The Rudolf Steiner Archive

According to the decree issued by the Swiss authorities, visitors from Germany will only be able to come to our temporary events under the following conditions:

You must apply to us for an invitation, stating that you wish to come to Dornach for study or visiting purposes. We will then, after checking the case, send you this invitation so that you can use it with the relevant consular authorities.

We can only do this if we can strictly commit ourselves to the authorities that the applicant will cover his own expenses here, will not engage in gainful employment and will definitely leave again after the expiry of the granted residence permit.

In the future, it will therefore be necessary for all members intending to come to Dornach from Germany to apply for such certificates in good time in advance. These applications are not to be sent to us directly, but to the relevant secretariat of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, Stuttgart, Champignystraße 17, which will forward them to us.

Please note that telegraphic requests cannot be considered as they are met with difficulties by the authorities.

My dear friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angeloi:
Feel as we feel in your thinking.

Archangeloi:
Experience, as we experience in your feeling.

Archai:
Perceive, as we perceive in your will.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cherubim:
Warm your inner life in divine cosmic life.

Seraphim:
Awaken inner light in your divine cosmic light.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Has your spirit understood?

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

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

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

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

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

The Guardian:
Has your spirit understood?

The I:

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

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

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

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

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

The Guardian:
Has your soul apprehended?

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

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

Has your body experienced?

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

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

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

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

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

The Guardian:
Has your body experienced?

I:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Has your spirit understood?

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

Has your soul apprehended?

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

Has your body experienced?

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

My dear friends!

As you may imagine, I have recently given much thought to the idea of the building in Dornach, and the situation will most certainly necessitate the earliest possible execution of this idea of this building in Dornach.

A great many of you were present in the summer when the financing of the future Goetheanum was discussed. [Note 68] Everything that came to light then, when our friends revealed their willingness to make infinite sacrifices, and all the observations of the situation I have made since then, force me to the opinion that there is no other way but to proceed as rapidly as possible to the construction of a Goetheanum here, even if externally this Goetheanum cannot present the image we would dearly have liked to promise ourselves.

It seems to me that this Goetheanum must be erected in such a way as to make it usable as expediently as possible.

But if the idea about the building expressed at the meeting in the summer were to be realized, it would definitely not be possible to use it in a suitable way once it was finished. For is it not so that, in considering all the possibilities, we must look, might I say, through the walls, that is through the walls of the wallets of our dear friends. I know very well that what I am about to put to you will be met, out of the utmost good will, by many objections. And yet I still believe that the situation will prove me right when I say that the best way to proceed will be to plan for a Goetheanum of which the actual building costs do not exceed 3 to 3½ million Francs. Only then, even with the utmost willingness for sacrifice, shall we be in a position truly fruitfully to serve the intentions inaugurated in our new Statutes.

It would not be at all sensible if, as the Anthroposophical Society, we were to spend every last penny simply on the building itself. This would not be a good thing to do. So I do believe that the right idea would be to spend about 3 to 3½ million on the building to start with. If it is to be built in accordance with the situation as it actually is, then it must be as resistant as possible to damage such as that which unfortunately destroyed the old Goetheanum. And, as I have already pointed out in my articles in Das Goetheanum, [Note 69] it must make available as much space as possible for anthroposophical activities. So we shall have to restrict ourselves somewhat. But I believe that just because of this we can be all the more certain of achieving what was pointed out yesterday, especially on the part of the young people: that above all a spiritual Goetheanum must exist here as soon as is in any way possible.

Today I want to start by explaining the ground-plan of the Goetheanum to you and then tomorrow I shall speak more about the elevation, the facade. I want to shape the ground-plan and the whole distribution of the space to be taken up by the Goetheanum in the following way.

The Goetheanum will not be as round a building as the old Goetheanum was. It is all very well to ask why I have not brought the model to show you, my dear friends. But you must not forget that this new Goetheanum is to be built in a relatively new material, concrete. And to give a concrete building a truly artistic character in keeping with the material is exceedingly difficult; the solution to this problem is very demanding.

You know Dr Grosheintz has had a house built near here which I have attempted to design in a style appropriate to concrete. [Note 70] But though I still believe that this style might be considered satisfactory for a dwelling to a certain degree—but only to a certain degree—it would nevertheless be impossible to build a second house to exactly the same plan. In any case it certainly did not yield an architectural style for a Goetheanum built of concrete. For the new Goetheanum it will be necessary to depart—essentially—from the idea of a circular building; we shall come back not to a circular building but to one that is more rectangular, a building with angles.

You can see the intention in the small building lower down the hill that was built to provide a hall for eurythmy practice. [Note 71] It is built in a different material, but it shows that an angular building has considerable potential.

Now since there is the need to provide stages for eurythmy and the Mystery Dramas, it will be necessary to combine an angular building with a circular one. In addition, the new Goetheanum will have to provide space for the various activities. We shall need studios and we shall need lecture rooms. The single small white hall in which the fire first broke out a year ago had turned out to be quite inadequate for our purposes. So the next Goetheanum would have to be built in such a way that it would have a lower level—a ground floor—and an upper level. The upper level would, essentially, be the large auditorium for lectures and for those who come to hear and see the performances of eurythmy, the Mystery Dramas and other things. And on the lower level, beneath this auditorium, would be smaller rooms, divided off by walls, which would provide space for artistic and scientific purposes.

I also intend to create a space for the administration of the General Anthroposophical Society, so that this can be carried out direct from the Goetheanum.

In the idea of this building I also want to solve a certain problem in what seems to me a practical way. The plan will be such that there will be a stage at the rear with a rounded form. (Please don't take any notice of the proportions in this drawing.) The stage will essentially form a semi-circle. It will be enclosed by store-rooms. And then extending forwards there will be at the upper level the auditorium and at the lower level the various rooms, with a passage-way in between so that in future there will be more freedom of movement in this new Goetheanum than there was in the old. In the old Goetheanum you stepped straight inside from a vestibule at the entrance. Here, so that there can be freedom of movement, there will be a heated area in which it will be possible to meet and converse in all kinds of ways. And this passage-way will give access to the various rooms on the lower level. [See Facsimile 5, Page XVIII bottom.]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Then, going up a staircase, you will come to the large auditorium from which you look on to the stage or the space where lectures and other things will take place.

The practical problem I just mentioned is the following: In the old Goetheanum great inconvenience was caused by the fact that eurythmy rehearsals had to take place on the stage itself. When visitors came from elsewhere, and I hope they will continue to come in the future, they wanted to see everything; but the auditorium was needed for the work, so it was never possible to allocate time properly in a way that was needed for rehearsals and preparations for performances.

I now want to solve this problem by having on the ground floor, that is the lower level, a stage of exactly the same size as that on the upper level. The one on the upper level will serve for the actual performances while the one down below, having identical measurements, will be for rehearsals only. So there will be a room down below which can serve for all rehearsals up to the dress rehearsal, thus leaving the upper auditorium free at all times. The lower hall will have an ante-room just for those taking part in the rehearsals, where they may wait and sit down. On the upper level the stage will give straight on to the auditorium. The auditorium will be the same size as the plan of the rectangular part of the building.

In this way it will be possible to work in a practical manner in all the available space. It will not be necessary to make the new Goetheanum very much taller than the old Goetheanum, since I am not considering a new cupola. I am endeavouring to create a design for the roof which will consist of a series of planes arranged in relation to one another in a way which will, I believe, be no less aesthetically attractive than a cupola.

So we shall enter into the Goetheanum through a facade on the main front which I shall describe tomorrow. There we shall find the staircase leading to the main upper space; and we shall have a passage-way from which the different rooms are reached, and so on. There will also be entrances at the sides. By making the stage space smaller on plan than the store area, and by extending the walls forwards, we will gain space for the different rooms. At the top it will be possible to light the whole space with daylight, so that we can alternate between daylight, when it is there, and artificial light when we need it.

In this way it will be possible to have a really practical building in which every cubic foot of space can be used to the full. A great deal will be able to go on in this building all at once, whereas in the old building only one thing at a time could take place.

You must consider, my dear friends, that this is not simply intended to be an improvement—which perhaps some might consider a dis-improvement—but it is designed to take account of all the developments that have come about. I have often stressed amongst ourselves that if you want to live in reality and not in ideas, then the realities of the time must be given particular recognition. The time in which one lives is a reality. But it is difficult to generate an understanding for this time as being something real. There are still people today who represent the threefolding of the social organism with the very sentences I used to use with regard to the conditions prevailing at the time, in 1919. History is indeed advancing so rapidly just now that if someone describes things in the way they were described in 1919 this seems to be hundreds of years out of date. Thus, since things have after all been happening in the Anthroposophical Movement, you cannot build in 1924 as you did in 1913 and 1914. In 1913 and 1914 the idea of the Goetheanum arose simply out of the realization that an artistic space would have to be created for the Mystery Dramas. At that time we really only thought of the Mystery Dramas and the lectures. But much has happened since those days and I only wish that even more had happened, but I hope that quite soon a good deal more will happen even without the 75 million Francs I spoke about earlier. This must certainly be taken into consideration.

The thing that has happened since 1919 is that eurythmy has been developed. [Note 72] In 1913 it did not yet exist, it has only developed since. Therefore it cannot be maintained that what was good enough then can be good enough now. Furthermore, although I was assured at the time that the building could be executed at a cost of much less than one million German Reichs-marks, nevertheless, as you know, the cost in the end was at least seven or eight times as much. So we do not want to do our sums in the abstract this time. We want to reckon with certain quite definite figures. The building must now be executed in such a way that we can start to carry out what is contained in our Statutes as soon as possible. This can only happen if we erect it in the manner described.

Even so, it will be possible to win, from the intractable material of concrete, forms that offer something new to the artistic eye. The old forms of the Goetheanum—I shall have more to say to you about these things this evening—will have to belong to history, which means your hearts, my dear friends. Forms moulded in concrete will have to be something entirely different. Much will have to be done on the one hand to force the intractable material of concrete into forms which the eye of the human soul can follow artistically and on the other hand to mould seemingly decorative features, which are actually a consequence of the concrete itself, in an artistic and sculptural way, so that the material of concrete can for once be revealed in an artistic manner.

I ask you now to regard this idea as the seed out of which the Goetheanum shall actually emerge. I have stated that I alone am allowed to work on the artistic creation of the Goetheanum and it will not be possible to take on board to any great extent any of those offers or suggestions which have already been made—of course with the best intentions. There is no point in telling me of buildings in concrete that have been put up here or there, or of factories here or there that are working efficiently. If the Goetheanum building is to come about in concrete, it will have to emerge from an original idea, and nothing that has so far been achieved in concrete can serve as a basis for what is to come into being here.

This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to say to you today. It was not in any way intended to put a stop to the collections already set in train by our dear friend van Leer or by others representing the different countries. The sum originally envisaged will still be needed if we are to carry out what must, of necessity, be carried out. Perhaps I can spur on your zeal in this direction even more by saying that we shall try to use the money you collect in the most economical way by putting it towards anthroposophical work in the sense that it will be used for running the Goetheanum and that the Goetheanum will be built using the smallest amount possible. We shall endeavour here to bring a Goetheanum into being in the shortest possible time.

Tomorrow I shall speak about the image the Goetheanum will present to the outside, namely its facade.

I now want to return to something that is being brought to me from many sides like a kind of derivative of fear. On all sides I am being asked how the three Classes and the Sections of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum are to be handled. My dear friends, in the first place the Sections are no one's concern. The Sections are being set up for the work here. There is no need for us to discuss the Sections. They will exist in accordance with whatever is achieved. So really we can only speak about the General Anthroposophical Society as the foundation, and about the three Classes. And I believe that everything relevant is stated with absolute clarity in our Statutes. In Paragraph 5 it says: ‘Members of the Society will be admitted to the School on their own application after a period of membership to be determined by the leadership at the Goetheanum. They enter in this way the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the Second or Third Classes takes place when the person requesting it is deemed eligible by the leadership at the Goetheanum.’

‘Paragraph 7. The organizing of the School of Spiritual Science is, to begin with, the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who will appoint his collaborators and his possible successor.’

These sentences express, I believe, with absolute clarity that it is necessary to apply to me personally either in writing or in person; it would be better to start by saying in writing, since there will be too many personal applications to be dealt with on the spot. The matter will be taken from there. That is what it says here. The storm of queries is perhaps not so much the result of unclarity as of the necessity, my dear friends, to become accustomed to clarity. Perhaps unclarity is what is wanted in some quarters. Pedantry must be excluded, and bureaucracy will be banished across the border, but in everything that emanates from here—at least this is what we intend—absolute clarity shall reign. From what is written here it is clear that a little note is all that is needed. The little note should be addressed to me personally. And you will see how the answer will be given. You must have confidence.

That is what I wanted to say. Herr Hahl has asked to speak about the building of the Goetheanum. Please would you now speak.

Herr Hahl speaks on this subject.

In the lecture yesterday I spoke of certain aspects of karma operating through the earthly lives of men, and of the forming of destiny, and I shall try to-day to give you an idea of how destiny actually takes shape.

