The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Many friends have gathered here today who are here for the first time since the Christmas Conference, and so it falls to me, albeit briefly, to say a few introductory words about the Christmas Conference. The purpose of that Christmas Conference was, after all, to give the Anthroposophical Society a new impulse—namely, the one that must be its own if the life that anthroposophy is meant to incorporate into human civilization is truly to flow through it in a dignified manner. An esoteric impulse has certainly entered the Anthroposophical Society since this Christmas Conference. Until now, the Anthroposophical Society had been, so to speak, the administrative center for anthroposophy. From its very beginning, anthroposophy has been the channel through which flows the spiritual life that has been accessible to humanity today and since the last third of the nineteenth century. However, this anthroposophical movement must be understood in such a way that what takes place here on earth is actually only the outer manifestation of something that is unfolding in the spiritual world for the development of humanity. And anyone who wishes to support the anthroposophical movement in a worthy manner must also come to understand that these spiritual impulses apply to the realm of the Anthroposophical Society itself.

[ 2 ] What significance does it have, my dear friends, when people in general believe in a spiritual world in theory? To believe in a spiritual world in theory means to take that spiritual world into one’s thoughts. But the thoughts of people today—even though, by their very nature, they represent the most spiritual aspect of modern humanity—are such that, as they have developed as the inner spirit of humanity over the course of the last four to five centuries, they are initially capable only of absorbing truths about the material world. And so, while modern humanity leads a spiritual life in thought, as a civilization as a whole it fills this spiritual life of thought only with material content. Even what one knows theoretically about anthroposophy remains merely material content until the true inner, conscious power of conviction takes hold: that the spiritual is a concrete reality, that wherever matter exists for the outer human senses, spirit not only permeates and flows through this matter, but that ultimately, all material things vanish from the true human gaze when one is able to penetrate through the material to the spiritual.

[ 3 ] But then such a perspective must also be extended to everything that concerns us directly. Our membership in the Anthroposophical Society concerns us directly. For this fact existing in the outer sensory world—our membership in the Anthroposophical Society—we must be able to recognize the corresponding spiritual reality: the spiritual movement that has developed in the spiritual world in recent times and will continue to exist in earthly life if people can remain faithful to it. Otherwise, it will continue to exist apart from earthly life. It will continue to exist in connection with earthly life if people find the strength in their hearts to remain faithful to it.

[ 4 ] But our theoretical conviction is not only that a spiritual element hovers behind minerals, plants, animals, and human beings themselves, but also that behind the Anthroposophical Society—which, outwardly, is part of Maya, an illusion, there hovers the spiritual archetype of the anthroposophical movement—this is what must penetrate the heart of every adherent to anthroposophy as a profound force of conviction. And this must become a reality in the activities and work of the Anthroposophical Society. I have often said, my dear friends, before the Christmas Conference, that one must distinguish between the anthroposophical movement—about which the same must always be said as today—and the Anthroposophical Society, which was an external, exoteric administrative body for anthroposophical esotericism. Since Christmas, the opposite has been the case. Around Christmas, the difficult decision arose as to whether I myself should become president of the Anthroposophical Society. Throughout all the preceding years of the Anthroposophical Society’s existence, I regarded myself as the teacher of the anthroposophical cause, unconnected to its administration, and I have strictly adhered to this principle in the most diverse matters that have come to my attention. The Anthroposophical Society as such was led by others. It was my responsibility, within the Anthroposophical Society, to promote the anthroposophical cause to the extent that individuals or groups within it desired.

[ 5 ] Our friends will, in the course of these lectures or on other occasions, have the opportunity to come to understand what it means to actively work out on the earthly plane that which is seeking to reveal itself in the spiritual world today. And one should recognize the difficulties associated with introducing, so to speak, an external administration into this relationship with the spiritual world. And around Christmas time, the possibility certainly existed: Either the spiritual powers that give us anthroposophy would take offense at the fact that an external administration was now being brought into contact with esotericism itself, or something else would happen. Therefore, the decision was the most difficult one conceivable at that time. For there was certainly also the possibility that the streams of spiritual life that had flowed to us could have been endangered precisely by such a decision.

[ 6 ] Nevertheless, the decision had to be made, because the circumstances were such that the opposite of what I have just described would inevitably occur if the anthroposophical cause were to remain connected to the Anthroposophical Society. In the future, the Anthroposophical Society itself would have to be the place through which esoteric life flows directly, and which itself acts esoterically and becomes aware of its own esoteric activity.

