The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Note: The transcript of the four “faculty” lectures are deficient. It shows not only noticeable gaps; the author of the transcript is also not familiar with the topic of the lectures. He often made summaries in haste as far as he understood the lecturer. That is why some connections shifted. Although notices of other participants were used, the deficiencies of the text could not be essentially corrected except for some big misunderstandings.

In the order of the talks on the relation of the universities to the theosophical movement it is the fourth about theosophy and its relation to the arts faculty (in Germany: faculty of philosophy). We have to consider the fact that this is possibly of more significance to our education and culture than the three other faculties, because the arts faculty encloses the scientific disciplines which extend about the whole field of research. That is why somebody who wants to become engrossed in wisdom and world view without certain trend simply for the sake of knowledge and education has to direct his looks at it. The arts faculty has experienced big changes; however, it has grown out of an educational institution to a sophisticating one. It was once the arts faculty a very typical name that had to prepare for the study of theology, philosophy, and medicine.

You know that the university originated in the 12th and 13th centuries, and we can still observe up to the 18th century how somebody who wanted to climb up to the heights by studying had to go through a philosophical preparatory study. This was arranged in such a way that one did not aim at any certain professional education, but at a formal education which should form the spiritual training of a human being in a formal way. Among other things, rhetoric, dialectic, astronomy and music were taught. The latter was understood as an understanding of the harmonies in the universe and in the smaller phenomena which surround us. One appreciated it to make only the mind ripe. The feature of our time is to set little store by the formal education.

Besides, I must touch something that looks very heretical in our time. Today a big tendency exists to underestimate everything formal compared with the material. One makes a point conceiving the matters rationally, bundling together as much knowledge as possible. Who looks at the matters in such a way as it is usual today, does not understand me. Who would not side immediately if anybody said the following: there are two methods to learn languages. A method, which is regarded as ridiculous, is that by which the human being is tormented with pointless exercises, as such as: today, my father has become fifty years old. Tomorrow, my aunt travels to Paris. One smiles at such things and it is still the question whether one has any cause of it.

One thinks today that one could better take sentences from any great classic. Thus it has come to avoid such banal sentences at school; one prefers sentences of the classics who are then shredded and analysed and become thereby unenjoyable for the pupil. On one side, we find the pointless, on the other side, the picking to pieces. There one hardly finds anybody today who sides the first way. Nevertheless, it is for the psychologist no question that the first way is the right one. He is clear in his mind that the human being must remain at the formal very long, that his reason is invoked very late, and that we learn best of all if the things leave us very uninterested as regards contents. During the years in which the mind is most receptive, one has to develop it rightly at first. We have to learn to talk fairly, before our thoughts are transformed with it; one lets the reason mature in the subsoil, lets it develop the ability of logic formally, then this precious good of humankind slowly matures. It is clear that nobody can apply his reason to a problem without further ado. So at first formal education, before that matures which can appear as the best fruit in the human being.

The faculty of philosophy was called arts faculty in the Middle Ages. It was an artistic mastery of the mental material, and it contained an overwhelming quantity of thoughts. Later on, the lower subjects of the arts faculty were assigned for the high school. The modern arts faculty is unworthy of its name; it is an aggregate.

This is not always the case. The philosopher Fichte (1762–1814) headed the Berlin university when it was founded (1810). At that time, any single scientific discipline was integrated into a big organism. Fichte was convinced that the world is a unity, and that any knowledge is a patchwork that is not steeped in it. Why does one study botany, mathematics, history, for example? We study these sciences because we want to obtain an insight into the construction of the universe. In other times, the penetration in the scientific disciplines would not have been so fateful. But the picture of the unity of the world has disappeared. The arts faculty should pursue science on its own sake. It did this once, but thereby it has collided with the cultural life. Already Friedrich Schiller spoke in a talk at the Jena university of the difference between the philosophical head and the bread-and-butter scholar. At that time, it was not yet so bad. Who is a philosophical head can study everything; the biggest points of view present themselves to him from every science. He sees the biggest world secrets in the plant as the psychologist realises them in the human soul. Specialisation had to take place. We know too much today to master everything. Great spirits like Leibniz, Leonardo da Vinci and others could control the knowledge of their times. This is rare today. We can only hope that the scientific disciplines get new life. However, to the bread-and-butter scholar science is nothing but a cow that gives him milk.

One would object nothing if professional schools were established for studies that provide well-paid jobs. However, this has no other value than learning any other trade. From the point of view of world knowledge it is quite irrelevant whether I become a shoemaker or a chemist. The consciousness should become general that the professional study is not more valuable than any other study in life. The chemist, botanist et etcetera is compared with the great philosopher in the same position as the businessman. Who realises, however, what it means to acquire philosophical education knows that there must be sites where one pursues science for its own sake. In this respect, it is not good that the university split up into scientific disciplines, in particular in a time in which materialism has seized everything. Nowadays, the arts faculty is nothing else than a preparatory site for the grammar school teacher. Actually nothing at all would objected if philosophy devoted itself to the task to train educated teachers. Training the human soul belongs to the highest tasks of life. However, only someone can solve them who is an artist of psychology and can undertake the task to guide the souls. The human being was called a microcosm by the great spirits of the world not without reason. There is no branch of knowledge that one could not use to train a human soul. Hence, the pedagogues do not want to cram the young human being with knowledge only, and he will get to the formal quite naturally. Science takes a particular position if one looks at it as a pedagogue. If anyone studies painting or music, he is not yet a painter or a musician. That also applies to the pedagogue. All knowledge is nothing to the pedagogue if it has not proceeded to art as with the painter or musician, so that his mind, like physical organs, has immediately absorbed what he knows, so that knowledge is, as it were, completely digested. The human soul should be an organism in which the soul food is transformed, is assimilated. Only then the human being is a philosophical spirit. It is right that the universities teach the scientific disciplines. However, another human being should arise from them, a human being who has become an artist.

If one really applies the theosophical way of thinking there, it does not depend on scientific exams. As well as anyone does not own the quality of an artist who has only scholarship, also anyone does also never become an artist who has passed the necessary exams only. The problem of examinations must also be seen in a new light. The examiner has not only to examine knowledge, but also which kind of human being the examinee is, whether he has the right philosophy of life, how much of it he has made his own, to which extent he has become a new human being. This has gone unregarded in our materialistic age. When the external appearance to the senses became decisive, the modern arts faculty originated. All the other sciences originated from philosophy. Once one had the consciousness of the connection of all knowledge; but if one does not brand the Middle Ages as heretical, one does rouse prejudices. However, in those days one felt on what it depended for the world and for the human beings.

In 1388, a person was appointed professor of theology and of mathematics in Vienna. Today, a professor would faint about that. However, we know that mathematical thinking can serve well for that where to theology leads us. Who learns to think in the way that he exercises some mathematics, learns to think quite differently, can also be a mystic without becoming a romanticist. Who has not acquired a comprehensive knowledge, can abandon himself only to a suggestion. With this he enters in a professional study. What can he know if he has experienced a purely philosophical higher education, what can he know about mathematics? Only mathematical concepts, having no inkling of the fact that mathematics introduces in the great principles of the universe.

It is not long ago when one still knew this. In the Middle Ages, this view was not dangerous, because it is not true that the iron theology of the Middle Ages put everybody in irons. The best proof is that at the Paris university one argued, for example, about such subject like: The Speeches of Theology Are Founded on Fables or The Christian Religion Prevents from Adding Something Superficial to Theology. It was possible at that time to argue about these subjects. One argues differently today. Once arguing was fertile because one had acquired formal education. Today one can prove errors in reasoning very easily. But any arguing that is based on errors in reasoning is infertile because one is not clear in his mind that someone who argues has only to understand the technique of arguing. In the Middle Ages, mathematics was regarded as the basis of any knowledge, even of art. There could be the great idealism of which our time cannot have any idea. A typical remark by Leonardo da Vinci (1459–1519), this representative of the great idealism, is that the mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences. He was an artist and mathematician at the same time. The physical education of his time lived in his soul. The way of thinking and the knowledge of his time also speak to us from his paintings. He called the external world the paradise of mathematics! Where he built bridges, thoughts about the spirit of humankind flowed to him... [Gap].

The “sacrifice of the world” means theosophically: the less someone acts for himself, the more he is capable to put something of himself into the culture of his time. It is not so important what we develop from ourselves, as what we implant in the world. Not what we perfect in ourselves, but what we give to the world is the pledge and the pound which is imperishable. Leonardo da Vinci got thoughts about the spirit of humankind as thoughts of mathematics from bridge building. The gods want free beings, they do not want a thing in nature. What the human being creates consciously in the world is an execution of the divine world plan. Something common can become something sacred if it is for the benefit of humankind. If we take this point of view, we have taken up the great idealism in ourselves, and this idealism would have to flow through the whole arts faculty. Within the frame of our arts faculty all scientific disciplines can be probably placed. But it had to be the headquarters of the world view as a core in the centre instead of taking the second place behind the single scientific disciplines.

With the help of this central philosophical science we would come to the artistic view. Only that should receive the doctorate who has absorbed this central attitude of having life in himself. The last exam of the philosopher would have to be an examination of his life forms; the only honorary title of the philosophical doctor would have to be founded on the fact that in the human being the life contents of this life form is included. Otherwise, the philosophical doctor is an arabesque, a pretension, a social form. Not only knowledge belongs to the philosophical doctor, but a knowledge transformed into art of living. One already had such consciousness. Thus a philosophical doctor will have only the maturity as it is commensurate with the philosophical head. A large dissemination of theosophy would bring it about by itself, for it wants to develop the forces that slumber in the human being. The theosophist is aware that the human being is capable of development that like the child must develop also mind and soul are capable to develop to higher stages. The human being is not yet complete when he leaves the high school and the universities. Theosophy asserts more and more that the human being is only in the beginning of his development. The arts faculty should have the greatest say. It should develop from the mathematical attitude into a spiritual direction; everything should run up to this point. Theosophy is not so difficult. It would be bound to occur that if there were a theosophical faculty all sciences would become theosophical in the end.

Physiology is the science of the phenomena in plants, animals and human beings. If in physiology the equipment of the eye is considered et etcetera, these are pictures to take the knowledge that the human being sees. Physiology teaches us that basically all our sense impressions depend on our senses; it teaches the subjective. In the end, it says that we know nothing about that which is beyond our sense impressions. If we consider this, and do not remain unthinking, but keep on investigating spiritually, we get exactly to the same teachings which occultism gives us that everything sensory is illusion and that the theory of sense energy, theosophically treated, leads into big depths. One needs physiology; one must study it and then top it with philosophy. One has no other choice. The philosophy in the arts faculty is only a piece. It does no longer have any strength; it is a discipline like other disciplines. This should not be; it had to give the strength to the other disciplines. Instead of this, it has received for its part the colouring from single professional disciplines.

The fact that one thinks substantially materially results from the fact that philosophy and the great world view do not have the saying, but rather psychology, which came from other disciplines, has become an experimental science. If one believes that psychology is done precisely only if one experiments around with the human being like with an unliving crystal, one considers the human being as something that has neither life nor soul. Psychology can recognise nothing but the material expression. Theosophy would realise that the studies of physiology and psychology are one and the same in certain way and would integrate both into the big framework of knowledge. The modern universities cannot do that and, therefore, they cannot carry any idealistic world view into the world. The arts faculty is not able to be the standard bearer of a philosophical attitude. The faculty should not be an aggregate of the various disciplines, but allow them to grow together to a common soul. Then it is taught theosophically without transplanting theosophy to the universities. Otherwise, the arts faculty remains an aggregate without spiritual bond. Knowledge should become a living whole from whose single parts the spirit shines. It satisfies us as theosophists if the prerogative belongs only to this philosophical study and if it develops on this basis. Then it is well rescued in theosophy. We want only what everybody wants for the welfare of the single sciences. Should theosophy fulfil its task, it must not be a doctrine but life. We have to be theosophists with every step, we have to impregnate everything that we do in life with this living theosophical attitude. Then the theosophical movement is more; it is like one of the most powerful cultural factors of the present. However, it has to win influence on those who are selected to lead our culture. We have to confess and represent theosophy where we want to work in life. The world process is not anything dead, but something living. The beings and not the relations cause the development of the human mind. If theosophy is a world of the spirit, then theosophy is one of the most powerful cultural factors of the present. It does not depend on the reading of theosophical writings, but on the attitude so that the human being is seized in the everyday life.

Spiritual research cannot interfere in the immediate problems of the day. Besides, the confidence must also not arise that the spiritual knowledge should be anything that floats above all reality and would have to do nothing with the life praxis. We do not want to state the events, which turn up the world directly today, in which way one treats the current events, and we do not want to belong to those who want to be blind and deaf to that which moves the human hearts immediately what concerns us directly. Between these two cliffs, the spiritual researcher has always to find the way, so that he is never merged in the opinions and the views of the everyday life. On the other side, he is never allowed to be involved in mere empty abstractions or to be addicted to authorities. I said that repeatedly from this place: spiritual science has to make us directly practical, much more practical than normally the pragmatists think. However, it should make us practical leading us in the deeply succumbing forces of life and clarify us about the things that they direct our actions in harmony with the big universal laws. Only then, one can achieve anything in the world and intervene in the activities of the world if one does it in accordance with the big universal laws.

After this premise, let me point to a few facts at first that should solely show us the importance and actuality of our questions.

Perhaps, you remember the fact that 24 August 1898 the authorised representative of the czar (Nicholas II) sent a circular to the foreign representatives accredited in Petersburg. In this circular you find, among other things, the following words, “The maintenance of the general peace and a possible lowering of the excessive armaments which press on all nations constitute an ideal in the present situation of the whole world to which the efforts of all governments should be directed.

The human and highly noble-minded striving of His Majesty, the Emperor, my elated lord, is completely dedicated to this task. In the conviction that this elated final goal corresponds to the most essential interests and the entitled wishes of all governments the imperial government believes that the present moment is extremely favourable to search for the most effective means on the way of international consultation, in order to ensure the benefits of a true and durable peace and to set an objective, above all, to the progressive development of the present armaments.”

Moreover, you find the following words in this document: “Because the financial loads increase and impair the national well-being, work and capital are headed off in great part from their natural determination and are consumed unproductively. Hundreds of millions are used to acquire dreadful destruction machines which are considered today as the last word of science and are condemned already tomorrow to lose any value as a result of any new discovery in these fields ... Because the armaments of every power grow to such an extent, they correspond less and less to the purpose which the concerning government has proposed to itself.” The document closes with the proposal that a conference with God's help should be an auspicious sign of the next century.

Certainly this manifesto arises from an intention. The last events teach us how this intention could come true. This intention is not quite new, because we can go back even centuries, and there we find a prince, Henry IV of France, in the 16th, 17th centuries, who stimulated the idea of such a general peace conference. Seven of sixteen countries were won when Heinrich IV was murdered. Nobody continued his work. If we were interested in it, we could probably trace back the intentions still much farther.

This is one range of facts. The other is this: the Hague peace conference took place. You all know the name of the meritorious person who pursues her ideal with a rare devotion and with a rare skill, the name of Bertha von Suttner (1853-1914, Austrian novelist and pacifist). A year after the Hague peace conference, she tried to collect the acts for a book in which she registered the partly nice and marvellous speeches. She prefaced the book. I ask to take into consideration that one year had passed, after Bertha von Suttner could have seen in this work of the peace conference. She already anticipated the results, after one year had passed. In the meantime, in the diametrical contrast to it, we had the bloody Transvaal war (1899-1902) with rejected mediation, and today we have war again (Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905).

Looking around in the world today, we see the struggle of many noble human beings for the idea of peace, the love for a global peace already in the hearts of high-minded idealists, and, nevertheless, so much blood has hardly flowed in other times on our earth as now. It is this a serious, very serious affair for everybody who also deals with the big mental problems. On the one hand, we have the dedicated apostles of peace with their activity. We have the excellent achievements of Bertha von Suttner, who was able to portray the frightfulness of fight and war with rare grandeur. However, we do not forget that we also have the reverse. If we do not forget that also many are among our judicious fellow-men who assure us, on the other side, again and again that they consider the fight as necessary for the progress, as something that steels the forces. Only in the fight against the opposition, the forces would grow. The researcher who has attracted so many thinkers (Ernst Haeckel), how often has he pronounced that he wishes the powerful war and that only the powerful war can further the forces in nature. Maybe he has not pronounced it so radically, but many people think that way.

Even within our spiritual-scientific movement, voices were being raised that it would be a weakness, almost a sin against the spirit of national strength if one objects anything against the war that has led to national honour, to national power. Today, in any case, the views in this area are confronted still harshly, very harshly. However, the Hague peace conference has brought one thing. It has brought the votes of a range of people who lead the public problems. A big range of the representatives of the states gave their consent in those days,—that the Hague conference could take place. One should believe that a thing that has found such an approval from such places had to be promising in the most eminent sense.

In order to be able to comment this spiritual-scientifically, we have to look a little deeper into the matters. If we pursue the question of peace as an ideal question as it has developed in the course of time, and pursue the facts of fight and quarrel, nevertheless, we must probably say that how this ideal of a general peace is pursued challenges our attention and an investigation. Many of those who practised the art of war are those in whose hearts pain and maybe even aversion of the results and effects of the war exist. Such matters induce us to ask, do the wars generally come from anything that can be eliminated by principles and views? Who looks deeper into the human souls, knows that two separate, completely different ways cause the war. One is that which we call power of judgement and reason that we call idealism, the other is the human desire, the human inclinations, the human sympathies, and antipathies. Some things would be different in the world if it were possible to regulate the desires, wishes and passions according to the principles of heart and mind without further ado. This is not possible, but the reverse has always been there in humanity up to now. For that which the passion wants, which the desire requires, the reason, even the heart creates a mask with its idealism.

If you pursue the history of the human evolution, you can put the question repeatedly, if you see lighting up principles or idealism here and there: which desires and passions are lurking in the background? If we consider this, it might be very well possible that one is not yet able to make use of the nicest principles in this question, then it could be that something else is necessary because simply the human passions, impulses and desires are not yet advanced enough to follow the idealism of the singles. You see that the question lies deeper, and we must grasp it deeper. We must really have a look at the human soul and its basic forces if we want to assess the whole thing correctly. The human being does not always see enough of his development. He often sees a small span of time only, and that is why an extensive worldview must open the look for us which, on the one side, leads deeply and allows us, on the other side, to overview the bigger periods, so that we get a judgment about the forces which have to lead us into the future.

Let us have a look once at the human soul, where we may study it in a point deeply and thoroughly. Today we have something that we could touch eight days ago, from another side. There we have a scientific theory, the so-called Darwinism. Within this scientific view, a concept plays a big role. One calls this concept the struggle for existence. At the sign of the struggle for existence, our natural sciences stood completely for decades, our whole view. The naturalists said, those beings in the world that survive in the struggle for existence best of all will remain and the others pass. So that we do not need to be surprised if those beings we have round ourselves are the best fitted ones, because they have developed through millions of years. The most efficient ones have survived; the unfit ones have declined.

The struggle for existence became the slogan of the researchers. Where from did this struggle come? It did not come from nature. Darwin himself, although he looks at it in a bigger style than his successors, took it from a view of Malthus (Thomas Robert M., 1766-1834), spreading about the human history, that view that the earth produces food in such a progression that this increase is much lower than the increase of population. Those who have dealt with these matters know that one says, the increase of food rises arithmetically, the increase of population geometrically. This causes a struggle for existence, a war of all against all.

Starting from it, Darwin also assumed the struggle for existence in the organic nature. This view does not correspond to a mere idea, but to the modern ways of life. This struggle for existence has become an actual reality as the general economic competition in the conditions of the single persons. One has seen this struggle for existence in the next nearness; one has regarded it as something natural in the human realm and has then accepted it in the natural sciences.

Ernst Haeckel, who has almost regarded war as a cultural lever, starts from such views. Struggle makes strong, the weak ones should decline. Civilisation demands that the weak ones perish.

Then economics have applied this struggle to the human world again. Thus, we have great theories within our economics, within our social theories which regard the struggle for existence as completely justified and as something that cannot be separated from the human evolution. One has further gone back on these things—not without prejudice, but with these principles—to primeval times, and there one tried to study the life of barbaric savage tribes. One believed to be able to eavesdrop on the human cultural development and believed to find the fiercest principle of war there.

Huxley (Thomas Henry H., 1825-1895, biologist) said, if we look at the nature of the animals, the struggle for existence resembles a gladiator fight, and this is a physical principle. If we look from the higher animals at the lower ones and if we get ourselves into the previous way of the world evolution, the world of facts teaches us everywhere that we live in a general struggle for existence.

You understand that this could be expressed and could be represented as a universal principle. Somebody who is clear in his mind knows that words are not pronounced which are not founded deep in the human soul says to himself that the whole soul constitution of our best men starts even today always from the view that struggle in the human race, even in the whole nature is justified.

Now you may say: but the researchers may have been quite humane persons who longed for peace, for balance and wished it in their deepest idealism. However, their profession, their science convinced them that it is not in such a way, and perhaps they wrote down their theory with a bleeding heart.—This would be an objection unless anything else had entered first. We are allowed to say that among all of those who believed to think scientifically and economically, the quoted theory was quite usual in whole Western Europe and Central Europe.

The view was quite usual that war and struggle are a physical principle from which one cannot escape. One had got rid of the old view of Rousseau (Jean-Jaques R., 1712-1778, philosopher) thoroughly—one believed—that only the human perversion has brought struggle and war, opposition and disharmony to the general peace of nature. This view of Rousseau was still spread at the end of the 18th century that if one looks into the life and activity of nature, which is still unaffected from the super civilisation of the human being, one sees harmony and peace then everywhere. Only the human being with his despotism and civilisation has brought fight and quarrel into the world.

This view of Rousseau still existed and the researchers assured us in the last third of the 19th century: yes, it would be nice if it were in such a way, but it is not the case. The facts teach us in another manner. Nevertheless, we ask ourselves seriously, has the feeling spoken or have the facts spoken? We could little argue if the facts spoke this way.

There a strange man appeared in 1880, a man who held a talk in the naturalists' meeting of 1880 in St. Petersburg in Russia, a talk that is of great importance for those who are thoroughly interested in this question. This man is the zoologist Kessler (Karl Fedorovich K., 1815-1881). He died shortly after. His talk dealt with the principle of mutual help in nature. For all those who deal with such matters seriously a quite new feature emerges from the research and scientific maturity that is stimulated by it. Here for the first time in the modern times facts of the whole nature were put together, which prove that all former theories of the struggle for existence do not comply with reality.

In this talk, the phenomenon is discussed and proven by facts that the animal species do not develop struggling for existence, but that there is a struggle for existence between two species only in exceptional cases, but not within the species. On the contrary, the individuals of a species help each other and those species survive whose individuals have a certain bent of mutual help. Not struggle, but mutual help grants long existence. One got a new point of view with it. However, modern research brought about because of a strange concatenation of circumstances that a personality that stands for the present on the most unbelievable point of view, Prince Kropotkin (Pyotr Alexeyevich K., 1842-1921, Russian anarchist, philosopher), has continued the matter. He could show with animals and tribes with an enormous sum of proven facts which significance this principle of mutual help has in nature and in the human life. I can recommend to everybody to study the German translation of this book (Mutual Aid; A Factor of Evolution, 1902). This book brings in a sum of concepts and ideas to the human being that are like a school for a spiritual attitude. Now, however, we understand these facts only correctly if we light up them esoterically if we penetrate these facts with the bases of spiritual science. I could demonstrate examples speaking quite distinctly; however, you can read them in the cited book. The principle of mutual help in nature means: those advance most of all who have developed this principle best.—The facts speak distinctly and will speak more and more distinctly for us.

If we speak of a single animal species in spiritual science, we speak of it like of a single human individual. An animal species is to us the same in a lower field as in higher fields the single human individual is. I have said it already once here: you must make a fact clear to yourselves to understand which contrast is there between the human being and the whole animal realm. This contrast expresses itself in the sentence: the human being has a biography; the animal has no biography. With the animal, we are contented if we have described the type. With the human being, we say: father, grandfather, grandson, and son; with the lion, this does not differ in such a way that we should especially describe any single one. Indeed, I know that one can argue a lot; I know that somebody who loves a dog or a monkey believes to be able to write a biography of the dog or the monkey. However, a biography should not contain what the other can know about the being, but what the being itself has known. Self-consciousness belongs to a biography, and in this sense, only the human being has a biography. This corresponds to a description of the whole animal type or species. The external expression of this fact is that any animal group has a group-soul and that any individual human being has a soul in himself. I was also allowed to discuss here already that a hidden world is directly connected with our physical world, the astral world that does not consist of such objects and beings whom you can perceive with the senses but it is made out of the substance from which our passions and desires are made. If you check the human being, you can see: that he has led his soul down to the physical plane or to the physical world. In this physical world, there is no individual soul of the animal. However, you find an individual soul of the animal that is on the so-called astral plane, in the astral world hidden behind our physical world. The animal groups have individual souls in the astral world.

There we have the difference between the human being and the animal realm. If we ask ourselves now, what fights in reality if we pursue the struggle for existence in the animal realm?—Then we must say: in reality it is the astral struggle of the passions and desires behind this struggle that is fought out between the species in the animal realm. It is rooted in the species or group souls.—However, if there were a struggle for existence within an animal species, then it would be in such a way, as if the human soul fought against itself in its different parts. This is an important truth. It cannot be the rule that there is a struggle within an animal species, but the struggle for existence can only take place between the species. For the soul of the whole species is uniform, and because it is uniform, it must control the parts.

The mutual aid within the animal realm that we can study within the species is simply the expression of the uniform activity of the species or group soul. If you look at all the examples you find cited in the mentioned interesting book, then you get a good knowledge of how the group souls work. For example, if an individual of a certain cancer species is thrown on the back by chance, so that it cannot get up itself again, then a bigger number of cancers comes along and helps it up. This mutual support results from a common soul organ of the cancer species.

Study once the way how beetles support themselves to maintain or protect a common brood, to master a dead mouse etcetera, how they combine there, support themselves, carry out common work, then you see the group soul working. You can study this up to the highest animal species. It is true: somebody who has a sense of this activity of mutual aid with the animals gets an insight, a concept, a notion of the activity of the group souls, too. Just there he can appropriate the vision with the eyes of the spirit. There the eye becomes sun-like.

However, the human being has a group soul that has become individual. In every single human being such a group soul lives. Thus, the single human being is able to fight against any single other human being like an animal group soul fights against other group souls. Let us now have a look at the purpose of the fight, whether the fight is there for the sake of the fight in the world evolution. What has emerged from the struggle of the species? Those species have remained which mostly support themselves mutually, and those which are most warlike against themselves have perished. That is the natural principle. That is why we have to say that in the external nature the developmental progress consists in the fact that peace takes the place of struggle. Where nature has arrived at a certain point, at the big turning point, there is balance; there rules peace to which the whole struggle has developed.

After all, take into consideration that plants as species struggle for existence against each other. However, consider how nicely and splendidly the plant and the animal realms support themselves mutually in their common developmental process: the animal inhales oxygen, the plant exhales oxygen. Thus, a peaceful universe is possible. What nature produces this way by its strength is determined for the human being that he produces it consciously from his individual nature. Step by step, the human being has advanced and step by step that has formed with him, which we recognise as the self-consciousness of our individual soul. We must look at our international situation in such a way that we envisage its previous development and trace its future trend. Go back to former times, and then you see group souls still in the human realm ruling first. They exist in little tribes and families; there we deal also with group souls of the human beings. The farther you look back in the world evolution, the more compact, the more uniform the human beings appear who are united that way. It is like a spirit that penetrated the ancient rural community that then became the primitive state. You could study that it was a completely different matter when Alexander the Great waged war with his hosts, from waging war today with human masses of more developed individual intentions. One must light up this properly. For this is the way of the progressive culture that the human beings become more and more individual, more independent and more conscious, more self-conscious. From groups, from common characteristics the human race has developed. Even as we have group souls that guide and direct the single animal species, the great group souls guide and direct the. The human being grows out of the guidance of the group soul more and more and becomes more and more independent by his progressive education. This independence implied that he is really—while he faced his fellow men in the groups more or less inimically—in a struggle for existence penetrating the whole humanity. This is our international situation, this is the destiny of our race in particular, and this is our immediate present.

Spiritual science distinguishes five successive races, consisting of seven sub-races, in the present world evolution at first. The first sub-race developed in ancient times, in the distant India. This sub-race was penetrated with a priest culture. This priest culture gave our present race the first impulses. It had come over from the Atlantean culture that was on that ground which forms the ground of the Atlantic now. This sub-race set the tone; then other sub-races followed, and now we are in the fifth. This is no division that is borrowed from anthropology or any race theory but a view that is discussed closer in the sixth talk of this series. The fifth sub-race furthered the distinct nature, the individual consciousness of the human being most notably. Christianity prepared the human being really to attain such an individual consciousness: the human being had to gain this self-consciousness. If we look back at the time before Christ when in ancient Egypt the huge pyramids were built, there an army of slaves did the work the difficulties and efforts of which no one has a right idea today. It was just a matter of course for these workers to build peacefully for the most time. They built because at that time the teaching of reincarnation and karma was a self-evident fact. No book says this to you, but this becomes clear to you bit by bit if you penetrate into spiritual science. Any slave who worked his hands raw and was in misery knew: this is a life of many lives, and I have what I suffer now to bear as a result of that which I prepared in my previous lives. However, if this is not the case, I experience the effect of the present life in a future life; he who orders me today was on the same point of view as I am today, or he will still be on it.

However, with this attitude, the whole self-conscious life on earth would never have developed, and the higher powers who guide the destiny of the human race in the large scale knew what they did when they atrophied the consciousness of reincarnation and karma for a while, for millenniums. This was the great previous development of Christianity that it atrophied the vision of a compensating Otherworld, and has drawn attention to the immense importance of the life on earth.

It may have gone too far in its radical realisation, but this had to happen, because the matters of the world do not develop according to the logic, but according to other principles. One has deduced eternal punishments from this life on earth; the tendency of development led to it if it is also illogical. Thus, humanity has learnt to be conscious of this one earth existence. Thereby the earth, this physical plane, became infinitely important to the human being. That had to become that way. Everything that happens in material respect could develop only from an attitude that is based on an education for this earth, apart from the ideas of reincarnation and karma. We see the result of this education: the human being has entirely settled in the physical plane. For the individual soul could only develop there, there it is separated, enclosed in this body and can look out only as an isolated special existence through its senses. With it, we have more and more of human rivalry, more and more of the effect of the special existence brought into the human race. We are not allowed to wonder that the human race is not ripe by a long stretch even today to eliminate the results of this education again.

We have seen that the present species of the animals developed to their perfection because of their mutual aid and that struggle was there only from species to species. However, if the human individuality is the same as the group soul of the animals, the human soul is only able to get a self-consciousness going through the same struggle as the animals outside in nature. As long as the human being does not yet have developed complete independence, the struggle will still last. However, the human being is appointed to consciously achieve what is there outside on the physical plane. Hence, it will lead him on the stages of consciousness to mutual aid and support because the human race is one single species. Only after the whole humanity has attained the peaceableness, as it is to be found in the animal realm, an entire, all-embracing peace will be. The struggle did not further the single animal species but mutual assistance and support. What lives as a group soul in the animal species as a single soul lives peacefully with itself, this is the uniform soul. Only the human individual soul is a particular one in this physical special being.

