The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Creating a Michael Festival from the Spirit: The Mysteries of the Inner Self

[ 1 ] What I would like to share with you today, like everything I have had to say about anthroposophy recently, must be said with a certain undertone, one brought on by the painful event that struck our cause and our society on New Year’s Eve: The Goetheanum in Dornach is, after all, no longer standing. It was consumed by flames on New Year’s Eve. And all those who, in the span of that one night, saw the ten years of hard work destroyed—work that had been undertaken by so many of our friends who had devoted themselves to it—all those who, through this work and through what the Goetheanum meant to us, had come to love this Goetheanum dearly—they will have to come to terms with the fact that we no longer have this outward symbol of anthroposophical activity. For even if—as indeed should be the case—some building for our cause is to be erected again on the very same site, the old Goetheanum can, of course, no longer be the same under the influence of these difficult times. Thus, in the background of everything I have had to say since those days lies the terrible heat of the flames that intervened in such a heart-rending way in the development of our entire cause. Now that this outward symbol is gone, we must devote ourselves all the more to grasping the inner forces and inner essences of the anthroposophical movement and of what is connected with it for the entire development of humanity. So let me begin, then, with a kind of reflection on the nature of the human being. I have made many such reflections here among you, and today I would like to offer another one from a certain perspective.

[ 2 ] I would like to begin by considering the human being entering the world—the human being who has descended from pre-earthly existence and is taking his first steps here in earthly life. We know that upon this entry into earthly life, our soul is dominated by a state that bears a certain resemblance to the ever-recurring state of human sleep. Just as ordinary consciousness, upon waking, has no memory of what the human soul and spirit have gone through from falling asleep to waking up—with the exception of the colorful variety of dreams, which, however, as we know, fade away with falling asleep or waking up—and which, for ordinary consciousness, do not actually emerge from deep sleep—just as ordinary consciousness does not recall these states, so too does this same consciousness have, for the entire earthly life, only a memory extending back to a certain point in childhood. For some, this point lies somewhat earlier; for others, somewhat later. What lies before that in earthly life is, in fact, as veiled from ordinary consciousness as the events of the sleeping state. It is true, of course, that the child is not in a state of actual sleep; it is in a kind of dreamlike, indeterminate inner activity, but for the whole of later life, this state is, at least initially, not entirely dissimilar to a dream-filled sleep.

[ 3 ] However, three activities—three things the child learns—come into play during this period: what we usually summarize with the expression “learning to walk,” then what is associated with learning to speak, and what is associated with learning to think. Now, when we use the term “learning to walk”—in an extremely abbreviated way that stems precisely from our own convenience—we are actually referring to something that is extraordinarily complex. We need only consider how the child first enters life in a state of complete clumsiness, and how it gradually gains the ability to adapt its own balance to the space in which it is to move throughout its entire life. After all, what we observe in the child is not merely learning to walk, but a search for the state of balance in earthly life, and linked to this learning to walk is the use of the limbs for movement in general. For those who possess the proper insight into such matters, this learning to walk actually expresses the most remarkable and magnificent mysteries of life. A whole world is expressed in the way the child progresses from crawling to sitting up, to placing its little feet on the ground, but also to everything else—raising its head, using its arms and limbs. And whoever then—I would say—looks more closely at how one child places their little foot more on the heel, while another tends more to step on the toes, may perhaps gain a glimpse of what I am about to explain to you today with regard to the three activities mentioned and their connection to the spiritual world. But first, I would like to briefly characterize these three activities from an external perspective.

[ 4 ] Based on this search for balance—or, if I may express myself in a slightly more scholarly, perhaps even somewhat more lofty manner, this search for a dynamic of life—it is on the basis of this search that the process of learning to speak then takes shape. For anyone who observes closely knows very well: a child’s normal development proceeds in such a way that learning to speak builds upon learning to walk and grasp. First of all, one will already notice in the process of learning to speak how the child’s steady or light gait is also reflected in the rhythm of speech, in the stress placed on syllables, and in the strength of the speech. And one will further notice how the modulation of words and the contouring of words show a certain parallelism with the way the child learns to bend or keep their little fingers straight—whether skillfully or clumsily. But anyone who can then observe the entire inner workings of the human organism will be able to understand not only—as modern developmental theory also acknowledges—that right-handed people have their speech center in the left third frontal gyrus, the so-called Broca’s gyrus—which quite simply illustrates, physiologically, the characteristic connection between speech and the ability to grasp, if I may use the pleonasm: the entire manipulative capacity of the arm and hand—but they will also know how intimately the movement of the vocal cords and the entire functioning of the speech apparatus take on precisely the same character as that of walking and grasping movements. But in normal childhood development, speech—which, after all, develops through imitation of the environment—cannot develop at all unless the foundation for seeking a state of equilibrium in life is already in place.

[ 5 ] And thinking! Yes, the finer organs of the brain that underlie thinking develop, in turn, from the organization of language. No one should believe that, in normal childhood development, thinking could develop before speech. Anyone who pays close attention will find that, at first, language is not an expression of thoughts in the child. Not at all! It would be ridiculous to believe that. Rather, language in the child is an expression of feeling, of sensation, of the life of the soul. That is why you will see that, at first, it is the words for sensations—everything that is a sensation—that the child expresses through language first. And when the child says “Mama” or “Papa,” it is the feelings toward Mama or Papa that the child means, not some concept or thought. Thinking develops only out of language. However, in humans, certain things can be out of order, so that one might say: “This child learned to speak before learning to walk.” But this is not normal development, and in child-rearing one should indeed ensure that the normal sequence of development is strictly followed: walking, speaking, thinking.

