The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is very difficult indeed to speak about the so-called “Eighth Sphere” which was referred to openly for the first time by Mr. Sinnett—one cannot say that he gave “information” about it for what he said was a fallacy.¹ You can certainly realise why it is difficult to speak about this subject, for again it must be emphasised that our language has been coined for the outer, material world, and the Eighth Sphere was regarded as a secret matter until it was mentioned by Sinnett.

Consequently there are not many words that can be used for characterising the Eighth Sphere. The fact that all mention was avoided for so long will also enable you to realise what is involved when one speaks of it. You will therefore have to take the aphoristic remarks I shall make today as a kind of introductory exposition, given with the object of throwing out certain indications which, to begin with, can be only a small contribution to the subject. It is to be hoped, however, that there will be opportunities for saying more at some later time. On the basis of what was said in the last lecture and also, to some extent, on earlier occasions, I shall try to characterise what is called the “Eighth Sphere” in order that we may have a foundation for describing the development of the spiritual Movement in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth.

You will have realised from the lecture yesterday that the Eighth Sphere cannot be anything that belongs to the material world, for I have shown you that the greatest fallacy in Sinnett's statement is that the physical Moon is directly connected with the Eighth Sphere; and I tried to make it comprehensible that the actual foundation of the error consists in the fact that this pointed to something material and physical.

From this you will be able to conjecture, even if not fully to understand, that what is called the Eighth Sphere can have nothing directly to do with anything within the material world—that is to say, what can be perceived by man's senses and thought out on the basis of sensory perception has no part in the Eighth Sphere. So it will be useless to look for the Eighth Sphere anywhere in the material world.

You now have indications by means of which some approach can be made in thought to a conception of the Eighth Sphere. I have said that the Eighth Sphere has something to do with the residue left from the Old Moon and its evolution. So much you can gather from the studies we have pursued in the course of time. I tried to make it clear in the lecture yesterday that on the Old Moon, man's natural mode of perception was visionary and imaginative in character, so that any substantiality to be discerned in the Eighth Sphere must be found with this kind of vision. That is to say: it must be presumed at the outset that the Eighth Sphere is found by way of visionary Imaginations.

How was it that the expression “Eighth Sphere” came to be used?—You know that human evolution takes its course through the seven spheres of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. We will conceive that besides these seven spheres there is still something else which lies outside them and yet is in some way related to the Earth. Here, then, we have a sphere, visible only to visionary-imaginative clairvoyance, which stands there as an Eighth Sphere over and above the seven which constitute the domain of the ordered and regular evolution of mankind. All such sketches are, of course, purely diagrammatic; one is obliged to draw separately spheres which can only be observed each within the others. For you will certainly have realised from our studies that as long as a man is within the material world, makes his observations through the senses and thinks with the intellect, he is standing in the Fourth Sphere, the Earth Sphere. If he develops his faculties of soul sufficiently to be able to see the Third Sphere, the Moon Sphere, then he takes a far flight—but not in the spatial sense. He observes, not from another place, but physically speaking, spatially speaking, from the same place. These seven spheres ought therefore in reality to be drawn within one another. They are successive stages and states of evolution and, fundamentally, such a diagram is of no other value than as if one were to say: human beings develop from birth to the seventh year in a first stage, from the seventh to the fourteenth year in a second stage, and so on. The being who has developed from the first to the seventh year cannot be thought of as separate from the being who is developing from the seventh until the fourteenth year. Neither is it correct to think of the seven successive spheres or stages of the Earth's evolution as separate from each other.

This will give you an inkling that the Eighth Sphere is to be observed within the Earth Sphere. It cannot properly be drawn either above or below; to depict the reality it would have to be sketched into the Earth Sphere. I have often given a crude example to express what is here meant. Just as the physical air is around us, so is the Spiritual around us; we have to look for the Spiritual within what is actually physical in our environment. Hence it must be presumed that just as the spiritual is round about us, so we must also look for the Eighth Sphere in our environment. This means that an organ enabling man to perceive the Eighth Sphere would have to be developed, just as his physical senses enable him to perceive the material Earth. He could then experience the Eighth Sphere quite consciously; but unconsciously he is always within it just as we are always within the air, even if we are not aware of it. And if we have developed an organ for experiencing the Eighth Sphere, we are conscious of it around us. So that if the Eighth Sphere is to be described, it must obviously be described as a realm in which we are living all the time.

Now, as I said, all that I can do in these introductory studies is to give some general information—the rest will emerge as we proceed. First of all, you can understand that what is around us as the Eighth Sphere is accessible to Imaginative-visionary clairvoyance. To develop Imaginative clairvoyance without perceiving something of the Eighth Sphere is impossible. The reason why it is so difficult to speak of matters such as the Eighth Sphere is because really clear and discriminative clairvoyance is possessed by so very few. In the Eighth Sphere we have to do with Imaginations, and what constitutes the essential nature of Earth-evolution—that is to say, the Fourth Sphere—is not present in the Eighth Sphere. The essential nature of the Fourth Sphere is constituted, as I indicated yesterday, by the mineral impregnation of this world-body. That we are able to live on the Earth is due to the fact that this Fourth Sphere has been mineralised: we live in a mineralised environment; what is perceived through the physical senses can be co-ordinated by the intellect. But we must conceive that the mineral element is totally absent from the Eighth Sphere.

When we eliminate the mineral element in thought, all that remains is a later stage of the Old Moon evolution, for whence could anything else originate ? But evolution proceeds; something that is perceptible through Imaginative, visionary clairvoyance but could be nothing else than a residue of the Old Moon—that would be no Eighth Sphere. All that could be said would be that something has been left behind by the Third Sphere.

In order to have some inkling of facts relating to the Eighth Sphere, let us keep the following in mind. In the course of its regular evolution, the Third Sphere became the Fourth Sphere; that is to say, a transition of the third elemental kingdom—for that is what we must call it—to the mineral kingdom took place. The mineral element was added. Otherwise we should have to conceive of the Old Moon as a sum-total of substantiality, imaginatively perceptible! It must therefore be assumed that the regular progression from the Old Moon to the Earth, from the Third Sphere to the Fourth Sphere, consists in what was formerly only imaginatively perceptible becoming materially perceptible, that is to say becoming mineralised. As the Eighth Sphere there remains, to begin with, the Old Moon element, but owing to a particular happening this Old Moon element undergoes a change. What took place in order that the Fourth Sphere might be able to arise from the Third is clearly described in the book Occult Science, where it is said that to the activities of the Spirits of Movement are added those of the Spirits of Form under whose guidance the whole process of the transformation takes place.² We can therefore say that the Fourth Sphere arises out of the Third through the fact that the Spirits of Form add their activities to those of the Spirits of Movement.

If the Spirits of Form had achieved everything that their own nature desires and moreover is able to achieve, when the mission of Sphere Three was fulfilled in the Cosmos, Sphere Four would have arisen quite naturally from Sphere Three. That is obvious. But we know that Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits are at work—and they hold back for themselves something of the Old Moon substantiality, wrest it away, as it were, from the Spirits of Form. The fact that Lucifer and Ahriman do so is indicative of their essential nature. Thus as Sphere Three is advancing to a further stage, something is wrested from the Spirits of Form by Lucifer and Ahriman; into this part that is wrested away, Lucifer and Ahriman penetrate, instead of the Spirits of Form. The activities of Lucifer and Ahriman are added to those of the Spirits of Movement and, as a result, Eight arises out of Three. (Note by translator: The Eighth Sphere out of the Third Sphere.)

Something else, then, must be there, not merely the Old Moon, and this “something else” which comes into being as well as Sphere Four is constituted by the fact that mineral substantiality, as it comes into being, is wrested away at the moment of the birth of the Fourth Sphere. Thus when the mineral comes into existence out of the Imaginative substantiality, it is snatched by Lucifer and Ahriman and made into Imagination. Instead of an Earth arising from the remaining Old Moon substantiality, a cosmic body takes shape whose birth is due to the fact that the substantiality wrested from the Earth is made into what has come over from the Old Moon.

Now recall how I have described the conditions pertaining to the Old Moon, in the book Occult Science. In the Old Moon there was as yet nothing mineral. Had mineral substance been present, that world-body would have been an Earth, not Moon. Sphere Four comes into being through the birth of the mineral element. In that Lucifer and Ahriman approach, snatch mineral substantiality out of Sphere Four and infuse it into Sphere Three, the Old Moon is recapitulated, but now with materiality that belongs properly to the Earth.

Mark this well: instead of pure Imaginations being there, the Imaginations are densified by the infusion of a mineral element that has been wrested from the Earth. Densified Imaginations are thus created. We are therefore drawn into a world of densified Imaginations which are not lunar in character because they have been densified by materiality belonging to the Earth. They are ghosts, spectres—that is to say, behind our world there is a world of spectres created by Lucifer and Ahriman.

Let me express it schematically, as follows: On the Old Moon certain pictures were present. These should have passed over to the Earth as something everywhere perceptible. But Lucifer and Ahriman retained them for themselves. Lucifer and Ahriman wrested from the Earth certain of its constituents and made them into Imaginations, so that these Earth-substances became, not Earthly formations, but Moon formations. Into our Fourth Sphere, therefore, there has been instilled a sphere that is really a Moon-sphere, but is filled with Earthly substantiality and is therefore a bogus creation in the Universe. To the seven Spheres, an Eighth, created in opposition to the progressive Spirits, has been added. The necessary consequence of this is that the Spirits of Form must do battle on the Earth for every morsel of substantiality capable of mineralisation, lest it should be wrested from them by Lucifer and Ahriman and borne into the Eighth Sphere.

In truth, therefore, our Earth—the Fourth Sphere—is simply not what it appears outwardly to be. Were it really to consist of atoms, all these atoms would still be impregnated by formations belonging to the Eighth Sphere—which are perceptible only to visionary clairvoyance. These formations are present everywhere; so too is the spectre-like content of the Eighth Sphere which can therefore be perceived just as actual spectres are perceived. All earthly being and existence are involved here. Lucifer and Ahriman strive unceasingly to draw from the Earth's substances whatever they can snatch, in order to form their Eighth Sphere which then, when it is sufficiently advanced, will be detached from the Earth and go its own way in the Cosmos together with Lucifer and Ahriman. Needless to say, the Earth would then pass over to Jupiter as a mere torso. But man, as you realise, has his established place in the whole of Earth-evolution, for he is mineralised through and through. We are permeated by the mineralising process which is itself drawn into this battle, so that morsels of this substance can be continually wrested from it. Therefore we ourselves are involved in the battle. Lucifer and Ahriman battle against the Spirits of Form, with the aim of wresting mineral substance from us everywhere.

But the strength of the process varies in the different regions of our organism. We are diversely constituted; some of our organs are more perfect than others. The most perfect of all is our organ of thinking, the brain and the skull, and there the battle of which I have spoken is the most vehement, precisely because this human head, this human brain, is fashioned as it is; and it is so fashioned because at this place in our body, Lucifer, and Ahriman too, have been the most successful in wresting mineral substance from us. Physical substance there is more spiritualised than anywhere else. The formation of our skull is due to the fact that it is there that most has been wrested from us. Hence it is precisely through the head that we can emancipate ourselves from our organism to the greatest extent. We can soar upwards in thoughts, we can distinguish between the good and the evil. And for that very reason, Lucifer and Ahriman have there been the most successful in wresting away substantiality; in the so-called noblest organ of man they have been able to wrest away the greatest amount of mineralised substantiality. This alchemy by which mineral substance is sent over into the Eighth Sphere is taking place all the time behind the scenes of our existence.—To begin with, I am simply communicating information; corroborations will emerge more and more clearly as our studies proceed.

If everything were to run without a hitch for Lucifer and Ahriman, if they were everywhere able to wrest as much as they wrest from the organ of the head, Earth-evolution would soon reach a point where Lucifer and Ahriman could succeed in destroying our Earth and in leading over all evolution of worlds into the Eighth Sphere, so that Earth-evolution as a whole would take a different course. Hence Lucifer endeavours to unfold his greatest strength of all at the place where man is the most vulnerable, namely, in his head. The stronghold which it is easiest for Lucifer to capture is the human head; and everything that is similar to the head in respect of the distribution of the mineral element, so that it can be drawn out in the same way, is equally exposed to the danger of being despatched into the Eighth Sphere. No less a prospect looms as a consequence of this intention of Lucifer and Ahriman than that the whole evolution of humanity may be allowed to disappear into the Eighth Sphere, so that this evolution would take a different course.

That, you see, was the intention of Lucifer and Ahriman from the beginning of Earth-evolution—to let the whole of this evolution disappear into the Eighth Sphere. It was therefore necessary that a counterweight should be created by those Spirits who belong to the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Form. The outer counterweight they created consists in this: into the “space”, as it were, of the Eighth Sphere something was inserted which works against this Eighth Sphere. To present this correctly, we must show the Earth here, and the Eighth Sphere here (see diagram). The Eighth Sphere belongs to our physical Earth in the sense indicated. We are surrounded everywhere by the Imaginations into which the aim is that mineral materiality shall continually be drawn. There lies the reason for the sacrifice made by Jahve or Jehovah—the precipitation of substance far denser than the other mineralised substance. This was established by Jahve as Moon, as the counteracting agent. It was substance of extreme density—and this density was described by Sinnett as substance of a far denser physical-mineral character than exists anywhere on the Earth. Hence Lucifer and Ahriman cannot dissolve it away into their world of Imaginations. And so this Moon circles around as a globe of dense matter, solid, dense, indestructible. If you read carefully enough you will find that even the descriptions of the Moon given by physicists tally with this. Everything that was available on the Earth was drawn out and placed there in order that there should be enough physical matter incapable of being wrested away. When we look at the Moon, we see there in the Universe a substance far more intensely mineralised, far physically denser, than exists anywhere on the Earth. Jahve or Jehovah, then, must be regarded as that Being who even in the physical domain has ensured that not all materiality can be drawn away by Lucifer and Ahriman. And then, at the right time, equal care will be taken by the same Spirit that the Moon shall re-enter the Earth when the Earth is strong enough to receive it, when the danger is averted by the development that has meanwhile taken place.³

This applies to the external, physical-mineral domain. But in the human domain too it was necessary that a counterweight should be created to the intention aimed at the human head. Just as in the outside world materiality had to be densified so that Lucifer and Ahriman cannot dissolve it by their alchemy, so in the human being something had to be set over against the organ that can most easily be attacked by Lucifer and Ahriman. Jahve had therefore to take care, just as he had done in respect of the mineral domain, that not everything can succumb to the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Care had to be taken that not everything in man proceeding from the head can become the prey of Lucifer and Ahriman; that not everything shall depend upon head-activity and the activity of the outward-turned senses, for then Lucifer and Ahriman would have been victors. It was necessary that a counterweight should be created in the domain of earthly life, that there should be in the human being something entirely independent of the head. And this was achieved through the work of the good Spirits of Form, who implanted the principle of Love into the principle of heredity on Earth. That is to say, there is now operative in the human race something that is independent of the head, that passes from generation to generation and has its deepest foundations in the physical nature of man.

Everything that is connected with propagation and with heredity, everything that is independent of man in the sense that he cannot penetrate it with his thinking, everything that is the gift of the Moon in the celestial firmament—that, in man, is what has proceeded from the principle of Love permeating the process of propagation and heredity. Hence the violent battle which persists through history, the battle waged by Lucifer and Ahriman against everything that comes from this domain. Lucifer and Ahriman want to force on man the exclusive sovereignty of the head, and they launch their attacks by way of the head against everything that is purely natural affinity. For whatever is hereditary substance on the Earth cannot be wrested away by them. What the Moon is in the heavens, heredity is in men on the Earth below. Everything that is grounded in heredity, everything that is not charged with thought, that is connected intrinsically with physical nature—that is the Jahve-principle. The Jahve-principle unfolds its greatest activity where nature is working as nature; it is there that Jahve has outpoured in greatest measure the Love that is his natural attribute, in order to create a counterweight to the lovelessness, the mere wisdom, of Lucifer and Ahriman.

It would be necessary to go very thoroughly into matters recently presented from quite different points of view, in order to show how in the Moon and in the process of human heredity, barricades have been created against Lucifer and Ahriman by the Spirits of Form. If you think more deeply about these matters, you will find that something of immense importance is contained in the indications given.

Now in order to reach at least some measure of understanding, the subject must also be approached from a rather different standpoint. If you remember what is said in the book Occult Science about the evolution of man through the Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon stages, you will realise that in these stages there can be no question of freedom. In those other stages man is enclosed in a web of necessity. In order that he might be ripe for freedom, the mineral nature had to be incorporated into him; he had to become a being permeated with the mineral element. Hence man can be educated for freedom only within the earthly-material world.

This by itself indicates the tremendous significance of the earthly-material world. That which must be acquired by mankind—freedom of the will—can be acquired only during Earth-evolution. In the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan stages men will need this freedom of will. Therefore when we consider the question of freedom, we are in a realm of great importance; for we know that the Earth is the begetter of freedom precisely because it is the Earth that impregnates man with the physical-mineral element.

From this you will understand that what stems from the free will must be kept within the realm of Earth. To Spheres Three, Two and One, it is impossible to apply anything that stems from the principle of freedom. But the endeavour of Lucifer and Ahriman is to drag the free will of man, and whatever stems from it, into the Eighth Sphere. This means that man is perpetually exposed to the danger of having his free will wrested from him and dragged by Lucifer and Ahriman into the Eighth Sphere.

This happens if the element of free will is transformed, for example, into visionary clairvoyance. When this is the case, a man is already in the Eighth Sphere. This is a matter of which occultists are so reluctant to speak, because it is an awful, terrible truth. The moment the free will is transformed into visionary clairvoyance, what unfolds in the human being becomes the booty of Lucifer and Ahriman. It is immediately captured by them and thereby spirited away from the Earth. You can see from this how, through the shackling of free will, the spectres of the Eighth Sphere are created. Lucifer and Ahriman are engaged perpetually in shackling man's free will and in conjuring all sorts of things before him in order to tear away what he makes out of these things and let it disappear in the Eighth Sphere.

When clairvoyance in all kinds of different forms develops in naive, credulous, superstitious people, it is often the case that their free will has been sacrificed. Then Lucifer instantly seizes hold of it, and whereas these people imagine they have had an experience of immortality, the truth is that in their visions they see a part, or a product, of their souls being wrested away and prepared for the Eighth Sphere.

You can imagine from this how deep was the concern of those who, having compromised by agreeing that by way of mediumship all kinds of truths relating to the spiritual world should be given to the public, then found the mediums believing that the dead were speaking to them. But the occultists then knew that what takes place between mediums and living men is that the stream of free will is passing into the Eighth Sphere. Instead of a link being formed with the Eternal, the mediums were testifying precisely to what was continually disappearing into the Eighth Sphere.

From this you will realise that Lucifer and Ahriman have an avid desire to bring as much as possible into the Eighth Sphere. Although Goethe mixed Lucifer and Ahriman together, he has nevertheless correctly described how a soul is wrested away from the clutches of Mephistopheles-Ahriman! It would be the richest prize for Lucifer and Ahriman if they could ever succeed in capturing a whole soul for themselves; for thereby such a soul would disappear into the Eighth Sphere and be lost from Earth-evolution. The greatest victory for Lucifer and Ahriman would be if one day they could claim that countless numbers of the dead had passed into their sphere. That would be their greatest victory. Moreover there is a way of achieving it. Lucifer and Ahriman may say: human beings long to know something about the life between death and a new birth. If, therefore, we tell them that they are learning something from the dead, they will be satisfied and will direct their feelings towards the realm from which announcements are made to them as coming from the dead. If therefore we desire that the hearts and minds of men shall be guided towards the Eighth Sphere, let us say to them: we are telling you something that comes from the dead. We shall capture men by alleging that the dead are in our domain.

This devilish plan—for here we have indeed to do with the devil—was put into effect by Lucifer and Ahriman when it had occurred to occultists to endeavour to accomplish something through mediumship. Lucifer and Ahriman inspired the mediums through whom they arranged the whole business, in order that people might be guided to the realm whence the dead were alleged to be speaking. Lucifer and Ahriman could then lay hold of their souls. The occultists were alarmed when they saw what course things were taking and they took counsel among themselves as to how to steer away from it. Even those who belonged to the left wing realised what was happening, and they said: we will do something different! An opportunity then presented itself through the appearance of a remarkable personality, namely H. P. Blavatsky. Now, after the plan had been seen through and the occultists on the Earth no longer lent their hands to it, Lucifer and Ahriman were obliged to pursue their aim in a different way.

Materialism had come upon the scene in the natural course of the Earth's evolution. Therefore in order to reckon with the mineralised process of evolution, it was necessary that men's attention should be focussed entirely on material things. That is materialism pure and simple! The occultists who had special aims of their own, said: Well and good, we will rely upon materialism. If, however, we take materialism in its purely earthly form, man will inevitably discover one day through his thinking that atoms do not exist—so that will not be very fertile soil. But human thinking can certainly be perverted if materialism is made occult. The best way of doing this is to present the Sphere that had to be created as a counterweight to the Eighth Sphere as the Eighth Sphere itself! If people can be led to believe that the materiality created as a counterweight to the Eighth Sphere is the Eighth Sphere itself, that will outstrip every conceivable earthly materialism! And earthly materialism was indeed outstripped in the assertion made by Sinnett. Materialism is there imported into the realm of occultism; occultism there becomes materialism. But sooner or later men would have been bound to discover this. H. P. Blavatsky, who had deep insight into this phase of the Earth's evolution, divined something of what was happening, after she had seen through the tricks of that strange individuality of whom I spoke in the last lecture, and she said to herself: This cannot go on as it is; it must be changed! But she said that under the influence of the Indian occultists who belonged to the left wing. She realised that things must change but that something not easily detectable must be created. In order to create something herself that would outstrip Sinnett's assertion, she acceded to the proposals of the Indian occultists who were inspiring her. These occultists, being adherents of the left path, had no other aim than the promotion of their own special interests—Indian interests. They had in mind to establish all over the Earth a system of wisdom from which Christ, and Jahve too, were excluded. Therefore something whereby Christ and Jahve were eliminated would have to be interpolated.

The following method was then adopted. It was said: Lucifer is in truth the great benefactor of mankind. (Of Ahriman there was no mention; so little was known of him that one name was used for both.) Lucifer brings to men everything they have gained through the head: science, art, in short, all progress. He is the true Spirit of Light; it is to him that men must adhere. And Jahve—what has he done, in reality ? He has established in men the principle of physical heredity! He is a Moon God who has introduced elements pertaining to the Moon. Hence the statement in The Secret Doctrine that men should not adhere to Jahve, for he is only the Lord of materiality, of all the lower, earthly impulses; the true benefactor of mankind is Lucifer. This shimmers through the whole of The Secret Doctrine, and is, moreover, clearly stated there. And so for occult reasons H. P. Blavatsky was prepared in such a way as to become a hater of Christ and Jahve. For in the occult domain such an utterance signifies exactly the same as Sinnett's statement that the Moon is the Eighth Sphere.

It is through knowledge alone that an approach can be made to these things—verily through knowledge alone. Therefore when we began the periodical Lucifer-Gnosis, the first article was necessarily on the subject of Lucifer, in order that he should be rightly understood, in order that it should be realised that inasmuch as he brings about head-activity, he is a benefactor of mankind. But the counterweight must also be there: Love must be there as the counterweight. This was stated in the very first article of the periodical, because at this point it was essential to intervene.

As you see, things were complicated. Fundamentally, what it was desired to achieve through H. P. Blavatsky was that men should be misled into believing in the Eighth Sphere. They could most easily be misled into this belief by something false being presented to them as the Eighth Sphere. Naturally, people were led to the spiritual world, for Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine has this great merit, that through it men's minds were directed to the spiritual world. But the path followed was in pursuance of special interests, not the interests of the evolution of humanity in general. All these things must be kept strictly in mind if we are to be quite clear as to which is the healthy path. We must not accept empty words without verification if we desire to hav e genuine occultism; we must resolve to see things clearly. Particularly at the present point of time in our development it has been necessary for me to give certain indications about these things, indications which can be supplemented at some other time by matters of even greater significance. I had to give these indications because, if you keep them rightly in your minds, you will see how our ship has been steered from the beginning of our Movement—steered in such a way that account has been taken of all the false paths that can be pursued and of all those things that were a menace to the spiritual development of humanity.

Indications of a path into the spiritual world must not be given blindly, above all not as the result of rapturous fanaticism. That is why the exhortation has again and again had to be made among you, my dear friends, that it is urgently necessary not to allow yourselves to be duped by what leads to the Eighth Sphere. And if again and again it has been said that more caution should be exercised in the domain of visionary clairvoyance, that validity should be ascribed only to that clairvoyance which, in leading into the higher worlds, excludes Lucifer and Ahriman—then it will be seen that everything capable of bringing the soul into connection with the Eighth Sphere must be rejected. If the tendency to shackle the free will and remain in the domain of visionary clairvoyance comes into evidence time and again, this is a sign that opposition is being put in the way of the clear-cut endeavour of our Movement, owing to the propensity to fetter the free will in visionary clairvoyance.

How happy some people would have been if only they could have shackled the free will! This was a symptom of how many of the traits prevailing in the other Movements spoken of here were being imported into our own Movement. It was not from Blavatsky, nor was it from outside, but by our Members themselves that breaches were constantly being made in what it is our aim to achieve. Such breaches were and are being made because announcements of visionary clairvoyants are greeted with rapturous wonder! This was an expression of perverse love for the Eighth Sphere. When one or another person has insisted: Dr. Steiner has said that such and such ought to be done, then this means that such and such a person wants to deliver up the free will to foreign influence, to let this will be determined, not by himself, but by someone else; he wants to make someone else responsible for instilling into the physical world a willingness to allow the free will to be fettered. Whenever people give way to fatalism instead of making decisions through their own power of judgment, they show their inclination to the Eighth Sphere. And everything that passes in this way into the Eighth Sphere disappears from Earth evolution, does not go forward in the right way with Earth evolution.

We have come to a point where it behoves us to pay heed to these things—that is why they have been brought forward. We have come to a point where we must pay attention to the needle in the scales which oscillates all the time between the exoteric and the esoteric. The principle in esotericism observed among us is that, fundamentally speaking, the occult life in its reality cannot be expressed by means of words. Things are said sometimes in an esoteric, sometimes in an exoteric form, and these are, as it were, two different dialects of one inexpressible language. And if in his arrogance a man wants to substitute the exoteric for the esoteric, he forgets that they are two dialects of an inexpressible language and that everything depends upon how he is able to hold the balance between the two. But what still remains between the two must be regarded as an inexpressible language—there is always something that cannot be directly expressed.

If, as in the book Occult Science, certain exoteric (sic) matters are publicised, care must be taken that in such a publication everything is put in such a way that it is within the grasp of the contemporary culture prevailing in the non-occult world outside. When it is said that something should remain esoteric, this simply means that it should remain within the circle of those who participate in everything that is presented in the sphere of esotericism. If things go wrong here, the esoteric is carried into the exoteric and then one is always facing a danger. This happens whenever anything that should be kept within a limited circle is carried out into the world so that there is no possibility of keeping up with it. ... During the years we have been pursuing our studies of Spiritual Science I have endeavoured to develop things in such a way that it can be clear to everyone who really goes into them that they are intelligible even before clairvoyance is attained. I have been at pains to make public nothing that cannot be comprehensible in its own domain. It follows therefore that only those who are willing to see human beings pass into the Eighth Sphere can have any valid objection to this spiritual-scientific Movement. When I made public the most delicate facts of all about the two Jesus children, opposition arose from a quarter which understood nothing at all and still places its faith in mediumship; whereas one who studies the Bible deeply enough today can grasp the circumstances which confirm the statement about the two Jesus children. We must therefore take our stand on the principle of following attentively what is brought forward, but not allowing it to be said that it is accepted among us out of belief in authority. Never should the phrase be heard that truths are accepted simply because I have voiced them! We should sin against the truth were we to say any such thing. One thing or another may be grounded on confidence; but that can never be made into a principle. Someone else may perhaps be better able to tread the path; but the rule to which every individual should adhere is this: not to accept things on authority, but to put them to the test.

It is by testing that confirmation will be found. Whenever the word “confidence” has been used among us it has been a danger signal; it has been a sign that we have entered a period when dangers threaten us. The attitude hitherto prevailing among us must cease, for Spiritual Science is grounded, not upon authority, but upon knowledge. The time for being easy-going about presenting Spiritual Science is over. Enemies will be on the look-out everywhere and we shall have much to combat; we shall have to make ourselves equal to the battle, and whenever confused minds feel compelled to throw themselves into the combat this will make it especially possible for the forces working against our spiritual-scientific Movement to develop.

These things must be regarded as resulting from the nature of the subject itself. We shall have to resolve to take account of all of them. For Movements with a particular bias find acceptance and adherents simply because there are always groups of human beings here and there whose interests are suited by one-sidedness. Humanity consists, does it not, of groups of human beings. If, now, an occultist attaches himself to a group, he finds it a means of support, he has a foothold from which he can start, because this group helps him. Therefore everyone who starts from a one-sided, biassed outlook may expect some measure of agreement and good-will. But he who starts from truth itself has, to begin with, all humanity against him. Truth has to conquer its domain with complete disinterestedness. That is why, at bottom, nothing is more hated than the truth, the unvarnished truth. And so there may be many adherents here and there who actually cherish hatred deep down within them. No wonder that this hatred sometimes cuts through the force that builds a wall against it—cuts through this force because the hatred has been accumulating for so long. Such hatred is far more widespread than is imagined and it is a factor that must be reckoned with. Wherever truth is trying to assert itself endeavours are made to transform and re-cast it in such a way that it can somehow serve the opposing Powers. And various endeavours cropping up among us at the present time must be regarded as an effort to distort truth as presented here and apply it in a different sense. The craftiest way of doing this is to declare: the teaching itself is good, the teacher—worthless. The teaching is stolen from the teacher and efforts are made to apply it to some other aims.—What Lucifer and Ahriman would love to do is to be able to take the wisdom of the Gods lock, stock and barrel and transfer it to the Eighth Sphere.

Endeavours such as those I have mentioned are directed to changing a Society in which freedom can prevail into a Society of slaves. That is the method which can serve Ahriman, for he sets out to make such activities useful to himself.—That is the more esoteric side of the matter, which we must now also consider with the necessary earnestness from the exoteric aspect—in the other dialect.

I would beg you not to lose sight of the fact that we are standing at a crucial point in the development of our Spiritual Science.

Notes by the Translator

As the literature which contains much direct confirmation of what is said by Dr. Steiner is not always readily available and may be unfamiliar to readers of these lectures, the following notes and quotations may be helpful.

(1) The very wide circulation of Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism is indicated by the fact that by the year 1884 (that is, only a year after publication) it was already in its third edition. There have been eight editions in all.

(2) The “Eighth Sphere”: In The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 186, Sinnett's statement that the Eighth Sphere is the Moon is criticised by Madame Blavatsky who says, however, that it is to be hoped that the “mistaken” notions of which this is one may be corrected in later editions of the book. She was obviously referring to the first edition, as was C. J. Harrison in his statement contained in The Transcendental Universe (see note below). In the third edition of Esoteric Buddhism, however, the corresponding passage is identical with that in the eighth edition, and while not specifically mentioning the Moon, implies it so specifically that nothing has really been done in the way of correction.

