The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! You have come together this Christmas, some of you from distant places, to work in the Goetheanum on some matters in the field of spiritual science. At the outset of our considerations I would like to extend to you—especially the friends who have come from afar—our heartiest Christmas greetings. What I myself, occupied as I am with the most manifold tasks, will be able to offer you at this particular time can only be indications in one or another direction. Such indications as will be offered in my lectures, and in those of others, will, we hope, result in a harmony of feeling and thinking among those gathered together here in the Goetheanum. It is also my hope that those friends who are associated with the Goetheanum and more or less permanently residing here will warmly welcome those who have come from elsewhere. Through our working, thinking and feeling together, there will develop what must be the very soul of all endeavors at the Goetheanum; namely, our perceiving and working out of the spiritual life and essence of the world.

If this ideal increasingly becomes a reality, if the efforts of individuals interested in the anthroposophical world conception flow together in true social cooperation, in mutual give and take, then there will emerge what is intended to emerge at the Goetheanum. In this spirit, I extend the heartiest welcome to those friends who have come here from afar as well as to those residing more permanently in Dornach.

The indication that I shall try to give in this lecture course will not at first sight appear to be related to the thought and feeling of Christmas, yet inwardly, I believe, they are so related. In all that is to be achieved at the Goetheanum, we are striving toward the birth of something new, toward knowledge of the spirit, toward a feeling consecrated to the spirit, toward a will sustained by the spirit. This is in a sense the birth of a super-sensible spiritual element and, in a very real way, symbolizes the Christmas thought, the birth of that spiritual Being who produced a renewal of all human evolution upon earth. Therefore, our present studies are, after all, imbued with the character of a Christmas study.

Our aim in these lectures is to establish the moment in history when the scientific mode of thinking entered mankind's development. This does not conflict with what I have just said. If you remember what I described many years ago in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age,¹ you will perceive my conviction that beneath the external trappings of scientific conceptions one can see the first beginnings of a new spirituality. My opinion, based on objective study, is that the scientific path taken by modern humanity was, if rightly understood, not erroneous but entirely proper. Moreover, if regarded in the right way, it bears within itself the seed of a new perception and a new spiritual activity of will. It is from this point of view that I would like to give these lectures. They will not aim at any kind of opposition to science. The aim and intent is instead to discover the seeds of spiritual life in the highly productive modern methods of scientific research. On many occasions I have pointed this out in various way. In lectures given at various times on various areas of natural scientific thinking,² I have given details of the path that I want to characterize in broader outline during the present lectures.

If we want to acquaint ourselves with the real meaning of scientific research in recent times and the mode of thinking that can and does underlie it, we must go back several centuries into the past. The essence of scientific thinking is easily misunderstood, if we look only at the immediate present. The actual nature of scientific research cannot be understood unless its development is traced through several centuries. We must go back to a point in time that I have often described as very significant in modern evolution; namely, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At that time, an altogether different form of thinking, which was still active through the Middle Ages, was supplanted by the dawn of the present-day mode of thought. As we look back into this dawn of the modern age, in which many memories of the past were still alive, we encounter a man in whom we can see, as it were, the whole transition from an earlier to a later form of thinking. He is Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus,³ (Nicholas of Cusa) a renowned churchman and one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He was born in 1401, the son of a boatman and vinegrower in the Rhine country of Western Germany, and died in 1464, a persecuted ecclesiastic.⁴ Though he may have understood himself quite well, Cusanus was a person who is in some respects extremely difficult for a modern student to comprehend.

Cusanus received his early education in the community that has been called “The Brethren of the Common Life.”⁵ There he absorbed his earliest impressions, which were of a peculiar kind. It is clear that Nicholas already possessed a certain amount of ambition as a boy, but this was tempered by an extraordinary gift for comprehending the needs of the social life of his time. In the community of the Brethren of the Common Life, persons were gathered together who were dissatisfied with the church institutions and with the monastic and religious orders that, though within the church, were to some degree in opposition to it.

In a manner of speaking, the Brethren of the Common Life were mystical revolutionaries. They wanted to attain what they regarded as their ideal purely by intensification of a life spent in peace and human brotherhood. They rejected any rulership based on power, such as was found in a most objectionable form in the official church at that time. They did not want to become estranged from the world as were members of monastic orders. They stressed physical cleanliness; they insisted that each one should faithfully and diligently perform his duty in external life and in his profession. They did not want to withdraw from the world. In a life devoted to genuine work they only wanted to withdraw from time to time into the depths of their souls. Alongside the external reality of life, which they acknowledged fully in a practical sense, they wanted to discover the depths and inwardness of religious and spiritual feeling. Theirs was a community that above all else cultivated human qualities in an atmosphere where a certain intimacy with God and contemplation of the spirit might abide. It was in this community—at Deventer in Holland—that Cusanus was educated. The majority of the members were people who, in rather narrow circles, fulfilled their duties, and sought in their quiet chambers for God and the spiritual world.

Cusanus, on the other hand, was by nature disposed to be active in outer life and, through the strength of will springing from his knowledge, to involve himself in organizing social life. Thus Cusanus soon felt impelled to leave the intimacy of life in the brotherhood and enter the outer world. At first, he accomplished this by studying jurisprudence. It must be borne in mind, however, that at that time—the early Fifteenth Century—the various sciences were less specialized and had many more points of contact than was the case later on.

So for a while Cusanus practiced law. His was an era, however, in which chaotic factors extended into all spheres of social life. He therefore soon wearied of his law practice and had himself ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He always put his whole heart into whatever he did, and so he now became a true priest of the Papal church. He worked in this capacity in the various clerical posts assigned to him, and he was particularly active at the Council of Basle (1431–1449).⁶ There he headed a minority whose ultimate aim it was to uphold the absolute power of the Holy See.⁷ The majority, consisting for the most part of bishops and cardinals from the West, were striving after a more democratic form, so to speak, of church administration. The pope, they thought, should be subordinated to the councils. This led to a schism in the Council. Those who followed Cusanus moved the seat of the Council to the South; the others remained in Basle and set up an anti-pope.⁸ Cusanus remained firm in his defense of an absolute papacy. With a little insight it is easy to imagine the feelings that impelled Cusanus to take this stand. He must have felt that whatever emerged from a majority could at best lead only to a somewhat sublimated form of the same chaos already existing in his day. What he wanted was a firm hand that would bring about law and order, though he did want firmness permeated with insight. When he was sent to Middle Europe later on, he made good this desire by upholding consolidation of the Papal church.⁹ He was therefore, as a matter of course, destined to become a cardinal of the Papal church of that time.

As I said earlier, Nicholas probably understood himself quite well, but a latter-day observer finds him hard to understand. This becomes particularly evident when we see this defender of absolute papal power traveling from place to place and—if the words he then spoke are taken at face value—fanatically upholding the papistical Christianity of the West against the impending danger of a Turkish invasion.¹⁰ On the one hand, Cusanus (who in all likelihood had already been made a cardinal by that time) spoke in flaming words against the infidels. In vehement terms he summoned Europe to unite in resistance to the Turkish threat from Asia. On the other hand, if we study a book that Cusanus probably composed¹¹ in the very midst of his inflammatory campaigns against the Turks, we find something strange. In the first place, Cusanus preaches in the most rousing manner against the imminent danger posed by the Turks, inciting all good men to defend themselves against this peril and thus save European civilization. But then Cusanus sits down at his desk and writes a treatise on how Christians and Jews, pagans and Moslems—provided they are rightly understood—can be brought to peaceful cooperation, to the worship and recognition of the one universal God; how in Christians, Jews, Moslems and heathens there dwells a common element that need only be discovered to create peace among mankind. Thus the most conciliatory sentiments in regard to religions and denominations flow from this man's quiet private chamber, while he publicly calls for war in the most fanatical words.

This is what makes it hard to understand a man like Nicholas Cusanus. Only real insight that age can make him comprehensible but he must be viewed in the context of the inner spiritual development of his time. No criticism is intended. We only want to see the external side of this man, with the furious activity that I have described, and then to see what was living in his soul. We simply want to place the two aspects side by side.

We can best observe what took place in Cusanus's mind if we study the mood he was in while returning from a mission to Constantinople¹² on the behalf of the Holy See. His task was to work for the reconciliation of the Western and Eastern churches. On his return voyage, when he was on the ship and looking at the stars, there arose in him the fundamental thought, the basic feeling, incorporated in the book that he published in 1440 under the title De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance).¹³

What is the mood of this book? Cardinal Cusanus had, of course, long since absorbed all the spiritual knowledge current in the Middle Ages. He was well versed also in what the medieval schools of Neo-Platonism and Neo-Aristotelianism had attained. He was also quite familiar with the way Thomas Aquinas had spoken of the spiritual worlds as though it were the most normal thing for human concepts to rise from sense perception to spirit perception. In addition to his mastery of medieval theology, he had a thorough knowledge of the mathematical conceptions accessible to men of that time. He was an exceptionally good mathematician. His soul, therefore, was filled on the one side with the desire to rise through theological concepts to the world of spirit that reveals itself to man as the divine and, on the other side, with all the inner discipline, rigor and confidence that come to a man who immerses himself in mathematics. Thus he was both a fervent and an accurate thinker.

When he was crossing the sea from Constantinople to the West and looking up at the starlit sky, his twofold soul mood characterized above revolved itself in the following feeling. Thenceforth, Cusanus conceived the deity as something lying outside human knowledge. He told himself: “We can live here on earth with our knowledge, with our concepts and thoughts. By means of these we can take hold of what surrounds us in the kingdom of nature. But these concepts grow ever more lame when we direct our gaze upward to what reveals itself as the divine.”

In Scholasticism, arising from quite another viewpoint, a gap had opened up between knowledge and revelation.¹⁴ This gap now became the deepest problem of Cusanus's soul, the most intimate concern of the heart. Repeatedly he sent through this course of reasoning, repeatedly he saw how thinking extends itself over everything surrounding man in nature; how it then tries to raise itself above this realm to the divinity of thoughts; and how, there, it becomes ever more tenuous until it finally completely dissipates into nothingness as it realizes that the divine lies beyond that void into which thinking has dissipated. Only if a man has developed (apart form this life in thought) sufficient fervent love to be capable of continuing further on this path that his though has traversed, only if love gains the lead over thought, then this love can attain the realm into which knowledge gained only by thinking cannot reach.

It therefore became a matter of deep concern for Cusanus to designate the actual divine realm as the dimension before which human thought grows lame and human knowledge is dispersed into nothingness. This was his docta ignorantia, his learned ignorance. Nicholas Cusanus felt that when erudition, knowledge, assumes in the noblest sense a state of renouncing itself at the instant when it thinks to attain the spirit, then it achieves its highest form, it becomes docta ignorantia. It was in this mood that Cusanus published his De Docta Ignorantia in 1440.

Let us leave Cusanus for the moment, and look into the lonely cell of a medieval mystic who preceded Cusanus. To the extent that this man has significance for spiritual science, I described him in my book on mysticism. He is Meister Eckhart,¹⁵ a man who was declared a heretic by the official church. There are many ways to study the writings of Meister Eckhart and one can delight in the fervor of his mysticism. It is perhaps most profoundly touching if, through repeated study, the reader comes upon a fundamental mood of Eckhart's soul.