[ 6 ] But one only truly becomes aware of the real nature of these activities of the child when one observes the other side of human life—namely, when one observes how these activities manifest themselves in sleep later in life; for, as I have indicated, these activities arise from sleep, or at least from the child’s dream-like sleep. But what, then, do these activities do during later earthly life?

[ 7 ] In general, modern scientific life is unable to address these matters. Modern scientific life, after all, is familiar only with the outer aspects of human existence and is unaware of the inner connections between the human being and the world spirit, insofar as the world spirit is spiritual. In all areas, human civilization—if I may use that term—or let us say human culture, has developed into a certain form of materialism or naturalism. Please do not think that I am trying to rail against materialism here. If materialism had not emerged in human civilization, human beings would not have become free. Materialism is therefore a necessary phase in human development. But today we must become clear about the paths we must take, even further into the future. And we must become clear about this in all areas. To better illustrate what I am about to say, I would like to demonstrate this with an example.

[ 8 ] You all know—and can learn from my writings—that before humanity on Earth went through those cultural epochs that are even remotely similar to today’s—the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greek-Latin, and then our own—it had previously gone through the so-called Atlantean Catastrophe. And during this Atlantean Catastrophe, humanity—which today comprises the European, Asian, and American civilizations—was essentially settled on a continent that is now an ocean, namely the Atlantic Ocean. At that time, it was essentially land, and humanity developed on this Atlantean land a very long time ago. You can, of course, read about what humanity went through there in my writings and cycles.

[ 9 ] I do not wish to speak here of humanity’s other experiences during the ancient Atlantean era, but specifically of musical experiences. The entire musical experience of the ancient Atlanteans would seem completely grotesque and bizarre to a person today—if they could hear it (though, of course, they cannot)—because what the ancient Atlanteans sought in music were, for example, seventh chords. These seventh chords had the peculiar quality for the Atlanteans that the souls of these primeval human beings—in whose bodies we were all once contained, for in our repeated earthly lives we ourselves have also lived through this era—were immediately lifted out of their bodies when they were immersed in their music, which primarily featured seventh chords. They knew no other emotional state in music than rapture, enthusiasm, and being imbued with the divine. And as soon as their extraordinarily simple instruments sounded—which, incidentally, were merely accompaniment instruments for singing—such an Atlantean actually felt himself weaving and living in the spiritual outer world.

[ 10 ] Then came the Atlantic catastrophe. Among all post-Atlanteans, a preference for sequences of fifths initially developed. You probably know that the fifth continued to play the most prominent role in musical development for a long time; even in ancient Greece, for example, the fifth played a very widespread role. This preference for sequences of fifths had the peculiar consequence that, although people no longer felt themselves to be outside their bodies when experiencing music, they did feel themselves to be within their bodies in a soul-spiritual sense. During the musical experience, they completely forgot their physical experience. They felt, so to speak, within their own skin, but their skin was completely filled with soul and spirit. That was the effect of music, and very few people will believe that, almost up until the 10th or 11th century A.D., natural music was as I have described it, for it was only then that people’s aptitude for thirds—the major and minor thirds—and for major and minor modes began to emerge. This came relatively late, but with this late arrival, the inner experience of music also took shape. People now remained within themselves in their musical experience. Just as the rest of culture during this period descended from the spiritual to the material, so too did people in their musical experience move from the experience of the spiritual—in which they were absorbed in ancient times, whenever they experienced music at all—toward the experience of the musical within themselves, no longer merely on the surface but entirely within themselves. It was in this way that the major and minor modes first emerged at that time; these are, in essence, only truly possible when human beings experience the musical realm inwardly.

[ 11 ] Thus, in all areas, one can trace how human beings have developed from the spiritual down to the material, but also toward themselves. That is why one must not, in a philistine and narrow-minded way, always just say: “Oh, materialism is something inferior; human beings must break free from it.” — Humanity would not have truly become human if it had not descended to grasp material life. It was precisely by grasping the spiritual within the material that humanity became a self-aware, free “I”-being. And today, with the help of anthroposophical spiritual science, we must once again find our way back into the spiritual world—we must find it in all areas. That is precisely why it is so painful that the artistic endeavor undertaken in Dornach has been extinguished in this way today! The path into the spiritual world must simply be sought in all areas.

[ 12 ] Let us now first consider the one activity that the child learns—language—in relation to the overall development of the human being. One really must say: What the child learns there is something magnificent, and Jean Paul, the German poet, said that in the first three years of life—when one essentially learns to walk, speak, and think—a person learns much more than in three years of academic study. Meanwhile, those “three” academic years have multiplied, yet one still does not learn more in those “three” academic years than one learns in the first three years of life as a child. Now, let us consider speech! Speech involves, first of all, the outwardly physical and physiological aspects: our larynx and our other speech organs come into motion; they move the air. Sound is produced. Here, so to speak, we approach the outwardly physical and physiological aspects. But what we speak also contains the soul, and the soul permeates and infuses everything we express through our sounds. Yes, insofar as speech involves something physical, the human physical body and etheric body are involved in it. They are, of course, silent from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up—that is to say, the normal person does not speak from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up. But insofar as the soul and the “I” are involved in speech, the soul and the “I”—the astral body and the “I”—take the soul’s capacity for speech with them when they leave the physical body and the etheric body upon falling asleep, and with it, in fact, everything that the human being has soulfully invested in their speech throughout the entire day. We are, in fact, different people every evening, for we have been engaged in speech all day long—some a great deal, others less, some too much, some too little—but in any case, we have been engaged in speech all day long and have poured our soul into our speech. And what we have poured into our speech, we take with us as we fall asleep; that remains our essence between falling asleep and waking up.

