The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends, I believe I have given you a very important insight into anthroposophical [spiritual] science. I will develop this further tomorrow.

I would just like to ask you one thing now. I am obliged to tell you something more mundane, and since I don't have another opportunity to say this more mundane thing, I would like to ask you not to underestimate what I said “sub specie aeternitatis” alongside what I now have to say as something mundane.

I would like to draw your attention to a newspaper report that has already appeared in a wide variety of Swiss newspapers about the events at the “Futurum” general assembly and what emerged from it. Now, as I said, I cannot take another opportunity, I do not want to call you together specially. I ask you all very much to make a distinction between the important matters that we have just discussed and what I have to say now. I do not want the first to be wiped out by the second.

But I would like to note a few things here before taking the opportunity to speak about them in public, and that must be done. I will read you the relevant sentences from this report, which are:

The report was received with satisfaction.

However, as far as the impact of the ideas of the threefold social order and associative economics emerging from the anthroposophical movement is concerned, several shareholders stated that expectations have not been met. It has proved impossible during the financial year to realize the idea of an associative economic system within such a small group of associated economic enterprises. This would only be possible if a corresponding reorganization of economic life could be undertaken on a larger scale. It was therefore demanded that the company abandon the offensive against the current economic system and initially turn its main focus to the greatest possible economic efficiency. As this direction had the majority of votes, there was a need for personnel changes in the administration and for the company to break away from its previous close connection with the anthroposophical movement of Dr. Rudolf Steiner. There were no differences with the spiritual movement, but there was a decision to separate it from “Futurum AG” in order to ensure that the latter would have full development opportunities as an economic enterprise. This has the consequence that the spiritual-economic enterprises such as the clinic, laboratories, publishing house and so on are to be separated from “Futurum” in the near future and remain with the anthroposophical movement.

My dear friends, I believe that if you reflect on the content of these sentences, you will have to say to yourselves: The worst enemy that could arise against the anthroposophical movement in Switzerland could not write worse sentences than those written here. For here, above all, the silliness is written that the reproach that can be made to the “Futurum” is that it has not fulfilled its expectations because it has not fulfilled what is demanded of the anthroposophical movement by the “Futurum”. And then it is said – as I said, putting these things together is nothing more than a huge, capital absurdity – then it is said: So the Futurum must separate itself from the anthroposophical movement, must give up the offensive against today's economic system.

My dear friends, I myself must naturally regard this form of expression as one of the worst attacks on my own personality. You will feel this when you consider the matter. Because here nothing less is said than: Dr. Steiner, with his anthroposophical movement, is becoming very dangerous because he is taking action against the modern economic system; so we have to do it differently, we have to move away from him.

My dear friends! This is the very way to completely destroy the Anthroposophical movement. But besides, anyone who understands what I myself have been dealing with in terms of economics in recent years will find that it is an unscrupulous untruth to say that, because one does not want to be offensive, one has to move away from the Anthroposophical movement and then from me.

As if this offensive had come from me! It was completely different people who took this offensive approach!

My dear friends! When I read this at first, I thought that some inept editors had written it who are not familiar with the anthroposophical movement as such. But today I was presented with the original, the original letter to the editorial offices, and this original letter to the editorial offices for these acts, which are already hostile to anthroposophy, comes from the current management of “Futurum”.

This is what has been sent to all Swiss editorial offices by the current management of “Futurum”, that is, by the side that has actually always conducted this so-called offensive in an outrageous manner. If they were to write in a reasonable way, they would actually have to admit to themselves that they have spoiled things in the most stupid way possible by proceeding in this way and constantly throwing the most stupid things at people's heads in public lectures.

This, my dear friends, is what is happening today. And actually, no worse insult has been made to the anthroposophical movement than here by the present management of “Futurum”. As I said, I only received it today that this has been issued by the current management of “Futurum”.

I must emphasize here, and this cannot be emphasized enough, that I consider it a dishonest, lying attack when it is said that one has to turn against the offensive that has been driven against today's economic system in order to get by. It is a falsehood that, if it were not done out of stupidity but out of intention, could have no other purpose than to finally culminate in the entire anthroposophical movement being shaped in such a way that I am thrown out of it in order to have it for oneself. I am not saying that this must be the intention, but if one wanted to achieve this intention, one could not do it more subtly than through such writings.

This, my dear friends, is necessary to say, after it became clear to me today that this writing originated from the current management of “Futurum”. Of course, I do not mean what I have discussed in relation to the current composition of the board of directors of “Futurum” and so on, which was somehow said in a still benevolent way. But the present management of Futurum has begun its activities by taking the most urgent steps to undermine the anthroposophical movement in Switzerland. You can imagine what consequences such a thing must have in the near future.

There we have it: this anthroposophical movement is a dangerous movement, it undermines today's economic system; one's own “Futurum” must break away so as not to be in these dangerous waters!

I don't know if it has been read in the right way. It must have been read, even by anthroposophists. But if it is read and felt in the right way, then it must also be felt as I have just expressed it. But then it cannot be allowed to go without informing the public that this is a thoroughly untruthful, objectively untruthful, unworthy attack against the Anthroposophical Society by the present management of “Futurum”. I cannot characterize the matter otherwise.

I now ask you to really consider the matter, because the situation is such that it is no longer possible to put up with everything that is being said and done to us from all sides. It is no longer possible. I am only giving this to you all for consideration for now, but for careful consideration.

Tomorrow at 5 p.m. there will be a eurythmy performance and at 8 a.m. we will continue today's reflection here.

It is necessary to explicitly point out that it was not the anthroposophical movement that trumpeted these crazy things out into the world, but the same side that is now blaming it on the anthroposophical movement.

Dr. Steiner: Before I leave, we need to discuss the fate of the fifth grade, and I would also like to hear about your experiences.

The teachers who went to England will tell you about their experiences themselves. Haven’t you already reported your successes? It is a fact that the teachers’ activities made a great impression; seen from behind the scenes, each Waldorf teacher is a person who made a great impression. Everyone did that individually.

Baravalle made an enormously deep impression with his presentation of the metamorphosis of surfaces, which merges into the Pythagorean theorem. Miss Lämmert’s presentation on teaching music also made a very deep impression. Dr. Schwebsch then made an impression through his knowledge and ability, and Dr. Schubert was very convincing about the truth of the Waldorf School as a whole. We must, of course, say the same about Dr. von Heydebrand, an impression so large that most people said they would like to have their children taught by such a person. That was the impression she made. Miss Röhrle was more active behind the scenes, and I think she could tell you about her success herself.

Is the last issue of The Goetheanum here? I would like to recommend that you all read the book by Miss MacMillan, Education through the Imagination. In my copy, I wrote something I did not include in my essay: “It is as though someone were very capable of describing the dishes on the table without knowing how they were prepared in the kitchen.” What is so interestingly described in the book is the surface, an analysis of the surface of the soul, at least to the extent that it develops imaginative forces, but she does not describe the work that gives rise to them. It is excellent as a description of the child’s soul, only she does not understand the forces that give rise to it. I think that if you apply the foundation anthroposophy offers, it would illuminate everything. Every anthroposophist can gain a great deal from that book because a great deal of anthroposophy can be read into it. It is a sketch everyone can develop wonderfully for themselves—it is a reason for working thoroughly with anthroposophy.

Miss MacMillan would like to come with some assistants at Christmas. I would ask that you treat her kindly. For some, she is one of the most important pedagogical reformers. If you go into her school, you will see a great deal, even if the children are not present. She is a pedagogical genius. She wants to arrange things so that she will see some of your teaching. I already told her that if she looks at our school without seeing the teaching, she will get nothing from it.

We had planned the Zurich course, but when Wachsmuth and I came back from England and heard that it was being seriously undertaken, we both nearly fainted. We will need to change it to Easter. We will also present an Easter play for the first time. I have already arranged for that. It will be at Easter. Perhaps the teachers who were in England would like to say something.

A teacher asks whether such things as sewing cards are proper to use at the age of twelve for developing the strengths of geometry.

Dr. Steiner: That is correct. After twelve, they would be too much like a game. I would never use things at school that do not exist in real life. The children cannot develop a relationship to life from things that contain nothing of life. The Fröbel things were created for school. We should create nothing for school alone. We should bring only things that exist in real life into school, but in an appropriate form.

Some teachers report about their impressions of England.

Dr. Steiner: You need to take into account that the English do not understand logic alone, even if it is poetic. They need everything to be presented in concrete pictures. As soon as you get into logic, English people cannot understand it. Their mentality is such that they understand only what is concrete.

A teacher thought that the people organized through improvisation. He had the impression they were at the limits of their capabilities.

Dr. Steiner: All the anthroposophists and a number of other guests drove from Wales to London. All of the participants were from Penmaenmawr. There was an extra train from Penmaenmawr. We had two passenger cars and a luggage car. The train left late so it could go quickly. The conductor came along, and the luggage was still outside. Wachsmuth said it needed to be put aboard. The passengers saw to it that the train waited. That is something that is not possible in Germany. At some stations there was a lot of disorder. Here, people don’t know what happens, and there you have to go to the luggage car yourself. In Manchester, two railway companies meet, and the officials there had a small war. One group did not want to take us aboard, and the other wanted to get rid of us. They often lose the luggage but then find it again. These private companies have some advantages, but also disadvantages. No trains leave from such stations on Sunday because the same people who own the hotels also own the railways. People have to stay over until Monday because there are no trains on Sunday. I discussed the inner aspects of Penmaenmawr in a lecture.

A teacher: In England they spoke about the position of women in ancient Greece and how women were not treated as human beings. Schuré describes the Mysteries in which women apparently played a major role.

Dr. Steiner: Women as such certainly played a role, particularly those chosen for the Mysteries. They were, however, women who did not have their own families. Women who had their own family were never brought into public life. Children were raised at home, so everyone assumed women would not participate in public life. Until the child was seven, he or she knew almost nothing of public life, and fathers saw their children only rarely. They hardly knew them.

It was a different way of life that was not seen as less valuable. The women chosen for the Mysteries often played a very important role. Then there were those like Aspasia.

We need to divide the fifth grade. I would have liked to have a male teacher, if for no other reason than that people say we are filling the faculty only with women. However, since we don’t have an overwhelming majority of women and the situation is still relatively in balance, and, in fact, I was unable to find a man, we can do nothing else. As I was looking around for someone capable, I put together some statistics. I looked at how things are. It is the case that in middle schools women have a greater capacity. Men are more capable only in the subjects that are absolutely essential, whereas women can teach throughout. Men are less capable. That is one of the terrible things of our times. Thus, there was nothing to do other than to hire this young woman. I think she will make a good teacher. She did her dissertation on a remark in one of my lectures about how Homer begins with “Sing me, Muse, of the man,” and on something from Klopstock, “Sing, undying soul!” The 5c class will thus be taken over by Dr. Martha Häbler. I think she is quite industrious. I want you, that is, the two fifth grade teachers, to make some proposals about which children we should move from the current classes into the new class. We will take children from both classes. Dr. Häbler will be visiting, and I will introduce her when I come on the tenth. She will immediately become part of the faculty and will participate in the meetings.

