The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before the session, a branch assembly had taken place in which a report was given on Rudolf Steiner's Dornach lectures of December 30 and 31, 1922, on the position of the religious renewal movement. Dr. Carl Unger had reported on Rudolf Steiner's address of January 6 (see page 73 of this volume) and explained that, speaking of the criticism that was being expressed about the work in Stuttgart, he did not want to be an obstacle to the progress of anthroposophical work. A discussion of the possibility of recognizing and combating the cause of the criticized unmethodical behavior was scheduled for the next branch evening.

Now the extended thirty-strong circle meeting requested by Rudolf Steiner took place with about 60 participants.

Dr. Steiner: After almost ten years of work and just as many years of worries, the Goetheanum has become our undoing, and I do not need to describe to you here the pain of this downfall, if only because great pain cannot really be expressed in words. But I would like to say a few words today before these proceedings.

It must be said that with the intention of building the Goetheanum, the Anthroposophical Society, from whose midst this building emerged, took on a different form than it had before. The building was a means of speaking to the world in general today. It was a stepping forward into this world; and it was necessary to see to it that the building was constructed in such a way that it could actually be used to speak to the whole world today. And in a sense, that is what the building has done. I might say that only now has the right opportunity arisen to tear the Anthroposophical Movement out of its sectarian nature and give it the importance that, according to the nature of the matter, has always had to be spoken of since its inception.

Now, of course, a true word about the terrible Dornach catastrophe can hardly come about unless it is spoken of from deeper foundations. But that cannot be. In recent times it has become almost impossible for anything I have said to be mentioned within even the narrowest circles of the Anthroposophical Society without our opponents taking it out of context and echoing it back to us in a distorted way within a very short time. It has become impossible to speak esoterically about deeper matters today because the words do not remain within the circles in which they are spoken. And so I must say that, apart from the fact that it is not appropriate at this present moment to speak about the spiritual side of the Dornach catastrophe, it will probably not be possible at all to speak about this spiritual side. Various people may have many thoughts as to why this could have happened. But, as I said, I must unfortunately leave these things unspoken.

Another aspect of this so infinitely painful event immediately confronts us. And since we must not allow ourselves to be weighed down by the pain, this other side is our first concern. This is what, I would say, could be immediately assumed from the night of the fire; namely, the way the echo of the world sounds to us after the disaster has struck us. The opponents use the disaster to forge further weapons for this antagonism. We see from the scorn and derision with which we are met everywhere, something like the tips of new offensive weapons, which are to become ever stronger in the near future. And we should look above all at what lies ahead for us.

That is why I had to emphasize in Dornach, and this brings me to the purpose of our meeting today, which is to deal with the future, that when it is thought of building something else in Dornach or elsewhere – something definite cannot yet be said – that could be an outward emblem of the anthroposophical movement, that it is a matter of consolidating the Anthroposophical Society. For in a sense the building at Dornach, which spoke loudly to the whole world, lacked the background of the protective Anthroposophical Society. Basically, the Anthroposophical Society fell apart from the moment the building began. Not that the number of members had become smaller, but precisely the way in which it had spread in recent years, which was necessary and gratifying, had done extraordinary harm to the cause itself. And the building would have needed the support of a strong Anthroposophical Society.

Now, my dear friends, what needs to be said in this regard has already been said by smaller bodies during my two attendances, and it should be the subject of today's negotiations. I myself would just like to say what needs to be said from my side in advance so that today's meeting does not remain incomprehensible from my side. In the course of the debate, which I do not wish to delay, only what has been a heavy concern on my mind for some time and which led me to a conversation with a member of the Executive Council when I was here in December [on December 10] should be said. This conversation was mainly concerned with the necessity of tackling the tasks that had arisen for the Anthroposophical Society from its membership. Not so much through what I myself had to do. It had become necessary to draw attention to the fact that in view of these tasks and the situation that had gradually developed, there were only two things left for me to do, since I could not continue to stand by and watch. Two things, one of which was that I had to say to Mr. Uehli, as the representative of the Central Board sitting in front of me: I assume that the Central Board will discuss the Anthroposophical Society in the very near future, so that, initially, for itself, reinforced by prominent personalities here, it will give me its opinions, and suggestions, which I will then listen to in order to see whether it is possible from within the Society, through its present leadership, to really consolidate this Society. So I said: I expect the Central Board to approach me in such a way when I am in Stuttgart the next time that they present me with their proposals. Otherwise I would be forced to continue to ignore the Central Board and to address the entire membership directly, in an attempt to make a start on consolidating the Society. I would deeply regret it if this step were necessary, and so I propose to the others.

I had to leave at the time and awaited the appropriate consequences of my request. Well, my dear friends, then the time passed with the preparations for everything that was to take place in Dornach: the science course, the Christmas plays, the eurythmy. During December I was unable to come over again. And then came the catastrophe. A large proportion of our friends here were over in Dornach. And I should not omit to mention this: on the night of the fire, as always when it comes down to doing the necessary, the membership did not fail, but worked in such a way that it met every ideal. |

Now I learned from the Central Committee that the first step to be taken was to address the members with the announcements concerning the religious renewal movement. This should be a first step, and further steps should follow. It was natural to find this understandable, because I had explicitly designated Stuttgart as the place where these things had come to a head. And so it was all right.

Now, however, after the catastrophe had affected us, a meeting of the members was to take place at the instigation of the central committee. And just before the meeting was to begin, I was asked [on January 5 in Dornach] what should happen at it. I replied: If one wants to speak in this situation, one must speak about the consolidation of the Society. Mr. Uchli said that this should take place in Stuttgart in a smaller group. I assumed that one cannot speak about it without having informed oneself about the most important things.

The next day the meeting was held [on January 6 in Dornach], and on this occasion I gave a speech that Dr. Unger reported to you [on January 9 in Stuttgart]. Then I arrived last week and a circle had somehow come into being that held a night session with me on Tuesday of last week [January 16th], in which the things were expressed that can be communicated to you by the personalities concerned. And I was basically faced with the situation that what I had asked the central committee for had not happened, but that a free group of leading personalities was waiting for me and negotiating the consolidation of society. The next day [January 17], Dr. Unger was also consulted. This afternoon I remarked to the same group,¹ Human contact has been lost to such an extent that the following question should be considered: whether, in order to revive this contact, a real meeting should be convened in which people could express their thoughts and desires. The question arises as to whether things can continue as they are, with the leadership simply dictating to the rest of society. Should the new leadership not come to an understanding with those who are to follow? When I consider that the matter here was still so immature that I had to ask this afternoon to convene this circle because one cannot say between four walls: We are making four people the new board. The response was full of well-meaning conventional statements, but it was not decidedly one way or the other. It was the expression of good intentions, but it was not the expression of a strong will.

Things like the ones I have expressed, even if I don't want to say anything bad about those involved, are quite real. I am absolutely in a position to be able to say: Here in Stuttgart there is a huge number of the best talents. The misfortune is that people do not want to apply their talents in an appropriate way. There is no lack of ability. Enlightened minds are here. If I tried to point out achievements, it is a reason for many to almost trample these achievements underfoot. That is the inner opposition. I would like to know who is in a position to say that Dr. Unger does not have the very highest abilities. There is no objection to his ability. The will must be found! It is not done with words of thunder, but with the content of the will. One must begin to study the things.

Another example is this: everything is done for the religious renewal movement. Mr. Uehli is involved. And after the matter is finished in Dornach on September 17,³ On September 17, 1922, he does not go to Stuttgart to take the appropriate measures, assuming that something important has been created, but he sits on his curule seat and does nothing. Then, at the end of December, a child is born terribly late.⁴ We are facing this today. This will cause many people who have taken up this or that position to suffer pangs of remorse. — And further: It does not matter at all that one bears a title, but that one does something. Much has been neglected. It is not a question of time, but of interest and discernment. One must have the will to look at things in terms of their importance, their significance or insignificance. A great resonance would be necessary. This consolidation must not be brought about in a bureaucratic way, but in a factual and human way.

Emil Leinhas speaks.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps someone outside will consider the causes of these things; without that, one cannot move forward. It is a spiritual movement. One must go back to the spiritual causes of things. Rightly so, one can be terribly amazed at the successes of the religious renewal movement. One is suddenly taken aback by the popularity of these people. But no one goes back to the causes, to how the whole thing developed, how this religious renewal movement came about. If these methods continue, the Anthroposophical Society will be left standing like a plucked chicken, because all its feathers will be plucked. It may still have the original juice. —— The lectures are locked up; and then the others come to me [wanting to read them], and I have to say that they have been locked up. That is how far you get with this. Now this [religious] renewal movement has formed. Imagine if you had had the strength to absorb it in the Anthroposophical Society! But Dr. Rittelmeyer and Emil Bock left [the Society].

It was a good thing that the “Movement for Threefolding” was pursued here in Stuttgart. How was it pursued? An office was set up. What were the local groups? The branches of the Anthroposophical Society. The local groups were ruined by the Stuttgart bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of the threefolding movement undermined the branches directly from Stuttgart. If religious renewal now takes hold of the branches, it is doing no more than the threefolding movement has already done. I must confess that I remember with a certain horror how this movement inaugurated itself here. The threefolding movement has not done anything new. One recalls how the threefolding movement established itself here with no small fanfare. It cannot continue unless someone comes forward and says: We want to thoroughly sweep away the methods of 1919. — Here it is a matter of realizing these things: why, for example, one writes a letter; and why for a fortnight the heads of the “authorities” do not talk to each other. If things do not change, they will come to a halt. They will not change unless you face things realistically and call a spade a spade. What has happened so far will not change things. It is essential that you speak and act differently, and quickly, so that not everything I have said is thrown to the wind again. I didn't know why I was supposed to be here at all; ⁵ my words were thrown to the wind. With the exception of the one case that was handled excellently, it was as if they were saying to me: “Don't do anything!” It is only the seriousness of the situation that makes it necessary for me to speak in this way.

I want to evoke a sense of what is necessary. I truly don't want to teach anyone a lesson. Today, one can't help but point out the seriousness of the situation. If the Anthroposophical Society continues to behave this way, in five years you won't sell a single anthroposophical book anymore. The Anthroposophical Society has become a serious stumbling block. A complete turnaround must take place.

• 1. Circle of Seven, that there could be no question of deciding anything in the abstract, but that those who want something have to be rooted in something real, in the real intentions of the membership. And I therefore asked that the next wider circle be convened, so that there would be not just talk about it, which would be nice, but so that it could be shown whether any of it [what is being talked about] is really rooted in the people of the society.

  I hope that tonight there will be an honest debate, both on the part of those who have taken the initiative so far and on the part of the others. It is impossible to be satisfied with deluding ourselves: it will work out. — Rather, it is a matter of all the things that underlie the fragmentation of society actually coming to light, of the way in which people want to work in the future coming to light, so that society can continue to exist. Because it cannot continue as it has until now. It would be no use to build a house, because the way things are now, society would no longer exist before it was finished, it would have fallen apart into its atoms. It is a matter of speaking in the most definite way possible, so that it can be seen to what extent society can be carried out of its own bosom.

  Emil Leinhas: Members from the most diverse layers of society have been summoned for this evening in order to deliberate on the situation of the Society. A smaller circle has discussed the necessary questions in contact with me, with Dr. Unger and Mr. Uehli. A resolution has been worked out which will be read out this evening.

  Eugen Kolisko: Dr. Steiner's address [January 6] led to the task for members to take care of the leadership of the Society and the way this leadership has been handled since 1919. There is strong criticism of the Central Council and much mistrust. There is no understanding with the youth and also no harmonious cooperation within the Central Council.

  Proposals are made to reorganize anthroposophical life by creating a trust organization. A statement to the general membership is to be given. Dr. Unger is willing to resign. Mr. Uehli has resigned. Leinhas, Hahn, Baumann and Kolisko are proposed.

  Dr. W. J. Stein explains that he and his friends are willing to work together, as they have promised each other. It would be very good if it turned out that there is a willingness to work together in very broad circles.

  Paul Baumann: Kolisko is my guarantee that no clique will emerge.

  Several speakers speak out in favour of Eugen Kolisko; some ask Carl Unger to remain on the board. There is a back and forth of the most diverse opinions, and other proposals for an expansion of the board follow.

  Paul Baumann: Dr. Unger is encumbered by the people who particularly want to support him, who are his clique. Dr. Unger explains that he does not want to be in the way if another group wants to do it. Only if this group does not succeed would he feel obliged to take matters back into his own hands. It is necessary to test whether the group will be trusted.

  Emil Leinhas reminds the meeting of Dr. Steiner's remark to Mr. Uehli that he would be obliged, if nothing happened, to address the members directly in a circular letter.

  Jose del Monte: The gentlemen proposed except for Mr. Leinhas are very young in the Society; they would not find much trust among the older members. Dr. Unger should be included after all.

  Several other proposals are made.

  Dr. Steiner: Apart from questions of personalities, this meeting today should show how things will change in the future from within the Society itself. Today, reference has repeatedly been made to a group that has met here in Stuttgart as an extended group to take care of the various anthroposophical affairs. I have put forward various ideas in this circle that cannot be resolved to the very end. It could be of interest, and this is really meant without malice, that My word has been heard only once when I spoke in this circle about the need to advocate for the order of affairs over there in Switzerland, namely that since then Mr. Leinhas has devoted himself to the demands made at the time in an intensive way. This has created a difficulty for the central committee. I could not wish that Mr. Leinhas devote himself to the business of the central committee. He really had enough to do for the whole person. At the same time, it is important that the “Kommende Tag” does not appear unmethodical by not continuing to work on it, as is the case with things that are started and then abandoned. The fact that Mr. Leinhas has to be a leading figure is obvious from the nature of the matter. I emphasize this explicitly, that this was the only case where one was interested in the things I brought up. It is a great oddity that I have spoken of such an extraordinarily important matter and it is claimed from two sides that the things did not happen. So that this cannot continue like this is self-evident and proves how much it was an urgent necessity to express this.

  The things that have been discussed here have not been heard. The most important matters have not been echoed at all. It cannot go on like this. I emphasize one thing: after all, from 1901 to 1918, things were not done carelessly in the Anthroposophical Society. They came about; and so it can also be said that the Central Board emerged from history. It has this piece of history behind it. It is burdened with everything we have heard this evening. You must bear one thing in mind: it is quite impossible to bring about change merely through abstract discussions. Positive impulses of will must emerge. After what has been said this evening, I must say: I expected that something would be said about the matter, not that all kinds of proposals would be made and the like. Of course it is impossible for three Waldorf teachers to form a new leadership, as has been proposed. If this tone is used, we will not get a new leadership. There must be some visible sign that work is being done from a different impulse. As long as this is not the case, it is not possible to hand over the society to a new leadership. Something that emerged between 1901 and 1918 and that has not outgrown the era of project-making cannot be brought to a successful conclusion by simply continuing with the projects. This must be taken seriously. If this seriousness does not emerge this evening, this discussion cannot lead to a result. The majority have remained silent in order to be discontent afterwards. Saying a few words will not help. The point is that we have come together here so that the things from which a new impulse arises can be heard. No one has been called upon to just sit, and everyone must have an opinion that can become an impulse. If the discussion continues in the same vein as before, we will get nowhere. Old members who come to such important meetings merely as observers show no interest in the progress of the anthroposophical movement.

  A large number of members speak.

  Adolf Arenson: There would always have been an opportunity to have confidence and take initiatives.

  Miss Waller: It would be worth considering whether something better would not come about if Dr. Steiner were to continue on his own.

  A number of other personalities speak out.

  Dr. Noll: The consolidation has been missed. Everything will fall apart if Dr. Steiner does not get in touch with the branches.

  Dr. Krüger, Mr. Ruhtenberg, Mr. Kühn and Mr. Leinhas speak.

  Dr. Steiner: I don't know what Dr. Krüger meant by “encapsulation”. I think he can only mean the “Stuttgart system”. I will illustrate the “Stuttgart system” with two examples. It was a long time ago. Even if it no longer occurs in places where it did, it still occurs in other forms. The matter in question was that someone had something to discuss with someone at 17 Champignystraße. One was in his office on the third floor, the other on the ground floor. The gentleman in question on the third floor addressed himself to the other in such a way that he dictated a letter into the typewriter and had this letter put into an envelope. The letter was left lying until Monday morning; it was delivered on Tuesday.

  I spoke with Mr. Uehli on December 10. Mr. Uehli is a member of the central committee and a colleague of Dr. Unger; the two gentlemen run the central committee. This important message was discussed again in only an inadequate form on December 24 [and, above all, without Dr. Unger]. I ask myself: Is this so submerged because the two gentlemen did not discuss it? These are the things that happen in Stuttgart and that lead to the fact that one speaks of a bureaucratization. One encounters isolated people who have lost their way. That is the Stuttgart misfortune, that is the isolation of each from each. We have to tap into the hot porridge. Try to answer the question: How can the individual reach out to the other? I cannot believe that anything beneficial can grow out of discussions.

  The following speak in favor of the new board proposal [Emil Leinhas and the three Waldorf teachers Dr. Herbert Hahn, Paul Baumann, Dr. Eugen Kolisko]: Dr. Mellinger, Dr. Palmer, Jürgen von Grone, Mr. Kieser, Miss Völker, Dr. Streicher, Mr. Benkendoerfer.

  Dr. Steiner: Those who can imagine it should imagine what it means: three Waldorf teachers must take the lead. This cannot come from the Anthroposophical Society. Nor can it come from the Waldorf School. The Waldorf School, which is carefully maintained as a non-ideological school, has every reason not to send a single teacher to the board. It is a painful fact that only Waldorf teachers have seen the light. On the other hand, I have not noticed that Mr. Uehli was actually on the committee. The circle that came to meet me consisted only of Waldorf teachers. It is a painful event that only they have had a brainwave. They have realized the matter from their own resources. If a Waldorf teacher is on the board, that is already a lot. But the board cannot be formed as you suggest. A wider circle can collaborate. So, it is desirable that as many Waldorf teachers as possible are on the board. As soon as you make this suggestion, you show that you have not properly assessed the situation. There is only confusion. The fact that there are only Waldorf teachers is proof of the Stuttgart compartmentalization. The Waldorf school should not be a clique; it is a body. Here, those who are banished to the same room put their heads together. If they work in Stuttgart in this way, nothing will ever come of it. I am convinced that many of those who have come here work well outside. But in Stuttgart they become something special. The filing system must be overcome from within. A certain government was already tearing down; people imagined that they could govern. This already occurred in 1919, where things that were intended to be taken seriously were done in the form of “meddling”. Study how these things have developed, and just look at the sudden fuss that arose. Some of it was exasperating. And the fruits are now showing. Especially since 1919, the “Stuttgart System” has driven us into misfortune due to a certain lack of seriousness about the things that have been undertaken bit by bit. This “Bund für freies Geistesleben” (Federation for a Free Intellectual Life) is just one example of this. It consists of nothing more than a piece of paper with twelve names on it.

  It is questionable whether the convening of the assembly should not be considered today.

• 2. Presumably, the intention of a general members' assembly had already been discussed, which was then realized at the end of February as a delegates' assembly.
• 3. On September 17, 1922, the Circle of Primordial Priests was founded. Ernst Uehli, as a member of the central council, had been authorized by Rudolf Steiner.
• 4. See under Notes.
• 5. “With the request for help, they turned to R. Steiner.” From Marie Steiner's notes of the first sevens session. Reaction to the meeting of January 22, 1923, from a member

As I have said, theoretical explanations about karma and repeated earthly lives cannot but remain unliving and inadequate, until our thought in this direction really flows into our understanding of the life around us. We must contemplate life itself in the light of karma and repeated earthly lives. But such a contemplation requires the very greatest earnestness, for it may indeed be said that the temptation is very great for man to spin out all manner of ideas about karmic connections and repeated earthly lives. The temptation is great; the source of illusions in this sphere is exceedingly great. And indeed, real investigations in this sphere can be made only by one to whom the spiritual world has in a sense been opened through his own soul-development.

Hence it must also be said that in these matters especially the investigator must rely on those foundations of conviction in his audience which may follow from other things he has brought to light. Indeed we ought not to have any confidence in one who begins without more ado to speak about repeated earthly lives in detail. What is derived from such occult depths as these must be confirmed and supported by the fact that many other things have already been produced which give a real basis for confidence in the spiritual investigator.

Now I think I may say that in the twenty-three to twenty-four years during which we have cultivated Anthroposophy, enough occult material has been gathered to warrant the description at this present time even of these bold researches into karma and repeated earthly lives, for the benefit of those who may have gained true confidence through the other realms of spiritual life which have been unfolded before them in the course of time. True, many are present here to-day who have been in the society for a comparatively short time. But the evolution of the society would be made impossible if we always had to begin at the beginning for those who enter newly; and on the other hand, to our great joy and satisfaction, large numbers of our oldest Anthroposophical friends have come here at this busy time when so many lecture-courses are to be given. Many Anthroposophists are gathered here who have witnessed nearly the whole period of Anthroposophical development and as time goes on opportunities must be created in the Anthroposophical Society for those in the earlier stages of membership to be properly introduced to all that must now be cultivated for the further course of the society's development.

I had to make these preliminary remarks, because what I shall say to-day will be given more in the form of a simple communication, and much of it may well appear exceedingly bold. It will however form the starting-point for what will follow in the succeeding lectures.

A human life after all only appears in its true nature when we consider how it passes through repeated lives on earth. Serious and responsible research in this domain is however by no means easy, for the results we gain do in a certain way contradict our habitual ideas on the subject.

At first sight, when considering the life of a man on earth with all the contents of his destiny, most people will be struck by those events of destiny which are connected with his outer profession or inner calling, with his social position and the like. As to the essential content of his earthly life, a human being will naturally appear to us in the light of these characteristics, nor need they by any means be superficial, for they may signify much for his inner life of soul. Nevertheless, to look into those depths in which repeated lives on earth are seen, it is necessary to look aside from many of these obvious and outer things that stamp themselves upon the destiny of a human being in his earthly life.

In effect, we must not imagine that the outer or inner calling of a man has a very great significance for his karma that passes through repeated lives on earth. True, even if we take a comparatively external and typical calling, that of a civil servant for example, we can conceive how much it is connected, even outwardly, with his destiny. Nevertheless, for the deepest relationships of karma or destiny those things that we can describe in a man as proceeding from his external calling are sometimes of no significance at all. And so it is with inner callings too. How easily we are tempted, in the case of a musician, to think that at any rate in one former earthly life he was, if not a musician, an artist of some kind. But it is by no means always so. Nay, I must go farther—it is so only in the rarest cases. For when we investigate these things in reality, we find that the continued thread of karma or destiny goes far deeper into the inner being of man and is little connected with his outer profession or inner calling. It is far more concerned with the inner forces of soul and resistances of soul, with moral relationships which can, after all, reveal themselves in any and every calling whether it be an outer or an inner one.

For this very reason, the investigation of karma—of the thread of destiny—requires us to concentrate on circumstances in the life of a human being which may often appear outwardly trivial or of small importance. In this connection I must refer again and again to a fact that once occurred to me.

