The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A members' lecture and a class lesson of the general pedagogical section of the Free University were held during the pedagogical event in Bern. And during the anthroposophical course at the Goetheanum during Easter week, the members of the first class were also brought together for two such class lessons. Following this course, the medical section organized two lecture series, one for younger doctors and medical students and the other for practicing doctors. We will report further on the progress of these events, which are still ongoing. However, we can already express our deep satisfaction at how strongly the participants feel the need to enrich their professional training with a spiritual view of the human being as a whole and their art of healing with a spiritual healing will that is permeated by a true understanding of the human being.

In a eurythmy performance for the members of the Anthroposophical Society, we wanted to show how the impulses that were present at the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum can develop with a certain inevitability. The new impulse that entered anthroposophical work at this conference must also assert itself by not only bringing what has arisen in the moment to life in our events, but also by allowing what has been worked on earlier to develop further in subsequent events. The verses with which the spiritual foundation stone was laid in the hearts of the members of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference were presented again at this Easter Conference in a eurythmic art performance. In connection with them, Albert Steffen's spirit-filled, soul-warm poems were eurythmized, which cast a consecratory mood over this conference. Further events, taking into account the Austrian mood, entwined themselves around this content of the eurythmy performance. We had such an Austrian celebration, into which our Christmas conference, which is so meaningful for society, resonated fully.

Despite the difficulties that arise for many members due to the current situation, our Easter conference was well attended. The somewhat uncomfortable way in which the audience has to participate in the events in our inadequate rooms may well trigger the wish that fate will soon grant us the opportunity to have a Goetheanum again at the site of the one that has been taken from us.

(continued in the next issue).

You will have seen from the previous lectures, how the souls who out of the depths of their subconscious life feel impelled towards the Anthroposophical Movement, bear this impulse within them through their special relationship to the forces of Michael. We have accordingly considered the working of these Michael-forces throughout the centuries, in order to see what influence the impulses of Michael can have upon the lives of those who stand in any kind of connection with them.

Now the Michael impulses—and this is of great importance for the karma of every single anthroposophist—the Michael impulses are of a kind to enter deeply and intensely into the whole being of man. We know from previous descriptions that the rulership of Michael, if so we may call it, beginning for earthly life at the end of the eighteen-seventies, was preceded by the rulership of Gabriel; and I have described how the rulership of Gabriel is connected with forces that go through the line of physical inheritance—forces related to physical reproduction.

The forces of Michael are the very opposite of this. The rulership of Gabriel is characterised by the fact that his impulses enter strongly into the physical bodily nature of man. Michael, on the other hand, works intensely into the spiritual being of man. You can tell this from the very fact that he is the administrator of the Cosmic Intelligence. But Michael's impulses are strong and powerful. Taking their start from the spiritual, they work through and through the human being. They work into the spiritual, thence into the soul-nature, and thence again into the bodily nature of man. Now in the karmic connections of life, these super-earthly forces are constantly at work. Beings of the higher Hierarchies are working with man and upon him. It is thus that the karma of a man takes shape. And so it is with the Michael-forces. Working as they do upon the whole human being, they work also very strongly into his karma. Gabriel-forces work only very little—I do not say not at all—but very little into the essential karma of a human being. Michael-forces on the other hand work very strongly into his karma.

If, therefore, certain human beings—and this in the last resort applies to you all, my dear friends—if certain human beings are especially connected with the stream of Michael, their individual karmas can only be understood when thought of in connection with the stream of Michael.

Now Michael is a Spirit who stands in a special relationship to the Sun and to all Sun-impulses. This being the case, we shall realise what a profound significance his impulses must have for those who are especially exposed to them. In effect, his forces will work right into the physical organisation. For Michael-men therefore (if we may use this term), we must connect the physical phenomena of health and illness with karma in an even higher degree than for Gabriel- or Raphael-men, or the like. Things in the universe are very complicated; and although Raphael is the Spirit most intimately connected with the art of Healing, nevertheless it is Michael who brings the karma of men nearest of all to health and to disease.

There is another fact in this connection. The Michael-forces not only work in a cosmopolitan sense, but they also work in such a way as to tear a man out of the narrower earthly connections of his life and carry him up on to a spiritual height, where he feels the earthly connections less strongly than others do. At any rate his karma predestines him for this. This again has a profound influence upon the karma of every single man who belongs to the stream of Michael.

You see, in the last third of the 19th century it did really happen that human beings—I will not say of nervous temperament—but human beings intense in soul and spirit, were able to feel the penetration of the Michael-forces into the world. In those who were essentially men of Michael, this penetration of the Michael-forces into the world came to expression in this way: they felt many things, which other men would have passed by more or less indifferently, entering deeply and incisively into their lives.

Above all their karma was such that they had a strong feeling—though they did not understand it clearly—a strong feeling of the battle I described the day before yesterday, the battle between Michael and Ahriman. In the present age, Ahriman can only have a strong influence upon men when their consciousness is diverted in one way or another. The most radical phenomenon is that of a fainting fit, or a diminution of consciousness lasting for a considerable time. In times like this, when a man is overcome by faintness or diminution of consciousness, the Ahriman forces can most effectively approach him. At such times they work their way into him, he is exposed to them. But it was above all in the last third of the 19th century—and especially in the time when the end of the Kali Yuga was approaching, in the very last years of the 19th century,—it was a shattering experience to see behind the scenes of this external, physical world which is spread out before man's senses.

For directly adjoining this outer world there is a world revealing very, very much of those historic processes in which the higher super-sensible Beings enter and play a part.

In the last third of the 19th century, and especially in the last decade, only a thin veil concealed that which we recognise as the dominion of Michael, the great battle of Michael and all the facts connected with him. Since then, Michael himself has been taking part in the battle even in the outer world, and we need a far stronger power to behold what is present supersensibly than was needed before the end of the Kali Yuga, when, as I said, the next adjoining world, where Michael was battling as yet behind the scenes, was severed from our own by a thin veil only.

But Michael insists, as I have told you, that his dominion shall prevail and penetrate at any cost. Michael is a Spirit filled with strength, and he can only make use of thoroughly brave men, men full of inner courage.

Now in the whole nexus that I have described, in the super-sensible School of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and in the great super-sensible Cult of the beginning of the 19th century, among all the spirits who partake in these things, great numbers of Luciferic figures are all the time playing their part. The Luciferic figures are necessary, necessary in the whole connection of these things. Michael needs the Luciferic spirits, he needs their co-operation to overcome the polar antithesis of Ahriman. Thus the men of Michael are placed into the very midst of the battle—or, if we may not call it so—the surging waves of interplay, of Luciferic impulses and Ahrimanic.

Just at the end of the 19th century these things showed themselves with great clarity and definition. In those years it was by no means rarely that one caught a glimpse, through the veil, as I have called it. Then one saw how intensely Michael was having to battle against Ahriman, and how easy it was for the consciousness of men to be diverted by all manner of Luciferic influences.

You may say: Disturbances of consciousness, attacks of faintness and the like, are nothing out of the ordinary. Outwardly considered they are not, of course; but they can become most significant through that which happens as a consequence,—through that which ensues when the diversion or diminution of consciousness takes place. I will give you an example.

It was once a question of someone being made more intimately acquainted with a certain historic personality. He was to study an historic personality who had lived in the time of the Renaissance and Reformation. I want you to understand me precisely. All the preparations had been made for this man (it was at the end of the eighteen-nineties) to become historically acquainted with a personality who had lived at the time of the Renaissance and Reformation. Indeed, with all the conditions that had gone before, it seemed scarcely possible for anything else to happen, than that he would become familiar with that historic personality in the perfectly ordinary, and if I may call it so, pedantic way of scholarship. But look what happened. Through the refined workings of karma he became incapable of using his consciousness just at the very time when he was to have had this experience. He fell into a kind of sleep from which he could not awaken, and was thus prevented.

Of course in ordinary life one pays little heed to such a thing. Yet it is through happenings like these that we look directly from the earthly into the spiritual world. And if you want an explanation of this fact, then we must say: This man, who was to have become historically acquainted with a certain personality of the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, would undoubtedly have received a very strong impression if he had had this experience. He did not have it; he missed it, he was prevented. But in that very time, the impression which he would have received was transformed. He received it in another form; it was transformed into a peculiar impressionability for the Michael element. He actually received, though unconsciously, a real power of understanding for the Michael element.

I give this somewhat strange example in order to show you by what paths the Michael element was approaching human beings at that time. We could give many examples of this kind. Indeed, human beings today would be quite different if such things had not occurred to many individuals. Such things may happen in hundreds of different ways. In the case I have just related, my dear friends, the man actually fell into a kind of sleep. In other cases it happened thus:—Some event that would have led a man away from Michael was prevented by a friend or someone else coming and taking him away to a different place, and his consciousness was veiled around in a most natural and matter-of-fact way. He was prevented from partaking in what was karmically set before him to begin with. It was just in those years that the strongest interferences took place with the ordinary smooth course of karma.

And as a rule in such cases it became evident how deeply these Michael influences work. In many instances one saw that such human beings had been affected not only in soul but even down into the body when their karma had received a jerk of this kind, because Michael needed to enter through the portals of a human consciousness into the earthly world of sense.

It is interesting in the highest degree to see how in the eighteen-nineties men were led into events which were none other than the paths of Michael from the spiritual into the physical world. For you must remember, the entry of Michael into the physical world was taking place in the last third of the 19th century. But it had been prepared for, in the spiritual world, for a long time before—already since the beginning of the eighteen-forties. If I may put it so, Michael and his hosts were drawing ever nearer and nearer, and it became more and more evident that those human beings would now descend, who in their earthly destiny were connected with the task of Michael,—the task of receiving the Intelligence here upon earth again after it had fallen away from the hosts of Michael in the super-sensible world.

Into the midst of all these things, as you will recognise from my presentation of the Mysteries, the Anthroposophical Movement is placed. For the Anthroposophical Movement is connected, as you will see from former lectures, with this whole stream of Michael.

Now I want you to consider in this light the karmic conditions of individual human beings who are led by an inner urge to approach the Anthroposophical Movement. They come, to begin with, from the world. They stand in many connections in the world. There have indeed been many communities in the world's history in which human beings have become united. But there was never a cohesive power of that peculiar quality which the Michael forces engender. Hence a peculiar situation is brought about for those who find their way, from other connections in the world, into the Anthroposophical Society. One can find one's way into other societies too, and could always do so, but one's destiny did not need to be very deeply affected. Into the Anthroposophical Society one cannot come—not at least in a thoroughly sincere way that really moves the soul—without being deeply and fundamentally influenced in one's destiny. This becomes especially clear when we consider these things along a right line of approach.

Take a human being who is just coming into the Anthroposophical Society, and who until then had certain connections with non-anthroposophists, which he may perhaps still continue to have. The difference between the one who stands within and the one who stands or remains outside, is of far greater significance than in the case of any other communities. There are two kinds of relationships.