The passage in Esoteric Buddhism is as follows (Pages 104 and 105, third edition, also eighth edition, pages 117 and 118):

“Kama loca may be permanently inhabited by astral beings, by elementals, but can only be an antechamber to some other state for human beings. In the case imagined, the surviving personality is promptly drawn into the current of its future destinies, and these have nothing to do with this earth's atmosphere or with Devachan, but with that ‘Eighth Sphere’ of which occasional mention will be found in older occult writings. It will have been unintelligible to ordinary readers hitherto why it was called the ‘Eighth Sphere’ but since the explanation, now given out for the first time, of the sevenfold constitution of our planetary system, the meaning will be clear enough. ... It will readily be guessed that the only sphere connected with our planetary chain, which is lower than our own in the scale, having spirit at the top and matter at the bottom, must itself be no less visible to the eye and to optical instruments than the earth itself, and as the duties which this sphere has to perform in our planetary system are immediately associated with this earth, there is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the Eighth Sphere, nor as to the place in the sky where it may be sought. ...”

Most interesting references are to be found in C. J. Harrison's The Transcendental Universe (a book containing lectures given by him in the year 1893 before the “Berean Society” which was “an association of students of theoretical occultism”.) The following extracts are taken from pages 1o8, 109:

“... It will be my duty to explain, to the best of my ability, certain facts in connection with a mystery known as the Mystery of the Eighth Sphere. ... Now I am well aware that there are many occultists who say the subject ought not to be brought before the public at all, and object to the very name being mentioned, ... In reply to such persons it is due to myself to say I am breaking no oath, and violating no confidence. These lectures were advertised in the public journals, and all who choose to attend them are welcome. I regret to be obliged to differ from many persons, whom I hold in the highest respect, as to whether or not the times are ripe for mentioning these subjects. They have been mentioned—prudently or imprudently—and are familiar to all who have taken an interest in the Theosophical Movement ... The first person, however, to profane the mysteries (albeit unconsciously) was Mr. Sinnett, the author of Esoteric Buddhism, a book which made considerable sensation when it came out, but which contains nothing new that is true, and nothing true that is new. As he was the first to make public the information that there is an “eighth sphere” and a mystery connected with it of which he is ignorant, it may be as well to say that both these statements are true. But when he proceeds to say that the Eighth Sphere is the Moon, he gives utterance to one of those half-truths that are more misleading than falsehoods ...

Readers of Esoteric Buddhism will remember that man is said therein to evolve on seven planets; three of which (including the Earth) are visible, and the other four composed of matter too attenuated to be visible. Also that there is an eighth planet, the moon, in which matter “asserts itself” yet more strongly than on the earth. Anything more utterly misleading it is impossible to conceive. Madame Blavatsky, who knew very well that this kind of thing was sure to be exposed sooner or later, has in her Secret Doctrine corrected some of the errors, but as she has not chosen to elucidate any portion of the mystery except such as suit her purpose, and as she is destitute, moreover, of the literary gifts of her disciple, her teaching in respect to the Seven Planets and the Eighth Sphere will be “caviare to the General”, who will continue to regard Mr. Sinnett's explanation as the genuine “Esoteric Buddhism” ...”

(3) In Lecture II, Dr. Steiner refers to the ”occult imprisonment” to which H. P. Blavatsky was subjected. He also refers to this in Lecture V of the Course Things of the Present and Past in the Spirit of Man.

The following is quoted from Harrison's The Transcendental Universe, page 36:

“... What is occult ‘imprisonment’, and why was it inflicted on Madame Blavatsky?

There is a certain operation of ceremonial magic by means of which a wall of psychic influences may be built up around an individual who has become dangerous, which has the effect of paralysing the higher activities, and producing what is called the ‘repercussion of effort’, and the result is a kind of spiritual sleep characterised by fantastic visions. It is an operation seldom resorted to even by Brothers of the Left, and in the case of Madame Blavatsky was disapproved of by almost all European occultists. On the American brotherhoods alone rests the responsibility for what has since happened. ...”

• 1. See notes at end of this lecture.
• 2. See pp. 128-9 et seq in the 1962-3 edition.
• 3. See Lecture by Rudolf Steiner: “From the Departure of the Moon to the Return of the Moon,” given in Dornach, 13th May, 1921. Printed in The Golden Blade, 1960.

If in a broad sense, without going into details, you review what I ventured to put before you in the foregoing lectures, you will realise that the path of development which the spiritual-scientific current of thought was bound to take, imposes definite and earnest responsibilities upon those who feel themselves its sponsors. For you will certainly have realised from our recent studies that when man tries to find his bearings along the right path, great difficulties spring up for him, difficulties of a kind different from those otherwise encountered in life.

Now in life on the physical plane we are in many respects protected from aberrations in one direction or another. Many years ago I drew attention to this protection when, in connection with the problem of the Guardian of the Threshold, I gave certain indications which have been added to in the course of time.¹ Even in the early articles now incorporated in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? it was shown how man on the physical plane is protected from deviating too readily in one direction or another in intellectual and moral life. We enter into existence in such a way that certain guiding forces for life are with us during our childhood. We know well that only in later years do we reach the stage of being able to exercise our power of free judgment.

If you observe a child and compare his soul-life with that of a grown-up person you will detect a certain difference. For you can justly say: instead of a kind of dreamlike life which he leads in childhood, the human being begins in later years to exercise his own faculty of free judgment. It is very important to be aware of these variations.

If in thinking of the whole course of human life from birth until death we keep childhood too much in mind, we may perhaps pay insufficient attention to this metamorphosis of the inner life of soul. But it is important to understand it because it is during the period when our power of judgment is not yet fully awake that guiding impulses for later life can be received. For the sake of our power of free judgment we must, as it were, be swathed in dream during the early years of our life in order that certain forces of guidance may find their way into our intellect and into our moral impulses, in order that we shall not prematurely crystallise the forces bestowed upon us for the purposes of our life and which are “breathed”—I will not say “incorporated”—into our being. Thereby we have something for the whole of our life; we direct ourselves throughout life in accordance with the intellectual and moral impulses that have been breathed into our soul.

When we approach concepts of the spiritual worlds, we become in a certain sense freer. It has often been said and must again and again be repeated, that the approach to the spiritual worlds is also a kind of awakening from the ordinary conditions and circumstances of life; again, therefore, this is a variation in the metamorphoses of life similar to the metamorphosis leading from childhood to the capacity of free judgment in later life.

But this means that when we adopt the spiritual-scientific view of life it can very easily happen that the steady direction of life we formerly knew, begins to waver. So that when we begin to grasp the reality of the spiritual worlds, it is a matter of mustering the forces of the whole man within us—because we need the “life-capital” breathed into us during childhood in order rightly to approach the things now to be revealed from the world on yonder side of the Threshold. And I showed you how easy it is, under influences which proceed as a matter of course from the different currents of the time, to go astray in one direction or another. An aberration such as occurs in Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism is due to the fact that the strong impulse of materialism can have an effect upon the souls of men—I say, can have an effect. Just because oriental influences were at work, a deviation was possible in the direction which led to a defamation of the whole nature of the present Moon, and on the other side aberration was possible because it was in the interests of certain persons not to allow the truth of repeated lives on Earth to come into the open. The one who had an interest—in this case it was not Sinnett himself but the one who was behind him—in helping materialism in human life to be, as it were, “ultra-materialised”, introduced into an otherwise true system, teaching such as that concerning the Moon, thereby giving a twist in a particular direction.

Now we know that especially in recent centuries Western civilisation and its American offshoot have been subject to a strongly Christian impulse. I myself have been at pains to show that the significance of Christianity does not depend upon what can actually be understood of it—for a great deal will become intelligible only in the future, and we ourselves are only just beginning to grasp certain facts connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. But the impulses of Christianity are real; they take effect even when men do not yet understand them. In earlier centuries, however, certain cosmic truths were excluded from these impulses. These truths are entirely compatible with Christianity although insight has not succeeded in making this evident. Truths relating to repeated lives on Earth were withdrawn from Christianity, and so a Western culture with an American offshoot arose with a form of Christianity from which the teaching of repeated lives on Earth was excluded.

Now I have shown you how certain occultists made efforts to preserve this view of Christianity—the view which rejected the truth of repeated earthly lives. I spoke of trends in occultism that were connected, for example, with the High Church party. Those concerned were people of knowledge, they were well-informed. It can be said that they knew much more about occultism than did the leading members of the Theosophical Society. But their whole object was to ensure that the teaching of repeated earthly lives should be eliminated even more decisively; hence their denial that man, as I have shown in Occult Science, enters in the course of his earthly evolution into relationship with the other planets of our solar system.

The forces here implanted into the human soul have mainly to do with man's participation in the extra-terrestrial Cosmos; and it was desired from this quarter that men should be left in obscurity about this participation. The object was to divert them from the realisation that the soul is connected, not only with the Earth and its happenings, but also with what is out there in the Cosmos, shining down to us, for example, from the other planets of our solar system.

Now in that they work upon the human being, the impulses proceeding from the other planets of our solar system have the power to wrest the soul, as living soul, away from physical death. That is their essential function, as you can realise from the descriptions of the life between death and a new birth which I have given in various connections and from various points of view.

But if you look back over the evolution of humanity, you will find that precisely in the times when atavistic knowledge, clairvoyant knowledge, was present as an ancient heritage, men directed their gaze to the other celestial bodies of our solar system, and Astrology—which in our day has become such a questionable science—played a part of tremendous importance in those olden times.

Why, we may ask ourselves, has Astrology ceased to play this important part? It is because the gaze of human souls had to be diverted in order that Christianity should have time to take root in earthly existence. Just as the gaze of clairvoyance had to be diverted from the Imaginative world, so too had the gaze to be diverted from the impulses proceeding from the planets of our solar system. All that has remained of Astrology consists of old traditions. I have often spoken of this. In a sense, we may say: the old clairvoyance and also the old vision of the impulses proceeding from the planets of our solar system, were circumscribed. Man was relegated to the physically perceptible world, to the senses by means of which he was to perceive only that which takes place on the Earth. This was in order that the impulses of the Mystery of Golgotha might wax in strength and take root in the souls of men, in the feelings of the believers, so that men might be inwardly deepened.

In ancient times, clairvoyance was, after all, an external faculty. It was not a question of having to acquire it by effort, for it was a heritage. Just as a man today has eyes and ears, so in those times he had the faculty of clairvoyance. But the times are approaching when clairvoyance will increasingly be regained. This made it necessary that in one phase of his existence man should be shut off from the spiritual world and confined to the outer, mineral world, in order that everything may be built up again from within; what was once seen from without must now be built up again from within. I will sketch it for you like this (drawing on the blackboard).

Picture a man with the old clairvoyant vision. (I will take the eye as representing the clairvoyant gaze, although this is not exclusively a function of the eye.) He directed his gaze to the starry heavens and beheld the different spiritual impulses streaming from there.

Then, in the course of the ages this clairvoyance faded away and man's gaze was restricted to the phenomena of earthly existence. Something else had to arise in place of the earlier clairvoyance, something that can be indicated by saying: What formerly came from without must now go out from within. Man had to learn to project outwards what the Heavens had implanted in him in order that he might again find his links with the phenomena of the Heavens.

The direction that had now to be followed was exactly the opposite of that of the earlier path. It is an actual fact that human nature is at this present point of time involved in a process of re-organisation. It has passed through the point of deepest darkness—one expression of which was what I called the full flood of materialism in the middle of the nineteenth century. But humanity is emerging from this condition. Describing this in terms of occultism, we may say: In earlier times men did not perceive, did not think with the physical body only, but they perceived and thought with the etheric body. What was perceived with the etheric body was experienced consciously in the astral body as Astrology. But in modern Astronomy everything is a matter of calculation. The etheric body must be revitalised, and this is connected with the new revelation of Christ. When the etheric body is re-vitalised, man finds Christ. But, as you see, it is essential that this vitalising of the etheric body shall take place.

Noteworthy discoveries can be made if one goes deeply into these matters. The whole feeling that man has an etheric body has disappeared and the feeling that he has only a physical body predominates. But it would be entirely false to believe that this opinion about man having a physical body only, is very old. By no means is it so. If this restriction to the physical body was actually brought about by the full flood of materialism in the nineteenth century, then men must previously have had some inkling of the etheric body which was then suppressed but is now emerging again. I could give you many proofs that previously something was known about the etheric body, the existence of which began gradually to be ignored. I could quote many passages from earlier works, but I will read one from a book published in 1827. On page 208, a remarkable passage occurs. I will read it very slowly so that you may be able to judge how differently these things are written about today under the influence of views that have become wholly materialistic.

“The concept of nourishment is connected erroneously with the mere imbibing of food and drink and their elaboration in the organs of digestion. The organism is nourished, and organic life sustained, not by food and drink, but by the blood (the neutralised earthly and etheric life-principle)”—here the writer shows that he is not speaking of the physical blood but of what underlies the blood as etheric life-principle—“and indeed not until in the plastic membranes the blood has been enhanced and as it were sublimated into the vitalising, formative exhalation (Aura vitalis).”

What does the writer want to express here? He wants to indicate that external nourishment is not the fact of primary importance but that while external nourishment is taking place, extracts stream from the foodstuffs into the blood, so that a process is going on in that which underlies the blood as an etheric life-principle.—This was written in the year 1827. The writer has put brackets round the words “Aura vitalis”. “Plastic” here is a synonym of “imaginative”. I might equally well read the lines thus: “Not until in the imaginative membranes the blood has been enhanced and sublimated as it were into the vitalising, formative exhalation (Aura vitalis)” ... the two last words are in brackets. “Aura vitalis” can only be translated as “etheric body.”

The man who wrote this was Professor of Psychiatric Therapy at the University of Leipzig and Physician at the Hospital of St. George there. He was Johann Christian August Heinroth, of whom I once spoke in connection with Goethe.

Hundreds of such examples could be given and they will indicate to you how utterly different the attitude of mind once was, how the knowledge that was still in evidence by no means such a very long time ago, has degenerated into the materialistic view of the world.

One can say: A stream of knowledge oozes away and the materialistic view of the world rises to the surface, but beneath the stream a sub-stream develops in human nature. The connection with the Cosmos is established again, this time from within. You may still say: Prove to us that there have been people who had an inkling of the fact that whereas, on the one side, knowledge of the activities of the etheric body passed away, on the other, the etheric body was being revitalised again from within.—

Here I will read you a passage from a book published even earlier, from which you can see that there were indeed people who drew attention to a change that would take place in the organisation of humanity in the future. Admittedly, the story is told in a very veiled form, but at all events it is told. The story is about a female character. When I read the passage, most of you will know where it occurs.

We read that there is a soul in the body of a woman who no longer leads the earthly life but the solar life, that in the course of her life she circles around wider and wider spheres—it can therefore be assumed that beings, in so far as they are corporeal, strive towards the centre, and in so far as they are spiritual, towards the periphery. A soul who lives with the Cosmos is here described.²

Makaria is in our solar system in a relation which we may scarcely dare to express. In spirit, soul, imagination, she keeps within herself; she does not only look, but at the same time she makes a part of it; she sees herself carried away in those heavenly circles, but in a quite special manner. From her childhood she wanders around the sun, and indeed, as is now discovered, in a spiral, withdrawing always more from the centre and circling towards the outer regions.

If we may accept that creatures, so far as they are bodily, strive towards the centre, so far as they are spiritual to the periphery, so does our friend belong to the most spiritual. She appears to be born only to free herself from what is earthly, so as to pierce through to the nearest and most remote spaces of existence. This quality, splendid as it is, was, however, lent to her from her earliest years as a difficult task. She remembers from childhood her innermost self as penetrated by illuminating beings, brightened by a light which even the brightest light of the sun could get no hold on.

She therefore bears sources of light within herself and the external light can “get no hold” on her.

Often she saw two suns, one inward, another in the sky; two moons, of which the outer one, in its size, remained the same in all phases; the inner always diminished more and more.

This gift drew her interest away from ordinary things, but her excellent parents directed everything towards her culture. All faculties were alive in her, all activities operative, so that she understood how to satisfy all outward relationships, and while her heart, her spirit, was entirely filled with otherworldly visions, her actions and dealings remained always suited to the noblest decorum. As she grew up, everywhere helpful, incessant in great and small services, she wandered like an angel of God upon the earth, while her entire spiritual being moved indeed around the sun of this world, but in continually increasing circles towards what is beyond this world.

The exuberance of this condition was in some measure modified, that it also seemed to her to dawn and to grow dark, while with quenched inner light she strove most loyally to fulfil external duties; with the fresh shining of the inner light she gave herself up to the most blessed tranquility. Yes, she will have observed that some kind of clouds hovered over her from time to time, and for some time obscured for her the look of the heavenly companions—a period which she understood how to make use of continually for the well-being and delight of her surroundings.

So long as she kept her views secret, it required much to support them. What she revealed of them was not recognised, or misinterpreted; therefore in her long life she let it appear outwardly as an illness, and in the family they still always speak of it so; but at last good fortune introduced to her the man whom you see with us, as doctor, mathematician and astronomer equally valuable; a thoroughly noble man who, however, first actually approached her out of curiosity. But when she gained confidence towards him, described by degrees to him her circumstances, joined the present to the past and had brought a connection into the events, he became so fascinated by the phenomenon that he could no more separate himself from her, but day by day endeavoured continually to penetrate more deeply into the secret.

At first, as lie gave it to be understood not obscurely, he considered it to be deception, for she did not deny that from earliest youth she had diligently busied herself about knowledge of the stars and sky, that she had been well instructed in them, and had missed no opportunity of getting a clear idea for herself of the structure of the world by means of machines and books. He did not, therefore, have his say out; it was learnt by heart, the effect of an imagination regulated in a high degree, the influence of the memory was to be conjectured, a co-operation of the power of judgment, but especially of a hidden calculation.

He is a mathematician and therefore obstinate, a clear mind and therefore unbelieving. For a long time he resisted, observed however what she mentioned, exactly, endeavoured to get near to the sequel of different years, kept himself especially to the newest with the opposite position of the lights of heaven and their tasks in accordance, and at last exclaimed: “Now why should not God and Nature be a living ‘Armillarsphere’, an intellectual clockwork movement, so that just as the clocks perform it for us daily and hourly, it would be in the position of itself in a special way to follow the course of the stars!”

But here we dare not proceed further, for the incredible loses its value when we wish to look at it more nearly in detail. We say so much, however: that which served as the basis of the reckonings to be instituted, was as follows. For her, the seeress, our sun appeared in the vision much smaller than she beheld it as such by day; also an unusual position of this high light of heaven in the zodiac gave rise to inferences.

On the other hand, doubts and errors arose because she who looked indicated one and the other star as appearing alike in the zodiac, but of which in the sky one was not aware. They might be the small planets at that time still undiscovered, for from other accounts it could be concluded that she, long since over the, orbit of Mars, drew near to the orbit of Jupiter. Openly, for a long time, she had considered these planets, at what distance it would be difficult to say, with astonishment in their mighty splendour, and looked at the play of its moons around it, but had seen it in the most marvellous manner as waning moon, and indeed, without being turned round, as the waxing moon appears to us. From this it would be concluded that she saw it from the side, and was really on the point of moving outside its orbit, and in the infinite space coming in opposition to Saturn. Thither no imagination follows her, but we hope that such an entelechy does not withdraw itself entirely from our solar system; but if it has arrived at the border of it, it will yearn to be back again, so as to work again in favour of our great grandchildren for earthly life and beneficence.

Here, in a very significant way, the vista is presented to us of how the soul, how the human being, will from within take the path of return to the world of the stars. I have been reading to you the description of Makaria from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and he has expressly added that he has not said everything. He indicates that this was an ethereal poem, in the words: “While we now here close this ethereal poetry, hoping for forgiveness, let us turn again to that terrestrial story, of which we have given above a transient indication.”

Before Goethe describes Makaria he writes:

But arrived at this point, we cannot resist the temptation of communicating from our archives³ a paper which concerns Makaria, and the special quality which was imparted to her mind. Unfortunately, this composition was written from memory not till a long time after the contents were communicated, and cannot be looked upon as altogether authentic, as in so remarkable a case would be desirable. But however this may be, here already is so much communicated as to arouse reflection and recommend attention as to whether already something similar or approximating to it has been remarked and noted down.

I wanted to call your attention to this passage in Wilhelm Meister's Travels because it will show you that with Spiritual Science we are really meeting the demands of our age. Human nature is changing in such a way that it will bring forth from itself that ancient heritage from the pre-earthly world which it has lost. And men must be aware of what is approaching them—otherwise they will fall into utter confusion. Spiritual Science must establish its place in the cultural life of our time.

But the moment men become attentive to what has been indicated here they inevitably come across the teaching of reincarnation, because they say to themselves that an entelechy from the spiritual world, from the spheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and so on, may well have something to do with the Earth and might return among us. Therefore those occultists who wish the teaching of reincarnation to be suppressed, say that barricades must be erected against the advent of this view of life, and these barricades are erected by diverting men's minds as far as possible from the connection with the celestial bodies of the solar system. So we see that in that quarter there is intense interest in not allowing certain things to come to light. I said yesterday that if interest is present for a biased, one-sided cause, it always finds support. But truth is generally contested and everything possible is done to prevent the truth itself from coming to light. And whether we take the right stand in our spiritual Movement depends upon our being fully conscious that the truth for which we seek will be attacked from many, many sides. Nothing is more essential than that in order to be armed, we shall endeavour to develop clarity of thought in every domain. You must bear in mind that the antagonisms that arise, above all the hostile personalities, are really, for the most part, puppets of the opposing Powers. For we are here in the field of activity of super-sensible Powers. These super-sensible Powers, to which Lucifer and Ahriman belong, naturally work in human life through human souls, which are simply their instruments.

Hence it is necessary to know exactly what is at issue in the one case or the other; but what is far and away the most necessary of all is that the acquisition of the faculty of clear, exact thinking shall never be neglected. You know that life itself has its contradictions, and Hegel built up his whole philosophy on this. It is not a question of avoiding the contradictions in life, for they are there. The essential thing is to recognise and be alert to them.

Ahriman and Lucifer can accomplish something only when a contradiction remains unnoticed, when we have neither the strength nor the will to lay it bare. Whenever we get entangled in a contradiction that we do not recognise as such but simply regard it as a natural part of life, this makes it possible for Lucifer and Ahriman to take possession of our soul.

Let us take a strange contradiction with which we have been just recently confronted here. The circumstances have obliged me to read a passage in a letter from a lady who states that what is wanted is “not the teaching and not the teacher, but the man”. The teaching was therefore taken as a kind of adjunct and the chief value attached to the man. Then came another assertion—the very opposite! The man was completely rejected and it was stated that the teaching must be acknowledged as correct. Just think of it: on the one hand it is asserted that the quest should not be for the teaching or the teacher, but for the man; and on the other: “I hate the man and reject him; he makes promises and does not keep them—but the teaching is good, I accept it.”

To what does this really amount? In effect it amounts to this: For a time I had a certain relationship with an individual; he himself interested me, the teaching only very little. Then I turn from the individual and lay stress on what did not really interest me at all. I now lay the stress upon what I formerly put aside; I did not assimilate the teaching and now say: it is good. I stand for something which I refused to accept, something I cannot possibly have acquired because previously I refused to accept it!—There you have a literal example of the kind of contradictions to be found in the world. Can you possibly imagine that where such contradictions prevail there can be any real, inner connection with our spiritual-scientific Movement? There can obviously be none.

It is important to be aware of contradictions such as these, for if we fail to notice such phenomena among us we shall never find the right path to knowledge of the spiritual world. Needless to say, many things may escape us, but we must have the will to take note of such contradictions. On the other side, however, it must be remembered that contradictions of this kind are used with the intent of shaking the truth to its foundations. Suppose, for example, someone were to say: a man is giving teaching but he himself is full of contradictions, even of immoral tendencies, indeed he is dominated by the power of evil; but the teaching itself is good—that is certainly to be admitted. Very well—but if it is part and parcel of the teaching that the one who represents it and the Movement connected with it establishes the relationship between himself and the others precisely through the teaching, wishing to be nothing more than the bearer of the teaching—then such an attitude demands him to be something else! All kinds of demands are made upon the man, and although at bottom the teaching is rejected, it is said: the teaching is good, but for all that the man is evil! In this way, someone who feels utterly incapable of grasping the teaching can work against it through those who believe in it. This is the best way for a person to undermine teaching which he cannot disprove, for as I indicated yesterday, it is then delivered into the hands of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers.

It has been said so often that our teaching must not be mere theory, but actual life. If it is made into mere theory, it is killed, delivered into the hands of Ahriman, the God of Death. That is the best method for ensuring that what is taught is given over to Ahriman and thus exterminated from the world; moreover, it is a method very similar to that employed by certain individualities who were standing behind Mr. Sinnett, for example. They inspired him to take a certain direction in order to steer him into fallacy which culminated in the true facts being violated. The Moon, which as physical Moon is an agent for paralysing the Eighth Sphere, is declared to be the Eighth Sphere itself. The reality concerning the Eighth Sphere is obscured, effaced. And later on H. P. Blavatsky corrects this by alleging that Jahve has created the lower sphere of man's life only, the sphere of his senses—whereas the truth is that Jahve has created a counteracting agent for the Eighth Sphere. This method therefore consists in spreading over some matter a fog whereby it is presented in a false light. If you examine these things carefully, you will see that what has happened among us is essentially of the same pattern, only on a smaller scale. It is an attempt to shed calumny on the truth that would fain come into the world. Someone feels incapable of refuting the teaching and so levels imputations against the one who has to present it. This of course shows that such a person is unable to grasp the essence of the teaching.

This is a problem well worth the notice of people of standing and sincerity among us, for these things must be viewed from a higher vantage-point. I am quoting these examples because they are near at hand and because they show us whither our attention should be directed. In our Movement the strongest possible emphasis must be laid—and this has been done ever since I have been connected with it—upon a right attitude being adopted towards atavistic clairvoyance, so that there may be no delusions about it. An example of what has been invented in order to distort what we do or desire to do, is that it has been said: One can see that this is a Movement which applies itself to the cultivation of clairvoyance—and then efforts have been made to imply that everyone in the Movement is urged to develop clairvoyance. This kind of thing spreads a fog over the Movement. The truth is reversed—although it is a fact that clairvoyance must be developed—but a good means is furnished for provoking hatred against the Movement.

Again, it is said: A Movement that comes into being in the modern age ought not to cultivate the old, atavistic clairvoyance, but that is precisely what this particular Movement is doing.—On the subject of cultivating atavistic clairvoyance the Movement says exactly the same, but here the direction of the arrow is turned round and the Movement is censured. This is happening, for example, in our immediate vicinity, where in sermons and addresses it is alleged that those who have gathered here in Dornach are urged, above all by me, to develop clairvoyance, and it is imputed at the same time that this is pathological, atavistic clairvoyance.

Needless to say, the one who voices these things has no inkling of what he is really saying; he is only a puppet. But we ourselves must look more deeply into the connections, realising that we are living at a time when such impulses will assert themselves strongly against us. And it would be particularly grotesque if our teaching itself were to he used as a weapon for confuting us. Even this has already happened. In one of the antagonistic criticisms published during recent weeks, an attack was formulated by using quotations from the Mystery Plays and from the book Occult Science. So the Powers that do not want the truth to come to light are everywhere at work.

About the truth itself we need have no anxiety. ... Truth makes its way in the world by laying emphasis only on what is positive.

But the moment statements that simply do not remotely come near the truth go out into the world, we must be armed and know how to judge them. We must not adopt the stand merely of studying what is to be found in the literature; we must translate into very life the life-principle contained in our teaching. That is to say, we must judge life according to the principles of our teaching; we must not think about one or another attack from outside as we should be bound to think if we had accepted our teaching merely as a theory. The need for polemics does not begin until we are attacked. But then we must realise that ours is a teaching very easily distorted into its opposite and that we have therefore to watch over and protect it. Especially must we be on guard against all one-sidedness.

For example, undertones could be heard in connection with certain things that have been said here and there—undertones coming from an attitude that very easily runs to opposite extremes. And then it is easy to be refuted. You will remember that it was necessary to say a great deal on the subject of illusions about particular incarnations. If this were carried to the extreme of laughing all such matters to scorn, our opponents might well say: “These people teach something. But let one of them touch the very fringe of it and they at once proceed to ridicule him!”

We have no ground for rejecting clairvoyant experiences—obviously not. Our only duty is to get to the bottom of such experiences when they are being used to bolster up the aims of personal vanity, or certainly when the outer course of events proves these experiences to have been incorrect. We must not, to use a trivial expression, pour away the child with the bath-water. Our Society must certainly not transform itself into a body of scientific theory. There too you can see that this danger may easily arise.

An essay sent to us during the last few days is astutely written, for there is no more plausible way of attacking our Movement than by saying: “Those people behave as if they rejected all connection between the world of the senses and the spiritual world!” This is actually stated in the essay. In an appendix, strangely enough, the question is raised : “Why should not the Mother of God also reincarnate?”—Of course, one can ask, why should she not reincarnate? There is no reason why it cannot be so. But of this you may be sure: the exoteric life of this Mother of God in such a reincarnation would not be in the form in which it is claimed to have taken place!

Truly, in these matters it is a question of something that I have been emphasising for many years and found it necessary to include in my fundamental philosophical work. If you read other philosophies you will find in their theories and forms of expression, also in still earlier writings, much that appears again in my The Philosophy of Freedom. But one thing is contained in it which, at least in the way it is there expressed and interwoven as an ethical principle, a moral impulse, is entirely original.—For the first time, “moral tact” is introduced as something that cannot be grasped through the mere power of judgment, but only through the whole mind and life of feelings, so that when something has to be handled delicately one shall not immediately fall into extremes and try to sweep away one error by means of another. That is “moral tact”. I have tried to define it as clearly as possible in the Philosophy of Freedom. It is truly necessary to emphasise at the present time that—because here we have to do with a very tricky matter—we must avoid the danger of falling into the other extreme.

I indicated various dangers yesterday but have felt it necessary to add something today, in order to emphasise that we must not fall into the other extreme. The whole of our activity, the whole nature of our Movement, must be based upon making the spiritual world a reality, upon feeling and experiencing our own life as connected with the spiritual world.

But if we hold this principle sacred, we must tactfully refuse to allow directly personal affairs, the subjective-personal life, to be drawn in. This again does not imply that we should never try to discover whether we ourselves are the reincarnation of someone. But simply to look from one personality in search of the other is of no account. It is the easy-going way. But the right way is to endeavour to reach the point where we begin to discover certain secrets of our own life. Then we shall certainly make progress. In this connection we are standing at a point of great significance, namely that we must pay heed to the saying: do not pour the child away with the bath water!

At the same time we must work with all intensity to prevent what would be utterly disastrous to an occult Movement, namely, a gradual lapse into haziness and lack of clarity. There are certain things which need to be treated with a certain harshness. That is another matter. But we must always be mindful of the ground on which we stand—the ground of an earnest and worthy spiritual Movement.

