The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] When we look back on the reflections we have made over the past few days, they will bring to mind the relationships that exist between human beings on the one hand and the universe on the other, but also the relationships that exist between the individual human life in a particular era and the entire course of human development on Earth.

[ 2 ] Today I would like to add a few more thoughts to these reflections, which will, in a sense, round them out. You will have gathered from what I took the liberty of saying that in ancient times, before the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings were actually much closer to external nature and the external world than they are today. Today, people imagine that they are very close to nature through their science. But that is not the case at all. People form intellectual concepts about nature, but they do so based on external observations. They no longer experience nature directly.

[ 3 ] For when one experiences nature firsthand—as we all did in earlier earthly lives in the way I described yesterday—one does not come to know those lifeless processes and entities that modern science rightly speaks of, but rather comes to know all of nature as animated and alive. In ancient times, it was a matter of course to perceive beings and processes between beings everywhere in nature, because through such experiences—as I described yesterday, the kind one had with the physical body in old age—one maintained a connection with what lives spiritually and soulfully out there in nature. If human beings had remained dependent in this way—if I may put it that way—on the spiritual aspect of nature, they would never have become the free beings they have become in the more recent period of historical development. They would not have attained their full sense of self. For when we look within ourselves today—and quite rightly so—when we also look at what we have as memories, when we look at what we have experienced, what do we find within ourselves? We find our “I,” our “I” with its experiences. When the ancient human being—particularly thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha—looked within, he did not find his “I.” He did not say, “Ten years ago, twenty years ago, I experienced this or that”—but precisely in his memory it became clear to him that he had to say: “The gods allowed me to experience this or that.” — And the human being did not say, “I within myself,” but rather, “The God within me.” — Precisely because he spiritually shared in the natural processes outside himself through his physical body, his etheric body, and his astral body—precisely because he was more attuned to, more familiar with, nature—he said, “The God within me experiences the world.”

[ 4 ] Today, human beings are no longer familiar with nature. They acquire knowledge of nature through their intellect. Through this, however, they gain knowledge only of inanimate nature. They no longer experience nature firsthand. As a result, they have become capable of truly and intimately saying “I” to themselves—of being a free “I”-being.

[ 5 ] Paul felt this particularly strongly after he had undergone the Damascus experience. For before he had undergone the Damascus experience, Paul was an initiate in the sense of the ancient initiation. In the Semitic schools of initiation of that time, he had experienced what one typically experienced in such schools of initiation at that time. There he had learned that the God whom one is justified in calling Christ could only be beheld in pre-earthly existence. He knew this from his schools of initiation.

[ 6 ] But the disciples and followers of Christ whom he met claimed: “Yes, the Christ lived among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He was here on Earth. While we were his contemporaries, we experienced him not only through memories of our pre-earthly existence, but also here on Earth.” — Then Paul, speaking from his own initiation, said: “That cannot be, for the Christ can only be beheld in pre-earthly existence.” — And he remained an unbeliever and persecuted Christianity until, through the vision—the imagination—at Damascus, he himself experienced that the Christ lives in connection with the earth. It was then that Paul coined the phrase that has since become so important for Christianity—for inner Christianity—he coined the phrase: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

[ 7 ] Yes, a person comes to the “I” naturally and of their own accord. In modern times, simply by looking within, a person comes to the “I” on their own. To reach God, however, they must, out of full consciousness, connect with the Mystery of Golgotha and say to themselves: “The Christ within me.” — The ancients said: “We were with Christ—and thus with God the Father—before we descended to Earth.” — Human beings now had to learn to say: “Christ is on Earth.” Physically, He was on Earth during the Mystery of Golgotha. Spiritually, He has remained united with human beings on Earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha. — This is also contained within Christianity when it is said that Christ revealed to humanity that the Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near. It is precisely in the interpretation of this saying that it becomes so clear how people, even if they are outwardly believers, are inwardly unbelievers. For just consider what many modern theologians say about this Kingdom of Heaven that has drawn near. They say: Well, Christ was simply influenced by the prevailing views of his time. People believed that at a certain point in time the Earth would become much more spiritual; that was a mistake on Christ’s part. — But it is not a mistake on Christ’s part; it is a mistake on the part of humanity. People have interpreted it as if, now that the Kingdom of Heaven was supposed to have come down, the grapes would grow ten times larger, all fruits would grow ten times more abundantly, and everything on earth would flow with milk and honey. That is not what Christ meant at all; rather, Christ spoke of the spiritual kingdom, and it is precisely through him that it has drawn near. One must not say, “What Christ said was a mistake, and we must think differently today”—but rather one must ask, “How do I understand what Christ said?”

