The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In these, days I must bring before you some facts which can shed light upon the great events of our time. Next Sunday too I shall have to direct your attention and your feelings to certain aspects which can throw some light upon the events which so deeply move our hearts and souls in the present time. To-day I wish to give, as it were, a kind of basis, a kind of preparation, by guiding your souls towards certain powers and forces which are active in man's historical existence. They can only be recognised through the insight given by spiritual science and are not immediately perceptible to the ordinary consciousness. Let me point out to-day certain facts of human development, certain more or less sub-conscious facts. But let us set out from the truth that what takes place, as it were, in the hidden depths of every human being, can be recognised in the successive supersensible stages of knowledge, as described in my book A Path of Initiation (Knowledge of the Higher Worlds): it can be recognised through the so-called, imaginative knowledge, inspirative knowledge and intuitive knowledge. Yesterday, in my public lecture, I emphasized that this must always be borne in mind: namely that the spiritual scientist who reveals something concerning the spiritual worlds, as a result of knowledge gained by imaginative, inspirative and intuitive perceptions, should not add anything which does not already exist, even without his knowledge in those spiritual regions in which every human soul is at home. The spiritual scientist merely draws, attention to something which always weaves and lives in the world, and he, shows how the individual human soul lives in it. Such knowledge is therefore of importance not only for those who intend to penetrate into the stream of occult experiences, but it is of importance also for every human soul, for under every circumstance it constitutes an inner reality for all, tut an inner reality which cannot be recognised by the ordinary perception in life.

Let me therefore set out from certain facts concerning human nature in general which are accessible to the imaginative perception. Every day we may observe an enigmatic process—at least it is an enigma to ordinary science—which alternates rhythmically in our life: WAKING and SLEEPING.

We already know that during, our waking state we belong to the physical world of the earth with our four parts or members, with the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. We know that during our sleeping state, that is to say, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we exist in the physical world only with our physical body and with our etheric body and that we withdraw, as it were, into a purely spiritual world with our astral body and with our Ego. What presents itself to the spiritual perception of the spiritual investigator, may be characterised by saying: The spiritual investigator simply perceives something which, always takes place in man, for example when he abandons his physical and etheric body on falling asleep, and ascends with his astral body and Ego into regions pertaining to a higher world. The spiritual-scientific investigator simply watches a process which takes place in man, in every man, whenever he falls asleep.

We may therefore say: The spiritual investigator only observes something which would present itself to every human soul if in the state of sleep, not in the: dreaming state, it could look down upon the world so as to discover among the objects in this world its physical and etheric body, but as something which exists outside the sleeping soul. But we should not think that from, the standpoint of sleep we would see our physical body and our etheric body which we left, behind in the same way in which we perceive with physical eyes the. objects which surround, us in the physical world. In order to see the world in the way in which we perceive it from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling: asleep, we must use our physical eyes, our physical sense-organs. We do not use our senses when we arc outside our physical, body and our etheric body. If we were suddenly to become clairvoyant during our sleep, we would not perceive anything of all that we see during our waking condition, nor in the way in which we perceive it then. And then we do not perceive our physical body and our etheric body in the same way in which we see our physical form when we look into a mirror. It is quite wrong to think that we behold our physical and etheric body as if we were bending over it with our astral body and our Ego, that we view them from this standpoint and, see them as if in a mirror. This is not the case. What presents itself to the imaginative-knowledge is that everything which we are accustomed to see in our waking state of consciousness during our ordinary life disappears in the end, it really vanishes from our sight. In reality, our physical body and our etheric body then appear to us as if they were extended into a world, enlarged into a world; they appear to us as if they were connected with the whole world of the earth. We behold them ... and we are conscious of the fact that we are looking upon our physical body and our etheric body, but we behold them in such a way that to begin with they constitute for us as it were the only existing world.

Even as in our waking state we are surrounded by mountains, rivers and clouds, by the sun and the stars, etc., and look upon these as our environment, so when we are outside our physical and etheric body and look upon our environment, we behold our physical and etheric body as if enlarged into a world. We really behold this. We do not look upon anything else. And we envisage it in the same way in which we ordinarily view the different objects on the earth.

We look upon our own bodily structure as if it were a whole world. And a strange thing appears: This world which we behold, appears to us in such—away that in failing asleep we experience it in the same way in which we experience the earth in the spring: it has shed off its snow covering and brings forth green shoots, and once more prepares itself for the growth and vegetation of everything that is produced upon it; everything begins to grow and to green. When we fall asleep and behold the physical body and the etheric body enlarged into a world, we behold them in such a way that we experience them as it were like a planet that is awakening in the spring. And this continues throughout the condition of sleeping. What we see in it, the mighty pictures which really appear to us in their extension as a planet, prepare to pass over into summer, just like the earth faces Sommer, when its spring is coming to an end. This is how we pass through sleep, if we live through it in the right way.

We go as it were through the sleeping state as far as a point in which we feel: our physical body and our etheric body carry a growing, greening life to the flowering stage, indeed to the stage of the development of fruits—everywhere we behold that everything is growing and flourishing.

If I may express myself in detail I must say: To the imaginative vision the sight which thus appears, presents to be sure a paradoxical aspect. When we survey the surface of the earth with our physical eyes, we are conscious of the fact that the plants grow upwards from below; but when we observe from outside what takes place in our body, and take the vegetable world as a comparison, it is as if its roots were to penetrate into our body from above, and its flowers would grow into the body. Bo that we then experience a world that is completely upside down, and its fruits grow into us.

We then discover that these fruits which penetrate into, us really bring to expression the strengthening which is brought by sleep, this strengthening of which we are conscious. And this enables us to know (because everything which we thus perceive in the imagination are forces) that by passing over into the condition of sleep, our physical body and our etheric body which remain lying on the bed, receive forces from the whole cosmos. We behold how the forces which express themselves in pictures of plants growing out of the world, come to us from the cosmos. We behold how the cosmos sends a whole vegetation into our bodily structure. And this gives us the sure knowledge that on falling asleep we abandon our body because from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep our astral body and our Ego keep the physical body and the etheric body away from the influences of the cosmic forces. By going out ourselves, we make our physical and etheric body free for the influences of the whole cosmos, which sends in these forces—elemental, not physical forces—expressed in the above-mentioned imaginations.

Whenever we fall asleep, a connection is established between our physical and etheric body and the whole cosmos. In the waking condition, we live in the physical world, but when we are asleep our physical and etheric body live in the sphere which may be designated as the elemental world, the world of pure forces, which presents itself to us in the form of the above mentioned imaginations.

And where are we ourselves, with our astral body and our Ego? This has frequently been described and it is also contained in many books: With our Ego and our astral body we live in the world which has been described as the world of the Higher Hierarchies, among the Beings whom we designate as Angeles, Archangels, Archai, and so forth. Into these Beings and into this world penetrate the astral body and the Ego. Even as during our waking state we know of the existence of the creatures pertaining to the animal world, to the vegetable world, and to the mineral world, and stand above them, as it were, as human beings, by taking them into our thoughts, so we ourselves are now taken in by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. I might say, we are absorbed by them like thoughts.

The significant thing is that we can say: Whereas there below our physical body and our etheric body enter in connection with the forces of the whole cosmos, we ourselves become thoughts from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, as if we were real Beings woven out of the essence of thought and will. We become the thoughts of Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Even as WE think Nature, so do the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies think US.

If we wish to speak exactly, it is therefore not correct to say: When we abandon the physical body, we think the world. It is instead correct to say: We experience that we are the thoughts of the world of the higher Hierarchies. If thoughts had consciousness and could experience themselves during our waking state, this is how we should experience ourselves outside the physical body, as thoughts of the higher Beings.

And how do we experience through imaginative knowledge the moment of waking-up again? When we gradually approach the moment of waking up, we really experience it in the same way (we may again compare this Imagination with external Nature) in which we experience the approach of winter, with its destructive and paralyzing effect on the greening growing life of summer. We dive down into the physical and etheric body when we wake up, and even as the winter brings cold and frost which destroy the glory of summer, so we dive into the physical and etheric body in the same way in which the winter dives down into the earth. We destroy the forces which entered from the elemental sphere of the cosmos into our physical and etheric body like a vegetation or an animal world, we destroy them in the same way in which the winter destroys the glory of summer.

When we are awake, our presence within the physical and etheric body brings about a condition comparable to the one in which the cosmos places the earth in winter: We spread winter over our own physical and etheric being, by penetrating into it.

This shows you at the same time that comparisons often used from physical points of view are not correct from the spiritual aspect. Of course, we feel that we are connected with the whole cosmos and that our experiences are a microcosmic image of the macrocosmos. But when people wish to compare their microcosmic life with the life of the macrocosm, they like to say: When we wake up, this is like the approach of spring in our life, aid our waking life is like summer,—the autumn is like the fatigue which we feel in the evening and our sleeping life is like winter. But the very opposite is true. Summer, life is the sleeping life, and winter life is the waking life! This is the truth.

When the spiritual investigator really investigates these conditions, he discovers that by rising up with his Ego and astral body into the spheres of the higher Hierarchies, where he is thought, as it were, by the higher Beings, not only the forces of the elemental world influence his physical body and his etheric body, but that certain Beings of the higher Hierarchies also influence our physical body and our etheric body. Not only the elemental world, consisting of FORCES, but real BEINGS, the Beings of the Hierarchies, of the Higher hierarchies, are active within our physical body and our etheric body.

Here a strange thing presents itself: Namely, we can perceive that when we fall asleep we penetrate into conditions which are quite different from those of our waking state. As stated, everything which can thus be said, is based upon the fact that spiritual research allows us to watch how the process of falling asleep and of waking up takes place. And spiritual investigation discovers that from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, our physical body and our etheric body are, for example, also subjected to the influence of that Being of the Higher Hierarchies whom we must experience as FOLK-SPIRIT, as FOLK-SOUL, as the Folk-Soul to whom we belong.

When we wake up, we do not only dive down into our physical body and into our etheric body, but also into the processes which take place in them as the result of the activity of the Folk-Soul. And a peculiar thing appears—please note this carefully, for we who wish to penetrate into spiritual science must observe the connections in the world more deeply than through the ordinary external perception—the following strange thing appears: When we fall asleep, we do not only dive down into those Beings of the Higher Hierarchies that correspond to our individual development, but also into the spiritual Beings whom we must look upon as Folk-Souls from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we penetrate into the connection of all the other Folk-Souls, except into the Folk-Soul to which we ourselves belong. Let us note this carefully: During cur waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts produced in our physical body and etheric body by OUR OWN Folk-Soul; from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live as it were together with our own Folk-Soul.

But in addition to our own Folk-Soul, there exist in the world all the other Folk-Souls of the other nations. When we fall asleep, we penetrate into the connection of these OTHER Folk-Souls; we do not dive down into one of these other Folk-Souls (let us bear this in mind clearly), but into their joint activity, into what they do together, as a community. Only our own Folk-Soul is excluded from this connection during the night.

We cannot escape entering into connection also with all the Folk-Souls that pertain to the other nations in which we are not incarnated during one particular incarnation. Whereas during the day, in our waking state, we belong to our own Folk-Soul, we belong during our sleeping state to the other Folk-Souls—but only in so far as they work together. When we are awake, we follow the intentions of the individual Folk Soul, into whose sphere we were born in a definite incarnation.

But it is possible to penetrate, even during the sleeping state, into the Being of an individual Folk-Spirit that is not our own. Whereas in our normal condition we live, when awake, within our own Folk-Soul, i.e. within his activity, and during sleep in the joint activity of the other Folk-Souls, we can dive down into an individual Folk-Soul, when we are asleep, if during our fife we are filled with glowing hatred for the activities of this other Folk-Soul. Though it may sound absurd, it is nevertheless true—and in our movement, we must learn to bear such truths calmly—it is nevertheless true that when a person is filled with glowing hatred for another nation, he condemns himself thereby to sleep with the Folk-Soul of that nation during the night, to live together with him.

Here we touch upon truths which show us that behind that veil which conceals the spiritual worlds to the ordinary observation, life begins to acquire a deeply earnest character and that it is uncomfortable, in a certain way, to be an adherent of spiritual, science. For from certain aspects spiritual science begins to treat certain matters earnestly which in ordinary life are looked upon as uncomfortable and which are mercifully withdrawn from us through the fact that in ordinary life the truth is not revealed to us. Although as followers of spiritual science we must stand with both, feet upon the ground which external life provides, we must nevertheless deal quite earnestly with such a fundamental principle, when we rise up to realms where other characteristics of life begin to reveal themselves.

You see, my book A WAY OF INITIATION speaks of that moment when we rise up to the spiritual world (indeed, every human being is in the spiritual world, it is simply a question of his being able to recognise a world which always exists round about him),—when that easy union, that unity of our being in which We live here in the physical world, ceases to exist. Divisions arise; but in addition to the division mentioned in that book, the one which may be observed after the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, there are other divisions, one for example, which is of deepest significance for our whole life of feeling. We should recognise that although we must do our duty fully towards the nation to which we belong in one particular incarnation and give it our love unstintingly, this nation stands within the whole process of evolution of the earth. We should realise that in view of the fact that through our Ego and our astral body we are also SPIRITUAL beings, we belong to the whole, of humanity and should therefore have impulses which we share with the whole of mankind. Spiritual science does net admit that we should, live in the world in a one-sided manner; these two sides of our being must be harmonised. We should realise that in our present incarnation we can love the nation to which we belong even though we are spiritual scientists, we can love it as deeply as any patriot, but the same time wo must bring this love in harmony with the feelings which unite us with the WHOLE of mankind.

Spiritual science above all unites us with the whole of mankind because it reveals to us that through our Ego and our astral body we are connected with humanity as a whole. To establish harmony between contrasts—this is what spiritual science more and more demands from those who dedicate themselves to it with earnestness and with worthy feelings. And it is harmful to mistake spiritual science for that unclear mysticism which always seeks to mix up the demands of external physical life with the truths to which we should ascend when we penetrate into the spiritual world. For that unclear mysticism which seeks to bring into ordinary life the things which spiritual science reveals in a true light, that unclear mysticism will, for example, never be able to harmonise the love for one's own nation with the love for the whole of mankind and it will lead instead to a vague mystical cosmopolitanism.

This, may be compared, as I have, done, with that equality wh.is always advanced by vague theosophists, the equality of all religions on earth. In an abstract way, it is possible to say that the truth is of course, contained in every religion. But this is the same as saying: On the table there are pepper, salt, cayenne and many other spices; they are all the same, for they are condiments. So, I may put cayenne into my coffee or sugar into my soup, this does not matter, for all condiments are the same Exactly the same, logic is applied by people who vaguely talk in a mystical way of the equal essence in all religions, instead of penetrating into the true essence of everything that appears in the evolution of the earth. The essential thing is to avoid emphasizing again and, again that all nations are, as it were, expressions of the universally human; it is instead essential to recognise the. specific task of each nation, as given, by the folk-soul. Fundamental points for this may be found in the lectures published long ago, which, were given several years before the war, so that they were not influenced by the present events and consequently it cannot be said that they are the result of war influences! I mean the lectures comprised in the cycle “THE MISSION OF THE SINGLE FOLK-SOULS IN CONNECTION WITH THE NORTHERN GERMANIC MYTHOLOGY.

In the present time above all it is important to reflect over such earnest things, so that the harmony between universal love and. the love for one's nation may be found. We need not recoil from describing the characteristics of each single nation, in so far as it is a nation, for the individual human being always, rises above his nation, but you will see from the remarks which I made that.it is necessary.to give such a description without any hatred. Even as we cannot recognise the true nature of a plant if we hate that plant,—for in that case we would describe our hatred—so it is not possible.to recognise the characteristics of a nation if we describe the qualities which we dislike in that nation, or if our description includes things inspired by our feelings of antipathy.

Those who are able, to rise to the standpoints of spiritual science should ceaselessly endeavour to gain insight not only into the uniform essence of the world, but into the harmony of its manifold characteristics. We should be able to feel warmest love for the nation to which we belong, in this warmth of feeling we need not be behind any other person, yet at the same time we should, be able to unite this with everything which unites us with humanity as a whole, with our feelings for the whole of mankind, as a great all-encompassing being

As stated, we shall deal more fully with these things the day after tomorrow how let me explain that when we pass over from the waking to the sleeping condition, when we are taken in and received by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, we really cast off the physical body and the etheric body which connect us with one particular incarnation. We therefore cast off our national character when we are asleep. When we are asleep, we are simply “human beings,” endowed with all the qualities which we must have through all the experiences gained as human, beings. But at the same time, when we observe from the spiritual-scientific standpoint what takes place with man both in his waking and sleeping conditions, we perceive that when he is asleep, when he lives in the spiritual world with his Ego and his astral body and also his physical body and his etheric body belong to the great cosmos, that then the single life which takes its course, as it were., within the compass of the skin, ceases, for our narrow individual self becomes extended to the great Self.

Consider now that, as a rule, in the course of twenty-four hours we always pass through a summer and a winter condition. Also, the earth passes through these conditions of summer and winter, but in the course of one year. Why does the. Earth pass through these states during the course of one year? Because the earth is, like man, a living Being? but upon another stage of the world of the Hierarchies. If we observe the whole earth physically, such as it exists, round about us, it is only the body of the earth, and even as man bears within him soul and spirit, so the earth also has its soul and its spirit. Our sleeping and waking conditions alternate in the course of twenty-four hours, whereas the earth sleeps and wakes during the course of one year. The earth is awake from autumn to spring, and it is asleep in the summer. We may therefore say that in the summer we are embedded in a sleeping earth. It is not true that the earth Is awake in the summer and asleep in the winter; this trivial comparison taken from ordinary life is hot correct. It is instead correct to say that with the approach of autumn the earth begins to wake up as a soul-spiritual being, and that it is most wide awake in the middle, of winter. The Spirit of the Earth is most deeply engrossed in thought in the middle of the winter, and with. the approach of spring, his thoughts gradually begin to ebb away, and in the summer the Spirit of the Earth is sound asleep; when life outside is budding and growing it is sound asleep.

As human beings, we are not only connected through our physical body with the body of the. Earth, but we are also connected with the Spirit of the Earth. Many lectures have shown you that through the Mystery of Golgotha the Spirit Whom we designate as the Christian Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, united Himself with the Spirit of the Earth. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Spirit of Christ lives in the Spirit of the Earth. Consequently, if people wish to celebrate a festival expressing the fact that the Spirit of Christ lives in the Spirit of the Earth, what should be the right season for it?—Not summer, but winter would be the right season for such a festival, the very heart of winter. This festival is the Christmas Festival.

For this reason, the Christmas Festival and everything that develops from it is celebrated in the middle of winter. This proceeded from the real knowledge of the people who in the past fixed the Christian festivals of the year. The Christmas festival was fixed in accordance with occult truths, not with historical facts, because in regard to what now constitutes humanity, man is in the winter time united with that condition of earthly existence which is most wide awake, because his own soul-spiritual part is embedded in the soul-spiritual part of the earth. In the winter, he lives together with the waking earth.

And what do we find in the case of past races of whom we know that they built up their service to the world and their knowledge of the world upon a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must above all have based themselves upon that which lives in the SLEEPING Spirit of the Earth. In contrast to the men of more modern times, these ancient peoples must have risen to the truths received in unconscious inspirations in the form most suited to them, when the Spirit of the Earth was immersed in deepest sleep, when it withdrew almost completely in sleep. We therefore find among these peoples whose cults and knowledge were drawn out of a more sleeping, dreaming state, the MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL, in contrast to the Christmas Festival which is suited to a more modern human race.

What was continued in an external way and what our materialistic, age did not understand at all, has its truly deep foundation in a spiritual, reality. Now we live in an age in which people should again begin to think and to feel in a different way from that of past epochs. The task of the past epoch was to make us familiar with the sphere of materialistic thinking and feeling. And the past centuries had to bring human souls in contact with materialistic thought and feeling. Indeed, the development of the earth had to pass through this materialistic epoch. And it is wrong if we only criticize materialism, for materialism had to enter the., evolution of the earth. But now we live in an epoch in which materialism must be overcome, an epoch in which a SPIRITUAL conception must enter the human souls. This is the more or less distinct or unclear feeling of all those who feel attracted, by our spiritual-scientific goals, by our spiritual-scientific world conception. These souls feel that the time has approached in which the spiritual world should be grasped consciously, whereas in the past it had to be perceived in a dreamlike way. Spiritual science exists for the purpose of understanding the world in a conscious way.

The past epoch was therefore the epoch of materialism. You see, because humanity had to dive down, as it were, into materialism, the strong impulse which leads it up again, had to be active above all during the age of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. The preparation began when the Christ Impulse entered the development of the earth. During the 14th/15th century it was in its most active stage, but when the Christ Impulse approached humanity was already preparing itself for its dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse existed in the evolution of the world as an objective fact, yet the people, who lived in the time when it appeared, were least of all able and ready to grasp it. Now we live in an epoch in which we must begin to understand what took place.

What do we see? We may study the strange course followed by the Christ Impulse in the historical development up to the present time. We see that when the Christ Impulse entered the evolution of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha it was not grasped at all by those who lived at that time. Let us try to form a picture of what people did in their cleverness! We find that all hinds of theological systems arose during the first Christian centuries which immediately followed the Christ Impulse. People began to dispute as to the way in which they were to think of the Trinity, and so forth. Throughout these, centuries there were endless theological disputes, and It would be the worst possible mistake to study the influence of the Christ impulse by studying these theological disputes which lasted for so many centuries. The people who were disputing over the Christ Impulse did not understand anything of the way in which the Christ Impulse stands at the very centre of evolution.

Let us try to understand how the Christ Impulse really worked. Let me indicate a few facts as an illustration. Let us take an event which took place in the 4th century, in the year 312 A.D. on the 26th of October, an event which changed, as it were, the future map of Europe completely. It took place when Constantine called the Great, the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome and gained a victory over him, whereby Christianity also became victorious in an external way in the Occident. For Constantine raised Christianity to the rank of official religion of the State. But was it his own cleverness which inspired all these deeds? Were the events which then took place the outcome of his cleverness? We cannot say that this was the case. For what occurred? Maxentius, the emperor of Rome, on hearing that Constantine was approaching, first consulted the Sibylline Books, so that he tried to grasp the world's events in a dreamlike way. What these Books revealed to him, was interpreted as follows: The right “deed would be done” by the one who being the ruler of Rome would leave the city and wage battle outside the walls of Rome. This was the most unusual advice which could be imagined. For Constantine had a far, far stronger army than Maxentius; nevertheless, he could not have won had Maxentius remained within the walls of Rome, But Maxentius followed the advice of the Sybil line Books and moved out of Rome. Also, in Constantine's army, the victory was not gained by the generals, but Constantine had a dream in which he saw the symbol of Christ, and in obedience to this dream he ordered that the Cross, the symbol of Christ, should be carried in front of his armies. He made his subsequent deeds depend on the revelations of that dream.

This battle, which gave a decisive aspect to the whole map of Europe of that time, was not waged by generals, nor determined by human cleverness, but by dreams and prophecies. If the events had followed the course dictated by human consciousness, and not influences coming from sub-conscious depths, everything in Europe would have taken on a different aspect.

Theologians were quarrelling over the true essence of Christ—whether He was born in Eternity together with the Father or whether he was born in Time, whether He was of equal rank with the Father, and so forth. But their thoughts did not contain anything of the Christ Impulse! The Christ Impulse worked in the sub-consciousness of human beings. It did not work through the Ego, but through the astral body. The Christ Impulse was a reality, and it worked in such a way that people did not need to understand it. This is the important and essential fact. The way in which the Christ Impulse worked, is as independent of the way in which people grasped it, as a thunderstorm is independent of what people learn in a laboratory concerning the electrical machine, and so forth.

This time has now come in which we must immerse ourselves CONSCIOUSLY into the influence of the Christ Impulse. In the historical events, however, the Christ Impulse is active as a force.

Let us pass over from this example to one which belongs to a later epoch. Here we must consider something which I already explained to you. It is important to know, in connection with the materialistic epoch, that when people wished to immerse themselves in the spiritual world, they could do this best of all in the winter. In that epoch, we therefore come across the conception that during the Thirteen Nights in the middle of winter specially gifted natures could obtain the gift of inspirations from the spiritual world. Every nation has legends which tell us how specially gifted people, who do not pass through an Initiation, but obtain inspirations through their own nature, through elemental forces which work in them, become inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve to the Three Kings' Day (Epiphany), during the Thirteen Holy Nights. Recently, a Very beautiful legend was discovered in Norway, the legend of OLAF ASTESON, who went to a church on Christmas Eve and began to sleep. He slept until the 6th of January, and when he woke up, he was able to relate in pictures the events which took place in the soul-realm—the Spirit-realm as we call it. He expressed them in pictures, but he had experienced all this during the Thirteen Nights. Such legends may be found everywhere. They are not simply legends, for in fact there always existed specially gifted people who passed through a kind of Nature-Initiation. Elemental forces were, active within them in this natural initiation, which we can only attain through the will, by faithfully following the indications given for the path leading to initiation.

We may therefore say: During the materialistic epoch, we can always come across people who were able to unite themselves with the Spirit of the Earth in the middle of winter, when the Spirit of the Earth is most wide awake, and they were thus able to receive inspirations. This was the epoch in which the Christ Impulse that had united itself with the earth, could not work through human consciousness. We must think of specially receptive souls, who could receive inspirations from the spiritual world. And we find that such souls receive the impulses which inspire their deeds, they receive their inspirations from the spiritual world, in the Thirteen Holy Nights, until the 6th of January. This was necessary, and it appeared again and again in small and great events that in the course of history there were people with such a spiritual disposition that when the right moment arrived for them, when they could live through these Thirteen Winter Nights, a spiritual impulse entered into them, and in that epoch this was above all the Christ Impulse. During the materialistic epoch, natural initiations which did not depend on conscious human activity, took place most easily of all in these Thirteen Holy Nights. And whenever such initiations appear, we find that they took place during these Thirteen Nights.

There is one event which induces even those who are least inclined to recognise the spiritual world (and to-day very few people are inclined to do so), to admit that in the 15th century Spiritual Powers really entered the course of history through the medium of a young girl, the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc. It can be proved historically that also in this case the whole map of Europe took on a different aspect because tie Maid of Orleans aided the French in the war against the English people who reflect over such things will discover that in accordance with human plans, everything would have followed a different course if the shepherd maiden had hot interfered—and through her, the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only an instrument for the forces which were then at work. The influence which worked through her was the Christ Impulse.

But a natural initiation was required for this, and such an initiation could only have taken place, as it were, during the Thirteen Nights until the 6th of January. The Maid of Orleans must therefore have been in a kind of sleeping condition from the 24th of December to the 6th of January, and been specially open to the spiritual influences which are active just in that period. We must therefore assume that the Maid of Orleans must have lived through the period from the 24th of December to the 6th of January in a not fully conscious state and received the Christ Impulse. And the Maid of Orleans indeed passed through such a condition in a very marked way! It cannot be experienced more markedly than during the sleeping condition which precedes birth, during the last days in which a child lives in the mother's body, just before birth. External human consciousness is then not able to take in anything, for it lives in a sleeping state, and when the child within the mother's body reaches the end of its time and approaches birth, this is the best condition of sleep this last period in the mother's body. The Maid of Orleans was actually born on the 6th of January, and this is the great mystery connected with her: that she passed through a Nature-Initiation during the thirteen days which preceded her birth. Specially sensitive people assembled in the village on the 6th of January on which the Maid of Orleans was born, said that something special must have happened; they felt that something special had occurred in their village: The Maid of Orleans was born, she passed through a natural initiation during that sleep In her mother's body, that sleep which was so significant to her, the sleeping condition just before her birth.

This shows us that spiritual Beings are really at work below the threshold of consciousness, behind the events which are accessible to human consciousness. It shows us the meaning of a history that only reckons with information gained by documents and external reports! But the Gods work along different paths and use other means: They place a Maid of Orleans into the world, through her special Karma in that particular incarnation she is able to take in the Christ Impulse and work through it. At the right moment, the Gods allow the Christ Impulse to flow into the development of humanity. Of course, both factors had to be there: for we must consider the special individual Karma of the Maid of Orleans. This must be added. Not every child born on the 6th of January could fulfil the same deeds.

We can therefore really say: The Christ Impulse worked through forces in man which did not rise up into human consciousness. Only now we again live in an age in which we should take in consciously the impulses which sought to enter the historical development by other ways than the conscious one.

I wished to call up in you a feeling of how the sub-conscious powers really work, and that external history, studied upon the foundation of documents and external records, is really quite superficial. In the present time, it is good to study history. For now, above all we can see that great, mighty and heroic events are taking place, joined to deeds of Sacrifice. But at the same time, we can see that the events of our time are accompanied, as it were, by the effects of the crassest materialism, by that consistent form of materialism which seeks to explain everything which is now taking place.as the result of merely external conditions. This is evident through the fact that one nation makes the other responsible for the present events. People wish to judge everything from outside, and they seek in others the guilt for what is taking place. But also in the present time the true cause and reasons for what is taking place should be sought in the depths of subconscious events. But we shall speak of this the day after tomorrow.

The present epoch can more than any other admonish people to follow spiritual impulses of knowledge, also in view of the blood which is shed on the battlefields. When peace will spread out its wings over the countries now at war, people will make a discovery; They will discover that such tremendous conflagrations in the history of the world cannot be explained by drawing in external causes! They will discover that it is not possible to explain them. To-day people still say—particularly the cleverest people: “It is not right to speak of the things which gave rise to this war let history speak of this.” And they think that they are particularly clever when they say: “In 50 or in 100 years' time, history will reveal the true causes of this war.”

But what we now designate as history will never be able to explain the causes of the present events: People will see that a historical survey cannot grasp the true cause. Other aids will have to be drawn in: This is particularly evident through an occult observation of the present time.

What is one of the most evident facts in the present time which is so fraught with destiny? Oh, one of its most obvious facts is undoubtedly the one that so many young people are passing through the portal of death! We know what takes place with them when they pass through the portal of death. We know that a human being first goes out of his physical body with his etheric body, his astral body and his Ego, and that after, e.g. relatively short time he sheds his etheric body and continues his pilgrimage with an extract of the etheric body. But can you not imagine that there must be a difference between an etheric body shed between the 20th and 30th year of life, an etheric body which might still have continued its functions in life for many decades, and an etheric body cast off at a later age? Yes, there is a great difference! When a person dies as a result of illness or old age, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But, in the case of a young person—and countless young people are^-now passing through the portal of death—the etheric body has not yet been able to fulfil all that it might have fulfilled.

Let me now give you a concrete example of what takes place with an etheric body torn away violently, as it were, from its physical body. Of course, many examples can be given. But let me give you an example which we actually experienced here at Dornach last autumn. We experienced it at the site where the Goetheanum stands. A family that lives near the Goetheanum had a little son aged seven, really a wonderful little boy. He was so good that when his father had to leave for the front, little seven year old Theo told his mother: “Now I must work specially hard, for I must help you in things, where father used to help you.” One, evening after a lecture a person belonging to our circle came and told us that little Theo was missing since that evening.—One could only suppose that, there must have been an accident. On that evening, through circumstances which in ordinary life, are designated as a “coincidence,” a furniture van had passed through a lane, through which no van had passed for years, and through which no van ever passed since. At a certain spot, it overturned. Little Theo was in the small house called the Canteen, where the friends who work on the Building get their meals. He would have left sooner, but by a strange coincidence he was held up by someone and instead of going out by the usual door which would have led him down a certain path, he went out through another door and passed by the furniture van at the very moment when it fell over. The van fell on top of him. This is an example, which clearly shows how Karma works.

I have often used a simple comparison in order to show how frequently people mix up cause and effect! A man is seen walking along the banks of a river. Suddenly he falls into the water. A stone is found at the place_; where the man fell into the river. The man is drawn out of the water but he is already dead. On investigating matters, people will give the following account of the accident in the full belief that they are telling the truth: The man stumbled over the stone, fell into the river and was drowned. Yet it would have sufficed to examine things more carefully and one would have discovered that death was not due to the fact that the man fell into the water, but he fell into the river because he was dead, for he had had a stroke. Consequently, the case was quite different from what people imagined it to be. Thus, we see how easy it is to mistake cause and effect, and particularly in ordinary science cause and effect are always mixed up.

In Theo's case, Theo himself was the cause of the accident; it was he who caused the van to pass by at a certain moment and he attracted the van so that it fell on top of him. This should he borne in mind as the secret of the whole case.

But let us now consider the continuation; A human being who dies accidentally in the very prime of life! If one's heart is intimately united with the whole work on the Building at Dornach and if at the same time one has the possibility to observe the influences which work in this Building, it is possible to say: The etheric body so violently torn away from little Theo, now lives in atmosphere of the Goetheanum Building, and the most beautiful forces of inspiration for the work connected with it, can be gained by uniting one's soul with the enlarged etheric body, extended as it were, to a small world, which lives in the atmosphere of the Goetheanum. I shall never hesitate to admit unreservedly that many things which I was able to discover at that time in connection with our Building, I owe to the fact that I turned my own soul to the etheric body of little Theo that was active in the atmosphere of the Building. Of such kind are the connections in the world. The real individuality of the human being passes on, but the etheric body that might still have sustained life for many decades, remains behind.

