The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today desire goes out of the astral body, interest lies in the I, and pleasure is in the etheric body. Previously interest was in the astral body, desire was in the etheric body and pleasure was in the physical body; this was in the Lemurian epoch when there was no disease, food flowed in and out, and egoless people without interest in outer things changed bodies like clothes. Pictures arose in the astral body that told a man what was good or harmful for him. He was interested in the pictures that arose within him and this interest remained when he changed bodies. This was a permanent astral consciousness. This changed when the I that had been in the spiritual world sank into man and permeated him more and more. Interest moved into the I. The I drew interest up to itself, it drew everything up to its own realm. Thereby it tied itself off from the Gods, and the result was death. Everything that doesn't happen for the whole but for a single something that's separated from the whole, and therefore is egoism, finally leads to the destruction of this single thing, to death.

Rosicrucianism calls this interest that goes out from the ego estimatio. We must raise our interest to the astral plane again; whereby we gain imaginatio. When desire is brought back into the etheric body we attain incantatio or inspiratio. And by putting pleasure back into the physical body we get intuitio.

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One must repeatedly let what one had heard in esoteric classes pass before one's soul, and only then will one gradually get out the forces that are hidden in what's given. In this way one learns to distinguish between thoughts that work productively in one's soul and those that are unproductive since they only reflect on things that are already given. If one looks at a watch one can make its whole construction and how it's kept in motion clear in one's thought. But they are unproductive thoughts. The one who first invented a watch had productive thoughts. Most of our scientific thinking is unproductive. But when we occupy ourselves with what's given to our thinking in esoteric classes we occupy ourselves with productive thoughts, and that's a source of strength for our soul. Such thoughts must pass through our soul in the right order. Just as nothing could exist in an organism if a leg was attached where an arm was supposed to be, so everything in our thinking must be consequent. Let's place such a thought structure before our soul today.

One says a lot about wisdom. But wisdom isn't what's often called wisdom today. One gets smart through experience, but wisdom is the force that streams into us from the spiritual world and then streams out again. Wisdom also comes from the mouth of babes. When what streams out comes more from the feeling, it's wisdom, but when it stimulates a man into action so that productivity predominates, it's love. But one has to know what love really is. Someone may feel sympathy for a man's misfortune, but that isn't real love. Sympathy only becomes love if one steps in and helps him. Wisdom and love make up the I. The I is love and wisdom that have become will. This is the higher triad. When it's reflected somewhat lower I, love and wisdom become thinking, willing and feeling, respectively. Reflected even further down they become the four temperaments. Men have composite temperaments, but angels only have one each. The first kind of angels are those who work the choleric temperament into men. Such people like to do things. Sanguine angels inject men with a temperament that makes them receptive to all sublime and beautiful things, although such men aren't very active. They get enthused easily but don't stick to anything very long.

Phlegmatic angels influence men so that they're not interested in what others have created. They do not leave such a creation the way it is, they repeatedly change it, they make everything flowing and indefinite. This is already expressed in the word phlegma, which means slime. Phlegmatics can't make decisions and resolutions and so they're always missing opportunities. Their bodies have soft and indefinite forms, they walk softly as they weave back and forth. And yet such people can also be choleric in their insistence on particular foods that they like. Melancholic angels work on a man so that he sees everything in himself, he's only occupied with himself, he does nothing for progress. So he doesn't enjoy creation and becomes dull and dark. One must judge all characters on the basis of what the individual does for the whole's progress. If one reflects these qualities even further down then choleric corresponds to fire, air to sanguine, phlegmatic to water, and melancholic to earth—there everything becomes rigid and solid.

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One should hold such figures before one repeatedly. They make it possible that our soul organism is built up in the right way. One must think through such figures clearly. Our inner life can't be strengthened by thoughts that oscillate back and forth. The soul gets stronger if one places such forms before one's spiritual eye.

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Foreign beings can't press into a being that's enclosed by a skin. So man's astral body was a zero, a nothing for other beings. Through the fact that the astral body had separated from the whole astral matter and had surrounded itself with a skin it had become a one, and people described this by putting a one in front of the zero: 10 Then they added the six and five that refer to the Venus and Jupiter stages of evolution that gives rise to the mystical number 1065 that is mentioned in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine (Vol. 1, Dzyan iv).

When a pupil becomes clairvoyant he sees rats, mice and other parasitic animals. Beings with beautiful human faces but crippled feet come to tempt him. The snake is a symbol for the astral body. One should use the shining staff with a black snake and a brightly shining, glittering snake to banish the beings that want to drag one down. Sphinxes and cherubs are good pictures to see.

The physical body doesn't belong to us, it's an optical illusion. It's formed by streams that go out from Thrones. Imagine brooks that flow together; a whirlpool arises where they meet. Likewise the physical body arises where streams from Thrones come together. The black cross represents the lower animal part of man that must be overcome. The seven red roses must sprout and flower out of it. A beautiful story tells us that when Christ hung on the cross, bees came and drew honey from his bleeding wounds, as from red roses otherwise. The blood's composition had changed through the sacrifice and had become like the sap of red roses.

All battles here on earth are only a weak copy of the Gods' battles.

One often hears Theosophists say that there are dangers connected with occult development. But it should be emphasized that one mustn't be kept from treading an occult path because one has a feeling of fear For someone who gets indications from a proper esoteric school and follows them correctly will also develop properly. The main thing is to awaken the right seriousness in one and to permeate oneself completely with the things one learns in esoteric classes.

It's always good for an esoteric to tell himself that he still has a long way to go. One may have grasped something with one's intellect a while back and yet not have arranged one's life in accordance with the knowledge gained. As an example of this, we can give the statement that should be familiar to all theosophists: “Everything that surrounds us is maya.” There are people who find this very enlightening but don't apply it. They let pains and joys work upon them without telling themselves: If everything is maya, then the cause of my pain is also maya.

But it's good that this is so, for if a man would take this statement into his feeling too soon, he might not be able to stand the shock that he would get, thereby. This requires a strong force that must gradually develop, and namely in that a man tries to see the truth in this statement through little everyday things around him rather than through big events in his life. We know that everything that surrounds us looks different than it really is. For instance, let's take a red object. Through what do we see the red color? Through the fact that light falls on it. If the object is in the dark, it doesn't look red. But when light shines on it, a red color arises because the object absorbs all the other colors that light produces and only reflect the red color it can't use, that it doesn't want or like. So it shows what it isn't in its interior.

Now, can a man press into this interior and get to know the true nature of things? He can only do this on a meditative path. If a man sticks to a view or idea he's also being confused by maya. But he usually also does something else. If a color approaches him, let's say a red one, it has an effect on his feeling. He has a freshening feeling when he looks at red. A blue mixed with a little violet will put him in a devotional mood. A man has these feelings in himself and he feels that they are true. The objects that induce these feelings may be maya, may arise and pass away, but the feelings remain the same. Someone can go out into a forest, hear a rustling and be frightened by it because he imagines that it's coming from a snake, whereas it was caused by the wind. Further on he can hear rustling again that is really coming from a snake this time. His fright is the same in both cases, but one time the cause was a deception.

But how do we arrive at the true nature of things through our feelings? When we look at the way plants sprout, shoot and put out vernal flowers, how are we supposed to see the truth behind the maya that they stretch out to us? There is a moment in the life of a plant when it shows us something of its inner nature, and that's when it begins to die. And when does this happen? At fertilization time. Up till then the plant used all of its forces to push back what it doesn't want, but now it has received something from outside, and it turns its life around, as it were. It loses its rejection power and withdraws into itself, it now turns the force that it used outwards inwards. Can we awaken a feeling in us that is like this process in a plant's soul life? When would we like to withdraw into our interior? When do we lose the power to ward off outer things? When we feel shame. If we awaken this feeling without outer cause and look at a fertilized plant, we'll become aware that the very same feeling lives in the plant, that it lives in it so intensely that it makes it die. In the fall a feeling of enormous shame runs through plants. A red rose is a quite special example of this.