[ 8 ] Indeed, ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, it has become increasingly necessary for human beings to find the spiritual within the earthly realm and to recognize the truth of the saying: “The spiritual worlds have descended to Earth.” — They have descended to Earth. Human beings need only find the way to seek them out. To help find something that leads along this path, I would like to offer a brief reflection today that is intended to foster understanding in these matters.

[ 9 ] In those ancient times, when people felt their physical bodies beginning to weaken around the age of fifty, that was also the time when one could discern an individual’s fate from the stars. Since then, all astrology has become an amateurish calculation. But in those ancient times, when people reached the age of fifty, they knew something about their destiny from the stars through the very nature of their physical bodies. They felt a kinship with the physical body’s becoming earthly. But this becoming earthly through the physical body, this perception of the earth through the physical body, led them to recognize the spiritual aspect of destiny once again through the course of the stars, so that, millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, great importance was attached to the wisdom of the stars.

[ 10 ] Then came the time I told you about yesterday, when people felt more connected to their surroundings, when they also felt language in such a way that, upon reaching their forties, they would say: “The spirit of the people speaks within me; the genius of the people speaks within me.” — People perceived language as something objective. But something else was connected to this as well. It was connected to the fact that people experienced what was, so to speak, taking place in the cycle around them. Later, people still experienced the daily sunrise and the daily sunset. They organized their lives somewhat around the daily sunrise and the daily sunset. But later on, people did not have much understanding of the course of the year.

[ 11 ] There was a time around the 6th, 5th, and 4th millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha when people lived not only with day and night, but also with the year. Much of this experience of living in harmony with the year has been preserved for later times. But this experience of the course of the year was in full bloom during the period I have indicated to you, in the Orient. Here in the North, in particular, something of this has been preserved for much later times. And you can still sense this remnant, for example, in the Olaf Song, where Olaf experiences the course of the year to such an extent that around Christmas time—and after Christmas—he experiences the spiritual world. For the Olaf Song actually contained the experience of the spiritual world following the Christmas season within the course of the year. This, I would say, is still a remnant of that golden age of experiencing the course of the year, as it was in very ancient times precisely where humanity’s highest civilization flourished—in the ancient Orient. And there, people understood something that was later understood only through tradition; they understood how to celebrate festivals throughout the year. They experienced the course of the year. How, for example?

[ 12 ] Today, we know this not through direct experience, but through science: a person inhales; a person exhales. The air is outside, then inside us; the air that is now inside us is outside again once we have exhaled. Today, people hardly know this through anything other than science. They no longer experience inhaling and exhaling as they did in ancient times, when people actively experienced their own inhalation and exhalation.

[ 13 ] But it is not only human beings who breathe; our Earth breathes as well, albeit in a different way. Just as human beings have a spiritual aspect, so does the Earth. But over the course of a year, the Earth breathes in and out its spiritual aspect. And when that winter season approaches, during which Christmas falls, that is the time when the Earth has inhaled the most, when the Earth’s soul is fully within the Earth. That is when the Earth possesses the greatest amount of soul life within itself. And that is why the spiritual-soul aspect also becomes visible within the Earth during this time.

[ 14 ] And human beings experience this “inhalation” of the Earth, when the Earth holds its entire soul within itself, and when all the elemental beings can emerge from the earthly realm and live among the trees—which are, of course, then covered in snow—and live on the Earth’s surface, where the water freezes; precisely when the earth covers itself with a cold shell, the spiritual beings within the earth become active. The mere naturalist says: The farmer sows the seed into the earth, which overwinters and blooms again in the spring. — None of this would be possible if the elemental spirits did not carry the spiritual power of the sowing through the winter. The spiritual beings, the nature spirits, are most alert when the earth has breathed in its entire soul during the winter season, during the Christmas season. That is why the birth of Jesus was best understood as having taken place at Christmas time, when the earth possesses its entire soul. But even during the Mystery of Golgotha, only a few people still had an understanding of this spiritual-soul aspect within the Earth during the winter season.

[ 15 ] And people also knew in those days that the opposite condition exists during the height of summer, around St. John’s Day at the end of June. That is when the Earth has exhaled the most. At that time, the Earth surrendered its soul to the outer cosmos. From the Christmas season to the time of St. John, one always perceives the outbreathing of the soul into the vast expanse of space. The soul of the Earth strives toward the stars. The soul of the Earth wants to come to know the life of the stars. And the soul of the Earth is, in its own way, most closely connected—through the light of the summer sun—to the movements of the stars during the time of St. John. This was perceived in certain regions in ancient times, thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha. It was possible to recognize this. And from this recognition arose the observance of the summer mysteries.