When a man passes through the gate of death he comes into a spiritual world that is not, so to speak, more devoid of happenings and beings than our physical world, but infinitely richer. Understandable as it may be that it is never possible to do more than describe one phenomenon or another from the wide orbit of this spiritual world, the different descriptions given will have conveyed some idea of the infinite richness and manifoldness of man's life between death and a new birth. Here on the Earth, where our life between birth and death runs its course, we are surrounded by the several kingdoms of nature: by minerals, plants and animals, and by the physical human kingdom. Apart from the human kingdom, we rightly consider that the beings comprised in these other kingdoms belong to a rank below that of man. During his earthly existence, therefore, man feels himself—and rightly so—as the highest being within these kingdoms of nature. In the realm into which he enters after death, exactly the opposite is the case: man feels himself there to be the lowest among orders of Beings ranking above him. In Anthroposophical literature I have, as you know, adopted for these Beings the names used in olden times to designate the higher Hierarchies. The first is the Hierarchy immediately above man, linked with him from above as the animal kingdom on Earth is linked with him from below. This is the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. Then, above this Hierarchy, comes that of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and then the highest Hierarchy of all—the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. There are nine ranks, three times three ranks of Beings higher than man. Between each group of three higher ranks (ranging from below upwards) there is a parallelism with the three lower stages (ranking from above downwards) of animal, plant, mineral.—Only by including all these ranks have we a complete picture of the world to which man belongs.

Human existence may also be characterised by saying that at physical birth or conception man passes from a purely spiritual existence into the realm of the natural orders of animal, plant, mineral; when he passes through the gate of death he enters the realm of Beings ranking above him. Between birth and death he lives in a physical body which connects him with the kingdoms of nature; between death and a new birth he lives in a ‘spirit body' which connects him with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Here on Earth our attention is directed, first and foremost, to our environment; we feel on a level with this world and from the Earth we look upwards to the Heavens, to the realm of spirit—whatever may be the designation used in the different religions. From the Earth man looks upwards with his longings, with his piety, with his highest aspirations in earthly existence. And in trying to envisage the spiritual realm above him, he uses imagery borrowed from the earthly world, he pictures what is above him in forms derived from earthly existence. In the life between death and a new birth it is the opposite: his gaze then is directed downwards from above. You may say, “But this means that his gaze is directed to an inferior world.” That is not the case, for the earthly world presents a quite different aspect when seen from above. And precisely in the study of karma it will become clear to us how different happenings on the Earth appear when seen from above.

Having entered the spiritual world through the gate of death, we come, first of all, into the realm of the lowest Hierarchy: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. We feel linked with this next higher Hierarchy and we are aware that just as in the earthly realm everything around us means something to our senses, what the spiritual realm contains means something to the innermost core of our soul. We speak of minerals, of plants, of animals, inasmuch as we see them with our eyes and touch them with our hands, inasmuch as they are perceptible in a material sense. Between death and a new birth we speak of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, inasmuch as these Beings have a connection with the innermost core of the soul. And passing on through the long existence spent between death and a new birth, we learn gradually to become part of the life of the Beings of the next higher Hierarchy who are concerned with us and with one another. These Beings are as it were the link connecting us with the spiritual outer world. During the first period of life between death and a new birth we are also very deeply occupied with ourselves, for the Third Hierarchy has to do with our own inner life and being. But then, after a certain time, our gaze widens: we come to know the spiritual world outside us, the objective spiritual world. Our leaders here are the Exusiai, the Dynamis, the Kyriotetes. They bring us into connection with the spiritual outer world. Just as here on Earth we speak of what is around us—mountains, rivers, forests, fields, whatever it may be—so do we speak in yonder world of that to which the Beings of the Second Hierarchy lead us. That is now our environment. But this environment is not a world of objects like the Earth; everything lives and has being, lives as spiritual reality. Nor in this life between death and a new birth do we come to know Beings only; we come to know their deeds as well, we feel that we ourselves are participating in these deeds.

But then a time comes when we feel how the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—and the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—are working together with us at what we ourselves are to become in the next earthly life. A mighty, awe inspiring vista opens before us. We behold the activities of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai and we perceive how these Beings act in relation to one another. Pictures come to us of what is proceeding among these Beings of the Third Hierarchy; but all these pictures are related to ourselves. And gazing at these pictures of the deeds of the Third Hierarchy, it dawns upon us that they represent the counterpart, the counter image of the attitude of soul, of the inner quality of mind and heart that characterised us in the last earthly life. We now no longer say in terms of an abstract idea of conscience, “You were a man who acted unjustly to this person or that, whose thoughts were unjust.” No, in the majestic pictures of the deeds of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, we behold the fruits of our attitude of mind and heart, of our life of soul, of our mode of thinking, in the last earthly life; we perceive images of this in what the Beings of the Third Hierarchy are doing. Our attitude, our feelings towards other individuals, towards other earthly things, are now outspread in the spiritual sphere of the Universe. And we become aware of what our thinking and our feeling signify. Here on the Earth this inner activity manifests in Maya, as if it were enclosed within our skin. Not so in the life between death and a new birth. The manner of its appearance then is such that we know that whatever thoughts, feelings or sentiments we unfold are part of the whole world, work into and affect the whole world.

Echoing the East, many people speak of Maya, of the illusion of the external world; but it remains an abstract thought. Studies like those we have been pursuing make us aware of the deep import of the words: “The world surrounding us is Maya, the great illusion.” We realise, too, what an illusory view prevails of the life of soul. We think that this is our affair and ours alone, for the truth is revealed only during our existence between death and a new birth. We perceive then that what seemed to be enclosed within us forms the content of a vast and majestic spiritual world. As our life after death continues, we observe how the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, are connected with the faculties we have acquired in earthly life as the fruits of diligence, activity, interest in the things and happenings of the Earth. For having cast into mighty pictures our interest and diligence during the last earthly life, the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes then proceed to shape images of the talents and faculties we shall possess in our next earthly life. In the images and pictures fashioned by the Beings of the Second Hierarchy we behold what talents and faculties will be ours in the next incarnation.

The course of this life continues and when the middle point of time between death and a new birth is about to be reached, something of particular importance takes place. From our habitations here on Earth—especially in those moments when as we look upwards to the firmament of heaven the stars send down their shimmering radiance—we feel the sublimity of the heavens above us. But something of far greater splendour is experienced as we gaze downwards now—from the realms of spirit. For then we behold the deeds of the Beings of the First Hierarchy, of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones working in mutual interrelationship. Mighty pictures of spiritual happenings are revealed to us as we gaze downwards—for our heaven now lies below. Just as in physical existence on Earth we gaze at the starry script above us, so when we look downwards from the realm of spirit we behold the deeds of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. And in this spiritual existence we are aware that what is proceeding among these Beings, revealed in sublime, majestic pictures, has something to do with what we ourselves are and shall become. For now we feel that what is taking place there among the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones reveals the consequences which our deeds of the previous earthly life will have in the earthly life to come. We perceive how in earthly life we behaved in this way to one individual, in that way to another individual, how we were compassionate or pitiless, whether our deeds were good or evil. Our attitude and disposition are the concern of the Third Hierarchy, our deeds of the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Then, in the cosmic memory now alive in us, there arises a shattering, awe inspiring realisation of our deeds and actions between birth and death in the last earthly life. Down below we behold the deeds of spiritual Beings, of Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. What are they doing? They show us, in pictures, what our experiences with individuals with whom we had some relationship in the previous incarnation will have to become in the new relationship that will be established in order that mutual compensation may be made for what happened between us in the previous life. And from the way in which the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones work in cooperation, we realise that the great problem is there being solved. When I have dealings with an individual in some earthly life, I myself prepare the compensatory adjustment; the work performed by the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones merely ensures that the compensation will be made, that it will become reality. And it is these Beings who also ensure that the other individual with whom I shall again make contact is led to me in the same way as I am led to him. It is the majestic experiences arising from the pictures of the deeds of the higher Hierarchies which are recorded by the Moon Beings and subsequently inscribed by them in our astral body when the time comes for the descent to another earthly existence. Together with us in the life between death and a new birth, these Moon Beings witness what is happening in order that the adjustment of the previous earthly life may take place in a subsequent life.

This, my dear friends, will give you an inkling of the majesty and grandeur of what is here revealed, as compared with the sense world. But you will realise, too, that the things of the sense world conceal far, far more than they actually make manifest.

Having lived through the region of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, man passes to still other realms of existence. More and more the longing arises in him for a new incarnation in which compensation can be made for what he did and experienced in his previous earthly life.

Anthroposophy has failed in its purpose when it remains a mere collection of ideas and conceptions, when people speak abstractly of the existence of karma, of the way in which one incarnation works over into another. Anthroposophy is only fulfilling its real purpose when it speaks not only to the head but awakens in the heart a feeling, a discernment, of the impressions that can be received in the super-sensible world through the Beings of that world. It seems to me that nobody with an unprejudiced, receptive mind can listen to such communications about the super-sensible world as I am now giving, without being inwardly stirred. We ought to be able to realise that although here on Earth we live through the whole gamut of human experiences, from deepest suffering to supreme happiness, what we are able to experience of the spiritual world should affect us far more potently than the most intense suffering or the highest happiness. We can only have the right relationship to the spiritual world when we admit, “In comparison with earthly sufferings or earthly happiness, what we are able to experience of the truths and beings of the spiritual world remains shadowy”—as indeed it does to those who merely listen to information about Initiation science. But to Initiates themselves it is far from shadowy. We should also be able to say, “I can feel how deeply what is here imparted about the spiritual world would affect the soul, if the soul had only sufficient strength and energy.” A man should ascribe it to earthly weakness if he is incapable of experiencing every degree of feeling, from fiery enthusiasm to deepest suffering, when he hears about the spiritual world and the Beings of that world. If he ascribes to his own weakness the fact that he is unable to feel these things with due intensity, then the soul has gone some way towards establishing the true and right relationship to the spiritual world.

When all is said and done, what value is there in spiritual knowledge if it cannot penetrate to the concrete facts or indicate what is really taking place in the spiritual world! We do not expect our fellow men on Earth to talk about a meadow in the way that pantheists or monists or would-be philosophers talk about the Godhead; we expect a detailed description of the meadow. And the same applies to the spiritual world. It must be possible to describe the concrete details. People to-day are still unaccustomed to this. Many who are not out and out materialists will accept generalities about the existence of a spiritual world and so forth. But when this spiritual world is described in detail they often become indignant because they will not admit that it is possible to speak in this way of the Beings and happenings of the spiritual world. If human civilisation is not to fall into chaos, more and more will have to be said about the realities of the spiritual world. For earthly happenings too remain obscure when people have no understanding of what lies behind them.

In this connection, my dear friends, there is something in the destiny of the Anthroposophical Society that strikes a note of tragedy. But if the necessary understanding for these things becomes more widespread, at any rate among Anthroposophists themselves, there is justification for hoping that good may develop out of the tragedy, that from the Anthroposophical Society there may go forth a quickening of the civilisation that is so obviously heading for the chaos of materialism. But if that quickening is to be a reality, something must be understood which at the beginning was not understood—which can more easily be understood to-day because more than two decades of effort have passed since the founding of Anthroposophical work.

At the beginning, as you know, the Anthroposophical Movement was within the Theosophical Movement. When we founded in Berlin the Section from which the Anthroposophical Society eventually developed, I wanted at our first gathering to strike a kind of keynote for what ought really to have followed. And now that we have tried through the Christmas Meeting at the Goetheanum to reorganise the Anthroposophical Society, I am able to speak about a certain fact to which probably very little attention has been paid hitherto. Nor could it have been otherwise here, because as far as is known to me none of our friends from Bohemia was present at the time. I gave a first lecture which was similar in character to the lectures given later on to the Groups. This first lecture had an unusual title, one which might at the time have been considered rather daring. The title was: “Studies of the practical working of karma.” (Praktische Karmaübungen.) My intention was to speak quite openly about the way in which karma works.

Now the leading lights of the Theosophical Movement who at that time regarded me as something of an intruder, were present at the meeting and they were convinced at the outset that I was not qualified to speak of inner, spiritual matters. At that period the leading lights of the old Theosophical Movement were always reiterating: “Science must be upheld, account must be taken of modern science. ...” Well and good—but nothing much came of it. Things have now been set on the right path but only the very first steps have been taken; nor will anything essential have been achieved until we have advanced beyond these first steps. And so what was intended in those early days all became rather theoretical. “Studies of the practical working of karma” were announced but nobody at that time would have understood their import, least of all the leading lights of the Theosophical Society. It therefore remained a task which had to be pursued under the surface as it were of the Anthroposophical stream, performed as an obligation to the spiritual world. But to-day—and how often it has been so during the development of the Anthroposophical Movement—I am reminded of the title of what was to have been the first Anthroposophical Group lecture: “Studies of the practical working of karma.” I can also remember how shocked the leading lights of the Theosophical Society were by such a presumptuous title.

But time marches on and more than two decades have elapsed since then—much has been prepared, but this preparatory work must also have its results. And so to-day these results must become reality. “Studies of the practical working of karma” which one desired—rather boldly—to begin at that time, must be actually undertaken. Such indeed was the aim of our Christmas Meeting: to bring real and living esotericism into the Anthroposophical Movement. This must be taken in all earnestness. By formalism alone the Anthroposophical Movement will have no regenerating effect upon our civilisation. In the future we must not shrink from speaking quite openly about the things of the spiritual world.