That leads me to a second question. I am going to ask Miss Klara Michels to take over the 3b class. I have asked Mrs. Plinke to go to Miss Cross’s school in Kings Langley.

The gardening teacher asks whether they should create class gardens.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against that. Until now the garden work has been more improvised. Write something up. It can go into the curriculum.

The science teacher: From teaching botany, I have the feeling that we should grow plants in the garden that we will study in botany.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible. In that way there will be more of a plan in the garden.

A teacher asks about handwork.

Dr. Steiner: Mrs. Molt can turn over her last two periods in handwork to Miss Christern.

Since we have let a number of things go, I would ask you to present them now.

I would like you to take a serious look at S.T. He is precocious. He is very talented and also quite reasonable, but you always have to keep him focused. I gave him a strong reminder that he needs to take an interest in his school subjects. He has read Plato, Kant, and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom. He pretty much has his mind made up. If you think he needs some extra help, he should receive it. He would prefer that you analyze esoteric science for him. He has gone from school to school and was in a cloister school first. He will be a hard nut to crack.

A teacher asks about a second conference for young people and also about lectures for anthroposophical teachers outside the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: We are planning another conference for young people, but you will need to decide how you want it. It is all the same to me, as I can adjust my lectures accordingly.

It would be good if we arranged to have lectures just for the teachers of the Waldorf School during the school year. That would be good. But it does not appear possible during the holidays. I don’t know about such a conference when so many deadly thoughts fly around between such beautiful ones. Those four days were terrible. Such conferences are not very useful for what we need here at school.

It seems to me, and I think we should discuss this, as though a somewhat different impulse is living here. That is what I think. I believe that an entirely new feeling of responsibility will arise out of the seriousness with which the pedagogy was taken up in England. That clearly indicates that we must develop very strong forces. I certainly think we need something. From the perspective of the entirety of Waldorf pedagogy, it would be desirable for us to speak about the effects of moral and religious impulses upon other subjects. We should speak about direct teaching experience, which we could do more easily at a youth conference. The youth conference will have open meetings. I think that is easier than if we have a conference where people sit from morning until evening. I will be here again from the tenth to the fourteenth of October, so we can plan to speak about this question in more detail then. Other than your participation, you will not have much to do with that conference. Since today’s youth want to be let loose, I think I will not have very much to do with such a conference either. It might be possible to have no school during those days, so that it would be easy to give a lecture.

I cannot easily be here at any other time; I have too many things to do. If we are to build, I must be in Dornach. During the fall holidays, we can speak about higher pedagogical questions, but only Waldorf teachers can attend. The public could attend the conference. We could arrange things so that everyone gets something from the conference, the parents as well as the teachers, but what they receive would be different. If I can present everything I have to say as something living, it will be that way.

(Speaking about a newly hired teacher, X.) I was satisfied with the periods I observed. He is really serious about the work and has found his way into the material well. The students understand him, but he needs some guidance. I have not allowed him here today because I wanted to say that. He needs to feel that you are all behind him. He needs to remain enthusiastic, which he is very much so now.

The music teacher asks about presenting rhythms in music that are different from those in eurythmy. He uses the normal rhythms and would like to know whether only the two-, three-, and four-part rhythms are important, or whether he should go on to five- and seven-part.

Dr. Steiner: Use five- and seven-part rhythms only with the older children, not under fifteen years old. I think if you did it with children under fifteen, it would confuse their feeling for music. I can hardly imagine that those who do not have the talent to become musicians would learn it alone. It is sufficient to go only up to four-part rhythm. You need to be careful that their musical feeling remains transparent as long as possible, so that they can experience the differences. It will not be that way once they have learned seven-part rhythm. There are certainly pedagogical advantages when the children actively participate in conducting—they participate dynamically, but everyone should do that. You can use the standard conductor’s movements.

The music teacher: Until now, I have only done that with all of them together. Should I allow individuals to conduct in the lower grades?

Dr. Steiner: I think that could begin around age nine or ten. Much of what is decisive during that period comes out of the particular relationship that develops when one child stands as an individual before the group. That is also something we could do in other subjects; for example, in arithmetic one child could lead the others in certain things. That is something we could easily do there, but in music it becomes an actual part of the art itself. A teacher asks about the order of the eurythmy figures.

Dr. Steiner: I had them set up so that the vowels were together, then the consonants, and then a few others. There are twenty-two or twenty-three figures.

You could, of course, put the related consonants together, in other words, not just alphabetically. It would be best to feel the letter you are working with and not be completely dependent upon some order. You should perceive it more qualitatively, not simply as a series of one next to the other.

If this were not such a terribly difficult time, I believe there would be a great deal living here. The difficulties are now more subtle. Before the children have learned a specific gesture, they cannot connect any concept with the figure, but the moment they learn the gesture, you should relate it to the figure. They must recognize the relationship in such a way that they will understand the movement, not just the character and feeling. The feeling is expressed through the veils, but the children are too young for veils. Character is something you can gradually teach them after they have formed an inner relationship to the movement. When they understand what the principle behind the figures is, that will have a favorable effect upon the teaching of eurythmy. Over time, they will develop an artistic feeling; when you can help develop that, you should do so.

How is the situation in the 9b class?

A teacher: T.L. has left.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad.

A teacher: L.A. in the fourth grade is stealing and lying. She also has a poor memory.

Dr. Steiner: She is lying because she wants to hide that. It would be good if, and this always helps, you could dictate a little story to her so that she would have to learn it very well. The story should be about a child who steals and then gets into an absurd situation. Earlier, I gave such stories to parents. Make up a little story in which a child ends up in an absurd situation due to the course of events, so that this child will no longer want to steal. You can make up various stories; they could be bizarre or even grotesque. Of course, this helps only when the child carries it in a living way, when she has to review it in her soul time and again. The child should commit the story to memory just as she knows the Lord’s Prayer, so that the story lives within her and she can always bring it forth from her memory. If you can do that, that would really help. If one story is not enough, you should do a second. This is also something you can do in class. It would hurt nothing if others also hear it. The child should repeat it again and again. Others can be around, but they do not need to memorize it. You should not say why you are doing it, don’t speak with the children about it at all. The mother should know only that it will help her child. The child should not know that, and the class, absolutely not. The child should learn in a very naïve way what the story presents. For her sister, you could shorten the story and tell it to her again and again. With L.A., you could do it in class, but the others do not need to memorize it.

A teacher asks whether an eighteen-year-old girl who is deaf and dumb can come to the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against it. However, it would be good if she remained at the commercial art school and took some additional classes here, for instance, art or eurythmy. She is completely deaf. An association can develop just as well with the movements of the limbs as with the movements of the organ of speech.

A teacher asks about the groups of animals and whether that should be brought into connection with the various stages of life.

Dr. Steiner: The children first need to understand the aspects of the human being. What follows is secondary. You can do that after you tell them about the major divisions of the head, rhythmic, and metabolic animals, but you cannot do it completely systematically.

A teacher asks about Th.H. in the fifth grade, who is not doing well in writing.

Dr. Steiner: It is quite clear that with this child certain astral sections of the eye are placed too far forward. The astral body is enlarged, and she has astral nodules before her eyes. You can see that, and her writing shows it also. She transposes letters consistently. That is why she writes, for example, Gsier instead of Gries. I will have to think about the reason. When she is copying, she writes one letter for another. Children at this age do not normally do that, but she does it consistently. She sees incorrectly.

I will need to think about what we can do with this girl. We will need to do something, as she also does not see other things correctly. She sees many things incorrectly. This is in interesting case. It is possible, although we do not want to do an experiment in this direction, that she also confuses a man with a woman or a little boy with an older woman. If this confusion is caused by an incorrect development in the astral plane, then she will confuse only things somehow related, not things that are totally unrelated. If this continues, and we do nothing to help it, it can lead to grotesque forms of insanity. All this is possible only with a particularly strong development of the astral body, resulting in temporary animal forms that again disappear. She is not a particularly wideawake child, and you will notice that if you ask her something, she will make the same face as someone you awaken from sleep. She starts a little, just as someone you awaken does. She would never have been in a class elsewhere, that is something possible only here with us. She would have never made it beyond the first grade. She is a very interesting child.

A teacher: Someone wants to make a brochure with pictures of the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: I haven’t the slightest interest in that. If we did that, we would have The Coming Day print it. If we wanted such a brochure, we would publish it ourselves. Aside from that, we cannot go so far as to create competition for our own companies. It would be an impossible situation to undermine our own publisher by having publications printed somewhere else. Under certain circumstances, it could cause quite a commotion. Considering the relationship between the Waldorf School and The Coming Day, it would not be very upright. If we were to make such a brochure, I see no reason why we should not have it published by The Coming Day. We would earn more that way. For now, though, it would not be right.

Did one of the classes go swimming? I am asking because that terrible M.K. who complains about everything also wrote me a letter complaining about the school. I didn’t read it all. He is one of those sneaky opponents we cannot keep out, who are always finding things out. He is the one I was speaking of when I said it is not possible to work bureaucratically in our circles as is normally done, by having a list and sending things to the people on it. The Anthroposophical Society needs to be more personal, and we do not need to send people like M.K. everything. We need to be more human in the Anthroposophical Society. I mean that in regard to how we proceed, whether we are bureaucratic about deciding whether to send something to someone or not. He just uses the information to create a stir and to complain. He complains with an ill intent, even though he is a member.

[ 1 ] It is not possible to perceive in the right light how the Michael Impulse breaks into human evolution, if one shares the conception which is universally accepted today, as to the relation of the new world of ideas to Nature.

[ 2 ] It is thought: There outside us is Nature with all that she accomplishes and is; within us are the ideas. These ideas are thoughts about the things of Nature, or about the so-called Laws of Nature. The thinkers of today are concerned first of all to show how to form such ideas as shall stand in a true relation to Nature, or in which the true Natural Laws shall be contained.

[ 3 ] It is of little importance to them how these ideas are related to the man himself, who has them. But in truth there can be no real insight until this question is raised: What does Man experience through the natural-scientific ideas of modern times?

[ 4 ] The answer can be arrived at in the following way.

[ 5 ] Man feels today that the ideas are formed within him through the activity of his soul. He has the feeling that he himself forms his ideas, while only the sense-perceptions come to him from without.

