The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When people pay attention to the interests of their soul, then the question to which our today's reflection is dedicated - the question of life and death - is certainly a recognized important and meaningful one, and the answer to this question must meet deep needs of the human soul life. Nevertheless, it is difficult to talk about such things in our present time, because it is difficult to strike a chord in the soul, because the concepts, views and ideas that our time has gained from seemingly established scientific concepts contradict what must be said from spiritual scientific research; and it is difficult to bring an unbiased approach to bear on these scientific concepts.

Now it could be that those who are trying to answer these questions today should be met with an unbiased approach, but one only has to pay attention to what is presented to us in the [contemporary scientific] literature and one will recognize how little healthy thinking, how few healthy concepts there are and have a broad audience.

The concept of “life” - let us take the “physiology” of one of the greatest naturalists of modern times, Huxley: here we have an exemplary book in terms of [contemporary] science, and in this book we find an examination of the concept of life. First, he talks about humans, and it is said that human life depends on the brain, lungs and heart, and if any of these elements do not function properly, then life is endangered. And then a curious transition is made. It is said that if you can, so to speak, deprive a person of his brain but artificially maintain the lungs and heart in operation, then life will continue. From a certain point of view, which is so popular today, this of course makes sense, but from the point of view of a world view that encompasses the whole human being, it does not make the slightest sense, because one would be grateful for a life that is not aware of the things one experiences. The true death occurs where this consciousness ends. Thus, the greatest naturalist of the present day is not at all capable of grasping the concept of “life” in the right way.

[In today's science, it is extremely easy to define life.] It is thought that life is the same in humans, animals and plants – everything is mixed up, while we should be clear about the fact that we have to consider each being in relation to this question at its [own level]. The most essential thing in the world view is ignored, because Huxley has become accustomed to looking at that in man which is most indifferent to human life and nature: the material of the body. And so he quotes Hamlet's saying quite seriously - and it is fitting for Hamlet, in his melancholy mood, to make such a statement and, looking at the material of the body, to pursue this material after the great Caesar has died, and to say:

The great Caesar, dead and turned to clay.
Might well plug a hole from the raw north;
Oh that the earth, to which the world has trembled,
Might wall up a wall against wind and weather.

And Huxley points to an [imaginable] “Negro slave Caesar” or a “chained dog Caesar” and says: Even in this slave or in this dog could be the atoms of the great Caesar. In this way, one pursues that which is most indifferent to human life, and is not aware that one should pursue that which shapes the substance in such a way that it conforms to humanity. Physics will soon abandon these fantasies about atoms – radium research has already shown that atoms disintegrate in the hands of man.

So you see: even at the heights of knowledge, one does not form any real concepts about what life and death are. But science is at an important turning point today, and those who do not work from buzzwords, but rather approach scientific knowledge and observations, see that science is already beginning to grasp the spirit.

It cannot grasp the concept, and perhaps it cannot do so because it has no proper concept of life. The biologist Weismann says: Only the experience that death occurs can convince of the same; one cannot grasp it from life itself. There is talk of the immortality of single-celled organisms. It is said that one such organism splits into two, continues to live as two, and this goes on and on. One speaks of a multiplication in number, and these innumerable beings are the same as the first being. One cannot speak of death in this case. But the fact that Weismann sought a definition of death in this way has led to a calamity, which is characteristic of the way it is understood in the present day and which has turned out strangely. He says that the essence of death is that a corpse is present. Contemporary natural science is only able to speak of life when it is no longer there, and wants to recognize the relationship between life and death by the dead, by the corpse. Verworn, Haeckel's student, says that the individual living beings die, but that life persists. They have resorted to all sorts of things to solve the riddle of life and death, but the confusion has only grown.

Spiritual science does not have it so convenient to be able to throw everything together - [end of transcript; continued after second transcript].

First of all, it should be noted that death in plants and animals is quite different from that in humans. It is a characteristic phenomenon of many plants that they die when they produce a new being; at the moment of fertilization, they pass over into a different form of existence. Until that moment, they were permeated by the etheric body. It is not difficult to make fun of such things; however, it has been shown time and again that anyone who is deeply involved in observing life phenomena cannot get by without the assumption of the etheric or life body. The dying off and withering is based on the fact that the plant follows the physical and chemical laws. Through the etheric body, the plant is withdrawn from the effect of the physical and chemical laws. Where does what is taken from the plant go? It passes over into the new plant; it is the stream of life that passes through the ranks of plants. Even more lives in the animal than the etheric body: in order for consciousness to arise in it, it is provided with an astral body, which is the builder of the organs of consciousness. — In humans, the I is added.

The difference between animals and humans can easily be determined; one must not look for the differences where they are not. The desire to completely erase the difference, as materialistic monism is doing now, did not yet exist in the last century. But the difference in the lower jaw was emphasized with pathos - [so] Kant. Goethe did not like this approach because he was able to think spiritually. He studied anatomy and physiology in Jena and proved that it was nonsense to claim this difference. He demonstrated the small ankle bone, [the premaxillary bone], also in humans, and showed that it was only fused. These things will be dealt with in more detail in the forthcoming booklet on anthroposophy. We should look for the difference in the spiritual realm. In animals, the scope of their abilities is tied to their organs and to what they inherit through birth. In humans, various activities remain open, for which they must first develop the ability. Animals have certain abilities that humans must first acquire through intellectual effort. The monkey has a predetermined equilibrium; humans must first learn to walk and stand. Equilibrium is not innate in them; only the mind gradually works on it. Goethe says:

The ancients said that animals are taught by their organs; I would add that human beings are likewise taught by their organs, but they have the advantage of being able to teach their organs in return.

Today, efforts are being made to trace all human abilities back to heredity, and then the help of far-back ancestors is enlisted. But what interests us about the individual person, what determines his or her particular position, his or her task in the world, cannot be explained by the line of ancestors. The unbiased educator can even recognize a clear boundary between inherited traits and those inner forces of the person that arise from previous lives. The fact that animals can also be trained is not a valid objection for someone who is able to see the essential. We ascribe to animals a group, species or generic soul. It is a fact, however, that we take just as much interest in the individual human being as we do in an entire species of animal. In the case of animals, the spiritual individuality does not come into existence in the individual being, but in the whole species. One can compare the individual feelings of a human being with those of an individual animal and the whole human being with the animal species. The animal lives as long as the group soul has not lost interest in the individual specimen. Weismann cannot find the reason for the death of an animal because he overlooks this fact. In the case of man, something comes into existence through birth that is not found in animals, plants or minerals.

There are thinkers, however, who have overcome the opinion that man is only composed of inherited forces. They recognize that an individuality precedes physical existence and shapes it, but they do not find the solution by assuming repeated lives on earth; see Immanuel Hermann Fichte, “Anthropology”:

Parents are not the producers in the full sense: they provide the organic material, and not only that, but at the same time that middle, sensual-comfortable, which shows itself in temperament, in the peculiar , in a particular specification of the drives, etc., as the common source of which “imagination” has been shown to exist in the broader sense that we have demonstrated. In all these elements of personality, the mixture and peculiar combination of the parents' souls is unmistakable; to explain this as a mere product of procreation is perfectly justified, especially if, as we have to assume, procreation is understood as a real soul process. But the actual, concluding center of the personality is missing here precisely; because with deeper penetrating observation it turns out that even those cozy peculiarities are only a shell and a tool to grasp the actually spiritual, ideal facilities of the human being, suitable to promote them in their development or to take, but not capable of letting them arise from themselves. [...] Each preexists according to its basic spiritual form; for, spiritually considered, no individual resembles another, any more than one animal species resembles any of the others.

Francesco Redi was the first to claim that living things can only arise from living things. Only an inaccurate observation could lead to the belief in earlier times that hornets arise from rotten oxen, bees from horse carcasses and wasps from donkeys. Just as today's natural science protests against such superstition, so the spiritual researcher must protest against the fact that the spiritual soul can be explained by the line of inheritance. Human individuality points back to itself in earlier earthly lives.

A well-known objection to this is: If a person does not remember, then the earlier experiences have no value. But there is also a time between birth and death that is not remembered: the first years after birth – and yet one was there; the sense of self was just not yet strong enough. The point in time at which self-awareness first arises is also the limit for remembering back. Thus this being-in-it of the self forms the possibility of remembering. When a person learns to remember, he will remember. It is not easy to grasp this; only through a very specific mode of perception, absolute equanimity, and no fear of fate: with this, our self makes a leap forward. The theory of inheritance has produced strange results, for example that a genius is at the end of an inheritance line and not at the beginning. This is no more surprising than a man who has fallen into the water being wet when you pull him out. We all know Goethe's joke:

From my father I have the stature,
the serious conduct of life,
from my mother the cheerful disposition,
and the desire to tell stories.
[...]
What then is
original about the whole creature?

Well, what is original about the “creature” is something that humanity already knows. Our body is built up from the powers that we have acquired from previous embodiments; but the soul abilities that we acquire now in this embodiment create the conditions for the next life. In this body a soul has developed that has greater abilities than in the previous life; and we feel a sense of gratitude that this body dies, because when the senses become dull, the soul is already building itself another body and can discard what is not up to the further development of the soul. Modern natural science is already very close to this assumption. It has already been found that we only tire from activities that involve our consciousness; that is something. A modern naturalist, Thomson, says: The soul is to the body as the rider is to his horse. That is the thought that ancient art expressed with the centaur. There are, of course, people who claim that the ancient peoples of the East saw the wild peoples riding through the mists as if they were one with their horses, and that this inspired their imagination to create the centaur.

The spiritual researcher does not look at the corpse, but at what the corpse leaves behind:

The smallest man on earth
A son of eternity,
Will conquer death in new life
.

What lives in the souls of those who sacrifice themselves outside today? All the souls of the leaders are included in it, as if they were to live in the people of the present. We want to focus on two in particular, as living examples, not to evoke sentimental feelings but as exemplary fighters. Let us start with the deaths of Schiller and Fichte. (Herman Grimm is quoted about Schiller's death.) Goethe passed away, fell asleep, but Schiller died! His body had decayed, but his soul was victorious. The spirit that lived in Schiller's body still had much to say to the people. Even more significant was the death of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He gave his people the most German speeches. At his deathbed, his son brought him the news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine. He was feverish, thought he was on the battlefield, and that was when German philosophy came into play. He rejected the medicine and said, “I don't need medicine, I've recovered, I feel it.” And so he died.

The greatest sons of Germany teach how the German feels differently about his nationality than the other nations. The German is not, he becomes. Goethe expresses it this way: “Only he deserves his German nationality who must always conquer it for himself.” The most magnificent creation about the becoming of man has been brought forth by Schiller: the “aesthetic letters”. For him, the question of the essence of Germanness was always clothed in form: the essence of Germanness is most deeply felt by he who always seeks the ideal of humanity in it. Not under the compulsion of mere logical necessity, nor only under that of the senses, nor only under that which comes from the physical world. All this is not the true human being. Schiller wants to plant in man the balance between sensuality and reason, that one is never enough, that one always asks oneself: How do I become human? This lives in all his poems at the bottom. The humanities only want to continue the impulses that came in through our spiritual heroes.

In Fichte's speeches, there are three questions that it would be impossible to ask today: firstly, whether there is a German nation; secondly, whether it is worth or not worth preserving. Schiller and Fichte themselves are the answer to this; thirdly, whether there is a sure means of preservation and what it is. Fichte believed that this means was education. Spiritual science is this education. Every person can receive it. But as a nation, the Germans are most closely connected to the idea that true humanity does not rest in the material, but in the spiritual. The recognition of the invisible as the only true thing, that is what Fichte calls it. That is precisely what spiritual science strives for. How the human being will consciously continue to live in his soul after death, spiritual science speaks of this true reality, not abstractly from the spirit. It is brave in the face of passive science. Fichte did not express this, but the stimulus about the invisible came from him. Fichte wanted to give his nation a different education. How many cling to the old, he expresses in a parable that seems to come from modern spiritual science: Time appears to me like a corpse (the quote was much longer, it begins with these words).

Whoever is familiar with the life of the soul immediately after death could not draw on any other comparison. It must be the possibility for the German spirit to shape everything that is in it. Fichte says: The path of the German is the harvest of his entire time.

What these geniuses have instilled as impulses lives on in the heart of Europe. We do not want to say, as Fichte and Schiller could, what the people of Central Europe have become. Today we are called “barbarians” from the west and east and northwest.

Emerson says of Goethe: One quality that Goethe shares with his entire nation is inner truth. England has talent, France has brilliant ideas. The German mind has a certain probity that never stops at appearances. (All this and more is quoted from Emerson.) The distinguishing concepts used in higher conversation are therefore all German.

(Then Mrs. Wylie is quoted, whose book “Eight Years in Germany” was excerpted in the “Süddeutsche Monatshefte.”) This is addressed to the English by Mrs. Wylie: German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. We know how many ships they have. It is wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It knows that on its eastern and western borders and over the water they are lurking, waiting for it to weaken a little so they can attack. (Quote continues.)

(Then Herman Grimm is quoted:) Everyone here is willing to sacrifice themselves for their fatherland, but to do it by means of war is far from our minds. France presents its war plans as a moral demand and requires Germany to recognize them as such. (Quote continues a little further.)

Going back to the last days of June, when the press campaign in St. Petersburg began. The pressure on Austria's right. (Here Bismarck is quoted, his speech on the occasion of the defense bill of February 6, 1888. This about Russia's policy against Austria, thereby putting Germany at odds with Russia. And then again Bismarck in the same speech, where he says:) If I were to demand a billion for a war of aggression, I don't know if you would have the confidence to give it. I hope not.

(Then the speech of Manchester is quoted, which was held only this year or last year, in which the speaker, an Englishman, emphasized the following three characteristics of the Germans: true, thorough, and loyal. And it is said that the preface to this book, in which the speech by Manchester appeared, was written by Lord Haldane, and it quotes how Haldane specifically praises the strength and straightforwardness of Germany as exemplary. The book is a compilation of speeches made in various cities on the occasion of visits by, I believe, German city councils.)

(Then it is said that the inclusion of Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of Austria's Balkan mission and the agitation of Herbst is mentioned, which led Bismarck to call Herbst and his supporters the Herbstzeitlosen. Dr. Steiner said:) This is one of the words of cultural history. Lord Salesbury gave Austria this mission - namely Bosnia and Herzegovina - and now Austria owes the assassination of the heir to the throne to England's policy. All the hatred from the East stems from this mission, which was given to Austria by English policy. And yet today England wants to avenge what it did itself. Is that true, thorough or faithful? And we are called 'barbarians'. (Then the punishment of Austria is discussed and Bismarck is quoted again. After that, the violation of Belgian neutrality is mentioned. Bismarck is quoted again, where he says that war is not waged out of love. Dr. Steiner's sentence follows: That has never happened before, that one people sacrifices itself for another. (Schiller and Goethe are mentioned, both of whom want to say that one finds the German in oneself best when one finds the human in oneself, when one stands above things, but also above nationalities.)

Today, there is much talk about the nature of the relationship between the Germans and the other peoples of Europe. How they hate the English because of the overwhelming challenge (so it is said). I do not believe in this hatred. There are cases where we love you English more than you love yourselves. Where is Shakespeare more cultivated, where is he more appreciated, at least more understood, than in England? In the German character! The Germans have shown that they love the English better than they love themselves.

(Then Goethe is mentioned, Faust and Euphorion.) Who was the model for Euphorion? The Englishman Byron. Goethe loved the essence of the English.

If we look to the West, we see how the figure of the maiden is taken from there. She is glorified and lives in the hearts of the German people: Schiller. In a few years, the same will be said for the East.

One more saying of Bismarck: We Germans fear God and no one else in the world. What can we promise to anyone who wants to help us carry out our world mission? However the German spirit may spread throughout the earth, the man who bears the German spirit and German mind within him will never stand otherwise than with the words of Faust: “Auf freiem Grund mit freien...” and so on.

Never will the German destroy a legitimate root. Can we hate as the others hate? No! We cannot. We face the opposing powers as a symbol, as it was given by Goethe in his Mephisto!

(Emerson is quoted: The world is young. We must write sacred scriptures to reunite the world of the spirit and the world of the earth. Recognizing the truth is Goethe's principle, Emerson says. Then follows a final quote from Bismarck, which is said in Bismarck's sense by Dr. Steiner): The German hates the spirit of lies, the spirit of untruth, but hates nothing and no one else in the world!

Members-only lecture

I would ask you to accept what is said here today as observations and experiences that the occultist can make of the Bible or other ancient documents of human development. In the most diverse records, among the most diverse peoples, one finds myths, sagas and legends that are strikingly similar to one another. Names and individual features of the narrative often, very often, differ; but great similarities can be found in such old legends, for example, among the Greek and Mexican peoples. Today's man of modern education, especially if he is quite clever, says, “These are the childish ideas that early man formed.” But from the point of view of occult research and by observing the Akasha Chronicle, one gains a tremendous respect for these ancient records. The old myths and legends spoke in images, but the nature of these leads us to assume that there was a correct understanding of the spiritual hierarchies that brought about what our earth is today with man. Not a child's imagination, but only a primal wisdom could create such images. ...