[ 7 ] To this end, the Esoteric Executive Council had to be established at the Goetheanum. To this end, it had to be recognized that this Executive Council as a whole is entrusted with an esoteric task and that, in the future, everything that flows through the Anthroposophical Society is not merely anthroposophical substance to be absorbed, but that, in addition to anthroposophy being taught, anthroposophy must also be practiced—that is, anthroposophy must be at work in all external actions.

[ 8 ] This requires recognition of those real forces that must unite the individual personalities brought together in society. These forces cannot be forces that are subject to any program or principle, or that can be summarized by abstract propositions. In the esoteric sense, only what exists as real human relationships can establish and sustain the Anthroposophical Society. Thus, in the future, everything must be based on real human relationships in the broadest sense—on concrete, rather than abstract, spiritual life.

[ 9 ] One simply has to be able to perceive this concrete spiritual life as such and to see it in the minutest details of life. I would like to cite a very small detail. When this impulse was taken up, we decided to issue a new membership certificate to each of our members. Since the Anthroposophical Society has now grown to twelve thousand members, the task at hand was to issue these twelve thousand membership certificates, and despite the objections raised by many, I had to make the decision—as I said, it is a tiny matter—to sign every single membership certificate myself. This is, of course, a task that takes many weeks. But what does this mean? It does not signify some kind of stubbornness, nor is it merely an external administrative measure; rather, it means that my eyes have rested upon the name of the person receiving the membership certificate. It is a human connection—admittedly one of very modest significance at first—but it is a human connection.

[ 10 ] This is how human relationships—which are facts—differ from what are merely administrative measures, from what is merely set forth in programs and paragraphs. Nothing of what truly flows through anthroposophy may be found in bylaws and paragraphs; rather, everything must be real life. Only real life can embrace esotericism.

[ 11 ] It must be said that, since the Christmas Conference, the anthroposophical cause and the Anthroposophical Society have become indistinguishable; they have become one. Ensuring that this is clear to every single member is what matters most.

[ 12 ] It may seem to you, my dear friends, that this goes without saying. Think about it, and you will find that putting it into practice with complete sincerity is not a matter of course, but that it is, in fact, quite difficult to do so at every moment of one’s life.

[ 13 ] The question now is—and I would say this is a genuine concern—whether spiritual life will continue to flow through the Anthroposophical Society under these conditions, just as it has flowed through the anthroposophical movement?

[ 14 ] But this much can be said: now that we have been living under the influence of the Christmas Conference for many months, striving to remain faithful to what we meant at that time when we laid the spiritual foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, we may say to ourselves: What has been flowing for years continues to flow in even greater abundance. And we may also say that hearts have opened up even more everywhere where the more esoteric current—which has been flowing through all anthroposophical work since the Christmas Conference—is present.

[ 15 ] Take to heart the full meaning of these words, which I speak to you based on the experiences of the past few months, my dear friends! Such an understanding will, in the future, contribute greatly to providing fertile ground for that spiritual cornerstone we laid for the Anthroposophical Society during the Christmas Conference.

[ 16 ] And this brings me to the point that, as a guide, is intended to highlight in this introductory lecture today what I will have to say to you over the next few days—namely, how the anthroposophical movement is now, at this grave moment, essentially returning to its roots. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded in Berlin at the beginning of the century out of the bosom of the Theosophical Society, something very peculiar took place. During the founding of the Anthroposophical Society—that is, the German section of the Theosophical Society—I gave lectures in Berlin on “Anthroposophy.” From the very beginning, this imprinted on my work the impulse that later came to define the anthroposophical movement.

[ 17 ] But there is something else I would like to recall today. The first thing I announced back then to a very small circle was a series of lectures titled “Practical Karma Exercises.” At the time, I felt the most vigorous resistance to carrying out this project. And perhaps the oldest member of the Anthroposophical Society—who, to our great joy, is here again today—Mr. Günther Wagner, whom I would like to welcome most warmly as a sort of senior member of the Anthroposophical Society—will recall how strong the resistance was at that time to much of what I intended from the very beginning to incorporate into the anthroposophical movement. These lectures never took place. It did not come to pass that we would cultivate that esotericism—in contrast to the currents that otherwise emerged from the Theosophical Movement—that speaks in a completely open and unbiased way about what, in truth, had always been there in theory.

