The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Notes from the Editor

The twelfth annual meeting of the European Section of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, took place in London from July 5 to 7, 1902. Marie von Sivers had already traveled to London in mid-June. Rudolf Steiner followed on July 1 as the designated General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society and remained there until July 11. Rudolf Steiner was invited by Bertram Keightley ¹ to join the commission, which was charged with the task of deciding the future structure of the European Section. Once the various national sections could be considered established (including the founding of the German section, which was still to come at that time), the former European section was dissolved. It was decided that an annual congress of the European Federation of National Sections would be held for future cooperation between the European national sections.

In his autobiography, Rudolf Steiner writes: “When I spoke for the first time in London at the 1902 conference of the Theosophical Society, I said: ‘The union that forms the individual sections should consist of each section bringing to the center what it holds within itself’; and I emphasized that I intended for the German Section above all. I made it clear that this Section would never act as the custodian of established dogmas, but as a place of independent spiritual research, which would seek to communicate with the Society as a whole about the cultivation of genuine spiritual life at their joint meetings.

In October 1918, Rudolf Steiner said the following about this first address at an international meeting of the Theosophical Society: “For example, I tried² when I first attended a congress of the Theosophical Society in London, to bring a certain point of view into it. I gave a very short speech. It was at a time when the Entente Cordiale had just been concluded and everything was under the impression of the recently concluded Entente Cordiale.³ I had tried to characterize that the movement which the Theosophical Society seeks to represent cannot be about spreading anything as theosophical wisdom from some center, but that it can only be about having a kind of unifying point, so to speak, in a common place for everything that the modern era is bringing forth from all corners of the world. And I concluded at the time with the words: If we build on the spirit, if we seek spiritual community in a truly concrete, positive way, so that the spirit that is generated here and there is carried to a common center (Theosophical Society), then we build a different Entente cordiale.

I spoke of this other entente cordiale in London at the time. It was the first speech I gave at the Theosophical Society, and I deliberately spoke of this other entente cordiale. [...] But the sympathies were not at all on my side.

The meeting took place in an annex of the renowned St. James Hall. A report of the meeting, which was printed but not published, also briefly describes Steiner's lecture. Steiner spoke in German and Marie von Sivers translated into English. The report reads as follows: “He said that he had been sent over by the Berlin Lodge to learn something of the Theosophical Movement at its fountain-head. In Germany they were about to found a new Section, and he would endeavor to give an idea of the state of things there. They had but few people at present who had the least idea of theosophical teachings, but there were some diligent workers in several large cities, and there was much latent power in Germany and a strong desire to seek for further spiritual understanding, rationalistic philosophy possessed a great influence among the classes it was most desirable to reach, and this philosophy might be made the greatest enemy if not encountered properly, or, on the other hand, it could be of greatest assistance if the foundation of Theosophy in Germany were laid on the writings of the great German philosophers. Such men as Leibniz, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel were real theosophists and they should attach themselves to the teaching these men had left” (quoted from Crispian Villeneuve: Rudolf Steiner in Britain, A Documentation of his Ten Visits, Vol I, 1902-1921, Forest Row 2004, pp. 29-30. According to Crispian Villeneuve, a possibly even only “the” copy of the printed but unpublished “Report of Proceedings” is located at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in England at Gloucester Place in London).

In German translation by the editor: “He said he had been sent over from the Berlin Lodge to learn about the Theosophical movement at its source. They were to found a new section in Germany and he would endeavor to give an idea of the state of affairs there. At present they had few people who had any real knowledge of the Theosophical teachings, but there were some hard-working people in several large cities, and there was sufficient latent power and a strong desire for further spiritual understanding in Germany. Rationalistic philosophy had exercised a great influence over those classes most desirable to reach, and this philosophy might be made the greatest enemy if not properly met; or, on the other hand, it might be of the greatest help if the establishment of Theosophy in Germany were based on the writings of the great German philosophers. Such men as Leibniz,⁴ Schelling,⁵ Fichte, ⁶ and Hegel ⁷ “You are true theosophists and you should adhere to the teachings that these men have left behind.”

No further documents relating to Rudolf Steiner's presentations at this twelfth congress of the European Section of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) are available.

In addition to Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers, the following people from Germany were in attendance: Henriette von Holten,⁸ Adolf Kolbe,⁹ Ludwig Deinhard.¹⁰ It is also noteworthy that this is probably where they first met Elisabeth Vreede ¹¹ and Daniel Nicole Dunlop ¹² came.

• 1. Bertram Keightley: 1860-1944, collaborator of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and later Annie Besant , was Secretary General of the Indian Section of the Theosophical Society in Benarcs from 1891 to 1893; and Secretary General of the British Section of the Theosophical Society in Adyar from 1901 to 1905. In his biography, Rudolf Steiner writes: “I became friends with him” (GA 28, Dornach 2000, 5. 397). Rudolf Steiner stayed with Bertram Keightley in London Bayswater from July 1 to 11, 1902. In a letter dated July 1, 1902, Rudolf Steiner writes to his first wife Anna Eunike (1853-1911): “Miss von Sivers is taking me to Mr. Keightley. A pure blessing: in England you have to bathe every morning in such houses. So my first London experience is a bath. Then breakfast with Mr. Keightley. He is a very pleasant and amiable man. I didn't want to eat lunch today. It seems best to me not to get too attached to certain times. So I am sitting there at two o'clock in the afternoon – but in Berlin it is already three o'clock – and I have just eaten: Stewed kidney Lyonais. You would call this roasted kidney. Tonight at seven o'clock I have a conference with Keightley, where he should hear about the state of German Theosophy.” Quoted from: Letters, Vol. II, CW 39, Dornach 1989, 8. 412.
• 2. For example, I tried... not on my part: From the lecture of October 27, 1918, in: Historical Symptomatology, Dornach 1982, GA 185, p.145. in London on July 5, 1902, no transcript of the speech itself has been handed down.
• 3.
• NoteNum. NoteText
• 4. Leibniz: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), German philosopher, mathematician, universal scholar of the Enlightenment.
• 5. Schelling: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), German philosopher and anthropologist, successor to Hegel's chair in Berlin.
• 6. Fichte: Johann Gott lieb Fichte (1762-1814), German idealist philosopher.
• 7. Hegel: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher, representative of German idealism. - on Fichte, Schelling, Flegel: See, for example, Rudolf Steiner: The Riddles of Philosophy, GA 18. The first edition of this appeared under the title World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century, Volume 1 in 1900 and Volume II in 1902, both in Berlin. - See in particular: Pictures of Occult Seals and Pillars. The Munich Congress at Whitsun 1907 and its effects, GA 284. At the 1907 congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society in Munich, Rudolf Steiner had the busts of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel placed in front of the stage.
• 8. Henriette von Holten: 1845-2, née Borchert; no further details known .
• 9. Adolf Kolbe:? -1934, member of the Theosophical Society since 1897, founded the Hamburg Pythagorean branch with Bernhard Hubo in 1898, which was one of the branches that formed the German Section in 1902. From 1905 to 1913 on the board of the German Section, esoteric student of Rudolf Steiner.
• 10. Ludwig Deinhard: 1847-1917, engineer and industrialist, 1894-1896 head of one of the first Theosophical branches in Munich. He worked towards the formation of a German section from 1900 and was a member of its board from 1902 to 1908. His book The Mystery of Man in the Light of Psychical Research. An Introduction to Occultism, Berlin 1910, was highly esteemed by Rudolf Steiner. Cf. also the lecture of May 19, 1917 in Central Europe between East and West, GA 1744, 2nd ed. Dornach 1982, 8. 155-175 and On the History and Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904-1914, GA 264. - Initially belonged to the circle around Karl du Prel, later to the circle around Hübbe-Schleiden , but then joined Rudolf Steiner completely.
• 11. Elisabeth Vreede: 1879-1943, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. She worked at the Goetheanum from 1914, and from 1919 she set up the Rudolf Steiner Lecture Archive. In 1920, she was a founding member and then secretary of the branch at the Goetheanum. From 1923 to 1935, she was a member of the founding board of the General Anthroposophical Society and head of the mathematical-astronomical section of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum.
• 12. Daniel Nicole Dunlop: 1868-1935, Secretary General of the Anthroposophical Society in England from 1930 to 1935, organizer of the International Summer Schools in 1923 (in Penmaenmawr) and 1924 (in Torquay). Founder of the British Weleda Company.

Written Report by Rudolf Steiner “Der Vâhan”, Volume V, No. 1, July 1903

On July 3, 4 and 5, the thirteenth annual meeting of the British Section of the Theosophical Society was held in London. Linked to this general assembly was a meeting of the general secretaries of the British, Dutch, French, Italian and German sections to discuss the way in which the annual meetings of the “Association of European Sections” should be organized in the future. One of these sections will invite the representatives of the others to visit it each year; the section extending the invitation and the location of the meeting will be decided upon for the following year. The details of this were discussed in a preliminary meeting on July 3. It was agreed that at the annual meeting the general secretaries would give reports on the progress of the Theosophical movement in their countries and that common matters would be discussed. The closer contact of the members of the Theosophical movement in the different countries will be sought at these meetings, so that the great international principle of the Theosophical movement will become more and more effective. At the same time, it was decided to collect the reports on the movement given by the general secretaries in annual communications. Van Manen of the Dutch section was elected editor of these communications. Following the kind invitation from the general secretary of the Dutch section for next year, it was decided to accept and to choose Amsterdam as the location for the next annual meeting. On the evening of July 4, the general secretaries of the above-mentioned sections gave speeches in which they pointed out the progress of the Theosophical movement in the individual countries. Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the General Secretary of the German Section, was able to point to less success due to the short existence of our section; he spoke of the special tasks that the German national spirit presents to the Theosophical movement and of the hopes and prospects that we may have if we make the seeds of Theosophy fruitful in German intellectual life. - Both the preliminary discussion and the meeting itself were personally led by the President of the Theosophical Society, who was present in London. - This was also the case for the meetings of the British Section itself, which held a business meeting on July 4 and organized speeches on July 5. From the business meeting, it should be emphasized that the representatives of the foreign sections, including Dr. Rudolf Steiner from our German Section, gave welcoming speeches and that Bertram Keightley, the former General Secretary of this Section, was re-elected, but in such a way that Mrs. Hooper was appointed to independently manage the affairs as Deputy General Secretary for the duration of his stay in India.

President H. S. Olcott opened the meeting on July 5 with an address in which he spoke about the founding, goals and tasks of the Theosophical Society, and in which he particularly pointed out that no belief in dogma would be promoted by the “Theosophical Society,” that unity should be sought in the various creeds, so that the element of brotherly love in the broadest sense would be instilled into humanity through the Society. — Bertram Keightley spoke about the “Coming Psychic Wave.” He pointed out the interest that is currently being shown from a wide variety of quarters in certain psychic phenomena and powers. But this interest is mostly directed towards the personal, as for example in “Christian Science”. The theosophical movement, on the other hand, emphasizes the impersonal, the selfless; under its influence, the “psychic wave of the present” alone can take on a promising character for the future. - Finally, G. Mead expounded the “Christ-Mystery in the Earliest Christianity.” He emphasized that, in his opinion, the universal-human character of Christ, born in the depths of the soul, had greater significance for the early days of Christianity than the facts that a later time placed at the starting point of Christianity.

Report of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner, “Luzifer” No. 5/1903

The following is a brief excerpt of what Dr. Rudolf Steiner (as General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society) said on July 3 of that year in London at the first meeting of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society (see issue 3 of Luzifer, p. 126): The European sections have agreed to meet annually for the common cultivation of the Theosophical movement. On these occasions, the individual contributions that the various regions of Europe are able to make to our great international task will come together, and the representatives of the individual sections will take the stimulus of the congresses back to their home countries to continue to work there. Our German section is not even a year old. It is therefore natural that it can only point to limited successes in the past . But it may be said that we have the best hopes for the future of Theosophy in Germany. For the whole essence of the German national spirit is one that is drawn to Theosophy. Where German intellectual culture has produced its most beautiful blossoms, there a hidden, but no less effective theosophical attitude has always been present among the bearers of this culture. For not only did the deep mysticism of a Meister Eckhart and Tauler, of a Valentin Weigel, Jakob Böhme, Angelus Silesius and of the secret mystical societies arise from this attitude and way of thinking; but also the world views of our more recent German thinkers, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, rest on this foundation. And what was expressed by these outstanding personalities has its roots in the depths of the German national soul. That is why the greatest of the newer German poets, Goethe, was imbued with such an attitude, with such a way of thinking. Goethe can only be fully understood when one sees through the theosophical way of looking at things, which is not to be discovered on the surface but in the depths of his creations. This side of Goethe's work has remained almost completely misunderstood. Once it is understood, what Goethe created will become an important promoter of the theosophical movement in Germany. Goethe's entire view of nature is based on theosophical principles. Much of what he, according to his own saying, “has hidden in his ‘Faust’” are theosophical truths. And in addition, he summarized his world view in his deeply symbolic fairy tale of “the green snake and the beautiful lily”. This fairy tale is almost the “secret revelation” of Goethe. It must be read as one reads esoteric writings, its meaning must be studied as one studies the meaning of secret representations of deeply hidden truths. Until one has done this, one does not know the whole of Goethe. Under the influence of such study, a new light is thrown on many other aspects of Goethe's life and work; and above all, it is proved that in Goethe the Germans have a theosophical poet. And one looks to Novalis, whose “magical idealism” is also theosophical; finally, one looks to Schelling, who in the 1840s appeared at the University of Berlin with his views, gained through long, deep research, in his lectures on “The Philosophy of Mythology” and “The Philosophy of Revelation”. Only one thing is missing in all these theosophical efforts of the Germans: a deeper understanding of the great world laws of reincarnation and karma. For even if Jean Paul advocated the doctrine of re-embodiment out of his intuition, it has never been organically connected with the currents mentioned earlier. The theosophical movement will incorporate these comprehensive truths into German culture. In this way it will bring the Germans closer to their great personalities, indeed to their own national soul; and Theosophy itself will experience the most beautiful fertilization from this side. As true as it is that German life has much to expect from Theosophy, it is equally true that it has much to contribute to the Theosophical world movement.

After the excellent conference at Ilkley and summer school at Penmaenmawr, it gives me heartfelt pleasure to be able now to give this lecture at our London centre.

I may remind you first of what I said in former lectures here.¹ Man, in accomplishing his work from day to day and from year to year, works in the physical body which is given to him upon Earth, and through which he is physically linked with all earthly life. So long as we contemplate what surrounds us here in this physical existence upon Earth, including that which we ourselves contribute to if, we shall of course fix our attention mainly on the times we spend in waking life. Yet as I said in those earlier lectures, that which goes on for man during the times when he is fast asleep is still more important for his whole existence—even for what he is and does in earthly life.

When we look back in memory from any given point in our life, we always exclude the times we spent asleep; we join the things we did and underwent by day and while awake, as though they were to form a continuous whole. Yet none of this would be possible without the intervening periods of sleep. Above all, if we want to know the true being of man, we must pay attention to these periods of sleep. A man might easily say that he knows nothing of what goes on during sleep. To ordinary consciousness this may seem true, but in reality it is not so. For if we had to look back into a life uninterrupted by sleep, we should be mere automata. True, we should still be spiritual beings, but we should be automata.

Even more important than the daily periods of sleep throughout our life are the times we spent in sleep as very little children. We retain the good effects of those early periods of sleep all through our life; in a sense, we only supplement them by what accrues to us spiritually night by night during the rest of life. If we came into the world as little children wide-awake and never slept, we should, once more, be automata, in this automatic state we should be unable to do anything consciously at all. We should not even recognize what came about through us, as our own concern.

We may believe we have no memory at all of what transpires during sleep, but even that is not quite true. When we look back in memory, seeing the things we experienced while awake and omitting the periods of sleep, the fact is that we see a void, a nothing, in the intervals of time when we were sleeping. It is as though you were looking at a white wall where at one place the white paint was lacking; you see a black circle. Or there might be a hole with no light behind it; you see the empty hole inasmuch as you see darkness. So do you see the darkness when you look back on your own life. The times you spent asleep appear as darkness in the midst of life. And in reality it is to these darknesses of life that you say ‘I.’ If you did not see the darknesses you would have no consciousness of ‘I.’ You owe the ability to say ‘I’ to yourself, not to the fact that you were active every day from morning until night, but to the fact that you were also sleeping. The Ego as we know it in this earthly life is, to begin with, darkness of life, emptiness, even non-existence. If we consider our life truly, we shall not say that we owe our consciousness of self to the day but rather that we owe it to the night. This is the truth. It is the night which makes us real human beings and no mere automata.

Indeed if we look back into earlier epochs of human evolution upon Earth, though he was no mere automaton even then, for he already had certain differences between his waking and sleeping states, yet inasmuch as he was more or less aware of his sleeping states even in ordinary waking life, man's earthly life and action was far more automatic than it is today.

Truth is, we never bring our real and inmost Ego with us from the spiritual world into the physical and earthly; we leave it in the spiritual world. Before we came down into earthly life it was in the spiritual world, and it is there again between our falling asleep and our awakening. It stays there always, and if by day—in the present form of human consciousness—we call ourselves an ‘I,’ this word is but an indication of something which is not here in the physical world at all; it only has its picture in this world.

We do not see ourselves aright if we say: ‘Here am I, this robust and real man, standing upon Earth; here am I with my inmost being.’ We only see ourselves aright if we say: ‘Our true being is in the spiritual world, and what is here of us on Earth is but a picture—an image of our true being.’ It is entirely true if we regard what is here on Earth, not as the real man himself, but as the picture of the real man.

I will now show how you can see this picture-character of man more clearly. Let us imagine ourselves asleep. The Ego is away from the physical and etheric body; the astral body too is away. Now it is the Ego which works in the blood of man and in his movements. In sleep the movements cease, inasmuch as the Ego is away; the blood however goes on working, and yet the Ego is not there. We need only think of the physical body and we must ask ourselves: What happens to it while we are asleep? Something must still be living and working in the blood, even as the Ego lives and works in it by day. Likewise the astral body, living as it does in the whole breathing process, leaves it by night, and yet the breathing goes on. Here again, something must be there within the breathing process, working in it even as the astral body does in waking life.

Thus every time we go to sleep, with our astral body we forsake those inner organs which are the organs of respiration, and with our Ego we forsake the pulsating forces of our blood. What then becomes of them by night? The answer is that while the man lies asleep in bed, Beings of the adjoining Hierarchy enter into the pulsating forces of the blood from which his Ego has departed. Angels, Archangels and Archai are then indwelling the self-same organs in which the human Ego dwells in waking life by day. Moreover in the breathing organs which we have forsaken inasmuch as the astral body is outside by night, Beings of the next higher Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes—are living then.

Thus when we go to sleep at night, setting forth with our Ego and astral body, leaving behind the body of our waking life, Angels, Archangels and higher spiritual Beings enter into us and animate our organs while we are outside—until we re-awaken. And what is more, as to our ether-body, even in our day-waking life we are not able to fulfill what is needed there. The Beings of the highest Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—have to indwell this ether-body even while we are awake; they remain there always.

Lastly the physical body; if we ourselves had to achieve all the great and wonderful processes taking place there, we should not merely do it very badly; we could not set about it at all. Here we are utterly helpless. What outer anatomy ascribes to the physical body could not even move a single atom of it. Powers of quite another order are required here, namely none other than those that have been known since primeval times as the supreme Trinity—the Powers of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They—the essential Trinity—indwell the physical body of man.

Therefore in truth, throughout our earthly life our physical body is not our own. If it depended on us, it could not go on at all. It is, as was said of old, the true Temple of the Godhead—of the Divine threefold Being. Likewise our ether-body is the dwelling-place of the Hierarchy of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. They have to help in caring for the organs which are assigned to the etheric body. As to those physical and etheric organs on the other hand which are deserted every night by the astral body, they are provided for by the second Hierarchy—Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. Lastly, the organs forsaken during sleep by the human Ego have to be cared for in the night by Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. There is a constant activity within the human being, proceeding not only from man himself. Only in waking life he lives in this bodily nature, so to speak, as a subtenant. For at the same time it is the Temple and the dwelling-place of spiritual Beings—the Beings of the Hierarchies.

Bearing all this in mind, we only see this outer form of man aright if we admit: It is a picture—a picture of the working-together of all the Hierarchies. They are within it. Look at this human head in all the detail of its form; look at the rest of the body in its human form. I do not look at it truly if I describe it as a reality—as a real being, thus or thus. I only look at it truly if I say: It is a picture of an invisible, super-sensible working of all the Hierarchies together. Only when things are seen in this way can one speak truly and in detail of what is commonly propounded in a rather abstract manner. The physical world is not the true reality, so it is said; it is a maya—the true reality is behind it. Yet such a statement does not help us much. It is too general, as if one were to say: Flowers are growing in the meadow. Just as this statement will only be of use if you know what kind of flowers, so too the knowledge of the higher world can only be applied in practice if one is able to point out in detail how it is working in the outer picture, maya, or reflection, which is its physical, sense-perceptible manifestation.

Man therefore, seen in his totality, both in his earthly life by day and in his earthly life by night, is related not only to his physical and visible environment on Earth but to a world of higher spiritual being. Through all the kingdoms of Nature upon Earth—mineral, plant, animal kingdom—there works what we may call a lower spiritual realm. So too throughout the world of stars there works a higher spiritual realm—a realm which also influences man. Looked at in his totality, man is related through his physical existence to plants and animals, to water and to air; so too, he is related spiritually to the world of stars. The latter too is but a picture, a revelation of the underlying spiritual reality. It is the Beings of the Hierarchies who are really there. When he looks up to the stars, man in reality is looking up to the spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies. That which is raying down upon him is but a kind of symbolic light which they send to him of their presence, so that here too, even in physical life, he may have some indication of the living Spirit which in reality fills the entire Universe.

Just as on Earth we may long to know this mountain or that river, this animal or yonder plant, so should we feel a longing to get to know the starry world in its true being. In its true being it is spiritual. In Penmaenmawr I tried to tell a little of the real spiritual nature of the Moon, such as it shines upon us from the cosmic spaces in the present phase of earthy evolution. When we look up to the Moon, we never really see the Moon itself; we see at most a scanty indication of it where the illuminated crescent is continued. What we are seeing is the reflected sunlight, not the Moon itself. So altogether, only the cosmic forces thrown back or reflected by the Moon reach us upon Earth, never what lives within the Moon itself. That it reflects the Sun's light to the Earth is but a part, nay, the smallest part of what pertains to the Moon. All physical and spiritual impulses that reach it from the great Universe, the Moon reflects to us like a mirror. And as we never see through to the other side of a mirror, so do we never see the interior of the Moon, where, in effect, there lives a spiritual population among whom are very high guiding Beings. These guiding Powers, with the rest of the Lunar population, were once upon a time on Earth, whence they withdrew to the Moon more than 15,000 years ago. Before that time the Moon looked even physically different. It did not merely reflect the sunlight to the Earth but mingled in the sunlight something of its own essence. This is however not the point which interests us now. What does concern us at this moment is the fact that in the present epoch the Moon is there like a fortress in the Universe—a cosmic fortress within which lives a population which fulfilled its human destinies more than 15,000 years ago, and, with the spiritual guides of humanity, withdrew thereafter to the Moon. For there were once upon a time on Earth very advanced Beings—Beings who did not put on physical human bodies as do the men of today. They lived rather in etheric bodies, yet for the men who lived on Earth at that time they were the great leaders and educators.

It was these mighty teachers and educators who brought to mankind, long, long ago, the primeval wisdom—the original and sublime wisdom-teachings of mankind, whereof the Vedas, the Vedanta, are but a distant echo. They now are living in the Moon and only radiating spiritually to the Earth what issues from the Universe outside the Moon.

Something of the erstwhile Moon-forces has indeed remained behind on Earth, namely the physical forces of reproduction in man and animal; but that is all. Only the most external and physical element remained behind when at a certain time of old Atlantis the great teachers of mankind migrated to the Moon, which had itself withdrawn from the Earth long before.

Therefore when we look upward to the Moon we only see it truly if we realize that there are lofty spiritual Beings there—Beings who were once upon a time on Earth and who now make it their task to ray down to Earth not what they bear within themselves, but the forces, both physical and spiritual, which they reflect and thus transmit from the great Universe. Whoever seeks Initiation-wisdom in present time, must among other things seek to receive into this Initiation-wisdom what the Beings of the Moon with their sublime spiritual forces have to tell.

Now this is only one of the ‘cities’ in the great Universe—one colony, one settlement among many. Others are no less important, notably those belonging to our planetary system. And as concerns ourselves—as concerns humanity on Earth—the other pole, the opposite extreme to the Moon, is the population of Saturn.

The Saturn population too, as you may gather from my Occult Science, was once united with the Earth, yet in a very different way from the population of the Moon. The Saturn-beings are connected with the earthly life in quite another way. They reflect nothing from cosmic space. Even the physical sunlight is only just reflected on to Earth by Saturn. Saturn like a lonely recluse wanders slowly round the Sun, shedding very little light. What outer Astronomy can tell us about Saturn is but a very small portion of the truth. The significance of Saturn for humanity on Earth is made manifest, if only in a picture, every night when man is sleeping, and it is realized more fully between death and new birth when man is going through the spiritual world—and therefore too through the world of stars—as I explained in a lecture here not long ago.