This is the great achievement of our soul which we obtain from the spiritual development that we really recognise the common soul that penetrates the whole human race. We do not receive it as an unaware present, but we have to get it consciously. It is the task of spiritual science to develop this uniform soul in the whole human race really. This expresses itself in our first principle: to found a brotherhood on the whole earth, without taking into consideration race, gender, skin colour etcetera. This is the recognition of the soul that is common to the whole humanity. The purification has to take place down to the passions, so that everybody understands that the same soul lives in the fellow man. In the physical, we are separated, in the mental we are a unity as the ego of humanity. However, only in the real life we can grasp and adapt this. Hence, it can be only has to foster the spiritual life that penetrates us with the common breath of this uniform soul. Not the present human beings with their principles, but the future ones who develop the consciousness of this common soul more and more establish the basis of a new race that is completely merged in mutual assistance. Hence, our first principle means a completely different thing than one usually says. We do not fight; we also do not fight against war or against anything else because struggle does not lead at all to higher development. From the struggle, every animal species has developed as a special race. Leave all struggle round us to the vicious ones who are not yet ripe enough to seek for that which the common soul of the human race finds in the spiritual life.

A real society of peace strives for spiritual knowledge, and the real peace movement is the spiritual-scientific movement. It is that peace movement as a peace movement can be in practice, because it aims at that which lives in the human being and progresses to future.

The spiritual life always developed from the East. The East was the area where the spiritual life was fostered. Here in the West was the area where the external material civilisation developed. Hence, one sees to the East as an area where the human beings are dreaming and sleeping. However, who knows what takes action in the souls of those whom we call dreaming or sleeping if they ascend to worlds that the western people do not know?—We have to get out of our material civilisation considering everything that is in the physical world round us. We have to ascend to the spiritual with everything that we have conquered on the physical plane. It is significant and not only symbolical that Darwinism still found Huxley as a representative who had to say from his western view: nature shows us that the apes struggled against each other, and it was the strongest who prevailed, while the slogan went out from the East: support, mutual aid consolidates our future. We have a particular task here in Central Europe. Nothing would avail us to be unilaterally English or unilaterally Oriental. We must combine the dawn of the East and the physical science of the West to a great harmony. Then we understand how the idea of the future is combined with the idea of the struggle for the special existence.

It is more than by chance that in that basic book of theosophy from which somebody who wants to get involved deeper in the spiritual life can find light on the path the second chapter ends meaningfully with a sentence that harmonises with this idea. You can read it not like a phrase in Light on the Path (1885, by Mabel Collins, 1851-1927, theosophical author), but because the spiritual development leads the human being to the knowledge of the common soul that settles in the single soul. At the same time, the nice words agree with which both chapters of Light on the Path close. Somebody who delves completely in this marvellous little book which fulfils the soul not only with the contents which make us internally devout and give the human being real clairvoyance because of the strength of the words sees the balance in detail if he lives through what he reads in every chapter. Then the last words light up in the soul: peace is with you. This will be finally imparted to the whole humanity by the mental power, which we look for and foster. Then the human genius bends over the human race spiritually whose principal words will be: peace is with you.—This opens the right perspective for us. There we have to speak not only of peace, not only establish peace as an ideal, conclude contracts, long for decisions of an arbitration panel, there we have to foster the spiritual life, then we cause the strength in ourselves that pours out over the whole humanity as a strength of mutual aid.

We do not fight; we do something else: we foster love, and we know that with this care of love the fight must disappear. We do not confront fight with fight. We confront fight with love, while we nourish and cherish it. This is something positive. We work on ourselves pouring out love and found a society, which is built on love. This is our ideal. We carry out an ancient saying in a Christian way if we penetrate this emotionally and vividly. A new Christianity or rather the original Christianity will awake for the new humanity. Buddha gave his people a saying that envisages such a care. However, Christianity also has such a care of love in even nicer words, if one understands them properly: you do not overcome fight with fight, or hatred with hatred but you really overcome fight and hatred only with love.

It was not at all that long ago that one considered as something unscientific in certain circles to speak about the human soul as a particular entity. The least understanding is there today if one speaks even about the mind or spirit besides the soul. The subject, which we set ourselves today, is rather extensive. I am only able to show some outlines. Within the spiritual-scientific worldview we are led to that older division of the human being, which is a trichotomy compared with that which has still validity almost entirely in the consciousness of the present humanity, compared with the division in two parts of body and soul. The trichotomy to which the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview has to go back again is that of body, soul and mind or spirit. Let us come to an understanding first of all about what we understand, actually, by body, soul and mind or spirit. The body of the human being is something about which we do not require many ideas to understand it. However, on the other side, the idea of the physical, of the external physical is so much the only thing that occupies our present humanity that the understanding about the difference of soul and mind and already about the entity of the soul is rather difficult. Today we have to be mindful—in contrast to some other talks I have held here—of a rather intimate exactness of our concepts and ideas which we want to develop here and, hence, I ask to be allowed to engage your attention to finer distinctions in the human ideas.

If a human being stands before you, you will admit without further ado that in the space, which the concerning person fills, his body exists. Because your senses attest this human body to you. However, the human being can look at himself with his senses at least partially, and we can say without thinking, the human being is a bodily being for another sensory-gifted human being. However, in the space, which the human being fills, even more exists certainly, than what your senses can see. It is maybe for the human life—understood in its entirety—the least that the other human being can see with his eyes and touch with his hands. For if the human being speaks about his life, he speaks very seldom about his bodily appearance perceptible to the senses. Then he speaks about his destiny, about joy and sorrow, about pain and everything that lives inside and is not perceptible to the senses at first.

A human being may stand before you and another beside him. What your senses perceive of both human beings is not the essential at first, but it is to be added that perhaps in the one human being a sad soul lives and in the other human being a joyful, happy soul exists. In both cases, the internal being of the person fills the space somewhat different from the physical existence. If you put a blind person before another person, this blind person does not perceive the bodily existence of the other person at first. He may be tempted to state under circumstances—if he does not take notice with his sense of touch or in another way—that nobody is in the room because his eye is unable to see. One just needs senses to be convinced of an external sensory existence, senses that are able to perceive this external bodily existence.

Now we must ask ourselves, would this external bodily existence not be there if one did not perceive it? Would I not stand also in this place if on all sides nothing but blind and deaf people were who cannot see and hear me? As for me, I would be there, I would be in myself. Just as I am in myself according to my bodily existence, and this must be distinguished from the perception by the others. We have now to soar a view that the same difference exists for that which I have called the second way of existence, for the desire and pain, for the life, which fills the space, but this space fulfilling is not perceptible to the senses. If a person stands before a blind person and this blind person becomes suddenly sighted, the external existence becomes a discernible existence for him. Then the question arises: could not be joy and pain, rage and passion—not perceptible to the senses at first, but living also in the human being like his red blood, his nerves and bones—a discernible entity perceptible to the other human beings?

The human being knows what he can perceive. He is a developing being, a being that has developed from imperfect levels in a distant past to his present existence. All organs, which are at and in the human being, have developed gradually. The abilities of seeing and hearing developed bit by bit; the external physical world became a discernible world for the human being, a world that he knows, that he can observe. If the human being develops that way, could we not ask there, whether he is not also able to improve himself further? May it become discernible to him what is not discernible to him even today?—Just as the room in which a human being stands is dark for a blind person at first and he starts perceiving colours and the physical figure if he becomes sighted, nonetheless, it could also be that that which still lives in the room what flashes through the soul would also be made visible, discernible. The human being was led to his external, sensuous visibility by the external forces of the world. He has added nothing there. He was put on the physical plane by the order of nature, equipped with senses to perceive the sensuous world. However, the human being himself can take in hand his further development; he can make himself able to experience other things except the sensuous world round him.

This development of a higher life was always nourished and cherished in certain human communities from times immemorial. Just as the human beings have sensuous eyes and sensuous ears at first, the ability to perceive with the eyes and ears of the soul—if I may express myself this way—was developed by the own activity of single human beings. As true as it is that the eye if it opens perceives a coloured world round itself, where, otherwise, darkness was, it is also true that the mental eye is unlocked by a suitable training, so that that which lives in the affects, in desire and grief becomes discernible. The instruction that leads to such higher development of the human being is different from the usual lessons. Our ninth talk will discuss that in detail what one can generally discuss on this internal development publicly. Somebody who wants to know more about this internal development can find out more about that. Today I can refer only to the ninth talk. However, the most necessary should be suggested.

The present external civilisation knows very little about those instructions, which the human being must receive to get mental eyes and ears. Only marginal knowledge is there. However, just the spiritual-scientific worldview is appointed to rouse an understanding of the supersensible because it is a necessary requirement for the culture. Today all lessons intend to fill the mind and reason mostly. However, this means that a world of ideas is woken in us that is connected with the external sensuous world. Our external sensuous knowledge attracts more and more increasing attention. However, this is not such necessary; it does not deepen the human being, as splendid as the achievements of our civilisation may be. There was another instruction at all times, an instruction that does not aim at the external expansion of the sensory world, but at the deepening of the world being. I describe it to you only with a few words to give an idea of it.

Everything that you read in the scientific writings today has come about by external sensuous observation. Science considers it more or less as something that must not contain what has not come about by external observation. One presupposes that the human being should remain, as he is that he already has the ability to absorb what this science can offer him. However, it is completely different if it concerns the instruction, which should lead the human being to the ability of mental perception. In such schools, one taught something else. At first, no teaching material is handed over to the student that contains as many concepts as possible. Rather a student went to a master and the master accepted him if he considered his disposition as ripe for developing the internal senses. Then he had not to take up much new contents in himself, but he had to become another human being at first. He did not get a book, not special contents, but so-called eternal contents of thought at first, something eternal that was due to those human beings who were further in their development than the remaining civilised human beings were. We have to come to an agreement about what we understand by such eternal contents of thought.

Try once to look around in your soul and to ask yourselves: how much of the ideas and thoughts living in me, of the feelings and what is, otherwise, in my soul, belongs to the time and the place in which I live?—Try once to think about what moves your soul from the morning up to the evening, and what would be different, completely different, if you were in Moscow instead of in Berlin, and if you did not live at the beginning of the 20th century, but at the end of the 18th century. Subtract everything that you have taken this way from space and time in which you live, from your soul contents. Try to understand how much of that which you imagine would also apply to a person in another place and time. It is not much. However, there are things, which do not only apply to today and to Berlin, but also to other places and other times. If we ascend in this sense, we detect more and more that our sense is led, like by a great spiritual guide of humanity, to such eternal contents of thought.

The religious scriptures of all times are full of such things, which are independent of space and time. To mention the most trivial I can say that mathematics is something that is independent of space and time. What deals with time and space is itself temporal and transient. However, if the soul devotes itself to the imperishable, it becomes everlasting and imperishable and absorbs what is immortal. Hence, the master gives everlasting contents of thought to the soul at first. The contents that are only related to the core of the soul can be given to everybody, indifferently whether he lives in America, in Japan or in Africa.

Then the student had to cut himself off the sensuous outside world and to live with that which lives as strength in him. With immense patience, the deepening had to happen on the inside of the soul. The human inside is something living, and as from the mere cell mass the wonderful construction of the physical eye has originated, the spiritual eye originates in the soul from the everlasting spiritual contents if it becomes engrossed that way and lives in meditation. The physical eye was not always there. It has originated from the confluence of the external physical forces. The human being is able to wake the spiritual eye in the soul if he can be developed by the spiritual contents. Such pupils awaited and awaited in patience, they had to use a big part of the day to their exercises. There were times in which this was possible. Thus, they waited until the internal forces woken by the mental deepening gave them the perception of that which filled the space as desire and grief, as instincts, passions, and impulses.

A physical eye sees because the external source of light throws rays on an object. One cannot see without light. Eye and light belong together. In the sensuous outside world, eye and light are two separate things. In the soul, the spiritual eye is woken, and this is at the same time the source of a new mental light. We ourselves must emit this light which makes the mental visible that stands before us. If you have received the inner light this way, by sinking in your inside and the awakening of the internal life linked with it, your own astral body starts shining from the inside and lights up everything in truth and reality like the sun the objects. However, you do not light up the external world, but that which is mental which lives in the human being as an affect; this becomes visible by the rays, which you yourselves emit. Thus, the human being is able to make discernible for himself what is not discernible externally.

All great guides of humanity who have spoken to us about the soul—do not believe that they had empty phrases and words in mind only. One knows nothing of the depths that have moved and caused the human culture if one believes only in the sense world. One normally speaks from the immediate view. Envisage, for example, the relation of soul and body as I have just discussed it, then you must say to yourselves, this relation of soul and body is such that something mental penetrates the bodily that stands before. As true as it is that this body that you call your own is fed from the outside by foodstuffs and is thereby animated and supplemented from outside, as true it is that this body is animated, penetrated and lighted by the mental. If this body sleeps, the mental is not in it at first, then it is separated from it, it is outside it. Then we cannot speak of the fact that the mental streams into the body. A German theosophist, a deep spirit, characterised this relation of soul and body in a wonderfully attractive way, which one understands only properly if one makes such requirements as we have just done. This theosophist—we are allowed to call him a theosophist—speaks about the sleep, when the soul is not in the body, in a peculiar way. He says, “Sleep is the digestion of the soul; the body digests the soul. Being awake means the effective state of the soul—the body enjoys the soul.” It is a wonderful comparison. As one enjoys the food with the absorption of nutrients, the body enjoys—this theosophist thinks—the soul, which lives in it. As well as the body, after it has enjoyed the food, digests it, the body digests in the sleeping state what the soul has sunk into it. This saying of our German poet and theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801, poet) is very beautiful. You can find a source of the most beautiful spiritual-scientific wisdom with him. Only the spiritual-scientific worldview can understand him. I could state countless things of the German culture that would show you how the great seers of humanity spoke of soul, body, and their relation to each other with expertise.

The third thing about which we have to speak is the mind or spirit. We summarise desire and grief, pain and joy, passion, instinct and avidity and what else under the name “soul.” If one asks what the soul is, then we say, what gets the living existence inside at first. Someone can attain the perception of this soul who has received an education as I have just described it. Mind or spirit exists not only inside of the human being, but also everywhere in the world. You can convince yourselves of that by a very banal thinking activity. All human beings in the world think, think in that which is round them. They get knowledge of the world round them with their thoughts. These thoughts are not only expression of that which lives in the outside world, but also of something that does not live in the outside world. If you oversee the universe, your sense sees an enormous sum of stars and processes, and then there comes your reflection and gets a concept of these stars. If your sense sees a drop of water, your reflection gets a concept of this drop of water. Briefly speaking, you are not contented to perceive the things; you also want to understand them. This is something different from mere sensuous perceiving. If you have a glass without water in it, you cannot pour out water from it. If no thought and no concept were in the space outside, one could also not get out them. It would be illusionary to think about the world if the world were not built up according to thoughts. The stone about which you think and which you understand must have originated from a thought, otherwise the thought could not be got out. If you do not want to get involved in absurd contradictions, you have to admit that the thoughts are as true in the world outside as the thoughts in your head inside. You think, and the thoughts that live in you are not different from those, which have built up the world.

Thus, we have three aspects:

1. The sensuous in the world, the material existence, perceived by the external senses;

2. The soul which we experience and which that soul, which is instructed in that way about which I have spoken, can also perceive, and

3. The mind or spirit that we assume all over the world as that which flows through it like a fluid and announces the being of the things to us at first.

The human being can perceive this spirit first of all where it appears as such. What he can perceive is its external physiognomy, its sensuous expression. You do not see the spirit in the world, but its sensuous expression.

The human being thinks in the spirit. Indeed, the thought lives in the world, but the human being cannot see it. He can only think it. As true as you yourselves think about the world and as true as a spiritual mirror of the world forms, as true it also forms in every other human being. This other human being is not only desire and passion, but this spiritual mirror of the world also lives in him. One can perceive this with the spiritual eyes and ears. It is true that that internal training about which I have spoken produces not only the ability to perceive the soul of the human being, but the human being can also develop the ability in himself to see the thoughts of his fellow-man, to understand and perceive the worldview, the whole environment. When the human being perceives not only the external portrayal of his thought, but the thought itself, when he is able to open his spiritual ears to the universe, then he will really perceive the thoughts, the spirit of the world. Then the star appears to him not only as a star, but the star says something to him. The stones, the rock crystal, for example, appear to him not only water-clear, but it also announces its being to him. Then the human being can face everything in a new way with such a deepening, as it has been suggested, so that the things speak sounding round him, say their innermost names to him, announce their being to us.

The old Pythagoreans meant this. They had such a training and initiated into such a hearing of the world speaking of the sphere music. It was not a mere comparison; it was the immediate percipience and the bringing to awareness of that which is hidden, otherwise, behind the things. The spiritual eyes disperse this veil of nature, and the harmony that is hidden behind this veil starts sounding. Goethe also means that with his words in the Prologue in Heaven (Faust I). You read no phrase there. It would be a phrase if Goethe spoke of the sounding sun. However, no, he speaks: “In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres the sun still sings its glorious song and it completes with thread of thunder the journey it has been assigned.” These words sound from the world music of the world spirit. Goethe continues this later once again, where he says, “Hearken! Hear the onrush of the Horae! In these sounds we spirits hear the new day already born.” If the human being develops this ability, he becomes aware of the spiritual. Then his soul perceives the thought as distinctly as the usual human being perceives his body.

Body, soul, and spirit are the three members of the human being. He is a bodily, physical being at first. In his inside, the mental existence lives and develops. In this the spirit of the whole world—as far as the human being can grasp it—is reflected and lives as the third member. From the outside into the inside and from the inside again to the outside, this is the way, which the human being walks from the body through the soul to the spirit. What gives us generally the possibility to have such a mental existence? We owe this possibility to the fact that we can live in the soul. We live in desire and grief, in pain and joy even if we do not perceive it externally. We also live in our body, but we perceive it also from the outside. It is a difference between these two fields of existence. In the spiritual-scientific worldview, one calls that which one has round himself as one has the external bodily round himself: existence of complete consciousness. Our consciousness combines with the bodily existence first. This consciousness lives only on the physical plane that way and we call that the physical plane, which spreads out round us to the senses. What lives in our soul is different. One calls it life, and one calls this life existence on the so-called astral plane. The physical plane and the astral plane are both realms in which the human being lives. On the physical plane, the human being is aware, on the astral plane, he lives only. There he forms the things that are outside him not yet consciously. However, he lives in the mental or astral.

The third kind of existence is the spiritual existence. In general, as present human beings we do not yet live in it or only partially at most. However, while we settle in the spirit, this spirit combines with our soul bit by bit. We could say that this soul spreads over the whole environment, it becomes bigger and bigger. If the human being seizes the outside world, grasps the sense and the spirit of the outside world, then he is no longer concluded in his inside. Then he walks daringly out of himself and combines with the things around him. Compare the animal with the human being in this respect. The animal lives, so to speak, completely in the soul. It does not create concepts of the environment. It does not spread its soul over the spiritual of the world. This is also the difference between the human being and the animal. The animal lives and weaves, so to speak, in his inside. However, the human being emerges again from his inside. We could also say, the human being exceeds his self (German nonce word: sich entselbsten). The human being has always soul, inner life. This inner life is there. However, the development of the human being consists of the fact that he spreads this inner life over his environment, over that what is around him, over the spirit; it streams out over the whole world. If this happens, the human soul combines with the everlasting of the human being. Then this marriage of the human soul with the everlasting, the world spirit, takes place. When this union of the human being with the everlasting world spirit takes place, this whole sum of joy and grief changes, this whole world of impulses, desires, and passions in our inside, the whole astral body of the human being becomes different. That desire, those instincts of the human being, which he got, when he arose from nature's hand, which he has in common with the animal, all this soul life disappears and passes and belongs as such to the transient. Try to visualise once what lives in such instincts, sufferings, and joys in the human being and how this life takes place in the human being. They are connected with the transient.

The human being starts stepping out of the circle of this transient. He refines his impulses and desires, his passions, he ceases to appreciate or displease what is bound to place and time. He rises to that which lies behind the things and is just hidden by the veil of the sensuous. This is something important if the human being starts enjoying not only what his eye gives him, but also what the impressions of his eyes bring from the spiritual world to his soul. This is a great moment in the human development when the human being is no longer following his sensuous instincts only, but is led by supersensible motives, by moral ideas and concepts that do not penetrate from the outside but from the spirit. Just as the body is interspersed with the soul, the soul is interspersed with the spirit. Consider the human being on certain former stages of development, there you find his physical being, which is interspersed with the soul. While the human being stands as a body before you, he realises his existence in his desires and passions. More and more comes from the supersensible into the soul. It is infiltrated with the spiritual. This process lifts the soul out of time and space. What is beyond time and space is imperishable, remains as the everlasting in the soul. Thus, you see that just as the soul is embedded in a body, the spirit is embedded in the soul. As the imbedding of the soul in the body points us to a distant past, in which they were connected bit by bit with each other, the union of the soul with the spirit points to the future of humanity. This development takes place gradually. It takes place at first in such a way that the spirit penetrates the soul more and more.

Consider how the beginning of the spiritual contents is in the soul at first. Imagine, you have an object before yourselves. You look at it as a sensuous object. You turn round: the sensuous object is no longer before you. However, a picture of this sensuous object is before you. We call this the idea of the object, the memory of it in a certain respect. This remains in the soul. This is the first element that the spirit gains ground in the soul as memory. We could not absorb anything from the spirit of our environment if we were not able to know anything about the objects when they do no longer stand before us. The first element of the spirit lives in the human being. It is to the objects of the environment, as it is also to our own soul. Get clear in your mind, which role memory plays in our soul life. The animal completely lives in the present. Of course, the levels or degrees, which I indicate, are more extremely expressed than they are in reality. The animals have also to go through a certain spiritual development, but I have to express it somewhat extremely to bring the matter to mind.

What the animal feels and experiences today is the central issue for it. The spiritualisation of his whole being means to the human being that he is able to live beyond the present. While we take the memory with us from our spiritual into our present, we spiritualise ourselves more and more; thereby we grasp the spirit in the first element. I have the spiritual before myself, if I remember the experience of yesterday. Memory is one of the most important moments for the spiritualisation of the soul life. Memory ties on the spiritual-mental existence that is connected with the external from birth up to the present. If we could not remember the past days, we would have little spiritual contents only. There are tribes even today that do not have such memory. There are still tribes which forget the experience in the cold, and that is why they must look for a protecting shelter for themselves every evening anew. Somebody who strives for a higher development takes up the memory and trains it more and more. Here begins the possibility to look beyond our transient existence, which is enclosed between birth and death.

Imagine that you have made a point of bringing in sense and reason to life by memory, and of living not only in the present, but learning more and more to have the whole life like a tableau before yourselves, with the consciousness that that can flow out only from your whole temporal being what you want to accomplish. If this is the case and if this is used again to wake up the internal forces as I have indicated this just now when I spoke that you have to live up the soul contents by contemplation, then you can try to extend the review farther and farther, make it more and more concrete and go back to birth. You can do this. However, infinite patience belongs to it; we shall still speak of these methods. Then you also see that of the soul which is not enclosed between birth and death. Then you learn to tie in with other things what takes action within this life between birth and death. There you learn to tie in your present with your past by the very own consideration in the memory and to reasonably connect the effect of today with the cause of yesterday; there you learn to pursue the inner thread of cause and effect in your soul. Then the same strength, which leads you back to your present life, leads you beyond birth. Because you have learnt to look at cause and effect in the soul independently, you experience what was before your birth, how you lived before your birth.

By the gradual development of this sense, the human being gets knowledge of his previous lives. The principle of re-embodiment or reincarnation becomes a fact to him. Sharpening the sight for the temporal in the inside world we attain the mental ability to make reincarnation or re-embodiment a fact for us. What do we do in this case? In this case, we penetrate the soul with that which connects us with the mental. There our sight extends inside. While we grasp the spirit of the outside world by understanding the outside world, pour out our soul over the outside world, and extend it, we spread the consciousness about the mental itself coming beyond our birth. Thus, our sight extends more and more, and thus we look from that which is bound to place and time to that which follows each other in the sequence of times. From there, we take possession of the essence of the human being that is imperishable and everlasting.

The human being spiritualises himself more and more. The first stage is if he comes out of joy and sorrow and develops feelings for the supersensible, a sort of joy and sorrow. The further he develops this, the more Plato's beautiful sentence comes true to him: the body is transient because it subsists on transient food; however, the spirit is imperishable because it subsists on everlasting food.—The relationship of body, soul, and spirit is this way. The body passes. What you can see of the human being is handed over to the earth at death. However, what lives as joy and sorrow in the human being, the soul, has not originated at birth, but is tied together with something that extends beyond birth. Thus, the soul existence extends beyond the borders of birth and death. However, what the human being absorbs in himself, while he goes out of his soul again and combines with the spirit, connects this soul with the everlasting springs of existence. This deifies the soul. The human soul becomes visible outside the body. As far as it is bound to the body and is one with it, it is something transient. If the soul combines with the spiritual, it thereby becomes more and more everlasting and imperishable. With it, we come to the point where we understand what human self-knowledge is, what true cognition of the human inside is.

At first, the human being experiences his soul in his inside undergoing joy and sorrow. However, then this soul realises images which disappear again. Something revives that is hidden to the mere senses. The human being has as the bare thought in himself what revives there in the soul. However, he connects this thought with his soul in the course of his life. He learns to feel and sympathise with the spiritual and, in the end, he likes the spiritual with pleasure as he only liked the sensuous with pleasure before. The desire applies, in the end, to everything spiritual. Selfishness becomes the unselfish love of the imperishable. In selfishness, the human love is grasped in the soul. But while we grasp it deeply inside as spirit, we realise that we find this self in the whole remaining world, that we are connected with the whole remaining world and that as we are born from the physical it is as true that we are born as a spirit any time from the spiritual universe, the spiritual-divine world. If we look for our higher self, which exists like a spark in us, we see the spiritual in the whole environment. This is the great knowledge of wisdom that the Vedanta philosophy sums up in the saying: tat tvam asi—Thou art that.—If the human being is aware of his spirit and his development begins to go out into the world, then his self extends to the spirit of the universe, to an existence of a spirit self, and we are with our very own being everywhere. Then that which was mere understanding becomes emotionally related content, and this is the real elevation of the soul to the spirit, the elevation to the real spiritual life.

There is a beginning of the spiritual life; however, it is dry and cold. There are people who only become warm if it concerns something mental, human beings who are glad and suffer, only if it concerns something mental, pain and desire. They say that the spiritual is something dull and cold. If they look up to the stars, they regard the thoughts about them as abstract; but they are dry and cold in their intellect. However, if the soul seizes the spirit, we feel, we think not only with the universe, because then the view changes by reason and mind into the mental conception of the whole universe. What was only desire once becomes now the desire of the spiritual, what was love in the mental becomes now love of the spiritual-divine in the world. Our feeling, which we have closed inside, spreads about the whole world. Our self flows out, and we become one with the all-embracing spirit. We lose our selves and we find ourselves in the all-embracing spirit. This is something higher than the mere thinking. In the mental, the human being has got the sensation. In the spiritual, he starts being able to operate the spirit. However, he will also come there where he reaches the spirit with the sensation. Then he is on the divine stage. He has to climb up this ladder with his own strength of connecting the soul with the spirit, so that they become one. This is true self-consideration. If we grasp the divine spirit flowing through the world not only with the reason but also with the heart—as we meet a friend and feel warmth in the heart—then we penetrate from the head and its wisdom to the heart and its love of wisdom of the whole world. Thus, we rise raising our soul, and we get not only to know our narrow-minded inside this way, but we extend our selves and find ourselves outside in the world. I have stressed it often and often: Look at your inside only, there you find the divine human being. No, you only find in yourself what you have in yourself. If you want to find more in yourself, you must develop this higher self first, and you develop it, spreading out the higher self about the whole world. Those who advised self-knowledge to a human being did not mean idle examining of his inside. This self-knowledge is considered as we have grasped it now, as an ascent of the soul to the spirit. Then the human being no longer feels any difference between himself and the animal, the plant and the stone. A general feeling of a universal brotherhood permeates his heart. And then, and only then if the human being has this in mind, he understands as the last destination of the development from the bodily-mental to the mental-spiritual the beautiful word of the poet and seer (The Novices at Sais by Novalis, 1802): “Somebody was successful to lift the veil of the goddess at Sais.—But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—his self!” The spiritual scientist adds: he finds the divine in his self, and this is just theosophy, divine wisdom to raise the heart, the soul to the spirit, so that one succeeds in connecting wisdom with the divine and to have not only understanding, but the general feeling of the divine world.

One has often said that the human being himself is the best and most important study of the human being, and that the human being himself is the biggest riddle of the human being. In view of certain facts, one has to emphasise that this riddle faces the human being in manifold forms. The human riddle appears as multiplied to us and looks at us from all sides. The manifold forms of the human being, the races, are certainly such a multiplication of the human riddle. Natural sciences and spiritual science have always tried to bring in light to this variety of the human existence, in these different forms of the human being. Besides, we realise plenty of questions. We have the consciousness in ourselves that in all human beings a uniform nature and being exists. However, how does this uniform nature and being behave to the manifold forms and physiognomies, which face us as races? In particular, this question approaches us if we see which different abilities the single human races possess.

Apparently, to our consideration, the one human being is on the highest cultural level, the other on the most primitive, subordinated one. All that makes it appear strange to us that the human being who has, nevertheless, a uniform nature can appear in such a different and imperfect figure. One feels it often as an injustice of nature that it condemns one to an existence in a lower human race and raises the other to an apparently perfect race. To put a new contemplation to this mystery, to lighten up this riddle, the spiritual-scientific worldview seems to be more suitable than any other is. For this spiritual-scientific worldview does not speak in the same sense of the uniform human being as the other worldviews. It has a concept of it, which is different from that of the philosophers, religions et cetera, and it speaks of a recurrence of the human soul. It says to us that the soul, which lives in the modern human individual, was already often on this earth and will still often return. If we look at the matter even closer, we see that the souls of the human beings go through the different races. Thus, the variety of the races gets sense and reason. Thus, we see how the one is not condemned to live only in a primitive race and the other to be on the developmental levels of race existence.

Each one of us goes through the most different levels of the races, and this passage just signifies a further development of the single soul. Someone who appears as a member of the European race today went through other races in former times and will go through others than ours later. The races appear to us as levels, and this variety becomes coherent and reasonable.

However, if we want to see this sense quite thoroughly, we have to investigate the developmental basis of the different races deeper. Someone who rises above the only sensuous view to the invisible, supersensible world and tries to answer this question from such realms can really get an adequate solution of the riddle.

The usual natural sciences, which have to confine themselves to the sensuous observation in this question, were only able to bring in one leading thread in these cases concerning the human types. They are able to lead us back to the imperfect levels of human existence according to the modern Darwinist point of view. They trace the human being back to the former epochs of the earth evolution. They show us how the human being experienced stages in the former times in which he satisfied his needs with simple, imperfect tools with which he could only perform small work. To even former times the natural sciences want to lead us back in which the human being developed from the animal realm. We are led to the statement that we can no longer prove the earliest developmental stages of the human being scientifically, presumably because the areas of the earth in which the human being developed at that time are covered with the floods of the ocean. The natural sciences only point to an area repeatedly. This is the area in the south of Asia, in the east of Africa and down to Australia. Ernst Haeckel supposes that an ancient, extinct continent is to be sought there and that the interstates of animal and human being developed there. He calls this continent Lemuria.