[ 13 ] Nowadays, especially in our materialistic age, it may well be that people no longer have the slightest inkling that idealism or spiritualism can find expression in language. In many cases, people today believe that language is meant only to express external, tangible, concrete things. The sense that ideals can be expressed through language has, in many cases, been completely lost. That is why people today usually find what is spoken to them by the Spirit so incomprehensible. For what do people say to themselves when the Spirit is spoken of? They say to themselves: Yes, he is speaking in words. — But all people know about these words is that they signify what can be touched or seen. The idea that words might also point to something supersensible and invisible—people no longer want to accept that at all. And that may be one way people relate to language. The other, however, may well be that people find their way back to idealism already in the words themselves, already in language, so that they know that, in a sense, a spiritual-soul experience can resonate through every word.

[ 14 ] What a person who lives entirely within the materialism of language carries over into the spiritual world as they fall asleep strangely places them in a difficult relationship with the world of the archangels, the world of the Archangeloi, into which they are meant to enter every night between falling asleep and waking up, whereas the person who preserves the idealism of language and knows how the genius of language lives within it enters into the necessary relationship with the hierarchy of the Archangeloi—namely, with the Archangel to whom they themselves are assigned in the world between falling asleep and waking up. Yes, this even finds expression in the phenomena of the outer world.

[ 15 ] Why, then, are people today so desperately seeking an external connection to their national languages? Why did this terrible misfortune befall Europe—which Woodrow Wilson considered a “blessing” (though he was, after all, a peculiar dreamer)—why did this great misfortune befall Europe, such that freedom is now linked to the desperate desire to cling to even the smallest national languages? Because, in reality, people are desperately seeking an external relationship that they no longer have in the spiritual realm; for, having fallen asleep, they no longer have the natural relationship to language and therefore also not to the hierarchy of the Archangels. Humanity will once again have to find its way back to the permeation of the entire realm of language with idealism if it does not want to lose its way into the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] How much attention does humanity today actually pay to what happens to the individual between falling asleep and waking up? People don’t even take this state of sleep into account. When we look back on our lives, we tend to believe that what we see is a complete picture of our lives. That is not true! Sleep periods are always left out; the whole picture is always interrupted. We may always link the morning to the evening, but the night lies in between. And what happens during sleep at night accounts, first of all, for at least one-third of human life in external terms—at least for “decent people”—and secondly, it is far more important for the inner life of the human being than external activity throughout the entire day. Certainly, external activity is more important for external culture. But our inner development throughout life is brought about by our ability to enter into the right kind of connection with the spiritual world during the hours of night sleep.

[ 17 ] And the same is true of what underlies other activities. If a person infuses their actions—that is, the totality of their movements, which they learn first and foremost at the beginning of their earthly life—with idealism, that is, if their life in its realization contains idealism, then that person rediscovers the proper connection with the hierarchy of the Archai. And through thoughts—if they contain idealism, if they are not materialistic—a person finds, in the state of night sleep, the connection with the hierarchy of the Angeloi. One arrives at this conclusion when one examines, from the perspective of anthroposophical spiritual science, the connection between these three activities acquired during childhood and the state of night sleep. But this connection can reveal itself to us on a much broader scale when we look at the human being’s entire life within the cosmos.

[ 18 ] You are familiar with the description in my *Theosophy*. When a person passes through the gate of death, they first experience, for a few days, a state that consists of the departure of thoughts and images. One can express this by saying: The etheric body expands out into the vast world; the human being loses his etheric body. — But this is the same as if I were to say: The human being’s ideas and thoughts depart. — But what does that actually mean: that the ideas and thoughts depart? It actually means a great deal. It means, in fact, that our entire waking life departs from us. Our entire waking life departs from us over the course of two or three days, and there would be nothing left of our life at all if we did not then experience what remains unconscious during our earthly life—if we did not then begin to experience in full consciousness what we have gone through during our sleep life. This life of sleep is, in fact, spiritually infinitely richer and more intense than waking life. This life of sleep is, every time—whether we experience a short or a long sleep—a backward-moving repetition of the day’s events, but with a spiritual dimension. What you have experienced as actions during the day brings you into a relationship with the Archai, the primal forces, during the night. What you have experienced as a speaker during the day brings you into a relationship with the Archangeloi—the archangelic beings—at night. And what you have experienced as a thinker likewise brings you into a relationship with your angelic beings, the Angeloi. What a human being experiences in this way is, after all, independent of time. You need not say: “Yes, but there is this possibility: I’m sleeping, and suddenly something stirs in the night—something, I don’t know what—wakes me up; then surely I can’t complete my review of the day?” — Yet I do complete it, because the temporal conditions are entirely different. In a single moment, one can go through what might otherwise, when sleep proceeds normally, take hours. The temporal conditions during the life of sleep are simply quite different. That is why it can certainly be said—and must be said—that every time a person sleeps, they relive in reverse, in spiritual form, nature, and essence, what they have experienced here in the physical world between the last waking and falling asleep. And when, after death, they have lost their waking life of imagination to the cosmos within a few days, they then relive precisely what they experienced during one-third of their life—while asleep. That is why I have always had to describe how a person needs one-third of their earthly life to then relive what they experienced during the nights. Essentially, of course, this resembles daily life, but it is experienced in a different way, and the human being then experiences, as a second state after death, this “retrograde journey,” in which he essentially relives his entire life once more—back to birth—in one-third of the time. Then they have arrived back at birth, and they acclimate themselves to the state I have already described to you here in another context: they acclimate themselves to the state in which their entire worldview changes fundamentally.