True, in the present phase of evolution man does not meet Saturn directly; yet by a roundabout way—which we need not go into now—he does come into contact with the Saturn-beings. Within Saturn in effect, Beings of high perfection, very sublime Beings live—Beings who are in near relation to Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are as it were the Beings nearest to them—nearest among the Hierarchies.

The sublime Beings, whom we may call the Saturn population, do not ray down to Earth or give to men from Saturn anything that can be found in the external, physical world. But they preserve the cosmic memory, the cosmic record. All facts and all events, both physical and spiritual, which the planetary system has undergone, all that the Beings within our planetary system have ever experienced—the Saturn-beings faithfully preserve it in memory. In recollection they are forever looking back on the entire life of the planetary system. Even as we look back in memory upon the limited range of our earthly life, so do the Saturn-beings—in their collective activity—cherish the cosmic memory of what the planetary system as a whole and all the beings in it have undergone.

For man himself, the spiritual forces living in this cosmic memory are present, inasmuch as he comes into relation with the Saturn-beings between death and a new birth, and also—more in picture-form—every night. Thereby the spiritual forces proceeding from the Saturn-beings—forces in which the deepest inner life of the planetary system is contained—are also working within man. Even as memory is our own deepest inner life on Earth, so too what lives in Saturn represents the innermost and deepest ‘cosmic I’ of the whole planetary system.

Inasmuch as these influences are also there in man, many things are going on in human life, of the significance of which we are for the most part quite unconscious—which none the less play the greatest imaginable part in our lives. What we are conscious of, is after all only a very small portion of our life.

Say for example there was an incisive moment, an all-important event in your life. You met another human being with whom you then went on through life together; or it was some other event, essential to your future life. If you look back in time from this event, you will be struck by the fact that something like a plan was leading you towards it, beginning long before. Something that happened, say, between your thirtieth and fiftieth year—follow it backward through your life and you will very likely find: ‘I entered on the path leading to this event when I was ten or twelve years old; all that then followed was leading up to it, so that I landed there.’

Elderly people, looking back contemplatively upon their life, will find that it all works out. They will be able to say: ‘There was a subconscious thread running through it all. Unconscious forces were impelling me to the decisive events of my life.’ These are the Saturn forces—forces implanted in us through our relation, such as has been indicated, to the ‘inner population’ of Saturn.

While therefore, of the Moon, only the physical forces of reproduction are there on Earth (for these are Lunar forces, once again, which remained at the Moon's departure), the very highest forces, namely the cosmic moral forces, are on Earth through Saturn. The source of cosmic equity, the great ‘restorer of the balance’ for all that happens upon Earth, is Saturn. And if the Moon-forces, now upon Earth, have to do only with heredity—heredity through father, mother and so on—the Saturn forces enter into human life through all that lives in Karma, from incarnation to incarnation. In this respect the other planets are intermediate between the two—they mediate between the physical upon the one hand and the highest ethical upon the other.

Jupiter, Mars and so on are there between Moon and Saturn. They in their several ways mediate what Moon and Saturn at the uttermost extremes bring into human life—the Moon inasmuch as its spiritual Beings have withdrawn, leaving behind with the earthly realm only the physical aspect, the physical force of propagation; and Saturn inasmuch as it represents the moral justice of the Universe in its highest aspect. These two are working together in that the other planets are there between them, waving the one into the other. Karma through Saturn, physical heredity through the Moon: these in their interrelation show how man upon his way from earthly life to earthly life is connected with the Earth itself and with the great Universe beyond the Earth.

As you will readily understand, my dear Friends, the science of today, fixing attention upon the earthly life alone, can only tell about a very little part of man. It tells a lot about the forces of heredity, yet even here it fails to see that these are Lunar forces left behind on Earth. It fails to relate them to the cosmic activities, transcending the mere earthly life, to which they properly belong. And it knows nothing at all about the destiny of Karma with which this earthly life is infused. Yet in reality, even as physical man is pulsated through and through by the living blood, so are the Beings bearing within them the vast memory of the planetary system with all its cosmic happenings, pulsating through man's Karma upon Earth. Looking into our own inner life, we must admit: We are true human beings only inasmuch as we have memory. Looking out into the planetary system with all its physical and spiritual happenings, and reaching upward to Initiation-science, we must equally admit: This planetary system would be void of inner life were it not for the inhabitants of Saturn preserving through the ages the memory, the cosmic past thereof, and also pouring ever down into mankind the forces springing from this preservation of the cosmic past, whereby all human beings are immersed in a living spiritual-moral nexus of causes and effects leading from earthly life to earthly life.

In earthly life, as to his conscious action, man is confined—in his relation to other men—within narrow limits. But if he takes into account what he experiences between death and new birth, there his relation to other human beings, who like himself will be discarnate, living no longer in physical bodies, reaches far wider circles. True, between death and re-birth he is at one time more in the neighbourhood of the Lunar influences and at another more in the neighbourhood of those of Saturn, Mars and so on. Yet through the cosmic spaces the one kind of planetary force interpenetrates the other. As upon Earth we work from man to man across the narrow confines of terrestrial space, so between death and new birth there is a working from planet to planet. The Universe then becomes the scene of man's activity and of the mutual relations between men. There between death and new birth, maybe the one departed soul is in the realm of Venus while the other is in Jupiter's domain; yet the interactions between them are far more intimate and tender than is possible within the narrow confines of earthly life. And even as the cosmic distances are called into play, to be the scene of action of the relations between human souls between death and new birth, so too the Beings of the Hierarchies are there, working throughout the cosmic spaces. We have to tell not only of the working of the several kinds of Beings—say, the inhabitants of Venus, or of Mars. We have to tell of the relations between the populations of Mars and Venus—a never-ending interaction, a constant to and fro of spiritual forces between the population of Mars and that of Venus amid the Universe.

This which goes on in the Universe between the populations of Mars and Venus—this everliving interplay in the spiritual Cosmos, the deeds of Mars and Venus fertilizing one another—all this again has its relation to man. Even as the Saturn-memory is related to human Karma, and the physical Lunar forces, left behind on Earth, to the external force of reproduction, so is the hidden spiritual interaction between Mars and Venus related to what appears in earthly life as human speech. For we could never speak by virtue of physical forces alone. It is the eternal being of man, going on from earthly life to earthly life, living in effect between death and new birth, which radiates into this outer world the gift of speech. Whilst as a spiritual being we are on our way from death to a new birth, we come into the sphere of action of the mutually fertilizing life which goes on between Mars and Venus—between the spiritual populations of Mars and Venus. Their spiritual forces, raying to and fro, co-operating, enter also into us ourselves upon our way from death to a new birth. This too is reproduced on Earth as in a physical picture, out of the innermost being of man, entering into the organs of speech and song. Never should we be able to speak through these organs if they were not physically kindled by the forces we receive into the depths of our being between death and new birth—forces derived from what is ever streaming to and fro in the Cosmos between Mars and Venus.

Thus in our daily life and action we are under the influence of the same spiritual forces, to the outward signs of which we look up with awe and wonder when we look out into the starry heavens. He alone is able to look up with inner truth who knows that in the stars, raying down to us from cosmic space, are to be seen the signs and characters of the great cosmic writing. For they are but the written signs of the great Universe—of the eternal, all-embracing spiritual life and process which also lives within us and of which we, once more, are but the image.

Long, long ago, in an instinctive atavistic clairvoyance, mankind had vision and perception of these things. The vision faded. If he had kept it, man could never have grown free. The ancient vision was therefore darkened. In compensation, the Mystery of Golgotha came into earthly life. A sublime Being from the population of the Sun came to Earth. He could not, it is true, bring to mankind all at once a consciousness of what is going on in yonder world of stars, but He brought with Him the forces whereby this consciousness can gradually be achieved.

Therefore it happened that to begin with, while the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place, a Gnostic wisdom was still there, inherited from olden time, through which the Mystery was understood This wisdom too then faded out; during the fourth century after Christ it vanished altogether. Yet the spiritual force which had come to Earth through Christ remained. Man can now call this force to life within him, if he once opens his eyes to the reality of spiritual worlds, as he can do through the communications of modern spiritual Science.

How much is yet to come to the humanity of modern time through looking thus once more to spiritual worlds! It is a striking fact: yonder in Asia, in more than one Asiatic, Oriental country, are living those who still preserve some relic of the old instinctive wisdom. They are the educated people, the true scholars, in the Oriental sense. No doubt this remnant of an ancient wisdom no longer belongs, in the best sense of the word, to our time; it needs to be replaced by a more conscious wisdom. And yet these bearers of an ancient and instinctive wisdom look down with not a little contempt upon the people of Europe and America. They are persuaded that their ancient Oriental wisdom even in its decadence, even the remaining rags and tatters of it, are preferable to the kind of knowledge of which Western civilization is so inordinately proud. Hence it is interesting to see a book recently published by a Cingalese, an Indian of Ceylon, The Culture of Souls among the Western Nations, wherein the author says to the Europeans, in effect: Since the Middle Ages your knowledge of the Christ has died out. No longer have you any real knowledge of the Christ, for he alone who can look up into the spiritual world can have real knowledge of the Christ. Hence you must first let teachers come to you from India, from Asia, to teach you Christianity again. You can actually read it in this book. A Cingalese Indian says to the Europeans: Teachers must come to you from Asia; they will be able to tell you what Christ really is. Your European teachers no longer know it. Since the decline of the Middle Ages you have lost your knowledge of the Christ.

Yet in reality it is for Europeans and Americans themselves once more to summon courage to look into the spiritual worlds from which the knowledge of the Christ, the wisdom of the Christ can be regained. Christ is the Being who came down from spiritual worlds into the earthly life. Therefore in His true inwardness He can only be understood in the light of the Spirit.

Upon this way it is also necessary for man to learn to look upon himself as a picture—an image of the spiritual Beings, spiritual realities and activities, on Earth. And he can do so best of all by permeating himself with such ideas and perceptions as I presented to you at the beginning of this lecture. Amid his conscious experiences in the stream of time he looks into the emptiness. He becomes conscious that his true Ego never descends from the spiritual world; that in the physical world he is but a picture. The real ‘I’ is not here in the physical world at all. He sees, as it were, a hole in time—a seeming darkness—and it is to this that he says ‘I’.

Man should therefore become aware of the deep significance of this fact. When he looks back and remembers his past life, he must admit: I see in memory the experiences I underwent from day to day, but there is ever and again a hole, a gap of darkness. It is this darkness which in my ordinary consciousness I call ‘I’. But I must now become conscious of something more than this.

I have summed up this ‘something more’ in a few words, which—as a kind of meditation reaching out to the true ‘I’—may be inscribed in the soul of every human being of our time. Ever repeatedly we may call to life in us these words of meditation, which I will write as follows:

Ich schaue in die Finsternis:
In ihr ersteht Licht—
Lebendes Licht.
Wer ist dies Licht in der Finsternis?
Ich bin es selbst in meiner Wirklichkeit!
Diese Wirklichkeit des Ich
Tritt nicht ein in mein Erdendasein.
Ich bin nur Bild davon.
Ich werde es aber wieder finden,
Wenn ich,
Guten Willens fur den Geist,
Durch des Todes Pforte gegangen.

I gaze into the Darkness.
In it there arises Light—
Living Light!
Who is this Light in the Darkness?
It is I myself in my reality.
This reality of the ‘I’
Does not enter into my earthly life.
I am but a picture of it.
But I shall find it again
When with good will for the Spirit
I shall have passed through the Gate of Death.

Entering ever and again into a meditative saying of this kind, we can confront the Darkness. We realize that here on Earth we are only a picture of our true Being—that our true Being never comes down into the earthly life. Yet in the midst of the Darkness, through our good will towards the Spirit, a Light can dawn upon us, of which we may in truth confess: This Light am I myself in my reality.

[Following the lecture Rudolf Steiner spoke a few words regarding the burning of the Goetheanum. See GA 228.]

• 1. Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds. Six lectures given in England during 1922.

Since we can come together so seldom and would like to include as much as possible in these lectures, it could easily happen that too much is included. Nevertheless, today, from a certain point of view, I would still like to try to characterize for you what could be called the other side of human existence on earth. I would then like to relate that to the significance of a deeper spiritual knowledge of our time.

How much do we finally know about our existence if we use only our senses and the intellect bound up with those senses as our source of knowledge? Ordinary sense-consciousness only allows us to spend the waking part of our existence in full consciousness. The spiritual powers that lead the world did not add the sleeping state to human existence for nothing. From falling asleep to waking up a very great deal happens to the human being. Indeed, most of what the spirit has to effect through human beings in earthly existence is actually achieved during the sleep state.

During the waking state, all that can occur on earth is what we can undertake with ourselves and the things around us. But what higher, spiritual beings undertake with the human soul in human evolution, in order to bring the soul to complete development within earthly existence—this happens during the sleep state. We should not lose sight of the fact that modern initiation knowledge can look closely at the significance of the events that occur when the human being is asleep. Of course, these events occur not only for initiates but for all people; the development of all human beings depends upon them. The initiate can only draw attention to these sleep state events. However, every human being who gives any thought at all to the meaning of earth existence should increasingly feel and sense the significance of what occurs while he sleeps.

Today I would simply like to describe all that plays into the sleeping state of the human being. As you know, when a person falls asleep we characterize what happens externally by saying that the astral body and the I are loosened from the physical and etheric bodies. The I and the astral body are then in the spiritual world; they no longer permeate the physical and etheric bodies as they did in the state between waking and falling asleep. When we look at what happens with human beings in the sleeping state our attention is drawn to the various ways they are connected to the earth during waking. To begin with, we are connected to the earth through our senses—we perceive and know the appearances of the various kingdoms of nature. However, we are also connected with the earth through what we do unconsciously while awake. For example, we breathe—for the most part, unconsciously—and the entire earth, if I may put it this way, plays into the air we breathe. Innumerable substances dispersed in a very fine state are present in the air we breathe. Precisely because they are in this finely dispersed state they have an extraordinarily significant effect when inhaled into the human organism. What enters the human being when he perceives through his senses enters consciously. But a great deal also enters the human being unconsciously when he is awake. And this unconscious element has more substance than what enters through the abstract, ideal state of perceiving and thinking. The world around enters us in a more substantial form through our breathing.

If you would only take into consideration just how dependent the human organism is upon everything that it takes in with the various substances of earthly nourishment, then you would be able to acknowledge that there is much that affects us in our waking state. But this fact is of less interest to us today. We are much more concerned with what is working on the human being in his sleeping state. The point here is this: Just as we see external earthly substances connected with us during our waking state, so too, when we enter the sleeping state, we enter into a certain connection with the entire cosmos.

That is not to say that we should imagine a human being taking on the magnitude of the cosmos every night with his or her astral body—that would be an exaggeration—but we do grow into the cosmos every night. Just as we are connected here on earth during the day with the plants, the minerals, and the air, so too we are connected during the night with the movements of the planets and with the constellations of the fixed stars. From our falling asleep until our waking the sky full of stars becomes our world just as the earth is our world in the waking state.

Now, to begin with, we can distinguish various spheres through which we pass between falling asleep and waking. The first sphere we pass through is that in which the human I and the human astral body—that is, the human soul when asleep—feels itself connected with the movements of the planets. When waking in the morning and, as it were, having slipped into our physical body we can say that we have in us our lungs, our heart, our liver, our brain. Likewise when we enter the sleep state we must say that in the first sphere with which we come into contact after falling asleep—which is also the sphere we are again in contact with just before awakening—in this sphere we have within us the forces of planetary movement.

It is not that we take the entire movements of the planets into ourselves every night. But what we carry within us as an image or copy is a small picture, in which the movements of the planets are actually copied, reflected. And this is different with every human being. We can say that, when falling asleep, every human being experiences the movements of the planets. Everything that goes on as movement “out there” in the space of the universe between the planets is experienced inwardly in a kind of globe of planets in the astral body. That is the human being's first experience after falling asleep.

Do not ask, my dear friends, what this has to do with you. Do not say that you do not perceive this. You may not see it with your eyes nor hear it with your ears. But in the moment you fall asleep, at that moment, that part of your astral body that during waking permeates and is a part of your heart—that part becomes an eye. We see with this organ, which I will call a “heart-eye.” When we enter the sleep state this organ begins to perceive what is happening in the way I have just described. This heart-eye really does perceive what the human being experiences there—even if the perception is, for present-day humanity, very dim and obscure.

What we experience there is perceived by this heart-eye in such a way that, in the time after falling asleep when the physical and etheric bodies are lying there in bed, this heart-eye looks back at us. The I and the astral body look back at the physical and etheric bodies with the heart-eye. What the I and the astral body experience in their body inwardly as a picture of the movements of the planets, radiates back to the heart eye from their own etheric body. The I and the astral body see the mirror image of the planetary movement coming out of their own etheric body.

Upon awakening, because of the way the human being is presently constituted, we immediately forget the dim consciousness provided by our heart-eye during the night. This consciousness is dim and, at the most, can only be found echoing in certain dreams; in their inner flexibility these dreams still have something of the planetary movements. As we approach wakefulness, images from our lives settle into these dreams which, fundamentally speaking, are actually dependent upon the movements of the planets. The images enter at this point because the astral body is being submerged into the etheric body, which preserves our memories of earthly life.

The following is a specific example: You wake up in the morning; you have once again gone through the spheres of planetary movement. Let us say you have experienced there a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus because such an event is connected with your destiny, your karma. This could happen. You could have experienced a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus. If you could lift what was experienced there between Jupiter and Venus into the light of your day consciousness, then much concerning your human abilities would be clear to you. For those abilities have come from the cosmos, not from the earth. How you are related to the cosmos determines how you are gifted, how you are good, or at least how you are inclined to good or to evil. You would be able to see what Jupiter and Venus discussed with one another, and what you perceived with your heart-eye. (I could just as well say heart-ear, for it is hard to distinguish such things.) But this is all forgotten because it has been perceived so very dimly. As this exchange between Jupiter and Venus continues within you it causes corresponding movements in your astral body and something else, from your etheric body, mixes in—for example, what you experienced around noon when you were seventeen, or when you were twenty-five years old, say, in Oxford or Manchester or anywhere. Such earthly images are mixed with the cosmic experiences. The pictures in dreams do have a certain significance; but the pictures arc not what is of primary importance. They are, so to speak, the fabric woven to clothe cosmic events.

Concerning the experience that thus comes into existence for the perception of the heart, we can say that it is bound up with a certain anxiety. For almost everyone there are feelings of a spiritual kind of anxiety mixed in with this experience, especially when what was experienced cosmically shines back and echoes from the human etheric body. For example, this anxiety arises for the perception of the heart if what has been brought about through the special relationship between Jupiter and Venus radiates back with a ray—which would say a lot for your heart perception—radiates back from the human forehead, and if this ray is then mixed with the sound and light from another ray, say, from the region just below the heart. This perception of anxiety leads every soul not entirely hardened to such perceptions to actually say to itself in sleep: The mists of the cosmos have taken me into themselves. It really feels like you have become as thin as the mists of the world and are swimming like a cloud, just a part of cosmic fog, within the larger mists of the cosmos. This is the experience immediately after falling asleep.

Then out of this anxiety, out of this feeling of one's self as just another mist within the cosmic fog, something comes into the human soul that could be called devotion to the divine that is weaving through the world. Those are the two basic feelings that come over the human being in the first sphere after falling asleep: first that I am within the mists of the world, and then that I would like to rest in the bosom of God so as to be safe from dissolution in these mists. These feelings must be carried by the perception of the heart when we again awaken in the morning and enter into our physical and etheric bodies. If this experience were not carried over into life then all the substances we take into our bodies for nourishment the next day, or whatever else our metabolism may process—even if we starve, for then the substances are taken from our bodies—these substances would assume solely their earthly character and would thus bring about disorder in the whole human organism.

It is simply a fact that for the human waking condition the significance of sleep is enormous. In this epoch of earth's development man is still spared the task of having to carry the divine from sleep into waking. Because of the way human beings in the present age are constituted they could hardly muster the strength to carry these things in full consciousness from the other side of existence to this side of existence.

After the experiences connected with the planetary movements, the human being goes into the next sphere. In doing so we do not leave the first; it remains for the perception of the heart. The next sphere is much more complicated and is perceived with that part of the astral body that, during the day, during waking, permeates and is a part of the solar plexus, permeates and is a part of our entire limb system. The solar plexus and limb system of the human being, that part of the astral body that penetrates and permeates the solar plexus and the arms and legs—this part of the astral body perceives what happens in the night in the next sphere.

In the next sphere we feel the forces in our astral bodies that originate in the constellations of the zodiac. These forces come in two forms, the first consisting of those forces which come directly from the constellations of the zodiac, the other form arising when these forces from the zodiac pass through the earth. It makes a very big difference whether the zodiacal signs are above or below the earth.

In this sphere the human being perceives with what I would like to call “sun perception” because that part of the astral body connected with the solar plexus and the limb system is involved in the perception. I would like to call this perceiving part of the astral body the “eye of the sun” or the “sun-eye.” Through it we become aware of our entire relationship to the zodiac and the movements of the planets. In this sphere the picture is enlarged, we grow more into the picture of the cosmos.

This experience is again mirrored to us by our own physical and etheric bodies, which we are now looking at. What comes forth from our body every night is brought into connection with the entire cosmos, with the movements of the planets and the constellations of the fixed stars. The experience with the fixed stars may occur for some people half an hour after falling asleep, for some after a longer period and for others very shortly after falling asleep. A person experiences himself in all twelve constellations. The experiences with the fixed stars are extraordinarily complicated.

My dear friends, I believe you could have visited the most important regions of the earth as a world traveler and still you would not have had the sum of experiences that your sun-eye gathers for you from a single constellation of the zodiac. Because the people who lived in ancient times still had powerful dreamlike powers of clairvoyance and perceived, in a dreamlike way, much of what I have been describing, all of this was relatively less confusing to them. Today, a person's sun-eye can hardly come to any kind of clarity—and we must come to clarity even if we forget it in the day. We can hardly come to any kind of clarity concerning what we experience in twelve-fold complexity during the night unless we take into our hearts and minds what Christ wanted to become for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Simply having felt what it means for the life of the earth that Christ went through the mystery of Golgotha, simply thinking about Christ in our ordinary life on earth brings such a tinge, such a hue, into our astral body, by the indirect path through the physical and etheric bodies, that Christ can become our leader through the zodiac from falling asleep to waking.

Once again the human being wonders: Will I be lost in the multitude of stars and their activities? But if we can look back to thoughts, feelings, and will impulses turned toward Christ during our daytime waking state, then Christ becomes a leader who helps us to bring order into the complex and confusing events of this sphere.

Only when we observe the other side of life do we realize the full significance of Christ for the earth life of humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the present, ordinary civilization, there is actually no one else who understands what Christ must still become for the life of earth. All these things, which have not yet been experienced by many people, are wrongly explained. Only when you know what I have just explained can you understand the various ways in which people who have not yet been touched by the Christ event bring their nightly experiences while asleep into waking day consciousness. When we have gone through the misty existence in the sleep state and entered the second sphere we stand before a complicated and confusing world. Only when Christ steps forward as a spiritual sun and becomes our leader is complex confusion resolved into a kind of harmonious understanding.

This point is important because our karma appears, actually appears to our sun-eye, the moment we step into this sphere of whirling confusion, this sphere of planetary movement and of the fixed star constellations of the zodiac. All human beings perceive their karma, but only in the sleeping state. The afterimage or afterglow of this perception slips into our waking state through our feelings.

Much of the condition of soul that we can find in ourselves—if, to some extent, we strive for self-knowledge—is a very dim echo of this zodiacal experience. People can receive strength for their daily lives because Christ appeared as the leader and led them from Aries through Taurus, Gemini, and so forth, and explained the world to them in the night. What we experience in this sphere is nothing less significant than this: Christ becomes our leader through the complex and confusing events in the zodiac; he stands there as the being who leads us, who leads us from constellation to constellation, in order for us to take into ourselves, in an orderly fashion, the spiritual forces that we once again need—and they are, indeed, ordered—for our waking life.

Fundamentally speaking, this is what the human being experiences every night between falling asleep and waking. He experiences this because he is related to the cosmos as a soul and spirit. Just as he is related to the earth through his etheric and physical bodies, he is also related to the cosmos with his soul, with his spirit and his astral body. When the human being has separated from his physical and etheric bodies and so grown out into the cosmic world, he then feels within himself a strong kinship to the world he is entering. He feels this kinship in his experience of the pictures reflected back to him from what has been left lying in bed. He feels a strong tendency to move out beyond the zodiac with his inner life. But this he cannot do between birth and death because another element mixes into all these experiences during the time when the human being is asleep, another element which, compared with what comes from the planets and the fixed stars, is of an entirely different nature. This is the element of the moon.