I want to begin to-day to speak of spiritual realities underlying earthly happenings and the life of humanity on Earth. Within the whole process of earthly evolution stands the Mystery of Golgotha—the Event which imbued this evolution with meaning. To deeper observation, everything that preceded this Event was in the nature of preparation. And although on account of the shortcomings of men and the influence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers from the spiritual side, the impediments to progress are more in evidence than the progress itself, it is nevertheless true that since the Mystery of Golgotha everything proceeding from the physical and spiritual worlds alike has come to pass for the sake of bringing man further along the path of world evolution as a whole. The gifts of Christianity to humanity will—if men prove worthy to receive them in their deeper, spiritual significance—be revealed only in times to come. But the essential impulse—and this applies, as well, to everything that Anthroposophy can achieve—lies in the Mystery of Golgotha.

We know that the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha made its way, to begin with, across the South of Europe and on into Middle Europe. But I do not want to speak of that to-day. I want you to think of how Christianity spread across the North of Africa into European civilisation. You know that some six hundred years after the founding of Christianity through the Mystery of Golgotha, a different religious stream—the stream of Mohammedanism—spread across from Asia. In contrast to Christianity, the spiritual life that is connected with the name of Mohammed expresses itself more in abstractions. In Christianity there are many more direct descriptions of the spiritual world than there are in Mohammedanism. But it has been the destiny of Mohammedanism to absorb much ancient science, much ancient culture. We see how Mohammedanism comes over from Asia and spreads in the wake of Christianity. It is an interesting spectacle. We see the stream of Christianity flowing towards the North, reaching Middle Europe; we see, too, how Mohammedanism twines as it were around this Christian stream—across North Africa, Spain and on into France.

Now it is quite easy to realise that had Christianity alone been at work, European culture would have taken a quite different form. In an outer, political sense it is of course true that Europe repulsed the waves of Mohammedanism—or better said, of Arabism. But anyone who observes the spiritual life of Europe will realise, for example, that our modern way of thinking—the materialistic spirit on the one side and science with its clear cut, arabesque like logic on the other—would not have developed had Arabism not worked on, despite its setbacks. From Spain, from France, from Sicily, from North Africa, mighty and potent influences have had their effect upon European thinking, have moulded it into forms it would not have assumed had Christianity alone been at work. In our modern science there is verily more Arabism than Christianity!

Later on, as a result of the Crusades, much Eastern culture—by then, of course, in the throes of decadence—came directly to the ken of the European peoples. Many of the secrets of Eastern culture found their way to Europe through this channel. In Western civilisation, above the stratum of Christianity, lie those elements of oriental spiritual life which were absorbed into Arabism. But you see, none of this is really understandable when perceived only from the outside; it must all be perceived from within. And from within, the spectacle presented to us is that although wars and victories brought about the suppression of Arabism and the bearers of Mohammedanism, the Moors and so forth, nevertheless the souls of these people were born again and continued to work. Nothing whatever can be gained from abstract accounts of how Arabism made its way to Europe from Spain; insight can only arise from a knowledge of the inner, concrete facts.

We will consider one such fact. At the time of Charles the Great in European history—it was at the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th centuries—Haroun al Raschid¹ was living over in Asia, in Baghdad, in an entourage of brilliant oriental scholarship. Everything then existing in the way of Western Asiatic learning, indeed of Asiatic learning in general, had been brought together at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. True, it was all steeped in Mohammedanism, but everything in the way of culture—mathematics, philosophy, architecture, commerce, industry, geography, medicine, astronomy—was fostered at this Court by the most enlightened men in Asia. People to-day have little conception of the grandeur and magnificence of what was achieved at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. First and foremost there was Haroun al Raschid himself—not by any means a ruler of mediocre intelligence or one who merely for the sake of self glorification called to his Court the greatest sages of Western Asia, but a personality who in spite of unwavering adherence to Mohammedanism was open and receptive to everything that oriental civilisation had to offer. At the time when Charles the Great was struggling with difficulty to master the rudiments of reading and writing, much brilliant learning flourished at the Court of Baghdad. The conditions in which Charles the Great lived are not comparable in any way with those brought into being by Haroun al Raschid.

This was at a time when many regions of Western Asia and wide territories in Africa had already adopted Mohammedanism, and the brilliant learning cultivated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid had spread far and wide. But among the wise men at that Court—men deeply versed in geography, in nature lore, in medicine and so forth—was many a one who in still earlier incarnations had belonged to ancient Mystery Schools. For men who were Initiates in an earlier life do not always give direct evidence of this in another incarnation. In spite of having been an Initiate in earlier Mysteries, it is only possible for a man in any given epoch to absorb the spirituality and develop the constitution of soul which the body of that particular epoch allows. Seen in its essential nature, the life of the soul does not tally with the intellectual ideas of the psyche in man prevailing at the present time. The soul lies at a far deeper level than is usually imagined.

Let me give you an example. Think of a personality like Ernst Haeckel.² The first impression one gets of him is that his view of the world is coloured by materialism, that he expounds a kind of mechanism by which the life of nature and also the life of soul is determined, that in his invectives against Catholicism he is sometimes fascinating, sometimes fanatic, and sometimes, too, lacking in taste. One who is cognisant of the threads connecting the different earthly lives of a human being will pay little attention to these traits; he will look at the deeper qualities of soul. Nobody who in trying to observe the actual manifestations of karma allows himself to be blinded by Haeckel's most striking external characteristics will be able to discover his previous incarnation. In order to find Haeckel's previous incarnation attention must be paid to the way and manner in which he expounded his views. The fact that Haeckel's erudition bore the stamp of materialism is due to the age in which he lived; that, however, is unimportant; what is important is the inner constitution and attitude of soul. If this is perceived by occult sight, then in the case of Haeckel the gaze is led back to Pope Gregory VII,³ the former Abbot Hildebrand—actually one of the most impassioned advocates of Catholicism. If one compares the two personages, knowing that both come into the picture here, one will perceive that they are the same and also learn to recognise the unessentials and the essentials in respect of the great affairs of humanity as a whole. The theoretical ideas themselves are by no means the prime essential; they are only essential in this abstract, materialistic age of ours. Behind the scenes of world history it is the quality, the modus operandi, of the soul that is all important. And when this is grasped it will certainly be possible to perceive the similarity between Gregory VII and his reincarnation as Haeckel.

Insight of this kind has to be acquired in studying the concrete realities of karma, and if it is to mean anything to us to be told that at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, for example, there were men who, although their physical bodies and education make them appear outwardly to be typical products of the 8th and 9th centuries, were nevertheless the reincarnations of Initiates in ancient Mysteries. When the eye of spirit is directed to this Court, a certain personality stands out in bold relief—one who was a deeply discerning, influential counsellor of Haroun al Raschid, and for that epoch a man of great universality. A remarkable destiny lay behind him. In a much earlier incarnation, and in the same region afterwards ruled over by Haroun al Raschid, but inhabited, then, by quite different peoples, he had participated in all the Initiations which had there taken place, and in a later incarnation, as a different personality, he had striven for Initiation with deep and intense longing, but was unable to achieve it because at that time destiny prevented it. Such a personality lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid but was for this reason obliged to conceal deep down in his inner life what lay within him as the fruits of the earlier incarnation as an Initiate. The inability to achieve Initiation occurred in a later incarnation and after that came the incarnation at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at this Court, for the reason that in those times Initiations in the old sense were no longer possible—this personality was one who out of a strong inner impulse and with powerful and sound imagination, organised and vitalised everything that was cultivated at this Court. Scholars, artists, a whole host of poets, representatives of all the sciences, were to be found there; moreover Baghdad itself at that time was the centre of the very widespread scientific and artistic activity prevailing in the empire of the Caliphs. The organisation of it all was the work of this personality—a personality endowed with great powers of initiative. Such individuals invariably play a significant role in the onward march of civilisation.

Let us think of Haroun al Raschid himself. If with occult sight one discerns the qualities of soul he possessed and then tries to discover whether he has since reincarnated, one finds that Haroun al Raschid continued to be associated with and to carry further what he had instituted on Earth; having passed through the gate of death he participated, spiritually, in the earthly evolution of mankind; from the spiritual world his influence was considerable but he himself assimilated a great deal. And then, in the form appropriate to the epoch, this personality came again as Lord Bacon of Verulam,⁴ the founder of modern science. From England, Bacon of Verulam. gave a strong impetus to European thinking. You may say: but what a different personality from Haroun al Raschid! ... Nevertheless it is the same individuality. The outward differences are a matter of the external world only. We see the soul of Haroun al Raschid after death moving across from Asia and then, from the West, influencing the later civilisation of Europe, doing much to lay the foundations of modern materialism.

The other personality—he who had been not only the right hand but the very soul of Haroun al Raschid's Court and had had that strange spiritual destiny—this personality took a different path. Far from seeking a life of outward brilliance, the urge in this soul after death was to unfold a rich inner life, a life of deep inwardness. Because this was so, there could be no question of taking a path leading to the West. Think again of Haroun al Raschid and his Court—outward brilliance and magnificence, inner consolidation of the fruits of civilisation, but at the same time the impulse to externalise everything contained in Mohammedanism. This was bound to come to expression in a subsequent incarnation. The wide and all embracing application of scientific method had to come to the fore—and so indeed it did. The outward brilliance that had characterised the Court of Haroun al Raschid came to clear expression in Bacon himself.

The other personality who had been the very soul of the Court in Baghdad was of a deeply inward nature, closely related to what had been cultivated in the ancient Mysteries. This could not come to expression—not at any rate until our own time when, since Kali Yuga is over and the Michael Age has begun, it is possible once again to speak openly of the spiritual. Nevertheless it was found possible to pour what had been received from the Mysteries in such volume and with such vital power into civilisation that its influence was profound. Something of the kind may be said in connection with the other personality whose development in the spiritual world after death was such that finally, when the time arrived for a new incarnation, he could not land, so to speak, in the Western world where materialism had its rise; he was led, inevitably, to Middle Europe and was able there to give expression to the impulse deriving from the ancient Mysteries but conforming with the altered conditions of the times. This personality lived as Amos Comenius.⁵ And so in the later course of world history these two souls who had lived together at the Court of Baghdad took different paths: the one as it were circling the South of Europe in order, from the West, as Bacon of Verulam, to become the organising genius in modern literature, philosophy and the sciences; the other taking the overland path—as did the Crusades—towards Middle Europe. He too was a great and gifted organiser but the effects of what he achieved were of an entirely different character. It is a wonderful and deeply impressive spectacle—there they were, Amos Comenius and Bacon of Verulam, having taken different paths. The fact that the period of their lives did not exactly coincide is connected with world karma, but ultimately—if I may express it in a trivial way—they met in Middle Europe. And a great deal that is needed in civilisation would become reality if the esoteric influences contained in the work of Amos Comenius were to unite with the power achieved by the technical sciences founded through Bacon of Verulam. This outcome of the paths taken by two souls who in the 8th and 9th centuries worked at the Court of Haroun al Raschid is one of the most wonderful illustrations of how world history runs its course. Haroun al Raschid makes his way across Africa and Southern Europe to England, whence his influence works over into Middle Europe; Amos Comenius takes the path which brings him to Middle Europe, and in what develops from his achievements there he meets the other soul.

Only when history is studied in this way does it become reality. What passes over from one epoch of world history so into another does not consist of abstract concepts; it is human souls themselves who carry onward the fruits of each epoch. We can only understand how what makes its appearance in a later epoch has come over from an earlier one, when we perceive how the souls themselves develop onwards from one epoch to the next. The distinction between what is called ‘Maya' and inner reality must everywhere be taken earnestly. Perceived in its outward aspect only, history is itself Maya; it can only be rightly understood by getting away from the Maya and penetrating to the truth.

We will continue these studies in the next lecture to Members. May the right kind of understanding be forthcoming as we now pursue the task inaugurated by the Christmas Foundation Meeting: to make into a reality what was announced at the very beginning, perhaps rather naively, as ‘Studies of the practical working of karma.' After preparation that has been going on for decades now, a genuine study of karma and of its manifestations will certainly be possible in the Anthroposophical Society without causing misunderstanding and apprehension.

• 1. Haroun al Raschid, 764–809.
• 2. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919.
• 3. Gregory VII, Pope from 1053 to 1085.
• 4. Bacon of Verulam, 1561–1626.
• 5. Amos Comenius, 1592–1671.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My dear friends!

We are gathered together for the last time in this Conference from which much that is strong and important is to go forth for the Anthroposophical Movement. So now let me shape this final lecture in a way that connects it inwardly, in its impulse, with the various prospects thrown open to us by this series of lectures as a whole,⁷⁹ but also in a way that will allow us to gain a sense for the future, especially the future of anthroposophical endeavour.

When we look out into the world today we see something that has already been there for many years: a tremendous amount of destructiveness. There are forces at work that give us an inkling of the abysses into which western civilization is still to plunge. Looking at those individuals who externally are the cultural leaders in the various fields of life, we notice how they are enmeshed in a terrible cosmic sleep. They think, and until recently most people thought, that until the nineteenth century mankind was childlike and primitive in its insights and views, and that now that modern science has entered into all the various fields truth has at last arrived, truth that must be upheld forever.

People who think like this are, without knowing it, living in a state of tremendous arrogance. On the other hand, here and there amongst mankind today there are some inklings that things are perhaps not as the majority would like to imagine.