I would like to describe it as follows. Though living earlier than Cusanus, Meister Eckhart too was imbued through and through with what medieval Christian theology sought as an ascent to the divine, to the spiritual world. When we study Meister Eckhart's writings, we can recognize Thomistic shades of thought in many of his lines. But each time Meister Eckhart's soul tries to rise from theological thinking to the actual spiritual world (with which it feels united,) it ends

By saying to itself that with all this thinking and theology it cannot penetrate to its innermost essence, to the divine inner spark. It tells itself: This thinking, this theology, these ideas, give me fragments of something here, there, everywhere. But none of these are anything like the spiritual divine spark in my own inner being. Therefore, I am excluded from all thoughts, feelings, and memories that fill my soul, from all knowledge of the world that I can absorb up to the highest level. I am excluded from it all, even though I am seeking the deepest nature of my own being. I am in nothingness when I seek this essence of myself. I have searched and searched. I traveled many paths, and they brought me many ideas and feelings, and on these paths I found much. I searched for my “I,” but before ever I found it, I fell into “nothingness” in this search for the “I,” although all the kingdoms of nature urged me to the search.

So, in his search for the self, Meister Eckhart felt that he had fallen into nothingness. This feeling evoked in this medieval mystic words that profoundly touch the heart and soul. They can be paraphrased thus: “I submerge myself in God's nothingness, and am eternally, through nothingness, through nothing, an I; through nothing, I become an I. In all eternity, I must etch the I from the ‘nothingness’ of God.”¹⁶ These are powerful words. Why did this urge for “nothing,” for finding that I in nothingness, resound in the innermost chamber of this mystic's heart, when he wanted to pass from seeking the world to seeking the I? Why? If we go back into earlier times, we find that in former ages it was possible, when the soul turned its gaze inward into itself, to behold the spirit shining forth within. This was still a heritage of primeval pneumatology, of which we shall speak later on. When Thomas Aquinas, for example, peered into the soul, he found within the soul a weaving, living spiritual element. Thomas Aquinas¹⁷ and his predecessors sought the essential ego not in the soul itself but in the spiritual dwelling in the soul. They looked through the soul into the spirit, and in the spirit they found their God-given I. And they said, or could have said: I penetrate into my inmost soul, gaze into the spirit, and in the spirit I find the I.—In the meantime, however, in humanity's forward development toward the realm of freedom, men had lost the ability to find the spirit when they looked inward into themselves.

An earlier figure such as John Scotus Erigena (810–880) would not have spoken as did Meister Eckhart. He would have said: I gaze into my being. When I have traversed all the paths that led me through the kingdoms of the outer world, then I discover the spirit in my inmost soul. Thereby, I find the “I” weaving and living in the soul. I sink myself as spirit into the Divine and discover “I.”

It was, alas, human destiny that the path that was still accessible to mankind in earlier centuries was no longer open in Meister Eckhart's time. Exploring along the same avenues as John Scotus Erigena or even Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart could not sink himself into God-the-Spirit, but only into the “nothingness” of the Divine, and from this “nothing” he had to take hold of the I. This shows that mankind could no longer see the spirit in inner vision. Meister Eckhart brought the I out of the naught through the deep fervor of his heart. His successor, Nicholas Cusanus,¹⁸ admits with complete candor: All thoughts and ideas that lead us in our exploration of the world become lame, become as nothing, when we would venture into the realm of spirit. The soul has lost the power to find the spirit realm in its inner being. So Cusanus says to himself: When I experience everything that theology can give me, I am led into this naught of human thinking. I must unite myself with what dwells in this nothingness in order to at least gain in the docta ignorantia the experience of the spirit.—Then, however, such knowledge, such perception, cannot be expressed in words. Man is rendered dumb when he has reached the point at which he can experience the spirit only through the docta ignorantia.

Thus Cusanus is the man who in his own personal development experiences the end of medieval theology and is driven to the docta ignorantia. He is, however, at the same time a skillful mathematician. He has the disciplined thinking that derives from the pursuit of mathematics. But he shies away, as it were, from applying his mathematical skills to the docta ignorantia. He approaches the docta ignorantia with all kinds of mathematical symbols and formulas, but he does this timidly, diffidently. He is always conscious of the fact that these are symbols derived from mathematics. He says to himself: Mathematics is the last remnant left to me from ancient knowledge. I cannot doubt its reliability as I can doubt that of theology, because I actually experience its reliability when I apprehend mathematics with my mind.—At the same time, his disappointment with theology is so great he dares not apply his mathematical skills in the field of the docta ignorantia except in the form of symbols.

This is the end of one epoch in human thinking. In his inner mood of soul, Cusanus was almost as much of a mathematician as was Descartes later on, but he dared not try to grasp with mathematics what appeared to him in the manner he described in his Docta Ignorantia He felt as though the spirit realm had withdrawn from mankind, had vanished increasingly into the distance, and was unattainable with human knowledge. Man must become ignorant in the innermost sense in order to unite himself in love with this realm of the spirit.

This mood pervades Cusanus's Docta Ignorantia published in 1440. In the development of Western civilization, men had once believed that they confronted the spirit-realm in close perspective. But then, this spirit realm became more and more remote from those men who observed it, and finally it vanished. The book of 1440 was a frank admission that the ordinary human comprehension of that time could no longer reach the remote perspectives into which the spirit realm has withdrawn. Mathematics, the most reliable of the sciences, dared to approach only with symbolic formulas what was no longer beheld by the soul. It was as though this spirit realm, receding further and further in perspective, had disappeared from European civilization. But from the opposite direction, another realm was coming increasingly into view. This was the realm of the sense world, which European civilization was beginning to observe and like. In 1440, Nicholas Cusanus applied mathematical thinking and mathematical knowledge to the vanishing spirit realm only by a timid use of symbols; but now Nicholas Copernicus boldly and firmly applied them to the outer sense world. In 1440 the Docta Ignorantia appeared with the admission that even with mathematics one can no longer behold the spirit realm. We must conceive the spirit realm as so far removed from human perception that even mathematics can approach it only with halting symbols; this is what Nicholas Cusanus said in 1440. “Conceive of mathematics as so powerful and reliable that it can force the sense world into mathematical formulas that are scientifically understandable.” This is what Nicholas Copernicus said to European civilization in 1543. In 1543 Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies,) where the universe was depicted so boldly and rudely that it had to surrender itself to mathematical treatment.

One century lies between the two. During this century Western science was born. Earlier, it had been in an embryonic state. Whoever wants to understand what led to the birth of Western science, must understand this century that lies between the Docta Ignorantia and the De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. Even today, if we are to understand the true meaning of science, we must study the fructifications that occurred at that time in human soul life and the renunciations it had to experience. We must go back this far in time. If we want to have the right scientific attitude, we must begin there, and we must also briefly consider the embryonic state preceding Nicholas Cusanus. Only then can we really comprehend what science can accomplish for mankind and see how new spiritual life can blossom forth from it.

• 1 . Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age (Blauvelt, NY: Steinerbooks, 1960) (formerly published as Eleven European Mystics).
• 2 . These include the three natural scientific courses held in Stuttgart: First First Scientific Lecture Course: Light Course (Forest Row, England: Steiner Schools Fellowship, 1977); Second Scientific Lecture Course: Warmth Course (Spring Valley, NY: Mercury Press, 1981); and Das Verhältnis der verschiedenen naturwissenschaftlichen Gebiete sur Astronomie. (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag). The relationship between natural science and spiritual science is dealt with in The Boundaries of Natural Science (Spring Valley, NY, Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 3 . Nicholas Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa), 1401–1464. Lawyer, churchman, philosopher, mathematician. Ordained priest between 1436–1440, Cardinal 1448. Bishop of Brixen, 1450. cf. chapter on Cusanus in Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.
• 4 . Nicholas Cusanus was made Cardinal and named Bishop of Brixen in rapid succession. Though a stranger to Brixen he was named Bishop there directly by the Pope. This led to a protracted conflict with his diocese, during which the latter gathered behind the Duke of Tirol. Cusa was ambushed by the Duke, imprisoned, and forced into accepting a demeaning agreement. The Duke was excommunicated by the Pope and attacked by the Swiss Confederation. However, he was supported by German Counts and remained intransigent. Cusa died before the Emperor could resolve the conflict. The battles around him did not rob Cusa of his peace of mind, and he developed his philosophic, mathematical and theological insights, writing fifteen of his works during the time in Brixen.
• 5 . Brethren of Common Life (also of Good Will): Founded by Gerhart Groote around 1376. Brother-houses in Holland, Northern Germany, Italy and Portugal. Brought into the Catholic Church in the Fifteenth Century. Their schools taught under the strict observance of dogma.
• 6 . Council of Basel: 1431–1449. Called by Pope Martin V on July 23, 1431, the year of his death. This was the last of four reformatory councils with the aim of ending the division in the Church. There came a new rift in the Church.
• 7 . In 1437. This summarizes a long process: Cusanus entered the Council 1432 with the task from the Archdiocese of Trier to defend their Archbishop, whom they had chosen against the will of the Pope. Through the treatise De Concordantia Catholica (On Catholic Unity) which he distributed among the Council and which contained an exceptional survey of the decisions of the Councils and Decrees of the Church, he offered the advice welcome by the majority that the Common Council was beyond the Pope. Thus, he immediately became an important figure in the Council.
  
  Later, the Council majority and the history writings accused Cusanus of having changed his conviction. But Cusanus' deep understanding was ignored, which was rooted in his attitude and which comes to expression in the following words: “When a decision is made unanimously, then one can believe that it came from the Holy Spirit. It lies not in men's power to meet somewhere, and although they are so different from each other, they are able to come to a harmonious decision. It is God's work.” (From J.M. Duex, Der Deutsche Cardinal Nicolaus Von Cusa, Regensburg 1874, Bd. 2, s. 262, which has translated some of the most important of the De Concordantia Catholica. Cusanus must have experienced at the Council that his description of the meaning of a Council was not taken with interest, and he must have faced a decision that is mentioned in the lecture.
• 8 . Pope Eugene 4th was put down and Duke Amadeus of Savoy was set up as Pope Felix 5th in 1439. His resignation in 1449 caused the disbandment of the Council.
• 9 . From 1439–1448 Cusanus acted on the order of the Pope as “Hercules of the Eugenians” as an opponent called him. He went to worldly and churchly princes as well as to the “Reichstag,” and he tried to overcome the neutrality of the Germans about the split of churches, with complete success.
• 10. At the meetings of the princes, 1454, in Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Frankfurt after the invasion of Constantinople by the Turkish, Cusanus tried to motivate the princes to a crusade. After J. Hunnyadis' victory over the Turkish Army in front of Belgrade in 1456 Cusanus organized, at the same day he received the message, a festival of thanksgiving, and he spoke the following words: “Because the lower man can only enjoy life animal-like and physical, Satan who wants to destroy the Gospels in a fine way, intended the appearance of Muhammad who knows the Gospel and the Bible, to let him give the Gospel and Bible an animal-like, sensual meaning. In this way Satan taught Muhammad knowledge to let go forth the head of Malignity, the son of Ruin, and to be an enemy of the cross of Christ.” (From a sermon, “Landaus Invocalo Dominum,” partly translated by J.M. Duex A.A.O.S. 165). Further sermons against the Turks are known from October 28, and November 5 of the same year. (E. Varisteenberge, Le Cardinal Nicolas De Cues, Paris 1920, S. 231 F, and index of sermons s. 480), but this sermon seems to be available only in Latin.
  
