The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is a source of deep satisfaction to me that karma has brought it about that we can be together this evening and say a few words at this solemn time. Above all, however, let us remember at this moment those who are outside, who are sacrificing their courage, their lives, their blood for the tasks that this extraordinary time demands of people. Our loving thoughts and prayers for help we want to direct primarily to those who have often sat with us in our common contemplations and who are now standing outside and have to participate directly in the great events that are now taking place, bringing the karma of nations and people to development. First of all, those who are connected with us, and then, in a broader sense, all the others. Then we want to look ahead in a certain way to the narrower bonds and the widest bonds that we also seek in the field of our spiritual current and that are formed from every soul to every soul that is called by the great events. So we also turn our loving, pleading thoughts to those who are out in the field and, as a sign that we are united with them, we will rise from our seats and remember them in the following words:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,
May your wings bring
Our souls' imploring love
To the earthly people who trust in your protection,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth to help
The souls that seek them lovingly!

And we want to send our loving thoughts to you, so that He may be with you, the helper, the Christ whom we seek, the Christ who must call upon the souls of our time to seek harmony in disharmony, so that He will surely lead to the redemption they need, so that the purpose of the human and national karma may be fulfilled: With you, souls, we want to be united in the sign that connects us to the only earth spirit, the Christ.

What has now broken in so surprisingly over, one must indeed say, the earth's humanity, could be foreseen long in advance. It has broken in so surprisingly because, one may say, occult causes have also contributed to this event, which have actually only gradually shown themselves little by little since June 28. In our time especially, one can really see how new things can be recognized in the spiritual world. I can only hint at what I mean here with a few words. When I returned from Sweden in July from the Norrköping lecture series, I had to draw the attention of someone who is connected in a certain sense to current events to how the event of Sarajevo o for the occultist showed quite remarkable consequences, how it was an outward symptom, and how strangely different this dead man behaved than all the other dead that could be observed in the occult field earlier. And so it was that in the occult background of earthly events there occurred very quickly that which then also broke in with such dreadfully rapid strides on the outer physical plane during the last days of July and the first of August. But it has also, most certainly, given rise in the souls of those who have been distant from spiritual life in recent times, to many intuitions, many definite feelings for a spiritual world, for the existence of a spiritual world. Enormous, one may say, and incomparable are the experiences that humanity on earth is now going through.

If I, my dear friends, would like to address a word to you first, then let it be this, that I would like to tie it to many a comment that has been made often in recent years within our spiritual scientific contemplation. What then should the connection with the spiritual life in our deepest soul be, that we seek? It should give us certainty and inner strength, certainty that in the changing times and changing events there is something solid to hold on to. And in such times as these, something else should be able to enter our souls: faith in the invincibility of the spiritual life and its mission. We should learn to connect this faith in the victory and the victoriousness of the spirit with the external events of the day.

In the first days of August, when the storms of declarations of war came little by little from the most diverse, one might say, directions of the world, I had to remember words that have been spoken recently, words that can dig themselves deep right now, and that, what I have just said, basically, we are really, really close. A few weeks before the outbreak of war, an important person said the following at a significant point: We are on the most friendly terms with all powers. We fell out with each other after the press machinations in Russia began this spring and were also echoed in the German and Viennese newspapers; press machinations are to be ignored and the old friendly, neighborly relationship is to be maintained. A word that also gives cause for concern was spoken in June: the general relaxation has progressed – and another word from the same speech: the negotiations with England have not yet been concluded, but are being conducted in the friendly spirit that otherwise characterizes our relations with Great Britain. Think about it: now! Consider how changeable it is in the physical world for what people believe today to be forced by the course of events to be witnessed in the coming weeks. Imagine the surging, driving, staggering, storming of events on the physical plane, imagine how necessary it is, this surging, this storming. One would like to say: What can be believed today is no longer true tomorrow. How necessary it is to have something secure and firm in these storms, something that is true today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and through all eternities! What is true in this way is the truth of the spirit, of the mission of the spirit, which runs through the development of humanity.

I would like to mention the following as quite symptomatic, not because it is something personal, but because it really spoke to the soul in a symptomatic and symbolic way: you know, of course, that the first volume of my book 'The Riddles of Philosophy' was published in July. The second volume was printed up to page 206 when the war broke out. It was the transition of thoughts from the French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson to the German philosopher Preuss, the indication of how Bergson develops a thought, somewhat carelessly overlooked by the unknown, lonely thinker Preuss, who in the last third of the 19th century, with massive thoroughness, anticipated our theosophical world view. I am also trying to do justice to this lonely thinker. Then it happened that the printing had to be stopped, and the work had to be continued later. It broke off with the transition from France to Germany. The war broke out. I really had to regard the empty sheets on the two-thirds printed sheets as a symbol of what happened between Western and Central Europe, over which the path of my presentation went.

And many other things could also be seen symbolically. I might also mention our building in Dornach, which had indeed progressed to a certain degree, but not as far as we would have liked. Perhaps some of our friends know how much emphasis was placed, as long as it made sense in the face of the eloquent facts, how much emphasis was placed, not only as a heartfelt wish of mine, but as an obvious necessity, on the idea that the building should be completed by August 1st of this year. Perhaps one could now try to consider whether it would not have made sense, in view of what has now happened, if the construction had been completed exactly on August 1st. Of course, it was impossible to fight against the facts with something that looked like a wish, and among many things that I do not want to talk about today that were to be solved with the construction, was the fact that the problem of acoustics for a larger room was to be solved by a larger resonance. It was in July, when the construction was already in place, that one could, for the first time, have an inkling that it would be possible to truly solve this acoustic problem once the building was finished, if one said a few words in a certain place. At certain points, you could hear how the resonance turned out in a way that had to be expected based on the occult calculations for the location, and so it can be expected that the word and music will really sound as they should. It was something of an ideal to be able to hear the word, which was supposed to speak of the spirit, inside the building as early as August. What our friends first heard in our building was the echo of the cannons thundering in the immediate vicinity on the Alsatian battlefields. Thus the room for which we had in a sense requested the echo of the words dedicated to the spirit first witnessed the thunder of the guns, which sounded not too far away. Other friends of ours had, also in a certain way symbolically, seen something that we had expected as our great ideal. We had expected that the message of the light of the spirit, of the spiritual worlds, would be heard, that this light of the spiritual worlds would come into its own. On some nights, the glow from the Isteiner Fort was seen, stretching far and wide, and for four minutes its light also pushed and pushed through our building: sound and light of current events!

But other thoughts and feelings could also pass through the soul. On July 26, I had spoken to our friends about some things that affected our organization, and had briefly pointed out the serious times that look in at our windows. And I must say: I could only read the letter that one of our younger friends wrote to his mother, who had been present on July 26, through tears. Immediately afterwards he was drafted, went to his Austrian homeland, and precisely out of the strength of the spiritual life, which he – he is still a fairly young member – drew from our endeavors, he also gained the strength to fulfill his place in the most beautiful, I would say, in the most sacred, purest sense, to which karma had placed him.

And again it was someone else who had been present on July 26 who wrote to me when he set out for the Serbian theater of war, full of feelings that were nourished on the one hand by the certainty that flows from faith in victory and the triumph of the spirit, on the other hand, were nourished by the full enthusiasm for direct participation in the events of our time from the place where he was positioned.

Truly, my dear friends, during these times, souls grew and matured, and it was beautiful and grand to see that all the feelings and emotions that have been drawn into the souls of our friends over the years also prove to be suitable for guiding people to the right place in the right way in today's difficult situation.

When we speak of the certainty that can be gained by contemplating the spirit and spiritual essence, the feeling of this certainty is intimately connected with our motto, which is modeled on a saying of Goethe: “Wisdom lies only in truth.” Among the great hopes that we may cherish from current events, there is also this one, that everything connected with this: “Wisdom lies only in truth”, that everything will be impressed upon humanity precisely through the great, painful and deeply moving trials. Everything connected with the words, “Wisdom lies only in truth,” must have a deeper and deeper effect on people, and now much has already been accomplished through the great teacher who speaks through His projectiles in overcoming materialism. |

Shortly before the outbreak of the war, I read the following words written by a respected journalist: “Despite Mr. Liebknecht's rebuke, I maintain that responsible rulers are not only entitled, but obliged, to deny the truth and assert the false. This right, this duty of those guided by collective morality, is limited by two conditions: The untruth must be neither provable nor contrary to the interests of the state. Remember this saying together with the motto we chose when we founded the Anthroposophical Society: “Wisdom is only in truth”! Much will fall into place, for quite different feelings have already entered into the souls of those who sense the seriousness of the present situation.

How often, my dear friends, has the word been spoken on our soil that not only what happens on the external physical plane is reality, but the thoughts of men are greater reality, a force, a power of action. But let us admit it, because it is the truth: such things have only been spoken on soil that carried a spiritual current. Now, on the rather complicated journey I had to make, I came across a magazine dated September 1, 1914. It contains a very nice essay by a soldier, Robert Michel, who wrote down his thoughts in the field. The essay beautifully reflects how the mobilization was announced and how he and his comrades, as it were, went into the unknown. The last words are significant for us: “But every single person left behind in the monarchy has the duty to support to the best of their ability until the victorious decision has been made.” All the good words, hearty cries and blessings that we received when we left increased our confidence. They were splinters that did not get lost. This spiritual strength must continue to be supplied to the army, and the will to win must tremble from each individual to the fighters at the front. Therefore, let no one rush to the decision that is being prepared in the north. Those who must stand idly by and watch the tremendous feat of strength of the army and the empire should strive to contribute their mite along the path of the soul's strength. Those whom God hears pray; those who cannot pray gather all their thoughts and willpower into a fervent desire for victory; and those who can do nothing else cross their fingers in the palms of their hands and say, “We must win, we must win.” In this way, even the weakest will have contributed to the victory.

The soldier who goes off to the field writes back words that echo what has often been said on the spiritual plane: Those who cannot pray gather their thoughts and willpower in a fervent desire for victory. We now see faith in the Spirit at the beginning of the tremendous event.

We need have no illusions. Some things may look quite different in the near future, but there will also come times that will fulfill what is to be hinted at in a few words. The progress of the world must happen, that which is to happen happens; sometimes it happens in a very strange way, in that the wills of men are guided step by step, so that one sees how from stage to stage, truly not in any other way than an educator would do it, the directions in which they will later come are poured into the souls. One need only look back over a short span of time to see the spiritual forces that transcend human power and work pedagogically for the great progress of humanity.

It is now time to entertain a thought that may be obvious but is not always considered. In 1866, German brothers stood against German brothers, Germans against Germans. Not even a decade has passed – 1870/71: one part of the Germans had to follow a great event in which the other part could not participate. One of my teachers at the Vienna University of Applied Sciences often spoke the words that went deep into my heart at the time: “We Germans in Austria must be aware that what happened is our destiny, not our fault, that we were not allowed to participate in an outstanding event. Now is the time when the two parts, which were once opposed and then one without the other, are forged together, as if by an iron power.

It is no coincidence, it is significant, important – it has taken no century to send this great teaching into all subsequent times: human progress, what the spiritual hierarchies want for humanity, must happen; but it can happen in many different ways. By a certain point in time something very definite must have been achieved. Let us assume – not because what I am about to say is true – that by 1950 a certain amount of willingness to make sacrifices, of the ability to love and to be selfless, of the fight against selfishness, must have been poured out upon humanity. Let us assume that what must be achieved by 1950 is what the signs of the times demand. On the one hand, it is achieved by speaking to people's hearts, by trusting in the power of the word, by those who hold the destiny of humanity in their hands wanting to approach human individuality in a spiritual way and seeking to bring them so far that the spirit can take effect on them. But the other teacher must often step in, the second teacher, who speaks through living proofs. And how we have seen his successes! What an enormous amount of sacrifice, of human love and unselfishness has been produced in an amazingly short time in our age of materialism, when the great teacher appeared, war, which has such terrible effects on the one hand On the other hand, it has what leads to what is called in occultism the iron necessities that must occur in order to achieve something specific in a specific age of human development. Rivers of blood are shed, precious lives wither away, others are snatched from physical life in the blink of an eye when the enemy bullet hits them. All this is taking place on such a tremendous scale in our time. What is it all? It is a great sacrifice, my dear friends, a tremendous sacrifice that is made at the altar of the development of humanity as a whole. On the one hand, there is what should penetrate the development of humanity, what must be handed over to humanity so that humanity can move forward, and on the other hand, there is the necessity of sacrifice.

It was infinitely meaningful for me to witness how intimately connected beyond death the souls of those are who are now directly participating in the great events. There one could often see how those who had been struck down by the enemy's bullet were taken up into the spiritual worlds, not yet awakened with their great individualities, were still connected with what was going on down there. I don't know if you can feel with me what it means to see how, on the battlefield, the psychic personality of someone who has already met his death protects the warrior who is still fighting, and is with him while he is still bound to the physical plane. This is one of my occult experiences, which I can't really compare to anything else. Unawakened warriors who have fought below, who have gone through death, remain connected to the event and, as it were, are like a second personality behind the one who is still fighting on the physical plane. Even in the spiritual worlds there are things that can instill confidence in our hearts, even if this confidence does not come easily.

When you consider what percentage of humanity is fighting each other today, when you consider how we are at the beginning – this event has only lasted a few weeks – and what enormous losses of human life these few weeks have cost, you might become uncertain and think: What will happen if this has to last a long time? – And when I am often dismayed by this – it can dismay you – then the thought lifts me up: What is right will happen, what is ordained by the spiritual worlds will come to pass. And when one has the certainty that not only the living are fighting, but that the dead also remain connected to their destinies, then there will always be strength. During those times, other things occurred to me. Our society unites in a common spiritual current members of the most diverse races and peoples who are hostile to each other today. There is also a need for some consolation! We look back on a time that is quite unlike our own, not much in common with it, to the time that the Bhagavad Gita describes to us, to a time when the old, often described conditions of humanity still existed, when people still lived in small circles of blood relatives. The transition from this time of blood relationship to the time when blood relatives are at enmity is described by the Bhagavad Gita, where the great spirit points out to Arjuna: Over there truly stand the brothers and here you stand, you will fight with each other, in whose veins the same blood flows; but there is a possibility to lead the balance in spirit. From that which should not fight against each other, that which fights against each other develops: this too is one of the iron necessities necessary for the evolution of mankind! The spirit bridges the gap between brother and brother facing each other as enemies, and develops that which faces each other in disharmony. This time is unlike ours. We are going the opposite way within our spiritual current. We are seeking to gather together again what was scattered throughout the world, and members of the most diverse nations are embracing each other again fraternally, becoming brothers within our ranks. Now we see how one of us comes over from France, leaving the other behind, and enters the German army, expecting to face the other, whom he has left behind as an anthroposophical friend, in battle. It is the opposite situation: the scattered limbs of humanity are seeking each other out in the spirit, and we will find our way if we truly and earnestly understand the Spirit of Truth and earnestly grasp hold of it. We just have to seek out the paths.

I would like to say that we Germans have a hard time finding our way, perhaps the hardest of all! It may sound strange to you that I say this, but we really have a hard time of it, and the reason we have a hard time of it – without wanting to boast about it – is because it is always difficult for us to be fair to ourselves, because it is easier for us to be fair to others than to ourselves. It is difficult for us for the reason that it will not be very easy for present humanity, especially not in the present, to survey with the right objective, unbiased, unruffled gaze, I would say, all that has often been hinted at in our spiritual science, all that can also be found in the lectures on the folk souls. It will be necessary for all who grasp the spiritual life in its genuine, true sense in our time to learn to understand how these folk souls, the genuine, true folk souls, form a kind of choir in which they already live together harmoniously. But one must find one's way to their essence, and that can only be done in the spirit.

It is really not the right time at the present to draw attention to what speaks to feelings and sensations in the background of the soul, but I would like to draw your attention to something else, namely that we can have a way to find the path that our souls should take in the right way, in secret dialogue, intimate, inner dialogue with the spirit of the people to which we belong. I can only advise you, if you find a few minutes, especially in the present time, to use the following formula to find your way around in the current world situation:

You, my spirit of the earth!
Reveal the light of your age.

Why “age”? “Age” is said in the case of spiritual beings, where one would say “the light of your being” in the earthly sense. Age is to the spirit what essence is to the earthly.

You, the spirit of my earthly space!
Reveal the light of your age
To the soul endowed with Christ,
So that striving, it may find
In the choir of the spheres of peace
You, resounding with the praise and power
Of the Christ-devoted human spirit!

There we find the way to the spirit of the people, to which we belong, and the way from this spirit of the people to the dialogue of the spirit of the people with the Christ, who is the teacher of all spirits of the people. And when they come together in this Christ, the national spirits will come together in the right way, since all these national spirits who lead the nations correctly – one can see this from the book 'The Spiritual Leadership of the Human Being and of Humanity' – regard the Christ as their teacher.

Often I had to hope that it was not true at all, what had been communicated, that in a popular representation of the East, in the Duma, at the end of a speech in which the ruler called on his people to take part in the war, the last word spoken was: The God of Russia is great! It would be terrible if the words had been spoken thus: an unconscious invocation of the spirit, whose character one can imagine when the invocation occurs in relation to a limited area, when it does not occur to the spirit, which is so intertwined with the fate of humanity that even those who face each other as enemies place themselves at its service by seeking the salvation of humanity at the same time as their own. The Christ, when He leads a people, leads that people in such a way that He seeks the salvation of humanity with His own salvation. We rightly invoke the spirit of the people to whom we are closely attached, so that we look up to see how He, in turn, speaks with the Christ; through the spirit of the people we speak with the Christ. Through this many thoughts will be prepared that shall remain in the spiritual atmosphere of humanity until the times when a meaningful war is followed by a meaningful peace.

A sacrifice, I said, is being offered on the altar of humanity, and holy blood is flowing down upon our earth, a blood that bears witness to the fact that those who now, in this struggle of the nations, ascend with their souls from the physical world to the spiritual worlds, will again come back in future incarnations to be important links in the spiritual progress of humanity – a sacrifice, a great sacrifice! What is happening now must happen this way; and anyone who wants to look back into the past to search for the very first causes, must look back to the time of the Punic Wars in the 3rd century BC, to the time when the Roman general used the gangplanks – as can be read in history – to achieve a first significant success. Today, we stand alongside what was the first event to take place in this war. A future historiography will prove this; it is difficult to go into these things.

Another leads us back to the times when the Romans wrestled with the Germans, when the fate of humanity was decided for many millennia. And then comes the third great event, which is ours, which will really have a significance like the Punic Wars back then, which of course are small in scale compared to today's world event, but which, in terms of quality, still loom large in our time. How the great events that shaped people, which were linked to the migration of nations, are repeated in a certain way — an entire cycle of humanity is spanned by this time frame — and how in those days in Rome it was decided what had to happen then, that the form of the human ego, as it was in the 3rd century before the event of Golgotha, passed into the later one, so that this form of the I through the Romans would find the path that it had to find for all that has happened since then, today the form of the I, which is the decisive one in the next human cycle, must be similarly placed in a struggle of nations. This is part of the deepest impulses of humanity.

But then, when we are connected with what we have been pursuing together in spirit for years, we can carry within us the faith in victory and the victory of the spirit. Then we will face everything that comes with this faith and know that what is happening is under the guidance of the high hierarchies and will go its way. It is up to us to go along this path in the right way. But we do this when we find the right way to observe our karma, when we do not withdraw from the tasks that the great time presents us with. And if we can thank spiritual science for many things, one thing should be at the forefront: that spiritual science sharpens our mind and view, so that we can see that we are in the best place with our personality and doing the right thing. The more we do it objectively, impersonally, without having anything else in mind, the more spiritual science has sharpened our vision, made our hearts receptive, the more we will understand the language that is now being spoken to us in these serious times.

One of the formulas given by the spirit in this time, which can also be given here before our friends, is this: it brings to mind the meaning of the sight of pain, which we can now see so abundantly, abundantly. The pain in souls that is created in our times is enormous, the sacrifices that are demanded are enormous, and the willingness to make sacrifices and to be receptive to another's pain must also be enormous. The Christ has only risen for many when we understand Him in such a way that we know: there can be no pain for the other that is not also our pain; for wherever He has entered, it is one's own pain. As long as we are unable to recognize pain in another and feel for it as our own, Christ has not yet fully come into the world. Pain in another should not keep us from it! This ideal is difficult and great and wide, but the Christ ideal is also difficult and great and wide. It is fulfilled when the wound we carry within us does not burn more fiercely than that borne by the other. Therefore, it is good to prepare ourselves to intervene with the following words, which we address to a community or to the other who suffers pain: |

As long as you feel the pain
That shuns me
Christ is unrecognized
Working in the world being.
For the spirit remains weak only
When it is alone in its own body
In the power of feeling suffering.

Try to feel these words through with all your being. If the first formula helps us to connect with the spirit of the people, these lines will imbue us with the attitude that allows us to relive the pain of humanity, the pain of a human community, in our own being and to do everything we do in the true Christian sense. May we do it in this time, especially imbued with the spirit of the spirit!

The wound that the bullet inflicts, my dear anthroposophical friends, would not heal were it not for the healing powers in the wonderful microcosm that is the human organism. It is good that our branches practice how to dress wounds, as our dear friend Dr. Peipers is doing here. It is good because we can easily find ourselves needing to use it. But when we approach such a task, we must also know that the spirit is reality and that, whether we are helping with this or that injury or this or that ailment, we can do more with the spirit in the right way than we can without it. So that when we approach a wound in the human organism with the right thoughts, let us think:

Source of blood,
In the source work,
Active muscle
Activate the germs
Loving care
Warming heart,

For in this blood, which flows from the wound, lies the sign that behind it lie forces, which are the healing forces of the wound.

Source blood,
In the source, active,
Active muscle
Active the germs,

the germs that die when the bullet has passed through. Send the right feelings for the one who applies a bandage to help his fellow man:

Source of blood,
In the source, work;
Active muscle
Stimulate the germs;
Loving care
Warming heart,
Be a healing breath.

Let us allow this attitude to permeate our soul, let it fill our entire being, when we help our fellow human beings, then, my dear friends, the spirit will help in whatever way we, as physical human beings, can provide physical help. And let us often think as individuals of the individual who stands outside in an exposed place, let us think when we begin our meetings of those who stand outside our circle, working in the field. The formula for this is, and I addressed it at the beginning to those in the field – the individual can address it to the individual:

Spirit of thy soul, active guardian,
thy wings may bring
the love of my soul imploring
to thy care, familiar earth-man,
so that, united with thy power,
my request may radiate helpfully
to the soul that lovingly seeks it!

If someone wants to direct their thoughts to several or many who are outside, then they say:

Spirits of your souls, acting guardians,
your wings may bring
my soul's pleading love
to the earthly humans you watch over,
so that, united with your power,
my request may helpfully shine
on the souls it lovingly seeks!

A teacher of love and unselfishness will be the great events that are now taking place. And a teacher for the spiritual worlds, we hope they will become that! Then the great sacrifices, the tremendous sacrifices that people make through their blood, will have been offered at the altar of the spiritual beings, and that which can be so painful to see will serve to achieve the great goals of humanity. The more we imbibe these attitudes, the more thoughts we will have when a great peace is concluded after the war.

The twentieth century is destined to transform much in the destiny and ordering of human affairs. And that which has already been achieved after this first great event will spare humanity the need to repeat this event in the future. Victory and the triumph of spiritual life is a saying that has often found its way into our hearts during these times. Try to understand how we have witnessed the event, which is to be decisive for the development of the entire human spirit, not just for a short time, but for a long, long time! And let us try, out of this seriousness, to muster the love and selflessness that the paths lead us to, in order to put ourselves in the right place according to our strength and ability. Our karma will show us the way. And let him who cannot now intervene to help not be disconsolate. It is important that we also conserve our strength for what will still have to happen later for many, that we recognize at the right moment that our karma is calling us. Then what one would like to say as a confessor of spiritual science at this point in time would like to happen, that it becomes more and more apparent through what is happening in the outer world, how the essences, forces and impulses of will of the spiritual world are going into the human spirits, into the human souls, into the human hearts from all world events. The bond that may arise from all the grief and pain we experience, may the bond be established between the human soul and the divine spirits that effect, rule and guide the destiny of the human soul. And the human soul will find this point. May the human soul find what is meant when it is said in our formula: “The Christ-endowed human soul may find striving:

In the choir of the spheres of peace
You, resounding with praise and power
Of the Christ-devoted human soul!

Now, my dear friends, perhaps we cannot be there fighting everywhere, perhaps we cannot do everything that we would like to contribute to according to our ideals, but to take part in the great event in the sense in which it was meant in the words just spoken will be possible for all of us. We may be in our place in many different places, some here, some there; but wherever we are, because every human being is in their place, no matter what human context they belong to, that is the place where love should work, the power that comes from love, that is the place where pain, suffering and misery challenge people to act, to think, to participate, the place where we feel so keenly how we should be connected in the depths of our hearts with the other person, to whom we should look up because he is protecting our common most sacred goods with his courage, his life's blood, sacrificing it. Therefore, as at the beginning, so at the end, let our thoughts turn once more to those who, as just mentioned, are immersed in the events of our time:

Spirits of our souls, watchers in action,
May your wings bring
Our souls' imploring love
To the earthly beings who trust in your protection,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine with your help
On the souls that you lovingly seek!

May the Spirit whom we seek, seek through our science, seek with our hearts, and whom our spiritual movement wants to serve, be our leader. But may He also be the leader of all mankind, for those among men whom He leads will not follow their goal alone, but will consider and follow that of all mankind.

The people who know how to trust the Christ will find the right way. So, my dear friends, we have endeavored to think for ourselves throughout the years that we have been striving towards this Christ. May the time that has now dawned be a time of trial for us, which we will pass, and may we so link the teaching of the spirit to our soul that it will be our helper in the time of trial, that it will have become for us the power that is not limited to us, but has gone out to all of humanity! May the spirit that leads us up to Christ help us to penetrate this living, cosmic-earthly Christ, so that we can always send our thoughts in the right way to those who are outside, where the destinies of nations and of humanity are being decided, so that they may be helped by the right spirit, which so wisely guides the evolution of humanity that this evolution of humanity may ultimately bring salvation and blessing to all mankind on earth! Let us do everything in our power to help those whose most sacred sacrificial blood is now watering the earth to come down when they are called upon to intervene as important links in the further course of earthly evolution, so that something will come to meet them from the spiritual progress of physical earthly evolution, from what has happened on earth itself, from which they will realize: Truly, it was worth shedding one's blood for this earth, which brings forth such things!

All those who cannot go directly to the front to shed their blood should remember that they should work in such a way that the spirit permeates the development of the earth, that they do everything so that such spirit can permeate the development of the earth, so that those who have shed their most sacred sacrificial blood may find something that was worth shedding their blood for. Then, when we are working on this development of the earth, we, too, as those who do not go directly to the front, will behave in such a way that we can look up into the circumstances with an open eye and have no need to be ashamed. If we did not do this, our eyelids might not really allow us a free view, when on the one hand we feel we belong to our time, and on the other hand we do not find the strength within us to belong to this time in a worthy manner. Spiritual science will contain a certain seal if it could help to give people this strength, strength on the one hand that sustains those who have shed their blood, but it must also give strength to those who must help in other ways, each in their own place.

And so spiritual science will be able to say: I was a means of enabling humanity to pass a great test. Then spiritual science will have achieved its divine goal.

With these simple words I would like to conclude this evening, my dear friends, which I was so happy to experience together with you.

The first part of our lecture today is devoted to insights that are connected with real experiences that our social karma has led us to in recent times. The second part is intended to cast some highlights on what may interest us particularly in current events.

In these two public lectures, I had to emphasize how it is necessary for the presentation of the spiritual worlds to gradually get used to a kind of different language than the one we use to characterize the insights of the worlds in which we find ourselves through our sensory observation and through the mind that is bound to the brain. To support our friends, I would like to refer to specific recent experiences that have taken place within our wider circle, events for which I could certainly choose others, but I choose these events because they tie in with, I would say, recent experiences and can give us ideas about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds.

I have always emphasized that when the soul on its path of knowledge crosses the threshold that leads into the spiritual world, then one of the first experiences is becoming one with what one experiences, observes. Here on the physical plane, one is, so to speak, enclosed in one's skin when facing the things one observes. As soon as one enters the spiritual world, has something to do with the spiritual world, one does not feel enclosed in the way one does in the physical body in the skin; one feels one's whole being spread out, as if identified with the beings and events one is dealing with. To explain this, I will go into positive events.

Recently, an elderly member passed through the gate of death. For years this member had lived with all his mind and soul in the ideas that one acquires when one really feels what spiritual science can give. It is of very special importance and is therefore mentioned so often that the theoretical absorption of what is given as spiritual-scientific ideas cannot be everything. It can be a starting point, but not everything. These ideas must take hold of our feelings and perceptions. In my public lecture, I was even able to explain how the sentient soul is currently much more closely related to the eternal core of the human being, while what is experienced from the consciousness soul is more relevant to what the human being experiences in connection with the physical world in the present epoch. That is why it is so important to feel what one can feel when absorbing spiritual knowledge, because this feeling has a much greater power to grasp our soul and to really bring it into contact with the supersensible world than mere thinking, intellectual reasoning. So the personality I am talking about has lived a great deal in our spiritual-scientific ideas, and now I can see, I can say, a very short time after death – before the actual occurrence of death on the physical plane has been reported to me in any way , how this personality, while still in its etheric body, processed within itself what it had absorbed in the way of feeling and intuitive powers, what it had become through living for years in the spiritual-scientific current. When its etheric body was still united with the astral body and the ego, what I have described above entered of its own accord. The personality that had passed through the gate of death came and told me that she now feels within herself what she has become through spiritual science, what she feels within herself now that she is no longer confined by the physical body. And so, as it were, sentences sounded from the individuality that had passed through the gate of death, which I will read aloud.

You will notice that in the first three lines the dead personality uses a word that cannot really be justified when used by an individuality that has already discarded the physical body; but that is not the point. The word, which refers to the physical heart, is meant in a symbolic sense. Heart here stands for the etheric organ of feeling. We have here the case of an individuality that has passed through the gate of death, which summarized its strongest experience before death as a result of life, in order to say to itself: I am now in a certain situation to experience the nature of my self, how this nature of my self arises for me by dealing with it with the understanding that I have gained in my feeling recognition through spiritual science. So it was that this individuality, who had at most passed through the gate of death two hours earlier, allowed something to resound from within that sounded in such a way that I must say that the words were put in such a way that I myself did nothing to them, I only took in the words that came from this self. These words then served as the beginning and the end when I had to give the funeral oration at the cremation. They are read:

In world-wide I will carry
My feeling heart, that it may become warm
In the fire of sacred power;

In world-thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, that it may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life;

I will dive into the depths of the soul
With devoted thoughts, that they may become strong
For the true goals of human endeavor.

In God's rest I strive so,
With struggles and worries,
Preparing my self for the higher self;

Longing for a peace that is joyful to work for,
Sensing the existence of the world in my own existence,
I would like to fulfill my duty as a human being;

Then I may live in anticipation
of my destiny,
which will grant me a place in the spiritual realm.

Let us hear here, as it were, from the self, what the self feels within itself, through what it has become by filling itself with spiritual-scientific feeling. It is important to bear in mind that we are dealing here with a personality who had reached a ripe old age in this physical life and that the possibility of wanting to characterize the self is connected with this attainment of a higher age, that the self only after after death expresses itself so completely in its own being that one has nothing to do but to observe it, to lose oneself completely, to surrender, to identify with the being, that one can let it express itself completely.

It was different in another case. There one had to deal with a relatively early death. To look at such a case, especially the events of the time urge us, since so many people today pass through the gate of death at a young age. In the case I am talking about, it was not the cause that is the cause in many cases today, but it was an early death. When death occurs so early that one can say: If the person had grown old, he would have lived for many decades more, then we are dealing with an etheric body that will indeed be laid aside, but it is such that it could still supply the physical body with forces for many decades. Someone who dies in such a way that he could have lived for decades hands over to the spiritual elementary world an etheric body that is still unused. Countless such unused etheric bodies are now entering the spiritual world. When we say that we have great hope for the age that is developing from the womb of our events, based on spiritual science, it should be borne in mind that those who are now passing through death will be witnesses in the spiritual world for a spiritual work and will send forces into earthly life through their individuality. But their etheric body is still there as something second, something special, it is unused. A large number of such etheric bodies will represent a force that will have an effect on people who will live when peace has been restored, and they will be helpers so that the materialistic world view can be replaced by a spiritual one.

We can become attached when we experience people dying at a young age and we can then, so to speak, perceive what is happening.

In the second case, where again the karma of our spiritual current led to me having to speak at the cremation of a personality who had passed through the gate of death, it was the case that a long time had passed between the onset of death and the cremation, from Wednesday to Monday. By then, this etheric body had already been separated, and for my occult observation, I had lost the etheric body, so to speak, on the night before I had to speak; the etheric body had been lost for the observation. The individuality had already been separated from the astral body and I. Here the observing soul was confronted with an astral body and I, and the impulse arose to introduce and conclude the eulogy with words that had something to do with individuality. Something did not arise that the individuality itself had expressed. Because it was released from the etheric body and the physical body, it was possible to put into words, which I believe were precise, the whole way this individuality had been here on earth. Again, these words are not the way I made them, but the way an inspiration impulse made them, the way they had to be, the way they characterize the individuality that had passed through death. They arose as the inspiration of the contemplating soul, yielding to the impression of the personality that had passed through the gate of death. The words arose:

You came among us.
Your gentle nature moved
Spoke from your eyes of silent strength
Calm that soulfully animated,
flowed in the waves
with which your gaze
to things and to people
carried your inner weaving; –
And this being was imbued with it
your voice, which eloquently
through the nature of the word more
than in the word itself
revealed what dwells hidden
in your beautiful soul;
But the part of devoted love of compassionate people
revealed itself wordlessly in full – –
This being, of noble, silent beauty,
told of the receptive feeling of the creation of the soul of the world.

These words were spoken at the cremation, and the peculiar thing turned out to be that the moment, which could only be called a moment of awakening, occurred when the heat of the furnace was just taking hold of the personality's physical body. And so, for this personality that had passed through the gate of death, there was a moment when it was possible to develop consciousness, and not during the funeral ceremony, but when the heat surrounded the body that had been given over to the fire. Then unconsciousness set in again. After being interrupted by unconsciousness, such moments of consciousness can occur again until full consciousness sets in some time after death. In this case it was particularly clear how consciousness works when a person has passed through the gate of death. This consciousness perceives time in a different form than a person perceives time when he lives here in the physical body. In such a case, it is particularly meaningful. The perception of time by someone who does not have a physical body can only be compared to our perception of space. Here in the physical body, we can always look back; what we have seen remains. If something has passed us by in time, we have to look back on the image in our memory, it has to rise up in our consciousness. This is not the case with someone who no longer has a physical body. The disembodied soul looks back as we do in space.

So the dead woman looked back at what had been said, as one looks back in space. What had been said now stood before her soul. It is precisely in such concrete cases that the peculiarity of the spiritual world becomes apparent. Now I just said that at the time when the words of the funeral oration were to be formed, I had, so to speak, lost the etheric body for the observation, but a second observation showed that it was precisely this etheric body that made it possible to have the inspiration that was shaped into these words. When I was able to find the ether body again - I mean for the observation - I became aware of where this ether body was when I shaped the words. It was in the night from Sunday to Monday. I said I had lost it, I only realized much later where it actually was: I was in it myself. It was a dissolving cloud. The ego and the astral body had already been separated. Because I was inside it, I did not perceive the aetheric body, like a cloud in which one is stuck; but what lived in it gave the inspiration to shape the words I read.

They provide an insight into the intimate secrets of the human soul's coexistence with the spiritual worlds. I would not dare to say so out of hand if this had only occurred in a single case, but it was confirmed to me again in the third case. There I was again in the same situation of shaping words that characterized the individuality of this third personality who had passed through the gateway of death and was part of our circle. The death of this personality had something particularly painful for our feelings on the physical plane, because it gave the best hopes with regard to the spiritual scientific work within our circle. This personality, during the time she lived here on earth, absorbed much of what can currently be called scholarship, became completely immersed in it and had the firm desire to do something that is necessary in our spiritual movement, namely to immerse oneself in what is currently called science, and to transform this science in the soul itself in such a way that it gives birth again on a higher level to spiritual-scientific insight. Not everyone can do this, but it is one of the necessities of our spiritual science. Concordance between science and spiritual science can often lead someone who is unfamiliar with spiritual science to a conviction, but it is necessary to become imbued with contemporary science, and when this is there, to ascend with it in a living way in spiritual science. One then comes to a certain point where one feels so surely, so knows so surely in one's inner experience the agreement between what present science gives and what spiritual science gives that one can no longer be misled by anything that comes from the present materialistic culture of our time.

When this personality passed through the gate of death, the necessity arose again to shape the beginning and end of the funeral oration in a certain way at the cremation, and the special impulse arose, precisely in the face of this individuality, to point out the bridge that exists for our spiritual science movement between the physical plan and the spiritual world. For our feelings on the physical plane, it is particularly painful that this personality was taken from us young. But the spiritual current in which we live would not be able to awaken as much hope as it must awaken if we were not sure that the forces flowing in spiritual science come not only from those who live on the physical plane, but that such forces also come from those who have already passed through the gate of death and are equipped with spiritual science. Thus the soul was faced with the necessity of emphasizing: At this moment you are given a great thing where you have gone through death: a call to remain a loyal co-worker even now that you have gone through the gate of death.

Especially those who take spiritual science seriously must count on those who are no longer on the physical plane as real co-workers.

Thus it became necessary to coin words, in the coining of which I am, so to speak, completely uninvolved, which resulted from a necessary impulse in the way I will read them now. You will see in a moment what the significance of such coined words is. The words are as follows:

A hope that brings us happiness:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms,
Through the power of the soul's being,
Want to show themselves to research.

Your pure love of truth was your longing was kindred;
To create from the light of the spirit
Was the earnest goal of life
You strove for tirelessly.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts
in order to walk the bright path of spiritual knowledge,
unperturbed by the contradictions of the world,
as a faithful servant of the truth,
with sure steps.

You practiced your spiritual organs
So that they bravely and persistently
On both sides of the path
You pushed error aside
And created space for truth.

To reveal your true self
To create pure light,
So that the soul's solar power
radiates powerfully within you,
was your life's concern and joy.