Some time ago I was able to give a number of lectures in Germany organized by the Wolff agency.⁸⁰ The audiences were exceptionally large, so that people here and there began to notice that Anthroposophy was something for which people were looking. All kinds of foolish voices were raised in antagonism, among them one which was not much more intelligent than any of the others but which nevertheless expressed a kind of presentiment. It consisted of a note in a newspaper referring to one of the lectures in Berlin. This notice in the newspaper said: Listening to stuff like this you get the impression—I am quoting the article approximately—that something is happening not only on the earth but also in the whole of the cosmos that is calling mankind to a form of spirituality that is different from what has existed so far; even the forces of the cosmos, not merely earthly impulses, are demanding something of mankind; a kind of revolution in the cosmos which must lead man to strive for a new spirituality.

So there was this voice, which was in its way quite remarkable. For it is true: The proper impulse for what must now go forth from Dornach must, as I have emphasized from various angles over the last few days, be an impulse arising not on the earth but in the spiritual world. Here we want to develop the strength to follow the impulses coming from the spiritual world. In the evening lectures during this Christmas Conference I have spoken about manifold impulses present in historical development so that your hearts might be opened to take in spiritual impulses which still have to stream into the earthly world and are not taken from the earthly world itself. Everything that has hitherto borne the earthly world in the right way has had its source in the spiritual world. And if we are to achieve something fruitful for the earthly world, we must turn to the spiritual world for the appropriate impulses.

My dear friends, this encourages me to point out that the impulses we are to bear away with us from this Conference must be linked to a great sense of responsibility.

Let us spend a few minutes on the great responsibility that is now incumbent on us as a result of this Conference. In recent decades it has been possible for someone with a sense for the spiritual world to wander, in spiritual observation, past many personalities, gaining bitter sensations with regard to the future destiny of mankind on earth. It has been possible to wander past one's fellow human beings in the manner available to spiritual insight, observing how they lay aside their physical and etheric bodies in sleep and live in the spiritual world with their ego and astral body. Wandering among the destinies of those egos and astral bodies while human beings slept has, in recent decades, given rise to experiences which can point to a heavy responsibility incumbent on the one who can know such things. These souls, having left behind their physical and etheric bodies between going to sleep and waking up, were often to be seen approaching the Guardian of the Threshold.

The Guardian of the Threshold has entered the awareness of human beings in many and various ways during the course of human evolution. Many a legend and many a saga—for this is the form in which the most important things are preserved, rather than that of historical records—many a legend and many a saga tells of the approach by one personality or another to the Guardian of the Threshold in order to receive instruction on how to enter the spiritual world and then return once more to the physical world. Entering rightly into the spiritual world must bring with it the possibility of returning to the physical world at any moment with the full ability to stand on both feet as a practical and thoughtful human being, not as a dreamer, not as a dreamy mystic.

Throughout all the thousands of years during which human beings have striven to enter the spiritual world, this has been the fundamental stipulation of the Guardian of the Threshold. But especially in the final third of the nineteenth century hardly any human beings were to be seen approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of wakefulness. And even more so in our own time, when mankind as a whole has the historical task of passing by the Guardian of the Threshold in one way or another, do you find, when wandering in the spiritual world, that souls are asleep when they approach the Guardian of the Threshold as egos and astral bodies. This most significant picture meets us today: There stands the Guardian of the Threshold surrounded by groups of sleeping human souls who do not have the strength to approach him in a waking state but who approach him instead while they are asleep.

Witnessing this scene, you become aware of a thought which is bound up particularly with what I would like to call the germination of a necessary great responsibility. The souls who thus approach the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep demand entry into the spiritual world. They demand to be allowed to wander across the threshold in a state of sleep; their consciousness is that of a sleeping human being—which so far as the waking state is concerned remains unconscious or subconscious. And countless times the voice of the grave Guardian of the Threshold is heard: For your own good, you may not cross the threshold; you may not gain entrance to the spiritual world. Go back! For if the Guardian of the Threshold were to allow them to enter without more ado, they could come over into the spiritual world with all the concepts passed on to them by today's schools, today's education, today's civilization; with all those concepts and ideas with which human beings have to grow up nowadays from their sixth year onwards right, you could say, until the end of their earthly lives.

These concepts and ideas have a particular characteristic: If you enter into the spritual world with them, with the way you have become with them through present-day civilization and schooling, you become paralysed in your soul. And on returning to the physical world you would be void of thoughts and ideas. If the Guardian of the Threshold did not gravely reject these souls, if he were not to reject many, many of today's human souls but were to let them step over into the spiritual world, then, waking up on their return, waking up at the decisive moment on their return, they would have the feeling: I cannot think; my thoughts do not grasp my brain; I have to live in the world without thoughts. For the world of abstract ideas which human beings today attach to everything is such that one can indeed go into the spiritual world with them but one cannot bring them out again. And when you watch this scene, which is experienced today by more souls than you would ordinarily imagine, you say to yourself: If only these souls could be successfully protected from experiencing also in death what they are now experiencing in sleep. For if the inner condition experienced before the Guardian of the Threshold were to endure for a sufficiently long period of time, if human civilization were to remain for a long time under the influence of what can be taken in in schools by way of what is traditionally passed down by civilization, then sleep would become ordinary life. Human souls would pass through the portal of death into the spiritual world and then be incapable of bringing any strength of ideas with them into their new life on earth. For though you can enter the spiritual world with today's thoughts, you then cannot leave it with them. You can only leave it in a state of soul paralysis.

You see, present-day civilization can be founded on the kind of cultural life that has been nurtured for so long. But life cannot be founded on it. It would be possible for this civilization to endure for a while. During their waking hours, the souls would have no inkling of the Guardian of the Threshold; then while they slept they would be turned away by him so that they should not become paralysed; and the final consequence would be that a human race would be born in the future without any understanding, without any possibility of applying ideas to life when they were born in this future time, so that the faculty of thinking and living in ideas would have disappeared from the earth. A sick human race, living only in instincts, would have to populate the earth. Terrible feelings and emotions alone, without orientation through the force of ideas, would come to dominate human evolution.

Indeed, the soul failing to gain entry into the spiritual world, and being turned away by the Guardian of the Threshold in the way I have just described, is not the only sad sight to meet the one who has spiritual vision. If such a one were to take with him a human being from eastern civilization on his journeyings to where the sleeping souls can be observed approaching the Guardian of the Threshold, then such an eastern human being would be heard to utter spirit words of terrible reproach towards the whole of western civilization: See, if this goes on, then the earth will have fallen into barbarism by the time those living today return for a new incarnation; people will live by instincts alone, without ideas; this is what you have brought about by falling away from the ancient spirituality of the orient.

Thus a glimpse like this into the spiritual world bears witness to a strong sense of responsibility for the task of man. And here in Dornach there must be a place where it is possible to speak, to those who wish to listen, about every important direct experience of the spiritual world. Here there must be a place where the strength is found to point to those little traces of the spirit not only in the cleverly put together dialectical and empirical scientific manner of the present time. If Dornach is to fulfil its task, then it must be a place where human beings can hear openly about what is going on historically in the spiritual world and about the spiritual impulses which then enter into the world of nature and govern it. Human beings must be able to hear in Dornach about genuine experiences, genuine forces and genuine beings of the spiritual world. This is where the School of true Spiritual Science must be. And we must henceforth not shy away from the demands of modern scientific thought which causes human beings to approach the earnest Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep in the way I have described. In Dornach it must be possible to win the strength, spiritually, to look the spiritual world in the eye, to learn about the spiritual world.

Therefore we shall not let loose a tirade of dialectics on the inadequacy of present-day scientific theory. Instead I had to draw your attention to the position in which this scientific theory, and its consequences in ordinary schools, places the human being with regard to the Guardian of the Threshold. If we can face up to this in our soul in all earnestness during this Conference, then this Christmas Conference will send a strong impulse into our souls which can carry them away to do strong work of the kind needed by mankind today, so that in their next incarnation human beings will be able to encounter the Guardian of the Threshold properly, or rather so that civilization as a whole will measure up to the Guardian of the Threshold.

Compare today's civilization with that of former times. In all former civilizations there were ideas, concepts, which were turned first of all towards the super-sensible world, towards the gods, towards the world which engendered, which created, which brought forth. Then with those concepts, which belonged above all to the gods, it was possible to look down onto the earthly world in order to understand it with concepts and ideas which were worthy of the gods. And if souls then approached the Guardian of the Threshold with these ideas which had been formed in a manner that was worthy of the gods and that had a value for the gods, then the Guardian said: You may pass, for you are bringing with you into the super-sensible world something that is directed towards this super-sensible world even during the time of your life on earth in a physical body; therefore when you return to the physical, sense-perceptible world sufficient strength will remain to prevent you from becoming paralysed through having seen the super-sensible world. Nowadays human beings elaborate concepts and ideas which, in accordance with the genius of the times, they want to apply solely to the physical, sense-perceptible world. These concepts and ideas deal above all with anything that can be weighed and measured, but they are not at all concerned with the gods. They are not worthy of the gods and they are of no value to the gods. That is why the souls who have fallen entirely under the spell of the materialism of these ideas which are unworthy of the gods and valueless for the gods are met, when they cross the threshold in sleep, by the thundering voice of the Guardian of the Threshold: Do not step across the threshold! You have misused your ideas for the sense-perceptible world; therefore you must remain with them in the sense-perceptible world; if you do not want to become paralysed in your soul, you cannot enter with them into the world of the gods.

Such things have to be said, not because it is necessary to brood upon them but so that heart and mind and soul may become filled to the brim with them. Then we may come into the mood that will be the right mood to bear away from this solemn Christmas Conference of the Anthroposophical Society. The most important thing of all is the mood of soul we bear away with us, a mood of soul for the spiritual world that gives us the certainty: In Dornach a central point for spiritual knowledge will be created.

That is why it was so good to hear Dr Zeylmans speak this morning about a field which is to be cultivated here in Dornach, the field of medicine, and to hear him say that it is no longer possible to build bridges from ordinary science to what is to be founded here in Dornach. If we have the ambition to make what grows in the soil of our own medical research into something that can stand the scrutiny of present-day clinical requirements, then we shall never achieve any definite goal in the things that really make up our task, for then other people will simply say: Well, yes, here is a new method; we too have initiated new methods once in a while.

The important thing is that a branch of practical life, such as medicine, should be taken up into anthroposophical life. I think I understood rightly this morning that this is what Dr Zeylmans longs for. Did he not say in connection with this goal that someone who today becomes a doctor longs for impulses from a new corner of the universe. Let me tell you that in the field of medicine the work here in Dornach is to be carried on just as has that in a number of other fields of anthroposophical work which have remained within the bosom of Anthroposophy. With Dr Wegman as my helper, work is already in train on a system of medicine based entirely on Anthroposophy, a system which is needed by mankind and which will be presented to mankind quite soon. Equally it is my purpose to bring about the closest ties between the Goetheanum and the Clinic in Arlesheim which is working so beneficially. In the very near future such ties are to be brought about so that all that is flourishing there may be truly oriented towards Anthroposophy, which is indeed the intention of Dr Wegman.

In what he said, Dr Zeylmans was indicating with reference to one particular field what the Vorstand in Dornach will make its task in all the fields of anthroposophical work. Thus in future the situation will be clear. No one will say: Let us first show people eurythmy; if they hear nothing about Anthroposophy, then they will like eurythmy; and then, having taken a liking to eurythmy, if they hear that Anthroposophy stands as the foundation for eurythmy, they will take a liking to Anthroposophy as well. No one will say: First we must show people how the medicines work in practice so that they see that they are proper medicines, and will buy them; then, if they later hear that Anthroposophy is behind the medicines, they will also approach Anthroposophy.

We must have the courage to regard such a method as dishonest. Not until we have the courage to regard such a method as dishonest, not until we inwardly detest such a method will Anthroposophy find its way through the world. So in future here in Dornach we shall fight for the truth, not fanatically but simply in an honest, straightforward love of the truth. Perhaps this will enable us to make good some of what has so sinfully been made bad in recent years.

With thoughts which are not easy but which are grave we must depart from this Conference that has led to the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. But I do not think that it will be necessary for anybody to go away with pessimism from what has taken place here this Christmas. Every day we have had to walk past the sad ruins of the Goetheanum. But as we have walked up this hill, past these ruins, I think that in every soul there has also been the content of what has been discussed here and what has quite evidently been understood by our friends in their hearts. From all this the thought has emerged: It will be possible for spiritual flames of fire to arise, as a true spiritual life for the blessing of mankind in the future, from the Goetheanum which is being built anew. They shall arise out of our hard work and out of our devotion. The more we go from here with the courage to carry on the affairs of Anthroposophy, the better have we heard the breath of the spirit wafting filled with hope through our gathering. For the scene which I have described to you and which can be seen so frequently, that scene of present-day human beings, the products of a decadent civilization and education, approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep, is actually not one which is found amongst the circle of sensitive anthroposophists. Here on the whole the circumstance is such that only a warning, one particular exhortation, resounds: In hearing the voice from the land of the spirit you must develop the strong courage to bear witness to this voice, for you have begun to awaken; courage will keep you awake; lack of courage alone could lead you to fall asleep.

The exhortation to be awake through courage is the other variation, the variation for anthroposophists in the life of present-day civilization. Those who are not anthroposophists hear: You must remain outside the land of the spirit, you have misused ideas for merely earthly objects, you have not gathered ideas which have value for the gods and which are worthy of the gods; you would be paralysed on your return to the physical, sense-perceptible world. But those souls who are the souls of anthroposophists hear: Your remaining test is to be that of your courage to bear witness to that voice which you are capable of hearing because of the inclination of your soul, because of the inclination of your heart.