  Cusanus himself announced his appointment as Cardinal with a short autobiographical note in which is written: Nicolas was made Cardinal secretly by Pope Eugene (Hist. Jahrbuch der Goerrers Gesellschaft 16.S.549).
• 11. De Pace Fidei (On the Peace of the Faiths), written in September 1453. “The horrible days of Constantinople ... had caused a deep feeling of sadness in the breast of a man who once had wandered through this region, and caused him to sink into deep contemplation, and he had a vision. In this sublime state, he particularly thinks about the differences of the religions of the world, and the possibility of their harmony. This harmony is, in his opinion, a basic condition for religious peace.” (Introduction to De Pace Fidei: Nach Duex A.A.O.S. 405).
• 12. Cusanus left Basel in May 1437 together with other representatives of the minority and traveled for the minority with the legation of the Pope to Constantinople to accompany the Greek Emperor and the heads of the Eastern Church to the Union Council in Ferrara. They arrived in February 1438 in Italy.
• 13. De Docta Ignorantia (The Learned Ignorance). Three books finished in February 1440.
• 14. See Rudolf Steiner, The Redemption of Thinking. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 15. Meister Eckhart: Hochheim by Gotha about 1260–before 1328, Cologne. Dominican, schoolmaster, German mystic. Preached in leading posts in orders and churches; taught in Paris, Strasbourg, Cologne. Main work: Opus Tripartius. Based on Scholasticism and writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. Copies of his sermons partly went around without his control. Meister Eckhart died, accused as heretic, during the trial. See chapter, “Meister Eckhart,” in Rudolf Steiner's Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.
• 16. These lines cannot be made clear and simple because the German text plays at length on the words Nicht and Ich.
• 17. Thomas Aquinas: Castle Roccasecca in the Neopolitan region, about 1225–1274 Cloister Fossanuova. Dominican, scholar, churchman. In Cologne, student and friend of Albertus Magnus. Advocated the spiritual reality of general concepts. He directed the theological school in Rome from 1261–1267. There the studies of the Dominican; from 1268 onwards he is teaching in Naples and France. See Rudolf Steiner, The Redemption of Thinking and Riddles of Philosophy (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1973).
• 18. Nicholas Copernicus: Thorn 1473–1543 Frauenburg. Humanist, mathematician, astronomer, physician, lawyer. No publications during his life, with the exception of a translation. Finished his work on the heliocentric planetary system around 1507. Copernicus was already on his deathbed when his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium was published. He dedicated it to Pope Paul III. His friend and publisher introduced it as a purely hypothetical, special scientific method of calculation. It thus slipped past the censor, until the third edition was banned in 1616/17. Not until 1822 was it accepted by the Catholic Church, cf. Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).

at the beginning of the lecture

On Monday, October 1, a meeting of the Austrian members of the Anthroposophical Society took place. The Austrian Anthroposophical Society will now join the other national societies, so that the Austrian Anthroposophical Society will also be present among the national societies at the founding of the International Anthroposophical Society at Christmas in Dornach.

Berlin, December 24, 1903

Dearest Miss Scholl!

Warmest Christmas greetings to you three, ¹ And the news that you will receive the diplomas and the exegesis for “L.a.d.W.” [“Licht auf den Weg” – “Light on the Way”] on Saturday. Please be patient until then.

Kind regards,

Dr. Rudolf Steiner
Berlin W, Motzstrasse 17

• 1. Refers to Mathilde Scholl's friends and housemates, Maud and Eugen Künstler.

My dear friends!

You will gradually return home from your visit to the Goetheanum.

This time I could only be united with you here in spirit. Nevertheless, I hope that in your hearts the forces kindled by the Christmas Conference a year ago have received a new impulse.

Remembering this and fervently hoping for it, I send you my warmest greetings and most intense thoughts. Dr. I. Wegman, my friend and devoted nurse, does likewise.

Most sincerely
Rudolf Steiner

These lectures and documents from the summer and fall of 1915 were a response to a crisis in the Anthroposophical Society, a crisis Rudolf Steiner wanted the membership to be aware of.

In part, the crisis was caused by Alice Sprengel, a long-time student of Rudolf Steiner, and her reaction apparently provoked by the marriage of her spiritual teacher to Marie von Sivers. Her expectations, the exact nature of which is not quite clear, were connected to the important role she felt herself playing in the anthroposophical movement. Faced with the close working relationship and then the marriage of Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers in the winter of 1914, Alice Sprengel not only sent personal letters to both but also brought her disappointment and sense of abandonment to the attention of other members of the Anthroposophical Society.

She also had a close relationship to Heinrich and Gertrud Goesch, a couple whose interest in Rudolf Steiner's work was matched by an equally strong fascination with the then emerging psychoanalytical school of Freud. Influenced by Alice Sprengel and his own inner uncertainties, Heinrich Goesch accused Rudolf Steiner both privately and publicly of manipulating the membership of the Anthroposophical Society into a dependent status. As supposed mechanisms of such manipulation he mentioned Steiner's repeated failure to keep appointments and physical contact with members through shaking hands upon meeting.

Rudolf Steiner was understandably upset by both sets of accusations and even more so by the gossiping and dissension they caused among members of the Anthroposophical Society. He used these difficulties as an opportunity to address four important questions that are as relevant today as they were in 1915. The first, primarily discussed in Lectures One and Two, concerns the nature of the Anthroposophical Society and the responsibilities its members have to accept if they want to be true to spiritual science. The very clear, pragmatic manner in which these two lectures discuss this important issue makes them a valuable companion to the recently published The Christmas Conference for the Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, 1923/24.¹ The need for the members to move from a consumer orientation regarding spiritual teaching to a feeling of responsibility for it, the unique nature of the Anthroposophical Society as an earthly home for spiritual revelation, and the harm that irresponsible statements and actions can cause the Society are just a few of the important points covered. Steiner also takes a stand against the incessant gossiping and the mutual criticism among members as well as against their attempts to justify sexual infidelities by pointing to an incontrovertible "karma." Rudolf Steiner here urgently appeals to the members' sense of truth and exactitude as the basis for a healing and nurturing of the Anthroposophical Society.

The second question addressed, particularly in Lectures Three and Five, concerns the nature and conditions of spiritual seership. Steiner uses a discussion of Swedenborg's inability to understand the thoughts of certain spirit beings to make two fundamental points about spiritual cognition. The first is the difference between perception in the physical world and true spiritual seership. In the physical world we perceive objects outside of ourselves and take something of them into us through mental images. In the spiritual world "we no longer perceive but experience that we are being perceived, that the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies are observing us. This experience of being perceived and observed by the Angeloi and Archangeloi and other spiritual hierarchies is a total reversal of our former relationship to the physical world.”²

According to Steiner, Swedenborg did not achieve this reversal of perspective; therefore, his clairvoyance was limited, and he did not attain to full imaginative cognition.

Steiner links this difference in perspectives to that between clairvoyance achieved through the redirection of sexual energies and clairvoyance resulting from pure thinking. The latter leads to the experience that the transformed thinking activity of the human being, a thinking devoid of personal likes and dislikes, allows thoughts to appear as objective entities within the human soul. It thereby properly prepares the individual for spiritual seership. The transformation of sexual energies, on the other hand, keeps the individual tied to the physical and allows only a partial clairvoyance. Steiner therefore contends that a spiritual science and seership appropriate to our time rests not on a transformation of our instincts but on a conscious separation of the instinctual life from that of the mind and spirit.

The third issue discussed by Rudolf Steiner in these lectures is the nature of psychoanalysis as developed by Freud. While acknowledging the importance of the unconscious and the subconscious, Steiner is particularly critical of the theory of infantile sexuality. It should be noted that Steiner gave these lectures in 1915 and that both Adler and Jung broke with Freud over Freud's insistence on infantile sexuality as a primary interpretive framework for understanding psychological disturbances.³

Freudian psychology is discussed in Lectures Four and Five of this volume. They are an important supplement to the recently published lectures of Rudolf Steiner entitled Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology.⁴ Of particular significance is Rudolf Steiner's treatment of the three main physiological functions of the human being—the nerve sense system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic system—in their historical and spiritual evolution. His insistence that the metabolic system and the instinctual sexual life are the least spiritual aspects of the human being supports both his criticism of Freud and his basic view of spiritual development.

In reading both these lectures and those contained in Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology, one can easily be led to reject much of the development of psychology in the twentieth century. Indeed the anti-psychological orientation of many students of Rudolf Steiner's work is quite pronounced. My own perspective is different. First, I see the development of modern psychology and psychiatry as co-existent with the end of what Rudolf Steiner refers to as “the Kali Yuga,” or dark age, in 1899. This means that however inadequate the evolution of psychological theories and practices has been in some respects, it has on the whole been a new and deepening exploration of the human soul and spirit. Here, I am in particular thinking of Jung in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections or of Viktor Frankl's logo-therapy or Assagioli's work. It seems to me that while there is much in modern psychology that is trivial and dangerous, there is also much that is worthwhile and helpful.

Students of Rudolf Steiner's work have the possibility to ask questions of appropriateness and relevance regarding different psychological schools, as David Black has done in “On the Nature of Psychology” in Towards.⁵ To see biophysical, behavioral, intrapsychic, and phenomenological schools of thought as addressing different levels of the human being, and to ask what spiritual science has to contribute to the evolving body of psychological and spiritual insight in the last decade of the twentieth century, is a more honest and, I believe, more helpful approach than to extend Steiner's early opposition to Freud and Jung into an unreflecting anti-psychological stance. Soul work and spirit work are intimately connected. The task of developing a more spiritual psychology is a vital task for the coming decades.

In Lecture Six, Steiner addresses the relation between love, mysticism, and spirituality. Particularly significant is his contention that the prevailing materialism of the time made it impossible for most people to conceive of a spiritual striving that did not have some erotic or sexual basis, albeit a very refined one. While Rudolf Steiner does acknowledge that this is sometimes the case, he again asserts the importance of spiritual science as a path of spiritual development for Western humanity in our time because of its reliance on the transformation of the individual's thinking.

As this volume also contains all of the correspondence regarding the difficulties in the Anthroposophical Society in 1915, readers will easily see the direct connection between the personal accusations leveled against Steiner and the lecture themes presented. The questions raised are basic ones for any modern spiritual movement that wants to contribute to individual freedom and a renewal of society. These lectures can lead members of the Anthroposophical Society to ponder their responsibilities toward the content of spiritual science, toward Rudolf Steiner, and toward their brothers and sisters in their striving. For outside observers these lectures constitute an insightful record of the social and psychological difficulties of a spiritual movement relying primarily on the insights and teachings of one individual.

However, the questions of love, sexuality, morality, and spiritual development are of immediate interest and of deep personal significance for all readers on their inner journey.

CHRISTOPHER SCHAEFER, PH.D.
Spring Valley, New York
February 1991

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, The Christmas Conference for the Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, 1923/24 (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1990).
• 2. See Lecture Three in this volume, pp. 43-44.
• 3. See I. Progoff, The Death and Rebirth of Psychology (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973).
• 4. Rudolf Steiner, Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1990).
• 5. Towards, 1 no. 7 (Winter 1980/81): 29-34.

[A full transcript of the proceedings conducted in Dutch is not available. However, Rudolf Steiner's various comments were recorded as follows:]

My dear friends! As far as I can understand the course of the proceedings with the help of the interpreters, a few words must now be said about the agenda.

It seems absolutely necessary to me that the decision that has just been taken be taken at the end of the negotiations. So I would like to propose to annul the solemn decision, to let the negotiations take place and then to consider whether the decision can be taken to found the Dutch Society.

Regarding the nature of the company to be established:

My dear friends! It seems to me that the next subject of the negotiations should be the constitution of the company, and in such a way that it can then lead to the decisions that consist of declaring the company to be established, electing the Secretary General, electing the Board of Directors, and so on. But we must also consider the reasons why we are entering into such negotiations at all, and how they should shape the content of today's negotiations.