Other concerns, other joys
hardly touched your soul,
because knowledge appeared to you as light,
which gives meaning to existence,
as life's true value.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms
Through the power of the soul's being
Would like to show themselves to research.

A loss that deeply hurts us,
So you disappear from the field,
Where the spirit's seeds of creation Matured in the womb of the soul, Your sense of the spheres.

Feel how we look lovingly Into the heights that now call you Towards other work. Give your strength from spiritual realms To your abandoned friends.

Hear our souls' request,
Sent to you in trust:
Here for our earthly work we need
Strong power from spiritual realms,
Which we thank our dead friends for.

A hope that makes us happy,
A loss that deeply pains us:
Let us hope that Thou, far-near,
Unlost, to our life dost shine
As a soul star in the realm of minds.

It was sometime during the following night when, as if it were an answer, it sounded to me from the being in question, not from its consciousness, but from its essence, so that one could immediately feel it as an answer to the words. Not as if the individuality had said it from the consciousness. The individuality resounded as if in sounds:

To shape my self to a revelation
of pure light,
That the soul's solar power
might radiate powerfully within me
Was my life's care and joy.

Other worries, other joys,
They hardly touched my soul,
Because knowledge appeared to me as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

Only now did I realize that this was only a rearrangement of the two verses, a rearrangement of the second person into the first. From this example you can see how a correspondence takes place between the soul that dwells here in physical life and the soul that has passed through the gate of death. I would like to draw special attention to the fact that such things are given in such a way that the words cannot be changed, and you can see that I was not at all aware why the words of the two verses were so shaped. I only realized this from the answer that came the following night from the soul that had passed through the gate of death. We must get used to the fact that in this respect too, we cannot have direct feelings towards the spiritual worlds that are taken from our experiences here in the physical world. Note that much depends on this if we are to gain a true understanding of the relationship with the spiritual world. As a small example, I could also mention something that was taken from a completely different side. When these difficult days began, these formulas that we are using now were given as if from the spiritual worlds, which I also use today to guide the souls of those who are in the fields of the events or have passed through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,
your wings may bring
the love of my soul imploring
to the spheres (earthly people) entrusted to your care, so that, united with your power,
my plea may help to radiate to the souls that seek them lovingly.

It says: “Spirits of your souls.” I had to experience in Berlin that someone objected that this is grammatically incorrect, and now one does not know in the second line what the “your wings” refer to, because if one says, “spirits of your souls,” one turns to those who live as human beings, but one still turns to the spirits of those who live there. So the pedant might think that one should say, “Spirits of their souls.” Yes, we have to get used to the fact that in the spiritual world, the grammar that applies quite naturally to the sensual world is not always adhered to, that one must have more flexibility in the soul. One turns: “Spirits of your souls,” but in the second line it is understood that one does not turn to one or a number of people, that one turns to the protecting spirits there. Grammar is not the deciding factor. We must realize that in the higher worlds everything is much more mobile, that one does not need to divert one's conception of the human being when one turns to the protecting spirit. He is much more closely connected with the man himself than two people here. There one must apply physical grammar, because there need not be such a connection between two physical people as between the protecting spirit and the human being. So one could say: It is precisely through these given words, which are contestable before physical grammar, that something is given that is peculiar to the higher worlds. When one receives such things from the higher worlds, the words become teachings. Sometimes one only understands such things much later, and sometimes this learning is not as easy as prying into grammar, which is not a great art. We have to find our way into such an intimate relationship with the spiritual world. Even in the presentation of the higher worlds, it is important that one does not grasp them with the rough word combinations that one has acquired here in the physical world, so that it is often quite easy to find a presentation of the higher worlds, in which the realm of the spirits of form loses its special power, contestable. Crossing the threshold, we enter the realm of the spirits of movement. Even the style must become more flexible there. The spirits of form are for the world around us. Style must adapt to the realm of the spirits of movement. The time will come when we will find our way into such things, and we must not believe that we can truly depict what is mobile and fluid in the spiritual world with a style that is suitable for the physical world.

I wanted to explain a few things about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds, using specific cases that our social karma has brought us into contact with. Even more than in abstract descriptions, such concrete involvement in individual conditions of the spiritual worlds, and above all, we can develop a feeling that through our spiritual scientific movement, a living interaction between the physical world and the higher world must gradually come about. After the manifold experiences that have had to be made in recent times, it can be said that the hopes that certain things will already happen in relation to our spiritual movement can only be firmly held inwardly if one is certain that those who have already passed through the gate of death will be our helping co-workers. This does, however, require that we take the content and intention of our spiritual science with the utmost seriousness.

In summary, I would like to say something that has already been discussed in detail in the cycle in Vienna about life between death and a new birth, which is important to consider. One can say, because one must use certain words that serve the physical life: After death, the human being is in a kind of unconscious, sleeping state. Then he awakens, but “awakens” is not quite the right word. It seems as if one comes to a kind of consciousness upon awakening. This is not the case. When the human being has discarded the etheric body, he does not have too little or sleeping consciousness, he has too much consciousness. He has a kind of overflowing consciousness. Just as one cannot see when blinded by flooding light, so there is too much consciousness after death. We are completely flooded by infinitely effective consciousness, and it must first subside to the degree that we have acquired after our development in the physical world. We have to orient ourselves in the abundance of consciousness. What is called “waking up” is only an accustoming to the much higher degree of consciousness that we enter after death. It is a dimming of consciousness to the degree that we can bear.

Another thing is that, I would say, every observation shows more and more how, for certain conditions of existence, the experience in the spiritual worlds is exactly the opposite of the experience in the physical world. This is also the case with the one I am about to mention. Between birth and death, no one actually remembers their birth without higher knowledge. For no one is it a matter of their own observation. If you were to listen to those people who say they believe nothing except what their five senses give them, you might object: Then you cannot believe that you were once a small child either. You only believe that from the following two reasons: Because you see that all other people begin their lives that way, you conclude that it was the same for you. That is only an analogy, or the others have told you. - It is known through communication and not through observation that one also enters life through birth. No one realizes that this is only an analogy. One would have to say: I cannot know from my own observation about the origin of this physical body. When a person looks back in physical life, he does not see as far as his birth. It is different between death and a new birth. This is shown by the very case in which the inner impulse arose to send the one who had passed through the gate of death such words that had something to do with his self, that characterized him. This impulse comes from the urge to serve the one who has gone through the gate of death, to make it easier for him to have what he needs as soon as possible: an unobstructed view of the moment of death. For just as little as one looks back on birth in physical life, it is indispensable to look back on death between death and a new birth. Death is always there in retrospect, only from the spiritual side it looks different. From the physical point of view it may have been a terrible death, but from the other side it is the most glorious event one can look back on. It shows the glory of the spirit's victory over the physical by freeing itself from it. This is one of the most beautiful experiences one has between death and a new birth in retrospect. This is another example of how the physical world and the spiritual world are opposed to each other.

We are gradually getting to know the peculiarities of the spiritual world. These are aspects that I wanted to develop before you today in aphorisms. Another aspect is indirectly significant for things that we are experiencing now: the aspect that in the case of a person who could have lived here for a long time under normal circumstances, an unused etheric body stands as an individuality alongside the individuality. The dissolution of the etheric body only takes a short time in older people. We are always surrounded by such as yet unresolved etheric bodies. We are living towards a time when this will be particularly noticeable, because a kind of atmosphere is formed indirectly from these etheric bodies, the like of which has not yet been seen in the development of the earth. One might think that something similar has already occurred in earlier wars, but things are changing because people in the past went through death differently. There were not as many people in the past who were surrounded only by material thinking as there are now. This justifies the fact that these etheric bodies will give off spiritual impulses. Furthermore, there will be people here on earth who will feel and sense this. I have already hinted at this in the lectures I would like to call the lectures on current events. What our time wants to teach us is that, in addition to the spiritual shallowness, we also need to deepen what will later appear as the accompanying phenomena. Should we not be deeply saddened to learn that in our time, which considers itself so enlightened in terms of logic, where scientific culture has spread through all kinds of popular channels to the widest circles, that something can take hold again in the widest circles that we must regard as a judgment born of passion?

Those who follow the voices of those who consider Central Europe to be locked up in a large fortress will already have realized what this passion is doing to people's souls. One need only look to the west and northwest, where one can stand in amazement at what human passionate judgment has brought about. Better newspapers will be particularly instructive there. How is it shouted out by these or those: We did not want this war! — How is it senselessly blamed for this war by those who are hostile to the German essence, to that area that had the least reason for this war: the Central European one.

In this respect, the way in which German character has developed makes it objectively possible for the German people to achieve a kind of national self-awareness that is sorely lacking in other nations. It will certainly be a long time before most people, especially outside of Central Europe, will be able to see the situation clearly enough to get past the most foolish judgments of the present. For us, who are part of a spiritual movement that not only wants to pass on theory, it should be clear that an objective judgment can be gained in the face of such difficult events and that we can clarify many things in the present precisely because we live in these fateful days. How easily some short-sighted minds criticize what belongs to the impulses, to the core of our spiritual science. Painful things have had to be experienced in this field in recent months. There is a spiritual science movement that says it is lovingly working to want to reach people without distinction of race and so on. One can say: How does what I have put forward in this time relate to this? Before these difficult, fateful days befell us, I warned against interpreting the principle of equality in such a way that it is transformed into something completely abstract. Do you remember how I often said: When people come and say that Buddhists, Mohammedans, and Christians are only different forms of one being, that is like saying: salt, sugar, pepper are all food additives, so it doesn't matter what I take – and sprinkle sugar into soup and beer because it is a food additive. It may be convenient to apply such a principle in such an abstract way, but for the one who is seriously seeking, it cannot be the point. If we lovingly engage with the essence of the individual European nations, we come to recognize that the soul of the people speaks to the sentient soul in the Italians, to the intellectual soul in the French, to the consciousness soul in the British, and to the I in the Germans. We do not come to understand these things by pouring love over everything in the abstract. The essential thing in our movement is that the human soul, while recognizing national peculiarities, wants to rise to the general human level. Spiritual science can bring it about that someone born in Britain this time says: “I have recognized that I have the folk soul speaking particularly through the consciousness soul, through that which regulates the soul's relationship to the physical plane, which makes the human being suitable for being material. When he recognizes this, he recognizes that he must discard what stands in his way from his nationality if he wants to rise to the general humanity. This knowledge always helps, and it is important to recognize what is peculiar to the individual national entity. When the member of Russian culture will say to himself: The peculiarity of the national soul is that it hovers like a cloud over the individual, that the individual, in chaotic thinking, looks up to the national soul, and thus relies on finding his way into the productive life of other nations – then he will find his way. Those who recognize the essence of the Russian national soul through spiritual science will say: Why am I Russian? The strength that I have acquired as a result, I have to absorb the strength of other nations.

The German will recognize through spiritual science — he needs to understand this in all objectivity and humility — that he is predestined to seek the universal human through his nationality through what the national soul speaks to his ego. That he perceives what leads him beyond nationality, that is the national essence of the German. The specifically national essence of the German consists in this, that through nationality it is driven beyond the nation into the general human essence. Therefore the transition from German idealism to spiritual science is to be found in the flowing of German idealism into spiritual science. It is necessary to struggle through to a concrete grasp of spiritual realities. Spiritual science makes it possible to grasp these things concretely. When one learns that a Frenchman like Renan says that what he has received in German culture seems to him like higher mathematics compared to the lower mathematics of the experiences of other peoples, then what characterizes the German essence is being stated. It is our fate to have to recognize this. We must recognize it, we cannot help but recognize it, but with the same objectivity we must recognize that it is our destiny, if we are true Germans, to progress to spiritual life, just as it is necessary for the British to shed materialism in order to enter into the spiritual. Different tasks arise for different nations from their national character. It is particularly important for the German to immerse himself in the spiritual worlds of that which flows through German culture. For the Russian, there is no such thing as a national culture. For him, there is only the possibility of gaining the strength of blood that makes it possible for him to accept the essence of others. It turns out that the German essence underwent an important development in the evolution of the folk soul.

The folk souls, like human beings, undergo development. Between 1530 and 1550 something special happened to the Italian folk soul. Before that time this culture was not yet as separate from the rest of Europe as it was afterwards. Before that time the folk soul worked in the soul; afterwards it reached beyond the soul, shaping the physical into the national. The human being progresses to becoming independent of the physical. The folk soul does the opposite. It first affects the soul, then the body, so that the Italian folk soul before the 16th century only affected the soul, but later it reaches beyond the merely soulful into the physical, shaping the nervous system, shaping the etheric body, so that the human being is also defined and identified in terms of the physical. The human being becomes more rigid, more closed to the other cultures.

For the French national soul, such a point in time occurs in the middle of the 17th century. At that point, the national soul begins to shift from the soul to the body, making the nation rigid. For the British, this only happens from the middle of the 17th century onwards, and Shakespeare does not yet belong to an age when the national soul shifts to the body. In the period between 1750 and 1850, a kind of spillover from the German folk soul from the spiritual to the physical takes place, but it withdraws again. In Western peoples, the folk soul floats higher at first, then descends into the physical. That which previously descended into the physical then rose again into the spiritual. The descent occurred between the mid-17th and 18th centuries. As a result, the German national soul remains more flexible. It does not remain down there permanently, it goes up and down, takes hold of people and then releases them again.

These are things that will only be fully understood in the future. We must say that we cannot empathize enough with the present difficult time, with all its greatness and significance, in the depths of our soul. These present events must be infinitely significant for anyone who is interested in the spiritual essence that is weaving through the world. When people reflect on the causes that led to the present war events, one thing will become clear: the antagonism between the national souls has contributed to these present war events, but no matter how hard someone in the future will search for the causes on the physical plane, they will always find something that does not clarify the matter, because the causes do not lie on the physical plane, but because one can say about these events: spiritual individualities, spiritual impulses have an effect. Only when mankind will recognize this, will one speak reasonably about the causes that have led to these events. One will recognize that people were only the tools through which good and evil forces have worked. To come to this judgment, it is necessary to be unprejudiced, by penetrating ourselves with what spiritual science can be to the innermost part of the soul, not just to the intellect.

It may be important at some point to realize how much of what the British world has taken part in is really intimately connected with the national character. Then one will have to recognize something that has been impressed on me since July, before the war had even begun. Then one could hear different judgments. I am reporting objectively and would like you to disregard the personal aspect. It occurred to me that the world was in danger because such a terrible fool was in charge of foreign affairs in London. The world considers Grey to be a clever, perhaps shrewd man. I could never consider him to be anything other than a fool, from intuitive impressions, and today I must consider him to be an especially foolish person, chosen by Ahrimanic powers because he could cause particular harm through his ignorance of things. It is not really possible to prove that such a person is a fool on the basis of external reasons. Yesterday I bought a book and found a letter in it that a colleague of Grey's wrote. I only learned about the letter yesterday, but I have considered Grey a fool chosen by Ahriman to wreak havoc since July. It is interesting for us to see how the writer of the letter characterizes his cabinet colleague: “It is very entertaining for us, who have known Grey since the beginning of his career, to watch him impress his continental colleagues. They seem to suspect something in him that is not there at all. He is one of the Kingdom's most outstanding sports anglers and a reasonably good tennis player. He has no political or diplomatic abilities, unless one were to recognize a certain tiresome dullness of speech and a strange tenacity as such. Earl Rosebery once said of him that he makes such a concentrated impression because he never has an idea of his own that could distract him from a task that has been handed to him with precise instructions. When a somewhat temperamental foreign diplomat recently expressed admiration for Grey's quiet manner, which never revealed what was going on in his mind, a cheeky secretary said, “If a clay money box is filled to the top with gold, it certainly doesn't rattle when you shake it. But if there isn't a single penny in it, it doesn't rattle either. With Winston Churchill, a few nickels rattle so loudly that it gets on your nerves; with Grey, not a single rattle. Only the person holding the box can know whether it is completely full or completely empty!” That was impertinent, but well said. I believe that Grey has a very decent character, even if a certain stupid vanity may occasionally tempt him to get involved in matters that hands that insist on absolute cleanliness would do better to stay away from. But his excuse is always that he is incapable of overlooking and thinking through a matter on his own. He, who is in no way a schemer in his own right, can, as soon as a clever schemer uses him, appear to be the most accomplished schemer. This has always been a temptation for political schemers to choose him as their tool, and it is only thanks to this circumstance that he owes his present position."

This is an example of how one can err if one does not try to look at things objectively. In this personality, who is not distinguished by particular cleverness but by personal angling skills that have nothing to do with the skills that matter, one sees the Ahrimanic powers at work, which necessarily had to work from the inner side for the events to occur. We shall gradually realize that in the face of these events in particular, we must be clear about how the supersensible must be acknowledged in both good and evil. If we try to understand these events on the basis of what can be observed on the physical plane, we will not be able to understand them. One will realize how the various impulses have streamed across, how for a long time the East has been preparing what gave the impulse for these events, how from those things that can be observed in Eastern Europe, the factors developed which must necessarily one day ignite the torch of war, how the present moment brought the war because the western factors allowed themselves to be drawn into the arson from the east, for reasons that can only be recognized if one goes into the important causes. It will be important that precisely these historical events will force people, if they want to recognize the causes, to look to the supersensible, not to remain on the physical plane, because otherwise they will be able to argue for a long time. We shall have to recognize that it is more necessary for the man of letters than for other men to place himself on a surer horizon than that which can arise from the experience of the affairs of the physical world.

How narrow the physical horizon can become has been evident for years. For many, historical consideration only began in July. Even some in our circles made strange judgments. The elements of what I want to say have already been given in the cycle 'The Mission of Individual National Souls' in Kristiania. It also says that what wants to come forth in the sixth post-Atlantic culture is preparing itself in the East. We live here in the fifth culture. If you think abstractly, that humanity is rising higher and higher from the fifth culture to the sixth and seventh cultures, then you may get a stiff neck. But such penetration is not the progress of the cultural development of humanity. Up to the fourth culture, there was a repetition of the development of the earth. The fifth culture is the one that matters; it is something new that has been added, that must be carried over into the sixth age. The sixth culture will sink into decadence; it will be a descending culture. This must be taken into account. Connected with this is the fact that a mind like Solowjow, which in certain respects has outgrown the Russian national character with its habitual traits, has sunk into the Western world, that his philosophy is Western, although it is enclosed in the temperament of the East, but in the way the sentences flow, it reveals the Russian. It would be foolish to say that someone steeped in Western European culture could be given something that went beyond that Western European culture.

These have again been only brief sentences, but you will hear the appeal to our spiritual science to try to use this difficult time to see with concreteness and to grasp with concreteness that which can really flow into our feeling when spiritual scientific ideas flow into this our feeling. In the future, our spiritual science will have to prove itself precisely by finding its way through the raging passions of our time.

I am well aware that since the beginning of this difficult time for us, I have spoken neither here nor elsewhere about these matters in any other way than so that one can advocate these matters before an objective world view. But what all could one hear! From what has happened in the last few months, one can also learn how things stand with regard to much of what is being criticized in the outside world. One often had to hear the judgment that a large part of the members only listened to the judgment of one person, that it was all based on blind trust. — How far that blind trust went could be seen at that moment.

About what was said about me, one could hear: He uses his occult abilities to waste them on checking the Wolffian telegrams. — Strange trust for someone who is in our movement to say that I use the truth of the Wolffian telegraph office in favor of the enemies of Germany! That is only one of countless judgments. There you see how what is now flooding the world in desires and passions also plays a role in spiritual science. This must not deter us from fathoming the truth with regard to what it is our duty to emphasize now. You will be able to see that.

Basically, it has always been as it is now. What has been said now has always been said and done. I have emphasized before that this Theosophical movement, which has become the Anthroposophical movement, never wanted to develop in any other way than in the direct progression of Central European culture. It was never a matter of being taken in tow by someone. On the English side, when this was noticed, mistrust was immediately aroused against these Central Europeans, who were not the imitators of what was given by British Theosophy. The sense of truth had to reject the British view of the Christ problem, it was of such a nature that the belief could arise that Christ would re-embody himself in the physical body, because one could not understand a spiritual coming of the Christ. This showed the impossibility of the two directions going together. In English theosophical magazines you will now find letters from Mrs. Besant, who in every way calls upon the world of Theosophy to work against Germany. There you will find a subsequent explanation of why the German Theosophical movement had to break away from the English one at that time. Mrs. Besant says: ” Now, looking back, in the light of the German methods, as revealed to us by the war, I see that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I thwarted those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace instead of giving honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here (in India) to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into an armed force against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader, instead of standing, as it always has, for the equal alliance of two free nations, then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

[Gap in the transcription] This personality has come up with what I wanted at the time. - There you can see the causes of why this war between Germany and England broke out. But you can also see that our spiritual struggle has preceded it. Many things that had to happen there will perhaps be understood differently now.

The assertion of occultism [...] is a double-edged sword. It must be said again and again that a sense of truth must intensively permeate the souls who, through occultism, want to bring salvation and not disaster into the world. How this is connected, what must penetrate our soul through the events of the time, what we, as occult students, should learn from the events of the time, can be revealed to us by the thought: When peace returns, there will be unused etheric bodies in the spiritual world that want to bring down forces. From souls that are stimulated by spiritual science, forces should also go up to connect with the forces from above. Then, for the progress and salvation of humanity, what spiritual science can be will be significant. If there are really quite a number of souls that feel this in truth and objectivity, if many souls with thoughts inspired by the spiritual world view long to reach up into the spiritual worlds, then the difficult times of our time will also have value for these souls. That is why I would like to express the connection of our spiritual striving today through the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit will grow
Guiding souls, spirit-conscious
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

There is a time when the experience of death, from the point of view of the physical plane, comes before our souls in many ways, in a broader and in a narrower sense, a thousandfold outside in humanity and also in our immediate circle, from which, especially in the course of the last few years and also months, dear friends have passed through the gate of death. It is perhaps appropriate to direct our thoughts, to which we can feel connected here in this branch, to certain aspects of the mystery of death and many things related to it. We direct our contemplative gaze to the riddle of death, not merely because we are plagued by curiosity or a thirst for knowledge to recognize what is mysteriously connected with death, but because we have already sufficiently gathered from the insights that spiritual science can impart to us how intimately connected with the mystery of death, with the knowledge of it, is that which we need in the way of strengthening forces of life, how, in fact, the contemplation of death removes the gulf between the two worlds — the world we live through in the physical and the world of the spiritual. We have often realized and rightly called to mind again and again in the face of concrete deaths how those souls that were connected to us in physical life remain so even after they have passed through the gate of death. In this context, I was also able to say in this branch that it is one of the strengthening, invigorating thoughts that we can let carry us, that we have friend souls in the spiritual worlds who, through the way they were connected with our cause here on earth, have become and will become our loyal helpers and co-workers. It must be emphasized that we are now living in a time in which we feel obliged to elaborate spiritual science, but in which this spiritual science is still met with much misunderstanding and opposition arising from this lack of understanding. And sometimes doubts may arise as to whether, in the face of ever-increasing opposition - and it will truly take on even stronger forms - what forces are given to us within the physical world can suffice. Then we are consoled by the thought that the souls of our friends who have passed away and are still united with us in our work, who are not hampered by the obstacles that still confront us here on earth, combine their forces with ours. And out of such conviction we believe in the victorious, if also slow, advance of spiritual scientific work.

When a person passes through the gate of death, it is indeed, I would say, close to our soul to experience how he, after leaving his physical body on the scene of earthly existence, then ascends into the spiritual worlds, so to speak, leaving these physical worlds. If we have gained convictions in spiritual science, then we perceive the passing through of the gate of death in a human being as a leaving of the physical world. If now the spiritual scientific view is directed to the experience of death, that is, to the passing through of a human being through the gate of death, then to this spiritual scientific view the matter presents itself somewhat differently. What comes into consideration is mainly what the so-called dead person experiences himself, how he feels and experiences passing through the gate of death in his innermost being, and how it then unfolds for him between death and a new birth. And here it must be said that what passes through the gate of death is, as we know, first of all the etheric body with the astral body and the ego. Now, however, the dead person, by entering the spiritual world in this triad of his being, first feels the scene of the physical world and, standing on it, those people with whom he felt connected in life, and also everything else to which he felt connected, actually as if it were all leaving him, as if it were moving away from him, so to speak. And then the one who has passed through the gate of death and is settling into the etheric world with his etheric body, becomes one with this etheric world. And we also already know this: a kind of overview of the experience on earth in the last incarnation occurs before his eyes. This experience can really be compared to a kind of universal 'dream experience'. Life goes on for days in surging, weaving images that are meaningful and full of meaning. One feels like saying that this panorama of life enlarges as the dead person feels: 'This is what you see, your life unwinds, flows away.' And beyond this flowing life, the scene on which you were standing leaves you.

This is a completely ethereal experience. While we, when we experience physically and sensually, come across the solid and sturdy with our senses and know exactly: what we experience with our senses is out there and we feel ourselves within the boundaries of our skin, the one who has passed through the gate of death experiences his existence and his connection to the world in such a way that he does not distinguish in such a strong way; he feels, so to speak, what he has as a tableau of life, as a piece of his self. Yes, this tableau of life is his world in the first instance. He surveys what he has lived through in a great panorama of life, as his immediate world, in which he is at first. In a sense, earthly existence fades away from him, and from this fading earthly existence he extracts what he has experienced since his birth within this earthly existence. This unfolds like a powerful, vivid panorama of images, not with a dull 'dream consciousness', but with a clear consciousness, in which not only images are seen, but in which everything that we have experienced in life in some other way is revived. Every single conversation we have had with people: we hear it again; everything we have experienced with people, everything we have exchanged with them in terms of feelings: we experience it again. The fact that everything is flooded with life makes possible that abundance of life which, compressed into a few days, gives a complete overview – which is actually always before us at the same time – of what we have gone through in a sometimes long life on earth. And we go through it in such a way that we then know: earlier, on earth, you went through it in such a way that experience followed experience. You had an experience and were in a context of life. It flowed by, remained partly in your memory, was partly forgotten. Then something new occurred, and so the stream of life was composed over the years. Now all of this is standing before the mind's eye at the same time, and now all of this is, one might say, in the self expanded into the world.

In these days after death, one does not distinguish between the world and the self, but both flow together, and the world is simply what one has experienced oneself. Otherwise, at first there is nothing but what one has experienced oneself, in which everything we have lived through with other people on earth is also included. And then we feel as if the external ethereal material, which initially appears to be the carrier of this world of images, were to leave us, and as if this world of images were no longer like one we have seen, but one that we have now completely connected with our own being, that now forms our innermost being. And by absorbing it, as it were, into ourselves, we are able to perceive and experience the rest of the spiritual world, to survey it with our consciousness.

Now, little by little, human souls appear in the rest of the spiritual world. These are either souls who have gone through the portal of death before us and are now there too, or human souls who are still in the physical body, in earthly existence. One sees these human souls from the spiritual world by seeing them in their spiritual-soul aspect. The physical is, of course, only perceptible to physical organs, but the spiritual-soul that lines the physical is then also in the person before our soul's eye, rising up. We feel much more intimately connected to all that is now being experienced by us than we could feel connected to when we were actually on earth, where there are separating barriers due to the physical body.

There is just one thing we must always bear in mind: we must choose our words carefully when we want to describe the spiritual, because the experience in the spiritual world is simply much more intimate than the experience here on the physical plane. When we visualize how a thought, which represents an experience long past, emerges from within us, reminding us of that experience, and when we now now, I might say, imagine the reality of such a shadowy memory experience, then we gradually get an idea of how spiritual reality actually appears to us after we have passed through the gate of death. As a rule, it does not approach us from outside like the experiences of the physical-sensory world. The imaginations come up as they are, only with infinitely greater vividness than the memory images, but in such a way that we do not distinguish our I and the imaginations as we distinguish ourselves from the outside world here. They arise from within us like memory images, but in such a way that we know: what arises on the horizon of our consciousness is reality. An image arises and we know that it is connected to us in the same way that a memory image is connected to us here on the physical plane. It arises with all its vitality. But we know that we are connected to it, our I is within it. In this way the soul arises, and we feel ourselves in union with the souls and soul beings of the higher hierarchies that gradually arise. The spiritual world comes to me, I would say, from the indefinite twilight darkness, approaching my own soul, like memories that arise in our soul. Only that the memories are very dim and depict only an external reality, while the imaginations that arise become speaking imaginations, announcing themselves essentially through their revealing language, which then becomes for us a revelation of the souls, of the spirits, with whom we continue to be in the most varied ways warmer, more intimate, than we can be with a person here on the physical plane.

One must now be particularly aware of the significance of the very first experience that a person undergoes when he passes through the gate of death. This looking back at the last life has a great, an enormous significance for the whole of the subsequent experience between death and a new birth, and we can realize this significance if we think about how we actually come to our sense of self in physical life on earth; not to our self, but to our sense of self. We know how we come to the I from our study of spiritual science: the spirits of form give us this I by advancing us from a moon-based existence to an earth-based existence. But this I is initially subconscious. It becomes conscious through being reflected in the physical body. How is it reflected here on the physical plane? Well, you know that even in the ordinary dream experience you can see it: The I only very rarely becomes clearly aware of itself in the dream experience; the I becomes blurred with the experiences, with the images of the dream that emerge. How do we experience I-consciousness during waking hours? Become aware of how this I-consciousness is actually connected to all external perceptions and all external experiences. When we move our hand through the air like this, we feel nothing. But in the moment when we push through the air, we feel something. But we actually feel our own experience, feel what we experience through our fingers. It is by touching the outside world that we become aware of our self. And in another sense, we actually become aware of our self when we wake up, in that we descend from the consciousness of sleep into our physical body, we collide with our physical body. In this collision with the physical body, the consciousness of self is actually summoned to the soul.

Let us be clear about the fact that the consciousness of self must not be confused with the I. The I initially remains in the subconscious, one could say, incomplete. Only during the volcanic period will man experience what the I really is. But the I acquires earthly consciousness by submerging with the astral body into the etheric body and colliding with the etheric body and physical body. And in this collision with the physical body, the ego becomes aware of itself: this is how the sense of self arises from the moment when the physical body is so hardened that this collision is strong enough, that is, from a certain point in early childhood, as far as we can remember.

Now the soul must also collide with something in the life between death and a new birth. Here in the physical life, it collides with the physical body, which is given from the physical forces and substances of the outer nature, in order to come to the I-consciousness. After death, between death and a new birth, the soul, in order to come to its now spiritual self-awareness, collides with its own life, which it has just seen in the days after passing through the gate of death and which it keeps looking back on. First, life presents itself in a way that allows us to see it, then it becomes a constant looking back. As spiritual beings, after we have passed through the gate of death and continue to live in the stream of time, looking back on what we have directly experienced in and with death, the soul, as it continues to progress, always encounters this panorama of life in retrospect, which one has had, but which now remains as a spiritual memory. And just as the I is ignited to its I-consciousness here through its collision with the physical body, so after death the I-consciousness is ignited by the look back at our own life, which encounters the last life on earth. As we look back on it, we experience this I-consciousness between death and a new birth. It is different, this sense of self after death, but it is by no means weaker.

What is this sense of self actually like here in the physical world? It is the case that here in the physical world, if we want to become aware of our self, we actually have to rely on it being shown to us through something else in our physical body. It appears to us, as it were, in the mirror of our physical body, this physical self of ours. We feel quite passive in the production of our self, at least if we do not happen to live according to a philosophy like that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By contrast, after we have passed through the gate of death, we feel constantly active. We give ourselves, as it were, our now much more intense consciousness again and again by looking back at our own life and connecting with the consciousness of the self: we want us, and always want us again, and we may want us, because we remain unlosable to ourselves by the indelible impression of what we have once lived through. I would like to use these words to express very clearly what is experienced in the consciousness between death and a new birth. And the consciousness between death and a new birth is very different from the consciousness here on the physical plane. Here on the physical plane, no one can actually look back on their own birth from their own experience in normal consciousness. Someone cannot observe their own birth in their own experience with normal consciousness; remembering only begins later. I have said this before: if people only want to rely on experience, on what they have experienced themselves in life, then actually no one can believe in their own birth; basically, they only experience their birth when they look back clairvoyantly. If someone says: I will not believe in the spiritual world until I have seen it myself; I do not want to believe what spiritual science tells me, I only believe what I have seen myself - then one can basically answer: And your own birth? It seems as if you do believe that this has taken place? But you cannot have any experience of it. — This shows how even something quite significant for human life is only conscious of a conclusion for normal consciousness. We only ever assume for normal consciousness that we are born by concluding: we look just like the people we have already observed being born, so we must also be born. — But it is only based on a conclusion.

The situation is quite different in the time between death and a new birth. Just as little as one can look back in normal consciousness to one's own birth, so much one always looks with this remembered panorama of life to the moment of one's death. And just as birth fades away for earthly consciousness, so too does the event of death always stand in retrospective consciousness before the soul life between death and a new birth, but now viewed from the other side. Here on the physical plane, man sees the experience of death only from one side. There are many gruesome aspects to it. But one should not conclude from this that it is now terrible for the one who lives on to have to look back forever at the experience of death. Seen from there, this is the most beautiful, greatest, most significant experience that a human soul can ever have, because it always shows in a radiant way how the spirit conquers material existence. This continuous review of the experience of death has an invigorating, uplifting and elevating effect on all consciousness. It is mainly through this experience of death that the soul says to itself: I live here in the spiritual world, with the spiritual world. The fact that the soul has the strength to say this makes this experience of death of immense importance for the life that begins after death.

I said: Man feels how his body and everything that was on earth leaves him, and he feels how he must now balance his consciousness through inner activity, how he must achieve something for his consciousness that he used to receive through the instrument of the body. I can live consciously without the body within me: the possibility of grasping this thought produces a much stronger consciousness than one can have within earthly life. And this is the lesson that death teaches us: that one can feel that the body is leaving, but that now begins a time when you are no longer dependent on your body to feel yourself as an ego, now begins a time when you, so to speak, pour the spiritual forces into your soul-shell yourself, so that you continually call yourself to consciousness. By recognizing how this calling-oneself-to-consciousness can be there when one's body is snatched away, one has the life impression of the inner creation of existence. This begins with death, where one must begin to experience oneself as an ego without the body. This is the starting point for continuing to feel oneself as an ego without the body by looking back at the experience of death. When the spiritual researcher's gaze, by bringing the spiritual world to life within him, causes souls that have passed through the gateway of death to emerge in the imaginations on the field of consciousness within, one learns to recognize how the dead experience. One learns to recognize differences that arise. Of course, one can only describe individual cases. Let us consider one such difference.

One learns to recognize how human souls appear at the scene of the soul's observation after death. These human souls are of two kinds: those human souls that have already entered the spiritual world before our death, which we therefore find inside as disembodied souls, and those souls that are still embodied in the body on earth. We are also able to experience those that are still on earth in the same way. As the scene of earthly existence disappears from us, we are left with the possibility of still knowing ourselves connected to what was spiritual. Only the physical disappears from us, our soul expands, unites with the vast universe, and precisely because of this, the possibility is given to know and experience that we are still connected to the soul even as the physical, as it were, rushes away from us.

But there is now a difference between the experience of one kind of soul and the other kind of soul. When we experience a human soul in the spiritual world, then of course we do not experience it in such a way – it hardly needs saying, but those who have not yet understood anything about looking in the spiritual world believe that – that one confronts it as one confronts an external being; but one experiences it in such a way that one feels the being emerging in consciousness. And now, when we encounter a soul that has already been disembodied, that has already passed through the gate of death, we have the inner experience of its presence. This is where the impression begins. We know: there is a soul. But we must, as it were, live ourselves into it, feel into it. We must receive the imagination of it in such a way that we feel ourselves participating in the creation of the imagination.

It is really the case that one would like to describe the matter in the following way: One feels oneself in the spiritual world. The awareness arises: You are not alone now, a soul is approaching you. — Now it is as if, in the physical world, one carries a thought invisibly in one's soul. But one wants to make it visible. So one takes a piece of chalk and draws the thought, makes a picture of it. That is really how it is at first with experiences in the spiritual world. One knows that a real spiritual being is present. In order to see the soul, one must first come into contact with it in such a way that one draws it, as it were, into the spiritual realm as an image. And that is what one does, but one is aware of being active in creating the imagination. And when, through the music of the spheres, it wants to speak its essence to our essence, as the human being here announces his soul to us in the physical world through his speech, when it lets the music of the spheres resound from within, then one also feels that one cannot remain passive. If you hear someone speaking and you don't want to think about it, you don't have to understand it. You have to participate if you want to understand. So you have to participate everywhere here too. You live together so actively, you know that you have to co-create every piece of the manifestation of the essence of a soul that you can have before you as a manifestation. You create the manifestation, not the essence. There will also be times when you do not feel so intensely active that you know: now there is a human soul. But this soul impels us, without our participating as intensely as in the case just described, to imagination. Imagination arises more by itself before us. Then we are confronted with a soul that is still embodied on earth. And as the human being has passed through the gate of death and gradually lives on in the spiritual world, he gets to know the differences between souls, through the way he relates to the souls that he meets in the spiritual world and those that he imagines on earth.

This is one of the differences in how experiences take place in the spiritual world, as they are directly experienced. And so it is also necessary to distinguish between experiences, inner experiences, whether one is experiencing human souls or the souls of the beings of the higher hierarchies. Please consider what I have described as an experience of human souls. I said: One experiences human souls either in such a way that one creates or recreates the imaginations, or by creating them more or less by oneself. But then the experience can also be like this: One knows that a being is there. This being must also be present as an imagination, it must also be present in the experience if we really want to be with it. But we will not be able to produce the imagination directly in the same way as in the cases just described, where it even builds itself up by itself. We must, by having the experience that a being is there, develop something else in us. We must develop the feeling in us: we create this being in us. We give our powers so that the powers of this being may stream into us. While we feel ourselves as creating in our imagination with the human soul, we feel that with the beings of the higher hierarchies, the angeloi and the archangeloi, these beings create the imagination in us. And so we gradually live ourselves into this co-experience of the spiritual world.

We also know that in the concrete sense this co-experience happens in such a way that through a long series of years – we have already considered its length in relation to the last life on earth – life is experienced backwards again. First we have a few days of the panorama of life, then we begin to experience life on earth in reverse, but in a different way than we experienced it here between birth and death. We experience the last one first, then we experience what we experienced before that, and so back in our mind to birth. We experience it by looking at our life, but now from the other side. I can say that we look at it from the side of the effects. Let's assume something rough, I have said to a person at some time in my life: 'You are a base person', or I have hurt him in some way. Then I have experienced something during my life. What I have experienced is different from what he has experienced. He had experienced the hurt feeling, the insult, the pain, the suffering. Now, in the afterlife in the spiritual world, one experiences the effects of what one has done. The suffering that the other person experienced when we insulted him, we experience this suffering, this pain, in ourselves. We experience the effects of our actions in the other being by living back in this way. We get a certain insight into this experience after death when we focus on something that can reveal itself to the spiritual researcher as a connection between this experience after death and the experience here in the physical world.