My dear friends, yesterday was the anniversary of the day on which we saw the tongues of flame devouring our old Goetheanum. Today we may hope—since a year ago we did not allow even the flames to distract us from continuing with our work—today we may hope that when the physical Goetheanum stands here once more we shall have worked in such a way that the physical Goetheanum is only the external symbol for our spiritual Goetheanum which we want to take with us as an idea as we now go out into the world.

We have here laid the Foundation Stone. On this Foundation Stone shall be erected the building whose individual stones will be the work achieved in all our groups by the individuals outside in the wide world. Let us now look in spirit at this work and become conscious of the responsibility about which I have spoken today, of our responsibility towards the human being who stands before the Guardian of the Threshold and has to be refused entry into the spiritual world.

Certainly it should never occur to us to feel anything but the deepest pain and the deepest sorrow about what happened to us a year ago. But let us not forget that everything in the world that has any stature has been born out of pain. So let us transform our pain so that out of it may arise a strong and shining Anthroposophical Society by dint, my dear friends, of your work.

For this purpose we have immersed ourselves in those words with which I began, in those words with which I wish to close this Christmas Conference, this Christmas Conference which is to be for us a festival of consecration not merely for the beginning of a new year but for the beginning of a new turning point of time to which we want to devote ourselves in enthusiastic cultivation of the life of spirit:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being.
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
Speaking:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South,
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul.
Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai!
Let there be fired from the East
What through the West is formed
Speaking:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South,
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light.
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted
Speaking:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.^A

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men:
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

And so, my dear friends,^B bear out with you into the world your warm hearts in whose soil you have laid the Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, bear out with you your warm hearts in order to do work in the world that is strong in healing. Help will come to you because your heads will be enlightened by what you all now want to be able to direct in conscious willing. Let us today make this resolve with all our strength. And we shall see that if we show ourselves to be worthy, then a good star will shine over that which is willed from here. My dear friends, follow this good star. We shall see whither the gods shall lead us through the light of this star.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun,
Warm thou
Our hearts,
Enlighten thou
Our heads!

• 79. See Rudolf Steiner World History in the Light of Anthroposophy, op. cit.
• 80. See Note 3.
• A. According to the shorthand report, the final words of the verse were not spoken on this occasion.
• B. In the following sentences, as in the gathering on 25 December 1923 at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner once again changed from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)

My dear friends! Today we will reconnect to what was spoken of in the previous lesson, in part in order to maintain continuity, but also in part for new members, or at least for members who were not here last time, but who are here today. Today's lesson should therefore begin with a short recapitulation of what was brought before our souls in the previous lesson.

We made our way in thought, to where just in the normal course of life and connecting to the sense-perceptible world with normal awareness and with the power of reasoning, to where a human being can feel himself confronting the supersensible, confronting, moreover, that part of an individual’s being that is related to his own true being. And we will first cultivate this mood, these inner feelings, before we enter into the mysteries of the life of the spirit, which we will certainly get to the next time.

This initial demeanor should lead us to an awareness of how a person, normally constituted in soul, regards the world of the senses around about himself, which cannot give him any inkling about his own true being. And if with certain justice there resounds to people throughout time, affording noble possibilities, the admonition "Know yourself!", then it is also true that a person can find no answer, can find no satisfaction, if under the inscribed words "Know yourself!" he merely gazes at what is spread out before his senses in the context of the external world. So a person is led by this suggestion to something other than what is in the sensory world, this world external to man.

In regard to this perception, which a person can have when he looks back with the question of his own nature upon the expanse of world existence-awareness, when we with this perception broach in thoughts supersensory existence-awareness, which is identical to the inner nature of humankind, then the corresponding demeanor will once again be given with the words, the words that that I already have placed before your souls at the last lesson:

Where on grounds of earth , color upon color,
Life stirring reveals itself,
Where out of stuff of earth, form on form,
All without life takes shape,
Where feeling creatures , strong in will,
Delight in the warm glow of their existence,
Where you yourself, O Man , derive
Bodily existence from earth and air and light,

There you enter your own being’s
Deep, night-bedecked, cold inner darkness.
You’d ask within the dark expanse
Never, who you are, and were, and will become.
For your true existence the day dims
To the night of the soul, to darkness of spirit
And you turn yourself, soul-searching,
Unto the light, that from darknesses strengthens,

We have before us, we feel it in our souls, the impression, presenting itself before us, that in spite of our perceiving the absolute beauty, immensity, and grandeur of the world around us, as we get a sense of all the surrounding immensity, grandeur, and beauty in this world, that we just cannot find our own true being in this world. For the person striving after the spirit, it is necessary ever and again to bring up this feeling in soul. For the experience of this feeling, its deep experience, as we gaze out on the world outside of ourselves, that in this world there is no answer to the question of what we ourselves are, brought up ever and again in one’s soul, this impression forces the very impulses to emerge from our souls that can carry us over into the spiritual world. But directly because we perceive this, that through such feelings we will be carried over into the spiritual world, we must also bring up in our souls that someone in customary awareness, in customary life, is unprepared to enter into the very world that is certainly the world of his own being.

Therefore, right at the boundary between the sensory world and the spiritual world stands the Guardian, who with all seriousness warns a person about crossing over unprepared. It is always so, my friends, and we must be aware of it, that standing in appropriate holiness at the threshold of the spiritual world, for the unprepared person, stands the Guardian. We will get to know him more and more in times to come. Always it is so, that we must time and again reactivate this inner state of awareness, and so come to the feeling of meeting this Guardian and so making quite clear to ourselves, that a very special condition of soul is needed in order to achieve real knowledge, real insight.

If this insight, which can indeed come in this materialistic age, I might add, to every person on the street, if this true knowledge were present in a person, it would be a shame, for he would receive it wholly unprepared. He would approach it without the proper inner state of being, which certainly must be present, a properly prepared inner state of awareness. Therefore, it is so, that we must also direct ourselves properly and bring up before the soul a second sort of demeanor, which speaks to us, ever and again, of how we must present ourselves before the Guardian::

And from darknesses clarifies itself
(Revealing you in counterpart,
Yet also portraying you as parable,
Earnest spirit-word in ethereal realm,
Audible to your heart, forcefully effective),¹
The bringer of spirit-premonitions to you,
He who alone can illuminate your way;
Before him spread the sensory fields,
Behind him yawns the deep abyss.

And from his fields spirit dark,
Hard by the yawning chasm of existence,
Rings forth the ancient might of his creator-word;
See, I am the only door to inner knowing.

The Guardian himself begins to speak while we are still more or less in the sensory fields. He instructs from a realm, where still, for us, as we approach, impenetrable darkness holds sway, and he holds forth in the darkness. But it grows lighter, forming up before us through spirit-awareness, and initially only he himself emerges from it and forms up, and so coming forth from this apparent darkness, from this maya of darkness, he then speaks:

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:

There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
In world shaping powers
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

Whoever can inwardly accept with sufficient depth the word resounding from the mouth of the Guardian, will become aware, as he gazes back upon himself, of how the backward gazing, the taking hold of truth in the backward gazing becomes the beginning of self-awareness. Moreover, it is self-awareness that is preparatory for real entry into true proper self-awareness. True self-awareness encloses us in spiritual world-awareness, in the being that is one with our true human essence. And so awareness arises, which can be obtained while still on this side of the threshold of spiritual existence, just so awareness arises, which those impure in thinking, feeling, and willing of course hold in terrible awe, even though the images appear to protect. Awareness then arises of the three emerging from the chasm, from the yawning abyss. Appearing out of the yawning abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world are rearing beasts.

What we should feel at the chasm of existence, between what is maya, mere appearance, and true being in the world of true reality, this should be placed before our souls in the fourth declamation:

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin.
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

My friends, one must clearly place in one’s soul this idea, that at first courage, courage in becoming aware, does not rule in the soul, but in the most thorough manner cowardice rules in the soul, cowardice, which in fact is strongly held onto by most people in these times, as a matter of course, even while approaching insight into the spiritual world.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
Your fire of knowing must tame it.

This is the second that we carry in us, which sows all the doubts in our souls, and which plants all manner of feelings of uncertainty concerning the spiritual world in our souls. It lies in feelings, in feelings that are weak, in feelings that cannot soar in spirited flight, in enthusiasm. Genuine experience must indeed emerge from lowly outward enthusiasm, which twines itself around all possibilities of outer life. A simple entwining! Inner enthusiasm, inner fire, the fire of awareness, is the very thing that vanquishes the second beast.

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

We must find the courage and the fire to bring activity into our thinking. If we plod along in our usual state of awareness, we work in whims, in caprice, we deal with what really signifies nothing at all. When we prepare ourselves in a manner corresponding to creative thinking, however, the spiritual world streams into our creative thinking. And then a real entrance into the spiritual world is born, out of courage in knowledge, out of fire in knowledge, and out of living work in knowledge.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

These mood-songs of demeanor can carry us quite far, so that we may feel properly what should be made to rule in us, so that as human beings we can enter the spiritual world properly, genuinely, and truly alive. It is also true, that in normal life, the most banal things often lead a person to realize that life is really serious, and not just a game. The very things that should lead us to an existence-awareness, however, do not make as strong an impression as does outer life. Outer life, when made active in the soul, can all too easily be made into a game. A person learns by himself, by playing it as a game, that it is serious. And if he makes endeavors of the spirit into a game, he will thereby embarrass himself and others enormously. He will be embarrassed, even if he deals with them only slightly in anything other than the most absolutely serious manner.

Of course, one does not need to maintain such a serious attitude to the point of becoming sentimentally attached to it. That is not the point, for the serious quality of life can be brought to light even in humor. But then even the humor becomes serious. The very manner portrayed here, which may be serious or playful, is not sentimentality, false piety, or untruthful flirtatious gaming, but rather it is the possibility of really going all out in endeavors of the spirit, and really living in endeavors of the spirit, with persistence, steadfastness, and tenacity..

Concerning the gravity of the words I am now speaking, my dear friends, to really understand their significance, it would be really, really good for striving after knowledge, if all of us, who as friends are sitting here, especially those who have been involved in anthroposophical endeavors for a somewhat longer time, would consider the following question: How often have I undertaken to do this or that as a function of anthroposophical life, and how often after a short time have I simply no longer thought about it? Perhaps I would have done it, had I thought about it, but I just did not think any further about it. It is simply gone, as a dream is gone from my life.

It is not unimportant and insignificant to consider such a question straightaway. And perhaps it might not be totally unimportant if a great number of our friends would place before their souls something actually happening at this time.

The Christmas Conference should have initiated real esotericism in the larger stream of the anthroposophical way of looking at the world, as it will be carried by the Anthroposophical Society in the future, all-inclusive. How often, and many questions could similarly be entertained, how often have I just forgotten what I held in glorious utter certainty during the Christmas Conference, how often have I just forgotten it, and how often have I thus maintained my thoughts and my realizations in the manner formerly present, as if the Anthroposophical Society were continuing as it had before Christmas. And perhaps if a few of you say to yourselves, such is not the case for me, it might be necessary just then to ask yourself this question. Am I not fooling myself, about it not being the case for me? Have I seen, in all acts pertaining to Anthroposophy, have I really seen that with Christmas a new phase of the Anthroposophical Society has begun? Entertaining these questions right away as questions concerning awareness is of very special significance. For then the proper seriousness will be inscribed in the soul.

You see, it would be good for this sort of attitude to be connected with the lifeblood of the Anthroposophical Society, and henceforth also with the lifeblood of each member who has sought admittance into the class. This attitude should be connected, it is imperative that it be attached to everything that impacts strongly on one's life. Hence, it would be good for each and every one who wishes to belong to the class to say to himself: Is there anything that I can do, now that the Anthroposophical Society has been re-founded, that is different from what I was doing earlier? Is there something new that I can take up in my life in devotion to Anthroposophy? Is there some way that I can work differently than before, so that I can bring in something brand new?

Actually, it would be tremendously significant, if this were to be taken seriously by each individual belonging to the class. Through this, the possibility would emerge, my friends, of the class continuing its work without the burden of heavy chains, for each person who continues in the old jog-trot really burdens the progress of the class accordingly. It might not be much noticed, but it is true nevertheless. It is not possible to forge ahead in esoteric life while walking along the hum-drum path that otherwise has dominion in life, on the path of lies, lies portrayed as truth. But if someone tries to work in esoteric life, vague portrayals are not effective, but rather truth is effective. You can certainly make colorful vain constructs, but colorful conceits make no impression on the spiritual world. The unvarnished, the simple unvarnished truth is what works effectively in the spiritual world.

You may conclude from this that spiritual realities are very different, as they continue to work under the surface of existence, from what is displayed today in outer life, which is so many lively lies just patched together. Uncommonly little of actual genuine worth lives between people today. And this should be brought before the soul ever and ever again, right at the beginning of the inner striving of the life of this Class. For only out of awareness built in this way can we find the inner strength that must be used, in the things which we will unravel more and more from lesson to lesson, which will be laid more and more before our souls, and through which we will find our way into the spiritual world.