These are some of the points of view which can help us to realise the conditions that are essential to the life of our Movement. When it is said that outer reality is maya, then this maya too must be thoroughly studied. Nor must we keep emphasising the theoretical saying, “outer reality is maya”, and then act as if the outer reality itself is of supreme importance when we encounter it concretely in the world.

• 1. See inter alia, Macrocosm and Microcosm, lecture 4. (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968).
• 2. The translation of the passage is by R. O. Moon, M.A., M.D.(Oxon.), from Vol. II of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Published by G. T. Foulis & Co., London.
• 3. (Goethe means “spiritual” archives.)

In a recent lecture I said something to which I want to return today, because in its logical conclusion it forms a kind of foundation for what I still have to say. I said that a spiritual-scientific Movement such as ours must be one which takes full account of the demands of the present cycle of the evolution of humanity and of the necessary consequences of this evolution. Such a Movement must therefore necessarily regard atavistic clairvoyance, and knowledge that is a residue of atavistic clairvoyance, as out of date and no longer suitable for our times; it must be a Movement which sets no store by anything that stems from atavistic sources.

This meant that a great deal of the knowledge given out in the so-called Theosophical Society had simply to be rejected or ignored in the form in which it was there presented, and in certain cases built up entirely anew. Hence from the beginning onwards, strenuous efforts were made by the old representatives of that Society to oppose us. I will give only one example.

You can compare what I said in the year 1904 in the first edition of my book Theosophy about the soul-world and the spirit-land with what had formerly been stated. You must bear especially in mind the distinctions made by me in connection with the soul-world and in the inner soul-life of man and you will see that great stress was laid upon the distinction to be made between the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, and the Consciousness Soul (Spiritual Soul). This threefold distinction had never been made in the literature of the Theosophical Society, but among us it was emphasised from the very beginning.

The other side were at pains to eliminate this distinction, not to allow it to gain ground. I remember vividly what efforts were made to win back our friend the late Ludwig Lindemann, when he was trying to make our Movement known in Italy. It was asserted: You are simply saying in other words what has already been said in our teaching.—Briefly, these people did not wish it to be realised that this threefold distinction was something entirely new and it was necessary to indicate it again and again. And the same kind of thing happened in many, many instances.

From the very beginning we ourselves set out in the direction demanded by the needs of the present age, taking into consideration all the matters of which I have been telling you briefly during recent weeks. But in order to follow this course strictly, it was necessary to give a different form to the way of working adopted everywhere in the Theosophical Society. This naturally entailed effort, really strenuous effort. There was also the difficult question of how my own work could find a place in the literature. During the first years I was obliged to present certain things with great reserve, for the simple reason that years of testing and strict verification were needed in connection with certain subjects and because from the outset I had resolved never to publish or to say anything except that for which I could be answerable, having submitted it all to thorough testing.

Now as you will have realised after what I have been saying, confusion had arisen because investigation of the life between death and rebirth had been brought into an entirely false channel. I spoke about this in the foregoing lectures. But it has not always been easy to test these things as they should be tested. If one resolves to work conscientiously and with a sense of full responsibility, every opportunity that offers itself for stringent testing must be seized, but these opportunities must never be forced. In spiritual investigation it is a matter of waiting. Opportunities must never in the slightest degree be forced.

Most obvious of all was the inaccuracy of the statements purporting to give information about the life between death and a new birth. But whereas on the physical plane, false results of investigation can be rectified by testing them with physical means which make their inaccuracy immediately evident, it is of course quite another matter when things of the spiritual worlds are involved. In the spiritual worlds, the existence of a false, erroneous conception of the real facts is confusing for investigation itself. If, then, through mediums, statements had been made which were not communications from the dead at all, but deliberately inspired by living persons with every kind of bias, these results of what purported to be investigation were in existence. They confront one, and if one is trying to verify things in this domain one has to battle with these results of investigation as actual powers. Anything that is said on the physical plane can be refuted; one sits down at the writing-table and refutes it. But a false result of investigation in the spiritual world is a living reality: it is there and one has to battle with it, do away with it.

Just as thoughts are living realities, false results of investigation are real powers which are there directly one crosses the Threshold of the spiritual world. One enters the spiritual world with the endeavour to bring to light knowledge of the life between death and a new birth; but now the false thoughts that have been produced stand there as living beings before one. To begin with, they give the appearance of truth, of reality. Hence one has first to battle with them, to test them, in order to discover whether they have the attributes of untrue thoughts, or the attributes of true and really living thoughts.

This process of testing and verification often takes a very long time. In the nature of things, therefore, when one had resolved that the testing should be thorough and exact, it was difficult to investigate this realm of the life between death and a new birth, because so many false conclusions had been drawn. Hence in these matters particularly it was necessary to exercise great reserve, speaking of them only when they could be presented as absolutely and strictly true. A great deal of work had therefore to be done before it was possible to give, for example, the course of lectures now available under the title The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and a new Birth.¹

In a general way it is easy to describe the life between death and a new birth. It begins when, after completing the backward review arising in the process of the separation of the etheric body from the physical body, the human being passes into the sphere which in theosophical literature was usually called Kamaloka. But if you compare what was called Kamaloka in that literature with what has been made known among us during the course of the years, you cannot fail to perceive the considerable differences. Now please do not misunderstand me here.—I do not assert that at the present time it is the task of each individual to put everything to the test. The task of one is not that of the other. I regard it as my task to say nothing which I cannot guarantee to have been tested and proven. That is what I consider to be my particular, entirely individual task.

I want now to speak of something that it is important to remember when speaking of the first years of the life between death and a new birth. A really positive and faithful picture of these first years or decades can be gained only by using certain parallels. Only so is it possible, by adding many details, to fill out the general picture given in the book Theosophy. Our whole development depends upon this being done. In that book a broad ground-plan is given, and our work should consist in filling out each of the various sections outlined in the general plan. It is a matter, therefore, of gathering together many things that have been said, and if, starting from what is contained in the book Theosophy, you go on to the many more intimate details given in the lecture-courses which have now been printed, you will see that real progress has been made in acquiring more and more intimate knowledge.

To have an accurate picture of the first years or decades of the life after death, it is necessary to compare what is to be perceived in the case of human beings who died very young, let us say in earliest infancy, with what is to be perceived in the cases of those who died in middle age and again at an advanced age. There are very great differences here. The life after death differs enormously according to whether the human being has died in early or advanced years; and a really reliable picture can be gained only from what is experienced in connection with human beings whose deaths occurred at different ages.

So, for example, an essential foundation for discovering certain matters was to become fully aware of the conditions of those who died in very early infancy and again of those who died at the ages of 11, 12 or 13. A very great difference in the conditions of life after death is to be observed according to whether death took place before the age of 8 or 9, or before the age of 16 or 17. This is clearly disclosed by certain experiences one can have with the dead. It can be observed that human beings who died during the tenderest years of infancy are very much occupied with the tasks devolving upon mankind during the period immediately following these deaths.

Now the outer representatives of religious communities do nothing to prevent certain ideas that are at variance with the truth from taking root among men. You will know from your own experience that little is done by these representatives of religion to refute the idea that when an old man or an infant dies, the old man lives on as an old man and the child as a child. But the mode of life of souls on the Earth has nothing directly to do with the mode of their life in yonder world. If a child dies at the age of three or six months, all its earthly lives come into consideration, and it may enter the spiritual world as a very mature soul. It is therefore entirely false to imagine that an infant lives on as an infant. We find that souls who died in early infancy have tasks connected with what the Earth needs in order that the necessary store of spiritual strength may be acquired for further activities. Human beings cannot work adequately on the Earth unless impulses come to them from the spiritual worlds. These impulses, however, do not come in the vague, nebulous way imagined by Pantheism; they come from actual beings, among whom are also to be found the souls of children who died in early infancy.

As a concrete example, let us think of how Goethe developed. Naturally, some part of Goethe's genius was due to the help he received from the spiritual world. If we investigate this, we come to the souls of children who died in early age. The spirituality there present in the universe is connected with the souls of children who died in infancy. On the other hand, children who died at the ages of 9 or 1o but before they are 16 or 17 are found very soon after death in the company of spiritual beings—but these spiritual beings are human souls. Many of these children are found in the company of human souls, and indeed of those souls who must shortly come down to the Earth, who are awaiting their next incarnation. And so those who die in early infancy, say up to the ages of 7 or 8, are found to be much occupied with human beings here below on the Earth; but those who died between the ages from about to to 15 or 16 are found to be occupied with souls whose endeavour is to incarnate soon. They are vital supporters and helpers, important messengers for what these souls need in order to prepare for their earthly existence. It is important to know this if we want to avoid generalities and are intent upon penetrating into these spiritual worlds.

It is not easy to investigate these matters.—One can make an approach by asking, for example: What is the best way to find the dead? It then proves to be the case that those who died years or decades ago, or quite recently, are most easily found when consciousness of the spiritual world awakens in sleep.

I have often told you that awakening can be of two kinds. An awakening can take place in sleep itself, and then a man knows that now he is not asleep in the ordinary way but is in the spiritual world. Indications on this subject are to be found in the book A Road to Self-Knowledge. Eight Meditations. Or an awakening can take place in waking life itself. But investigation into the life of the dead is best pursued when the awakening takes place during actual sleep, because then one's own activity is most closely related with that of the dead.

A remarkable discovery is then made.—Here, in physical life between waking and sleeping, man always remembers the periods of his waking life. In what does his life really consist? Waking, daily life, sleeping; waking, daily life, sleeping and so on. During the life of day his remembrances are always of what happened during a former life of day. Our everyday waking life is full of such remembrances. But it is different when the life of our Ego is interrupted by the periods of sleep. The curious thing is, however, that during sleep we remember only the preceding sleep-conditions only we are unconscious of this. In most cases there is no such remembrance. But during sleep a subconscious process of remembrance continues through the whole of life.

If we consider the life that embraces both sleeping and waking, night-life and day-life, we can say: the night-life is interrupted by the day-life, just as the day-life is interrupted by the night-life. Nevertheless the stream of life is continuous. The remarkable thing, however, is that whereas in remembrances during the life of day we are passive—for they rise up and it is only in exceptional cases, when we want to remind ourselves of something in the past, that we have to make efforts—during sleep, when we want to remember something for a particular purpose, efforts are essential. As a rule, however, man lacks the strength to become conscious of this activity and that is why he has no remembrances during sleep. In his soul, however, he is much more active during sleep than during waking life. Dreaming does not cut across this activity. Dreaming corresponds to what goes on in our waking life when we make great efforts to remember; but if during sleep, we exert ourselves only slightly, this corresponds to the ordinary process of remembering during the day, when we make no efforts because the remembrances come of themselves. After death, the remembrances we have of the waking life now ended are soon over. Then in the period of Kamaloka man lives through all the experiences of the nights in backward order.

In our life here on Earth we are occupied with what the days brought to us and also—although without being aware of it—with what we experienced during the nights. After death, however, everything we lived through during the nights comes into our consciousness. Night by night—everything comes back to us. And it is important to realise that, to begin with, the dead lives through his nights. This is by no means easy to realise and can only gradually be discovered. Naturally a man lives through his life, but he lives through it by way of his experiences during the nights.

I have often said that the time spent in Kamaloka is approximately one third of the lifetime on Earth. If you reflect that a man who does not die in childhood spends about a third of his life asleep, you will understand why the time in Kamaloka amounts approximately to a third of the time of the earthly life; the Kamaloka period lasts for as long as the time spent in sleep—about one third of the whole lifetime on earth.

It is very necessary to gather together carefully the items of concrete knowledge that have been given and to correlate them. And that is why—how shall I put it?—that is why it has such a jarring effect (although that does not quite express what I mean) when one who is trying to speak about the spiritual world with full responsibility, is asked all kinds of questions about this or that point after the lectures. These people want to know everything, but on the other hand one has been endeavouring to speak only of what has actually been thought through to the end. One is forced, then, to speak about a whole number of matters into which there has not yet been opportunity for thorough investigation. It is, of course, possible to give some reply, for the science of occultism is there; but when one has laid it down as a fundamental principle to speak only of what one has actually tested and verified, this kind of talking goes against the grain.

And now recall that I said: when we cross the Threshold of the spiritual world, we find that comparatively soon after his death a human being who died at the age of 11, 12, 13 or 14 years, is living among those who are shortly to return to the Earth and discharge their tasks there. This soul helps them to find the right paths to incarnation. It may seem strange to say this, but it is the case nevertheless.

Now these things are in turn connected with certain secrets of life, with very definite secrets of life. The fact of the matter is that we discover certain things in the real sense only when we can put the right questions. Not every question is rightly put; we have to wait until we become worthy, as it were, of putting the question in the right way.

I shall now say something that may seem strange, although it is correct. The human being gets two sets of teeth: first he gets the teeth which fall out about the seventh year, and then he gets the second teeth. I do not believe that it occurs to many people to ask anything about the coming of these second teeth, for I have always found that when the subject is under discussion among specialists, they speak as though there were no difference between the first and second dentition. To an occultist, however, the first dentition is an entirely different matter from the development of the second teeth. I once had to give what seemed a grotesque answer to a point raised to me by a medical expert. The answer amused him, but from the standpoint of occultism it was quite correct. He said that children with milk-teeth ought to be taught to bite as soon as possible, because the sole purpose of the teeth is to enable human beings to bite. This line of thought, however, is not correct—from the occult standpoint, at least, it is only half correct, and the matter must in any case be gone into more exactly. There is no question that man has the second teeth for the purpose of biting; but as regards the first teeth there is a question. The first teeth come through heredity. The human being has them because the parents and grandparents have had them. Only when he has shed these first, inherited teeth does he develop the second teeth. These are then an individual acquisition; the first teeth have been inherited. This is a matter which comes into consideration only if we pay attention to subtle differences. It is not a matter of outstanding importance, nor would particularly grave errors be incurred if the question were not raised. But it is important to know that the first teeth are related to heredity in quite a different way from the second. The second teeth will be found to be connected with the general health of the human being, with his whole constitution, whereas the first teeth, especially as regards their healthiness are far more closely connected with the health of the parents and grandparents. Here there is already a difference which can be followed up empirically. These distinctions are subtle, but when attention is directed in this way to how matters stand with the teeth, something else comes to light, and this is the point that may strike you as strange, although it is quite true.

Suppose a child dies before he has cut all his second teeth, or very shortly afterwards. Strangely enough, occult investigation discovers that whether the child has not yet or had already cut the second teeth has an actual effect in the spiritual world. Assuming that the child died at the age of 8 or 9, we discover that some of the impulses which otherwise penetrate into the physical world are working there; we discover that these are the forces which should have penetrated into the teeth, but are now at the disposal of the child. Especially in the case of a child who died early, who had lost the first teeth but had not yet, or had only just, cut the second teeth, it can be observed, strangely enough, that this child has certain forces and that these forces are of exactly the same kind as those which, on the physical plane, promote the growth of the teeth out of the organism as a whole.

When a human being is in the physical world he must unfold certain physical forces in order that the teeth may develop out of the organism. If he dies before the teeth have developed or have only just developed, these forces are free for him in the spiritual world and he can work with them into the earthly world; if he is living in the physical world these forces build up the teeth which he then uses in the physical world.

Here we have a vista of a wonderful connection with the Cosmos, and can recognise the profound truth of what is described in the first scene of the second Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation: how the spiritual worlds work by means of their Beings to bring Man into existence, and how when this knowledge goes to his head, Capesius is filled with arrogance on learning that Man is the goal of all the activities of the Gods.—But this great truth is hardly noticed.

I said further that human beings who died between the ages of 8 or 9, and 9 to 16 or 17, are found among souls who are trying to incarnate as soon as may be. These souls of human beings who died in youth again have special forces which are also the result of metamorphosis. At the age of 14, 15 or 16, the human being reaches puberty: if puberty had not been reached or had only just been reached, the forces leading to it are transformed in the spiritual world into forces by means of which such a soul can work among those souls who are awaiting their next incarnation on Earth, helping them to prepare for this incarnation.

Think of the infinitely profound connection here.—The forces of reproduction are transformed in the spiritual world into forces of help for the souls who are trying to come down as soon as may be into the physical world. These are connections which show us how the spiritual on yonder side of the Threshold works on in the physical world in individual, concrete realities. Moreover, we do not learn to know the physical world truly until we realise that forces are unfolded as a result of the fact that the human being discards certain teeth and develops others. Puberty again is brought about by the unfolding of forces. When the human being has actually reached puberty the forces have quite different functions.

All this leads to the question: Why is man prevented in his ordinary life from looking into the spiritual world? The spiritual world is barred on two sides. On the one side, it is barred by outer nature. We see outer nature as a veil covering what lies behind it. If a man can pierce the veil, he is in the spiritual world. Materialism endeavours in every way to prevent men from recognising that spirit is behind that veil. I have often said, even in public lectures, that an unconscious fear underlies this—but it is the same with regard to the inner life. Man is aware of his thinking, his feeling and his will; but behind these there is something else, namely, the being of soul who passes from incarnation to incarnation. And in that domain the religious communities of the present day do not want it to be discovered that behind thinking, feeling and willing there lies the other reality.

For this reason the book Riddles of Philosophy will be very unwelcome, because I have dealt with this point in the last chapter. The path to the world of spirit is barred on two sides. Whereas natural scientists on the one side are at pains to produce nothing that might lead into the world lying behind nature, the representatives of the religious communities are at pains to prevent anything coming to the knowledge of souls that can enlighten them on what it is that passes beyond death and then on to the next incarnation.

Why, on the one side, do the natural scientists hinder man from penetrating behind nature, and, on the other, why do the priests hinder him from penetrating behind the secrets of the life of soul? This question is important and worth consideration, for you will find these things coming more and more to a head. Those who build up a view of the world on the basis of natural science will be our opponents because they do not wish the spiritual world behind nature to come into evidence. And the priests will be our opponents because they do not wish to allow the reality of the being who lies behind thinking, feeling and willing and passes from incarnation to incarnation, to be grasped. On the one side the natural scientist says: here are the boundaries of knowledge. And on the other side the representatives of religion say: to go further is sinful, it is presumption on the part of man. Tomorrow we will consider the reasons on which the contentions of these two categories of opponents are based, and then pass on to other matters.

• 1. Six lectures given in Vienna, 9th to 14th April, 1914. Anthroposophical Publishing Co. (Rudolf Steiner Press) 1959.

At the end of the lecture yesterday I said that opponents of the spiritual-scientific Movement arise, naturally in a way, from two sides. They arise, on the one side, from the domain of natural science because its whole make-up and stamp at the present time are up to a certain point bound to be such that anyone who undergoes a scientific training and thinks that on this basis he can, or may, or must, develop a view of the world, feels compelled to adopt one which, on account of its materialistic trend, must inevitably be antagonistic to Spiritual Science. Right thinking is essential here. It must be realised that many individuals into whom the methods of modern materialistic science—which we recognise to be a necessity—have been instilled, simply cannot help becoming opponents on account of the thoughts that have been kindled in them. This of course cannot absolve anyone from the obligation to combat this opposition when it arises. But it will be combatted in the right way only when what I have just said is taken into consideration.

On the other side, in a similar way, opposition comes from the representatives of the various religious bodies. Just as in the domain of modern science there is an interest in concealing the spiritual behind nature, so have the representatives of modern religious bodies an interest in concealing the spiritual behind the soul. We may therefore say: Spiritual Science is obstructed from the side of natural science because of the desire to keep concealed the spiritual behind nature; and it is obstructed from the side of the religious bodies because it is held that the spiritual behind the manifestations of the life of soul should be kept hidden. Religious bodies, as they now are, will always be prone to oppose what Spiritual Science brings into the open, because they have no interest in pointing to the spirit behind the expressions of the life of soul, but consider that the spirit should be kept hidden. This must be realised, although again it does not imply that the opposition should be left out of account; it is a question of adopting the right attitude to it.

This is a chapter of which it is extraordinarily difficult to speak, for here we touch upon things which everyone must inevitably realise through what he reads between the lines in the literature of Spiritual Science and who feels something of what is contained in its communications. At the basis of the matters to which I have referred there lies something of great profundity, something very significant. For certain reasons it is actually dangerous simply to point from nature herself—that is to say, from the surface manifestations of nature—to what lies behind nature. And because of this danger there comes about what I have indicated, more or less metaphorically, by saying: In the so-called Secret Societies or Orders there is invariably a kind of “right wing”, composed of those esotericists who wish to adhere strictly to the principle of silence in regard to everything connected with the higher secrets. All such Orders—but, as I said, the expressions are to be taken metaphorically—all such Orders have a kind of “right wing”, a kind of “middle party”, and a kind of “left wing”. The inclination of those belonging to the left wing is always to make public certain esoteric matters; but those belonging to the right wing are wholly against making public anything whatever of what they believe should be in the guardianship of the Secret Orders and Societies. They consider that such knowledge is dangerous if it falls into the hands of incompetent people, if it were to be represented in public by persons insufficiently prepared.

The reason why it is so difficult to speak about this subject is that the moment one does so, one is obliged to give certain indications which in a way do bring things into the open. The Secret Orders, believing, rightly or wrongly, that they are custodians of certain higher knowledge, necessarily choose a method whereby they provide certain precautionary measures in connection with their real or alleged knowledge reaching the public.

In such Orders there are usually degrees—three lower and three higher degrees. The knowledge considered by those in the higher degrees to be dangerous in the hands of unprepared people is not, as a rule, imparted in the three lower degrees; in the three lower degrees, efforts are made to clothe the real or alleged knowledge in all kinds of symbols.

Of these symbols one may perhaps say the following: If they have been faithfully preserved since ancient times and have not been adulterated through the machinations of those who did not understand them, they constitute a kind of language which can gradually be mastered by those who really penetrate to the gist of them. And when this language is mastered, it conveys certain knowledge. These symbols could also be said to be vehicles of information brought upon the scene with extreme caution. The egoistic standpoint of restricting the store of knowledge to the innermost circle is not adopted. The knowledge is given in a certain way to those who are received into the outer circle. But it is hidden in symbolism, so that only one who is able to unravel the symbols can penetrate to the underlying truths. There are, indeed, Orders which keep a strict watch against theoretical explanations of the symbols ever being given, insisting that the symbols shall simply be presented or demonstrated by exercises; so that anyone who wants to read the symbols, when he takes them to be a language, must achieve this by his own efforts.

It might be asked: Is that really a protection? Is not the knowledge still apt to fall into wrong hands?—Now at any rate until the fourteenth and on into the fifteenth or sixteenth century, it can be said that the Orders working with symbolism did not, by such practices, allow the knowledge to fall into wrong hands. Since then, however, things have become essentially different.—I will at once tell you why. Please, therefore, bear this in mind. In occult Orders established before the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, those in the three lower degrees to whom, as the outer circle, the knowledge was imparted in symbols, could not make any fundamental misuse of it because the symbols were simply presented and everything else was left to those who had now to get at their meaning. This was in itself a protection, because to discover the meaning of the symbols entailed a certain spiritual effort.

Suppose someone entered one of the lower degrees of an occult Order. Symbols were either presented or demonstrated to him. He was given only the symbols and was instructed to let them work upon him as if they were phenomena of nature. If he wished to go further, to discover the secret meaning of the symbols, he was obliged to investigate, to exert spiritual energy. Had he received help, it would not have been necessary to apply this spiritual energy. But he received no help and was therefore obliged to make efforts to decipher the symbols.

And now the question is: What spiritual force was used for deciphering these symbols? It was the same force which—if not employed for this purpose but for penetrating the phenomena of nature—would have helped to make a man cunning and induce him to apply certain faculties to a purpose to which he ought not to apply them. It was therefore a task of symbolism to ensure that the forces which might become dangerous were diverted to the deciphering of the symbols. In this way the forces were deflected from causing harm.

A second point to be remembered in connection with these symbols is that human nature is intrinsically constituted to view such symbols in their moral aspect. It must also be stressed that these symbols were contrived in such a way that their moral aspect was necessarily obvious. But in the case of phenomena of nature, the moral aspect does not come into consideration. A lily, because it blooms, cannot be judged on the basis of moral principles; there one must go to work objectively and with complete detachment. Symbols are a different matter, for they arouse moral feelings. And these moral feelings which study of the symbols aroused in the soul were able to combat unhealthy mystical tendencies. So unhealthy mysticism, too, was turned aside by the inner effects of the impression made by the symbols. This symbolism had therefore very valid grounds.

Since the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, these grounds have lost their validity; they can no longer be advocated. Hence since that time, occult Orders have long lost the significance once attaching to them. In many respects they have become Societies where all sorts of special aims are pursued; they are Societies for fostering particular vanities and the like. In many cases they are no longer repositories of any special knowledge but at most of an empty formalism.

The development of natural science since the time of Galileo, Copernicus and others has played an essential part here. For the appearance and cultivation of these methods of natural science has caused the human soul gradually to lose the possibility of cleaving to symbolism with the old devotion. In reality, all symbols conduce towards bringing to light the Spiritual behind Nature. But natural science with its materialistic methods which reached their zenith in the nineteenth century, has affected the human soul in such a way that it loses interest in the reality to which symbolism is a pointer. Practical evidence of this is that anyone who believes himself able to construct a view of the world out of the findings of natural science has no longer any inclination to concern himself with symbolism with any real earnestness or seriousness. And so a symptom has appeared the significance of which is fully in evidence today.

The symbols of the secret Societies which until the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were presented to the lower degrees, were expressions of very deep truths. But expression was given to these truths in the manner that was customary at that time. Under the influence of the natural scientific way of thinking, and especially of the proclivities consequent upon it, no efforts were made to carry these symbols to a further stage. Since the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, symbolism ought to have been developed with greater freedom. The symbols ought to have been kept abreast of what humanity was actually experiencing in the world. But this did not happen, and so to those whose mental horizon has been created by modern culture, the symbols seem antiquated and out of date—as indeed by far most of them are. But precisely among those who want to make some approach to occultism, a propensity has developed which I have often deplored—the propensity to unearth as many very ancient symbols as possible. And if these people can say of some symbol that it has the hallmark of great antiquity, their delight is unbounded. They do not value the symbolism as such but the fact that it originated somewhere and somehow in the distant past. Very often no attempts are made to understand it; these people are satisfied if the symbols unearthed are of great antiquity. During recent centuries, very little has been done to develop symbolism to a further stage. The result is that when it is presented today in Orders that can only be called “stragglers” of the old occult Orders—for such indeed they are—this symbolism is for the most part antiquated, and no efforts are made to develop it in accordance with the progress made by humanity.

The general outlook and attitude of people have changed. To keep some matter secret today in the way in which this could formerly be done, is no longer possible. Let anyone try to delve into earlier, perfectly authentic symbolism, and he will soon find how little difficulty there is in doing so. Our age is the age of publicity and will not tolerate artificial secrecy, artificial mystery. Our age wants everything to come immediately into the open. Moreover, it can also be said that for those acquainted with the literature that has been published about symbolism scarcely anything is still unavailable! Practically everything has found its way into books, and some Orders today work on the principle of diverting their members' attention from literature where one thing or another is to be read. Hence a great deal that has long been accessible in books is thought by the members of such Orders to be a secret of which only their superiors may justifiably have knowledge. In no domain is humbug more rife than in that of occult Orders!

As I have said, it is really no longer possible to maintain the principle of secrecy and of erecting barricades by means of symbolism. But these things can only be rightly understood when one tries to discover the reasons why in earlier times certain things were kept secret. As I have already said, it is difficult to speak about these matters, because in doing so a great deal that cannot lightly be discussed would have to be said. Therefore today and tomorrow I shall choose a different way. I shall tell you certain things which if you follow them up consistently will help you to glimpse what it is really not advisable to express in plain words at the present time. I shall tell you certain things which can be followed up in your own thinking and experience, and also in your own inner life. If you do this, it will carry you far. Because it is timely to speak of these things, I shall do so—as far as is possible.

I will take one example.—In one of his addresses, the famous English writer Carlyle made a certain reference to Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy. In other respects the address is not particularly significant; it was on the subject of Dante and Shakespeare, but one passage is notable. Those who read this address in the way that ordinary readers are wont to read—and for most people today there is no difference between reading an address by Carlyle and a newspaper article—will find nothing particularly striking. But the attention of one who has absorbed something of Spiritual Science not only into his brain as theory but also into his feeling, may well be struck by this passage. Carlyle points out how remarkable it is that from happenings which outwardly seem like chance, or also from something that has not turned out at all as people would have wished, things of tremendous import have come to pass. Carlyle illustrates this by speaking of Dante's destiny. Dante was banished from his native city on account of his political views and was obliged to become a wanderer. It was owing to this that he became what he is for the world today. Being an outcast from his native city he was led to write The Divine Comedy. Now, says Carlyle, Dante certainly had no wish to be thus exiled! But had he remained in Florence he would probably have become something like a Lord Mayor in the city; he would have had a great deal to do as one of the leading figures in Florence, and The Divine Comedy would not have been written. So Dante was obliged to suffer something highly unwelcome in order that mankind might possess The Divine Comedy. Mankind owes this to a fate which Dante would certainly not have chosen for himself—and here Carlyle is assuredly right. There is genius in this utterance. It does not seem so very significant to one who reads the address in the ordinary way, but it may well strike an attentive reader. He may perhaps not understand why his feelings should be particularly arrested by this passage. Indeed, Carlyle himself was not aware of its significance. He made the utterance because he was a man of great insight, but he felt nothing of what I mean here.—I must make my meaning clear to you in a roundabout way.

Suppose that Dante had not been exiled, but had become something like a councillor or an official in Florence; he would have attained everything for which his talents fitted him. He might even have become a prior, and if he had he would have been a very distinguished one. Much would have come about through Dante—but there would have been no Divine Comedy.

The matter is, however, not as simple as this. Let us assume that Dante had achieved his goal, had not been exiled from Florence but had become one of the chiefs of the State or of the Church—posts which are somewhat akin as far as public influence is concerned. As you will admit from what is contained in The Divine Comedy, Dante possessed talents of no mean order and he would have been a most distinguished Lord Mayor, a figure of tremendous importance. In these circumstances, history would have assumed a totally different aspect. Florence would have had a very important civic official and statesman—yes, and not only that! Imagine a Florence administered by councillors possessing the talents which flowed into The Divine Comedy! This able administration would have meant that many, many other forces present would have been obstructed in their hidden working.

It is utter stupidity to maintain that there are no men of genius in the world. There are very many—only they go under because they are not awakened. If Dante had become a leader of the State, he would have had a successor also of great importance—and there would have been seven such successors. Exactly seven people—we shall one day see the reasons for this—seven people of importance would have succeeded one another as governors of Florence. Something really magnificent would have come into being—but there would be no Divine Comedy. Dante was born in the year 1265. We are living now in an age when, if all these seven men had worked in Florence at that time, we should still be feeling the after-effects, for they would have lasted for seven centuries! Seven centuries would have taken a course quite different from the one they have actually taken. But these things did not happen—the Catholic Church is still there, but so too is The Divine Comedy.

I have given you an example of how forces are transformed in the ordering of world-history, an example of what is really involved in the great process of the transformation of world-history. Viewed in this light, matters of immense significance open out before us, matters of vast, far-reaching significance.