Through the fulfilment of all the things I have described, we are living, once and for all, in a time of great, immense decisions. Thus the standing side-by-side today of anthroposophists and non-anthroposophists is fraught with great decisions. Either it is a question of the dissolving of old karma for the one who is in the Anthroposophical Society, or it is a question of the weaving of new karma for the one who is outside it. And these are great differences.

Let us assume an anthroposophist stands very near in life to a non-anthroposophist. It may be to begin with that the anthroposophist has old karmic connections to settle with the non-anthroposophist. On the other hand it may be that the non-anthroposophist has to enter into karmic connections with the anthroposophist, for the future. At any rate these are the only two cases I have hitherto been able to observe, though of course they are of many different kinds. There are no intermediates, there are no others beside these two. From this you will see that this is really a time of great decisions, for, if we may describe it so, either non-anthroposophists are being influenced in such a way that they come to the Michael community, or else the influences work in such a way that those who do not belong to the Michael community will be avoided by it. This indeed is the time of great decisions—the great crisis to which the sacred books of all time have referred—for in reality the present age is meant. Such indeed is the peculiar nature of the Michael impulses: they are fraught with great decisions, and they become decisive especially in this our age.

Human beings who in the present incarnation receive the Michael impulses through Anthroposophy, are thereby preparing their whole being in such a way that these Michael impulses enter even into the forces that are otherwise determined merely by the connections of race and nation.

Think how much this means:—Here is a man who stands within some national group. We can see at once, he is a Russian, he is a Frenchman, he is an Englishman, he is a German. We recognise it by his appearance, and we locate him by thinking, as we see him, where can this man belong? We think it a matter of some importance if we can recognise: he is a Turk, he is a Russian, or the like. Now with those who today receive Anthroposophy with inner force of soul, with deep impulse and strength of heart—who receive it, therefore, as the deepest force of their life—such distinctions will have no more meaning when next they return to earth. People will say: Where does he come from? He is not of any nation, he is not of any race, he is as though he had grown away from all races and nations.

When the last Michael dominion took place, in the age of Alexander, the point was to spread Grecian culture in a cosmopolitan way, carrying it out in all directions. The campaigns of Alexander were an immense achievement in the equalising of men on earth, I mean in the spreading among them of a common element. But the thing was not yet able to strike so deep, for at that time Michael still administered the Cosmic Intelligence. Now Intelligence is on the earth, now it strikes far deeper, it strikes down even into the earthly element of man. For the first time, the Spiritual is preparing to become a race-creating force. The time will come when one will no longer be able to say: the man looks as if he belonged to this or that country,—he is a Turk, or an Arabian, an Englishman, a Russian or a German,—but one will have to say what will amount to this: ‘In a former life on earth this man felt impelled to turn towards the Spirit in the sense of Michael.’ Thus, that which is influenced by Michael will appear as an immediate, physically creative, physically formative power.

Now this is a thing that takes root deeply, very deeply in the karma of the individual. Hence the strange destiny of those who are sincere anthroposophists, the strange destiny that they are not able to come to terms with the world: they cannot quite master it, and yet at the same time they have to approach the world and enter into it with full earnestness.

I have said that those who stand with full intensity within the Anthroposophical Movement will return at the end of the century, and others will then unite with them, for by this means the salvation of the earth and earthly civilisation from destruction must eventually be settled. This is the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement, which weighs on the one hand so heavily upon one's heart, while on the other hand it moves the heart, uplifts it with enthusiasm. This mission we must understand and see.

It is most necessary for the anthroposophist to know that in this situation as an anthroposophist his karma will be harder to experience than it is for other men. From the very outset those who come into the Anthroposophical Society are predestined to a harder, more difficult experience of karma than other men. And if we try to pass this harder experience by—if we want to experience our karma in a comfortable way—it will surely take vengeance on us in one direction or another. We must be anthroposophists in our experience of karma too. To be true anthroposophists we must be able to observe our own experience of karma with constant wide-awake attention. If we do not, then our comfortable, easy-going experiencing of our karma—or rather our desire to experience it so—will find expression and take vengeance in physical illnesses, physical accidents and the like.

These finer, more intimate connections of life must indeed be seen and observed, for then we shall see many another thing besides. It is the best preparation for true and real spiritual sight, to observe these more intimate connections of life attentively. It is a wrong principle to want to evolve all manner of nebulous, abnormal, visionary states. On the other hand it is immensely right to occupy oneself with all that goes on more finely and intimately in the connections of destiny which we can recognise.

Do we not see how this becomes our karma, my dear friends: we live, or have lived, alongside of human beings who are absolutely prevented, inwardly prevented, from coming near to things anthroposophical. They are prevented, in spite of all that we—I will not say have brought to them of Anthroposophy—but that we might have brought to them if they would only take it. We see this happen, surely. Now this also is among the great decisions of present-day life. For the things that take place in this way will have great karmic significance, both for the one who comes into the Anthroposophical Movement and for the one who remains outside it. It will have extraordinary significance.

Let us imagine that these human beings meet one another again in a future incarnation. We know that what happens to us in future incarnations is already being prepared for in this present. The meeting-again with human beings to whom we are related in the way I have just described, will be such that the usual strangeness between man and man will be essentially enhanced. For Michael works right down into the physical sympathies and antipathies. Now all this is taking place already now in a preparatory way, for every single anthroposophist. It is immensely important for an anthroposophist to study just those karmic relationships which unfold between him and non-anthroposophists. For in this connection things are taking place which reach up into the next kingdom of the Hierarchies. For you must see, there is a counterpart to what I have just described, when I said that the Michael impulses appear as a race-creating force. There is a counterpart to it.

Let us take the following karmic instance. Someone is taken hold of in the very highest degree by the impulses of Anthroposophy. He is taken hold of in heart and mind, in soul and spirit. In such a case something will necessarily happen, which, expressed in words, sounds very strange indeed; and yet it is necessary. In such a case the Angel of the man must learn something. This is a thing of untold significance. The destiny of anthroposophists,—the destiny that works itself out between anthroposophists and non-anthroposophists,—casts its waves even into the worlds of the Angeloi. It leads to a parting of the Spirits, even in the world of the Angeloi. The Angel who accompanies the anthroposophist to his next incarnations learns to find his way still more deeply into the spiritual kingdoms than he could do before, while the Angel who belongs to the other man—to the one who cannot enter,—descends. It is in the destiny of the Angeloi that we first perceive how this great separation is taking place. To this, my dear friends, I would now direct your hearts. It is happening now, that the comparatively single and uniform kingdom of the Angeloi is being turned into a twofold kingdom of Angeloi, a kingdom of Angeloi with an upward tendency into the higher worlds, and with a downward tendency into lower worlds.

While the Michael community is being formed here upon earth, we can behold above it the ascending and the descending Angeloi. Looking more deeply into the world today, one can perpetually observe these streams, which are such as to stir the heart to its foundations.

Now I have told you that those who come into the anthroposophical life fall into two main groups. There are the ones who still carry into it a knowledge from the old heathen times, and have had little experience of that Christian development which took its course during the Kali Yuga. They have gone on evolving out of the old Pagan sources, and they now grow into the Christianity which is to be a cosmic Christianity once more. They are souls with a Pagan predestination, who in reality are only now growing into Christianity. The others are souls who are a little weary of Paganism, though they do not confess this to themselves. From the outset they grow into the Anthroposophical Movement on account of its Christian character, but they do not enter so deeply into the anthroposophical Cosmology, the anthroposophical Anthropology, and so forth. They enter, rather, into the more abstractly religious side. These two groups are clearly to be distinguished.

Now for the group of a more Pagan predestination it is particularly necessary to take hold of the sustaining forces of Anthroposophy with full intensity of inner life. For this group, it is most necessary to avoid all side-tracks and other considerations, and steer straight forward in the direction of the anthroposophical sustaining forces.

We can only grasp these things when we receive them in our hearts; but they must enter into the hearts of anthroposophists. For only then will a real living-together within the Anthroposophical Society be possible, on a true anthroposophical foundation. When the more Pagan kind of souls, if I may call them so, bring forth their forces, which are in many cases already there in this incarnation deep within their souls, though they will often only come forth with difficulty,—when as I say they do bring forth the forces that are there in them, then there will spread over the whole Anthroposophical Society an atmosphere of steady and courageous progress in the good sense of Michael.

If this is to be so, we must have the courage to look straight into the intense conflict that is taking place, as between the things that Michael must undertake to achieve his great task, and the things that Ahriman is perpetually placing in his way.

Ahriman has already taken hold of certain tendencies in civilisation and placed them in his service. Consider this one fact:—Only since the 15th century has it become most thoroughly possible for man to take hold of the Intelligence. For since that time the Spiritual Soul is present in man, and the Spiritual Soul is man's very own; therefore it can make the Intelligence its very own. Moreover it is only since that time that those things have come to men, which have made them so exceedingly keen—if I may say so—on their own personal Intelligence.

Make this little calculation; it embraces huge dimensions, though the greatness of it be only in a spatial sense. Try to make this little calculation, my dear friends. Add up in thought all that is being thought today within a single day by all the writers in newspapers over the whole earth, so that newspapers may be produced. Try to imagine the tremendous sum-total of Intelligence that is being chewed out from their pens, put on to paper, printed, and so on. See what an enormous amount of personal Intelligence is flooding through the world. And now go back a few centuries, go back into the 13th century, and see whether such a thing is there at all. It is simply not there, there can be no question of its being there.

But I will give you another task. Imagine in your thought (today is Sunday, it is a good opportunity) just imagine how many meetings are being held on political questions from West to East,—we need not go beyond Europe for the moment. Here again, how much personal Intelligence is flooding through the atmosphere of the earth! And now imagine yourself in the 13th century. They managed without the newspapers and without the meetings. None of these things existed. Compare the 13th century with the present time. We may put it thus:—When you transplant yourself into the 13th century you can look out over the world, your vision is clear and unobstructed. There are no editorial offices, no political meetings, none of these. You look through, clear and free. But today, as you look over the world, everywhere the waves of personal Intelligence are surging forth. They are there everywhere. You simply cannot penetrate. It is a spiritual air that you could cut with a knife, as in some meeting-rooms where everyone is smoking his pipe or his cigar like a chimney-pot, and you say ‘it is an air that you could cut with a knife.’ So is the spiritual atmosphere today.

Such differences must be considered, if we would judge at all truly of the succession of historic epochs. When you read historians like Ranke you see nothing of these things, yet these are the real facts of history.

And all this that has come about since the 13th century, what is it? It is spiritual nourishment for the Ahrimanic Powers. Here in this region, they are first able to make their attacks. Hence the possibilities for Ahriman to take a hand in civilisation have become ever greater and greater. Needless to say, Spirits like Ahriman are not there to incarnate in physical bodies on the earth. Nevertheless, they can work on the earth, not indeed by incarnating but by incorporating themselves for certain spaces of time; when in one man or another there happens what I mentioned before: a diminution or diversion of consciousness. At such moments the human being provides a vehicle, and Ahriman is able—not indeed to incarnate,—but to incorporate himself and to work out of that human being, with that human being's faculties.