[ 18 ] Since the Christmas Conference, here in this hall and at the various places where I have had the opportunity to speak, there has been quite open discussion of the concrete workings of human karma in historical events and in individual human beings. And today, a number of our anthroposophists are already aware of how the various earthly lives of significant personalities have unfolded, and how the karma of the Anthroposophical Society itself—and that of the individual personalities associated with it—has taken shape. Since the Christmas Conference, these matters have been discussed in a thoroughly esoteric manner. Since the Christmas Conference, our lecture cycles have been open to the public—accessible to anyone who is interested. In this way, we have become a more esoteric and, at the same time, entirely public society.

[ 19 ] In a certain sense, this brings us back to where we started. What was then an intention is now set to become reality. Since many of our friends are here for the first time since the Christmas Conference, I will be addressing the question of karma with you here over the next few days. To that end, I will take the liberty of offering a sort of introduction today by speaking about the topics that are also touched upon—albeit in outline form—in this week’s “Mitteilungen.”

[ 20 ] As is evident from our anthroposophical literature, the development of human consciousness is essential to gaining the insights that point to facts and beings in the spiritual world, and to the exploration of these facts. We shall see how this spiritual world, explored through the development of human consciousness, can then become comprehensible to unbiased, sound common sense. This must always be borne in mind: The exploration of the spiritual world involves the development of other states of consciousness; grasping and understanding what the spiritual researcher brings to light requires only sound human sense, sound common sense, which truly seeks to unfold in an unbiased manner.

[ 21 ] However, the very act of voicing this immediately encounters fierce resistance in contemporary thought. When I once expressed in Berlin the same idea I have just stated, a favorable article appeared about my public lecture, which I had delivered before a large audience. This article stated: Mr. Steiner had said that common sense could comprehend what is explored in the spiritual worlds. But the entire course of recent history has taught us that a mind that is sound understands nothing of the supersensible, and that a mind that understands anything of the supersensible is certainly not sound. — One must certainly say: In a certain sense, this is the general view of educated people today. If one is not crazy—to put it in plain German—one understands nothing of the supersensible world; if one understands something of the supersensible world, one is most certainly crazy! — This is, after all, the same way of speaking about the matter, only somewhat more clearly.

[ 22 ] Therefore, we must take the time to consider to what extent common sense can comprehend the findings of spiritual research, which are attained through the development of other states of consciousness. For centuries, we have been equipping our external senses with instruments—with telescopes and microscopes. The spiritual researcher, too, equips his external senses with what he develops within his own soul. Natural science has turned outward, making use of external tools. Spiritual research turns inward, making use of the inner tools that the soul develops through a sincere spiritual life.

[ 23 ] Today, by way of introduction, I would like to help you understand the unfolding of other states of consciousness by comparing the states of consciousness that are common among people today—at first, simply comparing them with those states of consciousness that once existed in earlier, not historical but prehistoric, primitive stages of human development.

[ 24 ] Today, human beings live in three states of consciousness, of which only one is actually recognized by them as the source of knowledge: People live in the state of ordinary wakefulness, in the state of dream consciousness, and in the state of dreamless sleep consciousness.

[ 25 ] In ordinary consciousness—in waking consciousness—we relate to the external world in such a way that we accept everything we can perceive through the senses as reality and allow it to affect us; we grasp these external sensory impressions with our intellect, which is bound to the brain—or at least to the human being—forming concepts, concepts, and indeed feelings and so on based on what is perceived through the senses. Within certain limits, we then perceive our own inner life within this waking consciousness. And through all manner of reflections and the development of ideas, we come to acknowledge a supersensible realm beyond this sensory realm. I need not describe this state of consciousness further; it is, after all, familiar to everyone as the very state they actually recognize as the basis of their life of cognition and will on earth.

[ 26 ] Dream consciousness is, for people today, a vague and hazy state. In dream consciousness, a person perceives what exists in the external world in a symbolic transformation of which they are not always aware. In the morning, we lie in bed still in the process of waking up, so that we do not look out through our wide-open eyes at the rising sun, but rather the sunlight shining in through the window reveals itself to our still-hazy gaze. The person is still separated, as if by a thin veil, from what they would otherwise perceive through sharply defined sensory impressions and perceptions: within, the soul is filled with the image of a mighty conflagration. The mighty conflagration of which a person dreams is the symbol of what shines forth at sunrise upon the eye that has not yet been fully opened.

[ 27 ] Or a person dreams that he is walking through an avenue of white stones that line a road. He comes to one of the stones; he finds that it has been destroyed at the top, either by some natural phenomenon or by human hands. The person wakes up: from the toothache he is experiencing, he realizes that a tooth is damaged. The two complete rows of teeth have been symbolized in what the person saw in the dream; the damaged tooth corresponds to the damaged stake.