You will know, my dear friends, that some time ago the idea arose of founding an International Anthroposophical Society with its center in Dornach. We have indeed experienced the deep pain at the beginning of this year of losing the center in Dornach on which we wanted to build everything that should happen in Dornach. But we also hope that with the help of our friends around the world, it will be possible to rebuild the Goetheanum in Dornach. I do not wish to dwell here on the depth of the pain that has befallen us because of the destruction of the Goetheanum, because today we want to devote ourselves to the positive business of the Anthroposophical Society. The very idea of founding an International Anthroposophical Society must surely fill us with hope, and we must reflect on its significance and implications.

At the beginning of today's conference, my dear friends, you heard a number of really quite significant discussions about individual areas of work within the Anthroposophical movement, for example about Dr. Zeylmans' intentions regarding the newly established clinic and about the efforts regarding the school here, which is also based on the model of the Waldorf school. In both institutions, I was able to take part in the work during these days, to my great satisfaction, even if the time was short but all the more heartfelt. I would just like to mention how Dr. Zeylmans has succeeded in an extraordinarily significant way in interesting a relatively large number of doctors in our modern medical efforts, after which I was then allowed to give two lectures on our medical movement at Dr. Zeylmans' institute [in GA 319]. This is an achievement that has been brought about by the field of our medical work, which really cannot be sufficiently recognized in the immediate present and which has a very great, an enormous significance.

The second is the school. A similar thing can be said about the school. As far as it was possible to ascertain during the two visits, the school is truly permeated by purposeful will and a very clever, understanding, wisdom-filled use of our educational content, as it is demanded by the anthroposophical movement. Purposefulness and a high degree of skill in our pedagogical field are what one encounters in this school. Devoted work and efficiency are what immediately strike one. If we consider the cultivation of eurythmy at the local school, which is particularly new for our school efforts, I can also express a deep, heartfelt satisfaction about this, because the matter is imbued with extraordinary devotion, willingness to make sacrifices and efficiency. All of this really does spread something over the whole school, however small it still is – hopefully it will grow – that is already instilling confidence.

And just by emphasizing something like that, my dear friends, I would like to add a few details that have caught my eye with regard to these things, as if in parentheses. You see, there has been talk about the alleged high cost of remedies. Yes, the thing is that the remedies have to cost just as much as is necessary to cover the costs of production, shipping and so on. This is healthier after all – one must also think of the social and financial health when it comes to medicine, otherwise one is inconsistent – it is much healthier to pay for the remedies as they must cost according to the production costs and so on, than to pay less for them and have a deficit; you would have to pay for that again if it is not to be paid from the moon. These would not be healthy conditions. These things must be taken into account in such a way that, in such cases, when the remedies are too expensive for one or the other, a fund is set up or something similar, from which these remedies are then paid for. Here, too, we must develop a kind of trust, we must place this trust in the insight of those who have to work for these remedies. This only in parenthesis.

All in all, however, what emerges with great clarity from the presentations by Mrs. Mulder and Dr. Zeylmans is this: wherever we begin with something that has a manageable content from the outset, that can be seen in limitation, it immediately becomes apparent that we are making progress, that we can work spiritually. So, you see, it is in the legitimate special areas of our anthroposophical movement.

We have seen how, in recent times, eurythmy has made tremendous progress, and I hope that this will also happen in the Netherlands. It is hardly possible for Dr. Steiner to even begin to satisfy all the requests that arise all over the world regarding the seeing of eurythmic art. Here too, during this conference, we have seen how what is really deeply needed in the anthroposophical movement, especially as eurythmy on the one hand and the school system on the other spread, has sparked interest in the art of speaking, declamation, and recitation, and actually demands that it be cultivated in an appropriate way. As I said, we see at the Clinical Institute and at the school that when we have substantial, manageable content, we also make progress.

Now, my dear friends, you see, all these individual efforts could not exist without the central effort, which remains the main thing: the anthroposophical movement itself. They all arise from it and must be nourished by it. We could gain a perfect model for the work of the Anthroposophical Society from the work of these individual endeavors.

We must be quite open and honest with one another. Imagine someone who at least wants to think professionally visits the school that has been founded here. He will pay attention everywhere to whether what permeates the art of education and teaching has the prospect of really helping children to move forward, of placing children in life in a way that meets the demands of the present time. It would never occur to him to say, “This is a cult school; you can't go along with that, they work in a cultish way.”

And let us move on to the Clinical Institute. Certainly, those who have heard these two lectures in the last few days will certainly disagree with one or the other, or perhaps with the whole, in a variety of ways; that does no harm, it must be so at the beginning of a movement; one must have confidence in what is the underlying force. But even if people may not agree with the details or the whole, none of the participants could have gained the impression that they were dealing with a medical sect. That was quite impossible. Nor would one be tempted to speak of sectarian eurythmy, sectarian recitation or sectarian declamation.

But now we ask ourselves whether the same applies to the central movement, insofar as it is centered in the Anthroposophical Society. Some people who come from outside get the impression of sectarianism, of what is permeated by all sorts of things, by fanaticism, by stubbornness, by abstract idealism, by vague mysticism and so on, by all sorts of things that smell to them like it smells in sectarian communities, spiritually and soulfully. I say this, of course, only because these things must be said, not because I want to make accusations and the like. I say it only to present, so to speak, the counter-tableau, the sectarian counter-tableau, because I want to emphasize: the way it is in these individual endeavors, which are so fruitful, is the way it should be in the Anthroposophical Society itself. There really should be an objective, a purely objective spirit within it, which as such is evident to the world.

This was the basis, my dear friends, for the idea of founding the International Anthroposophical Society from Dornach. Never have I understood something better within the Anthroposophical Society than when, for example, I was told — and I also see personalities here who repeatedly said something like this to me in the years I have been here: Yes, this Anthroposophical Society, it comes together in smaller circles and so on, but we need something else. We need, for example, a center in Dornach where everything that a member of the Anthroposophical Society should know, everything that should be of interest to them, is somehow indicated, perhaps through a journal or something else. This should then be available to the individual members. Until now, our fragmented and divided nature, due to the fact that one person could know nothing of the others, meant that we were a society that others could not know either. We were unable to meet this very legitimate demand. It is one of those demands that simply has to be met.

Recently, we have had two eminently significant discoveries in the field of science, let us say, for the sake of argument. I will just emphasize that. These are two biological discoveries about the spleen and about the effectiveness of the smallest entities. I do not want to go into this now, but it would be interesting to have a vote on the matter and for all those who have not yet heard of the significance of these scientific discoveries to stand up. We really need some way of finding out what is going on. An enormous amount is happening in the Anthroposophical Society, but the individual does not even have the opportunity to know about it. As I said, I felt this was a very justified demand. But all this can only be done if the society is there as it should be. Therefore, the decision was taken to form the international society in Dornach in such a way - and this is to happen in the coming Christmas days - that it can fulfill such tasks. So it is not just a matter of this Society having an external form, with, for example, standardized membership cards, registers of members, a central office where everyone has to pay, and so on. The International Anthroposophical Society should not just exist in an external formal way, but in an organic circulation of what happens in it. Just imagine, once it is there in this form, the International Anthroposophical Society, then countless difficulties that we have today will simply disappear.

However, such an international society can only be founded in Dornach if the individual national societies have first been established and send their delegates to Dornach. Then the International Anthroposophical Society can be founded out of the national societies. That was the reason why national societies were founded in various countries in my presence. In Sweden we have had one for a long time [since 1913]; in Norway one was founded during my stay [in May 1923]; the Swiss Anthroposophical Society and the English one have been founded. In Italy, an attempt has been made. The German Anthroposophical Society has been founded. The French Anthroposophical Society has been founded in a slightly different form, due to circumstances; it has been founded by my appointing Mlle. Sauerwein as General Secretary. So all these national societies have been founded, and I was able to count on the founding of the Dutch Anthroposophical Society during my presence here, which then, in turn, sends the delegates, who have been endowed with all possible wills of the entire society, to Dornach at Christmas. This then brings us to an International Anthroposophical Society that is finally doing real work.

Now, today, the first task at hand – in full awareness that the entire Anthroposophical Society must also bear the character that the individual endeavors, the school, medicine and so on, which were founded on this character, must also bear – is to that for once all other differences are left aside and that the Anthroposophical Society itself can be presented to the world in the right way. For this, of course, it is necessary that the leading personalities in the individual national societies are concerned with working as objectively as possible in their respective fields. It cannot be said that in the individual fields the leading personalities do not go beyond their subjective opinions. They enter into objective, meaningful work. But this must also happen in the field of anthroposophy as a whole. And so we must first come to an understanding about the statutes, the content of which must make it clear that the Anthroposophical Society can present itself to the world today in a completely non-sectarian way, as can the individual endeavors. We should also talk about the form and content of the Anthroposophical Society's work, so that this can be seen from the statutes. I am entirely in agreement with the one gentleman who spoke here about statutes or something like that. I too loathe the statutes; but that is not the point. One could of course simply agree on the conditions of the Anthroposophical Society, but statutes are necessary for the time being. I would like to say: if, for example, I myself were here among you as a Dutchman and if I were asked whether I wanted to become the General Secretary of the Dutch Society and let myself be elected now, I would say: yes, first I have to hear what this Society should become, what it should look like; only then will I be able to decide whether I want to accept the election or not. It is self-evident that one cannot first decide to found the Society and then elect the General Secretary – all this must come at the end of the negotiations.

So: first we have to talk about the content of the statutes, about how the Anthroposophical Society should present itself to the world; how it should show what it wants. This must be expressed in formulated sentences in the statutes. Only then can the election of the functionaries take place. First the constitution of the Society, then the election of the functionaries, because only then can the functionaries know whether they want to be elected.

During the discussion of the statutes, Rudolf Steiner speaks:

Perhaps I can be of some help if I say a few words about what I intend to present at Christmas in Dornach. Take your Article 2: “The Dutch Anthroposophical Society wants to be a community of people to cultivate genuine spiritual values of the present...” and so on. This may be modeled on the “Draft of the Principles of an Anthroposophical Society”. This draft was initially addressed to those personalities who were previously in the Theosophical Society and who were to decide to found an Anthroposophical Society. Anyone who thinks realistically always starts from the present circumstances. So you have to imagine the situation of the transition from the Theosophical to the Anthroposophical Society in 1912/13. The draft statutes were written as a guide, since statutes were to emerge from them. When one then draws up statutes that are to serve as a ready-made basis for those who are to join, one must avoid, in the sense of what I have taken the liberty of saying this morning, creating the impression of sectarianism. It is a vital question for the Anthroposophical Society that this be avoided. If you want to give a classic example of how to create the impression of a sect, then you do it by placing this Article 2 and this Article 3 in the statutes immediately after the name. But you can't do it that way in statutes. One must speak in statutes somewhat more worldly. Everyone is immediately offended when he finds such stylization: “The Dutch Anthroposophical Society wants to be a community of people...” and so on. Firstly, nothing is said with it, because everyone already considers those spiritual values to be the genuine spiritual values of the present that he recognizes. So, firstly, nothing special is said; but secondly, it gives the impression that one is a sect. You also have to consider: the Theosophical Society was a sect, and still is today; the Anthroposophical Society is not supposed to be one and cannot be one according to its entire content. So it is not surprising that the draft statutes at that time only gently and mildly work their way out of the sectarian spirit of the Theosophical Society.