All ancient languages tell us through myths that language was given to man by the gods. This is not as fantastic a theory as the one put forward by modern scholars of antiquity. There must have been a primal wisdom that was given to the individual peoples, modified according to their aptitude. ...

But the occultist finds something else in one document, the Bible. An enormous amount of effort and diligence has been expended in order to understand its content; and it seems almost tragic when one realizes that in a certain respect all this was in vain, for whether the Bible is viewed from an orthodox or a liberal point of view, no one finds what is needed – it is all passed over. We must indeed have the greatest respect for the infinite diligence and great erudition; but all this serious and devoted research has been rendered completely useless by the materialism of the method: a harsh fate that befalls science!

I would like to explain what the method is like using an example. As a Goethe scholar, I tried to prove that a much-disputed essay – “On Nature” – was actually written by Goethe. There was sufficient evidence that Goethe had dictated the various sentences to the Swiss Tobler, who had an unusually good memory, during their daily walks, and that he had written them down immediately afterwards from memory. While I was of the opinion that I had clearly established Goethe's intellectual authorship, a respected philologist thanked me profusely for finally proving beyond doubt that it was not Goethe but Tobler who was the author! So for today's philologists, it depends on who dipped the pen in the ink! So they do not seek to explore the spiritual authors of the Bible, but the writers. But we do not need the Toblers, but the Goethes.

It is very difficult, especially in Genesis, to find the actual meaning of the wording; for the ancient peoples had a way of communicating through rhythm and the consonance of vowels, which our modern, so banal language has completely lost. “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” There is something in this that today's man must first conquer again. The Bible offers the greatest knowledge of the human soul. As an occultist, for example, one discovers the relationship between the individual sense organs, and then one finds: these things are in the Bible; this discovery is one of the most harrowing experiences.

In all other legends there is only knowledge of nature – there are Babylonian tablets and so on where, so to speak, the Lord's Prayer is already written, and the Sermon on the Mount also contains very familiar sentences – but what is important about the Bible is a completely new nuance. For example, it says:

Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth. (Matt. 6:10)

The similarities that can be found with earlier texts prove nothing. But something else peculiar about the Bible comes to light. A special feature of all religious documents is that they have an inspiring effect, so that we ourselves progress – modern literature does not have an inspiring effect, but rather a stifling one. And the Old Testament in particular has an inspiring effect. For a time this inspiration satisfies the occultist, but there remains a residue that can only be removed by a remedy: one of the Gospels or one of the letters of Paul or Peter. These are observations that anyone can make. We must be clear about the reason for the difference.

All the documents, except the New Testament, can be traced back to the original revelation. In the days when the spiritual leaders walked the earth, people could look back on their previous incarnations at the initiation. But the further development progressed, the darker it became around people at these initiations. At the time when the New Testament begins, the disciple no longer really understood what he saw; it remained dark within him. The great pain that lives in such people, who can no longer connect with the spirit, becomes clear to us when we consider the fate of a personality who lived at the boundary between the Middle Ages and modern times in his last incarnation.

This embodiment of this extremely problematic personality was the great philosopher Empedocles, who worked in Sicily for a long time. He is the one who first proclaimed the doctrine of the four elements. If you delve into his soul, you realize that it was far ahead of its time. He presented the elements in their materiality, and he felt so close to them that he could only really be close to the spirit. Empedocles also introduced the mysteries to Sicily and had to taste the tragic fate of the initiates of that time; he could no longer recognize the common origin because the Christ impulse was already approaching. He wanted to become one with the elements and threw himself into the Etna. He would have been ripe to connect with the Primordial Source in a completely different way. If he had been able to find the Christ Impulse at that time, he could have united with it; he came either too late or too early.

Where otherwise darkness would begin, the modern occult researcher finds the Christ impulse; a man of earlier times could not do so. If the modern occultist passes by the Christ when exploring the Akasha Chronicle, he will inevitably fall into darkness.

A true monist today is able to tell you that modern science can confidently refer to Kepler! But it was precisely Kepler who formulated his three laws from the Harmonies of the Spheres! He found the Christ Impulse! His saying is well known: “I have stolen the sacred vessels of the Egyptians” and so on. When such facts are pointed out, the monists are accustomed to behaving very indulgently towards such great minds. The time at that was not yet able to think so sharply, one is accustomed to saying otherwise apologetically. But Kepler found that very special star constellations occurred at the time of the Christ event; that the arrival of the Christ was written in the planetary system. Kepler found that! When we engage in occultism, we first learn to recognize the tremendous significance of this event; we have to find it in the Akasha Chronicle!

Today there are people who claim that it cannot be proven that Jesus lived. This is a very reckless approach. For example, a respected theologian claims that a Petersburg scholar — who, incidentally, does not even have a Christian background — has presented irrefutable evidence that Jesus did not exist. The latter, although now 90 years old and blind, felt compelled to write a small paper to explain that he had asserted the exact opposite of what the aforementioned theologian had attributed to him. But who has read the small paper? The newspapers have not mentioned this contradiction, but the false assertions of the theologian have been in all the newspapers. That is how conscientiously one approaches such matters today; there is not much conscience left in our public writing. Drews's manner could have been used for centuries; it is not about evidence, but about sensations and feelings.

The significance of Theosophy will be that it does not need any documents at all; instead, one explores directly from within oneself. If there were no Gospels, the Akasha Chronicle would guide the occultist to confirmation and knowledge. While the outer world will lose the Gospels, it will bring the theosophical research to life again. — We are facing great decisions! Also in relation to other things, to important questions, for example, the doctrine of blood circulation and heart movement. The current theories about this are very flawed; today's researchers take the heart as a kind of pump that sets the blood in motion; but it is the blood that moves the heart!! Individual scientists have already come to this conclusion, but they think too materialistically. Benedict, for example, says: “The feeling of hunger and thirst and breathing are the...” [gap].

That is something, after all. Theosophy must intervene practically in the epistemological theories of modern times.

In the drama “The Portal of Initiation”, the seer Theodora points to the imminent event of the appearance of the etheric Christ. It is timely to proclaim today, as the Baptist did in his time:

Change your state of mind, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

We are beggars for the spirit, because we see more and more into the light. Now come the Kingdoms of Heaven; they have come to the human “I”.

In the Sermon on the Mount, we read:

For they will find the Kingdom of Heaven through themselves (Mt 5,3)... [gap] to bring themselves forward – automobiles... [gap]

Little by little, powers will arise in man to see Christ as Paul first saw him, then people will recognize the conclusiveness of the documents in the course of the next 3000 years.

How a person lives, whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied, depends on the degree of understanding they have of their own nature. When looking up at the starry sky, the medieval person felt comfort and hope, full of admiration for its size and beauty, because the medieval person felt part of the universe, part of the spirit that permeates the world. He recognized his origin and his goal, which would lead him back into the bosom of the Godhead.

Compared to the mighty structure of the world, the infinity of the universe, today's man feels so small, so tiny, that he thinks he must scatter like a speck of dust. Man is certainly tiny compared to the universe, and yet one thing is greater than all creation: the soul, the spiritual part in man. The highest divine reality, to which his journey leads him back, lives within himself. This knowledge, this belief was not taken from people in the Middle Ages.

This has now changed significantly in our time. Popular writings never tire of emphasizing the smallness of man. Just as the earth appears in space only like a grain of sand, so man on earth is only a grain of sand that passes away. Thus, the present time emphasizes man's smallness, the Middle Ages his greatness. It is difficult for today's man to find his way between these considerations of the smallness and the greatness of man. Schiller, who had more of a theosophical way of thinking than most people suspect, says:

You astronomers, do not talk about nebulae and
suns, the Sublime does not dwell in space.

Theosophy brings new light into this confusion; it opens up depths for us that provide new insights into the nature of man. The theosophical world view is not reactionary; it knows and recognizes that the material world view was necessary because it led to the knowledge of the external world. But the consequence of this was that the deeper knowledge about man was neglected. The material view has conquered the globe. Now it is time to gain a deeper understanding of the soul and spirit, and the teachings of Theosophy can provide us with this.

How can the nature of man be fathomed? Today's science seeks to understand man, like everything else, through dissection. It uses the external senses to gain insight into the nature of man. The value of the science thus acquired is by no means to be belittled, but there is another way of research.

In old mystical writings (this word has an unpleasant ring for many, of course), you will find descriptions of the inner being, of the human spirit. They say that man has inner organs with which he can pursue a completely different kind of research than the one carried out with the outer senses. The result of these investigations with the inner, finer senses is now not at all fundamentally different from the materialistic investigation; it only provides further, deeper insights than the external method of investigation.

This spiritual wisdom now has different names. The name “Theosophy” is only one among many. Paul was the first to use it. This wisdom is ancient, it is nothing new; it is only being brought to people today in a way it has never been before. Higher or deeper knowledge used to be the property of secret schools. The word should not be misunderstood. The teachings are secrets only in the sense that mathematics is a secret for a simple farmer, for example. It remains a secret to him until he has learned it. Anyone who is willing to learn it can. Over the millennia, many have learned the wisdom. In the past, greater demands were placed on the student. Today, schools mainly teach intellectually and train the minds of students. In the wisdom schools, the aim is to develop the whole person with all their powers of mind and soul. And before the student was introduced to the deeper teachings of wisdom, he had to pass certain tests.

Some who read about the secret Pythagorean school may find it quite simple. Only those who put themselves in the same state of mind as the people were in at the time will recognize its true meaning. They will recognize its value.

We can understand this by considering a work of art. Two people stand before a painting by Raphael. One sees only the colors on the canvas and passes by the work of art quite untouched. The other, an art connoisseur with understanding, is opened to the wonders of the soul and spiritual worlds, which left the other quite untouched. This different perception of the work of art depends on the different development of the inner powers. In the one, only the intellect had been developed; in the other, soul and spirit had undergone a development that created the right mood to understand and enjoy the work of art.

Anyone who wants to live a life in the spirit must be clearly aware of one thing: that thoughts and feelings are real things. It is not the person who grasps the books who reads them with the intellect alone, but the person who grasps them with the spirit. Just as a brick falling from a roof kills a person just as surely as if it were a fact of nature, so does a feeling of hatred wound the soul of the one at whom it is directed. The soul is wounded by hatred just as surely as the body is wounded by the brick. The teaching of the invisible can only be grasped by the one who always realizes that the invisible is much more real than the visible.

It is also worthless to read only in books; it is life that matters, life in the spirit. The whole person must immerse themselves in the teachings, not just their minds. This must be said in advance to enable the understanding of what is to be said. It is not enough to say yes to the theosophical teachings; the person must transform themselves if they want to come to knowledge.

It is clear that man is part of the external world. Born of women, he appears on earth; the external sciences, chemistry, anatomy and so on show that the same forces, the same substances, make up the human body as they do in the rest of the world. Man is, therefore, first of all, a physical being. That much external science teaches us. Beyond that, it can investigate nothing; only that which dies can be investigated by it; theosophy gives us information about that which is immortal. That is a simple thought. Just as the human being, the external man, is grasped by looking with the external senses, so the spiritual man can be grasped by the inner senses.

What is meant by this is not difficult to understand. Look at my hands. It is conceivable that a skilled artist could create an exact replica of such a hand so that it could not be distinguished from mine; on the outside, let us assume, there would be no difference; and yet there is a word that shows the enormous difference between the artificial and the natural hand. The artificial hand remains as it is, unchanged; it can stand alone. But if you cut off the natural hand, it withers or decays. The one word is life. Science does not teach us this.

My whole body is flooded with life. Man has not only the physical body, but also, secondly, an etheric body – I ask the scholars not to take offense at this expression. Every living being has an etheric body that makes the being live. It is not perceptible to the external senses. But there is a way to see it, just as we see the physical body. There is a method that allows us to see life, not just see colors and hear sounds.

A doctor, with whom I discussed this matter, said: “It is quite natural that the hand withers when it is cut off; the blood no longer flows through it.” Quite right, but what does it need the blood for? What does it need the invisible for? To be what it is!

With death, the physical body decays and the etheric body dissipates; it returns its components to the life-giving ether that permeates the world.

We now come to the third aspect of human nature. Imagine a person standing before you; you can see and touch them. You recognize their weight and observe their life. But only the material can be felt by the hand. But there is still something else living in him: pleasure and pain, passions and desires, instincts and inclinations, which no hand can touch, no sensual eye can see. But all this is a reality for man, even if it cannot be perceived by any physical eye or other sense. The part of man that includes the instincts, desires, passions, and so on, is called the third, the astral body.

Those who have developed spiritual eyes, who have become able to see, can also perceive this body. It is also called an aura. This astral body is something that humans have in common with all animals. But beyond that, something that no animal can achieve, humans possess something that makes them human in the first place. The word “I” expresses this. In this word lies a very powerful difference from all other names. “I”, a powerful, great word. Anyone can say table, chair, dog, lion, but only you can say “I” about yourself. No other person can say “I” to you; only you can say it about yourself. I am me, everyone else is “you.” You have to delve into this thought to understand it.

All religions are based on wisdom; even Judaism; the Jews knew and recognized the God, the ego within man, the hidden God, whose name was unutterable for the people. Only the high priest was allowed to pronounce it once a year before the people: Jeoah — only a breath sounded from his mouth, and then the divine spark flashed through the hearts of the community in undulating motion. And this I is the fourth link in the human being.

Everything a person does and pursues contributes to the development of this I. In primeval times, man could not yet say “I”. He was still half animal. Instincts, desires and drives are the driving forces in the development of the animal, but through the I these instincts are ennobled; the I works into the astral body. In this way, man changes and ennobles his animal instincts. Anger and rage are transformed into calm reflection; hatred and feelings of revenge are transformed into love, as the I works into the soul. The wild is civilized, instincts become ideals, urges become duties, selfishness becomes sacrifice. This transformation of the astral body produces the growth of the “Manas”. What man has thus created for himself is permanent. This is the point where immortality begins. Every cause we build into the Manas remains, and the effects appear in the next re-embodiments.

Small children usually resemble their parents at first, and naturalists ascribe all their characteristics to their parentage. To a certain extent, they may be right. Raphael also appeared as the child of his parents, and many of his characteristics and his appearance can be explained by the nature of his ancestors. But what about when something suddenly comes to life in him, his genius, which he has inherited from neither his father nor his mother? Then one says to oneself: This must either have no cause at all or a cause other than descent. Often one also sees a great diversity among the children of a family. Where does that come from? This diversity has its basis in the fact that the individual has laid the foundation for it in previous lives. I do not owe my nature only to the similarity to my parents. Perhaps thousands of years ago I myself laid the foundation for it. The differences in human nature can thus be explained by reincarnation, by repeated lives on earth, in which each life brings to the fore what the person has laid the foundation for in previous embodiments.

What was it that made the ancient Egyptian slaves do their hard work, their forced labor, with devotion, even with joy in some cases? It was the fact that he knew that in the next incarnation the tables would turn, that the quietly obedient servant would then perhaps rule and the cruel oppressor would be enslaved; for that is how the law of retribution, karma, works. The man of the West has no idea what a feeling of bliss arises from this [law], how it produces cheerful serenity. “God is not mocked; what a man sows, that shall he also reap.” (Gal. vi. 7.) Reincarnation and Karma are the great facts which enable and impel man to work at improving his astral body.

When he has done so to a certain extent, he has undergone a catharsis. In the secret schools he is then taught how to develop not only his astral body but also his etheric body. When he has succeeded in doing this, when the etheric body is completely transformed and better, more fully formed, he no longer dissolves. He becomes immortal. This is the resurrection to life, that is, awakening Christ in us.

When a person returns, he brings with him, in addition to the astral body and the etheric body, the sixth part of the human being, the Budhi.

What lies beyond that or even deeper hidden within him is, seventhly, the Atma. It is difficult to say anything about this in a few words.

Once these higher basic parts have been developed, it is possible to become master of the whole body.

Only now, after we have become acquainted with the basic parts or bodies of the human being, can we become clear about the origin.

Natural science cannot provide any information about the origin of the human being. It is only concerned with the forms of manifestation that can be perceived by the senses. The origin of the human being can only be perceived by occult, supersensible means, through the organs of the finer bodies.

What do these reveal to us? If we look back a million years, what do we see? Something completely different from what we see now. Where Germany is now, there was a tropical climate back then; giant animals, giraffes, elephants roamed the swamps. There are hardly any traces left of this time; but theosophical wisdom can trace them back further and further through the changes brought about by the Ice Age, back to ever simpler and simpler conditions. Man, who lived thousands of centuries ago, looked quite different than he does now. There are hardly any remains from that time. The forehead was receding far, the forebrain was actually missing. He had no intelligence, no mind.

Materialistic science says that man has evolved. In his infancy, in the Stone Age, he was more similar to an animal and only gradually did he develop into today's man. There is only one difference between animals and humans that is immediately apparent. When an animal is born, it is already complete, for example a chicken; when it hatches from the egg, it can eat immediately and so on; it grows, but it does not change any further. A child undergoes major changes before reaching adulthood.