During the night the element of the moon, even during the new moon, tinges to a certain extent the entire cosmos with a special something that is like a substance. This tingeing is also experienced by us. But we experience it in such a way that these moon forces hold us back within the world of the zodiac and lead us once again to waking. With a dimly conscious awareness we already experience this moon element in the first sphere. But during the second sphere we experience the secrets of birth and death in an especially powerful way. With an organ lying even deeper than the heart-eye and the sun-eye, with an organ that is, so to speak, apportioned to the whole human being, we actually experience every night how our soul-spirit being descends—that is, has descended—from the world of soul and spirit and has entered into physical existence through birth; and we experience how the body gradually goes over into death. The human being is actually always dying. In every moment he only subdues death until death then really occurs as a single event. But in the moment we experience how the soul, so to speak, goes through earthly nature, bodily nature, in this same moment we also experience—and through the very same forces—our connection with the rest of humanity.

You have to remember this: Not even the most insignificant encounter, insignificant relationship—or even the most decisive—is without a connection to our total destiny, to the total karma of the human being. All our involvement with other human beings, all human relationships, which have, of course, an intimate connection with the mystery of birth and death, appear, I would like to say, before our spiritual eye at this point during the second sphere. This comprehension of karma happens whether the souls with whom we have ever had a connection in past lives, or with whom we now, in this earth life, have a relationship, are presently in the spiritual world or are on the earth. We feel ourselves at this point to be in touch with and living within our total life destiny.

This experience is connected with the fact that all the other forces, those of the planets and the fixed stars, want to draw us out into the cosmos while the moon wants to put us again into the world of people, basically tearing us out of the cosmos. The moon has forces that are actually opposed to the forces of the sun as well as the forces of the stars. It constitutes our kinship to the earth. For this reason every night, in a certain sense, it brings us back from the experiences of the zodiac into the planetary experiences and once again into earthly experiences, in that we are brought back into the physical body of a human being. From a certain point of view this is the difference between sleeping and dying: When a human being merely falls asleep he or she maintains a strong connection to these moon forces. Every night, in a certain sense, these moon forces also point out to us again the meaning of our life on earth. But this can only be the case because we receive everything reflected back from the etheric body.

In death we pull the etheric body out of the physical body; the backward view of memories from the last life on earth then appears. For a short while, a few days, the etheric body permeates the cloud of which I have spoken. As I said, every night we experience ourselves as a cloud, as a cloud of mists in a world of fog. But this cloud of mists that we ourselves are, this cloud is without our etheric body during the night. When we die the cloud is, to begin with, in the first days after our death, with our etheric body.

Then the etheric body gradually dissolves into the cosmos and our memory disappears. And now, in contrast to what we had earlier when our experience of the stars was only radiated back from the human being, who remained lying in bed, now, after death, we have an immediate, inner experience of the movements of the planets and the fixed star constellations.

If you read my book Theosophy³³ you will find, described from a certain point of view, what these experiences after death consist of. I describe what appears as if surrounding the human being between death and a new birth. But just as the world would have no color if there were no eyes in your body, no sounds if you were without ears, just as you could not breathe without lungs and a heart, so too, after death you would not be able to perceive what I have described as the soul world and spirit land, your environment in the spiritual world, unless you had Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so forth. That is then your organism: with your cosmic organism you experience all of this. The moon can no longer bring you back because it could only bring you back to an etheric body; but your etheric body has been dissolved into the cosmos.

As I described the process in Theosophy, there is still so much left of the power bequeathed to the human being by the moon that after death we must remain a while in the soul world. We keep looking at the earth intently, until we go over into what I described as spirit land. There we experience ourselves as being beyond the zodiac, beyond the realm of the fixed stars. In this way we live through the time between death and a new birth. I could describe the details of this entry into, and life within, the spiritual world—the entry made every night. But the concepts I use for this description must not be pushed too far; these things can hardly be expressed with earthly concepts. Nevertheless, I can describe it to you as follows.

Picture a meadow and picture flowers in this meadow; from every blossom in the meadow and on the trees, a kind of spiral goes forth unwinding upward into cosmic space. The spirals contain the forces through which the cosmos regulates and effects the growth of plants on the earth. For plants grow not only out of their seeds; plants grow out of the cosmic, helical forces that surround the earth. These forces are also present in winter, also in the desert, and also when there are no plants present. In order to enter into the movements of the planets every night we must use these helical forces as a ladder. Using the ladder-like quality of the spiraling forces of the plants we climb up into the movements of the planetary world. With the force that the plant uses to grow upward, a force coming forth from its roots (you see, it has to apply a force in order to grow upwards) with this force the human being is carried into the second sphere that I described. When it comes to those experiences I have described for you—when we are beset by a certain anxiety and say: I am a figure of mists in the universal cosmic fog, I must rest in the bosom of God—when we consider these experiences with respect to conditions on the earth, then, again, the soul can say to itself: I rest in all of that which lays like a cosmic blessing over a field of grain when it blossoms, which lays over a meadow when it blossoms. Everything that sinks down to the plants lives and expresses itself in the spiraling lines of force, is, fundamentally speaking, the bosom of God, the bosom of God enlivened and active within itself. Therein the human being feels embedded in every period of sleep.

The moon leads us back again to our animal nature while the forces of plants constantly strive to carry us further out into the universe. In this way we are connected with the cosmos. In this way the cosmos works between our falling asleep and our waking. And the heart-eye, sun-eye, and human eye go through the night feeling things in a way similar to the way, say, that we experience any kind of relationship to another human being. But we are not told this, neither do we think this out by ourselves, but rather the plants tell us this, the plants, which give us a ladder to climb up into the planetary world where we are then forced out into the world of the zodiac.

One could have an experience like this: I have a relationship to a particular person; the lilies tell me, the roses tell me, because the forces of the roses, the forces of the lilies, the forces of the tulips have driven me precisely to this place. The entire earth becomes a kind of “book of life” that enlightens us about the human world, the world in which we live, the world of human souls.

The people of various ages and epochs have had these experiences in different ways. If you look toward old India you will see that those wanting to discover something through the sleeping state, through a relationship with the world of the stars, wanted information only from those fixed stars and constellations that happened to be above the earth at any given time. They never wanted connections to the constellations below, the constellations whose forces had to go through the earth. Just take a look at the Buddha posture or at the posture of any sage whatsoever from the Orient, who strives for spiritual wisdom through exercises! Look at how he crosses his legs one over the other and sits on them. He assumes this posture because he wants only his upper body and what is connected to the stars above to become active within. He does not want what also works through him through the sun-eye, what works through the limb system, to become active within. He wants the forces of the limb system more or less excluded. Therefore, you can see, in the position of every Oriental striving for wisdom, how he wants to develop a relationship only to what is above the earth. He wants only to develop those connections leading to knowledge in the soul realm.

The world would have remained incomplete if this had remained the only kind of search for knowledge, if, in order to acquire knowledge, humankind had been restricted to the Buddha posture alone. Already, during the age of the Greeks, a human being had to enter into a relationship with the forces encountered when he develops in the direction of those constellations that, at any given time, are below the earth. This tendency is hinted at in a wonderfully intimate way in Greek tales. You are always told of a kind of initiation in Greek tales. When it is said that certain heroes in Greece have descended into the underworld, that they have experienced initiation, this means that they have become acquainted with those forces that work through the earth. They have come to know the chthonic powers.

Every age has its special task. In order to teach other people, the Oriental initiate learned primarily about what was to be found before birth, before conception actually, that is, what lay in the soul-spiritual realms human beings live through before descending into the earthly world. What approaches us in such a magnificent way in Oriental writings and in the Oriental worldview comes to us because people back then could look into the life human beings led before they descended to the earth.

In Greece people began to know the forces that depended upon the earth itself: Uranus and Gaia. Gaia, the earth, stands at the beginning of Greek cosmology. The Greek always sought to find out about, to know, the mysteries of the earth itself, mysteries that were, of course, also cosmic mysteries that worked through the earth. The Greeks wanted to know about the mysteries of the underworld. In this way the Greeks developed a proper cosmology.

Consider how little knowledge of history (as we call it) the Greeks had. Yet the Oriental never had any at all. The Greeks were far more interested in what was going on when the earth was being formed in the cosmos and then later when the inner powers of the earth, the Titanic forces, fought against other powers. The Greeks pointed to these gigantic, powerful spiritual forces that form the foundation for earthly conditions and in which humanity is so entangled. It is incumbent upon us in the new age to understand history and be able to point out that humanity has come out of an old, dreamlike clairvoyant condition, that we have now arrived at an intellectually colored consciousness that is merely tinged with the mythical. We must now work our way out of this consciousness and once again into a seeing into the spiritual world.

This present epoch marks the transition to a conscious experience of the spiritual world that can only be achieved with effort. For this purpose we must, above all, look at history. We have, therefore, in our anthroposophical movement, again and again reviewed the various historical epochs from our time all the way back to the time when human beings still received knowledge from higher, supra-earthly beings. We have followed the historical development of humanity.

The external knowledge of our time views this historical development of man in a completely abstract way. What abstract lines are drawn when people today develop knowledge of history! Ancient peoples followed a history still clothed in mythos, a history that included nature and its events. We can no longer do that. But people have not yet acquired a faculty that would lead them to ask: What was it like when the first human beings received wisdom from higher beings? And what was it like as that wisdom gradually faded away? What was it like when a God himself descended in order to incarnate in a human body through the mystery of Golgotha, in order to fulfill a grand, cosmic mission with the earth, so that the earth could receive its meaning?

The whole of nineteenth and twentieth century theology suffers from the inability to understand the spiritual significance of Christ. You see, modern initiation science must bring this understanding. There must be a modern science of initiation that can penetrate once again into the spiritual world, that can speak once again about birth and death, about life between birth and death and life between death and a new birth, and about the life of the human soul in sleep just as we here today have spoken to one another. Once again it must be possible for man to know about this spiritual, other side of existence. All of humankind's progress in the future will be possible only if human beings also become acquainted with this other side of existence.

Once people turned to the upper worlds alone for their knowledge. This can easily be observed in the posture of the Buddha. Later people came to their cosmology by reading it out of the development of the earth; they were initiated in the Greek chthonic mysteries, as passages in the Greek myths recount again and again. Now that the secrets of heaven and the secrets of earth have been studied in the old science of initiation we need a modern science of initiation that can move back and forth between heaven and earth, that can ask heaven when it wants to know something about earth and that can ask the earth when it wants to know something about heaven.

If I may say so in all modesty, this is how the questions are posed and given preliminary answers in my book An Outline of Occult Science.³⁴ The attempt is made there to describe what the modern human being needs, just as the ancient Orientals needed the mysteries of heaven and the Greeks needed the mysteries of the earth. In our present age we should observe how things stand with this modern initiation and its relationship to modern man.

To characterize briefly the tasks that form the foundation of modern initiation I will say something now that I was already able to say to a few of you in Oxford during these days of my visit to England. Namely, I would like to begin by pointing out that while it was important for the most ancient initiates to look up into the spiritual world from which man descended when he clothed himself with an earthly body, and while for later initiates such things as I characterized by pointing to Greek portrayals of a descent into the underworld were important, it is the obligation of modern initiation, as I have already said, to seek as knowledge the rhythmical relationship of heaven and earth.

This can only be achieved if we consider the following. Certainly, we must know heaven, and certainly we must know the earth. But then we must also look at the human being, in whom, among all the beings around us, heaven and earth work together to create a unity. We must look at—that means with our sun-eye, with our heart-eye, with the entire human eye—we must look at the human being. The human being! For humanity contains infinitely more secrets than the worlds that we can perceive with our external organs of perception, that we can explain with an intellect bound to the senses. The task of present-day initiation knowledge is to come to know the human being spiritually. I would like to say that initiation science wants to come to know everything for this reason: in order to understand the human being through knowledge of the whole world, through knowledge of the whole cosmos.

Now compare the situation of the present-day initiate with the situation of the ancient initiate. Because of all the abilities that existed in the soul of ancient humanity the initiate then could awaken memories of the time before the descent into an earthly body. For this reason initiation for the ancient was an awakening of cosmic memories. Then, for the Greeks, initiation meant looking into nature. Modern initiates are concerned to know the human being directly as a spiritual being. Now we must acquire the ability to set ourselves free from the grasp of earth, from the ties connecting us with the world. I would like to repeat an example that I have just recently mentioned.

Achieving a relationship to the souls who have passed through the gate of death, who have left the earth, either recently or long ago, is one of the most difficult tasks of initiation knowledge. However, it is possible to achieve such a relationship by awakening forces that lie deeper in the soul. Here we must understand clearly, however, that we have to accustom ourselves, through exercises, to the language we must speak with the dead. This language is, I would like to say, in a certain sense, a child of human language. But we would go completely astray if we thought that this human language here could help us to cultivate communication with the dead. The first thing we become aware of is that the dead are only able to understand for a short time what lives as nouns in the language of earth. What is expressed as a thing, a closed off thing, the characterization of a noun, is no longer present in the language of the dead. In the language of the dead everything is related to activity and movement. For this reason we find that some time after the human being has passed through the gate of death, he has a real feeling only for verbs. In order to communicate with the dead we must sometimes direct a question to them by formulating it in such a way that it is understandable to them. Then, if we know how to pay attention, the answer comes after a while. Usually several nights must pass before the deceased person can give us an answer to our questions. But we must first find our way into the language of the deceased; finally the language appears for us, the language the dead actually have, the language the deceased has had to live into after death, distancing himself from the earth with his entire soul life. We find our way into a language that is not at all formed according to earthly conditions, but is rather a language arising from feelings, from the heart. It is a kind of language of the heart. Here, language is formed in the way vowels or feeling sounds are formed in human language. For example, when we are amazed we say “Ah!” or when we want to lead ourselves back to ourselves we speak the “ee” sound. Only in such instances do the sounds and sound combinations receive their due, their real meaning. And beginning with such instances language becomes something that no longer sounds bound up to the speech organ. It is transformed into what I have just described, a language of the heart. When we have learned this transformed language, the forces that rise from the flowers give us information about humankind and we ourselves begin to speak with what comes from the flowers. When we enter into the tulip blossom with our soul forces we express, in the Imagination of the tulip, what is expressed here on the earth in the formation of words. We grow again into the spiritual aspect of everything.

From the example of language, just characterized, you see that the human being grows into entirely different conditions of existence when he has gone through the gate of death. You see, we really know very little about a human being if we only know his or her external side; the modern science of initiation must know the other side. This begins with language. Even the human body, as it is described if you read the relevant literature, becomes something else for us. The body becomes a world in itself when we grow into the science of initiation.

While the initiate in ancient times reawakened an ability in people that had been lost, while he brought to memory what they had experienced before descending to the earth, the initiate of the present age must do something entirely new, something that represents progress in the human being, that will still have significance for us when humanity itself will one day have left the earth, indeed, when the earth is no longer even present in the cosmos. This is the task of modern initiation science. Out of this strength modern initiation science must speak.

As you know, from time to time the science of initiation enters into the spiritual development of the earth. This has happened again and again. The initiation science we need actually sees only a beginning in the assumptions of contemporary science. This initiation science will be increasingly contested. You will need strength to get through all that stands against modern initiation. Before modern initiation, which is a conversation with super-sensible powers, actually first received its proper power in the last third of the nineteenth century, the adversarial powers were already at work to bring about a condition of human culture and civilization, in many ways an unconscious condition, which actually amounts to a complete extermination of modern initiation.

Just consider how popular it has become to respond to everything that appears in the world as knowledge with the words: This is my point of view. People say “This is my point of view” without having gone through any kind of development. Everyone is supposed to make his own point of view count from the location where he just happens to be standing at the moment when he speaks. And people are offended, even angry, when a higher knowledge is mentioned, a knowledge that can only be acquired through the work of self-development.

When the possibility of achieving a modern initiation appeared, primarily in the last third of the nineteenth century, adversary powers were already at work. Above all they wanted to bring about a great leveling of people, also in the spiritual realm. There are many people I could mention through whom these enemies of modern initiation have worked.

My dear friends, you must believe that the words I must speak out of the spirit of this initiation science must also sound the way they do from the point of view of ordinary conditions here on the earth. If I attempt to make clear to you how the sounds of human language become different when language is to be used in the presence of the beings of the spiritual world, then you will not misunderstand me when I say: I myself will never misunderstand the great significance, spoken from the merely earthly point of view, of someone like Rousseau; and if I speak from the merely earthly standpoint I will set out with all élan to praise and speak well of Rousseau, just as others speak of him.³⁵ But if I should rise to an attempt to clothe in earthly words what initiation knowledge says concerning Rousseau I would have to say that with his equalization, with his spiritual leveling, Rousseau represents the supreme babbler of modern civilization.

This is something that humanity cannot readily assimilate, that someone like Rousseau can be called a great spirit, a great personality, from the earthly point of view but—if we really want to get to know this person through the modern science of initiation (where we must know heaven and earth and describe the rhythm between them from both sides)—must be called the supreme babbler from the point of view of initiation. Only the harmony of what resounds from the one side and from the other side leads to a true knowledge of the human being. For this true knowledge of the human being must be built upon the same wisdom the old initiates build upon: Ex deo nascimur. All remembering must by built upon what comes to meet us when we look out into the world where, as I have today described the process, we have unconsciously allowed Christ to become our leader. But we must bring him into our consciousness more and more. Then we can recognize what belongs to death in the world as standing under the leadership of Christ. Then we can recognize that we live into the dead world with Christ: In Christo morimur.

Finally, because we are submerged in the grave of the earth and its life we experience with Christ the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

The modern initiate must strive above all for this Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus. If you consider this counsel and compare it with the modern attitude coming from science you will recognize that there will still be immense opposition, perhaps of a kind you cannot even imagine today, which will take the form of external actions and deeds that, above all, will have a tendency to make initiation science entirely impossible. What I would like to leave in your hearts, in your souls, when I speak in such an intimate circle of friends, is this: Through the descriptions given by modern initiation science, I would like to awaken strength so that a few people are actually present in the world who can find the proper place between what wants to come into the earthly world from spiritual worlds and what, from the direction of the earthly world, wants it to be impossible for spirituality to penetrate into the life of earth. This is what I have wanted to draw attention to, in such an intimate circle of friends. An opportunity had already been given to speak in a more external lecture, such as, to my great satisfaction, we were able to have in Oxford. Since the opportunity was given to describe the external side, so the esoteric side must also be handled in this smaller circle, it must also be described. I believe it would be good if you could get beyond the fact that there is much that sounds paradoxical when I speak out of spiritual worlds. It has to sound paradoxical because the language of spiritual worlds is so different from any earthly language. What should actually be expressed differently can only be brought into earthly language with a great exertion of force. Therefore, it should be understandable if some things are shocking when they appear unmediated as a simple description of spiritual worlds.

My dear friends, in addition to characterizing the fundamental intention that was behind today's lecture, I also want to express my deep satisfaction that I have been able to be here and speak to you in London. It is always gratifying. As I have already said, we are seldom together here. May what we can found in our hearts, in our souls, through such rare gatherings bring about a togetherness that should always be present among those who call themselves anthroposophists—a togetherness of hearts and souls extending over the whole world. Today's lecture has been given with this goal in mind, that we use such brief times together as an inspiration for the greater togetherness that unites all our hearts and all our souls. And to document, as it were, this intention I would like to add the following words. Speaking out of this frame of mind I would like to say: Let us remain together, my dear friends, even as we leave now to go in such widely separate directions.

• 33. Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
• 34. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline Of Occult Science, vol. 13 in the Collected Works, repr. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989).
• 35. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French philosopher. Influential in shaping Romanticism. Contending that people are good by nature and corrupted by civilization, Rousseau advocated a social contract to uphold the sovereignty of the people as a whole.

There is no doubt that at the present time numbers of people are longing to know something of the spiritual worlds and even modern scientists have been at pains to discover paths leading to knowledge of the Supersensible. But in all these attempts to penetrate to the supersensible world, modern man finds stumbling-blocks created by the judgments issuing from modern scientific thinking with all the authority it commands; and in regard to the many sources from which people imagine that knowledge of the supersensible world can be derived, the prevailing opinion is that concerning the supersensible worlds there can be no exact knowledge in the sense of modern science, for none of the evidence put forward stands up to any valid test.

Now the anthroposophical Spiritual Science of which I am venturing to speak to you in these lectures, strives to reach exact, genuinely exact, knowledge of the supersensible world: “exact,” not in the sense that experiments are made as in domains of science concerned with the external world, but in the sense that inner faculties of soul otherwise slumbering in man during his everyday life and ordinary scientific pursuits are unfolded in such a way that the full clarity of consciousness implicit in really exact science is maintained throughout. Whereas, therefore, in exact scientific thinking, consciousness is maintained as it is in ordinary life and exactitude of method is strictly adhered to during investigation of the external world, in anthroposophical Spiritual Science we proceed by adopting an initial attitude of what I will call intellectual humility, saying to ourselves: “I was once a child and my faculties then fell far, far short of those I have acquired through education and through life and now possess as an adult human being.” It is quite evident that certain faculties which did not previously function have unfolded since childhood, and the question arises naturally: Is it not possible, then, that faculties are slumbering in the adult human being just as his present faculties were slumbering in his soul during childhood? Provided that certain methods are put into practice, these faculties can indeed be drawn forth from the soul.

In anthroposophical Spiritual Science these inner faculties must be drawn out in such a way that the methods whereby the actual approach to supersensible knowledge is made, are in line with our own development. The preparation for looking into the higher world presupposes exactitude of method. As I said in my last lectures here,¹ it is possible for “exact clairvoyance” to be acquired by methods as precise and systematic as those employed when the facts of ordinary knowledge are being used in the investigation of nature.

I shall speak less to-day of how this exact clairvoyance can actually be attained—I shall mention this merely in passing, for the two previous lectures dealt with the methods for the attainment of exact clairvoyance, and information about these methods is available from the book that has been translated into English under the title, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

I want to-day to indicate why it is that in his ordinary life the human being is unable to pene­trate into the higher worlds. This is denied to him, primarily because he is only capable of per­ceiving the world in the actual present. Our eyes can perceive the world and its phenomena, our ears can hear sounds in the immediate present only. So it is with all our senses. We can only know the past of our earthly life in recollec­tion or remembrance, that is to say, in pale, shadowy thoughts. Just think how living and concretely real were experiences undergone ten years ago and how pale and shadowy are our thoughts and recollections of them to-day.

Everything that lies outside the present moment can only live in man's ordinary conscious­ness in the form of shadowy remembrance. But this shadowy remembrance can be kindled and fired into higher reality through the methods which, as I have said, I do not propose to discuss in detail to-day—through methods of mediation in thought, concentration upon thoughts, self-training and the like.

A man who applies such methods to himself, learning thereby to live in his thoughts with all the intensity with which he otherwise lives in his external sense-impressions only, acquires a certain faculty of observing the world not only in the immediate present. Depending upon the aptitude of the individual concerned, exercises leading to this result must of course be practiced for a long time, in conscientious, systematic meditation and concentration. Many a human being, especially in the present age, already brings with him at birth the faculty which can be developed by these methods. This does not mean that the faculty is immediately evident at birth, but at a certain moment in life it emerges from within the human being and he knows that had it not come with him at birth it would have been impossible for him to acquire it in the ordinary course of his existence. This faculty consists in being able to live within the thoughts themselves, just as through his body, man lives in the physical world.

Such a statement must not be taken lightly. Let it be remembered that man owes to his living participation in the physical world everything that enables him to claim an existence of his own. When he reaches the stage where without depend­ing upon impressions received through the eyes, ears and other senses he can unfold an inner life as active and intense as the life of these outer senses, an inner life consisting not merely of shadowy thoughts but of inwardly living thoughts experi­enced with all the intensity otherwise implicit only in sense-impressions ... then he knows the reality of a second kind of existence, a different form of self-consciousness. I will call it an awakening—an awakening to a life not outside the body but within the innermost core of being, while the physical body is as quiescent and as insensible to impressions from outside as is otherwise the case only during sleep.

If we think about our own inner life and being, we find that in ordinary existence we really only know what has been conveyed to us via the senses. But sense-perceptions tell us nothing whatever about our inner life and being. With ordinary consciousness we cannot look inwards in the real sense. But when the new kind of self-consciousness in the realm of pure thinking is unfolded, we learn to look inwards just as in ordinary existence we can look outwards, into the external world.

The experience then arising can be described somewhat as follows:—As we look into the external world, the sun or some source of light must be there to illumine the objects around us. Through the light that is outside us, we perceive these objects. When, in the process of pure thinking, consciousness of this second existence awakens—it is however a process of actual “beholding” as colourful and rich in content as sense-perception—then we can become aware of an inner light ... not in a figurative sense but as a spiritual reality ... a light which illumines our own inner life and being just as in the ordinary way objects are illumined for us by some external source of light.

This condition of human experience, there­fore, may be called “clairvoyance,” “clear seeing.” And this clairvoyance in the spiritual self-consciousness that has now been awakened, engenders, in the first place, the faculty whereby a man is able once again to be consciously present in every moment he has lived through during his earthly existence.

The following, for example, is possible—I say to myself: When I was 18 years old, I had certain experiences. But now, when the new conscious­ness has awakened, I no longer merely remember these experiences; I can actually live through them again with greater or less intensity. Once again I am the human being I was at the age of 18 or 15 or 10 ... A man can transfer himself in consciousness into every moment of his life and he thereby unfolds an inner, illumined perception of what, in contrast to the spatial body in which the senses are contained, may be called a “Time-body.”

