The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today—since Dr. Trapesnikoff has ordered them—we will show you some pictures arranged from a different point of view than in our former lectures; more from the point of view of subject-matter. The pictures today will relate especially to the birth of Christ Jesus, the Adoration by the Shepherds and by the Three Wise Men, and finally the Flight into Egypt. Comprising an evolution through several centuries, they will bring before our souls, from another aspect, that which is living in the Old Christmas Plays of which we have been speaking in the last lectures. We shall thus be concerned today, not in the first place with the artistic elements, as such, but with the treatment of a certain theme in the history of Art, and I will therefore speak not so much of the evolution of artistic principles, but draw your attention to some other points of view which may be of interest in relation to these pictures. You will, however, bear in mind the general lines of development of Christian Art, which we have described in the past lectures of this series. You will observe the same great trend of evolution, as we pass from the artistic representations of the early Christian centuries into the times of the Renaissance. First you will see the more typical representations of an early time. These, as we have seen, were still under the influence of Revelations from the Spiritual World. Less concerned with naturalistic expressions of form and color, they try to reproduce the spiritual Imaginations, revealed out of the Spiritual World. Thenceforward you will see this Christian Art evolve towards Naturalism, that is, towards a certain reproduction of that which may be called reality from the point of view of the physical plane. As we follow the evolution of this Art, the sacred personalities stand before us in a more and more human form.

We shall first show some pictures relating more especially to the Birth of Christ. Then we shall show the Adoration of the Child by the Shepherds; indeed, these two, to some extent, will go together. The next series of pictures will deal mainly with the story of the Three Wise Men of the East—the Magi. Here I beg you to observe how the two streams evolve: the stream of St. Luke's Gospel, as we may call it, and that of the Gospel of St. Matthew. They are the streams which take their start from the two Jesus Children. Artistically, too, we can recognise the difference. The Adoration by the Shepherds—all that is more or less related to this theme—could best be understood (understood, that is to say, by the inner feelings) under the influence of what remained from those Northern Mysteries whose center, as I told you, was in Denmark. This stream is connected with all that related to the Birth of Jesus—springing forth, as it were, with Jesus, out of the earthly evolution, out of the spiritual beings that are bound up with the life of Nature.

In the Adoration by the Magi, on the other hand—the mission of the Three Wise Men from the East—we always find a direct expression of the “Gnostic” stream. Under the influence of the “Star”—which means, something that is made known out of the Cosmos—the Wise Men draw near to the Christ Who heralds His approach and develops in the Zarathustra Jesus. In all that is connected with the Adoration by the Three Wise Men, we have, therefore the Gnostic stream: the consciousness that the Christ-Event was a cosmic one; that a fertilisation of the Earth had taken place out of the Cosmos.

Our friends have been kind enough to put up here a drawing of the Three Wise Men. The picture is taken from an old Gospel Book. We see them looking up in adoration, that is, in quest of spiritual knowledge, by striving upward with all their inner being, and looking up to the Star wherein the Spirit Who shall liberate the Earth draws near.

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1. Three Wise Men.

It may truly be said that this stream, which finds expression in St. Matthew's Gospel, was less and less understood in the further course of centuries. True, it also came to life, as you know, in the Old Christmas Plays. But the appearance of the Three Wise Men of the East cannot really be understood with the same understanding, as the appearance of Jesus to the Shepherds according to St. Luke's Gospel. For the latter is a simple understanding of the heart, of inner feeling; while the understanding which we must bring to bear on all that is connected with the Wise Men from the East must needs be of a “Gnostic” character. All that is signified by the Wise Men “following the Star” will only come into the consciousness of humanity again when—not the Gnosis this time, it is true—but anthroposophical Spiritual Science gains acceptance.

Finally, we shall show some pictures of the Flight into Egypt. This, too, is connected with the “Gnostic” Revelation concerning Jesus Christ. We cannot speak of it at great length today; we may return to it another time.

To begin with, it is important here, again, to realise that there is a certain underlying composition in all that the Gospels contain. The composition is always important. We need only faithfully follow the Gospel narrative. The Flight into Egypt appears in direct connection with the Mission of the Three Wise Men. It happens, as it were, on the basis of what was first undertaken by the Three Wise Men. This bears witness to the fact that the Gospel is taking into account the connection with all that was related about Egypt in the Old Testament. Moses was learned in the Wisdom of the Egyptians. Now we are told in the Gospel that the Three Wise Men of the East came to the birthplace of Christ Jesus, led by the Star which is really the Star of Christ. But it goes on to relate that something now had to take place which did not entirely accord, as it were, with the course of the Star; something which was not in the consciousness of the Wise Men themselves—for so the Gospel explicitly tells us. Here we are shown one of those cases where the astrological determination, as it were, of certain great events has to be broken through. How precisely the astrological determination corresponds to what is known of the historic facts—you could see this from the instance which we spoke of recently. Our friends drew up the Horoscope for that point in the course of Time which was indicated as the day of Christ Jesus's Death.

But we see that the Jesus Child, in whom the Zarathustra Soul was living, had to be taken out of the domain of this Star. He was taken into Egypt, and from Egypt He was then led back again into the realm of the Star. In this is contained the whole Mystery of the ebbing away of that ancient stream of evolution which had grown atavistic in the Egyptian Gnosis. The new Revelation had to enter once more into a certain union with the Old in order that it might free itself consciously.

These are the underlying Mysteries, and though they are little recognised, none the less they lie inherent in the composition. I may take this opportunity to point out once more, how important it is to pay attention to the composition when we read the Gospels. For the text is frequently corrupt and can only be read in its true form by those who are able to read with the help, if I may say so, of the Occult Text. Notably in the translations, naturally enough, the text is often quite unintelligible. But in the composition (compare my Lecture Cycle held in Cassel on the Gospel of St. John)—in the composition there is something which will strike any reader immediately, if he reads the Gospel carefully.

One more remark I would like to make, before we go on to show the pictures. The materialistic consciousness of our age has altogether lost the point of view which would indicate such inner connections as underlie the revelation to the Three Wise Men. Whatever goes by the name of Astrology today has fallen into the hands of utter dilettanti, who carry on all kinds of nonsense and abuses with it. Few people nowadays are in true earnest when they speak of that relation of the Earth to the Cosmos which finds expression in actual physical relationships—in the constellations of the Stars. On the other hand, for the official Science of today Astrology of whatever kind is a mere antiquated superstition.

Nevertheless, the knowledge of these things did not decay or die out absolutely until the 18th century. Even as late as the 18th century people still spoke of something which is of extreme importance if we wish to understand the deep, deep truths that underlie the appearance of the Three Wise Men. In the 18th century, those who had still preserved some knowledge of the old Initiations spoke of the significance of the physical constellations. But not only so: they also spoke of the significance of invisible constellations. Even in the 18th century it was expressly stated in certain circles who possessed Initiation Knowledge. “There are also Stars which only the Initiate can see.” This is a true statement, and this, above all, must be taken into account if we wish to understand why it was that “Imaginations” appeared to the Shepherds, while “Stars” appeared to the Three Wise Men. Such is the indication: The Revelation came to the Shepherds inasmuch as they still had dreamlike clairvoyance in the old atavistic sense. But the Wise Men of the East had their knowledge through the ancient Science that had been handed down. Through this they knew of the relation between the Cosmos, the Heavens and the Earth. Through this they knew—could calculate, as it were—what was drawing near.

Hence we can see in the evolution of these pictures—and you will now have opportunity to observe it for yourselves—we see, with all the transition to Naturalism, the pictorial representations growing less and less adequate to the theme of the Wise Men. For the Wise Men or Magi, the most ancient and typical representations are the most fitting. For the real truth that is intended in this story is lifted right out of the earthly domain. On the other hand, the representations of Jesus grow the more intimate and tender, the more naturalistic they become. For in this case the naturalistic quality is fitting. All that goes out to meet the approaching Christ from the physical plane—all that is connected, therefore, with the life of Nature—is naturally best portrayed by such means.

We will now go on to the pictures, first of the Nativity itself and of the Adoration by the Shepherds, and then of the Three Wise Men or Kings.

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2. The Nativity. (mosaic) (Palermo, Chiesa della Martorana.)

In these old compositions, as you see, everything is conceived in typical form—based on the typical representations of the ancient Myths which came over largely from the East. In a most natural way the typical representations of the Myth grew into the representations of the Christian theme. The Orpheus type, for instance, the type of the Good Shepherd, was handed down from earlier representations of Myth or Cult or Ritual, and taken to represent the new impulse, the Christ event; and so it was with many another theme and composition.

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3. A Page of the Biblia Pauperum. 1st Edition. (15th century) The Nativity, etc. (German Woodcuts.)

These early Bibles generally showed parallel representations from the Old and New Testaments. They bore in mind that the New Testament is the fulfilment of the Old; this idea is brought out again and again in these “Bibles of the Poor.” The Nativity, which interests us mainly now, is shown in the middle of the page.

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4. The Nativity, 11th Century. (Limburg Monestary.)

This is at Cologne. Beneath is the Flight into Egypt; the two are together in this slide. Apart from this one, we shall show the Flight into Egypt at the end of the lecture. Here you have a beautifully naive conception of the Nativity. You will feel the connection of it with what is given in the old Christmas Plays with which we are familiar. Though the latter belong, of course, to a later time, nevertheless they are from earlier Christmas Plays which are no longer extant.

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5. The Flight into Egypt. (Evangeliar of the 12th century. Cathedral of Cologne.)

It is interesting to see, all around the picture, representations of what was cosmically connected with the Event, showing how they were still aware of the spiritual relationships. And now we will take the same motif as it appears in the work of Niccola Pisano.

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6. Niccola Pisano. The Nativity. (Baptistery at Pisa.)

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7. Giotto. The Nativity. (San Francesco. Assisi.)

You see how the representations of the theme are gradually passing into Naturalism.

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8. della Robbia. The Nativity. (Hamburg. Altarpiece.) (National Museum. Florence.)

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9. Meister Francke. The Nativity. (Hamburg.)

This picture is at Hamburg; I remember having seen it there myself not long ago.

