The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] The Age of Philosophy is often said to have been superseded, about the middle of the nineteenth century, by the rising Age of Natural Science. And it is said that the Age of Natural Science still continues in our day, although many people are at pains to emphasise at the same time that we have found our way once more to certain philosophic tendencies.

[ 2 ] All this is true of the paths of knowledge which the modern age has taken, but not of its paths of life. With his conceptions and ideas, man still lives in Nature, even if he carries the mechanical habit of thought into his Nature-theories. But with his life of Will he lives in the mechanical processes of technical science and industry to so far-reaching an extent, that it has long imbued this Age of Science with an entirely new quality.

[ 3 ] To understand human life we must consider it to begin with from two distinct aspects. From his former lives on Earth, man brings with him the faculty to conceive the Cosmic—the Cosmic that works inward from the Earth's encircling spheres, and that which works within the Earth domain itself. Through his senses he perceives the Cosmic that is at work upon the Earth; through his thinking Organisation he conceives and thinks the Cosmic influences that work downward to the Earth from the encircling spheres.

[ 4 ] Thus man lives, through his physical body in Perception, through his etheric body in Thought.

[ 5 ] That which takes place in his astral body and his ego holds sway in the more hidden regions of the soul. It holds sway, for example, in his destiny. We must, however, look for it, to begin with, not in the complicated relationships of destiny, but in the simple and elementary processes of life.

[ 6 ] Man connects himself with certain earthly forces, in that he gives his body its right orientation within them. He learns to stand and walk upright; he learns to place himself with arms and hands into the equilibrium of earthly forces.

[ 7 ] Now these are not forces working inward from the Cosmos. They are forces of a purely earthly nature.

[ 8 ] In reality, nothing that man experiences is an abstraction. He only fails to perceive whence it is that an experience comes to him; and thus he turns ideas about realities into abstractions. He speaks of the laws of mechanics. He thinks he has abstracted them from the connections and relationships of Nature. But this is not the case. All that man experiences in his soul by way of purely mechanical laws, has been discovered inwardly through his relationship of orientation to the earthly world (in standing, walking, etc.).

[ 9 ] The Mechanical is thus characterised as that which is of a purely earthly nature. For the laws and processes of Nature as they hold sway in colour, sound, etc., have entered into the earthly realm from the Cosmos. It is only within the earthly realm that they too become imbued with the mechanical element, just as is the case with man himself, who does not confront the mechanical in his conscious experience until he comes within the earthly realm.

[ 10 ] By far the greater part of that which works in modern civilisation through technical Science and Industry—wherein the life of man is so intensely interwoven—is not Nature at all, but Sub-Nature. It is a world which emancipates itself from Nature—emancipates itself in a downward direction.

[ 11 ] Look how the Oriental, when he strives towards the Spirit, seeks to get out of the conditions of equilibrium whose origin is merely in the earthly realm. He assumes an attitude of meditation which brings him again into the purely Cosmic balance. In this attitude the Earth no longer influences the inner orientation of his body. (I am not recommending this for imitation; it is mentioned merely to make our present subject clear. Anyone familiar with my writings will know how different is the Eastern from the Western spiritual life in this direction.)

[ 12 ] Man needed this relation to the purely earthly for the unfolding of his Spiritual Soul. Thus in the most recent times there has arisen a strong tendency to realise in all things, and even in the life of action, this element into which man must enter for his evolution. Entering the purely earthly element, he strikes upon the Ahrimanic realm. With his own being he must now acquire a right relation to the Ahrimanic.

[ 13 ] But in the age of Technical Science hitherto, the possibility of finding a true relationship to the Ahrimanic civilisation has escaped man. He must find the strength, the inner force of knowledge, in order not to be overcome by Ahriman in this technical civilisation. He must understand Sub-Nature for what it really is. This he can only do if he rises, in spiritual knowledge, at least as far into extra-earthly Super-Nature as he has descended, in technical Sciences, into Sub-Nature. The age requires a knowledge transcending Nature, because in its inner life it must come to grips with a life-content which has sunk far beneath Nature—a life-content whose influence is perilous. Needless to say, there can be no question here of advocating a return to earlier states of civilisation. The point is that man shall find the way to bring the conditions of modern civilisation into their true relationship-to himself and to the Cosmos.

[ 14 ] There are very few as yet who even feel the greatness of the spiritual tasks approaching man in this direction. Electricity, for instance, celebrated since its discovery as the very soul of Nature's existence, must be recognised in its true character—in its peculiar power of leading down from Nature to Sub Nature. Only man himself must beware lest he slide downward with it.

[ 15 ] In the age when there was not yet a technical industry independent of true Nature, man found the Spirit within his view of Nature. But the technical processes, emancipating themselves from Nature, caused him to stare more and more fixedly at the mechanical-material, which now became for him the really scientific realm. In this mechanical-material domain, all the Divine-Spiritual Being connected with the origin of human evolution, is completely absent. The purely Ahrimanic dominates this sphere.

[ 16 ] In the Science of the Spirit, we now create another sphere in which there is no Ahrimanic element. It is just by receiving in Knowledge this spirituality to which the Ahrimanic powers have no access, that man is strengthened to confront Ahriman within the world.

(March, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the foregoing study: From Nature to Sub-Nature)

[ 17 ] 183. In the age of Natural Science, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, the civilised activities of mankind are gradually sliding downward, not only into the lowest regions of Nature, but even beneath Nature. Technical Science and Industry become Sub-Nature.

[ 18 ] 184. This makes it urgent for man to find in conscious experience a knowledge of the Spirit, wherein he will rise as high above Nature as in his sub-natural technical activities he sinks beneath her. He will thus create within him the inner strength not to go under.

[ 19 ] 185. A past conception of Nature still bore within it the Spirit with which the source of all human evolution is connected. By degrees, this Spirit vanished altogether from man's theory of Nature. The purely Ahrimanic spirit has entered in its place, and passed from theory of Nature into the technical civilisation of mankind.

Translated by Gertrude Teutsch

The concepts concerning the super-sensible world and its relationship with the world of the senses have been discussed here in a long series of lectures. It is only natural that, again and again, the question should arise, “What is the origin of knowledge concerning the super-sensible world?” With this question or, in other words, with the question of the inner development of man, we wish to occupy ourselves today.

The phrase “inner development of man” here refers to the ascent of the human being to capacities which must be acquired if he wishes to make super-sensible insights his own. Now do not misunderstand the intent of this lecture. This lecture will by no means postulate rules or laws concerning general human morality, nor will it challenge the general religion of the age. I must stress this because when occultism is discussed the misunderstanding often arises that some sort of general demands or fundamental moral laws, valid without variation, are being established. This is not the case. This point requires particular clarification in our age of standardization, when differences between human beings are not at all acknowledged. Neither should today's lecture be mistaken for a lecture concerning the general fundamentals of the anthroposophic movement. Occultism is not the same as anthroposophy. The Anthroposophical Society is not alone in cultivating occultism, nor is this its only task. It could even be possible for a person to join the Anthroposophical Society and to avoid occultism altogether.

Among the inquiries which are pursued within the Anthroposophical Society, in addition to the field of general ethics, is also this field of occultism, which includes those laws of existence which are hidden from the usual sense observation in everyday human experience. By no means, however, are these laws unrelated to everyday experience. “Occult” means “hidden,” or “mysterious.” But it must be stressed over and over that occultism is a matter in which certain preconditions are truly necessary. Just as higher mathematics would be incomprehensible to the simple peasant who had never before encountered it, so is occultism incomprehensible to many people today. Occultism ceases to be “occult,” however, when one has mastered it. In this way, I have strictly defined the boundaries of today's lecture. Therefore, no one can object—this must be stressed in the light of the most manifold endeavors and of the experience of millennia—that the demands of occultism cannot be fulfilled, and that they contradict the general culture. No one is expected to fulfill these demands. But if someone requests that he be given convictions provided by occultism and yet refuses to occupy himself with it, he is like a schoolboy who wishes to create electricity in a glass rod, yet refuses to rub it. Without friction, it will not become charged. This is similar to the objection raised against the practice of occultism.

No one is exhorted to become an occultist; one must come to occultism of one's own volition. Whoever says that we do not need occultism will not need to occupy himself with it. At this time, occultism does not appeal to mankind in general. In fact, it is extremely difficult in the present culture to submit to those rules of conduct which will open the spiritual world.

Two prerequisites are totally lacking in our culture. One is isolation, what spiritual science calls “higher human solitude.” The other is overcoming the egotism which, though largely unconscious, has become a dominant characteristic of our time.

The absence of these two prerequisites renders the path of inner development simply unattainable. Isolation, or spiritual solitude, is very difficult to achieve because life conditions tend to distract and disperse, in brief to demand sense-involvement in the external. There has been no previous culture in which people have lived with such an involvement in the external. I beg you not to take what I am saying as criticism, but simply as an objective characterization.

Of course, he who speaks as I do knows that this situation cannot be different, and that it forms the basis for the greatest advantages and greatest achievements of our time. But this is the reason that our time is so devoid of super-sensible insight and that our culture is so devoid of super-sensible influence. In other cultures—and they do exist—the human being is in a position to cultivate the inner life more and to withdraw from the influences of external life. Such cultures offer a soil where inner life in the higher sense can thrive. In the Oriental culture there exists what is called Yoga. Those who live according to the rules of this teaching are called yogis. A yogi is one who strives for higher spiritual knowledge, but only after he has sought for himself a master of the super-sensible. No one is able to proceed without the guidance of a master, or guru. When the yogi has found such a guru, he must spend a considerable part of the day, regularly, not irregularly, living totally within his soul. All the forces that the yogi needs to develop are already within his soul. They exist there as truly as electricity exists in the glass rod before it is brought forth through friction. In order to call forth the forces of the soul, methods of spiritual science must be used which are the results of observations made over millennia. This is very difficult in our time, which demands a certain splintering of each individual struggling for existence. One cannot arrive at a total inward composure; one cannot even arrive at the concept of such composure. People are not sufficiently aware of the deep solitude the yogi must seek. One must repeat the same matter rhythmically with immense regularity, if only for a brief time each day, in total separation from all usual concerns. It is indispensable that all life usually surrounding the yogi cease to exist and that his senses become unreceptive to all impressions of the world around him. He must be able to make himself deaf and dumb to his surroundings during the time which he prescribes for himself. He must be able to concentrate to such a degree—and he must acquire practice in this concentration—that a cannon could be fired next to him without disturbing his attention to his inner life. He must also become free of all memory impressions, particularly those of everyday life.

Just think how exceedingly difficult it is to bring about these conditions in our culture, how even the concept of such isolation is lacking. This spiritual solitude must be reached in such a way that the harmony, the total equilibrium with the surrounding world, is never lost. But this harmony can be lost exceedingly easily during such deep immersion in one's inner life. Whoever goes more and more deeply inward must at the same time be able to establish harmony with the external world all the more clearly.

No hint of estrangement, of distancing from external practical life, may arise in him lest he stray from the right course. To a degree, then, it might be impossible to distinguish his higher life from insanity. It truly is a kind of insanity when the inner life loses its proper relationship to the outer. Just imagine, for example, that you were knowledgeable concerning our conditions on earth and that you had all the experience and wisdom which may be gathered here. You fall asleep in the evening, and in the morning you do not wake up on Earth but on Mars. The conditions on Mars are totally different from those on Earth; the knowledge that you have gathered on Earth is of no use to you whatsoever. There is no longer harmony between life within you and external life. You probably would find yourself in a Martian insane asylum within an hour. A similar situation might easily arise if the development of the internal life severs one's connection with the external world. One must take strict care that this does not happen. These are great difficulties in our culture.

