The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends!

Before I begin my lecture, I have to report that our dear friend Nelly Lichtenberg has left the physical plane. The younger friends may know her from her participation in our events, but the older participants know her very well and have certainly taken her deep into their hearts – as has her mother, who is left in mourning.

Nelly Lichtenberg, who had recently sought recovery in Stuttgart, left the physical plane there a few days ago. She and her mother, who was there for her care, have been part of our anthroposophical movement since its inception. And if I want to express in a few words what, in my opinion, best characterizes the deceased, who has left the physical plane, and her mother, I would say: their souls were made of pure loyalty and pure, deep devotion to the cause of anthroposophy. We all appreciated, when our movement here in Berlin was still extremely small, the heartfelt loyalty and deep understanding with which they both clung to the movement and participated in its development. Baroness Nelly Lichtenberg carried this loyal soul in a body that caused extraordinary difficulties for her outer life. But this soul actually came to terms with everything in a wonderful spirit of endurance, a spirit of endurance that combined with a certain inner, inspired joy in absorbing the spiritual. And this spirit of endurance, combined with this inner joyfulness, warmed by a confidence in the life of the soul, on whatever plane in the future this soul life may unfold, all this was also found in the now deceased at her last sickbed in Stuttgart, where I found her in this state of mind and soul during my last visits. It is clear to you all that anyone who can in any way contribute to a person's recovery must do everything in their power to bring about that recovery; but you also all know how karma works and how it is sometimes simply impossible to achieve such a recovery. It was indeed painful to see only the future when one had the suffering woman before one in the last weeks. But her soul, which was also extraordinarily hopeful for the spiritual world, led her and those who had to do with her even in the last days beyond all that. And so we may say that in this soul, which left the physical plane with her, there lived here on earth one who had taken up anthroposophy in the true sense of the word – had taken it up in such a way that this anthroposophy was not just a theoretical world view, a satisfaction of the intellect or even a light satisfaction of the feelings, but was the whole content of her life, the certainty of her existence. And it was with this content of her life and with this certainty of her soul's existence that she left this physical plane. It is for us, especially for those of us who have gone through so many of the hours here in physical existence with her in the same spiritual striving, to turn our thoughts to her soul's existence. And that is what we want to do faithfully! She shall often find our thoughts united with her thoughts in the continuation of her existence in another realm, and she will always be a faithful companion of our spiritual striving, even in her further soul existence. We can be certain of that. And that we promise her this, that we want to powerfully direct our thoughts to her, as a sign of honor, we want to rise from our seats.

My dear friends!

In the first part of my lecture today, which I am very pleased to be able to give to you again during my journey, I would like to raise some points that may perhaps need to be discussed at some point. These points concern the change within our anthroposophical movement that is felt by many of you – and indeed more or less approvingly, but also negatively by some.

I am talking about such a change and I think that most of us feel this change. I will only briefly characterize some of this change, because I do not want to talk about it at length.

The older of our dear members look back to the times when Anthroposophy was cultivated in small groups — at least in smaller groups than it is now — merely, I would like to say, in the way that is appropriate for small groups that combine a certain need for knowledge with a religious need to strive for certain views about the spiritual world today. We have, and it is now a good two decades since in Berlin, repeatedly and repeatedly tried to esoterically deepen that which can be gained from today's conditions of the higher worlds of knowledge of spiritual life, based on the initial foundations that could be given years ago. And it is in the direction of this esoteric deepening that very many of our dear older members have found their deep satisfaction. It is fair to say that a kind of esotericism has gradually come to permeate everything, even the more public lectures. Regarding this esotericism that we have brought about, we can say, when we look at our branch life, that it has not been lost on us. This esotericism forms the basis of all branch life and has been cultivated in the branches as best as possible.

It seems to me that it would be unjustified for older members to feel dissatisfied with the progress and transformation of the anthroposophical movement because something else has been added to the original esoteric movement of the past – to what was distinctly esoteric in character. It has only been added, it has not been replaced. We may say that esotericism has not died out, but a further, different element has naturally entered into anthroposophical life. In order to gain a correct attitude towards this further, different element - regardless of whether we see in it something that we more or less accept or reject - we must say: we did not seek it, it more or less sought us. We must be clear about that. And just as we look with heartfelt, self-evident love at our esoteric element in the anthroposophical movement, so when it comes to relating this other element to our esotericism, we must not close our minds to the clear insight into what has very much entered the anthroposophical movement in recent times and taken its place alongside the esoteric. Do you not remember, I am addressing the older members among us, the small circles from which we started everywhere. At the beginning, the spread of our anthroposophical movement was also characterized by an esoteric element. It can be said that when anthroposophy was spread through the paths that were initially there for the wider public through the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis”, this spread was also tainted with an esoteric character. Esoteric truths reached those who wanted to take note of them. Of course, one has to feel what was in the esoteric will of the time. But something gradually broke away from esotericism, which at first was basically not within our own control. At first, one might say, the matter went its own way, and within our ranks esotericism was further developed, which then took shape in the public lectures that were given. What was then there in a more or less - we may say - “finished state” developed and wanted something from us. It was not yet there in the time that preceded the war catastrophe; at that time it was only present in the very first traces in the very first beginnings. But it was already very strongly present when the catastrophe of the war entered into that stage which was present in about 1918. There was, so to speak, something present that had arisen without our direct participation, and it confronted us as something finished. And even if I can only characterize it with the degree of precision that is appropriate for a brief, sketchy description, I have to say that anthroposophy had penetrated into the most diverse circles of the world, especially into scientific circles. It had become known and had been judged, and people demanded “scientific justification” from anthroposophy. With this phenomenon, that something was simply there through the anthroposophical literature, which made demands that had to be met, something else was there at the same time: there were a number of younger scientists, and some older ones, who seriously examined anthroposophy from their scientific point of view and, from a wide variety of angles, gave certain parts of their world knowledge an anthroposophical character. Therefore, one can say: One is not at all in a position to answer the question: Is it now sympathetic or unsympathetic that the older, esoteric kind was joined by the newer one, which some perceive as perhaps “too” scientific, and that precisely this current, especially through the challenge of its opponents, has assumed an ever broader, public character. We cannot look at what has really come to us from outside with sympathies and antipathies, because it did not depend on us at all that it once stood there more or less ready. We can only say: the necessity arose to simply place anthroposophy in the scientific life of the present, which can be placed there without reservation, and which can fertilize and lead forward the highest scientific life of the present everywhere – leading it forward to those goals to which it must be led further.

It is from such a background that some older members, who were accustomed to attending the branch every week, may have heard something more or less esoteric there, as it then passed into our cycles, and they heard it in a language that is not yet permeated by science everywhere – even though it is a more durable language than the scientific language, I want to add this here in parenthesis -, some of the older members, who were accustomed to hearing in public lectures something different from what they heard in the branches, but still in a language that was extraordinarily familiar to their hearts and souls, because what was given there was only was only a kind of more exoteric continuation of what was done in the branches, it seemed to some of these older members when they came here or there, even if lectures on anthroposophy and perhaps even congresses or courses were held there, that anthroposophy no longer sounded the way it did years ago. For whereas in the past the spiritual substance lived more in what was expressed through the word, that spiritual substance that sinks directly into the soul through its spiritual power, something has now emerged that seeks to scientifically 'prove' and , which at every step maintains the thread of a strictly organized logic, which at every step also presents what the scientific achievements of the present give us as indications of what is sought through anthroposophy in the scientific sense. But all this was of no interest to those who in earlier years had expressed their longing for words shaped more substantially in a spiritual sense. So it came about that some of the older members had the feeling: Yes, what we are hearing now is not really what we are looking for. What we heard often in the past went straight to our souls. Now everything is being given a thousand different reasons, now everything is being presented in a way that suits the learned, the academic people – and not us!

In a sense, this is unjustified, because the branch life continued, and the esoteric lived alongside what appeared in such scientific aprons. And not everyone saw that it is simply a matter of time, that we simply cannot do otherwise than to anchor anthroposophy scientifically, that it has now been taken up by scientists and is also demanded by scientists. This is how the situation we are in today arose, which is actually more in the soul feelings of our dear membership than in the fact that it is always clearly presented to the soul from the outside. But anyone who takes a good look at the anthroposophical movement, which has grown considerably in recent times, will find that what I have just said is expressed everywhere in the moods, feelings and perceptions: many people think that we do not need all this evidence at all.

I do not want to talk today about the rather unpleasant character that the opposition has taken on in the present, but I do want to say that we are obliged to place anthroposophy on a firm basis in relation to those opponents who at least mean it to some extent honestly. This is also far too little considered within the anthroposophical movement. But let us take a somewhat objective view of the situation. Then, however, we are confronted with something today that we must be mindful of, and that can already be taken up as an impulse in our work. And that is actually why I am having this whole discussion today.

On the one hand, we have today what is available as our anthroposophical esoteric stream, as it is laid down in the cycles, as most of you carry it in your hearts, having absorbed it over the years. We have this anthroposophical spiritual movement with its inner life, with its inner strength, with its inner warmth – with everything that makes it a source of soul and life. And on the other hand, when we step out of the narrower circle of our branch of life, we have the representation of our anthroposophical movement, which, as I said, gives anthroposophy a scientific character everywhere, which does present anthroposophy to the world, but uses the thought forms and thought connections that are common in scientific life today. Thought forms and thought connections that are not right for a large number of our members because these members are of the opinion that they do not need all of this. I am not talking about the practical forms of anthroposophy, such as the medical-therapeutic efforts, but rather about what appears more or less as a teaching within the anthroposophical movement.

If we look at the matter objectively, on the one hand we have today everything that is more or less permeated by esotericism, and we find this expressed in the cycles; but it can also be found if those lectures that I am still allowed to give within smaller circles – since I also have to devote myself to the external life of the anthroposophical movement, as is my duty – are examined in this regard. We find it, for example, in the discussions of the Swiss assemblies, and those of our dear friends who have been to Dornach on one occasion or another will find that, in terms of inner esoteric development, what is usually presented there is not something that would not be the right continuation of the old branch and cycle life. This on the one hand.

On the other hand, something quite different, and it must be admitted that it is something quite different: you see how anthroposophy is formed from the concepts of modern physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, as they are science, or as they have emerged from history, pedagogy and so on, anthroposophy is formed in such a way that it can, as it were, present itself as a science alongside the other sciences that are taught at universities. In terms of the nature of the investiture, however, these two currents are very different from one another. Of course, what is spoken out of the spirit, which has been the sole ruling spirit until the last four to five years, is very different from what has now been placed alongside it, not instead of it. And only because — one would like to say, thank God! — our dear members also feel the duty to take part in everything anthroposophical — while, on the other hand, many are quite indifferent to chemistry and physics and all the other beautiful things that present-day science has — only because these other friends also go to these achievements, which are based on this ground, do those members then find that a character is emerging in the anthroposophical movement of which they believe they have no need, and which they believe is something that scholars can work out among themselves, but which does not belong in the whole breadth of the anthroposophical movement.

One could say that it might have been better – but this is not said in a conclusive sense – if one could have found a way out of the old esotericism into a wider dissemination in the same kind of language; for it is simply the case that anthroposophy must be accepted by today's world, by today's people, if the world is not to descend into decline. And so one could say: Oh, if only Anthroposophy had spread in a straight line from its esoteric beginnings!

Well, it was not like that. It was the case that in the course of this spread, one came up against what was brought to it scientifically and what was formed “underhand”, so to speak. So today we have these two currents side by side, they have them so side by side that one could say - even if this is a little radically expressed -: If someone who simply wanted to find out about anthroposophy was present at the [last] course here in Berlin, informed themselves there and perhaps observed some of what was presented quite critically within themselves, they might have the objection: What is being said may not be correct in their view, but it is said 'scientifically'. But if someone who was just listening from the outside to what was being said in the scientific sense could somehow come to a branch meeting where what is said in the cycles is presented, they would find a different world, a world that is quite different from what is found in the courses and congresses designed for the public. He could say: Out there, it seemed to me as if people might be going astray, but in there they have already gone completely mad!

If we want to look at the matter seriously, we must realize that there is still a deep gulf between what our esoteric work is in the branches and what we have to present to the world externally in many respects. It is the same inwardly, but there is a gulf between the two; and the fact that this gulf is really gaping is due to the fact that the matter was as I have described it: We initiated the spiritual anthroposophical movement out of the most heartfelt and sincere needs, and developed it in this way, but then something came from outside that now stands as a second current and has a scientific character.

The latter is not a direct continuation of the former, not even in the case of those who have come from their scientific studies to work on anthroposophy scientifically. For many of them, it has been the case that they have simply undergone scientific studies and, out of certain needs of the heart, have felt towards their other studies: There is something wrong in science. Then they came to anthroposophy and through it they changed their science. These are completely different paths from those that originally formed the anthroposophical branch. But these things are developing today in such a way that, when they go side by side and there are only a few really active co-workers, it is very easy for such a gulf to form. We simply have not yet had the opportunity to bridge this gulf.

My dear friends, there is a direct path from what is presented externally in a scientific form to the deepest esoteric! And if time and opportunity were given, it could, so to speak, begin with the external, even more scientific character of the one movement, and it could be continued down to the deepest depths of the esoteric life. But so far we have not been offered the time or opportunity to do so. Therefore, those who often approach our movement with the utmost seriousness find this inconsistent character: on the one hand, what is more set down in public literature; then they desire the cycles – and find something quite different. And as much as this bridge exists between the two in essence, it has not yet been created in fact today. Our active co-workers have simply had an enormous amount to do and work on in one movement or another, and so what should have been in between could not be put in the necessary way. This will have to be something that our work will have to take up again one day: This link between what no longer sounds like anthroposophy to many older members and what is outwardly alive in the congresses and courses today, and between what was there in the old branch work and the cycles.

And then there is this, which, in line with a pressing demand of the present, must be brought into the public sphere with the cycle work, so that – I would say – the two things can be placed directly next to each other. You have them standing side by side in the journal 'Die Drei', with which you are familiar, where one of my esoteric cycles has been printed over the course of many issues, sometimes alongside very scientifically written treatises; so that, for those who looked more deeply, the connection was there everywhere, but for those who looked at the different ways of speaking, things were juxtaposed that were fundamentally and deeply different from each other. To some extent, this does appear as something disharmonious in our anthroposophical movement today. We have no reason to relate to this disharmony other than to simply present it clearly to our souls — as clarity in all areas must be what is specifically intended for anthroposophical life. But one of the difficulties we face when we want to present anthroposophy to the world today — and it must be presented to the world because the world demands it — is that we have to present a kind of Janus face, so to speak. We encounter these difficulties everywhere. On the one hand, people read our philosophical and scientific treatises, on the other hand they read the more esoteric works, and thirdly they often read a more or less good combination of the two, and we simply have to be clear about the fact that much of what makes the work in the anthroposophical movement difficult comes from this. And it must also be part of our work to provide those with information when we believe that such information is appropriate: that it is connected with the historical development, that it is as I have characterized it. And in this regard, I would also appeal to the older members not to make things too difficult by acting in opposition to what they may not care about but which cannot be dispensed with in view of the demands that are being made on the anthroposophical movement today. One could even say: if one has gained an inner vision from the laws of the soul's development, which are quite justified and present, for example, from some historical phenomenon, and if one then hears how today our dear younger members – not on the paths by which some older members have gained an inner vision, I might say, as if 'flying' to the point of convincing power, but start with things that are of little interest to many older members: with the elements of physics or even with the elements of mathematics, and then move from these elements through strictly drawn logical conclusions to things that are again of little interest to those who already have the matter, and then do it again and again - and in this way, to a more or less expressed form of what the other person already knows through his quick intuitive way, then many feel as if they are where the deepest secrets of existence have been grasped at a certain level, and now someone comes along, climbs a ladder, then past the things and then back down. Many older members certainly feel these logical climbing skills. But the fact is that these older members should show understanding for the demands of the times and know that this cannot be otherwise, and that we are simply faced with an ironclad necessity.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to put before you today, to express to you that there is no will — not in the slightest — to leave the old esoteric paths in the old anthroposophical movement. There is no question of that. The only thing that can be said is that we have been confronted with demands of our time, and so, as much as possible, the esoteric foundations of our anthroposophical movement must of course continue to be cultivated, for there must be a number of personalities today who are so strongly connected with spiritual life that they can achieve what otherwise could only be achieved by mental crocheting — not Haeckel, the naturalist, is meant by this — with a simple beating of the thread. Of course, it can be quite uncomfortable to do this mental crocheting, but it has to be done because, according to their general view, our time has arrived at this mental crocheting. But some people, who have been directly involved in weaving threads from their hearts and their innermost spiritual understanding, must know that the time has come when a wave of spiritual life is breaking into this earthly life from the spiritual world and must be grasped by people as a wave of spiritual life.

I have mentioned before that the period up to the last third of the nineteenth century was actually the time when the intellect of civilized humanity grew stronger. Great intellectual achievements based on the results of natural science were built up in the last few centuries. But with the twentieth century, only the legacy of this intellectual civilization remains, and there is no prospect at all that humanity will progress from the twentieth century into the following centuries by intellectual means, just as it progressed from the preceding centuries into the twentieth century. The intellect continues as it was, but it can no longer be the continuing force in the overall development of human thought. The continuing force is the spiritual life, which has broken into our earthly life as if through special gates.

Now perhaps some will say: Yes, you are talking about the intellect only continuing to live at the level at which it was already, and that the spiritual has broken into earthly existence; but we do not see this spiritual life, the intellect is certainly cultivated, but one sees nothing of the spiritual. I would like to say: So much the worse!

The spiritual is there nevertheless, although people do not see it; it can be found everywhere if one wants to find it. And that is the bad thing: that people do not want to find it, that they close their eyes to it, that they do not open their hearts to it! That is the terrible thing, that must be overcome: that today is already the time when the spiritual life can be grasped just as the intellectual was grasped from the Copernican-Galilean time on, but that people turn away from this spiritual life! But anyone who can turn their spiritual gaze to the spiritual life will see it flowing into our human life everywhere. However, this spiritual life is not yet being taken up, and so we have a desolate, merely inherited intellect. For in reality, the intellect has not advanced further; it is only being carried on in its old form.

While this is the outward appearance of the case, an event of the greatest importance is actually taking place within. I have described some aspects of this event again and again in our branch lectures. Today, I would like to summarize and present some additional information.

If we now consider ourselves as physical human beings, we live here on earth within the forms of existence that older people called “elements”: earth, water, air, fire. Today we speak of the solid material, the liquid material, the gaseous material and the warm etheric. Our organism is woven from this fourfold materiality, as is everything that our organism moves towards between birth and death. Today's man looks at this materiality, forms his world view through his lawful perception of this materiality, which is essentially an external scientific one, even if ancient religious traditions play into today's concepts. But this materiality is based on spiritual beings. The earthly solid is based on spiritual entities from the sphere of the elementary spirits, older intuitive clairvoyance called them “gnomes” and the like. Today's intellectualism regards this as fantasy. What we call them is unimportant, but underlying all that is solid on earth lies a world of spiritual elemental beings who, I might say, in their physicality, invisible to human senses, have a greater degree of intellect, of pure rationality, than we humans have ourselves and who are extremely clever compared to us humans, clever to the point of cunning, clever to the point of speculation, clever to the point of the shrewd foreknowledge of that which always gets in the way of man in the work he does based on his lesser intellectuality. Underlying all earthly solid matter is a world of elemental beings that are truly extraordinarily clever, and whose cleverness is the fundamental character of their being.

And underlying everything that is liquid, watery, is a world of elemental beings that have developed to a particularly strong degree what we humans – on the one hand somewhat more robustly, on the other hand somewhat more neutrally – spiritual elementary beings, which have a sensitive feeling, a feeling that lives into the finest nuances of sensation, that everywhere relives that which people only feel externally. For example, we look at the trees in the forest with our eyes; at most, we feel when we approach the forest or are inside it, how the wind, shaking something, rushes through us, but otherwise we only see the trees moved by the wind; on the other hand, we see, for example, the sun's rays shining. Our perception is relatively coarse compared to that of all beings that belong to the watery liquid element and permeate and flow through it, that go along with all the movements that the tree branches perform in the wind, that move with the clouds, that experience the condensation of water droplets in the clouds, experience the dissolution of water droplets as they evaporate, solidify in the solidifying ice, lose themselves in the vastness as the evaporating water does – and emotionally participate in all of this. This is a second kind of elemental being that populates our earth just as we ourselves and plants and animals populate the earth.

We then have a third kind of elemental being in the airy element, these are the beings that have developed to an intense degree that which lives in our will, which have developed this will to such a strength that this will lives in them as 'will', then becomes outwardly visible as a natural force. We finally have a fourth kind of elemental being, the warmth or fire beings, which have developed that which we carry within us as the power of our self-awareness, as the power of our ego; at the same time, they are the beings that live in all that has a destructive effect within nature. And when we see, for example, how in spring the elemental beings mentioned first look out of the natural phenomena everywhere, with a real clairvoyance based on exact foundations, we see how the fire beings are active in all the destruction of autumn, yes, are most active when what they accomplish is expressed outwardly in cold snow and ice, as in its opposite.

