The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Of peculiar importance for the understanding of the history of the West in its relation to the East is the period that lies between three or four hundred years before, and three or four hundred years after, the Mystery of Golgotha. The real significance of the events we have been considering, events that culminated in the rise of Aristotelianism and in the expeditions of Alexander to Asia, is contained in the fact that they form, as it were, the last Act in that civilisation of the East which was still immersed in the impulses derived from the Mysteries.

A final end was put to the genuine and pure Mystery impulse of the East by the criminal burning of Ephesus. After that we find only traditions of the Mysteries, traditions and shadow-pictures,—the remains, so to speak, that were left over for Europe and especially for Greece, of the old divinely-inspired civilisation. And four hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha another great event took place, which serves to show what was still left of the ruins—for so we might call them—of the Mysteries.

Let us look at the figure of Julian the Apostate.¹ Julian the Apostate, Emperor of Rome, was initiated, in the 4th century, as far as initiation was then possible, by one of the last of the hierophants of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This means that he entered into an experience of the old Divine secrets of the East, in so far as such an experience could still be gained in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

At the beginning of the period we are considering, stands the burning of Ephesus; and the day of the burning of Ephesus is also the day on which Alexander the Great was born. At the end of the period, in 363, we have the day of the death—the terrible and significant death—of Julian the Apostate far away in Asia. Midway between these two days stands the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now let us examine a little this period of time as it appears in the setting of the whole history of human evolution. If we want to look back beyond this period into the earlier evolution of mankind, we have first to bring about a change in our power of vision and perception, a change that is very similar to one of which we hear in another connection. Only we do not often bring the things together in thought.

You will remember how in my book Theosophy I had to describe the different worlds that come under consideration for man. I described them as the physical world; a transition world bordering on it, namely, the Soul-world; and then the world into which only the highest part of our nature can find entrance, the Spirit-land. Leaving out of account the special qualities of this Spirit-land, through which present-day man passes between death and a new birth, and looking only at its more general qualities and characteristics, we find that we have to give a new orientation to our whole thought and feeling, before we can comprehend the Land of the Spirits. And the remarkable thing is that we have to change and re-orientate our inner life of thought and feeling in just the same way when we want to comprehend what lies beyond the period I have defined. We shall do wrong to imagine that we can understand what came before the burning of Ephesus with the conceptions and ideas that suffice for the world of to-day. We need to form other concepts and other ideas to enable us to look across the years to human beings who still knew that as surely as man is united through breathing with the air outside him, so surely is he in constant union through his soul with the Gods.

Starting then from this world, the world that is a kind of earthly Devachan, earthly Spirit-land,—for the physical world fails us when we want to picture it,—we came into the interim period, lasting from about 356 B.C. to 363 A.D. And now what follows? Over in Europe we find the world from out of which present-day humanity is on the point of emerging into something new, even as the humanity of olden times came forth from the Oriental world, passed through the Greek world, and then into the realm of Rome.

Setting aside for the moment what went on in the inner places of the Mysteries, we have to see in the civilisation that has grown up through the centuries of the Middle Ages and developed on into our own time, a civilisation that has been formed on the basis of what the human being himself can produce with the help of his own conceptions and ideas. We may see a beginning in this direction in Greece, from the time of Herodotus onward. Herodotus describes the facts of history in an external way, he makes no allusion, or at most very slight allusion, to the spiritual. And others after him go further in the same direction. Nevertheless in Greece we always feel a last breath, as it were, from those shadow-pictures that were there to remind man of the spiritual life. With Rome on the other hand begins the period to which man to-day may still feel himself related, the period that has an altogether new way of thought and feeling, different even from what we have observed in Greece. Only here and there in the Roman world do we find a personality such as Julian the Apostate who feels something like an irresistible longing after the old world, and evinces a certain honesty in getting himself initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

What Julian, however, is able to receive in these Mysteries has no longer the force of knowledge. And what is more, he belongs to a world where men are no longer able to grasp in their soul the traditions from the Mysteries of the East.

Present-day mankind would never have come into being if Asia had not been followed first by Greece and then by Rome. Present-day mankind is built up upon personality, upon the personality of the individual. Eastern mankind was not so built up. The individual of the East felt himself part of a continuous divine process. The Gods had their purposes in Earth evolution. The Gods willed this or that, and this or that came to pass on the Earth below. The Gods worked on the will of men, inspiring them. Those powerful and great personalities in the East of whom I spoke to you—all that they did was inspired from the Gods. Gods willed: men carried it into effect. And the Mysteries were ordered and arranged in olden times to this end,—to bring Divine will and human action into line.

In Ephesus we first find a difference. There the pupils in the Mysteries, as I have told you, had to be watchful for their own condition of ripeness and no longer to observe seasons and times of year. There the first sign of personality makes its appearance. There in earlier incarnations Aristotle and Alexander the Great had received the impulse towards personality.

But now comes a new period. It is in the early dawn of this new period when Julian the Apostate experiences as it were the last longing of man to partake, even in that late age, in the Mysteries of the East. Now the soul of man begins to grow different again from what it was in Greece.

Picture to yourselves once more a man who has received some training in the Ephesian Mysteries. His constitution of soul is not derived from these Mysteries: he owes it to the simple fact that he is living in that age. When to-day a man recollects, when, as we say, he bethinks himself, what can he call to mind? He can call to mind something that he himself experienced in person during his present life, perhaps something that he experienced 20 or 30 years ago. This inward recollection in thought does not of course go further back than his own personal life. With the man who belonged, for instance, to the Ephesian civilisation it was otherwise. If he had received, even in a small degree, the training that could be had in Ephesus, then it was so with him that when he bethought himself in recollection, there emerged in his soul, instead of the memories that are limited to personal life, events of pre-earthly existence, events that preceded the Earth period of evolution. He beheld the Moon evolution, the Sun evolution, beholding them in the several kingdoms of Nature. He was able, too, to look within himself, and see the union of man with the Cosmic All; he saw how man depends on and is linked with the Cosmos. And all this that lived in his soul was true, ‘own’ memory, it was the cosmic memory of man.

We may therefore say that we are here dealing with a period when in Ephesus man was able to experience the secrets of the Universe. The human soul had memory of the far-past ages of the Cosmos.

This remembering was preceded in evolution by something else: it was preceded by an actual living within those earlier times. What remained was a looking back. In the time, however, of which the Gilgamesh Epic relates, we cannot speak of a memory of past ages in the Cosmos, we must speak of a present experience of what is past.

After the time of cosmic memory came what I have called the interim time between Alexander and Julian the Apostate. For the moment we will pass by this period. Then follows the age that gave birth to the western civilisation of the Middle Ages and of modern times. Here there is no longer a memory of the cosmic past, still less an experience in the present of the past; nothing is left but tradition.

Present Experience of the Past.
Memory of the Cosmic Past.
Tradition.

Men can now write down what has happened. History begins. History makes its first appearance in the Roman period. Think, my dear friends, what a tremendous change we have here! Think how the pupils in the Ephesian Mysteries lived with time. They needed no history books. To write down what happened would have been to them laughable. One only needed to ponder and meditate deeply enough, and what had happened would rise up before one from out of the depths of consciousness. Here was no demonstration of psycho-analysis such as a modern doctor might make: the human soul took the greatest delight in fetching up in this way out of a living memory that which had been in the past. In the time that followed, however, mankind as such had forgotten, and the necessity arose of writing down what happened. But all the while that man had to let his ancient power of cosmic memory crumble away, and begin in a clumsy manner to write down the great events of the world,—all this time personal memory, personal recollection was evolving in his inner being. For every age has its own mission, every age its own task.

Here you have the other side of that which I set before you in the very first lectures of this course, when I described the rise of what we designated ‘memory in time.’ This memory in time, or temporal memory, had, so to say, its cradle in Greece, grew up through the Roman culture into the Middle Ages and on into modern times. In the time of Julian the Apostate the seed was already sown for the civilisation based on personality, as is testified by the fact that Julian the Apostate found it, after all, of no avail to let himself be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

We have now come to the period when the man of the West, beginning from the 3rd or 4th century after Christ and continuing down to our own time, lives his life on Earth entirely outside the spiritual world, lives in concepts and ideas, in mere abstractions. In Rome the very Gods themselves became abstractions. We have reached a time when mankind has no longer any knowledge of a living connection with the spiritual world. The Earth is no longer Asia, the lowest of the Heavens, the Earth is a world for itself, and the Heavens are far away, dim and darkened for man's view. Now is the time when man evolves personality, under the influence of the Roman culture that is spread abroad over the lands of the West. As we had to speak of a soul-world bordering on the spiritual world, on the land of the Spirits that is above,—so, bordering on this spiritual oriental world is the civilisation of the West; we may call it a kind of soul-world in time. This is the world that reaches right down to our own day. And now, in our time, although most men are not at all alive to the fact, another stupendous change is again taking place.

Some of you who often listen to my lectures will know that I do not readily call any period a period of transition, for in truth every period is such,—every period marks a transition from what comes earlier to what comes later. The point is that we should recognise for each period the nature of the transition.

What I have said will already have suggested that in this case it is as though, having passed from the Spirit-land into the Soul-world one were to come thence into the physical world. In modern civilisation as it has evolved up till now, we have been able to catch again and again echoes of the spiritual. Materialism itself has not been without its echoes of the spirit. True and genuine materialism in all domains has only been with us since the middle of the 19th century, and is still understood by very few in its full significance. It is there, however, with gigantic force, and to-day we are going through a transition to a third world, that is in reality as different from the preceding Roman world as this latter was different from the oriental.

Now there is one period of time that has had to be left out in tracing this evolution: the period between Alexander and Julian. In the middle of this period fell the Mystery of Golgotha. Those to whom the Mystery of Golgotha was brought did not receive it as men who understood the Mysteries, otherwise they would have had quite different ideas of the Christ Who lived in the man Jesus of Nazareth. A few there were, a few contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha, who had been initiated in the Mysteries, and these were still able to have such ideas of Him. But by far the greater part of Western humanity had no ideas with which to comprehend spiritually the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence the first way by which the Mystery of Golgotha found place on Earth was the way of external tradition. Only in the very earliest centuries were there those who were able to comprehend spiritually, from their connection with the Mysteries, what took place at the Mystery of Golgotha.

Nor is this all. There is something else, of which I have told you in recent lectures,² and we must return to it here. Over in Hibernia, in Ireland, were still the echoes of the ancient Atlantean wisdom. In the Mysteries of Hibernia, of which I have given you a brief description, were two Statues that worked suggestively on men, making it possible for them to behold the world exactly as the men of ancient Atlantis had seen it. Strictly guarded were these Mysteries of Hibernia, hidden in an atmosphere of intense earnestness. There they stood in the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, and there they remained at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Over in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha took place; in Jerusalem the events came to pass that were later made known to men in the Gospels by the way of tradition. But in the moment when the tragedy of the Mystery of Golgotha was being enacted in Palestine, in that very moment it was known and beheld clairvoyantly in the Mysteries of Hibernia. No report was brought by word of mouth, no communication whatever was possible; but in the Mysteries of Hibernia the event was fulfilled in a symbol, in a picture, at the same time that it was fulfilled in actual fact in Jerusalem. Men came to know of it, not through tradition but by a spiritual path. Whilst in Palestine that most majestic and sublime event was being enacted in concrete physical reality,—over in Hibernia, in the Mysteries, the way had been so prepared through the performance of certain rites that at the very time when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled, a living picture of it was present in the astral light.

The events in human evolution are closely linked together; there is, as it were, a kind of valley or chasm moving at this time over the world, into which man's old nearness with the Gods gradually disappears.

In the East the ancient vision of the Gods fell into decay after the burning of Ephesus. In Hibernia it remained on until some centuries after Christ, but even there too the time came when it had to depart. Tradition developed in its stead, the Mystery of Golgotha was transmitted by the way of oral tradition; and we find growing up in the West a civilisation that rests wholly on oral tradition. Later it comes to rely rather on external observation of Nature, on an investigation of Nature with the senses; but this after all is only what corresponds in the realm of Nature to tradition, written or oral, in the realm of history.

Here then we have the civilisation of personality. And in that civilisation the Mystery of Golgotha, with all that pertains to the spirit, is no longer perceived by man, it is merely handed down as history.

We must place this picture in all clearness before us, the picture of a civilisation from which the spiritual is excluded. It begins from the time that followed Julian the Apostate, and not until towards the end of the 19th century, beginning from the end of the seventies, did there come, as it were, a new call to humanity from the spiritual heights. Then began the age that I have often described as the Age of Michael. To-day I want to characterise it as the age when man, if he wishes to remain at the old materialism—and a great part of mankind does wish so to remain—will inevitably fall into a terrible abyss; he has absolutely no alternative but to go under and become sub-human, he simply cannot maintain himself on the human level. If man would keep on the human level, he must open his senses to the spiritual revelations that have again been made accessible since the end of the 19th century. That is now an absolute necessity.

For you must know that great spiritual forces were at work in Herostratus. He was, so to speak, the last dagger stretched out by certain spiritual powers from Asia. When he flung the burning torch into the Temple of Ephesus, demonic beings were behind him, holding him as one holds a sword,—or as it might be, a torch; he was but the sword or torch in their hands. For these demonic beings had determined to let nothing of the Spirit go over into the coming European civilisation; the spiritual was to be absolutely debarred entry there.

Aristotle and Alexander the Great placed themselves in direct opposition to the working of these beings. For what was it they accomplished in history? Through the expeditions of Alexander, the Nature knowledge of Aristotle was carried over into Asia; a pure knowledge of Nature was spread abroad. Not in Egypt alone, but all over Asia Alexander founded academies, and in these academies made a home for the ancient wisdom, where the study of it could still continue. Here too, the wise men of Greece were ever and again able to find a refuge. Alexander brought it about that a true understanding of Nature was carried into Asia.

Into Europe it could not find entrance in the same way. Europe could not in all honesty receive it. She wanted only external knowledge, external culture, external civilisation. Therefore did Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus take out of Aristotelianism what the West could accept and bring that over. It was the more logical writings that the West received. But that meant a great deal. For Aristotle's works have a character all their own; they read differently from the works of other authors, and his more abstract and logical writings are no exception. Do but make the experiment of reading first Plato and then Aristotle with inner concentration and in a meditative spirit, and you will find that each gives you quite a different experience.

When a modern man reads Plato with true spiritual feeling and in an attitude of meditation, after a time he begins to feel as though his head were a littler higher than his physical head actually is, as though he had, so to speak, grown out beyond his physical organism. That is absolutely the experience of anyone who reads Plato, provided he does not read him in an altogether dry manner.

With Aristotle it is different. With Aristotle you never have the feeling that you are coming out of your body. When you read Aristotle after having prepared yourself by meditation, you will find that he works right into the physical man. Your physical man makes a step forward through the reading of Aristotle. His logic works; it is not a logic that one merely observes and considers, it is a logic that works in the inner being. Aristotle himself is a stage higher than all the pedants who came after him, and who developed logic from him. In a certain sense we may say with truth that Aristotle's works are only rightly comprehended when they are taken as books for meditation. Think what would have happened if the Natural Scientific writings of Aristotle had gone over to the West as they were and come into Middle and Southern Europe. Men would, no doubt, have received a great deal from them, but in a way that did them harm. For the Natural Science that Aristotle was able to pass on to Alexander needed for its comprehension souls that were still touched with the spirit of the Ephesian age, the time that preceded the burning of Ephesus. Such souls could only be found over in Asia or in Egypt; and it was into these parts that this knowledge of Nature and insight into the Being of Nature were brought, by means of the expeditions of Alexander. Only later in a diluted form did they come over into Europe by many and diverse ways—especially, for example, by way of Spain,—but always in a very diluted or, as we might say, sifted form.

The writings of Aristotle that came over into Europe direct were his writings on logic and philosophy. These lived on, and found fresh life again in medieval scholasticism.

We have therefore these two streams. On the one hand we have always there a stream of wisdom that spreads far and wide, unobtrusively, among simple folk,—the secret source of much of medieval thought and insight. Long ago, through the expeditions of Alexander, it had made its way into Asia, and now it came back again into Europe by diverse channels, through Arabia, for instance, and later on following the path of the returning Crusaders. We find it in every corner of Europe,—inconspicuous, flowing silently in hidden places. To these places came men like Jacob Boehme,³ Paracelsus⁴ and a number more, to receive that which had come thither by many a roundabout path and was preserved in these scattered primitive circles of European life. We have had amongst us in Europe far more folk-wisdom than is generally supposed. The stream continues even now. It has poured its flood of wisdom into reservoirs like Valentine Wiegel⁵ or Paracelsus or Jacob Boehme,—and many more, whose names are less known. And sometimes it met there,—as for example, in Basil Valentine⁶—new in-pourings that came over later into Europe. In the Cloisters of the Middle Ages lived a true alchemistic wisdom, not an alchemy that demonstrates changes in matter merely, but an alchemy that demonstrates the inner nature of the changes in the human being himself in the Universe. The recognised scholars meanwhile were occupying themselves with the other Aristotle, with a misstated, sifted, ‘logicised’ Aristotle. This Aristotelian philosophy, however, which the scholiasts and subsequently the scientists studied, brought none the less a blessing to the West. For only in the 19th century, when men could no longer understand Aristotle and simply studied him as if he were a book to be read like any other and not a book whereon to exercise oneself in meditation—only in the 19th century has it come about that men no longer receive anything from Aristotle because he no longer lives and works in them. Until the 19th century Aristotle was a book for the exercise of meditation; but in the 19th century the whole tendency has been to change what was once exercise, work, active power into abstract knowledge,—to change ‘do’ and ‘can’ into ‘know.’

Let us look now at the line of development, that leads from Greece through Rome to the West. It will illustrate for us from another angle the great change we are considering. In Greece there was still the confident assurance that insight and understanding proceed from the whole human being. The teacher is the gymnast.⁷ From out of the whole human being in movement—for the Gods themselves work in the bodily movements of man—something is born that then comes forth and shows itself as human understanding. The gymnast is the teacher.

In Rome the rhetorician.⁸ steps into the place of the gymnast. Already something has been taken away from the human being in his entirety; nevertheless we have at least still a connection with a deed that is done by the human being in a part of his organism. What movement there is in our whole being when we speak! We speak with our heart and with our lungs, we speak right down to our diaphragm and below it! We cannot say that speaking lives as intensely in the whole human being as do the movements of the gymnast, but it lives in a great part of him. (As for thoughts, they of course are but an extract of what lives in speech). The rhetorician steps into the place of the gymnast. The gymnast has to do with the whole human being. The rhetorician shuts off the limbs, and has only to do with a part of the human being and with that which is sent up from this part into the head, and there becomes insight and understanding.

The third stage appears only in modern times and that is the stage of the professor.⁹ who trains nothing but the head of his pupils, who cares for nothing but thoughts. Professors of Eloquence were still appointed in some universities even as late as the 19th century, but these universities had no use for them, because it was no longer the custom to set any store by the art of speaking; thinking was all that mattered. The rhetorician died out. The doctors and professors, who looked after the least part of the human being, namely his head,—these became the leaders in education.

As long as the genuine Aristotle was still there, it was training, discipline, exercise that men gained from their study of him. The two streams remained side by side. And those of us who are not very young and who shared in the development of thought during the later decades of the 19th century, know well, if we have gone about among the country folk in the way that Paracelsus did, that a last remains of the medieval folk-knowledge, from which Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus drew, was still to be found in Europe even as late as the sixties and seventies of the last century. Moreover, it is also true that within certain orders and in the life of a certain narrow circle a kind of inner discipline in Aristotle was cultivated right up to the last decades of the 19th century. So that it has been possible in recent years still to meet here and there the last ramifications, as it were, of the Aristotelian wisdom that Alexander carried over into Asia and that returned to Europe through Asia Minor, Africa and Spain. It was the same wisdom that had come to new life in such men as Basil Valentine and those who came after him, and from which Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus and countless others had drawn. It was brought back to Europe also by yet another path, namely through the Crusaders. This Aristotelian wisdom lived on, scattered far and wide among the common people. In the later decades of the 19th century, one is thankful to say, the last echoes of the ancient Nature knowledge carried over into Asia by the expeditions of Alexander were still to be heard, even if sadly diminished and scarcely recognisable. In the old alchemy, in the old knowledge of the connections between the forces and substances of Nature that persisted so remarkably among simple country folk, we may discover again its last lingering echoes. To-day they have died away; to-day they are gone, they are no longer to be heard.

Similarly in these years one could still find isolated individuals who gave evidence of Aristotelian spiritual training; though to-day they too are gone. And thus what was carried east as well as what was carried west was preserved,—for that which was carried east came back again to the west. And it was possible in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century for one who could do so with new direct spiritual perception, to make contact with what was still living in these last and youngest children of the great events we have been describing.

There is, in truth, a wonderful interworking in all these things. For we can see how the expeditions of Alexander and the teachings of Aristotle had this end in view, to keep unbroken the threads that unite man with the ancient spirituality, to weave them as it were into the material civilisation that was to come, that so they might endure until such time as new spiritual revelations should be given.

From this point of view, we may gain a true understanding of the events of history, for it is often so that seemingly fruitless undertakings are fraught with deep significance for the historical evolution of mankind. It is easy enough to say that the expeditions of Alexander to Asia and to Egypt have been swept away and submerged. It is not so. It is easy to say that Aristotle ceased to be in the 19th century. But he did not. Both streams have lasted up to the very moment when it is possible to begin a renewed life of the Spirit.

I have told you on many occasions how the new life of the Spirit was able to begin at the end of the seventies, and how from the turn of the century onwards, it has been able to grow more and more. It is our task to receive in all its fullness the stream of spiritual life that is poured down to us from the heights.

And so to-day we find ourselves in a period that marks a genuine transition in the spiritual unfolding of man. And if we are not conscious of these wonderful connections and of how deeply the present is linked with the past, then we are in very truth asleep to important events that are taking place in the spiritual life of our time. And numbers of people are fast asleep to-day in regard to the most important events of all. But Anthroposophy is there for that very purpose,—to awaken man from sleep.

You who have come here for this Christmas Meeting,—I believe that all of you have felt an impulse that calls you to awaken. We are nearing the day—as this Meeting goes on, we shall have to pass the actual hour of the anniversary—we are coming to the day when the terrible flames burst forth that destroyed the Goetheanum. Let the world think what it will of the destruction by fire of the Goetheanum, in the evolution of the Anthroposophical movement the event of the fire has a tremendous significance.

We shall not however be able to judge of its full significance until we look beyond it to something more. We behold again the physical flames of fire flaring up on that night, we see the marvellous way in which the fusing metal of the organ-pipes and other metallic parts sent up a glow that caused that wonderful play of colour in the flames. And then we carry our memory over the year that has intervened. But in this memory must live the fact that the physical is Maya, that we have to seek the truth of the burning flames in the spiritual fire that it is ours now to kindle in our hearts and souls. In the midst of the physically burning Goetheanum shall arise for us a spiritually living Goetheanum.

I do not believe, my dear friends, that this can come to pass in the full, world-historic sense unless we can on the one hand look upon the flames mounting up in terrible tongues of fire from the Goetheanum that we have grown to love so dearly, and behold at the same time in the background that other treacherous burning of Ephesus, when Herostratus, guided by demonic powers, flung the flaming brand into the Temple. When we bring these two events together, setting one in the background and one in the foreground of our thought, we shall then have a picture that will perhaps have power to write deeply enough in our hearts what we have lost and what we must strive our utmost to build again.

• 1. Flavius Claudius Julianus, called the Apostate by the Christians, was Roman Emperor from 361–363.
• 2. See the 8th and 9th lectures in Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres.
• 3. (1575–1624), mystic. See Eleven European Mystics by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New York, 1971.
• 4. Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493–1541), physician. See Eleven European Mystics.
• 5. (1533–1588), mystic. See Eleven European Mystics.
• 6. Alchemist and Benedictine monk, lived from 1413 onwards in the Monastery of St. Peter in Erfurt. His writings were not discovered or printed till the beginning of the seventeenth century. See Eleven European Mystics.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about this for instance in A Modern Art of Education by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972 and Human Values in Education by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1971.
• 8. Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about this for instance in A Modern Art of Education by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972 and Human Values in Education by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1971.
• 9. Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about this for instance in A Modern Art of Education by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972 and Human Values in Education by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1971.