Egotism in relation to inward soul properties is the first obstacle. Present humanity usually takes no account of this. This egotism is closely connected with the spiritual development of man. An important prerequisite for spiritual development is not to seek it out of egotism. Whoever is motivated by egotism cannot get very far. But egotism in our time reaches deep into the innermost soul. Again and again the objection is heard, “What use are all the teachings of occultism, if I cannot experience them myself?” Whoever starts from this presumption and cannot change has little chance of arriving at higher development. One aspect of higher development is a most intimate awareness of human community, so that it is immaterial whether it is I or someone else having the experience. Hence I must meet one who has a higher development than I with unlimited love and trust. First, I must acquire this consciousness, the consciousness of infinite trust toward my fellow man when he says that he has experienced one thing or the other. Such trust is a precondition for working together. Wherever occult capacities are strongly brought into play, there exists unlimited trust; there exists the awareness that a human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The first basis, therefore, is trust and faith, because we do not seek the higher self only in ourselves but also in our fellow men. Everyone living around one exists in undivided unity in the inner kernel of one's being.

On the basis of my lower self I am separated from other humans. But as far as my higher self is concerned—and that alone can ascend to the spiritual world—I am no longer separated from my fellow men; I am united with my fellow men; the one speaking to me out of higher truths is actually my own self. I must get away completely from the notion of difference between him and me. I must overcome totally the feeling that he has an advantage over me. Try to live your way into this feeling until it penetrates the most intimate fiber of your soul and causes every vestige of egotism to disappear. Do this so that the one further along the path than you truly stands before you like your own self; then you have attained one of the prerequisites for awakening higher spiritual life.

In situations where one receives guidance for the occult life, sometimes quite erroneously and confusedly, one may often hear that the higher self lives in the human being, that he need only allow his inner man to speak and the highest truth will thereby become manifest. Nothing is more correct and, at the same time, less productive than this assertion. Just try to let your inner self speak, and you will see that, as a rule, no matter how much you fancy that your higher self is making an appearance, it is the lower self that speaks. The higher self is not found within us for the time being. We must seek it outside of ourselves. We can learn a good deal from the person who is further along than we are, since there the higher self is visible. One's higher self can gain nothing from one's own egotistic “I.” There where he now stands who is further along than I am, there will I stand sometime in the future. I am truly constituted to carry within myself the seed for what he already is. But the paths to Olympus must first be illuminated before one can follow them.

A feeling which may seem unbelievable is the fundamental condition for all occult development. It is mentioned in the various religions, and every practical occultist with experience will confirm it. The Christian religion describes it with the well-known sentence, , which an occultist must understand completely, “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This sentence can be understood only by he who has learned to revere in the highest sense. Suppose that in your earliest youth you had heard about a venerable person, an individual of whom you held the highest opinion, and now you are offered the opportunity to meet this person. A sense of awe prevails in you when the moment approaches that you will see this person for the first time. There, standing at the gateway of this personality, you might feel hesitant to touch the door handle and open it. When you look up in this way to such a venerable personality, then you have begun to grasp the feeling that Christianity intends by the statement that one should become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Whether or not the subject of this veneration is truly worthy of it is not really important. What matters is the capacity to look up to something with a veneration that comes from the innermost heart.

This feeling of veneration is the elevating force, raising us to higher spheres of super-sensible life. Everyone seeking the higher life must write into his soul with golden letters this law of the occult world. Development must start from this basic soul-mood; without this feeling, nothing can be achieved. Next, a person seeking inner development must understand clearly that he is doing something of immense importance to the human being. What he seeks is no more nor less than a new birth, and that needs to be taken in a literal sense. The higher soul of man is to be born. Just as man in his first birth was born out of the deep inner foundations of existence, and as he emerged into the light of the sun, so does he who seeks inner development step forth from the physical light of the sun into a higher spiritual light. Something is being born in him which rests as deeply in most human beings as the unborn child rests in the mother.

Without being aware of the full significance of this fact, one cannot understand what occult development means. The higher soul, resting deep within human nature and interwoven with it, is brought forth. As man stands before us in everyday life, his higher and lower natures are intermingled, and that is fortunate for everyday life. Many persons among us would exhibit evil, negative qualities except that there lives along with the lower nature a higher one which exerts a balancing influence. This intermingling can be compared with mixing a yellow with a blue liquid in a glass. The result is a green liquid in which blue and yellow can no longer be distinguished. So also is the lower nature in man mingled with the higher, and the two cannot be distinguished. Just as you might extract the blue liquid from the green by a chemical process, so that only the yellow remains and the unified green is separated into a complete duality, so the lower and higher natures separate in occult development. One draws the lower nature out of the body like a sword from the scabbard, which then remains alone. The lower nature comes forth appearing almost gruesome. When it was still mingled with the higher nature, nothing was noticeable. But once separated, all evil, negative properties come into view. People who previously appeared benevolent often become argumentative and jealous. This characteristic had existed earlier in the lower nature, but was guided by the higher. You can observe this in many who have been guided along an abnormal path. A person may readily become a liar when he is introduced into the spiritual world, because the capacity to distinguish between the true and the false is lost especially easily. Therefore, strictest training of the personal character is a necessary parallel to occult training. What history tells us about the saints and their temptations is not legend but literal truth.

He who wants to develop towards the higher world on any path is readily prone to such temptations unless he can subdue everything that meets him with a powerful strength of character and the highest morality. Not only do lust and passions grow—that is not even the case so much—but opportunities also increase. This seems miraculous. As through a miracle, the person ascending into the higher worlds finds previously hidden opportunities for evil lurking around him. In every aspect of life a demon lies in wait for him, ready to lead him astray. He now sees what he has not seen before. As through a spell, the division within his own being charms forth such opportunities from the hidden areas of life. Therefore, a very determined shaping of the character is an indispensable foundation for the so-called white magic, the school of occult development which leads man into the higher worlds in a good, true, and genuine way. Every practical occultist will tell you that no one should dare to step through the narrow portal, as the entrance to occult development is called, without practicing these properties again and again. They build the necessary foundation for occult life.

First man must develop the ability to distinguish in every situation throughout his life what is unimportant from what is important, that is, what is perishable from the imperishable. This requirement is easy to indicate but difficult to carry out. As Goethe says, it is easy, but what is easy is hard. Look, for instance, at a plant or an object. You will learn to understand that everything has an important and an unimportant side, and that man usually takes interest in the unimportant, in the relationship of the matter to himself, or in some other subordinate aspect. He who wishes to become an occultist must gradually develop the habit of seeing and seeking in each thing its essence. For instance, when he sees a clock he must have an interest in its laws. He must be able to take it apart into its smallest detail and to develop a feeling for the laws of the clock. A mineralogist will arrive at considerable knowledge about a quartz-crystal simply by looking at it. The occultist, however, must be able to take the stone in his hand and to feel in a living way something akin to the following monologue: “In a certain sense you, the crystal, are beneath humanity, but in a certain sense you are far above humanity. You are beneath humanity because you cannot make for yourself a picture of man by means of concepts, and because you do not feel. You cannot explain or think, you do not live, but you have an advantage over mankind. You are pure within yourself, have no desire, no wishes, no lust. Every human, every living being has wishes, desires, lusts. You do not have them. You are complete and without wishes, satisfied with what has come to you, an example for man, with which he will have to unite his other qualities.”

If the occultist can feel this in all its depth, then he has grasped what the stone can tell him. In this way man can draw out of everything something full of meaning. When this has become a habit for him, when he separates the important from the unimportant, he has acquired another feeling essential to the occultist. Then he must connect his own life with that which is important. In this people err particularly easily in our time. They believe that their place in life is not proper for them. How often people are inclined to say, “My lot has put me in the wrong place. I am,” let us say, “a postal clerk. If I were put in a different place, I could give people high ideas, great teaching,” and so on. The mistake which these people make is that they do not enter into the significant aspect of their occupation. If you see in me something of importance because I can talk to the people here, then you do not see the importance of your own life and work. If the mail-carriers did not carry the mail, the whole postal traffic would stop, and much work already achieved by others would be in vain.

Hence everyone in his place is of exceeding importance for the whole, and none is higher than the other. Christ has attempted to demonstrate this most beautifully in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, with the words, “The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.” These words were spoken after the Master had washed the feet of the Apostles. He wanted to say, “What would I be without my Apostles? They must be there so that I can be there in the world, and I must pay them tribute by lowering myself before them and washing their feet.” This is one of the most significant allusions to the feeling that the occultist must have for what is important. What is important in the inward sense must not be confused with the externally important. This must be strictly observed.

In addition, we must develop a series of qualities.¹ To begin with, we must become masters over our thoughts, and particularly our train of thought. This is called control of thoughts. Just think how thoughts whirl about in the soul of man, how they flit about like will-o'-the wisps. Here one impression arises, there another, and each one changes one's thoughts. It is not true that we govern our thoughts; rather our thoughts govern us totally. We must advance to the ability of steeping ourselves in one specific thought at a certain time of the day and not allow any other thought to enter and disturb our soul. In this way we ourselves hold the reins of thought life for a time.

The second quality is to find a similar relationship to our actions, that is, to exercise control over our actions. Here it is necessary to undertake actions, at least occasionally, which are not initiated by anything external. That which is initiated by our station in life, our profession, or our situation does not lead us more deeply into higher life. Higher life depends on personal matters, such as resolving to do something springing totally from one's own initiative even if it is an absolutely insignificant matter. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.

The third quality to be striven for is even-temperedness. People fluctuate back and forth between joy and sorrow. One moment they are beside themselves with joy, the next they are unbearably sad. Thus, people allow themselves to be rocked on the waves of life, on joy or sorrow. But they must reach equanimity and steadiness. Neither the greatest sorrow nor the greatest joy must unsettle their composure. They must become steadfast and even-tempered.

Fourth is the understanding for every being. Nothing expresses more beautifully what it means to understand every being than the legend which is handed down to us, not by the Gospel, but by a Persian story. Jesus was walking across a field with his disciples, and on the way they found a decaying dog. The animal looked horrible. Jesus stopped and cast an admiring look upon it, saying, “What beautiful teeth the animal has!” Jesus found within the ugly the one beautiful aspect. Strive at all times to approach what is wonderful in every object of outer reality, and you will see that everything contains an aspect that can be affirmed. Do as Christ did when he admired the beautiful teeth on the dead dog. This course will lead you to the great ability to tolerate, and to an understanding of every thing and of every being.

The fifth quality is complete openness towards everything new that meets us. Most people judge new things which meet them by the old which they already know. If anyone comes to tell them something new, they immediately respond with an opposing opinion. But we must not confront a new communication immediately with our own opinion. We must rather be on the alert for possibilities of learning something new. And learn we can, even from a small child. Even if one were the wisest person, one must be willing to hold back one's own judgment, and to listen to others. We must develop this ability to listen, for it will enable us to meet matters with the greatest possible openness. In occultism, this is called faith. It is the power not to weaken through opposition the impression made by the new.

The sixth quality is that which everyone receives once he has developed the first five. It is inner harmony. The person who has the other qualities also has inner harmony. In addition, it is necessary for a person seeking occult development to develop his feeling for freedom to the highest degree. That feeling for freedom enables him to seek within himself the center of his own being, to stand on his own two feet, so that he will not have to ask everyone what he should do and so that he can stand upright and act freely. This also is a quality which one needs to acquire.