The elemental spirits live in the elements, we are surrounded by them, they are just as present in earthly existence as we ourselves are. These elemental spirits want something. These elemental spirits are not as unfeeling, as stubborn, as closed to the incoming spiritual wave in our age as people often are. People only want to persist in observing the sensual and in thinking about the intellectual aspects of this spiritual world, which underlies the natural elements. These elemental spirits do not close their eyes to the spiritual waves breaking into the earthly, which are everywhere today, to the spirituality that wants to come in. And when I said, for example, that the elemental spirits of the earthly firmament are preferably shrewd and even intellectual, it is only natural that they have no sympathy for a spiritual wave entering the present day. But even if they have no particular sympathy, they do pay attention! They notice that this spirituality is breaking in today and that it carries on its waves a truly deepened knowledge of Christ, a truly deepened knowledge of the mystery of Golgotha. Even the clever beings of the earthly kingdom can see that. But they decide: if people remain stubborn towards the incoming spiritual world, then we will do our part, which would have been futile so far. For in the period from the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, when people mainly developed their intellect, the gnome-like intellectual spirits of the solid, earthly realm could not do anything special, so to speak! They could use their cunning to peek into the earthly world here and there; and those who have perceptions of this peeking know this. But now that humanity is to meet the spirituality that wants to enter, the time has come when the intellect, having fallen into corruption, is only passed down as an inheritance and no longer has any fruitful suggestions - for the intellect decays over time, and if you look at it impartially, you can see it everywhere; if you compare today's scientific work with that of forty years ago in terms of the intellect that prevails in science, one can already speak of the decline of the intellect. Now the time has come when the other beings, who are there just as we humans are, by becoming aware of the incoming spiritual wave, say to themselves:

Now is our time, now we will do something! And they will decide, if people do not do their part, to put all their cleverness and intellectuality at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers, so that Ahriman will become powerful over an enormous host of elemental beings that inhabit the earth. And these beings, who thus have intellect at their disposal, will be joined by other elemental beings, because man, in turn, will be influenced by the elemental beings, so that the danger of humanity becoming ahrimanized is present. This is a somewhat radical statement, but it is nevertheless a truth.

Forty years ago, if you looked at a person in terms of how they used their intellect intellectually, the person who made the training of the intellect his profession was active in his intellectual training. The human being was there. There were really great minds there, minds that were active; in the schools, minds were there that one could rejoice at the activity of the intellect. Today it is not so, and people seem as if the mind had moved a little deeper, and as if they were producing the mind as a mechanism. One feels how people speak in intellectual terms, but as if the mind were not even involved. There are some very simple phrases that you come across. The further west you go, the worse it is, but it is already taking hold in Germany. If someone writes a sentence and doesn't put the predicate where it is supposed to be for whatever reason, it is stylistically incorrect; and if you go to France, everything is already stylistically incorrect because the language has already become stereotyped. In Germany, you can still turn your sentences around to get different possibilities of expression, but in France people are gradually getting out of the habit of doing that. In the East – Bolshevism wanted to get rid of it, but it will make itself felt again – there is still a certain flexibility in the language. But in general, this flexibility decreases with civilization. It is especially the case with younger people that they talk like mechanisms. They start – forty years ago it would have been interesting to pay attention to how they would continue to talk – but today we already know it, we are no longer interested; they talk like clockwork. There has been – we can see it today, but we want to close our eyes to it – a certain calcification of people, even literally, so that the intellect has indeed slipped down. But Ahriman takes him in. He cannot work through the nervous-sensory system as humans do, but he works through the elemental spirits. What the brains and etheric bodies are for us, the elemental spirits are for Ahriman; he waits until they place themselves at his disposal. But he has them as his brain and as his heart, which has become a leather bag. It is the case that the elemental spirits place themselves at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers. That is one side of it.

But if we look at the world externally, spatially and temporally, then we have, in addition to these elemental spirits, another world: the etheric world. We must preferably look down at the solid earth, at what surrounds and storms around this solid earth, flows around and flows around it as the water sphere, as the air sphere, which permeates and permeates it as warmth. We must preferably look down and straight ahead if we want to look at these kinds of elemental beings. But we must preferably look into the distance, that is, upwards. After all, warmth still belongs to the earthly, but above the warmth ether lie the light ether and the chemical ether. We must look into the distance if we want to look at the etheric. And when we look at the liquid and the elemental spirits on which it is based, we find a teeming population of individuals that clearly appear to us as single beings; there the number dominates. It is, so to speak, the world of the elemental realms populated by immeasurable elemental beings. But when we look at the ethereal world, there is more than one unit of spirituality living there. In the light ether, we can no longer distinguish the individual elemental spirits from one another, as we can in the air or water element or even in the earthly element. In the earthly element, it is the case that you go out into certain forests, track down some gnome's nest, and - you might say - thousands and thousands of elemental beings can be enclosed in a small globe, and then you are standing in front of a multitude. You have only a small ball in your hand and it is teeming with what it counts. There is the number, there is the teeming, that which forces us to count and which makes us admit that we cannot count at all because it is immeasurable and because every number is immediately exceeded. And of the one who has a spiritual vision, you can not say that he “miscalculates”. You can not distinguish what is there sooner or later; You think you have counted five, and see that you actually had to count eleven. But the six were not added, they were already there. The teeming of the number prevails. But in the etheric everything converges to a unity. Even in the light ether, the elementary beings form a unity. This is even more the case in the chemical ether, and it is completely the case in the life ether. And it was from this feeling that the idea contained in the idea of Yahweh was once formed, the idea of the one God Jehovah. This is the being that is unspokenly connected and composed of the many individual beings and that animates the ether, just as the many elementary beings animate the ether.

But just as when man disregards the irruption of spirituality into our time, then the world of the lower elementary beings connects with the Ahrimanic beings that are hostile to human development, so the luciferic If the forces of Lucifer, which can take hold of everything that is human will and feeling, combine with the ahrimanic beings that are hostile to human development, then these forces of Lucifer will snatch this element from the air and water beings and, as beings of Lucifer, will carry it into the ether.

Only with the help of human beings can the power of the unified God-being, which once designated a past time with the name Jehovah, be preserved in the ether. If people do not pick up the spiritual wave, then the being that appeared as Jehovah as the cohesive spiritual being will have to retreat from the onslaught of Lucifer, who rips the light beings, the chemical beings and the life beings out of the power of Jehovah. And from what I have described, a combined rule over the earthly of Ahriman and Lucifer would arise.

The only way to escape this is for people to gain a new understanding of Christ, a new understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, through the incoming spiritual wave. For the intellect would not die as a result; it would not develop further as intellect, but it would be enlivened by spirituality. It would come out of dead abstraction to a certain inner life. On the other hand, that which lives in human emotions and human instincts would not be taken up by an abstract unity in the etheric realm; it could not become Luciferic. We need a new understanding of Christ, a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And we will also come to the right realization of how we need this if we properly consider what is threatening to occur as another grouping in the universe, as another grouping of elemental and etheric beings. Yes, one can really already perceive how, on the one hand, the intellect wants to descend to the Ahrimanic, to the lower elemental beings. On the other hand, it is clearly perceptible how today there is a certain tendency to move away from the actual Christ-being and to immerse oneself in that etheric unity, so that through this immersion, precisely through the denial of the Christ principle, something Luciferic is absorbed.

This, my dear friends, can be clearly seen, and I have actually spoken of this perception here several times. We see how an actual conception of Christ is fading, especially in newer theology. We see how, according to the view of the modern theologian - one need only recall Harnack's 'Essence of Christianity', for example - for many modern theologians Christ is actually denied. “The Son does not belong in the Gospel,” says Harnack, ‘only the Father.’ It could therefore be said that there is no longer any real concept of Christ, only of the one God. There is no longer any awareness of how the Son differs from the Father. It is like a return to the Old Testament and an obliteration of the New Testament. But this is the way to penetrate to the ethereal unity without warming it with the Christ impulse. In short, one sees everywhere how people often unsuspectingly expose themselves to the forces that draw their powers from the ethereal spirits on the one hand and from the elemental spirits on the other.

If, however, people not only find the same ego, the same self-awareness that they have carried up into the spiritual world through the centuries and millennia, but if they are able to gain a stronger hold within themselves through which they can absorb the Christ impulse, and if this stronger self were to develop only as such, it would degenerate into boundless egoism. It is precisely this self, as it grows stronger, that must develop the sense of what Paul meant by the words, “Not I, but the Christ in me!” When the Christ is in this self that has become strong, then humanity will find ways to prevent this regrouping and allow the earth to develop in the right way. Today, if I may express myself so, one must look behind the scenes of existence, where that takes place that remains unconscious to man, if one wants to see how man depends on holding on to the spiritual wave that brings him what he needs to can continue the God- and Christ-intended earthly nature; while if he does not accept this spiritual wave, something else would be formed out of the earth through the intervention of the ahrimanic and elemental beings together with the etheric beings, other than what should come of it. And man would be diverted from his path, for his cosmic destiny and the cosmic destiny of the earth are necessarily connected with each other.

Today, outer scientific life, outer science, is not enough. It can certainly be translated into the anthroposophical, indeed, it will only attain its true thoughts by being translated into the anthroposophical. And much can be achieved by speaking anthroposophically, and not in the external, hypothetical, materializing sense, for example, of the composition of hydrogen and oxygen to form water and of the other physical and other phenomena. But however necessary this may be to correct our increasingly false and erroneous views of the external world, it is all the more necessary, on the other hand, not only to talk about “solid quartz” on earth , of the “solid calcite” and other solids or of various watery substances and of the airy substances, but that we talk about the spiritual beings that we have with the substances and in the substances everywhere. We need not only a physics or a chemistry, but we need a doctrine of the social life of the elemental spirits, of the social life of the ethereal spirits; we need a view of the spiritual life of the world, which is indeed concrete.

But as long as there is a doctrine that only wants to prove that there is no spiritual world at all, an insurmountable barrier has been erected between the world where man is on one side and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic on the other, and that world where man can only form the real tasks of humanity today out of knowledge, including elementary and etheric beings. We must look beyond the exoteric for esoteric wisdom. We must not only ask ourselves about the attractions and repulsions of matter, we must ask ourselves about the cleverness of the elementary spirits of the earthy, about the fine sensitivity of the elementary spirits of the watery, about the will impulses of the elementary spirits of the airy, about the elementary spirits of fire or warmth that permeate everything with egoity; we must penetrate ourselves with the peculiar qualities of the spirits of light and warmth, which in their turn relate partly helpfully and partly antagonistically to the elemental spirits of air, and thus create a balance between them, where we can see an interaction between the spirits of light that have become more air-like and the air spirits that have become more light-like. Here we have the possibility of looking into the evolution of a cosmic body, which I was able to describe in my 'Occult Science' as 'Jupiter'. We must look into the spiritual evolution of the world, in a way quite different from the way in which physical science looks into the evolution of the world today. Here we enter, indeed, a sphere in which the conceptions that men have today about the spiritual must be essentially broadened. This view of the spirit must become familiar to people, as familiar as what they know today of the physical-sensual world. Humanity must learn to think about the relationship of the elemental and etheric spirits to humanity and about the coming of the spiritual wave, which can bring the relationship of the two into the right and necessary relationship for people. We can only speak correctly about the relationship of these beings, about the part they have in an earth that is suitable for people, as well as about the part they would have if the earth were to perish with humanity, if we show understanding for the spiritual wave that is about to break into human civilization and cultural development.

To have ears for what is bursting in, to have eyes, eyes of the soul, to see what is shining in and streaming in and radiating in from supersensible worlds into the sensory worlds for the perception of those beings who, in the world of sense, can see the supersensible if they want to – like human beings – to have an appreciation of these facts, that is what esoteric anthroposophy would like to inspire in those who come together for it.

That, my dear friends, is what I was allowed to present to your souls today, and in doing so I wanted to encourage you again in your souls to study the spiritual world as it may be proclaimed today. Depending on your karma, when the time is right, you will also find a living connection to this spiritual world more and more.

and more, if you do not shy away from taking on board, with confidence – but with a confidence that is based on knowledge, not on authority – what can be extracted from the spiritual world in terms of the highest truths,

Lecture at the 1st General Assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

The Johannesbau, insofar as it is intended to house the seat of our spiritual science, should be something that takes into account the developmental conditions of all humanity. And it will either be this, or it will not be what it should actually be. In such a matter, one has a responsibility towards all that is known to us as spiritual laws, spiritual powers, and spiritual developmental conditions of humanity, and that can speak to our soul. Above all, we also have a responsibility to the judgment of future humanity. Such a sense of responsibility in our time, in the present cycle of humanity, is something quite different from a similar sense of responsibility in past ages.

Great, mighty monuments of art and culture speak to us in the most diverse ways from the course of time. How art and cultural monuments from the course of time tell us about the inner conditions of human souls in those times, you heard a beautiful, meaningful reflection on this very topic this morning from this place. If we are to speak in our own terms about something that made the sense of responsibility easier for all the people who were involved in those cultural and artistic monuments, in a certain way, than it is for us when we want to speak about it in our language, then we must say: These people of the past had other aids than our time cycle has; the gods helped them, who, unconscious to these people, let their own powers flow into their subconscious or unconscious. And in a sense it is Maya to believe that in the minds or souls of those who built the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek temples and other works of art, only those thought forms, impulses and intentions were effective for that which confronts us, that which has confronted people over time in the forms, colors and so on, because the gods worked through the hands, through the minds, through the hearts of people.

Our time is, after the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period has passed, the first time cycle in which the gods test people for their freedom, in which the gods do not deny their help, but only come to meet people when these people, in their own free striving from their individual soul, which they have now received through enough incarnations, take up that which flows down from above. We also have to create something new in the sense that we have to create from the human soul in a completely different way than was the case in the past. Consciousness, which is born with the consciousness soul, which is the characteristic of our time cycle, that is the signature of our time. And with consciousness, with fully illuminated consciousness, into which nothing can be absorbed from the merely subconscious, we must create if the future is to receive similar cultural documents from us as we have received from the past. Therefore, it behooves us to try today to stimulate our consciousness with those thoughts that are intended to shed light on what we have to do. And we can only do something if we know from which laws, from which spiritual basic impulses we are to act. But this can only come about if we work in harmony with the entire evolution of humanity.

Let us now try, at least very sketchily, to bring to mind some of the main ideas that can inspire us in relation to what we are to create with this novel, not merely new work.

In a sense, we are meant to build a temple that is also a place of learning, somewhat like the ancient mystery temples. Throughout the history of human development, we have always called a “temple” any work of art that contained what was most sacred to people. And this morning you have already heard how the soul was expressed in the temple in different periods. If we look more deeply at what we can know of the temple building and the temple artwork with eyes warmed by the soul, we see a great diversity in the individual temple artworks. And I would like to say: How great is the difference to those temple works of art, of which, admittedly, only a little remains externally, and which we can actually only either guess at in their basic form, in their oldest form, or reconstruct from the Akasha Chronicle; those temple forms which we can describe as those of the second post-Atlantean cultural period, then merging into the third, as the original Persian temples, of which only a little has flowed over into the later temples, insofar as they are influenced in their configuration by that area of the earth. Some of them have been incorporated into Babylonian, Babylonian-Assyrian, and indeed Near Eastern temple art. What was the most significant aspect of this architecture?

As I said, external documents do not speak much of this architecture. But even if one cannot go into the documents of the Akasha Chronicle, but lets oneself be influenced by what has been preserved from a later period, and points out how temple buildings in such an early period in the area that has been spoken of may have looked, one must say to oneself: with these temples, an enormous amount, indeed everything, depended on the façade, on the way in which a temple presented itself when one approached the entrance. And if one had entered the temple through such a façade, one would have had the following sensation in the temple, depending on whether one belonged to the more or less profane or more or less initiated personalities: The façade is saying something to me that is spoken in a mysterious language; and inside I find what wanted to be expressed on the façade.

And if we turn our gaze from these temple buildings, which can only be guessed at by non-akashic research, to certain Egyptian temples or other sacred Egyptian buildings such as the pyramids, we find a different character indeed. We approach an Egyptian temple building and are confronted with symbols and art forms that we must first unravel. We must first unravel the mystery of the sphinxes and even the obelisks. Above all, the mysteriousness that we encounter in the sphinx and the pyramid is such that the German thinker Hegel called this art “the art of the enigma”.

In the peculiar pyramidal shape, without many external window openings, something encloses us, which is already announced by its entire enclosure as a mysterious thing, which is not revealed from the outside, at least initially through the facade, other than by the fact that we are initially presented with a puzzle. And we enter and find, in addition to the mysterious messages about all kinds of mysteries, written in the ancient mystery script or its successor, in the holy of holies, that which should lead the human heart and soul to the God who dwells in the deepest secrecy within the temple. We find the temple building as an enclosure of the most sacred secret of the deity and, on the other hand, we find the pyramid building itself as an enclosure of the most sacred secret of humanity: initiation, as something that is closed off from the outside world because it is supposed to be closed off in its inner, mysterious content.

If we turn our gaze from this Egyptian temple to Greek temple art, we find there, to be sure, the basic idea of many Egyptian temples, in that we have to understand these Greek temples as the dwelling place of the divine-spiritual. But we At the same time, we find the outer structure of the temple itself developed in such a way that it is a self-contained entity in a wonderful dynamism - not just of form, but of the inner forces living in the forms - as if in an inner infinity, as if in an inner perfection. The Greek god dwells in a work of temple art. In this temple artwork, beginning with the supporting columns, which in every way prove themselves in their dynamics as carriers and are just such that they can carry what lies on them, indeed must carry them, we find the god enclosed in a self-contained perfection; in one that represents a self-contained infinity within earthly existence, beginning with the coarsest and going into the most detailed.

And we find the thought “man's most precious expressed in temple building” captured when we approach the Christian temple, which is built over a grave or even over the grave of the Redeemer, who then joins the soaring tower and so on. But here we are confronted with a remarkable new element, one that fundamentally distinguishes later temple art, Christian temple art, from the Greek. The Greek temple is so characteristic precisely because it is self-contained, dynamically complete in itself. This is not a Christian church. I once used the expression: a temple of Pallas Athena or Apollo or Zeus needs no human soul near it or inside it, because it is not designed for a human to be near or inside it; rather, it should stand in its grandiose, lonely infinity, merely showing the dwelling of the god. The god lives in him, and this dwelling of the god in him forms his self-contained infinity. And the further away, one might say, people in the surrounding area are from a Greek temple, the more genuine a Greek temple appears. Let me express the paradox, because that is how the Greek temple is intended, and that is not the case with a Christian church: the Christian church challenges the believer with its forms of feeling and thought; and what we enter as a space, it tells us, when we study it more closely, in each of these individual forms, that it wants to take in the community and the thoughts and the feelings and the emotions of the community. And one could hardly have developed a happier instinct than to coin the word “cathedral” for the Christian temple, in which the coming together of people, the “being together” of people, to use the strange word, is expressed. “Cathedral” is closely related to “tum”, as can be seen from the suffix in the word “Volkstum”.

And if we turn our gaze further, towards the Gothic, how could we fail to recognize that the Gothic strives even more to express something in its forms, which is by no means as self-contained as, for example, Greek temple architecture. One is tempted to say: the Gothic form strives beyond itself everywhere, everywhere it strives to express something that appears in the space in which one is, like something searching, like something that wants to transcend boundaries and interweave into the universe. The Gothic arches are, of course, the result of the perception of dynamic relationships; but what leads beyond these forms themselves, what wants to make them permeable, as it were, and which, in a certain respect, is so wonderfully effective that we can, but do not have to, feel that the stained glass windows are in harmony with nature and mysteriously connect the interior with the all-pervading light. How could there be anything more grandiose and full of light in the outer weaving of space than when we stand in a Gothic cathedral and see the light weaving through the multicolored windows into the dust clouds! How could one feel more grandiose the effect of a space boundary that, going beyond itself, strives for the universe and its secrets, as they spread in the great becoming!

We have allowed our gaze to wander over a long period of temple art development and we have noticed how regularly, in accordance with the law, temple art progresses in human evolution. But in a way, we are standing before a kind of sphinx. What is the underlying reason? Why did it happen just like that? Is there an explanation for the strange facade that we encounter in the Near East as the last remnants of the first stage of temple architecture, which I have tried to hint at, with the strange winged animals, with the winged wheels, with the strange columns and capitals that tell us something, tell us something remarkable, and say exactly the same thing in a certain way that we experience in our soul when we enter the temple? Is there perhaps anything more enigmatic in the art of external forms than something like this, when we see it ourselves in the ruins in a modern museum? What was it that made that?

There is one thing that immediately gives us an explanation of what was done here. But we cannot find this explanation otherwise than by looking into the thoughts and artistic intentions of those who were involved in building this temple. This is, however, a matter that can only be solved with the help of occultism. What, after all, is a Near Eastern temple? Where do we find an example of it in the world?

The model that immediately sheds light on what happened here is as follows: Imagine a person lying on the ground and raising himself up with his forepart and his countenance. And in this man, lying on the ground and raising himself up, in order to have his body captured by the descending higher spiritual forces and to make contact with them, you have given what inspiration can give for a temple in the Near East. All the columns, the capitals, all the remarkable figures of this temple are symbols of what one can feel when one stands face to face with such a person, with all that is revealed in his hand movements, in his gestures and in his countenance. If one were to penetrate this countenance with the spiritual eye, one would enter into the human being, into the microcosm, which is an imprint of the macrocosm. In so far as the human countenance is a full expression of what is inside the human being, the microcosm, the same relationship between the human face and the inside as between the facade of the Near Eastern temple and what was inside.

A person rising up is a Near Eastern temple; not copied, but considered as a motif with all that it evokes in the soul. In so far as we are physical people and the human body can be described spiritually through theosophy, the temple of the ancient Near East is the expression of the human microcosm. Thus, by grasping the human microcosm and striving upwards, that part of human architecture is opened up. This physical human being has his faithful spiritual imprint in those remarkable temples, of which not much else remains except as ruins. In all details, down to the winged wheel and the archetypes of these things, one would be able to prove that this is so. The ages speak to us loudly: Man is the temple! And the Egyptian and Greek temples?

We cannot describe the human being merely from an anthroposophical point of view, but also from a psychosophical point of view, from the point of view of the soul. If we approach the human being as a soul-being, which is how he primarily presents himself to us on earth, then what we see when we look at a person in his eyes, in his face, in his gestures is truly a mystery. And how many people are a great mystery in this respect! Truly, when we approach a person in this way, it is no different than when we approach an Egyptian temple that presents us with the mystery. And when we enter into its interior, we find there the human soul's holy of holies. But we can only access it if we go beyond the external and enter into the inner self. A human soul is locked in the innermost Celia, like the sanctuary of the god, like the mystery secrets themselves in the Egyptian temple, in the Egyptian pyramid.