[ 6 ] Man did not always feel in this way. In times past he did not realise the content of his ideas as something he had made himself, but as something received through inspiration from the supersensible world.

[ 7 ] There were various stages of this feeling. And these stages depended on that part of a man's being in which he experienced what today he calls his ideas. Today, in the period of the development of the Spiritual Soul or Consciousness Soul, what is contained in the ‘Leading Thoughts’ of the last number is wholly true:—Thoughts have their true seat in the human etheric body. There, however, they are real, living forces. They imprint themselves in the physical body, as such “imprinted thoughts” they possess the shadowy character known to ordinary consciousness.

[ 8 ] Now one can go back to times in which the thoughts were directly experienced in the ‘Ego.’ But in those times they were not shadowy as they are today, nor were they merely living; they were full of soul and spirit. But this means that the man did not only think his thoughts; he had as an experience the perception of concrete spiritual beings.

[ 9 ] Everywhere amongst the peoples of antiquity one finds the consciousness that looked up to a world of spiritual beings. The historical remains of this are described today as a consciousness that expressed itself in myths and mythologies, which are not considered of much importance for an understanding of the real world. And yet with this consciousness man stands in his own world—in the world of his true origin—whereas with his present consciousness he is lifted out of his own world. [ 10 ] Man is a spirit; and his world is the world of spiritual beings.

[ 11 ] The next stage was one in which the element of thought was no longer experienced by the Ego but by the astral body. The soul here loses the direct vision of the Spiritual. Thought appears as an element which is ensouled and alive.

[ 12 ] At the first stage, that of the vision of concrete spiritual beings, man does not feel at all strongly the necessity of connecting what he sees with that which he perceives through his senses. The phenomena perceptible to the senses are seen to be the deeds of what he observes supersensibly, but he does not feel impelled to develop a special science of that which is directly seen by spiritual vision. Moreover, the world of spirit-beings which he sees is so rich that his attention is directed to it above all things.

[ 13 ] It is different at the second stage of consciousness. Here the concrete spiritual beings are hidden; their reflection appears in the form of an ensouled life. Man begins to relate the ‘life of Nature’ to this ‘life of souls.’ In the beings and processes of Nature he seeks the active spirit-beings and their deeds. The result of this stage of consciousness may be seen historically in that which appeared later as the quest of the alchemists.

[ 14 ] When at the first stage of consciousness man ‘thought’ the spirit-beings, he lived entirely in his own being; and at the second stage, too, he is still quite near to his origin. [ 15 ] But at both stages it is quite impossible for man to develop, in the true sense of the word, his own inner impulses of action.

[ 16 ] A spirituality which is of like nature with himself acts in him. What he seems to do is the manifestation of processes which come about through spirit-beings. What man does is the sensibly physical manifestation of a real spiritual and divine event which stands behind.

[ 17 ] A third epoch in the development of consciousness brings thought to consciousness in the etheric body, but as living thought.

[ 18 ] The Greeks lived in this consciousness when Greek civilisation was at its prime. The ancient Greek did not form thoughts for himself and then look out upon the world with them as with his own creations, but when he thought he felt that a life was being kindled within him—a life which also pulsated in the objects and events outside him.

[ 19 ] Then for the first time there arose in man the longing for the freedom of his own actions—not yet true freedom, but the longing for it.

[ 20 ] Man, who felt the life and activity of Nature asserting itself in him, could develop the longing to detach his own activity from the activity which he perceived outside him and around him. But after all, this outer activity was still perceived as the final result of the active spirit-world, which is of like nature with man himself.

[ 21 ] Only when the thoughts were imprinted in the physical body and when the consciousness extended only to this imprint—then only did the possibility of freedom arise. This condition came with the fifteenth century AD.

[ 22 ] For the evolution of the world the important point is not, ‘What is the significance of the ideas of modern natural science with regard to Nature?’ For in effect these ideas have assumed their forms, not in order to provide man with a certain picture of Nature, but in order to bring him forward to a certain stage in his evolution.

[ 23 ] When thoughts laid hold of the physical body, spirit, soul and life had been excluded from their immediate contents, and the abstract shadow attaching to the physical body alone remained. Thoughts such as these can make only what is physical and material into the object of their knowledge, for they themselves are only real in the physical and material body of man. [ 24 ] Materialism did not originate because material beings and processes alone can be perceived in external Nature, but because man had to pass through a stage in his development which led him to a consciousness at first only capable of seeing material manifestations. The one-sided development of this necessity in human evolution resulted in the modern view of Nature.

[ 25 ] It is Michael's mission to bring into human etheric bodies the forces through which the thought-shadows may regain life; then the souls and spirits in the supersensible worlds will incline towards the enlivened thoughts, and the liberated human being will be able to live with them, just as formerly the human being who was only the physical image of their activity lived with them.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 26 ] 103. In the evolution of mankind consciousness descends on the ladder of unfolding Thought. There was an earliest stage in consciousness when man experienced the Thoughts in the Ego—experienced them as real Beings, imbued with Spirit, soul and life. At a second stage he experienced the Thoughts in the astral body; henceforth they appeared only as the images of Spirit-beings—images, however, still imbued with soul and life. At a third stage he experienced the Thoughts in the etheric body; here they manifest only an inner stirring, like an echo of the quality of soul. At the fourth, which is the present stage, man experiences the Thoughts in the physical body, where they appear as the dead shadows of the Spiritual.

[ 27 ] 104. In like measure as the quality of Spirit, soul and life in human Thought recedes, man's own Will comes to life. True freedom becomes possible.

[ 28 ] 105. It is the task of Michael to lead man back again, on paths of Will, whence he came down when with his earthly consciousness he descended on the paths of Thought from the living experience of the Supersensible to the experience of the world of sense.

[ 1 ] It is possible to follow the progress of mankind from the point of view of man himself, from the stage of consciousness in which he felt himself as a member of the Divine-Spiritual order, up to the present time, when he is conscious of himself as an individual, freed from the Divine-Spiritual, and able to think for himself. In our last study this point of view was taken.

[ 2 ] But it is also possible, through supersensible vision, to make a picture of what Michael and those who belong to him experience during this evolutionary process—i.e. to describe the facts of it as they appear to Michael himself. This shall now be attempted.

[ 3 ] There is an earliest epoch in evolution, where it is only possible to speak of what takes place among Divine-Spiritual Beings. Here one has to deal with the actions of the Gods alone. Gods fulfil what the impulses of their natures inspire, and are satisfied in this their activity. What they themselves experience in all this is alone important. But in one corner of this field of the Gods' activity, something resembling mankind is to be observed, as forming a part of their divine activity.

[ 4 ] The spiritual Being who from the beginning directed his gaze towards mankind is Michael. He so orders the divine activities that in one part of the Cosmos mankind may exist. And his own activity is of the same nature as that which is revealed later in man as intellect; but this intellect is active as a force that streams through the Cosmos, ordering ideas and giving rise to actual realities. In this force Michael works. His office is to rule the cosmic intellectuality. And he wills the further progress in his domain, which consists in this:—that that which works as intelligence throughout the whole Cosmos should later become concentrated within the human individuality. As a result the following takes place:—there comes a time in the evolution of the world when the Cosmos subsists no longer on its own present intelligence, but on the cosmic intelligence belonging to the past. For the present intelligence must then be sought in the stream of human evolution.

[ 5 ] What Michael desires is to keep the intelligence, which is developing within humanity, permanently in connection with the Divine-Spiritual Beings.

[ 6 ] But in this he is meeting with opposition. What the Gods accomplish in their evolution, in that they release the cosmic intellectuality so that it may become a part of human nature, stands revealed as a fact within the world. If there are beings with power to perceive this fact, then they can take advantage of it. And such beings do indeed exist. They are the Ahrimanic beings. It is their nature to absorb into themselves all that comes forth from the Gods as intelligence. They have the capacity to unite with their own being the sum-total of all intellectuality, and thus they become the greatest, the most comprehensive and penetrating intelligences in the Cosmos.

[ 7 ] Michael foresees how man, in progressing more and more towards his own individual use of intelligence, must meet with these Ahrimanic beings, and how by uniting with them he may then succumb to them. For this reason Michael brings the Ahrimanic Powers under his feet; he continually thrusts them into a deeper region than the one in which man is evolving. Michael, thrusting the dragon at his feet into the abyss: that is the mighty picture which lives in human consciousness of the supersensible facts here described.

[ 8 ] Evolution progresses. The intellectuality which was at first entirely in the sphere of divine spirituality, detaches itself so far that it becomes the element which ensouls the Cosmos. That which previously had only radiated from the Gods themselves now shines as the manifestation of the Divine from the world of the stars. Formerly the world had been guided by the Divine Being himself: it is now guided by the Divine manifestation which has become objective, and behind this manifestation the Divine Being passes through the next stage of his own development.

[ 9 ] Michael is again the ruler of the cosmic intelligence, in so far as this streams through the manifestations of the Cosmos in the order of ideas.

[ 10 ] The third phase of evolution is a further separation of the cosmic intelligence from its origin. In the worlds of the stars the present order of ideas no longer holds sway as the Divine manifestation; the stars move and are regulated according to the order of ideas implanted in them in the past. Michael sees how the cosmic intellectuality, which he has hitherto ruled in the Cosmos, proceeds on its way to earthly humanity.

[ 11 ] But Michael also sees how the danger of humanity succumbing to the Ahrimanic Powers grows greater and greater. He knows that as regards himself he will always have Ahriman under his feet; but will it also be the case with man?

[ 12 ] Michael sees the greatest event in the Earth's history taking place. From the kingdom served by Michael himself Christ descends to the sphere of the Earth, so as to be there when the intelligence is wholly with the human individuality. For man will then feel most strongly the impulse to devote himself to the power which has made itself fully and completely into the vehicle of intellectuality. But Christ will be there; through His great sacrifice He will live in the same sphere in which Ahriman also lives. Man will be able to choose between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able to find the Christ-way in the evolution of humanity.

[ 13 ] That is Michael's cosmic experience with that which he has to govern in the Cosmos. In order to remain with that which he has to govern, he enters upon the path that leads from the Cosmos to humanity. He has been on this path since the eighth century AD. but he really only took up his earthly office, into which his cosmic office has been changed, in the last third of the nineteenth century.

[ 14 ] Michael cannot force human beings to do anything. For it is just through intelligence having come entirely into the sphere of the human individuality that compulsion has ceased. But in the supersensible world first bordering on this visible world, Michael can unfold as a majestic, exemplary action that which he wishes to display. He can show himself there with an aura of light, with the gesture of a Spirit Being, in which all the splendour and glory of the past intelligence of the Gods is revealed. He can there show how the action of this intelligence of the past is more true, more beautiful and more virtuous in the present than all that is contained in the immediate intelligence of the present day, which streams to us from Ahriman in deceptive, misleading splendour. He can point out how for him Ahriman will always be the lower spirit, under his feet.