What I am going to discuss now is something that can really make us aware of how the spiritual researcher gradually comes to his results, and how it is a prejudice to think that someone who has crossed the threshold to the spiritual world now knows the spiritual world from his own point of view, and that we can ask him anything. We must experience it again and again when the spiritual researcher talks about this and that, especially in public, and one - as it may seem desirable from certain points of view - gives a question-and-answer session on all things in heaven and on earth and the whole of infinity, by assuming that anyone who looks into the spiritual world already knows everything that can be known there. That is about as clever as if someone here would say: You have eyes, you know Munich, so describe California to me! — It is really the case in the spiritual world that one must acquire step by step what is to be understood from the spiritual world, and it is naive to believe that everything there does not have to be looked at step by step first. Now, the spiritual world is still different from here in the physical world. Here in the physical world, if you, I mean, have never been to Heidelberg and now want to describe Heidelberg, you go there, don't you, you set yourself in motion. In the spiritual world, things have to come to us, and we have to develop the power of waiting, the inner power of experience, in our souls. Things enter our field of vision when we have made ourselves capable of perceiving them. The Heidelberg of the spiritual world must come to us, we must prepare our soul for it. It is always in a sense dependent on the grace with which we are endowed, whether we can learn something about this or that in the spiritual world. In this way, the spiritual researcher can gradually be taught about the secrets of the spiritual world.

Now I would like to discuss a spiritual research result from a certain point of view today that I have not yet discussed here from this point of view. When, after developing certain inner, that is, spiritual powers of observation, one observes the soul experience of the human being between falling asleep and waking up in the spiritual world, when one observes the sleeping person as a soul, as he is outside of his physical body – one gets to know many things, but one must learn to look from a certain point of view if one wants to grasp something – then one notices that in sleep a person is actually constantly active in his soul, much more active than during waking hours. While awake, a person makes use of the activity that his body develops, and this is what he places himself in as a soul, this is what he lives in. In sleep, on the other hand, he lives in his own activity. And if you follow this, you will find that in sleep, man relives in a different way what he has experienced in the physical world from waking to falling asleep. Let us assume that I have done something, have read this or that: in my sleep I relive the whole reading, I go through everything again. We just don't have this kind of consciousness in our normal waking life yet, so that it also becomes I-conscious, but that is why it still takes place in the soul, only vaguely, but it is the soul that actually now actively processes what it has experienced during the day. The thoughts are transformed in such a way that they can bear fruit in the soul. We process as fruits of life what we have worked for during the day. During sleep, we always actively incorporate the fruits of life, the results of our life.

Then the spiritual researcher can make a discovery. When he compares this sleep experience that the person has here with the experiences that the person has in the years or decades after he has passed through the gate of death and thus walks through his life backwards, it is interesting that the person walks through his life in such a way that he actually lives through the nights, not the days. As he looked back on the day every night, he now experiences it in the world of the soul. It is the same thing that one experienced in the waking consciousness, but seen from sleep. We experience this in such a way that it is very strange. Most of the time, one does not think about it, but actually, in the physical life, our memory only extends to the experiences of the day. We remember what we have in our waking consciousness. Now, after death, we remember what we have relived during the nights, what we have gone through in our earthly life. Then the conscious memory of the night experiences occurs. I did not express this so clearly earlier, simply because I did not know it. Such things arise in a successive spiritual research.

But one thing comes to light that is important, important for the consciousness that we are to create in our collective work in the branches. I have previously – you can read about it – pointed out from a different point of view the fact that the life in the soul is about a third of the time one has lived through between birth and death. Reasons for this are given in the books. But these reasons are given from a different point of view than the one I am giving now. One lives through the nights of life. How long does one actually sleep normally? One sleeps through a third of one's life. It is approximately true that one sleeps a third of one's life. Now, by passing through the nights after death, a third of earthly life lasts. This is connected with passing through the nights. It is tremendously interesting and important. Because the previous statement was based on completely different reasons. I have recorded this again, for example in 'Occult Science in Outline': after death, reliving the same thing again takes a third of earthly life, the Kamaloka life. Now, from a completely different point of view, which was not thought of at all before, it turns out again: this Kamalokaleben is one third of earthly life - from the point of view that one lives through the nights. You see, these are the kinds of things that, when they occur again and again, are so tremendously supportive and strengthening as proving forces for what spiritual science can give to man. One searches for a truth from a certain starting point and arrives at the conclusion that the Kamaloka life lasts for a third of the earth-lives. Then one arrives at the same result from quite a different point of view. These results support each other. We come across this again and again and it gives precisely that certainty which is also given to him who cannot yet do research himself. I have often called attention to this harmony. By following in detail how things are found in the life of the branch, we gradually gain inner certainty and conviction, even though we still have a long way to go in making our own experiences and gaining our own experiences on our own path of knowledge.

And now, in conclusion, I would like to share with you a truth that is of particular interest for our time, although it can always interest people. In my public lecture, I already spoke from one point of view about the death that occurs when a person in the prime of life is hit by a bullet, for example, and his physical body is effectively taken away from him. As I said, I have shown what becomes of these unused forces. I have already shown this from various points of view. Today I would like to point out this experience of death from yet another point of view.

How does someone enter the spiritual world who has not lost his physical body through illness or old age, but who has lost his body violently through a bullet or other injury? I have discussed what remains of his unused powers. But how he enters the spiritual world himself, that becomes a mystery. Especially in a time like ours, when so many souls enter the spiritual world through the gate of death. Their body has been taken from them by an external influence. In the spiritual world they differ greatly from the souls whose bodies have been taken away through illness or old age. In order to explain and understand such things, one must be able to place the right thing next to the right thing in the spiritual world. One must now be able to ask: how must one combine the phenomenon that is becoming a mystery in order to solve it? And here it becomes evident that this phenomenon must be put together with something that is experienced in the physical world. Now, let us characterize the experience here in the physical world in such a way that we first look at the coarsely materialistic-minded spirits who want to accept nothing but what can be grasped in a rough way through sense experience, which, because it makes a rough impression, is designated as being. But there is something else in this world that makes this life valuable, and that something else is ideals. Of course, the most crude materialists will say: you cannot eat ideals, they have no proper being, they are mere thoughts. But those people who bring ideals into their lives are actually working for the right fertilization, elevation and enlivenment of earthly existence. That which is not in a purely materialistic sense must be brought into the course of earthly existence in order to make this life valuable. Idealists are those who, in a certain sense, are messengers from divine worlds for earthly existence. For ideals are something like messages from divine worlds, something that belongs to the physical world but does not come from it. You cannot observe ideals, nor can you experiment on ideals to demonstrate them through experience. Yet ideals are like messages from a spiritual world.

When the human soul, from whom the body has been taken, for example, by a bullet in the prime of life, passes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, it not only leaves unused powers that are used in the way I have already indicated, but it also brings a very specific consciousness into the spiritual worlds. Such a soul enters the spiritual world through the gate of death differently than other souls who were able to complete their lives or whose body was taken from them by an illness. These souls enter the spiritual world bringing with them the thought of something that could have been down there in the physical world, namely their own life from the point at which they sacrificed themselves. As far as the abilities are concerned, what could have been, was already destined for the physical world, could have been its natural life for the next few years. There would have been the possibility that, say, two years after the death the body would have existed as a physical body in front of others. Now it does not exist. There could have been something in the physical world that is now not there. This is taken up by the soul, from whom the body has been taken away, into the spiritual world.

Now it is just as necessary for the spiritual world to be able to proclaim that something exists up there as for something to exist down there in the world that has the potential of this coarse existence, but which does not live out as a coarse material existence. This proclamation is something similar for the spiritual worlds as the proclamation of ideals is for the physical world. These are the reverse idealists. Here below, life can take such a course that inclinations do not live out, that souls return from the physical world that have found violent death. This makes a proclamation up there among those who have not experienced this, which means the same as the proclamation of ideals here. Here in the physical existence one proclaims: Not only is valuable that which makes an impression on the senses, but also valuable are the ideals that come from the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, those who have been deprived of their bodies proclaim that there is an effective force that, although intended for the sensual world, does not enter into this sensual world, but enters the world in a different way, and that it animates the spiritual world just as ideals animate the sensual world. This is a very significant result of spiritual research, and it indicates to us that sacrificial deaths also have a significance for the spiritual world, not only the significance that I explained yesterday for the physical world, but also for the spiritual world. Among the souls of the spiritual world, there are those who look to the ordinary course of life, but there are also those who have learned that inclinations can be cut off with a single blow. And they are, so to speak, the reverse idealists for the spiritual world.

And so, little by little, the phenomena of life reveal themselves, the riddles of existence, and one really gains the impression, especially in such times as ours, when so much that is mysterious can be sensed in blood and suffering, of how spiritual science can first place man in the whole of full life. Humanity is progressing. Natural science as it exists today did not exist in the past; it has emerged out of the dim darkness of soul striving. In the same way, spiritual science must come into being. In the future, man will not be able to do without it. Today it still has many opponents, but man will feel more and more the riddles of existence and thereby more and more the necessity of approaching the riddles of existence in a spiritual-scientific way. This must arise again and again in our souls as the thought that holds us together with our spiritual movement, that points out to us, as it were, how we seek within our spiritual movement something that must spread more and more in humanity, and that we must persevere through all the opposition that still exists in our present time in a very natural way.

I would like to emphasize this in our time, especially in view of today's reflection, as the seriousness of our time should remind us in these days to do everything we can, out of our strength, to truly incorporate spiritual science into the development of humanity, as far as it is up to us. And I would like to focus this admonition to the effect that we must now make this thought all the more alive in us, because the circumstances of the times can really lead to our not being able to be together as often as in normal times. And so let me address this admonition to our souls, that we work all the more faithfully and devotedly in our individual branches in these times of war, even if the collaboration between you and me, for example, may now be less frequent until we return to normal times, because traveling around the world is now much more difficult than usual, and it may be that we have to learn right now to rely on ourselves and work independently in the individual branches. What we can do in this direction will bear real fruit for that spiritual striving in our minds that must flow into the evolution of humanity. For it must be pointed out again and again that The great sacrifices that so many people have to make in the present, and which are so intimately connected with what death, as a mystery and as pain, hides in the development of mankind, these events can only have a proper relationship to our soul life if we can look at them from the point of view of spiritual science, in the context of the history of mankind.

It is not my intention to go into all kinds of inhibiting and hindering things, which may already have reached your ears in the last few days because they had to be discussed somewhere. But these things have shown how necessary it is that we allow ourselves to be taken up quite objectively by the fruitfulness and necessity of the spiritual-scientific movement, and that we can separate from it that which arises as our personal wishes and desires and will always stand in the way of the right course of our spiritual-scientific work as an obstacle and hindrance. Spiritual science is so rich in content that it can occupy us entirely objectively. Let us try to remind ourselves often how easy it is for personal, ambitious or vain striving to mix with what we should actually take hold of and allow ourselves to be taken hold of by as a spiritual life pulsating through the world.

Some events that have taken place within our society have already suggested to our souls: Oh, there is blood flowing out there, a large part of humanity is struggling for things whose significance cannot yet be measured, and there is a spiritual movement that could truly stimulate interest in purely objective terms, in which one does not need to focus on what is only personal, but there is so much of the personal in it, and at such a time when the soul must feel obliged to live together with the great events. That is also a source of pain, what was possible in terms of mixing the personal with what should be impersonal.

Now, again and again, and especially today, we should look from our isolated lives at what all of European humanity and humanity beyond is experiencing, and say to ourselves: the right fruits, the hard-won ones, will only arise in the future if what spiritual science wants to incorporate into the development of humanity is added to humanity. When what can be achieved in thought through spiritual science unites with the fruits of blood and pain, of suffering and deprivation, which will live on for the future, then one day a spiritual life, a human life, will flourish in the fields that today claim so many victims, a life worthy of these victims. Looking at this, we want to conclude with the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

May many such souls arise within our ranks, directing their minds to the spiritual realm, then the fruits and blossoms that arise from their efforts will truly be able to become not only a personal blessing but also a blessing for all mankind. In this spirit, whatever life may bring, we want to continue to work together on our cause with great intensity!

Today I would like to take a starting point that can lead us to an understanding of many things that surround us in the present time and that we face with questions. Our time demands to be understood in such a way that man places himself in it with a deeper, a spiritual understanding. On the other hand, however, there is a deep-seated aversion in the broadest circles to a spiritual understanding of human affairs; indeed, there is such an aversion that the attempt at spiritual understanding, the attempt to understand such impulses, which are capable of supporting human actions in our difficult times, is rejected from the outset as something fantastic, something impossible, something childish. Nevertheless, these reflections, which we are able to cultivate here together, should be devoted to what, though it does not speak directly of the circumstances of the time – as is easily understandable – cannot, as is well known, lead to some understanding for those who make an effort to arrive at such an understanding from truly deeper starting points.

In order to understand an age in which the deepest human forces are, as it were, being stirred up, in which the deepest human forces are at work, even if quite unconsciously for most people, it is necessary not just to talk about all kinds of ideals and all kinds of things, but to seek understanding from a broader view of human development in general. We have always tried to arrive at such a larger view of the development of mankind in our spiritual scientific considerations, and much has already been done in this respect. Today I would like to present some of it from a slightly different point of view.

We know that within the development of mankind there has been what we call the passage through the great Atlantic catastrophe. We know that what is now alive as humanity can be traced back to certain developmental states that took place before that Atlantic catastrophe, and that after this Atlantic catastrophe we can record the first post-Atlantic cultural period, which I usually call the ancient Indian, the second, which I usually call the old Persian, the third the Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian, the fourth the Greco-Roman; and in the fifth we live and have to look at how the fifth is to be replaced by a sixth.

Now, the fact of the matter is that, as inwardly, as spiritually, I might almost say, as humanly, as the development within humanity is now taking place, it could only have taken place after the Atlantic catastrophe. People today, who are generally reluctant to look at things in context, think: a person is a person, and the way in which the souls of people develop today is the way they have been since people have existed; and if we go back from what is regarded as humanity today, we do indeed arrive at primitive conditions, but then down to animality. This material interpretation of the history of development cannot, of course, stand up to spiritual scrutiny; for precisely when we go back and go further and further back in the development of humanity, we find that the basic impulses, the basic forces on which development is based, become ever more spiritual and ever more spiritual, although, if we want to understand the matter properly, we must first come to a proper understanding of the spiritual.

For our post-Atlantean time, the fourth period is above all a significant one, the most significant for the meaning of the whole evolution of the earth: it is the period in which the Mystery of Golgotha plays a role. And this calls upon us to understand the time before as a kind of preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, and the time after as a kind of fulfillment of what came as an impulse through the Mystery of Golgotha. But if we go back in Atlantean evolution, we find that the fifth period within Atlantean evolution is the most important for this time between the Lemurian evolution and our own, because in this fifth period of Atlantean development within the Atlantean human life took place that was extraordinarily significant and incisive, because at that time, so to speak, the starting point was taken of something that we can call the more soulful development of the post-Atlantean time. If we go back to Atlantean times, we do not find the animalistic humanity that materialistic Darwinism so readily speaks of; we find a humanity that certainly had a life that was much duller than that of the post-Atlantean humanity , and when one speaks of the dullness of the soul life, one would indeed like to say — but the comparison remains a very external one — that this duller dream-like soul life of the Atlantean period resembles the dream-like soul life of the present higher animals. But this comparison, if made, would be a very inadequate one, because the present-day animals, in their dull, dream-like consciousness, do not experience what the Atlanteans experienced in their dream-like, dull consciousness almost up to the end of the fifth period.

What then is the most essential characteristic of this dream-like consciousness of the ancient Atlanteans? The most essential characteristic is that the people who lived at that time — forgive me if what I say seems materialistic; but you can only recognize the materialistic if you have mastered it, if you know about the impulses of the spiritual — lived in such a way that their nutritional and eating lives were very closely related to their spiritual lives. Of course, you may object: Well, there is already a sufficiently close relationship between the soul life of some people in the present and what they eat! — That is all true, we know that a large part of present-day humanity does not underestimate food at all. Nor does it need to be characterized as a reproach in itself. But there is a great difference between the inner experience of tasting a dish, the feeling of well-being that a modern person feels when they associate the dish with themselves physically, and the inner experience of Atlantean humanity in the time of which I am now speaking. The Atlantean ate, he ate this or that food; he thus took these or those substances into his body, and by connecting them with his physical existence, an awareness arose in his consciousness of which elemental spirits this substance is imbued with. He did not gulp down the food as the present-day man does, with a great lack of consciousness, but was aware of the elemental spiritualities he was uniting with himself by connecting the food with his bodily existence. Metabolism was then at the same time a change of mind, a change of elemental spirits.

It was the case that one could describe the substances as carriers of these or those elemental spiritual impulses or even entities, that one felt that spiritual forces entered one with the food, and that one felt that, by digesting, spiritual impulses were at work within one. Such a person did not just sit and digest like a present-day human being, but felt physically permeated by these or those elemental spirits, so that a materialism, as it prevails today, was actually not possible at that time. One could not say that one believed only in the mortality of existence, because one ate the spiritual impulses, they permeated one while one digested. To be an anti-materialist, one needed only to eat. And the descent into the dullness of the unconscious is essentially an achievement of this fifth Atlantean period. Eating and digesting became, so to speak, less spiritual; but something still remained in the sixth Atlantean period that was even more spiritual: that was breathing.

When a person breathes in or out today, they are aware that they are breathing in or out air; at least that is what the chemist tells them. In those days, however, it was not just in consciousness, but it was clear to man - this lasted for the whole of the sixth Atlantean period - that with the inhaled air he took in elemental spiritual forces, and with the exhaled air he breathed out elemental spiritual forces. From the very beginning, breathing was seen as a spiritual-soul process, not just as a physical-bodily process. And in the last Atlantean period, something that had remained until then, which later actually only lived in memory, then diminished: By hearing tones and seeing colors, one realized that spiritual life was in the tone one heard and in the color one saw, that spiritual forces penetrated the eye when one saw colors and spiritual forces penetrated the inner being when one “heard tones.” These things were all present in the dim consciousness of that time. People have conquered a brighter consciousness, but at the expense of their spiritual consciousness they have had to give up the spirituality of their interaction with the external world. Every epoch has its own special peculiarity. Just as the individual human being goes through different ages and these ages are different in terms of physical and mental constitution, so too does the whole of human development go through different states, and the later developmental states are different from the earlier ones. It would be foolish for a man between fifty and sixty years of age to believe that the nature of his physical and spiritual existence should recall his existence between the ages of ten and twenty, just as it would be foolish not to distinguish between the different ages of life in their qualities. It is foolish to believe that what is appropriate in a later period of life development was also so in an earlier one. Things never return, and they are more different in successive ages than one might think.

I have now made it a point to learn something about the ages of people in the post-Atlantic period. Those who proceed only from analogies can indeed look at the development of humanity and say: just as the individual human being goes through childhood, youth, manhood, old age, so will humanity. But if one goes into real observation, into the real facts of the situation, this is not true. You simply cannot use these analogies as a basis, and only if you are serious about spiritual research will you find what is actually at the root of it. And then it became clear to me that something quite different is at the root of it than what one might describe by saying that, like the individual human being, humanity also goes through youth, manhood and old age. — That is not correct. It has become clear to me that in the first post-Atlantean cultural period, the primeval Indian one, humanity did indeed live to a certain age, but one that cannot be compared to youth, but rather to the individual human age from fifty-six to forty-nine. So if you want to compare the age of yore for all of humanity with the age of the individual, you have to compare it not with the youth period, but with this more mature age. Then comes the primeval Persian cultural period. As humanity continues to develop, it passes through an age that, if you want to compare it with an age of the individual, corresponds to the age from forty-nine to forty-two. Man grows older, humanity grows younger. The Egyptian period must be compared with the age between thirty-five and forty-two in the individual. The Greco-Roman period can be compared to the age of the individual between thirty-five and twenty-eight years of age, and the present fifth post-Atlantic cultural period can be compared to the age of the human being from twenty-eight to twenty-one years. And if we ask: How old is present humanity? — we must answer: It has an age of about twenty-seven years. And only then can one understand everything that has taken place within humanity when one allows this remarkable secret of development to enter one's soul. For that is really how it is.

This, however, has very definite consequences and effects on the way people experience life. What does it mean: In the first post-Atlantic cultural period, all of humanity was between the ages of fifty-six and forty-nine? It means that the individual human being, of course, went through the fact that he first became one, two, three years old; but the fundamental aspect of humanity, in which the individual lived, which encompassed all of humanity, presented something that the individual human being first experienced between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six. That is why so much of the original, elementary knowledge of humanity comes to light during this time, which we can admire because all of humanity was so old and because one grew into such an old humanity. As a young badger of twenty-five, one took in the human aura that which was full of wisdom as if it came from an older person. The wisdom was poured out over all of humanity. One also took in morally in this way, appreciating that into which one grew, as in the human aura, just as one appreciates a gray head because it has turned gray. And so a feeling of devotion and reverence was poured out over human cultural life that was taken for granted. It had the further consequence that one only outgrew what was common property of humanity with one's individual development after one had reached the age of fifty-six. Only then could one speak of one's own development; only then could one individually stand out from the background of what flowed to one from outside. However, at that time many people did not get to undergo an inner development corresponding to the period of life between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth year of life. Then they were seen as children, and they also felt like children, sensing the spiritual content of the age of humanity around them.

The next period, the ancient Persian period, no longer brought the same high revelations and cultural impulses as those brought to humanity by the wise fathers in the first post-Atlantic period through their contact with spiritual beings. The whole of humanity showed only that maturity which can be compared to the individual human age between the forty-ninth and forty-second year of life. And if one wanted to, so to speak, grow beyond the general human aura individually, one could only do so at the age of forty-nine. But through individual development one grew into a maturity that could only occur at the age of forty-nine.

And so it was again in the Chaldean-Egyptian time. The aura into which one grew can be compared with the age of the individual human being between the forty-second and thirty-fifth year of life; in the Greek-Latin time with the age between the thirty-fifth and twenty-eighth year. That is the remarkable thing about this Greco-Latin period, that the individual middle age of man coincides with the middle age of general humanity, except that humanity runs down in the general stream, but man ascends. Hence the peculiar harmony of Greek culture, of which present humanity has so little conception. But when a Greek was thirty-five years old, he remained, so to speak, an average human being, always remaining thirty-five years old, if he did not develop something individual in himself that went beyond the general aura of humanity. In older times, care was taken to ensure that the individual could develop upwards.

Now we are living in the fifth post-Atlantic age. In this fifth post-Atlantic age, humanity will undergo an age comparable to the individual age between twenty-eight and twenty-one years. This means that a person who simply surrenders to the stream of existence, to that which simply enters into the soul life by being human, will not get older than twenty-eight years. If he does not ensure, through spiritual development, that he advances his soul individually, he will always remain twenty-eight years old, or rather, he will not get over twenty-seven years. Mankind in general cannot give us more than it brings us up to the age of twenty-seven. If we do not seek in our time a kindling and encouragement of the individual soul forces that carry us across the stream of general human existence, we will never be older than twenty-seven, even if we live to be a hundred years old. And whether we are manual laborers or professors, or whatever: if we do not seek a spiritual development that gives the soul concepts that outer humanity cannot give it, we will always remain twenty-seven years old. Of course, outwardly we grow older, of course; time cannot be stopped; but without its own development our soul attains no more than a maturity of twenty-seven years. One really does not understand our time unless one bears in mind this peculiarity, which has just been described. Over the years, I have really asked myself many characteristic questions of our time, questions about life, the development of culture, the plight of humanity, about what makes present-day humanity happy and what it suffers from: the key to understanding our time will only be given when we face the fact that I have just discussed. We cannot penetrate what our time lacks if we do not face this fact.

We are experiencing philosophies that amaze us because they get stuck in general declamations and show not the slightest ability to delve into concrete realities. Where does this come from? I have posed this question to a single personality. I found that the standard-bearer of Eucken's philosophy is a man who has all the fire of someone who cannot be older than twenty-seven years old. Of course, he continues to talk – because he has already reached a considerable age today – he speaks in a somewhat hoarse voice, moves with different gestures, and is still learning. But that doesn't mean anything; the whole manner is no older than twenty-seven years old. This twenty-seven-year-old manner is carried through the whole of life. This becomes particularly noticeable when people are supposed to introduce ideas into life, when they are supposed to cultivate ideas by which life is dominated.

Now we are entering somewhat dangerous territory; but let us proceed by seeking examples as far as possible. I have posed the question to myself as to how it is with various personalities of the present day who have the task of developing ideas that intervene in present life, so that the events of the time are to be dominated by these ideas. There is now a characteristic personality. I have taken great pains not to go wrong in this area, but it is of no use if one does not get to the bottom of things in their concrete manifestations. If you look for a personality that is such that it can never be older than twenty-seven years, can never have more mature ideas than a person of twenty-seven years, you will find it, strangely enough, as a particularly characteristic personality, for example, in the President of the United States of America. If you study the various programs he has developed, they bear the stamp of a person who cannot grow older than twenty-seven, because this soul has never absorbed anything that was not brought to souls from the outside. Of course, a person can be more or less talented. —Talent may be conceded to such a person — but the ideas he develops are twenty-seven years old in terms of the maturity of their outlook, their penetrating power and the practicality of their view of life, and will not get any older, even if the man lives to be a hundred years old, if he does not begin to deepen spiritually and to supply the soul with firepower from within.

We live in such an age today that we have to supply what goes beyond the twenty-seventh year from within the souls. In the twenty-seventh year, people are not yet practical in life; however much they think they are, they are not practical in life. That is why Wilson's various ideas are so impractical and erratic, and why they are so popular in the widest circles. They are met with the same enthusiasm with which youthful ideas are met, youthful ideas that result in all sorts of declamations about the freedom of nations and the like. That's all very well! But that is not how you rule the world today, which demands that ideas be forceful, that you make a grand declamation about peace and then unleash war all the more!

One would really like to evoke a sense of what ideas that have an impact on reality are, ideas that have clout, that can grow together with reality. Ideas that are mere declamations, beautiful ideas are indeed much uttered; young ideas in particular are beautiful. But we need ideas that connect people with reality. What wonderful idea it is when someone today stands up and says: the world must receive a new orientation! — Of this, the word itself has so far proved to be the most beautiful! That is the only beautiful thing: the word itself, because if you stand up and talk about it, it is certainly very beautiful. It is also very beautiful to say: the most capable must be placed in the right place. Wonderful ideas! But what if the nephew or son-in-law is the most capable? The beautiful idea does nothing at all, but the real knowledge of reality, the ability for what is real, what is really is.

This is one of the aspects involved when one wants to understand in a deeper sense what the culture of the present time is like. This peculiarity of the time makes it clear how necessary it is for people today to deepen their souls, to seek to attain through individual development for their later individual age that which general humanity no longer provides. Of course, it is easier to speak in a Euckenian way of the renewal of life, the grasping of the powers of life within, of all kinds of things that can be used to rise up in a beautifully youthful way, but which are suitable for nothing more than declamations. And if you make political programs with such ideas as Wilson, then that is of incalculable consequences! It is of course easier than in serious research, in serious deepening to seek out reality and to penetrate into the deeper impulses of life.

If our spiritual scientific movement is to have a truly deep meaning, then above all it must contain the will to penetrate into the concrete developmental impulses of humanity. It must be there to grasp these great interrelationships of life, because otherwise everything remains mere theory within our spiritual science as well. And mere theory is worth nothing, no matter how much one wants to associate feelings of self-importance with it. Only that which is able to be absorbed into life, which captures life, is truly valuable. All kinds of mysticism, where people strive to find this or that within themselves, can indeed produce very beautiful results, but we must be able to look beyond ourselves and at the great tasks of humanity, in order to understand, above all, what is needed, what one must actually understand, what one should understand. Otherwise, we will simply ignore the most important things in spiritual science. And over the years, since we have had our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, important things in spiritual science have actually been ignored on a large scale.

If our dear friends would just remember what answer I have always given for many years when I have been asked how it is with reincarnation, since humanity is always increasing, if the friends would like to remember how the stereotypical typical answer has been given: It could be that people will very soon learn what decimation of humanity could take place, especially in Europe – then you will realize what was meant when you look back now and when you remember the tone in which this answer was given. When speaking of the increase of population, it was always said: There could very soon come a time when there could also be a decrease in population, and in a painful way! — In the field of spiritual science, it is really not a matter of accommodating the light-hearted needs of some people with theories, but of also answering the questions posed by the impulses of the time. And in accepting spiritual science, it is much more a matter of taking the weight of what is to be said and closing it in one's heart, than of satisfying curiosity, however high it may appear to be.

This, my dear friends, I wanted to share with you first as the first part of the reflections, which, if given due consideration, should lead to an understanding of our time, and which we want to cultivate more deeply in these days.

Since the time allotted to general reflections has expired, I may perhaps, without anyone being able to reproach me for cutting something off from the actual anthroposophical content, move on to something that must be hinted at with a few words. But I cannot proceed without also mentioning some souls who have passed from the physical plane into the spiritual life, who were close to some of those sitting here today. It is not possible to mention all of them by name. Our dear friends are well aware of the sincerity of our feelings towards all those who have passed from the physical to the spiritual plane. However, I cannot help but mention the name of one man in particular, who, after many obstacles, finally found such a beautiful and intimate union with spiritual science, oriented as it is towards anthroposophy, and who, especially in recent times, has done quite a significant and meaningful work for the external representation of this spiritual science. I am referring to our dear friend Ludwig Deinhard, at whose handover of the physical body to the physical elements and the passing away of the soul into the spiritual world our dear friend Sellin spoke such beautiful words. He was all the more to be esteemed because he did not come to our movement out of blind faith or blind allegiance, but rather after much resistance, and in the last, increasingly difficult times, he had unreservedly spared nothing to stand up for this spiritual movement with all his soul before the broader public. I am not afraid to say explicitly that I consider the way in which Ludwig Deinhard stood up for this movement in front of the general public to be one of the most valuable things.

Then I would also like to mention Professor Sachs, who passed away a few days ago, who pursued a great idea his whole life, a great idea in the field of music technology, and who always knew how to combine the modest work that an individual can be harnessed to with overarching ideas, and with whom it was truly uplifting to speak, because what he wanted as a person always led to great artistic will. We can count ourselves lucky to have such people at the center of our movement.

After these uplifting perspectives, I am obliged once again to cultivate some less uplifting perspectives, because what has happened forces me to take drastic measures in a certain respect, insofar as my part in the spiritual scientific movement, which is to be cultivated by the Anthroposophical Society, is concerned. Over time, something that should be a great blessing in the present cultural development, the anthroposophical movement, has, through many of its manifestations, more or less developed into a kind of obstacle for what I mean by the spiritual-scientific movement. And it is of no use to deceive ourselves about these things, especially when there is a danger that various things connected with the Anthroposophical Society could become obstacles, precisely for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Therefore, since we have worked together for many years, such things may be discussed without reservation, allow me to address these matters quite openly, as they lie close to my heart. It may be said that, in general, something has become habitual within the Anthroposophical Society that must not continue in this way, because the judgments of the present world about what Anthroposophy or spiritual science wants would have to be all too much clouded if it continued in the same way as it has done so far.

Let us take a single detail: It is often said in the outside world — and it has already become customary — that I am actually less attacked because of spiritual-scientific matters themselves, but very much because of what is connected with the Society. In particular, one of the accusations that is made is that a blind belief in authority prevails in the Society, a blind following, that much is done here out of pure devotion and the like. If I may also express my impression in response to this, I must say: for most things, what happens last of all is what I actually consider to be the right thing, what I consider to be what might be desirable. I do not believe that in any other society so little attention is paid to what might actually be the specific wishes of any individual active in it. Even if it looks different, that is how it is. But no one has to take offense at things. And to turn a blind eye, to bury one's head in the sand, that is only evil.

My dear friends, I have heard many things about the mood in the local Anthroposophical Society these days. I came here this evening, here into the vestibule, and the most pious incense aroma flowed towards me. Do not think that someone who is focused on the factual and the inner has any particular desire to have their speaking made difficult for the whole evening by resorting to this outwardness of the pious scent of incense, and that they has to carry a headache home because of the pious incense smell, and I am still completely ignoring how the truth is misunderstood when the incense smell - forgive me - smells out into the profane world. It may be unpleasant to mention such things, but they are symptomatic. Ask whether I have ever taken the initiative on such superficial matters. But that is only a side note.

What is most important to me, however, is how the membership feels connected to the spiritual life of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientific movement. As you know, various attacks have recently come to light, some of which have already been printed and some of which are still being printed. When the external world of today raises objections to spiritual science, we need neither be surprised nor feel particularly pained about it; it is only natural, self-evident. It can be countered. Spiritual science truly has no need to fear objective discussions. And perhaps one need not fear the reactions that are now arising from our own ranks. But the following does tremendous harm to what should be the real strength of our movement: It may be said that it is unique in this movement, in this society above all others, that the most benevolent intentions and measures, the most benevolent measures of conduct towards the members are here most of all immersed in poison and bile and also in the garment of slander, vilification, the most personal attack, all of which is aimed at a very well-known direction. The things that are done, perhaps out of a mystical need — I don't know —, the pure inventions, the pure untruths, are actually not so easily found anywhere else. But the will to behave correctly in relation to these things is not cultivated vigorously enough. Indeed, the will to see things truly impartially is not striven for vigorously enough either.

The seriousness that lies in the spiritual scientific movement, the special way in which it must be represented, should at least be studied. What the individual can do depends, of course, on the circumstances of life and on the most diverse factors; but one should still study what is, and not indulge in all sorts of delusions. Objectivity and impersonality are particularly necessary in our movement, which is devoted purely to spiritual things, and nothing is more harmful than when personal interests, vanity, ambition are brought into the ranks of our movement. Of course, things appear veiled and masked, but one should look at the true face of things, one should look at them in such a way that one comes to the truth of the matter. If someone writes a series of attacks and is well aware of what is behind the attacks, well aware of how precisely what he is attacking must be because of the peculiar character of spiritual science, then it is not enough to refute sentence by sentence. Much can be asserted and refuted, namely everything, but often it is not what is said that matters: the reasons lie in something quite different. If someone suggests a writing to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House and it has to be rejected, and the person concerned then becomes an enemy, the reasons for this must be sought elsewhere than in the sentences that the person concerned twists. And one does not learn the truth when the most important thing, when the real reasons are pushed into the background.

If someone makes this or that attack about all kinds of foolish esoteric effects, the foolishness of which is obvious to anyone who is not blind, then one also misses the point if one does not trace such things, which are pure inventions, back to the whole situation. Then perhaps a person is behind it who once lived in a small town in central Germany and suddenly had the idea of becoming a great man. At first he tried to become a great man in a small way; he wrote to Dr. Steiner, asking what he should do to be freed from the narrow circumstances of the small town. Should he marry into a business, or bring this about in some other way? If it is then made clear to him that we do not concern ourselves with the decision of whether or not to marry into a family, he may still not be dissuaded. He will advance, come forward, take part in some events, and perhaps also stand before society at a large gathering and declaim a poem by Schiller with tremendous lung power, even though he has not the slightest idea of declamation. He is laughed at. That offends his sense of honor. Then he wants to be a great painter. The idea is even taken up to a certain extent. Everything is done to support the person in question so that he can learn something; concessions are made to him. But the person in question wants to be an artist, but finds it inconvenient to learn something. He doesn't really want to become an artist, he wants to be one, and when the others, out of their deepest conviction, can do nothing but advise him to learn something, then it is insulting. You are a genius after all, and they expect you to learn something first! They do everything they can to let him learn, but that is precisely what is insulting.

Well, a lot more could be said along these lines. These are the real reasons why one must become an enemy of such a detestable society. Then all kinds of stuff is written. What is written is of little consequence. Of course, something else could just as easily be written, because the real reasons are to be sought quite elsewhere. And so it can continue, and will continue, taking on completely different dimensions. All these things, however, have not the slightest thing to do with spiritual science as such. But they can develop with great intensity out of a society which tries to build itself not on the objective basis that spiritual science as such provides, but which seeks within it all kinds of cliquishness, all kinds of personal social relationships. You see, I am only hinting at one or the other. Perhaps one or the other can be said in the following days. But all this really does not go back to spiritual science, but goes back to the view that prevails in many quarters about what should happen in society. Precisely those for whom most has been provided are among those who are now most peddling calumnies, pure fabrications.

Therefore, my dear friends, I am obliged to take drastic measures. I ask you at least to always mention the two parts of these measures, so that no new defamations arise by only communicating one part. If this measure is hard for some, then please consider that it is as hard for me as it is for those affected by it, that I am just as sorry that it is necessary, and that you do not turn to me, but to those who have caused these measures. Look for the reasons there, but also look there to recognize what has to happen in the future by directing your attention to where the defamation originated. In many cases, this is what plays out as personal. Certainly, I have been of service to everyone with personal advice: for esoteric matters, this personal discussion was very often quite unnecessary and, as far as the esoteric is concerned, I will ensure that a good replacement can be found. But because the personal has led to this, it is necessary that in the future everything takes place in the full light of the public. I shall see to it that everyone can have their esoteric rights, but I shall no longer receive anyone from society for a so-called esoteric private meeting. I must stop these private visits without exception, so that the slander cannot be brought from these private visits. If this is hard for one or the other, then this measure must be taken for two reasons: firstly, because these things are not necessary for the operation of the esoteric life. I will prove this very soon. In a short time you will have a complete replacement, even though the private conversations, which often took place in such a way that the members approached me with things that had nothing to do with the esoteric life, have to be dropped. Secondly, because I thereby document how it is taken out of thin air that the esoteric life of one or the other is not taken care of. Just read “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Nobody needs to gain a personal impulse after so much time. The second thing that belongs to this measure and which I ask not to be forgotten is that I release everyone who has had private discussions so far from any promise, which was never given anyway, from any custom not to talk about such private discussions. As far as I am concerned, anyone can communicate as much as they like about what I have said to anyone, because I have nothing to hide. Anyone who wants to can tell everyone everything. Even the past can be placed in the full light of day. This is the best way to distinguish untruth from truth and to find a yardstick for measuring how much fibbing there is within our movement. But the two measures belong together. Once again, I repeat that anyone who only communicates the first part will not represent the matter in its true light; the other belongs to it.