But the soul is not so closed within the human being that it cannot express itself in gestures, in everything that can come to us from a person. The body can become the external expression of the soul when it is permeated by the soul in its uniqueness. Then this human body appears to us as something that is artistically perfect to the highest degree, as something that is imbued with soul, as something infinite and perfect in itself. And if you look for something in the whole of visible creation that would represent something so perfect within itself as the human body is, insofar as it is ensouled: you will find nothing within visible creation, not in terms of dynamics, except for the Greek temple, which encloses the god within itself in such a way, but also serves as a dwelling for him in a perfect infinite, like the human body for the human soul. And in so far as man as microcosm is soul in a body, is the Egyptian, is the Greek temple: man.

The rising human being is the oriental temple. The human being who stands on the ground, keeping a world enigmatically closed within himself, but who can let this world flow into his being and calmly direct his gaze horizontally forward, closed to above and below: that is the Greek temple. And again the annals of world history speak: the temple is the human being!

And we are approaching our time, the time that originated, as we have already proven to an unshakable extent and will be able to prove more and more, in all that has emerged from ancient Hebrew antiquity and Christianity, the myster of Golgotha, but which in the first instance had to force its way into those forms that had been taken over from Egypt, from Greece, but which increasingly strove to break through these forms, to break through them in such a way that, as spatial boundaries - as broken through in themselves - they point beyond the limited space into the weaving of the infinite universe.

All things that will happen in the future are already predisposed in the past. In a certain way, the temple of the future is mysteriously predisposed in the past. And since I am talking about a great mystery of human development, I can hardly do other than express this mystery myself in a somewhat mysterious form.

We hear about the Temple of Solomon on many occasions as about that temple of which we know that it should express the whole spirit of human development. We hear about it; but the question is put to the people of the physical earth - and this is the enigmatic thing about it - that is quite in vain: Who has seen that Temple of Solomon, of which we speak as a grandiose truth, if we speak about it at all seriously? Yes, it is a mystery what I am saying! A few centuries after the Temple of Solomon must have been built, Herodotus traveled in Egypt and the Near East. From his travel accounts, which truly concern themselves with much less than what the Temple of Solomon must have been, we know that he must have passed only a few miles from the Temple of Solomon, but he did not see it. People had not yet seen the Temple of Solomon!

The mystery is now that I have to talk about something that was there and that people have not seen. But it is so. Now, there is also something in nature that can be there and that people do not see. However, the comparison is not complete, and anyone who wanted to exploit it would miss the mark completely. It is the plants that are contained in their seeds; but people do not see the plants in their seeds. However, no one should go further with this comparison, because anyone who would now interpret the Temple of Solomon based on it would immediately say something wrong. As far as I have said it myself, the comparison of the plant seed with the Temple of Solomon is entirely correct.

What is the purpose of the Temple of Solomon? It wants the same thing that the temple of the future should want and can only want.

One can depict the physical human being in anthroposophy. One can depict the human being in psychosophy, insofar as he is the temple of the soul itself and is inspired by the soul. And one can depict the human being through pneumatosophy, insofar as the human being is spirit. May we not then depict the spiritual human being in such a way that we say: First we see the human being lying on the ground, then the human being standing up; then the human being who, closed in on himself like an and stands before us with his gaze fixed straight ahead, as if he were executing himself; and then we see the man who looks up, his soul grounded within himself, but raising his soul to the spirit and receiving the spirit.

The outer human being who straightens up can be seen, and needs only to be interpreted. The human being who is to be interpreted within himself, who has been inspired by the soul, must be felt and sensed; interpretation is not enough. He was felt, as was so vividly expressed to you this morning. He was felt as truly as a Greek work of art must feel in us; in that it has been said that one feels the bones crack in the Greek temple because we are a microcosm that has been inspired to the extent that we are inspired. But the fact that the soul conceives in a spiritual, supersensible way is invisible. Yet it must become sensual if it is to become art!

No other age is capable of developing such art as our own and the coming one. But ours must make a start. All are only attempts, all are only beginnings, in the way that the self-contained temple has sought to break through the masonry in the Christian church to date and to find the connection with the infinite weaving of the universe. What must we build now?

We must build the completion of what has just been hinted at! From what spiritual science can give us, we must find the possibility of creating that inner space which, in its colors and formal effects and in other artistic presentations it contains, is at once closed and at the same time in every detail such that the seclusion is not a seclusion , that it invites us everywhere we look to penetrate the walls with the eye, with the whole feeling and sensing, so that we are closed and at the same time in the seclusion of the cell we are connected to the All of the weaving world-divine.

“To have walls and not to have walls” – that is what temple art of the future will answer: an inner space that denies itself, that no longer develops the egoism of space, that, in all the colors and forms it will offer, wants to be there only to let the universe in. How colors can do this, to what extent colors can be the connection with the spirits of the surrounding environment, insofar as they are contained in the spiritual atmosphere, I have already tried to describe at the opening of our Stuttgart building.

In the outer physical perfection of man, what is the supersensible man? Where do we still encounter a hint of the superphysical man in the outer physical man? Nowhere else but where the human being incorporates that which lives within him into the word, where he speaks, where the word becomes wisdom and prayer and - without the usual or any sentimental connotation of these words - envelops the human being in wisdom and prayer, trusting, world riddle! The Word that has become flesh in man, that is the Spirit, that is the spirituality that expresses itself also in the physical man. And we will either accomplish the task we have been given, or we will not do it at all, but will have to leave it to future ages. We will accomplish it when we are able to shape our inner space for the first time in an appropriate way, as perfectly as it is possible today, quite apart from how the building will present itself on the outside. It could be wrapped in straw on all sides — that is irrelevant. The outer appearance is for the outer, profane world, and has nothing to do with the inner. The inner space is what it is all about. What will it be?

It will present itself in such a way that every glance we cast will fall on something that announces to us: This, in all its colors and forms, in all its language of colors and forms, in all that it is, in all its real, living existence, expresses the same thing as what can be done and spoken in this place, what man can entrust to his own body as the most spiritual thing about him. And there will be a unity in this structure, proclaiming wisdom, prayer, the mystery of the human being, and that which encompasses the space. And it will be natural for the word that penetrates into space to limit itself in such a way that it falls, as it were, on the walls, and meets on the walls that which is so akin to it that it gives back to the inner space what is given by the human being himself. From the center of the word to the periphery of the word, the dynamic will emanate, and a peripheral echo of the spiritual companionship and spiritual message itself should be what presents itself as an inner space, not breaking through as a window, but at its boundaries, at what it itself is, simultaneously limited and at the same time freely opening up to the expanses of spiritual infinity.

This could not yet be there, because only spiritual science is capable of creating such a thing. But spiritual science must create such a thing at some time. If it does not create it in our age, later ages will demand it from it. And just as it is true that the Near Eastern temple, the Egyptian temple, the Greek temple, and the Christian church had to enter into human development, it is equally true that the spiritual mystery room, with its conclusion before the material world and its disclosure to the spiritual world, must arise from the human spirit as the work of art of the future.

Nothing of what already exists can remind us of the ideal form that is to emerge before us. Everything must be new in a certain respect. It will of course arise in an imperfect form, but that is enough for the time being; with it the beginning will have been made. And with it the beginning will have been made for ever higher and higher degrees of perfection in the same field. What do people of the present day need to make themselves reasonably ripe for such a work of temple art?

No art can come into being unless it arises out of the collective spirit of a cycle of humanity. The words of the architect Ferstel, builder of the Votivkirche in Vienna, still ring in my ears. These words were spoken during his rector's address in the second year of my studies at the Vienna Technical University. At the time, they sounded in my soul like a discord on the one hand, but on the other hand like a tone that truly characterizes our time. Ferstel said the remarkable words at the time: architectural styles are not invented – one must add to these words: architectural styles are born out of the peculiarity of peoples. Now, our time shows so far no signs of finding architectural styles in the same sense that the ancient times found architectural styles and presenting them to the world again. Architectural styles are indeed found, but they are only found by the collective spirit of some human cycle. How can we today bring before us anything of the collective spirit that is to find the future architectural style that we mean today?

I will now try to say something about the nature of this matter from a completely different side and from a completely different point of view: In the course of my theosophical work, I have repeatedly encountered artists in a wide variety of fields who had a certain fear, a certain shyness, of theosophy, and this was because theosophy attempts to open up a certain understanding of works of art and also of the impulses on which they are based. How often does it happen that what confronts us as saga and legend, but also as a work of art, is interpreted by theosophy, that is, it is tried to be traced back to the underlying forces. But how often does it also happen that the artist withdraws from such an interpretation in an understandable way, because he, especially when he is productive in one field, says to himself: I lose everything that is original; what I want to pour into the mold — everything, content as well as form — will be lost to me if I reduce what comes to me as a livingly felt work of art, or at least as a livingly felt intuition, to some conceptual or ideological construct.

There are few things that people have been able to say to me over time that I have been able to understand better than this fear and trepidation. For if you have the predisposition, you can fully sympathize with the horror the artist would feel if he were to find his own work, or a work he loves, analyzed here or there, with the work of art taken over by the intellect! What a terrible thought for everything that is an artist in our soul! We almost feel a kind of cadaverous odor when we have a Goethean Faust before us and below [read] the notes of an analyzing scholar, even if he belongs to the interpreting philosophers, not to the interpreting philologists alone! Yes, what should we say to that? I would like to make it clear to you very briefly in a few minutes with an example.

I have here in front of me the latest edition of the Legend of the Seven Wise Masters, which has now been published by Diederichs. This old legend – which exists in a wide variety of versions, with parts of it scattered almost all over Europe and recurring again and again – is a highly remarkable tale, beautifully constructed as a work of art. I am now talking about the art of poetry, but what is done for poetry could also be done for architecture. I cannot tell you now what is contained in the legend of the seven wise masters, which in some cases is expressed in extremely crude terms, but I would like to describe the skeleton in the following way.

What is expressed here is attached to a skeleton that is brought to life in the successive stories. The whole thing is headed: “Here begins the book that tells of the Emperor Pontianus and his wives, the Empress, and of his son, the young Lord Dyocletianus, how he wanted to hang him and how seven masters redeemed him, every day, each with his saying.” An emperor is married to a woman, with whom he has a son, who is described here as Dyocletian. The woman dies and the emperor marries another woman. His son Dyocletian is his rightful successor; from his second wife he has no legitimate successor. The time is approaching when Dyocletian is to be educated. It was announced that he was to be educated in the most meaningful and satisfying way possible by the wisest people in the land, and seven wise masters then came forward to take over the education of the emperor's son. The emperor's second wife also wanted to have a son in order to prevent her stepson from succeeding her in some way. However, she does not succeed. So she now tries to blacken this son of the emperor in every way with her husband, and she finally decides to eliminate him in some way. To do this, she uses all possible means. Now it turned out that Diocletian had been taught by the seven wise masters for seven years, that he had learned great and many things in the most diverse way, that is, in the sevenfold way. But in a certain way he had even outgrown all the practical wisdom that the seven wise masters had mastered. And so he had succeeded in interpreting a star in the night sky. This enabled him to say that for seven consecutive days, when he returned to his father, he would remain silent, would not speak in any way, and would present himself as a fool. But now he also knew that the Empress was plotting his death. So he now asks the seven wise masters to save him from death.

And now, in seven successive periods of time, the following happens: The son comes home. But the Empress has told the Emperor a story that has made a great impression on his soul, and which had the very purpose of moving the Emperor to have his son hanged. The Emperor is quite in agreement with this, for the story has convinced him. The son is already being led out to the gallows, when on the way they meet the first of the seven wise masters. After being reproached for leaving his son so stupid, the first of the masters speaks up and says he wants to tell the emperor a story. The emperor wants to hear it. Yes, says the wise man, but first you have to let the son come home; because I want the son to hear us before he is hanged. - The emperor agrees.

They return home, and there the first of the seven wise masters tells his story. The emperor is so impressed by this story that he does not have the son hanged, but releases him. The next day, however, the empress tells the emperor a story that again leads to the son being sentenced to death. He is led out to the gallows again, and on the way they meet the second of the seven wise masters, who also wants to tell the emperor a story before the son is hanged. This happens, and the result is that the son stays alive again. This is repeated seven times in a row until the eighth day arrives and the son can speak. This is how the son is saved.

The entire story, as well as the entire conclusion, are vividly presented in an excellent manner. I would now like to say: On the one hand, you take the book in your hands and immerse yourself in it and you take great pleasure in the large, sometimes rough images; wonderfully, you are absorbed in the description of souls. But such a story almost demands to be explained. Absolutely? No, only in our time, because we live in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, where the intellect is the dominant and ever more dominant force. In the age in which this story was written, it would not have prompted anyone to explain it. But we in our time are condemned to give an explanation for it, and then one decides to give one. How obvious is it? The Emperor had a wife; from her he has a son who is destined to be educated by seven wise masters, and who is aware that he comes from the time when humanity still had the clairvoyant soul. The clairvoyant soul has died, but the human ego still remains and can be taught by the “seven wise masters”, who appear to us in the most diverse forms. I myself once pointed out that we are essentially dealing with the same thing in the seven daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, whom Moses meets at his father-in-law's well, but also in the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages.

The second woman, who can no longer develop a divine consciousness, is the present human soul, who therefore cannot have a son either. Dyocletian, the son, is taught in secret by the seven wise masters, and in the end he must be freed by the powers he has acquired from the seven wise masters. We could go on like this and give an

absolutely correct picture and would, of course, be of great service to our time. But let us now take our artistic sense. I do not know to what extent what I am about to say will find an echo! But if you read the book, let it sink in and then explain it very cleverly and correctly in the sense of our time, as our time demands, you still feel as if you have actually done the book an injustice, a serious injustice, because you have actually put a straw skeleton of all sorts of abstract concepts in place of the living work of art. And it makes no difference whether this is right or wrong, clever or not clever.

We can go even further. The greatest work of art is the world, either the macrocosm or the microcosm. In images or symbols, in all kinds of things, the ancient times expressed what they had to express about the secrets of things, and we come with the “age-old” wisdom - which is only as old as it has prepared itself as a seed for the fifth post-Atlantic cultural age - we come with the intellect, we come with all of theosophy as an explanation of the world. This is something just as abstract and dry as the living reality, just as the commentary is dry compared to the work of art! Although there must be Theosophy, although our time demands Theosophy, we must feel it in a certain respect like a straw skeleton compared to the living reality. In a certain way, this is no exaggeration. For in so far as Theosophy only occupies our minds, in so far as we are only with the intellect, in so far as we coin schemas and all kinds of technical terms, especially in the parts that relate to man himself, in so far is Theosophy a mere straw skeleton. And it only begins to become a little more tolerable where we can describe, for example, the different conditions of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon and the earlier times on Earth, or the activities of the different hierarchies.

But it is horrible to speak of it: that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego - or even of manas and kama-manas - and it is even more horrible when these things have been expressed in diagrams and on blackboards. I can hardly imagine anything more horrible than the whole, in itself magnificent human being, and next to it on a blackboard the human being with the seven human limbs; being surrounded by a large number of people in a large hall and having a blackboard next to you with the scale of the seven basic human parts. Yes, that's how it is! But we have to feel our way towards something like that. We don't need to hang these things right in front of our eyes, because they're not even beautiful, but we have to hang them in front of our souls! That is the mission of our time; no matter how much one may say against these things from the point of view of taste, of artistic productivity – that belongs in our time, that is the task of our time.

But how can we escape this dilemma? We are also supposed to be boring theosophists in some respects, to pick apart and dissect the world, to incorporate grandiose works of art into abstractions and even to say: We are theosophists! How can we escape this dilemma?

There is only one way out! And this means that Theosophy is a cross for us, that Theosophy is a sacrifice for us, that we really feel that it takes away almost everything that humanity has had of a living world content so far. And there is no degree of intensity that I would not describe to make it clear that for everything that springs up in a living way, including in the course of human development and the divine world, Theosophy must first be something like a field of corpses!

But when we then feel that Theosophy, as the herald of the greatest thing in the world, becomes the greatest pain and deprivation for us, so that we feel within us one of the divine traits of its mission in the world, then it becomes the corpse that rises from the grave, then it celebrates the resurrection, then it rises from the grave!

No one will experience joy at the defoliation and desolation of the world's content, but no one can experience the productivity of the world's secrets like the one who, with his productivity, feels like a follower of Christ, who has carried the cross to the place of the skull, who has gone through death. But in the realm of knowledge, too, spiritual science takes upon itself the cross of knowledge in order to die within it and to experience from the grave how a new world arises, a new life. Those who, through the study of theosophy, undergo a transformation of their soul that is as profound as it is vivid, who, as if dying, experience a kind of inner death, will also feel that life gives them a living force for new artistic impulses, which can transform into reality what I have been able to sketch for you today.

So closely connected with all theosophical feeling is what we are to do, and what we believe that the JohannesbauVerein will open up an understanding of. I hardly need to say any more to make it clear that this Johannesbau can be a matter close to the heart of the theosophist, of the kind that is felt to be a necessity in the course of time. For in answering the question of whether Theosophy is understood in a certain broader sense today, an extraordinary amount depends first on an answer that we cannot give with words, that we cannot express with thoughts, but rather on our act and that each, as far as possible, contributes in one way or another to what our JohannesbauVerein, so understandingly and beautifully placed in the evolution of humanity, wants.

Lecture at the 2nd general assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

When the Johannesbau Association followed on from our last general assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society here in Berlin with a meeting, I had a few words to say to you about how the Johannesbau should be situated in the overall development of art, and in particular architectural art: that it should be seen, in the sense in which we also otherwise view what we want to achieve in the field of theosophy or anthroposophy, as something necessary in the whole spiritual development of humanity, so that what is to happen through theosophy or anthroposophy does not appear as some kind of arbitrariness, does not appear as something that we give birth to out of ourselves as some kind of arbitrary ideal, but appears as we derive it as a necessity from that writing, which reveals to us the necessary path of the human spirit through the development of the earth.

Now, one can choose many points of view to present this necessity that has just been characterized. At that time, I showed from a certain point of view how this necessary placing in human history of what is intended by the Johannesbau is to be understood. Today, another point of view will be chosen so that my considerations today will, in a certain respect, supplement what was presented here in December 1911.

Architecture is actually bound to a very specific premise if we understand architecture in the sense that man wants to create a shell, as it were, using some material, through some forms or other measures, be it for profane living and working, be it for religious activities or the like. In this sense, the art of building, architecture, is absolutely bound up with what we can call soul-life, is connected with the concept of soul-life, arises out of soul-life and can be grasped by grasping the whole extent of soul-life.

Now, over the years of working in spiritual science, the soul has always presented itself to us from three points of view: from the point of view of the sentient soul, from the point of view of the mind or emotional soul, and from that of the consciousness soul. But then this soulfulness also appears to us when it first announces itself, as it were, but does not yet really exist as soulfulness when we speak of the sentient or astral body. And again, the soulfulness appears to us when we say that the soulfulness has developed to such an extent that it seeks a transition to the spirit self or manas. If you look at my theosophy, you will find the threefold soul in it as a sentient soul, a mind or emotional soul and a consciousness soul, but you will find the sentient soul adjacent to the sentient body, so that the sentient soul and sentient appear as two sides of one and the same, the one side more soul-like, the other more spiritual; and then you will find, combining again, consciousness soul and spirit self; the consciousness soul representing the more soul-like side, while the spirit self represents the more spiritual side.

Those who, as anthroposophists, gradually find their way into such an understanding of these terms, as our esteemed friend Arenson has very beautifully explained in these days, will not be able to stop at the words sentient soul, mind or consciousness soul and only seek to find one or other definition for these words , but as a true anthroposophist will long to gradually develop in his mind many, many concepts, feelings and insights, which the one feeling leads to the other and so on, in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding, which in the case of these concepts is structured in the most diverse directions.

For the seer himself, the words quoted include, one might say, entire worlds. Therefore, in order to understand such concepts, one must also take into account what has been presented about human development, for example in the post-Atlantic period: that the sentient body has particularly developed in the ancient Persian culture, the sentient soul in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the mind or emotional soul in the Greco-Roman period, the consciousness soul in the time in which we ourselves live, and that we see the next period of time, so to speak, as already approaching in its development, yes, that we ourselves, with what we want as anthroposophy, theosophy, are working on the approach of this next period of time, which in a certain way should show us the connection between consciousness soul and spirit self or manas.

Architecture, as has been said, is closely linked to the concept of the soul. Now, someone might ask: shouldn't architecture then also be linked to the development of the soul, as it has just been characterized? And should not the forms and designs of architecture show certain peculiarities in their succession that are connected with this development of sentient body, sentient soul, and so on? And would one not then have no justification at all for speaking of architecture in the case of certain periods, for example the first post-Atlantic period, which particularly brought the etheric body to development? For if architecture is bound to the soul, it should only begin to dawn when it begins to develop. So one would assume that it begins to emerge in the sentient body, because that is, as it were, the other side of the soul; and before that, one would have to refer to times in which an actual art of building, in the sense in which we characteristically understand architecture, did not exist at all.

Now it is difficult in itself to answer this question from the point of view of external history, because everything that goes back to the Egyptian-Chaldean period can hardly be gleaned from historical monuments and traditions, but can only be derived from clairvoyant research. Even the period of Zarathustra, which we call the original Persian period, lies so far back that historical research is out of the question, let alone the period that we know to be connected with the development of the etheric body, namely the original Indian period.

However, one can also have strange experiences with this matter if one approaches the very clever people of the present day with it. Recently, for example, one of these clever people said that these post-Atlantean periods, as they are recorded in my esoteric science, for example, are untenable, because anyone who is familiar with the linguistic monuments of India would never believe that Indian culture had progressed as far ahead of Egyptian and Chaldean culture as it is presented in this esoteric science. Well, one can only be surprised that such very clever people of the present day have not yet managed to read a book written in their mother tongue with understanding, even if they can sometimes read Sanskrit. For it is expressly stated in esoteric science that the culture of India, including the Vedic culture, which is the subject of external science, is not the one spoken of in esoteric science as the ancient Indian culture, the first culture of the post-Atlantean time, but that in the case of the Vedic culture we are dealing with a time that can be counted as belonging to the third post-Atlantean cultural period, which thus runs parallel to the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. The original Indian culture, on the other hand, was one of which no external documents and no external monuments and the like exist and of which only the last echoes are contained in the Vedas. I will not dwell on this any further, but say this only because one or the other of you might hear this objection and perhaps not immediately have the concepts and ideas at hand that can refute such an objection.