I have used this example because I want to draw your attention to the fact that it is sometimes necessary in the evolution of humanity for forces to be transformed, turned into a channel quite other than that into which, according to outward appearance, they would seem to want to flow. This example has, apparently, nothing to do with what I really want to say, and yet it has everything to do with it. For if you follow to its ultimate consequences what is implied in this example, you will realise why it is difficult to hand over freely to the public certain truths connected with what lies behind outer nature. It is necessary to present many things in such a way as to keep rein on forces, in order that certain of them may not become dangerous.

With this example I have pointed to those forces which will unfold in human nature if a man penetrates behind the veil of the phenomena of outer nature. But there are also certain dangers when men do not only pierce through the veil of the phenomena of outer nature but try to pierce through the veil of the soul's experiences, endeavouring to plumb the depths of the life of soul. There are dangers here too. And again by means of a story I will make it possible for you to realise certain things which otherwise could not be expounded. I will take a story that is familiar to you but is not generally recognised as giving expression to such deep truths as those in question.

A man, by name Paul, came one day to Father Antonius, whose pupil he desired to become. He gave the appearance of being a very simple-minded man. Antonius, however, accepted this man as a pupil—we will call him Paul the Simpleton—and caused him year after year to carry out certain tasks. I do not think many of you would have enjoyed carrying out the tasks which Father Antonius set his pupil! The latter had to carry water, but in perforated vessels, so that when he reached his destination there was no water left in them; and this he had to do year after year. He had to stitch clothes, and when they were finished, unpick them; again, year after year, he had to carry stones up mountains and on reaching the top to let them roll down to their original places. The outcome was that Paul the Simpleton underwent a tremendous deepening of soul and he became aware that forces arising out of his subconsciousness were gradually making him into a man of wisdom. Paul the Simpleton became Paul the Wise.

I am not recommending that this example of what Father Antonius did with Paul the Simpleton should be imitated! I am merely telling the story. Suppose Antonius had not chosen this method but had made things easier for Paul the Simpleton. What would have happened ? One day Paul the Simpleton would have said: “Yes, Antonius, your teaching is very good, but you are really a very evil man. I must now take your teaching with me out into the world. I must fight you with your own teaching, for I recognise that you are evil. Moreover, you do nothing for me that I am entitled to demand. You promised that from a certain stage onwards you would declare that, although when I first came to you I appeared to be a simpleton, already then I was at a much higher level. And then you promised to declare that all your teaching is really inspired by me.” The pupil might have come to this, but he was protected by the methods employed by Antonius, methods which are now no longer practicable—although this is not to say that in certain cases they would not be very fruitful!

If you think through these two examples to their ultimate conclusions, you will perceive certain dangers which threaten a man if he enters into the field of operation of the spiritual forces which lie behind outer nature. From the example I gave you in connection with Dante, you can realise with what momentous issues one is confronted here.

The question might be raised: Why does not science, with its praiseworthy and really brilliant methods, arrive at certain things that lie behind nature? This can be answered very simply.—Science lacks the requisite forces of knowledge, nor does it work at developing them, owing—as I have often said—to a certain fear of what lies behind the phenomena of nature.

But on the other side it might be asked: why is it that those who know something of the spiritual in nature are not willing to bring to light more adequately than is the case at present, the methods and ways whereby man can develop the forces of knowledge which lead him behind nature, which enable him to cross the Threshold and to penetrate to what lies behind nature?

Now as soon as a man passes the Threshold leading to the spiritual beings behind nature, he comes into actual contact with those beings. So much you will have realised from all that has been presented in recent lectures. Passive phenomena of nature, such as are studied by natural science today, are to be found only in the physical world. As soon as we cross the Threshold we enter a world of living spiritual beings. The remarkable thing is that the beings first encountered in yonder world make us more capable of clear thinking and the like than we previously were. It is indeed so: if we regard all the phenomena of nature studied by materialistic natural science today as a “screen” on which the laws of nature are inscribed—then behind that screen lies a vortex of spiritual beings. This screen must be pierced. But it cannot be pierced by men with the faculties at their command for the study of natural science. If this were possible, the screen would be pierced today. But with these faculties it is not possible.

There are, to be sure, individuals who through a true interpretation of symbols could bring people to the stage of being able to pierce the veil. These people would then inevitably come into contact with spiritual beings, and indeed with beings pre-eminently interested in making them very astute, very cunning, very subtle thinkers. These are certain elemental beings whose whole endeavour is to impart to man certain faculties of knowledge which make him really different from what he was before he had pierced the veil. Man is connected with these beings. They have, however, still another trait: they make a man astute, endow him with certain faculties of knowledge—but they are inimical to man, inimical in the highest degree to man and animal. Hence in piercing the veil a person forfeits the very generally prevailing friendliness to man and animal. It is not easy for anyone who is unprepared to break through without forfeiting this natural friendliness. He tends immediately to do all sorts of things that are unfriendly to man and even acquires a certain skill in the doing of them.

You will see from this that it is not advisable to allow men to break through the veil without proper preparation. It is fraught with danger, because the beings first encountered are inimical to man. But one who broke through on the path that would make this possible if the methods of modern natural science were to be carried further, would inevitably encounter these beings who are inimical not only to man but to nature herself—and he would come into possession of a great mass of powerfully destructive forces.

It is therefore not desirable to allow those persons to break through the veil who still have the slightest inclination to apply these destructive forces—many of which would thereby be delivered into the hands of mankind. The endeavour must be to allow only those individuals to break through whose training has brought them to the stage where they will make no use of such forces when these beings present themselves. In this direction the deciphering of the symbols was extraordinarily effective. For in deciphering the symbols, the forces which these beings would have been able to apply in order to make men into agents of destruction, are used up. And the train of thought in those who were in favour of keeping secret a large part of esoteric knowledge was as follows.—They said: If we make our knowledge and the kind of knowledge existing in the secret Orders accessible to men unconditionally, so that they are spared the exertion of themselves penetrating to the meaning of the symbols, we shall make them rebels against nature, we shall make them bearers of forces of destruction. They said: We possess knowledge which would unquestionably bring this about, therefore we cannot make this knowledge exoteric. We must adhere undeviatingly to the rule that those who approach us shall first of all be trained to develop an invincible love for plant, animal and man; we must therefore first subject them to careful training and discipline.

Well and good—but today people do not take kindly to discipline; they resist it, fight against it. Humanity has advanced!—Suppose one were to enforce this discipline, were to put people into the Orders in question and strictly apply what in most cases might be prescribed with great benefit! What would be the outcome? Within three months, the women, especially, would all have departed; they would certainly not have taken kindly to it! Certain Orders, therefore, in order to be able to continue in existence, have abandoned this discipline. Hence what was once profound knowledge has degenerated into mere straw, lacking all real substance. On the other hand, however, the practice of discipline continued among those who really knew something about how to keep the knowledge secret.

As you will have seen, the subject is widened by what I have said, namely, that when materialism was in full flood, the method of mediumship was adopted. It was thought that what would otherwise be gained from theoretical explanations of the symbols would be actually perceptible in the methods used by mediumship.

From all this you will realise that those who possess some knowledge in this domain have, after all, certain grounds for not allowing the veil over the secrets of nature to be easily pierced. But it will be clear to you, too, that our Movement cannot consist in taking secrets of some Order as there preserved, and making them exoteric. If that were to be done—and it would amount to my taking some ancient secrets of an Order and teaching them in public—then we should be involved in all kinds of questionable magic of which nothing good could come. This means that the making public of any secrets of ancient Orders is precluded in our Movement. We cannot use such preserves of ancient Orders for unravelling the secrets of nature. Tomorrow I will show you that neither can we so easily adopt religious truths because thereby another and different danger would be set on foot. So it will be clear to us why we could not adopt either of these methods and were obliged to take a particular path. It is precisely this path that brings us opposition from both sides—from natural science and from religion. I shall speak further of this tomorrow.

If you recall what was said in the lecture yesterday, it will be clear to you that, fundamentally speaking, the appearance of materialism—I do not say the materialistic conception of the world, but materialism itself—has its very good sides. The harm occurs when materialism is made the basis of a conception of the world. As a method for investigating the external phenomena of the physical world, materialism is good; it is a good instrument for investigating the mineral world in Earth-evolution. Again it is of importance that man is embodied in this mineral world, for thereby he develops those faculties which can be acquired only in the physical-mineral body. Intelligence and free will must be acquired to a certain degree during the Earth-period. In the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan periods, man will possess these faculties, but a being of soul such as he is, can acquire them only by being incarnated during the Earth-period in a mineralised body.

A counterbalance to this evolution in mineralised earthly bodies is created by the fact that man passes ever and again, without a mineralised body, through the life of soul between death and a new birth. It can be said that man must undergo very much on the Earth, on account of the fact that between birth and death he has a mineralised body. But what he undergoes, as it were to his cosmic disadvantage, by being embodied in a mineralised body, is balanced out by what he lives through between death and a new birth, when he is not a corporeal being but entirely a being of soul—using the word in its right sense.

To examine into the mineral element contained in stones, plants, animals and men is the task of materialism and its method; in practising this method in the course of the centuries man acquires that which, fundamentally speaking, he must acquire during the Earth-period. The modes of investigation preceding those of materialism were all still influenced by the clairvoyance inherited by man from his previous evolutionary states. And when, after our fifth postAtlantean, and the post-Atlantean epoch as a whole, he has passed through his mineral evolution and enters a different form of evolution, the closeness of his relationship to the spiritual world will depend upon whether he has already acquired, during the Earth-period, the intelligence and the measure of free will foreordained for him; otherwise he will not have fulfilled the purpose of his evolution.

Viewed in this light, the method of materialism assumes great significance; but it must remain “method”, a method for investigating the physical, material world. It is there that, even in the higher sense, it has its truly great significance. In that man observes and also investigates the purely mineral world, is active in the mineral world, he gradually unfolds his free will. For while he stands in the mineral world, what really underlies this world is veiled from him.

We have heard during recent weeks what is the outcome if man limits himself to theoretical speculation within the perimeter of physical sense-perceptions. The outcome is atomism, and as we have also heard, atomism is nothing else than a subjective delusion. But if a man who allows himself to be thus deluded were to go out into the world where he looks for the atoms, he would find Ahriman and his beings. For through those spiritual beings of whom I spoke yesterday and whom man encounters when he breaks through the veil of nature, he will be led to develop forces of destruction. These beings, too, it must be remembered, are cosmic beings.

Thus we can understand what has to be said about materialistic methods. They provide man with illusion, maya. But this illusion is actually advantageous to man, for when he sees through it, he enters, to begin with, into the kingdom of Ahriman and his spiritual hosts—beings who are out for destruction and death and who cause him to develop certain subtly destructive forces in his own human nature. Intellect in particular, purely external cleverness, is developed in him by the powers into whose realm he enters, so that he becomes crafty, astute in a subtle way. If his earthly intelligence is not sufficiently developed to see through these things, he becomes unconsciously, but subtly cunning and crafty. It may therefore be said that materialistic philosophy represents a period during which man can mature and thus be able, later on, to enter this realm of Ahriman without danger.

So it is evident that materialistic natural scientists or philosophers follow a certain justifiable instinct. The custodians of the ancient symbols had not dared to make esotericism public and so hand over the secrets to men. The natural scientists said to themselves—not literally, of course, but one can put it in this way—‘we do great good if we lead men only so far as the veil and not behind it.’ Naturally they do this instinctively, but they do it, nevertheless. Fundamentally speaking, they render humanity good service, for if the natural scientists were to succeed in piercing the veil, they would make man acquainted with the forces of those destructive beings of whom I spoke yesterday, beings who are in the service of Ahriman. And the consequence would be that men still unprepared would come into possession of the forces proceeding from that realm and would be able to bring about very much by their means—but it would all tend towards destruction, towards extermination of the good. Thus even the ignorance in which man is left through the natural scientific view of the world has in a certain sense something good about it. That is one side of the matter. But the other side is this.—

Man has been living, already for a number of centuries, in this world of illusions into which, instinctively, he is placed by the scientists. Yes—but this has not been without its effects on human nature! When a man is living in illusion he is not living in the world of reality. This illusion does not affect his forces of soul as strongly as reality would affect them, and the consequence is that doubt upon doubt heaps up in the soul—doubts which make themselves felt even in the domain of science. Natural scientists of great eminence have declared: Ignorabimus—we shall never know. The second half of the nineteenth century did everything to cause men to be beset by doubt upon doubt. But the truth is that we are facing the approach of an era brought about by the fact that man is living more and more in illusion, while believing he has reality. He steeps himself more and more deeply in the materialistic view of the world, but doubts about its validity constantly increase, and it would not take long for every human being to be living in a condition of unalloyed doubt as the outcome of scientific philosophy. People would then no longer be able to hold fast to anything; doubt would inevitably arise over every problem, every task. Scepticism would become a vast ocean in which the human soul would inevitably be engulfed.

It is the task of Spiritual Science to make men realise that a great ocean of scepticism and doubt threatens to break in and engulf the human soul. And the further task of Spiritual Science is to erect dams which will hold back this flood of scepticism and doubt. We are here facing a vista of something that will inevitably befall man if natural scientific doctrine continues as a view of the world.

What I am now saying is connected with a deep secret: the secret that everything in the outer, material world lives itself out in duality. Two is the number of manifestation; two is the number which governs all material manifestation—but material manifestation only. The world of material manifestation always passes through a certain process of evolution.—Let us think of the evolution of the maya presented by nature—nature-maya. Reaching its zenith in the nineteenth century, this nature-maya gradually emerged together with the natural scientific view of the world. But the consequence of man's living in maya is that underneath this view of the world, something else takes place, namely, the preparation for a different view, the preparation for penetrating into reality. This preparation is going on in the sub-consciousness; but timely care must be taken that the next phase of evolution is steered into reality—otherwise nature-maya will assert itself as scepticism, as the most terrible doubt which will engulf the human soul. Thus we are approaching a time of which it may be said that without Spiritual Science, man will fall more and more deeply into scepticism; but if Spiritual Science is accepted, then in the place of the doubt that would engulf the soul, there will come what men truly need.

There is duality, as you see. Nature-maya continues, but underneath it is the budding life, the preparation for Spiritual Science. In the material world, duality prevails everywhere. Therefore the occultist says: Two is the number of material manifestation. Directly one passes from the material world into another world, the number Two no longer has this significance, and it is entirely erroneous to characterise higher worlds as if duality also prevailed there. It is only the basic law of the material-physical world that can be so characterised. In the higher world, if we are to start from number, we must, for example, start from Three; this governs everything in that world, just as the material world is governed by duality. In the material world, duality prevails; in the spiritual world, threefoldness.

There are circumstances when it is by no means unimportant to understand that if someone says that there is white magic and black magic, this implies duality. But duality can have meaning only in the material world; such a person therefore immediately shows that he has no notion of the fundamental laws of the spiritual world, for in the spiritual world duality can never be a basic principle. True as it is that duality lies at the basis of the physical-material world, it is also true that in the super-sensible world we never have to do with duality.

Now the human being is related to the whole Cosmos; as earthly man he is a microcosm, and in order to understand certain matters it is necessary to learn more about this relationship.

We have heard that when man breaks through the veil of nature and penetrates into the world lying behind nature, he encounters Ahrimanic beings, beings intent upon destruction. In the World Order these beings are bitter enemies of man's earthly nature, so that if, through weakness, he allies himself with them—and this is possible, as I have indicated—he is allying himself with the enemies of man on Earth. That is a fact, and a certain relationship existing between the human being and the Cosmos does much to promote such an alliance.

These beings behind the veil of nature are highly intelligent. I have spoken of human intelligence, but these beings have their own kind of thinking and intelligence; they have feeling, although it is different from human feeling; they also have will, although it, too, is different from human will. They perform certain deeds which come to expression outwardly in manifestations of nature, but the essential substantiality of which lies behind the veil. Now there is a remarkable affinity between something in man and the highest faculties of these beings. I will make this clear in the following way. When man crosses the Threshold of the spiritual world and approaches these beings, it may seem to him as if he were entering a veritable inferno, or whatever he conceives it to be. What matters is that he shall understand the experience aright. What will strike him most forcibly is the remarkable intelligence of these beings. For they are extraordinarily clever, extraordinarily wise. Their faculties of soul come to expression in this cleverness. But the soul-forces, the higher forces of these beings are all related to the forces of man's lower nature. Sensuous urges in man are, in these beings, the very forces which strike one as so significant. Thus there is a relationship between the lowest forces of man and the highest forces of these spiritual beings. That is why they strive to identify themselves with the lower forces in man. When a man enters this other world, instincts of destruction or hatred, or the like, arise in him, because these beings draw up what constitutes man's lower nature to their own higher nature, and with their higher forces work through man's lower forces. Nobody can ally himself with these beings without debasing his own nature, without greatly enhancing the strength of certain sensuous urges and impulses.

This is a fact of which special account must be taken, for it shows us unambiguously how we must picture our relation to the Cosmos. In our own human nature there are lower urges and impulses. But these lower urges are forces which represent lower impulses only in us, as human beings. These same urges are, in these spiritual beings, higher forces. But these beings are working all the time within us. They are always there within our nature. Our progress in Spiritual Science depends essentially upon our recognising them, knowing that they are there. This enables us to say: we have our higher forces and we have our lower forces, and, in addition, those forces which in us are lower forces but in these spiritual beings are higher forces.—This expands the duality of our higher and lower forces into a triad. We are already at the border of the Threshold of the spiritual world when, instead of the duality of our higher and lower forces, we recognise the triad.

Now as I said, in our age it is impossible to adopt the method employed by Father Antonius in dealing with Paul the Simpleton; it is also impossible to do many things in the way certain Orders have been wont to do them.—It amounts to this: the knowledge in its old form cannot be used. For if it were thus presented to men, it would bring about exactly what I have been speaking about. It would without any doubt arouse lower instincts in them.

For example, there actually exists in the world an Order which leads men to knowledge of these mysterious beings without any preparation. In all such men, instincts of destruction are aroused, so that this Order is actually responsible for sending human beings with destructive instincts out into the world. In a passage in one of his writings Nietzsche hinted at the existence of this Order without knowing the actual circumstances.¹

That is the one side which I have felt it essential to bring to your attention. Here (drawing on the blackboard) is a veil covering the secrets behind nature. The veil represents everything that can be acquired by materialistic methods. The real world lies behind, and to enter this world is verily no simple matter. Let us hold this firmly in our minds.

The other side is that of our life of soul, with its activities of thinking, feeling and willing. But in the form in which this life of soul appears to us inwardly as we actually experience it, it is maya, just as external nature is maya. The true form of our inner life is not that which appears to our own soul as thinking, feeling and willing; the true reality lies behind this thinking, feeling and willing.

Just as the learned scientists today instinctively develop the view that nature herself presents the reality, but ultimately arrive at atomism, so are the representatives of certain religious bodies at pains to indicate that the thinking, feeling and willing of which the soul is aware in the ordinary way are the reality, and continue in human beings after their death. Just as the scientists describe naturemaya, so do the representatives of certain religious bodies describe the maya of the life of soul, and in so doing, again instinctively, bring a certain trend into the evolution of mankind.

You know that already from the early Middle Ages onwards, trichotomy, as it was called—the division of man into body, soul and spirit—began to be a heresy in historical Christianity. As you know, a comparatively early Council abolished the Spirit and decreed that man was to be regarded as a being consisting only of body and soul. And since that time this has become customary in the West. In the Middle Ages it was a most terrible thing to speak of Spirit, of a trichotomy; it was deemed the worst of all heresies, because Spirit had been abolished and body and soul established as a duality. This is evidence of the endeavour to look, even in number as applied to the human being, for what has significance only for this earthly world. The tendency is to keep man within a world that is in truth only maya, because he stops short at the thinking, feeling and willing which are themselves of the same character. Attention is limited to those effects of the present incarnation which last only through the first period between death and a new birth. What is elaborated in man's being in order subsequently to come forth in the next incarnation is left entirely out of account.

I may perhaps indicate this diagrammatically in the following way (see diagram). Here is the body (red) and here what lies behind it—which is not visible and could be perceived only by penetrating through the nerve endings. If atoms were not accepted as forming the basis of the world but one were to go out of the body with vision, one would come to the realm where the beings of destruction seize hold of the whole man. And now, within this, I draw the life of soul unfolded by man in the physical world (blue). Thus the red and the blue represent what man is aware of here, namely, his bodily nature and his life of soul. But while we are living between birth and death, the imperceptible (yellow) develops, and remains wholly imperceptible to us. When we die, our thinking, feeling and willing do not continue; they are exhausted, and in the process the yellow is elaborated (the imperceptible). This increases in power between death and a new birth and in so doing becomes the foundation of the new incarnation. We are reincarnated with new thinking, new feeling, new will, and a new bodily nature. Thus when we speak of what is revealed to our soul here on Earth, we are speaking of something that comes to an end, does not go with us into the next incarnation. Of the soul itself, the representatives of certain religious bodies say: the human being dies, goes either to heaven or to hell, and we concern ourselves no more with him. According to certain representatives of religion, this is enough; what passes on to the next incarnation is not important. The aim is to conceal the fact that the spirit in man passes into the spiritual world and lives on until the next incarnation. It can be said that representatives of certain religious bodies are intent upon not allowing man to become aware of the yellow (diagram) in his nature, upon preventing him from knowing anything of it. Here again, they are really obeying a certain sound instinct, but one which shows even more clearly than the instinct prompting the learned naturalists, that in our time it has really lost its value.

The efforts of the representatives of various religious communities all tend quite decisively in the direction of concealing the fact that there is a spiritual world to which belongs the inmost core of our being, which is destined to appear in repeated Earth-lives, and in the intervals between them to pass through an entirely spiritual form of existence; they try to conceal this by offering men the consolation that the life of soul which comes to expression in thinking, feeling and willing is, after all, sufficiently immortal.

In their actions and trend of thinking these pastors of souls instinctively prevent men from coming into contact with certain beings. Man can never penetrate into the world of his true and innermost being without coming into contact with certain beings—just as in the way described he comes into contact with different beings if he desires or is actually able to break through the veil of nature. But the beings with whom he is related in this other world are of a Luciferic order.

If, as the result of certain teachings having been imparted to him without the requisite caution, a man comes into contact with certain destructive beings behind the veil of nature, he will become one who values nothing in the world, and it will soon be apparent that he takes actual pleasure in destruction—which need not necessarily be destruction of external things. Many men to whom this has happened have shown that they take pleasure in tormenting and oppressing other souls. These are the characteristics which come into evidence. But it can never be said that men who have such traits owing to their alliance with Ahrimanic elementary beings, are invariably egotistic. They need not be and indeed usually are not, egotists. They act out of an urge quite different from that of egotism. They act out of a lust for destruction, and they destroy without the slightest benefit accruing to themselves. The beings into whose sphere a man enters are essentially beings of destruction, and they tempt him, lure him, to destroy.

The other beings into whose sphere man comes when he penetrates behind the veil of the life of soul have a quite different character. They have no particular lust for destruction. In point of fact, what we know as destruction does not enter their ken. They have a veritable passion for creating, for bringing something into being—a tremendous urge for activity, for productivity. And they too have certain higher faculties which are less closely related to our thinking than to our feeling, and especially to our will. We enter here into a sphere of beings preeminently related to our will, but—curiously enough—to the noblest sides of our will.

Thus if we enter this world without knowing anything of what the Initiate knows, namely, that behind the world of nature and also behind the world of soul there is a spiritual world, when we fill our will with ideals, when we unfold noble, spiritualised will, this will becomes allied precisely with the lower attributes of these beings into whose sphere we have entered. There is a mysterious bond of attraction between the noble side of our will and the lower urges and desires of these beings.

And now think of it.—If a man's spiritual pastor gives him the consolation of immortality, laying stress on the dignity of the human soul, the majesty of the Divine and the like, it may happen that through some slight incitement, particularly if he was a noble character, he breaks through the membrane of his soul-activity at some point and penetrates behind the secrets of his thinking, feeling and willing. But he then comes into the region of these beings of will, and the consequence is that the idealistic side of his will actually begins to assume a sensuous character. And now, with this in mind, please read the descriptions given by certain mystics of either sex. As you read the biographies of these mystics, notice the sultry, voluptuous atmosphere which pervades them. The most sublime ideals assume a sensuous character. I would remind you of the rapture experienced by mystics in connection with their “soul-bride” or “soul-bridegroom”; in women mystics the mystical union is like a sensuous union with the Saviour, and in male mystics like an actual bond with the bride of the soul, with the Virgin Mary.

It is the endeavour of these beings of will to pour into man's thinking, into his ideals, what he otherwise knows as sensuousness. This is a hard saying. These beings into whose regions a man there enters, strive—and from their own standpoint it is a justified striving—to pour their sensuous instincts into his idealised will. And then the willing that goes out from the head, which otherwise has a certain quality of cool detachment about it, is pervaded by a sultry, voluptuous experience of the spiritual world, which often seems to have the character of fevered mysticism. The representatives of the various religious bodies have an infinite dread of this, and their greatest fear of all is aroused by those among their believers who come forward as mystics.

Verily, we have here Scylla and Charybdis. If we desire to pierce through the veil of nature, we come to Scylla, to the Ahrimanic beings who wish to endow us abundantly with destructive forces of intelligence. If we desire to pierce through the veil of the life of soul, we come to Charybdis, to the Luciferic beings of will, who would fain pervade us with the fumes of spiritual ecstasy, spiritual rapture, spiritual instincts.

Priestly Orders intent upon the cultivation of the religious life were therefore in a certain sense right to take care that when mystics appeared among them, at least the shadow-side of mysticism should not come to the fore. Hence in a certain sense they erected barriers against the entrance into the spiritual worlds. Just think how certain religious Orders—I am speaking, not of occult but of religious Orders—were associated with manual work, with labour that allows delight in nature, delight in what lives in the world around, to arise in the soul; just think how such Orders, if the right principles were understood, insisted upon outer, manual work. Those who founded such Orders said to themselves: “The worst thing we could do would be to isolate men and allow the mystic life to develop in them as the outcome of inertia and idleness.” Read the monastic rules originating in better times and in the better Orders, and you will everywhere see that full account was taken of what I have just mentioned, how mystic rapture and fevered ecstasy were counteracted by manual labour.—And now you will also understand why Father Antonius caused Paul the Simpleton to work, even if it served no useful purpose. Had he allowed him to cultivate idleness for years, Paul the Simpleton would have become a senuous, ecstatic mystic.

We have, as you see, to do with a duality: with objective occultism which, if it is simply handed over to unprepared men, makes them destroyers; and with subjective mysticism, which if it is cultivated or suddenly appears in idealistic natures, makes men egotists—egotists such as are to be met with in numbers of mystics who have developed merely a subtle form of egotism, a subtle mania for fostering their own souls. If you read the biographies of the mystics, you will often be appalled by the egotism they display.

The region of Scylla is that of the spirits who serve Ahriman. We come into their sphere if we cultivate, not egotism but the will for destruction. If we cultivate the subjective mysticism connected with the Luciferic spirits of will into whose sphere we enter, then Charybdis approaches us from the other side; for these spirits do everything to foster egotism, so that our own inner nature forms the world for us. This is the duality in the material world: objective occultism—subjective mysticism. In both realms there may be aberrations.

Fundamentally speaking, in what has been developing for centuries there is present, on the one side, objective occultism, guarded in the Secret Societies and Orders but no longer effectively protected owing to the insistent trend towards publicity. We have heard of the efforts that were made to find a way out of the dilemma. And on the other side there is subjective mysticism.

It follows from this that when we wanted to lay the foundations of Spiritual Science, it behoved us not to allow ourselves to be enticed either by Scylla or Charybdis, but to steer between them; it behoved us neither to cultivate the old, traditional occultism, nor the old, traditional mysticism. And now you have a deeper conception of what gives our Movement its direction. Both objective occultism and subjective mysticism in the old sense had to be avoided. Our Spiritual Science had to be of a character ensuring that Scylla as well as Charybdis are avoided.

I have still to speak to you about the fundamental character which our Spiritual Science must bear in order that it may steer clear of both these dangers. But it obviously cannot be avoided that at the present time, out of mistaken notions, certain people come to us because some of them are looking for an old, objective occultism, while others are hankering after old, subjective mysticism. It is hardly likely that either the one type or the other will find among us what they are looking for. But they believe they find it by simply interpreting our teaching to suit their own liking. The form which our teaching must take, and what our attitude to it must be if our ship is to be steered between Scylla and Charybdis—of this I must speak again tomorrow.

• 1. Dr. Steiner may have been referring to a passage in The Genealogy of Morals, Section XXIV, page 287 in the translation (together with The Birth of Tragedy) by Francis Golffing. (Doubleday Anchor Books, New York). “When the Christian Crusaders in the East happened upon the invincible Society of Assassins, that order of free spirits par excellence, whose lower ranks observed an obedience stricter than that of any monastic order, they must have got some hint of the slogan reserved for the highest ranks, which ran, ‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted.’ ” See also Dr. Steiner's own work, Friedrich Nietzsche. Ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit, page 25 in the Gesamtausgabe 1963 volume. (Bibl. No. 5).

If we are to enter more deeply into the matters which cannot fail to interest us at the present time, it is necessary to keep clearly in mind a certain aspect of human consciousness as it is today. Let us think of certain characteristics of this consciousness of which we have been speaking during the past weeks. This consciousness holds us within a domain shut off on the one side by the veil placed before us by the phenomena of nature through which, to begin with, our consciousness cannot penetrate, and on the other side, by the veil of our own life of soul, of our thinking, feeling and willing. The nature of our consciousness is such that when we look inwards, we are able to a certain extent to experience our thinking, feeling and willing in their human form, to experience them consciously. But again, we cannot penetrate behind the veil. Hence we can say: As regards the veil of the phenomena of nature on the one side, with the objective reality behind, our consciousness is directed towards a veil which, to begin with, may not be pierced. On the other side, there are the manifestations of the life of soul, behind which lies the subjective reality. We contemplate it but we cannot immediately break through the veil. Within these frontiers, within these two parallel lines, as it were, is our present consciousness, to which, when we look out through the sense-organs, the world of nature presents itself; when we look inwards, there is the world of soul. This is how the consciousness we have as human beings today, is organised.

We know that this consciousness differs from man's earlier consciousness with its heritage of ancient clairvoyance; but we know too that this inherited clairvoyance faded away and that our present consciousness, when functioning normally on the physical plane, is as described above.

The question may be asked: Why is it that our consciousness today is constituted as it is? The reason is that during the present cycle of evolution, as well as everything else that has been described, we have to develop the true relationship that should prevail between one human soul and another. Our present form of consciousness, therefore, has a very definite task.

During the earlier periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon we lived in different states of consciousness, and in the future periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, our consciousness will again be different. We are gradually preparing for these different forms of consciousness. In our present cycle of evolution we have to develop in ourselves, through the way we relate ourselves to the world, the form of consciousness belonging to this cycle; and besides all that must be developed in connection with the moral life, there is also the fact that through this form of consciousness there can unfold the right relationship of one human soul to another, a relationship we had not acquired before the beginning of the Earth-period and without which, if we do not acquire it during the Earth-period, we shall not be able to maintain our existence during the periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan.