Now which color would we use for the feeling of dying, for withdrawal from the outer things to the spirit? Black, and that's why we have the black cross on which red roses bloom. Black, charcoaled wood in which all outer things have died is an expression to us of the fact that the spirit reveals itself behind all dying things. Goethe once spoke of the color that the earth would have to have when it's dying at the end of the present cycle and passes over into a spiritual realm as it's fertilized by the spirit. It would have to “glow in flaming red.” This remark arises from keep knowledge. For when the earth is mature enough to be fertilized by the spirit how could the earth do anything else than to glow in deep shame?

If we awaken feelings in us that are induced by outer things in this way we'll get closer to the truth behind these things. We can also awaken pictures and feelings in us without any outer cause, can create ideas and feelings only in us. Then we're together with a world in us that wasn't produced by any outer cause, and thereby we can find the path to absolute truth. This should happen in our meditations. If we look at the sun and meditate on its vitalizing influences, we always have an outer inducement for the meditation. But if we take the words: In pure rays of light … etc. and awaken to an idea of light in us, and then imagine that it's the garment of the godhead, then we've recreated something in us that's not connected with anything external. And then when we awaken a feeling of love for all beings in the next lines, we'll permeate ourselves with this feeling, and it'll become a strong germinating force in us.

Before we begin today's esoteric study, let's direct a prayer at the Spirit of Thursday. For an esoteric should increasingly acquire real modesty and humility so that he doesn't turn to the highest Godhead with his affairs, but consider that between it—which we can't get an inkling of with the greatest human intellect—and us, all the great hierarchies are present.

Great embracing Spirit,
In your light radiates the earth's life,
My life's in yours.
You are.
My soul works in yours.
With your leader I tread my path.
I live with him.
His being is an image of my own being.
You are.
The leader's being in my soul finds you, embracing Spirit.
Blissfulness is mine out of your beings' breath.
You are.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

We'll elucidate our meditations from another side today. An esoteric wants to try to approach the Christ Spirit more intensively and to connect himself more closely with him through his meditations than he could through exoteric Christianity. The entry of the Christ principle into our earth evolution was such an incisive event even for outer history that we calculate our division of time in accordance with it. Back when Zoroaster saw the figure of the approaching Sun Spirit in the sun he gathered pupils around him to make them into servants of the great Ahura Mazdao, and he prepared himself ever more to take this Sun Spirit into himself.

When the earth with all of its beings looks up to the sun, it must tell itself that it can't do what the sun can, namely, send out light. It would be a dark, black body if the sun's light didn't permeate it and it couldn't reflect it. Since the Christ became the spirit of the planet earth through the Event of Golgotha, he's in the force that sprouts up through the earth's cover of green plants.

The masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings give us the great world truths in symbols, and here it's mainly the rose cross which—when it's reflected in us—can awaken and strengthen the power of the Christ-spirit in us. In our last esoteric class, we saw that a red cross brings a feeling of shame to expression in its red color. Now we know that all colors produce their counter color in us, which for red is green. So the sight of the black cross awakens the white, radiant sunlight of Christ in us, and the red roses stimulate a force so that green life can sprout out of the Christ-force's bright light. If we imagine a rose cross with this feeling and let it live in us like this, we share in one part of our earth's force, of our earth spirit, of the Christ-spirit.

As esoterics, we must always try to think good thoughts about things that seem to be maya to us. We must be permeated by the feeling that a spark of this force slumbers in everything, which can break forth at some point to outshine all evil things. We should also have the complete trust that all good and positive things on earth will and must be victorious.

Notes B, extract:

The cross is the highest of all symbols. One can get the whole of world history out of it, and even natural science could be built up out of it … In my essay The Education of the Child, it was pointed out that red has a calming effect inwardly. One would be able to see that the soul is then immersed in green … Living, sprouting, shooting green is the working of the Christ-spirit in the earth. The earth is permeated with it, as it were, and it's literally true that we on earth are walking on Christ's body. And the green is his etheric body.

By meditating the rose cross, it also becomes light in us, and the Christ-force will awaken the working of green in our soul, which was also awakened in the earth by this same force. And when this force works in us, we'll then feel a great confidence growing in us that pure love must overcome all evil and that truth can be found. For us this lies in the words: In pure rays of light …

Prayer to the spirit of Wednesday:

Great embracing Spirit,
In the knowledge of your being is world knowledge that is to become mine.
You are.
I want to unite my soul with you.
May your cognizing leader illuminate my path.
Feeling your leader, I tread the path of life.
Your leader is the sun of life.
He lived in my longing.
I want to take his being into mine.
You are.
May my force take the leader's force into itself.
Blissfulness moves into me.
The blissfulness in which the soul finds the spirit.
You are.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

Last time we saw that the symbols we're given can and should work o us in our meditations. To round off these three esoteric lessons, we'll speak about the wrong paths that we can get on as esoterics.

In ordinary exoteric life, we have all possible terms for qualities that we know are good or bad. These terms are often inadequate and one-sided for an esoteric, for every quality has two sides, good and bad, and one of an esoteric's main tasks must be to keep the right balance. He must constantly be on guard and be watching himself in general. Human qualities are such that a man can control them very well with his ego if they stay in the right balance. But if he lets any one become too intensive, the ego can get under the control of this quality. This isn't very dangerous in an exoteric; he's always brought back into equilibrium by the spirit of everyday affairs. But things are different with an esoteric. A quality that he allows to control him can get him into all possible dangers. Something like that can even become a disease of the physical body in his present life. Let's make this clear to ourselves by an example.

Who doesn't know ill feelings and discords. We've all been subjected to them But an esoteric must try to combat them with his ordinary ego For if he lets ill feelings master him, something happens to him. He succumbs to the wrong spirit of heaviness. Such spirits of heaviness really exist. A spirit of heaviness belongs to the archai, and he's the one who brings us back into our physical body when we wake up in the morning. This falls into his sphere of activity, and that's good and right for us. But some of these spirits overstep their sphere and want to work in the realm of the Spirits of Form. They're the ones who take over an esoteric's etheric body when he gives in to ill feelings and who work on it so that he succumbs to hypochondria. This then becomes manifest physically in diseases of the intestinal tract. This can also be said in exoteric lectures, but in our esoteric lessons we should always remember that we receive direct messages from the master who intended them especially for esotericism.

Another quality against which an esoteric should especially be on his guard and should be on the lookout for s that he doesn't succumb to it, is vanity, pride. We're often not aware of how much we've already succumbed to it and so must especially watch it. Many people imagine that they would like to help out of a “love for mankind.” But if one tells them that they can only achieve this through constant, diligent learning, one notices that they don't want this; they would like to start doing things right away, without thinking how much harm they can do through the wrong help. That's a very dangerous vanity to which all of those benefactors and confused fanatics have succumbed who preach their world view with nice words and unclear phrases, for they think that it's their mission to do this.