And rooted deep within our human nature is all that hinders true cognition, to begin with in thinking. The usual human thinking plays itself out in the thought specter of the third beast, the very third beast whose gestalt has been depicted as follows:

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;

And this is the picture of the way most people usually think. This type of human thinking looks out over the details of the external world, and does not become aware that these details of the external world constitute a corpse. Where has such a person been living? He has been living on the corpse of this conventional thinking.

Today, my friends, we are all thinking in just this way, in our ever-present human civilization, as it is so called in our present age. From waking in the morning until falling asleep at night, we are thinking under the guidance received in our normal schooling and in our normal living. We are thinking, but in such a way that our thinking is corpse-like. Thinking is dead. It was living once, but when? It was alive once, but where?

It was present before we were born. It was present in our souls in actuality in pre-earthly existence. Now just imagine, my friends, that a person lives on the physical earth, and his soul-nature stirs within his physical body, and that until his death he moves his physical body about by means of the activity of his soul-nature. For external appearance, however, this active soul-nature is invisible, and all that remains visible is the corpse, the dead corpse. Imagine that this dead structure is all that lives in this human frame during life, and so you must imagine, that thinking lives just so. A living, organic, enmeshed, and intrinsically awake reality was present before the person stepped into earthly life. Then it becomes a corpse, it becomes the grave of our true head, the tomb of our true brain. And just as if a corpse in the grave were to assert, "I am a man," just so is our thinking, as if it were in the brain of a corpse, lying entombed, and considering only things of the external world. It is a corpse. It may be depressing for someone to be a corpse, but it is actually true, and esoteric knowledge must stand by truth.

This lies, however, in the continuation of the address of the Guardian of the Threshold. For as soon as our souls have gone beyond the earnest warning concerning the third beast, then the Guardian speaks again. He speaks, as the words so far intoned rest in our hearts.

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad² contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

I will recite it once again:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

Thinking, with which we have to accomplish so much here in the fields of sensory life, is to the gods of the world a mere corpse of our being of soul. We have, while we have been treading the earth, during our time on earth, become dead in our thinking. The death of our thinking was in preparation already before the year 333 AC. By the middle of this fourth post-Atlantean period in 333, the ground had been prepared for thinking to be dead. Vitality still poured forth in thinking before this, inherent from pre-earthly existence. The Greeks formerly felt alive, the Orientals formerly felt alive within their thinking, within their thinking that meshed effectively with the work of the spirit, with spirit work. The Orientals, the Greeks of old, they knew that in their thinking, that in each thought, God was living. Such has been lost. Thinking has become dead. And we must abide by the earnest warning of the times, given to us by the Guardian.

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

This era began 333 years after the onset of Christianity, in the fourth century, after the first third of the fourth century had gone by. And such thinking today, among all sorts of thinking in the world, this thinking clearly arises out of forces of death, not out of living forces. And the dead thinking of the 19th century became encrusted on the surface of human civilization's dead materialism.

It is otherwise with feeling. In the same manner, mankind’s great Ahrimanic enemy, Ahriman himself, cannot yet put feelings to death inwardly in the way he has put thinking to death. Feelings still live on in worldly human ways at the present time. For the most part, however, people have tucked feelings out of full awareness into semi-unconsciousness. Feelings do surge up in the soul, but who has it under control, as one has thinking under control? To whom is it clear, what lies in feelings, as clear as it is, what lies in thinking?

Simply take one of the saddest things, specifically, in the eyes of the spirit, the saddest appearance of our time, my dear friends. If people think clearly about it, they are citizens of the world, and they know quite well that thinking makes a man a man, even though thinking is fairly dead in the present age of the world. Today in feelings, however, people are separated into nations and tribes, and directly due to this they allow certain unconscious feelings to rule, to the detriment of all. Everywhere strife arises on the stage of today's world, growing out of these undistinguished feelings, by means of which a person feels himself to be affiliated with only one particular group of human beings.

World karma of course places us into particular human groupings, and it is something that we feel, that is earned in the working process of world karma, that we are situated in this or that clan, class, or culture. It is not in thinking that we become so situated. Thinking, unless it becomes colored by feelings and willpower, is the same in all parts of the world, but feelings form up in particular ways characteristic of particular regions of the world. Feelings may seem to rest in semi-consciousness, but they really live in the unconscious. So the Ahrimanic spirit, that otherwise has no influence on the life of feelings, has acquired the possibility of mucking about unconsciously in feelings. This mucking about in feelings is somewhat limited, limited to confounding truth with error, so through Ahrimanic influences, through Ahrimanic impulses in us, our feelings become colored with prejudice.

Our feelings, if we wish to gain entrance into the spiritual world, must ascend fully into our souls. In regard to self-awareness, we must be fully able to incorporate our feelings. We must be able to say, by continually reexamining our own being, just what sort of people we are, as feeling human beings. We do not attain this easily. In regard to thinking, it will be comparatively easy for us, as we go about gaining clarity about ourselves. Naturally, we don't always do it, but at least we are more likely to admit to ourselves that we are not exactly geniuses, or that we fall short of clear thinking in this or that respect. It is the height of conceit or opportunism not to allow ourselves to come in this way to having at least some sort of clarity about our thinking.

Concerning our feelings, however, we simply cannot come to the point of really placing them clearly before our souls. We may certainly have persuaded ourselves that almost always our streaming feelings are appropriate. Immediately we must sweep our souls, intimately, thoroughly, if we as feeling human beings wish to be on the right track in our self-characterization. Whatever the case, we must just do it. We lift ourselves up only by what we by ourselves as feeling human beings from time to time conscientiously place before ourselves, we lift ourselves up only in this way over every obstacle that the second beast erects before us on the path into the spiritual world.

Instead of this however, if we do not cultivate this sort of self-awareness in ourselves from time to time, then certainly, inevitably, this mocking apparition will be intertwined in us when we regard the spiritual world. We ourselves will become mockers, and if we do not become aware of our sick feelings, we also will not be aware that in regard to the spiritual world we are indeed mockers. We dress up the mockery in all possible ways, but we alone are certainly mocking the spiritual world. Concerning this, which I was impelled to speak about previously, those who are not in earnest are mockers. Sometimes they feel ashamed to carry any sort of mockery inwardly, within their thoughts, but they are mocking nonetheless, in regard to the spiritual world. For how could someone be flippant and playful in regard to the spiritual world, if he were not mocking it? About such things the Guardian of the Threshold speaks.

The second beast, the mocking face,
It is the bad contrary-force
Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable³ soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

The first beast is the mirror image of our will. This mirror image of our will certainly shows us just what is living in our will. And the will certainly does not merely dream. It does not live in mere semi-consciousness. It lives wholly in the unconscious.

This has been presented to you many times, my dear friends, that the ways and means of the will lie deep in the unconscious. And in the life of customary awareness a person seeks the paths of his karma deep in the unconscious. Every step during life that a person takes by way of his karma is certainly measured out, but the person knows nothing of this. It all happens out of awareness. Former lives on earth are woven effectively into karma. Karma carries us to the situations of our life, to the circumstances of our life, to the uncertainties of our life. Such is the error-fraught state of the individual person, of the person who solely for his own individual self seeks for pathways in the world. In thinking, a person seeks the path that all people seek. In feeling, a person seeks the path that his social group seeks. In feelings one certainly knows whether a person's origins are in the north, west, south, or eastern parts of Europe, or in the middle but originating from the west, the south, or the east. And a person must be ready to enter the unconscious impulses of the will, just in order to maintain in himself, not just a generic person, not just a member of a specific group, but a specific unique human individual. So works the will. But please take note, willfulness works in this way in the very depths of the unconscious. The first beast points to this error-fraught state of the will.

And the Guardian speaks of this in earnest warning:

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

In our will, mighty spirits are working which actually wish to rip our body away from us during our conscious earth-existence, and in this way wish to carry off a piece of our souls. This would enable the building of an earth existence, during Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, that should not be developed, but would instead be a departure from divine intentions regarding the earth. The earth would be estranged, the earth would be dispossessed, after a certain time in the future. In this sort of world robbed of gods, a person would be bound to certain powers working in his will, which is where he seeks his karma.

The first beast, appearing within as a mirror image, appropriately shows what is effectively working within the will, with its bone-locked head, withered body, dull blunt blue skin, and crooked back. Such is the Ahrimanic spirit that holds sway in the will for all seeking after karma, and it can only be vanquished through courage in knowledge. And just so, as I have been leading up to, just so the Guardian of the Threshold speaks about this first beast:

I will read it once again.

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

In these words, sounding forth from the mouth of the Guardian of the Threshold, the admonition is expounded, and called out to those seeking insight, to human spirits seeking knowledge.

Let these words live in our souls, my friends, with truly genuine intensity, and often and again hearken unto the following, spoken by the Guardian:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

You must ever and again comparatively grasp the similarities in these verses. [The first section of the mantra was now written on the board.]

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

Feel initially what the section engenders in you.

Next the second section, which alludes to feeling: [The second section of the mantra was now written on the board.]

The second beast, the mocking face,
It is the bad contrary-force

As a "counter-force" it is no longer merely a sort of thinking, a counter-type of thinking, but now is a "force!" [Both words were underlined twice, and then the writing continued.]

Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

Feel next, here [in the first section] "denies", and here [in the second section] "hollows-out" [Both words were underlined twice.], and feel starkly the coloring coming through the verses, in which the first time there is the word "denies" and the second time "hollows-out".

Then the words of the Guardian, in which he addresses the will:

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

[This third section was now written on the board.]

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might

Now there is not “type”, not “force", but rather "might.” [The word "might" was underlined twice.] You must feel the progression.

Of willing, that estranges suitable body

And here we have the progression, first of something intellectual in "denies", then something lurking within in "hollows-out", and then something that directly takes a person off the inner path in "estranges.” [Estranges was underlined twice, and then the writing continued.]

From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

Feel however, how through all three verses, through all three dictums, how "bad" resounds. [In each section the word "bad" was especially emphasized at this point with vertical boundary lines and underlined three times.]

And when you inwardly feel yourself accepting these dictums at each stopping point, given in progressive steps in the distinctions between thinking, feeling, and willing, [These three words were underlined.] and when you truly come to feel how all three may be bound together by the same ever-present badness, then for you, my dear friends, each of the verses becomes a mantra, a mantra in its inner sense, and they will be able to become a guide for you into the spiritual world, on each of three stepping stones, that of the third beast, that of the second beast, and that of the first beast. [The words "third", "second", and "first" were at the same time underlined on the board.] And when you unfailingly keep in mind this concordance, and unfailingly bind these three together with the definitive word into an inner soul-organism, when you unfailingly bring these three verses into motion within yourself in this way, then these three verses will be your guide, my friends, along the way into the spiritual world, as you come upon the Guardian of the Threshold.

Whom we will get to know better in the next class.

• 1. The lines in parentheses were clarified later as a Zwischensatz.
• 2. böse: The German word übel is the same as the English word evil, which carries a high degree of conceptuality, but what is used here is böse, a word any small child can understand, for böse is bad. It is bad contrary confused dead thinking, bad contrary angry heartless feelings, and bad vicious defiant willfulness.
• 3. eigne: In regard to eigne (intrinsic, suitable, appropriate) as opposed to deine (your own), die eigne Seele ward erleuchtend suggests that spiritual worth was illuminating a well-suited soul before its earth-existence. And in the third stanza, den eignen Leib is not “your own” body, but “suitable” body.

Michael Bauer: Dear friends, I am of course also sorry that we have to continue today's meeting in this way. But on the other hand, one must say to oneself, or rather, I had to say to myself, that it is perhaps quite useful to consider the feelings that we can have when we reflect on our ideals and when we look at what these ideals have already have borne fruit, and at the same time not to forget – and not to forget in this particular case – that we cannot just maintain a sacred mood, but that we must also be constantly aware that much still needs to be changed.

The case we are dealing with here today has been discussed here many times, and I don't want to go into it at length; but it was still necessary to make some announcements to you. It might have seemed, or been seen, as if I hadn't done so, as if it was done for other, personal reasons, why one doesn't like to bring something like this to the public. - That is to say: I would like to read two letters.

Of course, the “Z.V.” – as he is called here – is the central committee; according to Dr. Goesch, he is burdened by the indiscretion he committed. And so perhaps this, too, will be seen as an indiscretion if I read these letters out loud.

This letter concerns me alone, and not the assembly; but the matter to which this letter refers is once our matter, and not my private matter. He writes on March 29:

Dear Mr. Bauer... [gap in the transcript]

After the reading and [after] explanations by Mr. Bauer, there follows a constant alternation of speech and counter-speech by Mr. Bauer and Ms. Wernicke. [Dr. Grosheintz also speaks up]. Dr. Vreede wants to add: Several members have received a letter from Dr. Goesch, which I unfortunately don't have with me, but which goes something like this:

1. How do you think you should act in view of the fact that the central committee has spread falsified quotations and so on? It has been four months since I wrote my letter.

2. That there was no response to his explicit request to withdraw them.

3. That Dr. Steiner continues to spread his teachings within a society that has such a leadership.

This letter was sent to about 45 members of the Society. We came to the conclusion that only a few of us should write a short, dismissive reply. I also said that I would not go into this letter and did not want to get further involved in discussions with him. In response, I received a business card (from Fräulein Doktor, quoting from memory):

Your letter, in which you declare yourself bankrupt as a human being and as a spiritual student... Should there not be enough humanly solvent members in the Society, I will be prepared to comply with your decision not to live up to the truth and bring about the public collapse of the Society. (That was the last straw.