If man has developed these qualities within himself, then he stands above all the dangers arising from the division within his nature. Then the properties of his lower nature can no longer affect him; he can no longer stray from the path. Therefore, these qualities must be formed with the greatest precision. Then comes the occult life, whose expression depends on a steady rhythm being carried into life.

The phrase “carrying rhythm into life” expresses the unfolding of this faculty. If you observe nature, you will find in it a certain rhythm. You will, of course, expect that the violet blooms every year at the same time in spring, that the crops in the field and the grapes on the vine will ripen at the same time each year. This rhythmical sequence of phenomena exists everywhere in nature. Everywhere there is rhythm, everywhere repetition in regular sequence. As you ascend from the plant to beings with higher development, you see the rhythmic sequence decreasing. Yet even in the higher stages of animal development one sees how all functions are ordered rhythmically. At a certain time of the year, animals acquire certain functions and capabilities. The higher a being evolves, the more life is given over into the hands of the being itself, and the more these rhythms cease. You must know that the human body is only one member of man's being. There is also the etheric body, then the astral body, and, finally, the higher members which form the basis for the others.

The physical body is highly subject to the same rhythm that governs outer nature. Just as plant and animal life, in its external form, takes its course rhythmically, so does the life of the physical body. The heart beats rhythmically, the lungs breathe rhythmically, and so forth. All this proceeds so rhythmically because it is set in order by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, particularly the astral body, have been, I would like to say, abandoned by these higher spiritual forces, and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity relating to wishes, desires, and passions is irregular, that it can in no way compare with the regularity ruling the physical body? He who learns to know the rhythm inherent in physical nature increasingly finds in it an example for spirituality. If you consider the heart, this wonderful organ with the regular beat and innate wisdom, and you compare it with the desires and passions of the astral body which unleash all sorts of actions against the heart, you will recognize how its regular course is influenced detrimentally by passion. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as those of the physical body.

I want to mention something here which will seem grotesque to most people. This is the matter of fasting. Awareness of the significance of fasting has been totally lost. Fasting is enormously significant, however, for creating rhythm in our astral body. What does it mean to fast? It means to restrain the desire to eat and to block the astral body in relation to this desire. He who fasts blocks the astral body and develops no desire to eat. This is like blocking a force in a machine. The astral body becomes inactive then, and the whole rhythm of the physical body with its innate wisdom works upward into the astral body to rhythmicize it. Like the imprint of a seal, the harmony of the physical body impresses itself upon the astral body. It would transfer much more permanently if the astral body were not continuously being made irregular by desires, passions, and wishes, including spiritual desires and wishes.

It is more necessary for the man of today to carry rhythm into all spheres of higher life than it was in earlier times. Just as rhythm is implanted in the physical body by God, so man must make his astral body rhythmical. Man must order his day for himself. He must arrange it for his astral body as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. In the morning, at a definite time, one must undertake one spiritual action; a different one must be undertaken at another time, again to be adhered to regularly, and yet another one in the evening. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable for the development of the higher life. This is one method for taking life in hand and for keeping it in hand. So set a time for yourself in the morning when you concentrate. You must adhere to this hour. You must establish a kind of calm so that the occult master in you may awaken. You must meditate about a great thought content that has nothing to do with the external world, and let this thought content come to life completely. A short time is enough, perhaps a quarter of an hour. Even five minutes are sufficient if more time is not available. But it is worthless to do these exercises irregularly. Do them regularly so that the activity of the astral body becomes as regular as a clock. Only then do they have value. The astral body will appear completely different if you do these exercises regularly. Sit down in the morning and do these exercises, and the forces I described will develop. But, as I said, it must be done regularly, for the astral body expects that the same process will take place at the same time each day, and it falls into disorder if this does not happen. At least the intent towards order must exist. If you rhythmicize your life in this manner, you will see success in not too long a time; that is, the spiritual life hidden from man for the time being will become manifest to a certain degree.

As a rule, human life alternates among four states. The first state is the perception of the external world. You look around with your senses and perceive the external world. The second is what we may call imagination or the life of mental images which is related to, or even part of, dream life. There man does not have his roots in his surroundings, but is separated from them. There he has no realities within himself, but at the most reminiscences. The third state is dreamless sleep, in which man has no consciousness of his ego at all. In the fourth state he lives in memory. This is different from perception. It is already something remote, spiritual. If man had no memory, he could uphold no spiritual development.

The inner life begins to develop by means of inner contemplation and meditation. Thus, the human being sooner or later perceives that he no longer dreams in a chaotic manner; he begins to dream in the most significant way, and remarkable things reveal themselves in his dreams, which he gradually begins to recognize as manifestations of spiritual beings. Naturally the trivial objection might easily be raised that this is nothing but a dream and therefore of no consequence. However, should someone discover the dirigible in his dream and then proceed to build it, the dream would simply have shown the truth. Thus an idea can be grasped in an other-than-usual manner. Its truthfulness must then be judged by the fact that it can be realized. We must become convinced of its inner truth from outside.

The next step in spiritual life is to comprehend truth by means of our own qualities and of guiding our dreams consciously. When we begin to guide our dreams in a regular manner, then we are at the stage where truth becomes transparent for us. The first stage is called “material cognition.” For this, the object must lie before us. The next stage is “imaginative cognition.” It is developed through meditation, that is through shaping life rhythmically. Achieving this is laborious. But once it is achieved, the time arrives when there is no longer a difference between perception in the usual life and perception in the super-sensible. When we are among the things of our usual life, that is, in the sense world, and we change our spiritual state, then we experience continuously the spiritual, the super-sensible world, but only if we have sufficiently trained ourselves. This happens as soon as we are able to be deaf and dumb to the sense world, to remember nothing of the everyday world, and still to retain a spiritual life within us. Then our dream-life begins to take on a conscious form. If we are able to pour some of this into our everyday life, then the next capacity arises, rendering the soul-qualities of the beings around us perceptible. Then we see not only the external aspect of things, but also the inner, hidden essential kernel of things, of plants, of animals, and of man. I know that most people will say that these are actually different things. True, these are always different things from those a person sees who does not have such senses. The third stage is that in which a consciousness, which is as a rule completely empty, begins to be enlivened by continuity of consciousness. The continuity appears on its own. The person is then no longer unconscious during sleep. During the time in which he used to sleep, he now experiences the spiritual world.

Of what does sleep usually consist? The physical body lies in bed, and the astral body lives in the super-sensible world. In this super-sensible world, you are taking a walk. As a rule, a person with the type of disposition which is typical today cannot withdraw very far from his body. If one applies the rules of spiritual science, organs can be developed in the astral body as it wanders during sleep—just as the physical body has organs—which allow one to become conscious during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes or ears, and the astral body walking at night is blind and deaf for the same reason, because it does not yet have eyes and ears. But these organs are developed through meditation which provides the means for training these organs. This meditation must then be guided in a regular way. It is being led so that the human body is the mother and the spirit of man is the father. The physical human body, as we see it before us, is a mystery in every one of its parts and, in fact, each member is related in a definite but mysterious way to a part of the astral body. These are matters which the occultist knows. For instance, the point in the physical body lying between the eyebrows belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. When the occultist indicates how one must direct thoughts, feelings, and sensations to this point between the eyebrows through connecting something formed in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body, the result will be a certain sensation in the astral body. But this must be practiced regularly, and one must know how to do it. Then the astral body begins to form its members. From a lump, it grows to be an organism in which organs are formed. I have described the astral sense organs in the periodical, Lucifer Gnosis. They are also called Lotus flowers. By means of special word sequences, these Lotus flowers are cultivated. Once this has occurred, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world he enters when passing through the portal of death, a final contradiction to Hamlet's “The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

So it is possible to go, or rather to slip, from the sense world into the super-sensible world and to live there as well as here. That does not mean life in never-never land, but life in a realm that clarifies and explains life in our realm. Just as the usual person who has not studied electricity would not understand all the wonderful workings in a factory powered by electricity, so the average person does not understand the occurrences in the spiritual world. The visitor at the factory will lack understanding as long as he remains ignorant of the laws of electricity. So also will man lack understanding in the realm of the spirit as long as he does not know the laws of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that is not dependent on the spiritual world at every moment. Everything surrounding us is the external expression of the spiritual world. There is no materiality. Everything material is condensed spirit. For the person looking into the spiritual world, the whole material, sense-perceptible world, the world in general, becomes spiritualized. As ice melts into water through the effect of the sun, so everything sense-perceptible melts into something spiritual within the soul which looks into the spiritual world. Thus, the fundament of the world gradually manifests before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.

The life that man learns to know in this manner is actually the spiritual life he carries within himself all along. But he knows nothing of it because he does not know himself before developing organs for the higher world. Imagine possessing the characteristics you have at this time, yet being without sense-organs. You would know nothing of the world around you, would have no understanding of the physical body, and yet you would belong to the physical world. So the soul of man belongs to the spiritual world, but does not know it because it does not hear or see. Just as our body is drawn out of the forces and materials of the physical world, so is our soul drawn out of the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognize ourselves within ourselves, but only within our surroundings. As we cannot perceive a heart or a brain—even by means of X-ray—without seeing it in other people through our sense organs (it is only the eyes that can see the heart), so we truly cannot see or hear our own soul without perceiving it with spiritual organs in the surrounding world. You can recognize yourself only by means of your surroundings. In truth there exists no inner knowledge, no self-examination; there is only one knowledge, one revelation of the life around us through the organs of the physical as well as the spiritual. We are a part of the worlds around us, of the physical, the soul, and the spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical if we have physical organs, from the spiritual world and from all souls if we have spiritual and soul organs. There is no knowledge but knowledge of the world.

It is vain and empty idleness for man to “brood” within himself, believing that it is possible to progress simply by looking into himself. Man will find the God in himself if he awakens the divine organs within himself and finds his higher divine self in his surroundings, just as he finds his lower self solely by means of using his eyes and ears. We perceive ourselves clearly as physical beings by means of intercourse with the sense world, and we perceive ourselves clearly in relation to the spiritual world by developing spiritual senses. Development of the inner man means opening oneself to the divine life around us.

Now you will understand that it is essential that he who ascends to the higher world undergoes, to begin with, an immense strengthening of his character. Man can experience on his own the characteristics of the sense world because his senses are already opened. This is possible because a benevolent divine spirit, who has seen and heard in the physical world, stood by man in the most ancient times, before man could see and hear, and opened man's eyes and ears. It is from just such beings that man must learn at this time to see spiritually, from beings already able to do what he still has to learn. We must have a guru who can tell us how we should develop our organs, who will tell us what he has done in order to develop these organs. He who wishes to guide must have acquired one fundamental quality. This is unconditional truthfulness. This same quality is also a main requirement for the student. No one may train to become an occultist unless this fundamental quality of unconditional truthfulness has been previously cultivated.