But this Time-body is ever-present, ever in operation; it is not experienced in a succession of separate moments, but as one complete whole. It is present in all its inner mobility. A vista arises before the human being of the whole of his previous earthly life, whereas in ordinary circumstances he merely recollects this earthly life in shadowy thoughts. The whole course of his earthly exis­tence lights up for him, but in such a way that he lives consciously in each single moment.

When this inner illumination arises, a man knows that he is the bearer not only of a physical, spatial body. He knows that he is the bearer of a second: ethereal body, a body actually woven from the pictures of his past earthly life, but pictures which, with creative power, shape this earthly life itself, shape and mould the very organism and its activities. He thus learns to know the reality of a second man within himself. This second man is conscious of living within a delicate, ethereal world of light—just as the spatial body lives in a physical world. The world is revealed in its finer, more delicate formations; the delicate, ethereal formations perceived in this way underlie everything physical.

Strange to say, it is only possible to keep very brief hold of what is experienced in this finer body. A man who by the development of exact clairvoyance has filled his ether-body, or “body of formative forces,” with light, is able to perceive the etheric reality of the world and of his own being; but in most cases he will find that the impressions pass away very quickly; they cannot be retained. And he is aware of a kind of anxiety to return as quickly as may be to the perceptions of the physical body in order to be assured of an inner sense of consolidation as a human being, as a personality. He experiences his own self in his ether-body. In this ether-body he also perceives etheric realities of the higher world. But at the same time, he finds how fleeting all these impres­sions are; he cannot keep hold of them for any length of time, indeed he must always resort to some means of help.

By way of example, let me tell you what pro­cedure I myself adopt in order to prevent the impressions of this etheric vision from vanishing too rapidly. Whenever such impressions come, I try not only to perceive them but to write them down; in this way, the inner activity is carried out not only by abstract faculties of soul but is strengthened by the act of writing down the impressions. The point of importance is not the subsequent reading of what has been written but the strengthening of the activity which, to begin with, is purely etheric.

In this way a quality so fluid and evanescent that it quickly passes away pours as it were into the ordinary human faculties. This condition is not induced unconsciously as in the. case of a medium, but in full consciousness. An ethereal quality is poured into the ordinary human faculties. This enables us, too, to understand something of great importance, namely, how we can “keep hold” of a supersensible, etheric world (later on we shall be speaking of other supersensible worlds) ... a world which embraces the course of our life hitherto and also the etheric realities of outer nature extending to the sphere of the stars. This ether-world becomes a reality and consciousness of the self within this ether-world arises; moreover, we know that it is impossible, without returning again to the physical body, to keep a hold on this world for longer than at most two to three days—even when the faculties have been developed to a high degree. Certain powers of which I will speak presently enable one who is an Initiate in the modern sense to perceive all this with clear vision; such a man knows, too, what it is that he is able in this way to hold within his ether-body, or body of formative forces, without the support of the bodily faculties. It is the same as the vision that arises before the higher self-consciousness when, as the human being passes through the gate of death, the physical body is laid aside and >begins to decay. This vision, too, for the reasons given above, can remain only for some two or three days after death.

Through the development of exact clairvoy­ance, therefore, the first conditions of existence into which man passes after death, can be experi­enced; they are experienced in advance, with conscious knowledge. The conditions which the Initiate is able to experience consciously in advance, set in for every human being when the physical body is laid aside at death. But in the ordinary way a man can retain consciousness of these conditions for no longer than two or three days—that is to say, for as long as he is able, having developed higher knowledge, to hold fast his ether-body, or body of formative forces. (I shall explain presently why it is that the human being is, nevertheless, conscious during the existence after death.)

For two or three days after death the human being has, in his ether-body, consciousness of the etheric world. Then this consciousness fades away; he becomes aware that the ether-body is falling away from him just as the physical body fell away and that he must pass into a different state of consciousness in order to live on after death as a conscious individuality.

The reality of what I am now describing to you as the first moments after death (they are the first moments of the cosmic existence to follow) can be affirmed by one who has acquired the faculty of seeing into the higher world, because he experiences in advance the conditions which in the normal life of man set in only after death. Because he has developed the intensified consciousness of self that is no longer dependent upon the body, he experiences in advance, in his present con­sciousness, these moments which immediately follow death. He is able to shed light upon his own higher existence and to realise that he has within himself the light which during the first two or three days after death will reveal to him a world quite different from the world revealed to him by his senses during earthly life between birth and death.²

This inner illumination is necessary before it is possible to survey that supersensible picture of the course of earthly life which, as I have said, lasts for a few days after death. A man must kindle within himself a spiritual light which shines inwards. Instead of being aware only of the present moment in the way made possible by the senses, he will then reach a higher stage.

The attainment of further knowledge of the Supersensible depends not only upon a change in perceptive consciousness but also upon a change in the state of ordinary existence. Our ordinary existence as human beings is enclosed within the spatial, physical body; the boundaries of our skin also constitute the boundaries of our actual life. Our life extends as far as our body. Within this field of experience, we cannot reach what I have so far been describing as knowledge of the higher worlds. Knowledge of the higher worlds can only be attained when ordinary experience is trans­cended by consciousness that is not confined within the boundaries of the spatial body but partici­pates in the life of the whole world around. This extended consciousness leads to knowledge of the higher worlds. As I have said, on this occasion I propose merely to speak about the methods through which a modern Initiate acquires exact knowledge of the higher worlds. The rest is to be found in the book mentioned above.

When we have acquired the faculty not only of experiencing a second existence in the life of thought—an existence that still remains within the confines of the spatial body—but also the faculty of living outside the body, a further stage is reached. It is attained when we are capable not only of letting thoughts live with full intensity in our consciousness but of eliminating them at will as the result of systematic exercises and practice. By this means, consciousness arises of experiences outside the body. Let me give a simple example.

Suppose we are looking at a quartz crystal. It is there before our eyes. A person who is trying to make himself into a medium or to induce some kind of self-hypnosis stares fixedly at the crystal and the impression it makes puts him into a state of confused consciousness. Such procedure is altogether alien to anthroposophical Spiritual Science. The exercises it adopts are of an entirely different character and can be described as follows:—We look steadily at, say, a crystal, until we can entirely ignore it as an object physically perceived, and re-orientate our attention. A crystal is there before us and we learn gradually to see it not with physical eyes but with eyes of soul; the physical eyes are open but are not used for the purpose of looking at the physical crystal and in this act of inner cognition the crystal in front of us is eliminated, as a physical object, from our vision.—The same procedure may also be adopted with a colour; it is there before us but we no longer look at it as colour, we eliminate it from our physical vision.

Such an exercise can also be applied to thoughts engendered in the immediate present by circumstances of external life, or to those which arise in the form of remembrances or recollections of earlier moments of earthly life.—Such thoughts are eliminated, emptied from the consciousness, so that we are simply awake and in a state of consciousness from which the external world is altogether excluded.

If such exercises are conscientiously carried out, we discover that it is possible for our life to extend beyond the boundaries of our spatial body. Then, in the real sense, we share in the life of the whole surrounding world instead of perceiving its physical phenomena only.

Thereby, in complete clarity of consciousness, an experience arises which may be compared with recollection of the life passed through during sleep. Just as acts of ordinary perception are limited to the immediately present moment, so is our ordinary life limited to the experiences that have arisen in the hours of our waking consciousness.

Just think of it—When you think back over your life, the periods of sleep are always blanks sofar as ordinary consciousness is concerned. Nothing that has been experienced by the soul during these periods of sleep is remembered; remembrance, therefore, is a stream in which there are constant interruptions, but this fact is usually ignored.

The experiences of the soul during sleep arise like intensified remembrances in consciousness which has awakened to such a degree that with it the human being is able to live outside his body. This condition leads to the second stage of know­ledge in the supersensible world and we become aware, to begin with, of what we experience as beings of soul when the physical body is asleep and quiescent, when it has no perceptions, when the will is not functioning and when the soul has, so to speak, temporarily departed from the body. In ordinary waking life we can in this way recollect the experiences through which we have passed while outside the body during every period of sleep. But it is very important to understand what these experiences really are. The experiences of the soul from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking are, of course, experiences in a realm outside the body, and actual awareness of them is possible only when consciousness of life outside the body has awakened. At this stage, knowledge comes to us not only of something which, like the “time-body,” is illumined by an inner light, but with the faculty of waking remembrance that is now illumined by exact clairvoyance, we learn to know what really comes to pass in us during sleep. This experience will, at first, cause astonishment. Living in the physical body with our ordinary consciousness, we have within us, lungs, heart, and so forth; from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking we have, in very truth, not a personal, human consciousness but a cosmic consciousness. In this higher state of consciousness, it is as though the after-images of the planetary and starry worlds were within us. This may sound strange, but it is perceptible reality at this stage of higher knowledge. We feel ourselves within the all-pervading cosmic life and contemplate the world from this cosmic vantage-point.

Experiencing as inner reality what was round about us in ordinary life, during every period of sleep we live through in backward sequence, all the experiences that came to us here, in the physical world, from the previous moment of waking to that of falling asleep. If, for example, after a normal day we go to sleep, we live backwards over the experiences of the day—first the experiences of the evening, then those of the afternoon, then those of the morning. Thus during sleep at night, we live backwards through all the experiences of the day.

The development of the exact clairvoyance of which I am speaking here, is connected with this power of conscious recollection of the experiences of sleep. Just as in the ordinary way we can remember things experienced years ago in full waking consciousness, by means of this exact clairvoyance we can call up remembrance of this backward sequence of the day's experiences. And so in actual fact, this exact clairvoyance is an extension of the ordinary faculty of recollection or remembrance. We look back upon our experiences during sleep, knowing that in sleep we have been living outside the boundaries of the physical body in a cosmic existence which is a reflection of the whole life of the universe; during this cosmic existence we live backwards through the happen­ings of the day. We find then, that the time taken by this backward review is shorter than that taken by the experiences themselves in physical life. When we are able in the real sense to investigate this realm of existence through systematic practice and increasingly exact knowledge, we discover that this backward review takes place three times more quickly than the physical experiences in our ordinary consciousness. Let us say that a man is awake for two thirds of his whole life and asleep for one third—During the one third spent in sleep, therefore, he lives through the experiences which, in the physical world, have occupied two thirds of his existence.

When exact clairvoyance enables us in waking consciousness to remember the life of sleep, we also realise that this backward review is significant, not so much in itself, but as a foreshadowing. Ask yourselves what you think about a recollection of something that happened to you 20 years ago—You say: “I experience it now in shadowy thoughts of remembrance; but the remembrance itself is the guarantee that it is not phantasy but a picture of an actual experience in my past earthly fife.”—Just as remembrance itself is the guarantee that it is related to a real experience in the past so the conscious recollection of the experiences of sleep is the guarantee that in itself it is only the foreshadowing of something belonging to the future.

Proof that a remembrance relates to something in the past is not needed. When exact clair­voyance has been acquired, it is equally unneces­sary to prove that the recollection of these night-experiences is not a phantastic picture of the present. It reveals in itself that it has to do with the future—indeed with that moment in the future when the physical body of a man will be actually laid aside at death, whereas now, in exact clair­voyance, it is only figuratively laid aside.

By this means, knowledge arises of what the human being experiences after death, when the three days of which I have spoken, have elapsed. This process also enables us to understand the significance of those two or three days after death when the human being is aware of living in a cosmic consciousness, when from the vantage-point, of the Cosmos he once again surveys the etheric picture of his life, looking back over the course of his earthly existence. We learn to know that these first days after death are followed by a life which runs its course three times more quickly than earthly existence. This same know­ledge, after all, resulted from conscious recollection of the experiences passed through during sleep. The etheric vision which persists for only a short time after death is followed by a life lasting some 20 or 30 years, or maybe less—according to the age reached in earthly existence. Approximately—for everything here is approximate—this life runs its course three times more quickly than earthly existence. If therefore a man dies at the age of 30, the life of which I am speaking now will last for about 10 years; if someone has reached the age of 60 and then dies, he lives through his life in the backward sequence of events, in 20 years ... but all these periods are approximate.

With exact clairvoyance these things become known, just as a past experience is known through an act of recollection or remembrance. Thus, we learn to know that death is followed by a life in the supersensible world during which we live through the whole of our past earthly life in back­ward sequence. Every night we live backwards through the events of the preceding day; after death we live back over the whole of our earthly life. We experience it all once again in its spiritual aspect and thereby unfold a true judg­ment of our own moral worth. During the period after death we unfold consciousness of our per­sonal, moral qualities, of our moral worth, just as here on Earth we are conscious of life in a body of flesh and blood. After death we live in a world that is conditioned by our own moral qualities and our deeds on Earth. By living through earthly life again in backward sequence and because we are not diverted from true moral judgment by instincts, natural urges and passions but survey our life from a purely spiritual stand­point, it is possible for us to form a true judgment of our own moral worth.

The forming of such a judgment requires the length of time of which I have just been speaking. When this period after death has come to an end, the backward-flowing remembrance of our moral life on Earth fades away and we must now pass onwards through the spiritual worlds with a different kind of consciousness. Knowledge of this different kind of consciousness can also be attained by exact clairvoyance.

The attainment of such knowledge depends upon the capacity not only to live outside the confines of the spatial body but to unfold a kind of consciousness entirely different from that belong­ing to the physical world. At this stage the human being discovers that a supersensible, purely spiritual state of existence follows the period during which judgment of the moral qualities is formed—this period lasts, as we have heard, for a third of the time spent in earthly life. This is followed by a different kind of existence, by a life that is purely spiritual. But before knowledge of it can be acquired, exact clairvoyance must have developed to a still higher stage.

If you think about the experiences undergone during sleep, you will realise that the human being does indeed lead a life outside his physical, spatial body. But he has no real freedom of movement in this life. He has to make his way through the experiences that have come to him during the hours of waking consciousness—only in reversed order. And a man who through exact clairvoyance has attained supersensible insight into these experiences—he too feels as though he is confined in a world which he is able to call up into his clairvoyant vision but in which he can­not move, in which he is fettered. Freedom of movement in the spiritual world—this is what must be acquired as the third stage of supersensible knowledge. Without such freedom of movement, it is not possible for spiritual consciousness in the real sense to arise.

In addition to exact clairvoyance, a power which I will call that of “ideal magic” must be acquired. I use this term in order to distinguish it from the unlawful form of magic which resorts to external means and is fraught with a great deal of charlatanism. A firm distinction must be made between such practices and what I now mean when I speak of “ideal magic.” I mean the following: —

When a man surveys his life with ordinary consciousness, he can perceive how in certain respects he changed with the passing of every year or decade. His habits have changed—slowly maybe, but definitely nevertheless. Certain faculties have developed, others seem to have disappeared. Anyone who honestly observes certain faculties of his earthly life can say to him­self that more than once he became a changed being. But this change has been wrought by life; he has surrendered himself to life and life educates him, trains him, moulds and shapes his soul.

A man who is intent upon finding his way into the supersensible world as a real knower, in other words one who strives to acquire the power of ideal magic, must not only be able to make his thoughts so inwardly forceful and intense that he becomes aware of a second existence as described above, but he must be capable of freeing his will, too, from bondage to the physical body. In ordinary life the will can only be brought into operation by making use of the physical body—be it through the legs, arms, or organs of speech. The physical body provides the basis for the life of will. But the following is possible and must, furthermore, be systematically carried out by anyone who as a spiritual investigator wishes to add to the power of exact clairvoyance that of ideal magic. He must develop such strength, of will that at a certain point in his life he can, at his own bidding, get rid of some habit and acquire an altogether different one. Even with the most resolute will, it may take a man several years to change certain forms of experience, but it is possible, nevertheless. Instead of allowing life in the physical body to be his educator, he can take this education and self-training into his own hands.

Exercises of will such as I have described in the book mentioned above, will lead one who is striving to be an Initiate in the modern sense to the stage where he is able not only to be conscious during sleep of what he has experienced by day. He will be able to induce a condition which is not that of sleep but is lived through in full, clear consciousness. At this stage he is capable of movement and action even during sleep; he is not, as in ordinary consciousness, a merely passive being while outside his body, but he can act and be active in the spiritual world. If he is incapable of this, he will make no progress during his sleep-life. One who becomes in the true sense a modern Initiate has acquired the faculties whereby he can also be active as a self-conscious human being in the life which runs its course between the onset of sleep and the moment of waking. And when the will becomes operative while he is actually living outside the body, he will be able gradually to unfold an altogether different kind of con­sciousness, namely, the consciousness that can actually perceive what the human being expe­riences during the period after death following the one described. With this more highly developed consciousness, vistas open out of the existence which follows earthly life and of the existence which precedes it. We behold a life which runs its course through a spiritual world just as physical life on Earth runs its course through a physical world. We learn to know ourselves as beings of pure Spirit in a spiritual world just as here, on Earth, we know ourselves as physical beings in the physical world. And it is now possible to ascertain the duration of this life—the period during which we assess our own moral worth.

By integrating will into the life of soul in this way through ideal magic, we learn to under­stand the nature of the consciousness that awakens in us as adult human beings, and to compare it with the dim consciousness of earliest childhood.

As you well know, ordinary consciousness has no remembrance of these first years of child­hood. The consciousness of the human being in this period of his life is dull and dim; his entry into the world is wrapped in sleep. The ordinary consciousness of an adult human being is clear and intense in comparison with the dim, dark consciousness of the first years of earthly life. But one who has acquired the power to put ideal magic into operation in the way described, understands the difference between his waking consciousness as an adult and this dim consciousness of early childhood; he knows that he rises to a higher level as he passes from the dim conscious­ness of childhood into the clearer consciousness of adult years. And with knowledge of how the dreamlike consciousness of childhood is related to that of adult life he is able to understand how his adult consciousness is related to that illumined consciousness which, imbued with the power not only of exact clairvoyance but also of ideal magic, makes him capable of moving freely in the spiritual world. He learns to move freely in the spiritual world just as after early childhood when he had no such freedom of movement, he learnt to move about freely in the physical body. In addition, therefore, to knowledge of how the consciousness of childhood is related to that of ordinary adult life, he learns to know how ordinary consciousness is related to a higher, purely spiritual consciousness.

Thereby a man is led to the realisation that in his life after death he is not only a spiritual being living among spiritual beings, but he can discover how long this life lasts. Here again I must quote as an example the recollection of an experience of earthly life. We realise that just as this recollection bears within it a reality belonging to the past, so this new experience bears within it the knowledge that the higher consciousness of the Initiate anticipates as it were this spiritual existence after death. And then we learn to know how this purely spiritual life is related to the earthly life that has stretched from birth to death.

When an Initiate looks back to his earliest childhood, he knows that as the years advance, the easier it is for him to look into the spiritual world. There are, of course, human beings who while still comparatively young have the power to see into the spiritual world. But this vision increases in clarity and exactitude with every year that passes. The faculty of entering into this other state of consciousness grows constantly stronger and with it comes clearer and clearer knowledge of the relation between the one state and the other. For example: a man has reached the age of forty and is only able, let us say, to remember back as far as his third or fourth year. By studying how the length of the period of the dreamlike consciousness of childhood is related to these forty years, we learn to recognise that the spiritual life after death will be longer than the span of an earthly life by as many times as this earthly life as a whole is longer than the dreamy life of earliest childhood; hence the life after death lasts for many centuries. The period during which the moral life is re-experienced and assessed after death is followed by a purely spiritual life during which man lives for many centuries as a spiritual being among other spiritual beings. During this period of existence, he has around him the tasks which belong to the spiritual world, just as here, in earthly existence, he has around him those which belong to the physical world.

When exact clairvoyance and the power to move freely in the spiritual world have been acquired, the nature of these tasks is revealed.—All the forces which finally lead over to a new life on the Earth are drawn from this spiritual world in which the human being lives after death. The future life on Earth stands there as a goal from the very beginning of the life after death. And this life on Earth as a human being ... it is in very truth a microcosm ... this micro­cosm is the outcome of great and mighty expe­riences in the spiritual world after death.

Now a seed in the physical world is minute—nevertheless it unfolds and later on will grow into a large plant or animal. It is also possible to speak of a spirit-seed which the human being unfolds and develops when his physical life on Earth is over. In communion with Spiritual Beings and out of the spiritual forces of the universe, he elaborates a spirit-seed for his new earthly life. This process is not a recapitulation of the past earthly life but embraces modes of activity and realities of being far greater and mightier than can ever exist on Earth. In his post-earthly existence, amid the experiences and realities of the spiritual world, the human being prepares his future earthly life.

I have spoken of the cosmic consciousness which arises in human beings after their death.—This cosmic consciousness is, after all, present every night during sleep, although in such dimness that, to use a contradictory expression, it is really an ‘unconscious consciousness.’—Because they have this cosmic consciousness in their post-mortem, spiritual existence, human beings live together not only with other spiritual beings who never come down to the Earth, having their abode in worlds of pure Spirit, but paramountly with all the souls who are either incarnate in human physical bodies or, having themselves passed through the gate of death, have also entered into the cosmic consciousness that is common to all.

The relationships woven on Earth between soul and soul, in the family, among individuals who have found one another inasmuch as they have met in physical bodies—all such ties in their earthly form are laid aside. What men experience as lovers, as friends, as associates of other human beings near to them in some way, in short, all experiences in the physical body—all are laid aside just as the physical body itself is laid aside. … But because these ties of family, of friend­ship, of love and affection have been unfolded here, on the Earth, they are transmuted after death into those spiritual experiences which help to build a later life.

Even during the period when the moral worth of the past life is assessed, the human being is working not for himself alone but for and in communion with souls who were esteemed and loved by him on Earth.

Through exact clairvoyance and through ideal magic these things become matters of actual knowledge, of direct vision, not of mere belief. Indeed, it may truly be said that in the physical world an abyss stretches between souls, however dear they may be to one another, for their meeting takes place in the body and the relationships between them can only be such as are determined by the conditions of bodily existence. But when a human being himself is in the spiritual world, the physical body belonging to one whom he loved and has now left behind does not constitute an obstacle to living communion with the soul. Just as the faculty for “seeing through” physical objects must be acquired before it is possible to gaze into the spiritual world, so the human being who has passed through the gate of death can penetrate through the bodies of those he has left behind, and enter into communion with their souls while they are still living on the Earth.

I wanted to speak to you in this first lecture of how perception of the supersensible life of man can be developed. I have tried to indicate that when we strive to unfold exact clairvoyance and the power of ideal magic, it is possible to speak with real knowledge of the higher worlds, just as exact natural science is able to speak about the physical world. As we learn to penetrate more and more deeply into these higher worlds—and undoubtedly there are human beings who by developing their faculties will be capable of this—we shall find that no branch of science, however highly developed, can deter us from accepting the knowledge which can be revealed through exact clairvoyance and ideal magic concerning man's existence not only on the Earth between birth and death but also between death and the return to earthly life through a new birth.

In the lecture tomorrow I shall speak of the impulse brought into the life of man on Earth by the Christ Event, the Event of Golgotha. It will then be my task to show that the knowledge of which I have been speaking, inasmuch as it is a concern of every single individual, sheds light upon the whole evolution of the human race on Earth and can therefore also reveal what the entry of Christ into earthly existence signified for man­kind.

The aim of these lectures is to show, on the one hand, that in speaking of supersensible know­ledge there is no need to be at variance with the exact scientific thinking of modern times. The theme of the lecture tomorrow will be that the Mightiest of all Events in the life of mankind on Earth—the Christ Event—is revealed in a new and even more radiant light to souls who are willing to receive knowledge of the supersensible world in the way set forth.

To-morrow, then, I shall be speaking of the relation of anthroposophical Spiritual Science to Christianity.

• 1. Knowledge and Initiation, 14th April 1922; Knowledge of Christ Through Anthroposophy, 15th April 1922.
• 2. The lectures were delivered by Dr. Steiner in three sections as indicated in the text, translations being given after each.

At the present time, opposition to what I will call anthroposophical knowledge of the Spirit comes mainly from two sides. I alluded briefly in the lecture yesterday to the antagonism of natural scientific thinking which maintains that supersensible knowledge is beyond the reach of human faculties. From this side, therefore, Anthroposophy is regarded as unworthy of any serious consideration.

We shall be more concerned to-day with opposition of a different character. It comes from people who feel that Anthroposophy deprives them and their fellow-believers of their inward connection with Christ. In their own way, such people are usually very devout Christians and it is from their very piety that the antagonism is born. They feel that man's relation to Christ should be the outcome of simple, naive devotion of the heart and soul and that this is disturbed and confused when intellectual knowledge is brought to bear upon the Christ Being. The one desire of such people is that the strivings of simple human hearts shall be left undisturbed by any attempt to speak of Christ in terms of intellectual understanding.

Due-respect must, of course, be paid to such feelings. Nevertheless, in their attitude to Anthroposophy these people are entirely in error. If they realised the truth, they would find that Anthroposophy helps them to tread the Path to Christ; they would find that all the longings which draw them to Christ in simplicity and devoutness of heart are inwardly strengthened by what Anthroposophy has to say concerning Him.

I should like to illustrate this from different points of view.—We will think; to begin with, of the character of the religions life, of the religious consciousness of men in different epochs of human evolution on the Earth.