I would also like to mention, my dear friends: Should it be difficult for some, then please turn to those places that you can easily find here in particular, turn to those who have made these things necessary. It is not acceptable that the spiritual scientific movement should be made impossible by the clique system within the Anthroposophical Society, because this exposes to misunderstanding in the outer world that which lives as the nerve of spiritual science. Do you believe that the things that have to be done in the interest of the Society are being done for my personal satisfaction? I have been reproached for withdrawing something from the Society in one direction or another because, for example, the Dornach building had to be undertaken. Do you believe that I personally care more about the Dornach building than any other member who is serious about our cause, that I have had any personal aspirations in this building? If the building had not been possible, I would have been the very last to have failed to comply with the necessity. That anything of what must be advocated should be advocated differently from such important matters as the Dornach building, other than it must be for the inner reasons of the matter, that should never happen.

The drastic measures just mentioned must be taken, especially for the reason that, after decades of my having spoken sufficiently about one thing and another, the seriousness of my words has never been felt. Perhaps this seriousness will be felt when this measure is introduced. There are, of course, other societies without them leading to the same things that have occurred in this society.

This, my dear friends, had to be said precisely because of our friendship, must not remain unsaid. Those who are serious about the anthroposophical movement will find the way, even if the seriousness of the situation makes such measures necessary. For the movement as such is too sacred to be extinguished by all kinds of personal aspirations, and enough has been done in this direction. Those of our dear members – and there are many who are just like that – who work in the movement, in society, in a devoted, self-sacrificing way, will be the last to complain about these measures; they will find them most meaningful. I do not think that I am misunderstood precisely by those who are really serious and sincere about our movement; they will agree with me. There will also be those who disagree with me; I gladly accept this disagreement.

Time has progressed. I will continue tomorrow with the considerations that I have undertaken today and perhaps also add some remarks about what I have said last about all kinds of things in society. It has often been quite hard to watch some things.

From yesterday's discussions, you were able to see how, in our time, the human being is part of the overall development of humanity. It was shown what, as it were, approaches the individual personality through the development of humanity itself, and how this development of humanity absolutely requires that the urge to fire and awaken the inner soul awakens more and more, so that man will find progress less and less as an external influence, so to speak, but that he will have to acquire it from within himself. That is the purpose of spiritual science: to enable human individuality to progress further, whereas in ancient times, simply by being born into humanity, a person had a certain amount of experiences that matured him to a certain degree. You will feel that the realization of such a fact, as we were able to describe it yesterday, is of tremendous importance and thoroughly illuminates what is needed in our time, what is needed by people of our time.

One can only really get into these things, as one should in the sense of a spiritual scientist, by looking with open eyes at the way in which people in the present day relate to the whole of earthly evolution. One can make discoveries of infinite significance. One must only make these discoveries in such a way that one is in a position to evaluate the facts. There are certainly people in our time who feel that something is needed to lead the soul, as it were, beyond itself, that is, beyond the twenty-seven years. But the courage and energy that accomplishes such wonders in external fields today, the courage and energy to really develop the inner soul forces, are not so common today. And so it happens that we meet people who have a certain striving in their nature to find something other than what can be offered by the culture of our time and the tasks of the world around us. But they do not have the courage to approach the kind of work and attitude that wants something truly new: spiritual science. And so we learn that such people do not clearly say to themselves, but feel: In the past, the environment gave people more, so we must again seek what the world gave people in the past, we must find the connection to earlier human gifts again.

That is why people who are more longing for the spiritual, I would say, out of powerlessness, take refuge in all sorts of things that have actually already been extinguished within human development. We could cite examples of this everywhere. Let us quote a very characteristic example from the writer Maurice Barres, who in his youthful impetuosity once wanted to storm, one might say, the spiritual heavens, but then, because he did not find the courage to join some new spiritual movement, sought to join Catholicism, as so many do in the present day. But it is a strange attitude that seeks a way backward instead of a way forward. And the words with which Barres describes his striving for Catholicism are characteristic, for these words testify to how a dispirited, energy-less soul, because it does not want to seek the new, reaches for the old. But how he reaches is the characteristic thing. Take the words of a man of this kind of mind, who has grown entirely out of the education of today, stands entirely in it, and out of this education has developed his inclination towards Catholicism. Take these words: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist!” Imagine someone who has sought this connection to Catholicism talking about the hereafter: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist; and however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us turn to the Church, first of all because she is inseparably linked to the tradition of France. And then, because it formulates, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, the rules of that ethic that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.” You see the motives of a man who is characteristic of the present age, driven to seek the spirit of his own kind: he reaches for what humanity once had without human effort. But he takes it without really laying any claim to the full meaning of what he takes. One would be tempted to say that such a thing is cynical or frivolous if it were not for the great seriousness of the endeavor. But that is precisely the fatal thing: the seriousness of the endeavor itself becomes frivolous due to the conditions of the time. Do not take this word lightly! The great damage of our time is rooted in the fact that people are always inclined to take things lightly. Examples like that of Maurice Barres could be cited countless times. What is characteristic of our time, in the sense of what has just been explained, would emerge everywhere in the most diverse ways.

We ask ourselves: What is the cause of this? We ask ourselves this question because it is important for us to recognize how we must do things differently. However, we can only find our way around in this if we have a little insight into the plight of the time, into what underlies such an attitude. We must look back a little into the meaning of human evolution if we want to understand what we must understand in the present if we are to move forward. If we go back in the evolution of European humanity and the Asian part of humanity that belongs to it — we only need to go back to the first third of the post-Atlantic period — we find today, even by outwardly scientific means, that people in those days clearly distinguished between the three basic components of the human being, and that the old, albeit more vague and dreamlike, understanding has come to the point that people knew how to distinguish between the three basic components of the human being. And this, in turn, is the reason why I emphasized with particular clarity in my 'Theosophy' that these three basic components must be taken as the basis for the whole structure of the human being. If we go back, we find everywhere that people can see how the human being can be traced back to body, soul and spirit. But just think about the lack of clarity that has arisen today, even among those who seek clarity, with regard to an overview of the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit! You can pick up one philosophy after another today, you can study Wundt, who was not only famous in Germany but world-famous, with great zeal, and you will see that the gentleman is unable to distinguish the soul from the mind, even though distinguishing the soul from the mind is one of the most fundamental necessities today. When did it actually come to light that people have confused the soul with the spirit? As I said, you can find it everywhere: man is divided into body and soul, and the soul is confused with the spirit, without any distinction. This was clearly expressed in 869 at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was abolished, excuse the harsh expression, because the teachings that were formulated at that time essentially culminated in making it a dogma that man has a thinking soul and a spiritual soul within him. Thus the spirit was done away with, and what little spirit was still sensed at that time was smuggled into the soul by saying: It has the power of thinking and something spiritual as well. Then came the Middle Ages with their scholastic research, which was admirable in many respects; but this was everywhere subject to the strict constraints of dogma, and so-called trichotomy was strictly proscribed. Spirit had to be left out everywhere. And this is also the source of the way in which modern university professors, who, according to their own statements, pursue science without preconditions, think – or do not think – about soul and spirit. But they are unaware of the prerequisites, namely the decrees of the Council of 869. The fact that they have no idea what they actually depend on is the reason why they call themselves unconditional. That is the way things are, and they must be heard and vigorously considered; there is no point in closing our eyes to them. For if spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy is to become for man what it must become according to the laws of human evolution, then such things must above all be faced, and man must be given back an understanding of the threefold constitution of the human being as body, soul and spirit. Just as on the one hand there is the body, which between birth and death or conception and death, is the physical mediator of consciousness, so the spirit must be recognized as the spiritual mediator of that higher consciousness that man has to develop between death and a new birth. But this is connected with the deep inner, significant life circumstances of modern humanity. Let us take a characteristic example from our time. In many cases, public life is based on three abstract ideas, even though people have deviated from them here and there. And particularly in our time we see these three abstract ideas being wielded by the whole world against the center of Europe. But this center of Europe will only spiritually grasp its task if it is willing to make the three abstract ideas into concrete ideas imbued with reality. These three ideas were forcefully called into the consciousness of mankind at the end of the 18th century in the words: fraternity, freedom, equality. They almost remind us of three very concrete ideas, which are only now being understood in a very abstract way, but which were meant very literally in their time when they were incorporated into the consciousness of mankind. They remind us of faith, hope and love. But let us dwell on the three ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality. It is a shadowy thinking that one seeks to visualize these three ideas in the whole modern world. All the efforts that the human soul makes in this direction are based precisely on the fact that people do not have the inclination to enter into reality. They do not approach these three great, these three cardinal ideas any differently than they would the idea of reorientation: that every person should stand in the place that is best for them. They declaim beautiful ideas, make abstract concepts out of these ideas, but have no inclination to engage with reality. And this reality lies in understanding spiritual science.

Just as one muddles mind and soul, so one also muddles freedom, equality and fraternity. The idea of brotherhood will only be grasped by humanity in the right way when it becomes clear that man is only fully present here on the physical plane with one part of his being, the part we call the body. It is with the body that man stands here on the physical plane; but this body connects man with the whole human race through blood and other ties. Let us think back to older times, especially with regard to the way the physical human being relates to the physical human being here in the world. After all, the human being does not only have within him what he has inherited from his parents; he carries within him the part of immortality that passes through birth and death. But this is divided into embodiments in the physical body. In ancient times, as I discussed yesterday, the human being was able to perceive the spiritual in the environment by going through eating, digesting and breathing; he was capable of that. In this way, something was instinctive in him, so to speak, which we can call a sum of feelings, sensations, perceptions and concepts that regulated his behavior towards his fellow human beings. Instinctively, this was in him. We see this instinctive element diminishing in more recent times, and the terrible explosions of hatred that we are now encountering can only be understood if we understand their real basis, if we understand how the old instincts are diminishing. These instincts of hatred are much more serious than is still recognized today. We will experience terrible things as a result of this state of affairs. And if that which must be conquered in the sense of the developmental history of mankind could not be conquered, the instincts of hatred would grow ever greater and greater. For even if, especially in this age of freedom from authority, in this age of the unconditioned nature of science, there are individuals who particularly strive to be led by the hand again and again, the feelings that arise from the unconscious do not allow this. Today, such people seek out all kinds of leaders. The more unnatural it is for them to strive to follow these leaders unconditionally, the more they are exposed to the danger of their so-called love turning to hatred. This is not something that can be remedied by mere criticism, because it is deeply rooted in the entire laws of human development. The more philanthropy is preached as an abstract idea, the more fraternity is preached in the abstract, the more mutual antipathy between people will develop. This is also a truth that must be taken very seriously and deeply into consideration if one wants to understand the present. What must happen is that what we call the view of repeated lives on earth is transformed into feeling. Merely adhering to the theory of repeated lives on earth does not account for it!

But if we take together all that is being attempted to be gathered together in order to extract from the laws of human development, in the course of time, that which does not present itself to us as an abstract idea but as a concrete fact, that something lives in every human being that goes through birth and death, then the abstract idea is transformed into feeling, not into instincts like those that existed earlier, but into conscious instincts, into a certain way of relating to other people. Today, there is still all too much of an urge to interpret what one takes on board as the idea of repeated earthly lives in an egotistical way. And how much of it have we experienced, that one person or another is above all keen to know some earlier incarnation of themselves very well indeed! This cannot be the practical consequence of the idea of repeated embodiments, of the idea of repeated earthly lives. The genuine consequence must be that we learn more and more to look at each person as if there were much more to him than he can live in one earthly life, in which he is now standing before us. Above all, what is often mentioned is the sense of distance, the right measure, the feeling for finding the right relationship with the other person: without deifying him, but always seeking deeper and deeper what belongs to infinity in him.

It is a false mysticism to brood within oneself. The mysticism we need is the one that guides us to a practical, but intuitive knowledge of human nature, so that we do not approach a person from the outset as either sympathetic or unsympathetic, but with the awareness that every human soul is actually an infinite mystery. If we take the idea seriously, something streams forth from repeated earthly lives, and from this outpouring into our soul there wells up what should be experienced in the right sense for later humanity as brotherhood, as brotherly love. Such brotherly love will not typically and repeatedly want to help people only according to the idea that appeals to us; it will want to respond to people so that we help them in a way that is appropriate for them, that helps them as their deeper selves require. But such an idea will also keep us from the thoughtless criticism that often erects a barrier between us and the other person, especially today, which does not allow us to look impartially at what lives in another person. Only when the idea of repeated earthly lives is alive and practically working in our soul, then the idea of brotherhood for what people in their corporeality are for each other will be able to take on the right form.

A second factor that must be taken into account in the development of humanity is that we not only recognize the physicality of the human being, which materialism alone wants to recognize today, but that we also recognize the soul of the human being, that we consciously ascribe soul to every human being. But we do not ascribe soul to him if we only seek to violate this soul in our attitude, that is, if we think that we really respect the soul by expecting this soul to have our thoughts, especially the form of our thoughts. We must grant freedom to the soul; we cannot grant it to the body. Freedom is only the basis in the interaction between soul and soul, that on which it depends. And the fundamental nerve of freedom is, namely, freedom of thought. If we come to understand this second link of humanity, the soul alongside the physical, then we will no longer confuse freedom and brotherhood, but will say: brotherhood is necessary because people must establish a social order in the sense of brotherhood. A social structure in the sense of brotherhood must come about, and until people are seized by right, practical ideas of brotherhood, they will not be able to find state structures in which people can live together reasonably. But if people do not recognize that within the state structure man lives not only as a body but also as a soul, they will never be able to grasp the idea of freedom in the appropriate way. For freedom lies in the relationship from soul to soul, not from body to body. The freedom that bodies need comes about of its own accord as a necessary consequence when soul to soul expands in the sense of freedom of thought. Above all, however, this requires that we finally learn to no longer want to impose our own thoughts on people, but that we learn to duly respect the direction of thought in every soul. But above all, we must acquire a sense of reality, for there is no field in which more sins are committed than in the fields of science and religion.

I can only refer to an example that I once encountered in a town in southern Germany. I gave a lecture on wisdom and Christianity. It was a town in southwestern Germany, so two Catholic priests were also at my lecture. After the lecture, they said: Yes, after what you said today, there is not much to be said against your assertions in terms of content, but one cannot agree. — I said: Yes, why? — Yes, the main thing, said the two gentlemen, is that you talk about all these things in relation to Christianity in a way that can only be understood by certain people with a certain level of education, with certain needs and so on. But we are seeking a way of speaking that is for all people; we are formulating our thoughts so that everyone can agree. — I replied: Pastor, how I or you think about what is good for all people depends on you or me, you and I can certainly form ideas about that; and when we do form such ideas, we will of course be fully convinced that they are right. We would be strange old fogies if we formed ideas that we did not believe were suitable for all people. But what matters is not what you or I think, according to our particular development, that something is suitable for all people. In the end, that is completely irrelevant. We have to get beyond that through proper, active, practical self-knowledge. What matters is to study reality and ask: What does reality dictate, what does the time and its content teach us as necessary for people, what do people's longings teach us? But then a question arises that is different from the one you ask: Do all people today go to your church? If you spoke for all people, everyone would go to you. — There they could not help saying: It is true that not all people go to church anymore. — So, I said; you see, and among those who have sat here are mostly those who do not go to church, but who also have the right to find the way to Christ, and I speak for them.

One must not form an idea about what people need according to one's own stubborn opinions, but according to what reality says. But it is more uncomfortable to study reality. There one must always and again apply the sense of observation accordingly, always and again have the will to ask: What are the needs of the time? How does what is necessary in our time present itself? — And until this sense, this practical sense, which must underlie freedom of thought, enters into the souls of men, we will not come to a corresponding relationship from soul to soul. Just as the social structure towards which humanity must strive depends on arriving at a correct understanding of the body in the sense of spiritual science and being able to understand the idea of brotherly love, so we must learn to gain understanding for souls and to help realize the idea of freedom of thought in the field of science and education, in the field of religious sentiment.

And a third aspect is the spirit. If we now really succeed in reinstating the rights of the spirit, in reversing what the Council of Constantinople in 869 recognized, then the spirit, too, will come to what, in a practical sense, leads the life of the people of the future. We already have two tendencies today: one tends to move in the same direction as the Council of Constantinople, that is, to abolish the spirit. A monistic world view also seeks to abolish the soul, and anyone who thinks that scientific monism has so much tolerance – as the word is used today – that it would not be able to hold a council and ban the soul is thinking wrongly. The tendency is already moving towards abolishing not only the spirit but also the soul. And those who are today the little monists will want to grow into quite great monists, and even if they disdain to hold councils, for they are free spirits, because they have freed themselves from all spirit, if they disdain to hold councils, then they will have a certain custom naturalized. And it will come - do not let this be a joke! —that the soul will be abolished. In addition to the various physical remedies that exist today, a series of others will be added that will be designed to treat those who talk about such fantasies as spirit and soul; they will be cured, they will be given medicine so that they no longer talk about spirit and soul. The spirit could be done away with in a trice; the soul can only be driven out of man by treating the body in the right medical way. However grotesque it may appear today, there is a tendency in a certain direction to invent means by which all kinds of stuff is instilled into the child, so that his bodily organization is so enfeebled that the materialistic attitude lives quite well in him, and it does not even occur to him to treat the old idea of soul and spirit as anything other than something in which the old days believed and into which it is a great delight to look.

Of course, saying such things is considered madness by a great many people today; but if one does not have the courage to admit these things to oneself, one will never find the energy to bring spiritual science spirituality to full bloom and to spark it in the souls of others. Therefore, in addition to this tendency, which I have just characterized and which will also cure the soul because it will be considered an illness, the other tendency must be added: the tendency to assert again energetically that, in addition to the body and the soul, the human being also carries the spirit within himself. For this, however, it would be necessary that knowledge of the spirit take hold, that spiritual science really becomes established, that it is recognized by man what belongs to his nature when he has passed through the gate of death. And one of the old folk proverbs that so often carry old good views into the new time is this: In death, all are equal – because all become spirit, and because the idea of equality is the one that corresponds to the spirit. Equality to the spirits! One cannot confuse the three ideas – liberty, fraternity, equality – but one must know in the concrete, in reality, what man is, and that he should be free according to the soul, fraternal according to the body, that men must be equal

must be equal in spirit. For the inequality that exists among people is that specialization brought about by body and soul, in that the spirit specializes in body and soul. Pneumatology, spiritual teaching, spiritual insight is the basis for the idea of equality. And so we have the strange fact that at the end of the 18th century the idea of brotherhood, freedom, equality was shouted out all over the world in a chaotic way, but that gradually it must be understood how the ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality can only be realized if one is also able to carry the knowledge of the threefold nature of

human being, in body, soul and spirit, into reality. This was the underlying reason for the attempt in my Theosophy to carry out this division into body, soul and spirit in such an energetic way: This division is a demand of our time and the near future. But it is only by realizing these ideas in practice, by learning to see humanity in this way, that one can go beyond the twenty-seven years; otherwise one gets stuck in the twenty-seven years. And just imagine the prospect: our fifth post-Atlantic period will be followed by a sixth and a seventh. In the sixth, general humanity will yield that which, in the individual development, corresponds to the time between the fourteenth and twenty-first year. No matter how clever the people are who direct education in the outside world, they will not be able to get more than what corresponds to individual development up to the age of twenty-one. One will not be able to live past the age of twenty-one, even if one does not die there. And in the seventh post-Atlantic age, one will not live beyond the age that corresponds to the fourteenth year of life in individual development. If one does not grow older through the inspiration of the inner being, then an epidemic of juvenile feeble-mindedness will seize humanity. Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, and does not live thoughtlessly, can, armed with such ideas, already evaluate many phenomena of the present in the right way!

Let us take just one area: Where has our present age brought us in our understanding of, say, the Christ impulse? How many people are quite close to Barre's idea that the Savior's generous world view has been adapted by the Church to the needs of modern society, and that it is precisely for this reason that we can get along so well with the Churches? Who is making an effort – perhaps there are still individuals who do, but generally speaking – who is really trying to resurrect from the Gospels the teachings of Christ that were directed against the other, the principal opponent? How are the most significant and profound teachings of Christianity understood today? I would like to mention just one central Christian concept: the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even Blavatsky ridiculed the prediction that the Kingdom of Heaven would come, saying that at the time it should have come, no more wheat had blossomed than before, the grapes had not grown larger, in short, the Kingdom of Heaven had not come to earth.

One thinks oneself clever; but from this cleverness nothing else comes out than this judgment, and this cleverness does not allow the deeper question: Could not perhaps the Christ have meant something else? — One already recognizes the Christ today, but in such a way that one wants above all that one's own ideas, precisely as one has conceived them oneself, also live in the Christ. The socialist makes a good socialist out of him, the liberal a liberal, the Protestant a Protestant, and so on. A modern school theologian constructs him in the image of Professor Harnack, and people listen to how Professor Harnack speaks about the most important concepts of Christ Jesus. Once it happened that I had to give a lecture in a club whose chairman was a man well versed in the Bible and also in modern 'T'heology. In the course of this lecture I said that Harnack actually had a strange concept of resurrection, because in his “Essence of Christianity” there is the strange sentence: “Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can no longer judge it today, because it exceeds human knowledge and also exceeds the legitimate demands of faith. But from the garden in Gethsemane came the belief in resurrection, and this has become especially valuable to mankind. Whether it is true that the Christ was resurrected in some way is not the point! One should believe that from the garden in Gethsemane came faith. That is Harnack's doctrine. The man who was the chairman of the association said: You were mistaken, because in that case Harnack would be nothing less than a Catholic – the man in question felt quite Protestant and exalted – it would be just like the Catholics who say: Where the piece of clothing that is venerated as the Holy Robe of Trier comes from, or where any old knucklebone comes from, it doesn't matter, what matters is that faith has spread, that these things come from a particular saint. But that is Catholic, said the person concerned. Of course, we cannot believe in something like that. And it would be all the same if Harnack said that it does not matter whether it is true that Christ was resurrected in some way, but that people believe that faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane. So, he said to me, you must have been mistaken. – So I said: Yes, you know, but it is written in 'The Essence of Christianity'. – No, he replied, it cannot be written there. Have you read it? – Oh, often, I said, tomorrow I will send you a postcard with the page and line from the book 'The Essence of Christianity' where it says that.

The man, who knew theology so well and was so well-versed in the Bible, could not read so carefully that he knew what was in the book. But it is in there. That is how today's thinking is. In all areas, it is quite strange, especially when one endeavors to make it so popular.

But not only theologians are guilty of sin; natural scientists are guilty too. There is a little book called “The Mechanics of the Spiritual Life”. I do not know whether there is already a book about the stiffness of iron. The author's name is Verworn. I esteem him, as I do many of those I criticize. In this little book he also deals with dreams and asserts that in dreams a subdued, paralyzed brain life takes place, that brain life is only partially active. If someone were to tap a pin against a windowpane, Verworn says, we may dream that cannon shots are going off one after the other. That is a well-known dream. Verworn says this at the top; then he says something in between, and at the end he says further down on the same page: The dream has its peculiar character because the brain is tuned down in its activity. Now imagine the cleverness: when we have a full brain, we hear the soft taps, the soft pinpricks; when the brain is down, less active, we hear the thunder of guns. — That is an explanation that is accepted, like much of Freud, and accepted with pleasure, because a few lines are in between.

But this is the basis of our time: the will to really go through with thinking what comes to one is very rare in our time. And so it is not particularly incomprehensible that one does not easily want to understand something like the coming of the “Kingdoms of Heaven”, because it takes a lot to do so. Until then, until the Mystery of Golgotha, the Kingdoms of Heaven approached man as in a dream. Before the Atlantean catastrophe, they were even assimilated through digestion. But now they had to come down. They came down, but in such a way that man had to exert his mind to grasp the Kingdoms of Heaven. It is not meant that the grapes become larger, that the ears of wheat become fuller, but that the kingdom lives in the midst of us, but we must find it through the preparation of our own spirit around us. |

This, as I have briefly outlined it, underlies the grandiose conception of Christ Jesus. This is, however, a conception that demands energy from our soul if we want to empathize with it. And so are many Christian conceptions. With these the Christ opposed the Imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire, which developed in complete opposition to Christianity. This Imperium Romanum, which had developed into Caesaranism, brought the old mysteries under its control through its tyranny. Augustus was the first Caesar who, because of his external power, had to be initiated into the mysteries. And his successors, Tiberius, Caligula and others, were people initiated into the mysteries. They only applied the mystery view to the external realm of the world; they did not, like the Egyptian temple priests, carry the realm of the spirit into the realm of the world. Commodus even had himself made an initiator, and when he initiated another man whom he had to initiate, he is said to have given him such a strong blow, symbolically, that he killed him.

So there were two powerful contradictions facing each other: the Imperium Romanum and Christianity. This contradiction must find its resolution. It has not yet found it to this day. We must become capable of recognizing the spirit and also of introducing the spirit into life. I only want to say so much about this point, because in our thinking, in our feeling, lives on in many ways that which has moved into people as the logic, the way of thinking and feeling, as it was dominant in the Roman Empire. Our grammar school pupils learned Latin first and with it the way of thinking of the Imperium Romanum, which has been passed on. We do not know how much of this is at the innermost nerve of our lives; we still do not know how to seek and find the spiritual path to Christ in the right sense. But this path can only be one that has the will to think, which has particularly declined in our time; one could say, intelligence itself. Our time, so proud of its intelligence, actually lacks intelligence because it lacks conscientiousness on the basis of thinking.

A much-read booklet, which deals with “Christianity in the ideological struggle of the present”, reproduces lectures that have been given to thousands upon thousands of people by a very leading spirit of the present day, who has of course thoroughly studied philosophy and theology. Ideas are developed there that make you want to climb up the walls! Finally, you come across a beautiful sentence, yes. Goethe is supposed to have said:

No created spirit can penetrate into the innermost nature

,

Happy the one to whom she only

reveals the outer shell!

We would actually have to get to that point in order to recognize something like that! The man knows his Goethe so well that he cites this saying of Haller as a saying of Goethe, despite the fact that Goethe said:

I curse it, but furtively.

Nature has neither core nor shell;

All at once it is everything.

You alone are tested most of all,

Whether you are core or shell.

So today people are talked into believing as a Goethean view what Goethe himself said: “I curse it”! But people listen willingly to it, that is the general thinking of today. It is of no use to look up with desire at certain ideas that come from spiritual science. These ideas must fully enter into the life of the soul, then the other current will establish itself, the spiritual current, which does not allow today's way of thinking to take over humanity, but allows people to develop individually so that they can bring into the general development that which can now be released from what is there by itself. But much must still come before such things are grasped in the right concrete sense, grasped in such a way that thinking really based on reality reaches people.

A very fine book has been published: “The State as a Form of Life” by Kjellen, the famous Swedish political scientist. I mention him because he is a man who has been very sympathetic to our cause, to my cause, so that one should not think that I am angry about anything. But for that very reason I may mention him as typical of certain ways of life.

In this book, he attempts to gain ideas about the state that may lead out of many an error. He naturally comes back to the idea of the state as an organism. He is further along than Wilson. Wilson in his time criticized very sharply the fact that in Newton's time people did not think independently about the state, but were so influenced by the theory of gravity that they judged the various impulses in human thought according to abstract gravity. One must think about the state as one would about an organism. In doing so, he fails to realize that people thought in Newtonian terms and he in Darwinian terms. Kjellén also thinks that the state is an organism; the individual people are then the cells. Now, of course, you can compare a whole that has impulses of life within it with an organism and its parts with cells. But you can actually compare anything if the ideas are not willing to delve into reality, ultimately even a lizard with a pocket knife. Everything can be compared. Only when one has a sense of reality does comparison lead to the right conclusion. In Kjellén's comparison, one state would be understood as a single organism and the other as a neighboring organism. However, anyone who can think realistically cannot possibly think of people as cells. The comparison could apply if one compares the whole of the states with an organism and the individual states as cells; but then the whole person does not merge into the state. Only social life over the whole earth can then be compared with the organism. But if one wanted to insert the human being now, it would look like this: if we imagine an organism, the cells would have to stick out everywhere. A strange kind of hedgehog would come out of it. But if that were the case, an organism with living things coming out everywhere, then that would be an organism with which we can compare the whole social life on earth.

But that means that the entire life of man cannot be absorbed into the state order at all. It must everywhere protrude into the spiritual from what the state is able to encompass. In practice, this is all too often forgotten in all areas today, and one could cite institution after institution that would prove how this is forgotten, how one forgets, in addition to the external, modeled on the Imperium Romanum, to establish the kingdom of the spirit that the Christ wanted to bring over the earth. It was very necessary to take this thought in its full seriousness.

You know, where it comes to the concrete, thinking usually does not extend. Think how in recent times everyone has sought to push back the autonomy of scholarly education in such a way that all the things that are associated with learned institutions have been pushed back and the principle of the state has been placed above them. Today, in order to become a medical doctor, one must first pass the state examination, and then one can receive the medical doctorate as a kind of decoration. The autonomy of the medical school as such has been completely suppressed. We could cite many examples where there is a real enthusiasm for moving in this direction. People cannot do enough to nationalize all titles. The word engineer was associated with “ingenium”. Now they no longer strive to do that, but they do strive for the diploma. If it says on it that you are an engineer, then you can call yourself that; otherwise the ingenium is of no use. This is a step away from a spiritual understanding of the world. People do not think about that. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic about this fight against the spirit in all areas. One would have to, in order to make this noticeable, because one likes to swear by words so much today, perhaps invent a new word and say: people are 'beleibert' for de-spiritualization. Then perhaps some would begin to pay a little attention to the direction one is taking! But the fact that people do not pay attention is precisely the proof of the thoughtlessness of life, of the hatred that one has almost against the will to think.

So you see how necessary it is to really introduce spiritual science into the most everyday life. Spiritual science is a serious matter. Therefore, in addition to yesterday's significant matter, the immediate current situation had to be mentioned. For the aims of spiritual science must not be compromised by its becoming philistine and ossified, by the Anthroposophical Society creating obstacle after obstacle for what spiritual science wants. Of course, reasonable people will always understand that the people who come to the Anthroposophical Society are those who have somehow come into conflict with life, and so strongly that they have lost their balance. The question then always arises: Do we want to accommodate these people, or be hard? — Sometimes such people change so much that they lose their balance even more, or they change so much that they tell stories like the ones they are telling now, which are likely to turn a sacred matter into gossip, into slander, into vilification. If what I said yesterday is considered unjust – that basically little is made of what I say – then of course that is the individual's prerogative. I only said: Outside, people speak of 'blind followers'. For the teaching, this is not necessary, because it can be examined. Only for some things that relate to institutions is trust sometimes necessary. But it is just in such matters that the opposite of what I myself mean usually happens. And so what I presented yesterday as a necessary measure may be felt to be unjust. But this measure will be maintained, although on the other hand it will be ensured that anyone who really wants to undergo it can go through the esoteric development. We must give it a little time. How many things will be revealed through the economy of the Anthroposophical Society, how much will be exposed to misunderstanding and calumny in the world! People who are well aware of how long some things have taken will be convinced that books that have not appeared will appear when this measure has been in force for some time. At the time, I was forced to print the cycles, which I cannot review. It was not my will; it was the will of others who want to read them. Certainly, one does not have to insist on one's will; it has been yielded; but you can read the accusations that are made, saying it would be a trick, and that the cycles have a style that one must only criticize. Everything is ultimately distorted by ill will. But, my dear friends, if spiritual science is to have the right relationship to the Anthroposophical Society, then the Anthroposophical Society must also feel connected to the life of spiritual science as such. But how many feel connected only to their own personal life!

There are, of course, and always have been, numerous people in the Anthroposophical Society who have simply said, in one form or another, that they actually only join the Anthroposophical Society in order to discuss this or that esoteric matter with me, and who refuse to trust people whom I myself trust. In this respect, something particularly bad is being experienced. It is of no use at all that I myself trust this or that friend in this or that society; they do not want the person concerned, and they try to ignore him. Now, these things all have their origin in the fact that so much, so much personal is brought into this Anthroposophical Society. Do you know which word I have really heard most often in the so-called esoteric discussions? Do not think that I heard most talk about such matters as freedom, equality, the evolution of humanity, and so on. Most of all I heard the word “I” from each individual. People come there with their most personal matters. This was also gladly taken into account, but it cannot go further, for the reasons given yesterday. And that must be understood.

I know that it will be best understood by those who really work devotedly and understandingly with the anthroposophical development, who are able to see in the anthroposophical development a task for humanity, who do not merely seek to facilitate their family or other personal affairs by belonging to the Anthroposophical Society, who are not merely seeking a back door to avoid the law because they would withdraw if it came to publicly opposing the materialistic medical system; but they are seeking a back door to be cured, apart from this materialistic medical system! There is no other way to counter all the things that have emerged from society to harm the Anthroposophical Society than through these measures, which I spoke of yesterday and which will certainly not be abandoned in the near future. Only in this way will it be possible to truly fight against what has become so terribly entrenched. The Anthroposophical Society will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. And esoteric life too — I will see to that — will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. As for those inventions — and this is what matters — to which I referred yesterday, it may still be possible to somewhat undermine them if only the two-part measure mentioned yesterday is vigorously implemented. Please understand this, because by understanding this you show understanding for the nature and task of the anthroposophical movement. There are enough people outside today who do not feel able to fight anthroposophy, as it is meant here, [objectively]. That is also too uncomfortable for them, since it is necessary to first know anthroposophy. This is an uncomfortable thing for many who want to fight it. But to allow oneself to be slandered and vilified and to spread these things provides a means of fighting anthroposophy without understanding it. For our contemporaries are indeed very susceptible to slander and vilification. Nothing is read with more relish than calumny and vilification. If we take the task of Anthroposophy seriously, if we grasp the seriousness of the situation, then we will also be able to cope with this measure. In this spirit, we want to conclude. Hopefully we will remain, working in the appropriate way with our strengths, together.

Today, on the first day of our branch reflections, we want to make a reflection, as is appropriate to the circumstances of the times, that extends to what can fall from our spiritual-scientific endeavor as light on many things that time, questioning, demanding, and should at least fill him with tasks, tasks that are indeed posed in the most eminent sense by the spirit of the time and on whose grasp by each individual perhaps much of the fate of humanity in the near future could depend. Let us start from something that may be obvious to us. You will have noticed that for some time now there has been a change in the mood of the outside world towards our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, a change in mood to the effect that this spiritual science is viewed with growing hostility here and there. Only someone who does not appreciate the history of spiritual movements in the right way can be surprised when such a change of mood, such a change of mood, comes; it will come with even greater intensity. As long as a movement like this one is mainly confined to a certain sectarian activity, as long as it is confined to a few people coming together here or there in different cities, sectionally uniting in front or back houses to pursue this or that sectionally, as long as such emerging movements are viewed with a certain indulgent goodwill which here and there may develop into something else, but that is left at that. There is no need to take such movements seriously; they will disappear by themselves, and the rooms in the front and back buildings where such things are done in a sectarian, more family-like way will be claimed by something else. For many years such an attitude prevailed in the outside world towards our movement, and the hostility that arose was more or less an oasis in comparison with the general mood. But things have changed a little, in that at least one side has increasingly endeavored to cast off the sectarian character of the movement. Although resistance to this sectarianism and to uniting with the general culture of the present arises again and again, even from within the ranks of our own society, an energetic attempt must be made to come together with those who are otherwise striving in the culture of the present, despite all resistance and hostility. It will not be enough just to sit down and read out lectures in a comfortable way and the like – although that can of course be a nice family task – one will be obliged to grapple with what people want here and there, to to tie in with what is wanted here and there, in order to find, precisely through the interrelationship with the perhaps reluctant movements of the outside world, what must be found for the present through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

And a very important task for our friends will be to develop the necessary flexibility of mind that will be needed to truly find this way out of the comfortable, safe, warm, family-like environment. It is necessary, but the necessity is not yet felt everywhere. This leads directly to the question: How will the various impulses of our spiritual movement have to deal in the future with that which is traditional or newly arising, or with the belief that it may be something new? How will that which comes from us have to deal with such movements? How will that develop?

Well, first of all, despite all the apparent approval from this or that side, the resistance will be particularly strong on the part of the official representatives of religious, denominational world views. These religious and confessional representatives of world views, from whose ranks exemplary confessors of our movement will certainly emerge, will nevertheless, in their majority, repeatedly emphasize what they pick up from the inherited good of their views, and will find plenty of support among the masses of people today, who, of course, do not believe in authority themselves, but fall for every kind of authority. In particular, it will be difficult to push through spiritual scientific knowledge against the current mood, which is based on a certain extraordinarily comfortable way in which human souls have become accustomed to finding their relationship to the spiritual world. How many people in the present day actually say: “Ah, there come such spiritual researchers who construct a whole world of hierarchies!” One should ascend through the hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and so on to a supreme spiritual, to a supreme divine. Such people find all this far too 'intellectual' to go along with, and they point to the simple, as they call it, naive relationship in which, through strong inner experience, the soul can come to God or even to Christ and the like. This is what you hear over and over again from those who think they know better: direct experience of the highest divine! Why should a person need so many hierarchical intermediaries to come to spiritual knowledge? They can find union with the highest divine in their childlike, simple experience.

But now we have to ask ourselves: What happens in the souls of those who, really with a certain honesty, even if this honesty is a comfortable one, characterize their striving in this way: They speak of the divine that they experience. There are people who have definitely experienced a certain change in their emotional life, through which everything they call divine, spiritual, appears to them differently than it did before. Some call it evangelism, others call it something else, but that does not matter. It is the belief that these people have found access to the highest divine in a childlike, naive way. Some people imagine that experiencing the Christ within is quite simple. But what do they really experience?