[ 19 ] You see, here on Earth we stand at a specific point on the Earth’s surface. The world surrounds us. With our ordinary consciousness, we know very little about it. We perceive the world through our external senses; that is what we know. You might say: But anatomists know the human interior quite well. — No, they know only the outer aspect of the interior. The true interior is something entirely different. When you recall something today that you experienced ten years ago, what you have in your memory is something that lies within your soul. It is condensed—perhaps a brief memory of a very, very extensive experience. But there is only a mental image of something you went through in your earthly life. But now look within yourself—not into your memories, but into your physical organism, that is, your seemingly physical organism—and observe your wonderfully constructed brain, your wonderfully constructed lungs, and so on. Then you will see that it is not merely the experiences of this earthly life that are, so to speak, rolled up within you, but rather the entire cosmos, the entire world, that is rolled up there. Human beings are truly a small world, a microcosm. The entire world is contained within their organs. But human beings are not aware of this with their ordinary consciousness. When they stand on Earth, they have memories of their experiences. They do not know that they themselves, with their physical being, are, so to speak, the embodied memory of the entire cosmos.

[ 20 ] So when the journey backward through life—which I have just alluded to here—is complete, we enter, between death and a new birth, into a cosmic life where the world with its mountains, clouds, stars, seas, and so on surrounds us, but where the mysteries of the inner human being are our surroundings—where everything that eludes us in earthly life regarding the mysteries of the inner human being then becomes our surroundings. Here on this earth, we live within our own skin and are familiar with the worlds of stars, clouds, mountains, stones, animals, and plants. Between death and a new birth, we know of the human being; all the mysteries of the human being then become our surroundings. And do not think that this is a less interesting environment than the earthly one! Certainly, the starry sky is magnificent, and the mountains and seas are grand; but that which constitutes the inner being of a human being—contained within a single tiny vessel—is even more magnificent and awe-inspiring when we experience it in all its majestic grandeur all around us between death and a new birth than anything found in our earthly surroundings. Human beings are the world between death and a new birth, and they must be that world, because we are preparing for our next earthly life. We must be part of this process, working together with the beings of the higher hierarchies to prepare the future inhabitants of Earth. Just as we here cultivate our external culture and civilization—just as we here on Earth make boots, sew skirts, operate telephones, style people’s hair, give lectures, engage in the arts, and do all that is part of civilization today—so, between death and a new birth, together with the beings of the higher hierarchies, we create that which is human and that which we ourselves will once again become in the physical body in our next earthly life. That is the spiritual goal of culture, and it is far more immense, infinitely more immense and magnificent than the earthly goal of culture. It is not for nothing that the ancients called the physical human body a temple of the gods, because this human physical body is formed in collaboration with the gods—with the beings of the higher hierarchies—between death and a new birth. This is the activity: here we are, with our “I,” now among the beings of the higher hierarchies, working together with them for the benefit of humanity. We move about, as it were, among the beings of the higher hierarchies; we are spirits among spirits.

[ 21 ] What we do there, however, we can only do in accordance with what we have accomplished here in our earthly life, and this, too, is revealed to us in a certain sense in the relationship between sleep and wakefulness. Just think for a moment how chaotic a dream is! I do not deny the wonderfully colorful diversity and the grandeur of dreams, but we must nevertheless be clear that, compared to earthly life—whose images it takes on—a dream is chaotic. You need only recall that dream I once cited as an illustration—Volkelt recounts this dream based on a Württemberg tale, but we are all familiar with such dreams—in which a city woman visits her sister, who is a pastor’s wife, in the countryside. She dreams that she goes to church with her sister to hear the sermon. But something seems very strange to her there, because after the Gospel is read and the pastor climbs into the pulpit, he doesn’t begin to preach; instead, instead of raising his arms, he raises his wings and finally begins to crow like a rooster! — Or consider another dream, in which a woman says she had just dreamed that she was thinking about what nice meal to cook for her husband, and nothing else occurred to her until, finally, the thought occurred to her that she still had an old salted grandmother up in the attic, but that she was still very tough. — That’s how chaotic a dream can seem—strangely chaotic. But what does that mean: that the dream seems so chaotic? What does that actually mean?

[ 22 ] While we sleep, our ego and astral body are outside the physical body and the etheric body. But there we relive—particularly in terms of moral significance—everything we have done, said, and thought during the day. We relive all of that. We prepare our karma for the next earthly life, and this appears in images even between falling asleep and waking up. But these images are still very crude, for when we then want to re-enter the physical body upon waking, they do not yet fit quite right. We cannot imagine things in accordance with the macrocosm. Instead, we imagine something entirely different—perhaps a “salty grandmother.” This is because, based on what we have already developed, we do not understand how to adapt to the physical human body, and this adaptation to the physical human body is infinitely difficult. We acquire this ability through the collaboration I have described with the beings of the higher hierarchies between death and new birth. There, the inner soul-spiritual aspect—which otherwise often enters the physical body so clumsily in dreams—must first re-establish balance once the entire sleep consciousness has been overcome and the human being has re-entered their old physical body without any active effort on their part.