In the periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon preceding the Earth-period, man had not, in this sense, acquired the right relationship to other men; in a certain sense he was too close to them. During the Old Moon period, conditions were still such that the will of one had a direct effect upon the other; the other felt, was affected by, the will of his fellow-being. Moreover, this process was regulated and guided by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies.

Had this guidance by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies continued, man would never have reached complete freedom in cosmic existence. The guidance had at some point to cease. Hence the necessity of a form of consciousness which as it were makes a frontier possible between one man and another. The fact is that on the one side our vision does not penetrate through nature, and on the other side the world of soul causes the relation of one soul to another to be such that a certain frontier is created between them. That this frontier exists is due to our present form of consciousness, a special characteristic of which is that what we actually experience are reflections, mirror-images. This, of course, applies also to relationships between man and man. Because, when we meet another human being we have in our present form of consciousness a mere reflection, we cannot approach him in so arbitrary a way that we pour the content of our consciousness into his soul. If, therefore, our consciousness is normally developed, this prevents us from coming unduly close to the consciousness of another. I might also put it like this: the forces of our consciousness and intelligence are so organised that we can neither exercise too great an influence upon the other man, nor can he exercise too great an influence upon us—because the fact that our own consciousness is mirrored, separates us from him.

This is a matter of very great importance for the understanding of human evolution. Whenever there is a defect in the normal consciousness, what happens is at once evident. Think of a person whose consciousness is not quite normal, who has a touch of what we have recently encountered in the form of “mystical eccentricity”—to use a rather harsh expression, but one that is often very apt. Suppose such a person is inclined to all sorts of fanciful delusions, based upon certain experiences which are abnormal in our day. You will always find that a person with abnormal consciousness of this kind has a far greater influence upon other souls than one with normal consciousness. To put it rather crudely, a person who is a little mad in one direction or another can have a far stronger influence upon his fellowmen than one who is normal; and by strengthening his consciousness, a normal man must protect himself from the influence of one who is abnormal. An abnormal man, as long as he is not recognised, is always a certain danger to his fellow-men, because they allow themselves to be too strongly influenced by him and because they are too ready to regard him as a rare, out-of-the-common phenomenon. Precisely where there are perforations in the mirror of consciousness, too strong an influence passes over through these perforations to the other person.

Thus in the present epoch of evolution we acquire our particular form of consciousness in order that the right relationship of one human soul to another in the world may be established.

Now, from all that has been said in these lectures, the following is clear: on yonder side of the veil of nature lies the Ahrimanic world with all the beings I have described; on yonder side of the veil of the life of soul lies the Luciferic world with all the characteristic features I have described. Man is, as it were, shut in between the Ahrimanic world and the Luciferic world. If he pierces only a little behind the veil of nature, he cannot help becoming acquainted with the Ahrimanic world. If he pierces a little behind the veil of the life of soul, he will inevitably become acquainted with the Luciferic world.

We have behind us a certain epoch during which man was safeguarded against making too great an advance towards the one side or the other. But we are now living in a time of transition, when human souls needs must advance towards the one side or the other. This must inevitably happen, for again it is demanded by the present phase of man's evolution.

As you know, we are now living in the age of the development of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul and moving towards that of the development of the Spirit-Self. Such development has a long preparation behind it. When, in the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the Spirit-Self is fully developed, man's life of soul will be different in very many respects from what it is today. The human intellect will have a much more objective power than is the case now. Mankind is already approaching this more objective intellectual life. Evidences may be seen on every hand and I have spoken of the matter in many lectures. A life of soul is approaching of which it may be said that the intellect will be outspread as a power to which men must submit—as a power working objectively in a realm outside the souls of men.

We are still living in times when many human beings are safeguarded against this objective power by a strong, assertive individuality. But this protection will be less and less possible the nearer we come to the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch. A time will actually come when phenomena now only in the initial stages will be far, far more strongly in evidence. Even now, one who knows how to assess happenings in the world can form a true judgment in regard to this phenomenon. It is well known, for example, that writers in certain newspapers and periodicals are very far from saying only what springs from their own souls. They represent the intelligence of certain circles, an objective intelligence which rides rough-shod and of which they are only the speaking trumpets. It is extremely important to keep this in mind, for it is a phenomenon which will become more and more prevalent.

Now there is a very definite prospect ahead. When the intelligence of certain people is objectivised—and it has been so objectivised ever since public literature has existed—it becomes more and more possible for Ahriman to take possession of the intelligence of men. That is a prospect which Spiritual Science must place before us, for it is Ahriman's constant and fiercest endeavour to strangle men's individual intelligence and appropriate it for himself, so that it may pass into his power and be used to serve his own purposes. I have told you that there is a mysterious connection between the higher forces of intelligence in the beings who serve Ahriman and the forces of man's lower nature. Ahriman's perpetual endeavour is to appropriate the intelligence of human beings and not allow them to realise what they can achieve through their own intelligence. Think of the last conversation between Benedictus and Ahriman in the Mystery Play The Soul's Awakening. Before Ahriman disappears, he says:

“It is now time for me to haste away
From his environment, for whensoe'er
His sight can think me as I truly am,
He will begin to fashion in his thought
Part of the power which slowly killeth me.”

A profound secret is contained here, a secret of which every student of Spiritual Science should be aware. Men must strive as time goes on to keep their intelligence under their own individual control, to keep unceasing watch over it. This is essential, and it is well that man should know with what enticing and powerful words Ahriman approaches him, trying to wring his intelligence from him.

More and more it will behove men to be alert to such moments. For Ahriman takes full advantage of moments when, in full waking life, a man falls into a state of vertigo or dizziness, into a kind of twilight consciousness, when he feels not quite securely anchored in the physical world and begins to yield himself to the whirl of the universe, when he does not stand firmly and steadily on his own feet as an individuality. These are the moments when it behoves him to be on his guard, for it is then that Ahriman easily gets the upper hand. The best way in which we can protect ourselves is to develop clear, exact thinking, not simply skimming over things in thought as is the general custom today. We should go even farther and try to avoid colloquialisms and current catchwords, for directly we use such words which come, not from thought but from habits of speech, we are not exercising thinking—even if only for a very short time. These are particularly dangerous moments because they are not heeded. We should really be careful to avoid using words behind which there is not sufficient reflection. Such self-training, precisely in these intimate details, should be undertaken by those who are in earnest about the tasks of the age. After all that has been said in these lectures it will not be difficult for you to realise what is necessary.

But Lucifer, too, endeavours by way of the will to bring man into a condition where he does not act out of well-considered impulses, but out of impulses springing merely from temperament and inclination. Here again, Lucifer takes hold and makes us his prey. And it is easiest for him to find his prey when a large number of people give way to such impulses which surge in the dark foundations of the life of soul without rising into the sphere of the individual will. If impulses springing from temperament and vague inclinations bring us into connection with groups of human beings in such a way that we feel ourselves part and parcel of a group, we are at once caught into a whirl in which the judgment of the individual will is wrested from us; and it must not be wrested from us, for if it is, Lucifer gains too great a power over us. We must strive for objectivity in this respect.

Again, when there is some deviation from the sphere of normal consciousness, these are moments favourable for Lucifer. Very radical symptoms may appear, but there are also more intimate phenomena, when, for instance, we allow our actions to be determined by obscure feelings of affiliation and the like. The more flagrant, more radical, deviations of consciousness are those where the will becomes defective or so weak that a man can do no other than surrender himself entirely to his life of soul with what amounts to the exclusion of his will.

Modern psychiatrists have adopted certain technical terms for these particularly radical phenomena. For example, they speak of “imperative” or “insistent” ideas (Zwangsvorstellungen)¹. These ideas arise in people whose consciousness is not adjusted in the way that is right and proper for the physical plane. If due strength of will is lacking, ideas arise which a man cannot expel from his consciousness—imperative or insistent ideas, as they are called.

I will give an example that has actually been observed in clinics.—A man once saw another who had a cancerous tumour in the face; he saw the tumour and as he was a man of very weak will, he has believed ever since that cancer germs are everywhere; he is convinced that these germs are present wherever he goes. In other words, his will is not strong enough to drive down into the subconsciousness the idea once aroused in him. That is a particular instance of an imperative or insistent idea. But the same kind of thing makes its appearance in very diverse forms among people whose will is not sufficiently developed, and then it is easy for Lucifer to get power over them. Another aberration of consciousness has been called by modern psychiatrists “a morbid fear of touch” (Berührungsfurcht). The sign of this condition is that people in whom the will is insufficiently developed shrink from every contact with other human beings or objects; they are frightened of being touched by others or by objects. The “morbid fear of touch” is another technical term used in modern psychiatry.

Many other such aberrations of consciousness could be mentioned. These very aberrations show what the normal state of our consciousness should be on the physical plane. But we are now living at a time when certain beings must inevitably become known to us, on the one side beings who are behind the veil of nature, and on the other, behind the veil of the world of soul. If these beings are not made known, the further evolution of mankind will be endangered. If the connection of Ahriman and Lucifer with human evolution is not perceived, danger lies ahead. For it is just when they are not perceived that they can operate most effectively. As an example of the way in which Ahriman works, I will relate an anecdote which presents the unqualified truth.—

To a village there once came a stranger who was an acquaintance of the burgomaster. He arrived on horseback and rode into the village. This was an interesting event for the villagers and they ran out into the street to watch him. He put his horse in the burgomaster's stable and stayed in his house from the Saturday evening over the Sunday. On the Monday he wanted to take his departure, and asked for his horse. The burgomaster said: “You came here on foot; you had no horse.”—To every protest the burgomaster replied: “You had no horse.” Finally he said: “Very well, then, we will ask the people in the village; they must have seen you when you arrived.” Thereupon he called the people together and asked them whether they had not seen the man arrive on foot, and they all said, “Yes”. When everyone had affirmed this, the burgomaster said: “Now swear to me, all of you, that this man came on foot.” And everyone swore that it was so. The man was therefore obliged to leave the village on foot, without his horse. After a short time the burgomaster rode after him, bringing his horse. At this, the man exclaimed: “What was the purpose of this comedy?” To which the burgomaster replied: “I only wanted to present my community to you!”

Naturally, Ahriman was at the bottom of this and he acted effectively as an objective power. The anecdote is “truer than true”, for the same thing is happening among us continually. The whole of human life tends to increase the number of people who swear to the non-existence of the horse.

We must therefore see to it that we have the greatest possible exactitude of consciousness, for that alone is fitting for our present earthly life. If you take all that can be found in my books, Occult Science, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, A Road to Self-Knowledge, in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? as well as in many Lecture-Courses, you will find that the paths have been indicated whereby men may penetrate behind nature and behind the world of soul in the proper way and with the requisite preparation. The paths are described by which men can penetrate behind the scenes of existence in the right way. But the subjective strivings of very many persons do not, in reality, aim at reaching the goal to be desired. In those books it is clearly indicated that one who wishes to penetrate into the other world must transcend the normal form of consciousness. If the indications given are faithfully followed, it will be clear that one must emerge from the normal consciousness into a different form of consciousness.

It is important to know this, for there is a tendency among most people, indeed among many of our friends too, not to leave the normal form of consciousness at any price but to remain in it and to bring the spiritual world into the ordinary consciousness: that is to say, not to let the Ego emerge but to bring the spiritual world into the Ego. It is knowledge of the spiritual world that should be brought into the ordinary consciousness, not the spiritual world itself. If you faithfully practise what is contained in the books mentioned, you will bring yourself into conditions through which you will experience the spiritual world, conditions through which experiences deriving from that world can be brought into the sphere of the normal consciousness. But there are many who do not want this; they want the experience to be actually in the normal consciousness; whereas it ought to originate from consciousness that is different from the normal and passes into the normal. Many of our friends, however, try to have visions in the normal consciousness, not something that is a reminiscence of a different kind of consciousness. If, however, you have visions in the normal consciousness, that is to say, if you do not really wish to develop a different kind of consciousness, but to keep consciousness in its ordinary form and yet look into the spiritual world, this means that you do not seriously wish to go beyond but to remain in the ordinary consciousness, expecting to see forms and figures there which look like those of the physical world. Many people try hard to see spirits or the activities of spirits, but they want to see them just as they see physical things. They want to see a spirit, but this spirit is expected to have the form of a man or a woman or perhaps a poodle, as these are seen in the physical world. In the other world, however, it is not like this. The process itself lies outside the ordinary consciousness and what enters into the consciousness is at most a picture, an image which appears afterwards. In short, we must not expect the spiritual world to be merely a kind of finer sense-world, nor that it will speak in human words, the only difference being that the words come from the spiritual world. Our friends are often only willing to listen in this way to voices which seem to speak to them; these voices are expected to be similar to those of the physical world, merely giving a different, subtler version of things of the physical world. These people would like to enter the spiritual world with the ordinary consciousness which belongs to the physical world only.

Actually, most of the visions or voices of which one is told are of the character just described. At all events, this much is certain: when we have such visions or hear such voices it is always easy for Lucifer and Ahriman to have an easy game with us; they lay hold of these experiences for themselves, for men are always prone to interpret them incorrectly. If such experiences are rightly interpreted, Lucifer and Ahriman gain nothing from them.

As you see, there are distinctions here which must be kept strictly in mind. We must be fully alive to the possibility that as soon as we bring something else into the ordinary consciousness which is in truth suitable only for the physical world, we come to Scylla and Charybdis—to Lucifer and Ahriman. We must learn to recognise Lucifer and Ahriman as real Powers in this connection. It is for this reason that such emphasis has been laid on the relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the statue in the Goetheanum will be a true representation of this.

Now you might ask: If this is how things are, might it not after all be more sensible to act like the scientists who, although Ahriman is within what they say, are nevertheless unwilling to acknowledge his reality? Or might it perhaps be better to act like the Pastors of various religious communities?—for they present things in such a way that Lucifer is everywhere, but they will not admit it. They would regard it as sinful were anyone to realise that the door there is open for Lucifer. But a person who speaks to this effect today is not being very clever. To say that it is more sensible to act like the scientists and the Pastors of various religious communities would be the same as deliberately refraining from warning someone who has to cross a chasm for some distance on a narrow plank, that he is facing danger. It is obvious that he should be warned. Otherwise it would amount to saying: certainly the man may be in danger, but it is more sensible to say nothing to him about it.—Through knowing how things are—and they will have to be known—the danger becomes no greater and no less.

A time is coming when Ahriman will try to take possession of the intelligence and Lucifer of the will of men. This can be thwarted only if these things are recognised; and recognition can be brought about only by a spiritual-scientific Movement. It is remarkable to see what Ahriman and Lucifer do and yet are not observed. From this point of view it is interesting to study modern psychiatry. Modern psychiatry has actually recognised many things that are facts, but that it cannot interpret correctly because it takes no account of the approach of these spiritual Powers behind the veil. Modern psychiatry regards anything that is not absolutely normal in man, anything that deviates in the slightest degree from a certain average norm, as tending towards insanity. In numerous treatises the Maid of Orleans is held to have been merely an hysteric. Indeed, writings are accumulating in which Christ Jesus Himself is regarded as a not quite normal man. There are also writings which ascribe craziness to Goethe, and so on.

Here we have an unmistakable, but false, Ahrimanic science, a science which is at pains to show that although Goethe was in certain respects a moral genius, this was entirely due to the fact that he had an element of madness in his nature. Socrates, however, knew better; he spoke of his “daimon”, being well aware that his soul bordered on objective spiritual Powers. This was quite clear to him. But the modern psychiatrist sees fit to make out that there was an element of madness or something of the kind in Socrates too. Ahriman must be hidden at all costs—which is exactly what suits him! And the same applies to Lucifer.

The fact of the matter is that if one were simply to cultivate today what purports in certain occult Orders to be secret knowledge, with its accompanying symbolism, it would be very easy to deliver into the hands of Ahriman everything that has been pursued hitherto as occultism. And if the mysticism hitherto pursued were to be encouraged and cultivated in human beings, it would easily be delivered into the hands of Lucifer. The ship of Spiritual Science must be steered between these two dangers. This is extremely important. Spiritual Science must therefore be so constituted that neither mystical nor occult aberrations can take root.

I said yesterday that when man breaks through the veil of nature, he comes into a region where he encounters beings who have a will for destruction, and that this will for destruction is related to the human intellect. I have described what may become of a man who falls prey to these beings. This must not happen. I have also spoken of the fevered, ecstatic condition into which a person may fall in his spiritual life if he indulges in false mystical experiences. This too must be avoided.

I said in an earlier lecture that the esotericists among the occultists tried hard to compel men to apply their intellect to the deciphering of symbols, in order that they should not break through the veil in a wrongful way and become the victim of the Powers encountered in so terrible a form in these border regions. These beings can be held at bay if the intellect is employed in the way it is employed, for example, in deciphering the symbols. This was formerly the practice but it no longer meets the needs of the present time, nor is it a practicable method.

You will find that by the very manner in which Spiritual Science is presented, the aberration leading into the region of Ahriman is avoided in a different way. You must think here about something that is apt to crop up in the life of our own society. When one person or another is beginning to study Spiritual Science, the remark is very frequently to be heard: “I cannot grasp these things until I have seen them myself clairvoyantly, so I take them on trust.” I have emphasised over and over again that, rightly understood, this is not the case. At the present time human beings have sufficient intellectual capacity to understand everything that has been given out. The whole of Spiritual Science in the form it has been presented is within the grasp of the intellectual capacities existing in men at the present time. Spiritual Science cannot, it is true, be discovered by these capacities, but it can be understood. The intellectual capacities are there and can be roused into activity, and those who refuse to admit that it is so are in error. When what has been given in Spiritual Science is really worked upon by the intellect, the intellect is being employed in the right way and it is then impossible to enter into the Ahrimanic realm by an unlawful path. There are two eventualities only.—Either men make strenuous efforts to understand, in which case they are employing the intellect—which could well be misused by the Ahrimanic beings—in order to understand Spiritual Science, and then this intellect cannot be wrung from them. Whatever Ahriman may elect to do, he will never get hold of the intellect which men apply, either in the present age or in the future, to the study of Spiritual Science. Of that you may rest assured. If men make no attempt to understand Spiritual Science, they are not applying their intellect to it—but Spiritual Science cannot be blamed for that! Laziness alone is responsible.

The region of destructive spirits into which a man may come, is disclosed most clearly of all if a soul is observed at the moment of passing through the gate of death. Then these spiritual beings swirl forward in their hosts; nor is this surprising, for they are the spirits of destruction. To work at the destruction of the physical organism is their regular function. It is part of their handiwork—only they must not remain too long.

Men who have attained spiritual understanding keep these beings at bay. But these beings have a great deal of power over souls whose thinking is materialistic, who acquire no understanding of the spiritual world. Souls who disdain any attempt to acquire knowledge of the spiritual world have a great deal to suffer from Ahriman. The Greek myth has depicted this very graphically in the figure of Tantalus. The Gods placed food in front of him but out of his reach and then watched the torments he had to endure.

Many such figures can be seen in the world today. All of them are materialistic souls who have no desire to understand the spiritual world. They are like Tantalus, in the sense that after death, during the period of Kamaloka when they live through their life—for a third of its duration—in backward order, everything is snatched away from them. Again and again they have the feeling: to what purpose did I do this or that? For they see one of the spirits of destruction snatching it away, and then they realise that they really did it to no purpose! That, of course, is an illusion; but such souls suffer the torments of Tantalus because the spirits of destruction are all around them. They do not realise that the whole of earthly life from birth until death would be without purpose or meaning if it were not pervaded by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. But these souls cannot see the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies and so everything must seem to them to have been purposeless.

Spiritual Science avoids false occultism in that it applies the ever-increasing intellectual capacity now developing in humanity to the establishment of a science for which more intellect is required than hitherto. The nature of Spiritual Science inevitably demands greater intellectual effort than people have been accustomed to apply. Men like to delude themselves in this respect. Were they really to apply the intellectual capacity at their command today, they would understand Spiritual Science. Through the strong intellectual efforts that are necessary in Spiritual Science, Scylla is avoided and mastered on the one side. The spiritual scientist is well aware why people are disinclined to embark on the study of Spiritual Science. It is because they are too lazy to apply enough intellectual effort. That is why I spoke just now of laziness.

On the other side, the pitfall of false mysticism must be avoided by ceasing to grovel within the purely inner life. This tendency to live and brood continually within one's own soul must be eliminated. The soul must come out of itself and look with eyes of love at the deeper connections manifesting in life outside.

The Mystery Plays were written in order to help people to perceive such connections—which can also be observed externally. Inner processes of the life of soul are portrayed in the Plays. If you learn to understand and perceive what is happening, for example to Capesius, how he passes on from one event to another, the weaving, creative activity there in evidence will help you to release your own inner life, to free it. This is also the essential function of our art. The purpose of our whole Building is that souls shall be set free from themselves and shall not lapse into false mysticism. It is necessary to keep this in mind for we shall thus also avoid the Charybdis of false mysticism.

Every effort we make to explain to ourselves the mysterious connections in the lives of human beings in the world outside protects us from false mysticism. If in this way we follow what happens to Capesius, we live in a weaving life of soul—but we are not huddled up within our own. We attain everything that the mystic attains, but in a different way. So you see, the ship of Spiritual Science must be steered with clear-sighted purpose between the two pitfalls. The teachings given must be of a nature whereby false occultism and false mysticism are both avoided.

It may truly be said that our Spiritual Science is in keeping with the needs and demands of the age. For this reason I have often been obliged to oppose any false simplification or popularisation of Spiritual Science which would do away with the need for strenuous thinking. Equally I have been obliged to oppose everything that tends towards ecstatic, egoistic mysticism, which is always an element of such precepts as: “in your own inmost being you find the reality, the Divine”—and so forth. For in this there is no desire to seek the Divine in outer life by following its phenomena with love and understanding.

I recently said to someone that Spiritual Science may be regarded as of eminently practical usefulness. I did not say this in order to boast about the merits of our Movement but merely in order to show that in it the positive can always be found. I said: even if people accept only what they can recognise, leaving aside what does not interest them, Spiritual Science can nevertheless be of the greatest usefulness. If you think of the way in which we have been working for fifteen years, you will realise that a host of truths belonging to the domains of natural science, art, the history of art and so forth, have been included in the purely spiritual-scientific teachings. Indeed, assuming for a moment that nothing at all of pure Spiritual Science had been given but only truths relating to natural science and art—even this by itself could be of practical use. But whatever is given in this way is given with purpose and deliberation, for thereby the human mind is induced to abandon fanciful speculation. And so in every way we have endeavoured so to form our Movement that it may go forward in the right and healthy way. From the very beginning it was conceived as a kind of organism. And thinking of it as such we may also say that it must grow and develop like an organism, like a human organism which about the seventh year gets its second teeth—and the organism must make use of these second teeth, of the individual teeth it then has at its disposal.

In earlier lectures I have shown why we had to link up with the Theosophical Movement, as we did in the year 1902 by founding the German Section. At the beginning, progress was possible because we developed entirely independently, as I have told you. But then, in the year 1909 (1902 + 7 = 19o9) it was also necessary to get second teeth. You will remember that those were the years when the Leadbeater affair threw everything into the melting-pot. The year 1916 is not far off. We shall then have the second seven years behind us. If with this second period of seven years behind us we think of our Movement as an organism, this organism will then have reached maturity; it must steer its own course and be able to achieve something by itself. After all that has been given, it ought to be possible for the work to go on effectively even without the teacher.

I have spoken to this effect on many occasions. Some time ago in Berlin I said that the “Gesellschaft für Theosophische Art and Kunst”² ought to be an organisation that leads a life of its own, apart from me. This trend will become more and more necessary. The danger that things go well only as long as something comes from me week after week, must be surmounted. We have now reached the years when the Society ought to be able to show that it can quietly continue to cultivate what has been given, to cultivate it as if I were no longer there.

This is an absolutely necessary thought. The teachings which have been given are of such a nature that if they now work in souls, a great deal can be done for which I am no longer needed. I am not saying that I will not remain, but the test will consist in my becoming more and more superfluous. It is absolutely essential to obviate the possibility—which actually exists—of our members not appreciating one another! For you can realise what ill service would be done to our cause if it were always being said: “He is the Director, and he must be followed”, or “He is the Director and he will see that such-and-such is done”.—That simply will not do. What would happen if one day I were no longer there? The Society would at once fall to pieces! We shall only attain what we ought to attain if, after fourteen years, we have really come to the point of having a life of our own which can in turn bring forth new life. This is not an impossibility if only we are mindful of our real aims. Certainly, there are some difficult years now, but we must surmount such difficulties. And a different value can be placed upon much that I myself have to contribute, if what I have now indicated is fulfilled. Difficulties of many kinds exist at the present time. There are certain things which cannot be said indiscriminately and during the last four days I should have liked to call together a small, restricted group of people in order to speak of matters of which I cannot speak before a whole audience. But I was obliged to abandon the idea because we are living in days when such an arrangement is not feasible. In order to see clearly, what I have been trying to present in these lectures must be kept well in mind. We must also try to understand the inner character of Spiritual Science and then it will be clear to us why on the one side we shall inevitably have opponents in the learned scientists who would like to base a view of the world upon their erudition and, on the other side, in those pastors who desire that what lies behind the everyday life of soul shall remain completely hidden.

We must hold faithfully to our teaching and also steep ourselves deeply in its contents. Let us remember, for example, how the Mystery of Golgotha has constituted the very core of our strivings, how it has been stressed that Christ entered into Jesus of Nazareth in the way so often described, coming from other spheres of consciousness into the sphere of consciousness proper for man's physical life on Earth. Christ-Jesus is a Power on Earth, living on in the earthly consciousness of men and in earthly happenings. For this reason the New Testament can be no natural science, for natural science—the science of what lies behind nature—must, if it makes for reality, go beyond our normal consciousness. Neither can the New Testament be Spiritual Science, for there, too, normal consciousness must have been transcended in the other direction. The marvellous greatness and significance of the New Testament lies precisely in the fact that it aspires neither to be Natural Science nor yet Spiritual Science—but for all that it must not be used to support polemics against Spiritual Science.

Here, however, we perceive the reasons why the representatives of one or another religious body will always rise up in arms against Spiritual Science! It is because they will never be willing to allow man to enter the world they so greatly fear. They are afraid that one day human beings will discover the eternal nature of the soul within them. They want people to realise that only what they already know lives eternally within them. I said yesterday that if a materialistic view of the world were to take root, if such a view alone prevailed and no Spiritual Science were to come into being, things would reach the point where men would be engulfed in scepticism and doubt, for something like an ocean would be created in which souls would inevitably drown. But if it is desired to hold men back lest they penetrate behind the veil of the world of soul, then the only thing to do is to keep them in a state of ignorance. Ignorance which would eventually suffocate men must inevitably spread if those who are often the representatives of religious communities today were to gain their ends. If the scientists were to win the day, human souls would be engulfed in an ocean of doubt; if the pastors of religion who think in the way described were to win the day, human souls would suffocate in an atmosphere of ignorance. The task devolving upon Spiritual Science is serious and grave and we must realise its gravity. We must regard ourselves as individuals who through their karma can be led to Spiritual Science in order that what they possess in the way of intellect and intuitive discernment may be placed at the disposal not actually of Spiritual Science, but of the general progress of humanity. And such progress is a dire necessity for the world.

We see, on the one side, how a materialistic view of the world is trying to get a firm foothold, and how nothing that offers resistance is of any avail! And on the other side we see how efforts are made to spread ignorance, how more and more is done to efface the truths relating to the spiritual world! Just think how every communication from the spiritual world is regarded with downright hatred by the representatives of certain religious communities!

I have given these lectures in order to indicate the direction of the path which must be taken by Spiritual Science, and to help you to realise the following. We must oppose the materialistic scientists, although they really cannot help acting as they do, for Ahriman has them in his power and wishes to hide from them the real motives underlying their activity. And we must oppose the othcrs too—although they again cannot act differently, because they are in the hands of Lucifer. The right way to work is to come to grips with what Spiritual Science can give us. Oh, if only there were a number of people who realised the uniqueness of Spiritual Science, that it must not be confused with other things! That in itself would be a great step forward.

One can also learn a great deal from mistakes, and pay attention to them from this point of view. That is more important than merely to criticise them, although criticism is also sometimes necessary. I said that—to put it in plain words—Ahriman is out to destroy man's intellect in the future; but he combines this with something else as well—because the beings who serve him are related, with their higher forces, to the lower forces in man and because he wants to establish an alliance between the higher and the lower forces. In the normal course, Ahriman has under his direction those things in the world which give rise to illnesses; we know that they too are unavoidable for they bring about death in the physical world. All destruction in the physical world is allotted to him. But the connection must be known and understood. If what is in the lower sphere is taken up into the higher, it is united with these beings of destruction and then man himself gives many opportunities to Ahriman and his hosts. And when he does so he will not fail to notice that certain lower parts of his organism begin to function as higher parts of the organism otherwise function.

If a man has a dread of really exact thinking and yet wishes to enter the spiritual world, well, he may succeed in doing so—he crosses the Threshold and lives in the realm of the powers of destruction. When he comes back again into his body, he has entered into an alliance with these destructive beings and knows nothing about it because he has not developed his own intellect in the right way. He will then feel these beings within him—and instead of thinking, instead of his ears hearing and his eyes seeing, all kinds of hidden powers in the lower organism begin to hear and to see. The body is no longer his own in the sense it was before. On coming back again into the body he finds it filled with all sorts of ingredients. It is something new to him.

This entry into one's own body as into something unfamiliar and containing unknown elements is an experience that may befall those who do not keep faithfully to the right path. For Ahriman strives to establish himself in the human body and to transform certain organs into organs of knowledge. Lucifer, however, incites his fiery spirits of will to take certain forces out of us in order to make these forces independent. And so if we cross the Threshold in the direction of Lucifer's realm and then come back into the body, we feel as if certain parts are hollow, as if something has been taken out of us. Ahriman adds something, because as he enters into us he fills the organs. Lucifer takes away organs, makes what was otherwise part of our own organism, independent of us.

This is one of the aims of Lucifer—to make independent what belongs to us. And that is why in the pursuit of unjustifiable mystical experiences it may so easily happen that mystics, by consolidating and brooding over their own inner life, prepare it for Lucifer who can then draw it out of them. It is really so: Lucifer approaches the human being and draws out something from his brain, namely, the intellect. The intellect is drawn out as part of the etheric brain or of the etheric heart, made independent, and then a man feels that part of him has become hollow and empty. This is actually an experience associated with intensely egotistic individuals who have reached a certain high level of development. It can be seen that certain parts of their forces have been detached and are then, as it were, outside them. Lucifer robs man of certain forces with which he then proceeds to work. This state of things must naturally be prevented and it is prevented by faithful adherence to the right path. It is, however, a Luciferic conception to imagine that something can be taken away from man and then utilised as though he has no longer any part in it—for example, if a man's teaching is stolen from him and then utilised in the world. There you have a hint of the domain where such things actually happen. A great deal can be learnt from an error—above all from the error that teaching can be separated from the teacher. By observing these facts one can learn more than by merely criticising them—justifiable though this may well be. It is not difficult to realise what danger there would be were this kind of thing to become more general in the future. And the danger actually exists!