The simile of the childhood of man also applies to the theosophical science, and we are now in our youth. Natural science traces man back to his childhood, when he was similar to an animal; it cannot go beyond that. The theosophical science goes beyond that; it asks about father and mother. Why does one child of the same parents become a good-for-nothing, while the other becomes an intelligent being? Why did the animal-like being give rise, on the one hand, to animals that do not change any further, and, on the other hand, to human beings with unlimited developmental capacity? Natural science has no answer to this. Without the parents, the child would not be there; the natural scientist cannot go further, because he cannot go further than his senses reach, and there is no objection to this.

Usually, one infers from the child to the parents. In the spiritual view, research into the origin of man takes a completely different form. When asking about the parents, we must proceed very carefully. When we look at the anthropoid ape, can we see primitive man in it? Two possibilities present themselves here: Man developed from the anthropoid ape, as was concluded at the time, then science rejected this hypothesis and said to itself that, given the still too great difference between the two, it would be more likely to assume that there must have existed a being from which both the anthropoid ape and the gibbon descended, as well as the evolving man. So there we have the father of the good-for-nothing and the good, noble son. But this being could not be found anywhere, and so the naturalists placed this primeval man in the sea.

The theosophical research actually points to an area that is now covered by the sea.

How is such research conducted? How can one learn this type of research? Today, young people are taught to look into the external world. A person is considered educated if they have learned a lot and absorbed a lot.

Another teaching method was adopted in the old schools, which had the attainment of knowledge of the hidden forces as their goal. When a pupil came and desired to learn, the teacher gave him a sentence that contained power for the soul, and then he sent him away. The pupil had to repeat this sentence silently within himself for hours every day, letting it live in his soul. We find such sentences, for example, in the little book 'Light on the Path', written by Mabel Collins. The student continued this exercise for months until he had experienced the eternal content of the sentence within himself. In this way, the instruction continued until the inner sun shone in the heart, not only illuminating one's own soul but also sending rays of light to the other souls, illuminating them as well. This light, this sun, now not only illuminates the life and soul of the person living now, but the practiced disciple also learns to throw its rays back to the earliest past, like a spotlight.

You can find more details about this kind of research in my “Lucifer” No. 14-18 in the essay “Akasha Chronicle”. So there are three kinds of chronicles: the Akasha Chronicle, the written book chronicle that we have had for about 6000 years, and the chronicle of nature. Where the Atlantic Ocean now flows, the continent of Atlantis lay a long, long time ago. Our ancestors living there had not yet developed minds. They were able to use other powers that are now dulled in humans. Just as we are now able to develop a driving force from coal, or rather, how coal is converted into a driving force, so the people who lived at that time understood the seed power, that is, the power that lies in the seed, which enables it to sprout through the shell, to use it and to convert it into a forward-driving power. The powers of will were strongly developed. Where did that come from? The I, which has now taken possession of the physical brain, could not work in it at that time, because there was no brain yet. It worked much more in the etheric body, just as powerfully and mightily in the etheric body as it does now in the physical brain. The etheric body was impregnated with the divine I.

So we have the human parental pair. He comes from the spiritual father and the physical mother.

Egyptian wisdom beautifully symbolizes this eternal truth. Osiris, the spirit, the father, Isis, matter, the mother. From these two, Horus, the young human being, was born. The physical body was endowed with the I. The non-fertilized beings developed downward into the animal kingdom, while the I-fertilized primal beings developed into ever more highly educated humans.

Before the Atlantean period, the etheric body was not yet fertilized either. Only the astral body was I-fertilized.

The land inhabited by these people, who were animated only by their instincts and passions, is usually referred to as Lemuria. Science regards the Lemurian as a human being who has degenerated into an animal; the development that the spirit teaches us regards him as a being working his way out of the animal state. There was a time when there were no warm-blooded creatures on earth. Only at the moment when man descended to earth as a spiritual being, at the great moment when the astral body was endowed with the ego, did man become warm-blooded. The divine spark of the spirit, the Father-Spirit, united with Mother-Matter, and man emerged from this. Humanity consists of spirit and matter. The descent of the manas, the Manasputras, is the descent of the human ego.

The origin of man from the Father-Spirit and the Mother-Matter is the starting point for the knowledge of God and the world.

The word “I” in its entire essence of recognition is the recognition of the divine being. Self-knowledge leads to the knowledge of God because the I originates from the divine. The recognition of the divine essence of the human being is the key to the recognition of the whole, including the physical human being. The poet says:

One succeeded,
He lifted the veil from the goddess Bild at Sais.
What did he see? Wonder upon wonder – himself.

When man finds himself, he finds God: through self-knowledge to God-knowledge!

Final remark

Until recently, there were no books about these things; these divine wisdom teachings were only passed down orally from ancient times, from generation to generation. Now the time has come when people in the midst of active life should learn these things, so they are now being published in elementary form.

It might seem presumptuous to talk about the future of man. But if we consider that man is a self-conscious being, called upon to stride ever onward, we must realize that he cannot be called upon to live dulled into the future. If we realize the sacred meaning of the word “self-conscious,” we come closer to the possibility that a self-conscious being is destined to gain foresight into the future. But where do we find this foresight? We find it in the theosophical world and life view, which deals with the inner core of the human being. The word “theosophy” is often translated incorrectly. It is said that theosophy is the knowledge of the divine essence. This is not correct. No one would be so presumptuous as to believe that they could fathom the divine essence.

Last time we talked about the origin and the past of man; today we will deal with the development in the future. If we believe in the development of man, it is clear that man must acquire ever higher and higher abilities in order to learn to understand God and the universe better and better with these abilities. After millions of years, our concepts will be quite different from today, and so it will continue. Our knowledge of God can never be complete. Theosophy is not “knowledge of God”; but it does show us the perspective that leads to knowledge of God.

The question now is: How does man acquire knowledge at all? He acquires knowledge in everyday life through his senses. If man had no senses, he could not get to know the world around him. What man perceives with the eye through the effects of light, the sounds that his ear conveys to him, what he feels, senses, tastes and smells, he absorbs and combines with the intellect. Now, everything he perceives is transient, everything has an end. Even intellectual thinking is fleeting. Eye, ear, brain will fade away, scatter. What the senses have perceived will one day be a thing of the past. Everything that disperses will one day no longer be there; all knowledge that comes from the senses will have to perish; it will also prove to be transitory because it was based on the transitory. Man, animal and plant are transitory, everything is transitory.

But in addition to this transitory nature, human beings also have an immortal core. Within them lie dormant powers that are to be developed, organs of life; just as eyes, ears, brain, organs of the physical body exist, so too there are organs of the spiritual man of an imperishable nature. In short, Theosophy teaches us that we carry within us a higher being that directs its imperishable senses to everything that surrounds it and allows it to recognize the essence of all things.

Theosophy is based on this. Like natural scientists, it directs its research to plants, animals and minerals, but it does not just seek to recognize the transient, but rather that which is imperishable in things; it does not examine anything else, but it does examine things differently from the way science does. It is not only about the past and the present, but also about the future.

What do we know about the future of man? What is this essence that man carries over from the present into the future? What is the new link in the chain of development that establishes the connection between the temporal and the eternal?

Let us try to visualize this in our minds. When earthly life, with all that man has enjoyed, all that has given him joy and caused him sorrow, has vanished away, what remains? — To make this clear to ourselves, let us place ourselves at three points in the life of our Earth. Let us go back a million years, to the present and to the future after another million years. If we go back to the distant past, we see man in a very different form than he is now. He was still untouched by all human activity and activity. Through the forces of nature, he has become what he was; divine forces in the universe have worked together so that man could come into existence.

After man appeared on earth, he has the task of transforming and reworking the earth in turn. A glance at the pyramids, these magnificent giant structures, may serve to illustrate this to us as a small example. If we consider the transformation that Egypt underwent through the work and creation of the pyramids, in which the colossal masses of stone were moved from one place to another so that these structures could be built, and which withstood the floods and inundations, it can give us a small glimpse of the transformation that the whole earth has undergone and will yet undergo through the work of man.

Another image: Take Cologne Cathedral, for example; how much work was needed, human work, to create it! The transportation and cutting of the stones and so on, and so on; just imagine the forces needed to create such a work of art. In the distant future, man will have even more power at his disposal; he will force many more forces of nature into his service and achieve much more than he does today. Today he has learned to use natural forces such as electricity, magnetism and so on; with the gentle push of a button, he can conjure up light. In short, he can do things that were unheard of a hundred or two hundred years ago. Today's man can see that even without theosophy.

Later, the electrical forces of the great rivers will be exploited, as will the sun's rays. That sounds fantastic – but these are perspectives. Man will harness the power of fire and the forces of volcanoes. Man is increasingly forcing north and south magnetic forces to serve him. Just as the earth now looks very different from what it looked like millions of years ago, so after millions of years it will look very different from what it looks like now. Man is always working on the earth.

The creatures are created with the planet to then remodel it into an image of what man will become.

Now you ask, can we get a real picture from this fantasy?

Theosophy does not give a utopian picture; it shows us a very real picture of the future. It can speak of the future in a very real sense. Let us take a comparison: [two people are standing next to each other, one of them is a “savage”, the other is Goethe]. A third person standing in front of them would point to the “savage” and say: What you are now, Goethe was once too, and in the future you will be like Goethe. Thus we point to the individuality of the human being, which develops little by little to the highest perfection. Among us there are people who have already developed within themselves what the average person will only develop in the future. They are no different from us; it is all natural, it is not based on magic. All this will be explained to us if we believe in an ascent.

To show you that it is not necessary to imagine this as something completely incomprehensible, let us clarify the matter by means of a comparison. Two naturalists observed a clumsy Moluccan crab that had fallen on its back and was now trying in vain to turn itself over again. Two of the crab's brothers intervened violently to help him, but they did not succeed; he was too heavy for them. So they left the crab and fetched two more colleagues; now the four of them managed to turn their colleague over. Let us now assume that the two naturalists had turned the crab over while the companions went to get help, and [these] would have found the crab on its legs when they returned; they would certainly have believed that a miracle had occurred; but some of their fellow crab monists would have rebelled against this belief and would claim that everything had happened naturally.

Transferred to humanity, we realize that our knowledge and abilities cannot be concluded with what we have achieved today. As far as Goethe stands above the “Hottentot,” so far will the future race stand above the present one. The present race is gradually producing a race of the future.

Let us assume that we have people before us who have reached the level of development that the race will only reach in later ages. If we were to ask them, what would they show us? It would be about birth and death, about what it will be like in the hereafter, and so on. First of all, we would learn that the beyond is not something future at all. Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21) - not “in you”.

How are we to understand this?

The things that surround us appear spiritual when the dormant forces within us are awakened. Two people love each other, live together; death comes, she leaves him, he leaves her. But what is above it, the result of life, the essence, remains from one embodiment to another; it will often come back to Earth.

What is the purpose and meaning of this? — The purpose is that life should teach people ever higher lessons.

Let us imagine ourselves in the time of the Odyssey. People at that time did not know how to read or write; they had not learned that. It was quite different from what people took out of the world at that time. It will not be useless for him to live on earth again now. From earliest childhood, he is surrounded by very different things than in Odysseus' time. He is always collecting new things, and the fruits of his experiences benefit him and the Earth.

What the soul has experienced remains with it. Not only has it become purer and stronger, but it has also learned.

In the time between death and a new birth, the human being processes what he has learned between birth and death. When he is then reborn, he brings with him new things that he can use to learn more. When we have learned everything, the earth will fall away. What has emerged from the human soul then remains; as new souls, they will live for a new stage of existence.

Now it will be clear that there are people who know more than the average person. They are people who have learned more and faster than their brothers.

What is the point of living in other worlds if we leave with death? We want to try to understand the whole of life. Here in this life, our senses are the tools through which we perceive the world around us. Without senses, we could not experience anything. We need eyes to see the beauty of the world, ears to hear sounds, tongue and palate to taste, the brain and tongue to think and speak.

What happens when the cover falls off us? The soul, the carrier of desires and instincts, is now free. Its life continues in the astral, uninfluenced and uninhibited by the earthly shells. If it was attached to a tasty food, it still feels the desire for such a tasty food; it would like to enjoy it, but it lacks the senses. It would like to enjoy it and cannot; this causes it agony. The soul has to unlearn desires and cravings. This happens on the plane or level of consciousness called Kamaloka; Kama - desire; Loka - place: the place of desires.

When the soul has stripped away all desires and cravings that can only be satisfied by the senses, what remains?

These are the experiences that we have absorbed through the senses, but they do not cling to the senses. The senses are the gates through which all experiences flow into us; but the senses tell us nothing about the essence of things themselves; nothing about the unity of all things, about numbers, about beauty, about all artistic activity, about good, about ideals. All this comes from the essence of man; this is how something arises that goes beyond the senses. The essence of man does not come to light brightly and clearly in Kamaloka if the soul still looks back at what it has left behind; but if it has broken the habit, the fruit of the whole life experience shines out of the soul. We live out what we have formed in blissful rapture. We lead a divine existence between our life on earth and our next birth. Devachan, or heaven, is the place where we will dwell when we have worked on earth beyond the call of earthly things. There we will feel kinship with the supermundane forces.

We will recognize the inner essence of plants and see the other, now invisible, side of nature. If your mind lives in the spiritual, you will be among those forces there that bring things into being, the forces that build the plants, that build the animals. If you look at a plant closely through the microscope, you will see a structure of wisdom with which the largest and most ingenious bridge construction of a master builder cannot compare. Or look at the marvel of the brain! Is it not condensed wisdom? We can only try to absorb it from the world around us by searching and intuiting; and we try to deduce the cause of things from what we intuit. In Devachan, we live among the creative powers and forces. The soul marries the spirit there. It rises higher and higher because it has lived among the creative spirits.

What we learn here can be compared to what the student learns on the map, for example, about Asia Minor. How completely different the country appears to him when he sees it with his own eyes than when he sees the names, points and lines on the map. The knowledge of the everyday person is also different from the knowledge of life in Devachan, the life among the things themselves. Here are the foundations of our being. A genius soul did not arise from swirling atoms. Those who have genius today have experienced it in many lives on earth. In one life we gain experience that we apply in the next. First we build the tools, then comes the application. What I can do today, I have acquired earlier.

A person can also tell himself all this from his own mind. But there are people who recognize it from their own experience because they are able to consciously put themselves in these states while they are surrounded by the shell of the flesh. We call them “chela” or disciple. They have learned to see into spiritual development; the spiritual world lies open before them. The chela can develop to the point of becoming a master.

How does a person become a chela? The preparations necessary to become a disciple can be read about in many scriptures. To become a disciple, a certain degree of development is necessary. There have always been people who have crossed the threshold of death, from which, supposedly, no one returns. But the chela and the master really do return. They can consciously pass through the gate and come back. The preparation requires only that the person learn to truly live within themselves. We can achieve this if we are completely within ourselves at least once a day. The true Christian attains this state in prayer, others through meditation and contemplation. If we are able to meditate and work on ourselves in meditation, we can gradually be accepted into the spiritual world.

Disciples are required to be strict and earnest. First, they must be able to distinguish the essential from the inessential. It does not matter whether it is a mineral, a plant, an animal or a human being; whether it is a wild animal, a criminal or a noble person; they must be able to separate the essential from the inessential at a glance. This first quality, which leads to fellowship, does not, as some might believe, exist in some kind of cloud-cuckoo-land, so that those who possess it would have no sense of everyday things and would not recognize them as essential either; that would be a false view. The way you bring a spoonful of soup to your mouth can be more essential than the whole plate of soup you eat. What is essential is what reveals the essence of the thing or the person, not what the senses perceive externally. To achieve this quality, one must start from the right place. If, for example, one believes that enriching the world with printed paper is better than drawing wire, then one is mistaken.

The second virtue is – Vairagya – not to cling to the ephemeral, but to the fruit of the ephemeral. One must familiarize oneself with the eternal core of things.

Third: Shatsampat – six virtues or qualities that are necessary to prepare for the future.

First: control of thoughts – Shama. You should not let your thoughts stray. A person who wants to become a chela must achieve complete control of his thoughts. This is still an ideal, but you have to take time to strive for this ideal. I have to get to the point where my soul does not harbor any thoughts that I have not presented to it. The more mastery I gain over my thoughts, the closer I come to my core being.

The second thing that arises from the mastery of thoughts is the mastery of actions - Dama. You should not just let yourself be driven by circumstances. It is not the outside world that should drive us, but our own inner world. In a sense, we should take our own destiny into our own hands. We should seek to achieve what we want to achieve according to our own well-thought-out plan. This control over our actions gives us a previously unknown calmness of mind. There will be a transformation of our whole life. Not that you have to do something extraordinary now that you have set out and neglected your duty to your neighbor. But man becomes master of every destiny. He remains the master and rules over fate; fate no longer rules him. In every situation in life, he will see at a glance what is needed at that moment. This is the ideal to strive for.

