The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It has been several decades since a certain scientific method of comparing different religions was developed. Those who devote themselves to this comparison are struck by how much agreement, even similarity, there is between the different religions. The most diverse evidence is cited to show that a certain core of belief underlies them all, from the Indian to the Germanic, the Near Eastern to the Greek, and that it can even be found in the uncivilized peoples of Africa and North America. The childlike predispositions of the various peoples have worked in the same way and have wanted to give enlightenment about the soul, the world, and God in the same way; for everywhere man is subject to the same powerlessness in the face of impending fate. The so-called Enlightenment assumes that people have attributed divine beings and forces to natural phenomena; it starts from the point of view that all religious beliefs are childish fantasies and that, finally, nations have now entered the age of reason, when people finally know how to understand these things.

But a thorough investigation teaches us otherwise. By comparing the Indian and Germanic intellectual spheres, we realize that before a thorough research, that doctrine of fantasy figures does not hold up. The deeper one penetrates, the more that hypothesis of enlightenment collapses, and two things prove that it is nothing: Firstly, we discover a deep meaning in the childlike ideas of recognized wild peoples. The more impartially we look at them, the deeper such folk religions appear to us; images and animals are the content of ideas that have an infinitely deep meaning.

Secondly, the people do not create poetry in the way that the gentlemen at the green table of scholarship imagine it. The people do not personify natural phenomena. Thus, the saga of Indra, which tells of how he set out with seven priestly sages to reclaim a number of cows that had escaped him to culture, was interpreted as if the god Indra personified the dawn and the seven cows personified darkness. Likewise, Buddha was seen as the sun god and it was said that his life was a personification of the sun – in short, the people personify natural phenomena.

Such a poetic folk poetry does not exist. Only those who are strangers to the people can arrive at such a view. Those who penetrate deeper will become more and more familiar with what spiritual research teaches in the Secret Doctrine.

The childlike religious ideas proceed from pure higher spiritual ideas and from the fact that a common, similar view underlies the various myths. This teaching is called the secret teaching of humanity. It has always been supported by the great spiritual leaders of humanity. Religions come not from the poetic folk poetry, but from the great initiates.

The original wisdom is the same, only it is structured according to the abilities and talents of the different peoples; thus we find a different form for the Greek peninsula, another for American, Indian, Germanic peoples. The different images are adapted to the different ways of life and talents of the individuals.

The profound spiritual basis reveals to us that a secret primordial revelation underlies all these religions. To many, this truth seems incredible, but only because of unfamiliarity with the facts, which appear to be imperfect because the great leaders can only give them such an expression as will be understood.

The very general secret doctrine of the fundamental primal generation is interesting in the history of the development of nations.

Although it is a sin against the holy spirit of modern monism to regard man as a two-part entity, and one risks being called a dualist, despite the unified origin , which of course underlies what we call “human”, the two-part nature of his being can be justifiably demonstrated, just as the existence of water can be demonstrated from hydrogen and oxygen. The two substances are present in it despite the unity of the whole. In the same way, it can be shown that the higher and lower selves of the human being have a common source. How a person's nature expresses itself, how he lives, strives and works, is revealed in a duality, just as water is revealed in the duality of hydrogen and oxygen. We therefore distinguish:

Firstly, the lower nature, which is more physical, more of the lower nature of matter.

Secondly, the higher nature, which is more spiritual, more of the higher nature of the spirit.

Development consists in ennobling the lower nature. No one has presented this better than Schiller in his “Aesthetic Letters,” where he says: Man is subject to the necessities of nature on the one hand, he is their slave as long as he clings to them, but he is also a slave to ironclad necessity of reason. Only he awakens to freedom who ennobles the lower nature through the higher nature. It is not the man who denies his lower nature who stands high, but he who ennobles it so that he can abandon himself to it.

The Secret Doctrine teaches that man overcomes his sensual nature through the spiritual and transforms his being in such a way that he receives a new impression of spirituality. The mystics often say: Man is a small world, and what surrounds him is the great world. He contains in miniature everything that the great world has around him. Schiller writes to Goethe in the first letter:

They take all of nature together to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, they seek the explanation for the individual. Goethe wanted man to be recognized as a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm, the great world. Paracelsus expressed it in the beautiful image: When we observe the individual phenomena of nature outside, they appear like letters, man as the word composed of them. Everything that is scattered outside in the great is in the small man.

In the sense of the secret teaching, the struggle that is fought within man and finally receives his purification is an image of the great struggle in nature outside. Just as in man the lower nature of the physical-visible is opposed to the spiritual nature of the invisible, so the Secret Doctrine opposes the nature of the visible universe - stones, plants, animals - as the second, the forces of nature, which are hidden in the individual things.

The divine part of man also corresponds to a divine part here. The Secret Doctrine also distinguishes here between the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual. The man before you seems to be what is outwardly expressed in his plastic form, but through deeper causes, in the outburst of his passions, the forces of his lower nature are revealed. Likewise, nature, like man in his body, finds physical expression in physical forms, in which forces are hidden just as they are in the lower nature of man. The lightning flashes in the cloud. The Secret Doctrine not only shows this comparison as fundamental, but also that the divine entities in nature are related to what rules and lives in man as his spirit. The same thing that ennobles the lower nature of man has overcome the lower nature in nature. Minerals, plants and animals are the plastic expression of the nature of God in descending order, while the invisible spirits in nature signify, for the Secret Doctrine, the ascent into the higher nature. They are more advanced entities than man. Animals, plants and minerals are further advanced on the descending path.

A picture of this development is given by coal. It is stone, a mineral. Millions of years ago it was part of living beings, plants. Great forests have perished and become these stone masses. What was once a living being has become a fossil. This is admitted by science.

In the sea basin, limestone formations are piled up in many different ways, created by animals that secreted lime shells. Here we find vast masses of limestone, prepared by living things. The dead is nothing other than a product of life.

The question arises: how does the living emerge from the dead?

In truth, not only does the living emerge from the dead, but all that is dead emerges from the living. Even rock crystal is a differentiation from the primal living.

If we follow the line of descent downwards from animals to fish, we finally find cartilaginous fish that have not yet developed any bones. In the same way, the physical human being has ancestors that had cartilage instead of bone, who are not yet at the stage where the petrification process has begun. Just as human bone turns to stone, so granite masses have also emerged from what was originally soft living matter.

Where does everything come from? From an original living organization, and this from original spirituality. — We find the overcoming of the lower by the higher everywhere, even outside. The lower has detached itself by the higher detaching itself.

But then there must be a great unity: as between the spiritual and the physical in man, so also a great unity between the great spirituality and the lower nature outside.

This unity is expressed by the various creeds. Just as it is clear that those who have today thrown off the lower nature were once struggling and striving beings, so the initiates are simply more advanced than their brothers; they have overcome the struggle and therefore know more.

At the bottom of all creeds we find the premise of the struggle of the higher nature against the lower and the conviction that there are initiates who are the leaders of humanity. — How has the Secret Doctrine been expressed among the Germanic peoples? There too we find the interpretation that the people have been poetizing, symbolizing the forces of nature.

We find a basis for the theosophical world view in a work by Ludwig Laistner: “Riddles of the Sphinx” on myth research. As is so often the case, the theosophist can learn the most from the non-theosophist, so we may start from his basic principles here. Let us start from a simple folk tale, the legend of the Midday Woman. She lives in the most diverse areas and has the following content: If you go to the field early in the morning to work and fail to go home at the appropriate hour, during the lunch break between twelve and one o'clock, the midday woman appears and asks him questions that are difficult to answer, about weaving, flax cultivation and the like, related to his work. During the whole of the lunch hour, questions are asked of him, all of which he must answer. If he misses even one, she comes with the sickle and cuts his throat. In some areas, it is said that you can get rid of her by reciting the Lord's Prayer, but it is not that simple, it has to be recited backwards, not from the beginning, but from the end. There is another spinning room saying related to this legend: “You ask like the midday woman.” Laistner interprets it as follows: This legend has its origin in the state that is brought about in a person when he stays outside in the field and falls asleep. Then the environment has such an effect that the dream always takes on this form in a similar way. Laistner traces all these legends back to the riddle of the Sphinx. It is the same torment of questioning that is found in this. In between lies a whole world of myths and legends. It has nothing to do with folk poetry, but can be explained by what the dream does to the sleeper. The dream is the main symbol. You catch a frog in your dream, wake up and find the corner of the bedspread in your hand. Legends and myths simply have their origin in the dream fantasy. From there, Laistner would have had only one step to the theosophical view, according to which there is not only the ordinary everyday state of consciousness, but another state of consciousness that, like the dream images, gives the outer things a different meaning: the tip of the bedspread is transformed into the image of a frog. The dream, a means of occult development, gives symbols of a higher spiritual world. Then, in contrast to this ordinary dream state, a higher state of consciousness arises in which the human being becomes aware of sensory perceptions. What shines into the dawning consciousness from the higher state of consciousness is the dream. This state is also present in a dull form in mediums in a trance: daytime consciousness is extinguished and a dusky consciousness has set in.

Everything in the world has developed, including man's consciousness today. Just as his organs have changed, so has he changed in terms of consciousness. He used to have no daytime consciousness, but a dim clairvoyant consciousness. Just as the body has organs whose significance fades, so the state that the person who misses the lunch break falls into is an echo of the old clairvoyant consciousness. It works in such a way that the untrained person sees everything the wrong way round; things appear as if in a mirror image. So, for example, you have to read 365 563. In this higher spiritual world, the astral world, man sees his desire. Everything in this plan attacks him in a retrograde direction, in the opposite order. The people therefore say quite correctly: If you want to escape the midday woman, you have to say the Lord's Prayer backwards, namely do something that does not correspond to the laws of this world.

These legends and myths deal with a different state of consciousness. It is only in this light that they can be explained to our medieval ancestors. Our ancestors had a clairvoyant consciousness, and the legends are echoes of it. This is the secret of the Germanic myths in particular. If you look behind the scenes of nature, you will see how the myths are expressed.

The dragon fight of the Siegfried saga is nothing other than the fight of higher wisdom against lower wisdom. The ancient Germans were a nation of warriors, their god was a warrior god, and their fight was a fight against dragons.

The astral picture, perceived clairvoyantly, can also be found in the Baldur saga: the primal struggle of the older brothers, the gods, against the lower ones, which has its echo in the forces of nature. The people see this and express it clairvoyantly as the real overcoming of Baldur by the blind Hödur.

It is said that Baldur represents the sun god, who was overcome by the winter god. But the saga means the struggle between beings of light and beings of darkness. The old Teuton remembers the primeval times, when he saw the darkness illuminated by spiritual light, when he saw the darkness illuminated by astral light - Hödur means astral blindness. — The clairvoyant consciousness has experienced the saga of Baldur. The Secret Doctrine, which tells us that there were initiates, also presents Wotan as an initiate. He was not a divine being, but a man who had raised himself up. The story that he hung on the gallows for nine days, wriggled through gorges and crevices like a snake to Gunnlöd, in order to receive the drink of initiation from the Valkyrie's cup, is consistent with the ancient cross initiation, with Egyptian mysticism. For three days and nights, Wotan is with Gunnlöd as a snake, which refers to the initiates. The higher soul, through which the ascent to higher levels is accomplished, is designated by the feminine.

The saga of Siegfried is also a picture of initiation. Siegfried acquires invulnerability, that is, he becomes insensitive to physical impressions, and thus becomes a companion of the Valkyrie. The initiates become invisible through the magic hood, that is, invisible as initiates, otherwise they remain visible (physically).

What then is initiation? Every nation has developed its secret teaching in a way that corresponds to its customs and traditions. The Germans were warriors, and a hero was called one who had fallen on the battlefield; he began the journey to Valhalla. The Valkyrie met him, that is, his own higher soul meets him when he passes through the gates of death.

“He who does not die before dying, when he dies, perishes.” That is, he who does not learn about that world beforehand, dies with death. Initiation is the forefeeling of what awaits the soul when it passes through the gates of death. The blessed warrior is united with the Valkyrie when he enters Valhalla: Siegfried with Brünhild. The leaders of the people clothed the initiation in this form. Even in this part of the saga, the Secret Doctrine finds expression in language that the people can understand.

The divine world, which has suppressed its nature, we find again in the giants.

The Secret Doctrine also tells how the migration of the peoples took place. Between Europe and America lay the Atlantic continent. Even the “Kosmos,” a magazine that swims in the Haeckelian direction, presents this as a hypothesis in the tenth issue. It only recognizes the existence of plants and animals, but that does not prevent the presence of humans, because science always lags behind.

From then on, people turned eastwards. Those who moved as far as Central and Eastern Asia form the basis of ancient Indian Asia, those who remained behind form the basis of the Celts and Germans. The Celts have progressed furthest in the transformation from the old dull clairvoyant consciousness to the present sensual consciousness. The Germans remained with the astral consciousness of the Atlanteans long after the Asians had developed to the day consciousness.

In the epoch before the Vedas, the teaching arose that was based more on ordinary day-consciousness. But man can never lose the connection with the spiritual, and so the longing arose there to find the way to the old clairvoyance by artificial means. That artificial clairvoyance arose there, which the wise strove for through inner development - yoga. Thus in India we have artificial clairvoyance with complete consciousness during the day, while among the Teutons the old consciousness of clairvoyance is still preserved. Among the Teutons, myths and legends form a dim expression of the secret doctrine as compared with that obtained by the initiates of modern times through artificial clairvoyance. For the people who no longer have clairvoyance, the divine worlds must be depicted. That is where the idol images come from, artificially prepared replicas by man. Among the ancient Germans, the old myths still lived in the people, in the old, retained symbolism, while in ancient India, the secret doctrine is artificially expressed by those who aspire to it. What we obtain from India is therefore more of an intellectual form, but the same secret doctrine that is expressed much more directly in the old Germanic myths.

The idols of the Indians and the theosophical doctrine: The renewal of the more theosophical doctrine of artificial clairvoyance in India goes completely parallel with what still lives in the old legends in Germania. Therefore, we do not need any Indian terminology in Europe, we only need to understand and revive what is original in Europe. We can get to the bottom of a great European secret doctrine and will get there.

The course of the secret teaching is determined by something else. The course of the future is prophetically expressed in the old Germanic secret teaching. The reference to Christianity is expressed in a powerful way. The research into legends, which is connected with the secret teaching, finds a coherent truth in the legend and in Christianity. Krimhild betrays her husband by attaching the cross. What does this deep trait indicate? It indicates the prophetic reference to the cross of Christ. Siegfried, the initiate, is invulnerable all over his body; only one spot is not invulnerable for the great initiate, the spot where Christ bears the cross. With the spread of Christianity, this spot has also become invulnerable.

In India we have a secret teaching that expresses itself rationally and symbolically, in Europe the old Germanic myth remained in the astral expression until Jesus Christ. Through Christianity, the myth has been replaced.

The task of Theosophy is to work in the sense of this spiritual development of humanity, to establish the deep connection between the ancient Germans and modern times. We cannot simply propagate the culture of the Orient; we must take into account the Germanic and Christian original culture. We must not seek the basis of the secret doctrine in Sanskrit dogmas, but we must seek the core of truth in those forms of religion that are appropriate to the European folk substance, seek what exists as an emanation of the secret doctrine in the Germanic world of legends.

That was the artist's intention when he gave a new culture by transforming the Germanic saga, that was Richard Wagner's intention when he reworked the old German sagas.

Theosophy also seeks the traces of the ancient secret teachings that live at the heart of the Germanic saga. Those who follow these traces will gradually find their way into Theosophy. However, we must not think in the same way as those who have “come so gloriously far”. For every nation has done its part in its own way. And in this sense, we in the Brotherhood must place unity and the harmony of the basic teaching above the differences in our views and presentations. If we seek the truth in every opinion and place brotherly love above the selfishness of our opinions, then we are acting in the true sense of the theosophical view of life.