[ 16 ] In the summer mysteries—the John mysteries, which were observed particularly in the north—and in the midsummer mysteries, the disciples of the initiates, under the guidance of the initiates themselves, sought to follow the Earth soul into the vastness of the stars in order to read from the stars which spiritual events and which spiritual realities are connected to the Earth. And during the period from Christmas to St. John’s Day, one observes this departure of the Earth soul into the starry realms, this striving of the Earth soul toward the stars. And an echo—but a traditional echo—of this striving of the Earth soul toward the stars still exists in the dating of Easter. Easter is set on the first Sunday after the spring full moon—that is, according to a standard derived from the stars—because in ancient times it was said: The human soul wishes to follow the Earth soul on its path to the stars and to regard stellar wisdom as the guide by which one should be guided. — Therefore, this spring festival, Easter, should first be determined not according to an earthly standard or earthly calculation, but according to a celestial calculation, a calculation based on the stars. All things harmonize when one is able to view them in the right way.

[ 17 ] Thus it had come to pass in human sentiment that every spring—when there was no longer a knowledge of the world as in ancient times, but rather a longing for what the human soul had gained from that knowledge—people could become particularly sad in the spring. From the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., this feeling was so strongly present in the collective consciousness of the people in civilized regions that in spring people became sad over the fate of humanity, over the cosmic fate of humanity, for the longing still existed to follow the Earth’s soul when it sought to ascend toward the stars in spring. Yet the human soul, bound to the body, could no longer do this. Nature offered no way to attain that ascent to the world of the stars that had existed in ancient times. That is why it was so understandable to people on the other side that Easter—the festival celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ—should take place precisely in the spring, since this event falls during that season, and that this festival should occur in the spring within the cycle of the year.

[ 18 ] And the Divine came to meet them, for the death of Christ Jesus did indeed take place in the spring. But the fact that one must not calculate this in earthly terms was expressed even in the establishment of the Easter festival. Christmas had to be calculated in earthly terms, for there the soul of the earth was wholly with the earth. Christmas had to be set on a specific day. Easter, however, was based on something different; it was not to be determined according to earthly calculations, but according to heavenly ones. It was not possible to set a specific date; instead, one had to calculate the constellation of the stars each year. For when we determine something on Earth—no matter how precisely we calculate using the most accurate instruments—viewed from heaven it is always off by a few days, because celestial time flows differently from earthly time. We strive to make earthly time proceed as evenly as possible. This is not at all the case with celestial time, which flows faster and slower because it is alive in itself. We humans ourselves render earthly time lifeless, which is why it proceeds so evenly. Celestial time is alive; it does not flow uniformly within itself. And there is a longing to align ourselves with celestial time—with the constellations—in determining the date of Easter, even though, by earthly standards, the day of Christ’s death must have fallen on a specific date and must be celebrated on a specific day each year.

[ 19 ] We do not do this because, in the spring, we want to align ourselves with celestial time, not earthly time. There is profound wisdom precisely in this understanding of Easter. But modern thinking is different. You see, perhaps twenty-four years ago, I used to meet once a week with a very well-known astronomer. We had a small club. This astronomer could only see that having Easter on a different day each year would create chaos in all the world’s calendars. Easter must at least be fixed, he argued, to the first Sunday in April, or it must be fixed in some abstract way. As you know, there is also a movement toward this kind of abstraction of Easter. People want order in their debits and credits—which they place such great importance on today. But every year, Easter—which, after all, takes up a few days of celebration—brings this disorder into their lives. There would be more order if it were fixed abstractly on a single day. But this is an outward symbol of the desire to completely banish spiritual guidance from the world. These matters best reveal how we have become materialists, how we want to banish the spiritual more and more.

[ 20 ] But above all, human beings experienced the cycle of the year in such a way that, as they followed the Earth soul toward spring and out into the cosmos toward the time of St. John, they learned each year through this following to also follow the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies—and in particular to follow the souls of the dead who had already passed away from this world. In ancient times, people were aware that by experiencing the cycle of the year, they learned to follow the souls of the dead—in a sense, to look after their departed loved ones and see how they were faring. And people felt that spring brought them not only the first blossoms but also the opportunity to check in on their dead and see how they were doing. — There was something spiritual very concretely connected to the experience of the cycle of the year. This has changed as a result of humanity’s development on Earth. People can no longer keep pace with the cycle of the year. Why is this so? A very simple observation will show you.