[ 23 ] Between death and rebirth, this soul-spiritual being must penetrate all the mysteries of the physical body so that the body can be built up in the proper way. For the body is certainly not built up by the parents and ancestors alone. To believe that is utter nonsense on the part of science—one may well use that word. For how does science roughly conceive of this process of becoming human? Well, it says: Among substances, we have molecules, which are composed of atoms in a complex manner. The protein molecule contained in the germ cell is the most complex molecule of all—of course, no scientist can describe it, but he points to its immense complexity—and because it is so complex, a human being can arise from it. — It’s the simplest way to explain human beings. People simply say: The whole human being is already contained within it; it’s just a molecule with such a complex structure. — But the truth is that a human being can only come into being if the protein molecule must completely revert to chaos, must become dust from disordered matter. Outside, we have ordered matter—in crystals, in plants, and so on. If something is to come into being—whether a plant or an animal—the matter must first completely revert to dust. And only when the matter no longer has a specific form of its own does the entire cosmos act upon that tiny piece of matter, forming an image within it.

[ 24 ] So what about human beings? We shape this image of humanity—between death and new birth—with all the mysteries into which we now weave our karma, and send it down before us into the mother’s body; we have the spiritual seed, which is large only in relation to the physical seed—that is, only just formed—and it descends into the matter that has become chaotic. That is the truth, not what modern physiology dreams of.

[ 25 ] During this period I have just described, the “I” lives as a spiritual-soul entity among spiritual-soul divine beings, engaged in the task of coming to know human beings as such in their innermost being, in preparation for the next earthly life. A reflection of what is experienced there spiritually in immense majesty and grandeur is what appears in a wondrous way in the child’s individual activities of seeking balance. It is very interesting to see how the primal forces, or Archai, influence the child’s entire process of seeking balance—what we trivially call “learning to walk”—from the life between death and new birth. Anyone who can see a reflection of the spiritual in all earthly things can see how, in all the activities of walking, in the movements of reaching out with the arms, and so on, these soul-spiritual acts—which we perform between death and new birth in the search for spiritual balance as the “I” among higher “I’s”—find their reflection in the earthly process of learning to walk.

[ 26 ] And once we have gone through those states where we are a spirit among spirits, where we prepare what will play out in our earthly life within the body and in the limbs—through which we in turn become a human being of one kind or another and experience our karma—once we have gone through these states over there in the world between death and a new birth, then a state arises in pre-earthly life where we can no longer distinguish the individual spiritual beings with whom we have worked together for so long, but where there is only a general perception of the spirit. We do know, then, that we are living in a spiritual world, but as we now approach earthly life, the impression the spiritual world makes on us becomes more of a unified one, no longer that of the specific, individual perception of spiritual beings. I can use a trivial comparison to explain this so that we can understand one another, but please be clear that I am actually referring to something very sublime. If there is a small cloud somewhere far away, you say, “That is a small cloud.”—But when you get closer, you realize: “Those are all just gnats!” — There you distinguish the individual entities. Well, in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, it is the other way around. There you first distinguish the individual entities of the spiritual beings, and then it becomes a general impression. I would say that the revelation of the spiritual takes the place of the experience of the spiritual.

[ 27 ] Yes, this state—which, in a sense, distances us from the spiritual world because we are already seeking our way back down to Earth—is now reflected in the inner workings that underlie human speech. Suppose we are speaking. It begins, so to speak, at the larynx—not exactly, but roughly—and the other speech organs are set in motion. But behind that lies the essential element. The essential element lies in the heart, behind the larynx; it lies in the entire breathing process and in everything connected with it. What underlies language there is likewise an earthly image of this state of revelation, in which we perceive the divine-spiritual only vaguely—just as learning to walk and seeking balance are earthly images of moving within the spiritual world. Thus, as the child learns to speak, it once again experiences a state that has been undergone between death and new birth.

[ 28 ] And when we have sent down our spirit seed into the physical body, when it has gradually united with the mother’s body through conception, we are still up above. This is the final period before earthly incarnation. During this time, we draw together the etheric body from all regions of the world, and what takes place in the supersensible world as the etheric body is drawn together is expressed in the child’s learning to think.

[ 29 ] Now you have the three successive states: experiencing the spiritual world, reflected in learning to walk, and the revelation of the spiritual world in learning to speak. That is why we call that which underlies the world word—the World Logos—the inner word. It is the revelation of the universal Logos, in which the spiritual expresses itself, like the mosquito in a swarm of mosquitoes; it underlies speech. And what we then do to develop our etheric body—which, after all, actually thinks within us (for we continue to think throughout the night; we are simply not present with our “I” and astral body)—is the very last thing we gather for ourselves before we descend to Earth, and that is what then carries over into thinking. Thus, as the very young child learns to walk, speak, and think, it integrates into the physical body what it brings down from its pre-earthly existence.

[ 30 ] This is what leads to true spiritual insight—and thus also to an artistic and religious understanding of the world: that we can relate every single aspect of physical, sensory existence to the spiritual. I have often compared those people who always want to speak only in general terms about the divine-spiritual to someone who went out into a meadow and was shown: “Look, there are daisies, there are dandelions, there are chicory, and there is chicory root!”—and who would then say: “Oh, none of that interests me! Flower, flower, flower—that’s all there is.” — That’s convenient: flower, flower is everything. But there are distinctions within the very nature of being a flower! And so it is in the spiritual world as well. It is, of course, convenient to say: Everything physical and sensory has a spiritual basis. — But what matters is that we come to know more and more which spiritual element underlies each individual physical and sensory aspect, for only in this way can we actually intervene once again from the spirit into the physical and sensory course of life.