Emil Bock opened the discussion hour and formulated the following questions:

1. Out of the previous lecture this morning, how can we take the power of formative speech to which we still need to gain access, and accomplish a new speech technique, perhaps new forms and a new gestural technique?
2. How do we actually now really speak of a new understanding of the Bible, of a new Bible text? Furthermore, we ask Dr Steiner on occasion to discuss in more detail the two chapters from the synoptic Gospels, Matthew 13 and Mark 13.
3. What is the reality behind the Apostolic succession, the tradition and the ordination of priests in the technical sense, and how can such a reality be made more accessible again in the future?

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: With regards to the first question: You would already have seen, my dear friends, that out of what I said this morning, that in the illustration, the soul contents related to the supersensible and also what leads to the power of formative speech, must be searched for. Regarding the power of speech formation: we actually have no direct understanding of sound anymore today; we basically have no more understanding for words, so our words remain signs. Naturally our starting point needs to be out of the spiritual milieu of our time. Man must be responsible for these intimate things out of what currently is available. Precisely such a question brings us naturally into the area of the purely technical. First of all one has to make the understanding for the sound active again, within oneself. One doesn't easily manage the free use of speech when one isn't able to allow the sound as such, to stir within oneself. I would like to continue in such a way that I first draw your attention to certain examples.

[ 2 ] You see, when we say "head" (Kopf) in German, we hardly have anything else in mind than the total perception of what reaches us through the ear, which indicates the head. When we say "foot" (Fuss) it is hardly any different to what we experience in the tonality and sound content in relation to some foot. Now we only need, for instance, to refer to the Romance languages where head is testa, tête, foot is pedum, pied, and we get the feeling at the same time that the term is taken from something completely different. When we say the word Kopf in German, the term has come out of the form, from looking at the form. We are not aware of this any longer, yet it is so. When we say Fuss, it is taken from walking where furrows are drawn in the ground. Thus, it has come into existence out of a certain soul content and coined in a word. When we take a word formation like, let's say, "testament" and all other word formations which refer in Romance language terms to head, testa, then we will feel that the term Kopf in the Romantic languages originate through the substantiation and thus not out of the form, but through the human soul with the help of the head, and particularly activating the mouth organs. Pied didn't originate from walking or drawing furrows but from standing, pressing down while standing. Today we no longer question the motives which have come out of the soul and into speech formation. We can only discover what can be called, in the real sense, a feeling for the language when we follow the route of making language far more representational than it is currently, abstraction at most. When someone uses a Latin expression in terminology, some Latin expressions are even more representational, but some people use them to denote even more. For example, today one can hardly find the connection between "substance" and "subsist" while the concept of "subsist" has basically been lost. Someone who still has the original feeling for substance and subsistence would say of the Father-God, not that He "exists" but that he "subsists."

[ 3 ] Researching language in this way and in another way which I want to mention right now, in order to develop a lively feeling for language again, leads then to something I would like to call a linguistic conscience (Sprachgewissen). We need a linguistic conscience. We speak really so directly these days because as human beings we act more as automatons towards language than we do as living beings. Until we are capable of connecting language in a living way to ourselves, like our skin is connected to us, we will not come to the right symbolization. The skin experiences pain when it is pricked. Language even tolerates being maltreated. One must develop a feeling regarding language that it can be maltreated because it is a closed organism, just like our skin. We can gain much in this area, when we have a lively experience in some or other dialect.

Consider how often we have performed the Christmas Plays, and in these plays there is a sentence spoken by one or more of the innkeepers. When Joseph and Mary come to Bethlehem in search of lodging, they are refused by three innkeepers. Each one of the three innkeepers says: Ich als a wirt von meiner gstalt, hab in mein haus und ligament gwalt.—Just imagine what this means to a person today. He could hear: "I as a host of my stature ..."—and think that what the host is saying means he is an attractive man, or something like that, or a strong man who has stature within his hostel, in his house. This is certainly not meant. If we want to translate that into High German we'll have to say: "I as a host, who is placed in such a way as to have abundant comfort, I am not dependent on such poor people finding lodgings within, with me." This means: "I as a host in my social position, in my disposition." This shows them it is necessary not only to listen to him—words one often enough hears in speech—but to enter into the spirit of the language. We say Blitz" (lightening) in High German. In Styria a certain form of lightening is called 'heaven's lashers' (Himmlatzer). In the word "Blitz" there is quite another meaning than in the word Himmlatzer.

[ 4 ] So we start becoming aware of different things when we approach the sense of speech. You see, such an acquisition of the sense of language sometimes leads to something extraordinarily important. Goethe once uttered a sentence, when already in his late life, to the Chancellor von Müller, a statement which has often been quoted and is often used, to understand the entire way in which Faust, written by Goethe, originated. Goethe said that for him the conception of Faust had for 60 years been clear "from the beginning" (von vornherein); the other parts less extensively. Now commentary upon commentary have been written and this sentence was nearly always recalled, because it is psychologically extraordinarily important, and the commentators have it always understood like this: Goethe had a plan from the beginning for his Faust and in the 60 years of his life—since he was twenty or about eighteen—he used this plan, he had "from the start," to work from.

In Weimar I met August Fresenius who bemoaned the fact that it was a great misfortune, if I could use such an expression, which had entered into the entire Goethe research, and at the time I had urged an unusually thoughtful and slow philologist to publish this thing as soon as possible in order that it doesn't continue, otherwise one would have a few dozen more such Goethe commentaries. It is important to note that Goethe used the expression "from the start" in no other way than in a descriptive way, not in the sense of a priori but "from the beginning" in a very descriptive manner so that in the strictest sense one could refer to Goethe not having an overall plan, but that "at the beginning" he only wrote down the first pages (i.e. to begin with) and of the further sections, only single sentences. There can be no argument of an overall plan. It very much depends on how one really experiences words. Many people have, when they hear the word vornherein totally have no conscience that it has a vorn (in front) and a herein (in) and that one sees something spiritual when one pronounces it. This simple dismissal of a word without contemplation is something upon which a tremendous amount depends, if one wants to attain a symbolic manner of speech. Precisely about this direction there would be extraordinarily much to say.

[ 5 ] You see, we have the remarkable appearance of the Fritz Mauthner speaking technique where all knowledge and all wisdom is questioned, because all knowledge and wisdom is expressed though speech, and so Fritz Mauthner finds nothing expressed in speech because it does not point to some or other reality. [ 6 ] How harsh my little publication "The spiritual guidance of man and of mankind" has been judged in which I mention that in earlier times, all vowel formation expressed people's inner experiences, and all consonant unfolding comes from outer observed or seen events. All that man perceives is expressed in consonants, while vowels are formed by inner experiences, feelings, emotions and so on. With this is connected the peculiar manner in which the consonants are written differently to the vowels in Hebrew. This is also connected to areas where more primitive people used to dwell, where they have not strongly developed their inner life, so predominantly consonant languages occur, not languages based on vowels. This extends very far, this kind of in-consonant-action of language. Only think what African languages have from consonants to click sounds.

[ 7 ] So you see, in this way we gain an understanding for what sounds within language. One would be brought beyond the mere sign, which the word is today. Only with today's feeling for language which Fritz Mauthner believes in, can you believe that all knowledge actually depends on language and that language has no connection to some or other reality. A great deal can be accomplished when one enters into one's mother tongue and try to go back into the vernacular. In the vernacular one finds much, very much if you really behave like a human being, that is, respond to what you feel connected to the language. In the vernacular one has the rich opportunity to feel in speech and experience in sound, but also the tendency towards the descriptive, and you have to push it so far that you really, one could say, get into a kind of state of renunciation in regard to expressions that are supposed to phrase something completely separate from human experiences.

Something which thoroughly ruins our sense of language is physics, and in physics, as it is today, it only aspires to study objective processes and refrains from all subjective experience, there it should no longer be spoken at all. According to physics, when one body presses (stoßen) against another, for example in the theory of elasticity, then you are anthropomorphising, because the experience of pressure as soon as you sense sound, means you're only affected by the same kind of pressure as the pressure your own hand makes. Above all, one gets the feeling with the S-sound that nothing other can be described as something like this (a waved line is drawn on the blackboard). The word Stoß" (push/impacts—ß is the symbol for ss—translator) has two s's, at the end and beginning; it gives the entire word its colouring; so when the word Stoß or stoßen (to push/thrust) is pronounced one actually can feel how, when your ether body would move, it would not only move but be shoved forwards and continuously be kept up.

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[ 8 ] Thus, there are already methods through which one comes to the power of speech formation, which is then no longer far from symbolizing, for the symbolum must be hacked out of the way so that one experiences language as a living organism, because much is to be experienced within language. Someone recently told me that there are certain things in language which only need to be pronounced and one is surprised at how they reveal themselves as self-evident.

The Greeks recited in hexameter. Why? Well, hexameter is an experience. A person produces speech, as I've already said, in his breathing. However, breathing is closely connected to other elements of rhythm in the human being; with the pulse, with blood circulation. On average, obviously not precisely, we have 18 breaths and 72 heat beats; 72 equals 4 times 18. Four times 18 heart beats gives a rhythm, a collective inner beat. In a time when man sensed in a more primordial and more elementary way according to what was taking place within him, man experienced, when he could, in uttering the relationship of the heart beat to the breathing, bring the totality of himself into expression. This relationship, not precisely according to time, this relationship can be brought to bear; you only have to add the turning point as the fourth foot (reference plate 3 ... not available In German text) then you have a Greek hexameter half-line, in the ration of 4 to 1 as a pulse beat to breathing rhythm. The hexameter was born out of the human structure, and other measures of verse were all born out of the rhythmic system of the human being. You can already feel, when you treat language artistically, how, in the process of treating human speech in an artistic way, language is alive. This makes it possible to acquire a far more inner relationship to language, yet also far more objectivity. The most varied chauvinistic feelings in relation to language stops, because the configurations of different languages stop, and one acquires an ear for the general sound. There are such things which are found on the way to gaining the power of creative speech. It does finally lead to listening to oneself when one speaks. In a certain way it's actually difficult but it can be supported. For various reasons it seems to me that for those who are affected by it, it is also necessary not to treat the Scripture in the way many people treat it today. You will soon see why I say these things.

[ 9 ] In relation to writing, there are two kinds of people. The majority learn to write as if it's a habit of staking out words. People are used to move their hands in a certain way and write like this: in the majority. The writing lesson is very often given in such a way that one just comes to it. The minority actually don't write in the sense of reality, but they draw (a word is written on the blackboard: Kann [meaning can; be able to]). They look at the signs of the letters simultaneously as being written, and as an artistic treatment of writing, it is far more an intimate involvement. I have met people who have been formally trained to write. For instance, once there was a writing method which consisted in people being trained to make circles and curves, to turn them and thus acquire a feeling of connecting them and so form letters out of them. Only in this way, out of these curves, could the letters come about. With a large number of them I have seen that they, before they start writing, make movements in the air with their pen. This is what brings writing into the unconsciousness of the body. However, our language comes out of the totality of the human being and when one spoils oneself by writing you also spoil yourself for the language. Precisely the one who is dependent on handling the language needs to get used to the meditation that writing should not be allowed to just flow out of his hand, but he should look at it, really look at what he is writing, when he writes.

[ 10 ] My dear friends, this is something which is extraordinarily important in our current culture, because we are on our way to dehumanizing ourselves. I have already received a large number of letters which have not been written with a pen but with the typewriter. Now you can imagine the difference between a letter written with a typewriter or written with a pen. I'm not campaigning against the typewriter, I consider it as an obvious necessity in civilization, but we do also need the counter pole. By us dehumanizing ourselves in this way, by us changing our relationship towards the outer world in an absolute mechanistic and dead manner, we need in turn to take up strong vital forces again. Today we need far greater vital forces than in the time in which man knew nothing yet about the typewriter.

[ 11 ] Therefore, for someone who handles words, he must also acquire an understanding for the continuous observation, while he is writing, that what he is writing pleases him, that he gets the impression that something hasn't just flowed out of a subject but that, by looking simultaneously at it, this thing lives as a totality in him. Mostly, the thing that is needed for the development of some capability is not arrived at in a direct but in an indirect way. I must explain this route because I have been asked how one establishes the power for speech formation. This is the way, as I have mentioned, which comes first of all. As an aside I stress that language originates in the totality of mankind, and the more mankind still senses the language, so much more will there be movement in his speech. It is extraordinary, how for instance in England, where the process of withdrawal of a connection with the surroundings is most advanced, it is regarded as a good custom to speak with their hands in their trouser pockets, held firmly inside so they don't enter the danger of movement. I have seen many English people talk in this way. Since then I've never had my pockets made in front again, but always at the back, for I have developed such disgust from this quite inhuman non-participation in what is being said. It is simply a materialistic criticism that speech only comes from the head; it originates out of the entire human being, above all from the arms, and we are—I say it here in one sentence which is obviously restricted—we are on this basis no ape or animal which needs its hands to climb or hold on to something, but we have them as free because with these free hands and arms we handle speech.

In grasping with our arms, creating with our fingers, we express something we need in order to model language. So it has a certain justification to return mankind to its connection with language, bringing the whole person into it, to train Eurythmy properly, which really exists in drawing out of the human organism what is not fulfilled in the human body, but is however fulfilled in the ether body, when we speak. The entire human being is in movement and we are simply transposing though the eurhythmic movements, the etheric body on to the physical body. That is the principle. It is really the eurythmization of something like a necessity which needs to be regularly brought out of the human being, like the spoken language itself. It must stand as a kind of opposite pole against all which rises in the present and alienate people towards the outer world, allowing no relationship to be possible between people and the outer world any more. The eurythmization enables people in any case to return to being present in the language and is on this basis, as I've often suggested, even an art. Well, if you take into account the things I've just proposed, then you arrive at the now commonplace speech technique basically under the scheme of pedantry.

The great importance given to teaching through recitation and that kind of thing, only supports the element of a materialistic world view. You see, just as one would in a school for sculpture or a school of painting not really get instructions of the hand movements but corrects them by life forces coming into them, so speech techniques must not be pedantically taught with all kinds of nose-, chest- and stomach resonances. These things may only be developed though living speech. When a person speaks, he might at most be made aware of one or the other element. In this respect extraordinary atrocities are being committed today and the various vocal and language schools can actually be disgusting, because it shows how little lives within the human being. The formation of speech happens when those things are considered which I mentioned. Now if the question needs to be answered even more precisely, I ask you to please call my attention to it.

[ 12 ] Now there is a question about new commentary regarding the Bible, in fact, how one can arrive at a new Bible text.

[ 13 ] You see, the thing is like this, one will first have to penetrate into an understanding of the Bible. Much needs to precede this. If you take everything which I have said about language, and then consider that the Bible text has originated out of quite another kind of experience of language than we have today, and also as it was experienced centuries before in Luther's time, you can hardly hope to somehow discover an understanding of the Bible through some small outer adjustment. To understand the Bible, a real penetration of Christianity is needed above all, and actually this can only emerge from a Bible text as something similar for us as the Gospels had once appeared for the first Christians. In the time of the first Christians one certainly had the feeling of sound and some of what can be experienced in the words in the beginning of St John's Gospel which was of course experienced quite differently in the first Christian centuries as one would be able to do today. "In the primal beginnings was the Word"—you see, today there doesn't seem to be much more than a sign in this line, I'd say. We come closer to an understanding when we substitute "Word," which is very obscure and abstract, with "Verb" and also really develop our sense of the verb as opposed to the noun. In the ancient beginnings it was a verb and not the noun. I would like to say something about this abstraction.

The verb is quite rightly related to time, to activity, and it is absurd to think of including a noun in the area which has been described as in "the primal beginning." It has sense to insert a verb, a word related to activity. What lies within the sentence regarding the primal origins is however not an activity brought about by human gestures or actions, because it is the activity which streams out of the verb, the active word. We are not transported back into the ancient mists of the nebular hypothesis by the Kant-Laplace theory, but we will be led back to the sound and loud prehistoric power. This returning into a prehistoric power is something which was experienced powerfully in the first Christian centuries, and it was also strongly felt that it deals with a verb, because it is an absurdity to say: In the prehistoric times there was a noun.—We call it "Word" which can be any part of speech. Of course, it can't be so in the case of St John's Gospel.

[ 14 ] In even further times in the past, things were even more different. They were so that for certain beings, for certain perceptions of beings one had the feeling that they should be treated with holy reserve, one couldn't just put them in your mouth and say them. For this reason, a different way had to be found regarding expression, and this detour I can express by saying something like the following. Think about a group of children living with their parents somewhere in an isolated house. Every couple of weeks the uncle comes, but the children don't say the uncle comes, but the "man" comes. They mean it is the uncle, but they generalise and say it is "the man." The father is not the "man"; they know him too well to call him "man." In this way earlier religious use of language hid some things which they didn't want to express outwardly because one had the inner reaction of profanity, and so it was stated as a generalization, like also in the first line of St John's Gospel, "in the beginning was the Word." However, one doesn't mean the word which actually stands there but one calls it something which has been picked out, a singular "Word." It was after all something extraordinary, this "Word." There are as many words as there are men, but children said, "the man," and so one didn't say what was meant in St John's Gospel, but instead one said, "the Word." The word in this case was Jahveh, so that St John's Gospel would say: "In the primal beginnings was Jahveh," so one doesn't say "God," but "the Word."

[ 15 ] Such things must be acquired again by living within Christianity and what Christianity has derived from the ritual practice of the Old Testament. There is no shortcut to understanding the Gospels; a lively participation in the ancient Christian times is necessary for Gospel understanding. Basically, this is what has again become enlivened through Anthroposophy, while such things have in fact only risen out of Anthroposophic research. We then have the following: In the primordial times was he word—in primordial time was Jahveh—and the word was with God—and Jahveh was with God. In the third line: And Jahveh was one of the Elohim.—This is actually the origin, the start of the St John Gospel which refers to the multiplicity of the Elohim, and Jahveh as one of them—in fact there were seven—as lifted out of the row of the Elohim. Further to this lies the basis of the relationship between Christ and Jahveh.

Take sunlight—moonlight is the same, it is also sunlight but only reflected by the moon—it doesn't come from some ancient being, it is a reflection. In primordial Christianity an understanding existed for the Christ-word, where Christ refers to his own being by saying: "Before Abraham was, I am" and many others. There certainly was an understanding for the following: Just as the sunlight streams out of itself and the moon reflects it back, so the Christ-being who only appeared later, streamed out in the Jahveh being. We have a fulfilment in the Jahveh-being preceding the Christ-being in time. Through this St John's Gospel becomes deepened through feeling from the first line to the line which says: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us." Even today we don't believe a childlike understanding suffices for the words of the Bible, when we research the Bible by translating it out of an ancient language until we penetrate what lies in the words. Of course, one can say, only through long, very long spiritual scientific studies can one approach the Bible text. That finally, is also my conviction.

[ 16 ] Basically, the Bible no longer exists; we have a derivative which we have put together more and more from our abstract language. We need a new starting point in order to try and find what really, in an enlivened way, is in the Bible. For this I have suggested an approach which I will speak about tomorrow, in the interpretation of Mathew 13 and Mark 13. You will have to state in any case that even commenting on the Bible makes it necessary to deal with the Bible impartially. If it is stated that something is mentioned which had only taken place in the year 70, therefore the relevant place could not have been mentioned before other than what had happened after this event, this could be said only if it is announced at the beginning of the Bible explanation that the Bible will be explained completely from a materialistic point of view; then it may be done like this. The Bible itself does not follow the idea that it should be explained materialistically. The Bible itself makes it necessary that the foreseeing of coming events is first and foremost ascribed to Christ Jesus himself, and also ascribed to the apostles. Thus, as I've said, this outlook is what I want to enter into tomorrow on the basis of Mathew 13 and Mark 13, by giving a little interpretation as it has been asked for.

[ 17 ] Another question asks about the reality behind the apostolic succession and the priest ordination. This question can hardly be answered briefly because it relates deeply to the abyss which exists between today's evangelist-protestant religious understanding and all nuances of Catholic understanding. It is important that in the moment when these things are spoken about, one must try to acquire a real understanding beyond the rational or rationalistic and beyond the intellectualistic. This is acquired even by those who have little right to live in the sense of such an understanding. In the past I have become acquainted with a large number of outstanding theosophical luminaries, Leadbeater also among them, about whom you would have heard, and some other people, who worked in the Theosophical Society. I have recently had the opportunity—otherwise I would not have worried about it again—to experience, that some of these people are Catholic bishops; it struck me as extraordinary that a part of them were Catholic priests. Leadbeater in any case had, after various things became known about him, not exactly the qualification to become a Catholic bishop. Still this interested me about how people become Catholic priests. One thing is observed with utmost severity, which is the succession. In order for me to see which people have the right to be Catholic bishops, I was given a document which revealed that in a certain year a Catholic bishop left the Catholic church, but one who was ordained, and he then ordained others—right up to Mr Leadbeater—and ordination proceeds in an actual continuation, in an absolutely correct progress; they actually have created a "family tree" by it. I don't want to talk about the start of the "family tree" but you must accept that if it would be a natural progression that there once was an ordained bishop in Rome who dropped away, who then however ordained all the others, so all these Theosophical luminaries would refer back to a real descent of their priesthood to that which once existed. Therefore, awareness of this succession is everywhere present and such things are, according to their understanding, taken completely as the reality.

[ 18 ] Something like this must be taken as a reality within the Roman Catholic Church. The old Catholic church more or less didn't have the feeling—but within the Roman Catholic church it is certain accepted this way—that the moment the priest crosses the stole he no longer represents a single personality or attitude but he is then only a member of the church and speaks as a representative, as a member of the church. The Roman Catholic Church considered itself certainly as a closed organism, where the individual loses his individuality through ordination; they see it this way increasingly.

[ 19 ] Now something else is in contrast to this. You may think about what I've said as you wish, but I can only speak from my point of view, from the viewpoint of my experience. I have seen much within the transubstantiation. Today in the Catholic Church there is quite a strict difference according to which priest would perform the transubstantiation, yet I have always seen how during the transformation, during the transubstantiation, the host takes on an aura. Therefore, I have come to recognise within the objective process, that when it is worthily accomplished, it is certainly fulfilled. I said, you may think about this as you wish, I say it to you as something which can be looked at from one hand, and on the other hand also as a basic conviction of the church being valid while it was still Catholic, when the evangelist church hadn't become a splintering off. We very soon come back to reality when we look at these things and it must even be said within the sacrament of mass being celebrated there is something like a true activity, which is not merely an outer sign but a real act. If you now take all the sacraments of mass together which had been celebrated, you will create an entirety, a whole, and this is something which stands there as a fact. It is something which certainly touches things, where the evangelical mind would say: Yes, there is something magical in the Catholic Mass.—This it does contain. It also contained within it the magical part, one can experience in the evangelist mind as something perhaps heathen. Good, talk to one another about this. In any case this underscores it as being a reality, which one can't without further ado, without approaching the bearer of this reality, celebrate a mass. I say celebrate; it can be demonstrated, one can show everything possible, but one can't celebrate with the claim that through the mass what should happen at the altar will only happen when it is read without any personal imprint, in absolute application.

You see, it is ever present there where one works with the mysteries; it is simply so, when one works with the mysteries. Just as no Masonic ceremony may be carried out by a non-Mason in the consciousness of the Freemason, nor may a non-ordained person in true Catholicism work from out of Catholicism and perform with full validity the ceremony in consciousness.

[ 20 ] This is where we are being directed and must consult. I want you to take note that in this case the Catholic rules were actually very strict. Please don't take things up in such a way as if I am saying this towards pro-Catholicism; I only want to point out the situation. It isn't important for us to be for, or opposed, to Catholicism, because it's about something quite different. Particular customs were very strictly adhered to in the Catholic Church—not at all what is today in Rome's mood and procedure. If a priest became so unworthy as to be excommunicated, then his skin would be ripped off, scraped off from his fingers where he had held the sacred host in his hands. His skin would be scraped off. Sometimes such things are referred to but legally it is so, and I know such processes quite well, that after the priest's excommunication the skin of the fingers which touched the host, were scraped off. You can certainly set the objective instead of the succession that goes from the apostles through the priesthood to the priest celebrating today. You can set that which goes through consecration and through the sacraments themselves. You can exclude priesthood, but you can only exclude that by taking things objectively, right to a certain degree, objectively, that the priest no longer may have skin on his fingers when he is no longer authorised to celebrate the sacrificial mass.