So what happens if an esoteric doesn't' suppress this vanity? He succumbs to Spirits of Light and namely to the regular, good ones who are recruited from hosts of Wisdom Spirits, but to ones who work down into the realm of the Spirits of Movement Good Spirits of Light have the task of leading a man into the spiritual world when he goes to sleep, to guide him into it so that he's unconscious when he gets there. But if an esoteric wants to accelerate his development in an irregular way without learning what he must know about spiritual worlds, then one of the other spirits of light overpowers him and influences his etheric body in such a way that the brain is affected by it. The result is confusion, fanaticism, and eventually insanity.

Anyone who succumbs to the spirit of heaviness only harms himself, and one should try to help him in every way, for we should love each man and not just mankind. But one who succumbs to the Spirits of Light can harm everyone with his confused fanaticism. Therefore, we should repeatedly ask whether the reasons we want to develop ourself are really selfless ones; we shouldn't get tired of learning, for the more we learn, the easier it is to become modest.

We shouldn't get scared if we feel the spirit of heaviness on waking in the morn, so that we feel exhausted and our limbs feel so heavy that we can hardly move them. This is a passing stage and a sign that we've gotten past the improper stage of hypochondria. And anyone who has the feeling that it's hard for him to keep his feet on the ground at certain times, doesn't have to be upset, for he has passed the stage of fanaticism, and the phenomenon is just a regular one in his development. A man's soul is kept in balance by the spirit of gravity and the Spirit of Light, and esoterics should always try to maintain this equilibrium.

We're referred to this balance by a master of wisdom in the prayer that we say at the close and which contains all the wisdom of the world that will be revealed to us evermore:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

My dear friends!

I would like to combine the two lectures today and tomorrow into one unit, so that today we look up at certain ideas and facts of the spiritual world, which we then want to summarize tomorrow in a certain world view that is particularly important for the present time.

Perhaps it will already be understandable to some today that we are currently living in a time that, for all those who, in one form or another, are participating in and living through this time, means a time that demands the development of the soul in a way approaches the soul in such a way that this way cannot easily be compared with anything we know from before, whether it be through our own human experience or through anything else we have been able to take in. One could say many things. One could express through many symptoms and images what this very special thing about soul development consists of.

Let's start with an image. You know – either you have heard it or read about it in lectures or in cycles of lectures – that over the years in which we have spoken to each other in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I have often referred to the name Herman Grimm, to Herman Grimm as a spirit who, in the most eminent sense, has grown directly out of the development of German culture and has placed himself in this development of German culture and spirit. I can say, my dear friends, that when I spoke of Herman Grimm in the years up to 1914, it always seemed to me as if he were standing beside me spiritually, as if one could have had the thought: What does such a personality say, which - albeit in a completely different form than spiritual science makes possible - has participated intensively in German spiritual life? The feeling that such minds as Herman Grimm's — he died in 1901, at the age of 70 — such a feeling that such minds are standing beside you and quietly asking the question: What do I myself have to say about what is being brought forth from the spiritual life of humanity, be it in one form or another, and thus also in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? This feeling, we have not had it since 1914. That is significant. Today, my dear friends, there is no possibility, from the outside, to ask oneself: How would a personality like Herman Grimm behave in the context of our times and in relation to anything that is taking place in the development of the spirit in the sense of this time? Of course, Herman Grimm would be almost 90 years old if he were still alive, but if he were still alive today, one must imagine that, from the thoughts that such a personality could have, from the way he way of experiencing the present life of humanity, it would hardly be possible for such a personality, to gain a judgment, a position to that, which has gone on in these three years since 1914 over the development of humanity.

Now we can certainly ask ourselves the question differently from our point of view, we can ask ourselves the question like this: How does such a soul, after passing through the gate of death and having lived through almost twenty years in the spiritual world, look down on us and on what is happening here on earth? We come to the conclusion that it does not look down so uncomprehendingly as it actually should have done, considering how alien everything is to what such a personality has felt on earth.

It is not without reason, my dear friends, that I draw your attention to such a thought. We have thus hinted at a thought that, to a certain extent, cannot be completely real to us, cannot be completely real, a thought that asks: How understandingly or unintelligently would a personality like Herman Grimm face the present, the external present? We know very well that this thought has no reality, namely because the soul, when it passes through the gate of death, continues to develop in a completely different way – and that is the reality – in a completely different way than it would have developed if it had remained in the body for years. But to pose the question of how such a personality would face the external present today, to virtually present us with this unreal thought, the unreality of which we can be well aware of, is good material for meditation. Above all, such thoughts have great significance for our spiritual life, and it can be said that they will gain ever greater importance for our spiritual life. More and more, people will have to become accustomed to thinking that takes into account factors such as putting oneself in the place of such a thought: this is how it would have been if such a personality had remained on earth.

It will become more and more necessary for our thinking to become more agile through such thoughts than it unfortunately is in this day and age. For what is around us, my dear friends, what humanity is experiencing with such terror, what makes our feelings so different, is largely connected with the development of thoughts – or one could also say with the lack of development of thoughts in recent times. If I am to correctly supplement the thoughts expressed earlier, I would like to say that since 1914, when I think of Herman Grimm and his school of thought and world view, I feel something as I used to feel when I looked back centuries to a personality who was centuries before us, to a personality who had long since become historical. But, my dear friends, it will only gradually dawn on humanity that these years are now in reality a much longer time than they are in terms of the external, physical course. We have actually - it can be said that it is not an exaggeration - we have actually lived through centuries in these three years. But, my dear friends, we must not be afraid to add something else to the concept that we have acquired over the decades within our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, to the “we have lived through centuries”; we must not be afraid to add: in many, many respects, these times have not only been lived through, but in a certain higher sense they have also been slept through. What do we mean when we say that they have been slept through in a higher sense? These years contain so many possibilities for life and experience that for many souls these possibilities for life and experience pass by in much the same way as the events that take place around a person when he is asleep. They are there when he sleeps, but he does not perceive them.

I would like to speak to you today about some of the conditions of awakening in our time, of being awakened in our time, my dear friends, in these preliminary discussions. It will be necessary for humanity to see many things in a different light than it has been seen before. And so let us point out a basic fact, an important, important basic fact, which can bring our thinking in the direction, in the current, that we need to understand what is already preparing for many in this time. Let us look, my dear friends, at what is being said, thought, and expressed in words from various places around the world. From the outset, one must of course believe that when this or that is expressed in thoughts or in words, these words, these thoughts mean what – yes, I would like to say, what is found in the dictionary as the meaning of these thoughts, these words; one must believe this to be the case from the outset. But in many respects in our time this is not the case. And one should know that in our time it is not the case in many respects.

In our time, many things happen, and many highly significant things happen, that I would characterize as follows: Let us assume that two people come into a difference with each other, and we listen to the one person who is in difference with the other. He tells us: I came into difference with this person, I quarreled with him. We ask him why he has come into difference, why he is in conflict with the person in question. He answers us, “Yes, because this person has a bad character, because he has done this or that.” Of course, sometimes if you look into the facts, you may find something justified. If you are completely honest in looking into the facts today, you will very often not find something justified. The man says that the other man did this or that, or was such and such, and that is why he came into conflict with him. But why does he say that? Not because the other man is like that, but perhaps he says it for the same reason, because he needs to be reassured about the real reason why he came into conflict with him. What could this real reason be? This true reason can simply be that the soul life, the life of experience of this person who is telling us this, has developed in such a way that at a certain point in time it must discharge itself with a certain amount of hatred. Let us hold on to this, my dear friends, that this can simply be a primal fact of the soul of some human individualities. They grow up, they develop, and the soul develops in such a way that at a certain point in time it simply needs a certain amount of hatred. Just as a certain constitution, an abnormal constitution of the organism needs a fever, so a soul needs a discharge of a certain amount of hatred before itself, for the sake of what it has developed within itself. Because this certain amount of hatred is present in the soul, this soul mysteriously seeks someone on whom to discharge this hatred. But you can't say to yourself, without being frightened in a certain sense: I attack the person concerned because I have to discharge a certain amount of hatred. You have a sedative, a kind of anesthetic for the soul. This calming, this numbing of the soul occurs when one describes the other. The description may be true, the description may be false; but what it expresses is in any case not the real reason, but lies in the soul itself in the accumulated amount of hatred that must be discharged.