When facing sense experience, one can test what is being said. When I tell you something about the spiritual world, however, you must have trust because you are not far enough to be able to confirm the information. He who wishes to be a guru must have become so truthful that it is impossible for him to take lightly such statements concerning the spiritual world or the spiritual life. The sense world corrects errors immediately by its own nature, but in the spiritual world we must have these guidelines within ourselves. We must be strictly trained, so that we are not forced to use the outer world for controls, but only our inner self. We are only able to gain this control by acquiring already in this world the strictest truthfulness. Therefore, when the Anthroposophical Society began to present some of the basic teachings of occultism to the world, it had to adopt the principle: there is no law higher than truth. Very few people understand this principle. Most are satisfied if they can say they have the conviction that something is true, and then if it is wrong, they will simply say that they were mistaken. The occultist cannot rely on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always be in consonance with the facts of the external world, and any experience that contradicts these facts must be seen as an error or a mistake. The question of who is at fault for the error ceases to be important to the occultist. He must be in absolute harmony with the facts in life. He must begin to feel responsible in the strictest sense for every one of his assertions. Thus he trains himself in the unconditional certainty that he must have for himself and for others if he wishes to be a spiritual guide.

So you see that I needed to indicate to you today a series of qualities and methods. We will have to speak about these again in order to add the higher concepts. It may seem to you that these things are too intimate to discuss with others, that each soul has to come to grips with them on its own terms, and that they are possibly unsuitable for reaching the great destination which should be reached, namely the entrance into the spiritual world. This entrance will definitely be achieved by those who tread the path I have characterized.

When? One of the most outstanding participants in the theosophical movement, Subba Row, who died some time ago, has spoken fittingly about this. Replying to the question of how long it would take, he said, “Seven years, perhaps also seven times seven years, perhaps even seven incarnations, perhaps only seven hours.” It all depends on what the human being brings with himself into life. We may meet a person who seems to be very stupid, but who has brought with himself a concealed higher life that needs only to be brought out. Most human beings these days are much further than it seems, and more people would know about this if the materialism of our conditions and of our time would not drive them back into the inner life of the soul. A large percentage of today's human beings was previously much further advanced. Whether that which is within them will come forth depends on many factors. But it is possible to give some help. Suppose you have before you a person who was highly developed in his earlier incarnation, but now has an undeveloped brain. An undeveloped brain may at times conceal great spiritual faculties. But if he can be taught the usual everyday abilities, it may happen that the inner spirituality also comes forth.

Another important factor is the environment in which a person lives. The human being is a mirror-image of his surroundings in a most significant way. Suppose that a person is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings that awaken and develop certain prejudices with such a strong effect that the higher talents cannot come forth. Unless such a person finds someone who can draw out these abilities, they will remain hidden.

I have been able to give only a few indications to you about this matter. After Christmas, however, we will speak again about further and deeper things. I especially wanted to awaken in you this one understanding, that the higher life is not schooled in a tumultuous way, but rather quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakens and enters into the higher life actually arrives like the thief in the night. The development towards the higher life leads man into a new world, and when he has entered this new world, then he sees the other side of existence, so to speak; then what has previously been hidden for him reveals itself. Maybe not everyone can do this; maybe only a few can do it, one might say to oneself. But that must not keep one from at least starting on the way that is open to everyone, namely to hear about the higher worlds. The human being is called to live in community, and he who secludes himself cannot arrive at a spiritual life. But it is a seclusion in a stronger sense if he says, “I do not believe this, this does not relate to me; this may be valid for the after-life.” For the occultist this has no validity. It is an important principle for the occultist to consider other human beings as true manifestations of his own higher self, because he knows then that he must find the others in himself. There is a delicate distinction between these two sentences: “To find the others in oneself,” and “To find oneself in the others.” In the higher sense it means, “This is you.” And in the highest sense it means to recognize oneself in the world and to understand that saying of the poet which I cited some weeks ago in a different connection: “One was successful. He lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. But what did he see? Miracle of miracles! He saw himself.” To find oneself—not in egotistical inwardness, but selflessly in the world without—that is true recognition of the self.

• 1. For another description of these exercises, see Occult Science, an Outline (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1972) Chapter 5, p. 283.

In 1913 on the hill in Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, construction had begun on the building then known as the Johannesbau and later to be called the Goetheanum, the central headquarters of the anthroposophical movement. Members of the Anthroposophical Society from all parts of the world had been called upon to work on the building, and they were joined by a growing number of others who moved to Dornach, either permanently or temporarily, on their own initiative. Thus a unique center of anthroposophical activity developed in Dornach, a center that was, understandably enough, burdened with the shortcomings and problems unavoidable in such a group.

In the summer of 1914, these difficulties escalated when World War I broke out, since people from many different nations, including those at war, had to work together and get along with each other. Isolation from the rest of the world and, last but not least, both local and more widespread opposition to the building and the people it attracted, further complicated the situation. In spite of all obstacles, however, the building continued to grow under the artistic leadership of Rudolf Steiner, who was well-loved as a teacher and felt by all to be a bulwark of constancy. But in the summer of 1915 all this changed as a result of incidents that threatened to test the Dornach group, and thus the Anthroposophical Society as a whole, to the breaking point.

Rudolf Steiner's marriage to Marie von Sivers at Christmas of 1914 had provoked not only general gossip, but also some bizarre mystical behavior on the part of a member named Alice Sprengel¹ Heinrich Goesch (see below) and his wife Gertrud seized upon her strange ideas and made use of them in personal attacks on Rudolf Steiner. Since this was done publicly in the context of the Society, Rudolf Steiner asked that the Society itself resolve the case. This resulted in weeks of debate, at the end of which all three were expelled from the Society. Rudolf and Marie Steiner did not take part either in the debates or in the decision to rescind their membership.

The documents that follow reconstruct the events of the case in the sequence in which they occurred.

Alice Sprengel (b. 1871 in Scotland, d. 1949 in Bern, Switzerland) had joined the Theosophical Society in Munich in the summer of 1902, at a time when Rudolf Steiner had not yet become General Secretary for Germany. She joined the German Section a few years later. In a notice issued by the Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society in the fall of 1915 informing members about the case, Miss Sprengel is described as having undergone unusual suffering in her childhood. At the time of her entry into the Society, she still impressed people as being very dejected. In addition, she was unemployed at that time and outwardly in very unfortunate circumstances. For that reason, efforts were made to help her.

Marie Steiner, then Marie von Sivers, sponsored her involvement in the Munich drama festival in 1907 and arranged for her to be financially supported by members in Munich. In order to help her find a means of supporting herself in line with her artistic abilities, Rudolf Steiner advised her on making symbolic jewelry and the like for members of the Society. It was also made possible for her to make the move to Dornach in 1914. She, however, interpreted this generous assistance to mean that she had a significant mission to fulfill within the Society. Having been given the role of Theodora in Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas fed her delusions with regard to her mission, as did the fact that toward the end of the year 1911, in conjunction with the project to construct a building to house the mystery dramas, Rudolf Steiner had made an attempt to found a “Society for Theosophical Art and Style” in which she had been nominated as “keeper of the seal” because of her work as an artist. She imagined having lived through important incarnations and even believed herself to be the inspirer of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual teachings. In addition, having been asked to play Theodora gave rise to the delusion that she had received a symbolic promise of marriage from Rudolf Steiner, and she then suffered a breakdown as a result of Rudolf Steiner's marriage to Marie von Sivers at Christmas 1914. Her letters to Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner, reproduced below, clearly reveal that she was deeply upset.

Letter from Alice Sprengel to Rudolf Steiner
(undated; received December 25, 1914. Cf. p. 159.)

“Seven years now have passed,” ² Dr. Steiner, since you appeared to my inner vision and said to me, “I am the one you have spent your life waiting for; I am the one for whom the powers of destiny intended you.”

You saw the struggles and doubts this experience occasioned in me; you knew that in the end my conviction was unshakable—yes, so it is. And you waited for my soul to open and for me to speak about this. Yet I remained silent, because my heart was broken. Long before I learned of theosophy, but also much more recently, I had had many experiences that made me say, “I willingly accept whatever suffering life brings me, no matter how hard it may be. After all, I have been shown by the spirit that it cannot be different.” But this is something that seems to go beyond the original plan of destiny; I lack the strength to bear it, and so it kills something in me, destroys forces I should once have possessed. These experiences were mostly instances of people deliberately abusing my confidence, and all in the name of love. But I had the feeling that this was not only my own fault; it seemed as if the will of destiny was inflicting more on me than I could bear.

I had some vague idea of why that might be so. Once, some years ago, I heard a voice within me saying, “There are beings in the spiritual world whose work requires that human beings sustain hope, but they have no interest in seeing these hopes fulfilled—on the contrary.” At that point I was not fully aware of what we were later to hear about the mystery of premature death, of goals not achieved, and so forth.

Then, however, I bore within me a wish and a hope that seemed like a proclamation from the spiritual world. This wish and this hope had made it possible for me to bear the unbearable; they worked in me with such tremendous force that they carried me along with them. My soul was in such a condition, however, that it could neither relinquish them nor tolerate their fulfillment, or, to put it better, it could not live up to what their fulfillment would have demanded of it. Thus I could not come to clarity on what the above-mentioned experience meant for me as an earthly human being. Neither the teaching nor the teacher was enough to revive my soul; that could only be done by a human being capable of greater love than any other and thus capable of compensating for a greater lack of love.

I can no longer remain silent; it speaks in me and forces me to speak. Years ago I begged you for advice, asked for enlightenment, and your words gave me hope and comfort. I am grateful for that, but today I would no longer be able to bear it. Why did you say to me recently that I looked well, that I should persevere? Did you think I was already aware of the step you are taking now, and that I had already “gotten over it”? I was as far from that as ever.

In conclusion, I ask that you let Miss von Sivers read this letter.

Alice Sprengel

Letter from Alice Sprengel to Rudolf Steiner

Dear Dr. Steiner,

This will probably be my last letter to you; I will never turn to you again, neither in speaking nor in writing. I only want to tell you that I see no way out for myself; I am at my wits' end. As the weeks gone by have showed me, it is inconceivable that time will alleviate or wipe out anything that has happened; it will only bring to light what is hidden. Until now I have more or less managed to conceal how I feel, but I will not be able to do so indefinitely. I feel a melancholy settling in on me; being together with others and feeling their attentiveness is a torment to me, but I also cannot tolerate being alone for any length of time. I feel that everything that was to develop in me and flow into our movement through me has been buried alive.

My life stretches ahead of me, but it is devoid of any breath of air that makes life possible. And yet, in the darkest hour of my existence, I feel condemned to live—but my soul will be dead. Desolation and numbness will alternate with bouts of pain. I cannot imagine how the tragedy will end. It is likely, though, that I will show some signs of sorrow in weeks to come, and it may well be that I will say and do things that will surprise me as much as anyone else. I do not have the feeling that my words will arouse any echo in you. I feel as if I were talking to a picture. Since that time early on in those seven years when I stood bodily in front of you and you appeared to me as the embodiment of the figure that had been revealed to my inner vision, you have become unreal to me. Then, your voice sounded as sweet and comforting as my own hopes. You restored my soul with mysterious hints and promises that were so often contradicted in the course of events. And when my soul wanted to unfold under that radiant gaze of yours in which I could read that you knew what had happened to me, something looked at me out of your eyes, crying “This is a temptation.”

The most terrible thing was to have what stood before me in visible human form become unreal to me. And yet, I had the feeling that there was something real behind all this. I do not know what power makes your essential being a reality for me. You know that I have struggled for my faith and will continue to do so as long as there is a glimmer of life in me. You also know how I have pleaded with that Being whose light and teachings you must bring to those who suffer the terrible fate of being human, pleaded that whatever guilt may flow on my account may not disturb you in your mission, and I have the feeling that I have been heard. Nevertheless, the shadow of what has happened to me will fall across your path, just as it will darken my future earthly lives. That shadow will also fall across the continued existence of our movement and upon the destiny of our building. If the mystery dramas are ever performed again, you will have to have another Theodora, and since I will never be able to come to terms with what has happened, the very doors of the temple are closed to me in future. I wonder if, under these circumstances, there will ever again… I do not need to finish the sentence.