On the other side man is approaching the danger that in the process of the independent development of the Spirit-Self, Ahriman may take possession of it. Already ncw, those who have an eye for such things perceive how men lose their independence and how Ahriman is actually guiding their hand when they write. That is the one side, and the other is that things are taken and utilised, and it is believed possible to separate them from their originator. But the legitimate and only right way will be for men to accept the guiding principles of Spiritual Science, whereby on the one side the illumination that is shed upon nature safeguards them when they break through its veil. A zoology, a botany, a science of agriculture based on the principles of Spiritual Science must be brought into being; everything, medicine too, must be enriched by these principles. But medicine can be rightly enriched only by those who are not afraid to pierce the veil of nature, to enter right into the Ahrimanic world where they must battle against the spirits of destruction. To discover what is health-bringing for man, one must enter the region of those spirits who destroy all human life, who bring about illness and death; for only in the realm where lie the deeper causes of illness and death can the remedies be found.

Similarly, one who wishes to learn what will be fruitful for the human soul, must not be afraid to battle with the Luciferic beings; he must preserve unshakable moral courage if he wishes to cross the Threshold, he must realise that he is entering a region of spiritual beings where his every thought will tend to produce in him a slight touch of vertigo because it is on the point of being wrested from him, because it is about to flit away and he must swiftly take hold of it lest it escape him. Nobody can penetrate into this region without calmly battling against everything which, when it is out of balance, leads the human being to unhealthy, subjective mysticism.

But Spiritual Science steers us in such a way that, if we understand it, we actually find the strength to combat the Ahrimanic forces of destruction wherever they may be at work. And when, as in the Mystery plays, we apply Spiritual Science to the onflowing development of human life, and to the unfolding life of nature when we portray the forces of nature in the forms of our pillars and architraves, and when we portray the higher secrets of existence by placing Christ over against Lucifer and Ahriman as in our statue, when we approach these things in such a way that the spiritual powers become objective realities to us, then, my dear friends, we find the strength which the mystic does not, as a rule, possess—the strength to battle against the Luciferic powers.

From this you will realise that Spiritual Science was from the outset obliged to take the form in which it has actually been presented, and that what it creates, in addition to its theoretical teachings, is also essentially part of it. Let us try more and more to make our thinking conform with the thinking proper to Spiritual Science, for not until we free ourselves from the prejudices current in the outside world can we have a rightful place in Spiritual Science.

• 1. Note by translator: According to Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, the more commonly-known term “fixed idea” would not be the correct translation here. The expression “imperative” or “insistent” idea approximates more closely to the example given by Dr. Steiner.
• 2. This was the name of a project which did not continue.

In recent lectures given here my endeavour has been to show how in the middle of the 19th century a flood of materialism burst into the evolutionary process of humanity, and how from different sides it was felt that a flood of materialism of this kind had never previously been known, and that furthermore there was a certain significance in the way it had arisen I also tried to bring home the fact that men must arm themselves if they are to continue along the path of evolution once laid down for humanity.

Particularly in the most recent lectures¹ I described the efforts that were made from different quarters concerned with the furtherance of cultural aims akin to those of spiritual science to inculcate an element which was deemed necessary in order to demonstrate to men that something entirely new must be added to the old. Naturally, a very great deal more could be said about this subject, and as time goes on, there will be opportunities for speaking of many aspects of it—for illustrations will have to be given of what was presented in the first place more in the form of narrative. Today, however, I want to show that towards the middle of the 19th century there were evidences in the external spiritual life, too, of a feeling that a crucial point had been reached. In the external spiritual life—that is to say, in the different philosophical movements, the literary movement and so on—there are evidences that a convulsive element interpolated itself into the course of evolution. As numbers of illustrations could be given, it is obviously only possible to select one or two.

I will take as our starting-point today, two examples from European literature. These examples will show that in the hearts and minds of some men there was a feeling that significant things were taking place in the invisible worlds.

One of these examples is Gutzkow's novel “The Mahaguru”—the great Guru.² The second—remarkably enough it was written at about the same time—is the extraordinarily interesting drama which ends with the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”³ So far as my knowledge of it goes, it seems to me to represent a crowning point in Polish literature of the 19th century.

It is remarkable that in the thirties of the 19th century, the young freethinker Gutzkow—then in his twenties—should have chosen this particular material in order to point to much that was astir at that time, linking it on to a personage who subsequently became the Dalai-Lama in Tibet—the “Mahaguru,” as he called him.

A few brief words will suffice to outline this picture of conditions apparently so remote from those prevailing in Europe, yet in reality infinitely pertinent to them, “The Mahaguru” was published in the thirties of the 19th century—at the dawn, therefore, of the age of materialism.

One of the principal characters in the novel is a man who makes models of gods. What is such a man in Tibet? He is one who models figures of gods out of all kinds of substances (as we today work with clay or plasticine); he makes models of gods according to the traditions strictly laid down in the Tibetan canon. The details of these figures must be absolutely correct: the proportions laid down for the facial structure, the size and position of the hands—all must be exact. The hero, or rather one of the heroes of the novel, has descended from an ancient stock, the members of which have always been engaged in the trade of making gods, and he is an expert in his craft. His fame is widespread and his figures of gods are bought all over Tibet. In modeling one of the chief gods, a very terrible thing happens to him.—We must of course try to put ourselves into the heart and mind of a Tibetan before the whole import of the word “terrible” in this connection will be clear to us.—To the heart of a devout Tibetan it is a terrible thing that befell this maker of gods. In the figure of one of the chief gods, the length between the nostrils and the upper lip was not correct, not in accordance with the canon. This was a terrible and significant matter. The man had departed from the ancient, time-honoured canon and had made the space between the nostrils and the upper lip a little larger than was prescribed.

In Tibet this is a dreadful sin—nearly or perhaps just as dreadful as when someone in the West today states to an audience of orthodox believers that the existence of the two Jesus boys was necessary in order that Christ might descend into Jesus—or when he speaks of a faculty of knowledge higher than the ordinary faculty, so that he must be accused of inducing his followers to engage in experiments with clairvoyance and the like. Such teachings are sheer fantasy—that is what is said today. But in the days described in this novel it was an equally outrageous sin that in a figure of one of the chief gods the nostrils should lie too far above the upper lip. The only thing that is different is the actual form of punishment. Today, the most that happens is that lectures crammed with inaccuracies are delivered and other “justifiable” measures adopted. But at that time in Tibet the maker of gods was obliged to appear before the supreme tribunal of the Inquisition—the dread Council of black Inquisitors.—That is how it would be designated in terms current in Europe today.

So the maker of gods was obliged to set out for Lhassa and present himself before the tribunal—police are not necessary in Tibet, for the people obey automatically; when they are told that they must appear before the tribunal of the black Inquisition, there is no need to fetch them. So the maker of gods set out with his brothers and his enchanting daughter, a great Tibetan beauty.

With her masterly knowledge of the Tibetan canon, this daughter had been helping him devotedly and efficiently for many years and was an altogether lovable character. The brothers of the man were obliged to accompany him because they were co-responsible for what he had done. The caravan party now set out for Lhassa where the sinner must appear before the black tribunal. When they had traveled some distance from their home on the way to Lhassa, they came upon a curious troop of men, also bound for Lhassa, weeping, dancing, whistling, beating all kinds of instruments, and led by a Shaman. He was an acquaintance, a youthful playmate of the daughter of the maker of gods, and he knew the members of the caravan party, at the head of which was the man on his way to judgment in Lhassa, weighed down by the sinfulness he had incurred with his falsely-made god. The Shaman impressed upon him the danger of his position, saying that it would be a good thing if the real Dalai-Lama were still on the throne, but possibly the new Dalai-Lama had already been found and would be ruling Tibet from Lhassa. If that were so, things might be even worse, for the Vice-Regent was able in certain circumstances to be merciful in the administration of justice—but if the new Dalai-Lama were installed there was no telling whether or not the supreme penalty would have to be paid. And when the canon had been violated as seriously as the maker of gods had violated it by placing the nostrils too high above the upper lip—naturally the penalty would be death.

So the sinner learns that the Dalai-Lama, the Mahaguru, may soon be found. What does this mean in Tibet? The Tibetans are convinced that the soul of the great Bodhisattva who rules over Tibet passes from one body to another. When a Dalai-Lama dies, a new Dalai-Lama must be sought for—on an entirely democratic basis, for the Tibetans are thoroughly democratic in their attitude. No rank is hereditary, nothing transmitted from father to son by way of the body is of any account. According to Tibetan ideas this principle is utterly inconsistent with the dignity of the Dalai-Lama. Therefore when a Dalai-Lama dies the priesthood must set about finding a new Dalai-Lama, and then every young boy must be inspected—for the great soul might have incarnated in the very poorest family. The whole country must be searched and every boy in every house and on the roads scrutinised; if one of them shows signs of what is considered by the priesthood to indicate the necessary intelligence, be has the prospect of being acclaimed as the Dalai-Lama. The conviction is that in the boy who shows the most signs, the great soul of the Bodhisattva has incarnated, and then he is the Dalai-Lama. In the interval, while the search continues for the incarnation of the god in human form, a Vice-Dalai-Lama must rule the country temporarily.

Gutzkow's story continues.—It is already being rumoured that the new Mahaguru or the new Dalai-Lama will eventually be crowned in Lhassa, brought there with all honours.—And here I must interpolate an episode narrated by Gutzkow; he interpolates it in a slightly different place in the story, but what we are trying to do is to get a picture of his “Mahaguru.”

The beautiful girl was journeying with her father, the sinner. According to the Tibetan Constitution, his brothers are also fathers because a kind of polyandry is customary there. When a man marries, his brothers also marry the same woman. So the brothers of a father are also fathers, although one is the actual chief. The caravan procession is beautifully described in the book: the fathers are in front, then the chief father (the sinner) and his beautiful daughter. While she was still a small child and was just beginning to help her father, she had a companion with whom she liked to play, who at that time had been very dear to her and whose memory she still cherished. The Shaman at the head of the shrieking, whistling band had also been one of her early playmates and he was the brother of the one who had been her dearly-loved companion.—I have had to interpolate this in order to make what comes later more intelligible.—

The whole caravan moves on towards Lhassa, and on arriving there it is learnt that the new Mahaguru, the new Dalai-Lama, has been installed with all the honours due to him. But first we are told how the great sinner who has made the nostrils too far above the upper lip in a figure of one of the chief Tibetan gods is led before the black tribunal.

During the terrible proceedings of the tribunal it is made clear that this is a sin whose only expiation is death. Meanwhile the sinner is thrown into prison together with his family, to await a further trial in which all the sins ever committed by him are to be enumerated.—It must be emphasised that until now he had committed no sin other than that of having made the distance between nostrils and upper lip barely a millimeter too long in one of his figures. But in Tibet that is a crime punishable by death.

With pomp and splendour the new Dalai-Lama has been installed in office. We are told of many Tibetan customs, also of what goes on around the Court at Lhassa. Exact and lengthy descriptions are given in the book. In this setting, with the honourable rank of a Chinese Envoy at the Court, was a man who also had a charming young sister and who had reached a certain degree among the mandarins of China. He was a mandarin of the 6th degree but was hoping soon to be raised to a higher rank. Actually the ideal to which he aspired was the Order of the Peacock's Feather. But while this Chinese Envoy is dreaming his dreams, the most daring of which is to be made a member of the high Order of the Peacock's Feather, the new Dalai-Lama has been installed in his glory. The new Dalai-Lama knows that he has made the sun, the moon, the stars, the lightning and the clouds, the plants and the stones, and he explains to those who now come to pay their respects to him how he created it all, that he is the creator of everything that is visible in the wide universe and also of what is invisible—that he is therefore the primal creator of the visible world and of the invisible worlds connected with it.

Now in Tibet—as elsewhere—there are two parties. But these two parties are still closely bound up with the spiritual evolution of mankind in very ancient times. The two parties, whose priests belong to different sects, are usually designated by their headgear: the Yellow Caps and the Red Tassels. These two parties are in perpetual conflict with one another. In our language—for in Tibet these things are closely connected with the spiritual—we should say; the Yellow Caps are connected with the Luciferic element, the Red Tassels more with the Ahrimanic. These traits come to expression not only in their doctrines but also in their deeds: the Luciferic element is predominant in the doctrines and deeds of the Yellow Caps, the Ahrimanic element in those of the Red Tassels. In consequence of this—to explain why would lead us too far afield—the Red Tassels are bent upon ensuring that the Dalai-Lama at Lhassa shall be regarded as the lawful god who has created the plants, the animals and men; it is in their interest that the new Dalai-Lama shall be found and that the whole country shall believe him to be the lawful god—whereas the Yellow Caps are always indignant when the new Dalai-Lama is found and sits on the throne. For in Tibet, as well as the Dalai-Lama there is a Teshu-Lama, whose followers are found more among the northern Tibetans and the Mongol tribes. The Teshu-Lama strives his whole life long to overthrow the Dalai-Lama and usurp the throne. The Yellow Caps, then, support the Teshu-Lama and try to put him on the throne.

The man who aspires to the Order of the Peacock's Feather is now faced with the fact that a new Dalai-Lama is there. China, his country, holds a kind of mandate over Tibet. The Teshu-Lama is out to contest the throne, so there is opportunity here for intrigue. The man now begins to intrigue by arranging a kind of warlike caravan column to go to the Teshu-Lama and reinforce his power. But in reality his aim is not that the Teshu-Lama shall come to the throne but that the Chinese regiment shall be able to tighten the reins. In the confusion caused by this action, the beautiful daughter of the sinner is able to escape from the prison, and something unheard of happens: in the garden where only the god, the Dalai-Lama, may walk, she comes across him—and lo! the Dalai-Lama was her childhood's playmate who one day had suddenly disappeared and in the intervening time had been trained to become the Dalai-Lama. He is now the Dalai-Lama and encounters this girl, the daughter of the sinner. A deeply-interesting dialogue now ensues.—You can well imagine the situation that may arise when the girl, who had loved her playmate very intensely, encounters this playmate who is convinced that he has created the sun, the moon and the stars, and she is not altogether disinclined to believe in her god. But the priests discovered the shameful thing that had happened and threw the girl back into prison. The Dalai-Lama, however, sitting on his soft silken cushions, surrounded by all his other appurtenances, continues to meditate on how he directs the lightning and the clouds, how he has created and sustains the other phenomena of the visible world.—

The further course of the story brings us once again to the black tribunal. There is a terrible scene because the sinner, who to begin with had nothing on his conscience except the fact of having made the nostrils and upper lip of the god about a millimeter too far apart, now appears as an arch-criminal. He had gone mad in prison and had made out of some kind of substance—similar to what we should now call plasticine—most curious figures of gods. Just imagine it—A Tibetan tribunal confronted with a whole number of false figures of gods made by the culprit in prison! A howl of anger arises, no matter how he tries to vindicate himself; the judges sit around and the long galleries are full of people. The judges are monks who lay down the correct measurements of each feature in the case of every single god, how much larger the stomach of a god may be than that of an ordinary man, and so on; all the sins thus committed by the man with the figures made in prison are enumerated one by one. It is a dreadful affair and the fanatical judges pour their wrath on the sinner. He and his party are again thrown into prison, together with his daughter whose particular charm consists in the fact that because her feet are not too minute they differ from the excessively small feet customary in the Far East—in other respects, too, she is a lovely creature. But the followers of the aspirant to the Order of the Peacock's Feather cause a commotion in Lhassa and in the confusion a fire breaks out, burning the very house where the girl is imprisoned. She appears at the top of the house amid the smoke and flames at the moment when the Dalai-Lama is passing by with his brother, the Shaman, who, knowing all that has happened, has helped him to escape. At the crucial moment the human heart of the god, the Dalai-Lama, is moved. Instead of sending thunder and lightning to help, he throws himself into the flames, rescues the girl and brings her to the ground. He flees with her to a lonely, mountainous region together with his brother—and the Teshu-Lama, supported by the Yellow Caps, is enthroned in his place. So the beautiful girl goes off with the Mahaguru and his brother, the Shaman, and the Mahaguru is now married to her. After a year the Shaman dies. The good Dalai-Lama lives to an advanced age and for many long years is his wife's only husband. He actually outlives her, becomes a solitary old man and has long ceased to imagine that he rules over the lightning and the thunder, that he has created the mountains, forests and rivers, that sun, moon and stars circle in their courses according to his will. In his last years he becomes a Yogi, striving to acquire the wisdom that will lead his soul into the spiritual worlds. He stands on one leg, the other coiled around it like a serpent, one hand held behind him, the other raised upwards; he stands there with only his lips moving. The poor from the valley bring him food, but he never changes his posture.—The description of this final scene is most remarkable. We are told how the man who had been made the Dalai-Lama does indeed, in old age, find his god; how his soul dissolves into the elements which he was trying to understand and of which for a certain period in his life he had believed himself to be the creator.

The novel is a very remarkable product of the thirties of the 19th century, a work in which a comparatively young man describes with profound insight, customs prevailing in the strange country of Tibet. These customs are relics, surviving in the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, of many things that existed in quite different forms in the Atlantean age, that is to say, the fourth main period of earth-evolution. The outward significance lies in the fact of such a novel having been written when it was; it shows that a human soul felt the need to portray something that in truth can be understood only by those who have at least some inkling of the evolutionary course of mankind, in its spiritual aspect too. One man in Europe at all events divines that in this strange country, in many Tibetan customs seeming to us so grotesque, there is preserved more faithfully than anywhere else—in caricature, of course—what was present in a quite different form in the Atlantean world. That is the outward significance, added to the fact that this novel was written at the time it was, and that attention is directed to a country which affords most telling evidence of how in the so-called Yellow Caps and Red Tassels there still live the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces with which the men of Atlantis, especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, were well acquainted and with which they worked.—But something else as well is inwardly significant in this novel, “The Mahaguru.”

Inwardly significant is what is presented to us in the scene of the proceedings at the black Inquisition-tribunal. The sinner makes a remarkable speech in self-defence. As we know, he had made a great number of gods during his imprisonment; but he made them when be was in a state of madness. There is a fine description of how the first symptoms of madness already became apparent on the way to Lhassa, how the condition became more and more acute and finally broke out in the form referred to. In a state of complete madness he had made all kinds of figures which violated the canon in the most atrocious way. We learn a great deal about the Tibetan canon from Gutzkow's powerful description; but we also learn something quite remarkable.—We are told that this great sinner, as the offspring of his forbears, has become a maker of gods—as is invariably the custom in Tibet. The figures he made had always been correct in every detail: the proportions and positions of the limbs, the length between nostrils and upper lip, and the like. Never once had it happened that the measurement between nostrils and upper lip had been one iota too long—but it did happen once, and he must expect death as the penalty. But now, as a madman—that is to say, in the condition where his soul is already to some extent outside his body—he uses his body in such a way as to produce utterly heterodox figures of gods. And now, he who knows nothing about Art except what is laid down by the canon for the making of gods, makes a long speech in his own defence, a speech in which, in his madness, he talks about principles of art. For one who understands these things it is a most moving scene. As long as the connection between the man's four bodies was intact, only the negligible mistake in the measurement between nostrils and upper lip could occur. But now, after the astral body and etheric body have loosened from the physical body, the man becomes an artist, producing grotesque, but for all that, artistic figures. The Inquisition does not understand this and believes that he had allied himself with evil in order to destroy the works of the gods.—The description of the moving scene at the tribunal reminds us of many things I have said about the aberrations of the human soul towards the one abyss or the other. In the soul of the young Gutzkow, too, the thought arose that there may come a time when men will no longer be able to find their equilibrium.—And now he places such men in the setting of a Tibetan religious community, because these problems can be brought home more vividly by presenting sharply contrasting situations, and because the novelist is able to show how art suddenly comes upon the scene. Art bursts forth from a human soul who has gone astray in the abyss, a human soul who has drawn near to Lucifer in order to save himself from the Ahrimanic claws of the Red Tassels, who are there as the unlawful judges. A profound law is indicated here—the law of man's connection with the spiritual world and its abysses: the world of Lucifer and the world of Ahriman.

Before continuing this particular line of thought, I want to say something about the Polish drama by Zigmunt Krasinski, which ends with the words: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean?” A translation of parts of it, under the title “La Comedie Infernale,” was given by Mickiewicz in his lectures in Paris in the year 1842.⁴ I must emphasise that I am not in a position to form a judgment of the drama from the purely artistic point of view because I know only the idea and intention underlying it. The fine impressions of this drama given by Adam Mickiewicz in his lectures enables me to speak about its basic idea and intention, but I can say nothing about it as a work of art. This reservation must be kept in mind. It is possible, however, to speak about the drama in this way, for Mickiewicz analysed its underlying idea and intention. The passages in French are so excellent that by studying what Mickiewicz says one is immediately impressed by its grandeur and significance. This conviction is still further strengthened when one reads Mickiewicz's rendering of the beautiful preface on the spirit of poetry. This is obviously a drama that has sprung from the very depths of the human soul. It presents the secrets of the life of soul in a wonderful way.

The chief character is a Polish Count; speaking to him and bending towards him from left and right are good angels and bad angels, the former intent upon leading mankind to the good side of evolution, the latter to the bad side. The relevant scenes are translated into French and show with what wonderful simplicity the Polish poet was trying to depict the relations of the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi to the hero of the drama, the old Count. We then learn of the Count's family life which has suffered on account of his personal characteristics. He lives entirely in the Past as it plays into his personal life, in the past history and evolution of the human race; surrounded by pictures of his parents and forbears, he also lives in the past of his Polish ancestral stock. He pays very little heed to the Present and so can find no real link with his wife. But in what has come to him through heredity, in what has been implanted in him through the blood refined through many generations, there is also in him an unusual spirituality, a sense for the realities of those worlds which hover above the earthly world. The result is that he can find no inner link with his wife. He lives entirely in the spirit, and the manner of his life is such that he is regarded by those around him as a god-gifted prophet. His wife has just borne him a son. We then come to the scene of the child's baptism, but the Count himself is not there. He can find no bond with anything earthly. This baptism and the circumstances associated with it send the child's mother insane. The Count had gone away, and when he returns to the house after the baptism, he learns that his wife has been taken to a madhouse.

Strangely enough we are again confronted with a case where the members of a man's constitution have loosened. We are told of the words that had been uttered by the wife before she went mad. Before the baptism the idea came to the mother that misfortune would surround the child because her own talents and human qualities had not made her equal to living, like her husband, in the spiritual world, and that she was incapable of bearing a child who would be able to live with sufficient intensity in the spiritual worlds to win the father's love. And with all the strength of her soul she longs to penetrate into the spiritual worlds in order to bring down for her son what is to be found in yonder worlds. Her wish is to bring from the spiritual worlds everything that would imbue the child with spirituality. This drives her insane and she is put into a madhouse—or asylum, as we should say nowadays.

The old Count searches for and finds her there, and she speaks deeply moving words to him. First of all, she declares that she wants to bring out of the spiritual worlds for the child those qualities that will enable the father to love him—and then she speaks wonderful words to this effect: I can traverse all worlds; my wings carry me upwards into all the worlds; I would fain gather up everything that is there and instill it into my child; I would fain gather all that lives in the light of the spirit and in the heavenly spheres in order to make my child a poet.—One passage in particular is deeply indicative of the poet's intuitive conception of the spiritual world. It is where he lets the old Count say, on hearing that his wife has become insane: Where is her soul now? Amid the howling screams of maniacs! Darkness has enshrouded this bright spirit who was full of reverence for the great universe ... She has sent her thoughts into the wilderness, searching for me!

The father then goes to the child who had been born physically blind but who has become clairvoyant. The child speaks of his mother. Some time after this scene, remarkable words are uttered by the Count. In the meantime the mother has died. The child had told his father that his soul could always soar, as if on wings, to where the mother now dwelt—the mother he had not known. While the child is describing how he looks into the spiritual world, he relates something which he himself could not have heard but which the father had heard from the wife when she was already insane, as her last wish. The Count speaks remarkable words—remarkable for those who understand these things in the light of spiritual science. He asks: Is it then possible that one who has passed through death retains for a time the last ideas he had before death?

So we see how mother and child go to pieces physically, and are transported in a certain abnormal, atavistic way into the spiritual world. Around the Count whose spirit lives entirely in the Past, they go to pieces physically and are transported atavistically into the spiritual worlds.

We cannot fail to perceive an inner connection between this atavistic transport into the spiritual world of those around the old Polish Count and of the Tibetan maker of gods in the novel “The Mahaguru” who, after he becomes insane and has gone to pieces physically, describes principles of art and produces an entirely new world of gods. The Polish drama, perhaps even more clearly than the novel, makes us aware of the cry which goes forth from humanity: What will befall if the souls of men cannot receive teachings concerning the spiritual worlds in the right and pure form? What will become of humanity in the future? Must human beings go to pieces physically if they are to enter the spiritual worlds?—

Earnest souls were inwardly compelled to put these grave questions to destiny. And as we read the preface to “The Undivine Comedy” we feel that these questions stood in all their urgency before the soul of the Polish poet. There is perhaps no finer, no more poignant description of this tragic situation than is given in the preface to this drama.

Confronting the Count who has seen his family go to pieces around him, is a forceful personage who will have nothing to do with the Past; inwardly he is a Tartar-Mongolian character, outwardly a personality who has imbibed the socialistic doctrines of Fourier, Saint Simon and others, who will stop at nothing in order to destroy all existing conditions and to establish a new social order for mankind, who says; The world of the Past in which the Count lives must be exterminated root and branch from the earth.—A despot is presented to us, a despot who is bent upon universal destruction, who will not tolerate things as they are. A battle begins between the bearer of the Past and the bearer of the Present, a vehement battle, brilliantly described. The scenes that have been translated into French amply justify this praise.

There is also a dialogue between the despot and the old Count; a dialogue that could take place only between men in whose souls two world-destinies confront each other. A battle wages in which the old Count appears with the clairvoyant child. The child and the old Count perish and the despot is the victor. The whole of the Count's faction is exterminated. The old order is overcome, the despot has gained the mastery; the Present has triumphed over the Past.

The description of the field of battle is magnificent. And then still another scene is presented. After the battle the despot stands with a friend, looking upwards towards a high rock gleaming with the golden light of the sun that is setting behind it.—And suddenly he has a vision. The friend sees nothing unusual, he sees only the rock gleaming in the setting sun. But the despot who has burdened his soul so heavily, with whom the impression remains of the old Count whose life has been so full of experiences—the despot stands there—and sees over this mountain pinnacle the figure of Christ Jesus.—

From this moment onwards he knows: Neither the old Count, the representative of the Past, who lives in the spirit in an atavistic way and has been able only to save the Past that is breaking up around him, nor he himself who lives in the immediate Present, has won the real victory. He knows that a battle will ensue but that neither of the two will be victorious—neither the Past which can lead only to atavistic life in the spiritual world, nor the Present, of which he, the despot, is the representative. The Present, basing itself upon doctrines such as those of Fourier and Saint-Simon, mocks at angels and teachings about God. Christ Jesus Who now appears to him shows him: Victory lies neither on the one side nor the other, but in that which is above them both.—And the One—Christ Jesus—whom the despot now beholds over the pinnacle gleaming golden in the rays of the setting sun, draws from him the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”—Thereupon he falls down dead. This is the tragic consequence brought about through what is higher than the two streams which are presented in such magnificent contrast in this drama. As is clear from the single scenes, we have in this wonderful product of Polish literature a magnificent expression of Polish Messianism. We see how with the coming of the modern age it behoves men to ask weighty, far-reaching questions concerning the destiny of the human race.

• 1. “The Occult Movement in the 19th Century.” Course of 10 lectures.
• 2. “The Mahaguru” has not been translated into English.
• 3. See notes later in lecture on “The Undivine Comedy” (Krasinski).
• 4. An English translation, of the drama, with the title “The Undivine Comedy,” and Mickiewicz's analysis, was published in 1875. A later translation with a preface by G. K. Chesterton was published in 1924. (George Harrap & Co., London.)

I spoke yesterday of the great Polish drama “The Undivine Comedy” by Krasinski and of its very special significance. One can truly say that it was consciously brought into the world as the outcome of a dialogue with the Spirits working in the evolution of humanity, who in the middle of the 19th century spoke to those who were willing to listen to them.

Let us for a moment hold in our minds the thoughts that came to us from the realisation that what was astir in the inmost depths of the evolutionary process made its way into the external literary culture of the time. From Gutzkow's novel “The Mahaguru” as well as from “The Undivine Comedy”—I chose only two particularly striking examples from many that might be quoted—we see that as it were behind the scenes of external happenings, significant impulses are at work in the cultural life of mankind. From many sources we have gained knowledge that directs our minds and hearts to the great moment of world-evolution in which we are living, the moment when it is essential to be mindful of the new element that must be received into the evolution of humanity—but with the co-operation of human souls who are able to understand it. There are different ways of characterising the importance of the present time, but perhaps one thing only need be said and this will be sufficient to bring home the significance of the point of time at which we are standing.

In ages of antiquity men received a heritage consisting of wisdom yielded by atavistic clairvoyance and of knowledge gained atavistically. But this heritage petered away and the tide of materialism arose—particularly since the last three or four centuries and reaching a peak in the 19th century. This tide of materialism veiled all possibilities of vision into the spiritual world—and a new path, a new method, is now appearing in spiritual science. As I have often said, this development ultimately becomes a natural process in the souls of men. The situation today still is that the vast majority of souls have yet to learn that there are many earthly lives. But when the souls now living are re-incarnated, for the most part they will know, not merely as a theory, that there are many earthly lives; they will live on into an age when it will be known quite as a natural matter of course: there are many earthly lives. Just as human souls now remember back to a certain point in childhood, and thoughts from childhood constantly arise, so it will be natural one day for the living impression to well up from within: “We have been here many times.” Human souls will evolve to this stage just as they have evolved from primitive stages of life. This development will come about of itself but the following is inevitable.—

The souls who have learnt nothing from spiritual science today will die and return in new incarnations. Then, having learnt nothing from spiritual science, they will not know what to make of the impression that will rise up from within them of the truth of repeated earthly lives, and they may well be driven to despair. For this inner impression that will arise quite naturally in the soul must be grasped through thoughts, and the thoughts that are necessary before it can be understood are those yielded by spiritual science. These thoughts should make the whole history of the Ego and the fact of its existence in man intelligible to us; and he alone who has within him the force of these thoughts will be able to understand the impression that will come of itself, as a kind of remembrance.

But the foundation for understanding this remembrance will from now onwards have to be laid through spiritual science; knowledge of the continued existence of the Ego will have to be acquired. And those who have not acquired it will have to admit, when these remembrances well up in them: “I do not understand my own self.” This will be a terrible cry of despair in future times. It must be realised that only through knowledge and understanding of what will inevitably come in the future can human souls be kept from falling into despair. When the Ego which passes from incarnation to incarnation asserts itself in the future—and this means in our future incarnations—men must be able to understand this Ego. And they will do so if they have worked on their souls through the thoughts of spiritual science.