With this example, I wanted to show that anyone who is truly able to observe the world and makes an effort to do so can see today, wherever they look, how common it is to confuse cause and effect in our judgment of people. It is easy, my dear friends, to agree that in ordinary science, cause and effect are confused at every turn; but this confusion only occurs because in general human life there is a tendency to confuse cause and effect in the way described. Mankind, and I mean all of mankind, must learn to observe life and to live wisely. Without this observation of life, without this wisdom of life, my dear friends, which human beings must strive for, the complicated life that will come upon this earth cannot be lived through by mankind. For only through such striving will one come to feel with the necessary weight that which one needs to live. And in saying this, my dear friends, I may perhaps point out a certain fact that has occurred over the years of our anthroposophical endeavors within our previous considerations.

You can think back many years, a whole series of years, and you will remember that even in public lectures the question was quite often asked: How do repeated earthly lives relate to the increasing population of the earth? After all, the population of the earth is constantly increasing. If the same individuals keep reincarnating, how does this fact fit in with the increasing population of the earth? You will recall that I have given various reasons for understanding the apparent increase in the earth's population despite repeated lives on earth. But you may also remember that whenever this question came up, I always added a sentence to the other reasons I had given. I always added the sentence: “We shall wait, and perhaps the time will soon come when people will realize in a terrible way that the population of the earth will also be reduced in an extremely significant way by horrific events.” Of course, many will be able to remember these sentences. Many things could be remembered, but today I would like to remind you in particular that you will find in the cycle held in Vienna before the war, which dealt with life between death and new birth, how I tried to describe the general possibilities of the disease of social life across the globe. At the time, I even used the expression – it can be read in the cycle – that something like a social carcinoma is going through the world. The expression can be found printed in the cycle.

Such things, my dear friends, have been said to point out that much is going on around us that is as elusive to the ordinary consciousness as the tables and chairs of our bedroom are to us when we are asleep. And many, many passages in the lectures that have been given, they were given with the intention of touching souls, of touching hearts, to point out the utter seriousness of the forces that go through time in one direction or another. Because it does not help us, my dear friends, if we only try to gain, I would say in accessible concepts, some general ideas about the spiritual worlds. What we need, especially if these ideas that we gain are to be fruitfully integrated into our time, what we need is to acquire such concepts, such ideas from the experience of the spiritual world, that can intervene in reality in every area of life. But our present time is altogether poor, tremendously poor, in such concepts that can intervene in reality. And it is a concomitant of materialism, my dear friends, that the concepts that develop in the materialistic age have no power to intervene in reality in a directing, ordering, comprehending way. Man must learn to place himself in the world in a realistic way. This is only possible if spiritual science opens up an understanding for something without which understanding one knows nothing at all: for the relationship of man to the world.

If we are to take up the important things we have to say in this regard and bring them before our soul in the right way and with the utmost seriousness, we must start with three concepts that every religious mind today will inevitably see as the three most important concepts. We must start with the concept of the Father-God, with the concept of the Christ, and with the concept of the Spirit or Holy Spirit. Let us first consider today what spiritual science can say about the relationship of the human being to that which can be expressed by the three concepts of the Father God, the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Today, we are indeed confronted with a world in which materialistic development has led to there being people who do not accept all these three ideas, the three concepts, I will not say, but do not experience them in their full seriousness, in their full depth. They will not be able to doubt, my dear friends, that many people today go through life without dealing with all their soul forces with these three concepts of Father-God, Christ, Holy Spirit.

What then does spiritual science have to say, based on what it can experience, about the just-mentioned lack in human souls, about this inability to deal with these three concepts? If you enter into the full meaning of our spiritual science, you will always be able to understand the following, because in what follows I would like to express a basic phenomenon for the soul's life in words that, I believe, express this basic phenomenon succinctly and precisely. I think that spiritual science can say from its point of view: the denial or misunderstanding of the Father-God is an illness; the denial or misunderstanding of the Christ is a misfortune of fate. Note the words carefully; I am using them in such a way that the matter is expressed very precisely. The denial or misjudgment of the Father-God is an illness; the denial or misjudgment of the Christ is an accident of fate for the soul; and the denial or misjudgment of the spirit is a blindness of the soul. I believe that anyone who combines the right approach with these three characteristics has much of what is needed to understand materialism in our time. I also believe that anyone who understands these three characteristics in the right sense has the key to understanding much, much more in our time.

Let us consider the first characteristic: the denial or misunderstanding of the Father-God is an illness. As an anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientist, I have to say this because, if the totality of the human being is organized in a healthy way according to the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of this being and the person does not physically, mentally or spiritually oppose themselves to allow their whole being to work healthily, then there is no possibility of not recognizing that which can be called the Father God. Every human being with a healthy organization, my dear friends, who does not allow prejudices to stand in his way – prejudices that have such an effect that everything organic no longer works properly – every human being, if he looks at the world in a healthy way and really applies his healthy spiritual power to this healthy view, comes to think of nature and the life of history as imbued with a Father-God. And the strange thing that offends today's materialists – the denial or misjudgment of the Father God – is not possible at all, except that something is not right in the human organization. So one can say: atheism is, under all circumstances, a real symptom of illness for spiritual science; something must be wrong in the human organization when atheism is present.

If people want to develop a relationship to human evolution, if they want to make sense of earthly development, then they have to be able to look at a certain point in time in this earthly development, when the mystery of Golgotha had to take place. But you can't say – just as you can say: that an atheist is actually more or less physically ill, one cannot say that anyone who does not find the Christ is ill. For finding the Christ is really something that is connected with a power to which the name 'grace' is fully applicable. The Christ must be found in such a way that He approaches the human being as an entity, so that the person can find His way to Him. Not to recognize God as such, to be an atheist, means — also in the physical sense — to be ill. But one can be healthy without finding the Christ. Therefore, not finding the Christ is not an illness like not finding God, but not finding the Christ is an misfortune of the soul. It is something that affects us, the failure to find Christ, that plunges the soul into misfortune. You can see this from the deeper meaning of the many discussions that have been held in our field for years: the soul needs the connection with Christ in order to find its way in the overall development of humanity. It was only until the Mystery of Golgotha that it was possible for the human soul to develop its entire life without coming into contact with the Christ. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ must permeate the human soul with His power, the Christ must connect with the human soul so that this human soul can find its way through the entire development of humanity. You can really find this within the development of spiritual life itself.

