The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Man's connection with the various planetary bodies. The earth's mission.

For the more exact understanding of our particular subject let us first consider the great world and then look down to the limited circle of our immediate earthly existence. We shall be able in this way to form a clear idea of what in Spiritual or Occult Science is understood in connection with the three conceptions we have brought together—Universe, Earth, and Man.

You will have already gathered from what has been said that in Spiritual Science one can by no means speak of the world as a mere material thing. We have seen how the manifold world beings (we may not say world-bodies) that have been brought before you as the different embodiments of our earth—Saturn, Sun, and Moon are quite other than mere material globes, each being, as we have seen, the dwelling-place of a host of spiritual beings, and created only according to the needs of the spiritual beings that live on them.

We saw how the sun separated from the earth because it had to be the home of certain highly exalted Beings who could only make use of the finer substances for their evolution, while man had to retain the other substances on the earth. Were we to investigate the whole wide world we should nowhere find anything that is material alone, everything is connected with a spiritual part. We have seen how the various earth-beings are connected with spiritual-beings. Stones and the minerals of the earth have their ego in that which surrounds us in the universe. Plants have their ego localised in the centre of the earth-planet, while their astral principle, which brings about the development of the flower, encircles them above the earth. Everything is pervaded by spirit, and thus our conception of a world-body is enlarged. We look up to some heavenly body and we know that it is but the expression of certain spiritual beings connected with a material planet.

Now, by developing certain capacities which are to be found slumbering within him, man is actually in a position to gain knowledge for himself regarding these bodies existing in space, and today we shall consider man in relation to the various planets.

We are surrounded on earth by minerals, plants, animals, and human beings, moreover we know that earthly affairs are regulated by higher beings who in Christian esotericism are described as Angels, Archangels, and Archai; we also know that there are other beings concerned with the earth, even though they send their forces from the sun and the moon. Today we have something to add to this. The question might rise in the mind of anyone: To what extent may one of the planets of our solar system be compared with another in respect to its inner nature?

To help us, let us consider the beings that visibly confront us in the present cycle of humanity, and enquire: How are the beings which surround us here as minerals, plants, animals, and men related to other beings in the universe? Of course we are dealing with this question from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, from knowledge gained through the development of clairvoyant consciousness; and of this development we shall speak later. In the first place let us ask: Are there on the other planets men such as those developing on our earth? Can clairvoyant consciousness discover such men? Clairvoyant consciousness answers: We do not find men on other planets in exactly the same form as upon earth, but we do discover that each planet, each heavenly body, has its particular mission. Nothing in the universe is repeated, other planets have other missions.

Our earth has originated from three preceding embodiments; the stage of existence we are now passing through (the human stage) has been passed through already by other beings; by Angels, for example, on the ancient Moon, by Archangels on the ancient Sun, and by Archai upon ancient Saturn. It is easy to make the mistake that these were men like ourselves, but we must bear in mind that on the ancient Moon there was no solid stone or mineral and therefore the beings who passed through their human stage there did so under entirely different conditions.

We know this, but we have to speak of it as the human stage. The Archangels, or Fire-Spirits, passed through their human stage in entirely different conditions, for the ancient Sun consisted only of warmth and gas, and beings passing through their human development there could not have bodies such as we have, with solid muscles, bones, etc. In earthly evolution nothing is repeated, every stage has its particular mission in the great household of cosmic existence.

Let us now consider for a time the evolution of our earth. If it is observed occultly we see it as a body inhabited by man on which he carries out his development. This development has only been made possible through the sun and the moon having separated from the earth, so that its forces were held in balance between the two. At the time when the earth was itself still sun (if we may call it so), it passed through an evolution in which it was incorporated with the sun. The sun was then itself at the planetary stage of existence, and was inhabited by Archangels, but because of advancing development it was possible for part of that which was embodied in it to rise to a higher existence at the cost of that other part which it sent forth as the earth-moon. In the great universe evolution proceeds in such a way that things which for a time have progressed side by side separate; the one expanding into higher regions, the other descending into a lower state. In order that certain beings might develop high enough the sun had itself to become a body fitted for their habitation; it advanced from planetary existence to fixed-star existence. We have to realize that a world-being like our sun has developed occultly from a planet to a sun. A sun is a planet that has progressed.

As was pointed out in the last lecture, after everything had united again, and the sun had once more at a certain period separated from the moon-plus-earth, man continued to dwell for a long period upon the earth, on into the present earth-period, without the spiritual Sun-Forces. Then through the advent of Christ the spiritual forces of the sun found again a place upon the earth. Now, if the Christ is embodied in the earth man must become more and more mature through receiving into him the Christ-Principle; the material form of a planet depends on what it evolves in the way of beings.

Exactly in the same way as the sun evolved to its present exalted position, by withdrawing the finer substances because the Sun-being had need of them, so also will the earth. The substances of the earth will have then so changed as to be suited to man, or rather to what, in the distant future, will have developed from man and from the earth-beings he bears along with him; for when man has become powerful he will draw other earth-beings along with him. What will happen then? If man fills himself ever more and more with the Christ-Principle, if he absorbs more and more of the Sun-Forces which descended to earth with the Christ, he will himself grow ever more Christ-like, and will irradiate the whole heart with the Christ-Principle.

What is this Christ-Principle? Before we can know what it is we must know what the mission of the earth is, so that we can describe it by one special word. What is the mission of earthly existence? Let us ask first, What was the mission of the Moon's existence?

If we cast our clairvoyant vision back to the ancient Moon we find at the beginning, in the ancestors of all the beings on our earth, a very remarkable quality. These beings possessed a great deal, but one thing they lacked at the very beginning of the Moon period, and this thing we now find everywhere around us on our earth. The forces of the Moon, the predecessor of our earth, worked at first unwisely; the conditions on the Moon to begin with were such that nowhere could one have perceived a harmonious working together in wisdom. If one follows the evolution of the ancient Moon clairvoyantly one sees how the wisdom of the cosmos was gradually embodied in the beings who dwelt upon the Moon, by other beings who were round about it and who worked on it from without. Because of this the ancient Moon is called the Planet of Wisdom.

When the Moon period came to an end, wisdom was in all things. Life on the Moon then went through an intermediate condition resembling a world-sleep called “pralaya,” and when the beings again came forth from pralaya, and the earth appeared, they brought with them the wisdom with which they had been imbued on the ancient Moon. The consequence of this is that wisdom is implanted in all we observe around us. In all the creations which are the result of the Moon evolution, and which have a yet further mission, we find wisdom. Look where you will: take, for example, the leaf of any plant; the more closely you observe it the more wonderful it appears, because the several parts are arranged according to the highest wisdom. Take a portion of the human thigh-bone; there also the constituent parts are arranged according to the highest wisdom so as to form a support capable of carrying the upper part of the body.

No engineering skill of today can equal the bridge-building of this mighty wisdom. In all the other human organs, and indeed in all the surrounding world, we see wisdom at the root of everything. Man can only absorb this wisdom in a bungling way into his inner being on the earth. Microcosmic wisdom is something only to be learnt from the objects that surround man here. Wisdom is in all things, including those parts of man in which he does not consciously participate.

Following the course of history, we often extol human wisdom. How wonderful it seems to us when we learn that at a particular time man made this or that discovery. The art of paper making, for example, was discovered in recent times; it was an accomplishment of human intelligence—but wasps knew how to do it long before man. A wasp's nest, however, is not built by individual wasps, but by the group-soul of wasps; it is built of exactly the same material as our paper. These group-souls possessed long ago something which human wisdom will only gain gradually. This wisdom, which is found deeply ingrained in everything that exists on earth, had to take form gradually, and we shall see how this was brought about throughout the Moon period; how at that time wisdom warred against un-wisdom, and how the ancient Moon then bequeathed to the Earth the germs of beings in whom wisdom had been implanted.

What is to be implanted in a similar way in the beings of our Earth? Just as wisdom was implanted in our predecessors on the ancient Moon, so love has to be implanted on our planet. Our planet (the Earth) is the planet of love. The development of this, the first instilling of love, had to be in its lowest form. This happened during the Lemurian epoch, when the ego of man took shape; at that time the development of love in its lowest form began through the separation of the sexes. All further development consists in the continual refinement, the spiritualizing, of this love-principle. Just as in the Moon-period wisdom was instilled into Moon-beings, so one day, when our earth shall have attained its goal, all earthly beings will be filled with love.

Let us now turn for a moment to the next planetary existence, that which is to succeed our Earth—the Jupiter planet. When the beings reappear who will inhabit Jupiter they will regard all those in their environment with their own spiritual powers of perception; and just as with our intellect we admire the wisdom contained in stones, plants, and animals, and indeed in everything that surrounds us—just as we draw wisdom from them that we also may have it—the Jupiter-beings will direct their forces to all that surrounds them, and the love which had been implanted in them during the Earth evolution will be wafted to those who now surround them. In the same way that we analyse objects and learn from the wisdom contained in them, so the Jupiter-beings will edify themselves with the outpourings of love that proceed from the beings about them. This love which is to develop on Earth can only develop through earthly egos being related one to another in the way described. Development in this direction can only take place through men being torn away from group-soul qualities; through one man drawing close to another; only thus can true love develop. Where egos are united within the group-soul there is no true love. Beings must be separated from each other so that love may be offered as a free gift. Only by such a separation as has come about in the human kingdom, where ego meets ego as independent individual, has love as a free gift become possible. This is why an increasing individualism and a uniting of separate individuals had to come about on earth.

Think of the various beings that are united within a group-soul; the group-soul directs them as to how they shall act. Can it be said that the heart loves the stomach? No, the heart is united to the stomach by the being within who holds them together. In the same way the several animals in a group are united one with the other within the group-soul nature, and what they have to do is regulated by the wise group-soul.

Only when the group-nature is overcome, and individual confronts individual ego, can the sympathy of love be offered as a free gift from one being to another.

Man could only be prepared for this mission gradually, and we see how he passes through a kind of preparatory school for love before he is fully individualized. We see how, before he possessed a complete ego of his own, he was gathered into groups that were related by blood by guiding beings, and the members of these groups loved each other because of the blood tie. This was a great time of preparation for humanity. We have already pointed out that at this stage love was not a free gift, but was directed by a remnant of the cosmic wisdom; we have seen how Luciferic beings worked here and opposed with their strong liberating force everything that gathered mankind into families and peoples through the power of the blood; these Luciferic beings strove to make man independent.

Thus man continued gradually to mature that he might eventually receive the highest potency of love—the Christ Principle, which expressed its nature in the words, “He who does not forsake father, mother, son, and daughter, he who does not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.” These words are not to be understood trivially, but in the sense that, through reception of the Christ Principle the ancient blood brotherhood had to assume a new form, a feeling of “belonging to each other” which, regardless of material foundations, must pass from soul to soul, from man to man. The Christ-Principle has given the impulse by which man can love man, and that through being Christened human love may become more and more spiritual. Love will become more psychic and more spiritual, and through this man will also draw along with him the lower creations, and will thus transform the earth. In a far distant future he will transform the entire substance of the earth, and so mature the earth-body that it will be enabled to unite again with the sun. Christ as Spiritual Sun has given the impulse by which the earth and the sun can again be united in one body at a future day.

We have surveyed the course of the evolution of the world; we have seen how the body of the sun first separated from the earth, and how the mighty Christ Impulse descended, and how the impulse was thereby given towards a reunion of earth and sun so that they might rise to higher stages of existence. We have also realized that the earth is to produce human beings who have this as their mission. Therefore, when we look around upon the human kingdom, and desire to learn about man, we can find him only on the earth, for only here are conditions produced for such men as exist today. You may now ask: How is it with the other kingdoms of the earth? Let us consider the vegetable kingdom. When clairvoyant vision sweeps out into the universe and we investigate the other planets belonging to our system, we find in all those belonging to our sun a vegetable kingdom entirely corresponding to our own—so that in our vegetable kingdom we have something that in its systematic life is a part of our whole universe.

Our solar system is peopled by a vegetable creation, and were the whole matter to be considered occultly we should see that each planet is peopled also by its own kind of human beings. It is easy to perceive an inner relationship between plants and the sun, and how the life of the plant is intimately connected with the life of the sun. If this is the case it must also be connected with all the planets belonging to the solar system. When we allow our thoughts to sweep back to the condition of the earth when it was still a Sun planet, we know that man consisted of physical and etheric body, that is, he was at the stage of a plant. Man at that time had the value of a plant; he was in the position in which the vegetable kingdom is now. This kingdom is composed of beings consisting of physical body and etheric body. These confront us in a way that moves us to say that they have remained true to the sun; even now they clearly reveal their relationship with the sun.

Let us consider the nature of a plant according to Rosicrucian wisdom. We see the plant fixed in the ground by its roots, that is, the organ which leads it towards the centre of the earth—to its ego and we see how it turns its organs of reproduction to the sun and absorbs its chaste rays.

Let us now turn to man. It is not difficult to imagine man as a reversed plant. If we think of a plant exactly reversed in position we have a man; his reproductive organs are turned to the centre of the earth, and his root towards space. The animal stands half-way between these. Hence one can say in a spiritual sense, when the soul-nature of the world passed through the various kingdoms it passed through a vegetable, an animal, and a human existence. Plato expresses this in a beautiful way. He says: “The world-soul is crucified on the cross of the world body.” Man has passed through the plant stage which directed him to the centre of the earth. The position of animals is expressed in the horizontal position of the spine. Man's position is that of the plant, only reversed. Thus the cross arose.

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On it the world soul is crucified; this is the profound esoteric meaning of the cross. In the plant of today we have a being which strives towards the sun, which has, in a certain sense, remained united with the sun, hence it has the opposite direction to man. Animal forms on the various planetary existences are partly alike and partly different; even here the animal stands midway between man and plant.

If we now pass to the mineral kingdom we find in the forms of crystals something that directs us into space far beyond our solar system. In the formative forces of the mineral kingdom we find forces which reach far beyond the solar system. We are led, especially when considering those forms of the mineral kingdom through which the light passes, to a perception of what takes place far beyond our solar system. The most abstract thing, and that which has least individual existence, yet forms at present the foundation of our life, is the mineral. It has a universal existence; the higher the being the more it is suited to the system of our earth and sun.

We will now consider this point with regard to man. If man were adapted to forces that ruled on the earth alone he would be condemned to exist only on the earth; he could never become a citizen of the universe; he could speak of nothing that takes place beyond the earth. Though he is adapted, through his outward form, to the conditions of the earth, he has also through his higher powers a part in all the higher beings who are connected with the earth. That which limits man to the earth has reference to his body alone; the spiritual powers with which he is furnished lead him far beyond the earth. Here again we have to distinguish between different forces. In order that we may understand them let us dwell first on those forces that can be easily classified.

We have in the first place the power which called up pictures before our spiritual eyes during the Atlantean epoch. Man's consciousness, to begin with, was a picture consciousness; only as evolution progressed was he gradually able to comprehend external objects by means of his objective consciousness. The consciousness which at the present time presents the sense world to us so that we see colours with our eyes, hear sounds with our ears, smell, and taste, was only differentiated at one time from out the general perception of warmth by the organ which was then like a kind of lantern—the pineal gland. Objective consciousness is purely of the earth. Wonderful as it may seem, all the sensations man is aware of, such as the colour of objects, resounding tones, have only existence on earth, and if we were to consider the beings of another planet we would find that at first we could not understand them. For instance, if we were to say something to these beings about the colour red they would not know what was meant; on their planet they have a different way of perceiving beings and things. What we call sense-perception applies only to our particular planet.

I have already explained that before sense perception was differentiated it was inwardly connected with reproduction. Precisely as sense perception is of the earth, so also is the form of reproduction (as it exists at present) of the earth, and is only adapted to this planetary existence: it exists for the purpose of providing the first foundation of that which is the mission of the earth, namely, love—for love is to be developed upon the earth.

We now come to another human power. Suppose you observe some object; as long as your eyes are turned to it you know that you are in correspondence with the object; it acts upon you; now turn your eyes away and hold the idea-picture of it in your memory; the object has gone but the image remains. If man had not the capacity of retaining such images he would be an entirely different being, for as soon as his gaze left the object the image of it would also have disappeared, and in consequence he would not have power to connect the qualities of the things observed with his own qualities. That capacity of consciousness which makes the man of today able to retain the image of an object even when the object itself is gone, was his even on the ancient Moon; it is the same capacity which then enabled him to see what was external to him in pictures. He could not at that time see outer objects as he does today, but when anything approached him an astral vision rose before him like a vivid dream picture, but it was related in a particular way to the object he perceived.

Man's consciousness was then a picture consciousness, not an objective consciousness. Now he is in touch with the objects themselves, the picture he sees is the object. A last remnant of picture consciousness has remained in our power to form memory pictures. These are of greater value than the mere observation of external objects. In observing a number of objects that are similar to each other we bring them under one general idea. For instance, you have here so many pieces of chalk you group them under the general conception “chalk.” In this way man rises to general conceptions for which no outer object exists. Man can work inwardly with his ideas, and if with this inward activity—with this power of ideation—he were to come in touch with beings outside our planetary existence he would be able, without having to refer to any object, to make himself more easily understood by them. Both the picture consciousness (which man possessed before he could perceive outer objects, and which was a dim clairvoyance) and also the imaginative consciousness which he will develop later are more far reaching than mere sense observation.

When picture consciousness is acquired through occult development and man is able to perceive not only outer objects, but also, for instance the human aura; when in pictures he sees around him things of a soul and spirit nature; when that which exists in the world rises before him in pictorial symbols, he has gained with his imaginative consciousness the power to connect himself with other things inhabiting other planets.

There is a yet higher degree of consciousness. This was possessed by man dimly during the Sun period, and to a slight extent he has it still—it is dreamless sleep consciousness. Man is not without consciousness when asleep; neither is a plant without consciousness; its consciousness is the same as that of man in ordinary sleep. Sleep is only a lower degree of consciousness, when things escape man's attention and he does not observe them.

Through developing certain forces man can gain the power to perceive what is around him during the state of dreamless sleep. This is a higher state of consciousness than picture consciousness; it is the consciousness plants have, but in a sleeping form. If one rises to this consciousness but permeates it with one's ego in clear day-consciousness one has attained to the degree of inspiration or, in occult development, to inspired consciousness. This consciousness does not act merely by means of pictures. When something flows from the object and passes into the observer it is a tone-consciousness, and cannot be compared with picture-consciousness. The man who experiences it enters into a spiritual world of tone; this is the consciousness described by Pythagoras as “the Harmony of the Spheres.” The whole world then utters forth its nature, and when man is asleep at night and the astral body and ego are withdrawn from his physical and etheric bodies, the harmonies and melodies of cosmic music pervade his astral body. The astral body is then immersed in true spiritual existence, and from the music of the spheres it draws power by which to restore its exhausted forces. Man is plunged at night within the music of the spheres, and through the tones ringing within him he feels strengthened and refreshed anew when morning comes. When conscious of this he is Inspired, and is capable of perceiving all that is contained within the solar system.

Through his ordinary senses and the intellect associated with them man perceives only the things of the earth; through Imagination he comes in touch with the various planets; when he has attained to Inspiration he comes in contact with the solar system. This fact has always been known in certain circles. Goethe, who was an Initiate, knew it; hence in the prologue to Faust, the scene of which is set in the spiritual world in heaven—he represents the Angel as saying: “The sun intones his ancient song, 'Mid rival chant of brother spheres.”

From this we see that he knew that the secrets of the solar system are expressed in tones, and that one who can raise himself to Inspiration can learn these secrets. Goethe did not write this by chance, as we can see, for he maintains the character. In the second part of Faust, when he takes us up into the spiritual world he says again very much the same thing:

“Sounding loud to spirit ears,
Lo! the new-born day appears.”

Spirit ears are the ears of the clairvoyant, who is able to perceive the harmonies of the solar system. If you could perceive the Sun-Forces streaming down on to the bodies of plants as they grow (these bodies whose roots and leaves terminate in flowers bathed round by the astral body, into which stream the forces of the sun); if you could perceive these forces secretly entering the earth through the flower, you would perceive them as spiritual music—the music of the spheres. This can, however, only be heard by spiritual ears.

Spiritual sound enters into flowers, that is the secret of the development of plants, each separate flower is the expression of the tones which give it form, and give to the fruit its character. The sun tones are caught up by the plant, and these rule within it as spirit.

You perhaps know how form can be imparted by sound in the material world; you may remember the experiment of the Chladnic sound forms. How dust scattered upon a disc assumes certain figures as the result of sound; in these figures we have the expression of the sound that produces them. Just as physical sound is caught up, as it were, in this dust, so the spiritual sound of the sun is caught up and absorbed by flower and fruit. It is hidden mysteriously in the seed, and when a new plant grows from the seed it is the sun-tone it has absorbed that conjures forth its form.

Clairvoyant consciousness looks around upon the vegetable kingdom, and in the flowers which form the variegated carpet of the earth's surface it sees everywhere the reflection of sun-tones. What Goethe says is true, “The sun intones his ancient song,” but it is also true that these sun tones stream to earth, are absorbed by plants, and reappear when new plants spring from the seed. For in the forms of plants is heard the sun-tones which re-echo into space the music of the spheres.

Herein we see how universe and earth, how fixed star and planet, are spiritually in touch with each other, and we learn not only to look at what is in our environment in the physical world, but we also gain an inkling of how those who partake of Inspiration ascend to the sun.

There is a still higher state of consciousness, which, in the true sense of the word, we call Intuition; through it man can creep within the very nature of things. This is more than inspirational consciousness; here a man sinks himself into beings, he identifies himself with them. This leads him still further. Where does inspirational consciousness lead him? It leads him to where he feels one with the earth planet, for the egos of the plants are in the centre of the earth. When he perceives the sun-tone he becomes one with the planetary being that dwells in the centre of the earth; he becomes one with his planet; he can also become one with all other beings. He then goes through experiences that reach far beyond our solar system; his vision is extended from system-consciousness to cosmic-consciousness-intuition carries him beyond the several solar systems.

Thus we see that in the mineral kingdom we have something which in a homogeneous form furnishes us with a basis that extends far beyond our ordinary existence. We see that the present human form is a physical earthly form, but that man will raise himself once more from ordinary earthly consciousness to planetary-consciousness through imagination; to system-consciousness through inspiration; to cosmic-consciousness through intuition.

This is the path humanity has to travel in so far as it is connected with the entire evolution of the world. In the next lecture we shall descend from this study, which has led us outwards to that which has taken place in more recent ages of earthly existence, in the Egyptian and Grecian ages, and in our own age. We shall see how the macrocosm, the mighty universe of which we have formed some idea today, is reflected in the life and conception of individual man—the microcosm.

The progress of man. His conquest of the physical plane in the post-Atlantean civilizations. The beginning and up-building of the “I am.” The chosen people.

Our task today is to comprehend the spiritual horizon within which man stands by investigating his origin. We have seen that in the course of his development throughout the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs he has gradually acquired his present form; we will now extend our study of this second epoch, the Atlantean, on into our own age so far as is necessary to an understanding of our subject.

We know that previous to the middle of the Atlantean epoch the conditions of the consciousness of man were quite different to what they are today. While in his physical body during the day he then saw objects by no means with the same sharp outlines he does now, everything was more or less blurred; and when at night he left his physical body he did not sink into dreamless sleep, but was able to perceive Spiritual Beings in a spiritual world.

We will now deal further with the fact that these beings (who also sought embodiment in Atlantean bodies) entered into a certain companionship with man, but will only remind ourselves that at that time man had a conviction, based on direct experience, that above the human kingdom to which he himself belonged there were other kingdoms—that of the Angels and of the Archangels; and that he learned to recognize these higher beings face to face, just as we now learn to recognize each other in the physical world. Then came the time when objective day consciousness became ever clearer and clearer, and, on the other hand, when dimness and darkness enveloped man at night. This was the period when the first rudimentary germs of ego or “I am” were laid down in man. By learning to perceive the objects around him he at the same time gained that form of self-consciousness it was intended he should develop.

We must conceive of everything in the world as graded; that just as there are all possible grades of beings in the animal and human kingdoms so also there are many different grades among the beings above man. Some beings in the kingdom of the Angels are very close to man, and others are at a higher stage; many grades are met with when we direct our gaze to the higher worlds. We have in the first place to understand clearly that at the time when man rose at night through dim clairvoyant consciousness into higher worlds these beings (to put it trivially) gained something from man through their intercourse with him; their own being was enriched. For though these beings stood above man they were still inwardly connected with him; they inspired him and influenced his imaginative consciousness, which was, however, dim. So that we must think of man in that ancient period as being in such a condition that when he withdrew from his physical and etheric bodies it was as if a higher being, or, in a wider sense, a whole host of higher beings, took possession of him. Fundamentally this is also the case today, only man is not aware of it, whereas at that time he was, though in a dim clairvoyant way. It has already been explained in other lectures that sleep is by no means unnecessary for man; it serves a very great purpose.

During the day man is continually making use of his physical and etheric bodies. The life we lead from morning till evening exhausts these bodies, and what we feel as fatigue is nothing more than the expression of the fact that indirectly through the astral body all kinds of perceptions have been taking place in us as well as impulses of joy, of sorrow, and of pain; all these have been playing through us. This wears out our physical and etheric bodies, and in the evening we are tired because all day long we have been destroying them.

When at night we leave these bodies on the bed the astral body and ego are not inactive; all night long they send their forces into the physical and etheric bodies; they work at repairing the disorganized and exhausted forces of these bodies; this they could not do if, on their withdrawal, they were not taken up into a higher kingdom. Above the human kingdom a spiritual kingdom is outspread, the kingdom of the Angels, Archangels, and other beings. It is as if ozone streamed from the Spiritual Beings that then surround us, and from whom we are separated during the day, because with our perceptions we are enclosed within the shell of our bodies. At night we plunge into this spiritual ozone; from it our astral body absorbs forces which it then pours into the physical and etheric bodies to repair them. Today man is unconscious of this, but at the time when he still possessed dim clairvoyant consciousness he saw how his astral body and ego left the other members and was absorbed into the divine spiritual world.

Things seen in one way in the physical world have a very different appearance above. One might even say that the Gods profit by participating thus in humanity. In order rightly to understand the relationship of man to the universe we must try to form a conception, which is not so easy, but is, however, necessary, if we are to understand his true position. We have said that the earth is the planet of love, that love will be first rightly developed upon the earth. To put it crudely, it will be bred here, and through their participating in mankind the Gods will learn to know love, though in another sense it is they who bestow it. It is difficult to picture this.

It is entirely possible that one being may impart a gift to another, and only come to know his gift through the other. Picture to yourselves an exceedingly rich person who has never known anything but riches, nor ever experienced the deep satisfaction of soul which results from well-doing. Picture this person now as doing something good; he gives to the poor. The gift calls forth great thankfulness in the soul of the needy individual; this feeling of gratitude is at the same time a gift; it would never have existed if the rich person had not first given. He is the originator of the feeling of gratitude, although he does not himself feel it, and is only acquainted with it through its reflection, which streams back to him from the person in whom he roused it. It is approximately in this way that the gift of love is imparted to man by the Gods. They have progressed so far that they are able to kindle love in man so that he feels it, but they only learn to know it as a reality through man. From their heights the Gods reach down into the ozone of humanity and feel the warmth of love. We know that the Gods lack something when man does not live in love. The more human love there is on earth the more food for the Gods there is in heaven; the less love there is, the more the Gods hunger.

The sacrifice of man to the Gods is nothing else than the love which streams up to them, which man has produced. It is not difficult to picture that in ancient times, when man was still conscious of the Divine, this reciprocity—this mutual giving, from man and from the Gods—was quite different to what it became later. Indeed, there were some among divine Spiritual Beings who, because man could no longer rise by means of his dim clairvoyant consciousness, could no longer descend, or reach the sphere of humanity. Throughout the Atlantean epoch man lived with numerous divine beings, and the less capable he became of looking up to the Gods the less could a certain category of divine beings experience all they had formerly been able to experience through man. When Atlantis came to an end there were among the Atlantean gods some who suffered hunger, if we may so express it, because they could no longer find the way to man.

We must now picture the further development of man from this standpoint. We know that there was a realm in the neighbourhood of Ireland where dwelt the most advanced beings of the Atlantean epoch, those who were best prepared to pass through an advanced development. These now journeyed from the West to the East, populating Europe, where some remained at a particular stage of evolution, while others went further. The most advanced passed on to the neighbourhood of Central Asia, others into Africa. There were already in these parts some people left over from the older Lemurian and Atlantean epochs; these now mixed in diverse ways, and from them arose the people whom the Greeks represent in many artistic forms as the Satyr, the Hermes, and the Zeus types.

We must picture to ourselves that the condition of human consciousness changed from this time more and more. Those who had come over from Atlantis still possessed a remnant of ancient clairvoyant consciousness, but this continually decreased. At the time of the Atlantean catastrophe there were some even among those who had journeyed towards Asia, Europe, and Africa who had already lost every trace of clairvoyance, and, again, others who still had some remnants of it.