But today we have progressed more than ten years since this draft was written. So I think it will be necessary to give these statutes - I have to use the word again - a more cosmopolitan style. I have not yet thought about it thoroughly, because I should not speak about it until Christmas. I always want to say things honestly. It is not right to say that it should first be discussed in Dornach and that it would be pointless to set everything down in writing. In Dornach, the individual national societies should come with fully completed statutes. So the right thing to do is to set out the statutes in detail right now.

I would suggest to you, but only in terms of direction, that you try to keep the style of the statutes along the lines of: “The Dutch Anthroposophical Society should have the task of cultivating a spiritual life in the way that was essentially considered correct by the founding meeting on November 18, 1923 in The Hague.” — That gives you a positive starting point. You say: We have an opinion today, and the Anthroposophical Society should be the society that carries this opinion forward. “The assembled personalities here are of the opinion that in the Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, which is already available to a large extent today, there is something that can have an even greater influence on the spiritual and physical sides of civilization and of the individual human life than the results of research into nature, of natural science, on the material and technical sides.” Then one would have to say, in parentheses: “Among these results, which will emerge from what is intended here, will be: real human cooperation in civilization in the sense of brotherhood; a real understanding of the externally differentiating world views that arise from each other; the acquisition of one's own, individual world view through the understanding of different religions and world views and a real understanding of the spiritual core in all beings and in all processes.

In this kind of way, one could say something in a worldly way, whereby no one would think that you are entering a sect, because it sounds like the way such things sound in other associations, for example in meetings of natural scientists. But the moment you tell people something that is already a theory, that moment gives the impression of sectarianism. It is already a theory to say: “Everyone who has a true interest...” and so on. There is already a whole range of dogmatism in it. Anyone reading this as an outsider must think: I am getting up to my ears in the water of sectarianism. — And that must be strictly avoided. Otherwise you will continue to experience that the anthroposophical movement can no longer be stopped, but that the Anthroposophical Society is no longer able to grasp what is contained in the anthroposophical movement. The Anthroposophical Societies often give the impression of being small sects to the world. That is not the anthroposophical movement.

In this way, I would like to recommend thinking about the matter. Of course, everything can be included, but the question is how to include it. The three points must be included; Mr. van Leer is right about that, but how they must be included. It must be formulated in such a way that no one can take offense at it, that it does not sound sectarian. Thus, Article 2 would be given.

Article 3 should be broadly formulated, so that in individual cases undesirable applicants can be deterred, but also so that not always precisely those people are deterred who would actually fit best into the Society. Today many people are really deterred from entering the Society by the fact that the boards of management approach them in a certain way. They cannot enter if they are treated with such admission requirements, as is often the case today. People do not put up with this, they simply do not join. It is not intended to criticize or to offend anyone, but I must say the following: introductory courses are held in which simply what is said in this or that book or cycle is repeated. Then someone comes along who, through his other life, has plenty of education that allows him to belong to us, and he is told: “Yes, but you have not taken an introductory course.” My dear friends, if a society can do such a thing, it will never grow as it should grow. I would like to orient the discussion in this direction now, not to be specific about what has been said.

The focus of Article 3 should be on the mode of admitting members, for membership. Article 2 should be worded in the way I have just characterized it, so that it has a cosmopolitan character. But Article 3 must then provide a certain direction for the whole character of the society. So there must be something in the statutes that can be used to determine who can become a member. But that too should be formulated in as tolerant, liberal and cosmopolitan a way as possible. All these are only suggestions, not even proposals. I attach great importance to the fact that everything in the statutes of the national societies does not come from me, but from the national societies themselves. I would only like to intervene and help if the discussion comes to a standstill.

I therefore believe that the statutes should naturally contain the following: “The endeavors characterized here have their center in everything that, in scientific, medical, artistic, or religious respects, emanates from the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, and can be linked to it.” If this paragraph is included in any version, then you, as the person of trust taking on the role of admitting members, have the right to turn away someone who says: I have aspirations to cultivate spiritual life, but I look at Dornach and see only dirt. — So a certain direction must be indicated. It is not enough to just say: admission is carried out by trusted individuals. — It cannot be left to mere arbitrariness. Such a paragraph should follow, and then one could say: Everyone who has an interest in the endeavours characterized here can apply for membership. Admission is granted in such and such a way — please choose the way the national societies consider right. The thinking should be along these lines, for one must say something in the statutes.

What is really important in such matters is the stylization. Consider what a difference it makes whether you use a personal name, as in Article 2, or whether you say, “The characterized aspirations have their center in all this...” and so on. There are many people who would never join a movement based on a name. They do not do it on principle. No one will be deterred by the passage just mentioned. We really have no use for anyone who is deterred by this version. We need to be aware of and take such things into account, otherwise we live outside of reality when we are making statutes.

Regarding the office of General Secretary:

The office of the General Secretary of the national societies is an extremely important office, and even if it were not so today, it should be. The General Secretary has two main responsibilities: firstly, to represent the Anthroposophical Society in his or her own country in its entirety in relation to its own members; secondly, to represent the national society to the leadership of the International Anthroposophical Society in Dornach. But there is a third, absolutely essential

Stenographic notes by Rudolf Steiner on page 1 “Provisional draft of the statutes of a Dutch Anthroposophical Society”.

The task of the Dutch Anthroposophical Society is to bring the results of the already existing anthroposophical spiritual science, which by its nature could have an even greater significance for life than the natural sciences, which are so fruitful for modern civilization, to bear in the world.

The Dutch Anthroposophical Society wants to develop its effectiveness in the sense that it corresponds to the gathering of its founders... [full stop in original]. These founders are aware of the already extensive results of anthroposophical spiritual science for the development of the more spiritual side of human civilization and of the individual human life.

Longhand additions in an unknown hand:

Community of the trusted personality of a group.

The representatives of the groups are appointed by the groups for at least a year.

--

if society is to flourish again. The Secretary General must become a well-known figure in the individual national societies, who is mentioned when the society is mentioned. It follows that he cannot be appointed for a short period of time, but that he should actually work for as long a period as possible. Today, you have elected Dr. Zeylmans as General Secretary, which, as it seems to me, should even become part of the statutes. Now, therefore, a corresponding paragraph in the statutes should first be found for this office of General Secretary. It should read something like the following: “The office of General Secretary is for an indefinite period and can only be terminated: 1. by his own resignation; 2. if the majority of the members of the Dutch Anthroposophical Society no longer agree with the General Secretary; 3. if an objection is raised by the leadership of the International Anthroposophical Society in Dornach.”

Regarding the relationship between the national societies and the international leadership of the Society:

It would be better to omit all the paragraphs and formulations about international leadership and so on. The national societies themselves must emerge from the statutes in some way. The national societies are formed before the founding of the international society in Dornach. This international society is only to be established on the basis of the national societies. Therefore, it should be clear from these statutes that the current founding meeting designates the executive council. And then, as with the general secretary, it must be stated how long the executive council remains. And something should be said about the expansion of the board. The current board is designated by the sovereign founding assembly, so there is no need for recognition of the international leadership. But then it could perhaps say: “The board can be co-opted; it can be expanded by an assembly of members, at which at least so-and-so many members are assembled with a majority of so-and-so much.” For all I care, you could also say, “The Executive Council can be extended by appointment by the existing Executive Council...” and so on: “The election or appointment of future Executive Council members is valid if no objection is raised by the international leadership in Dornach.” — It is my opinion that this would be a little too far-reaching, but if you want it, you can do it that way. In a sense, it is good if, once the international society is in place, the sense of belonging together is also expressed by the fact that the international leadership can veto an appointment, but that it has no positive right of co-determination. A right of objection is quite different from a positive right of co-determination.

Dornach, 22nd June, 1924

The study of problems connected with karma is by no means easy and discussion of anything that has to do with this subject entails—or ought at any rate to entail—a sense of deep responsibility. Such study is in truth a matter of penetrating into the most profound relationships of existence, for within the sphere of karma, and the course it takes, lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world-existence, even of the phenomena of nature. Without insight into the course which karma takes in the world and in the evolution of humanity it is quite impossible to understand why external nature is displayed before us in the form in which we behold it.

We have been studying examples of how karma may take its course. These examples were carefully chosen by me in order that now, when we shall try to make the transition to the study of individual karma, we can link on to them. To begin with I will give a general introduction, because friends are present to-day who have not attended the lectures on karma given during the last few weeks and months.

It is very essential to realise the importance and seriousness of everything connected with our Christmas Foundation Meeting. We must be deeply conscious of the fact that this Christmas Meeting constituted an entirely new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. And there must be no returning to old customs, to old habits of thought in relation to the fundamental changes that have come about in the method of handling the truths of Anthroposophy. The contents of the lectures given here since Christmas should not really be passed on to any audience otherwise than by reading an exact transcript of what has been said here. A free exposition of this particular subject matter is not possible at the present stage. If such a course were proposed I should have to take exception to it. These difficult and weighty matters entail grave consideration of every word and every sentence spoken here, in order that the limits within which the statements are made shall be absolutely clear. If anyone proposes to communicate the subject-matter to an audience in some different way, he must first get in touch with me and enquire whether this would be possible. For in future a united spirit must prevail through the whole Anthroposophical Movement. Otherwise we shall fall into the same mistakes that were made by a number of members who thought it their duty to elaborate anthroposophical truths in terms of modern science, and we have experienced to the full how much harm was done to the Movement by what was then “achieved”—I say the word with inverted commas!

These conditions do not, of course, apply to entirely private communications; but even in such cases the person who makes them must be fully alive to his responsibility. For the moment things are spoken of in the way we are speaking of them here, there begins, in the fullest meaning of the words, a sense of responsibility in regard to communications from the spiritual world. It is difficult to speak of such matters here in view of the limitations of our present organisation which do not, however, admit of any other arrangement. It is difficult to speak about these matters because such lectures ought really to be given only to listeners who attend the series from beginning to end. Understanding will inevitably be difficult for anyone who comes in later. If, however, friends are fully conscious that such difficulties exist, a certain balance can be established. Provided this consciousness is present, then all will be well. But it is not always there ... Nor will it ever be possible to think in the right way about these matters—which are among the most delicate in our Movement—if, as is still the case even since the Christmas Foundation, the same habits persist—jealousies, mutual rancour and the like. A certain attitude of mind, a certain earnestness are absolutely essential for anthroposophical development.

Before I assumed the office of President I spoke of such matters as a teacher. But now I must speak of them in such a way that they actually represent what proceeds from the Executive at the Goetheanum and must come to life within the Anthroposophical Society. I think that the meaning of what I have said will be understood. I have spoken as I have in order that the necessary earnestness may prevail in regard to lectures of the kind now being given.

Karma is something that is in direct operation through the whole course of man's life but lies concealed in the unconscious and subconscious regions of the human soul, behind the outer experiences.

Now a biography should evoke experiences of a very definite kind in the reader if he follows the narrative with genuine, warm-hearted interest. If I were to describe what the reading of a biography can awaken in us, it is this.—Whoever reads a biography with alert attention will find description after description of events and phenomena which are not really in keeping with an uninterrupted flow of narrative. When reading a biography we have before us a picture of the life of a man. But truth to tell it is not only the facts experienced in his waking consciousness that play into his life. Time takes its course thus.—First day, then night; second day, then night; third day, then again night, and so on. But in ordinary consciousness we are aware only of what has happened during the days—unless we write an anthroposophical biography which, in the circumstances of present-day civilisation, is an utter impossibility. Biographies give an account of what has happened during the days, during the hours of waking consciousness of the one whose biography is being written.

But that which actually shapes life, gives it form and implants into it the impulses that are connected with destiny—this is not visible in the events of the days but comes into operation between the days, in the spiritual world, when man himself is in the spiritual world from the time of falling asleep to that of waking. These impulses are at work in life but are not indicated in biographical narratives. To what, then, does a biography amount? In regard to the life of a man it is as if we were to hang Raphael's Sistine Madonna on a wall and paste strips of white paper over certain places so that only portions of the surface remain visible. Anyone looking at the picture would be bound to feel that there must be something more to be seen if it is to be a complete whole.

Everybody who reads a biography dispassionately ought in truth to feel this. In view of the conditions of culture to-day it can be indicated only by means of style, but that should be done. The whole style and manner of writing should indicate that impulses are flowing all the time into the life of a man from impersonal levels of the life of soul and spirit. If that is achieved we shall gradually come to feel that in a biography, karma itself is speaking. It would of course be pure abstraction to narrate some scene in a man's life and then add: This comes from a previous earthly life; at that time it took such and such a form and now it takes this. Such a way of speaking would be sheer abstraction, although a great many people would probably find it highly sensational! Actually, however, it would contain no higher spirituality than is to be found in the conventional biographies written in our time, for everything that is produced in this domain to-day is so much philistinism.

Now it is possible to cultivate the attitude of soul that is needed here by learning, shall I say, to love the diaries or daily notes written by individuals. If such diaries are not read (or written), thoughtlessly ... some diaries, of course, are very humdrum and prosaic, but even so, as he follows the transitions from one day to another, a man who is not a philistine will be aware of feelings and perceptions which lead on to an apprehension of karma, of the connections of destiny.

I have known people—and their number is by no means small—who out of blissful ignorance thought themselves capable of writing a biography of Goethe. But the fact is that the more deeply one looks into the connections of existence, into the karmic connections of existence, the more do the difficulties increase.

Try to recall what I have been telling you here recently, and especially the lecture in which I urged you expressly to understand me with your hearts rather than with your intellects, and when I should speak again, to receive that too with your hearts. Remember the emphasis I laid upon this. For the fact of the matter is that an intellectual approach cannot lead to a real apprehension of karma. Anyone who is not inwardly shaken by many of the karmic connections disclosed here shows that any real perception of karma is beyond him and that he is incapable of pressing on to the perception of individual karmic connections.

But let us try now to find the transition from the studies hitherto pursued, to what can lead us to say of some happening in the life of a man that this is karma, in a definite form of manifestation.

When I recall all that I experienced in relation to Goethe during the seven years I was working in the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar—in narrating the story of my life I am having to review it all in thought—I say to myself in reference to karma that one of the most difficult problems in any presentation of the subject is to describe the experiences through which Goethe passed between the years 1782 and 1800. To write this chapter in a biography of Goethe is one of the most difficult of all tasks.

Now we must learn to perceive, even if it has to be with higher, occult vision, how and where karma is working in the life of a man.

Between the moment of falling asleep and that of waking, man lives in his astral body and his ego, outside his physical and etheric bodies. With his ego and astral body he lives within the spiritual world. Again, it is one of the most difficult of all investigations that can be undertaken in spiritual science to make an accurate survey of what happens between falling asleep and waking. I shall describe it in outline to-day.

If you review all that has been brought before you in Anthroposophy, you will feel that it gives the impression of being comprehensible; but the discovery of it is a matter of extraordinary difficulty in anthroposophical investigation.

If I were to draw a kind of sketch of the human being, this outline or boundary-line indicates his physical body. In this physical body is the etheric body, within that the astral body, and within that again, the ego, the ‘I’.

Now think of man as he falls asleep. The physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed. What happens to the astral body and the ego? The astral body and the ego go out through the head and, in reality, through the whole senses-system, that is to say, they pass out through the whole body but mainly through the head, and are then outside. Thus, leaving aside the ego, we can say: At the moment of falling asleep the astral body leaves the human being through the head. Actually, the astral body leaves him through everything that is a sense organ, but because the sense organs are concentrated chiefly in the head, the main part of the astral body goes out through the head. But as the sense of warmth, for example, is distributed over the whole body, and the sense of pressure too, weaker radiations also take place, in every direction. The whole process, however, gives the impression that at the moment of falling asleep the astral body passes out through the head.

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The ego, which—speaking in terms of space—is rather more extensive than the astral body and not entirely enclosed within it, also passes out.—Such is man as he falls asleep.

Now let us turn to man as he wakes. When we observe him at the time of waking we find that the astral body approaches through the limbs, actually through the tips of the fingers and toes first, and then gradually spreads through the limbs. Thus at the moment of waking the astral body comes in from the opposite side. So too, the ego, only now the ego does not envelop the astral body but on returning is enclosed by the astral body.

We wake from sleep and as we do so the astral body and the ego stream into us through the tips of the fingers and toes. In order to fill the human being entirely, as far as his head, they really need the whole day; and when they have reached the head the moment has come for them to go out again. You will realise from this that the ego and astral body are in constant, perpetual flow.

At this point you may raise the question: Yes, but if that is so, half an hour after waking from sleep we have in us only a small part of our astral body (and here I include the ego as well) as far as the wrists above and as far as the ankles below. And that is actually so.—If somebody wakes at 7 o'clock—I will assume him to be a person of decorum and stays awake, then at 7.30 his astral body will have reached about as far as his ankles and possibly his wrists. And so it goes on, slowly, until the evening.

You may say: But how is it, then, that we wake up as a whole man? We certainly feel that we wake as a whole man, all at once ... yet properly speaking, only our fingers and toes were awake at 7.15, and at mid-day most people are within the astral body only as if they are sitting in a hip bath. This is really so.

The question that arises here must be answered by pointing to the fact that in the spiritual realm other laws prevail than in the physical world. In the physical world a body is exactly where it is—nowhere else. In the spiritual world it is not so. In the spiritual world our astral body works through the whole space taken up by the body, even when it has actually occupied only the fingers and toes. That is the strange fact. Even when the astral body is only approaching it can already be felt throughout the body. But its reality, its substantiality spreads out only slowly.

Understanding of this phenomenon is of the greatest importance, above all in enabling a true judgment to be formed of the human organisation in health and disease. For think of it: throughout the hours of sleep, in what lies in the bed and is not man in the full sense but only the physical and etheric bodies, a kind of plant-mineral activity is going on, albeit within a human organisation. And this activity can be either normal or abnormal, healthy or unhealthy.

It is precisely in the morning hours, when the astral body begins to rise upwards from the limbs, that the unhealthy phenomena become manifest to a special faculty of perception. Therefore in forming a judgment of illnesses it is of the utmost importance to know what feelings the patient has when he wakes from sleep, when his astral body is forcing upwards what is unhealthy within him.

And now let us proceed.—On falling asleep, our ego and astral body pass out of our physical and etheric bodies into the spiritual world. The after-effects of what we have experienced during the day still remain. But thoughts do not remain in the form in which we harboured them, neither do they remain in the form of words. Nothing of this remains. Remnants, vestiges, still adhere to the astral body when it passes out, but no more than that.

Immediately the astral body has passed out of the human being, karma begins to take shape, although at first in the form of pictures only. Karma begins to take shape. What we have done through the day, whether good or bad, viewing it to begin with in accordance with customary ideas—directly we fall asleep, all this begins immediately to be translated, integrated, into the stream of karmic development.

This process continues for a time after we fall asleep and overshadows everything else that happens to us during sleep. As sleep continues, however, a man begins to dive down into the experiences undergone in his preceding earthly life (see arrows in diagram), then into those of the life before that, and so on, backwards. And when the time of awakening comes he has reached and passed his first, most distant earthly life as an individual. Then he reaches the state of being when he was not yet separate from the cosmos, a state of existence in reference to which one cannot speak of an earthly life as an individual. Only when he has reached thus far can he return again into his physical and etheric organisation.

Still another question arises here, moreover a very important one.—What happens when we have a very short sleep—for example an afternoon nap? Or indeed when we have a brief forty winks during a lecture, but really do go to sleep; the whole thing may last only two or three minutes, perhaps only a minute or half a minute. What happens then? If the sleep were real, we were in the spiritual world during that half minute.

The truth is, my dear friends, that for this short nap even during a lecture, the same holds good as for the all-night sleep of a lie-a-bed—I mean, of course, a human lie-a-bed! As a matter of fact, whenever a man falls asleep, even for a brief moment, the whole sleep is a unity and the astral body is an unconscious prophet; it surveys the whole sleep up to the point of waking ... in perspective, of course. What is remote may lack clarity, as when a short-sighted person looks down an avenue and does not see the trees at the farther end of it. In the same way the astral body may be short-sighted, figuratively speaking, in the subconscious. Its perception does not reach the point where the individual earth-lives begin. But broadly speaking, the fact is that even during the briefest sleep we rush with tremendous, lightning-like rapidity through all our earthly lives. This is a matter of extraordinary significance. Naturally it is all very hazy; but if somebody falls asleep during a lecture, then the lecturer or those who share his power of observation have it in front of them. Think of it: the whole of earth-evolution, together with what the sleeper has experienced in previous earthly lives! When somebody falls asleep during a lecture everything lacks clarity because it happens with such terrific rapidity; one thing merges quickly into another, but it is there, nevertheless. From this you will understand that karma is perpetually present, inscribed as it were in the World-Chronicle. And every time a man falls asleep he has opportunity to approach his karma. This is one of the great secrets of existence.

One who can survey these things from the vantage-point of Initiation Science, with unimpeded vision, looks with deep reverence, a reverence of knowledge, upon what can live in a human memory, upon the memory-thoughts that can arise in the human soul. These memories tell only of the earth-life now being undergone, yet within them lives a human ego. And did these memories not exist—I have spoken of this previously—then the human ego would not be fully present. Deep down within us there is something that can ever and again evoke these memories.

But inasmuch as we are in communication with the external world through our senses and our mind, we form ideas of this external world, ideas that give us pictures of what is outside.

Drawing this diagrammatically, we say: here (a) man looks out into the world. Pictures arise in his thoughts, representing to him what he perceives in the external world. Here (b) man lives within his body. Thoughts well up, containing their own store of memories. Of our store of memories we say that it presents, as faithfully as our organisation of spirit-soul-body allows, what we have experienced in this present life on earth.

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But now let us think about what lies on the other side, outside man. We do not as a rule reflect upon the fact that what we see there is but a section of earth-existence, in the first place, the surrounding earth and sky. If a man is born in Danzig, his eyes and other senses perceive different processes and phenomena from those of one born in Hamburg or in Constantinople. We can say: The world presents ‘sections’ of itself in infinite variety; for no two human beings are these sections identical, even though the two may have been born at the same place and die at the same place, living their lives in close proximity. The section of the world presented to the one is completely different from that presented to the other.

Let us be quite clear what this means. The world presents to us a certain part of itself and this we see. The rest we never see. It is extremely important to reflect upon how the world presents to a human being a sum-total of impressions upon which the experiences of his life depend. This will mean very little to a shadowy thinker, but one who thinks deeply will not put it lightly aside. As he ponders it all he will say: ‘This fact is so puzzling that I am at a loss how to put it into words.—The cosmos, the world, presents to each human being only a portion of itself, a more or less coherent portion; therefore in this sense the cosmos particularises human beings. How am I to put this into words? In speaking of it as abstractly as this I am merely stating a bare fact which does not really amount to anything. I must be able to express the facts clearly, to formulate them. How am I to do so?’

Now we shall arrive at a way of formulating these facts if we again consider memory. What is it that wells up from the depths when we recall something in memory? What is it that rises up? It is what our own human being has experienced. Our real human being is somewhere deep down where we cannot take hold of it. It streams up in our memory-thoughts, streams up into our consciousness from our inmost being. What is it that streams into us from outside? Man himself is still so minute when all this is welling up from within him and everything in the cosmos out yonder is so vast, of such immensity! But these ‘sections’ of the cosmos are always entering into man. And the fact of the matter is that here too, thoughts arise.

We know that our memory-thoughts derive from what we have actually experienced. But thoughts also come into us from outside, just as memory-thoughts come from below. Here below (see diagram) is our own human being; and here, outside, is the whole world of the Hierarchies.

An impression of greatness and majesty comes to us when with Initiation-Science we begin to realise that these ‘sections’ of cosmic intelligence are outspread around us and that behind all this that makes an impression upon us from outside live the Hierarchies, as truly as our own individual being lives behind the memories that well up from within.

It all depends upon the vividness of some experience whether or no we can call it forth again in memory, whether or no there is any reason why one thought rises up from our store of memories, and another, or all the others, lie dormant. And it is the same here. Those who learn to know the true facts realise that at one time a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi is appearing, at another, a Being from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai, and so forth.

Thus we arrive at the following formula.—During our earthly existence we behold that which it pleases the Spirit-Beings to reveal to us.

Inasmuch as a particular portion of the world is revealed to us during our life on earth, we learn to recognise that it is just this portion of the infinite range of possibilities contained in the cosmos that certain Beings of the Hierarchies have selected in order to disclose it to us from our birth until our death. One human being has this portion revealed to him, another that. Exactly what is revealed to individual men lies in the sphere of the deliberations of the Hierarchies.

The Hierarchies remember, just as man remembers. What is it that provides the basis for the memory of the Hierarchies? They look back upon our past earthly lives—that is what gives them the basis for their memory. And according to what they behold in these past lives they bring the appropriate section of the cosmos before our soul. In what we see of the world—even in that lies karma, karma as apportioned by the world of the Hierarchies.

Within: remembrance of the present brief life in our human memory. Out yonder: memory of the Hierarchies of all that men have ever done. Memory-thoughts rise up from within; memory-thoughts from the world of the Hierarchies enter in the form of what a man beholds of the cosmos ... and human karma takes shape. This thought is startling in its clarity, for it teaches us that the whole cosmos, working in the service of the Hierarchies, is related to man. Viewed in this aspect, to what end is the cosmos there? In order that the gods may have the means whereby to bring to man the primary form of his karma. Why are there stars, why clouds, why sun and moon? Why are there animals on the earth, why plants, stones, rivers, streams, why rocks and mountains, and all that is in the cosmos around us? It is there as a reservoir upon which the gods may draw in order to bring to our vision the primary form of our karma, according to the deeds we have wrought.

Thus are we placed into the world and thus can we relate ourselves to the secrets of our existence.

And so we shall be able to consider the various forms of karma. In the first place it is karma in its cosmic aspect that is being brought before us, but it will come to be more and more individual. We shall discover how karma works in its inmost depths.

We must realise clearly how it is that in the depths of winter the Earth, in relation to the cosmos, is a being enclosed within itself. During the winter the Earth is, so to speak, wholly Earth, with a concentrated Earth-nature. In high summer—to add this contrast for the sake of clarity—the Earth is given over to the cosmos, lives with the cosmos. And in between, during spring and autumn, there is always a balance between these extremes.

All this has the deepest significance for the Earth's whole life. Naturally, what I shall be saying applies only to that part of the Earth's surface where a corresponding transition from winter to spring takes place.

Let us start, as we have always done in these lectures, by considering the purely material side. We will look at the salt-deposits which we have had to treat as the most important factor in winter-time. We will study this first in the limestone deposits, which are indeed a phenomenon of the utmost importance for the whole being of the Earth.

You need only go out-of-doors here, where we are surrounded everywhere by the Jura limestone, and you will have before you all that I am going to begin by describing to-day. Ordinary observation is so superficial that for most people limestone is simply limestone, and outwardly there really is no perceptible difference between winter-limestone and spring-limestone. But this failure to distinguish between them comes from the standpoint which yesterday I called the flea-standpoint. The metamorphoses of limestone appear only when we look further out into the cosmos, as it were. Then we find a subtle difference between winter-limestone and spring-limestone, and it is precisely this which makes limestone the most important of all deposits in the soil. After all the various considerations we have gone into here, and since we know that soul and spirit are to be found everywhere, we can allow ourselves to speak of all such substance as vivified, ensouled beings. Thus we can say that winter-limestone is a being content within itself.

If we enter into the being of winter-limestone with Intuition—the Intuition described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—we find it permeated throughout with the most diverse spirituality, made up of the elemental beings who dwell in the Earth. But the limestone is as it were contented, as a human head may be when it has solved an important problem and feels happy to have the thoughts which point to the solution. We perceive—for Intuition always embraces feeling—an inner contentment in the whole neighbourhood of the limestone formations during the winter season.

If we were to swim under water, we should perceive water everywhere; and similarly, if we move spiritually through the process of limestone formation, we perceive this winter contentment on all sides. It expresses itself as an inner permeation of the winter-limestone by mobile, ever-changing forms—living, spiritual forms which appear as Imaginations.

When spring approaches, however, and especially when March comes, the limestone becomes—we may say—dull in respect of its spiritual qualities. It loses them, for, as you know from previous accounts, the elemental beings now take their way, through a kind of cosmic-spiritual breathing-out into the cosmos. The limestone's spiritual thinking qualities are dulled, but the remarkable thing is that it becomes full of eager desire. It develops a kind of inner vitality. A subtle life-energy arises increasingly in the limestone, becoming steadily more active as spring draws on, and even more so towards summer, as the plants shoot up.

These things are naturally not apparent in a crude outward form, but in a subtle, intimate way they do occur. The growing plants draw water and carbonic acid from the limestone in the soil. But this very loss signifies for the limestone an inner access of living activity, and it acquires on this account an extraordinary power of attraction for the Ahrimanic beings. Whenever spring approaches, their hopes revive. Apart from this, they have nothing particular to hope for from the realm of outer nature, because they are really able to pursue their activities only within human beings. But when spring draws near, the impression which the spring-limestone makes on them gives them the idea that after all they will be able to spread their dragon-nature through nature at large. Finding the spring-limestone full of life, they hope to be able to draw in also the astral element from the cosmos in order to ensoul the limestone—to permeate it with soul. So, when March is near, a truly clairvoyant observer of nature can witness a remarkable drama. He sees how everywhere the hopes of the Ahrimanic beings play over the Earth like an astral wind, and how the Ahrimanic beings strive with all their might to call down an astral rain, as it were. If they were to succeed, then in the summer this astral rain would transform the Earth into an ensouled being—or at least partly, as far as the limestone extends. And then, in autumn, the Earth would feel pain at every footfall on its surface.

This endeavour, this illusion, lays hold of the Ahrimanic beings every spring, and every spring it is brought to nothing. From a human standpoint one might say—surely by now the Ahrimanic beings must have become clever enough to give up these hopes. But the world is not just as human beings imagine it to be. The fact is that every spring the Ahrimanic beings have new hope of being able to transform the Earth into an ensouled, living being through an astral rain from above, and every year their illusions are shattered.

But man is not free from danger in the midst of these illusions. He consumes the nature-products which flourish in this atmosphere of hopes and illusions; and it is naïve to suppose that the bread he eats is merely corn, ground and baked. In outer nature these hopes are shattered, but the Ahrimanic beings long all the more to achieve their aim in man, who has a soul already. Thus every spring man is in danger of falling a victim—in subtle, intimate ways—to the Ahrimanic beings. In spring he is much more exposed to all the Ahrimanic workings in the cosmos than he is during other times of the year.

But now, if we direct our gaze upwards, to where the elemental beings of the Earth ascend, where they unite themselves with the cloud-formations and acquire an inner activity which is subject to planetary life, something else can be seen. As March approaches, and down below the Ahrimanic beings are at work, the elemental beings—who are wholly spiritual, immaterial, although they live within the material Earth—are transported up into the region of vapour, air and warmth. And all that goes on up there, among the active elemental beings, is permeated by Luciferic beings. Just as the Ahrimanic beings nourish their hopes and experience their illusions down below, so the Luciferic beings experience their hopes and illusions up above.

If we look more closely at the Ahrimanic beings, we find they are of etheric nature. And it is impossible for these beings, who are really those cast down by Michael, to expand in any other way than by trying to gain domination over the Earth through the life and desire that fill the limestone in spring.

The Luciferic beings up above stream through and permeate all the activities that have risen up from the Earth. They are of a purely astral nature. Through everything that begins to strive upwards in spring, they gain the hope of being able to permeate their astral nature with the etheric, and to call forth from the Earth an etheric sheath in which they could then take up their habitation.

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Hence we can say: The Ahrimanic beings try to ensoul the Earth with astrality (reddish); the Luciferic beings try to take up the etheric into their own being (blue with yellow).

When now in spring the plants begin to sprout, they assimilate and draw in carbonic acid. Hence the carbonic acid is active in a higher region than it is in winter; it rises into the realm of the plants, and there it comes under the attraction of the Luciferic beings. While the Ahrimanic beings strive to ensoul the living limestone with a kind of astral rain, the Luciferic beings try to raise up a sort of carbonic acid mist or vapour from the Earth (blue, yellow). If they were to succeed, human beings on Earth would no longer be able to breathe. The Luciferic beings would draw up all that part of man, his etheric nature, which is not dependent on physical breathing, and by uniting themselves with it they would be able to become etheric beings, whereas they are now only astral beings. And then, with the extinction of all human and animal life on Earth, up above there would be a sheath of etheric angel-beings. That is what the Luciferic spirits strive and hope for, when the end of March comes on. They hope to change the whole Earth into a delicate shell of this kind, wherein they, densified through the etheric nature of man, could carry on their own existence.

If the Ahrimanic beings could realise their hopes, the whole of humanity would gradually be dissolved into the Earth: the Earth would absorb them. Finally there would arise out of the Earth—and that is Ahriman's intention—a single great entity into which all human beings would be merged: they would be united with it. But the transition to this union with the Earth would consist in this: man in his whole organism would become more and more like the living limestone. He would blend the living limestone with his organism and become more and more calcified. In this way he would transmute his bodily form into one that looked quite different—a sclerotic form with something like bat's wings and a head like this. This form would then be able to merge gradually into the earthly element, so that the whole Earth, according to the Ahrimanic idea, would become a living Earth-being.

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If the Luciferic beings, on the other hand, could absorb the etheric nature of man, and thus condense themselves from an astral to an etheric condition, then out of them would arise something like an etheric form, in which the lower parts of the human organism would be more or less absent, with the upper part transformed. The body would be formed of Earth-vapour (blue), developed only as far down as the breast, with an idealised human head (red). And the peculiar thing is that this being would have wings, born as it were out of clouds (yellow). In front, these wings would concentrate into a sort of enlarged larynx; at the sides they would concentrate into ears, organs of hearing, which again would be connected with the larynx.

You see, I tried to represent the sclerotic form through the figure of Ahriman in the painting in the dome of the Goetheanum and plastically in the wood-carving of the Group. Similarly, the Luciferic shape, created out of Earth-vapour and cloud-masses, as it would be if it could take up the etheric from the Earth, is represented there.¹

Thus the two extremes of man are written into the life of the Earth itself: first, the extreme that man would come to if under the influence of Ahriman he were to take up the living limestone and thereby become gradually one with the Earth, dissolved into the whole living, sentient Earth. That is one extreme. The other extreme is what man would come to if the Luciferic beings were to succeed in causing a vapour of carbonic acid to rise from below, so that breathing would be extinguished and physical humanity would disappear, while the etheric bodies of men would be united with the astrality of the Luciferic angel-being up above.