Just think of what a beautiful flowering of human spiritual life Greek culture was. People today have no real idea of what life was like for the ancient Greeks. And really, sometimes the only way to express one's admiration for Greek culture is to be negative. Spiritual science will first allow us to become positive again with regard to our admiration of Greek culture. Today, people take it for granted that they can read Sophocles or even Aeschylus, or perhaps even recite or act them. And so one is often asked: Is it possible to do anything with Aeschylus in terms of acting or reciting? It is possible if one has the right sense of Greek culture. If you have Aeschylus or even Sophocles as they exist today in modern languages as Aeschylus or Sophocles, then that is a shadow of the matter. Only the full, dense, reality-imbued concepts will be able to lie in the words again, when there will be [true] translations of Aeschylus or Sophocles or when the Greek words are to be understood. We must not forget that those whom we call intellectuals today, in the cultural life to which they go back in reality, only go back to Roman times. Our high school students may learn Greek, but they only learn Latin-Roman ideas. We have Roman law, Roman ideas in other areas of life as well. But Greece is actually a fairy-tale land. But it is deeply, deeply rooted in this Greekness, my dear friends, that we have been handed down the significant word of the Greek hero: Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows. Why? The soul concept of Aristotle answers that. No one has dealt so thoroughly with Aristotle's soul concept as the recently deceased excellent psychologist Franz Brentano. It can be said that spiritual research can agree with what Brentano discovered by philosophical means with regard to the soul and immortality concept of Aristotle, the Greek sage, for the reason that it is the Greek concept, but elevated to philosophy.

Aristotle was not initiated. The initiated Greeks knew something else about the immortality of the soul. But Aristotle was not initiated. He could only rise to that conception of the soul to which an uninitiated wise thinker of the Greeks could rise in the centuries before the entrance of the mystery of Golgotha. What is this conception of the soul and immortality? The ancient Greeks knew, they knew from an experience that people today no longer have, that everything they accomplish in the body as human beings is imbued with soul. The ancient Greeks did not speculate about whether their soul somehow lives, but they knew that when I move my hand, my soul moves with it. The ancient Greeks knew that the soul lives in everything they did, physically and mentally. But he had the idea that soul and body belong together internally. For him, it was a whole: soul and body. That is why Aristotle says: If they cut off one of your arms, then you are no longer a complete human being. If they cut off two of your arms, then you are even less so; if they take away your whole body, as death does, then you are no longer a complete human being. Aristotle speaks of human immortality, but he says, when man has gone through the gate of death, he is no longer a complete human being – he says this as a Greek – because he lacks the possibility of coming into contact with the environment in any way, which is only possible through the body. A person who has passed through the gateway of death is, for Aristotle, a maimed person. Although Aristotle still clings to the idea of immortality, within this immortality the soul lives in such a way that one is an incomplete human being. And that it can actually do nothing but continue this existence, I would say spiritually vegetatively, to reproduce, without coming into any contact with the environment. That is the concept of Aristotle, which could arise before the Mystery of Golgotha, when man was left to his own devices. And now think about what the concept of immortality would look like today if this had been propagated. Something new had to occur in human development to give the human soul the strength to come to the concept of immortality again: that is the Mystery of Golgotha. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the power of Christ has permeated the evolution of the earth. But it must happen to people in a merciful way that the power of their soul coincides with the power of Christ. Otherwise, misfortune would befall them, and they would know nothing of the soul that has passed through the gate of death except that it is only an incomplete, mutilated human being.

These are only preliminary remarks, my dear friends, who want to explain the word, want to explain the characteristic: misjudgment or denial of the Christ is a misfortune of fate for the soul. You can be healthy, but you must be unhappy in soul if you do not find the Christ. People must be brought to make clear distinctions regarding the most important concepts if life is to go on and what the future will demand of people is to be achieved. But it is precisely such ideas that some people, especially those who are otherwise close to us, shy away from.

You see, for someone who is a humanities scholar, there is a theologian – such as Adolf Harnack, for example – in terms of the inner structure of thought, the Father God, but there is no actual Christ. Harnack does, of course, introduce the concept of Christ, but it is not organically connected with what he thinks. And what Harnack says about Christ are basically only the attributes of God the Father. The most important attributes Harnack presents about Christ and His nature are only attributes of God the Father. It will be a fundamental requirement of our time that humanity finds the way to the real Christ, that the confusion between Christ and God the Father ceases. Otherwise, some might believe that they have the Christ, when in fact they only have God the Father. We only need to remember that some Christian mystics of the Middle Ages claimed that they had found the Christ by delving into their souls. There is no reason for them to say that they have found the Christ – they have only found the Father God. One can find the Father God in this way, but not the Christ. Take the term that I initially developed as a characteristic. When our soul appears healthy for the organism, when it properly comprehends itself in the whole person, then it says “Ex Deo nascimur” – “I am born of God”. This saying “Ex Deo nascimur” should be nothing more than an expression of the complete health of human nature. So just living your life in the right way, living a completely healthy life, allows this life to culminate in the recognition of the Father God: “Ex Deo nascimur”.

The good fortune of being able to connect one's own soul with the power of Christ brings the gracious possibility to know oneself beyond death, not as a mutilated human being, but on the contrary, not only as a whole human being, but as a human being illuminated in the illuminated spiritual world. Therefore, “In Christo morimur” – “In Christ we die”.

But in order not to recognize the spirit, blindness of the soul is necessary; this is now more than ever characteristic of materialism. For if the soul really sees all that is around her, if she does not pass by in sleep but sees what is around her in an awakened state, she is therefore not blind but sees awakened, then she sees the spirit at work in all things. Therefore, it must be said that to fail to recognize or to deny the Spirit is blindness of the soul. I particularly want you to grasp this distinction: Not being able to see the mysterious working of the Spirit in world events when the soul is blind comes from not being able to see the Spirit. Being unhealthy in oneself, so that the soul does not fully experience itself, causes atheism, the non-recognition of the Father-God. The recognition of the Father-God therefore comes from the healthy inner being, the recognition of the spirit comes from the alert observation of the world facts and world events around us. The materialist is only a sleeper to the world facts and world events around us.

If what has just been said is plausible – and it is well-founded in spiritual science – then perhaps the question will arise: Yes, but why has there been no real possibility for so long in humanity to develop complete clarity precisely about these three ideas? Why is that so? Yes, you see, that has to do with what I would like to call the historical “misdeity” — “misdeity”. Three is the number: mis-deity, just “misdeity”. I had to coin a new word, and you will soon hear that it is quite good to coin a new word for this idea. In the future, we will have to coin many new words. People will coin many new words in general, because the old words are no longer sufficient for what we need to understand now. And for what we have to say to each other now, we take the word “abuse”, where three is taken from the number three.

You see, my dear friends, in the presentation that I have given in my “Theosophy”, I have pointed out from the most diverse sides in a clearly noticeable way that in order to understand the entire essence of man, it is necessary to consider the human and also the worldly trinity of body, soul and spirit - body, soul and spirit. If we go back to those times when there was only an atavistic, dream-like consciousness, but within this atavistic, dream-like consciousness there was an ancient view of reality, we find everywhere, especially in the wisdom of the mysteries, the threefold division of the world and man into body, soul and spirit. For neither the world nor man can be understood otherwise if one does not grasp the meaning of the threefoldness of body, soul and spirit.

Now something strange has occurred. The Council of Constantinople took place in 869; with it, the spirit was actually abolished. Until then, there was widespread awareness that one must distinguish between body, soul and spirit. Among the things established by the Council of Constantinople, the most important is that one should not assume a difference between soul and spirit, but in the soul one should only think of a thinking and a spiritual part. And from that time on, throughout the entire world-developmental currents of the Middle Ages, it became necessary that one no longer distinguished the human being into body, soul and spirit, but only into body and soul, whereby soul and spirit were conflated with each other. It was heretical to speak of the so-called “trichotomy” since the Council of Constantinople in 869, after which it was only permissible to distinguish the human body and the human soul as a thinking and spiritual being, but not the threefold nature, the trichotomy into body, soul and spirit. This is tremendously significant. Those who are familiar with medieval philosophy know how some medieval philosophers struggle with the fact that they still had the feeling from ancient times that the human being consists of three parts. But the misappropriation had occurred since the Council of Constantinople, and anyone who wanted to claim or philosophically teach the trichotomy of body-soul-spirit would have been declared a heretic.