I had to investigate the karmic connections of a certain human being. He had many characteristics in this his present life. He had a certain task in life, he had indeed his profession. But to intuitive vision, from all that he did out of his profession, or that he did as a philanthropist and the like, no indication of his former earthly lives could be found. Not that these things were unconnected with his former lives on earth, but for spiritual vision they gave no clue. One could penetrate no farther when concentrating on these facts of his profession or of his philanthropic work. On the other hand, curiously enough, a quite unimportant peculiarity of his life gave a result. He frequently had to lecture. Every time before he began he quite habitually took out his pocket handkerchief and blew his nose! I often heard him lecture, and without exception whenever he began to speak (I do not mean when he began to speak in conversation, but whenever he had to speak continuously) he first took out his pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose. Now this gave a picture from which there radiated out the power to look into his former lives on earth.

I give this as a particularly grotesque example. It is not always so grotesque; but the point is, we must be able to enter into the whole human being if we wish to look in any valid way into his karma.

You see, from a deeper point of view, the special calling of a man is, after all, something that results from education and other circumstances. On the other hand, it is deeply connected with his inner spiritual configuration if every time before he begins to make a speech he simply cannot help taking out his pocket-handkerchief and blowing his nose! That is a thing far more intimately connected with the being of a man. Still, I admit, this is a radical and extreme example. It is not always quite like this. I wanted only to awaken in you the idea that for the investigation of karma, that which lies on the obvious surface of a man's life is as a rule of no use. We have to enter into certain intimate features of his life—I do not mean into things that one pries into unjustifiably—but into the finer qualities and characteristics that nevertheless appear quite openly.

Having said this by way of introduction, I will now relate a certain instance perfectly frankly and straightforwardly, and of course with all the reservations which are necessary in the case. I mean with the reservation that everyone is free to believe or disbelieve what I now say, though I must assure you that it is based on the deepest and most earnest spiritual-scientific research.

These things do not by any means come to one if one approaches them with the deliberate intention to investigate, like a modern scientist in his laboratory. In a certain way, researches on karma must themselves result from karma.

I had to mention this fact at the end of the new edition of my book Theosophy, for among the various strange requirements that have been made of me from time to time during my life, this too occurred not long ago.—It was suggested that I should submit myself to examination in some psychological laboratory, so that they might ascertain whether the things I have to say on spiritual science are well founded. It is of course just as absurd as if someone were to produce mathematical results and, instead of testing their accuracy, you were to challenge him to submit to an examination in a laboratory, to see whether or not he was a real mathematician. Absurdities of this kind go under the name of scholarship to-day and are taken seriously by learned people!

I said quite definitely at the close of the new edition of my Theosophy, that experiments in this spirit can of course give no result. And I also mentioned that all the paths of approach which lead to the discovery of a certain occult result must themselves be prepared in a spiritual, in a super-sensible way.

Now I once had occasion to meet an eminent doctor of our time, who was well known to me by reputation and especially by his literary career. I had a very high regard for him. You see, I am mentioning the karmic details which led to the investigation, the results of which I shall now describe. The investigation itself took a very long time and only reached its conclusion during the last few weeks. Only now has it reached a stage which enables me conscientiously to speak of it. I am mentioning all these details in order that you may see some at least of the inner connections, though of course not all of them.

Thus I made the acquaintance of this doctor, a man of our own day. When I met him I was in the company of another person whom I had known very well for a long time. This other person had always made, I will not say a deep, but a very thorough impression on me. He was exceedingly fond of the society of men who were interested in occultism in the widest possible range, though an occultism somewhat externally conceived. He was fond of relating the views of his many acquaintances on all kinds of occult matters, and especially on the occult connections of what the modern artist should strive for, as a lyric and epic poet, or as a dramatist. Around this person there was what I might call a kind of moral, ethical aura. I am applying the word ‘moral’ to all that is connected with the soul-qualities under the command of the will.

I was paying a visit to him, and in his company I found the other man first mentioned, whom I knew by reputation and respected very highly for his literary and medical career. Everything that took place during this visit made a deep impression on me and impelled me to receive the whole experience into the realm of spiritual research.

Then a very remarkable thing happened. By witnessing the two persons in the company of one another, and by the impression which my new acquaintance made on me—(I had known him for a long time as an eminent literary and medical man and had a great regard for him, but this was the first time that I saw him in the flesh)—by these impressions I gained certain perceptions. To begin with however, it enabled me, not to investigate in any way the connections in life and destiny of my new acquaintance. On the contrary, my seeing them together shed light as it were upon the other one, whom I had long known. And the result was this.—He had lived in ancient Egypt, not in his last, but in one of his former lives on earth. And (this is the peculiar thing) he had been mummified, embalmed as a mummy. Soon afterwards I discovered that the mummy was still in existence. Indeed a long time afterwards I saw the actual mummy. This, then, was the starting-point. But once the line of research had been kindled in connection with the person whom I had long known, it shed its light still farther, and eventually I was enabled to investigate the karmic connections of the other man, my new acquaintance, the doctor. And the following was the result.

As a general rule one is led from one earthly life of a human being to the preceding one. But in this case intuition led far back into ancient Egypt, to a kind of chieftain in ancient Egypt. It was a chieftain who in a certain sense, indeed in a very interesting way, possessed the ancient Egyptian Initiation, but had become somewhat decadent as an Initiate. In the further course of his life, he began to take his Initiation not very seriously, indeed he even treated it with a certain scorn. Now this man had a servant, who in his turn was extremely serious. This servant was of course not initiated; but both of them together were given the task of embalming mummies and procuring the substances for this purpose, which was no easy matter.

Now especially in the more ancient periods of Egypt, the process of embalming mummies was very complicated and demanded an intimate knowledge of the human being, of the human body. Nay more, of those who had to do the embalming—if they did it legitimately—deep knowledge of the human soul was required. The chieftain of whom I spoke had been initiated for this very work, but he gradually became, in a manner of speaking, frivolous in relation to this, his proper calling. So it came about that in the course of time he betrayed (so they would have put it in the language of the Mysteries) the knowledge he had received through his Initiation to his servant, and the latter gradually proved to be a man who understood the content of Initiation better than the Initiate himself. Thus the servant became the embalmer of mummies, and at length his master did not even trouble to supervise the work, though of course he still took advantage of the social position, etc., which this honourable task involved. But at length his character became such that he no longer enjoyed great respect, and he thus came into various conflicts of life. The servant, on the other hand, worked his way up by degrees to a very, very earnest conception of life, and was thus taken hold of, in a remarkably congenial way, by a kind of Initiation. It was no real Initiation, but it lived within him instinctively. Thus a large number of mummies were mummified under the supervision and co-operation of these two people.

Time went on. The two men passed through the gate of death and underwent the experiences of which I shall speak next time—the experiences in the super-sensible which are connected with the development of karma or destiny. And in the Roman epoch they both of them came back to earthly life. They came back at the very time when the dominion of the Roman Emperors was founded, in the time of Augustus—not exactly, but approximately, in the time of Augustus himself.

I said above that this is a matter of conscientious research, no less exact in its methods than any researches of physics or chemistry, and I should not speak of these things unless for some weeks past it had become possible for me to speak of them so definitely.

The chieftain, who had gradually become a really frivolous Initiate, and who, when he had passed through the gate of death, had felt this as an extraordinarily bitter trial of earthly life, experiencing it in all the bitterness of its effects—we find him again as Julia, the daughter of Augustus. She married Tiberius, the step-son of Augustus, and led a life which to herself seemed justified but was considered, in the Roman society of that time, so immoral that at length both she and Tiberius were banished.

The other man—the servant who had worked his way from the bottom upwards nearly to the grade of an Initiate—was born again at the same time, as the Roman historian Titus Livius, or Livy.

It is most interesting how Livy came to be an historian. In the ancient Egyptian times he had embalmed a large number of mummies. The souls who had lived in the bodies of these mummies—very many of them—were reincarnated as Romans. And certain ones among them were actually reincarnated as the seven Kings of Rome. For the Seven Kings were no mere legendary figures. Going back into the time when the chieftain and his servant had lived in Egypt, we come into a very old Egyptian epoch. Now through a certain law which applies especially to the reincarnation of souls whose bodies have been mummified, these souls were called back again to earth comparatively soon. And the karmic connection of the servant of the chieftain with the souls whose bodies he had embalmed was so intimate, that he had to write the history of the very same human being whom in a previous life he had embalmed, though naturally, he also included the history of many others whom he had not embalmed. Thus Titus Livius became an historian. Now I would like some, indeed as many of you as possible, to take Livy's Roman History, and, with the knowledge that results from these karmic connections, to receive a real impression of his style. You will see that his peculiar penetration into the human being and his tendency at the same time towards the style of the myth, is akin to that intimate knowledge of man which an embalmer could attain.

We do not perceive such connections until the corresponding researches have been made. But once this has been done, a great light is shed on many things. It is difficult to understand the origin of the peculiar style of Titus Livius, who as it were embalms the human beings whom he describes. For such is his style. Real light is thrown upon it when we point to these connections.

Thus we have the same two people again as Julia and Titus Livius. Then Julia and Livy passed once more through the gate of death. The one soul had had the experience of being an Initiate to a considerable degree, and having then distorted his Initiation by frivolous conduct. He had discovered all the bitterness of the after-effects of this in the life between death and a new birth. He had then undergone a peculiar destiny in his new life on earth as Julia, of which life you may read in history. The result was, that in his next life between death and a new birth (following on the life as Julia) he conceived a strong antipathy to this his incarnation as Julia. And in a curious way this antipathy of his was universalised. For spiritual intuition shows this individuality in his life between death and a new birth as though perpetually crying out: “Would that I had never become a woman! It was the evil that I did in yonder life in ancient Egypt which led me thus to become a woman.”

We can now trace the life of these two individualities still farther. We come into the Middle Ages. We find Livy again as the glad poet and minstrel in the very centre of the Middle Ages. We are astonished to find him thus, for there is no connection between the external callings. But the greatest possible surprises that a human being can possibly have are those that result from a real study of successive lives on earth. The Roman historian, with his style that proceeded from a knowledge of man acquired in embalming mummies, with his style so wonderfully light—we find him again as the poet Walther von der Vogelweide. His style is carried upwards, as it were, upon the wings of lyric poetry.

Walther von der Vogelweide lived in the Tyrol. He had many patrons; and among his many patrons there was one very peculiar man, who was on familiar terms with alchemists of every kind, for there were scores of alchemists at that time, in the Tyrol. This man was himself the owner of a castle, but he frequented all manner of alchemists' dens and hovels. In so doing he learned extraordinarily much, and (as happened in the case of Paracelsus too) by spending his time in the dens of alchemists he was impelled to study all occult matters very intensely, and gained an unusually intense feeling for occult things. He thus came into the position of rediscovering in the Tyrol what was then only known as a legend, namely, the Castle in the Mountain—the Castle in the Rocks—(which indeed no one would have recognised as such, for it consisted of rocks, it was hollowed out of the rocks)—I mean, the Castle of the Dwarf King Laurin. The daemonic nature in the district of the Castle of the Dwarf King Laurin made a profound impression on him. Thus there was a remarkable combination in this soul—Initiation which he had carried into frivolity, annoyance at having been a woman and having thus been drawn into the sphere of Roman immorality and, at the same time, Roman cant and hypocrisy about morals; and lastly, an intimate knowledge, though still only external, of all manner of alchemical matters, which knowledge he had extended to a clear feeling of the nature-daemons and of other spiritual agencies in nature.

These two men—though it is not recorded in the biography of Walther, nevertheless it is the case—Walther von der Vogelweide and this other man often came together, and Walther received many an influence and impulse from him.

Here we have an instance of what is really a kind of karmic law. We see the same people drawn together again and again, called to the earth again and again simultaneously, complementing one another, living in a kind of mutual contrast. It is interesting once more, to enter into the peculiar lyrical style of Walther. It is as though at last he had grown thoroughly sick of embalming dead mummies and had turned to an entirely different aspect of life. He will no longer have anything to do with dead things, but only with the fullness and joy of life. And yet again, there is a certain undercurrent of pessimism in his work. Feel the style of Walther von der Yogelweide, feel in his style the two preceding earthly lives: feel too, his restless life. It is extraordinarily reminiscent of that life which dawns upon one who spends much of his time with the dead, when many destinies are unburdened in the soul. For such indeed was the case with an embalmer of mummies.

Now we go on.—My further researches into this karmic chain led me at length into the same room where I had visited my old acquaintance, whom I had recognised as an Egyptian mummy. And now I perceived that this very mummy had been embalmed by the other man whom I now met in his room. The whole line of research led me back to this same room. In effect, I found the soul who had passed through the servant of the old Egyptian embalmer, through Titus Livius, through Walther von der Vogelweide—I found him again in the doctor of our time, in Ludwig Schleich.

Thus astonishingly do the connections in life appear. Who, with the ordinary consciousness alone, can understand an earthly life? It can only be understood when we know what is there in the foundations of a soul. Theoretically, many people know that deep in the foundations of the soul there are the layers of successive earthly lives. But it becomes real and concrete only when we behold it in a specific instance.

Then inner vision was directed out of this room once more. (For in the case of the other man, who had been mummified by this one, I was led to no more clues—at any rate to no important ones.) On the other hand I now perceived the further soul-pilgrimage of the old chieftain, of Julia, of the discoverer of Laurin's Castle. For he came back to earth as August Strindberg.

Now I would like you to take the whole life and literary work of August Strindberg and set it against the background which I have just described. See the peculiar misogyny of Strindberg, which is no true misogyny, but proceeds from quite different foundations. Look, too, at all the strange daemonic elements that occur in his works. See his peculiar attraction to all manner of alchemistic and occult arts and artifices. And at length, look at the adventurous life of August Strindberg. You will find how well it stands out against the background which I have described.

Then read the Memoirs of Ludwig Schleich, his relations to August Strindberg, and you will see how all this arises once more against the background of their former earthly lives. Indeed, from the Memoirs of Ludwig Schleich a very remarkable light may suddenly arise, a light truly astonishing. For the man in whose company I first met Ludwig Schleich—the man of whom I said that in his ancient Egyptian life he was mummified by Schleich—it is he of whom Schleich himself tells in his Memoirs that he led him to Strindberg. In a past life, Strindberg and Schleich had worked together upon the corpse. And the soul who dwelt in that body, led them together again.

Thus, all that we have to explain to begin with about repeated earthly lives and the karmic connections in general, becomes real and concrete. Only then do the facts that appear in earthly life become transparent. A single human life on earth is an entire mystery. What else can it be, until seen against the background of the former lives on earth?

My dear friends, when I explain such things as these I always have an accompanying feeling. If these things which it has become possible to set forth since the Christmas Foundation Meeting are to be regarded in a true sense they demand real earnestness in the listener. They demand an earnest spirit. They require us to stand with real earnestness in the Anthroposophical Movement. For they might easily lead to all manner of frivolities. But they are brought forward here because it is necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to-day to take its stand on a basis of real earnestness and to become conscious of its tasks in modern civilisation.

Having thus laid the foundation, I wish to speak in the next lecture about the karma of the Anthroposophical Society. And in the following lecture which I shall then announce, I shall pass on to describe what these studies of karma may become for the human being who wishes to understand his own life in its deeper meaning.

Having spoken so often about the School of Chartres and its great significance for the inner spiritual life of the West, I have received a welcome gift during the last few days: a gift of pictures, some of which have been put up here for you to see. Others will be added next Tuesday. In these pictures you will see what wonderful architectural works and works of sculpture in the mediaeval sense, arose at the place where flourished that spiritual life of which I have now spoken so often.

The personalities who were gathered in the School of Chartres still had the impulse, even in the 12th century, to enter as teachers or students into the living spiritual life that had arisen in the turning-point of time—I mean in the epoch of European evolution when humanity, inasmuch as they were seekers after knowledge, still sought it in the living weaving and working of the nature-beings, and not in the conception of void and abstract natural laws.

Thus in the School of Chartres there was a deep devotion to spiritual powers, notably to those that hold sway in Nature. All this was cultivated there—no longer, it is true, by Initiates into the ancient Mysteries—but by personalities who had the heart and mind to receive from tradition much that had once been direct spiritual experience. And I have told you of the mysterious radiations of light from the School of Chartres which we can truly recognise in the spirit of Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of Dante. I tried to explain how the individualities of Chartres worked on in the spiritual worlds in unison with those who afterwards came down, more in the Dominican Order, as the bearers of Scholasticism. We may put it thus.—The individualities of Chartres were obliged to see, out of the signs of the times, that there would be no place for them within the earthly life until the time when the element of Michael, which was to begin at the end of the 19th century, should have been working for a while on earth.

In a far-reaching sense these individualities of Chartres took part in the super-sensible teachings of which I spoke last time—teachings that were given under the aegis of Michael himself, so as to pour forth impulses which were to hold good for the spiritual life of coming centuries. And it may be said indeed that anyone who would devote himself to the cultivation of spiritual life to-day must necessarily stand under the influence of those great impulses.

Broadly speaking we may say that there have been very few reincarnations of the spirits of Chartres hitherto. Nevertheless it was granted to me to look back upon the School of Chartres through a certain stimulus, if I may describe it so, which came to me out of the life of the present time.

There was a monk in the School of Chartres who was altogether devoted to the life-element that existed in that school. But in the School of Chartres, especially if one was truly devoted to it, one felt as it were a twilight mood of the spiritual life. All that was reminiscent still of the great and deep impulses of the spiritual Platonism that had been handed down—all this was living in Chartres. But it lived in such a way that the bearers of the spiritual life of Chartres said to themselves: In the future, alas, the civilisation of Europe will no longer be receptive for this living, Platonic spirituality.

It is touching to see how the School of Chartres preserves as it were the portraits of the inspiring genii of the Seven Liberal Arts, as they were called: Grammatica, Dialectica, Rhetorica, Arithmetica, Geometría, Astronomía and Musica. Even in the reception of the Spiritual that was contained in the Seven Liberal Arts, they still saw in them the living gifts of the gods, coming to man through spiritual beings. They did not see the mere communication of dead thoughts about dead laws of Nature. And they could see that Europe in the future would no longer be receptive to these things. Hence there was a feeling of evening twilight in the spiritual life.

Now one of those monks who was especially devoted to the teachings and the works of Chartres, was, after all, reincarnated in our time. He was reincarnated, moreover, in such a way that one could find in this case most wonderfully the echo and reflection of the former life in the present. This personality lived in our time as an authoress who was not only my acquaintance, but my friend. [Marie Eugenie delle Grazie.] She died a considerable time ago. She bore within her a strange mood of soul, about which I should not have spoken until now, although I observed it many years ago. To speak of these things has indeed only been possible since the Christmas feeling came over our Anthroposophical Society. For this has brought a peculiar illumination over these things, and it is possible, as I have already said, to speak about such matters openly and without embarrassment to-day.

When one was in conversation with that authoress, she returned again and again to the theme that she would like to die. But her desire to die did not spring from a sentimental or hypochondriac, nay, not even from a melancholic mood of soul. If one had the psychological vision to enter into such things, one found one's way far, far back into her soul until at length one had to say: It is the echo and reflection of a former life on earth. In a former life on earth a seed was planted which now comes forth, I will not say in the longing for death, but in this feeling that the soul, being now incarnated, yet has nothing really to do with this present age.

Her writings, too, are of this nature. They seem to be written out of a different world—not indeed as to their facts and communications—but as to their mood and feeling. And we can understand this mood only if we find the way from the dim light of her writings, from the dim light that lived as a fundamental disposition in her own soul, back to that monk of Chartres who felt in Chartres the evening twilight mood of a living Platonism.

In this authoress it was not a question of temperament or melancholy or sentimentality; it was the raying-in of a former life on earth. And her present soul was like a mirror into which the life of Chartres really penetrated. Not indeed the content of the teachings of Chartres, but their moods and feelings, had been transmitted from the one life to the other in this personality. Transplanting oneself into these moods, and looking back, one could receive in them as it were spiritual photographs of the personalities who are also to be found by direct spiritual research in the worlds where they now are—the personalities who taught in Chartres.

Thus you see, life brings to one in many ways the karmic possibilities to gaze into these matters. Last time, I described my experiences with the Cistercian Order. To-day I would supplement what I then said by referring to the evening twilight mood of the School of Chartres which penetrated into the heart and soul of an extraordinarily interesting personality, who lived again in the present time. She has long ago found her way back into the worlds for which she longed. She has found her way back to the Fathers of Chartres. And if her whole soul-life had not been dominated by a kind of weariness as the karmic outcome of the mood-of-soul of yonder monk of Chartres, I could scarcely imagine a personality more fitted to behold the spiritual life of the present day in connection with the traditional life of the Middle Ages.

There is another thing which I would mention here. When there are such karmic impulses working deep in the foundations of the soul, we find what is otherwise a very rare occurrence: we find in the physical expression of the countenance in a later incarnation, a likeness to the former. The face of yonder monk and of the authoress of the present time were indeed extraordinarily alike.

Now in these connections I will gradually pass on to the karma of the Anthroposophical Society, or of the individualities of its members. For as I said last time, a large number of the souls who stand sincerely within the Anthroposophical Movement were connected somewhere and somewhen with that stream of Michael which I must now characterise. You will remember all that I have said in this connection about Alexander and Aristotle and about the events in super-sensible worlds at the time when the 8th Council in Constantinople took place here in this world of sense. You will remember what I said of the continuation, in the spiritual and in the physical, of the life of the Court of Haroun al Raschid, until at length I spoke of that super-sensible School which stood under the aegis of Michael himself. Deeply significant was the teaching of that School. On the one hand it pointed again and again to the connections with the ancient Mysteries, to all that must now come forth once more in a new form from the content of the ancient Mysteries, to permeate modern civilisation with spirituality. On the other hand it pointed to the impulses which souls, devoted to the spiritual life, must have for their work into the future. And we know that from an understanding of the spiritual stream we may also come to understand how Anthroposophy, in its real essence, signifies the impulse for a renewal, for a true and sincere understanding of the Christ-Impulse.

For in the Anthroposophical Movement we find two kinds of souls. A large number of them have partaken in those currents which were, so to speak, the officially Christian ones in the first centuries. They witnessed all that came into the world as Christianity, notably in the times of Constantine, and immediately after him. Many of those who approached Christianity with the very deepest sincerity at that time and received it with inner depth and penetration, many of them are found in the Anthroposophical Society to-day with the deep impulse towards an understanding of Christianity. I do not mean so much the Christians who followed such movements as that of Constantine himself; I rather mean those Christians who claimed to be the true Christians, who were distributed in different Christian sects. In those Christian sects we find many of the souls who to-day approach the Anthroposophical Movement sincerely, though often through subconscious impulses which the surface consciousness may even largely misinterpret.