Let us go back to ancient times.—You will see later that this historical survey is not superfluous but will actually clear away many misunderstandings prevail and at the present time. Evidence and knowledge concerning these very ancient epochs cannot be obtained from historical documents but only through the methods of Spiritual Science of which I spoke yesterday through the development of those faculties of inner perception described yesterday as the means whereby the supersensible nature of man and his supersensible destiny are revealed. We find that in these olden tithes, men were instructed by these who were disciples of the Mysteries. External documents have practically no information to give about the ancient Mysteries, far such indications as still exist are of very much later date and tell us nothing of what the Mysteries really were.

The Mysteries were centres of spiritual life and culture in which religion and science were a unity. Sheer veneration, superhuman in its intensity, went out from the pupils to their great Teachers, or Gurus in these Mysteries. And when other men desired to satisfy their inner longings for religion, they turned to those who were the pupils of these Teachers, receiving from them the knowledge of the universe and its laws which the disciples of the Mysteries had acquired through deep devotion. In order to throw light upon what, in the present age too, can be true piety and true veneration of Christ, I should like to speak briefly about the attitude and relation of a pupil in olden times to his Guru or Teacher in the Mysteries.

We find, first of all, that these Teachers were regarded by their pupils as being divinely inspired. When they spoke with the fire of inspiration that had been kindled in them in the Mysteries and through the sacred rites, their pupils felt that the words were not uttered by men but that the Divine Powers of the universe were speaking out of human lips.

This was not a symbolic conception but an actual experience in the pupils of the ancient Mysteries. And you can imagine the depth and intensity of veneration in such a pupil when he knew that a Divine Being, a God—not a human being—was speaking to him through the lips of his Teacher. Strange as it seems to us to-day, the following was the typical attitude of the pupils of the ancient Mystery-teachings.—They held the view: In still earlier epochs of the evolution of mankind, in the initial stages of this evolution, Divine-Spiritual Beings themselves descended—in the spiritual sense, of course—to the Earth. These Divine-Spiritual Beings did not incarnate in bodies of flesh but by way of spiritual knowledge entered into communion with those who were the first Gurus, the first Teachers in the Mysteries; and the primary instruction concerning what must be taught to men in order that they may enter into real connection with the spiritual world, came from these Divine-Spiritual Beings themselves. Thus, it was held that the teachings once transmitted to men by the Gods themselves had - passed down the generations to the disciples of the Mysteries in every epoch.

You will say this amounts to an assertion that the origin of human wisdom lies in supersensible worlds. But here we come to a domain that is still wrapped in complete obscurity. Think, for example, of the explanation usually given of the origin of speech. There are people who believe, in accordance with the Darwinian theory, that human speech has evolved from the sounds uttered by animals. But there are and have been men—above all it was so up to a comparatively recent past—who attribute a divine origin to human speech.

I shall not enlarge upon this particular point for it would lead too far to-day. It is enough to say that what gave rise to these feelings of deep reverence in the disciples of the Gurus was the conviction that the teachings received from their lips had once been imparted to mankind by the Gods themselves.

What was the aim and goal of this kind of discipleship? Discipleship itself consisted in this: the pupil gave himself up to his Guru in utter veneration and devotion; the Guru was the link connecting him with the spiritual worlds; this Teacher was regarded as the one and only channel for the Divine. The pupil felt that whatever qualities he himself possessed, whatever powers he unfolded were due to his Teacher; he felt that he owed everything to his Teacher. From the Teacher he received instruction—primarily concerning the direction of his thoughts. His thoughts must not be concerned with the material world of sense but through the power implanted in his soul by the Guru, using what were then legitimate methods of suggestion, the heart and soul, of the pupil were directed entirely to the Supersensible. In acts of ordinary sense-observation, thoughts strike as it were against the external objects ... when we think about a table or a tree, our thought strikes against the table or the tree ... But under the influence of the Guru the pupil's thoughts became translucent, so that he saw nothing that is in the physical world but with the vision of thought he gazed into those supersensible worlds I described to you yesterday in terms of ,modern Initiation-science, It was essential, too, for the pupil to experience the reality of these supersensible worlds, and to this end instruction was given him concerning speech. When we speak in ordinary life, we share with others, thoughts that are either of our own shaping or have been conveyed to us in some way; in short what flows into our speech has its origin in the physical world. The Guru imparted to his pupil certain mantric utterances, words half-declaimed, half-spoken, the purpose of which was to educate him to pay attention not so much to the meaning of the words but rather to experience the currents of the Divine Cosmos itself in the flowing sentences. The mantram itself was uttered in such a way that the divine realities in the world and in the human being might pour through the words; the actual meaning of the words of the mantram was of no importance. Thus, by making his thoughts translucent, the pupil was to become capable of beholding the Divine. When declaiming the mantrams, he was not to heed! the meaning of the words, but the divine power streaming through them was to flow over into the acts performed in the sacred rites. The pupil's will was to be directed to the Divine through the rites and ceremonial. Even to-day you can find an indication of this in the Buddha posture. The position in which the limbs are held is quite unsuitable for earthly activities; indeed, the human being is lifted away from the earthly world and, I together with the acts he is performing inwardly is led upwards to the Divine.

What was the aim of such procedure? The soul of the pupil, directed in this threefold way to the Divine, was to become capable of turning evil, sin and human transgression in the direction of .those supersensible worlds described to you yesterday, I told you that with modern Initiation-science, too, man can penetrate into the worlds in which he lives as a being of soul-and-spirit before entering earthly-existence; he descends from these worlds in order to unite with a body provided by the father and mother, and when he has passed through the gate of death, returns thither to prepare for another life on Earth. The aim of these godlike Teachers in the ancient Mysteries was not only to turn the gaze of the pupil towards the supersensible worlds but to kindle in him a force of thinking akin to prayer, a force born of the divine power flowing in the mantric utterances, a force of deepest veneration while performing the sacred rites. Imbued with this power the pupil was then able to turn the tide of sinfulness on the Earth towards the supersensible worlds. These pupils in turn imparted to other human beings what they themselves had been taught in the Mysteries and thus the content of civilisation in those ancient times took shape.

Now upon what basic assumption did these teachings rest? The basic assumption was that the world in which man lives here on Earth does not, like the Divine world, encompass his whole being. In those olden times the Guru taught his pupil: This world in which you are living between birth and death comprises the other kingdoms of nature, but not the deeper being of man. And apart altogether from the conception that human activities between birth and death were fraught with sin, the pupil was taught to realise None of my experiences here in the world between birth and death, none of the deeds I perform are an expression of my full manhood, for that belongs to supersensible worlds.

Every pupil in those ancient times knew with complete certainty in certain moments of life that before descending to the Earth he had lived in a supersensible world and would return thither after death. This clarity of insight was due to a primitive, dreamlike clairvoyance which he need not acquire by effort since it was a natural faculty in all human beings. Thus, the pupil knew: When my actions and life are concerned only with what exists here, on the physical Earth, my full manhood is not in operation. I must guide the forces within me to those spiritual worlds where they truly belong.

The aim of the ancient Mysteries was that by the ceremonial rites and the divine power flowing through the sounds of the mantrams, the forces which man on the Earth cannot turn to good account in his actions should be led upwards and away from the earthly world to the super-earthly, supersensible worlds—for it is there and there alone that man lives in the fullness of his being.

The Gurus brought home to their pupils that when the human being has passed through the gate of death he knows that his actions and achievements on Earth fall short of what his full manhood demands; he knows that compensation must be made in the spiritual world for actions which on the Earth are full of imperfection and fraught with unwisdom.

Knowledge of the supersensible worlds includes the realisation that what remains imperfect on the Earth can be raised nearer to perfection in the supersensible worlds.

But as we shall see, conditions in the days of the ancient Mysteries were quite different and this difference must be recognised and understood to-day. The pupils in those olden days learned from their Teachers that when man has passed through the gate of death and has lived for a certain time in the supersensible world, a sublime. Spiritual Being comes before him, a sublime Being Whose outer expression is the Sun and its forms of manifestation. Hence the sages of the ancient Mysteries spoke of the Divine Sun Being. Just as we say that the soul of a man expresses itself in his physiognomy and play of countenance, so did the men of old conceive the Sun with its movement and forms of manifestation to be the physiognomic expression, the revelation of the sublime Sun Being Who was hidden from their sight on Earth but Who came before them after their death, helping to make more perfect their shortcomings and imperfect achievements in earthly life. “In deepest piety of heart, put your trust in the sublime Sun Being Whom you cannot find on the Earth, Who will be found only in the spiritual worlds ... put your trust in the mighty Sun Being in order that after your death He may help you to take the right path through the spiritual world.” ... In such manner did the Gurus of ancient times speak of the Being by Whom all the imperfections of men are made good.

When the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching, this ancient wisdom had already fallen into decay; little of it remained, save traditions and vestiges here and there. But Initiates-in the old sense of the word still existed—men who clung with the same devotion and pious faith to the Divine Father God by whom in days of yore the Divine Messengers, the Teachers of the first Gurus, had been sent down to Earth. These Initiates were well aware of the deep consolation that had been given to the pupils of the ancient Mysteries when they were told: After death you will find the sublime Sun Being—He Who helps you to transmute and make perfect all shortcoming of earthly life, Who takes away from you the bitter realisation that you have fallen away from the Divine World-Order. Those who were Initiates at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, however, knew that this same sublime Sun Being had come down to the Earth, had taken Manhood upon Himself in Jesus of Nazareth and since the death on Golgotha must be sought no longer in the supersensible worlds but among men on the Earth. This was how the Initiates spoke at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and on in to the third century of our era. To those who were willing to listen, they were able to say The Being from Whom true healing comes and for Whom you are longing, was within the reach of men in days of yore. Through a Divine Deed this Being came down to the Earth, into a human body and has lived since then as a supersensible reality within the evolution of mankind. And whereas the pupils in olden times had been obliged to go to the Mysteries and there be stimulated by the sacred rites to lift their gaze to the supersensible world, men of later time must learn on the Earth itself to make direct connection with the Christ Being Who descended to the Earth and became Man as other men.

Such was the mood and attitude kindled among men by those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha and also by many who were Initiates in the first three centuries of Christendom. Historical records have little help to offer because all real evidence of the teaching was exterminated. But supersensible perception as it was described to you yesterday leads to the knowledge that in the first three Christian centuries, this was the attitude and feeling prevailing in men who were willing to listen to the Initiates still living in those times ... And then this truly Christian feeling died away and must in our time be called to life again.

The veneration of the pupil for his Guru in olden days had been a means whereby men had learned to look upwards to the Divine. The Teacher or Guru was regarded as the channel by which the Divine streamed down to the Earth and as the one who, in turn, guided into the spiritual world the feelings of devotion and reverence in the human heart. These feelings and experiences passed along the stream of heredity from generation to generation and were guided by those who became the first Teachers of Christianity no longer to a Guru in the old sense but to the Christ Who had descended from spiritual worlds and in Jesus of Nazareth had taken Manhood upon Himself. Few people to-day realise the deep inwardness and intensity of devotion which characterised these early Teachers of Christianity.

This feeling of reverence and devotion continued through the centuries, directed now to the Being of Whom Christianity proclaimed that He had passed through the Death on Golgotha in order that henceforward mankind might find Him on Earth.

The goal and aim of the modern Initiation-science of which I spoke to you yesterday is to approach this Christ Mystery, this Mystery of Golgotha, with true understanding.

Medieval Christianity was, it is true pervaded by piety and religious devotion that were really like a continuation of the veneration paid to the Gurus of old, but the dreamlike clairvoyance once possessed by human beings had faded away. Apart altogether from historical records, anthroposophical Spiritual Science is able to investigate the life of man as it was in those far distant ages of the past. At certain moments in their lives it was possible for human beings to pass into a state of dreamlike clairvoyance in which they became aware of the world from which they themselves had descended to their earthly existence. But this knowledge that the soul belongs to Eternity had gradually been lost. Under the influence of this knowledge men would never have been able to unfold consciousness of human freedom. Consciousness of freedom—which is an integral part of full manhood—was destined to arise in man when the time was ripe. The epoch when this feeling of freedom dawned was that of the Middle Ages; but by that time the old consciousness which could never have experienced the reality of freedom, was fading away. For when man looked upwards to his existence as a being of soul among other beings of soul in pre-earthly life, he was aware only of dependence, he had no feeling of freedom. The ancient clairvoyant vision of the spiritual world grew dim and in this twilight condition of consciousness humanity unfolded that feeling of freedom which in our modern civilisation has reached a certain climax. But in this condition the gaze of mankind could not penetrate into those supersensible worlds whence Christ had descended into Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, true Christian worship rested, to begin with, upon tradition; men relied upon historical tradition and upon the power that had come down through the generations from the veneration once paid to the Gurus. The deep reverence for the Divine that had once lived in men could be directed, now, to the Being Who had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. But in this twilight condition of consciousness, men were gradually evolving a science of physical nature such as ancient times had never possessed and in consequence of this, even the faintest inkling that a spiritual world is accessible to human cognition, even that faded away.

The supersensible knowledge of which I. spoke yesterday is an actual extension of knowledge of the world of nature. And all the faculties developed by a man through meditation and concentration in such a way. that he penetrates into the spiritual world as a knower—all these faculties are immeasurably strengthened when, as one belonging to the modern age, he does not content himself with what natural science has to say about the external world but wrestles inwardly with it, assimilating these exact, scientific thoughts but endeavouring, then, to unite them with the innermost forces of his own being. A certain attunement or attitude of soul then arises—to begin with, it is not easy to define. But if this attitude becomes the keynote of meditation and concentration in the sphere of thought and in the sphere of will, then the soul is led upwards into the spiritual worlds and understanding of supersensible reality is attained. We learn to look away from the Earth of which natural science teaches us, into a supersensible world which belongs to the Earth and must be recognised as an integral part of the Earth—above all when it is a matter of understanding man and man's life on Earth.

Questions of far-reaching import then arise in one who is struggling to acquire anthroposophical knowledge. And as he seeks to find answers, he is led towards an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Having raised his consciousness away from the Earth, having unfolded a faculty of perception outside the physical body and of action through the power of ideal magic, such a man is able to behold the Spiritual. With consciousness that has become independent of the body, he is able to penetrate into a spiritual world with knowledge and with power of will.

If a man who is equipped with this inner understanding of the spiritual world turns his attention again to Christ and to the Mystery of Golgotha as an Event on the Earth, his thought—unlike that of many modern theologians—will not be concerned only with the man Jesus of Nazareth. His conception of what came to pass in the Mystery of Golgotha is no longer materialistic because he has acquired the power of supersensible vision and sees the man Jesus of Nazareth as the bearer of the Divine Christ—the Divine-Spiritual Christ Being. Because the Divine-Spiritual is a direct reality to this modern “Theosophia,” it can recognise in the man Jesus of Nazareth the Christ Who is a Spiritual Being and must always be conceived as such. With the knowledge and understanding of the Super-Earthly he has acquired, a man is then led to Christ, beholding in Him the super-earthly, Divine Principle, the God-Man.

Through an understanding of the realities of the spiritual world, modern Anthroposophy leads the way to Christ—leads to Him after due preparation. In order to make this quite clear I want to speak of erroneous and true ways by which a man of the present age may approach the spiritual world ... There were men in days long since gone by whose inspiration proceeded directly from the Mysteries; then the spiritual consciousness of humanity grew dim but even with this darkened consciousness men still gazed into certain spheres of pre-earthly existence and strove to let a spiritual power stream from their sacred rites. But the successors of those godly, pious men of old have become, in the modern age, people who endeavour by extremely questionable means to contact the spiritual world. The godly men of earlier times confined themselves to the realm of the soul, turning their eyes of soul to the supersensible worlds; this mood of holiness and of piety persisted in the feelings of those devotees of Christianity of whom I spoke at the beginning of the lecture and who desire to cling to their naive, simple piety. Such an attitude is naive to-day because in his natural consciousness the human being no longer has any vision of supersensible existence. This naive piety no longer leads men upwards into the supersensible worlds, for their consciousness remains in the earthly, physical body. It is characteristic of this naive piety that it clings to the feelings, to the sentient experiences, coming to the soul when it sinks into itself, into its own human nature. This will, it is true, lead a man to the realisation that the physical body consists not only of flesh and blood, but that the Spiritual too, is present—the Spiritual which truly pious men would fain send upwards to the Divine. But those who are misguided successors of the pupils of the old Gurus endeavour through mediumistic practises to kindle this spiritual force.

What kind of person is a medium? A medium is one who lets the Spiritual speak out of the physical body, write by means of the physical hands or manifest in some other way. The very fact that mediums speak or write while their ordinary consciousness is dimmed, indicates that the human body is not wholly physical, that a spiritual force issues from it, but of a mechanical, inferior kind. A medium desires not only to experience the Spiritual in the body but strives to bring the Spiritual to physical manifestation. And the spiritual force that is present. in the body does indeed become articulate when the medium speaks or writes. The peculiarity about mediumistic people is that they become extremely talkative, they love to talk and to write at tremendous length ... but all these manifestations of the Spiritual through the body contain a great deal that ordinary logic will regard as highly questionable. These mediums are themselves the proof that it is not right for modern man to fall back upon ancient methods of establishing connection with the Divine-Spiritual but that he must seek in an altogether different way.

This different way of approach to the spiritual world is that of anthroposophical Spiritual Science and I will speak of one particular aspect. If a man takes natural science in earnest, regarding its results as truly great achievements of modern civilisation, then in his efforts to draw near to the spiritual worlds he will, to begin with, find it extraordinarily difficult to speak of the Spiritual at all, to entertain thoughts concerning it, let alone to indulge in any kind of automatic writing. When through meditation and concentration a man becomes aware of the Spirit within him, he will prefer to keep silent—to begin with, at any rate. Whereas a medium becomes talkative and lets the Spiritual become articulate through his own organs of speech, when supersensible knowledge of the Spirit begins to dawn in one who is a conscientious, scientifically trained thinker, he would rather keep silent about the subtle and delicate experiences of which his soul becomes aware. He even prefers to forbid thoughts from intruding because thoughts have been associated with earthly, physical things. He prefers not to let thoughts stream into his soul because he has an inner fear lest half-consciously he may apply to spiritual realities, thoughts that are connected with outer, physical things; he is afraid that when thoughts are applied to spiritual reality, this spiritual reality will not merely slip away but that it will be profaned, distorted. Least of all will he take to writing—for he knows that in days of yore, when worship of the God became potent, spiritual deed in the sacred rites, men did not resort to writing—which is a bodily act. Writing first became a custom when the human intellect and reasoning faculty were directed to the material world of sense and to one who has any knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual it is an activity which goes very much against the grain. And so when a man begins to become aware of the reality of the Divine-Spiritual, of the supersensible world, he stills his thoughts; he is literally silent as far as speaking is concerned; and he abstains from writing about matters pertaining to the Divine.

I said before, my dear friends, that it is permissible for me to speak of these things because they are the results of my own experience along a path of development which had led on from natural science to a comprehension and actual perception of the spiritual worlds and of the Mystery of Golgotha as spiritual reality. But you will realise that the Mystery of Golgotha presents difficulties to everyone who tries to approach it in the light of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. The Mystery of Golgotha as it reveals itself in the course of human history must be conceived in all its stupendous majesty and glory as an historical fact. Within the man Jesus of Nazareth, a God passed through death on Golgotha and we must learn to contemplate in a picture from which every element of sense-life is absent, this, the greatest of all Events in history. But it is exceedingly difficult to wrestle through in thought to this sense-free comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha, to present it in words or write of it.

What comes to us along this path is inner reverence and awe as we contemplate the great Mystery enacted on Golgotha. This reverence pours through the soul of one who in the way I have described, has silenced his thoughts and words, who feels the deepest awe when the power of the Spirit within him draws him to the Mystery of Golgotha. Feelings of profound reverence and awe pour through the soul of such a man ... it is as though he dares not approach so stupendous a Mystery. Thus the path of anthroposophical Spiritual Science leads not only to knowledge ... although to begin with it is knowledge which directs our gaze into yonder supersensible worlds. But this knowledge streams into the life of feeling, becomes holy awe; it becomes a power that lays hold of the human soul far more deeply than any other power, more deeply even than the veneration paid to the Guru by his pupils in olden times. And this feeling grows, first and foremost, into a longing and a yearning to understand Christ Jesus on Golgotha. What, to begin with, was supersensible vision in the life of soul is transformed through inner metamorphosis into feeling. This feeling seeks the God-Man on Golgotha and can find Him through the vision of the Spiritual already acquired. Man also learns to understand Jesus of Nazareth, realising that, in him, Christ may be seen as a reality within earthly existence. And so anthroposophical Spiritual Science brings knowledge of the Spiritual Christ Being but at the same time the deep and true reverence for the Divine which arises from this knowledge of the Supersensible.

When a man first becomes aware of the power of supersensible knowledge he prefers to be silent in his thoughts and words, not in any way to use his bodily faculties as an instrument for voicing his experiences. Nevertheless, having reached a transitional stage, when he resolves to speak of his inner life, he experiences something which justifies him in speaking of the spiritual nature of Christ Jesus. At this transitional stage he makes the resolve to give the Spiritual definite form in his thoughts, to speak and to write about the Spiritual. And the experience that now comes to him is that he feels as it were lifted out of his physical body whenever he is speaking or thinking about the Spiritual. The physical body is an essential instrument in ordinary thinking and speaking, but now, at this higher stage, a man is aware of being removed in a certain way from his physical body. Whereas a medium feels himself entirely within the physical body and even deadens his consciousness in order to remain within the physical while allowing the Spiritual to manifest through the body, a man who has attained real knowledge of the Supersensible lifts himself out of his physical body in an enhanced and more delicate state of consciousness. Because he is experiencing the reality of the spiritual world, he finds it exceedingly difficult to take hold of the physical world; his faculty of speech and the natural flow of his thinking elude him; he cannot find the way to his limbs or his physical body. He must now undergo the experience of trying to find his bearings in this physical world once again and therewith the thoughts and the language in which to express the realities of the supersensible world of which he has become aware. But having had this experience, a man feels as though he must enter life anew, as though he must pass through a second, self-engendered birth. He learns to know the inner depths of human nature for he has entered into these depths a second time in order to create an instrument for thinking and speaking of spiritual reality. Penetrating thus into his organism with supersensible knowledge, a man realises that there too he will find Christ inasmuch as Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. He now has some understanding not only of the Christ Who once came down to the Earth and passed through death, but if he has really fathomed the depths of his own being, there too, he experiences Christ Who died in order that His Power might flow into all mankind.

This is the experience that comes, with far greater assurance now, to a man possessed of supersensible knowledge. And he can clothe the knowledge of Christ thus acquired in words which contain profound truth: “Not I but Christ in me.” For he knows: On Golgotha, Christ died; through His death Christ entered into the human forces of birth and has lived since His death in the very being of man. The modern Initiate therefore knows the truth of these words of St. Paul, knows that he will find Christ within himself if he does but succeed in fathoming the depths of his own manhood.

In order to make men Christians in the real sense, the Initiate need not demand that they should all have reached his own level. Equipped with this understanding and knowledge of Christ, he can also discover new paths for simple-hearted piety. Men of simple piety can indeed find Christ, only their path to-day cannot be quite the same as that which led in days of yore to the adoration outpoured at the feet of the Guru. The piety that befits the modern age must be an inward piety, for man is no longer called upon to send up into a supersensible world, his feelings of reverence for the Divine; he must penetrate within his own being in order there to find Christ Who since the Mystery of Golgotha has been on the Earth as the Living Christ.

Anthroposophical Spiritual Science can say to a man of simple piety: “If you do but penetrate deeply enough into your own being, you will find Christ; this is no illusion because by his Death on Golgotha Christ did indeed descend into these depths of your innermost self.” One who is schooled in Spiritual Science knows that in speaking thus to a man of simple piety, he is saying what is true; he knows that he is not playing upon the emotions of the other but pointing to a goal within his reach. It is perfectly possible for simple, godly men to tread the path which leads, in the modern age too, to supersensible knowledge.

Whereas in earlier times, reverence and veneration for the Guru made the thoughts of the pupil translucent, enabled divine power to resound in the mantrams and the rites to become potent deed, a man who desires to find the true path to Christ in our modern age must, above all else, inwardly deepen his soul. He must learn to look within himself in order that he may find and become aware of inner reality when he turns his gaze away from the world of sense. And within him too, he will find the power that carries him through the gate of death, inasmuch as here, on the Earth, knowledge of this power has come to him through devotion to Christ and to the Mystery of Golgotha.

The Guru of olden times said to his pupils and through them to all human beings: When you pass through the gate of death you will find the sublime Sun Being Who makes good the imperfections of Earth-existence. The teacher of modern times says: If here on the Earth, with inner reverence and deep devotion of heart you establish connection with Christ Who has descended, and with the Mystery of Golgotha, you will be inwardly filled with a power that does not die with you, but bears you through death and will work together with you towards the fulfilment of what cannot be wholly fulfilled on Earth while you are living in a physical body. What in olden times was wrought by the sublime Sun Being will be wrought, now, by Christ's power within your own being from which the body has been cast off at death. Christ's power will work in human imperfections on Earth and men will be drawn together in the social life through their recognition of Him. For the power that streams from Christ, the power upon which anthroposophical Spiritual Science is able to shed the light of understanding, can enter into the actions and the will of men and thereby flow into their social life.