We are experiencing the highly remarkable fact today that the gentlemen who pursue unconditional science, exactly according to the Council of Constantinople, divide man into body and soul, and have no idea at all about the division into soul and spirit, except at most as something that is only a verbal skirmish. Look at Wundt and other enlightened minds of the present day; they all have the division into body and soul. That is why these gentlemen are also “presuppositionless”, because they have only the Council of Constantinople as a presupposition. They just don't know that they have this presupposition, which is why they call this philosophy “presuppositionless science”.

In certain directions, order and, above all, strength and world understanding are not created if one does not penetrate the secret of “dreiung” again, if one does not overcome the “missdreiung” that has been going on for centuries through the world view, through the view of humanity in general. The deep significance of the division of the human being into body, soul and spirit must be recognized again. But then, in precisely this most important and essential area, one will find the possibility of speaking concretely, imbued with reality, and expressing the truth, whereas in this area, the present time speaks not in terms of reality but in abstract terms; it believes that it is not speaking abstractly but is presenting the greatest real ideals of humanity.

It was at the end of the nineteenth century, as you know, that three ideals of humanity resounded through Europe and as far as Asia: fraternity, freedom, equality. And you know that within the European discussion - which today is no longer a discussion, but is being written in blood - that within this discussion the three words keep coming up that are supposed to say: But let us ask the question that must be asked in relation to these three words, let us ask it from a spiritual scientific point of view: if we simply talk in general terms that man or humanity must strive for fraternity, freedom and equality, we are dealing with an abstraction, three abstractions that are still under the complete influence of “misdeity”. Why? Man is in reality a trinity: body, soul and spirit, and as body, soul and spirit man lives with other people, who are also body, soul and spirit, here on earth together. This gives rise to a relationship between those forces within people that experience each other here in the physical world, and that comes from the fact that a person is incarnated in a body, a relationship that arises from the fact that we interact with each other in our bodies.

If we are to formulate an ideal for the future, a social ideal based on the truth that man is incarnated in a body, then it must be the ideal of brotherhood. From what man is for man, because man is bodily, from that must grow brotherhood, my dear friends; that is a social ideal for the future. But there is no point in speaking of the ideal of freedom from the same point of view. That would be to speak in the abstract. Speaking of the ideal of freedom only makes sense if one knows that only the spiritual relationship between people can be free. Just as people can only develop a social relationship according to the ideal of brotherhood if they are incarnated in the body, so too can this striving for the ideal of freedom only be realized if one understands how one soul can live from another. People become free as souls, people can become free as souls just as they can be fraternal if they are incarnated in bodies. Equality is an ideal that only makes sense if it refers to man as spirit. For the way we are placed in the world means that we are specialized in having one body and one soul. In terms of our spirituality, we are equal. Therefore, when we have discarded the body and with it the specialization of the characteristics, the saying that aptly characterizes the event comes to mind: In death, all men are equal, because they all become spirits.

The three ideals are meaningless when they are mixed up in “misuse”; they only become meaningful when these three ideals will sound through humanity in such a way that one can recognize them.

Man is body, soul and spirit; he must become brotherly according to the body, free according to the soul, equal according to the spirit. You see, these three abstract, unreal words will only make sense when spiritual science can find this meaning for them.

But why were these words spoken at the end of the 18th century? You see, you say words – I gave you the example on a small scale earlier – you say words, you believe you have come to a difference [with someone]; in truth it was hatred that has been unleashed. I have shown you that. And now we have the application of this small example to the great world-historical event. And so these words were also spoken in historical time, not to express what one thought one could find in these words, but to compensate, as it were, for something else. In a sense unconsciously, the three words came historically from the human mouth as if in a play, out of ecstasy. Out of full reflection, the words should have been: Fraternity from the body, freedom from the soul, equality from the spirit. One speaks the words half consciously, not fully consciously, for only spiritual science will speak them fully consciously. One speaks the words half consciously, like a person in ecstasy, a visionary speaks the words. But of course no one will understand this who swears by the supposed weight of these three words today. What will he say? He will say: Are you saying that these words were spoken in ecstasy? They are something that is most imbued with self-confident human reason. That is the belief that is poured out over the whole fact. Because why? Because in the depths of the soul of the times, when these words were spoken, Ahriman was lurking; and Ahriman is the one from whom these words really emerged. That is why they rashly croak.

And Ahriman needed to unburden his soul. Just as a soul usually unloads hatred, so Ahriman sought to unload himself. And just as a soul that is discharging would say that so-and-so did this or that to me, Ahriman had above all to bring out of his soul a certain impulse towards the material. And this was expressed not by letting people say — imagine what would have been the fate of people if they had had to say: We must not oppose materialism, we must now forget that there is a soul and a spirit, we must ascribe everything to the material; not to the body fraternity, not to the soul liberty, not to the spirit equality, but we must ascribe everything to material man; we must finally wipe the slate clean with this trichotomy.

That did not work. Therefore, the three things had to be conjured up as an ideal. And because Ahriman was at work in these, they came out under ecstasy. When a person does something like this, he numbs himself, he is in ecstasy. When Ahriman raves in him, then he can believe that he is saying the wisest thing, that he has complete control over himself and is saying something quite natural, while in fact he is saying nothing else that is perfectly apt for outer development, but which in truth is the life of an Ahrimanic power in the human soul.

We will take up these matters again tomorrow, for they are truly important if we want to understand the present time. And tomorrow I will have many more important things to say, especially with regard to the present time.

But now, following these discussions, allow me to say something that I would rather not say, but must say. We have fulfilled our task today. But it is necessary because I am obliged to observe certain measures for the near future within the Anthroposophical Society, and I need to give some motivation for them.

You see, my dear friends, spiritual science is something that must — I have motivated you from a wide variety of perspectives, quite objectively — that must become part of human development. It is not something that has an end in itself, like the program points of other societies, which one can be passionate about, but something that must become established because humanity itself, if it understands itself correctly, demands spiritual science. Only a few people still know this objectivity over time to observe what really presents itself as a yearning in human souls. But from certain laws, which are already understandable through spiritual science itself, my dear friends, what I have indicated in the most diverse ways is being realized more and more. And those who have heard me speak often know that I have often pointed out that the forces that would like to extinguish the light of spiritual science are indeed already at work. These dear friends who have heard me speak often know this for certain. For those who observe things, they have not come as a surprise, but they must still be treated in the right way.

Is it not the case that spiritual science is something that has to become established? In a sense, the Anthroposophical Society should be an instrument for spiritual science. It is an instrument that is difficult to handle, that must be readily admitted. But my dear friends, we must also truly face the fact that the Anthroposophical Society must be taken extremely seriously. Otherwise it would be better to have very small groups of friends in different cities trying to organize public lectures, and spiritual science would be able to fulfill its current mission for humanity in this way. But if there is an Anthroposophical Society, then it must be something real. Now, from certain backgrounds, it is extremely difficult for this Anthroposophical Society to fulfill its ideals, but on the other hand, it must not be ignored that one must look at what is necessary in this Anthroposophical Society in order to advance it as a society - I am not talking about spiritual science now, but about the society.

You see, above all it is necessary to acquire a clear and healthy judgment within the Society, also for what exists in society, and about the way society works outwardly, and to shape one's feelings and one's judgment of the world in the sense of this judgment. I am not saying that I demand this of society, but society cannot be what it wants to be if it does not strive for it. I have nothing to demand of society, I emphasize that, but it cannot be what it should be and wants to be if it does not strive for this healthy judgment of the world and life, if this striving does not really take root in society.