Now, I assume that the experiences that are meant here are genuine and honest, that people really experience something, that they have really experienced a change in their spiritual life. I start from a very honest conviction. I also start from a certain lack of prejudice towards the traditional confessional beliefs. What these people experience is then at most the next spiritual that a person can experience. And what is this next spiritual? This next spiritual is that being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, which is assigned to every person for his guidance, which one can call whatever one likes: Christ, the highest God, if one likes! - It does not depend on what one calls it, but on what it really is, which approaches the soul when one has an honest, real experience: It is the Angelos, the Angel, and this Angel one regards only as the highest God. One is too lazy to progress to something else, and the next thing one experiences one designates as one's God and constructs with it — yes, what actually? — the most egotistical religion one can possibly construct! It is not important that all people communicate by giving the thing a single name, because since people do not want to experience anything other than what has been suggested, everyone experiences only their own angel, everyone worships only their own angel. And no matter how many preachers speak of the unified God, of the seemingly monotheistic God, in truth they only speak of the millions of angels that people worship and to whom they give the same name, thus driving people into confusion that these millions of beings are only one being. That is the reality, and at the same time it points to the illusion that one falls prey to when one wants to unite with the most egotistical God in this way. |

There is already an external indication of what I have just mentioned. Try to resort to the learned aids that can also be used on such occasions, and you will be able to learn something strange: Take the most learned things in this field today and try to gain knowledge of the origin of a very common word. You will find a word in particular about which all scholars within the German-speaking area will tell you: the origin of it cannot be fathomed. That is the word God and its adjective divine. Take the German dictionary: the article 'spirit' in the dictionary is also not very satisfactory, but still more satisfactory than the article 'God'. All you can find out is that no one knows where the word God comes from. There are all kinds of hypotheses, but no one knows where it comes from. In the face of such a learned conclusion, will anyone still be able to shrink from the assertion that numerous people who speak of God and the divine do not know what they are talking about? Quite naturally, because they use a word of unknown origin for something, well, for whatever they would like to use it for. Things are more serious than they would like to admit. But one does not want to tackle these things. One does not realize how much one lives in clichés and how happy one feels to be able to live in clichés. That is one thing. But one can also find something else.

If you go for the reality that people experience when they speak of their God today, even transcending the denominational, and experience him in their own inner being, they may call it mystical or theosophical, you can experience over and over again that people say: It all comes down to experiencing God within yourself, to becoming one with God within yourself! What exactly does one become one with in this case? If one investigates the thing with which the human being then becomes one, without realizing it, it is nothing other than one's own soul as it was before it entered into physical existence through conception or birth, as this soul has lived between the last death and this birth. Today, even if he sincerely wants to be religious, man either worships his angel or his own ego as it was before birth or conception. He calls it his God and attributes it to the word of unknown origin; but what he really feels dawning from the unconscious is himself. And the curious thing comes to light for the one who sees through reality, that from all pulpits there is constant talk of predestination, and since one cannot think of this without repeated earth lives, so the truth is spoken of these earth lives, namely of one's own self that goes through them, and at the same time the fact of these repeated earth lives is denied. In truth, nothing is talked about more than what Anthroposophy wants to bring to conscious human knowledge.

Now people find that it is necessary to give the matter a name of unknown origin. They actually talk about something emerging from the subconscious that can be experienced in mystical experiences. They call it being with God. In reality, it is being with oneself, with one's self, as it was before birth. If you call it God and ask people to worship it, you are asking people to worship themselves. Self-idolatry is what is celebrated as religion in many cases today. It is necessary to say this today because it describes the full seriousness of reality. But at the same time it is uncomfortable because it points to the tremendously profound lie that permeates our lives.

This life lie has essentially been led to what I have already mentioned here: that in the year 869 at the Eighth General Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, the spirit was abolished. I mentioned that the philosophical, unprejudiced people who start from the so-called unconditional science, today speak of the fact that man consists of body and soul. In truth, he consists of body, soul and spirit. But in the year 869 it was forbidden to speak of the spirit. And there is nothing that Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages avoided more than speaking of the so-called trichotomy of the spirit. But as soon as one left trichotomy, from which, for example, Dionysius the Areopagite still started, from which copies were still made in the 6th century, all of which still speak of the higher hierarchies, as soon as one took leave of what is so eagerly fought against even in today's world, of the old Gnosis, which of course , which of course must present itself to us in a different form today, but which was an enormously lofty thing for its time. As soon as one took leave of it and took into account the comfort of the intellect, one was also condemned to speak gradually of something that actually leads the soul into a terrible life-lie. No wonder that because spiritual science must tell the truth about these things, it arouses the most violent opposition today. And today, in many cases, people do not really want to listen to what people actually want to express in their hearts. It is truly the case that today, for the most part, people have completely forgotten how to listen with their souls.

Sometimes this comes to the surface in grotesque examples. People no longer care about what is actually being said, but about saying something themselves, regardless of whether it is relevant or not. This is not an isolated phenomenon, it is typical, it happens everywhere at every turn. I could give you a hundred examples of this, and a thousand. This is how it is in the literary field, and this is also how it is on the big world stage.

But what is really driving the present, what is driving the present and has ultimately led to such a catastrophe, is intimately connected with such things, with such a spiritual state of the present. This must be pointed out again and again. Even today there are still people who feel compelled to speak of love for one's neighbor, to speak of the fact that one has to respond to the other with understanding and love. But in reality none of this exists. Instead, the prevailing mood is that which Fritz Mauthner expresses in the case of Boll, with which you are familiar, where he launches a terrible tirade against someone who actually agrees with him completely.

In such matters, what one has to clearly and sharply perceive in the present is expressed characteristically and typically. Only by developing the will to engage with such matters will one find the standpoint necessary to make progress today in some way in the sense of human evolution at a place to which one is placed by one's karma.

Above all, we must recognize the following today: we must really look at what has developed in the human being from the last death to the present birth. We can no longer deceive ourselves, we can no longer have illusions through self-idolization, through self-adoration, by calling that which we actually find within us as our real self, God. One will no longer be able to indulge in such deceptions, but will have to look at what everyone brings with them into their physical existence as a legacy from spiritual worlds through their birth. Where is it actually? Yes, my dear friends, we all bring it with us, we bring an enormous amount of wisdom and spiritual knowledge into our physical existence through our birth. Where is it then? We are all so wise when we are born that we cannot believe how wise we are. But where is this wisdom? On the one hand, it is enchanted in our physical body and its predispositions, with which it has united, and on the other hand in our destiny. It wants to be released from this. And in the present time cycle of humanity it lies that this heritage be released through the free activity of the human being, be brought up as higher I-knowledge of what lies enchanted in ourselves and our destiny. We can, by realizing that the human being of today lives differently than the human being of past cultural epochs, also come to some insight about such things.

Let me remind you of something I have already mentioned here. I said that in the first cultural period of the post-Atlantic epoch, people lived differently than they do today. He experienced spiritually and mentally what was happening physically in him. Just as we as children today experience the change of teeth as a special turning point, and experience sexual maturity as a turning point in our psyche, so until the 1950s, people in the first post-Atlantic cultural period experienced their physical development. Then came the time when this was only experienced until the forties, then until the thirties. Today we only experience these things until the twenties. Until the twenties, the human being today experiences what is going on in him physically; then he is, as it were, emancipated. He can no longer experience by himself what lives in the descending development of life; he must experience it by allowing himself to be spiritually stimulated by the soul. The spiritual science must give the impulse to redeem what lies enchanted in our body or in our destiny. Our present-day education has not even come close to achieving this, let alone penetrating it. It must be recognized that an impulse must be laid in man in his earliest youth so that man may learn to grow older. People today do not understand growing old. At most, they understand that they are getting gray hair or – particularly common today – early baldness or similar signs of aging. But there is not what there can be in people: the expectation, the hopeful expectation for each new year, with the certainty that by getting older, one experiences something every year that cannot be experienced earlier. Every year brings something new, every year brings a new revelation, if one knows how to use it.

Of course, the mood must come over people, through which they say to themselves: Now I am turning twenty years old, the thirty- to forty-year-old has experienced something that I cannot yet experience today. I have to wait, then it will reveal itself to me. Consider seriously in all its aspects what it would mean if education worked in such a way that one could look forward hopefully to the approach of one's life. The opposite mood is cultivated today. People want to be elected to state parliaments and other parliaments at a very early age because they believe that one is ready at the earliest age, that one already has it all. What is more common today than for the youngest badgers to say at every opportunity: “That's my point of view!” — Everyone today already has a point of view at the earliest age. It is completely unknown to people that hope lives expectantly, that life holds secrets that reveal themselves little by little. But it would mean a great deal if this were to be incorporated into our education. Then one would have the will to gradually release that which is enchanted into our body and into our destiny.

However, we will have to see the culture as it has gradually developed in a very special light if we want to educate ourselves about such things. We will have to ask ourselves: How do we actually find the right point of view to gradually release what is enchanted in us? — Yes, we may even have to ask ourselves something else: Why should we redeem what we have within us in the form of enchantment? Is it not much more comfortable to leave it to the flesh and the nerves and the blood down there? It can rest there until we die and enter the other world; it can eke out an existence there. We leave what lies within us in enchantment to the nerves, the muscles, fate. Why should one then release this? One should and must release it for the reason that the spirit is subject to very definite laws on its way. That which is given to us as inheritance from spiritual worlds wants to be released, wants to be freed from its captivity. And that occurs by being taken up into consciousness. What lies in the body and in destiny wants to make its way into our consciousness. It has its true home in our consciousness. It should live in our consciousness, not be enchanted in our nervous or circulatory systems, in our muscles or in our bones. For if it remains in the nerves, muscles, bones or in the vague, merely suffered destiny, then this spiritual element is transformed into something else: into evil forces. It is destined to be brought into life through consciousness. If it remains united with the person outside of consciousness, it will either turn into Luciferic or Ahrimanic forces, and will gradually be handed over to Ahriman or Lucifer.

But for a long time, our Western cultural development has reckoned with Luciferic forces, and now, through a particularly esteemed spiritual current, it is preparing to reckon with Ahrimanic forces and to live with them. Man is indeed to be placed in the midst of life, is to find his place in life: that is how he is educated. Certain impulses, certain perceptions, certain feelings are cultivated. What impulses and feelings were used for in particular? Look around you at what is happening in the world. It is on the decline and will soon mean very little, but for centuries it has meant a great deal: medals, decorations, titles, honors. But what is behind all this? Feelings, sensations that make one strive to develop instincts, desires, Luciferic tendencies in humanity. Think about how much Luciferic in human nature has been striven for, cultivated, in order to put man in the place where one wanted to put him, by taking a detour through this Luciferic. That was the Luciferic period. It is on the wane. There is hardly any need to talk about it today, because what is happening in this area is on the wane. Even if people do not yet realize how much this is the case, they will see it. One speaks of something that is on the wane when one speaks of the actually Luciferic cultural impulses.

But the Ahrimanic ones are looming ominously. An example of this: right now, what is expected to achieve so much for the cultivation of humanity in the future, what is called the gifted test, the testing of human talents, is going through the German and other cultural “forests of scholars” in glorious representation. In the world of scholarship, very particular plants have emerged in recent times: certain psychologists, certain soul experts. They do experimental psychology, they experiment on people in order to explore the soul. Now, in the very latest times, these people have also turned their attention to young people. Because they can no longer cope with the old examination system and the old social order, they are turning on young people and testing their abilities so that, as they say – and this has already been said in prominent places – the right man is put in the right place. Of course, you have to start with the child to test how to find the right one. First of all, one tests the ability to grasp things by conducting all kinds of experiments: how quickly a child guesses this or that, which is some kind of vague stuff into which they are supposed to put meaning. Then one tests the intelligence, one tests the memory. The intelligence, for example, by presenting two words to the child or young person that are as unrelated as possible, say, for example, 'mirror' and 'robber'. And then you instruct a number of young people, whose intelligence you want to test, to combine these words in a meaningful way, to say what they want to put between these words mirror and robber. One person puts in: Even a robber can look at himself when he sees himself in the mirror. — This person is considered the least intelligent. Another thought up: the person who is to be robbed or even killed by the robber has a mirror; from a distance he sees the robber approaching and can save himself. — This is a more intelligent boy or girl.

There are now magazines in which these hair-raising methods of testing intelligence are described; they are developed and analyzed as a special achievement of the present. In this way, memory and intelligence are tested. A statistical approach is taken. The person who has told the most stories, for example, about what can happen between the robber and the mirror, is given two or more marks, as with censorship, and the person who has the most dashes, who has been able to find the most ingenious connections, is the most intelligent. That is the man or woman who is to be promoted in some way at special colleges with all kinds of support, and so on. The characteristic of these things, which are really praised today as a special achievement of humanity – and the most courageous educators devote all their energy to these aptitude tests – is that in this way one does not approach the soul at all, but only tests what ahrimanic rests in his physicality, that in this way one only tests how strongly Ahriman can develop through one or the other young person. What will be introduced into human culture in this way will be the ahrimanic impulses. But today one indulges in such illusions, such deceptions.

But this must be the significant thing in our spiritual development, that its seriousness is recognized. Of course, in small groups you can sit together and, as I said, read lectures in a family-like comfort: That does not hurt, or rather, what comes from outside does not hurt. But as this spiritual science gradually begins to spread, seriousness also begins, and this seriousness can only consist in wholeheartedly engaging with what is to be taken in connection with what is developing around us. It is necessary to understand these things and to understand them as deeply as they can be understood. It is necessary to develop the flexibility of mind that makes it possible to move beyond sectarianism to a worldly grasp of what our spiritual science is supposed to encompass. For various impulses must come from this spiritual science, which are healthy impulses in the face of many things that are emerging in our time in the form of a decadent, a declining one. Above all, those who want to enter this spiritual current need freedom, a spirit of independence.

For us, it is not about believing in authority, but about acquiring free, independent judgment. For nothing that is said in the field of spiritual science can be generalized; everything applies individually, everything applies in the concrete for the particular case. It is indeed a certain comfort that the human mind seeks to generalize things in so many ways, but this cannot be done as soon as one enters spiritual realms. Today it is absolutely necessary, absolutely imperative, to also open oneself to such insights, which do not stop at the merely indefinite, abstract, mystical, but penetrate into reality from the spiritual. One may believe oneself to be a great mystic, untouched by world events, going one's lonely way through the world, experiencing God within. But all this is a thin spiritual life, so thin that it does not approach what is present in the world as reality. Such mystics are not required in the present time. The individual can demand such mysticism because it can lull him into the comfortable belief that he is experiencing something very sublime in his soul. But the present time demands a strong spirituality that penetrates into the immediate reality. It demands not only a discussion of the higher hierarchies, but also such an insight into the nature of the higher hierarchies that one can, starting from this knowledge of the nature of the hierarchies, gain insight into what surrounds us on earth. For now the time is coming when human order can no longer be found except through real insights into the nature of what is developing here on earth, even if it is uncomfortable to recognize it.

Read the cycle I gave in Kristiania long before the war, in preparation for the present time, about the individual souls of nations, about the connection between the structure of the individual nations. There you will see that what is recognized in the higher hierarchies can be taken seriously, that it can be applied to the configuration of the earth. Such knowledge is necessary for the present. For such knowledge must provide the practical basis for what is to be undertaken in the future. What has to be done will have to be recognized, not from the phrase-filled writings and speeches of people who today talk about the European nations on the basis of what they call their observations, but one will really have to penetrate into what lives on earth in the realm of the spiritual.

Of course, today we think that anyone who has experienced something has something to say under all circumstances. Yes, do you think that everyone who lived a dull existence in some village in Provence from 1789 to 1800 had something very clever to say about the French Revolution? He has experienced the event; but that does not mean that he necessarily has anything significant to say about it! Similarly, countless people can travel to America or Italy and, as they say today, judge a country and its people. But what they say is not necessarily very valuable for judging what is needed. This depends on having the opportunity to get into the depths of existence, and for that today it is necessary not to accept or reject materialism on the one hand for my sake, or to accept or reject spiritualism, no, for the researcher of reality, the spiritual researcher in our sense, it must be completely irrelevant whether one takes one's starting point from being a materialist or a spiritualist. We do not necessarily have to despise the materialists under any circumstances, because it does not matter whether one starts from matter or from spirit, if one only goes to the end! He who in true contemplation goes to the end of matter finds the spirit in the material things that happen around us. And he who wants to rely on the spirit and is always saying, “Spirit, spirit, spirit!” must above all see that he finds the way from abstract comprehension of the spirit to concrete comprehension of what happens materially. For that which happens materially is a revelation of the spirit, but one must develop the right faith in the spiritual. The one who does not have the expectant life, that each new year can radiate new secrets into us as we grow older, that person, no matter how much he speaks of God and the spirit, does not really believe in God and the spirit. For he believes that he is mature at twenty-five in all that makes a person capable of judgment. But then the rest of life is useless, worthless for the soul; the Godhead no longer reveals anything else.

One must penetrate with the spirit to the material, comprehend it. The spiritual must be so condensed that it can find the material. If we grasp what is otherwise going on out there in the world in terms of material phenomena only in terms of what is within us, we must say: there is an abyss between the external and what goes on within us. Only spiritual science is called upon to bring the external world closer to us and to bring us closer to the external world in such a way that the two meet. We can do this for the individual and for the evolution of the earth. Such things must be understood. As I stated yesterday, natural science is the least suited to grasp the fact that the head is in retrogression and the extremities are in over-development. It is particularly necessary to grasp these things. How can we grasp them? We grasp them by going beyond ordinary imagining, beyond abstractness, and forming an imaginative vision of our own imagining. You cannot look at your own imagination without at the same time approaching what is happening materially in your head as you imagine. If you have the ordinary imagination of the ordinary consciousness, you do not notice what is going on in your head. You only notice this when you ascend to imaginative thinking; you experience the material process.

And do you know what happens in the head, in the mind, while we develop ordinary consciousness? A process of hunger takes place. The waking life of imagination consists in our head starving. The false ascetics and false mystics have instinctively understood this. Therefore, they have let the whole body starve. But it is not normal for spiritual experiences to occur when the whole body is starving. That is always wrong. The hunger-asceticism that is supposed to lead to mystical raptures is one-sidedness, an unhealthy direction. But normally the equilibrium of our body is so arranged that from morning to evening, from waking up to falling asleep, not the whole body, but the head is in a continuous hunger process. It is always the head that is undernourished. This is something that belongs to the process of degeneration. And through the undernourishment of the head, we are able to make room for the imaginative spiritual life. And he who gets to know the imaginative spiritual life as imagination also gets to know what others only know in somewhat lower regions when they feel the growling of the stomach. He learns to recognize that from morning till evening, until he falls asleep, he has a growling in his stomach. What takes place is what one can call the approach of the spiritual to the material in our own body. One-sided mysticism is a comfortable sinking into the inner self, where one experiences not much more than what one experiences otherwise, only a little more condensed. True spiritual development is such a strengthening, such an invigoration of the spiritual life that, when one applies it to one's own experience, one gets to know oneself more precisely, but now really more precisely. One also gets to know the bodily more precisely because one moves so close to the bodily that one moves up into the spiritual with the bodily, that one bridges the abyss that is otherwise always there between the spiritual and the bodily.

And so one bridges the abyss that exists between the physical and the spiritual, even outside in the life of nations. Take a look at the European nations, at least some of them. You know that the leading beings from the higher hierarchies with regard to nations – you know this from the cycle on the souls of nations – are the beings of the archangelic hierarchy, the archangeloi. But how do they work? Of course, this is only an abstraction, to see any archangel as the conductor of this or that people. We have no more than when we talk about the human soul, which can only be present between birth and death because it develops out of something material, namely in our body. In the same way, the archangel, in guiding a people, is bound to the external material. The bridge between the purely spiritual nature of the archangel and the nature of the people is a material one, even if it is not as clearly defined and sharply contoured as our body. We ask, for example: What about the people who inhabit the Apennine Peninsula, what about the people who used to be Romans and are now Italians of Germanic origin? For basically, the majority of the inhabitants of today are only transformed Germanic peoples, but they get their configuration, their national determination, from something else, from the fact that in their breathing process, into the air of their breathing process, the archangel enters, not in the sense of incarnation, but in the sense of, well, let us say, permeation. And by breathing with the air, the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula are connected with their archangel. And anyone who really wants to study in order to recognize something of what is actually at work there must study the peculiar connection between the inhabitants of this peninsula (and also of the Iberian Peninsula, although to a lesser extent) and breathing, with the air. They must know how the air and the special breathing process are incorporated into the human inner being.

It is different with those who live in present-day France. Here the archangel takes a different approach, working through everything that is fluid in the human being's natural development. The French often drink their national character with their wines, but also with other things that figure in the organism as liquid elements. You see, in this way one does not merely arrive at abstract descriptions of the connection between the spiritual and the physical world. There is a description that only hints at the archangel, and below that teem with peoples, people, and the archangel guides people. Through true spiritual science one can understand the process in all its concreteness.

The inhabitants of Great Britain receive through the solid matter developing in their bodies what the archangel has to give them. They absorb it as the solid components form in their body, with the solid organization. Of course, this is only in one area where it expresses itself radically, but it is nevertheless not just a harsh truth, but a spiritual scientific truth: as the Englishman eats his beefsteak, the archangel works on him. Of course, this cannot be interpreted in a chauvinistic sense, because the individual individuality separates itself from it. Man belongs to this matter only with a part of his being, but insofar as man belongs to the people, it is effective in him. One only learns about the earth by not being afraid to go into these things in the future. Man has an inordinate fear of the truth because, of course, uncomfortable things come out through the truth. But as soon as the truth is taken seriously, it is necessary not to shy away from this discomfort. |

Let us cross over to America. Even outwardly, in its external configuration, it shows how dependent people become on what radiates from the soil! In Italy from the air, in France from the water, in England from what is destined to enter the body as solid ingredients or to become solid in it. In America it is still different.

You will see that spiritual-scientific truths, when measured against reality, find confirmation everywhere. It is just that today we do not seek this confirmation. In earlier years, I once pointed out that the development of the consciousness soul, which particularly emphasizes the egoism of man, is outwardly and materially increased by sugar. At the time, I pointed out how infinitely greater the consumption of sugar is in the British Isles than, for example, among the self-denying Russian people, where the consumption of sugar is infinitely lower. But if one describes how the consciousness soul only comes into being and develops from the 15th century onwards, one only has to look at the history of sugar production: it only begins in the 15th century. Where, then, does our sugar production actually come from? It is only in the 15th century that people begin to depend on sugar. Everything that is really evoked from the spiritual worlds in spiritual science is fully confirmed precisely when it develops so strongly in the spiritual that it can be submerged in the material, where it lives and must therefore be recognized. As soon as one crosses over to America, one finds not only externally that the Europeans who come to America gradually develop different arms and hands: the formation of arms and hands approaches that of the ancient Indians, the ancient Indian people who have been exterminated in America. And this also applies to the configuration of the facial features, even if it occurs only very gradually and only in the third or fourth generation. Of course, we should not imagine that a staid British philistine can suddenly become an Indian in the third or fourth generation, but it only shows in the finer facial features; but it does emerge. We must face these things squarely, for only by doing so will it be possible, through knowledge, to develop true love across the earth. Love can only be developed by truly empathizing with other people. But to do that, it is necessary to get to know them. The folk spirit works on the American people through the undergrounds of the earth, through the magnetic and electrical forces slumbering in the earth. It is the underground that radiates up and that in America provides the medium through which the national spirit directs the people.

And if we go to Central Europe, it is good to let the people think for themselves. But some things can be said: there is actually something very unstable, something very intimate, that is connected with the material expression of the folk spirit, with the material effect of the folk spirit. There it is essentially the effect of warmth on warmth. The differences in warmth that occur between external warmth and internal warmth, the warmth of winter, of spring, of summer, in short, everything that is expressed in the warmth conditions, that is the medium through which the folk spirit in Central Europe works. Everything that affects blood circulation and breathing as a result of warmth conditions is the indirect way in which the folk spirit works here. You can also follow this in the soul. We still have the opportunity - if we are not Fritz Mauthner - to feel something of the after-effect, I would say, of being warmed through, in the element of language. If you are not abandoned by all the good spirits of language, you are able, for example, in German, to feel your way into the language, not just to stop at the abstract element, but to feel your way into the spirit of the language, because warmth is physically related to the soul in warmth. Nothing is more physically akin to the soul than soul warmth and soul coldness are to physical warmth and physical coldness. That which lives in the sentient soul is already much more foreign to the air; that which lives in the intellectual or mind soul is much more foreign to the element of water, and even that which lives in the consciousness soul is foreign to beefsteak, that is, to the earth. And what is expressed in the human soul is terribly foreign to the magnetic and electrical forces that radiate from the underground into the human development of the American character. That is why there is so much in the American national character that appears as if the American is obsessed by what he does, in contrast to the Central European, who must be with the soul in everything he does, and who can therefore also develop mystical warmth, while the American can so easily develop a spiritualist attitude, can be obsessed by some spiritual thing, just as one can become obsessed by something that no longer flows directly into people, like air, water, earth, but only works up from the earth's underworld to form the structures of a people.

In the Russian national character, in what is being prepared in the East – we will continue to talk about such things the day after tomorrow – the folk spirit is at work, but it is only called upon to play a special role through its people in the future. the folk spirit works through the light, and indeed through the light in such a way that it does not work through the light that radiates directly from the sun, but through the light that is first absorbed into the vegetation and into the earth itself and radiates back again. The solar power reflected by the earth, especially by the vegetation, the solar power working from the ground, is what the Russian national spirit uses as its medium to bring about the structure and organization of the nation.

If we look at all these details — I will talk more about this the day after tomorrow — then we will see how the present and the near future need not a general, vague, phrase-like mysticism, but a spiritually so strong spirit-knowledge that it can immerse itself, that it can put itself into the material existence with which one has to live. So that material existence, when it can be contemplated in its kinship with the spirit, is not regarded, as one has done by mistake, as something one would like to get out of like one's skin in order to get to the spirit, but must be regarded precisely as a revelation of the spirit. He does not yet have the right relationship to the spirit who is unable to recognize that which is physical is in truth a manifestation of the spirit. Everything around us is the body of the spirit. And only when one grasps the spirit in such a way that one is able to see nature as the body of the spirit, only then is one capable of attaining true spiritual knowledge. But these are the things that must be striven for as concrete spiritual knowledge. But is it not actually the case with these things, as soon as one approaches them with complete sincerity, that they become uncomfortable for people, these people of the present day, who of course do not love such truths, who would prefer to hear only: People must love each other across the earth! Yes, certainly, but first they must recognize each other. And love must become independent of what meets one in knowledge, but it can only become independent if that meets one in knowledge. For what I have described, including what I have described about the souls of nations, you all know it, your nerves, your muscles, your blood knows it: it is enchanted in it, it must be brought out of it; and if it is not brought out in the near future, it will stir in the nerves, in the muscles, in the blood, and it will go over the earth as disharmony, as an impulse to conflict and war. The only way to prevent this from happening is to ensure that the spirit, which would otherwise transform into its ahrimanic or luciferic counter-image, is released from nerves and muscles and blood and guided into consciousness, because it wants to live here on earth only in consciousness. Only when he lives in consciousness is he established in his true existence and leads people to what they must come to in the future. He must not be left down there in the Ahrimanic and Luciferic realm, because he transforms when he cannot find his place. This ability of the spirit to transform must be recognized, for it is from this recognition that the tasks for the future arise. It is not easy to rise to the level required of humanity for the future, but it is necessary to dig deep with knowledge so that the tasks of the future can be solved. To do this, it is necessary for people to overcome certain inconveniences. And because they do not want to overcome them, they will often become enemies of spiritual development. This will have to be taken into account, especially when spiritual science spreads. The stronger such a thing becomes, and the more you are all called upon to make the transition from comfortable sectarianism to a cosmopolitan view, to work on the plan of the world, to carry this spiritual science out of the front and back parlors to those places where it is believed that the affairs of mankind must be negotiated. That is what I wanted to talk about today; I will continue the day after tomorrow.

From the observations we made here the day before yesterday, and perhaps also in a broader sense from the public observations of these days, it will be seen that there is a certain necessity for humanity to develop spiritual-scientific interests, especially in the present day. For this spiritual science, in addition to its other tasks in the narrower sense for the individual human being, for his mind, his needs in life, his soul matters, is in a position to create clarity about certain things that man in the present must absolutely consider. And it is from this point of view that I have emphasized the necessity of regarding the seriousness with which spiritual science must be taken by those who approach it today, and of allowing it to appeal above all to the soul. We must try to explore in the most diverse directions how humanity could end up in such a catastrophic situation. For what this catastrophic situation means is still not considered by many people today in its full depth and with full seriousness. But the time will come when the events themselves, the facts themselves, will reveal this seriousness in a completely different way than is already the case today. But precisely on the basis of spiritual science, one should realize that it is not enough to wait until the very last moment, so to speak, to understand what one needs to understand in the face of the deeply dormant demands of the time. Above all, it is necessary to be prepared to face the fact that certain truths, which are necessary for humanity in the present and in the near future, are uncomfortable, that it is much more comfortable to sing the praises of how we have come so gloriously far in this or that respect, through the great achievements of cultural studies achievements, than to point out what is effective and alive in the relationships of human beings themselves, and what is effective and alive in particular in order to condition the character of contemporary humanity, so to speak. Contemporary humanity is challenged in many ways, it is necessarily led to understand this and that; but some things that are to be understood are just uncomfortable to understand, and require a certain unreserved, unprejudiced assessment of one's own human nature.

Certain tendencies exist in the development of time. Hypothetically, one can say that it would indeed be possible to continue to regard such things as something great, such as the so-called examination of aptitude mentioned the day before yesterday. Certain contemporary educators, namely, propagate these things, regard them as something tremendously great, and the rest of humanity disdains to form an opinion about these things, finds it inconvenient not to sleep in the face of such Ahrimanic tendencies, as they are introduced by something like the aptitude test and many other things. If such endeavors, such ideals – and of course they are ideals too – are to continue to exist, then this will have a profound influence on the whole development of the human soul, and above all a very specifically configured influence on the basic powers of the human soul: thinking, feeling and willing. One may hypothetically ask oneself, for it is not to take place, it is to be remedied by the efforts of those who profess the anthroposophical world view, but hypothetically one may ask oneself in order to know what one has to do: What configuration must the three main soul forces of man take on if such tendencies, as they are currently prevailing from the materialistic attitude, from the Ahrimanic, were to take hold alone, if they were not countered by spiritual striving, spiritual will? However great and powerful the influence of technical progress, which is fed by natural science, and of progress in other fields of natural science, may be, this very progress in natural science, this very structure of present-day thinking, will gradually impress more and more the character of narrow-mindedness, of limitation, on human imagination, on human thinking. There is no other way to characterize it, because in the broadest sense, I would say, the beginning of this narrow-mindedness, this limitation, is already apparent today, and it will consist in the fact that one will sin more and more

against something that was asserted in a public lecture yesterday: one will sin against opening up the whole soul to the world. More and more, people will limit themselves to listening theoretically and intellectually to what the concepts and ideas say. I also wanted to publicly point out that two people can say exactly the same thing with words, and one is by no means justified in thinking that what comes from both people is the same.

Today we live in the age of programs. The age of programs is precisely the age of intellectualism. What is it that people most like to do today when they devote themselves to the good of humanity? They found associations for all kinds of causes and set up programs and ideals. These can, of course, be very ingenious, very benevolent, very plausible; for the development of humanity they need not be worth a shot of powder. But one goes out of one's way to ask oneself: What does the person in question want? And if the person in question says – now, let's take something abstract, today one loves abstractions –: I want to cultivate universal philanthropy, then one thinks: What better thing could one do? Of course, one must join such an association! But we live in a time when, due to a certain oversaturation that culture has attained, it is extremely easy to come up with the most beautiful programs and the most beautiful ideas. In this regard, one can be a very limited person in terms of one's sense of and interest in the overall well-being of humanity and its true concerns. I might add that today, in the more delicate matters of culture, one can sometimes be right in the higher sense about things in which, according to the opinion of very many people, one is perhaps completely wrong. Thus, for example, today one may be led to set a higher value on poetic stammering which really and truly heralds the power of the inner soul than on perfect verses which are recognized as such simply because, as regards the outward configuration of poetry, language itself, the spirit of language, writes verses today and only employs the human soul to do so. Today, anyone can make brilliant verses in terms of the old verse style, even if they have no strong soul power. Such things must be taken into account in a time when great, eminently great questions arise for the development of mankind, as in this present time.

So it must be said: People must learn to open their whole soul to whole souls; people must learn to hold less and less to the content of what is said, and they must learn to gain more and more insight into the knowledge and power of what is brought into the world by this or that personality. We are, after all, experiencing the most terrible world-historical drama, that people all over the world worship principles such as those emanating from Woodrow Wilson, because these principles are plausible, because these principles cannot be refuted. Of course they are plausible, and of course they cannot be refuted, but they are as old as human thought; they have always been said that way. In all these things, there is nothing that is connected with the real, concrete, immediately present tasks. But people find it uncomfortable to put themselves in the position of the real, concrete, immediately present tasks, to develop the flexibility of thought. For this flexibility of thinking is part of the process of entering into the immediately concrete. Of course, it sometimes takes a long time to find one's way into this concrete; but today it is necessary to understand such things, to enter a little into the soul of the development of humanity.

There is a city in which a southern German population lives. In this city, a very important personality arose in the 18th century: Johann Heinrich Lambert. Kant, who was a contemporary of Johann Heinrich Lambert, called Lambert the greatest genius of his century; for if only Lambert's ideas had taken the place of the so-called Kant-La Place theory, something very significant would have emerged. This Lambert grew up in a city, which is now a southern German city, as the son of a tailor, and showed special talent at the age of fourteen. His father petitioned the city's council for support. After much effort, the council finally agreed to donate forty francs for the talented boy, on the condition that he never again request support. A hundred years had to pass before the city erected a monument to this man in the 1840s, the same city that had chased him out when he was fourteen. He was forced to leave the city and achieved greatness through special circumstances in Berlin. Now there is a beautiful monument, with a globe at the top to suggest that this genius was born out of this great, powerful city, which was able to harbor such geniuses, that the genius who knew how to embrace the world comes from this very soil!

Sometimes it takes even longer than a hundred years to realize what is teeming with talent. That may be, it may have been until our time. But how often has it been emphasized among us that the time has come when people must awaken to a free, self-reliant consciousness, in which people can no longer afford to be unaware of what is going on around them. This time is approaching with giant strides. People must learn to unlock their souls in order to see what is really there. Because, as I said, thinking is threatened by the peculiar configuration of materialistic culture, imagination is limited and becomes narrow-minded. Spiritual science provides concepts and ideas that do not allow one to become narrow-minded in one's thinking. One is constantly being asked, precisely through spiritual scientific concepts, to look at a thing from the most diverse sides. That is why even today many people in the spiritual science ranks are annoyed when they hear: Now a new cycle is coming, the matter will be approached from a completely different angle. — But it is inevitable that things are approached from the most diverse angles, and that we finally get beyond what I would call the absolutization of judgment. The truth, grasped in the spirit, cannot be well expressed in sharp contours because the spirit is a moving thing. So spiritual science works against narrow-mindedness in relation to thinking. Of course, it is difficult to say this to the present, but it is necessary.

The second faculty observed in the soul is feeling. Regarding feeling, regarding the world of feeling, what tendency does humanity strive towards from its materialistic culture? One can say that it has come a long way precisely in this area. In the realm of feeling, materialistic “culture” produces narrow-mindedness, philistinism. Our materialistic culture is particularly inclined to grow into the gigantic. Narrow-mindedness of interests! In the narrowest circle, people want to close themselves more and more. But today man is no longer called to close himself in the narrowest circle, today he is called to recognize how he is a tone in the great cosmic symphony.

Let us once again consider something, in order to immediately look at what is meant here from a comprehensive point of view, something that has already been mentioned here. I would like to say: you can calculate – and today people believe a lot in calculation – in what a wonderful way man fits into the cosmos. In one minute, we take about eighteen breaths. If you multiply that by twenty-four hours in a day, you get 25,920 breaths. Twenty-four hours, 25,920 breaths! Now try to calculate the following: You know that every year the vernal point, the rising point of the sun in spring, moves a little further along the vault of heaven. Let's go back to very distant times. The sun rose in Taurus in spring, then a little further in Taurus and again a little further until it entered Aries, and then again further, and so the sun goes around, apparently of course. How many years does it take for the Sun to move forward a little bit at a time in this jerky manner so that it arrives back at the same point? The Sun makes many such jerks: it takes 25,920 years to move forward in this way, which means that the Sun completes one revolution in the great cosmos in 25,920 years, in as many years as we take breaths in one day. Imagine what a wonderful coincidence that is! We breathe 25,920 times in a day, the sun advances, and when it has made the jerk 25,920 times, like our inner jerk, a breath, then it has come around the cosmos once. So we are a reflection of the macrocosm with our breathing.

It goes further: the average lifespan – this can of course go much further, but some people die earlier – the lifespan is on average seventy, seventy-one years. What is this actually, this human life? It is also a sum of breaths. Only they are different breaths. In ordinary physical breathing, we suck in the air and expel it. In a twenty-four-hour day, if we are ordinary, righteous people and do not go out at night in rags, we take a deep inhalation of our ego and the astral body when we wake up, and exhale our ego and astral body again when we fall asleep: that is also a breath. Every day is a breath of our physical and etheric body in relation to the I and the astral body. How often do we do that in a lifetime that lasts about seventy, seventy-one years? Calculate how many days a person actually lives: 25,920 days! That means that not only in one day do we imitate the course of the sun in the world by developing as many breaths as the sun makes jolts until it returns to the same point in the cosmos, but we also perform the great breath, the inhalation of the I and the astral body into the physical and etheric bodies, and the exhalation of the I and the astral body into the seventy-one years just as often as we breathe in one day: 25,920 times, which is the number of times the sun moves before it returns to the same point. We could cite many such things that show us how we, with our human lives, stand in the great harmony of the universe in terms of numbers and otherwise, and they would be no less surprising, no less magnificent, than if we feel what I have just explained. Much is hidden in the circumstances in which man stands in the world, but this hiddenness has its profound effect because it is actually the same as what was understood in ancient times as the harmony of the spheres.