Thirdly: The third quality – Uparati – is best translated as fruitfulness. To face everything that comes our way with a certain equanimity. Not to be sky-high and then sad to death, but to be fruitful. To greet happiness with joy, but without excitement, and to endure misfortune, albeit seriously, but calmly. Always keep the same temperature.

Fourth: General, loving understanding of people, understanding of all beings, tolerance – Titiksha. Do not condemn or detest the criminal, but try to ennoble him; do not say “I do not like him,” but try to bring him to a higher level, look for the essence everywhere. We say to ourselves: This criminal was no worse than I; circumstances may have made him a criminal. Can I help him? I do not want to judge him, but to try to understand him. And so the disciple must be tolerant towards all beings.

Fifth: Unbiasedness towards all events - Shraddha. When we are told or told something new, we are inclined to exclaim or think: Oh, I don't believe that. - If we do that, we take the unbiased view of something new. The chela never says: I cannot believe that. He believes that he can always experience something new and higher. Impartiality leads to faith and trust.

The sixth virtue, inner harmony – samadhana – arises from the five previous qualities.

From all this it follows: Fourth: The will to freedom - mumuksha. Man usually has more will to be unfree than to be free. He feels dependent on the outside world and inwardly unfree because his passions dominate him. But if he has realized the aforementioned virtues in himself, then the will to freedom is there, which enables him to become completely free, which is what makes it possible for him to become established in the life of the spirit. When this has been achieved to a certain degree, chelaship begins. This comprises four stages.

First stage: The homeless person. He no longer clings to the external world, does not look back longingly at the world of the senses. He is not unloving towards the world of the senses, but he does not allow himself to be captured by it. He himself gives equal love to all the world. He now begins to look consciously into the spiritual world, into those regions which are otherwise open to the average person only after death. Then all superstition and doubt disappear forever, because he sees how things are. But then all illusion of the self also disappears.

We can already realize this in the physical. Our existence depends entirely on the context we have with the globe. If we were to rise above it, we would perish, because the living conditions we need are not available up there. We can only live in the environment we were born into because it is in the right proportion to the temperature of our own blood. If the temperature were only 30 degrees higher or lower, our existence would be endangered.

The personal self will be overcome, the “Tat twam asi” - “That art thou”, fully awakened, that is, the human being feels at one with the universe.

[The] second stage of chelaship is referred to as “building huts”. He sees the kundalini light. This is presented to us in the account of the Transfiguration, where the Lord Jesus introduces his three disciples to chelaship. Then they want to build huts.

Third degree of chelaschaft: Then the light shines out of the disciple. “Every thing says its own name to him.” He sees things from the other side through the rays of the spirit,

Fourth degree of chelaschaft: cannot be described; it cannot be explained in ordinary words; it can only be spoken of in secret schools.

Only a hint can be given of the higher stages.

What only a few individuals attain now, the whole human race will possess in the future. New powers will be revealed, and people will consciously work from the realm of the spirit.

Theosophy is not utopian, not a figment of the imagination. What is now only realized in individual instances will be the future of the human race. It is not idle talk about interesting problems, but active work into the future. Whoever begins to immerse themselves in it is working for the future. Theosophy points out the seeds; it indicates means and ways in which we can work into the future. It is not an abstract teaching method. It shows what man will become if he lives in such and such a way.

Someone might ask: Is it certain that what is proclaimed here will come to pass? This cannot be answered simply with yes or no. The means have been given to man, but whether he will use them, no one can know. It depends on whether people will be willing to work together. The Theosophical Society has been founded for the purpose of educating people who want to work towards this goal. The deification of humanity depends on whether some of them will come together to tackle the work.

In this they must be completely free, they must make their own decision completely uninfluenced. From what we have heard here, we can see that

only Theosophy reveals the true meaning of life to us.

[Note from the stenographer] At Mr. Hubo's request, Dr. Steiner said a few more words about the Theosophical Society's position on Christianity:

Our second principle and goal is to cultivate knowledge of the core of truth in all religions and religious life. There is no intention of transplanting the Buddhist religion to our West. We have no need to do so. Christianity contains the purest form of theosophy. It is only just beginning. It is the religion of the future. The earlier religions contained the same essence, but their form was calculated for earlier times. However, we have lost the key to Christianity, the origin of all religions.

A small scene from North America should make this clear to us. The so-called culture had driven the Indians out of their hunting grounds. They were promised certain areas in which to settle. But the promises had not been kept. It was in 1847 when a great Indian chief faced a senior official and said something like the following: You white people promised us land, but you did not keep your word. You are one who gets the teachings of the great spirit from books, from leaves on which all kinds of signs are written. But the great spirit did not teach you the truth, otherwise you would not have betrayed us. Our ancestors taught us to seek the great spirit Tao in everything around us. We feel it in the wind, in the sunshine, in the rustling of the leaves, in the flowing water, everywhere it speaks to us, we are one with it. And Tao has taught us truth that you do not know. — 'Tao is the concept for God, who is thought of as half concrete and half spiritual. In Tao, man does not yet feel separate from God, inside and outside.

Religion seeks to reconnect what has been separated from Tao. One seeks now what one has felt before. The Brahmans say of Tao: It is what it is.

Orpheus has wisely developed this thought and described the laws by which man can regain this conscious feeling of unity with Tao: You are created and you will create. The son has given himself and thus brought back light and

life and communion with the Father.

Esteemed attendees! Among the ideas that the theosophical movement is trying to bring to people's attention again, the two words “reincarnation” and “karma” are combined in the title of today's lecture as the solution to the human riddle. Our contemporaries have very different interpretations of these two words. Some are quick to declare Theosophy fantastic and nonsensical; they say, “How can anyone possibly know something like that?” For others, this knowledge is a kind of deliverance; the word to the riddle is the riddle's solution, which they have found; the nightmare under which they have been suffering has been lifted. The mystery of why some people are in deepest misery while others seem to walk in the highest happiness is solved when we consider that in times gone by the foundations were laid for both the abilities with which a person is born and his destiny in this life on earth.

Those, however, to whom this seems so fantastic, do not consider that their environment is not the only one on earth. There are many people who believe in repeated lives on earth, just as many as those for whom this idea has been pushed out of their field of vision. For the Asian peoples, re-embodiment is not a dry theory, but a truth of life from which they draw vitality. In earlier times, until the advent of Christianity, this view was widespread in Europe, even in the early days of Christianity. It was not just a view for visionaries; the best of the leaders professed this view. Plato, Giordano Bruno, who was executed for standing up for Copernicus, stood up for it. Their doctrine cannot be separated from the concept of repeated lives on earth. Lessing professes it in his “Education of the Human Race”. It is not just the fanciful spirits of some subordinate religious system that advocate this, but great minds such as Goethe and Jean Paul, because this is the only way they can explain life. One behaves remarkably against the great spiritual heroes such as Plato, Lessing and so on, whose names one mentions with more or less feigned reverence – there is even a tie named after Giordano Bruno – when one comes across their deepest conviction of repeated life on earth and then shrugs and says: That is one of the weaknesses of this great man. – Is there a greater immodesty than to judge like this? I ask anyone who speaks in this way where they learned the best things they know. It was probably from those whose names are associated with this teaching. Yet they claim to be their judges! They accept from them what suits them and discard what does not.

The theosophical movement seeks to bring the awareness of repeated earthly life to people in a modern way. Science still resists recognizing this teaching. If only they would accept it as a hypothesis, the time will soon come when they will see that without this teaching they cannot solve the mystery of man. Every human being carries within himself an imperishable core of being. What is born and dies with him is only the shell of this core of being. This was there before birth, will be there after death. This core of being has already repeatedly lived on earth and will be born again and again in the womb. The present life is only one among many.

This is not immediately apparent when considered superficially. On first glance, the teaching may seem improbable. The naturalistic way of thinking in the West makes it impossible for us to grasp the matter correctly. There is a certain higher spiritual teaching, as it was cultivated in the East. Many Westerners who have received this teaching have naturally come to separate their outer appearance from their inner core of being in their thoughts when they are alone or with those who have undergone the same schooling and know about this inner core of being.

They think or say: “It is not my actual core of being that is walking around the room, but my body. My body is hungry, my brain is thinking, and so on.

There are spiritual teachings that teach us that the physical body is only a tool for the spiritual essence, that all sense organs only serve to enable it to occupy itself on earth. The average person thinks of their body as “I”; the spiritually trained person has the sensation of a duality, a spiritual “I” that has nothing to do with the external one; more and more, they distinguish the imperishable core of their being from the physical body. What was there before birth has nothing to do with the physical body, but a lot to do with physical needs.

The idea that it is Mr. Smith or John Doe who returns is wrong. Only someone who can detach himself from the idea that he is his body can recognize what it is that reincarnates itself as Fritz Schulze or Johann Maier. Only when he is able to do this can he begin to understand what it is that reincarnates itself.

Now we must once again briefly consider what remains and returns to earthly existence and what passes away. Firstly, the physical body disintegrates at death because it consists of physical matter – it passes away.

Secondly, the etheric body, the life body: this is what enables the physical organs to perform their function; the moving, the invigorating in the body. The clock also moves, it consists of a wheel train; if I take out a wheel, it stops working; if I put the clock down and the wheel next to it, they can lie there for a long time, they do not change. But if I cut off a hand from the human body, it does not remain as it was; it withers away because it was connected with the body, of which I have separated it, in a living, organic way. This etheric body also disintegrates. It merges into the general ether.

The third body can be recognized when we consider what lives in the human being – not just the connection between skin and bones – but what he carries within him in terms of suffering and joy, desires and passions; these are things that live in him just as much as blood and heart; they are just as alive. This is the astral body.

Fourthly, there is the I, which distinguishes human beings from the creatures of the other realms. The physical body is shared with minerals, the etheric body with plants, and the astral body with animals.

The I works on the astral body. We must keep reminding ourselves of this. The example often given can make this clear to us. What Darwin experienced with a “savage” who eats his own kind: this “savage” also consists of the four basic parts of the human being mentioned; but his astral body still differs little from that of the animal. He still blindly follows his instincts. Darwin tried to make it clear to the “savage” how wrong it was for him to eat his brother. The “savage” said that Darwin could not possibly know whether it was bad or good before he had eaten it. — From this we can see that this “savage” had no concept of right and wrong at all; he could not yet make a distinction between good and evil. What he likes, what tastes good to him, is good for him; what tastes bad or displeases him is bad for him. His ego has not yet worked on his astral body; he has not yet ennobled it. Culture ennobles the instincts and makes them subservient to duty. The ideal of duty teaches man to distinguish between what attracts him and what he should avoid. In this way he recognizes right and wrong. When man has come so far that he is able to distinguish between what he may follow and what he may not follow, he has learned to control his astral body from the ego.

When we look at people today, we find that they have worked on one part of their astral body and not the other. We must make a strict distinction between these two parts of the astral body. One part is still like that of an animal, blindly following its inclinations and impulses. The other part is the part of the astral body that man has transformed from a purely natural state into something nobler. There is a sharp and important boundary between these two parts. The part that the human being has not yet worked on will be lost after a short time when he dies. The part of the astral body that we have not made our own is given back to nature. What we have purified and transformed from astral matter remains our imperishable property. The unrefined part of the instinct must fall away; what has been refined remains and is incorporated into the ego. Thus man works on the immortalization, on the making immortal of his astral body. It is obvious that this work cannot be completed in one life. Logically structured, the doctrine of repeated earth lives appears through this contemplation.

For anyone who, through personal insight, knows the inner life of man, re-embodiment is a fact as certain as the fact that there are so and so many people sitting here in this hall. He knows of this fact through higher vision; he has not arrived at it through logical speculation.

But this evening we want to make clear to ourselves the logic of the matter. — Let us compare the “savage” who has done very little work with, say, St. Francis of Assisi, who had almost nothing left in him that he had not ennobled. He had brought the remainder of the earth down to the smallest degree. To reach this level, he must have had completely different abilities and powers at his disposal than that “savage”. Would it not be just as nonsensical to assume that these abilities came out of nothing as it would be to assume that a lower animal could arise from the mud, or that a lion did not descend from a lion? If you wanted to claim that, you would consider it foolish in the physical realm. We are reluctant to assume miracles in the physical realm, but not such a much greater miracle in the higher realm! What is inherited in the animal, so that only lions descend from a lion, only tigers from a tiger, and so on, are generic characteristics. But in the individual human being, there can be no question of the genus. Every human being has individual characteristics; only someone who chooses to ignore them can fail to see this. For human beings, the individual is as important as the species is for animals. An animal repeats the species, a human being repeats the individual. The individual human being not only displays the characteristics of his parents, but is also something in itself.

This must be explained. In addition to what we have inherited from our parents, something spiritual lives in us; that is, something spiritual lives in each of us that can be traced back to a previous existence. Just as the physical person has acquired physical characteristics through heredity, so the spiritual person has acquired spiritual qualities. And he has acquired them in previous lives by learning to control his astral body. And he has brought this ability with him into this life. It is always only the core of his being that reappears on earth.

Some might well object: Yes, if that is so, then shouldn't a person remember their previous lives? The question is wrongly put. Imagine you have a four-year-old child in front of you and someone asks: Why can't people do arithmetic? Of course, the four-year-old child can't do arithmetic. Let him reach the age of ten and he will be able to do it. There comes a time for everyone when they will realize that the more they ascend, the more they will also come to understand their previous lives on earth. For the majority it is still quite impossible. One must first know what is embodied before one can recognize what happens to it. Man desires to remember, but that which he wants to remember has fallen away from him, that which has significance for him. Only when he can grasp himself as a spirit can there be any question of remembering.

Whoever needs external impressions to feel does not become aware of the immortal, cannot learn anything about it. It only shines forth in the one who conquers the spiritual core. Certain phenomena occur here and there where memory becomes clairvoyant; for example, in the face of mortal danger, the whole of life sometimes arises in memory.

We must be clear about this. If man, as he is now, is to remember, he must call upon the etheric body for help. Memory lies in the etheric body. The instincts are in the astral body. We could not have memories without the etheric body, but they are clouded and inadequate because they are hindered by the physical body and drowned out by the surging feelings of the astral body. During sleep, the etheric body remains connected to the physical body and causes dreams. Shortly after death, the astral and etheric bodies separate from the physical body; then the magnetic bond that tied them to the body is broken. In the short time between the lifting of the finer bodies and their separation from the physical body, the whole of life flashes before the soul as in a great painting. It is written in the etheric body; memories emerge of long, long times; there is a dead calm over the soul; it is blind and deaf to its surroundings; deep inside, it comes to life with a sublime content.

Thomas a Kempis, in his “Nachfolge Christi” (The Imitation of Christ), has much to say about this language of the soul. His book is almost on a par with the New Testament.

When this spiritual power arises deep within us, it gradually allows us to recognize our spiritual essence. It is a very specific experience, the inner realization of the self-generating thought. We can get some idea of the process if we become completely absorbed in a work of art, to the extent that we forget ourselves completely. If you want to know yourself, your innermost self, there must be perfect calm. Nothing, absolutely nothing of the personal ego must interfere. This requires a degree of living in the object that takes place in the chaste ether element. When a person has learned to let the divine thought live in him and is able to trace his life back to his birth, then an image appears before his soul. It is the image of what he saw at the hour of death in the previous life, the overview of the previous earthly life. He cannot remember the whole earthly life; that comes only later.

At first, this memory will be repeated until it becomes certain, before the memory goes back further and further. Anyone who knows what happens to a person will understand the context. Anyone who believes that a person receives everything from nature will find it strange. But to those who believe in the work that man has to do, it will be clear. What a person's character is, that person has created for himself: What you think today, you will be tomorrow. — Beautiful, pure thoughts, often, often cherished, duties faithfully fulfilled, will pass into character. Thought forms character.

On the other hand, it is obvious – and easy to notice – that a person's environment, their surroundings, their occupation, has a great influence on their character. On closer examination, we will find that the opportunities offered to people in life are related to their inclinations, desires and cravings. Compare a North American bank official with a botanist. The botanist draws very different things to himself than the bank official. This is quite natural and natural. They are the consequences of the innate dispositions that each person has acquired in their previous life. The actions are the counter-shock to the environment. An example: a carpenter has worked all day. The half-finished table that he finds in the morning causes him to continue working on this table. He does not work out of nothing. The half-finished table determines my fate for tomorrow, the carpenter can say. So the previous day is the karma for the next.

Those animals that crawled into a dark cave and could not find their way out again gradually lost their eyesight because they could not use it in the dark. Their offspring lacked the organs of sight altogether; in the dark they needed other organs. These animals prepared their own fate. Their migration into the dark cave was their karma. In the past they created their future. What I do changes the outside world. If I break off a twig, I have changed the course of the world. The tree does not continue to grow as it was in its nature to do. With every deed we change the course of events; it would have been different if I had not done that deed.

The same applies to the spiritual life. Through our feelings and thoughts, we change the world. Because all my actions have an influence on the world, my karma consists of the changes that I have brought about in the world through my actions. Thoughts form character; actions form counter-actions. They fall back on the doer in the next life.