[ 28 ] We perceive that we are in an overheated room where we feel uncomfortable. We wake up: our heart is pounding, our pulse is racing. The intensity of the heartbeat and pulse is symbolized by the overheated room. Inner and outer states are symbolized to us in dreams; reminiscences of daily life, transformed in the most varied ways and developed into entire dream dramas, fill the person. He does not always know how things take shape within the wondrous scope of his inner life. And often, a person is caught in a mild delusion precisely because of this dream life, which can indeed spill over into waking life whenever consciousness is even slightly subdued.

[ 29 ] A naturalist is walking down a street and passes a bookstore. He sees a book about lower animals—a subject that has always interested him greatly, since he is, after all, a naturalist. But now, even though the title suggests that it contains something of extraordinary importance to a naturalist, he isn’t interested in it at all; instead, as he stares at what he would otherwise have looked at with the greatest interest, he suddenly hears a barrel organ in the distance playing a melody he had at first completely forgotten. He becomes very attentive. Just think: The naturalist sees a scientific treatise on the cover of a book. He doesn’t pay attention to it; instead, it is the sound of a distant barrel organ—which he otherwise wouldn’t have heard at all—that captivates him. What is it? Forty years ago, when he was still very young, he danced for the first time in his life with his first dance partner to the very same melody that the barrel organ is now playing. The barrel organ melody, which he hasn’t heard in forty years, reminds him of that event. The naturalist has remained sober, which is why he remembered the incident quite clearly.

[ 30 ] The mystic often finds himself transforming such an event inwardly in such a way that it becomes something entirely different. Precisely the person who approaches the exploration of spiritual life with the utmost inner conscientiousness must also be able to clearly visualize everything that appears as delusion and illusion within the life of the human soul. It is very easy to believe, by immersing oneself in the life of the soul, so to speak, that one has found an inner path to this or that spiritual reality; but one has only the transformed reminiscence of a barrel organ tune. This dream life is something wonderful, something magnificent, but it can only be properly understood by a person if they can truly stand before the phenomena of human life with a spirit-shaped mind.

[ 31 ] And when we consider the deep sleep state, which is dreamless, a person’s ordinary consciousness today retains nothing of this deep sleep state other than the recollection that some time may have elapsed between falling asleep and waking up. Everything else must be experienced again with the help of the waking state. A general, vague sense of having been there between falling asleep and waking up—that is all that remains of dreamless sleep.

[ 32 ] However, we already have these three states of consciousness today: waking consciousness, dream consciousness, and dreamless sleep consciousness. But if we go back to the earliest times of human evolution—as I said, not to historical but to prehistoric times, which can only be penetrated by those methods of spiritual research that will be discussed here in the coming days—then we also find three states of human consciousness, but of a completely different nature. What we experience today in our waking daytime consciousness was not experienced back then; instead, in the ancient times of human development, rather than sharply defined, material, clearly delimited facts, people experienced beings with blurred physical boundaries.

[ 33 ] In such times, a person who had seen all of you here, sitting as you are, would not have perceived the sharp contours that today define your human form as distinct lines, as he sees them today; rather, the figure would have been blurred to ordinary waking consciousness; what one sees today—and what would have been less distinct back then—would have been permeated everywhere by an auric, spiritual radiance, brilliance, shimmer, and iridescence that would have extended far beyond the scope visible today. All of you sitting here would have appeared to the observer as if your auras were merging into one another. And such an observer would have looked into these iridescent, gleaming, shining, and glittering auras of the soul of those standing before him. It was still possible to look into the soul, for human beings lived in the atmosphere of the soul-spiritual.

[ 34 ] If I may use an analogy: When we walk through the streets in the evening after a clear, dry day, the streetlights appear to us in such a way that they reveal the sharp contours of the lights. If we walk through the streets on a foggy evening, those same streetlights reveal all sorts of colorful formations around them—phenomena that modern physics completely misunderstands by regarding them as subjective appearances, when in truth they are what is experienced from the very essence of these flames in connection with the fact that the human being is walking through the watery element of the fog. The people of old walked through the element of the spiritual-soul; they saw the auras on human beings, which were not subjective but objectively belonged to human beings. That was their state of consciousness.