But there are other souls: there are those who did not partake directly in that development of Christianity. They either partook in Christianity at a later stage of its development when the deep inner life of the sects was no longer there, or on the other hand—and this is the most important thing—they still had, living and unextinguished in the depths of their souls, much of what was experienced in pre-Christian time as the ancient wisdom of the heathen Mysteries. They too often partook in Christianity; but it did not make so deep an impression upon them as upon the other souls described before. For there still remained alive in them the impression of the teachings, the rituals and practices of ancient Mysteries. Now among those who have entered the Anthroposophical Movement in this way we find many who are seeking for the Christ in an abstract sense. The other souls above described are happy, so to speak, to find Christianity once more within the Anthroposophical Movement. But many of the souls I now mean grasp with real inner understanding the Cosmic Christianity which Anthroposophy contains. Christ as the Cosmic Spirit of the Sun is taken hold of most especially by the souls (and they are very numerous in the Anthroposophical Movement) in the depths of whom much is still living of what they underwent in connection with ancient heathen Mysteries.

Now all this is deeply connected with the currents of the whole spiritual life of mankind in the present time—I mean the present time in a wider sense, reaching over decades and centuries.

Anthroposophy after all has grown out of the spiritual life of the present time, and though in its contents it has nothing directly in common with this spiritual life, karmically it has grown out of it in many ways. We must turn our eyes to many things which do not apparently belong to what works in Anthroposophy directly, if we would include in our spiritual horizon all that partook in the different streams I have mentioned. I said a little while ago that we only truly understand what takes place outwardly on the physical plane if we see in the background what is poured down from the fields of the spirit into these events as they take place on the physical plane. We must regain the courage to bring into our present life that feeling of the ancient Mysteries. We must connect the physical events not merely abstractly with a vaguely Pantheistic or Theistic or whatever spiritual life. We must become able to trace the detailed events, nay more, the inner experiences of men within these events, to the spiritual source and background.

We are led to do so among other things by something that belongs to the deepest tasks of the present time. For in the present time we must seek again for a real knowledge of man in body, soul and spirit—not a knowledge rooted in abstract ideas or laws, but one that is able to look into the true foundation of the human being as a whole. To gain such knowledge man must be searched through and through in his conditions of health and sickness; and not in a merely physical sense as is customary to-day, for then we should not learn to know the human being. By merely physical knowledge we can never learn to know what works so deeply into the life of man, determining his destiny: his unhappiness, his sickness, his abilities or absence of abilities. Karma in all its forms—this we can only know if from the starting-point of the physical we can trace the spiritual life of a man and his inner life of soul.

How do people work, in the ordinary scientific striving of to-day? They study the human being quite externally as to his organs and vessels, his nerves, the vessels of the circulation of the blood and so forth. But when the health and sickness of man are studied in this fashion one cannot find the spirit and soul in all these things.

Indeed the anatomist or physiologist of to-day may well speak in the words of a famous astronomer of the past, who, in answer to a question which his sovereign had put to him, replied:“I have searched through the whole universe, through all the stars and all their movements, but I have found no God!” So said the astronomer. And the anatomist or physiologist of to-day could say: “I have searched through them all—heart and kidneys, stomach and brain, blood-vessels and nerves—but I have found neither soul nor spirit.”

All the problems and difficulties of modern medicine, for example, are subject to this influence. And all these things must be dealt with in the Anthroposophical Movement today, according to the tasks which are placed before it. In general terms these questions must be unfolded before the Anthroposophical Society as a whole; in detail they must be treated in an expert way within the several groups. Thus, for example, I am now speaking on Pastoral Medicine to a group who are prepared for it by training and profession. Here we must seek the way into those great connections which proceed in the last resort from the workings of the streams of karma. In time to come it will be seen how pathology and therapeutics, how the observation of man in sickness and disease, will make it absolutely necessary to enter into the deep questions of the soul and spirit. As I have said again and again, the external and physical—the physical as presented by natural science—is to be respected in the fullest sense. Yet men will find themselves compelled to take into account the higher members of man's nature when considering disease and health. This will be seen in the book¹ on which my dear fellow-worker Frau Dr. Wegman and I are working together, on the subject of man in health and in disease. Now these researches especially, seeking the ways of entry from the physical man into the spiritual, can only lead to good and promising results if we set about them in the right way. For in such work we must not only use the knowledge-forces of the present, but we must use the knowledge-forces which arise by picking up the threads of karma—the karmic threads proceeding from the history and evolution of mankind. We must indeed work with the forces of karma in order to penetrate these secrets.

In the first volume, only the beginnings of our work will be published. The work will then be carried forward and from the more elementary expositions we shall proceed to unfold the particular knowledge of man which can arise from this medical, therapeutic and pathological aspect of spiritual science. This work has only been made possible through the presence in Frau Dr. Wegman of a personality whose medical studies have entered into her in such a way as to evolve quite naturally, as a matter of course, towards a spiritual conception and perception of the human being.

Now it is in the course of these researches, when we behold in spiritual perspective all the workings of the human organs, that those perceptions also arise which lead us in turn to the deeper karmic connections. The same manner of perception must be evolved to perceive the spiritual realities that underlie, not the whole man, but his several organs. (For, if you will, it is the Jupiter world that underlies one organ, the Venus world that underlies another, and so forth.) The same insight which we must evolve in this direction, leads also to the possibility of perceiving human personalities in past earthly lives. For in the present earthly life man stands before us within the limits of his skin. But when we become able to gaze into his single organs, what was contained within the skin expands and expands. Each of the single organs points us to a different direction of the universe. The organs prepare the roads that lead us far out into the macrocosm, until far out yonder the human being once again appears as a complete and rounded whole. It is the human being built up once more in the spirit, having transcended the present form, the form that is enclosed within the skin—it is this that we need. For the sum-total of the human organs—which even physically is altogether different from what the present-day anatomist or physiologist conceives—when we trace it out into the cosmos, leads to perceptions which correspond in turn to the spiritual perception of the former earthly lives of man. Then we experience the inner connections that shed their light upon the evolution and history of mankind, explaining what is physically there to-day. For in reality the whole past of human beings lives in the present time. Yet the vague and abstract saying by itself is of no avail. Materialists too will say the same. The point is to perceive how the past is living in the present.

And of this I would now give you an example, an example which is in itself so wonderful that it called forth in me the greatest imaginable wonder when I first came to it as a result of spiritual research. And many things which I have said before must now be rectified, or at any rate must be completed, by that which I shall now set forth.

You see, for one who studies history with feeling for its inner meaning, a certain event in the first centuries of Christianity is wrapped in the atmosphere of a strange mystery. We see on the one side a personality of whom we may well think that in his inner life he was little fitted to take hold of Christianity or to make it what it then became, the official Christianity of the West. I mean the Emperor Constantine, of whom we have so often spoken. Then, side by side with him (not literally of course, but gazing back into that age from a considerable distance in time), side by side with Constantine we see Julian the Apostate. Julian the Apostate, he of a truth was one in whom the wisdom of the Mysteries was living, as we may know. Julian the Apostate could speak of a Threefold Sun. Indeed he lost his life through being regarded as a betrayer of the Mysteries, because he spoke about the Threefold Sun. Of these things it was no longer allowed to speak in his time; still less would it have been allowed in earlier times. But Julian the Apostate stood in a peculiar relation to Christianity. In a certain sense we must again and again be surprised that the genius, the fine spirituality and intellect of Julian was so little receptive to the greatness of Christianity. It was simply due to the fact that in his environment he saw very little of what he conceived as a true inner sincerity, whereas among those who introduced him to the ancient Mysteries he found great sincerity—positive, active sincerity. Such was the case with Julian the Apostate.

Yonder in Asia he was murdered. Many a fable is told about the murder. The truth is that it took place because he was regarded as a betrayer of the Mysteries. It was a murder altogether pre-arranged.

Now if we make ourselves to some extent acquainted with that which lived in Julian we cannot but be deeply interested in the question: How did his individuality live on in later times? For his was a peculiar individuality, one of whom it must be said that he would have been better fitted than Constantine, better than Clodvig and all the others, to make straight the ways of Christianity. This lay inherent in his soul. If the time had been favourable, if the conditions had existed, he could have brought about out of the ancient Mysteries a straightforward continuation from the pre-Christian Christ, the true macrocosmic Logos, to the Christ who was to work on within mankind after the Mystery of Golgotha. He was indeed a vessel well prepared. Strange as it may sound, we find it so, if we enter into his true spirit. We find in the foundations of his soul the true impulse to take hold of Christianity. But he did not let it emerge, he suppressed it, misled by the stupidities which Celsus had written about Jesus. It does indeed happen now and then that men of real genius are led astray by the stupidest effusions of their fellow-men. Thus we may have the feeling: Julian would really have been the soul to make straight the ways of Christianity and to bring Christianity into its true and proper channel.

We now leave the soul of Julian the Apostate in that earthly life and follow the same individuality with the highest interest through spiritual worlds. But there is always something vague and unclear about it. Only the most intense spiritual striving can come at length to a clear perception of his further course.

On many matters very adequate ideas existed in the Middle Ages. They might be legendary, but they were adequate; they corresponded to the real events. Legendary though they may be, how adequate are the narratives that centred round the personality of Alexander the Great. How vividly his life appears, as I already said, in the description of Lamprecht the Priest!

But that which lives on of Julian, lives on in such a way that we must say again and again: It seeks to disappear from before the vision of mankind. And as we seek to follow it we have the greatest difficulty, so to speak, in keeping it within our spiritual field of vision. Again and again it escapes us. We trace it through the centuries into the Middle Ages and it escapes us. But when at length we do succeed in following it to the end, we land at a strange place, which though it be not historic in the proper sense, is in reality more than historic. We come at length to the figure of a woman, in whom we find again the soul of Julian the Apostate. It was a woman who accomplished an important deed in her life under the impression of an essentially painful event. For she beheld, not in herself, but in the person of another, an image of the fate of Julian the Apostate, inasmuch as Julian the Apostate went on a campaign to the East and there lost his life by treachery.

The woman whom I mean is Herzeleide, the mother of Parsifal, who was an historic character though history itself tells nothing of her. In Gamuret, whom she married and who lost his life through treachery upon an Eastern campaign, she was pointed to her own destiny in the former life as Julian the Apostate. This went deep into her soul, and under this impression she achieved what is told to us in a legendary way—yet it is historic in the truest sense—of the education of Parsifal by Herzeleide.

The soul of Julian the Apostate who had remained thus in the depths and of whom one would believe that it should have been his very mission to prepare the right way for Christianity—this soul is found again in the Middle Ages in the body of a woman who sent out Parsifal, to seek and to find the esoteric paths for Christianity.

Mysterious like this, and full of riddles, are the paths of mankind in the background, in the foundations of existence. This example—and it is strangely interwoven with the one which I already told you in connection with the School of Chartres—this example may make you realise how wonderful are the paths of the human soul and the paths of evolution for all mankind.

We shall continue speaking of it in the next lecture, when I shall have more to say of the life of Herzeleide and of what was then sent forth, physically, in Parsifal. I shall begin next time at this point where we must break off to-day.

• 1. Fundamentals of Therapy; an Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge, by Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D. and Ita Wegman, M.D. (Zurich). English translation by George Adams, M.A.

As you can see from the announcement, we will have a weekly meeting every Monday. This is to be considered a meeting of the Besant branch. The notes on the invitation are to be taken into account. Last year's work has made the venue too small. It is not at all our intention to be exclusive and to hold these Mondays for the branch alone. We would like to expand the matter, but on the other hand it seems a bit harsh to the members if non-members without excuse have access throughout the year, especially this year, when perhaps even more intimate things could be discussed in these Monday meetings than last year. We are getting deeper and deeper into it. The other meetings are then in the architect's house. This year, particular attention will be paid to demonstrating the significance of Theosophy and its importance for the present. I will speak about important questions in their relation to current affairs. Next Thursday, I will speak about Haeckel's world riddle, then about our world situation, and then about the question of inner development. The cycle will then conclude with a reflection on Christmas.

I have just completed a major lecture tour. A tour such as this is not only educational for the one undertaking it, but it can also be educational for the widest circles of those who are interested in Theosophy. I was in St. Gallen, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Frankfurt am Main, Kassel, Weimar. In most places I was able to give a public lecture, and then in the following days I had a discussion with those listeners who were more interested. We do not yet have branches in all these places. But that is not to say that we will not. We do not want to proceed in a stormy, agitating way. Those who come to the Theosophical Society should come because they have an inner urge to do so. Therefore, it will be good to cultivate Theosophy as much as possible and to tell the audience what it is all about. I am convinced that those who are predestined to participate will come. I was able to perceive that there is a great longing for what the Theosophical Society has to offer humanity. The Theosophists within it are deeply responsive to what people need and desire today. On the other hand, there is a certain despondency, a certain sum of prejudices with which people are afflicted, and which prevent them from immediately dealing with Theosophy. There is much to be overcome. This is shown by such a journey, on which one gets to know the most diverse moods. Despite all discouragement, such a journey has a certain satisfying impression. One sees in the hearts of men that which must live if we want to move towards the future, which the theosophical movement wants to strive for.

So let us touch on a few questions that may be of particular interest to us, without making any judgments. You only need to take a look at the current world situation to be able to recall at any moment how necessary Theosophy and Theosophical striving are today. You can look at all parts of the world, everywhere you see peoples and classes in a hard struggle for existence. Races are fighting each other, nations are at war with each other, individual classes in individual countries are sharply opposed to each other. Against this, we have nothing much other than our first principle: to establish the core of a universal brotherhood, without distinction of race, sex, class or creed. That is a powerful principle, people say. But many appeal to what Schopenhauer has already said: preaching morality is easy, but establishing morality is difficult. The theosophical movement is not a doctrine, not a foundation. It differs from the other movements of the new time in that it is real life. And the teachings we spread are not the main thing. It is not the teachings that matter to us. They are all only the means to life. And no matter what teachings are proclaimed in the various branches of the movement or at its public events, whether we believe these teachings or do not believe them, whether we can repeat them or cannot repeat them, that is not the point. The point is that the teachings are something quite different from other teachings of present-day science or from the teachings of even the traditional concepts of the Logos. As long as the theosophical teachings are not what they should be, as long as they are the same as other dogmas, as other doctrines and sciences. Only when they are great, when they live into the soul like a magnetic force and work in the soul, will they become what they should be. This is not a lodge where reincarnation and karma, the world view, the origin and purpose of man are merely taught and beautiful sentences are coined, but this is a lodge where these thoughts buzz through the room and touch the deepest part of the heart, so that man feels these teachings as intimately related to him, so that it is as if these teachings come from within him. When these things become so powerful that he not only becomes wiser but also better, then it is the right thing.

This difference will not be immediately understood by many. Many today present themselves as teachers of ethics, of morals, or as teachers of a creed or as educators. We hear people talking about monistic teachings, about a renewal of this or that teaching – all these teachings come across as being deeply different from what the theosophical teacher wants, what we want in general within the theosophical movement. All the others preach or proclaim their supposed truths, they stand there and say, this is our confession, this is our opinion, this is the truth, in my opinion. No Theosophical lecturer could approach an audience in this way. It is not about an opinion. We carry within us the awareness that truth is within ourselves, that it lives in every human breast, that we do not have to bring it in, but at most have to bring it out – that we stimulate our fellow human beings. Thus, what is necessary lies in what has been said, in the bond that unites the Theosophical members. What is discussed in the branches should be a kindling of the inner life in the souls. We bring thoughts from the spiritual world, the great laws from the supersensible existence, which have formed the world, brought forth man, the great laws according to which the wise teachers and masters taught our ancestors millennia ago and still teach us today. We draw on these great laws, and they are at the same time that which carries us forward, which gives us security, courage and hope for life. These laws should permeate the spaces in which we live. And by feeling them, these laws, we recognize the world and ourselves. Then we should let these laws influence our daily activities in the most mundane things we do. Then the members of the Theosophical Society will be like leaven; they will be everywhere on the outside like a new spirit - if that is the case, we will know that the spirit is something true and real.

Anyone who comes here just to hear teachings comes here in vain, because they don't have the right attitude. And this is what matters when faced with the spirit. It is important that the person who comes here knows that the spirit is a reality, a truth, that I do not just get well and ill from [a] medicine, not just from wind and weather, but that what our body and our reality actually is also emanates from what I think, feel and will, that health can only come from a spirit that works healthily. It is even more important that our thoughts are healthy than that our thoughts are true. You will not be able to notice tomorrow or the day after that a source of health emanates from what is done in the theosophical lodge. Think wrongly in the world and you will bring illness into the world, not tomorrow or the day after, but one day for sure. All evil stems from untruth, from an incorrect inner life. This connection will become clear to you in the next Monday lecture. To give humanity a new health, a new harmonious life, that is our main goal. Therefore, our thoughts are not just teachings, but forces. They do not just enlighten, but heal and harmonize, healing the body and healing the legal and social aspects of human coexistence. Those who grasp this so deeply have the core of the theosophical movement. Those who merely ask how this or that relates do not know about theosophy. But the theosophist knows that when he sits together with the others in the branch and the great thoughts of the world order pass through his soul for an hour, he makes himself the sounding board of a new, healthy and harmonious life. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that such a life springs up and exists in the theosophical movement is evident in some phenomena. We started from the premise that we said: you cannot preach morality, you have to establish it. But it seems as if the Theosophical Society has already achieved something that corresponds to and serves the principle of the brotherhood of peoples. There was a beautiful moment at the opening of this year's congress. It was decided that each delegate would give a short speech in his or her mother tongue. There they were, people who, in the external political situation, are in a fierce struggle against each other. A prelude to what can become reality when the spiritual life takes hold of souls was played out at the opening of the London Congress. The following languages could be heard, as a symbol of our principle: Dutch, English, Swedish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Finnish, Russian. There you have a symbol of the same will and the same feeling flowing in the different languages. This is the life that the Theosophical movement has achieved in the thirty years since its inception. There was one of the most beautiful and wonderful moments at this conference – not during the conference itself, but on one of the evenings before – for some members who gathered here during the summer. They were invited to attend a meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge. At that meeting, Annie Besant gave a lecture on the requirements of discipleship. As you know, discipleship is something very high. That evening, it was not so much a matter of discussing the requirements of discipleship in general, but rather of the greatest of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's disciples speaking out about critical minds. Allow me to say a few words about the actual subject. I need only mention here that everything that is the Theosophical Society is owed to the fundamental work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. None of the disciples can claim to have fully grasped what lived in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Those who delve into the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky see more and more that they are entering unfathomable depths, and that in her time the truth flowed through this unique personality as it has only flowed through the greatest religious founders and leaders of humanity. I can understand that in the beginning, when one approaches Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's achievements, one believes that one has understood many things. This can happen to anyone. But then there comes a time when one realizes that the content of the 'Secret Doctrine' contains writings of such spiritual depth that no one, without exception, has ever fully grasped it since Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. You could hear these words from Mrs. Annie Besant at any time.

There is the possibility, even for the greatest leading minds of humanity, to never stop. At least no one has yet found the end point. Deeper and deeper foundations of truth are found when you go deeper. That is what ultimately brings those who have the will to penetrate into a spiritual connection with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is still in contact with the Theosophical movement today. She is still one of the aids for the Theosophical Society today. If we have the right to turn to her, then she will help. One only has to look at what she has done historically. Take a look at her writings. You will find things in them that some scholars say: “This could be cobbled together from all the books in the world.” Yes, but no one has ever found what was available in different places around the world. Some things are in the most hidden places, in places that no other soul has had access to before; you will find exact quotes from writings that no human eye has rested on for centuries in Blavatsky's writings. She wrote so many of them in [Würzburg], while the books [in truth] were in the Vatican.

Of course she also made mistakes. But if you look into them, you will find that the mistakes are based on something specific, namely on a certain uncertainty of reading that always occurs when one has to grope in the astral light. We do not only live in the physical world, we also live in the higher worlds. We see not only the physical, but also the spiritual. We see not only physically, but also spiritually, and there you can also read books that are in the Vatican in Rome, but you can easily read wrong, you can easily read 136 instead of 631. Where mistakes have been made, it turns out that they have always been made in this way. Every objection that is raised against the truly valuable, the great and significant aspects of this personality can be easily refuted by anyone who really engages with it. But it seems that not many people are willing to get to the bottom of the matter, despite everything. Otherwise it would not have been possible for small mistakes by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to have been ridiculed here and there in recent times – even in the English “Vâhan” – that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was sometimes passionately agitated, used a harsh, passionate word, smoked cigarettes. The question was raised as to whether someone who smokes cigarettes can really be a great person, can sometimes be agitated. This was the reason for Mrs. Besant's lecture on Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Now this greatest disciple of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky spoke from her innermost being. Everyone who was there will have found that something tremendous emerged from within, everyone had to feel that something deep was alive there. She discussed the fact that there may be people who have not gone astray – but [she also] asked whether they also have the great qualities of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Of course, there are also many who do not smoke cigarettes, but do they have the great qualities of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky? The sun also has sunspots, but these do not illuminate the earth. It is light that has a warming and fertilizing effect. Those who want to have it, who want to achieve what Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was able to give to humanity, must also be able to see it - and be satisfied with what is great and powerful about it. Then they will come closer and closer to the impersonal source of wisdom, truth and life.

The fact that this was spoken out of a deeply serious experience was what mattered, and it was spoken by a personality who herself admitted that evening that [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky] was the Bringer of Light for her. Then came the beautiful, profound words in which Annie Besant, as everyone could feel, was in complete harmony with all the students of the great teacher Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, at the head of whom she placed those who said that that one should bear in mind that the disciple, the beginner above all, before he can grasp the greatness of the great, harms himself if he blocks his path to these great ones by hasty, unintelligent criticism. To have such an attitude, to get into such a mood, to really feel what is right in the face of greatness, that is the gain of life, that is the beginning of the highest spiritual knowledge. No one needs to venerate anyone else, everyone may criticize as much as they want in the world, but by doing so, they harm themselves most of all when they want to gain knowledge. Then they put the greatest obstacles in their own way.

There is one thing that must not be misunderstood. It is often said in theosophical writings: Don't criticize, seek to understand first, before you judge. And this is taken as if it were a prescription for everyone. The Theosophical Society does not oblige anyone to follow such a prescription. But there is something else we need to know, and that is that we must be in this mood of unbiased acceptance if these truths are to flow into us. You can't have one without the other, and anyone who wants one without the other is like someone who has a glass rod and wants it to be electric. If he wants it to be electric, he has to rub it. If he does not want to rub it, it will not become electric. He who wants knowledge must have this mood. You cannot achieve one without the other. It is a contradiction in terms to want to achieve one without the other.

You just have to understand the theosophical view correctly. It is nothing more than a narrative. It never demands anything of any of its members. That is something we are very far from, especially those who know what is important in the theosophical movement. We are not asked to believe in any authority, to engage in any personality cult. The less the cult of personality is demanded, the higher the status of those to whom it is applied. All speaking against personality cult is speaking against things that are not there. The great moment I wanted to characterize was to see a personality looking up. And the whole lecture was looking up. That was the significant thing about it.