The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled in order that the Ego might be fully understood, and this can never happen if—as in the case of the Polish Count described yesterday—men preserve in their souls nothing but feelings of the Past—sacred though these feelings may be and connected with the events centred in the Mystery of Golgotha. Such feelings will enable these events to be grasped as matters of history, but that cannot lead to any true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. True understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha depends upon the fulfilment of the words; “Not I but Christ in me.” It will then be possible for Christ in His living activity within earth-evolution not to remain inaudible to men. He must be made audible through that which, under his inspiration, spiritual science has to say, no sentiments or feelings tied to remembrances, can lead mankind to future well-being. But neither can the interests of the future be furthered by one who lives only in and for the Present—the tyrant described in the lecture yesterday. The tyrant does indeed, assert the Ego, but not Christ within the Ego. A deep riddle is presented to us in this Polish drama: two personalities stand in contrast to one another, one of whom has the Christ of tradition, of history, but runs the risk of falling away from Him. And what comes to expression in the wife and in the child of the Count relapses into a purely atavistic connection with the spiritual world.

A great danger for our time is indicated here. It is that those who are not willing to assimilate in a new way the knowledge of mankind's connection with the spiritual worlds, although they feel that such connection exists, will cause part of their being to lose the requisite link with the spiritual world. Mankind would fall asunder into those who—like the old Count—must necessarily despair and die because they cling exclusively to the Past, and those who rise into the spiritual worlds in an atavistic way—like the Count's wife and child. Because they have not received the Christ into their inmost being in full reality, they pass into the spiritual world without finding in themselves a point of anchorage.

What is it that the members of the Count's family have not fully developed? They have not fully developed the Ego: they are remains from the age which in the regular course of the evolution of humanity has been at an end since the Mystery of Golgotha, but markedly so since the last few centuries. They are remains from an age of antiquity when the Ego had not yet completely taken root in man; they are Ego-less human beings who, because they cannot take the Christ into the Ego which has not developed into the necessary intensity, lose the Christ. And standing in contrast to them is the tyrant, who has developed the Ego and bears it in himself with all strength; without taking the Christ into the Ego, he desires to bring happiness to the world but is incapable of doing so. At the point of death—out of the vision which the tyrant understands as little as he understands how to resign himself to death—there breaks from his lips the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”—This is an indication of the fact that for those human beings who have, it is true, acquired the Ego but have not taken Christ into this Ego, there is one moment only when it is possible for them to come into relationship with Christ: it is the moment when they pass from this world into the other world. But because Christ came from that other world into this world in order there to find the way to human hearts, men must inevitably lose Him when, after the moment of death, they arrive in that other world. All the deeper impulses at work in our time belong to a sphere where momentous issues are at stake—I can say no more than that they “are at stake.”

But now we must go rather more deeply into things that are already known to us but must be studied in a certain setting if we are to understand them in the light of the conditions prevailing in our time. We know that, properly speaking, the evolution of the earth must be divided into an epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha and an epoch following the Mystery of Golgotha. We know, too, that in the epoch before the Mystery of Golgotha, Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits also worked into the souls of men. Particularly in considering the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha it must be realised that foolish chatter about avoiding Ahriman and Lucifer at all costs will get us nowhere. For Ahriman and Lucifer were allowed by the normal, progressive spiritual Beings to work in the earthly evolution of men.

Now we know that there are spiritual Beings actually ranking higher than men but who during the Old Moon period of evolution did not reach the height that would have been possible for them; they did not reach it, but for all that they rank higher than men. So that bearing in mind the intervention of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, we can now understand better what is called the ancient, primeval wisdom in earth-evolution. For example, the ancient wisdom that was misused in the Lemurian epoch and perished with the Lemurians; the wisdom that was then misused in the Atlantean epoch and brought about the destruction of Atlantis. What was it that was then among men? What was it, in reality? To say that the great wisdom then existing was misused, applied in practices of black magic and so forth, is a very abstract way of speaking and leads to no very definite idea. Let us think, for example, of the character of this wisdom in the last periods of the Lemurian epoch. Whence had it come? Spiritual Beings who had not completed their full development during the Old Moon epoch but who were nevertheless at a higher level than men, had mingled with the earthly evolution of humanity. Man was already there—but, as you can well imagine, in his most primitive state. What was subsequently developed by human beings during the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs did not yet exist. In those Lemurian times, man was a being wholly devoid of intelligence, for intelligence was to develop only gradually during the course of earth-evolution. Man was primitive in his will, in his actions, in his soul-development—altogether like a child. Now had there existed only bodies of men with the higher members of those bodies that had been developed for them by the progressive spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, men would not have been capable at that time of evolving any outstanding wisdom. But in that Lemurian age a very lofty altogether extraordinary wisdom existed. For example, among those primitive men there was widespread knowledge of how to handle a child during the period between birth and the seventh year so that as the result of a certain transformation of his etheric body which then worked back upon the brain, he could be made extremely clever. Radical educational methods have to be applied today if this result is desired—and everyone is aware how very often these efforts are unsuccessful. But in any case the art of affecting the brain itself by exercising a certain influence on the etheric body of the brain, so that the child in question becomes extremely clever, is entirely lost today. Furthermore—and I hasten to emphasise it—this art is in no circumstances whatever legitimate in our time, for if it became at all general, even in its most elementary form, it would lead to terrible abuses.

How is the existence of such an art in Lemurian times to be explained? It is explained by the fact that Beings who had not completed their development on the Old Moon, but had evolved only the first six of their seven members, incorporated in men who otherwise would have been utterly primitive. The spiritual Beings who on the Old Moon were at a higher level than men but had not attained the apex of their development, took on these primitive human bodies and went to work with arts which far transcended all earthly knowledge. You can imagine what such Beings in human bodies were capable of accomplishing,—Beings who at a level higher than the human had developed the sixth member—the Life-Spirit—entered into these primitive, flexible, pliant bodies. And they became terrible magicians, dread magicians!

And again, what kind of arts were general in the Atlantean epoch? First and foremost there was the wisdom which must be applied in order to cause talents in ancestors to be transmitted, purely through heredity, to their descendants and actually to be enhanced in these descendants. The Beings whose development had not been completed on the Moon but who for all that were of a higher rank than earthly man, were deeply versed in this art—with most significant effect. Let me put it like this: it was as if by methods connected with star-constellations and the like, one were to lead over the qualities of a genius to his descendants, but in such a way that these spiritual qualities were not merely inherited, but intensified, enhanced. These higher Beings working in human bodies were capable of mighty achievements. All this was swept out of existence. Very many things were connected with these particular arts. For example, it was possible by their means to observe the course of spiritual evolution and to guide the spiritual forces into the stream of heredity.

And so even superficial observation will show that there is a very great deal in world-evolution which in an earlier age had its justification but which in the form it now bears is no more than a relic that has been preserved. Both in unimportant and important domains it is so. In his novel “The Mahaguru” Gutzkow wanted to indicate something of the kind in an important domain. He wanted to give emphasis to the question: In what form does something that had great significance in ancient times—in the Atlantean epoch, when it was still possible for men to regulate the stream of heredity—in what form does it appear when it is carried over into an age and into a community where the traditions of it had indeed been preserved but where nothing more was known of the earlier art than an inferior form of it called in occultism “Occult Chemistry?” Gutzkow showed that something of the kind existed in Tibet. Naturally, the priesthood in Tibet had no knowledge of how through forces of heredity they could produce a body for the individuality whom they believed should pass from one body into another—but they preserved the old customs. So there we have an example of the external reality presenting an aspect utterly different from what it had been in conditions once prevailing in the evolution of humanity. Reading “The Mahaguru” makes one want to cry out: Oh, how reality itself can become a maya in face of the prevailing conditions!

And now think of something else.—You can well imagine that the men of Lemurian and Atlantean times did not resemble the men of today, for what developed, inwardly in the soul at that time also gave configuration to the outer form; the whole outer form of man was different—it was pliant and flexible. The human form in the times of Lemuria and Atlantis was not ape-like; the bodies of the actual ancestors of men were not ape-like.—It would seem, therefore, that world-evolution must have made an exception in the case of certain people who have written of themselves that they can remember having descended from apes!¹—But we will not go into that now.—Men did not resemble apes, but if you picture our children presenting a much, much more infantile appearance, with an elemental quality of being extending over the whole body, you may be able to get an idea of the character of the human body in those times. As you can read in the book “From the Akasha Chronicle,” because Beings surviving from the Old Moon evolution had incarnated in these pliant, flexible bodies, these bodies became animal-like rather than human. Distorted forms arose, with strangely contorted limbs.—And there you have the origin of the figures of gods to be found among certain peoples. These curious figures with non-human faces and huge limbs, originate from the knowledge that the incarnating Moon-Beings were united with human bodies.

If in the Atlantean epoch there had been painters and sculptors, they would have been able to portray or model these figures of Moon-Beings incarnated in human bodies. But in Tibet this was no longer possible. Hence the canon must be strictly obeyed, for the artists would otherwise have made figures with whatever terms they liked. If a man did not obey the canon but created something out of his own play of fancy, he incurred the death-penalty. Naturally, one may ask: Is there any justification for condemning to death someone who makes only one tiny change in the figure of a god? Is there really any justification for it? In Tibet, of course, there is no longer any justification, but once upon a time there was, for as you have heard, these Beings were actually present in bodies, and if they were not faithfully portrayed, any deviation amounted to a lie. In those ancient times a lie had infinitely greater power than it has nowadays. If at the present time everyone who tells a lie were to suffocate as the result—well, I prefer to leave it at that, for I think that the fear of suffocation would be too great to allow people to risk telling lies! I assume that nowadays people will not suffocate—but at that time a lie would have caused actual suffocation. For the thought expressed in the word contained a power to give form to the air in the larynx, and then suffocated the man—and anyone who had incorrectly portrayed on earth a Being who had not fully completed his development on the Old Moon would have suffocated, in other words, a process of nature would have caused his death.

The evolution of humanity is an exceedingly complicated matter and to understand it one must go deeply into spiritual science. To find the right approach to world-evolution it is essential to study what it is the mission of spiritual science to make known from spiritual worlds. For spiritual science is, as it were, a first impulse to which other impulses must increasingly be added, in order that humanity in the future may advance along the right path. You will have realised from what I have been saying recently² that a course must be steered between a Scylla and a Charybdis, that a very definite path must be laid down in spiritual science.—This must be taken with the deepest earnestness. Our modern natural science is developed by materialistic methods. During these last weeks I have tried to describe its characteristics to you. I have said that a materialistic method in natural science is fully justified. It can be characterized by saying that it is adapted to cloak the spiritual reality lying behind. Why, then, must this materialistic method be there in our present time?

In our present time an earlier knowledge of nature must be superseded by a new knowledge of nature. I have told you something about this earlier knowledge of nature. Just think what kind of knowledge it was! To be able to mould a human head into an instrument editable for genius, through specific measures applied scientifically in the old sense of the word—this signified colossal knowledge!—or again, so to regulate heredity that qualities of genius were transmitted to descendants—the knowledge required for this was even more penetrating and comprehensive, far, far surpassing all the theories of evolution, the physics, chemistry and so on, of today. But that ancient knowledge was to be veiled and obscured by the materialistic method employed in natural science today—which is fully justified in the purely physical domain. It must be remembered that at the time when that lofty knowledge of nature existed, man was not a free being; he was only at the beginning of the gradual evolution of freedom. He was led and guided and what came to pass in the process of his guidance was for the most part brought about by the higher Hierarchies. And it was single individuals who deviated from the regular course, who advanced too far along the path to freedom, who were responsible for the fall into the abyss and the inevitable destruction of Atlantis. But with the constantly increasing freedom of will, man would have been unfit for knowledge of this kind. To possess knowledge such as once existed on the earth is unthinkable today because man's will has attained freedom to an extent that would enable him still to misuse this knowledge. How, then, is this free will guided into the right channel?

From indications I have given recently you will have gathered that by adopting the method employed in natural science, with all its scrupulous exactitude, the free will is directed into the right channel; moreover, this method is a wonderfully effective pedagogical means for the development of the free will. We have therefore no cause whatever to quarrel with the method employed in natural science, the justification of which for our present time we fully acknowledge. You will find that what is contained in our lecture-courses and books completely refutes the allegations of individual opponents—to the effect, for example, that we repudiate natural science. It is sometimes necessary to take exception to the pretensions of certain investigators and so-called scientific authorities; but nothing derogatory to the achievements of natural science will ever be found in our literature. To say that anything in our literature is a repudiation of natural science would be sheer calumny, for among us there can be no question of such repudiation. But at the same time it must be realised that attacks upon us may well be made from the side of so-called natural science—and if necessary, we must then repel the attack. But true adherents of spiritual science must become more and more conscious of the necessity to understand the natural-scientific method and to protect this method from being tainted by all kinds of non-scientific concepts—for example concepts of the atom and movement of the atom, of which I have recently spoken. These are fantasies of natural science, and the difference must be clearly seen.

Efforts must be made to distinguish between genuine natural science and scientific fantasy. How often do we not hear it said today that one thing or another is scientifically established—whereas it is nothing of the kind, because words are simply accepted as facts. Never was blind belief in authority greater than it is at the present time in the domain of science, for everyone allows things to be determined entirely by those in whom they happen to believe. The purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha was that what came into the world through Lucifer might gradually be corrected in a certain way—it is indicated symbolically in the Bible: “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil”—that is to say, ye shall know good and evil from outside. But when in the sphere of perceptions one perceives from outside, it is impossible to receive from that world anything other than perceptions. As soon as one begins to reflect about the perceptions, to speculate about them and derive all kinds of ideas from them, one is on the way to finding what has been imbued into them by Ahriman and Lucifer. The ideas must come out of the spiritual world and be united with the perceptions: then these ideas are in the real sense divine! In human life there must be a marriage between the ideas which are given to men from out of the Spiritual and what he perceives in the outer world through his senses. But this union must first be achieved. How this principle applies in the scientific domain you can gather from my essay “Truth and Science.” The belief that in the scientific sense, ideas, thoughts, could also be found from outside, from the perceptions, is based on illusion, on illusion caused by Ahriman and Lucifer. But as long as the Powers associated with the words “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil” (which means to search for the ideas in the outer world) were sanctioned, that is to say, until the Mystery of Golgotha—as long as Lucifer and Ahriman were allowed to work in this sphere, there was no objection to be made. But that state of things is now over. Now, in the matter of the permeation of perceptions from outside, they are all the more unjustified.

This too was brought into evidence in the middle of the 19th century through a crisis of a particular kind. This crisis announced itself in great and outstanding achievements: spectral-analysis, for example, came on the scene, swept away the conception that when one looks upwards to the stars one has to do with spiritual Beings—and showed that substances to be found everywhere in the universe also exist on the earth. The old union between ideas and perceptions is no longer possible, for such discoveries make it essential that the ideas shall again find the spiritual path into our souls. The same applies to Darwinism. To reason entirely on the basis of what is found by outer perception—that is to say, to seek for the ideas in the outer world—can only lead to a purely materialistic conception and interpretation of the world. In short, the crisis is in evidence everywhere and there is also widespread rebellion against the fact that the ideas must flow out of the spirit-realm into the souls of men if humanity is to make progress. In other words: we must understand the nature of Ahriman and Lucifer and be on the alert when they try to make us continue the principle indicated in the words; “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil.” We must learn to observe both Ahriman and Lucifer. And we shall be able to do this if we permeate the Ego, as it has now unfolded, with Christ.

But something else too resounded through the world in primeval times, resounded from a different side, after man had acquired the power to distinguish good and evil, to direct his gaze outwards, that is to say, to use his senses and through them to acquire ideas based on sense-perceptions. The decree went forth: Man must be driven out of the spirit-realm in which he has hitherto been living, in order that he may not also eat “of the Tree of Life.” But Christ will forever give men to eat of the Tree of Life, and the ideas which stream directly out of the spirit-realm into human souls must be inwardly experienced. But they can be experienced in the real sense only when the human soul takes Christ into itself. Then we have something quite different from the concept of Knowledge; then we have the concept of Life. Just as a strict eye must be kept on Lucifer and Ahriman in order that when they allow knowledge derived from the outer world to penetrate into us we may perceive that this knowledge is coming from them, so we must realise that through the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha, ideas were to flow into men to be the substance of life—the substance not of knowledge alone, but of life. And when from this standpoint of life we study the different religions of the world, it will be far, far from our minds to investigate these religions with the object of discovering whether they are or are not in keeping with our own view of the world. To apply only the concept of knowledge to these religions is not our task; we must apply the concept of life.

There are definite forms of religion in the world. We should not set out to discover whether we can consider these forms to be true, but whether through their ritual and ceremonies they are able to give nourishment and life to the souls of men, and—as the souls of men differ—it follows that their life can be sustained by different forms of nourishment. If we grasp this truth we shall realise that we can never lend ourselves to quarreling with any form of religion but that we must endeavour to understand it in so far as it is life-nourishment for human souls to whom it is given as life not as knowledge only, but as very life. Then we shall see that the standpoint from which a religion begins to quarrel with some branch of science is entirely misplaced. We shall also realise that religion will inevitably adopt a hostile attitude towards progress in natural science and spiritual science alike. For the religions are still unwilling to get away from the old Tempter, they still want to invoke only that God Who said to man that He will give them life, that they themselves are not to eat of the Tree of Life. The representatives of religions do not want to invoke God alone but also the Luciferic Spirit and the Ahrimanic Spirit; they want the eyes for distinguishing good and evil to be opened through religion. Religion wants to be “knowledge.” But it cannot be “knowledge” because it is life-substance. And under the sway of this temptation which still whispers in their ears, the representatives of the different religions believe they possess facts of knowledge in their religions, whereas the question of knowledge cannot, in reality, come into consideration between religion and science. We have no cause whatever to combat religious bodies, because we ask them about the sustenance they provide for life, not about what knowledge they possess. Religious communities will always be tempted to ask whether science as it advances is in keeping with what they regard as knowledge. But because life is in process of constant evolution, advancing science can never be in keeping with religions which invariably tend towards conservatism.

And now you can picture the whole conflict which in the nature of things will ever and again be urged. I should like you to think rightly about this conflict and to realize that as a matter of course the representatives of religious bodies, because they are under the sway of temptation, will always, from their standpoint, combat spiritual science, just as they combat natural science. But you must also realise that these opponents fight because they lack understanding. This does not excuse them at all, but it must none the less be realised that they fight because of lack of understanding; they cannot take the right standpoint. As a sign and symptom, let me bring to your notice words written by a man who perceived the inevitable approach of the natural-scientific age and the natural-scientific way of thinking, and who was told by a friend that one should not be concerned with knowledge that is not contained in the Bible or preserved in the traditions of the Church. Since the 14th century, of course, things have changed in this connection.—Dante's “Divine Comedy” is a great, world-embracing poem. But Dante lived at the time when the epoch during which men confined themselves to purely historical Christianity was passing away. For Dante, Virgil was simply the exile banished to hell. Dante did not know much about anything that differed from the Christianity confronting him as a great system and régime. But in the case of Petrarch it was different, 1 century later, in the 14th century, Petrarch read Virgil with far greater credence. He turned not only to Greek but also to Roman spiritual culture. When one of his friends wrote to Petrarch saying that there had appeared to him in a dream a spiritual Being who exhorted him to avoid all non-Christian literature, he (Petrarch) gave a very significant answer. I stress the importance of this incident because it shows how the friend—and through him, Petrarch—was enjoined from the spiritual world to concern himself only with what the Christianity of that time regarded as truly Christian. Petrarch wrote the following beautiful words which held good at that time for the approaching epoch and still hold good today. Petrarch replied to his friend Boccaccio in momentous words, affirming his standpoint, why he read this non-Christian literature, and what it meant to him (Petrarch: Letter to Boccaccio (“Epistolae seniles” I. 5):

“Why then should we shun the pagan poets and writers who do not use the name of Christ simply because they have never heard it? Surely there is greater danger in the books of sceptics who speak of Christ and at the same time dispute Him—but those who claim to be the defenders of the true faith read these writings with the greatest eagerness. Believe me: much that is simply the product of sloth and timidity is attributed to thoughtful deliberation. Men often cast scorn on what is out of their reach; it is characteristic of ignorance to condemn what it cannot comprehend and nobody will concede to it strivings of which it is incapable.

“Here lies the root of the misguided judgments of what is unknown; it is not so much the blindness of those who pass judgment as their laziness that is in evidence. We, however, should not allow ourselves to be frightened away from the sciences by any pious admonitions, or by indications of the near approach to death. If the sciences are imbibed with inner sincerity they quicken the love of morality and take from us, or at least diminish, the fear of death; if we abandon them, this will excite the suspicion that disbelief lays claim to be knowledge. The sciences are not a hindrance to one who has the right mastery of them, but they are a help to him; they level his path of life and do not thwart him.

“For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind. ...

“I know well that many have achieved great sanctity without culture, but I know too that nobody has been kept from sanctity by culture. ... If I am to tell you my own opinion, it is this: The path to holiness via ignorance may possibly be smooth, but it is faint-hearted. All good things have a single goal but many paths lead thither and fellow-travelers along these paths differ greatly; the one moves more slowly, the other more quickly, the one in obscurity, the other visibly, the one bowed with humility, the other buoyant with exultation. All journeying is blessed; but the noblest is that which proceeds freely and openly before the world. The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity, be it never so pious; and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

The same could be said about our spiritual science! And not only to X³ but to all the others who fight against us, one could rejoin with the words written by Petrarch to his friend; “For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind.”

And when people harp on the “contradiction in the first and third Gospels” and refuse to admit that the contradiction disappears as soon as the existence of two Jesus boys is taken into account; when they insist upon “simplicity” and say that the fantastic statements of “the one up there” (on the Goetheanum hill) can well be ignored; when they will not admit that all the forms of life are incorporated in our Building, but talk about “distorted, fantastic forms,” one must quote the words of Petrarch: “The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity; be it never so pious, and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

Such thoughts make us realise that it can never be our principle to combat any religious body and that it is sheer calumny when anyone accuses us of being an enemy of religious Movements. The very fact of such an accusation proves that there is no willingness even to try to understand us. This at least we must know; and we must resist every tendency to adopt an aggressive attitude to any religious community just as we must keep ourselves free from the same kind of attitude to natural science because that will soon disclose its attitude to spiritual science! There is no reason whatever for us to combat any religious body. Combat cannot be begun by us because it does not lie in our nature to attack. And it must be taken as an axiom that if peace is denied us, it is because the hostile neighbour is not inclined for peace. Let the principle of leaving us in peace be put to the test and then see whether peace is maintained! Let it be put to the test! But naturally, we ourselves must be permeated with the right feeling and attitude. For example, much wrong is also done when from our side, too, dogmas or rites of one kind or another are attacked, often without having been understood; but if we rightly understand them, the principle referred to holds good. I would therefore enjoin you to understand the principle of peace. Just as I was obliged to enjoin you to have forbearance with conditions prevailing at the present time, so must I enjoin you to be alert and watchful, in order that we may do what is necessary to guard the holy treasure entrusted to us. For more and more we shall have to wend our way through the world with an unwavering inner strength if we are to stand firmly on the ground where spiritual science would have us stand.

The Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ Principle are intimately connected with the need to see spiritual reality in the world. Mere looking will never suffice even to understand the Mystery of Golgotha purely as an historical event. The Mystery of Golgotha must be comprehended spiritually; and those who devote themselves to knowledge where everything is derived from outside and will not open their eyes to the new revelations of the Mystery of Golgotha which can ever and again flow to us, will not grasp the import of a poem sung by yet another voice in the middle of the 19th century concerning that which—ever changing yet ever present—holds good in earthly humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. Let me read you a section of this poem which describes how one who cannot grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha confronts this Mystery:⁴

Here is another example of how a human soul feels impelled to give expression to what has come to pass. And now that we have let these pictures pass through our souls, let me remind you of something that I have already said here: that we must change our mode of perception if we are to look with true vision into the spiritual world. We must not believe that the spiritual world can be seen as we see the material world of sense. We must even accustom ourselves to different modes of expression,—In the physical world we see trees, rivers, mountains. But of spiritual being we must say: they see us, they perceive us. To understand the Mystery of Golgotha truly, it is necessary to know this, because the Mystery of Golgotha can be understood only in the Spiritual. But that is how we aspire to understand it.

The time must come when through a true understanding of the words “Not I, but Christ in me,” it will be possible to rise into the spiritual worlds with the right knowledge. This epic poem “Ahasver” by Julius Mosen was published in the year 1838, and the fact that he was able to put the legend into such a form also indicates that the tragic destiny by which Mosen was overtaken profoundly affected him. He was bedridden nearly all his life, for his physical body was almost totally paralysed; this was precisely what enabled him to grasp such lofty ideas. We are reminded of the sinner in the novel “The Mahaguru” who, when he was already out of his mind, discovered the true nature of his art; and we are reminded, too, of the Count's wife in the Polish drama, who had to fall into a pathological state in order to find the connection with the spiritual world. It is the task of spiritual science today to help human beings to rise into the spiritual world in the healthy, normal state of consciousness.—All these things are signs of the task and of the value to be attached to the task of the spiritual-scientific Movement. Compressed into a few brief words, this is the truth that can inspire us as a source of strength: “The Mystery of Golgotha itself reveals that it must be understood spiritually, that we must seek for Christ as Spirit.” And then we must also say: “Christ is seeing us, Christ is perceiving us.”

We will inscribe this deeply in our hearts, keep it constantly in our minds, and our conscience must be satisfied when, in presenting our spiritual-scientific knowledge, we are saying with inner sincerity: May Christ be a witness of what we promulgate as Spiritual Science. We believe that this may indeed be so—and it can inspire us as men were once inspired by the cry of Bernard of Clairvaux: “It is God's Will!” These words became deeds. May it be the same among us—for we may believe that we understand Christ truly when we live under the inspiration of the words: Christ knows us.—And if you understand it aright, to a soul that sees our spiritual science in the true light, to a heart that feels it in its true light, I can impart no more esoteric saying than this: Christ is seeing us.

May these words live in our souls: “Christ is seeing us”—for so we may believe if we rightly understand spiritual science.—Christ is seeing us.

• 1. Statements to this effect are made in the book “Man: How, Whence and Whither” by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. (Theosophical Publishing Company)
• 2. See “The Occult Movement In the 19th Century”—notably Lectures IX and X.
• 3. A newspaper article had been written by a priest living in the vicinity of the Goetheanum.
• 4. Dr. Steiner now read part of the epic poem on Ahasver, or Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew, by Julius Mosen. The Wandering Jew is the legendary figure of a Jerusalem shoemaker who, taunting Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, was told by Him to “go on forever till I return.”—Note by Translator.
  
  In a lecture entitled. “Elemental Beings” (Berlin, 16th May, 1908), Dr. Steiner speaks as follows of the legend of Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew: “An important legend sets before us what a man must experience who descends too deeply into the temporary, transitory nature of the one incarnation. If we think of an extreme case, we can imagine it like this: ‘What is it to me that I should carry over something to later incarnations? I live in this incarnation, I like it, it suits me very well. I am not concerned with what I am supposed to make of it.’ Where does this thought lead? It leads to a man who sits at the wayside when a great Leader of humanity passes by. He, however, rejects the ideas of the Leader of humanity; he repulses him and thinks: ‘I will know nothing of thee, who wouldst guide the kernel of my being into future incarnations where mankind will be outwardly more perfect. I wish to remain united with my present form.’—A man who thrusts from him such a Leader of mankind will appear again in the same form. And if this attitude hardens, then he shall also thrust from him the Leader in the next incarnation. He will appear again and again as the same figure. ... Those who listen to the great Leader of humanity will preserve the soul with its eternal life-kernel. Mankind will have gone forward but they too will appear in an ever-progressive form. He, however, who thrusts the Leader of humanity from him must reappear again and again in the same form. This is the legend of Ahasueris who has thrust from himself the Christ, the Leader of humanity. ...”

As there is an opportunity for us to be together again today, I will speak of certain matters connected in one way or another with subjects we have been studying. I should like, first of all, to direct your minds to the fact that the attitude of which I spoke last time, the attitude which leads to a certain denial of the reality of the spiritual worlds, is fairly universal in the external world today. Fundamentally speaking—and indeed it is evident—willingness to approach the spiritual worlds in order to receive from them something that will enrich and invigorate life, is to be found in only a tiny handful of men. We can see that this is so.

My dear friends! The last reflections will have made you aware of the position that spiritual-scientific knowledge has to occupy in the spiritual development of humanity. There is, of course, a great deal to be said on this question; we will have more to say about it in the near future. However, it is sometimes necessary to point out the inhibitions that arise from the spiritual life of the present day and that stand in the way of what must be done in the interest of the further development of humanity. And so, in today's discussions, I will have to familiarize you with such thoughts, which are indeed quite common today against spiritual science, by picking out what I would like to call typical examples. I will try to characterize the nature of such obstructive thoughts for you.

It is indeed the case that since spiritual science has recently been given more consideration from this or that side, the voices are also increasing that not only want to put everything possible in the way of this spiritual science, but also want to crush it, so to speak. They must only bear in mind that a spiritual movement in our time will meet with little opposition as long as it can be labeled a sect. However, it would be a great convenience on our part if we were to think about the inhibitions that arise in the same way as we were accustomed to thinking at the time when this spiritual science was practiced in smaller circles like a sect. Personally, I never liked the sectarian aspect, but in view of the present-day habits of thinking, feeling and willing, it is extraordinarily difficult to get away from the sectarian, because it is almost taken for granted that the individual human being seeks points of contact for the progress and development of his soul where he can find them from a spiritual knowledge. But then, of course, there is the outer life, in which one fears nothing so much as the possibility of stumbling here or there, and then the will that has been fought through in the quiet chamber of the soul fades to a great extent when it comes to stepping more openly into the public arena.

The number of hostile writings that are being produced today is so great that I can only pick out something typical, and in doing so I will refer to a brochure that has just been published, 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist', by a professor in Tübingen, Dr. Friedrich Traub, who has formed his opposing remarks from the present-day Protestant-Lutheran point of view. The peculiarity that confronts us in such matters in the present day is something that can be linked to reflections that I have been engaging in recently and also here in these days. It must be constantly and repeatedly recalled that a truly fruitful cultivation of a spiritual-scientific movement absolutely requires the assimilation of a completely unclouded sense of truth and the conscientious pursuit of truth in the contemplation and treatment of the things of the physical world. That wisdom can only be sought in truth, my dear friends, should not be an inanimate motto of our movement, it should point to something very essential.

Now, it is a peculiarity of our time, firstly, that people in general tend to retouch what is happening, to retouch it in some way. There is certainly a lot of unconsciousness in such retouching, but even unconscious retouching must be striven for by those who strive for truthfulness in their lives. It is a matter of the fact that when one remembers things, one must endeavor to recall them in their true form. It is so remarkable, as it always happens even in our circles – that must be said – that things are told, things of the ordinary physical plane, which one can then investigate and find that there is nothing to them, that they completely vanish into thin air. These are things that should really be taken more seriously than they usually are. But then it is a matter of observing certain things in the interaction between people, which are necessary if social life is not to degenerate into absurdity.

You see, some time ago in Stuttgart a theologian was severely reprimanded (Dr. Unger did it) for mixing a lot of personal stuff into a lecture about my anthroposophy. Theologians should actually be people with a sense of truth. This personal information was almost completely borrowed from the brochure of the well-known ex-anthroposophist — one is accustomed to such word formations today — Max Seiling. Now, the theologian in question, who wants to be a researcher, that is, a scientist, said, among other things, that these things have not yet been refuted in public. Well, my dear friends, if you wanted to refute everything that comes from such a source, it would be a task on a par with boys throwing dirt at you on the street and you then getting into a scuffle with the boys, wouldn't it? So much for the refutation. But the following should be criticized about the statement of a person who wants to be a scientist.