[ 15 ] Those persons who can see the supersensible world bordering next upon the visible world, perceive Michael and those belonging to him in the manner here described, engaged in what they would like to do for humanity. Such persons see how—through the picture of Michael in Ahriman's sphere—man is to be led in freedom away from Ahriman to Christ. When through their vision such persons also succeed in opening the hearts and minds of others, so that there is a circle of people who know how Michael is now living among men, humanity will then begin to celebrate Festivals of Michael which will possess the right contents, and at which souls will allow the power of Michael to revive in them. Michael will then work as a real power among men. Man will be free and yet proceed along his spiritual path of life through the Cosmos in intimate companionship with Christ.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the preceding study)

[ 16 ] 109. To become truly conscious of the working of Michael in the spiritual order of the World, is to solve the riddle of human freedom in relation to the Cosmos, in so far as the solution is necessary for man on Earth.

[ 17 ] 110. For ‘Freedom’ as a fact is directly given to every human being who understands himself in the present period of mankind's evolution. No one can say, ‘Freedom is not,’ unless he wishes to deny a patent fact. But we can find a certain contradiction between this fact of our experience and the processes of the Cosmos. In contemplating the mission of Michael within the Cosmos this contradiction is dissolved.

[ 18 ] 111. In my Philosophy of Freedom (Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) the ‘Freedom’ of the human being in the present world-epoch is proved as an essential element of consciousness. In the descriptions here given of the Mission of Michael, the cosmic foundations of the ‘coming-into-being’ of this Freedom are disclosed.

[ 1 ] In our last study we followed human life as a whole by turning our attention to the successive lives on Earth. The second point of view, which can throw still more light upon what was revealed by the first, is yielded when we consider the successive lives between death and new birth.

[ 2 ] Here also we see that the content of these lives, such as they are at the present time, goes back only to a certain point of time in earthly evolution. Their content is determined by the circumstance that man carries with him through the gate of death the inward power of self-consciousness gained in earthly life. This also enables him to confront as an individual the Divine-Spiritual Beings into whose presence he comes.

[ 3 ] This was not the case in a preceding period. At that time man had not yet progressed very far in the unfolding of his self-consciousness. The power gained on Earth was insufficient to detach him from the Divine-Spiritual Beings and so give him individual existence between death and new birth. Not that man was then within the Divine-Spiritual Beings, but he was within their sphere of influence, so that his will was essentially their will, not his own.

[ 4 ] Before this period there lies another in which, as we look back, we do not meet with man in his present constitution of soul and spirit at all, but we find a world of Divine Spiritual Beings within whom man only exists germinally. These Beings are the Primal Forces, the Archai.

[ 5 ] And indeed, if we trace back the life of one human being, we find not one Divine-Spiritual Being but all the Beings that belong to this Hierarchy.

[ 6 ] In these Divine-Spiritual Beings lives the will that man shall be. The will of all these Beings plays a part in the ‘becoming’ of each single human being. The cosmic aim of their harmonious co-operation is the production of the human form; for man is still without form in the Divine-Spiritual World.

[ 7 ] It may seem strange that the whole choir of Divine Spiritual Beings should work for a single human being. But the Hierarchies of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim also worked in this way at a still earlier stage throughout the Moon, Sun and Saturn evolutions, in order that man might come into being.

[ 8 ] What had previously originated as a kind of pre-human being on Saturn, Sun and Moon, had no uniform shape. Some of these pre-human beings were chiefly organised with respect to the limbs-system, others with respect to the breast system, others again with respect to the head-system. These were actual human beings; we describe them here as pre-human only in order to distinguish them from the later stage, when the union of all these systems appears in the human form. The differentiation among them goes even further, for we may speak of heart-men, lung-men, etc.

[ 9 ] The Hierarchy of the Primal Forces considered it their task to lead into the general human form all these pre-human beings, whose soul-life also corresponded to their one-sided formation. [ 10 ] They took over Man from the hands of the Exusiai. The latter had already in thought created unity out of the human multiplicity; but among the Exusiai this unity was still an ideal form, a World-thought-form. Out of this the Archai moulded the etheric form, and this form already contained the forces which made it possible for the physical shape to originate.

[ 11 ] When we observe these things a stupendous fact is revealed, viz., that man is the ideal and aim of Gods. But this vision cannot be for man the source of vanity and pride; for he may only reckon, as coming from himself, what he has with full self-consciousness made out of himself during earthly life. And, expressed in cosmic proportions, this is little as compared with that foundation for his individual being which the Gods have created out of the macrocosm which they themselves are, as the microcosm, which he is. The Divine Spiritual Beings confront one another in the Cosmos. The visible expression of this fact is the form of the starry heavens. They wished to create in a unity as Man all that they themselves are as a choir.

[ 12 ] In order really to understand what the whole choir of the Hierarchy of the Archai accomplished when they created the human form, we must remember that there is a very great difference between this form and the physical body of man. The physical body is made up of the physical and chemical processes in man. These processes take place in the present human being within the human form. But this form itself is something that is altogether spiritual. It ought to fill us with solemn feelings when, on looking at the human form, we realise that with physical senses we are perceiving in the physical world something that is spiritual. For one who is able to see spiritually it is really the case that in the human form he sees a true Imagination which has descended into the physical world. If we wish to see Imaginations we must pass from the physical world to the neighbouring spiritual world, and then we realise how the human form is related to these Imaginations.

[ 13 ] When with the inner vision of the soul man looks back over the lives between death and a new birth he finds a first period during which this human form originated. And at the same time the deeper relation that exists between man and the Hierarchy of the Archai is revealed.

[ 14 ] During this period there is just an indication of the difference between earthly life and the life between death and new birth. For the Hierarchy of the Archai works in rhythmical epochs at the development of the human form. In one period of their work the Archai direct the thoughts which guide their several wills more towards the Cosmos beyond the Earth; at another time they look down to the Earth. And out of the co-operation of what is aroused from the Cosmos and from the Earth the human form is developed, which is thus the expression of the fact that man is an Earth-being and at the same time an extra-earthly, cosmic being.

[ 15 ] But the human form, here described as the creation of the Hierarchy of the Archai, comprises not merely the external outline of man and the formation of the surface as it is determined by the limit of the skin, but also the formation of the forces contained in his carriage, in his power of movement, which is adapted to the conditions on the Earth, and in the capacity to use his body as a means whereby to express his inner being.

[ 16 ] It is owing to this creative work of the Hierarchy of the Archai that man is able to assume his upright position within the earthly conditions of gravity, that within these conditions he can maintain his balance while moving freely, that he can liberate his arms and hands from the force of gravity and use them freely—all this he owes to the Archai, in addition to much more that lies within him and yet has form. All this is prepared during the life which may also for this period be called the life between death and a new birth. It is here prepared in such a manner that, in the third period, at the present time, man is himself able, during his life between death and a new birth, to work at this form for his earthly existence.

(New Year, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the foregoing study: What is revealed when one looks back into former lives between death and a new birth?)

[ 17 ] 147. Man's lives between death and a new birth also show three distinct periods. In the first of these, he lived entirely within the Hierarchy of the Archai, who prepared, for the physical world, the human form and figure which he was afterwards to bear.

[ 18 ] 148. Thus the Archai prepared the human being subsequently to unfold the free Self-consciousness. For this Self-consciousness can only evolve in beings who can show it forth, in the form and figure which was here created, out of an inner impulse of the soul.

[ 19 ] 149. In this we see how qualities and powers of Mankind, becoming manifest in the present cosmic age, were laid down in germ in ages long gone by. We see how the Microcosm grows out of the Macrocosm.

[ 1 ] To gain a true appreciation of Anthroposophy in relation to the development of the Spiritual Soul, we must turn our gaze again and again to the particular mental condition of civilised mankind which began with the blossoming forth of the Natural Sciences and reached its climax in the nineteenth century.

[ 2 ] One should place the character of this age vividly before the soul's eye, comparing it with that of preceding ages. In all ages of the conscious evolution of mankind, Knowledge was regarded as that which brings man to the world of Spirit. To Knowledge, man ascribed whatever relationship to Spirit he possessed. Art and Religion were none other than the living life of Knowledge.

[ 3 ] All this became different when the age of the Spiritual Soul began to dawn. With a very great part of the life of the human soul, Knowledge now concerned itself no more. Henceforth, it sought to investigate that relation to existence which man unfolds when he directs his senses and his intellectual judgement to the world of ‘Nature.’ It no longer wanted to concern itself with that which man unfolds as a relation to the world of Spirit, when he uses—not his outer senses—but his inner power of perception.

[ 4 ] Thus there arose the necessity to connect the spiritual life of man, not with any living present Knowledge, but with Knowledge gained in the past—with Tradition.

[ 5 ] The life of the human soul was rent in twain. On the one hand there stood before man the new science of Nature, striving ever onward and unfolding in the living present. On the other side there was the experience of a relation to the spiritual world, for which the corresponding Knowledge had arisen in the ages past. All understanding of how the Knowledge, corresponding to this side of human experience, had been gained in ages past, was gradually lost. Men possessed the Tradition, but they had lost the way by which the truths of Tradition had been known—discovered. All they could do now was to believe in the Tradition.

[ 6 ] A man who had consciously reflected on the spiritual situation, say about the middle of the nineteenth century, would have been bound to admit: mankind has come to a point where it no longer feels itself capable of evolving any Knowledge, beyond that science which does not concern itself with the Spirit. Whatever can be known about the Spirit, a humanity of earlier ages was able to investigate and discover, but the human soul has lost the faculty for such discovery.

[ 7 ] But men did not place before themselves the full bearing of what was taking place. They were content to say: Knowledge simply does not reach out into the spiritual world. The spiritual world can only be an object of Faith.

[ 8 ] To gain some light upon these facts of modern history, let us look back into the time when the old Grecian wisdom had to retreat before the power of Rome, when Rome had accepted Christianity. When the last Greek Schools of the Philosophers were closed by the Roman Emperor, the last custodians of the ancient Knowledge too departed from the regions in which European spiritual life was henceforth to evolve. They found a haven in the Academy of Gondishapur in Asia, to which they now became attached. This was one of the centres of learning in the East where through the deeds of Alexander the tradition of the ancient Knowledge had been preserved.