Example: I have offended a person. By doing so, I have brought about a change; now I am obliged to restore the world to the state from which I disturbed it. I have made the world imperfect; it demands that I make it perfect again. I am bound by my obligation until I have restored the disturbed harmony. If the harmony is not restored in this life, the guilt remains until the next life on earth and must be compensated for.

This is how repeated lives on earth are connected. If I was born into hardship and misery in this life, it was because I had previously brought disharmony into the world. This is how world justice is administered. Man is answerable for his actions; there is no other forgiveness for these than the counter-action that is performed as atonement. This is the unpardonable sin against the spirit. What he does in the lower world must be made good by him in the lower world. Natural life brings about nature in him; if he errs there, it will be forgiven him. Man is answerable for what he has done himself. If he does evil, consciously goes against the cosmic order, it is a sin against the self, against the spirit. The self has been violated by the conscious act. Theosophy is not dogma, it does not form a sect. It is life, full life. Mere theory is of no use. Even if I knew everything perfectly and did not want to apply it in life, it would be of no use to me. You have to be convinced of the truth in a practical way.

How should we relate to this? We have to be thorough and look at the bottom of things. If we know the reason and the cause of the bad things in the world, it is depressing at first. Then I have to say to myself: I have prepared my destiny, my character myself. But on the other hand, consciousness also has an uplifting effect. We are the masters of the future. What I do now forms the basis for the future. If I work on improving my character today, I know that this work is not in vain. This gives a blessed consolation to those who are inwardly convinced of the matter. The deepest peace of mind sprouts from this teaching. Life becomes different, also in relation to our fellow human beings. We are only too easily inclined to judge when we see in others what we do not like. If we have gained an understanding of karma, how different it becomes. Then we say: 'You may be bad now, you may lie and cheat, but perhaps this is not the first time you have faced me, and who knows whether I am not perhaps to blame for the fact that you are so bad today.

If someone finds this ridiculous, it is a sign that they have not yet penetrated deeply into the law of karma. Once you have come to the realization of the higher self, you will no longer pass by your fellow human beings indifferently or criticize them; you will learn to understand the connection between person and person. He meets people on every street corner; he thinks, can I help you, maybe I can make you better if I did something wrong in a past life. This idea, which is possible today, applied to life, makes life clearer, more transparent. We learn to understand people better and to help them better.

It is nonsense to say: I should not help him, he has brought his evil karma upon himself. — The moment you are standing in front of him, his karma is that you help him. If you do not help him, he will be helped in some other way. But you have neglected your duty. If you help him, you can say to yourself: If I help him, his future life will be better. The doctrine of karma teaches us to help ourselves. Through my own practical life, the doctrine becomes ever clearer; those who live by it will find it to be true - and only in life. Through recurring experiences, it will be proven to you throughout your entire life.

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, summarized this teaching in a confession. He spoke of the whole world as of the body of his Father, as every body of man is a dwelling place of the Father. Man is unconscious of the Father; he needs a guide to the Father. Only through the Son do we come to the Father; he wants to be our guide. After every life on earth, the soul returns to the Father's body. In every life on earth, the soul passes through a dwelling that is taken from the divine Father Body. Jesus Christ says: “In my Father's house are many mansions.”

Dearly beloved! Whoever gazes at a cloud, or at a cloudy sky, would never guess that in the next moment lightning will flash out of the cloud and thunder will rumble. Lightning and thunder are phenomena hidden in the cloud. This is an image for the things around us; there is also much hidden that can be awakened from its slumber.

I will now try to characterize this hidden world. In theosophy, it is called the three worlds. These three worlds are not separate from each other, but they rest within each other; they are present within this world of ours, but they only emerge under special circumstances. The physical world is visible, audible, tangible, and so on, for the ordinary person. The other two worlds rest hidden in the physical world; but they can be brought out.

An often-used image can help us to understand what is meant by this. Let us think of a person born blind, whose eyes are opened and who can now see. Until now, he has felt his way around; now he has had an operation and can see. The same objects, whose properties he could previously only explore by touching, take on shine and color now that his eye has been opened to the light. In this sense, one speaks of higher worlds. They are there, but the higher sense, the spiritual eyes, must first be opened in order for them to be revealed to the person.

Another comparison that has been made here before: two naturalists were observing three Moluccan crabs in an aquarium. One of them had fallen on its back and was so unhappily placed under an iron bar that it was unable to right itself. The other two crabs tried in vain to help their comrade back on his feet. After they had tried for a long time without success, they left. The naturalists waited to see what would happen. After some time, the crabs returned and brought two more brothers with them. These four then managed to get the crab back on its feet by working together.

I am not telling this story to give an example of mutual aid in the animal kingdom, although it is a fine testimony to it. It is intended to lead us to a different consideration. Suppose the naturalists had lost their patience and reached into the water and turned the cancer back over; and then imagine the crabs endowed with human intelligence, the following would arise: The cancer society would consider this strange case. First, there would be the orthodox, the conservatives; they would say: A miracle has occurred. Then there would be the monists, the materialists; they would say: There are only cancer forces, no other forces exist; a higher intervention is impossible. They would have to leave the case unexplained. Thirdly, the cancer theosophists would come; they would say: No, there are no miracles, everything is based on law; but there is also a higher law that goes beyond the ordinary comprehension of cancer. We theosophists extend the law into higher realms beyond the ordinary comprehension.

Let us now realize what it depends on to perceive these supersensible things. All our senses are active and serve us to perceive the things around us. But we also become aware that the senses decrease, die, and then the ability to perceive ceases; but life does not stop with that. So you can live in the world without perceiving. Whether or not we perceive things depends on whether we have the senses necessary to perceive them. Admittedly, it is not unacceptable that we live in countless worlds for which the senses have not yet been awakened.

The real purpose of the theosophical movement is to awaken man to these higher senses. Some people go wild when you talk to them about supernatural things. They cannot grasp that one can really gain an insight into these things, that not everything that is said about them is based on hypothesis. But they do not consider that there are many things around us that pass us by without a trace because we do not recognize them.

An example of this: a famous singer was invited to an elegant society event; she was late – as famous personalities sometimes are. She was seated between two gentlemen; one was Mendelsohn, whom she knew and with whom she had a lively conversation. The gentleman on her other side tried repeatedly, in his polite, modest way, to draw her into the conversation, but she didn't like him and asked Mendelsohn quietly, “Who is that stupid fellow?” The famous philosopher Hegel, was the reply. Had she known beforehand that she would meet Hegel there, she would have made every effort to engage him in conversation. Now she had sat with him – and had not recognized him.

Could it not be that many a person who is endowed with higher faculties is merely a “stupid fellow” in the eyes of many people? Let us think of Christ Jesus; now, after all that the Church and time have made of him, it is indeed easy to recognize him. But just imagine he were to enter this hall today. Who would recognize him then?

Therefore, we may admit the possibility that there may be people who are endowed with higher senses than the ordinary ones, without the ordinary man in the street perceiving anything. Such a person is called “one with a higher state of consciousness”.

Actually, every human being lives in these different states of consciousness. We must realize that the human being really lives in different states of consciousness. First, in the physical world during the day, in the normal state, he has the waking consciousness. Second, the dream-filled state of sleep. It is not uninteresting to study the experiences of dreams. If you pay just a little attention to them, you will find a certain regularity in the dream images. Dreams are symbolic. The dream experiences show that we are dealing with rudiments of our daytime consciousness.

I would like to make this clear with a few examples, which, like all the examples I give, are based on real experiences. Someone dreams that they have caught a tree frog, vividly reliving the entire chase until they hold it in their hand. With the feeling of the soft, slippery thing in their hand, they wake up and realize that they had a corner of their bedspread in their hand. There the dream consciousness had symbolized the soft mass of the bedspread and transformed it into a tree frog.

A dream is also a playwright. Example: A woman dreams that she is in church, the preacher is giving an uplifting sermon, gradually his raised hands turn into wings – she finds this quite natural in the dream – then his lofty speech turns into cawing and outside the cockerel crows. - How the dream is a symbolist and a playwright, Schubert described in “The Night Side of Nature” from the hidden side of man. Heinrich von Kleist received many suggestions from him about this matter.

Thirdly: the state of consciousness of dreamless, unconscious sleep. Everyone will admit that a person is present, even when he is unconscious in his sleep, that he does not cease to exist in the evening and come into being again in the morning. And yet his consciousness perceives nothing of what is going on around him. These three states of consciousness change significantly when a person undergoes a spiritual, mental development. Then the divine man is awakened in him. He learns to perceive the mental processes. With the help of higher, more perfect people, mental organs develop in him that change the first two states of consciousness, so that the person not only perceives fleeting images, but a new world opens up to him that speaks to him in symbols. It is not enough for a person to be conscious only in dreams; he now also learns to bring dream consciousness into daytime consciousness, and in this way all irregularities will be regulated. Gradually, the confused dreams become clear symbols. If one receives guidance, one also learns to understand these symbols. Something real may then well occur. For example, it may occur that the student dreams of something ugly that is connected with a particular friend, who moves him; he learns that the friend has fallen seriously ill. A real condition has been expressed in the ugly dream.

In this way, a new world gradually opens up for the dreamer, and he learns to take this spiritual world into the ordinary world. He also perceives the soul in his fellow human beings. He also perceives soul-spiritual beings that he has not usually seen before.

The world that opens up to the human being is the “astral” world. Just as lightning and thunder issue forth from the cloud, so things emerge when the astral senses are awakened. Why is this world called the astral world? Those who understand only one sixteenth of it have quibbled a lot about the name. The people who have always been theosophists, the ancient mystics, used this name for good reason. What is the astral world? It is an expression of the soul world.

What is physical about me, my bones, muscles, and skin, forms the physical body. What is mental about me, my instincts, passions, and desires, is just as real as my hand and my head. These [mental qualities] form the astral body.

A person stands before me. I see his form, his hair, his face, his skin; but just as real as this visible person are his desires and cravings, instincts and passions before me, they are just as real for the astral world as the visible body is for the physical world. It has been suggested that it should be called the “drives-body”, but that is no better; it could lead to the erroneous opinion of the materialists, who believe that the drives emanate from the physical body. Before man was born, the soul of man was there, which has embodied itself in the body. The drives, instincts, passions and so on were there, and they are what shaped the physical body. So we can give a very definite answer to the question of where the physical body comes from.

Imagine a glass of water with a piece of ice floating in it. Ice is water. It is formed from water through cooling. This is roughly how we can imagine the process. The astral is to the physical as water is to ice. Ice is condensed water. The physical is the condensed astral substance. This is the relationship between the desire body and the physical body. Just as water crystallizes into snowflakes, all worlds have been created through crystallization processes. Our visible world has also emerged from the astral one. Goethe knew this process and tells us about it in the words of the world spirit:

In the floods of life, in the storm of action
I surge and surge again,
Weaving to and fro,
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life.
Thus I create at the whirling loom of time
And work the living garment of the Godhead!

Just as our earth was created from the astral matter that surrounds it and consists of it, so the astral matter and the other matter consist of the same matter as the whole world of stars. The physical matter of the earth is related to the physical matter of the stellar world, the astral matter to the astral matter of the same and so on. The astral matter permeates everything. The mineral contains forces and substances. The plant also has substances and forces and life. The animal feels and senses, but more unconsciously. Man, finally, who still has the animal in him, consciously gains control over it and thereby rises above the animal. He is, as it were, a summary of all physical realms and has the essence of all of them within him.

The materialists claim that instincts arise from the physical. Theosophy claims the opposite. Our desire body is related to the world of desire around us.

Thirdly, dreamless consciousness: human consciousness develops ever higher and higher. Then not only dream consciousness emerges from the dark night, but something new emerges that cannot be compared to light images. It speaks to the human being in sounds, as it were. This sound of the higher spiritual world was well known to the Pythagoreans; they called it “the harmony of the spheres” or “music of the spheres”. Goethe also tells us about it in his “Faust”. The “Prologue in Heaven” introduces us to this third world. What Goethe presents to us here is not just a poetic image, but reality. — The archangel Raphael sings:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
In brotherly spheres of song,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderclap.

What resounds is not the physical sun. This physical sun is only the body for the sun spirit. This “resonance” is perceived by the more highly developed people. From the dark deep sleep, it “resonates” up to him. This is what Goethe means when he says “the sun resounds”. He sticks with this image. In the second part of “Faust” it says:

Tönend wird für Geistesohren
Schön der neue Tag gebören:;

This third world is the mental world, the spiritual world. It can be perceived in its true state with proper concentration. Once man has reached this level, he knows that the mere thought is something real. Heaven – Devachan – can be conjured up.

This state is called the continuity of consciousness. When the ear is opened to this sound, the actual spiritual world, the world of the spirit, opens up to man. Just as man is plant, animal and mineral, he is also astral and mental; it is possible for him to live entirely within himself, in the spirit.

Man lives in the three worlds. During the day he lives in physical consciousness. At night, during sleep, he initially perceives nothing that is perceptible to his senses. How is it that man is unconscious during sleep? There is a very specific reason for this. Man divides his being. During the day, the human being uses the powers of the physical and etheric bodies. The powers for the waking consciousness are taken from these two bodies. These powers must be renewed; this is done during sleep; the actual human being uses his astral and mental bodies and their powers to work on the physical body.

The person who wants to develop himself higher must acquire special moral qualities, whereby he can make the work of the astral and mental bodies superfluous.

How can a person make this possible? When he enters the “Chela path”, which has been discussed in detail here. The qualities that are necessary as preparation for this path have been mentioned here many times. The first main condition is the control of thoughts; one must not let them stray; then comes the control of passions and desires, great composure, and so on. When all this has been achieved, after years of practice, what happens then?

A calmness comes over the physical and astral life, a feeling of well-being, an inner health, and thus the astral and mental forces are released from their work during sleep; they no longer have as much work to do on it. These unused forces are now used to draw out hidden abilities in man and to develop clairvoyant organs, to form the “eyes of the soul”. These organs are called “lotus flowers” or “chakras”; they are described in detail in “Lucifer - Gnosis”. With these organs, the astral world can be perceived.

In this way, a person develops through virtues, especially through calmness and composure. Once he has achieved these, he may use the freed-up energies to develop the higher organs. Those who want to develop these higher organs without these virtues are drawing on physical forces that the physical nature still needs. The result is that the person becomes nervous, even mentally and spiritually ill. In this way, the human being can open up the two higher worlds. The astral matter is thin, thinner than air. It appears in the astral light as a human aura. It is a radiation that extends one and a half times the length of the head. This aura expresses the character of the human being's innermost being in different color tones. The newcomer to the astral plane is struck by the fact that everything is read there as in a mirror image, in a most strange and shocking way. Above all, he sees the mirror image of himself there, which seems to be coming towards him, while in reality it emanates from him. If, for example, one sees the number 164, one must read 461.

What takes place in relation to time also runs in the opposite direction. You first have to learn how to orient yourself in the other world. It is very important to know that the passions show themselves there in an ugly, demonic form; one's own passions pounce on the clairvoyant as demonic figures – in the mirror image.

That is how you get to know yourself. Those who have had experience in this and have previously learned the context know how to judge and deal with this phenomenon correctly. Many a person who has attained abnormal vision without having received proper training, but has broken into the astral unprepared, describes it that way. That comes from materialism. Theosophy is quite serious. It can only confuse those who approach it without understanding. But for those who look deeper into it, theosophy brings spiritual health. Materialism, on the other hand, makes people ill. If the religious element slumbering in every human being is not satisfied, it will eventually break through the brain; the brain does not understand it and becomes ill. The higher worlds break in on man, and he does not understand them. That is the essence of mental illness.

The “sounding” is then the third world.

The human being lives in these three worlds one after the other. After he has ended his life here in the physical, he discards his physical body, then also his etheric body; then the astral body remains, in which he now lives. He really lives in the astral. When we say we live in this or that, we mean that we have something in common with the world around us. Now, one thing in particular is no longer the case. Even during sleep, the astral body is separated from the physical and etheric bodies, but they are still connected by a magnetic bond. This now falls away. The human being now becomes aware of this. It is a very peculiar awareness that confronts him. He is accustomed to perceiving and doing everything through the senses; for example, he is accustomed to enjoying food and delighting in the taste through the palate; the longing for enjoyment has remained with him; he must first get used to doing without these pleasures.

This happens for all the senses. This happens through this deprivation of the senses. Through this deprivation of the senses, two conditions arise violently. First, a burning thirst that arises from the inability to satisfy desire. This acts as a kind of fire — the purgatory of Catholics. He must first get rid of his desires. The other concerns action. He is accustomed to acting; but he lacks the hand to act, the foot to walk, and so on. This feeling of inability causes a state of coldness. This state is called Kamaloka, the place of desires. This state is caused by the desires in man, which are still active and find no satisfaction. It is the state of disaccustoming.

If a person has already become accustomed to living in the spirit during his lifetime, this disaccustomment will not be difficult for him. Christ Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21), so that a person can already live here in the spirit, in the third, the mental world, in Devachan. If he has then passed through Kamaloka after death, he comes to Devachan. That is the state in which the divine man truly lives in his element. When he is no longer attached to the lower, his own divine self comes to life in his inner being.