[ 21 ] In ancient times, people really did attach great importance to everything connected with the earthly realm—insofar as the earthly realm depends on the stars. People have outgrown that. Just think about it: when we celebrate St. John’s Day here—that is, when our souls can follow the Earth soul as it goes out to connect with the stars—the antipodes, the people on the other side of the world, celebrate their Christmas. On the other side, the Earth soul withdraws into the Earth. You need only consider that in ancient spiritual times, people knew so little about those on the opposite side of the globe that they imagined the Earth as a disk; they had not even gotten around to conceiving of the Earth as round at all, and thus had no sense of this entire relationship with those on the opposite side of the globe. Humanity is truly advancing in its consciousness. The entire relationship to the Earth has changed precisely because, for humanity, the Earth has become round. Now, while in the north the Earth soul reaches out toward the stars—revealing itself, as it were, to spiritual vision like a comet’s tail stretching out into the heavens—on the other side the Earth soul withdraws back into the Earth, and it is Christmas. And conversely, when the Earth soul withdraws here, the comet’s tail stretches out into the cosmos on the other side. This happens simultaneously.

[ 22 ] As humans came to sense the curvature of the Earth, they simultaneously became independent of the cycle of the year. As long as they lived within their own region, their own locality, the cycle of the year was something absolute for them. Today, when people no longer think twice about traveling across the Earth—and thereby constantly disrupting their experience of the cycle of the year by moving to other localities—they can no longer experience the cycle of the year through their external surroundings. Nor do they have that same intense understanding of the festivals. Just think how little concreteness and how much abstraction is contained in the festivals today. We know from tradition that at Christmas we exchange gifts, and we’re also happy that there are a few days off from school. At Easter, one might see all sorts of ceremonies connected to the traditions I have described. But where, specifically, do people today feel the spiritual world as part of the cycle of the year?

[ 23 ] Today we cannot celebrate festivals based on a full understanding of the cycle of the year. Just as we experience hunger and thirst in our physical bodies, we would have to constantly experience the inhalation and exhalation of the Earth’s soul on one side of the Earth; on the other side, it is exactly the opposite. Human beings have not only become, in their own right, “I”-beings—free beings—but the Earth itself has emancipated itself from outer space. In recent times, the Earth itself no longer stands in such an intimate relationship to outer space—at least as far as human development is concerned—as was the case in ancient times. And so human beings have become increasingly dependent on seeking within themselves that which they cannot find outside. Science will also help in this regard. And now I would like to say just a little something about science—something that may not interest everyone, but which, within the overall context, is part of the matter.

[ 24 ] As humanity has gradually become more intellectual, we have developed a natural science that deals with everything outside of human beings. I don’t want to talk now about physics or chemistry, which deal purely externally with what lies outside of human beings; I want to talk about the science of life, about biology. It deals intensively with lower animals, with somewhat higher animals, all the way up to the highest animals. And we have acquired a magnificent, admirable science of animal form, so that today we can form ideas about how the various animal forms have developed separately. This has given rise to the Darwinian-Haeckelian notion that the human form evolved from the animal form. In this way, however, human beings learn extraordinarily little about themselves. Human beings become merely the culmination of the animal series. There are the animals, from the lowest to the highest, and then, at the culmination, human beings. Human beings come to know themselves not as human beings, but as the highest animals. This is a great achievement of the sciences, but it must be understood correctly. One must truly admit that science can teach us nothing other than what human beings are not. Once it becomes clear that science must concern itself not with what a human being is, but with what a human being is not, then light will shine upon science; then we will all study the forms that exist, for example, in the animal kingdom, as well as in the plant kingdom. And what will we say then? We will say: Out there we have all those animal forms. We had to leave those behind in the world, for if we had them within us, we would not be human beings. Natural science teaches us about what we have had to overcome within ourselves. We have developed by increasingly shedding these natural forms, casting them out of ourselves, and retaining that which is not natural—that which comes from the soul-spiritual realm.

[ 25 ] Will we ever reach the point where we say to science: “You are magnificent, for you teach me everything that man is not.” I must therefore seek man somewhere entirely different from external science. I must become scientific precisely by not seeking the human being at the top of the animal kingdom, but by seeking to recognize the animals through the fact that their forms had to be shed by the human being, had to be left behind. Then I stand in the proper relationship to science. — But this places human beings in the position where they must once again recognize something not through external observation, but from within, from the soul-spiritual realm. And the moment a person says to themselves: “Science in the modern sense provides us with no information about human beings, but only about what human beings are not”—at that very moment, one will also recognize how necessary spiritual science is. For only it offers the possibility of understanding human beings. Otherwise, one comes to know only the outer shell of the human being as the culmination of the animal kingdom.

[ 26 ] It is precisely the correct understanding of the natural sciences, precisely the correct grounding in the natural sciences, that enables us to fully recognize the natural sciences as something beyond the human and to view human knowledge in a different light, including with regard to human physical characteristics. To do this, we will have to develop a spiritual way of observing human beings even within the earthly world. Anthroposophy must strive toward this kind of spiritual observation. I can show you this in specific, concrete cases.