So the question I have just hinted at remains, namely that in the first post-Atlantic period we have to go back to times when an actual art of building, as for the later periods, could not yet be possible. But then we come to a strange boundary point, to which external research also points; we come, so to speak, to a preliminary stage of architecture: the building of spaces for religious, for worship activities in caves, carved into the rock, as can be found in India or Nubia. This is indeed the age that stands on the boundary of the development of the soul from the physical. These cave dwellings confirm what spiritual research suggests we can expect in terms of the development of the soul: it is only in the period of human development in which we see the soul developing out of the physical that we also see the first real higher architecture developing out of what were previously rock caves and underground rock caves that had been hewn out of the earth itself.

In this respect, the earth appears like the physical realm into which the human soul first works, as it also happens in the development of the human being itself, where the soul works into the physical, the sentient soul into the sentient body. And in the transition from cave rooms to architectural works that encompass human activities, we also see the importance of the transition from the culture of the sentient body to that of the sentient soul.

There will come a time when what Theosophy or Anthroposophy provides will be elaborated for all branches of human knowledge, for all branches of human development. And it will be found that everything that other human worldviews present one-sidedly is cobbled together from some inadequate concepts and ideas, while spiritual science or anthroposophy shows the comprehensive whole with which one can shine a light everywhere. One can be completely reassured, even if people do not yet believe this today. That is not the point, but rather that time will provide the evidence for it. We just have to give it time. These confirmations will gradually be realized in all areas of life and development. This also applies to architecture.

And if we now go through the post-Atlantean development, we see that, in the course of time, the individual developmental epochs are, so to speak, bound to the soul, to the development of the sentient soul, then to that of the mind or feeling soul, and then to that of the consciousness soul, right up to our time. And in our own time we can see the time approaching, even if it is still only in the preparatory stage, when the spirit soul or manas will be worked out of the consciousness soul, so that we stand, as it were, at the opposite end of the process to that in the post-Atlantean epoch when we passed from the bodily to the soul realm. Just as the sentient soul was worked out of the sentient body in those days, so we are now facing a time in which we have to work our way out of the soul and into a spiritual realm. For architecture, this means that we can expect the opposite again. That is to say, just as in those earlier times caves were hewn out of the rocks as the preliminary stages of human architectural works, so now, in the present rising time, we have to work into the spirit in order to create the complement, the counterpart to it.

Let us now try to visualize the following, initially without more precise details about the time frame, since everyone can form for themselves what is necessary for parallelism. Let us consider the development through the sentient soul, mind or intellect soul, and consciousness soul, so initially the development through the sentient soul. Through being endowed with the sentient soul, the human being enters into a reciprocal relationship with the world around him. Through the sentient soul, what is present in the world as reality passes, as it were, into the human soul, into the human inner being itself. The external becomes an inner experience by way of the sentient soul. Therefore, there should now be something in the development of architectural art that, as it were, quite naturally emerges from cave construction and shows something in itself that is characteristic of the sentient soul. That is to say, it should be built in such a way that one wants to represent both an exterior and an interior.

Here we need only recall the construction of the pyramids and similar buildings, and we can even think of more recent scientific research that has shown how astronomical-cosmic relationships are reflected in the dimensions of the pyramids, and then we have an idea of what it is all about. The more we study the pyramid, the more we discover its strange structure based on cosmic relationships. Astronomical dimensions are reflected in the ratio of the base to the height, for example. And anyone who studies the pyramid gradually comes to the conclusion that with the pyramid, the pyramid priests expressed everything that could be expressed in a structure as a perception of cosmic conditions. The pyramid was built as if the earth wanted to experience within itself what is perceived from the cosmos. Just as the sentient soul brings the external reality to life within itself and presents what is outside as an inner reality, repeating in its own way what is outside, so the pyramid repeats external cosmic relationships in its proportions and forms, for example, in the way sunlight falls within it. Just as external reality finds a kind of representation in the human being through the sentient soul, so the pyramid looks like a large sentient organ of the entire earthly culture in relation to the cosmos.

Let us move on. How should architecture behave in a cultural stage in which the characteristic is the intellectual or mind soul? The mind or soul of mind is the inner soul in man that has the most work to do within itself, that builds on the already inner foundation of the sentient soul to further develop this inner soul, but does not yet go so far as to bring it together again into the actual I; thus it spreads and expands the soul, so to speak, without allowing it to culminate in the center of the I. The person who has developed precisely this soul element comes to us through the richness of his soul life, through the many inner soul contents and experiences that he has fought for and achieved; he has less of a need to build systems out of his inner experiences, but rather gives himself over to the breadth of these inner experiences. The intellectual soul is a life of the soul that bears itself inwardly, closes itself inwardly, and totalizes itself inwardly.

What kind of architecture would be needed to correspond to such a soul? It would have to be an architecture that, unlike the construction of a pyramid, does not so much resemble a kind of image or representation of cosmic conditions, but is more of a self-contained, total being; something that supports itself and which, so to speak, entirely in keeping with the intellectual soul or soul of feeling, shows the breadth of development in the way the individual parts are supported, and is less concerned with integrating what is there in the breadth of development. No one who is familiar with the nature of the intellectual soul or the soul of feeling, as it has just been characterized, can doubt that Greek and also Roman architecture can be understood as an external image of the life of the soul of intellect or soul of feeling.

Let us consider Greek architecture, for example Greek temple architecture, as we have often done before, by understanding it as the house of the god himself, so that the god dwells within it and the whole house presents itself as the dwelling of the god, the whole inwardly rounded as an inward totality. We have even been able to say from our contemplation of the Greek temple: This Greek temple does not claim that a person or a community of people is inside it. It is the dwelling place of the god and can stand alone, closed, as a totality in itself, just as the mind or soul is an inner totality, a self-contained inner life, which does not yet go to the ego, but which, albeit unconsciously, is the manifestation of the god in man. And when we see how in Greek temple construction one part supports the other, how everything is based on the columns striving upwards and supporting the beams, how the mutual forces are combined into a totality without the whole any way systematically toward a unity, toward a point, we find in it - and in Roman architecture the same is actually the case - that breadth, that expanse, which we find in the intellectual or emotional soul itself.

What is striking about Greco-Roman architecture is that it is based on statics, on the pure statics of the individual forces that unfold in a supporting or burdening way. But there is one thing you can forget about a Greek temple: you can forget that it has a “heaviness”. For anyone who feels naturally will or can at least feel that the columns are something that grows out of the earth. And with that which really grows out of the earth, with the plant, one does not have the feeling of oppressive heaviness. That is why the column in the Greek temple gradually strives to become similar to the stem of a plant, even if this only becomes visible in the Corinthian column. And that is why, in terms of perception, the column is not a burden, but rather a support.

But when you then come to the beam, to the architrave, you immediately have the feeling that this weighs on the column, that is, the structure is permeated by inner static equilibrium. And anyone who has developed their inner life will also have the feeling that the perceptions, feelings and concepts they have arrived at, which they have worked towards internally, are supported internally in the same way that the column supports the beam. Because at the time when Greco-Roman architecture originated, the intellectual soul or soul of mind was particularly developed in humanity, therefore, when the soul wanted to express itself in the language of architecture, it naturally strove to express what it had experienced internally in the static structure. Not with the intention, but in the way the human soul nature expressed itself, it was in the architecture to create a reflection of the soul.

And then gradually the development progressed to the consciousness soul. It is essential for the consciousness soul to summarize what the soul experiences in the total feeling: “You are! And you are this one person, this one personality, this one individuality.” By living in the soul of mind or feeling, God lives in you; but you allow God to live in all the vibrations of the soul, you are certain of him, so you do not have to summarize it as in one point and you do not have to bring yourself to consciousness: “You are identical with your divine.” But this is something that must be done in the consciousness soul. In this, it is not the case that the person rests inwardly within themselves as in the mind or feeling soul, but in the consciousness soul, the person reaches out from themselves in order to unfold their I arbitrarily into reality, into existence.

If you have a feeling for the formation of words, you can literally see how the words that have just been spoken as the characteristic of the consciousness soul form themselves almost automatically into the Gothic pillar and the Gothic arch, where the enclosing shape presents us with a structure that no longer expresses calm, inward persistence, but rather, through its forms, the striving to emerge from mere inward stasis. How great is the difference between the beam, which is carried in full static calm by its column, and the mutually supporting arches, which come together at the apex and hold each other, where everything pushes towards a point, just as the power of the human soul is concentrated in the consciousness soul.

And anyone who can empathize with the ongoing process of human development, especially when observing Italian or French architecture, feels how, in the transition from the development of the intellectual or emotional soul to the development of the consciousness soul, it is no longer a matter of a calm, static support and supporting itself out of its inner totality, and one no longer strives for inward unity in form, as in Greek architecture, but rather seeks to pass over into the dynamic, as it were, to emerge from one's skin, in order to enter into connection with the reality of the outer world, as in the consciousness soul. Gothic arches open up to the light of heaven in long windows. This is not the case in Greek architecture. In a Greek temple, it would make no difference to the perception whether light fell into it or not. The light is only incidental. This is not irrelevant to the Gothic cathedral; the Gothic cathedral is inconceivable without the light refracted in the stained glass windows. Here we can feel how the consciousness soul enters into the totality of the world and strives out again into general existence. The Gothic style is thus the architectural striving that is characteristic of the age of the development of the consciousness soul.

And now we enter our own age, in which a world view that does not arise out of arbitrariness but out of the necessities of human development must realize that the human being must work his way out of the soul and into the spirit again, that the human being rests in the spirit of himself. The Gothic building, with its special architecture of the wall broken through by the windows, with its opening up for what can come in, for what must now come, appears as no more than the forerunner of this process! Like the right-hand harbinger of what is to come - where the wall necessarily leads to a structure and in this respect is also only a filler, a decoration, not an enclosure, like the walls of the Greek temple - like a harbinger, this Gothic building appears to be what must now become the new building for the enclosure of the coming Weltanschauung, the new building whose essential characteristics I have already hinted at here and there and some of whose essential features have even already been attempted, for example in the Stuttgart building.

The essential thing will be that the complement to the preliminary stage of architecture, to cave construction, where the rock itself materially closed off what had been hewn into it, will now appear; that our new building opens up on all sides, that its walls are open on all sides, not, however, to the material, but open to the spiritual. And we will achieve this by designing the forms in such a way that we can forget that there is any city or the like besides our building. Such an attempt has already been made in the Stuttgart building; its walls are open despite the material closure, open to the spirit. In the new building, too, we will design the forms, the decorative, the picturesque, in such a way that the wall is broken through, so that we can feel our way through color and form: Despite being closed in, our spiritual and mental outlook expands into the world at large. Just as the proportions of the cosmos were taken up in the pyramid, we take what we can experience through anthroposophy and theosophy and create forms, colors, outlines, figures for it , but we create all this in such a way that precisely through what we create on the walls and conjure up on the walls, these walls themselves disappear, and we experience the closed space in such a way that we can feel the illusion everywhere: It expands out into the cosmos, into the universe, just as the consciousness soul, when it merges with the spiritual self, expands out of the merely human into the spiritual.

In the new architecture, the significance of the individual column will also change completely. If, as in the Greek temple, we are dealing with static conditions, with conditions in which inwardness is of primary importance, then it is natural that the column forms and the capital forms should be repeated. For how could one imagine a column in one place as being different from another in the neighborhood if they have exactly the same function? It must be designed in the same way as the other. It cannot be any different, because every column has the same function.

If we are now dealing with a new architecture that reaches out into the cosmos, which is differentiated in the most diverse ways on all sides, and we are to forget that we are in an inner space, then the columns take on a completely new task, a task that is somewhat like that of a letter that points beyond itself by forming a word with the other letters. Thus the columns combine, not in a diversity, but like the individual letters to form a weighty writing that points outwards to the cosmos, from the inside outwards. And so we will build: from the inside out! And just as one capital follows the other, so they will join together and express something as a totality. This will be something that leads beyond the room. And what we will otherwise install, for example inside the dome, will be installed in such a way that we will not have the feeling of We are closed in by a dome, but that the whole painting seems to pierce the dome, carries it away into infinity. To do this, however, one will have to learn to paint a little in the way that Johannes Thomasius paints for Strader's sensibility, so that Strader gets the feeling: “The canvas, I want to pierce it, to find what I am supposed to seek.”

You will realize that in the mystery plays not a single word is written in vain, but always from the whole, and that all the things we want necessarily follow from the preconditions of our culture. Today I just wanted to evoke a feeling for the fact that in the entire treatment of the walls, the architectural motifs, the columns, and in the use of everything decorative, the new architecture must aim at the destruction of the material, so to speak overcome the wall and outwards, so that the picturesque must also overcome the wall; I wanted to evoke a feeling that all this must occur and be attempted through the new architecture and that this is a necessity in view of the course of human development, as we recognize it as a necessary one.

However, given the necessity of such a building in the course of human development, it seems pathetic that it is so difficult to actually carry out the building, and pathetic too are all the objections raised by the authorities in Munich, including those of the artists who have been called upon to judge it and who have said that the building would overwhelm its surroundings. Perhaps they felt a little queasy about the building overwhelming the neighborhood, about it growing out of it into a very wide environment. They will initially feel oppressed by it.

Such objections, raised by artists who believe themselves to be at the cutting edge of their time, seem grotesquely comical when viewed from the perspective of human development. Our dear friend, who is helping us here as an architect, said that the master builder should not let himself be forced by the client, but should create as a free artist, as he wishes. That is a nice principle, because let's say the client orders a department store, he would not be very satisfied if the “free artist” built him a church. Now, there are many such buzzwords. But one is limited by task and material. The term “free artist” simply makes no sense here. For I would like to know what the “free artist” will do if he intends to execute a plastic work of art from free artistry, to mold clay and create a Venus, and instead of Venus a sheep comes out? Is he then a free artist? Does the word 'free' have the slightest meaning in art when Raphael was commissioned to paint the Sistine Madonna and it ended up being a cow? Raphael would have been a 'free' artist, but he would not have created a Sistine Madonna! Just as one only needs one tongue for certain things, here too only one tongue is needed. For such reasoning has nothing to do with the necessary real conditions of human development, but rather it depends on whether one has a truth in mind that relates to doing, to working. For truths that are to be fruitful, that are to be 'true', must be grounded in the necessities of human development. However, they will always be applicable to what Schopenhauer said about truth entering into human development. For Schopenhauer said: “In all centuries, poor truth has had to blush because it was paradoxical, and yet it is not its fault. It cannot take the form of the enthroned general error. So it looks up with a sigh to its patron, Time, who beckons victory and fame to it, but whose flapping of his wings is so great and slow that the individual perishes from it.

Let us hope, dear friends, and let us do our part, because it could be good for our cause, that our guardian spirit takes pity on us and turns his gaze to us, so that we, recognizing the necessity of our structure, may soon be able to truly create this shell for anthroposophy or spiritual science, which corresponds to the development of humanity.

Lecture given at the second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society

My dear Theosophical friends!

In connection with the construction of our Johannesbau in Dornach, a number of our friends and members have felt the desire to create some kind of home around or near the Johannesbau, and a number of members have already registered and considered the purchase of property there in order to create permanent homes for the whole year or for some of the year. Of course, my dear friends, the words I would like to say at this moment, following on from what I have just said, are not meant to imply that I would like to interfere in any way with what these colonists are undertaking around our Johannesbau in Dornach. It is self-evident that, given the way we understand our anthroposophical movement, the freedom of each individual member must be preserved to the greatest extent. So I have no business to speak in terms of even hinting at compulsion in either direction; but I may perhaps have the right to express what is desirable.

So, in Dornach we will now have the Johannesbau as such, for which we have endeavored to find a truly novel architectural style, in order to express what we want in the building forms and to create something that can represent, in the sense already often hinted at, a not only dignified but also correct envelope for our cause.

Dr. Grosheintz has shown you the efforts that have been made to achieve this goal in various illustrations. If the funds are sufficient, buildings will be constructed directly around the Johannesbau, individual houses, some of which you have already seen will be in the immediate vicinity of the Johannesbau. And we will try to build these houses in such a way that their artistic design will truly allow them to form a whole with the plans for the Johannesbau itself.

It takes a lot to create such a whole. We have, of course, only had the opportunity to implement the idea just characterized for the small house that you see there (in the model ) at one point, and which is initially intended to be used to make the glass windows in it; so that Mr. Rychter and perhaps someone else can find shelter in it, and the glass windows can be made in the other rooms. Secondly, we have the so-called “Kesselhaus”, which is already in a very definite form, so to speak. This Kesselhaus had to be designed with the modern material of reinforced concrete in mind. And so the problem was how to construct such a giant chimney – which would, of course, be an eyesore if it were built in the same way as chimneys are built today near buildings – how to construct such a chimney in such a way that it is architecturally compatible with the building and made of the appropriate material.

In the small figure form that you see here (in the model), and in what Dr. Grosheintz showed as an image of this boiler house, you will have seen that an attempt has been made to solve the architecture of this structure as well. And once it is standing there and, in particular, once it is heated – because the smoke emerging from the chimney is incorporated into the architecture – then perhaps people will be able to feel that these forms have intrinsic beauty despite their prosaic purpose. Perhaps precisely because the building's function is truly expressed in its forms, one will be able to sense that these forms have not only been purely formed according to the principles of the old utilitarian architecture, but at the same time in such a way that an inner aesthetic formation has taken place. By thinking of the two domes together, with an extension that is shaped differently on different sides, and on the chimney in a burst of, one cannot say “leaf-like” structures, because a member who saw this model found them, for example, “ear-like” – but one need not define them as such, the forms just have to be right. All these forms will probably make it possible to feel that even such a building, which serves a very modern heating purpose – the Johannesbau and the buildings immediately around it will be heated from here – can be given aesthetically pleasing forms.

For such a thing, now – the other things are therefore only provisional and it will become clear to what extent they are provisional – in order to know what is needed for these forms, it is necessary to first know a precise, specified indication of everything that is to take place in the building, for which purpose it is to serve. I would like to say: If one knows how many rooms, for what purposes rooms are needed, how many types of staircase, how many types of view and so on one wants, and if one also knows exactly the location of the building in relation to the Johannesbau, to the north or south, then one can find a corresponding architecture for each such specification.

Therefore, it will be necessary for all those friends who want to become colonists and are thinking of building something near the Johannesbau to really follow, at least in a broader sense, what must be pursued for the buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Johannesbau if we do not want to be unfaithful to our principles. For the first thing that is at hand is that through the external construction, through the overall style, it should be apparent to the outside world that all these houses, so to speak, belong together, form a whole. Even if other houses should be in between, it would still be desirable that precisely those houses that are built by colonists be built in such a way that it is clear from the houses: they belong to this whole. People on the outside might say: These are twisted people! Very well, but one should feel it - regardless of whether one looks at it affirmatively or negatively - and we should give cause for feeling that in this way - even if perhaps disturbed by many other things that stand in between - the complex of buildings built towards the Johannesbau forms an ideal whole.

This is the one aspect that really needs to be taken into account. But the other aspect is that we really want something that has a certain significance in the cultural development of the present day. We want, my dear friends – and you can see this from the forms of the John building itself – that our spiritual-scientific attitude should actually be incorporated into the architectural style and into the artistic forms in all areas. Just as we would be in no position to answer the question, “How can one best practise the art of dance?” by saying, “Go to such and such a person who has this or that method”, so too, just as we would be compelled to seek our own way in eurythmy, we must also learn to understand how to seek our own in other art forms and thereby create something for those who want to understand, something that is perhaps only possible from such a productive spiritual current as the humanities provide.

I have often pointed out how it continues to resound in my ears what the architect Wilhelm Ferstel said after he had built the Votive Church in Vienna and was elected rector of the Vienna University of Technology, when he gave a lecture on architecture, what his actual tenor was in this lecture: architectural styles are not invented! One can object to this statement, one can also prove it, both can be equally correct. They are not invented, the architectural styles, but from the correctness of the statement that they are not invented, it does not follow at all that one simply takes the Gothic architectural style, as Ferstel took it, and builds the somewhat enlarged confectionery, this sugar work of the Votive Church in Vienna. Nor does it follow at all from that sentence that architectural styles in our own time can only be formed by modifying old architectural styles in an eclectic sense, welding them together again and again, and in this way creating this or that.

A spiritual scientific attitude should show that it is possible to bring real art forms into the architectural style from within spiritual life. And we should prove to the world that this is also possible in a private house. We should be able to gain understanding for our cause from this point of view. By being able to proceed from this point of view, we will create an enormously significant ideal value for our culture.

So it would certainly be nice, without wanting to exert any influence on the freedom of any member, if the colonists would come together and, of their own free will but with an understanding of our principles, achieve something unified. Since this cannot be changed for the time being – it may be different later – we have to take into account the factor that there is a house near the Johannesbau that cannot be removed yet and will not enhance the beauty; but it is there now and it is not important that we make everything “beautiful”, but that we make what we do beautiful in our sense.

Therefore, I was really saddened, I might say, when in the past few weeks I came across construction plans and proposals for houses to be built by the colonists there. They were, of course, intended with the very best of intentions, but they exhibited all the ugliness and monstrosity of a terrible architectural style. It really can be done differently if you have the good will to do so. It goes without saying that a number of obstacles and hindrances must be expected, but what new movement that has to become established in the world does not encounter obstacles or hindrances?

I do not want to interfere in what might arise from the members of the colony – that is, the colonists themselves – getting together tomorrow; but it would sadden me if anything other than what is in line with the words just spoken could or would arise. It will be entirely possible if we all take care to ensure that what has just been characterized comes true. Of course, if colonists do not have the patience to wait until the time comes when it may be possible to indicate how one or the other could be done well, then nothing favorable can be done.