Everywhere under certain conditions there were some who (between sleeping and waking, for example) were able to obtain a clear view into the spiritual worlds. The spiritual being known as Wotan, for instance, was a “personality” well known to the Atlanteans; we might say that all the ancient Atlanteans were more or less in close touch with him, as some men today come in touch with a monarch, but the conscious connection was gradually lost. Among the peoples of Europe, especially the ancient Germans, there were many who in an intermediate condition between sleeping and waking could enter into relationship with Wotan, who actually existed in the spiritual world; but owing to the advance in evolution he was limited and could no longer make himself so generally known as before. There were people in Asia also who knew him, and this knowledge continued on into later times to which even history refers, a time when there was an original natural clairvoyance, and man could speak of the Gods from his own experience.

We must keep before us the fact that man was descending more and more into the material world; and because of this the Gods were less and less able to maintain their connection with him; many were able only to have companionship with certain outstanding beings. Certain of the Gods were unable to descend to ordinary humanity, but could only get in touch with personalities who rose to meet them, who developed themselves up to them. The varied dispositions of men, and the remnants of old clairvoyance, as well as the principle of initiation, mingled in a strange way, and this intermingling was preserved in the consciousness of the Germanic people.

During the Atlantean epoch men knew that during sleep, when outside the physical and etheric bodies, they rose into the kingdom of the Gods, the Gods were known to them, and they knew they would meet them there again. It was felt as a kind of punishment when, after death, man was for a time unable to behold the Gods and to be received into their company; when, after death, he had to pass through a period of probation owing to his having become too much entangled in material existence.

Among those who were in a position to value material life less than non-material life the conviction grew that they were not bound to the material world, but that immediately after death they could enter the kingdom of the spirit, which was well known to them. The opinion was held by the various peoples inhabiting Europe that those men who fought bravely and met death on the field of battle, who valued the honours of war more highly than material honours, were not dependent on material existence. They were convinced that in such a case the hero met with some deity or other immediately after death. Those who did not die on the battlefield, who had not learnt to value spiritual possessions more than material life, were said to have died ignobly, and not to be mature enough to be taken immediately into the realm of the spirit, but would first have to enter a kingdom in which they would have to undergo certain trials.

This idea is expressed in the meeting with the Valkyre, and is connected with an ancient clairvoyant memory. It was thought rightly that the man who met death on the field of battle was taken up by the Valkyre, and it is quite in harmony with such an idea that in its further development it should have been pictured in ancient Europe as symbolic of initiation. Among other peoples other ideas had developed, but in Europe personal bravery and personal excellence were considered to be most valuable.

It was always understood, and rightly so, that as regards initiation man might experience even during life that which normally he only experienced after death, namely, direct communication with the spiritual world. As the warrior experienced his first meeting with the Valkyre upon the battlefield, it was obvious that those who sought initiation had to experience this in physical life. In one part of Europe Siegfried was looked on as the last of the heroes of initiation. This fact is preserved in the legend of Siegfried, which tells how the hero united himself with the Valkyre during life, just as dying warriors did upon the battlefield.

Let us now try to enter into the mentality of those who migrated from the West towards the East. They had risen in a certain way up to the point where they were fitted to enter upon a further development. They had not become ossified, and had within them the germs of a more perfect development, but they had retained a comparatively strong clairvoyant capacity. Among all the people who had gone forth from Atlantis the Europeans were most gifted with clairvoyance; it was less strong among those who peopled Africa. Those who had emigrated earlier into Asia, and who were among the most advanced, came upon a still older people who were in possession of a still older clairvoyance, so that there was much clairvoyance in those parts.

Then there was a certain small colony consisting of the most advanced men of the Atlantean epoch who had settled near the Gobi desert. What kind of people were these, and what do we mean when we say they were the “most advanced?” It means those least able to see into the spiritual world, for advancement consisted in their having proceeded from the spiritual world and having entered into the physical world. They were the people who felt constrained to say: “Formerly we had connection with the spiritual world, but we have it no longer.” This loss filled their hearts with sorrow; they longed for the spiritual world from which they had come and which they valued more than that in which they now dwelt.

Conditions varied among the different European populations. Under certain conditions many could still see into the spiritual worlds. When the Mysteries still existed in Europe, and Initiates—who through occult development could rise in full consciousness to the spiritual world—spoke of those worlds and of the beings dwelling there, or of the varied parts men had to play after death; when the initiates brought all this in mighty pictures before the people by means of myth and legend, they found some who understood them, for some still had vision. The peculiar conditions of life and of environment in ancient Europe caused even uninitiated persons to experience the spiritual world. Though they could not come in contact with the higher Gods they believed in the spiritual worlds and trusted in them. These worlds were real to them, hence they felt their humanity in a quite different way from other peoples. Let us try to enter into the feelings of these ancient Europeans. They said: “I am indeed connected with the Gods.” Through consciousness of this a strong sense of personality developed in them, a special sense of the divine worth of the human personality, and, above all, a strong sense of freedom. We must picture this state of feeling vividly, for it was this consciousness of the personality which the people of Europe took with them when they went south and peopled the Grecian and Italian peninsulas. We can note stragglers from those who were possessed of this feeling, particularly among the ancient Etruscans. Even in their art we can observe this strong sense of freedom, for it had a spiritual foundation. Before the rise of the true Roman kingdom there was an Etruscan population in the Italian peninsula which had a high degree of freedom in its system of government; on one hand it was somewhat hierarchical, and, on the other, free in the highest sense. Each town made provision for its own freedom, and an ancient Etruscan would have felt any kind of confederacy, in our sense of the word, as unbearable. Everything which passed southwards in the peninsula as a sense of freedom, or a feeling for personality, sprang from the causes we have mentioned.

Those other people who had gone the farthest into Asia included a small company from whom the divine spiritual world had withdrawn the most. In its place they had acquired something else, something that had been saved from the world, which had withdrawn into profoundest darkness—this was the ego, or the “I am.” They felt that what was preserved within them as the “I am” was the eternal core of their being, and that it had sprung from the spiritual world; they felt all the forms they had previously seen were like a sacred memory, and that their strength depended upon this firm core which remained within them. As yet they did not perceive the ego in its complete form; this only came later, but those who were the most advanced, who had descended most deeply, developed a certain tendency which they might have expressed as follows: What we have to treasure above all else is the consciousness of our divinity, consciousness of that in which is to be found the deepest memories of our soul. Even if this soul has forgotten the divine beings which once it knew, we can find the way back to them by looking within our own being—by being conscious of our ego. In short, the consciousness of a formless God was now evolved, a God who does not appear in outward form, but who must be sought within man's innermost being. This conception, which is a very old one, was transformed in the course of man's further development into the commandment: Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image or likeness of thy God.

In primeval ages man experienced God by means of an image. Now the image had withdrawn into the invisible world, and man strove with all his strength to bring forth a conception of God from out his own ego. There, where God is formless, man strove to form an idea of Him and to realize His power. This was not immediately possible; during the first post-Atlantean civilization the memory of what had been lost was still too vivid. Man felt in his soul “The door is shut,” and the longing to enter again into the spiritual world was too strong. Hence in the first age of civilization the people were filled with longing for the hidden world of the spirit; they looked with great reverence up to the Initiates and besought them to allow them to become partakers of this lost world. The first great age of post-Atlantean culture was founded under the influence of Initiates by means of colonies. This was the wonderful awe-inspiring pre-Vedic culture, the last remnants of which are to be found in the Vedas; in it the longing for the spiritual world was so great that men strove by artificial means to regain contact with the Spirits and Gods which they had lost. The longing to fly from the physical world into which they had entered was overwhelmingly strong; we find this feeling in the souls of those who were instructed by the Initiates—the Holy Rishis.

We see the feeling developed in them which they might have expressed as follows: “The world of the physical plane into which we have now entered, which we see spread out around us, is merely illusion; it is worthless; it is Maya; but the world lying behind this illusory physical plane is valuable.” Thus a feeling of the worthlessness of the physical plane was developed, a feeling of the need to flee from it in order to attain that which was spiritual. A feeling evolved which was the basis of this ancient civilization, that man must lose his strong sense of personality if he was to be conscious of his divine origin. He strove for complete absorption in divinity, with extinction of his personality; this was of more value to him than life within that personality. We must try to understand the mood of this ancient civilization, we shall then understand this turning away from all that was material, and how, if man desired to seek the divine he had to free himself from the bonds of sense and get away from all illusion, from Maya.

Such was the nature of the first post-Atlantean age; but the mission of the whole epoch is that man should make the surroundings in which he lives more and more his own, that he should master them more and more.

In the Persian, that is, the pre-Zarathustra, civilization we see the first phase of the conquest of the external world. The ancient Persians (we refer here to the prehistoric Persians) had already a different consciousness from that of the ancient Indians; they regarded the physical plane as something real. It no longer appeared strange to them; they said: “We can bring spirit into the physical plane and can cultivate it here.” They paid attention to the physical plane; they did not study it as yet, but they considered it; the ancient Persians still perceived a hostile element in their surroundings, but thought that the enemy could be overcome. The Persian made a friend and companion of the God Ormuzd in order that he might redeem matter. He worked into the physical world gradually; he began to perceive that this is not only Maya, not merely soulless appearance, but a reality which must be taken into account.

In the great migration towards the East there was another group which moved more towards Asia Minor and Africa, where the Chaldean and Egyptian civilizations were founded. Through them a further step forward was made in the conquest of the physical plane. Here the condition of the people was such that they no longer regarded what is of the senses as merely hostile or illusory. When they looked up to the stars they said: “Those stars are not Maya, they are not mere appearances!” They thought much about the stars, and studied how one star approached another and what changes took place in the constellations. They felt the stars were an outward expression of the ruling Gods; they were a script which the Gods had written what they saw was not merely appearance but a revelation of the Gods.

A further advance had been made; sensible matter was now considered as an expression of Divinity; man began to look for wisdom in things of sense. In the Egyptian world man's gaze was turned from the heavens and directed to the earth; geometry was studied so that the earth might be measured. That to which the spirit could attain was thus joined to substance perceived by the senses—an essential advance in evolution. Thus, step by step, evolution progressed.

Now, there was formed within the third age of civilization a small company which separated off in a certain way and absorbed all that could be gained from ancient tradition as well as from recent knowledge. This small company, whose Initiates had preserved the ancient wisdom and the earlier companionship with the Gods, knew how to impart what they had gained as experience from the spiritual world, and they had also absorbed the wisdom of the Chaldeans—the writings of the Gods in space—as well as the wisdom of Egypt, which expressed the union of spirit with that which is physical. This group of people, who, in a certain sense, may be called the “chosen people,” had to make preparation for the greatest period in the world's history; they are the people of the Old Testament, who in their Testament possessed the greatest and most significant document regarding long-past events and also those that were to come. It is not only an error in learning, but a farce, when some historical work is thought even to approach the Old Testament in value; for it portrays in mighty pictures man's descent from divine heights, and shows at the same time how historical experiences are connected with cosmic events. All this is contained in the Old Testament, and, above all, its contents correspond exactly with the events of evolution.

We have now seen how the rudimentary germ of the human ego was prepared step by step in earthly evolution. We have seen that this rudimentary germ would never have been able to evolve if the sun, and afterwards the moon, had not separated from the earth. It was only possible for it to develop through man's horizon with regard to the spiritual world being gradually limited and then closed.

Let us consider how this rudimentary germ developed. What had man gradually learnt during the earth's development? We must first look back to those ancient times when he was as yet unable to see physically, when he lived in the spiritual world; then came the time when the external objects of the physical world appeared to him as if blurred, when he could still see in the spiritual world as well. Who was it prepared man so that in later times, when he was to behold the sun clearly, he should be ready for this change? It was the God we call Jehovah who brought man to full maturity; He who separated Himself from the Elohim in order, from the moon, to prepare for the most important moment in the earth's evolution. While man was still unable to see the outer world Jehovah instilled ego-consciousness into Him. It was He who in the time of the old dim clairvoyant consciousness entered into man at initiation, and it was He who appeared to man in dreams and prepared him slowly to receive the “I“ which he could obtain fully only through the coming of Christ.

Christ has not only come once, but only once in personal form; His last coming was in Jesus Christ. In ancient times He worked also through the Prophets. Christ Himself indicates this in the Gospel of John, where He says that those who did not believe Moses and the Prophets would not believe Him either, for Moses and the Prophets spoke of Him, not indeed as already on earth, but as one whom they foretold. In this sense Christ has a certain story in earthly evolution. If we go back to the ancient Mysteries we find everywhere the story of Christ and His descent. Let us for a few minutes consider the European Mysteries. We find in all of them a certain tragic feature. If one transports oneself into these ancient Mysteries one always finds that the teachers told their pupils: “You may raise yourselves to divine heights, and receive a high degree of initiation, but there is something you cannot yet know fully, something for which you must wait and which we can only indicate: this is the coming of Christ.”

They always spoke of Christ in the northern Mysteries as “He who would come”; they knew Him everywhere, but not as One already on the earth. The Initiates in Asia and Egypt also knew Him as the approaching Christ. “One day,” they said, “He will appear.” They knew also that the olden Mysteries could not lead men to the highest stage of development. This idea has been preserved symbolically, only too much stress must not be laid on such things; they must be accepted generally, partly as truth and partly as allegory, and not be outlined too sharply. Some echo of this tragic feature regarding the ancient Gods and the waiting for the Christ has survived. The glory of the old Gods was to disappear before the glory of Christ.

This is found even in the most recent legends of the Teutonic gods, where something remarkable is ascribed to Siegfried—he was invulnerable and had the strength of an Initiate according to the European Mysteries; he was, however, vulnerable in one spot. He was wounded in this spot, and thus met his death. In what place was he vulnerable? The place on which later the cross was laid on Him for Whom they were looking with such expectation. The place where Siegfried was vulnerable was covered by the cross in the journey to Golgotha. This legend contains a last memory of that tragic feature which passes through all the ancient European Mysteries. But in those other Mysteries into which Moses was initiated, from which the Old Testament has proceeded, and which Moses implanted in his people so far as seemed possible to him, this strange feature in human evolution is often referred to. It is more than a mere picture; there is something which imparts deep reality to it, which we might illustrate as follows. Let us think of a man as regards his astral body, his ego, his etheric and physical bodies; let us think of these four principles as shone upon by the sun.

Through Christ's coming to the earth man has become able to absorb both the physical and spiritual forces of the sun. Previously this was different. Then, during sleep, when at night the astral body and ego were outside the physical body and etheric body, the direct sunlight did not fall upon man, only sunlight that was reflected from the moon. Man absorbed this reflected light, not the direct sunlight. This is exactly the same (in an external, symbolic, yet true form) as in the case of the Christ, Who lived as the spiritual part of the sunlight, and with Jehovah, who reflected the true Christ-light until such time as men were sufficiently mature to receive it direct. Jehovah sent the Christ down to humanity as from a mirror.

Men spoke of Him when they spoke of Jehovah. Hence Jehovah says to Moses: “Say to thy people, I am the ‘I AM.”’ This was the name later applied to the Christ. He would not as yet turn His own countenance to men. Jehovah prepared humanity; he sent them the image of Christ before Christ Himself descended, for man had to learn to comprehend the complete descent of Christ into the physical world with His “I am” in the depths of his own being. Therefore this people, which had been prepared in the truest sense for the coming of Christ, held most firmly to the conception of a formless God. They had to attain to a new conception of God, not merely to remember an old form. This people with its Jehovah-religion became in fact those who prepared for the coming of the Christ.

Now, we must clearly understand that everything that has to be specially striven for in the world must proceed from strong impulses; hence the idea of the power of the formless God spread through all the Old Testament; an entirely abstract God, condensed within the centre of a mere I-principle, stands at the centre of the religion of the Old Testament—an image-less I-God.

How could this God first obtain a form that could be comprehended by a people living on the physical plane which they had to conquer? Through a wise dispensation something remarkable originated in Southern Europe.

Emigrations had taken place from Asia and Africa; these mingled with other streams coming from the North. Those that came from the East brought the firm conviction of the worthlessness of Maya, of the need to change the material kingdom of men into a kingdom of the spirit; these mingled with others who had gained a stronger feeling of personality. Those with the greatest spiritual force, who had remained longest behind in the emigration from West to East, met in Asia Minor and in the Grecian and Italian peninsulas; here the fourth age of civilization was built up, and the conquest of the physical world advanced another stage.

The mission of the third age, the Egypto-Chaldean, had been to perceive and comprehend the profundities of God; from it had to spring a people who were able to seek God in an abstract way, as a Spiritual Being with the least content of anything sensely. Meanwhile in Southern Europe another group was being formed. Certain men had come down from the north with their strong northern consciousness of personality in them; a union was formed between matter and the human soul. The result of this we see and admire in the art of Greece, in the temples of Greece, and in the tragedies of Greece, in which man began to represent his own destiny. In these tragedies he secreted his own spirit in matter, incorporating it with external objects. One might say that we have here a marriage between what is spiritual and what is physical, wherein each has an equal share. In all that the Greeks produced spirit and matter had an equal share, and this was also the case in a certain sense with the Romans; they knew that spirit dwelt in them, that spirit could become personality in them.

It was only at this stage of human evolution that that which had been foretold could assume actual form upon the physical plane. Christ could only descend to the physical plane when man had conquered it. A Christ would not have been possible in the old civilizations, when the physical plane was only seen as Maya, and a longing for the past filled the souls of men. At the time the union occurred which we have seen represented in Greek art man had turned more and more to the physical plane; this was expressed in the strong consciousness of the Roman citizen; it was also the time when the Christ-principle was able to appear in the flesh.

We have to consider all those who worked previously to the coming of Christ as being indeed acquainted with Him, but we must look on them as Prophets who could only foretell; they beheld in the coming of Christ the fulfillment of that for which they themselves had striven.

In the following lectures we shall see how Christianity is mingled with other elements in the era subsequent to the coming of Christ, and how this produced the conditions that now surround us. Today the period has been described when, through the conquest of the physical plane, man made himself sufficiently mature to understand the God-man—the Christ.

The reflection in the fourth epoch of man's experiences with the ancient Gods and their way of the Cross. The Christ-Mystery.

In the last lecture we learnt that man had gradually conquered the physical plane during the post-Atlantean epoch; he had come gradually to understand that the physical world into which he had entered is the expression of the spiritual powers lying behind it. We learnt also that when the Greeks and Romans were the leading peoples in human evolution man had established a kind of balance between his understanding of the physical and spiritual worlds. He had come to terms with the material world; he had learned gradually to understand and to love it.

We must not think that such processes did not have corresponding parallels in the spiritual world. Even if we go further back in human evolution we find, to the same extent as outward conditions alter as regards man's observation and perception of the physical world, conditions alter essentially also as regards other states of consciousness. So far special stress has been laid on the state of consciousness when man is withdrawn from his physical body during sleep. We saw that in the Atlantean epoch he perceived only blurred outlines when awake, but that divine spiritual beings appeared before him when he exercised the dim kind of clairvoyance he then possessed. In order that we may understand the entire human being we must take into account these alternating conditions of consciousness which are connected with what we call death and what lies beyond death; we shall then see that the ordinary life we observe between birth and death has also an essentially different side.

So far we have considered the destiny of man during his life between birth and death from the Atlantean epoch to the age of Greece and Rome; we must now inquire as precisely as possible into his destiny between death and rebirth; for the life of man continues after death. From the moment during the Lemurian epoch when he entered for the first time into earthly incarnation, and life within a physical body first alternated with life outside of it, man has led, to a certain extent, a two-fold life—one upon earth and one in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. Though some people believe that changes only occur in the physical world, and that between death and rebirth everything can be described in a few typical words, this belief is absolutely incorrect.

Destinies change in the spiritual period of human development also. We shall best understand how these changes occur if we glance at the life man leads here in the physical world, and at his relationship to the other kingdoms around him. Man, as at present developed, is by no means a being who exists absolutely by himself; he is related in various ways to all that surrounds him.

Think only how man's consciousness, his self-consciousness, depends upon that which surrounds him. If no other kingdom surrounded us, no mineral, no vegetable, no animal kingdom, if there was no atmosphere, no clouds which reflect the light to us, our ego as it is now would not have been kindled by the outer world. Man, as regards his self-consciousness, is immersed during the day in the world that surrounds him.

Between birth and death he is plunged into a certain environment through having an etheric and physical body. He draws his food from the lower kingdoms of nature, these give him the substances and forces which pass through him. We might say that up to the time of birth he evolves, and then, on entering earthly existence, he comes in contact with the lower kingdoms of nature. It is true he only enters these when he takes on a physical body, and has then to assimilate them as his means of support; in the physical world man is not an absolute being. Only think how he must continually inhale a certain quantity of air; so that he is by no means enclosed within his skin, his being extends into the air. On entering physical existence he enters into a certain relationship with the kingdoms below him; he dips into them; on leaving his body he rises into higher kingdoms, into that of the Angels, Archangels, and Archai, and indeed into still higher kingdoms. Just as through the needs of his physical body he enters into relationship with the lower kingdoms, so after death he enters into relationship with higher kingdoms.

Let us now pass to the epoch when man first began to enter upon his earthly incarnations. This was in the Lemurian epoch, when, though he did enter a physical body, he had very little connection with the physical world. He had as yet the merest trace of sense organs, and had therefore hardly any perception of the outer world. Man actually passed through a condition at the beginning of his incarnations when his connection with the physical world was very slight; because of this he was all the more at home in the worlds of the spirit. This was also the period when, having passed out of his physical body—not only during sleep but also after death—man entered a world full of spiritual light where he perceived spiritual beings; where, to a certain extent, he drew strength from these beings as he now draws it from the physical world; it was a time when he reached out into the kingdoms above him as he now reaches out into the physical world. His being extended into the kingdom of the Angels, Archangels, and even into higher kingdoms which interpenetrate his own. His consciousness was dim, and only at death did he gain true consciousness. He only drew into the physical world gradually, nourishing himself spiritually with the vision of divine spiritual beings.

Man only gained his ego in the course of time as he passed through his various incarnations; he did not have it at an early stage. Other beings of whom we said that they had passed through their human stage at an earlier period already possessed egos, and man learnt to know the ego through beholding them, but he only came to know it truly in the period between death and rebirth.

When a man died at that time he had the feeling that only when he could see divine spiritual beings did he really begin to live; it was actually the case that the farther he left death behind him the higher the stage to which he attained. He grew even more and more conscious until the time came (between death and rebirth) when the mighty Being appeared who had first given true content to his life, regarding whom he felt: “From Him I have come; I belong to Him.” This was the same Being, seen in a primeval period, who later incarnated on earth as the Christ. It was not possible in the Lemurian period for man to behold Christ in a physical body, but he did behold Him midway between death and rebirth; he thus became a part of Him and knew Him in the spiritual world.

As time passed on man grew ever more conscious in the physical world. Full consciousness came first in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, but it came gradually. The more conscious man became in the physical world and the more the rudiments of the ego had entered into him, the less did his consciousness reach up into higher worlds after death. At first he was not able to expand to the vision of the Christ; he only saw Angels and Archangels, and later, in the Atlantean epoch, even this was denied him; it was only granted to those who were most advanced. Normally, man only perceived Angels through his ancient dim clairvoyance; these were Angels also in the Christian sense, and are those who were referred to by the Greeks as Zeus, and by the Germanic people as Wotan, and were regarded as deities.

We have already said that in the Atlantean epoch, during sleep, man was the companion of the Gods; this was especially the case in the period between death and rebirth. These Gods were Angels, or, at the highest, Archangels, and only when man had prepared himself in this life by what he felt to be good deeds, was the vision of Christ, under certain circumstances, vouchsafed to him, through these subsidiary beings. Man still knew the Christ, however, through the deeds and the nature of the Angels and Archangels. Just as light is still light though tinted by passing through coloured glass, so the Christ-form was seen, but with waning strength. It was none other than the Sun-Spirit who thus appeared with waning strength, because man was attracted more and more to the physical side of existence and had learnt to love it.

So humanity developed through the different ages of post-Atlantean civilization, and in each of them appeared the remembrance of earlier epochs; these were actually experienced. In the Egyptian age we find a memory of the Lemurian epoch.

How did Initiates at that time represent the life after death? It was their endeavour that men should experience after death—if only as a faint echo—what men experienced in olden times when they raised themselves up to that in which they felt as if hidden, to that supreme Being—the great Sun-Spirit. This is the meaning of what the ancient Egyptians called the judgment of the Dead; when the dead person appeared before his judge, who weighed his deeds. If these were found to be worthy he might, through the merit acquired in the physical world, become a part of the Being looked up to as God of Light, the Sun-God, This was the same being who was called Osiris. It was the journey to Osiris—the union with him that was imparted to the dead as a recollection of an actual previous evolutional condition. This is how we must understand what is contained in the Book of the Dead, that most remarkable record of the Egyptian people.

From the nature of the conditions laid down in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, the full esotericism of such things can obviously not be given out, but the fact remains that these things might be gone into very much more deeply. According to the ancient Egyptian idea, if a soul according to its deeds was found worthy of this vision it might be united with Osiris; indeed it was actually addressed as an Osiris, because united with Him. The words are: “Osiris was cleansed in the pool to the south of the field of Hotop and north of the field of locusts, where the Gods of growth wash in the fourth hour of the night and in the eighth of the day, with the image of the heart of the God passing from the night to the day.” It is impossible to express the full depth of meaning of this formula but it is important to understand the expression, “from the night to the day.” Previously it had been night; the soul is led over to a day—to a spiritual day—when it will be united with Osiris, when it may itself become an Osiris. The soul in this way actually experienced its destiny in another world, the world lying between death and birth.

Consciousness between death and rebirth darkened more and more, though it was never lost completely; it was never extinguished, though it grew dim. The more affection man developed for the sensible physical world, the more he had to content himself with the vision of lower beings, and the less communion could higher beings have with him. All the beings who were his good companions during the Atlantean epoch, when he was still clairvoyant, disappeared, especially in the period between death and rebirth, and gradually the connecting link between man and those ancient Gods was lost.

We know that remnants of ancient clairvoyance endured up to the later ages of European culture; that there were some people who in certain states of consciousness could still rise to the vision of the Gods. Such people also enjoyed a more vivid communion with the Gods after death; they had a more intimate life with them. Such a communion was good not only for men but also for the Gods, for man takes up with him the love he has won in the physical world; the Gods received back from him as a sacrificial offering that which as love he had acquired in the physical world. Men, however, grew ever less and less fitted for this communion with the Gods, because their love for the physical world continually increased. The souls of those dwelling in the districts from which the Germanic peoples have since sprung gradually participated less and less in the vision of the Gods, so that they had little fellowship with them between death and rebirth. Through this an idea developed that the Gods were losing their connection with the earth which they had themselves created, and losing also their rulership over it. This feeling gave rise to the conception of the “Twilight of the Gods.”

This is the actual foundation of the drama. It was felt that the Gods had to withdraw from the world they had themselves created. The Gods who, even as late as the Atlantean epoch, had descended into the bodies of the most advanced human beings and had taught them important secrets in the Mysteries were obliged gradually to withdraw, and they could only come in touch with the physical world by using the more advanced human beings as their instruments or vehicles. This actually happened in the Atlantean epoch; and those who were initiated into the ancient Druidic Mysteries knew, for example, that an ancient Atlantean individuality known as Sig appeared for long after the Atlantean catastrophe in many different ways in European bodies.

All such names as Siegfried and Sigurd preserve exoterically the remembrance of the repeated appearances of this individuality who was finally only perceptible to those who had been initiated into the Mysteries. He united himself with high Initiates, and it became more and more necessary, the nearer we approach our age, for him to seek out those who had already gone through many, incarnations in which they had purified themselves. Now, in order that we may understand our age, it is necessary to touch the fringe of a great mystery which throws light on much that had taken place in our time.

Let us turn once more to the middle of the Atlantean epoch, when the physical world was first disclosed to man. A sort of parting of the ways then took place for the Gods—those who had been the ancient companions of men in higher realms. Coming from spiritual heights man had plunged deeper and deeper into the physical world. He had already passed through three great epochs; the third being the Lemurian, the fourth the Atlantean and this will be followed by three others. We are living at present in the fifth epoch. The Lemurian epoch came to an end through great fire catastrophes; the Atlantean through mighty catastrophes of ice and water; our epoch will come to an end through other forces, through a mighty increase of egoism in human nature, and, on account of this, through the war of all against all.

Only those who turn to a spiritual life will survive the catastrophe, which, in this case, means the war of all against all, just as only a small group of people escaped from the catastrophes of Lemuria and Atlantis. The war of all against all will be still more terrible for those involved in it than were those of fire and water, however terrible we may picture them to have been. Those who are now turning towards a spiritual life should feel it their duty to do all that is possible to rescue the good seed of our age and carry it over into the sixth age, which will follow the present one. This age is made up of great subdivisions; the ancient Indian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Greco-Latin, and the present one, which will be followed by the sixth and the seventh right on to the time of the war of all against all.