[ 27 ] Under the influence of the materialistic spirit of the times, there has been a growing tendency to base even what should be done with children in school on the physical body. Today, experiments are being conducted on memory itself, and even on the will and on thinking. I do not object to this, for it is quite interesting from a scientific standpoint; however, to base pedagogy on it is a terrible thing, for it proves that we have become completely alien to human beings in their very essence when we must resort to external experiments in order to reach a child, for example. If we are inwardly connected to the child, we certainly do not need to conduct external experiments. But I would like to emphasize once again that I am not opposed to experimental psychology; I fully acknowledge its significance as an interesting field for science. However, when used as the foundation for pedagogy, experimental psychology merely demonstrates how alienated we have become from human beings when we experiment on them externally in order to gain some inner understanding of them—when we no longer have any inner access to them at all.

[ 28 ] We must create the opportunity to gain inner, spiritual-soul access to the human being. There we learn, for example, that with a child—let’s say around the age of nine or ten—we may be appealing too much to their memory or, conversely, too little. All this talk about not overloading the memory can also lead to not engaging the memory enough. We must find the right balance in everything—neither overloading nor underloading the memory. Consider this: around the age of nine or ten, we may be overtaxing a child’s memory—we may be demanding too much of it in education and instruction. The true consequences only become apparent when a person reaches the age of thirty or forty, or perhaps even later. That is when the person may develop rheumatism or diabetes. Precisely when we have overburdened the memory at the wrong time—let’s say, between the ages of nine and ten—this overburdening of the memory during childhood later manifests as an excessive accumulation of abnormal metabolic byproducts. People usually fail to see this connection throughout the entire course of earthly life. Conversely, if we do not engage the memory enough—that is, if we do not allow the child to rely sufficiently on memory—we in turn bring about a tendency toward all sorts of highly inflammatory conditions in later life. Understanding how physical conditions at one stage of life are the consequences of the soul-spiritual conditions of another stage of life is what is important; it is what we must know.

[ 29 ] Or let me put it another way. We conduct experiments—say, with children of compulsory school age, in their eighth, ninth, and tenth years—to determine how quickly children tire while reading. Now, for example, one could create tables: they tire this quickly when learning arithmetic, that quickly during physical education, and then one organizes instruction according to these tables. These tables are, of course, very interesting for purely objective science, for which I have all due respect. I do not oppose them, but such an approach is of no use whatsoever for pedagogy. For between the change of teeth and puberty—that is, precisely during the age of compulsory elementary school—we educate and teach correctly only if we focus neither too much on the head nor too much on the limbs, but rather on the respiratory and circulatory systems, on the rhythmic system. We should also give priority to incorporating rhythm, tempo, and artistic elements into physical education.

[ 30 ] This is why eurythmy is such an effective educational tool: it incorporates artistic elements into the child’s physical movements. Likewise, we should relieve the burden on the child’s mind by not letting the child think too much at this age, but rather by making lessons visual and presenting everything to the child in a visual way. In this way, we do not address the child’s nervous-sensory system, nor its motor system, but primarily its rhythmic system. This, however, does not cause fatigue. Just consider: our heart must keep beating all night long, even when we are otherwise tired and resting. Our breathing must continue tirelessly from birth to death. Fatigue can only be a factor in the motor system. Fatigue is relevant only to the nervous-sensory system. The rhythmic system never tires. Therefore, during the period when the child must absorb the most important things for the soul, instruction must be organized in such a way that we address only those powers of the child that do not tire. However, if one calculates that the child becomes fatigued to such-and-such an extent during this or that activity, one merely proves scientifically how wrong one has been. If one follows this scale, one bases teaching methods on what is wrong, not on what is right. One must know that what is non-human actually becomes clear through experimental psychology, while what is human must be recognized inwardly.

[ 31 ] In this way, a spiritual-psychological perspective will once again find its way into medicine. It was already present there in ancient times. In those days, it was so deeply embedded that, fundamentally speaking, “healing” and “education” were essentially synonymous. When a person entered the world, they were regarded as someone who needed to be healed. Education was healing. This will only be possible again when spiritual and psychological understanding has advanced to the point where it can perceive such things at a deeper level. As I have said, too little mental stimulation leads to inflammatory conditions later in life, while too much stimulation, on the other hand, leads to metabolic deposits.