As much as it is understandable that some of the colonists may be in a hurry to get their building project started, it would be desirable for the colonists who are serious about our cause to exercise a little patience patience in order to let things develop in accordance with the intentions, which I cannot say are ours through our will, but that they arise out of what we have to bring out of the spiritual scientific attitude. Something might indeed come into being of which the world might at first receive an impression that makes it laugh. Let it laugh! But the time for laughing at such things will come to an end. If nothing of this kind were ever undertaken, human development would never advance.

No one should think that they have to endure even the slightest discomfort in their home if the principles I have mentioned are adhered to. But one thing is certainly necessary: that not every colonist goes his own way, so to speak, but that what is done is done in a certain harmony, that people can discuss and hold each other mutually.

The architectural style of the colonists' houses will make the entire colony appear as an ideal unit, and this will be an external expression of an internal harmony. I say this, partly as a wish, partly as a hypothesis, partly as something, yes, I myself don't know what word to choose: It should simply be an expression of the inner harmony of those living in this community!

It will be in keeping with the spirit of the Anthroposophical Society that not the slightest discord or mutual incompatibility, or even a bad word from one member of the colony to another, or even a frown from one to another, will ever be allowed to pass. And it will be beautiful when this is also expressed in outward forms, as it were, as if personified peace were to pour over everything. But even if it should ever happen that a little thing in someone's mind might cause one or the other to turn a crooked mouth or a crooked face, because forms stimulate thoughts, he will turn his eyes in that crooked face to the common peaceful forms and a peaceful smile will immediately cross the twisted face.

If we consider all this, then we really have the reasons for the impulse to create something unified there. Do not think that this unity will mean that one house will be like the other. On the contrary. The houses will be very different from each other and everything will have to have a very individual character. After all, a human organism is not created by saying: an arm is like this, a hand is like this... [gap in the text]. If we had never placed the arm or the hand on top instead of the head, an organism would never have been created. Similarly, the shape of a house that is right on one side will not be right on the other side. But all of this will have to be carefully thought out for our purposes.

And then, when we are in a position to really put it all into practice, there are other aspects to consider. Just think, we were united here this week. On Monday, some Theosophical Society was meeting in the next room with a lecture by so-and-so; on another day, another society was meeting with something else, and on a third day, an “Anthropos” society was meeting, and so on. Just think, if it could happen that the son, daughter, grandson, or nephew of one of our members would join some “Anthropos” society or even some theosophical society, and it came to that houses in our colony were later inherited by such members of a family, then not only would we have the lectures of the other societies in a neighborly way, but we would also have the attitudes and so on of these societies right in the middle of us.

We must therefore consider today what difficulties may arise over time and how we can counter them. We will only be able to counter them if we create such an association of colonists through which means and ways can be found to ensure that the possessions of members of the Anthroposophical Society really do remain with members of the Anthroposophical Society in the future. That this will only be possible through a wide variety of means will become clear to you tomorrow when we discuss the practical principles. Of course, heirs must never be affected, but it is also possible to create the possibility that what one owns in the colony might never pass to heirs who are not members of the Anthroposophical Society, without affecting the heirs.

It would be desirable to preserve this colony as a colony for members of the Anthroposophical Society in the future; but not just to think about how nice it is for oneself to live there, how nice it is not to have to travel far to the events in the Johannesbau and to be there with Anthroposophists. To think only of that, would be even less in keeping with our spiritual current than if it were for anything else. The fact that our spiritual current still has to be associated with certain sacrifices is particularly evident when the principles and impulses of our spiritual current have to be put into practical reality. It should be more or less self-evident that we cannot have our houses built by just any architect who is completely unconnected with our cause. It should also be self-evident that we want to express the anthroposophical character of the colony.

These are certain aspects that I would like to present to you, of course, as I said, not to exert any pressure, but as something that you will admit on closer reflection that you cannot avoid if anything is to come out of the whole matter of our Johannesbau and thus serve our anthroposophical cause.

You see, we had to leave Munich because we did not find any understanding there, initially purely for what we wanted artistically. Out there in Dornach, where we can be now, we can put ourselves in a position to serve as a model for what our spiritual movement should bring in the future. And it would be a misunderstanding of our movement if we did not want to do this, if we let ourselves be deterred from adopting the points of view that have been discussed by petty considerations or by anything else. Basically, everyone who wants to build there should realize that it is necessary for them to really join a colonists' association. Perhaps it would be best if the artistic side of things were subject to a kind of committee or commission. There is no need to force this matter, but it would be wonderful if all the colonists could agree that it would be best to submit to a kind of commission the houses and other structures that are to be built. If we can really carry this out, if we, as colonists, can show that we can imbue a number of us with a common will and give this will the direction that is prescribed by our anthroposophical attitude, then we will create something exemplary there. And what is created there will be a test of how well or how poorly our cause has been understood. A house built by any old architect will be seen as further proof of how little our anthroposophical movement is understood in today's world! And of every house that is a formal expression of our anthroposophical convictions, people will say: How glad it makes one that there is already an inner understanding in one or other of us for what we want!

I would have been so very happy if what I had intended for this General Assembly could have come about. We will see what can still be achieved tomorrow if a really inspiring discussion comes about in this General Assembly in free debate on the basis of the theses: How can we, each and every one of us, best work anthroposophically among our fellow human beings and how can we best show our anthroposophical attitude and put our experience at the service of the world? But my dear friends, by endeavoring to merely bring the wisdom of the anthroposophical movement to the people, we alone do not do what we must do if we want to establish our movement in the world. We must really ensure that what is given to us as spiritual knowledge is properly presented to the world in the embodiment of what is created by us externally, just as the old architectural styles were embodiments of the old cultural ideas.

If we succeed in creating something truly unified there and in legally safeguarding this unity as something to be preserved for the anthroposophical movement, then we will have provided proof that we understand our movement. May it really come to pass that quite a number of such artistic elements – also in architectural and other forms – on this occasion, when it can, provide us with proof that The anthroposophical movement is already understood!

Truly, we do not want to be a sect or some kind of community that represents and spreads these or those dogmas. We want to be something that takes cultural tasks seriously. However, we can only do that in the case of the Johannesbau and the associated colony if we act in accordance with what has now been said.

I think, my dear friends, that these few words may have provided some insights for your colonization efforts around the Johannesbau.

Report by Richard Bresch, “Der Vâhan,” Volume IV, Nos. 5 and 6, November and December 1902.

After preliminary discussions had already taken place between individual delegates on the evening of October 18, the negotiations began at half past twelve on schedule in the hall of the Theosophical Library and former apartment of Count Brockdorff, who had moved to Meran, [Berlin] Charlottenburg, KaiserFriedrich-Str. 54a. They were introduced by an appropriate address by the chairman, Dr. Steiner. Those who understand the signs of the times cannot fail to see that we are on the threshold of a new intellectual epoch, that a new turning point is in preparation, one that is just as important and significant as those in the times of Augustine or in the 16th century, a change in which Germany in particular is destined to play a very great role; German science has the most important task in the face of materialism, and only hand in hand with it will we be able to work...

The ten lodges included in the section charter were represented as follows:

They initially agreed that, in accordance with the statutes of the European section, the Berlin lodge, with more than 25 members, should have three votes in voting, but all other lodges should only have two votes. It is not the place here to go into detail on the individual paragraphs of the new statutes, since the latter are expected to be published separately soon. It should only be noted here that, in order to ensure that as many lodges as possible are represented on the board, it was decided to elect ten additional members to the board, in addition to the four members living in or near Berlin, in accordance with the statutes of the European section, for a total of fourteen members. Dr. Steiner was elected as Secretary General, Mrs. von Holten as Treasurer, Julius Engel, Miss von Sivers and Mr. Rüdiger (Charlottenburg) as residents of Berlin and its surrounding areas, and in addition Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, Ludwig Deinhard, Günther Wagner, Bernhard Hubo, Adolf Kolbe (Hamburg), Bruno Berg, Dr. Noll (Kassel), Oppel (Stuttgart), Richard Bresch were elected. All were elected for three years. The accounting year ends on September 30, and it was decided not to request a refund of any dues already paid to London for the current year, so that for the accounting year that has already begun, the dues set at three marks for each member are now to be collected from the branches and delivered to the new treasurer. The general assembly, which apart from extraordinary ones should take place annually, is to meet on October 19. In addition to the lodge delegates, only the general secretary and treasurer have voting rights at the assembly. The journal Dr. Steiner intends to publish under the name Lucifer, the first issue of which will appear around January 1903, is intended to reveal and collect all the threads and guidelines that lead from nature, art, philosophy, science and social life to the spiritual, thus leading to theosophy. This undertaking was welcomed by all as a thoroughly purposeful, equally arduous and meritorious one; a separate section organ should not exist, but the “Vâhan” should also publish the section news.

Written congratulations were received from the Italian section, a telegraphic message from the French section, and verbal congratulations were offered by the Scandinavian section, through a gentleman present from Denmark, and by the British section, through Mrs. Besant. In addition, several telegrams of congratulations were received from individual members.

The negotiations lasted until the next day, because Mrs. Besant's arrival at seven o'clock at the Friedrichstraße station was expected. She had come to Berlin from London especially for this occasion, thereby demonstrating the great importance she and the British Section attach to the formation of the German Section. Her presence during these days in Berlin has significantly increased their importance and we German Theosophists are grateful to her. The train pulled into the station right on time and was greeted by a short but warm welcome from about 25 members.

The next day, Dr. Steiner welcomed Mrs. Besant as she entered the hall during the proceedings and she was given a standing ovation; she attended the proceedings for about half an hour. After the latter had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion thanks to Dr. Steiner's skillful and tactful leadership, she presented the charter of the German Section to him as the General Secretary and, after a break during which the kind and generous hospitality of Fräulein von Sivers also took care of the physical needs of the participants, she gave a speech in front of 50 to 60 people. She explained how the European (now British again) section had previously included the lodges of all European nations, but how cumbersome and complicated its administration had been as a result, a situation that could only be provisional, of course, until one by one the national sections stand on their own two feet and break away from the parent section; this is how the Scandinavian, Dutch, French and Italian sections came into being, and it is a source of particular satisfaction to her that the German Theosophical work is now also being tackled by Germans in the German way. All nations are different and each nation practices Theosophy in its own way, but the nations are like the notes of a harmony, each contributing its part to the great harmony, their combination forming the harmony, realizing the universal brotherhood, so the German Theosophical work is also a necessary part of the global Theosophical movement. The theosophical movement needs the German spirit, needs the cooperation of the German people, in order to be enriched by it. Ms. Besant then explained the difference between the Theosophical Society and other societies (see February “Vâhan”, p. 129), and that the current merger of lodges into a section is comparable to the formation of a vessel made of clay, thus creating a reservoir for divine life from which the latter can flow over humanity. Compared to the religious foundations of earlier times, each with a great teacher who transmitted this divine life, the Theosophical Society represents a significant step forward. It is not a new religion, but strives for the great unity of all religions. However, as the divine life flows into the reservoir and the privilege is received, the responsibility for the members also increases, and harmonious cooperation is an indispensable requirement. If in everyday life, every gain and progress is sought only for one's own personal advantage, then this must now change. It is necessary to purify oneself and to let go of all personal desires and dislikes. Only then does one become a Theosophist, rather than just a member of society. But by considering that although there is one life in all, it manifests itself differently in each, and each person sees the truth only from a different point of view, in a different way. One person may have poetic gifts, another organizational abilities, a third intellectual, oratory or literary talents. The secret of success lies in the cooperation of all, in mutual tolerance, appreciation and support.

Dr. Steiner's lecture on practical karma studies formed the conclusion of the evening, but we must refrain from going into this here.

Many members enjoyed the stimulating company at the vegetarian restaurant opposite the Central Hotel until late in the evening.

On Tuesday, October 21, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Mrs. von Holten invited members to her hospitable, elegant home, and the time flew by in lively conversation when the time came to leave for Charlottenburg via the new elevated railway or underground railway, where, in the already used rooms, Mrs. Besant answered a wide range of questions in front of around 50 members:

Regarding Christian Science, she said that a distinction is made between Christian and mental healers. The former deny all illness, saying that only God possesses reality and everything else is unreal, an illusion. The latter, however, recognize the illness and thus take a more rational approach. They seek to restore harmony (health) by using the right will and thinking to counteract the disharmony caused by wrong thinking. However, there is a danger with all such healings that, although the evil is removed from the lower level, it is instead drawn up into higher ones, from where it would then have to descend again in a different, worse form; physical ailments should therefore only be treated with physical means. Healing through prayer, etc., should actually only be done by those who have vision. They see what is missing and observe the effect of their actions. When the saints perform healings, they act from the vision that the karma of the sick person has taken effect, and they then restore the desired harmony by means of their own life energies.

Furthermore, the question was asked: How does Jesus eating fish with his disciples square with the commandment of pure food? According to the Holy Scripture, Jesus also ate fish after appearing to his disciples. Is the astral body even capable of ingesting food? Answer: The latter suggests that the passage is to be understood symbolically. For the Christian as well as for the sacred scriptures of the East, three interpretations are possible at the same time. The first is that one is dealing with historical or factual information intended to teach morals and ethics to the masses of people; the second is for the more developed, the intellectual, and the third is the deepest, mystical. The more developed person, like the present questioner, finds an inner contradiction in the sayings, which urges him to seek a higher explanation; in the occult sense, fish signify esotericism; so if Jesus ate fish with his disciples, it means that he instructed them in secret knowledge. Incidentally, however, the saint could also enjoy impure food without harm, since he knew how to render the harmful juices harmless or to excrete them, as the legend of St. Sankharacharya proves, to whom one of his disciples had reproached him for eating impure food. The next day they came to a blacksmith's shop, where the teacher took a glowing piece of iron and wanted to give it to the disciple. But when the disciple recoiled, he was taught that he, the teacher, could also enjoy impure food 'without harm, but the disciple could not. - In response to the question, “What karma does one incur who neglects his family in favor of his theosophical work?” The answer was that everyone has to do their duty where their karma has placed them, so that everyone has to take care of their family first and foremost.

Question: Did the martyrs incur their terrible suffering in a past life or not?

Answer: The martyrs usually take on such suffering of their own free will for the good of humanity, thereby benefiting from an opportunity for faster progress that presents itself to them, or creating good karma for the future.

Question: Lazarus is said to have been resurrected four days after Christ's death. Shouldn't the body have begun to decompose after four days, and is resurrection still possible?

Answer: First of all, we have no proof that it would really have happened that way. If decomposition had already occurred, revival to physical life would no longer be possible. The magnetic connection between the astral and physical bodies must still be present, otherwise it would be impossible even for a saint to call someone back to life. However, this connection could still be present weeks after the apparent death.

Question: If this connection can exist for such a long time, can it not often happen that people are buried alive?

Answer: We want to hope and wish that this does not happen so often, but the possibility should not be ruled out. Indeed, changes in the position of the corpses have been observed in graves, and cases of reawakening have been proven. In any case, the short time period prescribed in France before burial is not to be approved.

Question: Is it right to be cremated after death?

Answer: She (Besant) has always held the view that the best form of burial is cremation because it is the quickest and most thorough way to sever any connection with the physical world. Another question concerned the spiritual tidal wave that descends from higher planes every century, which retreats from the physical plane at the end of the century. Mrs. Besant confirmed this information, but the retreat of the tidal wave is no reason to stop the theosophical work afterwards, otherwise the next spiritual tidal wave would have to start all the more deeply.

A question regarding mantras was answered as follows: even the ignorant person who recites a mantra achieves some effect, however small. However, they are far more effective when they are recited competently with conscious will and knowledge. - Mention was also made of the recent claim by a London sectarian clergyman to be the incarnate Jesus, who should be treated with caution; but the fact that Jesus, as he once did to his disciples, can still show himself in the astral to a circle of his followers today, at least the possibility cannot be denied, only the utmost purity of the aspirations of such followers would be an indispensable prerequisite.

Finally, Mrs. Besant also refuted the oft-repeated accusation against the law of karma that it prevents all charity and compassion. Anyone who, on the pretext that suffering is the karma of the person in need of help, fails to take advantage of an opportunity to help a person in need, does not consider that he was chosen by karma as the instrument to provide relief in the emergency. If he fails to do so, he too will be left in the lurch when he encounters a similar emergency. The law of karma, however, will then seek and find another agent to fulfill its purpose, which cannot remain unfulfilled or be broken.

In the evening, Mrs. Besant finally gave the public lecture at the Hotel Prinz Albrecht, which was attended by about 400 people. It was introduced by an address by Dr. Steiner: Many would have been surprised, he said, when he publicly confessed to Theosophy in the Giordano Bruno Federation about 14 days ago. But just as Giordano Bruno, relying on Kepler's discoveries, demanded the recognition of a new worldview, so today Theosophy brings a new worldview and we stand today, just as we did then, at a world-historical turning point. Today, the German Section has been founded and for this reason the most outstanding representative in the Theosophical movement has come here to speak the first words publicly. Mrs. Besant's lecture on Theosophy, its meaning and purpose, was as follows:

In the last 100 years, Mrs. Besant began her public lecture on Theosophy, the world has become smaller for us, because we can see it more easily and more completely, but on the other hand it also seems larger to us when we consider what research has painstakingly brought to light. Countries and peoples have grown closer; we cross the oceans with ease in all directions; what used to take years now takes weeks or months, what used to take days now takes minutes or hours. But not only spatial distances are shrinking, but also temporal ones. While 100 years ago, only a few thousand years of human history could be looked back on, today we are able to look further and further back. The old buildings and other remains of long-gone civilizations are coming to light, lost nations and dead languages are being awakened, so that they come to new life and activity before our eyes. We see them before us in their customs and habits, and written records even tell us about their religious beliefs. Comparing the otherwise so different traditions of the most diverse peoples, we were astonished to find that all the religions of the extinct peoples agreed on the main points, and that they must therefore have a common root. From the bosom of the earth, from graves and ancient ruins, writings are emerging that confirm this. In Mexico, ancient monuments bear witness to a long-vanished civilization that had amazed the first Spanish settlers to arrive there. Around the Mediterranean basin, in Central Asia, Macedonia, among the ancient Etruscans, etc., writings were found in graves that revealed the same thoughts about nature, the human spirit, and its eternal duration . Even among the Chaldeans, Persians and other nations, comparative mythology has found the same terms for certain principles. Nowhere did it find a religious doctrine that was completely different from the others, but everywhere the same doctrines, the same ethics, the same symbols; so the question arose as to the root cause of this striking similarity. Many researchers have indeed tried to explain this similarity by saying that the religions and the first crude concepts of God among savages arose out of fear of the forces of nature and of death, and thus arose everywhere from the same motives and gradually developed and refined with increasing intelligence and culture. The most important thinkers outside the church were those who held this view, among them in particular Huxley. They called it agnosticism, that is, the opinion that we humans cannot know anything about religion and transcendental things and that in this regard everything is merely a matter of faith and feeling. But experience does not agree with this view, for instead of gradually developing and perfecting religions, we find that there are always highly perfect, pure, highly spiritual religions founded from the outset, which only degenerate and materialize over time – in other words, precisely the opposite process. From the ancient scriptures, especially those of the Indians, it can be seen that the concepts of God, the afterlife, eternal justice, etc., become ever more refined and elevated the further back in time we reach, instead of becoming coarser and cruder.¹

In the [Upanishads], for example, which are thought to have been written around 5000 BC, we find the most exalted concepts of God and the human spirit, which even our greatest philosophers lag behind, as Schopenhauer, for example, acknowledged when he said that the [Upanishads] had enlightened his mind and would be his comfort in death. Since religions have not developed from savagery and ignorance, but rather, as far back as history goes, were founded by sages such as Laotse, Zoroaster, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed, Theosophy answers the question about the reason for the agreement shown by all religions, even those of the distant past, : There is a brotherhood of divine men who have risen far above the development of ordinary men; this brotherhood sends from time to time a brother, who, be it as a king or as a leader and teacher, protects, supervises, teaches and educates a particular people or a particular race. All these masters have proclaimed the same truths to the world, and history teaches that each new religion is followed by a new era of development. All the main ideas of the old religions reappear in the modern religions. The idea of the further development of one and the same human entity over many lives (reincarnation) was also found among the Hebrews and in early Christianity; later, in the sixth century AD, however, it was declared heresy and only survived in a few sects. But religion does not necessarily have to be based on such a divine teacher, that is, on belief in an authority; it can also be a form of knowledge, a realization. Man is able to separate himself from his bodies and enter the higher planes of consciousness. This has long been scientifically proven. Christianity, Islam, and many mystics up to the present day testify to this possibility. We see evidence e in somnambulism, telepathy, suggestion, hypnotism, in all kinds of clairvoyance [and so on], so that even the most stubborn skeptics can no longer close their minds to these facts. Of course, they try to discredit such manifestations by saying that they only occur in cases of hysteria, nervous disorders, and thus in a pathological state.² occurred.

Well, I am not saying that it is so, but even if it were the case that only people with extremely fine nerves could leave their bodies, this would not be a testimony against the existence of this fact. Lombroso, an Italian psychiatrist, says that genius and madness live very close to each other. Even if he is right, it is still fortunate for humanity that there are such geniuses who make us happy through their creations. Or do you think that the beef-eating, beer-drinking, muscle-bound average man would be more likely to produce such works of art? Consider our great geniuses, a genius like Beethoven, a sculptor like Michelangelo, a Goethe, a Shakespeare! Where did they get their great ideas? Did they not get them by seeing them in spirit at a higher level? How many messages have been given to us by people who have seen and heard things in a trance or in ecstasy! In this state, the spiritual person leaves his body, slips out of his shell, as it were, and can then rise to a higher level than the physical one, where he sees and has clairvoyance. This ability can also be acquired through practice and a certain training; that which sees or recognizes there is our spiritual essence and since this is an outflow of the one great life that lives in all, it can also not only recognize this unity in all, consider it true in theory, but when man is first can take his consciousness uninterruptedly over into his temporal day-consciousness, he sees, knows and feels this unity, the one life that pulsates in all, and understands his brother, because he feels with him, thinks with him and loves him, not as another, but as a part of his own self. Because he now understands everyone, he also embraces everyone with the same love. We should all learn this knowledge. Theosophy gives us the opportunity to do so; it offers us its treasures.