[ 31 ] It is this principle, for example, that makes our Waldorf school pedagogy a unique approach that truly takes the human being into account. This will become even clearer once this pedagogy has been developed for a child’s early years. We are not yet able to do that. Up until now, we’ve always had to expand upward, and this year we established the final grade level. There is a great deal of work involved in shaping the educational goals of an entire school. That is why, until now, it was out of the question to make the program more complete at the lower end as well and to add a kind of kindergarten. Now the first Waldorf students are set to take their high school graduation exams. Then adding classes at the upper end will no longer be necessary, but given our extraordinary “abundance of lack of funds”—especially for the Waldorf School—I fear that expanding the program at the lower end will still fail. Just as we would organize things there for learning to walk, speak, and think, and for their further development, so too do we naturally organize matters between the ages of six and seven and in the other years of life in such a way that we take this into account: What is taking shape within the child? What aspects of the pre-birth realm are expressed in the child’s life with each passing week and month? Thus, pedagogy is in fact shaped by the spirit.

[ 32 ] This is one of the moments we must rediscover many times over if humanity does not wish to remain in decline but instead wants to rise again. We must rediscover the paths to the spiritual world. But we can only do this if, out of full consciousness, we learn to find ways and means to act and speak from the spirit.

[ 33 ] In the early days following the great Atlantic catastrophe, people lived in accordance with the spirit—every single one of them—because each individual could be told, from the moment of his or her birth, what his or her karma was. At that time, astrology did not represent the amateurism it often embodies today; rather, it meant actively experiencing the workings of the stars, and through this active experience, it was revealed to each individual from within the Mystery how they were to live. Astrology had a vital significance for the individual human experience.

[ 34 ] Then came the time—around the sixth, fifth, or fourth millennium B.C.—when people no longer experienced the mysteries of the starry sky, but did experience the cycle of the year. What do I mean when I say that people experienced the course of the year? It means they knew from direct observation that the Earth is not that crude block of rock that modern geology regards it as. On the Earth as geology conceives it, plants could never grow, let alone animals or human beings exist. Such things could not exist at all, for the geologists’ Earth is a stone, and nothing grows directly within a stone unless the entire cosmos acts upon it—unless it is connected to the whole world. In ancient times, people simply knew what we must learn to know again today: that the Earth is an organism and has a soul.

[ 35 ] This Earth soul, too, has its own particular destinies. Suppose it is winter here, the Christmas season, the time of the winter solstice; that is the time when the Earth soul is fully united with the Earth. For when the snow covers the earth, when, so to speak, a cloak of cold surrounds the earth, then the Earth soul is united with the earth and rests within it. It is also the case that the Earth soul, resting within the earth, sustains the life of numerous elemental spirits. If a naturalistic view today suggests that the seeds I sow into the earth in the fall simply lie there until the following spring, that is not true. The seeds must be preserved through the winter by the earth’s elemental spirits. All of this is connected to the fact that during the winter, the Earth Soul is united with the Earth’s body.

[ 36 ] Consider the opposite season, the time of St. John. Just as a person inhales and exhales air—so that it is sometimes within them and sometimes outside them—so the Earth inhales its soul. This occurs during the winter season. And fully exhaled, cast out into the vastness of the cosmos, the Earth’s soul is in midsummer, during the time of St. John. Then, in a sense, the Earth’s body is empty of the Earth’s soul. The Earth experiences the events of the cosmos—the course of the stars and so on—through its soul. That is why, in ancient times, there were winter mysteries in which one experienced the union of the Earth soul with the Earth, and there were summer mysteries in which one could perceive the mysteries of the universe through the shared experience of the Earth soul—which the human soul, in the initiates, was to follow out into the cosmos—with the stars.

[ 37 ] You can see from the old traditional remnants that still exist today that people were aware of these things. It was a long time ago now, but I used to sit down quite often—right here in Berlin, in fact—with an astronomer who was very famous here and who argued vehemently that it was very disruptive if, for example, Easter did not fall at least on the first Sunday in April every year, and that it was terrible that Easter was supposed to be the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Of course, it was no use citing reasons against this, because the underlying issue was this: it would cause terrible confusion in the debits and credits of the cash books if Easter were set at a different time every year. This movement had even already taken on quite large proportions. I’ve said here before: The first page of the cash books usually bears the inscription “With God,” but more often than not, what’s written in these books isn’t exactly “with God.”

[ 38 ] In those times when Easter was determined by the movement of the stars—the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the sun—there was still an awareness of this: In winter, the Earth’s soul is within the Earth; at the time of St. John’s Day, the Earth’s soul is entirely out in outer space; in spring, it is on its way to outer space. The spring festival, Easter, therefore cannot be fixed on a specific day based solely on the Earth, but must be determined by the constellations. There is a profound wisdom in this, stemming from times when people, through the old instinctive clairvoyance, were still able to perceive the spiritual nature of the annual cycle. We must return to this, and in a certain sense we can return to it if, building directly upon discussions such as those we have held here together, we take up the tasks of the present.

[ 39 ] I have often spoken of this here as well: Among the spiritual beings with whom human beings unite every night in the manner I have described—through language with the Archangels—certain beings serve as the ruling spiritual powers for a specific period of time. And in the last third of the 19th century, the Age of Michael began—that time in which the spirit, otherwise referred to in the Scriptures as Michael, became the essential force in the affairs of human civilization. These things repeat themselves cyclically.