This, indeed, calls forth our interest in the whole world. We are gradually learning to understand that we know nothing about ourselves as human beings if we restrict our interest in a philistine way to our immediate surroundings. But this has become more and more the characteristic of modern times, philistinism! Indeed, philistinism has become the basic tenor of the religious world view; and from there this basic tenor of philistinism radiated into many minds. Go back to the first centuries of Christianity: there was a doctrine that was grandiose. It was for that time. Today it must be replaced by our spiritual-scientific view, because different times make different demands on humanity, but at that time it was a grandiose doctrine, Gnosticism. Consider the magnificent way in which these Gnostics thought, in the research of the eons, in the research of the various spiritual hierarchies, how this small earth is aligned with the great cosmic world evolution with its many, many entities, but in whose ranks man is placed after all. It took flexibility of thought, a certain goodwill to develop one's concepts, not to let them calcify, become slimy, as one does now, in order to rise to Gnosis. Then came — not Christianity, but Christian confessionality. And ask around today what most official representatives of Christianity hate most of all: Gnosis. And they blacken anthroposophy most of all for that reason; they do not concern themselves with anthroposophy itself, they are too lazy for that, but when they glance into some book they have a dark suspicion, a dark notion: it could be some kind of gnosis too, for heaven's sake! We must take in new ideas, we must make the mind agile! We have finally brought people to simplicity of thought, especially in the religious sphere. It is said that one cannot gauge what will come of it when one soars to such lofty heights! – It is said: Man can indeed come to reach the highest divine in the simplest mind; there is no need to make an effort, but the simplest, childlike mind can reach the highest divine at every moment.

Yes, we must see through these things! It is important to really look at these things, because the prevailing mood of modern times, the philistinism, emanates from these things. That is why the religious sentiment in the various denominations has become so philistine, because what I have just described underlies it. Today it flatters people who pretend to be modest, but who are actually terribly immodest at heart, because immodesty, megalomania, is a fundamental characteristic of our time. Everything is judged, no matter how difficult it is experienced, no matter how much difficulty it bears on the forehead: it is judged, even by the one who can well know that he has not particularly endeavored to much experience, who only endeavored to arrive at the self-evident: that no effort must be made to recognize God, but that God must surrender Himself at all times to the simplest, most childlike mind if it wants Him. So one must see that philistinism must be pushed back by spiritual science before all else. But philistinism is rooted quite differently than is often assumed today, and many of those who believe that they have truly escaped philistinism are in fact mired in it up to their necks. Many “isms” and many modernisms that make it their program not to be like the philistines are actually nothing more than the most masked philistinism. That is the second point. In the realm of thinking and imagination, the encroaching narrow-mindedness must be pushed back; in the realm of feeling, the advancing philistinism. Broad-mindedness of interest must take its place, the will to really look at what is going on in the great tableau of earthly development.

The day before yesterday, we tried to characterize the effect of the folk spirits in concrete terms. These are archangels. From this you could already see that these folk spirits are connected with the places where certain people develop on earth. The folk spirit in Italy works through the air, and it works through everything liquid in the areas of present-day France and so on, as I have characterized it. But naturally these things intersect with many others, and one must be clear about the fact that people live side by side on earth, that certain phases of development are left behind in certain areas. In some cases, people advance them, in others they even cause them to decline. Now there is something tremendously significant to observe. If we regard the whole earth as an organism and ask ourselves: What is happening all over the earth? we can begin by looking at various areas of Asia, the Asian East, as it is called. In this Asian East, there are many souls incarnating today that, due to their karma, due to what they have brought with them from previous lives on earth, are still stuck in earlier peculiarities of human development. These are souls seeking bodies in which they can still be dependent on physical development up to a certain advanced age. The normal thing is that today one is only dependent up to the twenty-seventh year. This is what represents the fundamental character of our time: that one is dependent on physical development until the age of twenty-seven. This is very significant in our time. One understands much in our time when one considers these things. I have already pointed this out here.

I once asked myself: What would a person be like who was supposed to be the very type of our time, how would he have to enter this time with all his work, with all his activity? — He would have to, so to speak, exclude from himself everything that is otherwise brought to people from outside and affects them, leaving them to their own devices until the age of twenty-seven. He would have to be what is called a self-made man, a self-made person. Until the age of twenty-seven, he should be little affected by what the normal, the representative in our time, should be. Until the age of twenty-seven, he should develop entirely on his own. Then, just after he has made of himself what a modern man can make of himself, then, for example, he would have to be elected to parliament. Isn't it true that being elected to parliament is what it means to be in touch with the times today? Then, when he has been elected to parliament and after a few years has even become a minister, then he is in a sense stigmatized, then people notice later when one falls over in one direction or another and has this or that mishap. And then? How must it continue? One can no longer develop, one remains the type of one's time, one is the right representative of one's time. There are people like that today, as I said here some time ago: Lloyd George, for example. There is no one who expresses more characteristically and typically what is present in our time than Lloyd George, who by the age of twenty-seven had brought forth everything that a person can draw from the physical body. He was an autodidact, he came into life early, into socialism, and learned early on that at twenty-seven, you belong in Parliament. He was elected to Parliament and very soon became one of the most feared speakers there, even one of the most feared squinters – that's what they say: squinters – he always sat there and lurked when others were talking. There was something special about the way he looked up, that was well known to Lloyd George. Then the Campbell-Bannerman ministry came. Then they said: What do we do about Lloyd George? He's dangerous. It's best to make him a minister. And so they took him into the ministry. Yes, but to which ministerial post do we transfer him? He is a very talented person! Well, we transfer him to a position where he understands nothing. There he will be most useful, there he will be the least trouble! - He was made Minister of Railways and Shipbuilding. In a few months he acquired what he needed. He made the greatest reforms, the greatest things.

Surely, the type of man of the present cannot be better described than by portraying Lloyd George. It is as if it is concentrated, as if it is the essence of the materialism of the present, and one can understand much of the present if one is able to go into something like this. That is how it is in the middle of the world, I would like to say, between the Asian East and the American West. It is particularly the case in European culture that up to the age of twenty-seven one can extract from the bodily-physical what can also be significant for the soul-spiritual. Then a spiritual impulse must be aroused in the soul if one wants to progress, for the physical body has nothing more to give. Therefore, in a person like Lloyd George, everything that the present gives by itself is there, but he also has nothing of what is to be freely achieved. The present naturally gives much genius, many talents, but it gives nothing spiritual by itself. That must be conquered through freedom. But in Asia there is still ample opportunity to find bodies that allow the soul-spiritual development to continue beyond the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year. Therefore, souls incarnate there that still want to gain something from the physical body beyond this time. That is why there is still a spiritual culture, a culture that insists that the things around us be looked at spiritually, that the spiritual be recognized in the world. Of course, there is also a great deal of decadence in the East because materialism has spread, and since it is least suitable for the East, decadence has the greatest effect there. But among those who are the leading people, you can see how a natural spirituality is still present. They inwardly despise European materialistic culture in the most comprehensive sense. People like Rabindranath Tagore, who recently gave a speech about the spirit of Japan, who says: We Orientals naturally adopt European achievements for our external technical cultural conditions; but we put them in our sheds, in our stables, and certainly don't let them enter our living rooms, this European culture - because the spiritual is a matter of course for him. Today, we need to know such things, for these things are the basic forces of what is happening in the world, and on which world events depend today.

You will say: Yes, but we do have, for example, in our Central European culture, a firm foundation for a spirituality that is even based on clear, bright ideas! — We do have that too, and we can speak of this spirituality in the same way that I tried to speak of a forgotten current in German intellectual life in my book “Vom Menschenrätsel” (The Riddle of Man). In order to be imbued with a spirituality that would truly go beyond what Oriental spirituality has achieved in the development of humanity, we need only imbibe the wonderful imaginations that we find, for example, in Herder or Goethe. Oriental culture has not produced anything as great as Herder, who sees a picture of the new creation of the world in every new sunrise and describes it in a magnificent way. Those who do not want to be philistines today are still such philistines that they say: You no longer care about something that is so ancient – and if you ask people about Herder, it has long been forgotten. And the Oriental, when he judges the circumstances, naturally judges that which lives in the outer real current of Central European culture.

Read the perceptive Chinese scholar Xu Hung-Ming, who has sympathetically described Central European culture, or read the lecture that Rabindranath Tagore recently gave. Then you will see that people are asking themselves: What is the position of this Europe in the overall progress of humanity? — They have an inkling that this Central Europe would be called upon to lead people beyond what spiritualism has given them itself. But then they look to see whether this Central Europe has not failed to develop the great talents, the great seeds that are there, that it contains. People say that they had a Goethe; yes, but these honest, materialistic Germans do not know how to make use of him! When his last grandchild died, there was another opportunity to introduce Goetheanism into German spiritual life. Under the truly incomparably magnificent aegis of a German princess, the Goethe-Schiller Archive was founded. A great impulse was given in the 1880s. The Goethe Society was also founded, but they were constantly embarrassed to appoint someone to the top who would really have dealt with the spirituality of Goethe. They did not find that worthy, and in the last election they did not put a person at the head of the Goethe Society who would be steeped in the spirituality inspired by Goethe, but they appointed a former finance minister. Yes, but after such things the world must judge what is happening in Central Europe! Today, Goethe's heritage is administered by a former finance minister who, admittedly, has the symptomatic first name “Kreuzwendedich” (which means “Turn Yourself Around”). But I don't know if, if the symbolism of this first name were to be fulfilled, something better would take its place.

These things could only change if the place of narrow-minded interests were taken by great interests, if people really looked at how the impulses work across the earth, how the bodies in the east, I would like to say, make a somewhat spirituality for the souls who want to incarnate in such bodies today with a retarded spirituality, which still gives something of the physical body for the souls beyond the twenty-seventh year. In the East, people remain at an earlier stage of human development, they stop at what humanity has already gone through. Here in the middle, people have reached the point where a change must take place, where they can draw what is necessary from the physical body up to the age of twenty-seven. But for the further development of the human soul, if one does not want to grow old early and does not want to have nothing of one's youth, one must have a spiritual-soul impulse, a free spiritual impulse, not, like the Oriental, an unfree spiritual impulse.

If we go further west, to America, humanity is so constituted that it lags behind, that it does not reach this level. In the Orient, humanity has, in a sense, regressed to earlier stages; in the middle, you have the normal age; in the West, in America – I characterized it the day before yesterday – the subterranean of the earth is at work. Even on such minds as Woodrow Wilson, it has the effect of being obsessed by their own words, their own principles. They are like prematurely aged children, but the word has a slightly different connotation. They cannot achieve the full impact of what can be achieved up to the age of twenty-seven. Once we understand what makes such a strong impression on many people in the present day, we will ask ourselves, for example: How could it be that a mind like Woodrow Wilson's, which with its age never absorbed more than one absorbs up to the age of twenty-seven, could become the great world schoolmaster? — The breadth of interest to really bring such things to mind in a genuine way, you just don't have that. You don't want to get out of philistinism!

That remarkable trend in the evolution of humanity, which is characterized by the following: from the East to the West, from the preservation of an earlier time through the normal middle to the decadence of the West - this is to be found in the development of nations and the earth, not in the individual human being. Interest in it must be developed so that one knows what impulses are at work across the earth and so that one can evaluate them. And for a long time, the main influence here in the center of Europe came from the south, with the culture of Central Europe being permeated by Greco-Roman influences. The conservative nature of the south was adopted. Today we stand at a turning point. A particularly progressive element of the north must permeate the population of central Europe. And this special, I would say, favorable impulse of the Hyperborean time for today must pass through our soul. This is what must be taken into account. Otherwise, if man does not open his eyes and soul to these great impulses of human evolution, the earth will take a wrong direction of development, will not become humus for the cosmic world structure, and that which the last epoch of evolution of the earth should mean must be taken up by another planet.

There are great interests at stake. It is necessary to work one's way out of philistinism and develop towards great interests. Only by acquiring such interests can one come to evaluate certain phenomena of our present time in the right way. It can be clearly seen that human natures are bifurcating in our time. This is only the beginning today; but people are bifurcating. Some are natures that, so to speak, harden the physical body within themselves. They develop it in a certain hardening up to the age of twenty-seven, then they stop, they reject the spiritual-soul. If they do not have constant stimulation to stir up humanity, to lead humanity to disaster, like Lloyd George, then they become dull, stale, and turn into right-wing philistinism, becoming dull. In one direction lies the dulling of humanity. The others abandon themselves to all the driving, pulsating forces of the physical body until they are twenty-seven years old, drawing all spirituality out of the physical body. There is much in the physical. Do not forget, we all come into the world with tremendous wisdom; we only have to transform this wisdom into consciousness, to transform what is full of wisdom in our entire physical being. Spiritual science attempts to bring everything in the nerves, blood and muscles into consciousness in a harmonious, spiritualized way. Spiritual science rejects not only the dull-witted, but also, in many cases, those - and there are more and more of them - who, pulsating with life, feel until they reach sexual maturity and until the age of twenty-seven that which boils and seethes as genius in the nerves, blood and muscles. These overheated natures, which, so to speak, burn up human life, are becoming more and more common. They already occur extremely frequently today. They fill the lunatic asylums and so on. But it is not recognized that the real healing lies in anthroposophically 'oriented spiritual science.

A fine typical nature has indeed become a world celebrity in recent times. That is the philosopher Otto Weininger. Right, Otto Weininger was a person who, in the most chaotic way, unrefined, disharmonized, brought out what lies in the nerve, muscle, blood, and then wrote the book 'Sex and Character', which has become world-famous, and which people who fall for anything have also fallen for here. So that the Philistines were also taken in, who did not understand that, despite all the nonsense and repulsiveness, it was an idea, a revelation of an elementary fact about nerve, blood and muscle. The elemental approaches such people, out of their humanity itself, that which spiritual science would like to develop — only in an orderly, harmonious way. Such people, because they have not learned it from spiritual science — there they would learn it properly — but because their nerves, their blood, their muscles demand it, must ask a question that humanity must necessarily ask itself today. Without this question, humanity will not advance. It is: How can I, having entered the physical world through birth or conception, continue the development of my spiritual and soul existence from the last death to this birth? Such and similar questions, as we raise them in spiritual science, as we regard them as fundamental questions of progressive spiritual culture, must be raised and will be raised by those who boil up what is in nerve, blood and muscle.

You see, there is a chapter in Otto Weininger's work that is extraordinarily interesting. He asked himself: Why did I actually come into this world? — And he answered this question in his own way, out of what I have just characterized, out of the wisdom that lies in muscle, blood and nerve, but in a way that consumes and burns the human being. He asked himself: Why am I drawn out of the spiritual world, where I used to be, into earthly life? He found no answer except this: Because I was a coward, because I did not want to remain alone in the spiritual world and therefore sought the connection with other people. I did not have the courage to be alone, I sought the protection of the mother's womb. These were perfectly honest answers that he gave himself. Why do we have no memory, he asked, of what happened before birth? Because we have become that way through birth! — Literally he says: Because we have sunk so low that we have lost consciousness. If man had not lost himself at birth, he would not have to search for and find himself.

These are typical phenomena; today they still occur sporadically. They are those who, in their youth, extract from blood, nerve and muscle that which can only flourish in the whole human process if it is clarified and harmonized by that which spiritual science is to give. For this, however, the interests of general human life must be broadened. Philistinism must recede. The fact that people are locked in a narrow circle of interests must be systematically combated. Certain questions must take on a completely different form than they have done up to now. How has the religious development of the last few millennia itself structured the question that still binds people to the spiritual to some extent? A materialistically educated, witty person of the present day, who has taken a high position in a certain circle, once said to me: If you compare the state with the church, you get the opinion that the church still has it easier than the state. Well, I will not say anything about the value of this judgment, but that man thought that the church had an easier time than the state, because the state administers life, the church death, and people are more afraid of death than of life; therefore the church has an easier time. He considered this nonsense, of course, because he was a materialist.

But this chapter too has actually been brought into a rather selfish channel. Basically, people today ask: What happens to my soul and spiritual life when I have passed through the gate of death? — And there are many selfish impulses in this. Under the influence of spiritual science, the question of immortality in particular would take on a completely different form. In the future, people will not only ask: To what extent is the spiritual and mental life after death a continuation of life here on earth? But rather: To what extent is life on earth a continuation of the life I used to live in the spiritual and mental world? - Then one will be able to look at something like the following.

When a person passes through the gate of death, the imaginative presentation is very strong at first; a comprehensive world of images unfolds imaginatively. I would call this an unrolling of the world of images. The second third of the life between death and a new birth is filled mainly with inspirations. Inspirations occur in the human life in the second third of this life between death and a new birth. And intuitions in the last third. Now intuitions consist in the human being transferring himself with his self, his soul, into other beings, and the end of these intuitions consists in his transferring himself into the physical body. This transfer into the physical body through birth is merely the continuation of the mainly intuitive life of the last third between death and a new birth. And this must actually occur when the human being enters the physical plane; it must be a particularly characteristic trait in children: the ability to place themselves in the other life. They must do what others do, not what comes naturally to them, but imitate what the other does.

Why did I have to describe, when I was talking about “The education of the child from the point of view of spiritual science”, that children in the first seven years are mainly imitators? Because imitation, because putting oneself in the place of others, is the continuation of the intuitive world that exists in the last third of life between death and a new birth. If one looks at the life of the child here in a truly meaningful way, one can still see the life between death and a new birth streaming in and shining. The question of immortality will have to be posed on this basis: to what extent is life here on earth a continuation of the soul-spiritual life? But then people will also learn to take this life on earth very seriously, but not in an egotistical sense. Above all, they will adhere to a sense of responsibility, which is based on the realization that they are continuing here what is imposed on them by the fact that they have brought something with them as an inheritance from the soul-spiritual. It will mean an enormous change in the way people think when they speak from the other point of view. For that which the soul experiences between death and a new birth, this great spiritual realm, which is experienced in imaginations, inspirations, intuitions, that is the here and now for there; and what we experience here is the beyond for there. And the desire to understand and honor this Hereafter will become part of the newly formulated question of immortality, which will intervene in the spiritual development of humanity in a less egotistical way than the question of immortality has often done in the religious development of the past millennia.

I wanted to describe such things in order to show how humanity should emerge from philistinism, in order to show how one is not a philistine. You are not a philistine if you can go beyond your narrowest interest, and if you also have an interest in the fact that here on earth you take 25,920 breaths in one day, which corresponds to the number of days in an earthly life and also to the 'jerk' of the sun as it orbits in the cosmic ellipse. Our interest expands beyond what has led to the fact that there is a forgotten stream in German intellectual life; our interest expands beyond what is configured in the spirit all over the earth, what the keynote of oriental, middle, Western spiritual development: how the Asian spiritual development is dependent, so to speak, on an eastern current, which entered the West in a state of decadence, how the middle current, initially dependent on the South, will become dependent on the North in the future. These things lead us to the great plan of human development, overcome philistinism, correctly adjust our feelings in relation to human development and teach us to really feel for what lives in humanity as impulses.

And the will: the will also develops in a very specific way in the material impulses. It develops in such a way that people become more and more unskillful, and in the great classical sense, more and more unskillful. What can a person do today? The narrowest thing he is trained for puts him in a small circle. What develops in spiritual science in terms of concepts, feelings, and impulses extends to the limbs. When someone really immerses themselves in spiritual science, they become adept, adapt to their environment, and sometimes learn things in the course of their lives that, when they are still very young, show no aptitude for. If properly grasped, spiritual science will also make people adept. Today, people are not adept at even the smallest things. You meet people who do not know the simplest tasks, you meet gentlemen who cannot even sew on a button if it has come off, much less anything else. But it is important that people can become versatile again, that they can adapt to their surroundings, that this confinement to the narrowest circle and thus the becoming clumsy for the world be overcome.

However strange it may sound, humanity has this threefold task for the present and the near future with regard to thinking, feeling and willing: that narrow-mindedness be overcome and a flexible way of finding one's way into the circumstances of the world take hold, that philistinism be overcome and generous interests take hold of human hearts, that clumsiness be overcome and people become skillful and are also educated in skill in the most diverse areas of life. Learn to understand the world in the most diverse areas of life! Today, of course, we are doing the opposite of all this. We are heading towards clumsiness, philistinism, and narrow-mindedness, and these are the necessary consequences of the materialistic way of thinking. Of course, not everyone can learn to set a broken leg themselves, but there is no need to cultivate clumsiness to the point where someone no longer has any sense of how to help themselves in the simplest of cases of illness and the like. What matters is skillful understanding in order to cope with life in the most diverse situations.

With the advent of this newer time, have we not seen clearly how things have actually developed? Anyone who has asked around with discerning eyes about the phenomena of the present in the last decades has clearly seen that the sense of developing a worldview, of making impulses for a worldview the subject of consideration, was only present in those who at the same time had the will to develop purely materialistic worldview interests, namely in the field of socialism. Basically, consideration of ideological issues only occurred where people wanted to reform the world in a socialist sense. If one came up above the socialist flood, there was disinterest; at most narrow clique interests, clinging to the old, or if one thought one was grasping at something new, it was abstract words, the forerunners of Wilsonianism, as it raged particularly badly in the so-called liberal parties in the second half of the 19th century. There was no will to penetrate into the intellectual and spiritual impulses of the world, as socialism wanted to penetrate into the material; there was dullness where the bourgeoisie began – on the whole, of course; exceptions are disregarded. Those present are always excepted, that is a matter of politeness.

Now, to confront these phenomena and to answer such questions as have been raised today, also in the sense in which we have tried to answer them today, is basically one and the same thing. For great things are connected with these matters. In the East of Europe, we see something being prepared, I would say in the extract, for which Europe today has terribly little understanding. We have often pointed out the developmental germs of this European East in our field. This European East wants to learn to understand that all human life has meaning! And when the sixth post-Atlantic cultural epoch approaches, the European East is to show in the evolution of the earth that all human life has a meaning, and not just believe as true what is taught in school in one's youth. The East should show that man is in a process of development until death, that every year brings something new, and that when one passes through the gate of death, one is still connected with the earthly and brings wisdom with one even after death. What does the soul element want, which until recently could be called Russian, and which is now provisionally entering a state of chaos, but will find its way into the development of European culture and thus into the cultural development of all humanity? What does this element of the East want?

It wants to see the dawn of an understanding that all human life is in a state of development, and that the moment of death is only an especially important moment in this development. This principle must indeed find followers and confessors in Central Europe, and from such prerequisites as we have mentioned, it will find them. But until this principle is recognized, people will always believe that the younger you are, the more you can have a point of view. The youngest badgers and badger females today have their own fixed point of view, and basically have nothing of the great expectation and hope that every year new secrets will be revealed, that the moment of death will reveal new secrets. The European East is developing souls that today are still developing an understanding in the subconscious that man is wisest and can judge best about earthly, human conditions precisely when he dies. And from these souls living in the East today, there will arise those who do not merely seek advice from the young badgers, from the parliaments, on how to decide on human affairs, but who also seek advice from the dead, who will learn to establish contact with the dead and to make fruitful the contact with the dead here for earthly development. In the future people will ask: What do the dead say about it? And they will find spiritual paths if they delve so deeply in spiritual science that they ask the dead, not just the living, when it comes to deciding the great matters of people here on earth. That is what the East wants. And never has anything clashed more badly than it is happening today in the European East. For that which is the soul of this European East is the exact opposite of what, in the form of Trotskyism or Leninism, has been superimposed on it today from the purest, albeit self-misunderstanding, materialism of the present. Never before in the development of mankind have two things that are so incongruous collided as the spiritual germ of the East and materialistic Leninism, this caricature, this most grotesque caricature of human cultural progress, which has no sense or understanding of anything truly spiritual but which is so understandable in terms of the fundamental nerve of the present day. The future will learn to recognize this.

That, my dear friends, is what I just wanted to tell you in summary with regard to such things that should ignite interest in our hearts. One must have understanding for such things; one must not remain dull to what is going on in the deeper sense in the souls. That is what I wanted to put into your souls and hearts during our meeting today.

Originally published in the 1991 edition of the Golden Blade.

On many occasions when I have spoken of human evolution I have pointed out that during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in which we live, the task is to develop the consciousness soul out of the general human potential. During the sixth post-Atlantean epoch the Spirit Self will have to evolve. I have pointed out that if the sixth post-Atlantean epoch is to come into its own in that evolution, a major role will have to be played by specific human faculties that are to be found in the Eastern part of Europe, in the Russian people, though at present these still lie dormant. That evolution will depend on certain qualities that need to be so deeply rooted in the Russian folk soul that the souls of individual members of that nation—unless led astray by their ‘intelligentsia’—are profoundly illumined by these qualities. We should take note of those qualities. The Russian folk soul has something almost feminine about it, a compliance, something that makes it easy to accept what the process of civilisation brings with it.

One aspect of this is that in the course of their evolution the Russian people have always been receptive to Byzantine religious elements with their more oriental flavour, elements that have come to be part of their culture. Until now the Russian folk soul has been neither productive nor inwardly creative, but it has been enormously receptive. That is also why the Russian Orthodox faith cannot really be said to have shown progressive development in the centuries during which this Russian faith with its Byzantine orientation has been alive among the Russian people. When you attend one of the ceremonies of the Russian church—even if only briefly—you can sense the strong oriental aura present in those ceremonies; something of an auric element is tangibly brought right into the present time.

That is one aspect. Another is that the nature of the Russian folk soul is such that individual Russians have little feeling for the thought forms that in Western and Central Europe have become a necessity in order to structure social life and develop it further. One of those necessities has been to make strictly legal thinking part of the social order in Europe. Russians, however, have little understanding for a social life that owes its inner structure to thought forms. They would feel that this interfered with their freedom to live out their destinies both with and through their feelings. They do not wish to be side-tracked by thought forms of any kind that are woven into the outer social structure.

A third element is intimately bound up with what we may call the Russian folk soul. This trait is one of peacefulness and non-aggression in the life of the spirit, a passive nature that is more inclined to yield. Aggressive protagonism of any kind of dogma is alien to Russian folk nature. This, then, is their third trait.

It is of course possible for such character traits to change into their opposites if circumstances arise that make this happen—that is inevitable considering the complexity of human life. Thanks to those who are now leading the people astray, the three traits have almost completely turned into their absolute opposites, something that should not surprise anyone who is working out of the science of the spirit.

We see, therefore—and we’d see very much more if we were able to study in more detail what can only be given in brief outline here—that the East provides material that as it were has to come together with the fruits of a much more active development in the West of Europe, where we find character traits that are practically the opposite. I have shown what the West has been able to achieve for humanity up to our fifth post-Atlantean era because there has been a certain active development. I have also indicated the things that still have to be achieved for humanity and can be achieved if people do not fail to wake up to things such as I mentioned in yesterday’s lecture, when I gave an example of a note that had been struck in the life of the spirit in Germany but had then been allowed to fade away.

The driving forces within the life of the spirit have to be perceived in an unbiased way even where they appear in the most dreadful distortions and as absolute caricatures in outer physical reality. Those who can do this will know that because of a certain fact it will be necessary for the element that is to be found in the life of the spirit in Central Europe to enter into a form of marriage with the element that comes from the natural traits of the Russian people. The fruits that can be generated through the special nature, of the life in the spirit in Central Europe need to work together with the receptivity that is possible thanks to those purely natural charac-teristics of people in the East of Europe.

If you were to take an even closer look at the Central European life of the spirit, and in particular the trait to which I have just drawn attention in my public lecture, you would see that while it is not yet spiritual science as such, it does have something which is the seed of spiritual science. Fichte¹ spoke of a ‘higher sense’, Goethe² of ‘the power of intuitive judgement’. Schelling,³ on the other hand, said that the soul had to attain to a higher level of ‘intellectual intuition’ if it was to gain true insight into the secrets of life. To understand this more clearly we have to take note of the great achievements of Schelling’s old age, when he wrote two extremely profound works—"The Philosophy of Mythology" and "The Philosophy of Revelation". These reveal a profound appreciation of Christianity and are far from understood even today. The world is seen in terms of the spirit in works such as "The Gods of Samothrace", where Schelling seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the Samothracian Cabeiri or Kabiri. Nowhere else in recent philosophy does one find such a marked awareness of the fact that the Christian faith is not a collection of dogmatic statements, that such dogma as there is really only has secondary importance and that the heart of the matter is that the Christ event, the mystery of Golgotha, did occur. Nowhere else is this more strongly represented than in Schelling’s "Philosophy of Revelation". All this is capable of further development and must lead to the development that I have frequently outlined, a necessary development that reveals itself when we reflect on the tasks to be achieved specifically in Central Europe during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

And now we come to Western Europe. In considering Western Europe the first thing to be clearly understood is that it is riddled with historical occultism passed on by tradition, an occultism that can never arise from the living reality of outer exoteric life and be as alive and organic as the spiritual stream of which Goethe, Schelling, Hegel⁴ and so on are part. The occultism of the West has little connection with exoteric science. Thus it would be impossible, for example, to find there the kind of relationship between occult science and exoteric science and philosophy that is to be found in German idealist philosophy. One cannot imagine that outwardly utterly English elements such as Bacon’s⁵ or Spencer’s⁶ philosophies, Darwinism with its English flavour or the more recent school of pragmatism⁷ could establish the kind of relationship to what lives in the different secret societies of the West as has been the case in German idealism. The stream that lives in those secret societies has to shut itself off from the world and cannot build any real bridge to exoteric worldly science.

On the other hand those Western societies,⁸ and particularly certain secret societies where they have higher degrees, have a traditional historical knowledge that is acquired by every member. They have some perception, I would say, of the European political situation, the main secret of which is the very fact I have just described—that on the one hand the East of Europe is destined, out of the blood, as it were, to be receptive and on the other hand the regions that lie to the west of the East of Europe are destined to evolve something that is to be received by the East. The leaders of those Western secret societies undoubtedly have this knowledge and they certainly speak of it when they present the basic concept of their occult work and influence.

Something quite specific arises in connection with those basic concepts in the West. We can perceive it most easily if we consider these things where they appear most rigid and set in their ways, which is in the British secret societies. People who have been initiated to certain higher degrees—higher degrees of initiation that they then know as history, but into which they are not really initiated in a living way—have the notion that the Anglo-Saxon folk element should give rise to something that can unite with the Russian folk element in a kind of spiritual and cultural marriage. The people who are part of Anglo-Saxon occultism in the way I have just described consider it to be the role of this occultism to take the place of the deepest occult driving forces of Greek and Roman origin. To their way of thinking, civilisation was shaped by elements that arose from Graeco-Roman culture, including occult elements, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and must be replaced by the Anglo-Saxon element during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They see this as a positive necessity that has to be brought to realisation. This dogma, that in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch civilisation has to have an Anglo-Saxon physiognomy and bear the mark of Anglo-Saxon culture, also has a will element to it, and anyone who has made this dogma his own also has a certain image of what the future Europe should look like. The image these people have is that any life of the spirit existing in Central Europe absolutely has to be suppressed and prevented from influencing the future of the human race. To their mind it should be ignored as something of no significance.

This dogma is consciously or to some extent unconsciously followed in all Anglo-Saxon secret societies and consequently also in all secret societies that have any connection with the Grand Orient in France,⁹ for example, and all the secret societies of Western Europe. Thus we have the basic dogma—consciously or more or less unconsciously adhered to—that Central European knowledge cannot and indeed must not be allowed to play a role in fifth post-Atlantean civilisation. Things have to be organised in such a way that the fifth post-Atlantean civilisation has an Anglo-Saxon physiognomy. This calls for a kind of marriage between Western and Eastern Europe, leaving out anything that Central Europe may have to offer.

The war that is now being fought in Europe has been discussed for many, many years in those secret societies, and believe me, it was no less terrible in their imagination than it has now become in reality. It is naive to think that this war came unexpectedly and has not been foreseen and indeed talked about by many, many people. It has been discussed a great deal! You’ll find that the subject of the great European war that was to come has been mentioned and discussed everywhere, repeatedly so, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon secret societies.¹⁰ Again and again there have been indications that such a major European conflict was inevitable. And then the future Europe is envisaged. They know that the qualities, the blood qualities, I’d say, of the Russian people have something to do with the sixth post-Atlantean civilisation which in Anglo-Saxon terminology is called, somewhat materialistically, the sixth sub-race, and that the Western European and the Russian elements should therefore be brought together. These things have to be seen quite clearly, otherwise we are asleep in the occult movement of the present time.

Let me mention something to you in this connection, something I have never been able to forget. When Mrs Besant visited us in Europe for the first time¹¹ a meeting was organised in Hamburg at which she gave a lecture. On that occasion I put the following question to her "We are now intending to start a Central European occult movement; yet surely significant beginnings of a specifically Central European spiritual life showed themselves earlier, at the beginning of the 19th century, that is, at the turn of the century?". Mrs Besant’s answer was—and there was of course little comprehension of what lay behind it all: "At that time something of an abstract, conceptual form of spiritual knowledge did show itself in Germany; but humanity had no use for it and it had to be developed in a purer, higher and true form later on in English spiritual circles". Some people find it distasteful that I cannot and will not forget characteristic statements of this kind, but I can assure you that they will not be forgotten.

During the last third of the 19th century a particular phenomenon arose that holds very special significance for occult development in Europe and indeed also in America. This phenomenon—outwardly presenting itself in the form of an individual human being—had much greater significance than we are generally inclined to believe. It presented itself in the individual known as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky¹² The outer fact—but this extraordinary fact has a deep inner spiritual background—is that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born as a Russian and had all the qualities of that nation, but out of this developed tremendous spiritual qualities of a mediumistic nature and above all psychic powers of the highest degree.

You need to have an idea as to what the appearance of such a phenomenon signifies in the occult evolution of humanity if you are to fully appreciate what I am going to say next, for instance. Lively activity developed in the Anglo-Saxon or Western secret societies, etc. when it became known that such a unique individual existed, someone who was capable of distilling qualities belonging to the future of human evolution out of a quite specifically Russian background, producing outstanding psychic powers and a quite unique mediumistic talent. Things were astir everywhere. Life burst forth in those Anglo-Saxon secret societies, posing urgent questions. The vital urgency that arose may be described as follows—though it will be necessary to limit ourselves to certain outlines. The people who are the actual guardians of this Anglo-Saxon Western movement said to themselves: It means something that such an individual comes to life at this moment out of the people in the East; this is something to be taken into account we have to decide what our attitude to it should be. The question now arose as to how this phenomenon, which out of tremendous psychic powers was capable of making certain deep secrets known to the world, could be channelled in a direction where the Russian element relating to the future could be united with the Anglo-Saxon element. The aim was then to channel the gifts of Madame Blavatsky so that they flowed into the Anglo-Saxon element. If nothing else, they hoped to use Madame Blavatsky’s psychic powers in such a way that they revealed to the world primarily the occult dogmas that the Western secret societies wanted to present to the world. The aim was to show that a certain science of the future based on occultism had to come. People’s minds, that are so easily led, were to be guided to advance from the fifth to the sixth epoch, but in such a way that initially they would be filled with the drives that originate in Anglo-Saxon occultism and its dogmas. The psychic personality of Madame Blavatsky was to be used to inculcate the historical, traditional articles of faith of Western occultism.

We could say that at first things went the way they were meant to. Madame Blavatsky was certainly starting to familiarise herself with the occult aspects of the spiritual life of Central Europe. We can get a perfectly clear idea of what this means if we take a closer look at this life of the spirit in Central Europe and its occult elements. The spiritual life of Central Europe has always brought occult elements to the surface, and these can actually be perceived in a particular, even if exoteric, form of literature. It was alive in the 15th, 16th, 17th and even 18th century, until the Jesuits came and outwardly—but only outwardly—ruined everything. It certainly was alive at that time. When we speak today of the way in which a deeper quest was evident in a certain purely ideal form at the time of Goethe, Schelling and Fichte, we have to realise that this deeper quest had its roots in Central European occultism, in a Central European occult development.¹³ Initially, then, things went in the right direction, with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky entering into this stream of Central European occult development, so that to begin with the element which, if I may put it like this, rose up into her psychic life through the subterranean channels of this human personality, received into it the occultism that lived in Central Europe during late Medieval times.

But something else had happened to this Central European occultism at an earlier time. Western occultists are of course far from stupid; in fact, when it comes to what may be perceived as outer intelligence they are extraordinarily intelligent. I won’t include Grey¹⁴ and Asquith¹⁵ among the intelligent, though; I do not want it to be thought that I consider the English statesmen of today intelligent. But there certainly have been truly important individuals particularly within the secret societies, people who above all had great intelligence; thanks to that intelligence it happened that practically everything that it was possible to adopt from Central European occultism has indeed been adopted in England and come to life again in that country in a fairly extensive though exoteric literature.

For anyone who knows the real situation it is perfectly clear, on looking at anything by Wynn Westcott¹⁶ or by English occultists who do have some knowledge, and also when one takes a closer look at the writings of Laurence Oliphant,¹⁷ why this English occult literature was produced: the aim was to present in English, or Western European, garb the ideas evolved in Central Europe, where for the time being they had to give way to a more materialistic development. That is why I have felt saddened beyond hope over and over again on hearing some Germans talk who were never satisfied unless able to point out that all genuine occult endeavour should really be ‘English’ and that we should adopt as much as possible from there. They simply do not realise that occult material originating in Medieval German culture has been taken over to Britain and is now coming back in English garb. One might even do some relevant research work; some startling results would emerge, for example, if one were to translate English occult writings and then look at them side by side with what exists of Medieval German occultist literature, work that has much more depth and seriousness to it. Some of the results of such a comparison would be positively grotesque! One would find that in Central European evolution, highly spiritual elements are merely covered over with a kind of rubble, and that these same elements are now being brought back again in a form heavily imbued with British materialism, without people being aware of the fact that they originally went to Britain from Central Europe.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky initially took in the elements that had been part of Medieval occultism. She was never fully conscious of what was happening to her, for her psychic gifts were largely of a subconscious nature. Yet there was also this tremendous, urgent desire in the West of Europe to subordinate everything that held potential for the future to the Anglo-Saxon element, and in connection with this—I could of course give you all the details, but lean only give an outline here, time being short—Madame Blavatsky was at a certain moment induced to join a particular secret society in Paris.

Madame Blavatsky, on the one hand possessing Russian qualities deepened by occultism and on the other having taken in a considerable volume of genuine knowledge that had originated in Central Europe—Rosicrucian, if you like, or call it what you will—thus joined a secret society in Paris. She was now a member of this society. Her soul was tremendously powerful and presented what lived in it most forcefully; she certainly would not easily accept being regarded as simply a higher kind of medium, which would have suited those secret societies in Paris. Their particular problem was that Madame Blavatsky was able to present all her occult experiences to the world, if she felt so inclined, having taken them into a kind of higher psyche. If the situation had been different they could have said to the world: What we have to say is not merely based on theories; it presents itself via a supra-mediumistic channel, coming forth from a vigorous Russian soul, from the psyche of someone who is psychic to the highest degree. If that had been the intention, Madame Blavatsky would have had to have been a much less self-willed individual. But she certainly would not accept such a thing. In fact she made conditions when she was a member of that secret society in Paris—I’ll not say what these were now, but the time will come when these things should be discussed—and this arose from the powerful Blavatsky urge. She sensed that the people in the West wanted to further Western dominance—in so far as this can be furthered by occultism—and she did not want to have anything to do with this. For it was particularly during that time in Paris, when there were those strange goings-on in the Parisian secret society, that she was tremendously conscious of being a Russian and made conditions relating to her remaining a member—as I said, I am not going to tell you what they were—that could in no way be accepted if the society was to continue to deal with the outside world. She made conditions that would have been liable to turn the whole history of France upside down. As a result she was excluded from the society and the feeling was that this had happened in the nick of time, otherwise she would have come to know too many of the society’s secrets.