I wanted to emphasize these two moments for you because they symbolically show something of the gain in life that one can have today within the Theosophical Society. There are two things that will become more and more important: One is the realization of our first principle: to establish the core of a human brotherhood, to present the great core of humanity, and the second is to learn to worship without belief in authority, without worship of persons, to worship out of freedom, out of knowledge. To offer worship as a gift that is free, without compulsion. This can be achieved. This is what we have achieved in thirty years. When we do that, it is as if a different kind of spirit were to pass through the room and fill everyone. Little by little, the theosophist comes to realize that this is something much more real than what can be grasped with hands. The thought should occur to every member at the entrance gate to the Theosophical Society: Here you enter a society in which people believe in the truths and realities of the spirit, in which they believe that spirit lives in you. This is connected with the central phenomenon of our society.

We recognize the great progress of the outer life, we are not reactionaries, we know what it means to have achieved outer science, that in the eighteenth century in one of the big cities 77 out of 1000 people died, while now only 22 out of 1000 die. We know what it means that our industry has conquered the world. In the face of all these achievements, there is one thing within this modern science that claims authority, one thing that you will encounter again and again, and that is an uncertainty regarding the great questions of the divine, regarding the great questions of the immortal powers in man. And there you hear from those who are most learned, most scientific: We know nothing, we can know nothing. And that is only natural, for it lies in the present development. But what knowledge have we acquired? To understand this properly, we have to look back a little in history.

Anyone who studies culture from a historical perspective from the point of view of the school of thought will be told that there were originally primitive, uneducated, uncultivated peoples. They still live in some parts of the world. We are descended from them. We will not examine whether this is the case. But when we examine religious beliefs, legends and myths, these world scriptures, we are amazed when we look into the deep wisdoms for which these myths and legends are the expression. We can glimpse the deepest wisdom in the mythical images of the seemingly most primitive peoples. We do not import it. Those who study them will find that it takes much more skill to import it than to extract it. These peoples did not have our means of understanding and our instruments. It is a miracle that the secret of the material is presented in a similar way to that given to us by science today. But now read a lecture given at the naturalists' meeting on the brain conditions. Everything appears chaotic to you compared to the old wisdom. There is a difference in how our people think and how our ancestors thought. What does today's man say? I have invented the truth. - Your ancestors would have referred you to their teachers, to higher and higher teachers. A sense of profound humility permeated the whole thing, a humility that can listen, that says to itself, the human being is in a state of development, knowledge and wisdom are also in a state of development, and if I want to know that which I cannot know myself, I must look up to other teachers. We should not accept knowledge on authority, no, when we have heard the truth, the knowledge, we can also find it ourselves.

It is true that the personal cannot know anything about things that go beyond the tangible. If we want to know something about this, we have to turn to such teachers who have kindled the light within themselves, in order to be able to show us what it looks like in the worlds that extend beyond the physical world. They will bring the teacher principle home to us.

What has the man of today achieved with all his science? He has been able to build the outer house and to bring about the greatest conceivable progress in the outer world of the senses. But one thing must be borne in mind. Think of it: all of science and culture has made our Earth a veritable palace for the people living on it. But it also teaches us something else: namely, that this physical Earth will no longer be here, because all the greatness and infinity that material culture has achieved will disappear, will disperse into its atoms. What does this physical science teach us? What will happen to all that man has been here and has achieved? A “I don't know,” this science must say, which is limited only to this earth. Only those who have experienced more than what is connected with the earth can know something about this question – and they do not speak about it that way. We must turn to the great teachers. Therefore, theosophical teaching ultimately leads to the great masters and teachers of the human race. Then one comes to the point of saying that a certain human knowledge is vain. But there are human beings who are beyond this point of view and have achieved something that will still be there when the earth has long since been scattered. We must find the way to the higher individualities who speak to the people who want to hear them. The Master does not speak to those who are arrogant, only to those who are truly humble in the highest sense, who make themselves a vessel and tool of the Master.

The Master speaks to them in the highest sense. Did the founder of the Theosophical Society, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, also have this humility? How easily she could have said: What is in my books comes from my knowledge. But she always referred to those who stood behind her, to the enlightened guides and masters of wisdom. So Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had that great modesty.

There are many who do not want to hear about the so-called higher worlds, who want to avoid the Theosophical Society precisely because it talks about a devachan plan and an astral plan. But whether we are afraid and afraid of these things is not the point, but whether they are true. The masters have told us more about these things because we need them in life. Certainly, you can learn a lot by observing life, the mind can tell us a lot. Even the moral teachings can be grasped by the intellect. From the ordinary point of view, many a person can be moralized about envy, cowardice, lies and so on. But envy, cowardice and lies are things that are observed in truth in the higher world. In the physical world, lying is a relatively light offense. But it is nothing compared to what it is on the astral plane. The moment you tell a lie, you cause something that is like the destruction of a living being. You then carry this killing with you. It mixes with your own astral body. What we otherwise only know from the lie as an external world, we then get to know in its liveliness. What is sensual here becomes spiritual. Today we need to be reintroduced to the spirit, to sense it first and then be led to certain knowledge. This is the life that must pulsate through the theosophical movement. If this life does not pass through the theosophical movement, then it will not achieve what it is meant for. These guiding masters, all our beautiful teachings and theories are in vain if there are not a number of people in the world who come together in the mood we have described, in the mood that they already say to themselves at the entrance: Here we only live in the awareness that the spirit is a reality. - When every listener is filled with this mood, then our branch has meaning, then you yourself are the source of something living. When we are together in the consciousness of the truth of the spirit, then this consciousness is a force, and the people who are there and have this consciousness form an electrical receiver. And when thoughts are expressed, whether by anyone in particular, that are in harmony with the laws of the universe, and are grasped by all the souls in us and a center is formed, then they go out from there through the whole city and influence the whole city, when we have the consciousness of the spirit. My words have no meaning if there are no people who take them up and carry them out into the world. That is why we come together in the Society. When we have this consciousness, only then are we truly a Theosophical Society. That this consciousness becomes more and more intense, stronger and stronger with us, that we really show a power through faith and through the knowledge of the spirit and of the spirit, that is what our meetings should achieve. What really matters is not that we read books or listen to teachings, but that we accept and appropriate this consciousness of the spirit. And then, when there are as many branches as there are people who have this consciousness of the spirit, only then will there be a Theosophical Society. But not before. It is not the doctrine, not the dogma, but the consciousness of the spirit that is important.

My dear friends,

We will again start by letting the words resound from the cosmos near and far, which can be heard by everyone who correctly understands the world. But before doing so, because again many new members of the esoteric school are present, I must say at least a few words about the meaning of this school.

I will put it briefly. This School must be recognized as one which brings down its information from the spiritual world to human souls. Therefore, what lives here in the School and what is brought to human souls are to be perceived as communications from the spiritual world itself. From this you will understand that membership in the School must be regarded as serious in the highest degree.

This seriousness has only become possible because of the Constitution which the Anthroposophical Society received during the Christmas Conference. Since then the Anthroposophical Society as such is an openly public institution, but at the same time one through which an esoteric breath flows, which has been better received than the former exoteric one.

So nothing more is expected from the members of the Anthroposophical Society than that they feel themselves to be receivers of anthroposophical wisdom. And, of course, what is generally expected of decent people in life.

But membership in the School implies even more, that the member recognize the serious conditions for membership—namely the basic condition that anyone who wishes to belong to the School should present himself in life in such a way that he is in every respect a representative of anthroposophy before the world.

To be a representative of anthroposophy before the world necessarily means that whatever he or she does in connection to anthroposophy, be it ever so remotely connected, also be with the approval of the leadership of the School, that is, with the esoteric Executive Committee at the Goetheanum. Thus through the School a real stream can enter the anthroposophical movement, which today is represented by the Anthroposophical Society.

Therefore, it is necessary that membership in the School be understood in such a way that the member feels in his whole being that he is a part of what is being done and revealed from here in the Goetheanum. Such a condition should not be taken as a restriction on human freedom, my dear friends, for membership in the school rests on reciprocity. The leadership of the School must be free to give what it has to give to whom it considers right to do so. And the fact that no one is obliged to be a member of the School, but that it depends on his free will to be a member, means that the leadership may also place conditions on membership without anyone claiming that his free will is in any way infringed upon. It is a free agreement between the leadership of the School and those who wish to be members.

Furthermore, in order that the School really be taken seriously, it cannot be otherwise than that the leadership exercise its right to revoke a membership whenever it considers necessary because of certain events. And, my dear friends, that the leadership of the School takes this seriously is shown by the fact that since the relatively short time the School has existed, sixteen members already had to be suspended for shorter or longer lengths of time. And I must again emphasize that this measure will have to be strictly adhered to in the future, regardless of the personalities involved, because we will be entering ever more deeply into esoteric matters.

* * *

And now the words will be spoken which are always spoken at the beginning of our deliberations, reminding us of the admonitions which resound from all the events and beings of the world to all those who have the heart to understand them: the admonition to self-knowledge, which is the true foundation of world knowledge.

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with cosmic might?
Who speaks in depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

My dear friends, we have advanced, in respect to what has been sent to us from the spiritual world in the form of mantras, to the mantric verses which correspond to the esoteric situation in which we feel ourselves: first of all, in meditation we imagine the being standing at the abyss of existence speaking to us.

Let us imagine it once more, for we cannot recall it to our souls too often. We see before us everything belonging to the kingdoms of nature. We observe the glorious heavenly bodies; we see the floating clouds; we see the wind and the waves, the thunder and lightning. We see everything from the humblest worm to the sublimest revelations in the glittering stars. Only a false asceticism, unrelated to true esotericism, could in any way despise this world that speaks to the senses. The person who wishes to be truly human can do nothing other than intimately relate to the sense-perceptible life, from the humblest creature to the majestic, divinely glittering stars.

We must never despise the grandeur and awesome beauty of all that surrounds us, which we must acknowledge; we must go forward step by step in the world and be able to appreciate what our eyes see, what our ears hear, what the other senses perceive, what we can grasp with our reason. However, a moment comes as you look around at the expanse of space, at the interweaving of time, that despite all the grandeur and awesome beauty in your surroundings, you cannot find there what the inner nature of your being is. So you must say to yourself: the inner source of my being is to be sought elsewhere. The very power of such a thought affects us.

What follows for the soul can only be expressed in imaginative thoughts. At first these imaginative thoughts lead us to a wide field in which everything earthly and sense-perceptible is spread out before us. We find it to be radiant with the sun, we find it to be shining light. But as we look all around us we find our own self nowhere. Then we gaze before us and see that this sunny field, which is grandiose and beautiful and sublime to the senses, is blocked by a dark, night-bedecked wall. We see ourselves entering deeply into the darkness. We intuit that perhaps there in the darkness is our self's true origin; but we cannot see into it.

And as we follow the path forward, the abyss of existence, the threshold to the spiritual world, appears before us. We must cross over this abyss. The Guardian stands there warning us that we must be mature in order to cross over the abyss, for with our thinking, feeling and willing habits which correspond to the physical sense-perceptible world, we cannot cross over the abyss of existence into the spiritual world in which our real self originated.

The Guardian of the Threshold is the first spiritual being we encounter. Every night we are in this spiritual world when we sleep. But it is like darkness around our I and our astral body, because we can only enter this spiritual world when sufficiently mature. The Guardian of the Threshold protects us from entering immaturely. But now as we encounter him he sends us his grand admonishments. And the admonishments are contained in the mantric verses which until now have formed the content of these esoteric lessons.

Those of you who do not yet have these mantric verses can obtain them from other members of the School. But the following procedure must be observed: not the person who is to receive the verses asks for permission, but the one who gives them.

These verses have not only shown us how our hearts are to react if we wish to cross over the abyss of existence, they have also shown us what our souls will feel once we have overflown the abyss and gradually sense—not yet see, but sense—how the darkness, which was at first night-bedecked, gradually becomes lighter. At first we feel becoming lighter, and we feel that the elements—earth, water, air, fire—are different on the other side, that we are living in another world. And the world in which we recognize our own being, and therewith the true form of the elements, is indeed another world.

During the last lesson we considered the meditation with which we were to imagine how the Guardian stands before the abyss of existence; now we are already beyond it, first we feel—not yet see—how the darkness becomes lighter. The Guardian speaks to us, after he had previously made clear to us how we should comport ourselves in relation to the four elements. He tells us how these four elements change for us. He then asks questions.

Who answers? The hierarchies themselves answer these questions. From one side the third hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—from the other side the second hierarchy, from a third side the third hierarchy.

The third hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—answers when the Guardian of the Threshold asks what becomes of the earth's solidity. The second hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—answers when the Guardian of the Threshold asks us what becomes of the water's formative force, which acts in us and gives us our inner configuration. And the first hierarchy—Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim—answer when the Guardian asks us what becomes of our breathing, of the air's stimulating power, which awakens us from dull plant-like existence to sentient-feeling existence.

Such mantras are to penetrate our souls, our hearts, to the extent that we feel ourselves to be within the situation. The Guardian of the Threshold poses the testing, admonishing questions. The hierarchies answer.

The Guardian:
What becomes of the earth's solidity, which supports you?

Angeloi:
Feel as we feel in your thinking.

Archangeloi:
Experience, as we experience in your feeling.

Archai:
Perceive, as we perceive in your will.

The Guardian:
What becomes of water's formative force, which penetrated you?

Exusiai:
Learn the spirit cosmic creating in the human body creating.

Dynamis:
Feel the cosmic life of spirit in the human body's life.

Kyriotetes:
Will the spirit's cosmic working in the human body's being.

The Guardian:
What becomes of the air's stimulating power, which awakened you?

Thrones:
Knowingly grasp inner being in your divine cosmic being.

Cherubim:
Warm your inner life in divine cosmic life.

Seraphim:
Awaken inner light in your divine cosmic light.

These, my dear sisters and brothers, are the admonishing words coming from the communion of the Guardian of the Threshold together with the hierarchies, which bring our souls ever forward if we experience them more and more in the right way.

In this way, we are doing what is appropriate for human beings of today and the future, what in the ancient holy mysteries meant that the student was being guided to the essence of the elements: earth, water, air.

But warmth, which is also an element, pervades everything: in the solid earth element, which supports us, is warmth; in the element of water, which forms us as humans, which gives form to our organs, causing them to develop and grow, warmth is also present; and in the element of air, by which the Jehovah-spirits once breathed into humanity its soul, through which man is even today awakened from his dull, plant-like existence, warmth is present. Warmth is everywhere. We must recognize it as the all-pervading element. We must immerse ourselves in it as the all-pervading element: Yes, we feel so close to it.

We feel far from the solid earth element, though we still feel the earth's support. We even feel far from the water element. The air element maintains a more intimate relation to us. When the air element does not fill us with regularity, when we have too much breath in us, or too little, our inner life indicates how the air-element is connected to us. Too much breath awakens fear in the soul. Too little causes fainting. Our soul is embraced by the air element.

We feel ourselves most intimately united with the warmth element. We ourselves are what is warm or cold in us. In order to live we must generate a certain amount of warmth. We are intimately close to the warmth element. If we want to be closer to it, then not only one hierarchy can speak, then the reminding words must resound together from various hierarchies.

Therefore, when the Guardian of the Threshold asks questions of us concerning the warmth element, the answers from the cosmos are different. The Guardian asks the question:

What becomes of fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

We already know this question; it is the question about our entrance into the element of warmth, or fire. But now the answer does not come from one hierarchy or from a rank of one of the hierarchies, but the answer comes in choir from the Angeloi, the Exusiai, the Thrones; secondly the Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim answer the Guardian's question; and thirdly Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim answer. Thus the three answers about the general nature of warmth resound from the choir-like words of the three hierarchies.

Therefore, we are to imagine that when we hear the Guardian of the Threshold's warning reminders, the answers, which resound from our I, but which are stimulated by the hierarchies—come from all sides: first Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones; secondly speak the Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim; and thirdly speak Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim. All three hierarchies always speak: a rank from each of the three hierarchies always speaks. Thus the answers comes to us from the cosmos.

The Guardian speaks:
What becomes of the fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones:
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.

From all three hierarchies we are reminded that everything which happened to us during earthly life is recorded in the cosmic ether and we see it recorded there when we have passed through the gate of death. Once we have passed through the gate of death, looking back at our earthly life, but also gazing out at the etheric vastness, what we have done and accomplished in thoughts, feelings and deeds during earthly life is recorded. It is your life's flaming script.

Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim—answer in us:
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.

We are admonished during the second stage we go through after passing through the gate of death, where we experience in reverse, in mirror images—that is, in its just atonement—what we have done here on earth. If we have harmed another human being in any way, we experience in the reverse stream of time what the other felt because of us. As I have said, the Archangeloi, Dynamis and Cherubim admonish us in this second stage, which we pass through between death and a new birth.

What our karma works through during the third stage—what happens when as souls we cooperate with other human souls and with the beings of the higher hierarchies

—the Archai (primal powers), Kyriotetes and Seraphim admonish us:
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

We must feel ourselves completely within this situation: the speaking Guardian of the Threshold—his earnest gesture toward us, his admonishment. And from the cosmic vastness, resounding, grasping our heart—what connects us with the riddle of life.

[The fourth part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian speaks:
What becomes of fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones:
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.

Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim—they answer in us:
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.

Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim:
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

What previously stood before us like a black, night enclosed darkness, is not yet illuminated by light for the soul's eye. But we have the feeling that while we are standing within this black, night enclosed darkness, wherever we reach out we begin to feel a glimmering light. And we find ourselves in the situation where we know that we ourselves are within this glimmering light. We feel ourselves moving toward the Guardian of the Threshold. We had only seen him as long as we were in the field of the senses. Then we stepped into the darkness and heard his questioning, admonishing words.

But these admonishing, questioning words had led us to where we now feel something like a mild weaving, moving light. In this weaving, moving light we make our way to the Guardian of the Threshold seeking help. It is a unique experience: not yet light, but the light is making itself felt; in this felt light the Guardian of the Threshold, manifesting himself, as though he were becoming more intimate with us, as though he were leaning more to us now, as though we were also stepping closer to him.

And what he now says seems as though in [earthly] life a person is whispering something confidential in our ear. And what were at first admonishing, earnest words, trumpet-like, powerful, majestic, from all sides of the cosmos coming to our hearts, continues now as an intimate conversation with the Guardian of the Threshold in weaving, moving light. For now it is as though he no longer just speaks to us, it is as though he whispers to us:

Has your spirit understood?

Our inner self becomes warm when the Guardian of the Threshold says in confidence: “Has your spirit understood?” Our inner self becomes warm. It experiences itself in the warmth. And this inner self feels obliged to answer with devotion, quietly and humbly. Thus we imagine it in meditation:

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence still
Illuminate my I.

[Der Weltengeist in mir
Er hielt den Atem an
Und seine Gegenwart
Mög' erleuchten mein Ich.]

Our I does not answer the question “Has your spirit understood?” with pride and arrogance: “I have understood”, but the I feels: divine being streams through the innermost essence of the human being; it is divine breath in man which quietly lingers and prepares us for understanding.

[The first part of the new mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian:
Has your spirit understood?

The I:

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence still
Illuminate my I.

Secondly, the Guardian in confidence asks:
Has your soul apprehended?

The I answers:
The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

Again it is not proudly that the I is tempted to answer when the Guardian asks: Has your soul apprehended? Rather is the soul becoming aware that in it speaks the cosmic souls of the beings of the higher hierarchies, and that in what they say not an individual entity is present, but an entire council, a consultative meeting, as if the planets of a planetary system were circling and contributing their respective illuminating forces. Thus do the cosmic souls send their concise suggestions. Our soul hears and hopes that from the harmonies the I will be so formed that the I in the human being is an echo of the cosmic harmonies which arise when cosmic souls take council among each other—like the planets in the solar system—and their advice and harmonies resound in the human soul.

[The second part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian:
Has your soul apprehended?

The I:
The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

And the third confidential question which the Guardian directs to the person in this situation is this:

Has your body experienced?

The soul feels that in this body the cosmic forces—which are everywhere—are concentrated in one point in space. But these cosmic forces do not appear now as physical forces. The soul has long since become aware of how these forces, which from outside appear as active physical forces, as gravitational, electrical, magnetic forces, as warmth forces, as light forces, when they are active in the human body are moral forces, are transformed into will-forces. The soul feels the cosmic forces as those which constitute eternal universal justice throughout the succession of earth lives. The soul feels them to be like forces of judgment which weave in the verdicts of karma and therewith the I itself.

When the Guardian asks in confidence:
Has your body experienced?

The human being feels obliged to answer with devotion to universal justice:

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.

[The third part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian:
Has your body experienced?

I:

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.

Thus after having experienced the metamorphoses of the cosmic elements together with the Guardian of the Threshold and the hierarchies, the soul answers the Guardian's three questions with inner devotion; interwoven with what has been poured into it, the soul has advanced somewhat in answering the riddle of the words: “O man, know thyself!”

And today we will compare the opening words after having been filled with the element of warmth in devotion to the spiritual content of the cosmos, feeling how we have advanced further in following the great admonishment: “O man, know thyself!” We will see how we, as human beings, stand between the resounding of the demand for self-knowledge from all the cosmic events and beings, and the mantric verse, which has been contemplated in today's lesson:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with cosmic might?
Who speaks in depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

What becomes of fire's purification, which enkindled your I?
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

Has your spirit understood?

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence still
Illuminate my I.

Has your soul apprehended?

The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

Has your body experienced?

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.

My dear friends,

We also begin today with that verse which, by a correct understanding of the universe, resounds to human hearts from all that is and all that is becoming as a call to self-knowledge, which one must first attain for true knowledge of the cosmos.

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the souless void of space,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

Once more let us review in our souls what summarized the contents of the previous Class Lesson. It was also a meditation arising from what the human being can experience when he feels himself completely immersed in the cosmic context, above all in the context of the spiritual world.

Man's path to the abyss of existence, at which the Guardian of the Threshold stands, appeared before our souls. We heard the teachings the Guardian gives to those who cross the threshold. We heard how the person who arrives on the other side of the threshold at first feels himself to be within light, and experiences the world in a new way in that he first hears what the Guardian says, but also what the beings of the higher hierarchies are saying. In the last dialog the Guardian asks a question and the Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones; Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim; Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim speak, one after the other, about the element of warmth, which penetrates everything and reveals itself to be a moral element on the other side of the abyss.

We saw how the Guardian then speaks to the I, asking three questions which penetrate deeply into the human being, and the I answers with humility, as was explained last time, but exchanging words as in a deeply intimate conversation with the Guardian.

The Guardian speaks:
What becomes of the fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones:
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.

Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim:
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.

Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim:
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

The Guardian:
Has your spirit understood?

The I:

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence now
Illuminate my I.

The Guardian:
Has your soul apprehended?

The I:

The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

The Guardian:
Has your body experienced?

The I:

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.

The human being beyond the threshold of existence, where the Guardian stands, feels himself to be within weaving, living light. Gradually it becomes not only felt light, but a kind of light about which we can say that he sees it.

From feeling the light in waves, as in spiritual thoughts, so to speak, light appears which is seen by the spirit's eye.