I have now shown how man, by opening up the higher senses, becomes familiar with the two hidden worlds, which are hidden only to the extent that colors and light are hidden things for those born blind.

The time has not yet come for everyone to follow this hidden path of knowledge. But people must hear about the higher worlds, become familiar with them, try to grasp them intellectually, and let them tell them about themselves. That is the first step towards finally entering them. Man should create concepts for himself, he is a self-creating being.

We live in an important time, when great movements of a spiritual and intellectual nature are taking place. Much is being told publicly about supersensible facts that used to be kept secret. Then some people come and say: Yes, you are telling us all kinds of things; and we are to believe in you. — Once a personality in Berlin was literally enraged. To this personality I said: You don't need to believe me at all. I don't care what you think about me. If I draw you a map of Asia Minor, indicating the outlines, the rivers with lines and the cities with dots, you can say: 'What are you making up, Asia Minor doesn't look like that. No, it does not look like that, but if you go there, you will see that the drawing was correct. That is how it is with the drawing I have sketched for you of the transcendental worlds. For the time being, you are welcome to think of me as a fraud who is telling you something, but – listen! – after death everyone is in a position to apply what they are now learning.

But culture will soon produce blossoms that will only be understandable to those who understand the occult. Therefore, it is advisable to listen quietly and to process what you hear. If you can do this without inner contradiction, life will open up for you in a completely new way; you will learn to understand it in an unimagined way.

In this way, one struggles upwards to knowledge, to that which never fades, to the realm of heaven. We develop ever higher and higher, through the three worlds first. The first stage is the physical, the second the astral, the third the mental, the spiritual. The first step consists of man's turning from the transitory to the eternal. The astral life of mind and desire turns either downwards to the transitory or upwards to the eternal; it has two sides. The third world, the spiritual world, encompasses what man recognizes as his own spiritual being.

Dear attendees! Not so long ago, only 300 years, not only laymen but also learned naturalists believed that lower animals, worms, even fish could arise from inanimate river mud. And it was a great advance in human thinking when the Italian naturalist Redi first stated that, under our present-day conditions, living things could only arise from a living germ. Today, anyone who still wanted to claim that earthworms or fish can simply form from ordinary sand or mud would be considered a fool or an ignorant person. Indeed, the vast majority of today's thinking people are hardly aware that these three hundred years ago, people still believed that such a thing was possible! What is taken for granted today by laypeople and by science, that under our present conditions, living things can only arise from living things, is something that humanity had to gain for its thinking only over the course of centuries, and so it is, honored attendees, for many achievements of human knowledge. Today, spiritual science or theosophy has a very similar truth to implement and introduce into human consciousness. That this truth will become part of human consciousness in the future depends solely on whether people will just as naturally accept what many people today consider to be folly, a reverie or a fantasy: that the spiritual and soul can only arise from the spiritual and soul. Basically, all that is needed to understand all the things that will form today's topic is a thorough living through of this simple sentence. Nevertheless, much, much water will flow into the Elbe before the advocates of this sentence will no longer be regarded as fools, dreamers or fantasists.

The sentence that living things can only arise from living germs was not easily accepted either, and Redi only narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today, those who bring something similar together are no longer condemned to death by fire, that has gone out of fashion. But they are condemned to the other death, which burns less, but which is therefore still equivalent to the way in which uncomfortable truth seekers were eliminated from the world in the past. Today they are condemned as dreamers, fantasists, fools or the like. But the time will come, and it is not so far away, when it will seem self-evident that the spiritual and the soul can only arise from the spiritual and the soul. And the whole question at issue today, the question of such immeasurable importance for people, the question of the supersensible worlds and the destiny of the human soul in the supersensible worlds, the question of the riddles of human death and life, the question that is not just a theoretical, but a practical question in the most eminent sense, because the one who is able to solve it for his own soul draws certainty and strength for life from the answer, hope and confidence for his work, in short, everything that allows people to stand upright in the most difficult struggles of fate, in all that life brings.

Today we will approach the question of the destiny of man in life and in death from two sides. One approach will bring this question before the court of facts, the other before the court of common sense. If we want to speak of facts, then we must first form an idea of what we actually have to understand as facts. We speak so easily of proving. We shall see that these things are taken very superficially in the wide circle of humanity. The fate of the human soul in the supersensible world will be the subject.

Now, dear audience, when I was still a little boy, I often listened to conversations of very simple people about that mysterious land where man comes after death. There were religious people who, out of their faith, gave certain answers about fate, but there were also free-spirited people among the simple folk, unbelievers. One sentence always worked to beat the others. That was the sentence: No one can know anything about that country from which no wanderer has yet returned. It was said more simply: Have you seen one who has told of the events after death?

That was something that was taken by many as something striking. Now, honored attendees, people would not attach so much importance to such words if they wanted to reflect more thoroughly on the ordinary events of the day that happen to every human being in 24 hours. In the ordinary course of daily life, a person clearly experiences different states. In 24 hours, you go through two states of consciousness: waking and sleeping. Of course, the most ordinary and everyday things are the least thought about; but the riddles of the world are present in the everyday. It should seem mysterious to man that what he experiences within himself from morning to evening, the whole world of surging and swaying sensations, perceptions and thoughts, lust and suffering, joy and pain, drives and desires and passions, that he sees this whole world of the evening sinking into an indeterminate darkness. Everything that a person perceives through his eyes from morning till evening, which awakens desires, lust and suffering in him, etc., descends into the darkness of consciousness like the setting sun. In the morning, the person wakes up again; what he left behind for his consciousness yesterday dawns again out of the darkness. All the familiar images, thoughts, impressions come to consciousness just as the sun rises over the horizon. All the pains and sufferings that had been forgotten come back up like the sun rising over the horizon.

Would it not be foolish to claim that every evening the sum of perceptions, sensations and perceptions, pleasure and pain, pain and joy, that they disappear and merge into an indeterminate nothing and are recreated tomorrow? Anyone who thinks thoroughly says: It would be the greatest folly to claim such a disappearance of mental life and a new creation. The soul is there, it is present, it is real, anything else is contrary to common sense. What distinguishes the sleeping soul from the waking soul? Only that the sleeping soul cannot perceive, it has no consciousness of what fills its field of vision during the day as its experiences. States of consciousness change in every person in 24 hours.

Now, honored attendees, when the world of facts is to be explored, that which can be called clairvoyant human consciousness comes into play. With this word, I have expressed what may seem like something fantastic or foolish to the very enlightened of the present, especially at first. What is this clairvoyant human consciousness? First, let us clarify this consciousness through a comparison. You imagine, honored attendees, you are leading a person born blind into this hall. For you, these lamps shine, these doors appear brown. For the man born blind, this hall does not appear in this way; the lights and colors are not there for him. If you were to succeed in operating on this man born blind here, what would enter his field of vision is what was there before, but what he did not see. What was there before has now become perceptible to him.

What this man born blind can experience through the operation can be experienced in relation to the spiritual abilities of the soul. Just as in this man, whom you operated on, the ability to see was dormant, so in every human soul there is something dormant of higher abilities that can likewise be brought out of the human soul through an operation. What Goethe, for example, referred to as spiritual eyes, slumbers in the soul of every human being. And then, when these spiritual eyes are awakened in the soul of a person, it is just as much on a higher level as it is for a person born blind on a lower level whose physical eye has been operated on. A new world invades him, the world that is always around us, the spiritual world. But man's soul is also in this world during the state of sleep, during the night.

Why can't the human soul see this spiritual world in its normal state? It is easy to see why. Imagine that you were standing here with your body alive, but you lost your sight and could see nothing. If you also lost your hearing and other senses, the world would be imperceptible to you. So how can we know that a world exists for us? Only on the fact that we have organs for this world. When a person is in the spiritual world at night while sleeping, then in his normal present state he has no organs for this world, he has no spiritual eyes. But when a person develops what are called these spiritual eyes, then it is not dark and gloomy around him, but then he lives in the sleeping state so that he perceives: There is a world, I have left the physical world; I have entered another world. Now another world has become visible, a fact, as the world of physical colors and lights for the blind man who has undergone an operation.

What is described here as opening the spiritual eyes is called awakening or initiation. Such initiated people, who had developed their spiritual abilities, have always existed. Because they had developed their spiritual abilities, they could see into the spiritual world, into the world of which they now had to say: When a person falls asleep, what we call his outer physical body remains in bed, and a spiritual-soul entity leaves this physical body. This being really does leave the physical body when we fall asleep. During sleep it is in another world. In the morning, the soul once again enters the physical body. It then uses the eyes and ears again and perceives the physical world. What is the difference between the unawakened person and the awakened person? The difference is that in that part of his being that goes out at night, there are no spiritual eyes; but in the awakened person, spiritual eyes have developed. Those who want to study these questions more deeply and thoroughly will see that what has been said is not something plucked out of the blue, but something definite and real. Of course you can ask the question: Yes, but how does one achieve this awakening? The answer to this question is also given. There are certain methods and certain practices that a person must apply to his soul, and then he draws out of his inner being the dormant spiritual eyes, the slumbering soul abilities. It can only be hinted at that by allowing very specific inner soul experiences, which have been established for thousands of years in what is called concentration, meditation, or inner contemplation, to take effect on his soul, man can change his soul and develop spiritual eyes as a result. Then man becomes clairvoyant in a world that is otherwise closed to him.

If you look through the little booklet on initiation and mysteries, you will see that there is a very specific way of making the soul clairvoyant, just as there are methods for making microscopes. Certain ideas have an effect on this soul, and then it transforms, and then abilities arise, which you can call hallucinations or visions if you like, but they change very quickly so that they become the mediators of the spiritual worlds that are around us. In this development, one very soon learns to distinguish from one another what a vision is and what corresponds to reality in the spiritual world. Just as in the physical world you can only come to distinguish between ideas and reality through experience and living, the same applies to the spiritual world.

Someone may say: I believe in Schopenhauer that the world is my idea. We say: Very well, just imagine a piece of burning iron or glowing steel. It does not burn you, but now, if you touch it, you will very soon realize the difference between your idea and reality; the imagined glowing steel does not burn, but the real one does. You will have the same experience as you develop your spiritual powers and abilities.

When I said this once in southern Germany, someone said: But you can evoke the ideas in your mind so vividly that they even have a physical effect; so someone could have hallucinations through contemplation and other exercises that they mistake for reality. You can also, he said, make your mouth water when you imagine lemon juice. “Then I said that he should try to quench his thirst with imagined lemon juice. You can only do that with real lemon juice, and you notice the difference. It is the same in the spiritual world. Those who are spiritually awakened and have developed their spiritual senses know from experience where the boundary is between imagination and spiritual reality.

These are the facts on which spiritual research is based. When someone comes and says: Yes, these people claim not only the physical body, but what they – oh, these fantasists and fools – call the astral body, these awakened ones claim that. They should just prove it and list all the facts. Well, ladies and gentlemen, firstly, the person who makes such a speech has not thoroughly informed himself about the nature of proof. I would like to advise him to think about the proof that the horse has its head in front and its tail behind. Just because people always see normal horses, that is why they take such a thing for granted. Proofs, which are to be based on facts, must be based on these facts. The spiritual researcher is on no different ground than the natural scientist. If someone comes and says, “There are natural scientists who say that plants consist of cells.” “I have never seen cells, only leaves and flowers.” What I have not seen, I do not believe. — Then the natural scientist will say to him: You must get a microscope and learn to work scientifically, then you will see the cells as facts. Only if you take the appropriate precautions will you see them.

But the methods by which the invisible, supersensible aspects of human nature can be seen are accessible to everyone. If he undergoes the methods that the initiate has to undergo, if he develops clairvoyance, then he undergoes something similar in the spiritual life to what the person working with the microscope undergoes in the physical life. The analogy of the facts is complete, at most the matter is more uncomfortable in the spiritual life. It is more uncomfortable in the spiritual life because a microscope can be fabricated. But what the spiritual microscope is, everyone must develop in their own soul; they must transform themselves if they want to see for themselves. But there have always been such initiates who knew what message to bring from these spiritual worlds.

And now let us present to our soul what these initiates have to say about the cycle of man through the different worlds. It is presented in much the same way as if someone were to tell you that he has seen this or that through the microscope. The spiritual researcher speaks from his research: What you call the human being is by no means as simple as you imagine. This human being consists of many, many parts; he has visible, tangible parts, but in addition he also has invisible, supersensible parts. The first part is the physical human body. This physical human body he has in common with all other inanimate beings, with crystals, rocks, with mineral beings. In addition, he has an invisible part that is a loyal fighter in the physical body. This second link, which only a clairvoyant can see, is the etheric or life body. This permeates the human being. If one did not have it, the human body would be in every moment what it becomes with death: a corpse. A crystal follows its own physical and chemical laws. The human body cannot follow its own chemical and physical laws during its lifetime. If it did follow them, then what it is as a corpse would show up, it would dissolve. But the etheric body is a faithful fighter against decay. The human being has the etheric or life body in common with all plants.

The third link of the human being is the astral body; it is the carrier of desire and suffering, joy and pain, of all the feelings and passions that arise and ebb away in the waking consciousness, etc. This astral body is just as real and true for the spiritual researcher as the physical body, indeed even more real. If someone objects: You are not going to imagine that such astral bodies can fly around in the air, then the spiritual researcher answers: I can imagine it very well; not only imagine it, but to the spiritual researcher the astral body shows itself as an independent part of the human being.

Today, such an awareness would be considered fantasy; but the real fantasy lies on the other side. A healthy understanding of human nature will say: Here I see the person, the tear rolls out of his eyes. Therefore, I assume that he is sad. The grief is an experience of the soul or the astral body. This experience has a physical effect, it presses tears out of the eyes. Here we see how physical effects arise from experiences of the soul. Some schools of philosophy say that this is a mistake. They say that when a person cries, a secret effect occurs that is mediated by material things, and this secret effect presses tears out of the eyes and when the person notices this, then he becomes sad. So the person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries.

The third part of human nature, the astral body, is shared by humans and all animals. Then there is a fourth element, which is the carrier of self-awareness, the carrier of our ego. Through this element, humans rise above all the beings that surround them in the sensory world. He towers above his fellow creatures, he is the greatest of earthly creation. In spiritual research, we speak of the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body in animals. In the case of humans, we speak of four members: the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the I-vehicle.

What is sleep for spiritual research? When a person falls asleep, his physical body and ether body remain in bed, while the astral body and the I-bearing body separate out for the clairvoyant. In the sleeping person we have a separation of the four limbs. Because in today's normal consciousness the I and the astral body have no organs of their own, but only in clairvoyant consciousness, these organs are dark and there is darkness around the person. In the morning he plunges into his physical and etheric bodies. Throughout life between birth and death, except in states of emergency, the physical body is firmly connected to the etheric body. The astral body goes out at night.

After death, something very special happens. The mere physical body remains behind and the connection between these three invisible members, ether body, astral body and I, goes out. And from that time on, the physical body begins to be a mere physical body, that is, it follows its physical and chemical laws; it dissolves; it is a member of the mineral world.

But then, when spiritual research follows what emerges from the physical body, it shows that the person remains connected to their etheric body for a while. After death, there occurs for a time what could be called a review of the whole past life. You will already have heard that people who are close to death in abnormal conditions – for example, when drowning – review their whole life like a panorama. This gives the person a shock because the entire etheric body is detached from the physical body. The entire life is written in the etheric body, it is the carrier of memory, and only the physical body prevents it from showing this. But it immediately shows this memory of past life when it is freed from the physical body for a moment.

The same is also evident after death. Man then has a review of the past life. Then comes the second cadaverization. After a few days, the etheric body detaches itself from the actual inner core of the being, just as the physical body detached itself earlier. What remains is an extract of this etheric body, and the etheric body dissolves into the general etheric matter just as the physical body dissolves into the physical matter. After the human being has freed himself from his etheric body, he now consists of the ego, the astral body and an extract of the etheric body. This extract represents the fruit of the last life, what we have experienced in the last life. You can say to yourself: when you have grown older, you have experienced more than you did earlier. The whole of life consists of becoming more and more attuned to the spiritual; that is not lost, it is written into your etheric body, and you take it with you as a fruit.

After death, something very special happens. What I am about to say is a fact for clairvoyant research, but it can also be grasped by common sense. We have seen: the physical body has fallen away, we will leave the etheric body out of consideration for the time being, but what has lived in man, lust and suffering, joy and pain, that has not only existed as an effect in the physical body, but we must consider that as reality, and then we can say: what is the reason why the desires should immediately fall away when the physical body falls away? There is no reason for it. Spiritual research now shows that the astral body remains present after death with the desires.