[ 21 ] Isn't it true, if you have Catholic feeling, it is something as definite to you as two plus two making four? It is something definite according to religious feeling. When you don't have that then you as modern people must have a certain piety, which says to you the Catholic church has also just preserved the celebration of mass and if this is carried outside the circle to which it had been entrusted—other circles have not preserved the sacrifice of mass—if it is being performed in other circles it is pure theft. Real theft. These things must also be understood from such concepts. I believe to some it appears very difficult to understand what I am saying but in conclusion it has as such a certain validity which needs to be achieved through understanding. We don't have to worry about it here because you can experience the mass according to what there is to experience. As far as the training of a new ritual is concerned, it would not be disturbed at all by this, that the Catholic mass regards the mass to be something so real that it may certainly not to be removed from the field of Catholicism.

[ 22 ] This is firstly something which I wanted to say during our limited time. When I speak about the mass itself, and I will do so, I will still have a few things to add.

Well, gentlemen, has anyone thought of anything else today?

Questioner: I have a question about the purpose of carnival. Is there anything we can hear from Dr. Steiner about that? Where does the carnival celebration come from, what does it mean?

Dr. Steiner: So you mean, what is the purpose of carnival? Well, you see, the carnival festival cannot be understood by asking about its purpose, because, at least according to the way it is celebrated today, you will admit that after all, humanity could do without carnival over the years. So you can say that, from today's point of view, the carnival festival is basically pointless. But it no longer has its original meaning either. It has gone with such things as carnival festivals, just as it has gone with the medals, with the robes and so on. They used to have their good sense; little by little they have lost that sense. Well, it is not true that the other festivals of the year are also gradually disappearing; little by little, if they are no longer revived in their meaning, they lose their significance. Not much has been done yet to restore the significance of Carnival. In fact, Carnival would have a profound impact on all of social life if it regained the original meaning it had, for example, in ancient Rome, where it was celebrated a little earlier.

If we go back to ancient Rome, we find the following. People back then were also divided up, if one may say so, as they are here in the present day: one was a civil servant, the other was a warrior, the third was a laborer, and so on, and the division was even harsher then than it is today, at least in a social sense. For a slave could even be bought as a human being! So one can say that the differences between people in ancient Rome were still very, very significant. But the awareness that one had this or that position should be lost, at least for a few days of the year. Isn't that right? Today we talk about democracy and mean, at least initially and more in the theoretical sense, that all people are equal. Now, the Romans did not believe that at all, but for them, the one who was born into any higher class was only a real human being. You know that even in our times, the saying still applied to certain people: “A man only begins with a baron.” So those who are below the baron are not human.

In ancient Rome, this was of course extremely pronounced. Even if the nobility was not introduced in the same way as it appeared later – because that is a medieval institution from the so-called feudal period – there was still a great difference between the classes in ancient Rome. But now, for a few days a year, people were supposed to be equal, democracy was supposed to prevail. Of course, it was not possible for people to come with their ordinary faces, otherwise they would have been recognized; so they had to wear masks. Then they were what the masks were. There was also a person who was the carnival king. During these days he could do whatever he wanted. He could give orders when otherwise he only received orders. And the whole of Rome went mad for a few days, out of place; and people could also behave differently towards their superiors, did not need to be polite to them - so for a few days, to make people equal! And this institution naturally led to people not exactly weeping and mourning during these days; for it pleased them to be able to live like that for a few days. The carnival revelry then developed out of this joy: People only played crazy tricks when they were freed for a few days. And so the whole carnival merrymaking came about.

The result of this was that, because people liked it very much, it has been preserved. But things are preserved without people knowing the original meaning. So carnival remains only as the time when you do crazy things – because you were allowed to do crazy things. Then the church decided that it was necessary to have Ash Wednesday immediately afterwards, so that people would feel that they were guilty, that they were not allowed to do everything they wanted, and so on. And since Christianity, at least in earlier times, had developed the custom of making people do without, Lent was established. And it was naturally expedient to attach Lent to the carnival season, because then people did without the least; they did everything they liked as well as they could. Afterwards it is much worse not to eat the things one has eaten before. It was then as if time had not gone forward. And so these festivals came together.

The only thing was that in Rome, Carnival was much earlier, around our present-day Christmas time, because everything was moved a little to a later season. That is how we got today's carnival. I believe that the date of the carnival in all other areas is based on the Easter season. But that, as I hear, only leads to it being celebrated twice!

Well, that is what needs to be said in answer to this question. It can be said of many things in humanity that they originally had a meaning but then later lost that meaning. Then one wonders: Why all this?

Well, maybe someone has something else to ask today.

Questioner: I would like to ask the doctor if he would perhaps continue the story from last time.

Questioner: I would like to ask Dr. whether it is possible for people to insult another person or cause him pain, that is, to influence others? Mrs. A had a three-year-old child who always saw entities coming in through the door and windows. The child often had restless nights, and especially when the woman had washed her underwear – the woman borrowed things in the house – the child always became restless. Finally, there was nothing left; then the woman died later. I would like to ask Dr. Steiner if something like this would be possible?

Dr. Steiner: These are, of course, things that touch on all kinds of areas in which superstition can play just as strong a role - because people are gullible - but also the facts. You just have to be clear about the fact that there are connections in the world that cannot be easily traced physically. I will start from very simple connections.

Look at it this way: take a grape harvest. You harvest the grapes and press them, prepare them, put them in barrels, store them in the cellar. Now, you will notice that when the next wine is ready - when the time comes for the wine to ferment again - it becomes restless. He remains, without having a physical connection, still in contact. This is a simple fact that shows you that there are such connections in nature itself that cannot easily be followed with the eye and so on.

Now, as you know, there is already a way to bridge the ordinary visibility. You only need to remember that even in inanimate nature there are devices today that overcome the ordinary visible – not the finer visible, but the ordinary visible. You only need to think of radiotelegraphy! What is radiotelegraphy based on? It is based on the fact that you have an electricity exciter somewhere; initially, no wire connects to it, but it stands alone. Somewhere else, without any connection to it, there is an apparatus that contains certain fine discs that can be set in motion. Such an apparatus is called a coherer. At first glance, they have no physical connection at all, but when you excite electricity here, it causes the signs to move there; and if you connect it to a device, you can receive the messages there, just as you can receive electricity through the wires. Of course, it is based on the fact that electricity propagates, but you just can't see it; it propagates without a gross physical connection. So even in inanimate nature you have a connection that is such that you can say: at least to a certain extent, the visible is overcome.

Now we can take the matter further. Imagine certain twin brothers or sisters. When they reach a later age, even twin brothers and sisters who are not physically connected can be in touch with each other. One may be here and the other there. Nevertheless, it can be observed that at a particular time one of the twins may fall ill, for example, and the other, who is further away, also! Or one of them will become saddened by something at a certain time; and so will the other. All such things show you that there are effects in the world that cannot immediately be explained as physical influences.

But if you now approach the animal kingdom, you soon realize that there are perceptions in animals, for example, that humans do not have. Suppose, for example, an earthquake or a volcanic eruption occurs in some area that is very damaging to people. People just sit there quietly; you can sometimes see the animals moving away and leaving the area for days beforehand! From this too you can see that there can be a sense of something for the animals that you do not perceive physically. If one were to perceive it physically, then man would also be able to perceive the matter.

From all this you can see that there are connections that are possible in the world outside the physical. Now, when we look at such finer connections, we come to the fact that sometimes people feel something inside them that they certainly could not have perceived physically. For example, I will say: There is a person somewhere - these things have happened in hundreds and thousands of cases - who suddenly flinches and sees something in front of him like a picture - it is of course only a dream - and he cries out and says: My friend! But the friend may be far away; he may be experiencing it in Europe, or he may be in America. My friend! Something has happened to him! It turns out that he has died. So these things do happen. Once again, we can see how such effects can take place without there being any physical connection.

Yes, but it must be said that it is good for our human race that these things are not all too widespread; because just think, if your head were capable of perceiving everything that one person or another thinks or says about you, for example, then it would be a terrible story! Isn't it true, you know, if you have a telegraph device, then the device must first be set up, the wire must first be switched on, and then the transmission takes place. Likewise, in wireless telegraphy, this must be in order, must not be disconnected (pointing to the drawing), then the transmission takes place. Now, in general, in the case of a fully healthy person, it is so that the person is not connected to all the currents that are going on; he is disconnected; but in special cases it can certainly happen that one is connected to something.

Take for example – I cannot go into your case in detail for the good reason that you probably do not know how strongly it is attested; but I will go into a similar case, and then you will be able to explain this too. I only want to talk about things that are absolutely authenticated, because otherwise it is very easy to end up with mere talk. You probably did not experience the case yourself, but read about it or heard it related? So I will only go into what is well authenticated. Suppose: A woman A had an argument during her pregnancy with a woman B who lives in the neighborhood. It does happen, doesn't it, that people argue with each other. Now perhaps this woman B, who lives in the neighborhood, cursed woman A very strongly, and woman A was terribly frightened when woman B shouted and swore. As a result, the child that is born may become somewhat dependent on Ms. B, but Ms. B may also become somewhat dependent on the child. It may well be that the child becomes receptive to what Ms. B gives it as underwear or the like when she washes it. But on the other hand it can also be important for Mrs. B to receive underwear; she then needs, because she does have a little remorse about what she did to Mrs. A, to have something from this house to continually reassure her; and in the moment when she is then deprived of it, she seeks to get it in every possible way. People who want to get something like that, without being thieves by nature, can steal all kinds of things. They become thieving only for these things; otherwise they do not steal, but seek to get these things in every way. Then it can even happen that, when these things are withdrawn from them, because there are also spiritual and mental influences on a person's health, they suffer from a kind of inner wasting away, from a wasting fever and die, or let us say, even from a heart or nerve attack. That is entirely possible.

So you can say: These things happen in the world, and these things can be explained, because, even without a physical connection, an influence is exerted by one person on the other under certain circumstances. But then you always have to be able to go into the cause. It could have been a completely different cause in this case you mentioned. But if, for example, there had been a row between the two women during pregnancy, this could be the cause of an intervention between this woman and the child at a later stage. Now, gentlemen, it was requested that I speak a little further about what I said the other day. I showed you how people in ancient India lived under very different conditions four to five thousand years ago. And it was precisely through this special Indian nature and the way the peoples were together that these ancient Indians developed the view of the physical human body.

The Egyptians, on the other hand, who had their country entirely under the influence of the Nile, who owed everything they were, so to speak, to the Nile, they have, because man also becomes aware of the ether through this, developed the view of the etheric body of man.

The inhabitants of Assyria and the Babylonians, because the particularly pure air and the high altitude made it easy for them to observe the stars at certain times of the year, developed the astral body as a concept.

And the Jews, who actually had to wander in their early days, who were never settled close to anyone, only later settled, who thought and felt more out of the inner nature of man, they developed the view of the human ego.

Thus, the conception of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I has gradually developed. You see, the word Yahweh means nothing other than: I am the I-am. That is the meaning of the word. Since Yahweh is considered the supreme God, this confession of the supreme God clearly points to the human ego.

If we follow the development of the story, we find that all these peoples have actually expressed more in their thoughts and feelings what they have experienced. The Indian has experienced a fertile, rich nature - everything is in a state of perpetual bloom and growth: a rich, lush nature. So he actually perceived the richness of the physical, and he developed the view of the physical body from his own view. The Egyptian, on the other hand, saw that only the Nile, which you can see, can help him; so he developed the doctrine of the ether, and so on. But all these people actually developed everything they experienced.

In contrast to this, there was another people. We can say (a drawing is being made): here is ancient India, here Arabia; here then Egypt, there flows the Nile. Now it goes over here, and here we have a land facing Africa, which then connects to Europe. Here again would be Assyria, as I told you last time, here Egypt, here India; here would be Palestine, where the Jews settled; and here we have Greece. In this Greece, peoples settled who had immigrated from the most diverse areas of Asia and Europe, and who thus mixed with each other there. They also found original inhabitants when they immigrated, but the Greek people gradually developed on this peninsula of Europe. These Greek people were actually the first, one might say, to open their eyes and see something of the world that was not only experienced from within. The Indians experienced nature from within; the Egyptians experienced the effects of the ether; the Assyrians experienced the astral body in the stars; the Jews experienced their ego. The Greeks were actually the first, as I said, to turn their eyes outward and look at the world. The others did not really look at the world. So one can say: The Indians and the Egyptians, nor the Babylonians nor the Jews, had a particularly developed view of nature; they did not know much about nature because they did not open their eyes and look out. It was only with the Greeks that an understanding of nature arose, because the Greeks opened their eyes and looked outwards. And so it was only in Greece that man really became aware of the external world.

You see, the Indians knew very well: this physical world here is part of the whole world, and I came out of the spiritual at birth; I go back into it after death. The Egyptians believed that the mummies had to be preserved so that people could come back; but they also paid particular attention to the spiritual. The Babylonians saw the will of the spirits in the starry sky that they observed, in the astral. So they also believed in spirits. And you know that the Jews were of the opinion that Jehovah, Yahweh, would lead them back to those ancient times when the patriarchs lived. So basically they also looked to what connects man to the spiritual world.

With the Greeks, it became different. They were actually the first to have become attached to the external world. The earlier peoples did not care much about the external world. The Greeks were very interested in the outer world; and there is a Greek saying that says: It is better to be a beggar in the upper world, that is, he means in Greece, on earth, than a king in the realm of shadows, that is, of the dead. So the Greeks, above all, have grown fond of the world and have thereby also gained a view of nature for the first time.

The other peoples, for example, developed a view of man. Among the Indians, in particular, there was already a certain view of man in the most ancient times. But they did not gain this view of man by taking dead people to the dissecting room and cutting them up! If the Indians had to do that, they would never have gained their view of man. Rather, they sensed how the liver and lungs behave in the individual parts of the human body - this was still possible in those days. They knew this through inner knowledge. This is what led the Indians to their great wisdom: they knew through inner sensing and feeling how the liver works and so on. Today, people only know how a piece of meat tastes in their mouths. The Indians knew how a piece of meat behaves in the intestines, what the liver does, what the gall bladder does, through inner experience, just as people today feel the pieces of meat they eat in their mouths.

The Egyptians developed geometry because they needed it. They had to determine again and again where the fields were located; after all, the Nile flooded everything every year. This is also something that can be invented out of the head. The Babylonians developed astrology, the knowledge of the stars - again something that has nothing to do with the earthly; they had no strong interest in the earthly. And the fact that the Jews have no strong interest in the earthly is shown by the fact that a Jew is more likely to have an interest in anything than in what is actually in the world of the senses around him; he is good at thinking, but he has no real interest in what is in the world of the senses around him.

The people who are most interested in what is in the sensory world around them are the Greeks. If you do some research, it is interesting to note that they saw the whole world differently from the way we see it today. That is very interesting. Today we see the sky as blue. The Greeks did not have the same impression of the color blue as we do, but saw the sky as much darker, almost blackish, with a slightly greenish tinge. They perceived red particularly strongly. With our dull perception of red, we can no longer imagine the strong impression that the red color made on the Greeks! It is precisely because humanity has gradually developed a sense of blue that humanity has in turn moved away from the sensual impression. So the Greeks first became particularly attached to what existed outside of them. And that is why the Greeks were particularly skilled at developing what we today call mythology. The Greeks worshipped a whole pantheon of gods: Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athena, Ares, Aphrodite; they saw gods everywhere. They worshipped a whole pantheon of gods because what they loved as external nature seemed to them to be everywhere still alive and spiritualized. Not as dead as it is with us, but everywhere still animated and spiritualized, it seemed to them. So they worshiped the gods everywhere in the nature itself that they had come to love.

But as a result, during the Greek era, all those people who had become dependent on Greek civilization, Greek culture, and Greek intellectual life forgot what the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians had actually experienced in spiritual terms.

Now you will know, gentlemen, how great an influence Greece actually had on the whole development of mankind. This continues to this day! Anyone who can send their son to grammar school today still has him learn Greek. But in the past it was much more widespread. In the past, you were a donkey, so to speak, if you couldn't speak Greek or at least read Greek writers and poets. Greece has had an enormously strong influence on the world because it was the first to take an interest in this external world.

Now, while this interest in the external world was developing in Greece, the important thing happened in Asia, that from there the mystery of Golgotha developed, that is, when Greece was already overcome, when everything was actually already under Roman rule. But what does this Roman rule mean? It was, after all, completely imbued with the Greek spirit. The educated Romans had also all learned Greek, and anyone who was educated in Rome knew Greek. Greek had gained the greatest influence everywhere. While Greek was spreading in this way, in a little-known Roman province in Asia – at that time Palestine, the Jews had been overcome, Palestine had become a Roman province – a man appeared, Jesus of Nazareth, who said something completely different from anything that people had ever said before. And as you can imagine, because he said something so special, he was not immediately understood by others either. Therefore, at first he was understood only by a few.

What did this personality, Jesus, actually say when he appeared in Palestine? Well, this personality, Jesus, said in the way he was able to express it at that time: Yes, people today believe – that was the “today” at that time – everywhere that man is an earthly creature. But he is not. He is a being that comes from the spiritual world and when it dies, returns to the spiritual world. Today, when Christianity has been in effect for almost two thousand years, one is surprised that such a thing was said at the time. But at that time it was not so. The Asian and African conceptions of the spirit were little known or widespread in Greece. There, people were more turned towards the world. And so, especially against the worldly Hellenism that existed in Rome, what Jesus of Nazareth taught in the first place was something tremendously significant.

But in doing so, he would not have done anything different from resurrecting what earlier peoples, the Indians, the Egyptians and so on, had already said. Only what I have just told you would have been resurrected; only what was already there would have come back. But that Jesus of Nazareth not only revived what was already there, but he also said the following. He said: Yes, if I had only listened to what people could tell me today, I would not have come up with the teaching of the spirit at all, because people no longer really know anything about the spirit. That came to me from outside the earth. And so he realized that he was not just Jesus, but that an entity had emerged in his soul that was the Christ. To him, Jesus was the one who was born of the mother's womb on earth. The Christ was the one who entered his soul only in later times. The truth has emerged in his soul from the fact that people are spiritual by nature.

Now we must ask ourselves: How were the various ancient teachings cultivated in India, in Egypt, in Babylonia and also among the Jews? If you look around at the spiritual life today, you will find the church on one side and the schools on the other. At most, the rulers of the church argue with the rulers of the schools about the extent of the influence of the one on the other; but they are separate from each other. This was not the case with these ancient peoples, neither with the Indians nor the Egyptians nor the Babylonians nor even the Jews. Everything that was connected with religion in those days was at the same time connected with schools; it was one and the same thing to serve both the church and the school. Much of it has, of course, been transplanted into our time; but it is not the same as it was in ancient times, when the priest was also the teacher. The priest was the teacher both in India and in Egypt, Babylonia and so on. The priest was the teacher. And where did he teach? Well, he taught where the service was also performed, where the cult was held. The cult was generally connected with teaching. These were the mystery schools. They did not have churches and schools, but they had such places, that is, such institutes, which were both at the same time, and which we call mysteries today. But the general view was that one must be careful with everything that could be learned there.

You see, gentlemen, that was an old view: that a person should only be mature enough to receive certain knowledge. This has been completely lost today. And so everywhere you had those who held the highest dignity in the mysteries, called “fathers”. This is still reflected, for example, in the Catholic Church, where certain priests are called fathers. In ancient times, among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and so on, everywhere those who were actually initiated into the knowledge, who had insights, were called “fathers”. And when these fathers had taught those who had been accepted by them, whom they believed could make them mature, then they also had them, just as they had been called “fathers,” called them “sons.” And all the rest of the people who did not enter into the mysteries, who were not accepted, were called the “children” of the fathers; or they were also called sons and daughters. Now, you can understand that a certain view has emerged. This view consisted in the fact that people, who were much more devout then than they are today, really felt that those who were in the mysteries were their fathers in a spiritual sense as well; they gladly regarded them as their fathers, as their spiritual fathers. And above all, they believed that these spiritual fathers were in closer contact with the gods than they were outside; they outside must first receive the message, the knowledge, from the fathers. And so, gradually, people became very dependent on the fathers. The state that the Catholic Church would like to restore today, I believe, wholeheartedly, was a matter of course in the ancient times. It was like that everywhere. No one rebelled against it. People simply said: If you want to be a real human being, then you either have to be a father yourself, then you communicate directly with the gods, or you have to learn something about the gods from the fathers. So you are a human being because those who are in the schools, in the mysteries, tell you something. This is how the distinction between children of God and children of men, between sons of God and sons of men, came about. Those who were in the mysteries were called the sons of God because they, in turn, looked up to the gods as to their fathers. But those who lived outside, to whom only what was in the mysteries was proclaimed, were called the children of men or sons of men. And so people were divided into sons of God and sons of men or human children. Today this seems even ridiculous to people, but in those days it was quite natural. Today, people do make distinctions – admittedly not in Switzerland, but I don't know whether something similar is gaining a little ground there; but in neighboring countries, right away – now it has ceased somewhat, but it wasn't long ago that one distinguished excellencies from ordinary people, the barons from ordinary people; this was more taken for granted. But in the old days it was simply taken for granted that a distinction was made between the sons of the gods, the children of the gods and the children of men.

The one who then called himself Christ Jesus, who was so named, said: A son of God, a child of the spirit, is not acquired through another human being; rather, everyone becomes one through God Himself. It is only a matter of becoming aware of it. The old man said: The Father from the Mysteries must make one aware of this. - The Christ Jesus said: One already carries the seed of the divine within oneself, and one can, if one only makes the right effort, bring it out of oneself.

But with that, Christ Jesus taught that which makes people all over the world the same in their souls. And the greatest difference that has been overcome by Christ Jesus is that between the Sons of God and the sons of men.

People have misunderstood this in all sorts of ways – the ancients because they did not want the idea to arise that it was no longer possible to distinguish between the Sons of God and the children of men, and the later generations because they no longer knew what was meant by it. Just as the later generations no longer knew the carnival, they also no longer knew what was meant by “sons of the gods” and “sons of man”. That is why the Bible, the New Testament, continually adds that Jesus Christ is sometimes called the Son of God and sometimes the Son of Man, while all the passages that speak of the Son of God and the Son of Man actually mean that both can be used in the same sense; that is why they are spoken of alternately. But if you don't know that this has led to that, you can't really understand the Gospels at all. And they are actually being understood today in a very bad sense, especially by those who profess to do so.

In this way you have presented emotionally what actually came into the world through Christ Jesus. And if I first deal with the external things today, I must say: You see, there were also other great differences between people everywhere. One need only think of ancient India. There were distinctions, like the animals or classes of animals: the Brahmins, the priests, the country people, the laborers. The Egyptians, on the other hand, had a whole army of slaves. The castes were not so strictly separated from each other, but they were still present to a certain extent. Yes, even in Greece and Rome there was still the difference between freeborn and slaves. These external differences have only been wiped out in modern times because the difference between the children of the gods and the children of men has been wiped out. So there was also an enormous influence on the whole social life of humanity from what happened in Palestine through Christ Jesus.

But now one can actually ask about everything: Yes, is it the case that it can be found out where the spiritual actually comes from outside of the earth into the human being? You see, in this respect it is even very difficult to talk today, because today everything is actually only considered materialistically. For example, let us say, language. You know that different languages are spoken in different areas, different countries of the world; but still, the languages all have a secret similarity. The similarity does not have to be as striking as, say, in Germany and England, in Germany and in Holland. But still, it is the case that the languages, despite being different, have a certain similarity. One can find that, for example, the language spoken in India, even if one does not understand it immediately, if one engages with it, the individual word images are similar to those of the German language.

And what do people say when they want to explain something like this today? They say: Well, such a language originated in one place on earth - because everything should only come from the earth - then the peoples migrated, carried the language somewhere else, and it changed a little. But it all comes from one language.