Since my interest was piqued by this correspondence, I then worked through Dr. Goesch's longer letter and gave a presentation for various members who had come together, discussing many points in some detail and also absolutely refuting the notion that one could speak of falsified quotations.

Ms. von Vacano wants to say that she also received this letter. Mr. Michael Bauer: All the chairmen in Germany too!

Ms. von Vacano: After some time, I also heard from Graf Lerchenfeld, since he can't write everything, just hinted at by him, but probably something different from my content, and secondly, a strange hint that I won't elaborate on. Mr. Walther from Berlin also received the one sent by Goesch. If he distributes it here in Switzerland, the military censorship can read it. Mr. Bauer thinks that it would not be of much use to us to dwell on it. It is more important to think about what the members should actually pay more attention to in this case (which was also reflected in Miss Wernicke; he regrets that she left; it would have been better if she had stayed), namely that a number of members are immediately prepared to take sides [and on this basis to highlight the disruptions in the society, the attacks and provocations against the central committee].

This is what happened in Munich, where Mr. Hofrat Seiling declared his resignation [because he] did not agree with our handling of the Sprengel-Goesch affair, that is, the way the central committee dealt with the society. At least that is the reason he gave – or so I was told. A number of members don't see what it's all about: the things are the most monstrous; you can't find the right word for them at all. He himself, by the way, uses the term “claim”; he doesn't prove them. [Gap in the transcript]

When we now try to show Dr. Goesch how wrong he is, there are a number of members who say: Yes, but we shouldn't have proceeded this way – we should have dealt with him in a much friendlier, completely different way. After all, we didn't do anything against Goesch until he went too far. He also wrote this letter without any offense on our part. And from our side, the whole situation was so clear. – He claims that he would have come to these realizations without the help of Miss Sprengel, albeit much later, and that this realization has nothing to do with emotional or personal matters.

We have now explained to him [gap in transcript] that Sprengel wrote a letter on December 25, 1914. We had written that the letter arrived on December 25. He says: No, it was only posted on December 25. But on the same occasion, he reveals how he handles things; he then says: When Miss Sprengel wrote this letter, whereby the central committee before the marriage [gap in the transcript] the marriage was the cause. They actually didn't know about the execution of the marriage yet. Everyone is thinking: Yes, but that's really strange – Miss Sprengel hadn't yet heard about the marriage! We thought there was a connection. Now Goesch writes: In fact, Sprengel only found out about the marriage later. Much later on, he returns to the matter, saying: Fräulein Sprengel had learned of the marriage on the 24th. – So, at first he gives the impression that she knew nothing. [gap in the transcript]

This letter expresses something of a catastrophe, as which Miss Sprengel perceives and experiences the marriage with the doctor. This catastrophe then results in Miss Sprengel gaining all kinds of insights; her life destiny has been sacrificed. These insights then lead to Goesch writing these letters, in which he shares these insights, which he has acquired under instruction. These insights consist of: not keeping promises; not allowing criticism, in the form of incorrect advice or incorrect influences. We were forced to think that there is a certain connection, an inner connection between the reasons he gives and Sprengel's entire experience as a result of the marriage.

We discussed this and showed him that these were all the most infamous insinuations. In Goesch's case, there is a whole series of expressions of this kind that characterize our approach. None of this is true. The only thing that is true is that [...] at first he didn't know, and only much later did she tell him why she was so affected by this marriage; none of this weighed heavily on him. And yet he claims: These are all insights that take place entirely in the spiritual realm, which cannot be approached by external means, and never can be approached abstractly.

We have at least written clearly enough in the letter, he could just as well say: All this happened merely in the belief that we were helping him [gap in the writing], to make it clear how things were; we had no intention of harming him by telling him the truth!

This fact exists; a member in Munich is resigning from our party because of this incident. This is a case that should concern us much more now than our feelings towards Dr. Goesch or Miss Sprengel, because this is not something that is so rare. Ms. Wernicke said to me right away, by the way, that we just have to meet people halfway, then people wouldn't be so bad; they would also be inclined to give in if we met them halfway. But she said explicitly that she also told him that he simply did not act correctly.

It has also been summarized by Dr. Unger, and as it has at least been suggested to me, we want to write a paper together. [unclear passage]

That may all be. But for the members, the following should be considered: What was the issue here? It is not the central committee that is the rabbit, but rather one should ask: What did Goesch do? That is the point of view. Again and again, we should shake things up and show that elements are playing on the minds of members without us having done anything to them. If one says, “Why did Seiling take the whole story so tragically?” – it couldn't possibly be the realization that Goesch was wrong. At most, he would have to say, “Yes, maybe he was wrong after all, because something had to be there, even there, if you want to accommodate Goesch.”

We would have to think about this matter more and more clearly than is possible today, how it is possible that members of the party repeatedly [take up] the role of the accuser, and repeatedly demand of those who lead that they help those who do not act in the interests of society.

Now we can move on, and of course we have to say to ourselves: nothing at all can be achieved through reasoned argument. Given the nature of the matter, this must be clear. Anyone who studied the document eight days ago should actually have realized that not much can be done. Because despite all the ingenuity of the arguments, the truth is constantly being trampled underfoot, under the guise of seeking the truth.

I am sure that Dr. Goesch will not let the matter rest. Perhaps under completely different circumstances, if something completely different had come in, it might have worked; but it is likely that he will not let it rest. Because the fact is that he is no longer on the ground of wanting to get close to each other, but wants to use force, that is already clear from his first letter.

He has written certain things to Dr. Steiner, because: Dr. Steiner knows that everything he says is right. And [Goesch even goes so far as to say] if we had asked Dr. Steiner, “Is it as Goesch says?” [then] he would probably have said, “Yes, that's right.” So he doesn't need to come to Dr. Steiner with other reasons.

He has now sent the letter and expects that Dr. Steiner will change his attitude and his entire behavior towards the members. But just in case, if Dr. Steiner were so devious, he sends it to some members right away. Experience has shown that nothing changes, that everything remains the same. So he shouldn't get away with it; I will still tell others, so it is not possible for him to cover it up.

In other words, no rational arguments are to be accepted, but coercion is to be used. And this coercion is further exercised, it is attempted in this letter to me, where I have to give lectures that I have announced, but I am being encouraged to quickly cancel them, and I am being given to hope that I will do so. Now this document comes.

Dr. Steiner: But I don't know if I am allowed to read it in the sense of Dr. Goesch, because it is only for members of our spiritual movement. There is also the title “Philosophical” about it, but since Dr. Goesch makes the distinction between that and the members of the movement, [I don't know] whether it is in the sense of Dr. Goesch to read this document, to communicate it to you! Who knows whether he thinks I'm allowed to read it out. The document is called:

[Gap in the transcript]

So this is the letter that came to me, with no date, postmarked August 21.

Michael Bauer: Yes, so this document will also belong in this direction, that he now wants to work with written means of power, with such means that may have made an impression on some people in history. [Presumably an audience reaction:] There will be protest.

Michael Bauer: And if that does not happen, other measures will most certainly follow; we have to expect that one day there will be brochures in bookstores that concern us, and we have to be clear about what should be done with them; I don't think much will be achieved by discussing them; we just have to fight these things with all the means at our disposal as soon as they go public, with reasons. In any case, we must not allow the sentiment to arise that has emerged in some people, according to all indications – that the greater injustice has been done to the others – by not addressing the issues, but we must know where the guilt lies! This is how it has already been in some other cases here. People have made the most terrible accusations; but afterwards it has become apparent that compassion has faded away from where the accusations originated. These are things that we should clearly recognize. At the moment when we clearly recognize, we will understand when it comes to ourselves. We must see how endangered our movement is, we must consider that we belong to our movement, that we do not want to bring personal things into it; because most of the time it is only personal sentiments that come into play, for example, a feeling of having been neglected in society and now wanting to ally with others.

So we will not be dealing with critics from outside our society. But the judgments about us will not become less frequent, but more numerous. That is a separate issue. We will be attacked again and again in the wrong way by people who were once with us or are still with us. We have to see clearly: what is our task? In the present case, it should be clear: things have been said that are unproven and also unprovable, that are completely untrue, that constitute gross defamation, that are, to the highest degree, what Goesch describes as “dishonor cutting”! But that does not bother him at all; because he still maintains that he is right, and the central committee is the one that does all this. In these and similar cases, it will be very important for us to see clearly: What can be done for the benefit of our movement? — Because we are not doing the movement any service by saying, “Yes, of course, a lot could have been done differently; they are surely right, and if they wait a little longer, the central committee will perhaps realize that they are right; they may gradually be willing to negotiate further if they themselves admit that they are willing to express themselves and listen to reasons. In this sense, this is certainly not justified; rather, we must recognize with all sharpness: here are things that should not have happened and that we do not want to get involved in any further, as far as the case itself is concerned.

But these means of violence, which are still to come, must find us on guard. At the very least, we must be able to counter them properly. And we can only do that if we are very clear about the tasks and goals of our movement, and if we are not too lazy to fathom within ourselves why the movement is in the world now. Often it is just laziness when we don't pursue things and want to get away more easily.

It may have been wrong to exclude the three people; perhaps it would have been better to keep them away from our events [or] perhaps not to have them among us at all. But if a large number of our members continue to take sides against us and work against us, then it is simply impossible for us to have these people among us; because sooner or later the movement will be so torn apart and tossed back and forth by personal feelings that it would no longer be able to exist as a society. This is really something we must clearly envision.

And if we had the celebration of the laying of the foundation stone today, then it is not out of context at all if we have to realize - and if it can at least serve this assembly: How can our society and the work in it be judged? Only if we all know what we want for spiritual science and its endeavors! And if, as was said earlier, we want to awaken understanding for spiritual science and its endeavors, and if we then remain loyal to it. — That is not loyalty if you immediately turn personal matters into a matter against the movement. Basically, in the vast majority of cases, it was personal matters that should have been dealt with within the Society. It was very personal matters that Fraeulein Sprengel was pursuing, and which were not achieved, and which then led to the case. Ultimately, it was probably also personal matters that led to the resignation in Munich. Because mostly personal aspirations are approached to the Society. If these aspirations do not lead to the goal, then one turns against the Society.

If you have truly understood the Society as a tool for spreading and cultivating spiritual science, then you will not oppose the Society for personal reasons. You may well have a personal dispute with a member from time to time, but you can never turn against the Society or the teacher in the Society in the way that has happened here. If we could see clearly that it is often only where we ourselves carry discord within us that personal things have been brought about, then we would quickly stand on our own two feet.

Basically, it must come to pass that every member of society also wants to become a co-worker of society. And this must actually become the point of view – that one must see in which way one's abilities can then be integrated into the whole: First and foremost, one must clearly strive against oneself.

There are many things to discuss, my dear friends, but we cannot do so today. In any case, the fact that the matter is not yet closed should encourage us to do our utmost and to put all our comfort aside in order to stand firm as members of our spiritual movement and to be able to do something for the great task that our movement is striving for.

[In this respect, what unfortunately still had to be said today is not entirely without relevance,] because it was the third anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone. In this respect, even the feeling of love for the movement may increase, insofar as we feel: We must strive to overcome our difficulties, the difficulties with which our movement is faced in the world, and which will probably increase, and so with the feeling of love for the movement; then, perhaps, out of this love for the movement, we will find the strength to be loyal to it and to stand by it loyally where it is endangered.

I ask that anyone who wishes to say something to speak up. I did not want to plead for the Central Board of Trustees with these sober remarks, but I just wanted to say that the focus of the whole thing lies in Dr. Goesch's attack on Dr. Steiner - and thus against our entire movement - and that we should not lose sight of that, even if, when reading this document, one occasionally thinks that the Central Board of Trustees could have said it differently in a clever way.

When I came to Munich this year, I had to learn that the document had been read and studied there, and that there too the feeling that the Central Executive Committee had committed blunders was felt more strongly than what Dr. Goesch had done! That was basically partly sprouted for the same reasons as what is happening today, namely where one does not want to take the “party” - but where one is nevertheless full of sympathy for the side that has directly conjured up a danger.

The office of the Central Council is not “elected”; the position is not filled by election. I am not elected to the Central Council; but I declared at the time that I am willing to work in this direction, and that those who want to work with me may form the Society - together with the others. It could only be because of a statement of mine that I stop being on the central committee. And I am not making that statement today.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to speak?

Mrs. von Vacano: I just want to say that it is very nice of Mr. Bauer not to make this “statement”!

General applause.

Michael Bauer: Many people have commented on what I actually wanted to read from the document: a characterization; but it really didn't work. It would be too much.

Mrs. von Ulrich: May I make a small request: If we are attacked in writing or through brochures from that side, every response should be submitted to the Society or the Central Committee, so that when one rejects attacks with good intentions, one does not perhaps make it worse.

Michael Bauer: That was not a motion, but a suggestion; because it is not a motion, it does not need to be voted on until a time when it [gap in the transcript]

Ms. von Ulrich: Yes, but then it will be too late; if answers are given that harm us, it will be too late. Therefore, I am making the suggestion now so that it should be considered.

Michael Bauer: This can be heard above all from the suggestion that the answers are well considered in every case; it need not be only in this case. One may hear that; but I would prefer not to come to a decision about it, to a decision of this kind; it would be interpreted as if we did not love and fear freedom of expression from the outset and wanted to introduce censorship in all cases. It is better not to let this opinion arise.