Indeed, in the same sense in which Haeckel speaks about this continent and his inhabitants, about pithecoid human beings as the ancestors of the modern human beings, spiritual science cannot speak about this matter out of its experience. I have tried to show that there are other methods and means to find out something of the prehistoric times as those are on which the natural sciences must rely, other methods than the investigation of the leftovers, which one has found in the earth. You find everything about the origin of the human being and his classification in different races that has always been taught in the so-called secret schools out of inner mystic experience in my essays From the Akasha Chronicle (CW 11). Physical records and sensuous experience cannot lead us to the times, which can really teach us the decisive of this question. The supersensible experience only can teach us this. Today, I can only give a spare concept of this supersensible experience, and only a comparison should show us where from that is taken which we want to discuss in the main.

You know that my words I speak here are carried away by the undulations, which are stimulated in the air. The oscillatory air brings my words through your organ of hearing into your soul. While I am speaking here, this whole airspace is filled with sound waves. Imagine that these sound waves could be fixed, one could get an imprint with any means at every moment of that which is spoken here. Then you would have a recording of everything that is spoken here. Just as the word that I speak here makes an imprint on the medium around us also the other expressions of the human nature do, indeed, not on the air, which is somewhat coarse in relation to many other and subtler substances, because there are subtler substances than the air is. I point only to the ether, although our consideration deals nothing with it. However, I mean, actually, the finest matter, the akashic matter in which not only the spoken words imprint themselves, but all thoughts, feelings and will impulses of the human being.

This akasha matter with its imprints really forms a large phonograph. While these sound waves pass here in the air perpetually, last only as long as the sound is heard, the imprints that the human achievements up to the thoughts cause in this so-called akasha matter always persist. Somebody who is able to develop so far to read in this akasha matter can read the recordings, which have been put down since primeval times. From this chronicle, from the higher spiritual experiences the information comes which spiritual science announces about the human development through the different races. We are led back not only to the human beings who the natural sciences and archaeology register investigating the leftovers of human beings who had primitive tools and weapons in the caves of France or anywhere. These human beings had low receding foreheads and were backward in their intellectual development compared to the modern civilised human beings.

These researches do not lead us back to those forms of humanity that the spiritual-scientific worldview teaches us, even if the modern naturalists think that they lead us back ten to fifteen millennia, maybe even farther. All those human forms and racial forms that the naturalist can find in the earth point again back to quite differently formed human physiognomies, to races which have lived on another earth area, on Atlantis which extended between Europe, Africa and America. The idea is also no longer strange to the natural sciences that the Atlantic was once land. The resemblance of the fauna, of the animal realm and the various soil formations, also some relationships of languages, all these matters point the naturalist to the fact that we deal with a big earth subsidence, with a flood of a large land domain that took place in very early times of our development. Plato tells about an island Poseidonis which is still stated by him as an island in the ocean, it was the last rest of the past world. The spiritual-scientific view teaches us that, too.

If we go back to the inhabitants who lived in Atlantis, then something appears to us that is different from today. We get to know a race in which the most significant abilities, which make the modern civilised human being a civilised human being, did not yet exist. The Atlantean race did not yet have these abilities, the ability of combining, of counting, of logical thinking. These human beings had memory and language at that time. That had only developed in them. However, in return, they had other abilities. A progress of the human abilities takes only place if certain so-called higher levels of the human existence are purchased with the disappearance of former levels of development. Exactly the same way as the human being has a very low ability of smelling compared to certain animals, whereas the animals have less developed higher senses, the brain in particular, however, they bring the lower abilities to perfection. It is the same here on these higher levels of humanity.

The Atlantean had an almost omniscient memory. His knowledge was generally based on his memory. He did not know what we call law or rule. He did not calculate in such a way that he knew a multiplication table; indeed, he did not know this. His memory was the basis for his whole thinking. He knew if he had piled up twice five beans that this was a small heap of so and so many. He did not count, but he kept it in his memory. His language was also different from ours. I will come back to this phenomenon in the course of this talk. Because the Atlantean had developed these abilities only, a certain clairvoyant talent belonged to him inevitably which withdrew when our day consciousness, our reason, our mathematical, logical consciousness, our cultural consciousness developed. The Atlantean was able to quite different sense to work on the growth of plants out of his nature using the special magic willpower. Without sensuous mediation, the Atlantean was able to carry out certain magic effects. All that also was connected with a completely different body structure, above all with a receding forehead and with a defective formation of the forebrain. On the other side, other parts of the brain were unlike those of the modern civilised human being. This enabled him to use his big abilities of memory.

If we observe such an Atlantean according to the recordings of the Akasha Chronicle, we find that at the same time the brightness of our present consciousness was not yet achieved. It was a dream consciousness. It was brighter than this, but it did not yet have that bright clarity of the intellect, which our modern consciousness has. It was more a brooding and dreaming one. What worked with him was also not in such a way that he could regard himself as the master of that which he caused, but it was in such a way that everything that was in him was like a kind of inspiration. He felt to be connected with other forces, like with a spirit flowing through him. The spirit was something concrete to him, it was that which was in the wind, in the clouds and which grew up in the plants. The spirit was something that one could feel if one moved the hands through the air, if the trees rustled. This was the language of nature. The independence of the Atlantean was also not as great as that of the modern human beings.

If we look back farther, we come to the ancestors of this population, to those human beings who lived on a part of the world, which the natural sciences know as well as spiritual science: on Lemuria, the land between Asia, Australia, and Africa. However, spiritual science has to portray the appearance and figure of those human beings quite different from the naturalists. The portrayal of the figure of these human beings, which the spiritual researcher gives, is not so different from that which the naturalist supposes. However, it is spiritually completely different. The Lemurian was much more clairvoyant than the Atlantean. He had a gigantic willpower; he was a human being with whom language and memory were not yet developed. The language began only in the later Lemuria. However, the Lemurian could make the plants grow, he could command the wind, he could take natural forces out of the earth like with magic, briefly, what the Lemurian was able to do borders on the miraculous compared with the modern ideas. However, all that was in a vague consciousness, in a deeper dream sleep than it existed with the Atlantean. Completely conducted by higher influence, by higher spiritual beings, this Lemurian was a dependent creature in the hands of higher forces, which gave him the impulses of his intentions, of his actions.

With it, we have three successive developmental forms of our race. This Lemurian developed out of the not yet human companion of the ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, et cetera. These fabulous animals were there still before our mammals and perished because of big physical revolutions in these continents. The volcanic formations that stand out of the ocean are the remains of that old Lemurian age. In addition, those primitive constructions of gigantic size and strange form, as they are found on the Easter Island, are remains of the cyclopean constructions, extend into our time like monuments of those human beings whose soul life was completely different from ours.

Only with a few words, I would like to point to the relation between the human being and the different animal forms. The modern naturalist, accustomed to materialistic ideas, supposes that the human being developed from lower animal forms. The spiritual researcher is not able to do this. He supposes that the spiritual led the way of the material that the primal ground of the outside, of the material is founded in the spiritual that the external human body of the human being is an expression of the human soul. What the spiritual researcher describes as an astral body developed much earlier than the physical body of the human being. This astral body experienced a compression and it forms the etheric body this way, and only the compression of this etheric body forms the physical body.

The denser condition evolved only later. The thinner one, the astral one in particular, existed in much earlier times. Thus, spiritual science shows us that a being did not originate from an accidental agglomeration of physical matter, which has such impulses, passions, and instincts as the human being, but that these impulses and passions are the origin of the encasing matter. The passion did not create this matter, but the former passions created the forms of the physiognomy. Thus, the human being goes through a process of compression. Indeed, if we go back to the Lemurians, we see that their bodies become thinner and thinner, until we come back to human beings whose physical matter is very similar to the gelatinous matter of certain present animals. If we went back even farther, we would find ancient human ancestors, formed in a matter, which one cannot see with the usual physical eyes: the etheric human being. However, I do not want to go back to this very ancient time.

We want to begin our considerations with those human beings who start appearing in such a carnal cover as the present human being carries it, although the covers of the human beings who inhabited Lemuria and Atlantis were completely different from the construction of our muscles and skeletons. All that was much softer, more pliable, and flexible, and complied with the requirements of those vague, dreamlike soul forces I have described to you. Just by the fact that the physical matter of the human being becomes denser and denser; the pole of the physical matter is created on the other side, which is the tool of intelligence. With the creation of the brain, a compression of the remaining human organs took place at the same time.

Thus, the brain becomes the tool of the intellect, of the mind. If we summarise these three stages, we have them in the civilised human being. First, we have the Lemurian human being, his consciousness is trance-like, then we have the Atlantean human being who develops memory and language and then we have the actual civilised human being, the human being of our time.

If we consider the modern human beings, they developed from these former stages of existence. The primitive stage does not disappear at once when the higher one appears. It survives for the time being and changes in manifold ways. So that we can say: a part of the former Atlantean population migrated from Atlantis to Europe and farther to Asia and established colonies, a part stayed behind, so that we have the most manifold stages side by side. Every progressive part leaves behind as it were the stages of development like memories. That also applies to the human being in a similar way. He developed the most different forms of the animals from himself. Just as humanity leaves lower races behind, the human being leaves certain animal forms behind on even former stages which are like externally preserved memories of his former existence. Looking at the animals, we can say that they show the stages of our own development, from the lower animal form up to the forms of our race. However, our own forms did not look like that which stayed behind. At that time, the conditions were still different.

One normally does not imagine at all how infinitely big the changes were which took place on the earth. In the old Atlantis was no distribution of rain and sunshine, air and water as today. There was another air saturated with water. There was not yet rain at that time. Myths and legends hold on these things vividly. Hence, the Nordic legends also speak of “Niflheim,” “nebulous home.” A real fact forms the basis of that. The forms of our ancestors were different from ours, and those human beings whom they left behind got to conditions, which they did not stand. Hence, they had to develop to lower stages, they became decadent, and they degenerated.

The physical conditions of our present earth make it possible that the mind develops with a certain level of the beings. If the earth had not developed from the completely different conditions of rain and sunshine to our advantage, the human being would never have been able to develop to the stage on which we are today. We see that only the progressive race is able to develop suitably. However, what maintains the former form and is as a reminiscent sign of it, becomes degenerate because it does not comply with the later conditions. If we go back to the former times, we understand that that which we were once was completely different from the present animals. These changed because of the completely changed conditions. We also have to regard the subordinated races as stages of former human existence that were adapted, actually, to other earthly conditions according to their nature.

The matter becomes much more understandable, if we look into it that way. Then we understand that the Indian population of America, which appears to us so mysterious with its social structures and peculiar instincts must be completely different. The African race, the Ethiopian one, the black race is different in another way. There are the instincts that tie in with the lower human. We find a certain dreamlike element with the Malayans. Within the Mongolian population those qualities exist which are based on a special energy of the blood. There are also certain mental qualities, which developed quite typically. Hence, the Mongolian race always refuses to accept a pantheistic view. Its religion is a belief in demons, a cult of the dead. The population, which one calls the Caucasian race, constitutes the real civilised race, which is appointed to develop the logical thinking, to create tools for the work on nature using the mere reason of the human being who can no longer use the magic forces but has to rely on the mechanical. Everything that the human being had in the times of the old Atlantis in this way got lost, and, therefore, he manufactured tools because he could no longer work as he worked once; hence, he required tools for the mechanical effect.

The physical research tried in manifold ways to divide the different races. It tried to divide them according to the shaping of the skull in those, which have a narrow and backwards long skull, in those, which have a short and broad skull, and in those, which are between the both. One divided the human beings also according to their skin colour, into black ones: Black, Ethiopians; in yellow-brown: the Malayans and Mongols, and in white ones, the Caucasians. This division is done more according to external signs and gives certain differences, however, is not exhaustive. In the newer time, one has taken the language as a basis. However, if you consider the past spiritual-scientifically, you get quite different views. You find that our white civilised humanity originated from the fact that certain parts separated themselves from the Atlanteans and developed higher under other climatic conditions. Certain parts of the Atlantean population stayed behind just on the former stages, so that we have to observe remains of the different Atlantean races in the population of Asia and America. However, they have changed; they differ from the original Atlantean population.

We distinguish seven human sub-races within the Atlantean population. Five of these seven sub-races are in an ascending development. I only want to mention here that the Chinese are descendants of the fourth sub-race of the Atlantean population, and that the Mongolians are descendants of the seventh sub-race of this Atlantean population. Memory and language gradually developed. Only with the third sub-race, with the Primal Toltecs, language appeared clearly. There also appears a culture supported on memory. The fifth sub-race which we call the primal Semites and which had established its main residence in Ireland was the first germ of our present Caucasian or—as spiritual science also calls it—Aryan human race.

A part of this sub-race—it was very unlike the modern Jewish population but was still called Semitic rightly because of certain processes—moved to Asia and developed the intellectual culture which spread then over Europe, southern Asia and over the population of northern Africa. On the other side, around this centre is a belt of human population that had manifold remains in its character from inhabitants of former times, remains of the Atlanteans. All these inhabitants left behind descendants, and thus we can imagine that the train, of which I have just spoken surged to Asia, collided there with a population that was left from Atlantis and maybe from Lemuria, and formed the Malayan races then. With them, one can perceive a drowsy being and a prematurity concerning passions and sexuality. In such a way, the Indian-Aryan race developed from a choice branch of the Atlantean population, with mixing in of remains of the old population. It connected a certain dreamlike, clairvoyant being with a peculiar intellectual worldview. Perhaps, in no other worldview the clairvoyant view of deeper forces of nature and a system of thinking with such an architectural unity and pervasive astuteness were connected with each other. We find other new populations of quite different forms in the direction to the Middle East.

Moreover, another train of Atlanteans went to America—the spiritual-scientific worldview can prove this. There were rests of Lemurians and of Atlanteans who intermingled in many respects. This Indian population faces the European immigrants later. There two very different human developments collided. What lived in the ancient times, a completely different soul element, something clairvoyant, something of the spirit flowing through the whole world still lived in this Indian population. A speech is preserved to us that an Indian chief held at a clash of Indians and Europeans. He condemned the breach of promise by the Europeans. One had promised to the Indian population, after one had taken their residences from them, to give them other residences. He possibly said the following, oh you pale-faces, you do not understand what the Great Spirit teaches us. This comes from the fact that you pale-faces read everything that the gods say from books that the letters in your books tell you what is true. You promised us that you give us land again, but you have not kept your promise because your god does not teach you the truth and keeping your word. We know a god who speaks to us in the clouds, in the waves, in the rustling leaves, in flash and thunder. The god of the red man keeps his word. The god knows that he has to be loyal to the tribe.—This was a great speech. The Great Spirit was a rest of a human view that originated from a dreamlike consciousness, from inspirations of higher forces. Hence, at the same time it was closer to the divine, the springs of the divine.

The languages teach us something similar. If we compare the different human races, we find a quite different structure in the languages of this external belt of peoples. We find the old Atlantean structure in the Mongolian languages, and we find something of Atlantean origin expressed in the structure of certain African languages. They emphasise the nouns, and they express by prefixes what we express by inflexions. We learn from that that they originated from an excellently working memory. The Mongolian languages show that they originated at a time in which memory did no longer function in such a way, as it was the case once. There the verbs are more developed which already tend to the reason. The Atlantean did not at all talk, actually, from memory. Everything was present to him. Not before one starts forgetting, the verb forms in the language. I would like to say that a magnificent monument of the middle of the Atlantean culture has remained, and this is the Chinese language. This language has something purely composing and at the same time something original where in the sounds even something inside, mental and a certain relation to the outside world is expressed. If we studied certain parts of the population in the connection with it, we could understand this completely.

We can understand our race if we pursue it in two currents, which we can clearly, prove. There we have that current at first, which moves from the west, maybe from England to Asia. It probably gave cause for the Indian, the Near Eastern-Semitic, for the Indo-African-Semitic races as well as for the Arabian-Chaldean race. Then, however, we must imagine another current that did not progress so far which came maybe only to Ireland or Holland, or also to the area that the ancestors of the ancient Persians inhabited. There we have a belt of related population through the area of the Persians via the Black Sea to Europe.

Thus, we can verify two zones of human population. One extends from India over here and encloses the southern peninsulas of Europe; the other encloses the zones located to the north with different gradations. There we have the Aryan one and the different Semitic gradations in Asia and Africa; then in Greece and Italy the Greek-Latin population. However, we have to imagine them also in such a way that it originated from the mixture with the northern belt which also encloses the Persian population and everything that developed, like from undergrounds, the Slavic and the Germanic populations in the west, and that which provides the basis more or less of all, the ancient Celtic population. We can imagine that we had an ancient Celtic population in the west of Europe. This part of the current of peoples lies farthest to the west, while the Persian population is that part which went the farthest to the east. The Slavic and the Germanic peoples stand between; intermingled with the southern belt, these established the Greek-Latin race. You can prove it in the languages that a relationship of the population exists, which expresses itself the strongest in the deep relationship of the languages in the northern belt.

There we have languages that are completely different from that which constitutes the character of the Semitic-Egyptian culture. The structure of the Semitic-Egyptian languages express what developed in the fifth sub-race of Atlantis as a Primal Semitic culture. It is characterised by the first lighting up of the intellect in the human development. Here logic and intellect developed first. The former dreamlike clairvoyant element intermingled in the most different way, and the different religions formed. However, the Semitic language does not have an atomistic character like the Chinese one, but an analytic character. On the other hand, the Caucasian languages have a synthetic character.

We distinguish five human races. I leave it undecided whether the word is used rightly or wrongly. The ancient Indo-Aryans with their marvellous visionary thinking established the first culture. This culture preceded the Vedic culture. That is why there are no recordings of it. What you read in the Vedas is only an echo of the ancient visionary Indian culture. Then the ancient Persian culture comes as the second race, that population which preferably applies the intelligence to the external work. The ancient Indian culture has something unworldly. In these northern regions, we find human beings who enclose the world who want to conquer the world who use tools and the like. Hence, we see in this culture how there the consciousness develops that humanity has to achieve something that there is good and bad. Here Ormuzd and Ahriman confront themselves. Then we come to the Near East. There develops another race. What expresses itself in the structure of the Semitic language is the combinatorial, the mathematical, and the logical-conceptual aspect. This faces us in the architecture of Egypt; this is expressed in the pyramids and in the great thought structures, then in the marvellous science, in the astrological form of astronomy.

We have three sub-races now. We come now to Europe to the southern peninsulas. There we find that which flows from the north and expresses itself in old cultural peoples. We find that something develops that looks for the inner life. While the Egyptian builds up externally, with internal symbolism, the Greek starts erecting monuments and cultivating sculpture stimulated by the mystery dramas. However, the most significant action within this fourth sub-race or culture epoch is the rise of Christianity. The southern peoples are not able to understand this Christianity in its peculiar figure. In Greece, it is Grecized, in Rome it is Romanised and becomes state church. This happened while the fifth sub-race approached gradually in the Middle Ages. This is our own sub-race. It had the task to bring the culture down to the physical plane. This indicates that sense and reason is in the succession of races.

Still in another sense, sense and reason are in this racial development. The human being consists of three members according to his lower nature: of physical body, etheric body, and astral body. The physical body is that which we see with eyes, can touch with hands. The astral body is the bearer of our desires, passions, and instincts, of our emotions, affects, of rage and hatred. The etheric body is the bearer of the vital forces. The human ego lives in them. This expresses itself differently.

I immediately want to begin with the way in which it expresses itself in our present cultural epoch. It has developed the physical body most remarkably, elaborated it most marvellously. The body, the brain became the tool of the intellectual life and thinking. Gradually the body had to be conquered. If you were able to look back, you would see that during the Lemurian age the body looks like an awkward huge thing. The astral body is not yet able to move the limbs. The ancestors of the Lemurian age were clumsy. You see this still echoing in the Native American population. On one side, the instincts still fight because the human beings do not yet have the consciousness to penetrate themselves from the inside, they work on the body from the outside, they tattoo it because it does not yet appear finished to them. If we go up to the other races, we see the human being conquering the etheric body. The functions of life and nutrition developed, so that the human being becomes a conscious and autonomous being from an unaware one.

The human being gradually starts the campaign of conquest through his own being. The Lemurians conquered the astral body, the Atlanteans the life body, and our present humanity conquers the physical body. The conquest of the spiritual-mental forces follows, which is the task of our time. Thus, the racial development gets an even higher sense and we understand that it is a training of the developing human mind. We look back to areas where the human being is structured quite differently. Our souls embodied themselves at that time and got to know the phenomena of the external world. Later they returned to the earth in another race and learnt to look into the world in another way. Moreover, it goes on that way. The human being goes through race by race. Those who are young souls reincarnate in those races that remained on their former level.

Thus, that which lives as race and souls round us fits into each other organically and mentally. Everything gets a sense, becomes transparent, and becomes explicable. We approach the solution of these riddles more and more and we can understand that we have to go through other epochs in the future that we have to go other ways than the race made them. We must be clear in our mind that mental and racial developments are different. Within the Atlantean race our own souls lived which developed then upwards to a superior human race. This gives us a picture of the human development up to our time.

Hence, we also understand the principle to found the core of a general brotherhood without taking into consideration race, colour, social rank et cetera. I shall explain this thought in particular. I wanted to show today only how in the different figures the same being exists, namely in a much more correct sense than the natural sciences teach it. Our soul steps from stage to stage, that is, from race to race, and we get to know the significance of humanity if we look at these races. We learn to understand one thing more and more, namely how deep and true the saying is, “Somebody was successful, and he lifted the veil of the goddess of Sais. However, what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—himself!” We see ourselves everywhere and in the manifold figures.—This is self-knowledge! The great saying in the temple of the Greek school of wisdom comes true: human being, recognise yourself.

If anybody reads a popular book, about astronomy, for example, then probably above all because he wants to inform himself about the mysterious facts of the universe. He finds his satisfaction, perhaps in such a book if the information makes sense to his reason, sensation, and feeling. He also tries perhaps to penetrate into the matters as far as it is possible to convince himself of such truth, such knowledge, visiting popular talks in which one makes experiments or observatories, laboratories et cetera. However, in any case, one fact remains in force. The human being who reads such things has to assume that still other human beings exist who have these abilities with particular research methods, with particular scientific and technical schooling.

Who reads Haeckel's Natural Creation History may possibly say to himself, yes, this makes sense to my intellect, to my reason and to my feeling.—However, he also becomes aware of the fact that it requires a lot of work to ascertain these facts only. Then maybe he assumes that there is a little group of human beings which deals with the finding of such facts. In quite a similar way, a big part of humanity probably behaves towards other writings which want to bring facts of another field home to the human being, namely towards the so-called religious scriptures.

It is no other relation than that I have just described. Also towards the religious scriptures, the human being asks himself at first, does this speak convincingly to my sensation, emotions, and reason?—Also here, he assumes or assumed in past times at least just as for the external, sensuous facts, which we possibly get to know from the Natural Creation History by Haeckel or from popular representations of astronomy, who know the methods, have the key to ascertain these facts. Thus, the human being also assumed concerning the religious documents that there are single human beings who are able not only to read this truth but also to ascertain it. He assumed that there are single human beings who have the key of them and know methods how one can convince oneself of them directly. Briefly, one has to demand from the religious scriptures, as from any other representation of facts that they come from knowledge, from immediate experience.

The human being assumes that there are single people who ascertain the described sensuous facts using telescopes, microscopes, biological and other methods of investigation. Concerning the communications that are included in the religious documents we must also assume that there are human beings who know the methods to penetrate by the experience into the field, which is described in the religious scriptures. Just as in the Natural Creation History the field of the sensuous facts and in the popular talks the field and the facts of astronomy are portrayed, the field of the supersensible, the invisible, the spiritual is portrayed in the religious scriptures. If we who do not research have to offer the same trust, the same confidence to the religious scriptures, we must assume also that there are single persons in the world who made it their particular task to collect experiences in the world of the supersensible, which forms as spiritual causes the basis of the sensuous world. The human being is not allowed to behave differently towards the representation of a natural creation history and the representation of a supersensible creation history.

Not the behaviour of the human beings towards these matters is different, only the fields are different about which the concerning writings tell. With it, one says that there must be knowing people who are able to ascertain the facts in the religious scriptures. Indeed, up to a certain degree this consciousness has got lost just in our time. Just as it would be of little use if anybody were not able to assume that researchers exist behind the popular scientific representations, also it would not make much sense basically if we did not assume that researchers are behind the statements of the religious scriptures. It is the task of theosophy or spiritual science today to renew and animate the consciousness that there is also a research in the supersensible fields. Spiritual science wants nothing else than to evoke the consciousness in the larger circles again that it is in such a way as I have said it now.

One often translates the word theosophy saying that theosophy is knowledge, wisdom of God. This translation is not right; at least it does not describe what theosophy wants. Knowledge of God is something that the theosophist has in mind as an inkling at first, as something that signifies the last purpose of all knowledge. As little as we already have awareness of all means and abilities of knowledge, just as little as we are allowed to say that we can have a comprehensive or final knowledge of the divine primal ground of the universe today. Humanity develops, advances, also its abilities of knowledge. Perhaps, even the most advanced people cannot form an idea of the insights into the mysterious worlds of existence the human being can get on this way. We have to absolutely realise that European civilised human beings have another concept of divinity than, for example, the so-called savages of Africa or the barbarians who invaded the Roman empire from the north at the beginning of the Middle Ages.

We have to assume that a usual educated person also has another idea of the divine being than Goethe had. Thus, we can also imagine that the human being advances further, that abilities develop in him compared with which Goethe's intuitive and imaginative strength was undeveloped. There we can have an inkling how much more elated and more magnificent the concept of God of those human beings will be than ours are. We can say that we exist, work, and live in Him; however, the knowledge of Him can never be completed. Therefore, theosophy does not think that it wants to be knowledge of God. Theosophy is that knowledge, namely, which attains the deepest, innermost being of the human being, in contrast to the usual, everyday knowledge that acquires the external, sensuous, transient nature of the human being.

Let us realise once: we see colours, light, we hear tones, smell and taste, seize objects, feel heat, cold, and so on, everything with the help of our outer senses. We can also imagine that for anybody who has no ear no sounding world, but a dumb world is around him, for anybody who has no eyes no luminous, no colourful world but a dark one exists. All that is only a summary of that which the human being can perceive with the senses. However, the senses consist of material forces that are handed over to the earth again. What we perceive with them is also something transient. With it, we have realised the transient human being. The physicist shows us that a time comes when the earth is dispersed in countless atoms in which it does no longer exist. Then also no colours, lights, tones, the present forms of minerals, plants and animals exist, the human form itself does no longer exist.

Thus, we have characterised the extent of the transient in the human being. What this transient human being recognises is everyday science, is our official science. With it, I say nothing against this official science. However, this whole science is nothing else than preoccupation with transient matters. However, there is still another possibility to look at the world, namely with those abilities in the human being which are imperishable. The human being bears an imperishable core in himself.

The human being bears an imperishable core that we find in ourselves by introspection, by self-observation to a new existence in the times when the earth is dispersed. He carries this imperishable core to other worlds, and carries that which he recognised as the fruit of this life on earth to another world. What the divine core recognises is the content of spiritual science. Theosophy is not knowledge of other matters of the human being but knowledge of the other part of the human being. Hence, theosophy or spiritual science does not come from such people who want to rise with the usual reason, with the usual senses to a consideration of the spiritual from the sensuous, but from such people who have woken the abilities slumbering in the human being and are thereby able to investigate the supersensible, the imperishable. The usual science considers plants, animals, and human beings according to their usual qualities as they present themselves to the senses. In addition, the spiritual research looks only at that which surrounds us in the world. However, it looks at it with other forces and other abilities and, hence, gets to know the everlasting and imperishable qualities of the things. This is theosophy.

Such researchers who have woken such abilities in themselves are able to ascertain the supersensible facts independently which the confessions communicate. As well as the naturalists ascertain in the laboratory and on the observatory using the strength of the senses and their instruments what you can then read in the popular books, the researchers of the supersensible ascertain by their own experience what was communicated to humanity in the religious documents. In the same sense as we speak of the scientific laboratories and astronomical observatories as research sites, in the same sense we speak of spiritual research sites. We call this spiritual research site—the term does not matter—the Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom.

Because all wisdom must be based on a common origin, because all those who are in a spiritual relationship to these teachers are penetrated and irradiated by that wisdom, all researches also go back to the spiritual primary source. They go back, to the big brotherhood of the most advanced sages who have recognised what those religious documents announced from own observation by the means of spiritual research. You may call this basis of all religions the “spiritual laboratory of humanity,” or the “great White Lodge,” it is the same. Now we know what it means. As any popular book goes back to something that has really been investigated anywhere, each of the great religions goes back to that which was investigated in the spiritual sense in this laboratory of the white brotherhood of humanity. Those who founded the religions were great, excellent individualities who experienced the lessons and instructions of that brotherhood in this big spiritual laboratory. They were introduced into the spiritual life, which forms the basis of all phenomena, and were then sent from there to the various peoples to speak to them in their language and according to their characters.

One taught a uniform ground of knowledge, an ancient truth in that spiritual laboratory, and it is possible that those who advance further by internal development learn the methods of research and can use them as Haeckel and other naturalists used the sensuous methods. It is possible that these find access to the researchers of the spiritual laboratory, that they get to know from which central site the great sages came who went to the south and the west, and brought the great messages to humanity. It is possible that they find the way to those from whom they can learn how all that has come about.

The ancient religious teachers were sent out from the same site, the great founders of a religion who brought the first messages to India the echo of which the European researchers admired so much when they faced the wisdom, which is contained in the old Brahmanism. The same site of wisdom sent out the various Buddhas who brought their messages to the single members of the Asian religions. It sent out the Egyptian Hermes, too, who founded that marvellous religion about which anybody said to Solon (~640-~560 B.C., Athenian statesman, lawmaker and poet): what you know is like the knowledge of children compared with the wisdom of our initiates.

Pythagoras (~570-~495 B.C., philosopher, and mathematician) came out of it, the great teacher of the Greek people. That man came out of it who illuminates the future, whose religion becomes more and more comprehensive and spiritual, Jesus himself. There we have the spiritual connection, and we see how the different religions point back to the central site where the loftiest human wisdom is cultivated. Who looks at the different religions can convince himself that their qualities point to such a central site. Our materialistic cultural researchers have also often recognised resemblances of the different confessions. Zarathustrism, the ancient Indian culture, Buddhism, even the religion that lived in the old America contain all components in which marvellous accordance exists. However, one has believed that this accordance comes from external reasons. One has not penetrated deeply enough because one had lost the key of it. Who gets involved, however, really in the core of truth of the religions can obtain the conviction concerning the religions that the accordance cannot come from the outside, but that it arises from a common core of wisdom, and that they were differently organised considering the single peoples and the different epochs.

If we look at Asia, we still find the remnants of an ancient religion at first, which one cannot understand, actually, as religion in the modern sense. We find this religion in the strange culture of the Chinese. I do not speak about the religion of Confucius, not about that which spread as Buddhism in India and China, but I would like to speak of the remains of the ancient Chinese religion, of Taoism. This religion points the human being to Tao.