This is the greatest scientific superstition that has emerged in modern times. Because, you see, gentlemen, this scientific superstition is exactly the same as the following: Imagine a person lives in India and he gets warm when the sun shines. Now, the view is formed: man can get warm. - Now, later, people in Europe discover that they also get warm in summer. They also get warm. Now they don't use their intellect to help them, but their senses. They say: “You can't explain getting warm from the present; but in ancient India, people got warm; they emigrated to Europe and transplanted the property of getting warm to Europe.” Yes, gentlemen, if someone says that, then of course he is crazy. But the philologists say the same thing! They do not say, when a language in Europe is similar to a language in India, that the same influence from outside the Earth has worked in India as in Europe, but they say: the language has migrated! If in two regions a person gets warm, one will not say that the property of getting warm was brought here by migration, but one looks up to the common sun, and it warms both those in India and those in Europe. When two languages are found that are similar in distant places, it is not because the language has migrated, but because the common influence, just as the influence of the sun is there for the whole earth, the common influence of extraterrestrials is effective on the peoples of the most diverse areas of the earth. But because men definitely do not want to admit that an extraterrestrial influence takes place in the spiritual, they think up all kinds of things, which one just does not notice are crazy, because they are so learned. If people were not afraid of being thought crazy, they would deny everywhere that the sun warms, but they would say: In primeval times the property of becoming warm arose once, and that has been transplanted over the whole earth. They would deny the influence of the sun, if that were not crazy! This is something that must be taken into account if one wants to understand the origin of Christianity.

It's already too late to answer any further questions today; we can talk about it next Saturday.

In the gathering held here just after the Christmas Course we turned our attention to things that can deepen medicine in an esoteric sense. And we tried—to the extent to which this is possible in such brief meetings—to penetrate into the esotericism of medicine, in the way that is suitable for younger medical aspirants today. In formulae for further contemplation and elaboration, we received things that can quicken the sense for medicine and emphasis was laid upon the necessity of having this sense for medicine.

I picture to myself that you have worked upon these things for a time, my dear friends. Naturally, my idea of this work is not that people sit down and ponder about such things theoretically, but that from time to time, when the inner need is felt, they let these things work upon and develop the soul. It was inevitable, from the very way in which these things came before us, that one perfectly definite fact should emerge—a fact which I believe to be of importance for our gathering now. Because of the very concentrated form in which the esoteric things were given at the first gathering, one or another, to a greater or lesser degree, must have realized that it was necessary to face certain inner difficulties. The purpose of esoteric teachings is not always to make life as easy as possible for us. In a certain respect the opposite is certainly the case. They are also there in order to make life more difficult, to make us realize the difficulties of understanding the world, of really getting to know the world and human beings. So that when we become alive to these difficulties, we take the opposite path of development from that which is so often taken in our civilization today. We take the opposite to a superficial path of development. It is only by becoming alive to the difficulties existing as between the outside world and the human being that a person can be deepened in soul. I think, therefore, the best way now will be if, bearing these inner difficulties in mind, you will bring them forward in the form of questions and we will then make matters that can really promote the development of our subject into the theme of our discussions. I would ask you, to begin with, to tell me what inner and outer difficulties have arisen in your own circle. Difficulties will have arisen both for the practitioner and for the student. There are a number among you who are now approaching the end of their studies; they will have found quite specific difficulties and we will try to find their solution. All of you have received the first circular letter and you will have realized that in connection with definite questions there is a very great deal to say. I would like to ask if any question, definite or indefinite, has arisen, for such questions will surely lead us further. In this way we shall get away more from theoretical study and reach matters which lie in the realm of actual experience.

Question: A participant asked about the course of the year, the Calendar of the Soul, definite constellations of the stars and whether one must be consciously aware of these.

That is not essential. You mean observation of the constellations as they are at a particular time. It is, of course, a help if one is able to look at the visible constellations. But if I have understood you aright you mean: How are things, really, if we allow the formulae we have been given to work upon the soul? These things work through their own inherent mantric power; orientation in the outer world according to the stars can, of course, be a help but you must remember the following. Take the most striking example of a human-cosmic relationship that can still be observed today, namely the menses. It is obvious that they are determined cosmically yet they are not so determined in the present epoch. They were cosmically determined in a much earlier phase of cosmic evolution in which our earth was also involved. Then, in the course of time, they became independent, were emancipated from the external cosmos, so that nowadays there is no direct dependence. Therefore, one cannot say nowadays that the phases of the moon are coincident with menstruation. This cannot be said. But it is certainly true to say that there was once a time when the one coincided with the other; then they separated. The moon phases exist on their own. Menstruation takes its own independent course. Here is one example of separation. The other that I will mention is not governed by the phases of the moon but by the daily phases of the moon. Ebb and flow were once coincident with certain influences of the moon. Again there was separation. The moon is on its own, ebb and flow on their own.

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These things also hold good in the working of mantric power. Mantric power is certainly of such a nature that what happens in the human being as a result of it was at one time coincident with cosmic processes, but separation has now taken place, so that a proper orientation is necessary. If we want this help from the outside world we must say to ourselves first of all: What is to happen in the inner being is inscribed in the cosmos. But in contemplating this we must make ourselves inwardly independent and be able to experience inwardly and quite on our own, emancipated from the cosmic happenings. Therefore it is not unconditionally necessary to reckon with the constellations of the stars in the working of a mantram. Equally it cannot be a question of the menses being regulated according to the external phases of the moon, because the menses have become a process of the world of nature. Today it is the case that the whole of our inner life that is to be influenced by mantrams must take place in emancipation from the outer cosmos.

In connection with other subjects I have often had to speak of this as the difference between Eastern and Western esotericism. The whole standpoint of the oriental is this: the human being has come forth from the cosmos, he must return there, he must be united with the cosmos again. Think of the posture of the Buddha. It is a return to earlier conditions. This is shown by the Buddha's whole posture, the crossing of the legs one over the other, the elimination of the limb structures. The position of the arms, too, is such that the whole relationship to the earth is paralyzed. We see how the human being again members himself into the cosmos. He goes back again. So it is, in reality, with the whole of Eastern esotericism. It is a going backwards. Our Western esotericism can only be a going forward, an ever-increasing emancipation. For this reason it is not so inwardly comfortable and when applied in certain domains particularly it does not make for inner ease.

Of course, if you have some specific, pathological condition before you, and when you look at the constellations you find, for example, that the condition definitely set in when Saturn was in opposition to the moon, this naturally has a certain significance. For if you now come as a healer with Saturn and moon, that is to say, in earthly terms, with lead and silver, saying: I will apply the lead cosmically and the silver in the earthly form, trying to pulverize it, to dissolve it; I will change it into the earthly form, thereby producing the same constellation that is expressed in the heavens in the opposition to the moon, then you can heal in the sense of the cosmic forces. But at the same time you bring the human being into a condition which throws him back into earlier stages of evolution. Whereas if you take your start directly from the given earthly state—the connection of the human being with lead, with silver—then you are working in something that is in a process of emancipating itself within the human being and you are looking not into the past but into the future. In this case you will certainly be doing something similar, but you get at it from within, by getting to know the nature of the lead and the silver, realizing that the lead works as substance, the silver through what it actually becomes when it is broken into pieces, dissolved, resolved into atoms. But you are comparing it with the human nature that is already emancipated, not with the cosmos. This is the way in which one must proceed. Therefore it may certainly be a help to think about the actual constellations of the stars. But to begin with, we shall have to use all our power to lend ourselves to the inner activation of soul by the mantric formulae we have been given, and seek for everything more from within.

Question: What must I do out of the ego when I am meditating?

From out of the ego? Meditation consists, does it not, in the following. As a modern person you feel that you must understand every sentence. This is emphatically an activity of the ego in the present incarnation. Everything you do intellectually is an activity of the ego. In the present incarnation the intellect predominates and everything else is overshadowed by the ego, works upwards at the most like a dream, and is unconscious. In contrast with this, meditation means elimination of this intellectual striving and, to begin with, taking the content of the meditation just as it is given—purely according to the sounds of the words. When you approach the content of the meditation intellectually you bring your ego into movement before you absorb the meditation, for you think about the content; it is outside you. If you let the meditation be present in your consciousness just exactly as it is given, not cogitating over it at all but simply letting it be in your consciousness, then your ego is working in you not from the present incarnation but from the past. You hold the intellect still, simply transporting yourself into the word-content which you hear inwardly, not outwardly; you transport yourself into this word-content and as you do so your inner being works within the content of the meditation—the inner being which is not that of the present incarnation. But thereby the content of meditation becomes—not something for you to understand merely—but something that works within you in reality; so that finally you become aware of: Now I have experienced something I was unaware of earlier.

Take a simple meditation which I have often given: “Wisdom lives in the Light.” If we think about this we can extract many very clever things but equally frightfully stupid things from it. “Wisdom lives in the Light” is there in order to be heard inwardly. When you hear this inwardly that within you which listens does not come from your present incarnation but what you have brought with you from former earthly lives. It is this that thinks and experiences, and after some time there lights up within you something you did not know before, that you cannot think out with your own intellect. Inwardly you are much further than your intellect. Your intellect contains only a tiny extract of what is really there.

After all, you must take what is given in Anthroposophy absolutely concretely and objectively. Just think about the following: With the change of teeth the human being really renews his whole physical body. This must be taken as a fundamental fact. That the human being gets second teeth is really only the most external symptom of all, merely, a fragment of what is going on. Just as the so-called milk teeth are replaced, so is the whole human organism replaced. After the change of teeth, so far as his physical substance is

concerned, the human being is entirely new in comparison to what he was when he was born. The modern view which jumbles everything together is that the human being is born, passes through a metamorphosis with the change of teeth and then goes on developing. It is not like this. The truth is that when the human being comes physically into the world he has, as well as the so-called milk teeth, a body that is a product of hereditary development. He has received a body that is the product of what is contained in the whole line of ancestry. The physical body of the first seven years—if we express it in figures—comes from here. From the seventh to the fourteenth year the human being has a body, too, but this body has not been produced from the first by transformation. What the human being has brought with him to the earth has intervened here.

Picture it as follows: the human being has had his body. This body which has come to him from the line of heredity is a model; he has it as a model. Into this body he takes earthly substance. If he were to work only with the forces he brings with him from pre-earthly existence he would elaborate this earthly substance which he takes into his body in the first seven years into quite a different form. He would call forth quite a different form. He does not come at birth with the tendency to give form to a being with eyes, ears, nose, like the being who stands on the earth. He enters with the tendency to structure the human being in such a way that very little is structured by way of the head through his pre-earthly being; it is especially upon everything else that the greatest care is expended. What is stunted in the embryonic life is developed in the astral, in the ego organization. Of the physical embryo, therefore, we must say: Physical nature in the embryo is developed in a wonderful way but the pre-earthly human being has very little indeed to do with it. On the other hand the pre-earthly human being plays the very greatest part in all that lies around the embryo. It lives in what is demolished in the physical world, amnion, chorion, and so on. Within this lives the pre-earthly man.

You can picture it rather like this. To begin with, the cosmos is copied. This is what the human being wants, in reality, to do when he has come down from the pre-earthly into earthly existence. Why does he not do it? Because a model is already provided. And in accordance with this model, with the substances received, he transforms the pre-earthly during the first seven years of life. His inherent tendency would be to form a more spherical being, a being organized into a sphere. This is transformed in accordance with the model and so the pre-earthly forces work out this second physical man who is there from the seventh to the fourteenth years, but to begin with, by adhering to the model which comes from the forces of heredity.

There, you see, you have two, actually distinguishable entities of forces in the human being. How can you understand these force entities? Take, with the outlook and feeling of the physician, the book Occult Science and read where the earth's evolution is spoken of. At first there is a Saturn evolution, then a Sun evolution. If you follow the description of the Earth evolution you will find that until the separation of the sun, sun, moon and earth were one, combined together in one. Afterwards there is a separation of earth and sun, earth and moon. Up to the middle of this evolution, therefore, the human being lives in the cosmos. He lives in sun and moon just as he lives in the earth. After the separation of the sun he lives outside the sun; after the separation of the moon, outside the moon. Until the separation of the sun, therefore, the cosmic forces were working upon man's nature; those forces, too, which are today outside the earth in the moon and in the sun were working in the human being because he belonged to the world in which the sun and moon were still present. There followed for the human being an evolution during which sun and moon were outside.

There was a phase of evolution which contained within it all that today is both earthly and of the nature of sun and moon; later on, the extra-earthly emancipated itself from the earthly. The earthly went on along its own path, it dried up, hardened, became physical—and you find this today in the stream of heredity; it has densified within the stream of heredity. What the human being has received since the separation of the moon and sun lies in the forces working in from the cosmos. That is the point. So that in the model that is received in order that the second man may be elaborated, you have a model that really represents a primeval, artistic principle given by father and mother, originating when sun and moon were still united with the earth. It was then that the forces which really give the human being his earthly configuration were developed. For you will readily understand that the configuration of the human being is an earthly one. Try to think of the being of man entirely removed from the earth. What could be done with it? You would be extremely unhappy if after death you were to make use of anything like legs. Legs have purpose only when the earth's forces of attraction pass through them, when the legs are within the sphere of the earth's forces of attraction. Legs—and arms and hands, too—have meaning and purpose only on the earth. So that a whole section of the human organism, in the way it is developed, has purpose only when we are earthly man. What we are as Earthly man has no meaning so far as the cosmos is concerned. Therefore when we come to the earth as beings of spirit and soul, our wish, to begin with, is to form quite a different organization. We want to build a sphere and to generate all kinds of configurations within this sphere, but we have no wish for this being with whom the cosmos itself can do nothing. This being is given us as a model and we build up the second man in accordance with this model.

In the first life-period, therefore, there is a perpetual struggle between what comes from us out of the previous incarnation and what comes from hereditary development; the two elements fight with each other. The illnesses of childhood are the expression of this fight. Just think how intimately the whole inner being of soul and spirit is bound up with the physical organization during early childhood. When the second teeth appear you can see how they push up against the first, how they still have tussles with each other, and in this same way the whole second man has tussles with the first. But within the second man there is the super-earthly being; in the first a foreign, earthly model. These two work into one another and if you observe this inter-working truly you can see how, if the inner man, who as a being of soul and spirit was present in pre-earthly existence, has too much the upper hand for a time, working into the physical very strongly and having, willy nilly, to adjust itself by dint of effort to the model, that it damages the model by striking up against it everywhere, saying: I want to get this particular form out of you—then the fight expresses itself as scarlet fever. If the inner man is tender, so that there is a continual shrinking back, a wish to mold the in-taken substances more in accordance with their own nature, and resistance is put up to the model, the struggle comes out as measles. What is, in reality, a mutual struggle expresses itself in the illnesses of childhood. Moreover, it is only possible to understand truly what comes later if these things can be properly reckoned with.

It is, of course, very easy for the materialists to say that all this is stupid, because children still retain a likeness to their parents after the change of teeth and not only up till that time. Such talk is nonsense. The fact is that one being is weaker, directs himself more in accordance with the forces of heredity, builds up the second man with a greater resemblance to the model. This naturally comes out in the appearance, but the same thing has been going on when the being has adjusted itself more in accordance with the model. On the other hand, there are human beings who after the change of teeth become very unlike what they were before. In such cases what comes from the pre-earthly life of soul and spirit is strong and they adhere less to the model. We have therefore simply to see these things in their right connection.

The following, too, must be remembered. Everything that has to be taken in must, in the first place, be taken in by the child and elaborated inwardly in such a way that the ego and astral body enter into intimate contact with the foodstuffs. Later on this need not be the case any longer. The human being is never afterwards in the position of being so strongly compelled to work out, according to a model, something that is independent as is the case during the first seven years of life. During those years he must work up in his ego and astral body everything he takes in; he must work it up in such a way that it can be molded in accordance with the model. This process must be helped; and the world has arranged for it, inasmuch as milk is able to bear a very great resemblance indeed to an etheric structure. Milk is a substance which really still has an etheric body and because this substance, when it is taken by the child, still works up into the etheric, the astral body is able at once to take hold of the milk and then there can arise the close inner contact between what is thus taken in and the astral body and ego organization. For this reason there is an inward, intimate connection in the child between the external foodstuffs and the inner organization of spirit and soul.

In the whole way in which the child drinks milk you can actually see how his astral body and his ego are taking hold of the milk you can see it with your very eyes. And now, as a physician, you must realize the remarkable process of working up what is going on. On the one side, meditate in mantrams, letting the mantram work upon you, freeing your forces of soul on the one hand; and on the other hand, meditate simply upon the child. Picture to yourself how the being of spirit and soul comes down and makes its way to the physical foodstuff, ignoring the model to begin with, and then picture what is going on between the being of spirit and soul and the foodstuff—a process that is now directed in accordance with the forms contained in the model. If you form a true picture of an excessively strong working of the spirit and soul, the picture crystallizes into that of scarlet fever. A picture of a too feeble working of the spirit and soul which wavers in the face of the model and becomes the picture of measles.If you picture these things in meditation you carry over ordinary meditation into medical meditation. It is dreadful that people today want to grasp everything with the intellect. In medicine really nothing can be grasped with the intellect. With the intellect one could at the very most grasp the diseases of the minerals—and there it is not a question of curing. Everything medical must be grasped by direct perception and the faculty for this has to be developed.

You cannot notice this process in a grown-up person. The digestive tract takes over the foodstuffs—it is a process transacted inwardly; whereas in the child, astral body and ego take over the foodstuffs. Unfinished forms of human nature have there to be directed and fashioned in accordance with the model. When you meditate upon the child, you see a mighty metamorphosis going on. You see the spirit and soul lighting up, as it were, and the in-taken foodstuffs cast into darkness and shadows; you see there how the second man is formed out of light and darkness, in colors, as it were. You see how the pre-earthly in man is a brightness and how the external foodstuffs are a darkening. In the child a brightness comes upon the darkness, a brightness that comes from the pre-earthly. The milk goes in as darkness. The brightness and the darkness together give rise to manifold colors. What is white in the physical is black in the spiritual; always the opposite.

These things make it possible for the ego to be active in quite another way than is usual in life. What a feeble effort it is that we make in the act of ordinary, intellectual thinking. Intellectual activity is man's greatest weakness. He simply carries one concept to another. But if you observe the child in the way now described you will meditate in such a manner that your ego organization is thoroughly involved in the effort.

These things, in their further course, must also be heeded in our pedagogy. In a school like the Waldorf School we have children between the ages of seven and fourteen. At this age things have changed. The second man has been developed. The child before us has been molded out of pre-earthly existence according to the model that has been cast off; forces of heredity, naturally, have remained in the child. They have been brought into the model, into the imitation of the model. The child is now much too unearthly. For now the forces that come from beyond the earth have worked on the child with special strength and the swing of the pendulum has gone to the opposite side. Formerly, this was externally visible in the human being; he was entirely the product of heredity. Now that which is to be seen externally has arisen entirely from within. It is the external world that has now to be mastered. What has hitherto worked without consideration for the earthly world, with consideration only for the human model, must direct itself to the outer world. Between the seventh and fourteenth years, astral body and ego organization must work in such a way that this super-earthly being is again adjusted to the external conditions of earth existence. This process has its culmination at puberty. At that age the human being is placed wholly within earthly conditions; he enters into his relationships with earthly conditions; the earthly is membered into his being. Therefore the element of greatest importance in the generation of the second man between the seventh and fourteenth years is what the human being brings with him from pre-earthly existence. For this reason his own specific karma only begins to work after puberty. Then the earthly works in. A culmination is reached at puberty and the third man now begins to develop.

The second man—so far as the substance is concerned—is thrown off and the third man is developed. The process does not reach so far as actual form, it only gets as far as life. If it were to get to form, we should get third teeth, because the human being is now governed by external conditions. Within these outer conditions it is the case that the human being again takes in what is extra-human. When he was being governed by the model he was directed entirely in accordance with the human. So long as he was governed by the model he was governed by something passed on by heredity. But in this there lies, in reality, something that is dried up. Since the separation of the sun it has really broken off from the root of his being and is dried up, withered. Therefore the forces of heredity contain the most pathological forces and when he is governed by the model the human being really absorbs innumerable causes of illness. He absorbs few such causes during the period after the change of teeth because then he is governed by the external world; climate, everything contained in the outer air, etc., are less harmful. Between the seventh and fourteenth years the human being is healthy; then again there begins a period when he is again susceptible.

All these conditions must be observed in such a way that you have the picture of man in your mind. If you have this picture of man in mind, then you also meditate rightly. Then you will be able to combine what you learn with what you meditate upon and what you have learned does not remain theory but becomes practice, because you uncover the power that enables you to perceive these things. This is what is so urgently needed today. It is impossible to achieve anything in medicine so long as we persist in thinking that evolution goes forward in a straight line. The human being is in reality constituted from separate streams of development which take their course in periods of seven years; what comes later is linked to what is earlier; it is not a one-sided continuation but different conditions are always intervening. Continuous evolution in this sense, where the earlier alone is the cause of the later, is only to be found in the mineral kingdom, less in the plant kingdom and least of all in the human kingdom.

Let us try to picture the plants. How do people proceed today when they picture the plants? There is the soil of the earth. The seed is pictured as being laid into the soil and then the plant grows out of this. People are naive enough to think as follows: Hydrogen is a very simple molecule, consisting of two atoms. All kinds of things are imagined to form combinations. Alcohol is certainly a very complicated molecule. Carbon is there combined with hydrogen and oxygen and then one has something more complex. And now there come still more complicated substances with more and more complicated molecules. There was a period during the eighties and nineties of the last century when the titles of these were very complicated, consisting of more than three lines in length. Yes, the molecule has become terribly complicated! And now still more so. Then it becomes a seed, and a seed is a most highly complicated combination. Then the plant grows out of the seed. But all this is nonsense. The basis of the seed formation is, in reality, that earthly matter tears itself away from the principle of structure and passes over into chaos, becomes chaotic, contains no more forces of matter in itself. Then, when no earthly structure is present, what is working out of the cosmos can assert itself. The cosmic declares its readiness to mirror the cosmic structure in the minute. In the seed formation the “nothingness” asserts itself over against the earthly and the cosmos works into the nothingness.

Frau Dr. Kolisko could tell you an interesting fact which entirely confirms this. During investigations into the function of the spleen we took small rabbits and excised the spleen. In spite of this the rabbits were quite well. They did not die of the operation, but a long time afterwards, from colds. It was quite possible to see how the rabbits live on without the spleen. When one of the rabbits died, we were able to see what had happened and in the place of the spleen there had appeared tissue which had assumed a decidedly spherical form. What had really happened? We had excised the physical spleen and by doing this had artificially driven earthly substance into chaos, made it accessible to the cosmic forces, and something resembling a seed formation had come into being. There had arisen, in an extremely primitive form, something that resembled the structure of a seed—an image of the cosmos. This quite harmless vivisection, therefore, confirmed a matter of great significance, for this is what appears to spiritual-scientific observation.

Take a quartz crystal. It is an earthly thing. Why? Why is the quartz crystal an earthly thing, retaining its form really in a very pedantic, rigid way? The quartz gets its form from an inner force and if you break it apart with a hammer the single parts always retain the tendency to be six-sided prisms, self-contained, six-sided pyramids. This tendency is present. You can as little rid the quartz of this tendency as you can get pedantry out of a man who is pedantic by nature. You may atomize a pedantic person, but he will still remain pedantic. The quartz does not allow itself to come to the point where the cosmos can do anything with its forces. Therefore the quartz has no life. If the quartz could be pulverized to such a degree that in the single fragments it no longer had the tendency to be governed, in the single fragment, by its own forces, something living and cosmic would grow out of the quartz. This is what happens in the formation of a seed. In the seed, matter is driven out to such a degree that the cosmos can intervene with its etheric forces. The world must be seen as a perpetual entering into chaos and again an emergence from chaos. What is contained in quartz also came at one time from the cosmos, but it remained at a standstill, has become Ahrimanic. It no longer exposes itself to the cosmic forces. As soon as anything enters into the realm of the living it must always pass through chaos.

This again is something which will help you to meditate in the sense of medicine. And you can also picture the developed plant—how it grows from leaf to leaf, and so on. You come to the formation of the seed in the fruit. Whereas you otherwise picture the seed plant as brightness it now becomes dark, quite dark. Then again comes the light, when the forces from outside take hold. In this way, too, you can make an imaginative picture from the being of the plant. When you are aware of an object which you call “plant”—then it is an imaginative meditation. You should not remain in the sphere of the intellectual but in the sphere of the concrete, inner picture. The intellectual element is merely there for the purpose of presenting what is known, in the form of thoughts.