[ 35 ] Then they experienced a state of consciousness that followed this one, just as dream-filled sleep follows the waking state for us—though this was not the same as our present-day dream state, but rather one in which everything perceptible to the senses seemed to vanish. For us, sensory impressions become symbols in contrast to dreams: sunlight becomes a blaze of fire, the inner rows of teeth become two rows of stakes, and so on; memory-dreams become earthly or even spiritualized dramas—dream dramas. The sensory world is always there; the world of memory remains there. For those who were conscious during the most ancient times of human evolution—we shall see, after all, that we all were back then, for everyone sitting here was present in earlier earthly lives at that time—for them, things were different. Back then, when the sunlight grew weaker during the day, people did not see symbols of physical things; rather, the physical things themselves vanished from their sight. The tree standing before them vanished; it transformed into something spiritual—the legends of tree spirits are not, after all, figments of the folk imagination; only their interpretation is a figment of the scholarly imagination, which wanders in error—and the spirit belonging to the tree took its place. And these spirits—the tree spirit, the mountain spirit, the rock spirit—it was they again who further guided the soul’s gaze into that world in which the human being exists between death and a new birth, where he is just as much among spiritual realities as he is here on earth among physical realities, where he is just as much among spiritual beings as he is here on earth among physical beings. That was the second state of consciousness. We shall soon see how our ordinary dream consciousness can also transform into this state of consciousness for people today who are striving toward spiritual knowledge.

[ 36 ] And there was a third state of consciousness. Of course, people slept back then, too. But when they woke up, they did not merely have a vague recollection of having lived through time, or a dull sense of life; rather, when they woke up, they had a clear memory of what they had experienced in their sleep. And it was precisely from this sleep that the impressions of past earthly lives emerged—along with an understanding of the interconnection of human destiny, insight, and the comprehension of karma.

[ 37 ] Thus, modern humans have waking consciousness, dream consciousness, and dreamless sleep consciousness. Similarly, a pre-human civilization had three states of consciousness: the state of consciousness for reality permeated by the spirit, the state of consciousness for insight into the spiritual world, and the state of consciousness for perceiving karma. Essentially, among the primordial human race, it was a kind of twilight consciousness of the evening.

[ 38 ] This twilight consciousness of the evening has passed, faded away in the course of human evolution. A twilight consciousness of the morning must dawn. Today’s spiritual research is already moving in that direction. And human beings must reach a state where they can look at the tree, the rock, the spring, the mountain, and the stars; they must reach a state where, by strengthening and invigorating their own soul forces, they can bring about a situation in which the spiritual reality or spiritual being behind every physical thing appears to them.

[ 39 ] It can become an exact science, an exact form of knowledge—something that is still mocked today as madness or insanity—that the one who truly perceives looks at the tree, the tree before his eyes, and sees that even though it represents the material, it seems to recede into space, becoming nothing, and the spiritual essence of the tree comes to meet the human being. Just as sunlight reflects back to our physical eyes from all external physical beings, so humanity will come to realize—and anthroposophy anticipates this realization—that the spiritual solar being that interweaves and permeates the world also lives within all physical beings. Just as physical light reflects back into our physical eyes, so too can the divine-spiritual solar being—which permeates everything—reflect back into the eye of our soul from every earthly being as a fact. And just as a person now says, “The rose is red”—and underlying this is the fact that the rose returns to him the gift he himself has received from the physical-etheric solar being—so he will then be able to say: The rose returns to him that which it receives from the spiritual-soul solar being that ripples through and animates the world.

[ 40 ] Human beings will once again settle into a spiritual atmosphere and will know that their very being is rooted in this spiritual atmosphere. But then it will dawn on them that within this dream consciousness—which at first can offer only the chaotic symbolizations of external sensory life—lie the revelations of a spiritual world that we pass through between death and a new birth; just as, in the life of deep sleep within us, what we then, upon waking, leads us toward—that with which our destiny, our karma, is woven—weaves and lives as a real interplay of forces. What we experience as our destiny in our daily life, despite all our freedom, is spun and woven during our sleep life—there, where we lead a life with our soul-spiritual being, which has emerged from the physical-etheric, together with divine spirits, including those divine spirits who carry over the results of earlier earthly lives into this one. And the one who, through the development of the corresponding soul forces, succeeds in looking into the dreamless state of sleep discovers the karmic connections within it. Only through this, however, does the historical life of humanity acquire meaning: it is woven from what people from earlier epochs carry over—through the life between death and new birth—into new lives and new epochs. When we look at a person of the present or from any other time, we can only truly understand them when we comprehend their past earthly lives.

[ 41 ] In the coming days, we will discuss that research which, beginning with historical figures but then extending to everyday life—whether in the present or in any other time—leads from past lives on Earth.