Consider now how many etheric bodies soar above us in the spiritual atmosphere and will also soar above those who come after us! They are the etheric bodies that remained behind, the etheric bodies of those who passed early in life through the portal of death in the present epoch so heavily laden with destiny. We do not speak here of the paths trodden by the INDIVIDUALITIES, but of a special spiritual atmosphere created by the etheric bodies that remained behind. The human beings here on earth will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged in an atmosphere which is filled by these etheric bodies whose life-forces were sacrificed, in order that humanity may progress through the tragic events which are taking place particularly in the present time.

It will be necessary however to feel what these etheric bodies desire, for these etheric bodies will be the best inspirers of mankind in the future. A beautiful age of spirituality might dawn, if true understanding, an inner understanding of the heart, is brought towards these etheric bodies, if people listen to what they wish to say. All these etheric bodies can in the future aid humanity to rise up to spiritual heights. For this reason, it is so important that there should be souls on earth who are able to feel what is penetrating into the atmosphere of the future, through the medium of these etheric bodies. You learn something, concerning the nature of these etheric bodies not only by recounting that man consists of a physical body, of an etheric body, of an astral body and of an Ego, but also by learning to know the secret of the influence exercised, by these etheric bodies and of how this influence will work in the future.

Those who are already now followers of spiritual science prepare the souls so that they become receptive for the messages of these etheric bodies. Let us therefore turn our souls to the spiritual world, for in so doing, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel the heritage of the dead, to feel what the dead demand from mankind in the future. If spiritual science can stimulate human souls in such a way that they can turn their spiritual sense towards the spiritual worlds, the effect which grows out of the blood/courage/suffering and sacrifice will be great and powerful indeed. Let me therefore recapitulate at the end of this lecture the feelings which can animate us, when our souls, which follow spiritual science, are directed towards the great events of our time:

Aus dem Mut der Kampfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassenem,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird er wachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich

Translation

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the sorrow of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a spiritual fruit,
If souls, spiritually conscious, direct
Their understanding towards the Spirit-realm.

My dear friends,

Our spiritual-scientific world-conception should not only further the, development and rise of individual souls, hut above all it should really help us to gain new aspects for a conception of life. In the present time we should take it to heart that such encompassing aspects have to be gained in order to judge life. Of course, it is a great and also a significant task for the individual to further his own development by what he can win as a fruit of spiritual-scientific self-education. Only the fact that individuals progress, enables individual souls to cooperate in the development of mankind. Our attention should, however, not only be turned to this fact, but as followers of the anthroposophical world-conception we should also be able to experience the great events of our time from a high standpoint, from a truly spiritual standpoint. When judging the things which are taking place, we should really be able to transfer ourselves, as it were, to a higher standpoint. To-day it may perhaps be appropriate to advance a few aspects connected especially with the great events of the present time, because, my dear friends, our meeting is being held in a fateful time, fraught with destiny.

Let us now set out from something which closely affects us as human beings. At certain times people are seized by illness. As a rule, illness is looked upon as something which injures the organism. But this, generally adopted view is not always justified. There are indeed certain illnesses which must be judged from this standpoint, which invade our organism, as it were, like a foe, but this is not always the case. It does not even apply to the majority of illnesses, for as a rule illness is something quite different. Illness is generally not an enemy, but a friend of the human organism. What is inimical to the organism generally precedes illness, it develops in us before the external, visible illness breaks out. Opposing forces are in the organism, and the illness which breaks out at a certain moment is an attempt on the part of our body to defend itself against these opposing forces which had remained unnoticed. When an illness breaks out, the organism frequently begins a work of healing. Through illness the organism fights against the inimical influences which precede the illness. Illness is the last form of the whole process and it implies a battle of the sound fluids in the organism against the forces which are lurking below. Illness exists for the sake of driving out what is lurking below. Only if the majority of illnesses is looked upon in this light, can a right conception of the pathological process be reached. Illness therefore indicates that something preceded its outbreak, something which must be expelled from the organism by the illness itself.

It is easy to discover what has just been said, if such phenomena of life are viewed in the right light. The causes may lie in many different spheres. But as explained, the essential point is to view illness as a defence of the organism against forces which must be driven out.

I do not think that it is possible to make a better comparison in regard to the whole complex of the significant and deeply incisive events in a great part of the world which are taking place since the beginning of August 1914,—I do not think that a better comparison can be found between these events and a pathological process affecting the whole human development. What should strike us above everything else is that these war-events really constitute a pathological process. But it would be wrong to think that we can deal with it by grasping it wrongly, as so many other pathological processes are grasped, namely by considering it as something inimical to the organism. The cause which we must envisage, precedes the pathological process.

Particularly in the present time it may strike us how little inclined people are to envisage truths which are immediately evident to these who take in a spiritual-scientific world-conception not only with their intellect, but also with their feeling.

We have had to pass through many painful experiences during the past 9 months—painful experiences connected with people's lack of judgment. When reading the books and articles which are most popular to-day and which are spread in many different countries of the world, do we not find that those who judge the present events admit that everything began, say in July 1914? The most distressing experience which we had to pass through in addition to all the other painful things, was to see that particularly the people who counted, most, that is to say, those who write newspaper articles and form public opinion, regally do not know anything about the development of events and only bear in mind the things which lie closest! This gave rise to endless discussions, to entirely useless discussions on the real cause of the present war.

Again, and again people ask: Is this or that party responsible for it? and so forth. But in every case, they omit to go back further than. July, or June 1914 at the incest. I mention this because it really characterizes our materialistic age. One generally thinks that materialism only brings with it a materialistic way of thinking. But this is not true. Materialism does not only produce a materialistic way of thinking, but also short-sightedness; materialism produces laziness of thinking and lack of insight. The materialistic way of thinking leads to the opinion that one can prove and believe anything. The self-training implied by Anthroposophy, if this is grasped in the right way, also enables us to recognise that it is possible to prove and to believe anything if one remains in the field of materialism. Let us take an example:

You see, in the past years, when one brought forward the spiritual-scientific world-conception in this or in that place and certain people thought that they had to assert their own views in the face of the spiritual-scientific world-conception, one could frequently hear the following argument: Kant has already proved by his philosophy that there are limitations to man's knowledge; human knowledge cannot reach the spheres which the spiritual-scientific world-conception tries to reach. Then they bring forward certain interesting things showing how Kant is supposed to have proved that human knowledge cannot reach the spiritual world. If spiritual science was upheld in spite of all, then they came along and said: This person rejects everything that has been proved by Kant! Of course, this more or less implied: What a foolish person he must be, for he rejects strictly proved facts!

But this is not the case: The spiritual scientist does not deny that Kant is absolutely right, for it is evident that he demonstrated this clearly. But my dear friends, suppose that someone had stated that the plant consists of minute cells, at a time when the microscope had not yet been invented, but that these cells could not be found because human eyes are unable to see them. It might have been proved that the cells do not exist and this would have been quite correct, for the constitution of the human eye does not permit us to penetrate into the plant's organism to the extent of seeing these tiniest cells. The proof would be absolutely correct and it could not be overthrown. Yet in the course of human development the microscope was discovered as an aid to the human eye, so that in spite of the strictest proof to the contrary, people were able to recognise the existence of these tiniest cells.

When people will grasp that proofs are useless for the attainment of truth, that proofs may be correct, but that they do not mean anything special if we wish to progress in the attainment of truth, then it will be possible to stand upon the right foundation. For then it will be possible to know: Though proofs may be correct, they cannot lead us to the truth, this is not their task!

Bear in mind the comparison which I made, for it will show you that the proof according to which the human power of vision is unable to reach the plant's cell is just as valid as the proof that, according to Kant, human knowledge is unable to reach the supersensible worlds. These proofs may be absolutely correct, yet real life transcends them. This too is something which we obtain, as it were, along the path of spiritual research, for by extending our horizon we really reach the point of appealing to. something which is not only limited to the human, intellect and its proofs.

Those who restrict themselves to materialistic ideas are really led to an unbounded belief in proofs; if they have a proof in their pocket, they are convinced of the truth. But spiritual science shows us that in reality it is possible to prove either the one or the other thing; intellectual proofs are however meaningless for the attainment of real truth. It is therefore an accompanying symptom of our materialistic age that people should fall into this intellectual short-sightedness. And if this is mingled with passions, it gives rise to something which we do not only see in the armed conflict of European nations, but also in the hostile attitude consisting in the fact that one accuses the other, without any outlook (I distinctly say, without any outlook, for this does not only apply to the present time of war) of their ever convincing each other. These who naively think that a neutral country might perhaps arbitrate in the case of diverging statements between two hostile countries, are really simple minded! Of course, the facts advanced by one side may be just as well supported by proofs as the facts advanced by the other side. Insight, my dear friends, can only be gained by penetrating into the deeper foundations of the whole human development.

In my lecture-cycle on the Folk-Souls of Europe and their influence on the individuals belonging to the different nations, which I gave a few years before the outbreak of the present war, I already tried to throw some light upon the reciprocal relations of the different nations and I tried to show that different forces are at work in the various, nations.¹ Let us complete this to-day by drawing in some new aspects.

Our materialistic age has far too abstract a way of thinking; Above all it does not consider the fact that in life there is a real course of development and that man should allow that which is in him to mature, so that it gradually ripens into real judgment. We know—for this has been set forth sufficiently clearly in The Education of the Child that the human being passes through a course of development; during the first seven years he develops above all his physical body, from the seventh to the fourteenth year his etheric body, and so forth. Little attention is paid to this progressive course in mans individual development, and less still to the parallel phenomenon, to the equivalent course of development in mankind.

The processes which take place in the nations and their connections are guided (we all know this through spiritual science) by the Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. We speak of FOLK-SOULS, or FOLK-SPIRITS in the true meaning of the word. We know, for example, that the Folk-Soul of the Italian nation inspires what we designate as Sentient Soul; the French Folk-Soul inspires what we call the Intellectual Soul; the inhabitants of the British Isle are inspired through their consciousness soul; in Central Europe the inspiration takes place through what we designate as the human Ego.

This does not imply any verdict in regard to the individual value of the different nations, it simply states the facts. It states for example, that the inspiration of the nation which inhabits the British Isle is based on the fact that it has to bring into the world influences produced by the inspiration of the Consciousness Soul through the Folk-Soul.

It is strange how nervous people get on this subject. During the war I once more emphasized in this or in that place certain things which I had already explained in the above-mentioned cycle of lectures. Yet some people almost considered it as an insult to the British nation to say that it had the task to inspire the Consciousness-Soul, whereas, the Folk-Soul pertaining to the German nation has to inspire the human Ego. It is just as if it were taken as an insult to say that salt is white and Cayenne pepper red! It is a plain characteristic, the description of an existing truth, and it has to be accepted as such, to begin with.

It will be much easier to deal with the connections existing between the single members of human nature if we bear in mind the characteristics of the various nations, if we do not mix everything together, as is done by the modern materialistic conception. Of course, the individual rises above that which he receives from, his Folk-Soul, and it is pre-eminently the task of our Anthroposophical Society to lift the individual out of the Group-Soul life into the life of humanity as a whole. But nevertheless, there remains the fact that in so far as the individual stands within his own nation he is inspired in a certain direction; the Italian Folk-Soul speaks, for example, to the Sentient soul; the French Folk-Soul to the Intellectual Soul, the British Folk-Soul to the Consciousness Soul. We should therefore imagine that the Folk Soul soars above that which individuals do within single nations.

But in the same way in which we can see a course of development in individual life and are able to say in the case of individual people that the Ego reaches a certain stage of development at a definite moment in life, so it is also possible to speak of a development, a real development in the case of the Folk-Soul. But this development of course differs somewhat from that of individual human beings.

Let us single out, for example, the Italian nation. There we. have this nation and the Folk-Soul belonging to it. You see, the Folk Soul is a Being of the supersensible world, it belongs to the world of the higher Hierarchies. It inspires the Sentient Soul, and this until the nation, the Italian nation, lives (we are speaking of this particular nation), yet it inspires the Sentient Soul at different times in a different way.

There are times in which the Folk-Souls inspire the members of single nations in such a way, that their inspiration is, as it were, one of the soul. The Folk-Soul soars in higher regions of the spirit, and its inspiration is of such a kind that it only transmits soul qualities. Then there are times in which the Folk-Souls descend and engage mere strongly the individual members of the nations; their inspiration is so strong, that they do not only send it down into the soul and its qualities, but right down into the bodily qualities, so that people depend on their Folk-Souls even bodily. As long as a nation submits to the influence of its Folk-Soul so as to receive only soul-spiritual qualities, the national type is not so distinct. The forces of the Folk-Soul do not yet work in such a way as to seize the whole human being, right down into the blood. Then comes a time when one can gather by the way in which a person looks about, by the characteristic shape of his head and his physiognomy, how the Folk-Soul influences him. The influences are so strongly marked, because the Folk-Soul has descended deeply; it claims the whole human being in a strong and intensive way.

You see, in the case of the Italian nation, the middle of the 16th century, around the year 1550, was the period mentioned by me, when the Folk-Soul came down and worked in such a way that its mark may be found in the individual people. Then the Folk-soul soared back, as it were, and these influences were transmitted to the descendants by heredity. The most intensive union of the Italian nation with its Folk-Soul was around the year 1550. It was the time when the Italian Folk-Soul descended most deeply, when the Italian nation acquired its definite character. If we go back to the time before 1550, we see that the characteristic traits are not so clearly traced, they do not confront us so clearly as after 1550, Only in that epoch began the characteristic essence which we know as Italian character. At that time the true marriage took place between the Italian Folk-Soul and the Sentient Soul of. individual people belonging to the Italian nation.

In the case of the French nation (you see, I am not speaking of individual men, who can rise above the nation) a similar moment, when the Folk-Spirit descended most deeply and permeated the whole nation, set in around the year 1600, at the beginning of the 17th century. There the Folk-Soul seized the whole Intellectual Soul.

In the case of the British nation this moment arose in the middle of the 17th century, around the year 1650. Then the British nation obtained as it were its external British expression.

Many things will be clear to you if you know such facts, for now you can, for example, face quite differently the question: “What about Shakespeare and his connection with England?” Shakespeare worked in England before the time when the British Folk-Soul exercised its strongest influence upon the English nation. Shakespeare lived before that time. This explains why he was not completely understood in England. We all know that there are Shakespeare editions in England which suppress everything that is not quite in keeping with the taste of governesses. Shakespeare has often been moralized, so to speak, in the most extreme sense. We know that the deepest, understanding for Shakespeare is not to be found in England, but in the Central European, development of spiritual life.

You will now ask: When did the Folk-Soul come into contact with the members of the Central-European nation? There matters stand as follows: Through the fact that the Ego is the essential thing in Central Europe, that the Folk-Soul soars down and withdraws, again soars down and withdraws—through this fact, we have repetitions. Thus we have a descent of the Folk-Soul, when it unites with the individual souls, around the time in which the wonderful Parsifal legends arose, the legends of the Holy Grail. Then the Folk-Soul withdrew and its next descent is between the years 1750 and 1830. At that time Central-European life is most deeply seized by the Central-European Folk-Soul. Since 1830 it has withdrawn again.

You may therefore see why Jacob Böhme lived, for example, in an epoch in which he could obtain little from the German Folk-Soul. For it was not a time in which the Folk Soul united with the individual souls of the nation. Although Jacob Böhme is called the “Teutonic Philosopher,” he is therefore a man who, in regard to the time in which he lived, is not dependent on his Folk-Soul; he faces us, as it were, like one who is not rooted in his time, like something eternal.

If we take Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, they are German philosophers who are deeply rooted in the German Folk-Soul. It is a characteristic fact that these thinkers who live between 1710 and 1830 are deeply rooted in their Folk-Soul. This is their characteristic trait.

You therefore see that it is not only essential to know that

1. in the Italian nation, the Folk-Soul works through the Sentient Soul,

2. in the French nation, it works through the Intellectual Soul,

3. in the British nation, through the Consciousness-Soul,

4. in the Central-European nation, through the Ego—

but that it is also essential to know that they exercise their influences at given times. The events which take place can only be grasped from a historical aspect, if we really know these things. The nonsense pursued in the form of science, where documents are taken and events are enumerated in sequence, with the conclusion that one must be deduced from the other—this nonsense of historical investigation does not lead to real history, to an understanding of human development, but only—one might say—to a falsification of the forces working in human history.

If we now see in how many different ways the forces which drive the nations work upon each nation (of course, other nations might also be characterized), we discover the contrasting things which are there. We then see that the events which are taking place in the present time have not only arisen during the. past few years, but that they prepared themselves throughout the centuries.

Let us look across to the East, to the region which is the home of Russian culture. Russian culture is characterised by the fact that it can only unfold when the Russian Folk-soul will have united with the Spirit-Self. (This too is mentioned in the cycle of lectures The Mission of the Folk-Souls). That is to say; A future epoch must come in which the characteristic qualities of the European East will take on a definite form. This will be entirely different from what takes place in Western or in Central Europe. To begin with, however, it is clear that what pertains to Russian culture does not exist as yet, for Russian culture is connected with tin Spirit-Self in the same way in which the individual human being is now connected with it, that is to say, it must always look up to it. Individual Russians, even the deepest Russian philosophers, do not speak in the same way Central Europeans when they express the loftiest things, but in an entirely different way. Here we come across something very characteristic.

You see, we must ask: What is the most characteristic trait of the spiritual life of Central Europe? You all know that there was a time in which the great mystics lived; Meister Eckhart,Tauler,and others were active then, and others too. With their feeling soul they all sought the Divine Essence contained in the human soul; they looked for the God within them, ... they sought to find within their own soul “the little spark in feeling,” as Eckhart expressed himself. Within the soul (they said), within the soul there must be something where; the Godhead is present in a direct way. This gave rise to the striving to unite the human Ego with the Godhead within the human soul. This Divine Essence, this Godhead, was to be striven for; it called for an active striving, for development.

This characterizes the whole life of Central Europe. Think of the infinite soul-depth and feeling of a man who stands in a completely international way in Central European culture, in the spiritual life of Central Europe. Angelus Silesius, who says in one of the beautiful mottoes contained in his Cherubinisher Wandersmann: “When I die, it is not I who die, but God in me.” Consider the great profundity of these words! The man who uttered them, had a living grasp of the idea of immortality and he felt that when death comes to the individual human being, it is because he is filled by the Godhead. Death is a phenomenon which is not connected with man, but. with God, and since God cannot die, death must only be an illusion. Death can therefore not mean a destruction of life. A person who can say, “When I die, it is not I who die, but God in me,” knows of the existence of the immortal soul. This infinitely profound feeling lived in Angelus Silesius. It is a result of the fact that the inspiration passes through the Ego.

When the inspiration passes through the sentient soul, something may arise which appeared, for example, in Giordano Bruno: This friar penetrated with greatest passion into everything discovered by Copernicus and he felt that the whole world was filled with life. If you read anything by Giordano Bruno you will find the confirmation of the fact that in so far as he grew out of the Italian nation, he proves that the Italian Folk-soul is inspired through the sentient soul.

Cartesius (Descartes) was born at that characteristic moment of French development when the French Folk-soul completely united itself with the French nation. Read a page by Cartesius, the French philosopher; you will find everywhere the confirmation of the truth discovered by spiritual science, namely that the inspiration of the Folk-Soul influences the Understanding Soul.

Read Locke or Hume, or any other English philosopher up to Mill and Spencer,—everywhere you will come across the inspiration of the Consciousness Soul.

When you read Fichte, who strives within the Ego itself, you will find that the Folk-soul inspires the Ego.

It is characteristic that the Central European Folk-Soul is experienced in the Ego, so that the Ego is the truly striving part, the Ego with all its strength and errors, with all its mistakes and victories. A man of Central Europe who has to find the path to Christ, must give birth to Him within his own soul.

Try to find in the spiritual life of Russia the idea (it should not be taken over superficially from the civilisation of western Europe) that Christ or God should be experienced within the soul. You will not be able to find it; Russians always expect that the forces which penetrate into the historical course of events penetrate into it like a “miracle,” to use Solovioff's expression. The spiritual life of Russia is very much inclined to look for the resurrection of Christ in the spiritual world, to worship th influence of an inspiring, power, yet this inspiring power speaks as if man were below and as if the inspiring element soared on high above mankind like a cloud, as if it did not penetrate into the human Ego. This intimate union of the Ego with its God, or if Christ is thought of, with Christ, this desire that Christ should be born within one's own soul, can only be found in Central Europe. If the culture of Eastern Europe will one day reach the stage of development which is appropriate to it, it will appear in a civilisation soaring above man, setting forth a kind of Group-soul life, but upon a higher stage than in the past. At present we must find it natural that Russians, and even Russian thinkers, should always speak of a spiritual world soaring above the world of man, of a spiritual world which they can never approach as intimately as Central Europeans approach it, when their Ego seeks to draw nigh to the Divine Essence surging and weaving through the world. On many occasions, when I myself spoke of the Godhead that surges and weaves through the world, my words were inspired by the feelings of a Central European, for no other nation in Europe can grasp such truths in the way in which Central Europeans grasp it. This characterizes the Central European nation.

These are the forces that live in the different nations and that confront one another in such a way as to compete with each other again and again. Sudden explosions must occur, resembling the discharge of clouds which bring lightning and storm.

But do we not see (this is how one might express it now) how a word resounded in the East of Europe, which was like a watchword and was also meant to act as such, just as if the civilisation of Eastern Europe were beginning to overspread the unworthy west of Europe, overflooding it? Do we not observe the rise of Slavophils, of Panslavs and Panslavism, particularly in men of Dostojevski's kind, and similar ideas? Dostojevski came forward with the special points of his programme staging; “You western Europeans, the whole lot of you, have a culture which is rotten to the core; it must be supplanted by the impulses coming from Eastern Europe.” A whole theory was set up, which culminated above all in the fact that people said: In the West, everything has grown rotten and decadent, and it must be replaced by the fresh forces of the East. We have our good orthodox religion which we do not oppose, we accept it like the cloud of the Folk-soul soaring above the people ... and so forth. Very clever theories were thus built up, dealing with what might already constitute the principles, the aims of the ancient Slav life, and stating that from the East the Truth should begin to spread over Central and Western Europe.

I said that the individual may rise above his nation. In a certain sphere, Solovioff, the great Russian philosopher, was such an individual. Although every line he writes reveals that he writes as “Russian,” he nevertheless stands above his nation. In his youth Solovioff was, one might say, a Panslav. But he penetrated more deeply into the ideas which the Panslav and Slavophils set up as a kind of philosophy of nations, as a kind of world-conception of nations. And what did Solovioff discover? What did Solovioff, the Russian find? He asked, himself: Does that which constitutes the true Russian-being really exist in the present time? Is it to be found among those who represent Panslavism, who follow the Slavophils?—He did not rest until he discovered the truth. What did he discover? He investigated the statements of the Slavophils, to whom he himself had belonged in the past, he pressed upon them. And he discovered that the majority, of the thought-forms, statements and intentions had been taken from the French philosopher de Maistre, who sympathized with the Jesuits; he was the great teacher of the Slavophils in the field of a world-conception. Solovioff himself proved that these ideas had not grown out of Russian soil, but that these Panslav and Slavophil thoughts had been taken from de Maistre. And he proved other things besides. He unearthed a long-forgotten German book, from the 15th century, unknown to everyone in Germany. The Slavophils copied whole portions of it in their literature.

What is the strange phenomenon which confronts us here? People believe that from the East come impulses which are of Eastern origin, whereas they are a purely western importation. They came from the West and were then sent back again to the western people. The western people become acquainted with their own forms of thought ... because the East does not yet possess its own forms of thought.

When things are closely investigated, one always finds the confirmation of the statements made by spiritual science. They prove to be correct. We therefore have something elemental in the forces, which come rolling towards us from the East, something which will unfold one day if it will absorb the forces which developed in Central Europe with the same love with which Central Europe once absorbed the Greek and Latin life coming from the South.

In the course of mankind's development, the later epochs absorb what was contained in the past epochs. And the FAUST mentality of Central Europe, which I described in my public lecture [Lecture of May 8th, 1915. “Man's Destiny in the Light of a Knowledge of the Spiritual Worlds.”] when I spoke of the year 1770, was felt by Goethe as a Faustic striving and he expressed it in the words:

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und, leider, auch Theologie!
Durchaus studiert mit heißem Bemühen.
Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor.

(Alas! Philosophy, law, and medicine,
and unfortunately, also theology
I studied with hot endeavour.
But there I stand now, poor fool!
and am as clever as I was before.)

There arose in Germany an immensely rich life of the spirit, an immensely intensive rich striving in the spiritual life of Germany.—But if Goethe had written his Faust 40 years later, he would certainly not have begun with: “Habe nun ach, Philosophie ...” I have, alas! studied philosophy, etc. ... and have become the wise man of all ages ... but he would have described his Faust exactly as he did in 1770.

This living striving comes from the Folk-soul's inspiration, of the Ego, from that intimate connection of the Ego with the Folk-soul. This is a fundamental quality of the Central-European civilisation of the spirit. And the civilisation of eastern Europe must unite with it warmly and lovingly. The forces which bad to flow into Central Europe were once absorbed, received from the civilisation of the South. To-day it is not otherwise, and if the elemental wave of development comes rolling along from the East, it is just as if the pupil were furious with his teacher because he must learn something from him and wants to whip him for it. The comparison is somewhat trivial, but it is one which explains things precisely.

Groups, masses of people endowed with entirely different forces of development live together in Europe. These different forces of development must actively compete against each other; they must assert themselves in different ways. The opposing forces, those which come into conflicts with the others, prepared themselves long, long ago. Particularly when studying the fine nuances, we see everywhere the truths revealed by spiritual science.

Do we. not find it expressed in a wonderful way that the wave of European development should concentrate itself so as to show the whole of mankind, symbolically as it were, how Central Europe must feel the life-union between the Ego and the spiritual world, how God should be experienced in the “sparklet within the soul,” how Christ should be experienced in “the small spark within the soul?” Christ himself must become active within the human Ego. For this reason, in Central Europe the. whole development tends towards what we call the Ego, the “Ich.” And Ich means “I, C, H” : ICH. The Ich—Jesus Christ, faces us in Central Europe like a mighty symbol, intimately working together with, what can be the soul's holiest possession, intimately working together with the soul itself!

This is how the Folk-soul works, he inspires the nation and expresses the underlying facts in characteristic words. I know that some people laugh when such things are said, when one gives expression to the truth that the Folk-soul worked for centuries in order to give rise to the word ICH, which is so symbolically full of meaning. But let them laugh! After a few decades they will no longer laugh, and call such things more significant than what people now designate as “laws of Nature.” The influence of this wave of development was very characteristic. Only a very small portion of the truth sometimes rises up in human consciousness; but the forces which are active in the sub-conscious depths express themselves in a far more truthful way.

We speak, for example, of the Germanic peoples. The working Genius of Speech forms the words. One part of the inhabitants of Central Europe calls itself “German.” But when we speak of the Germanic races we must include Germany Austria, Holland, the Scandinavian nations and also the inhabitants of the British Isles. The word “Germanic” has a very wide meaning and embraces a large field. But the inhabitant of Great Britain rejects it. To him a “German” is an inhabitant of Germany. In English there is no special word for “Germane” (Germanic). The German language embraces a far larger field with that word. The German language as such is inclined to set the word at the service of selflessness; The German does not only call himself Germanic, but he includes the others in it. But the Briton rejects it.

Try to penetrate into the wonderful essence of the Genius creating speech, and you will discover the truly wonderful element in it. Maya, the great illusion, arises in connection with that which lives in the consciousness of men. But the forces, which work, in the subconscious depths are far more true. They express something immensely significant and profound.

Compare now the intimate way in which we must work in order to understand the European play of forces, compare this inmate way of working with the coarse way in which one generally views the reciprocal connections of the European nations. It will show you the devastation in the human power of judgment resulting from the materialistic age. The fact that people have begun to think that “matter carries and supports, everything” is not the worst; the worst thing of all is that people have become short-sighted, that they are unable to see the fundamental facts and do not even make one step to reach the world which lies behind that veil which is woven over truth as Maya; this is really a calamity.

Materialism very skilfully prepared its aims. Here too genius was at work, but the genius who is the leading power in materialism is Ahriman. He exercised a powerful influence during the past centuries, a very powerful influence indeed!

Let me now refer to a chapter which people perhaps prefer to ignore to-day. But I must draw attention to it, even though people may look upon this as a special form of insanity.

You see, the easiest, way of influencing people is to drip into the soul and thoughts of still youthful persons forces which will develop later in life. Older people can very seldom be taught anything thoroughly. Consequently, Ahriman could never have a better chance of preparing souls in a genuinely materialistic way than by dripping into the souls of young children and youthful persons certain forces which will continue to work in their sub-consciousness. By absorbing materialistic forms of thought at an age, when one does not yet think materialistically, people are taught to think materialistically. When materialism is implanted into the souls of children, people learn to think in a materialistic way.

Ahriman did this by inspiring a writer of the materialistic age to write Robinson Crusoe. If our spirit is clear-sighted and submits to Robinson's influence, we shall see that ideas which are completely materialistic are at work in Robinson. This may not appear at once, yet the whole … the way in which the book is built up, the way in which Robinson is led to all kinds of outer experiences in his adventurous life, until finally even religion grows out of the soil like cabbage,—all this prepares the child's soul excellently for a materialistic way of thinking.

And if we consider that at a certain time there existed a Bohemian, a Portuguese, a. Hungarian, etc., etc. Robinson, in imitation of the original Robinson Crusoe, we must admit that the work was done very thoroughly. The reading of Robinson books contributed greatly to the development of materialism.

In contrast to such phenomena we should point out that there is something which children should take in until late in life: namely the fairy-tales of Central Europe, above all those collected by the brothers Grimm. This is far better reading for children than Robinson Crusoe.

And if to-day the terrible, difficult, fateful events among the nations of Europe are looked upon as a warning to study more closely the whole way in which things occur in the present time by developing out of the hidden depths of events, it will be possible to recognise above all that in reality the essential thing doe s not lie in the fact that a few German scientists sent back their decorations and titles to England!

If the warning of the present time is strong enough to enable us to recognise the whole significance of the materialistically inspired consciousness-soul of the British nation, we shall also recognise what it means to let children read Robinson-books and we shall extirpate the whole Robinson literature. If the warnings of the present time are really taken into consideration in the right way we shall work far more thoroughly, far more radically.

You see, I began to interpret Goethe 35 years ago by explaining his spiritual-scientific task. I tried to explain that Goethe's theory of evolution really contains a truly great theory of evolution, in keeping with spiritual views. The time must come in which larger circles of people recognise this. For Goethe gave us a great, powerful theory of evolution, which is truly spiritual. People found it difficult to understand. In the materialistic age, Darwin was far more successful for he gave in a coarser, materialistic form the truths contained in a fine, spiritual form in Goethe's theory of evolution. A thorough Anglicising took hold of Central Europe. Consider how tragic it is that the most English scientist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, who swore by Darwin, should have felt such a furious hatred against everything English, and when this war broke out he was one of the first who returned the decorations and titles which had been given him in England. He will have been too old to send back the English-tinted Darwinism, but this would have been the important, essential fact.

The things which matter, lie deeply concealed and are immensely significant. And they are connected with the necessary spiritual deepening of our epoch. If one day we shall recognise the immensely greater depth of Goethe's Colour Theory in comparison with Newton's Colour Theory, and the immensely greater depth of Goethe's Theory of Evolution in comparison with Darwin's, we shall recognise the forces concealed in the spiritual life of Central Europe also in regard to these highest subjects.

By explaining to you all these things, I wish to awaken in your souls a feeling for the great warning which we must see in the present difficult and fateful events. It is a warning to work, to bethink ourselves of what lies concealed in the spiritual life of Central Europe, to undertake the responsibility of drawing out these forces. This is what I meant in my public lecture, yesterday, when 1 said that the spiritual life of Central Europe contains seeds which must unfold into flowers and fruits.

If we recognise again and again that the conscious life of the soul lies on the surface and that below it lies all the things explained to you in these days, we may turn our thoughts towards the fact that also in the present time the impulses of many people contain forces besides those of which they are conscious. Do not think that the people in the West and in the East who have to. defend the great fortress of Central Europe are only fighting for something which lives in their upper consciousness. You should envisage above all the impulses of which so many men who are now passing through blood and death are not conscious,—nevertheless these impulses exist. When we look to the East and to the West, spiritual science should give us the feeling that the impulses of the men who bring these sacrifices contain forces which the future will bring to birth in external life, although the fighting men are hardly conscious of this. Only if we consider the present events in this light, we are filled with the true feelings, with the feelings enabling us to grasp them.