[ 9 ] The ancient Knowledge was living on there in the form which Aristotle had been able to give to it. But in the Academy of Gondishapur it was also taken hold of by that Oriental spiritual stream which we may describe as Arabism. Arabism in one aspect of its nature, is a premature unfolding of the Spiritual Soul. Through the soul-life working prematurely in the direction of the Spiritual Soul, the possibility was given in Arabism for a spiritual wave to go forth, extending over Africa to southern and western Europe, and filling certain of the men of Europe with an intellectualism that should not properly have come until a later stage. In the seventh and eighth centuries, southern and western Europe received spiritual impulses which ought to have come only in the age of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 10 ] This spiritual wave was able to awaken the intellectual life in man, but not the deeper founts of experience whereby the soul penetrates into the world of Spirit.

[ 11 ] And now, when in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries man exercised his faculty of Knowledge, he could but reach down to those levels of the soul where he did not yet impinge upon the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] Arabism, entering into the spiritual life of Europe, held back the souls of men, in Knowledge, from the Spirit-world. Prematurely it brought that intellect into activity which was only able to apprehend the outer world of Nature.

[ 13 ] This Arabism proved very powerful indeed. Whosoever was taken hold of by it, was seized by an inward—though for the most part quite unconscious—pride. He felt the power of intellectualism, but not the impotence of intellect by itself to penetrate into Reality. Thus he gave himself up to the externally given Reality of the senses, which places itself before the human being of its own accord. And it did not even occur to him to approach the spiritual Reality.

[ 14 ] The spiritual life of the Middle Ages found itself face to face with this position. It possessed the sublime Traditions about the spiritual world. But the soul-life was intellectually so impregnated by the hidden influence of Arabism, that medieval Knowledge found no access to the sources from which the contents of the great Tradition had after all proceeded.

[ 15 ] Thus from the early Middle Ages onwards, that which men felt instinctively within them as a connection with the Spirit, was battling with Thought in the form that this had assumed under Arabism.

[ 16 ] Man felt the world of Ideas within him; he experienced it as something real. But he could not find the power in his soul to experience, in the Ideas, the Spirit. Thus arose Realism, feeling the reality in the Ideas and yet unable to discover it. In the world of the Ideas, Realism heard the speaking of the Cosmic Word, but it could not understand the speech. [ 17 ] And Nominalism in opposition to it, seeing that the speech could not be understood, denied that there was any speech at all. For Nominalism, the world of Ideas was but a multitude of formulae within the human soul-rooted in no Reality of Spirit.

[ 18 ] What lived and surged in these two currents, worked on into the nineteenth century. Nominalism became the mode of thought of Natural Science, which built up an imposing conceptual system of the outer world of sense, but destroyed the last relics of insight into the nature of the world of Ideas. Realism lived a dead existence. It knew still of the reality of the world of Ideas, but had no living Knowledge with which to reach it.

[ 19 ] But man will reach it when Anthroposophy finds the way from the Ideas to the living experience of Spirit in the Ideas. In Realism truly carried forward, there will arise—side by side with the Nominalism of Natural Science—a path of Knowledge which will prove that the science of the Spiritual, far from being, extinguished in mankind, can enter into human evolution once again, springing forth from newly-opened sources in the soul of man.

(March, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with regard to the foregoing study: The apparent Extinction of Spirit-Knowledge in Modern Time)

[ 20 ] 177. Looking with the eye of the soul upon the evolution of mankind in the Age of Science, a sorrowful perspective opens up before us to begin with. Splendid grew the knowledge of mankind with respect to all that constitutes the outer world. On the other hand there arose a feeling as though a knowledge of the spiritual world were no longer possible at all.

[ 21 ] 178. It seems as though such knowledge had only been possessed by men of ancient times, and man must now rest content—in all that concerns the spiritual world—simply to receive the old traditions, making these an object of Faith.

[ 22 ] 179. From the resulting uncertainty, arising in the Middle Ages as to man's relation to the spiritual world, Nominalism and Realism proceeded. Nominalism is unbelief in the real Spirit-content of man's Ideas; we have its continuation in the modern scientific view of Nature. Realism is well aware of the reality of the Ideas, yet it can only find its fulfilment in Anthroposophy.

[ 1 ] The decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the appearance on the scene of peoples from the East—the great migrations—are a phenomenon of history to which the attention of true research must again and again be turned. For the present day still contains many an after-effect of these catastrophic happenings.

[ 2 ] A true understanding of these events is impossible to merely exoteric history. For we must look into the souls of the human beings who took part in these migrations and witnessed the downfall of the Roman Empire.

[ 3 ] Ancient Greece and Rome flourished in the epoch of human evolution when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was unfolding. Indeed the Greeks and Romans were most essentially the bearers of this unfolding process. But in the Greek and Roman peoples the evolving of this stage of the soul did not contain the seed from out of which the Spiritual Soul could truly have developed. All the contents of soul and spirit, latent in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, blossomed forth luxuriantly in the life of ancient Greece and Rome. But Greece and Rome were unable, out of their own inherent powers, to pass on to the new stage of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 4 ] The stage of the Spiritual Soul did, of course, appear none the less. But the Spiritual Soul was as something implanted from without into the character of the Greek or Roman—something that did really not proceed out of the personality.

[ 5 ] The connection with and severance from the Divine Spiritual Beings, of which we have said so much in these studies, takes place with varying intensity in the course of succeeding ages. In olden times, it was a power entering into human evolution with the impulse of a mighty living process. In the Greek and Roman experience of the first Christian centuries it was a feebler power—but it still existed. While he was unfolding the fullness of the Intellectual or Mind Soul within him, the Greek or Roman felt—unconsciously, but with no less deep a meaning for his soul—a loosening or severance from the Divine-Spiritual nature and a growing independence of the human. But this ceased in the first Christian centuries. The early dawn of the Spiritual Soul was felt as a renewed union, a closer connection with the Divine-Spiritual. Men evolved back again, from a greater to a lesser degree of independence of soul. Nor could they receive the Christian content into the human Spiritual Soul, for they were unable to receive the Spiritual Soul itself into their human being.

[ 6 ] Thus they came to regard the Christian content as something given to them from outside—from the spiritual outer world—not as something with which they could become united through their own faculties of Knowledge.

[ 7 ] But it was different with the peoples coming from the North-East, who now entered on the scene of history. They had passed through the stage of the Intellectual or Mind Soul in a condition which, to them, conveyed a feeling of dependence on the spiritual world. They only began to feel something of human independence when, with the beginnings of Christianity, the earliest forces of the Spiritual Soul were dawning.

In them the Spiritual Soul appeared as something deeply bound up with the human being. They felt a glad sense of unfolding force within them when the Spiritual Soul was stirring into life.

[ 8 ] It was into this new-springing life of the dawning Spiritual Soul that the Christian content entered in these peoples. They felt the Christian content as something springing to life within their souls, not as something given from outside.

[ 9 ] Such was the mood in which these peoples approached the Roman Empire and all that was connected with it. Such was the mood of Arianism in contrast to Athanasianism. It was a deep inner conflict in world-historical evolution.

[ 10] In the Spiritual Soul of the Greek and Roman, external as it was to man, there worked, to begin with, the Divine Spiritual essence, not uniting fully with the earthly life, but raying into it from without. And in the Spiritual Soul of the Franks, the Germanic tribes, etc., which was only just dawning into life, such of the Divine-Spiritual as was able to unite with mankind worked as yet but feebly.

[ 11 ] To begin with, the Christian content living in the Spiritual Soul that hovered over man grew and expanded in outer life. On the other hand, that Christian content which was united with the human soul, remained as an inner urge, an impulse within the human being waiting for future development—for a development which can only take place when a certain stage has been attained in the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 12 ] In the time from the first Christian centuries until the evolutionary epoch of the Spiritual Soul, the dominant spiritual life was a Spirit-content hovering above mankind—a content with which man was quite unable to unite himself in Knowledge. He therefore united with it in an outward way. He ‘explained’ it, and pondered on the question: how, and why, and to what degree the faculties of the soul were insufficient to bring about the full union with it in Knowledge. Thus he distinguished the realm into which Knowledge can penetrate, from that into which it cannot. It became the proper thing to renounce the exercise of those faculties of soul which rise with Knowledge into the spiritual world. And at length the time approached—the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—in which the forces of the soul that inclined towards the Spirit were diverted from the Spiritual altogether, so far as active Knowledge was concerned. Men began to live their conscious life in those forces of the soul only, which are directed to the sense-perceptible.

[ 13 ] Blunt indeed became the powers of Knowledge for spiritual things—most of all in the eighteenth century.

[ 14 ] The thinkers of humanity now lost the spiritual content from their Ideas. In the Idealism of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Spirit-empty Ideas themselves are represented as the creative substance of the world. Thus Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Or again, they point to a Supersensible which vanishes into thin air because it is bereft of Spirit. Thus Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and others. The Ideas are dead when they no longer seek the living Spirit.

[ 15 ] There is no escaping the fact, lost was the sense of spiritual vision for the things of the Spirit. [ 16 ] A ‘continuation’ of the old life of spiritual Knowledge is impossible. With the Spiritual Soul unfolding within him, man's faculties of soul must strive onward to reach their new union with the Spirit-world, a union elementary, immediate and living. Anthroposophy would fain be such a striving.

[ 17 ] In the spiritual life of this age, it is just the leading personalities who to begin with do not know what Anthroposophy intends. Wide circles of people who follow in their wake are thereby kept away from Anthroposophy. The leading people of today live in a soul-content which in the course of time has grown altogether unaccustomed to use the spiritual forces. For them, it is as though one would call upon a man having an organ paralysed, to use it. Paralysed were the higher faculties of Knowledge from the sixteenth into the latter half of the nineteenth century. And mankind remained utterly unconscious of the fact; indeed, the one-sided application of Knowledge-powers directed to the outer world of sense was regarded as a sign of special progress.

(March, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the foregoing study: Historic Cataclysms at the Dawn of the Spiritual Soul)

[ 18 ] 180. The Greeks and Romans were the peoples predestined by their very nature for the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. They developed this stage of the soul to perfection. But they did not bear within them the seeds of a direct, unbroken progress to the Spiritual Soul. Their soul-life went under in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.

[ 19 ] 181. In the time from the origin of Christianity until the age of the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul, a world of the Spirit was holding sway which did not unite with the forces of the human soul. The latter contrived to ‘explain’ the world of the Spirit, but they could not experience it in living consciousness.

[ 20 ] 182. The peoples advancing from the North-East in the great migrations, encroaching on the Roman Empire, took hold of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul more in the inner life of feeling. Meanwhile, imbedded in this element of feeling, the Spiritual Soul was evolving within their souls. The inner life of these peoples was waiting for the present time, when the re-union of the soul with the world of the Spirit is fully possible once more.