But the human being cannot enter already seeing into this light without hearing another deeply founded admonition from the Guardian. And this admonition refers to a powerful cosmic imagination, something tremendously majestic which the person, even while being here in the sensible world, can receive as an impression—if he has the heart for it. For, when he becomes magically illuminated by the cloud formations and the majestic rainbow, then he can feel as if the spirits beyond the physical sense-perceptible rainbow's glow are shining in through its colors. It is there, builds itself up from the universe, then disappears back into the universe, is placed within the universe like a mighty imagination.

The Guardian reminds us of this rainbow's impression at the moment when it becomes light enough for perception there in the spiritual world.

[The rainbow is drawn on the blackboard.]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

And the Guardian reminds us that the one who has come over to the spiritual world should recall the impression from the sensory world which the rainbow had made. For it is remarkable, my dear sisters and brothers, that when we cross over from the physical sensory world to the spiritual world, the image of the rainbow is the easiest to remember and the one which most easily allows us to recall the relationship between the spiritual world, where it is becoming light, and the physical-sensory world, which we have left together with our capacities for knowledge.

Not referring to the view of the rainbow itself, but to the memory of the rainbow which has been called forth by the Guardian of the Threshold, the Guardian now indicates (we will hear the exact words): Try, with the force you normally use to see with your eyes, to prepare the substance with which you will penetrate this rainbow, with which you will pass below, through the rainbow and to the other side.

If we can imagine [the second drawing is made]: here in the cloud formation [white in the upper right-hand corner]—looking up from the earth [small arrow]—the rainbow would be here [red in the cloud formation]. Then the Guardian instructs us to penetrate through that rainbow and from this vantage point [a line is drawn to the small circle on which the word “Warte” (vantage point) is written] which is on the other side, to look back from that cosmic distance at the rainbow. The Guardian instructs us to make our imagination more profound through meditation, if we wish to advance beyond the point we reached during the previous lesson.

When we look back from out there, if you imagine that you go behind the blackboard [white arrow pointing up and left in the first drawing], then look at the rainbow from behind [red arrow pointing down and left in the first drawing], as it appears in memory, looking from behind, then the rainbow becomes a powerful bowl, a cosmic bowl. And we no longer see a bow, we see a powerful bowl extending over half the sky, within which the colors flow into each other.

This is the imagination which the Guardian first introduces:

See the ether-rainbow arc's
Light teeming round,
Let the light creating force
Pass through your eyes,
Your I penetrate the circle,
Observe from the other side's vantage point
Color flooding the cosmic bowl.

[This first stanza of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

See the ether-rainbow arc's
Light teeming round,
Let the light creating force
Pass through your eyes,
Your I penetrate the circle,
Observe from the other side's vantage point
Color flooding the cosmic bowl.

These are the powerful words spoken by the Guardian, my dear sisters and brothers, and you must put yourself correctly in the image-filled situation in which the Guardian of the Threshold's pupil finds himself when he is called to observe the cosmic bowl with its content of color-flooding light.

See the ether-rainbow arc's
Light teeming round,
Let the light creating force
Pass through your eyes,
Your I penetrate the circle,
Observe from the other side's vantage point
Color flooding the cosmic bowl.

We must pass through such images. And if they work deeply into the I, then we see how the beings of the third hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—appear in the flood of colors that fill the bowl. They are breathing the colors into their own angelic beings.

Thus we have an idea about the cosmic creation behind the sensory world, which is the result of the deeds of the higher hierarchies; we have a conception of how the spiritual beings act beyond the rainbow, at first breathing in the cosmic bowl's colors, taking them into their own being.

We observe how what flows from the cosmos to the rainbow, penetrating it, then appears behind the rainbow as thoughts, how it is absorbed, breathed in by the angelic beings. Now we learn the true nature of the rainbow. All the thoughts thought by people in a particular place are gathered from time to time through the rainbow's bridge and sent farther out to the spiritual domain, where it is breathed in by the beings of the third hierarchy.

What so magically appears [the rainbow] in the vastness of the universe does not only have a physical meaning; it has a spiritual-inner meaning. And the magical ether-rainbow cannot be discerned from within the physical-sensory world; we can discern it only beyond the threshold of existence, once we have heard the Guardian of the Threshold's various admonitions.

Through the impression we receive from that outlook point of the rainbow as the cosmic bowl, it becomes clear to us how the light, which at first was a dark, night-bedecked sphere, spreads out before us. We are now within it. It brightens: it is sun, the cosmic bowl with its flood of colors seen from the other side of the rainbow.

Then the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai begin to reflect their consciousness within the human soul of how they breathe in the floods of color in order that what exists here on the earth as sense-perceptible may be brought into the spiritual domain, to the extent it is of use there.

And then we perceive how the beings of the third hierarchy have breathed in what they took from the sensible world, what has penetrated them through the rainbow, what they have transformed to the extent that it can be taken into the spiritual world—they go as helpers, with what they have absorbed within themselves, to the even higher spirits, to the spirits of the second hierarchy. For the spirits of the third hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Angeloi, are the helping spirits of the spirit-world. We now hear from them what we see when we behold the color-flooded cosmic bowl—somewhere beyond the rainbow.

Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai:

Sense our thoughts
Breathing the colors of life
To the light-flooded bowl;
We carry the mirage of the senses
To spirit's domain of being
And turn, by the world inspired
To serve the higher spirits.

[This second stanza is written on the blackboard.]

Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai:

Sense our thoughts
Breathing the colors of life
To the light-flooded bowl;
We carry the mirage of the senses
To spirit's domain of being
And turn, by the world inspired,
To serve the higher spirits.

My dear sisters and brothers, let us place the image once more before our souls: the cosmic bowl, half the sky in size, the colors flooding within—which we normally see toned down in the rainbow—weaving, living in one another; the beings of the third hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, approach. They breathe these colors. The thoughts of the beings of the third hierarchy are visible to us in this breathing of colors.

We observe how these beings of the third hierarchy, permeated with these cosmic thoughts, turn to the beings of the second hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, whom they serve. And we have this powerful image before us—the pure spirit-beings appear, the residents of the sun, who only appear when the physical image which the sun casts, disappears; for despite all its greatness in comparison to the earth, it is a small image—for it is only an image. And the sun majestically fills the entire universe, infinitely larger than the gigantic cosmic image. Then the beings of the second hierarchy appear, weaving, living in the pure spirit-domain, but now receiving what the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai bring them. These are not dead thoughts, such as we have. The dead thoughts are taken from the illusion of the senses and become living thoughts through the breath of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. As a powerful offering, the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai place these living thoughts before the second hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. The thoughts which are illusions in earthly life are awakened to existence by the beings of the second hierarchy.

And we see how the beings of the second hierarchy receive from the beings of the third hierarchy the thoughts already made living by them; and we see that a powerful resurrection of a new world takes place, created out of what was dead, illusionary, and taken up by the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. Thus a new world, a resurrecting world comes into existence through the workings of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes.

Then we see how the remarkable secret of the cosmos works. We see how the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes give over what they received from the beings of the third hierarchy to what we call rays in earthly life—rays of the sun, of the stars. The awakened, now living world-thoughts are given over to all that rays.

In reality rays are not physical. In reality it is the spirit that beams in the rays. But we fail to see, when the rays reach us, what they had previously been given from the realm of the beings of the second hierarchy. All these rays, the rays of the stars, the rays of the sun, have been given what the beings of the second hierarchy weave in world-thoughts, but also what they let be resurrected from the dead thoughts—our thoughts on earth—which were made living by the beings of the third hierarchy. And now we hear how they also give to these raying spiritual forces what works as creative love in the cosmos—what weaves in the sun and star rays as love; the love that floods the cosmos and which is the creative force in the whole cosmos; how they entrust it to the rays of the stars, to the rays of the sun. We now see with the eye of the spirit how the beings of the second hierarchy—raying spirit, awakening love, bearing love—merge with the world.

Thus we hear them speaking, not to us; we are witnesses to a dialog between the beings of the second hierarchy and the beings of the third hierarchy. It resounds across. We only listen. It is the first time in the course of situational meditation that we hear the beings of the hierarchies speaking to each other:

What you have received
From dead illusion made live:
We waken it to existence;
We give it to the rays,
Who manifest with love
The nothingness of matter
In the spirit's essence.

By being witnesses to a heavenly dialog, the once night-bedecked darkness is gradually illuminated for the eye of the spirit. It becomes filled with a soft, mild light.

[The third stanza is written on the blackboard.]

What is received by you
From dead illusion made live:
We awaken it to existence;
We give it to the rays,
Who manifest with love
the nothingness of matter
In the spirit's essence.

If we have heard and have absorbed all this, then we will see with the spirit's eye something else taking place. We have already seen how earthly thoughts are made living ones by the third hierarchy, that what was made living is received by the second hierarchy and then shared with the rays of the stars and with the rays of the sun, and transformed into love. Now we see it taken over by the beings of the first hierarchy and made by these beings into the elements with which to create new worlds; what Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai breathe in from the world, what Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes receive from them and transform into creative forces from which they—Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim—shape new worlds.

What is remarkable is this: first we were witnesses to a conversation in heaven between the beings of the third and second hierarchies. Then we hear more with our spiritual ears. The beings of the first hierarchy begin to speak the cosmic words. At first it seems as though we were only to be listeners to a heavenly conversation. But soon we realize that it is not so.

First the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai made their voices heard; then a dialog took place between the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes and the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai; then the Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim join the conversation. A choir of the spiritual spheres rings out. We become aware, now that the voices of all nine choirs ring out together, that what they are intoning is directed at us as human beings. And so finally the whole spirit world speaks to us. But only when what has been spoken within the spirit-world is included in the cosmic words of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, is it again intoned in our humanity. It intones to us as human beings:

In your worlds of will
Feel our cosmic working:
Spirit glows in matter,
When we create thinking;
Spirit creates in matter
When we willing live;
World is I-Willing Spirit-Word.

The world is the spirit-word which wills the I; and the world is in the creation by Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

[This fourth stanza is written on the blackboard.]

Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim:

In your worlds of will
Feel our cosmic working:
Spirit glows in matter,
When we create thinking;
Spirit creates in matter
When we willing live;
World is I-Willing Spirit-Word.

The spirit-word, which wills the I, is the world. And as we hear with the spiritual ear these words directed at our humanity, it becomes light in the spiritual world. The mild light which was there before is transformed into spiritual brightness.

This is the experience with the Guardian while the spiritual sphere is becoming light:

See the ether-rainbow arc's
Light teeming round,
Let the light creating force
Pass through your eyes,
Your I penetrate the circle,
Observe from the other side's vantage point
Color flooding the cosmic bowl.

Sense our thoughts
Breathing the colors of life
To the light-flooded bowl;
We carry the mirage of the senses
To spirit's domain of being
And turn, by the world inspired,
To serve the higher spirits.

What is received by you
From dead illusion made live:
We awaken it to existence;
We give it to the rays,
Who manifest with love
The nothingness of matter
In the spirit's essence.

In your worlds of will
Feel our cosmic working:
Spirit glows in matter,
When we create thinking;
Spirit creates in matter
When we willing live;
World is I-Willing Spirit-Word.

And it is as though the Guardian of the Threshold were touching us softly with his spiritual hands. We feel his presence as if he closed our spirit-eyes and we saw nothing for a moment, despite having been in a bright spiritual space a moment before. Words arise within me which I will place at the end of the lesson, to be saved for next time; I do not wish to include them as a mantra for today.

When the Guardian of the Threshold—if we may express with a sense-perceptible picture what takes place in a purely spiritual way—softly places his hands over our eyes so that we do not see the spiritual light around us, something arises in us that acts as a remembrance of the sensory world, which we had left behind in order to acquire knowledge in the spiritual world:

I walked in this world of senses,
Thought's legacy with me leading,
A god's force had led me in.
Death stands at the path's end.
I will to feel the presence of Christ.
In matter's death wakes the spirit's birth.
Thus In spirit I find the world
And know myself in the evolving world.

*

My dear friends, I must remind you of something I said upon the opening of these Class Lessons, and also during the Christmas Conference. It cannot be assumed that things which have been organized in a certain way for good reason may be changed from outside and be organized in a different way. Therefore, I must announce here that in the future no application to the Class will be considered which is not directed to the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Goetheanum, Dr. Wegman, or directly to me. Only applications for participation in the Class Lessons directed to either one of these two addresses will be considered. What has been the rule from the beginning must be continued. The members have not followed this procedure, but have done as they wish. And those who are already members of the Class should make this clear to others who want to participate.

On this occasion I would like to bring to your attention something else, my dear friends, which is especially grave now when the importance of how the Anthroposophical Society is managed must be maintained. Again and again letters are arriving which state: If I don'ive a reply, I will assume the answer to be affirmative. Those who have written in this way know about it. I wish to inform those who have written in this way, and those who intend to do so, to please know that every letter which contains the sentence: I consider no answer to mean yes—that every such letter can form its own answer as being a negative. In the future such letters will not be answered, because one cannot accept such impertinence, but what is written in such letters must be regarded as containing their own rejection.

Blackboard Texts in original German:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

My dear venerated guests! The organisers of this university course have asked me to introduce the reflections of the day through some remarks and so I will introduce today's work in a certain aphoristic manner to open our discussion. I am aware that this is no easy task at present. Once in Stuttgart I gave a short course to a smaller circle regarding the items I want to talk about today and it became clear to me that one really needs a lot of time to discuss such controversial things as we would like to talk about today. So I'm only going to suggest a few things about the spirit of our reflection which is required by Anthroposophy in relation to observing human speech.

When speech is the subject and when one sets the goal to treat speech scientifically, then one must be clear that it is not as easy to have speech as an object for scientific treatment as it is for instance about human beings relating to nature or to the physical nature of the human being. In these cases, one has at least a clear outline for the observation of the object. Certainly one can discuss to what a degree observation lies at its foundation, or if it is merely a process being grasped through human research capabilities of an unknown origin. However, this is then a discussion which happens purely within the course of thought. What is presented as an object of observation is a closed object, a given.

This is not the case in spoken language. A large part of speech means that through a person speaking, something is unfolding which was already in the subconscious regions of the human soul life. Something strikes upward from these subconscious regions and what rises, connects to conscious elements which gradually, like harmonics, move with it in an unconscious or subconscious stream. That which is momentarily present in the consciousness, what is present as we speak, that is only partially the actual object essential for our observation. One can, if one remains within the current speech habits of people, acquire a certain possibility of bringing language as an object into consciousness, also when one is speaking. I would like to present in a modest way an example which could perhaps illustrate this.

During Christmas in Dornach I held a lecture cycle at the Goetheanum regarding pedagogical didactic themes. This lecture cycle came about as a request which resulted in a row of English teachers coming to the lectures which they had asked for. When it became known that this course was going to take place, people from other countries in western and middle Europe, namely Switzerland, also gathered to listen to the lectures. Because this course couldn't contain the 900 visitors in the large auditorium of the Goetheanum, but could only be held in a smaller hall, I was notified to give the lectures twice, one after the other. Already before this I believed that to a certain degree it would be necessary to separate the English speakers from those who belonged to other nationalities—not out of political grounds; I stressed this clearly. The lecture cycle was given throughout also for the English speakers; because when people want to hear something about Anthroposophy, wherever it is presented, I always speak German to them. I thought this was something through which its “Germanic” nature could be documented, whereby the German character and German language can be served.

In one of these lectures I had to discuss ethical and moral education. I tried in the course of the lectures to show how the child can be guided in these steps inwardly in its earthly life, which could bring about a certain ethical and moral attitude in the child.

If I would today again speak in front of individuals who listen in the same way as some had listened yesterday, then one could again construe that I spoke out of direct experience, as it happened yesterday, when I spoke about the Trinity. However, Dr Rittelmeyer responded so clearly with a comparison between the book and the mind, which understandably I didn't wish to do.

In this lecture I want to indicate the ethical, moral education towards which the child needs to be orientated so that it is done in the right way: feelings of gratitude, interest in the world, love for the world and his or her own activity and action; and I would like to show how, through love imbuing their activity and actions they are steered to something which can be called human duty. It would be necessary for this trinity to be taken directly out of life's experience and express them in three words—we're talking about language here. I arrived at the first two steps, Gratitude and Love, then the third step: Duty. Despite having to give the lecture twice, once from 10 to 11 o'clock for the English audience, and a second time from 11 to 12 for other nationalities, the latter with their frame of mind being that of central Europeans, I actually had to do these lectures which should simply have been parallel, in quite a different way for the English than for the Germans because I needed to make an effort to live into the mood of my audience. Something similar applied to the other days but on this day, it was particularly necessary.

Why was this so? Yes, while I spoke about duty during the hour from 11 to 12, my entire audience experienced it through words of the German language; I had spoken in the first hour from 10 to 11 what I had to say about their experience of the “Pflicht”-impulse, which they call “duty.” Now it is quite a different experience when one expresses the word “Pflicht” to the word “duty” and in the 11 to 12 o'clock lecture I had to allow nuances of experience to flow into what happens when one says “Pflicht.” When one says “Pflicht” one touches an impulse through these words which comes out of the emotional life, which flows directly into experience as something—which I want to say verbatim—is related to “pflegen” (to care for). Out of this activity flows the feeling, as to what belongs to this activity. This is the impulse which one designates to the word “Pflicht.” Something quite different lives in the soul when this impulse is designated by the word “duty,” because just as much as the word “Pflicht” points to the feelings, so the word “duty” points to the intellect, to the mind, to what is directed from within, like how thoughts are being conducted when one goes over into activity. One could say “Pflicht” is fulfilled through inner love and devotion, duty is fulfilled from the basis of a human being, when sensing his human dignity, must say to himself: you must obey a law which penetrates you, you must devote yourself to the law which you have grasped intellectually. This is roughly characterised. However, with this I want to bring into expression how inner complexes of experience are quite different between one word and another, and yet despite this the dictionary says the German word “Pflicht” translates to the English word of “duty”. This is however transmitted by the spirit of the folk, in the folk soul and in the speech, you have nuances of the entire folk soul. You are going to see that in the soul of central Europeans, in relation to this, it looks quite different compared with souls of other nationalities; that the soul life is experienced quite differently in speech by central Europeans compared with the English nation.

A person who has no sense for the unconscious depths of soul where speech comes from, which lies deeper than what is experienced consciously, will actually be unable to obtain a sober objectivity for scientific observation of speech. One should be clear about one thing. With nature observation the objects present themselves, or one can clean them up through outer handling in order to have the object outside oneself and thus able to research it. To consider speech it is necessary to first examine the process of consciousness in order to come to what the object essentially is which one wants to examine. So one can, where speech is the subject, not merely consider what lives in human consciousness, but in considering speech one needs to have the entire living person before you who expresses himself in speaking and speech.

This preparation for the scientific speech observation is very rarely done. If such preparation would be undertaken then one would, if one takes linguistic history or comparative linguistics, move towards having a deep need to first contemplate the inner unconscious content of that language, the unconscious substance which in speaking only partly comes to expression.

Now we arrive at something else, namely, during the various stages of human development this degree of consciousness associated with language was quite varied. It was quite different for example during the times in which Sanskrit had its origins; different again during the time the Greek language developed, another time than we had here in Germany—but here nuances became gradually less recognisable—and in another time, it happened for instance in England. There are already great variations in the inner experience of the conduct in the English language when used by an Englishman or American, if I observe only the larger differences. Whoever takes up the study of dialects will enter into how the different dialects in the language is experienced by the people who use it, and take note of all the complicated soul impulses streaming through it which comes into expression as speech in the vocal organism. It is for instance not pointless that when the Greek speakers say “speech” (Sprache) or when they say “reason” (Vernunft), they consider both these words as essentially the same and can condense them into one word, because the experience within the words and the experience within thoughts, within mental images, flow together, undifferentiated, in the Greek application of speech, while in our current epoch differentiations show themselves in this regard. The Greek always felt words themselves rolled around in his mind when he spoke; for him thoughts were the “soul” and words streaming in formed the “body”, the outer garments one could call it, the word-soul streaming in thought. Today we feel, when we clearly bring this process into consciousness, as if on the one side we would say a word—the word streams towards what we express—and on the other side the thoughts swim in the stream of words; it is however soon clearly differentiated from the stream of words.

If we return for instance to Sanskrit then it is necessary to undergo essential psychological processes first, to experience psychic processes, in order to reach the possibility to live inwardly with what at the time of Sanskrit's origin was living in the words. We may not at any stage confront Sanskrit with the same feelings when regarding its expression, when regarding its language, as we would do with a language today.

Let's take for example a familiar word: “manas”. If you now open the dictionary you would find a multitude of words for “manas”: spirit, mind, mindset, sometimes also anger, zeal and so on. Basically, with such a translation one arrives at an experience of a word which once upon a time existed when it was quite clearly and inwardly experienced, not nearly. Within the epoch when Sanskrit lived at the height of its vitality, with a different soul constitution as it has today, it was essentially something different. We must clearly understand that human evolution already existed as a deep transformation of the human soul constitution. I have repetitively characterized this transformation as having taken place somewhere in the 15th Century. There are however ever and again such boundaries of the epochs when going through human evolution, and only when one can follow history as the inner soul life of the people can one discover what really existed and how the life of speech played its part.

It was during such a time when the word “manas” could still be grasped inwardly in a vital way, when something existed which I would like to call the experience of the meaning of sound. In an unbelievable intense way one experienced what lived inwardly in the sounds, which we designate today as m, as a, as n and as s. The life of soul rose to a higher level—still dreamily, yet in a conscious dream—with its inward living within the organism when the vocals and consonants were pronounced. Whoever uses such scientific tools for researching how speech lives within people, will find that everything resembling consonants depends upon people placing themselves into external processes, into things, and that the inner life of things with their own inner, but restrained gestures, want to copy it. Consonants are restrained gestures, gestures not becoming visible but which through their content certainly capture that which can outwardly be experienced in the role of thunder, lightning flashes, in the rolling wind and so on. An inner inclusion of oneself in outer things is available when consonants are experienced.

We actually want to, if I might express myself like this, imitate through gestures all that lives and weaves outside of us; but we restrain our gestures and they transform themselves within us and this transformation appears as consonants.

By contrast, by opposing external nature, mankind has living within itself a number of sympathies and antipathies. These sympathies and antipathies within their most inner existence form gestures out of the collective vowel system, so that the human being, through experiencing speech, lives in such a way that he, within the nature of the consonants, imitate the outer world—but in a transformed way—so that in contrast, through the vowels, he forms his own inner relationship to the outer world.

This is something which can certainly be understood and examined through today's soul life if one enters into the concrete facts of the speech experience. It deals with what is illustrated as imagination, not as some or other fantasy, but that for example the inner process of the speech experience can really be looked at.