I sense that, on an occult level, this is a terrible state of affairs. Is there no way out?

Only a miracle can help in this case.

I am well aware that deliverance is possible, and if it were not to come, it would be terrible, and not only for me.

Let me tell you a story by way of conclusion, the story of the “soeur gardienne.” ³

During the preparations for the plays during the summer of 1913, I noticed that you were not satisfied with me, and when it was all over I felt like a sick person who knows the doctor has given up on her. That feeling never left me from then on, and I could tell you of many instances, especially in recent months, when I felt a deathly chill come over me although your words actually sounded encouraging. The feeling grew stronger whenever I encountered anyone who knew what lay ahead. Why do I feel as if someone had slapped me in the face? Don't they all look as if they were part of a plot? That's what came to mind on many occasions, but I was relatively cheerful then and put it out of my mind. But all this is just a digression.

Two summers ago, shortly before the rehearsals began, I read La Soeur Gardienne. I had always assumed that Miss von Sivers would play the title role. On reading it, however, I began to doubt that the role would suit her; in fact, it seemed to me that she would not even want to play that part. And then I noticed how the figure came alive within me—it spoke, it moved in me. It was my role. If only I were allowed to play it! I saw what it would mean to me, and it was too beautiful to be true. Then invisible eyes looked at me, and I heard, “They will not give you that part, so resign yourself.” In my experience, that voice had always been correct. In view of the existing situation, I said to myself, “Dr. Steiner knows as well as I do that I had this experience; he must have good reasons for arranging things this way in spite of it—and as far as Miss von Sivers is concerned, I must have been mistaken—the whole thing must simply be another one of the incomprehensible disappointments that run like a red thread through my life.”

My soul collapsed; I behaved as calmly as I could, but that did not seem to be good enough. Your behavior as well as Miss von Sivers' was totally incomprehensible to me. They were looking everywhere for someone, anyone, to take the title role, and no one seemed to think of me; anyone else seemed more desirable. And yet people were making comments about how strange it was that I had nothing to do in that play. I held back, because at one point I was really afraid I would have to play a different role. Performances have been more or less the only occasions in my life where I could breathe freely, so to speak, where I could give of myself. But that was only true when I played parts that lived in me, like Theodora and Persephone. But when a role didn't sit well with me, it increased the pressure I was living under for quite some time. That is why I was not as unconcerned about these things as others might be; for me it was a matter of life and death. In the midst of all this tension something befell me that I had already experienced countless times before in many different situations and against which I have always been defenseless. My soul crumples as soon as it happens. Once again, “it” looked at me and said, “This is a lesson for you!” (or sometimes it said “a test” or “an ordeal”).

I felt the effects in my soul of countless experiences, repeated daily, hourly, going back to my earliest childhood. I do not know why my surroundings have always been tempted to participate wrongfully in my inner life. Only here and only very recently have I been able to ward this off, but it has forced me into complete isolation. What my foster parents, teachers, playmates, friends, and even strangers used to do to see what kind of a face I would make or to guess at how I would react! And much more than that. As I said, these experiences were so frequent that I could not deal with them; they suffocated me. Mostly I took it all calmly, thinking they didn't know any better. Now, however, in the situation I described, these semi-conscious memories played a trick on me—and I was overcome by anger. And then this summer, a year later, I had to relive the whole thing. And it occurred to me that I should have told you about what went before it.

As I said, those words “This is a lesson for you” always made me stiffen and freeze. When I look back on my life, it seems as if a devilish wisdom had foreseen all the possibilities life would bring to me in these last few years, and as if this intelligence had done its utmost to make me unfit for them. I could watch it at work, and yet was powerless to do anything. Much could be said about why that happened. But nothing in my own soul or in any single soul could ever help me over this abyss. Only the spark leaping from soul to soul, the spark that is so weak now, so very weak, can make the miracle happen now…

February 5

I have just read over what I wrote, and now I wonder, is it really all right for everything to happen as I described? That is how it would have to happen if everything stays as it is now. But don't we all three feel how destiny stands between us? Can it really be that there is one among us who does not know what has to happen next? That will bring many things to light; the course of events to come depends on what had been one person's secret. This is truly a test, but not only for me. What was hidden shall be revealed.

I still have one thing to say to you, my teacher and guide: even though the tempter looks out of your eyes, there have been times when I experienced with a shudder that what was revealed to me also meant something to you, something that has not been given its due. However, this must happen and will happen—you know that well, and so does

The Keeper of the Seal

Excerpt from a letter from Alice Sprengel to Marie Steiner
(undated; received on August 21, 1915. Cf. p. 139 and p. 160.)

I know that people who have “occult experiences” are a calamity as far as the people in positions of responsibility in our movement are concerned, and understandably so, but still, that is what our movement is there for—to come to grips with things like that.

The relationship between you and Dr. Steiner is not the point right now; no, it is the relationship between you and myself. However, your civil marriage unleashed a disaster for me, one that I had feared and seen coming for years—not in its actual course of events, you understand, but in its nature and severity. That is to say, for years I had seen something developing between my teacher and me, something to which we can indeed apply what we have heard in the last few days, though not for the first time. It has a will of its own and laws of its own and cannot be exorcised with any clever magic word. As I said, I had sufficient self-knowledge to know what had to come if nothing happened to prevent it.

Three years ago, like a sick person seeking out a physician, I asked Dr. Steiner for a consultation. There was something very sad I had to say during that interview, and I have had to say it frequently since then: Although I could follow his teachings, I could not understand anything of what affected me directly or of what happened to me. I must omit what brought me to the point of saying this, since I do not know how much you know about my background and biography. I was not able to express my need, and Dr. Steiner made it clear that he did not want to hear about it. The following summer, however, we were graced with the opportunity to perform The Guardian of the Threshold; in it a conversation takes place between Strader and Theodora, a conversation that reflected in the most delicate way the very thing that was oppressing me. Perhaps Dr. Steiner did not “intend” anything of the sort; nevertheless, it is a fact. Perhaps it was meant as an attempt at healing. I do not understand…

Newsletter from the Youth Section of the School of Spiritual Science

Wherever the “youth movement” appears today, it reveals that it lives out of deprivation. What does the young person, who becomes aware of his or her youth, “lack”? After all, there is so much to “learn” in today's civilization. It contains not only a wealth of knowledge, but an overabundance.

It is tempting to think that young people are confused by this overabundance, that they cannot “understand” the content of it. But experience shows that this belief is false. Young people “understand” quite well what civilization offers them. One can understand what can be grasped in thought. And our present-day civilization, despite its overabundance, can almost be grasped entirely in thought.

The young person realizes when he begins to develop a relationship with civilization that he understands. And a right instinct tells him that this understanding, this thinking grasping should also be his further fate. But one cannot be young with “understanding” alone. One can only be young when one experiences with one's whole heart and soul what awaits understanding. And as a young person, one senses that one will grow old if one gradually leads the experienced into the understood.

Today's youth absorbs something from civilization that allows them to grow old, but not to be young. This civilization has almost nothing to give to the first years of life. One should enter the earth at the age of twenty today, then one could imbue oneself with the content of civilization.

This civilization has lost its spirit. It brings only matter into thought. These thoughts cannot be experienced; they can only be understood. And once they have been understood, they lie in the soul, incapable of transformation, as hard as stone. They are already fully ripe when they arise; that is why they cannot grow. But the young person must grow; and he wants what he takes up into his soul to be able to grow with him.

A genuine spiritual science can reveal itself only in thoughts. But these thoughts can be seen and experienced; they can be taken up by no one at a higher degree of maturity than he himself has. But they are akin to the human being's nature. They grow and mature with him. If someone gives me material thoughts when I am eighteen years old, I take them in the same way as I would if I were forty or fifty years old. If someone allows me to experience thoughts that arise from the spirit in their unfolding of humanity, then they may be seventy years old; if I myself am only eighteen years old, they will harmonize with my eighteen-year-old state of mind and grow as I myself grow.

The materialistic way of thinking and looking at things demands that young people fill themselves inwardly with “old things”. But young people want to experience their youth. Therefore, “experiencing old age” becomes a deprivation for young people. The Youth Section at the Goetheanum wants to give young people a living knowledge that can be used to grasp youth in a living way. Today's civilization has no thoughts with which one can experience “being young”. A real spiritual science will have such thoughts.

If you are an older person today and hear young people speak, you often have the feeling: oh, how old the speeches sound that come from the mouths of young people! But these are the speeches that young people find among the “old people” today. He absorbs them, but does not make them his own. In his desire to experience them, he feels false. He speaks words that cannot be true for him; and he carries his truth within him, without being able to reveal it to himself. It chokes him; it becomes a nightmare coming from within.

The young want freedom of breathing in a living spiritual life so that the nightmare will disappear. They want an awakening to a healthy spiritual outlook so that their consciousness can be filled with the experience of being young.

Young people want to be awake when they are young; but the thoughts of materialistic civilization only allow them to dream of it. But one can only dream when one has dulled one's consciousness. So the consciousness of youth must walk dulled through mechanical reality. Its hammer blows, its electric waves pierce into dreams. But they cannot bring about awakening. For they are not human; they are extra-human.

Spiritual science can be for souls that want to awaken. It does not just want to impart knowledge to people, but to bring them closer to life. Then it will be given to their freedom to transform life into knowledge.

People who believe themselves to be poets, but who are really just philistines, object: take away the dreams of youth, bring them to awakening, and you take away the best of their youth. Those who speak thus know not that dreams attain their full value only when illuminated by the light of waking. Mechanistic civilization does not bring the dreams of youth to joyful revelation, but rather crushes them as they arise, so that they become oppressive and burdensome.

Only in such images can we say here what the Youth Section wants to achieve. It will not publish a “programme”; it will not give an explanation of the “nature of youth”. It will try to bring to life what its founders themselves can experience of the deprivations of young people today. This will give rise to a “youth wisdom” that can unfold anew in life every day.

Immediately after the announcement of the Youth Section and ever since, young people living at the Goetheanum have expressed their desire to work within this section. Enthusiasm speaks from these expressions. In the first announcement, I said that the Youth Section will be able to work if it is understood for what it is meant. I truly believe that enthusiasm can bring about the right “understanding”. Not the “understanding” of which I have spoken here, and which is lacking in young people, but the kind that is called by the same word but is quite different. An understanding that comes not from the intellect but from the whole human being.

The longing of the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society “can only be to feel a receptive enthusiasm. Then it can hope that the life force of spiritual science is sufficient to give this enthusiasm what it would like to take. This board would like to live with the young in such a way that they can lead their youth towards old age in true humanity, because it believes that in doing so it will meet the needs of the young and give them what their yearning hearts desire.

Lecture at a meeting of members of the Anthroposophical Society

My dear friends! It should be clear that we are living in a time of change, a time that we have to see as a time of transformation, and that it is our primary responsibility to find our task in this time. We will, since we are not today on the ground on which we stood in the consideration that we devoted to the general cultural council, but precisely on our ground, as members of the Anthroposophical Society, we will do well to occupy ourselves a little with our thoughts from this point of view of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement.