There is much talk to-day of social reform and social progress. Who will be the great Reformer of the social life when men's actions are performed in the name of Christ Jesus and the world becomes truly Christian? Who will be the mighty Reformer, having the power to establish peace amid social strife on Earth? The Christ—He and He alone can bring peace, when men lead a social life hallowed by acts of consecration, when as they look up to Christ they do not say “I,” but rather: When two or three, or many, are gathered together in the name of Christ, then He is in the midst of us Activity in the sphere of social life then becomes a veritable hallowing, a continuation of the sacred acts of cult and rite in olden times. Christ Himself in very truth will be the great social Reformer, since He works to-day as a living reality within the being of man.

The social life must be permeated with the Christ Impulse ... Men of simple piety long to find Christ's power within the soul so that what they do in the social life may be done in Christ's name. These men of simple piety can still be sure of their ground when a modern Initiate says to them: The power you can find through your simple piety of soul when you meditate upon your own being and upon the Christ Who lives within you—this power streamed from the Death on Golgotha, from Christ Himself. It works as the Christ Impulse in the deeds you perform in social life, because Christ is present among men as a Living Reality when they find the way to Him. They are led to Him through that deep inner love which links human hearts together and brings a supersensible element into feeling, just as the light that is kindled within a man's being brings a supersensible element into knowledge.

And so men of simple piety need say no longer that their path is disturbed by the knowledge imparted by anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If natural science were to continue along purely external paths, this simple piety would in the course of time die out altogether; but if natural science itself can lead on to knowledge of the Supersensible and thereby to knowledge of the Christ as a supersensible Being, then all truly pious men will be able to find that for which they long: assurance in their life of soul, certainty that their deeds and actions are in harmony with the Christ Impulse. That for which pious and godly men yearn can be imbued through anthroposophical Spiritual Science with all the certainty of knowledge. This Spiritual Science has therefore the right to insist that it does not disturb the path of simple godliness or lead men away from Christ. Seeking as it does to lead the way to the spiritual world by working with and not against modern science, Anthroposophy has this message to give: Mankind must not go forward into the future without Christ but with him—with Christ as a Being Who is known and recognised, Whose reality is felt and Whose Impulse men resolve to make effective in the world.

This lecture is the ninth of sixteen lectures from the lecture series entitled Spiritual Relationships within the Human Organism. It is also known as Knowledge of Higher Worlds.

There is no doubt that in the present time a great number of people is longing to know something about the spiritual, supersensible worlds and even scientific men have recently made the attempt to discover paths enabling them to gain knowledge of the supersensible world. But a modern person is continually hampered in all these attempts to penetrate into the supersensible world by the obstacle of judgments based upon modern science, by the authority of modern science. But when one confronts sources out of which it might be possible to draw facts concerning the supersensible world, the following view is generally advanced; It is not possible to obtain exact knowledge of the supersensible worlds, the kind of knowledge which we are accustomed to have in modern science, for all these facts concerning the supersensible worlds do not stand the test.

But the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, which I shall take the liberty to explain to you now and in the following days, strives to reach an exact, a really exact knowledge of the supersensible world. This Knowledge is not “exact” in the meaning that experiments have to be made as is the case in modern science which deals with the external world, but exact spiritual knowledge consists in the fact that inner soul capacities of the human being which in ordinary life and in ordinary science only exist in a dormant state are developed in such a way that in the course, of this development the cle.ar conscious faculties remain throughout in full activity, as they do in exact modern science. Whereas in exact modern science we maintain the state of consciousness which we have in ordinary life and strictly observe the scientific methods while we investigate the external world, the spiritual science of Anthroposophy adopts a different attitude, for we submit to what p might designate as intellectual modesty and say to ourselves; Once upon a time we were children and we then had capacities which did not in the least approach those which we now possess as adults, faculties which we gained through education or through life itself. Even as from childhood onwards we developed certain capacities which we did not have before, so in a grown-up person there are certain dormant capacities which slumber within him in the same way in which his present capacities slumbered within his soul during childhood. These slumbering capacities may be drawn out of the soul with the aid of certain methods.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy, in the meaning of these lectures, must draw these slumbering capacities out of the human soul in such a way that the methods applied to our development before we attain to supersensible knowledge, manifest every stage of our development, so that it follows a definite course. We therefore prepare ourselves for the perception of the higher worlds by applying first of all these preparatory measures to our own development, measures which in themselves constitute an exact method. As already explained to you in this same hall during my last lectures, an exact clairvoyance can therefore be reached along this path. Clairvoyance is gained in an exact way, whereas in ordinary science, with the aid of the ordinary powers of cognition, we can investigate Nature in an exact way.

To-day I shall not explain in detail how this exact clairvoyance can be acquired, but I shall speak of this more fully in due course. In my last lectures, however, I already spoke to you of the methods by which it is possible to gain exact clairvoyance. Further information on these methods may be obtained above all from the book that is now translated into English: “THE WAY OF INITIATION.”

I wish to point out to you to-day why it is not possible in ordinary life to penetrate into the higher worlds. This is denied to modern people chiefly because they are able to perceive the world only in the present moment. Through our eyes we can only perceive the world and its phenomena in the present moment/. Through our ears we can only hear tones in the present moment. This apples to each sensory organ. To begin with, everything which constitutes our past earthly existence can only be gathered by memory, that is to say, in the form of shadowy thoughts. Compare how living and real were your experiences ten years ago, and how pale and shadowy are the thoughts by which you remember them to-day.

To our ordinary consciousness, everything which transcends the present moment appears in such a form that it can only live in shadowy memories. But these shadowy memories can be stimulated to a higher life. This is possible by methods which, as already stated, will not be explained in detail to-day, by methods which consist of meditation in thought, of concentration upon thoughts, of self-training, and so forth.

Those who apply these methods and thus learn to live in thought just as intensively as they ordinarily live in their sense-impressions, acquire a certain faculty which consists in the fact that they are able to survey the world in a way which transcends the present moment. Such exercises which lead to the result that the world can be observed beyond the present moment, must however be made for a long time, and the time will be in accordance with the individual predisposition of each person, and they must consist of a careful system, that is to say, of exact meditation and concentration. Particularly in our days some people bring with them when they are born capacities which can be developed in this way. That is to say, such capacities are not evident immediately after birth in the form which they may take on afterwards, but at a certain moment of life they emerge from man's inner being and then we know that they could not have been acquired in the ordinary course of existence unless they had been brought into life through birth. These capacities reveal themselves in the fact that we can live in the world of thoughts in the same way in which we ordinarily live in the physical world through our physical body.

Do not take such a statement too lightly. Consider that the existence which we ascribe to ourselves is due to the fact that we are able to take part in the existence of the physical world through our own experience. If we reach the stage in which we are able to unfold an inner life independently of the impressions which we obtain through our eyes, our ears, and our other sense-organs, if we unfold this life which is inwardly just as intensive as the ordinary life of the senses and which does not only weave in shadowy thoughts but in inner living thoughts, so that these are experienced just as livingly as we ordinarily experience sense-impressions we gain the certainty of a second form of existence, we experience a new kind of self-consciousness.

We experience what I might designate as an awakening not outside the body, but within our inner self. A new life awakens within us, although our physical body is just as quiet and inert as when we are asleep in ordinary life, with the senses closed to the impressions which come from outside.

If we cast a glance into our inner self, we find that in ordinary life we are only aware of what we take in through our senses. Through direct perception we know nothing whatever of our own inner being. Our ordinary state of consciousness does not enable us to look into our inner organisation, but when we acquire the new kind or self-consciousness which lives in the sphere of pure thinking, we learn to look into our inner being in the same way in which we ordinarily look out into the physical world.

We then have more or less the following experience: In ordinary life, when we look out info our world, there must be the light of the sun or some other light shedding its rays upon the objects in our environment. This light, which is outside, enables us to perceive the external objects. When we gain consciousness of our inner being in this second state of existence within the activity of pure thought, which is however objectively real with the same intensity, and wealth of colour as the ordinary sense-perceptions, we then feel as it were (not only “as it were,” but in a real sense, meant spiritually of course), we feel an inner light, the existence of a light which sheds its rays upon our own inner being, in the same way in which external lights ordinarily illumine the objects in our environment.

For this reason, the state of human consciousness and experience which we thus acquire, may be designated as a form of clairvoyance. This clairvoyance which exists within the awakened spiritual self-consciousness at first gives rise to a new capacity; We are able to enter again, to live through again, every moment experienced during our earthly existence.

For example, it is quite possible to have the following experience: We were once eighteen years old. When we were eighteen, we experienced this or that thing. Now we do not only remember these experiences, but we live through them again, in a more or less strong and intensive way. We are once more what we were a “Time-body,” in contrast to the spatial physical body, which contains the sense-organs.

This Time-body appears all at once. We do not experience it in successive moments, but it is there all at once. It is there before us, in its inner mobility. We survey our own being within our whole past existence on earth, we survey our whole life, which we ordinarily review in memory, which we can ordinarily survey only in the form of pale thoughts, light falls upon our whole earthly life, but so that we stand within it and can live through every moment of our existence.

If we experience this inner illumination, we know that we do not only have a physical body, a spatial body. We then learn to know that the human being also has a second body, which is less substantial than the physical body, and which is really woven out of the images of our earthly, life. These images, however, are more than pictures, for they are forces which mould our earthly existence in a creative way. They form our physical organism and shape our activities. We thus learn to know of the existence of a second human being within us.

This second human being that now appears to us, is perceived in such a way that it grows aware of its existence. If becomes conscious of itself, even as the physical spatial body is aware of its existence within a physical body, it becomes conscious of its existence within a finer, I might say more etheric world, within a world which is filled with light. The world manifests itself to us in a second form of existence and reveals finer, more etheric shapes. For at the foundation of everything physical lie these finer more etheric forms, which can be perceived in this way.

We then have the strange experience that everything which we experience through this finer body can only be retained for a short time. Generally speaking, people who have acquired exact clairvoyance and can therefore shed light upon their etheric body, or the body of formative forces, as it can also be designated, perceive, the etheric aspect of the world, the etheric part of their own being. At the same time however, they must admit that these impressions vanish very quickly. They cannot be retained. A kind of fear then takes hold of us, and we wish to return as quickly as possible to the perceptions of the physical body, in order to feel an inner sense of firmness as human beings, as human personalities.

When we experience our own SELF within the etheric body, we also experience things pertaining to the higher world, we experience the etheric aspect of the higher world. And at the same time, we discover how fleeting these impressions are, for we cannot retain them for long; we can only retain them by seeking some kind of support.

Let me now give you an example showing you the kind of aid which I must draw in, in order to prevent these etheric impressions from vanishing too quickly. Whenever such impressions arise, I do not only endeavour to see them, but I also try to write them down, so that the activity, which thus sets in, does not only come from the soul's abstract capacities, but is held fast through the act of writing down the impressions. It is not important at all to read these notes afterwards; the essential thing is that a stronger activity should flow into the one which is, to begin with, a purely etheric activity.

By doing this, we pour, as it were, into our ordinary human capacities something which is immensely evanescent and liquid and which vanishes very quickly. This is not done unconsciously, as in the case of a medium, but with full consciousness. We pour our etheric experiences into our ordinary bodily faculties, and are thus able to retain these impressions.

This also enables us to understand something very important: We can now understand how a supersensible etheric world (we shall speak of other supersensible worlds in due course) can be retained. It is a supersensible, etheric world which comprises our own being, the course of our own life and the etheric part of Nature which reaches as far as the starry spheres. We learn to know this etheric world. And we learn to experience our own being within this etheric world, and at the same time we learn to know that unless we come down into the physical body it is impossible to retain the etheric world longer than two or three days at the most. If our clairvoyant faculties are highly developed, the etheric world can be retained for two or three days.

Since certain things, of which I shall speak presently, enable us to have this survey as modern initiates, we are able to form a judgment of what we thus, retain within our etheric body, or within the body of formative forces, without the support of our ordinary bodily capacities. It is the same survey which we obtain from the standpoint of a higher consciousness of self when we pass through the portal of death, after having cast aside the physical bone which decays. But for the reasons stated above, also this post-mortem survey cannot be retained in human consciousness longer than two or three days after death.

The development of an exact clairvoyance thus makes us experience the first conditions which arise after death. We experience them by learning to know them in advance, in a fully conscious state.

Every human being who sheds his physical body when passing through the portal of death, goes through the experiences which an initiate has in advance in a fully conscious state. But the human being would not continue to be conscious (why he has a consciousness after death, in spite of it all, will be explained afterwards) he would have no consciousness throughout the time in which higher knowledge enables him to retain his etheric body, or the body of formative forces, that is to say for two or three days.

Within his etheric body the human being can therefore be conscious of the etheric world for two or three days after death. Then he sheds this consciousness. He feels how the etheric body falls away from him, as it were, in the same way in which his physical body first fell away from him; he feels that it is now necessary to pass over to a new state of consciousness in order to continue to live consciously after death as a human being.

What I have now described to you as the first moments, as it were, after death (for in the face of the life of the cosmos these are only the first moments) can be retained by those who have acquired the above-mentioned capacity to look into the higher worlds. They experience in advance what otherwise takes place only after death. When such a strong consciousness of Self is acquired, so that the support of the physical body is no longer needed, these first moments after death can be experienced in advance within this intensified state of consciousness.

We can then shed light upon our higher existence, and this enables us to recognise within us that light which during the first two or three days after death sheds its rays upon a world which differs from our ordinary physical environment, which we perceive through our senses during our earthly existence between birth and death.

The experiences which follow these first days after death will be explained when the first part of this lecture has been translated.

The inner illumination described to you just now is needed in order to survey the supersensible part of life's course on earth, which, in its character form, continues a few days after death, as already explained. The spiritual light which sheds its rays into man's inner being must be kindled within us. This enables us to go beyond the stage in which we only live in the perceptions of the present moment transmitted by our sense-organs.

If we wish to gain further knowledge of the super-sensible world, not only the perceptive state of consciousness in life should undergo a transformation, but also life itself. Ordinary life generally consists of a state of existence enclosed within our physical spatial body. The boundaries of our skin are at the same time the boundaries of our existence. Our life reaches as far as the boundaries of our body. When we live within this state of consciousness we cannot go beyond that sphere of knowledge of the higher worlds which has been described so far. When we gain knowledge of the higher worlds, we can only transcend our ordinary experiences by acquiring a form of experience which is not closed in by our spatial body, but which participates in the life of the whole world which constitutes our environment in ordinary life.

It is possible to participate in the lit ... of the universe when we gain knowledge of the higher worlds. As already stated, I shall only give a few indications concerning the methods of a modern initiate which enable him to gain an exact knowledge of the higher worlds. Everything else may be found in my book “INITIATION.”

When we acquire the capacity to live not only within a second form of existence that consists in a life of thought still enclosed within the spatial body, but when we acquire the capacity to live outside our body, through the fact that we do not only allow certain thoughts to live intensively within our consciousness, but through the fact that we can also eliminate these thoughts from our consciousness by systematic exercise, we gain this new state of consciousness enabling us to have experiences outside the body. Let me now give you an easy example.

Let us suppose that we are contemplating a crystal. This crystal is there before us, because we see it with our eyes. A person who only wishes to become a medium or to reach a kind of hypnotic condition will stare at this crystal until a dulled state of consciousness arises. But the spiritual science of Anthroposophy has nothing to do with such things. It must draw in quite different exercises. When we look at a crystal, Anthroposophy finally leads us to the point of turning away our attention from the crystal, of abstracting our attention from it in the same way in which we generally abstract our attention from thoughts. We therefore have before us a crystal, but this crystal teaches us to look through it psychically, not physically, so that we do not use our eyes for this kind of contemplation, although our eyes are wide open. This psychical knowledge arises through the fact that we eliminate the crystal from our vision. Such exercises can also be done by eliminating a colour which we have before us, so that we no longer see it, although it is still there before us.

In this way we can above all do exercises consisting in the elimination of thoughts that rise up in the present moment through external impressions. Or we can eliminate thoughts which we have had in some past moment of our life and that now rise up in the form of memories; we eliminate such thoughts, we throw them out of our consciousness, so as to bring about a state of mind which only consists of a waking consciousness and which excludes every impression coming from the external world.

By doing such exercises we discover within us the capacity to transcend the boundaries of our spatial body, so that we no longer live within these boundaries. In that case we participate in the life of the whole world which we ordinarily perceive as our environment from the limited aspect of its physical phenomena.

This gives rise above all to something which can be compared with a recollection of that state of existence in which we live when we are asleep, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, but it is a recollection which rises up in a completely clear state of consciousness. Even as in our ordinary perceptions we are limited to the present moment, so in our ordinary life we are limited to the experiences which we always have during our waking state of consciousness.

Consider the fact that whenever you remember some portion of your life, the experiences which you have during the hours of sleep remain blanks in your ordinary consciousness. All the soul-experiences from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up do not rise up in your memory; in reality, memory is therefore an interrupted stream. But we do not always notice this.

All the experiences of the soul from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up confront our awakened higher consciousness as if they were intensified memories. This awakened consciousness arises through the fact that the human being can live consciously outside his body. This leads us to the second stage of knowledge in the supersensible worlds; we can, to begin with, perceive what our soul passes through when our body is in a state of repose, when it has no perceptions and no manifestations of the will, as if the soul were no longer contained within it.

We are thus able to remember in ordinary life our experiences outside the physical body, the experiences which we have whenever we go to sleep, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. But we should bear in mind that these experiences must be judged in the right way. We learn to know the experiences of the soul outside the body, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. This can only be perceived if we develop a state of consciousness, a condition of existence outside our body.

At this point we do not only recognise the thing which is illumined, as it were, by that inner light which also sheds its rays over our “time-body” as already explained to you, but within our daytime memory, that has risen to this stage of exact clairvoyance of a higher kind, we now learn to know our real experiences, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. To begin with, however, these experiences are rather surprising. Even as in ordinary life we live within our ordinary consciousness, within our physical body, and know that we have within us the lungs, the heart, etc., so we have a cosmic, not a personal human state of consciousness, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. Although this may sound paradoxical, clairvoyant knowledge enables us to perceive that this cosmic state of consciousness contains the living images of the planetary worlds, of the starry worlds. We feel that we live within the universal life of the cosmos. We contemplate the world, as it were, from the standpoint of this universal experience within the cosmos.

Because we now experience within us what ordinarily exists in our environment, we pass through everything that we experienced during our physical life from the moment in which we last woke up to the moment in which we fell asleep; we live backwards through all these experiences, in the real form in which we experienced them during our waking life.

For example, if we live through an ordinary day and then sleep during the night, the experiences which we had just before going to sleep will be lived through backwards; then come the experiences of the afternoon, and throughout the night we live backwards through our daytime existence.

As stated, in exact clairvoyance it is a question of acquiring this retrospective memory within our ordinary daytime consciousness. Even as our ordinary memory can recall experiences of many years ago in our daytime consciousness, so exact clairvoyance enables us to have this retrospective experience of our daytime existence. This exact clairvoyance therefore constitutes a kind of extended memory. We look back upon the experiences which we have when we are asleep. We know that when we are asleep, we have experiences outside the physical, spatial body, we know that we live in a real world, in an essential world, which contains, as it were, within its consciousness an image of the whole universe, and we know that within this universal essence we live backwards through our daytime life.

We then discern that within this retrospective experience our daytime-existence does not last as long as it does here in the physical world. When we investigate this supersensible sphere, that is to say, when we learn to know these things better and better by systematic practice, we gradually recognise that this retrospective experience is three times faster than the physical experience within our ordinary consciousness. During his sleeping life which lasts one third of his waking life, a person who is awake two thirds of his time and asleep one third of his time, also passes through the experiences which he has during the two thirds which constitute his physical existence. We therefore learn to know a life which we develop outside our body and which takes its course backwards with threefold speed.

When by exact clairvoyance we recollect our sleeping life of the night during the ordinary life of the day, we also know that this retrospective experience of sleep has no meaning of its own What exact clairvoyance can call up within our ordinary daytime consciousness is like a memory. But the experiences of sleep which we are thus able to remember, reveal at the same time that they do not have a meaning in themselves, but that they point to something which lies in the future.

This can be explained as follows: If you ask your selves; How do I judge the memory of an experience which I had twenty years ago? you will reply: I experience it like a shadowy thought. Through its very essence, however, this memory offers the guarantee that, we do not have before us an empty fantasy, but the image of something which we really experienced in the past during the course of earthly life. Even as memory in itself guarantees that it refers to something which really existed in the past, so the experiences of the night upon which we look back contain the guarantee that they have no meaning in themselves but point to something which lies in the future.

In regard to memory it is not necessary to prove that it refers to something past. Similarly, when we acquire exact clairvoyance it is just as little necessary to prove that the night-experiences which we survey are not fancies that arise out of the present, moment, for they show in an evident manner that they are related with man's future, with that moment in the future when the human being lays aside his physical body through death, in the same way in which he lays it aside symbolically through exact clairvoyance.

We thus learn to know the experiences of the human being after death, when he has absolved the three days of which we have spoken. Indeed, this process resembling memory also teaches us to recognise, the importance of the two or three days after death, when we have the feeling as if we lived within ä universal consciousness, within a cosmic consciousness, when we survey our etheric being once more from the aspect of the cosmos and look back upon our experiences during our past earthly life. We then learn to know the experiences which follow this stage of existence, namely we learn to know that the event of death is followed by a life which takes its course three times faster than earthly life. It is the same thing which we learned to know by contemplating the experiences which we have at night, when we are asleep.

We know that the contemplation of our etheric part, which only lasts a short time after death, is followed by a life that lasts twenty, thirty years, or even less, according to the age reached during our life on earth. Approximately—for all these things are approximate—this life after death takes its course three times faster than our earthly life. If a person has, for example, reached the age of thirty, he will pass through the existence referred to above three times faster, that is to say, in ten years. If a person has reached the age of sixty years, he will after death live backwards through his earthly life in twenty years;—but everything must be taken approximately.

We perceive all this by exact clairvoyance in the same way in which we perceive past things through memory. We thus learn to know that death is followed by a supersensible life, by a life in the supersensible world, which consists of a retrospective experience of our whole earthly life. Each night we pass through the preceding day. After death we pass through our whole preceding life retrospectively. We once more pass through every experience of our earthly life. By living again through all these things experienced during our earthly life, by passing through them spiritually, we acquire a right judgment of our own moral value.

During the time through which we pass after death we acquire, as it were, a consciousness of our moral personality, of our moral value, in the same way in which here on earth we are conscious of our existence within a body of flesh and blood. After death we live within that part which constituted our moral essence here on earth. By passing once more through all these things in a reversed order, so that the development of a moral judgment is no longer handicapped by our instincts, impulses and passions—for we now survey them spiritually—we learn to acquire a right and true judgment of our own moral quality.

In order to acquire this judgment, we must pass through the length of time of which we have spoken just now. When we have absolved this length of time after death, our inner moral life begins to vanish, the retrospective memory of our moral value on earth disappears, and we must proceed further through the spiritual worlds, equipped with another state of consciousness, which can also be recognised through exact clairvoyance.

This does not only entail that we should live outside our spatial body, but within a state of consciousness which completely differs from the consciousness which we have here, in the physical world. We then perceive that the living experience of our moral worth, which we acquired by passing through one third of the time which constituted our earthly life, is followed by a supersensible life, by a spiritual life. And we learn to know this life. It is a new form of existence, a purely spiritual life. But in order to know it, exact clairvoyance must be able to rise from the ordinary consciousness to a higher state, to a pure state of consciousness, so that it is fully able to recognise this higher state of consciousness.

I have tried to give you a description of two conditions after death. The description of the third condition of existence will follow, when the above has been translated.

If you consider this retrospective experience described just now, which we have when we are asleep, you will see that this is an experience which the human being has outside his physical, spatial body—he is, as it were, outside himself, by the side of his own self,—but this existence is, I might say, of such a kind that one cannot move in it. Essentially speaking, we then reverse the actions which we carried out during our ordinary daytime consciousness. Even a person who attains supersensible insight into these experiences by exact clairvoyance, in the manner explained to you, feels as if he were a captive in a world which he is able to recall in the clear, daytime consciousness of clairvoyance, but in which he cannot move about, for he is chained and fettered in it.

The third condition of higher knowledge and of higher life which we must attain, is therefore the capacity to move about freely in the spiritual world. Otherwise it is impossible to gain knowledge of the purely spiritual, supersensible state of consciousness.

In addition to exact clairvoyance we must acquire what I designate as ideal magic, but this is to be clearly distinguished from the wrong kind of magic which takes on external forms and which is connected with a great deal of charlatanism. The ideal magic of which I intend to speak is to be clearly distinguished from this charlatanism.

By ideal magic I understand the following:

When we survey our life with our ordinary consciousness, we perceive that in a certain sense we underwent a change with the years and decades that passed by. Though slowly, our habits gradually changed. We acquired certain capacities and certain others disappeared. One who observes himself honestly in regard to certain capacities pertaining to his earthly life can say that whenever he acquired a new capacity he became a different person. This is how life transforms us. We completely surrender to life and life educates and trains us and develops the configuration of our soul.