[ 40 ] In ancient times, people knew something about all these spiritual processes. Ancient Hebrew tradition spoke of Yahweh, but it always spoke of the “face” of Yahweh, and by “face” it meant the archangels, who actually mediated between Yahweh and the earth. And when the Jews awaited the Messiah on Earth, they knew that this was the Age of Michael, when Michael mediates the activity of the Christ on Earth. They only misunderstood this in a deeper context. Now, once again, the time has come for the Earth—since the 1870s—when the Michael power is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and when we must learn to incorporate the spiritual into our actions and to organize our lives from a spiritual perspective. This means serving Michael: not merely organizing our lives from a material standpoint, but being conscious that Michael—whose mission is to overcome the lower Ahrimanic forces—must, so to speak, become our guiding spirit for the development of civilization. How can he do that? Well, he can do so if we remember how we, in turn, can reconnect with the course of the year in a spiritual sense.

[ 41 ] There is truly great wisdom in the course of the universe in that we are able to associate the Spring Festival with the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. The historical connection—which I have explained on several occasions—is entirely accurate: The Spring Festival—that is, Easter—can only fall on a different day each year because it is viewed from the other world. Only we on Earth have the philistine notion that time flows continuously, that one hour is always as long as the next. We determine time only with our earthly tools, with mathematics. In contrast, for the true spiritual world, the “world hour” is alive. No two world hours are alike; rather, they are longer or shorter. Therefore, we are bound to err whenever we attempt to determine something that is to be fixed from heaven solely from our earthly perspective. Easter is rightfully fixed according to heavenly principles.

[ 42 ] What kind of festival is it? It is the festival that is meant to remind us—and that once reminded people with great vividness—that a God descended to Earth, taking up residence in the human being Jesus of Nazareth, so that at a time when humanity was approaching the development of the “I,” people might find their way back, in an appropriate manner, through death into spiritual life. I have discussed this here on several occasions. Thus, the Easter festival is the festival in which humanity contemplates death and the immortality that follows it in the Mystery of Golgotha. We view this spring festival in its true sense when we say to ourselves: Christ has affirmed the immortality of the human being by overcoming death himself. But we human beings can only truly understand the immortality of Christ Jesus if we acquire this understanding during our earthly life—that is, if we enliven in our souls our relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha and if we can free ourselves from that materialistic conception that seeks to strip away everything spiritual from the Mystery of Golgotha. Today, people no longer want to acknowledge Christ at all, but only the “simple man from Nazareth,” Jesus. They are, so to speak, embarrassed by their own scientific mindset if they were to admit that the Mystery of Golgotha contains a spiritual secret at the very heart of earthly existence: the death and resurrection of God. But when we experience this spiritually, we also prepare ourselves to experience other things spiritually.

[ 43 ] That is why it is so important for people today to gain the ability to experience the Mystery of Golgotha, first and foremost, as something purely spiritual. Then they will experience other spiritual realities, and they will find access to the spiritual worlds—the paths to the spiritual worlds—through the Mystery of Golgotha. But then, building upon the Mystery of Golgotha, a person must understand the Resurrection while still alive. And when they intuitively understand the Resurrection while they are alive, they will thereby also be enabled to pass through death in the right way. That is to say, death and resurrection in the Mystery of Golgotha are meant to teach human beings to reverse the relationship: to experience the resurrection inwardly and spiritually during life, so that, after this inner spiritual resurrection, the human being can pass through death in the right way. This is the experience that is the opposite of the Easter experience.

[ 44 ] At Easter, we should be able to immerse ourselves in the death and resurrection of Christ. But as human beings, we also need the opportunity to immerse ourselves in what is, for us, the resurrection of the soul, so that the resurrected soul of the human being may truly pass through death. Just as we cultivate the true Easter spirit in spring when we see the plants sprouting and growing, how nature rises again, and how nature overcomes the death of winter, so too, if we have truly lived through the summer, can we cultivate a sense of knowing that: The soul has ascended into cosmic expanses; we are now approaching autumn—September is drawing near, the autumnal equinox is approaching. The leaves that turned green and sprouted in spring are turning brownish and yellowish and are falling off; the trees stand there, already partly bare, and nature is dying. But we understand this dying nature when we look into the process of dying, into the approaching blanket of snow covering the earth, and say to ourselves: There the soul of the earth is drawing back to the earth once more, and it will be wholly with the earth when the winter solstice has arrived.

[ 45 ] There is a way to experience this autumn season with the same intensity as the spring season. And just as we experience the death and resurrection of God during the spring and Easter season, so too can we experience the resurrection and death of the human soul during the autumn season—that is, the experience of resurrection during earthly life—in order to pass through death in the right way. But then we must also understand what this means for us, for our present time: that during the St. John’s season in summer, the earthly soul is breathed out into the vastness of the worlds, where it unites with the stars and returns again. Whoever penetrates the mysteries of this earthly cycle throughout the year knows that the Michael force is now descending again through the forces of nature—a force that did not descend in earlier centuries—so that we can move toward the leaf-shedding autumn, in which we behold the Michael force approaching the earth from the clouds.