But let us consider how many souls involved in these events—so great in their warlike character that they cannot be compared with anything else in the conscious history of mankind—let us consider how many souls are now passing through blood and death and let us remember that they will look down upon the death which they were condemned to suffer by the present time. Let us remember that in the meaning off what I told you yesterday, youthful etheric bodies fill the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. Let us consider that in the spiritual world will exist not only the souls, and the individualities of these men, but that useful impulses going out from these young etheric bodies will permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Let us set out from this point and try to bear in mind the warning calls which must be heard by those who remain behind on the earth. Indeed, each individual soul that passed through the portal of death reminds us of the great tasks which must be fulfilled in the civilisation of Europe. These warning calls must be heard. Out of the depths of spiritual life, we must be willing to draw feelings born out of knowledge, which show us the true nature cf the world in which we live. And one day, when we shall feel that each soldier who fell on the battlefield is a warner calling for mankind's spiritualization in the civilisation of Europe, we shall have grasped the events in their true meaning. Not only an abstract knowledge should go out from centres such as Dornach, the knowledge that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, that he passes through many incarnations, that he has a Karma and so forth, but the souls who belong to our spiritual-scientific movement should be stirred in their innermost depths to that feeling life of which I have just spoken, enabling them to experience in the near future the warning calls of those who died in young years. The most beautiful experience which followers of spiritual science can win is that of the living stream which should pass like a breath through the ranks of those who count themselves as belonging to our movement. Not the mere knowledge of this fact, not only its recognition, but its life, the realisation of this life.

Indeed, recently several of our members have left the physical plane. Among them, a young helping friend, our dear FRITZ MITSCHER. Karma brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation in Basle, I had to send certain words to the departing soul. Among other things which I said to this soul, were the words that we know that he will remain a helping friend also now that he has passed through the threshold of death. I had to say this, guided by the consciousness of the fact that the truths which animate every one of us do not only stand before us as a theory, but that these truths uttered as if they were theoretical thoughts, must fill our whole soul with life, full life.

In that case, our attitude towards those who passed through the threshold of death must be the same as towards those who still live here on earth. Indeed, we should not hesitate, to say: Those who still live in the physical body are handicapped in many ways, so that they cannot live a full spiritual lire, they cannot live it to the fill. How many handicaps can be observed in people during their physical life on earth, when it is a question of recognising the truly great tasks of evolution—and still more, when it is a question of FULFILLING THEM! We may rely far more on the dead.

This feeling, that the dead live among us, of a special mission entrusted to them, guided me, when p spoke the parting words for our fried, Fritz Mitscher, who passed through the portal of death so early in life. The words spoken for him apply to many others who crossed the threshold of death. In the dead we have our beat and most important helpers and you will not misunderstand me when I say: In our spiritual work we may rely far more upon the dead than upon the living.

But in order to be able to say this, we should stand in a living way within that which our spiritual movement can give us. I rely on the fact that those who crossed the threshold of death are—particularly in the external field—our most important helpers in the spiritualization of human civilisation in the future, for they look back upon death, and death will be their great teacher. Many people to-day need stronger teachers than those whom life can give them. Many examples prove this.

Let me give you one example (though many others can be given): A few years ago, a sensational article directed against the spiritual science I represent, appeared in Hochland, a periodical published in South-Germany. This article caused a real sensation. It convinced many people, because it was written by a very famous philosopher. The editor of Hochland accepted the article, so that he propagated—at least he thought so—a very conspicuous article on this mad spiritual science.

You see, it is not important to defend ourselves against such things with external measures. It is quite comprehensible that clever modern people should think that spiritual science is foolish ... But since the outbreak of war something else occurred. The editor of that paper is a staunch German, a man with German feelings. The author of the article which had been accepted, addressed certain letters to him and these were printed in the Sueddeutschen Monatsheften for the publisher was guided by, let us say, his blessed “innocence.” Try to read these articles. They are full of venom against the spiritual culture of Central Europe; the letters which that very same philosopher wrote to the editor of Hochland are full of venom, so that the editor felt obliged to say: “In Central Europe, men with such ideas can only be found in a mad-house.”

Consider the immense significance of this criticism. There is a man who edits a paper in South-Germany. He accepts an article winch he considers important as a weapon for the destruction of spiritual science and he says: “Here, at last, we have a good article on spiritual science written by a famous thinker!” After a while, the same author sends him letters which he must designate as coming from a person who should be in a mad-house.

If one arrives at conclusions by a truly living logic, one would have to say: That man is a fool now, consequently he must have been a fool before! The editor simply did not recognise that he had to deal with a fool, when that man first wrote against spiritual science. This is living logic, life-logic. Sometimes, however, people cannot wait until this logic works and shows its effects. Nevertheless, it is active in life and so we may sometimes experience things of this kind.

The article in question was directed against my spiritual science. People read it and said: “O, that article was written by a famous philosopher and Platonist and he is a very clever man!” The editor thought: “An article on spiritual science written by such a clever man, must be a specially good article.” But after a while that same editor had to admit: “That man is a fool.” First, however, he needed proofs for this, as described.

Such things may occur among those who live on the earth. People who do not have a very firm ground under their feet, as in the case of the editor of that South-German periodical, have to be taught their lessons by the recent events which come from the spiritual world and are offered by life itself, in a far deeper meaning than one generally likes to admit.

You will therefore understand me, when I add the following remark to what I already explained to you: There are many opposing forces in the present time, and it is permissible to designate war as a disease. This war is the result of something which was enacted long ago, and it is a healing force eradicating many evils which would gradually harm the life of our whole, civilisation. By designating war as a disease in this meaning, but by looking upon disease as a self-defence, we can understand it, and the fateful events of the present with its significant hints and admonishments. In that case we experience it with all the inner forces of our soul, so that we can direct our attention towards the souls who passed through the threshold of death and look ahead into the near future, the souls who really grasp the inspiration which they are able to send into the hearts of those who are willing to listen to them, namely that a spiritual deepening must take hold of them, it must penetrate into them for the sake of human progress and salvation which the future needs.

If your souls can rightly take in the meaning which I wish to convey with these words, you will really be followers and upholders of our spiritual-scientific world-conception in the full meaning of the word. If you can make up your minds to become souls who turn their attention to the messages whispered from above by those who passed through the portal of death as a result of the fateful events of our times, you will be true followers of spiritual science.

In the near future, spiritual science will have to build a bridge connecting the living with the dead, a line of communication for the inspiring elemental forces of those who in the present time made the great sacrifice of their life, a path along which their messages can reach us.

For this reason, I wished to give you these explanations, by appealing to your souls and by stimulating certain feelings. These should be expectant, listening feelings, able to grasp what the difficult, fateful present reveals to human souls.

In this meaning, let me again conclude with the words already spoken the day before yesterday; they should work in our souls like a Mantram, transforming them into expectant souls, ready to receive the inspirations which come from the dead, from souls filled with a growing life in the Spirit:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfer taten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(Translation)
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood shed in battles,
From the sorrow of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Will spring forth a spiritual fruit,
If souls, spiritually conscious, turn
Their senses towards the Spirit-realm.

---

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner: The Mission of the Folk-Souls in Relation with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology.

It must be my intention during these days to bring something home to our souls that is able to throw some light from the spiritual-scientific point of view on our big events. Therefore, it is also my task next Sunday to turn our sensations to certain points of view which can bring some light just in that which must now move our hearts and souls in the deepest sense. I would like to prepare the basis of that, directing your souls to certain powers and forces which have an effect in the historical existence of human beings which can be only recognised by those insights spiritual science can give and are not immediately discernible for the everyday consciousness. I want to point to developmental facts of human life, to more or less subconscious facts today which express themselves in the historical course of human life.

We go out from the fact- you know it from the representation in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—that what takes place in secrecy with every human being is recognised on successive levels of supersensible knowledge, of the so-called Imaginative knowledge, of the Inspirative knowledge and of the Intuitive knowledge. In the public lecture yesterday, I have already emphasised that one has always to keep in mind that the spiritual scientist who states something of the spiritual worlds on the basis of his knowledge of Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive perceptions, does not add anything that does not exist in the spiritual realms in which every human soul lives without being aware of them. The spiritual scientist only draws attention to that which always weaves and lives in the world and in which way the individual human soul is put in it. So that not only for somebody who has the intention to make his way into the current of esoteric experiences, but for every human soul the knowledge of them is important what is internal reality for it at any rate, only a reality which cannot be recognised by means of the everyday awareness of life.

Thus I would like to go out from some facts of the Imaginative perception of the human nature generally. We observe daily that an event full of riddle, at least an event full of riddle for the external science intervenes rhythmically in our life by turns: the waking and sleeping states. We know for a long time that we belong with our four human members, the physical body, the etheric body, astral body and ego, in the waking state to the physical earth. We know that we are during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking, in the physical world only with our physical and etheric bodies that we withdraw as it were into the purely spiritual world with our astral bodies and egos. We can characterise that which presents itself now to the view of the spiritual researcher and say: the spiritual researcher looks at that which takes place, for example, constantly with the human being when he leaves his physical and etheric bodies while falling asleep and advances to the region of the higher world with his astral body and ego. The spiritual researcher simply watches what happens there with the human being—with every human being falling asleep. So that we can say: the spiritual researcher only observes what would show itself to every human soul if it could look down not in the dream state, but in the complete sleeping state at the world, so that it would find its physical and etheric bodies as something among the things of the world that is outside of it, of the sleeping soul.

We must not imagine that we see that which we have left there, in which we have left behind our physical and etheric bodies, from the point of view of sleep as we see our physical surroundings with our physical eyes. We have to use our physical senses, our physical eyes to see our surroundings from waking up to falling asleep. We do not use them when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies. If we became suddenly clairvoyant in the sleeping state, we would perceive nothing of that what surrounds us in the waking state, as it is in the waking state. We also do not perceive our physical and etheric bodies as we perceive the physical body looking into a mirror. It is quite wrong to believe that one looks at the physical and the etheric bodies as if one bends with his astral body and ego over the physical and etheric bodies. This is not the case.

That what the Imaginative knowledge—we keep that in mind now: Imaginative knowledge—shows us that everything disappears to us, really disappears for the time being that we are used to see in the waking state. Also while we see our physical and etheric bodies, these are not like they are in the waking state, but our physical and etheric bodies appear to be enlarged to a world; they appear to us as connected with the whole earth. We are looking; we are aware that we are looking at the physical and etheric bodies. But we behold them, so that they are the only world for us at first. As well as we have mountains, rivers and clouds, the sun and stars et cetera round ourselves and look at them as our surroundings in the waking state, we look, while we look at our surroundings, when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies, at our physical and etheric bodies as something that is extended to a world. We look at nothing else at all. We look at this as we look, otherwise, at the different things of our earth. We look there at our own physical nature like at a whole world.

It is strange that we feel this world at which we look there falling asleep that we feel it as we feel the earth in spring when it produces the single green rungs, after it has been freed from the snowy cover of the winter, when it makes the vegetation grow on it again, when everything begins shooting and sprouting. Falling asleep we look at the physical and etheric bodies enlarged to a world, we look at them, so that we can feel them like a planet waking in spring. And this goes on through the whole sleeping state that way. What we see there in mighty pictures which really appear to us in the expansion of a planet, begins going to its summer like the earth is about to go towards its summer when the spring comes to an end. We experience the sleeping state that way if we experience it properly.

We go in the sleeping state up to that point where we feel: our physical and etheric bodies bear something sprouting and shooting up to bloom, up to fruit; everywhere everything grows and blossoms. If I may express myself in detail, I have to say—for the Imaginative view that is paradoxical which shows itself that way, indeed: while looking physically we feel our earth's surface and experience its sprouting upwards, its growing and blooming in our consciousness. It is different when we now observe that from outside which takes action with our body and compare it with the plant world, as if its roots penetrate from above and grows with its flowers into our body. Thus we feel a completely reverse world, and the fruits are immersed. We learn then that with this immersion of the fruits is really expressed what becomes clear to us as the refreshment of sleep.

We know thereby that our physical and etheric bodies receive the forces from the whole universe—because everything is forces at what we look Imaginatively,—while we go on sleeping. We watch forces coming from the universe which are active in the creation of plants. We see the universe driving a vegetation into our physical nature. We get the sure knowledge of the fact that we leave our body while falling asleep, because we take away our physical and etheric bodies from the effects of the cosmic forces with our egos and astral bodies from waking up to falling asleep. Because we ourselves go out, the whole universe is able to have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies. It sends elemental, not physical forces into us which express themselves in the described Imaginations. Thus a relation is produced between physical body and etheric body with the whole universe every time when we fall asleep. While we live in the waking state in the physical world, our physical and etheric bodies really live during sleep in that what we call the elemental world, the world of the bare forces which show themselves just in the described Imaginations.

Where are we with our egos and astral bodies? We have often described, and it is also shown in different writings: we are with our egos and astral bodies in the world that has been described as the world of the higher hierarchies among the beings we call angeloi, archangeloi, archai et cetera. The egos and the astral bodies dive into these beings and their world. As well as we know about the beings of the animal, the plant, the mineral realms, when we are waking, and stand as human beings as it were above this world while we take up them in our thoughts, we are taken up like thoughts by the beings of the higher hierarchies. This is the significant matter that we can say: while here below our physical and etheric bodies are connected with the forces of the whole universe, we are thought from falling asleep up to waking, as if we were real beings, woven of thoughts and the will being; we are thought by the beings of the higher hierarchies.—As we think nature, the beings of the higher hierarchies think us. Hence, it is not right at all, exactly speaking, to say if one comes out of the physical body, he thinks the world. It is correct to say that one experiences to be thought by the world of the higher hierarchies. As the thought would have to feel itself during the waking life if it had consciousness, we would have to experience ourselves as the thoughts of the higher beings when we are outside our physical bodies.

How do we experience the reawakening Imaginatively? While we prepare to wake up gradually, we experience that really as we experience—we can compare the Imagination again to the external nature—the winter coming with its forces destroying and paralysing the sprouting summer life. As well as the winter above the earth brings frost and cold and the destruction of the summer splendour, we ourselves dive into the physical body and etheric body. Waking up we prepare the decline of the forces which entered our physical body and etheric body really like a vegetation, even like an animal realm from the elemental world of the universe as the winter prepares the decline of the summer splendour. While we are awake, we really transport our physical and etheric bodies as a result of our presence into such a condition as the cosmic relations transport the earth when it is winter. We spread out the winter over our own physical and etheric bodies, entering them. You see at the same time that what one uses from physical points of view often as a comparison is not right for the spiritual view. Indeed, the human being already has the consciousness instinctively that he is connected with the whole universe and that his experience is a microcosmic image of the macrocosm. But the human being prefers to say when he really wants to compare something in his microcosmic life to the macrocosmic life: waking is like the spring coming in our life and the waking life is like the summer. The autumn is like becoming tired in the evening and sleeping is like the winter.—Just the reverse is reality. The summer life is the sleeping life and the winter life is the waking life. This is the truth of the matter.

If the spiritual researcher investigates these relations, he finds that, while his ego and astral body rise to the realms of the higher hierarchies and are thought by the higher beings, not only the elemental world but also certain beings of the higher hierarchies work on his physical and etheric bodies. It is not only the elemental world which consists of forces, but real beings of the higher hierarchies, which work on our physical and etheric body. Something strange comes to light then that we can notice that we get to quite different conditions at the moment when we fall asleep as those in which we are while we are awake. As I have said, everything that can be expressed that way is based on the fact that the spiritual research permits us to watch the conditions of falling asleep and waking. Then it appears that also that being of the higher hierarchies has an effect on our physical and etheric bodies from waking up to falling asleep whom we must feel as the folk-soul to whom we belong. When the human being wakes up, he does not only dive into his physical and etheric bodies, but also into the processes which are carried out in his physical and etheric bodies by that which his folk-soul accomplishes. Something strange becomes apparent that the human being dives with falling asleep not only into those beings of the higher hierarchies who correspond to his individual development, but also into such spiritual beings we must regard as folk-souls. I ask to notice that, because it behoves us, who want to penetrate into spiritual science, to look deeper at the world interrelation than external perception can do it. Namely, the human being dives into the relationship to all folk-souls except his own folk-soul from falling asleep up to waking.

Let us remember: during the waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts which our own folk-soul carries out in our physical and etheric bodies. We live together with our own folk-soul from waking up to falling asleep. Beside our folk-soul all the folk-souls of the other peoples are existent in the world. With falling asleep we dive into the relations of the other folk-souls, not in a single other folk-soul—make a note of that,—but in what they accomplish together, what they accomplish as it were in association, as a society. Only the own folk-soul is taken away from this relationship during night. We cannot escape to have also a relationship with all those folk-souls which belong to the other peoples in whom we are not incarnated in a certain incarnation. Since, while we belong to our folk-soul in our waking state, we belong to the other folk-souls in the sleeping state, indeed, only to their sounding-together; while we belong in the waking state to the intentions of the individual folk-soul in whose area we are born in a certain incarnation.

But there is a means to dive sleeping also into an other folk-soul. While we live in the normal awake state in our own folk-soul or its activity and in sleep in the harmony of the other folk-souls, we can dive sleeping in an individual folk-soul if we acquire a rather burning hatred of that which this other folk-soul accomplishes. So absurd it may sound, it is true—and we must be able in our movement to endure such a truth quietly: if the human being really feels burning hatred of a nation's area from his inner being, he condemns himself to sleep with the folk-soul of this nation's area at night, to be together with it.

We just touch a truth where we can see that life begins to have a deep seriousness behind that veil which covers the spiritual worlds for the everyday view, and that it is quite uncomfortable in a certain respect to be a supporter of spiritual science. Since spiritual science begins to be most serious about circumstances which one thinks uncomfortable in life and over which we are generously helped to get because life does not reveal the truth in the everyday sense. Although we must stand, of course, in the external life on the ground which this external life requires from us, we have to be serious about such a principle if we rise in spiritual science to those realms where other characteristics of life begin.

In my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? I spoke of the fact that at the moment when one rises in the spiritual world—and every human being is in the spiritual world, it concerns here only to a knowledge of that which is there always,—then that comfortable unity of the human being stops in which we live in the physical world. The human being experiences some splits; apart from those splits which are mentioned there, and which one can observe after the meeting with the guardian of the threshold, some other splits happen, for example, that is of deep importance for the soul-life. We have to accept while we live in a certain incarnation in a certain nation that it is involved in the whole process of the earth's evolution. We have to do our duty for the nation in which we stand and we have to offer our love to it. It must be clear to us that we really belong, because we are also spiritual beings in our ego and astral body, to the whole humankind and feel with our impulses with the whole humankind. Spiritual science does not allow that we live in it in one-sidedness, but we must be able to harmonise these both sides completely.

We have to realise that we harmonise—although we can love as a person of the present incarnation, even if we are spiritual scientists, our nation as intensely as somebody else is able to love his nation—this feeling with that which combines us with the whole humankind. And just spiritual science raises us to be brought together with the whole humankind because it shows us that we are connected with the whole humankind in our egos and astral bodies. Spiritual science demands more and more to harmonise contrasts from those who devote themselves to it with seriousness and dignity. It is bad if true spiritual science is confused with that unclear mystic activity which wants to combine the needs of the external, physical life with that for which we must rise diving into the spiritual world. Because unclear mysticism wants to bring in that everywhere in the everyday life what spiritual science only shows in the right light. That unclear mysticism will never be able to harmonise, for example, the love of the own nation with the love of the whole humankind, it leads to a hazy mystic cosmopolitism.

One can compare it, as I have already done, to that which hazy theosophists say all the time about equality and about the equal validity of any religion. Indeed, you can say in the abstract: all religions contain the truth. But this is exactly the same, as if one says: pepper, salt and paprika and everything possible are on the table, and all are food ingredients. Sugar, pepper, salt, and paprika—everything is the same. So I give paprika once into the coffee and sugar into the soup, because they are all food ingredients. Exactly on the same point of logic are those who drivel in an unclear mysticism only about the uniform core of all religions instead of getting involved in the real being of any detail that appears in our earth development. It does not depend on emphasising always: all peoples are only expressions of the generally human, but that we recognise the specific tasks which are given to the individual peoples by their folk-souls. A key is given for that in the series of talks which was printed long ago, which was held several years before the outbreak of the war, which did not come into being under the influence of the war, which one cannot reproach that it originated under the impressions of the war: The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology.

Just in our time it is important to call to mind such serious matters, so that the human being can find the harmony between general charity and patriotism. One does not need to shy away from characterising of any individual people, in so far as it is a people—the individual human being always rises up above his people. However, you can derive from my remarks that that has to take place without hatred, of course. Anybody does not recognise the real being of the individual plant if he hates the plant and describes what he feels as hatred. And also anybody cannot recognise the characteristics of a people if he describes what he hates of the people, or if he takes up that in the portrayal which comes from the emotions of hatred.

Thus somebody who is able to rise up to the points of view of spiritual science has to be eager all the time to see the being of the world not in a uniform unity, but just in the harmony of a variety. The human being has to find the possibility to feel all possible warmth for his people, concerning which he needs not show less commitment than anybody who does not strive for spiritual science, and to combine, on the other side, what brings us together with the whole humankind as a big complete being.

I said that we resume such matters the day after tomorrow. Now, however, I want to note that we take off that which brings us together with the single incarnation by our physical and etheric bodies at the same time, while we pass from our waking state into sleep and are thereby taken up in the beings of the higher hierarchies. So we take off our national being in sleep, too. We become only human beings, human beings with all the characteristics which we must have by that which we have acquired as human beings. If we look as spiritual scientist at that which happens to the human being, waking and sleeping, we perceive at the same time that in sleep the human being lives in the spiritual world with his ego and astral body, just as now also his physical and etheric bodies belong to the big world. The independent existence stops, which passes as it were in our skin, and we extend our selves to the big self.

Take into account that we go through a summer state and a winter state always in the course of twenty-four hours. The earth goes also through this summer and winter states, but the earth goes through them in the cycle of the year. Why does the earth go through these states in the cycle of the year? Because the earth is a being as we are, only on another level of the hierarchies. The whole earth, if we look at it physically, as it is around us, is only the body of the earth; and as well as we carry our soul and spirit in ourselves, the earth also has its soul and spirit. Only that is the difference that we are awake and sleep in the course of twenty-four hours, and the earth is awake and sleeps in the cycle of the year. It is awake from the autumn up to the spring and sleeps during the summer. So that we can always say, actually when we live in the summertime: we live embedded in the sleeping earth.—When we live in the wintertime: we live embedded in the waking earth.—It does not hold true that the earth is awake in summer and sleeps in winter as we can say in the trivial comparison taken from everyday life. But it is correct that when autumn comes the earth wakes up as a psycho-spiritual being and is most awake in the midwinter. The earth spirit thinks in the midwinter the most and starts stopping its thinking bit by bit while spring is approaching; and it sleeps when the external life sprouts; in the summertime the earth spirit is sleeping.

We as human beings are not only in connection with the body of the earth by our physical body, but also with the spirit of the earth. We know from various talks that the spirit we call the Spirit of Christ was united with the spirit of the earth by the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ Spirit lives in the spirit of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. If the human beings want to commit a festival which should express that the Christ Spirit is in the earth spirit—in which time they have to set this festival? They must not set it in the summer, but in the winter, in the midwinter. This is Christmas. For this reason one sets Christmas and that which develops from it in the wintertime. This arose from a right knowledge of those who once arranged the Christian year. Out of esoteric truth Christmas was determined, not account of historical facts. For the human being, while he is embedded with his soul and spirit in the soul and spirit of the earth, is together with that most awake condition of the earth in the wintertime. There he lives in the waking earth.

And what did the ancient peoples do about whom we know that they worked and got knowledge with the help of a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must refer preferably to that which lives in the sleeping earth spirit when the earth spirit sleeps mostly, has withdrawn mostly to its sleeping state. There they have risen to that—in contrast to the modern humankind—which gave them the truth unconsciously, as it had to be for them. Hence, in the midsummer we find the St John's-tide festival with the peoples who belonged to the cult which scooped its knowledge from the more sleeping, dreamlike state. It is the summer festival in contrast to Christmas which is fitting for the modern humankind.

What is determined so externally, and what our materialistic time does not understand at all, this actually has its deep bases in the spiritual reality. We live now in a time in which the human beings must start again thinking and feeling quite differently as it was the case in the past time. The past time had the task to bring the realm of materialistic thinking and feeling home to the human beings. And just the last centuries which the human souls lived through should bring them home to the materialistic thinking and feeling. The earth development had to go through the materialistic time. We do not do well to harshly criticise materialism. It had to come once in the earth development. But now we live in a time when materialism must be overcome again when spiritual beholding has to enter human souls again. This is the more or less bright or dark sensation of those who are attracted in their own souls to our spiritual-scientific attempts, to our spiritual-scientific world view. They just feel that now the time is there when one has consciously to take up this spiritual world, while the spiritual world was once seen in a dreamlike condition. Spiritual science is there for that.

The past time was that of materialism. Because humankind had to dive into materialism, the strong impulse which takes up humankind again had to work just through the time of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. When the Christ Impulse came into the earth evolution, the preparation already began. It came in the 14th, 15th centuries all the more. But when it approached, humankind already prepared itself to dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse was there as an objective fact in the world evolution, but the human beings of that time were not able to understand it least of all. Now we live in the time when one has to start to really understand it.

What do we see, hence? We see a strange course of the Christ Impulse in the previous development. We see that this Christ Impulse when it has entered in the human development as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha is not understood at all by the human beings. Let us try once to form an idea about that which people did in their cleverness. Just in the first and the following centuries, after the Christ Impulse had entered, we find that any possible theological system forms, that the people argue about how they have to imagine the Trinity et cetera. We see an infinite theological squabbling through centuries, and it would probably be the worst way to want to understand the Christ Impulse today from this theological squabbling how the Christ Impulse has worked during these centuries. The people who quarrelled there about its understanding have also understood nothing of the way the Christ Impulse stands in the evolution.

Let us try to realise how this impulse really worked once. I may give you single facts. I take the event that happened in the fourth century A.D., in 312, on the 28th October, which determined the later map of Europe completely: this was that Constantine, who was called “the Great,” the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, and triumphed over him. That is why Christianity also was victorious in the western world in an external way. Constantine declared Christianity the state religion et cetera. However, did he act out of his cleverness? Did that happen, which happened in those days, out of cleverness? We cannot say this. What happened then, actually? When Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, got to know that Constantine was approaching, he asked the Sibylline Books at first. That means that he set about understanding the world phenomena in a dreamlike way. He got the statement out of these books that somebody would accomplish the right action if he left the city as a ruler of Rome and went into battle outside Rome. This was something most unusual that one could think. Because Constantine had a much smaller army than Maxentius and could have achieved nothing without doubt if Maxentius had remained in Rome. But Maxentius moved out of Rome on the advice of the Sibylline Books. However, also in the army of Constantine the generals were not victorious. Rather Constantine had a dream showing him the symbol of Christ. On account of this dream he made his armies carry the cross as the symbol of Christ. He made his behaviour dependent on that which the dream had revealed to him. This battle by which the map of Europe was determined at that time was not decided by means of human cleverness, nor did the generals triumph, but dreams and prophecies. Everything in Europe would have changed if in those days the matters had taken place according to the consciousness of the human beings and not according to that what worked out of the subconsciousness what the human beings just did not know.

The theologians have argued about the question who is Christ, whether He is born with the Father in eternity, whether He is born in time whether He had the same validity as the Father et cetera. In their thoughts nothing of the Christ Impulse was included. But it worked within the human beings in the subconscious regions. It worked not by the egos, but by the astral bodies. The Christ Impulse was reality and worked without human beings understanding it. This is the important, essential part. The working of Christ is so independent of that what human beings understood of it like the course of a thunderstorm is independent of that what human beings have learnt about electricity or in the physical laboratory. Now it is the time to immerse oneself consciously in the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse. But Christ was always working as a force in the historical events.

We go over from this to another, later example. However, there we have to remember of what I explained to you. For the time when materialism approached it is important to know that the human being, while he wants to immerse himself in the spiritual world, must do that best of all in the wintertime. Hence, the view arises everywhere for this time that at the mentioned nights of midwinter especially talented people are endowed with inspirations from the spiritual world. There are legends everywhere with the peoples that tell us how the especially talented human beings who experience no initiation but are endowed by their nature, by elemental forces working in them to be inspired, how these are inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, in thirteen winter nights.

There is a very nice legend which was found in Norway not long ago, the legend of Olaf Åsteson who approaches the church at Christmas Eve and falls asleep. He sleeps up to the sixth January; and when he wakes up, he knows how to tell in imaginations about that which has taken place in the soul land, in the realm of spirits, as we call it. He expresses it in pictures, but he has experienced it through these thirteen nights. Such legends are found everywhere. They are just not that which one calls legends today. Indeed, there have always been endowed human beings who have gone through a physical initiation by elemental forces working in them which the human being can go through if he carefully follows the instructions of the initiatory path by his will.

So that we can say: in the time of materialism there could always be human beings who could unite with the earth spirit and receive inspirations when the earth spirit is most awake, in the midwinter. This was also the time when the Christ Impulse was able to work which united with the earth. Imagine especially endowed souls who are receptive for the spiritual world. It became apparent to them that they just got the impulses to that what they had to accomplish from the spiritual world in these thirteen nights up to the sixth January. This had to appear and appeared always again in little and big examples that there were human beings in the historical course who were inclined spiritually so that if the right point in time entered when they lived through those thirteen nights in winter the spiritual impulse—and in this time the Christ Impulse in particular—came into them. Initiations by nature, initiations which did not take place by means of conscious work have been carried out in the time of materialism always the easiest in these thirteen nights. We can find out that where such initiations appeared they took place in these thirteen nights.

And now we have a fact that even those will accept, who have only a little good will to recognise the spiritual world—the fewest people have this today,—that spiritual forces entered the historical course in the 15th century in the form of a virgin, the Maid of Orleans, as can be proved. You can verify this also historically that again the whole map of Europe was arranged differently, because the Maid of Orleans helped the French against the English at that time. Who thinks about it can find out that everything would have formed differently after that what human beings are able to do unless the shepherd girl had intervened—and in this shepherd girl just the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only the instrument for that which was caused in those days. The Christ Impulse worked in her.

However, she had to have a physical initiation for that—and this physical initiation had to be carried out the best in the thirteen nights up to the sixth January. The Maid of Orleans had to get a sleeping state in the time from the 24th December to the sixth January when she would have been especially receptive for the spiritual influence which can be there just in this time. So that one had to demand that the Maid of Orleans would have experienced the time in a not quite conscious state from the 24th December to the sixth January and would have got the Christ Impulse.—Yes, the Maid of Orleans went through this state in a quite striking way. One cannot go through it more strikingly, than when one is still in that sleeping state in which somebody is before his birth, in the last times which he/she spends as a child before the birth in the body of the mother. The external consciousness is not able, of course, to take up anything. There is a sleeping state, and if it is the end of the time in the womb, it is the ripest condition of the internal-motherly sleep.

Indeed, the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. This is the great secret of the Maid of Orleans that it went through an initiation by nature during thirteen days, which preceded her birth. That was why especially sensitive people gathered on that sixth January, when the Maid of Orleans was born in the village, and said that something quite particular must have happened. They sensed that something particular had come to the village. The Maid of Orleans was born. She worked through an initiation by nature in that sleeping state which she experienced in the body of the mother in the last time before her birth. There we see the spiritual beings working behind the threshold of that which takes place for the human consciousness, which are under this threshold of consciousness.

We see what history can mean if it counts only on that which is given in documents and external communications. The gods go differently through the course of history. The gods work by other means and in other ways. They put a Maid of Orleans into life who is able because of her special karma of this incarnation to take up the Christ Impulse and to work with it. They allow the Christ Impulse to flow in at the right moment. Of course, both were right for that: the special individual karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be added. Not any child that is born on the sixth January could accomplish the same.

Thus we can really say: the Christ Impulse worked in the human being using those forces which did not become clear to these human beings. Only today do we live in the time in which we must consciously take up that which used another way for centuries than the conscious way to be effective in history.

I wanted to arouse a feeling in your souls how the subconscious powers work definitely, what external history is which can be studied according to the external documents, that it is trivialities. It is good if one does such a study in particular in our time. We see, nevertheless, just in our time something great, something immense, something valiant, combined with sacrificial actions, occurring. But we see this great that takes place in our time, being really accompanied from the consequence of the extreme materialism, from that consequence which tries to explain everything that takes place in our time by means of bare external circumstances. This finds expression in the fact that one nation puts the blame on the other nation for the present events and wants to judge everything externally, so that one finds the guilt with the other for that which takes place. Also for our time the causes and reasons of the events are right down at the bottom in the subconscious processes. We will speak about that the day after tomorrow.