It will be my further task to tell you of this kind of working of the Ahrimanic Powers. I shall have to show, for example, how Ahriman has appeared in the course of modern time even as an author. This will show you what things must be observed today by those who would fain observe realities.

You will have seen from the previous lectures, how the souls who out of the depths of their subconscious life feel impelled towards the Anthroposophical Movement, bear this impulse within them through their special relationship to the forces of Michael. We have accordingly considered the working of these Michael-forces throughout the centuries, in order to see what influence the impulses of Michael can have upon the lives of those who stand in any kind of connection with them.

Now the Michael impulses—and this is of great importance for the karma of every single anthroposophist—the Michael impulses are of a kind to enter deeply and intensely into the whole being of man. We know from previous descriptions that the rulership of Michael, if so we may call it, beginning for earthly life at the end of the eighteen-seventies, was preceded by the rulership of Gabriel; and I have described how the rulership of Gabriel is connected with forces that go through the line of physical inheritance—forces related to physical reproduction.

The forces of Michael are the very opposite of this. The rulership of Gabriel is characterised by the fact that his impulses enter strongly into the physical bodily nature of man. Michael, on the other hand, works intensely into the spiritual being of man. You can tell this from the very fact that he is the administrator of the Cosmic Intelligence. But Michael's impulses are strong and powerful. Taking their start from the spiritual, they work through and through the human being. They work into the spiritual, thence into the soul-nature, and thence again into the bodily nature of man. Now in the karmic connections of life, these super-earthly forces are constantly at work. Beings of the higher Hierarchies are working with man and upon him. It is thus that the karma of a man takes shape. And so it is with the Michael-forces. Working as they do upon the whole human being, they work also very strongly into his karma. Gabriel-forces work only very little—I do not say not at all—but very little into the essential karma of a human being. Michael-forces on the other hand work very strongly into his karma.

If, therefore, certain human beings—and this in the last resort applies to you all, my dear friends—if certain human beings are especially connected with the stream of Michael, their individual karmas can only be understood when thought of in connection with the stream of Michael.

Now Michael is a Spirit who stands in a special relationship to the Sun and to all Sun-impulses. This being the case, we shall realise what a profound significance his impulses must have for those who are especially exposed to them. In effect, his forces will work right into the physical organisation. For Michael-men therefore (if we may use this term), we must connect the physical phenomena of health and illness with karma in an even higher degree than for Gabriel- or Raphael-men, or the like. Things in the universe are very complicated; and although Raphael is the Spirit most intimately connected with the art of Healing, nevertheless it is Michael who brings the karma of men nearest of all to health and to disease.

There is another fact in this connection. The Michael-forces not only work in a cosmopolitan sense, but they also work in such a way as to tear a man out of the narrower earthly connections of his life and carry him up on to a spiritual height, where he feels the earthly connections less strongly than others do. At any rate his karma predestines him for this. This again has a profound influence upon the karma of every single man who belongs to the stream of Michael.

You see, in the last third of the 19th century it did really happen that human beings—I will not say of nervous temperament—but human beings intense in soul and spirit, were able to feel the penetration of the Michael-forces into the world. In those who were essentially men of Michael, this penetration of the Michael-forces into the world came to expression in this way: they felt many things, which other men would have passed by more or less indifferently, entering deeply and incisively into their lives.

Above all their karma was such that they had a strong feeling—though they did not understand it clearly—a strong feeling of the battle I described the day before yesterday, the battle between Michael and Ahriman. In the present age, Ahriman can only have a strong influence upon men when their consciousness is diverted in one way or another. The most radical phenomenon is that of a fainting fit, or a diminution of consciousness lasting for a considerable time. In times like this, when a man is overcome by faintness or diminution of consciousness, the Ahriman forces can most effectively approach him. At such times they work their way into him, he is exposed to them. But it was above all in the last third of the 19th century—and especially in the time when the end of the Kali Yuga was approaching, in the very last years of the 19th century,—it was a shattering experience to see behind the scenes of this external, physical world which is spread out before man's senses.

For directly adjoining this outer world there is a world revealing very, very much of those historic processes in which the higher super-sensible Beings enter and play a part.

In the last third of the 19th century, and especially in the last decade, only a thin veil concealed that which we recognise as the dominion of Michael, the great battle of Michael and all the facts connected with him. Since then, Michael himself has been taking part in the battle even in the outer world, and we need a far stronger power to behold what is present supersensibly than was needed before the end of the Kali Yuga, when, as I said, the next adjoining world, where Michael was battling as yet behind the scenes, was severed from our own by a thin veil only.

But Michael insists, as I have told you, that his dominion shall prevail and penetrate at any cost. Michael is a Spirit filled with strength, and he can only make use of thoroughly brave men, men full of inner courage.

Now in the whole nexus that I have described, in the super-sensible School of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and in the great super-sensible Cult of the beginning of the 19th century, among all the spirits who partake in these things, great numbers of Luciferic figures are all the time playing their part. The Luciferic figures are necessary, necessary in the whole connection of these things. Michael needs the Luciferic spirits, he needs their co-operation to overcome the polar antithesis of Ahriman. Thus the men of Michael are placed into the very midst of the battle—or, if we may not call it so—the surging waves of interplay, of Luciferic impulses and Ahrimanic.

Just at the end of the 19th century these things showed themselves with great clarity and definition. In those years it was by no means rarely that one caught a glimpse, through the veil, as I have called it. Then one saw how intensely Michael was having to battle against Ahriman, and how easy it was for the consciousness of men to be diverted by all manner of Luciferic influences.

You may say: Disturbances of consciousness, attacks of faintness and the like, are nothing out of the ordinary. Outwardly considered they are not, of course; but they can become most significant through that which happens as a consequence,—through that which ensues when the diversion or diminution of consciousness takes place. I will give you an example.

It was once a question of someone being made more intimately acquainted with a certain historic personality. He was to study an historic personality who had lived in the time of the Renaissance and Reformation. I want you to understand me precisely. All the preparations had been made for this man (it was at the end of the eighteen-nineties) to become historically acquainted with a personality who had lived at the time of the Renaissance and Reformation. Indeed, with all the conditions that had gone before, it seemed scarcely possible for anything else to happen, than that he would become familiar with that historic personality in the perfectly ordinary, and if I may call it so, pedantic way of scholarship. But look what happened. Through the refined workings of karma he became incapable of using his consciousness just at the very time when he was to have had this experience. He fell into a kind of sleep from which he could not awaken, and was thus prevented.

Of course in ordinary life one pays little heed to such a thing. Yet it is through happenings like these that we look directly from the earthly into the spiritual world. And if you want an explanation of this fact, then we must say: This man, who was to have become historically acquainted with a certain personality of the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, would undoubtedly have received a very strong impression if he had had this experience. He did not have it; he missed it, he was prevented. But in that very time, the impression which he would have received was transformed. He received it in another form; it was transformed into a peculiar impressionability for the Michael element. He actually received, though unconsciously, a real power of understanding for the Michael element.

I give this somewhat strange example in order to show you by what paths the Michael element was approaching human beings at that time. We could give many examples of this kind. Indeed, human beings to-day would be quite different if such things had not occurred to many individuals. Such things may happen in hundreds of different ways. In the case I have just related, my dear friends, the man actually fell into a kind of sleep. In other cases it happened thus:—Some event that would have led a man away from Michael was prevented by a friend or someone else coming and taking him away to a different place, and his consciousness was veiled around in a most natural and matter-of-fact way. He was prevented from partaking in what was karmically set before him to begin with. It was just in those years that the strongest interferences took place with the ordinary smooth course of karma.

And as a rule in such cases it became evident how deeply these Michael influences work. In many instances one saw that such human beings had been affected not only in soul but even down into the body when their karma had received a jerk of this kind, because Michael needed to enter through the portals of a human consciousness into the earthly world of sense.

It is interesting in the highest degree to see how in the eighteen-nineties men were led into events which were none other than the paths of Michael from the spiritual into the physical world. For you must remember, the entry of Michael into the physical world was taking place in the last third of the 19th century. But it had been prepared for, in the spiritual world, for a long time before—already since the beginning of the eighteen-forties. If I may put it so, Michael and his hosts were drawing ever nearer and nearer, and it became more and more evident that those human beings would now descend, who in their earthly destiny were connected with the task of Michael,—the task of receiving the Intelligence here upon earth again after it had fallen away from the hosts of Michael in the super-sensible world.

Into the midst of all these things, as you will recognise from my presentation of the Mysteries, the Anthroposophical Movement is placed. For the Anthroposophical Movement is connected, as you will see from former lectures, with this whole stream of Michael.

Now I want you to consider in this light the karmic conditions of individual human beings who are led by an inner urge to approach the Anthroposophical Movement. They come, to begin with, from the world. They stand in many connections in the world. There have indeed been many communities in the world's history in which human beings have become united. But there was never a cohesive power of that peculiar quality which the Michael forces engender. Hence a peculiar situation is brought about for those who find their way, from other connections in the world, into the Anthroposophical Society. One can find one's way into other societies too, and could always do so, but one's destiny did not need to be very deeply affected. Into the Anthroposophical Society one cannot come—not at least in a thoroughly sincere way that really moves the soul—without being deeply and fundamentally influenced in one's destiny. This becomes especially clear when we consider these things along a right line of approach.

Take a human being who is just coming into the Anthroposophical Society, and who until then had certain connections with non-anthroposophists, which he may perhaps still continue to have. The difference between the one who stands within and the one who stands or remains outside, is of far greater significance than in the case of any other communities. There are two kinds of relationships.

Through the fulfilment of all the things I have described, we are living, once and for all, in a time of great, immense decisions. Thus the standing side-by-side to-day of anthroposophists and non-anthroposophists is fraught with great decisions. Either it is a question of the dissolving of old karma for the one who is in the Anthroposophical Society, or it is a question of the weaving of new karma for the one who is outside it. And these are great differences.

Let us assume an anthroposophist stands very near in life to a non-anthroposophist. It may be to begin with that the anthroposophist has old karmic connections to settle with the non-anthroposophist. On the other hand it may be that the non-anthroposophist has to enter into karmic connections with the anthroposophist, for the future. At any rate these are the only two cases I have hitherto been able to observe, though of course they are of many different kinds. There are no intermediates, there are no others beside these two. From this you will see that this is really a time of great decisions, for, if we may describe it so, either non-anthroposophists are being influenced in such a way that they come to the Michael community, or else the influences work in such a way that those who do not belong to the Michael community will be avoided by it. This indeed is the time of great decisions—the great crisis to which the sacred books of all time have referred—for in reality the present age is meant. Such indeed is the peculiar nature of the Michael impulses: they are fraught with great decisions, and they become decisive especially in this our age.