Suppose you write down the word Menschenkind. This word is taken from something that has been perceived. Very well. The word Menschenkind reminds you of a Menschenkind (a human child). But suppose you take the word and say: I like the i, so I will put that first, I like the n, so I will put that next, then the sch and so on. You can put the word together in a different way but nothing that you can make anything of will come out of it. This is what people are doing with concepts all the time. The concept is only the spiritual term for the perception. People separate and combine concepts and think in acts of thinking. They do this, too, when they are observing the external world. They cover up observation with thinking and so they live today outside reality. This is possible as long as one is working with the science that stands outside reality, with geometry and arithmetic. But if we want to go in for medicine we cannot stand outside reality. If we do, then we also stand outside reality in medical practice itself.

If we look back upon the evolution of humanity, if we look back—let us say—as far as history permits it, we shall encounter something very strange. Various phenomena enable us to examine what we thus encounter. Above all, (and we shall see to-day that what we are about to say may be applied to every human heart, to every human soul) we may examine the evolution of humanity with the aid of various documents, traditions and writings which have been pre served. We shall find in them something very strange and peculiar. If we go back to the conceptions which were formed by the various peoples of ancient times in connection with the origin of the world and of the sources of what is good and moral, we shall find that the conceptions which thus arose are laid down in legends—in myths and legends. We come across such legends and myths in a more or less beautiful, lofty, sublime or even less significant form among the various peoples of the earth. A modern man is so very much inclined to consider these myths and legends as poems and to say: They were invented by the peoples during their infancy, because they did not as yet possess the sources of modern science. They have, for instance, formed all kinds of ideas about the origin of the world: the Greeks and their gods, the ancient Germanic peoples and their gods, and, if you like, the American peoples, whose legends have recently been dscovered and which are found to correspond with what exists among other peoples. If we learn that among the Central-American peoples Quetzalcoatl and Vitzliputzli play a role which is more primitive but similar to that of other mighty characters created by other races we shall see that such legends and myths exist among all these peoples ... And, as already stated, a modern man is easily inclined to say: These are poems, fantastic inventions of man's spirit, in order to explain the origin of the various beings of the world and of the various phenomena of Nature!

Among the various documents, there is one which I have already considered with a greater number of the friends who are now present. It is a lofty, mighty document: the Genesis, the beginning of the Old Testament. At Munich we have already seen how infinitely deep are the contents of the Genesis.¹ Several of you have also heard the explanations supplied by spiritual knowledge in connection with the various Gospels, which are, as it were, the last documents of this kind. We find that such documents have been preserved and that they have arisen at various periods of time as we were passing through our preceding incarnations, periods of time through which we have passed during our preceding lives on earth. Those who advance in spiritual knowledge must learn to realize that they have lived during times when men spoke, for instance, of Zeus, Hera and Chronos, and so forth, when they spoke of the phenomena of Nature in a different way from the one which is usual to-day, that they spoke of them in the form of myths, legends and fairy-tales. We must bear all this in mind. We must say to our selves: How do matters stand with our soul that has taken up these things (most people are not aware, so to speak, of what has been deposited within them) which now come to the fore again?

I shall now describe to you very simply what happens with a person who takes up within him these documents—to begin with, in the form of legends, myths and poems—and who then penetrates into occult science, into occultism, and who uses occult science as an instrument enabling him to understand them more and more. He will experience something very strange. I will take, for instance, just one case: What will take place within him in connection with the Old Testament?

In the case of the Old Testament, which most modern men read in such a way that they consider it as a very beautiful collection of all kinds of images about the world's origin, he will find that he will gradually say to himself: Infinite wisdom is contained in these things which are rendered in such a peculiar way! And he will gradually discover that the single words and sentences contain things—provided he understands them rightly—to which occult investigation can lead him along entirely independent paths. And his respect for these writings will grow. The most efficacious means perhaps of increasing our appreciation of these documents is to penetrate to some extent into spiritual science.

A question may then arise and may be placed before our soul. The human being may then say: How do matters really stand as far as this question is concerned? The ancient documents have been preserved: if we penetrate into them we discover in them the deepest, most significant spiritual meaning. Even if today we cannot feel entirely convinced of the fact that these documents contain, indeed, an overwhelming wisdom, we should persevere in our search and penetrate into them more and more. We shall then see that the wisdom which they contain is indeed overwhelming. It is not we who bring anything into them ... it would be quite ridiculous to say that we bring anything into them. The documents themselves contain this wisdom. Indeed, the greatest discoveries which can be made in the, sphere of spiritual science, the loftiest things which can be found again with great effort through occult investigation—all this may afterwards be discovered, for instance, in just one word of the Bible in the Genesis. This is very strange, is it not so?

We find, however, that there is a certain difference between the Old Testament and all the other legends, myths and documents. This is a fact which we should bear in mind. For there is a difference. Consider, for instance, the legends of the Greeks, of the ancient Germans, even what is contained in the Vedas of the Hindoos, or Persian documents. Take whatever you like—if you compare it with the Old Testament you will find a tremendous difference. This difference appears quite clearly to the unprejudiced investigation of an occultist the more he penetrates into these things. This difference appears in the following way: We shall gradually discover that all the other documents set forth in a legendary form the riddles of the phenomena of Nature, the riddles connected with all these phenomena of Nature, and also with the human being, in so far as he has a kind of natural form of life, in so far as the powers of Nature compel him to do this or the other thing. The Old Testament, however, is the one and only document in which we find the human being described from the very beginning as an ethical soul-being, not merely as a being of Nature. And everything in the Old Testament is described in such a way that the human being is placed within the course of evolution, as an ethical soul-being. Every other statement made by modern science rests upon a very weak foundation; it dissolves into nothing if we really observe things. This is the great difference which appears to us. We may therefore say: Everything else in the world shows us that men have obtained mighty revelations from one or the other direction, they have obtained mighty revelations which were expressed in the legendary form of myths and which have arisen out of deep wisdom. We may also say that as far as the Old Testament is concerned the human beings have had certain definite revelations which are connected with the ethical soul-mysteries of man. This is a fact which is, in any case, quite clear.

Another difference appears, however, if we compare the New Testament with all the other documents of this kind. We find in it a spirit which differs entirely from the one contained in any other document, even in the Old Testament. How can we grasp this difference if we approach the question as anthroposophists? We shall realize this difference if we first place another phenomenon before our soul.

Let us imagine, first of all, a man who has never heard anything about spiritual science, who is entirely the product of a scientific or of another so-called sensible education of our modern time, and who has, therefore, never had the chance to permeate the ancient documents with spiritual science. We may perhaps imagine him as a learned person or as an unlearned person—the difference is not so great—we may imagine him in any case as a person who has had no contact with spiritual science and we see him approach these ancient documents, Greek, Persian, Indian, Germanic documents, and so forth. We imagine him approaching these documents, equipped with everything which modern thinking can give him, if he is really unable to feel even a breath of what constitutes spiritual investigation a very strange thing will appear. There will be a difference according to his more or less greater inclination toward poetry or toward a matter-of-fact mentality, but on the whole we may say that something very strange will appear. Such a man will never be able to understand the ancient documents, he will never be able to penetrate into the way in which wisdom is offered by them, he is simply unable to do it, it is quite impossible for him to understand them. In this sphere, we come across the strangest examples; it may suffice to refer to one of the most recent attempts to explain these ancient documents. A little book has just appeared, which is extremely interesting because it is so absurd. It attempts to explain, as it were, all the myths up to the Gospels, beginning with the earliest documents of the most primitive peoples. It is really a book which is extraordinarily interesting because of its grotesque way, its grotesquely stupid way of grasping things. It is entitled “Orpheus,” and its author is Salomon Reinach, who is well known in France as an investigator in this sphere, and among scientists he is a characteristic example of a man who has not even had the slightest inkling of the way in which it is possible to penetrate into such things. In this book, a definite method is applied to everything, and the author passes sentence upon everything. He sees nothing but symbols, and there are no real beings behind Hermes, Orpheus, etc. These characters are merely symbols and allegories to him ... It is not proper to repeat the explanations which he gives for these symbols; he speaks of them in such a way that it is not necessary to repeat them. Every reality contained in these things can thus be proved to be non-existent ... the reality of Demeter and of Persephone is explained away, he decrees that they do not exist. According to this author, all these names are merely symbols. He follows a method according to which it would be easy to prove to children, eighty years hence, that a man named Salomon Reinach has never lived in France at all, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but that the civilization of that time has merely comprised the contents of this book in the name of Salomon Reinach. This could be proved quite well! In spite of all, these things have caused a great sensation. And according to this same method evidence has been produced in Germany to the effect that Jesus has never lived at all. This too has caused a great sensation.

You see, we may now ask: Why is it not possible to-day to penetrate into these things without the aid of spiritual science, (and it is a fact that it is not possible to do this without spiritual science) what is the true reason for this? If we wish to understand the true reason for this, we must gain a deeper insight into the evolution of humanity. We must look back a certain while into this evolution of humanity. And as a result we shall really feel compelled to say: Indeed, the science which men possess to-day, the science which is taught to-day in the elementary schools concerning the sun, and so forth, this is something which the ancients did not possess they did not possess a science which could be grasped with the understanding, with the intellect. This is something to which the human race has advanced little by little. And when our souls were born during earlier incarnations, they were certainly not able to take up this form of science, for this did not exist, this was not as yet incorporated in our civilization But the more we go back into the course of evolution, the more we shall find (quite apart from the fact of seeking the reasons for this which have often been explained to many of you here, in this or in that direction) that men possessed a deep wisdom of an entirely different kind from the one of to-day, wisdom concerning spiritual things which modern men are unable to express in their scientific form. This wisdom ruled in the souls of men, it lived in their souls. Wisdom was simply there. Particularly the initiated leaders of humanity possessed this wisdom, and if the anthroposophical spirit lives within us, it can be proved historically that a primal revelation, a primal wisdom was spread over the whole human race upon the earth, a wisdom which took on this or that form, ac cording to the various stages of evolution. If anyone considers history with a truly anthroposophical spirit he will discover this primal, original revelation. But something else is needed: the ordinary, modern scientific mentality must pass through a preparation if it wishes to penetrate into these documents and grasp their true meaning—I shall now relate a simple fact—a preparation is needed enabling a modern man to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. If he passes through this preparation he will be able to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. This preparation consists in the study of the only documents which can be studied to-day in a direct and immediate way, namely, the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. If we are filled with an anthroposophical spirit it is possible to approach these documents in a direct and immediate way and to understand them.

Even if we know nothing whatever about Anthroposophy, but if our feelings are filled with an anthroposophical spirit (this can be the case with many people) we may feel that something special lives in the Gospels and in the Epistles of St. Paul. This is indeed a strange fact! And in the case of an occultist another strange thing arises, something quite special will arise in his case. Namely, in the case of an occultist we may find that in accordance with modern prejudices he has, let us say, a certain aversion to approach these Gospels. It is quite possible to be filled with an occultistic spirit and yet to feel an aversion to the Gospels, to say, that they are only one religion among many others. No attempt is made to approach the Gospels, and it is possible to understand this aversion. But if we do this as occultists, if we have this strange attitude as occultists, we shall find that we cannot grasp what is contained in other documents. Everywhere we shall find something which we cannot understand. We may be content with this, but if we continue to penetrate more and more deeply into these things we shall never reach a goal unless we have passed through a preparation by studying the Gospels. On the other hand, it is a fact that if someone who may even be a well-trained occultist approaches an oriental or an occidental document and comes across a very hard nut which he cannot crack ... he will immediately be enlightened about the things contained in other documents if he approaches—even if it is only in spirit—the events of Palestine and if he allows them to inspire him. This is an undeniable fact. A ray of light can go out of the Gospels, and this is an experience which can be made. We must admit that the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul are indeed necessary if we wish to go back into earlier times. It is not possible to ignore them, to take no notice of them. Particularly the occultist will always realize this. If he is really able to read the spiritual documents, the Akasha Chronicle, it will not be necessary for him to consult the written Gospels—but he must approach the events of Palestine, he cannot ignore them. Otherwise, certain preceding things will always remain dark. I am therefore not drawing your attention to the records, or to the written word, but to the events, in the form in which they have rea1ly taken place within the course of human evolution. This is a very important fact.

I wish to throw some light upon this fact also from another side. Let us bear in mind what I have already stated. It is not possible to ignore, as it were, the event of the Christ, and if we wish to understand what has been given to humanity in the form of a primordial revelation we shall always trip up somewhere. I must say the following if I wish to describe the true aspect of things. Let us suppose that a modern occultist investigates the past and that he has no understanding (for it is this understanding which is so important) for the event of the Christ. He disregards the event of the Christ and proceeds to investigate earlier events of human evolution. He will then find that he grows uncertain everywhere, really everywhere. Of course, he can persuade himself that he feels quite certain about these things, but if he is honest he will have to admit that things are not entirely as they should be. Let us now imagine an occult investigator before the time of Christ Jesus, an occult investigator who has reached such a high degree of development in clairvoyance and also in other directions that he is able, even before the Christian era, to survey the whole past in such a way that, had he lived after the event of the Christ, he would have passed through the Christ event in his retrospective survey, a man who is therefore in advance of his time. Let us suppose that he lived five or six centuries before Christ and that he reached the maturity of a modern occultist; that is to say he is able to go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event. And we may then ask ourselves: How would an occultist who is so much in advance of his time, that even five or six centuries before Christ he can go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event, how would such an occultist have to appear in order to avoid falling a prey to the luciferic and ahrimanic powers? Let us suppose that it would really be necessary for him to pass through the Christ event ... This Christ event, however, has not yet taken place at the time in which he lived. In the case of such a man it appears that he will easily content himself with what he discovers—and he will then speak of all kinds of things which are not quite correct, for it is not possible to speak correctly about things if they are not seen correctly—but otherwise nothing will happen to him. Or else he will reach the point of saying: “There is something amiss, something I cannot find when I turn my gaze backwards. I cannot discover this something which I need along my path.” And he will then have to admit to himself: “Here I begin to grow uncertain. I must find this missing ‘something,’ but it does not exist as yet upon the earth. It cannot as yet be found within the evolution of the earth.”

You see, I have now painted theoretically, as it were, the portrait of a personality who lived during the 5th and 6th century before Christ, a personality who would have been mature enough to discover Christ Jesus in a retrospective survey, but he could not discover him because Christ Jesus had not as yet appeared upon the earth. He could not discover Christ Jesus as an earthly fact. A short time ago this theory took on the form of a vivid reality. I experienced it this year during a visit to one of our groups abroad which has adopted the anthroposophical manner of contemplating the world, during a visit to our group at Palermo. As the ship approached Palermo, I suddenly realized: “The solution of a riddle will present itself to you, a riddle which can only be solved easily here, at this place, through the immediate impressions which can be gained here.” Soon afterwards I found the solution of the riddle. The personality concerning whom I have just spoken to you in a theoretical manner, immediately appeared in the whole atmosphere of Sicily, I might say, in the whole astral body of Sicily. His presence was an altogether living one. In the whole atmosphere of Sicily continued to live a personality that is very enigmatic in many respects, the personality of Empedocles, the ancient philosopher. This ancient Greek philosopher has in fact lived in Sicily during the fifth century before Christ, and even external history knows that he was a profound initiate in many different spheres and that he accomplished magnificent things just here, in Sicily.

If to begin with, we turn, as it were, our spiritual gaze upon this man he will appear to us, from an occult standpoint in a very strange light. The occult fact which presents itself to us is the following. If we look back upon the development of Empedocles, if we follow his occupations as statesman, architect and philosopher, if we follow him upon his journeys, if we see him in the midst of his enthusiastic pupils initiating them into the various mysteries of the world—if we follow him spiritually in this manner, without the aid of external history, we shall discover in him a personality who possessed an infinite amount of scientific knowledge of the kind which is only known to a modern man. Empedocles had an altogether modern mentality, a modern aura, and he was indeed constituted in such a way that he sought to discover the origin of the world. In fact, according to his degree of development and everything which had taken place, he would necessarily have found the Christ in his retrospective survey. But the Christ had not yet appeared. It was not possible as yet to find Him upon the earth; He was still absent from the earth. These experiences in particular made Empedocles waver and developed within him a strange desire, and in his case it transformed itself into something entirely different from what takes place in the superficial minds of modern times. This desire transformed itself into the passion to consider the world in a materialistic way. Lucifer approached him. We should try to form a vivid picture of the way in which this took place. Empedocles possessed a modern spirit, but at the same time he was initiated in many different mysteries. He was clairvoyant to a high degree. Let us now imagine vividly that his modern way of thinking made him feel inclined to consider the world from a materialistic aspect; he has, in fact, drawn up a materialistic system which describes the world more or less from the stand point of a modern materialistic chemist, namely, as a combination and separation of elements. The one difference is that Empedocles distinguishes only four elements. He thought that various beings arise according to the way in which these four elements combine. As a result of these thoughts he felt the strong desire to discover in a true and real way what lies behind these material elements, what air and water really contain. If we peruse the Akasha Chronicle today and look into water, air, fire and earth we shall discover in them etherically the Christ. Empedocles could not find Him, but he felt the tremendous impulse to discover something in air and water, fire and earth, to find out what they really contain. And we can see how this personality is seized by the strong desire to penetrate at all costs into what constitutes the material elements. This desire finally induces him to make a kind of sacrifice. It is not merely a legend that Empedocles threw himself into the crater Aetna in order to unite himself with the elements. The luciferic force, the strong desire to grasp the elements, led him to a bodily union with the elements. The death of Empedocles continues to fill the atmosphere of Sicily, and this is a great mystery connected with this strange country.

Let us now picture the soul of Empedocles who has laid aside his body by allowing it to be burned. His soul is born again in a later period of time, when the Christ has already appeared upon the earth. Entirely new conditions now exist for this soul. In the past, this soul has, as it were, sacrificed itself to the elements. Now it is born again. But now it can discover the Christ when it looks back into time. And all the past knowledge concerning the elements rises up again in a new form, the knowledge which this soul once possessed arises in a completely new form. In fact, the personality of Empedocles was born again later, but at the present moment it is not permissible for me to mention his name. If we study the reincarnation of Empedocles in a more northern country, if we observe him as he then lived at the turning point of the Middle Ages and the modern time and if we compare this character with the Empedocles who threw himself into Mount Aetna, we shall see livingly before us the gigantic impulse which has arisen through the fact that the Christ event has in the meantime taken place upon the earth.

What thus takes place in the case of this one definite personality applies, however, to every soul, to the souls of each one of you. At the time in which the Christ event was drawing nigh, all these souls have looked back with a certain feeling of discomfort into past, even if they have not felt the mighty impulse experienced by Empedocles. They felt uncomfortable because they had lost their bearings and because the time of the modern scientific man who looks back into the past ... was gradually approaching, and something resembling the case of the men of earlier times begins to spread ... If we go back to earlier times we find that those who have preserved this tradition faced the masses and related to them—let us imagine this vividly—mighty tales which are contained, for instance, in the legends told to the ancient Greeks. But this induced the ancient Greeks to experience the truth of these legends, when they were, let us say, in a special condition which was still possible at that time to a greater extent than now, and these legends gave them, as it were, a push enabling them to look into the spiritual world. But the human beings lost this capacity. The inner force enabling them to rise into the spiritual world was lost to the extent in which intellectual knowledge began to develop. You may calculate and find in any little manual when our modern conceptions began to arise, these modern conceptions which children take up, if not with the mother's milk, at least with the school milk! These modern conceptions reach back to a few centuries before our Christian era. This is a tremendous turning-point. And if we wish to go back still further, if we wish to understand the ancient documents, it will not be possible for us to understand them, for now they appear to us merely as poems, legends and myths. We cannot go back further, and this is something which should really be borne in mind more clearly. More and more it will be the case that people who do not bring with them, as it were, an inherited disposition to understand the ancient documents, will be unable to understand them.

The opinion will gradually spread that there is a great field of illusion behind everything which is accepted as science, because the majority of scientists believes that now we fortunately know how the earth moves round, and that all the explanations of earlier times in this connection are nonsense. This opinion is already prevalent to-day. We go backwards into time ... The Copernican world-conception arises somewhat later, but even in the case of geometry we cannot go back further than Euclid. And further back, behind all this, a modern man can only see black darkness. He cannot find wisdom and the primordial revelation, he cannot find the path which leads into them. If we really accept this as a fact, something resulting from the deepest anthroposophical studies may then condense itself to a fundamental conviction—and this may take place even in the simplest mind, provided the feelings are sound.

Man must, after all, reach the point of saying to himself “The form in which I see the world is not its true aspect.” If this were its true aspect it would not be necessary to investigate it. Investigation would not be necessary at all, for the world would immediately appear in its true aspect. Modern investigation, however, does not consider the world in this way. The Copernican system would not exist if men were simply to accept what the senses reveal to them. Even external science contradicts the experiences gained through the senses. If we progress we shall see that we cannot stay by what the senses give us, by what we obtain through the external experiences which we make in the physical world. These must in any case be corrected, even by external science. This fact is perhaps not generally recognised; nevertheless, it is true. As soon as we begin to understand our own being—even if it is only with the aid of ordinary thinking and with what we can learn to-day—we shall be obliged to admit that the essential point of everything is to have an insight into the illusion created by the senses, for otherwise science would not exist and reflection would not exist. If this is indeed the case, we must discover something which enables us to understand without any difficulty in which direction and toward which goal the world is gradually developing. We shall find the confirmation of this fact if we consider matters a little in the light of Anthroposophy. We may therefore say to ourselves: Once upon a time there was a primordial wisdom; the human beings were constituted in such a way that they received a primordial wisdom which they could only see in pictures, but nevertheless they possessed such a primordial wisdom, and they have gradually lost the understanding for such a wisdom the more human evolution progressed; men were less and less able to grasp this primordial wisdom. And another fact is quite clear, namely, that they began to lose this understanding to the extent in which science and the intellectual understanding developed. We may now ask: What can have arisen at a certain definite moment?

Let us imagine the whole situation. Let us picture a man of pre-Christian times, who lived under certain conditions. He will have looked out into the world, he will have seen all manner of things, but within his soul there also lived the possibility of seeing behind these things. He still possessed this disposition. Consequently, it was an undeniable fact for him that there is an etheric body behind every flower. This was a fact for him. Gradually he began to lose this capacity. He lost it because it was banished by the intellectual understanding which rules to-day. The intellectual capacity cannot be united with the other one, for they are two hostile forces. This is an undeniable fact, and every occultist knows by experience that the understanding, or ordinary thought, sears and burns the clairvoyant manner of looking upon things. Even in the course of history, the knowledge based upon the ancient clairvoyance was lost to the extent in which the understanding, or the intellect in the ordinary meaning, have arisen, and the loss of the old clairvoyant wisdom also implied the loss of the capacity to understand the ancient traditions. A few centuries had to pass, and the kind of man I have just described to you had to be replaced by another kind who might perhaps have said: “It would, of course, be a serious prejudice to think the truth can be discovered in the way in which the world presents itself to our senses. Human reason must supplement everything!” Particularly this belief in human reason was the decisive factor; human reason must first pounce upon the phenomena which appear to the senses and then grasp them logically.

Such a kind of man would perhaps have said: “The special advantage of the human being over all the creatures of the earth is the fact that he is endowed with reason, that he can understand cause and effect as they manifest themselves behind the sense-phenomena. He is able to discover this. And his intellect enables him to communicate with other men through the means of speech. For it is easy to see that speech is a child of reason.” And he might also have said: “Reason is, of course, the highest of all things.” Now, if we wish to draw a vivid picture of such a person, we should imagine him saying to himself: “Rely on your understanding and reason, dissect everything with your reason, and then you will surely reach the truth!” Let us suppose that we are actually facing such a man. I have given you a description from a theoretical standpoint, yet this particular type of man has appeared very frequently. A characteristic thinker of this kind was Cicero, who lived shortly before Christ. If you study Cicero you will immediately see that he thinks exactly in this way, namely, that reason is able to grasp everything. It is not true that the world appears as it presents itself to the senses, nevertheless human reason is able to grasp everything! Just in the case of people who lived shortly before Christ we find an invincible faith in reason. They even identify reason with God himself, who rules within things. Cicero adopts this standpoint.