Now in ancient times, in which Sanskrit had its original source, there was still something like a dreamlike imagination living within the human soul. Not a clearly delineated mental picture like we have today was part of man, but a life in pictures, in imaginations—certainly not the kind of imaginations we talk about in Anthroposophy today, which are fully conscious with our sharply outlined concepts, but dreamlike instinctive imaginations. Still, these dreamlike imaginations worked as a power. If we go back up to the time we are talking about, one can say these imaginations lived as a vital power in people: they sensed it, like they sensed hunger and thirst, only in a gentler manner. One painted in an internal manner, which is not painting as in today's sense, but in such a way as to experience the inward application of vocalisation, like we apply colour to a surface. Then one lives into the consonants through the vocalization, just as when, by placing one colour beside another, one brings about boundaries and contours. It is an inner re-experience of imaginations, which presents an objective re-living of outer nature. It is the re-living of dreamlike imaginations. One surrenders oneself to these imaginations and inverts the inner processed imaginations through the speech organs into words.

Only in this way does one imagine the inner process of the life of speech in the way it was once experienced in human evolution. If one becomes serious about such an observation, for example through the experience of tones, which we call ‘m’ today, we notice that with the experience of this sound, we stand at once on the boundary between what is consonant and what is vowel. Just like we paint a picture and then the colours, which have their inner boundaries and outer limitations and do not continue over the surface, just so something is expressed in the word “manas”. With ‘a’ something resembling human inwardness is sensed. If one wishes to describe the word “manas” I have to say: In olden times people lived in their dream-like imaginations in the language, just as we experience speech consciously now. We no longer live in relation to speech in dream pictures, but our consciousness lies over speech. Old dreamlike imaginations flowed continuously in the language. So when they said the word “manas” they felt as if in some kind of shell, they felt their physical human body in as far as it is liquid aqueous, like a kind of shell, and the rest of the body as if carried in a kind of air body. All of this was experienced in a dreamlike manner in olden times when the word “manas” was spoken out. People didn't feel like we do today in our soul life, because people felt themselves to be the bearers of the soul life—and the soul itself one experienced as having been born out of the supersensible and super-human forces of the shell.

You must first make this experience lively if you want to understand the content of older words. We must realise that when we experience our “I” today it is quite different from what it was when the word “ego” was for instance come across in humanity in earlier times, when the word “aham” was experienced in the Sanskrit language. We sense our “I” today as something which is completely drawn to a single point, a central point to which our inner being and all our soul forces relate.

This experience does not underlie the older revelations of the I-concept. In these olden times a person felt his own I as something which had to be carried; one didn't feel as if you were within it. One then experienced the I to some extent as a surging of soul life swimming independently. What one felt was not indicated by the linguistic context—what lay in the Sanskrit word “aham” shows it is something around the I, which carries the I . While we feel the I inwardly as will impulses—we really experience it this way today—which permeates our inner being, we say that as its central point it is a spring of warmth, which streams with warmth—to make a comparison—streaming out on all sides, this is how the Greek or even the Latin experienced the I like a sphere of water, with air permeating this sphere completely. It is something quite different to feel yourself living in a sphere of water within extended air, or to experience the inward streaming towards a central point of warmth and to stream out warmth to the periphery of the sphere and then—if I might use this comparison more precisely—to be grasped as a sphere of light.

These are all symbols. Yet the words of a language are in this sense also symbols, and if you deny the ability of words to indicate symbols, you would be totally unable to be impressed by such a consideration. It is necessary in the research of linguistics that one first lives into what actually has to become the object of linguistics. Now, one finds that in ancient times, the language had a considerably different character than what exists in civilisation's current language; further, one finds that the physical, the bodily, played a far greater part in the establishment of phonetics, in the establishment of word configuration. The human being gave much more of his inner life in speech. That is why you have ‘m’ at the start of “manas” because this enclosed the human being, formed a contour around him or her.

When you have Sanskrit terms in front of yourself, you soon notice you can experience the nature of the consonants and vowels within it. You notice how in this activity an inner experience in the external events and external things are present and how this results in the consonants being imitated, so vocal sympathies and antipathies are discovered where the word process and the speech process merge. In ancient times a much more bodily nuance came about. One had a far greater experience in the ancient life of speech. This one can still experience. If today you hear someone speaking in Sanskrit or the language of an oriental civilisation, how it sounds out of their bodily nature, and how speech absorbs the musical characteristics, it is because such an experience rises out of the musical element. Only in a later phase of human evolution the musical elements in speech split away from the logical, thus also away from the soul life, into mere conceptions.

This is still noticeable today. When for instance you compare the inner experience in the German and in the English language, you notice that in the English language the process of abstract-imagery-life have made greater progress. If we want to live in the German language today we must live into those forms of the speech which came about in New High German.¹ The dialects still lets our soul become immersed in a far more intensive and vital experience. The actual spiritual experience of the language is primarily only possible in High German. Thus, a figure such as Hegel who was born out of this spirit, for whom the mental images are particular to him and yet it is also quite connected to a particular element within the language, out of these causes it has come about that Hegel is in reality not translatable into a western language, because here one experiences the literal fluency (Sprachliche) even more directly.

When you go towards the west you notice throughout within the observation how the soul unfolds when it is given over to the use of language: the soul experiences it intensively, however the literal fluency (Sprachliche) is thrown out of the direct soul experience throughout; it flows away in the stream of speech and continuously, to some degree, out of the flowing water something is created like ice floes, like when something more solid is rolling over the waves—as for instance in English. When, by contrast, we speak High German, we can observe how a person in the stream of speech is in any case within the fluidity of it but in which there are not yet any ice blocks which have already fallen out of the literal fluency, which are connected with the soul-spiritual of the human being.

Now when we come towards the east, one finds this process in a stage which is even further back. Now you don't see ice floes which are thrown out of the stream of speech, and which are not firmly connected with it; here also, as not in High German, the entire adequacy of thoughts are experienced with the word but the word is experienced in such a way that a person retains it in his organism, while thoughts in their turn flow into the words, which one runs after but which actually goes before you.

These are the things which one has to live through when one wants to really understand literal fluency. One can't experience this if one doesn't at least to a certain degree take on the contemplation which Goethe developed for the observation of the living plant world and which, when in one's inner life, these are followed with inner consequential exercises, leading towards mental pictures about what is meant in Anthroposophy. Anyway, if you want to look at the language, you must observe it in such a way that you live within the inner metamorphosis of the organising of the language, experience in its inner concreteness, because only then will you have in front of you, what the speech process is. As long as you are unable to rise up to such inner observations of speech, you are only looking at speech in an outer way, and you will be unable to penetrate the actual living object of language. As a result, all kinds of theories of speech have appeared. Ideas about language have in many cases become thought-related regarding the origins of language; a number of theories have resulted from this. Wilhelm Wundt enumerated them in his theory of language and picked them apart critically.

This is the way things are today in many areas and how it was observed yesterday. When the bearers of some scientific angle today raises into full contemplation regarding what he has observed within the science and he represents it thus, then talk starts to develop about “decline”. This is actually not really what Anthroposophy wants to tell you. Basically, for example, yesterday very little was said about decline; but very much not so in the case of those who stand within theology, for they are experiencing a decline.

Similarly, there is also talk regarding the philosophy of language, of declining theories, for instance with the “theory of creative synthesis/invention” (Erfindungstheorie). Wundt lists his different theories. Following on the theory of invention the language developed in such a way that humanity, to some extent, fixed the designations of things; however, this is no longer appropriate for current humanity because today the question they ask is how could the dumb have fixed forms of language while still so primitive?

As his second, Wundt presents his “theory of wonder” (Wundertheorie) which assumes that at a certain stage of evolution human speech/language arrived as a gift from the Creator. Dr Geyer already dealt with this yesterday; currently it is no longer valid for a decent scientist to believe in wonder; it is prohibited, and so the theory of wonder is no longer acceptable. Further down his list is the “theory of imitation” (Nachahmungstheorie) which already contains elements which have a partial authorisation because it is based on elements of consonants in speech being far more on an inner process than what is usually imagined. Then the “natural sound theory” (Naturlauttheorie) followed which claimed that out of inner experience the human being aspired towards phonetically relating what he perceived out in nature, into the form of speech, according to his sympathies or antipathies. These theories could be defined differently. Today it is quite possible to show that on the basis of those who criticise these theories, it becomes apparent that these theories can't determine the actual object of language.

Dear friends, the thing is actually like this: Anthroposophy—even when people say they don't need to wait for her—can still show in a certain relationship, what can be useful in this case, through which—even in such areas as linguistics—firstly the sober, pure object is to be found, on which the observation can be based.

Obviously anything possible can be discussed, also regarding language, even when one actually doesn't approach it as a really pure object. Anthroposophy bears within it a profound scientific character which assumes that first of all one must be clear what kind of reality there is to be found in specific areas, in order for the relationships we have regarding truth and wisdom to penetrate these areas, so that these areas of reality can actually become inward experiences. As we saw happening here yesterday, then in relation to such earnest work which is not more easily phrased in other sciences, it is said that these Anthroposophists stick their noses into everything possible, then it must be answered: Certainly it is apparent that Anthroposophy in the course of its evolution must stick its nose into everything. When this remark doesn't remain in superficiality, this ‘Anthroposophy sticks her nose into everything possible’—but if one wants to make progress to really behold and earnestly study the results, when it comes down to Anthroposophy sticking its nose into everything, only then, when this second stage in the relationships to Anthroposophy is accomplished, will it show how fruitful Anthroposophy is and in how far its legitimacy goes against the condemnation that it merely originates from superficial observation!

• 1. Hochdeutch or High German is the pure German language without the influence of dialects, which is also understood by most Germans. New High German differs from Old High German as the latter refers to more historic times. Schriftliche Deutch is the German most widely used in school instruction, standardization, etc.—translator

Studies that are concerned with the karma of human beings must be undertaken with deep earnestness and inwardly assimilated. For it is not the mere knowledge of some particular karmic connection that is important. What is really important is that such studies should quicken the whole of man's nature, enabling him to find his bearings in life.

Such studies will never be fruitful if they lead to greater indifference towards human beings than is otherwise the case; they will be fruitful only if they kindle deeper love and understanding than are possible when account is taken merely of the impressions of a single life.

Anyone who reviews the successive epochs in the evolution of mankind cannot fail to realise that in the course of history very much has changed in man's whole way of thinking and perception, in all his views of the world and of life. Generally speaking, man is less interested in the past than in the future, for which the foundations have yet to be laid. But anyone who has a sufficiently clear grasp of how the souls of men have changed in the course of the earth's evolution will not shrink from the necessity of having himself to undergo the change that will lead him to study, not merely the single earthly life of some individual, but the succession of earthly lives, in so far as these can be brought within the range of his vision.

I think that the examples given in the last lecture—Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Pestalozzi, and others—can show how understanding of a personality, love for this personality, can be enhanced when the latest earth-life is viewed against the background of other lives of which it is the outcome.

And now, in order that our studies may be really fruitful, I want to return to a question to which, as many of those present here will know, I have already alluded. Reference is often made in spiritual science to the existence in olden times of Initiates possessed of clairvoyant vision, personalities who were able to communicate the secrets of the spiritual world. And from this the question quite naturally arises: Where are these Initiates in our own time? Have they reincarnated?

To answer this question it is necessary to point out how greatly a later earth-life may differ from a preceding one in respect of knowledge and also in respect of other activities of the soul. For when in the time between death and a new birth the moment approaches for the human being to descend to the earth and unite with a physical-etheric organisation, a very great deal has to take place. The direction towards family, race and so forth, has indeed long been determined, but the resolve to undergo this tremendous change in the form of existence, the change involved in the transition from the world of soul-and-spirit into the physical world—this resolve is a stupendous matter. For as you can well imagine, circumstances are not as they are on earth, where the human being grows weaker as he approaches the end of his normal life; after all his experiences on earth he will actually have little to do with the decision to enter into a different form of existence when he passes through the gate of death. The change, in this case, comes upon him of itself, it breaks in upon him.

Here on earth, death is something that breaks in upon man. The descent from the spiritual world is completely different. It is a matter, then, of fully conscious action, a deliberate decision proceeding from the deepest foundations of the soul. We must realise what a stupendous transformation takes place in the human being when the time comes for him to exchange the forms of life in the pre-earthly existence of soul-and-spirit for those of earthly existence. The descent entails adaptation to the prevailing conditions of civilisation and culture and also to the bodily constitution which a particular epoch is able to provide. Our own epoch does not readily yield bodies—let alone conditions of culture and civilisation—in which Initiates can live again as they lived in the past. And when the time approaches for the soul of some former Initiate to use a physical body once again, it is a matter of accepting this body as it is, and of growing into the environment and the current form of education. But what once was present in this soul is not lost; it merely comes to expression in some other way. The basic configuration of the soul remains but assumes a different form.

Now in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. it was still possible for the soul to acquire a deep knowledge of Initiation truths, because at that time, especially in Southern Europe and Asia Minor, body followed soul, that is to say, the bodily functions were able to adapt themselves inwardly to the soul. One who may have lived in the early Christian centuries as an Initiate, with a soul wholly inward-turned and full of wisdom, is obliged to descend to-day into a kind of body which, owing to the intervening development, is directed pre-eminently to the external world, lives altogether in the external world. The result is that owing to the bodily constitution, the inner concentration of soul-forces that was still possible in the 3rd or 4th century of our era, is so no longer. And so the following could take place in the course of evolution.—I am telling you of things that reveal themselves to inner vision.

There was a certain Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, typical of all such institutions in that part of the world in the early Christian centuries. Traditions were everywhere alive in those olden days when men were deeply initiated into these Mysteries. But everywhere, too, men were more or less aware of the rules that must be imposed on the soul in order to acquire knowledge leading to its own deep foundations, as well as out into the cosmic All. And in the early Christian centuries these very Mysteries of Asia Minor were occupied with a momentous question.

Boundless wisdom had streamed through the sanctuaries of the Mysteries. If you will read what was described in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—as far as description was possible in a printed publication at that time—you will see that the ultimate aim of all this wisdom was an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And in these Mysteries of Asia Minor the great question was: How will the sublime content of the Mystery of Golgotha, the reality of what has streamed into the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha—how will it evolve further in the hearts and minds of men? And how will the ancient, primeval wisdom—a wisdom that encompassed the Beings who have their habitations in the stars and the manifold orders of Divine-Spiritual Beings who guide the universe and the life of man—how will this primeval wisdom unite with what is concentrated in the Mystery of Golgotha? How will it unite with the Impulse which, proceeding from a sublime Sun-Being, from the Christ, is now to pour into mankind?—That was the burning question in these Mysteries of Asia Minor.

There was one personality who with his Mystery-wisdom and Mystery-experiences felt this question with overwhelming intensity. It is in truth a shattering experience when in the search for karmic connections one comes upon this man who was initiated in one of these Mysteries in Asia Minor in the early Christian centuries. It is a shattering experience, for with his Initiation-knowledge he was aware in every fibre of his being of the need to grasp the meaning and import of the Mystery of Golgotha, and he was faced with the problem: What will happen now? How will these weak human souls be able to receive it?

Weighed down in soul by this burning question concerning the destiny of Christianity, this Initiate was walking one day in the wider precincts of his Mystery-centre, when an experience came to him of an event that made an overwhelming impression—the treacherous murder of Julian the Apostate. With the vision and insight of Initiation he lived through this event.

It was known to him that Julian the Apostate had attained a certain degree of Initiation in the ancient Mysteries, that he wanted to preserve for the spiritual life of mankind, the impulses that had been cultivated in the ancient Mysteries, to ensure their continuance, in short to unite Christianity with the wisdom of the Mysteries. He knew that Julian the Apostate proclaimed, in the sense of the Mystery-wisdom, that as well as the physical Sun there is also a Spiritual Sun, and that whoever knows the Spiritual Sun, knows Christ. But this, teaching was regarded as evil in the days of Julian the Apostate and led to his treacherous murder on his journey to Persia. This most significant, symptomatic event in world-history was lived through by the Initiate of whom I am speaking.

Those of you who for many years have been listening to what has been said on the subject of karmic connections in world-history, will remember that in the lectures I once gave in Stuttgart on certain chapters of occult history—reference was also made to the same theme at the Christmas Foundations Meeting¹—I spoke of the deep tragedy of Julian the Apostate's position in the history of humanity.

His death was felt and experienced by the Initiate to whom I am now referring, whose Initiate-knowledge, received in a Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, was shadowed by the question: What will become of Christianity? And through these symptomatic events there came to him the crystal-clear realisation: A time will come when Christianity will be misunderstood, will live only in traditions, when men will no longer know anything of the glory and sublimity of Christ, the Sun-Spirit Who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth.

All this lay like a weight upon the soul of the Initiate. And for the rest of his life at that time he was heavy-hearted and sorrowful in regard to the evolution of Christianity. He experienced the consternation and dismay which a symptomatic event of the kind referred to must inevitably cause in an Initiate.—It made an overwhelming, shattering impression upon him.

And then we go further.—The impression received by this Initiate was bound to lead to a reincarnation comparatively soon afterwards—in point of fact at the time of the Thirty Years' War, when very many outstanding, interesting incarnations took place, incarnations that have played an important part in the historical evolution of mankind.

The Initiate was born again as a woman, at the beginning of the 17th century, before the actual outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. She lived on into the time of the conflict and was in contact with certain attempts that were made from the side of Rosicrucianism to correct the tendencies of the age and to make preparation in a spiritual way for the future. This work, however, was largely overshadowed and submerged by the savagery and brutality prevailing during the Thirty Years' War. Think only of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz which appeared shortly before its outbreak. And many other significant impulses came into the life of mankind at that time, before being stamped out or brutalised by the War.

This personality, who as an Initiate had experienced the deeply symptomatic event connected with Julian the Apostate and had then passed through the incarnation as a woman in the 17th century, was born again in the 19th century. All that had become even more inward during the incarnation as a woman, all that had formerly been present in the soul—not the Initiation-wisdom but the horror caused by the terrible event—all this, in the last third of the 19th century, poured into a peculiarly characteristic view of the world which penetrated deeply into the prevailing incongruities of human existence.

The whole tenor and trend of the present age is such that it is difficult for one who has carried over ancient Initiation-wisdom from an earlier earth-life into the life of the 19th and 20th centuries, to work effectively through deeds. And so, in this case, what was brought over—deeply transformed and apparently externalised, though in reality still inward—pressed its way from the heart—the seat of the old Initiation-wisdom—towards the senses and sense-observation, striving to find expression in poetry, in literature.

That is the reason why recent times have produced so many really splendid examples of literature. Only they are incoherent, they are simply not intelligible as they stand. For they have been created not only by the personality who was present on earth at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th centuries, but an additional factor has been some experience in a past life such as I have related, an experience that had such a shattering effect upon an Initiate—albeit an Initiate in Mysteries already decadent. This shattering experience in the soul works on, streams into artistic, poetic qualities of soul—and what, in this case, comes over in so characteristic a way, lives itself out in the personality of Ibsen.

When this vista is open to one, the secrets of the evolution of humanity light up from writings which appeared at the end of the 19th century and which cannot be the work of a single man but of a man through whom and in whom earlier epochs are also coming to expression.

In approaching a theme like this, we shall certainly not lose respect either for the course taken by world-history or for the single personality who stands before us with greatness and distinction. In very truth, the experiences that come upon one in this domain are shattering—that is to say when such matters are pursued with the necessary earnestness.

Now you will often have heard tell of an alchemist who lived in a comparatively early period of the Middle Ages: Basilius Valentinus (Basil Valentine), a Benedictine monk. His achievements in the spheres of medicine and alchemy were of momentous significance and to study him in connection with karmic relationships in world-history leads to remarkable results, results which show very clearly how difficult it is to understand the age in which we ourselves are living.

Many things in our time are not only incomprehensible but often repellent, disagreeable, horrifying in a certain respect, and if we look at life merely as it is perceptible to the senses, it is impossible not to feel indignation and disgust.

It is different, however, for one who can perceive the human and historical connections. Things are by no means what they seem! Traits may show themselves in life to-day for which the onlookers have, quite understandably, nothing but censure and indignation. And yet all the time, even in the unpleasant elements themselves, there may be something that is intensely fascinating. This will be the case more and more frequently.

As I said, there in the early Middle Ages we find Basilius Valentinus, a Benedictine monk, engaged in the pursuit of medicine and alchemy in his cellars in the monastery and making a number of important investigations. There are others with him who are his pupils and they write down what Basilius Valentinus has said to them. Consequently there are hardly any original writings of Basilius Valentinus himself; but there are writings of pupils which contain a great deal that is genuinely his wisdom, his alchemical wisdom.

Now when, at a certain time of my life, one of the pupils of Basilius Valentinus who especially interested me came into my field of vision, I realised: This pupil is again in incarnation, but spiritually there has been a remarkable metamorphosis. He has come again in the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.

But the alchemical activity, directed without co-ordination towards the senses, manifested outwardly as a view of life in which alchemical concepts are always, so to speak, being welded into sense-observations. In this later incarnation the man observes external facts—how people act, how things happen among them, how they talk to one another—and he groups it all together in a way that is often repellent. But the explanation lies in the fact that the personality in question had, in an earlier incarnation, worked at alchemy under Basilius Valentinus. And now he jumbles everything together—the relationships between people, how they behave to one another, what they say, what they do and so forth. He does not look at these things with the eyes of a modern philistine—far from it!—but with the eye of a soul in which impulses from his former alchemical pursuits are still alive. He jumbles up events that occur among men, makes dramas out of them, and becomes: Frank Wedekind.

These things must of course be studied in pursuance of a longing for a genuine understanding of man. When this is the case, life becomes, not poorer, but infinitely richer. Take Wedekind's ‘Hidalla’ or any other of his dramas which make the brain reel when one attempts to find the thread connecting what comes first with what comes later. Yet there is something fascinating about it for anyone who can look beyond the surface, and the commonplace judgments of the critics sitting in the stalls will leave him untouched. From their own standpoint, of course, these critics are justified—but that is of no account. The real point is that world-history has here produced a strange and remarkable phenomenon.—Alchemical thinking, flung as it were across centuries, is now applied to human life and human deeds; these, together with human rules and standards are all jumbled into a hotchpotch, just as once in alchemical kitchens—at a time when alchemy was already on the decline—substances and their forces were mixed in retorts and tests made of their effects.

Even in respect of the point of time at which they occur on earth, the lives of men are determined by connections of destiny and karma. Let me give you another example in corroboration of this.

We turn our gaze back to the time when the Platonic School flourishes in Greece. There was Plato, surrounded by a number of pupils. In their characters these pupils differed greatly from one another and what Plato himself depicts in the Dialogues, where characters of the most varied types appear and converse together, is in many respects a true picture of his School. Very different characters came together in this School.

In the School there were two personalities in particular who imbibed, each in a very different way, all that fell from Plato's lips, bringing such sublime illumination to his pupils, and that he also carried further in conversations with them.

One of these two pupils was a personality of rare sensitiveness and refinement. He was particularly receptive to everything that Plato did, through his teaching on the Ideas, to lift men's minds and hearts above the things of earth. Everywhere we find Plato affirming that over against the transitoriness of the single events in man's life and environment, stand the Eternal Ideas. The material world is transitory; but the material world is only a picture of the Idea which—itself eternal—passes in perpetual metamorphoses through the temporal and the transitory. Thus did Plato lift his pupils above the transitory things belonging to the external world of sense to contemplation of the eternal Ideas which hover over them as the heavens hover over the earth.