Our time will be suitable—also because of the bloody events—to remind the human beings of spiritual impulses of cognition. If once again peace is in the countries waging war today, one will realise that one cannot explain such immense wars of world history out of external causes. One will find out that one cannot explain them. Today people still say, especially the clever ones: nobody is allowed to speak about everything that has caused this war, history will speak about that.—They regard themselves as especially prudent who say there: only in fifty, in hundred years history will speak the right thing about that.

What one calls history today will never explain the causes of these events; however, one will see that from the historical consideration the causes cannot be fathomed. But other support will be there. An esoteric observation of our present just shows this.

What is one of the most remarkable facts in this destiny-burdened time? Oh, one of the most remarkable facts is without doubt this that so countless human beings go through the gate of death in their youth. We know what happens with the human being when he goes through the gate of death. We know that he comes out of the physical body with his etheric body, astral body and ego and that he takes off his etheric body after relatively short time and makes his journey with the essence of the etheric body. However, you can imagine that a difference must be between an etheric body, which is taken off between the twentieth and thirtieth years which could still have supplied the functions of human life for decades, and an etheric body, which is taken off at the later age. Yes, there is a big difference. If a human being dies because of age or illness, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But countless young human beings go now through the gate of death, and their etheric bodies could not yet fulfil everything that they could fulfil.

I would like to show you at a concrete example how it is in a certain way with such etheric bodies that are torn away by force from the physical bodies. One could give many examples, of course. But today I want to give you an example which we ourselves experienced in Dornach in autumn. We experienced it at the site of our construction. A family which lives near the construction had a little son of seven years—a family which belongs to our anthroposophical circle. It was a dear boy of seven years, really a boon boy. He was so well-behaved that when his father had gone to war the seven-year-old Theo said to his mother: now I must be especially diligent, because I must help you where the father has helped you.

One evening after a lecture, a person belonging to our circle came and reported that this little Theo has disappeared since the evening. One could imagine nothing but that he has had an accident. A removal van had driven in that evening by what one calls in the external life chance at a place where for years indeed no van has gone, and since that time also not. Here the carriage had tipped over. The little Theo had been in that small house which one calls the canteen because there our friends who work on the construction are supplied with food. Strangely enough—he would have left sooner—he was detained by somebody, and while he wanted to go out through a door through which he would have gone on a certain way, this time he had to go through another door, and he thereby passed the removal van, just when the removal van toppled over. The van fell on him. This is one of those examples where we see clearly karma working.

I often used the simple comparison to show how often cause and effect are totally confused: we see a person going along a river. Suddenly we see the person falling into the river. We go and find a stone lying where the person has fallen. The person is drawn out of the water. He is already dead. If one does not go on examining the matter, one tells the matter with the best external conscience in the following way: the man fell over the stone and then into the river, and drowned.—One would have only needed to examine, and one would have thought that death did not happen because the person fell into the water, but the person fell into the water because he was dead; he had got a heart attack. Just the opposite happened as one imagines. You see how easy it is to confuse cause and effect everywhere in life. However, in the usual science this happens everywhere that causes and effects are confused.

Of course, here is the case that this Theo just caused it. He was the cause that the van passed at this time, he steered it to himself. You have to imagine this as the real secret of the matter. But now I will go on: a human child is killed in an accident in the very first blossom of life. If anybody is combined wholeheartedly with the construction work in Dornach and has the possibility at the same time to observe what is working on this construction, then one can say: this etheric body which was separated by force from the little Theo is in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus one gains the best Inspirative forces for the construction combining his own soul with that what lives, expanded to a little world, in the atmosphere of the construction. Never will I hesitate before confessing unreservedly that I have to thank for much that I could find for our construction in that time that I directed my soul to the etheric body of the little Theo working in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus just the connections are in the world. The real individuality of this human being goes on, but the etheric body remains which could have still supplied a human life for many decades.

Imagine the number of the unused etheric bodies which are floating there in the spiritual atmosphere over us and over those who will also live after us. Those etheric bodies which are left behind by those who went in young age through the gate of death in our destiny-burdened time. We do not speak of the way the individualities go through, but we speak of the fact that an own spiritual atmosphere is created by these etheric bodies. The human beings, who will live there, will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged into a spiritual atmosphere which is filled with these etheric bodies which sacrificed their lives, because just in our time humankind can advance by these events. But it will be necessary that one feels what these etheric bodies intend which are the best inspirators of the future humankind. A good time of spiritualism comes if human beings show understanding, internal heart understanding for that what these etheric bodies want to say to them. All these etheric bodies are assistants of the spiritual impetus of the future. That is why it is so important that there are souls who are able to feel that what comes into the atmosphere of the future by these etheric bodies.

You do not learn anything about the nature of the etheric bodies that you can tell: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, but that you also know such a secret of the effective spirituality of the etheric bodies as it is there in future.

Those have to prepare themselves who already tend to stand up for spiritual science, to receive that which these etheric bodies want to say. If we turn our souls to the spiritual world, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel that which the legacy, the etheric legacy of the dead wants from the future humankind. If human souls are stimulated by spiritual science, so that they are able to direct their spiritual senses to the spiritual worlds, then something great and immense will certainly sprout up as an effect of the blood, of the courage, of the sufferings, and of the sacrifices. Hence, I would like to summarise at the end of this consideration in some words that what may now inspire, invigorate us if we as spiritual-scientific supporters direct our senses to the big, destiny-burdened events of our time.

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

Our spiritual-scientific world view may not only turn to the development and advance of the individual souls, but above all it has also to help really to gain additional points of view for the observation of life. In our time it has to suggest itself to us in particular to gain such additional points of view for the judgement of life. Indeed, it is a big and also important task for the individual human being to help himself by that which he can gain as the fruit of the spiritual-scientific self-education. Only because the individual human beings really help themselves, can they co-operate in the development of humankind generally. But our attention should be directed not only to that, but we really should be able to feel as supporters of the anthroposophical world view the big events of our time from a high point of view, from a really spiritual point of view. We should be able to transport ourselves to a higher standpoint judging the events. Today some points of view just with reference to the big events of our time may be given, because our present meeting takes place in these destiny-burdened times.

We start from something that is near to us as human beings. Human beings have illnesses at certain times. One considers illnesses normally as that which damages our organism which penetrates our organism like an enemy. Such a general point of view is not always justified. Indeed, there are symptoms which must be judged from this point of view where as it were the illness comes like an enemy into our organism. But that is not always the case. In most cases, the illness is something completely different. The illness is not the enemy in most cases, but just the friend of the organism. That what is the enemy of the organism precedes the illness in most cases, it develops in the human being, before the externally visible illness breaks out. There are forces opposing each other in the organism, and the illness, which breaks out at any time, is the attempt of the organism to save itself from the forces opposing each other which were not noticed before.

Illness is often the beginning work of the organism to induce the healing. The illness is that which the organism undertakes to fight against the hostile influence which precedes the illness. The illness is the last form of the process, but it signifies the battle of the good juices of the organism against that which is lurking there at the bottom. Only if we look at the most illnesses in such a way, do we get the correct understanding of the illness process. Hence, the illness points to the fact that something has taken action, before the illness broke out, that should come out of the organism. If some phenomena of life are seen in the right light, you understand quite easily what I said. The causes may be in the most different areas. What it concerns, this is that which I have just suggested: the fact that we have to look at the illnesses as something that the organism defends itself against things which should be driven out.

I do not believe that there is a comparison which holds really as true as the comparison of such a sum of significant, deeply intervening events, as we experience them now since the beginning of August 1914 over a big part of the earth, with an illness process of the human evolution. Just this must strike us that these military events are actually an illness process. But wrong would it be to believe that we cope with it if we simply understand this illness process in the wrong sense as just many an illness process is understood: as if it is the enemy of the organism. The cause goes ahead of the illness process. It can strike us in our time particularly how little people are inclined in the present to take into consideration such a truth which must prove itself as immediately clear to somebody who takes up the spiritual-scientific world view not only in his reason, but also in his feeling.

We had to experience a lot of infinitely painful things just in the course of the last nine months—painful concerning the human ability of judgement. Is it not that way, actually, if one reads the literature, which is read mostly and is spread by the most different countries of the earth, is it not as if the people who judge about these events suppose that in July 1914, actually, history has begun? This was the saddest experience in which we had to take part beside all the other painful things that the people, setting the tone or rather giving articles, and making the public opinion, know basically nothing about the origin of the events and look only at the nearest. The infinite discussions, these invalid discussions came into being from that. Where is the cause of the present military conflicts? Over and over again one has asked: does this have the guilt? Does that have the guilt?—And so on. Always one hardly went back further than up to July, at most June 1914. I mention that because it is a characteristic feature of our materialistic time. One thinks usually that materialism only manages a materialistic way of thinking, a materialistic world view. This is not the case. Materialism manages not only this, but it also manages shortsightedness; materialism manages mental laziness, manages lack of insight. The materialistic way of thinking leads to the fact that one can prove everything and believe everything. It really belongs to that self-education which anthroposophy must give us to see that somebody who stops in the area of materialism can prove everything and believe everything.

I take a simple example. When one had something to say about the spiritual-scientific world view during the last years, somebody here or there believed to have to assert his view compared to the spiritual-scientific world view. One could often hear: Kant has already proved by his philosophy that the human being has limits of knowledge, and that one cannot get where the spiritual-scientific world view wants to attain knowledge.—Then the very interesting matters were stated by which Kant should have proved that one cannot penetrate to the spiritual world with human cognition. If one still went on representing spiritual science, then the people came and believed: he denies everything that Kant has proved. Of course, such a thing contained a little bit of the assertion: this man must be an especially foolish person, because he strictly denies proven matters.

It is not that way at all. The spiritual scientist does not deny at all that this is absolutely right what Kant has proved, it is clear that this is proved quite well. However, assume once that somebody would have strictly proved in the time in which the microscope was not yet invented, that there would be the smallest cells in the plant, but one could never find these because the human eyes were not able to see them. This could have been strictly proved, and the proof would be absolutely right, because the human eye, as well as it is arranged, could never penetrate to the organism of the plant up to these smallest cells. That is an absolutely right proof which can never be upset. However, life has developed this way that the microscope was invented, and that in spite of the strict proof people got the knowledge of the smallest cells. Only if once anyone understands that proofs are worthless for gaining the truth that proofs can be correct, but mean basically nothing special for the progress of the knowledge of truth, only then will one stand on the right ground. Then one knows: the proofs can be good, of course, but the proofs do not have the task to lead really to truth. Think only once of the comparison I have given, then you see that also, as absolutely strict the proof may be that the human visual ability does not reach to the cell, as strict can be the proof that human knowledge, as Kant says, does not reach to supersensible worlds.

The proofs were absolutely correct, but life goes beyond proofs. This is also something that is given to somebody on the path of spiritual research that he extends his ken and is really able to appeal to something different than to the human reason and its proofs. Who limits himself to materialistic ideas is really led to an uncontrollable confidence in proofs. If he has a proof in the pocket, he is generally convinced of the truth.

Spiritual research will just show us that anyone can prove the one and the other matter rather well that, however, proofs by reason have no significance for gaining real truth. That is why it is a concomitant of our materialistic time that people are enslaved by mental shortsightedness. If this mental shortsightedness is still infiltrated with passions, it comes about that we see today not only the European peoples fighting with arms, but feuding with each other. There anyone has to say all possible matters, and you cannot expect basically that one is able to persuade the other, not only during the war. If anybody believed that one day a neutral state could possibly choose between the allegations of two hostile states, he would have a naive confidence. Of course, one side can have its opinion and substantiates it by all kinds of proofs, but the other side will do the same. One gets insight only if one is involved in the deeper bases of the whole human evolution.

I tried already some years before the outbreak of this war to throw some light on it in the series of talks about the individual folk-souls and their effects on the individual human beings in the different European regions, how the individual nations face each other and that there really different forces hold sway over the different peoples. Today we want to complete that with a few other viewpoints.

Our materialistic time thinks too much in the abstract. Such a thing is not taken into consideration in our materialistic time at all that there is a real development in the life that the human being has to allow to be ripe that what is in him develops gradually to the real judgment. The human being—we know this and it is shown in detail in my essay Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science—experiences such a development that during the first seven years his physical body, from the seventh up to the fourteenth years the etheric body develops in particular et cetera. This advancing development of the individual human being is taken into consideration a little, the parallel phenomenon, the synonymous phenomenon much less. The processes which take place within the individual nation's connections are directed and led—we all know this from spiritual science—by beings of the higher hierarchies. We speak of folk-souls, of folk-spirits in the true sense of the word. We know that, for example, the folk-soul of the Italian people inspires the sentient soul; the French folk-soul inspires the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that the inhabitants of the British islands are inspired by the consciousness-soul; in Central Europe the ego is inspired. I do not pass any value judgment on the individual nations, but I may only say that this is that way. The fact that, for example, an inspiration of the people that inhabit the British islands is based on the fact that it brings as nation everything into the world that is caused by inspiration of the consciousness-soul from the folk-soul. It is strange to which extent people become nervous in this field. When I emphasised here or there during the war what I had expressed in the mentioned series of talks, there were people who almost understood it like a kind of abuse of the British people that I said that it would have the task to inspire the consciousness-soul, while the German folk-soul has to inspire the human ego. As if one understood it as an insult when one says: salt is white, paprika is red.—It is a simple characterisation, the representation of a truth which exists, and one has to accept this as such a truth first of all. One manages that much better which prevails between the individual members of humankind if one looks at the characteristics of the individual peoples, and not, if one confuses everything, as the modern materialistic view does it.

Of course, the individual human being rises up above that which he gets from his folk-soul, and this is just the task of our anthroposophical society that it raises the individual human being out of the group-soul and raises him to the general humankind. But it remains that the individual human being, in so far as he stands in a people, is inspired by his folk-soul, that, for example, the Italian folk-soul speaks to the sentient soul, the French folk-soul to the intellectual soul or mind-soul, the British folk-soul to the consciousness-soul. We have to imagine that as it were the folk-soul is hovering over that which the individual human beings do in the single nations. But as we see that the human being develops already as we can say: the ego experiences a particular development in a certain time of life; we can also speak of a development of the folk-soul in relation to its people. Only this development is somewhat different from that of the individual human being.

We take, for example, the Italian people. There we have this people and the folk-soul belonging to this people. The folk-soul is a being of the supersensible world; it is affiliated to the world of the higher hierarchies. It inspires the sentient soul, and this always happens, as long as the people live, the Italian people, because we speak of this people, but it inspires the sentient soul in the different times in the most different way. There are times in which the folk-souls inspire the members of the single nations, so that this inspiration happens as it were on the level of the soul. The folk-soul floats in higher regions of spirit and its inspiration happens in such a way that it inspires the soul qualities only. Then there are times when the folk-souls float further down and make stronger demands on the single members of the peoples when they inspire them so strongly that not only the human being gets them in his soul qualities, but where they work so effectively that the human being becomes dependent on the folk-soul concerning his bodily qualities. As long as people are influenced by the folk-soul in such a way that it inspires the psycho-spiritual qualities, the type of the people is not coined so deeply. The forces of the folk-soul do not work there, so that the whole human being is seized up to the blood. Then a time comes when one can infer already from the kind how the human being looks out of his eyes, from the facial features how the folk-soul is working. It is revealed that the folk-soul has sunk deeply; it makes forceful demands on the whole human being.

Such a deep impression took place with the Italian people approximately in the middle of the 16th century, about 1550. Then again the folk-soul floated back as it were, and thenceforward that is passed on the descendants. You can say: the most intensive being together of the Italian people with their folk-soul was about 1550. At this time, the Italian folk-soul sank the deepest, this people of the Italian peninsula got their most distinctive character. If we go back to the time before 1550, we see that their character is not as strongly coined as from 1550 on. Then only the typical begins what we know as Italianità. The Italian folk-soul, so to speak, entered into marriage with the sentient soul of the individual human being, who belongs to the Italian people.

For the French people—I do not talk about the single human being who can rise up above the people—the similar point in time entered when the folk-soul sank the deepest and penetrated the people completely, about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century. At this time, the folk-soul completely seized the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

For the British people the point in time entered in the middle of the 17th century, about 1650. Only then the British people got their exterior British expression.

If you know such matters, something will be explicable to you, because you can now put the question differently: how is it with Shakespeare in England?—Shakespeare worked in England, before the British folk-soul worked most intensively on the English people. That is why he is not understood in England substantially. As everybody knows, there are issues in which everything that does not correspond completely to the taste of the governesses is eradicated. Very often Shakespeare is extremely moralised. We know that the deepest understanding of Shakespeare was caused not in England, but in the Central European spiritual development.

Now you will ask: when did the folk-soul touch the members of the Central European people?—However, the case is somewhat different, because this folk-soul descends and ascends repeatedly. And thus we have in the time, when the boon legend world of Parzival, of the Grail originated, such a descent of the folk-soul which combines with the individual souls, then it ascends again and after that a next descending takes place in the time between 1750 and 1830. The Central European life is then touched by its folk-soul the deepest. Since that time the folk-soul is ascending. Thus you see that it is quite comprehensible that Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) lived in a time in which he could get little from the German folk-soul. There was not the time when the folk-soul combined with the individual souls of the people. Hence, Jacob Böhme is, although he is called the “Teutonic philosopher.” a person who is chronologically independent of his folk-soul; he stands as it were like an uprooted human being there, like an everlasting phenomenon within his time. If we take Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, these are also German philosophers, they are completely rooted in the German folk-soul. This is just the typical feature of these philosophers living in the time between 1750 and 1830 that they are completely rooted in the folk-soul.

You see that it does not depend only on the fact that one knows: with the Italian people the folk-soul works on the sentient soul, with the French people the folk-soul works on the intellectual soul, with the British people the folk-soul works on the consciousness-soul, with the Central European nation the folk-soul works on the ego. One has also to know that this happens at certain points in time. The events which happen become historically explicable only if one knows such matters really. That nonsense which is done as science where one gets the documents and enumerates the events successively and says that one has to derive one matter from the other, however, this nonsense of the historians does not lead to a real history, to an understanding of the human evolution, but just only, so to speak, to a falsification of that which exists and works in human history.

If one sees how differently that works on the individual peoples—I could still characterise other peoples—which forces drive these peoples, then one sees the conflicting matters which are there. And one sees that the events of today really did not happen only during the last years, but were prepared for centuries.

We look at the East, at the area of the Russian culture. The characteristic of the Russian culture is that it can develop when once the point in time can enter when the Russian folk-soul combines with the spirit-self—I already expressed this in the mentioned series of talks. A time has to come in which this characteristic of the European East is only revealed. This will be completely different from the development in the West or in the middle of Europe. Provisionally, however, it is quite explicable that that which is allotted to the Russian culture is not there at all, but that the Russian culture has such a relationship—like the individual human being—to the spirit-self that it turns always upwards. The single member of the Russian people and even profound Russian philosophers do not speak as one speaks of the biggest matters in Central Europe, but they speak quite differently.

We find something tremendously typical. What is the most characteristic of this Central European cultural life? You all know that there was a time of the great mystics in which Master Eckhart, John Tauler and others worked. They all sought for the divine in the human souls. They tried to find the God in their chests, in their souls, “the little spark in the soul,” as Master Eckhart expressed it. They said: therein something must be where the divinity is immediately present. Thus that striving originated through which the ego wanted to be united with its divinity in itself. This divinity wanted to be won by hard efforts; the divinity wanted to be won by the developing human being. This runs as a trait through the whole Central European being. Imagine which infinitely deep emotion it is when Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) who, I may say, stands internationally on the ground of the Central European culture and cultural life, says in one of his nice sayings The Cherubinic Wanderer: if I die, not I die, but God dies in me.—Imagine how infinitely deep this is. For he, who said this, seized the idea of immortality vividly, because he felt: if death happens in the individual human being,—because the human being is filled with God—this phenomenon of death is no phenomenon of the human being, but of God, and because God cannot die, death can be only a delusion. Death cannot mean destruction of life. He knows that an immortal soul exists and says: if I die, not I die, but God dies in me.—It is a tremendously deep sensation which lives in Angelus Silesius. This is a result of the fact that the inspiration takes place in the ego.

If the inspiration takes place in the sentient soul, it can happen what took place by Giordano Bruno. The monk got into the spirit with everything what he found with Copernicus, felt the whole world animated. Read a line of Giordano Bruno, and you find verified that he, in so far as he has grown out of the Italian people, just proves the fact that there the folk-soul inspires the sentient soul.

Cartesius, Descartes (1596–1650), is born almost in the characterised point of the French development, when the French folk-soul combined so surely with the French people. Read a page by Cartesius, the French philosopher, you find that he confirms on each page what spiritual science finds: the fact that there the inspiration of the folk-soul works on the intellectual soul.

Read Locke (1632–1704) or Hume (1711–1776) or another English philosopher, up to Mill (John Stuart Mill, 1806–1873) and Spencer (Herbert Spencer, 1820–1903), everywhere inspiration of the consciousness-soul.

Read Fichte (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814) in his struggle in the ego itself, then you have the inspiration of the ego by the folk-soul. This is just the characteristic that this Central European folk-soul is experienced in the ego, and that, hence, the ego is the actually striving force, this ego with all its power, with all its mistakes, with all its wrong tracks and also with all its conscious efforts. If this Central European human being should find the way to Christ, he wants to bear Him in his own soul.

Try once to look for the idea to experience the Christ or a God internally in the Russian cultural life, if it is not taken over externally by the west-European civilisation. You cannot find it at all. There one expects everywhere that a historical event happens really, so that it takes place, as Solovyov (Vladimir Solovyov, 1853–1900) says, as a “miracle.” The Russian cultural life is very much inclined to behold the resurrection of Christ in the supersensible realm, to revere the working of an inspiring power externally, as if the human being is beneath it, as if the inspiration moves over humankind like a cloud, not as if it enters into the human ego. This intimate being together of the ego with its God, or also, if it concerns Christ, with Christ, this desire that Christ is born in the soul is to be found only in Central Europe. If once the East-European culture develops as it is commensurate, again a kind of group-soul will appear because that culture will be founded which floats above the human beings. This kind of group-soul is only on a higher level than the old group-soul was. At the time being, we must find it quite natural that one speaks everywhere in that way, as the Russian philosopher does, about something that floats like the spiritual world above the human world. However, he can never approach that world as intimately as the Central European human being wants to approach with his ego the divine that flows and weaves through the world.

When I often spoke of the fact that the divinity flows through the world and weaves and surges, then that is out of the sentient world of the Central European human being and would not at all be understood by any other European people in the same way as it can be taken up by the Central European feeling nature. This is the typical, the characteristic of the Central European people.

These are the forces which live there in the individual peoples facing each other, which time and again are in competition, which must discharge by force as clouds discharge and cause flashes and thunderstorms.

Do we not hear, one could say now, a word sounding in the East of Europe which was as it were something like a slogan and should work thus, as if the culture of Eastern Europe should begin now to extend over the little valuable Western Europe, to overflow it? Do we not see that the Pan Slavists, the Pan-Slavism¹ appeared, especially also appeared in spirits like Dostoyevsky (Fyodor Mikailovitch Dostoyevsky, 1821–1881) and similar people, with the particular points of his program as there was said: you West-Europeans altogether, you have a decadent culture that must be replaced by East Europe.—Then a whole theory was built up, a theory which culminated above all in the fact that one said: in the West everything has become decadent; this must be replaced by the fresh forces of the East. We have the really orthodox religion against which we do not fight, but we have just accepted it like the cloud of the folk-soul floating above the human beings et cetera. Then sagacious theories were built up, very sagacious theories, which the principles, which the intentions of the old Slavism could already be, that from the East the truth must now spread out over Central Europe and Western Europe.

I said that the single human being can rise up above his people. Such an individual being was Solovyov in a certain field, the great Russian philosopher. Although one also notices with him in each line that he writes as a Russian, nevertheless, he rises up above his people. In the first time of his life, Solovyov was a Pan-Slavist. But he has more exactly concerned himself with that which the Pan-Slavists and Slavophils² put up as a kind of national philosophy, national world view. What did Solovyov, the Russian, find? He asked himself: is there already the real Russian being in the present? May it be included already in those who represent Pan-Slavism and Slavophilism?—And lo and behold, he did not rest, until he came on the right thing. What did he find? He checked the statements of the Slavophils to whom he had belonged before, he tackled them, and there he found that a big part of the forms of thinking, the statements, the intentions is got from the French philosopher de Maistre³ friendly to the Jesuits, who was the great teacher of the Slavophils concerning their world view. Solovyov himself proved that Slavophilism does not grow on own ground, but originates from de Maistre. He proved even more. He discovered a German book of the 19th century which was forgotten for long time and which nobody knows in Germany. The Slavophils copied whole parts of that book in their literature. What a peculiar phenomenon appeared? One believes that something comes from the East, whereas it is a purely western import. It came over from the West and was then sent back to the western people again. The western people were confronted with their own thought-forms because own thought-forms do not yet exist in the East.

If anyone tackles the matters exactly, it is confirmed everywhere what spiritual science has to say. So that one already deals with something while rolling from the East that is still elementary, with something that will find its development when it takes up that as affectionately which has developed in Central Europe as this Central Europe took up the Greek and Latin cultural achievements from the South. Because development of humankind takes place, so that the following condition takes up the previous one. What I could characterise in the public lecture as the Faustic way of thinking of Central Europe by the words: there was a year 1770—Goethe felt it as a Faustic striving when he said:

I've studied, to my regret,
Philosophy, Law, Medicine,
and—what is worst—Theology
from end to end with diligence.
Yet here I am, a wretched fool
and still no wiser than before

Faust I, verses 354–359

There a very rich German cultural life came about, a most intensive striving. But if Goethe had written his Faust forty years later, indeed he would not have started: “I've studied now, to my regret, Philosophy ...” et cetera, and I have now become a wise man,—but he would have written exactly his Faust like in 1770. This vivid striving comes from the inspiration of the folk-soul in the ego, from that intimate being together of the ego with the folk-soul. This is a basic characteristic of the Central European spiritual culture. And the East European culture has to combine with it affectionately, it must take up it. What had to flow into Central Europe was received once from the southern culture, was taken up. Now, however, it is not different when from the East the elementary wave of development rolls, as if the pupil is furious with his teacher because he should learn something from him and wants to thrash him, therefore. It is a somewhat trivial comparison, but, nevertheless, it is a comparison which exactly applies to the matter. Human masses of quite different internal forces of development live in Europe together. These different forces of development must compete with each other; they must assert themselves in different way. The reluctant forces developed for a long time. If one looks at the details, one finds that they express everywhere what spiritual science has to say.

Is it not expressed so wonderfully, does not the wave of the European development crowd together in such a way that it is put symbolically before the whole humankind that in Central Europe the intimate living together of the ego with the spiritual world must be felt? That God is to be experienced in the “little spark in the soul,” that Christ is to be experienced in the “little spark in the soul?” Christ Himself must come to life in the human ego efficiently. That is why the whole development in Central Europe tends to the ego as in no other European language. “Ich” (ego) is “I-C-H.” Like a mighty symbol in the intimate interaction of that what can be the holiest to the soul stands there in Central Europe: I = I-CH—Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus and at the same time the human ego! The folk-soul is working that way, inspiring the people to express in typical words what the underlying facts are. I know very well that people laugh at such a thing, when I express that the folk-soul worked for centuries, so that the term “ich” has come about which is so typical, so symbolical. However, we let people laugh. Only few decades, and they will no longer laugh, but then they will regard it as more significant than what people call physical laws today.

What had an effect as a wave of development worked rather typically. Sometimes, the consciousness expresses a very small part of the truth only; but what works in the subconscious depths expresses itself much truer. We speak, for example, of “Germans” (Teutons, Germanic people). Words are formed by the active genius of language. A part of the inhabitants of Central Europe is called “Germans.” If a German speaks of “Germanic people” (Teutons), he counts the inhabitants of Germany, Austria, Holland, Scandinavia, but also the inhabitants of the British islands to them. He expands the word “German” about a wide area. However, the inhabitant of the British islands rejects this. He calls the German “German” only. He does not have the word German for himself. The German language embraces a much bigger circle. It is inclined to put the word into the service of selflessness; he not only is called “German,” he also encloses the others. The other, the Briton, rejects this. If you are once grasped by the creative genius of language, then you see something really wonderful in it. What people have in consciousness becomes maya, the big delusion. What exists in subconscious depths has a much truer effect. Something tremendously significant and deep expresses itself therein.

Compare now the rude way to look at the relations of the European peoples today with the way one has to go to work intimately to understand the European interplay of forces. Then only will you be able to see the devastation that the materialistic age caused in the human power of judgment. The fact that one started to think that matter carries and holds everything is not yet the worst, but that one has become shortsighted that one cannot look at the central issue, even does not do a step behind the veil which is woven as a maya over the truth, this is the actually bad.

Materialism well prepared what it intended. Also there the genius worked, only the genius who caused materialism as the highest leader is Ahriman. He had a powerful influence during the last centuries. I may still point briefly to a chapter to which one does not point with pleasure today. If it happens, one looks at it as a particular madness. One influences the human being the easiest, if one instills to him in his youth in his powers of imagination, in his soul what should grow up then in him. In the later life one cannot teach human beings anything thoroughly. Hence, Ahriman never would have, actually, better prospects to make the souls really materialistic, than when he instills in the youthful childish souls already that which works on in the subconsciousness. If in the time when the human being does not yet think intellectually already the materialistic forms of thinking are taken up, then people will learn to think thoroughly materialistically if materialism is already instilled in the children's souls. Ahriman did this in such a way that he inspired a writer of the materialistic age⁴ with the idea of Robinson Crusoe. Who allows to take in Robinson sees the materialistic ideas of Robinson thoroughly working. It does not seem so, but the whole—as Robinson is constructed as he is driven in this adventurer's life in the external experience to everything, until even the religion grows up finally like cabbages on the fields—all that prepares the child's soul very well to the materialistic thinking. If you imagine that there were in a certain time—in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries—Bohemian, Portuguese, Hungarian versions of Robinson et cetera as imitations of Robinson Crusoe, one must say: the job was performed thoroughly, and the portion that the Robinson reading had in the education of materialism is enormous.

Compared with such a phenomenon one has to point to something different that the children should take up in their understandings for their later lives. These are the fairy tales which live in Central Europe, and particularly the fairy tales which the brothers Grimm⁵ collected. This is a much better literature for the children than Robinson. And if one understands that which now happens between the European peoples in such a frightful, such a grievous and destiny-burdened way as an admonition to look at the way a little more exactly that developed in the subsoil of the events, at that which extends to himself in the present, then one will know above all, that it does not depend really on whether now a few German scholars send back their medals and certificates to England. If the admonition of the time is so strong that one recognises the materialistically inspired consciousness-soul of the British people in its significance, one also understands the significance of the Robinson reading and eradicates the whole Robinson once. Much more thoroughly, much more radically one will have to set to work if one is able to take into consideration the admonitions of our time correctly one day.

Thirty-five years have now passed since I started interpreting Goethe, just in his spiritual-scientific task. I tried to show that in Goethe's theory of evolution a really great, spiritual theory of evolution is given. The time must come when that is seen in wider circles. For Goethe gave a great, tremendous and spiritual theory of evolution. This was hard to understand for the people. Then Darwin could work better in the materialistic age who gave that in a coarsened, materialistic way which Goethe gave in a fine, spiritual way as a theory of evolution. It was a thorough Anglicisation which seized Central Europe. Now imagine the tragedy which lies, actually, in the fact that the most English naturalist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, who swore completely on Darwin, had to appear with his furious hatred about the English. When this war broke out, he was one of the first who sent back the received medals and certificates to England. To send back the English coloured Darwinism, he is probably too old, however, that would be the essential, the more important action.

The concerning matters are tremendously deep and important, and they are connected with the necessary spiritual deepening of our time. If one sees once that the Goethean theory of colours is infinitely deeper than the Newtonian theory of colours that the Goethean theory of evolution is infinitely deeper than Darwin's theory of evolution, then one finally becomes aware of that which the Central European cultural life involves, also with regard to such highest fields.

I will only arouse a sensation in your souls which admonitions the present grievous, destiny-burdened events must be to us. An admonition to work which should induce us to reflect that which is there in the Central European cultural life and which is as it were an obligation to get it out. I also meant this when I spoke yesterday in the public lecture⁶ about the fact that this Central European cultural life contains germs which must produce blossoms and fruits.

When we say time and again: the conscious soul-life takes place on the surface; however, beneath it there is something about which we have spoken during these days. Then we are also allowed to direct our thoughts to the fact that in the impulses of numerous human beings also in the present something lives that is quite different from that they are aware of. Do not believe that the human beings fight in the West and the East who have to defend the big Central European fortress only for that they are aware of in their consciousness. Look at the impulses above all which are unaware to many human beings who go through blood and death today. However, the impulses exist, and we should be able to get the sensation from spiritual science,—looking to the East and to the West—that in the impulses of those, who sacrifice their lives, something lives that the future has to bear only for the external experience, even if the fighters possibly have no premonition in their consciousness. Considering these events that way we can penetrate ourselves with the right feeling.