Look, let me start from a specific point: there are things that, as they happen, are only possible within our Anthroposophical Society, that would not actually be possible outside. Take the most blatant case of Heindel-Vollrath. What I mean is this: a Mr. Grasshoff applied for admission to the Anthroposophical Society a few years ago. That is, he was one of those people who are dragged into it by other members, sometimes in a rather unjustified way. But he had an urgent desire to become a member of our society. He became one, attended all the lectures, perhaps even spent some time in Hamburg, took part in public and branch lectures, but he also borrowed all kinds of individual lectures from all kinds of members and diligently copied everything down. So that when he said one day that he wanted to go back to America, he not only had all the public lectures in his head, but also pretty much everything that had been presented in our cycles and branch lectures.

Now you may say: Why was the person accepted at all? Yes, my dear friends, you cannot anticipate the future in such a case. You cannot – I must ask for forgiveness for using a harsh word – you cannot reject someone and say: I am rejecting you because later on you will be a bastard! You cannot give prophecies as a reason for rejection. This is a dilemma that occurs in such a society, and it makes it necessary for every member of the society to develop correct judgment.

So Mr. Grasshoff went back to America one day, took all his things with him and said that he wanted to spread our spiritual science in America. The dependency was so great that he himself said, before he took leave and made the solemn promise, that the way he would represent spiritual science would be a thoroughly honest one. The matter went so far that he said at the time: How should one actually translate “Rosicrucian worldview” into English? Back then, it was very difficult to translate “Weltanschauung” into English, and we still discussed the “Rosicrucian World Conception”. Except for this word, it is from me, which is a word that had not been used before: “Rosicrucian World Conception”. So he packed this word into his suitcase and left.

What did he do? He sat down in America and wrote down in his own way what he had found in the lectures and in the printed books, changing it in his own way. But there is nothing in his books that he did not get here. But in the preface he wrote the following: He had learned many things in my lectures that he wanted to share in America, but it was not enough, and after he had listened to the lectures here - here with me, with us - he received a call from a wise master down there in Transylvania, in the Transylvanian Alps, who introduced him to the deeper secrets of the matter. Therefore, he would not only give what he had from me, but also what he had received from that wise master there in the Transylvanian Alps. But if you check what this wise master told him, it is what he copied here from the cycles, lectures and branch lectures. It is all worked into it. The book was published in America.

Well, that could still be tolerated, right? But it didn't stop there. This book was translated into German and published years ago in German translation as “Rosenkreuzerische Unterrichtsbriefe” under the aegis of Mr. Hugo Vollrath years ago, and on the bookplates and in the preface, you can read that some building blocks of this Rosicrucian worldview did indeed come to light here in Germany, but they were impure; they first had to be purified by the bright Californian sun. That is where Grasshoff, who later called himself Heindel, later lived. So not only was it possible in America, but the things were retranslated into German. That is possible. This is a scandal, my dear friends, and deserves to be made known. I have even mentioned it in public lectures. It has not become known. But if the Anthroposophical Society wants to fulfill its task, it is important that our cause be presented to the world in the right way; that it is not just said by me, but that one also gains the right attitude towards these things. Of course, it is wonderful and desirable to hear lectures and read cycles about spiritual things, but for that we do not need an Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society must work and develop a field of activity.

Of course, where such things can develop, things move forward. What have we experienced recently? Recently we have seen that a man who for a long time truly appeared to be the most honest of the so-called followers of anthroposophy, was a member of the Anthroposophical Society who called himself true, he was so true that he even wrote a book that was published by the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House, and then he wrote a small booklet “Who was Christ?” In this booklet, he used some material that is also from the Cycles. Now, that might still be acceptable, but Dr. Steiner did not think it was quite right to introduce it. I did not take a stand on the matter, but Dr. Steiner did not think it was right – and she is the one who runs the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House – that if you take things from the cycles and then say: some hints have been given, but I must first explain them clearly. For these and other reasons, the booklet “Who Was Christ?” had to be rejected. Post hoc ergo propter hoc - after a thing, therefore because of a thing. This is often a disputed dictum, but I believe it is often a very correct dictum. What became of this man who had lived among us as a loyal anthroposophist and who had sought to find his own place for his work? This man became the most vehement and swollen opponent because his little book was not accepted by the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag. That is the only reason. All the foolish talk he has developed about alleged contradictions in “Psychische Studien” is just added. And one does not do justice to the matter if one believes that one has to go into this talk, but one has to know, in order to see the whole enormity, that a person who has last sought to publish his writing in the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag posophical publishing house, and thus had every intention, had his writing been accepted, to remain an anthroposophist as he had been before, that he would become a person producing defamatory writings if his writing were rejected. One has to - forgive me - found the Anthroposophical Society in order to experience such things, because otherwise this cannot actually happen with such intensity.

Now don't misunderstand me! Opposing writings must also appear, I will have no objection to that. Please do not take my words as if spiritual science should be afraid of opposing writings. They may appear, but they should be objective. But there is nothing objective here. This will become immediately apparent when we see what ground the whole matter is taking. Everywhere it is actually only seemingly a matter of all kinds of refutations, I might say, of contradictions that are pointed out; in truth, it is a matter of spreading gossip and scandal, most of which is even invented, but sometimes presented with great sophistication. So this is not said because of factual opposition, but because the aim is not to engage in a factual fight – that is far too uncomfortable – but because the aim is – by virtually driving the anthroposophical movement into scandal, into defamation, into slander, into inventing facts that have absolutely no connection with reality - to make this Anthroposophical Society impossible.

But so much can happen in the realm of this Anthroposophical Society! A man from a town in central Germany once wrote to Dr. Steiner: He is now at a particular point in his soul life, he does not know what to do next. He would like some advice, should he become involved in a business or should he seek his new soul path in some other way. Since he had been informed that it could not be our task to give advice on marrying into a family, he turned up one day. He made himself noticed by reciting Schiller's “Cassandra” with furious emphasis, although he had no idea of any art of recitation, and unleashing it on the unsuspecting members of the Anthroposophical Society. In this way he made himself felt in the Society; to individual members he made himself felt by, as I was credibly told, energetically exercising the will to marry the young girls of the Society.

Now, of course, such things happen in the course of the flow of anthroposophical life, but sometimes they take on even more forms. One day the good man was seized by the urge to be a genius, a painter genius. He was seized not by the urge to become a genius, but to be a genius, not by the urge to become a painter. If anyone expected him to become a painter, he took it as an insult.

He couldn't paint, couldn't do anything, but he wanted to be a painter. He moved to Munich, and we tried in every way – didn't we, to a certain extent anyone can become a painter – to get him teachers. He has been supported, but we just couldn't make him a genius. And this whole matter developed into what is now called the “Bamler case”, which is supposed to characterize the entire disgrace of the anthroposophical movement with invented stuff about exercises causing bruises on the skin and similar things. These articles are accepted with open arms, and not only that, by busy editors, by editors who are sometimes of such a nature that they make any old remark, and someone writes to them – I am only telling facts, a correct judgment can only be based on facts and I am accustomed to telling only facts —, someone wrote to the editor: Well, haven't you read the essay in your own magazine, which should have told you that this [illegible] is completely unjustified [illegible]? The editor replied to the person concerned: “Yes, do you think that I have time to read all the essays that are printed by me?”