You see, when we talk today about a spiritual-scientific understanding of the world, about the real content of spiritual science – you were also able to learn about this in Stuttgart, where spiritual-scientific lectures have been given for many years, which, it can be said, have found an ever-larger audience. When one speaks to people today from these spiritual-scientific points of view in the concrete, one first encounters an audience that corresponds to the conditions of the present. But you have also seen that, even leaving aside the public, we have continued to develop anthroposophy. Many of you have seen how we have applied anthroposophy fruitfully in a wide variety of fields, fruitfully applied from a very specific spirit. Let us imagine how this has been attempted from a particular spirit.

We can start with anything – let's start with the public lectures. These public lectures had to introduce a new insight, a completely new characteristic of spiritual life into the world. There was never any hesitation about this, not even in public lectures, and certainly not in the lectures that were then given to advanced students within the Anthroposophical Society itself. There was never any hesitation about pointing out in a concise and forceful way what should replace this cultural life of the present day, which is in decline. For decades now, it has been made clear that this cultural life is in decline; that the life in which we are immersed is in decline. And it has been pointed out everywhere that an upward development must be fostered from a renewal of the spiritual understanding of the world. It was pointed out very clearly that we must distinguish with the utmost seriousness between what is in a downward movement and what must fulfill humanity so that it can ascend again. Was that not, my dear friends, the spirit of all the lectures given to the public or to a smaller circle? And was not, in essence, what is now being illustrated in an outward way through world-historical events and world-historical misery always contained in these lectures?

Let us look at something else in our specifically anthroposophical field: we have erected a building in Dornach. In erecting this building, we have not followed any of the traditional forms of architecture, painting or sculpture. We have tried to create something out of the consciousness that a complete renewal and regeneration of our spiritual life is necessary, something that is a beginning, but that is also something new. We have not shunned the challenge of striking at the face of all that which we have created and which, out of old conceptions, wanted to judge architecturally, pictorially, sculpturally and so on. Yes, the philistines sometimes stood head to toe in front of the Dornach building; we let them stand head to toe. And we knew: it was precisely that which we had to have, that the philistine bearers of the previous worldview should stand head to toe in front of things. We also did not let ourselves be deterred when all the unsuccessful newer attempts to arrive at some unphilistine art, with all the backgrounds from which artistic creation so often arises, with the backgrounds of hysteria or of inability but of much wanting, when they simply pronounced it 'unartistic' about that of which they, precisely because they wanted to be artistic in a new way in their sense, understood nothing. We did not let ourselves be deterred from being looked at askance and askew by the philistines and, forgive the word, over-philistines.

When we set about cultivating eurythmy, with all that this involves, a recreation of the art of recitation, I said: the sensitive souls who will be involved in performing these things must prepare themselves that once they are brought to the public, they will be thoroughly criticized; but that will be the proof that they mean something; because if they were praised, they would agree with what is happening below, and then they would certainly be of no use. This awareness, which is now being challenged, I might say with blood, by humanity, was brought forth in the anthroposophical movement out of the demands of a new spiritual life.

We have performed our mysteries in Munich, the actual content of which has so far been understood by few people. We have performed these mysteries for four years, many people have seen them; they are buried from the world; since then they have not been spoken of at all. They have been forgotten because they have passed before those to whom they were performed, like a dream that one forgets; one may enjoy it, but one forgets it. These things must be said one day, my dear friends, otherwise we will not get around to what I actually meant last Sunday.

Yes, my dear friends, it would have been nice if we had tackled all the things that have been mentioned here today in 1907. But we are living in 1919, and today we can no longer merely tackle the things that we should perhaps have tackled on the basis of our awakened anthroposophical consciousness in 1907. So what is it about? Please excuse me if, in order to keep this matter from taking too long and to make it as painless as possible, I express myself somewhat sharply: I would like to say, with reference to our anthroposophical movement, that there were two types of people from whom two things could be assumed: those people who were at public events or who could see how the Dornach building is now open to the world, who could see what we wanted simply as - well, let's say, as contemporaries. That was one kind of people. We also experienced them here, when the general anthroposophical truths were specialized for the threefold social order. We experienced them here in the Siegle House. We have experienced people for whom these things are already understandable, as far as they need to be understandable for a general audience. But I have often characterized here how the understanding of people of the present day who actually deal with these things actually is. These people of the present, they do accept some things, they also see some things, but they cannot rise to make that which they see the content of their whole being; to make it not only the content of their thinking and dreaming, or dreaming thinking, but also the content of their will. And so one can experience that perhaps a whole assembly, or the majority of people who are listening publicly, show their clear approval to a certain degree for the things that must now be spoken for the benefit of humanity. But the next day everything is as it was before; it has no other significance for them than that they have heard the things for an hour and a half or two hours; that the things are there for man to take them up into his inner being, for that present humanity has absolutely no disposition. That, my dear friends, is the one kind of people.

The other type was the anthroposophists, a completely different type of person. With the first type of person that I have just characterized, one could hope for nothing other than what I have said, because that is the bourgeoisie of the present, that is the part of humanity that one could believe would have salted meat in its head instead of a brain criss-crossed with furrows. That is what people of the present age are like. But then the Anthroposophists were there, about whom, for decades, people had been talking in terms quite different from those that could be spoken in public. It could not suffice for the Anthroposophists to take these things in; it could not suffice for them to devote themselves to the general inner habits of the present-day human being. One must indeed ask: Is the modern human being seeking a spiritual life? Yes, he seeks it, he seeks a spiritual life, because what the church gives him, what the modern school gives him, is no longer enough for him. He seeks a spiritual life, but what kind of spiritual life is he actually seeking? He basically accepts the highest truths, but accepts them in such a way that, firstly, they bother him little, that, secondly, he needs to claim his inner self as little as possible for co-activity, and that, thirdly, he moves quite well in this outer decaying world, alongside what he takes from it, just as the outer decaying world demands. That is, he finds it perfectly natural, without feeling any inner contradiction in it, that he goes about the business of his life in the sense of the decadent world, in the sense of the destruction that he had to be confronted with head-on by the world war catastrophe and what followed, and then he sometimes feels the need to be uplifted by an anthroposophical lecture or instruction, which he accepts like a Sunday afternoon sermon that offers him a change from what he otherwise absorbs quite well as life within the decaying culture. It sometimes shakes up the people of the present that the things around him, the things he has to go through, are so nonsensical; then he also turns to something like anthroposophy, but not as to something he seeks in it is an impulse for how things should be done in detail for others, but rather seeks in anthroposophy a nice sleeping pill with which he can numb himself to what he can live with after all to externally calm his inner being.

You see, that was the ongoing call to those involved in the anthroposophical movement: to understand that this must not continue in modern humanity, that anthroposophy should not be understood as a sleeping pill and as a Sunday afternoon sermon, but that modern man must absorb his anthroposophy in order to truly embody it in all the details of life, to develop it, to develop the consciousness of self-reflection within himself, that we are in a decaying cultural world.

The adaptability of modern man is enormous. But what does one adapt to? You see, we live in a threefold unnatural environment in the present. We live in the phrase. We live in a mere positive statement of all sorts of commandments and prohibitions, instead of in the original human right. We live in economic egoism instead of in the brotherhood of economic life. All this is accepted by modern man in such a way that he needs to notice it as little as possible.

Yes, you see, anthroposophy, taken seriously, does not let you simply ignore these things, but it is something that I have often said: absorbing anthroposophical truths means a certain danger for life, means that you have to live courageously, means that you have to have the inner resolve to break with many things. In almost everything that has been said, reference has been made to what Anthroposophy seeks to be. The motto given was: 'Wisdom lives only in truth'. But modern humanity lives in lies. For what has gone through the world during the catastrophe of the world wars was only lies. People everywhere said different things about things than they actually were, because in the declining culture, people have unlearned the inner connection between what they say and their inner experience. Humanity needs a strong spiritual substance in its soul to regain this connection. We should be strict with ourselves on this point. One should also understand things in detail. For example, one should understand what led to this misfortune of world war catastrophe; it is necessary to know what the inability of the leading personalities has brought about, and that this inability has been nurtured from the ground up because antipathy towards spiritual life in all areas has been nurtured. But where was it nurtured the most? It was most cultivated in the church, because what is most materialized today is the popular Christianity of all denominations. This popular Christianity of all denominations is supposed to lift man up to the spiritual world, while it only ever attempts to present the spiritual world to man in such a way that it is tangibly material. All these things have often been pointed out in detail, again and again. It is of no use today not to see these things in their true form. Above all, however, it must be realized that what is now coming into the world as the threefold social order is a result of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But one will only understand this in the right sense if, as I have just said, one looks into these things.

My dear friends, it is necessary for the human being to become a self-reliant personality through spiritual science, so that he learns to judge the outside world, including the human outside world, in the right way, precisely because he stands firmly on his own ground as a free personality. The free personality is no longer recognized in the world at all today. We have become accustomed to no longer recognizing the free personality at all. If someone says their own thoughts somewhere, their own thoughts that they have fought hard for, the foolish, stupid world today calls it a presentation. In such things, down to the last detail, it is important to see where things are rotten. This adaptation to the stupidity of the present shows how we are no longer able to stand on the ground of a free, self-creating personality. It is not pedantry to point out such things, for it is in the habitual tendrils of ordinary life that we see where things are rotten on a large scale. And if we want to recover, then this recovery must start from the large and be so strong in the large that the large can intervene in the ordinary smallest tendrils of life. At the moment when the whole world could already see externally that things were going wrong in Central Europe because of the arms race, we named our building in Dornach, which, I might add, stands directly on the border with the Entente, the Goetheanum, so that we could make it clear to the whole world what we believe to be right, never yielding in any way to what one might say: How will it affect people, what should be taken into consideration? and the like.

And in this context, I would like to point out that it would be good if the people of Central Europe in particular would remember that people like Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder and similar people once lived in Central Europe, that Fichte spoke there. Because these things, my dear friends, have been forgotten. It is not true that these things are still alive today. It is an enormous lie to say that Fichte is still alive. He no longer lives in people. For he does not live through the fact that his successors in the old, so-called German Reichstag in Weimar have even begun to quote him. These people, who constituted the greatness of Central Europe, became parasites on the life of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They must first be unearthed. And we will have to understand that time is a reality.

My dear friends, I want to tell you the following in a radical way: Suppose Herder or Goethe had written something; you put that down in front of you; and today, whether by karma or by chance, someone writes something without knowing that Goethe or Herder had written it; they write the same thing, using the same words. Most people of the present day would say: Well, that is exactly the same. And yet, the truth could be that what Goethe or Herder wrote would be imbued with the real spiritual, and what a person today writes with the same words would be empty phrases. But from this you may see that when someone brings a piece of paper from this or that community that comes up today with some nice program that one should do this or that socially, and compares it to what appears here as threefolding , some of it may agree word for word; but anyone who sets store by such agreement shows only that he does not really stand within the anthroposophical movement with his soul. For the great difference between us and all these things — and I have repeatedly made this absolutely clear over the decades in the most diverse contexts — the great difference lies in the fact that behind what we proclaim socially stands the world characterized by anthroposophy . That is the substance, and that makes the difference; it elevates what our sentences say beyond the character of mere phrases to real content, while most people today only speak phrases that may sound like the content of reality. What matters is reality, not the phrase. That is what one would like to be understood. If the matter is understood, my dear friends, then it is a matter of being able to grasp our time in reality from this point of view.