[ 32 ] If one looks closely at what the spiritual-soul aspect does within the physical realm, one finds it at work even in individual diseases. And then, conversely, one comes to understand the cosmos—how the substances in the cosmos behave spiritually. Then one finds the therapy for the pathology. One is then completely filled with the thought: ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, we have been dependent on appealing to the innermost depths of the soul. We can no longer draw the spiritual-psychic from our surroundings. If we rely on our surroundings, if we go into the anatomy lecture hall, then what emerges is what came to light like a cry of distress at one of the world’s most recent medical conferences. Out of the distress of the times, a physician raised the cry: “Give us cadavers, and then we will make progress in medicine.” Give us corpses. — Certainly, this is entirely justified in today’s world, and once again I am not arguing against this call for corpses. But it will only bear fruit in the right way if, on the other hand, the call resounds: Give us the opportunity to look into the spiritual-psychic realm, as it constantly builds up and constantly destroys the body.

[ 33 ] But this is connected to a proper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For Christ already intended that we should once again come to understand how to heal from within. That is why He sent the healing Spirit. What He wished to implant in humanity was at the same time what physical science—but physical science grounded in the Spirit—also brings forth. Let us therefore understand Christ correctly by also grasping this in the right way as a word of the Gospel: Whoever constantly has the cry “Lord, Herm” or “Christ, Christ” on their lips is not necessarily a true Christian. — Anthroposophy is often accused of speaking less about Christ than the external religious creeds do. I often say to those who accuse anthroposophy of speaking less about Christ: But there is an ancient commandment that is also recognized by Christians, yet is not taken into account amid the constant talk of Christ: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” This is one of the Ten Commandments.

[ 34 ] Whoever speaks constantly of Christ alone, whoever has him constantly on their lips, sins against the holiness of Christ’s name. Anthroposophy seeks to be Christian in all that it does and is. Therefore, one cannot accuse it of speaking too little of Christ, for the awareness that Christ lives is present in everything it brings forth. And it does not wish to constantly have “Lord, Lord” on its lips; the less it wishes to speak of Christ incessantly, the more it seeks to be Christian.

[ 35 ] We must, in a truly Christian sense, once again develop an understanding of how to incorporate something spiritual into all of social life. We must be able to arrive, from within, at something spiritual that—I would say—also lives among us. And humanity will have the opportunity to do this if it works toward it—this cannot happen in a single day; such intimate spiritual matters, in particular, cannot happen in a single day—to develop, purely from the inner spiritual realm, something that also pertains to human coexistence.

[ 36 ] Let us consider the Easter festival. Through the Easter festival, Christ Jesus graciously intervened in the development of humanity by revealing Himself to humankind—at a time when the mystery of death was weighing particularly heavily upon them—as the Immortal One, who is, in a sense, the archetype of the human being, the immortal human being who had to pass through death and find resurrection. This has been understood since ancient times. People understood life before birth. They saw death on earth; they were to see the Resurrection in Christ Jesus. But Christ Jesus also followed this with the mystery of Pentecost. He sent the Spirit—the healing Spirit—to humanity, thereby indicating that human beings are to experience Christ from within themselves. One can only have this, however, if one can walk the reverse path: first experiencing the Resurrection, and then—after having experienced the Resurrection—going through physical death in the proper way, that is, allowing the soul to rise again inwardly. Between birth and death, through the full enlivening of the relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha, to elevate the soul to a higher vitality, so that this soul may feel within itself, out of the spiritual resurrection: “I pass through earthly death as one who has risen.” — The fact that the gods have provided for humankind so that it may not lose its immortality is presented to humanity through the sequence of death and resurrection at Easter.

[ 37 ] But now let’s imagine: If a person were to experience spiritual activity just as vividly as they experience in spring the sprouting and growth of young plants, the emergence of blossoms, the greening of the trees, and the awakening and coming to life of all of nature—just as they can become alive with all of nature through their physical being—if they were now, in the same way, after having passed through the height of summer and as autumn returns, could perceive how nature dies off—how the outer physical aspect manifests in the leaves turning brown, in the withering shoots, in the drying of the fruits that must be stored—if a person were to experience this just as deeply, but now experience it how, in this process of nature’s decline, the spiritual aspect springs forth—which will then be most closely connected to the earthly realm during the height of winter or the depths of winter, at Christmas time—if a person can one day celebrate the approach of autumn just as festively as he celebrates spring at Easter, if he can experience burial, death, and resurrection just as festively as at Easter, just as the resurrection of the soul occurs with the burial of nature, so that they may then truly face earthly burial and earthly death, when in autumn they learn to sense the reverse sequence in nature: resurrection, death—if, from within his soul, he creates a festival that relates to Easter just as the autumn sun relates to the spring sun, then humanity will also have drawn the strength from the spirit of today to celebrate a festival.