Report in the “Münchner Neueste Nachrichten”, April 1906

Theosophical lectures. The theosophical speaker Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave two well-received lectures in the Prinzensaal of Café Luitpold on “Germanic and Indian Secret Doctrine” and on “Inner Development”. In the first lecture, the speaker tried to argue that the origin of legends and myths cannot be traced back to the personification of natural phenomena by the poetic fantasy of the people, as Ludwig Laistner had already suggested in “Riddle of the Sphinx” another explanation for the origin of certain myths, but that the strangely profound meaning of myths and legends point to regarding them as the symbolic expression of primal truths, which are intuitively recognized by primitive peoples themselves in images and symbols, and are also presented by the great teachers of humanity, who are initiated into the “primal secret teachings,” in images adapted to the understanding and character of the peoples of Asia, America, Africa and Europe. Thus, for example, we find the struggle of the higher nature with the lower, the spiritual battle of development, the primal fight, which takes place in the macrocosm as well as in the microcosm, and which the gods, that is, the beings who were the first to fight for spiritual development, fought in primeval times, is illustrated in the myths of the fight of the gods and heroes with the dragon. In the cycle of Teutonic myths we also find the fight against the dragon and the fight against the giants, the powers of the lower nature. For the warlike Germanic peoples, who regarded bravery as the highest virtue, the doctrine of the higher and lower self also found expression in the fact that the warrior who fell on the battlefield, elevated by his heroic death, moves up to Valhalla to meet his own higher soul, the Valkyrie, who comes to meet him. The speaker then expressed the view that the Theosophical Society in Europe had the primary task of working for an understanding of the great truths and beauties of the Germanic world of legends, as well as for a deeper understanding of the symbols of Christianity, since the forms of the Orient cannot be transferred to Europe without further ado. It must shine into the depths of the beautiful and true of the Germanic world of legends, which the great master Wagner artistically resurrected, and utilize it for her spiritualized conception of the world and life, as well as the primal truth of the Christianity brought to the Germanic world, which was destined to replace the old myths.

In the second lecture, the speaker dealt, as already noted, with the topic of “inner development”. According to the theosophical view, in order to attain knowledge of the higher divine self, it is necessary for a person to first learn to regard all things as an expression of the eternal primal being living in them, and to affirm the good in everything, unbiassed by preconceived judgments, and to strive for the good as an ideal. In order to find the spiritual, eternal in one's own being, the striving person must therefore practice the necessary isolation to achieve stillness and silence of soul, the lonely life in one's own soul, without the outside world, instead of losing and dispersing oneself in the outside world. Furthermore, one must practice acting on one's own initiative instead of always being driven from the outside, in one's own thinking while controlling the thoughts that impose themselves and are suggested by the outside world, in composure, indifference to joy and sorrow, pleasure and displeasure, in the courage to be independent, in the courage to relying strictly on oneself, leaning on nothing, alone in life, then in the concentration of thought (meditation) by abstracting from sensory impressions, for which, as is well known, the regulation of breathing is also considered beneficial in the practice of yoga in India. In this way, mystics gradually seek to create the freedom of mental calm, the “calm of the soul”, which should lead the soul completely into itself, allowing a new inner world to arise in freedom of thought.

The study of parables and their interpretation is all too easily drawn into the current materialistic worldview, for materialism, even if it is not so strongly felt and admitted by individuals, has taken hold of our entire age, of the whole way of thinking. Not only natural science, but philosophy and even theology have been affected to some extent. One kind of materialism can be easily cured, so to speak, because it is only theoretical and can easily be shown to be absurd. It is much more difficult with the materialistic way of thinking, which, for example, sees in Jesus nothing more than a selfless, pure human being and then has drawn this figure so completely down into the materialistic.

There were times when the parables could not be interpreted highly enough; in the first centuries, the interpreters of the Gospels did everything they could to identify the Christ in Jesus; today, on the other hand, we see that newer theologians have no inclination to see in Jesus anything other than an idealized person who, while being somewhat higher than Goethe or Schiller, may in no case, in their judgment, rise so significantly above humanity. For these modern theologians, Jesus is simply the simple man from Nazareth, and such a belittling of Jesus' personality is much worse materialism than the theoretical kind.

Things like the parables must not be reduced to the generally human, otherwise only pure materialism will be spread in the field of religious thinking. Salvation can only come from the fact that these documents do not contain mere facts, but universal truths. One must delve deeply into these truths in order to recognize the right intentions from them, and not speculate about them.

How, for example, has the Lord's Prayer been viewed in the esoteric, which I have already been able to talk to you about! Only those who go back to the occult schools can find the right thing.

So let us also draw from these right sources with regard to today's parable: It reads:

He spoke But he spoke also to his disciples, saying, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do, for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I will know what I may do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thine own bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to the other, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thine own bill, and write forty. And the lord commended the unrighteous steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in the least is unrighteous also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you are not faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. When the Pharisees heard all this they were mocking him. And he said unto them, “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.” The law and the prophets were preached until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the law. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and he who marries a widow commits adultery. (Luke 16:1-18)

To understand this parable, it is first necessary to see where it is found; it is found in the Gospel of Luke. The apparent diversity of the four Gospels is due to the fact that their authors had not gone through the same mystery school. For example, the Gospel of John is based on the Greek mystery schools. Luke, on the other hand, drew from the deep mysteries of the therapists and Essenes, and that is why the Gospel of Luke has a completely different tone of explanation than that of John, for example. In this sense, everything cannot be lumped together.

The Gospel of Luke, as I said, was born out of the attitude of the therapists and Essenes, which consisted in pointing out to people in all their striving to the powers of their own soul. The keynote of this Gospel will only be grasped in the right way if one takes into account the saying of these Essenes: You shall bring to maturity the thoughts within you that take care of the poor, the afflicted, the laden. Luke's gospel is a gospel of poverty and is thus most intimately connected with the attitudes of the therapists and Essenes.

This noble brotherhood was the first to emphasize the equality of all people before God. They allowed their bodies only the most necessary nourishment, and of the greatest purity of morals. They were doctors of body and soul to their fellow human beings; no one was allowed to heal for the sake of reward. Their beneficial work extended to the huts of the poor as well as to the palaces of the rich. Those who are not familiar with the circumstances of this time do not realize what an eminent progress was associated with the appearance of this order, and only then do we understand why Luke's gospel has this particular tone. The confrontation between the rich and those who owe him money comes to the fore at first; it is not at all a matter of accusing the rich man in some way, but of putting the debtors, the poor, in the right light. Thus, it is not a good idea to want to recognize God, the infinitely rich, in the rich man; for it is simply said of the man that he is a rich man. But is his way of thinking also such that he wants to exploit people, or is it different, and would it not be possible that the steward's actions were based solely on the good intention of reducing the debts of the poor?

The steward had brought the economy into disarray; now he has to give account and fears that he will be dismissed and therefore he is trying to provide for himself. He cannot work, does not want to beg, but he wants to have a place to stay and he is now trying to find one with those whom he had wronged. It is his own fault that they were charged too much, so he says to the first one: You no longer owe me 100 tons of oil, but 50, and to the other: You no longer owe me 100 bushels of wheat, but 80, and with that the debtors are satisfied, he has eased the heavy burden on them as much as possible. So what did he do? He used his master's wealth to do justice to the poor, thereby doing them a favor.

That's what matters. Now let us remember that the rich man says to his steward, “You have acted wisely”; he does not want to be an exploiter, but thinks to himself, Now I like you.

Such an attitude was new to the scribes of the time; never before had anyone been induced to do good in this way. It achieved something that had previously been considered inadmissible, even impossible. The debtors, the poor, would have found no way out of their dire situation; here they are referred to as the children of light, that is, as those who accept the teaching of wisdom, in contrast to the children of the world. These, the Pharisees, are stingy and only act according to the rigid letter of the law; they do not want to help the poor, but the steward was always the one who did something for the poor.

And now we can also apply the parable to a higher truth and do not hesitate to describe God himself as the rich man who, although no one compares him to an exploiter, is always happy to give of his inexhaustible riches and praises the steward for using the divine riches to do good to the poor.

But the parable also becomes a universal truth through Jesus' subsequent words. Jesus says that the law and the prophets prophesied until John. (Luke 16:16) This is a reference to the higher spiritual truth; it refers to the great change that occurred through Christ Jesus. Before that, there was the rigid law, the wording of which people scrupulously adhered to, but which could not prevent the gap between the wealthy and the poor from growing ever wider, and the contradictions from developing into a harshness and acrimony that we can hardly imagine today. This state of affairs, carried to its extreme point, was finally resolved by the fact that Christ Jesus, although He rightly left the Law in full force, transferred its seat and its work into the souls of individual human beings.

As can be seen later, the Law not only does not lose any of its importance as a result, but it is intensified and refined in a way that was previously unimagined and unknown. In the serious and urgent admonishment that Jesus addresses to the Pharisees, who justify themselves before men, the parable of the prodigal son also passes before our soul. The son who always stayed at home is less favored by the father than the “prodigal” son who has undergone the test, who has returned to the fatherland, who has been resurrected. This is a perfect expression of what grace means, which paves the way from a loving heart to another loving heart. The law is the network that bound people together; grace flows into the inner being and becomes the living law in the soul. It is not for nothing that Jesus says, “I am the fulfillment of the law.” (Matthew 5:17-18) The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be forced; it does not come with external gestures; only those who try to reach it with the power of their soul will find it, and that is by Christ becoming alive in them.

In the successive periods, the most diverse impulses prevail in the soul. So what is the law in relation to grace? It is the one that did not come in through Christianity, but what was there through the steward. Before his appearance, Christianity was not yet the appropriate religion for people; they still needed the law, they still needed stewards.

This steward is replaced by the work of Christ on humanity and must give account. The law has become an unjust one over time, like all systems that are temporarily suitable for people. The oppression of the poor is mentioned again and again in the Gospel of Luke. Christ teaches a new way of thinking and acting in place of this way of thinking and acting. Now we understand when it says in this Gospel: “The law and the prophets were preached until John; and since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and people are forcing their way into it.” (Lk 16:16)

When interpreting the parables, nothing should be left out; only in this way will we gain the context. Now let us go one step further:

The law had led to the oppression of the poor; these, the children of light, heard that something new was to come, that they were to give account. They can now cite nothing but the innermost feelings of their hearts if they want to make some excuse. The oppressors have not heard the voice of charity so far, but now they are trying to give back the unjust mammon, the vague call for a new era has also reached them, in which injustice should not continue, the children of the world cannot indulge in hypocrisy, the new external and internal conditions of the world force them to behave differently than before. All this justifies that Christ Jesus can claim this change in the spirit of the time for himself. And I also say to you: “Make friends with the unrighteous mammon, so that when you now suffer hunger, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9) He can say: “You see from this steward how one should behave in the face of poverty, and you can truly take an example from it, but you must be urged to do so by the innermost impulses of your soul; then you will find enough for your needs when you are in need yourselves.”

In the old dispensation, the children of the world were wiser than the children of light, but that will be reversed later. You must not believe that it can only be beneficial to adhere strictly to the rigid letter of the law; the children of the world have generally always spoken of righteousness, but have not in reality kept to it in the slightest. From the steward's actions, we can see how the law should have been applied in its deepest inner sense.

"If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is yours?” (Luke 16:11-12) These words point to the replacement of the old era by a new one, a new social order is being introduced in which each shall receive what is his. And now, once again, the point is summarized: ”Be serious.” There the old attitude with its harshness according to the letter of the law, here the new attitude, which knows nothing but responding to the needs of the other, recognizing in this an equal entity, while at the same time being carried by the consciousness of serving God.

“You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13); mammon is the name given to the gods of obstacles, while Christ and wisdom bring forward. Mammon is the term used for everything that man wants to grab for the narrow circle of his “ego”; but this is only of secondary importance. This embodied selfishness is shown to us in the Gospel by Judas Iscariot, who contributes to Christ being led to his death.

“Old times - new times.” It is now understandable that the Pharisees mocked, of whom it says, “They were greedy.” (Luke 16:14) The translation is not quite correct; it would be better to say, “They had a mammonistic attitude.” Therefore, Christ Jesus says, “But God knows the hearts,” and that is what will matter, because what is high among men is an abomination before God; only true spiritual power determines the real order of rank. Charity is not against the law, but as an impulse for the fullest fulfillment of the law, of one's own free will. At the time of Christ, the moment had come when charity had to appear before the hearts of men hardened completely. But Christ Jesus continues: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail” (Luke 16:17); “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and he who marries her when she is divorced from her husband commits adultery.” (Luke 16:18) – If we now turn to Matthew, chapter 5, we find that Jesus says that true marriage must neither be broken nor divorced (Matthew 5:30-31). We who are present know the concept of marriage only according to the law, and of course the completely new concept of Jesus, which places the focus of married life so completely within the soul, is the greatest possible contrast. Such words must have seemed incomprehensible to most people because their hearts were hardened, as Jesus often emphasized in his speeches. Instead of being bound by the form of the law, here the circumstances are based on the power of the innermost impulses. Therefore, through the realization of Jesus' teachings, the most glorious conditions must arise from the heart. In the analogous passage in Mark (Mk 10:2-10), there is also talk of marriage and the possibility of divorce and the consequences, but the whole marital relationship is so delicate in reality that it cannot be transferred to another. The teachings expressed in the parable point to the change brought about by Christ Jesus. — Having considered the gospel in this way, we may also compare the rich man with the world ruler, who is always happy to give from his inexhaustible abundance and praises those who make use of this wealth to do good to others. You see, the parable is written entirely in the spirit of the Gospel of Luke, and so it should be observed, otherwise it would not be understood. As already mentioned at the beginning, when studying individual parts of the Gospel, it is always necessary to consider which evangelist wrote them, each of whom came from a different school.

There is not much left to explain about this parable. Theosophy is always a clear guide for such considerations. We should not brood and fantasize, but draw wisdom from these words ourselves, then we will find what remains hidden from the keen minds of liberal theologians and at the same time we will not run the risk of being drawn into the teachings of material fantasists who, despite their new teachings about the vortices of atoms, they cannot in their own way get any closer to the essence of phenomena.

At present, however, it seems as if humanity is guided by purely material profanes who accept nothing other than what can be perceived with the bodily senses. Holding on to phrases about harmony and universal brotherhood does not benefit the progress of humanity either. If I say to the stove, “Be warm,” it does not spread warmth because of that; you have to heat it, and only then will it become warm and warm others. So admonitions of brotherhood are of no use either; you have to give people wisdom, then brotherhood develops by itself.

The great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said meaningful words about the interaction between two layers of the population in one of his inspiring “Speeches to the German Nation”. He said that the spiritual life of a nation can only be directly active if there is full understanding between the way in which the leaders at the forefront of this spiritual life express themselves and the way in which those who receive, who listen in their hearts and souls to what the leaders of the nation have to say, conceptualize and feel. And Fichte called those nations more or less dead nations in terms of their intellectual life, in which a stratum of learned education, a stratum of higher intellectual life, speaks a language and has a thought life that does not immediately find a living, full echo in those who are meant to listen to the voices of the leaders, to the voices of those who have something to proclaim about the highest questions of existence, about the riddles and the secrets of the world that are hidden in our existence.

What the philosopher and orator said at the time in relation to a nation, we can also apply to other forms of spiritual life, and indeed we see it confirmed more and more in what we experience in the field of religious coexistence between those who are supposed to listen, those who have a longing and a need to receive something, and the leaders in this field of spiritual life, in the field of religious life.

If we take a closer look at the last few decades, or perhaps the whole century, and survey these facts, we see how, in relation to those documents that have actually provided spiritual nourishment for thousands of years for broad sections of our population, how a scholarship is asserting itself in relation to these religious documents that is no longer directly understood by the broadest sections of the population, by those who are to be heard. We see how those who are scholars, leaders, and teachers in this regard have different things to say about the religious documents of Christianity and what is connected with them, and have different things to say about what has created a deep gulf between this scholarship and the immediate religious needs of wider and wider sections of the population: the two groups no longer understand each other properly. If you look at the matter with an unbiased eye, you will notice this very, very soon.

Theologians and other learned circles who deal with the Bible, whether scientifically or popularly, with that document that is the most important for our national life, have been led by their research to a way of understanding what these documents are , what value and origin they have, and of the content of the same, to a way of understanding them so that what they have to say no longer finds a living response, no longer can ignite the living life in the hearts of those who are supposed to listen.

When we take such popular writings on these matters into our hands, through which we are to educate ourselves, books that are distributed among the people in thousands and thousands of copies, when we look at them and ask ourselves: Is this scholarship such that what is spoken of it and distributed through thousands and thousands of channels into the people, is it such that it can satisfy the deepest religious needs of man, that the simple man, who seeks spiritual nourishment in religious documents above all things, seeks something that solves the highest questions of existence for him, the riddles of world life, is what is offered here such that this man can find what he seeks?

If we look at the facts at hand impartially, we have to say: little, very little, of real, truly deep religious feeling is to be found in our theological scholarship, and little, very little, of what comes out of this erudition, approaches us, little of it is suitable to penetrate the heart, to uplift and unfold the mind. We need only look around a little, and this will be confirmed.