I would have liked someone else to have said it, but since no one else is saying it, I have to say it myself: We do have anthroposophy, we do have spiritual science; from it arises the awareness that a transformation is necessary in our cultural world. But humanity does not yet know this, it does not know it enough, it has to be told, it has to be made apparent, and it has to be made as clear as I have just shown. If someone wants to found a school, good, let them do it; if someone wants to tell fairy tales, good, let them do it; one could have done that in 1907 as well. What is at stake today is to convey to humanity the awareness that anthroposophy is here and that anthroposophy must grow. And if it does not grow, nothing will grow, because the other will perish, as is clearly evident in intellectual life. And this must be seriously presented to humanity. Of course, we cannot immediately found any schools on a large scale, but we have to say to humanity: your world is perishing, here is the truth from which you can renew it. You have to found the liberation of the School of Spiritual Science in the sense of the new spirit! It is the awakening of this consciousness that is at stake. I am therefore pleased that my appeal “To the German People and to the Cultural World” in the last issue of the “Reich” was followed by an essay containing the words:

But the forces of self-reflection should ultimately be able to lead to such a common understanding if this self-reflection were directed in the right direction, which must lead to an understanding of the foundations on which alone reconstruction is possible.

The forces of development in the new era must be included in the plan of construction. If one wanted to build without such a plan, then every well-intentioned effort would have to disintegrate due to the lack of a realistic foundation.

Anyone who takes the step towards such self-reflection will realize the significance of the view expressed in the appeal that a real mission of the German people must be inextricably linked with all that the developmental forces of modern times demand. Valid foundations for a structure cannot be created if the inexorably surging developmental forces that have been released over the last hundred years are channelled into the riverbed of old habits of thought. These developmental forces want to carve out a new riverbed. Large-scale spiritual pioneering work is to be done if the future of the German people is to be secured. But the weapons of old habits of thinking are proving too blunt to accomplish this work.

Everyone who has participated in anthroposophical work should think this way, and everyone should make this their work. For what matters today is not what we do tomorrow in detail, but that as many people as possible know what needs to be done, then there will be as many people as possible who can do it. And we must never shrink from the decision to see things as radically as possible today. To see them in such a way that we truly do not remain in the old stupid formulations of the cultural program, but that we see: here is the old culture - here is the one that is to be replaced by spiritual science. The details will follow.

It was just demanded that the children in the lowest classes should play a certain music, that everyone should learn an instrument. Such a thing can be demanded in detail. Was it not our demand from the very beginning to give every child a musical instrument? These things will come about when the work that follows from anthroposophy, the spiritual work, is undertaken on a large scale, initially for the purpose of helping people to find themselves. That is why, when I came here, my main aim was to get as many people as possible to see the things that are most important in social life today. At first people thought, because they were foolish and did not feel the reality of things: these are dreamers, things have grown on anthroposophical soil. At first they were no longer anxious. Then we had thousands and thousands of followers who sealed their allegiance by name, and we had a large, large number of votes in many resolutions. Then those to whom the masses submit have become fearful due to the present-day conditions, and since it has become apparent to them that this is not anthroposophy but realities in the minds and souls, they have denounced it as utopian because the leaders of today's proletarian masses do not think proletarian themselves, but are precisely the most dreadful bourgeois philistines. They are the ones in whom the bourgeoisie is expressed in its most characteristic form. Therefore, it is important that we now grasp our task above all. We can only grasp this task if we know how to rebuild the education system from the ground up. And we have to make it clear to the world that this education system has to be rebuilt, that it has to be built from the spirit of spiritual science. We have to make it clear today that the universities that exist now serve the downfall of humanity; that our grammar schools, our secondary modern schools, our middle schools serve the downfall of humanity; that in our primary schools, people are not educated, but state cripples. But if we allow anthroposophy to be a Sunday afternoon sermon that we let go on alongside our lives as far as possible, and then we grovel and dare not tell anyone outside that the things that other people set such great store by contain nothing but impossible stuff, then we need not be anthroposophists. We must imbue ourselves with the spirit of the truly new age, not with the catchphrases of the new age. Therefore, if we are to work as anthroposophists, our first task is to ensure that people first know what needs to be done; that they learn to know what needs to be done. I would like to test the anthroposophists who are here, they are all individual personalities. I would like to ask you: Imagine, instead of you, instead of the fact that you are sitting there and I am speaking to you, there were a bunch of Jesuits, and one of the Jesuits was encouraging the others to action. I would like to know what these Jesuits, if they were here in such numbers, would do for Jesuitism – that is what I would like to know. They would work for what they are supposed to do. They do not need to do this or that in detail, they would just limit themselves to working on a large scale to create the consciousness they want to instill in people. Basically, the only important thing is the personality that we develop, because there is nothing else, my dear friends, that will achieve anything in the present situation except by permeating as many people as possible with the truth and daring to speak that truth. We are constantly experiencing how little courage there is for the truth and how little will there is to see things through. How is a cultural pest like Johannes Müller treated in the present day? Just today I received an essay that I believe a great many people consider extraordinarily clever. The Frankfurter Zeitung, that depository for all the current nonsense and fawning of those people who also want to participate in the redesign, the Frankfurter Zeitung even prints it as a feature, an essay by Johannes Müller, in which he talks about the fact that the German people had confidence in their generals, but the generals did not have confidence in the German people, and that this is the source of the misfortune. It is pure nonsense, it is pure brass, but people today follow this brass. And one must dare to confront this brass with all one's might, because anthroposophy should not be something that is received like a Sunday afternoon sermon, but something that pours fire into our blood. What matters first of all is that we say to the world, in the most comprehensive sense, what I pointed out at the end of last Sunday's reflection: we are here as anthroposophists! If we were to found a university today, what would be the result? Well, let us assume that we get students – I will leave aside whether we would have the teachers for them – we get students; I do not think that we would get students under today's conditions, because no matter how well these students were trained, even if the socialist state system, which is praised by many, continues to exist or comes into being in a different form, it would not be recognized by the state. They would have studied for the outside world, so to speak, for their own pleasure. That is not the point, but the point is that we make the world understand: the whole spirit that prevails in our public science today must become a different one. And we have a right to demand that everyone do it – that is what matters.

Do you see why I am saying these things? Yes, I am saying them for the following reason: We have been working on this for decades; much of what I have discussed from this platform only came before my mind's eye in these last decades; I know what some of them were a harrowing experience; I know how I have to look at them; but I also know how little willpower has been developed to see things as they really are in terms of their spiritual content.

The new issue of Reich contains a very interesting essay by Hermann Haase, a contribution to a phenomenology of consciousness. This interesting essay shows something very curious. The author points to an investigation by a psychiatrist, a pathologist, who examined schizothymia and its connection with dementia praecox, a certain form of mental deficiency. Through the examination of an imbecile, the psychiatrist in question came to the conclusion that there are four types of layers of consciousness in man: the superconscious (called sup.), the experiencing subconscious (called exp. sub.), the ordering subconscious (ord. sub.) and the deepest subconscious (d. sub.). There we find the modern researcher, who has emerged from the modern university. He establishes four levels of consciousness in individuals with mental deficiencies, in which this is reflected in a negative mirror image, and it is not realized that this matter has been proclaimed to the world in a healthy way by telling it: the ordinary object consciousness, the imaginative consciousness, the inspired consciousness, the intuitive consciousness. If something is said today in the light of sound spiritual work, it is not accepted. If a psychiatrist comes along and takes something out of the morbid states of morbid individuals, the world falls in line to receive the thing in a caricature. That is what we have come to. Such an abyss exists between what can and must be proclaimed today out of the spirit and what the world is willing to accept. We must make an effort to recognize this mission of ours in the present day and not give in to the thought: “Yes, but it can't be that bad after all, people want the best.” No, we have to recognize that the world is in decline and that it needs to be rebuilt. That is what we have to make it aware of first. If we do not make it clear, then nothing we put into the world will be of any use, and the world would not understand it at all if it were not first pointed out that it is necessary to replace contemporary state science with something else. This is how the world must experience it. And if we do not rise to this challenge, then we as anthroposophists are not working to transform modern culture. Anything else is wishy-washy. We must therefore seek the forms in which we can communicate this to the world, in which we are really always talking about spiritual science. We do not need to concern ourselves today at this important historical moment with whether or not we have fairy tales to tell; that may be a nice task, but today it is about how we present the spiritual wealth of spiritual science to the world. We must not always protect and patronize what is different, but really stand on the ground of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We have to represent spiritual science. That is what I meant last Sunday. And we should courageously represent this spiritual science wherever we can, in whatever profession we are active. This spiritual science can send its reforming and revolutionary power into every profession. We must not be deterred when something is possible, such as a first-class university of the old declining times producing an individual like Max Dessoir, who lies, lies scientifically. We must have the courage to present these things in their truth. But now we must be alert to the fact that slimy figures are creeping out everywhere, attacking what should have come from here. The things these slimy figures come up with! In addition to everything else that has been slime, a new slime has emerged that has added a slur on Dessoir and that produces the slimey lie that Dessoir has justified himself in the new edition of his book. We must be alert to the slime in today's culture, as it emerges particularly in the public press. If we do not aspire to clarity, all our confused thoughts will not help us. For that we need both courage and the humility to limit ourselves in our abilities and in our powers to do what we can do. You see, I just wanted to tell you these things to make you understand what I actually meant last Sunday. I did not mean that one should think one should now do what one should have done in 1907; then it would have developed in some way by 1919; but I meant that one should now seize the great historical moment and make it clear to the world that there is an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It does not know that. It does not know that at all, because people are not listening to these things, because they are not being transformed into deeds. I could give you countless examples of how things are not being transformed into deeds, how things mean nothing more than a passing sensation. That is not what anthroposophy is meant to be. Anthroposophy is meant in such a way that action can arise from each of its words, even if this action can initially only consist of words. But these words must not be empty phrases, they must not be formulated in an unctuous way, like the unctuous speech of ancient or contemporary Christianity; these speeches must be grainy. We must make it clear today that those who come out of our universities are stupid, and we must not tire of showing that this is a cultural-historical phenomenon, that all four faculties (or however many are newly established) are institutions of stultification in the sense of real human development. If we do not take a stand and speak out, then anthroposophy will have to work for a long time before it can fulfill its true calling. Then you see, do you believe that what I told you the other day, that for example what is described in our anatomy and physiology as “human” is actually not a human being but Lucifer, described by Ahriman, which is expressed by the fact that today's physiology distinguishes between two types of nerves, sensitive and motor nerves; do you think that it is easy to find? If it is found, it is a truth today that should not be taken as a sensation, as idle gossip, but that it could unhinge an entire system of science, as well as many other systems of science that are taught today at our universities by the boards of trustees, and how this spiritual science could unhinge many other things. But as long as we are not aware that anthroposophy is everything, that the other things cannot exist alongside it, that it is wrong of us to let ourselves be beaten down as soon as we are out of this door, then of course we cannot achieve what I spoke of last Sunday. We as anthroposophists should make it clear to the world that we are here. That is what matters. Above all, we must grasp that. The world must know that anthroposophy can advocate for its cause. Think about it: if there were only Jesuits sitting here and they were admonished to work, how they would work, then you would get a yardstick for what people who want to advocate for their cause do for their cause. But one must be able to look at things this way, not as a Sunday afternoon sermon. I believe that this is the most practical thing at the present time, and we would like to agree on this: how we can really bring the anthroposophical spiritual heritage into the world today, when the time is right for it, when it is high time for it. We have begun by saying that we were always embarrassed at the beginning, when this movement began here in Europe; we were always embarrassed; we wrung ourselves out, how we say this or that, but just not where it comes from, just not on what soil it grew; we have considered that as our task. We should think back to this time, and when we think back, we should learn the right lessons from it. Then we could, above all, be a community of people who practice the right, but now productive criticism of the unculture of the present. And this productive criticism, this emphasis on the fact that what is there must be replaced by something else, that the whole of the present school system is not worth a shot of powder, this productive criticism, that is what we have to do first. Then everyone can add what they can add from their own particular knowledge, and in doing so they can make fruitful use of what they are as individuals. But wanting to make all kinds of things fruitful without putting them at the service of the greater good will achieve nothing today, because today humanity is not facing small, but great reckonings, and this must always be said again.