Various other things then happened, among them that she had now got a taste, as it were, for being involved in world affairs. She therefore got herself admitted to another society, this time an American one. Here she did not make the same conditions as in Paris, but she acted in such a way that it should have been possible to achieve by the American route what she had previously intended to achieve in Paris by openly making her conditions. Working together with Olcott,¹⁸ who was far from satisfied with the situation in America at that time, she had great plans for America, plans apt to make Anglo-Saxon Western occultists feel extremely hot under the collar. Even Dr Faustus would not have felt that hot under the collar, nor even Richard III, as Goethe once put it when speaking out of a certain mood.¹⁹ Apart from this something else had now also happened, something that had not yet happened in Paris, and that was that Madame Blavatsky knew and understood too much of the underlying aims. Something had been done that certainly was not entirely justifiable if one went by the ancient and most sacred rules; yet it was something that had to happen in order to prevent what might have been a great disaster. A meeting of American and European occultists considered future plans and after all kinds of digressions the measures that were taken resulted in what in occult terms is called ‘occult imprisonment’. This meant that certain steps were taken to ensure that the aims of particular individuals, and specifically their occult aims, were imprisoned in a kind of sphere, with the result that the individuals concerned would keep seeing their own aims being directed back at them and would be unable to see beyond the limits of the sphere. Madame Blavatsky was put into such an occult sphere. Things were arranged in such a way that she was physically in Asia during her occult imprisonment.

However, things were also happening on the stage of human evolution. As I’ve said before, this story is not entirely accurate; that is to say, the details are accurate but lack of time makes it necessary to leave out some things that can perhaps be told at another time and that one may indeed wish to tell at another time. What happened was that leading occultists in India were seeking by occult methods to further the political aims of the Indian people, and the method used was to release Madame Blavatsky from her occult imprisonment. Then everything that had initially had a Central European flavour and had then been covered over with everything that Western European occultists had sought to inculcate into her now assumed an Indian flavour. Poor Madame Blavatsky had got herself caught up in a complex occult experience, as it were. The day came when she was out of her occult imprisonment; but all the occult elements in her soul had assumed an Indian quality. Added to this was the largely unconscious influence of Olcott, with the result that those occult elements with their Indian quality were made to serve Anglo-Saxon aims once again. The outcome was that Madame Blavatsky’s former guide was replaced by another, though she called him by the same name, Koot Hoomi. The second guide, however,—this is well known to those who are in the secret—was essentially nothing more than a wretch subservient to the Russians, someone pursuing quite different aims in everything communicated to Madame Blavatsky and her followers from the honest dissemination of occult knowledge; this individual was above all serving major political aims, as a kind of Russian spy, and sought to direct and channel the affair in such a way that the spiritual marriage between the Russian and the Anglo-Saxon element would be brought about from the other end.

Everything that is now such a ghastly corruption in many of the extraordinarily great truths, including those to be found in Madame Blavatsky’ s "Secret Doctrine", has its roots in the things I have touched on here. It should also be noted that the eminently Russian characteristic given to the whole Blavatsky movement by this later Koot Hoomi was afterall not to the taste of some high-ranking English occultists; certain occult groups in particular that were extraordinarily close to the high Anglican Church²⁰ did everything in their power to fight that Russian element. That is quite a story in itself.

Above all it must be clearly understood that Helena Blavatsky was an extraordinarily important psychic individual; all kinds of endeavours and currents were active in her out of the psyche. At that time, and particularly when she first came to prominence, there was a general tendency to pave the way for certain political developments by stunning the populace, as it were, with certain occult teachings. There is a class of occultists who know only too well that there is no better way of making people stupid—forgive me for using such a harsh term—than by presenting occult teachings in a certain way. Unless one has the will to be absolutely truthful, it is possible to lead the people, whom one has thus rendered stupid, in any desired direction. That is the inclination of occultists of the more or less black or grey kind. They often pursue distant political goals, preparing the way with great care and over a long period. It is not for nothing that in certain secret societies, mainly in Britain but also in France, people are, or at least were, taught over and over again what the future destiny of Poland was to be and what their attitudes should be to the various aims of the Polish people and the cultural and spiritual streams in that country. It is not for nothing that members were always taught that Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and the adjoining Balkan territories should be brought together and how preparations should be made to create certain political undercurrents in order to further those aims. There is tremendous political activity going on in the secret societies, particularly those of Western Europe.

Madame Blavatsky would never lend herself to occult promotion of purely Anglo-Saxon concerns; at the same time, being psychic, she came to be considered dangerous by, for instance, the high-ranking occultists who were particularly close to the high Anglican Church and whose sole and singular aim was the one I have already outlined. The individuals concerned had thought at first that they could work through people with minor talents who had not developed their thinking and therefore generally had little idea of what was really going on. They thought they could achieve particularly good results by guiding the steps of Mr Sinnett²¹ in a certain direction. In the circumstances I have outlined it is always possible to guide the steps of another person, unless one firmly bases oneself on the principle that in occultism nothing transcends the freedom and dignity of the individual. It is indeed necessary to remind occultists and those who are studying occultism over and over again that they need to keep a close watch on themselves particularly in this respect. Mrs Besant, too, has gradually come into these things without really understanding what is going on, but she also has a strong Anglo-Saxon trait, and that is why all those things could be brought about through her that have been brought about. If you consider the complexities of the stream in which she has been placed you will understand quite a few things, particularly in the case of Mrs Besant. One does of course have to make the effort to gain some insight into these things.

It is most important, my friends, that our true, clear judgement, our ability to have a clear overview over the external situation, is not affected when we enter into occult studies; we have to use sound common sense in our assessment of the external situation and not let our minds be befogged by all kinds of occult teachings. We need a clear head to judge what goes on in life so that we do not get caught up in all kinds of murky occultistic charlatanism and above all in situations where under the influence of certain centres the aim is anything but the utter truth; instead, certain occult teachings are spread abroad just to make it possible to fish in murky waters and thus further specific aims and purposes. Another urgent necessity, also in our movement, is to make a clear distinction between honest seeking for truth, based on realisation of what has to come into the general spiritual development of humanity today, and all the things that are particularly at the present time making themselves felt in the world as occultism—where one should not even admit to taking a real interest in the relevant facts. Clear distinction must be made between sheer superstition that befalls those who ‘know’ -’know-’ in the worst sense of the word—and the spiritual movement that is to remain clear and bright within the stream to which we belong, and no one should ever be left in doubt as to which side we are definitely not on. That is absolutely essential, for otherwise a state of confusion arises that may have disastrous results. In future these things will be made known and discussed more from the materialistic point of view and undoubtedly made use of to harm all occult teaching... [a section of original has been omitted—Editor]

One has to look into the deeper connections that exist if one wants to form an opinion of what is going on in the world. And even if little can be said about these things at the present time, because we are blocked, as it were, and also because some dates are missing—the time will come when the role that those Western European secret societies have played in everything that led to the outbreak of war in Western Europe will be apparent, societies that are able to pull strings—and more than strings—in English ministries, Parisian ministries and so on. It will also be apparent that these Masonic organisations played a major role in Western Europe when the aim was to get Italy to join the ‘Entente’, as it was called. They were extremely busy and also well connected with certain organisations in Eastern Europe.

As to German masons of both lower and higher degree, they were of course members of a world-wide organisation, exchanging ‘fraternal greetings’ and stressing fraternal co-operation with the others; it can be said in their defence that they were too stupid to have any idea of the whole business they were involved in. The most outstanding characteristic of Central European masons is that they were duped right to the last moment, as were others who were not masons and who were in a position where possibly they should not have been duped... [a section of original has been omitted—Editor]

I have tried to give you at least an outline of what may be important to you and at the same time may sharpen awareness of a number of things that inevitably had to happen. It would no doubt also be good to reflect a little on the deeper background to the fact that our Central European spiritual movement dissociated itself from all the rubbish that finally got into the Besant connection and that is now given vent to in such a peculiar way, right down to out and out slander. That, surely, may be said, though let me repeat that it is not my intention to open up old disputes again. Thus one of the things Mrs Besant is now publishing in her English journal is the ridiculous tale that I had had ambitions to be elected president of the whole Theosophical Society so that I might go to India and oust her, Mrs Besant, from her sphere of work; she has said that the real reason for those ambitions of mine was that land the others who are with me were in fact agents of the German government and that our purpose had been nothing less than to use all kinds of occult machinations to put a kind of pan-Germanism in the place of the Anglo-Saxon stream and above all to work from India to oust the British government. These things are now put with even greater acrimony in Mrs Besant’s articles. She knows how to talk rubbish also on other topics, fit enough to go with the Alcyone²² rubbish. The latest is, however, that Alcyone is to be deprived of the honour of being the future Christ-bearer. Well, others were deposed when the position was given to him, as you know. Changes have always been made as need arose. Certain esoteric groups even thought of making the Russian crown prince the Christ-bearer—young Alexei! The present incumbent would of course have to be deposed. There have been others before, sometimes even more than one at a time. Well, if you don’t allow one party to tell the other—always only hints given, a mysterious business, as you can see—it is possible to have more than one, thing at a time.

You see, however, if these things are taken too lightly we fall to take note of something like the following: In 1909, when the worst of the Leadbeater-Besant brouhaha was developing,²³ the ‘first of the worst things’, a society was formed that was supposed to be international. Mr Keightley,²⁴ a long-time friend of Mrs Besant who used to revise her books for her to remove scientific errors, was then specially involved in plans for this international society that was to be established in opposition to Besant from India. I was asked by letter if I would be prepared to be president of this international society.²⁵ The offer came from India. 1909 was the year of the Budapest Congress. At the time I told Mrs Besant in front of witnesses that I had been offered the presidency. I did however only say this to a few people then, on the boat, and immediately afterwards told her: "Where the occult movement is concerned the only thing I can be is someone who within the German context represents that which he has to represent, and I shall never in any way hold an occult position outside the German context". And now she dares to say in a journal that I had had ambitions to become president by taking up the Indian offer. I have always spoken of objective untruths with reference to many things that Mrs Besant has said. But when this kind of thing happens, despite the fact that I had expressly told her that I never wished to be anything else in the Theosophical Society than at most the General Secretary of the German Section or something that makes up this Section, then one need no longer speak of objective untruth but may as well say: here we have not an objective untruth on the part of Mrs Besant but—just as in the case of the Jesuit allegation – a deliberate lie. And if people now wish to defend Mrs Besant they will have to take on board that someone who knows the situation tells them that they are defending a deliberate liar. And if you take the Jesuit allegation together with this business and the whole campaign that is now being waged against what we will to do here, waged out of English chauvinism, we may indeed speak of a systematic campaign of lies; that quite definitely exists.

If you think I am putting things too strongly, remember that I never say anything by way of attack and always speak out only when it has become defence. This should be noted especially by the people who keep saying that one needs to be fair to both sides. In our case, fairness has consisted in simply closing one’s eyes to the truth—at least after the event—even in our area. What has to be is that this present time, pregnant with destiny, takes us to the point where things are seen in truth, in their full, honest and true seriousness, and are acted on. For it is true after all, that all the sacrifices now being made, with hundreds upon hundreds dying, will have been for the salvation of humanity if they find souls here on earth who know how to think and feel the right way about the times. Something is preparing in the world of the spirit and if those who are able to understand see it in the right way, then it will turn into powers in future that souls who have understanding and occult feeling then transform into powers that take humanity onwards. If it is not understood, then the events of the present will in spiritual terms take a direction where the very powers that are now available in the world of the spirit as the outcome of hundreds upon hundreds of sacrificial deaths are given into the hands of Ahriman. That is why I have always said:²⁶

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people’s deeds of sacrifice
Fruit of spirit shall be won
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to realm of spirit.

• 1. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), German philosopher. In the introductory lectures in "Die Wissenschaftslehre" (Berlin 1813).
• 2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist and scientist. Goethe’s essay on the subject was first published in vol. 1 no.2 of "Die Morphologie". It is in vol. 1 of Goethe’s scientific writings edited by Rudolf Steiner.
• 3. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher. Schelling discussed his ‘intellectual intuition’ in a number of works, e.g. his "Transcendental Idealism" (1800) and in the posthumously published "Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie, ch. 2. Philosophie der Mythologie und Philosophie der Offenbarung", two of the works Steiner mentions in this lecture, were edited by Schelling’s son and published in 1856-61. "Cher die Gouheiten von Samothrake" first appeared in 1915.
• 4. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), German idealist philosopher.
• 5. Francis, Baron Verulam of Verulam, Viscount of St Albans (1561–1626), English philosopher and statesman.
• 6. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English evolutionary philosopher.
• 7. In philosophy, pragmatism represents aversion of empiricism developed mainly in the USA by C. S. Pierce (1839–1914), William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859–1952); according to it, knowledge has meaning and significance only in so far as it is of practical value.
• 8. See also Rudolf Steiner’s "The Karma of Untruthfulness", vol. 1 (GA 173), tr. J. Collis; lecture given in Dornach on 4th December 1916.
• 9. French Grand Lodge of the Scottish Grand Order of Freemasonry.
• 10. See lecture referred to in Note 7.
• 11. Mrs Annie Besant, née Wood (1847—1933), British theosophist born in London of Irish parents, initially a follower of Bradlaugh’s secularism, went over to theosophy in 1889. Following an invitation from Rudolf Steiner she visited Germany in 1904, giving lectures in a number of German cities.
• 12. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, née Hahn (1831–91), Russian theosophist.
• 13. Elsewhere referred to as Rosicrucianism by Steiner.
• 14. Edward, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933), British statesman, Secretary for Foreign Affairs 1905–16.
• 15. Herbert Henry, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852–1928), British Liberal statesman, Home Secretary 1892–95, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1905–08, Premier 1908–16.
• 16. William Wynn Westcott (d. 1919), member of English Grand Order of Freemasonry and author of works on occultism (pen name: Sapere aude).
• 17. Laurence Oliphant (1829–88), English travel writer and mystic. His two most significant works relating to mysticism are "Sympneumata" (1886) and "Scientific Religion" (1888).
• 18. Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (c. 1830–1907), established the Theosophical Society together with Madame Blavatsky in 1875, remaining its President until his death.
• 19. It has not been possible to trace this.
• 20. C. G. Harrison, author of "The Transcendental Universe".
• 21. Alfred Percy Sinnett whose main work, "Esoteric Buddhism", was first published in 1883.
• 22. The Theosophical Society’s name for Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), Indian theosophist declared the Messiah by Mrs. Besant in 1925.
• 23. Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934), well-known theosophical writer working with Mrs Besant in the Theosophical Society. The ‘Leadbeater case’ shook the whole of the Society to its foundations and resulted in Leadbeater’s exclusion in 1906, followed by reinstatement in 1909. All this was well known to Rudolf Steiner’s audience; for details see Eugene Levy, "Mrs Annie Besant and the Crisis in the Theosophical Society".
• 24. Bertram Keightley (1860–1949), General Secretary of the Indian Section of the Theosophical Society and at times also of the European Section.
• 25. See lecture Rudolf Steiner gave in Berlin on 28th March 1916, in "Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes", GA 167; translation by E. Goddard in manuscript at Rudolf Steiner House Library in London: Things of the present and of the past in the spirit of man; flashlights on the deeper impulses of history (Library code C 42).
• 26. E.g. in conclusion of many of the lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in Berlin in 1914–15 (see "Destinies of Individuals and of Nations", tr. A.R. Meuss; London: Rudolf Steiner Press).

For a gradual acquisition of that science which we designate as spiritual science, it is necessary that we should have the good will of filling out the thoughts and thought-connections which are indicated almost in the form of a plan with real ideas relating to those things which can at first only be given in a more general outline. We say that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, etc. This is quite correct, to begin with, for it is necessary that we should orient ourselves with the aid of encompassing schematic ideas. But if we wish to continue in the acquisition of spiritual science, we must penetrate more accurately into everything which has thus been given in a schematic form. We already possess quite a considerable number of lecture-cycles, which are read particularly within the more restricted circle connected with our Society; but these cycles of lectures still contain relatively little of what should be known to humanity in a near future, at least to a certain number of people! This would be most desirable. To begin with, we say: We designate as man’s physical body his external appearance, which can be perceived through the physical senses and which can be observed with the aid of that science that is linked up with the intellect, with experiments and observations. We know that the etheric body lies at the foundation of the physical body. Let us, first of all, cast our spiritual eye upon these two members of human nature.

Spiritual science as such, needs to say least of all (of course, this is at first only apparently the case) about the physical body, for the physical body is the only thing which the ordinary science, dealing with the physical world, is willing to contemplate with the aid of its methods. But although the physical body may at first seem to be what natural science considers, it to be, its true significance and its position within the universe can only be recognised if the higher members of the human organisation are also borne in mind.

You will undoubtedly recollect that man’s physical body, in the form in which it envelops him here upon the. earth, could only arise during the Earth-epoch, but it received its first foundation during the ancient Saturn-epoch. During the Sun, Moon and Earth epochs, it then underwent a constant transformation. It was gradually transformed under the influence of the processes which were taking place: it was transformed through the fact that the etheric body was incorporated with it. When the physical body passed on from the Saturn epoch to a new epoch, it had to change, for it became permeated with the etheric body. And it also had to change when it became permeated with the astral body upon the Moon. Not only has the astral body been added to the physical body, but the physical body has been transformed through the fact that the etheric body penetrated into it, as it were, during the Sun-epoch and the astral body during the. Moon-epoch, whereas the Ego is gradually developing in every direction here, upon the Earth; of course, it develops first of all within the astral body, then within the etheric body, but then also within the physical body.

If we now pass on from the human being to the cosmos, we only need to remember what is contained in our lecture-cycles. We must remember, in this case, that just as the first foundation of the physical body has been made possible through the outpouring, as we may call it, of the Spirits of the Will or the Thrones, so the transformation during the Sun-epoch became possible through the Spirits of Wisdom, and the transformation during, the Moon-epoch through the Spirits of Movement. The transformation during the Earth-epoch, that is to say, the change entailed through the fact that an Ego now dwells within the physical body, has been made possible through the Spirits of Form, This is a most significant fact, which we must bear in mind. When we encounter man’s physical body upon the Earth, we must think of it as being endowed with an Ego, and since it is endowed with an Ego, we must bear in mind that it has received a certain form, the form which is most appropriate to it. During the Moon epoch, it has merely received the inner movement which was most adapted to it. The form which was most suited to it, is a gift of the Spirits of Form, and is in keeping with the fact that an Ego had to be Implanted in it.

We may thus say: Our earthly body, which has a physical form, has been formed in such a way as to become a bearer of the Ego. Together with the Ego, the Spirits of Form gave the human physical body the form which it now has and which is in keeping with the fact that it is the bearer of an Ego. The beings that belong to the other kingdoms of Nature, have received their forms later. If you read the more intimate descriptions of the Moon-epoch,¹ you will find that they describe all the other beings in such a manner that it is not possible to say that also these beings had their forms at that time. They are described with a certain mobility. Bear in mind, for instance, the description contained in my Occult Science.

Also the other kingdoms of Nature have received their stable forms through the Spirits of Form, during the Earth-epoch. Let us now contemplate the animal kingdom. Also the animal kingdom has its definite forms. It has acquired these forms only during the Earth. epoch. But think of the great difference between the forms of the animal kingdom and of the kingdom of man! If we cast our gaze over the surface of the earth, we may indeed find certain differences among men, but these differences belong to another field of study. We also come across certain differences in the external human form. All the interesting peoples which the West Europeans now lead into the field against Central Europe of course present a different aspect from the European populations! Differences can of course be perceived when we cast our gaze over the surface of the earth and study the form of various individual human beings. The colour of the skin must, for instance, be considered in connection with the bodily form. But if you compare the differentiations which exist in regard to the human being with the great differentiations which exist in regard to the various animal species, you will have to admit: The various species of animals differ far more from one another than the human beings. In comparison to the various animal species we can speak of an individual human species; in the human kingdom, however, we cannot find such a great difference as may be found, for instance, between a lion and a nightingale. If there would be such a great difference in the kingdom of man as that between a lion and a nightingale, we would not hear even such peculiar observations that it is not possible to notice the differences which exist among human beings. The fact to be borne in mind is that the animals show infinitely greater differences than the human being, within his own general human species.

Although the things which I have just now explained to you are undoubtedly right, they are only right within certain limits, if we consider them from the aspect of spiritual science. The following fact should be looked upon as a truth: In your thoughts and, in your observation, add the etheric body to man’s physical body and imagine that a certain experiment is to be made; in reality, of course, this experiment cannot be made. Imagine the following experiment and that you see it being enacted; imagine that the whole physical body of man can be separated from him, detached from him scientifically, piece by piece and that before we begin to detach the physical body from the human being we are in the position to invoke the Spirits of the higher hierarchies—to send an invocation to the Spirits of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. We would have to utter this invocation in such a way that its request would be granted, namely, that the Spirits of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai might withdraw from the human being and cease; to influence his etheric body. We would, therefore—we cannot say, excoriate—but we would have to take away from the human being everything pertaining to his physical body and then we would have to ask the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai to withdraw their influences, so that man’s etheric body may be left entirely to its own resources, and may no longer be influenced by anything else. For the etheric body is subjected to certain influences; it is inserted in the physical body and the physical body has its own solid form, to which the etheric body must adapt itself. If you take a very soft piece of rubber and put it into a glass, it will adapt itself to the form of the glass and will no longer maintain its own form. But if you take it out of the glass, it will bound back into its own form. In a similar way, the etheric body must adapt itself to the physical body, without a form of its own. Consequently, if we draw away the physical body, we eliminate the forces to which the etheric body had to adapt itself; however, it would not immediately take on its own form, owing to the fact that the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai still work upon it, but we have asked them to withdraw, so that the etheric body can now obey its own forces to the fullest extent. In that case, the etheric body would take on its own elasticity. And this would be visible; we would see the etheric body jumping out. And what would occur?—You would have before you the whole animal kingdom! The etheric body would split up into portions, and these would show in their fundamental types the forms of the whole animal kingdom. In other words: etherically, the human being carries about within him the whole animal kingdom, which is simply held together by the form of his physical body and by the activity of the Beings of the above-named hierarchies. It is unquestionably true that the human being bears within him, as a disposition, the whole animal kingdom. From this standpoint, the animal kingdom differs from man only through the fact that every animal-species has assumed a form of its own, which it has developed independently into a physical shape. Consequently, the animal kingdom is the expanded etheric body of man,

A strange fact should be borne in mind. At the turn of the 18th and of the 19th century, something special arose within the world-conception of Europe, and we may observe this, for instance, more in detail in the case of Oken. From the standpoint of his time, the scientist Oken could not as yet speak of etheric bodies; indeed, he was far from doing so. But in his books we may find the following peculiar statement: “The animal kingdom is the human being, expanded.” This means that in his fantasy he had caught, a glimpse of the truth. It rose up on his spiritual horizon at a time when the great ideas of the Central European world-conception had developed. Indeed, this truth even rose up on Schelling’s horizon, and this same statement can also be found in Schelling’s books. Those who were unable to penetrate into such a lofty idea, which could not, of course, be developed fully, those who were unable to penetrate into such a great idea, went through a terrible time. We should think of Oken in such a way, that the things which he could not as yet grasp clearly, nevertheless lived within his soul as a marvellous conception, so that he could feel the single parts of the human being really consist of animal forms. He even had the courage to express this, but this courage very much annoyed the learned Philistines. Just think that Oken conceived the following idea: What is the tongue?—Well, he said that the tongue is a cuttlefish. Of course, the things which I have just explained to you lay at the foundation of this statement ... but just imagine what the learned Philistines thought about it! If we wish to grasp the development of man’s spiritual life we must become broad-minded and we must realise that things which may apparently sound like nonsense may bear within them a great truth. Oken subdivided the human being as follows: The tongue is a cuttlefish, other organs are something else. After all, it was merely the exact repetition of a truth which existed in a very ancient conception of man and which brought into evidence the fundamental types, subdividing the human being in accordance with the four fundamental animal types: Lion, eagle, angel and calf.

Thus we may say: Things are not as easy as they appear to be, for in reality, the human being bears within his etheric body the whole animal kingdom. As a philosopher might express himself, he bears it within him as a disposition.

Now you should bear in mind the following fact: If the things which I have just now described to you would not take place, if in addition to the fact that the physical body holds together the whole animal kingdom, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai would not exercise their influence, then the process explained above would necessarily take place, when the human being lays aside the physical body and passes through the portal of death; namely, the etheric body would, in that case, jump out elastically into the world when the astral body and the Ego have abandoned it, and a whole etheric animal kingdom would rise out of the etheric body. But in reality, this does not take place; this animal kingdom does not rise out of the human being, for the etheric body detaches itself in an entirely different form; it detaches itself and becomes incorporated with the universal ether and interweaves with it.²

What lies before us in that case? The fact that the Beings of the hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our etheric body and do not allow it to reach the point of splitting up into the animal kingdom. What does really take place?—You see, I would like to describe these things by drawing in a comparison. Here upon the earth we human beings work. We build machines, for instance, machines made of wood or of iron. Wood and iron are our fundamental materials. We use them to construct machines. The way in which these materials are put together is our own work, but wood and even iron are raw materials which we take from the earth. We take them from a kingdom which lies below our human kingdom.

If you now imagine that the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai live above us, you will also realise that these Beings do not exist in the universe simply in order to have a perpetual holiday. They have their work, tasks which they must fulfil. What do they really do? They, too, must use a material for their work, just as we use wood and iron which we take from the earth, and they, too, will work upon this material. Our etheric bodies are the material used by the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. For the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, our etheric bodies have the same value that the wood and iron which we take from the earth have for us, when we use them to build machines. The Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our etheric bodies, and when we walk about upon the earth and harbour, as it were, the thought (if we have such thought at all!) that we carry about within us our etheric body, believing that we carry it about as something that belongs to us in the same way in which the lungs that we carry about within us belong to us—then the whole essence of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai is active around us and works out forms for the spiritual world, forms that are needed there, just as machines are needed here upon the earth. They work out what is needed in the spiritual world. What aids these spiritual beings in their work?

You see, throughout our life we think; we think, from the moment that we attain the capacity of thinking up to the moment of death. Our thinking consists therein that it weaves and lives in our etheric body. Yet, while we live within our physical body, we believe that only the things we mould in the shape of thoughts belong to us. But what we thus possess in the shape of thoughts, what we thus form and mould within our thoughts is, as it were, only the inner aspect of our whole thought-life. From outside, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our thoughts, particularly in regard to our etheric body. As human beings, it is not at all unnecessary that we should think. Our thoughts are necessary not only for the physical earth, but also for the cosmos. For what we transform within our etheric body through our thinking, is employed during our earthly life as a material which is used in accordance with higher standpoints. While we pass through the world as thinking human beings, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our thoughts, so that after our death something may arise that can be incorporated with the whole ether of the universe. When our astral body and our Ego lay aside our etheric body, they sew into the cosmos the wool of our etheric body, that has arisen essentially through our manner of thinking.

As human beings, we do not only live for ourselves; we also live for the whole universe. We know that Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan will follow our Earth. But all this must be prepared; it must be interwoven with the universe as forces. This entails work. It forms part of this work, for instance, that the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai carry it on in accordance with our thoughts. (Stupid thoughts are not the same kind of material as clever thoughts). Coarsely speaking, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon these etheric machines in accordance with the material that we supply to them, and these “machines” then exist, in order that the evolution of the universe may continue. When our etheric body is handed over to the cosmos after our death, this kind of work is therefore handed over at the same time to the Beings of the three, above-mentioned hierarchies.

Let us now contemplate from a similar standpoint man’s astral body. We always contemplate things from different standpoints, so that we always obtain other connections with the surrounding kingdoms, and those who cannot read (an encompassing view of things is needed in order to be able to read) may discover many contradictions in our descriptions, but this is only due to the fact that they ignore the standpoints from which these things are viewed.

You see, our astral body is connected with the earthly surroundings in a similar way as our etheric body. From the standpoint just indicated, our etheric body is the whole ANIMAL KINGDOM. Our astral body is, instead, the whole VEGETABLE KINGDOM. In exactly the same way in which I spoke to you of the etheric body in connection with the animal kingdom, I would now have to speak to you of the astral body in connection with the vegetable kingdom. All the vegetable forms of our earth are contained in the astral body. And again, we find that if nothing else were to occur, if the Beings of the higher Hierarchies would not work upon our astral body, if during the time between death and a new birth, when we live backwards through our life, nothing would occur except the fact that the astral body is discarded, then the astral body would appear as the whole vegetable kingdom outside in the world. Indeed, this would even take on the form of a sphere, it would follow its own elasticity. The astral body would really take on the form of a sphere; but it cannot do this because during our life between birth and death the Spirits of Form have been working upon our astral body, also the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom, and even the Spirits of the Will. When after years or decades we have lived backwards through our earthly life and have thus gradually freed the astral body from its connection with earthly existence, then the astral body will contain the results of a work, results that the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom and the Spirits of the Will require in order to incorporate something with the cosmos, namely, to incorporate with it, what they MUST incorporate with it. Of course, what thus becomes incorporated with the cosmos is to our own profit; for this must be contained in the cosmos. However, this becomes inwoven with the cosmos in a manner that differs from the process described above.

When we discard our etheric body, this becomes inwoven, I might say, with the universal ether of the cosmos. But what appears now, as a woof woven out of our astral body as a result of the work of the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom and of the Thrones, cooperates with our Ego that is passing through its time between death and a new birth and contains forces which must be active, in order that we may once more enter a new incarnation. Many things are needed in order that we may enter a new incarnation! Many things, indeed! To-day, the ordinary science of the physical world really knows quite a lot about the structure of the skull and of the human brain; such a lot, that many people find it is too much to learn all these things! It is undoubtedly a lot. But suppose that all the knowledge which is acquired through external science were to be considered from a particular standpoint ... from the standpoint that the _skull containing that wonderful structure of the brain has actually arisen, that it could really be formed in its minutest details, whereas if all this had to be formed with the aid of our ordinary external science, very little indeed could be achieved!

Here we face a significant mystery, a mystery that obtuse men (the sort of men whom we can really designate as obtuse) think to cope with so easily by saying: “Well, the human being simply arises! In the course of the generations, it so happened that human bodies develop spontaneously within the bodies of mothers. This is quite spontaneous.” Indeed, the arguments adopted by such people can be grasped ... but let me show you, with the aid of a comparison, how clever they really are!

For instance, you may take for granted that here in Munich there are certain Beings able to perceive many things, but unable to perceive man, and thus unable to see his activities. It is quite possible, to imagine this! But those Beings who cannot see man, nor his activities, may, for instance, be able to see—a clock. They would, therefore, know that there are clocks and also how they are made. They would not, however, see the man who makes the clock; they would only see how a clock arises from its single parts. They would perhaps see the different kinds of pincers taking hold of the clock’s parts, but they would see them gripping, as it were, out of the air. What a conception would these Beings have of a clock? They would not say: “In Munich there are clock-makers”, but they would say: “Clock-makers do not exist; the clocks arise spontaneously, of their own accord, for we can see how they form themselves.” This is the manner of thinking adopted by people who take for granted that things that gradually develop in a physical way must arise quite spontaneously! However, everything that arises is the result of actions fulfilled by spiritual Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. Indeed, the human being does not arise spontaneously, merely through the interchanging influence of father and mother and through what develops within the mother’s body, but the whole cosmos participates in his development.

Particularly the external world, as far as its highest regions, cooperates in the formation of the human head. It participates less in what is attached to the head, and participates in a particular way in the development of the human head. In a not too distant future, even ordinary science will learn to think differently in embryology concerning all the organs and also concerning the human head. It will discover that the other organs depend very strongly upon hereditary qualities, whereas the formation of the head depends upon them only very slightly. The form of the head is simply pushed together after the formation of the other organs. The whole cosmos participates in the forming of the head and the influences of the cosmos penetrate into the mother’s body. Those who do not see these forces ... well, also a farmer does not see the forces that are active in a magnet, but this does not prove the non-existence of these forces. What exists in the human head, has been worked out, as it were, in connection with all that the human being has received from the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement and the Thrones, with what he bears along within his Ego, carrying it over into the time between death and a new birth, as a mighty spherical form. What is thus elaborated is gigantic; it is a sphere and within this sphere everything is worked out.³.

Imagine a gigantic sphere, upon whose surface is engraved, as upon a globe, everything that must be worked into it in accordance with what the human being handed over, to begin with, to the universal cosmos through his etheric body, through the extract of his etheric body; this forms, as it were, something that is copied on to the surface of the sphere. We then work into it what should be engraved upon it in accordance with what we have brought along with us through the work done upon our astral body. And then comes the time—it begins with that moment designated by me as the world’s midnight hour—when the sphere gradually grows smaller and finally this sphere, upon which, the higher Spirits work, becomes quite small, it grows smaller and smaller, until it unites with the human germ conceived within the mother’s body. This, above all, gives rise to the form of the head. The gradual development of the form of the head is the result of centuries of work on the part of the higher Hierarchies.

Just imagine how man’s feelings in regard to his relationship with the world could be deepened if he would be aware of his position within the whole cosmic connections! The human being who carries his head upon his shoulders should learn to think in all humility, without any pride and arrogance, that human wisdom and all that may be found in it, contains very little indeed of what is required for the forming of the head bestowed upon the human being! Man bears within him everything that is contained in the cosmos. If we consider things from this standpoint, spiritual science acquires an immense value through, the fact that it becomes the point of departure for certain feelings, that may, indeed, endanger souls filled with pride and arrogance.

In my second Mystery Play I have alluded to this fact, in the scene where Capesius, conversing with Benedictus, feels the approach of truths telling him that the deeds of gods are needed in order to give rise to man. Truths of this kind may increase the vanity of many, who may at first be disposed to vanity. They may attribute enormous importance to themselves. Yet it would be far more reasonable to foster the feeling showing us how little of all that wisdom which gave rise to the human being really exists within our own consciousness! Of course, we may snare the opinion of those who say: “Of what use is it to know all these things? We can quite well do without this knowledge. Indeed, we can live quite comfortably without knowing, all these, things” ... Yet a great error is contained in the belief that we can quite well do without this knowledge! For, in reality, we cannot live without it. Indeed, at the present time we easily yield to the erroneous belief that we can lead quite a decent life without having a knowledge of the spiritual world; that is to say, that we can breakfast, etc., and do many things in between ... Undoubtedly, it is very easy to believe this at the present time; nevertheless, such a belief is not based upon truth. We should gradually be brought to the point of feeling that such beliefs are not based upon truth. For this reason, I mention a subject such as that of Planck. I mention Planck, that strange man, who lived for many years an extremely lonely life at Ulm and was not even offered a chair at the university of Tübingen, because nobody really understood his true value and significance; the significance of a man concerning whom obtuse persons would certainly say: “Towards the end of his life, he grew so nervous that he said all manner of things that sounded like megalomania.” Well, obtuse men may argue like that. But even someone who had not to endure the sufferings that Planck had to endure, would have grown nervous through the way in which his fellow men treated him, and he would also have uttered the words which may be found in Planck’s introduction to his “Philosophy of Nature and of Mankind”, the words of an ancient Roman: “Ungrateful country of mine! You shall not even have my bones!” I am quoting these words purposely; they were uttered in 1889, the year of Planck’s death, and they really convey exactly what we tried to explain just now.

The reality could be perceived by a man with idealistic conceptions, because the forces that develop within us when we are able to think in this manner, are, at the same time, the most practical thing in the world. The most practical thing is not at all as imagined by those who believe that they really are in touch with the most practical things in life; this can only be explained through the brutality with which they face life’s practical aspects. When I advance such examples, I only advance them in order to show you that all those human forces which are also needed in practical life, can give rise to clear thoughts filled with insight, only if the soul is fertilized by spiritual scientific truths.

Is it possible to-day that people actually believe that human life on earth is possible, without the slightest idea of spiritual scientific truths? Why do people believe such things?—Because they are so terribly short-sighted! If they were not so short-sighted, it would be possible to prove, even in an entirely external way, how mistaken are those who say: “Well, people simply believe that they need not concern themselves with a spiritual world. They are born without doing anything towards this, and they grow ...” Of course, some kind of education must be offered to man. Modern pedagogy is so extremely clever, that it sets up clever principles, reaching the gigantic heights of Forster’s pedagogy! And then we gradually become mature men, who concern themselves with the problem of what we should do, in order to give others something to eat and to drink.

Yet it was not always so within the human race. It is not so long ago that the present conditions arose, inducing men to believe that they can live upon the earth without possessing any spiritual knowledge. External proofs may be advanced, in support of this.

Let me advance one of these proofs. Probably, if we had time to spare (but here in Munich, people do not have much time), we might even come across a similar proof here in Munich. At the Museum of Art, in Hamburg we recently discovered a proof that may be advanced externally. It results from the following fact:

Let us bear in mind that great symbol at the beginning of the Old Testament: Adam and Eve’s Temptation, what is known to us as the Luciferic temptation. Let us think of this. When a modern painter paints this (his standpoint is quite an indifferent matter; it is all the same whether he is a realistic or an idealistic painter, an expressionist, impressionist, or futurist), he thinks that the reality can be conveyed best of all if he paints Adam and Eve in a more or less ugly way; between them, he will paint the Tree of Paradise and upon it the Serpent, with a real serpent’s head, as large as the Tree. Can this be termed realistic, in the true meaning of the word? I do not think so. Leaving aside the present assumption, it is impossible to believe that the archetypal mother Eve could have been so stupid as to be tempted by a real serpent. Imagine, a real serpent creeping through the green grass should have caught mother Eve! Even the present serpent can only be looked upon as a symbol of something else. Let us recall the thoughts that should really be connected with the Luciferic temptation. The serpent is Lucifer. It can only symbolize Lucifer. The fact that this being remained behind upon the Moon-stage of development, is connected with the Luciferic principle. It is therefore impossible to see Lucifer through physical eyes, for these have only developed upon the earth. Lucifer can only be perceived through the inner eye, and so he cannot resemble an earthly serpent that can be seen through our ordinary earthly eyes. Lucifer should be imagined as spiritual science is able to represent him. Imagine now that man carries upon him his head, as the most perfectly formed member of his body. Attached to it (it suffices if you study a skeleton) is the remaining organism; the spine is attached to the head. Everything that has, later on, developed physically, was formed in advance. If we go back into evolution, if we were to perceive Lucifer through our inner power of vision, we would see him in the form which he had upon the Moon, when he was preparing the earthly human head, a human head that was not so dense and solid as the present one, for it was inwardly mobile, manifold in its forms, and attached to it was a human spine, a spinal cord, that may be imagined in the form of a serpent’s body. Lucifer would, therefore, have to be painted with a countenance as expressive as possible, and attached to it, a serpent’s body, but one that resembles the archetypal human spine. This would be a kind of picture of Lucifer.