But in this Platonic treatment of the world, man in his true being fares rather badly. For the Platonic conceptions and mode of thinking cannot properly be applied to man, in whom the Idea itself becomes alive in objective reality. Man is too individual. The Ideas, according to Plato, hover above the things. This is true in respect of the minerals, crystals and the other phenomena of the lifeless sense-world; Goethe too, while on the track of the archetypal plant (the ‘Urpflanze’) was observing the varying types; and the same applies in the case of the animals. With man, however, it is a matter of seeking the living Idea within each single human individuality. It was Aristotle—not Plato—who taught that the Idea as entelechy has entered into the human being.

The first of the two pupils shared with whole-hearted fervour in this heavenward flight in Platonism. With his spiritual vision he could accompany Plato in this heavenward flight, in this soaring above the earth, and words of mellowed sweetness would fall from his lips in the Platonic School on the sublimity of the Ideas that hover over and above the things of earth. In his soul he soared to the Ideas. When he was not lingering in his world of vision but living again in his heart and mind, going about among the Greeks as he loved to do, he took the warmest interest in every human being with whom he came into contact. It was only when he had come down as it were to everyday life that his heart and feelings could be focused upon the many whom he loved so well, for his visions drew him away from the earth. And so in this pupil there was a kind of split between the life of heart when he was among living human beings and the life of soul when he was transported to the Eternal Ideas, when he was listening in the Academy to Plato's words or was himself formulating in words full of sweetness, the inspirations brought by Platonism. There was something wonderfully sensitive about this personality.

Now a close and intimate friendship existed between this man and another pupil in the Platonic School. But in the course of it, a different trend of character which I will now describe, was developing in the friend, with the result that the two grew apart. Not that their love for one another cooled, but in their whole way of thinking they grew apart; life separated them. They were able, at first, to understand one another well, but later on even this was no longer possible. And it led to the one I have described becoming irritable and ‘nervy’ as we should say to-day, whenever the other spoke in the way that came naturally to him.

The second pupil was no less ready than the first to look upwards to the Eternal Ideas which were the inspiration of so much living activity in the School of Plato. This pupil, too, could be completely transported from the earth. But the deep, warm-hearted interest in numbers of his fellow human beings—that he lacked. On the other hand he was intensely attracted by the myths and sagas of the ancient gods which were extant among the people and were well-known to him. He interested himself deeply in what we to-day call Greek Mythology, in the figures of Zeus, Athene and the rest. It was his tendency more or less to pass living human beings by, but he took a boundless interest in the gods whom he pictured as having lived on earth in a remote past and as being the progenitors of humanity.

And so he felt the urge and the strong desire to apply the inspiration experienced in his life of soul to an understanding of the profound wisdom contained in the sagas of the gods and heroes. Men's relation to such sagas was of course completely different in Greece from what it is to-day. In Greece it was all living reality, not merely the content of books or traditions.

This second personality who had been on terms of intimate friendship with the first, also grew out of the friendship—it was the same with them both. But as members of the Platonic School there was a link between them. Now the Platonic School had this characteristic.—Its pupils developed forces in themselves which tended to separate them from one another, to drive them apart after the School had for a time held them close together. As a result of this, individualities developed such as the two I have described, individualities who in spite of their different natures belonged together and who then grew apart.

These two individualities—they were born again as women in Italy in the days of the Renaissance—came again to the earth in modern times; the first too early and the second rather too late. This is connected with the strong resolution that is required before making the descent to incarnation.

Having passed through the gate of death, the one I described first, who had soared in spirit to super-earthly realms but without the fullness of human nature which expressed itself only in his heart and feelings, was able between death and rebirth to apprehend what pertains to the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; to some extent he could also apprehend the Second Hierarchy, but not the Hierarchy immediately above man, not, therefore, the Hierarchy, through which one learns how the human body is built up and organised here on earth.

He thus became a personality who in pre-earthly existence had developed little insight into the constitution and nature of the human body; hence, when he was born again, he did not take into himself the final impulse. He made a partial, not a full descent into the body, did not come right down into it, but always hovered a little above it.

His friend from the Platonic School waited before descending to incarnation. The reason for the waiting was that had the two of them met, had they been actual contemporaries, they would not have been able to tolerate one another. And yet, for all that, the one who had been wont to speak at such length about his intercourse with men, recounting it with such charm and sweetness to the other—who did not go among his fellows but was engrossed in the myths and sagas of the gods—this first personality was destined to make a deep impression upon the other, to precede him. The second followed later.

This second personality, having steeped himself in Imaginations of the gods, had now developed a high degree of understanding of all that has to do with man. Accordingly he wanted to extend his time in the spiritual world and gather impulses that would enable him to take deep hold of the body. And what actually happened was that he took hold of the body too forcefully, he sank too deeply into it.

Thus we have here two differing configurations of destiny. Of two members of the Platonic School, one takes too slight a hold of the body in the second incarnation afterwards and the other takes too strong a hold. The one cannot completely enter his body; he is impelled into it in his youth but out of it again soon afterwards and is obliged to remain outside. This is Hölderlin.

The other is carried so deeply into his body that he enters with too much force into his organs and suffers almost lifelong illness. This is Hamerling.

Thus we have before us great human destinies stretching through the ages of time, and the impulses which gave rise to these destinies; and we are now able to divine how the spiritual impulses work. For we must place this fact in all clarity before our souls: an individuality like Hölderlin, who has come from the Platonic School and who cannot enter fully into his body but has to remain outside it, such an individuality experiences in the dimness of insanity, impulses that work in preparation for coming earthly lives, impulses that destine him for greatness. And it is the same with the other, Robert Hamerling.

Illness and health appear in quite a different light when considered in the setting of destiny than when they are observed within the bounds of the single earthly life.

I think it can surely be said that reverence will arise in men's hearts and minds when life is treated in this way—reverence and awe for the mysterious happenings brought about by the spiritual world. Again and again I must emphasise that these things are not being told in order to satisfy cravings for sensation, but to lead us more and more deeply into a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual life. And it is only through this deeper penetration into the spiritual life that the external, sense-life of man can be explained and illumined.

• 1. Lecture-Course XVI. Occult History. Stuttgart, December 27th–31st, 1910 and January 1st, 1911. World-History in the Light of Anthroposophy. Dornach. December 24th–31st, 1923.

We have already spoken of how the cultural development of mankind, in so far as it is spiritual, is permeated by all kinds of brotherhoods which bring to expression in their total content the symbolic actions which have been taken from certain imaginative ideas. The most significant symbol of such brotherhoods is that which is connected with the thought of death and resurrection. Again and again the thought of death and the thought of resurrection is brought together before such brotherhoods. Thus, one can say that as a middle point symbol man is shown how the thought of immortality proceeds out of both of these thoughts. First a man dies and is buried.

Now, in most of these brotherhoods, the personality to which this symbol is attached is called Hiram; this symbol is connected with what is called the legend of Hiram. Thus the name of Hiram, the architect of King Solomon who according to the legend built the Solomon Temple with King Solomon and then as a result of certain of his servants becoming his enemies, Hiram was killed and his death is shown in a symbolic way. It is shown how he is buried and the presentation is brought to a certain resurrection out of the grave, a proceeding of Hiram out of the grave. Through this symbol, they want to carry the thought of immortality to the soul in a much more penetrating way than is possible through mere theories. Through this symbol which takes hold of the unconscious forces of man, through this imagination one wants to show what the situation really is when one passes through death and then is resurrected.

Now, when you consider that the death of Hiram, the resurrection of Hiram is led before the brothers of the lodges, so indeed, we have the connection with the Easter thought. Now you know that in the Catholic cult there is also a symbolic presentation occurring; that the festivities of Maundy Thursday pass over to the Good Friday, and then the Festival is concluded in the symbolic placing of Christ Jesus in the grave. Then you have Christ Jesus lying in the grave from Good Friday through Saturday evening; and as is the modern custom the Resurrection is celebrated, which means that Christ is again taken out of the grave and you have celebration with the Resurrected Christ. When one considers the action which occurs there in the cult, particularly in the Catholic cult, it is just the same as that which occurs in occult brotherhoods as the putting in the grave and the resurrection of Hiram. So you see, the Easter thought stands as the center point in a certain connection in these occult brotherhoods. The meaning which is connected with this ceremony is that the human being, by gazing on this symbolic activity, goes deeper into his soul than he would with the normal forces which are present in his consciousness; it goes much deeper than that. Such a symbolic action would actually have no significance if you could not presuppose that deep down in the human soul you have an activity where the consciousness does not reach. The human soul contains activity below his conscious awareness.

We speak in art of the fact that that which gives the artist power enabling him to produce works of art or to reproduce them cannot originate from the ordinary conscious forces of the soul, but come up out of the unconscious and then enter into the consciousness. Hence, in connection with the artist, it is so that for him any sort of rules to which he might direct himself to, will become a disturbing factor; he cannot regulate himself according to rules; he must direct himself to that which as an elementary consciousness in his soul gives wings to those forces which he needs. He can, if he wants, subsequently to look back and give a certain explanation of that which comes to the surface from the subconscious aspect of his being. Therefore we must assume that many other hidden qualities hold sway in the soul, forces which do not play up into consciousness.

We speak of the fact as we have often spoken about it, that the astral life of man is much broader, much more extensive than the conscious ego life of this human being and these forces play out of the astral life of man into the conscious ego experience. Hence,these forces are present underneath. There is already a large number of people in our time who have so adapted themselves to the external, purely materialistic life and look for their salvation in this external materialistic life so that, in the main, in their soul life they only possess that which is connected with the external material life. You can really notice the difference when you lead a symbol such as the death and resurrection of Hiram in front of human beings who have only been educated for the external material life. They find it very comical, very superfluous. However, those people who have the unconscious soul forces, who are able to perceive the unconscious forces which hold sway in the astral, are taken hold of in the deepest sense by the symbol and call up those faculties out of their soul which are able to understand what is meant by immortality; whereas the ordinary forces which are bound to the physical life cannot understand this immortality.

Something has remained in the Easter Festival of what in the primal consciousness of mankind was connected, in the main, with the thought of this festival. We have often spoken about the question—When do we celebrate this Easter Festival? Well, we celebrate it on the Sunday following the first full moon after the beginning of Spring which falls on the 21st of March. Thus the establishment of the point of time of the Easter Festival is dependent upon the relationship between the sun and moon positions, which means that we upon the earth celebrate the festival which is dependent upon the cosmic connections. What does the human soul say in so far as it has undertaken such an establishment of the Easter Festival. It says the following: Here upon this earth everything shall not be regulated according to purely earthly relationships. However, at least that which touches the soul most deeply ought to be directed according to extra earthly relationships. Man should gaze upon the symbol of immortality; the placing in the grave and the Resurrection; the thought of immortality of the living; the soul going through the Portal of death. That should be carried in front of the human being either in the occult picture as in the Catholic cult or more in thoughts as happens in other confessions—that is not so important at the present time. However, in so far as the human being allows the picture of the placing in the grave and the Resurrection to sway in his soul, this should happen when the sun and the moon come into a corresponding constellation. This is a protest of the human soul, that the gazing upon such an important symbol should not be carried out purely under earthly conditions; it is a recognition that the gazing upon this symbol should be bound up with the cosmic relationships external to the earth.

Here, as I am giving a lecture, certain things are happening to your human soul. Just imagine that so-called Monists were sitting here instead of you. Naturally, there would be an entirely different effect upon their soul than is upon your soul, because you have taken up into your soul certain preliminary ideas from spiritual science. Man is continuously changed by that which he has experienced. You have been exposed to anthroposophical spiritual science; your soul is different from those people who have not been exposed to it. It is not realistic to speak in general terms abut the human being as is done by the academic would. As soon as one goes into the realities, one sees how unrealistic the way the human being is considered by anthropologists.

Now, you see, it is very easy for you not to assess correctly or even to overlook what has happened to your soul in so far as the work of spiritual science has impinged upon it. Much, much more is imprinted upon this soul. Much is imprinted in the human soul, because there is the unconscious, the astral united with the human soul and you will be able to say: That which plays into the human being from the external world and which remains unconscious is nevertheless far more powerful, far more significant, than that which enters consciously. You all know the beautiful love poems which unite themselves with the light of the moon. Here we see that the unconscious soul itself stands in a connection with the non-earthly, that which comes into the earth with the light of the moon. Here you have the moon with its light streaming in and it is something that you have coming from the cosmos, from the extra earthly and has to do with the unconscious weaving and swaying of the human soul. And, if you remember what I said to you on Thursday and again that which I said on Saturday evening at the public lectures about the swaying, the dominating, the ruling and weaving of the Folk Soul element in the human soul life, then, indeed, you must say to yourself that this Folk Soul element comes up out of the unconscious much more than from the conscious. It is really true that that which rules in the depths of our soul and can only echo faintly up into the consciousness, is precisely what rules and weaves in the astral body; that is very important and is of a non-earthly nature. And that person whose soul is open for the impressions of the spiritual world knows that our earth is not only different in spring and in Autumn, that in spring the vegetation shoots up and in autumn there is harvesting, but the portion of the earth which is illuminated by the light of the moon is something different than the earth when it is not illuminated by the light of the moon. After the 21st of March the sun stands in a different relationship to the earth than it had before the 21st of March and that which is reflected back to us as sunlight from the moon upon the earth is therefore something quite different from that which radiated down before the 21st of March. The first full moon after the beginning of Spring gives back to us the first strength of the resurrected sun and this is quite different from any other full moon. Thus our astral nature would not be the same if, shall we say, we would gaze upon the symbol of laying in the grave and Resurrection in December; it is not the same as when we do it in the week after the streaming down of the spring full moon. Our soul is in another condition at this particular time. Now, if our soul is something quite different through the fact that we have taken up spiritual science into it and are not just Monists, so our soul is also something different in the moonlight after the Spring Equinox than, shall we say, after the Winter Solstice. Hence our soul can experience something different at this time as compared with any other time.

Now, when spiritual science appears today, it does so in order that the circle of vision of human beings which has been shrunken by the materialistic development can again be expanded. If you take the thoughts of spiritual science into yourself in a thoroughly correct sense, then you actually are expanding the thinking, the perception, the willing, the feeling of your soul. Today people are not sufficiently clear about the fact that materialistic development has brought not only that which one calls materialism, but this materialistic development has brought something else; it has brought, I might say, short-sightedness of the thought life into all things. The thoughts have become small and now they must be made much larger. The possibility of seeing things in their larger perspective must again arise among human beings.

Just think if the human being were again to become clear about the fact that man actually consists of two parts, out of the head which stands at a much later stage of development and which, one might say, is much more hardened than the rest of the organism and the rest of the organism which stands at a much older stage of evolution. Just think what proceeds from the working together, of this head organism with the rest of the human organism. When we move a hand, the body is at the basis of this movement which participates in this movement. What occurs when I move a hand? I have previously told you about this. The physical hands and the ether hands both move, they move together. When I think, the left and the right lobes of the brain also execute ether movements, that is to say, the ether portion of the left and right brain lobes also execute movements which are quite similar to the hand movements. The ether movements are there, but the physical movements are imprisoned, they are enclosed in the solid skull. It is a bound Promethius and because of this, it is possible to have thinking. If it were not through this external imprisonment, but through the organic fettering of the human being man's arms would now be imprisoned as they will be in the future when the earth will have disappeared and developed into the Jupiter existence just as the brain lobes are imprisoned now. Man's arms will be imprisoned in the future as now the lobes of his brain are imprisoned. Then that which we call thinking will also be left over from the movement of the hands. I will show you what can be made clear with a much more concrete example presicely from the history of our time. It can be clearly shown how the thoughts of the best man of our age are very short.

Now, let us consider Eduard von Hartmann who was the philosopher of the unconscious. As far as his own estimation of himself was concerned, he would never consider hinself to be a materialistic thinker. However, how we think of ourselves does not depend on what we think, but the point is, are our thought habits of a materialistic nature? A person can establish a quite idealistic philosophy and nevertheless can still possess quite materialistic habits of thought; and these habits of thought determine whether he has short carrying thoughts or wide carrying thoughts. Now, as far as Eduard von Hartmann is concerned, among many of his contributions he has also written a great deal about politics, and I want to present Hartmann, the political author, to you, because in his age he was held in the highest esteem as one of the best German, nay, one of the best Prussian patriots as well as being a good political writer. Obviously Eduard von Hartmann's thoughts were so wide carrying that he was able to represent the constellation of the different great powers of Europe to himself: Germany, Austria, Italy, France, England, Russia and in between them the different small neutral states. He continually studied and wrote papers about the different political interest of these single states. Now, he wrote a very significant thesis which came out in 1888 and appeared in book form in 1889, and in it he set forth his ideas as to what represents the best political constellation for Europe.

Now, I have to make the preliminary comment that he was not only a German, but also a Prussian patriot, he spoke so obviously from the standpoint of Prussian patriotism. He attempted to represent what the best thing for Germany and Europe would be as far as alliances which must be developed were concerned, and he saw the salvation of Germany and of Europe in an alliance of common neutrality in the arising of an alliance between Switzerland, Belgium and Holland under English leadership. Just think, Eduard von Hartmann wanted Belgium, Switzerland and Holland under English leadership. You can see exactly what I am driving at from such a concrete example, and the same thing can be seen in other domains of life; When you look back 30 years you can see how ridiculous these thoughts were; how the whole development which one can describe as the age of materialism brings with it short thoughts, thoughts when they relate themselves to time relationships are perhaps valid for 2 or 3 centuries.

Now I will give you an example from the realm of medicine, but things do not go as easily here as in the realm of politics. Nevertheless here is an example from the philosopher Lotse, who had a well developed medical background. He said: “The enthusiasm for any given remedy, as a general rule, is only valid for five years. The enthusiasm for a remedy discovery today disappears and soon as another remedy comes into fashion.” this is noticed far more easily in the medical field than with politics. Gustav Theodore Fechner who really was a very intelligent person wrote a very interesting thesis in the 1820's. At that time iodine, a new medicament, appeared on the scene. Everyone began to claim that it could cure numerous types of illnesses. Then Gustav Theodore Fechner wrote a very neat thesis in which, according to the rules of science, and all you need to do is develop a method of receiving the light of the moon and then this universal medicament could be used in a wonderful way everywhere. Can you see from this that a shortness of judgment, a certain living concepts which cannot be carried very far.

Now, when you entered the domain of folk psychology or race psychology and read what the foremost writers had to say and then placed these side by side, you would be surprised at what you had before you. For example, you could find that men, in so far as they claim to be objective scientists with present ways of thinking, depict the population of Middle Europe as being descended from the Germans. Now, they depict these Germans as having all sorts of qualities. Then the Frenchman, shall we say tries to describe the French and says that they became wise through the fact that France descends partly from the ancient Celts and then he describes the Celts. When you compare and find that person who describes the Germans in Central Europe attributes the same qualities to the Germans which the Frenchman ascribes to the ancient Celts. However, there is much more of a Celtic element living within central Europe than within France. But this the people.

I can repeat numerous examples which will show you how the concepts are so very small that they do not carry very far. You can see what happens today when these so-called secure natural scientific methods attempt to go on into the spiritual life. When you realize all these things, then you will see how necessary it is that the spirit should beat into this realm. How long will it take however until one has such a psychology, a science of the soul of the type which I attempted to give in the lecture last Thursday? Only such a science of the soul can make that which actually rules in Europe understandable, and can also bring that understanding which is necessary if a culture your is to proceed further. One can think of all sorts of domains which are so advanced in materialistic directions, directions which are without any spiritual value. Then we see that this material element—it can be a state or any other structure—can never succeed, can never get better, because the way things are is that everyone needs a soul.

Now, that which we foster, that which we have as our science of the spirit within the Anthroposophical Society cannot be just one society among others. Why not? The answer lies in the following question: what do other societies do when they establish themselves? They set up programs and one unites round a certain program. You print the agreement of this program and when you leave this society, that means you no longer agree with the program. When the whole society dissolves, no one is hurt about these programs. One can get together and then one can also depart. That is the case which happens with every mechanism in the world.

Now, Weissman once attempted to characterize an organism from the natural scientific standpoint. Naturally he could only bring a negative quality, but this negative quality really is correct. He asks the question: how can you tell if something is living? His answer is: that which, when it does, leaves behind a corpse. Now, naturally in this way he is not characterizing that which is living. However, one has to concur that he is quite correct when he says: “The living is negatively characterized by the fact that this living being leaves behind a corpse.” Now, our Anthroposophical Society is a living being through the fact that there are a large number of cycles in the hands of our members of which, in the first place we know as a general rule non-members should not receive these cycles. However, one can now go into second hand stores everywhere and buy these cycles. You see from that that the Anthroposophical Society must be an organism, because just imagine, if the Anthroposophical Society dissolved itself away, then it would leave a corpse behind, and the corpse would be the cycles.

Now, one must be able to think about all these things. Other societies, when they dissolve away, can actually do so without leaving behind a corpse, because they are more mechanistically built. These people depart, the point of the program cannot be called a corpse because nothing is left behind. We are trying to deal in realities. This is something that must enter into our souls. When spiritual science becomes a real perception in us, every thought is felt in such a way that this thought stands in reality; whereas the abstract thinking which corresponds to the materialistic thinking does not bother itself with whether thoughts stand in reality or not. All this, my dear friends, show how limited the thinking is when it only restricts itself to the consciousness; when it is only bound up to the material aspect. Hence we should not wonder when those particular cultural streams in the development progress of mankind they want to take hold of everyday life, must also reckon with other than that which works only upon the ordinary consciousness. And so it has always been with the deep religious cultural impulses.

Why, for example, did something like the cult of Easter enter into the evolutionary history of mankind? Why was this Easter Cult brought into connection with cosmology, with that which occurs in a wide spaces of heaven between the Sun and moon? Because if man were only restricted to the experiences of the Earth, he would fall into the most extreme shortsightedness thinking, feeling and willing. Only through the fact that man is able to receive a greater perspective for his life can his thoughts be made much wider so that not only his physical ego consciousness is inserted in the right way into the earthly experiences but also his astral subconsciousness is membered into the great cosmic events. When the most important thought, the thought of immortality, is attached to the cosmos, it finds its fundamental basis in the religious connection. If man were only to originate out of that which is earthly, he would never be able to grasp the thought of immortality. If man was actually that which the materialistic natural science tries to say he is, if he was merely a highly developed ape, there would be nothing inside of him which would arrive at this thought of immortality.