Take into account that many souls have gone through blood and death during these military events which cannot be compared with that which took place in the conscious history of humankind, and we imagine that these souls will look down on the death which was imposed to them by the big events of time. Imagine that for the purposes of what I said the day before yesterday the youthful etheric bodies permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Imagine that not only the souls, the individualities, are in the spiritual world, but that something useful of their young etheric bodies penetrates the spiritual atmosphere. Let us try to look at the admonitions which people should have, who are left here on the earth. Yes, the individual human being who has gone through the gate of death reminds us of the big tasks which are to be carried out in the European culture.

These admonitions must be heard. And people must be inclined to get recognising sensations of our conditions from the depth of the cultural life. If one feels once that way that everybody who remains today in the blossom of his years on the battlefield stands as an admonisher calling for the spiritualisation of humankind in the European culture, one will have properly understood it. One wants not only that from such sites as ours the abstract knowledge goes out: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, the human being goes through many incarnations, the human being has a karma and so on,—but one would want that the souls who take part in our spiritual-scientific life are roused in their internal depths to the sentient life which has just been suggested, to experience also that which the admonitions of the early deceased are in the next future. The nicest we can acquire to us as supporters of spiritual science is the vivid life which should go like a breath through those who count themselves to us. Not the knowledge, not the knowledge only, but this life, this life becoming reality.

In the last times, several members left us from the physical plane. Also a young co-worker, our dear Fritz Mitscher, died. I had, arranged by karma, the task to speak at the cremation in Basel. I had to speak certain words to the disappearing soul. Among various matters, I spoke to the soul that we are aware of the fact that he also remains as a co-worker, after he has gone through the gate of death. I had to speak this out of the consciousness that what invigorates us is not only a theory, but that it must fill our souls completely with life. Then, however, we must behave to those who have gone through the gate of death like to those who are here still in life. We must not be waiting to say to ourselves: human beings living in physical bodies are prevented by the most manifold circumstances from fully realising the spiritual life. Which inhibitions can we notice in this physical life on earth with the human beings if the really big tasks of development are involved—and have to be fulfilled then. But we can rely on the dead often better. This feeling that they are among us that a special mission can be transferred to them allowed me to speak the obituary for our friend Fritz Mitscher appropriately who has gone as an early deceased through the gate of death. What was said for him concerns many others who have gone through the gate of death. We regard them as our most important co-workers, and it will not be misunderstood if I say: even more than on the living we can rely on the dead with our spiritual work.

But that we can generally express such a thing, we have to stand quite vividly in that which our spiritual movement can give us. I rely on the fact that just the dead are now the most important co-workers for the spiritualisation of the future human culture on the external field in our destiny-burdened time. For this death is a great master at which those look back who have gone through the gate of death. Some people need a stronger teacher than life can be today. You can see this at various examples.

I would like to give an example—some other could be given. A spectacular article⁷, opposing against spiritual science, represented by me, appeared several years ago in a magazine which is published in South Germany, in the Hochland. This article caused a great sensation. It has made sense to many people because it was written by a quite famous philosopher. The editor of that magazine Hochland accepted this article. He supported, actually, as he thinks, such a view on this tricky spiritual science.

It does not depend really on defending oneself with external means against it. It is absolutely comprehensible that the quite clever people of the present consider spiritual science to be something foolish. But after the war had broken out, something different occurred. The editor of the mentioned magazine is a good German, a man feeling very German. Now the man whose article he accepted in those days has written letters to him, and this editor also has printed them, I may say, in his especially gifted “innocence” in the South German Monthly Magazine. Try once to read them, you will see that same philosopher venting his rage against the Central European spiritual culture so that the editor of the Hochland feels compelled to say: one can only find somebody, who thinks such matters, in madhouses in Central Europe. What an infinitely significant criticism. There is an editor of a South German magazine. This editor accepts an article which he considers to be authoritative to destroy spiritual science of which he says: this is a good article about spiritual science by a famous philosopher.—After some time the editor gets letters from the same man, who should be in a madhouse, as he says. So would one not have to continue, with the logic of life, and say: if the man is now a fool, he once was a fool, too, and the dear editor did only not realise in those days that he deals with a fool when he wrote against spiritual science.—This is logic of life. You cannot sometimes wait, until such logic of life works, but it already exists in our life. Thus you can sometimes experience something according to this prescription. In those days, the article appeared just against my spiritual science. People read him. People said: this is a famous philosopher and Platonist, he is especially clever.—The editor said to himself: if anybody who is so clever writes about spiritual science, this is a significant article.—Some time passes, and the same editor says: the man is a fool.—But he needed the proof in the just cited way. Such matters take place with the living human beings. Such people who have so little steady ground under their feet like that editor of the South German magazine need that they are taught by events which are given in much deeper sense by the life of the last times from the spiritual world than it is convenient.

Thus you understand when I return to that which I said just now: our time had many reluctant forces, and if we call the war an illness—we can do this,—this is an illness which was caused by something that took place long ago, and it is there to the recovery, so that something is eradicated that had to lead to the damage of the life of the whole culture gradually. If we call it illness in this sense, if we look at the illness as a defence, we understand this war and the destiny-burdened events of the present, understand it also in its significant hints and admonitions. We then experience it with all internal forces of our souls, so that we can surely take notice of those who have gone through the gate of death and look at the next future and really have learnt what they can inspire in the souls which they want to hear. That spiritual deepening which is necessary for the human welfare and progress in the next future must come into them.

If your souls can rightly take up that which I would like to say with these words, you are supporters of our spiritual-scientific world view in the right sense only now. If your souls can make the decision to become such souls which turn their attention to that which is murmured down from those who have gone through the gate of death because of the destiny-burdened events.

A connecting bridge between the living and the dead should be built by spiritual science just for the next future, a connecting line by which the inspiring elemental forces of those who have made the big sacrifices in our time are able to find their way to us.

That is why I wanted to stimulate sensations during these days, teaching to your souls. These sensations should be like sensations expecting that which is said to the souls by the effects of our destiny-burdened time. In this sense, I may close today again with the words that I already spoke here the day before yesterday that should have an effect like a mantram in our souls, so that our souls expect the inspiration which will come there from the dead who become particularly living in spirit:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. was originally a scientific term for the relationship of the Slavic languages. The idea of nationality of the Slavophils led to the demand to unite all the Slavic peoples under Russian dominion.
• 2. several Russian philosophers of the 19th century who stood up for the emancipation of the Russian culture in contrast to the “Westernisers.”
• 3. Joseph-Marie Comte de Maistre (1753–1821) stood up for absolutism and the feudal form of society. He regarded Catholicism and the papal primacy as foundations of the national and social life
• 4. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) wrote The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York (1719)
• 5. Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) published their collection of fairy tales in 1810 for the first time.
• 6. The Human Destiny Seen in the Light of Spiritual Knowledge, Vienna, 8th May 1915, not yet published.
• 7. Wincenty Lutoslawski Rudolf Steiner's so-called Occult Science in Hochland October 1910

The lecture presented here is the 12th of 12 lectures in the series entitled: The Sun Mystery ... Death, Resurrection. This lecture is also known as: Anthroposophy, a Striving for Spiritual Understanding of Nature Permeated by Christ.

Mankind unfolded its intellectual life in the course of many centuries. This intellectual life gradually led it away from spirituality. The intellect itself is spirit, but its content is no longer a spiritual content. Indeed, the intellect is spiritual, but it seeks as its content external Nature, the external life of Nature. Hence the intellect is spirit, but it fills itself with something which cannot appear to it as spiritual. The great tragedy, the modern tragedy of the world, is that man may look into himself and that he must say to himself: When I am intellectually active, I am spiritually active, but at the same time my intellect, which is pure spirit, cannot absorb in a direct way the spiritual. I fill the spirit in me only with things pertaining to Nature.

This is what devastates and rends the human soul to-day. Even though we do not wish to admit this torn and devastated condition, it nevertheless exists in the spiritual regions of the human soul and constitutes the fundamental evil and the fundamental tragedy of our age.

If we wish to express in habitual terms what I have explained to you just now, we must draw attention to all the spiritual powers that are still active in the whole life of Nature; they enter into us because we fill our own spirit with the life of Nature, and we may designate these powers as the Ahrimanic powers.

Our intellect is thus exposed to the great danger of falling a prey to the Ahrimanic powers. During the past centuries, when the intellect was still unfolding and still possessed the inheritance of an old spiritual life, these Ahrimanic powers did not have that great influence on man which they have now. The life of Nature is apparently spread out round about us; but this is only apparent: for Ahriman lives in Nature. And by absorbing Nature, by believing that it is only controlled by neutral laws of Nature, we really absorb spiritual powers, even though we are not aware of this; we absorb Ahrimanic spiritual powers, who took over a special task in cosmic life, in the whole evolution of the world.

When we speak of the task of these spiritual powers, some people are easily inclined to say: But why does the divine guidance of the world admit these powers?—To this we must reply: All that exists in the earthly sphere may be grasped with the ordinary understanding; but when it is a question of grasping in a spiritual-scientific way that which transcends the earth, we must do this through spiritual vision (Anschauung).

Consequently we must say: These powers exist,—but the way in which they are connected with the divine-spiritual powers pertaining to man, can only be grasped in the course of long epochs; indeed, the powers belonging to the super-human sphere are perhaps quite inaccessible to the human understanding. We can therefore only say: These powers exist, they show themselves to those who have spiritual knowledge.

The tasks of the Ahrimanic beings is the following: To prevent the earth from continuing to develop as it should develop in accordance with the intentions of the divine-spiritual powers with whom man is connected from the very outset, inasmuch as he is a human soul. (You will find all these things mentioned in my “Occult Science”). In my “Occult Science” I have spoken of the future development of the earth, of the Jupiter and Venus phases of evolution: The aim of the Ahrimanic powers is to prevent this course of development.

Their aim is to harden and freeze up the earth, to shape it in such a way that, together with the earth, man remains an earthbound creature. He becomes hardened, as it were, within earthly substance and continues to live in the future ages of the world as a kind of statue of his past. These powers thus pursue definite aims, which undoubtedly appear as part of their own individual striving.

The earth could not reach its goal if the Ahrimanic powers were to gain the victory, if man were alienated from his beginnings, from the powers who supported him at the beginning of his evolution. Outwardly, the human being would develop in a way entirely in keeping with the earthly sphere, but by suppressing his innate disposition, which must lead him beyond the earth.

The Ahrimanic powers could not touch man while the intellect was still rooted in the spiritual through an old inheritance, as was the case during the past three or four centuries. But this has changed since the beginning of the 20^th century. The ancient Indian wisdom knew this, and fixed the end of the 19^th century as the end of the “Dark Age,” of Kali-Yuga. Thus it had an intimation of a new age. This new age was to indicate that from the beginning of the 20^th century, our deepest concern should no longer be that of clinging to an old spiritual inheritance, but of absorbing the new light, the pure light, in our earthly life.

Our aim in this course of lectures will be to describe the inner life of man in relation to the life between death and rebirth, in order to show how intimately these two realms of existence are connected. A secondary aim will be to point out, as the result of this knowledge, certain guiding lines which will enable human beings to take the right course in many difficult situations in life, and which are fitted in many respects to give a sure support to the life of the soul, affording as they do, a thorough understanding of this soul-life. To this end it will be necessary for you to work through these first lectures, which are intended to provide a foundation. They will lead us into esoteric, scientific realms which to many might perhaps at first appear to be far removed from what human feeling would like to grasp at once; but when we have arrived at the true goal of these lectures you will see that this goal can only be attained in a pure manner if we first work through the apparently remote esoteric knowledge which is now to be put before you.

If, to begin with, we consider the inner life of man abstractly, it appears in the three forms we have often mentioned; in the forms of thought, feeling and will. But in order to consider this inward life fully, we must add a fourth, for to the inner life of man belong not only the three realms we have just mentioned, but also that which he obtains through the perceptions of the senses. We do not allow colours and sounds, perceptions of warmth and other sensations to rush past our consciousness, but we lay hold of these impressions, we turn them into perceptions. The fact that we are able to remember these impressions, that we are able to retain them, that we not only know a rose is red when we have one directly in front of us, but that we are able to carry the red of the rose with us, to preserve as it were, the colours as a conception in the memory—this testifies that the life of sensation, the life of perception through which we bring ourselves into touch with the outer world belongs also to our inner life. So that we may say, that we must count our perception of the outer world as part of our inner life, in so far as we make it into something inward in the very act of perceiving it.

We must reckon our thoughts, by means of which we create knowledge for ourselves regarding what is immediately around us, and through science regarding what is more distant, as that, by means of which we make the outer world into our own inner world in a much deeper sense than by perception. We do more than merely live in our perceptions, we reflect upon them and we are aware that through this reflection we are able to experience something of the secrets in the things perceived.

Next, we have to reckon our feelings as part of our inner life; in our feelings we are immediately in that realm of the inner life of man which contains within itself all that brings us as human beings in touch with the world in a manner worthy of humanity. The primary foundation of our truly human existence is that we are able to feel concerning things—that we are able to feel pleasure in what is around us. In a certain sense this is also the foundation of all our happiness and sorrow; for these are made up of feeling, which wells up and again subsides. Certain feelings arise within us, or force themselves on us, which uplift and strengthen our life and in which we feel happy and satisfied; other feelings arise through the events of life, through our destiny and also through our inward life, which give us pain and sorrow. When we use the word ‘feeling’, we are referring to the realm which embraces the happiness and sorrow of human life.

When we refer to the will, we are dealing with that which makes us of value to the world, which so places us in the world that we not only live a life of knowledge and a life of feeling within ourselves, but are able to re-act upon the world. What a human being wills, and what flows from his will into his actions, constitutes his value to the world. Thus we may say that in referring to the realm of will we are dealing with that element which shows that man is a part of the world and it is our inner life which thus flows out into the world and forms part of it. Whether they are the emotions and passions of criminal natures hostile to social life that flow into the will and thence become part of the world to the world's detriment, or whether they are the high, pure ideals which the idealist draws down from his contact with the spiritual ordering of the world and allows to flow into his actions, allows to flow perhaps only into his words which act upon human beings, stimulating them or revealing the worth of man—in either case we are always dealing with what lies in the realm of will, with what gives to man his value. So that all the wealth which man can really possess as a soul-being, is expressed, when we mention these four realms: Perceptions, Thought, Feeling and Will.

Now to one who goes somewhat more deeply into the consideration of what we may call the four inner spheres of the soul-nature of man, there appears a significant difference between the first two and the last two parts of this four-fold human being. In ordinary life, the difference does not really enter very much into the consciousness of man; at the most it only enters our consciousness when we reflect upon these four spheres of human nature in the following manner.

In speaking of perception, and reflecting upon it, we have the feeling that with perception we are directly in touch with the outer world. Through perception we interiorise the outer world; it furnishes something which belongs to our inner being when we have worked upon the sensation. But we have the feeling that we must so order our sensation that it gives us true images of the outer world in certain conditions, and every failing or defect in the life of perception and of sensation, every distortion of the senses means that our inner life is impoverished through our becoming poorer with respect to what we are able to obtain from the outer world.

In passing from perception to thought, we become aware that also with respect to thought we may have the feeling that we must not be satisfied if this thought merely stirs and dies down again within itself; thoughts only have an ultimate value when they represent within us something which is objective, something that is outside us. Our reflections would give us no satisfaction if through them we could not experience something about the outer world.

But when we pass to our feeling and reflect a little thereon, we find that this feeling, or, perhaps better, the life of feeling, is much more intimately connected with our own inner being than are thought and perception. When we wish to perceive or feel certain subtleties of the outer world in the right way, we have the idea that we must, to begin with, develop ourselves in a purely external manner on the physical plane. If we have a thought which we can call true, we say of this true thought that it must really hold good for all our fellow-men and it must also be possible to convince others of this thought if we can only find the right words to express it. But if we stand before a phenomenon of nature, or, shall we say, a human work of art, and through this develop our feelings, we know that fundamentally our human nature alone does not help us fully to exhaust what may thus be in front of us. It may be that when we hear a piece of music or see a painting we remain quite dull simply because we have not educated our feeling to be able to perceive its refinements. If we follow this direction of thought we find that this life of feeling is very interior and that we are unable to convey it to others directly in thought in the manner we experience it inwardly. In our life of feeling we are, under all circumstances, in a certain sense alone. We know at the same time that this life of feeling is the source of a special inward treasure, it is an inward result of evolution, and just because it is something so subjective, it cannot directly pass over into the object in the same way as it lives inwardly.

The same thing must be said with respect to the will. How different we human beings are with respect to what we will, with respect to what passes into our actions through our will! The great variety of human action really comes about through one person willing this and another that. When in the case of feeling we are able to rejoice in finding a companion in life who, in a purely inward, subjective manner, has arrived at a similar standpoint of feeling as ourselves, one who, through feeling, can so interiorise certain refinements in the external world that he has an understanding which is independent of and yet connected with us, we feel that our life is enhanced by such companionship. Each one of us has to develop his own feelings within himself; but we are able to find others whose feelings echo our own. For although the life of feeling is inward, it is still possible for different human beings to have feelings that are in unison. But there cannot be two wills which are directed to one and the same object, that is, two human beings who wish to do one and the same thing at the same time. The two wills cannot unite in a single object. Even the handle we grasp to turn a machine we can only grasp ourselves, though another helps us with it, the part of the work that we do through our own will is only half of the whole work. We do our half, the other person the other half. Two will-impulses cannot exist together in one object. Although we occupy common worlds through our will, it is exactly through this will that we are so placed in the world that each of us is a single individuality. It is just by this we are shown how the will constitutes the individual worth of a human being, how from this standpoint the will is the innermost thing.

We may gather from this that perception and thought are more external in the inner life of man, and that feeling and will are more internal, and constitute his true inner nature.

Now with respect to these four spheres of human soul-life another distinction may be seen, even through an entirely external, exoteric method of observation. When we confront the world with our perception we may say that this perception does indeed bring the world to us, but from one standpoint only. How small is that section of the world which through our perception we are able to make into our own inner life! In perception we are dependent upon place and time. We must allow that the very least part of what we perceive in the world enters our inner life through our perception. And with respect to our thought we have the notion that no matter what efforts we make there are always further steps that can be taken; through our thought we can always press on further and further. In short, we have the notion that the world is there outside, and through perception and thought we can only make ourselves masters of a tiny portion of this world. It is different with feeling; for in this case one asks: what possibilities of feeling, what possibilities in the way of joy and sorrow are within us? What might we not bring forth from the depths of our soul! And if we did bring it forth, how much more nobly should we feel about the things of the world!

Whereas with regard to perception and thought one has the notion that there is a great deal outside in the world of which one can experience only a small portion through perception and thought; with respect to feeling one has the sensation: within me are endless depths; could I but bring them forth, my feeling would become richer and richer. I can only bring forth the smallest part and transform it into actual feeling ... through perception and thought I can only turn a tiny portion of the world into my own inner world, in the sphere of actual experience I can only give expression to a part of the possibilities I have within me. And this is also the case to a much higher degree with the will. I refer to one thing only. How strongly we feel our shortcomings in what we do, as compared with what we might do, or in what it is possible for us to do!

Thus we realise that we only bring a portion of the outer world into our inner life through our perception and thought; and we are only able to bring forth a part of what lies deep down in the soul, through our feeling and our will. Thus the four spheres of our soul-life are divided, as it were, into two parts; perception and thought on the one side, feeling and will on the other.

An entirely different light is thrown upon these four spheres of our inner life when we try to illumine esoterically that which we may thus explain exoterically by means of thought.

You know that during the night when a person is asleep, the connection between his ‘I’ and his astral body on the one hand, and his physical body and etheric body on the other, is different from what it is while he is awake. During the day while he is awake his physical body, etheric body, astral body and ‘I’ are coupled together in a normal manner. This connection is loosened during sleep, so that the astral body and the ‘I’ are away from the sphere of the senses and from the sphere of thought, that is, away from the entire sphere of the instruments of consciousness, and therefore the darkness of night is spread over normal consciousness and unconsciousness supervenes. Now, when through his esoteric exercises a person so strengthens his soul that he knows and perceives—that is, he spiritually knows and perceives—in the spiritual soul-being which he is during the night; when he is unconscious outside the body, when he really experiences this spiritual soul-being as his own human nature outside the body, then a new world appears to him, a spiritual world, just as a physical world exists for a person when he makes use of the senses and the brain which serves thought. Thus a spiritual world is around him.

Now, the spiritual environment which can then be observed, is by no means always the same. Were a person to place himself in the position of a spiritual investigator, he would see at various times and in various ways, how the intention always affects what a person sees spiritually. It is not the conscious intention, but rather the unconscious, instinctive intention which always affects what he really wants to know. If, for example, a person goes out of his body in order to come in contact with a dead person, this intention affects the whole of his spiritual field of consciousness; he overlooks, as it were, all that does not belong to this intention. If he succeeds at all, he steers straight for the dead person and his destiny, in order to see what he desires to see in connection with him. The rest of the spiritual world remains unnoticed—it would be better to use the word obscure—and the person then feels his connection with the dead. Thus what a man sees in the spiritual world, depends upon his intention. And so you can understand, that what is described by the clairvoyant consciousness regarding what it sees in the spiritual world, may vary infinitely with different clairvoyant individuals. Each one may have seen quite correctly what he did see, according to the purpose in him when he withdrew his soul and spirit from his physical, bodily part. In this and the following lectures I shall describe what the clairvoyant consciousness sees when it enters into the spiritual world with the intention of knowing the inner human-life—these four soul-spheres of Perception, Thought, Feeling and Will—in order actually to get behind that which ebbs and flows in this human soul causing it happiness and sorrow.

Let us suppose that a clairvoyant consciousness has reached the point where the spiritual and soul-part can really leave the physical bodily-part in a way similar to what is usually done unconsciously during sleep; and he leaves it with the definite purpose—the definite impulse to become acquainted with, to feel really confronted with the inner life of man. He will meet with what I shall now try to describe.

The first thing that the clairvoyant consciousness meets with, is in fact a complete reversal of his entire mental outlook. As long as we are in the body we look around us with our senses and think about what we see with our intellect. We look upon a world of mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, etc., and at one point in this world we see ourselves as a very small thing compared with this great world. When the clairvoyant consciousness begins to act outside the body, this relationship is exactly reversed. The world which ordinarily is outspread before our senses and which we reflect upon with the intellect that is connected with our brain—this world disappears from our view. It no longer provides us with thoughts, but one feels as if poured out into this world, one really feels as if one has left one's body.

This perception is correctly expressed when we say to ourselves, Thou art now poured out into the world which previously thou didst look upon, thou art in it, thou fillest the whole space up to a certain limit, and yet thou thyself livest in time. This is a sensation to which one has to become accustomed; it is at first a sensation which may be expressed by saying, that what previously was outer world has now become inner world. Not as if one now carried within one this former outer world, but one has the feeling it has become one's inner world; one feels: thou art living in the space in which formerly thy sense-impressions were outspread and art regarding the objects and processes of which thou didst think. Thou art living in it. ... And when one develops clairvoyant consciousness to a certain extent, the tiny being, the man, who formerly seemed to stand in the centre of the sensible horizon, now really becomes the world, and we look on it as we formerly looked on the whole of the outer world which was outspread in space and ran its course in time. To a certain extent we have become the world. Only imagine what a reversal of the human way of considering the world it is, when that which previously was not world, that to which one had said ‘I’—when this now really becomes the world outside, towards which everything tends. It is as if from every point of space one were to look towards a single centre and there behold oneself. It is as if one floated back and forth in time and at a certain point, on a wave of this stream of time, one found oneself. One has oneself become the world.

That is the first impression received when—and I once more lay stress on this—when with ‘intention’ to learn to understand the inner life of man, one develops the clairvoyant consciousness; that is the first impression. Is it not remarkable that one goes out of the body with intention to learn about the inner life of man and the first thing that meets one is the human form itself? But how changed is this human form! One cannot say it often enough: that one must go out of the body with the intention of becoming acquainted with the inner life of man and then all that I now tell you takes place. Naturally, it does not necessarily always appears the same. How differently does this human form present itself! One knows: ‘That which thou art now looking at, is thyself; yea, it is thee. Thou who formerly didst feel thyself within thy skin, within thy blood, art now outside.’

At first one sees only what one might call the outer form of that which stands there; though changed. These eyes, those parts which were eyes, shine like two suns, but suns which inwardly vibrate with sparkling light, suns which sparkle, whose light shines out and fades, giving forth radiant light—thus do the eyes appear in the changed human form. The ears begin to sound in a certain way. One does not see the ears as one does in the physical world, but one feels a certain resonance. The whole skin shines with a sort of radiation, which one feels rather than sees. In short, the human form appears to one as something which gives forth light, sound and magnetic, electric radiations. These expressions are naturally inappropriate, because they are taken from the physical world. Thus does the world stand before us, and this is our world at the beginning of the clairvoyant experience we have described. One sees the human being which sparkles with light, the whole skin sparkles so that one can feel it, the eyes can be seen, the ears heard. And when one has this impression, one knows: Thou hast seen thy physical body, from outside the body. One knows: seen from the standpoint of the spirit the physical body is like this.

If one then tries to exercise an inner activity out there, outside the body, which may be compared to reflection—though this differs somewhat from ordinary thinking, for it is the exercise of an inner creative soul-force—if one does this, one sees something more in this shining being; one sees forces moving within it, something like a circulation of force permeating this shining form. Then one knows: That which thou seest like a separate part within thy light body is thy thought-life seen from outside. One may call that of which one now sees part, the etheric body. One sees the etheric body as the weaving thought-life. It is like a circulation of dark waves, a spiritual blood circulation, one might describe it as dark waves in the light-body, giving a peculiar appearance to the whole and constraining one to acknowledge there in thy physical body pulses and weaves the etheric body, which thou now seest from outside, which now becomes visible to thee.

You see, therefore, that outside the body one gains the knowledge that the physical and etheric bodies really exist, and how they appear when seen from outside.

But this inward strengthening may go still further. If one were only to see what I have just described, one would appear peculiar in the spiritual world: one would appear in the spiritual world like a being who on the physical plane could indeed receive impressions from the outer world, but who was inwardly entirely void of feeling, who could feel nothing at all. What corresponds to feeling on the physical plane, can also move us inwardly when outside the body. It is not feeling, for feeling has meaning and existence only within the physical body, but it is that which corresponds to feeling in the spiritual world. Previously, for instance, we merely felt that we were within space and moved in time; in that space in which we observed events and beings and in that time in which we realised that we were in it. When, however, the inner soul-nature which corresponds. to feeling is awakened outside the body, the soul-nature begins to develop a knowledge through which all sorts of things come to light, through which one not only feels as if outspread in space, but through which one perceives something in this space, something which moves in the stream of time; as ‘being.’ One now finds, not what one formerly saw by means of the body and its organs in the outer world, but one finds one has experiences in the inner part of this outer world, in the spiritual part which lives and moves in this outer world. It is as if the space, in which formerly one had only been aware of oneself, were now filled with innumerable stars all in motion, to which one belongs oneself. Then one knows: Thou art now experiencing thyself in the astral body outside the physical body in such a way that what formerly was only felt, now comes to life as inner content.

In looking back at that part of oneself seen previously, which we described as the outer world—that light-body with the dark thought-circulation of the etheric body within it—then, at the moment of concentration [outside the body] upon the astral, the star-life of the astral body,—the body one has left behind—appears different. The exact difference may be expressed as follows: Thou canst concentrate upon thyself, looking back on thy light-body and thy etheric-thought body; thou canst so concentrate on thyself that an inner star-world comes to life within these, regarding which thou knowest: This thou fillest completely, now thou lookest back on thy physical body which thou hast left behind; the shining may then cease, the thought circulation also.

This is done to a certain extent voluntarily and in the place of what has faded, comes an image of our own being, which appears to us—it cannot be expressed otherwise—it appears as our ‘personified karma.’ That, which as human beings we bear within us, that on account of which we shall have this or that fate, is here as if rolled into one. Before us stands our karma personified. When we see this we know: thou art that; such thou really art in thy moral, inner being, as thou standest as an individuality in the world, that thou thyself really art!

Then emerges another consciousness and this consciousness which now supervenes is very depressing. For instance, one sees the whole of this personified fate in such a way that one feels it in most intimate connection with one's body, with one's earth-man, and indeed in such a way that one knows directly: The manner in which thy muscles are constructed in thy earthly body, the whole form of thy muscular system is the creation of this thy fate, thy karma. Now comes the time when one says to oneself: How different Maya or Illusion is from reality! As long as we are on the physical plane we think that this man of muscle consists of fleshly muscles; in reality these fleshly muscles are crystallised karma. And they are so formed in man, so crystallised, that, even to the finest chemical formation man bears his crystallised karma in his muscular system. So strongly is this the case that the spiritual observer sees quite clearly that when for example a person has exercised his muscles so that they have taken him to a place where an accident happens to him, it happened because in his muscles lay the spiritual force which drove him of himself to the place where the accident occurred. The cosmic order has crystallised our fate within our muscular system. In our muscular system lives the spirit (crystallised for the physical plane), which without our apparent knowledge leads us everywhere, directing our coming and our going in accordance with our karma.

If inward strengthening is carried further, if the pupil while outside his body, experiences his inner being still further, there arises within him what in physical life on the physical plane corresponds to the impulse of the Will. As soon as this life of Will rises within a man—but when outside the body—he feels not only as if he were within a system of stars, but as if he were in the sun of this system: he knows that he is one with the sun of his planetary system. One might say that when a person inwardly experiences his astral body he knows that he is one with the ‘planets’ of his planetary system; when he experiences his ‘I’ outside the body he knows that he is one with thy sun of his solar system, to which everything turns, around which all is ordered. If we look back on that which is now no longer within us, but outside—and what is outside us, so long as we are in the physical body, is within us when we are outside the body, and what is within us, when we are in the physical body, is outside us when we are outside the body—if one now looks back at oneself, something else appears; in looking at oneself, one is confronted by the necessity that what exists out there in the physical world as one's own body, had to come into being and must again decay.

The growth and decay of the physical body is what confronts one. One becomes aware that there are Spiritual Powers and Beings which guide and direct the coming forth and growth of this physical body and that there are others which disintegrate this physical body. One becomes aware of that into which this actual growth and decay in the physical world again crystallises. For one knows that this growth and decay is connected fundamentally with the bone-system of man. With the formation of the bone-system in the human physical body, judgement, so to say, is given, regarding the form in which the human being experiences birth and death in the physical body. The way in which a man comes into being and decays, is decided by the way in which the bone-system is crystallised within him. The knowledge comes to one—thou couldst not be the being thou art in physical existence if the whole world had not co-operated in order to bring about the hardening of the physical nature, so that it appears as it does in thy bone-system. In the skeleton one learns to reverence—curious as this may sound—the ruling Cosmic Powers which find their spiritual expression in all the Beings concentrated in the life of the sun. One learns to recognise that this skeleton has been sketched out, as it were, in the cosmic order as the fundamental plan of man, and that the other physical organs have been attached to it.

Thus to clairvoyant vision, that which now has become the outer world culminates in the symbol of death, or one might say, in the vision of the skeleton. For through such clairvoyant experiences one at length acquires knowledge of how the spiritual worlds have fashioned an external physical symbol, as it were, of themselves—these spiritual worlds to which one really belongs with one's inner being and into which one enters on going out of the body. At this fourth stage we also learn that when we perform actions in the world, when we exercise our will, a force is active within us of which we are unconscious on the physical plane and which we only now learn to recognise. If we but make a forward movement and in doing so employ the mechanism of our skeleton, universal cosmic forces take part in the action, forces into which we really first enter when we have experienced this fourth stage outside our body.

Suppose a person goes for a walk and with the aid of the mechanism of his bones moves his limbs forward; he imagines that he does this for his own pleasure. In order that forces might come into existence to enable us to move ourselves forward by the mechanism of our bones, the whole world had to come into being and the whole world had to be filled with divine spiritual forces, spiritual forces of which we only become aware when we arrive at the fourth stage. The divine spiritual Cosmos participates in our every step, and though we think that it is we who move our feet forward, we could not do so if we did not live within the spiritual Cosmos, within the divine world. As long as we are in our physical body we gaze around us; there we see the beings belonging to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, we see mountains, rivers, oceans, seas, clouds, stars, sun and moon; what we see externally has an inner Being and we ourselves enter into this inner Being when we live outside our body in the manner described. When we live in these Beings we know that their spiritual essence, that which is hidden behind the radiant Sun, behind the shining stars, behind the mountains, rivers, seas, clouds—that which is hidden there lives in the mechanism of our bones when we move them, and that all this must be so.