One translates Tao as the way or the goal, the destination. However, one gets no clear idea of the being of this religion if one simply sticks to this translation. For a big part of humanity, Tao expresses and already expressed the highest to which the human beings could look up. They thought that the world, the whole humanity would attain it once, the loftiest that the human being bears in himself as a seed and that develops once as a ripe flower from the innermost human nature. Tao signifies a deep, concealed soul ground and an elated future at the same time. Somebody who knows what it concerns not only pronounces it but also thinks of it with shy reverence. Taoism is based on the principle of development. It says, what is around me today is a stage, which will be overcome. I must be clear in my mind that this development in which I am has an aim that I develop to an elated aim and that a force lives in me that urges me to arrive at this destination Tao.

If I feel this big strength in myself and if I feel that with me all beings strive for this goal, then this strength is to me the steering force which blows from the wind against me, which sounds towards me from the stone, which shines towards me from the flash, which sounds towards me from the thunder. It appears in the plant as force of growth, in the animal as sensation and perception. This force produces form by form repeatedly up to that elated goal by which I recognise myself as one with the whole nature, which streams into me and streams from me with every breath, which is the symbol of the loftiest developing spirit that I feel as life. I feel this force as Tao.—One did not speak in this religion of a transcendent god at all, one did not speak about anything that is beyond the world, but of something that gives strength to the progress of humanity.

The human being felt Tao intensely when he was still connected with the divine original source, in particular in the Atlantean age. Our ancestors still had no such advanced reason, no such intelligence like the modern humanity. In return, however, they had a more dreamlike consciousness, an instinctively ascending imagination and their life of thought was in such a way that they were almost innumerate. Imagine the dream life, but increased, so that it makes sense and is not chaotic, and imagine a humanity from whose souls such pictures arise that announce the sensations which are in the own soul, which echo everything that is external round us. One has to imagine the soul world of these prehistoric human beings quite unlike ours. The human being today strives for forming thoughts and images of the environment as exactly as possible. However, the prehistoric human being formed symbolic images, which appeared in him full of life.

If you face a person today, you try above all to form an idea of him whether he is a good or a bad, a clever or a silly person, and you try to get an idea very soberly which corresponds to the external human being. This has never been the case with the prehistoric Atlantean. A picture arose in him, not a rational concept. If he faced a bad human being, a picture arose in him, which was vague and obscure. However, this perception did not become a concept. Nevertheless, he acted on this picture. If he had a bright, beautiful picture before himself, which appeared dreamlike in his soul, then he knew that he could trust in such a being. He got fear of a picture if it arose in black, red, or brown colours in him. He did not yet grasp realities with reason and intellect, but they appeared as inspirations. He felt as if the divinity working in these pictures was also in him. He spoke of the divinity, which announced itself in the blowing of the wind, in the whispering of the woods and in the pictures of his soul life if he felt the urge to look up to an elated human future. He called this Tao.

The present human being who replaced this ancient humanity relates to the spiritual powers differently. He has lost the strength of the immediate beholding, which was more vague and twilighted than ours in certain respects. He has attained the developmental stage of the intellectual and rational ideation, which is higher in certain respects, however, also lower in certain respects. The modern human being thereby outranks the prehistoric human being because he owns a sharp, pervasive intellect; but he is no longer feeling the lively connection with the divine Tao forces of the world. That is why he has the world as it reveals itself in his soul, and on the other side his intelligence. The Atlantean felt the pictures living in him. The modern human being hears and sees the external world. These two things, outside and inside, are opposing each other, and he is no longer feeling the connection of both.

This is the great sense of the human development. Since the land masses have risen again, after the floods of the oceans had flooded the continents, since that time humanity longs for finding the connection of inner soul life and external sensuous world again. That is why the word religare (Latin)—religion is justified. It means nothing else than to combine again what was connected once and is separated now, the world and the ego. The different forms of the confessions are nothing else than the means, than the ways taught by the great sages to find this connection again. Therefore, they are formed so differently to become understandable in this or that form to the human beings of any cultural level.

The ancient Indian had an excessively growing plant world around himself, which made him dreamy in his soul and did not make it necessary to produce external tools and external culture. He had to get religion in another form than the modern human being. If the human being lives quietly, other images appear in his soul, than if he works with coarse tools and must be technically active. The external nature is different in the different areas of the earth, and the inner soul life of the human beings is different, too. Because the connection should be sought by the different religions, it is only a matter of course that the masters had to determine the way of finding the connection differently for different peoples and different times.

The first way to determine this connection, to look for the ancient Tao of Atlantis, is the religion of the ancient India. This received the instructions of the holy Rishis, great initiates in ancient times whose elated teachings still go on sounding in the marvellous Vedic poems and in the Vedanta philosophy of the ancient Brahmans, which extends to the loftiest levels of human understanding. It was announced to humanity in broad outlines there that there is something that as a uniform world ground serves everything as a base. One called it Brahman, Parabrahman, Bhagavad and so forth.

What we find in the Vedas, which are only an echo of the original old teachings, shows us how great and stupendous and, at the same time, how sublime the concepts were by which that subtle spirituality attempted to reach the divine original source of being. One could circumscribe it as follows: once the spiritual hosts assembled round the original being and asked it who it was, and it said, I am not that who I am if I am able to define myself by anything other than by myself. If you define a thing, you look for a higher concept. You define the single animal beings, the lion, the eagle, the dog, the wolf, while you change over to the superior concepts of the cat species, the dog species, the bird species et cetera. You define the single winds, while you change over to the general concept of wind. Thus, anything in the world has its name that indicates what stands above it. I, however—the Brahman said to the spirit hosts—I have no name which stands above me. I am the I-am.

From this original source, the human being started; he shall come to it again. There was also development in the ancient India. Development was the magic word by which the human being felt his destination. There must have been anything, as the confession says, that leads to the point on which the human being stands today. Once there must have been a longing that leads him from the divine origin down into this world, to the necessary stage on which we stand today. As true and inevitable as it was that there was such a yearning and desire which leads into the world, as true it is that there must be a force that leads the human being again out of it, so that he brings the fruits of this world back again to the divine original source. This force is the overcoming of the desire by the divine desires, the purification of the destinations by the divine destination.

Now it was something else that was felt as a religion than in the ancient times of which we have spoken. Now, it was no longer the god who revealed himself to the inside, now it was the god revealing himself from the outside, because the human being had to create an abyss between himself and the outside world. The word obviously replaces the immediate life and the sheer strength, and Veda means nothing else than “word.” By this word, advanced, wise human beings announced the origin and destination of the human being, which forms the basis of the universe. One had another idea of this word in ancient times than today if one speaks of the word.

I would like to try to give you an idea of that which one felt speaking of the Veda, of the Logos, and later of the Word. The human being gives names to the things. He says, this is this and that is that. However, if his mouth names the things, it is no arbitrariness, but these are the same names, which once the divine original soul of humanity pronounced from itself and thereby created the things. The human being sees the things and pronounces the names afterwards. However, once the original soul spoke the names first and according to the word, the things formed. This is why there an original soul was in the ancient times, which expressed the words of creation. The words became things and the human soul afterwards found the words out of the things, which the god had put into them.

It revived the sleeping words out of the things. The human being behaved to the divinity this way where one had religious sensation, the sensation towards the word, which lived with the ancient Indians really. Therefore, the opinion combined with the word that there are human beings who are able to look deeper into nature and the being of the world, who are able to directly echo in their words and announce what once the divinity breathed out of itself into the world. One perceived such human beings as initiates. The ancient Indian considered his Rishis not as usual human beings, but as such beings who had reached the level of immortality already in the physical body and live not in the sensory world, but with their souls in the higher heavenly world and have contact with the gods, with the spiritual beings who form the basis of the world. While one looked up at the human beings who had developed the Tao in themselves in this way, one was aware that every human being would also attain this stage once.

The doctrine of rebirth, of the repeated return was combined with it. Buddha did not speak out of his imagination but out of his perception when he spoke to his believers and said, I see back at one, two, three, four, ten, hundred lives.—He spoke of these hundred lives as the human being speaks of one life. In these many lives, he obtained everything that enabled him to speak no longer about the experience of the sensuous world, but about the experience of the supersensible worlds and to bring the message of these supersensible worlds to humanity. This supersensible knowledge is an original component of all religions.

If we put ourselves once again in the peoples feeling the Tao. They not only tried to unite in the religion with the divine, but they also considered themselves as embodiments, as covers of the divine. This was their immediate consciousness. There were human beings who could not think correctly; they were not as clever as we are, but had a direct consciousness that they surrounded a divine core as a fruit surrounds the pit. They saw and felt this core, and they looked through it at the past and the future. They thereby felt the doctrine of reincarnation in themselves.

At that time, the immigrants found such a consciousness. At that time, the ancient Indian teachers who gave the first Brahma culture to the Indians still found a lively view of re-embodiment. Hence, all religions, which started from this site, have the teaching of reincarnation. One felt the Tao in its different creation of human activity. It is only a matter of course that the human being of our period who has separated his soul life from the big external powers could not overlook so many lives, but only saw that he represented this limited soul life. From every next stage, which extends northbound then—starting from the ancient Persian religion—the consciousness of the fact disappeared that the human soul is a cover around the core reincarnating forever. The consciousness confined itself to the zenith between birth and death and to how within birth and death “religare“, religion, has to be sought for. There one felt the contrast of a duality instead of the unity for the first time.

Whereas the Taoist human being of the Atlantean age felt his connection with the original source vividly, and the Brahmanic human being still tried to rouse the Brahman, which is thought outside and within the human being as the same, the human being felt a certain duality, a dualism in Persia first. He felt that which has originated from the human being, as an inside and outside, as an original ground and present human figure. He looked up to the original ground from which everything had risen round him, he looked up to the word from which plant, animal, and human being had arisen according to the physical figure. However, he still felt something else: he felt that anything was therein that did not be in accordance with the original harmony that has to become only again like the original divine. He felt the latter as renunciation from the original divine. He faced the contrast, the duality of light and darkness or of male and female. They represent the original ground and that which expects the human soul in the material compression. This is the second level of human development.

The third stage faces us in the prehistorical and historical Egypt; it is preserved for us as the Book of the Dead. There the human being felt a third aspect besides the duality. He saw a light, the sun, illuminating the earth and saw it penetrating this with its beams and enlivening the seeds and beings slumbering in the earth, and saw how the primal ground had to be fertilised. We find this triad original ground, conception, new life, symbolised as Osiris, the sun, the god of light; as Isis, the matter, and as Horus, the life developing from it. These were three Egyptian divinities. The triad appears here. This triad becomes a basic core in all later confessions.

As trinity the divinity faces us in the confessions where it is called Father, Word and Holy Spirit—Isis, Osiris, Horus—atma(n), buddhi, manas. We find the triad everywhere in the religions now. We have recognised the reason. It faces us with pictures or words in Asia, in Egypt with the priests, but also in the Greek-Roman world, with Augustine, then as nuances in the Middle Ages.

If we have got a bigger perfection in the future, that strength will have appeared as a forming one to which we owe our existence and which works today as a concealed primal ground of the being in us. One felt this as the divine, the inexpressible of the human being that is identical with the first essential component of the tripartite world. One felt then what lives in the human being, what strives for this highest as the word active in the present, the son, who originated from the father who rests unutterably in him. As true as this Father's ground forms the future, more perfect human being, he created the developing son, the buddhi, the second human member, which is not yet perfect but is the reason why we strive for perfection. This is the second being. Also in the past this original ground worked. As well as the sensuous human being was created by the universal primal ground in the past, also that which has already assumed and given off shape in him has something that has likewise arisen in the past from the primal ground and is already developed now.

Let us look at the universe, how it makes itself perceptible as colours, tones, smells and tactile sensations, it streamed from the inexpressible primal ground. In such respect, we may call this primal ground, which appears to us, the creatures, spirit, also in the Christian sense. However, the creation of the world is not finished. The world is a germ, something that has a soul that has the impulse of the future in itself. This is the son. Hence, one called this striving the Word, Veda, Edda. The third one is a strength in us that becomes discernible in the future in us: the Father's ground of all being deep set in any of our souls.

Feeling this vividly means feeling the trinity, making it the being of the entire internal imagination. Persona (Latin) signifies mask or external figure, cover. Hence, the religion shows this core of truth, which I have just explained, in three different masks, in three persons. God has three different persons. That means that he appears in three different masks: Spirit, Word, and Father. With it, we have touched that confession at the same time that then led to Christianity. If you understand this really, you find this truth also expressed in it. If you correctly understand the deepest Gospel, that of John, you find the same consciousness of religare, of the connection with a higher consciousness that appeared in human form. It is the teachings of the incarnate Logos, the incarnate divinity, the present divinity that lives in brotherliness with both forms of the divinity, with the active Spirit coming from the past, working in the present, and the Father creating in the present into the future. Thus, the Son originated from the Father, is connected with the Spirit at the same time, and that is why the Son is the great preannouncement that will lead to the Father.

The words no one comes to the Father except by me (John 14:5), by the divine essence of the present, point to this. He says that he sends the Spirit again, the essence of that which is already in the world. As true as Christ said, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20), it is also true that he will come again that the whole Christianity has been a preparation of the new figure. The Spirit is there provisional, the knowledge, the science, the religions were taught provisionally as they were taught in the past. The religious documents were preserved to us and now the theologians try to interpret them and to teach according to them. This is the way now theology works in place of wisdom. Theosophy means wisdom and truth, theology means the doctrine of wisdom and truth. As well as theology originated from spiritual science, theology has to go back to spiritual science.

I have often drawn your attention to the condition of former research, and that then a reversal took place. Once one trusted in the books of the old sages, in Plato, Aristotle and others at all sites where one taught. Researchers were not there, but interpreters. I have that strange time in mind about which theology tells that one could no longer understand later when one learnt to read in the book of nature. The confidence in the written was almost absolute. If, for example, a naturalist had stated that the nerves do not start from the heart, but from the brain, one said, nevertheless, Aristotle says differently, and Aristotle is right, although one saw the demonstrated phenomena. Today in wide sections of the population, the consciousness does not yet exist that there is a key that there are research sites and research methods that ascertain the facts of the spiritual worlds as the observatories or the laboratories ascertain the facts of the sensuous world.

Since thirty years it has been announced again that there is such a thing like a spiritual central site of humanity, and with it the theosophists say nothing more unbelievable, than if Haeckel says: this is in that and this way.—If Haeckel argues anything, we assume that he has found the proofs of it in his research. We assume also that the statements in the religious documents were proved by the facts to be true, and that there are persons among us which themselves can go back again to the sources. Theosophy or spiritual science means drawing the attention to the spiritual researchers and to the central site. It speaks again from experience about the matters of the supersensible, as those did who originally created the religious documents, from their inner experience. As well as 400 years ago, the natural sciences experienced a revival, theosophy or spiritual science should today signify a revival of the immediate spiritual research.

Thus, we are put in the necessity to return to that core of truth, which I tried to outline from the Tao up to the appearance of the great saviour of humanity. I wanted to generate awareness of the relation of spiritual science to the central point, the core of truth in the different religions. Those who have not yet approached spiritual science maybe come again to hear more. However, some may also say that it is a kind of neo-Buddhism, a new religion, something oriental; it wants to bring in something foreign to our world. However, this is not the case; this would not be spiritual-scientific. Only those speak in such ways who do not have the will to listen to that which spiritual science says. The aspiration of spiritual science is to look for the core of truth in our external confessions, to go back to the sources from which the books existing today were created. It is necessary to go back to the facts, then the books are better understood, then new life flows in humanity.

Christianity is to be understood as a religion that has to prepare humanity for the future, as the religion of the Son by which one finds the Father on the same ways. At the same time, it is one of the most important tasks of spiritual science to get this religion across. Therefore, it searches for the core of truth in all religions to find it in our own. We recognised that religion originated not from childish images, but from the highest wisdom, from spiritual research. However, we also learnt that one can abreast with science and be, nevertheless, a religious person. If this knowledge finds an echo again, the lively feeling awakes for that which one of the theosophists, Goethe, called into the world more than hundred years ago like a program, like a beautiful and marvellous saying to humanity. I would like to close with this saying today, confessing that there can be no true science, no deeper human observation, which shows the religious truth as something childish; and that all religions contain as a core of our highest destination:

Who has science and art,
Has religion, too;
Who does not have both,
Should have religion.

It is our task today to speak about two soul contents one of which fraternity, represents a great ideal penetrating humanity, and the other represents something that we meet in life at every turn wherever we go, the struggle for existence: fraternity and struggle for existence. Those of you who have occupied themselves only a little with the aims of the spiritual-scientific movement know our first principle to establish the core of a fraternity founded on general altruism, without difference of race, gender, profession, confession et cetera. With it, the theosophical society itself ranked this principle of a general fraternity first and made it its most important ideal. It has indicated that way that this great moral pursuit of fraternity—a pursuit that is necessary besides other cultural aspirations—is intimately connected with the main destination of humanity.

The spiritual-scientific striving human being is convinced, and not only convinced, he is quite clear in his mind that the deep knowledge of the spiritual world must lead to fraternity if it seizes the human being really, that fraternity is just the noblest fruit of deep, innermost knowledge. However, with it the spiritual-scientific worldview seems to contradict something that approached humanity lately. One pointed in certain circles to the progressively working strength of the struggle. How often we can hear even today that the human forces grow with resistance that the human being gets strong will and intellectual initiative because he must measure his strength with the adversary. A worldview which has arisen from bases full of mind, the worldview of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher), has among other enthusiastic pugnacious sentences also this: I love the critic, I love the great critic more than the little one.—We can find this over and over again most variously just with Nietzsche as something that completely belongs to his approaches to life.

It depends on certain economic views, which prevailed for a long time that one regards the general competition in the struggle of all against all as a powerful lever of progress. How often one has said that thereby, humanity can progress best of all that the single human being benefits himself, as well as possible, and establishes his position. The word individualism has become almost a catchword, admittedly, more in the external material life, but also to some extent in the inner spiritual life.

The human being benefits his fellow men the best if he obtains as much as possible economically from life, because he becomes economically strong, he can also be more useful to the public: this is the creed of many economists and sociologists. On the other side, we hear repeatedly emphasised that the human being should not become stereotyped that he should develop the forces lying in him universally that he should enjoy life wholeheartedly that he should develop what lies in his inside and that he can thereby benefit his fellow men mostly.

There are many among our fellow men who are virtually eager for the pursuit of this principle who enjoy life as intensely as possible. The spiritual-scientific worldview does not misjudge the necessity of the struggle for existence, just not in our time, but at the same time this worldview realises also that today—where this struggle for existence peaks—the deep significance of the principle of fraternity must be brought near to an understanding again.

The most important question is: is it right what so many people believe that the human forces grow in particular with the resistance that it is the struggle above all which the human being has to fight that has made him great and strong? In my talk on the idea of peace, which I held before you, I pointed already to this principle of the struggle for existence in the human life that receives strong support by the fact that the natural sciences have made it a general natural world principle. They, in particular in the west, believed for a while that those beings in the world are formed most suitably, which have out-competed their adversaries and have been left in this struggle for existence.

The naturalist Huxley (Thomas Henry H., 1825-1895) says: if we look at life outdoors, it appears to us like a gladiator fight, the strongest remains as the victor, the others perish.—If one believed the naturalists, one would have to suppose that all beings, which populate the world today, have been able to out-compete the others, which were there earlier. There is also a school of sociologists, which wanted to make this principle of the struggle for existence almost a doctrine of human development. In a book, entitled From Darwin to Nietzsche (1895), Alexander Tille (1866-1912, German philosopher, economic functionary, and lobbyist) tried to show that the future happiness of humanity depends on the fact that one accepts this struggle for existence wholeheartedly in the development of humanity. One should arrange it in such a way that the incapable perishes, however, that one must care for the strong ones and encourage them in the struggle for existence. The weak ones should perish. One said that we need such a social order that suppresses the weak ones because they are injurious.—I ask you, who is the strong one, who has an ideal mental power but a feeble body, or the other one who owns a less high mental power in a robust body?—One achieves nothing with general rules as you see. It is hard to decide who should be left, actually, in the struggle for existence. If it concerned practical measures, this question would have to be decided first. Now we ask ourselves, what becomes apparent to us if we look at the human life? Has the principle of fraternity or the principle of the struggle for existence achieved great things in the evolution of humanity, or have both contributed something to it?

Only with brief words, I would like again to draw your attention to what I already said in the talk on the idea of peace that even the modern natural sciences do no longer stand on the ground on which they still stood one decade ago. I have already pointed to the basic talk of the Russian researcher Kessler (Karl Fedorovich K., 1815-1881, German-Russian zoologist) in 1880 where he showed that the actual progressive animal species capable of development are not those which struggle the most, but which help each other. With it, it should not be asserted that struggle and war do not exist in the animal realm. Indeed, they exist, but it is another question what promotes development more, the war, or the mutual aid? One put an additional question: do those species survive whose individuals fight perpetually with each other, or those, which help each other? Here the above-mentioned research has already proved that not the struggle, but the mutual aid actually supports the progress. I have already pointed to the book of Prince Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921, Russian geographer, anarchist) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. In this book, you find some nice contributions to the questions, which occupy us here.

What did fraternity achieve in the human evolution? We only need to look at our ancestors on the same land on which we live today. You can easily get the idea that hunting and war were the actually supporting and caused the character of those human beings primarily. However, who defers deeper to history, finds that this is not right that those, also among the Germanic tribes, prospered best of all, on the contrary, those who had developed the principle of fraternity extraordinarily. We find this principle of fraternity above all how in the times before and after the migration of the people's property was regulated. In a great measure, there was a common property of land. A village in which the human beings lived together had a common property, and with the exception of a few things that belonged directly to the domestic use, with the exception of the tools, maybe of a garden, everything was common property. Every now and then, the land was divided again among the inhabitants, and it became apparent that these tribes had become strong because they had extraordinarily maintained fraternity concerning material goods.

If we go on some centuries, we find that this principle faces us in an exceptionally fertile way. The principle of fraternity, as it is distinct in the old villages, in the old conditions where the human beings found their freedom in the brotherly living together, expressed itself typically in the fact that one went so far to burn everything that a dead person had possessed. For one did not want to possess anything that the dead had possessed. When the principle was broken because of different conditions, in particular because single human beings had acquired a large estate and the persons in the surrounding area were thereby forced to serfdom and corvée, the principle of fraternity asserted in another, luminous way. Those who were depressed by their lords, the owners, wanted to free themselves from this oppression. Thus, we see in the middle of the Middle Ages a big liberation movement going through entire Europe. This liberation movement was characterised by general fraternity from which a general culture blossomed. We are in the so-called urban civilisation in the middle of the Middle Ages. Those human beings who could not stand the labour work on the manors escaped from their lords and sought for freedom in the enlarged cities.

People came from Scotland, France, and Russia, from everywhere and brought about the free cities. The principle of fraternity thereby developed, and it promoted culture in the extreme. Those who had common activities of the same kind united to associations which one called confraternities and which grew up to the guilds later. These associations were far more than mere unions of artisans or merchants. They developed from the practical life to a moral height. The mutual aid was highly developed with these associations, and many matters, which almost nobody cares about today, were objects of such assistance. Thus, for example, the members of such a confraternity provided assistance supporting each other in cases of illness. Two brothers were determined from day to day who had to keep vigil at the bedside of an ill brother. Sick people were supported with food.

Even beyond the grave, one thought brotherly, while one regarded it as something particularly honourable to bury a brother suitably. Finally, it also belonged to the honour of the association to supply the widows and orphans. Thus, you see how an understanding of morality arose in the common life how this morality formed on the ground of a consciousness an idea of which the modern human being can hardly conceive. Do not believe that here the present conditions should be rebuked in any way. They have become necessary, as well as it was necessary that the medieval conditions were expressed in their way. We have only to understand that there were also other phases of development than the modern ones.

Everywhere in the free cities of the Middle Ages, the trade in the market places and the prices were controlled. What did this mean? I want to illustrate it with a concrete example. If products were brought from the surrounding farmland to a market place of a city, one was only allowed to sell them in retail in the first days. Nobody was allowed to buy wholesale or to be an intermediary. At that time, one never thought to regulate the prices by supply and demand. At that time, one was able to adjust both. The authorities of the cities or the guilds had to fix the prices of the goods after one had determined everything that was necessary to their production. Nobody was allowed to exceed the prices. If we look at the labour conditions, we see that a thorough understanding existed of that which a person needed. If we look at the wages of the past taking into account the completely different conditions, we must say to ourselves that we cannot compare the remuneration of a worker of that time with that of a worker of today. The researchers have often interpreted this fact quite wrong.

According to practical points of view, these associations were formed and, hence, they formed gradually according to such practical points of view. Then they spread from one city to the other, because it was a matter of course that those who had a common craft and common interests combined in the various cities and supported each other. Thus, the associations extended from town to town.

At that time, humanity was not yet united by police rules, but by practical points of view. Who bothers to study the conditions, which were visible steadily in the towns of Europe at that time, notices very soon that we deal here with a particular phase of the deepening of the fraternity principle. This becomes apparent in particular, if we see which fruit developed from it. We could point to the highest summits, to the enormous artistic achievements of the 12th and 13th centuries. They would not have been possible without this deepening of the fraternity principle. Dante's tremendous work, The Divine Comedy, we understand cultural-historically only if we understand the development of the fraternity principle. Have a look further at that which originated in the cities under the influence of this principle, for example, how art of printing, copperplate engraving, paper preparation, horology, and the later appearing inventions prepared under the free principle of fraternity. What we are used to call bourgeoisie arises from the maintenance of the fraternity principle in the medieval cities. Many things that were produced by the scientific and artistic deepening would not have been possible without maintenance of this fraternity principle. If a cathedral should be built, for example the Cologne Cathedral or any other cathedral, then we see that at first an association, a so-called construction guild formed. A determined cooperation of the members of such a guild came into being that way. One can see—if one has an intuitive look—this fraternity principle expressed even in the architectural style, one can see it expressed everywhere almost in every medieval city, and you find it going northwards to Scotland or to Venice, looking at Russian or Polish cities.

However, we have to emphasise one thing, namely that the fraternity principle originated under the influence of a decidedly material culture and, therefore, everywhere we see the material, the physical in this developing higher culture and in that which remains as a fruit of that time. It had to be maintained once, and to maintain and to organise it properly this fraternity principle was necessary in those days.

From an abstraction, this fraternity principle arose at that time and our life was split by this abstraction, by this rational thinking, so that one does no longer know and understand exactly today how the struggle for existence and the fraternity principle mutually co-operate. On one side, the spiritual life became more and more abstract. Morality and justice, views concerning the political system and the other social conditions were considered under more and more abstract principles, and an abyss separated the struggle for existence more and more from that which the human being feels, actually, as his ideal. In those days, in the middle of the Middle Ages, a harmony existed between that which one felt as his ideal and which one really did. If ever it was shown once that one can be an idealist and practitioner at the same time, it might have been good so in the Middle Ages. In addition, the relation of the Roman law to life was still a harmonious one. However, look at this matter today, and then you see our legal relationships hovering over the moral life. Many people say: we know what is good, right, and proper, but it is not practical.—This comes from the fact that the thinking about the highest principles is separated from life.

From the 16th century on, we see the spiritual life developing more under rational principles. A member of a guild who sat with other twelve lay judges in judgement of any offence that another member of the guild had committed was the brother of that who should be judged. Life combined with life. Everybody knew what the other worked and tried to understand why he deviated from the right way. One looked, as it were, into the brother and wanted to look into him.

Now a kind of jurisprudence developed that the judge and the lawyer are only interested in the code that both only see a “case” to which they have to apply the law. Consider only how everything that is intended morally is detached from jurisprudence. We saw this condition more and more developing in the last century, while in the Middle Ages under the principle of fraternity something had developed that is inevitable and important to any prosperous progress: expertise and trust which disappear as principles more and more.

The judgment of the expert has almost completely withdrawn compared with the abstract jurisprudence, compared with the abstract parliamentarism. Today the ordinary intellect, the majority should be authoritative, not the expertise. The preference of the majority had to come. But just as little as one can vote in mathematics to get a right result—for 3 times 3 is always 9 and 3 times 9 is always 27, it is there also. It would be impossible to carry out the principle of the expert without the principle of fraternity, of brotherly love.

The struggle for existence is justified in life. Because the human being is a special being and must go his way through life as a single, he depends on this struggle for existence. In certain respects, the saying by Rückert (Friedrich R., 1788-1866, German poet and translator) also applies here: if the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.—Unless we make ourselves able to help our fellow men, we are only able to help them badly. Unless we see to it that all our dispositions are trained, we are only less successful to help our brothers. A certain egoism must exist to develop these dispositions, because the initiative is connected with egoism.

Who knows not to be led who knows not to let any picture of the surroundings work on himself, but knows how to descend in his inside, where the springs of the forces are, becomes a strong and capable human being who is more capable to serve others than someone who complies with all possible influence of his surroundings. It is obvious that this principle, which is necessary for the human being, can be radically elaborated. However, this principle only bears the right fruit if it is paired with the principle of brotherly love.

Just for this reason, I have instanced the free city guilds of the Middle Ages to show how the practice became so strong just under the principle of the mutual personal, individual aid. Where from did they get their strength? From the fact that they lived fraternally together with their fellow men. It is right to become as strong as possible. However, the question is whether we are generally able to become strong without brotherly love. Someone who soars a real soul knowledge has to deny this question categorically.

We see models of cooperation of single beings in a whole in the whole nature. Take only the human body. It exists of independent beings, of millions and millions of single independent living beings or cells. If you look at a part of this human body under the microscope, you find that it is composed of such independent beings. How do they co-operate? How has that become unselfish which should establish a whole in nature? None of our cells asserts its selfhood egotistically. The marvellous tool of thinking, the brain, is likewise formed from millions subtle cells, but they all work on their place harmoniously with the others. What does the cooperation of these little cells cause, what does it cause that a higher being is expressed within these little living beings? It is the human soul, which produces this effect. However, never could the human soul work here on earth unless these millions little beings gave up their selfhood and serve the big, common being which we call the soul. The soul sees with the cells of the eye, thinks with the cells of the brain, and lives with the cells of the blood. There we see what union means. Union means the possibility that a higher being expresses itself by the united constituents. This is a general principle of life.

Five human beings who are together and think and feel harmoniously, are more than 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, they are not only the sum of five, just as little as our body is the sum of five senses. However, the living together and living in each other of the human beings signifies something quite similar as the living in each other of the cells of the human body. A new, higher being is among the five, already among two or three ones. “For where two or three meet together in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:29). It is not the one, the other and the third, but something quite new originates from the union. However, it originates only if the single human being lives in the other, if the single human being not only gets his strength from himself only, but also from the other. However, this can happen only if he lives unselfishly in the other. Thus, the human unions are the mysterious sites, in which higher spiritual beings delve themselves to work using the single human being, as the soul works using the parts of the body.

In our materialistic age, one hardly believes that, but in the spiritual-scientific worldview, it is not only something pictorial, but also something real to the highest degree. Hence, the spiritual scientist does not only speak of abstract things speaking of the folk soul or of the folk spirit, of the family spirit or of the spirit of another community. One cannot see this spirit that works in a union, but it exists because of the brotherly love of the human beings working in this union. As the body has a soul, a guild, a fraternity also has a soul, and I repeat once again, I do not speak of anything figurative but of anything real.