The present position of evolution is that we have passed the middle of the Earth age. Had human beings turned towards the spiritualizing of themselves before they had completely entered the physical world, the conquest of the physical plane, of which we spoke in the last lecture, would never have taken place. Man has, however, taken a path that leads him deeper and deeper into physical evolution; he has gone beyond the point that would have represented the deepest stage if at that time he had turned to self-spiritualization.

This point (which lies in the middle of the Atlantean epoch) was an important parting of the ways for certain spiritual beings. They had then to decide whether they would sink into a kind of abyss from which they would rise again later all the stronger (for through their fall they would have developed greater powers) or whether they would take the direct way. Certain spiritual beings, those who had formerly been the companions of man, took the direct way; they decided never again to enter human bodies, but to remain in the realms of the spirit. The subsequent development of humanity passed them by with hardly a trace.

There were, on the other hand, other divine beings, a number of whom have been preserved in the memory of the people of Europe and elsewhere under such names as Zeus, Wotan, etc.; they decided, for the salvation of humanity, to descend again and again into human bodies, that they might work for humanity. It was not possible for all of them to descend to the same extent, for through man having entered so deeply into the physical world human bodies became ever less suitable instruments for divine beings.

Only those men who had purified their bodies in a certain way, who throughout the course of many incarnations had developed such noble etheric and physical bodies that they had completely banished from their souls certain connections with the physical world, who, through their whole disposition, had lived less in that which was of the earth than in that which was not of the earth—only such men were still able to receive into themselves the souls of high Spiritual Beings as they would receive their own soul. So it happened that those into whom Spiritual Beings had entered could not, as it were, descend far enough into physical existence; they therefore held a very unique position in the world.

Let us picture some such being, one who for many incarnations had developed the forces of his body, had won an inner victory over it so that he lived more in the spiritual than in the physical world, and was, on this account, fitted to be the vehicle of a higher being. Was it possible for such a being to be fully understood by those who had descended completely into physical existence, who had developed a love for the physical world and strove to work on this physical plane? Would he not be better understood by those who had preserved the character of an earlier epoch, who were stragglers from an earlier epoch? He could, in truth, be much better understood by these stragglers from the Atlantean epoch.

The Mongolian peoples have not descended so deeply, nor have they entangled themselves so much in the physical plane nor done so much towards its conquest as the people of Europe. We see that external physical civilization is accomplished by western nations rather than by the stragglers from Atlantean civilization who had remained stationary, and were therefore not at home in a world of post-Atlantean development, because they had retained certain qualities and had then degenerated.

It is often pointed out that the Japanese are going through a significant development today through the qualities of their own character. This is an illusion. They are not developing through the force of their own qualities. In the last war against Russia they conquered with the help of battleships and cannon invented by Europeans; they made use of a foreign civilization. It is only progressive development when a people develops from out its own being. It is on this that development depends.

Spiritual individualities who were still the companions of men in the Atlantean epoch could be understood better by nations who had in a certain way remained stationary, and who represented, in a later epoch, conditions beyond which the people of Europe had developed because of their individual self-consciousness and feeling for freedom. Hence the teaching of these spiritual individualities had to be directed to such people, and we see here the consummation of a great mystery.

We see beings who, when the people of Europe were at an earlier stage of evolution, were fully understood, incarnating and appearing later as teachers in the schools of initiation, and on this account being honoured as Gods. We see Wotan, who had previously dwelt as an Initiate in a human body and taught in the Mysteries, being able, because he had not descended so deeply, to incarnate in a nation which, in a certain way, was backward, and on this account had preserved a feeling for the nothingness of the physical plane, of its unworthiness as an expression of the Deity, who looked on it as a place of sorrow and pain, and who held that the only real bliss was in leaving it. This individuality, known as Wotan and who had taught in the Mysteries of the Germanic peoples, is the same who appeared later as the Buddha, and with the same mission. (It is possible to touch on such secrets as we are speaking of in the privacy of an Anthroposophical Lodge.) Buddha, who mediated between our world and the higher worlds, is the same individuality who passed over Europe and is remembered there under the name of Wotan.

We see from this how those people who had preserved certain tendencies and connections with earlier conditions were provided for. Knowing this, the historical fact of the good reception Buddhism received among the Mongolian peoples is comprehensible, and entirely in accordance with the wise guidance of man.

As humanity had to conquer the physical plane more and more, it was no longer possible, in a later age, for such spiritual beings to incarnate directly in a physical body. It required a mightier Spiritual Being to do this, One who had been foretold by all the earlier teachers. Even the ancient Egyptians when they spoke of Osiris recalled their connection with the ancient Spirit of the Sun, and said: “The kingdom of Osiris will be established again upon earth.”

Before this could come to pass a Being like the Christ was needed. In that He had withdrawn more and more from the kingdom of the dead (and we do really see Him disappearing from the other side of life), He had drawn ever nearer to this side, until in the fourth age of civilization He incarnated in a human body visible to all, but in a body that had been very specially prepared.

The Christ-principle could not assume a human body in the same way as those did who descended entirely to the physical plane. Even such a Being as Jesus of Nazareth, Who had gone through many incarnations and attained to a high degree of initiation, was not capable at birth of being the vehicle of the Christ-individuality. Only after preparing himself through a life of thirty years had he succeeded in so far cleaning and purifying the outward physical sheaths—the physical, etheric, and astral bodies—that the Christ individuality could make use of them. In the thirtieth year of his life the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth left the outer vehicles which he had purified.

This took place at the baptism by John in Jordan. A change of individuality took place at this time, when the Christ took possession, not of an ordinary human body, but of a purified body. Then followed three years, during which Christ walked the earth in the body of Jesus, the years described in the Gospels between the baptism and the Mystery of Golgotha. We have here an Individuality Who had not appeared as in the ordinary course of events, where a form is provided at birth in accordance with the experience of many incarnations; but because this Individuality had entered into a body which for thirty years had been entangled in the physical world, and had received a mighty impulse through the Christ, something of profound importance took place which esotericists can read in the Gospels when they really know how to read them. There it stands; but such things are veiled.

At the baptism in Jordan, when the significant symbol of the dove appeared above the head of Jesus, he was not merely inspired but directly intuited by the Christ. On that occasion something shot through the entire body of Jesus of Nazareth, even into those parts which, at the present stage of human development, are most withdrawn from the influence of man—the very bones. I am now about to say something which to the materialistic consciousness of the present day seems nonsense; but that is of no matter. At the moment when the body of Jesus of Nazareth was permeated and fired by the Individuality of Christ—the great Sun-Spirit—the effect reached even into the bones.

If you burn a bone the cartilaginous part is consumed and the bone ash is left. The mineral substance of the bone and the cartilage are held together by a power which is opposed to fire, but also, therefore, associated with it. This power is at present entirely beyond the control of man's will, but it was under the control of Him Who was later to pass through the Event of Golgotha. Man can at present move his hand, but has no power to affect the chemical forces of his bones; he has become solid through them. The body of Jesus of Nazareth, through its having been intuited by the Christ, is the only body on earth that has ever acquired control over the force that holds cartilage and bone-ash together.

Through this control over the bones a force entered the world which is positively able to conquer death; for the bones are guilty of the death of man. Man has become entangled in the mineral part of the earth through being so constructed that he has incorporated into himself solid bony substance. Death came to him because of this, and it is not without cause that death is represented by a skeleton—the symbol is fully justified. The Christ-Impulse is the living force that is able to again transform the bones that is, to lead men gradually towards that which is spiritual; and this will come to pass in future evolution. This is why no external force was permitted to interfere with the bony structure of Jesus Christ: no bone of Him was to be broken. The others who were crucified with Him had their bones broken, but in Him the words of the prophet had to be fulfilled: “No bone of Him shall be broken!” This was in order that what had been imparted as a mighty central impulse to the earth should not be spoilt by any outside influence.

In this way the mighty Sun-Spirit worked at that time in the mystery which took place at the baptism in Jordan. It was the same Sun-Spirit who through His withdrawal from the earth had made it possible for man to enter physical matter, by which ossification took place, and Who continues to work on him so that he may perceive the impulse by which he can again uplift or spiritualize this tendency towards ossification.

Risky as it may be to speak of such matters, it is the mission of the Anthroposophical movement to declare those things that have always been known, taught, and seen within the Mysteries. Only because this mystery had been accomplished, and because of this alone, did another mystery become possible.

We know that the several parts of the human body correspond to the principles of man. The physical body corresponds to itself; the glandular system to the etheric body; the nervous system to the astral body; and the circulatory system (that of the blood) to the ego. The ego entered physically into man through his being endowed more and more with blood, thus becoming ever more capable of devoting himself to the material world.

A time came when the surplus blood had to be sacrificed. Horrible as it may sound to the chemist, it is nevertheless true that the superabundant ego, that which would have brought humanity to the war of all against all through excessive egoism, flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha. At the moment when the wounds of the Redeemer bled there was implanted within humanity the seed of the power by which it might raise itself again out of the state into which it had sunk so deeply.

If man had taken the upward turn in the middle of the Atlantean epoch he would never have attained to complete independence. He had to conquer the physical plane, but then on this plane the impulse by which he could rise again had to be all the stronger; and this impulse was given by the Christ. Because the Christ was stronger He could not only lead mankind out of the depths, but could do something else, something of very great importance! A part of the world is to be conquered by man, a part that will be united with the spiritual world that will be led back to the spiritual world.

It was shown in the last lecture that during the Greco-Latin age man had progressed so far in the conquest of the physical world, had become so deeply entangled in it, that he had to have a God in human form before he could recognize Him, for he could no longer penetrate to the spiritual world and perceive Him there. Meanwhile conditions on the other side of life—between death and rebirth—had also changed. Through man having descended so much further into the physical plane, and having developed so great a love for it, and derived so much pleasure from it, what was on the other side of life became ever less perceptible to him. He retained a considerable remembrance of this world when he lived on the other side between death and rebirth, and much of this has been preserved in legend. When we read in a book of Greek origin that the hero says: “It is better to be a beggar in the physical world than a king in the land of the shades,” it exactly expresses the feeling of that period. Because man had conquered so much of the physical plane he longed to come back to it, for at that time he could not take much over with him. Only through Christ having come to earth, and through man having already experienced Him in a preparatory way in the time of the Old Testament; only because man had received the Christ into his thoughts during life, could he take over with him that which brought light again to him on the other side. What he took with him made the other side clear and bright and restored the Christ to him with even greater splendour than in this world. Hence we see how consciousness on the other side became darkened more and more as the time approached which we described yesterday; and how it then grew clearer through man learning to know the Christ here. For what man learns of Him in this world is not lost in the period between death and rebirth; he takes his knowledge with him; and this is what the expression “To die in Christ” means.

From what has been said you will see that throughout evolution the life not only of the living changes, but also that of the dead. Because the dead are nourished on what they have learnt here concerning the Christ, because they take the fruits of this with them to the life between death and rebirth, returning here again in ever recurring incarnations, they will appear also in ever mightier, more Christ-filled bodies, and will make the earth more and more into an expression of what Christ can be to a transformed world when in the future He leads the earth to higher and ever higher conditions.

Thus we see how life, both on this side and on the other, cooperates in maturing the earth for what is to come; when the earth through being filled with the Spirit of Christ will be united once again with the sun, and will thereby rise a stage higher in the cosmos.

The Christ Event—the coming of Christ—is therefore not only a fact of great importance to man, but is of infinite importance also to the evolution of the whole of the cosmos.

The reversing of Egyptian remembrance into material forms by way of Arabism. The harmonizing of Egyptian remembrance. The Christian impulse of power in Rosicrucianism.

In the previous lectures wide reaches, both of human evolution and also of world evolution, were brought before our souls. We saw how mysterious connections in the evolution of the world are reflected in the civilizations of the different nations belonging to the post-Atlantean period. We saw how the first epoch of earthly development is reflected in the civilization of ancient India; the second, during which the separation of the sun from the earth took place, is reflected in the Persian civilization; and we have endeavoured, as far as time permitted, to sketch the various events of the Lemurian epoch—the third in the course of the earth's development—in which man received the foundations of his ego, which is reflected in the civilization of Egypt. It was pointed out that the initiation wisdom of ancient Egypt was a kind of remembrance of this, which was the first period of earthly evolution in which man participated. Then, coming to the fourth age, that in which the true union between body and spirit is so beautifully presented in the art of Greece, we showed it to be a reflection of what man experienced with the ancient gods, the beings we have described as Angels. Nothing remained that could be reflected in our age—the fifth—the age now running its course. Secret connections do, however, exist between the different periods of post Atlantean civilization; these we have already touched on in the first of these lectures.

You may recall how it was stated that the confinement of the people of the present day to their own immediate surroundings, that is, to the materialistic belief that reality is only to be found between life and death, can be traced to the circumstance of the Egyptians having bestowed so much care on the preservation of the bodies of the dead. They tried at that time to preserve the physical form of man, and this has not been without an effect on souls after death. When the bodily form is thus preserved the soul after death is still connected in a certain way with the form it bore during life. Thought-forms are called up in the soul, these cling to the sensible form, and when the person incarnates again and again and the soul enters into new bodies these thought-forms endure.

All that the human soul experienced when it looked down from spiritual heights upon its corpse is firmly rooted within it, hence it has not been able to unlearn this, nor to turn away from the vision which bound it to the flesh. The result has been that countless souls who were incorporated in ancient Egypt are born again with the fruits of this vision, and can only believe in the reality of the physical body. This was firmly implanted in souls at that time. Things that take place in one age of culture are by no means unconnected with the ages that follow.

Suppose that we represent here the seven consecutive cultural periods of post-Atlantean civilization by a line. The fourth age, which is exactly in the middle, occupies an exceptional position.

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We have only to consider this age exoterically to see that in it the most wonderful physical things have been produced, things by which man has conquered the physical world in a unique and harmonious way. Looking back to the Egyptian pyramids we observe a type of geometric form which demonstrates certain things symbolically. The close union of spirit—the formative human spirit—and the physical form had not yet been completed. We see this with special clearness in the Sphinx, the origin of which is to be traced to a remembrance of the Atlantean etheric human form. In its physical form the Sphinx gives us no direct conviction of this union, although it is a great human conception; in it we see the thought embodied that man is still animal-like below and only attains to what is human in the etheric head.

What confronts us on the physical plane is ennobled in the fourth age in the forms of Greek plastic art; and the moral life, the destiny of man, we find depicted in the Greek tragedies. In them we see the inner life of the spirit played out upon the physical plane in a very wonderful way; we see the meaning of earthly evolution in so far as the gods are connected with it.

So long as the earth was a part of the sun, high Sun-Spirits were united with the human race. By the end of the Atlantean epoch these exalted Beings had gradually faded, step by step, along with the sun, from the consciousness of man. Human consciousness was no longer capable of reaching up after death to the high realms where vision of the Sun-Spirits was possible. Assuming that we are at the standpoint of these Beings (which we can be in spirit), we can picture them saying: We were once united with humanity but had to withdraw from them for a time. The divine world had to disappear from human consciousness so as to re-appear in a newer, higher form through the Christ-Impulse.

A man who belonged to Grecian civilization was incapable as yet of understanding what was to come to earth through the Christ; but an Initiate, one who, as we have seen, knew the Christ aforetime, could say: That spiritual form which was preserved in men's minds as Osiris had to disappear for a time from the sight of man, the horizon of the Gods had to be darkened, but within us dwells the sure consciousness that the glory of God will appear again on earth. This certainty was the result of the cosmic consciousness which men possessed and the consciousness of the withdrawal of the glory of God and of its return is reflected in Greek tragedy.

We see man here represented as the image of the Gods, we see how he lives, strives, and has a tragic end. At the same time the tragedy holds within it the idea that man will yet conquer through his spiritual power. The drama was intended as a presentation of living and dying humanity, and at the same time it reflected man's whole relationship to the universe. In every realm of Greek culture we see this union between things of the spirit and things of the senses. It was a unique age in post-Atlantean civilization.

It is remarkable how certain phenomena of the third age are connected as by underground channels with our own, the fifth age. Certain things which were sown as seed during the Egyptian age are re-appearing in our own; others which were sown as seed during the Persian age will appear in the sixth; and things belonging to the first epoch will return in the seventh. Everything has a deep and law-filled connection, the past pointing always to the future. This connection will best be realized if we explain it by referring to the two extremes, those things connecting the first and the seventh age. Let us turn back to the first age and consider, not what history tells us, but what really existed in ancient pre-Vedic times.

Everything that appeared later had been first prepared for; this was especially the case with the division of mankind into castes. Europeans may feel strong objections to the caste system, but it was justified in the civilization of that time, and is profoundly connected with human karma. The souls coming over from Atlantis were really of very different values, and in some respects it was suitable for these souls, of whom some were at a more advanced stage than others, to be divided in accordance with the karma they had previously stored up for themselves. In that far off age humanity was not left to itself as it is now, but was really led and guided in its development in a much higher way than is generally supposed. At that time highly advanced individuals, whom we call the Rishis, understood the value of souls, and the difference there is between the various categories of souls. At the bottom of the division into castes lies a well-founded cosmic law. Though to a later age this may seem harsh, in that far-off time, when the guidance of humanity was spiritual, the caste principle was entirely suited to human nature.

It is true that in the normal evolution of man those who lived over into a new age with a particular karma came also into a particular caste, and it is also true that a man could only rise above any special caste if he underwent a process of initiation. Only when he attained a stage where he was able to strip off that which was the cause of his karma, only when he lived in Yoga, could the difference in caste, under certain circumstances, be overcome. Let us keep in mind the Anthroposophical principle which lays down that we must put aside all criticism of the facts of evolution and strive only to understand them. However had the impression this division into castes makes on us at the present time, there was every justification for it, and it has to be taken in connection with a far-reaching and just arrangement regarding the human race.

When a person speaks of races today he speaks of something that is no longer quite correct; even in Theosophical handbooks great mistakes are made on this subject. In them it is said that our evolution runs its course in Rounds, that in each Round there are Globes, and in each Globe, Races which develop one after the other—so that we have races in each epoch of the earth's evolution.

But this is not the case. Even in regard to present humanity there is no justification for speaking of a mere development of races. In the true sense of the word we can only speak of race development during the Atlantean epoch. People were so different in external physiognomy throughout the seven periods that one might speak rather of different forms than races. While it is true that the races have arisen through this, it is [in]correct to speak of races in the far back Lemurian epoch; and in our own epoch the idea of race will gradually disappear along with all the differences that are a relic of earlier times. We still speak of races, but all that remains of these today are relics of differences that existed in Atlantean times, and the idea of race has now lost its original meaning. What new idea is to arise in place of the present idea of race?

Humanity will be differentiated in the future even more than in the past; it will be divided into categories, but not in an arbitrary way; from their own spiritual inner capacities men will come to know that they must work together for the whole body corporate.

There will be categories and classes however fiercely class-war may rage today, among those who do not develop egoism but accept the spiritual life and evolve toward what is good a time will come when men will organize themselves voluntarily. They will say: One must do this, the other must do that. Division of work even to the smallest detail will take place; work will be so organized that a holder of this or that position will not find it necessary to impose his authority on others. All authority will be voluntarily recognized, so that in a small portion of humanity we shall again have divisions in the seventh age, which will recall the principle of castes, but in such a way that no one will feel forced into any caste, but each will say: I must undertake a part of the work of humanity, and leave another part to another—both will be equally recognized.

Humanity will be divided according to differences in intellect and morals; on this basis a spiritualized caste system will again appear. Led, as it were, through a secret channel, the seventh age will repeat that which arose prophetically in the first. The third, the Egyptian age, is connected in the same way with our own. Little as it may appear to a superficial view, all that was laid down during the Egyptian age re-appears in the present one. Most of the people living on the earth today were incarnated formerly in Egyptian bodies and experienced an Egyptian environment; having lived through other intermediate incarnations, they are now again on earth, and, in accordance with the laws we have indicated, they unconsciously remember what they experienced in Egypt.

All this is re-appearing now in a mysterious way, and if you are willing to recognize such secret connection of the great laws of the universe working from one civilization to another, you must make yourselves acquainted with the truth, not with all those legendary and fantastic ideas which are given out concerning the facts of human evolution.

People think too superficially about the spiritual progress of humanity. For example, someone remarks about Copernicus that a man with such ideas as his was possible, because in the age in which he lived a change in thought had arisen regarding the solar system. Anyone holding such an opinion has never studied, even exoterically, how Copernicus arrived at his ideas concerning the relationship of the heavenly bodies. One who has done this, and who more especially has followed the grand ideas of Kepler, knows differently, and he will be strengthened even more in these ideas by what occultism has to say about it.

Let us consider this so that we may see the matter clearly, and try to enter into the soul of Copernicus. This soul had lived in the age of ancient Egypt, and had then occupied an important position in the cult of Osiris; it knew that Osiris was held to be the same as the high Sun-Being.

The sun, in a spiritual sense, was at the centre of Egyptian thought and feeling; I do not mean the outwardly visible sun; it was regarded only as the bodily expression of the spiritual sun. Just as the eye is the expression for the power of sight, so to the Egyptian the Sun was the eye of Osiris, the embodiment of the Spirit of the Sun. All this had been experienced at one time by the soul of Copernicus, and it was the unconscious memory of it that impelled him to renew, in a form possible to a materialistic age, this ancient idea of Osiris, which at that time had been entirely spiritual. When humanity had sunk more deeply within the physical plane, this idea confronts us again in its materialistic form, as the Copernican theory.

The Egyptians possessed the spiritual conception and it was the world-karma of Copernicus to retain a memory of such conceptions, and this conjured forth that “combination of bearings” that led to his theory of the solar system. The case was similar with Kepler, who, in his three laws, presented the movement of the planets round the sun in a much more comprehensive way; however abstract they may appear to us, they were the result of a most profound conception. A striking fact in connection with this highly gifted being is contained in a passage written by himself and which fills us with awe when we read it. Kepler writes: “I have thought deeply upon the Solar System. It has revealed to me its secrets; I will carry over the sacred ceremonial vessels of the Egyptians into the modern world.”

Thoughts implanted in the souls of the ancient Egyptians meet us again, and our modern truths are the re-born myths of Egypt. Were it desired, we could follow this up in many details; we could follow it up to the very beginnings of humanity. Let us think once more of the Sphinx, that wondrous, enigmatic form which later became the Sphinx of Oedipus, who put its well-known riddle to man. We have learnt already that the Sphinx is built up from that human form which on the physical plane still resembled that of animals, although the etheric part had already assumed human form. In the Egyptian age man could only see the Sphinx in an etheric form after he had passed through certain stages of initiation. Then it appeared to him. But the important thing is that when a man had true clairvoyant perception it did not appear to him merely as a lump of wood does, but certain feelings were necessarily associated with the vision.

Under certain circumstances a callous person may pass by a highly important work of art and remain unmoved by it; clairvoyant consciousness is not like this; when really developed the fitting emotion is already aroused. The Greek legend of the Sphinx expresses the right feeling, experienced by the clairvoyant during the ancient Egyptian period and also in the Grecian Mysteries, when he had progressed so far that the Sphinx appeared to him. What was it that then appeared before his eyes? He beheld something incomplete something that was in course of development. The form he saw was in a certain way related to that of animals, and in the etheric head we saw what was to work within the physical form in order to shape it more like man. What man was to become, what his task was in evolution, this was the question that rose vividly before him when he saw the Sphinx—a question full of longing, of expectation, and of future development.

The Greeks say that all investigation and philosophy have originated from longing; this is also a saying of clairvoyants. A form appears to man which he can only perceive with his astral consciousness; it worries him, it propounds a riddle, the riddle of man's future. Further, this etheric form, which was present in the Atlantean epoch and lived on as a memory into the Egyptian age, is embodied more and more in man, and re-appears on the other side in the nature of man. It reappears in all the religious doubts, in the impotence of our age of civilization when faced with the question: What is man? In all unanswered questions, in all statements that revolve round “Ignorabimus,” we have to see the Sphinx. In ages that were still spiritual man could rise to heights where the Sphinx was actually before him—today it dwells within him in countless unanswered questions.

It is therefore very difficult for man at the present time to arrive at conviction with regard to the spiritual world. The Sphinx, which formerly was outside him, is now in his inner being, for a Being has appeared in the central epoch of post-Atlantean evolution Who has cast the Sphinx into the abyss—into the individual inner being of every man.

When the Greco-Latin age, with its after-effects, had continued into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we come to the fifth post-Atlantean age. Up to the present new doubts have arisen more and more in place of the old certainty. We meet with such things more and more, and if desired we could discover many more instances of Egyptian ideas, transformed into their materialistic counterpart in the new evolution. We might ask what has really happened in the present age, for this is no ordinary passing over of ideas; things are not met with directly, but they are as if modified. Everything is presented in a more materialistic form; even man's connection with animal nature re-appears, but changed into a materialistic conception. The fact that man knew in earlier times that he could not shape his body otherwise than in the semblance of animals, and that on this account in his Egyptian remembrances he pictured even his gods in animal forms, confronts us today in the generally held materialistic opinion that man has descended from animals. Darwinism is nothing but an heirloom of ancient Egypt in a materialistic form.

From this we see that the path of evolution has by no means been a straightforward one, but that something like a division has taken place, one branch becoming more materialistic and one more spiritual. That which had formerly progressed in one line now split into two lines of development, namely, science and belief.

Going back into earlier times, to the Egyptian, Persian, and ancient Indian civilizations, one does not find a science apart from faith. What was known regarding the spiritual origin of the world passed in a direct line to knowledge of particular things; men were able to rise from knowledge of the material world to the most exalted heights; there was no contradiction between knowledge and faith. An ancient Indian sage or a Chaldean priest would not have understood this difference; even the Egyptians knew no difference between what was simply a matter of belief or a fact of knowledge. This difference became apparent when man had sunk more deeply into matter, and had gained more material culture; but in order to gain this another organization was necessary.

Let us suppose that this descent of man into matter had not taken place; what would have happened? We considered a like descent in the last lecture, but it was of a different nature; this is a new descent in another realm, by which something like an independent science entered alongside the comprehension of what was spiritual. This occurred first in Greece. Up till then opposition between science and religion did not exist; and would have had no meaning to a priest of Egypt. Take, for instance, what Pythagoras learnt from the Egyptians, the teaching regarding numbers. This was not merely abstract mathematics to him; it gave him the musical secrets of the world in the harmony of numbers. Mathematics, which is only something abstract to the man of the present day, was to him a sacred wisdom with a religious foundation.

Man had, however, to sink more and more within the material, physical plane, and it can be seen how the spiritual wisdom of Egypt reappears—but transformed into a materialistic, mythical conception of the universe. In the future, the theories of today will be held to have had only temporal value, just as ancient theories have only a temporal value to the man of today. Perhaps men will then be so sensible that they will not fall into the mistake of some of our contemporaries who say: “Until the nineteenth century man was absolutely stupid as regards science; it was only then he became sensible all that was taught previously about anatomy was nonsense, only the last century has produced what is true.” In the future men will be wiser, and will not give tit for tat; they will not reject our myths of anatomy, philosophy, and Darwinism so disdainfully as present-day man rejects ancient truths. For it is the case that things which today are regarded as firmly established are but transitory forms of truth.

The Copernican system is but a transitory form, it has been brought about through the plunge into materialism, and will be replaced by something different. The forms of truth continually change. In order that all connection with what is spiritual should not be lost, an even stronger spiritual impulse had to enter human evolution. This was described yesterday as the Christ-Impulse. For a time mankind had to be left to itself, as it were, as regards scientific progress, and the religious side had to develop separately; it had to be saved from the progressive onslaught of science.

Thus we see how science, which devoted itself to material things, was separated for a while from things spiritual, which now followed a special course and the two movements—belief in what was spiritual, and the knowledge of external things—proceeded side by side. We even see in one particular period of development in the Middle Ages, a period immediately preceding our own, that science and belief consciously oppose each other, but still seek union.

Consider the Scholastics. They said: Faith was given to man by Christ, this we may not deny; it was a direct gift; and all the science which has been produced since the division took place, can only serve to prove this gift. We see in scholasticism the tendency to employ all science to prove revealed truth. At its prime it said: Men can gaze upwards to the blessedness of faith and to a certain degree human science can enter into it, but to do this men must devote themselves to it.

In the course of time all relationship between science and belief was, however, lost, and there was no longer any hope that they could advance side by side. The extremity of this divergence is found in the philosophy of Kant, where science and belief are completely sundered. In it, on the one hand, the categorical imperative is put forward with its practical postulates of reason; on the other hand, purely theoretical reason which has lost all connection with spiritual truths and declares that from the standpoint of science these cannot be found.

Another powerful impulse was, however, already making itself felt, which also represented a memory of ancient Egyptian thought. Minds appeared that were seeking a union between science and belief, minds that were endeavouring, through entering profoundly into science, to recognize the things of God with such certainty and clarity that they would be accessible to scientific thought. Goethe is typical of such a thinker and of such a point of view. To him religion, art, and science were one; he felt the works of Greek art to be connected with religion, as he felt the great thoughts of Divinity to be reflected in the countless plant formations he investigated.