Once we all have this level of knowledge and understanding, then everyone will also respect the differences of others. Hatred and antagonism, however, as they still prevail today between nations - the Frenchman hates the Englishman, the Englishman the German, the German the Frenchman and so on - are based on the fact that each nation regards its relationship with every other nation through the prism of its self-created thought and feeling, and in the light of eternal reality, all these antagonisms between nations, like individuals, are foolishness and folly; there should only be one competition between them, namely, which nation will earn the greatest merit for the good of the whole. The time will come when everyone recognizes the tone and color that is expressed in every nation and every individual, when everyone grasps the harmony that flows from these tones and colors, rejoices in them, finds in them a complement to own tone and color; this harmony of tones and colors will lead us to that eternal blessed peace, as it will arise from the divine wisdom, theosophy, in the future.

So much for Mrs. Besant's public lecture, which visibly made a deep and lasting impression on the audience, even those who understood little English; there was nothing sensational, theatrical, nothing screaming, intrusive; in short, powerful, powerfully emphasized sentences gave even the non-understanding the impression of the dignified, the momentous. Mrs. Besant spoke with perfect rhetoric, despite the severe fever that she had recently overcome, without a trace of fatigue, without faltering even once, without once correcting a word or changing a phrase she had begun, and the last sentence of her speech came across as freshly as the first. Dr. Steiner took it upon himself to interpret the main ideas of this lecture for the non-English-speaking audience, not literally, but in his own way. However, a reproduction of his remarks would have to repeat too much of the above, which is why it must be omitted here.

So in those memorable days in Berlin, we finally found the long-awaited union, so that the next day I felt solemn and could easily have been persuaded that Berlin had put up the festive flags not for the Empress, but for our Section. After all, the stagnation and faltering of the Theosophical movement in Germany, the splintering into illegitimate offshoots, has now been prevented as far as possible, and we have created a viable organizational basis for fruitful growth, planted a healthy seed in fertile soil. The real work, however, the growth itself, is only just beginning, even if we have all the necessary virtues and abilities among us.

• 1. This is confirmed, among others, by Max Müller in his Essays on the Science of Religion (p. 40ff.), where he says: “Monotheism preceded polytheism, and through the polytheistic fog in the Vedas, the memory of the One Infinite God breaks through.” Furthermore, von Spiegel, one of the first experts on Persian religion, when he expresses himself in his “Eranische Altertumskunde”, vol. II, preface, about the former as follows: “Contrary to my earlier view, I now no longer believe that the Eranian religion emerged from polytheism in such a way that the multiplicity of the Göuer was reduced to a duality and finally arrived at monotheism. It seems more correct to me that a vigorous monotheism preceded dualism.” And the ‘Germania’ of Nov. 5th. also says in an article ‘Original Polytheism’: ”The original religion, it may once have existed, but it must have left some traces, some afterglow, in the oldest religions. These traces must be followed up if one wants to research the developmental history of religion. What do the oldest religions of the Chinese, Egyptians, and Indo-Europeans teach in their written monuments about an original polytheism? Not the slightest thing. On the contrary. The further research advances into the distant past, the more it is able, through the most diverse discoveries, to examine the earliest germs of religion, the more the picture of a primeval humanity that pays homage to the most desolate fetishism and most excessive polytheism proves to be a magnificent humbug.... History has advanced to the most distant times. It knows of peoples who, from the most ancient times to the present, have worshiped many gods in all parts of the world. In these long centuries, it should be possible to find some evidence of a transformation from polytheism to monotheism, even if it is only a very weak beginning. Why are no such facts taught? Quite simply because there are none.
• 2. However, today's doctors are very good at distinguishing between epilepsy and ecstasy; this is shown in a posthumous work by Prof. Kußmaul that appeared in the “Deutsche Revue”. The claim that many of the greatest men in world history, such as the apostle Paul, suffered from epilepsy, is refuted here. In the case of Mohammed, it seems that he suffered from a non-epileptic, catatonic nervous condition. He dictated the suras of the Koran during his seizures, which is not consistent with the nature of epileptic seizures. Kußmaul demands that scientific pathology must place strict demands on the diagnosis of epilepsy. D.R.

Report by Richard Bresch, “Der Vâhan”, Volume V, No. 5, November 1903

Berlin, Motzstr. 17, Sunday, October 18, 11 a.m. preliminary discussion. Eight lodges are represented: Berlin, Charlottenburg, Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig, Lugano, Stuttgart and Weimar. After Dr. Steiner had read out some letters of congratulations and welcome, he proceeded to discuss the events of the past year. The behavior of the lodges in Düsseldorf and Kassel is distressing. Due to various unfortunate circumstances, they have ceased their meetings and become dormant branches. However, all activity has by no means ceased there, and there is justified hope that a revival or awakening will succeed. What is missing in Düsseldorf and Kassel is a suitable personality who, as a spiritual pacemaker, has enough intelligence and willingness to make sacrifices to lead the whole, to impress upon the members the duties that arise from the new knowledge, and to encourage them to further progress with ever new material. The founding of the Weimar Lodge, in the city of muses so significant for Germany's intellectual life, and the almost perfect Nuremberg Lodge, in the emporium that was no less important in Germany's early history, is gratifying. Dr. Steiner recommends that where the formation of lodges is not possible, at least “centres” should be formed. In all sections of the population, the reluctance and prejudice against Theosophy are very strong and its disdain is encountered at every turn; nevertheless, Dr. Steiner cannot adopt the policy advocated by some of spreading Theosophy without using its name, could not be adopted by him. He considered it more appropriate to proclaim it loudly and to blaze a trail for it with perseverance, strength and dignity. He then spoke about his trip to London for the annual meeting of European general Secretaries, where he made a point of learning about the experiences of the other sections so that he could apply them in Germany as far as possible. Mrs. Besant takes a lively interest in our section and fully approves of what has happened so far; in England, great expectations are being placed on our movement in Germany. He has even found so much material support from the English side that next year he will be able to attach himself an assistant in the person of Miss von Rosen, who, under his (Dr. Steiner's) direction and responsibility, would take care of the correspondence, which he has been forced to neglect so far, and thus remedy a situation that is so painfully felt in all lodges. Otherwise, matters of an internal nature were discussed that do not belong in public.

At half past five, Dr. Steiner gave the announced lecture on occult historical research, which was attended by an audience of 40 to 50 people. The speaker said the following: After the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, with the help of her teachers, began to work on the mighty work that we know as “The Secret Doctrine” and in which a treasure of the deepest knowledge has been left to us. This work consists of two parts, the cosmological and the anthropological, the first of which deals with the development of the universe and the second with that of man. In the course of time, this work will be supplemented by a third part, which will deal with what profane science calls “history”. Historical research must, for better or for worse, be content with the facts that take place on the physical plane; on the other hand, theosophy, which goes directly back to the causes, finds the answer to all those questions that secular science has so often and so in vain tried to solve.

If we follow the historical facts, we encounter three things: just as the acting human being is enveloped in a three-part system - the physical, the mental and the spiritual being - so too are historical facts subject to such a tripartite division. The external actions that take place before our senses are in the physical; in the soul lies the center where pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy prevail, and in the spiritual we find the realm where the events of history arise. Here we have to look for the true causes of everything that happens on earth, here the leading figures of history consult each other face to face with the great and invisible leaders of humanity. Only when we explore the intention that drove them to act do we understand the often inexplicable facts of history.

For example, in the fifteenth century there lived a Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), who had deep scientific insights. Long before Copernicus, he had recognized and taught the double movement of the earth, without being understood by his contemporaries. It was a kind of preparation for what Copernicus (born 1473) was able to communicate to a more insightful generation (sixteenth century). Occult researchers now unanimously teach (and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky also openly stated and hinted at it in the third volume of the “Secret Doctrine”) that Copernicus was none other than the reincarnated Cardinal Cusa, who in this way brought his work to completion. Thus tasks are set and solved; the soul that prepares something great comes back later to fulfill and complete its mission.

The speaker gave two more examples to illustrate the way in which occult historical research works in its difficult field, how it connects seemingly unrelated facts in an explanatory way; and with these examples he at the same time gave a picture of the supplement to the “Secret Doctrine” that was once to be expected: rounds and races were the subjects of the parts published so far; the third part, the occult research of history, will deal with reincarnation.

Finally, Dr. Steiner spoke at length about the Theosophical movement. This, he emphasized, is also an enormous necessity in the occult sense; there are many reasons for this, one of the most important of which is as follows:

A secret is handed down to each human race; we are in the fifth race and with the fifth secret, and the latter cannot be pronounced today, but we are gradually living into it. Paul, who was an initiate, already hints at what it is, but it will only be revealed in the course of our race's development. Premature divination of this secret by purely intellectual abilities would mean an indescribable danger for humanity. Since such divination has almost occurred twice already and will happen again in the foreseeable future, the great teachers of humanity have brought about the theosophical movement. Humanity is to be prepared for the great truth. Theosophy is working towards a certain point in time; a core is to be formed that understands this truth when it emerges undisguised one day - a core that grasps it correctly and uses it not as a curse but as a blessing for humanity. The earlier races were formed from an already existing one, by the selection of suitable individuals or families and the continuation of these by the Manu in suitable deserted landscapes.¹

This process is no longer feasible in today's globalized world, but it is no longer necessary either; it has been replaced by education through the cosmopolitan International Theosophical Society, which forms this core.

So much for Dr. Steiner.

Only a few points from the discussion that followed his lecture can be highlighted here. It was emphasized how few people have real experience regarding the decisive facts of the world view, e.g. regarding the biogenetic law in Germany only about 20; witnesses of the occult facts are even fewer by nature. Incidentally, it is hardly a mere coincidence that in 1875, the year in which the nature of the fertilization process, and thus the origin of the personality, was revealed to us by science, the Theosophical Society was founded, which teaches us about our individuality. The monistic or materialistic view of Ernst Haeckel was discussed in detail, the importance of his scientific research was emphasized and appreciated, but the low value and superficiality of his speculative philosophical and especially religious remarks were also emphasized. The monistic way of thinking is very close to Theosophy and much of what Haeckel writes reads like the basics of Theosophy. Only the thinking habits of our time, mass suggestion, prevent the breakthrough of the theosophical worldview.

In order to easily, smoothly and effectively refute all objections of natural scientists to the existence of the soul (independent of the physical body), Mr. Hubo recommended two of du Prel's works that had also appeared in Reclam's Universal Library: “The Riddle of Man” and “The Monistic Doctrine of the Soul”; these writings are in that respect a veritable arsenal full of weapons that every theosophist should always have at hand. Finally, attention was drawn to the highly questionable nature of those writings on the effects of personal magnetism (Törnbock) that have recently come to us from America (New York Institute of Science) with the usual publicity. These writings should only be given to those who are absolutely morally stable and are therefore quite capable of causing untold harm under the guise of science.

Monday, October 19, at ten o'clock in the morning: business general assembly. In order to establish a connection and communication between the branches, it was decided to publish a monthly hectographed correspondence sheet, to be produced at headquarters and sent free of charge. Furthermore, when notifying the names of all members to headquarters, the date of admission and the names of the two sponsors or guarantors should be added if possible. It was recalled that when each member joins the Society, in addition to the annual subscription of three marks, they must pay five marks admission fee in accordance with the Constitution. The income of the Section in the past year amounted to 332.70 Marks, of which one-fourth is to be remitted to Adyar in November, as per the Constitution. Expenditure amounted to 34.40 Marks. Miss Motzkus and Mr. Seiler were appointed as auditors. Privy Councillor Lübke and Miss Mathilde Scholl were elected to replace the outgoing board members Bruno Berg and Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. The members of the board can express their will or vote in writing, but cannot be represented in person. Miss von Sivers is given the title “secretary”. Furthermore, the statutes of our German section were definitively established; however, since they will soon appear in print, there is no need to go into them further here. The first general assembly concluded with a vote of thanks to Dr. Steiner, Ms. von Sivers and Ms. von Holten for their knowledgeable and dedicated work. I am convinced that we can be thoroughly satisfied with the way the assembly went and with the results. In any case, the foundation for a prosperous future has now been laid.

• 1. Readers will find more details about this in the essay by A. P.Sinnett, “The Beginnings of the Fifth Root Race”, which begins with this number.

Originally appeared in “Lucifer” No. 6/1903

Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke on this topic at the annual meeting of the German Section of the Theosophical Society on October 18, 1903. A very brief summary of his remarks is given here. Through the founder of the Theosophical Society, we have been given the “Secret Doctrine,” in which the foundation for a solution to the great riddles of existence is laid on two sides. In a comprehensive theory of the origin of the world (Cosmogenesis), the plan is shown according to which the scene has developed out of the spiritual primal powers of the universe, on which man is responsible for his earthly change. From a second volume (Anthropogenesis) we see which stages man himself has gone through until he became a member of the present race. It will depend on the development of the theosophical movement, on when it will have reached a certain state of maturity, in which time the same spiritual forces that have given us the great truths of the first two volumes will also give us the third. This will contain the deeper laws for what the so-called “world history” offers us on the outside. It will deal with “occult historical research”. It will show how the destinies of nations are fulfilled in the true sense, how guilt and atonement are linked in the great life of humanity, how the leading personalities of history arrive at their mission and how they fulfill it. Only he who knows how the great trinity of body, soul and spirit intervenes in the wheel of becoming can see through the development of humanity. Above all, one has to realize how physical existence in the broadest sense is conditioned by the great cosmic natural forces, which take on a particular form in the characters of races and peoples and in what is called the “spirit” of an age. One will see how the material basis comes about, which expresses itself in the fact that people represent certain types (peoples, ages) in which they resemble one another. The generic characters will be more clearly illuminated here, which they cannot receive from the cultural history that is focused on the merely superficial. It will be understood how the influence of the soil, the climate, the economic conditions and so on actually takes place on people. - Then the question will be addressed as to what role the personal element in the true sense plays in history. The drives, instincts, feelings and passions come from this personal element. And they can only be understood if one is familiar with the influence of the world that is called astral or psychic (soul-like) in the one that takes place before our physical senses and our mind. This part of occult history will throw light on what is usually attributed to the arbitrariness of individual personalities. And one will understand the interaction of individual personality, nation and age. The enlightening light will be thrown into world history from the astral field. Thirdly, it will be revealed how the total spirit of the universe intervenes in the destinies of men, how the life of this total spirit pours into the higher self of a great leader of mankind, and in this way communicates itself through channels of this higher life to all mankind. For that is the way this higher life takes: It flows into the higher selves of the leading spirits, and these communicate it to their brothers. From embodiment to embodiment, the higher selves of human beings develop and learn more and more to make their own selves missionaries of the divine plan for the world. Through occult historical research, one will recognize how a human leader develops to the point where he can take on a divine mission. One will see how Buddha, Zarathustra, and Christ came to their missions. The lecturer illustrated these general statements by suggesting some examples of how we can imagine the development of great leaders of humanity through their reincarnation.

The annual meeting of the German Section of the Theosophical Society was opened on the morning of October 18, 1903 by an executive committee meeting, attended by the executive members Dr. Rudolf Steiner (secretary-general), Fräule von Sivers (Berlin), Julius Engel (Charlottenburg), Richard Bresch (Leipzig), Bernhard Hubo (Hamburg), Mrs. von Holten (Berlin), Günther Wagner (Lugano) and [Adolf] Kolbe (Hamburg). Internal section matters were discussed and it was decided to bring about a closer exchange of ideas and communication between the individual branches by creating a small organ for this purpose, only for the branches and their affairs. Fräulein von Sivers was elected secretary of the section and the appointment of Fräulein von Rosen as assistant to the section, which has been made possible by the loving support of our English brothers, was confirmed. On Sunday evening, the lecture on “Occult Historical Research” took place. It was followed by a discussion of important theosophical questions (for example, the position of so-called monism in relation to theosophy, the use of psychic powers in life, and so on), in which the following participated: Günther Wagner (Lugano), Richard Bresch (Leipzig), Bernhard Hubo (Hamburg), Julius Engel (Charlottenburg), Arenson (Stuttgart) and Rüdiger (Charlottenburg). At the general meeting on Monday, October 19, the following were present in addition to the above-named representatives from outside: Frau Geheimrat Lübke (Weimar), Arenson (Stuttgart), Fischer (Hannover). The business of the section was conducted. The following should be mentioned: Frau Helene Lübke (Weimar) and Fräulein Mathilde Scholl (Cologne) were elected to replace two former members of the board. It was reported that a new branch had been formed in Weimar and that the formation of others was to be expected. Miss Klara Motzkus (Berlin) and Mr. Franz Seiler (Berlin) were elected as auditors.

The Secretary General, Dr. Steiner, is presiding. He welcomes the representatives of the various branches in Germany.

The following are present:

Mr. Hubo from Hamburg
Mr. Günther Wagner from Lugano
Mr. Richard Bresch from Leipzig
Mrs. Geheimrat Lübke from Weimar
Mr. Julius Engel from Charlottenburg
Mr. Fischer from Hannover
Mr. Arenson from Stuttgart

From the Berlin branch:

General Secretary Dr. Steiner
The Treasurer Mrs. von Holten
The Secretary Miss von Sivers

The following German cities are not represented:

Düsseldorf, Kassel, Munich.

The following members of the Theosophical Society are also present:

Miss Motzkus
Mrs. Blieffert
Miss von Rosen
Mr. Kolbe from Hamburg
Mr. Fränkel
Mr. Georgi

Dr. Steiner reads out the telegrams of greeting from:

Count and Countess Brockdorff
Mr. Haase in Leipzig
Mr. Fischer in Schneidlingen.

Dr. Steiner announces that Mr. Bruno Berg has resigned from the Theosophical Society. Since he was a member of the executive council and Mr. Huebbe-Schleiden had also resigned from the council, two new members of the council had to be elected; then the statutes of the Theosophical Society had to be reviewed. But first he wanted to raise the question of whether it would not be advisable to include the godparents in the membership lists as well, as far as possible.

Hubo thinks it would serve little purpose and would present many difficulties.

Bresch asks whether it has proved to be practically desirable.

Steiner reports on a case where knowledge of the sponsors would have been of practical importance. In the past, only one sponsor would have been put on the form, and the other would have been taken very lightly. It was only much later that it became necessary to check the individual case.

Wagner suggests writing out the sponsors on the forms when the latter are in Berlin.

Hubo admits that it is necessary not to accept members so informally and without knowing their personality. However, it is difficult because after public meetings, people can come forward who nobody knows. They would then have to be asked to come to the public meetings for a while until they have got to know the Theosophical world view.

Bresch believes that caution is advised when entering the Esoteric Section, but otherwise he accepts as members those who have heard three lectures by him.

Arenson says that one cannot go further than demanding an interest in the matter and observing that no moral qualities stand in the way of entry.

Engel says that if these people were interested in getting to know us, we would get to know them in the process. He agrees with Dr. Steiner's view that the names of the sponsors should also be included.

Hubo expresses the wish that in the future the costs of propaganda lectures in Berlin will be borne by the German Section. Election of the executive council: Dr. Steiner proposes Mrs. Geheimrat Lübke from Weimar as a member of the executive council to replace the resigned Hübbe-Schleiden.

He justifies this choice by mentioning Mrs. Lübke's merits in spreading Theosophy in Weimar, which is particularly important as the spiritual center of Germany. Mrs. Lübke also got to know the Theosophical movement thoroughly during an extended stay in England.

The election is unanimously accepted.

Wagner proposes that Mr. Eggers, the chairman of the Hanoverian branch, be elected to the board instead of Bruno Bergs.

Bresch: Without wanting to vote against Eggers, he thinks that the main emphasis should be on the quality of the personality.

Steiner, having met him in person, has the impression that Eggers has a skillful hand and is energetic and active.

Fischer says that he has been serving as chairman for a good two years.

Bresch proposes Miss Mathilde Scholl in Cologne.

Hubo votes in favor and adds that they had already been considered the previous time.

Arenson abstains from voting.

Wagner says he doesn't know her either, but is of the opinion that personal qualities should be the deciding factor, and Hanover will not be offended if it is not considered this time.

Steiner notes that Mr. Noll will soon no longer be able to work, and then Eggers could be elected in his place. Thereupon the election of Mathilde Scholl is unanimously accepted.

Steiner asks whether the election of Mr. Eggers is agreed to in advance in the event of Mr. Noll's resignation.

Hubo notes that according to the statutes, the opinion of the members of the board would have to be obtained in this case.

Election of two auditors to audit the penalty fund at the Annual General Meeting each year. Miss Motzkus and Mr. Seiler in Berlin are unanimously elected after Mr. Fischer from Hanover declines the election. Correction of the statutes

These are discussed point by point and amended. There is a lengthy discussion about whether Germans in other countries should be included in the German section.

Hubo says that as far as Switzerland is concerned, it does not yet have its own section, and therefore the German-speaking Theosophists there could be counted as part of the German Section, just as the Theosophists in Geneva have joined the French Section. But as soon as Switzerland has its own section, this question will be settled by itself.

Steiner notes that according to Austrian state laws, the merger of individual lodges into one section is not possible at all. However, we have members from Austria.

Arenson proposes to set the date of the General Assembly and to include it in the statutes.

Hubo proposes to set “in October”, and this version is adopted.

After further discussion of the statutes, Hubo proposes increasing the membership fees within the branches and the section fees.

The date for the section's annual accounts is also discussed and set for August 31.

Mr. Arenson, who is representing the Chairman in Stuttgart, Mr. Oppel, raises the question of whether Section board members may be represented at board meetings at the General Assemblies of the German Section.

Dr. Steiner says that this will not be allowed in the future.

Hubo proposes to change the title of the statutes as follows: “Statutes of the Theosophical Society and the German Section”.

Steiner suggests: “The Theosophical Society, Adyar Headquarters, Madras, German Section. Statutes”.