An example: a person was a gourmet in life, he had desires for these or those delicious foods. This desire does not depend on the physical body - minerals have no desires - but it depends on the astral body. Now the physical body is dead, the craving has remained, and now the person is in a special situation: in life he satisfies it by eating the food in question, but for that he needs the palate and tongue, organs of the physical body. After death, he still has the craving, but he lacks the organs to satisfy it. The human being is in the same situation as someone who suffers from thirst in solitude and finds no water or beer far and wide. It is the same after death with everything that lives in the human being's astral body and that can only be satisfied through connection with the physical body. After death, spiritual research can confirm that the human being gradually weans from everything that can only be satisfied by the organs of the physical body. This state lasts until the person has given up all impulses in life that require physical organs. This period, which varies in length in different individuals, is called in spiritual science the time of man's passage through the world of souls or Kamaloka; what is meant is a state. After death, man has to go through this state. Certain religions call it purgatory, a time of trial, purification, cleansing. Then the parts of the astral body that contain only what can be satisfied by the physical body fall away from the person like scales. Then the soul is able to make something out of what it has taken with it as an extract, out of what it has taken with it as the fruit of life.

And now the time of the actual spiritual life begins, the time in which man lives in increasingly spiritual worlds, which first begins with man reversing his activity from the physical world. What does that mean? What man does first among many other things, we can understand, honored attendees, if we look at the light with common sense. It is true that if man had no eyes, he would not see the light. But for those who always claim that without eyes there would be no world of light, the other side, the other side, must also be asserted. Where do eyes come from? Goethe speaks from a deep knowledge of the world when he says, “The eye is formed by light for light.” That is to say, if there were no light, if the sun did not give off light, there would be no eye. Light has formed and shaped the eye out of indifferent organs.

The organs that we have as human beings have been formed gradually, after undergoing very imperfect states. So how could an eye come into being? Because there was light around the human being. If you look at certain animals that live outside in the world, they have eyes. When such animals change their way of life and come into dark caves, their eyes wither, they recede, they lose their sight because there is no light in their environment. As the missing light takes the eyes, so the light has also given them. But in the same way, what we encounter as a person's soul with these or those abilities can only be built up by the surrounding spiritual world. But in this world is the human being after Kamaloka, and in this spiritual world he has the fruit of his last life. From this spiritual world he begins to build up his spiritual organs with what he has learned in the last life, what he has experienced. Bit by bit, he now builds up his spiritual organism with the experiences he has had in the last life. It is true that the human being builds up this spiritual organism bit by bit. Just as he builds his destiny in the physical world according to the experiences he has in the physical world, so he directs his actions in the spiritual world according to the spiritual experiences around him. And he is busy, among many others in the spiritual world, creating a kind of archetype, spiritual model for his spiritual organs.

When this spiritual organism is now created out of the materials of the spiritual world, then the human being experiences the longing to realize in the physical world what he has built spiritually, to descend again into the physical world. So those bodies that he had previously discarded are built up again piece by piece around this spiritual organism according to the conditions of the physical world. For what the human being has taken from the physical world has been prepared for him in the physical world. That which is in the physical and etheric bodies must be given back to him from a world to which he had given it back; his parents give it to him. The physical and etheric bodies are brought up to him by his parents from a world from which he has only just departed, and what has taken shape as an archetype in the spiritual world is connected with him. And we can see how this archetype works on the formation of the physical body.

Physical science is not a counter-proof of this. Once the facts of natural science are properly examined, then natural science will correctly find the fact of spiritual life. Look at the child after it is born. The child has developed certain parts of its brain that can be said to be sensory centers, nerve pathways; these are already developed in the first week after birth. On the other hand, if you examine the brain at the end of the first month, you see that almost two-thirds of the brain is only formed during the last four weeks after birth. Bit by bit, the inner two-thirds of the cerebral cortex are permeated with nerve marrow, which transmits one sensory impression to another. The child sees colors and hears sounds, but cannot connect them. The nerve cords that transmit the impressions of the senses are built up bit by bit. Those who insist that these nerve cords build themselves can cling to their superstition; but they should also claim that some complicated apparatus also assembles itself.

We take on board what science says. We see the physical body and its mechanism, but we also make the comparison: No mechanism can be built without intelligence. No machine is made in the world by itself. That which is formed in the human brain does not do itself. What works on it? The archetype, which for the clairvoyant consciousness comes from that spiritual organism, works on this brain. And when this brain is worked through more and more, the fruits of life are woven into it. Man had, after all, taken the fruits of life into the spiritual world. He transforms his brain into this archetype. Depending on how he has used this life, his brain is now transformed by this archetype. For example, someone who has lived in dullness will think nothing of what happens when he sees a church lamp burning and swinging. But for the one who has used life in a different way, it works in such a way that he discovers the influential laws of the pendulum and gives them to humanity, like Galilei, who first saw the laws of the pendulum vibrations in the church lamp in the cathedral of Pisa. Indeed, with him the archetype worked differently than with the thousands upon thousands who also saw that lamp and who did not notice anything. Here we have a tangible example of how the spiritual works on the physical.

Those who do not admit this can be said to be beyond help, not admitting obvious facts. They cannot demand: prove your case, but rather it is a matter of the other person creating conditions to produce evidence. Those who look deeper will realize that the best evidence requires recognition.

Thus we see how man, passing through the gate of death, enters into other worlds: first into a preparatory world, then into the world of spiritual creation, where he prepares a new life. Then, through conception and birth, he enters into a new life. After birth, the human being still works on his brain. Either say: it all takes care of itself —, or there is no other possibility than that the human being is accepted with such a spiritual life.

Now one could say: Of course I will admit a soul that exists before conception; but I will not admit that the soul owes its working capacity and form to a previous life; rather, it descends from the spiritual world anew each time. — Under today's conditions, such a soul that descends anew would not fit well into the present world. That is another necessary assumption of common sense, that one turns one's attention to the harmony and fit between what descends and what is brought in the line of inheritance. Only such a soul can come into harmony with the conditions in the physical world that has acquired the prerequisites for a life in the present conditions in a previous life.

This is how we move from the present life to a previous one. When the soul descends again and develops in the body in this life, it is exactly the same as in the previous one, except that the person has woven in the fruits of the earlier existence. Thus enriched, the person lives again between birth and death, and so it goes on.

Thus man passed through the cycle from the sensual world through the world of the mere soul, the world of purification, to the spiritual world, and then again he descended into the sensual world, and so on. He goes through this cycle again and again, and therein lies, honored attendees, the guarantee of an ever-higher development of man. This teaching, which shows us the causes of our present life in previous lives, is not a bleak one. One can only say: if you build up this life in an inadequate way, then the cause lies in a previous life. But one can also point to the future and say: use your life well and you will carry the fruits of this life over into the following one; then confidence and energy follow from such a realization.

For those present, who approach this sentence with common sense, the facts of clairvoyant consciousness cannot, of course, be proven externally, but they can understand them. They can say to themselves: If I accept the facts, then life becomes understandable to me. Facts cannot be proven; I would like to see someone prove that there is a whale when no one has seen it. But by creating the appropriate organs, one can come to see the facts of spiritual life. Only connections can be proven, never facts.

Now, dear audience, common sense may want to object to some things and say: If you tell me that the human being descends from spiritual heights and connects with the physical, I don't believe it, because I don't see it.

Today, certain abilities are attributed to heredity. In the radical case of genius, people today try to present a genius and say: Now we go peddling and see if we can find the qualities that the genius has in the father or mother or up to aunt-like ancestors, and so the genius should be the last link in the line of inheritance. The fact that genius always appears at the end of the line of inheritance is cited as proof that genius arises through inheritance. For those who want to think in a thoroughly materialistic way, this sounds reasonable; but there is no logic behind it at all. For the doctrine would really be proven if the ancestor had the genius and this had inherited its properties to the descendants. But that is not the case. Those who take a closer look at human life will know that certain traits are inherited. We know that there are 29 musicians of varying ability in the Bach family. There is nothing miraculous about that. To become a proficient musician, one needs not only mental and spiritual qualities, but if the soul descends and meets no parents who can give it a developed ear, then it cannot become a musician. So just as the soul's qualities come from past lives, so the inner physiognomy of the ear depends on the ancestors. But when man becomes a closer observer of life, when he, as a thinking educator, sees this human soul developing in its manifold individualities, then he sees how the spiritual abilities by no means develop out of the physical human being, but he gets the feeling that something is working its way in that has lived in the spiritual world before. One then notices that the human being has often existed in this world, that he has adapted to this world in his various stages of existence.

Today we know that an earthworm can only develop from an earthworm germ, that it cannot grow from river mud, which all natural scientists believed 300 years ago. Today, people think that the wonderful human soul can arise without being transmitted from the spiritual and soul realm. Living things can only arise from living things, and spiritual and soul qualities only from spiritual and soul qualities. If one leads the spiritual-mental, which works in from a dark background, back to earlier spiritual-mental, and one is clear that the consequence of the spiritual-mental lies again in the spiritual-mental, that it goes beyond our present life, and that these different lives have nothing to do with what is called the line of inheritance.

A worldview like this will give courage and strength. The more materialistic people have become, the more they have become afraid of things. What is more widespread today than the fear of hereditary burden? The view has changed, and the result of this view, which is based on materialistic ideas, is fear of people, and this has an enormously paralyzing effect on life. If people live their soul unused and do not want to be filled with spiritual content, then what they inherit is indeed fatal for them. For they are weak in their soul.

The soul, like the body, wants to be nourished. It wants to be nourished with truths and insights. If a person trains himself in soul knowledge, he becomes strong and can control and overcome the laws of inheritance. Of course, today's materialists do not believe this. When the soul becomes desolate, then life remains unused, then what is called heredity carries a great deal of weight. It is therefore up to man to make his soul strong and powerful. A world view is not without practical consequences. He who has no idea that the soul really exists, lets his soul become desolate. The materialistic world view brings with it a desolation of the soul's feelings and emotional life. And it is true that such a soul has more to fear than a soul that strengthens itself with spiritual content. Here we see how the spiritual worldview provides enlightenment and security for life. At any time, so to speak, the two things interlock: the facts that arise in the clairvoyant consciousness about the fate of the soul, and the common sense that can say: I can understand life. And so the soul works its way through the individual lives to ever greater perfection. There is for the human soul, apart from the sensual life, a soul life and still another spiritual one. The soul passes through these lives, only to undergo a new one.

Even if life in the material world sometimes appears to be in decline, in general, life on earth and the intervening lives in the spiritual worlds are a continuous ascent. This worldview offers a wonderful perspective on the goal of life. This goal is becoming more and more spiritual in nature, both physically and spiritually. Indeed, we can say “spiritualization”, because the human being will increasingly recognize the foundations of physical life. More and more, he will work from the spiritual world. Ultimately, his own act will be his deliverance from the sensual world.

Thus man progresses towards his perfection in a way that is completely comprehensible to us. Those who extend the law of cause and effect, which is a scientific fact in the physical world, to the spiritual world, say to themselves: “Let people call you a dreamer and a fantasist – the time will come when the sentence: spiritual-mental can only come from spiritual-mental, will be recognized, where the realization will come of man's passage through all worlds, through many lives, and of man's perfection. When one comprehends the human development in this way, then one has certain concepts not only for the physical, sensual world, but also for the soul and spiritual world. These are not fantastic ideas, but concepts with which one connects something, just as man connects these or those concepts with ordinary sensual things.

And so today we can say: Yes, of course, the things that are facts for the initiate, such as the cycle of life through the different worlds, are still little recognized; but they will be recognized, and they will become a fact of the inner soul life for people. Humanity is moving from progress to progress, and it will also have to accept this progress. And those in particular who today still do not want to recognize these facts will have to recognize this progress, which solves the riddles of life, from the mystery of death.

Then people will understand that at first they can believe that what the initiates say is a reality, just as they believe when a microscopist says that a plant consists of cells. If we are willing to think through the analogy correctly, we will gain the courage to develop our own spiritual abilities, our spiritual eyes and ears, as Goethe says, and to learn to recognize what can give us a truly new religious religious consciousness, a religious consciousness that already lies in what we know as the truth of Christianity, which shows us that life in the world of the senses also has value for eternal, heavenly and spiritual life. With Christianity, a religious consciousness has entered into people that sees redemption not only in the spiritual world, but also in the taking over of the fruits of physical life, of what one has learned here.

Finally, let us visualize two images. The progress in our religious life goes from Buddha to Christ. We can only express our admiration for the great figure of Buddha to those who can understand the depth of the Buddha's soul. What Buddha expresses as the great truths of life is infinitely profound. It seems like a legend when Buddha, emerging from wealth and the king's environment, finds a corpse outside, a poor, miserable, sick man. He looks deep into the depths of life and speaks his great truths: life is suffering, death is suffering, illness is suffering, old age is suffering; being separated from what one loves is suffering; being connected to what one does not love is suffering. Desire for what cannot be obtained is suffering. The teaching of Buddha is that the thirst for existence, for re-embodiment and for new life must be quenched and mankind must be released from this sensual existence, which is called Nirvana. Buddha proclaims the fourfold suffering. Liberation from the suffering of this world, that is, ascending to the Buddha's teaching. And then Christ came into the world, that was a strange advance. Those who understand the essence of Christianity, who understood it in the first century, for example, had a different feeling about the name Christ. They had a feeling for how the spiritual life is clothed with the sensual existence, the material for which is supplied by the physical, sensual world. But we do not say with Buddha: We only want liberation and salvation from the sensual world. We say: This earth is worthy and dignified, because the body of Christ is also taken from the material of this earth. The earth over which Christ walked gives fruit for eternal life. And so, for those who recognized him, the existence of Christ became a certainty that from life to life, man takes the fruits of his existence into the spiritual world. And now the teaching of the Buddha changed. In the schools of spiritual science, it has always been expressed that the truth of life through Christ has changed. Birth, that is, entering life, is not just suffering, because we enter a life in which Christ has lived. Illness is not just suffering, because by connecting with Christ's powers we become master over illnesses. In the future, people will learn how to work externally on physical illnesses; the conqueror of illnesses is Christ in the human breast. And old age is not suffering, because as a person ages and the physical body declines, he will carry the fruits he receives in the physical body over into the spiritual world. And death is certainly not suffering, because it is a wonderful image of contrast: Buddha goes out of his royal castle and sees the corpse and there he comes to the great truth: death is suffering. And in the first centuries of Christianity, we gradually see people turning their eyes to the wood of the cross and seeing the corpse. And this is the guarantee of eternal life, of glorious eternal life, of the victory of eternal life. This corpse is not the proof that life is suffering, but that life is victory over all suffering.

The one who comprehends Christianity knows that he cannot be separated from what he loves, because the spiritual bond is woven from soul to soul. It is impossible not to be connected in a spiritual sense to what one loves, because one learns to embrace the whole universe and to purify one's desires.

The full meaning of Christianity will only be revealed by research, which we call spiritual science, not from any documents, but from the clairvoyant consciousness, independently of all records. Then Christianity will show itself as something that has not yet by a long way brought its deepest impulses to the surface. But not just a dead observation of the course of development of Christianity, but a deepening into the spiritual world and a bringing forth of these living germs from Christianity will mean the progress of Christianity. Spiritual science does not seek the Christ where he walked the earth, but is a faithful follower of the words:

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Therefore, we rediscover the Christ every day, and we find him, if we want to seek him today, through spiritual science, which, independently of all documents, looks into the spiritual world and sees the Christ as a guide to ever higher progress in it. This is how the cycle presents itself, and this is how it will always present itself to those who will understand spiritual people.

That everyone will experience this one day was the profound realization expressed by Goethe at an early age. He confirmed that he recognized a spiritual world to which the human being belongs just as he now belongs to the physical world. Yes, it was from the depths of his discerning soul that he spoke when he pointed out what can be renewed again and again in the human soul, what can constitute the happiness and blessing and blessedness of the human soul, which this spiritual world recognizes, which Goethe also recognized when he said:

The spiritual world is not closed;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead.
Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted,

The earthly breast at dawn!

Report in the “Neue Hamburger Zeitung” of February 14, 1902

Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke on this subject yesterday evening at the local Theosophical Society. We learn the following from the speaker's remarks, which are also of interest to those who do not share these views:

The genuine spiritual leaders of humanity differ from other people in that we keep returning to them and keep drawing valuable instruction from their writings. But only a few are called to this leadership. Among them is Goethe, the artist and proponent of a worldview that opens up infinite perspectives. He is a man of a deep, mystical nature who set down in Faust that which he could only reveal to mankind in symbols. Admittedly, this work has been little understood. The first part is admired as the great, ingenious work of an excellent poet, while the second has found only a few appreciative viewers. Even an esthete like Fr. Th. Vischer called the second part a cobbled-together concoction of old age. Only he who has grasped and understood the revelations of the inner life as they appear in the mystical works of all times can draw from the second part of Faust, this deep source. Goethe himself says that this part of the work is to be judged quite differently than the first, just as he also points out that one becomes a mystic in old age under all circumstances.

As early as the sixteenth century, the figure of Luther, who wanted to seek the truth with the Bible in his hand, was contrasted in folk legend with that of Faust. Faust sought the truth in the book of the world and wanted to build further, relying on the knowledge of nature. Such a personality does not throw the inkwell at the devil's head, but is taken by him. As a result of the education of his time and his own character, Goethe was ripe for understanding this Faustian urge for knowledge. The time had come for him to draw truth from nature; even as a seven-year-old boy, he sought to establish his own cult of nature! And knowledge of nature at its highest level is at the same time knowledge of man.