Human beings who in the present incarnation receive the Michael impulses through Anthroposophy, are thereby preparing their whole being in such a way that these Michael impulses enter even into the forces that are otherwise determined merely by the connections of race and nation.

Think how much this means:—Here is a man who stands within some national group. We can see at once, he is a Russian, he is a Frenchman, he is an Englishman, he is a German. We recognise it by his appearance, and we locate him by thinking, as we see him, where can this man belong? We think it a matter of some importance if we can recognise: he is a Turk, he is a Russian, or the like. Now with those who to-day receive Anthroposophy with inner force of soul, with deep impulse and strength of heart—who receive it, therefore, as the deepest force of their life—such distinctions will have no more meaning when next they return to earth. People will say: Where does he come from? He is not of any nation, he is not of any race, he is as though he had grown away from all races and nations.

When the last Michael dominion took place, in the age of Alexander, the point was to spread Grecian culture in a cosmopolitan way, carrying it out in all directions. The campaigns of Alexander were an immense achievement in the equalising of men on earth, I mean in the spreading among them of a common element. But the thing was not yet able to strike so deep, for at that time Michael still administered the Cosmic Intelligence. Now Intelligence is on the earth, now it strikes far deeper, it strikes down even into the earthly element of man. For the first time, the Spiritual is preparing to become a race-creating force. The time will come when one will no longer be able to say: the man looks as if he belonged to this or that country,—he is a Turk, or an Arabian, an Englishman, a Russian or a German,—but one will have to say what will amount to this: ‘In a former life on earth this man felt impelled to turn towards the Spirit in the sense of Michael.’ Thus, that which is influenced by Michael will appear as an immediate, physically creative, physically formative power.

Now this is a thing that takes root deeply, very deeply in the karma of the individual. Hence the strange destiny of those who are sincere anthroposophists, the strange destiny that they are not able to come to terms with the world; they cannot quite master it, and yet at the same time they have to approach the world and enter into it with full earnestness.

I have said that those who stand with full intensity within the Anthroposophical Movement will return at the end of the century, and others will then unite with them, for by this means the salvation of the earth and earthly civilisation from destruction must eventually be settled. This is the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement, which weighs on the one hand so heavily upon one's heart, while on the other hand it moves the heart, uplifts it with enthusiasm. This mission we must understand and see.

It is most necessary for the anthroposophist to know that in this situation as an anthroposophist his karma will be harder to experience than it is for other men. From the very outset those who come into the Anthroposophical Society are predestined to a harder, more difficult experience of karma than other men. And if we try to pass this harder experience by—if we want to experience our karma in a comfortable way—it will surely take vengeance on us in one direction or another. We must be anthroposophists in our experience of karma too. To be true anthroposophists we must be able to observe our own experience of karma with constant wide-awake attention. If we do not, then our comfortable, easy-going experiencing of our karma—or rather our desire to experience it so—will find expression and take vengeance in physical illnesses, physical accidents and the like.

These finer, more intimate connections of life must indeed be seen and observed, for then we shall see many another thing besides. It is the best preparation for true and real spiritual sight, to observe these more intimate connections of life attentively. It is a wrong principle to want to evolve all manner of nebulous, abnormal, visionary states. On the other hand it is immensely right to occupy oneself with all that goes on more finely and intimately in the connections of destiny which we can recognise.

Do we not see how this becomes our karma, my dear friends: we live, or have lived, alongside of human beings who are absolutely prevented, inwardly prevented, from coming near to things anthroposophical. They are prevented, in spite of all that we—I will not say have brought to them of Anthroposophy—but that we might have brought to them if they would only take it. We see this happen, surely. Now this also is among the great decisions of present-day life. For the things that take place in this way will have great karmic significance, both for the one who comes into the Anthroposophical Movement and for the one who remains outside it. It will have extraordinary significance.

Let us imagine that these human beings meet one another again in a future incarnation. We know that what happens to us in future incarnations is already being prepared for in this present. The meeting-again with human beings to whom we are related in the way I have just described, will be such that the usual strangeness between man and man will be essentially enhanced. For Michael works right down into the physical sympathies and antipathies. Now all this is taking place already now in a preparatory way, for every single anthroposophist. It is immensely important for an anthroposophist to study just those karmic relationships which unfold between him and non-anthroposophists. For in this connection things are taking place which reach up into the next kingdom of the Hierarchies. For you must see, there is a counterpart to what I have just described, when I said that the Michael impulses appear as a race-creating force. There is a counterpart to it

Let us take the following karmic instance. Someone is taken hold of in the very highest degree by the impulses of Anthroposophy. He is taken hold of in heart and mind, in soul and spirit. In such a case something will necessarily happen, which, expressed in words, sounds very strange indeed; and yet it is necessary. In such a case the Angel of the man must learn something. This is a thing of untold significance. The destiny of anthroposophists,—the destiny that works itself out between anthroposophists and non-anthroposophists,—casts its waves even into the worlds of the Angeloi. It leads to a parting of the Spirits, even in the world of the Angeloi. The Angel who accompanies the anthroposophist to his next incarnations learns to find his way still more deeply into the spiritual kingdoms than he could do before, while the Angel who belongs to the other man—to the one who cannot enter,—descends. It is in the destiny of the Angeloi that we first perceive how this great separation is taking place. To this, my dear friends, I would now direct your hearts. It is happening now, that the comparatively single and uniform kingdom of the Angeloi is being turned into a twofold kingdom of Angeloi, a kingdom of Angeloi with an upward tendency into the higher worlds, and with a downward tendency into lower worlds.

While the Michael community is being formed here upon earth, we can behold above it the ascending and the descending Angeloi. Looking more deeply into the world to-day, one can perpetually observe these streams, which are such as to stir the heart to its foundations.

Now I have told you that those who come into the anthroposophical life fall into two main groups. There are the ones who still carry into it a knowledge from the old heathen times, and have had little experience of that Christian development which took its course during the Kali Yuga. They have gone on evolving out of the old Pagan sources, and they now grow into the Christianity which is to be a cosmic Christianity once more. They are souls with a Pagan predestination, who in reality are only now growing into Christianity. The others are souls who are a little weary of Paganism, though they do not confess this to themselves. From the outset they grow into the Anthroposophical Movement on account of its Christian character, but they do not enter so deeply into the anthroposophical Cosmology, the anthroposophical Anthropology, and so forth. They enter, rather, into the more abstractly religious side. These two groups are clearly to be distinguished.

Now for the group of a more Pagan predestination it is particularly necessary to take hold of the sustaining forces of Anthroposophy with full intensity of inner life. For this group, it is most necessary to avoid all side-tracks and other considerations, and steer straight forward in the direction of the anthroposophical sustaining forces.

We can only grasp these things when we receive them in our hearts; but they must enter into the hearts of anthroposophists. For only then will a real living-together within the Anthroposophical Society be possible, on a true anthroposophical foundation. When the more Pagan kind of souls, if I may call them so, bring forth their forces, which are in many cases already there in this incarnation deep within their souls, though they will often only come forth with difficulty,—when as I say they do bring forth the forces that are there in them, then there will spread over the whole Anthroposophical Society an atmosphere of steady and courageous progress in the good sense of Michael.

If this is to be so, we must have the courage to look straight into the intense conflict that is taking place, as between the things that Michael must undertake to achieve his great task, and the things that Ahriman is perpetually placing in his way.

Ahriman has already taken hold of certain tendencies in civilisation and placed them in his service. Consider this one fact:—Only since the 15th century has it become most thoroughly possible for man to take hold of the Intelligence. For since that time the Spiritual Soul is present in man, and the Spiritual Soul is man's very own; therefore it can make the Intelligence its very own. Moreover it is only since that time that those things have come to men, which have made them so exceedingly keen—if I may say so—on their own personal Intelligence.

Make this little calculation; it embraces huge dimensions, though the greatness of it be only in a spatial sense. Try to make this little calculation, my dear friends. Add up in thought all that is being thought to-day within a single day by all the writers in newspapers over the whole earth, so that newspapers may be produced. Try to imagine the tremendous sum-total of Intelligence that is being chewed out from their pens, put on to paper, printed, and so on. See what an enormous amount of personal Intelligence is flooding through the world. And now go back a few centuries, go back into the 13th century, and see whether such a thing is there at all. It is simply not there, there can be no question of its being there.

But I will give you another task. Imagine in your thought (to-day is Sunday, it is a good opportunity) just imagine how many meetings are being held on political questions from West to East,—we need not go beyond Europe for the moment. Here again, how much personal Intelligence is flooding through the atmosphere of the earth! And now imagine yourself in the 13th century. They managed without the newspapers and without the meetings. None of these things existed. Compare the 13th century with the present time. We may put it thus:—When you transplant yourself into the 13th century you can look out over the world, your vision is clear and unobstructed. There are no editorial offices, no political meetings, none of these. You look through, clear and free. But to-day, as you look over the world, everywhere the waves of personal Intelligence are surging forth. They are there everywhere. You simply cannot penetrate. It is a spiritual air that you could cut with a knife, as in some meeting-rooms where everyone is smoking his pipe or his cigar like a chimney-pot, and you say ‘it is an air that you could cut with a knife.’ So is the spiritual atmosphere to-day.

Such differences must be considered, if we would judge at all truly of the succession of historic epochs. When you read historians like Ranke you see nothing of these things, yet these are the real facts of history.

And all this that has come about since the 13th century, what is it? It is spiritual nourishment for the Ahrimanic Powers. Here in this region, they are first able to make their attacks. Hence the possibilities for Ahriman to take a hand in civilisation have become ever greater and greater. Needless to say. Spirits like Ahriman are not there to incarnate in physical bodies on the earth. Nevertheless, they can work on the earth, not indeed by incarnating but by incorporating themselves for certain spaces of time; when in one man or another there happens what I mentioned before: a diminution or diversion of consciousness. At such moments the human being provides a vehicle, and Ahriman is able,—not indeed to incarnate,—but to incorporate himself and to work out of that human being, with that human being's faculties.

It will be my further task to tell you of this kind of working of the Ahrimanic Powers. I shall have to show, for example, how Ahriman has appeared in the course of modern time even as an author. This will show you what things must be observed to-day by those who would fain observe realities.

[ 1 ] Through the Leading Thoughts which have been sent out from the Goetheanum during the past weeks to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, the soul has been directed to the Beings of the spiritual kingdoms with whom man is connected from above, just as, from below, he is connected with the kingdoms of Nature.

[ 2 ] True self-knowledge may become the guide through which man finds his way into these spiritual kingdoms. And when such self-knowledge is striven after in the right way, then the understanding will be awakened for what Anthroposophy is able to make known through its insight into the life of the spiritual world. But self-knowledge must be practised in the true sense, not as a mere rigid gazing into one's inner being.