Let us take a look at what has been developed in this direction over the last 100 years: The time is over when the Old and New Testaments were considered books in which truly inspired personalities once solved the riddles of existence under higher inspiration, as needed for the religious mind. For many, many centuries, there were times when the widest circles of the population listened so intently to the words of the Holy Scripture, as if the highest truths were proclaimed here, then, when they received it - not directly, but indirectly through the mouths of priests and sages, what the religious documents offer, that they then listened as if they were convinced that when the content was proclaimed to them, they were given the highest truths about the spiritual-divine realities underlying our everyday sensual life. There was a time when people were convinced that the Bible is no ordinary book, but that it originated from the very Being that has also brought forth all the phenomena that surround us. The Bible was spoken of as an inspired book, and it was felt to be a book whose words resounded from spiritual worlds themselves, whose words therefore proclaimed the eternal wisdoms that mankind needs on its path of development in the course of world evolution. In those ancient times, no one dared to think of criticizing this book in any way. That this book has been subjected to criticism is the result of 100 years of research by scholars. They no longer had the same reservations about accepting this book as it is, they asked themselves: Do the individual parts agree with each other, do they not contradict the scientific findings of other fields of research? Are they such that one could think it was an inspired book from beginning to end? The answer to these questions provides the basis for a critical work that has been done by the science of our time for 100 years. And what has come to light in the process? It is not necessary for our purpose – which is to consider the relationship of wisdom literature to the Bible – to talk about biblical criticism; we will say a few words about the spirit of this biblical criticism only in this introduction.

For example, it has been seen – I can only touch on what is important here briefly and summarily – that there is a peculiarity in the first parts of the Old Testament: two ways in which the divine presence in the world is named. It was noticed that in certain parts the divine presence is referred to as Yahweh, in other parts in a kind of plural: the Elohim.

And yet another observation has been made that seemed to point to something: that right at the beginning of the Old Testament, as is believed, a fact: the creation of man, is told twice. The creation is told in the seven-day work, and it is told how, finally, on the sixth day, man, as the crowning glory of creation, was created as it says, “male-female” (Genesis 1:27). Strangely enough, they say, this creation of man, and specifically of male-female man, is retold! Now the matter is presented as if man had already existed, as if no animals had yet been created around him. In short, critical research says that the same fact is being retold.

Furthermore, many passages were found in the writings named after Moses that could not be believed, and for which evidence was also believed to have been found, that they originated in the sense of the old opinion of the great inspired Moses himself, for example when it is said about the land of Canaan, so that it was seen: It could not be said in this old time, in which Moses lived, in this way about this land, but only in a later time. Then they examined the style in which it was written and found that the individual parts showed a great difference in expression; in one case they found it to be more popular, in the other more priestly and learned.

I would have to tell you much, much more in order to explain the spirit and meaning of this biblical research to you in detail. We do not need this, we just have to realize that under the impression of such critical research, scholars came to say: a unified meaning, a unified author cannot have written these so different, pieced-together parts that we call the individual books of the Bible. So they came to say to themselves: These most diverse parts originated at the most diverse times, formed in the most diverse manner among the people and were then collected. In particular, two parts were distinguished: a first part and a second, distinctly different part. Each of these parts was to have its special writer. The former was called the Jahwist. And to this Jahvist was attributed everything that seemed to be more original and imbued with popular force. Thus everything in the style of the Paradise Narrative, where Adam is led into paradise and Eve is created out of his own substance, was attributed to this source.

All of this was attributed to one source. On the other hand, everything that seemed more like speculation was attributed to another source. This source was called the so-called Priest Book, which alone was said to contain the more scholarly, priestly parts that were more speculative in character, like the six- or seven-day work. So, little by little, these stylistic and source investigations have been extended to the smallest individual parts, yes, one might say scraps, and traced back to their various origins.

Yes, today there are Bible translations, the so-called rainbow Bibles, in which the individual parts that are said to come from different sources are printed in different colors. Often you can even see the color changing in the middle of a line, in the middle of a sentence, for example, which means that this sentence is considered to come from different sources. The parts that are attributed primarily to the Yahwist are said to have originated in David's time, the others after the Babylonian exile. Thus the Old Testament gradually emerged as a collection, as something that had been compiled over a long period of time. In the way it was conceived, what was lost was necessarily that which, in its ancient greatness and significance as religious sentiment, was incorporated into what had been found in the Bible as revelation through centuries, even millennia.

Seen in this light, we have to say that the attitude of the broadest sections of society towards the Bible has changed more than people are usually willing to admit.

More than those who still have a deep religious fervor realize, this gap exists between those who are supposed to say what the Bible is actually about and those who are supposed to believe. And anyone who is able to look impartially into these circumstances, who has an unbiased view of the spiritual currents of our time, will see that the time is not far off when this gulf between theological scholarship and warm religious feeling among the people can no longer be bridged if things continue in this way, if nothing changes.

Religious life in the old way is no longer possible under these circumstances, and if you just don't want to close your eyes, you can see the time when Bible criticism – despite all the objections of those who want to cover up these facts , where this Bible criticism must have a killing effect on religious life, the gap will become unbridgeable if another spiritual current does not give the matter a completely different turn, a direction that brings about such a change. This spiritual current can only be one that has been referred to as theosophical wisdom for several decades.

Here in Munich, we have discussed the most diverse topics over the course of this winter; today and tomorrow, we want to consider the relationship between this theosophical school of thought and the view of this religious document, the Bible, which is so significant for our cultural life.

The theosophical approach to the world has to take a very peculiar attitude toward the Bible. Our conception of the Bible cannot and must not be something that is extraneous to the necessary historical course of our modern spiritual life, but something that is completely in line with the program of our modern spiritual life.

Theosophy seeks to renew and restore direct knowledge of the spiritual worlds. All those who have imbued their lives with this theosophical school of thought are firmly convinced that behind the world that our senses see there is a spiritual world, a world of spiritual beings. It is further the firm conviction of this same school of thought that this spiritual world is not something inaccessible and unsearchable for man, but something that man can search and recognize. Particularly under the influence of the materialistic school of thought in recent times, something like timidity, like hopelessness, has entered into our quest for knowledge: never in the development of the world has there been so much talk about the limits of knowledge as there is in our time, when people talk about the real why of existence, about the real creative and active entities that stand behind the world of the senses. Today, people easily say: Our powers of knowledge are not sufficient for this, we cannot explore this.

Our school of thought, however, spiritual science, says: We believe in development quite honestly and with all the consequences; not only everything else in the world, but also the human being develops, and the way he stands before us today, his development is not complete, he can continue this development at any moment, but especially the spiritual development. There are forces slumbering in him that can be drawn from his soul and then become active in higher knowledge.

To those who speak of the limits of knowledge, spiritual science says: Certainly, you are right, quite right, when you say that the source of existence cannot be explored with the powers of knowledge you are talking about. If you only speak of these powers you are quite right; but we, we do not speak of these powers in the field of spiritual science, but of powers which man does not have from the outset, but which everyone can have if he does not close himself to them by saying: I do not want to go further. Man lives in this world, which surrounds him with color and sound. Through his senses and with his mind limited to the world of the senses, he gains knowledge in it. In the same way, the higher worlds also surround him: but for them he has not yet brought any organs within himself into activity; he lives in these higher worlds like the blind man in the physical world of colors and light. But man can also live in this higher world as one who sees.

Just as the man born blind, when operated on, enters into a world that was previously unknown to him, while it has always been around him, so does the one to whom the spiritual eye is opened, to whom the spiritual senses are revealed, enter into a new world that has also surrounded him before, but which he could not perceive because he has not yet opened the organs for it. Only someone who does not want to think logically can dispute the possibility of such a higher world. Only someone who can see for himself is qualified to decide what it looks like in this world.

So what does this spiritual science have to say about religious documents? For anyone who really engages with the subject, it is a source of ever new and ever greater satisfaction and uplift. But before we discuss this in more detail, we would like to touch on something else.

In our time, there are four ways of relating to religious documents. These four types can be experienced by someone born into our time, who seeks out everything that seems capable of giving them satisfaction. Let us assume that a person is born and then introduced to a more or less naive religious life through school and family, so that he first receives the ideas of the Bible in a naive way, as the naive believer receives them. He believes in it for a while. Then, perhaps in our present time, the time comes for him when he becomes, as they say, as many people say, “enlightened,” when he becomes an “enlightened” person, and then he moves away from his old childlike faith!

What I am about to say is not meant as mockery, but as an expression of the truly tragic experience of many, many of our contemporaries. They come to the conclusion: When I look at modern science with its irrefutable results, which contradict so much of what I was taught and what I accepted with religious faith, I cannot help but have to give up my beautiful childhood faith. It is often tragic for such people to part with such beliefs; many cling to their old beliefs with all their hearts, but their sense of the truth of natural science separates them from them. They then become “enlightened people”; they try to be satisfied with what purely external natural science provides them with. These are the “clever people”, among whom many often look down with a certain arrogance and even some mockery on the naive believers.

Strangely enough, a group has now formed within these circles, within freethinking itself, which has come to the conclusion that these religious documents do not merely contain naive children's beliefs. They say to themselves: Admittedly, the things we are told here are not facts, but they are symbols for developmental processes - for inner development, if you like - and so now one person interprets these things in one way, the other in a different way, and so on. Recently a group has formed within the so-called freethinkers that has taken on the symbolic interpretation of the Bible. When you look at the work of this group, you have to say that you find many beautiful, spiritual things in it, they have thought about many myths and legends in an excellent way. But here the worst arbitrariness prevails. Everything depends on the interpreter's state of mind. One thinks more, the other less, into the things he wants to explain. What each one knows and is able to understand, that is just different. Some come to these points of view; but some can also shorten the way by leaving out one or the other of them.

Finally, after going through such preliminary stages, some people are able to truly penetrate the religious documents with the help of spiritual science, and there they notice something peculiar. They increasingly notice that what is written in the Bible can be taken literally, truly literally. It dawns on them like a new light, like a revelation, and on a higher level they come back to recognizing the value and significance of these religious documents. This is an experience that many have certainly gone through through theosophy. Starting out with a sincere striving for knowledge, they came to throw everything, absolutely everything, overboard. After a shorter or longer period of time, they came to Theosophy, guided by this striving for truth, and through it, the religious documents became valuable to them again, and what they once gave them, they have regained! The deeper one penetrates into the meaning of this wonderful book, the more one recognizes that everything, everything is as it is told to us there, and that precisely the passages that may have most provoked our disbelief, our criticism and our ridicule, can reveal the deepest spiritual truths to us.

The position of spiritual science in relation to the Bible and other religious documents will also be characterized from another perspective. You see, what Theosophy can be in relation to the Bible has long been established in another area of spiritual life, in the field of natural science, in order to determine its position in relation to another great document. What has taken place since Copernicus and Galileo in the field of external knowledge of nature is now taking place in our time in the field of religious knowledge and in relation to the religious scriptures through spiritual science, through Theosophy.

I would like to tell you a fact that will make this clearer: Throughout the Middle Ages, in all schools, what Aristotle had achieved was regarded as an incontrovertible fact with regard to the external knowledge of nature; for his time, he had been an important naturalist and collector of scientific knowledge. What he had compiled in his writings about nature is truly astounding. These were available as books, and at that time they were considered to be dogmatic documents about nature. Throughout the Middle Ages, teaching was based on these books; what he had to say about stars, plants, animals and human beings, and what they contained as a new revelation, was considered the ultimate authority. Then came Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and their great leader Giordano Bruno; a completely new position with regard to knowledge of nature took hold. These people turned their gaze to nature itself; they no longer asked, “What did Aristotle say about this or that organ of the human body?” Instead, they examined everything themselves, they looked at the objects of nature themselves with their instruments and methods; they wanted to see with their own eyes, and for them only what they had found themselves was considered the authoritative thing, and no longer what Aristotle had said.

A short story may show how difficult it was for them to overcome their old faith in Aristotle and how deeply rooted it was. Through his detailed studies of the human body, Galileo had found various things that could not be reconciled with Aristotle. It is interesting to note what an old Aristotelian, a friend of Galileo, once said to him in this regard. He was invited by Galileo and shown by him to a human organism, and shown that one of Aristotle's assertions turned out to be incorrect when observed on the human body. Galileo wanted to make it clear to his friend that the true source of science about nature is the direct knowledge of nature itself. This friend, then, looked at what Galilei showed him, and had to admit, like it or not, that Galilei was apparently right, but he continued to swear by Aristotle's claim as only some orthodox theologian can swear by the Bible today: “It's true,” he said, “the facts are like this, but Aristotle said it differently, and I believe Aristotle more than my own eyes.” Tradition and prejudice have such a strong effect on people.

But today we see something different, and we have to say: Such are the changes of the times; another fact has taken the place of those prejudices. Today we are imbued with the attitude that we must approach nature itself directly if we want to come to a correct understanding. We are aware that it is not old traditions that can be decisive for us, but our judgments and insights gained through our own observations. At the same time, however, we are learning more and more through science to recognize that people in those days had not yet understood Aristotle at all, but had misunderstood him completely. Today we have come so far that we are making the amazing discovery that Aristotle meant the right thing after all, if only we understand him correctly. Thus, it is only through the fact that we have gained access through the direct knowledge of the facts of nature that we have been given the opportunity to recognize tradition in its true value, in its true meaning.

Where natural science stood at that time, today we stand in the presence of the spiritual science of the Bible. Through the stream of spiritual science that is brought to humanity today, the human being stands in relation to the spiritual world as the sensual human being of Galileo's time stood in relation to external, real nature. Just as there have been researchers since that time who approach the sensual facts of nature directly with their methods and instruments, so there will be more and more researchers who look directly into the spiritual worlds and directly recognize what is told in the Bible. This has been in preparation for a long time. It has been achieved for natural science; for spiritual science it must be achieved.

The Germans have a saga that points to this in its meaning: the Faust saga. Faust – it is said of him that he put the Bible behind the bench for a while. He no longer wanted to be a theologian, but a man of the world and a physician, because he put the Bible behind the bench for a while. He wanted to approach the secrets of nature directly and gain direct wisdom.

Thus, spiritual wisdom does not look to the Bible for the content and knowledge of the spiritual world, but independently of any tradition, it seeks to explore the factual content of the spiritual world and approaches the records with what it already has in order to test the records in its findings. If I am to characterize this position for you, I would like to do so with an example. What every schoolboy learns in geometry today was once discovered by ancient researchers. What schoolboys learn today is called Euclidean geometry, after that great Greek researcher to whom we owe the oldest work on these things. Is every schoolboy instructed to take the first work by Euclid and learn from it what he has to learn? The schoolboy knows nothing about these ancient documents; he learns from within himself, from his own ability to grasp the right thing, from the rightness, clarity and truth of the matter itself, and only much later, when he studies history, does it become apparent to him that the right thing is already contained in that work by Euclid and can therefore be found there.

Just as geometry is true in itself, so are the facts of the spiritual world true in themselves, and just as little as one needs the old documents to research the theorems of geometry today, so little does one need old documents to recognize the truths of the spiritual world. This is supposed to be the direct path, the immediate way into the spiritual world, which is shown by modern spiritual science. Here the Bible is the historical document that, like Euclid, is not necessary for understanding, but can confirm what has been found independently. So you see that spiritual science is as independent as possible of the Bible and is therefore also called upon to research it and recognize its real value. Let us ask ourselves: Who is actually called upon to recognize this? Our example can lead us to the answer: Only someone who is actually familiar with geometry can be called upon to recognize the value and significance of a work on geometry! Likewise, we must say: Only someone who is able to explore the content of the Bible from the spiritual world itself is called upon to judge and recognize its value and significance! As you can see, a completely new relationship to the Bible as a document has emerged through spiritual science.

Now, in the light of spiritual science, the things that “critical research” has brought to light about the Bible appear in a peculiar light! It seems relatively unimportant, quite unimportant and irrelevant when the individual pieces, parts of this document were written, created, we are only interested in this as a historical fact. But we gauge the value of the book itself as what we ourselves recognize as the content, by the correctness of the content.

Those who study this Bible from the point of view of spiritual science sometimes have the feeling when considering modern Bible criticism - I myself once had this feeling towards philological scholarship, sometimes towards this critical philology - because modern theology is, after all, only philology - a feeling that I will now describe to you.

It seems far-fetched, but there is a very beautiful prose hymn to nature by Goethe, which I have mentioned several times. In it, Goethe expresses his religious conviction in his enthusiastic way at the time:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by it, unable to step out of it and unable to get deeper into it. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries on with us until we are tired and fall out of her arms. ... People are all in her, and she is in everyone. ... Even the most unnatural is nature, even the most crude philistinism has something of her genius. ... One obeys her laws even when one resists them; one works with her even when one wants to work against her. ... It is everything. It rewards itself [and punishes itself], delights itself and torments itself. ... It has brought me in, it will also lead me out. I trust it. It may do with me as it likes; it will not hate its work. I did not speak of it; no, what is true and what is false, it has spoken everything. All is its fault, all is its merit.

And then he concludes with the words:

Her crown is love, and she holds a few sips from the cup of love harmless for a lifetime of toil.