This version is adopted.

The wording surrounding the Theosophical emblem is still being negotiated. Steiner says that the translation “No religion is higher than the truth” is not entirely accurate, but that it was once accepted by Olcott. It should rather read “No fixed opinion is higher than the truth”; however, this matter cannot be dealt with so quickly.

Hubo proposes to leave the motto out altogether, Bresch to give it in the original language.

It remains the same and the statutes are adopted without a third reading.

Closing remarks

Hubo suggests sending a welcome to the new branch in Weimar and says thank you on behalf of all for their stewardship during the past year to Steiner, Fräulein von Sivers and Mrs. von Holten.

Steiner urges the meeting not to be dissatisfied with the progress of the German Section, which has only existed for a year. There are many difficulties and prejudices to be overcome, but the word “Theosophy” should still be retained, as it is still causing so much offence, and should be brought into honor in all quarters.

The meeting is adjourned at around two o'clock.

My dear Theosophical friends,

If the Theosophical movement is to achieve the great goals it has set itself, then it must, above all, assert its first principle everywhere and realize its first principle in all its endeavors. As is well known, this is to form the core of a general human brotherhood without distinction of race and so on. But then, if this principle is paramount to us, then differences between peoples and nations can only be an expression of what animates people in their innermost thoughts.

We must seek out everywhere the people we want to unite with us in brotherhood. With this principle in mind, the Theosophical Congress in London two years ago decided to propose the introduction of an annual congress of the European sections of the Theosophical Society. This year, the first European congress of the various sections of the continent that truly deserves this name has been convened.

Thus, from June 19 to 21, the European sections of the Theosophical Society were united in Amsterdam for the purpose of to be laid down on the common altar in a free exchange of ideas for inspiration, and on the other hand, to bring the common work that is being done here and there in the service of the general public to the attention of the assembled. Both were achieved by the extraordinarily efficient and energetic approach of our Dutch brothers, so that the congress took an extraordinarily dignified course.

The Congress showed how deeply the Theosophical idea has already taken root in those gathered there. Five European sections have indeed united to form the so-called Federation. These are the sections from which the Theosophical movement initially emerged. First the English, second the French, third the Italian, fourth the Dutch and finally fifth the German section, which has only existed for two years.

Our esteemed Annie Besant has taken over the chairmanship of this congress. She recently returned to Europe from India, where she has spent most of her time working. It was wonderful that she was able to chair this congress. All those who have inwardly grasped the task and mission of the Theosophical movement know that their ideal is embodied in the personality of Annie Besant. When Mrs. Blavatsky died, the spiritual leadership passed to Annie Besant, and she was the most suitable person to take over this leadership. Everything that must live in Theosophy lives in her. She unites the ideal of the will, the enthusiasm of feeling and at the same time the scientific direction of our movement. And all this is immersed in what constitutes the basic element, in spirituality, regardless of whether Annie Besant is discussing a scientific, an agitative or an occult topic.

In the views, only the outer form of expression for the innermost part of her soul is embodied. And that is the task that the Theosophical movement has set itself, to immerse all branches of human activity today, all impulses of the will and all scientific ideals in spirituality, to bring everything out of the dead. This spirituality speaks for itself when Annie Besant speaks to us. It was therefore a solemn moment when she opened the congress in Amsterdam, when she explained the 'why and wherefore' of the movement.

She said, roughly, the sense, not the wording: The task of the Theosophical movement is the spiritualization of our entire culture, our entire civilization. If we survey the last decades of our culture, we see that it has reached an infinite height in the most diverse points. We see that science, that the external material life, has reached such a summit as has never been the case before. We see how the horizons of the nations have expanded infinitely, we see that these nations have made the whole world the dwelling place of the nations. This outer material life can only be the outer expression of the inner life of culture, of the inner life of civilization, of the very soul of human development and progress. And to impress this soul of human development and progress on the outward, splendid aspects of our culture is the task of the Theosophical movement. It has been justified by the developments of the last thirty years in the evolution of our culture. We see everywhere that our civilization has changed in the last thirty years. We see that nobler spirits are striving out of purely material culture, out of intellectual science, out of the luxury to which material culture has risen. Thus we see that the yearning for spirituality runs through our entire time. This ideal is not limited to our Theosophical movement alone. It also lives in those who know nothing or want nothing to do with the theosophical movement. The theosophical movement wants to be nothing more than something that must happen in our time. Thus, in our society, there are women and men who want to show that they are touched by the fact that there is soul and spirit, that there is spirituality. To this end, the theosophical movement turns to the most ancient thoughts of humanity, to those that have given great impetus to all civilizations and cultural advances at all times since humans have existed on earth. It does not address these thoughts in an abstract, lifeless form, but in a living form. These thoughts did not arise by chance in this or that head. They have been instilled from time to time by the great leaders of humanity, instilled by those leaders who, in their own development, have outstripped our entire race, who have already achieved today, or rather, some time ago, what the masses will only achieve in a distant future. Such advanced brothers were always in possession of great, moving thoughts. And they have preserved these in the so-called occult brotherhoods. They have handed them down to the human race, graded according to the needs of the time and the peoples. As a rule, these brothers have remained in hiding. But they have sent their messengers where it was necessary; to this or that people, to this or that time. And from these messengers arose the great civilizing movements, the world religions, the great spiritual and material movements, which are said to be the expression of the souls of the people.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, such a wave was to pour forth again. It was to convey something of the ancient wisdom again. And what it conveys is contained in what the Theosophical Society has been teaching since its founding by Olcott and Blavatsky. That is what we have to incorporate into our culture, that is what offers the source for the spiritual civilization of humanity. Those who are inspired by these thoughts and want to work for the development of all of humanity based on these thoughts are worthy members of the Theosophical Society. If we win the souls of humanity, our culture will also present the right view from the outside. Everything has gone astray. Take a single trait: beauty. Beauty can only be present in culture if it contains true belief in the highest ideals of humanity. See why the true painters of the Middle Ages have had such a great effect, and you will find that they have kept their ideals secret in their works, which then speak for them. When we come to such true faith, to such wisdom, a divine light will also arise from our art. This is one of the tasks that the Theosophical Society will fulfill. And there are many such tasks. The Theosophical Society is not there to instruct individuals, to perfect individuals, but to educate them to be willing to make sacrifices, to be of service. Not the one who wants to perfect himself is a true member of the Theosophical Society, but the one who puts all his strength, his whole being, at the service of humanity.

Such a speech, which contained much wisdom, and the words of Annie Besant had cast a solemn atmosphere over the whole congress. If I am to describe the course of the events that followed this speech, which took on a more communal character, I have to say that the individual sections were represented by their general secretaries. The English section was represented by Mr. Keightley, the French by Mr. Pascal, the Italian was not represented, the representative could not be present; the German by Dr. Steiner.

Our theosophical brother in Holland, Mr. van Manen, managed the preparatory work and the work during the congress, so that the external management can indeed be called exemplary.

On the evening of that day – it was Sunday – Annie Besant gave a second speech, a speech about the new psychology. This speech was public, open to everyone, and held in the Free Church in Amsterdam. If in the morning one had the opportunity to see the spiritual life springing from the mind and idealism of Annie Besant, in the evening one had the opportunity to admire the whole scientific sense of this spiritual leader of the Theosophical movement. I can only hint at the ideas she expounded.

Those who can remember back to the time about forty years ago, to the course of the soul development theory, will remember the materialistic high tide. There was a saying by Karl Vogt, which roughly translates as: This is how the brain sweats out thoughts, just as the liver sweats out bile.

In this age of materialistic science, there were attempts to regard thought, spirit and soul as mere products of the outer mechanism of the body, attempts to explain thought in much the same way as the turning of the hands of a clock is explained by the mechanism of the clockwork. This view has undergone a fundamental change in the last forty years. It has been found that it is just as impossible to explain the mind from the nervous system as it is to explain a work of art by Mozart or Beethoven from the keys or strings of the piano. It has been recognized, scientifically recognized, that this is impossible. This was recognized by the experimental method itself. It has been found that when the brain is in a different state than during everyday life, it is not without all consciousness, but shows a different kind of consciousness, a different form of mental and spiritual phenomena. These states have been observed in dream life and then also in abnormal personalities, and it has been concluded that what we call soul has a very different expression in the brain mechanism. It has been found to manifest itself in a different way in the dream life and in yet another way in trances, somnambulism and so on. This has led to the realization of the great independence of the spirit in relation to the brain mechanism. French researchers have recognized that one and the same human individual shows completely different conditions in everyday consciousness when we interact with him than when we observe him in an abnormal state of the brain. There is a personality who has the pseudonym Leonie. During her examination, it was found that she has three states of consciousness: in one state she is a personality who tends to antipathy, while in the other state of consciousness she shows completely different characteristics. And a third state could also be induced in her. This justifies one of the basic convictions of all religious systems, that the mind has only one tool in the brain mechanism and that what it accomplishes in it is only one form of expression, and that the mind therefore has an independence from this form of expression. This justifies the theosophical aspiration to seek the truth not only with the help of the brain, but also with the help of such states in which certain personalities can place themselves.

This was a lecture by Annie Besant, which essentially shows the difference between what is established on our lecterns and what the theosophical worldview represents. It is precisely from such lectures that it becomes clearer and clearer that our culture and civilization of today will culminate in what the theosophical worldview proclaims. In this sense, it is an advanced post, and Western civilization will follow it.

For the next two days, the work was divided into so-called departments. A large number of lectures were announced, from all parts of the world. There were different rooms for the lectures, in order to cover all the material. It became clear that the various representatives of the Theosophical worldview have pursued their ideals everywhere. The work of Theosophical students already extends to all sciences, to art and to social life. And here it has become clear how sources can be drawn from all branches of contemporary culture, flowing together into the great stream to which our theosophical movement belongs. It was also possible to see how the theosophical movement has a fertilizing effect. What otherwise seemed to us to be without content appeared to us here in a light in which even those who do not belong to the theosophical movement will soon be drawing their insights.

The departments were: firstly, the department of science; secondly, the department of comparative religious studies; thirdly, the department of philology; fourthly, the department of general human brotherhood; fifthly, the department of occultism; sixthly, the department of philosophy; seventhly, the department of methods of theosophical work. In these seven departments, the work of the Theosophical Society was carried out in the following days.

Allow me to sketch out just a few of the achievements. Since the talks were held in different rooms, I cannot talk about everything.

An interesting lecture was given by Dr. Pascal on the nature of human consciousness, and it was precisely in this lecture that modern thinking, modern scientific view, gradually wants to embrace the theosophical concepts and ideas, as it tries to express the concepts, ideas and truths that are the content of ancient wisdom in a modern way.

In the second presentation, our Munich member Ludwig Deinhard gave a stimulating talk. Following on from Annie Besant, he tried to provide a suggestion and first spoke about the multiple personality. This is precisely the multiple personality that we encounter in appearances, as they occur to us through the medium Leonie. There we are dealing with three states of consciousness, including one that is quite different from the ordinary consciousness of the medium Leonie. The experimenter himself said that a medium in such a state remembers things from her youth, of which she otherwise has absolutely no memory. The medium also shows memory for the past, which did not take place in this present life, but must have taken place in another, previous life. This is a reference to reincarnation. Deinhard tried to explain this personality; and those members of society who enjoy a higher state of consciousness should take the opportunity to follow these points of view, which are being taken up by modern psychology, in their higher consciousness, so that we can establish a kind of harmony between what modern science is doing and what the mystic endowed with clairvoyance is able to experience within himself.

Following this discussion, another one took place about double consciousness, about the second self, which our member [Orage from Leeds] held.

Then a series of other lectures followed, which dealt with the important question of the fourth spatial dimension. These are particularly important because this question must be thoroughly studied by researchers at some point. We have particularly interesting and instructive literature. There are books today about things that were laughed at not too long ago. In the explanations about space and the fourth dimension, we have a guide to how people can directly form a real idea through external experiments of what Hellscher actually calls four-dimensional space. This is a guide to give even the everyday person an idea of it. Until now, only mathematicians could gain such an insight. But here you have the opportunity to gain such an insight through ingenious models. When I have made the models myself in the fall, I will give you a series of lectures here to show you how to gain such an insight directly from the model. That was the scientific part.

The second department was that of comparative religions. Here, an Indian lecture on the future of religions was particularly significant.

This was followed by the third department on philology. There were some very interesting papers that could give us important insights into the development of various concepts. I cannot go into details here. The yearbook will provide more information about these lectures.

Then the fourth department spoke about the idea of brotherhood. And then the fifth department about occultism. Mrs. Annie Besant gave another speech. She talked about the nature of occultism. I can only briefly touch on the content of this extremely important speech. The speaker started from a saying of Mrs. Blavatsky, who said that occultism is the realization that the universal spirit of the world has brought forth all things, that we must seek an expression, an outward form of a universal spirit in all things, and that he who seeks this universal spirit and finds the methods and means to find this spirit is an occultist. This is what occultism is in abstract form, but it is not so easy to state exactly what the essence of occultism is in detail. Man sees around him material things, which he sees ruled by forces that we call natural forces: electricity, heat, light, and so on. Then he sees the phenomena controlled by the laws of nature, by the law of gravity, by the law of attraction and repulsion, by the law of causality, by the laws of life. Material forces and laws are what ordinary science is able to convey to us about the world. The occultist differs from the ordinary scientist in that something else dawns on him about the forces and something else about the law. Through the methods he is able to apply, he comes to see and perceive that which is hidden behind the forces in the world, that which is occult. And when he perceives what is hidden behind the forces, then these are not again forces, not such things as can be perceived by the ordinary, everyday consciousness, but they are beings, beings of a higher nature, which belong to the so-called higher worlds. The occultist rises from the nature of the forces to the nature of the beings, from the nature of the forces to the creative beings. He arrives there through direct vision. He recognizes the Formers of the world. The forces which the ordinary man sees as means of expression are only the outer projections, the outer shadow and reflection of these Formers of the world. And where ordinary science fails, the occultist ascends to Beings of an even more exalted nature, to Beings that extend from the Formers of the world up to the so-called Logoi. These are for the occultist what is hidden behind what science calls laws. The scientist recognizes the material forces, the material laws, the occultist sees the higher beings, the creative entities, whom he gets to know as the agents and shapers of the forces of nature. He gets to know the most exalted Logoi, which only externally reveal themselves in the existence of the laws of the world that permeate the celestial spaces. In order for the occultist to arrive at these insights, he must undergo careful training and manifold tests. They consist of two things: first, to expand the consciousness of the person, to broaden the horizon beyond this sensual, physical world; and secondly, to develop senses that can perceive those higher worlds just as the outer eyes and ears perceive the outer physical world.

Before a person can seek to expand their consciousness, they must exercise careful control over their thoughts. Without this, no step forward can be taken in occultism. The everyday person is ruled by his thoughts, but the occultist must rule his thoughts. Before you have managed to prevent any thought, any movement, any emotion from creeping into your consciousness, before you can summon and control them, we cannot gain access to occultism. Complete control of the thoughts, which makes man the master of them, is necessary. If man were to enter the occult fields without this control, he would suffer great disadvantages. The ordinary power is just enough to hold thoughts together. If man were to enter the occult with only this power of thought, it would be destroyed by the forces that assail it in the astral. When man has achieved complete control over his thoughts, when no emotion has access to him anymore, then he can develop the higher senses, the senses for higher perception. This is again a training full of tests. Here we are confronted with all the dangers that the occultist is well aware of. He whose sense is awakened in the spiritual realm knows that he is first tormented in the most terrible way by his own desires and passions. Desires, lust and pain are constantly flowing out. We see them and mistake them for objective entities. The difficulty is to distinguish them from the truly objective things. This is something we learn only through careful and strict training.

Another danger is that hostile forces threaten us and we are exposed to them. We must also learn to avert this danger. Furthermore, we must learn not to mistake the individual grimaces and fragments that present themselves to us for exhaustive reality. The strictest training is required here so that a person can stand on firm ground when he leaves the world, namely the physical world. Above all, the occultist must have eradicated all personal desires and passions within himself. He must want nothing for himself. He must put everything at the service of a great cause, which only he knows and which he may not even be able to express. When he has become desireless in this sense, then, when his consciousness is expanded and his senses developed, something will approach him that is called the voice of the Master. This does not approach us until we have learned to distinguish it from the other voices. When he is ready, he can go through the narrower gate, then he is ripe for initiation. Only those who really go through such a path are occultists. To them the exalted divine beings reveal themselves, which in the lower world present themselves only as laws.

This third lecture was an extraordinary complement to the first two. If I may say that in the first lecture the mind was uplifted to enthusiasm, that in the second lecture there was knowledge that enlightens, so I may also say that in the third lecture, where Annie Besant spoke about occultism, she sanctified the will, this root of being.

After this lecture we had the reading of a lecture by Leadbeater about occultism. I will only emphasize one point. It was said that experiments have been carried out to see what effect musical forms have in the astral realm. If you play a piece of music by Mozart or Beethoven in a room, then if you have astral hearing and vision, you can see the forms in the astral world in which the one or other work of art is expressed. The lines and forms of a wonderful piece of architecture are reflected in the lines and forms of a musical work of art in the astral realm. This astral architecture of music was particularly explored in America.

The next day, Tuesday, we still had to complete the scientific department and the department for methods of work. In the scientific department, I talked about mathematics and [occultism]. I tried to show how it came about that Plato demanded a mathematical course from his students on the basic concepts of mathematics before admitting them to

why the Gnostics called mathematics “mathesis” and why Pythagoras sought the essence of the world, insofar as it can be known by man, in numbers. I have tried to show that what was taught in those ancient times is by no means the abstract mathematics of today, but that in mathematics they had an immediate, intuitive perception, just as the person who hears a piece of music does not mathematically calculate the tone relationships, but perceives them in a sea of tones; in the same way, the occultist perceives these things. The ancients called it music of the spheres. In their intuition, the sensually pure, mathematical view allows a higher kind of intuitive music to arise. He perceives the three kinds of occult knowledge that are equally present in the occultist: the material, the intellectual, and the perception of great musical relationships that are based on numbers and numerical relationships. Only someone who knows what the Gnostics meant by mathesis can form a concept of this. A turning point occurred with the discovery of infinitesimal and integral calculus since Newton. Since then, one can calculate with infinitely small and infinitely large quantities. The ordinary mathematician cannot enter into this infinitely small and this infinitely large. Only those who know and are able to bring it to life within themselves can understand it. They can then also free themselves through a mathematical means. And so, as a mathematician, he can find access to the occult worlds and make a contribution to them. I then showed how, in the time when Plato's and Pythagoras' music of the spheres had been lost and Galileo and Newton were exerting their influence, the world of the senses was conquered, the physical laws of nature were discovered, mathematics became different and people took possession of mathematics itself. In the past, finite mathematics was known. Since Newton and Leibniz, we have had the mathematics of infinity. Those who study it arrive at occult, intuitive vision. They arrive at turning back, at moving upwards. They become free from everything that speaks to them in the sensual-material world. And something very peculiar enters their astral body. Those who truly grasp mathematical concepts, grasp them in a living way, their thought forms become completely different. Every thought-form that is influenced by sensuality seems to be closed off as if with a breath. Then it rebounds from the outside. But if it is free of sensuality, the thought-form opens up and then envelops every thing with its thought-form. Everything that is antipathetic has been transformed into something sympathetic. In this way you have become an occultist. This is a contribution, an attempt to come from a particular branch of science to occultism.

Then a Frenchman spoke about the rhythm in the world and [Bhagavän Däs, Benares, read a paper about the relationship between self and non-self]. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are a closed book for modern science itself. It would be satisfying if our very powerful German philosophy were to be transformed by the ingenious thinking of India.

From the department on the methods of the theosophical work, the lecture given by Misses [Hooper, London] must be emphasized, which is appealing because of a certain turnaround in the external way in which this entity represents theosophy in the world. Those who heard my report on the London Theosophical Congress will recall that I had to mention that Christianity was almost completely rejected there. This rejection of Christianity has now given way to a complete understanding of it, so that we are learning not only to speak in Indian and Muslim terms, but also to endeavor to reveal the infinitely deep core of truth of the Bible, of the Old and New Testaments. And then something emerged of which the more recent times knew little until today. It turned out that the Bible is a deeply esoteric scripture and that the deepest truths on which it is based are also the expression of the theosophical truths. Those who understand what is hidden in this book must marvel and admire the occult, and they must say to themselves: Only now do I recognize what the Bible is. Mrs. Hooper must have been moved by such feelings when she said, “The core has always been the same, but the forms have changed.” We find in the Bible and in Christianity symbols of such depth and such conciseness and forcefulness that we can speak entirely from the Bible when we advocate the Theosophical teachings. Now, during the Theosophical Congress in Amsterdam, we have been able to observe how there is already a current within the Theosophical movement towards the revival of the Gospel of John. I will talk about this again next Monday.

The congress was closed on Tuesday afternoon. Mrs. Annie Besant was able to sum up in a few concise words what we had all felt during these days of the congress, that our Dutch brothers, who have made such great strides in the Theosophical movement, had indeed made every effort to make this congress a worthy one, that they had proceeded judiciously and energetically.

The Dutch may be a small country, but they have a big heart, and it is better to have a small country and a big heart than the other way around.

In the evening there were more thanks and a lecture about the aura. Between the individual events there were also artistic performances. All the choir members and declaimers were taken only from members of the Theosophical Section in Holland, so that we have to say about the Dutch that the members have made gratifying progress in recent years. We can therefore say that this congress was an extraordinarily dignified expression of the Theosophical movement and that we look forward with great enthusiasm and interest to the reunion in London. The symbol of the movement came to me in a small experience. We visited the house where Spinoza was born. It is a small house. There is no plaque, no memorial. On the other hand, it is a house of squalor. One could say that this is irreverent. I had a different thought. Nothing of the temporal reminds us of the great spirit of Spinoza. The eternal lies in the progress of the spirit.

After an absence of eighteen months, our esteemed Annie Besant returned to Europe in May from the scene of her work in India to spend a few months among us in Europe working to spread the theosophical teachings and theosophical life.