My dear brothers and sisters! Since the Christmas Conference an esoteric impulse goes through the entire Anthroposophical Society, and those members of the Anthroposophical Society who have recently taken part in the general members' lectures will have noticed just how this esoteric impulse flows through all that is worked on within the Anthroposophical Movement and through all that is still to be worked on.

This was a necessity, a necessity which above all has been given out of the spiritual world, from which certainly flow the revelations which should live in the Anthroposophical Movement. It was a necessity which arose out of the spiritual world.

With this, however, an imperative emerged, in particular out of the spiritual world, out of which the revelations flow which should live in the Anthroposophical movement. This emerged out of the spiritual world. This imperative was fashioned as a specific kernel for Anthroposophical esoteric life, to make a kernel for true esoteric living. Thereby the imperative was given in a certain measure to build a bridge over to the spiritual world itself.

The spiritual world in a certain sense revealed itself in having to fashion such a school. For an esoteric school cannot be made out of human caprice, or what people might call human idealism. Rather this Esoteric School must be the body of something flowing out of spiritual life itself, so that in all that happens in such a school, it presents itself as the external expression what happens from an activity specifically in the supersensible, in the spiritual world itself. In this fashion this esoteric school could not have been made without having surveyed the will, which frequently has been brought forth in members' lectures, the will which since the last third of the nineteenth century has actually been guiding human spiritual affairs, the Will of Michael.

This Michael Will is one of those forces which in the course of time has intervened out of the spiritual world in sequence ever and again in the cycles of human destiny. When we look back in time at evolution, we find that this same Michael Will, which we can also call the Michael Regency, was active in the spiritual affairs of humanity, in the great questions of civilization, before the Mystery of Golgotha during the time of Alexander. Then what had been brought forth in Greece through the Mysteries, both the underworld Chthonic and the celestial Mysteries, that this was to be carried abroad into Asia, carried abroad into Africa. Whenever and wherever the Will of Michael has dominion, a cosmopolitan spirit is always present. The differentiations among people on earth are overcome in an era of Michael.

After this deeply significant activity, linked with the spreading of Aristotelianism and of Alexandrianism, which was an activity of Michael, after this followed other activities linked with Oriphiel.¹ After the Oriphiel-linked activity came the Anael activity, the Zachariel activity, then the significant Raphael activity, then the Samael activity, then the Gabriel activity, which extended into the nineteenth century. Since the late seventies of the nineteenth century, we stand once again under the sign of Michael's regency. It is beginning, but the Michael-Impulses must flow in, and can certainly become clear to you, my brothers and sisters, through the general members' lectures, Michael-Impulses must flow in a conscious way into all genuine, rightfully constituted esoteric work.

And through all that is connected with the impulse of the Christmas Conference, through all that has been brought forth, is the possibility of this being the kernel of the Anthroposophical Movement’s forming an esoteric school to be seen as the esoteric school inspired and guided by Michael himself. Thereby it rightfully stands its ground in our time as a spiritual institution. And a person must feel, a person who would rightfully become a member of this school, that this must become a part of one’s life in deepest sincerity. And a person who would rightfully become a member of this school must feel not merely belonging to an earthly community, but also to a supersensible community, whose leader and guide is Michael himself. As a consequence, what is communicated here should not be taken as my word, but rather in so far as it is the content of the lesson it should be taken as that which Michael has to make known esoterically in this age to those who feel themselves belonging to him. Therefore, what these lessons contain will be the Michael communication for our era.

And thereby, since it is that, the Anthroposophical Movement will contain its specific spiritual vigor. To this end it is necessary that what may be called membership in this school will be acquired with utmost sincerity. It is still necessary, my dear brothers and sisters, fundamentally and deeply necessary, that in an ever more earnest way, it is necessary to point to the holy sincerity with which the school must be taken up.

Here within this school, it must be said once again, and ever and again, that in Anthroposophical circles much too little seriousness prevails for what actually flows through the Anthroposophical Movement, and, at least among the esoteric members of this esoteric school, a kernel of humanity will be drawn forth, which will gradually rise to the necessary earnest sincerity. Therefore, it is necessary that the leadership of this school really reserves to itself the responsibility to recognize only those as rightful, worthy members of the school who, in every detail of their lives, would be worthy representatives of Anthroposophical endeavors, and the decision as to whether or not that is the case must rest with the leadership of the school.

Do not see this, my dear brothers and sisters, as a limitation of freedom. The leadership of the school must have freedom and be free to recognize who belongs to this school and who does not, just as much as each of you will freely choose whether or not to belong to this school. But it must throughout be an idealistic spiritual freely-borne pact, so to speak, that will be made between the members of the school and the leadership. In no other way could the esoteric development be considered healthy, and especially in no other way worthy of the actuality of this esoteric school standing under the immediate impact of the potency of Michael himself.

The leadership of the school must, in the strictest sense of the word, manage what has just been said. That it does so may become evident to you, my dear friends, through what has taken place since the relatively brief existence of the school, that eighteen to twenty expulsions have occurred, because the earnest serious quality which is essential to the school was not adhered to.

Conscientious care of the mantric maxims, so that they do not fall into unauthorized hands, is the first obligation, but also to actually be a worthy representative of Anthroposophical affairs.

I need only mention a few facts in order to indicate how little, in actuality, the Anthroposophical Movement is grasped fully in earnest, how little earnestness penetrates the Anthroposophical Movement. I have mentioned this to some of you individually. It has happened that members of the school have reserved their seats here with the blue certificates which give them the right to be present in the school. It has happened in the Anthroposophical Society that whole piles of News Sheets, intended only for members, have been found in the tram running from Dornach to Basel. I could enlarge this list in the greatest variety of ways. Again and again, it happens that the most dumbfounding incidents occur as a result of the lack of seriousness. Even things which are taken seriously in everyday life, as soon as the same things practiced seriously in ordinary life are practiced within the Anthroposophical Movement, they are not taken seriously.

These are all matters which must be taken into account in relation to the firm structure which this school must have. Therefore, these things must be said, for if one fails to pay attention to these matters, one cannot worthily receive the revelations from the spiritual world which are given here in this school. At the close of each lesson attention is expressly drawn to the fact that the individuality of Michael himself is present while the revelations of the school are being given, and this is confirmed through the Sign and Seal of Michael.

All these things must live in the hearts of the members. Dignity, profound dignity, must prevail in everything, even to what connects one’s thoughts to the school. For in all of this there can live only what today an esoteric streaming through the world should carry. And all this is included in the responsibilities each individual has.

The mantric maxims written here on the board can only be possessed, in the strictest sense of the word, by those who have the right to participate in the school. If a member of the school is prevented on some occasion from taking part in the lessons in which mantric verses are given, another member who has received these verses in the school can communicate the verses. In every single case, however, for every single person to whom the verses are to be given, permission must be requested either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from myself. When permission has been given for one person it then remains in effect. But for every other person permission must again be requested from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. This is not an administrative regulation, it is something which is demanded, in the strictest sense, by the rules of occult life. For it must be understood that every act of the school must remain connected with the school's leadership, and this begins with the fact that one requests permission if something is to occur which belongs to the sphere of responsibility of the school. Not the one who is to receive the mantras should request permission, but the one who transmits them, according to the procedures which I have just described. If someone writes down anything during the lesson, other than the mantric verses, something which has been said, that person is obligated to keep it only eight days and then to burn it.

All these things are not arbitrary regulations, but are connected with the occult fact that esoteric matters are only effective when they are encompassed by a certain attitude of heart and mind, which those who are recognized as responsible members of the school have. The mantras lose their effectiveness when they come into unauthorized hands. This rule is so firmly inscribed into the world's order that the following incident once occurred and a whole series of mantras became ineffective, which had been current within the Anthroposophical Movement.

It was possible for me to give to a number of people some mantric verses. I gave the mantras also to a certain person. This person had a friend who was clairvoyant to a certain degree. It then came about, as both friends were sleeping in the same room, that the clairvoyant friend, during the time that the other was merely repeating the mantra in his mind, the clairvoyant read it mentally and then misused it by giving it to others as coming from him. One first had to investigate the incident, which then brought to light why the mantras in question became ineffective for all those who possessed them.

You may not, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, take these matters lightly, because the rules of esoteric life are strict, and no one who has committed such a mistake should excuse himself with the thought that he couldn't help himself. If someone lets a mantra pass through his head in thought, and someone else observes this clairvoyantly, the one who thinks the mantra certainly cannot do anything about this. But the events occur, nevertheless, according to an iron law of necessity.

I mention this incident in order that you may see how little arbitrariness is involved in these matters, and to show how in these matters there is contained what is read directly from the spiritual world, what corresponds with the habits and customs of the spiritual world. Nothing is arbitrary in what takes its course in a rightfully constituted esoteric school. And there should ray out from the esoteric school into the rest of the Anthroposophical Movement that earnest quality about which we have spoken. Only then will this school be for the Anthroposophical Movement what it should be. But it will be necessary to be honest with oneself, and acknowledge that one acts sometimes out of personal motives, and if so, one should not dress the matter up as if it were inspired by devotion to the Anthroposophical Movement. Naturally, I certainly don't intend to say that nothing should occur out of personal motives, for it is a matter of course that people today must be personal. But then it is necessary that in what is personal the truth must be acknowledged. For instance, if someone travels here to Dornach for personal pleasure, he or she should therefore admit this and not make out otherwise. There's nothing wrong with traveling to Dornach for personal pleasure! Indeed, it is, by the way, very good when one comes here. But one should admit the personal pleasure and not dress it up as pure devotion to spiritual life.

I mention this, but I might equally well have chosen a different example, which might be closer to reality, for it is, in fact, true that when most of our friends travel to Dornach, the readiness to sacrifice, the spirit of sacrifice, is indeed involved, and that in this particular example, the traveling to Dornach, in at least some degree, untruthfulness played a role. But I chose this example precisely because of the fact that it hits home least and is thus less hurtful. If I had chosen other examples, the basic quite calm mood of soul, a truly serene mood in the hearts and souls of all those who are sitting here, would have been less likely to rise to the occasion.

After this introduction I would like to start with the verse which is both the beginning and the end of what comes before you here as the declaration of Michael, which contains what is spoken to all human beings who have an unencumbered sense for it, by all things and beings in the world, if one listens to what is said with the soul. For everything that lives in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, that sparkles down from the stars, that works into our soul from the realm of the hierarchies, from all that crawls on the earth worm-like, that moves living upon the earth, out of all that speaks in rock and spring, in forest and field and mountains and thunder and clouds and lightning, out of all this spoke to the open-minded human being in the past, speaks to him in the present, will speak in all futures:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

The last lesson concluded, my dear brothers and sisters, following the final admonitions that the Guardian of the Threshold imparts before crossing the yawning abyss of being, with the Guardian of the Threshold having spoken weighty, human-heart-moving words:

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being

Weighty, portentous, significant experiences have entered our hearts, through all that the Guardian of the Threshold has spoken at Michael's behest. All that he has spoken was spoken in order to prepare us for the demeanor which we must have, when after the door is opened, we cross over the yawning abyss of existence, where one does not go by walking with earthly feet, where one only goes by flying with the soul, when the soul out of a spiritual attitude, out of spiritual love, out of spiritual feeling grows wings.