At the Museum in Hamburg there is a picture by Master Bertram representing a Story, of the Creation, and there the Paradise-symbol is represented in such a way that Lucifer is portrayed as described, exactly in accordance with spiritual science. In the 13th and 14th century, Master Bertram therefore painted Lucifer correctly, in a spiritual-scientific sense. This can be seen; it is a historical fact. We have frequently spoken of the ancient atavistic clairvoyance. What Master Bertram painted, shows that up to the 13th and 14th century it was possible to paint Lucifer correctly, in accordance with an ancient spiritual science. It can therefore be proved, it can be proved externally, that the human beings have become, so abandoned by the spirit as they are now, only a few centuries ago. This can be proved, and you will be able to discover such proofs.

In other words: What the obtuse people of to-day consider as the everlasting human nature ... the fact that they look out into the world through their eyes and then combine the things they see through their intellect, has become a human soul-quality only a few centuries ago. Before that time, man was aware of his connection with the spiritual world. This has faded. But we can learn to know that even in the 13th and 14th century people were still able to paint in such a way that this was in keeping with the ancient spiritual science. It is important to bear in mind such a fact. It shows us that the ancient spiritual science had to vanish for the sake of the development of human freedom, for in the 5th post-atlantean epoch arose something that has often been described: namely, the, consciousness-soul had to develop and consequently the old spiritual science had to recede. But it must be brought back again.

In regard to what constitutes the spirit of invention, the creative spirit, humanity still lives to-day upon the old inheritance in every sphere, upon the old inheritance that entered human evolution with the ancient spiritual science. When someone has a new idea to-day and invents something quite new, he does this because the ancient spiritual science still continues to be active. But in less than a hundred, in less than fifty years time, every kind of invention, every creative kind of thought shall have disappeared; it shall have disappeared even in the mechanical sphere, unless spiritual science influences humanity in a fruitful way. Spiritual science must begin to penetrate livingly into the development of the human race, for otherwise, the human race must grow barren.

In the sphere of art, this, fact is more or less evident to-day. In art it is strongly evident that the human beings are, as it were, abandoned by the spirit, seeing that they can only weave into their works of art what they find as a model, outside, in Nature; thus the inner fertilization on the part of the spirit is completely lacking.

These facts stand on one side. They show us how necessary it is for the human being to become aware of the fact that he is connected, as a whole human being, with Beings belonging to the higher kingdoms. We may think of people—some still exist to-day—who do not know that air exists. For them, space is empty. At least this fact does not reach their consciousness. After all, the physical body cannot be thought of without the environing air—for what would we be with our physical body without any air! We imagine that the physical body is closed up, because it is enveloped in its skin,—but here is the air outside the body: we breathe it in, and now it is inside us; we breathe it out, and then it is outside. Does not the air belong to the physical body in the same way as the muscles? Do you not have within you what is outside, and outside what is within? In the same way in which we are connected with the air in regard to our physical body, so we are connected, in regard to our soul-element, with the Beings that weave through the world as Spirits of Form, Spirits of Movement and Thrones; through our astral body we are united with the Beings who weave through the world as spiritual Hierarchies; they are incessantly active in us, just as the air is active within our physical body. If we know this, we have the right kind of consciousness of man’s being.

This is one aspect of the matter. But then there is still another aspect. Now I wish to awaken in you a conception of these things, by contemplating them from several aspects, as it is necessary to-day.

Read, for instance, (I might also indicate another example) Dostojevski’s “Karamasov Brothers”. Four characters appear, among others, in this book: the four sons of the old Karamasov, Ivan, Dmitri, Aljosha, Smerdiakov. It is very strange to see what an influence this novel of Dostojevski had, particularly in Europe. I would have to say many things if I wished to explain the whole way in which such things rise out of human life and pass through a soul such as that of Dostojevski where they develop into a work such as his “Brothers Karamasov”. Let me only say this: In spite of the greatest admiration which we may have for the penetrating psychological art (this is the name given to it by many modern people, because they know so little what psychology really is!), in spite of the penetrating insight of Dostojevski’s psychological art, also in spite of his fine and penetrating observation of life, those who have really reached the point of taking up spiritual-scientific conceptions not only in such a way as to say, man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, but so that they are filled with what may be experienced in connection with these members of human nature—those who strive to build up feelings in the way in which we endeavour to do it, will have an uncomfortable feeling when they read the frequently chaotic descriptions of the Karamasov brothers. For this book contains many things that may indeed be designated as fine observations of life, if we simply bear in mind an external, superficial observation of life ... for instance the fact that the eldest brother is the son of another mother and has an entirely different character than that of his two younger brothers; the fourth son is again the offspring of another mother (the old Karamasov is namely a thorough scoundrel!), whereas the third son has a most peculiar mother. One does not know if he is really the son of the old Karamasov ... But I do not intend to tell you the story of the book. Indeed, if we also bear in mind the aspect, who were the mothers, we may feel throughout: there is something behind all that! In fact, this is so, for a Central-European writer would not describe things in that way; he would describe things far more consciously and thus he would not bring into his description so many sub-conscious factors; as is the case with Dostojevski, he constructs more, and since he only brings into his book what he more or less knows, his book will not contain such a wealth of things as that of Dostojevski, who takes the things he writes from LIFE.

Life contains more than that which rises up in the consciousness of the human soul. Towards all these things we feel that in the case of Dostojevski we have before us an extremely chaotic mind, rendered chaotic through his epilepsy; but, in spite of this, many things passed through his entirely diseased soul, things which could pass through it, because human nature is, in our time, inclined, as it were, to reveal certain Things. We may then come to the following result: If we have acquired the right kind of feeling, the right kind of idea in regard to what is meant by physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, we shall find in the four Karamasov brothers four human beings who can only be understood in the right way if we say to ourselves: In one of them, we have before us a human being in whom the physical body is specially active; in the other one, a human being in whom the etheric body is particularly active; in the third one, a human being in whom the astral body is more active; and in the fourth one, a human being in whom the Ego is more active. It is indeed so: If you take the Karamasov brothers and study them from an inner aspect, you will be able to say that, in accordance with. the present cycle of human evolution, and in a case where everything is active in such a way that the poet is influenced and stimulated to describe things more from out his sub-consciousness, the various members of human nature are active so that in one brother one particular member has the upper hand, and in another one, another member; the four brothers therefore appear like the drawn-out image of humanity. In Dmitri we find that the Ego is preponderant; in Aljosha, the astral body; in Ivan, the etheric body; and in Smerdiakov, the physical body. Though at first this may seem strange, it is nevertheless so, from the standpoint of reality.

You see, here we have the strange case of a poet who produces chiefly from out his sub-conscious depths and even has a chaotic soul life owing to his epilepsy, but who is nevertheless pushed towards the reality and whose astral body, that is to say, his sub-consciousness, becomes connected with what weaves and lives in the world.

We may well believe that the experience of standing beneath the gallows and. being unexpectedly pardoned at the last minute (Dostojevski’s comrades have already been hung, while Dostojevski himself is facing the moment of being hung), is not an indifferent experience; indeed, such an experience awakens in a human soul altogether different feelings than those of a soul that has never passed through a similar experience. This is a fact that should be borne in mind. But all this shows us that at the present time, in particular, a soul of Dostojevski’s kind could be influenced by the real facts in such a manner that his soul felt induced to describe throughout his book, in a chaotic way, these four brothers, who possess the qualities just described, whom we can only understand if we know this and if we are able to feel it. In that case, we shall understand why the brother in whom the etheric body predominates and the one in whom the astral body predominates, must be the sons of a mother afflicted with hysterical fits. If we know this, the details in particular become wonderfully transparent. This reveals the tendency of our time within the sphere of a nation inclined to offer (I have already explained this to you), as it were, those blood qualities which must become united with the Central European qualities. We can grasp what is taking place, also in the case of men in whom these events are still inwoven unconsciously; but we can grasp this only if we understand spiritual science.

Even though it may seem stupid, let me nevertheless say that the world is deep, and that it is not such a simple matter to gain some knowledge in regard to it, nor to judge it; it is not so simple a matter as imagined by those who lead the usual kind of life. The human beings pass through life in a dream or in a state of intoxication. Yet great things are preparing and it is not so easy to attract people’s, attention to these things.

Through your Karma you belong to those who are gradually penetrating into these things; you have been listening to them for many years and have thus gradually become familiar with them, acquiring an idea of all that lies concealed beneath the surface of life. But in regard to outsiders:—we may sometimes allude to such things in their presence and the very people may be sitting there, who belong to the clever set and believe, above all, that the person who speaks in a spiritual-Scientific manner and mentions this or that thing to them, does not really know anything beyond what he is saying. They have not the slightest idea that this knowledge must be drawn out of an all-encompassing knowledge, one that can really be proved in every detail and that becomes interesting just when it can be substantiated through details.

That many things in human evolution must change, can be seen therein that I have put before you two facts: I have shown you, on the one hand, what is connected with the human being, but on the other hand, I have also shown you the way in which we should contemplate the events that are now taking place. If someone who knows nothing of microscopy looks through a microscope, he will see nothing whatever. In a similar way, nothing whatever can be discerned when we contemplate human experience. Nothing whatever can be discerned in the experiences of the East during the 19th century; nothing can be seen in a Dostojevski, who wrote the book, “The Brothers Karamasov”, a book that indicates a sub-earthly element. In the East, in the Russian East, people have become aware of this, for a certain attitude towards life has been designated, as “Karamasovshchina”. It is difficult to explain this word; it is a far more qualitative concept than, for instance, the word “Strizitum” (a word in Austrian dialect, indicating a loose, half rascally, half good-fellow attitude towards life). “Karamasovshchina” is a far more concrete thing. We may come across this in life itself and even in art, and in order to perceive what is taking place, it is easy to realise that when we contemplate things, it is necessary to have in our soul’s background a knowledge that can only come from spiritual science.

Even the external processes rising up before us at the present time in particular, reveal this necessity; if we only look upon life thoughtfully, they reveal the necessity to which I allude and which I illuminated from two aspects. For instance, a very distressing phenomenon of the present is the following one:—General opinions existed long before the war. Certain people were considered to be prominent in this or in that sphere. There was no reason to object to this because they really achieved extraordinary things in the meaning of modern civilisation. Then war broke out. These prominent people expressed their views, they wrote letters. It is almost incredible what nonsense these prominent men wrote! For instance, Krapotkin, who enjoyed a great reputation in England. But read the letters written by him at the beginning of the war! He was looked upon as a broad-minded free-thinker, yet how stupid were the letters he wrote!

These are weighty facts. Indeed, I might say: Particularly now that humanity is facing such a sudden and powerful situation, we can see how little their thoughts are capable of grasping something that does not, for once, break in upon mankind in accordance with an ordinary, easy programme. From their own standpoint, the ordinary Philistines are better off than others, for they judge things in accordance with their views. But how do these views generally arise? At the present time, people despise authority and have their own views! Yet their opinions are merely based upon the fact that they have forgotten where they have read them! These are the “individual opinions”, that are simply characterised through the fact that they have been read or heard somewhere. All these things show that particularly the so deeply incisive events of the present contain something that must become a distinctive mark of humanity: namely, the fact that many, many things in spiritual life must change completely; human beings must make up their mind not to pass through life in the same way as the materialists, who merely dream of the world ... Of course, they think that the others are dreaming, nevertheless it is THEY who really dream, for they have never really woken up properly. Spiritual life must indeed change, and this fact must penetrate into the consciousness of those who wish to become united in their heart with the true life-essence of the spiritual-scientific world-conception.

Earnest words had to be said at this meeting, simply because to-day things present such an aspect that every opportunity must be used which may, perhaps, not always be available. It is difficult to travel about, at present.

It is therefore necessary to discuss these earnest things. They are also connected with questions discussed on previous occasions, questions that may be considered in connection with those of to-day. I explained that our etheric body is not something that may be designated as the bearer of our thoughts; it does not simply evaporate: no, the etheric body does not evaporate ... it becomes inwoven with the world-ether. When, however, as is the case at present, hundreds and thousands of deaths prevent human beings from carrying their etheric bodies through several decades, as would be the case normally, when these etheric bodies are handed over to the spiritual world, then something arises which I have frequently described: They remain here, with that part of the etheric body which may still have been used, and this will be found ABOVE. But its INFLUENCE in the future will depend upon the constitution of the souls BELOW. Strength for a spiritual progress will in future be found by those souls below who say to themselves: Many men have passed through the sacrifice of death and if we grow conscious of the forces contained in what they leave behind, then a spiritual growth will be possible. Souls must be there who are open to the comprehension of the spiritual world. In that case, the forces existing through the death-sacrifices can become fruitful for the earth. Otherwise, they must fall a prey to Ahriman. It need not NECESSARILY arise that these forces become fruitful for the earth ... for this will depend either upon the greatest possible number of souls that are inclined to unite in their feelings with what has arisen spiritually through the death-sacrifices; it will depend upon the possibility of utilising this later on, or else it will depend upon whether this will fall a prey to Ahriman. Meditate this thought, for then it will acquire significance and you will be able to feel the words with which I once more wish to conclude my lecture:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten:
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(TRANSLATION)

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a Spirit-fruit,
If souls, in spirit-consciousness,
Lead their heart and mind into the Spirit-realm.

• 1. See The Akasha Chronicals
• 2. Compare: Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth
• 3. “MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM”

One of the great men whose busts stand before you here, the German philosopher Hegel, summarized his conviction of the essence of human development in the words: this development is a progress of humanity in the consciousness of freedom. And with this he wanted to imply that the development of humanity is not a repetition, a succession of the same facts, the same events, but a constant and continuous progress; that from epoch to epoch humanity rises to ever higher and higher levels.

Those who look at human evolution from a spiritual point of view will find a deep truth in Hegel's saying. This is not to say that there are not also temporary epochs of decline within the ascending course of human development; but it means that the great development of our race is viewed from a small point of view if one does not see the continuing ascent on a large scale in the face of temporary epochs of decline. Only those who are unable to see into the depths of the process of development have the idea, which is so frequently encountered today, when we look further back in time or even look ahead into the future, as if everything, man himself in his form or the natural kingdoms around him, were still roughly similar to what they are today. Even when we speak of development, the spirit, which lives only on the physical plane, usually has no conception of the tremendous differences that exist between the individual epochs of the human spirit and advancing culture. It often seems grotesque to the spirit when the great differences between the nature kingdoms in the past epochs are described to it or when one prophetically points to the future epochs.

Only when we observe the differentiated development of humanity does it present us with the configuration of the higher worlds on the physical plane. Only he recognizes his epoch who knows where he stands in the development of humanity. We have to look around a little to see where we stand – which level our present human development corresponds to. What is called occult wisdom teaches us that on a descending path of development, what we call the spirit in the German language is not the other parts of the human being. It is the spirit that has descended the furthest onto the physical plane in our epoch. Since the last third of the 19th century, it has been, as it were, on the way up again, and anyone who recognizes the configuration can only express it by saying that within this epoch the deepest entanglement of spirit with matter has been the characteristic; now it is striving to ascend again. And all who strive spiritually strive to escape from this entanglement.

For a long time such an important crossroads of human development has been in preparation. If one examines occultly how long this has been in preparation for what emerged as an important turning point in the spiritual development of humanity in the 19th century, one comes back to the time when the human spirit descended from those insights that were still more or less born of the astral plane, and one comes to a special mission in the evolution of humanity for the last four to five centuries. We can pinpoint the most important point at which human evolution moved down from the astral to the physical plane and spiritual knowledge passed into the material realm as the time when the old Ptolemaic worldview, which is not nonsense but a projection of astral knowledge onto the physical plane, was brought down to the physical plane by Copernicus. This realization then penetrated more and more into the later stages of development, until in the 19th century it was taken even lower, when people even wanted to grasp the spirit materially. Those who understand the theosophical movement in the right sense do not criticize what has brought humanity so low. That would not be an active theosophical life. The active theosophical life rather asks: How do we get out of the bonds of the physical plan? — and it tries to recognize what purpose this descent into the physical plan served.

We look back to Egyptian wisdom, to the wonderful Chaldean-Babylonian wisdom and ask ourselves: What is the difference between what the Egyptian priest, the servant of Hermes, saw when he looked up at the starry sky, or what the Chaldean astronomer saw in the stars, and what today's science sees? One does not get a proper idea of what was going on in those wise men when they looked up at the vault of heaven through materialistic science, but one does get it through an analogy when one looks at a human being.

We do not look at a person just by looking at the physiognomy of his face. When we see the tears rolling down, we do not just observe how they move downward under the force of gravity – in fact, if an angel were to come from heaven today, we would first calculate its rate of fall – no, through the rolling tears we see the suffering and pain of his soul. And when he smiles, we see in his smiling countenance what lives in his mind as joy. We know that original elementary sensations take place in man.

This seeing through from the material to the spiritual-soul content of the soul is what the Hermes servants meant when they said: “Down below, everything is like up above!” No material thing that is not the outer expression of a spiritual-soul! Just as ice is only water in a different form, so all matter is only spirit in a different form. If someone came and showed us a piece of ice and we said, “This is condensed water,” but he denied it, we would say to him, “You are naive, you are wrong, this ice is only condensed water. It is just something else, new, when we look at the form. So matter is just the transformed, condensed spirit. But it is not enough just to know that; we must absorb all knowledge into our soul. And spiritual life demands that everything that lives in our soul comes into activity; it is not enough what lives in our soul as ordinary thoughts, feelings, and will impulses. But if we awaken an inner life in us, then we can feel how the Egyptian Hermes servant or the Chaldean astronomer looked up at the starry sky: Mars, Venus, the Moon or Mercury, all were only the expression of the spirit living in the star. In times of spiritual life, one did not describe what today's astronomer understands by the stars, but by the name Mercury, for example, the old wise man, who lived in the spiritual life, imagined the soul, the spirit that lives through Mercury, just as the soul lives in your body. And so he taught everyone who listened to his word. Now imagine vividly how a person looks out into space and sees the stars. It is not an abstract but an intimate spiritual life that connects him to the world. It is spirit that he saw, and in the spiritual realm he himself floated and felt that he was a part of the world, just as a finger is only a part of my hand. If you separate his being from the universal spirituality, it dies and no longer exists, like the finger if you cut it off. Compare this with what today's astronomer sees. For him, physical globes fly around. He lacks the living feeling [for their spiritual essence]. But this living feeling is not so easy to achieve. Perhaps he is a spiritualist in theory; but it is more difficult to be a spiritualist of the whole soul, of the whole life, than to be a spiritualist in mere theoretical terms. Now man lives in a purely physical environment; he no longer finds the living harmony between the divine and the physical. But it is right and of great importance that it came to this.

Let us compare the achievements of people on the physical plane with the high spiritual wisdom of the priests. In ancient times, primitive culture prevailed. When we see the endless labor and effort that has gone into making every single object around us a spiritual creature of the last four centuries, let us not forget that this is thanks to the human spirit of the last centuries. But even that could not be there if the spirit had not descended to the physical plane. Thus, each epoch has its task. And because this was particularly the case for the last epoch of world history, those sources from which spiritual life always flows had to send the spirit down to the last epoch of humanity, to those who wanted to receive it in devotional spiritual work.

If we go back four or five centuries before the descent [of the spirit on the physical plane], and then another two centuries for the preparation, we find a current that, despite the descent, has ensured that the spirit can find its way back; to give the spirit, which necessarily had to descend to the physical plane, means to rise again. This current is called the Rosicrucian current. And just as in ancient times people had to be led up to the eternal, so it is that today man must seek the way to the modern, to the Rosicrucian initiation. It is not to be asserted here that there are different truths in the course of human development. Truth is one, like the sun that illuminates the whole of the physical orbit of the earth; but the paths to truth are different. Imagine, for a moment, comparing the point of view you would have attained with the summit of a mountain; at the top, one would have an unobstructed view in all directions, however one came up. But would you not call it foolish if someone were standing down below on the left side of the mountain and could find a way up on the left side of the mountain, and then would go around the mountain to find a way up on the other side that is not on the side where he is standing? So it is with the evolution of humanity. The starting points of the civilizations are like the paths on the mountain; the different peoples have to move up the different paths. The truth - spiritual realization - is one and the same. Only those who believe that the same thing is repeated in different races can claim that the paths of initiation were the same. But just as the human body that is born fifteen centuries from now is different from the human body that is born today, so must the treatment for the student who wants to go up the path be different. And in certain periods, there must be a renewal of methods, an adaptation to the peoples - to what man has become - even if the structural conditions elude the ordinary eye. But occult physiology and anatomy know that the structural conditions of the physical brain had to change if man was to conquer the physical plane. The physical structures are only the lower facts of what is spiritual above. And so today there is a Rose Cross initiation.

Among the various types of initiation, we need only mention the three most prominent ones. People know what is meant when the Yoga path, the Christian Gnostic path and the Rosicrucian path are mentioned. You all know the Yoga path from literature. The Christian-Gnostic path is the one taught in Christian esotericism - in the early days when Christianity was spreading - by Dionysius Arcopagita. Scholarship speaks of him as a pseudo-Dionysius, who is said to have lived in the 6th century and written all the great books. Christian tradition dates this back to the time of the Apostle Paul. Scholarship only asks: When were these scrolls written?, but Christian esotericism knows that this Dionysius Areopagita was a disciple of the Apostle Paul and was specially commissioned by his master to found the esoteric school of Christianity. For countless people, this Christian esotericism has become truth. Today it is hard to imagine the sources from which some of the words of a Christian teacher came to us. This source was the Christian Initiation. To the materialistically-minded, this Christian Initiation appears to be a figment of the imagination. But for people at that time, it was direct and immediate life. We distinguish seven stages in it, which everyone who wanted to achieve the Christian Initiation had to go through. I will only mention the seven names for them:

the washing of the feet
the scourging
the crowning with thorns
the crucifixion
the mystical death
the burial and resurrection
the ascension of the soul.

These are the seven true stages that had to be gone through in the Lehtrstätten, where the Christian initiation was at home. At least two of these stations, the first and the fourth, I will characterize for you to understand.

When the Christian disciple had reached the point where what is called morality in ordinary life had been purified and raised to a higher level, when one could take it for granted that he would no longer stray from this higher morality, then he was received by his master of the Christian initiation, and he should now experience something within himself that I can only describe to you in the form of a dialogue, although it never took place in a dialogue.

After the student had been disciplined in this way, he was told by the teacher:

Take a look at the plant world. It grows out of the mineral kingdom. If it were not for the mineral kingdom, the plant could not flourish, even though it is at a higher level. If the plant could think, it would have to say: You may be lower in the hierarchy of the natural kingdoms than I am, but I could not be without you. In humility I bow down before you!” And then the disciple was led to recognize this humility in all the kingdoms of nature. The animal would have to bow down humbly to the plant and man in turn to the animal and say: Without you I could not be! And man, who stands on a higher level, would have to bow down in humility before those who are not yet so far; for no one can stand higher without the others. When man understands this ladder, he looks down with humility on those below. In this way the disciple learned to understand what it means in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John that the Highest, although the twelve are lower than He, bows down in humility before them and washes their feet. Those who have been educated in this way [to higher morals] in the sense of esoteric Christianity, only then understand the inner meaning of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is a book of initiation about the methods of initiation, the apocalypse about the content of initiation.

When the student had progressed so far that this humility had become second nature to him, the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John became truth for his soul. Then the teacher could lead him to experience very specific feelings. The student could feel and recognize that he now had the opportunity to ascend to a higher level. He felt - and this was a common feeling of all who had received the Christian initiation - as if his feet were standing in the water, as if the waters of the spirit were lapping at him. And the inner symptom that arose as an image each time was that the disciple, when he was ready, had the image before him, from within, through an inner power, which is presented in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John. This is not just an external-historical, but a spiritual image that anyone can have: on the astral plane, he sees the image of the washing of the feet spread out before him.

Just to make ourselves understood, I will also mention the fourth stage - the crucifixion. When the third stage was over, it was made clear to the disciple that he no longer had to count his body as part of himself. He had to feel his body as an object, as something outside of himself. The ordinary person thinks that his body is his ego. But anyone who wants to reach the fourth stage of Christian initiation must be able to make his body no more precious to him than any chair or table around him. The ordinary person says: I enter through the door. But it is natural for the initiate to say: I carry my body to the door. Then two more symptoms arise: the arbitrary production of the so-called blood sample is the symptomatic expression of the fourth stage of initiation. Exactly at the points of his body called the stigmata, he is able to produce redness of the skin through the inner power of his spirituality. The stigmata appear on the palms of the hands, on the feet and on the right side of the chest. This is accompanied by the inner symptom that the disciple on the astral plane sees himself as on the cross.

One does not speak of the dangers of this development. What matters is the degree of inner development, and then one no longer speaks of dangers in it. But anyone who wants to do this without the advice of a teacher is certainly in danger. But he who patiently and humbly surrenders himself to the leadership will, only by undergoing his martyrdom, be all the more a useful member of human evolution. However, he should not take this upon himself until he feels the obligation within.

Christian initiation was also the foundation and source of the outer Christian life. This Christian initiation had to be passed over into the somewhat different form of the Rose Cross initiation about two hundred years before the descent of the Spirit upon the material plane.

The Rose Cross initiation is not an un-Christian one. It is a further development of the Christian initiation. But the one who receives it does not step out of the physical environment, as the purely Christian initiation demands - at least for a time. Whoever wants to live as a worthy member of human evolution today must take part in the work on the physical plane. It would be sinful to withdraw from the physical world. We must only understand it and be equal to it. If the Christian initiation had retained its earlier form, man would have risen high spiritually and soul-wise, but would have remained weak on the physical plane. Think of the conquest of the physical plane, of the great inventions, the art of printing and so on. What is flooding in from the other planes... [gap in the transcript]. For this, a completely different inner configuration is required. This requires the ability to develop other strong impulses within oneself in order to channel what comes from material development in the right way. The Rose Cross initiation is one that enables people to use all the means of modern culture. It teaches the spirit to grasp in matter, in that man recognizes the connection of even the most material with the spiritual, so that he can let the spiritual flow out into the material.

The Rose Cross initiation is born out of the necessity of the time. It also has seven levels.

The first is what is broadly called study; the second, the acquisition of imaginative knowledge; the third, the acquisition of occult writing; the fourth, the production of the philosopher's stone - that is the technical word for it -; the fifth, the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm; the sixth, the absorption in the macrocosm; the seventh, beatitude. You must not imagine that each pupil has to pass through these stages in succession, so to speak; but the teacher must select from each chapter that which is suitable for each pupil according to his individuality. First each pupil must study, but then the material must often be organized in quite different ways. And now we will discuss it in detail.

Study in the sense of the Rosicrucians is not what is called study in ordinary life. In the sense of the Rosicrucians it is what should really be called: living in pure thought. What this means is not at all easy to grasp at the outset. Hegel, on the other hand, spent his whole life trying to teach the Germans what it means to live in pure thought. And ten years after his death, what Hegel contributed to the Germans' deepening had been completely forgotten. Today we have not yet reached the point where Hegel would be understood again. And yet his works would be a good means of showing what it means to live in pure, sensuality-free thought. The more recent philosophers, for example Eduard von Hartmann, deny altogether that we can form a thought that is not influenced by sensuality. They swore that nothing is in the intellect that was not in the senses. What is not of the senses is not real. If these words were true, there would be no mathematics. The Gnostics called the life of the spirit a “mathesis,” not because they imagined it to be mathematics, but because on the higher planes there is pure thinking and knowing, as there is in mathematics, in terms of forms, a thinking free of sensuality. This pure thinking does not proceed from objects, but flows from thought to thought. For those who want to immerse themselves in a completely sensuality-free thinking, I tried to write a book like my “Philosophy of Freedom”. It is not a personal work. It has come into being like an organism: it is a thought organism, and a guide to what is called study in the Rosicrucian sense. Certainly, many do not go through something like that. For most people who cannot undergo something like this, the simple Theosophical teaching is enough. It is sensual thought; no one can hear or see it. If you study Theosophy, it corresponds to the first stage of the Rosicrucian training. Theosophy is itself Rosicrucian study if you pursue it in the right way. There is no need to lose yourself in philosophical heights. The humblest soul can immerse itself in it.

Imaginative knowledge is the second step in the Rose Cross initiation. It is achieved when a person learns to transform thought into image. This is a real fact. A man who knew about Rosicrucianism once uttered the words, “All that is transitory is but a parable!” Then one comes away from the physical plane. I would like to show you how this can be achieved by means of two examples. Take the three Logoi. Everything that has been mentioned so far as a study relates solely and exclusively to the physical plane. Only imaginative knowledge lifts us higher. If you describe the three logos schematically, if you speak of projections, then one can form an idea for the physical mind, even if you say that the second logo vibrates differently from the first. But all this is only for the consciousness of the mind. We cannot take with us to the higher planes anything that relates to three-dimensional space, but only that which is not conceived spatially. A “tone or color quality is indeed built into the space, but it is not spatial. The astral space is a flowing sea of color and light. There you will encounter on the astral plane what you have perceived here as a color quality and a tone quality. What is physical here in color and tone, you lift up to the higher planes; only we must purify and cleanse it in order to lift it up. Therefore, the teacher says: Take away the sensual quality for everything you want to see directly; imagine how a color stands out. Then that is the method for developing the imagination. And anyone who wants to achieve this level confronts the outside world in such a way that these isolated images present themselves in such a way that when one speaks, for example, of the three Logoi, one no longer perceives them as quantity but as quality. Then he feels the third Logos as something that resounds through the world – he feels it as sound; the second, insofar as it appears as an astral projection, as flooding light; and the first Logos as the aroma of the world, as an aroma flying through the world, purified to the most perfect purity. This is how the Rosicrucians felt everywhere. These are images, imaginations, not descriptions, for these come from the physical plane.

Another image, which presents us with a more mundane phenomenon, has been preserved in a wonderful myth, the myth of the Holy Grail. This is also an experience for the Rosicrucian disciple, which he perceives as a real fact of his inner soul life. The Master says to the disciple: “Take a look at the plant; it lives with the root in the ground, sends the stem upwards and has its calyx - that which produces a plant again - turned towards the sun. Even the more recent materialistic scholarship has again pointed out that if we compare the plant with the human being, we must compare the root with the head. The plant is, as it were, a human being turned upside down. Evolution consists in the image being reversed: what the plant opens up chastely before the world, is directed downwards in the human being. What the root is in the plant, striving towards the center of the earth, is directed upwards in the human being. In the human being, the head reaches out into the space of the sun. Between the two, on the inside, is the animal world, whose backbone is directed horizontally. Now the pupil was told: Imagine the plant, the animal and the human being and you have the world cross. The cross was the image of the evolution of the world beings up to the human being. The plant only produces when it is touched by the sunbeam, which was called the “holy lance of love”. When it is touched by this, it fulfills its task. Now imagine the human being with the Kama that has seized him; the lower organs must be purified and cleansed and must appear again at a higher level, so that in the course of evolution this chalice opens. When man has transformed himself, when he has purified this chalice, which the plant has at a primitive level, then he will have it in his hand again, that he will be touched by the holy lance of love – then he will have the purification of man in his hand – not only astral or etheric, but even physical. Thus evolution is imaginatively presented. Those who live in this way will have the astral plane revealed to them.

The third is the attainment of occult writing. It is not a writing like our present-day abstract writing. One appropriates the harmony of the qualities. The teacher says to the disciple: “If you ascend higher, until you attain knowledge of occult writing, you will hear what was called the harmony of the spheres in the Pythagorean school. This is a reality for the initiate, not a mere allegory. What today's science has to offer when it speaks of number systems is often as far removed from the harmony of the spheres as if one wanted to describe a symphony as a wave motion in the air. The occult disciple learns to hear the sounds in the spiritual world. Goethe also knew about this when he said: “The sun resounds in the ancient manner in the brother spheres of song.” And in another place: “The new day is born sounding for spiritual ears.” What happens, what is audible to spiritual, not physical ears, are the events of the spiritual plan, are the harmonies of the spheres. And the signs of occult writing are real cosmic forces, and he who knows them feels the stream of cosmic forces in his organism down to the physical organism. I will give you only one example: four numbers. When I tell you, they are somewhat abstract; but if you were to perceive the music spiritually, you would perceive the relationship of the four lower human limbs. These numbers are: 1, 3, 7, 12. This is how the four lower limbs of human nature sound together harmoniously in the spiritual world. This is the secret of Pythagorean number theory: that it can be transformed into spiritual music.

The fourth is the creation of the philosopher's stone. Modern scholarship has turned it into a fairy tale. But in a way it is right, because if it were really as science imagines it, it would be a childish thing. But it is the highest goal to which man aspires. At the end of the eighteenth century, some of the Rosicrucian secrets were revealed. We find something there that we could say: People have heard something ringing there. We find a remarkable passage in a German newspaper! It says about the philosopher's stone: It exists. If you can recognize it in its full value, you possess the secret of immortality. Actually, the vast majority of people know it. Many have it in their hands every day. The man who wrote this had no idea what it was about, but he had received a message that contained something true. We need to consider nothing other than the process that maintains human beings cosmically in this present epoch: the breathing process. We breathe in and out. We breathe in the oxygen of the air and give back to the surrounding world the carbonic acid, a poisonous gas in which we could not live. The plant absorbs it continually, retains the coal from the carbonic acid and builds up its own body from it. But it gives the oxygen back to animals and humans. Thus, plant, animal and human form a whole, as far as we look at the breathing process. Today, humans need plants. The corpse of the plant as black coal, when you dig it out of the earth, or as a transparent diamond, is something we have within us; but we cannot use it. We have to give it to the plants as air for life. The plant builds its body out of carbonic acid itself. It can do something that man cannot yet do today, but will be able to do later. Imagine this process: the plant taking in carbonic acid and emitting oxygen – transferred to the inside of the human being... [gap in the text] Thus, by merging with the plant world and taking it into human nature, we build up within ourselves a pure, chaste body, as the plant does today. Man is on the way to becoming a being who can consciously carry this out; and then he will be able to develop within himself the chalice of the Holy Grail. The breathing process is not a closed one; it is in the process of becoming more perfect and of performing within man that which today takes place outside of man, and of transforming the human substance, which is permeated by Kama, into pure, chaste substance. This is real alchemy. Then man will have mastered alchemy, by means of which he will also learn to transform the cosmos. The symbol for this is the Holy Grail. We must not reject the lofty ideal because it is still millions of years away from us, but must be attained according to the principle: constant dripping wears away the stone. Thus, he who rhythmizes the breathing process will gradually achieve his goal. The philosopher's stone is coal, it is the substance for building the human body in the future. This process of transformation is alchemy in the Rosicrucian sense. Of course, the intimate instructions are given only from teacher to student.

The fifth, the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm, is the learning of the correspondence of what we have within ourselves with the outer macrocosm. Paracelsus once said: “Let us look at the animals, plants and minerals - everything is in some way also in the human body. Man is like a confluence of everything that is also in nature outside. Nature is, as it were, the dismembered human being. Nature is like the letters, but the human being is the word that is composed of these letters. When this realization dawns on the consciousness, the student sees how the eye was formed from the light. The eye is formed by the light. Our organism emerged from another that did not yet have eyes; but the light brought forth the eye. This state of consciousness has long since ceased to exist. Man today knows nothing more about it, but the seer on the astral plane sees it. There you get to know again what is weaving within the cosmos as in your own nature. Then you get to know the cosmos through your individual limbs: from the eye the light, from the ears the sound, and the other as it can only be given from the teacher to the disciple.

When a person has come so far that he has learned the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, then he can ascend to the sixth: to merging with the macrocosm. Then you have a relationship of friendship with every thing in nature. There is then something like a loving relationship with every being in nature, something like what remains in the love between man and woman. The sunflower appears different, the violet different, the lion and the tiger different, this and that different. The whole cosmos appears as differentiated as love between man and woman. Our inner being flows from the inside out, and this is connected with a transformation of the heart: the etheric and astral bodies transform the heart so that it becomes an arbitrary muscle. Here, the occult teaching, if it perfects itself even more, will spread light. Today, the heart is a crux for physiologists. It is an involuntary muscle, but in terms of its striation it is an arbitrary muscle; for it is transversely striated. All voluntary muscles are transversely striated, while the involuntary muscles are longitudinally striated. The heart is transversely striated because it is on the way to becoming an arbitrary muscle. Today it is endowed with the potential to become one. If in the future man is able to create from the spirituality of the cosmos, he will be able to move the heart as he is able to move the hand today. And so I could give you a hundred and a hundred examples where occult science sheds light on what physical science cannot unravel.

When man gradually attains this personal, intimate relationship with the whole of his environment, when he no longer has to use the physical powers of the brain, then, the teacher says, he can only understand what the Rosicrucian calls divinity, where the independence of man is preserved, but the highest is felt.

I have only been able to sketch out a few ideas today; but the Rosicrucian training has much to give here. Much can also be objected to; one can point out the dangers that can arise in the process. Only one thing can be pointed out: if a person does not strive towards the ideal out of egoism, but feels integrated, if he does not feel the urge for development as a desire but as a duty, if he wants to be a servant of evolution, if he purifies everything that needs to be purified, then there is no danger at all. And the Rosicrucian training in particular will also bring about a moral purification. The disciple must have the intention of merging his soul completely in the pure thought, for the pure thought is a mighty moral purification. Then he is prepared for the six steps.

All striving for occult development must proceed under the principle of conquest, which Goethe also expressed in one place. Only when we have conquered ourselves may we develop higher. This must become our fundamental ideal, for conquest is the fundamental ideal of the Rosicrucians:

From the fetters that bind all beings,
The man who overcomes himself is free!