[ 38 ] We must not only strive to avoid losing sight of the meaning behind these festivals more and more, to the point where we no longer even know why we should celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. We must not say: “We just have Easter; that’s how it’s always been.” Let’s just make it as convenient as possible—on the first Sunday after April 1, purely as a matter of convention! — We must learn once again to feel that we need a connection between humanity and the cosmos. — Just as we have the rising and setting sun, so too, when we celebrate death and resurrection at Easter and resurrection and death in the fall, we need the resurrection of humanity within nature as it dies.

[ 39 ] We will only learn to feel this in the right way—from spiritual and soul-related depths—as the year unfolds if we bring to mind a fact from the spiritual world that I have often discussed here in previous years. We know that in the Old Testament, whenever Yahweh or Jehovah was mentioned, it was precisely those who knew the mysteries of the spiritual world who said: Yahweh stands in the background, but the one who carries out his deeds on earth is the Archangel Michael. Now, the course of human development is such that, in fact, during the last third of the 19th century, this spiritual being—traditionally designated by the name of the Archangel Michael—experienced a particular intensification of its activity. So to speak, this Archangel Michael has been active in the earthly sphere since the 1870s. In the spring, the human soul strives to follow the exhaled Earth soul as it ascends into the cosmos, but it does not reach that destination. Under the influence of the sense of freedom and self-consciousness, the human soul has become powerless in the face of the heavenly heights. But when autumn approaches, the human soul—if it feels correctly—can sense how Michael descends and, particularly as Christ’s representative in the autumn, becomes humanity’s collaborator.

[ 40 ] When the leaves wither, turn brown, and fall from the trees—when nature dies—then one senses in this autumnal landscape how Michael descends from the heights, which the human soul can no longer reach, to become, on behalf of Christ—whom he will bring at Christmas—a helper to humanity through the hardships of autumn. Then one senses the possibility of introducing a festival into the cycle of the year that unites people of their own free will, a festival that people, in turn, establish out of spiritual consciousness. Yet in the calendar it stands like a prophecy, like a hint: the Feast of St. Michael at the end of September. Properly understood, this means: People, learn to celebrate festivals as well! Understand how to set the Michaelmas Festival at the end of September—as the festival of the setting—in contrast to Easter, the festival of the rising! —Truly, if people were to come to such a spiritual resolution to establish something that is brought from the spiritual worlds into social life, it would mean something immense for that social life.

[ 41 ] I know that materialistic minds will regard it as something fanciful when certain sectarian people, as they will say, strive to celebrate a harvest festival or a Michaelmas festival. But anyone who truly looks into the realities of the world knows that this act—this decision—will have a greater impact on social balance and social progress than all the social agitation sweeping the world today, —this act of will, whereby people organize an autumn celebration as a purely spiritual matter, as a sign that they seek an awakening of the soul between birth and death, a resurrection of the soul, upon which physical death can then follow in the proper way. To will the spiritual once again in the physical world—that is what would matter. And this is truly easiest to understand right here in these regions.

[ 42 ] Perhaps I may remind you today of what I concluded with during my last visit here in Norway. I pointed out how all the natural conditions—how the entire relationship between human beings and nature here—cause the human soul, when it passes beyond death, to become a teacher of nature to the souls of human beings after death. The Norwegians, I said, will become the teachers of nature to human souls in the spiritual world after death. Those who were present at that lecture will recall how I urged the people here in the North to reflect on this spiritual-scientific mission. I suggested that they consider how Norwegians, through their relationship to the rocks and the sea—to this very special, somewhat sparse natural environment—have such an intimate connection to nature in their spirit that, after death, they can tell all other people on Earth something essential precisely through nature. I was allowed to say that at the time.

[ 43 ] But there is something else happening in parallel. This is accompanied here by something we recalled together many years ago, when we were still a much smaller group, and we remembered that, out of human beings’ full consciousness following the Mystery of Golgotha, a spiritual connection between human beings and the universe must arise more and more once again, as it existed in those ancient times, when people sensed spiritual beings everywhere behind natural phenomena and forms—from elemental beings all the way up to the highest spiritual beings—and when people still knew what they were supposed to feel when they looked up at a flash of lightning. Do we know that today?

[ 44 ] Yes, we know this very well from physics. We know from physics that electricity discharges in the air and sends a spark through the air. We know this very well from physics when we have the simple physical instruments in the laboratories. We rub them with a cloth and then let the little spark jump across. And now let’s interpret it this way: Up there, the big lightning spark jumps across. — It’s just a shame that, under certain circumstances, a little boy might come along and think: The teacher wipes everything down so carefully on the apparatus when he wants to make the little lightning spark jump across. If the glass rod is wet and the conductor is wet, the lightning spark won’t work. But up there, the clouds are all completely wet. What goes so poorly in the laboratory is supposed to work so well up there! I actually can’t believe that up there the big spark only jumps when things are wet, while down here not even the little spark jumps when things are wet. It must be something else, and perhaps we don’t really understand the matter as well as we think based on what we experience in physics.