The human beings who co-operate in a brotherhood are magicians because they draw higher beings into their circle. One does no longer need to refer to the machinations of spiritism if one co-operates with brotherly love in a community. Higher beings manifest themselves there. If we are merged in the fraternity, we harden and strengthen our organs. If we act or speak then as a member of such a community, the single soul does not act or speak in us, but the spirit of the community. This is the secret of the future human progress to work out of communities. As an epoch replaces the other and any epoch has its own task, it is also with the medieval epoch in relation to ours, with our epoch in relation to the future one.

The medieval guilds worked in the immediate practical life, in the basic useful skills. They showed a materialistic life only, after they had received their fruits, after the basis of their consciousness, namely brotherliness, had dwindled more or less, after the abstract state principle, the abstract, spiritual life had replaced real empathy. It is the future task to found brotherhoods again, namely out of the spiritual, out of the highest ideals of the soul. Human life produced the manifold unions up to now; it has caused a terrible struggle for existence, which has almost arrived at its peak today. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to train the highest goods of humanity in the sense of the fraternity principle, and then you see that the spiritual-scientific world movement replaces the struggle for existence with this fraternity principle in all fields. We have to learn to lead a common life. We are not allowed to believe that the one or the other is able to carry out this or that.

Probably everybody would like to know how to combine the struggle for existence and brotherly love. This is very easy. We have to learn to substitute struggle by positive work, to substitute the struggle, the war by the ideal. Today one does not sufficiently understand what that is. One does not know of which struggle one speaks, because one speaks in life generally only of struggles. There we have the social struggle, the struggle for peace, the struggle for the emancipation of the woman, the struggle for land, et cetera, where we look, we see the struggle.

The spiritual-scientific worldview strives for replacing this struggle by positive work. Someone who has settled down in this worldview knows that the struggles lead to a real result in any field of life. Try to apply that which proves to be the right thing in your experience and knowledge to implement in life, to assert it without fighting against the opponent. Of course, it can be only an ideal, but such an ideal must exist, which is to be implemented today as a spiritual-scientific principle in life. Human beings who join human beings and who use their strength for everything are those who deliver the basis of a prosperous development in future. The theosophical society wants to be exemplary even in this respect; therefore, it is no propaganda society like others, but a society of brothers. One works in it by the work of every single member. One has to understand this correctly once. Someone works best who wants to push through not his opinion, but that which he guesses by looking at his co-brothers; who does research in the thoughts and feelings of the fellow men and serves them. Somebody works best of all within this circle who is able not to spare his own opinion in the practical life. If we try to understand this way that our best forces arise from the union and that the union is not only considered as an abstract principle, but also is to be operated above all theosophically with every handle, at every moment of life, then we advance. We must be patient advancing this way.

What does spiritual science show to us? It shows a higher reality, and it is this consciousness of a higher reality that furthers us in the activity of the fraternity principle.

One still calls the theosophists impractical idealists. It will not last long, and they will prove to be the most practical people because they envisage the forces of life. Nobody doubts that one injures a person if one throws a stone at his head. However, one does not consider that it is much worse to send a hatred feeling to the human being that injures his soul even more than the stone injures the body. It completely depends on it with which attitude we face the fellow men. However, our strength of a prosperous work in future also depends on it. If we try to live fraternally that way, then we carry out the principle of fraternity practically.

Being tolerant means, something else in a spiritual-scientific sense than what one normally understands by it. It means to pay attention also to the freedom of thought of other people. It is boorishness to push another away from his place; it is boorishness if one does the same, however, in thoughts, because nobody regards that as wrong. Indeed, we speak a lot of the appreciation of the other opinion; however, we are not inclined to apply this to ourselves.

A word almost does not have any significance to us; we hear it and have not heard it, nevertheless. However, we must learn to listen with the soul, we must know how to grasp the most intimate matters with the soul. That always exists in spirit at first, which originates later in the physical life. We must suppress our opinion to hear the other completely, not only the word, but even the emotion, also if in us the emotion should stir that it is wrong which the other says.

One is much more strengthened if one is able to listen, as long as the other speaks, than to interrupt him. This gives a completely different mutual understanding. Then you feel, as if the soul of the fellow man warms and illuminates you, if you consider it with absolute tolerance. We should not only grant freedom of the human being, but we should also esteem complete freedom, even the freedom of the other opinion. This is only one example of many. Someone who interrupts the other does—considered from a spiritual worldview—something similar as someone who gives him a kick. If one is able to understand that it is much stronger influencing to interrupt another than to give him a kick, then only one gets around to understanding the fraternity at heart, then it becomes a fact. This is the great thing of the spiritual-scientific movement that it brings us a new confidence, a new conviction of the spiritual forces flowing out from human being to human being. This is the higher principle of spiritual fraternity. Everybody may imagine how remote humanity is from such a principle of spiritual fraternity. Everybody may educate himself—if he finds time—to send thoughts of love and friendship to his dear. The human being regards this normally as something meaningless. But if you are once able to see that the thought is as well a force as the electric wave which goes out from an apparatus and streams to the receiving apparatus, then you also understand the principle of fraternity better, then the common consciousness becomes more distinct bit by bit, then it becomes practical.

From this point of view, we can realise how the spiritual-scientific worldview understands the struggle for existence and the fraternal relationship. We know for sure that quite a few people who are put to this or that place in life simply would perish if they did not do in Rome as the Romans do, if they did not fight this struggle for existence as cruelly as many others. For somebody who thinks materialistically there is almost no escape from this struggle for existence. Indeed, we should do our duty at the place where karma has put us. However, we do the right thing if we understand that we would perform much more if we refrained to see the results, which we want to get, in the immediate present. If you are in the struggle for existence with bleeding soul, have the heart to let flow your thoughts affectionately from soul to soul to anybody whom you hurt in the struggle for existence. As a materialist, you maybe think that you have done nothing. After these discussions, however, you see that this must have its effect later; for we know that nothing is lost which takes action in the spiritual.

Thus, we may wage the struggle for existence with hesitating soul sometimes, with melancholy in the heart and transform it with our cooperation. Working in this struggle for existence in such a way means transforming it in practical respect. This is not possible overnight, but no doubt, we can do it. If we work on our soul in the sense of brotherly love, we benefit humanity mostly because we benefit ourselves. For it is true that our abilities are uprooted as a plant is eradicated from the ground if we remain in selfhood. As little as an eye is still an eye if it is torn out of the head, as little a human soul is still a human soul if it separates from the human society. You will see that we develop our talents, best of all, if we live in brotherly community that we live most intensely if we are rooted in the whole. Of course, we have to wait holding communion with ourselves until that which takes roots in the whole becomes fruit.

We must not get lost neither in the outside world, nor in ourselves, for that is true in the highest spiritual sense, which the poet said that we have to be quiet with ourselves if our talents should appear. Nevertheless, these talents are rooted in the world. We can strengthen them and improve our character only if we live in the community. Therefore, it is true in the sense of the principle of real fraternity that brotherliness makes the human being the strongest just in the struggle for existence, and he will find most of his forces in the silence of his heart if he develops his whole personality, his whole individuality together with the other human brothers. It is true: a talent forms in the silence—, however, it is also true: a character and with it the whole human being and the whole humanity form in the perpetual current of the world.

In a series of talks, I have spoken of the ideas about the supersensible world and its connection with the sensuous world. It is only a matter of course that the question appears repeatedly, where from does the knowledge of the supersensible world come? Today we want to deal with this question, or with other words, with the question of the inner development of the human being.

Inner development of the human being is meant here in the sense that the human being advances to such abilities that he must acquire to himself if he wants to make that supersensible knowledge his own. Do not misunderstand the intention of this talk. This talk is remote from establishing rules or principles that have something to do with general human morality or with the demands, which belong to the general zeitgeist. I must note this expressly because over and over again in our time of equalisation where one does not accept any difference between human being and human being the misunderstanding appears, as if anybody who speaks of occultism establishes any general human demands, moral principles or the like which apply to everybody without distinction. This is not the case. This talk must not at all be confused with a talk on general principles of the theosophical movement. Occultism is unlike theosophy. The Theosophical Society has not only and indeed not exclusively the task to maintain occultism. It could be even possible that anybody who joins this Theosophical Society considers occultism as something completely unacceptable.

Among those matters that are maintained in the Theosophical Society to which also a general ethics belongs is also occultism, which encompasses the knowledge of those principles of our existence that escape from the usual sensory observation in the everyday human area of experience. However, by no means the principles are those, which have nothing to do with this everyday experience. “Occult” means: concealed, mysterious. However, I emphasise again and again that occultism is something that needs certain preconditions. As incomprehensible as higher mathematics is for the usual farmer who has never heard of it, it is occultism for many people of our time.

However, occultism stops being occult if one has taken possession of it. With it, I have strictly limited the field of this talk. Thus, nobody can object—and this must expressly be emphasised after the millenniums-old experiences and often performed experiments—that the demands which occultism puts up could not be fulfilled, they would contradict a general human culture. The fulfilment of it is required from nobody. If, however, anybody comes to me and wants to get the convictions which occultism conveys, but refuses to deal with occultism, he is in the very same situation as the schoolchild who wants to make a glass rod electric, but refuses to rub it. It will not become electric without friction. Somebody who behaves like that who has to make any objection to the methods of occultism.

Nobody is asked to become occultist; everybody must come voluntarily to occultism. Someone who objects that we do not need occultism does not need to deal with it.

Occultism does not appeal to the general humanity today. Moreover, in our present civilisation, it is exceptionally difficult to fulfil the demands of a life, which makes the supersensible world accessible.

Two preconditions are completely absent in our civilisation. The first demand is the isolation, that which esoteric science calls the higher human loneliness. The second one is the overcoming of an egoism that has risen high concerning the innermost soul qualities, in large part unaware to humanity.

The lack of these preconditions makes the developmental way of the inner life almost impossible today, because life is dispersed more and more, demands external sensuousness. In no other culture, the human beings lived in the exterior in this way as just in ours. Now I ask you again not to take anything that I say as criticism but only as a characteristic.

Of course, someone speaking that way as I do today knows exactly that this cannot be different, that just the great advantages and significant achievements of our time are based on these qualities. However, that is why our time is without any supersensible knowledge and without any influence of supersensible knowledge on our culture. In other cultures—and there are some—the human being is able to maintain his inner life more and to withdraw from the effects of the outer life. Then, within such cultures, that prospers which one calls inner life in the higher sense. In the Eastern cultures, there is something that one calls yoga and those who live according to the rules of yoga yogis. Therefore, a yogi is someone who aims at the higher spiritual science, but only, after he has looked for a master of the supersensible for himself. Nobody looks for yoga in another way than under the tutelage of a master, a guru. If he has found him, he must use a big part of the day regularly, not irregularly, to live completely in his soul. All forces that the yogi has to develop are already in his soul, they are there as certain as it is true that the electricity in the glass rod appears by friction. It is true that no one knows on his own how to cause these forces as also no one knows on his own that he can make the glass rod electric by friction.

One has to use the observations made in millenniums and the esoteric methods developed thereby to evoke the soul forces. This is very difficult in our time, which demands from every human being because of the struggle for existence that he splits himself. He does not come to the big inner contemplation, not even to a concept of contemplation, which one had in yoga. No consciousness is there of the deep loneliness which the yogi must search for. He has to repeat the same thing rhythmically, even if only for a short time, with tremendous regularity every day, with complete seclusion of anything that lives in him otherwise. It is necessary and essential that all life, which surrounds us, dies down before the yogi that his senses become unreceptive to any impression of the outside world. The yogi has to make himself blind and deaf to the environment for the time, which he dictates to himself. He must be so composed—and he has to acquire the practise in this contemplation—that one may shoot a gun beside him, and he is not disturbed directing his attention upon his inner life. In addition, he has to become free from any memory of the everyday life.

Consider now how exceptionally hard these preconditions are to be produced in our civilisation, how little one has an idea of such isolation, of such spiritual loneliness. You have to achieve all that on one condition, namely on that never to lose the harmony, the complete balance compared with the outside world in any way. This is exceptionally easy with such a deep sinking in your inside. What settles down deeper and deeper in your inside has to produce the harmony with the outside world even more distinctly at the same time. Nothing that is reminiscent of estrangement, of distance from the outer practical life is allowed to appear with you, otherwise you go astray, and otherwise, perhaps, you are not able to distinguish your higher life from insanity to a certain degree. It is really a kind of insanity if the inner life loses its relations to the outer one. Imagine once—to give you an example—you are clever concerning our earthly conditions; you have all experience and wisdom that can be collected on earth. You fall asleep in the evening, but you wake in the morning not on the earth, but on Mars. However, on Mars are conditions quite different from those on the earth. Any science, which you have collected on earth, benefits you by no means. There is no longer any harmony between your inner life and that, which takes action outside you. Hence, you would be probably put into a Mars lunatic asylum already after an hour because you cannot find the way in the new conditions. To such a road, anybody can be easily directed who loses the connection with the outside world developing his inner life. One strictly has to pay attention to it that this does not happen. All that causes big difficulties in our civilisation.

The other obstacle is a kind of egoism concerning inner soul qualities, an account of which the present humanity normally gives to itself. This is tightly connected with the spiritual development of the human being. For it belongs to the preconditions that one does not strive for it from egoism. Who strives for it from egoism cannot come far. However, our time is selfish until the inside of the human soul. You can hear repeatedly: on the other hand, how useful are these teachings to me which occultism propagates if I myself cannot experience them?

Who starts from this condition and also does not desist from it, can hardly get a really higher development, because the most intimate consciousness of human community belongs to the higher development, so that it is irrelevant whether I myself or another experience this or that. Hence, I must meet somebody whose development is higher than mine is with boundless love and full trust. First, I have to bring myself to this consciousness, to the consciousness of infinite trust towards my fellow man if he says I have experienced this and this. Such trust must be a condition of the community life, and wherever such occult abilities are used more extensively, there it is unlimited trust; there one has the consciousness that the human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The basis is trust and confidence at first because we are searching not always only in ourselves for our higher selves, but also in our fellow men. Everybody who lives round us is according to his inner nature in undivided unity with us.

As long as it depends on my lower self, I am separated from other human beings. However, if it concerns my higher self—and only this can ascend to the supersensible world—, then I am no longer separated from the fellow men, I am a uniform being with my fellow men, then is that who speaks to me of the higher truth: I myself. I must drop this difference between him and me completely, I must overcome the feeling completely that he has something over me. Try to settle down in this feeling completely, so that it penetrates till the thinnest little fibres of the human soul and any egoism disappears, and the other who is farther than you stands like your own self before you, then you have understood one of the preconditions that are necessary to wake the higher spiritual life.

You can hear just where the instructions of the occult life are given—often very incorrectly and erroneously—: the higher self lives in the human being, he only needs to let his inside speak and the highest truth is revealed.—Nothing is more correct on the one hand and, on the other hand, more infertile than this assertion. If the human being tries once to let his inner human being speak, he will see that as a rule his lower self speaks, even if he imagines ever so much that his higher self appears. We do not find the higher self in ourselves at first. We have to look for it outside ourselves first. From anybody who is farther advanced we can learn a piece, because we keep it in sight as it were. We can never profit anything from our own selfish ego for our higher self. Where anybody is who has farther advanced than I have, there I am in the future. According to my disposition, I really bear the seed in myself of that which he is. However, first the ways to Mount Olympus must be illumined, so that I can pursue them.

A feeling is the basic condition of any esoteric development, you may believe it or not—every practical occultist who has experience confirms it to you—, a feeling which is mentioned in the different religions. The Christian religion calls it with the known sentence that one must understand as an occultist completely: “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15, Matthew 18:3). Only that understands the sentence who has learnt reverence in the highest sense of the word. Assume once that you would have heard of an adorable person in your earliest youth, a personality by which in you the highest idea has been woken in a direction, and the opportunity is offered to you to get to know this personality closer. A holy shyness of this personality lives in you during the day, which should bring you the moment where you see him in person for the first time. Standing before the door of this person, you can have the feeling to be afraid to touch the handle and to open the door. If you look to such an adorable personality this way, you have understood the feeling approximately which also Christianity means if it says that one should become like the little children to participate in the kingdom of God. It depends not so much on whether that to whom the feeling is directed deserves it in full measure, but it depends on the fact that we have the ability to look up reverentially at something from our inside. This is the important aspect of admiration that you yourselves are drawn up to that at whom you look up.

The feeling of admiration is the raising force, the magnetic force that pulls us up to the higher spheres of the supersensible life. This is the principle of the occult world that everybody who looks for higher life has to write into his soul as with golden letters. From this basic mood of the soul, the development has to begin. Without this feeling, one can generally attain nothing. Then that who looks for inner development must be clear in his mind that he does something tremendous concerning the human being. What he looks for is nothing more and nothing less than a new birth, namely in the proper sense. The higher soul of the human being should be born. As well as the human being was born with his first birth from deep inner reasons of existence as he came to the sunlight, somebody who looks for inner development steps out of the sunlight, out of that which he can experience in the sensory world, to a higher spiritual light. Something is born in him that rests in the usual human being, who represents the mother, as deeply as the child in the mother before it is born. Who is not aware of the far-reaching consequences of this fact does not know what is called occult or esoteric development. The higher soul that is deep in the whole human nature at first and is interwoven with it is got out. If the human being stands in the everyday life before us, his lower and higher natures are closely related, and this is a piece of luck in the everyday life.

Somebody, who lives among us, would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if he followed his lower nature, but within him, mixed with the lower nature, the higher one lives which keeps it in check. You can compare this mixture with a mixture of a yellow liquid and a blue one in a glass, resulting in a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish yellow and blue. The lower nature is mixed with the higher one in the human being that way and both are not to be distinguished. As you can extract the blue liquid from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow fluid remains, and the uniform green is separated into a duality, in blue and yellow, you separate the lower nature from the higher one by means of the esoteric development. You pull the lower nature out of the body like the sword from the scabbard, which remains alone then for itself. This lower nature comes out in such a way that it appears almost nightmarish.

When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of it was to be noticed. Now, however, when it is separated, all evil, bad qualities come out. Human beings who had seemed benevolent before often become quarrelsome and envious. These qualities sat already in their lower nature, however, were controlled by the higher one. You can observe this with many people who are led on anomalous ways. The human being becomes a liar very easily when he enters the supersensible world. He easily loses the ability to distinguish true from wrong. It belongs inevitably to the esoteric training that the strictest training of the character is paralleled by it. What history tells of the saints as their temptations is not a legend but literal truth.

Someone who wants to develop in any way to the higher world is easily exposed to this temptation if he has not developed the strength of character and the highest morality in himself to be able to hold down everything that approaches him. Not only that desire and passions grow, this is not even so much the case, but—and this seems miraculous at first—also the opportunities increase. Like by a miracle, opportunities of the evil, which were concealed to him before, lie in wait of someone who ascends to the higher world. In every fact of life, a demon lies in wait for him which tries to lead him astray. What he has not seen once, he sees now. The splitting of his nature conjures up such opportunities as it were everywhere from the secret sites of life. Therefore, the so-called white magic—that school of esoteric development which leads the human being to the higher worlds in good, real and true way—demands a particular development of character as essential. Every practical esoteric says to you that nobody should dare to pass that narrow gate—one calls the entrance to the esoteric development that way—without practicing these qualities repeatedly. They are a necessary pre-school of the esoteric life.

The first ability that the human being must develop is to separate the unimportant from the significant, the transient from the imperishable on all his ways through life. One can demand this easily, but it is often difficult to carry it out. It is, as Goethe says, indeed, easy, however, the easy is difficult. Have a look, for example, at a plant or at a thing.

You learn to recognise that everything has an important and an unimportant side and the human being mostly is interested in the unimportant, in the relation of the thing to him or in a subordinated quality. Someone who wants to become an esoteric has to get into the habit of seeing and looking for a being in everything. Seeing a watch, for example, he has to be interested in its principles. He must be able to disassemble it in the minutest detail and develop a feeling of its principles. Suppose further that a mineralogist looks at a rock crystal. He gets already by an external view to a significant knowledge of the crystal. However, the esoteric must take a stone in hand and can vividly feel what is indicated in the following monologue: in certain respect, you are below humanity, but in certain respect, you outrank humanity by far. You are below humanity because you cannot conceive ideas of human beings because you do not feel. You cannot imagine, you cannot think and you do not live, but you have something over humanity, you are chaste in yourself, you do not have any wish and desire. Every human being, every living being has wishes, cravings, desires; you do not have them. You are perfect and contented with that which was bestowed on you, a model for the human being with which he has still to connect his other qualities.

If the esoteric can feel this rather deeply, he has grasped the significant that the stone can say to him. Thus, the human being can take something important from everything. If this has become a habit that he separates the significant from the unimportant, then he has appropriated another of the feelings, which the esoteric must have. Then he must connect his own life with the significant. The human beings are deceived in that in particular very easily in our time. The human beings believe very easily that the place on which they stand is not commensurate with them. How often are people inclined to say, my destiny has put me in a place in which I do not fit. I am, we say, for example, postal clerk. If I were put to another place, I could provide high ideas to the people; I could give great teachings and so on.

The mistake of these human beings is that they do not connect their lives with the significant of their occupations. If you see anything significant in me because I can talk to the people here, you do not see the significant in your own life and occupation. If the postmen did not carry away the letters, the whole exchange of letters would come to a standstill, a lot of work, which has already been performed by others, would be in vain.

Hence, everybody is of extraordinary importance for the whole on his post, and nobody is higher than the other is. Christ tried to indicate this the nicest in the downright marvellous way in the thirteenth chapter of the St. John's Gospel with the words: “a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger than the one who sent him” (13:16). These words were spoken, after the master had washed the disciples' feet. With it, he wanted to say, what would I be without my disciples? They must be there, so that I can be there in the world, and I have to pay tribute to them degrading myself before them and washing their feet.—This is one of the most significant hints to the feeling, which the esoteric must have towards the significant. One is not allowed to confuse the externally significant with the internally significant. One has to pay strict attention to that.

Then we must develop a number of qualities. First, we have to become masters of our thoughts, of the chains of our thoughts in particular. One calls that the control of thoughts. Consider once how in the human soul the thoughts are bustling about, how they are wandering around aimlessly: here appears an impression, there another, and every single one changes the thought. It is not true that we control the thoughts; rather the thoughts control us completely. However, we must advance so far that we are engrossed in a certain thought during a certain time of the day and say to ourselves, no other thought is allowed to enter my soul and to control me.—With it, we ourselves lead the reins of the thought life for some time.

The second quality is that we behave in a similar way to our actions, that is that we control our actions. It is necessary that we reach so far at least to commit such actions now and again to which we are caused by nothing that comes from outside. Nothing that is induced by our state, our occupation, and our position leads us deeper into the higher life. The higher life depends on such intimacies, for example that we make the decision to do something for the first time, something that arises from our very own initiative, and even if it is a quite unimportant fact. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.

The following, the third quality is endurance. The human beings alternate between joy and grief, once they are on top of the sky, then they are down in the dumps. Thus, the human beings drift on the waves of life, of joy and grief. However, they have to attain equanimity, calmness. The biggest grief, the biggest joys must not confuse them, they must stand firm, get endurance.

The fourth quality is the understanding of any being. What it means to understand any being is nowhere better expressed than in a legend about Christ Jesus, which has been preserved to us not in the Gospels, but in a Persian story. Jesus walked with his disciples overland, and they found a rotting dog on the way. The animal looked awkward. Jesus stopped and glanced admiring at it, saying, “However, what nice teeth has this animal.” Jesus spotted the beautiful of the awkward. Strive for approaching the marvellous everywhere in such a way, and then you see something in everything outdoors to which you can say yes. Make it like Christ who admired the beautiful teeth of the dead dog. This direction leads to great tolerance and to the understanding of anything and any being.

The fifth quality is the complete impartiality towards everything new that faces us. Most people judge something new according to something old that they know already. If anybody comes to say anything to you, you immediately answer: I am of another opinion about that.—However, we are not allowed to confront a communication, which we get with our opinion immediately, we must be on the lookout for something new that we can learn. We can still learn something from a little child. Even if one is the wisest human being, he must be inclined to restrain his judgment and to listen to others. We must develop this ability of listening to anybody, because it enables us to face the things with maximal impartiality. In esotericism, one calls this “confidence,” and this is the strength to maintain the impressions, which the new makes on us, by that which we hold against it.

The sixth quality is that which everybody receives by itself after he has developed the cited qualities. This is the inner harmony. The human being who has the other qualities has the inner harmony. Then it is also necessary that the human being who looks for the esoteric development has developed the feeling of freedom to the highest degree. This feeling of freedom which enables him to look for the centre of his being in himself and to stand firm on own feet so that he does not need to ask anybody what to do, but that he stands straight and acts freely. This is also something that one has to acquire.

If the human being has developed these qualities in himself, he is above any danger that could cause the splitting of his nature in him. Then the qualities of his lower nature can no longer work on him, and then he can no longer lose his way. Hence, these qualities must develop very exactly. The esoteric life comes then whose expression causes a certain rhythmisation of life. The term rhythmisation of life expresses the corresponding ability. If you look at nature, you find a certain rhythm in it. You will consider it as a matter of course that the violet blossoms annually at the same time in the spring that the grain on the field, the grapes on the grapevine become ripe at the same time. This rhythmical succession of the phenomena is found everywhere outside in nature. Everywhere is rhythm; everywhere is repetition in regular sequence. If you go up to the higher beings which, you see this rhythmical sequence more and more decreasing. You also see with the animal, still in a higher degree, all qualities rhythmically arranged. At certain time of the year, the animal gets particular functions and abilities. The higher the being is developed, the more life is given in own hands of the being, the more this rhythm ceases. You must know that the human body is only one of the members of his being. Then the etheric body comes, the astral body, and finally, the higher members, which form the basis of those.

The physical body is highly subject to the rhythm to which the entire external nature is subjected. As the plant life and animal life proceed in their external form rhythmically, the life of the physical body proceeds. The heart beats rhythmically, the lung breathes rhythmically and so on. Everything proceeds so rhythmically because it is ordered by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, and in particular the astral body, are left, I would like to say, by these higher spiritual powers in a certain way and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity is irregular concerning wishes, desires, and passions that it cannot be compared with the regularity that prevails in the physical body? Who learns the rhythm of the physical nature finds the model of spirituality in it. If you look at the heart, this marvellous organ with the regular beat and its implanted wisdom, and compare it to the desires and passions of the astral body that release all possible actions against the heart, then you recognise how disadvantageously the passion works on its regular way. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as the performances of the physical body are.

I want to state something that will seem absurd to most people, namely concerning the fasting. We have completely lost the consciousness of the importance of fasting. However, from the point of view of the rhythmisation of our astral body, fasting is something exceptionally meaningful. What is fasting? It means to control the desire of eating and to eliminate the astral body concerning the desire of eating. He who fasts eliminates the astral body and has no appetite. This is in such a way, as if you switch off a force in a machine. Then the astral body sleeps, and the rhythms of the physical body and its implanted wisdom work on the astral body and make it rhythmic. As well as the seal is imprinted by a signet, the harmony of the physical body is imprinted in the astral body and it would be transmitted much more permanently if it were not always made irregular by the desires, passions and wishes, also by spiritual desires and wishes.

The modern human being needs more than in former times to bring in rhythm to his entire higher life. Just as God planted rhythm into the physical body, the human being must make his astral body rhythmic. The human being must dictate the course of the day to himself; arrange it for the astral body in such a way as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. Early in the morning, at a particular time, one must do a spiritual exercise, at another time, which must be again observed strictly, another exercise, in the evening another exercise again. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable to the continuing development of the higher life. This is a kind to take charge of life and to control it. Determine an hour in the morning where you concentrate. You must observe this hour. There you have to produce a kind of calm, so that the great esoteric master can wake in you. There you have to meditate on big contents of thought, which have nothing to do with the outside world, and to liven these contents of thought up in you.

A short time is enough, maybe a quarter of an hour, even five minutes if one does not have more time. However, it is worthless and useless if one exercises irregularly. If one exercises regularly, so that the activity of the astral body becomes regular like a clock, then these exercises have value. The astral body gets another appearance if you exercise regularly. Sit down in the morning and exercise; the forces develop which I described to you. However, it must happen regularly because the astral body expects that the same is carried out with it at the same time, and it gets into a mess if it does not happen. One must have a mind to exercise regularly at least. If you make your life rhythmic in such a way, you perceive the results in not too long a time, namely the spiritual life, which is hidden to the human being at first, becomes apparent to some extent.

As a rule, the human life changes between four states. The first state is the perception of the outside world. You look with the senses and perceive the outside world. The second state is that which we can call imagination which is somewhat related to the dream life, even belongs to it. There the human being is rooted not in the surroundings, but is detached from them, there he has no realities before him, memories at the most. The third state is the dreamless sleep. There the human being has no consciousness of his ego, and the fourth state is that in which the human being lives in his memory. This is different from perception; this is something abstract, spiritual. Had the human being no memory, he could not get any spiritual development generally.

Inner life starts developing by means of tranquillity and meditation. The human being notices then eventually that he is no longer dreaming chaotically, but that he dreams in extremely significant way and that to him strange things manifest, which he recognises gradually as manifestations of spiritual truths. Of course, one can easily raise the trivial objection: all that is just dreamt, what does this concern to us?—However, if anybody invented the dirigible airship in his dreams and carried out it, this dream would just have revealed the truth. Thus, an idea can be grasped still in a way different from the usual, and then the truth of it must be found in the realisation. We have to be convinced of its inner truth from the outside.

The next stage of the spiritual life is that where we grasp truth using our own qualities and direct our dreams consciously. If we start directing the dreams regularly, we are on that level where truth becomes transparent to us. One calls the first stage the material knowledge where the object must be there. The other stage is the imaginative knowledge. One develops this by meditating, organising life rhythmically.

It is laborious to gain it. If it is obtained, the time also comes when there is no longer any difference between the perception in the usual life and the perception in the supersensible. If we live among the things of the everyday life, in the sensuous world, and change our spiritual state, we experience the spiritual supersensible world perpetually if we have exercised enough in this way. This is the case, as soon as we are able to become blind and deaf compared with the sensory world, to remember nothing of the everyday life and still to have a spiritual life in us. Then our dream life starts becoming conscious. If we are able to pour something of it in our everyday life, then also that quality appears which makes the spiritual qualities of the beings round us perceptible.

Then we do no longer see the outside of the things only, but then we also see the inside, the concealed essence of the things, the plants, the animals, and the human beings. I know that most people say: these are other things.—This is quite right; these are always things quite unlike those, which the human being sees, who do not have such senses. The third state is usually completely empty, but starts to be animated if the continuity of consciousness occurs. The continuity comes completely by itself, and then the human being does no longer sleep unconsciously. He experiences the supersensible world during the time when he sleeps otherwise.

What does sleep consist of, otherwise? The physical body lies in the bed and the astral body lives in the supersensible world. In this supersensible world, you are strolling. As a rule, the human being of the present disposition cannot go far away from his body. If anyone has now developed organs of the astral body, strolling during sleep, by the rules which spiritual science gives, he starts realising during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes and ears, and the astral body that strolls at night is blind and deaf because it still has no eyes and ears. However, these develop by meditation; it is the means of forming its organs. This meditation must then be performed regularly. It is performed in such a way that the body of the human being is the mother and the spirit of the human being is the father. The body of the human being, as it stands physically before us, is in every member, which it shows to us, a mystery, namely in such a way that any member belongs in certain but concealed way to a part of the astral body. The esoteric knows these matters. He knows, for example, where to the point between the eyebrows belongs in the physical body. It belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. While the spiritual scientist indicates how to direct your thoughts, feelings and sensations to the point between the eyebrows, you connect something that develops in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body and you get a certain sensation in your astral body.