I can give you a beautiful example from the philosophical aspect about how short the thoughts of natural researchers are in this domain. A few days ago I opened a book in which a person spoke about the connection of man with the apes in the sense that the monists do, in the material sense, not in the sense in which it is justified, but in the sense in which it is quite often expressed. At the beginning of his thesis, he says that he could prove that people who travel in certain districts where the cultural situation of the human being have so deteriorated could see that these people have the same instincts and drives as the apes. Now he says: “If it can be experienced that man can sink down to an ape condition, then it is logical that man can develop out of the apes.” Obviously, that is logical and quite clear. If a person becomes older, then you can get an old man out of the child; you can realize that without having to travel. In the same sense when you say that through cultural decadence man sinks down to ape condition, that is just as logical the same day man can become ape, why shouldn't the eighth also become a man! Therefore with the same logic you can say that if the child can become an old man, why shouldn't a child develop out of an old man; the logic is exactly the same. Material aspect is not that these people develop such logic, but that everyone reads this and no one notices what utter nonsense is being expressed.

If the present type of science, the present type of culture continues as it has, it can give people thoughts and feelings and perceptions only about what is earthly. Nevertheless there lives in man's depths that which is present as super sensible forces. They live there, but they must be repressed. And gradually as a result of this repressed spirituality in human soul, you would get the illness of culture. We cannot sufficiently emphasized the earnestness of our times. If from the heavy trials and tribulations which mankind is going through now, a small number of people can be permeated by the consciousness that what mankind needs is a spirituality, then out of this difficult time of trial something would happen which would be in the sense of the world spirit. But unless we get this spiritualization, nothing will go well for mankind.

We understand spiritual science only when we see in it not just a Christmas Festival but also an Easter Festival; that we understand what actually is meant when we have the thought of immortality for the whole being of man. When we grasp that which is immortal in the human being, only then are we able to understand immortality. Fichte, Hegel, many others knew that the human soul does not only become immortal when it passes through death, it is immortal now; that mortal element can now be found in us. Hence a science must be sought for, which besides taking into view the mortal body, takes into view the immortal soul of man.

It was natural that under the great advances and brilliance of natural scientific development in the last four centuries, that the consideration of spiritual life had to recede and the tendency towards the spiritual was also being eliminated from the external world. However, a time must come again when that Hiram, or shall we say that portion of Christ which always is there and which speaks of the super sensible, when that again resurrects itself after it has been buried in the Good Friday period of cultural development. We grasp the thoughts which at the time when the great Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo are all those who in the first place in a true way and can call that time cosmic Maunday Thursday. This has to be followed by a Good Friday. This view of the immortal element had to be buried. However, now the time has arrived when the cosmic Easter Sunday has to come and when we must celebrate the Holy Resurrection of the human soul and of the spirit knowledge.

Now, it is quite all right if, for example, we celebrate the Good Friday mood of soul in our present age. However, only when we have the power to gird ourselves for the Cosmic Easter Sunday, shall we also be able to perform the cult activity within our soul life which is there externally as the Easter Cult. Black mood of soul—that belongs to the days of Good Friday. The priests wear black clothes, because the corpse of the dead Christ rests in the grave. Then follows the Resurrection in the place of the thought of the grave. Today it is appropriate for us to carry in our soul the sorrow and the tragic. However, we ought to be able to know ourselves that we will be able to carry the spiritual Easter clothes when the times will again be different.

From the views which have been presented here for some time, and more particularly from the considerations which have come before us these last few days, we see how essential it is for the further cultural evolution of mankind that what we may call the knowledge of Initiation should stream into it. We must say, absolutely without reserve: The deliverance of mankind from a downward evolutionary course depends entirely upon its turning to a revelation which can only come through Spiritual knowledge.

Although it might be said, with a certain amount of feeling or logic, that it would be difficult in our time for wider circles of people to accept such knowledge, which at first can only be given out by few who have reached the height of being able to see into the Spiritual World, all such objections, even when apparently justified, will not contradict the clamorous fact that without accepting that which is here called Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, civilization must sink into the abyss. The work of the Heavenly Powers upon the earth must cease if their further cosmic evolution is not united with mankind. The healing of mankind can only be brought about if a sufficiently large number of people permeate themselves with what we are trying to say here. For only he who will not, who absolutely will not look into what has happened in the whole world as the result of the last catastrophic years, only he can close his eyes to the fact that we are at the beginning of a process of destruction, and that nothing can bring us out of this process of destruction except something new. For what we seek within the destructive force itself can never be anything but a force of destruction. A power for building afresh can only be obtained from a source not belonging to earthly evolution up to the present time.

Now the results of the inflow from such sources are fraught with most significant difficulties. You have often been told that the Science of Initiation cannot be given to mankind haphazard, without preparation, because a certain receptivity is necessary. You have heard this continually; but it is exactly against this attitude of mind that man continually transgresses. Let us take a simple example. One of the first, most primitive demands relative to the acceptance of the Science of Initiation, is that every one should seek to strip off what we call Ambition, particularly when it expresses itself as a judging of others by one's self. Now, it is easy to see that this is exactly what takes place in the Anthroposophical Society. What would be the use of keeping silence about such matters? It is readily admitted that such is the case, but nevertheless the most fatal things in this direction exist within the Anthroposophical Movement, and mutual envy is on the increase. I shall merely indicate this aspect. Today I must speak of other great difficulties in the entrance of the Science of Initiation into our earthly civilization.

In the first place, that which belongs to the Mystery of the Will of Man must be pointed out to humanity in a comprehensive way. This Mystery of Man's Will has been veiled from modern culture especially since the middle of the fifteenth century, since the rise of the fifth post-Atlantean age. The modern theory of the universe knows the very least possible of the Will. We have often characterized this. A man when awake never experiences consciously the real nature of his Will. When awake he experiences consciously the nature of his Conceptions, when in a dreaming state he experiences the nature of his Feelings, but he is sleeping, even when he is awake, partially, with reference to his Will. We go through the world as so-called waking beings, but are only awake with regard to conceptions and ideas, we are only half awake in our life of feeling, and completely asleep in our Will. Let us not delude ourselves about this matter. We have ideas about what we will, but only when the Will becomes idea, when the Will is reflected by the intellect, can we experience it in our waking consciousness. What goes on in the depths of man's being, even if he only raises his hand, which means bringing his Will into operation, of this the ordinary man knows absolutely nothing. This means that the Mystery of Will is to the modern man entirely unknown, and with this is to be connected the fact that our entire modern civilization—especially that which has come about since the fifteenth century—is absolutely intellectual, a culture of the understanding; for the culture of Natural Science is an intellectual culture. The Will plays the least possible part in everything that we grasp with our intellect, our understanding. When we think, when we form ideas, the Will of course plays a certain part in the formation of the ideas, but only in a very fine state. Man does not notice how the Will pulsates in his perceptions and how in other ways the Will is working within him.

For man in this new age the Mystery of the Will is completely veiled by our exclusively intellectual culture. Only when we seek, through those means given by Spiritual Science of which I have often spoken to you, to investigate the Will, that is, when we try with the help of Imagination and inspiration to make those forces active which enable man to see into the workings, the machinery which is set going by Man's Will, then we notice that in our physical life between birth and death, the Will as a living entity is not bound up with constructive processes but only with destructive processes. I have often explained this. If constructive processes alone took place in our brain, if for instance, only that took place which results from the action of the life-forces upon our food, we should be unable to evolve a soul- and spirit-life by means of the apparatus of the nerves and the brain; only on account of the destructive process which is continually going on in our brain do the soul and spirit take root in what is being destroyed. It is just here that the Will works. Man's Will is essentially something which during our physical life works to a certain extent for the death of man. With reference to our head organization, we are continually dying; in every moment we die. We only live because the rest of our organization works against this continual dying in our heads, for which our Will is mainly responsible. Independently of us, there is continually taking place in our head, that which takes place objectively in the outer world when we pass through physical death.

Our corpse, in so far as we are human individuals and enter the world of soul and spirit through the gate of death, ceases to be a matter of importance to us, but it is of great importance to the Cosmos. This corpse in some way or other, it does not matter whether by cremation or burial, is given over to the elements of the Earth; there, in its own way it carries on what our human Will does partially to our nervous system, to our sense-organization in our life between birth and death. We have perception and thought because our Will destroys something in us. We give our corpse over to the Earth, and by the help of the disintegrating corpse, which only continues the same process which we partially carry on in life, the whole Earth thinks and has perception. I characterized this from another point of view a few months ago. That which continually takes place in the Earth through the interchange between the primal earth-substances, through the union (of these substances) with the dead human bodies, is an activity in all respects comparable with the activity of the Will which between birth and death is practised by us continually, unconsciously, while the working, the destroying like a corpse, goes on in our nerve and sense system. Between birth and death the Will, because it is united with our Ego, works through the destructive forces within the bounds of our skin. This same Will works cosmically through our corpse, in the thinking and forming of ideas by the whole Earth, after our death, when we have given our corpse over to the Earth. Thus, we are cosmically united with what we may call the Soul-spiritual process of the whole Earth existence. This conception is a very difficult one, for it places man concretely into that which is Cosmic in our Earth existence. It shows the relationship of man's Will to the manner of working of the universal Cosmic Will within the Earth existence, in the destruction, in the bringing about of death conditions.

But just as our further evolution in the Spiritual World after we have passed through the gates of death, is dependent upon our having left the corpse behind, upon the fact that we no longer work with these forces, but with others, so the healthy further evolution of the whole Earth depends on whether humanity on this Earth unites itself not now with forces of death, but with forces of life, forces which evolve in another direction than do the forces of death. To speak of this today when men are filled with personal ideas and feelings is indeed something fraught with bitterness, for the seriousness of such a truth is only experienced in the most limited degree. Man is unaccustomed to taking in these great truths with the deep earnestness with which they must be taken. Nevertheless, the further question must be asked: “How is that which lies in the Will of man as I have described it, related to the processes of destruction in outer nature? How is that in man's Will which I have described as its own particular characteristic, connected with these destructive forces in outer nature?” Here is something which stands before the man of today as the greatest illusion. What does the man of the present day really do when he looks at Nature? He says, “Here a natural process is taking place. It has arisen from another process which produced it and this again from another which caused it.” And so man finds a chain of causes and effects in the working of Nature and he is very proud when in this way he can grasp what he calls leading threads of casualty to be found in the outer world.

What is the result? If we ask some geologist, physicist, chemist or any right-thinking scientific investigator, his honest opinion, he will often be reluctant to give you the last consequence of his own World-Conception. But ask him if he does not think that the earth as we know it—stones, plants and many animals, too—would have evolved just in the way it has done, had Man not been present, he will reply: “Certainly. No houses would have been built, no machines, no flying machines would have been made by cows or buffaloes, and so on, but everything else which we can see is not the work of man, would be present from beginning to end just the same as if man had not been there, for a chain of causes and effects is found within external nature.” That which takes place later is the result of that which went before. According to present-day thought man has nothing to do with the formation of the chain. This view contains exactly the same mistake as the following. I write a word on the board. Every letter arises only because I have written it, and not because the previous letter has given birth to the next one. It would be utter nonsense to say: From the preceding letter there arises the following one. A thoroughly unprejudiced investigation of that which is essential in the processes of Nature convinces us of the mistake we make when we give ourselves up to the great illusion of modern science: Effects are the result of their causes. It is not so. We must look elsewhere for the true causes, just as we must seek in our intellect the reason of the letters following each other. Taken in the wide sense where do the primal causes for external happenings in Nature lie? That can only be determined by spiritual perception; these causes lie in Mankind. Do you know where you must look if you wish to gain an insight into the actual primal causes of the course of Nature on the Earth? You must investigate how the human Will, quite unknown to present-day consciousness, is to be found in the centre of gravity in man, that is, in the lower part of his body. Only a part of the Will is active in the human head; the chief part of the Will is centred in the rest of his organism. That which comes into existence in the course of external nature is dependent upon man's relation to his unconscious Will. So far we have only been able to cite one significant example as to the course of Nature, but it serves for the course of Nature as a whole. I have often pointed out that during the Atlantean epoch man gave himself up to a form of black magic. The consequence of this was the Glaciation of the civilized world. In a comprehensive sense, the whole course of Nature really is the result of the activity of Will, not in single individuals, but of the various forces of Will working together in humanity as a whole; forces which arise from—the human centre of gravity. If a being adequately developed, a being, let us say, from Mars or Mercury, wished to study the course of the Earth, i.e., wished to understand how the course of Nature went on there, this being would not describe Nature as one of our learned men would describe it, but looking down upon the world he would say: The Earth is there below me; I see there many points; in these points are centred the forces from which the course of Nature proceeds. But these points would not lie for him in outer Nature, but always within man. He, looking from without, would find that he must look upon the centre of man if he wished to find the cause of what takes place in the course of Nature. This insight into the connection of the human Will with the course of Nature as a whole must become an integral part of the Natural Science of the future, for Mankind. With such a Natural Science man will feel his responsibility in quite a different way from what he does at the present day. Man will rise from being a citizen of the Earth to being a citizen of the Cosmos. He will learn to look upon the Cosmos as a part of himself.

Directly our attention is called to such things, knowledge of them takes possession of us. This knowledge does not work in such a shadowy way as our intellectual knowledge does. It is taken far more from realities, and therefore it works in a much more living way. And because the way in which it works is so much more real than the shadowy knowledge of modern man, it is all the more necessary that man should take seriously what is revealed to him through this knowledge. One cannot be a citizen of the Cosmos on one side in the sense described above, and on the other side remain the old Philistine whom the last few hundred years, i.e., the period since the middle of the fifteenth century, has produced in the man of today. We cannot on the one hand consciously want to take a part in the processes of the Cosmos, and on the other hand wish to gossip with our fellow beings as is done so much in restaurants and clubs in this bourgeois age since the fifteenth century. At the same time another Ethics, another moral impulse must surge through mankind if the Science of Initiation is to enter in real earnest. For all that prepares in the wrong way, for the appearance of Ahriman on our earth, as I have told you, works especially strongly as a force hindering the entrance of the Science of Initiation. I have spoken recently about these facts, in order to give some indication of the spirit which should pervade our Christmas Festival this year. I will now only briefly recapitulate.

Looking back over the evolution of our earth we find, preceding our modern materialistic civilization, the Greco-Latin, which goes back to the eighth pre-Christian century. We see, about two hundred years after the beginning of this Greco-Latin time, something rising up, which we might describe as the old Life of Wisdom of earlier times percolating through the land of Greece. Nietzsche felt this to a remarkable degree, even if pathologically. From the beginning of his spiritual activity he felt himself an opponent of Socrates, and he was never tired of speaking of the greater value of pre-Socratic Greek culture than of the post-Socratic. It is certainly true that with Socrates a great age came in for Mankind, an age which reached its climax in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But this age of Socrates has now run its course, has rightly come to an end. The Socratic age is that in which pure logic and pure dialectic arose from the earlier instinctive Wisdom. The rising of pure logic, of pure dialectic, out of the ancient clairvoyant Wisdom is the chief characteristic of our Western culture. This logic, this dialectic, has also impressed its stamp upon Christianity, for the theology of the West is a dialectic theology. But what rises in Greece as dialectics, as thought reduced to abstraction, goes back to the Mysteries of the East. Among these Mysteries were those which founded that civilization which later became the Chinese. Within the early Chinese civilization Lucifer was incarnated in human form. We must not conceal the fact from ourselves that Lucifer once lived in a physical body, as Christ during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha walked on earth in a physical body. But it is only a narrow-minded misunderstanding of the Luciferic incarnation if we look upon everything that has come through Lucifer as “Touch-me-not”. From Lucifer, for instance, has arisen the greatness of Greek culture itself, that unique ancient art, the artistic impulse of mankind, as we ourselves still look upon it. But in Europe all this has hardened into mere words, empty of content. It was through Luciferic wisdom that Christianity was first grasped in Europe. The important point is that in the Greek wisdom which developed as Gnosis in order to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha, the old Luciferic Wisdom had cooperated, had given the old Gnosis its form. The fact that the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself in what Lucifer had given to the evolution of the earth, was the greatest victory for Christianity at that time. But when this Luciferic culture, to which, through the incarnation of Lucifer man was given over, was ebbing away, there flowed in gradually, that which was preparing for the coming incarnation of Ahriman in the Western World. When the time is ripe—and it is preparing itself—Ahriman will incarnate in a human body in the Western World. This fact must take place just as the others have taken place—viz. that Lucifer has incarnated and that Christ has incarnated. This fact is predetermined in the evolution of the earth. The all-important fact is simply this: to keep the fact in mind, that we shall rightly prepare ourselves for it, for Ahriman will not begin to work only when he has incarnated in a human body; he is now preparing his appearance from the super-sensible world. He is already working from thence into the evolution of mankind. From that side he is seeking his tools through which he prepares for what must come.

Now, it is essential for the favourable working of that which Ahriman will bring to humanity—he will bring advantageous gifts just as Lucifer did—that man shall take the right attitude. The all-important thing is that man shall not through sleeping miss the coming of Ahriman. When the incarnation of Ahriman takes place in the Western World we shall simply see inscribed in the local Register, the birth of John William Smith (of course, this will not be the name) and people will look upon the child as a citizen in comfortable circumstances like any other, and they will sleep through what has in reality taken place. Our University professors will certainly not trouble whether man sleeps through it or not. For them what has taken place will be merely the birth of J. W. Smith. But in the Ahrimanic age it is all-important that men should knower that they have here to do only externally with J. W. Smith, that inwardly Ahriman is present, and that they must not deceive themselves through sleepy illusion about what has happened. Even now we may not yield to any deception. These things are in preparation. Among the most important means which Ahriman has to work with from the other side, is the furthering of abstract thinking in Man. And because men cling so firmly today to this abstract thinking, they are working in the way most favourable for the coming of Ahriman. You must realize that there is no better way to prepare for the fact that Ahriman is endeavouring cunningly to capture the whole Earth for his evolution, than that man should continue to live an abstract life, steeping himself in abstractions, as he does in the social life of today. This is one of the ruses, one of the clever tricks, by which Ahriman prepares in his own way for his lordship over the earth. Instead of showing men today out of conclusive experience, what has to happen, leaders offer them theories on every subject, including the social question. To those who give out these theories, knowledge gained by means of experience is abstract, because they have no inkling of what real Life is. All this is preparation from the Ahrimanic point of view.

But there is also another form of preparation for Ahriman which can happen through an erroneous view of the Gospels. This, too, is something that must be made known at the present day. You know quite well that today there are very many men, especially among the official representatives of this or that form of religious confession, who are fighting to the uttermost against that new Christ knowledge which is arising among us out of the Science of Initiation. Such men, if they do not swear allegiance to mere Rationalism, accept the Gospels; but what do these men really know of the true nature of the Gospels? These are the men who, during the nineteenth century, have applied to the Gospels the historical-scientific method of the outer world. What has come from the Gospels through the scientific method of last century? Nothing else, except that the conception of the Gospels has gradually become completely materialized. Our attention was first drawn to the contradictions in the four Gospels. Then from the recognition of these contradictions came the slide downwards. Finally, what is the outcome of this Gospel investigation? What else is it but, I might say, lifting the Gospels off their hinges? What does such an investigator as the theologian, Professor Schmiedel of Basle, seek in the Gospels? He seeks to prove that they are not simply products of fantasy brought forward only to glorify Christ Jesus. And so there follow a limited number of now-famous points unfavourable to the Christ. These, he maintains, would have been omitted if the Gospels had only been written for the glorification of Jesus. We are, therefore, left with the feeling that he admits all the objections that are brought against Christ Jesus, so as finally to save for the Gospels a little label of this world's Science. Even this little label will give way. Man will gain nothing from this worldly Science. He will gain nothing as regards the genuineness of the Gospels from the way these people point it out. To have the right relation towards these Gospels we must know why they came into being, that is, we must know their real purpose. This knowledge can only be obtained through an understanding fructified by Spiritual Science.

If we sink ourselves in the Gospels, if we absorb their content and force, then we gain from them a soul-content. No outer historical science will explain the riddle of the Gospels; but we can sink ourselves in the Gospels, and then we receive a soul-content. This soul-content, however, is a great hallucination—certainly a most spiritualized hallucination, the hallucination of the Mystery of Golgotha. The highest that is to be gained from the Gospels is the hallucination of the Mystery of Golgotha, neither more nor less. Now, it is just this secret which is known to the more modern Catholic Church. For this reason the Gospels are not allowed to be studied by the laity, for it is feared that men will discover that they cannot have through the Gospels historical knowledge of the Christ Mystery, but only a hallucination of this Mystery of Golgotha. I might also say, an Imagination; for the hallucination is so spiritualized that it is an actual Imagination. But more than an Imagination is not to be gained from the content of the Gospels in themselves.

What is the path from Imagination to Reality? The path will be opened up through Spiritual Science, not through that which is outside Spiritual Science, but through Spiritual Science alone. That means that the Imagination of the Gospels shall be raised to Reality through Spiritual Science. It is of the most extreme importance to Ahriman so to prepare his incarnation that through Spiritual Science man shall not follow this path of Imagination in the Gospels on to the Reality of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just as it is in the greatest interest of Ahriman that man should keep up the love of abstraction, so it is in his greatest interest that man should cherish more and more a form of piety built upon the mere Gospels. When you think over this, you will realize that a great part of the creeds existing today is the preparatory work of Ahriman for his purposes in this earth existence. In what way could one serve Ahriman better than by resolving to make use of an external power commanding those who believe in, and submit themselves to this power, not to read any anthroposophical literature? No greater service could be done to Ahriman than to make sure that a great number of people do not read anthroposophical literature. I have already mentioned in these lectures who the people are that have resolved upon this course. The only way to present certain facts today is to place them unreservedly in the light of truth. It must be realized today that the progress of the World has a certain relationship to cosmic periods, limited through the Luciferic incarnation, which in time and space, lies before the Mystery of Golgotha. But in the way of this progress the incarnation of Ahriman in the West places itself, so that the forces in opposition are strengthened. The incarnation of Ahriman, in a future not very far distant, can be helped on its way just as well by an obscured worship of the Gospels as by abstract thinking.

Many people today experience an inner sense of comfort in shutting themselves off from these serious facts. Anthroposophists should not feel in this way; on the contrary, they should develop a definite impetus to do as much as possible to spread Spiritual Science among mankind. It is quite wrong to think as is so often done that we should come to an understanding with such people as those of whom I have spoken. It is foolish to believe we can come to an understanding with such people for they do not desire it. The point is to make clear to the rest of humanity what sort of people these are. We must speak out about such people. All that is possible has been done so that they can come to an understanding with us. They only need to read without prejudice what is there, to give it their serious attention. We must strictly discriminate between those persons who do harm to the progress of human evolution and other people to whom we must go and tell how such harm is brought about. The attempt to come to an understanding with the former has absolutely no sense and no meaning; for these men would outwardly incline to an agreement if they no longer had followers to support them. Then they would be ready of themselves to come to an understanding. The urgent need before us is exactly this, to open people's eyes. Only, unfortunately, too often within our own circle, the endeavour is made to come to a compromise in this respect, and the courage needed for unconditional acknowledgment of the truth is lacking. We must not ever be under the illusion that we can come to an understanding with this one or that one, who does not wish in any way to come to an understanding with us. What is required of us is courageously to stand up for the truth as far as we are able. This seems to me especially the outcome of an understanding of what is bound up with the evolution of Mankind.