Well, it is not about that when someone enters into a factual discussion, but rather that one wants to avoid it. For spiritual science has no need to fear factual discussions. One wants to collect all that is simply invented today from such things. For the things that are invented are indeed enough to make one want to climb up the walls – and are partly invented in the most obscene way.

I do not want to tell you obscenities today, which are already being printed, but I do want to give you a small sample of what is possible in this day and age; I will give you a sample that is sweet but no less ridiculous. I could come up with very thick chunks that would taste quite different, through which, in order to drive them into a scandal, anthroposophy is to be made impossible. I would like to give just a small sample. There is a nice / gap in the transcript] essay that contains things that are all made up. What matters is that they are made up. And what is not important is that attention is drawn to the fact that the personality who wrote this did so in a mentally ill state; that is not important, but that the things are objectively untrue. It says: Dr. Steiner often explained the Lazarus miracle to his students, the transformation of the human being through the Lazarus miracle. Dr. Steiner sent chocolate to a certain person who had to be taken to a sanatorium “to thicken the blood.” This chocolate had been chosen to bring about a transformation in the person in the sense of the Lazarus miracle.

There you have an example – as I said, I have chosen one that is still the most appetizing, but that does not make it any less likely for you to invent. But there are editors who write: “Even a healthy person could be put in an asylum because of such craziness.” - So you can imagine: someone thinks that Dr. Steiner wrote about the Lazarus miracle; Dr. Steiner wants to perform the Lazarus miracle by sending chocolate biscuits - now imagine during the war - to a sick woman in the sanatorium to send chocolate biscuits to thicken the blood so that the Lazarus miracle will take place. This will be printed today, and an editor can be found who says: “Through such follies, even a healthy person could end up in an insane asylum.”

Yes, it is ridiculous, but the very campaign that is starting today is characterized by the fact that on the one hand it is ridiculously ridiculous and on the other hand it is downright spiteful. For it has become possible for articles to appear in the “Psychische Studien” with comments by the editor that ridicule the anthroposophical movement and drive it into scandal. It has become possible for such an article to appear that one would have to experience first hand to believe that such things could appear. For against the prevailing attitude, everything that has been written in the scandal press so far does not come up. For to proceed in such a way would have been avoided until now – I will say, if not towards a man, then at least towards a woman, but that has also become possible.

And it has become possible that just people who cannot be rejected when they enter society – because the one who wrote this was, of course, a member of the Anthroposophical Society – because one cannot anticipate the future, one cannot reject them; it is possible for these things to happen. It is possible, my dear friends, that now, in the most incredible way, what really did not happen to my pleasure and at the request of the members, that the most incredible gossip and slander about the personal relationship between me and Dr. Steiner and the members – that all of this is being dragged into gossip and slander and – not to speak with my own words, but with the words of a friend who was at the Nuremberg lectures and heard the matter – into meanness. Not only did the Imperial Privy Councillor and Professor Max Seiling explain quite tastefully, despite the fact that he had come repeatedly over the years and did not even request brief private discussions, and now declares: the cycles would have a better style if they were corrected by me, instead of having private discussions with the members. Nevertheless, the imperial court councilor Professor Max Seiling knows very well how the cycles were wrested from me, because it was not my wish that they be published, but it was done out of two necessities: it was desired by the members, although I said there was no time to review them; on the other hand, the mischief that was done with the rewritten lectures. The rewriting went so far that one day we came across a lecture that had been rewritten. This transcript actually stated that I had said in a cycle that prostitution had been set up by the great initiates. This is just a sample of the things that were present in the private transcripts that were passed from hand to hand.

It was necessary that at least once the matter was taken in hand, that at least the follies that were passed from hand to hand in society in the form of private notes should cease. Nevertheless, the imperial court councilor Seiling had the nerve to say: if the private conversations had not taken place, then these lectures - while he was calculating and indicating prices - could have been corrected. All this is possible, other things are possible that I do not want to mention for the time being. All these things are possible, but it is precisely the private conversations that lead to things being invented, purely invented, and that are now beginning to be used because people do not want to fight objectively, that are now to be used to proceed in the most unobjective way against what the anthroposophical movement is.

What has been said over the years, and how have I emphasized: Those who know me know how opposed to everything sectarian what I have in mind is. And where is there more of a tendency towards it than in our society! I need only mention one external manifestation. We once wanted to travel to a course in Helsingfors. We arrived at the Stettin train station and found, walking on the other platform, a whole company of female members - I don't want to say anything against the female members, it could also be male members - so we saw a whole bunch of ladies with purple bishop's caps in incredible costumes heading for the Helsingfors train. When the ladies got off in Helsingfors: One should have seen the fright that the poor Helsingfors Anthroposophists got. They no longer had any sense of the aesthetics of these bishop's caps and so on, but only the sense of accommodating the ladies in such a way that at least the rest of the Helsingfors population would not notice that they belonged to the Helsingfors Anthroposophists.

But this is only an outward sign of the urge for sectarianism. Again and again, people on the outside have to hear: This is a society built on authority. They do everything that Dr. Steiner wants. I don't think there is a society where it is like ours, where if something is to happen according to my opinion, it certainly won't happen. I do not consider myself the master of the Society, so I cannot demand that what I want should happen; but I can demand one thing: that I should not be asked. But on a small scale it has been shown time and again: some lady or man, it can also be a gentleman, feels the need to justify to her husband or a friend why she is traveling on a cycle. What does she say? “Doctor Steiner said so.” — What do I care whether she goes to the cycle or not? — ‘Do you have anything against it?’ she asks me. — I can't have anything against it, that would be an infringement of human freedom, which I respect and value. But then one says: ‘Doctor Steiner said I should travel to the cycle.’

Well, these are the kinds of insinuations that make it necessary, after years of talking about these things, to take measures once, not to take them, but because they are necessary, even if they are as difficult for me as they are for some people, but to emphasize the seriousness that is necessary in these measures.

Firstly, I now have to stop having private conversations with members for the time being. I can no longer have private conversations with members. I can only say that I am as sorry as anyone can be, but you will have to turn to those who made this necessary. It was not I who made it necessary.

The second thing is – but I ask that the one not be told without the other, the one is not right without the other – the second thing is: I explain to everyone who has ever had a private conversation with me that they can tell everything that has been said in these private conversations or has otherwise occurred, that they can tell everything completely, as far as they themselves want. I urge no one not to tell anything, insofar as he himself wants, that has ever occurred in such conversations. Nothing need shun the light of day if it is truthfully communicated.

So first, the private conversations must stop; second, I authorize everyone, insofar as he himself wants, to tell everything that has ever been spoken or occurred in any private conversation. It remains to be seen whether, under the seriousness of these measures, one or the other may yet be achieved. For my part, I am completely convinced that those of our dear members who are seriously and with dignity seeking that which must now be sought through spiritual science within humanity not only understand these two measures, but also approve of them and find them necessary. For those who seriously want to advance esoterically – just give me a little time, and even without the private conversations I will find ways and means to ensure that no one is held back in their esoteric development; a fully valid substitute will be found, it just has to be created first.

I have only given you a small part of the characteristics of the campaign as it is now being launched, but something must be done, because it is not acceptable to be caught between personal spite and ridicule. After all, it could be said in Munich: One of the most serious attacks is yet to come, that of Goesch.

Yes, my dear friends, that can be said, even though Goesch's attack is typical of the stupid and ridiculous on the one hand, because he engages in magical effects of handshakes and the like, and on the other hand, just in mere spite.

Perhaps if we just have a little awareness / gap in the transcript] some things can be improved. I know that those who take the Anthroposophical Society and spiritual science seriously will understand me.