However, it must happen regularly, and one must know how. Then the astral body starts being structured. It develops from a lump to the organism in which the organs form. I have described the astral senses in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis. One also calls them lotus flowers. These lotus flowers develop using certain formulae. If they have developed, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world, which he enters when he walks through the gate of death. The saying by Hamlet is then wrecked that from that unknown land no traveller has come back.

You can go or, better said, you can slip from the sensuous world into the supersensible world, and live here and there. This is no life in a cloud-cuckoo-land, but a life in that area which only makes the life in our area explicable and clear. As well as a usual human being who has not studied the principles of electricity goes into an electrically powered factory, sees the miraculous activities and does not understand them, he also does not understand the activities in the spiritual world.

The ignorance of the visitor of this factory exists as long as he does not know the principles of electricity. Thus, the human being is also ignorant in the fields of the spiritual, as long as he does not know the principles of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that does not depend on the spiritual world wherever one goes. Everything that surrounds us here is an external expression of the spiritual world. There is no material. Every material is compressed spirit. To somebody who looks into the spiritual world, the whole material, sensuous world, the world generally spiritualises itself. As the ice melts before the sun to water, everything sensuous melts to something spiritual before the soul, which looks into the spiritual world. The primal ground of the world reveals itself bit by bit before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.

In reality, this life, which the human being gets to know in this way, is the spiritual life that the human being has already led inside perpetually about which he knows nothing because he does not know himself until he has developed the organs for the higher world. Imagine once that you would be a human being with the qualities, which you have now, however, you would have no senses. You would know nothing about the world round you, you would have no understanding of the physical body, and, nevertheless, you would belong to the physical world

Thus, the human soul belongs to the spiritual world, however, it does not know it because it does not hear and see. As our body is taken from the forces and materials of the physical world, our soul is taken from the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognise ourselves in ourselves, but only in our surroundings. As true as you cannot see the heart and brain, without perceiving them with your fellow men by your senses—even with the help of the X-rays your eyes can only see the heart—, it is true that you cannot see or hear your own soul, without recognising them by the spiritual senses in the environment. You can recognise yourselves only by your environment. There is no inside knowledge in reality, no introspection, there is only a knowledge, a revelation by organs of the physical as well as of the spiritual life around us. We belong to the worlds around us, to the physical, astral, and spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical world, if we have physical organs and from the spiritual world, from all souls if we have soul organs, spiritual organs. There is no other knowledge than world knowledge.

It is idle and empty tranquillity if the human being is brooding in himself and believes to be able to reach anything by mere introspection. The human being finds God in himself if he wakes the divine organs in himself and then finds his higher divine self in his environment, as he can only find his lower self in the surroundings using his eyes and ears. We understand ourselves as physical beings by the contact with the sensory world, and we understand ourselves in a spiritual respect while we develop spiritual senses in ourselves. Developing the inside means opening ourselves to the divine life in the outside world round us.

You understand now why it is necessary that someone who ascends to the higher world experiences an infinite consolidation of his character first. The human being can get to know by himself at first how the world is because his senses are already opened. For a benevolent divine spirit that had seen and heard in the physical world stood beside the human being aeons ago, before he could see and hear, and opened his eyes and ears. Just from such beings, the human being has to learn to see spiritually, from the beings, which are already able to what he has to learn. We must have a guru who says to us how to develop our organs who says to us what he did to develop the organs. Who wants to instruct has to acquire a basic quality: absolute veracity, and this is also a main demand, which must be made on the student. Nobody is allowed to be trained as an esoteric, unless he has acquired this basic quality of absolute veracity before.

Concerning the sensuous experiences, one can examine what is said. However, if I tell you anything of the spiritual world, you must have confidence because you are not yet so far that you can check it. Who wants to be a guru must have become so true that it is impossible for him to take such statements slightly with regard to the spiritual world and the spiritual life. The sensuous world immediately corrects the mistakes, which we do concerning this world, however, in the spiritual world, we must have that guideline in ourselves, we must be rigorously trained, so that we are not forced to control by the outside world, but have the control in ourselves. We can only acquire this control, while we appropriate the most rigorous veracity already here in the world. Therefore, the Theosophical Society also had to accept the principle: no law above truth, when it began revealing some elementary teachings of esotericism to the world.

A few understand this principle. Most people are content with it if they can say to themselves, I am aware that it is true, and if it is wrong, they say, I have erred. The esoteric is not allowed to insist on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always comply with the facts in the outside world and he must regard an experience, which speaks against it as a mistake, as an error. The esoteric is no longer responsible or not. He must absolutely harmonise with the facts of life. He must start feeling responsible in the strictest sense of any statement, which he makes. Then one educates himself to the unconditional assurance that that must have for himself and others who wants to be a spiritual guide.

Thus, you see that I had to indicate—we have to speak about this subject once again to add the higher parts—a number of qualities and procedures. They seem to you too intimate to speak about them with others, every soul has to sort them for itself and they may seem to you inappropriate to attain the great aim, which should be attained, namely the entrance of the supersensible world. That will absolutely arrive at the entrance who walks on the way, which I have characterised.

When? About that, one of the most superior members of the theosophical movement, our long since deceased member Subba Rao (Tallapragada S. R., 1856-1890), appropriately expressed himself. He answered to the question, how long it lasts: seven years, maybe also seven times seven years, maybe also seven incarnations, maybe also only seven hours.—It completely depends on that which the person brings into life along with him. A person may face us, who is apparently quite silly who has brought a higher life along with him, which is concealed now and must only be got out. Today, most human beings are farther advanced in esoteric relation than it seems, and this would become known to many people if our material conditions and our material time did not strike back so much into the inner soul life. A big percentage of modern humanity advanced rather far in earlier times. It depends on different matters whether that which is in the human being comes out. However, one can give some help. Imagine that a human being faces me. In his former incarnation he was a far advanced individuality, however, he has an undeveloped brain now. An undeveloped brain may sometimes conceal great spiritual talents. However, if one teaches him the usual profane abilities, it is possible that also the inner spiritual ones come out. However, it does not depend only on this, but also on the surroundings in which the person lives.

In quite significant way, the human being is a reflection of his surroundings. Assume that a human being is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings, which only wake and form certain prejudices in him that work so vigorously that the higher disposition cannot come out. If such a human being does not find anybody who gets out it, then it just remains concealed in him.

I could only give you a few indications about that; however, we speak again about the other and deeper matters after Christmas. The one idea I wanted to wake is that the higher life develops not tumultuously but quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakes and enters the higher life really comes like the thief at night.

The development of the higher life leads the human being into a new world, and after he has entered this new world, he sees the other side of existence, so to speak, then that presents itself to him, which was hidden to him before. Everybody should say that to himself, perhaps, not everybody is able to do this, maybe only a few are able. However, this should not discourage him from entering that way which at least is open to everybody to hear something of the higher worlds. The human being is destined to live in community, and who separates himself cannot get to spiritual life. However, it is a seclusion in the higher sense if I say, I do not believe this, this is not related to me, this may have validity for the other life; this does not apply to the esoteric. The esoteric has the principle to regard the other human beings as a revelation of his own higher self because he knows then that he has to find the others in himself.

A subtle difference exists between both sentences “find the others in yourself” and “find yourself in the others.” That is in the higher sense: you are that. In the highest sense, it means, you recognise yourself in the world and understand the word of the poet, which I quoted some weeks ago in another connection: “Somebody was successful to lift the veil of the goddess of Sais.—But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—his self!” You do not find true self-knowledge in your selfish inside but unselfishly in the world.

Let us try to think once about the fact how many people are still able to evoke a clear, somewhat more in-depth idea in their souls walking through the streets and looking at the preparations of Christmas everywhere. There are slightly clear ideas about this festival today and they correspond less to the intentions of those—we are allowed to speak as theosophists this way—who once used these great festivals as symbols of the infinite and imperishable in the world. You can convince yourselves of it adequately if you have a look at the so-called Christmas considerations of our newspapers. There probably cannot be anything bleaker and stranger at the same time to that which it concerns than what is disseminated by the printed paper into the world at this time. Let a kind of summary of that pass before our souls that these various autumn talks on the spiritual-scientific horizon have brought us. It should not be a pedantic, schoolmasterly summary, but a summary of the kind as it can arise in our hearts if we link on Christmas from the spiritual-scientific point of view. The spiritual-scientific view of life should not be a grey theory, not an external confession, not a philosophy, but it should pulsate in our life directly. The modern human being is estranged to the immediate nature, much more than he thinks, much more than still at the time of Goethe.

On the other hand, does anyone still feel the whole depth of that saying by Goethe, which the great poet spoke when he entered the circles of Weimar and began a life epoch extremely important for him at the same time? At that time, he addressed a hymn, a kind of prayer to Nature with her mysterious forces:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her—unable to come out of her, and unable to go deeper into her. Uninvited and not warned she takes us up in the circulation of her dance and drifts away with us, until we are tired and drop out of her arm.

She creates forever new figures; what is there was never, what was does not come again—everything is new and, nevertheless, always the old.

We live in the middle of her and are strange to her. She speaks continually with us and does not betray her mystery to us. We continuously work on her and, nevertheless, do not exercise power over her.

She seems to be out for individuality of everything and makes nothing of the individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is inaccessible.

She lives in nothing but children; where is the mother? She is the only artist: from the simplest material to the biggest contrasts; by all appearance without effort to the biggest completion—to the most precise assertiveness, always covered with something soft. Any of her works has own being, any of her phenomena the most isolated concept, and, nevertheless, everything constitutes one.

She plays a game: whether she sees it herself, we do not know, and, nevertheless, she plays it for us who stand in the corner.

It is an everlasting life, becoming and moving in her, and, nevertheless, it does not move further along. It changes forever and no moment of standstill is in her. She has no concept of remaining and curses the standstill. She is firm. Her step is measured, her exceptions are seldom, and her principles are unalterable...

We all are her children. If we believe to act according to her principles least of all, maybe, we act most of all according to this big principle that floods through Nature and streams into us. Who does feel the other significant saying by Goethe so deeply even today with which Goethe tried not less to express the empathy with the concealed forces common to Nature and the human being, where Goethe approaches Nature not as a lifeless being like the modern materialistic thinking where he speaks to her like a living spirit:

Spirit sublime, all that for which I prayed,
all that you now have granted me. In fire
you showed your face to me, but not in vain.
You gave me for my realm all Nature's splendour,
with power to feel and to enjoy it. You grant
not only awed, aloof acquaintanceship,
you let me look deep down into her heart
as if it were the bosom of a friend.
You lead the ranks of living beings past me,
and teach me thus to know my fellow creatures
in air and water and in silent wood.
And when the storm-swept forest creaks and groans,
when, as it falls, the giant fir strips down
and crushes neighbouring boughs and trunks, and when
the hill echoes its fall as muffled thunder,
you guide me to the safety of a cave,
reveal my self to me, and then my heart's
profound and secret wonders are unveiled.

(Faust I, Forest and Cave, v. 3217-3234)

Goethe tried out of his feeling of nature to refresh something of that, which flowed out of emotion and knowledge at the same time by this mood. This is the mood of the times in which wisdom still was in league with nature, when those symbols of empathy with nature and the universe were created, which we recognise as the great festivals from the spiritual-scientific point of view. Such a festival has become something abstract, almost uninteresting to the soul and to the heart. Today often the word about which we can argue to which we can swear weighs much more than that which should apply to this word originally. This external word should be the representative, the announcement, the symbol of the big creative word that lives in the outside nature and in the whole universe. It revives again in us if we recognise ourselves correctly, and all human beings have to become aware of it with those opportunities that are in particular suited to it according to the course of nature. This was the intention when the great festivals were established. Let us attempt to apply our knowledge we have got in the course of the spiritual-scientific talks to understand something that the old sages expressed in the Christmas.

Christmas is not only a Christian festival. It existed where religious feeling expressed itself. If you look around in old Egypt, thousands and thousands years before our calendar, if you walk across to Asia, even if you go up into our areas, again many years before our calendar, everywhere you find this same festival during the days in which also the birth of Christ is celebrated by the Christians.

What a festival was celebrated everywhere on earth since ancient times during these days?—We want to refer to nothing but to those marvellous fire festivals, which were celebrated in the areas of Northern and Central Europe in old times. During these days, that festival was mainly celebrated in our areas, in Scandinavia, Scotland, England, within the circles of the old Celts by their priests, the so-called druids. What did one celebrate there?

One celebrated the ending wintertime and the springtime announcing itself again bit by bit. Of course, we still approach wintertime advancing to Christmas. But in nature a victory has already announced itself there which can just be the symbol of a festival of hope for the human being, or better said—if we use the word that exists for this festival almost in all languages—the symbol of a festival of confidence, of trust and faith.

The victory of the sun over the opposing powers of nature: this is the symbol. We have felt the shorter and shorter growing days. This decreasing in length of the days is an expression of a decease, better said of the natural forces falling asleep up to the day at which we celebrate Christmas and at which our ancestors celebrated the same festival. During this day, the days start becoming longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Today, this appears to us, thinking materialistically, even more than we believe it, as an event about which we do no longer think in particular. It appeared to those who had a lively feeling and wisdom connected with this feeling as a living expression of a spiritual experience, of an experience of the divinity, which leads our life. As if in the single human life an important event takes place that decides something, one felt such a solstice in that time as something important in the life of a higher being. Yes, even more: one did not feel this decreasing and increasing of the days immediately as an expression of such an event in the life of a higher being, but still more like a reminiscent sign of something much bigger, something unique. Thus, we conceive of the great basic idea of Christmas as a universal festival, a festival of humanity of the highest rank.

In the times in which a real secret doctrine one saw something occurring in nature at Christmas that was considered as a commemoration of a great event which had taken place once on earth. The priests, who were the teachers of the peoples, gathered the faithful around themselves during these days at midnight and tried to reveal a great mystery to them and spoke about the following. I do not tell anything sophisticated to you here, anything found by the abstract science, but I say something that lived in the mysteries, in secret cult sites, because the priests gathered their faithful around themselves by that which they said to them to give them strength for their teachings.

Today, they said, we see the victory of the sun over the darkness announcing itself. Thus, it also was once on this earth. There the sun celebrated the great victory over the darkness. This happened in such a way: until then all physical, all bodily life on our earth had almost only reached the stage of animals. What lived on our earth as the highest realm was only on the level to be prepared to receive the immortal human soul. Then a moment came in this prehistoric time, a great moment of human development, when the immortal imperishable human soul descended from divine heights. The wave of life had developed up to that time in such a way that the human body had become able to take up the imperishable soul in itself. Indeed, this human ancestor ranked higher than the materialist naturalists believe. However, the spiritual part, the immortal part was not yet in him. It descended only from another, higher planet to our earth, which should now become the scene of its work, the place of residence of that which is now undetachable to us, of our soul.

We call these human ancestors the Lemurian race. The Atlantean race and then ours, which we call the Aryan race, followed it. Within this Lemurian race, the human bodies were fertilised by the higher human soul. Spiritual science calls this great moment of human development the descent of the divine sons of the spirit.

Since that time, this human soul forms and works in the human body for its higher development. Unlike the materialist natural sciences imagine, the human body was fertilised by the imperishable soul at this time. At that time contrary to the view of the materialist naturalists, something happened in the big universe that belongs to the most important events of our human development.

At that time, that constellation, that mutual position of earth, moon, and sun gradually appeared, which made the descent of the souls possible. The sun became significant for growth and thriving of the human being and of the plants and animals belonging to him. Only somebody who realises spiritually the whole becoming of humanity and earth correctly sees this connection of sun, moon, and earth with the human beings living on earth.

There was a time—one taught this at these old times—, when the earth was one with the sun and moon. They were one body. The beings still possessed figures and appearances different from those living on earth today, because they were adapted to that world body which consisted of sun, moon and earth together. Everything that lives on this earth received its being because first the sun and then the moon separated, and that these heavenly bodies interrelated now externally with our earth. The mystery of the togetherness of the human spirit with the entire universal spirit is based on this relationship. Spiritual science calls the universal spirit logos, which encloses sun, moon, and earth at the same time. We live, we work and we are in it.

As well as the earth was born out of the body which enclosed sun and moon at the same time, the human being was born out of a spirit, of a soul to which sun and earth and moon belong at the same time. If the human being looks at the sun, at the moon, he should see not only these external physical bodies, but he should regard them as external bodies of spiritual beings. Modern materialism has admittedly forgotten this. However, who can no longer regard sun and moon as the bodies of spirits can also not recognise the human body as the body of a spirit. As true as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, as true the heavenly bodies are the bearers of spiritual beings.

The human being also belongs to these spiritual beings. As well as his body is separated from the forces which prevail in the sun and moon, and, nevertheless, as his external physical accommodates forces which are active in the sun and moon, the same spirituality, which rules on the sun and the moon is also active in his soul. While the human being became this being on earth, he became dependent on that effect of the sun, which it causes as a special body shining on the earth.

Our ancestors felt as spiritual children of the whole universe that way, and they said to themselves, we have become human beings because the spirit of the sun caused our spiritual form. The victory of the sun over the darkness signifies to us a memory of the victory, which our soul gained in those days, in the times in which the sun appeared for the first time in such a way as it shines now onto the earth. It was a victory of the sun, when the immortal soul entered the physical body in the sign of the sun, when it descended into the darkness of desires and passions.

Let us imagine the life of the spirit. The darkness precedes the solar victory. It followed a former solar time only. Thus, it was also with the human soul. This human soul originates from the original divinity. However, it had to disappear for a while in unconsciousness to build up the lower human nature within this unconsciousness; since this human soul itself built up the lower human nature gradually to inhabit this house built by itself. If you imagine that a master builder builds a house, according to his best forces, and enters it later, you have a right simile of the entry of the immortal human soul into the human body. The human soul could work only unconsciously in that time on its house. This unaware work is expressed in the simile by the darkness. The emergence of consciousness, the lighting up of the conscious human soul is expressed in the simile by the solar victory.

Thus, this solar victory signified to those who still had a lively feeling of the connection of the human being with the universe the moment in which they had received the most important of their earthly existence. This great moment was maintained in that celebration.

At all times one imagined the way of the human being on earth in such a way that this human being becomes more and more similar to the regular rhythmical way of nature. If we look from the human soul at that which encloses its life now, at the way of the sun in the universe and at all with which this way of the sun is connected, something becomes clear to us that is infinitely important to feel. It is the big rhythmical, the big harmonious in contrast to the chaotic, to the unharmonious in the own human nature. Look at the sun, pursue it on its way, and you see how rhythmically, how regularly its phenomena return in the course of the day and of the year. You see how regularly and rhythmically everything is connected in nature under the influence of the sun.

On occasion, I have already emphasised that everything is rhythmical with the beings ranking below the human being. Imagine the sun deviating for a moment, for a fraction of a second only, and imagine the unbelievable, indescribable mess, which would be caused in our universe.

The rhythmical life processes of all beings that are dependent on the sun are connected with this harmony. Imagine the sun in the course of the year how it evokes the beings of nature in the spring, imagine how little you are able to think that the violet blossoms at a time different from that when you are used. Imagine that the seeds are sown at another time and the harvest may take place at another time than it takes place. Up to the animal life, everything appears to you depending on the rhythmical way of the sun. Even with the human being, everything is rhythmical, regular, and harmonious, as far as it is not subjected to the human passions, instincts or even to the human mind. Observe the pulse, the way of digestion, and admire the big rhythm and feel the great, infinite wisdom that floods through the whole nature, and then compare the irregular, the chaotic to it which prevails in the human passions and desires and in particular in the human mind and thinking. Try once to let the regular of your pulse and your breath pass yourselves by, and compare it to the irregularity of your thinking, feeling and willing. They wander around aimlessly.

On the other hand, imagine how wisely the life powers are arranged how the rhythmical has to overcome the chaos. Which crimes do not all human passions and hedonism commit against the rhythm of the human body! On occasion I have already mentioned here how marvellous it is for him who gets to know the heart by anatomy, this wonderfully arranged organ of the human body, and must say to himself what has it to bear because the human being enjoys tea, coffee and so on that has an effect on the rhythmical, harmonious heartbeat. Thus, it is with the entire rhythmical, divine nature that our ancestors admired and the soul of which is the sun with its regular way.

While the sages and their followers looked at the sun, they said to themselves, you are the picture of that which is not yet this soul, which is born with you, but which it should become.—The divine world order presented itself to these sages in its whole glory. The Christian worldview also says that the glory is in the divine heights (Latin gloria in excelsis deo). The word “glory” means revelation, not honour, or splendour.

One should not say, glory to God in highest heaven—but God is revealed in the heavens today.—This is the true meaning of the sentence. In this sentence, one can fully feel the glory flowing through the world. In former times, one felt in such a way that one established this world harmony as a great ideal for that who should be the leader of the remaining humanity. Therefore, one spoke at all times and everywhere where one was aware of these matters of the “sun hero.”

In the temple sites where the initiation was carried out one distinguished seven degrees. I use the Persian terms of these degrees. The first degree is that where the human being went beyond the everyday feeling, where he came to a higher mental feeling and to the knowledge of the spirit. One called such a human being “raven.” Hence, the ravens are those, which announce to the initiates in the temples what takes place outdoors in the world. When the medieval poetry of wisdom wanted to portray an initiate in the person of a medieval ruler, for example, Barbarossa who should wait inside of the earth with the treasures of wisdom of the earth for that big moment when Christianity should rejuvenate humanity, it let the ravens be again the messengers. Even the Old Testament speaks of the ravens of Elias (Elia, Elijah).

The initiates of the second degree are the “occult.” The third degree is that of the “fighters,” the fourth degree is that of the “lions.” The initiates of the fifth degree are called with the name of their own people: Persian or Indian and so on, because only the initiate of the fifth degree is the true representative of his people. One called the sixth degree “sun hero” or “sun runner.” The seventh degree had the name “Father.”

Why did one call the initiate of the sixth degree a sun hero? Who had climbed up so high on the ladder of spiritual knowledge had to have developed such an inner life at least that it ran after the pattern of the divine rhythm in the whole universe. He had to feel, to think in such a way that anything chaotic, anything arrhythmic, anything inharmonious no longer existed with him. This was the demand, which one made on him in the sixth degree of initiation. One considered them as holy human beings, as a pattern, as ideals, and said about them, as big as the misfortune would be to the universe if it were possible that the sun deviated from its way for a quarter of a minute. It would also be a big misfortune if it were possible for a sun hero to deviate from the way of the big morality, from the road of the soul rhythm.—One called somebody a sun hero who had found such a sure way in his mind like the sun outdoors in the universe. All nations had such sun heroes.

Our scholars know so little about these matters. Indeed, it strikes them that sun myths about the lives of all great religious founders formed. However, they do not know that one was in the habit of creating the leading heroes sun heroes with the ceremonies of initiation. It is not miraculous at all, if that which the ancient peoples had attempted to put into them is found out again by the materialist research. With Buddha and even with Christ, one looked for such sun myths and found them. Here you have the reason why one could find this with them. They were put into them first, so that they showed an immediate imprint of the solar rhythm. Then these sun heroes were the big pattern that one should try to equal.

What did one imagine what happened in the soul of such a hero who had found such an inner harmony?—One imagined that in such a way that now no longer only a single human soul lived in him, but that in him something of the universal soul had emerged which flows through the whole universe. In Greece, one called this universal soul, which flows through the whole universe, Chrestós, and the most elated sages of the East know it as buddhi. If the human being has stopped only feeling as the bearer of his individual soul and if he experiences anything of the universal, then he has created an image of that in himself, which combined at that time as a solar soul with the human body; then he has reached something tremendously important on the road of humanity.

If we look at this human being with such an ennobled soul, we are able to put the future of the human race and the whole relationship of this human future with the idea, the image of humanity generally, before ourselves. As humanity faces us today, one can imagine only that certain matters are decided by the fact that people bring about a decision in quarrel and discord by a kind of majority, by a majority decision. Because where one still looks at such majority decisions as something ideal, there one has not yet understood what truth is. Where does truth live in us? Truth lives in us where we pledge ourselves to think logically. On the other hand, would it not be nonsense to decide by majority decision whether two times two are four or three times four are twelve? If the human being has recognised once what is true, then millions may come and say, it is different, nevertheless, he has his assurance in himself.

So far, we are in relation to the scientific thinking, to that thinking, which is no longer affected by human passions, desires, and instincts. Where passions, desires and instincts play a part, the human beings are still in quarrel, in confused mess as the instincts form a wild chaos generally. However, if once the desires, instincts, and passions are purified, have become what one calls buddhi or the Chrestós, if they are developed up to that height on which today the logical thinking is without passion, then that the human ideal is attained which shines to us in the old religions of wisdom, in Christianity, in the anthroposophic spiritual science. If our thinking and feeling is so purified that that which one feels harmonises with that which our fellow men feel, if on this earth the same epoch has arrived for the feeling and the sensation, as it has come for the equalising intellect, if buddhi is on this earth, if the Chrestós is embodied in the human race, then the ideal of the old teachers of wisdom, of Christianity, of anthroposophy is fulfilled. Then one needs to vote just as little about that which one regards as good, noble and right as one needs to vote about what one has recognised as logically wrong or right. Everybody can put this ideal before his soul, and doing this, he has the ideal of the sun hero before him, the same that all esoteric teachers also have who are initiated in the sixth degree.

Even our German mystics of the Middle Ages felt this, while they pronounced a word of deep meaning, the word deification or apotheosis. This word existed in all religions of wisdom. What does it signify? It signifies the following: once also those at whom we look today as the spirits of the universe passed a chaotic stage which humanity experiences today. These leading spirits of the universe brought themselves up to their divine stage where their manifestations of life sound harmoniously through the universe. What appears to us today as the harmonious way of the sun in the course of the year, with the growth of the plants, in the life of the animals, was once chaotic and brought it to this great harmony. Where these spirits stood once, the human being stands today. He develops from his chaos to a future harmony that is modelled after the present sun, the present universal harmony.

The anthroposophic mood of Christmas results from this, not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as a living feeling lowered into our souls. If we feel it so sure that the splendour, the revelation of the divine harmony, appears in the heights of the heavens, and if we know that the revelation of this harmony sounds once from our own soul, then we feel the other that will happen within humanity due to this harmony. Then we feel the peace of those who are of good will (Latin: et pax hominibus bonae volutatis). Thus, two feelings are connected as Christmas feelings. If we look into the divine world order, into the revelation, at its splendour in the heights of the heavens, and look at the human future, we can already feel that harmony in advance which takes place on earth in the human beings in the future who have the feeling and the sensation of it. The more that lowers itself into us what we feel outdoors in the world as harmony, the more peace and harmony will be on this earth.

Thus, the great ideal of peace places itself as the highest feeling of nature before our souls if we feel the way of the sun in nature in the right way during Christmastide. If we understand the victory of the sunlight over the darkness during these days, we take the big confidence, the big trust from it that connects our own developing souls with this world harmony, and then we let that be known not for nothing, which lives in this world harmony in our souls. Then something lives in us that is harmonious, then the seed falls into the soul that brings peace on this earth, in the sense of the peace between the religions. Those human beings are of good will who feel such peace, such a peace, as it spreads over the earth if that higher stage of the unity of feeling is attained which is attained only in the equalising intellect today. Then love flowing through everything replaces quarrel and discord. Goethe said in the same hymn I have quoted that a few swallows from this cup of love compensate a life full of trouble.

That is why Christmas was a festival of confidence, of trust and hope in all religions of wisdom because we feel during these days that the light must be victorious. Out of this big universal feeling, the Christian church determined in the fourth century to reschedule the birthday celebration of the Saviour on the same day in which with all great religions of wisdom the victory of the light over the darkness was celebrated. Until the fourth century Christmas, Christ's birthday celebration was completely variable. Only in the fourth century, one decided to let the Saviour be born on that day when this victory of the light over the darkness has always been celebrated.

Today we cannot deal with the Christian teachings of wisdom, which will be an object of a talk next year. But one thing should and must be said already today that nothing was more justified than to reschedule the birthday celebration of that divine individuality in this time, which offers the guarantee, the confidence to the Christian that his soul, his divinity will carry off the victory over everything that is darkness in his only outward world. Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all great world religions. When the Christmas bells sound, the human being may probably remember that during these days this festival was celebrated all over the world. Everywhere it was celebrated where one had understood the true big progress of the human soul in this world, where one knew something of the significance of spirit and spiritual life, where one tried to practice self-knowledge in the practical sense.

We have today not spoken of an uncertain, an abstract feeling of nature, but we have spoken about a feeling of nature in any lively spirituality. If we go back to the word of Goethe: “Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by her” and so on, we may be clear in our mind that we interpret nature, not in the materialistic sense, but that we see the external expression and the physiognomy of the universal divine spirit in her. As the physical is born from the physical, the mental and spiritual from the divine-mental and divine-spiritual, and as the physical, the body combines with merely material forces, the soul combines with the spirit.

The great annual festivals are there as symbols for humanity to feel this in connection with the whole universe and to use our knowledge, our thinking to feel one with the whole universe not uncertain but most certain. If one feels anything about it again, these festivals will be different from today, then they will plant themselves again vividly in soul and heart, then they will be to us that which they should be really to us: nodal points of the year, which connect us with the universal spirit.

If we have fulfilled our duties, our tasks of everyday life all the year round, at these points of the year, we look at that which connects us with the everlasting. Even if we know that we had to grind out quite a few in the course of the year, during these days we get a feeling of the fact that there is peace and harmony beyond all fight and chaos. Therefore, these festivals are annual festivals of the great ideals; and Christmas is the birthday celebration of the greatest ideal of humanity, the ideal that humanity must gain if it wants to reach its destination generally. The birthday celebration of that which the human being can feel and want is Christmas if one understands it properly.

The anthroposophic spiritual science wants to go making understandable this festival again. We want to announce not a dogma, no mere doctrine, or philosophy to the world but life. This is our ideal that everything that we say and teach, and is included in our writings, in our science passes into life. It passes into life if the human being practices spiritual science also in the everyday life everywhere, so that we do no longer need to speak of spiritual science, if from all pulpits spiritual-scientific life sounds through the words, which are spoken to the believers, without saying the word theosophy or spiritual science. If at all courts the human actions are considered with spiritual-scientific feeling, if at the sickbed the doctor feels spiritual-scientifically and heals spiritual-scientifically, if at school the teacher develops spiritual science for the adolescent child, if in all streets one thinks, feels, and acts spiritual-scientifically, so that the spiritual-scientific doctrine becomes superfluous—then our ideal is attained, then spiritual science will be mundane. Then, however, spiritual science will also be in the great festive turning points of the year. The human being connects his everyday tasks with the spiritual using the spiritual-scientific thinking, feeling, and willing. On the other hand, he lets the everlasting and imperishable, the spiritual sun shine in his soul at the great annual festivals. They remind him that in him a true, higher self is, a divine, a sun-like, a light that will forever win over all darkness, over all chaos, that gives a soul peace, that will always compensate all fight, all war and strife in the world.