[ 45 ] In fact, back when people still possessed spiritual knowledge—albeit in an instinctive way—they expressed this differently. They put it this way: Just as a human speaks, so too is spoken in the universe out there, and the word coalesces into a synthesis of words. The multitude that resounds as Logos out there sometimes converges throughout the world as Tao. Then Thor has struck with his hammer. Then the world-word has synthetically converged. This manifests itself when we hear the thunder. But then the other god—who is the god of light—also helps.

[ 46 ] In other words, expressed in spiritual terms, it was of a kind that we can no longer express. We must speak in an anthroposophical way, but we are, in turn, speaking spiritually. Back then, people knew: When we see lightning and hear thunder, we must not explain it solely from an earthly perspective; rather, something reveals itself to us that acts into the earthly realm from beyond the earthly and seeks to reveal itself—something that reveals itself in precisely the opposite way to how things arise here on Earth. — Allow me to make one more remark from the natural sciences. Everyone knows from physics that when a light is turned on, the intensity of the light decreases in all directions. There is a formula: light intensity decreases with the square of the distance. We also know that gravity, like the intensity of light, decreases with the square of the distance. But there is one thing we do not know: that the validity of the laws of nature decreases with distance, that our earthly laws of nature no longer apply once we venture out into outer space. We lack the courage to apply the law of light and the law of gravity to the law of the intellect as well. The validity of our laws of nature—which we investigate here on Earth—decreases with the square of the distance as we venture out into outer space. I know what an immense heresy this is. Today it is no heresy to say: Light diminishes in this way; gravity diminishes in that way. — But it is heresy to say to the one who conducts research in the laboratory and seeks out his chemical and physical laws there: “What you are investigating there also diminishes with distance, just as light grows weaker and weaker as it propagates.” Out there, at a certain distance, the laws of nature that apply here no longer apply at all. What you have there in your Leyden jar—that jumping of the spark—you may well force it to conform to the laws of nature here on Earth, but out there it no longer applies, just as the intensity of light diminishes with distance.

[ 47 ] Following the Mystery of Golgotha, we must once again find the way from within to reach the spiritual realm. The ancient initiates sometimes alluded to this by pointing out to people: “Yes, humanity still possesses an instinctive clairvoyance. It sees into the spirit.” But humanity will attain a free consciousness and will no longer look into the spirit. Then, through inner training of the spirit, through strengthening the spirit, through spiritual insight, and through spiritual science, humanity must once again come to the spirit. Then God will appear again.

[ 48 ] Gods of this kind will appear again in the retinue of Christ, just as they were present in the beginning, before the Mystery of Golgotha, without Christ. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity beheld nature as an animated, spirit-permeated entity. After the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity must strive to ensure that this animated, spirit-permeated nature forms the retinue of Christ, so that all nature spirits may be seen in the retinue of Christ, for without him they cannot be seen. But this is precisely what is hinted at here, in that the people are told that Widar will reappear in a new form from among the host of ancient spiritual beings; Widar, having converted to Christianity, will reappear from among the host of ancient divine beings. We recalled this many years ago. And it was after this that our Nordic friends here named their branch.

[ 49 ] What has become the “Zweig” here was rooted in a memory—a shared memory. May such shared memories, my dear friends, always be alive among us; just as what led to the branch’s name arose from a shared memory, may what we always experience during such cycles also become a shared memory—that is, a shared life. May we thus live together in the cultivation of anthroposophical life. I would like to pour this into the farewell greeting I must now offer you—to pour into this farewell greeting the hope that a living remembrance may arise ever more fully in our souls, and that through this, a true Pentecost consciousness may always be present. And may we thus remain united in spirit as we work together for spiritual progress and the spiritual development of humanity. Through such unity, humanity will gradually grow strong enough to prepare a home for the Spirit once again on Earth. May what we have been able to think together during these days also contribute a little—even if only in its nascent form—to gathering strength as part of that great power that will be necessary to prepare a home for the Spirit once again on Earth. I would like to impress this upon your hearts today at the conclusion of our lecture series and assure you that, in light of the fact that you were once again willing to receive what I had to say to you these past few days, it gives me deep satisfaction that I was once again able to spend a few days among you, my dear Norwegian friends, and that this, too, will serve as a starting point for me to reflect deeply on what we have been able to discuss here together and what we will continue to experience together. In this way, we can remain united in spirit, even though earthly circumstances will separate us time and time again.

[ 50 ] With this in mind, I would like to extend my warmest greetings to you at this moment, with the deepest gratitude for the attention you have given to the lectures and in the hope that they will remain in your memory.