Let us suppose, however, that someone succeeds in discovering the secrets connected with all this. Let us suppose that someone contemplates all this in an entirely unprejudiced way and sees how everything results little by little. How would he then describe the whole period? Let us suppose that one century before Christ a man who is endowed with deep insight contemplates all these things ... How would the whole course of history appear to him? Well, he would say: “We can see two currents in humanity. One is the old clairvoyant power, with a descending course. Reason appears in its place, and it roots out and destroys within the human being the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. A great darkness spreads over the spiritual world. Those who accept the authority of reason will indeed think that their reason can discover what lies behind things. But these people forget the true nature of reason, about which they talk so much. Reason is linked up exclusively with the brain. It is a force which can only use the brain as its instrument. It belongs to the physical world and must, therefore, share the qualities of the physical world” ... Such a man would say: “You may, if you like, rely on your intellect and I say that it enables you to grasp what lies behind things, since the things in themselves are not real. Consider, however, that reason itself belongs to these things. You are a physical being among other physical beings, and your reason belongs to the physical world. If you think that reason enables you to discover what lies behind all the other things, you will demolish the foundation under your feet.” This is what he would say, and he would add: “Indeed, men are more and more inclined to use their reason, to rely upon their intellect. They have this inclination. But in doing so, they raise up before them a wall hiding the spiritual world, for they make use of an instrument which can not be applied to the spiritual world, for it is limited to the physical world. Humanity, however, unfolds in the very direction of developing this instrument.” And if this man had known the real course of events, he would also have said: “If men return to the spiritual world at all, they should not only be able to use their intellect, which can be applied solely to the physical world, but an impulse must arise enabling them to ascend once more to the spiritual worlds, an impulse which drives the intellect itself along this upward path. But this can only take place,” this person would have said, “if something dies within the human being, if something which calls forth in him the firm belief in the exclusive rule of reason perishes. This must die.” In fact, we imagine the human being gradually descending into the material world and developing his brain more and more. If the human being were to depend exclusively on his reason, he would be unable to abandon it, to come out of it. His physical body would then deceive him and persuade him to do away with everything which cannot be grasped by earthly reason. But it is the physical body which dulls man in this manner, because it gradually develops to a very high degree, and man does not realise that he thus remains within the physical world. Try to imagine this and you will see that the human being is then caught as if in a trap. He is quite unable to escape out of himself. Human evolution has so far reached the point of preventing man from going out of his own self, and so he faces the danger, of being gradually overwhelmed by his physical body. What can help the human being at all in this case? If just at the time when the intellect reaches this point, there arises the possibility of changing the intellect so, that the part which blinds it, dies, then this part must die. An impulse must arise which is able to overcome once and for all that part in man which can overwhelm him through a blind faith in mere reason. Try to feel the power of this impulse; try to feel that this was the meaning of human evolution! The bodily constitution developed in such a way that it would have overwhelmed man. He would have reached the point of thinking that he must remain within the physical world and yet be able to penetrate through Maya, without bearing in mind that he himself lived in this Maya through his intellect. This would have taken place had not something arisen which can tear him out of it, as soon as he accepts it, and which is able to counteract the fall into the physical sphere. Indeed, its influence reaches as far as the etheric body, so that the etheric body is then able to kill what leads man into a similar illusion. The human being would otherwise have remained imprisoned in this trap.

Let us now turn away from such a person who would have spoken in this way when the time of Christ Jesus was approaching, and let us consider the way in which a modern man, or anyone of us, would look at things. He would say to himself: If I consider the development of man in an unprejudiced way and see how the intellect, this instrument belonging to Maya, has gradually gained strength, I would undoubtedly be on the wrong track if I follow merely the course of the world's evolution. For, this is arranged in such a way that if I do not take up within me the impulse which kills that part leading me astray in this direction, I am unable to free myself from the intellect. What must therefore have taken place? I must be able to look back upon a time in which this impulse has entered. I must find something within the historical evolution of humanity which brings about the fact that the continuous stream of evolution has been reversed in a materialistic sense. If to-day I were to look within my own being without finding anything of this kind, what would I then have to find? I would trace in that case the gradual growth of the intellect, until I reached a time, at the beginning of our era, when the intellect began to work ... and further back? There it grows dark, pitch black darkness rules there, and I shall need something entirely different. Then it will grow light, and here everyone must encounter the Christ! Anyone who is at all willing to believe in the possibility of progress, and that during the following incarnations he will have within him something which will lead him upwards and will prevent his being overwhelmed by Maya, must meet the Christ when he looks back into time. Upon looking back, everyone must encounter the Christ. This can give him an impulse leading him upwards.

Let us now suppose that the gospels did not exist, and that we would not need them as anthroposophists. Let us suppose that we do not need the gospels; that all we need is to study the course of human evolution in an unprejudiced way and to say: What would become of every human being if he were unable to look back upon an event which has swung the whole meaning of the earlier course of evolution over to the other side? We simply must encounter the Christ if we go back into the course of evolution! Anthroposophists must be able to find Him, and the clairvoyants will find him under every circumstance. This is a mystery which is connected particularly with Christianity. Documents may be questioned. Indeed, the gospels are not real historical documents. All the clever people, Jensen and others, who decree in a trivially learned manner that the gospels do not exist and upon them as mere legends, have a certain justification for doing this, because they depend solely upon their external reason. But if we are anthroposophists we are able to say that we do not need the gospels; we only need the facts supplied by spiritual science itself, and if we go back into time we shall discover the living Christ, as He appeared to Paul in the event of Damascus. Paul has experienced in advance what we, too, are able to experience if we search for the Christ in a truly anthroposophical spirit. Paul was, after all, in the same position of a modern anthroposophist who does not wish to accept the gospels. At his time the gospels did not exist, but Paul was able to go to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, this did not convince him, for otherwise he would not have left Jerusalem. The events described in the gospels did not convince him. It is not necessary, therefore, that the contents of the gospels should convince a modern person. All that is necessary is that he should be in a position to experience, through Anthroposophy, what Paul has experienced, and this experience will then become for him an event of Damascus. He will then have the proof of Christ's existence, in the same way as Paul, without the aid of documents.

Of course, this points to very deep things in human evolution, to extraordinarily deep things in the evolution of man. In a certain sense, every human being, even the simplest man, may experience what the reincarnated Empedocles has experienced during the 15th and 16th century, who looked back into earlier times and was able to see what he was unable to see before. Before, he had grown so uncertain that he threw himself into Mount Aetna. He cast his glance backwards during the 15th and 16th century and what he was unable to grasp in any way during his previous incarnation he was now able to grasp clearly through the Christ principle. And this enabled him to become one of the most remarkable personalities of the later era.

This is how matters appear to every human being, without the aid of any document, simply through retrospection. At some later time, all men will be able to look back into an earlier incarnation and they will distinguish exactly the incarnations before and after Christ. What may be felt to-day instinctively by a simple soul who reads the gospels, will arise, later, in the form of knowledge. This is the chief difference between the gospels and other documents: they are the first documents which we must understand. The gospels are a great, beautiful and mighty point of transition. It we pass through it, light begins to spread, while everywhere else there is darkness.

It is indeed so. Christianity is only at the beginning of its evolution, and a modern man may find that he often loses his thread when he investigates earlier things. But if he returns to one of the events in the life of the Christ he will feel inspired, and it will grow light about him. Even a simple person may experience what occultists discover, namely, he will be able to feel within his soul a reflection, as it were, of what I have just explained. He may feel very depressed owing to his human weaknesses and mistakes and he may admit to himself: “What I am to-day, is the result of all the generations!” But then he would deny this and would have to admit to himself, instead, that he himself has been his own father and his own mother. There is, consequently, something within us connecting us with the rest of humanity, and we may feel very depressed by all human mistakes, weaknesses and illnesses. Nevertheless, even the simplest soul always has the possibility of rising. These words should not be understood in the orthodox meaning. What is possible for an occultist is also possible for the simplest soul. Such a simple man may feel as weak possible, but if he begins to read the gospels, strength will flow out of the gospels, because the power of the Word streams out of them and penetrates into the etheric body. The gospels are strengthening words, words of strength. They do not speak merely to the intellect, but penetrate into the deeper forces of the soul. And they are not merely based upon the intellect which exists in Maya, but they penetrate into the deeper forces, which can, as it were, console the intellect concerning its own nature. This is the great strength of the gospels; they exist for every one of us, and this is the powerful element distinguishing them from all the other documents. This fact, too, may not be accepted, but its rejection would imply that the possibility of human progress is denied altogether.

You see, this points to a fact which cannot be grasped right away. And now you will be able to realize what was needed for the preparation of a person whom I have already set before your soul hypothetically, who announced, one century before our era: “A man must come who will give us the impulse which will bring about the great turning point in the course of events.”

This person was a significant man, and he also underwent the necessary preparation. For a long time, the attempt had already been made, among those who knew things, to bring about the possibility that at least a few people, as it were, should understand the times which were approaching, that they should understand what was being prepared, namely, that, on the one hand, men were being drawn into a snare, and that, on the other hand, through the appearance of the Christ, they could be led upwards again. This was taught prophetically. The man who was chosen to teach this prophetically, more than one century before our era, within the circles of people who were able to understand these teachings, was an initiate of the community of the Essenes, which was closely related to the circles frequented by the Christ. He announced the coming of One Who would lead men upwards again. The man who taught this within the community of the Essenes was a very significant individuality. External history really knows very little about him, but at least a few writers mention the legends referring to him which were handed down traditionally. Thus he is not merely a mythological character, or one who is named exclusively in occultism, He lived a hundred years before Christ and he even instructed one of his five or six pupils to write down his teachings. One of the pupils of this man, who drew attention to the Christ and announced His coming, understood the meaning of his teachings. This man, therefore, had a pupil, who was called Matthew, and he wrote down the mysteries relating to the Christ. The individuality who taught them was Jeshu ben Pandira.² He had to suffer martyrdom because he taught these things, he was stoned to death in his own country, and afterwards his lifeless body was hanged. We should not confuse Jeshu ben Pandira with Jesus of Nazareth. Jeshu ben Pandira, the great prophet of the Christ, instructed his pupils to write down what he knew, and these documents then came into the hands of the man who included them with the mysteries which they contained, into the gospel which is known to us as the Gospel according to Matthew. It is an important, a preeminently important fact to realize, in the first place, the necessity of the Christ impulse, and in the second place, in an occult historical way, how Jeshu ben Pandira, through the fact that he was first stoned and immediately afterwards crucified, set forth, as it were, symbolically what took place afterwards in the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ was not stoned, but crucified, and a wonderful thing took place simultaneously with His death, for at the very moment when His blood streamed out of His wounds something passed over into the atmosphere of the earth, which brings to those who take up this event in their etheric body when they look back into time, to those who pass through this event and look, as it were, into the grave of the Christ, something leading them into a past filled with light, because they have passed through this moment. But without this experience, darkness spreads over everything which lies before it.

Consider what has been said to-day. It was my task to point this out to you. This subject, however, is so vast and encompassing that mere indications can be given. Nevertheless, these indications were treated so that if you investigate what you already know and what you carry in your heart, you will find to what a great extent life itself and your own soul prove the truth of what I have told you to-day.

• 1. Secrets at the Bible Story of Creation
• 2. Compare the lecture published in German by the Philos. Anthrop. Verlag “Jeshu ben Pandira, der Vorbereiter für ein Verständnis des Christus-Impulses.”

My dear friends!

Allow me to say a few words, which are meant to be, so to speak, an interpretation of the moral and financial balance sheet that has been presented to you today. I would like to tie in a few things that I am convinced are intimately connected with this balance sheet, but the connection cannot always be seen immediately if things are not considered thoroughly.

I would like to start from something very obvious, and draw attention to something else here: the fact that the anthroposophical movement, of which the Goetheanum here is the external representative, has recently become very widespread without the movement itself having done very much directly to popularize it. Little by little, anthroposophy has actually become something that is widely taken into account, and this is precisely because people have become aware of it from the outside and have studied it. As a result, it is really already part of all the various efforts and struggles that are being waged within civilization today. This can be seen quite clearly. We couldn't have changed that. For it is precisely in the circles where anthroposophy is widely discussed today that we have basically done nothing, but have endeavored to maintain the original impulses, to work more and more in a positive way towards the given treasure. And of course it would have been different – despite some enmities arising from the movement – it would have been different than it is now, when we are exposed to the broadest public to such an extraordinary degree. But this factor simply has to be reckoned with, and in this respect the recent Congress of Vienna was particularly characteristic. There we were, if I may say so, in full public view, and we were also in public view in front of numerous people who, with regard to what is necessary to build civilization, to rebuild civilization, are also asking themselves questions.

It is quite clear today – and this must also be said in this circle – that one thing is quite clearly noticeable when one observes life on a large scale. It is noticeable today that in Western countries there is a conviction, perhaps not yet very strong, but clearly emerging, that the old cultures that have developed within Central Europe must be ferments for a spiritual reconstruction. The West's antipathy towards the spiritual life in Central Europe will decrease, while political antagonisms are currently still on the increase. Although other symptoms seem to indicate the opposite, political antipathies are steadily increasing. The same is not true – even if it is less noticeable – of the sympathies for that which can become effective in the spiritual realm in Europe for a healthy building up of civilization.

Yes, my dear friends, there are many things to be considered. I will first draw attention to just one detail. I will single out the special reception that the three eurythmy performances have now found in Vienna. If you have an ear for these things, you can distinguish between them. The reception of eurythmy in Vienna was the warmest imaginable, the warmest that has existed so far; even if it was not perhaps the most outwardly striking, it was still the warmest because people were able to see the artistic aspect in general and because did not think of all the things that we ourselves - and I in particular in every introduction to the performances - emphasize; because it did not occur to them, because they were able to take it all in as an artistic disposition of the heart. The reception of eurythmy in Vienna is actually something that marks an epoch-making event within the anthroposophical movement.

And here we must take into account the fact that there is a strong urge today for the artistic element in anthroposophy to be developed. We ourselves cannot exert a direct influence on many things because of our working conditions, because we are absorbed by the things that already need to be done. But when, for example, a number of younger people feel the need to train in the art of recitation and declamation, and also in the elements of dramatic art, when it has become necessary for Dr. Steiner to hold a course here for young people in the art of recitation, declamation and mime, at the request of young people, then it is at least a sign that the striving, however little it may be apparent today, is present.

All these things must be treated with an extraordinarily strong objectivity, because, of course, the impulses that live in such things can also be expressed in a negative way, and in the moment when, for example, the artistic is led only a little on an inclined plane, in that moment all possible luciferic and ahrimanic forces are immediately set loose, and the matter leads into a false channel.

Therefore, it is necessary, especially on this point, to pay attention to the experiences gained so far, as could be gained through the previous operation. These experiences must be carefully considered, and in this area in particular, the always inhibiting criticism and even derogatory discussion, which is very common in our circle, must be avoided, as it leads to nothing but hindrance in the real advancement of the matter. Because, of course, something can be objected to in everything, and the critic can always know better. I don't mean that ironically at all; sometimes it can be better in theory, but it can't be carried out under the conditions that we are given. But it can't be carried out at all because it is mere theory and not really artistic practice.

Such things must certainly be taken into account: that attention is paid to what the personalities have experienced so far and what ideas they have formed [about] how things could proceed, personalities who have so far mainly been involved in the issues. And the others should help them more so that they do not experience inhibitions at every turn due to knowing better and the like, which can always be very easy. These are things that are much more connected with what you have actually encountered here in the balance than is usually believed.

I would like to point out another fact. You see, it is now very natural that when such congresses or university courses and the like are held, as was particularly the case in Vienna, people talk about it everywhere. It is only natural that the education should be discussed, that the principles on which it is based should be expounded, and so on. The Vienna Congress is of such great significance because, if it is properly followed through, the success we have had, first of all with the general public, can indeed prove a great blessing for the anthroposophical movement. 'If it is not capitalized on, it can of course - because it has led to things being so widely publicized - lead to a situation in which all the things that are now coming out of all corners with it will increase the opposition considerably.

You only have to consider the following in this context: in Vienna, despite the fact that such things were not sought – on the contrary, people were somewhat shy about them – outsiders have already published quite objective descriptions of what happened at the congress. But you must not forget that at the moment when something like this occurs on one side, the malicious and harmful opposition in particular makes full use of it.

I will mention just one fact. When I was traveling back, I had a somewhat longer stay in Linz, where I bought a newspaper. You do it in such a way that you go to the kiosk, pick up a newspaper, and you can have the most interesting experiences. There was an article in it called “Steinerism”, and the article was written in such a way that it wanted to show that the congress in Vienna could show the harmful aspects of Steinerism in particular, because if you go to Germany, things are worked a little more tightly there, and then more of the beneficial aspects come out. But when you come to Vienna, everything is immersed in sloppiness, the writer of the article says, and so you perceive the special form of sloppy Steinerism. And so you can see in the sloppy Steinerism just what is really wanted. And then it is peeled out; what is actually striven for in Waldorf school pedagogy, and in fact in the form that is said: the essence of Waldorf school pedagogy consists in homosexuality.

Now, my dear friends, you see, this is carried out in every detail, and so in a relatively widely circulated daily newspaper, people are taught the judgment: Don't make any sacrifices for this Waldorf school movement, because it's just a mask for spreading homosexuality.

Now, my dear friends, these things must of course be carefully observed. I could also illustrate what I am saying to you with other examples. One need only be led, by chance or by one's karma, to become aware of such things. For example, I once had to wait for something to happen in Vienna during the last days, so I went to a coffee house to avoid waiting on the street. As I still find it most useful on such occasions, I took a fair number of newspapers. The Congress had just ended. The newspapers had a lot to say about the conclusion of the Congress. But a large part of what appeared there in the way of reports was not written in such a grotesque style as the article that I then found in Innsbruck – not in an Innsbruck paper, but in a Viennese one. This grotesque style was not achieved, but nevertheless nice things were said from various sides. And some of the newspapers that had previously published objective reports then thundered from a completely different corner.

I emphasize this because it should be understood that the word has a much greater significance; that I always say that one should know how things live in our age, how things work, otherwise one cannot really [be familiar with the realities]. Of course, in anthroposophy the impulses are so strong that one does not need to take out one's earplugs, but can go through the world with them in. But one can no longer do that when the anthroposophical movement has spread so much without our doing. And so we must see to it that we ourselves find the possibility of finding our way, while remaining constantly alert and constantly taking into account everything that is happening. We must simply come to find our way. When you look at the bigger picture, it is quite confronting. That civilization cannot continue as it is today, as many people think, is becoming fully clear to other people. That is why the most beautiful alliances are being formed today, with the most beautiful programs.

Now I have been completely convinced of the following in recent times: We have certainly also found a certain number of people at our Congress of Vienna who, through this Congress of Vienna, have become aware that we are not making any progress with the old way of thinking, that it is necessary for a completely new and spiritual approach to come. It is precisely because of what was done and implemented at the Congress of Vienna that numerous people, certainly enough people for such a congress, have come to this conclusion.

If these people have now come to this conviction and now want to translate this conviction into practical life, then, my dear friends, what has always been there on a small scale also emerges again: these people do not join the Anthroposophical Society, but they do join another of the covenants, whose external leadership, whose external organization, whose external collaboration of members they like better. So that we actually - we can say it, and today I am saying it quite decidedly, because it has come to me so decidedly in recent times - so that we actually now often work in such a way that we thoroughly win people over for the facts, but they do not join us, but enter into the other covenants that are currently being founded. So the material success is actually not lacking. You can't even say that people don't want anthroposophy, because they do want it, and those who enter into the other alliances are sometimes very good anthroposophists, they just don't join us. I'll leave it to you to think about the reasons for this, because that will be the useful thing in working out an opinion for yourself.

But now I would like to start calculating. I believe that a great deal of money is being spent today to stage such alliances, and quite a lot of money is flowing into them. I am convinced that we could have this money if our cause were properly managed. We don't get them. We could very well build the Goetheanum with them and continue to operate it if only we understood that people really join us, and don't join other [societies] after they have been convinced by us.

To do this, however, we must really pay attention to the only specific thing, we must not pass by the single specific thing. And so it must be said: other alliances are relatively successful in raising and collecting sums of money from the broadest circles. If you were to see in detail how we have been offered the opportunity to continue our work at the Goetheanum in recent times, then, apart from the respectable beginnings in raising larger sums from individual smaller contributions, the main thing that has helped us so much comes from a very few individuals, who must be approached again and again, and who have indeed given their all. So we should not be deceived by drawing up statistics according to country and so on. It is individual people who have actually helped us decisively so far. And that is what prompts me to think with an extraordinary feeling of gratitude of those individual personalities who have really understood in an extraordinarily sacrificial way to make possible the continuation of the Goetheanum building and what is connected with it.

But since I am convinced that many people who have worked in this extraordinarily sacrificial way have actually given their all, I also believe that we are currently in a particularly critical and that attention must be drawn to the moral foundations of our balance sheet, in such a way that we should take into account just such things as those I have just mentioned.

You see, my dear friends, the fact of the matter is that, given our membership, it would be absolutely possible for the journal Das Goetheanum, which appears here – and which, of course, viewed from the outside, has emerged quite respectably in relation to how other journals emerge – but that a journal like this, which actually provides an extraordinarily good picture from week to week of what is happening spiritually here, it would be possible, through our membership, for this journal to have ten times more readers than it actually has, if it were sufficiently taken into account. If people were sufficiently aware of what is actually involved in the simple fact that this magazine, Das Goetheanum, exists and is so well managed by our dear friend Steffen, if people were aware of all that is involved for our anthroposophical administration, I would say, then I would be able to do something extraordinarily good through these moral impulses, I would say.

For there is no doubt that someone could easily say that they know better: one article should have been published, the other should not have been published, and so on. I do not disagree with someone who says something like that, of course. But if the necessary support were there, which would simply consist of our being in the thick of it, really making DasiGoaheanam min an extraordinarily widespread magazine, then, in turn, the support that would be provided by that would of course make it possible to do better and better. These are, of course, things that point to the remote, but they are related to what should actually be considered above all: that we now interest the world in our sense, so that people also learn to know what the reality is of something like Waldorf school education and the like.

Do not underestimate this: if – well, I cannot say anything very decisive in this regard – but if, for all I care, a hundred thousand people read after the Congress of Vienna has concluded: It has become quite clear in Vienna that Waldorf school education is based on homosexuality. So it has been read by a hundred thousand people, and it only helps if we do not have these hundred thousand people, but other hundred thousand people who now approach things as they really are. It is much less a matter of repeatedly dealing with people who cannot be convinced, but rather of reaching the others who do not absorb the opposing poison in this way. There is no need to deal so intensively with those who might express such views, unless it is a matter of defense. No one can believe that someone who expresses such views can ever be convinced.

Not true, I have discussed it on a variety of occasions; I have discussed it very clearly when some person has once again spread the nonsense here about my magical effects on the German Kaiser and so on: there is no point in dealing with those people, whose worth is known from the outset, because they have such an immoral basis for their judgment. It is just as necessary, of course, that we spread our good things among people in every direction on the other side. And in this direction, we cannot say that the first condition, an awareness of these things, is present. There is no awareness of what it actually means to have something like the magazine Das Goetheanum. I think it is absolutely necessary to become aware of these things first, then we will really make progress. Our work begins with becoming aware of them.

In Vienna, we discussed with friends from various countries the possibility of financing the construction of the Goetheanum to such an extent that the sum is available annually that is not only necessary for the expansion, but also to to avoid constantly going around with a collection plate for every single thing, such as for eurythmy; so that the Mystery Dramas can be performed again, and so on. In doing so, it is really necessary first of all to consider these things in such a way that one does not say: the Mysteries should be performed. They will be performed as soon as it is possible. But this possibility really also requires that one does not, I would say, always have to worry from eight days to eight days about how to raise what is needed for the construction, or how to stretch and so on.

Rather, it would be necessary for us to find ways of approaching the people who, I might say, are springing up like mushrooms; people are saying: There is nothing to be gained from all the economic chatter and all the politicians are doing; the task today is to create spiritual movements. People who say this are springing up like mushrooms all over the place today. Of course, they may disagree with this or that; they fully recognize the practical work of anthroposophy, but when it comes to whether they join us or somewhere else, they join somewhere else, because, after all, [gap in the text]. Think for yourself about things, how sometimes things approach in such a strange way, how often they are so strangely barricaded, so full of clauses, not in the principles, of course, but in practical application. It is difficult for some people to get through some of the things that come their way when they should approach our movement.