The world appears in bewildering variety to the human being looking around at first, both the external nature and the human life. He directs his look up to the starry heaven and tries to fathom the sense of the marvellous, but at first mysterious variety of the stars of the luminous sky. The thoughtful human being will probably try to recognize the sense of the ways of the stars and the elements working during the day.

If we look down at our earth,

If we try to understand our mountains with their coloured variety of rocks, woods and vegetation,

If we try to understand the things that surround us as plants, animals, and human beings, and try to see in the phenomena of nature that approach us more or less dark, briefly,

If we try to see reason and sense in everything,

Then we probably feel a kind of faint at first towards all bewildering, which faces us. However, the most bewildering is that for us which faces us in the real life of the human being, in the historical development of the human being since millennia. Science, religion, and other human striving, feeling, intellect, and reason have always tried to introduce sense and coherence into the coloured variety of the stars, into life and into the activities of the beings on our earth.

Who could deny that the human mind has brought it so far in this respect and that it can hope to go farther and farther. However, also a legitimate sense, a kind of spiritual coherence is included in it what we call human development in history. Nevertheless, this seems to somebody rather doubtful, if he looks at the course of destiny with all misery which single human beings, tribes and peoples experience undeservedly, with all luck which meets the single or also many apparently undeservedly, with all sequences of historical experiences of the single peoples, races and nations. If we look into all that, then it probably appears to us as the pure chaos sometimes. There some people probably believe to look in vain for sense or coherence, believe to be unable to understand all that.

Great, astute spirits never doubted that the human mind is able to find sense and reason, lawful necessity also in the course of the historical events. I need to draw your attention only to the fact that our great German poet and thinker, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781), in the testament of his life, in his last work, explained this human development as an education of the human race. He represented the antiquity as the childhood of humanity with the Old Testament as the first elementary book, the following age as a kind of youth from which we have the possibility to look at the future that should bring us something mature and male. I would still like to remind you that another great German thinker whom, admittedly, only a few know, even those who are destined to study him, the great German philosopher Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770-1831) called history an education of the human being to become conscious of freedom. We could still add a hundred examples, and we would see everywhere that those human beings who look ingeniously into this activity, in this bewildering, apparently chaotic activity never doubted that there is also a lawful necessity, above all a higher order than outdoors in nature, in the world of the stars, plants, animals and physical beings generally.

If we let our eyes wander over the development of humanity, one thing faces us that is no longer felt with that liveliness with which it should be felt: a duality, a drastic division in two parts. It is this apparently something quite trivial that it seems so trivial, however, because the human beings are used to it. We reckon with the long period before Christ's birth and with the long period after Christ's birth. One no longer feels this as anything significant because humanity is used to it. However, is it not anything significant in the highest sense that our whole history was split after this sole event in two parts? That anything must have worked so incredibly as a strength that it was recognised by a big part of humanity? The fact that this could happen shows us that something of the consciousness of the unique, immense significance of the action of Christ Jesus is deeply hidden in the human breast. Who could deny, however, that today this significance has become somewhat questionable to many people, so that few of those who count themselves to the most sophisticated persons can really account to themselves why this is in such a way from which infinite depth, actually, humanity was induced to this division of history?

This question should occupy us today, the Christian doctrine of wisdom from the point of view of a detailed spiritual worldview. Among other things, the theosophical movement that spreads out more and more since thirty years in the educated world also tries to deepen the Christian doctrine of wisdom. Those who have already occupied themselves a little bit with the anthroposophic spiritual science know that the second principle of the spiritual-scientific movement is to search for the core of wisdom in all great religions. Just concerning the anthroposophic view of Christianity there are the conceivably biggest misunderstandings, and among those who are called to teach and explain Christianity are just only a very few who show real understanding of the anthroposophic striving. One said repeatedly, anthroposophy wants to transplant some Eastern teachings, a new Buddhism to Europe. This would be the most un-anthroposophic that one can imagine. If we mean it sincerely with the principle of searching for the core of wisdom in all religions, then we must be aware that we have to search for this core of wisdom in Christianity above all, in the religion by which the whole culture of Europe was created and from which the noblest currents of the West originated.

Who does not understand Christianity today, does not understand himself, and if Christianity has to perform anything great for Europe in the future, it has to be deepened. If spiritual science shall have a share of this big achievement, it has the task to penetrate into the depths of Christianity and to search there for those springs which are able to flow in the future which are able to wake cultural hopes for the future.

When I spoke in a city of South Germany some time ago (Colmar, 21st November 1905, no transcript) about the teaching of wisdom of Christianity, about our subject today, also various Protestant pastors and Catholic priests were there. After the talk, the Catholic priests said to me, what you have said to us is the choicest Christianity, but it is only for the choice ones who want to have Christianity in such detailed way. However, we announce Christianity in a form in which everybody understands it and which it is accessible to all.—There I said, if you were right, you could be sure that it would never have occurred to me to speak about the core of wisdom of Christianity, because I would consider it as superfluous in the world. If you were right, could then there be a human being who felt compelled to secede from the way you teach? Then the number of those people could not increase with every day who find no satisfaction with the way you teach. Indeed, there are many for whom you can speak today. However, the fact that it is possible that numerous human beings do no longer find their satisfaction with you proves that there are human beings to whom one has to speak differently. It does not depend on the fact that we imagine that we find the way to everybody. We can do this easily and mean that we communicate in such a way that we find the way to everybody. However, it does not depend on it which opinions we have about what we regard as the right way. It depends not on our imaginations, but on the facts. If you observe this and let not speak what you put as your subjective confession, then you realise that you do no longer speak to many people. To those one has to speak in a new form. They are those to whom the spiritual scientist speaks.

However, spiritual science has not only to speak to those. It will also speak to those who remain in full Christian devoutness in old Christian traditions, and to those it will be a deepening, a spiritualisation of the truthful teachings of Christianity. The spiritual-scientific saying, nothing is higher than truth, is surely often misunderstood by such like the priest whom I have quoted. One believes, it is sufficient if one only has the belief that something is true. No, that is not enough that we have the subjective conviction and imagine we would have the right way. Just the spiritual-scientific world movement should overcome this. Truth is not in our opinion, but in the facts. The observation of the facts must be higher for us than our belief. This is the sense of the saying. What we believe is our personal affair. Transpersonal is that which speaks to us by the world of the facts. We have to submit to it, we have to follow it.

Indeed, it is true that the human development was split by the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, and, hence, we have to look a little deeper into this way of the human development. Who penetrates only somewhat into a spiritual investigation of existence will soon recognize how vapid and superficial any materialist worldview is, that any material is only the expression of the spiritual, that the spiritual is the origin and spring of any external sensuous existence.

The earthly human being as this sensuous being, who developed since the times about which history, the human thinking generally reports, is only the expression of a supernatural spiritual being. I do not have the time today to explain these great thoughts in a complete, possibly scientific way. This has oftener happened here in these talks. Today I can show it only figuratively, and Christian and pre-Christian thinkers showed it always figuratively in such a way that the supersensible human being who was not yet touched by the matter descended and embodied himself in the sensuousness. We consider that human being who comes from other spiritual worlds into this sensuous world as the Adam Kadmon of the Jewish secret doctrine, the kabbalah. This coming in is called “fall.” However, you must not misunderstand this. Great Christian authors understood this as a fall, and the action of Christ Jesus was understood as a rise from this fall to a new spiritual height. We shall still see how Paul's remark that Christ Jesus is the reverse Adam has a deep spiritual sense (1 Corinthians 15:44ff). If we understand the human being quasi—I ask you not to tip the scales at the word “quasi” because it should be only an indication of the true relation—quasi descended from spiritual heights and embodied in the sensory world, then we also understand which task the human being had initially in the first times of historical development.

What had the human being to do on this earthly scene in the first times of historical and prehistoric development? His sensuous members were the tools whose use he had to learn in the first times. Now the high spiritual human being was embodied in the sensory world. He learnt there in the first epoch of his existence, which I would like to call the instinctive epoch of human development, to use his own tools. This was the first task of the first quarter of human development—we do not want to go back to the very old times.

The human being gradually learnt to use his hands and the remaining limbs; he learnt to fit into the world and nature surrounding him. He needed no intellect for that; this was an instinctive empathising and settling in existence. When humanity learnt to control itself and acquired the use of the limbs as tools, it lived in the tribal history. The people were that within which the human being lived. It was a natural coherence, which was given by blood relationship. A sort of an animal instinct kept humanity together. Only the great masters were beyond the instinctive life. In the most different way, the human beings learnt to use their limbs, according to the state of the countries, regions, and times in which the peoples lived. The development generated a big variety in the human structure. That which was given to the human being developed most diversely. We can go back everywhere: we find this instinctive epoch of development with all peoples.

Then we find the second epoch. There the human being learns something that the Bible and other worldviews comprise with a certain word, with a word that is exceptionally important to understand properly. We understand this word properly if we realise what the first period of human development preferably had to produce. The instinct had taught the human beings most diversely to use their limbs, in one area in this way, in the other that way. People developed in the hot zone with a rampant plant growth where without effort the food was supplied, another developed in a cold, inhospitable area where it had to produce his food and create the conditions of existence with big trouble and that is why the human being had to form his limbs with big trouble. Because the human beings had so little intellect, they faced each other as it resulted from the different instinctive development. Something new took place due to the law, which the intellect created. The instincts of the peoples are different, the intellect is the same, and at the moment, when the uniform intellect was applied to the human living together, that appeared in the world which also the Bible calls the law.

The human being learnt to control his whole body as his tool first. Then the lawful period occurred where the human being tried to harmonise and order his community where he tried to compensate the instincts in the mutual action where he wanted to create conditions on this earth as they correspond to the intellect. The intellect was introduced by the way how the human being lived together. Thus, humanity developed in the first two quarters of existence. However, humanity was there not without guidance. The instinct developed to bigger and bigger brightness, until the law took on the form of the intellect widespread in the farthest circles.

Where from did all that come? Humanity would never have come so far without such brothers who were way ahead of their fellow men. At all times, always and everywhere there have been human beings, who developed the stages of existence faster to be able to lead the other human beings. Spiritual science calls such personalities, such individualities the guardians of wisdom, the guardians of human progress. There were always such guardians of human progress. Even today, there are some. These great persons, these personalities who have arrived at a stage of existence today where the majority of humanity will come only in a very distant future existed also in the pre-Christian times, in the first two quarters of human development.

They led the world; they were the shepherds of humanity and introduced order and coherence into humanity. Where from did those leaders of the human race get their knowledge, their wisdom? What did this wisdom consist of?—One led the visible by the invisible, the sensory by the extrasensory. One led the material connections by that which slumbers invisibly in the material. Does it slumber invisibly in the material? A simple reflection can convince you. Look up at the cloud. It appears bright and dark to you. It announces a thunderstorm. Moreover, while you are still looking upwards, the flash streaks through the cloud, the thunder rumbles. Where was the flash, where was the thunder? They slumbered; they slept as concealed material forces. As well as flash and thunder slumbered, a lot of concealed forces slumber in the visible as something invisible, in the sensory as something extrasensory. As well as our external civilisation has reached its present state, because the human being has learnt to wake up forces and abilities slumbering in the matter, the great spiritual culture comes from the fact that the guardians of humanity are able to wake up the supersensible forces slumbering in the sensuous and to control the lower by the higher.

As well as the master builder uses the force of gravity to lay the beam on the column, so using a force slumbering in the matter to erect our buildings by the different combination of columns and beams,

As the electrician controls our engines and other electric apparatuses with the invisible electric power,

The guardians of wisdom and human progress control the earthly forces by that which is not perceptible by the senses.

The visible is controlled not by the visible, but by the invisible. None is unworldly who rises by the invisible above the visible, but someone who is stuck in the visible. The true realist is that who controls the world by that which slumbers in him, so that he forms and builds up reality and introduces it into the service of human progress. As well as the master builder and the electrician use the forces slumbering in the matter to build houses, to create mechanical civilisation, the great guardians of wisdom and human progress use the forces existing in humanity to lead the human beings to their aim to order that which whirls chaotically in the outside world and to give it significance. Never was the advancement sensory from the instinctive, then lawful periods up to ours.

However, the wise guardians of humanity had to find out and to experience this at first; they had to be steeped in it completely, not due to blind faith, not due to vague convictions, but due to spiritual experience. They had to be clear in their mind

That there is something extrasensory, something extrasensory inside and outside the human being

That that which happens between birth and death is only one side of our existence and

That an essence outreaches birth and death

That there is something in the human being that is more comprehensive than all sensuous and is the creator of the form and the preserver of everything sensuous, and this not based on a supposition, but based on the immediate extrasensory, everlasting view.

Out of this view, the guardians of humanity had to act, then out of the knowledge that death is to be defeated, that a consciousness is to be gained that there is something that lets death appear as an event like other events of life. Only from such an experience the force arises to the human being to control the sensory from the extrasensory, the visible from the invisible. Had I to say with few words what the big secret of the great guardians of humanity is, I would say, these guardians of wisdom and human progress knew that there is something in the human being that defeats death.

They had to go behind the scenery of existence, to look behind the regions of existence, which the human being enters after death. What exists behind the sensuous had to be accessible to the students by experience. They learnt to know that in the temples of initiation of the ancient Egyptian priests and teachers of occultism, in the Eleusinian and other Greek schools or temples of initiation. Those who were mature to acquire these convictions were initiated into these secrets. Only with few words—I explain the other matters in the next talks—I can indicate what was imparted to the human beings in these temples of initiation, in these high schools of spiritual life.

There the human being went through death at first; he already experienced within this life that rise which takes place in the human being if he passes the gate of death. If he passes the gate, which leads to the other world with his natural death, he enters another land, the land on the other side of existence. One can enter it also already during this life, one can enter it by another state of consciousness, awakening the abilities which slumber in the human breast, which enable us not only to experience the unconscious state during sleep in the spiritual environment, but to enter the beyond using the spiritual qualities, to be a citizen of the spiritual world. One called this death, resurrection, and ascension.

They experienced the great initiates. If I may express myself in such a way, they experienced death with the living body, for three and a half days, they were dead, so to speak, they came out of their physical bodies and experienced the facts of a higher world, a spiritual world, that world to which the human being belongs according to his deeper nature. This happens to that part of the human being that enters the extrasensory existence. After the human being had passed this higher world, those who were already initiates recalled him to his earthly existence. Then he was a new human being whom one called a risen one. As a symbol of it, he got a new name that had a deeper meaning. Such a human being who had come into the mysteries and the temples of initiation to behold spoke a new language, and in his words, the spiritual world sounded which he had experienced during his initiation. He was a messenger of higher worlds, his words had wings because of the experiences in the spiritual world, and he spoke another language. He was one of those who talk the language of the gods, as one said, he talks the wisdom which the gods know. This is fundamentally theosophy, the divine wisdom.

One called such a human being a blessed (German: selig) one if one translates the word in German. The words have a deep meaning if one understands them in the right sense; they did not originate by chance. About such a man, who felt sympathy for the spiritual world because he had beheld it, one said, he is blessed. Those who know something about that great bliss, about those marvellous experiences of another world tell about it, even if they write profane writings about it. The most important of these matters was never written down and can never be written down.

However, those who tell and write down something of it write about it in tones that sound quite different from those who say something about a sensuous existence. Those who knew something of initiation speak of a renewal of the whole human being. One of them said, that only has become a human being in the true sense of the word who was blessed with his everlasting essence in the mysteries, while the others have still to wait, until they also get this mercy.—Plato, the unique Greek philosopher, says: those walk in the mud who got to know nothing of the divine of initiation.

Thus, we could still state many voices of antiquity and of the pre-Christian time, which emphasise the holiness, the power, and greatness of initiation, so that it resonates in our souls. Only a few, choicest ones could be blessed with the higher spiritual life in such a way, immediately beholding. The crowd received nothing but the announcements of such initiates.

Then Christianity appeared and changed these conditions completely. The depth of this change of humanity is expressed in a powerful saying, and that is: “Happy (Blessed) are they who find faith without seeing me” (John 20:29). The secret of Christianity is contained in this saying, and we understand it only if we take it as literal as possible. What does it mean? We know that somebody who had experienced initiation in the temple knew that he defeated death that he took part in the entombment and was blessed by the vision. Now a great individuality came who carried out this great event on the external plane of history in front of all, as far as they wanted to see it or could take up it by faith, by the union with the unique personality. That happened once on the historical plane, which had often happened to the initiates in the deep darkness of the mystery temples. This event took place in Palestine in the year 33.

What was received and protected till then more or less symbolically in the depths of the temples had become historical truth, historical reality on the big stage of life. One must understand this, because this is important. I entitled my small writing about Christianity really with full care not Mysticism of Christianity but Christianity as Mystical Fact (CW 8). I wanted to show not the mysticism of Christianity, but Christianity itself should be understood as a mystical fact. It should be understood that the event in Palestine is a fact of deep symbolism and at the same time something that is actual reality, actual truth. We should understand each other just concerning this point, because it belongs to the most important points of the knowledge of Christianity. If one speaks of the fact that in Palestine the event of death, resurrection, entombment and ascension took place as a historical event in 33 and says that this event has happened also before so and so often in the mystery temples, then one does not regard that as something real, then one does not believe in the real Christ. On the other side, other people who believe in Christ think that death, entombment, and resurrection are profound symbols. It is hard to understand that something can be fact and symbol at the same time.

Somebody never understands who explains history “really” and considers it indifferently that a fact also has deep symbolic significance. He has never grasped that there are high and low mountains in history, high mountains that outreach the high that they are facts and symbols at the same time. That is the point. Now we have put an event before all human beings, which pronounces before them that death can be defeated and that there is a spiritual life, which outreaches death, because the only One had defeated death. In front of all human beings, he had experienced what the initiates experienced in the mysteries. Now, one did no longer need to go into the mysteries to behold, now, one could believe and feel connected with Him who experienced the great event of the victory of life over death in the physical world. Now, one could believe even if one did not behold. That understands the religious books correctly who brings himself to a literal understanding again. Beholding means literally the beholding in the mysteries, and faith is the faith in the fact that death was defeated by Christ's life. Hence, we are allowed to say that the greatest teaching of wisdom of Christianity is that the teachings of wisdom of the various religions became fact in Christianity.

What were the teachings of wisdom of the various religions? Deepening really in the spiritual-scientific teachings you can convince yourselves that the religions comply with each other concerning their teachings. Take the teachings of Hermes, Pythagoras, and Zarathustra or also of other religious founders: in that which they expressed and taught one can find a deep consistent core of wisdom. All teachers who announced the great teachings of wisdom could say, I am the way and the truth.—For truth flowed out of their mouths; that truth which they had experienced in the mystery temples, they had become messengers of the divine truth. With Christ Jesus, it was another matter.

He could say more of himself. He became that which is expressed in the great and beautiful saying: I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He taught that in front of everybody, which the other religious founders said, living concealed to the rest of humanity in the twilight of the mysteries. The life by which experience was won inside of the mystery was invisible. It became visible because of the event in Palestine.

Thus, Christianity outranks the old pre-Christian religions. That wisdom which was won by the concealed life of the initiate came out to the public, and we have in the newer time in Christianity the truth that became person, life, and existence. Hence, it does often not depend with the old religions on telling how the religious founders lived. We do not hear telling, how the Egyptian Hermes, the Indian Rishis, how Zarathustra, how Buddha lived. If we receive the teachings and raise our hearts and our senses in them, the blessing flows from them to us. However, if we want to understand Christianity, we have to consider that Christ did not speak only that way, but also that he went his own way. Hence, no book by him, but only books about him are preserved. The good news, the Gospels, is not the wise language of Jesus. They are the stories of the life of Jesus. Others spoke about him. If the disciples of Buddha and Hermes spoke, they would say, we have heard this, these are his holy words, and we want to echo them to you.—However, if the disciples of Jesus moved into the world, they emphasised that He was there that they were connected with Him that they were His companions. They attempted to keep up the tradition, to reproduce it from generation to generation: we ourselves heard the word on the holy mountain together with Him; we laid our hands in His wounds.—It was the truth element of the living together that should transfer the liveliness to the future generations. This is somewhat different from that which existed before in the other religions. This is new.

If we want to imagine the whole significance of this new, we have to realise the difference that existed between the first quarter of human evolution and what happened now. What happens now? What does Christianity prepare humanity for, actually? Why had somebody to experience the great event in such a way that the human beings could look at him, could look up at him as evidence of the victory of life over death? One needed such evidence because now another historical epoch of humanity began, because now the intellect, the strength of mind was used for something different for centuries, even for millennia. With the propagation of Christianity, that approximately begins which we can call the triumphal procession of humanity about our material world. Christianity had to prepare for it first. In the middle of the Middle Ages, the material victory of humanity begins, the laws become more and more perfect with which the human beings found it. The human being becomes the master of nature by the perfection of his mechanisms, establishes a big system of, traffic and trade. The human intellect wins over our earth.

That did not exist in the pre-Christian times. Try to realise how our science begins in the times when also Christianity arises. You know that Thales (~624-~547 B.C.) was the first philosopher. Then Christianity prepares the ground for the use of the human strength to control the external nature. It was necessary that the conviction of a spiritual life comes from quite a different side so that humanity is not completely isolated from spiritual life. Now the efficient personality had to be used to conquer the globe in a material respect. Hence, science had to separate from the feeling, from faith. It was the characteristic feature of those who were initiated into the mysteries that science and faith, feeling and faith were one. For that who comes out of the material there is no separation between faith and knowledge, between truth and feeling. The forms in which the stars were arranged were the letterings of the godhead with the Chaldean initiates. This had to change in the new time. At first, the human being directed his look up at the starry heaven, and a science divested of divine feelings encompassed the skies and the earthly existence in all its phenomena. The knowledge of the world could no longer go the same way as faith and wisdom.

Because both had to separate, an event had to take place that guaranteed faith that founded such a firm feeling in humanity that faith could found itself besides the material science and that faith lived on throughout the material time. Thus, we have the firmly founded faith and science side by side, which does not have faith, but looks at the personality, at Christ. A personal relationship to the only One establishes itself besides the material striving. Thus, that which was put in Palestine in 33 was the bulwark to preserve the everlasting, the consciousness of the spiritual during the development of humanity towards materiality. Those had to be blessed who could believe in the only One, while they had to use their looking for the achievement of the material life. Thus, the second epoch of antiquity points prophetically to Christ Jesus. Not without good reason the teachings of the Old Testament are interpreted as predictions of Christ Jesus. Any initiation was such a prediction. What the initiate experienced, he experienced it spiritually first, then symbolically, then it was there in the world. Then it was a fulfilment, the fulfilment of the Old Testament was the New Testament. In addition, this word appears to us in its full significance if we grasp it in its depth. Thus, I have described three epochs of human evolution that go side by side, of faith, knowledge, and wisdom.

Let us carry our mind back to the times in which the poor Egyptian slaves dragged the big, massive boulders and worked themselves to blood on huge stone giants. The modern worker cannot imagine that labour. Bliss and contentment were the feelings, which penetrated the soul of the wretched slave. However, this slave knew one thing. He knew that the life that he lived in such a hard work was one life of many. The initiate often said it to him to make humanity aware of the fact that the human being embodies himself repeatedly and that he experiences that which he prepared himself, and that he is recompensed in future lives. Thus, the riddle of human destiny is solved for him really. Among the hard working slaves, bliss and religious feeling prevailed. The slave said to himself, he who commands me today was once as I am and I become once, as he is if I carry out all that now.—The prudent men who conquered the material world later, who dealt with the merely material science would not be able to achieve this, as overwhelming the teachings of Galilei and Copernicus, the teachings of the modern investigation of the sensory material existence may be.

Indeed, nothing should be said against these teachings and nobody can estimate its greatness and power more than I do. Nevertheless, it is true and one has to say also that the materialistic researchers could not find those fiery words, that spirit which opens the souls which gives the human being hope forever which gives the human beings the certainty of the mental-spiritual life. However, this certainty came from the personal connection with the unique Christ. The external science was also gradually deepened again. Science became wisdom bit by bit again, and the result of the fact is that this external science claimed to appear again as founder of a religion. What then are the enlighteners, the freethinkers? What do they want? They are, actually, religious natures. They want to found a religion; they want to conjure up such a religion from the modern science. In particular, Moleschott (Jacob M., 1822-1893, Dutch physiologist and philosopher), Haeckel and others with their books which founded a kind of materialistic Gospel for many are nothing else than founders of a materialistic religion. Because the worldly-sensuous has won such an immense strength and authority that the human being wants to gain the highest by science and its wisdom, the scientists have turned away from Christ Jesus, also those who feel only a bit of the power of science and have something to inform of the greatness and the power of science. Thus, we have the separation of science. However, Jesus spoke a word, a word that we cannot grasp deeply enough, and this is, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20).

We do not need to borrow this wisdom only from traditions and books, but if we rise into the higher worlds, we have the greatest experience in ourselves again, which can be experienced only in the higher worlds beyond the gate of death. Then He speaks again to us, then He shows us that He is there today that we can hear Him immediately in the present. Hence, we need such a deepening of humanity again that the human being has the experience of Christ in himself and that the human being can find out something similar like the initiates in the ancient mysteries again in himself. At least a reflection of the great, significant experience of the mystery temples should be delivered gradually to those who turn to anthroposophy. They enter the spiritual region, the other side of life already here during this life. Thus, they can experience what Goethe expressed significantly in his poem, which begins: “Tell nobody except the wise, because the mob is immediately scornful,” and closes: “And so long as you don't have it, this “Die and be transformed!,” you will only be a gloomy guest on the dark earth.”

Today it concerns this passing away and becoming. There are methods of spiritual development with which we can wake the inner divine essence in ourselves, with which we can outgrow into the spiritual world. Our eyes are opened there for the spiritual world; our ears become active, so that we hear something higher speaking. We are able to become citizens of a higher world; we find that Christ is with us to the end of the world. Then we can also hear that language again, which spoke to the disciples on the mountain. This is indicated in the deepest mystery of Christianity.

Let us consider this great mystery at the end. Christ had initiated pupils too; he also led them away from the crowd. When he wanted to explain what he had said to the crowd in parables, he led his three initiated disciples: Peter, James, and John on the Mount Tabor. They beheld the transfiguration there (Matthew 17). Who understands the transfiguration recognizes the deepest mystery of Christianity. The disciples are translated from the sensuous existence. What faces them? Elijah and Moses. Elijah is the word meaning way or aim, Moses is simply the esoteric word meaning truth, and Jesus is life. While eternity appeared to them in temporality, while those who are dead long since appeared to them, before their spiritual eyes, it means that they had ascended to the spiritual world. Peter says to Jesus, it is good that we are here. Would you like me to make three shelters...? You can read the expression “make shelters” where a pupil attains the second stage of chelahood. One says of him that he makes shelters in the beyond.

The great truth in the religious documents is recognized everywhere by that who recognizes the so-called key words. The saying “I am the way, the truth and the life” faces you there. When they descended from the mountain, Jesus forbade them to tell anyone about the vision, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. They questioned themselves: what is “rising” from the dead?—They said to Jesus, the scribes say that Elijah must come first.—He answered, Elijah is to come and set everything right.—The disciples, in the most intimate sanctum, speak here about reincarnation as about something that is a matter of course to them. The Lord Himself spoke about it like about a matter of course, saying, Elijah has already come, John the Baptist is Elijah, but they failed to recognise him.—This is the testament on the mountain. “Mountain” is the key word for initiation. Where initiation is concerned, the term “on the mountain” is applied. What means: do not tell anybody that I come again? That is, until I speak again to you, until you yourselves are there again in such figure that humanity can again perceive the word of truth. Christ Jesus was as a deputy on earth. Looking at his death, humanity should feel the victory of life over death. The faith by which even the Egyptian slave knew of the beyond should be substituted by the faith that the everlasting is in the essence, which passes through the physical. Now they had to start the triumphal procession through the world. Nothing material remains to us of that which is wisdom, immediate knowledge of the beyond. Nothing of reincarnation should be taught to humanity during the following two millennia. Jesus determined this as his testament. Not before the human beings have gone through the third epoch of development, they have gained this material victory over the globe; they will have applied intellect and reason to the external civilisation. Then only a new epoch is permitted to begin, then wisdom can understand that again which lived uniquely. Then Christ appears again on earth, so that He can be grasped immediately.

Then the human being does no longer need the life on Tabor, and then he experiences the initiation in himself, finds the divine human being in himself. Then he will look up again at the divine life that was common property of humanity in the pre-Christian times. The anthroposophic teaching has introduced this new epoch. What Christ left on the mountain Tabor, the spiritual-scientifically striving human beings feel this as their mission, as their vocation. Christian mystics of the Middle Ages already indicated this. You find it expressed by Angelus Silesius, the great Silesian initiate: “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you still are lost forever.” As the blind person experiences the awakening of light, somebody who arrives at the new condition can experience the apparition like that on Tabor. This is the future. Thus, we had a Christianity of faith in the third epoch of humanity, and we shall have a Christianity of wisdom in the fourth epoch. What did humanity perform in the third epoch? The instinctive period is the pre-Christian time. We have had the period of the external material civilisation, and now we enter the fourth period of human development.

The human being has encompassed the world with industry and trade; without distinction of nation and race industry and trade work. The machine prepares the same goods in Japan, Brazil, and Europe. The same railways cross the globe in all areas without distinction of race, nation, and class. The differences within humanity have fallen in our civilisation. The cheque, which is written here in Berlin, can be redeemed in Tokyo. Everything in our civilisation has taken place in such a way that we can put up as a principle of the third period what no one could have put up as a principle in the starting point of our civilisation: we want to found a civilisation that encompasses the globe, without distinction of race, gender, occupation, and confession. This material civilisation has encompassed the world under this motto. This civilisation must receive soul. It is the task of the fourth epoch of humanity; it is the task of anthroposophy and of our lifestyle to introduce this cultural soul into humanity. We have a material civilisation, and we need a spiritual culture with the same qualities. The human beings are strong where they founded the moral connection. The Japanese trader understands the traders of all other countries. The human beings must understand each other in their souls.

This will be if these achievements are also made fruitful for the human science. The cultural body has three epochs. It needs a soul. The fourth epoch has to bring cultural spirit. This is the great basic idea, the big aim, which the big cultural movement must have, if it wants to be something else than a mere play for those who deal with nothing but brooding over mystic thoughts. If the Theosophical Society continues to exist, it manages this. Hence, it has to understand Christianity in its deepness. It has to understand its deepest teachings of wisdom and must also have the strength to practice these teachings of wisdom not in old traditional form, but to reshape them so that they live on usefully at all times. With it, Christianity is not anything past, but has the living strength to work on future more and more. Thus, anthroposophy, the anthroposophically understood Christianity is no doctrine, no dogma, no sectarianism, but it is something else. It is something that makes hearts leap for joy in the best sense of the word; it is something that raises the soul to the biggest tasks of the present because the biggest tasks can only correspond to the beneficial hope for the future.

Then we have understood Christianity if it gives us life for the future. Then we understand the high spirits correctly if they become our future teachers. We are their right pupils if we do not want to reproduce authoritatively what they themselves had said, but if their words, their actions have become the energy for the new that we create. This is the great secret, the big lawfulness and necessity that shall fulfil us in the progress of human evolution and that shall constitute our life in the highest sense of the word. This is the true education of humanity that we receive the strength of creating in the future and the hope for a beneficial effect in the future from a real knowledge of the great actions of our ancestors.