Again we can say: These are the hopes, the illusions, of the Luciferic beings. Anyone who looks out as a seer into the great spaces of the cosmos does not see in the moving clouds, as in Shakespeare's play, a shape which looks first like a camel and then like something else. When March comes, he sees in the clouds the dynamic striving forces of the Luciferic beings, who would like to create out of the Earth a Luciferic sheath. Man sways between these two extremes. The desire of both the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings is to blot out humanity as it exists to-day.

These various activities are manifested within the life of the Earth. The hopes of the Luciferic beings are shattered once more every spring, but they work on in man. And in spring-time, while on one hand he is exposed to the Ahrimanic forces, he is also exposed more and more—and right on through the summer—to the Luciferic beings.

These forces, certainly, work in so subtle a way that they are noticed to-day only by someone who is spiritually sensitive and can really live with the course of events in the cosmos round the year. But in earlier times, even in the later Atlantean period, all this had great significance.

In those earlier times, for example, human reproduction was bound up with the seasons. Conception could occur only in the spring, when the forces were active in the way I have described, and births could therefore take place only towards the end of the year. The life of the Earth was thus wholesomely bound up with human life.²

Now a principle of the Luciferic beings is to set free everything on Earth, and among the things that have been freed are conception and birth. The fact that a human being can be born at any time of the year was brought about in earlier times by this Luciferic influence, which tends always to loosen man from the Earth, and it has become an established part of human freedom. Next time I will speak of influences that are still active, but to-day I wished to show you how in earlier times the aims of the Luciferic beings were actually achieved, up to a certain point. Otherwise, human beings could have been born only in winter.

As against this, the Ahrimanic beings try with all their might to draw man back into connection with the Earth. And since the Luciferic beings had this great influence in the past, the Ahrimanic beings have a prospect of at least partly achieving their purpose of binding man to the Earth by merging his mind and disposition with the earthly and turning him into a complete materialist. They would like to make his capacity to think and feel depend entirely on the food he digests. This Ahrimanic influence bears particularly on our own epoch and it will go on getting stronger and stronger.

If, therefore, we look back in time, we come to something accomplished by the Luciferic beings and bequeathed to us. If we look forward towards the end of the Earth, we see man faced with the threatening prospect that the Ahrimanic beings, since they cannot actually dissolve humanity into the Earth, will contrive at least to harden him, so that he becomes a crude materialist, thinking and feeling only what material substance thinks and feels in him.

The Luciferic beings accomplished their work in freeing man from nature, in the way I have described, at a time when man himself had as yet no freedom. Freedom has not arisen through human resolve or in an abstract way, as the usual account suggests, but because natural processes, such as the timing of births, have come under human control. When in earlier times it became obvious that children could be born at any season, this brought a feeling of freedom into the soul and spirit of man. Those are the facts. They depend far more on the cosmos than is commonly imagined.

But now that man has advanced in freedom, he should use his freedom to banish the threatening danger that Ahriman will fetter him to the Earth. For in the perspective of the future this threat stands before him. And here we see how into Earth-evolution there came an objective fact: the Mystery of Golgotha.

Although the Mystery of Golgotha had indeed to enter as a once-for-all event into the history of the Earth, it is in a sense renewed for human beings every year. We can learn to feel how the Luciferic force up above would like to suffocate physical humanity in carbonic vapour, while down below, the Ahrimanic forces would like to vivify the limestone masses of the Earth with an astral rain, so that man himself would be calcified and reduced to limestone. But then, for a person who can see into these things, there arises between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces the figure of Christ; the Christ who, freeing Himself from the weight of matter, has Ahriman under his feet; who wrested Himself free from the Ahrimanic and takes no heed of it, having overcome it, as we have shown here in painting and sculpture. And here is shown also how the Christ overcomes the force that seeks to draw the upper part of man away from the Earth. The head of the Christ-figure, the conqueror of Ahriman, appears with a countenance, a look and a bearing such that the dissolvent forces of Lucifer cannot touch them. The Luciferic power drawn into the earthly and held there—such is the form of the Christ as He appears every year in Spring. That is how we must picture Him: standing on the earthly, which Ahriman seeks to make his own; victorious over death; ascending from the grave as the Risen One to the transfiguration which comes from carrying over the Luciferic into the earthly beauty of the countenance of Christ.

So there appears before our eyes, between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forms, the Risen Christ in his Resurrection form as the Easter picture; the Risen Christ, with Luciferic powers hovering above and the Ahrimanic powers under His feet.

This cosmic Imagination comes before us as the Easter Imagination, just as we had the Virgin and Child as the Christmas Imagination in deep winter, and the Michael Imagination for the end of September. You will see how right it was to portray the Christ in the form you see here—a form born out of cosmic happenings in the course of the year. There is nothing arbitrary about this. Every look, every trait in the countenance, every flowing fold in the garment should be thought of as placing the Christ-figure between the forms of Lucifer and Ahriman as the One who works in human evolution so that man may be wrested from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers at the very time, the time of Easter and Spring, when he could most readily fall victim to them.

Here precisely in the figure of Christ we see again how nothing can be rightly done out of the arbitrary fancies which are favoured in artistic circles to-day. If a man wishes to develop full freedom in the realm of art, he does not bind himself in a slavish, Ahrimanic way to materials and models; he rises freely into spiritual heights and there he freely creates, for it is in spiritual heights that freedom can prevail. Then he will create out of a bluish-violet vapour a kind of breast-form for the Luciferic element, and a form consisting of wings, larynx and ear as though emerging from reddish clouds, so that this form can appear in full reality as an image both of what these beings are in their astral nature and of the etheric guise they threaten to assume.

Place vividly before you these wings of Lucifer, working in the astral and striving towards the etheric. You will find that because these wings are actually feeling about in the cosmic spaces, they are sensitive to all the secrets of force in the cosmos. Through their undulating movement, these wings, with their wave-like formation, are in touch with the mysterious, spiritual wave-activities of the cosmos. And the experience brought by these waves passes through the ear-formation into the inwardness of the Luciferic being and is carried further there. The Luciferic-being grasps through his ear-formation what he has sensed with his wings, and through the larynx—closely connected with the ear—this knowledge becomes the creative word that works and weaves in the forms of living beings.

If you picture a Luciferic being of this kind, with his reddish-yellow formation of wings, ears and larynx, you will see in him the activity which is sensitive to the secrets of the cosmos through his wings, experiences these secrets through the inward continuation of his ear-formation, and utters them as creative word through the larynx, bound up with wings and ears in one organic whole.

So was Lucifer painted in the cupola, and so is he represented in the sculpture-group which was intended to be the central point of our Goetheanum. Thus, in a certain sense, the Easter mystery was to have stood at this central point. But a completion in some form will be necessary, if one is to grasp the whole idea. For all that can be seen as the threatening Luciferic influence and the threatening Ahrimanic influence belongs to the inner being of the Nature-forces and the direction they strive to take in spring and on into summer; and standing over against them is the healing principle that rays out from the Christ. But a living feeling for all this will be attained when the whole architectural scheme is completed and what I have described exists in architectural and sculptured form, and when in the future it will be possible to present in front of the sculpture a living drama with two leading characters—man and Raphael

Within this architecture, and in the presence of the sculpture, there would have to be enacted a kind of Mystery Play, with man and Raphael as chief characters—Raphael with the staff of Mercury and all that belongs to it. In living artistic work everything is a challenge, and fundamentally there is no sculpture and no architecture which—if it is to be inwardly in accord with cosmic truth—does not call for a presentation in the space surrounding it of the artistic action it embodies. At Easter this architecture and sculpture would call for a Mystery Play, showing man taught by Raphael to see how far the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces make him ill, and how through the power of Raphael he can be led to perceive and recognise the healing principle, the great world-therapy, which lives in the Christ-principle. If all this could be done—and the Goetheanum was designed for all of it—then at Easter there would be, amid much else, a certain crowning of all that can flow into mankind from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic secrets.

You see, if we learn to recognise the springtime activity of the Ahrimanic influence in the living limestone, through which a greedy endeavour is being made to take up the cosmic astral element, then we learn also to recognise the healing forces that reside in everything of a salt-like nature. The difference is not apparent in the coarser kind of activities, but it comes out in the healing ones. Thus we learn to know these healing influences by studying the working of the Ahrimanic beings in the salt-deposits of the Earth. For whatever is permeated by Ahrimanic influences during one season of the year—we will go more closely into this next time—is transformed into healing powers at another season. If we know what is going on secretly in the products and beings of nature, we learn to recognise their therapeutic power. It is the same with the Luciferic element: we learn to recognise the healing forces active in volatile substances that rise up from the Earth, and especially those present in carbonic acid. For just as I explained that in all water there is a mercurial, quicksilver element, so in carbonic acid there is always a sulphurous, phosphoric element.

There is no carbonic acid which consists simply—as the chemists say—of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms: no such thing exists. In the carbonic acid we breathe out there is always a phosphoric, sulphurous element. This carbonic acid, CO₂, one atom of carbon and two of oxygen, is merely an abstraction, an intellectual concept formed in the human mind. In reality there is no carbonic acid which does not contain a phosphoric, sulphurous element in an extraordinarily diluted state, and the Luciferic beings strive towards it in the rising vapour.

Again, in this peculiar balance between the sulphur-element that becomes astral and the limestone that becomes living, the forces we can recognise as healing influences are expressed.

And so, among much else that is connected with the Easter Mystery, we should have the Easter Mystery Play enacted in front of the painting and the sculpture, and through it the communications about ways of healing which are given in the course of the year to those willing to listen would reach a climax in a truly living, artistically religious form. They would indeed be crowned by being placed in the whole course of the cosmos and the seasons; and then the Easter festival would embrace something that could be expressed in the words: “The presence of the World-Healer is felt: the Saviour who willed to lift the great evil from the world. His presence is felt.” For in truth He was, as I have often said, the Great Physician in the evolution of mankind. This will be felt, and to Him will sacrifice be offered with all the wisdom about healing influences that man can possess. This would be included in the Easter Mystery, the Easter ritual; and by celebrating the Easter festival in this way we should be placing it quite naturally in the context of the seasonal course of the year.

To begin with, in describing the powerful Imaginations which come before man at Michaelmas and Christmas, I was able to show them to you only as pictures. But in the case of the Easter Imagination, where over against the activities of the Nature-spirits there arises the higher life of the spirit, as this can develop in the neighbourhood of the Christ, I could show how the Imagination can lead directly to a ritual in the earthly realm, a ritual embracing things which must be cherished and preserved on Earth—the health-giving healing forces, and a knowledge of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces which could destroy the human organism. For Ahriman hardens man, while Lucifer wishes to dissolve and evaporate him through his breathing. In all this the forces that make for illness reside.

All that can be learnt in this way under the influence of the great teacher Raphael—who is really Mercury in Christian terminology and in Christian usage should carry the staff of Mercury—can be worthily crowned only in so far as it is received into the mysteries and ritual of Easter. Much else can come into them; of this I will speak in later lectures.

• 1. The central motif (painted from a sketch by Rudolf Steiner) in the small dome of the first Goetheanum, and in Rudolf Steiner's woodcarving of the Representative of Humanity.
• 2. See the lecture entitled Christmas at a Time of Grievous Destiny, given in Basle, 21st December, 1916. Printed in The Festivals and their Meaning, Vol. I: Christmas. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)