But those who wish to enter the supersensible world with full knowledge—in other words, those who wish to acquire ideal magic must not only intensify thought, as described, so that it enables them to recognise a second form of their existence. But they must also emancipate their will from the physical body on which it depends in ordinary life. We can only activate our will through the fact that we use our physical body, our legs, our arms, our instruments of speech. The physical body is the foundation of our volitional life.

The following can be done, and this has to be done quite systematically by those spiritual investigators who wish to attain to ideal magic in addition to exact clairvoyance. Such a strong will-power should be unfolded, that at a certain moment of life they can say to themselves: I must lose a certain habit and my soul must assume a new habit.

When we apply our will-power strongly in order to change certain forms of experience completely, a few years may sometimes be needed for this—but it can be done. We can be educated as it were not only by life itself, through the means of the physical body, but we ourselves can take in hand this education, this self-training.

Such strong exercises of the will, which are also described in the above-mentioned books, lead those who wish to be initiates in the modern meaning, to new experiences besides those that imply the retrospection of our daytime experiences during sleep.

It is then possible to develop states of consciousness which are not those of sleep, but which are lived through in full consciousness and which nevertheless render it possible to do something and to move about while one is asleep, so that one is not only in a passive state as is ordinarily the case when one is outside the body in the spiritual world, but one is able to act in it, one can be active in the spiritual world. Otherwise one will not be able to progress during the condition of sleeping.

Those who become modern initiates in this meaning are also active within their human being during their sleeping condition; they carry this activity also into the existence which takes its course from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. If the will is thus carried into the human being during the condition of sleep, when the human being lives outside his body, an entirely new state of consciousness can be developed: a consciousness which is really able to perceive what we pass through during the time which follows the post-mortem period that has just been described.

There, this new state of consciousness really enables us to look into our human existence after our earthly life, in the same way in which we look into our prenatal human existence. We then perceive that we pass through an existence which takes its course within a spiritual world, even as our physical-earthly existence takes its course within a physical world. We learn to know our purely spiritual essence within a spiritual world, even as here upon the earth we learn to know our physical body within a physical world. We then obtain the possibility to judge how long this life may last, which constitutes as it were the epoch of moral valuation, as described above!

If through ideal magic we thus carry the will into our soul-life, we gain knowledge of this adult state of consciousness and we learn to compare it in the right way with the dull state of consciousness which we had at the beginning of our earthly life, as infants.

You know that through our ordinary consciousness we cannot remember the first years of our infancy. There we live in a kind of dull consciousness and we enter the world in a kind of sleep. As adults our consciousness is intensive and clear in comparison with this dull, dark consciousness into which we look back and which we had at the beginning of our earthly life.

Those who ascend to ideal magic in the manner described, learn to know the difference between the ordinary waking consciousness of an adult and the dull consciousness of an infant. They learn to know, as it were, that they rise by stages from the dull consciousness of infancy to the clearer consciousness which they have as adults.

The connection which they discover between the child's dreaming consciousness and the consciousness of an adult, teaches them to judge the other connection which exists between the ordinary consciousness of an adult and that illumined consciousness which contains not only exact clairvoyance, but also ideal magic, a consciousness which enables them to move about freely in the spiritual world.

I might say that we learn to move about freely in the spiritual world in the same way in which we learned to move about freely with our physical body in our physical existence on earth, as we passed over from the helpless state of childhood to this more emancipated state. In addition to the connection which exists between the consciousness of early childhood and our ordinary consciousness, we thus learn to know another connection which exists between our adult state of consciousness and the highest purely spiritual state of consciousness.

But this also enables us to know that in the post-earthly life after death we are spiritual beings among spiritual beings; we work together with these spiritual beings and at the same time learn to judge how long this spiritual existence among them will last.

I must again bring in the example of an ordinary experience which we remember. We now realise that even as a memory contains a past reality, so the experiences which we now have contain the right judgment of the fact that in the initiate's higher consciousness there are not only things which have a significance for our earthly life, but things which pertain to the life after death, when we live as a spiritual being among spiritual beings. We also learn to know what connection there is between the purely spiritual life and the earthly life through which we passed between birth and death.

When an initiate looks back upon his earliest childhood, he knows that the older he grows, the easier it will be for him to look into the spiritual world. To be sure there are some people who are comparatively young and who possess the capacity to look into the spiritual world. But this vision gains in exactness and clearness with every year that passes. As we grow older we are more and more capable to pass over into that other state of consciousness. This shows us the relation which exists between the different states of consciousness.

We learn to know the following; We have, for instance, reached the age of forty years, but we are only able to remember our life as far as the third or fourth year. We study the conditions and realise how much more we have at the age of forty, than during the unconscious, dreamlike state of consciousness which we have in childhood. We learn to recognise that the life after death is longer to the same extent as our earthly life is longer than our dreamlike childhood existence; the life after death lasts for many centuries.

After our retrospective experience of a moral character we therefore enter a purely spiritual life, where man is spirit among spirits. This is a life which lasts for centuries. During this spiritual existence the human being faces tasks which pertain to the spiritual world, even as here, during his earthly existence, he faces tasks which pertain to the physical world.

To exact clairvoyance, which is supported, I might say, by ideal magic, or by the capacity to move about freely in the spiritual world, these tasks become manifest through the fact that from the essence of the spiritual world in which we live after death we extract all the forces which then lead us on to a new life on earth. From the very outset of our existence after death, this new life on earth confronts us as a goal, as an aim which we always have before us. And the earthly existence within the body of a human being, which is a real microcosm, is the result of a powerful experience which we have, in the spiritual world after death.

You see, when we speak of a germ here in the physical world, this germ is small and gradually unfolds itself, until it becomes a large tree or a large animal. I might also speak of a spiritual germ which develops after our physical life on earth, after death. Out of the spiritual forces of the universe the human being develops with the aid of the spiritual Beings, a spiritual germ for his next life on earth. This elaboration does not consist in a repetition of his earthly life, but it contains activities and essential forces which are far greater to be sure than anything which can be experienced on earth. During our post-earthly existence, our first experience in the spiritual world is this preparation of our future earthly life, upon the foundation of experiences which we can only have in the spiritual world.

In addition, we have the cosmic consciousness, of which I have spoken. Through the fact that such a cosmic consciousness arises in one human being and also in other human beings ... indeed, it exists every night, though we pass through it in a dull state which is no real consciousness, but, if I may use the paradoxical expression, an unconscious consciousness ... through this fact the human beings live not only as spiritual beings together with other spiritual beings who never come down to the earth, but who dwell in the purely spiritual world, but they also live together with all the souls who are either incarnated in physical bodies, or who have also passed through the portal of death and consequently have the same experiences: the cosmic state of consciousness which is common to them all.

The threads which were spun here on earth from soul to soul, in the family or in other human relationships, the connections which we made while living within a physical body, these threads and all the ties upon the physical plane are now laid aside. We lay aside everything which we experienced as lovers or friends, or in connection with human beings otherwise closely connected with us, we lay aside these experiences which we had through our physical body, in the same way in which we lay aside the physical body when we enter the spiritual world. But family ties, friendships, loves which we experienced here on earth continue spiritually beyond the portal of death. They become spiritual experiences which build-up our next earthly life. We do not work alone, but during the time in which we pass through the moral valuation if our past life we work together with the human souls who were dear to us here on earth.

Through exact clairvoyance and ideal magic these facts appear as something which is not subjected to faith, but as something which constitutes real knowledge. They are facts which penetrate into our direct vision. Indeed, we may say: Here in the physical world a gulf separates one human soul from the other, no matter now dearly they may love each other, for they can only meet within their bodies and they can only cultivate relations which are determined by the fact that they live within physical bodies.

When we live in the spiritual world, the physical body that belongs to a beloved person here on earth no longer constitutes an obstacle and no longer renders it difficult for us to live together with the other soul. Even as the vision of the spiritual world entails the capacity to look right through earthly objects, as already described to you, so a human being who has passed through the portal of death can commune with the souls whom he left behind upon the earth, he can have intercourse with them by passing right through their bodies. All those who were dear to him are experienced by him as living souls, even while they are still living upon the earth, until the moment when they too pass through the portal of death.

I wished to speak to you first of all of these things, as an introduction to the three lectures on exact clairvoyance and ideal magic, for such truths can give us an insight into the real, supersensible life of the human being. I wished to show you that when we strive after exact clairvoyance and ideal magic, it is really possible to speak of the higher worlds in terms of scientific knowledge, in the same way in which one can speak of the physical world in terms of an exact knowledge of Nature.

If we penetrate further and further into the higher worlds—and there will be people who will develop their faculties so that they will be able to do this—we shall see that no branch of science, even in its most perfect form, need be an obstacle which prevents us from accepting the truths revealed by exact clairvoyance and ideal magic. Upon the foundation of a real scientific mentality we can accept the truths relating to experiences through which we pass not only here upon the earth during our existence between birth and death, but also during our existence between death and a new birth, until we return into a new earthly life.

To-morrow I shall speak to you of the repeated lives on earth and indicate how they will terminate, for I shall take the liberty to give you a description of the relation which was brought into human life on earth by the Event of Christ, by the Event of Golgotha.

I shall then be able to show you that the knowledge of which I have spoken, in so far as it concerns us individually sheds light upon the whole development of the human race during its existence upon the earth, so that it can also illumine what really took place when Christ entered the earthly life of humanity.

These lectures are therefore meant to show on the one hand that it is not necessary to reject the exact natural science of modern times when one speaks of spiritual truths. The subject of tomorrow's lecture will be the Event which is of greatest importance also for mankind's life on earth. The Christ Event will rise up before our souls in a new, more radiant aspect, if our souls are willing to take in the truths concerning the spiritual world, as set forth here.

To-morrow's task will therefore be to explain the connection which exists between the spiritual science of Anthroposophy and Christianity.

As in the previous lesson, we will first hear resounding towards us the words that are spoken to human beings like an eternal admonition, like an admonition of eternity resounding in the past, in the present, and in the future, calling out to a human being that he should become self-aware, in order to find his proper relationship to the world and to himself.

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.
Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?
Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?
Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

My dear brothers and sisters! A harrowing admonition was spoken by the Guardian of the Threshold to the human being in the first Lesson. This first admonition shows a person how willing, feeling, and thinking, as they live in a human being in this materialistic age, continue to live in him when endeavoring to rise above materialism. It shows how willing, feeling, and thinking appear in the imaginations of the three beasts, which can be very harrowing indeed if felt deeply enough. They show us how little of all that is at work near the surface of one’s soul life really accords with the actual intentions buried deep within the soul.

This is how it is with all esoteric life, as described last time, that wants to speak to us directly out of the spiritual world. There we are shown on one side all the depths, the moral depths in our soul through which we shall have to pass in order to find our way to the true being of the world and to ourselves. On the other side, we are shown the heights to which a person should ascend.

There is no true esoteric pathway to self-awareness if the person will not be carried both down and under into the depths, and also will not be carried out and into the heights. Only if we develop the courage to go to the depths as well as to the heights, only then will the stark strong impulse come into our souls, the impulse which is necessary for esoteric development.

For the sake of our esoteric development, a person has to stop feeling cut off from our cosmic environment. Let us ask about the relationship of our day life to our surrounding cosmic world. Around us a person perceives the mineral, plant, and animal world. Yet he feels separate from this world in his body. This isolated existence in body was good for his own development. But today there is a tendency to separate oneself too much from the world, really, not merely in thoughts. Every night we enter the realm of sleep from which only chaotic dreams well up to the surface. Instead of being among animals and plants there, we are surrounded at best by shadow images of them. We are infinitely alone with ourselves there. Our dream life is filled with infinite loneliness and this continues to work on in our daytime consciousness. We continue to dream on in our illusions, and out of this arise all the things that are rooted in our egoism. On our way to the godlike spiritual we have to overcome this egoism. This proper feeling, this attitude of mind must give rise to the beginning of an esoteric path. Whomever is not willing in a certain way to break with all that has formed itself in his ordinary self will not get far along an esoteric path, for we are concerned here with a genuine turning point in development. For the world, much depends on how many human beings will find their way on to a truly esoteric path.

We must begin by trying to experience the elements that surround us. After having shattered us with the appearance of the three beasts, the Guardian in turn instructs us to look into the world of the elements, for on the path to the spirit we have to grow into the different elements. There is the earth below… There is fluidity. We must feel how they are united with us, how they are united inwardly and externally. So it is also with air, which is within us, which is again external to us. So it is with warmth, so it is with all the elements. The issue is for us to summon up the necessary attentiveness through an intimate melding into the advice, the teachings that we here receive and sustain.

Think, my dear friends, imagine touching something, imagine feeling something. It is just the same, however, when you observe, when you hear… Imagine, you are a single great sense organ, you remain on the floor of the earth, while the earth below bears you up. It is just the same as touching something with your finger, just so you touch the earth with your entire body as you stand and walk. It is only because it has become so habitual that a person doesn’t say it this way. What is customary, habitual a person must in turn emerge from in esoteric development. A person must learn to find himself to be a sort of finger touching, tasting the earth. The entire person himself becomes a sensory organ.

O Man, touch inwardly in your body’s whole existence,
How earth forces for you in existence-awareness¹ are pillars.

As a whole human being you must feel like a finger feeling and touching something. You will then feel how earthly forces are your supports within existence so that you don't sink down into the heaviness. With these words the Guardian is telling us that we should feel as the godhead tasting on the earth with this finger, this finger which we are as whole human being.

Now we come to a second aspect. As we continue, we no longer only feel the earth supporting us with our feet, but we also feel how the blood … in this finger of the godhood that we are… how the blood lives and moves. One feels for instance blood living in a finger, that for example is sick or injured in some way. In this way a person becomes aware of the watery element. This is how we feel the watery element within ourselves.

O Man, live inwardly in your touching’s whole sphere,
How water ways for you in existence-awareness are sculptors.

Water beings … in our own blood, in our blood vessels … a sculpting. Outside, in the cosmos, the water, the fluid element, it tosses waves and wavelets on its surface which a person finds beautiful. But in occult development a person must experience how this same water element also lives in us, molding and sculpting us. Earth for us is merely like supporting pillars. Water sculpts us inwardly. Whereas earlier it was unknown, a person should become aware of inner touching: O Man, live inwardly in your touching’s whole sphere. …

My dear friends, please note in all these mantras the exact choice and position of each word. We must take the words as god-given, inspired, inspired out of the spiritual world. It is just this way for every single word, from the progression of pillars to sculptors, of something lower to something higher, to what not merely supports us outwardly, but rather chisels, plastically molds us inwardly.

Now we come to the third stage. The Guardian instructs us to look up to the air element. A person breathes in and out. The movement is initially automatic, unconscious, but it moves in him nevertheless. When there is something wrong with his breathing, he notices that in it is something that is moralistic, soulful. If a person breathes wrongly while asleep, for example, fear and anxiety live in the dream. Here the person is not merely sculpted. He becomes built by water going out into all organs. All that is fully formed first built itself out of fluidity. Blood contains the formative forces. … In seven years, the material parts of the organs are offloaded and newly formed out of the blood. All the material substance you have in your body now was not there eight years ago. All of you sitting here have been essentially rebuilt out of your blood stream during the course of the last seven or eight years. Whereas the fluid element is our sculptor, air is something we sense in our soul, so that fear arises if we breathe too much carbon dioxide and faintness occurs if we have too much oxygen, which is like being dissolved into the cosmos.

O Man, feel inwardly in your living’s whole weave,
How air powers for you in existence-awareness are nurturers.

In this way we proceed upwards into a realm where a moral aspect begins to appear. We have progressed from support to etheric sculptor and then on to nurturer.

In the fourth stage we ascend to fire, the element of warmth. The earth is scarcely felt by us. The formative, sculpting process is perhaps felt in childhood, if at all. As regards the air, the nurturers take care not to let us feel them. But warmth, whether it is cold or hot, a person feels the warmth element of the cosmos as belonging to himself. Yes, he would totally feel, by means of the admonition of the Guardian, passing by the three beasts and coming up into the cosmos altruistically not egoistically, that he will be carried out and beyond into the realm of the living moving warmth. …

Viewed occultly it is as follows: When a person thinks, he inwardly grasps the fire element of the cosmos. He does not think only in his head. The thinking ability goes far, far out into the cosmos. In the summer he feels the Fire Spirits, the Dynamis, Archai, and Seraphim. In the winter he lives into the cold element with thinking, his thoughts rise up in ice and snow, into the sun-resplendent air. … The fire element is smoothy intimately bound together with the human being. And the human being then says to himself, “If you climb high up a mountain, then it gets colder and colder, and just so you come upon the Exusiai, the Kyriotetes, the Archangels, and the Cherubim, on such a world in which wisdom rules. If you descend from the mountain, or if you come into warm, summer-like times, you come out of the realm of the Cherubim with their wisdom into the realm of the Seraphim’s love, out of the realm of the light-filled wisdom of the Kyriotetes and the Exusiai, into the realm of the fire wielding Dynamis, … who forge in fire … out of the realm of the Archangels, who transform in the water weaving wisdom world into the realm of the Archai and Angeloi. …

O Man, think inwardly in your feeling’s whole stream,
How fire-mights for you in existence-awareness are helpers.

Here it rises up into morality. The nurturers, … they nurture still from the outside. The fire-mights are not merely nurturers, they help us, they help us inwardly.

After a person takes up this admonition, he once again fastens the whole together with the words, as a summary of the previous:

O Man, look within yourself into the elemental realm.

And so, after we were shattered down, we now receive from the Guardian's earnest countenance the instruction to enter, thinking, into the elemental world, to take up within us the existence of the elements...

So, the Guardian admonishes us to live ourselves into earth, water, air and fire. We do that with our physical and etheric body. But the soul cannot simply penetrate the realm of the elements, it must expand into the realm of the planets. The wandering stars, depending on how they face the Earth, they express in their mutual relationships what rules in our souls. Our physical and etheric body ... familiarize themselves ... in the realm of the elements. Our souls expand into the circling of the wandering stars,... of fast-moving Mercury, of nearby Moon, of Venus as she carries cosmic love out into the world’s far reaches, of the forceful craft of Mars, of the wisdom spewing forth from Jupiter, of the maturity of Saturn as he drives all that bears essence with fire-nature. ... It is our soul that therefore expands out into the cosmos. The Guardian says:

O Man, just so let rule in the depths of your soul
The wandering stars' world-guiding might.

And he fastens this once more together, as the many circles of the planets become fastened together as a single circling:

O Man, bring yourself into being, into motion through world’s circling.

So far, we have only accounted for the physical and etheric body, and for the soul, but not yet for the spirit. Out to the spirit moving and weaving within the “I” we must gush, not merely to the planets, but rather out to the fixed stars. The “I”, that forever and ever wields authority, we must carry out to the realm of the fixed stars.

O Man, hold inwardly in the work of your spirit
The resting stars’ heaven-heralding words.

And once again, the Guardian fastens these two lines together. ...with might surging and seething in us... in the words:

O Man, fashion yourself through heavens’ wisdom.

When we feel such a word, sounding together as a whole through earth, water, air, fire, planets, and fixed stars, when we feel it in its entirety, while we hearken to the words, which come to us from the Guardian, then the might of Michael wields authority in this present time through the school. And we may feel this might of Michael in his sign, and feel how Michael, who since the year 1879 and beyond to our time has marshalled his leadership, has accepted all that was grounded since the fifteenth century in the emblem of the Rosae et Crucis. And we may feel the demeanor of the Rose Cross in the three-part word I honor the Father, I love the Son, I unite with the Spirit. This will not be spoken, but accompanies in gesture the threefold word Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

We must now understand as three-sided what the Guardian gives to us as he accompanies us across the abyss of existence, not with earth-feet but with soul-wings.

We think in customary life. In our thoughts live simply the felt shadow in reality of the embrace of essential being. We ask, what are our thoughts? They are a corpse. Just as soul and spirit depart from a physical corpse, and the body is given over to the earth, that is what god-like spiritual beings make of the body of our thoughts. Between death and rebirth living thoughts were fully alive. Then it descended into the physical body where it lives as if in a coffin. The human physical body is the coffin of living thoughts. We should feel this as the truth, with which we are guided by the spiritual world. So, the Guardian says to us: Your thoughts are mere semblance, but you can dive into this illusory appearance and then behind it feel true selfhood … as a godliness. … In the interweaving etheric, there within feel the spirit-beings, that weave, move throughout …

The Guardian speaks to the human being:

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

There is a rhythm in this, as though we were climbing down a mountain … In the trochaic rhythm of macron then breve, stressed then unstressed, we connect in meditation with the pulse of living world thoughts in which we were before descending down to earth.

But not only thinking, we also bear feeling within us. This is not only semblance but also substance. Thoughts are semblance. In feelings semblance and substance mingle ... The powers of the world rule in us. We are expected not only to honor but also to consider that objective world forces wield and weave authority in us:

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

In this verse we swing up in turn to existence. The rhythm of breve then macron, unstressed then stressed, is quite different. We should live in this cosmic rhythm, in which the soul rises up to existence, after it has lost existence in thoughts. Here it progresses from honoring to considering. It becomes more intimate. We honor, indicating that the beings guide us more from the outside. We consider how the powers of life rule in our own inner being.

Then we go down to greater depths. The Guardian points out how the cosmos lives and weaves in our will. The power of existence rises up in us. We are to lay hold of the power within us, the might of world creating:

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being
With autonomous existence well-equipped;
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence, it should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

Here we become aware how existence, newly made, rises up out of all that is semblance-being. It needs another rhythm, the spondaic, macron, macron, stressed, stressed. The two stressed syllables express how the mighty beat of existence thrusts into soul and spirit.

Note the intensification from honor, to the more intimate consider, and then to the going-entirely-into-the-thing grasp. Similarly guiding beings outside us in the cosmos), powers of life within us, world-maker-might in the cosmos as well as within us. Here, in the last line of the third verse, the corresponding word world-maker- might comes at the beginning of the line, not at the end. This is also important. The rhythm is therefore spondaic, stressed, stressed, stressed, and stressed.

When this threefold mantra resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold to the human soul, waiting to fly over the abyss, then may the soul feel how the magic might of Michael surges and seethes through the room. … And how, since the beginning of the new age, Michael is coalesced, is amalgamated, is confederated² with the stream of Rosae et Crucis... In Michael’s Sign we receive what comes to us here in this way with the three-sided countenance of the Rose Cross...

Both the mantras and also anything about the content of the Lessons may only be passed on to members of the esoteric School, that is, those who possess the blue membership card. Those who have been unable to attend may receive the mantras from those who were here. But in every case, it is the one who wishes to pass on the mantras who must ask either Dr. Wegman or myself. It is part of the esoteric guidance that in every single case there must be a concrete request. Taking notes is not authorized. If notes were taken, one is duty bound to burn them within a week.

• 1. Dasein
• 2. vereinigt

The theme we are to consider today leads at once into a sphere which belongs to all humanity, apart from distinctions.

We are to speak, in the first place, of that realm of man's aspiration which in its true, original form can be described in no human language but only in the language of thought—I refer to the realm of occult science.

Through his human faculties man strives for occult knowledge and may also acquire it, but occult knowledge has a greater significance for the world than it has merely within the human soul. In the world around us we can distinguish different substances and materials through which its various phenomena and manifestations are given expression. In the Primal Principle, the essential nature of which can hardly be expressed in words of human language, all creatures, all things of the earth and all worlds are rooted. But the individual differentiations of this Primal Principle come to expression in the physical world in the substances of earth, of water, of air, of fire, of ether, and so forth.

One of the finest, most highly attenuated substances within the reach of human faculties is called Akasha. The manifestations of beings and of phenomena in the Akasha are the most delicate and ethereal of any that are accessible to man. What a man acquires in the way of occult knowledge lives not only in his soul but is inscribed into the Akasha-substance of the world. When we make a thought of occult science come alive in our souls, it is at once inscribed into the Akasha-substance and this is of significance for the general evolution of the world. For no being in the whole world other than man is able to make in the Akasha-substance the inscriptions that can be called by the name of Occult Science.

It is important to bear in mind one characteristic feature of the Akasha-substance, namely that in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, man lives in this substance, just as here on the earth he lives in the atmosphere.

If a seer, using the means at his disposal, were to come into contact with human souls living between death and rebirth he would be able to observe the following.—

In the present cycle of evolution—formerly it was different—a man who here on the earth is never able to kindle to life within him thoughts and ideas belonging to Spiritual Science, cannot be seen, even when he is actually present, by a soul living between death and a new birth. But when a man living on the earth causes a thought or an idea from the domain of Spiritual Science to quicken within him so that it can be inscribed into the Akasha-substance, he becomes visible to the souls who are living between death and rebirth. Profoundly shattering impressions may come to a seer who has prepared himself patiently for clairvoyant vision when he enters into relation with souls who have passed through the gate of death. I will give you an actual example.

A seer found a man who had passed through the gate of death, leaving behind him his wife and children whom he dearly loved. This man and his family were kindly, good-hearted people but had no inclination whatever for spiritual knowledge; they had not outgrown the religious traditions through which certain souls today still feel connected with the spiritual world.