The one who makes an assertion has the obligation to follow the sources for the evidence, not just to repeat it, but to check the sources first. Where would you end up, for example, in historical research, if you were to regard everything you pick up somewhere as real history, and did not feel obliged to really check the truth of the sources? It is not the person who is being attacked who has the obligation to refute the allegations, but rather the person who repeats them, who uses them to characterize, who would have the obligation to investigate such a matter before repeating it. And this gentleman, who, in addition, in the outer social life may call himself a university professor, should be made to understand that such a person, who works scientifically without examining the sources, simply documents himself before the world in such a way that he can never be taken seriously scientifically in the future with regard to anything.

You see, such things must be stated so categorically today because these things should be investigated in public, because people should actually be tested today for their sense of truth. One would have to investigate whether anyone who is in public life takes the truth seriously or not, that is, whether they also feel the obligation to check the sources of the truth for everything they claim. It is not enough for someone to say that they are speaking in good faith; this faith is worth nothing when it comes to asserting a public judgment. Of value is only the conscientious examination that everyone is obliged to do when making any kind of assertion. If one were to make a habit of this in one's private, personal life, it would not be able to occur in a context like the one I have characterized. And if it does occur, then it is a symptom that in today's world it is common practice in everyday life to blindly assert something without conscientiously checking the sources for any assertion. This is something that must be said in general.

Now, my dear friends, I will start with something seemingly extremely trivial, something that many of you might consider trivial and say: Well, such things, they don't matter, such small oversights, one must forgive. Nevertheless, it is precisely in the – I would say unscrupulous way – in which someone often treats small matters that shows how he acts in matters of importance. You see, the brochure I mentioned, which says in the introduction, in the preface:

The present writing - originally a lecture at the course organized by the Evangelical Federation and held in Tübingen in August 1919 - endeavors to describe and assess Steiner's world of thought as clearly and objectively as possible.

- this writing also contains some biographical information at the beginning, and this biographical information begins:

Steiner was born in 1861 in the small Hungarian border town of Kraljewitz.

Now, my dear friends, if the man were to open any old guidebook – which he would be obliged to do – and look up Kraljevec on the Island of Mur in Hungary, he would find that it is a terrible little dirt hole of a village that is being discussed. So, you just need to look it up. You may find it insignificant and inconsequential, but in research, accuracy is important, in research, an exact love of truth is important, and if someone does such things in small things and does not feel obliged to research the truth, then there is actually nothing to be given in his great things. Then it continues:

But he is still not Hungarian, but German Austrian.

And so on. Then it says:

The intellectual atmosphere in which he grew up is that of enlightened Catholicism, which explains why he is inwardly distant from the intellectual world of German Protestantism.

Now, my dear friends, where did this man get it from? He cannot have got it from a reasonable source, because I truly did not grow up in an enlightened Catholicism, but grew up without Catholicism, even without enlightened Catholicism, in fact in a way of thinking that corresponds entirely to what I would call the most radical scientific point of view of the 1860s and 1870s. One would like to believe that such a man knows nothing at all about what happened in the last third of the last century, otherwise he would not be able to find anything in my writings about enlightened Catholicism. Then just one more sentence of this kind:

He studied natural science and mathematics in Graz and Vienna and later went on to philosophy.

My dear friends, I was in Graz for the first time at Hamerling's funeral in 1889, after I had long since finished all my philosophical studies. I have never seen the University of Graz or any other university in Graz from the inside.

As I said, you may find all this irrelevant, you may say that these are such small oversights that one can forgive. No, my dear friends, anyone who wants to be a researcher cannot be treated in this way; instead, we have to look at the exact truth. If someone claims such things out of some fantasy or other, then we also have to realize that we can't really believe much of what he says otherwise.

But I have studied what the man might actually have thought, how he could have found out that I studied in Graz – I actually studied in Vienna – how does he come up with something like that?

Yes, you see, my dear friends, if you imagine: here the Styrian Mur, so here is the Mur Island, Großmurschen, there the very small village of Kraljevec, Csaktornya is in front of it, then Kottori. Now, if this is Graz, this is Vienna. Now the man said: How did Steiner get from Kraljevec to Vienna? Of course via Graz (see Chart 1). There seems to be no other way of asserting these things. But from this, my dear friends, you can see what the thinking of some people who call themselves researchers from our social background actually is.

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Traub's brochure is divided into two parts. The first part deals with “Steiner's Philosophy”, the second with “Steiner's Theosophy”. Now, after the experiences of life, one does not exactly have reason to believe that Protestant theologians understand much about philosophy on average; but if someone writes about it and makes the claim to be taken seriously at least in theology, then it should be possible for him, when he writes about the “philosophy” of a personality, to at least touch on the main point somehow; it should somehow be emphasized what is essentially important. The way he treats my philosophy here, the whole thing is basically a statement that there are indeed many witty remarks in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” but then it culminates in the following sentence:

But then there are also passages that are quite obscure and that leave the reader at a loss.

I believe that Pastor Traub, or rather Professor Traub, is at a loss for words; but it seems to me that in this respect he would do well to consider whether the perplexity might not come from his state of mind. For, after all, what good Mr. Lichtenberg said a long time ago is still true today: When a book and a head collide and it sounds hollow, it is not necessarily the book that is to blame. Now, you see, when someone goes so far as to say:

So here we have a lack of conceptual clarity in Steiner that is disastrous for the justification of his point of view.

- then he would at least have to try to somehow take into account the point of view that matters. Perhaps it would have helped Mr. Traub a little if he had tried to examine the matter conscientiously. But he only cites the “Philosophy of Freedom” and “World and Life Views in the 19th Century” from 1901 among the writings he has read for a description of my philosophy; he does not mention “Truth and Science,” which could have been very helpful to him in not being quite so at a loss in the face of the “Philosophy of Freedom”.

But to find out the crux of the matter - it is as if Pastor Traub really was at a loss in the matter - that would certainly be the most important thing. For this crux of the matter concerns the fact that both in my book “Truth and Science” and in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” a consciously anti-Kantian point of view has been clearly and distinctly formulated. And the important thing about this is that I have shown that one cannot at all place oneself in relation to the outer sense world in the way that Kant and all his imitators placed themselves in relation to this outer sense world, simply accepting it and asking: Is it possible to penetrate deeper into it or not? What I wanted to show at the beginning of my literary career was that the external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is a mere semblance, is half-real, because we are not born into the world in such a way that our relationship to the external world born into the world in such a way that our relationship to the external world is a finished one, but that our relationship to the external world is one that we ourselves must first complete when we think about the world, when we acquire this or that experience of the world. So when we acquire knowledge about the world in the broadest sense, only then do we come to reality.

The fundamental error of 19th-century philosophy is that it always simply takes the sensory world as a finished product. People have not realized that the human being belongs to true reality, that what arises in the human being, especially in thought, splits off from reality, in that the human being is born into reality , that reality is hidden at first, so that it appears to us as an illusory reality; and only when we penetrate this illusory reality with what can come to life in us do we have full reality before us. But from the outset, from the point of view of a certain theory of knowledge, everything that later forms the basis of my anthroposophy would be characterized by this. For it has been attempted from the very beginning to prove that the sense world is not a reality, but that it is an illusory reality, to which must be added what man brings to it, what flashes up in man's inner being and what he then works out. All of Kant's and post-Kantian philosophy is based on the assumption that we have a finished reality before us and that we can then ask the question: Yes, can we recognize this finished reality or cannot we recognize it? But it is not a finished reality, it is only half a reality, and the whole reality only comes into being when the human being comes along and pours into reality that which arises in his innermost being. If one were to characterize as it is given in my “Truth and Science” and what then leads from this “Truth and Science” to the “Philosophy of Freedom”, one would see that the thinking, which is necessary to found an anthroposophy, has already been philosophically characterized by me in its essence. It is interesting that Traub writes:

Anyone who talks about moral freedom cannot, one would think, do so without taking a stand on the fundamental question of “Freedom and Causal Necessity of Nature”. There is almost nothing about this question in this entire book.

Of course, the word 'about' in this sentence allows for a wide range of interpretations. But putting that aside, one might ask whether the author only opened the book halfway through and only read from the middle to the end. In the first chapter, there is a discussion, in connection with Spinoza, of how to understand the idea of freedom in contrast to natural causality. As far as it is necessary for such a book, this question is the starting point. Such a way of thinking as that of Professor Traub overlooks this.

Regarding the “riddles of philosophy,” you need only read what I said at the beginning of that admittedly daring introductory chapter: that it was necessary to let the whole course of philosophy of mankind have an effect on me in order to write these few pages, which are intended to characterize the course of philosophical thought of mankind in the period of seven to eight centuries. When you read this, you will ask yourself: What does such a gentleman want when he says:

But these points of view...

— he means those developed in these pages —

... are so vague and fluid and so poorly aligned with the content they are supposed to summarize that one gets the impression of a schema that has been arbitrarily superimposed on the content, not an order that grows organically out of the material.

It is precisely this that is shown, how the order grows organically out of the material, and every opportunity is taken, in every single chapter, to show how precisely what he calls a scheme here grows out of the real empirical observation of the material. You can say anything to people like that – they then say anything that comes into their heads.

But the most beautiful thing, my dear friends, in this writing are sentences like this:

It would therefore have been of the greatest importance if he had formed a clear and unambiguous concept of science in his philosophical period. Is spiritual science a science of facts like natural science and history? Is it a science of norms like logic, ethics, aesthetics? Or in what other sense is it a science? Nowhere does one get any satisfactory information about it.

Now, my dear friends, what is the basis of such a sentence? First of all, the gentleman in question has the ingrained concepts of factual science and normative science in his mind. He has learned from his compendia, at least in the course of his life, that there are normative sciences and factual sciences. He would first have to educate himself about the fact that these old concepts break down when confronted with spiritual science. But he judges that which he should find his way into according to the concepts he has acquired. No wonder they do not fit into these concepts.

The following is also cute, for example. He says:

A third example. For Steiner, all “riddles of philosophy” are ultimately reduced to one: soul and world. How must the world be conceived in order to accommodate the soul? But this formulation of the problem is extremely vague. The term 'soul' is, after all, ambiguous. Is the soul meant as the psychological, the epistemological, the ethical-religious subject?

First of all, I would like to know where he got this problem from. Yes, my dear friends, soul is meant as soul, as the real soul. The fact that in the compendiums, reflections have been made in the course of time that can be called epistemological, that can be called psychological or that can be called ethical-religious does not imply the nonsense that one should say: I am considering the relationship of the ethical-religious soul to the world, or I am considering the relationship of the epistemological soul to the world, or I am considering the relationship of the psychological soul to the world. It is very difficult, you see: if you wanted to refute such stuff, it would have to be based on something tangible. But you can't really grasp such things, they just vanish in your hands.

Of course, the Protestant theologian is most interested in how I dealt with the concept of God during the period in which my philosophical writings were written. Now, my dear friends, when one writes something, it is not a matter of writing about everything possible, from all possible points of view, but rather of writing from the points of view that are relevant to the content of the writing in question. During the period when I was writing my “Philosophy of Freedom” and also earlier and some later works, I never had any reason to deal with the theological question about God and the world in any way. So it is a strange criticism if one does not see that in a context such as that of “The Philosophy of Freedom”, neither a personal nor a superpersonal God can be found. It is about the treatment of matter, the treatment of substance.

Now you see, it is of course a godsend for people who miss the main point – for Traub has missed the real main point, the determination of the relationship between man and reality, to such an extent that he has not even seen this point, that he has no idea at all that this is the main point – it is always a godsend when secondary matters can be emphasized. It should surprise no one that from the point of view, including the anthroposophical point of view, from which I have to start, only a harsh judgment can be passed on everything that is denominational Christianity of one shade or another in the present day, that a harsh judgment must be passed on everything that is vague ideas about the beyond. For those who have grasped the core of anthroposophy, the latter shines forth upon what I have had to assert philosophically. The point is that, however far we penetrate into the spiritual worlds, we must always imagine them as a unified whole, so that everything that is spirit must at the same time be sought in material existence. The greatest harm that has been done in the development of our modern world view is that people have repeatedly wanted to point beyond what is direct experience to an indefinite, vague beyond. This beyond is to become a here, a real presence here, precisely through spiritual contemplation. Therefore, from the point of view of epistemology, I had to fight all vague ideas of the beyond and had to reject everything that tends to repeat these vague ideas of the beyond from one religious confession to another. In order to gradually ascend to a true understanding of Christ, I had to present everything that actually obscures the real Christ impulse as something to be rejected by future humanity. For it must be clear that the way in which, in more recent times, under the protection of precisely the theological schools of thought, a distinction is made between revelation and external science, that precisely this is of great harm to our spiritual development. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that ordinary Christianity has been rejected by me in my philosophical period, for this ordinary Christianity is to be rejected precisely for the sake of Christ Himself. But for those people who cling to words, who never look at things in context but always cling to words, it is easy to discover apparent contradictions when words are taken out of context. Of course, this is extremely easy for someone who has never been concerned with words but always with the matter at hand.

And so one can take up a sentence like the one I said in 1898:

We want to be fighters for our gospel, so that in the coming century a new generation will arise that knows how to live, satisfied, cheerful and proud, without Christianity, without looking to the hereafter.

Or even earlier:

It is only worthy of man to seek the truth himself, that neither experience nor revelation guides him. Once this is fully recognized, the religions of revelation will have had their day.

This is something, my dear friends, which, if taken literally, can very easily, terribly easily, lead to the construction of contradictions. The conscientious person would, of course, examine the context in which these words were used. For Pastor or Professor Traub, however, this is something dangerous, because his Christianity, his belief in the hereafter, is quite certainly affected.

You see, I have roughly demonstrated the wealth of ideas with which my philosophy is characterized by Professor Traub. Because other ideas are not to be found much in the writing. Everything that matters has been overlooked. The fact that I speak of intuitive thinking in The Philosophy of Freedom is something that Professor Traub does notice, but he cannot form any conception of it because he finds that thinking is merely formal in nature and is therefore actually empty. Yes, my dear friends, there is no talking to such a person, because he has not acquired the very simplest concepts that one could gain right at the beginning in mathematics, for if you only give mathematics a formal, content-free thinking, then I would like to know how one could ever understand something like the Pythagorean theorem. If the aim were to take all content out of experience, then one would never be able to grasp something like the Pythagorean theorem, which presupposes that thinking that is rich in content meets external sense experience, which then, so to speak, comes with intuitive thinking, as characterized in 'The Philosophy of Freedom'. The fact that the development of this thinking, the ascent of this thinking into the spiritual world, is already there, would be something to be emphasized when characterizing my philosophy. Well, after all, one cannot assume that a Mr. So-and-so will find out.

Then he moves on to the characterization of what he calls “Steiner's theosophy.” He has read “How to Know Higher Worlds.” In it, he initially finds some commendable ethical principles that are given. But then he proceeds, as is actually to be expected from his entire attitude, then he proceeds - yes, how shall I put it? — not to understand and to emphasize sharply that he does not understand what astral body, life spirit, etheric body and so on is.

It is difficult...

– he says literally –

... to form a reasonably comprehensible picture of these components of the human being.

Well, he agrees with me that I demand of everyone who has common sense that they should be able to examine things from the point of view of common sense. Of course, Professor Traub has common sense – in his own opinion. But, my dear friends, it is a peculiar way of approaching such things when he finds, for example, in “Theosophy” that the number seven is often mentioned, and when he then says:

Should there really be - this critical question cannot be suppressed here in the presentation - a regularly recurring sevenfold “view”? Can one avoid the suspicion that one has an artificial scheme here, which is arbitrarily grafted onto things?

If he understood anything at all, he would know that it is no more an artificial scheme than it is when you look at a rainbow and say that there are seven colors in it, or when you look at the scale and say that there are seven tones in it and the octave is the repetition of the prime and so on. But, my dear friends, he does not even approach such a thing in a positive sense, but simply raises the question:

Can one avoid the suspicion that one has an artificial scheme here, which is arbitrarily grafted onto things?

Why ask such a question if you are not going to investigate the matter! The whole methodology is something quite impossible.

I would not speak so harshly about this book, my dear friends, because in my opinion the author's limitations are actually largely to blame for the way the book is, not exactly ill will - that emerges from the content. But judging by the terms the man uses, it justifies the use of equally strong terms. I will endeavor not to use harsher terms than those used in the book against my “Philosophy” and my “Theosophy.” This gentleman's way of thinking is indeed quite peculiar. You see, he has grasped how I arrive at a certain corroboration – you know, I try to corroborate everything in the most diverse ways – how I arrive at a certain corroboration of the idea of reincarnation, of repeated lives on earth, by using an example such as Schiller, who, with his genius, could not could not have inherited everything that he carried within him from his father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and so on, and that if one does not want to assume that the qualities that Schiller could not have inherited with his blood were born out of nothing, one comes back to some kind of previous existence.

You know that I don't present such things as proof, but one gathers these things because, when gathered together, they can corroborate a matter. Yes, but how does Professor Traub deal with this example? He says:

So there must have been a soul related to the poet in earlier times, a prehistoric Schiller, so to speak, who died unnoticed and unrecognized and then embodied himself in the historical Schiller in 1759. Of course – to insert this critical remark right here – a hair-raising logic! Otherwise, the explanation is that the unknown is traced back to the known. But here the unknown, the becoming of Schiller, is traced back to something even more unknown, the re-embodiment of a prehistoric Schiller. That is not logic, but a gimmick.

My dear friends! You can declaim for a long time that explanations consist of reducing the unknown to the known. Now, my dear friends, I would first like to know how to do that. How do you get at the unknown? It must first be known; but then, at most, you would only have to reduce the unknown, the seemingly unknown, which must first be known, to the known! So, the “hair-raising logic” seems to me to be more on the other side. But if it is also often proclaimed that the unknown should be traced back to the known in order to provide explanations, I would first like to ask: Why explain it at all? One could stop at the known. But in truth it is not so. Just go through all the explanations that are offered. Explanations always assume that what is being sought is something that is not actually present. In practice, the exact opposite of what Professor Traub's method demands is true. It is not surprising that the old objections arise, that one does not remember previous incarnations, but it is interesting to note that it is stated here:

The return to this earthly world is said to be necessary for the purpose of making it possible for man to make amends in a future life for the wrongs he has done to his fellow men in the present life. But, one must ask, how is he to go about this? After all, he does not know which of his fellow human beings in the present have been harmed by him in a previous life.

Yes, my dear friends, I have certainly never claimed anything similar, even remotely similar, about the average person. But it is really not at all a matter of whether a person A, who is standing in the present and facing a person B, now saying to himself: This person B, I lived with in the year 202 AD; I did him an injustice then, now I have to do this and that to make amends. Professor Traub can only imagine that karma, that fate, unfolds under this assumption. Yes, my dear friends, but it does not matter at all whether person A makes these considerations, because karma is arranged in such a way that he makes amends for what he has done wrong in the previous life, from what is going on in his soul, even without knowing it, without him first reflecting on it. It is indeed the case that when Professor Traub says that he does not know which of his fellow human beings in this life were harmed by him in a past life and how he can make amends, he does it without knowing how. Such gentlemen are completely lacking in the most obvious thoughts.

Now, my dear friends, what are we to do with such an assertion? That this Protestant gentleman does not, of course, like such explanations as I have given about a passage in the Bible: “He who eats my bread tramples me under his feet” or similar - one can believe that, of course. He expressly assures us that he cannot imagine anything at all about the “center spirit” of the earth. But then a series of extraordinarily cute remarks follows. You see, I emphasize from the most diverse points of view that the embodiment of the Christ-being in the man Jesus of Nazareth is not just an earthly, but a cosmic event. That which took place, whether in the great historical context or in the own soul of the man Christ-Jesus, is not to be regarded as merely an earthly, a telluric event, but as an event that concerns the cosmos. The point is to lift the event of Golgotha out of the merely earthly sphere and raise it into the sphere of the world, and I have emphasized this again and again in all possible variations.

Yes, my dear friends, after Professor Traub has expressed his horror at the two Jesus children, which may well be granted him, he goes on to say the following cute sentence, which is all too beautiful for us to ignore:

According to Steiner, however, the crucifixion is a purely cosmic event. Anyone who could have followed the development of the earth through the millennia from a distant planet would have seen not only the physical but also the astral body of the earth, and this astral body would have shown the same lights, the same forms, the same colors for thousands of years. But at a certain moment, this would have changed. “Other forms appeared, other lights and other colors shone - that was the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer at Golgotha. This was not a human event, but a cosmic one."

That's what I say, he even quotes it verbatim. But then he says:

There is no trace of an ethical appreciation of the death on the cross! The astral body of the earth shines in different lights and colors, appears in different forms. The Christ-I, the solar regent descends to the earth, and in the spirit of the earth one now sees the solar-I, the Christ-I. Can these purely cosmic processes simply be added to the moral deed of the historical Jesus? Are the two processes, the cosmic and the ethical, not too heterogeneous to be considered as elements of a cumulative example? One could object that Jesus' ethical deed could be accompanied by cosmic effects, just as such effects are linked to the death of Christ in the letters of Paul. But with Steiner it is not the case that one could distinguish between an ethical act and its cosmic effects. One hears nothing at all about an ethical act, only about cosmic events. But then the two interpretations of the death on the cross are mutually exclusive. It cannot be both an ethical act and a purely cosmic event.

Yes, my dear friends, what am I supposed to understand from this? That the event of Golgotha took place on the earth's orbit is certainly not denied by me. I did not claim that it took place on the sun or the moon. Well, in any case it is a telluric event. That this is reversed by Traub in the assertion that I understand the event of Golgotha as a pure, that is, only a cosmic event - that is basically a strong act! From Kraljevec the way to Vienna goes via Graz! That is the distorted thinking in small, insignificant things. This distorted thinking, which one often does not want to criticize in small, insignificant things, is something that then also shows itself in great things. For anyone who feels obliged to conscientiously read what Professor Traub claims to have read will never be so presumptuous as to claim that I said that the Christ event was only a cosmic event.

Now, I can only pick out individual things. The description of Atlantis naturally hurts him again, and he finds himself particularly badly affected when I say that the Atlanteans thought in images and that now people think in concepts.

The Atlanteans thought in images. And when an image appeared before their soul, they remembered so-and-so many similar images that they had already experienced. Based on that, they formed their judgment.

To which Professor Traub says:

So the Atlantean also judged; but how a judgment without a concept is possible remains unclear.

Yes, my dear friends, concepts are formed according to judgments for straightforward thinking. If you had to have concepts in order to judge, few judgments would be able to come about. So this is something that really testifies to a very blatant lack of philosophical education.

Now, I won't even talk about the fact that he cannot understand what is spiritually similar to the sensation of blue as I describe it, right; I also won't talk about the fact that he says:

A spiritual color is a contradiction in terms.

- because he constructs arbitrary concepts of a spiritual color. I will only speak of the fact that it is said of me again and again that one can follow everything with common sense, even that which is directly observed, if one is willing to overcome one's laziness and observe to a certain degree what is written in “How to Know Higher Worlds”.

In a length that is striking for the brevity of the remaining remarks, Professor Traub now explains that on the one hand, faith in authority is required, but on the other hand, one should examine it oneself. In particular, he is harshly critical of those who say that, after all, other things in the world are also accepted on trust, for example that people who have not been to America still believe the travelers when they say that it looks like this or that there. — Well, of course it is easy to say that in America there are also people, animals, plants and so on that are also known in Europe. I will not dwell on this, I have spoken of it often; but I would like to draw your attention to the logic of this gentleman. On page 34 you read the cute sentence:

The truths learned at school I can verify.

—- so he thinks.

Most people will admittedly have no occasion to do so; but the fundamental possibility exists. I may have to become a historian, a physicist, a chemist, in order to be able to test independently. I cannot verify the theosophical truths if I am not clairvoyant; I can only check them in a negative way.

This is literally true; to test a chemical truth, one must want to become determined to become a chemist. There is nothing at all to be said against that. But Professor Traub continues:

But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am clairvoyant.

Yes, you see, of course I cannot verify the theosophical truths either unless I want to become clairvoyant, just as you cannot verify the chemical truths without becoming a chemist; he himself cites this as proof. But he considers it his right to become a chemist if he wants to verify chemical truths, but he does not want to become one, as one must become to verify the theosophical truths. In any case, he turns out to be extremely demanding on this point. Because the fact that one or the other can verify and then confirm is not enough for Professor Traub. He says:

It is not enough for the theosophical side to say that the results of spiritual scientific research have already been verified by a large number of people. The question is whether they have been or can be verified by me, and, apart from the formal logical criticism, I have to say no.

That is logic, isn't it! But this logic is even intensified, my dear friends. He says, after all, with chemical truths, with ordinary scientific truths, it does not matter if everyone checks them, because they are not as important as spiritual truths, nor are historical truths. And there we find the following cute sentence:

On the contrary, we must demand that in matters of world view, the individual stands by himself and does not simply accept what others dictate to him. If I were ever in a position to have to dare something great based on one of those school truths – for example, that Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire or that Hannibal crossed the Alps – and I came to the complete conviction that life or bliss depends on such a truth, I would no longer be satisfied with just accepting the authority of others, but would do everything I could to gain an independent certainty about those things.

Yes, I want to know how he actually does it, I want to know how he wants to gain an independent certainty about the event of his own birth, which is, after all, an extremely important event in his life on earth! So these things are written down from the mere rattling of words that are not at all accompanied by any thoughts. Based on our current circumstances, these are youth educators! This raises the question of judging everything as possible.

Now I would like to read you a sentence of mine, my dear friends, which you will know, which I am reading here not for any personal reason, but because something quite peculiarly remarkable appears to me in the way Professor Traub introduces the sentence:

Spiritual science will not, in its very essence, directly interfere with any religious confession or the domain of any religious confession. It can never want to create a religion. Therefore, in the circles of the spiritual scientific world view, the most diverse religious confessions will live together in the deepest peace and fullest harmony and will be able to strive for the knowledge of the spiritual. ... Spiritual science does not in any way need to divert anyone from their religious life. Therefore, one cannot speak of spiritual science as such being a religious confession. It does not want to create a religious confession, nor does it want to change people in any way with regard to their religious confession. Nevertheless, it seems as if people are thinking about the religion of anthroposophy. In truth, one cannot speak in such terms, because within the Anthroposophical Society all religions are represented, and none are prevented by it from practicing their religious beliefs in the fullest, most extensive and most intense way.

These sentences are mine. They are found in 'The Task of Spiritual Science and Its Structure in Dornach'. Professor Traub cites them and then adds the following sentence. I will read it out, although I am not sure whether I am clever enough to recall the following sentence in the right way. He adds the sentence:

These sentences, which also give a certain impression of Steiner's unsightly and un-German style, reveal his opinion: anthroposophy is not a religion as such.

Yes, I must confess that if I wanted to judge the unsightly style of this Traub writing – well, I don't want to pass judgment on it, because after all it is a matter of taste, but when I have read so much criticism about style lately and then see that judgments are formed in such a way, then it seems to me to be almost as irrelevant as the content-related matters.

Now I would like to share with you just a few sentences from the last part of the text, where the relationship between anthroposophy and Christianity is discussed. It says:

2. Christianity is a historical religion. Theosophy is a religion without history. The first sentence cannot be substantiated here, only elucidated. It means not only that Christianity has a history and passes through a historical development, but also that its validity as truth is bound up with history. If one crosses out the story of the Gospels, the whole of Christianity stands in the air. And what about the other sentence, that Theosophy is without history? He does not mean, of course, that Theosophy has no history. It has a very long history. You meet only old acquaintances when you look around in the theosophical literature. What is Steiner's Christology other than a new form of Gnostic Christology? His anthropology and cosmology also have their parallels in the history of religious and philosophical thought. The doctrine of reincarnation and the related, though not identical, idea of transmigration of souls run through the history of religions in ever new forms. In this sense, Theosophy also has its history. It is without history in the sense that it does not need history to justify its conviction of truth.

Yes, I must say, with such a remark, one's mind could stand still: a Protestant theologian who claims that the truth of Christianity is based only on history, that Christianity does not contain eternal truths! One cannot even find out what the contradiction is supposed to be. He himself points out that Theosophy also originated historically. But he attaches great importance to the fact that Theosophy endeavors - although it originated historically - to find ahistorical, that is, eternal truths. Christianity is supposed to be merely a historical matter. Traub writes:

The first sentence...

- namely, “Christianity is an historical religion” —

... cannot be justified here, but only explained. It means not only that Christianity has a history and is undergoing an historical development, but also that its validity is bound up with history.

Yes, it is absolutely incomprehensible how such a sentence can be pronounced as something valid, because that is how it is pronounced. The person in question is a university professor, so he teaches with a certain authority. These things are sufficiently characterizing to show where the words that oppose the humanities come from.

It is particularly interesting for me, who always tries to reject anything that is overheated tone, who tries to present as calmly as possible, with a calm, scientific style, that I am also accused of:

It was different with the great mystics of the past. In their presence one had the feeling: “Take off your shoes; the ground you stand on is holy ground.” One does not have this feeling in the presence of Steiner. There is no sense of mystery here. It is as if the magic of mystery has been stripped from the beyond. Hence the sober, dry tone that characterizes Steiner's writings. They have none of the excitement and gripping quality that one would expect from the prophet of a new worldview. When you consider this, it is impossible to overlook the contrast between Christianity and anthroposophy. There is reverence for the mystery of the eternal; here is the understanding and sobriety of the one who has uncovered the secret.

Yes, my dear friends, I consciously refuse to speak in an overheated tone of something unknown, because that is precisely what has a hypnotizing effect on human souls.

Now, I have highlighted some of the typical things that oppose the spiritual scientific movement. We had to stop at such a point, since I intend to move on to characterizing what the position of that spiritual entity that we call Michael, who in turn has become the spiritual world regent since the end of the seventies of the last century, actually is in relation to the human present and its culture. Next time I must characterize the whole metamorphosis of the Michael personality, from what Michael was – that which is called the face of Yahweh – to his present position. It was also necessary to characterize a little the stones that are thrown in the path of spiritual science.

One can say: Firstly, in such a case there is the most terrible inaccuracy, secondly, in such a case there is the inability to somehow find out the key points of the matter - and, moreover, the unscrupulous will to characterize the matter as it has been done here. Finally, the brochure summarizes the content of the critique:

Christianity is a religion of history...

— there is the sentence for the second time! —

... theosophy is without history. Christianity is essentially ethical, anthroposophy is cosmically oriented. Christianity is a religion of mystery; the anthroposophist has penetrated the mystery. Christianity is simple at its core; anthroposophy is complicated and fantastic.

Yes, that is true, and many opponents of anthroposophy today fly this flag. But the reasons for this and the direction in which the judgment should be steered if one wants to arrive at a fair and dignified judgment must first be pointed out in a typical case. Next Friday, I will discuss the topics mentioned above. We will meet here at 7 p.m. for the lecture.