[ 46 ] Yes, the calendars list “Michael” for this day, and Michaelmas is considered a farmers’ holiday. But we will only be able to perceive the present in such a spiritual way that earthly human events merge with natural events when we once again become capable of understanding the course of the year to such an extent that we can establish annual festivals within it—just as the ancient people established them out of their ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance. The ancients understood the year and, drawing on these mysteries—which I could only hint at today—developed Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of St. John. People exchange gifts at Christmas and do other things as well, but I have often explained—when I have given Christmas or Easter lectures here—how little people today still have of these ancient festival traditions, and how everything has become merely traditional and superficial. But once we come to understand the festivals that we merely celebrate today without truly understanding them, we will also have the strength to establish, out of a spiritual understanding of the course of the year, a festival that holds the true significance for present-day humanity. This will be the Michaelmas Festival in the days at the end of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves wither, the trees become bare, and nature moves toward dying off—just as it moves toward sprouting at Easter—when, in the sprouting nature, we become aware of how the soul of the earth unites with the earth, and how Michael brings it down from the clouds.

[ 47 ] If we have the strength to create, out of the spirit, a celebration that in turn brings a sense of community back into our social life, then we will have done so out of the spirit. For then we will have established something among ourselves that has its origin in the spirit. More important than all other social reflection and the like—which, in the current confused circumstances, can only lead to something if the spirit is present—it would be, first and foremost, for a number of understanding people to come together to create something on Earth, inspired by the cosmos, such as a Michaelmas festival that would be worthy of Easter but, as an autumn festival, would serve as its counterpart. If one could resolve to create something for which the motives exist only in the spiritual world—but which would then bring about a shared sense of feeling among people once again at such a festival, created from the full, fresh human heart right here and now—then there would be something that would bind people together socially once more. For in ancient times, festivals firmly bound people together socially. Just think of all that has been done, said, and thought about festivals and in connection with them for the entire culture! This is what, through the establishment of festivals rooted in the immediate spirit, has become embodied in the physical world.

[ 48 ] If people today could decide, in a dignified manner, to establish a Michaelmas festival in the days at the end of September, that would be an act of the utmost significance. To do this, people would have to find the courage—not merely to discuss external social organizations and the like, but to do something that binds the Earth to the heavens, that reconnects physical conditions to spiritual conditions. Then, because this would reintroduce the spirit into earthly conditions, something would truly happen among people that would be a powerful impulse for the continuation of our civilization and our entire life.

[ 49 ] Of course, this is not the time to describe to you what a scientific, religious, and artistic experience all of this would be—just as with the old festivals, so too with such a new festival created on a grand scale from the spirit—and how much more important such a creation from the spiritual world would be than all the social tirades being developed today. For what would that mean? Ah, it means a great deal for gaining insight into the human soul when I can discern what a person means, or when I understand their words correctly. If one can perceive today how the entire course of the world unfolds as autumn approaches, if one can unravel and decipher this entire physiognomy of the universe and act creatively upon it, then one reveals not only human will in such a festive creation—one would reveal the will of the gods and spirits. Then the spirit is among humanity once more!

[ 50 ] But today it is indeed the case that the spiritual is received in the world in a peculiar way. Perhaps I may conclude with a few words on the very point with which I began. I should have pointed out long ago how—starting from a very minor Masonic source, but then repeatedly taken up in all sorts of astrological works and echoed by all opponents for quite some time—the following statement has been put out into the world: Enough spiritual sparks of fire have flown into the Goetheanum in Dornach; the time will come when the physical spark of fire will fly into this Goetheanum. — People have been writing about this for two years. This is the way in which what is truly drawn from the spirit is received in the world today! In contrast, there must be people who can take the act of immersing themselves in the spirit completely seriously. One cannot take it seriously merely by speaking of the spirit, but rather by speaking of the spirit in such a way that it can truly spread the spirit among us human beings. Such a spreading of the spirit would occur if we were to create out of the spirit, just as in ancient times people created out of the spirit. I have often had the opportunity to speak to you about Christmas, Easter—that is, about ancient festivals. It is beautiful to draw the spirit of the ancient festivals out of the flow of time. But I would like people not only to understand what ancient wisdom conceived—as brought to the surface through anthroposophy—but I would also like them to be able to understand what speaks to us as a call from the Spirit of our immediate present. It is not enough to regard the Gospels merely as an expression of Christianity, for Christ said: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He is here! If we understand his spirit, his words, then we can speak from this spirit every day. What enabled the ancients to create from a world-wisdom—what enables us even today to reveal the deep meaning of the festivals—that lives among us. Let us strive to be whole human beings. But then we must also be able to create spiritually as whole human beings. Then we must not only be able to reflect on the meaning of the ancient festivals; we must also be able to become socially creative through them, so that we can create festivals out of the cycle of the year.

[ 51 ] This, however, demands more of people than simply explaining the long-established festivals. But it is also a true anthroposophy, a higher anthroposophy. And the Anthroposophical Society can only be judged by whether it understands not only dead anthroposophy, which deals with the past, but also living anthroposophy. This, too, can be a collection of sparks of fire! But these sparks of fire will be in a temple that is not made of external material. Physical flames consume temples made of external material. The flames of genuine spiritual enthusiasm, of genuine spiritual life—which must permeate the temple because they must illuminate it with what shines forth in the spirit—these flames cannot destroy the temple; they can only make this temple ever more magnificent. Let us think of what living anthroposophy is as that fiery flame that will lead us farther and farther, just like the living spirit of anthroposophy itself, which is to guide us toward the progress of humanity and the reconstruction of that which is now in such a clear state of decline.

[ 52 ] That is what I wanted to tell you during my current visit to Berlin, my dear friends, because it is good for us to discuss such serious matters now, precisely because we are so rarely able to be together. I hope that this gathering will also result in a truly meaningful connection in spirit. For anthroposophy is meant to work in the spirit, not merely in physical space. And so, let this serve as a greeting to you: may we remain united in spirit, even if we must now be physically separated for some time.