So now, my dear brothers and sisters, will be described what the human being experiences when he stands beyond the yawning abyss of existence. The Guardian of the Threshold instructs, “Turn around and look back! Until now you have looked toward what appeared to you a black, night-bedecked darkness, concerning which you had to surmise that it will become bright and will illumine the source of your own self. I allowed it, on the occasion of the last admonitions, so says the Guardian of the Threshold, I allowed it to grow brighter, at first very gently. First you feel light dawning around you. But turn around, look back!”

As one who has crossed the yawning abyss of being now turns around and looks back, he beholds his person of earth, what he is during physical incarnation, over there in that part of existence which he has left, that now lies yonder in the province of the earth. He beholds his own person of earth over there. He has entered and embodies himself with his spirit-soul being in spirit existence. The earthly sheath, the earthly formation, now stands over yonder. It stands yonder in that region in which we were at first with our entire human being, where we have seen all that crawls below and flies above, where we have seen the sparkling stars, the warm sun, where we have seen what lives in wind and weather, and where we have stood, knowing that in all of this, despite all that is so majestic that rays out and gives light in the sun, despite all its beauty and greatness, there in the field of sense-existence, where we have stood and said to ourselves that our own human being's essence is not within it, that you must seek beyond the yawning abyss of existence, in what from the other, from the sense-bound side appears to you as black, night-bedecked darkness.

The Guardian of the Threshold has shown us in the three beasts what we actually are. Now there is described how, within the darkness which is growing bright, which is beginning to lighten up, we should begin by looking back on what we are as human beings in the sense-world, together with what was formerly our only world in sense-bound earth existence.

Now the Guardian of the Threshold points in a very definite way to the one who stands over there as the earth-person, who is ourself, in earth existence, that being to whom we must return again and again, into whom we must penetrate over and over again when we step forth from the spiritual world and enter into the duties of our work on earth, when we return to earth existence. For we may not become dreamers and light-headed enthusiasts. We must return, in every respect, to earthly life and obligations. For this reason, the Guardian of the Threshold directs us to look on the person who stands over yonder, who we ourselves are, in such a way that he makes us attentive, at first, to who and what this person is. [An outline of the human form was drawn on the blackboard.] The human being is aware that he perceives the outer world through the senses [the eye is drawn] which are localized, primarily, in the head and that he perceives his thinking through the activity of his head.

But the Guardian of the Threshold now remarks, “Look inside this head.” It is as if you look into a dark cell, for you do not see the light which is working within it. But the truth is that what you carried within you as thinking over there in the sense world is the mere appearance of reality, is mere picture-images, not much more than mirror-pictures.

The Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us to be very conscious of this fact, but also to be conscious of the fact that what lives in earthly thinking only as appearance, as we learned in earlier lessons, is the corpse of living thinking, in which we lived in the spiritual-soul world before we descended into this earth-existence. In that existence thinking was alive. Now, thinking rests as dead thinking, as the semblance of thinking, in the coffin of our body. All thinking which we make use of in the sense world is dead thinking. It was alive before we descended to earth.

What did this thinking make? It first made all that, which within the top of the body, within the head, within this dark cell, so it shows itself for sensory appearance, all that is light-making being.² The brain, which sits there inside as the supporting pillar of thinking, has been made out of living thinking. [The interior of the head, yellow, was drawn on the blackboard.] And living thinking it is that first makes the supporting pillar for our semblance of thinking on earth.

Look at the convolutions of the brain, look at all you bear within you in the dark cell of the head, which makes earthly thinking possible for you, my brothers and sisters. Look behind that thinking, which is only appearance in the cabinet of the head, and you will then discover how into what here above is felt as thinking [drawing, red arrows] there streams the force of willing, there pours up into thinking the force of willing, so that each thought is irradiated by will. It can be felt how the will flows into thinking.

We look back thus from beyond the threshold and see how that other human being, who we ourselves are, has streaming out of the body into the head the willing’s undulations, willing at work, and eventually, if we follow it back in time, traveling as far as our former incarnations on earth, at work over here from past worlds into the present incarnation are thought-undulations which build our head, finally passing over into the appearance of thinking here in this incarnation.

Therefore, we should be stout and strong,³ the Guardian of the Threshold says to us, and imagine the dead thinking thrown out into world-nothingness, for it is mere appearance. And the willing which arises there we should regard as that which from former earth-incarnations crosses over to dwell and move and work and make⁴ us finally into a thinker. There, within [see drawing, yellow] are the formative world-thoughts.⁵ These formative world-thoughts first take effect, that we can have intrinsically human thoughts.

Therefore, the first word of the Guardian of the Threshold after he has allowed us to cross the threshold, after he has informed us that the door is opened, that we can become a true human being, therefore the first word which he there speaks is:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

The first words that we hear over there, as we look back upon the form, the gestalt which we ourselves are, which stands here before our soul's gaze, which we direct back from over there: [The heading and the first verse with the underlined words were written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian is heard in the gradually brightening darkness:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold adds to this, and one must exert oneself in order to hear it. Just imagine yourself looking back at what you yourself are, who stands over yonder, then turn again and look into the darkness and try with all possible inner imaginative force of memory, as when you retain an after-image, a physical after-image held in your eye, try with maximum force to sketch there something like a kind of gray outline form of what you have seen over yonder, but avoid making a sketch of anything else other than a gray outline. [Drawing continued.]

There then appears, if one succeeds in seeing this gray outline-figure, there

appears behind this gray outline the image of the moon [the sickle moon is drawn, yellow] with the gray silhouette in front of it.

If one is now able to maintain inner quiet, one sees in the distance the moon. The gray silhouette becomes something that is both over there and at the same time arises within one. If we practice in this way, again and again, we feel approaching the spirit-form of the head, which one has yonder, not the physical form, but the spirit-form of the head, which we have over there, then will the person feel coming toward him what karma brings him from former incarnations on earth [yellow arrow to the right of the sickle moon].

Therefore, in meditating, you should meditate on the image I have drawn here in gold, the sickle moon with this arrow. Let the mantra run, let it play out, then bring up the image as a reminder for what can gradually lead one to become familiar with what emerges in force from prior lives on earth.

As a second step the Guardian of the Threshold instructs with a more forceful gesture, pointing to what lives as feeling in the person over there, who we ourselves are, and he admonishes us to correctly see this feeling as a dream dawning. And in the act, we will see feeling, which in spite of this person over there is made much more real than is thinking, for thinking is appearance, yet feeling is half real. However, we see the feeling of the day-person unfolding in dream pictures that are louder, purer, and we learn to know through the observation, that feeling as seen from the spirit, and in the spirit, is dreaming.

But what kind of dreaming is feeling? In this feeling the person dreams not alone the individual person, but therein dreams the whole surrounding world-consciousness.⁶ Our thinking is ours alone, therefore it is also only appearance. Our feeling is something in which the world to some extent lives. World-consciousness is within it.

Now we must look to acquiring the greatest possible restfulness of heart, which the Guardian admonishes us to do. If we acquire the greatest possible restfulness of heart, so that we can extinguish what moves and lives as feeling in dream pictures, just as dreaming is extinguished in deep sleep, then we come upon the truth of feeling and can see personal feeling interwoven with world living that is present in spirit around us. And then the true spirit-person appears to us, which lives and moves in the body, initially in its half-existence. Emerging from the sleeping feeling appears to us the person. We feel ourselves over there on the other side of the Threshold in this way, on the other side of the yawning abyss of existence in our essence as a human being, since feeling has fallen asleep and world-creative might has appeared around us, might that lives in feeling. Therefore, the Guardian admonishes us:

Look into feeling's wafting of soul,
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

[The second stanza was written on the board and compared with the first.]

Look into

Here [in the first verse] it was behind, here it is into [into was underlined]. Every word is significant in mantric verses.

feeling’s wafting of soul,

Here it is thinking, here feeling, here sensory-light, here wafting of soul. Wafting is much more real than light’s appearance.

[In the second verse feeling's was underlined but not wafting of soul.]

How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;

Here it says Willing ascends from bodily depths, and here Living streams from world afar.

[In the second verse Living was underlined.]

Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;

It progresses. Here [in the first verse] there is let flow through the strength of your soul. Here [in the second verse] one must let human feeling waft away. [waft away was underlined.]

And world living shall come alive

There [in the first verse] it was willing, which is still within the person. Here

As human-being's-power.

The progression is in contrast to world-thought-creating. [In the second verse human being's power was underlined.]

The Guardian of the Threshold instructs us to look back once again on the form, the gestalt that stands over there, the one we ourselves are in earth existence, and once again we should take up the gray image, but now take it up in such a way that we retain it, after having turned away from ourselves, and in our soul-life we turn it in a circle, so that it persists as we turn it. We shall find that when we rotate the image in this way in a circle, the sun appears, in its appearance behind the silhouette turning in the circle. [drawing, red]. In this experience we become aware how in the moment we are drawn out of spiritual worlds into physical earth consciousness, our etheric body has drawn itself together out of the world ether. Therefore, just as the previous picture belongs to the first verse [The drawing of the gray silhouette and the first verse were numbered 1.], we should add this picture to the second verse [The red drawing of the rotating image and the second verse were numbered 2.].

Then the Guardian of the Threshold directs us to our willing, that acts in our limbs. He sternly makes us aware that everything connected with the will is sleeping in us when we are awake. For just as the thought works downward, as I explained last time and therefore may say today, just as the thought warms downward into the limb’s movement, just so willing emerges, which becomes clear in spiritual discernment, in spiritual observation. This is hidden from ordinary consciousness just as life is hidden in sleep. Now we are to look, and from the start, to behold willing within our limbs sunk in deep sleep. There willing sleeps. The limbs sleep. This we should have as a firm thought in mind. For then, when we have this, we are able to realize how thinking, that is the origin of willing in earthly man, sinks down into the limbs. Then it becomes light in the human being. Willing becomes bright. It wakes up. When we first see it in its sleeping condition, we find that it awakens when thinking sinks downward and light streams upward from below, light which is indeed none other than the forces of gravity. Feel in your legs, feel in your arms the force of gravity when you just let everything hang down. That is what streams upward, what unites itself with the downward streaming thinking. We see human willing transforming itself into its reality and thinking appearing as what, in a mysterious, magical way ignites the will in man. This is, in actuality, the magical activity, the magical effect of thinking, which the will carries out. There is magic. This we now realize. The Guardian of the Threshold says:

Look over willing's bodily-working

in the surrounding aura

How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

[This third verse, with certain words underlined, was now written on the board.]