Report in: Das Goetheanum, vol. 3, no. 6

Rudolf Steiner

Remembering the Druids

The second of the lecture series that I was invited to give by friends of anthroposophy in England this summer took place in Penmaenmawr (North Wales). It was a beautiful thought of Mr. Dunlop's, a long-standing custodian of spiritual knowledge and current member of the Anthroposophical Society, to choose this location. It is located on the west coast of England, where the island of Anglesey is just off the coast.

One lived completely in the spiritual atmosphere that emanates from what the ruined places of worship of prehistoric Druidic service still say today. In the mountains around Penmaenmawr and on the island of Anglesey, these promising stones lie in places where one can still see the careful selection today. Places where nature reveals many of its secrets to man.

Unhewn stones were arranged in a ring (in the cultic structures now called Cromlech) and covered by a larger stone, so that they enclosed a small space. In other places, larger circles were formed from such stones, the actual Druid circles.

You can find two such circles by climbing one of the mountains near Penmaenmawr. You walk along a path that offers wonderful views of the mountains and the sea at many points. You reach the uppermost area of the mountain, where the summit surface slopes gently, so that you are surrounded by a ring wall, as if by nature, over which you can see the most magnificent landscape everywhere. There are two such stone rings lying next to each other, one larger and one smaller.

History sees in these formations monuments over graves and also allows them to be considered as a kind of place of pilgrimage, as places where meetings were held to organize the affairs of the people, etc.

What I have to say about these places may be considered fantastic from the point of view of present-day thought; for me, however, it is the result of spiritual insight, of which I have often spoken in this weekly, and is of the same character as any currently accepted knowledge. A visit to Penmaenmawr provides ample inspiration to talk about these things.

The Druidic service had its time of decline. In this time, it certainly revealed some rather ugly aberrations. In its heyday, it consisted of institutions through which an ancient humanity sought in its own way to fathom the secrets of nature in order to order life in its own sense. The Druidic cult sites served the purpose of what history, which adheres to the external, speaks of. But they also served other purposes. The sun cast shadows on these stone structures; and the path of the heavenly body could be read from the directions and shapes of the shadows at different times of the year and day. From what was seen, the connections between the earth and celestial events were interpreted. The power of the sun is present in growth, in life and death, in all living things. As Druid priests, they observed the change of the sun's activity in the course of time by the way it showed itself through the place of worship. What they interpreted was knowledge of the sun's activity, which is reflected in the products of the earth in a living way. The Druid priest received a kind of inspiration there. Reading the secrets of nature was part of his ministry.

Then came to this solar inspiration what he, equipped with it, had to see as the effect of the moon. In those days, the causes of what is present in the living things of the earth were sought in the sun and moon. The sun brings forth burgeoning life. But what it brings about would stretch into infinity if it were extended everywhere. The way in which the moon absorbs its effects and transforms them, casting them back onto the earth, captures what wants to grow immeasurably in plants, in animals, in all of nature, shaping it within limits.

In the minds of the Druid priests, these life-giving, form-shaping forces became images, in which their wisdom consisted. They owed the inspiration to what they had to see as lunar effects their kind of knowledge of nature. They saw the result of these lunar effects in the shaping of forces with which the plant took root in the substances of the solid earth, with which it penetrated the air when forming leaves, and then, when the flowers unfolded, it strove freely towards the being of the sun.

This shaping of forces was seen in the images of living spiritual beings in all forms of natural existence. It was not abstract natural laws that were thought to be effective; living spiritual beings, in secret relationship to the sun and moon, were seen to be effective in the roots, leaves and flowers of plants. The spiritual realm was seen as the cause of the physical realm.

But the forces of the world reveal themselves in many different ways. In the roots of the plants, the nature spirits work in a beneficial way within the limits assigned to them by the sun and moon. But they can break out of these limits. What contracts the salts of the earth in the root in order to incorporate them into the plant form can leave the limits of the plant and become independent. Then it proliferates into the gigantic. Instead of the narrow root nature, it takes hold of the vastness of natural events. It lives in the products of frost, in the wild effects that emanate from the cold of the earth. The root spirits develop into the frost giants. What the leaf brings to the plant of the air in the way of form, lives, emancipated from its narrow boundaries, as storm and wind giants. And what the blossom and fruit release in the plant in the way of solar power becomes, proliferating independently, the fire giants.

Thus arose in the north of Europe an understanding of nature that saw the Frost, Storm and Fire Giants where we see “forces of nature” today.

During our stay in Penmaenmawr, we became aware of the natural effects that arose from the earth, lived in the air, and streamed down from the sun and radiated. Every hour, glorious sunlight often alternated with cloudburst-like rainstorms. The memory could truly awaken to the natural giants that revealed themselves to the ancient Druid priests.

And what was often seen in a terrible way in the nature beings that had grown into the gigantic, the druid priests sought to entice beneficial effects from it again. What worked from within the plant through the sun and moon shaped it into root, leaf, blossom; what played itself out in the independently become gigantic: in the sap content of the ripening, dew; in the formations that arise on the earth through wind and weather; in what is formed by charring, burning, etc. as a result of the fiery. Human art finds in this that with which it can treat plants from the outside. What is often harmful, when used in the right way, becomes a remedy. The Druid priest becomes a healer.

He wrests the powers of the giants, the enemies of the gods, where they become harmful, in order to put them back into the service of the gods.

The Druid service thus ordered life through the way it connected with the spirit of nature. The spirit quest, to introduce the spirit into earthly life, is what these stones lying around speak of in a haunting way. It was therefore deeply satisfying to be able to talk about the spirit quest in the very atmosphere of these memories, in a way that seems appropriate to the present day.

The lecture cycle now being published in its entirety for the first time in English has always been known as the “French Course” for an interesting reason—although it is directed to anthroposophists everywhere as much as any other of Rudolf Steiner's major cycles. The course was given in September, 1922 exclusively to members of the Society, and it was held in the old Goetheanum. French members were specially invited, and a considerable number of them were present. A French translation was provided by Jules Sauerwein, a distinguished bilingual French member, editor of Le Matin, the leading Parisian newspaper of the time, whose sister Alice was to become in the following year the first General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in France. Determined to spare no effort to make the cycle, difficult and detailed though it was, comprehensible to the French members present, Rudolf Steiner every night prepared an outline of what he was to say, and gave it to Jules Sauerwein the following morning, so that he could study it and decide how best he could translate it into French. During the lectures Steiner paused three or four times to allow him to translate the gist of what he had said, a procedure he followed also with George Adams Kauffman during these years when the audience was composed of English-speaking members.

The reason for this special invitation to the French lies far back in anthroposophical history. Eduard Schuré, the Alsatian author of The Great Initiates, a book greatly admired by Steiner, was twenty years older than Steiner and by 1900 had won a considerable reputation in Europe, becoming at the same time interested in Theosophy. It was in 1900 that he became acquainted with Marie von Sievers, who was in Paris studying to become an actress. Knowing of her interest in spiritual matters he suggested that she might look into Theosophy, but in fact she did not do so until she paid a visit to Berlin later in the same year. There she heard of some lectures being given in the Theosophical Library by a certain Rudolf Steiner, and later wrote a glowing letter to Schuré about him. Meanwhile she herself translated two esoteric dramas by Schuré, though of course she continued working from 1902 onward with Steiner, eventually in 1914 becoming his wife.

Thus, Schuré already had begun to play an important part in Steiner's life before he met him personally when he came to Paris in 1906 to give some lectures at a Theosophical Congress. On that occasion he was tremendously impressed by the man he was willing to admit was the first modern initiate he had known, and he wrote an enthusiastic introduction to Steiner's work Christianity as Mystical Fact which appeared at this time in a French translation. Meanwhile Marie von Sievers translated Schure's esoteric dramas, the first of which, The Mysteries of Eleusis, was presented by the German Theosophists at their Congress in Munich in 1907. Immediately after the Congress Steiner and Marie von Sievers were guests of Schuré at his property in Barr, in Alsace, and Schuré persuaded him to write an autobiographical sketch of his life and spiritual development, which is the oldest such document known (printed, together with Schure's introduction in the Golden Blade of 1966).

Thus, the two men were friends and collaborators of long standing by the time of the outbreak of World War I. But unhappily Schuré, like so many Alsatians who had bitterly resented the German annexation of their province in 1871, was a strong French patriot, and it seemed to him that Steiner was too pro-German in the early years of the war. So the two men became estranged, and the estrangement continued for some years after the war, and it was even thought by many Frenchmen that Steiner had been an unofficial adviser of General von Moltke at the beginning of the war. Jules Sauerwein helped to clear up this misunderstanding by publishing an interview with Steiner in his paper, and gradually it became clear to Schuré that he must make an effort to meet Steiner again and become reconciled to him, while Steiner, for his part, had never harbored anything but friendship for Schuré. The reconciliation was consummated at the Goetheanum in 1922 at the time of the French course; and it marked at the same time the reconciliation with the French people, so many of whom had shared Schure's extreme patriotism and wanted as little as possible to do with the Germans. The meeting of the 81 year old Schuré with the 61 year old Steiner was the warmest possible, and the entire course, in which the French had been given such marked consideration, was suffused with the glow of the reconciliation.

The outline prepared by Rudolf Steiner for Jules Sauerwein has survived, and it is extremely interesting to compare it with the course. Steiner explained on several occasions that when he lectured he spoke always directly out of his supersensible perception of the spiritual worlds and could never speak out of what he remembered or had given previously. It will be evident that he did not deviate from his rule even when he had given his translator an outline of what the night before he had decided he would say. Especially the last highly esoteric lectures of the course when he speaks of the influence of the Christ in earth evolution go so much farther than the outline that Sauerwein must have felt he had been given little enough to help him through his exceptionally difficult task.

Even so, the outline is in itself a most remarkable work, and it is not surprising that Harry Collison published two editions of it (1930 and 1943) in English translation, and that Marie Steiner's German edition was published long before the full course. The Anthroposophie Press is planning to publish both the outline and the course, as either may be studied with profit separately, and both are most suitable for group study, though requiring somewhat different responses from the students. The very bareness of the outline demands extremely careful attention to each sentence and each concept, whereas the course does not invariably supply all the knowledge to fill in the outline. What it does is to provide an enormous amount of detailed information, some of it hard to come by elsewhere, on how to attain higher development and the kind of exercises that are needed, following this with a dense and packed account of the period between death and rebirth, and especially the role of the Christ after death, as revealed to imagination, inspiration and intuition. This material differs significantly from that given in most of the better-known cycles devoted to this subject. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Steiner, faced with a highly educated French audience in the Goetheanum in which he had already given so many difficult scientific lectures, took special pains to direct everything he said to their thinking and understanding—even taking the trouble to provide an outline in advance for his translator. The result is a course that is in many respects unique in all his work, and it is very good that at long last it should be made available to English-speaking readers.

Colmar, Alsace, France Stewart C. Easton