Dr. Steiner: In all such matters, it must of course be borne in mind that we are an emerging entity, an emerging movement, and have no means of simply refraining from doing that which could be refrained from in such a case, as in the Goesch-Sprengel case.

The obvious thing would be – I would almost say – the most obvious thing would be to ignore the whole matter. And one would not concern oneself with it even if one were a corporation recognized by the world that had no need to concern itself with such matters!

It is not only from Dr. Goesch, but from many sides – from outside the Society, from within the Society.

One can form an opinion about this, which can ultimately be summarized in the words with which I once summarized what I wanted to say with regard to certain press attacks of this or that kind. I will just refer to a press attack that was made on my last lecture, which I gave in Zurich, and which was then written by the Zurich correspondent to Germany and reprinted there in the most incredible way in numerous smear and tabloid newspapers, newspapers that have a certain circulation.

It is only right that I should not answer such things at all. And I said at the time in such a public lecture: As long as it is possible, I must myself, in view of such attacks as that which came from Zurich at the time, stick to my old habits. — Not true, that is what one can always do in such a case. But one must not forget that we are, after all, a much 'attacked society', a society in which the attacker is easily believed. Yes, one can say that hardly anything is stupid enough to be spread and not be believed — believed out in the world about our society. So one has to say: Of course we are obliged not to adopt an ostrich-like policy in all cases, that is, not to bury our heads in the sand in all cases. Not true, for example, strange things have been reported about Mr. Goesch, reported by people whom one must believe, not just may believe in this case, but must believe in this case, given the various circumstances. For example, it was said that he had written letters to various people in Germany saying that the measures taken against him by the central board in Germany had given him a certain reputation. Now, however, individual members of the Anthroposophical Society had promised to help him out with certain funds, and he had therefore run into financial difficulties and could very easily be compelled to do more and to hand things over to the public.

So you see: I say that these things have been reported by those who have received such letters. Isn't that right, Ms. Grosheintz?

[Probably Nelly Grosheintz:] Yes, certainly! I have also read about it.

Dr. Steiner: Well, Dr. Goesch has written such letters. I'll leave it to you to characterize such things yourself. He is also said to have written that the behavior of the central committee has led him to not receive the money promised by his father for support, and that he is therefore forced to reveal these things to the public bit by bit.

A lady wrote to Dr. Goesch in a rather benevolent way – really in a rather benevolent way – and pointed out to him that he was dwelling on trivialities. Today you have heard Mr. Bauer's characterization of the incredible things he dwells on. He replied to the lady, roughly, not quoted verbatim, but roughly: as long as the lady in question stands by the point of view of Trottelism, which she expresses in her letter, he does not want to descend to the level of her mental state; he can only communicate with her when she has come out of Trottelism, out of her foolishness.

Now, however, this letter stated – because the lady in question had said that the matters were insignificant – that he had to tell her that the matters would no longer be insignificant if brochures could be found in all bookstores with the title: “The Central Council of the Anthroposophical Society. - The central board of the Anthroposophical Society's defamation of an innocent woman.” This brochure could be found in all bookstores and articles with such headlines in all journals. So you see, things can lead to more, and they must actually draw our attention to one thing.

I do not need to say all these things today; I can possibly, as I have often done, include in lectures such things that are yet to be said about the basic conditions of our Anthroposophical Society. But I would like to say this: There have already been enough attacks from within our society over the course of the two times seven years, in the most diverse forms; and actually very little has been done in defense! I say this despite the fact that some members have recently taken it upon themselves to write defenses and various articles, which is certainly very commendable. However, I must note – although it might even seem silly to note – that the defenses that arise in response to attacks are by no means the most appropriate defenses; because as a rule, nothing else comes of it than: Someone attacks – in the same way as Dr. Goesch did – and you respond. Of course you don't convince the person who attacked you; you can't be so naive as to believe that you can convince someone who has attacked you in such a way! He replies again; he replies in an even worse way, and the matter becomes – I do not want to use the word that was used earlier, because Confucius already said that one should love one's fellow human beings, but love with moderation. Therefore, I do not want to repeat the word that was used in the plenary in this context, but I will try to choose a more moderate word – I will just say that this leads to an 'endless to and fro', in which, of course, the one who has the necessary composure will always have the last word; and something, as the saying goes, always sticks! These defenses of our cause, which take place in response to attacks, will certainly be necessary in numerous cases and will also be good in numerous cases; but these defenses, which take place in response to attacks, are not the most important ones. The most important ones are those that spontaneously and positively do something for our cause – that do things for our cause because it is their own cause.

Now suppose you put all the attacks on one side and on the other side everything that has ever been done in defense of our cause, and you would really get a strange picture!

The fact is that we also need some initiative to be taken, something to be done and arranged by members in a positive way. It is silly for me to say this, of course; but now that the Society exists, the Society must behave not only as a community of people who receive something, but as an instrument for leading our spiritual movement into the world!

But then it is necessary that the society has members in its bosom who feel certain obligations, depending on their abilities, to do or refrain from doing this or that for the society. In the latter respect, much will have to be done! Just yesterday, I was told a strange case that has no significance for the public, but is symptomatic nonetheless, because such things are taken up, and – isn't it true – really also in the omission of such things, a clever way to defend our society could lie.

A short while ago, a picture of Dr. and I appeared in a newspaper. And this newspaper was, as I was told, ordered from a Basel office. I was told: “The order for the magazine was undoubtedly taken by a member and said: ‘There they are, the master...’ – to the shop girl there!”

These are things, aren't they, that don't exactly help – if you don't refrain from them – to put our society in the right light, and which are really, forgive the harsh expression, something that must be said: a mere stupidity. Well, stupid things are also a gift from God; but, aren't they, they usually don't remain or at least often don't remain in the circles in which they occur.

If you consider that there is actually nothing particularly wrong in the nice article in the magazine “Heimatschutz”, the way one has had to complain about many things lately, because, isn't it true, there in “Heimatschutz” are views - the things can of course be refuted - there are views - certainly, views which are foolish – but they are views, with the exception of one fact, a single fact, which unfortunately could be true: that the gentleman who wrote this peculiar article heard in the 'Iram of people that there is a model, and, isn't it true, that the things are made according to this 'wax model'. And all the comments he makes about it give the impression that strange things seem to be being said in the various 'trams.

So there you have the introduction into the public sphere of things that are simply said here or there – and that would be better left unsaid – and then the introduction of such things into the public sphere. And, no, we are just becoming a thing; we need to be careful not to throw stones in our own path. Of course, it is always the same thing that we have to say; but it is necessary to bring these things forward because it is so widespread in our society, something I have already pointed out, and have also pointed out in these lectures. These things are always being forgotten; they are forgotten over and over again; they do not become part of our ongoing practice. I am completely convinced that the best suggestions have already been made from one person to another; but as a rule it does not last long.

Many meetings are held on this or that subject; but when it comes to actually implementing such an initiative with real determination, as is necessary for an emerging movement, then comes the forgetting that plays such a big role. And that is connected with what I want to emphasize: we should not wait until attacks occur, but we should be clear that we really want to see ourselves as an instrument for the spiritual-scientific worldview, and that we really do what we can do. And that we really refrain from doing what we could easily see we should not do.

And this is perhaps not even of so little importance within society itself in relation to what is done in society. It sometimes really leads to the greatest difficulties when someone simply says something, the other hears it, someone else is already telling something different; with the third it is the opposite! We hear these things every week. And how much of it we have had to experience since we have been back here, it could be a great work if it were all written down.

But as I said, things like the “picture in the magazine” also have to be considered; because things keep happening over and over again, keep happening. Of course not exactly the same, but they keep happening in this form or in that form and then even appear in public! Why is it necessary to talk about something like the wax model on the electric train? If you show people the wax model during construction, they will naturally get a different view; but from the way it is communicated in the article, you can see how such things are talked about on the electric railway.

Furthermore, it is precisely in this area of false propaganda that the most diverse things have been achieved in connection with our construction in recent times – one can already say – starting with that article that once did us so much harm, which appeared in the “Matin” soon after our construction began, and continuing with various other things.

So it is necessary to reflect on the living conditions and communicate in such a way that things are no longer forgotten, and to see, don't we, that things really lead us into the impossible.

So it has now become necessary for Dr. Steiner to resign from the central board in Germany, from the central board of the Anthroposophical Society. Just imagine if the other central committees also somehow feel that it is not working. Where would that leave us? The principle of not supporting those who have to work is too widespread among us. I would say there is a certain lack of enthusiasm for certain things. This is something that belongs to the imponderables; you can't grasp it, you can't really put it into words either. But I must now say: if at all, such a letter as the one read today from Mr. Bauer to Mr. Bauer could be written, if such things can be written, such as these strange quote-fabrications and so on, then – yes, I can't say anything other than: I feel much too little that there is any sympathy, any enthusiastic support for what should be in society, that one feels sufficiently how outrageous it actually is when those people who work in the interest of our cause can be attacked in such a way. In such matters, there is a tendency to brush these things aside, to prefer not to worry about them.

There is still far too much of that horrible tendency here, which we could observe in the old Theosophical Society, where a great deal of time was spent describing the greatest heights that man has climbed. Just read the (aforementioned report), where one climbs up so high; higher and higher points of view – that is very nice if one can revel in it, and possibly also tell at the tea table that such things exist.

In this way, we cannot get involved in dealing with things, because we have to be clear that if our movement is to go through serious times, then it can only happen if we really take things in their full dignity and in their full depth. We cannot keep saying: our society is based on an occult foundation, and therefore certain things must not occur in our society, and then take the view: Yes, it is not nice to deal with these things, we should not spend nice hours with these things. - We have to communicate, and we have to know that the central board has experienced such attacks in these three years since the laying of the foundation stone for our local building. And I must say: it is part of the times we live in to take these things very seriously and to be so imbued with the feeling that the central committee is truly put in a position by them that we must all approach it with the most enthusiastic feelings of gratitude after it has experienced such unjust attacks – not so, I would say, passive towards it.

The Central Committee, so to speak, must be regarded as the flesh of our flesh when I speak in relation to society. And really, if one could feel a little more the members' heartfelt involvement with these matters, not just the apathetic going to lectures or the heartfelt involvement in all the things that affect the welfare of the Society, then this would be a fact that could evoke the feeling that our Society is viable!

The apathy that can be found in some things is what is so terribly, fundamentally – allow me to use the expression – so terribly painful and wounding: the apathy of not paying attention to things if they don't concern you personally.

Enthusiastic sharing, enthusiastic support, especially for those who have to work, that is what is not felt. These are imponderables; but they are not felt. It had to be said before.

Don't take this as an attack, but it had to be said. For example, I would have expected different things to be said today, after hearing the outrageous letter to Mr. Bauer, and that words would have been found for what it

actually means when people emerge from the bosom of our society who, after having first fanned the whole attack, hurl such things at the man who has joined the movement in such a selfless, devoted and self-denying manner – given these other difficulties – in such a self-denying manner for the movement. This is a fact that must be faced, and we must not remain apathetic about it, but must try to make amends in some way. Somehow we must find ways and means to really protect the spiritual movement to which we want to belong.

That is what I wanted to say, as I said, without it being an attack.

These are imponderables that one feels: this not wanting to stand with one's whole personality for the things in which one believes one can and should stand. It is an outrageous thing that such a letter can be written. You can, of course, say: it cannot be prevented. Of course it cannot be prevented. Even more terrible letters have been written; not a week goes by without even more terrible letters being written; but there is also a great deal happening within the movement itself that, if it did not happen in this way, would prevent such attacks from coming about in such an outrageous way from within the bosom of society. If you were to follow the history of each individual case where attacks arose from the bosom of our members, you would see that many things could have been done by our members before they happened that would have prevented the case from coming to such excesses.

Mrs. Peelen: I didn't feel it was necessary to say a word to Mr. Bauer about this matter, because all of us here have such reverence and love for Mr. Bauer that he knows how painfully this letter has affected each and every one of us , so that we really are incapable at this moment of finding words to tell him how each of us probably feels affected by it, and that we couldn't find words to tell him how great our love and admiration is. He knows that and must have felt it during the time he worked here. Dr. Steiner: But if we can never find words, then we will constantly be beaten by those who find words.

Michael Bauer: The essential remains: Where in our circles more and more voices express themselves, which ultimately boil down to fending off an attack for personal motives, that we counteract this in good time if we only know where we stand /unclear text passage]. Because it is quite certain that a whole range of such things would never have become so big if the members themselves had not repeatedly allowed these things to grow by adding to them when listening or speaking. If something had been done about it in time, something would certainly have come of it, especially on this point – especially this point of view, that we have to work positively, [that we] have to gradually learn and apply defense in a positive way, [especially this point of view,] that this thought has come to quite a few minds recently. And time and again, one person or another has said it to me. And I am hopeful that the time is not far off when our society will do its duty in a positive way in this regard. In one way or another, many things have come to light recently. I am not saying this now to reassure us, but to show that we can still have hope. I recall, for example, Albert Steffen's beautiful essay on Dr. Steiner, or Dr. Boos' work; and then Dr. Beckh's work on Buddhism, which does not speak about our movement, but says a lot from within our movement.

And so I hope that the words that Dr. Steiner said most recently will lend support in this direction. The will and the need to work in this direction is now present in many people. If we do not forget it, something will come of it.

I will now conclude for today.