We can now more clearly understand what was said previously. Just as our will is inwardly connected with the mechanism of our bones, our feelings are inwardly connected with our muscular system. This muscular system is the symbolical expression of our feeling-system. In order that our muscles can be constructed as they are, permitting of expansion and contraction, so as in their turn to set the mechanism of the bones in motion—in order that this can come to pass, the whole planetary system is necessary. We learn this when we find ourselves in our astral body. In our muscular system lives the whole planetary system, just as the whole cosmos lives in the mechanism of our bones. What can be said in a similar way about our thoughts and our sense-perceptions will follow in the next lectures.

Spiritual knowledge reveals such things to us. From this we see that spiritual knowledge is truly not merely something which gives us thoughts and ideas, but which can permeate our whole soul so that we thereby really learn to know ourselves; we become different human beings in all our feeling and thinking. For when a person accepts what has just been described as the experience of clairvoyant consciousness—and which I think can easily be understood—if he accepts this and allows it to work upon his mind and then gathers it together in one fundamental feeling in his soul, how may this fundamental feeling be expressed? How must we describe in a few words that which is enkindled within us as an inner feeling through this clairvoyant knowledge?

We look at that which seemingly is most ordinary, the expression of our most everyday moods, and we receive something like an impression of what is described concerning Capesius and Benedictus in the opening sentences of my Mystery Drama, The Soul's Probation, namely how in man are gathered together the aims which divine Spiritual Beings have set before them, how into the nature of man flows that which divine Spiritual Beings have thought throughout the worlds, If we wish to sum this up in one vital feeling, we may describe it by saying that we now regard human nature differently from what we did before, we now know in a different manner than formerly that human nature is permeated by the divine Cosmos. Our consciousness is fired by this and waxing stronger declares with inner understanding of soul and feeling that if we wish to understand man, we cannot do so otherwise than by recognising that the whole is born from out Divine-Spirituality. When we consider him and observe how his feelings flow into his muscular activity and how Divine-Spirituality, the Cosmos, enters into his bones, how the whole universe lives in the movement of his bones and the whole planetary system lives in the contraction, expansion and relaxation of his muscles, when we ponder on this and feel it deeply, we can say with full understanding: Of a truth man is born from God:

EX DEO NASCIMUR
Out of God we are born.

In the last lecture, my task in connection with our study of Thought, Feeling, Will and Perception, was to impart a few esoteric experiences which the human soul undergoes, when as a spiritual investigator it lives outside the body with the intention of experiencing something concerning the inner nature of man. To-day I shall try to bring forward other experiences from a different aspect, because only when we observe life from different spiritual points of view are we really able to arrive at the true explanation of it.

You will remember, that in the last lectures we tried to describe what the human soul first sees when, from outside the body, it looks back at its own body and on all that is connected with it physically; and then how it afterwards discovers what the astral body and Ego of man experience when they strengthen themselves more and more in the sphere into which they enter when outside the body. Now there is another way of considering the same matter and indeed it is of supreme importance in true, spiritual research, to realise that one only really solves the riddle of existence through spiritual observation, when a matter is considered from various sides. There is another way of leaving the body. I might say that the way I described in the last lecture showed us the soul leaving the body, so that it simply goes out of the body into space and begins to live there outside the body. This process of leaving the body can also take place in the following manner. In order to find the way out of oneself, one may try to begin with, to enter more deeply into oneself; one may try to connect oneself with spiritual experiences through that in the soul which is most similar to them, one may try to connect oneself with these experiences through one's memory. I have often said that because as human souls we are not only able to perceive, to think, to feel and to will, but are also able to store up our thoughts and perceptions as a treasure in the memory, we are thereby really able to change our inner life into something spiritual. In recent public lectures I mentioned that the French philosopher Bergson says that the treasure of memory in the human soul cannot be considered as directly connected with the body, but rather as an interior possession of the soul, as something which the soul develops, something which is purely of the soul and spirit.

In fact, when Imagination begins in the clairvoyant consciousness, when from the darkness of spiritual existence the first impressions emerge, these first impressions are very similar in quality and in their whole nature to the contents of the soul which we bear within us as the treasure of memory. When we begin to perceive with clairvoyant consciousness, the revelations from the spiritual world appear in us like memory pictures, but infinitely more spiritual. We then notice that the treasure of our memory is the first really spiritual thing through which we lift ourselves, to a certain extent, out of our body. But then we have to go further, we have to draw forth from spiritual depths fleeting pictures, such as those memory presents to us, but much more living; pictures which do not belong to our experience like the ideas in memory, but which rise, as it were, behind the memory. This must be borne in mind. Something comes forth from unfamiliar spiritual realms, whereas the treasure of memory comes forth from what we have experienced in physical life.

Now, if we try to turn our spiritual gaze to the experiences of our Ego during the years that have passed since our childhood, back as far as our memory extends, if we try to shut out everything external and live entirely within ourselves, so that we penetrate more and more deeply into our memory and draw forth from its treasures what is not usually present, we gradually approach the point of time to which our remembrance extends. And if we do this often, if we acquire a certain amount of practice in calling forth long-forgotten memories—and this can be done—so that we develop a stronger power of memory; if we call forth more and more of what we have forgotten and thereby strengthen the power which evokes memories, we shall find, that just as in a meadow flowers appear among the green blades of grass, so between the memories appear pictures, imaginations of something we have not known before, something that really emerges like flowers among the grass in a meadow, but which comes forth from entirely different spiritual depths than do our memories which only come forth from our own soul. Then we learn to distinguish between what might be connected in any way with our memories, and what comes forth from spiritual sources and spiritual depths. Thus we gradually become able to develop the power to call forth the spiritual from its depths. We thereby get out of our body in a different way from the one described in the last lecture, where one leaves the body directly, as it were. By the method we have just described we first go backwards through our life. We sink into our inner life. Through strengthening our power of remembrance we accustom ourselves to draw forth spiritual things from the spiritual world in our inner life between our memories, and thus at length we attain to where we push on beyond birth and beyond conception, into the spiritual world in which we lived before we were connected in our present incarnation with physical substance through heredity. Returning rapidly through our life we reach out into the spiritual world far back in ‘time’, before we entered into this incarnation. This is the other way of leaving the body and of entering the spiritual world, a way quite different from the one described in the last lecture. Notice this difference carefully, for in this course of lectures I have to acquaint you with very many subtleties and intimate things regarding spiritual life, and it is difficult to describe these in fitting words. It is only when we try to comprehend these differences that we enter correctly into these matters and acquire certainty in our thought about them.

If a person leaves his body in the manner I have just described, he comes out of it quite differently. When he leaves his body in the manner I described in the last lecture, he feels that he is outside his life in outer space. I described how he diffuses himself over external space and how he looks back at his physical body. He slips out of his body and fills space, as it were. He steps out into ‘space’. But if a man really goes through what we are describing to-day, he steps out of space itself; space ceases to have any meaning for him. He leaves space and is then only in ‘time’. So that on leaving his body in this way, the words: ‘I am outside my body’ cease to have any meaning, for outside signifies a relationship in space. He feels that he does not exist contemporaneously with his body, he feels himself in ‘time’; at that time in which he was before his incarnation, in a ‘before’. And he looks upon his body as existing afterwards. He really exists only within onstreaming, onflowing time. In place of ‘outer’ and ‘inner’, comes a ‘before’ and ‘after’.

Through this way of going forth from his body he is really able to enter into the realms we pass through between death and rebirth: for he goes back in time, he lives back into a life in which he lived before his earth-life. Earthly life appears in such a way that he asks: What is in the future? What appears to us there as coming later? In this way, you have a more exact understanding regarding matters which I have been unable to go into so fully in my public lectures, how for instance we enter concretely into the realms in which we live between death and rebirth.

If in this way the pupil has passed out of his body by returning into the life which he had previously lived in the spirit, he has thereby passed out of space. This way of leaving the body, going from the ‘present’ to the ‘previous’, has a much higher degree of inwardness than the other way, and, to the spiritual investigator, the way we have just described is infinitely more important than the way we described in the last lecture which does not get out of space; for that which concerns the deeper matters of the soul can only really be comprehended when one leaves the body in the manner described to-day. And now I might mention one thing, from which you will see how one has to try to get behind the depths and subtleties of human life.

Here in the physical body we live our physical life; we make use of our senses; we perceive the world; we think about the world; we feel in it; through our actions we try to be of value in this world; we act consciously by means of our body. Thus everyday life goes on; this life goes on, in so far as we belong to the physical plane. Now for every one who truly wishes to establish his worth as a human being there must be a higher life and there always has been a higher life of the soul. Religions which inspired men to a higher life have always existed. In the future, Spiritual Science will inspire mankind to this higher life. What is the aim of this higher life? What is the aim of this life which in Thought, Feeling and Perception transcends what the physical plane has to offer, which, in one person is but dim religious ideas, in another through the clear definitions of Spiritual Science, far transcends what the senses can see, what the intellect which is connected with the brain can think, or what man through his body can accomplish in the world? The human soul tends towards a spiritual life. To feel spiritual life within himself, to know something about the spiritual life which goes beyond physical life—this alone it is which gives man his value. We might say that as long as a human being dwells in the physical body he endeavours to enhance his value, he tries to gain a notion of his true destiny, through a life which he conceives as going beyond the physical world, through a presentiment of feeling, a knowledge of the spiritual world. ‘Look up to the spirit, feel that spiritual forces are weaving through the physical world I’—That is fundamentally the note which religion and the life connected with religion should give to man. Anyone who means to bring up a child seriously will take care not to allow this child to grow up with external, material conceptions alone, but will provide it with ideas regarding a super-sensible world.

Let us now, without wishing to draw attention to the limited and dogmatic side of any religion, describe as religion that which draws man out of this physical world. And with respect to what we have just described as the passing of the human soul beyond birth and conception into a previous spiritual world where it is also out of space, let us ask: Is there between death and rebirth, is there in the world into which we enter in the manner we have explained, is there something there which might be called a religion of that spirit-land? Is there something above, which may be compared to religious life on earth? We have already described in many particulars and shall yet have to describe further what a human being goes through between death and rebirth; but let us now ask, is there such a thing as religion in spiritual life? Is there something concerning which one may say that it bears the same relationship to the experiences in the spirit-land as the references to the super-sensible world bear to the everyday life of the physical plane?

Anyone who passes out of his body in the manner we have described arrives at the knowledge that up above in the spirit-land there is also something like a sort of religious life. And, curiously enough, while one experiences everything around one in the spirit-land, spiritual beings and spiritual events, one has there before one continually the picture of the human ideal; this appears like a mighty spiritual structure, throughout spiritual life, or at least for a great part of this life between death and rebirth. Here on earth, we have as religion everything that transcends man; in the spiritual world, we have the Ideal Man himself as religion. We learn that the various Beings of the various spiritual hierarchies permit their forces to work together in order that man may gradually be produced in the world, in the manner described in my book, Occult Science. The aim of the creative activity of the Gods is the Ideal Man. That Ideal Man does not really come to life in physical man as he is at present, but in the noblest spiritual and soul life that it is possible through the perfect development and training of aptitudes which this physical man has within him. Thus a picture of Ideal Man is ever present to the mind of the Gods. This is the religion of the Gods.

On the far shore of Divine existence there rises before the Gods the temple which presents the image of Divine Being in the form of man, as the highest divine work of art, and the special thing is that while man develops in the spirit-land between death and rebirth, he gradually matures so as to be able to see this temple of humanity, this high ideal of humanity. Whereas here upon earth, we recognise that a life of religion has to be our free act, that we have to draw it forth ourselves and that it is also possible for the materialistic mind to deny religion, the reverse is the case in the spirit-land between death and rebirth. The longer we live within the second half of the time between death and rebirth, the more clearly does it appear before us, so that we cannot disregard it, that this most sublime Ideal Man, the goal of the Gods, is always before us. Here on earth a person may be irreligious, because his soul may disregard the spirit as compared to the body; above, it is impossible for him not to see the aim of the Gods, for it stands clearly before his eyes. Thus in the second half of the life between death and rebirth the ideal of humanity stands, as it were, on the shore of existence, that is to say, on the shore of on-flowing time (consider all these expressions as referring to ‘time’ that is outside space). A religion formed on knowledge cannot exist there; for in the spiritual world we realise what the content of religion is. In this sense no one can be irreligious there. The religious ideal of the spirit-land is ever before one, it stands there of itself, it is the goal of the Gods and when we enter upon the second half of our life between death and rebirth it stands before us as the mightiest, the most glorious Imagination. Although we cannot there develop a religion by knowledge, still, under the guidance of the higher Spiritual Beings who are there active for man, we do develop a sort of religion.

While perception or sight cannot be taught, because things are self-evident; our will, our feeling-will and willing-feeling have to be stimulated in the second half of our life between death and rebirth, in order that we may really strive towards what we see there. Into our willing-feeling, into our feeling-will How a divine will and a divine feeling. In order that we may choose the path towards these in the second half of our life between death and rebirth, we are instructed with respect to our willing-feeling;—all these terms are inappropriate for this entirely different life, but still this expression may be used. It is only when a teacher has first called forth ideas in us, that he then works further upon our feelings; but over there it is the case that when one has passed over the point which we have still to describe, midway between death and rebirth, when one has passed that which in my last Mystery Drama, The Soul's Awakening, I describe as the Midnight Hour, there is at first a certain dullness as regards willing and feeling in respect of that which stands as a glorious temple in the distance of ‘time’. Divine forces then send a glowing warmth through the inner powers of our soul. It is a kind of instruction which speaks directly to our inner being, and which has such an effect that we gradually gain the power really to desire to tread the path towards the ideal we see.

Whereas in physical life we may stand in front of a teacher and he may stand before us, and yet we may really feel that he speaks to our heart from outside, we feel that our spiritual teachers, who belong to the higher hierarchies, when they teach us in the manner I have just described, send their own forces directly into our inner being. Earthly teachers speak to us; in the life between death and rebirth spiritual teachers pour their life into our souls, then they instruct us in spiritual religion. Thus we feel these teachers from the higher hierarchies ever more and more within us, we feel ourselves connected with them more and more inwardly, and thereby our inner life becomes stronger. ‘Thou art accepted ever more and more by the Gods; the Gods live in thee more and more, and they help thee to grow inwardly stronger and stronger I’—That is the fundamental feeling throughout the second half of the life between death and rebirth.

Thus we see that everything in that life is so arranged that our experiences run their course in the depths of the soul itself. Now, while being instructed by the Gods, we arrive at a certain point in our experience between death and rebirth—at a very important point. Far away at the most distant point of time we see the ideal of humanity; but the forces which our divine-spiritual teachers can give us are dependent on what we have made of ourselves in the course of our incarnations, in the course of our previous human life. As we turn towards life from the Midnight of the world, we stand exactly midway between death and rebirth; as we follow our life further and further and see the ideal of humanity in the most distant future, we are at a point whence we have the furthest perspective of this ideal of humanity.

When we reach this point we have to say to ourselves—of course we do not say this, we experience it quite inwardly, but it has to be expressed in the words of ordinary life—we have to say to ourselves: ‘Divine Spiritual Forces have worked on thee, they have entered ever more and more deeply within thy soul, they live in thee; but thou hast now arrived at the point where thou canst not fill thyself any more with these forces, for thou wouldst have to be far more perfect if thou wouldst go beyond this point.’ Here an important decision has to be made. At this moment a severe temptation assails us.

The Gods have meant well by us; they have given us all they could in the meantime; they have made us as strong as was possible according to the measure of the power we have so far acquired in life. The strength given us by the Gods is within us, and a temptation comes which says to us: ‘Thou canst follow these Gods; thou canst now allow all that thou art, to enter, as it were, into the forces the Gods have given thee; thou canst go into the spiritual worlds, for the Gods have given thee a very great deal.’ We might at this point spiritualise ourselves entirely. This is the prospect that confronts us. But we could only do this by turning aside from the path leading to the great ideal of humanity. This means, in other words, that we should force our way into the spiritual worlds taking all our imperfections with us, and there they would change into perfection. This they would really do. We might enter with our imperfections, and because we were permeated with divine forces we should become a spiritual being, but this being would have to renounce the possibilities it now has within it, which it has not realised on its path so far, and which lie in the direction of the great ideal of humanity, these it would have to renounce. Each time, before an earthly incarnation takes place, the temptation comes to remain in the spiritual world, to enter into the Spirit and to develop further with what we already have which is now entirely permeated with Divinity, but to renounce what it is possible for us to become more and more as men, along the path to the distant religious ideal of the divinely spiritual world. The temptation assails us to become irreligious with respect to the spirit-land. This temptation is all the stronger because at no time in the evolution of humanity has Lucifer greater power over man than at this moment, when he whispers ‘Seize the opportunity, thou canst remain in the Spirit; thou canst carry over into the spiritual light all that thou has acquired!’ Lucifer tries by every means to make the soul forget the possibilities it yet has within it, and which stand before it as the distant temple on the far shores of time. As humanity now is, a man would not be able to withstand the temptation of Lucifer at this point, if the Spirits to whom Lucifer is opposed did not now take upon themselves the affairs of man. A fight for the human soul takes place, between Lucifer and the Gods who lead man towards his ideal, the Gods who adhere to the religion of the Gods. The result of this fight is that the archetypal image which the human being has formed from his earthly existence, is thrown out of time into space, it is attracted magnetically by special existence. This is also the moment when that magnetic attraction through the parents is felt, when the human being is transported into the sphere of space; when he becomes connected with space. Through this, all that might instil into him the temptation to remain in the spiritual world is veiled. And this veiling is expressed by his being enveloped by the body. He is surrounded by the body in order that he may not see what Lucifer wishes to put before him. And when he is enveloped by the covering of the body, when he sees the world by means of his bodily senses and his bodily intellect, he does not see what he might otherwise strive after in the spiritual world, if he were misled by the Tempter. He does not see it; he sees this world of Spiritual Beings and spiritual events from outside, as revealed to his senses and to the intellect connected with the brain. When he is in the sense-body, the Spirits who watch over him undertake his development.

Let us now ask: How much goes on in the subconscious depths of our soul between birth and death, how much goes on without our knowing anything about it? If we had to do consciously all that occurs in our lives, we could by no means go through our earthly existence. I have already indicated in my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, that when a person enters into physical incarnation he himself must work plastically on his brain and nervous system. He works upon it, but he works unconsciously. All this is the outcome of a much greater wisdom than that which a human being can comprehend with the intellect that is bound to the senses. Between birth and death a wisdom rules within us which exists behind the world which we see with our senses and concerning which we think with the intellect that is connected with our brain. This wisdom is in the background; it is hidden from us between birth and death, but it controls, it lives and works within us in the subconscious depths of our soul, and in these subconscious depths of our soul it has to take our affairs in hand, because we have to be withdrawn for a time from the vision of that which would be a temptation for us. All the time we live in our body we should—if the Guardian of the Threshold did not withhold from us the vision into the spiritual world—be tempted step by step to abandon our still undeveloped human possibilities and to follow the upward sweep into the spiritual worlds, taking with us all our imperfections, instead of allowing ourselves to be guided thereto through careful training. We have need of our earthly life so as to be withdrawn during this time from the temptation of Lucifer.

Up to the time mentioned, when we are led forth into space, Lucifer has no power over us and there is always the possibility of progress; but he draws near at the time we have to make the decision. We can make no further progress through our previous life, so we wish to turn aside with all our imperfections and remain in the spiritual world. The Gods of progress, to whom Lucifer is opposed, protect us from this by withdrawing us from the spiritual world, by hiding themselves from us and from the spiritual world, doing that which has to be accomplished in us without our being conscious of it. Thus we stand here as human beings in the world, conscious in our physical body, and say: ‘We give ye thanks, ye Gods! Ye have given us the power to know as much of the world as is good for us; for if we were to see beyond the threshold of the present horizon of our consciousness we should be in danger every moment of not wishing to reach the goal of humanity.’ We have to be transported into the world of space from that bright, higher condition of consciousness in which we live between death and rebirth—when spiritual worlds and spiritual beings surround us, when we are in the spirit, in order that in the world of space that world may be hidden from us which we are unable to endure until we have passed through the period between birth and death. During the time we dwell on earth, through our having been withdrawn from the spiritual world, through this spiritual world not having worked upon us and through material objects alone having surrounded us—we have again received a new impulse towards the distant goal of the ideal of humanity. For the divine Spirits who drive us forward work in us the whole time we live upon earth, during which time we do not see consciously into the spiritual world. They work in such a manner that they are not disturbed by our state of consciousness, they are not disturbed by our being tempted to follow Lucifer. They instil so much power into us, that, when we pass through the portal of death, we are able again to press forward a little further towards the ideal of humanity.

What I have just indicated in these words is another mystery which lies behind human existence. I think it is good for us at this Eastertide to consider those conditions of life which are attained by going out of the body in a more inward way; to consider the relationship between death and rebirth and the life we afterwards pass in the physical body. We then observe life between death and rebirth and become aware of the guidance of the good Spiritual Beings who are helping us onward. We look up to these Divine Beings as to our past life in the spirit, and we understand that our present existence in the body between birth and death has been lent to us by the Gods, in order that without our doing anything towards it, they may be able to take care of us so that we may develop further. While we perceive the world, while we think in the world, feel in it, will in it, while we store up our treasure of memory in order to have a connected existence in physical life;—behind it all, behind our conscious life, Divine Spiritual Beings are active; guiding onward the stream of time. They have sent us forth into space in order that we may there have exactly as much consciousness as they find it good for us to have, for behind this consciousness they wish to guide our destiny further towards the great ideal of humanity, the IDEAL of the religion of the Gods.

When we consider our inner being in this manner, the inner being which under normal conditions of life we are unable consciously to see and investigate, when we try to fill ourselves with the feeling that there is something within us, which, though we cannot perceive it, with the normal powers of human life, is nevertheless our deepest inner-soul nature; when we try to become aware of this soul-nature which is so deeply hidden within us, and then try to realise that the Gods rule in this soul-nature which we ourselves cannot guide, we then get the right feeling regarding the God which rules within us.

The words that have been spoken to-day have been spoken not so much on account of their theoretical content but to the end that this feeling might arise:—a true Easter-feeling. When the soul, looking on that which is revealed to it when it goes out of itself into space, when, filling space, this soul learns and knows ‘Out of the Divine I am born’, it can still further deepen this knowledge through what has been said to-day, for it becomes aware that: ‘With all I know, with all that is accessible to my soul in Perception, Thought, Feeling and Will, I am born out of a deeper soul-being, that soul-being within me which is yet one with the Divinity which flows within the stream of ‘time’, but flows in it with the Divine. We are aware of a knowledge which may be expressed in a much deeper way than the knowledge expressed at the end of the last lecture. As the result of our considerations to-day, the statement, ‘Out of God we are born’, can be made in a much deeper sense, for we are aware that this soul, together with what it knows regarding itself, is born every moment from out the Divine, so that every moment we may fill our deepest, most inward being with this thought:

EX DEO NASCIMUR
Out of God we are born.

In this lecture we shall have to draw attention to several positive results of occult investigation which will enable us to penetrate into the nature of man and will also show us what a complicated being man really is as he exists in the world. Can we think otherwise than that this human being must be a very complicated being, when we reflect how the true ideal of man, that which it is possible for man to become if he really develops all the possibilities contained within him, is fundamentally the content of the religion of the Gods and that all the Spiritual Beings belonging to the various hierarchies whom we know to be connected with human nature really work together with one object, that of building up man out of the whole cosmos, as the purport of that cosmos.

The first thing we remark is that when a human being receives impressions of the outer world, he actually receives into his consciousness only a small portion of what really surges in upon him. When in the physical world, he opens his sense organs and the intellect connected with his brain and nervous system, when he considers the world and tries to explain what comes to him in this way, only a small portion of what surges in upon him, really attains the form of ideas, only a tiny portion really enters the consciousness of man. Light and colour contain much more than what enters man's consciousness. In sound there is much more than what comes into the consciousness of man. External materialistic physics in its childish idea of the world says that behind colour, behind light, etc., there are material processes, vibrations of atoms and so on. This is indeed but a childish conception of the world, for in reality the following comes to light:—

We must investigate human perception with clairvoyant vision, for only by observing the actual process of perception can we understand man's relation to the surrounding world, even though we consider only the physical world. Something quite unique appears when we observe the process of perception clairvoyantly. Let us suppose some object affects our eyes, we perceive light or colour, and thus we have in our consciousness the sensation of light or colour. The remarkable fact one discovers through spiritual investigation is that in the human being there appears not only this light and this colour, but, in consequence of light and colour, there appears what we might call a sort of light-corpse or colour-corpse. Our eyes cause us to have the sensation of light and colour. Thus we might say: The light streams towards us and brings about in us the sensation of light; but looking deeper into our being we discover that while we are conscious of light, our human nature is permeated by something that has to die in us in order that we may have the sensation of light. We can have no perception, no sensation from outside without a sort of corpse being formed as the result of this sensation.

The spiritual investigator has to say: ‘Here I see a human being; I know that he has the sensation of red. But I see that this red which is in his consciousness pours forth something, pervades his whole being with something which in so far as it has entered within his skin and the limits of his etheric body—kills something in him which becomes like the corpse of the colour. Imagine that whenever we confront the physical world and have our sense-organs open, we always receive into us the corpses of all our sensations, as phantoms—but active phantoms. Whenever we perceive the outer world, something dies in us. This is a most remarkable phenomenon. And the spiritual investigator has to ask: What happens here? What is the cause of this very remarkable phenomenon?

One has to consider what it really is that comes to us as light. This light has a great deal behind it. What manifests as light is only the forerunner, as it were, of that which surges in upon us: at any rate there is not behind the light that undulating motion which external physics fancies, but behind the light, behind all sensations, behind all impressions, there is that which we only comprehend when we view the world occultly through Imaginations, through creative images. The moment we perceive all that lives in light, in sound or in warmth, we perceive, behind what reaches our consciousness, creative Imagination, and within this again is revealed Inspiration, and within that, Intuition. That which comes into our consciousness as the sensation of light or sound is but the outermost layer, only the froth, as it were, of what comes to us; but within it there is that which, if it were to enter our consciousness, could become in us Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition.

In what we perceive, we really only receive one-fourth of that which assails us; the other three-fourths penetrate into us without our being aware of them. When we perceive colour, there presses into us, as it were, below the surface of the sensation of colour,—creative Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition; these sink into us. When we investigate more closely into that which thus enters into us, we find that if Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition were really to enter our organism as they wish to do through sense perception, the result would be, that even during the period of our physical earthly existence between birth and death, they would bring about the same spiritual effect as I mentioned yesterday as a possible result of the temptation of Lucifer. This Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition would so act upon us that we should have the impulse to cast behind us every possibility that exists for our becoming the Ideal Man in the far-distant future, and we should want to spiritualise ourselves as we are now; we should want to become spiritual beings at the stage of perfection we have now reached through our previous life. In a certain sense we should say to ourselves: ‘It will be too great an effort for us to become man, for to reach this goal we should have to tread a difficult path in the future. We shall forego the possibilities yet lying in man, we prefer to become angels with all our imperfections, for then we can rise at once into the spiritual world, we can then spiritualise our being; we shall however, be less perfect than we might be in the cosmos, in view of our possibilities, but still we shall be spiritual, angelic beings.’

Here again, you see from this example the great importance of what is called the threshold of the spiritual world, and how important the Being is, who is called the Guardian of the Threshold. For there he stands, at the point of which I have just spoken. It is he who only allows sensation to enter our consciousness, and does not allow Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition to enter; for if these were to enter they would rouse within us a direct impulse to spiritualise ourselves just as we are, foregoing all the subsequent life of humanity. This has to be veiled from us; the door of our consciousness is closed against this impulse which penetrates our being. And in so far as it penetrates our being without our being able to illuminate it with the light of consciousness, as we are obliged to let it descend into the dark depths of our subconsciousness, there come towards it those Spiritual Beings to whom Lucifer is opposed. These come into our being from the other side and now arises within us the war between Lucifer, who sends in his Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, and the Spiritual Beings to whom Lucifer is opposed. With every sensation, with every perception we should behold this battle, if the threshold of the spiritual world were not closed to our outward perception. But to clairvoyant vision it is not closed.

From this you may see what a great deal really takes place in the inner part of human nature, and the result in us of the battle which takes place there is what I have described as a sort of corpse, a partial corpse. This corpse is the expression of that which has to become entirely material in us, it is like a mineral deposit, which we are unable to spiritualise. If this corpse were not formed through the war between Lucifer and his opponents we should have, instead of this corpse, the result of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition within us and we should rise at once into the spiritual world. The corpse forms the dead weight by which the good Spiritual Beings—the opponents of Lucifer—detain us at first in the physical world, detain us in it so that because of this veiling we should strive towards the true ideal of human nature and the fulfilment of all the possibilities that may be ours. Through this content, this corpse-phantom being formed in us, through our receiving into ourselves, every time we perceive, something which is at the same time a corpse, we kill in us during the act of perception this ever-springing impulse towards spiritualisation. It is while this deposit is forming that what I have often mentioned occurs, and of which it is so important we should recognise the full significance. Just consider! When you look into a mirror you have a sheet of glass before you; this you would see through, if it were not for the mirroring substance spread on it. Through the mirroring substance being upon the sheet of glass everything that is in front of the mirror is rejected. If you were really to stand before your physical body in such a way that you experienced the perceptions which pass into it from Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions, you would then see through the physical body, and your feeling would be such that you would say: ‘I will have nothing to do with this physical body; I will take no notice of it, but I will rise just as I am into the spiritual world.’

The physical body would really stand before you like a pane of glass without any mirroring substance behind it. But the physical body is now permeated with the corpse which resembles the mirroring substance of the mirror and it reflects everything that falls upon it, exactly as in the case of sense perception. It is in this way sense that perceptions originate. The permanent corpse we bear within us is the reflecting substance of our whole body and we thereby see ourselves in the physical world. It is because of this that we are individual physical beings in the physical world. How complicated does the human being now appear to us!

Let us take the other case, in which we not merely perceive, but we think. When we think, it is not a sense perception. Sense perceptions may give rise to thought, but true thought does not consist of sense perceptions, it is a more interior process. When we think, we make no impression in our physical body with the actual thought, but we do upon our etheric body. When we think, all that is in the thought does not enter into us. Were all that is contained in thought to enter into us, we should feel, every time we think, nothing but living, elemental beings pulsing in us; we should feel inwardly alive. I mentioned once at Munich that if a person were to experience thoughts just as they are, he would feel somewhat as if he were in an ant heap. Thoughts would live in him, everything would be alive. We do not perceive this life in our human thought, because again, only what is like the froth of it enters our consciousness and forms those shadow-pictures of thought which appear in us as our thinking. On the other hand, that which permeates thought as living force, sinks into our etheric body. We do not perceive the living beings, the living elemental beings swarming through us, but only an extract, something like a shadow of them; but the other part, the life, does enter into us and as it enters into us pervades us in such a manner that again a battle takes place, this time in our etheric body, between the progressing spirits and Ahriman, the Ahrimanic beings. And what is the outcome of this battle? It is that thoughts do not appear in us as they would do if they were alive. Were they to appear as they actually are, we should feel ourselves within the life of the thought-beings moving hither and thither; but we do not perceive this, and our etheric body, which otherwise would be transparent, is rendered opaque. I might say that it becomes somewhat like a smoke-topaz, which has darker layers in it, while quartz is quite transparent and pure. In the same way our etheric body is filled with a spiritual obscurity and that which thus fills our etheric body is the treasure of our thought.

This treasure of thought arises through thoughts being reflected, as it were, in our etheric body in the way described, but in this case, in ‘time’, they are reflected back as far as to the point of time to which our memory extends in physical life. Memory is rejected thoughts, thoughts reflected in time. But deep down in our etheric body, behind memory, work the good divine Spiritual Beings to whom Ahriman is opposed and there they create, they construct the forces which are able to reanimate what has died in the physical body as the result of the above-described process. Thus whereas in our physical body a corpse is produced (a corpse which has to be produced, because otherwise we should have the impulse to spiritualise ourselves with all the imperfections we possess), something like an invigorating vital force proceeds from the etheric body, so that in the future that which has been killed can once more be regenerated.

We now see for the first time the significance of ‘before’ and ‘afterwards’. If in the immediate present we were fully to experience the Intuitions, Inspirations, etc., which enter into us, we should spiritualise ourselves, but through their being thrown into the future by Ahriman, through their not being used now, but being preserved as germs for the future, they attain at last to their true nature. That which we should misuse at the present time we shall employ in the future, when we have passed the portal of death, to shape a new life for ourselves from out the spiritual world. That which—if we were to use it in the physical world—would lead us to spiritualise ourselves with all our imperfections is the force that leads us after death to apply ourselves again to physical earthly life. In such opposite directions do things work in different worlds!