Some little time after he had passed through the gate of death, this man said to himself: ‘I have left behind on the earth my wife and children; they were the very sunshine of my life, but my spiritual sight cannot reach them. I have nothing but the remembrance of the time I spent together with them on the earth.’

An entirely different picture can be seen if a soul still on the earth forms strongly spiritual thoughts and ideas. In this case, when another soul, living between death and a new birth, looks down upon one he has left behind, he can follow his soul-life at the present time because it is inscribing itself into the Akasha-substance.

This is an indication of how anthroposophical teaching will bridge the gulf between the so-called living and the so-called dead; and already now we can see how human beings who have some understanding of the spiritual may be a blessing to the so-called dead by reading to them in thought the truths of Spiritual Science. If, either reading aloud or to ourselves, we follow in thought the ideas and concepts of Spiritual Science, at the same time feeling that one or more who have passed through death are there in front of us while we read, then this reading becomes very real to them, because such thoughts are inscribed into the Akasha-substance. Such reading may be of the greatest service, not only to those on the other side of death who while they were on earth concerned themselves with Spiritual Science, but also to those who during their earthly life would have nothing to do with it.

The question may be asked: As the dead are living in the spiritual world, do they need such reading of Spiritual Science by those on the earth? There are many who believe that it is only necessary to have passed through the gate of death in order to experience everything that can be attained only by dint of great effort on the earth, through Spiritual Science. Such people also believe that after death a man will be able to acquire all occult knowledge, because he will then be in the spiritual world. This, however, is not the case.

Just as here on the earth there live beings other than man, who perceive everything that man is able to perceive by means of his senses, whereas—as in the case of the animals—they are unable to form ideas or concepts of it, so it is with souls living in the super-sensible worlds. Although these souls see the beings and facts of the higher spiritual worlds, they can form no concepts or ideas of them if men here on the earth do not inscribe such concepts and ideas into the Akasha Chronicle.

This mission of human life upon earth is by no means without purpose; on the contrary it has very deep meaning and purpose. If human souls had never lived on the earth, the spiritual worlds would still be in existence but there would be no occult knowledge of these spiritual worlds. In the course of world-evolution the earth has reached a point at which spiritual knowledge can be developed by spiritual beings organised and constituted as men are on the earth. What has been inscribed into the Akasha-substance through Spiritual Science would never have been there if this science had not existed on the earth.

If a man tries to put the life of his soul on the earth to the test, he will discover in the first place that during our present age he has applied his faculties for the acquisition of knowledge to aims other than the attainment of spiritual knowledge. These faculties have been used for the acquisition of data of knowledge produced by means of the senses and through the intellect that is bound to the brain. Thus human knowledge is of two kinds: the one pertains only to experience acquired by means of the senses, which needs the organ of the intellect in order to transform it into knowledge; the other kind is Spiritual Science. The knowledge that belongs only to the sense-world forms the one stream; the other consists of what men inscribe through Spiritual Science into the Akasha Chronicle. For Spiritual Science develops ideas and concepts which are then inscribed forever in the Akasha Chronicle.

All science, all knowledge pertaining to experiences acquired through the senses, to technical things, to the commercial and industrial life of mankind, when inscribed in the Akasha-substance has this effect: the Akasha-substance discards it, thrusts it away, and the medley of ideas and concepts is obliterated. If these facts are perceived with the eyes of a seer, a conflict may be observed in the Akasha-substance between the impressions made by the occult knowledge acquired by man—impressions which are eternal—and those made by thoughts based upon the senses, which are only transitory. This conflict arises from the fact that when man first began to inhabit the earth as man (that is to say, in the ancient epoch of Lemuria), he was already then destined by sublime spiritual Beings to acquire Spiritual Science.

But through what we call the Luciferic influence, through the encroachment of Luciferic beings, man diverted his power of thought and other powers of soul which he would otherwise have used for the acquisition of occult knowledge only, to the study of things belonging exclusively to the physical world.

There are many who say that whereas ordinary science is accessible to everybody, spiritual or occult science can be made intelligible only to those who are able to see into the spiritual worlds.

This is a fundamental error, for in the depths of his own soul every man is capable, even before he becomes a seer, of recognising the truths of Spiritual Science. Admittedly, occult truths can be discovered only by the seer, but when they have been discovered, and expressed in the normal language of human reason, they can be intelligible to every human soul who has the will to remove the obstacles to such understanding that exist within himself.

As a result of the Luciferic impulses it became possible at a later period in the evolution of the earth for another Being whom we call Ahriman, to acquire influence over the souls of men. And only when the possibility of understanding Spiritual Science is held back through Ahrimanic influence in the soul does that understanding remain unattainable. If the Being we call Ahriman did not work in every human soul, if our souls were free from his influence, then an idea or thought belonging to Spiritual Science would need only to be spoken and the soul, through its subconscious relationship to this truth, would feel: This idea, this statement of Spiritual Science, is true. In every human soul there is a life which the everyday consciousness understands and can account for, and a subconscious soul-life which lies submerged as if in the depths of an ocean and only from time to time is brought to light. In the depths of the soul there lies, for example, the fear that is present in every human being—the fear of the spiritual. This fear is the outcome of Ahriman's influence and would not exist if Ahriman had not gained power over the souls of men. The reason why a man is usually unconscious of such fear is that it works in the deepest foundations of his soul and plays no part in what he can account for with his everyday consciousness.

Sometimes this fear knocks at the door of a man's ordinary consciousness without any knowledge on his part of what is inwardly disquieting him; and then he looks for something that will act as an opiate, that will deaden this feeling of fear. He finds this opiate in materialistic thoughts, theories and ideas. Materialistic theories are not devised on a logical basis, although it may be believed that this is the case; they are devised as the result of a dread of the spiritual, which is the consequence of Ahriman's influence upon the soul. Hence the preparatory condition for actual understanding of spiritual truths is much less a knowledge of physical science than an education of the soul in the virtue of moral courage, spiritual courage. Therefore we may say that occult science must be explored by the seer, but it can be understood by every human soul if this soul will only liberate within itself all the moral courage at its command and so frustrate the obstacles proceeding from Ahriman.

Should anyone wish to understand occult truths through the original moral forces of his soul he may make the following attempt: he may allow Spiritual Science to work upon his soul without saying to himself, ‘I agree with this’, or, ‘I do not agree with it’. He may assimilate the ideas and concepts given by the seer and allow them to work upon his soul; and if he has absorbed the occult knowledge with inner enthusiasm and not as the result of mere curiosity, he will have an experience that may be compared with a feeling of soaring without physical ground under his feet, with a feeling as if he were hovering in the air.

This attempt will have a completely different effect according to whether it is carried out by a person with religious, reverential inclinations towards spiritual life, or by someone accustomed to materialistic thinking. One who has no actual occult knowledge, but whose inclinations and feelings with regard to the spiritual world have nevertheless a religious quality may feel somewhat insecure as the result of this attempt but very much less so than a materialist who has no feeling of attraction to the spiritual world. The latter will experience a strong feeling of fear, of insecurity. The materialist may convince himself through this experience that the effect of occult ideas and concepts upon him is that they give rise to dread and terror. And then he may say to himself: ‘This proves to me, not only that I am full of fear of this realm, but that fear is one of my intrinsic tendencies.’

If, for example, Ernst Haeckel or Herbert Spencer had made this attempt they would have convinced themselves not only that occult knowledge is not contradictory or impossible of belief but that in the inmost depths of their souls they were full of fear; and they would soon have forgotten all doubt and disbelief in what they had been wont to consider fantastic spiritual teachings and would have admitted to themselves that to overcome this fear was of very great significance. Having made this confession they would soon have abandoned their opposition to the spiritual teachings. They would have said to themselves: ‘I must endeavour to strengthen moral courage within myself.’ Then, perhaps, they would have taken their own self-training in hand and if they had succeeded in overcoming this fear would have said: ‘Now that we have become stronger souls we no longer have any doubts as to the truth of spiritual science.’ This experience, arising from the strengthening of moral courage within the soul, is a victory over Ahriman, whose influence can be perceived in the science of Ernst Haeckel and the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. It is Ahriman who has inspired souls to take a materialistic direction. If only a small portion of mankind, as a result of genuine knowledge, will work in the way above indicated to strengthen their moral courage, these materialistic theories will gradually disappear from the world.

Occult knowledge is necessary for the whole process of evolution, as it is inscribed in the Akasha-substance. The importance of this can be evident from a brief outline of the evolution of humanity on the earth.

Man's evolution on earth advances in stages from one civilisation-epoch to another; during these successive epochs the souls of men dwell, as individualities, in bodies belonging to the several civilisations. All the souls here this evening were incarnated in bodies that belonged to earlier periods of culture. Each individual soul advances in accordance with the karma it has built up for itself.

As well as this evolution of individual souls which depends upon their karma, we must recognise the evolution of mankind as a whole which advances from epoch to epoch. A Grecian body, an Egyptian, Chaldean, ancient Persian or ancient Indian body was, in the finer parts of its structure, quite different from one of the present age.

Distinction must be made between the inner progress of the ‘I’ and the astral body from incarnation to incarnation, and the outer progress and change in the physical and etheric bodies from one race to another, from one nation to another, from one epoch to another. This progress of the physical and the etheric bodies from one epoch to another would not be perceptible to those who study anatomy and physiology, but it happens, nevertheless, and can be recognised through occult science. The human physical body will be quite different when, in the normal course of evolution, our souls appear again on the earth in future incarnations.

In the present epoch of human life a delicate organ is being developed in man. It is not perceptible to anatomists and physiologists, yet it exists as an anatomical structure. This rudimentary organ is situated in the brain, near the organ of speech.

The development of this organ in the convolutions of the brain is not the result of the karma of individual souls but of human evolution as a whole on the earth; and in the future all men will possess it, no matter what the development of the souls incarnating in the bodies may be, and irrespective of the karma connected with these souls.

In a future incarnation this organ will be possessed by human beings who at the present time may be opposed to Anthroposophy as well as by those who are now in sympathy with it. This organ will in future time be the physical means, the physical instrument, for the application of certain powers of the soul; just as, for example, Broca's organ in the third convolution of the brain is the organ of the human faculty of speech.

When this new organ has developed it may either be used rightly by mankind, or it may not. Those people will be able to use it rightly who are now preparing the possibility of having in their next incarnation a true remembrance of the present one. For this physical organ will be the physical means for remembering an earlier incarnation—which in the case of by far the greater majority of people is possible now only through higher development, through Initiation. But a faculty which in the present epoch it would be possible to acquire only through Initiation will later on become the common property of mankind. Our modern knowledge was formerly the special knowledge possessed by the Atlantean Initiates only; everyone can now possess it. In the same way, remembrance of former lives on earth is possible at present only for Initiates but in times to come it will be possible for every human soul.

The Initiate is able to attain certain knowledge without the use of a physical organ, but this knowledge can become the common property of mankind only when a physical organ through which it can be acquired is developed in mankind as a whole in the course of evolution.

The reincarnated souls must, however, be able to use this organ in the right way and only those who in the present incarnation have inscribed occult thoughts and ideas in the Akasha-substance will be capable of this.

One often hears it asked: What is the use of believing in former lives when mankind in general can remember nothing about them? But from what is known of life, how much more surprising it would be if men in general were even now able to remember their former lives. If we ask ourselves what is necessary to enable us to remember anything, we shall have to reply: We can remember only that about which we have previously thought.

Everyday life can teach us that this is so. Suppose someone on getting up in the morning cannot find his cuff-links, no matter where he looks. Why is he not able to find them? Because while he was putting them away he was not thinking of what he was doing. Let him, however, try every evening while putting his links away to think quite consciously: I am putting my cuff-links away in this place. Then he will never be uncertain but will go straight to the place where he has put them; the thought brings the process back into his memory.

When we are living in a future incarnation we shall only be able to remember those that are past if we can grasp the true nature of the soul which continues from one incarnation to another. A man who does not study occult science in the present life can acquire no knowledge of the constitution and nature of the soul, and if he has no such knowledge, how should he, when he is again incarnated, remember that to which he never gave a thought in the earlier incarnation?

Through the study of Spiritual Science, which includes, among other things, the study of the intrinsic nature of the soul, we prepare in ourselves that which will enable us in a future incarnation to remember what happened in the present one. There are, however, many people nowadays who are not willing to devote themselves to the study of this knowledge. These human beings will be reborn, perhaps in their next incarnation, with the above-mentioned organ for the remembrance of former lives physically developed; but they have not prepared themselves in such a way as to be able to remember the past.

What, then, is the significance of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy in the life of the present day, in addition to all that has been said? Through Anthroposophy we become able to use in the right way the organ that will be developed in human beings of the future, the organ for the remembering of former lives on earth. In our present incarnation we must inscribe in the Akasha-substance the knowledge we acquire in order that in our next incarnation we may be able to use this organ—which is developing in man whether he wishes it or not. In the future there will be men who are able to use this organ for remembering past lives and others who are not able. Certain illnesses will appear in the latter, owing to the presence in their physical bodies of an organ which they are unable to use. To have an organ and be unable to use it gives rise to nervous diseases in a very definite form, and those that will be caused in cases of this kind will be far worse than any yet known to man.

When we study the connection of facts in this way we begin to get an idea of the mission and purpose of Anthroposophy and of the importance of understanding life and mankind through this knowledge. But lest the impression made upon you by what has been said should lead to any misunderstanding, I will mention yet another fact which may mitigate anything that was painful in that impression. Although a genuine occultist realises that Anthroposophy must enter into the spiritual life of our present time in order that the man of the future may be able to use the organ for remembering past lives and remain physically in good health, nevertheless it cannot be said categorically that a man who in this epoch is not ready to accept Anthroposophy will suffer in his following incarnations in the sense referred to above. For a long time to come it will still be possible for a human being, even if he has neglected to use this organ in the present life, to put this right in the next, for there will be several more opportunities for him to regain health and acquire anthroposophical knowledge. The time will come, however, when this possibility will cease.

For this reason, even if we have not yet reached the crucial moment, we are nevertheless living in the epoch when Anthroposophy must be membered into the spiritual life of mankind. Anthroposophy is an essential development in the general progress of mankind and does not stem from the personal opinions of individuals.

And so especially in our own time, the possibility will be given for the subjective development of the human soul, leading to personal vision of the spiritual worlds, to genuine occult development. It may be said that every individual who will apply the original forces within his soul, undisturbed by Ahrimanic influences, can understand everything that is revealed from the spiritual worlds; hence in a certain sense it is possible for every human being to unfold consciousness of the spiritual worlds by undergoing occult development. At the present time, three particular powers of the soul may well be developed in order to establish an occult link with the super-sensible worlds.

The first of these powers is that of thinking. We live in relation with the world around us by forming thoughts about our surroundings. In ordinary, everyday life a man thinks thoughts which are caused through impressions made on the senses, or through the intellect that is bound up with the brain. In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment it is said that through meditation, concentration and contemplation, through strengthening his life of soul, a man can make this power of thinking independent of external life. I want to call your attention here to how the power of thinking within the soul, which otherwise is developed only through thought about the external world, can be made essentially free and independent of everything belonging to the body. That is to say, through such development it becomes possible for the soul to think, to form thoughts within itself, without using the brain as an instrument. This is easy to understand if we consider the chief characteristic of ordinary, everyday thinking which is dependent upon the impressions conveyed through the senses.

The chief characteristic of ordinary thinking is that each single act of thinking injures the nervous system, and above all, the brain; it destroys something in the brain. Every thought means that a minute process of destruction takes place in the cells of the brain. For this reason sleep is necessary for us, in order that this process of destruction may be made good; during sleep we restore what during the day was destroyed in our nervous system by thinking. What we are consciously aware of in an ordinary thought is in reality the process of destruction that is taking place in our nervous system.

We now endeavour to practise meditation by devoting ourselves to contemplation, for instance, of the saying: Wisdom lives in the Light. This idea cannot originate from sense-impressions because according to the external senses it is not so.

In this example, by means of meditation we hold the thought back so far that it does not connect itself with the brain. If in this way we unfold an inner activity of thinking that is not connected with the brain, through the effects of such meditation upon the soul we shall feel that we are on the right path. As in meditative thinking no process of destruction is evoked in our nervous system, this kind of thinking never causes sleepiness, however long it may be continued, as ordinary thinking may easily do.

It is true that the opposite often occurs when someone is meditating, for people often complain that when they devote themselves to meditation they at once fall asleep. But that is because the meditation is not yet as it should be. It is quite natural that in meditation we should, to begin with, use the kind of thinking to which we have always been accustomed; it is only gradually that we can accustom ourselves to give up thinking about external things. When this point is reached meditative thinking will no longer make us sleepy, and we shall then know that we are on the right path.

When the inner power of thinking can thus be developed without using the thinking faculty of the body, then and only then shall we acquire knowledge of the inner life and recognise our real self, our higher ‘I’.

The path to true knowledge of the human self is to be found in the kind of meditation just described, which leads to the liberation of inner thought-power. Only through such knowledge do we realise that this human self is not confined within the limits of the physical body; on the contrary, we come to recognise that this self is connected with the phenomena of the world around us. Whereas in ordinary life we see the sun here, the moon there, the mountains, hills, plants and animals, we now feel ourselves united with everything we see or hear; we are a part of it all, and for us there is now only one external world—our own body. In ordinary life we are here and the external world is around us, but after the development of the independent power of thinking, we are outside our body, one with all that we otherwise see; our body in which we live is now outside us; we look back upon it as the only world upon which we can now gaze.

In this way, by liberating the power of thinking, we can actually emerge from the physical body and contemplate it as something external. Even more can be done: for example, we can give a positive answer to the question: Why do we wake up every morning? During sleep our physical body lies in the bed and we are actually outside it, just as is the case during meditative thinking. On waking we return to our physical body, being drawn back to it by countless forces, as by a magnet. A man usually knows nothing of this. But if through meditation he has made himself free, he is consciously drawn back by the same force which, on waking from sleep, draws his soul back into his physical body without consciousness on his part.

We also learn through meditation how the human being comes down from the higher worlds in which he lived between death and a new birth, and how he unites with the forces and substances provided by parents, grandparents and so forth. In short, we learn to know the forces that draw human beings back from their life between death and a new birth to new incarnations.

As a fruit of such meditation one may look back over a great part of the life spent in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, before conception took place. But through this kind of meditation one can, as a rule, look back only to a certain point that lies before the present incarnation; it would not be possible to look further back into earlier incarnations themselves. To do this at the present time, as the organ referred to above has not yet developed in the human brain, another kind of meditation is necessary. This other kind can become effective only if feeling is brought into the meditation. All meditation as now described may also be permeated with feeling.

We will now consider the subject-matter which, in the process of meditation itself, must be permeated by feeling. If, for instance, we take: ‘Wisdom radiates in the Light’, and we feel inspired through the radiation of wisdom, if we feel uplifted, if we feel inwardly aglow, if we can live in and meditate upon the content of these words with inner zeal, then we have in our souls something more than meditation in thoughts. The power of feeling we then activate in the soul is the power we otherwise use in speech. Speech comes into being when thoughts are permeated with inner feeling. This is the origin of speech, and Broca's organ in the brain comes into existence in this way: the thoughts of the inner life that are permeated with feeling become active in the brain, and build the organ that is the physical instrument of speech.

When our meditation is really permeated by such feelings we hold back in our souls the force that in everyday life we employ in speaking. Speech may be said to be the embodiment of the inner soul-force which gives expression to these thoughts If now, instead of allowing the soul-force to be applied in speaking, we develop meditation from these thoughts that are permeated with feeling, if we continue this meditation to further and further stages, we gradually gain the power—now actually without the physical organ but through Initiation—to look back into earlier lives on earth and also to investigate the period between earthly lives, the period which always lies between death and a new birth.

Through cultivating the withholding of speech within the soul or, as the occultist says, withholding the ‘word’ within the soul, we can eventually look back to the primeval beginning of our earth, back to what the Bible calls the creative act of the Elohim. We can look back to the time when repeated earth-lives actually began for human beings. For the occult development we attain through withholding the word, or withholding speech, enables us to look into the successive epochs, in so far as these are connected with our earth, with the spiritual life of our planet. We become able to behold the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, in so far as they are connected with the spiritual life of the earth.

But these two clairvoyant faculties which are developed in meditation through thoughts and through thoughts permeated with feeling, cannot lead us to experiences lying before the epoch of the present earth, experiences connected with earlier planetary incarnations of our earth. This requires the development of the third meditative power, of which we will now speak briefly.

We can further permeate the content of our meditation with impulses of will in such a way that if we meditate, for instance, on ‘The Wisdom of the World radiates in the Light’, we may now really feel the impulse of our will united with that activity; we can feel our own being united with the radiating power of the light, and let this light shine and vibrate through the world. We must feel the impulse of our will to be united with this meditation.

When our meditation is filled with impulses of the will, we are holding back a force which otherwise would pass into the pulsation of the blood. It is easy to realise that the inner life of the ‘I’ can pass over into the pulsation of the blood when we remember that we grow pale when we are afraid and blush when we are ashamed; these are the signs that the soul-force is passing over into the pulsing of the blood. If the same force which influences the blood is activated in such a way that it does not descend into the physical but remains in the soul only, this is the beginning of the third form of meditation which we can influence through impulses of will.

He who achieves these three forms of occult development feels, when he liberates the power of thought, as though he had an organ at the root of the nose—these organs are described as ‘lotus-flowers’ by means of which he can become aware of his ‘I’ or Self that extends far into space.

A man who by meditation has cultivated thoughts permeated with feeling becomes gradually conscious, through this developed force which would otherwise have become speech, of the so-called sixteen-petalled lotus-flower in the region of the larynx. By means of this lotus-flower he can comprehend what is connected with temporal things, from the beginning of the earth's existence until its end. By means of this organ he also learns to recognise the occult significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, of which we shall speak in the next lecture.

Through the soul-force which in normal everyday life would extend to the blood and its pulsation but is held back, an organ develops in the region of the heart. By means of this organ the nature of the earlier incarnations of the earth—known in occultism as the Saturn-, Sun- and Moon-evolutions—may be understood. Reference is made to this organ in my book Occult Science—an Outline (pp. 276–7).

As you will now realise, occult development is achieved by means of faculties and possibilities that are actually present in the life of the human soul.

The first occult power that has been mentioned stems from a higher development of the power of thinking, the power that is otherwise applied only for thoughts connected with the external world.

The second power is only a higher development of the force which in everyday life is applied by every human being through the body, in speech, in the development of the organ for the word.

The third power is a higher cultivation of the force that exists in the human soul to cause the blood to pulsate faster or slower, to direct a greater or smaller amount of blood to one or another organ of the body; to direct it more to the centre when we grow pale, more to the surface when we blush, to direct it more or less strongly to the brain, and so on.

When a man cultivates these forces that are present within him, but in ordinary life are used for his outer, bodily existence only, occult development begins. The findings of occult investigation can be understood today by every human being who is willing to clear away obstacles to comprehension. What can be learnt as the result of occult development is occult science, and in the present cycle of man's existence occult science must flow into the human soul in order that it may learn to know its own being—which is independent of the body. The forms of all the substances in the external world, such as earth, water, air, etc., pass away; the forms of the Akasha-substance endure. Through its inner life, our soul must feel itself connected with the Akasha-substance, and in future time it will have the wish to remember what it is experiencing in the present epoch. The possibility of acquiring ideas and concepts that can lead to this remembrance results from the study of occult science, which means that the knowledge gained through occult development must be spread abroad and accepted.

I have therefore tried in this first lecture to bring home to you that in addition to the impulses underlying the development of humanity, the spreading of anthroposophical occult knowledge and the pointing of the way to occult development are vitally necessary. It is not by means of words based upon ordinary human considerations that I have tried to elucidate the mission of Spiritual Science, but through the study of facts which are the findings of occult research. Whoever will allow these facts to work upon his soul will realise that anyone who understands their full significance cannot possibly deny the need to spread the knowledge of Spiritual Science at the present time. There is certainly no need to become fanatical in order to recognise the necessity of anthroposophical development; what is needed is to understand the facts that lie at the foundation of man's occult life. Truth to tell, it can only be ignorance of these facts that still keeps mankind away from anthroposophical life.

Among the spiritual movements of our time, Anthroposophy as it is here understood will be the least fanatical, and the one that proceeds most decisively from objective considerations. It is necessary to affirm repeatedly that all kindred theories and teachings must finally unite in anthroposophical circles in deeply-rooted, living feeling.

There is an objective spiritual life, the reflection of which in the world of maya is the life by which we are surrounded. Occult development is a step from semblance towards reality. And because genuine understanding of these facts can lead to nothing else than the impulse to take the necessary steps, the future destiny of Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will be secure, because more and more souls will have the wish to recognise the objective truth regarding the World-Spirit.

The anthroposophical fire that can be kindled in us is only an outcome of the Cosmic Fire which streams forth spiritually from the beginning to the end of existence.

It is this that I wanted to say to you in this first lecture concerning the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement in the spiritual life of the present day.

The decipherment of the Akasha Chronicle and the difficulties and the dangers attendant upon it are described by Dr. Steiner in Chapter IV of Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (Rudolf Steiner Press, New Edition 1966).