[ 3 ] By means of such a true self-knowledge one arrives in the first place at what lives in memory. In thought-pictures, the shadow of what was a direct and living experience in the past is called up into consciousness. Anyone seeing a shadow will, out of an inner impulse of thought, be guided to the object which threw the shadow. He who bears a memory within him cannot in this direct way turn the eye of his soul to the experience which lives on in the memory. But when he truly reflects on his own nature he will be obliged to say to himself: that he himself, in his soul-being, is what his experiences have made of him—those experiences which throw their shadows into the memory. The memory-shadows appear in the consciousness; in the soul there shines what in the memory is shadow. Dead shadow lives in the memory; living being lives in the soul in which the memory is active.

[ 4 ] It is only necessary that this relationship of the memory to the actual soul-life should be made clear; and in this striving for clearness in self-knowledge a man will then perceive that he is on the path to the spiritual world.

[ 5 ] Through memory, man is looking at the spiritual in his own soul. But in the ordinary consciousness he does not arrive at a real grasp of what he thus looks upon. He looks in the direction on something; but his look meets with no reality. Anthroposophy, out of Imaginative Knowledge, shows the way to this reality. Through it we are referred from the shadow to that which gleams and shines. Anthroposophy does this, in that it speaks of the etheric body of man. It shows how the physical body is active in the thought-shadow pictures; but how in the gleaming and shining the etheric body lives.

[ 6 ] With the physical body man is in the sense-world; with the etheric body he is in the etheric world. In the sense-world he has his environment; in the etheric world also. And Anthroposophy speaks of this latter environment as the first of the hidden worlds in which man is living. It is the kingdom of the Third Hierarchy.

[ 7 ] Let us now approach speech in the same way that we have considered memory. It issues from within man just as does the memory. It connects him with a certain state of being, as memory unites him with his own experiences. In words, too, there is an element of shadow. This is deeper than the shadow of the thoughts of memory. When man inwardly casts the shadow of his experiences as his memories, his own hidden self is active in the whole process. He is there when the light casts the shadow.

[ 8 ] In speech there is also a process of shadow-casting. The words are the shadows. What is it in this case that shines? Something stronger shines, because words are stronger shadows than are the thoughts of memory. The element in the human self which in the course of an earthly life can produce memories, cannot create words. Man must learn these in connection with other human beings. Something which lies deeper in him than that which casts the shadow of memory must take part in this process. In this case Anthroposophy speaks from Inspired Knowledge of the astral body, as in the case of memory it speaks of the etheric body. The astral body is added to the physical and etheric bodies as a third part of the human being.

[ 9 ] This third part, too, has a cosmic environment about it. This is made up of the Second Hierarchy. In human language we have a phantom of this Second Hierarchy. As to his astral body, man lives within the province of this Hierarchy.

[ 10 ] We may go still further. In speech a portion of man's being is engaged. When he speaks he brings his inner being into motion. That which surrounds this inner being remains at rest. The movement of speech wrings itself loose from the human being while he remains at rest, but the whole man comes into motion when he brings into activity all that belongs to his limbs. In such movement man is no less full of expression than in memory and speech. Memory expresses his experiences. The nature of language consists in its being the expression of something. In the same way the man whose whole being is in motion expresses something.

[ 11 ] Anthroposophy points out that this ‘something’ is another part of the human being. From Intuitive Knowledge it speaks of the ‘real Self’ or ‘I.’ This too, it finds, has a cosmic environment, namely the First Hierarchy.

[ 12 ] When man approaches the thoughts in his memory he meets with the first supersensible element—his own etheric being. Anthroposophy points out to him the cosmic environment corresponding to it. When man considers himself as one who makes use of language he finds his astral being. This is no longer comprehended in that which only acts inwardly, like memory. It is seen by Inspiration as that which in the act of speaking shapes a physical process out of the Spiritual. Speech is a physical process. At its foundation lies an activity which proceeds from the sphere of the Second Hierarchy.

[ 13 ] When the whole man is in motion there is a more intense physical action than in speech. Not merely a part of man is moulded, the whole man is given shape; and in the physical being which lives and moves in form, the First Hierarchy is active.

[ 14 ] In this way, then, true self-knowledge can be cultivated. But in doing this man does not grasp his own Self alone. Step by step he comprehends the parts of his body: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Self. And by comprehending these he also reaches up, step by step, to higher worlds which like the three kingdoms of Nature, the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, belong, as the three spiritual kingdoms, to the whole Universe in which his being is unfolding.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 15 ] 69. The Third Hierarchy reveals itself as pure soul and spirit. It lives and moves in all that man experiences in the soul, in his inner life. Neither in the etheric nor in the physical could any processes arise if this Hierarchy alone were active. Soul-life alone could exist.

[ 16 ] 70. The Second Hierarchy reveals itself as soul and spirit that works in the etheric. All that is etheric is a manifestation of the Second Hierarchy. This Hierarchy, however, does not reveal itself directly in the physical; its power extends only to etheric processes. Only etheric and soul-life could exist if the Third and the Second Hierarchy alone were active.

[ 17 ] 71. The First and strongest Hierarchy reveals itself as the spiritually active principle within the physical. It makes the physical world into a Cosmos. The Third and the Second Hierarchy are the Beings who minister to it in this activity.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 18 ] 72. As soon as we approach the higher members of man's being—the etheric, the astral body and the Ego-organisation—we are obliged to seek for man's relation to the beings of the spiritual kingdoms. It is only the physical body's organisation which we can illumine by reference to the three physical kingdoms of Nature.

[ 19 ] 73. In the etheric body the Intelligence of the Cosmos becomes embodied in the human being. That this can happen, requires the activity of cosmic Beings, who, in their combined working, shape the etheric body of man, even as the physical forces shape the physical.

[ 20 ] 74. In the astral body the spiritual world implants the moral impulses into the human being. That these can show forth their life in man's Organisation, depends on the activity of Beings who are able not only to think the Spiritual, but to shape it in its reality.

[ 21 ] 75. In the Ego-organisation man experiences himself, even in the physical body, as a Spirit. That this can happen, requires the activity of Beings who themselves, as spiritual Beings, live in the physical world.

[Even before the report written by H. J. Heywood-Smith about the Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland on April 22 was sent out by the Society in a circular dated May 14, Heywood-Smith had sent a short report to the Friends in England with the following cover letter dated May 1: “Haus Friedwart, Dornach, May 1, 1923

Enclosed is a brief report on the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. You will see from it that Dr. Steiner hopes that such gatherings will also be held in other countries, when Anthroposophists unite to set themselves a worthy task that the whole world cannot help but respect.

It has been four months since the destruction of the Goetheanum by fire and the consequent homelessness of Anthroposophy, and yet nothing has been done to rebuild the structure. Is it not clear from Rudolf Steiner's earnest words that the worthy task that the Society as a whole should take on and work on with all its strength and energy is the rebuilding of the Goetheanum? Would this not be a positive act in response to the attacks of the enemies of anthroposophy?

Would you call a meeting of the members of the groups as soon as possible and discuss with them what the doctor expects of such a meeting, and if they agree, take a decision to the effect that it is their firm intention to rebuild the Goetheanum in Dornach and that they wish the work to begin immediately. Such a resolution, passed by groups in several countries, would contribute to the fulfillment of the first condition under which the building could be rebuilt. The resolution should be sent to Dr. Steiner, Villa Hansi, Dornach, Switzerland, as soon as possible, for Dr. Steiner asked the members not to leave the assembly room before they had set themselves a real task, but unfortunately the assembly in Dornach ended without this having happened.

With best regards
H.J. Heywood-Smith

The lectures, addresses and contributions to discussions given by Rudolf Steiner at the Christmas Conference for the Founding of the General Anthroposophical Society in 1923/24 were first published by Marie Steiner twenty-one years later. She undertook the revision of the text and wrote the introductory and concluding words. The original form of Marie Steiner's presentation has been maintained in the present new edition within the framework of the Complete Works. Any changes made in the text after comparison with the existing records have been documented in the Notes. A Supplement has been added containing facsimile reproductions of documents in Rudolf Steiner's handwriting as well as of texts and diagrams made on the blackboard during the Conference.

The Conference was for members of the Anthroposophical Society only. This fact determined the tone of Rudolf Steiner's contributions, especially the lectures. ‘I was permitted to speak in internal circles in a manner which would have had to be different had I spoken publicly from the start.’ (The Course of my Life)

The records taken down in shorthand were originally not intended for publication, and Rudolf Steiner was unable to check them himself. Though for the greatest part they may be assumed to be verbatim, nevertheless, as with all his published lectures, account must be taken of his own proviso in this matter: ‘There will be nothing for it but to accept that there may be mistakes in the records I have been unable to check myself. A judgment on the content of these private publications will in any event only be acceptable when it is based on that knowledge which is a prerequisite for such judgment. In the case of most of these publications this is at least the knowledge of man and the universe as given by Anthroposophy, and also what may be found under the heading “anthroposophical history” in the wisdom that has been received from the spiritual world.’ (The Course of my Life)

Today I would like to mention something that comes from outside, but which is actually already inwardly connected with all spiritual scientific impulses, namely, that it really does depend on whether we finally take these spiritual scientific impulses very seriously. Then we can hope that the goals that must be set with them will be achieved. And this seriousness cannot be great enough. You see, my dear friends, at the time when the Anthroposophical Society was founded, founded out of an inner necessity – in the face of all the impossibilities that existed at that time with regard to spiritual science – the way in which I, for example, have to stand within this anthroposophical movement was formulated, precisely formulated. This foundation must be maintained. And everything that has happened in the last few years, right up to the present day, proves that this foundation must be fully maintained if the spiritual science movement, as we understand it, and this anthroposophical movement are to continue. We really won't get anywhere by burying our heads in the sand like an ostrich. As I said recently, it could look as if you were constantly moving forward as a blind man, when in fact things are already clear to you in the eye of your soul.

Various things have been perceived again and again: When this or that happened, many things emerged that — I would like to say — gave me such a position within spiritual science that the pure effectiveness, the pure flow of spiritual scientific truth suffered from many things. And yet it is so remarkably strange how little this is taken into account.

It would be quite wrong for you, my dear friends, to believe that the words I am speaking now are directed against anyone in any way, or spoken so vaguely that this or that person might believe they are meant. That is not the case: there are dear friends among us who work faithfully for our cause, who give much, much of their energies to it, and who really do everything they can to further this spiritual scientific movement, that is, to advance it in a concrete way so that it can continue. But they, in particular, must realize that certain things must be sharply defined. So don't take it the way you would if you thought: Oh, I'm supposed to think, I'm doing it wrong either way, the words I speak are far from that. But there must be room for an understanding that it is an anomaly, for example, do you see that in our circles people keep appearing who, so to speak, turn all facts into their opposite. For example, if someone, some X, does this or that that one is obliged to turn against. What happens?

In rare cases, a real handling of the interest occurs that one must turn against this or that. Or, if the interest occurs, it fades away very quickly. Things are quickly forgotten. On the other hand, when one has to turn against this or that, then those who say: Do everything you can to ensure that something particularly unpleasant does not happen to the one who did it, against whom you have to turn, that something particularly unpleasant does not happen to him. You have to make every effort to cajole the one who has done something wrong, so that everything - you have to treat him in a particularly charming way, so that he is not angry that you think the truth about him, that he has done something wrong that you have to turn against him.

Taking the wrong side to protect, turning protection to the wrong side, that is such a typical phenomenon. What attacks we have experienced; against the board, against the members of the board! Yes, the interest in the attacked board or the attacked board members has always waned terribly quickly. There has always been a lot of talk about it, but very soon even what one has said oneself has been forgotten.

But the interest has stubbornly persisted that what has been said has been said: that person has been treated badly, that person has been reproached. And now letters have been written to the members of the board. [And now the members of the board are supposed to] go there and reconcile those who actually caused the whole thing! It is a very typical phenomenon. Always turning the understanding in the wrong direction.

Now, my dear friends, many things seek a channel, as it were, and make this or that a recurring typical phenomenon: Thus, it has occurred before, one can say, in a frightening way in recent times, has occurred again and again, that the honor that has been done to me in a dubious way for so long, that whenever someone did not want to take responsibility for something but still wanted to advocate it, they would say, “Doctor Steiner said so.” This way, this dubious way, has been transferred to Dr. Steiner for some time. And wherever it occurs — “She said so” — it is incredible! Or: “She said this or that about it.”

Dear friends, the way Dr. Steiner has to work with me, always has to work with me, it is only possible to maintain that trust within society if complete clarity is brought into this matter. But what is behind all these things? Behind these things is really everything. From the simplest statement: “Dr. Steiner is behind this again.” – From writing private letters: “Dr. Steiner is behind this again.” – From this simple statement to those undertakings that have recently come from this angle of mind, I would like to say.

I had to speak to you about such an attack here recently. It had to be mentioned for the simple reason that I had to make a comment in connection with this attack. I said quite simply at the time - without claiming that it was originally connected with the intentions one has: But what one undertakes in this direction can lead to claims and statements that I characterized at the time, which is sailing directly towards undermining my activity, our activity within the anthroposophical movement – insofar as it is linked to this structure – just as I said at the time: that we are separated from the structure, exiled from the structure. The movement is not going the way I described it, in terms of subjective intentions, but in the direction of the actions and assertions of certain people, the movement is going that way. Because I had to point out, without naming names – and I still don't want to name names today – I had to point out that among the attackers is a very respected writer who writes pages and pages about facts that don't even exist, and who chooses the way to carry out his attacks – including against me – but chooses to do so via Dr. Steiner, who attributes characteristics to her - I don't even want to talk about them - that one can hardly decide whether they arise from madness or from a particularly sophisticated way of representing certain things. A writer to whom one was extremely close, to whom one did exactly the opposite of what he now makes the basis of his attack, and who formulates the attacks in such a way that they can achieve their goals in a particularly sophisticated way. I said at the time that I ascribe the intentions, the subjective ones, to what emerges from the letter out of incredible national chauvinism. Without wanting to talk about intentions, I am talking about the consequences that may occur. And that I was not completely wrong, that I characterized at the time not without reason, you can see that simply from the fact that the same words that appear in that letter, those words that are pulled out of thin air and that – even if they were true – show that the person concerned, according to his own statement that the person in question has been pretending for six years, that these words, which were in the letter, appear in a newspaper that could be described as a rag, literally the same words, literally the same attitude, that it is now already being incorporated into this current, that is important now; not important because of this paper – because printing ink contains so much – but that the way is found by someone who – despite the fact that we have done exactly the opposite – takes what he has made the basis of his attack, his fundamentally untrue attack, and that this finds its way into such rags, that speaks volumes. Not that it is found in these rivulets, but that it is what came to us in this way, as I had to characterize some time ago.

My dear friends! The attitude of any person is not in the least affected by anything that must happen within our anthroposophical movement. Everyone may have attitudes that they believe they need. But saying untrue things is something else. And if you want to prove an attitude with untrue things that you direct against someone personally, then that characterizes the whole kind of attack that is made and the whole kind of attitude and way of thinking from which such attacks are possible.

The person in question – after saying this about Dr. Steiner – turns to me. If someone honestly refutes what I have done, that is something different from writing personal things that border on objective defamation, which then find their way, as can now be seen, to such prey.

So there we were, my dear friends, there we were for years, endeavoring to carry out honestly that which leads from one cultural current to another, that which brings peace and harmony between the individual cultural currents. There are attacks in this way, not resorting to refutations, but to defamation. This is only the most generous of the attacks that are already being made in this direction. Don't think that I would have said a word about what is sent out into the world in the form of printing ink. I have often said that I have a good remedy for such things: when I have read them and held them in my hands, I wash my hands afterwards. But that is not the case here. And the fact that these are the same words that appear in the letter of a person who has lived in our midst for years, who is now incapable of writing a single correct sentence, who must know that everything he says is a pure untruth, the opposite of truth, does not incite me to speak in such a way, and to speak again, but, my dear friends, it compels me to do so because there is no other way to get through to people who, in another way, do not want to be reached. , but rather, my dear friends, it is because they do not want to do it in any other way, now, by inciting what can be incited, [because] they want to get at our movement out of national chauvinism.

I can count, my dear friends, on the fact that I will never teach in this building! I can count on the fact that I only contributed to the realization of the forms – I, my dear friends, can only not draw any conclusions about these things. What should I draw as a conclusion? I could have drawn a different conclusion from all of this before the construction began. Iron obligations bind one to what has been done. The construction came about because a large number of people made their sacrifices, which I believe was on the condition that the construction remains connected to me in a certain way as long as I live. I am forced, because people have made their sacrifices in reliance on this fact, not to be able to draw the conclusion that would have to be drawn today in order for one point of view to be made absolutely clear: so that no one can find the opportunity to insult the one who works closest by my side, calling her a person who wants nothing more than to satisfy a desire for power or the like.

I cannot resign. I must maintain the commitment that I have had since the construction began, not to disappoint those who have made their sacrifices precisely with a view to our remaining connected to this construction. Real commitments are kept. That is why I said the other day: nothing will induce me to voluntarily loosen the ties that bind me to the building. Don't think that I am speaking thoughtlessly or without realizing the gravity of the situation. But let it be quite clear: I will hold out as an adviser and I will see if a sufficient number of people will understand.

Whatever lies are told, if there are any desires for power or the like that are deadly to everything within our movement, and if such lies are told as are being told now, our movement cannot continue to exist. I will not resign from the Honorary Presidium out of politeness to the Anthroposophical Society, but for the time being I will remain purely passive with regard to this ownership of the Honorary Presidium. But I ask you to take into account that I only want to be an advisor for all spiritual matters, as it was intended at the beginning of the Anthroposophical Movement.

However, Dr. Steiner will, as quickly as possible, now carry out her decision and resign from her position on the Central Council, so that she too stands within this movement only as a private person, as I myself do. She will fully meet the challenges she faces as a private person through her spiritual potency, she will do everything she can do; but she will no longer hold any office as soon as possible, she will no longer hold any office in any direction, but [she will] only stand as a private person, like myself, within the Anthroposophical Society.

I would like to say: there have been enough words; there have been enough meetings about all kinds of things; there has been enough talk. Perhaps it will have more effect if there is an action for a change. The next step should be for Dr. Steiner to resign, on my advice. The measure is full of what has been directed against her from all sides in recent times. Not a week goes by without the most incredible attacks coming from somewhere. Such things would at least undermine what is needed for real productive work. We will only be able to continue working if we both stand as private individuals within this society. It remains to be seen whether there will still be people who will find the opportunity to speak of all kinds of agitation and all kinds of lust for power. Yes, we have come a long way in our time, a wonderful way!

I would not have returned to that letter, which I mentioned at the time, if after this letter there had not been a number of developments that filled the cup to the brim, and if it had not become completely clear how closely related what lives in this letter is to what is subtly revealed in every line, wherever one looks, what one strives for. Well, my dear friends, as long as possible I will remain connected in this way with what the Bau should be. For the reasons stated, I cannot voluntarily resign from the Anthroposophical Society. But when one sees how – and as I said, I am not talking about subjective intentions, but about objective facts – what is done by people who should know that they are saying untruths is turned into the opposite, then it has gone far, and then it just has to be said.

In this formulation, my dear friends, I must announce to you that I ask to always be taken seriously as a private person, as has been the case since 1912, and to take note that the measure has been taken and that Dr. Steiner is resigning from her post on the central committee and her other offices and will devote herself to the Society in the future in a spiritual activity in the direction she has already taken. I think I have said enough.

See GA 223

Words on the Inaugural Meeting of the Austrian National Society

My dear friends! At today's afternoon meeting, you have adopted a resolution for which I must be grateful to you. I express my thanks to you from the depths of my heart. But you must not be angry with me if I also say a few words about what should be linked with what has been discussed so often this afternoon, and so passionately at times: the further development, the reorganization, the coming of age of the Anthroposophical Society. All this is certainly extraordinarily good when it is backed by a strong will. But, my dear friends, I am sometimes put in the position of having to speak more concretely about what is actually necessary. Since, to my regret, I cannot be in Vienna as often as I would like, I have spoken less concretely about these things here in Vienna than, for example, in February on other occasions in Stuttgart. But some of what I said in Stuttgart or Dornach with regard to what would be necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to come of age in the twenty-first year of its life may have been leaked. Again and again I had to point out a word that is very necessary in the development of the Anthroposophical Society: This is the word waking up, being attentive to what is going on around us, having a heart for life – not just for theories about life – in the Anthroposophical Society. Please forgive me if I then also characterize small things; but to him who observes life, it often reveals itself in small things. I would like to draw attention to one such detail. It is not meant in a negative way, but the following happened a few days ago.

It is true that I care as little as possible about what is said in public about my lectures or about what I do. But there are exceptions. On the day of my second public lecture, a newspaper article appeared here that – I will now completely disregard whether it is praising or not, I do not consider praising articles more valuable than terribly scathing ones – but it does have some characteristic words that say the following. I mention it because of the coming of age of our society. About supersensible knowledge it says:

"It (anthroposophy) has not met the challenge of the time to improve our existence, so it has not yet proved itself to be the challenge of the time. And it will not become so until it comes to truly beneficial insights in its ‘exact formulation of supersensible experience’. What it offers us is only old mysticism, which fell asleep when it experienced the supersensible and, upon awakening, forgot everything it had experienced. Overcoming such forgetfulness is the challenge of the times for Rudolf Steiner.

These words are extremely characteristic. I am only, I would like to say, as if by fate, somewhat absorbed in the discussion of this demand, in that I have pointed out that there are insights, for example, about the human heart, that lead us further in education. But just think: if I had received this article when the lecture was given, instead of a day after, then I could have replied: “What you are calling for exists!” I touched on it, but perhaps I would have gone into it in more detail otherwise. The things are there – they are just not taken into account. But then people come up with such demands!

If one of our friends here had been kind enough to give me this article during the day on the twenty-ninth, it would have meant: People are paying attention, they care about the things that are happening, they are getting involved! Because I would have said something very important, even if only in five lines, in connection with the end of this article, and something could have been done as a result. It is not enough to merely talk about the fact that we are founding a new phase of society. We really have to wake up and work together. We can do this on a small and large scale. Because just as I received this article when the cow was out of the barn, I could have received it when the cow was still in the barn. That is what I once requested as the coming of age of society. I have to be unpleasant when I characterize things from my point of view, but it has happened and it is not meant to be so bad!

But these things have to be pointed out, because they can really be worked with! It would have been quite good... I know that many have read the article, but they did not consider it worth the effort to hand it over to me the day before the lecture. It is only one symptom, and I choose to make it clear that I do not mean it badly, the most venomous symptom, but it is still characteristic for that reason.

And so I would ask you to take seriously what I mean by awakening. Awakening means: focusing attention on the environment, working with the world, working for our great cause when our great cause comes into consideration. Theoretical arguments that we are “now twenty-one years old” do not do it. What does it matter if one has now turned twenty-one? If, however, it has really reached the depths of your soul, waking up is what we need. What I am saying is actually meant as a kindness.

In the afternoon I was asked if I would like to speak myself, and I would like to say the following: In general, it would be good for our dear friends in Austria, if they — since I love Austria so much — would not just go along with this awakening, but if they would even be a prime example of awakening. But then it must begin with the most everyday things, insofar as it touches the life of society. In Austria, there is really an opportunity to do a great deal for this spiritual movement to which we are devoted. For Austria has always had, I might say, a certain development of an external or bureaucratic-mechanical spirit of life, and yet always a strong inwardness in the realm where the intellectual merges into the emotional. And I would never want to fail to mention this. If we go back to the 1850s, 1860s or even the early 1970s of the last century, we see that Austria had the best schoolbooks in the world, and this excellence extended not only to the so-called humanistic schoolbooks, but also to mathematics and geometry books. And we must be fair here. One can also be fair to those who are our opponents. It is really time that people realized that anthroposophy is not anyone's opponent: the others are opponents of anthroposophy. I recently had to complain about this in connection with an unpleasant matter in Stuttgart. People say that so-and-so treats me as an 'adversary'. They have no right to do so, since I do not behave as an adversary until I feel compelled to defend myself against attacks from others; only then do they become adversaries. A fine distinction needs to be made here. Therefore, one must be fair and say: From that fine education which chiseled the spiritual life, which in Austria was the education of the Benedictines and the Cistercians right up to the secondary schools, something of the spiritual flowed into the Austrian mind from this education, which you will not find anywhere else. I really don't want to flatter you otherwise, but the older ones of you have it unconsciously within you, perhaps you don't take it into account. The introduction of those horrible geometry books that came later, in place of, for example, Fialkowski or the old Močnik, which was used as a geometry book in Austria, where all of descriptive geometry, without anyone noticing, led to the imaginative, was not done so without consequence. This could be seen from the figures alone: they had a black background with white lines instead of the black lines that are most commonly found today. All of this was infinitely closer to the soul. Much of that still lives here. It lives in the soul; only people maltreat their own soul: they suppress these things. And precisely the fact that that reformatory Protestant-evangelical intellectualism did not sweep through the Austrian soul as a wave, that is precisely what conditions a very special Austrian spiritual milieu. Germanness in Austria is different from Germanness anywhere else in the world. One need only point to those fine minds that worked in Austria in the last third of the 19th century. I will not mention names, but they can be found everywhere, sometimes in the most unlikely places.

All this could indicate that this thought also occurred to me at a decisive moment: talk about anthroposophy and the human mind, especially in Austria and especially in Vienna. And even if you in your higher souls were to grasp all this in the same way as the world otherwise grasps it, in your lower souls you cannot grasp it at all in the same way! Because there is something there of that fine vibration that emerged from the profound education that was present in Austria around the middle of the last century. And one must answer the question: What can German-Austria do for anthroposophy? with the soul. You must not speculate about the difference between this or that area of the world, but you must feel how there is really a strong inwardness here. This is expressed in the smallest details. The other Germans sometimes feel this as something quite foreign.

Do you see that you have a special task here, to work from the heart, which may emerge from the details. I was once sitting with Herman Grimm in Weimar. In the course of our conversation we happened to mention Grillparzer, and Herman Grimm said: “I once heard Scherer (who was called from Vienna to Berlin) say that Grillparzer was also a poet.” Imagine! The man who at that time was the most brilliant representative of German intellectual life spoke in this way! And he continued: “Once, during a stay in Munich, I had a free hour and sent over to the court library to have something of Grillparzer's sent to me; and when I read it, it seemed to me as if it were not actually written in German at all, but in a foreign language, it seemed to me like something quite foreign.” That was Herman Grimm saying it!

Those who embrace Austria with their hearts cannot speak in this way; for them, precisely this language, which is so strongly emphasized by Grillparzer, will reveal itself as the language of the heart. One must answer this question with one's heart: What should Austria do for anthroposophy? — It is good for the Austrian that in the word 'anthroposophy' there is only one R; for you know — you will agree with me — the Austrian never really learns to pronounce the R properly. It is precisely his peculiarity that wherever there is an R, he actually speaks an A. We vocalize the R. Just explore your vowel and consonant secrets, and you will find that you are no great genius at R! It is the case with Austrians that they never actually grasp this “rolling” of the R with their speech organ. The Austrian speaks a “cozy” R; but it is just not cozy — and so it is not a proper R. But it is the case that you have to grasp the essence where it is.

And so I thought: I would like to touch your soul with this series of lectures! That is the answer to the question that our dear friend Zeißig asked me this afternoon. That is what I wanted to say as a farewell greeting. With this, I close this lecture series, and I would just like to add that it has given me great satisfaction to be among you in Vienna once again. And I do hope that, in our spiritual movement, even when we are apart in the physical sense, we will always know that we are together in the inner sense. And since we always know and feel that we are together, we will be together spiritually even when we are physically apart!

The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question.

Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development.

The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death.

That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science.

And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force.

The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character.

If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space.

Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such.

Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time.

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space.

A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time.

If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time.

This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important.

Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being.

What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it.

But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past.

When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers.

In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it.

Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals.

This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary.

What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one.

So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this.

If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous.

To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.”

Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality.

But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm.

Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads.

But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation.

Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent.

Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer.

We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to

its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head.

Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature.

But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation.

I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters.

I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective.

That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past.

This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing.

This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature.

Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by.

On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone.

Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world.

We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it.

To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society.

In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter.

It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface.

Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times.

[Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918

Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event.

Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events.

Address in Dornach after the fire of the Goetheanum on New Year's Eve 1922/23.

My dear friends! Esteemed attendees! I would have to read you a book if I wanted to share with you all the extraordinarily kind words and the words of heartfelt connection with what has been lost here as a result of the terrible catastrophe; I will therefore take the liberty of just sharing the names of those who have signed such words of sympathy and devotion to the cause. Some of them are a sign of how deeply the hearts of many people have been touched by what may be communicated from here to the world. Some of them are also signs of truly heartfelt desires and energetic resolutions of will to regain what we have lost. The widespread sympathy for our work and for our loss will certainly be a source of strength for many of you, and for this reason alone I am allowed to communicate all this here. For our cause should not be merely a theoretical one; our cause should be one of labor, of philanthropy, of devoted service to humanity, and therefore, what should be said from here should also include the communication of what is being done or intended to be done. I will only take the liberty of mentioning those names that do not belong to personalities who are here, because what the hearts of those who are here have to share has been expressed more silently, but no less deeply and clearly, in these days, in these days of truly painful togetherness. So you will allow me not to mention the dear friends of the cause who have expressed their sympathy in writing. You know them, of course. [The names are read out.]

We may assume that what has been attempted here is deeply rooted in many hearts, and I would like to fill this evening's lecture by interrupting the reflections of these days, as it were, and remember that it was a course that brought a large number of friends from outside to join the friends who otherwise try to work on the anthroposophical matter here at the Goetheanum. And in particular, I would like to turn first in thought to the young, to the younger friends who have come here for this course and who, to the greatest satisfaction of all those who are serious about anthroposophy, have recently found their way into this movement in such a beautiful, deep and heartfelt way.

We must be absolutely clear about the significance of young souls, souls that are striving to acquire all that can be acquired by a young person today in the way of science, art and so on, finding each other to work within the anthroposophical movement. These younger friends who have come to this course here are among those who came here recently, saw the Goetheanum, saw it again and probably thought that they would leave it in a different state than they are now on their return journey. And if I turn first to these younger friends in my thoughts, it is because everyone who cares about the anthroposophical movement must feel that everything that concerns any group or individual within the movement is their direct concern. Most of our younger friends are people who want to find their way into anthroposophical work through what is today called spiritual life. And I would particularly like to speak first to those who belong to academic life and have felt the urge — but hardly generated by it — to join with others within the anthroposophical movement for further striving.

Above all, it is the holy earnestness of the striving for the fulfillment of the human soul with spiritual life that has driven these young people. Within anthroposophy, however, there is talk of a spiritual life that cannot be acquired in direct contemplation in the easy way that is particularly loved today. And it is made no secret of the fact – not even in the literature, from which everyone in the broadest circle can see for themselves what they will find within the anthroposophical work – that the paths to anthroposophy are difficult. But difficult only for the reason that they are connected with the deepest, but also with the most powerful, of human dignity, and because, on the other hand, they are also connected with what is most necessary for our age, our epoch, what may be said that the discerning person, who correctly appreciates the phenomena of decline in our time, must recognize the necessity of such progress as is at least attempted by the anthroposophical movement.

Now it should certainly not be forgotten that the anthroposophical cause can be of value to the modern man in many ways. He can indeed benefit from it if he tries with true inner devotion to gain a direct insight into the spiritual worlds, and thereby convince himself that everything that is communicated from the spiritual worlds is absolutely based on truth. But I must emphasize again and again that, however necessary it may be for individuals, or perhaps for an unlimited number of people, to take this serious and difficult path in the present day, anyone with unbiased, common sense can gain an insight into the truth of anthroposophy that is based entirely on real inner reasons.

This must be emphasized again and again, lest the objection, which is quite invalid, seemingly gains validity: that actually only the one who clairvoyantly looks into the spiritual world can somehow gain a relationship to what is proclaimed as truth in the anthroposophical movement. Today's general intellectual life, general civilization and culture, they indeed bring forward so many prejudices that it is difficult for man to come to full consciousness in the healthy human mind, to convince himself of the truth of the anthroposophical cause without clairvoyance.

But it is precisely in this area that the Anthroposophical Society should lead the way and focus its work, so that the prejudices of contemporary civilization are increasingly overcome. If the Anthroposophical Society does its duty in this direction, then one can hope that those inner powers of knowledge will arise even without clairvoyance in those who, for whatever reason, cannot strive for the exact clairvoyance that is being spoken of here, but that they can still come to a fully-fledged conviction of the validity of anthroposophical knowledge.

But there is another very special path that younger academics can now find for themselves to anthroposophy. Consider what academic study should and could actually provide today as a solid starting point for coming to one's own view – and I say this expressly: for coming to one's own view – of the anthroposophical spiritual knowledge, if science and knowledge and inner life within our school system were present in the way that the possibility for this is actually available today.

But consider how little younger people today are inwardly connected with what they are supposed to strive for as their science, as their knowledge, within the present civilization. Consider how it cannot be otherwise today, for the most part, than that the individual sciences approach younger people more or less as something external. They approach with a system that is not at all suited to letting the often extraordinarily significant, so-called empirical knowledge speak for itself in its full value. Yes, my dear friends, today within every science that is cultivated, there are harrowing truths, sometimes harrowing truths in details, in specialties. And there are, in particular, such truths that, if properly presented to young people, would act as a kind of mental microscope or telescope, so that, if properly used by the soul, they would unlock tremendous secrets of existence.

But precisely those things that would be tremendously revealing if they were properly cultivated, that would carry hearts and minds away if they came from the depths of humanity and personality within academic life to the youth, precisely those things must be said today in many cases are often brought to young people within a spun-out, indifferent system, often with indifference, so that the relationship of young people to what our empirical science has produced in the most diverse fields of information remains a thoroughly external one. And one would like to say: many, indeed most, of our young academics today go through their studies without any inner interest, letting the subject pass by more or less as a panorama, so to speak, in order to be able to take the necessary repetitions for the exams and find a permanent position.

It almost sounds paradoxical to say that the hearts of academic youth should also be involved in everything that is presented to them. I say that sounds like a paradox, although it could be so. For the possibility exists, because for those who have a subjective disposition for it, sometimes even the driest book or lecture can be enough to be deeply moved, if not by the power of the writer or lecturer, then perhaps by one's own strength, even in one's heart. But I must say that sometimes it goes quite deeply to the soul when one notices, perhaps even in the best of the young friends who come to the anthroposophical movement, that through no fault of their own, but through their destiny within today's civilization ization life, not only have they received nothing for their hearts from the current knowledge base, but — perhaps some will not forgive me for saying this, but most of the young academics here will probably understand — they have also received nothing for their minds.

Today, in this age, as a result of the development of science, which I have tried to characterize during this scientific course, we have reached a point in the development of civilization where it is possible that, without any Anthroposophy, through the mere practice of the life of science and knowledge by fully human beings, young people would have to experience what I would call a kind of deep mental oppression from ordinary natural science. Yes, contemporary science is such that precisely those who study it diligently and earnestly and take its things seriously feel something like a mental oppression, can feel something of what comes over the human soul when it wrestles with the problem of knowledge. For anyone who looks around a little from this or that point of view, which is available within natural science today, is confronted with great world problems, world problems which, however, are often clothed, I might say, in small formulations of facts. And these formulations of facts urge one to seek something in one's own soul, which, precisely because these scientific truths exist, must be solved as a riddle; otherwise one cannot live, otherwise one feels oppressed.

Oh, if this oppression were the fruit of our scientific studies! Then not only the longing for the spiritual world would arise from this oppression, which takes hold of the whole person, but also the gift to look into the spiritual world. Even if one takes knowledge that cannot satisfy the human being, it is precisely through the unsatisfactory, when it is brought to the soul and heart in the right way, that the highest striving can be kindled.

That, my dear friends, is what is sometimes felt as so terrible, so devastating, within the realm of knowledge in the present day, that no claim is made to allow people to feel how the things that are present in the present in such a way that he is prevented in his young life from even approaching what is most human in nature, if he does not, precisely because of a particularly strong yearning, free himself from that which only afflicts him with the obstacles that are placed in his way.

And if we look away from the natural sciences to the humanities, we see that during the age of natural science they have reached a state in which, if a young person were to be given instructions that would treat these humanities from a fully human point of view, they would be able to devote themselves to them in such a way that they would at least receive what I would call a spiritual sense of urgency. All the abstract ideas, the results of documentary research and all the other things that are contained in the humanities today, if they were at least presented to young people with a human element, could pursue the goal of awaken in him the urge to ascend into the fresh air that is to be brought into the field of today's spiritual contemplation through anthroposophical world view.

Anyone who has followed the spirit of my lectures on the scientific development of modern times will certainly not be able to say that I have criticized this natural science of the present unnecessarily. On the contrary, through my lectures I have proved its necessity, have tried to prove that natural science and, finally, also spiritual science of the present time can be nothing but foundations, for they served and must serve as the foundations of civilization, which must be laid once so that further building can be built on them.

But man cannot help it, being human, being full of humanity in body, mind and soul. And since today's young people have to live in an age in which they are inevitably confronted with something that does not include the human being at all, the noblest and most powerful human striving could nevertheless be aroused if only that which is necessary but not humanly satisfying were to be offered to them today in the highest sense of the word, out of full humanity. If that were to happen, our young people would need nothing more than to hear about the achievements of today's physical science and today's spiritual science at the academies themselves; and from this they would receive not only the innermost urge but also the ability to absorb spiritual science in full humanity. And from what would then live in young people, it would arise of its own accord that the anthroposophical form of science would also become that which is necessary for us to progress in human civilization.

I believe that our younger friends, if they reflect on the words I have spoken, which may sound somewhat paradoxical, will find that they go some way to characterizing the main difficulties they have had to endure during their academic years. And I can assume that this difficulty is the reason why they have come to us. But for many of them, this difficulty belongs to the past, a past that can no longer be made up for. For what one should actually have in a certain period of youth can no longer be had in the same form later. But nevertheless, I believe that one thing can serve as a substitute. What should be a substitute for what one can no longer have is the realization of the task that younger people in particular have among us to cultivate anthroposophical life in the present. |

Set yourselves this task: to do for the anthroposophical movement what you already know, from your own conviction, can be done for it, or what you can, in the course of time, become convinced of in your innermost being, in your very individual innermost being, that it is necessary for the further civilization of mankind: then you will be able to carry something in your heart for longer than this earthly life lasts: then you will be able to carry the awareness of having done your duty to humanity and the world in an age of greatest human difficulties. And that will be a rich reward for what you may rightly lose.

If you have a true sense of the situation of young people in our age, you will also look in the right way at the fact that academic youth has found its way into our circles, and then, if I may may say so, the talent will gradually arise within the Anthroposophical Society to gain a relationship with this youth, on the part of those who, let us say, do not belong to it as youth in this or that respect.

But I believe that there is a word that can come from our present mourning, that I can also speak to the oldest members of the Anthroposophical Society, and that is this: that the human being who today can truly understand himself as a human being within the Anthroposophical Society, and that this, in turn, must be taken seriously if civilization is to continue for humanity, if the forces of decline are not to gain the upper hand over the forces of ascent. It has almost come to this within general culture and civilization of the present day, that it almost sounds funny when someone says: When a person is in his spiritual-soul life between falling asleep and waking up, he should have ensured that his spiritual-soul life can behave in the right way during this time. But within the anthroposophical movement, you learn that this spiritual-soul, as it lives between falling asleep and waking up, is the germ that we carry into the eternity of the future. What we leave behind in bed when we sleep, what is visible to us when we perform our daily work from morning to evening, that we do not carry out through the gate of death into the spiritual, into the supersensible world. But we do carry out into the spiritual, supersensible world that which is subtlest in our natures and exists outside the physical and etheric bodies when we are between falling asleep and waking up. We shall not concern ourselves here with the significance of the life of sleep for man here on earth. But it can be made clear to man through anthroposophical spiritual science that this fine, substantial something, imperceptible to ordinary consciousness, , lives between falling asleep and waking, is precisely what he will carry within him when he has passed through the gate of death, when he has to fulfill his task in other worlds than this earthly world. But the tasks he has to perform there, he will be able to perform them, depending on how he has cultivated these spiritual and mental abilities. Oh, my dear friends, in that spiritual world, which is around us just as the physical world is, those human soul beings also live a present existence who are not in a physical body right now, but may have to wait for decades, centuries, for their next embodiment on earth. These souls are there just as we physical people are there on earth; and in what happens here among us physical people, what we later call historical life, not only do the earthly people work in it, but also those forces that reach out from people who are currently between death and a new birth. These forces are there. As we stretch out our hands, so these beings stretch their spiritual hands into the immediate present. And it is a desolate historiography when only the documents are recorded that deal with the earthly, while the true history that takes place on earth is also influenced by the spiritual forces from the spiritual world of those who are between death and a new birth. We also work together with those who are not embodied on earth.

And just as we commit a sin against humanity if we do not educate young people in the right way, we commit a sin against humanity, a sin against the noblest work to be done from invisible worlds by not embodied human beings, we commit a sin against the evolution of humanity if we do not cultivate our own spiritual nature so that it passes through the portal of death in such a way that it can develop there more consciously and more consciously. For if the soul and spiritual aspects are not cultivated on earth, it happens that this consciousness, which in a certain way immediately and then more and more between death and a new birth begins to shine, remains clouded in all those souls who do not cultivate a spiritual life here. When a person becomes aware of his full humanity, then the spiritual belongs to it.

Those who truly understand the impulses of the anthroposophical movement should take it seriously, knowing that what has been acquired through anthroposophical spiritual science is a world-life treasure, a world-life force. It is a sin in the higher sense to neglect to cultivate that which must be there in order to further develop the earth, in order to further develop mankind on earth, because its absence must lead to the downfall of the earthly. And in many ways, it depends on feeling the deep seriousness of connecting with a spiritual and comprehensive human cause, in addition to what one may more or less accept in theory from spiritual science.

And that, my dear friends, is something that does not apply to a particular category of people, it is something that most certainly applies to young and old alike. But that also seems to me to be the one thing in which young and old can come together, so that one spirit may prevail within what is the Anthroposophical Society.

May the younger people bring their best, may the older people understand this best, may understanding on one side find understanding on the other: only then will we move forward. Let us, from the sad days we have gone through, from the painful suffering we have been imbued with, let us let resolutions enter our hearts that are not mere wishes, not mere vows, but that are so deeply rooted in our souls that they can become deeds. Even in a small circle, we will need deeds if we want to make up for the great loss.

Youthful deeds, if they are in the right direction, are deeds that can be used around the world. And the most beautiful thing that one can want as an older person is to be able to work together with those people who can still perform youthful deeds. If one knows this in the right way, oh, my dear friends, then youth will indeed come to meet you with understanding. And only then will we ourselves be able to do what is necessary to compensate for our great loss, when young people, who can offer us what was once necessary for the future, can see – and most certainly then to their own satisfaction – beautiful examples of what older people can do to compensate for this loss.

Let us endeavor to see the right and powerful in each other, so that strength may be added to strength, for only in this way will we make progress.