There are riddles of the world in which somebody takes an interest who wants to deeper penetrate into the structure and texture of our existence. Such riddles of the world are, for example, these: where from do materials and forces come, where from does life come into the world? Where from the purposiveness of nature, where from consciousness? How have we to assess the question of the origin of language, how the question of the riddle of the free will? These questions force themselves to somebody who wants to deeper penetrate into the understanding of existence indeed, questions which are not far from an advanced, educated intelligence. But before these questions there are more obvious, big human questions which have no theoretical, no scientific value at first, but which force themselves, which allow us to look up from the works and efforts of life at that which we want to call the imperishable compared to the transient. These questions are connected with that which meets us wherever we go, with that which must face us everywhere in the world as a riddle. These are questions on whose reply not only the satisfaction of our theoretical or scientific interest depends, but it also depends on them whether we have strength, courage and assurance in life, whether we have hope for a prosperous future of the human race and the single human being.

Such vital matters face us if we turn our look at the immediate existence of the human being, if we see how one is equipped at his birth with a low ability and strength and is inclined by these dispositions and talents. With it, we can foresee how he is condemned to a wretched, miserable existence that he has to carry on between birth and death. He may be born into a family so that he seems to be condemned to misery already without any guilt due to the circumstances and facts. The other is born into a family which makes sure from the start that he has a happy existence full of joy; he has talents and abilities so that we can say, he accomplishes something great and significant in his life. All that and other things embrace the big and immediate riddles, if we consider life, as it faces us, impartially. The great worldviews and their preachers always tried hard to solve these riddles of existence. However, in every new time the riddles of existence need a new solution. Not as if the old truth is no longer true, it does not concern this, but the fact that thinking and feeling of the human beings change, that the feeling of the soul changes more than one assumes usually, that one does not put other questions, but that one puts the old questions differently. The theosophical or spiritual-scientific approach to life, spreading out for thirty years in educated cultures, tries to solve the riddles of existence in such a way that the modern human being can be satisfied with such a solution.

There are two spiritual-scientific concepts that should form the object of our issue today and give answer to the raised questions: the idea of reincarnation or of the repeated earth lives, and the idea of karma or the big principle of existence. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to answer the riddles of existence with these both ideas as the physical researcher answers his questions from knowledge, not from mere belief. What the spiritual-scientific worldview wants to give has the same character as what the remaining research wants to offer. The only difference may be that for the understanding of the scientific truth preconditions are necessary. A certain scientific basis also belongs almost to the complete popular scientific representation. However, the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview is understandable for every human being. It satisfies every human being, from the simple, naive mind which is only able to follow the questions and answers with sensation and feeling up to the most sophisticated sage who approaches these matters with the biggest doubt at first and who—if he only has the patience and perseverance to come to grips with these matters—finds his satisfaction. They all find not only satisfaction, not only that releasing feeling which approaches us in the soul if we have longed a long time for getting an answer to any question—who knows this feeling knows something about the intimate happiness of the soul—, but also concerning the vital matter it gives something quite different. There does not come into consideration what satisfies our thirst for knowledge, but something that gives us the assurance of life, something that should not give an answer only for single but for all soul forces.

Because we deal with so important and basic questions today, let me say first, in which sense the spiritual-scientific answers are to be understood based on life. One often counters the spiritual scientist, out of an entire misunderstanding: bring forward proof of that which you state there if we should believe you what you say about higher, spiritual worlds and about matters that are inaccessible to the usual senses of experience at first.—The spiritual scientist can appropriately answer only: nobody needs to believe me, from nobody I ask more than trust in my assertions, because there cannot be such proofs of the spiritual-scientific truth as one normally demands them. Who demands them does not understand the character and the sense of the spiritual-scientific truth.

Life delivers the proofs of the spiritual-scientific truth and life delivers them if not only we look with the senses here within that which our own eyes, ears, and our sense of touch teach us, but life in its entirety up to the highest spiritual parts of life. If anybody comes and says: I do not believe what you tell there, because this may be anything that you have devised, this may be fantasies—, and one can answer: well, believe it, believe that the spiritual scientists are the biggest swindlers of the world. However, something else is between belief and disbelief. This is an impartial listening.—Take a drastic proof. Take a map of Asia Minor. A man says, this is no map of Asia Minor, you have thought up this.—One can only answer to him: well, never mind, but remember what I have shown to you on this map, take note of it, and memorise it. If you come to Asia Minor once, you see that it is right.—The same applies to the spiritual-scientific teachings. No one needs to believe them. If only we want to observe carefully and impartially, there are enough proofs of it in life, also for that life when we have passed the gate of death, when we are on the other side.

One has to answer the old questions in a new way. Still in the 17th century, it was not only a superstition of the big mass, but also a common conviction of all learnt people who believed to understand something of natural sciences that not only quite low animals, but also even earthworms can grow out of ordinary river mud. One thought this generally. One did not have the conviction that an earthworm must come from an earthworm, but one believed that it originated from mud. The Italian scientist Redi (Francesco R., 1626-1697) put up the sentence: life comes only from life. Never comes life from lifelessness. The earthworm originates not from the mud, but by a reproduction of an earthworm.—So young is this conviction! Thus, the human race advances concerning truth. Everybody would be regarded as a fool today who believed that earthworms could grow out of mud. What Redi expressed at that time—who escaped the destiny of Giordano Bruno by the skin of his teeth—, applies to the spiritual-scientific worldview today. As well as it was contrary to the ways of thinking at that time to admit that life must come from life, the teaching of reincarnation is contrary to the present ways of thinking.

Some run literally wild by the spiritual-scientific truth as in those days the human beings ran wild if anybody stated that the earthworms do not grow out of mud. In the same sense, like that which I have stated now the spiritual-scientific worldview says, spirit and soul come only from spirit and soul. If folly does not win over reason, there is no doubt that in two centuries exactly just as the scientific truth, the spiritual-scientific worldview will have seized all circles.

What does it mean that spirit and soul come only from spirit and soul? Spirit and soul face us if we consider the destiny of the human being how it depends on external facts, on dispositions and abilities, on the overall character. Only someone who is not able to observe the fine, intimate peculiarities of a human soul in its becoming, who only has a sense of the coarse physical can deny that we see something growing up in the child that can be explained just as little from a non-mental, a non-spiritual as the earthworm from mud. Schiller's nose, Schiller's red hair and some other of his physiognomy are indeed explicable by bodily inheritance, exactly as the carbon particles and the oxygen particles in the earthworm come from other carbon particles and oxygen particles of the surroundings.

The lifeless parts of the earthworm come from the lifeless parts of the surrounding nature and the physical parts of our body come from the physical surroundings. However, we can explain Schiller's abilities and talents from the surroundings just as little as the earthworms from the mud. Nevertheless, it does not depend on Schiller. He is given only as a radical example. It applies to every human being, also to the simplest, that he develops gradually from the type. It is impossible to derive the individual from the physical inheritance. One can see that easily. Try to understand once how Goethe's saying applies here,: “Nature, mysterious in day's clear light, lets none remove her veil, and what she won't discover to your understanding you can't extort it with levers and with screws” (Faust I). This is nothing for pliers and microscope. Have a look at the child how it faces you in the first months and years. On its face expresses itself what it has from father, mother, and ancestors. The general-human expresses itself, the type, the character of the clan, of the family. We often say, the mild trait of the child comes from the father, from the mother, from uncle or aunt.

However, when we see the child growing up, a strange change takes place that is visible to a subtler sense. What we can perceive as the confluence of father, mother, grandmother et cetera like an imprint changes and takes shape from its inner being. What lives in the core one cannot derive from father and mother expresses itself gradually in the traits. The more something individual is in the soul that is above the type, the more the soul creates in the body from inside and transforms it. How could one explain the face of a great thinker, of a great world benefactor by inheritance who works from his inside and enriches the world with anything new? From the face, you can see how the human being outgrows the mere type. In every human being, just a spiritual essence reveals itself, which is not born out of physical inheritance, but is born into it. If you cannot lead back this spiritual core to father and mother, to the ancestors, we must be able to lead it back to something spiritual. Soul and spirit come from the soul and spirit. There is only the idea of development, the idea of repeated incarnations. The being that impresses its traits to the child already existed, was already repeatedly in a body. There you find an explanation of soul and spirit just as you find an explanation of the earthworm if you say, the earthworm has originated from an earthworm and not from mud or sand. Once there was something imperfect, however, we cannot go into it in this talk.

How does spiritual science explain the perfect and the imperfect in the mental-spiritual realm? As well as the small plasmodium originated, according to Haeckel from simple living conditions, and as the following animal formed bit by bit by the development of the external physical figure, we can say about a perfect soul that it gradually formed from an imperfect soul which became more perfect bit by bit. The imperfect savage with his childish soul has preserved that figure of our soul through which we had to go to raise ourselves to the spiritual figure of our soul. On the other hand, compare the soul of an average European with the soul of a human being as Darwin still met one. The soul of a modern human being has concepts of good and bad, of right and wrong, of false and true.

Darwin wanted once to make clear to a savage who was still a cannibal: you are not allowed to eat a human being, because it is bad.—The savage looked at him peculiarly and said, why? Where from can you know this without having eaten him? If we have eaten him, we know whether he was good or bad.—Thus, you have an imperfect soul that develops more and more completely. Our soul comes into the world not as a baby, but this soul has developed in imperfect incarnations first where it had understood nothing of good and bad but the pleasant and the disagreeable to the palate and the like. It developed through such stages and advanced to our level through many incarnations. We carry our soul in ourselves with the abilities and forces, which we have, with the destiny, which it experiences. We see more precisely if we come again in another incarnation on earth; we appear more perfect on earth, until that stage is attained on which we are able to ascend to a higher and more divine existence of which we do not need to speak today. There are indeed still other explanations of existence than the teaching of reincarnation, but this can solely solve the riddles of human existence.

A core of existence faces us in that human being about whom we say that he goes through many lives, through repeated lives. The materialistically minded says to us that mind and soul are only attachments to the body, developed only from the body; the thoughts and language are only higher forms of that which we meet also in the physical-animal realm. The materialist brings us to mind that our most elated moral ideals, our holiest religious feelings are nothing but the results of our physical organization. On the contrary, the spiritual-scientific worldview shows us that everything that rests in our souls is our everlasting essence, which formed its body step-by-step. The physical-bodily comes from the spiritual-mental: this is the teaching of the spiritual-scientific worldview, which becomes clearer and clearer, the more you immerse yourselves in it. It is a teaching that is not based on blind faith, although—if one wants to show it popularly in one short hour—one can outline it only briefly and cannot introduce in it extensively. However, it is a teaching that is founded as certainly and firmly like any scientific teaching. It works with the same methods, only in the spiritual realm, as the sensuous science in the physical realm.

Spiritual science speaks of the fact that the human being consists of a higher and a lower nature, and that his lower nature—when he walks through the gate of death—is given back to those elements, which it belonged to. The body is handed over to the earth; other parts are handed over to other elements. However, an everlasting essence is in the human being that always takes on a new human figure and form like the lily as a species always takes on new forms, while it goes repeatedly through the grain to come to a new life.

This teaching of reincarnation of the being, which shows us the development in the spiritual realm as the higher counter-image of the development in the sensory realm, leads us to see those finer, more intimate things in the human being. We speak of the fact that this essence of the human being contains a triple basic being, that it is of triple nature. We speak of the fact that something exists in the deepest inside of the human beings that is quite undeveloped with the normally educated people, exists only embryonic. We call this innermost essence of the human being atman or spirit man. With the most human beings, it is not even visible by vision.

The second member of this spiritual essence of the human being is the buddhi. In English, we would call it life spirit. This second element in the human soul is something that is expressed with the most developed human beings, with the leaders of humanity in a certain way. We can describe this life spirit in a certain way. This buddhi of the highest glory and sublimity inhabited the old religious founders, Hermes, Buddha, Zarathustra and—in the extreme—Christ Jesus. If I make clear what this buddhi signifies in the spiritual realm, I can do it only by a symbol. One must behold the spiritual either, or one has to sum up the everlasting in a symbol, like Goethe does who says: “All that is transitory, is only a symbol.” I would like to give such a symbol of buddhi. If you imagine the usual productive strength in the usual sensuous life, combined with love, but not with receptive love, but with devoted love: this is buddhi. There is in nature no other symbol than the hen, which sits on the egg, conjuring up a new life with its own warmth, sacrificing its own existence in love for the new life. Now imagine this transferred to the spiritual, imagine an individuality who produces the big, propelling forces, the spiritual impulse in the human nature for the further development in such a way as I have just described, then you have it.

The element of Christian feeling and sensation had been a basic strength since two millennia. It flowed as blessing through the Western hearts and fulfilled them with bliss. Did Christ not generate it and did it not exist in Christ? Was it not brought into this world with the highest glory, showing that spiritually, which lives in the sensuous, the devoted love which creates—which does not create a human being, but spiritual love which brings forth the universal wisdom, for centuries? Imagine this element in the human nature, and then we have what we call Christ in the Christian mysticism, Chrestós in the Greek mysticism, buddhi in the Eastern mysticism, the life spirit in its highest potentiality. Everybody who feels something of that which it means to produce spiritually what is incorporated as a force in the human development, everybody who feels something of it has a feeling of spiritual, bright clearness like that which expresses itself here below by a symbol, the true blissful sensation with which the chicken sits on the egg. This is buddhi. It exists in every single human being to a certain extent, at least as disposition.

The third soul force is that by which we understand the world. It would be brainless in the highest degree to believe that one could get water out of a vessel if no water is in it. However, such brainless people are those who say that they can get the wisdom of the world if it is not there. The astronomer tries to calculate and to understand the wisdom in the universe. The world is to be understood only by wisdom. Would it not be the biggest folly to want to take wisdom from the universe unless wisdom were in it? If not wisdom were given, we could never get wisdom there. The universe is created by the same wisdom by which we want to understand it. This is the third element that flows through the whole world. This is the manas. In English, it is translated best of all saying: wisdom is born out of the world, our spirit self is this third element. If you take these three things: atman, buddhi, manas, and then you have the deepest essence of the human being. Then you have what walks from incarnation to incarnation what is imperfectly formed with the savage where this triad also exists on a low level, up to where we see it with the modern human being, up to the great leader of humanity. The human being walks from incarnation to incarnation, from the cultured man up to the spiritually not only ideal, but also holy leader of humanity, up to Francis of Assisi, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) or others. The student can completely get to know the passage through the repeated earth-lives by the way the human beings stand side by side in this development.

What I have stated expresses itself in the whole human being to somebody who sees more intimately. I have said, this essence of the human being exists only as disposition with the normally educated person. It becomes perfect. However, what we form from our essence today formed and created us from the outset. Thus, we see this tripartite being, this essence working in the human being unconsciously at first and then consciously. Just now I have only mentioned an example how the inner being expresses itself in the physiognomy of the thinker. Not only in the steady physiognomy, but also in the gesture and in the mobility of the traits the essence expresses itself. They are accordingly formed bit by bit, depending on the essence growing out with the child. Spiritual research, occultism gives you the coherence of this tripartite being of the human being and that, which is expressed externally in his body, in his instrument. The so-called occultist says, with the man the spirit self-expresses itself in the traits at first. Buddhi develops in his organ of speech, lives in his voice, preparing future levels. The third force, atman, lives in man's gesture, in the movement of his hands. I said, in the organ of speech and in the voice the second member, buddhi, or Christ, lives as you have seen just now. The Christian mysticism expressed this the deepest in John's Gospel where you read: “In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God's presence, and what God was, the Word was.” John directly calls the speech Christ. In the female nature, it is somewhat different. Of course, I would like to say nothing against the absolute gender equality practiced in theosophy. Atman, buddhi, manas are the same with the man and with the woman. They have nothing to do with the gender, however, with the external figure. With the woman manas comes into its own in the speech, buddhi in the gesture of the hands, and atman appears in the whole body. These are the so-called occult differences between the male and the female figures, not between the essence of man and woman.

What is now this idea of reincarnation compared with the principle of karma? Karma comes from or is connected at least with the Sanskrit word karnoti that means acting, doing, and working. It is exactly the same stem like in Latin “creare,” create. Creare, do and create is the same. Karma and creating is the same, expressed only in two different languages. Now we want to realise what one calls karma. Karma is called, in English expressed, activity, becoming, and action. With a simple example, let me make clear what one calls karma. Imagine, you work on anything from morning to night. Then you go to bed, sleep the whole night through, and get up in the morning again. If now you say to yourself, what I have worked yesterday does not concern me, I start afresh today, and then you are brainless, are you not? Nevertheless, the only possibility is that you take up in the morning again, what you have left in the evening, saying to yourself, this is my work and where I have stopped yesterday, I must resume today. What does that mean? That only means that my destiny of today is determined by my work of yesterday. Yesterday I have created my destiny of today. With it the whole concept of karma is given. Every being makes his future destiny.

Take another example. Once animals walked into dark caves. Something peculiar occurs to these animals. They lose their sight. The food juices move to other parts of the body that they need them more than the eyesight. The result is that the faculty of seeing withdraws, the animals become blind. What do we have before ourselves if we see these animals producing blind generations repeatedly? There we must say, in the blindness of the animals we have the effect of the fact that the animals have moved into dark caves. By which have these animals created their present figure? By their preceding action. Nothing else is karma, as if one prepares his future destiny by his work in the past. Cause and effect are always connected. If the human being goes through a life on earth between birth and death, he commits a number of actions. He goes in the interim through death and new birth and enters a new life then. It is as well as if we wake up and take up again what we have left in the evening. What we have sowed in the past life on earth, we harvest this as a fruit in the new life on earth. If we he have made a bad, disgusting destiny in the past life, the effect of our own actions faces us in the new earth-life.

If we have caused anything bad to a person, he appears to us in the new life again and causes something bad to us as compensation. If a person faces me and commits anything bad to me, I can suppose that I had already been together with him in a previous earth-life and caused that which he now does. Thus, the destiny of the single human being becomes more transparent and explicable with the help of the big principle of karma, and the biggest riddle of life, which meets us at every turn, receives light and solution. Now I get an explanation why one is born in the deepest need and misery and why such a disgusting destiny affects him apparently undeservedly. It is the same as if someone has not done his work properly. He is condemned by the bad preparation of yesterday to do bad work again today. Thus, the same applies if I say that anybody who lives in need and misery now himself caused it in a previous life. I also know that nothing remains without effect. That has its effect in the coming life, which I do well or wrongly. The effect in the world is connected with the cause, the observation of the stars and the sun teaches that. The same applies also to the astral and spiritual worlds. What we do now is compensated in a later life. The biblical saying is right: “God is not to be fooled, everyone reaps what he sowed” (Galatians 6:7).—

Paul as an initiate knew why he especially pronounced such words. This is the big world principle that leads the human destiny. Now I know very well that it is also necessary to get an idea how this principle works, and about which I would still like to say some words. Who has heard some of my talks, already knows what I want to indicate herewith. If we look at the human being with spiritual sense, he does not face us as this physical body, but we know that this physical body is only one part of the big being, that behind him something is that Paul calls the spiritual body and that the spiritual scientist calls the etheric body. The etheric body is like a portrayal of the physical body, or better vice versa, the physical body is a portrayal of the etheric body. This is the second member of the human being, the etheric body. The third member is the astral body, that which the human being bears in himself as joy and sorrow, instincts, desires, passions, everything that faces us if a human being faces us that we do not see or perceive, however, with sensuous-physical means. What do we see if a human being stands in front of us? We see the skin, its colour and so on.

The anatomist can look with physical means still at bones, at muscles, nerves et cetera, but the desire and pain, instincts, and passions that are also in the same room are not sense-perceptible. One calls this the astral body and in it only the spiritual being of the human being exists which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-consciousness. While we have this, we become on our part again the bearers of atman, buddhi, manas, of that which I have described as spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man.

The animal already has the astral body. It has desire, joy, and pain. What exists, however, in the highest configuration with the leaders of humanity and exists as disposition with all human beings is the everlasting essence of the human being who advances from incarnation to incarnation. If now the human being dies, what remains there and what passes? The physical body, what one sees with eyes and can feel with hands is handed over to the earth. The etheric body is merged in the general life ether, namely not long after we have gone through death. The third member is the astral body on which the human being has already worked. Take such a soul that lives in the civilised human being, there you have the inner essence and the sum of his desires and passions. With the savage, on the first stage of incarnation, atman, buddhi, manas have worked a little on the instincts. Hence, they are still animal. What does the spiritual essence do? It works perpetually, while it improves the animal passions. The civilised human being differs from the savage because his astral body is no longer animal. Then the human being dies and goes to the astral and spiritual worlds.

One sees there what was still in him as desire from the first-time incarnation. If the human being enters incarnation for the first time, the animal passions are not purified. He eats his fellow men et cetera. Then the results appear. He starts roughly understanding something. We suppose the radical case that he says to himself if I can eat the other, he also can eat me. He understands that he can be also eaten up. The consequence becomes clear to him at the last minute, and there the first moral consciousness dawns on him. Then he purifies his desire by the judgement that he has formed, and this judgment comes from his spiritual essence. His judgment appears with the second incarnation as disposition. He has become somewhat nobler. He is now purifying his passions and desires more and more. He enhances them from incarnation to incarnation. That really happens if the human being dies. The physical body is delivered to the earth; the etheric body is merged in the life ether. What happens now with the human being, what takes place now?

Not only the ability to look clairvoyantly at the world but already the intellect could teach somebody who thinks deeper what must happen. The human being is disembodied, he has no physical body. What has he done, however, throughout his whole life? He has the conveniences of food by the sense of taste throughout the whole life.

This convenience of food, the taste of the dishes, the palatal pleasure is mental. The palate itself is physical. If the human being did not have the physical, he could not get the mental pleasure. If he had no physical ear, he could not hear, had he no physical eye, he could not see. We perceive everything that we perceive with the physical senses at first. The modern human being can perceive nothing without his physical senses. He is used to them. He is used to satisfying such wishes that can be satisfied by the sense organs. The habit to have wishes, to have pleasures, remains, the means by which he can satisfy them disappear; tongue, eyes and ears disappear. He does no longer have them. Now he misses them after death. He is still thirsting for the pleasure, which can only be satisfied by the sense organ. The result is that the human being comes to a state of consciousness after death, which consists in breaking the habit of being satisfied only by the sense organs. The soul must stop asking for sensuous satisfaction, has to purify itself beyond that which satisfied it on earth and can be satisfied only by sensuous, physical means. That is kamaloka in the theosophical worldview. We know it as the purgatory. One can compare that not improperly, which the human being experiences there, to a feeling of burning thirst, to a kind of burning privation. This is the state after death. The suitable means is not there sensuous-physical after death; the organ is not there by which the thirsting soul can be satisfied. If a soul has finished this connection with the physical in the course of years in the kamaloka, it lives in the spiritual world, to which it belongs as soul. It takes that along into the spiritual world. The spiritual-scientific worldview calls this spiritual world devachan or spirit land. What does the soul take along?

The purified desires and passions are now spiritualised. If the human being was incarnated on earth, he takes what he has gained to the devachan and processes it there for a new earth-life. A strength of life has to emerge from his experience. It is not enough that the human being experiences anything. Consider the difference between the experience and strength of life exactly. If an undeveloped soul finds out by consequence that it is impossible to eat his fellow man without putting himself in danger and damaging himself, if this faces the soul as experience, then it is this experience that must be transformed into strength, so that an inner voice exists: you are not allowed to eat a human being.

This becomes will, the voice of conscience, which becomes more and more perfect, the more embodiments we have experienced. Experience changes into will, in the voice of conscience in the course of our incarnations. You know now what the human being does in the devachan. In the kamaloka, he purifies himself, in the devachan; he transforms the experiences, which he had, to strength for the next earth-life to appear as a powerful, inner, individual nature. Hence, you can perceive it if an undeveloped soul appears in the savage; you can perceive this in his gestures and traits, in the movements of his hands as something typical. The more incarnations we have lived through, the more our individual comes out. What is elaborated? The experiences of his former incarnations which become his character.

You can raise another question: why does the human being not remember his former incarnations?—This question has little sense if it is put in such a way. You immediately realise this. It is in such a way, as if anybody comes and says: the human beings are called human beings, and a four-year-old child stands before us which is innumerate—, and now he says: this child is innumerate, however, it is a human being, so the human beings are innumerate.—However, this is a question of development. Every human being arrives at that level once where some advanced persons have already arrived who can remember their former earth-lives. If he cannot remember, it is because he must acquire this ability to himself first, as the child acquires the ability of reading, calculating, and writing. The human being is not allowed to let destiny pass himself in dullness if he wants to achieve the point of view by these experiences to remember his former earth-lives. How does this recollection of the former earth-lives appear?

This life is bound to the fact that the human being has developed as much as possible of his inner spiritual essence. The more free and independent from sensuousness the human being has become in this life, the more he lives in the soul, the less he is dependent on the pleasures provided by the senses, the more he approaches the state where he recognises himself in the former states. However, how should such a human being remember former earth-lives? Examine only once what normally fulfils a usual human being. Only that which the sensuous view offers! Of course, this disappears, because a recollection of former earth-lives is not possible. Not before the human being leads a life in his divine self, he remembers in the same extent what he has experienced in his former incarnations, and those who become engrossed in the spiritual life are certainly reincarnated with a recollection of the spiritual life.

Another objection is normally done against the teaching of karma. One says, well, it is the old principle of fate. Now one says, the human being has prepared everything for himself in his former earth-life. Destiny and character are thereby determined irreversibly. There is no longer freedom nor free will. There we are subject to fate.—If anybody said so, this would be as clever, as if anybody wanted to say: here I have a cashbook. On the left, I have all debits, on the right all credits. If I add both sides, a certain number results. If I subtract both figures, the profit or the loss arises as a result. If I add this on one side again, we have a balance.—Indeed, this is also with a life balance. The good actions are on one side, the bad and foolish actions on the other. There is also a life account with the life balance as there are accounts and balances in the accounting. Imagine now a businessman who said, my annual accounts are done, I am no longer allowed to register anything, I am no longer allowed to bargain, because everything that I am still allowed to do is predetermined by the previous registrations.

The same would be if the human being said, I am no longer allowed to commit new actions. The registrations and the balancing do not forbid him this. Just as little as the accountancy forbids the businessman to do new deals, just as little the karma forbids him good or bad actions. At every moment, we can register new posts; at every moment, we can increase the debit side and the credit side. Some people also say, if I help anyone who is in need and misery, I intervene in his karma. However, I am not allowed to do this.—This is not true. You can help the person to register new and good posts in his karma and to transform his life account to a favourable one. What you register as laziness, neglect, and fatalism is not connected so positively with the principle of karma. However, something else is connected with it.

If you see a chemist going to his laboratory, he will maybe go in with the idea: if I bring together sulphur, oxygen, and hydrogen in a certain way, sulfuric acid originates according to an irrevocable principle. Nothing is to be argued against this principle. However, the chemist can also omit to carry out the mixture, he can do it or not. The principle does not impair his free will at all. Nevertheless, the principle gives him the certainty that that really happens which shall happen. You cannot get carbonic acid one time and sulfuric acid the other time from the same mixture. The principle allows us to build on a certain effect. That also applies to karma. The principle of karma can keep us from no action, but there is the certainty that a right and fair balance must take place in life that every good action must have its good effect and every clever action its corresponding effect. The fact that everything happens according to a spiritual principle gives us the certainty. It shows us that nothing is accidental that we do but that everything we do is done in such a way that we can build on a right world connection.

Thus, this principle of karma is not only a scientific principle, not something that satisfies the theoretical interest only, but something that contains the solution of the riddle of life, the riddle of the world. It gives strength and certainty in life, it works in such a way that we know that everything in this life is connected according to a principle that is recognised more and more that we interpret unconsciously at first and then more and more consciously. Not only is the urge for knowledge satisfied with the spiritual-scientific worldview. Something else is given, namely strength, courage, and certainty. Not only one tells something of our determination to us, but at the same time we get the possibility to live according to our determination, to live in such a way that we advance to a more and more perfect existence. The solution of the riddle of life is not dogmatic and doctrinal, but full of life and mind-impregnated because of the facts of the principles of karma and reincarnation.

All those who looked deeper in nature, in the nature of the spiritual life found more or less this principle of karma and reincarnation. Giordano Bruno was a supporter of the principle, and when from a dullness a new intellectual culture emerged, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781, writer, philosopher, dramaturg) concluded his wisdom in the teaching of reincarnation. I know that many people do not want to criticise Lessing. However, if one likes to praise him, they will not go along. It is strange towards a great man that one only accepts from him what suits one. This also applies to Giordano Bruno and Goethe with whom one regards these ideas as senility or the like. We see that also our German theosophy is deeply penetrated by this view. Only today, only since some decades it is possible again to inform in public about this view. For the centuries of the new development, this was not possible because the human culture had another task as I have already explained.

The teachings of karma and reincarnation appeared in the dawn, and also these great spirits were only able to announce them figuratively, symbolically, they understood them full of life. Where life could become explicable to them in its deepest depths, they often pointed with big life humour to this truth, to this everlasting principle of reincarnation that determines what we now experience between birth and death. Goethe pointed to it when he wanted to explain his deep soul friendship to Mrs. von Stein saying, “Oh you were my sister or my woman in past times.” However, Goethe also expresses the principle of karma like other great spirits. He expresses the fact that we enter the world according to our disposition following the principle of cause and effect like everything in the world in the nice words:

As on the day that lent you to the world
The sun stood to greet the planets,
You instantly thrived and continued to do so
In accordance with the law by which you made your appearance.
Thus, you must be, you cannot escape yourself,
Thus, sibyls and prophets have already spoken,
And no passage of time nor any can break into bits
A moulded form that develops as it lives.

(From: Primal Words. Orphic. Daimon)

However, he said the deepest what he had to say figuratively, among other things, in the beautiful poem where he compares the human soul with the water and the human destiny with the wind. He compares with that which flows along from embodiment to embodiment in the life stream; and the destiny is the wind, which lets the soul surge up and down in perpetual waves. As every following wave is dependent in its figure on the preceding one, the soul is depending on its previous figure, and as well as the wind becomes always new, in the life account of the human being always something new is registered. “Soul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind!” he says at the end of the poem where he downright shows the reincarnation in the earth-life. “The soul of man resembles water, it comes from heaven, it rises to heaven, and it must descend back to earth, in eternal alternation.” Goethe shows the soul that way. It comes from the spiritual world, descends to the earth, goes back to heaven and comes again in a new incarnation

The soul of man
resembles water:
it comes from heaven,
it rises to heaven,
and it must descend
back to earth,
in eternal alternation.

The pure jet
streams from the lofty,
steep rock wall,
then falls as charming droplets
in cloudy waves
on the smooth rock,
and, gently received,
it bubbles with a veil of mist
and a quiet murmur
down to the depths.

If cliffs loom up
to meet its plunge,
it foams indignantly,
in stages,
into the abyss.

In its flat bed
it moves quietly down the meadowy valley
and in the smooth lake
all the heavenly bodies
cool their faces.

Wind is the wave's
amorous lover
wind stirs foaming waves
up from the very bottom

Soul of man,
how you resemble water!
Destiny of man,
how you resemble the wind!