The first part of Faust shows how Goethe faces nature, a man facing the universe. But Faust cannot break away from the material and falls into a grave sin in the first stage of development. Which paths should Faust take in the future? His Italian journey opened up a new world for Goethe. On classical ground, the secrets of an old, noble art were revealed to him. He also eagerly pursued the laws of nature. Now Goethe was ready to have Faust embark on a profound path of development: the second part of Faust bears witness to this. At the emperor's court, Faust appears in the mask of Pluto, who was revered in ancient mysticism as the god of life and death. Goethe knew how an understanding of life can arise from death. Faust shows the emperor Helen and Paris, the eternal living, eternal archetypes of those who have overcome life and recognized death. Faust finds these archetypes in mothers. Just as in Greek symbolism the appearance of a female personality signifies the attainment of a deeper level of consciousness, so in Goethe's work the mothers are a symbolic representation of the deeper layers of consciousness to which man descends, a representation of the depths of his own soul, from which he draws self-knowledge. But when Faust wants to grasp the archetypes, they fade away, for he has not yet progressed to the full inner experience. In Homunculus, we see a product of pure knowledge. Homunculus cannot yet live, but it can be a guide on the path to life to where Goethe himself was led: to ancient Greece, to find the real Helen, who can now stand before his soul as a figure of experience. Euphorion, who is created by Faust, represents the highest, initially achievable level of consciousness.

At the beginning of Act 4, Faust appears as a complete mystic. He has reinterpreted the best of his inner being for immortality. He who has awakened the highest humanity in himself, confronts the world as a completely new person, and so Faust strives for comprehensive activity in all fields. Once again he becomes a sinner, but then he appears at a higher level, that of material blindness. But the soul shines all the more brightly in its eternal radiance. Now Faust has become completely spirit in the body. Faust's ascent through the stages signifies a series of inner processes and opens up the perspective of immortality. The hymn of Pater ecstaticus is a paraphrase of Fichte's “I am eternal in all finiteness”. This shows the illumination of truth within the human being. During Faust's ascent to heaven, Goethe seeks to symbolize the higher powers of knowledge again in a female figure, this time the Mater dolorosa. The Chorus mysticus also shows that Goethe wanted the development in the second part of Faust to be understood as a symbolic-mystical one. The eternal feminine that draws us up is the deeper forces of our consciousness. Only he attains eternity who acquires it during the time. Thus Goethe concludes the second part of his Faust as a true theosophical mystic. The words are spoken from a higher vantage point:

Who always strives, we can redeem.

and

Only he deserves freedom and life, Who must conquer them daily.

Dear attendees! That the theosophical worldview is not just a series of doctrines and dogmas and that professing them is not the main thing will be best shown when we practically consider the great cultural issues of our time. Today we want to look at educational issues from a theosophical point of view. What more beautiful fruit could arise from this world view than if it led us into the depths and into all corners of human nature, if it taught us to understand the human being and thus the art of influencing it. That would, of course, be different from if we came only out of curiosity or a desire for knowledge, to hear and learn unknown things about the mind, soul and body of man.

This path alone – the path of learning – cannot be called theosophical, because the theosophical path is only the one that passes through practical life. For those who do not delve deeper into the teachings in their daily lives, they remain incomprehensible. You only get to know the human being in terms of soul and spirit if you work with the undeveloped life of the same. This also gives you insight into the higher worlds. And we cannot deny that an intimate understanding of the soul is needed if we want to be leaders.

The human being consists of different parts, of which the physical body is only one. It is of great importance to know this, because the person who knows that the soul of this child has already led a rich life, that it has already taken many steps through many lives on earth, will relate to the growing child quite differently. What appears at birth in the way of aptitudes and abilities has been acquired in previous lives.

Anyone who knows that the soul gradually evolves out of its shells sees the child with completely different eyes. Not only with regard to the more intimate knowledge of human nature, but also to the whole process of human development in time, Theosophy sheds new rays of light.

We must distinguish between two aspects of the human being: firstly, an eternal core that gains new experiences in the most diverse embodiments, in that it takes something of an extract from each life on earth, so to speak, and secondly, the lower human nature, which only forms the shell of the actual self. Let us briefly repeat what this lower nature consists of.

We have, firstly, the tangible, visible physical body; secondly, the etheric body, which creates the shape of the human being; thirdly, the desires, instincts and passions – the astral body. The higher self is enclosed in these sheaths. We have the physical body in common with the mineral kingdom, the etheric body with the plant kingdom, and the astral body with the animal kingdom. Only the fourth, the I, is possessed by the human being alone. The sheaths that surround the I serve the human being as instruments, as tools, in which the actual I, that which already existed, lives out.

With each new birth, these three sheaths are formed anew. However, we do not have to imagine these sheaths as onion skins that seal off the core of our being from the outside world. Rather, the bodies penetrate each other, and the I penetrates the bodies.

Only those who know the growing human child not only in terms of their physical body, but also take into account their developing and growing etheric and astral bodies, can fully influence their education.

But there are other fundamental questions to be grasped. Great progress has been made in the art of education for over a hundred years. Pestalozzi on the one hand, Rousseau on the other, as well as Herder, have paved the way for the attempt to find the way to make a whole human being out of the child. Deep attempts have been made. Through theosophy, these attempts are becoming even more profound.

Since the subject is so vast, this evening we will limit ourselves to a few educational questions with regard to the finer limbs of the human being.

As long as one regards people as a real mess, one can only achieve results from observations. It is quite different for someone whose gaze is able to perceive the four limbs of the human being, or who at least has knowledge of the connections between these things. The child develops differently in the first years of life and differently in later years. We will now ignore the ego for the time being and deal with the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

Let us consider the child as it stands before us after its birth. There we have the physical body, which is most important. Then, from the seventh or eighth year onwards, it is particularly important to take the greatest care of the etheric body. At the time of the onset of sexual maturity, the astral body requires a very unique educational treatment.

What should happen in the first years of life? The etheric body is devoted entirely to the growth of the physical body during this year, so that the etheric body is not yet free for the astral body according to its natural disposition. Only later, when the physical body is formed, is the etheric body freed for independent growth; for the occult eye, this is connected with the will, which sits deepest.

The one thing in man that he most easily changes is his concepts and ideas. The concepts we form of things in earliest childhood differ significantly from what we think about them in later life. Our emotional world is also changeable, although it changes more difficult than the conceptual world. If, for example, a child has a grumpy disposition, it will be difficult for him to get rid of it. Temperament and character change more slowly.

The most difficult thing of all is the basic character of the will, because the will has its seat where the human being can do the least. He can create new understanding, acquire new feelings, but there is one thing he cannot do: he cannot work on the physical body; and it is the physical body that gives the basic shade to the character of the will. It is only possible to work on the physical body in the first years of life. The educator must always bear this in mind. It is now up to him to develop courage of will in the early years; he must devote himself entirely to its pure development; he must beware of interfering by wanting to teach the child concepts too early. So the will must be developed above all else. The human being has an instinct for imitation. The educator's attention must be focused mainly on this instinct for imitation. He must ensure that good role models are available for the child to imitate. The educator must have an effect on the child through his mere presence. The foundation for some good qualities, such as fearlessness and presence of mind, must be laid in the first year. Until the age of seven, the main focus must be on educating the physical body to become a useful organism.

Is it not possible to influence the etheric body at all during this period? The educator should not intervene much. He must work through his presence. He will then realize that feelings and thoughts are facts. He must not believe that only a slap in the face, a push or an upset stomach are real, but he must be aware that whether he has a good or an evil disposition is just as real, and that it matters who cares for the child. It is not what one does with the etheric and astral bodies of the child that matters, but rather with what thoughts, with what attitude, with what atmosphere one surrounds the child. Depending on the environment, the child's attitude will also be noble or ignoble. Thus it is possible to influence the child systematically, with full consciousness, by setting an example in ordinary, daily life. Everything the child absorbs, it absorbs through the senses, and what it absorbs, it imitates. In this way one is able to influence it harmoniously.

It would be very important if this idea were thoroughly worked on from a theosophical point of view, so that one would learn to recognize better and better the tremendous importance of the environment for a young child. Let us try to make this clear to ourselves in a few details. Some people believe that they are doing a child a great service by giving it a beautiful doll. This is the worst thing possible in the eyes of the occultist. With the beautiful doll, the child's instinct for imitation, which is to be stimulated, is forced into certain channels. The creative power is killed. If you observe a child closely, you will often see that it throws away the most beautiful toys and creates a new one for itself from the simplest material. You should not give the child a reflection of reality. Imitation must not be allowed to restrict the imagination. The child must live in an illusory world; the imagination must occupy the child. It must develop its own powers and create its own world of ideas. And this inner strength remains idle in the face of a beautiful doll. The child's games are reproductions of what they hear and see; they demand mental effort. This awakens two kinds of energy: skill and the ability to maintain balance in a wide range of circumstances. These are some of the aspects from which the education of a young child must be considered.

Around the seventh year, the etheric body becomes freer. The physical body has now acquired the vitality to develop further. Now it is important to influence the etheric body and develop its powers, which are memory and attention. Good habits should be instilled during this time. The educator must now develop these soul powers.

This has also been considered by today's educators. The astral body must not be influenced yet; that comes later; in these years, formal education is the main thing. It is not about acquiring a lot of specific knowledge at first, but about the human being itself. What the person does not learn in the way of geography and so on during these years can be made up later, but what cannot be made up is the acquisition of memory and attention. And these powers should be strengthened so that the person is later protected from flightiness, so that he learns to stand firm and not become fickle. So it is important to teach formal education at this age.

In this regard, big mistakes are made. As early as possible, one wants to develop the child's judgment, to answer the why and wherefore. This is not the right time for that. Rather, one should offer the child a sum of contemplation and thus strengthen his memory. Inner silence must be encouraged, one must try to limit the incessant questioning in order to promote a rich inner life. It is not a matter of saying no and yes, but of developing the possibility of one's own judgment; this would be restricted by saying: This you should do, that you should leave, but one should work more through examples and stories. The spiritual must be reflected in the symbols, fairy tales and mythologies that are communicated to the child; this awakens deeper soul forces. By saying yes and no, we restrict these forces; they should develop out of themselves. No ready-made morals should be given to the child; one should try to create great thoughts and feelings for great people. If possible, little doctrine. Stories of great personalities work better than moral rules. Describe the world, but don't teach rules and laws. It is not one's own judgment and views that should be cultivated at this time; the child is not yet mature enough for that. But what is missed in the development of memory between the ages of seven and fourteen cannot be made up for later. For example, in arithmetic: If the foundations have been laid through visual instruction, then memory must be used to learn the multiplication table. The same applies to languages and other things.

The educator has to gradually withdraw his personality and become a servant to the child. He must not only fill the child's soul with wisdom; he must approach the child's nature and slip out of his soul. He must be a puzzle solver. It is a great gain for the soul when the etheric sheath is given a fixed form in the seventh to fourteenth year. When the memory is practised, when the ability to dwell on one object in quiet concentration is developed, these are firm and solid habits that become constant in people, remaining with them for life.

Whatever we can do must be practised. During these years, everything must be repeated over and over again to become a habit. Formative, creative powers are developed in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth year. The task of the educator is now to lead from example to the ability to judge; the child should learn to use his finer powers. The soul must not be influenced alone, nor must it be guided only by precept and prohibition. Pythagoras struck a balance here and gave wise teachings clothed in a form that held the middle way between example and principle. Thou shalt not beat fire with thy sword, that is, a person in anger wastes strength. He now expresses this in a way that not only appeals to the abstract mind, but he also frames the teaching in a picture that stimulates the child's imagination, develops his fantasy, his imagination. The Pythagorean tenets are something between a picture and a principle. The aim should be to work towards the child learning to form his or her own opinion. The child's opinion should not be narrowed down by strict doctrines, but broadened. And this is done through images, through symbolic representations of the great truths. During the first years of school, the aim is to bring calm and work into the right relationship with the etheric body. As the time of maturity approaches, it is necessary to bring the right balance to maturity, so that the person can live out in the three worlds. The first task was to free the etheric body from the demands of the physical exertions of the body; this required careful observation in order to steel the body through gymnastic exercises and make it mobile, and then to give it the necessary rest, to get it used to rest while the etheric body works.

The tasks of the educator become increasingly difficult as the third period, the time of sexual maturation, approaches. Here, the astral body must be treated with care. Only now has the time come when the child must be taught to form their own judgment. Before that, it was necessary to encourage taciturnity. In the first period, the senses impel the child to imitate; the task is to create the right model for him. In the second period, the child should be influenced by authority; this is natural and has a beneficial effect, inspiring faith and trust. Happy the child who looks up with reverence to an authority that is everything to him. During the third period, the educator has to let his own wisdom take a back seat to the wisdom of the person he has before him in the growing child. Sexual maturity is connected with the independence of the human being. Preparation is necessary for this. What the astral body is to absorb must be prepared in the etheric body. This relates to the harmonious development of the emotional world. If we succeed in awakening graceful, aesthetic feelings in the child, this has an effect on the astral body and produces a normal, harmonious, aesthetic power of judgment.

It is not good when children of 16 or 17 approach us with ready-made judgments; this takes its toll bitterly. We should bring them noble figures from history, beautiful poems, the works of our great masters, but not a confession. Confessions evoke a yes or no, but not a rich inner life. And those who have not had the good fortune to see authorities before them will not come to their own judgment either.

Now is the time when we must strive to develop the relationship between people. In the past, it was important to awaken the spirit of worship; now he must learn to recognize the value of different people himself. Now he learns to distinguish his earlier relationship to people as man to man, recognizes what is worthy and what is unworthy. For what must now be awakened? The affects, the sensations, the feelings of pleasure and suffering. The astral body develops through our dealings with the world around us. Therefore, we must first cultivate the astral body in such a way that it works inwards. Now it is coming to the fore. If it is to make the right use of its freedom, the etheric body must be prepared for it. The astral body was otherwise called the body of instincts and desires. If it is not properly prepared, it will express itself in wild desires and the vices of academic life. If it is not prepared for freedom, the driving force that wants to live it up becomes wild and unrestrained; it must be strengthened in earlier years by educating the etheric body.

Through theosophical knowledge, the educator will be able to deepen and spiritualize his pedagogical skills. Thus, Theosophy becomes useful when it is used to influence young people. The usefulness of having these concepts will be recognized by those who try to apply them in practice in their lives. He will then gain knowledge from life itself, even if he renounces the theosophical worldview. And this practical knowledge is worth more than curiosity and a thirst for knowledge.

External material knowledge often does not depend on us. The state, the class, the circumstances are often decisive; but that is not the most important thing either. What is required by profession and station can take a good or a bad direction. Even with the most flawed curriculum and the most overcrowded classrooms, you can still be effective if you know the person. If it is true that the human being can develop all his powers harmoniously, then this can only happen if you recognize the person from the first year of life, even before birth.

Spiritual things are real. It matters not which thoughts surround a child, not unimportant who receives the human being. It depends very much on whether the person who receives a human being has good or evil thoughts and feelings; doctors and midwives should be priestly educated, ennobled personalities. If this is the case, then the human being enters a pure atmosphere at birth, and that is not insignificant. The spirit is a real thing. This is an area where an insightful education can do a lot of good, and conversely, ignorance can do a lot of harm. Imperfectly, the human being comes into existence. He comes into existence to acquire higher abilities; he must pay for the possibility of rising higher with his helplessness. He must be helped. In this we recognize the solidarity of all humanity, the necessity of mutual aid. Thus, all humanity is one great body, of which individuals are only members. This gives us an understanding of brotherhood, the first principle of the Theosophical Society.

When a human being comes into existence, it is not a matter of a finished life in the most eminent sense; the task of the educators lies in educating him for culture, and this can only happen if it is done out of a sense of brotherhood, out of a sense of community.

Answering questions

One teacher, who was obviously deeply moved by this clear and convincing speech, asked a question about inheritance.

Answer: Above all, the educator must be an observer. He must observe human nature in the child. In doing so, it does not matter at first whether he has a materialistic view that the child's abilities and drives come from heredity, or a theosophical view that the child has acquired his abilities in previous lives on earth and is therefore born into certain circumstances with certain parents. The facts, the result of observation, will always be the same. The educator must be careful not to intervene forcibly in the child's development. Here is an example: an educator had to deal with an eleven-year-old boy in a family. He was retarded and his body was not normal either; he had a large head. He had never progressed beyond the lowest class. His arithmetic books, among other things, were in a sorry state. When he had calculated a task, it was never right, and he kept erasing until everything was full of holes.

The educator did not despair and said to himself: the soul would form the body. He carefully set about educating the child's soul, working according to the principle of the smallest measure of force. He started from very specific points of view and learned that one learns to solve puzzles. He succeeded in educating the boy into a normal child in a year and a half because he was able to recognize the causes of the characteristics. The large head gradually took on the right shape; the boy then developed normally and was later able to study.

It would be very desirable if the question of education were to be thoroughly elaborated in the light of Theosophy.