As you all know, we will also have an opportunity to hear Annie Besant here in Berlin in a few days. When Annie Besant comes to Europe, even if it is only for a short time, it is a celebration for the members of the Theosophical Society on our continent and in England. It is a celebration especially for those who, out of full knowledge and insight, appreciate the greatness and significance of this unique personality. There are many people in Europe who are attached to this personality with a love built on knowledge and insight.

In the arena of her activity, where she is mostly active now, Annie Besant is particularly well understood. One understands why Annie Besant is so extraordinarily well understood and loved in India. You understand it when you read the words, which are on the one hand full of deep wisdom and on the other hand full of strength, in the lecture that Annie Besant gave two years ago at the annual meeting of the Theosophical Society in England and which is now also available in print. The lecture that Annie Besant gave at the time on the task of her own, the English people, in India was – if I may use the worn-out word – it was an act. For it was based on what I would call the deepest historical insight into the needs, the true, heartfelt needs of a people.

Annie Besant, if I may say so, spoke to the conscience of her compatriots at the time. And they were words of love - because only words of love can come from true theosophy - but at the same time they were words that sound quite different from what England, what English imperialism, is still doing in India today. They were words that were entirely appropriate for a theosophist.

What Annie Besant called for was nothing less than a modern fulfillment of what Christians call the miracle of Pentecost. You all know that this Pentecost miracle expresses in a powerful symbolism that at that time the apostles, the messengers of Christianity, began to speak in all tongues. They began to speak in all tongues for the reason that this is necessary for someone who wants to bring the message of the divine world order into the world. God speaks to all hearts. But only with one's own tongue can a member of a nation hear the divine word. If you go to a nation and try to interest them in the spirit of divine wisdom or to teach the spirit of human comfort, then you must, above all, be understood by that nation. You must speak in the tongue of that nation. You must take the words, the ideas, the feelings in which you express yourself from this people. The Theosophist sets himself the goal of respecting and appreciating the peculiarities of each people if he wants to contribute to the spread of human and divine wisdom.

And that is what Annie Besant demands of her people with such fervor, one might say, when she says: If you go to this country, then do not be strangers, not rulers, not conquerors, but loving friends who want to learn the language – at least the spiritual language – of the one to whom you want to speak, to whom you want to convey a culture other than your own.

You see, that is the understanding that Annie Besant has been showing the Indian people for years, the active understanding that has led her to work in India for the benefit of the education of this people, for the development of the extraordinarily high spiritual culture to our present day there. Because she knows how to speak to each person in his own tongue, in the sense of the symbolic miracle of Pentecost, and because the Indian people in particular have an understanding of it, Annie Besant is so very much loved there. Those who understand this spirit of genuine theosophical sentiment in the West as well, who do not just know it intellectually, but have grasped it with the depth of their hearts, so that it is the very principle of their lives, are equally devoted to Annie Besant, and for them Annie Besant is currently the soul of the theosophical movement. She is because the spiritual life, which the theosophical movement wants to bring to modern humanity, flows through each of her words, can be felt in each of her words, so that each of her words, although it comes from a complete mastery of all present sciences, at the same time sinks deeply into the hearts of her listeners, can sink deeply into their hearts.

Now, esteemed attendees, Annie Besant may be called the soul of the theosophical movement, and we may greet it with particular satisfaction that this year's season, our work this year, may begin with the work of Annie Besant within our section.

I would like to say that the theme of Annie Besant's lecture in Berlin next Friday is indicative of the whole task of the Theosophical movement and of the importance of the Theosophical Society in our time. The theme is “The New Psychology”, the new doctrine of the soul. We will prepare ourselves for the lecture, which is to be a celebration for us, by realizing what this lecture, in the sense of the Theosophical movement, is actually supposed to convey. Psychology, as you know, is the study of the soul. A “new psychology” is what will be discussed here. The word “new” indicates that we are dealing with a doctrine that was not there before. And if it was not there, then in relation to which doctrine of the soul is the one that Annie Besant is talking about a new doctrine of the soul? That we can speak today of a new doctrine of the soul is something that is connected with the whole task, with the whole meaning of our Theosophical movement. And probably if we could not speak today of a new doctrine of the soul, the Theosophical movement would not have attained any importance, would not have solved its task in such a way, as is already the case today to a high degree.

What was the old doctrine of the soul? We shall understand this if we look back half a century in the development of our cultural life. What I am about to say applies not only to Germany, but to all civilized countries. If we look back to the middle of the nineteenth century, we find that peculiar thoughts about the nature of the soul and the nature of the human spirit prevailed at that time. At that time, so-called materialism was at its peak. Those who had the ear of their contemporaries, such as Ludwig Büchner, Vogt, Moleschott and others, spoke for materialism. The words spoken by the natural scientists Vogt in Germany and Clifford in England resounded throughout the world: “Thoughts are secreted by the brain just as bile is produced by the liver.” So that was the time when people wanted nothing to do with a special soul. Those who wanted nothing to do with a special soul were those who placed the physical above the soul, those who wanted nothing to do with it were those who believed at the time that they were at the cutting edge of science. The flowering of science in the modern age had just begun.

If we take a look at the science of more recent times, we have to say that tremendous developments and discoveries were made in the world at that time. The new science of life was invented under the microscope. It was at that time that people first looked through the microscope at the smallest living creatures, the so-called cells. The doctrine of the origin of the earth, which we now call geology, was still very young. The gale-force winds of Darwinism swept through the educated world. Discovery followed discovery, and the discoveries in the scientific field meant that our external life was changing as industry made its great conquests in the field of natural science, of natural forces. Man had completely settled in the physical world. He had celebrated his great triumphs in the physical world. At the same time, this was the epoch in which man – at least the man who had immersed himself in it – became disoriented about the truths of thousands of years, by denying what the fathers and the fathers of our fathers had regarded as the principle of their existence, as the support of their lives.

We may say that not all of the educated, perhaps only a small number of them, had embraced this materialistic worldview. But that is not the point in the development of the human race. What matters is not whether only a few or the masses grasp some new idea, but whether that idea has the potential to be absorbed into the development of culture, whether it is suitable for being absorbed into the hearts of people, into the minds of those who reflect. There have always been only a few in the world who were knowledgeable. Go back to ancient times and you will always see that there were only a few spiritual leaders. And it is true that the spiritual possessions of the spiritual leaders later become the almost universal possessions of a large part of humanity. Go back to the times when Christianity spread, when the gospel that we call Christian first came into the world, and of which we must say that at first only a few people adhered to it. Then more and more people did so, and later there were millions. And if you go back to the time of the dawn of new eras, to the time of humanity's scientific discoveries, and do some research, you will find that only a few people believed in what are now scientific facts that are common knowledge to countless people – our views of the starry sky, for example, the so-called Copernican worldview. Look at how few people confessed to this belief centuries ago. You will see that there were only a few. And then the current flooded into the minds of a large number of people. This is the case with ideas that have the power to fill people's hearts. With them, it does not matter whether they are initially held by a few or a large number. What matters is who they are held by. Whether they are those who are at the summit of the times or not.

If you follow the times and go back to the first decades of Christianity, you will find that a large number of people, namely the best within European culture, who were at the height of their time in terms of spirituality, were seized by the principles of Christianity. And if you go back to the sixteenth century, you will find that a large number of people, inspired by the few, were convinced by the ideas that Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and others brought into the world. They are the leaders of humanity, and the question is whether these leaders of humanity will find the ear of their contemporaries. It was an important question in the mid-nineteenth century as to whether the few whose convictions found expression in the words “The brain sweats out thoughts as the liver does bile” would find the ear of their contemporaries. It was, I say, a big question. For those who spoke in this way, we must realize, were not the worst of their age in those days. They were the ones who spoke from erudition, from science. And science itself had taken on a form that was quite capable of instilling such views in the hearts of many. You can imagine what would happen if, instead of the spiritual, the spiritual world view, the purely materialistic doctrine I have mentioned were to become common knowledge among mankind. Anyone who has an inkling of the devastating effects that the materialistic doctrine would have to wreak on humanity, anyone who is able to observe how the destructive, devastating forces of human nature are connected with this world view in particular, also knows that there was a danger within our education, within our development at that time; but they also know that it is people themselves who are leading history.

Our revered first teacher, Mrs. Blavatsky, once said in her “Secret Doctrine” - and it is a profound truth: Certainly, what is necessary happens in the world. And when an age needs a teaching, a wisdom, a truth, then it will come. But people are called upon to receive it. Although the higher forces must flow into human nature, human resistance, the destructive, evil forces of human nature, can delay the inflow of the higher forces for a long time. Man is not a weak-willed tool of the divine world order, but through thought and human feelings, this divine world order speaks. If we realize this, then we must say to ourselves: Much depends on how humanity in the second half of the nineteenth century positions itself in relation to the materialistic world view, and what it will say to those who are at the height of the materialistic world view. It was close – and the one who cannot observe the times cannot imagine how close it was – that the materialistic worldview would have completely found the ear of its contemporaries. In 1875, that stream of spiritual wisdom was sent into the world, that stream of spiritual wisdom that comes from the same beings from whom spiritual wisdom has spread through all times.

Our first teacher, Mrs. Blavatsky, was commissioned to make herself the mouthpiece for this spiritual wisdom, and those who listened to the messenger of higher beings, to Mrs. Blavatsky, were the first to vigorously counteract the materialistic flood. But do not think that the stream I spoke of was only active within what we call the Theosophical movement or Theosophical Society. Oh no, in the last third of the nineteenth century a mighty spiritual wave began to sweep over all of civilized humanity. Everywhere, the longing arose to recognize the spirit again. Everywhere, the longing arose to gain clarity in the face of the materialistic shaping of science. Only the standard-bearers, the pioneers of this spiritual direction, wanted to be theosophists. Look at all countries and see how all countries long for a new spiritual life, and how this spiritual life lives as a longing in all souls that often deal with the riddles of human life. This longing lives in people who today can call themselves the best of culture, and more than anything else lives in this urge for a new idealism, for a new spirituality. This spiritual wave has also had an effect in science, and there has been a mighty change in science, especially in recent years. Whoever knows that what is decided by the so-called authorities is only a relatively small wave, but one that spreads in all directions and affects humanity, and who also knows how the materialistic movement was aroused at the time, also knows what significance this new wave will have for humanity. Mankind must surely look up to those who have the opportunity to study science and truth. Where should the ordinary person turn when they ask: What is the smallest living thing? They can only turn to science. What priests were in the broadest sense in the past, men of science have become for modern, cultured humanity. But with the psychology that Vogt expresses with the words “The brain sweats out thoughts like the liver sweats out bile,” science, which is at the cutting edge today, has broken thoroughly.

Those who fifteen years ago proclaimed with certainty materialistic science, who denied any life that extends beyond birth and death, precisely those who, just fifteen years ago, did this but seriously engaged with science, who did not remain with prejudices and opinions, who developed further, it is precisely they who today speak a completely different language.

Those who once said that man descended from the mere animal, that the human soul is nothing more than an expression of the mechanically acting organism, just as the activity of a machine is an expression of the mechanical nature of that machine, those who spoke or speak like that, are no longer considered by the truly insightful to be at the level of science. Those who have developed further have at least come to the one thing, they have come to admitting: With materialistic science, there can be no question of attaining the soul, of knowing about the soul, of real psychology. Take a look around Germany. Natural scientists who have done their studies in the last fifteen years and are beginning to talk about these questions: how cautiously they speak compared to the materialistic certainty that could be heard fifteen years ago. Compare what was said about Darwin in the past with what is being said about him today. There is a tremendous difference. And if you look at books that come from infinite erudition, such as those by [Fresnel] – I could also name some German naturalists in this field – you will see the turnaround that has occurred in scientific thinking. Fifteen years ago, you could still hear the same mechanical science at work in the laboratory and the dissecting room, examining tissues under the microscope, and so on. It cannot provide any insights into the soul. Laplace, who originated the doctrine of the movement of the heavenly bodies, once made a remarkable statement to the great Napoleon. Napoleon said: “I find that in your explanations about the movement of the heavenly bodies, there is no God.” To which Laplace replied: “I don't need this hypothesis!” Just as Laplace, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, believed that he did not need the “God” hypothesis, so science believes that it does not need the soul hypothesis. It says: We have examined and dissected the brain, and we have not found a soul.

Today, only a natural scientist whose insights are outdated would say this. No natural scientist at the cutting edge of his or her field would say this. Today, the natural scientist who is not yet ready to embrace the new paths of a new soul doctrine will at least cautiously say: My science must stop at the problems of the soul, at the riddles of life.

That is what the natural scientists say: it is agnosticism, that is, non-science or non-knowledge. For many, this is a buzzword. The conviction that materialistic science must be modest and must be agnostic with regard to the higher realms of existence is becoming more and more widespread. From this you can see that the psychology of fifty years ago, which is not a psychology at all but a denial of everything spiritual, is on the way to being completely overcome.

But this materialistic doctrine of the soul has brought us one thing: for centuries and millennia there was a doctrine of the soul that priests taught and that comforted people when they were dying. At that time, many people were able to doubt this doctrine of the soul and they believed that they had to doubt it in honest conviction because, in their opinion, their research demanded it. Certainly, the eternal truths proclaimed by the religions of all times are unshakable, they stand firm. They have not been shaken, not even by the fact that individual people have lost their way with them. It is no proof that the materialistic doctrine of the soul has spread, that at that time this doctrine of the religions did not have the power to bring about the conviction of its truth. But the spirit had become weak, especially in the inquisitive and striving seekers of truth. And because it had become weak, the spirit, through the floods of new physical truths that had befallen it under the splendor of the new cultural achievements, because it had achieved another, external, physical greatness, therefore it lagged behind in spiritual life, therefore it could not comprehend the truths in the old form. A new form for the teaching of the soul has therefore become necessary. And a completely new method of research has also become necessary. And while the natural scientists I have been talking about have become more modest over the last fifteen years, while they have moved towards non-knowledge, towards agnosticism, others are working on developing a new teaching of the soul.

They are working on it and investigating what does not present itself to external research, what only presents itself to the spiritual and soul view. Thus we see that within the last twenty years a new psychology has flourished, quite independently of all occultist movements. We see that within the circles of scholars, natural scientists, researchers, a new psychology is emerging. And while the Theosophists want to be the pioneers and standard-bearers for a spiritual deepening of humanity, here you see the work beginning from a completely different side. You see how the same results are being sought on a much larger scale, which the Theosophical Society wants to bring to the world. The spiritual forces work uniformly. Do not imagine that it is other forces than the spiritual beings who stand behind the Theosophical movement that are inspiring modern scholars to a new psychology. These beings choose many paths. They choose them unconsciously in human terms in order to advance humanity in the knowledge of the spirit and in the study of the soul. One of the paths that runs parallel to Theosophy is the path that the new psychology is taking. The theosophist already knows where this new psychology will lead in years to come. He knows that it is a tributary that will flow into the great stream of spiritual movement, which is represented by the theosophical teaching and by the theosophical life. In full foresight of what must come, and in order to truly bring humanity to an understanding of what must come, the theosophical movement has been called into the world by beings who transcend far beyond the measure of what the most highly educated person can achieve within our culture. Anyone who does not believe in all modesty that his wisdom is the sum of all wisdoms, that his judgment represents the highest judgment, will soon be able to observe that there are other people besides him who have more wisdom and more judgment, and he will listen to these personalities, will let himself be taught by them. When he gains some insight, he will come to say to himself: I still have the way to go that others have already gone. The more insight a person gains, the more humble he becomes in this regard, the more clearly he realizes how much he still has to learn, and the more likely he is to find those who have something to teach him from their spiritual heights, which he has not yet reached. If someone believes that they cannot learn anything from anyone, it is a sure sign that they have not progressed very far. The more advanced a person is, the more he comes to the certain knowledge that people are at different stages of development, and that there have always been those who have been spiritual guides to humanity and who have progressed further in their development than their fellow brothers, the most advanced brothers. They are the ones who are most difficult to understand, indeed, to be recognized, by their less developed fellow brothers. It was from such highly developed entities, difficult to understand and recognize, that the great spiritual stream emanated in 1875, which, with the help of the Theosophical movement, poured out over humanity, which longed for it.

People often ask why these highly developed entities do not show themselves, why they only make themselves felt to a limited extent. The answer can be found in one of the most profound works produced by the Theosophical movement, in the small booklet, which, however, encompasses a world of wisdom, in “Light on the Path”. What is said there, that the guiding beings, these highly developed individualities that tower far above their fellow human beings, can be there, yes, can be in the midst of a crowd without being recognized, that they can be in St. Petersburg, in Berlin, in London, in Paris, without anyone - except for a very few - knowing about it. This is literally true. There are reasons, certain reasons, why the advanced leader of humanity must

remain hidden. We cannot deal with such reasons today. But it is necessary for the highest teachers to build a kind of wall around themselves, and that only those who are prepared by a suitable way of life should have access to them. Such entities were and are continually the source of the movements we call theosophical. Such entities, in their infinite benevolence, also have great power, and much of what happens in humanity comes from these beings without humanity suspecting it.

When we speak of new currents in spiritual life, of a new psychology, which seems to be apart from the great theosophical stream, it is only seemingly so. The same entities and forces are at work there too, and they speak the language that can be understood in the circles of scholarship, in the circles of scientific research. For the observation of the miracle of Pentecost, of speaking in all tongues, is the principle of the theosophist, that is what completely fulfills him. That is why it speaks to each race, each people and each tribe in its own language. That is why it speaks in the language of the Hindus in India and in other tongues in other places, to the hearts of people who are accustomed to thinking and speaking in scientific terms, these beings are also able to speak to them in their language. And gently and mildly and slowly, Theosophy will also guide science in its paths.

This is the perspective for the future. The theosophist knows that what is to be will be. He knows that even though we have to speak of it today as a very young plant, he knows that this new teaching of the soul will grow into a mighty light in a short time, that it will radiate and fill people with a completely new consciousness of the times.

This new psychology has been established by the scholars and will continue to be developed by the scholars. But if we want to learn about its significance and its mission in the future, then we must hear about this new psychology from the theosophists, and our dear and esteemed Annie Besant will speak about the significance and essence of this new psychology in Berlin on Friday. You see how a single act of a theosophist is connected with the whole task of theosophy, and how in turn the whole task of theosophy is connected with the task of our time. We do not believe that the theosophical movement is called upon to explore the souls of people for new truths, as is happening in the field of new psychology, nor do we believe that these truths can be found in ancient wisdom. We are clear about one thing: wherever new life is sprouting in the present, wherever something new is emerging, it needs to be imbued with a spiritual breath, to be directly revitalized with new spiritual life. And this spiritual life, this breath, which should blow through the souls and hearts of our present-day humanity, this direct life in the face of the new truths, is what the theosophical movement wants to bring.

You will hear about the new truths in a new form from all lecterns and from all sides in the future. The theosophical movement wants to give the deepest life, which must permeate it, the soul itself of this new spiritual life. And he who is imbued with this life, who is imbued with this attitude, wants that all our new souls striving for truth be inspired, that what we explore from a warm heart penetrates into hearts, so that it gives us strength to live and comfort for our gaze into the farthest future for that which would have to remain a dead letter, dead science, if it remained merely scientific, the one who wants to bring it to life, he is a theosophist. For those who hear the inner voice speaking in quiet moments, for such men and women, the Theosophical Society is only the outer instrument. It does not depend on whether something is more or less good or bad in the Theosophical Society. It is built on human weakness and with human judgment, like all human institutions. The greatest masters themselves, who have brought us the theosophical wisdom, who speak to those who imbue the theosophical movement with life, cannot deal with external social foundations. They leave that to those who carry out their orders, who place themselves in their service as their messengers. It is not the external framework that matters. But we want to preserve it precisely because we do not overestimate it and because we need it, and because we would be disturbed and prevented from working if we did not have this external framework as an all-encompassing one that covers Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Australia. We want to draw attention to the fact that it is not this framework, but the spirit that humanity needs, and that through the theosophical movement flows to those who want it.

Thus, a society in which Theosophists are gathered is something different from a society in which others are gathered in the present time, something essentially different. Everyone seeks out societies, geographical, anthropological, philological, philosophical, and so on. They find that all cultural products must spread through society. But one thing is different in the theosophical movement. Where theosophists are united, they do not all want to be united by common truths, not all by common convictions, by dogmas, they want to be united in that which cannot be grasped by the mind, not by the intellect, but by the heart, the heart that comprehends and is filled with wisdom, which is at the same time the heart that loves. The theosophists want to be filled with a common spiritual life. When they are united, this common spiritual life should flood their souls. And wherever there is a theosophical lodge, wherever more or less theosophical personalities of the present have united, they want to form a center where they gather these powers of soul and spirit, this power from which this spiritual life then radiates in all directions. Every meeting and every branch should be such a center, and something invisible should radiate out from it. What matters in these gatherings is not what this or that person says, whether he is more or less learned, not whether he is this or that, but whether those who are gathered are filled with this true spiritual life that radiates from their center, so that the humanity of the present can grasp it more and more. What matters is not what I say here, not my words, but each and every one of us who is gathered here. What passes through all our souls at the moment we have gathered here is what matters. It is only by chance that one person speaks and only by chance that one person puts into words what needs to be said. What one person says is no more important than what is going on in the souls of the others, in the eyes of those who lead the theosophical movement. What is important is the spiritual life, which should flourish in all souls at this moment and radiate out to the rest of the world, to the present-day human civilization. That is the true teaching of our society. That is what is embodied in our Annie Besant, and that is why we can call her the soul of the Theosophical Society. That is why she embodies the task of the Theosophical Society before the others. That is why what she does is specifically Theosophical work. And if today we have tried to immerse ourselves for an hour in the spirit of the Theosophical Movement and in the task of the Theosophical Society, if we have tried to understand what will be embodied for all of us in the near future, as if alive, next Friday and Sunday, then this task of ours should stand before our soul, shining before us as the best Theosophical light in the present. Hopefully we will get beyond the preparations to what it has to say to us about important questions of the present in the theosophical movement.