This is an essay full of many pearls of wisdom steeped in enthusiasm. Goethe was once asked in his later years when he had written this essay. In response to this question, you will then find a second essay in which Goethe says that he no longer remembers when he wrote this first essay, and that he no longer remembers that he wrote it, but that it is entirely an expression of his views at the time, and that it is quite possible that he wrote it. What Goethe said here has given learned Goethe researchers much to think about and occasion for incredible research; there was a time when Goethe researchers spent long, long hours investigating whether this essay was written by Goethe himself or not.

When I was appointed to the Goethe Archive in Weimar years ago to reissue Goethe's scientific writings, I was once asked to examine this question as well, and I was asked to pay particular attention to clarifying this controversial issue. I came to the conclusion that I was now able to determine that at the time when the aforementioned hymn was written, Goethe often went for walks with a younger person, and that one day, during a walk along the Ilm, he recited this essay to this young person in those beautiful words. This person was a certain Tobler, who had an excellent memory and was able to write down this essay word for word from memory. So in Tobler's transcript we have a genuine Goethe essay.

With a kind of pedantic philological precision, I myself proved at the time that every sentence was written by Goethe, although it was written down by someone else. Shortly thereafter, I met one of the most well-known Goethe researchers [whose name I understandably do not mention]. He approached me with the following words: [You have truly earned recognition for what you have brought to light, because] now we finally know who wrote the essay, that it was not Goethe who wrote it, but Tobler.

This is an experience that can show us how today's biblical criticism is to be taken. It was not important to this gentleman where the spiritual source was, but only to determine who dipped the pen in the ink and ran it over the paper.

It may seem almost grotesque, but today's biblical criticism is basically taking the same approach. It is not important to them where the spiritual sources for what is told come from, but rather to show with meticulous precision – in a figurative sense – who ultimately put the pen in the inkwell, and that is exactly what these people want to do: to distinguish with colors what flowed from one pen and what flowed from another. Not the slightest criticism is intended here. The scholar was right at the time: Tobler had dipped that pen into the ink and written the essay. Therefore, not the slightest doubt is to be cast on the value of this research. That is not the point. Full recognition is to be given to the true and infinite diligence that is displayed here, because anyone who is familiar with it knows what diligence, what amazing diligence is applied to answering these questions. Perhaps everything this science finds is true, but the only question is: is it fruitful for the inner life of human beings, is it of value for those who hope for an answer to the great questions of existence from the depths of their hearts? One more thing must be pointed out for a better understanding of these lectures. The word inspiration, which played a major role when the concept of the Bible was discussed earlier: it was said that what is in the Bible arose from inspiration. The wisdom from the same spiritual sources that are related to creation and production in the world itself flowed into it – the Bible. Gradually, the materialistic age came; it could not believe in such inspiration. The moment humanity ceased to believe in the spiritual worlds themselves, this concept had to fall. Spiritual science now knows this concept and traces it back to its true content and true meaning.

Spiritual science first recognizes a world, a physical world, the world of our senses, which we perceive with our eyes, can grasp with our hands, which we hear when we direct our ear to something that makes a sound. This whole world of the senses and of the mind that comprehends this world is the only real one for the materialistic mind. The spiritual world is a second world for those who, with unprejudiced senses, want to penetrate it through spiritual science. As already mentioned, spiritual wisdom shows that there are abilities that usually lie dormant in people today, but that can be awakened and that then really let people experience the spiritual worlds. In the human organism, the eye developed only gradually; with the development of the eye, the surrounding darkness, light and color first penetrated it. With the formation of the ear, the world of sounds resounded to it. With the development of the brain, man became able to develop and recreate the sensory world in his mind, to grasp it spiritually.

Just as the eye once lay dormant in the human organism, so other spiritual organs lie dormant in the human spirit, in the human soul. These organs can be awakened from the soul and spirit by certain methods that spiritual science offers to man, and then there is a second and a third world in the same world that surrounds us. I will first characterize the second world in a few words. When a person, whose physical senses are merely unlocked, looks at any object, he sees that thing with a certain color. The surface of that being is afflicted with a certain color. He can then hear what emerges as a sound from the soul of that being, and so on, but within the limits of that being's skin, there is something else, but it is just as true and just as real as what he can perceive with his senses: Within this being is a sum of pain and joy, urges, desires and passions. You cannot penetrate into this second world with your senses.

But there is a way to open up the spiritual eye, then this inner soul world of the other being does not remain hidden from you, then it appears before you as these external colors and sounds appear to the senses. You can perceive as much of the world as you have senses for perception. We only recognize a certain amount of realities when we have senses for them. What all there is that would confront a person if only they had more senses, more abilities to perceive. We can experience it through what is called initiation, that the sense is open to us, not only for what the outer senses tell us about the outer world, but also for what is going on in the soul of a being within. It is possible for us to perceive the joy and suffering of a being with the open mind of a seer. A certain color sensation arises before the spiritual eye of the seer when a person stands before him with some inner experience, and the same inner color appears to him every time he has the same experience.

In the case of sympathy, for example, we see with a seeing eye how this sympathy takes on a certain color and form; antipathy and pain appear to us in such a world of images, in different colors and forms. This world of second sight exists; this world can be developed, it has always been known in spiritual science. This world is called the imaginative world, and the ability to see in this way is called imagination. The person who has these abilities encounters a strange being within himself with the sensation of his joy and suffering. He perceives the soul life of the other being in the image; at the same time, he is surrounded by the imaginations of the inner being, the inner life of this entity. This world, to which all this belongs, is also called the astral world. Once the eye is opened to this world, one perceives not only the soul experiences that are actually present in sensual beings, but one also makes the discovery that there are also soul entities in our environment that have no sensual expression. Such beings exist. Everyone who knows spiritual science as the chemist knows chemistry, knows this world of imagination, because if he develops further, if he applies the methods that spiritual science provides in the right way, then he enters this world of flowing colors, and if he now continues to progress further on the path of inner development, then what could be called clairaudience - in contrast to clairvoyance - approaches him and now gives him knowledge of the truly so-called spiritual or even heavenly world.

This further world is also referred to by the term used in theosophical literature as the devachanic world; the old Pythagorean school called this world the world of the harmony of the spheres: one hears the tones of the harmony of the spheres when one develops up to this region.

Thus we are surrounded by three worlds; by the sensual world, which we perceive with our outer senses, by the astral world, in which we encounter - when we penetrate into it - the images of soul entities. These imaginations are the expression of a much truer and more real world than the sensual world is. Then, when we penetrate even further, to clairaudience, we enter the world of inspiration. Spiritual science has known about these worlds since the earliest times, and they are to be made accessible to today's humanity again through the theosophical movement of modern culture. The realization of this spiritual world of Devachan, in the form of clairaudience, has been called inspiration at all times.

Man can reach yet another level, where he can see into yet another world, the world of intuition. This occurs when man sees not only that which is recognizable on the surface as astral, when he not only hears what emerges from their soul as sound, only when he can become one with the whole world. This characterizes it in a technical sense: in ordinary life, we stand outside of a thing – you stand outside of a plant or a mineral that you want to explore. But when you have reached this level of knowledge, your own being flows into the foreign object and you speak with your soul from within the object itself. There is no thing in itself outside of you, there you are in all beings, there you have become one with the whole environment; there the things themselves speak to us.

Through inspiration, the things around us express their essence in the harmony of the spheres. In the images of the imagination, they reflect their soul-like outer sides to us in colors and shapes. The spiritual researcher knows that there are three such worlds outside our physical world, that there are beings in these worlds that elude our physical sense world, that the creative entities of our sense world are contained in these higher worlds.

What created minerals, animals and plants is contained in these worlds, and what is contained in man as a real higher being is also a citizen of this higher world, which can only be seen in imagination. Man is not only enclosed in the world of the senses, no, he is something that has its home in the imaginative world and can only be properly recognized through imagination. And in all of us lives an innermost being – in ourselves – but only when we are able to step out of ourselves so that it seems to come to us in others and can be recognized in its real form, that is, only intuitively, in intuition. And if humanity is to be informed of those entities, which as the creating original entities underlie our world of sense facts, then people must bring the message out of their higher developed perception, out of their imagination, intuition.

When today man penetrates spiritual truth himself, when the spiritual researcher penetrates into spiritual realms, then he can proclaim from his own experience what the leaders of mankind once put into the religious scriptures, what they gave to mankind as a guide to higher development. In primeval times there was a kind of dim clairvoyance. This gradually disappeared, and our present-day “scientific”, critical awareness of facts took its place. This will be overcome by the fact that higher spiritual-scientific knowledge must in turn be added to this day-awake object consciousness.

For certain intermediate stages, the sense of the spiritual-scientific foundations of knowledge from the higher worlds had to be lost. In older spiritual times, however, it was generally known that those people who had struggled to achieve inspiration were inspired, that they had truly laid down their own experiences in the religious documents.

There will be more and more people who can recognize more and more directly – independently of these documents – what is true in these documents. The concept of inspiration will be rediscovered; then the time will come when there will be a new relationship between wisdom and the Bible. Everything that can be known about divine spiritual things can be directly researched using the methods of spiritual science, everything that has ever been brought in a religious document. Then the human being recognizes the truth of these documents again; when he can look into these worlds himself, then he experiences again that these things are all true, that there was indeed good reason why people could naively believe in all that is reported in such holy books for a time. The fact that this awareness can be regained will indicate a time when people, precisely by knowing something of the spirit that underlies all matter, will come to recognize again that those records are true that criticism cannot begin to understand, those records that this criticism has devalued in the eyes of many people today. Recognizing the Bible in its value as a book that emerged from inspiration will be a success of the theosophical movement, because one will again recognize what inspiration is, what inspired knowledge is. One will again be able to find wisdom in the Bible if one can independently recognize what is described in it and is to be given to people.

There will again be wise men who, from their own spiritual experiences, will be able to give an account of what the origins of existence look like and how the riddles of existence can be solved. And when there are such wise men who, from their direct knowledge, can say what the riddle is, then the gulf between those who are to be guides in religious knowledge and those who want to look up, who want to have content for their existence, who want something more than the most empty everyday life, who want to live a dignified existence at all, can be bridged. A connection between the broadest layers of those who want to listen and those who are to teach will again become possible. Then the ground will be laid for a healthy national life and for a healthy religious development. These two are connected: this healthy religious development will mean healthy national development.

In this way we shall learn to see deeply into many a thing and then recognize how literally we can take again many a thing that was no longer understood because the sense for spiritual research had been lost. We shall see that it is true: there is a naive relationship to that great religious document of which Goethe said that it must be a land register for the religious development of mankind for an incalculable time.

There is a certain justification for this relationship of doubt and rejection in our time, but those who say that true wisdom and knowledge of facts must necessarily lead away from what is given in this document are wrong.

So you then find more and more that you understand, and you are surprised that you criticized some things earlier that you just did not understand, and that now it appears to you in a completely new light. Then comes the point where one becomes modest and humble in the face of such a book, which not only contains human wisdom but goes far beyond everything human. Then one is inclined to say: Through spiritual science I have come to understand some things, have learned to appreciate some things – there is much I do not yet understand, but now I no longer criticize, but wait quietly and patiently until I too will one day understand the rest. There is no more beautiful sensation than this: to look into the source of wisdom with modesty and humility, because this looking is connected with a feeling of an opening up infinity of existence into an ever-widening perspective of wisdom. We have recognized some things, and the little we have learned has taught us the idea that, with increasing development, we will be able to unlock more and more, that the stronger and brighter light will come to meet us from the great religious documents of the human race, the more we approach the sources of the divine being from which we once sprang, unknowingly, and to which we will approach again in the course of our development. We see this goal as a flourishing, satisfying fact before us, inviting us to never cease in our efforts to perfect and spiritualize humanity in its development.

Yesterday we tried to penetrate the relationship between what is called wisdom in the spiritual scientific sense, immediate, direct knowledge of the spiritual worlds, and that religious document that is the most important for our culture, the Bible. Today, let us take a look at some specific facts that can illustrate this relationship to us, that can show us how, if we understand this relationship in this way, we can indeed arrive at a new understanding of this religious document. You will understand that it is impossible to even touch on such a broad subject in summary, considering all the things that could be considered. It will therefore be best if we try to pick out individual things in particular to see how certain things that are also told in this biblical document can be understood through direct insight into the higher worlds and how one can then find that which one can grasp so immediately and directly in this religious document.

I would like to start with a very specific individual fact, a fact that has already been touched on here in a different context. I would like to show you how spiritual science introduces us to a certain law of human development. Today, this law is even already suspected by the more materialistically colored natural science. Spiritual science has known the law for long, long times and regards life from the point of view of this law. If we want to characterize this law in one word, we say: This law expresses the development of the spiritual life of humanity. You know that the idea of development is something that has had a truly fascinating effect on the external science of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. You know that external science has been completely moved into this perspective and that as a result the development of the simplest living beings up to the most complicated ones has become understandable.

Spiritual science has always had this idea of development, only much more comprehensive, much more universal than this natural science of the nineteenth century.

Spiritual science says: Everything is in the process of development. Everything develops from simple, very simple forms in the distant past to those forms that are so intricately interwoven that humans are still far from being able to comprehend them today. Spiritual science speaks above all of a development of human consciousness itself, and it is important that we follow the development of this human consciousness through its various stages. For this will cast a spotlight on certain chapters of the biblical records. What the vast majority of individuals today call consciousness is, for spiritual science, a state of consciousness that has developed from other forms of consciousness. We describe this present human state of consciousness as the so-called waking daytime consciousness, or also the object consciousness. Why? If we want to characterize this consciousness that a person has today from morning, when he wakes up, until evening, when he falls asleep, we have to say: This consciousness acquires its knowledge as follows: First, it acquires its perceptions of the objects through the external senses, of the objects in space and in the time around us, and our mind, which is limited to the sensory world, processes the perceptions that the human being receives through the external senses; and through such perceptions and such processing of perceptions in our conscious mind, we form the treasures of our knowledge, which are stored in our memory and guide and accompany us through life.

However, there are other forms of consciousness besides this state of consciousness; this state of consciousness is one that humanity has not always had in the past, and we have to look back to recognize the development of this state of consciousness, to times in the distant, distant past, to times that lie far, far behind our own.

In the past, people had a different form of consciousness, and at one point a different state of consciousness. How we perceive today, how we think today, has developed from other forms of consciousness, and the state of consciousness that once existed in humanity, but which today's state of consciousness has replaced, is called pictorial consciousness, the imaginative consciousness of the distant past.

The higher imaginative consciousness of which I spoke yesterday is not meant here. If we want to understand how this earlier pictorial consciousness relates to the consciousness that the initiate, who has undergone the inner spiritual development, already has today and that all of humanity will have at some future stage, if we want to recognize the two levels of consciousness If we want to recognize the two stages of imaginative consciousness, these two phases of the development of our consciousness in their relationship, we have to say: what we will speak of here precedes our own and is a dim, more dream-like clairvoyance. In that very distant past, people had a dream-like clairvoyance, and from this, today's object consciousness has only just developed; and a future state of consciousness stands before our soul, which the initiate already has today and which all of humanity will have in the distant future, in that man will have today's object consciousness and clairvoyance, both in bright, clear clarity. Early man, our ancient ancestor, had a consciousness that could not yet calculate in the same way that today's consciousness can. But instead he had a kind of dull, dream-like clairvoyance. He could see more into the spiritual and soul-life of his surroundings, either continually or in specially evoked states. He could receive images of what was spiritually and soul-wise in his environment. Today's object consciousness only sees spiritual entities when they are physically embodied externally.

I can best describe the former clairvoyance to you by means of an example. A person approaches another; the second harbors feelings of antipathy in his soul towards the approaching person. Modern man can only guess at what lives in the soul from external sensory perceptions. In the dim clairvoyance that man of ancient times had, however, a picture in color and form appeared freely floating before the clairvoyant gaze, indicating to him what the other felt towards him. The innermost attitude of a being was clothed in a color and form floating in space for the spiritual eye, just as certain ether vibrations express themselves today for the physical eye through color and form.

There are times in the distant past when this clairvoyance was developed to a certain extent. Today, however, we can only look back in history to a time when the last remnants of this somnambulistic clairvoyance, so to speak, were still present in people. These remnants were present in times not much more than a thousand years ago. We find such dim clairvoyance in every people in its initial stage, and it is from this dim clairvoyance that the myths and legends and fairy tales that originated among peoples in the early days were born. These myths and sagas did not come into being through that abstract thing we call the child's creative imagination, but out of the remnants of this former clairvoyance, as a reproduction of what an original, dim clairvoyance originally saw in all, all peoples from whom today's humans descended. This dim clairvoyance is connected with other conditions in the development of mankind, and if we want to characterize this development that has taken place in the transition to our present object consciousness, then we have to point to an external event that has taken place in our physical world and that is an expression of this transformation of that consciousness into our present one. This found expression in what we can call the transition from near-marriage to distant-marriage. In ancient times, among the most diverse peoples, there was an age in which what we call consanguineous marriage was common practice, a matter of course. People lived in small tribes and married within these small tribes, and it was considered somewhat immoral and incorrect to marry outside one's tribe; so in those times, related blood mixed with related blood, and those times these times of close marriage prevailed were also the times when the last remnants of a dim form of clairvoyance were present.

It is an extremely important moment in the development of all peoples: the transition from close marriage to distant marriage. One could point out how this is expressed in the most diverse myths and legends, how the whole cycle of the Siegfried saga is connected with that transition from close marriage to distant marriage, but that would be going too far today. What is important for us is the effect of foreign blood on foreign blood, which is that the original clairvoyance is killed; and this consciousness, which we know today, which is characterized by calculating, combining, logical thinking, this achievement emerged from that mixing of foreign blood with foreign blood!

Thus, we can trace in all ancient times how a different form of living together is linked to a different state of consciousness and vice versa. It has also been pointed out that even today, under certain circumstances, the last vestiges of this clairvoyance remain; I have already referred to the conversation between Rosegger and Anzengruber. I will take it up again here: Rosegger, the amiable and significant descriptor of what he sees around him in farm life and elsewhere, is a descriptor based on external sensory observation. Compare this with Anzengruber, and you will see that Anzengruber is able to present figures from folk life with wonderful plasticity, so that they stand on their own two feet with wonderful truth and naturalness. Now Anzengruber never saw the things he describes with his senses, he never lived among the farmers. Now Rosegger said to Anzengruber: You know, it seems to me that if you went out into the farming world and observed what happens there, you would be able to describe it even better. Anzengruber, on the other hand, replied: No, then I probably wouldn't be able to describe it at all. I have never seen farmers, but my ancestors were farmers, all my ancestors were farmers, and so the peasantry still lives and stirs in my blood, and I describe what my fathers saw, my ancestors, it runs down to me in my blood, and that is how I describe peasant life.

There you have the last remnants of what was once present in a much higher degree in all humanity. If you realize this, you will have to say: the way Anzengruber worked had the effect that a dark power of consciousness lives down in the blood through his ancestors to himself, and that lives itself out in him. Imagine this state of consciousness intensified, intensified to such an extent that the son can really remember what the father experienced, yes, what the grandfather experienced, then you have characterized that dim state of clairvoyance after a certain side, which once belonged to all our ancestors. There is a much higher, a real memory in the blood of what the ancestors had experienced, and as true as it is that today's man with his object consciousness can only store what he himself has experienced since childhood, it is just as true, incredible and grotesque as it may appear to today's materialistic way of thinking, it is true that there was a time when there was a dim awareness that the following generations remembered what their father, grandfather, ancestor and great-ancestor had experienced. Not just a vague feeling of it rumbled in the blood that had come from marriage between relatives, it was a real memory of it. Now let's see: what was the result of such a very different state of consciousness? The result of this was a very different naming than what takes place within humanity today. Today, man calls his ego that which holds together the experiences of his person since his youth. It was different then. Imagine those people who had a clear memory of what their ancestors had experienced; they also used the term “I” to describe what had been experienced in their ancestors over the generations. So someone was telling the experiences of his grandfather as those of his own “I” – if you want to express it radically. So he said: My “I” does not end with my birth, it extends up the generations, and that is why in such distant times, of which, however, no reports and documents report, what was remembered was given a uniform name, and so we must first learn to understand the meaning of the naming for those ancient times. Names were not only given to individual persons in those days; the whole context of all experiences in which one was present had a name in one's memory. When we know that there were names that designated many generations that went back centuries, then we understand an important chapter in which the patriarchs lived through the centuries.

Adam is not a person like those who live today as personal human beings on our physical earth. Adam was that which lived through generations and found expression in the collective memory. He did not denote a tribe or race, but that which passed through the generations as a common memory of consciousness in the old dim clairvoyance.

Thus it becomes clear that we need only understand the naming of ancient times, then it becomes bright within us in what the documents of the Bible tell us from this chapter of the history of creation. In those ancient times of dim clairvoyance, man did not attach much importance to his own personal experiences; they were only a small part of that great circle of experience to which he felt he belonged. He spoke of that which his consciousness overlooked as a unified entity. And so, just as when you talk to another person today, that person appears to you as something real, and the succession of generations as a whole appears more or less abstract, so to those people the individual person was insignificant, and what was important to him was what held his consciousness, reaching back over generations, together. Thus, in the patriarchal names, we do not have names for individual personalities, but rather a designation of a sum of beings. Thus, something in the Bible shines for us, which we recognize in its true sense when we face it equipped with higher spiritual-scientific knowledge. That is the way in which the person who recognizes it can look at the Bible. He first sees how it was in ancient times, and then, when he can understand correctly, he finds that the description of the Bible is just the same, wants to say the same thing. At that time, those who wrote down these records simply described what they were aware of.

Another example: in spiritual science, we follow the human being in his development far, much further back than to the point in time we have just discussed. Since I have often spoken about the idea of development here, I hope I will not be misunderstood today. Spiritual science traces the human being far, far back, and when it traces the human being back, it always comes across such human beings through long, long periods of time, where the physical body of the human being is the expression of the soul living in the physical body of the human being. But then, going further and further back, we come to a point in human development when this is no longer the case, when we can see how, so to speak, the paths of physical development and of soul-spiritual development separate further backwards. The spirit and the soul of man are rooted in the spiritual world, and when I use the expression of descending from the spiritual world, those who have already penetrated deeper into theosophy know that this expression is only figurative, an expression for something spiritual in a language that is only suitable for the external material. We are coming to times in the development of humanity when we see how the human soul and spirit is still united with other spiritual and soul-like entities. Out of spiritual entities, man's soul and spirit are born. There is a point in our earthly development when these human soul and spirit have only just entered this physical body, but we must not believe that this physical body, as it has taken in the soul and spirit, has not also undergone a long, long development.

At this point, two developmental currents meet. One of these currents is that of the physical world: We see how physical entities – headed by the physical human body – develop up to a certain level of perfection. Then there comes a point in time when this physical human body has become so perfect that it is now able to accommodate this spiritual-soul entity, which has developed to such an extent that it could find expression in the physical human body. since that spirit, that soul, has moved within the human body from the imperfect form that that body had, up to the present human form, the soul and spirit itself has worked in the human body through long, long periods of time. And through the forces through which they worked, the soul and spirit within the human body developed this body ever higher and higher, to its present form. Soul and spirit are, so to speak, the transformers and redevelopers of the human body. From that time on, we can also characterize the form of the physical human body, as it existed at that time, suitable for receiving the soul-spiritual, today, without any religious document, but only from the developed abilities of the seer.

These two human body in such a way that the human body as yet without a human soul was certain — I know how I shock all those who have only a materialistic way of thinking; but that does not matter; but if we want to know the truth, we have to tackle this great difference . The reasons why materialistic science may find this strange and grotesque are already known to the spiritual researcher himself, he has already dealt with them, otherwise he would not dare to tell such things – they are formed quite differently than he later became. But the earth was also shaped quite differently in those ancient times.

I will speak only of a single thing in the human body and its transformation at that time. Before that time, it was necessary for the human body to have an organ that still exists today in a last rudiment and remnant, in the swim bladder of fish. Since the physical human ancestor had to move by floating and swimming on the earth, he needed such a organ. The physical human ancestor had this organ in ancient times. This organ has transformed itself in the course of human physical development into the lungs. This has enabled man to breathe in and process the air as he does today. Connected with this is what we know about other processes in the body that have some kind of relationship to this lung breathing. We see the transition from the old gill breathing, which is still present in human embryonic development, to lung breathing, which is the preparation for red blood, which plays such an important role in human beings as well as in the life of nations. This moment of capturing the oxygen in the air through the lungs is also the moment of the human being being endowed with a human soul. Only then was he a suitable vessel for what we call a human soul.

These things took place over long, long periods of time: the transformation of the swim bladder into lungs that are able to process the oxygen in the external air. Now, if an observer wanted to describe this important moment of development in emotional and sensory terms, he could have said: “With the inhalation of the air, we breathed in the divine soul.” That is indeed how our ancestors felt, they gratefully felt the breath as the inspirer. You see, that is why the legends and myths of all peoples saw the body of the deity in the air, which had given man his individual consciousness. In the drifting air, the one who sees out of dull clairvoyance or out of the developed consciousness of the seer, sees the body of the animating deity, that deity of which his individual soul is a part. Imagine that all this extended over long, long periods of time, what was expressed pictorially in such legends and myths.

This image for all that I have described to you can be found again in the biblical record: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.

Yes, why then clothe such a powerful fact, which goes through millions of years of development, in such an image? Yes, it is not unimportant in which image such a fact is presented to the consciousness at a particular stage of development. In the form in which it was expressed just now, it would not have been understood by anyone at that time. At that time it was necessary to speak in images, in imaginations. Everything, absolutely everything is in development! You will only understand what that means when I tell you how it all affects you.

Those who have already delved deeper into the theosophical teachings know that the human soul is not embodied only once, but passes through human bodies over and over again, going through many, many lives. They know that That which is in you today as soul has developed over and over again through life and life; that which is able to understand and comprehend this great law of becoming human in you today would understand nothing, absolutely nothing, would not have the ability to grasp such concepts if you had not also listened before or more often to how others have described this same process of becoming world in images and imaginations. Only this enabled this soul to understand the concept of it in today's incarnation.

Everything that only later appears in concepts must first be brought to humanity in imaginations, in images. The wisest of humanity, the leaders of the people, have known all that we describe today. But for the majority it had to be brought in images, because they had a dim clairvoyance and could not yet absorb these things in concepts, but only in images, and that was to be given in this form: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7)

Let us now ask ourselves: What does Jahve, Jehovah stand for? Jehovah is the expression for that which we perceive as the individual, the I-giving. At the same time, it has the secondary meaning “the blowing one,” “the one blowing in the air,” and there you have the Yahweh himself, that is, the deity who gave man the I: “I am who am” (Ex 3:14). And if you go from there up to the Central European old legends and myths, you will find that there you also have the Wotan, who rides in the air storm, the Wotan who blows. Thus, the blowing spirit, the spirit that blows in the air, was always felt to be the bringer of human consciousness.

This is only one of the concepts we can develop. Going further back into the distant past, we would arrive at the line of development of the spiritual core of the human being, and from there to spirit itself. Even in those ancient times, the old consciousness looked back to the time when the soul and spirit were still united with the original divine spirituality; our spiritual-soul human ancestor was within this. What you call your self today, your most intimate inner being, was at that time, when it had not yet united with your body, was at that time in that divine primordial being within it. Above all, it was in a state that we must describe as being without gender. Spirit and soul have no gender. They acquire gender when they take on a physically formed body, but their innermost being is not gender-related. This soul also underwent development, and every spiritual researcher looks back on this as well, and saw man and woman united in one before the two genders appeared to us in the outside world. The spirit of man, the spirit that was not yet sexual, united both sexes within itself.

Thus we have the one point of the incarnation of man in the sense of the soul, the spirit, entering the physical, appropriately prepared body, and an earlier, equally salient point: the incarnation of the soul, the spiritual man himself, and how from an even earlier spiritual state the asexual, spiritual-soul man emerged from the one original spirituality.

Thus we see the incarnation twice: once above in the spiritual world, once below on the physical plane. This twofold human becoming for our Earth appears to us in the mirror image in the description in the biblical document; we see it truly in that twofold human becoming in biblical history.

First, the human becoming in the spiritual-soul world: the biblical writer says of that time: man came into being as a male-female being. (Genesis 1:27) And then this male-female being, which was of a spiritual and soul nature, came down into the physical world, and there we are dealing with the physical body, which now simultaneously begins to breathe. Thus we see how a twofold form of human incarnation entered into the Bible. We now recognize that if one wanted to describe the truth, then this is how this twofold human incarnation would have to be described.

Now let us consider another case that comes closer to what touches us even more intimately, which introduces us introduces us to the New Testament and familiarizes us with the mystery of Golgotha, with Jesus Christ. You will easily be able to see that another element remains that is still present as a shared humanity that will not be destroyed if close marriage is destroyed. It is true that the love that attaches people to close marriage can only exist through shared blood, but there is a love that is more comprehensive and higher than that of blood. Thus there is something in humanity that is truly common, that exists as a common bond of humanity, even when that bond is severed, a bond that is more comprehensive than the love that is woven through blood relationship. When that human ancestor looked back at the time of the near marriage, it was a generational, tribal self that he designated as I. The boundaries of the tribes stretched further and further; tribes became nations, and the consciousness of the tribes was destroyed, and a common bond, which was no longer so strong, embraced the people, a national consciousness. It was most clearly and distinctly evident in that body of people who are called the Hebrew.

The tendency to expand the national consciousness to include that which holds all humanity together, the force that brings people together beyond the nation state, only came to Earth with the appearance of Christ Jesus. Even today man cannot clearly recognize what lives in all men as a common bond, but a future will come, still far distant from us, in which the consciousness will be so vividly present in a large number of people, the consciousness of brotherhood without blood. And to prepare this consciousness to act as a real power in preparation for this brotherhood, that is the mission of Christianity. If, therefore, the God who was felt in ancient times as the blowing one is also called the one who gave the I, then we must call the God who lives in that consciousness, which is not so dimly , but which will develop to feel and clearly recognize that which is common to all of humanity, we must describe this human consciousness and describe it, when we speak in the Christian sense, as the Christ consciousness. The Christ consciousness denotes, as it were, an I that embraces all of humanity in a common consciousness. There is a sentence: “If anyone does not leave wife and child and mother and brother, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29) This must not be understood in a trivial, ascetic sense. It must be understood in such a way that Christianity paves the way for an all-encompassing human brotherhood, which is not based on blood ties, but on the fact that a person says brother to every human being, not in the everyday sense , but to gain an awareness that is not enclosed and limited within the blood ties, that gradually extends to more and more people in our later life, and is ultimately able to embrace all of humanity. Therefore, if one calls Jehovah the god of the people, then one comes to call Christ Jesus the god of humanity, the god of all humanity, the “Son of Man”. He, the Master, had to prepare the bond of love for all mankind.

If Jehovah is called a national god, then the Christ, who was embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, must be called the Son of Man, as He called Himself. Thus you see the truth of the word “Before Abraham was, I Am” or, better, “I AM” (John 8:58), who has brought the forces of humanity for the first time, which embrace all of humanity, who is able to bring about all of humanity's brotherhood.

How did this great event come about through external real facts, through real events? The Son of Man has been embodied in a human personality. Spiritual science points this out to us again. It points out to us, if we understand it correctly, what is called prophecy, that which underlies all of this. Only the initiate can and can clearly recognize this, but humanity can have a feeling for it, an awareness of it, since the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth.

What is prophecy? Do not believe that what the Christian can know since the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth has only just begun in those times. The one who is a true Christian and does not want to stop at what Christianity, for example, tells its believers today, knows that he is one with what Augustine said. That which is called Christianity today is the religion that has always been called the true religion in ancient times. But not all people have been able to understand this religion since ancient times; in ancient times there were always only a few who were chosen to be initiated into the great mysteries. They became the prophets of a certain time, able to see what must happen in the future. Initiation means: to develop those higher abilities in man that lie dormant in every human being!

And now a law that tells us: That which moves down into the physical world in the future is already present today in the spiritual world, and that which lives today in the spiritual world will one day descend into the physical regions. But because the one who becomes an initiate already ascends today into the spiritual regions, he can perceive in spirit today that which will descend into the physical world in the future. He can see it today from above and now say: This will happen in the future. Initiation is now attained in a certain sequence, only according to the methods prescribed in spiritual science and also in all great religions. There have been such methods of initiation in all times, just as there have been initiates in all times.

There is a tremendous difference in the initiation principle between those ancient pre-Christian times and the post-Christian times. In those pre-Christian times, much less of those methods was written down, but they were passed on through the tradition in those schools, which are called the mystery schools. Those who were recognized as being ready to be accepted into these schools were introduced to them in stages, undergoing severe tests, and were initiated into what what is called a mystery, a thing from which two things developed in the future: the school on the one hand and the church on the other – science and religion.

So you have a rough idea of those ancient wisdom schools where initiates were initiated, but it was prescribed step by step what the one who wanted to be initiated had to do first, and what he then had to go through as a second step, up to the highest step of the spiritual worlds.

You now have an idea of those wisdom schools, in which those entities work that underlie our physical world. There were ancient initiation rites, a canon of initiation in each school of initiation. Those who were deemed suitable to become students of the sacred mystery doctrine were accepted into this school of initiation and went through the stages that led them up into the spiritual worlds. The life of such a person was strictly prescribed. Imagine this life: Once he had been initiated into the mysteries, he had to lead a life in which everyday experiences were of no significance, while what he experienced in terms of the initiation methods was of great importance for the life of such a person.

Those who had reached a certain level of initiation was called a sun man, because his life had to be lived in such a regulated way that he could not stray from his path; just as the sun cannot deviate from its path, so the one who has made it to the level of a sun hero on his path of initiation is just as sure. He shares the truths of the spiritual world from his own experience; he is a leader of humanity.

The myths and legends contain this and tell us again and again about sun heroes, and when they speak of such people, when they agree with each other even among the most diverse peoples, what is described to us is what made him a sun hero. Then such a story seems to us like a repetition of the canon of initiation, and so in those ancient times a principle was formed in relation to the life of the initiate that is just the opposite of the principle of the biographers of today. For those who told something about the lives of the great leaders of humanity in ancient times, it was important to blur what made them appear as special beings, what made them become solar heroes, what they had to go through according to the initiation rite, and what all of them went through in the same way. The goal of this initiation was also to develop in those initiated a living vision of the all-human ego, of the unified consciousness, but the chosen ones only had it.

Only a few people could achieve this. Now, in the course of time, an event was to occur in development that what could be achieved individually in the old days, within the mysteries, could now be achieved by all of humanity in general. And this event was precisely the Mystery of Golgotha. How did that come about? We will understand this if we look into the mysteries: then, when he had experienced all these things at first hand, which one had to experience before that great final moment of initiation, then the time came when he was placed by the initiating priest-hierophant in such a state that he could experience in the clearest clarity of vision that which raised him above his tribe and people, and into what he has in common with all humanity.

You know from other lectures that the human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I and its higher members. During sleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, and during sleep the astral body with the higher limbs of human nature is out. Then, when the etheric body also separates from the physical body, death occurs. That is the spiritual difference between sleep and death. But then, when the person to be initiated had come so far that he could undergo the last stage of initiation, the hierophant, the initiating priest, led him to it, so that for a short time of three and a half days the etheric body could also leave, so that the physical body was in a kind of state of death. The result of this was that someone who had been prepared through the necessary stages could experience everything that was prepared for him in his own vision, and he could experience the higher worlds in real vision. Then, after three and a half days, the one to be initiated was called back to the ordinary physical, and now he was one who could proclaim, from his own experience, the secrets of the higher worlds to those who wanted to hear it. From his lips flowed the word of the spiritual world; he had become a witness that there is a spiritual world, that life in the spirit can conquer death. For he himself was in that world in which one gains the conviction that life will always conquer death. And again and again, the one who had thus traversed the spiritual worlds in three and a half days, again and again the initiate came back when he was awakened, with an exclamation that would be something like in German: “My God, my God, how You have glorified me.”

In ancient times, anyone who wanted to become such a proclaimer of spiritual wisdom from their own experiences had to enter into the mysteries and experience them outside of their physical body. Only in this way could it be done in the ancient, pre-Christian times. This is the world-historical moment of Christianity: that in the one event of Golgotha, everything that the one to be initiated experienced during the three and a half days was drawn into the physical world as a historical fact of physical reality. The Mystery of Initiation has become physically real in the Mystery of Golgotha. The sequence of initiations could be physically experienced in the physical world by the one who had the consciousness of the unity of humanity, the Son of Man. Physically, he could experience what was only possible for people to experience outside of their physical body before his appearance.

Thus, the mystery of initiation, having become physical, shines out to us from the event of Golgotha. So how will those who wanted to describe this mystery present the special events of the life of Christ Jesus? They knew that the one who, as the Son of Man, brought the secrets into the physical world, also had to experience these stages of initiation in the sense of the initiation canon here in the physical world, which the one to be initiated had always experienced outside of his physical body. Thus, the life of this unique being, who appeared only once in the development of humanity, had to be described in such a way that it was, of course, a reflection of the ancient initiation canon.

Now the various forms had been written down, fixed in different ways, in different forms of ritual, of rite, but all leading back to a unified mode of development. This mode of initiation, which also represents the life of Christ Jesus, was one that underlay all mystery schools, and it is only natural that it was applied to the external physical life of Christ Jesus, for this is truly how it happened. They describe to us something which they have taken from the old initiation canon, as they had received it in the mystery schools. Therefore, we find in the Gospels various outwardly seemingly divergent forms of the initiation canon, which appear as the biography of Christ Jesus.

Thus, we see in the Gospels the fixed initiation canon , and in Christ Jesus, whom they describe, we see the only Son of Man who presents that which others could only experience within the mysteries, outside of them in the physical life, in order to make their blessings accessible to all people. The sentence that life conquers death, which the initiate had experienced in the higher worlds, was outwardly manifested by Christ Jesus in the physical world, and is now accessible to all people in the same way.

Spiritual science knows that the gospel is history, extraordinary history, and at the same time a symbol. That is precisely the essential point, that here the symbol has become outer reality, that what had previously only taken place symbolically in the higher worlds, that it has become outer historical truth in the Mystery of Golgotha. Very few people want to understand that historical Christianity is so historical, and that it is also symbolic. Once this is understood, one can penetrate deeply into the spirit and meaning of the New Testament, and then one sees that the spirit and meaning of these documents is so infinitely deep that one can only gradually penetrate into its deepest depths. Let us look at a few more passages in this light. We recognize the three and a half days in the three and a half days, as it is reported (John 11), that Lazarus had already been dead when the Lord resurrected him, and we recognize again in another place those words – for that is how they should actually be translated – that Christ Jesus speaks on the cross at the moment when he arrives at the last act of his life in the physical body: “My God, my God, how hast thou glorified me”, for that is what these words should mean — and not “how hast Thou forsaken me” (Matt. 27,46, cf. Psalm 22,1; Mark 15,34), which is only an inaccurate rendering.

Thus we see that spiritual science, in its turn, becomes acquainted with initiation, experiences that life in the spirit conquers death, that this life, this wisdom, in its turn, makes understandable makes the deep meaning of the New Testament understandable, and so the wisdom-filled deepening of humanity within the theosophical movement will again lead to an appreciation, to a valuation of the biblical documents, of both parts of them.

Precisely because this wisdom will testify to the truth of this testament independently of it, it will have such a significant effect when you rediscover this truth in the Bible.

Thus will the man who penetrates it through theosophical study rediscover the value of this book, which could no longer be appreciated by someone who had lost touch with the spiritual world. And so no other biblical research, criticism, and so on, will be able to bridge the gap between scholars and believers than this spiritual science or and it will bridge this gulf and will bring a wisdom that will understand everything, everything that is expressed in the mighty words of the biblical documents. It will bring the solution to the great riddle of existence that is sought by the intellect and the mind in the Bible. And this will be recognized in the Bible, that it was and is the actual basis for the actual culture of humanity. Thus the Bible will again become a book that will be recognized in its full significance and value, and one will no longer be able to approach it indifferently, but with awe for the great, infinite sources of wisdom that bubble forth in it.

Thus, who is able to penetrate into the spiritual world independently will be filled with ever deeper and deeper awe in the face of this book, and it will become for him in turn a book of proclamation, which must be understood ever deeper and deeper, and a book in which the greatest riddles of man and of the development of humanity find their solution. Thus the Bible will rise higher and higher in value through wisdom, and if this movement succeeds in pointing people to the direct path to knowledge, then this reference will at the same time be something of immense value for the whole religious life of the broadest humanity.

The conquest of wisdom will at the same time be a reconquest of that charter which after all underlies our culture, that is to say, of that which lives as the spirit of our culture.

Then this penetration into wisdom, this conquest of the spiritual worlds through wisdom, will at the same time be the conquest of these valuable sources for wisdom, the conquest of the Biblical charters themselves.

Report in the “Münchner Neueste Nachrichten”, January 1905

Theosophical lectures. The Secretary General of the Theosophical Society in Germany, the writer Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin, gave two theosophical lectures at Café Luitpold.

In the first lecture, he discussed the topic: “Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul.” He began by pointing to Plato's account of the death of Socrates, which offers a treatise on the immortality of the soul, in which the mystical conviction of the soul's immortality based on inner experience and the inner victory over death are clearly expressed. Like Socrates, the mystic feels independent in his true inner life from the apparent meaning of things that surrounds him. In order to recognize this true inner life, the essence that lies behind the phenomenal world, in one's own introspection, to seek the soul, one must, as mysticism teaches, seek to create within oneself that inner silence through contemplation and meditation, through which one can, for a longer or shorter period of time, become deaf and blind to the impressions of the outside world. The world of the spirit must become as real to his inner vision as the world of the senses is to his sensory vision. The mystic must learn to know directly, free of the senses, in contrast to indirect, sense-bound knowledge. When, in this heightened state of consciousness, he experiences the eternal in the conscious and willed elevation above the sensory world, it can be said of him in the traditional language of mysticism that he has crossed the narrow gate of death, in that he has died to the sensory world; for the mystic, death is the highest goal to which they aspire in their quest for higher knowledge. Just as the mystic, by immersing himself in his own soul, is reborn to knowledge free of the senses in the spiritual world, so too will the answer to the question of what birth and death are become clear to him in inner vision. Birth presents itself to the mystic as an externalization of the soul for the purpose of gaining indirect knowledge through the sense world, for indirect contact with it, according to inner urge, desire and longing, for the accumulation of experience through the sense world. Death is the means to liberation, to gradual rebirth in the spiritual world, after the desire has been fulfilled, and to the internalization of the collected experiences in the spiritual state, which is referred to as Devachan by Indian mysticism. The

soul, in that it is enriched by this, is born again into the sense world, and the internalized develops anew out of itself. Involution and evolution constitute the soul's life process. It must continually descend into the world of the senses and ascend into the spiritual world, in eternal becoming and dying – an eternal law to which the great mystic Goethe pointed with the words of the poet: “He who does not have this dying and becoming remains only a passive guest on this earth.”

Report in the “Münchener Neueste Nachrichten,” January 1906

Ch. Th. Theosophy and Art. The well-known theosophical speaker Dr. Rudolf Steiner from Berlin spoke on January 17 and 18 in front of a large audience in the Prinzensaal of Café Luitpold about theosophy and art. In the first lecture, he sought to illuminate the essence of the visual arts, painting, sculpture and architecture from a theosophical point of view. According to the theosophical world view, as he explained in his introduction, the outer material nature is only the expression of the deeper world essence. In the nascent nature, the formation initially takes place inwardly in three stages, occultistically so-called “elemental realms”, from the formless to a world of forms and flowing images, models of the outer world. According to the speaker, the artist's creative process is connected with these realms. In the imaginative state, the artist rises again into nature as it develops, into these higher realms, beholds the images of the world that lie behind the world, and brings them into waking consciousness. He relives the formation of the world. The speaker believes that from his theosophical point of view he should point out that internalization, the spiritual deepening to rediscover the inner spiritual world, the stepping out to self-expansion and devotion to the universe was also the characteristic of the initiation into the mysteries, to which he somewhat strangely associated artistic talents.

The speaker believes he can find a difference in the visual arts in the fact that in painting and sculpture only the higher realm of images and figures is reproduced, while in architecture the formless is newly formed, and in this way it represents a repetition of the construction of the world from the formless natural forces. That is why the idiosyncrasy, the character, is so evident in architecture. Nothing is as closely related to the character of a nation as its architectural style.

Report in the Generalanzeiger of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, November 1906.

Theosophical lectures. Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin gave three theosophical lectures at Café Luitpold. The first dealt with the topic: “How do we understand illness and death?” After a general introduction about the theosophical views of the human being, the relationship between the inner life and spiritual forces and the physical body, their gradual manifestation in the different age groups, the speaker explained how the saying is proved: nature has invented death in order to have much life. In further remarks about illness, the lecturer sought to suggest how, in the process of illness, the life force seeks to overcome the disturbing forces of the outside world, the pathogens, and how the process of illness can serve to make the person more and more immune, to strengthen them against the damaging influences of the environment. The speaker also discussed, from his point of view, the effect of poisons on the body and touched on the field of psychotherapy, pointing out how the developed mind can have a healing effect on the body.

In the second lecture, the speaker sought to clarify the principles of a Theosophical education for children, following on from his remarks on the development of the human being. The first seven years of life should naturally be devoted to the development of the physical body, and in particular, one should seek to influence the senses of the child in this age period. The educator should try to take into account the particularly strongly developed imitative instinct of the child. From the age of seven until the onset of puberty, on the other hand, the educator must act authoritatively in order to strengthen the child's character, to build up a solid foundation of good habits in him, to incorporate into his memory a sum of ideas that he will need in life. It is only after the development of the power of judgment in the subsequent period of life that one can dispense with authoritative guidance and work towards the young person's self-determination.

In the third lecture, the speaker discussed the topic: “Blood is a very special juice” (Faust). He believed that this passage should be interpreted as meaning that Goethe really wanted to point out the importance of blood for the human organism and its relationship to the surrounding forces of the outside world, to the old view that with influence over a person's blood, a certain power over the person himself and his inner life was bestowed. Furthermore, he tried to explain how cultural issues are related to blood issues in issues of blood mixing. The lecture, which was received with approval, was followed by a lengthy discussion.

[Dear attendees:] During their beautiful friendship, so significant for the newer intellectual life, Goethe and Schiller exchanged the works they were working on during the time of their friendship, and when Schiller received some parts of the “Wilhelm Meister” from Goethe, he wrote him strange, one might say, at first, peculiar words. Overwhelmed by the impression of the chapter he received at the time, he wrote:

The poet is the only true human being, and the best
philosopher is only a caricature compared to him.

These words may seem strange, but they will no longer seem so strange once we have delved a little into Schiller's soul and examined how he actually meant this saying. We will gain insight by comparing these words with the content of that famous letter that Schiller wrote to Goethe shortly after the two had formed their friendship, the letter that I have mentioned many times before. There Schiller wrote:

For a long time now, [although from a considerable distance, I have observed the course of your mind and noted the path you have mapped out with ever-renewed admiration. ...]

And now he is spreading it across the way in which Goethe views the world. He says that Goethe directs his gaze freely and openly and objectively over the things of the world and that he tries to gain an insight not by speculative means, but by seeking what is necessary in the totality of the world's phenomena. A “heroic” undertaking, as Schiller calls it. And then he explains in his own way why he finds this undertaking so heroic, and then he says: All your powers, your powers of mind, work together harmoniously and ultimately align themselves with the unifier of all powers of mind in your soul, with imagination.

So we see from this that Schiller sees something in Goethe's way of looking at the world, and indeed in the soul activity of Goethe, from which his artistic works have flowed, that it can lead people very deeply into the secrets of existence. Schiller therefore sees something special in the way Goethe developed his imagination, his fantasy, and if one examines what thoughts and opinions were actually exchanged between Goethe and Schiller, one finds that Schiller absorbed a meaningful concept of fantasy in the contemplation of the highest spiritual, and that is what one could call the “inner truth of fantasy”.

Schiller strove, and this can be seen again from his letters, to recognize how man, through development, can become a complete human being. In every human nature, he saw a higher human being, a representative human being, whom the ordinary everyday human being must increasingly approach. In Goethe's way of letting the powers of the mind work together in the imagination, of letting the imagination radiate what assigns each other soul power its place — in this kind of soul activity Schiller found something that makes man a complete human being, that best brings him to unite with the very foundations of the world from which man and things have flowed.

When we hear our great minds talk about imagination, it looks a little different than when, not only in everyday life, but also in many circles close to or even devoted to science today, imagination is talked about. Today, imagination is contrasted with the objective pursuit of truth as if it were directly opposed to the mental faculties that lead to the investigation of truth, as if it only served to combine things in an arbitrary way. If we can bring ourselves to understand Goethe and are convinced that Goethe was an expert in these matters, then perhaps a Goethean saying will be enlightening for us:

Man strives to fathom the secrets of nature and longs for its most worthy interpreter, art.

Yes, Goethe addresses the beautiful, that is, the creations of the imagination, the content of artistic creation, in such a way that he says: art, the beautiful, and thus the children of the imagination, are a manifestation of secret laws of nature that could never be fathomed without their activity.

Now, however, we have to agree with common sense, which describes imagination as a capacity for association that works according to the desires of the soul, that is, out of pleasure and other impulses that have nothing to do with objective knowledge. We have to admit that imagination often leads people away from the truth. Where would it lead us if we were to admit that imagination plays a role in external scientific research? Admittedly, no one will deny that imagination may play a preliminary role in scientific research. Those who are able to work with combining imagination are able to recognize hidden connections that others do not see, who work in the laboratory or in the physics cabinet and structure experience upon experience. But of course it must be fully admitted that for certain areas of research, of life, it is absolutely necessary that when someone makes such combinations through their imagination, they prove what they have combined in strict external evidence through experience. Thus imagination can be a guide to this or that connection, but it must be verified by the means of external, objective research; we are willing to concede that.

Nevertheless, a word such as Goethe's – or a position on the matter such as Schiller's – indicates that Goethe sees something in the works of imagination, in the creative activity of imagination, that also contains a truth, in contrast to the arbitrary, unfettered play that we might better call a fantastic play of ideas. But anyone who speaks of fantasy in such a way that it contains something of truth, you will readily admit, cannot speak of being forced by the external world to recognize this truth.

When we string fact after fact and seek to fathom the laws, then the results of our observations force us to our judgment. When we let our imagination speak, then there is no such external compulsion. That which underlies imagination, that which imagination brings forth, would therefore be something that, as truth, permeates imagination. Accordingly, an inner lawfulness would have to prevail in such a way that certain thoughts, brought together by imagination, appear before a higher forum as real, that certain conclusions of imagination, through an inner necessity, present an expression of truth.

Therefore, if creative imaginative activity is to have true justification, there must be something at work that acts as an inner guide to direct a person in their imaginative work, that does not allow him to fertilize his thoughts at random, according to his desires and pleasures, but rather what guides him to stringing thought to thought with a sure inner direction and thereby obtains something that is, in a certain sense, an expression of truth.

When we hear a true and great poet speak of imagination as a means of unraveling inner truths, then it is certainly permissible to measure this creative soul activity, this imagination, against that soul activity, that soul capacity, which, in the sense of spiritual science or theosophy, is suitable for leading into the foundations of existence.

Over the years, we have spoken at length about this spiritual world that underlies the material world. The methods that lead to the results we have so often discussed are – as terrible as the word may sound to some modern people – the so-called clairvoyant methods. Spiritual science offers information about facts and beings of the spiritual world, and these facts and beings are found through clairvoyance. It will not be my task here to discuss certain lower forms of clairvoyance – they can only be touched on – because these lower forms can never lead to any real results of spiritual science. On the other hand, it will be my task, in accordance with the time allotted to us, to discuss the method and scope of so-called higher clairvoyance, that is, clairvoyance achieved through genuine, truly appropriate training.

Many people today only know clairvoyance in the form of so-called lower clairvoyance, where it occurs to us as an accidental gift or disease, in somnambulism and other forms. There are conditions in human nature through which a person does not relate to his environment in the usual way, but in which he has filled his soul life, we might say, with images from another world. For the outside world, the somnambulist is in a kind of sleep. This sleep may be present to such a slight degree that the layman will always reply: Yes, he is indeed completely awake, he just sees differently than the ordinary person in his waking state. And such a person who sees differently is called a clairvoyant. When he perceives images in this more or less sleep-like state, these images sometimes form strange content, sometimes quite meaningful content. He can communicate these images and amaze those around him with the things he sees. In this somnambulistic state, he himself knows certain things through prediction, which then come true despite all objections. Such a person, who has tuned down his external daytime consciousness, can make statements about certain conditions that lie ahead of him, which appear astonishing. Such a patient can indicate exactly what can help him and how he is to be treated. In such states, the human soul does indeed penetrate through the shell of the external sense world and has another world before it. This cannot be denied, and anyone who denies it has simply not done any research in this field.

But all these forms are not what really interest us. That which is gained through such lower clairvoyance cannot be the subject of the spiritual science we are talking about here. The subject of this spiritual science is only that which is gained through the path of trained clairvoyance, the clairvoyance that man has acquired through the fully conscious application of the methods given to him by the corresponding schools. The aspiring clairvoyant performs each step with strict self-control, in complete awareness, just as other people behave in relation to the external world that they perceive with their senses. The only question now is this: how do we visualize the process of becoming such a clairvoyant?

If we want to define its nature, we can say: In terms of scientific methodology, it can be compared to what we call external research in the modern sense of the word. The researcher makes use of all kinds of instruments and tools to explore what is within the sensory world. He invents scientific methods by which he can systematically see things in such a way that they reveal their secrets to him, so to speak. Thus the scientific researcher surrounds himself with instruments, he equips himself with methods that enable him to arrange things in such a way that they tell him something. The spiritual researcher also works with his instrument, with a very complicated one at that, and he cannot explore anything without this instrument. What is this instrument?

It is himself. But he is not himself in the state in which the soul is in everyday life. Man only becomes this instrument when he has so transformed his entire capacity for knowledge, his soul constitution, through the methods that can be given to him, that he has acquired other, indeed now spiritual organs. He must have experienced the moment when he can say from his own experience: Now, every reasonable person says to himself, it cannot be that what surrounds us is exhausted by the tools of our five senses, because if someone does not have one of these senses, he lacks the possibility to see with seeing eyes, so the world of light is not there [for him]. It is there when the organ is there. With each new organ, a new content of the external world presents itself, so we must not limit reality. There must therefore be or be able to be hidden, invisible supersensible worlds around us, and insofar as one expresses this in this cautious way, 'they can be there', logically there is no objection to it.

Someone who becomes clairvoyant in the sense just described reeducates themselves in such a way that this hidden world becomes as perceptible to them as the world of light and color is to ordinary eyes. And just as a new world, the world of light and color, opens up for the one born blind, so a new world streams in from the surroundings of the thus awakened clairvoyant, which then becomes their world of observation. But one must not believe that this is achieved by any means that could be described as superstitious or prejudiced. It is accomplished by a strict transformation of the human cognitive faculty into an instrument of higher perception. Of course, I can only hint in general terms at how this happens. But we also want to go to such, so to speak, higher chapters, also in public lectures, and at least sketch out how research is done.

Man, when he perceives the surrounding world, will be most true to that surrounding world if he lets it tell him what it has to say to him, as far as possible without the interference of arbitrariness. Therefore, we see that the scientist is rightly endeavoring, and carefully endeavoring, to ensure that nothing of subjective arbitrariness of any kind is mixed into what he strives for as a result, that everything is dictated by the things themselves, that man, through his methods, only gives nature the opportunity to express itself. The less arbitrariness we apply in doing so, the better it is. But man cannot help reflecting on the things of the external world, and a little consideration will show you that you gain your perception, your sense impressions, from the external world, from observation; that you let the individual things of external life flow in; but you will also understand that what is called the concept does not flow into us from the external world. Even an external fact can provide you with the proof that, where man investigates the external world, he actually brings the concepts from his inner being; and modern thinking in particular will have to admit this. If this thinking looks back a few millennia and considers the concepts about the structure of our solar system, it must say to itself: When the eye looked up, external perception saw the same as Copernicus and Galileo saw; but the laws that govern it, the concepts and ideas about the structure of the world, have only been acquired over time. How did Copernicus, for example, come to his view of the starry sky? By combining the same observational material that his ancestors had in a different way, by applying the mind, the world of concepts that ruled in him, in a different way than his ancestors. Through what he added to the observation, he saw the essential for our century.

We could show this for all fields. The most orthodox Darwinian must admit: people looked at the facts of the world before Haeckel, too. That they came to their theory does not depend on Haeckel experiencing the environment in a different way, but on his approaching things in a different way. So it is essential what the person brings to it.

And there is another example that shows how concepts and ideas are not something that flows into the human being from the outside, but something that he himself must bring into the world. Try to think about it when you go out to sea to a point where you only have sea, sea, on which the vault of heaven seems to rest all around you. You will then say to yourself: the vault of heaven seems to rest on the surface of the sea in the form of a circle; but you will not understand the circle through such observations. You will only understand it when you disregard the external observation and are able to construct the circle in your own mind, independently of the observation, when you are able to draw the picture mentally, in which all points are the same distance from the center. To have this image in your mind, to understand the [circle], you do not need chalk, no external observation. You can construct it in your mind and realize all the laws in your mind. And when you step out into reality and see arrangements that are in a circle, then it must correspond to what you have thought up in your study as the laws of the circle. The great Kepler would never have been able to discover the laws governing the movement of the planets if the orbit of the planets had not first appeared to him in his mind and he had then realized that when he looked out, the stars moved in the lines that he had first constructed in his mind.

Thus we carry the world of concepts and ideas within us in the higher sense of the word. We bring them to the external things, and these tell us: What you have thought, we carry out. The star says, as it were: You have conceived a line in your soul; but I move in the sense of this line. And so you come to realize that what lives in your soul, without you taking in an external sensory observation, that this underlies the spiritual basis and laws of this sensory world; but you have to get the confirmation from this sensory world. You can only make a statement about this sensory world when it offers you phenomena that correspond to what you have thought.

Now imagine that a person — and in this case I am indeed quoting the simplest things from the so-called school of esoteric science — tries to hold on to a thought that is constructed in his own soul, such as a circle, without going out into the world of observation with the image in his soul. If a person can now manage to refrain from all external observation for a while and is able to hold the attention to such an inner image, if he makes himself blind and deaf to his surroundings and remains attached to such an image, if he concentrates his soul on this image, then he is practising the first elementary activity on the way to clairvoyance – that which is called concentration.

Everything assumes that the human soul initially clings to something that lives within itself alone, for which it is initially unimportant whether or not there is something external to which it corresponds. What matters is the activity of the soul, to hold fast in strict inner direction such activity that is directed towards a soul image. That is what matters. Now, of course, a single such activity is not enough; it must be repeated often; and even if it is repeated over and over again, what is actually effective is not what the person can gain in terms of mental images, when he is actually still completely dependent on the stimulation of the external sense world.

There are thousands of years of experience in relation to clairvoyance, experiences of people who know and give their advice to develop inner soul forces. Above all, I just want to point out that there are certain truths, core statements. One need not be convinced of the truth of such sentences, which in a certain sense are the possessions of researchers in this field. Suppose someone says: I cannot be convinced from the outset of the truth of such sentences, which perhaps relate to an eternal. That is not necessary; that is not the beginning. The greater the impartiality, the better. When the teacher gives the student something and says, “Fill your soul so that during the time it lives in your soul, you perceive nothing around you and give yourself entirely to this soul content,” then you do not need to believe in this soul content. The teacher can even say, “Don't believe in it, but let it work in you.” That is what matters. Focus on that and you will see that such a resting of the soul on that content has an effect. Not that you gain a conviction, but that this content works in your soul, that is what matters. — If someone says that the teacher gives his student something that is not true at all, it can be calmly retorted: It may be that it is not true, that the external truth is not applicable to such a sentence; but that is not the point, but rather that it becomes a working force in the soul, that out of the soul comes forth what was hidden and of which the soul was not previously aware. One will see that with constant repetition of such instruction one can have inner experiences.

Certain symbols and symbolic representations are particularly effective for bringing hidden soul abilities to the fore. And a symbolum will be used to characterize how something like this actually works. I would like to speak of the symbolum that I have often referred to, the black cross surrounded by red roses. Let us first consider the abstract meaning, which is not of great importance for the training of clairvoyance. It will be best if we recall Goethe's words:

He who does not have
this dying and becoming,
is only a gloomy guest
on this dark earth.

Die and become – what does that mean? It means nothing other than that in the development of our soul we must rise above the things of our sensory world, that these things must first disappear around us, so to speak, so that we find ourselves in a state in which we are unconscious of the sensory world, which can be compared to the process of battle and death. The sensory world must first die. But whoever remains without content, whose soul remains empty when the content dies, is a dull guest. This is more or less what Goethe means: when you succeed in diverting your attention from all external things, when you are certain that nothing from the external world is flowing in, when you can then draw something out of the hidden depths of your soul that fills the field of vision of your soul, that is different from the external, then you have risen anew in another world, then you have “become”. Die and become – the dying of the lower nature, of outer sense perception, is characterized by the black cross. The dawning of a new world out of this death of the sense world is characterized by the red roses on the cross. And if we then interpret this rose cross in a comprehensive cosmic sense, we must say: in the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom, in what is called unconscious nature, there is a spiritual element. This underlies everything. The human being directs his gaze to his environment, he perceives it. To those who have an inkling of the spiritual, this environment appears only as an external expression of the underlying spiritual. They say to themselves: The whole unconscious nature is based on a divine-spiritual; but it is as if it were in a grave, it is as if it were dead. The human soul is like steel on flint; when it strikes it in recognition, what lies hidden within it shines forth. In the human soul, divine spiritual content arises; it comes to life. Thus, the spirit must first pass through the death of the unconscious world in order to come to new life.

And I could tell of all possible areas of spiritual life. I could cite what could serve as a first intellectual explanation of this symbol. But that is not the point at all. The only point is that we do not entertain the thought that it was invented arbitrarily. For the budding clairvoyant, it is not a matter of what it might mean. Someone might say: Well, you may talk about the Rose Cross all you like, but to the objective researcher it makes no difference, because he gains nothing about the secrets of nature by imagining a black cross; that tells him nothing. When we carry out experiments with the falling-body machine or other apparatus, we discover a law. This, expressed in words, means something to us; it corresponds to an objective truth; a rose cross means nothing to me. That is how the person concerned can say. He who has undergone clairvoyant training may reply: That does not matter, it is not the point. The images in question are not meant to depict anything in external reality, so they are most effective when they are symbols that are open to multiple interpretations. What matters is not that one wants to express in such a symbolum the things of the outer world as they are, but that one forms such a symbolum in purely inner soul activity, initially in dependence on the outer expressions, that one contemplates such a symbolum in the soul in a way that is as concentrated as possible and excludes outer things. What this symbolum brings about in the soul is what matters.

When a person allows something like this symbol to live in his soul with ever-increasing inner concentration – and many other things as well – then these are the means to awaken the forces slumbering within him. Something very special happens to the person. He can experience – and these are real experiences – that the proofs, the real guarantees of this matter arise within him. In the end, the human being will experience the following feelings, which I ask you to observe carefully. He will say to himself: What I imagined was really only a kind of bridge; this rose cross is a bridge. Now I have received something that is not connected with it, to which the rose cross has only helped me, which rises in my soul and which is first of all an experience that cannot be obtained through external stimulation. At first, the student does not know whether what is arising within him is a bubble, a mirage, a fantastic construct, or whether it corresponds to some kind of reality. He does not know, but what matters is that he acquires the ability to experience and see such things within himself. For even that is still a detour for higher clairvoyance. What occurs at first are images.

But now, when the student continues to do such exercises, a further feeling arises for him that can be proven by nothing more than by the experience, the feeling that tells him: It now also does not depend on the images, but on what is expressed in these images. And now he knows that it is with these images, which he experiences in his innermost being, something like this: If you press on your eye or let an electric current pass through it, then any light impulse can pass through the eye, a light can shine within you. In this case, you have a light impression that is caused by the constitution of the eye. It is the same when the images first appear, which are evoked by following the appropriate advice. Then, like spiritual flashes, things flash through the soul that are indeed new, but they really appear the same as the light that you generate in the eye through a blow or an electric current. But you know very well when you are confronted with an external object that although the nature of the eye enables you to perceive light, you can say to yourself through experience, through a certainty gained in the experience: that which has been evoked only by my eyes is nothing, the real thing is the object. I stand facing the object, it communicates itself to me through my eye as an object.

This moment occurs for the clairvoyant person. These images ultimately become a means by which a new reality is expressed. Just as surely as the person who faces an external object with his eye knows that the object is expressing itself, so the clairvoyant knows that although it depends on his nature whether such images arise, he also knows quite precisely: in the way these images are now experienced by him, objective entities and facts of the spiritual world are expressed.

This can only be attained through strict inner schooling in a completely natural way. Just as one can distinguish fantasy from reality in outer experiences, so it is necessary for the pupil to maintain a sound judgment and a sound mind in this area, for here it is much easier to mistake illusion for reality than in outer life. Therefore, in such schooling for real higher clairvoyance, something else must go along with it.

If the student were to allow only what has been described to approach him, then he would be exposed to the danger of becoming a madman in a sense, and that is because in this realm of changing images of the higher spiritual life, he can conjure up appearances for reality through his subjective feelings, through his personality. This training must go hand in hand with the fact that the person, through certain instructions given to him, learns to renounce everything in this higher spiritual world that is connected with his desires, that is connected with his personality.

Here we come to a chapter where it is very difficult to be understood. For what do all contemporary psychologists say? They are not familiar with what has just been described and what is experienced as reality by hundreds. They therefore say: When a person is confronted with the external world, the sensory world corrects him by giving him realities; but when a person abandons himself to his inner activity, then, of course, feeling and subjective inclination are involved, and then feeling is transformed into such images; this can never claim to be objective. In the area where these gentlemen think they are right, they are right, because they have no concept of what must take place in terms of the actual eradication and obliteration of subjectivity, subjective opinions and inclinations. These must be completely eliminated. One must learn to renounce any preference or sympathy.

There are again very special exercises for this, so that what our popular psychologists rightly describe for ordinary human life does not occur, namely, that the arbitrary interferes. Man must have thrown out everything that could conjure up appearance for him as reality. But then he can keep the objective spiritual in its true form.

Something else needs to be said. Where clairvoyance is prepared in this way of training, where expertise prevails in this field and not dilettantism — the latter of which is terribly rife in the world — great importance is attached to not starting the path without certain prerequisites. For there is a great difference between setting out on this difficult path as an ignorant person, equipped only with the ordinary concepts of the world, and setting out after having absorbed higher concepts about certain secrets of existence, which can be explored and tested. There is a great difference whether one advances in this or that way. One can also go through this path with a small amount of outer experience. But then the soul's content is poor, and everything that can be seen is compressed into a few images. And then the incorrectly trained clairvoyants come into being, whom you will find again and again, who present in their writings: Now I have come so far that I have united with God through concentration, through the expression of my soul; and then they express God as a diamond illuminated by light or something like that. This is a mistaken idea, an idea that is basically no different from the usual description of an external thing of the senses, except that the person concerned calls it God.

When such “clairvoyants” repeatedly discuss their higher world and express all the glories of the higher world through nothing but such trivial descriptions, it is because they have not approached this training properly prepared. But when someone approaches these things with a proven teacher, then what he achieves, what flows into the images he has prepared, is a diverse world view, and everything that the surrounding external nature can offer people, with all its beauties and glories and secrets, is only a small part of the whole world that surrounds them. Much more magnificent and glorious is that which lies as the unknown world behind the known and which shines forth as the primal source of all that is visible. But it is also the case that the person who experiences this knows that he is not deceiving himself, that he is not, for example, projecting external impressions into this realm; he knows full well that what he experiences there, he can never experience in the external sense world.

This is the path of calm development by which man comes to truly see into the spiritual worlds. This is trained clairvoyance.

Now, what objectively happens to a person when he applies such methods? We remember that for spiritual science, the human being is not limited to what the senses can perceive, but that this external, this physical body, is merely one part of the whole human nature. For spiritual science, this physical body is permeated by supersensible parts, first of all by the etheric body, and the astral body is incorporated into the physical and etheric bodies. In the astral body we have the carrier of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, of drives, instincts, desires, of all inner experiences. Integrated into this is the fourth link of the human being, the carrier of self-awareness.

What sleep actually is in the sense of spiritual science has already been characterized here before you. What happens then when, in the evening, for the human being's subjective perception, all the impressions of the day sink down into the sea of forgetting, when, so to speak, forgetting or unconsciousness spreads around the person? What has happened to this person? The physical body and ether body remain in bed; but the astral body, together with the ego, has moved out and now acts on the physical and ether bodies from the outside. Our inner worlds sink into oblivion because the astral body does not make use of the external sense organs during the night. In the morning, the astral body with the ego then descends again into the physical and etheric bodies; it makes use of the senses again, and the world of the senses emerges for the human consciousness. How can a person perceive the external world of the senses? Because he has eyes and ears and the other sense organs. If these organs did not exist, the environment would be silent and lightless for the human being. When the astral body is externalized at night, it is also in a world, a spiritual world. But it has no organs to perceive it. In its fine substantiality, it has no organs like those that the human being has today in the coarse physical substance. Only through organs can a world around the human being be perceived. If the astral body had organs, then it would be able to perceive its environment just as well when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies as it can perceive what surrounds a person in the physical world with the help of the physical senses.

Now the question is: if a person is to perceive the spiritual world, then his astral body must be given organs, spiritual ears and spiritual eyes. How does this happen? This happens through the methods that have been mentioned, through concentration, through living in certain ideas and images. When such a person's astral body goes out at night, this astral body is quite different. This is known by those who have attained clairvoyant consciousness. It is as if you were to imagine that in the physical body the organs begin to differentiate and perceive the environment. What was a disorderly mass is divided into organs. It takes a long time for the organs to form in the astral body, until what was once like an undifferentiated mist begins to emerge in beautifully formed organs. But then what was possible for man before, to have these images in his soul, which were characterized earlier, occurs. This world of images arises from the fact that the human being integrates such organs.

Since ancient times, the process that occurs for the human being has been called purification, cleansing, catharsis, for the reason that the human being thereby learns not only to sense the spiritual world through the veil of external sensuality but because he then looks into this spiritual world in such a way that his vision is purified from the outer sensual world, that the outer sensual world is blurred and yet unconsciousness does not occur. Catharsis, purification, cleansing has always been correctly described as the first stage of trained clairvoyance.

Then a later stage occurs for the clairvoyant. At first, when the person returns to the physical and etheric body in the morning, the external organs are working again and have more power. He cannot, so to speak, handle the internal, still fine and mobile organs; the external impression of the eye and ear drowns out what the internal astral organs can see. It is always present, because the spiritual world is within the sense world — but as long as the human being still has these organs weakly developed, as long as they are only in the astral body, they are drowned out by the sensory organs and the powers of the etheric body. By working diligently in this way, the human being develops organs so strong and capable of being controlled internally that when he enters his physical and etheric bodies in the morning, he can see through these organs not only sensory perceptions but also the spiritual. At that moment, the person has attained what has always been called enlightenment or photism within the schools that work in this field.

These are all very real processes that can be experienced, and they do not arise from something happening to the person that is beyond his control. Step by step, the person applies the methods used in the corresponding schools to transform himself into the instrument through which he can perceive the spiritual world. What is it that enables a person to become clairvoyant? It is the organization of his inner invisible being, the transformation of the chaotic structure of this inner being, which otherwise only has an experience when the outer world is affected, into an organization that is just as regular as the outer physical body has become through outer nature.

Exactly the same path of development that nature has taken with man, to transform him from a lower stage to today's being with perfect organs, the same path of development is taken up by man himself, is continued by him. Where nature leaves man, he himself continues to work. Whoever reflects on this will not find the slightest illogicality in the fact that the one who sets out on the path can have real experiences.

When man gains insight into the spiritual worlds in this way, he owes it to the fact that he has made his inner man so strong that he is an independent being in relation to the external organs. Man has become his own master. This is a principle that is expressed in all such schools as an abstract characteristic of this matter. If man has come to this stage, he owes it first of all to the control over his etheric body. In the undeveloped human being, the life body is, so to speak, somewhat inelastic, following only the forces of nature. In the clairvoyant, it is something that the astral body adapts to its forms. It has become elastic because the stronger power is at work in it.

If we now touch on the kind of clairvoyance that is evoked by lower states, which we generally characterize – and this is of course speaking in a laymanly way – as human states of weakness, then we have to say: this comes from something quite different and can never be controlled, but it is based on the same laws. Whenever a person becomes somnambulant of their own accord, or when a person is influenced by unlawful means, or when a person is going through this or that illness, it may happen that their etheric body is dissolved in the physical body, so that the compact connection between the physical body and the etheric body does not exist, as it does in the normal state. This can actually happen as a result of disease processes, and basically most of what is seen in the field of low-level clairvoyance can be traced back to pathological conditions. Then the person has an etheric body that is not so firmly bound. While in the trained clairvoyant the loosening occurs because the astral body strengthens and gains control of the etheric body, in the case of low-level clairvoyance it occurs because an organ becomes diseased. Through the illness, it is released from the etheric body to a certain extent; the etheric body becomes free for such people.

As long as the physical brain is still in a normal, intimate connection with the etheric, the astral body cannot do anything with the etheric; the physical brain holds the etheric body. If an abnormality occurs, a larger or smaller piece of the etheric body will separate from the physical body; it can be handled more easily, and it is handled by the astral body so that a kind of natural enlightenment occurs, but which in its content cannot offer any higher world, cannot lead to higher results, because all control, all certainty, all conscious pursuit of things is excluded. People who have become clairvoyant in this way can, because their condition is based on the same principle as that of the trained clairvoyant, namely, on the control of the etheric body by the astral body, can have unordered insights into the higher worlds; what they relate may be fact, but a real result of spiritual science can never arise from it. What has been said here is not a denial of the reality of what such people see, but an alerting to the fact that the strict results of spiritual science can only be achieved through the path of trained clairvoyance.

I would just like to touch on one possible objection. Someone might say: So lower clairvoyance is always based on pathological conditions; how can a disease process produce real insight? — That is a shortsighted view. Health and insight do not go hand in hand. A person can become ill, and precisely through this process of illness the supersensible world can be opened up for influences from the higher world; there is nothing contradictory about this. Nor does it imply that a person should be made ill in order to become clairvoyant.

Thus we see what it is that brings the facts and beings of a higher world into the field of consciousness in the same way that the world around us is brought into this consciousness through sensory observation. It is exactly the same thing, only in a different field of vision. And just as we perceive plants and minerals in the world of the senses, so in the spiritual world we have around us that which makes this world of the senses explicable to us in the first place, because it has emerged from the spiritual world. And when the clairvoyant makes statements about what he has seen, he does so in order to tell. He does not want to prove anything, he wants to tell what he experiences by applying strict methods to his own soul development. And by telling, he imparts a world that can be logically understood, that can be grasped by the ordinary mind.

If we express the experiences of the clairvoyant in a different way, we have to say: our inner world, our soul world, is determined in ordinary life by what is going on outside. That I, for example, imagine a green stem with leaves on it, that I assert this image, comes from the fact that I am organized in a certain way. The rose out there determines me, its forces stream into me, by conveying to me the idea of its outer being.

It is the same in the spiritual realm. These spiritual entities reveal themselves to the developed person, they are reflected in his inner soul life, just as external sense perceptions are reflected in ordinary thinking. Thus the clairvoyant experiences the spiritual external world in his soul life and says to himself: When I look at the sense world, I know that this sense world is created, ordered and determined by the beings whose activity and rule is revealed to me when I direct my clairvoyant gaze to the sense world. He says to himself: The fact that the sensory world appears to me in an organized way is because it has been shaped by the beings I see. The flower before me, a crystal, a mountain range, it is all worked out of the spirit. I see the spiritual foundations. I would see nothing of them if I left it to my own discretion. I must, so to speak, sacrifice my soul life and let the world of the higher spiritual self flow into my soul; it must have an effect on me, it is the determining factor.

And now imagine something: Imagine that this world is there, that it is at work, that it is always at work on people, even if not on their consciousness. Imagine that a person is standing in the world; around him is the world that the clairvoyant sees; it has an effect on every person. On the merely sensual observer it has an effect in that it presents an external face; on the clairvoyant it has an effect in such a way that he does not see this spiritual world at first, but that it works as a determining force, that he cannot look up to a world of spiritual forces, but that the forces of these entities flow to him in an unconscious way. He does not see them, but they send forces, order his life of ideas, determine what his soul experiences. A person sees another person; if he saw nothing more, he would only receive a picture of the external world. Now the spiritual world works by sending him its forces. Now he is not satisfied with the ideas of the external, sensual world. He is transforming himself, in order to gradually make himself into the sublime image that the Greeks, for example, represented in the statue of Zeus. The same power and essence that the clairvoyant sees works, as it were, on the person endowed with true imagination, so that it stands by his side, guiding and leading him, combining the images.

And so imagination works like a soul force that is fertilized by the worlds into which the clairvoyant looks, a soul force into which the higher worlds send their laws, so that the person gifted with imagination transforms the external things so that the truths of the spiritual worlds live in them. There we have the real basis of imagination, and there we understand that Schiller could say of Goethe, how with him understanding and reason and feeling and all the soul powers work together harmoniously and are fertilized by imagination. We understand that he could say: What is created in this way characterizes the human being as the only true human being, because he does not work only through a single soul power, but takes everything together, and everything works towards the imagination — which does not have to agree with external truth —, towards the imagination. And so we can also understand that Goethe can be the view: There is a form of imagination that does not need to agree with external truth, but which has its own certainty. We have seen this. There is a form of imagination that does not yet lead to clairvoyance, but which is fertilized by the forces that the clairvoyant sees. It is understandable that Schiller finds all other human activities one-sided, but in the contemplation of Goethe it dawns on him: the artist who takes the individual soul forces together in order to allow the spiritual worlds to fertilize what he receives as an external new formation in the sense world; such an artist is the only true human being.

Of course, Schiller knew nothing of spiritual science, but he sensed what it was about. Likewise, what Goethe says about imagination is absolutely right. It is true when Goethe says that genuine art, that is, art that creates out of imagination, is the revelation of secret laws of nature that could never be discovered without imagination. While external observation may provide us with purely external sensory facts and truths, inner truth is something that the imagination, fertilized from above, is much closer to than the powers of reason.

And so we see how things are distributed in the world, so to speak. Man is predisposed to ascend into the higher worlds. The higher abilities lie dormant in every soul. Those who have the patience and endurance — perhaps through many lives — may hope to glimpse into the worlds that make the outer sense world understandable in the first place. But until then, until man achieves this, something is given him as a forerunner, a representative for insight into the higher worlds. He can allow himself to be inspired by these higher worlds and then, in the work of the artist, for example, transform the external world in such a way that it offers a reflection of the spiritual worlds.

And so, in art, we do not merely see the world of the senses as nature creates the world of the senses, but in great works of art we see the Creator Himself, Who has passed through the medium of the human spirit and human imagination. We see in the surroundings of the work of art an external reflection of that which, although not an immediate sensory reality, is an expression of spiritual worlds, insofar as spiritual worlds can find expression through the sensual-material. And so we see that in the spiritual life of humanity, imagination lights the way to the great goal of clairvoyance, of looking into the spiritual worlds. Individual people have already achieved this goal by using the means mentioned. This spiritual world appears to us as the ruler of all lower existence and clairvoyance as that through which the human being gains a share in the spiritual world; it calls the human being up into the spheres of a higher world. And imagination is the representative of clairvoyance in the world of the senses, so that a person can already have a reflection of the spiritual world, for example through art. And the deeper we look into this context, the more we recognize: Clairvoyance is the ruler of the human mind in the broadest sense of world knowledge and understanding; and imagination is the deputy of clairvoyance within the sensual world.

Report in the “Allgemeine Zeitung München” of May 3, 1904

Goethe as a theosophist. On April 22, the well-known Goethe scholar and philosophical writer Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin, formerly an official at the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar, gave a long lecture in the large hall of the Wittelsbacher Garden on the subject of “Goethe as a theosophist,” which writer Ludwig Deinhard introduced with a short speech. The latter referred, among other things, to the earlier works of Dr. Rafael v. Köber and Prof. Seiling on Goethe's position on the question of immortality and on occultism. Dr. Rud. Steiner first stated that in his lecture he would like to limit himself solely to Goethe's relationship to Theosophy, without pursuing his position on occultism. He then discussed the basic idea of Theosophy, “the divine striving of man to develop”, which can be recognized as the core essence of the various religions and has found expression in Goethe's works as well as in the writings of other leading figures in world history. Goethe, in his spiritual depth a mystery to his contemporaries, knew much, very much indeed, to say about the divine, mystical, ideal human being in the depths of the human essence. He had sought and seen the divine in nature, in the beauty of art, in the laws of the macrocosm and the microcosm, in man. To illuminate Goethe's theosophical ideas, the speaker referred in particular to the lesser-known enigmatic fairy tale 'The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily'. The speaker sought to interpret this 'secret revelation' of the poet in a meaningful way. The will-o'-the-wisp, the souls trapped in the world of the senses, can only return to the land of the spirit by sacrificing the snake, the symbol of the higher self sacrificing itself for others. Only through sacrifice can the bridge to the land of the spirit, of higher knowledge, be built. In this realm, the youth, representing the human race, receives the lily, the symbol (taken from the alchemists) of a “higher spiritual development”. Furthermore, the speaker sought to trace Goethe's theosophical views in the second part of Faust as well. He discussed, among other things, the meaning of the ideas of the gradually revealing soul being, the homunculus, the descent to the mothers, the idea of karma in the life and work of Faust and his final ascent to mystical life after he goes blind to the sense world. In conclusion, the speaker offered a meaningful explanation of the “Chorus mysticus”. After the lecture, a number of those present, who had given the speaker's interesting explanations a lively applause, gathered for a discussion. Through “Karma” it was determined that the listeners had to bear saddening proof of the “inadequacy of our earthly Sansara” in their efforts to obtain their wardrobe. In the “terrible narrowness” of the queue in front of the entrance to the hall, they were able to practice “sacrificing their lower selves”. Unfortunately, several Theosophists, who were perhaps still too absorbed in Faust's “Descent to the Mothers”, were tripped up by a weighing machine in front of the cloakroom, which will hopefully be eliminated in the course of the 20th century.