Look over willing's bodily-working
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

To that, imagine the Guardian of the Threshold again beckoning us to look down at what is over there, who we ourselves are, to retain an image, but this time not to turn round but rather to allow this image to sink into the earth beneath the form that stands there. We look over there. There stands over there, who we ourselves are. We form the image for ourselves and form within us the powerful force to look downward, as though a lake were there and we would see this image by looking down and under, so that we see it now as if within the earth, but not as a reflected image, but as an upright picture.

We imagine the earth, [The arc was drawn.] with the third verse. [This drawing and the third verse were numbered 3.] We imagine the earth, how its gravity-forces ascend, how the gravity-forces shine into the limbs, feet, and arms [arrows]. In what we perceive later we have a foreshadowing of how the gods work together with human beings between death and a new birth, in order to fulfill karma.

It is this about which the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us, when he speaks to us for the first time after we have crossed the yawning abyss of existence:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Look into feeling's wafting of soul,
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

Look over willing's bodily working,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

Always, the circle closes. Again, we look back upon the point from which we set out, hearing out of all beings and all processes of the world:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

With his communication, Michael is present in this rightly constituted school. His presence is confirmed by his sign, which should have dominion over all that will be given in this school [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.], and it is confirmed through his seal which he has impressed upon the esoteric striving of the Rosicrucian School, which lives symbolically in the threefold maxim Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. And as Michael impresses his seal, the first sentence is spoken in this gesture [The lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], the second sentence in this gesture [The middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], and the third sentence in this gesture [The upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.].

The first gesture signifies [Beside the lower seal gesture was written:]

I honor the Father.

It lives silently while we speak the Ex Deo Nascimur. The second gesture signifies [Beside the middle seal gesture was written:]

I love the Son

It lives silently while we speak the In Christo Morimur. The third gesture signifies [beside the upper seal gesture was written:]

I unite with the Spirit

It lives silently in the sign, that there is Michael's Seal, as we speak the Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

And so is confirmed today’s Michael proclamation substance through the Sign and Seal of Michael. [The Michael sign was made and with the three seal gestures was spoken:] Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

I have to announce that the course for theologians will take place tomorrow at 10:45. The speech formation and dramatic course at 12 o'clock. In the afternoon at 5 there will be a eurythmy presentation, and at 8 o'clock in the evening, or, if the eurythmy finishes late, at 8:15 or 8:30, the members' lecture.

The Guardian is heard in the gradually brightening darkness:

Look behind thinking's sensory light
How in the darkened spirit cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Look into feeling's wafting of soul
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

Look over willing's bodily working,
How into sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus
I honor the Father
I love the Son
I unite with the Spirit

• 1. In a notebook of Rudolf Steiner, dated August 18, 1924, under morning lecture, Torquay, appears an entry about the different epochs: 1979–1510 Gabriel (Moon), 1510–1190 Samael (Mars), 1190–850 Raphael (Mercury), 850–500 Zachariel (Jupiter), 500–150 Anael (Venus), 150–200 Oriphiel (Saturn).
• 2. lichtschaffendes Wesen
• 3. stark
• 4. herüberwellt und webt und wirkt und macht
• 5. schaffenden Weltgedanken
• 6. Weltendasein

In connection with the Congress held by the “Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society” in Budapest in the year 1909, Dr. Steiner gave a Lecture-Course entitled: “Theosophy and Occultism of the Rosicrucians.” The Mystery of Golgotha is there indicated as the great turning-point between the old, now already fading Mystery-wisdom and the wisdom in its new form of revelation wherein account is taken of the faculty of thought possessed by a maturer humanity and of the advance of culture and civilisation. Theosophia, the Divine Wisdom, could not, as in earlier times, flow as inner illumination into the hardened constitution of man. Intellect, the more recent faculty of the soul, was directed to the world of sense and its phenomena. Theosophy was rejected by the scholars with a shrug of the shoulders and the very word brought a supercilious smile from the monists. Dr. Steiner, however, was trying to restore to this word its whole weight and spiritual significance and to show how the roots of all later knowledge lie in Theosophy, how it unites East and West, how in it all the creeds are integral parts of one great harmony.

This had also been the fundamental conception of the Founder of the Theosophical Society but she understood nothing of the essence of Christianity and disputed its unique significance. Her tendency to place too much reliance upon spiritualistic communications drew her into the net of an oriental stream only too ready to use this instrument for its own ends—to begin with under the cloak of Neo-Buddhism then represented in the person of Charles Leadbeater, a former priest of the Anglican Church. Annie Besant, a pupil of Charles Bradlaugh, a free-thinker and the most brilliant orator of the day in the field of political and social reform, had also been so deeply influenced by spiritualistic communications that on the advice of William Stead she went to Madame Blavatsky towards the end of the latter's life and became her ardent follower. Stead's spiritualistic circle was influential and the Theosophical Society, with its much purer spiritual foundations, had here a dangerous rival.

Dr. Steiner brought light to bear upon all these developments, upon their aims and aberrations, and raised Theosophy to heights far transcending the narrow sphere of the Theosophical Society. Alarmed by this, the Indian inspirers behind the Adyar Society, with their nationalistic aims, took their own measures.—The imminence of a return of Christ was announced and the assertion made that he would incarnate in an Indian boy. A newly founded Order, the “Star in the East,” using the widespread organisation of the Theosophical Society, was expected to achieve the aim that had met with failure in Palestine.

Not very long after the Budapest Congress, these developments began to be felt in the sphere of Dr. Steiner's lecturing activities. Disquieted by the beginnings of the propaganda for the Star in the East, Groups begged Dr. Steiner to speak about these matters. This caused alarm to the organisers of the Genoa Congress, who thought that the scientific as well as the esoteric discussions with Dr. Steiner would be too dangerous a ground, and for extremely threadbare reasons the Congress was cancelled at the last moment. Many of those taking part were already on their way—we too. A number of Groups in Switzerland took advantage of this opportunity to ask Dr. Steiner for lectures. They wanted to understand the meaning and significance of the Michael Impulse which denotes the turning-point in the historic evolution of the Mystery-wisdom. The Intelligence ruled over in the spiritual world by the hierarchy of Michael had now come down to humanity. It was for men to receive this Intelligence consciously into their impulses of will and thenceforward to play their part in shaping a future wherein the human “I” will achieve union with the Divine “I.” For this goal of the future men must be prepared, a transformation wrought in their souls; they must “change their hearts and minds.” To bring this about was the task of Rudolf Steiner. The moment had arrived for treading the path which liberates the Spirit from the grip of the material powers. The first healthy step to be taken along this path by the pupil of spiritual knowledge, is study.

As the theme chosen for Genoa had been “From Buddha to Christ,” it was natural that the lectures now given in Switzerland should shed the light of Spiritual Science not only upon the earlier connections between the Buddha and Christ Jesus but also upon the lasting connections indicated by the Essene wisdom contained in the Gospels. This is the theme which gives these studies their special character—which could only be brought out by outlining the historical development of the Mystery-wisdom. The ancient revelations of the Mysteries had shed light into many forms of culture, but were now spent; symptoms of decay and increasing sterility of thought were everywhere in evidence. Then, from heights of Spirit, the Michael Impulse came down to the Earth—in order gradually to stir and flame through the hearts of men. The intellect was pervaded by spiritual fire, the lower human “I” lifted nearer to the ideal of times to come: union with the Divine “I.” To awaken understanding of these goals, to establish them firmly on the ground of their spiritual origins and to place them in living pictures before the souls of men—such was the task of Rudolf Steiner.

This brought the inevitable counterblow from the opposing powers; into this they knew they must drive their wedge. The development of the human being in freedom, this gift bestowed by Michael, must be checked and the hearts and minds of men incited to resistance. In his Four Mystery Plays, Rudolf Steiner has given us living pictures of this: the human being between Lucifer and Ahriman—now succumbing to their promptings, now overcoming them, but nevertheless bearing them in the soul like a poison that may at any time begin to work. We too shall continue to bear this picture and its substance in our souls.

The full content of the lectures, however, has not been preserved, for we possess no good transcriptions. The fact that no really reliable and expert stenographist was available at the time seems like a counterblow from the opposing powers. Besides the abbreviated reports of the Cassel lectures, we have in some cases only fragments, in others, scattered notes strung together. But the essential threads have been preserved and an attempt at compilation has been made. The attempt does not always succeed from the point of view of convincing style, but the impetus for effort in thought and study will be all the stronger.

The activities of the Star in the East led, finally, to the exclusion of the German section from the Theosophical Society; this, however, had been preceded by the forming of a Union which included people in other countries who opposed this piece of Adyar sectarianism and led to the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. For a time, care was necessary to prevent confusion as between the two Societies and so for the Movement associated with him, Rudolf Steiner chose the name Anthroposophy—the Divine Wisdom finding its fulfilment in man. Theosophy and Anthroposophy are one, provided the soul has cast away its dress. And Rudolf Steiner showed us how this can be done.

The new Indian Messiah soon cast off the shackles of the renown that had been forced upon him and retired to private life in California. Annie Besant was obliged to renounce her cherished dream and died at a very great age. It is rumoured that the question of the dissolution of the Adyar Society was considered but that this proved impossible owing to the extensive material possessions. Jinarajadasa, my good friend from the days of the founding of the Italian Section, succeeded Annie Besant as President. The branch of the Theosophical Society which had seceded at the time of the Judge conflict and to which Madame Blavatsky's niece belonged, had found in Mrs. Catharine Tingley a leader of energy and initiative, but she too had died.

The old conditions have now faded away. Those grotesque edifices of phantasy can no longer be associated with the Anthroposophical, formerly Theosophical, Movement, for they have crumbled to pieces. We can allow the word Theosophy again to come to its own, as did Rudolf Steiner when he was trying to restore to this word its primary and true significance.

Besides laying emphasis on the essential character of Spiritual Science in the post-Christian era, the aim of the lectures given in 1911 and 1912 was to explain karma as the flow of destiny and to point to its intimate workings. The lines of development running through the lectures have survived only as pictures of memory; the transcriptions often failed to catch the threads of the logical sequence and the notes or headings jotted down and collected here and there are really no more than indications. But the direction of the spiritual impulses given by Dr. Steiner has been preserved, and justifies, maybe, the attempt at compilation. Through meditative study these impulses will be able to work in us and deepen our souls.