Taking the whole of modern culture, we have to see in it a memory of Egyptian culture; Egyptian thought is reflected in it from its beginning.

The division in modern culture between science and belief did not arise without long preparation,—and if we are to understand how this came about we must glance briefly at the way post-Atlantean culture was prepared for during the Atlantean epoch.

We have seen how a handful of people who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Ireland had progressed the furthest; they had acquired those qualities which had to appear gradually in the succeeding epochs of civilization. The rudiments of the ego had been developing as we know since the Lemurian epoch, but each stage of selfhood in this small group of people, by whom the stream of culture was carried from West to East, consisted in a tendency to logical thought and the power of judgment. Up to this time these did not exist; if a thought arose it was already substantiated. The beginning of thought that was capable of judgment was implanted in these people, and they bore the rudiments of this with them from West to East in their colonizing migrations, one of which went southwards towards India. Here the first foundations of constructive thinking were laid. Later, this constructive thinking passed into the Persian civilization. In the third cultural period, that of Chaldea, it grew stronger and with the Greeks it developed so far that they have left behind them the glorious monument of Aristotelian philosophy.

Constructive thought continued to develop more and more, but always returned to a central point, where it received reinforcement. We must picture it as follows: When civilization came from the West into Asia one group, that having the smallest amount of purely logical thinking capacity, went toward India; the second group, which traveled towards Persia, had a little more; and the group that went towards Egypt had still more. From within this group were separated off the people of the Old Testament, who had exactly that combination of faculties which had to be developed in order that another forward step might be taken in this purely logical form of human cognition.

With this is associated the other thing we have been considering, namely, the descent to the physical plane. The further we descend the more does thought become merely logical, and the more it tends to a merely external faculty of judgment. Pure logical thought, mere human logic, that which proceeds from one idea to another, requires the human brain as its instrument; the cultivated brain makes logical thought possible. Hence external thinking, even when it has reached an astonishing height, can never of itself comprehend reincarnation, because it is in the first place only applicable to the things of the external sense world that surrounds us.

Logic may indeed be applied to all worlds, but can only be applied directly to the physical world; hence when it appears as human logic it is bound unconditionally to its instrument, the physical brain. Abstract thought could never have entered the world without a further descent into the world of the senses. This development of logical thought is bound up with the loss of ancient clairvoyant vision, and was bought at the cost of this loss. The task of man is to re-conquer clairvoyant vision, adding logical thought to it. In time to come he will obtain imagination as well, but logical thinking will be retained.

The human head had in the first place to be created similar to the etheric head before man could have a brain. It was then first possible for man to descend to the physical plane. In order that all spirituality should not be lost a point of time had to be chosen for the saving of this, when the last impulse to purely mechanical thought had not yet been given. If the Christ had appeared a few centuries later He would have come, as it were, too late, for humanity would have descended too far, would have been too much entangled in thought, and would not have been able to understand Christ. Christ had to come before this last impulse had been received, when the spiritually religious tendency could still be saved as a tendency leading to belief. Then came the last impulse, which plunged human thought to the lowest point, where it was banished and completely chained to physical life. This arose through the Arabs and Mohammedans. Moslem thought is a peculiar episode in Arabian life and thought, which in its passage over to Europe gave the final impulse to logical thinking—to that which is incapable of rising to what is spiritual.

To begin with, man was so led by what may be called Providence or a spiritual guidance that spiritual life was saved in Christendom; later, Arabism approached Europe from the south and provided the field for external culture. It is only capable of comprehending what is external. Do we not see this in the Arabesque, which is incapable of rising to what is living, but has to remain formal? We can also see in the Mosque how the spirit is, as it were, sucked out.

Humanity had first to be led down into matter, then in a roundabout way by means of Arabism, and the invasion of the Arab, we are shown how modern science first arose in the sharp contact of Arabism with Europeanism which had already accepted Christianity. The ancient Egyptian memories had come to life again; but what made them materialistic? What made them into thought-forms of the dead? We can show this clearly. If the path of progress had been smooth the memory of what had taken place previously would have re-appeared in our age. That which is spiritual has been saved as a whole, but one wing of European culture has been gripped by materialism. We also see how the remembrance of those who recalled the ancient Egyptian age was so changed by its passage through Arabism that it reappeared in a materialistic form. The fact that Copernicus comprehended the modern way of regarding the solar system was the outcome of his Egyptian memory. The reason why he presented it in a materialistic form, making of it a dead mechanical rotation, is because the Arabian mentality, encountering this memory from the other side, forced it into materialism.

From all that has been said you can see how secret channels connect the third and the fifth age. This can be seen even in the principle of initiation, and as modern life is to receive a principle of initiation in Rosicrucianism let us ask what this is.

In modern science we have to see a union between Egyptian remembrances and Arabism, which tends towards that which is dead. On the other side we see another union consummated, that between what Egyptian initiates imparted to their pupils and things spiritual. We see a union between wisdom and that which had been rescued as the truths of belief. This wondrous harmony between the Egyptian remembrance in wisdom and the Christian impulse of power is found in Rosicrucian spiritual teaching. So the ancient seed laid down in the Egyptian period re-appears, not merely as a repetition, but differentiated and upon a higher level.

These are thoughts which should not only instruct with regard to the universe, earth, and man, but they should enter as well into our feeling and our impulses of will and give us wings; for they show us the path we have to travel. They point the path to that which is spiritual, and also show how we may carry over into the future what, in a good sense, we have gained here on the purely material plane.

We have seen how paths separate and again unite; the time will come when not the remembrances only of Egypt will unite with spiritual truths to produce a Rosicrucian science, but science and Rosicrucianism will also unite. Rosicrucianism is both a religion and at the same time a science that is firmly bound to what is material. When we turn to the Babylonian period we find this is shown in myth of the third period of civilization; here we are told of the God Maradu, who meets with the evil principle, the serpent of the Old Testament, and splits his head in two, so that in a certain sense the earlier adversary is divided into two parts. This was in fact what actually happened; a partition of that which arose in the primeval, watery earth-substance, as symbolized by the serpent. In the upper part we have to see the truths upheld by faith, in the lower the purely material acceptance of the world. These two must be united—science and that which is spiritual—and they will be united in the future. This will come to pass when, through Rosicrucian wisdom, spirituality is intensified, and itself becomes a science, when it once more coincides with the investigations made by science. Then a mighty harmonious unity will again arise; the various currents of civilization will unite and flow together through the channels of humanity. Do we not see in recent times how this unity is being striven for?

When we consider the ancient Egyptian mysteries we see that religion, science, and art were then one. The course of the world evolution is shown in the descent of the Gods into matter; this is presented to us in a grand dramatic symbolism. Anyone who can appreciate this symbolism has science before him, for he sees there vividly portrayed the descent of man and his entrance into the world. He is also confronted with something else, namely, art, for the picture presented to him is an artistic reflection of science. But he does not see only these two, science and art, in the mysteries of ancient Egypt; they are for him at the same time religion, for what is presented to him pictorially is filled with religious feeling.

These three were later divided; religion, science, and art went separate ways, but already in our age men feel that they must again come together.

What else was the great effort of Richard Wagner than a spiritual striving, a mighty longing towards a cultural impulse? The Egyptians saw visible pictures because the external eye had need of them. In our age what they saw will be repeated; once more the separate streams of culture will unite, a whole will be constructed, this time preferably in a work of art whose elements will be the sequence of sound. On every side we find connections between what appertained to Egypt and modern times; everywhere this reflection can be seen. As time goes on our souls will realize more and more that each age is not merely a repetition but an ascent; that a progressive development is taking place in humanity. Then the most intimate strivings of humanity—the striving for initiation—must find fulfillment.

The principle of initiation suited to the first age cannot be the principle of initiation for the changed humanity of today. It is of no value to us to be told that the Egyptians had already found primeval wisdom and truth in ancient times; that these are contained in the old Oriental religions and philosophies, and that everything that has appeared since exists only to enable us to experience the same over again if we are to rise to the highest initiation. No! This is useless talk. Each age has need of its own particular force within the depths of the human soul.

When it is asserted in certain Theosophical quarters that there is a western initiation for our stage of civilization, but that it is a late product, that true initiation comes only from the East, we must answer that this cannot be determined without knowing something further. The matter must be gone into more deeply than is usually done. There may be some who say that in Buddha the highest summit was reached, that Christ has brought nothing new since Buddha; but only in that which meets us positively can we recognize what really is the question here. If we ask those who stand on the ground of Western initiation whether they deny anything in Eastern initiation, whether they make any different statements regarding Buddha than those in the East, they answer, “No.” They value all; they agree with all; but they understand progressive development. They can be distinguished from those who deny the Western principle of initiation by the fact that they know how to accept what Orientalism has to give, and in addition they know the advanced forms which the course of time has made necessary. They deny nothing in the realm of Eastern initiation.

Take a description of Buddha by one who accepts the standpoint of Western esotericism. This will not differ from that of a follower of Eastern esotericism; but the man with the Western standpoint holds that in Christ there is something which goes beyond Buddha. The Eastern standpoint does not allow this. If it is said that Buddha is greater than Christ that does not decide anything, for this depends on something positive. Here the Western standpoint is the same as the Eastern. The West does not deny what the East says, but it asserts something further.

The life of Buddha is not rightly understood when we read that Buddha perished through the enjoyment of too much pork; this must not be taken literally. It is rightly objected from the standpoint of Christian esotericism that people who understand something trivial from this understand nothing about it at all; this is only an image, and shows the position in which Buddha stood to his contemporaries. He had imparted too many of' the sacred Brahmanical secrets to the outer world. He was ruined through having given out that which was hidden, as is everyone else who imparts what is hidden.

This is what is expressed in this peculiar symbol. Allow me to emphasize strongly that we disagree in no way with Oriental conceptions, but people must understand the esotericism of such things. If it is said that this is of little importance: it is not the case. They might as well think it of little importance when we are told that the writer of the Apocalypse wrote it amid thunder and lightning, and if anyone found occasion to mock at the Apocalypse because of this we should reply: “What a pity he does not know what it means when we are told that the Apocalypse was imparted to the earth 'mid lightning and thunder!”

We must keep in mind the fact that no negation has passed the lips of Western esotericists, and that much that was puzzling at the beginning of the Anthroposophical movement has been explained by them. The followers of Western esotericism never find in it anything out of harmony with the mighty truths given to the world by H. P. Blavatsky. When we are told, for example, that we have to distinguish in the Buddha the Dhyani-Buddha, the Adi-Buddha, and the human Buddha, this is first fully explained by the Western esotericist. For we know that what is regarded as the Dhyani-Buddha is nothing but the etheric body of the historic Buddha that had been taken possession of by a God; that this etheric body had been laid hold of by the being whom we call Wotan. This was already contained in Eastern esotericism, but was only first understood in the right way through Western esotericism.

The Anthroposophical movement should be especially careful that the feeling which rises in our souls from such thoughts as these should stimulate in us the desire for further development, that we should not stand still for a moment. The value of our movement does not consist in the ancient dogmas it contains (if these are but fifteen years old), but in comprehending its true purpose, which is the opening up of fresh springs of spiritual knowledge. It will then become a living movement and will help to bring about that future which, if only very briefly, has been presented to your mental sight today, by drawing upon what we are able to observe of the past.

We are not concerned with the imparting of theoretic truths, but that our feeling, our perception, and our actions may be full of power.

We have considered the evolution of Universe, Earth, and Man; we desire so to grasp what we have gathered from these studies that we may be ready at any time to enter upon development.

What we call “future” must always be rooted in the past; knowledge has no value if not changed into motive power for the future. The purpose for the future must be in accordance with the knowledge of the past, but this knowledge is of little value unless changed into propelling force for the future.

What we have heard has presented to us a picture of' such mighty motive powers that not only our will and our enthusiasm have been stimulated, but our feelings of joy and of security in life have also been deeply moved. When we note the interplay of so many currents we are constrained to say: Many are the seeds within the womb of Time. Through an ever deepening knowledge man must learn how better to foster all these seeds. Knowledge in order to work, in order to gain certainty in life, must be the feeling that pervades all Anthroposophical study.

In conclusion I would like to point out that the so-called theories of Spiritual Science only attain final truth when they are changed into something living—into impulses of feeling and of certainty as regards life; so that our studies may not merely be theoretical, but may play a real part in evolution.

by Marie Steiner

The cycle of lectures now appearing in book form was given by Rudolf Steiner in 1908, and the following words of his might well serve as its motto: “The mission of our age is to bring forth not an ancient wisdom, but a new wisdom, one that points not only to the past but that works prophetically into the future.”

The previous year at the memorable congress of the General Theosophical Society at Munich, Doctor Steiner clearly indicated the direction that the revival of the Theosophical movement should take, for the movement was threatening at that time to degenerate into one-sidedness influenced by Oriental ideas which did not accommodate themselves to the mental and soul-life of the people of Europe.

As against the many grievous misunderstandings that had arisen, Rudolf Steiner gave out something positives teaching that was suited to the growth of humanity. He also gave for the first time on that occasion a fitting artistic setting to the spiritual teaching he had to offer. The colours of the walls, and the pictures of the Seals represented the Rosicrucian spiritual aims; the motive of the column-forms portrayed the future, and this was aided by the dramatic reproduction of “The Sacred Drama of Eleusis” by Edouard Schuré, which presented in a living way the Mysteries of ancient Greece. With these Rudolf Steiner connected the Mythology of northern Germany. He had something new to give which hitherto had not been offered to the blind followers of a submissive Anglo-Indian Theosophy.

The courage with which Rudolf Steiner trod new paths stirred up spiritual opposition among the leaders of the Theosophical Society, who sought constantly to hamper and fetter him. This opposition forced him to withdraw from the post he had held in the Society. The conditions under which he had undertaken office were: that he should be free to allow that which threw light on the mystery of Christ to flow into European culture, which since the Event of Christ had become western esotericism. When certain leading theosophical circles recognised the remarkable spiritual capacities and the knowledge that Rudolf Steiner was able to bring to bear on this problem, means were sought to hamper his activity. They considered that the best way to do this was to proclaim the coming of Christ again in the flesh, in the body of a Hindu boy, and the centre from which a few years later Krishnamurti was to appear as a future world teacher was cautiously prepared.

It was whispered that Rudolf Steiner would be compelled—by the appearance of Krishnamurti—to divulge Christian secrets concerning which he would ordinarily have been silent. This interfered with his quiet and steady aim in building up the system and organisation of his teachings. He considered it his task to instruct humanity in the methods of initiation suited to present conditions of consciousness. Beside the reverent pursuit of ancient wisdom, it was necessary to waken an understanding of the changed form in which this wisdom was now to be given, and to show how such forms are subject to a continual up-rising, maturing, and decay, in order that new life may spring ever and again from what is dead. An historical sense had to be aroused in men, not merely a wonder-filled contemplation of ancient manifestations. The mysterious connection of the great cosmic laws uniting one age of civilization with another had to be made known. No one had ever described in so powerful and sublime a fashion the primeval wisdom which streamed down to earth from spiritual heights as Rudolf Steiner had done. No one before him had been able to speak in terms of modern consciousness of the reflection of the great Cosmic Existence in individual man—the microcosm.

All this teaching culminated in the central event of human evolution: the descent of the Sun-Spirit into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Rudolf Steiner showed how the sun forces were thereby able to penetrate and spiritualize the planet, summoning men to fit themselves for the task that was before them. By the death on Golgotha an incisive mystic fact was consummated; it could endure no repetition, otherwise it would have taken place in vain.

In order that these truths might be brought to humanity, fact by fact had to be introduced in gently balanced stages. The foundations had already been laid before Krishnamurti was presented to Europeans. In this cycle, in the year 1908, the path had already been entered, the logical sequence of events from civilization to civilization had been described, the great central event clearly illuminated. There are occasions when the time in which a truth is to be given out may be hastened; it may be necessary to confront certain challenges with facts which one would rather have allowed to speak for themselves. This does not mean that something was done which otherwise would not have been done; it had to be done because it was rooted in the deepest necessities of present evolution, both cosmic and human; and, with complete self-sacrifice, the responsibility was assumed as the task of a life-time. The Theosophical Society cut itself off from this influx of new wisdom, it rejected what would have infused new life into it, and to the admiring recognition of an ancient honoured wisdom would have given new meaning to historic events.

The Theosophical Society would have been led with ripened wisdom from India by way of Persia, Chaldea, and Egypt deeply into the mystery of the chosen people, and the reason for this choice would have been made intelligible to it; and thence it would have been led to the Mystery places of Asia Minor and southern Europe. Further, the soul-life of the expectant peoples of central and northern Europe would have been touched on, and the whole teaching would have culminated in the Event of Golgotha, by which the hidden mysteries which until now had been veiled stepped forth on to the plane of universal history.

The individual personality evolves within the general evolution of humanity, and must learn to find within itself the central point of its purpose, which is primarily in spiritual experience. The tragedy of the personality lies in its severance from the spiritual world; in its seeking, erring, and striving, through the approaching night of separation from what is spiritual, till finally it perceives in spiritual darkness its tragic fate.

Comprehension of such things is necessary if we are to understand ourselves. Into this night of darkness shines a light, the light of Christian esotericism which was kindled in Palestine and passed thence into Europe. It broke with wonderful clearness over the island of Hibernia, where, notwithstanding the repression of the monastic colonies by a Church, fettered by Roman Imperialism, its radiance endured in secret as a stream of spiritual force.

Through this there arose the spiritual orders of knighthood and the desire for religious communities. German mysticism appeared as a rich blossom of deep religious fervour. In order to keep pace with events, above all with the conquests of science, and in order that faith might stand firm in the darkness of a materialistic age, something further had to emerge. The power of Belief had to yield to the certainty of Science. This new force was the aim of the Rosicrucian schools. They concerned themselves with the newly evolving forces of consciousness in the coming age. Rosicrucian esotericism, with its earnest striving after the new forces of human knowledge, with the tragic fate and spiritual tests laid upon its followers, was yet able here and there, as Rudolf Steiner has shown us, to raise the veil of its mysteries. New forces of spiritual consciousness were born from it that were able to overcome materialism by cognition. In the hard struggle to recover the faculty of spiritual perception, once given to man and now lost, but which must be regained through the power of the ego, through the death and re-birth of the personality, the ego-being of striving humanity grows strong. When man consciously grasps this ego-being he can rise and unite himself once more with the Godhead. That this might come to pass the Divine Ego descended—once—to earth. The unique character of this event must be recognised as the decisive turning point of the earth's destiny. Rosicrucian teaching sums it up in the motto “In Christo Morimur”; in Christ we die to live above, to live upwards to the Spirit. “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus”; through striving towards the Christ we gain true life, we become awake in the Spirit out of which we once were born.

The personality had to come into being, it had to comprehend itself, to take itself in hand and recognize itself as a centre, to confront and then overcome itself, to learn to die, that it might realize itself again as a free ego-being whose central point is the Divine Ego.

This is the path of western esotericism; the European cannot avoid it. Formerly his task was to complete the education of the personality, entangled as it was in egoism; his present task is to overcome egoism, to transmute it by liberating the divine-willing, strong ego-nature within him. This he can only do through controlling the forces of his consciousness through knowledge and cognition. He must be willing to recognise the smallest in the greatest. He cannot eliminate whole epochs of time with their tremendous significance for human development. Power will be given to him if today he desires knowledge and cognition of the Universe, Earth, and Man.

This knowledge is now called Anthroposophy. It gives its teaching and declares its creed quite openly; it hides nothing, for it knows the time has come when what was once nurtured in secret must step forth on to the plane of history.

In describing the descent of man from the Divine and his way back again to Divinity, Anthroposophy might have felt secure within genuine Theosophy, they are so far one and the same “Ex Deo Nascimur”—Out of God we are born to the Godhead we return when we have received the Christ unto us.

But men turn names to their own particular ends. Societies arise which no longer express their true nature—they may indeed become the very opposite of what they were at first. If one has such a contradiction before one, as for example the pseudo-Christian statement engineered by the Theosophical Society, one cannot strengthen it by means employed in the advocacy of truth.

From his sense of responsibility to truth Rudolf Steiner declared it impossible, in the lectures which under pressure from the members he was forced to print, to employ the term “Us Theosophists” any more. The Theosophical Society is fast stuck in Oriental dogma, and rejects the intellectual permeation of Christian truths to which a rightly guided Theosophical movement should necessarily have come. That which the Theosophical Society did not accept is now represented by those calling themselves Anthroposophists.

It has been necessary therefore in the publication of any cycles of lectures to employ the word Anthroposophy, or Spiritual Science, instead of Theosophy. The ancient holy name Theosophy has been caricatured and falsified, and especially to the outer world must we make clear the difference, especially in all this confusion between Societies bearing great and honourable names.

It is undoubtedly our duty in memory of Rudolf Steiner to throw light upon the conditions of that conflict which aimed at crippling his world-embracing activity in Christian esotericism. It is our duty to show how necessary his action was in separating from a Society which saw in Thibetism, Hinduism, and Buddhism the sum of all wisdom, but in the Mystery of Golgotha only the karmic fate of a noble personality not yet matured to ultimate perfection. The leaders of the Theosophical Society were determined to get control of the Society and run it in their own way.

With their pseudo-Christ, to whom in various circumstances they ascribed varying names as it appeared to suit, they hope to win adherents of other forms of belief and satisfy the longings of western hearts, and in this way gradually and gently to turn the tide of European thought back into the stream of pre-Christian spirituality.

Let us close these observations with words of Rudolf, Steiner which are directly connected with the above.

“We see a primeval wisdom preserved in the Mysteries of past epochs; but our wisdom must be an apocalyptic wisdom, of which we must plant the seeds. We have need once again of a principle of Initiation wherein the original connection with the Spiritual world can be reestablished.”

This is the task of the Anthroposophical world movement.

THE THEME OF THE lecture to-day is of a profoundly occult character, the title—strange as it may seem to begin with—being: “Mephistopheles and Earthquakes”. We shall see that not only does the problem of the figure of Mephistopheles lead us into a deep realm of occultism but that the same applies to the problem of earthquakes if explained from the spiritual point of view. I have already spoken here and in several other places about the interior of the earth and have also referred to the question of earthquakes. We shall now approach the subject of these most tragic happenings on the earth's surface, from yet another side.

The figure of Mephistopheles which will be our starting-point to-day, is familiar to you all from Goethe's Faust. You know that Mephistopheles is a Being—we shall not enter to-day into the question of how far the poetic presentation tallies with the occult facts—a figure who appears in the drama as the seducer and tempter of Faust who, in a certain respect, may be thought of as the representative of man aspiring to reach the heights of existence. In lectures on Goethe I have also indicated what spiritual vistas are revealed in the scene of the “Passage to the Mothers”, where Mephistopheles holds in his hand the key giving access to the dark, nether region where the Mothers dwell. Mephistopheles himself may not enter this region. He merely indicates that in this mysterious realm there is no difference between “below” and “above”:

“Sink then! I might as well say, Mount!
'Tis quite the same.”

We know too that in characterizing this region, Mephistopheles uses the word “Naught”, “Nothingness”. In a certain sense, therefore, he represents the spirit who in this “Naught” would be seeking something that is valueless to him. Faust answers as any true seeker to-day might answer a materialistic thinker: “In thy Naught I hope to find the All”.

Goethean research has made many attempts to find the clue to the figure of Mephistopheles. In other lectures I have said that the explanation of the name Mephistopheles is to be found in the Hebrew language, where “Mephiz” is the word used for one who obstructs, who corrupts, and “topel” for one who lies. We have therefore to think of this name as belonging to a being who brings corruption and hindrances to man and is a spirit of untruth, deception and illusion.

It may occur to those who read the introduction to Faust, the “Prologue in Heaven”, thoughtfully, that it contains words which resound as it were across thousands of years. Goethe has let words spoken between the Lord and Job in the Book of Job re-echo at the beginning of Faust. In the Book of Job we read that Job is a good, upright and pious man and of how the sons of the Lord of Light present themselves before Him. Among them is a certain enemy of the Light. In a conversation between the enemy of the Light and the supreme Lord, this enemy of the Light says that he has “gone to and fro in the earth”, seeking and trying out many things. The Lord asks: “Knowest thou my servant Job?” and the enemy of the Light—for so we will call him—answers the Lord that Job is known to him and that he would assuredly be able to divert him from the Good and bring him to perdition. This spirit has to make two attempts to approach Job and he then lays hold of him through injuring his physical body. He indicates this expressly when he says to the Lord: “Seize his possessions and he will not fall; but touch his bone and his flesh and he will fall!” Who can fail to hear an echo of this in Faust when the Lord calls to Mephistopheles in the “Prologue in Heaven”: “Knowest thou Faust, my servant!” And then, in similar terms, we hear the retort of the spirit who in the Book of Job comes before the Lord, when Mephistopheles asserts that he can lead Faust gently on the way, that he can win him from the paths which lead to the Good. Here, then, we are listening to sounds striking together in unison across the ages.

When you are thinking about the figure of Mephistopheles, you may often have asked yourselves: Who is Mephistopheles, in reality? Grave mistakes are made here, mistakes which admittedly can be corrected only by deeper, occult insight. The name itself suggests that Mephistopheles is associated with the devil, or the idea of the devil, for the word “topel” is the same as “Teufel”—devil. But the other question—and here we come into a realm of serious fallacies which frequently occur in explanations of the figure of Mephistopheles—the other question is: Whether Mephistopheles can be identified with the spirit we know as Lucifer, who during and after the Lemurian epoch approached mankind together with his hosts and entrenched himself as it were in the evolutionary process? The prevailing tendency in Europe is to identify the figure of Mephistopheles as he appears in Goethe's Faust but also in earlier folk-literature (Folk Plays, Puppet Plays and so forth), with Lucifer. Mephistopheles is a familiar character everywhere, and the question is: Are he and his hosts identical with Lucifer and his hosts? In other words: Are the effects of the Mephistophelean influence upon man the same as those of Lucifer?—That is the question before us to-day.

We know when Lucifer approached man. We have studied the course of human evolution on earth through the epoch when the sun with its beings, and subsequently the moon, separated from the earth together with the forces that would have made further development for man impossible. And we have learned that at a time when man was still not ready for his astral body to become independent, Lucifer and his hosts approached him. The effect upon man was twofold. It was towards the end of the Lemurian epoch when, in his astral body, man was actually exposed to the influences issuing from Lucifer. If Lucifer had not approached, man would, it is true, have been protected from certain evils but he would not have attained what must be accounted one of his greatest blessings.

The significance of Lucifer's influence becomes evident when we ask ourselves what would have transpired if since the Lemurian epoch there had been no Luciferic influence, if Lucifer and his hosts had remained separate and apart from man's evolution! Until the middle of the Atlantean epoch man would have evolved as a being who in every impulse of his astral body would have obeyed the influences of certain spiritual Beings of a higher rank than himself; these Beings would have retained their sway over him until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. If that had happened, man's faculties of perception and cognition would not have been directed to the material world until a much later period. During the Lemurian and early Atlantean epochs, no passions, no desires would have arisen from his sense-perceptions; he would have confronted the world of sense as it were in a state of innocence, obedient in his every action to the impulses instilled into him by higher spiritual Beings. The instincts prompting him to action would not have been of exactly the same nature as those of the higher animals to-day, but more spiritual. His every deed on earth would have been prompted, not by mere impulses, but by a kind of spiritual instinct. As things were, under the influence of Lucifer man came earlier to the stage where he said: This delights and attracts me, that is repellent to me! He reached the stage of following his own impulses earlier than would otherwise have been the case; he became an independent being, with a measure of inner freedom. The consequence was that he was detached in a certain way from the spiritual world. To put it concisely, one might say: Without this influence of Lucifer, man would have remained a spiritualized animal—an animal who would gradually have developed a form nobler and more beautiful than could have been developed by man under the influence of Lucifer. Man would have remained far more of an angelic being if Lucifer's influence had not taken effect in the Lemurian epoch; but on the other hand, the higher Beings would have guided him as it were on leading-strings. In the middle of the Atlantean epoch something would have befallen him suddenly: his eyes would have been fully opened, the tapestry of the whole material world of sense would have lain around him—but gazing upon it he would simultaneously have perceived the Divine-Spiritual, a Divine-Spiritual world behind every physical object. If, therefore, in his former state of dependence man had looked back into the bosom of the Divine whence he had proceeded, beholding the Gods of Light sending their radiance into his soul, guiding and leading him, something would have come about for him—this is not a mere picture but corresponds in a high degree with the reality—namely, that the world of sense in its entirety would have been outspread in transparency before him, revealing behind it those other Divine-Spiritual Beings who had taken the place of what had now been lost. One spiritual world would have closed behind him and a new spiritual world opened before him. Man would have remained a child in the hands of higher, Divine-Spiritual Beings; independence would not have been established in the human soul.

It did not happen so, because Lucifer had approached man and made part of the underlying spiritual world invisible to him. The personal instincts, passions and desires which arose in the human astral body spread a cloud of darkness over the spiritual Beings of the world out of which man is born and who would otherwise have remained perpetually visible to him.

Hence in those great centers of the Oracles in ancient Atlantis the Initiates had expressly trained themselves to behold that part of the spiritual world which had been concealed as the result of Lucifer's influence. The aim of all the preparation undergone by the guardians and pupils of the ancient Oracles in the Atlantean Mysteries was to enable them to perceive that part of the spiritual world of light which in consequence of Lucifer's influence upon the astral body of man had withdrawn from his field of vision. And visible too, were those figures seen by man in the various conditions of soul running parallel with initiation, figures which from a world of Light penetrate into our world decked in the raiment provided by the astral world. In the ancient Oracle centers the Atlantean Initiate beheld in the spirit those figures who were in truth spiritual Beings of a higher rank than he—Beings who had not descended into the physical world and who had therefore remained invisible to ordinary sight when man's eyes were opened prematurely. But since Lucifer himself was an opponent of these worlds of Light, it was inevitable that he too should be visible to the initiates; and the hosts of Lucifer were visible to the Atlanteans who in their shadowy, clairvoyant consciousness, in the sleeping state and in conditions midway between sleeping and waking, could be transported into the spiritual world. When part of the world of Light was accessible to these Atlantean men, part of the world opposing the world of Light was also visible; the Luciferic hosts were visible—not Lucifer himself. These noble figures belonging to the world of light were as fascinating and splendid in their astral raiment as those of the opposing world of deception were fearsome and terrible.

Thus it was the influence of Lucifer in the evolution of humanity that made it possible for man to fall into error and evil but also to attain freedom. Had there been no Luciferic influence, the conditions I have been describing to you would have come about in the middle of the Atlantean epoch: the tapestry of the sense-world would have been outspread before man; the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms would have been materially visible to him; also the phenomena of nature and of the heavens, thunder, lightning, clouds, air—all would have been visible to external sight. But behind it all would have been the unmistakable presence of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Because Lucifer's influence had already taken effect in man's astral body, his physical body—at that time still transmutable—had been so prepared ever since the Lemurian epoch and on into the Atlantean, that it could not become the direct instrument for the physical world of sense with the spiritual world visibly behind it. And so man could not immediately behold the physical sense-world in the form in which it would simultaneously have revealed itself to him as a spiritual world. The three lower kingdoms of nature lay around him; the physical world became a veil over the spiritual world. Man could not, nor can he to this day, see directly into the spiritual world.

But because man had passed through this evolution, a different influence was able to assert itself in the middle of the Atlantean epoch—an influence from quite another side and not to be confused with that of Lucifer and his hosts. Although it was Lucifer who first made it possible for man to come under the sway of this other influence, although it was Lucifer who caused the human physical body to become denser than it would otherwise have become, nevertheless it was necessary for yet another influence to approach man in order to bring him completely into the material world of sense, in order to shut him off entirely from the spiritual world so that he was led to the illusion: There is no other world than the world of material existence outspread before me!

From the middle of the Atlantean epoch an opponent quite different in character from Lucifer approached man, namely the Being who casts such mist and darkness around his faculties of perception that he makes no effort nor unfolds any urge to fathom the secrets of the world of sense. If you picture to yourselves that under Lucifer's influence the sense-world became like a veil, through the influence of this second Being the physical world in its totality became like a dense rind, closing off the spiritual world. It was only the Atlantean Initiates who were able, through the preparation they had undergone, to pierce this dense covering of the material, physical world.

The Powers who approached man in order to obscure his vision of the other side of divine existence are brought to our notice for the first time in the teachings given to his followers and pupils by Zarathustra, the great leader of the ancient Persians. The mission of Zarathustra was to instill culture into a people who, unlike the ancient Indians, did not by nature yearn perpetually for the spiritual world. Zarathustra's mission was to impart to his people a culture directed to the world of sense, aiming at mastery of the material world through means dependent upon the efforts and labors of physical man. In the civilization of ancient Persia, therefore, man was less subject to the influence of Lucifer than to the influence of that Being who since the middle of the Atlantean epoch had approached mankind, with the result that many of the Initiates at that time had lapsed into the practice of a form of black magic; having been led astray by this tempter, they misused for the purposes of the physical-material world what was accessible to them from the spiritual world. The mighty influence of the forces of black magic which finally led to the destruction of Atlantis had its origin in the temptations of that Being whom Zarathustra taught his people to know as Ahriman (“Angra Mainyu”), the Being who opposed the God of Light proclaimed by Zarathustra as “Ahura Mazdao”, the “Great Aura”.

These two figures—Lucifer and Ahriman—must be clearly distinguished from each other. For Lucifer is a Being who detached himself from the spiritual hosts of heaven after the separation of the sun, whereas Ahriman had already broken away before the separation of the sun and is an embodiment of quite different powers. The result of Lucifer's influence in the Lemurian epoch was merely the corruption of the faculty, still possessed by man in the Atlantean epoch, to manipulate the forces of air and water. In the book entitled From the Akasha Chronicle you will have read that in Atlantean times the seminal forces in plant and animal were still at man's command and could be drawn forth just as the forces used in the form of steam for propelling machines can be extracted from mineral coal to-day. I have told you that when these forces are drawn forth they are connected in a mysterious way with the nature-forces in wind, weather and the like; and if applied by man for purposes running counter to the divine purposes, these nature-forces are called into action against him.

Here lies the cause of the Atlantean flood and of the devastation wrought by the powers of nature which led to the disappearance of the whole continent of Atlantis. But even before that time, man had lost command over the forces of fire and the power to ally them with certain mysterious forces of the earth. Power over the forces of fire and earth in a certain combination had already been withdrawn from man. But now—through the influence of Ahriman and his accomplices—he again acquired a certain mastery over the forces of fire and earth, with dire consequences. And much that is to be heard about the use of fire in ancient Persia is connected with what I am now telling you. Many forces that are applied in black magic and are connected with it, lead to the result that man lays hold of forces of an entirely different nature and thus gains an influence over fire and earth, with terrible and devastating results. The practice of black magic by the descendants of the Atlanteans in ancient Persia would still have been effective had not the teachings of Zarathustra revealed how Ahriman, as an opposing power, ensnares man and clouds his vision of the spiritual reality behind the world of sense. Thus through Zarathustra and his followers, influence was brought to bear upon a large part of Post-Atlantean civilization; on the one hand men were taught of the workings of the sublime God of Light to whom they may turn, and, on the other, of the malefic power of Ahriman and his hosts.

Ahriman works upon man in countless, infinitely diverse ways.—I have told you that the Event of the Mystery of Golgotha was a moment of supreme importance for the evolution of the world. The Christ appeared in the realm into which man enters after death, where Ahriman's influence was even mightier than in the world around man here on earth between birth and death. In the realm of existence between death and rebirth, Ahriman's influences worked upon man with terrible, overwhelming power. And if nothing else had taken place, utter darkness would gradually have closed in upon man in the ‘realm of Shades’—as it was correctly designated by the ancient Greeks. A condition of complete isolation, leading to the intensification of egoism would have set in between death and rebirth; man would have been born into his new life as a gross and overweening egotist. Hence it is more than a figure of speech to say that after the Event of Golgotha, at the moment when the Blood flowed from the wounds, the Christ appeared in yonder world, in the realm of the Shades, and cast Ahriman into fetters. Although Ahriman's influence remained and is really the origin of all materialistic thinking on the part of man, although this influence can be paralyzed only if men receive into themselves the power emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha, nevertheless they can draw from that Event a power which enables them to find their way once again into the Divine-Spiritual world.

Thus it was to Ahriman that the faculty of human cognition was primarily directed. Ahriman was a Being whose existence was divined by men, a Being of whom they had some knowledge through the culture inaugurated by Zarathustra; and from there the knowledge of Ahriman spread among the other peoples and into their world of ideas. Ahriman with his hosts appears as a figure with the most diverse names among the civilized peoples. And owing to the peculiar conditions obtaining in the souls of the European peoples who had remained farthest in the rear of the migrations from West to East, who had been less affected than the others by what had transpired in the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian and even in the Greco-Latin civilizations—owing to these circumstances there prevailed among the European peoples from whom the Fifth Epoch of culture was to be born, an attitude of soul which regarded Ahriman alone as a figure of dread. And while many different names were adopted—as for example, “Mephistopheles” among the Hebrew people—in Europe the figure of Ahriman became the “Devil” in his various forms.

Obviously, therefore, we are gazing here into a concatenation of happenings in the spiritual worlds and many a man who claims to be above medieval superstitions will do well to remember the words in Faust:

“The little folk ne'er scent the Devil
E'en though he have them by the collar”.

It is precisely because man closes his spiritual eyes to this influence that he succumbs to it so completely. Goethe's “Mephistopheles” is none other than the figure of Ahriman and must not be confused with Lucifer. All the errors cropping up here and there in commentaries on Faust originate from this confusion—although it was indeed Lucifer who first paved the way for Ahriman's influence. In studying Ahriman one is therefore led back to an original influence of Lucifer, the nature of which can only become clear after long preparatory efforts have been made to understand this intimate connection.

The subtle difference between the two Beings must not be overlooked. The essential point is that, fundamentally speaking, Lucifer had brought man under the influence of the powers connected with air and water only; whereas it was Ahriman-Mephistopheles who has subjected him to the influence of far more deadly powers and the civilizations immediately to come will see the appearance of many things connected with Ahriman's influence. Through this influence the seeker for the spirit who does not stand upon firm and sure foundations can readily fall prey to the most terrible illusion and deception. For Ahriman is a spirit who sets out to spread deception as to the true nature of the sense-world, especially as an expression of the spiritual world. When a man has a tendency to abnormal, somnambulistic states or through certain wrongful training awakens occult forces whereby egoism is intensified, then Ahriman or Mephistopheles has a ready influence precisely upon these occult forces, an influence that can soon become overwhelmingly powerful. Whereas Lucifer's influence can only bring it about that what confronts a man from the spiritual world (and this applies also to one who is receiving wrongful training) appears to him as an astral form visible to the astral body, the manifestations due to the influence of Ahriman are brought to light in that the evil influences on the physical body press through into the etheric body and then become visible as phantoms.

In the influences of Ahriman, therefore, we have to do with powers of a much lower nature than the influences of Lucifer. Lucifer's influences can never become as evil as the influences of Ahriman and of those Beings who are connected with the powers of fire. The influence of Ahriman or Mephistopheles can bring it about that in order to attain occult knowledge a man is induced, for example, to undertake certain measures with his physical body. The method that consists in the use and misuse of the physical body is the most evil that can possibly be applied for the purpose of acquiring occult powers. It is a fact that in certain school of black magic such practices are taught in abundance. One of the most terrible perversions to which man may be subject occurs when the forces of the physical body are taken as the starting-point for occult training.

It is not possible here to enter into closer detail than the indication that all machinations consisting in any way of a misuse of the forces of the physical body emanate from the influences of Ahriman; and because the effect of this penetrates into man's etheric body, it works as a world of phantoms that is nothing else than the garment of powers which drag man down to a level below that of true manhood. Nearly every ancient civilization—the Indian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Greco-Latin—had its period of decadence; so too the Mysteries, when the Mystery-traditions were no longer preserved in their purity. During these periods many of those who were either pupils of the Initiates but unable to remain at their level or men to whom the secrets of the Mysteries had been unlawfully betrayed, had fallen into perverse and evil paths. Centers of black magic and its forces originated from these influences and have persisted to this day.

Ahriman is a spirit of lies, a spirit who conjures illusions before men, working together with his confederates in a spiritual world. Ahriman himself is no mirage—far from it! But what is conjured before men's eyes of spirit under his influence—that is mirage, illusion. When a man's desires and passions flow along evil paths and at the same time he lends himself in any way to occult practices, then the occult forces which are awakened penetrate into the etheric body and the most evil powers of corruption appear among the illusory images which may themselves often be majestic, awe-inspiring. Such is the terrible influence of Ahriman upon man.

From what has been said you can gather that through Christ's Coming, Ahriman has been cast into fetters—if this expression may be used—but only, of course, for those who endeavor unceasingly to fathom the Christ-Mystery. And outside the forces streaming from the Christ-Mystery, protection in the world against the influence of Ahriman will steadily diminish. In a certain sense—and many signs proclaim it—our epoch courts these influences of Ahriman. In certain occult teachings the hosts of Ahriman are also called the Asuras. These are of course, the evil Asuras who at a certain time fell away from the evolutionary path of the Asuras who endowed man with personality. It has already been indicated that these are spiritual Beings who detached themselves from the evolution of the earth before the separation of the sun.

Up to now we have been describing merely the terrible influence that Ahriman can exercise upon a certain abnormal process of development, one that proceeds along occult paths. But in a certain respect the whole of mankind came under the influence of Ahriman during the second half of the Atlantean epoch. The whole Post-Atlantean epoch has within it, in a certain sense, the aftermath of Ahriman's influence—in one region of the earth more, in another less. But Ahriman's influence has asserted itself everywhere and all the teachings given to the peoples by the ancient Initiates concerning the Spirits of Light who are the opponents of Ahriman were given primarily in order to draw these peoples away from Ahriman's influence. It was a good, wisely led education of mankind.

But let us not forget that since that time the destiny of Ahriman has been interwoven in a certain sense with the destiny of humanity, and manifold happenings, of which the uninitiated can know nothing, keep the whole karma of humanity in perpetual connection with the karma of Ahriman. To understand what will now be said, we must realize that over and above the karma which belongs to every individual human being, there is at every stage of existence a universal karmic law. All the categories of beings have their karma—the karma of the one differing from that of the other. But karma operates through every realm of existence and there are things in the karma of mankind, in the karma of a people, of a community or other group of human beings, which must be regarded as collective karma, so that in certain circumstances the individual can be drawn into the sway of the collective karma. It will not always be easy for one who cannot penetrate to the root of the matter to discern exactly where the influences of the powers concerned lie in the case of human beings overtaken by such a destiny. An individual within some community may well be entirely guiltless as far as his own karma is concerned; but because he stands within a field of collective karma, calamity may befall him. If, however, he is entirely guiltless, compensation will be made in later incarnations.

In the wider connection we must look not only at the karma of the past but also think of the karma of the future. A terrible fate may befall a whole group of human beings; the reason why just this group should suffer such a destiny is not to be discovered. Someone who might be capable of investigating the karma of an individual will in certain circumstances be unable to find anything at all that could have led to this tragic fate, for the threads of karma are extremely complicated. The cause of such karmic happenings may lie far, far away—but it is connected with these people nevertheless. And it may be that the whole group, while guiltless, has been overtaken by some collective karma which could not overtake those immediately guilty, because circumstances did not make this possible. In such cases the only thing that can be said is this: In the total karma of an individual, everything is ultimately balanced out, including what befalls him without guilt on his part; it is all inscribed in his karma and compensation in the fullest sense will be made in future time.—Therefore in considering the law of karma we must also take into account the karma of the future. Nor must it be forgotten that man is not an isolated being but that every individual has to share jointly in the collective karma of humanity. We must remember, too, that man, together with humanity, is connected with those hierarchies of Beings who have not entered into the physical world and that he is also drawn into the karma of the hierarchies. In the destinies of mankind in the spiritual world a great deal appears the connections of which are not to be sought in the immediate circumstances, but the karmic consequences come to pass inevitably. Since the second half of the Atlantean epoch, Ahriman's karma has been linked with the karma of mankind. Where, then, are the deeds of Ahriman, over and above what is wrought by him in the bodies of men in order to spread phantoms and illusion over the world of sense? Where are these other deeds?

Everything in the world has, as it were, two sides, one pertaining more to man as a spiritual being, the other to what has developed as the kingdoms of nature around him. The earth is the arena of man's existence. To the eye of spirit this earth is revealed as a combination of different layers or strata. The outermost stratum is called the “Mineral Earth” or “Mineral Stratum” because it contains only such substances as are to be found in the ground under our feet. This is the shallowest stratum, relatively speaking. Then begins the “Fluidic Earth”, the material constitution of which is entirely different from that of the “mineral” stratum above it. This second stratum is, as it were, endowed with inner life; and only because the solid, mineral stratum is spread over it are the inner forces of this second stratum held together. If they were released they would instantaneously disperse into cosmic space. This stratum, therefore, lies under tremendous pressure. A third stratum is the “Vapor Earth”. It is not a material vapor such as arises on the earth's surface but in this third stratum the substance itself is imbued with inner forces, comparable only with the passions, the inner urges and impulses of man. Whereas on the earth it is only beings like animals and men who can unfold passions, this third stratum—just as the substances of the earth are permeated by forces of magnetism and warmth—is permeated in a material sense with forces similar to those we know as human and animal passions and impulses. The fourth or “Form Stratum” is so designated because it contains the material and the forces of what are encountered in the mineral part of the earth as entities cast into form. And the characteristic of the fifth stratum, or “Fertility Earth” is that even as material it teems with infinite fertility. If you were to get hold of part of this stratum it would perpetually be sending forth new impulses, new sproutings; rampant fertility is the intrinsic quality of this stratum. Then we come to the sixth stratum, the “Fire Earth”, containing as “substances” within it, forces that can bring about terrible havoc and destruction. It is actually into these forces that the primordial Fire has been banished.

In and from this stratum the realm of Ahriman operates—in a material sense. What manifests in the phenomena of outer nature, in air and water, in cloud formations, in lightning and thunder—all this is, so to speak, a last vestige on the earth's surface, of forces that were already connected with ancient Saturn and separated from the earth together with the sun. By what is working in these forces, the inner fire-forces of the earth are placed in the service of Ahriman. There he has the center of his activity; and whereas his spiritual influences make their way to the souls of men and lead them to error, we see how Ahriman—in a certain respect shackled—has certain foci for his activity in the interior of the earth. Were we to understand the mysterious connections of what has come to pass on the earth under Ahriman's influence and what Ahriman's own karma has become in consequence of this, we should recognize in the quakes and tremors of the earth the connection between such grievous, tragic happenings in nature and the power that holds sway on the earth. These manifestations are something that has remained since ancient times as a reaction on the earth against the good Beings of Light.

Thus forces allied with the Beings who were thrust away from their connection with the earth at the time when the good Beings of light established the beneficent phenomena around the earth-globe, are active, and in a certain sense we can recognize the echoings of these fire-forces which in earlier times were withdrawn from man's control, in what is wrought by fire in such terrible manifestations of nature. Although the karma of Ahriman has been linked with that of humanity since the time of Atlantis, the suggestion should not arise that any guilt is to be attributed to those who are victims of what Ahriman's karma has evoked. Such happenings are connected with the collective karma of humanity in which the individual has also to share. The causes which produce their effects in particular localities as the workings of Ahriman's karma often lie somewhere else entirely. It is however these particular places which afford the necessary opportunity.

There we see a connection which seems to be like a relic of catastrophes undergone by humanity in the far distant past. The power to work upon fire which man had formerly possessed, was withdrawn from him. Hence ancient Lemuria was brought to its destruction by the fire of the passions of men. The same fire that is now below was then above; it receded from the earth's surface and the same fire that issued as a kind of extract from the primordial fire is the inorganic, mineral fire of to-day. So too it was with the forces working through air and water which, again by way of the passions of men, led to the Atlantean catastrophes. These catastrophes were evoked by the collective karma of humanity but a relic has remained and this relic awakens the echoes of those earlier catastrophes. Our volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are nothing else than the echoes of these catastrophes. But it should never so much as occur to anyone to attach an iota of guilt to the victim of such a calamity or to withhold compassion in the fullest measure. It must be absolutely clear to an anthroposophist that the karma of these individuals has nothing to do with the guilt to which the catastrophes are due and it should never occur to him to withhold help from anyone because—to put it trivially—he believes in karma and therefore assumes that this destiny was brought on by the man himself. Karma demands of us that we help human beings because we may be sure that our help means something that is written in their karma and will turn that karma in a more favorable direction. Understanding that is based upon the recognition of karma must necessarily lead to compassion; our compassion for the victims of such catastrophes will be all the greater, for our knowledge tells us that there is a collective karma of humanity from which the individual members have to suffer, that just as such happenings are brought about by humanity as one whole, so too must humanity be answerable for them; we must regard such a destiny as our own and help not only out of a spontaneous impulse but because we know that we are involved in the karma of humanity and share the guilt incurred!

A question was handed to me this morning about earthquake catastrophes. The question runs as follows: “What is the occult explanation of earthquakes? Can they be foreseen? If particular catastrophes can be foreseen, why should it not be possible to give some warning beforehand? Such a warning might possibly be ineffective the first time but certainly not on another occasion.”

You may remember something of what was said at the end of the lecture on the interior of the earth about the possibility of earthquakes. We will not consider that now but enter directly into this question. In reality it has two sides. The one is: Whether from the occult connections which can be discerned, earthquakes can be foreseen? The answer to this is that the knowledge of such matters belongs to the deepest realm of occult science. In respect of a particular event on the earth, an event with roots as deeply laid as those described to-day, and connected with causes extending widely over the earth—in respect of such an event it is absolutely correct to say that even in a particular case an indication of time can be given. It would certainly be possible for the occultist to give such an indication. But the other side of the question is: whether it is permissible for such indications to be given?—For one who confronts the occult secrets from outside it will seem almost a matter of course that the answer will be “Yes!” And yet the truth is that in regard to such events it is actually only twice or three times in any one century—at the very most, twice or three times—that any prediction can be announced from the centers of Initiation. For you must remember that these things are connected with the karma of humanity as a whole and if, for example, they were avoided in one instance they would inevitably occur in some other place and in a different form. The prediction itself would alter nothing. And just think what a terrible encroachment it would be into the karma of the earth as a whole if human measures were adopted to prevent such happenings. The reaction would be so fearful, so violent, that only in very rare and exceptional cases would a high Initiate, foreseeing an earthquake, be able to make use of his knowledge to help himself or those near him. With full knowledge he would have to face his end, as a matter of course! For these things that have been implicit in the karma of humanity for thousands and millions of years cannot be paralyzed by measures adopted during one brief period of evolution.—But there is still more to add.

It has been said already that this very subject is one of the most difficult of all in occult investigation. It is far easier to know something about the astral world, the devachanic world, even about the farthest planets, than about the interior of the earth. Most things one hears are the purest trash, because, as I say, it is one of the most difficult subjects in occultism. The same is true of matters that are connected with these elemental catastrophes. And above all you must realize that clairvoyance is not a matter of just sitting down, inducing a particular condition, and then being able to say what is going on in the whole universe, up to the highest spheres. It is by no means so. To believe any such thing would be as “clever” as to say: “You have the faculty of perception in the physical world; but why was it that when 12 o'clock came and you were sitting in your room, you were neither astonished by nor did you see what happened outside by the River Spree at that hour?” There are hindrances to seership. If the seer in question had gone for a walk at 12 o'clock he would probably have seen what happened. It is not the case that all worlds are immediately disclosed through the mere resolve to induce in oneself the requisite condition. The seer has to find his way to the events and investigate them, and these investigations are of the most difficult kind because the hindrances are greatest.—And perhaps at this point something may be said about these hindrances.

If a man is able to walk about on his two legs, you can deprive him of this faculty not only by amputating his legs but also by shutting him up in a cell; then he can no longer walk about. In the same way there are hindrances to occult investigation and in the domain of which we are speaking they are immensely powerful. I will tell you one of the main hindrances and in doing so introduce you to a mysterious relationship. The greatest hindrance to occult investigation in this domain is constituted by the methods and trend of modern materialistic science. The countless illusions and fallacies accumulating in materialistic science to-day, all the research that is not only futile but is prompted by the vanities of men—these are things which in their effects in the higher worlds make investigation into these manifestations and free vision in the higher world impossible or to say the least, extremely difficult. Free vision is clouded as a result of the materialistic research pursued here on earth. It is by no means easy to get to the root of these things. But only wait for the time when spiritual science has become more widespread and when through its influence the materialistic superstitions prevailing in our world will be swept away! Once the nonsensical analogies and hypotheses leading to all kinds of conjectures about the interior of the earth are cast aside, you will see that when spiritual science has itself been integrated into the karma of humanity, when it finds the way to men's souls and is able from there to overcome the opposing powers and materialistic superstitions, when further research can be made into all that is connected with the bitterest foe of mankind, that Being who fetters man's vision within the world of sense—you will see that it will then be possible, even externally, to influence the karma of humanity in the sense that the dire results of such happenings may be alleviated. The reason why the Initiates must be silent about happenings connected with the great karma of humanity is to be found in the materialistic superstitions of men. Many scientific pursuits are in no way imbued with the Faustian striving for truth but prompted entirely by vanity and ambition. How much scientific research is promoted in the world simply because an individual is seeking for something that will be to his personal advantage! If you sum up all these things you will realize the strength of the force that obstructs vision into the world behind the external phenomena of the material world. Not until this fog has been cleared away will the time come when, in respect of certain mysterious manifestations of nature emanating from the foes of mankind and trespassing deeply into human life, it will be possible for help—and then in no small measure—to be given to mankind. Until that time comes there is no such possibility.

I am well aware that these questions have been given a turn not always in the mind of the one who asks them. But it is often the fate of occult science to be obliged to formulate the questions in the right way before they can be correctly answered. Again do not take this to mean that the mysterious connection between earthquakes and the karma of humanity is a secret that cannot be investigated. It can be investigated but there are reasons why only the most commonplace aspects of such questions can be presented to the world to-day. Let the knowledge reach mankind through spiritual science that there is a connection between the deeds of men and happenings in nature and then the time will come when these things can be answered in the way the question demands. Spiritual science may pass through many destinies; its influence may even be crippled, remaining within narrow and restricted circles. Nevertheless it will make its way through mankind, will be integrated into the karma of humanity, and then the possibility will be created for individuals themselves to have an effect upon the karma of humanity as a whole.

Today we shall concern ourselves with the question: What does modern man really possess in spiritual science? The answer to this question will be based on many things that have come to our knowledge in the course of lectures, especially those given last winter. Spiritual science may appear, at first, to be one conception of the world among the many others now existing. It may be argued: The riddles of existence are there; people endeavor with every possible means at their disposal, religious or scientific, to answer these riddles of existence in an effort to satisfy, as it is said, their eagerness and desire for knowledge. Spiritual science may well be considered just another philosophy of life—whether calling itself materialism, monism, animism, idealism, realism, or what you will. It may be represented as something that endeavors to satisfy the desire for knowledge on a par with other modern world-conceptions. But this is not correct. In what man acquires through spiritual science he has something of positive, continuous value in life, something that not only satisfies his thinking, his thirst for knowledge, but is a real and potent factor in life itself. To understand this we must look far afield and consider the evolutionary course of mankind from a particular point of view.

We have often looked back to the times preceding the great Atlantean flood, to the times when our forefathers, that is to say our own souls in the bodies of those forefathers, lived on the ancient continent of Atlantis between Europe, Africa and America. We have also looked still further back, to the Lemurian epoch, when the souls of men incarnated at the present time were at a much lower stage of existence. We shall now speak again of this epoch, reminding ourselves, to begin with, of the following: Man has attained the present stage of his life of feeling, his life of will, his intelligence, nay even his form, because higher spiritual Beings in the cosmos have also been at work in earth-existence. We have spoken of these Beings as the “Thrones”, the “Spirits of Wisdom”, the “Spirits of Movement”, the “Spirits of Form”, the “Spirits of Personality”, and so forth.

They are the great builders and architects of existence who have led the human race onward step by step to its present stage. But we must bring clearly before our minds to-day that Spirits and Beings other than those who help human evolution forward have also intervened; there are spiritual Beings who oppose the progressive Powers. And for every epoch—Lemurian, Atlantean, Post-Atlantean—it is possible to indicate which particular spiritual Beings bring the “hindrances”, which spiritual Beings are the opponents of those whose only aim is the progress of humanity.

In the Lemurian epoch—the first that concerns us to-day—it was the Luciferic Beings who intervened in man's evolution, in opposition to the Powers who at that time were striving to help him forward. In the Atlantean epoch, the Spirits opposing the progressive Powers were the Spirits of “Ahriman” or “Mephistopheles”. The Ahrimanic or Mephistophelean Spirits—to give the precise names—are those known in medieval times as the Spirits of “Satan”—who must not be confused with “Lucifer”.

In our own epoch, as time goes on, other spiritual Beings of whom we shall speak later, will stand as hindrances in the path of the progressive Spirits. We will ask ourselves now: What did the Luciferic Spirits actually achieve in the ancient Lemurian epoch?

These things will be considered to-day from a particular point of view. Of what domain did the Luciferic Spirits lay hold during the Lemurian epoch? The best way to understand this is to cast our minds back over the course taken by human evolution.

You know that on Old Saturn the Thrones poured out their own substance to lay the first foundation of the human physical body. On Old Sun the Spirits of Wisdom imbued man with the ether- or life-body. And on the Earth the Spirits of Form endowed him with the ‘I’, the ego, in order that by realizing himself as distinct from his environment he might become an independent being. But even if through the deed of the Spirits of Form he had become independent vis-à-vis the external world surrounding him on earth, he would never have become independent of the Spirits of Form themselves; he would have remained dependent on them, he would have been directed by them as on leading-strings. That this did not happen was due to something which had, in a certain sense, a beneficial effect, namely the fact that in the Lemurian epoch the Luciferic Beings set themselves in opposition to the Spirits of Form. It was these Luciferic Beings who gave man the prospect of freedom—but therewith the possibility of evil-doing, of succumbing to passion and desire in the world of sense. Where did these Luciferic Beings actually take hold? They took hold of what had been instilled into man as his innermost member at that time—the astral body. They established their footing in the human astral body and took possession of it. Had it not been for the coming of the Luciferic Beings this astral body would have remained in the sole possession of the Spirits of Form. They would have instilled into this astral body the forces which give man his human countenance, making him into an image of the Gods, namely, of the Spirits of Form. All this man would have come to be; but in his life through all eternity he would have remained dependent upon the Spirits of Form.

The Luciferic Beings had crept, as it were, into man's astral body, so that Beings of two kinds were now working in it: the Beings who bring man forward and the Beings who, while obstructing this constant impulse, had at the same time established the foundations of his independence. Had the luciferic Beings not approached, man would have remained in a state of innocence and purity in his astral body. No passions inciting him to crave for what is to be found only on earth would have arisen in him. The passions, urges and desires of man were densified, debased, as it were, by the Luciferic Beings. Had they not approached, man would have retained a perpetual longing for his heavenly home, for the realms of spirit whence he has descended. He would have taken no delight in what surrounds him on the earth; earthly impressions would have aroused no interest in him. It was through the Luciferic Spirits that he came to have this interest, to crave for the impressions of the earth. These Spirits impelled him into the earthly sphere by pervading his innermost member, his astral body. Why, then, was it that man did not fall away entirely at that time from the Spirits of Form or from the higher spiritual realms as a whole? Why was it that in his interests and desires he did not succumb wholly to the world of sense?

It was because the Spirits who lead humanity forward took counter measures; they inculcated into the being of man what would otherwise not have been his lot, namely, illness, suffering and pain. That was the necessary counterweight to the deeds of the Luciferic Spirits.

The Luciferic Spirits gave man material desires; as their countermeasures the higher Beings introduced illness and suffering as the consequences of material desires and interests, to the end that he should not utterly succumb to this world of sense. And so there is exactly as much suffering and pain in the world as there is interest only in the physical and the material. The scales are held in perfect balance; the one does not outweigh the other—so many passions and desires on the one side, so much illness and pain on the other. This was the effect of the mutual activities of the Luciferic Spirits and the Spirits of Form in the Lemurian epoch. Had the Luciferic Spirits not approached, man would not have descended into the earthly realm as soon as he actually did. His passion and craving for the world of sense also brought it about that his eyes were opened and he was able to gaze at the surrounding field of material existence earlier than would otherwise have been the case. If evolution had proceeded uninterruptedly along the course intended by the progressive Spirits, man would have had sight of the surrounding world only from the middle of the Atlantean epoch onwards. But then he would have seen it spiritually, not as he sees it to-day; he would have seen it as the direct expression of spiritual beings. Because man came prematurely into the earthly sphere, forced downwards by his earthly interests and desires, conditions were different from what they would otherwise have been in the middle of the Atlantean epoch.

The result was that the Ahrimanic Spirits—“Mephistophelean Spirits” as it is equally correct to call them—mingled in what man was able to see and apprehend; thus he fell into error, into what, for the first time, can correctly be called “conscious sin”. The host of Ahrimanic Spirits has worked upon man since the middle of the Atlantean epoch onwards. To what did these Ahrimanic Spirits entice him? They enticed him into regarding everything in his environment as material, with the result that he does not see through this material world to its true, spiritual foundations. Were man to have perceived the Spiritual in every stone, in every plant, in every animal, he would never have fallen into error and therewith into evil; if the progressive Spirits alone had worked upon him he would have been protected from those illusions to which he must always fall a prey when he bases himself solely upon the manifestations of the world of sense.

How did those spiritual Beings who desire to further man's progress act in order to combat this corruption, error and illusion arising from the material world? They saw to it—the process was of course slow and very gradual—that man was actually lifted away from the material world as such; this enabled him to shoulder and work out his karma. Whereas, therefore, the Beings upon whom it fell to rectify the enticement of the Luciferic Beings brought into the world suffering, pain and what is connected with them, namely death, the Beings whose task it was to rectify the outcome of error concerning the sense-world, made it possible for man, through his karma, eventually to blot out all the error, all the evil he has wrought in the world. For what would have happened if he had become the prey of evil and error? Little by little he would have become one with the evil; no progress would have been possible for him. For with every error, every lie, every illusion, we cast an obstacle in the way of progress. We should fall back in our progress to exactly the same extent to which we had cast obstacles in our path through sin and error, if we were not in a position to rectify them; in other words, we could not reach man's true goal. It would be impossible to attain this goal if the counter-forces, the forces of karma, were not in operation.

Suppose that in some life you commit a wrong. If this wrong were to become firmly fixed in your life it would mean nothing less than that you would lose the step forward which you would have taken had you not committed the wrong; with every wrong, a step would be lost—enough steps to correspond exactly with the wrongs committed. If the possibility of surmounting error had not been given, man must ultimately have been submerged by it. But the blessing of karma was bestowed. What does this blessing mean for man? Is karma something at which to shudder, something to dread? No, indeed! Karma is a power for which man should be thankful. For karma says to us: If you have committed a wrong, remember that “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”. An error demands that you shall right it; then, having expunged it from your karma you can again take a step forward!

Without karma, no progress would be possible. Karma is a blessing that has been vouchsafed to us, inasmuch as it obliges us to rectify every error, to re-achieve the steps that thrust us back.

Karma was thus the indirect consequence of the deeds of Ahriman. And now let us go further. In our days we are moving towards the epoch when other Beings will draw near to man—Beings who in the future before us will intrude more and more deeply into human evolution. Just as the Luciferic Spirits intervened in the Lemurian and the Ahrimanic Spirits in the Atlantean epoch, so our epoch too will see the intrusion of Beings. Let us be clear about the nature of these Beings.

Of the Beings who intervened during the Lemurian epoch we must say: They entrenched themselves in the astral body of man, drew his interests, impulses and desires down into the earthly sphere. Where—to speak more precisely—did these Luciferic Beings entrench themselves?

You can only understand this by taking as a basis what is set forth in my book Theosophy. There it is shown that the following members of man's being must be distinguished: first, his physical body; then his ether or life-body and his astral body—or as I have called it in that book, the sentient body, or soul-body.

These are the three members with which man was endowed before his earthly existence. The foundation of the physical body was laid on Old Saturn, the ether-body on the Old Sun, the soul or sentient body on the Old Moon. On the Earth was added the sentient soul—which is actually a transformation, an elaboration carried out unconsciously, of the sentient body. Lucifer anchored himself in the sentient soul; and there he remains. Through the unconscious transformation of the ether-body, the intellectual soul came into being, a more detailed description of which is contained in the book entitled The Education of the Child. It was in this second soul-member, the intellectual soul—the transformed part of the ether-body—that Ahriman established his footing. From there he lures man to false conceptions and judgments of material things, leads him to error, to sin, to lying—to everything that originates in the intellectual or mind soul. In every illusion that matter is the sole reality, we must perceive the whispered promptings of Ahriman, of Mephistopheles. Thirdly, there is the consciousness soul (spiritual soul), arising from an unconscious transformation of the physical body. You will remember how this transformation came about. Towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, the etheric body corresponding to the head came right into the physical head and gradually brought about selfconsciousness in the physical body. Fundamentally speaking, man is still working at this unconscious transformation of the physical body, at the development of the consciousness soul. And in the age now, approaching, those spiritual Beings known as the Asuras¹ will creep into the consciousness soul and therewith into the human ‘I’ or ego—for the ‘I’ lights up in the consciousness soul. The Asuras will generate evil with a far mightier force than was wielded by the Satanic powers in the Atlantean epoch or by the Luciferic Spirits in the Lemurian epoch.

In the course of the Earth-period man will cast away all the evil brought to him by the Luciferic Spirits together with the blessing of freedom. The evil brought by the Ahrimanic Spirits can be shed in the course of karma. But the evil brought by the Asuric powers cannot be expunged in this way. Whereas the good Spirits instituted pain and suffering, illness and death in order that despite the possibility of evil, man's evolution may still advance, whereas the good Spirits made possible the working of karma to the end that the Ahrimanic powers might be resisted and the evil made good, it will not be so easy to counter the Asuric powers as earth-existence takes its course. For these Asuric Spirits will prompt what has been seized hold of by them, namely the very core of man's being, the consciousness soul together with the ‘I’, to unite with earthly materiality. Fragment after fragment will be torn out of the ‘I’, and in the same measure in which the Asuric Spirits establish themselves in the consciousness soul, man must leave parts of his existence behind on the earth. What thus becomes the prey of the Asuric powers will be irretrievably lost. Not that the whole man need become their victim—but parts of his spirit will be torn away by the Asuric powers. These Asuric powers are heralded to-day by the prevailing tendency to live wholly in the material world and to be oblivious of the realty of spiritual beings and spiritual worlds. True, the Asuric powers corrupt man to-day in a way that is more theoretical than actual. To-day they deceive him by various means into thinking that his ‘I’ is a product of the physical world only; they hue him to a kind of theoretic materialism. But as time goes on—and the premonitory signs of this are the dissolute, sensuous passions that are becoming increasingly prevalent on earth—they will blind man's vision of the spiritual Beings and spiritual Powers. Man will know nothing nor desire to know anything of a spiritual world. More and more he will not only teach that the highest moral ideals of humanity are merely sublimations of animal impulses, that human thinking is but a transformation of a faculty also possessed by the animals, that man is akin to the animal in respect of his form and moreover in his whole being descends from the animal—but he will take this view in all earnestness and order his life in accordance with it.

Man does not as yet entirely base his life on the principle that his true being descends from the animal. But this view of existence will inevitably arise, with the result that men will also live like animals, will sink into animal impulses, animal passions. And in many things that need not be further characterized here, many things that in the great cities come to expression in orgies of dissolute sensuality, we can already perceive the lurid, hellish glare of the Spirits we call the Asuras.

Once again let us look back. We have said that suffering and pain, nay even death, were brought by the Spirits who are intent upon man's progress. The words of the Bible are unambiguous: “In travail shalt thou bear thy children!” Death has come into the world. Death was decreed for man by the Powers opposing the Luciferic Spirits. From whom came the gift of karma itself, who made karma possible for man?—To understand what is here being said you must discard all earthly, pedantic notions of time. Earthly notions of time give rise to the belief that what has once happened here or there will have an effect only upon what comes afterwards. But in the spiritual world it is the case that what comes to pass reveals itself in its effect, beforehand; in its effect it is already there, in advance. Whence comes the blessing of karma? Whence has there arisen in our earth-evolution this blessing of karma? From a Power none other than Christ.

Although Christ appeared only later, He was always present in the spiritual sphere of the earth Already in the ancient Oracles of Atlantis, the priests of those Oracles spoke of the “Spirit of the Sun”, of Christ. In the old Indian epoch of civilization the Holy Rishis spoke of “Vishva Karman”; Zarathustra in ancient Persia spoke of “Ahura Mazdao”, Hermes of “Osiris”; and Moses spoke of the Power which, being eternal, brings about the harmonization of the temporal and natural, the Power living in the “Ehjeh asher Ehjeh” (I am the I AM) as the harbinger of Christ. All spoke of the Christ; but where was He to be found in those ancient times? In the realm to which the eye of spirit alone can penetrate, in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world He was always to be found, working in and from the spiritual world. It is He Who even before man appeared on earth, sent down the possibility of karma. Then He came Himself to the earth, and we know what this has meant for man. We have described what was wrought by Him in the earthly sphere, we have spoken of the significance of the Event of Golgotha and of its effect also upon those who at that time were in the spiritual world, not incarnate in earthly bodies. We know that at the moment on Golgotha when the Blood flowed from the wounds, the Christ-Spirit appeared in the underworld, flooding the whole world of spirit with radiance and light; we have said that the appearance of Christ on the earth is the event of supreme importance also for the world through which man passes between death and a new birth.²

The impulse going forth from Christ is in the fullest sense reality. We need but ask ourselves what would have become of the earth had Christ not appeared. Precisely from the opposite picture—an earth without Christ—you can apprehend the significance of Christ's coming. Let us suppose that Christ had not come, that the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place.

Before Christ's Coming, the condition in the spiritual world of human souls who were the most progressed, who had acquired the deepest interest for earthly life, was truly expressed by the saying of the Greeks: Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades. For before the Event of Golgotha the souls in the spiritual world felt completely isolated, enveloped in darkness. The spiritual world in all its gleaming clarity was not transparent to those who entered it through the portal of death. Each one felt isolated, thrust back into himself as though a wall were between himself and every other soul. And this feeling of isolation would have become more and more intense. Man would have hardened within the ego, would have been thrown back into himself, nor could he have found any bridge to the others. And egoism, already intense, would have increased beyond all telling with every new incarnation.

Earth-existence would more and more have made men into utter egoists. There would have been no prospect of brotherhood on the earth or of inner harmony among souls; for with every journey through the spiritual world, stronger influence would have penetrated the ego. That is what would have happened to an earth without Christ. That the way from soul to soul will be found again, that it has been made possible for the mighty force of brotherhood to pour over all humanity—this is due to Christ's Coming, to the Event of Golgotha. Therefore Christ is the Power who has enabled man to turn earth-existence ultimately to good account, in other words to give karma its true configuration—for karma must be worked out on the earth. That man finds in himself the force to profit by his karma in physical existence, that advancing evolution is possible for him—all this he owes to the working of the Christ Event, to the presence of Christ in the earthly realm.

And so we see many diverse forces and beings working together in the evolution of humanity. Had Christ not come upon the earth, man would have been engulfed in error, because having hardened within himself he would have become as it were a globe on its own, knowing nothing of other beings, entirely self-enclosed, driven into that condition by error and sin.

Christ is verily the Light which leads out of error and sin, the Light which enables man to find the way upwards. And now let us ask ourselves: What was it that was lost to man in that he descended from the spiritual world, was ensnared in desires and passions under the influence of Lucifer, and then, under Ahriman's influence, in error, illusion and lying in the earthly world?—He lost direct vision of the spiritual world, he lost understanding of the spiritual world.

What, then, must he regain? He must regain full understanding of the spiritual world. As a self-conscious being, man can grasp the import of Christ's Deed only by realizing with full clarity of understanding, the significance of Christ. The Christ-Power is there in very truth—not brought by man, for the Christ-Power was brought to the earth by none other than Christ Himself. Karma has come into humanity through Christ. But now, with self-consciousness, man must learn to know Christ in His real nature and His connection with the whole universe. Only so can man work in the true sense as an ‘I’. What then, does he actually achieve when, after Christ's appearance, he does not merely rest satisfied with letting Christ's power work upon him unconsciously, with saying: I am content with the knowledge that Christ came to the earth; He will redeem me and ensure my progress!—but when he says: I am resolved to know what Christ is in all reality, how He descended; I am resolved to participate through my own spirit in Christ's Deed!—what does man achieve thereby?

Recall to your minds that because the Luciferic Spirits slipped into his astral body, man has come down into the world of sense, thereby falling prey to the evil but also acquiring the possibility of self-conscious freedom. Lucifer is in very truth present in the being of man, has drawn him down to the earth, has ensnared him in earthly existence; inasmuch as the passions and desires contained in the astral body had first been led by Lucifer into the earthly realm, Ahriman too was able to invade the astral body—in the intellectual soul. Christ appeared, and with Him the force which can bear man upwards again into the spiritual world. But now, if he so wills, man can come to know Christ, he can gather all wisdom to this end. What does he achieve thereby? Something of untold moment! When a man knows Christ, when he absorbs the wisdom which begets insight into what Christ truly is, then he redeems himself and the Luciferic Beings through this knowledge of Christ. Were man merely to say: I am content with the fact that Christ appeared and to allow myself to be redeemed by Him unconsciously—then he would contribute nothing to the redemption of the Luciferic Beings. These Luciferic Beings who have brought man freedom, also make it possible for him, if he so wills, to turn it to account in order to understand Christ. Then the Luciferic Spirits are cleansed and purified in the fire of Christianity and the wrong done to the earth by them is changed into blessing. Freedom has been attained; but it will also be carried into the spiritual sphere as a blessing. That man is capable of this, that he is capable of understanding Christ, that Lucifer, resurrected in a new form, can unite with Christ as the good Spirit—this, as prophecy still, was told by Christ Himself to those around Him, when He said: “Ye shall be illumined by the new Spirit, by the Holy Spirit!” This “Holy Spirit” is none other than the Spirit through whom man can apprehend what Christ has wrought. Christ desired not merely to work, but also to be apprehended, to be understood. Therefore the sending of the Spirit by whom men are inspired, the sending of the “Holy spirit”, is implicit in Christianity.

In the spiritual sense, Whitsuntide belongs inseparably to Easter. This “Holy Spirit” is none other than the Lucifer-Spirit, resurrected now in higher, purer glory—the Spirit of independent understanding, wisdom-inwoven. Christ Himself foretold that this Spirit would come to men after Him, and in the light of this Spirit their labors must proceed. What is it that works onward in the light of this Spirit? The world-stream of spiritual science, if rightly conceived! What is this spiritual science? It is the wisdom of the Spirit, the wisdom that lifts into the full light of consciousness that in Christianity which would otherwise remain in the unconscious. The torch of the resurrected Lucifer, of the Lucifer now transformed into the good, blazons the way for Christ. Lucifer is the bearer of the Light—Christ is the Light! As the word itself denotes, Lucifer is the “Bearer of the Light”. That is what the spiritual scientific movement should be, that is implicit in it. Those who know that the progress of mankind depends upon living apprehension of the mighty Event of Golgotha are they who as the “Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings” are united in the great Guiding Lodge of mankind. And as once the “tongues of fire” hovered down as a living symbol upon the company of the apostles, so does the “Holy Spirit” announced by Christ Himself reign as the Light over the Lodge of the Twelve. The Thirteenth is the Leader of the Lodge of the Twelve. The “Holy Spirit” is the mighty Teacher of those we name the “Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings”. It is through them that his voice and his wisdom flow down to mankind in this or that stream upon the earth. The treasures of wisdom gathered together by the spiritual scientific movement in order to understand the universe and the Spirits therein, how through the “Holy Spirit” into the Lodge of the Twelve; and that is what will ultimately lead mankind step by step to free, self-conscious understanding of Christ and of the Event of Golgotha Thus to ‘cultivate’ spiritual science means to understand that the Spirit has been sent into the world by Christ; the pursuit of spiritual science is implicit in true Christianity. This will become more and more evident to men; and then they will realize that in spiritual science they have a potent asset in their lives. Men owe to spiritual science the consciousness which dawns in them by degrees, that Christ is the Spirit Who fills the world with light. And the consequence will be that here on this earthly globe, in the physical world itself, men will make progress in their moral life, in their life of will, in their intellectual life. Through physical life itself the world will be spiritualized in ever-increasing measure. Men will grow in goodness, strength and wisdom and will gaze with ever deepening vision into the foundations and origins of existence. They will bear with them into the super-sensible life the fruits acquired in this physical life, and ever and again bring these fruits back from the super-sensible life into a new incarnation.

Thus the earth will more and more become the expression of its Spirit, of the Christ-Spirit. Spiritual science will be understood in the light of the world's foundations, apprehended as a real and active power. In various respects to-day mankind is near to losing the Spirit altogether. In the recent public lecture³ it was said that men suffer to-day under the fear of heredity. The fear of the burden of heredity is the direct offspring of our materialistic age. But is it enough if a man simply says to himself that he need not have this fear?—By no means does that suffice. A man who does not concern himself with the spiritual world, who does not instill into his soul what can flow from spiritual science, is subject to the forces of physical heredity. Only by steeping his whole being in what spiritual science can communicate to him does he gain mastery over the forces of heredity, regards it as a factor of no essential significance and becomes the victor of everything that the powers of hindrance place in his way in the external world. It is not by arguing or philosophizing it away, or by contending: Spirit exists!—that man brings the life of the senses under his command, but by permeating himself with the Spirit, by absorbing the Spirit, by having the will to acquire intimate knowledge of the Spirit. Then spiritual science will make men healthier even in the physical world; for spiritual science is itself a therapy that brings vigor and health. And the essential power of spiritual science will become still more evident to us when we consider what becomes of the human being when he passes through the gate of death. The modern mind finds great difficulty here.

Man thinks to himself: Why need I trouble about what happens in the spiritual world? When I die I go into the spiritual world in any case and then I shall see and hear what goes on there! In endless variations one hears this easy-going way of talking: Why should I trouble about the spiritual before I die? When the time comes I shall see what there is to see. My relationship to the spiritual world will not be altered in the slightest, no matter whether I do or do not concern myself with it.—But indeed this is not so! A man who thinks in such a way will enter a world of darkness and gloom, unable to make very much of what is said in my book Theosophy about the spiritual worlds. For it is only by allying himself in spirit and soul with the spiritual world during life in the physical world that man can acquire the faculty of perception in the spiritual world; the preparation must be made in his life here on earth. The spiritual world is there in very truth—the faculty of being able to see in that world must be acquired on the earth; otherwise there is blindness in the spiritual world.

Spiritual science is therefore the power which alone makes it possible for man to enter the spiritual world with consciousness. Had Christ not appeared in the physical world, man would have gone under in that world, could not have found entry to the spiritual world. But Christ lifts him into the spiritual world in such a way that he can see and be conscious there. This depends upon his knowledge of how to unite his being with the Spirit sent by Christ; failing that knowledge, he remains unconscious. Man has to win his immortality through his own efforts, for an unconscious immortality is no immortality. A beautiful saying of Meister Eckhardt is: “What does it profit a man to be a king if he knows it not,”—What he meant was: Of what use is the spiritual world to a man if he does not know what the spiritual worlds are in reality? The capacity for seeing the spiritual world can be acquired only in the physical world. Those who ask: Why was it necessary for man to descend at all into the physical world? do well to take this to heart.—Man descended in order to acquire vision of the spiritual world. He would have remained blind to the spiritual world had he not descended and attained the self-conscious manhood which enables him to return to the spiritual world now lying in radiance and light before his soul.

Spiritual science is therefore not merely a “conception of the world” in the accepted sense but something without which—even in the immortal part of his being—man can know nothing about the worlds of immortality. Spiritual science is an active power, permeating the soul as reality. And in that you are present here in the pursuit of spiritual science, you are not only gathering knowledge but you are growing into something you would otherwise not have become. That is the difference between spiritual science and other world-conceptions. The latter are rooted in knowledge; spiritual science is rooted in being.

Rightly conceived, these things will make us say to ourselves: With this illumination, an inner, fundamental connection is revealed between Christ, the Spirit, and spiritual science. In face of this connection all the superficial statements made to-day to the effect that a Western trend is being set up in opposition to an Eastern trend of occultism fall to the ground. There can be no question of any such opposition. There are not two occultisms, there is only one occultism; and there is no opposition between eastern and western Theosophy. There is only one truth. And what is our reply to be when we are asked: If eastern occultism is the same as western occultism, why is it that in eastern occultism, Christ is not acknowledged? The right reply is that it is not for us to give the answer; that obligation does not rest upon us, for we fully acknowledge eastern occultism. If asked whether we acknowledge what eastern occultism says about Brahma, about the Buddha, we shall answer: Most certainly we acknowledge it. We understand what is meant when we are told that the Buddha attained his exalted rank in this or that way. We deny no single one of the eastern truths; in so far as they are positive truths we acknowledge them all. But shall this prevent us from acknowledging as well, what goes yet further? No indeed! We acknowledge what is said by eastern occultism, but that does not prevent us from acknowledging, too, the western truths.

When people allege that it is an inferior way of thinking on the part of orientalists to say that the Buddha died from eating too much pork—as these learned gentlemen assert—and it is explained that this actually has a deep meaning, namely that the Buddha imparted to those immediately around him too much of the esoteric wisdom, so that this over-abundance caused the onset of a kind of karma—then we agree that it is so; we say: certainly there lie behind it the deeper esoteric truths as stated by you who are eastern esotericists!—But when the statement that the Apocalypse was revealed to St. John on Patmos amid thunder and lightning is held to be unintelligible,⁴ then our answer will be: everyone who is aware of what is really meant, knows that it is a truth! We do not refute what is said about the Buddha but we cannot agree when the validity of the other statement (concerning the Apocalypse) is denied. We do not contest the assertion that the astral body of the Buddha was preserved and was later incorporated in Shankaracharya. But that does not prevent us from teaching that the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was preserved and in multiple replicas was incorporated in various individuals dedicated to Christianity, like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Elizabeth of Thüringen. We deny no single truth of oriental esotericism. Therefore when we are asked: Why is anything refuted? Why is there opposition?—it is not incumbent upon us to answer. It would be incumbent upon us to answer if the opposition came from our side. But it does not! The duty to answer rests upon one who denies, not upon one who agrees. That is obvious enough.

In the coming weeks⁵ you will be able to hear of the connection between spiritual science and the Event of Golgotha and you will realize that the whole vocation, the whole mission of the spiritual scientific movement in the world is raised to a higher sphere inasmuch as spiritual science puts into effect the inspiration, the power proclaimed as the Spirit by Christ Himself.

So we see how Powers work together in the world, how everything that appears to oppose the progress of mankind subsequently turns out to be a blessing. We realize, too, that in the Post-Atlantean epoch—from age to age—the Spirit who has brought man freedom will appear again in a new form; Luciferus, the sovereign Bearer of Light, will be redeemed. For everything in the great World Plan is good and the evil endures only for a season. Therefore he alone believes in eternity of the evil who confounds the temporal with the eternal; he who does not rise from the temporal to the eternal can never understand the evil.

• 1. The Asuras are retarded Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archai (Spirits of Personality). They are Beings who instead of furthering man's progress to independence, lure him into gross egoism. In the negative sense they now bear the name originally pertaining to the entire Hierarchy. C.S.P.
• 2. Cp. Lecture 13, Cycle VIII: The Gospel of St. John in relation to the other three Gospels, especially to the Gospel of St. Luke. “At the moment when the Blood flowed from the wounds on Golgotha, the earth—which in the course of evolution had grown ever darker—began to send rays out into cosmic space, began to be radiant.”
• 3. Berlin, 18th February, 1909.
• 4. The reference is to a passage in The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky. A later volume, compiled by Annie Besant from manuscripts left by Blavatsky includes a statement indicating that the author was not unaware of the significance of thunder and lightening as an accompaniment of spiritual revelations. (C.S.P.)
• 5. Lecture-Course on the “Spiritual Hierarchies”.

Today let us look at one of those aspects of spiritual science that show us how well qualified anthroposophy is to throw light on life in the widest sense. Not only does this knowledge help us understand everyday life, it also throws light on the great span of human existence that includes the time between death and a new birth.

Spiritual science can be of great help to us just where daily life is concerned; it can help us solve many problems and show us how to cope with life. Those people who cannot see into the depths of existence fail to understand many things they are encountering every moment of the day. The questions that cannot be answered out of sense experience mount up, and, being unanswered, remain problems that have a disturbing effect on life, breeding discontent. Being discontented in life, however, can never serve man's evolution nor his true welfare. We could enumerate hundreds of such life problems that are far more deeply illuminating than people usually imagine.

A word that contains many such problems is the word ‘forgetting’. You all know it as the word indicating the opposite of what we call the retaining of a mental image or a thought or impression. Certainly you will all have had some distressing experiences with what is conveyed by the word forgetting. You will all know the annoying experience you often have if one or another idea or impression has, as we say, slipped your memory. You may then have wondered why such a thing as forgetting has to belong to the phenomena of life.

Now it is only with the help of the facts of occult life that you can get answers to a thing like this, that is, answers that are of any value. You know, of course, that memory or remembering has something to do with what we call man's etheric body. So we can also assume that the opposite of memory, namely forgetting, will have something to do with the etheric body. Perhaps we are justified in asking if there is any significance in the fact that the things a human being has had at some time in his life of thought can also be forgotten? Or do we have to be satisfied with characterising forgetting in a purely negative way, as so often happens, and say that it is a defect of the human soul not to be able to remember everything all the time? We shall only throw light on forgetting by turning our attention to its opposite and considering the nature and significance of memory.

If we say that memory has something to do with the etheric body, we ought to ask ourselves how it happens that the etheric body acquires this task of retaining the impressions and thoughts in man, when the etheric body is present in plants where it has an essentially different task? We have often spoken of the fact that in contrast to the stone a plant has its whole material nature permeated by an etheric body. And this etheric body in the plant is the principle of life in a restricted sense, and also the principle of repetition. If the plant were only subject to the activity of the etheric body, then, beginning from the root of the plant, the leaf principle would repeat indefinitely. It is due to the etheric body that the parts of a living entity repeat again and again, for it is the etheric body that wants to keep on reproducing the same thing. That is why life has such a thing as so-called propagation, the bringing forth of its own kind, for this is due fundamentally to an activity of the etheric body. Everything depending on repetition in man or animal is attributable to the etheric principle.

The repetition of one vertebra after another in the spine comes from this activity of the etheric body. The termination of the plant's growth at the top, and the gathering up of its whole growth in the blossom is due to the astrality of the earth descending from without into the growth of the plant. The fact that in man the vertebrae of the spine widen and become the hollow bones of the cranium arises through the activity of man's astral body. So we can say that everything which brings things to a conclusion is subject to the astral principle and all repetition to the etheric principle. The plant has this etheric body, and man has it too. Of course there can be no question of memory in the plant. For to assert that the plant has a kind of unconscious memory with which it notes what the leaf it produced was like, grows a little further and then produces the next leaf on the pattern of the first, this kind of assertion leads to the strange illusions seen today in a recent trend of natural science. Some people even say that heredity is due to a kind of unconscious memory. We could almost call this bringing nonsense into natural scientific literature, for to speak of memory in the plant is actually sheer dilettantism on a higher level.

It is with the etheric body, which is the principle of repetition, that we are concerned. To be able to grasp the difference between the plant's etheric body and man's, which, in addition to the qualities of the plant's etheric body also has the capacity to develop memory, we shall have to become clear about the fundamental difference between a plant and a human being. Imagine planting a seed in the earth; out of it a quite definite plant will arise. From a grain of wheat a wheat stalk and ears will grow, and out of a bean will come a bean plant. You will have to admit that the plant's development is in a certain way irrevocably determined by the nature of the seed. It is true that the gardener may bring his influence to bear on it and alter and improve the plant by means of all sorts of horticultural methods. But that is really an exception to the rule, and is only of minor significance compared with the fact that a particular seed will produce a plant of a definite shape and growth. Is this also the case with man? Up to a point this is certainly so, but only up to a certain point. When a human being arises out of the embryo we see that his development is also enclosed within certain limits. Negroes come from negro parents, white children from white parents, and we could add various other examples to show that human development, just like the plant's, is also enclosed within certain limits. This limit, however, only extends as far as the physical, etheric and astral nature. Certain things can be traced in the permanent habits and temperamental nature of a child that show similarities with the temperament and instincts of his ancestors. But if the human being were just as enclosed within the limits of a certain form of growth as the plant is, then there would be no such thing as education, as the development of soul and spiritual qualities. If you imagine two children who have different parents but who are very similar with regard to ability and external characteristics, and then imagine that one of these children is neglected and does not have much education, while the other is carefully brought up and sent to a good school where his capacities are properly developed, you could not possibly say that this development of the child's capacities was already there in embryonic form as with a bean. The bean grows from the seed in any case without our needing to educate it. That belongs to its nature. Plants cannot be educated, but human beings can. We can pass something on to the human being and put something into him, whereas we cannot put anything of the kind into a plant. Why is this? Because the etheric body of the plant always has a certain finite number of inner laws which unfold from one seed to the next and have a definite round beyond which they cannot go. Man's etheric body is different. Besides the part that is used for growth, which is that part of his being that is also enclosed within certain limits like the plant, man's etheric body has as it were another part too, a free part, which does not have a natural use unless the human being is taught all kinds of things through his education, and things are thereby put into his soul which this free part of the etheric body deals with. So there is actually a part of man's etheric body that is not used by his organic nature. Man keeps this part of the etheric body for his own use; he uses it neither for growth nor for his natural organic development, but keeps it as a free organ with which he can take in the ideas of education.

Now the first thing that happens in this process of acquiring ideas is that man receives impressions. Man always has to receive impressions, for the whole of education is based on impressions and on the co-operation between etheric body and astral body. To receive impressions we need the astral body, but in order to retain these impressions, so that they do not disappear again, we need the etheric body. Even the minutest, apparently most trivial memory-picture needs the activity of the etheric body. To perceive an object you need the astral body, but to remember it when you turn your head away you have to have the etheric body. The astral body is necessary for perception, but to have an idea, a mental image, you need the etheric body. Even though very little activity of the etheric body is necessary for the retaining of ideas, so little that it hardly need be taken into account until it comes to permanent habits, inclinations, changes of temperament and so on, you still need the etheric body for remembering. It must be there for you to so much as remember one single mental image. For all retaining of mental images is based in a certain sense on memory.

Now through the impressions of education, through man's spiritual development, we have put all sorts of things into this free etheric organ, and we can now ask ourselves whether this free etheric organ has any significance at all for a person's growth and development. Yes it has! The older a man becomes—not so much in his youth—all that has been incorporated into the etheric body through the impressions of education gradually begins to participate in the whole life of the human body, also in an inward way. And the best way of forming an idea of this participation is to get to know a fact that is not usually taken into account. People think that what is of a soul nature is not of much importance for man's life in general. Yet the following can happen: Suppose a man gets ill simply because he has been exposed to an unsuitable climate. Now let us imagine that this man could be ill in two different situations. One might be that he does not have much to work upon in the free part of his etheric body. Let us assume that he is a lazy fellow, on whom the outside world does not make much impression, and whose education has presented great difficulties, because things go in through one ear and out through the other. A person like this will not have so much to help him recover as another person who has an alert, lively mind, and who in his youth took in a great deal and worked well, and has therefore provided well for the free part of his etheric body. It will, of course, still have to be proved by external medicine why the process of recovery meets with greater difficulties in the one than in the other. This free part of the etheric body that has grown energetic through many impressions asserts itself, and its inner mobility contributes to the healing process. In innumerable cases people owe their rapid or painless recovery to the fact that when they were young they received impressions with lively interest. There you see the influence the mind has on the body! In the case of recovery from an illness, it makes the world of difference if we have to deal with a man who goes through life with a dull mind, or with a man whose free etheric body, instead of being heavy and lethargic has remained alive. You can see this for yourself if you look at the world with your eyes open and notice how mentally lazy and mentally active people behave when they are ill.

You see then that man's etheric body is something quite different from a mere plant's. The plant lacks this free part of the etheric body which furthers the development of man, in fact man's whole development depends on his having this free part of the etheric body. If you compare the beans of thousands of years ago with the beans of today, you will notice a certain difference, of course, but beans have basically retained the same form. If, however, you compare the people of Europe in the time of Charlemagne with people today: why do present day people have such different thoughts and feelings? It is because they have always had a free part of their etheric body with which they could take something in and transform their nature. All this holds good in general. Now we must look at the way all that we have been describing works in particular instances.

Let us take the case of a man who cannot obliterate from his memory an impression he receives, and so the impression just stays there. It would be a strange thing if you had to think that everything that had made an impression on you since your childhood, every day of your life, from morning till night, were always in your mind. You know of course that it is only present after death for a certain time. And there is a good reason for it then. But man forgets it during life. All of you have not only forgotten innumerable things that happened to you when you were little, but also a lot of things that happened last year, and even a certain amount that happened yesterday. A mental image that has gone from your memory, that you have “forgotten”, has by no means disappeared from your whole being, your whole spiritual organism. Far from it. If you saw a rose yesterday and have now forgotten it, the picture of the rose is still in you, as well as all the other impressions you have received, even though they have been forgotten by your immediate consciousness.

Now there is a tremendous difference between a mental image whilst it is in our memory and after we have forgotten it. So let us imagine a mental picture we have formed of an external impression, and now have in our consciousness. Then let us see with our soul's eye how it gradually disappears and is forgotten. It is there nevertheless, and remains within the whole spiritual organism. What does it do there? What does this so-called forgotten image do? It has a very important function. From the moment of being forgotten it begins to work in the right way on the free part of the etheric body we have been speaking about, and make it serviceable for man. It is as though it were not digested until then. As long as the human being uses it for acquiring knowledge it does not yet work inwardly to bring life into the free etheric organ. The moment it sinks into oblivion it begins to work. So it can be said that work is continually in progress in and upon the free part of the etheric body. And what is it that does the work? It is the forgotten ideas! That is the great blessing of forgetting! As long as a mental image remains in your memory you connect it with an object. If you observe a rose and carry the mental image of it in your memory, you connect the image of the rose with the outer object. The image is thus chained to the external object and has to send it its inner force. The moment you forget the image, however, you set it free. Then it begins to develop germinal forces which work inwardly on man's etheric body. So our forgotten memories have great significance for us. A plant cannot forget. It cannot receive impressions either, of course. It would not be able to forget, anyway, because its whole etheric body is used for growth, and there is nothing left over. If mental pictures could enter into the plant, it would still have nothing there to be developed.

Everything that happens, however, happens in conformity to law. Everything that is meant to develop and yet is not helped in its development creates a hindrance to development. Everything in an organism that is not included in its development becomes a hindrance to development. If, for instance, all kinds of substances were secreted inside the eye and could not be absorbed by the general fluid of the eye, then sight would be impaired. Nothing must be allowed to remain that cannot be taken in and absorbed. It is the same with mental impressions. If, for instance, a man could receive impressions and never get them out of his consciousness, it could easily happen that the free part of the etheric body would be undernourished and would consequently be more of a handicap than a help to a man's development. There you have the reason why it is bad for a person to lie awake at night and not be able to get certain impressions out of his mind because he is worried about something. If he could forget them they would work beneficially on his etheric body. In this case it is obvious what a blessing it would be to forget, and at the same time you have an indication of the necessity not to force yourself to remember something, but rather learn to forget it. It is the worst thing possible for a man's inner health if there are certain things he just cannot forget.

What we can say about everyday things of the moment also applies to things of an ethical-moral nature. A warm-hearted disposition that does not bear grudges is really based on this, too. Bearing resentment preys on a person's health. If someone has done us a wrong and we remember the impression it made on us every time we see him, then we relate this image to him and let it stream outwards. But if we could manage to greet him warmly next time we meet him, just as though nothing had happened, that would really do some good. It is a fact and not a fantasy that it does some good. A resentful thought like this is dull and ineffective when turned outwards, but no sooner is it turned inwards than it becomes soothing balm for many a thing in man. These things are facts, and they help us see even more meaning in the blessing of forgetting. Forgetting is not a mere defect in man but one of the most salutary things in human life. If man were only to develop his memory, and if everything that makes an impression on him were to remain in his memory, his etheric body would have more to carry, and its contents would become more and more extensive, but at the same time it would become more and more dried up. It is thanks to forgetting that man is capable of developing. Besides, no mental image is completely lost to man. This is seen best in that mighty memory picture we have immediately after death. There it becomes apparent that no impression is entirely lost.

Having touched shortly on the blessing of forgetting both in the neutral and the moral sphere of daily life, let us now consider how forgetting works in the large span of life between death and a new birth. What actually is Kamaloca, that period of transition human beings go through before entering Devachan, the spiritual world proper? Kamaloca exists because immediately after death the human being cannot forget the inclinations, desires and pleasures he had in life. At death man first of all leaves his physical body behind him. Then the mighty memory tableau I have often described stands before his soul. After two, three or at the most four days this has completely finished. Then a kind of extract of the etheric body remains. Whilst the greater part of the etheric body withdraws and dissolves in the general ether, a kind of essence or framework of the etheric body remains behind, but in a concentrated form. The astral body is the bearer of all the instincts, desires, passions, feelings, sensations and pleasures. Now the astral body would not be able to be conscious of the tormenting privations in Kamaloca if it were not for the fact that it is still connected with the remainder of the etheric body, which gives it the continued possibility of remembering what it enjoyed and desired in life. And the breaking of habit is really nothing else but a gradual forgetting of all that chains the human being to the physical world. So if man wants to enter Devachan, he must first learn to forget all that binds him to the physical world. Thus we see that man is tormented here, too, because he still has memories of the physical world. Just as worries can torment man when they refuse to leave his memory, so likewise can the inclinations and instincts that remain after death torment him, and this tormenting memory of the connections with life expresses itself in all that the human being has to pass through during his Kamaloca period. Not until he has succeeded in forgetting all his wishes and desires for things of the physical world do the achievements and fruits of his previous life appear, in readiness for the work of Devachan. There they become sculptors and overseers working on the form of the life to come. For man largely spends his time in Devachan working on the new form he is to have when he re-enters earthly life. This work of preparing his future being gives the feeling of bliss which he has throughout Devachan. When man has passed through Kamaloca he begins the groundwork for his future form. The life in Devachan is always spent in using that extract he has brought with him for constructing the prototype of his next form. He forms this prototype by working into it the fruits of the past life. He can only do this, however, by forgetting the things that made Kamaloca so difficult for him.

We have seen that the suffering and privation in Kamaloca is caused by the human being's inability to forget certain connections with the physical world, and then the physical world hovers in front of him like a memory. However, when he has passed through the waters of ‘Lethe’, the River of Forgetfulness, and has learnt to forget, the achievements and experiences of his past incarnation can be put to work to build up bit by bit the prototype of the coming life. Now the joyful bliss of Devachan begins to take the place of suffering. When worries torment us in ordinary life, and particular images remain stuck in our memory, we introduce something hard and lifeless into our etheric body which undermines our health. Similarly, after death we have something in our being which contributes to our sufferings and privations, until, through forgetting, we have rid ourselves of all connection with the physical world. Just as these forgotten memories can become a source of health in man, so can all the experiences of the past life become a source of bliss in Devachan when the human being has passed through the River of Forgetfulness and has forgotten everything that binds him to life in the world of the senses.

So we see then that these laws of forgetting and remembering are also absolutely valid for life in its broadest sense.

Now you might ask: How can a man after death have any memory pictures at all of what happened in his past life, if he must forget this life? Someone might say: Can you talk about forgetting at all, seeing that man has laid aside the etheric body with which remembering and forgetting are connected? After death, of course, remembering and forgetting assume a slightly different form. They change in such a way that a reading of the Akashic Record takes the place of ordinary remembering. The happenings of the world have not disappeared, of course, they just appear objectively. When the memory of connections with physical life vanishes in Kamaloca, these events appear in quite another form, and arise before man in the Akashic Record. Then he does not need the connection with life which comes from ordinary memory. Every question of this kind that might be asked will find an answer. But we must leave ourselves time to do this gradually, for it is impossible to have all the answers straight away at our finger tips.

Now we shall understand many a thing in everyday life, if we know about the things just discussed. Much of what belongs to the human etheric body is shown in the way the temperaments react upon man. We have said that this enduring characteristic that we call temperament also has its origin in the etheric body. Let us imagine a person who has a melancholic temperament and who never gets away from certain mental images that he is always thinking about. This is something quite different from a sanguine or a phlegmatic temperament, where the images just disappear. A melancholic temperament works detrimentally on a man's health, in the sense we have been considering, whilst a sanguine temperament can in a certain way be extremely beneficial. Of course these things must not be taken in such a way that you come to the conclusion the human being must try to forget everything. But you can see that the healthy and beneficial side of a sanguine or phlegmatic temperament and the unhealthy side of a melancholic temperament can be explained by these very things we have just learnt. It is natural to ask whether a phlegmatic temperament is also working in the right way. A phlegmatic who only takes in trivial thoughts will easily forget them. That will be good for his health. But if, on the other hand, he takes in no other thoughts than these, it will not be good for him at all. This gets rather complicated.

The question as to whether forgetting is just a defect in human nature or something useful is answered by spiritual science. And we see, too, that strong moral impulses can follow from the knowledge of such things. If a man believes it is for his good—and this has to be taken quite objectively—to be able to forget insults and injuries done to him, then quite a different impulse will work in him. But as long as he believes that it does not make any difference, then no amount of preaching will help. When he knows, however, that he ought to forget for the sake of his well-being, he will let this impulse work on him in quite a different way. You need not immediately call it egoistic; it would be better to express it this way: If I am ill and feeble, and if I ruin my health spiritually, psychologically and physically, I am of no use to the world. We can also consider the question of well-being from an entirely different point of view. If a man is a thoroughgoing egoist he will not profit much from such considerations. But whoever has the good of humanity at heart and is therefore intent on working for it—and also, indirectly, has his own good at heart—if he is in a position to think about this, he will also draw moral fruits from such considerations. And we shall see that if spiritual science works into human life by showing man the truth about specific spiritual circumstances, it will give man the greatest ethical-moral impulses, such as no other knowledge and no merely external moral commands can do. Knowledge of the facts of the spiritual world, as imparted by spiritual science is, therefore, a powerful impulse which also in regard to the moral realm can bring about the greatest progress in human life.

Those of you who have been attending these group lectures for years will perhaps have noticed that the themes have not been haphazardly chosen but have a certain continuity. In the course of each winter, too, the lectures have always had a certain inner connection, even if, on the surface, this has not been immediately apparent. Therefore it will obviously be of the utmost importance to follow up the various courses that are being held here alongside the actual group evenings, and which are intended for the purpose of bringing newer members up to the level, as it were, of these group lectures; for various things said here cannot be immediately understood by every newcomer. But there is something else we should note as well, which will gradually have to be taken into consideration in the various groups of our German section. As there is a certain inner thread in the lectures, it is incumbent upon men to form each lecture so that it is part of a whole. Therefore it is not possible to say the things that can be presented to advanced participants in that kind of single lecture in such a way that they are equally suitable for newcomers. We could speak about the same theme in a very elementary way, of course, but that would not do in face of the progressive path we are planning to take in the anthroposophical life of this particular group. This again is connected with the fact that the further we progress the more we can anticipate in the way of wide-spread lecture publications and reporting of lectures from one group to another. For with regard to these lectures I give in the groups it is becoming less and less immaterial whether you hear the one on one Monday and the next the following Monday. It may not be immediately apparent to the audience why the one lecture succeeds the other, yet it is important nevertheless; and when you lend lectures to one another you cannot take this into account at all. One lecture might get read before the other, and then it unavoidably gets misunderstood and causes confusion. I want to make a special point of this, as it is an essential part of our anthroposophical life. Even the inserting of a phrase here or there, or the over or under emphasising of a word depends on the whole development of the life of the group. Only when the publication of the lectures can be strictly supervised so that nothing is published unless it has been submitted to me, can any good come of this duplicating and publishing of lectures.

This is also a kind of introduction to the lectures about to be held in this group. There will be a certain inner connection in the course of this winter's lectures and all the preparatory material will eventually be directed towards a definite culmination with which the course will then close. Last week's lecture was a small beginning, and today's lecture will be a kind of continuation. But it will not continue like a newspaper serial, where the thirty-eighth installment follows on after the thirty-seventh. There will be an inner connection, even though the subject matter will appear to differ, and the connection will consist in the fact that the whole series will culminate in the final lectures. So, with these concluding lectures in view, we will start today by sketching the nature of illnesses, and next Monday we will talk about the origin, historic importance and meaning of the “Ten Commandments”. These could well appear to have nothing in common; however, you will eventually see that it all has an inner connection, and that these lectures should not be taken as separate ones, as is often the case with those given for a wider public.

We would like to speak today about the nature of illness from the point of view of spiritual science. As a rule people are not concerned about illness, or one or another type of illness at least, until they themselves fall sick with it, and even then their interest does not go much beyond the cure. That is, they are only concerned about their recovery. How this cure is effected is sometimes a matter of complete indifference, and the pleasantest thing is not to have any further responsibility for the “how”. Most of our contemporaries content themselves with the thought that the people who carry out the job have been appointed to do so by the authorities. In our time there exists in this sphere a much more rabid belief in authority than has ever existed in the religious sphere. The papacy of medicine, irrespective of its various forms, still makes itself felt with great intensity and will do so to an even greater extent in the future. Laymen are in no way to blame for the fact that this can and will be like this. For they do not think about these matters or care in the least about them unless it affects them personally and they suffer from an acute case that requires treatment. Thus a large section of the population calmly looks on whilst the papacy of medicine assumes greater and greater dimensions and insinuates itself into things in all manner of ways, like the way it is now speaking out and interfering so horribly in the education of children and the life of the schools, and claiming its right to a particular therapy. People do not care about the deeper significance that is actually behind all this. They look on whilst one or another law is instituted. People do not want to have any insight into these matters. On the other hand there will always be people who are personally affected and cannot manage with ordinary materialistic medicine, the basis of which does not concern them, but only the fact of whether they can be cured or not, and then they will apply to the people who work out of occultism—and there again they only care about whether they can be cured or not. But they do not care whether public life as a whole, with its methods and its way of understanding things, completely undermines a deeper method arising out of the spirit. Who cares whether the public prevents any cures being effected in the method based on occultism, or cares whether the one who applies the method is put in prison? These things are not taken seriously enough except when people are personally affected. However it is just the task of a really spiritual movement to awaken a consciousness of the fact that there has to be more than an egoistic desire for recovery; in fact there has to be knowledge of the deeper foundations in these matters, and this knowledge has to be made known.

In our age of materialism it appears to anyone who can see to the bottom of these matters as only too obvious why just the theory of illness in particular comes under the strongest influence of materialistic thinking. However, if we follow this or that slogan, or give special credit to this or that method, merely criticising what is trimmed with materialistic theories, despite the fact that it arises out of a scientific basis and is useful in many respects, we shall be making just as much of a mistake as if we were to go to the other extreme and put everything under the heading of psychological cures and suchlike, and fall victim in this way to all manner of one-sidedness. Present-day mankind must, above all, realise more and more that man is a complicated being and that everything to do with man is connected with this complexity of his being. If there is a kind of science holding the opinion that man consists merely of a physical body, it cannot possibly work beneficially with the healthy or the sick human being. For health and sickness, have a relationship to man as a whole and not to one part of him only, namely the physical body.

Nor must the matter be taken superficially. You can find plenty of doctors nowadays, properly recognised members of the medical profession, who would never admit to being sworn materialists; they profess to one or another religious faith, and they would staunchly deny the accusation of being materialistic. But this is not the point. Life does not depend on what a man says or believes. That is his personal concern. To be effective it is necessary to know how to apply and make valuable use in life of those facts that are not limited to the sense world but have an existence in the spiritual world. So that however pious a doctor is and however many ideas he has regarding this or the other spiritual world, if he nevertheless works according to the rules that arise entirely out of our materialistic world conception, that is, he treats people as though they only had a body, then however spiritually minded he believes himself to be, he is nevertheless a materialist. For it does not depend on what a person says or believes but on his ability to set in living motion the forces behind the external world of the senses. Nor is it sufficient for anthroposophy to spread the knowledge of man's fourfold nature and for everybody to go repeating that man consists of a physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, even if people can define and describe them in a certain way. The essential thing is not just to know this, but to understand more and more clearly the living interplay of these members of man's being and the part the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego play in the healthy and in the sick human being and what their interrelationship implies. Unless you make it your business to know what spiritual science can tell you about the nature of the fourth member of man's being, the ego, then however much you study anatomy and physiology you would not know anything about the nature of blood. That would be quite impossible. And you would never be able to say anything of any value about the illnesses connected with the nature of the blood. For the blood is the expression of the ego nature of man. And if Goethe's words in Faust: “Blood is a very special fluid” [see the lecture: Occult Significance of the Blood, e.Ed] are still quoted today, they do in fact say a very great deal. Present-day science has no inkling of the fact that scientists ought to treat blood, even physical blood, in an entirely different manner from any other organ of man's physical body, because these other organs are the expression of entirely different things. If the glands are the expression, the physical counterpart, of the etheric body, then even physically we have to look for something quite different in the composition of a gland, be it liver or spleen, than we have to look for in the blood that is the expression of a much higher member of man's being, namely the ego. And scientific methods must be guided by this if they are to show us how to work with these things. Now I want to say something which will really only be understood by advanced anthroposophists, yet it is important that it is said.

A materialistically-minded scholar of today takes it as a matter of course that when he makes a prick in the body blood will flow out that can be examined in all the known ways. And blood is described according to the method of investigating its chemical composition in exactly the same way as is done with any other substance, such as an acid. One thing, however, is left out of account, although, needless to say, it is not only bound to be unknown to materialistic science, but it is sure to be considered sheer folly and madness, and yet it is true: the blood flowing in the arteries, and sustaining the living body, is not what flows out when I make the prick and take out a drop. For the moment blood comes out of the body it changes to such an extent that we have to admit it is something quite different; and what flows out as coagulating blood, however fresh it is, is no proof of the living essence within the organism. Blood is the expression of the ego, a member of the human being that is at a high level. Even as physical substance blood is something that you cannot examine physically in its totality at all, because when you are able to see it, it is no longer the blood it was when it flowed in the body. It cannot be looked at physically, for the moment it is exposed to view and can be examined by some method similar to X-ray, you are no longer examining blood but something that is the external image of blood on the physical plane. These things will only gradually be understood. There have always been scientists in the world working out of occultism who have said this, but they have been called things like madmen or philosophers.

Everything to do with man's health or sickness really is bound up with man's manifold nature, with the complicity of his being; hence it is only through a knowledge of man arising out of spiritual science that we can arrive at a conception of man in health and in sickness. There are certain ailments in man's organism which can only be understood when we realise their connection with the nature of the ego, and these ailments also appear in a way—but in a limited way—in the expression of the ego, the blood. Then there are certain ailments in man's organism that point to an illness of the astral body and which therefore affect the external expression of the astral body, the nervous system. Now whilst mentioning this second case I shall have to ask you to be somewhat aware of the subtlety of thought necessary here. When man's astral body has an irregularity that comes to expression in the nervous system, the external image of the astral body, the first thing we notice physically is a certain disability in the functioning of the nervous system. Now when the nervous system cannot do its job in a certain area all kind of symptoms can result, affecting the stomach, head or heart. However, an illness that shows symptoms in the stomach does not necessarily point to a disability of the nervous system in a certain area and originate therefore in the astral body, it can come from something entirely different.

Those types of illnesses connected with the ego itself and therefore also connected with its external expression, the blood, appear as a rule—but only as a rule, for things are not so clear cut in the world, even though you can draw clear lines when you want to make observations—these illnesses appear as chronic illnesses. Various other disturbances appearing to begin with are usually symptoms. One or another symptom may appear, which nevertheless originates in a disturbance in the blood, and that has its origin in an irregularity of that part of the human being that we call the bearer of the ego. I could speak to you for hours about the types of illness that are chronic and which originate from the physical point of view in the blood and from the spiritual point of view in the ego. Those are chiefly the illnesses that are in the proper sense hereditary, and these are the illnesses that can only be understood by those people who look at the being of man from a spiritual point of view. Here and there are people who are chronically ill, who are, in other words, never really fit; they always have one or another thing the matter with them. To get to the bottom of this, we must ask ourselves what the actual basic character of the ego is like. What kind of a person is he? If you understand what life really is, then you will know that definite forms of chronic illnesses are connected with one or another basic soul character of the ego. Certain chronic illnesses will never occur in people who have a serious and dignified attitude to life but only in those of a frivolous nature. This can merely be an indication, to show the way these lectures are leading.

As you see, the first thing you have to ask yourself when somebody comes and says he has been suffering from this or that for years, is what kind of person is he fundamentally? You have to know what basic character type his ego is, otherwise you are bound to go wrong with ordinary medicine, unless you are lucky. The important thing in curing people of these, illnesses which are mainly the really hereditary ones, is to consider their whole surroundings, in so far as they can have a direct or indirect influence on the ego. When you have really got to know this aspect of a person, you may have to advise that he is sent to another natural surrounding, perhaps for the winter, if possible; or, if he has a certain job, to change it and encounter a different aspect of life. The essential thing will be to try to find the setting that will have just the right effect on the character of the ego. To find the right cure, you need, in particular, a wide experience of life, so that you can enter into the person's character and can say: For this person to recover, he must change his job. It is a matter of pinpointing what is necessary from the point of view of his soul nature. Sometimes, perhaps, just in this sphere, no recovery can be achieved at all, because it is impossible to effect a change; in many instances it can be effected, however, if people only know of it. A lot can be done for some people, for example, if they simply live in the mountains instead of the lowlands. These are the things that apply to the kind of illnesses that appear externally as chronic illnesses, and that are connected physically with the blood and spiritually with the ego.

Now we come to those illnesses that have their spiritual origin mainly in irregularities of the astral body and that appear in certain disabilities of the nervous system in one or another direction. Now a large part of the common acute illnesses are connected with what we have just mentioned, in fact most of them. For it is sheer superstition to believe that when someone has a stomach or heart complaint or even a clearly perceptible irregularity somewhere, the right treatment is to deal directly with the symptom. The essential thing could be that the symptom is there because the nervous system is incapable of functioning. Thus the heart can be affected simply because the nervous system has become incapable of functioning in the area where it ought to support the movement of the heart. It is quite unnecessary to maltreat the heart or, as the case may be, the stomach, for they may, in principle, have nothing directly the matter with them, for it is only the nerves that provide for them which are incapable of carrying out their job. If in a case like this the stomach complaint is treated with hydrochloric acid, it would be a mistake comparable to tinkering with an engine that is always running late because you think something is the matter with it—yet it still runs late. For you would find, on closer examination, that the engine-driver always gets drunk before driving; so you would do better to deal with the engine-driver, for the train would be punctual otherwise. So it could well be that with stomach complaints we have to treat the nerves that provide for the stomach instead of the stomach itself. In the domain of materialistic medicine, too, you may perhaps hear various remarks to this effect. But it is not just a matter of saying that with stomach symptoms you have to deal with the nerves first. This achieves nothing. You only achieve something when you know that the nerve is the expression of the astral body and seek for the causes in the irregularities to be found there. The question is, what is the main thing?

The first thing to consider in the treatment of this sort of complaint is diet and finding the right balance between what a person enjoys and what is good for him. What matters is his way of life, not with regard to externalities but regarding what has to be digested and worked through by him, and in this respect nobody can possibly know anything on the basis of purely materialistic science. We need to realise that everything around us in the wide world of the macrocosm has a relationship with our complicated inner world of the microcosm, and every kind of food there is has a definite connection with what is within our organism. We have heard often enough that man has passed through a long evolution, and how the whole of outside nature has been built up out of what has been thrust forth from man. Time and again in our studies we have gone back to the ancient Saturn period, where we found that there was nothing in existence apart from man, who, as it were, thrust forth the other kingdoms of nature: the plants, the animals, and so on. In that evolution man built up his organs in accordance with what they thrust forth. Even when the mineral kingdom was pushed out, certain specific inner organs arose. The heart could not have arisen if certain plants, minerals and mineral possibilities had not arisen externally in the course of time. Now what arose externally has a certain connection with what arose within. And only the person who knows of this connection can prescribe in individual cases how the macrocosmic element outside can be used in the microcosm, otherwise man will experience in a certain way that he is taking in something that is not right for him. So we have to turn to spiritual science for the actual basis of our judgment. It is always superficial to follow purely external laws taken from statistics or chemistry when prescribing dietary treatment. We need quite a different basis, for spiritual knowledge has to be active when we deal with man in health or sickness.

Then there are those types of illness, partly chronic and partly acute, which are connected with the human etheric body, and which therefore come to expression in man's glands. As a rule these illnesses have nothing to do with heredity, but a great deal to do with nationality and race. So that in the case of the illnesses originating in the etheric body and appearing as glandular complaints, we must always ask whether the illness is occurring in a Russian, an Italian, a Norwegian or a Frenchman. For these illnesses are connected with the national character and therefore take quite different forms. Thus for example a great mistake is being made in the field of medicine, for over the whole of Western Europe they have a completely wrong view of spinal consumption. Although they have the right judgment of it for the West [Europeans, they are quite wrong about it where the East European population is concerned, because it has quite a different origin there, as even these things still vary considerably nowadays. Now you will realise that the mixture of peoples affords us a certain survey. Only the person who can distinguish differences in human nature can make any judgment at all. These illnesses are simply treated externally today and lumped together with acute illnesses, whilst they really belong to quite a different field. Above all we must know that the human organs that come under the influence of the etheric body, and which can fall sick as a result of irregularities of the etheric body, have quite definite relationships with one another. There is for instance a certain relationship between a man's heart and his brain which can be described in a somewhat pictorial way by saying that this mutual relationship of the heart and the brain corresponds to the relationship of the sun and the moon—the heart being the sun and the brain the moon. So we have to know, if a disturbance occurs in the heart for instance, that in so far as this is rooted in the etheric body it is bound to have an effect on the brain. Just as when something happens on the sun, an eclipse for instance, the moon is bound to be affected. It is no different, for these things have a direct connection.

In occult medicine these things are also described by applying the images of the planets to the constellation of man's organs. Thus the heart is the sun, the brain the moon, the spleen saturn, the liver jupiter, the gall mars, the kidneys venus and the lungs mercury. If you study the mutual relationships of the planets you have an image of the mutual relationships of man's organs in so far as they are in the etheric body. The gall could not possibly ail—and this would show spiritually in the etheric body—without the illness having its effect on the other organs mentioned, in fact if the gall is described as mars, its effect would be similar to the effect of mars in our planetary system. You have to know the interconnections of the organs when there is an etheric illness, and yet these are principally those illnesses—and from this you will see that any form of one-sidedness must be avoided in the field of occultism—for which specific remedies are to be used. This is the place to use the remedies you find in the plants and minerals. For everything belonging to the plants and minerals has a profound importance for everything to do with the human etheric body. So when we know an illness has arisen in the etheric body, and it appears in a certain way in the glandular system, we must find the remedy that can correctly repair the complex of interconnections. Particularly with those illnesses where the first thing you have to look for is obviously whether they originate in the etheric body, and secondly whether they are connected with the national character, and all the organs are interconnected in a regular way, these illnesses are the first ones for which specific remedies can be used.

Now perhaps what you are imagining is that if it is necessary to send a person to another place, you will not be able to help him as a rule if he is tied to a job and cannot move. The psychological method is indeed always effective. What is called the psychological method works best of all when the Illness is actually in a person's ego being. Thus when a chronic illness of this type occurs, one that is in the blood, psychological remedies are justified. And if they are carried out in the right way, their effect on the ego will entirely compensate for what impinges on him from outside. Wherever you look you will be able to see the subtle connection between what a man experiences in his soul when he is habitually working behind a work bench and when he gets the chance to enjoy country air for a short while. The joy that lends wings to his soul can be called a psychological method in the widest sense. Then, if the therapist is carrying out his method properly, he can gradually exercise his own influence in place of this, and psychological methods have their strongest justification for this form of illness and should not be overlooked, because most of the illnesses came from an irregularity of the ego being of man.

Then we come to the illnesses arising out of irregularities of the astral body. Although purely psychological methods can be used, they certainly lose their greatest value, therefore they are seldom used for these. Dietary remedies apply here. The type of illness we described in third place are actually the first in which we are justified in using external medicines to assist the course of recovery. If we see man as the complicated being he is, the treatment of illnesses will also be a broad-minded one, and one-sidedness will be avoided.

The only illnesses left now are those that actually originate in the physical body itself, having to do with the physical body, and these are the actual infectious diseases. This is an important chapter and will be considered in greater detail in one of the coming lectures, after we have first of all dealt with the real origin of “Ten Commandments”. For you will see that this really has a connection. Today, therefore, I can only just mention that there is this fourth type of illness, and that a deeper understanding of these involves knowing the nature of everything connected with the human physical body. The basis of these illnesses is not physical but very much of a spiritual nature. When we have looked at the fourth type we shall still not have finished with all the important illnesses, for we shall see that human karma also plays in. That is a fifth category to be considered.

Let us say, then, that we shall gradually attain an understanding of the five different forms of human illness, that stem from the ego, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, and also from karmic causes. The sphere of medicine will not improve until this whole sphere includes a knowledge of the higher members of man's being. Up to now we have not had a medical practice that has really come to grips with what is at stake. Although, as with many another occult insight, these things have to be brought up to date and put in a modern form, you must realise that this wisdom is, in some respects, not new.

Medicine arose from spiritual knowledge and has become more and more materialistic. And perhaps in no other science can we see so clearly how materialism has overtaken mankind. In earlier times people were at least conscious of the fact that they had to have a knowledge of man's fourfold being in order to understand it. There have been instances of materialism before, of course, and even earlier than four hundred years ago clairvoyants observed materialistic thinking arising all around them in this sphere. Paracelsus, for instance, who is taken for a madman or dreamer and not understood at all today, drew full attention to the increasing materialism of medical science centred in Salerno, Montpellier, Paris and also certain parts of Germany. And just because of his responsible position in the world, Paracelsus felt compelled—as we do today—to draw attention to the difference between medicine based on spiritual knowledge or on materialism. Perhaps it is even more difficult nowadays to achieve anything with paracelsian thinking. For in those days the materialistic approach to medicine was not so rigidly opposed to the paracelsian approach as materialistic science is today to any insight into the real, spiritual nature of man. What Paracelsus said about this, therefore, still applies today, though its significance would be less readily recognised. If we look at the opinions held today by the people working at the dissecting benches and in laboratories, and at the way research is applied to the understanding of man in health and in sickness, we could, to a certain extent, react similarly to the way Paracelsus did. It might not be appropriate, though, to add a plea for understanding and forgiveness, too, perhaps, as Paracelsus did to his local contemporaries in the medical sphere—that is, with any real hope of forgiveness. For Paracelsus himself said he was not a man of good breeding, nor had he moved in high circles; he lacked grace and refinement, therefore he would be forgiven if what he said was not always couched in the best language. Whilst discoursing on the nature of the different illnesses Paracelsus said the following about the foreign and also the German medical doctors: “It is a bad business, all those foreign doctors, to name those in Montpellier, Salerno and Paris, who want to have all the credit and pour scorn on everybody else, yet they themselves know nothing and can do nothing, and it is common knowledge that it is nothing but talk and show. They are not ashamed of their enemas and purgatives, and rely on them even if the patient is dying. They boast about all the anatomy they know, and they cannot even see the tartar on people's teeth, let alone anything else. Fine doctors they are, even without spectacles on their noses. What kind of eyesight and anatomy have you got? You can do no earthly good with them, and see no further than your own noses. They work so hard, too, those German swindlers and thieves of doctors and newly-hatched fools, that when they have seen everything, they know less than they did before. So they choke in filth and corpses and afterwards put on holy airs—they ought to be thrown to the rabble!”

We will keep to our set programme, and in the group meetings this winter we will work through a series of apparently widely divergent aspects of human health and illness. And later on these various aspects will group themselves into a whole and culminate in an understanding of certain things towards which we will gradually work our way. In the first lecture of this series we made a kind of classification of illness types, and last time we attempted to portray the text of The Ten Commandments. All that goes beyond this text will follow in the course of the coming meetings. Our main concern last week was to acquaint ourselves with the content and the actual trend of the Commandments. Today we want to speak of other aspects that will not appear to be directly connected with the preceding or following talks, for they are a series of aspects the comprehensive meaning of which will not dawn on us until later.

We will start today by looking at an important moment in man's earthly evolution. Those of you who have been working in the anthroposophical movement for some time have long been familiar with it; the others will gradually accustom themselves to this way of thinking.

The moment in human evolution we want to recall lies a long way back. If we go back through post-Atlantean times and then through Atlantean times as far as ancient Lemuria we come to that moment when the division of the sexes took place in the kingdom of man on earth. You know that before this we cannot speak of such a division of the sexes in the human kingdom. I want to emphasise that we are not speaking of the very first appearance altogether of two sexes in earthly evolution or in evolution as a whole, in so far as it comprises the kingdoms that are around us. Phenomena that doubtlessly belong to bisexuality occur earlier. But what we call the human kingdom did not divide into two sexes until Lemurian times. Prior to that the human shape was formed differently, and both sexes were in a way contained within it undifferentiated. We can form an external picture of the transition from dual sexuality to the division into sexes if we visualise how the earlier dual sexed human being gradually developed in such a way that in one group of individuals the characteristics of the one sex, the female, became more pronounced, whilst in the other group the characteristics of the male sex developed more strongly. This was still a long time before the sexes separated, when there was progressive development in one direction or the other, at a time when man still lived in a very insubstantial material body.

We have focused our attention on this moment in time to start with, because we want to enquire into the meaning of the arising of the two sexes. It is only when we have a spiritual scientific basis that we can enquire into such a meaning, for physical evolution receives its meaning from higher worlds. As long as we are in the physical world, if we consider it let us say philosophically, it is somewhat childish to talk of purposes. And Goethe and others were right to make fun of the people who talked of the purposes in nature, as though nature in her wisdom had created cork so that man could make stoppers with it. This is a childish way of looking at things and can only lead to our missing the main point at issue. This view would be similar to thinking of a clock as having little demonic beings behind it wise enough to make the hands go round. In actual fact if we want to know how the clock works we must go to the mind that produced it, namely the clockmaker. And similarly, when we want to understand purpose in our world, we must step beyond the physical world and enter the spiritual. Thus purpose, meaning and goal are words that we can apply to evolution only when we consider them on a spiritual scientific basis. It is in this sense that we ask the question: What is the meaning behind the two sexes gradually developing and then inter-working?

The meaning will become clear to you when you see what we call fructification, the reciprocal influence of the sexes, (as) replacing something else that had previously existed. You must not think that fructification appeared for the first time at the moment when the division into sexes occurred in human evolution. That was not so. We must picture to ourselves that in the times preceding bisexuality this fructification took place in quite a different way. Clairvoyant vision can see that there was a time in mankind's earthly evolution when fructification happened in connection with the intake of food, and those beings which in those early times were male-female received fructifying forces with their food. This food was still of course of a much more delicate nature, and when human beings partook of nourishment in those times there was something else contained in these nourishing fluids which gave these beings the possibility of bringing forth another being of like kind. You must realise, however, that the nourishing fluids taken from the substance of their surroundings did not always contain these fructifying fluids, but only at quite definite times. This depended on the changes that took place, comparable to today's seasonal changes, changes of climate, and so on. The nourishing foods imbibed from the surroundings by these beings of bisexuality had the power of fructification as well at quite definite times.

If with clairvoyant consciousness we look further back still, we find another peculiarity in the propagation of ancient times. What you know (of) today as the difference between the various individualities, which expresses itself in the multiformity of life in our present cycle of humanity, these differences did not exist before the arising of the sexes. A great uniformity was there then. The beings that arose then were similar to one another and to their forefathers. All these beings that were still undivided into two sexes were outwardly very similar, and their characters were more or less the same too. That men were so much alike did not have the disadvantage in those times that it would have at the present time. Just imagine how infinitely dull human life would be if people were to come into the world today with identical appearance and character, and how little could actually happen in human life, as everybody would want to do the same thing as everybody else. But in ancient times this was not the case. When man was still as it were more etheric, more spiritual, and not so firmly embedded in matter, then at birth and on into childhood human beings were really very similar to one another, and the teachers would not have needed to notice whether the one child was a scamp and the other a gentle little being. Although the people were different in character at different times, they were in a certain way all fundamentally alike. Each person, however, did not remain the same throughout his life. Because man was still in a softer, more spiritual body he was much more open to the permanent influences coming from the environment, so that in those ancient times these influences brought about tremendous changes in him. Man became in a certain way individualised because, having a nature as soft as wax, he became more or less an impress of his surroundings. At a quite definite time in his life, which would coincide nowadays with puberty, it became possible for him to let everything that happened in his environment work upon him. The difference between the various times that were comparable to our present day seasons was very great, and it was of great importance to a man whether he lived in one part of the earth or another. If he traveled just a short distance over the earth, that had a great influence on him. If people go on a long journey nowadays, however much they see, they return on the whole the same as when they went away, unless they are very impressionable. This was different in olden times. Everything had the greatest influence on people, and so long as they had a body of soft material they could actually become gradually individualised in the course of life. Then this possibility ceased.

Something further that reveals itself to us is that the earth itself became denser and denser, and to the same extent as the substance, let us say the earthy nature of the earth intensified, this uniformity became harmful. For this gradually reduced mans capacity to change. He became as it were very dense at birth. This is the reason why men nowadays change so little during their life. And this led Schopenhauer to think that men were absolutely incapable of bringing about any basic changes in their character. The reason for this is that men are embodied in such dense substance. They cannot easily work on the substance or change it. If, as once was the case, men could still alter their limbs at will, and make them long or short according to their need, then man would, of course, still be very impressionable. Then he would really be able to take into his individuality the power to change himself Man always has an inner contact with his environment, especially his human environment. To make this quite clear I would like to tell you something that you may not have noticed before but which is nevertheless true.

Imagine you are sitting facing someone and speaking to him. We are referring to ordinary human relationships in the normal course of life and not to someone who is specially deeply schooled in occultism. Two people are sitting together, one talking and the other just listening. It is generally imagined that the one who is listening is doing nothing. But that is not true. In things like this we still see the influence of the environment. It is not noticeable to outer perception, but inwardly it is very clear, in fact striking, that the one who is merely listening is joining in everything the other one is doing.

He even imitates the movements of the vocal cords, and speaks with the speaker. Everything you hear you also say with a gentle movement of the vocal cords and the other speech organs. It makes a great difference whether the speaker has a croaky voice and those are the movements you have to imitate, or whether he has a pleasant voice. In this respect the human being does everything the other person is doing, and as this is really happening all the time, it has a great influence on a man's whole development, though only in this limited respect. If you imagine this last remains of man's participation with his surroundings vastly increased, you get an idea of how the man of ancient times lived and felt with his environment. Man's faculty of imitation, for instance, was developed on a tremendous scale. If one person made a gesture, then everyone else made the same gesture too. Only a few insignificant things in certain particular directions remain of this today, like for instance when one person yawns, other people do too. But remember that in these ancient times it was entirely a question of their having a dim consciousness with which this power of imitation was connected.

Now as the earth and everything upon it became denser and denser man became less and less capable of transforming himself through the influence of his environment. In comparatively late Atlantean times a sunrise, for instance, had a powerfully creative effect upon man, because he was completely open to its influence and underwent sublime inner experiences, which, if they continually recurred, changed him tremendously in the course of his life. This diminished more and more and gradually disappeared altogether the more humanity progressed.

In Lemurian times, before the moon left the earth, mankind was in a dangerous predicament. It was in danger of becoming rigid to the point of mummification. Through the gradual departure of the moon from the evolution of the earth this danger was averted. At the same time as the moon departed, however, the division into sexes took place, and with this division came a new impulse for the individualisation of man. If it had been possible for human beings to propagate without the two sexes, this individualising would not have taken place. The present diversity among men is due to the inter-working of the sexes. If there was only the female element, human individuality would be extinguished, and men would all become alike. Through the co-operation of the male element human beings are individual characters from birth. So the significance and meaning of the inter-working of the sexes is to be found in the fact that through the separating off of the male element the individualising of man at birth has replaced the old kind of individualisation. What was achieved in earlier times by the whole surrounding environment was compressed into the inter-working of the sexes, so that individualisation was pushed back to the arising of the physical human being at birth. That is the significance of the inter-working of the two sexes. Individualisation happens by way of the effect of the male sex on the female.

Now this came about at the expense of something else, and when I describe the situation I beg you to take it as applying strictly to human beings, for when we are based on spiritual science we must not assume that what applies to man also applies to animals. Health and illness, in their more delicate aspects, are subject to quite different causes in human beings than in animals. So what is being said applies solely to man, and we will begin by looking at the finer aspects.

Imagine yourself actually there in those ancient times when man was entirely given up to his surroundings, and the surroundings entered into him and on the one hand fructified him with the nourishing juices it offered him, and on the other hand he became individualised through its influence upon him. Now we know when we base ourselves on spiritual science that everything around us which influences us, be it light or sound, heat or cold, hardness or softness or this or that colour, is the revelation, the external expression of something spiritual. And in those ancient times man did not at all perceive external sense impressions, he perceived the spiritual. When he looked up to the sun he did not see the physical ball of the sun but that which is preserved in the Persian religion as ‘Ahura Mazdao, the Great Aura’. The spiritual part, all the spiritual sun beings appeared to him, and it was the same with the air, water and the whole environment. Today when you drink in the beauty of a picture, you can have something that is as it were distilled from it, only in those times it was far richer. If we wanted to speak as they did in those times we would not be able to say: ‘This or that tastes in some particular way’; but we would have to say: ‘This or that spirit does me good!’ This is what it was like when men were eating—an activity quite different from what it is today—and quite different, too, was the time when the forces of fructification were received: it was a phenomenon of the spiritual environment. Spirits overshadowed man and stimulated him to bring forth his kind, and this was also experienced and seen as a spiritual process.

Then little by little it became impossible for men to see the spiritual in their environment. It became more and more veiled from sight, especially during their day consciousness. Little by little men lost sight of the spirit behind things, and they only perceived the external objects which are the outer expression of these. They learnt to forget the spiritual background, and the influence of the spirit grew less and less the denser man's body became. Through this densification man became a more and more independent being and shut himself off from his spiritual surroundings. The further we go back into these ancient times the more spiritually godlike was this influence that came from the surroundings. Human beings were really organised in such a way that they were a likeness of the spiritual beings hovering round them in their environment; images of the gods who in older times were present on earth.

Through the inter-working of the two sexes in particular this was lost more and more, and the spiritual world withdrew from men's sight. Men beheld the sense world more and more clearly. We must picture this situation vividly: Just imagine, in those times man was fructified from the spiritual world of the gods. It was the gods themselves who gave forth their forces and made men like themselves. That is why in those ancient times what we call illness did not exist. There was no inner disposition to illness, and it could not be there because everything that was in man and that worked upon him came from the health giving divine-spiritual cosmos. The divine-spiritual beings are full of health, and in those days they made men in their image. Man was healthy. But the nearer he came to the time when the inter-working of the sexes came about and together with it the withdrawal of the spiritual worlds, and the more independent and individual man became, the more the health of divine-spiritual beings withdrew from him and something else took its place. What happened in reality was that this inter-working of the sexes was accompanied by passions and instincts aroused in the physical world. We must look for this incitement in the physical world after human beings had reached the point when the two sexes were sensually attracted to one another. This was a long time after the sexes already existed. The effect of the sexes one upon the other—even in Atlantean times—happened when physical consciousness was actually asleep, during the night. It was not until the middle of Atlantean times that what we call the attraction of the sexes began, what we might call passionate love; that is, sensual love that mingled with pure super-sensual or platonic love. There would be much more platonic love if sensual love did not enter into it. And whereas everything that formerly helped to form man came from the divine-spiritual environment it now came more from the passions and instincts of the two sexes working one upon the other. The kind of sensual longing that is stimulated by seeing the outer appearance of the opposite sex is bound up with the working together of the two sexes. And therefore something was incorporated into man at birth that is connected with the particular kind of passions and feelings human beings have in physical life. Whilst in earlier times man still received what was in him from the divine-spiritual beings of his surroundings, he now acquired something through the act of fructification which, as an independent, self-contained being, he had taken into himself from the world of the senses.

After human beings had been separated into two sexes they passed on to their descendants what they themselves experienced in the sense world. So we now have two types of human being. These two types live in the physical world and perceive the world through their senses, and this leads them to develop various externally aroused impulses and longings, especially those arising from their own externally stimulated sensual attraction to one another. What now confronts man in an external way has been drawn down into the sphere of the independent human being, and it is no longer in full harmony with the divine-spiritual cosmos. That is imparted to men through the act of fructification, it is implanted into them. And this worldly life of theirs, received not from the world of the gods but from the external side of the divine-spiritual world, is passed on to their offspring through fructification. If a man is bad in this respect, then he passes worse qualities on to his descendants than another person who is good and pure.

And this is the true meaning of ‘original sin’. That is the concept of original sin. Original sin is brought about by man coming to the point of transferring to his offspring his own individual experiences in the physical world. Every time the sexes glow with passion the ingredients of the two sexes combine in the human being who is descending from the astral world. When a human being incarnates he comes down from the Devachanic world and forms his astral sphere in accordance with his particular individuality. Something of what belongs to the astral bodies of his parents—their impulses, passions and desires—combines with this astral sphere so that he thereby shares in the experiences of his forefathers. What descends through the generations in this way, what is actually acquired as human attribute through the generations and is handed down as such, is what we have to understand as the concept of original sin. And now we come to something else: an entirely new impetus entered humanity through the individualisation of man.

In earlier times the divine-spiritual beings—and they were absolutely healthy—made man in their own likeness. But now man, as an independent being, detached himself from the all-embracing harmony of divine-spiritual health. In a certain respect he set himself up in his individualism against the whole of this divine-spiritual environment. Imagine that you have a being developing entirely under the influence of his environment. What he expresses will be the environment. Imagine, though, that he shuts himself off in his skin, then in addition to the characteristics of his environment he has his own characteristics as well. And indeed, with the division into sexes men became individual and developed their own individual characteristics. And there was contradiction between the great divine-spiritual harmony with its health and the individualism of man. And through this individuality continuing to work, through it becoming a really effective factor, the possibility of becoming ill has entered into human evolution. This is the moment when the possibility of illness first occurred in human evolution, for it is bound up with the individualisation of man. When man was still connected with the divine-spiritual world the possibility of illness did not exist. It came about at the same time as individualisation, and that is the same time as the division into sexes. This holds good for human evolution, and you must not apply it in the same way to the animal world.

Illness is indeed a result of these processes I have just described, and you can see that it is really the astral body in particular that is originally influenced in this way. The human being draws the astral body into his organism himself to begin with as he comes down from the Devachanic world, and there it encounters what flows into it through the inter-working of the two sexes. So the astral body is the part of man that shows most clearly the non-divine. The etheric body is more divine, for man does not have so great an influence on that, and the physical body is the most divine of all; it is God's temple, for it is completely withdrawn from man's influence. Whereas in his astral body man seeks all kinds of pleasures and can have all sorts of desires that have a harmful effect on the physical body, even today his physical body is still such a wonderful instrument that it can withstand heart poisons and other harmful influences of the astral body for decades. And so we have to admit that because of all these things that occur in the human astral body it has become the worst part of man. Whoever looks deeper into human nature will find that the deepest causes of illness lie in the astral body and in its bad effects on the etheric body, and by way of the etheric body on the physical body. Now we will understand a number of things that cannot be understood otherwise. I will now speak of ordinary mineral medicaments.

A medicament from the mineral kingdom works in the first place on man's physical body. Now what is the significance of man giving his physical body a mineral medicament? Please note that we are not going to speak of any plant medicaments but purely mineral ones, what is prescribed in the way of metals and salts and so on. Suppose someone takes one or another mineral medicament. Something very remarkable is then seen by clairvoyant consciousness. This clairvoyant consciousness can carry out the following feat—it always has the ability to divert its attention away from something. It is possible to divert the attention from the whole physical body. Then you still see the etheric body, the astral body and the ego aura. You have suggested away the physical body through strongly negative attention. Now if someone has taken a mineral medicament, you can remove everything from your attention and just direct your clairvoyant vision to the mineral or metal that he now has within him. That is, you suggest away everything in him of the nature of bone, muscle, blood and so on, and turn your attention solely to the particular mineral substance that has permeated him. Something very remarkable presents itself to clairvoyant consciousness. This mineral substance has become very thinly diffused and has itself acquired the human form. You have before you a human form, a human phantom consisting of the substance taken in by the man. Supposing the person has taken antimony, you have before you a human form of very finely diffused antimony, and it is the same with every mineral medicament a man takes. You create a new man within you consisting of this mineral substance; you incorporate it. Now let us ask ourselves what the purpose and significance of this is?

The significance is that if you were to leave a man as he is and withhold from him the medicine he really needs, then because of certain bad forces in his astral body the astral body would work on the etheric body and the latter on the physical body and gradually destroy it. You have put a double into the physical body. This works to prevent the physical body obeying the influences of the astral body. Imagine you have a bean plant. If you give it a prop it winds up it and is no longer blown by the wind. This double made out of the incorporated substance is a prop like this for the man. It attaches the physical body to itself and removes it from the influences of the astral and etheric body. In this way you make the human being's physical body independent as it were of his astral and etheric body. This is the effect of a mineral medicament. But you will immediately see the bad side of it, for it has a very serious drawback. Since you withdraw the physical body artificially from its connection with the other bodies you have weakened the influence of the astral and etheric body on the physical body and have made the physical body independent. And the oftener you take such medicines the more the influence of the astral and the etheric body disappears, making the physical body a hardened, independent being, subject to its own laws. Imagine what people are doing who take mineral medicaments of this sort all their lives. A man who has in course of time taken a lot of these mineral medicaments has within him a phantom of all these minerals, a round dozen of them. It is as though the physical body were surrounded by solid walls. And what kind of influence can the astral and etheric body still have on it? Such a person is actually dragging his body around with him and has very little power over it. If a man who has been dosing himself in this way for a long time applies for treatment to someone who wants to treat him psychologically and work especially on his finer bodies, he will discover that he has become more or less unreceptive to psychological influences. For by making his physical body independent in the first place, he has deprived it of the possibility of being affected by anything that might take place in his finer bodies. And this has happened mainly because the human being has so many phantoms in him that are not in harmony, that they pull him hither and thither. If the human being has deprived himself of the possibility of working from out of his soul and spirit, he need not be surprised if spiritual treatment is not very successful either. In cases of psychological treatment, therefore, you should always give consideration to the kind of person the patient is. If he has made his astral or etheric body powerless by making his physical body independent, then it will be very difficult to help such a person by means of spiritual treatment.

So now we understand how mineral substances affect a man. They create doubles in him that preserve his physical body and remove it from the possible harmful effects of his astral or etheric body. Because materialistic medicine is ignorant of man's higher members, almost all our present-day medicine works in the direction of treating the physical body in some way or another only.

We have begun today by looking at the effects of mineral substances. Some time we shall have to speak of the effects of plant forces and animal substances on the human organism, and then we shall go on to those influences or remedies that work from one being to another in a psychic or spiritual way. But you will see that it is essential for our studies for us to acquire once again such concepts as the concept of original sin and understand it correctly. With certain things nowadays people just do not see what lies in front of them and show no understanding for them at all.