Such is the case with respect to our thought. And now let us consider feeling, that which we have within us as inner feeling. That which we perceive as inner feeling is, once more, not really what it could be according to its whole inner nature. What we have within us as feeling, what enters our consciousness as feeling, is only the shadow of what really lives within us; for here again, in our feeling Spiritual Beings live. Remembering what I said in the first lecture, you will perceive that in feeling live the Spiritual Beings who are really at the back of the whole of our planetary system, only they do not enter our consciousness. Feeling, as we know it, enters our consciousness; the rest remains outside our consciousness. What does it really mean when we say that the rest remains outside our consciousness? It is really very difficult to find words in ordinary language which exactly describe these things. Just as we must say perception and thought produce within us something that is really like a ‘killing’—but in the case of thought, through counteraction, there is at the same time a sort of impulse towards a future ‘making alive’—so also we have to say that every feeling we have is not really born in us, it does not come fully into existence. If everything that is in us when we feel were to emerge, what is contained in the feeling would lay hold of and give force to that which is behind the feeling in quite a different manner. That which really makes feeling into a living being, into a living being whose life is nourished by the entire planetary system, does not appear directly. Feeling does arise in us but as a shadow of what it really is. The result is that however profoundly a person may enter into his world of feeling, however deep his feeling for humanity, he is really aware of something unsatisfactory in respect of every feeling. He perceives that each feeling might be enhanced, it might come forth with more power. Especially as regards feeling we have something like a secret consciousness that it could reveal to us much more than it does; it hides something that lives in our inner being, something that is in the depths of our soul and that is only half born.

When we pass on to our will, to all that as wish and will can arise within us, the case is the same as with feeling, but to a higher degree; for behind the will is to be found the Spiritual Being, the Causal Being, who really lives in the sun. In the will there lives not merely that which lives in the planets, but that which lives in the sun itself—but hidden. The will is still less entirely born than is feeling. The will would permeate us very, very differently, if all that is contained in it were really to manifest itself in our consciousness. Only the outermost surface of the will, only it's most superficial part is really expressed. The other remains hidden from us. Why does a whole world remain hidden from us in feeling and in will? It is because if that which remains hidden from us were to be seen from the physical plane, we could not bear it. Seen from the physical plane it would have such an appearance that we should want to ward it off, we should want to turn away from it.

That which lives in feeling and in will, and remains unborn, is karma in process of development, evolving karma. Let us suppose, to choose a concrete example, that we have a hostile feeling towards someone. That which comes into our consciousness when we have this hostile feeling is but the ripple on the surface; below, forces are active which extend over the whole of our planetary system. But it is precisely that which remains hidden that says to us: ‘Through thy hostile feeling thou art implanting in thyself something that is imperfect,’ this thou must make good. The moment that were to appear, which dwells below the surface, we should see before us the ‘Imagination’ of what karmically must balance this hostile feeling. In order to avoid the compensation we should unite ourselves with Lucifer and Ahriman, because we should judge what we saw from the standpoint of the physical plane. On the physical plane this is hidden from us; the Guardian of the Threshold hides it from us because we can only judge the things which are unborn in our feelings and in our will when we live in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. There we will what otherwise we never should will; there we will that what corresponds to a hostile feeling shall really be corrected, because there we have a true interest in the contents of divine religion, in the perfect ideal of humanity, which would make of us perfect human beings. From this we know that what has come to pass through a hostile feeling must receive its equivalent compensation. It has to be held over till the future, only after death may that appear which has remained unborn in our feeling and will.

Thus you see I have presented to you four things connected with the human soul. That which remains unborn in our feeling lives in the astral body. That which remains unborn behind our will, lives in the ‘I’. Again, when we receive impressions of the outer world we receive into us at the same time something like a physical corpse, which is really the mirroring-substance of our physical body. We also have within us a deposit, resembling a beclouding of the etheric body. In our astral body we have something which does not come to birth in the period between birth and death; and in our will we also have something which is not born during this period. This fourfold possibility which a human being bears within him, must be aroused in the period between death and re-birth. It lives within us as the kernel of our soul, just as surely as the seed for the following year lives in the plant. Thus we do not only speak of a soul-seed in a general way, but we can even comprehend this soul-seed in its fourfold nature. When we have a feeling which produces an inward uneasiness, when we are not in harmony with life, it is because a certain pressure is exercised upon the conscious part of our feelings by the unborn part of our feelings. How can this pressure be relieved? Now this pressure is something to which every human being is continually exposed; for what I have just described—in so far as it relates to feeling and will, that is, to what is really our soul-life—is that which brings us into inner disharmony. If there were true unison between that part of feeling and will which is born, and that which remains below the threshold of consciousness, if the right relationship, the right harmony existed, we should live in this sense-world as happy and useful human beings. Here lies the real reason for all inner dissatisfaction. If anyone is inwardly dissatisfied, it comes from the pressure of the subconscious part of his feeling and will.

Now, to the explanation I have given, I must add that the nature of man has changed in the course of his evolution. What I have just described applies particularly to the present time, but it was not always thus. In ancient periods of human evolution, let us say in the ancient Persian, Egyptian and Indian ages, it was different. Of course man's perceptions arose in exactly the same manner, and Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions were contained in them; but in ancient times these Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions were not so entirely without effect upon man as they are to-day. They did not kill so completely the inner physical part of man. They did not make such a dense mineral deposit. This was because, in those ancient times under certain conditions when perceptions came from outside, something shot up out of feeling and will to meet it. If, for example, we go back to the Egyptian or the Babylonian civilisation and observe human beings, then we find that they perceived quite differently. Of course they confronted the outer sense-world just as we do, but their bodies were so organised that the Imaginations hidden within the sense-perceptions had not only their destructive effect, but they entered with a certain life-giving power. Because they entered in this living way they produced inwardly the reflection of that which now remains entirely hidden in the Ego and astral body. The Spiritual Beings belonging to the sun and planetary system pressed out from within and reflected as it were that which was animated by the Imagination; so that to the people belonging to the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilisations there were certain times when, on turning their gaze to the physical world, they did not only have physical perceptions as we have them, but life-endowed perceptions.

The Egyptian knew that behind his perceptions there was something which expressed itself in Imaginations. Hence he was not so foolish as to suppose that behind the perceptions there were vibrations of material atoms, as our present physicists do, but he knew that there was life behind them and from his inner being there streamed towards him pictures of the animated starry heavens and the living sun.

This was particularly strong during the Persian culture, when, together with the outer perception, something like the inner, spiritual force of the sun shone forth—Ahura Mazdao! If we go back to still more ancient times we find this interaction, this meeting of the inner and the outer expressed very much more strongly. To-day this can no longer be the case; but there can be a substitute, and here we reach a point where from the very nature of the thing we can really understand the task of the anthroposophical conception of the world. A substitute has to be produced. We confront the outer world with our perceptions. We think about it, a part of this outer world remains hidden from us, and this has a deadening and darkening effect upon us, but through Spiritual Science we can restore that which is thus darkened and deadened. It is precisely through the restoration of what otherwise is killed and darkened, that the science originates which portrays evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon Periods, as described in my book Occult Science. Every human being possesses this knowledge regarding the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, only it is in the background of his consciousness. He would prefer not to be an earthly man were he able to see it directly, without the necessary preparation: he would prefer not to have any connections with the earth, and to end with the Moon evolution. All the knowledge we are able to acquire through Spiritual Science illuminates the hidden part of evolution in the past. That which as Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions lives outside and does not consciously enter into us, is really what we have gone through in the past. To gain this knowledge we must pass beyond the veil of sense-perception.

It is somewhat different regarding what is contained in our feeling and will. A person may say (and many have the impulse to say this at the present time): ‘Why should I concern myself with what these odd people think out, or have thought out, regarding a super-sensible world? I do not accept such ideas!’ A person who says this has never formed any idea as to why religions have come into our evolution. The one thing which all religions have in common is that they relate to things we cannot perceive with our senses: a person who accepts religious ideas fills himself with something he cannot perceive with his senses. Ideas which come from what we sensibly perceive, never give such an impulse to our feelings and will as may have an uplifting power after death. In order that the ‘unborn’ part of our feeling and will may continue to be active after death—as indeed it must—we do not use ideas gained through the perception of the senses, or through the intellect attached to the brain. These do not help us at all. The only ideas which give us the impulse and power which we need after death, are the ideas which correspond to that which is not outwardly real, the conceptions which when accepted make us pious and by which we look up to a spiritual world. Religious conceptions are those which cannot work in us as yet, but they become active forces after death. When we acquire religious conceptions we are not merely acquiring knowledge, but something that can become active after our death. For this reason it must be that anyone who does not want to reflect upon active forces of such a nature may laugh about them and in his materialism may reject them, but if he does not acquire ideas regarding what is super-sensible he will have but crippled powers wherewith to develop that which has remained unborn in his feeling and will.

Therefore it must frequently be stated that light is thrown on the past by clairvoyant consciousness. This is recognised at the present time in so far as it exists behind the veil of the sense-world as Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. In former times this consciousness was given to man as a religious belief, in order that he might not lose all uplifting power for the period after death and that he might have something in his soul—like a seed—that could carry on the life of the soul even when he had laid aside the physical body. The time has now come when mankind ought to acquire ideas about the super-sensible worlds through the understanding of Spiritual Science. For this reason it cannot be too often stated that the spiritual investigator alone can investigate these matters in the super-sensible world; but when they have been investigated and then imparted to us, there is something in our inmost soul which is a hidden language of the soul, which can grasp and understand the discoveries made by the spiritual investigator. It is only when the prejudices of the mind and senses hold sway that the super-sensible ideas furnished us by spiritual research are looked upon as nonsense, as foolishness and fantasy—ideas which, when accepted, endow the soul with an uplifting power which enables it to find its way in the cosmos through all the ages to come. It will always be the case that only those who have gone through an esoteric development will be able to investigate the contents of the spiritual world; but to know these contents, to work upon them inwardly in the consciousness, to hold them as ideas and conceptions, to possess the spiritual world as a certainty of the soul's existence is something that humanity will have need of more and more as its necessary spiritual food.

It is this which shows us how, from its very nature, the mission of our Anthroposophical Movement can be understood. In ancient times it still was the case that knowledge was animated from above and the capacity for receiving this knowledge came from below. Hence the ancients still possessed a direct consciousness of the spiritual worlds, but this consciousness gradually became dim and dark. Had this not come to pass, man would not have arrived at the full consciousness of the Ego, He can only attain to full consciousness of his Ego by developing to the highest degree in his physical body, the phantom-corpse of which I have spoken. Our physical body, as a transparent being, must be, as it were, entirely overlaid with ‘mirror-foil’ and only when it is completely overlaid, are we so conscious of ourselves that we can say: ‘I am an I’. But the complete overlaying has only been done slowly and gradually, for it has developed in the course of the evolution of humanity: it was completed in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

The application of the ‘mirror-foil’ was then completed. Before that time the higher and the lower natures of man still met, what was below and what was above in a human being came together. One may say that through the covering of ‘mirror-foil’ being perfected, the higher and the lower were completely forced apart and this only came about when the event of Golgotha drew near.

What had then really taken place? Let us look more closely at what had taken place. Picture to yourselves the consciousness of these ancient people before the Mystery of Golgotha. From outside comes the life-giving force of Imaginations; from within arise pictures of the superhuman spiritual world. What are these pictures which thus arise in the human being? As we know, this was possible in ancient times, owing to the clouded condition of human consciousness. Those who knew these things, those who as Initiates were able to see the human soul and who saw it in this meeting of the life-giving Imagination from without and the vision from within, these did not say, ‘Man alone sees this’; but these ancient Initiates—the ancient Jewish Initiates, for example—said: ‘Jahveh or Jehovah looks upon His world in man. God thinks in man.’ Just as at the present time, in our cycle of evolution, when we have a thought, we may say ‘I think’, those who knew these things in ancient times said, when the pictures from the spirit-worlds appeared to them, ‘The Gods are thinking in us.’ Or as they recognised the unity of Divinity in Monotheism, they said, ‘Jehovah thinks in man; man is the stage whereon the play of divine thoughts is carried out.’ Men felt themselves inflamed by these thoughts; therefore they said, ‘In me the Gods think.’ But the necessity arose in human evolution that this should become more and more impossible and that darkness should spread more and more. The possibility of seeing visions, the thoughts of the Gods in man, ceased. The phantom-like corpse in man became more and more pronounced. The time drew near, when no more thoughts came forth from our human nature to meet the Gods. The Divine Being regarding whom it was said that He thought through man, felt His consciousness becoming dimmer and dimmer—for His consciousness consisted in His thoughts. And the longing arose within this Divine Being to awaken a new form of consciousness. When men acquire a different form of consciousness, they acquire something of the utmost importance. When the Gods create a new form of consciousness, they create with it something essential; something of the most profound moment occurs. The thing of profound importance that now came into being was the Christ. Christ the child of the Godhead, restored to man the power whereby he was conscious of God—restored the consciousness which the previously mentioned Divine Being had felt to be darkened. To accomplish this the Christ had to enter into and become a part of human nature. We must become fully aware of the fact, that in the act of perceiving the sense-world we receive continually into ourselves the content of death; that when we think about this world we are receiving obscuration and darkness into ourselves; and when we feel and will, something remains unborn in us. All these remain below in the depths of our consciousness, and with them there enters into us the content of something dead and something unborn which we can only first make use of after we are dead. But the power to do this would be crippled, if we could not let it sink into the Being whom the Godhead has brought to birth as the principle of a new consciousness, if we could not let it flow into the Christ-Being. When through spiritual science we really recognise the meaning of evolution, we become conscious of the following:—We realise that we send down into the subconscious depths of our being that which dies in us; but the death which we send down more and more into our own being is received by the Christ Who comes to meet us with life-giving power. Christ gives life to that which dies in us, which darkens in us, which remains unborn in us. We allow that to die in us, which must die in order that we may approach the true ideal of humanity with all the possibilities it contains; but the death-content which streams into us we pour into the Christ-Being, for He has pervaded human evolution since the founding of Christianity, and we also realise that what remains unborn in us, our feeling and will, is received by the Christ-substance into Whom it will sink after death. For within us dwells the Christ ever since He passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Into Christ we let sink the death-content which is present with every perception; into Him we allow the darkening of our power of thought to sink. Into the light, into the spiritual sunlight of Christ we send our darkened thoughts, and when we pass through the portal of death, our unborn feeling sinks within the substance of Christ and so too does our unborn will. When we understand evolution aright we say to this evolution:

IN CHRISTO MORIMUR
We die in Christ.

In my second public lecture here, I tried, as far as is possible in a public lecture, to describe in broad outline the life of man between death and rebirth. We shall go more deeply into this subject in the next two lectures, in order to gain a clearer understanding of our life here in the physical world. The preparation provided by the previous lectures was necessary before we could go further. This course of lectures will provide the means whereby we can enter more deeply into this subject than was possible in the public lectures.

I have often said that if a person wants to know and understand the spiritual worlds—and these are the worlds in which we live between death and rebirth—he must make certain conceptions and ideas his own, which cannot be gained from experience here on earth, but which, if once gained, will be of infinite importance to life on the physical plane; and this importance will increase more and more.

To begin with, let me now explain one difference between the experience in the spiritual world and the experience on the physical plane, which when heard for the first time must seem astonishing and strange, so that we might easily think that these things would be difficult of comprehension. But the deeper we go in Spiritual Science, the more we shall find that these things become ever more comprehensible. When we live on the physical plane and are affected by the experiences of the physical plane, one thing must, upon recollection strike us forcibly. That is, that on this physical plane we are confronted with what we call reality, existence, being. One might say that the more unspiritual a person is, the more does he rely upon what he has before him on the physical plane as the ‘reality’ that presses in upon him. But as regards what we wish to acquire on the physical plane as ‘knowledge,’ knowledge of this reality, the case is different. As children we have to be taught to develop the capacities for acquiring the knowledge of the physical plane and then we have to work further and further. The acquisition of knowledge demands mental work. Nature, that is to say external reality, does not of itself yield up the contents of its wisdom and its laws; we have to acquire this knowledge. Indeed, all human striving after knowledge consists in actively acquiring from passive experience, the wisdom and the law that Nature contains.

Now matters are quite different when either by the exercises which lead to spiritual investigation, or by passing through the portal of death, we enter into the spiritual world. The relation of man to the surrounding spiritual world is not, under all circumstances, what I am now about to describe; but it is so in important moments, during important experiences. In our life on the physical plane we are not always striving after knowledge, for sometimes we pause in this labour. So also, what I shall now describe is not continually necessary in the spiritual world, but it is requisite and necessary for us at certain times. The astonishing thing is that man has no lack of wisdom in the spiritual world. A person may be a fool in the sense-world, but simply through his entrance into the spiritual world wisdom streams towards him in its reality. Wisdom that we acquire with trouble in the physical world, that we have to work for day after day if we wish to possess it, is already ours in the spiritual world, just as surrounding nature is ours in the physical world. It is always there, and it is there in the greatest abundance. To a certain extent we may say that the less wisdom we have acquired on the physical plane, the more abundantly does this wisdom stream towards us on the spiritual plane. But, we have a special task, with respect to this wisdom on the spiritual plane.

In recent lectures I told you that on the spiritual plane the ideal of humanity stands before us, the content of the religion of the Gods, and that we have to strive towards it. We cannot do this, if we are incapable of so exercising our will—that is, our feeling-will, our willing-feeling—that we continually diminish this wisdom, continually take something away from the wisdom which for ever streams towards us and which there surrounds us as the phenomena of nature do here. We must have the power to deplete more and more the wisdom which there comes towards us. Here, on the physical plane we have to become wiser and wiser; there we have to endeavour so to exercise our will and our feeling that we diminish and darken the surrounding wisdom. For the less we are able to take from it, the less strength do we find within us whereby to fill ourselves with the necessary forces to approach the ideal of humanity as real being. This approach has to consist in our taking more and more away from the surrounding wisdom. What we thus take away we are able to transform within us so that the transformed wisdom becomes the life-force which drives us towards the ideal of humanity,. This life-force we have to acquire during the period between death and rebirth. It is only by changing into life-force, the wisdom which flows into us so abundantly, that we can approach a fresh incarnation in the correct way. When we return to earth, we must have changed so much wisdom into life-force, we must have diminished the wisdom by so much, that we have sufficient organising spiritual life-forces to permeate the substance we receive through heredity from father and mother. Thus we have to lose wisdom more and more.

When we find a thorough materialist again after his death, one who on the physical plane did not recognise any reality in spirit, who said during his life, ‘All that you say about spirit is nonsense; your wisdom is nothing but fantasy; I will have nothing to do with it. I admit nothing but what is to be found in external nature’—in the case of such a person, when met with after his death, one sees wisdom stream towards him so abundantly that he cannot escape it. From all sides spirit streams towards him. To the same extent that he did not believe in spirit here, he is overflooded by it there. His task is now to change this wisdom into life-forces, so that he may produce a physical reality in his next incarnation. He is to produce what he called reality from this wisdom, he is to diminish this wisdom; but it will not permit itself to be diminished by him, it remains as it is. He is unable to form reality out of it. This dreadful punishment of the spirit confronts him, namely, that whereas in his last life here on the physical plane he relied only upon reality, whereas he entirely denied spirit, he is now unable to save himself, as it were, from spirit and he is unable to produce anything real out of this spirit. He is always faced with the danger of not being able to come again into the physical world through forces which he himself produces. He lives continually in the fear—‘Spirit will push me into the physical world and I shall then have a physical existence which denies everything that I recognised as true in my previous life. I shall have to allow myself to be thrust by spirit into physical reality, I shall not have produced reality by myself.’ That is a most astonishing thing, but it is a fact. To be a great materialist and deny spirit before death is the way to be drowned, as it were, in spirit after death and to find in it nothing of the only reality one had formerly believed in, A man is then choked or drowned in spirit.

These are ideas which we have to acquire more and more in the course of our. study of spiritual science; for if we do acquire them they lead us onward harmoniously even in physical life and they show us, to a certain extent, how the two sides of life have to supplement and balance each other. We form the instinctive desire really to introduce this balance into our life.

I might give you another example of the connection between physical and spiritual life. Let us take a concrete, individual example. Suppose we have told a lie to someone on the physical plane—I am speaking of actual cases. When we tell a lie to someone, it happens at a certain point of time and what I shall now describe as the corresponding event in the spiritual world also takes place at a certain point of time between death and rebirth. Let us suppose we have told a lie to someone at some particular time on the physical plane; then, during our sojourn in the spiritual world, be it through initiation or through death, there comes a certain time when our soul in the spiritual world is entirely filled with the truth we ought to have expressed. This truth torments us; it stands before us and torments us to the same degree in which we deviated from it when we told the lie. Thus one need only tell a lie on the physical plane in order to bring about a time in the spiritual world when we are tormented by the corresponding truth, the opposite of the lie. There the truth torments us because it lives in us and burns us, and we cannot bear it. Our suffering consists in our seeing the truth before us. But we are in such a condition that this truth gives us no satisfaction, no joy, no pleasure; it torments us. One of the peculiarities of our experience in the spiritual world is that we are tormented by what is good, by the things which we know ought to uplift us.

Take another example. In our life in the physical world we may be lazy in doing something which it is our duty to do industriously; then comes a time in the spiritual world when we are filled with the industry we lacked in the physical world. Industry most surely comes; it is alive in us when we have been lazy in the physical plane. The time comes when from inner necessity, we have to exercise this industry unconditionally. We devote ourselves to it entirely and we know that it is something which is extremely valuable; but it torments us, it makes us suffer.

Let us take another case which is perhaps less under the control of human volition, but depends upon other processes of life which go on more in the background of existence and are connected with the course of our karma; let us take the case in which we have passed through an illness. When in physical life we have had an illness which has caused us pain, we experience at a certain point of time in the spiritual world the opposite feeling, the opposite condition, namely, that of health. And this feeling of health strengthens us during our sojourn in the spiritual world to the same degree that the illness weakened us. This is an instance which perhaps may not only shock our intellect, like the other things we have mentioned, but it may enter much more deeply into the emotional aspect of our soul and irritate it. We know that the things of Spiritual Science must always be grasped through our feelings; but in this case we must remember the following. We must clearly understand that something like a shadow lies over this connection between physical illness and the corresponding health and strength we have in the spiritual world. The connection exists, but there is something in the human breast which prevents the feelings from rightly coming to terms with this connection. We must indeed admit this connection has another result when we really understand it, and this result may be described as follows:—

Let us suppose that a person takes up Spiritual Science and devotes himself seriously to it—not in the way in which other sciences are taken up. These may be studied theoretically; one may receive what they give merely as thoughts and ideas. Spiritual Science ought never to be taken up in this manner. It ought to become a spiritual life-blood within us. Spiritual Science ought to live and work in us; it ought also to awaken feelings through the ideas it gives us. To one who really hearkens to Spiritual Science in the right way there is nothing it has to give which does not either, on the one hand, uplift us, or on the other, allow us to see into the abuses of existence in order that we may there find our way aright. The student who understands Spiritual Science correctly always follows what it says with the appropriate feelings. Spiritual Science when accepted will transform his soul, even while in the physical world, simply through the ideas that live in him and through his acquiring the habits of thought and feeling which we have just mentioned as being necessary. I have often said that the earnest study of Spiritual Science is one of the best and most deeply-penetrating of all exercises.

Something remarkable gradually appears in one who takes up Spiritual Science. A person who performs exercises—possibly he does not do it in order to become a spiritual investigator himself, but only tries earnestly to understand Spiritual Science—such a person may perhaps not be able for a very long time to think of seeing clairvoyantly for himself. He will be able to do it sometime; though this may perhaps be a far-off ideal. But if he really allows Spiritual Science to act upon his soul in the manner we have indicated, he will find that the instincts of life, the more unconscious impulses of life change. His soul really becomes different. No one can take up Spiritual Science without it influencing the instinctive life of the soul. It makes the soul different, it gives it different sympathies and antipathies, it fills it with a sort of light, so that it feels more certain than it did formerly. This may be noticed in every realm of life; in every realm of life Spiritual Science expresses itself in this way. For example, a person may be unskilled; but if he takes up Spiritual Science he will see that without doing anything else than filling himself with Spiritual Science, he will become more apt and capable, even to the manner in which he uses his hands. Do not say: ‘I know some very unskilled people who follow Spiritual Science; and they are still very unskilled!’ Try to reflect to what extent these have not yet really permeated themselves inwardly with Spiritual Science according to the necessities of karma. A person may be a painter and exercise the art of painting to a certain degree; if he takes up Spiritual Science he will find that what we have just mentioned will flow instinctively into the actions he performs. He will mix his colours more easily; the ideas he wants will come more quickly. Or suppose he is a teacher, and wishes to take up some science. Many who are in this position will know how much trouble it often costs to gather together the literature required to clear up some question or other. If he takes up Spiritual Science, he will not go as before to a library and take down fifty books that are of no use, but he will immediately lay his hands on the right one. Spiritual Science really enters into one's life; it makes the instincts different; it gives us the impulse to do the right thing.

Of course what I shall now say must always be thought of in conjunction with human karma. It must always be kept in mind that man is subject to the law of karma under all circumstances. But taking into consideration the law of karma, the following is still the case. Let us suppose that a certain kind of illness attacks someone who has taken up Spiritual Science in the way described and it is in his karma that he may be cured. Naturally, it may be in his karma that the disease cannot be cured; but, when considering an illness, karma never under any circumstance says that it must run a certain course in a fatalistic sense, it can be cured or it cannot be cured. Now, anyone who has earnestly taken up Spiritual Science acquires an instinctive feeling which helps him to oppose the illness and its weakening effect with the proper remedy. That which in the ordinary way is experienced as the result of the illness in the spiritual world works back into the soul, and, in so far as one is still in the physical body, it acts as instinct. One either succumbs to the illness or finds within oneself the way to the forces of healing. When the clairvoyant consciousness finds the right remedy for an illness, it happens in the following way: such a clairvoyant is able to call up before him the picture of the illness. Let us suppose that he has the picture before him of the illness which approaches a person in such or such a way and has a weakening effect on him. Owing to his clairvoyant consciousness there appears to him the counterpart of the illness, namely, the corresponding feeling of health, and the strengthening which springs from this feeling. That which can now happen to man in the spiritual world as the corresponding cure for that from which he is suffering in the physical world, is perceived by the clairvoyant. Through this the clairvoyant is enabled to advise the man for his good. Indeed, one need not even be a fully developed clairvoyant, but this may appear to one instinctively from seeing the picture of the illness. But the cause of that which to clairvoyant consciousness appears as compensation in the spiritual world, belongs to the picture of the illness as much as the swing of a pendulum to one side belongs to the swing to the other side.

From this example you will see how the physical plane is related to the spiritual world and how fruitful for the guidance of our life here the knowledge of the spiritual world may be.

Let us go back once more to the first concrete fact we mentioned, namely: that just as nature surrounds us on the physical plane, so what is spiritual, wisdom-filled spirit, surrounds us in the spiritual world and is always there. Now, if you understand this thoroughly, an extremely important light is cast on what takes place in the spiritual world. In the physical world we may pass by objects and observe them in such a way that we may ask: What is the principle or nature of this object? What is the law of this Being, or this process? Or, on the other hand, we may pass stupidly by and ask nothing at all. We shall never learn anything intelligently on the physical plane if we are not impelled, as it were, by the object itself to ask questions, if these objects do not present problems which we recognise as such. By merely looking at objects and processes, we should never on the physical plane arrive at being a soul that guides itself. On the spiritual plane this is different. On the physical plane we put our questions to objects and processes, and we have to make efforts to investigate them in order to find the answer to our questions from the things themselves. On the spiritual plane things and Beings surround us spiritually and they question us, not we them. They are there and we stand before them and are continually being questioned by them. We must now have the power to draw from the infinite ocean of wisdom the answer to these questions. We have not to seek the answers in the objects and processes, but in ourselves; for the objects question us; all around us are objects questioning us.

At this point the following comes under consideration. Let us suppose that we confront some process or some Being in the spiritual world; inevitably it asks us a question. We cannot approach it without its doing so. We stand there with our wisdom, but we are unable to develop sufficient will, sufficient feeling-will, or willing-feeling to give the answer from out this wisdom, although we know that the answer is within us. Our inner being is infinitely deep; all answers are within us—but we are unable really to give the answer. The consequence of this is that we rush past on the stream of time and fail to give the answer at the proper time, because we have not gained the capacity—perhaps through our previous evolution—we have not become mature enough to answer the question when the time comes for it to be answered. We have developed too slowly with respect to what we ought to answer; we can only give the answer later. But the opportunity does not recur; we have missed it. We have not made use of all our opportunities. Thus we pass by objects and events without answering them. We have experiences such as this continually in the spiritual world. Thus it may come about, that in our life between death and rebirth we stand before a Being which questions us. We have not developed ourselves sufficiently in our earthly life and the intervening spiritual life, to give the answer when we are asked. We have to pass on; we have to enter into our next incarnation. The consequence of this is that we must receive the impulse once more, in our next incarnation, through the good Gods, without being conscious of it, so that we shall not pass by the next time when the same question is asked. This is how things come to pass.

I have often mentioned that the further we go back in human evolution the more do we find that humanity did not then possess our present mentality, but had a kind of clairvoyance on the physical plane. Our present mental outlook developed from a dull, dreamy clairvoyance. The more primitive and elementary the stages of mental development of some races still are, the closer connection we find in their thought and feeling to this original clairvoyance. Although the primitive atavistic clairvoyance is becoming less and less frequent, we still find in unexplored regions of the earth people who have preserved something from former times, so that we still find echoes of the ancient days of clairvoyance. This clairvoyance reveals—although in a dim, dreamy form, because it is a seeing into the spiritual world—it reveals peculiarities which reappear in the developed clairvoyance; only in the latter case it is not dim and dreamy, but clear and distinct. Spiritual Science shows us that when a man of the present time goes through life between death and rebirth, he has progressively to answer the questioning Beings more and more at the proper time; for on his power to answer depends his true development, and his approach to the ideal of the Gods—the perfect man. As we have already said, in former times people had this experience in the domain of dreams and we have the remains of it in a great number of fairy-tales and sagas. These are gradually disappearing, but they run somewhat as follows. A certain person meets a spiritual Being. This Being repeatedly questions him and he has to answer. And he knows that he must give the answer by a certain time, when the clock strikes, or something of that sort. This ‘question motif’ in fairy-tales and sagas is very widespread and is a form of dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness which now reappears in the spiritual world, in the way have described. On the whole, the description of what takes place in the spiritual world provides in all cases a valuable clue to the understanding of myths, sagas, fairy-tales, etc., and enables us to place them where they belong. This is a point which shows that everywhere, even in the mental culture of the present day, evolution is standing, as it were, at the door of Spiritual Science.

It is very interesting, that a book such as the one by my friend Ludwig Laistner, The Riddle of the Sphinx, which in many respects is a good and well-intentioned book, is unsatisfactory, because in order to be satisfactory, the ‘question motif’, with which Ludwig Laistner specially deals, would have had to be treated from the basis of occult knowledge; the author would have had to know something about the truths of occult science which enter here.

Bearing these examples in mind, we see that the conditions in the spiritual world depend upon something quite definite. In the spiritual world it is not a case of gathering knowledge as we do here; it is even a case of diminished knowledge and changing the force of knowledge into life-force. One cannot be an investigator in the spiritual world in the same sense as one can in the physical world; that would be an absurdity, for there a person is able to know everything, it is all round about him. The question is whether he is able to develop his will and his feeling, in contradistinction to his knowledge, whether in individual cases he is able to bring forth from the treasure of his will sufficient power to make use of his wisdom; otherwise he is stifled by or drowned in it. Whereas in the physical world wisdom depends on thinking, in the spiritual world it depends upon the adequate development of the will, the feeling-will, the will which brings forth reality out of wisdom, which becomes a kind of creative power. There we have Spirit as here we have Nature, and our task is to lead Spirit to Nature. A beautiful statement is contained in the theosophical literature of the first half of the nineteenth century, a statement made by Oetinger, who lived at Murrhardt, in Wurtemburg, and who was so far advanced in his own spiritual development that at certain times he was able quite consciously to help spiritual beings, that is, souls who were not on the physical plane. He made the remarkable statement which is very beautiful and very true: ‘Nature and the form of nature is the aim of spiritual creative power.’ What I have just brought down to you from the spiritual world is contained in this sentence. In the spiritual world creative power strives to give reality to that which at first heaves and surges in wisdom. Here, we bring forth wisdom from the physical reality; there we do the reverse. Our task there is to produce realities from wisdom, to carry out in living realities the wisdom we find there. The goal of the Gods is reality in form.

Thus we see that it depends upon will permeated with feeling, or feeling-filled-will being changed into creative force; this we must employ in the spiritual world in the same way as here in the physical world we have to employ great mental efforts in order to arrive at wisdom.