Of course, we really have to pay attention to this if we don't want to have to start the managing director's report last year by saying that last year it was pointed out that the progression is declining and that we can only talk about adding around 290,000 francs to the value of the Goetheanum. Since the construction of the Goetheanum was stopped, we have only had to account for the administration of the remaining funds up to the last few months before the construction of the Goetheanum was stopped, now to those people who are still interested in the past. Please do not take this as an exaggeration. If things are not taken in hand energetically, a report like this may well be the beginning of a new tradition. For the critical moment to which I have referred has certainly arrived. But I have had to point this out in previous years as well, for I would say that the basis of our accounting is more spiritual than material.

I am always extremely reluctant to have to make such a statement, which some might call a diatribe, but it is absolutely necessary, and I am fully convinced that it is fully compatible with my deepest gratitude to those who work with me at the Goetheanum. It is indeed the case in the anthroposophical movement that a group of co-workers has come together in the most dedicated way in all fields, artistic and non-artistic, and now works in the most self-sacrificing way, so that resistance in the work of this group can never be found in earnest. I am often confronted with the fact that whenever I ask why this or that has not been done, the answer is always: We didn't think of that! It will be done the next day; there is always the will to get things done. But it is more important, above all, to consider that things should be done more rationally, more economically.

You see, if I may speak for myself: the corrections for my books are very high! I can't get to them, for the simple reason that there are always other things to be done. It is quite natural that there are other things to be done; but when you look at a lot of things in more detail, the fact is that I am very often not asked at the decisive moment about things that are being conceived somewhere, that are being done somewhere. Then they happen. Then, after some time, they do not go any further, and then one is asked about the details. That is, of course, an endless matter.

I am not at all annoyed when I am asked about all sorts of things, but it must be the main things. It should not be the case that I am not asked about the main issues, and then have to negotiate about the secondary issues in endless meetings, by which I do not just mean those of the “coming day” and the “future”; it is not the case that I am referring to these in particular. Rather, I mean that it is necessary, now that we are really facing such enormous demands from the public, that we now do things with a certain rationale, that they are considered, and that they are done in such a way that they are not just done out of momentary ideas, but that they are really done with a certain overview. Otherwise, the same thing will happen that has already become a calamity within the anthroposophical movement.

You see, something like the Congress of Vienna is particularly evident. The Congress of Vienna is closing; the most urgent requirement is to make it count. This commercialization consists, of course, in evoking a correct judgment in the world as to what the Congress had as its content. And then it is a matter of this being done by people who are collaborators. At the moment when one needs new collaborators, because the old ones have simply been overworked, it is no longer possible. In our case, the matter very often comes to a halt due to the fact that we have a number of exceptionally good workers in a particular field; when their number reaches a certain size, the result is not that the circle expands, but that people overwork, as is the case with such bodies, say, as the Waldorf school teaching staff and the like. People overwork themselves; and of course, overwork does not make a person more resilient, but less so.

Today, of course, there is the very aggravating fact that if it were a matter of founding new Waldorf schools, we would face a major difficulty. If someone were to give me, say, fifty million francs to found new Waldorf schools immediately, then things could be done very well. But if there are constant calls for Waldorf Schools to be founded without the fifty million francs being available, for instance through the establishment of a world school association, then we face the greatest difficulty of all: we cannot find teachers. If you want to found Waldorf schools today, you have to create teachers who are truly capable practically out of thin air. It is even extremely difficult to expand the teaching staff of a Waldorf school in an appropriate way.

My dear friends, I would like to illustrate to you why this is the case: You see, with the current state of the anthroposophical movement, it is simply not possible for me to deal with each individual teacher as much as is necessary to hire a single teacher here or there. It is absolutely impossible. It is not possible. The moment we are in a position to offer a joint course again for, say, a hundred or three hundred teachers, then we can do it again as it was done at the beginning of the founding of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Then the matter is settled; then we can move on. But for that to happen, we really need to be able to hold courses that are embedded in the bigger picture. As the movement stands today, it is impossible to fragment our energies in the way that they are fragmented when things go the way they do today.

So if there are fifty million available to found Waldorf schools, then many can be founded; because teachers are available, they just need to be trained first. You need a teacher training background and so on. And those who are the best teachers in the world today need to be trained first. If someone wants to become a teacher today, they say: they want to take the course that was held for the Waldorf school back then. That is all well and good, but it is not the same as three weeks of real teacher training! Then you would have the opportunity to establish a whole series of Waldorf schools. But if you have to do something on the side in the meantime, you face the greatest difficulties, then it simply does not work. And so you will simply end up having to keep replying, “I don't have any teachers,” to these constant small advances.

What is important is not the utopia that I am creating here, but rather my firm conviction that it can be done; but the most important things always fall through, they are rejected. The World School Association was clearly rejected in its founding. They didn't want it. But it could have helped us, because if we had really launched the World School Association as it was meant at the time, we would not have membership fees for the World School Association of fifty francs, but of five or even one franc. If there is the necessary reality behind it, then we can move forward, we can form public opinion, and that is where it must start. That is where the matter lies. We must be able to form a public opinion. Now the matter always comes to a halt because we can, to a certain extent, place personalities in the places where they need to be placed, that they overwork themselves there, and that we cannot draw on forces from outside, because of course that depends on the most diverse circumstances.

But, my dear friends, these conditions also mean that, in each individual case, when you want to bring in this or that personality, you are faced with the question: how do you pay them? And that is where it stops. You simply cannot pay them under the current conditions. You have to let them go. These are the things that must therefore be taken into account.

Marie Steiner: I would like to mention that no one has ever gone around with a collection bag for eurythmy, so as not to cause any misunderstandings. For theologians, for everything possible, one has already gone with the collection bag, just not for eurythmy.

Rudolf Steiner: That is not quite what I meant. When one says “to go with the collection bag”, it does not mean that one actually goes from one person to the next with the collection bag.

Marie Steiner: But it is easy to get that impression. I would like to take this opportunity to mention that teachers are often asked to come to various German cities to teach eurythmy. Everything is agreed, even the rather low remuneration, and then when the time comes, they are told: No, we need the money for the theologians or for the schools or for the lecturers, so please stay at home.

Rudolf Steiner: Going around with the collection bag means that the money is raised from corners that would otherwise not give anything, but which have to be sought in such a way because people do not think about the fact that these things also have to be provided for. By “collection bag” I mean that the funds have to be raised. If, as unfortunately happens time and again, a eurythmist is appointed far away and people realize how much it costs when they see the bills, then the money has to be found somehow if the people are to be sent there. That is how I mean it, that you are constantly worrying about how to get the money together for the most important things.

Marie Steiner: It would be no use at all, because for people everything else is more important than eurythmy. They have even found that something that was already intended for eurythmy has to go into the school!

Rudolf Steiner: It is indeed the case that things have to be done in this way all the time.

Marie Steiner: I have even been told that the clothes are not beautiful enough on the stage.

Rudolf Steiner: But they are very beautiful!

Marie Steiner: I am taking this opportunity to mention this for once.

Rudolf Steiner: Those who grumble are the ones who can pay the bills! Isn't it true that we actually have to go around with the collection bag for the most important things – I don't mean that in a derogatory way – that we have to go around collecting. We have to go around with the collection bag for the most important things. If I express myself in this direction, then the collection bag will also be abolished, but don't think that it offers a very uplifting sight when I now have the collection bag in front of me every time I leave the carpentry workshop! I am not saying that – except in special cases – anything of significance goes into it, it is not really noticeable. But in any case, it is not an uplifting sight. However, I would like to add, when making such a comment, that it should not lead to the elimination of the collection bag at the door or even just for oneself.

Yes, it is the case that recently we have found the courage for everything except for the things on which the anthroposophical movement was built. We have found the courage for many peripheral things, but not for the things on which the anthroposophical movement was built, and of course these are the things that would have to be taken into account in a very decisive way.

I do not have high hopes when I say this, because I have said it here almost every year and people simply do not believe it. They think it is a propaganda speech, like the ones they already hold! But now, the things that are happening are, on the one hand, extremely encouraging, but on the other hand they are really not being seen in the way they should be.

Yesterday, for example, I was confronted with a fact that really speaks volumes. I was confronted with a fact in the most beautiful way, so that I have to acknowledge that it was brought to my attention; but it does have its downsides. It told me yesterday: It would really be appropriate for a pedagogical course to be held for Swiss teachers. This is something that is of the utmost necessity.

Yes, my dear friends, not too long ago I held a pedagogical course for Swiss teachers in Basel. There was almost no one in it. Here, too, such a course was added at Christmas. Everything was there; they just failed to even look at the things, to take into account that they were there! They didn't even bother to look at them. But that's not true, you really can't just think of a pedagogical course for Swiss teachers, where there would certainly be a number of people. But it would still not lead to what I mentioned earlier – that you could really win over teachers and make progress in the Swiss school movement.

There must be an echo, a support within our movement. People must take an interest in what is happening. And this interest is of course lacking, despite everything, it is not there. And that is why, for example, something like this will not be reported, will not become known in the world, that eurythmy in Vienna has had such an elementary success and the like. Our members also go there and are witnesses to such things. But at most they find that the clothes were not beautiful enough, that they could be even more beautiful, but then they do not pay for the expensive clothes. The positive things are not emphasized, which should really be presented to the world, when we are on the other hand obliged to go before the great public.

Of course, it is due to some things that are already connected with our anthroposophical movement! But it must be emphasized again and again, so that something is thought in this direction after all, so that one really understands when something like this is demanded of us, that we have to work under the most unfavorable conditions. We will work. But the damage will become apparent, and the damage will not lie in the matter, but in the fact that we will only ever be able to have a small circle of employees who overwork and ultimately cannot catch their breath. And then we find no interest in the fact that things are like that, but then the criticism sets in, and that this is considered to be in the matter after all, not in the surrounding conditions.

This is what I would like to see propagated, I would like to say, to tell people again and again. Otherwise, we end up with a report like this: After we completed the construction of the Goetheanum so and so many months ago, at this year's annual meeting we can only report on the administration of the last funds. Repairs cannot be carried out because we have no money. We are therefore also faced with the sad fact that what has already been built will fall into disrepair and so on.

Serious thought should be given to how such a report can be avoided! I regret that I have spoken out of turn again this year. But those who have been devoted co-workers in all areas should accept my most heartfelt thanks. Because it is not at all a question of not working extremely hard, but rather of the fact that we see ourselves as being constrained in every way when it comes to really drawing the consequences of what one begins. It is certainly the case that the things that are done are good. But when something arises – I don't want to mention a positive thing – when something arises that is supposed to come out of the anthroposophical movement, then the money for it has to be sought from outside, from those who are outside. But the reasoning is always done in such a way that with each new foundation, the anthroposophists are now being shelled out and thus, of course, have no. have any money for the things the Anthroposophical movement was actually built on.

I don't want to cause misunderstandings by not naming the individual things, but it always comes back to the fact that this or that is justified and that one says: It is an urgent necessity of the time. If it is an urgent necessity of the time, then one should approach those people who are not exactly anthroposophists, but for whom one wants to fulfill an urgent necessity! And when you point out this urgent necessity, people come back and say: No one has given us much, the amounts are quite minimal; but with the anthroposophists, we have repeatedly found the opportunity to get this or that out of it. That has been the order of the day lately. Then it comes about that there is money for everything, but not for what the Anthroposophical movement is actually based on.

We are put before the public and have to fulfill the conditions of the public. We have to get to the point, my dear friends, where those who approach us say: Well, yes, there is so much evil talk about anthroposophy in the world, but actually they are quite nice people, and you can even talk to them, while everyone thinks: They are such arrogant people that you can't talk to them at all. You can see for yourself: It is possible to talk to them.

But as a rule it is not so, rather one hears again and again from the outside: I had the best will to deal with this or that person, I also approached him, but, oh dear! He has done a number on my corns! Yes, that is something with which I hint to you in pictorial form what I find in many cases, namely that people say: Anthroposophists always hold their heads so high, they are so arrogant that they then don't know where they are stepping, and then they usually always step on your corns. We prefer to go where they curtsy and don't step on our corns.

That is, in a very narrow-minded picture, what is repeatedly found. The chapter “The arrogance of anthroposophy” is something that could fill very thick books, not just individual essays. And if I were to tell you more details – I will take good care not to – but if you ask: Who has been arrogant again?, then those are named who, when I speak of arrogance in general here, are terribly astonished at how it can be! That is what one very often experiences.

Please do not consider this address as a diatribe, but as a confidential message that is not given because someone wants to give someone a piece of their mind, but because they would like them to work together in the right way, and it is believed that in the future they will think less about their own interests and many other things, but more about the problems of other people.

Emil Grosheintz: Since no one else has requested the floor, I believe that the meeting can be closed.

If we look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many remarkable facts.

To-day I want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live, because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their being.

If we take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.

Now if we study the question of karma in connection with those personalities who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that Event.

And then the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Movement?

Even from exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said: “Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St. Augustine says.

Those who penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.

To-day I can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood—impressions which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of this castle.

At this place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood, over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.

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And if we look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which nature there displayed before them.

I cannot say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths—in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature. These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call “piety”—piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of nature.

Those who lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

I want to tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.

When a human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.

A remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.

And so, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous European population—barbarous at all events in Central and Northern Europe.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia, the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the seventh member of the human being.

Christ died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body. After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of the Christ.

Now the connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.

Try to picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There is a living interplay between Sun and earth.

In the centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.

Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture—a truth whose meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.

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Yonder in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth—the Christ was moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through nature.

And so on the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.

The one stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible, even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the actual historical Event of Golgotha.

And coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams come to meet one another—the pre-Christian Christ stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.

How can we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to West.

And to meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image of the Christ—the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha, but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.

Behind the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting takes place—the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.

The other stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image—this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the 9th century.

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I have given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical Movement.¹

When we consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age of Michael.

We find one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international, cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership. The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time. Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry it.

This came to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander. The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your age?—they would have spoken, though under a different name, of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation, Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century. And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.

And so as we look back—when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its mighty heroes of the spiritual life.

It is a strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going Eastwards from Macedonia—that is to say, once more from West to East but this time farther to the East—we see the same stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period, Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to Asia?

At the time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in religion, in literature, in poetry—it was all gathered at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to instruct—all this was changed. Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.

And then, all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as it were into the world of Christendom.

But before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.

And now the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on—I will not now mention unimportant incarnations—and they experience, in the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.

Another meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real Alexander—not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the Sun.

Then a great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however, been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.

In the spiritual world which borders on our physical earth—it was here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which borders on the physical earth.

Below, on the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual attributes. Trichotomy—the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit—was done away with and anyone who persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul.

The decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual world.

Such was the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I have described—coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself with His own Image.

But it was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once again.

In you yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from the heavenly Council of which I have told you.

From these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries—not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly before—arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.

And so the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Knowledge resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings, with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its great Teachers—Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more and more gained the supremacy on earth.

The Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

Something of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these Teachers—who were the last who taught of Christianity in its cosmic aspect—they waited until these Teachers of Chartres had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There took place—if I may use trivial words of earth to describe such a sublime event—a kind of conference between the Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to come later on in the next Age of Michael.

And now, in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity, the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations—these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and continued their existence in the spiritual world.

In the 15th century and lasting on into the 16th—and it must be remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the spiritual world—there took place in the super-sensible world the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded, a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.

In this super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place. Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot. The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism, came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.

And so while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought was going through its most important phase of development in the super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries—during this very same period we find materialism being established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. The two souls worked together.

When Amos Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of Michael.

As I have shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was flooded by a whole host of “idols.”

And the materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had instituted on earth.

The individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke out on the earth.

The idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome, which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the materialism of the 19th century.

The souls who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come to the Movement with inner sincerity.

It is a shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and sure foundation.

Every Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks. Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture, all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying downhill.

If there are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be merely the beginning of still worse evils.

Human beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit, when we have worked together for a time, we know, as Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been understood.

• 1. See: Karmic Relationships, Vol. III.

On the last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to others less familiar to you.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence, while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this constitutes a third of the earthly life—if a man is not an abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies about a third of the time of life on the Earth.

We may ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the human being—constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary consciousness—were always to have awareness during sleep he would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep.

When a man has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through the nights—the periods of sleep—not through the days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward ‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during which—unconsciously of course—pictures were produced which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life.

If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences?

In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’

Let me give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays. You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death.

An incident connected with this was that certain friends interested themselves in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while living through his life in backward order are much more intense than they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not.

You can imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from judgement as it is on Earth.—I may already have mentioned that many years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives. She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that there are many earthly lives!

When the human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death, he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being; and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you do most assuredly form it!

All these experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything good—but after all, nobody like this really exists—such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings do make progress.

With less or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth. This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had his Mysteries. As you can read in the book, Occult Science, there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece; they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a tradition.

Then the human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality, and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature as it will be in his next Earth existence. This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say: this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say: this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth—I refer of course to a spiritual conception of man—he is merely filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life.

In order to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think of the following.—Stars—what are they, in reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth—which is the theatre of man's existence—there are so and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers, intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma. We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there—in that direction—is a colony of Spirits.

When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well as this—in order that he shall find the load of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way that it can be fulfilled on Earth—he needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere. Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this.

Today the time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world becomes for the first time transparent, full of light—not poorer but richer, more splendid in content.

I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.

In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?

With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.

And now study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.

What circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.

Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained, and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon existence—he can look into these happenings. In the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years, the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.

And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.

When history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke, openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to understand the battle that is being waged between men who strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science but also in what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents alone are studied—for documents too are records only of happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution. Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an illness of which I have been speaking for years—even in public lectures—will become more and more widespread. Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but it will none the less exist in life—its name is Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)—or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man.

I want to give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is details which lead to perception of the real connections. This individuality lived through various other incarnations which were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere, to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world. The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes through the Mars sphere—battle; through the Mercury sphere—critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere—it is a particularly complex karma—and with the tendency to evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century becomes Heinrich Heine.

Just try to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is, in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth.

And so, looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. (I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere, Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos here on Earth—in one case in this way, in another in that.

These things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes out in all his creations because living beings are at work—this will have a different result in another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar, primitive form of wisdom—an inferior wisdom—was in this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like.

The earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become elements in the constitution of karma.

It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge.

Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is star-wisdom—all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man.

That is what I wanted to say to you today concerning karma.

If we look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many remarkable facts.

To-day I want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live, because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their being.

If we take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.

Now if we study the question of karma in connection with those personalities who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that Event.

And then the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Movement?

Even from exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said: “Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St. Augustine says.

Those who penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.

To-day I can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood—impressions which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of this castle.

At this place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood, over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.

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And if we look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which nature there displayed before them.

I cannot say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths—in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature. These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call “piety”—piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of nature.

Those who lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

I want to tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.

When a human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.

A remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.

And so, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous European population—barbarous at all events in Central and Northern Europe.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia, the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the seventh member of the human being.

Christ died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body. After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of the Christ.

Now the connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.

Try to picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There is a living interplay between Sun and earth.

In the centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.

Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture—a truth whose meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.

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Yonder in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth—the Christ was moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through nature.

And so on the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.

The one stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible, even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the actual historical Event of Golgotha.

And coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams come to meet one another—the pre-Christian Christ stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.

How can we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to West.

And to meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image of the Christ—the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha, but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.

Behind the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting takes place—the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.

The other stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image—this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the 9th century.

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I have given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical Movement.²

When we consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age of Michael.

We find one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international, cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership. The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time. Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry it.

This came to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander. The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your age?—they would have spoken, though under a different name, of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation, Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century. And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.

And so as we look back—when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its mighty heroes of the spiritual life.

It is a strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going Eastwards from Macedonia—that is to say, once more from West to East but this time farther to the East—we see the same stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period, Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to Asia?

At the time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in religion, in literature, in poetry—it was all gathered at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to instruct—all this was changed. Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.

And then, all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as it were into the world of Christendom.

But before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.

And now the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on—I will not now mention unimportant incarnations—and they experience, in the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.

Another meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real Alexander—not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the Sun.

Then a great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however, been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.

In the spiritual world which borders on our physical earth—it was here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which borders on the physical earth.

Below, on the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual attributes. Trichotomy—the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit—was done away with and anyone who persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul.

The decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual world.

Such was the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I have described—coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself with His own Image.

But it was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once again.

In you yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from the heavenly Council of which I have told you.

From these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries—not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly before—arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.

And so the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Knowledge resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings, with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its great Teachers—Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more and more gained the supremacy on earth.

The Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

Something of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these Teachers—who were the last who taught of Christianity in its cosmic aspect—they waited until these Teachers of Chartres had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There took place—if I may use trivial words of earth to describe such a sublime event—a kind of conference between the Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to come later on in the next Age of Michael.

And now, in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity, the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations—these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and continued their existence in the spiritual world.

In the 15th century and lasting on into the 16th—and it must be remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the spiritual world—there took place in the super-sensible world the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded, a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.

In this super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place. Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot. The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism, came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.

And so while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought was going through its most important phase of development in the super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries—during this very same period we find materialism being established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. The two souls worked together.

When Amos Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of Michael.

As I have shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was flooded by a whole host of “idols.”

And the materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had instituted on earth.

The individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke out on the earth.

The idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome, which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the materialism of the 19th century.

The souls who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come to the Movement with inner sincerity.

It is a shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and sure foundation.

Every Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks. Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture, all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying downhill.

If there are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be merely the beginning of still worse evils.

Human beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit, when we have worked together for a time, we know, as Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been understood.

• 2. See: Karmic Relationships, Vol. III.

During this Winter we have prepared the ground in various ways in order to understand with greater exactitude than has hitherto been possible man's life between birth and death in the physical world on the one side and on the other between death and rebirth in the spiritual world. And there will be still more to say about this subject in the coming months.

Efforts will be needed to draw together a number of details that will contribute towards a thorough understanding of this subject and throw new light upon many topics we have already studied from a different point of view. Today, then, I will ask you to think, above all, of the course of man's physical life—about which something has also been said in my book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy—and of how it progresses in cycles: one from birth until about the seventh year, or until the change of teeth; a second cycle from the change of teeth until puberty at about the fourteenth year; then a third cycle, and so on in periods of seven years. Even to ordinary observation it will be clear that this systematic arrangement into periods of seven years is well founded, but on the other hand it will also be evident that in the actual life of the human being other facts of incisive significance cut across these seven-year periods. We ourselves have repeatedly considered a crucial occurrence in a man's life which eludes this division into cyclic periods. It is the point of time back to which a man's memory extends in later life, the moment when he begins to feel and know himself as an ‘I’, when Ego-consciousness dawns in him. This experience does not by any means occur at exactly the same point of time, but in most cases it may be said that Ego-consciousness flashes up in the human being at some point between birth and the seventh year. And something similar can be said to hold good in the later period of a man's life. Although with less abruptness than the sudden flashing-up of Ego-consciousness, there are other occurrences which as it were invalidate the regular seven-year cycle. We shall, however, always discover that whatever comes in this way into the life of man and cuts across the cyclic periods, occurs much more irregularly than the experiences connected with the actual seven-year cycles. You will hardly find two human beings whose memories go back to exactly the same point of time, that is to say who experienced the flashing up of consciousness of ‘I’ at the same age. Nor does the change of teeth occur at precisely the same age in different individuals. But why this is so in the latter case, we shall still have to consider.

When we study the cyclic periods already referred to and mentioned in my little book, Education of the Child, we shall notice that they begin in connection with the most physical, the most external member of man's being and are then concerned with the other, more inward members of his constitution. From birth until the seventh year development is connected primarily with the physical body, then for seven years with the etheric body, then for seven years with the astral body, the sentient soul, and so on. The evolutionary factors pass over more and more decisively from the external to the inner nature of man. That is essentially characteristic of the seven-year periods.

What, then, is there to be said about occurrences which cut across these seven-year periods? The flashing-up of ‘I’-consciousness during the first cycle is an emphatically inner event. For the sake of clarity, here let us consider something that seems to be in contrast with this flashing-up of Ego-consciousness. If we observe human life with discernment we shall find that the cessation of growth may be compared with some happening which cuts across the seven-year cycles of evolution. We will therefore think about the cessation of growth which after all occurs comparatively late in life, and study its implications.

The first seven-year period ends with the change of teeth. The appearance of the second teeth is, as it were, the final act of what may be called the formative principle. The last contribution made by the forces that give the human being his form is when they drive out the second teeth. That is the culmination of the formative process, for the principle which builds up the human form is no longer in action. With the seventh year the formative principle ceases to be active. What comes about later on is only an expansion of what has already been established as form. After the seventh year there is no more remodelling of the brain. All that happens is growth of what is already established as basic form. Therefore we can say that the principle of form unfolds its activity specifically in the first seven years of the life of a human being. The principle of form stems from the Spirits of Form; thus these Spirits of Form are active in the human being during the first seven years of his life. It can therefore be said that when the human being enters into life through birth, his actual form is not complete. What happens is that the Spirits of Form continue their active intervention during the first seven years of life; the human being has then reached the point when his form merely needs to grow. The basis for the form has been established by the seventh year, and the second teeth are what the formative principle still produces out of the human being. The formative principle has now come to its conclusion. Were its activity to continue, the second teeth would inevitably make their appearance later than is now the case.

Here we may ask: When these Spirits of Form have worked on the human being until the seventh year of his life, does everything they do for him come to an end?

The answer is ‘No’, for the human being goes on growing and the basic principles of his form develop still further. If nothing else intervened, growth would be able to continue without interruption. If we think only of the principles of form that are active in the human being until the seventh year there is no more reason in the case of man than in that of other beings why these forms should not continue to grow if nothing were to intervene. But something does intervene. When the human being stops growing, certain principles of form still have an effect upon him. They have already been drawing near to him but now they unite in the fullest sense with his organism, lay hold of it, but in such a way that they now act as a hindrance, and further growth is prevented. The formative principles that are active until the seventh year of life allow the human being a certain elasticity. But at that point other formative principles approach him; their nature is such that they capture and confine what is elastic in the demarcated form, thus preventing any further growth. That is why growth stops at some point. When growth stops, this means that formative forces approaching from outside are at work. Whenever formative principles are active, whenever forms grow larger, provision must be made for the stoppage of growth by the appearance of counter-formative principles which oppose the first category as its polar antithesis. When man's form has developed until about the seventh year of life (indicated in the shaded portion of the diagram) this form can continue to grow.

The formative principles have been at work until the seventh year; these principles work from within. Then different formative principles work in opposition from outside, so that the human being can grow only to the limit indicated by the line b–b. It is really as if until the seventh year of his life the human being were given an elastic garment which he can constantly stretch and enlarge. But at a specific point of time he is given one that is not elastic; he is obliged to put it on, and thenceforth cannot grow beyond its limits.

We can therefore say that in the human being a confrontation takes place between two kinds of formative principles, one working from within and the other from without. The formative principles belonging to the first category come from the Spirits of Form, from those Spirits of Form who have passed through a perfectly normal process of evolution in the Cosmos. The formative principles working from without are not of the same kind. They come from Spirits of Form whose development has been retarded and who have acquired a Luciferic character. They are the factor which works in the purely spiritual domain, whereas the forces working in the material sphere have had a normal development; having evolved through the stages of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, they then pass to the Earth in the regular way and shape the human form from within. The ‘irregular’ Spirits of Form take what is presented to them and hold back its further development. Thus the process of growth in the human being is brought to a halt by these backward Spirits of Form. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies have the most varied tasks, among them the one that has been characterised today.

We have now been able to consider many different aspects of the work of the ‘regular’ Hierarchies and also of the work of the backward spiritual Beings belonging to the different Hierarchies. In the book Occult Science—an Outline¹ you can read how the human being reached the stage where through the Spirits of Form he could be endowed with the germinal foundation for the ‘I’, the Ego. We know that man received the germ of his physical body from the Thrones, of his etheric body from the Spirits of Wisdom, of his astral body from the Spirits of Movement, and the germinal foundation for the ‘I’ from the Spirits of Form. Bearing this in mind we can say that man, in his outer stature, has been organised by the regular Spirits of Form into an Ego-bearing being and that this comes into manifestation in the first seven-year cycle of his life. But then the backward Spirits of Form who are the opponents of the regular Spirits of Form, put a stop to his growth. This is actually the antithesis of the first, most deeply inward experience in the human being, namely, the kindling of the consciousness of ‘I’—the Ego. This happens in the early years of life, in the innermost realm of being. The outermost manifestation, the form, is checked at a later age, as a final act. Thus we perceive two evolutionary—but antithetical—processes in the human being. Of the one I have said that it comes from without and moves inward, taking hold of the sentient soul and so on, in the twenty-first year of life. Then there is another evolution proceeding from within outwards until the growth of the physical form is checked. The one evolution, the regular evolution, proceeds from the spiritual to the corporeal, from within outwards and is of interest especially for education. The other evolution—which is a much less regular and also more individual process—proceeds from without inwards and, when the human being has reached a certain age, it comes to expression in the completion of the outermost principle—the physical body.

It is very important that teachers should have knowledge of these two antithetical lines of evolution. Hence in the book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy it was right to call attention to the first process of evolution which proceeds from within outwards, because it is only there that education is possible. On the other line of evolution—from without inwards—which is the line of individual development, it is impossible to make any actual impression. This is something of which account can be taken but which cannot be halted; neither can much be achieved in the way of education. And to be able to distinguish between where education is possible and where it is not, is of fundamental importance.

Just as the cessation of growth is caused by the backward Spirits of Form, the first actual manifestation of the ‘I’ in the human being during early childhood is the work of the backward Spirits of Will (Thrones). Between these two extremes there are other happenings which are to be attributed to backward Spirits of Wisdom and backward Spirits of Movement.

No adequate characterisation of man's life as a whole, including the existence between death and the new birth, is possible unless we take account of all the factors which have an effect upon him, and recognise that even in everyday life the influences of Luciferic beings take effect in many different ways. This influence is evident in other spheres as well. And as our endeavour in these lectures is to acquire a really fundamental understanding of man's life as a whole, we will not hesitate to think about matters which seem to be somewhat remote.

Attention shall first of all be drawn to a phenomenon from which it is evident that on the physical plane too, between birth and death, man's life has undergone essential changes in the course of evolution. If we realise this, it will, become evident that the life between death and rebirth has also changed. Those who think intellectually, but superficially, about life today may readily believe that, in essentials, things were always the same as they are at present. By no means was it so! And in certain cases we need go back only a few hundred years to find that conditions were very different. Thus at the present time there is something that has a very great influence upon man's life of soul between birth and death but that simply did not exist in its present form only a few centuries ago. It is what we today mean by the expression ‘public opinion’. Even as recently as the thirteenth century it would have been nonsense to speak of public opinion as we do today. A great deal is said nowadays against belief in authority, although in actual fact it exists in a much more oppressive form in our time than it did in these earlier, often despised centuries. In earlier centuries there were, of course, defects, but there was no blind belief in authority such as exists at present. This blindness of belief in authority is usually revealed by the fact that the authority in question cannot be specified. A person today will readily be floored when he is told that science has proved this or that. In earlier centuries, however, people attached more weight to authorities whom they encountered physically. Reference to an intangible ‘something’ is implied when it is said: ‘There is scientific proof of it.’ Such a saying urges belief in authority when confronted with something incomprehensible. Such belief did not exist in earlier centuries. People belonging to our civilisation usually concern themselves very little with matters about which the simplest, most, primitive human being in earlier centuries endeavoured to have some knowledge—matters relating, for example, to health and illness. Why, it is asked today, should anyone need to know about health and illness? The doctors know about these matters and the problems concerned can be left to them. This is also an example of what comes into the category of intangible but sovereign authority. But countless other influences make their way into life; from earliest youth the human being becomes dependent upon them and his trends of judgement and feeling force themselves into our life! These living currents swirling around among human beings are usually referred to as ‘public opinion’—and prompted the saying from philosophers: ‘Public opinions are mostly private errors.’ To realise this, however, is not as important as it is to be aware that public opinions exert tremendous power upon the life of an individual. It would be a complete misconception of history to speak about the influence of public opinion upon the life of an individual living in the thirteenth century. In those days there were single personalities who admittedly exerted a great deal of authority either in affairs of Government or in practical life, and in these spheres it was obeyed. But at this time there was nothing resembling what impersonal public opinion has become today. Anyone who is unwilling to believe this on the basis of the occult facts should study the history of Florence during those centuries and in later times too—when the government of the city passed into the control of the Medici. The tremendous power of individual authorities will then be apparent, but there was no such thing as public opinion. It first arose in an epoch preceding our own by four or five centuries and one can speak of its actual beginning. Such things must be regarded as realities, for a world of swirling thoughts does indeed exist.

What is the origin of this public opinion which we often accept as something that cannot be verified? What is public opinion in reality? You may remember that I have spoken of certain spiritual Beings belonging to the Hierarchy immediately above man—Beings who participate in various ways in the guidance and leadership of humanity. In my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity, you will find a great deal on the subject of spiritual Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. Now we know that the mightiest incision in the evolution of humanity was made by the Mystery of Golgotha. In that event there came to pass something that was most wonderfully expressed in the esoteric teaching of St. Paul. Paul spoke in simple language but the actual way in which he spoke was rooted in profound esotericism. It was not possible for him always to give out openly what he, as an Initiate, knew; for in the first place he wanted to speak to a wider circle of people and, secondly, it was not possible in his day to give out everything he knew in the way of which he would have been capable. Nevertheless his very presentation was based upon profound esoteric knowledge. We find, for example, that there is a deeply significant truth in the distinction he makes between the ‘first Adam’ and the ‘higher Adam’—the Christ. According to Paul, the various generations of human beings are to be traced back to Adam, that is to say, the bodies of men descend from Adam. Hence it can be said that the physical increase of humanity over the Earth during the different periods, leads back finally to the physical body of Adam—Adam and Eve, naturally. We can then ask: What lies at the basis of the physical evolution of mankind from Adam onwards? Naturally, the evolution of souls! The physical bodies which have descended from Adam are the habitations of living souls. These souls had descended from cosmic worlds and had brought with them to the Earth a certain spiritual heritage, a spiritual endowment. But in the course of time this spiritual endowment had undergone decline. Individuals who lived, say, six or seven thousand years before the founding of Christianity had within them much stronger, more extensive spiritual forces than those who lived a mere thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. The spiritual heritage which once came to the Earth with human beings had gradually withered away in the soul. Now the life between death and rebirth is of particular significance for this spiritual heritage. If we go back to the epoch long before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that after death men had an active, inwardly illumined life of soul; but then this life of soul became dimmer and dimmer, darker and darker. An ever-fading life of soul came with human beings when they passed through death. This was particularly the case among the Greeks although they were the most advanced peoples then on the Earth, and their sages had every reason to say, in view of the stage reached in evolution: ‘Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.’ We know that this saying was true when applied to the Greeks who lived a fully satisfying life on the physical plane; but as soon as they had passed through the gate of death their life became dim and shadowy.

In the fullest sense it is true that the spiritual life which men had brought with them to the Earth and which manifested after death as a somewhat dim clairvoyant consciousness, had become even dimmer. And especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, the Graeco-Latin epoch, during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the spiritual life had reached the stage of its greatest darkness.

The all-important purpose of the Baptism by John the Baptist was that some of those who sought to be baptised should be made conscious of the conditions just described. The individuals baptised by John were completely submerged in the water. As a result, the etheric body of these individuals was liberated from them and for a short time, while under the water, they became clairvoyant. John was able to reveal to them that there had been such deterioration in the life of soul in the course of time that a human being now possessed very little of the spiritual treasure that he had once been able to take with him through the gate of death and that could give him clairvoyant consciousness. A man whom John baptised in this way became aware that a revitalisation of the life of soul was essential, that something new must radiate into human souls in order that after death there might be a life in the real sense. This new impulse streamed into the souls of men through the Mystery of Golgotha. You need only read my lecture-course entitled From Jesus to Christ and you will realise that a rich and abundant spiritual life streams from the Mystery of Golgotha into the souls of individuals who develop a relationship to that Mystery.

Hence Paul could say: just as the physical bodies of men descend from Adam, so will the content of their souls in greater and greater measure ‘descend’ from the Christ who is the second Adam, the spiritual Adam. It is a profound truth that Paul uttered here, clothed in his simple words. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, men would have become progressively empty in soul and would either have developed a longing only to live outside the physical body or to live on Earth with no other wishes or desires than for a purely physical life, and so would have become more and more materialistic. Because all development is a slow and gradual process there are still some peoples on the Earth who have not yet wholly lost the original spiritual treasure, who still retain some measure of it in spite of having failed to establish any relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha. Individuals belonging to the most advanced peoples, however, can become conscious after death only to the extent to which they have learnt ‘to die in Christ’, as the second line of the Rosicrucian formula expresses it. And so in actual fact the Mystery of Golgotha has acted as illumination in men's souls.

With this clearly in mind we shall understand the gist of a question relating to man's evolution. It is the question: How came it that understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha enabled the content of man's soul to be carried into the sphere of his ‘I’, his Ego? How did this soul-content differ from what existed before the Mystery of Golgotha as an ancient heritage? The difference is that, before the Mystery of Golgotha, in respect of the content of their souls men were far less independent. They were under the direct guidance of the Beings we know as the Angeloi, Archangeloi and so on. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men were under the leadership of the Beings of the nearest higher Hierarchies to a far greater extent than was the case after that event. Indeed the progress of these Beings themselves—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—consists in the fact that they have learnt to lead human beings in a way that respects their independence. Men were intended to live on the Earth in a state of greater and greater independence. The leading spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies have recognised this and therein consists their progress.

But it is possible for these Spirits too to remain behind in their evolution. Not all the Spirits who participated in the leadership of humanity have acquired through the Mystery of Golgotha the power to guide and lead men while ensuring their freedom. Among these Beings of the higher Hierarchies there are some who remained backward and have become Luciferic spirits. What we call ‘public opinion’ is an example of the way in which some of them are active. Public opinion is not created by human beings alone but also by a certain category of Luciferic spirits of the lowest rank—retarded Angeloi and Archangeloi. These spirits are only beginning their Luciferic career and have not yet risen very high in the ranks of the Luciferic spirits, but they are definitely Luciferic in character. With the eye of seership one can perceive how certain spirits of the higher Hierarchies did not keep pace with evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, how they adhere rigidly to the old kind of leadership and therefore cannot make any direct approach to men. Those who have kept pace with evolution can make regular and direct contact with men; the other spirits are incapable of this and they manifest their activity in the muddled, turbulent thinking that comes to expression as public opinion. The function of public opinion is intelligible only when it is realised that this is how it has made its way into human life.

Thus we have among us beings who abandon the regular course of evolution and become Luciferic in character. It is important that this should be known. The work of the Luciferic beings of whom we have already spoken and who now have great power, also began on a small scale. Indeed this is true in the case of the whole host of Luciferic beings. Admittedly, on the Old Moon there was no public opinion as we know it but something that can be compared with it—a kind of guidance of men. Some among this host of Luciferic spirits of whom we have spoken are powerful and important beings, for example backward Spirits of Form who surge in upon the human being with such violence that they stop his growth. The others are merely the recruits; nevertheless this is the beginning of the career of the Luciferic spirits, a career which later on will assume a quite different dimension because the spirits become more and more powerful. Public opinion, which under the guidance and direction of certain Luciferic spirits of the lowest order, influences human beings because they absorb it between birth and death, must necessarily have its counterweight during the life between death and rebirth. That is to say, because a human being in his life between birth and death has been caught up into the current of public opinion described, he must experience the counterweight in his life between death and rebirth. Otherwise the following would ensue.

The backward spirits who are responsible for the creation of public opinion have no significance or power whatever in man's life between death and rebirth. They have relinquished all possibility of working in that sphere because they are active here, on the physical plane, in a spiritual way—indeed in a way that is only possible in the form of public opinion. A man can take no iota of anything like public opinion with him into the spiritual world and whatever element of it he might want to accompany him into the life after death would be entirely out of place. It must be said, although it will seem strange to many people, that life in Kamaloka becomes very difficult for one who clings to public opinion or has been caught in the coils of his own judgement very early in life. This applies particularly to persons who believe that within the world of public opinion there can still be independent judgement—which is an utter impossibility. For such people Kamaloka is admittedly difficult. But when the period of Kamaloka is over, public opinion has no weight or significance whatever, and after death it is irrelevant whether people adhered to nuances of it, such as liberal or conservative, radical or reactionary. This has no significance whatever in the different groupings of human beings and moreover exists on Earth solely for the purpose of hindering men from making progress towards illumination of consciousness after death. The beings behind public opinion resolved to forgo the progress made possible by the Mystery of Golgotha. But the Mystery of Golgotha will become of greater and greater importance for the Earth's evolution. We must clearly understand that the future of the Earth's evolution cannot be assured simply by rectifying phenomena such as public opinion and the like which are inevitable in the course of evolution. Men can, however, become better in their own inner nature, therefore the process of evolution must take root more and more deeply in their inner life. In the future, men will be still more exposed to the pressure of public opinion, but inwardly they will have developed greater strength. This is possible only through Spiritual Science. But if man is gradually to become a match for those spirits who are now exerting their influence in public opinion as recruits of the Luciferic beings, this will be possible only if, between death and rebirth too, he undergoes something that strengthens him inwardly, strengthens the principle in him that is independent of life on Earth. Whereas through the influence of public opinion he becomes more and more dependent upon earthly life, in the life between death and rebirth he must receive into his very self something that in the next life on Earth will make him ever freer from the influence of public opinion.

Connected with this is the fact that at the time when public opinion began to assume importance, the Buddha-realm was established in the Mars sphere—as we heard in the lecture at Christmas. Consequently between death and rebirth man passes through this Buddha-realm on Mars. Christian Rosenkreutz had entrusted to Buddha a special mission in the Mars sphere. And what would be futile on Earth, namely the desire to flee from the conditions of terrestrial existence—this is an experience which man must undergo between death and rebirth during his passage through the Mars sphere. Among other things he strips off the incubus of public opinion which takes effect only on Earth. Many, even more overbearing influences will come in the future and it will be more than ever necessary to undergo the experience that is possible for man as a pupil of Buddha in the Mars sphere. Here on Earth, men can now be pupils of the Buddha in the orthodox sense only if they refuse to participate in the progress made by the most advanced people on Earth. But between death and rebirth Buddha unfolds what has developed from the teaching he gave on Earth, which was that man should free himself from the need for further incarnations. This has been developed into a doctrine that is inapplicable to the Earth, where life must progress from incarnation to incarnation. Thus the doctrine preached by Buddha on Earth contained the seed of what man must acquire in the disembodied state of existence. In this advanced form, Buddha's teaching is right for the period between death and rebirth. The Buddha himself appeared in the astral body of the Jesus-Child of St. Luke's Gospel² and Christ Himself leads men between death and rebirth through the Mars sphere, enabling them there to receive the Buddha's advanced teaching. Thus in the Mars sphere men can be emancipated from the tendency to uniformity resulting from the effects of public opinion which are detrimental for their further progress on Earth. Whereas in earlier times Mars was said to be the planet of warlike traits, it is now the Buddha's task gradually to transform these warlike traits in such a way that they become the foundation of the sense for freedom and independence needed in the present age. Whereas nowadays men have the tendency to surrender their sense of freedom and succumb to the fetters of public opinion, on Mars between death and rebirth they will strive to throw off these fetters and not bring them again into the life on Earth when they return to new incarnations.

It seems to me that here we have something that characterises most wonderfully how wisdom holds sway in the world, how everything that progresses or remains backward is manipulated in such a way that the final outcome is harmony in the evolution of worlds. Man cannot achieve progress by keeping as it were to the middle line, although there are many who realise the uselessness of adopting a one-sided standpoint. Admittedly, we come across idealists, materialists and other ‘-ists’ who swear by their own standpoint, but truly great individuals such as Goethe do no such thing. They try to grasp material conditions by means of material thinking. When men of less eminence imagine that they have understood this, they say: truth lies in the middle, between two different standpoints. But that would be the same as if someone in practical life wanted to sit between two chairs! The truth cannot be found by a one-sided adoption of this or that standpoint but by applying the modes of knowledge appropriate either for materialism or idealism, The world does not progress by undeviating adherence to a middle course: a middle course is appropriate when the opposing sides are also present and are recognised as forces. If something has to be weighed, the two scalepans are needed as well as the beam. Thus there must be a counterbalance to public opinion; and this is provided by Buddha's teaching in the Mars sphere—which would not be necessary if public opinion had never existed. Life needs antithesis; life progresses in and through polarity. Somebody might think that as the North and South Poles are antitheses, it would be better if neither existed! They are not, of course, antithetic in the sense implied by a certain Professor of whom it was said that because he had written his books in such haste he could not think about their contents and stated that civilisation could develop only in the middle zone of the Earth because at the North Pole people would freeze through cold and at the South Pole melt through heat! In another connection, of course, North and South Poles are genuine opposites and are necessary because progress is not achieved by adopting a neutral course but by the maintenance and harmonising of opposites. Thus what develops on Earth had to undergo a process that lies below the level of progress. Public opinion is of less value than the judgements which an individual can reach on a path of progress. Public opinion is sub-human and it is this sub-human influence that is counteracted by the Buddha-stream through which man passes between death and rebirth. Both influences are necessary and it is extremely important to bear this in mind in connection with evolution.

It can therefore be said with truth: yes, there are indeed backward spirits, but everything that remains behind on the one side and on the other outstrips the evolutionary process, is manipulated by the wisdom of the Universe in such a way that harmony is the final result. The backward spirits are utilised to constitute the opposite pole to the spirits who have progressed to further stages.

If we look at life in this way it will be clear to us that in the future course of Earth evolution the human being will bring into life more and more qualities which will have greater weight and influence than the purely physical qualities. And it will be increasingly apparent that qualities other than the purely physical will have to be taken into account. Physical qualities will be evident, which—although they become manifest only gradually—can be traced back to infancy; but there will be other qualities to which this does not apply and which show themselves in a marked form only comparatively late in life. A characteristic feature of evolution in the future will be the existence of an increasing number of individuals about whom it will inevitably be asked: What can have happened to that individual at a certain age in his life? He has completely changed; it is as though he has become a different being! Qualities that were completely absent in earlier life, that appear only when a certain age has been reached, will reveal themselves. This will happen in the case of souls who are the most highly developed and in whom a certain break in their life becomes evident. For the fact that an individual was a pupil of Buddha in the life between death and rebirth reveals itself only at a certain age. This would apply to persons of whom it can be said: Up to a particular point in their lives their individual qualities were in evidence; but then entirely new trends appeared and they were able to understand matters altogether different from those for which they had previously shown understanding. These will be individuals who in the future will be the vehicles of true spiritual progress although they may simply be regarded as late developers, manifesting these qualities only late in life. In truth, however, the reason why these individuals display these qualities only in later life is that in previous incarnations on the Earth they had established the causes which enabled them to experience the spiritual life in the Mars sphere with particular intensity and so to acquire qualities which enabled them to bring a new impulse into the evolution of humanity. True spiritual culture will more and more be in the hands of individuals of this kind, who in their youth showed little aptitude for the spiritual standpoint they adopt in later life.

We now see that this is the reason why a certain fact has always been stressed in the Rosicrucian line of thought of which we ourselves have heard in the past, although it could not then be substantiated because our studies were not as advanced as they now are. Representatives of the Rosicrucian principle of Initiation in the West have always emphasised that it is impossible to discover in their childhood those who are to become leading figures, because these are individuals who give evidence of that fundamental change in later life of which I have spoken. When a seer speaks of Buddha today, he knows that Buddha has faithfully adhered to what his teaching promised; he has continued to work for that in human nature which has no direct urge for physical embodiment and therefore does not appear at the beginning of life in a physical body but only when the physical body has undergone a certain development, when a certain stage towards spirituality has been reached. Then, at a later stage of life the gift of the Buddha to man becomes an effective influence.

All this must be borne in mind if we are to understand the whole process of man's development. What it signifies for each individual in his life between birth and death—of this we shall hear later.

• 1. See pp. 180 onwards in the Rudolf Steiner Press 1963 edition.
• 2. See the lecture-course, The Gospel of St. Luke given by Dr. Steiner in Basle, September 1909, particularly lectures four to nine.