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10. Philippo Lippi. The Nativity. (Cathedral at Spoleto.)

You really see how in the course of time Naturalism takes hold of it more and more.

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11. Piero della Francesca. The Nativity. (National Gallery. London.)

Here we are in the fifteenth century once more; and we now go on to Correggio.

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12. Correggio. Holy Night. (Dresden.)

We pass again to the more Northern Masters, whose names you know. First we have a work of Schongauer' s.

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13. Martin Schongauer. The Nativity. (Alto Pinakothek. Munich.)

Most interesting to see the Italian and the Northern Masters one after the other. In the former you still find a stronger adherence to ideal types, while here there is more individualisation—creation out of inwardness of soul, as we have seen before. Down to the tiny feet, all is pervaded with feeling, albeit the artistic perfection is not so great as in the Southern Masters.

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14. Herlin. Nativity from the Altar of St. George. (Museum at Nordlingen.)

We come now to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, to Albrecht Dürer.

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15. Dürer. The Nativity. (Alto Pinakothek. Munich.)

See how the Art is taken hold of here by all that I described to you—the working out of the element of light. It is most interesting to study this in Dürer.

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16. Altdorfer. The Holy Night. (Berlin.)

Altdorfer was Dürer's successor in Nuremberg.

We shall now give a series of pictures relating mainly to the Adoration by the Shepherds. First, some older Miniatures from Bible and Gospel Manuscripts.

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17. Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds. (Codex Egberti. Trier. 10th century.)

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18. Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds, from Menologion of Basil II (Vatican. Rome. 11th Century.)

We go on to the Italian representations of the Adoration of the Child by the Shepherds.

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19. Cimabue. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Assisi.)

With Cimabue, as you know, we find ourselves in the 13th century. We go on into the 15th and come to Ghirlandajo, the Master of whom we lately spoke.

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20. Ghirlandajo. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Akademia. Florence.)

Another Master of the 15th century is Piero di Cosimo.

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21. Piero di Cosimo. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Berlin.)

And now we come to the Art of the Netherlands, with which we are familiar.

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22. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration of the Child. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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23. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration of the Child. (detail.)

Finally we give two works by Rembrandt.

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24. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Shepherds. (In the Lantern Light. Etching, about 1652.)

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25. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

We now go on to the pictures representing the Adoration by the Three Wise Men. To begin with, an old Mosaic, of the 6th century.

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26. Mosaic. Chiesa della Martotana. Palermo. Three Wise Men.

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27. Mosaic. Sant Apollinare Nuovo. Ravenna.

In these older pictures the events are shown thoroughly in connection with the Spiritual World—remote from all Naturalism, lifted into a higher sphere.

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28. Nativity and Adoration by the Wise Men. (Menologium Basilius. Vatican. 11th century)

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29. Niccola Pisano. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Baptistery at Pisa.)

This is the famous Golden Gate at Freiberg, second half of the 12th century:

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30. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Cathedral of Freiberg. The Golden Gate.)

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31. Domenico Veneziano. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Berlin.) Formerly attributed to Pisanello (Vittore Pisano).

We go on to the 15th, to Stephen Lochner:

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32. Stephen Lochner. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Cathedral of Cologne.)

The next is by Gentile da Fabriano, also of the 15th century.

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33. Gentile da Fabriano. Adoration of the Child. (Florence.)

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34. Fra Angelico. Adoration of the Kings. (St. Marco. Florence.)

Fra Angelico is as tender and lovely in this as in all other subjects.

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35. Filippo Lippi. Adoration by the Wise Men.

Whichever subject it is, you see how Naturalism progresses. This is especially interesting when one follows the treatment of one and the same subject through the centuries.

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36. Sandro Botticelli. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

Now we come to the second half of the 15th century.

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37. Ghirlandajo. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Spedale degli Innodenti. Florence.)

End of the 15th century:

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38. Mantegna. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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39. Giorgione. The Wise Men of the East. (Vienna.)

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40. Giorgione. Adoration by the Wise Men. (National Gallery. London.)

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41. Giovanni Bellini. Adoration by the Kings. (Layard Gallery. London.)

And now I ask you to call to mind once more the various Dutch and Flemish Masters of whom we have spoken in a former lecture. For we now have the same subject by

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42. Rogier van der Weyden. Adoration by the Kings. (Alte Pinakothek.Munich)

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43. Dieric Bouts. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Alte Piankothek. Munich.)

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44. Adoration by the Wise Men, 15th centry, from the Brevarium Grimani.

We have spoken of the characte of these painters. The next is by the artist who worked in Bruges and died about 1523.

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45. Gerard David. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

And now the same theme treated by Leonardo.

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46. Leonardo da Vinci. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Uffizi.Florence) And by his pupil,

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47. Luini Bernadino. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Saronno.)

Going North again:

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48. Dürer. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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49. Brueghel. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Vienna.)

And finally, Rembrandt.

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50. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Buckingham Palace.)

And now we come to our last theme: the Flight into Egypt. First we have a painter of the late 15th and early 16th century.

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51. Herrad von Lanndsberg. The Flight into Egypt.

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52. Joachim de Patinir. Rest in the Flight. (Prado. Madrid.)

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53. Correggio. Madonna della Scodella. (Parma)

The next, a little later.

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54. Bernhard Strigel. The Flight into Egypt. (Stuttgart.)

Strigel painted also in Vienna, and died in 1528.

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55. Albrecht Dürer. Resting on the Flight into Egypt.

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56. Workshop of Albrecht Dürer. Resting on the Flight into Egypt.

Next is Hans Baldung or Hans Grun, going on into the 16th century.

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57. Hans Balding (Baldung). Rest in the Flight. (Germanisches Museum. Nuremberg.)

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58. Lucas Cranach. Rest in the Flight. (Berlin.)

Finally, Rembrandt:

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59. Rembrandt. Rest in the Flight. (Etching.)

So much for today. Perhaps you will now take the opportunity to see at close quarters this impressive picture of the Wise Men which indicates so clearly the worship of the Star with the incoming of the Christ Jesus Soul.

Extract from a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner at 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 taken by karma 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 ...

What has been said in the lectures here since the Christmas Foundation Meeting 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 ...

In the fullest meaning of the words, a sense of responsibility in regard to communications from the spiritual worlds begins the moment things are spoken of in the way we are speaking of them now. It is in any case very difficult to speak about these 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 things 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 ...

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 ...

The lectures printed in this volume are those Rudolf Steiner gave to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Berlin immediately after the outbreak of the First World War. The atmosphere perceptible in these lectures was markedly influenced by the momentous events of the time. On the other hand the language is often personal and intimate, for a powerful bond existed between Rudolf Steiner and this group of people. From 1900–1902 onwards, Berlin had been the place where he developed and presented spiritual science in lectures and written works, and it was the centre of his activities in Germany. The Berlin ‘Branch’ of the Anthroposophical Society was the only one Rudolf and Marie Steiner (von Sivers) led in person until the General Anthroposophical Society was established in its new form at Dornach in Switzerland over Christmas and New Year 1923–24.

The year 1914 saw the collapse of many hopes. Austria declared war on Serbia on 28 July, and further declarations of war followed at a rapid pace. Germany declared war on Russia on 30 July and on France on 30 August. Great Britain then declared war on Germany on 4 August, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia on 6 August, and Great Britain on Austria-Hungary on 13 August.

One year previously, in the autumn of 1913, Rudolf Steiner had laid the foundation stone for the first Goetheanum (referred to as ‘the building' in a number of these lectures) on a hilltop in Dornach, near Basle in Switzerland. At the time when war broke out, artists and young people from many European nations had been working together for many weeks to bring Rudolf Steiner's artistic and architectural concepts to realization on that site in Dornach. Something very real had developed among them, a true fellowship in the reality of the spirit, irrespective of nationality or creed. The outbreak of war came as a tremendous shock to them and to the millions who lived in Europe.

This is the background to the lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in Berlin during 1914 and 1915. Particularly in the first lectures one is very much aware of his heart going out to all the people caught up in the maelstrom of war, people now finding themselves on opposite sides, facing great challenges both at home and in the trenches. Today different challenges have to be faced, but the wider context and true spiritual background given by Rudolf Steiner, the great challenge to humankind from the spiritual world which he was able to show to be behind the events of the day—these are as relevant now as they were then.

Two-part report in: Das Goetheanum, vol. 1, no. 39 and 40

Rudolf Steiner

I. In Holland

From April 7th to 12th we held an “anthroposophical-scientific” course in The Hague. The following people were among those who organized the course (F.W. Zeylmans van Emmichoven, physician, H. Droogleever Fortuyn, P.J. de Haan, G. Schubert Knobel, litt. stud. Leiden, M.H. Ekker, techn. stud. Delft, M. van Deventer, med. cand. Utrecht, M.L. Stiebe, jur. cand. Leiden, F.C.J. Los, litt. stud. Amsterdam) a number of teachers from the Stuttgart Waldorf School, other representatives of the anthroposophical worldview from Stuttgart, Dr. E. Vreede from Dornach and myself.

This course had a specific task. It was to show students at the Dutch universities how the anthroposophical method of research is based on a fully-fledged scientific foundation, how it can have a fruitful effect on the most diverse fields of knowledge and life, and how the insights it can provide really meet the demands of those who are serious about contemporary civilization.

Of course, it is only possible for me to describe the impressions I have received from my personal point of view as a co-lecturer. And I ask the reader to accept the following as a sum of subjective perceptions.

The first lecture was held by Dr. W. Stein on “Goethe's significance in the development of humanity as a whole”, after a warm welcome by G. Schubert Knobel, for which we all had to be grateful. Dr. Stein has grown into an inner affinity with the anthroposophical way of thinking and research from an early age as a matter of course, through an inner disposition. He is a keen thinker and courageously presents anthroposophy as well as the self-revelation of his own personality. His comprehensive overview of the anthroposophical results already available today helps him to gather evidence, justifications and explanations from the most diverse corners for the topic he is discussing. And so there is something about his lecture that I believe should have a stimulating effect on many serious listeners. They should come to the conviction that anthroposophy is a conscientiously reasoned matter of knowledge and life.

Dr. Stein then sat with me before he gave his further lecture: “The Connection of Epistemology with Organic Science”. He felt the need to talk to me about many things before this lecture. I said to him: “As a young man, you naturally grew into anthroposophy; in the future you will face difficult personal tasks of knowledge precisely because you have mastered so much and work so flexibly in your thinking. But you can use it to give your audience the most beautiful thing in addition to your many other gifts: your whole, unique humanity.

Dr. Karl Heyer offered a completely different nuance with his lectures. He shows that he comes from the world of contemporary science. He has thoroughly absorbed the contemporary character of jurisprudence and history. Of course, this is not really any of the public's business. But this foundation runs through all of Heyer's statements like a thread. He shows: this is what science is like now; and because it is like this, it must lead to anthroposophical research. Dr. Stein speaks, Dr. Heyer lectures; but it is necessary that there is also lecturing within our ranks. Dr. Heyer can be convincing precisely because he lectures his way from the recognized into the anthroposophical, and thus brilliantly guides his listeners from the known into the unknown.

Ernst Uehli comes across quite differently from the two of them. He has given two lectures on completely different subjects. One was about the “Threefold Social Organism” and the other about the “Egyptian Sphinx as a phylogenetic development problem”. But even when he talks about such diverse subjects, a unifying impulse prevails in his heart. Uehli has an artistic view of the world. He also allows the artistic to prevail in him when he observes social life. But the artistic in him is transformed into a cognitive impulse by the seriousness of his soul mood and by a sense of reality that seems to come from his heart. That is why warmth of soul flows through his arguments, and a noble emotion pulses through his assertions in a certain even tone. Uehli has humor, but it is stronger in his inner being than in the revelation of speech. A humor that sometimes dries on the lips. All this ultimately gives a distinct personality, carried by enthusiasm for anthroposophy.

Dr. H. von Baravalle is an important mathematical mind. In his doctoral dissertation, published by Kommenden-Tag-Verlag, he has delivered a fundamental work on certain mathematical-physical concepts and on spatial forms. He is able to bring a thinking rooted in natural reality into mathematical-physical formulas. One is tempted to say: Usually the formula arises as something that embraces the natural process from the outside; Dr. Baravalle makes it something that lives in the process. This was particularly noticeable during his Hague discussions. The most stimulating discussions were related to these discussions. Dead formulas, borne by the accustomed scientific way of thinking, rubbed interestingly against the lively but still unfamiliar Baravalles.

Dr. E. Vreede is tireless in her efforts to introduce anthroposophy into the field of mathematical natural science. Her Hague lecture was on astronomy. The task is difficult. In everything Dr. Vreede does in this direction, she must first point out a necessary methodological reorientation. She succeeds in doing this with anyone who first wants to be made aware of the essentials. This is because she combines thorough anthroposophical insight with an excellent clarity about how anthroposophy is to be introduced into the individual sciences.

Dr. von Heydebrand had to speak in The Hague about education. She is a born educator. The educational mission lives in each of her sentences, as it lives in her actions at the Stuttgart Waldorf School. Its foundation is anthroposophical knowledge of the human being, its effective impulse is insight-based love for people and especially for children. You can also hear from her lectures that the children must love her. It seems to me that sensible listeners must have the thought with her: I would like to have my children educated and taught by this woman.

Personalities such as Dr. med. He spoke in The Hague about biological and chemical problems and also about “Free spiritual life through Anthroposophy”. In Kolisko, scientific phenomenalism has a champion who develops this side of Anthroposophical thinking objectively and from unbiased factual knowledge. In Kolisko's work, one never has the feeling that he brings anthroposophy into his world knowledge from the outset, but rather that he gains the anthroposophical view from the concrete problems in an appropriate but intimate way of thinking. In the process, he is intimately entwined with his problems as a personality, so that, in my opinion, he comes across as a thoroughly scientifically convincing personality. When I hear him speak, as he did this time about “free spiritual life”, I have the feeling that he speaks truthfully to the heart; and in this truth he lives out completely.

Dr. Herbert Hahn is in the process of comprehensively and internally penetrating the linguistic results of the recent past and present in order to perfect them into an anthroposophically oriented science. His fresh and vigorous approach to his tasks, and his loving devotion as a teacher and researcher, have led him to valuable results as a scientist and to fruitful effectiveness as a teacher. His lecture in The Hague on 'Consciousness Change in the Mirror of Linguistic History' was likely to have a surprising effect due to the research results gathered from all possible sides and due to the emphasis placed on the linguistic phenomena that emerge in the life of nations in order to understand the moral-inner life that expresses itself in the linguistic-external of the life of nations. One would hope that Hahn's approach would find many followers among people trained in philology, linguistics and history, for his life's work requires the collaboration of many.

For many years, Dr. Carl Unger has been the most enthusiastic and dedicated co-worker in the anthroposophical movement. In The Hague, he spoke as a technician and as a philosopher about “The Social Tasks of Technology and Technicians” and “On the Philosophical Foundations of Anthroposophy”. Dr. Unger saw early on that anthroposophy requires, above all, a rigorous epistemological foundation. With deep understanding, he took up what I myself was able to give many years ago in my writings “Epistemology”, “Truth and Science” and “Philosophy of Freedom”. He independently developed the suggestions further. His keen intellectual powers were directed towards understanding the nature of the human cognitive process in a clear and illuminating analysis and synthesizing this understanding into a true picture of cognition. Unger is not a dialectician but an observer of the empirical facts of knowledge. And that is why he has been able to provide particularly valuable work over the years in the sense that the process of knowledge of ordinary consciousness drives the impulses for anthroposophical research out of itself everywhere. Unger's thinking is trained on the technical problems, is thereby free of any subjective fuzziness, and therefore his scientific contribution to anthroposophy is the most meaningful conceivable. He has grown steadily over the years in his thinking, research and technical as well as anthroposophical work. In his two Hague lectures, he offered ripe fruits of this growth. In his first lecture, he showed how the technician in particular is challenged to develop social understanding in the present; in the second, he showed how philosophy, from its own historical development, must flow into anthroposophy in the present.

Dr. Friedrich Husemann spoke about the medical field. His topic was “New Paths to Rational Therapy.” The suggestions that can come from anthroposophy for the healing arts require, in order to be accepted by science, the closest connection to existing medical schools of thought. One could prove to them that they only understand themselves and take themselves to their logical conclusions if they look for anthroposophical supplementation. To work in this direction is not difficult under the present circumstances. It is also not as difficult in medicine as it is in education, for example. For the teachings that one receives from illness cannot be so easily had from the development of a more or less healthy person. Illness speaks a clear language. One needs only scant suggestions from the side of intuitive insight in order to conscientiously work through the clearly speaking symptom complexes to the point where pathology and therapy converge into a rational medical art. Exploitation of solid scientific education, prudence in the observation of patients will lead to the goal. So far, I only hear the problems from public lectures in this field. Here too, it must be emphasized that anthroposophy is not a theory, but a practice of life. A single case, properly characterized from beginning to end, would speak louder than any theoretical discussion. Theory is of no use in and of itself, except insofar as it allows us to believe in the coherence of phenomena. This can be learned from Goethe. I have described the individual voices that came together in a chorus in The Hague to form a whole. I myself had the task, in six evening lectures, of characterizing the significance of anthroposophy in contemporary spiritual life, its scientific character, its particular research methods, research results, and its relationship to art and to the scientific agnosticism of the present day. My aim is to present the anthroposophical results from ever new angles, so that one can see how they mutually support each other. However, anyone who fails to recognize that the moment the sciences flow into anthroposophy, one must come to this mutual support and bearing of truths, will not find the path to genuine knowledge. The heavy things on earth must lie on the ground so as not to fall; the world bodies support each other. The empirical sciences rest on sense perception; anthroposophical knowledge must be mutually supportive. To demand of it the same conditions as for the usual foundation of science is like demanding a support for the earth in space. It does not fall without support, and neither does anthroposophy, even if it is founded differently than the usual science.

I will not be asked to speak about the impressions that the audience has received. Others must judge about that. But I may say that we, the participants, must all feel a heartfelt thank you towards the organizers, whose devotion to the matter was evident from every action and every word they spoke.

After the course in The Hague ended, I went to England. I had lectures in London and at the Shakespeare festival in Stratford-upon-Avon. In Holland, my experience was working with colleagues and friends. In their work I lived with them. In England I was given tasks that had a different outward character. But these tasks came from the same source. How I understood them, how I tried to solve them, and how I was helped by understanding helpers, is what I will talk about in the next issue of this journal.

II. In England

My journey to England grew out of the course I gave at Christmas on educating and teaching on the basis of anthroposophical knowledge of the human being. This course was inspired by Prof. M. Mackenzie, who attended the last summer course at the Goetheanum with her husband, Prof. Mackenzie. In the summer, the workers at the Goetheanum got to know two personalities in Prof. and Mrs. Mackenzie, whose visit had to fill all of these workers with deep satisfaction from the point of view of the anthroposophical movement. Prof. Mackenzie is a personality who expresses a significant note in English philosophical life. His constructive philosophy is not only independent in outlook and content from other contemporary trends in this field, but, above all, it is so independent that it seizes with the certainty of an intuitive grasp of reality on a field that brings the true philosophical sense of the human being into activity. I would like to say: Mackenzie's constructive philosophy begins where it needs to begin if the metaphysical, psychological and epistemological fields, which are fluctuating all around, are to be given a firm foundation again. In doing so, his literary and philosophical work covers many fields of cultural history, social and educational issues. His books on humanism and on social life bear witness to this.

Prof. Mackenzie, who was herself also a university teacher (Prof. of Education, University College, Cardiff), presented me with her extremely interesting book, 'Hegels educational Theory and Practice', during her summer stay here in Dornach. This book reveals the comprehensive work of this spirited and practical woman in literary form. Hegel is easily misunderstood. In his books, he seems abstract. But the peculiar thing about him is that behind his abstractions stands a man who grasped reality with a firm hand. His thoughts are basically the life-awakening, only seemingly abstract expression of a passionate life practice. Mrs. Mackenzie has seen this as clearly as possible: “I believe that these two philosophers (Plato and Hegel) were constantly striving not only to see the truth, as other philosophers did, but also to fathom how it can be achieved and appropriated by a mind that is far removed from its essence; and both believed that this could be done through the dialectical method.” Thus she says in the preface to her book, and it is now her aim to show how this philosophical self-education thinks about the education of the child and the young person. With regard to Hegel, she comes to the view: “I dare to claim that Hegel, more than any other educator (more than Herbart, because his educational ideas are grounded in a deeper philosophy), offers us precisely those things that we need most today and also in our country.”

What can be seen in her relationship to Hegel, and what is fully confirmed when one gets to know Prof. Mackenzie better, is that she is a person of great intellectual depth, combining philosophical insight with a wide range of interests in educational and social issues of humanity.

It is thanks to this personality that the pedagogical Christmas course described by Albert Steffen in this weekly magazine has come about. Prof. Mackenzie invited teachers from England to this course. Among those who attended was Miss Cross, headmistress of Kings Langley Priory, a school and boarding school near London. Even then, the idea arose among the English visitors to bring the spirit into this school, from which I held my Christmas course.

Thanks to a few of the participants in that course, after some time I received an invitation from the “New Ideals in Education” committee to participate in the festivities they organized around Shakespeare's birthday (from April 17 to 24) by giving lectures. This invitation was followed by another from friends of the anthroposophical worldview (including Mrs. Drury-Lavin and Mr. Collison) to give a few lectures in London for those interested in anthroposophical endeavors.

So I was able to give two lectures in London on April 14 and 15. The first was on “Cognition and Initiation”. My aim was to show how knowledge of the supersensible world can be attained through the development of abilities that are not used in ordinary life and ordinary science. I called the supersensible vision that comes about in this way “exact clairvoyance” because it is my conviction that the processes of the soul life through which man comes to this vision are experienced with the same clarity of consciousness as the solution of a problem in exact science. If science is exact in its treatment of the objective world, then anthroposophy is exact in the development of supersensible cognitive abilities, through which the vision of the spiritual world then arises, through which man grasps the eternal nature of his being. Our time, which everywhere shows the strong need of thinking people to ascend from the sensual to the supersensible, can demand such “exact clairvoyance”, not a nebulous mysticism or an unscientific occultism.

I only want to give my subjective impressions in all modesty here. And that is how it should be meant when I say: the sight of my audience in London gave me deep satisfaction. For I felt I could sense that the need I mentioned was also present here.

On the following day, it was my turn to describe the mystery of the Christ-life on the basis of anthroposophical knowledge. Anthroposophy certainly does not want to found a sect or even a new religious community. It only wants to say what arises from “exact clairvoyance” about the mystery of Golgotha. This is what the modern human being demands. Through centuries of development in the field of external knowledge of nature, he has been brought into a state of soul that must progress from mere belief to the cognitive grasp of religious content. Religious belief is not touched by this, but rather deepened and strengthened. Again, in all modesty, I would like to say that after my second lecture in London, I had the impression that this need to consolidate religious mysteries is an international one. On such occasions, one can gain the conviction that in the search for the supersensible, the peoples of the civilized world can come together in harmony out of discord.

After these two lectures, I had to give another one in the narrower circle of personalities who have been in the anthroposophical movement for many years. On the same day, I was able to accept an invitation from Miss Cross to show us her school in Kings Langley. Again, the idea arose to adapt this school to the spirit in which I must think I have developed the art of education. Among those with whom I was able to discuss this matter was Prof. Mackenzie.

I may mention here that a group of people around Prof. Mackenzie and Miss Cross has set itself the goal of helping to make this idea a reality in England. This opens up the prospect that the educational basis, which was held in the spirit of the Dornach Goetheanum and on which the Waldorf School in Stuttgart is based, will be understood and cultivated in England.

On April 18, the Shakespeare festivities began in Stratford-upon-Avon. A long line of personalities expressed their reverence for the poetic creations, which are among the greatest of humanity, by offering what they have to say about art, poetry and education. One was presented with an impressive cross-section of contemporary English intellectual life. Powerful speeches on artistic contemporary interests, such as those offered by Lena Ashwell in a lecture on “Drama and National Life” and Cicely Hamilton in her remarks on “Tendencies of Modern Drama,” alternated with charmingly and ingeniously expressed longings for the permeation of education with the artistic spirit. John Masefield spoke about playwriting from the point of view of an artist who feels he is part of the lively world of art and artistic endeavor and who wants to say what art needs if it is to fulfill its task.

It is not my intention here to criticize certain aspects with which I cannot agree, especially in the area of the cultivation of art in schools. But more important at this moment in time is that one can only look with satisfaction at the basic tendency of the whole event. Shakespeare's figure was to some extent only in the background. From the glance up to him, the impulse went out to discuss the question of education from all sides. The education of children, of the people, of humanity in general; these were the questions that turned the interest of speakers and listeners alike. And so the most important thing for the present day was placed at the center of the intellectual work of these festivities. It was clear from the attitude of this assembly that it had a sense of these civilizational hardships. Miss Ashwell's words on the decline of the dramatic and theatrical arts and on the necessity of providing the forces for an ascent were essential. A personality full of fire, but also full of inner understanding for the matter, stood on the podium in Miss Ashwell. And in beautiful addition to this was what Miss Hamilton said about the decline and the necessity of raising artistic taste.

In this context, I was able to present my anthroposophical views on Shakespeare, on education and on the demands of spiritual life for the present day. The educational power of Shakespeare's art stands in the developmental history of humanity through the influence it had on Goethe. One must ask oneself: on what is this tremendous influence based? Asking myself this question, a fact of supersensible experience presents itself to me.

Those who are able to immerse themselves in a Shakespearean drama and then carry the experience over into the world that is spread out before 'exact clairvoyance' can find that Shakespeare's figures present themselves in the supersensible realm as more alive to the soul, while the newer naturalistic dramas either transform themselves completely into puppets or freeze during this process. The Shakespearean figures live on in the imagination. They do not perform the same actions as in the drama, but they act in transformed situations and with a different course of events. I believe that through this fact the deep rootedness of Shakespeare's characters in the spiritual world can be found; and that Goethe unconsciously experienced this rootedness in his devotion to Shakespeare's plays. He felt as if he himself had been seized by facts of the spiritual world when he turned to Shakespeare.

I had this experience in the background when I was able to speak in Stratford about Shakespeare, Goethe and education in three lectures. In particular, the conviction that arose from this lived in my heart when I had to speak about “Shakespeare and the New Ideals” on April 23, the actual Shakespeare Day.

The events of the committee for “New Ideals in Education” were accompanied by performances of Shakespearean plays in the Shakespeare Memorial Theater. We were able to see: “Othello”, “Julius Caesar”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “The Twelfth Night”, “All's Well That Ends Well”, “Much Ado About Nothing”. I found the performances of the comedies satisfying for my feelings. But I imagine the right way to present the tragedies differently.

On April 24, I was able to give a lecture in London to the English friends of the anthroposophical movement. It was intended to show how anthroposophy relates to the spiritual development of humanity in general and to the Christ impulse in particular. I tried to show how a figure such as Cardinal Newman, out of his perception of the religious needs of the time, sought a basis for knowledge of the supersensible, but how this can be found not on the paths he took, but only on the anthroposophical path.

Special thanks are due to George Kaufmann, who took on the difficult task of translating all my lectures for the audience after merely listening to them in sections.

On April 25, I left England, filled with the thought that there are people in England who see the cultivation and representation of the anthroposophical cause as part of their life's work and work energetically in this direction. I have to think of them when I feel gratitude in my soul when I find people who intervene helpfully for this cause. That I was able to find this help in this day and age as a German in London and Stratford, I may well express as a satisfying final thought of this subjective travelogue.

In my former series of lectures I have been speaking about occult schools and secret societies, and I think it right today to bring this whole course of lectures to a close before we pass on to a different subject next time. A week from now I shall speak about the meaning of the days connected in the Church Calendar with the Christmas Festival—most especially about Epiphany, which follows on the less important New Year Festival.¹ The lecture today, therefore, will be more in the nature of a conclusion.

The question might be asked: What is the deeper meaning of such secret societies, and what is their whole purpose in world evolution? To such a question, my answer would be that they have a real connection with the way in which beings in this world evolve and make progress. If you wish to develop yourself, you know that different kinds of exercises are necessary towards this end and that they are available. You have heard of Hatha Yoga, Rajah Yoga and other exercises of different kinds by means of which societies and brotherhoods connected with occult science have initiated their members.

Somebody might say: All this, surely, could be attained without these secret societies. But I can tell you—and in the course of the lecture you will realise it—that the world cannot do without such societies. To put it bluntly, it is quite unjustifiable to speak in public in the style of the Manifesto of the Freemasons which I read to you a fortnight ago.²

One cannot attain to what is usually known as immortality unless one is to some extent familiar with the occult sciences. The fruits of occult science do, of course, find their way out into the world along many different channels. A great deal of occult knowledge exists in the various religions, and all those who participate deeply and sincerely in the life of a religious community have some share in this knowledge and are preparing themselves for the attainment of immortality in the real sense. But it is still something different, to subsist on the knowledge of this immortality and the feeling of belonging in the spiritual world in concrete experience and with full awareness.

All of you have lived many times; but not all of you are conscious that you have lived through these many lives. However, you will gradually attain this consciousness, and without it, man's life is lived through with incomplete consciousness. It has never been the aim of occult science to inculcate into man a dim feeling of survival, but to impart a clear, fully conscious knowledge of onflowing life in the spiritual world. And there is a certain great law which governs the progressive development of consciousness in all future stages of life. Namely, it is what man works at to help others attain such consciousness which contributes the most to its development. It is an apparently paradoxical proposition: Everything a being works at without aiming at developing its own consciousness, helps to maintain that being's consciousness.

Take as an example the building of a house. An architect builds a house; he does not build this house for himself, but undertakes the task of building it for reasons which have nothing at all to do with him himself. You know well that this is very seldom the case. There are many people who, to all appearances, are not working for themselves; and yet, in reality, they are.

A lawyer, for example, is to all intents and purposes working for his clients. Part of his work may well be selfless, but the real question is one of earning his living. Whatever men do in business merely for the sake of their own livelihood, to the extent that their business only serves that end, just so much is lost in the way of spiritual gain. On the other hand, everything that is introduced into the work for an objective end, everything that is connected with the interests of another, helps to conserve our consciousness for future evolution. So that is quite clear.

Now, think of the Freemasons. In the original arrangement, they gave this injunction to their members: Build such buildings as make no contribution at all to, or have nothing to do with, your own subsistence. All that has survived of the good old Freemasonry, are certain charitable institutions. And although the lodges have lost their living roots in the ancient wisdom and occult knowledge once in their possession, these charitable institutions are evidence of a humanitarianism which, while it is empty [of real substance] still persists and is cultivated as a tradition. Selfless activity is something that belongs to Freemasonry. Freemasonry did originally urge its members to work in the service of humanity, to build into the objective world.

We are living now in the epoch of evolution that may be called the mineral epoch; and our task is to permeate this mineral world through and through with our own spirit. Grasp exactly what this means. You are building a house. You fetch the stones from some quarry. You hew them into the shapes needed for the house, and so on. What are you joining this raw material, obtained from the mineral kingdom, with? You are joining raw material with human spirit. When you make a machine, you have introduced your spirit into that machine. The actual machine does, of course, perish and become dust; it will be broken up. Not a trace of it will survive. But what it has done does not vanish without a trace, but passes into the very atoms. Every atom bears a trace of your spirit and will carry this trace with it. It is not a matter of indifference whether or not an atom has at some time been in a machine. The atom itself has undergone change as a result of having once been in a machine, and this change that you have wrought in the atom will never again be lost to it. Moreover, through your having changed the atom, through your having united your spirit with the mineral world, a permanent stamp has been made upon the general consciousness [of mankind]. Just so much will be taken from us into the other world.

It is a fact that all occult science consists of knowing how a man can act selflessly in order to attain the greatest enhancement of his own consciousness. Consider how certain men who have known this very clearly, have been so selfless that they took steps to prevent their names from going down to posterity. An example of this is the Theologia Deutsch.³ Nobody knows who wrote it. Outwardly, there is only ‘The man from Frankfurt’. He therefore took care that his name could not even be guessed. He worked in such a way that he merely added something to the objective world without asking for honour or for the preservation of his name. By way of comparison, let it be mentioned that the Masters, as a rule, are not personages known to history;⁴ they sometimes incarnate [embody] themselves, when it is necessary, in historical personalities, but this is in a certain respect a sacrifice. The level of their consciousness is no longer compatible with any work for themselves—and preservation of a name does after all involve work for oneself.

It is difficult to understand this rule. However, you will now grasp that the Freemasons aim in this, as far as possible, to do their work in the world in such a way that it is concealed in the cathedrals, in social institutions and organisations, in charitable foundations. For selfless deeds are the real foundations of immortality: this is the reflex of selfless deeds in the outer world. They need not be of great account. If someone gives a coin to someone in a selfless way, then that is an action that is to be understood in that way; but only to the extent that it was selfless does it come into immortality. And very few [deeds] are selfless. A good deed may be very egotistical when, for instance, it creates a feeling of comfort. Good deeds spring extremely often from selfish motives. If a poor man living among us has no roast meat at Christmas, and I feel the need to give him some in order that I may feel justified in [eating] my own roast meat, that, after all, is egoistic.

In the Middle Ages no one could say who had built many of the cathedrals or painted many of the pictures. It is only in our epoch that people have begun to attach such value to an individual human name. In earlier epochs, more spiritual than our own, the individual name had less importance. Spirituality in those days was directed at reality; whereas our epoch adheres to the delusion that what is merely transient should be preserved.

I have said this only in order to indicate to you the principle on which these secret societies depended. It mattered to them to efface themselves altogether as personalities, and to allow what they did to live only in its effects. And this brings us to the heart of the secrets. The fact that some particular thing is kept secret is of less importance than keeping one's own share in the work secret. Everyone who keeps his own part secret thereby secures immortality for himself. The rule is therefore clear and unambiguous: As much as you yourself put into the world, that much consciousness the world will give you back. That is connected with the greatest universal laws.

You all have a soul and you all have a spirit. This soul and spirit are called upon to reach one day the highest stages of perfection. But you were already there before your first physical incarnation. You were first physically incarnated in the preceding races after the time of the Hyperborean and Polarian epochs.⁵ Before that you were purely beings of soul. But as beings of soul you were a part of the world soul, and as spirit you were part of the general world spirit. The world soul and the world spirit were spread around you as Nature is spread around you today. Just as the mineral world, the plant world and the animal world are around you today, so were the worlds of soul and spirit spread around you then. And what was once outside you is now your soul; you have made inward what to begin with was outside. What today is your inward part was once spread about outside. This has now become your soul. The spirit, too, was once spread around you. And what is now spread around you will become your inner life. You will take into yourself what is now the mineral kingdom, and it will become your inner part. The plant kingdom will become your inner part. What surrounds you in Nature will become your inner being.

You will understand now how this is connected with the first example given: you build a church for others, not for yourself. You can take into [yourself] a world full of majesty, beauty and splendour if you make the world majestic, beautiful and splendid. To do something for the higher self is not selfish because it is not done only for the self. This higher self will be united with all other higher selves, so that it is [done] for all at the same time.

It is this that the Freemasons knew. The Freemason knew, when he helped [by] building with the spiritualisation of the mineral world, that this would one day become the content of his soul—and to build means nothing else than to spiritualise the mineral world. That is the significant thing: God once gave us the Nature that surrounds us, as mineral, plant and animal nature. We take these in [to ourselves]. It is not due to us that it is there; all we can do is to appropriate it for ourselves. But what we ourselves create in the world—that is what will, through ourselves, constitute our future being.

The mineral world, as such, we perceive; what we make out of it we will, in the future, be. What we make of the plant world, of the animal world and of the world of men, that too we will be, in the future. If you found a charitable institution or have contributed something to it, what you have contributed, you will be. If a man does nothing which he can draw back in this way into his soul from outside, he will remain empty. It must be possible for man to spiritualise as much as he can of the three kingdoms of nature—four, for mankind also belongs thereto. To bring spirit into the whole external world—that has been the task of the secret societies of every age.

You understand that that must be so. Take a child who is just learning to read and write. To begin with, all the equipment is around him. Today, the child begins to learn to read. Nothing is in him yet, but the teacher, the primers and so forth are there. So it continues until what was outside the child has been instilled into him. And the child acquires the capacity to read. And so it is with Nature, too. In times to come we shall have within us what is now spread around us. We are souls, we spring from the world soul, and we drew it in, when it was spread around us. The spirit was likewise drawn in, and Nature, too, will be drawn in by us, in order to stay within us as an active ability.

That is the great thought at the basis of these secret societies, that all progress is the result of involution and evolution. Involution is the drawing in, evolution is the giving out. All situations in the universe alternate between these two processes. When you see, hear, smell or taste Nature, you breathe it in. What you see does not pass away without leaving a trace on you. The eye itself perishes, the object perishes, but [the fact] that you have seen something remains. You will understand now that at certain times it can be necessary that an understanding of these things be available. We are going forward to an age when, as I recently indicated, understanding will reach right into the atom. It will be realised—by the popular mind too that the atom is nothing else than congealed electricity. Thought itself is composed of the same substance.

Before the end of our present cultural epoch one will in fact have come so far that people will be able to penetrate into the atom itself. When one is able to grasp the materiality between the thought and the atom, then one will soon be able to understand the penetration of the atom. And then nothing will be inaccessible to certain methods of working. A man standing here, let us say, will be able, by pressing a button concealed in his pocket, to [explode] some object at a great distance, let us say in Hamburg, just as wireless telegraphy is possible, by setting up a wave movement and causing it to take a particular form at some other place. This will be within man's power when the occult truth, that thought and atom consist of the same substance, is applied to practical life.

It is impossible to conceive what might happen in such circumstances if mankind has not by then reached selflessness. Only through the attainment of selflessness will it be possible to preserve mankind from the brink of destruction. The downfall of post-Atlantean culture will be caused by the lack of morality. The Lemurian race was destroyed by fire, the Atlantean by water; ours will be destroyed by the War of All against All, [by?] evil, through the struggle of men with one another. Humanity will destroy itself in mutual strife. And the despairing thing—more desperately tragic than other catastrophes—will be that the blame will lie with human beings themselves.

A tiny handful of men will save themselves and pass over into the sixth epoch. This tiny handful will have developed complete selflessness. The others will make use of every [imaginable] skill and subtlety in the penetration and conquest of the physical forces of Nature, but without attaining the essential degree of selflessness . They will start the War of All against All, and that will be the cause of the destruction of our civilisation.

In the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to be precise, this War of All against All will break out, in the most terrible way. Great and mighty forces will ensue from discoveries that will turn the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus. The tiny handful will be protected in a way that cannot be discussed.

Now you will be able to picture more clearly than was possible when I spoke of these things last time, why the Good [and Proper] Form must be sought and in what sense Freemasonry became aware that it must build a building [dedicated to] selfless [ends]. It is easier to survive and pass over into the future, to the tiny handful of new humanity, with the good old forms, than in chaos.

It is easy to jeer at empty forms, but they have however a deep significance. They are adapted to the structure of our [period of] evolution. After all, they are connected with necessary stages in human nature and the development of the human soul. Just think of it: we are living in the fifth period of the fifth great post-Atlantean epoch;⁶ we have still to live through two more periods of this great epoch. Then the seven periods of the sixth great epoch will follow and then the seven periods of the seventh great epoch. This makes sixteen stages of evolution in the future. Humanity has still to pass through these sixteen stages. A man who can experience something of the conditions [of existence] that are possible there, is to a certain degree initiated. There is a certain correspondence between the degrees of initiation and the secrets of the epochs still to come.

In the ‘form-state’ of our planet there are seven great epochs and each of these epochs has seven sub-periods (cultural epochs)—forty-nine conditions, therefore, in all. In the next ‘form-state’ of our planet there are again forty-nine conditions. Thus there are definite stages for the investigation of the secrets of future phases of evolution. The higher degrees of Freemasonry had no other aim or purpose, originally, than to be an expression of each one of the future stages of the evolution of humanity. Thus in Freemasonry we actually have something which has been very good, namely, that a man who had attained a certain degree knew how he must work his way into the future, so that he could be a kind of pioneer. He knew, too, that one who had reached a higher degree could accomplish more. This arrangement according to degrees can very well be made, for it corresponds with the facts.

If, therefore, it were again possible to pour a new content, together with a new knowledge, into these forms, much good would accrue. Freemasonry would then be imbued with real spirit once again. But content and form belong to the Whole. The state of affairs today is, as I have said: the degrees are there, but nobody has really worked through them. In spite of this, however, they are not there for nothing. They will be brought to life again in the future.

The fifth cultural epoch is a purely intellectual one, an epoch of egoism. We are now at the high point of egoism. The intellect is egoistical in the highest degree, and it is the hallmark of our time. And so we must make our way upwards through intellect to spirituality, which was once there ...[Gap]

The secret of secrets is this, therefore: the human being must learn how to keep silence about the paths along which his ego unfolds, and to regard his deeds, not his ego, as the criterion. The real heart of the secret lies in his deeds and the overcoming of the ego through action. The ego must remain concealed within the deed. Elimination of the interests of the ego from the on-streaming flow of karma—this belongs to the first degree. Whatever karma the ego incurs is thereby wiped out from karma. Nation, race, sex, position, religion—all these work upon human egoism. Only when mankind has overcome all these things will it be freed from egoism.

You can identify, in the astral body, a particular colour for every nation, every race, every epoch. You will always find a base-colour there, that the person has as a member of one of these classifications or categories. This [specific colour] must be eliminated. The Theosophical Society works to level out the colours of the astral bodies of its adherents. They must be of like colour, like in respect of the base-colour. This base colour gives rise to a certain substance ... [Gap] ... [called kundalini, which holds together, within the human being, the forces which lead eventually to the spirit.]⁷

Bringing this levelling-out about will actually entail bloody war, and through such things as economic strife among nations, wars of exploitation, financial and industrial enterprises, conquests, etc., and through the adoption of certain measures, it will be more and more possible to set masses of people in motion and simply to compel them. The individual will acquire more and more power over certain masses of people. For the drift of this development is not that we will become democratic, but that we will become brutally oligarchic, in that the individual will gain more and more power. If the ennobling of morals is not achieved, then the most brutal forces will lead. This will happen, just as catastrophe by water happened to the Atlanteans.

• 1 . The German text, as handed down, reads: an Weihnachten, vor allen Dingen an das minder bedeutende Fest Neujahr anschliessen, das Fest der Epiphanie,’ which could be rendered as follows: ‘... about Christmas, most especially about the less important New Year's Festival the Festival of Epiphany.’ One must assume that the shorthand copy of Seiler intended the following: ‘... das minder bedeutende Fest Neujahr anschliessende Fest der Epiphanie's, which would give the rendering as in the text of the lecture above. The said lecture was held on 30th December 1904 and its subject was the “Three Kings” Festival.’
• 2 . In the lecture given on 9th December 1904 (lecture 8 in this volume). Regarding the style of speaking appropriate to lecturing in public, see The Course of My Life,Chapter 32.
• 3 . Written about 1380. First published by Luther (fragmentary edition) Wittenberg, 1516. Complete edition 1518. First German translation by Johannes Arndt, 1597. Translation into modern German by Franz Pfeiffer, Giitersloh, 1875.
• 4 . See note 21 to the lecture given on 23rd May 1904. (Lecture 1 in this volume).
• 5 . The word nach (‘after’) is missing from the German edition, but to leave it out would be to negate the sense given in lecture I of this series: ‘Whitsuntide,’ given on the 23rd o May 1904, which reads: ‘It is a wrong conception when theosophists believe that reincarnations had no beginning and will have no ending. Reincarnation started in the Lemurian Age and will cease again at the beginning of the sixth Root Race or Age.‘ (See diagram opposite). The German would then read: ‘In physischer Inkarnation waren Sie in den vorhergehenden Rassen erst zur Zeit nach der hyperboraischen und polarischen Rasse vorhanden.’
• 6 . See diagram at the bottom of the page.
• 7 . called Kundalini, which holds together, within the human being, the forces which lead eventually to the spirit.] The latter part of this sentence (within square brackets) was a correction made for the earlier edition of this lecture, published on 23rd November 1947, in the members' newsletter of the German Anthroposophical Society, No. 47.

My dear friends! So, we have prepared ourselves initially with regard to the development of the attitude and disposition for the office of carer for souls. Before we now proceed on the basis of what has been created, we must become quite clear about a number of things, because the whole conception, which you entered into by placing your ego in a direct relationship with the spiritual world yesterday, so to speak, is one that already necessitates a spiritual-scientific foundation in a certain sense.

The point is that, as I said in my first discussions, the concept of the “priest” - we will find the name later - points to something other than what is given in today's Protestant conception. In this, the priest is more of a teacher. Now, the point is that it must appear justified in a certain way to distinguish oneself from the ordinary layman. This justification could not exist at all, that is, what we did yesterday would be an unjustified act if the whole concept of your profession were not placed in a spiritual atmosphere, if I may say so. And here we must ask: Can we make the concept of the “community” or, if we use the old word, the “ecclesia” a real one?

In the communities that have been established in more recent times, even if there was a different intention, this community was essentially an association of individuals, and apart from these individuals, there is actually nothing else of which one is fully aware. Now you must remember – what I am saying now is not meant as a theory, but so that it may permeate your work, because only in this way can your work become a true one – you must remember that everything higher that was realized in human primeval times through individual people leads us back to the concept of a group or species soul. In earlier times, groups of people were bound together by blood ties as tribes or, later, as larger blood communities or communities of relatives. But what was bound together in this way could not be counted as one, two, three, and so on, as so many individual people. Never in the mystery was such a community understood as a mere sum of people, but it was understood that a real community spirit is present, not incarnated on earth, but always present when something is to happen from the community.

Mankind has outgrown this way of being connected to the spiritual. But it is in the sense of what emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, on a higher level, to lead mankind back to associations that have a real sense of community, so that it develops something through which an entity from higher worlds, in the sense of Christianity a servant of Christ himself, descends. “Servant of Christ” means in this case: a part of Christ, so that the community is not alone, but a part of Christ is there. In the times when blood provided the bond of community, the inclination towards the spiritual was an instinctive one and conditioned by physical basis. In the sense of Christianity, all this must be raised to a spiritual level. People must feel that when they gather in the church of their own free will, it means that in a certain sense they are only members of a common, more delicate body, but one that is truly animated and spiritualized. The one who is the priest then feels himself to be the bearer of this communal spirit. Thus it is not merely a matter of intellectual, theoretical, symbolic speech when the reality of the presence of the spiritual is repeatedly pointed out in the ritual forms, when, as it were, what is living down from spiritual worlds is called into the community of believers, into the “Ecclesia”. Therefore, it is necessary that the stripping of the personal also appears externally in the effectiveness of the priest. The priest actually ceases to have any significance as a personality during the most important acts of worship. He is truly a servant of the word, not a teacher of the word, he is a transmitter of the word from divine heights into earthly existence. And the purpose of donning the cultic vestments is to relinquish one's personality and to appear as a representative of a higher order than the human order on earth.

Therefore, we can say: In the Mass Sacrifice, in the Act of Consecration of Man, when we begin with the relay prayer and then proceed to the reading of the Gospel, we are actually only dealing with the first part of the Mass, with a preparation. And if you recall the first words of the relay prayer given to you, you will immediately find the words: “Let us worthily accomplish the Act of Consecration of Man.” The “worthily” is of the utmost importance for the priest's understanding. Every time he celebrates Mass, the priest must be aware that he must first struggle to achieve the dignity to celebrate the Mass. In this struggle for the worthiness to celebrate the Mass, lies precisely the stripping away of the personal. The priest is clothed in priestly garments and proceeds to the altar in them. That is to say, he completely disregards what is human about him, earthly man, earthly personality in this particular incarnation. He must become the instrument for the Spirit to express itself through him. Therefore, he must try each time anew to struggle for worthiness. And then it says [in the prayer of the Mass]: From the revelation of Christ, in the veneration of Christ, in devotion to Christ's deed. These are words that, in the immediate aftermath of Christ's deed, of the Mystery of Golgotha, are intended to express and support the struggle for an impersonal action.

This is how the service should begin. We must be clear about the fact that the Catholic Church has fostered extensive errors in this regard. It is right that the personality of the priest should not come into consideration, but in many cases it does not take into account the struggle for worthiness and the difficulty of achieving this personality; and so the Roman Catholic view has incorporated the notion that it does not matter if the priest is personally a sinful or even a bad person, because at the moment he celebrates, his personality is not taken into account, because the spiritual power, the spiritual authority, is at work. The Catholic Church has developed this with an extraordinarily great spiritual skill in a one-sided way, and it has been absorbed to a high degree into the consciousness of the faithful. Even the simplest, most primitive Catholics distinguish the spirit-bearer, who stands before the faithful through the symbolic vestments, from the living garment under the vestments, of which many Catholic priests become; he may be a sinful man, but he does not celebrate, the spirit celebrates, for which he is merely the bearer. This kind of Catholic view naturally eliminates the relationship that must exist between the individual personality of the priest and his priestly office. The priestly office is something that comes from the higher worlds. But there is no way around the fact that at least the priest's language is influenced by what he is as an individual human being, that his heart and his mind also influence his language, that he strives for worthiness to be allowed to wear this priestly garment as this one personal human being. Therefore, it is necessary to have a correct understanding of consecration.

What does “consecrate” actually mean? We cannot arrive at an adequate concept in this regard if we simply take a historical view of what has developed over the past few centuries. If we want to proceed historically, we can only do so by considering the acts of consecration as they have existed since the original revelation and as they have been renewed by Christianity, in terms of their spirit. What then do the words 'consecrate' and 'initiate' mean? It means that the spiritual world is lowered over something earthly, so that one beholds this earthly thing as enveloped by the spiritual world. If we want to draw this symbolically, we could do so in the following way (it is drawn on the board). I attach great importance to making this quite clear to you. Let us take for example an ancient Near Eastern mystery. There was, let us say, the sixth degree of the “sun hero”, the seventh degree of the “father”. What does that mean? Well, if this figure represents a person of the sixth degree, his dignity meant that which descended from above and enveloped him from above. He walked around as an earthly man, but for his followers he represented not what was created by the earth, but what is created by the sun, that is, by the spiritual sun. “To consecrate” therefore means to take something away from the earth. The robe worn by the priest, if it is to be regarded as consecrated, envelops, as it were, the earthly personality; the person wearing the robe belongs to the spiritual world. There is only one exception to this, which of course was not yet present when the Persian mysteries were instituted and performed, and that is the following: In the older mysteries you will find everywhere that the act of consecration consists in calling down a heavenly being upon an earthly one. That which is impressed upon the earthly being is not present on earth. The only exception was Jesus Christ, who was present on earth and who, when celebrating Holy Communion, did not say what an old initiated priest would have said: I offer the bread as the body of the heavenly spirit, I offer the wine as the blood of the heavenly spirit. - He would, of course, have clothed it somewhat differently, because he could not have said “body” and “blood”, but “etheric body”, “etheric current” or the like, words that can no longer be heard today, but which were possible at that time in the sacred language. The only exception is what was said by Christ at the institution of the Lord's Supper: “This is my body, this is my blood.

This is radically opposed to all earlier acts of consecration. If you look at the acts of consecration of earlier times, you will have to say to yourself that these acts of consecration were based on the possibility of unearthly events having an effect on earthly events; they were therefore magical. When Christ Jesus came to Earth, He became a human being among humans, and the consequence of this is that the relationship of confession and trust in Christ Jesus now has a power that previously only existed in magical power. Thus, a human consecration ceremony is now possible, which simply begins with the words: “Let us worthily accomplish the human consecration ceremony out of the revelation of Christ, in the veneration of Christ, in devotion to Christ's deed.” An old priest would have had to say: “Let us worthily perform the Act of Consecration of Man in the revelation of extraterrestrial spirituality, in the worship of extraterrestrial spirituality, in devotion to extraterrestrial spirituality.” One must be aware of this; then one comes to feel and experience the Trinity correctly, in the Christian sense, and this is to be expressed in the relay prayer, which is then the continuation in the worthy preparation. You will see from each sentence that there is a struggle for a correct understanding of the Trinity.

I have already pointed out to you that the Gospel of John is basically not understood correctly by most theologians, because the Father God is called the “Creator” and Christ, the Logos, merely the “Savior”. But the Gospel of John expressly states: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. — The active, productive, actual Creator in the world is the Son of God, not the Father, so that the Trinity formula must express the confession of the Son of God as the Creator. God the Father must be felt as the underlying substance of all, as the underlying being of all; he must be felt in the sentence “God the Father be in us,” as the Son of God, who came to earth through Christ, is correctly understood by: “The Son of God creates in us”. This is simply the correct understanding in the sense of the Gospel of John, and such a correct understanding of the Trinity must be striven for at the beginning of every reading of the Mass.

In the consciousness of our humanity, we feel the divine Father.

There is an immediate indication of the sense of being with this “we feel the divine Father”.

He is in all that we are.

He is the underlying substance of everything.

Our substance is his substance. Our being is his being. He walks in us through all existence.

Thus, the Being in the Father is that which must be brought to consciousness. Then one proceeds to the confession of the Son-God:

In the experience of Christ in our humanity, we feel the divine Son. He reigns as the Spirit-Word through the world. He creates in everything we create. Our being is His creation.

Therefore, in so far as there is creation in us, we have come into being through the Word just as everything else has, for apart from the Word nothing of what has come into being has been created.

Our life is his creative life. He creates through us in all spiritual endeavors.

Once you have properly absorbed this into your consciousness, you can develop the right relationship with the Spirit God, the third aspect of the Godhead.

In the grasping of the spirit by our humanity, we feel the healing God. May He shine as the spirit-light through the world. May He shine in everything we behold. May our beholding be imbued with His spirit-light. May our recognition accept Him into His spirit-shining life in a pleasing way. He spiritualizes everything in our human soul.

We have seen, by first bringing the Act of Consecration of Man before our soul as a test, that the words “Christ in you” are often repeated, whereupon the acolyte says: “And fill your spirit, O Lord”. The priest turns to the congregation, and it is immediately understandable what is to be done with the pronouncing of the word “Christ in you”. As the altar server stands before the priest as the representative of the congregation, he is, so to speak, the one who indicates where the earthly plan, the earthly level begins. He speaks for the community, and the words “And may your spirit be filled” are not an order from the community, nor a wish of the community; when the words are spoken in the subjunctive, they signify that which actually comes from the community. Do you now understand the whole context and the subjunctive? What does the priest represent? The priest is only the one who represents the spirit of community within himself. In what does this spirit of community prevail in his body? In the believers who are there, in the participants of the Ecclesia. So what the community says through the altar boy is: Christ fill your spirit, the spirit of the community. Thus it is a matter of the community spirit of the congregation; it is diverted from the human and directed to the spiritual. “And may He fill your spirit.” You just have to understand this word in its subjunctive mood in the right way. Such things are quite important, and there must be an awareness of them.

When this preparation is over, the reading of the Gospel can begin in the manner indicated. The reading of the Gospel is, after all, the proclamation of the word of God by the Priest. The Catholic Church also inserts the so-called “Gloria” before the Gospel on feast days. It is entirely in the right spirit of spiritual intention that you take as little account as possible – in fact none at all – of what has only come about over time from the Roman Catholic Mass sacrifice. The progression over the course of the year must also be marked by the fact that the most important sections of the Gospel are read to the community during the year, so that, in a sense, the Gospel is divided up and the whole process from the birth of Christ to the Ascension is developed through the reading of the Gospel over the course of the year, although it is certainly possible to use one or the other Gospel. The most correct thing to do is to start at the Feast of the Nativity, at Christmas, by reading the first chapter of the Gospel of John, and then, by Christmas, to have progressed so far that, during the year, the Gospel has been covered by reading the Mass.

Regarding the further progress of the Mass, it should be noted that after transubstantiation has taken place and Communion is still to come, then the right place in the Mass is to interrupt the ritual that we read three days ago on a trial basis and insert the Lord's Prayer. Indeed, in recent times there has been a great deal of laxity in all denominations with regard to the Lord's Prayer. Originally, the Lord's Prayer is actually a compendium of the most important truths in the world, reflected through human feeling. In the Protestant confession, the Lord's Prayer is said in a way that is, I would say, not always sufficiently prepared. Just think of the solemnity of saying the Lord's Prayer when transubstantiation has preceded and the Lord's Prayer is inserted at this point. I am not saying that the Lord's Prayer should not be recited by the faithful as often as possible. But even the simplest individual prayer, such as the Lord's Prayer, is recited more reverently by the faithful - despite all the errors of the Roman Catholic Church - by the fact that the Roman Catholic hears the Lord's Prayer at an important point in the mass. This gives the whole mood in which the Lord's Prayer is prayed a certain solemn nuance. However, the Catholic Church has thoroughly dispelled this solemn nuance among the faithful by telling the penitent during confession, when a penitent has confessed his sins to the confessor, to say five Our Fathers every day as penance. This bartering of sin for the recitation of the Lord's Prayer is, of course, a terrible thing and desecrates the sacred character that the Lord's Prayer takes on during Mass and which helps it always retain its solemn tone. What the Catholic Church achieves in this respect, by speaking in Latin, a language that is incomprehensible to the faithful, can be replaced by the force with which the Lord's Prayer is spoken, because merely reciting the Lord's Prayer does not actually correspond to the grandeur of the Lord's Prayer. Although there should not be the slightest tendency to create a sense that something bordering on magic is being done – the Catholic Church has achieved this through the Latin language – it should be said that the Latin language, in a certain respect, also proves to be non-magical when it comes to nuancing the profound truths of the Lord's Prayer, which should never become trivial. It is true that there is a certain justification for the continued use of the Latin language for certain purposes that were intended to steer humanity away from the personal. But today, what could be given by the Latin language in the Lord's Prayer must be replaced by the power of speaking when praying the Lord's Prayer in front of the community. The believer must hear the Lord's Prayer during the cultic action, precisely because it is his daily prayer, in a way that goes beyond the ordinary measure of language. The Latin language has, after all, recreated the Lord's Prayer in such a way that it is, in a certain sense, a mantram:

Oremus. Praeceptis salutaribus moniti et divina institutione formati, audemus dicere:

Pater noster, qui es in coelis:
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also forgive those who owe us debts.
And lead us not into temptation.
But deliver us from evil.

Something must be transferred back from the Latin Lord's Prayer, which already exists in a mantric way, to the Lord's Prayer when it is prayed at the point between transubstantiation and communion during Mass. We will include these things in the Mass at the next Mass rehearsal.

Each of you will read the mass. This expresses what makes each of the priests the same as the other priest before the spiritual world. It is the highest form of democracy in spirit. Thus, what takes place in the spiritual through the formation of the community is fulfilled with the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the sense of Christianity, the ordination of a priest is actually the only form of initiation. The other religious communities that are not directly Christian, especially the old religious communities, had the degrees, the degrees within the spiritual hierarchy. In a certain sense, such degree initiations can still be introduced today; they have a good purpose. However, they cannot be introduced within a Christian community led by a Christian priesthood. Therefore, what are higher levels in the Christian priesthood are to be understood differently than as higher degrees. As priests, all stand equal. But what must enter into the church are human conditions. Within human conditions, we need a hierarchy of offices; so that where a Christian community is based on properly understood worship, “leadership” and “senior leadership” and so on relate to the order of communities on earth. This must be very carefully distinguished. The Catholic Church has not understood how to make this distinction in the right way, otherwise it should not have regarded, for example, the confirmation as a monopoly of the episcopal dignity. Every priest should be able to administer confirmation. Strict views must prevail in these matters. You see the stricter views sometimes peeping through in history, but at the same time you see confusion in history.

Our time is so far advanced in the development of mankind that you, my dear friends, cannot afford to allow confusion in this direction. For example, you will have to be very strict about the following: If we do things in such a way that a priest appears among us first as an ordained priest and he ordains the others, then in terms of ordination they all become equal to him. If he is also a superior, there is nothing superior in his conferring the ordination on the others. He confers the ordination on the others because he has already become a priest. But what is added is that with the ordination the priest is at the same time installed in office, and that is an earthly act; it is, if I may use a profane word, an administrative act; that must be added. Thus, for example, one can say: Since the one who is appointed as the highest arbiter also has an overview of how the individual priests who are to be ordained are used, it is simplest if he performs the ordinations at the same time, but as a priest he performs the ordination to the priesthood, and as the highest arbiter he establishes the office. This is reflected in history in the famous Investiture Controversy, where the way historians talk about it reveals something terribly confusing, while the distinction between secular office, secular office and incorporation into a spiritual order must be observed. It was simply not possible to properly distinguish between the conferral of the priestly dignity and the conferral of the office. You will see that if the correct understanding of these things takes hold among you from the very beginning, then you will have created a kind of cement for all your connections that would otherwise be lacking.

What I would still like to say today with regard to the reading of the Mass is that the simplicity of the four main parts should be maintained and that insertions should only be made on the most important annual feasts and on certain other occasions, which we will discuss in the next few days. So, of course, a Christmas mass must contain something special in the parts that are not the main parts, as must a Easter mass, a Pentecost mass and a mass that is said for a dead person or a mass that is seen as a somehow otherwise intended celebration.

That is what I wanted to tell you today.

During the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923, Rudolf Steiner also reconstituted the “Esoteric School” which had originally functioned in Germany from 1904 until 1914, when the outset of the First World War made its continuance impossible.

However, the original school was only for a relatively few selected individuals, whereas the new school was incorporated into the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner was only able to give nineteen lessons—plus seven “recapitulation” lessons—for the First Class before his illness and death. His intention had been to develop three classes. After his death, the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council was faced with the dilemma of what to do about the Esoteric School—to try to continue it without Rudolf Steiner, or not. He had not designated a successor. And what to do with the stenographic records of the Class lectures.

Rudolf Steiner had always insisted that the lectures were not to be published. In fact, the members of the School were only permitted to copy the mantra—and not the text of the lectures—for their own personal contemplation. The dilemma was further complicated by the dispute between Marie Steiner—Rudolf Steiner's legal heir—and the rest of the Executive council, which claimed all of Steiner's lectures for the Society. (The dispute was eventually settled by the Swiss courts in favor of Mrs. Steiner.)

The Anthroposophical Society was permitted to hand out manuscripts of the lectures to its so-called designated “readers,” who read each lecture to the members of the school in their particular area or country. This system is still practiced.

Marie Steiner wrote:

“How can we preserve the treasure with which we have been entrusted? Not by hiding it away, thereby simply giving our enemies the opportunity to do with it what they will, but by trusting in the good spiritual powers and thereby giving new generations the possibility of receiving a stimulus in their souls that will kindle the spiritual light slumbering there, a light that will awaken in their souls what the powers of destiny have sown in them.”

Marie Steiner, letter of January 4, 1948

The lectures were published in German in manuscript book form in 1977 by the Rudolf Steiner Estate (Nachlassverwaltung—Marie Steiner's legal successor) in a limited edition and sold only upon written request to anthroposophists.

However, pirated editions containing errors and falsifications occurred to the extent that the Rudolf Steiner Estate decided to make the printed volumes in German generally available in 1992.

The Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain published the lectures in English translation in 1994.

Frank Thomas Smith—Editor, Southern Cross Review

During the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923, Rudolf Steiner also reconstituted the “Esoteric School” which had originally functioned in Germany from 1904 until 1914, when the outset of the First World War made it's continuance impossible.

However, the original school was only for a relatively few selected individuals, whereas the new school was incorporated into the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner was only able to give nineteen lessons – plus seven “recapitulation” lessons – for the First Class before his illness and death. His intention had been to develop three classes. After his death, the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council was faced with the dilemma of what to do about the Esoteric School – to try to continue it without Rudolf Steiner, or not. He had not designated a successor. And what to do with the stenographic records of the Class lectures.

Rudolf Steiner had always insisted that the lectures were not to be published. In fact the members of the School were only permitted to copy the mantra—and not the text of the lectures—for their own personal contemplation. The dilemma was further complicated by the dispute between Marie Steiner – Rudolf Steiner's legal heir – and the rest of the Executive council, which claimed all of Steiner's lectures for the Society. (The dispute was eventually settled by the Swiss courts in favor of Mrs Steiner.)

The Anthroposophical Society was permitted to hand out manuscripts of the lectures to its so-called designated “readers”, who read each lecture to the members of the school in their particular area or country. This system is still practiced.

Marie Steiner wrote:

How can we preserve the treasure with which we have been entrusted? Not by hiding it away, thereby simply giving our enemies the opportunity to do with it what they will, but by trusting in the good spiritual powers and thereby giving new generations the possibility of receiving a stimulus in their souls that will kindle the spiritual light slumbering there, a light that will awaken in their souls what the powers of destiny have sown in them.”

Marie Steiner, letter of January 4, 1948

The lectures were published in German in manuscript book form in 1977 by the Rudolf Steiner Estate (Nachlassverwaltung – Marie Steiner's legal successor) in a limited edition and sold only upon written request to anthroposophists.

However, pirated editions containing errors and falsifications occurred to the extent that the Rudolf Steiner Estate decided to make the printed volumes in German generally available in 1992.

As far as we know, the lectures in English translation are appearing in public availability for the first time here in Southern Cross Review.

Frank Thomas Smith - Editor

During the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923, Rudolf Steiner also reconstituted the “Esoteric School” which had originally functioned in Germany from 1904 until 1914, when the outset of the First World War made its continuance impossible.

However, the original school was only for a relatively few selected individuals, whereas the new school was incorporated into the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner was only able to give nineteen lessons—plus seven “recapitulation” lessons—for the First Class before his illness and death. His intention had been to develop three classes. After his death, the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council was faced with the dilemma of what to do about the Esoteric School—to try to continue it without Rudolf Steiner, or not. He had not designated a successor. And what to do with the stenographic records of the Class lectures.

Rudolf Steiner had always insisted that the lectures were not to be published. In fact, the members of the School were only permitted to copy the mantra—and not the text of the lectures - for their own personal contemplation. The dilemma was further complicated by the dispute between Marie Steiner—Rudolf Steiner's legal heir—and the rest of the Executive council, which claimed all of Steiner's lectures for the Society. (The dispute was eventually settled by the Swiss courts in favor of Mrs. Steiner.)

The Anthroposophical Society was permitted to hand out manuscripts of the lectures to its so-called designated “readers”, who read each lecture to the members of the school in their particular area or country. This system is still practiced.

Marie Steiner wrote:

“How can we preserve the treasure with which we have been entrusted? Not by hiding it away, thereby simply giving our enemies the opportunity to do with it what they will, but by trusting in the good spiritual powers and thereby giving new generations the possibility of receiving a stimulus in their souls that will kindle the spiritual light slumbering there, a light that will awaken in their souls what the powers of destiny have sown in them.”

Marie Steiner, letter of January 4, 1948

The lectures were published in German in manuscript book form in 1977 by the Rudolf Steiner Estate (Nachlassverwaltung—Marie Steiner's legal successor) in a limited edition and sold only upon written request to anthroposophists.

However, pirated editions containing errors and falsifications occurred to the extent that the Rudolf Steiner Estate decided to make the printed volumes in German generally available in 1992.

As far as we know, the lectures in English translation are appearing in public availability for the first time here in Southern Cross Review.

Frank Thomas Smith—Editor

The lectures that are now being given for the general anthroposophical part of the Free University are intended to provide an outlook on the experience of the “threshold” between the sensual and the supersensible world. It is necessary for those who are truly seeking knowledge of the human being to see through how everything that “nature” reveals of beauty, greatness and sublimity cannot lead to the human being. For the inner man, who creates in the outer, has his source not in the natural but in the spiritual world. But the senses and the intellect bound to the brain cannot penetrate into the latter. These must first cease to function if the human being is to face the world of his origin. But where this activity ceases, the human being initially faces an inability to perceive anything at all. He looks at his surroundings and, as if they were 'nothing', the darkness that is there because of the inability to perceive appears to him. This inability can only give way to spiritual-vision abilities when the human being becomes aware of higher powers within himself, which train the 'senses of the spirit' in the same way that the physical powers of the organism train the senses of the body. This presupposes a complete transformation of the inner man from one form of existence into another. In this transformation, however, man must not lose one form of existence before he gains the other. The right transformation is the result of the right experience at the “Threshold”. Knowledge of man in his true essence is only possible from a point of view beyond the threshold. If one wishes to accept with common sense the messages of one who has knowledge, coming from the field beyond the threshold, one must also have some conception of what the knower has experienced on the threshold. Only by knowing the conditions under which the knowledge of this supersensible reality is gained can one be in a position to judge it aright.

It will only be possible to give content to the words in which the supersensible result of the vision is expressed when one understands what the seer has gone through before he has the power to coin such words. If one does not understand this, it seems as if the words do not mean something supersensible but something sensible. But this gives rise to confusion. The words become deceptive; instead of knowledge, illusion arises.

These indications are intended to characterize the esoteric work of the Free University. The external members will receive the content in a suitable form as soon as our work, which was occasioned by the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, has progressed to the point where such a step is possible. What is said here in exoteric terms will be developed esoterically in the School.

(continued in the next issue).