Now, in order that this should be possible, it is very important that we should develop our feeling and thinking in the right way, that we should prepare ourselves here on the physical plane in a manner which is right for the present cycle of evolution; for all that takes place in the spiritual world between death and rebirth is the result of what takes place in the physical world between birth and death. It is indeed true, that conditions are so different in the spiritual world that we have to acquire entirely fresh conceptions and ideas if we wish to understand them, but all the same the two are connected like cause and effect. We only understand the connection between what is spiritual and what is physical, when we recognise it really as the connection of cause and effect. We have to prepare ourselves while in the physical world and we might therefore now consider the question: How, at the present age, can we prepare ourselves in the right way, so that—whether we enter the spiritual world through initiation or through death—we shall really possess the spiritual power necessary to draw what we have need of from the wisdom that is there—so that we may bring forth realities from this surging flowing wisdom. Whence comes such power? It is important that these questions should be answered in a manner adapted to our present age. In the age when mankind thought in such a way, that the origin of what I have called the ‘Saga motiv’ resulted, the case was different; but from whence comes this soul-force in the present age?

In order that we arrive at the answer to this, may I bring forward the following?

We can study the various philosophies and inquire as to how philosophers arrive at the idea of God—there are, of course, philosophers who have sufficient spiritual depth to be convinced from the existence of the world that we may speak of a Divine Being who pervades it. In the nineteenth century we need only take Lotze, who tried to produce in his religious philosophy something that was in harmony with the rest of his philosophy. Others too were sufficiently profound to have with all their philosophy a sort of religious philosophy also. We find one peculiarity in all these philosophers, a very definite peculiarity. They think to reach Divinity with ideas gathered from the physical plane; they reflect, they investigate in a philosophical manner, and come to the conclusion—as is the case with Lotze—that the phenomena and beings of the world are held together by a divine First Cause which pervades all and brings all into a certain harmony. But when we go more minutely into the ideas of these religious philosophers, we find that they always have one peculiarity. They arrive at a Divine Being who pervades all; and when we consider this Divine Being more closely, this God of the philosophers, we find that it is approximately the God called in the Hebrew, or rather, the Christian religion ‘God the Father’. Thus far do the philosophers go; they observe Nature and are profound enough not to deny everything Divine in an empty-headed, materialistic way; they can arrive at Divinity, but it is God the Father.

One can demonstrate most exactly, after studying these philosophers, that mere philosophy, as thinking philosophy, can lead nowhere but to a monotheistic Father-God.

If in the case of individual philosophers, such as Hegel and others, Christ is mentioned; it does not spring from philosophy—this can be proved—it comes from positive religion. These people have known that positive religion possesses the Christ and therefore they can speak of Him. The difference is, that the Father-God can be found through philosophy, but Christ cannot be found by any philosophy, by any method of thought. That is quite impossible.

That is a statement which I suggest you should weigh well and consider; if rightly understood it leads us far into the most important probings and strivings of the human soul. It is connected with something which is expressed in the Christian religion in a very beautiful, symbolic and pictorial manner; namely, that the relation of this other God, Christ, to the Father-God is understood as the relation of the Son to the Father. That is a very significant fact, although it is only a symbol. It is interesting to notice that Lotze, for example, cannot make anything out of it. ‘One cannot take this symbol literally, that is obvious,’ says Lotze. He means that one God cannot be the son of another. But there is something very striking in this symbol. Between father and son the relationship is something like that between cause and effect; for in a certain way one may see the father is the cause of the son. The son would not exist if the father were not there—like cause and effect. But we must take into account one peculiar thing, namely, that a man who eventually may have a son, may also have the possibility of not having a son, he may be childless. He would still be the same man. The cause is the man A, the effect is the man B, the son; but the effect need not come about, the effect is a free act, and follows as a free act from the cause. For this reason, when we study a cause considering it in connection with its effect, we must not merely inquire into the nature of the cause, for by this we have done nothing at all; but we must inquire whether the cause also really causes; that is the important question. Now a characteristic of all philosophy is that it follows a line of thought, it develops one thought out of another; it seeks for what follows in that which has gone before. Philosophers are justified in doing this; but in this way we never arrive at the connection which comes about when we call to mind the fact that the cause need not cause at all. The cause remains the same in its own nature whether it causes or not. That changes nothing in the nature of the cause. And this important fact is presented to us in the symbol of God the Father and God the Son: this important fact, that the Christ is added to the Father-God, as a free creation, as a creation which does not follow in due course, but which emerges as a free act alongside the previous creation and which also had the possibility not to be; the Christ is therefore not given to the world because the Father had to give the Son to the world, but the Son is given to the world as a free act, through grace, through freedom, through love, which when it creates, gives freely. For this reason we can never arrive at God the Son, the Christ, through the same kind of truth by which the philosophers arrive at God the Father. In order to arrive at Christ it is necessary to add the truth of faith to the philosophical truth, or—as the age of faith is declining more and more—to add the other truth which is obtained through clairvoyant investigation, which likewise only develops in the human soul as a free act.

Thus from the ordered processes of nature it may be demonstrated that there is a God; but it can never be proved by external means from the chain of causes and effects that there is a Christ. Christ exists and can pass by human souls if they do not feel in themselves the power to say: That is Christ! An active up-rousing of the impulse for truth is required in order to recognise Christ in that which was there as Christ. We can arrive at the other truths which lie in the realm of the Father-God, if we merely devote ourselves to thought and follow it consecutively; for to be a materialist means at the same time to be illogical. Religious philosophy according to Lotze, and religious philosophy in general, has its origin in the fact that through thought we can rise to this Divinity of religious philosophy. But never can we be led to recognise Christ merely through philosophy; this must be our own free act. In this case only two things are possible; we either follow faith to its ultimate conclusions, or we make a beginning with the investigation of the spiritual world, Spiritual Science. We follow faith to its ultimate conclusion when we say with the Russian philosopher Solovioff: ‘With regard to all the philosophical truths man gains about the world, to which his logic forces him, he does not stand related as to a free truth. The higher truth is that to which we are not forced, which is our free act, the highest truth won by faith.’ Solovioff reaches his highest point when he says: ‘The higher truth, that which recognises Christ, is the truth which works as a free act, which is not forced.’ To the spiritual investigator and to those who understand Spiritual Science, knowledge comes; but this is an active knowledge which rises from thought to Meditation, Inspiration and Intuition, which becomes inwardly creative, which, when creative, participates in spiritual worlds and thereby becomes similar to what we have to develop when we enter into the spiritual world, whether we do so through initiation or through death.

The wisdom which we acquire with such difficulty on earth, surrounds us in all its fullness and wealth in the spiritual world—just as nature surrounds us here on the physical plane.

The important thing in the spiritual world is that we should have the impulse, the power, to make something out of this wisdom, to produce from it reality. To create freely through wisdom, to bring about something spiritual as fact, must become a living impulse in us. This impulse can only be ours if we find the right relationship to Christ. Christ is not a Being who can be proved by external brain-bound logic, but who proves Himself, who realises Himself in us as we acquire spiritual knowledge. Just as Spiritual Science joins up with other science as a free act, so knowledge about Christ is added to us as soon as we approach the world into which we enter through spiritual investigation, or through death. If in our present age we seek to enter the spiritual world aright, that is to say, if we wish to die to the physical world, our attitude to the world must be that attitude which is only gained when we relate ourselves to Christ in the right way. Through the observation of nature we can attain to a God who is like ‘God the Father’ of the Christian religion, Him we find through the observation of what is around us when we live in the physical body; but to understand Christ aright, apart from tradition and revelation, from pure knowledge alone, is only possible through Spiritual Science. It leads into the realm which man enters by dying—whether it be that dying which is a symbolical dying, the going forth from the physical body in order to know oneself in the soul outside the body, or the other dying, the passing through the portal of death. We provide ourselves with the right impulses to pass through the portal of death, when we find the true relationship to Christ. The moment when death takes place, whether it comes about through Spiritual Science or whether we actually go through the portal of death, the moment it comes to dying, to leaving the physical body, the important thing in the present cycle of time is that we should confront in the right way the Being Who has come into the world, in order that we may find connection with Him. God the Father we can find during life; we find the Christ when we understand the entering into the Spirit, when we understand dying in the right way.

IN CHRISTO MORIMUR
We die in Christ.

I have now to speak once more of the events between death and rebirth, making use of the ideas we have acquired in the previous lectures. As we can only deal briefly with this wide subject, a great deal can be but indicated and much else which perhaps does not follow from this pictorial presentation will have to be worked out later; but that which at present you may find incomplete will be made clear in the further course of our studies in Spiritual Science.

When a person passes the portal of death, he lays aside his physical body. This is consigned to the elements of the earth. In other words we may say of the physical body, that it has withdrawn from the forces and laws proceeding from the true man which permeate it between birth and death and which are different from the mere chemical and physical laws to which, as physical body, it succumbs after death. From the standpoint of the physical plane, a person has naturally the idea that he has left on the physical plane that part of his being which belongs to that plane. What belongs to the physical plane is consigned to the physical plane. For the comprehension of man himself and also for any comprehension of the spiritual world, we have naturally to consider the point of view taken by the dead person when he has passed through the portal of death. To him the leaving of the physical body means an inner process, a soul-process. To those who are left behind, what happens to the physical body after death is an external process, and the inner being of the person who has died, his human soul nature, can no longer express itself in the mortal residue; but to the man himself who has passed through the portal of death, something is connected with this leaving of the body. To him it means an inner experience of the soul; he feels: Thou hast come forth out of thy physical body and art leaving it behind.

From the standpoint of the physical plane, it is extremely difficult to give an accurate description of what here takes place within the soul; for it is an inner process of far reaching importance and immense significance. It is an inner process which lasts but a brief space of time, but it is of universal importance to the whole of human life. Now if the ideas connected with what then takes place in the soul were to be described—these ideas which of course cannot be touched upon at present in a public lecture because they would astonish the public too much, though perhaps the time will also come for this—if we were to describe the external process of ideas (now of course the spiritually external) with which the path of life running between death and rebirth commences, we might say that the person who has passed the portal of death has the feeling: Thou art now in an entirely different relationship to the world from that in which thou wast before; thy former relationship to the world is radically reversed. If we wished to describe the ideas which are then experienced in the soul, we should have to say that up to his death a person has lived on the earth. During this time he has been accustomed to stand on the solid, material earth, to see there the beings belonging to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, to see the mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, sun and moon; and from his own standpoint and through the powers of his physical body he has become accustomed to conceive of all this as we do to-day. This he does although at the present day we know from the teaching of Copernicus that fundamentally what we see is an illusion. There above us is the blue vault of the heavens, like a bowl, there are the stars, over it pass the sun and moon. Man is within this bowl as it were, he is within this hollow globe, in the centre, on the earth, together with all that the earth reveals to his powers of perception.

We are not at present concerned with the fact that it is an illusion when through the limitation of our capacities, we picture to ourselves this blue circumference, but with the fact that we cannot do otherwise than see it; we see a blue globe as a firmament above us. Now when a person has passed the portal of death, the first idea he has to form in his soul is: ‘Thou art now outside, but as though sunk into a single star.’ At first he is unconscious of the starry world in which he is really outspread, at first he is only aware of what he has left, he is only aware that he has left the sphere of consciousness he possessed in the physical body, he has left all that he was able to see by means of the human capacities developed in his physical body. Something has really happened—but spiritually—similar to what would happen if a chick, which at first is within the egg-shell, were consciously to experience how it breaks through this and afterwards sees the broken egg-shell—the world which had previously surrounded it—from outside, instead of from inside. Naturally this idea, which passes through the human soul at this point is Maya; but it is a necessary Maya or illusion. As we have already said, that which previously gave our consciousness its content has shrunk together as if into a single star, only that from this star radiates what we might call ‘radiating cosmic wisdom.’

This radiating cosmic wisdom is what I dealt with in the last lecture and regarding which I said that we possess it in its fullness. It shines and glitters at first as if from a fiery star. It is now not blue, like the firmament, but fiery, shining, reddish—like a fiery star. And from it streams forth into space the plenitude of wisdom, which in inward motion first presents to us what might be called a memory-tableau of our last earthly life. All the events we have consciously experienced in our soul between birth and death now come before our soul, but in such a manner that we know: There thou seest all, because the star shining before thee is the background which, through its inner activity, is the cause of thy being able to see what is outspread before thee, as a memory tableau. That is expressed more from the standpoint of the imagination. From the standpoint of inwardness the experience is somewhat as follows: The one who has passed the portal of death is entirely filled with the thought: Thou hast left thy body; now in the spiritual world this body is nothing but will. Thy body is a star of will, a star whose substance is will; and this will glows with warmth, and into the expanses of the world into which thou hast now poured thyself, it rays back to thee thy own life between birth and death as a great tableau. To the circumstance of thy sojourn within this star thou owest the privilege that thou art able to draw and absorb from the world what thou hast drawn and absorbed from it while on the physical plane: for this star, this will-star, which now forms the background is the spiritual part of thy physical body, this will-star is the spirit which permeates and strengthens thy physical body. That which streams to thee as wisdom is the activity, the mobility of thy etheric body.

This period passes. The period during which we have the impression that our life is running its course like a memory-tableau really only lasts for some days. Our thoughts, which became our memories during life on earth, unfold once more before our souls in this memory-tableau. We can maintain this tableau as long as we have the power under normal conditions to keep awake in the physical body. It does not depend upon how long we once remained awake in life under abnormal conditions, it depends upon the power we have within us to keep ourselves awake. In one case it may be that a person can scarcely keep awake one night without tiredness overcoming him, in another case it may be that he can hold out longer without becoming tired; but the length of time he needs to finish with this memory-tableau depends upon the degree of this power. We also have the distinct inner consciousness that because this will-star is in the background, there is contained within the memory-tableau what we have gained in our last earthly life, there is contained in it that by which we have become more mature, what we have carried beyond death as a plus quantity as compared with what we had as a minus quantity when at birth we entered into earthly life. This, which we may describe as the fruit of the last life, we feel in such a way as if it would not remain as it appeared during the memory-tableau, but as if it withdrew, as if it went away into the future and disappeared in those future ages.

In this lecture I shall speak principally of the condition in the life between death and rebirth of those who have reached the normal length of life and have died under normal conditions. Exceptional cases will be dealt with in the next lecture.

Thus the fruit of our life, if we have gained such fruit, withdraws to a distance and we know within our soul:—This fruit exists somewhere, but we have been left behind by it. We have the consciousness that we have remained at an earlier period of time, the fruit of our life hurries forward, it arrives before us at a later period of time and we have to follow after it. We must grasp correctly what I have just said, this idea of the inward experience of the fruit of our life being in the universe; because it is this inward experience which forms the basis of our consciousness, the beginning of our consciousness after death.

Our consciousness must always be aroused by something. When we awake in the morning our consciousness is enkindled anew through our entering into the physical body and thereby confronting outer objects, through something affecting us from outside, while during sleep we are unconscious. In the state immediately after death, this consciousness is enkindled by our inward feeling and experience of the fruits of our last life, experience of what we have gained. These fruits exist, but outside us. Our consciousness is first enkindled after death through this feeling and experience of our inmost earthly nature being outside us. By this our consciousness is quickened. Then begins the period during which it is necessary for us to develop soul-forces which had really to remain undeveloped during our life on the physical plane, because they were used to organise the physical body and all appertaining to it—soul-forces which during physical life have to be changed into something else. These forces have to awaken gradually after death. Even in the days during which we experienced the memory-tableau we notice this awakening of soul-capacities. This happens when the memory-tableau gradually fades away and grows dim, because it is during these days that we actually develop the forces lying at the foundation of the faculty of remembrance, but not acting consciously during physical life. The reason these forces do not act consciously during physical life is because during this physical life we have to transform them in order to be able to form memories. The last great memory which we have after death in the form of the tableau must first fade away, must gradually grow dim. Then out of the darkness develops that which we could not consciously possess before death; for if we had had it consciously before death we could never have formed the forces of memory. The forces which now develop in the soul during the fading of the remembrance of the tableau of life were, during life, transformed into the power by which we remember: they now emerge, because the power to remember earthly thoughts in the ordinary way is overcome and this spiritually transformed memory-force is awakened within us as the first spiritual soul-force which comes forth from the human soul after death, just as the soul-forces come forth in a growing child in the first weeks of its life. As this soul-force grows it is revealed to us that behind our thoughts, which while we were on the physical plane were but shadows, something lives; there is life and movement in the world of thought. We become aware that the thought pictures in our physical body were but a shadow and that in them there really lives and expands a vast number of elemental beings. Our memories grow dim and in their place we see emerge a vast number of elemental beings out of the universal cosmos of wisdom.

You might ask, ‘Is it not a great loss when after death the power of memory is overcome and we have something else in its place?’ We do not miss it, because we then have a very good substitute for it. Instead of remembering our thoughts as we do in life, we notice after death that these thoughts, which we had in life as memory-thoughts, only seem to be memories. This treasure of memory which is ours during life becomes something much more than merely a treasure of memory. When we are out of our physical body, we see all this treasure of memory as a living presence; it exists. Every thought is alive, is a living being. Now we know: During physical life thou didst think, thy thoughts appeared to thee; but while thou wast under the delusion that thou wast forming thoughts, thou wast producing nothing but elemental beings. That is the new thing thou hast added to the whole cosmos. Something new exists, to which thou gavest birth in the spirit; that which thy thoughts really were now stands before thee. We now first learn by direct vision what elemental beings are, because this is the first time we come to know the elemental beings we have ourselves produced. This memory-tableau is the very important impression we receive in the first period after death; but this begins to live, really to live, and as it begins to live we perceive it as nothing but elemental beings. It now shows its true face, as it were and its disappearance merely signifies its change into something different. If, for example, we died at the age of sixty or eighty, we do not need the power of memory to remember a thought we had, say, at the age of twenty, because it is there as a living elemental being, it has waited and we do not need to remember it; then if we died, for example, at the age of forty the thought would only be twenty years old and we should see it clearly. These elemental beings themselves tell us how long it is since they were formed. Time becomes space: it stands before us, because the living beings reveal their own time-signature. Under these conditions time becomes the immediate present.

From these, our own elemental beings, which surrounded us during life and which we see at death, we learn the nature of the elemental world and thereby prepare ourselves gradually to understand the elemental beings in the outer world not produced by us, but existing apart from us in the spiritual cosmos. Through our own elemental creations we learn to know the others. Think how very different this life between death and rebirth really is from our earthly life. The main thing is that after physical birth we are not aware of ourselves. What we experience as a baby, those around us experience with us; we are born, and others, our parents, look upon this which has been born. Neither are we aware of ourselves at first after death, but we see as an outer world that to which we have given birth. We ourselves look upon that which is outside, that to which we have given birth at the moment of death. When at our physical birth we enter into existence, we have an incomprehensible world before us, and to those around us we are indeed a being who only sprawls and cries and laughs; but after death, after our birth into the spiritual world—which to the physical world is death—we enter at once into an environment to which we ourselves have given birth, which we have ourselves organised, for we have ourselves given birth to it. There, we have given birth to a world, whereas, when we are born physically, this world gives birth to us. Such are the conditions with respect to thought and also to that which springs from thought as our store of memory.

It is different as regards what belongs to our feeling and our will. In the first lecture I mentioned that all that belongs to the spheres of our feeling and our will is not yet born in us, that in a certain respect will and feeling are something which is not fully born. This can be seen clearly after death; for will and feeling, as they pervade the physical body, still exist after death. So that after a time, after the will-star has withdrawn with the fruits of our last earthly life, we live in an elemental world which forms our environment to which we ourselves give the fundamental tone through our transformed memories. We live in such a manner in this world, which really is ourselves, in the sense I have just explained, that we know: Thy feeling and thy will are still in thee. They have still a sort of remembrance, a sort of connection with thy last earthly life. This condition lasts for decades. When we are in earthly life between birth and death, we enjoy and suffer, we live in our passions and we develop impulses of the will through having the feeling and willing soul in our body; but it is never the case that all the forces contained in feeling and will are really able to find an outlet through the body. Even though we may die in very old age, we still could have enjoyed more, suffered more, we still could have developed more impulses of the will. All the possibilities of feeling and will that yet remain in the soul must, however, be overcome. As long as these are not fully overcome we still have a connection of desire with our last earthly life. We look back, as it were, at this last earthly life. It is, as I have often expressed by a trivial word, a sort of weaning from the connection with the physical earthly life. Anyone who is but to a slight degree a true spiritual investigator soon penetrates into the nature of the force which we have now to overcome, and this overcoming takes decades to accomplish: but it is revealed comparatively easily to spiritual investigation.

Each day when we fall asleep and when we experience the interval between sleeping and waking, we are in our soul and spiritual nature outside our body. We return, because in our soul and spirit nature we have the impulse to return, because we really have a desire for our body. We absolutely long for our body. And one who can consciously experience awaking, knows: you want to awaken and you must will to waken. In the spirit and soul-nature there is indeed a force of attraction to the body. This must gradually decline, it must be entirely overcome and this takes decades to accomplish. This is the period in which we gradually overcome our connection with our last earthly life and this is why, in the period which is occupied in the manner I have just described, we really have to experience in a reversed direction everything that took place in our earthly life.

Now that the previous lectures have been given, I am in a position to describe various conditions more minutely than before, when only a general outline could be given; for before this could be done, it was necessary that certain ideas should first be brought forward.

Let us suppose that we have passed the portal of death and that we have left someone behind on the earth. We are now in the period when we have gained the power of beholding elemental beings and of having the inward feeling that the fruits of our earthly life have withdrawn; but that we are still connected with this last earthly life. Let us suppose, that when we have passed the portal of death we have left behind one whom we have loved very much. Now, when after death we have become accustomed to our elemental creations, we gradually attain to seeing the elemental beings of others; it is possible for us now to see the thoughts of others as elemental beings. We see the thoughts that live in the soul of the person we have left behind, for they are expressed in living elementals which appear before our soul as mighty Imaginations. In this way we can now have a much more intimate connection with the inner life of this person than we had with him in the physical world; for while we ourselves were in the physical body we could not indeed see the thoughts of the other, whereas now we can. But we have need of the feeling-memory—please note the word—the feeling-memory, the connection of feeling with our own last earthly life. We must feel, just as we felt in the body, and this feeling must echo in us. Then, when the thoughts of the other appear to us, the whole condition, which otherwise would only be as a picture, receives life. Thus, by the route of our feeling, we gain a living connection with our friend: it is really so with everyone.

You see, it is a development of a condition which may be described thus: There is a period during which we still have to draw from our last earthly life the forces enabling us to enter into living relationship with the surrounding spiritual world; we have still to be connected with this earthly life. We love the souls we have left behind, the contents of whose souls appear to us as thoughts, as elemental beings. But we love them because we ourselves are still living in the love we developed for them during our earthly life. The expression is not a happy one, but some of you will understand me when I say that earth-life—not the thought-life but the earth-life whose soul-contents are filled with feeling and permeated with the impulse of will—this earth-life, with which we are still connected, becomes like a sort of electric switch connecting our own individuality with what goes on around us spiritually; we perceive everything in a roundabout way through our last earthly life, but we only perceive what appertains to us in the spiritual world, through the feeling and will that were ours in our last earthly life. It is now really the case that we feel ourselves living on further into time, as a sort of comet of time. Our earthly life is still there like the kernel of the comet, but the kernel sends out a sort of tail into the near future through which we live. We are still connected with our earthly life in so far as this is filled with feeling and will, and from this experience something must be born within our soul as I have described, something that is not directly feeling and will. The soul-powers we develop here in the physical world, which include the power of feeling as we have it here in the physical world and the power of the will as we have it here in the physical world, these soul-powers we possess in this form, because we are living in the physical body. When the soul no longer lives in the physical body, it has to develop other qualities which only slumber during physical life. Because the echoes of feeling and will reverberate in it for years, the soul has to mature something from them which it can also use for the spiritual world in this respect, namely a force which I might describe as something like a feeling-desire or a desiring-feeling. In respect of our feeling and our will, we know that these dwell within our soul; but after death we do not, on the whole, possess such feeling and desire, they must gradually fade and die down, and they do this after some years.

But during this dying down and fading away, something has to develop from feeling and will which can be ours after death. Our thoughts live outside us as elemental beings; of inward feeling and will we should have nothing in this spiritual world which we ourselves are, and which is there, outside us. We have gradually to develop a will—and this we really do—which streams forth from us, which pours forth from us, as it were, and undulates and moves to where our living thoughts are. These it penetrates, because then upon the waves of will floats the feeling which in physical life is within us and not outside. Feeling then returns to us floating on the waves of will. There, outside surges and billows the ocean of our will and upon this swims our feeling. When the will strikes against an elemental thought-being, the contact produces an up-glimmering of feeling and we perceive this ‘ricochet’ of our will as an absolute reality of the spiritual world. Let us suppose there is an elemental being in the outer spiritual world. When we have gradually worked out of the condition we must first pass through, our will going forth from us breaks against this elemental being. When it strikes against the elemental being it is thrown back. It does not now return as will, but as feeling, which floats back to us on the waves of will. Our own being which is poured out into the cosmos lives as feeling which comes back to us on the waves of will. The elemental beings thereby become real to us and we gradually perceive that which exists outside us as the outer spiritual world.

Still another soul-force has to come forth from us, which slumbers in a much deeper layer of the soul than the feeling-will or the willing-feeling. It is creative soul-force, which is like an inner soul-light that must shine forth over the spiritual world, in order that we may not only see the living, active, objective thought-beings floating back to us on the waves of feeling in the ocean of our will, but that we may also illumine this spiritual world with spiritual light. Creative, spiritual illuminating power must go forth from our soul into the spiritual world. This awakens gradually.

You see, that while living in physical life we have at least differentiated within us the pair of brothers—feeling and will, from feeling-will or willing-feeling: we possess these as a duality whereas when we have passed the portal of death they are unity. The creative soul-force which we radiate as soul-light into spiritual space (if I may use the word ‘space’ here, for in reality it is not space, but we have to try to make these conditions comprehensible by expressing them pictorially), this soul-light slumbers so deep down within us because it is connected with something regarding which we neither may nor can know anything during life. That which is liberated as light and which then illumines and brightens the spiritual world slumbers very deep down within us during our life on the physical plane. What then rays forth from us, has to be transformed during our physical life and used in such a way that our body shall really live and that consciousness shall dwell in it. Entirely below the threshold of consciousness works this spiritual illuminating power in our physical body, as the power which organises life and consciousness. We dare not bring it into our earthly consciousness, for we should then rob our physical body of the power which has to organise it. But when we have no body to take care of, it becomes spiritual illuminating power, and streams through, shines and glitters through everything: these words signify actual realities.

Thus we gradually work our way onwards to where we become at home in the spiritual world and experience it as a reality, just as here we experience the physical world as a reality. We gradually arrive at really having the souls of those who have passed the portal of death as our companions in the spiritual world, in so far as these really live in the spiritual world. We then live among souls, just as here in the physical body we live among bodies. As we enter more and more into the true spirit of Spiritual Science, the assertion that after death we do not meet again all those with whom we have lived here, would be, to one who goes more deeply into the matter, as foolish as if someone were to say, with respect to the physical plane, that when we enter upon the earth at birth we find no human beings there. Human beings are all about us.—To one who knows spiritual life it is exactly the same as if someone were to say: the child comes into the physical world, but it sees no one there. That, obviously, is nonsense. In the same way it is nonsense when people say: when we enter into the spiritual world we do not find again all the souls with whom we have been associated, neither do we find the Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies, whom we recognise in their order, as here upon the earth we recognise minerals, plants and animals! But there is this difference, here in the physical world we know that when we see and hear objects and beings, the possibility for doing so comes through our senses, from the outer world. In the spiritual world we know that this possibility comes from ourselves, because what we may call the soul-light streams forth from our souls illuminating everything about us.

Thus do we live in the period which may be called the first half of our life between death and rebirth. While we are living in this period we go through the two conditions I have already described:—one, a condition lasting for years, in which, through the illuminating power proceeding from our soul, we are connected with the spiritual world and are thus enabled to perceive spirits and souls about us. This then grows dim and we have the feeling: thou canst develop thy soul-illuminating power, thy soul-light less and less, thou art obliged to let it become dimmer and darker in a spiritual sense. Thereby thou canst see spiritual beings less and less. It becomes increasingly the case that we enter alternating periods in which we have a feeling which we may express thus: Beings surround thee on all sides but thou art becoming more and more solitary, thou art aware only of the contents of thine own soul and these contents grow richer to the same extent that thou ceasest to be able to illuminate the beings without.—There are periods of spiritual companionship, and again, periods of spiritual solitude during which we live over again in our soul, what we experienced in the periods of spiritual companionship. These conditions alternate. Such is our life in the spiritual world: spiritual companionship, and again spiritual solitude. In periods of spiritual solitude we know: what thou didst experience in the spiritual world around thee was indeed there, thou knewest about all that; but now there remains only the echo of it within thee. One might say, that what we experience in the periods of spiritual solitude, are memories; but these words do not express it exactly. I must therefore try to describe it to you from another aspect. It is not as if in the period of spiritual darkness, when one has no companions, one were to remember what one had previously experienced in the spiritual world, but as if one had to produce this afresh every moment: it is a continual inward creation. One is inwardly aware: While there, outside thee the outer world exists; thou must remain alone and create and create. What thou createst is the world which surges around thee beyond the shores of thine own being.

As we thus live on further during the first half of our life between death and rebirth and approach the middle of the period between death and rebirth, we feel the solitary life grow richer and richer and at the same time the vision of our spiritual environment becomes dimmer and more restricted. This continues until we arrive at the middle of the period between death and rebirth, which in my last Mystery Drama, The Soul's Awakening, I have endeavoured to describe as the Midnight of the World. That is the period when we have the strongest inward life, but we no longer have within us the creative soul-force enabling us to illumine our spiritual environment. Here, one might say, infinite worlds fill us inwardly, spiritually, but we are unable to know anything about any other being except our own. That is the central point in our experience between death and rebirth, it is the Midnight of the World.

Now the time begins when there develops within us the longing for a positive creative power; for although we have an infinite inner life, there awakens within us the longing to have an outer world again. And so different are the conditions of the spiritual world from those of the physical world, that whereas in the physical world longing is the most passive force (when there is something for which we long, this something is what determines us), the reverse is the case in the spiritual world. There, longing is a creative force; it transforms itself into something which, as a new kind of soul-light, is able to give us an outer world, an outer world which is yet an inner world, inasmuch as it reveals to us a vision of our previous earthly incarnations. These now lie outspread before us, illumined by the light that is born of our longing. In the spiritual cosmos there is a power which comes from longing, which can illumine this backward survey and enable us to experience ourselves.

But to this end one thing is necessary in our present age. I have said that during the whole of the first half of our life between death and rebirth we alternate between inner life and outer life, between solitude and spiritual companionship. At first the conditions in the spiritual world are such, that each time we return to our solitude in the spiritual world, to our inner activity, we call up before our soul again and again what we have experienced in the outer world. Thereby a consciousness is aroused which expands over the whole of the spiritual world; with the swing of the pendulum this again contracts during the period of solitude.

There is one thing, however, which exists there and which we must retain, no matter whether we expand into the great spiritual world, or withdraw into ourselves. Before the Mystery of Golgotha took place, it was possible, through the forces connecting man with primeval times, to preserve a connection with that which gave him the feeling of ‘I’. It was possible not to lose this connection, for he could preserve a clear remembrance of one thing in the previous earthly life, namely, that in this life on the earth he had lived as an ‘I’; and this remembrance continued both through the periods of solitude and of companionship. Before the Mystery of Golgotha the forces of inheritance took care of this. Now, it can only be accomplished through the fact that the soul-content, which we may have through Christ having entered into the earth aura, remains connected with that which we have released from us as the treasure we have brought from the earth, which we perceived withdraw immediately after leaving the physical body. This is the permeation with the Christ-substance, which after death gives us the power to maintain the remembrance of our ‘I’ up to the time of the world-midnight, in spite of all expansion and in spite of all the contraction into solitude. Thus far does the impulse proceeding from the power of Christ extend, that through it we do not lose ourselves. Then from our longing must spring a new spiritual power, a power that only exists in spiritual life and by which, through our longing a new light may be kindled.

In the physical world there is Nature and the Divinity which pervades Nature, from which we are born into the physical world. There is the Christ-impulse which is present in the earth's aura, that is, in the aura of physical nature. But the power which draws near to us in the Midnight of the World, through which our longing is enabled to illumine the whole of our past, this power exists only in the spiritual world where nobody can live. When the Christ-impulse has brought us as far as to the Midnight of the World, and when the Midnight of the World is experienced by the soul in spiritual loneliness, because the soul-light cannot yet stream forth from us, when world-darkness has come upon us, when Christ has led us thus far, then in the Midnight of the World there emerges something spiritual from our desire, creating a new world-light which illuminates our being and by means of which we enter anew into worldly existence. We learn to know the Spirit of the spiritual world which awakens us, because out of the Midnight of the World a new light shines, the light which illuminates the whole of our human past.

In Christ we have died; through the Spirit, through the bodiless Spirit for which the technical expression Holy Ghost is used, i.e., the Spirit that lives without a body—(for this is meant by the word Holy, namely, a spirit without the weakness of one that lives in the body)—through this Spirit we are reawakened at the Midnight of the World. At the World-Midnight we are awakened by the Holy Ghost:

PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS