The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It may seem strange to some, if an anthroposophist, of all people, feels himself called upon to speak of practical training in thought. For people very often imagine Anthroposophy to be something highly unpractical, having nothing whatever to do with real life. That is because they look at the thing externally and superficially. In reality, what we are concerned with in the anthroposophical movement is intended as a guide for everyday life, for the most matter-of-fact affairs of life. We should be able to transform it at every moment into a sure sense and feeling, enabling us to meet life confidently and find our footing in the world.

People who call themselves practical imagine that their actions are guided by the most practical principles. When you look into the matter closely, you will, however, frequently discover that what they call their practical way of thinking is not thinking at all, but the mere “jogging along” with old opinions and acquired habits of thought. You will often find there is very little that is really practical behind it. What they call practical consists in this: they have learned how their teachers, or their predecessors in business, thought about the matter in hand, and then they simply take the same line. Anyone who thinks along different lines they regard as a very unpractical person. In effect, his thinking does not accord with the habits to which they have been brought up. In cases where something really practical has been invented, you will not generally find that it was done by any of the “practical” people.

Take for instance our present postage stamp. Surely the most obvious thing would be to suppose that it was invented by a practical post-office official. But it was not. At the beginning of last century it was a very long and troublesome business to post a letter. You had to go to the office where letters were posted, and various books had to be referred to; in short, there were all manner of complicated proceedings. It is hardly more than sixty years since the uniform postal rate to which we are now accustomed was introduced. And our postage stamp, which makes this simple arrangement possible, was invented, not by a practical man in the postal service, but by a complete outsider. It was the Englishman, Rowland Hill. When the postage stamp had been invented, the Minister who had to do with the Postal Department said in the English Parliament: In the first place, we can by no means assume that as a result of this simplification postal communication will really increase so enormously as this unpractical man imagines; and secondly, even assuming that it did, the main Post Office in London would not be big enough to hold it.

It never dawned on this very practical man that the Post Office building ought to be adapted to the amount of correspondence, and not the amount of correspondence to the building. Yet in what was, comparatively speaking, the shortest imaginable time, the thing was carried out. One of the unpractical people had to fight for it against a practical man. To-day we take it as a matter of course that letters are sent with a postage stamp.

It was similar in the case of the railways. In the year 1887, when the first German railway was to be constructed between Nuremberg and Fürth, the Bavarian College of Medicine, being consulted, pronounced the following expert opinion. In the first place, they said, it was inadvisable to build railways at all; if, however, it were intended to do so, it would at any rate be necessary to erect a high wall of wooden planks to the left and right of the line, in order that passers-by might not suffer from nerve and brain shock.

When the line from Potsdam to Berlin had to be built, the Postmaster-General Stengler said: I send two mail coaches a day to Potsdam and they are not full up; if these people are bent on wasting their money, they might as well throw it out of the window without more ado.

In effect, the real facts of life leave the “practical” people behind, or rather they leave behind those who so fondly call themselves practical.

We have to distinguish true thinking from the so-called practical thinking, which merely consists in opinions based on the habits of thought in which people have been brought up.

I will tell you a little experience of my own, and make it a starting-point for our considerations to-day.

In my undergraduate days, a young colleague once came to me. He was bubbling over with that intense pleasure which you may observe in people who have just had 'a really brilliant idea. “I am on my way,” he said, “to see Professor X. (who at that time occupied the chair in Machine Construction), for I have made a wonderful discovery. I have discovered a machine whereby it will be possible by the use of a very little steam-power to exert an enormous amount of work.” That was all he could tell me, for he was in a tremendous hurry to go to see the Professor. However, he did not find him at home, so he came back and set to work to explain the matter to me. Of course, from the very start the whole thing had sounded to me suspiciously like perpetual motion; but, after all, why shouldn't such a thing be possible one fine day? So I listened; and after he had gone through the whole explanation, I had to answer: “Yes, it is certainly very cleverly thought out; but you see, in practice it surely comes to this. It's as though you were to get into a railway truck and push tremendously hard, and imagine that the truck would thereby begin to move. That is the principle of thought in your invention?” And then he saw that it was so, and he did not go to see the Professor again.

That is how it is possible to shut oneself up, as it were, in one's thought. People put themselves in a neat little box with their thought. In rare cases this is perfectly evident; but people are continually doing it in life, and it is not always so clear and striking as in the instance we have taken. One who is able to look into the matter a little more intimately knows that this is the way with a great many human processes of thought. He constantly sees people standing, as it were, in their truck, pushing from the inside, and imagining that it is they who are propelling it.

Much of what happens in life would happen altogether differently if people were not such pushers, standing in their trucks!

True practice of thought requires us in the first place to have the right attitude of mind, the right feeling about thought. How can we gain this? No one can come to a right feeling about thought who imagines that thought is something which merely takes place within man, inside his head, or in his mind or soul. Anyone who starts with this idea will have a wrong feeling, and will continually be diverted from the search for a truly practical way of thought. He will fail to make the necessary demands on his thinking activity. To acquire the right feeling towards thought, he must rather say to himself: “If I am able to make myself thoughts about the things, if I am able to get at the things through thoughts, then the things must already contain the thoughts within them. The thoughts must be there in the very plan and structure of the things. Only so can I draw the thoughts out of them.”

Man must say to himself that it is the same with the things in the world outside as with a watch. The comparison of the human organism to a watch is frequently used, but people often forget the most important thing. They forget the watchmaker. The cogs and wheels did not run together and join up of their own accord and set the watch in motion, but there was a watchmaker there first, to construct the watch. We must not forget the watchmaker. It is through thoughts that the watch has come into being. The thoughts have, as it were, flowed out into the watch, into the external object. And this is the way in which we must think of all the works of nature of all the natural creation, and of all natural processes. It can easily be illustrated in a thing that is human creation: in the things of nature it is not quite so easy to perceive. And yet they too are works of the spirit; behind them are spiritual beings.

When man thinks about things, he is only thinking after, he is only re-thinking, that which has first been laid into them. We must believe that the world has been created by thought and is still in continual process of creation by thought. This belief, and this alone, can give birth to a really fruitful inner practice of thought.

It is always unbelief in the spiritual content of the world that underlies the greatest impracticality of thought. This is true in the sphere of science itself. For example, some one will say, our planetary system came about as follows: “First there was a primeval nebula. It began to rotate, drew together into one central body from which rings and spheres split off, and by this mechanical process the whole planetary system came into being.” People who speak like that are making a grave error in thought. They have a pretty way of teaching it to the children nowadays. There is a neat little experiment which they show in many schools. They float a drop of oil in a glass of water, stick a pin through the middle of the drop and then set it in rotation. Thereupon little drops split off from the big drop in the middle, and you have a minute planetary system. A nice little object lesson, so they think, to show the pupil how such a thing can come about in a purely mechanical way.

Only an unpractical way of thinking can draw this conclusion from the experiment. For the man who transplants the idea to the great cosmic planetary system generally forgets just one thing—which at other times it is perhaps quite good to forget—he forgets himself. He forgets that he himself, after all, set the thing in rotation. If he had not been there and done the whole thing, the drop of oil would never have split off the little drops. If the man would observe that too, and transfer the idea to the planetary system, then, and then only, would his thought be complete.

Such errors in thought play a very great part to-day—and they do so especially in what is now called science. These things are far more important than people generally imagine.

If we would make our thinking practical, we must first know that thoughts can only be drawn from a world in which thoughts already are. Just as you can only draw water from a glass that does really contain water, so you can only draw thoughts from things that already contain thoughts. The world is built up by thoughts, and it is only for that reason that we can gain thoughts from the world. If it were not so, then there could be no such thing as a practice of thought at all. When a man really feels what has here been said, and feels it to the full, then he will easily transcend the stage of abstract thinking. When a man has full confidence and faith that behind things there are thoughts, that the real facts of life take place according to thoughts—when he has this confidence and feeling, then he will readily be converted to a practice of thought that is founded on reality.

We will now set forth some elements of practice in thought. If you are penetrated by the belief that the world of facts takes its course in thoughts, you will admit how important it is to develop true thinking.

Let us assume that someone says to himself: “I want to strengthen my thought, so that it may find its true bearings at every point in life.” He must then take guidance from what will now be said. The indications that will now be given are to be taken as real practical principles—principles such, that if you try again and again and again to guide your thought accordingly, definite results will follow. Your thinking will become practical, even though it may not appear so at first sight. Indeed, if you carry out these principles, you will have altogether fresh experiences in your life of thought.

Let us assume that someone makes the following experiment. On a certain day he carefully observes some process in the world which is accessible to him, which he can observe quite accurately—say, for example, the appearance of the sky. He observes the cloud formations in the evening, the way in which the sun went down. And now he makes a distinct and accurate mental image of what he has observed.

He tries to hold it fast for a time in all its details. He holds fast as much of it as he can, and tries to keep it till the following day. On the morrow, about the same time, or even at another time of day, he again observes the appearance of the sky and the weather, and he tries once more to form an exact mental image of it.

If in this way he forms clear mental images of successive conditions, he will soon perceive with extraordinary distinctness that he is enriching his thought and making it inwardly intense. For what makes a man's thought unpractical is the fact that in observing successive processes in the world he is generally too much inclined to leave out the actual details and to retain only a vague and confused picture in his mind. The essential, the valuable thing for strengthening our thought is to form exact pictures above all in the case of successive processes and then to say to ourselves: “Yesterday the thing was so; to-day it is so.” And in doing this we must bring before our minds the two pictures which are separated in the real world, as graphically, as vividly as possible.

To begin with, this exercise is simply a particular expression of our belief that the thoughts are there in reality. We are not immediately to draw some conclusion—to conclude from what we observe to-day what the weather and the sky will be like tomorrow. That would only corrupt our thinking. No, we must have faith that outside in the reality of things they have their connection, and that tomorrow's process is somehow connected with to-day's. We are not to speculate about it, but first of all to think, in mental images as clear as possible, the scenes which in the external world are separated in time. We place the two pictures side by side before our minds, and then let the one gradually change into the other.

This is a definite principle which must be followed if we would develop a truly objective way of thinking. It is especially valuable to take this line with things which we do not yet understand, where we have not yet penetrated the inner connection. Particularly with those processes—the sky and the weather, for example—which we do not understand at all, we must have the belief that, as they are connected in the outside world, so will they work their connections within us. And we must do it simply in mental pictures, refraining from thought. We must say to ourselves: “I do not yet know the connection, but I will let these things grow and evolve within me, and if I refrain from all speculation, I am sure they will be working something within me.”

You will not find it difficult to imagine that something may take place in the invisible vehicles of a human being who, refraining from thought in this way, strives to call forth clear mental images of processes and events that succeed one another in time in the outer world. Man has an astral body as the vehicle of his life of thought and ideation. So long as he speculates, this astral body of man is the slave of his Ego. But it is not completely involved in this conscious activity, for it also stands in relation to the whole Universe. Now as we refrain from giving play to our own arbitrary trains of thought, and simply form in ourselves mental images, clear pictures of successive events, in like measure will the inner thoughts of the universe work in us and impress themselves upon our astral body, without our knowing it. As, by observation of the processes in the world, we fit ourselves to enter into the world's course, and as we take its scenes and pictures into our thoughts clearly and faithfully in their reality and let them work in us, so do we become ever wiser and wiser in those vehicles and members of our being that are outside our consciousness.

So it is with processes in nature that are inwardly connected. When we are able to let the one picture change into the other just as the change took place in nature, we shall soon perceive, that our thought is gaining a certain flexibility and strength.

That is how we should proceed with things that we do not yet understand. For things that we do understand—events, for example, that take place around us in our daily life—our attitude should be slightly different.

For instance, someone—your neighbour, perhaps—has done something or other. You consider: Why did he do it? You come to the conclusion: Perhaps he did it in preparation for such and such a thing that he intends to do tomorrow. Very well; do not go on speculating, but try to sketch out a picture of what you think he will do tomorrow. You imagine to yourself: That is what he will do tomorrow; and now you wait and see what he really does. It may be on the following day you will observe that he really does what you imagined. Or it may be that he does something different. You observe what really happens and try to correct your thoughts accordingly.

Thus we select events in the present which we follow out in thought into the future, and we wait and see what actually happens. We can do this with the actions of men, and with many other things. Where we feel that we understand a thing, we try to form a picture of what, in our opinion, will take place. If it does take place as we expected, our thinking was correct; that is good. If what happens is different from what we expected, then we try to think where we made the mistake. Thus we try to correct our wrong thoughts by quiet observation, by examining where the mistake lay, and why it was that it happened as it did.

If, however, we were right, then we must be careful to avoid the danger of mere self-congratulation and boasting of our prophecy: “Oh yes, I knew that was going to happen, yesterday.”

Here again you have a method based on the belief that there is an inner necessity lying in the things and events themselves—that there is something in the facts themselves which drives them forward. The forces working in things, working on from one day to the next, are forces of thought. If we dive down into the things, then we become conscious of these thought-forces. By such exercises we make them present to our consciousness. When what we foresaw is fulfilled, we are in attunement with them. Then we are in an inner relationship to the real thought-activity of the thing itself.

Thus we accustom ourselves not to think arbitrarily, but to take our thought from the inner necessity, the inner nature of things.

There is yet another direction in which we can train our practice of thought.

An event that happens to-day is also related to things that happened yesterday. For example, a child has been naughty. What can have caused it? You follow the events back to the previous day, you construct the causes which you do not know. You say to yourself: “I fancy that this thing which has happened to-day was led up to by such and such things yesterday or the day before.”

You then make inquiries and find out what really happened, and so discover whether your thought was correct. If you have found the real cause, then it is well; but if you have formed a wrong idea of it, then you must try to see the mistake clearly. You consider how your thought-process developed, and how it took place in reality, and compare the one with the other.

It is very important to carry out such principles and methods. We must find time to observe things in this way—as though with our thinking we were in the things themselves. We must dive down into the things, into their inner thought-activity.

If we do so, we shall gradually perceive how we are entering into the very life of things. We no longer have the feeling that the things are outside, and we are here in our shell, thinking about them; but we begin to feel how our thought is living and moving in the things themselves. To a man who has attained this in a high degree, a new world opens up. Such a man was Goethe. He was a thinker who was always in the things with his thoughts. In 1826 the psychologist Heinroth said in his book, Anthropology, that Goethe's was an objective thinking. Goethe was delighted with this description. Heinroth meant that Goethe's thought did not separate itself off from the things or objects; it remained in the objects, it lived and moved in the necessity of things. Goethe's thought was at the same time contemplation; his contemplation, his looking at things, was at the same time thought.

Goethe developed this way of thinking to a high degree. More than once it happened, when he was intending to go out for some purpose or other, that he went to the window and said to whoever happened to be by: “In three hours it will rain”—and so it did. From the little segment of the sky which was visible from his window he could tell what would happen in the weather in the next few hours. His true thought, remaining in the things, enabled him to sense the later events that were already preparing in the preceding ones.

Far more can be achieved by practical thinking than is generally imagined. We have described certain principles of thought. A man who makes them his own will discover that his thought is really becoming practical. His vision widens, and he grasps the things of the world quite differently than before. Little by little his attitude to things, and also to other human beings, will become different. A real process takes place in him, one that alters his whole conduct of life. It can be of immense importance for a man to try to grow into the things with his thought in this way. In the fullest sense of the word it is a practical undertaking to train our thinking by such exercises.

There is another exercise which is particularly valuable for people who fail to get the right idea at the right moment.

Such people should try, above all, to think not merely in the way suggested by every passing moment. They should not merely give themselves up to what the ordinary course of things brings with it. When a man has half an hour to lie down and rest, it nearly always happens that he simply gives his thoughts free play. They spin out in a thousand different directions. Or perhaps his life is just occupied by some special worry. Suddenly it flies into his consciousness, and he is completely absorbed in it. If a man lets things happen in this way, he will never arrive at the point where the right thing occurs to him at the right moment. If he wants to succeed in this, he must do as follows. When he has half an hour to lie down and rest, he must say to himself: “Now that I have time, I will think about something which I myself will choose—something which I bring into my consciousness by my own will and choice. For example, I will think about something that I experienced at some earlier date—say on a walk two years ago. I will bring it into my thought and think about it for a certain time—say even only for five minutes. All other things—away with them for these five minutes! I myself will choose what I am going to think about.”

The choice need not even be as difficult as the one I have just suggested. The point is, not that you try to work upon your processes of thought by difficult exercises to begin with, but that you tear yourself away from all you are involved in by your ordinary life. You must choose something right outside the web of interests into which you are woven by your everyday existence. And if you suffer from lack of inspiration, if nothing else occurs to you at the moment, then you can have recourse, say, to a book. Open it, and think about whatever you happen to read on the first page which catches your eye. Or, you say to yourself: “Now I will think about what I saw at a certain time this morning just as I was going into the office.” Only it must be something to which in the ordinary course you would have paid no further attention. It must be something beside the ordinary run of things, something you would otherwise not have thought about at all.

If you carry on such exercises systematically and repeat them again and again, the result will soon be to cure you of your lack of inspiration. You will get the right idea at the right moment. Your thought will become mobile, which is immensely important for a man in practical life.

Another exercise is especially adapted to work on the memory.

First you try to remember some event—say, an event of yesterday—in the crude way in which one generally remembers things. For, as a rule, people have the greyest of grey recollections of things. As a rule you are satisfied if you only remember the name of someone you met yesterday. But if you want to develop your power of memory you must no longer be satisfied with that. You must set to work systematically and say to yourself: “I will now recall the person I saw yesterday, clearly and distinctly. I will recall the surroundings, the particular corner at which I saw him. I will sketch out the picture in detail; I will have an accurate mental image of what he was wearing—his coat, his waistcoat, and so on.” Most people, when they try this exercise, will discover that they are quite unable to do it. They will notice how very much is missing from the picture. They are unable to call up a graphic idea of what they actually experienced on the previous day.

In the vast majority of cases it is so; and this is the condition from which we must start. As a matter of fact, people's observation is generally most inaccurate. An experiment which a University Professor made with his class showed that, of thirty people who were present, only two had observed a thing correctly; the other twenty-eight had it wrong. But good memory is the child of faithful observation. To develop our memory, the important thing is that we should observe accurately. By dint of faithful observation we can acquire a good memory. Through certain inner paths of the soul a true memory is born of a good habit of observation.

Now suppose that, to begin with, you find you are unable to call to mind, exactly, something that you experienced on the previous day. What is the next thing to do? Begin by remembering the thing as accurately as possible; and where your memory fails you, try to fill in the gaps by imagining something which is, probably, incorrect. For instance, if you have absolutely forgotten whether a person you met had on a grey coat or a black one, then imagine him in a grey coat, and say to yourself that he had such and such buttons to his waistcoat, and a yellow tie; and then you fill in the surroundings—a yellow wall, a tall man passing on the left, a short man on the right, and so forth.

Whatever you remember, put it in the picture, and then fill it in arbitrarily with the things you do not remember. Only try to have a complete picture before your mind. The picture will, of course, be incorrect, but by the effort to gain a complete picture you will be stimulated to observe more accurately in the future. Continue doing such exercises—and when you have done them fifty times, then the fifty-first time you will know exactly what the person you met looked like and what he had on. You will remember exactly, to the very waistcoat-buttons. You will no longer overlook anything, but every detail will impress itself upon your mind. By this exercise you will first have sharpened your powers of observation, and in addition you will have gained a truer memory, which is the child of accurate observation.

It is especially valuable to pay attention to this. Do not merely content yourself with remembering the names and the main outlines of things, but try to get mental images as graphic as possible, including the real details; and where your memory fails you, fill in the picture and make it whole. You will soon see—though it seems to come in a roundabout way—that your memory is becoming more faithful.

Clear directions can thus be given, whereby a man can make his thought ever more and more practical.

There is another thing of great importance. Man has a certain craving to reach a definite result when he is considering some line of action. He turns it over in his mind, how should he do the thing, and comes to a definite conclusion. We can well understand this impulse; but it does not lead to a practical way of thinking. Every time we hurry our thought on, we are going backward and not forward. Patience is necessary in these things.

For example: there is something you have to do. It is possible to do it in one way or in another; there may be various possibilities. Now have patience; try to imagine exactly what would happen if you did it in this way, and then try to imagine what would happen if you did it in that way.

Of course, there will always be reasons for preferring the one course of action to the other. But now refrain from making up your mind at once. Try, instead, to sketch out the two possibilities, and then say to yourself: “Now that's done—now I will stop thinking about it.”

At this point many people will become fidgety, and that is a difficult thing to overcome. But it is no less valuable to overcome it. Say to yourself: “The thing is possible in this way and in that way, and now for a time I will think no more about it.” If the circumstances permit, defer your action to the next day, and then once more bring the two possibilities before your mind. You will find that in the meantime the things have changed, and that on the following day you are able to decide quite differently—far more thoroughly, at any rate, than you would have done the day before.

There is an inner necessity in the things themselves, and if we do not act impatiently and arbitrarily, but let this inner necessity work in us—and it will work in us—then it will enrich our thought. And our thought, being thus enriched, will appear again the next day and enable us to form a more correct decision. That is immensely valuable.

Or to take another example: someone asks your advice about some point that has to be decided. Do not burst in with your decision straight away, but have the patience to lay the various possibilities before your own mind quietly and to form no conclusion on your own account. Let the different possibilities hold sway. An old proverb says: “Sleep on it before deciding”—but sleeping on it is not enough. It is necessary to think over two or even more possibilities (if there are more than two, so much the better). These possibilities work on in us, when we ourselves, so to speak, are not there with our conscious Ego. Later on, we return to the thing. We shall see that by this means we are calling to life inner forces of thought, and that our thinking grows ever more practical and to the point.

Whatever it is that a man is seeking to find, it is there in the world. Whether he stands at the lathe or behind the plough, or whether he belongs to the so-called privileged classes and professions, if he does these exercises, he will become a practical thinker in the most everyday affairs of life. Practising his thought in this way, he begins to look at the things in the world with a new vision. And though these exercises may at first sight appear ever so inward and remote from external life, it is precisely for external life that they are so useful. They entail the greatest imaginable significance for the external world; they have important consequences.

I will give you an example to show how necessary it is to think about things practically. A man climbed a tree and was doing something or other up above; suddenly he fell down and was dead. The thought that lies nearest at hand is that he was killed by the fall. Most probably, people will say: “The fall was the cause, and his death the result.” Such is the apparent connection between cause and effect. But this conclusion may involve an utter inversion of the facts. For it may be that he had a fatal heart attack, and fell down as a consequence. Exactly the same thing happened as though he had fallen down alive. He went through the same external processes that might really have been the cause of his death. So it is possible to make a complete inversion of cause and effect.

In this example the fault is very evident, but often it is not so striking. Such mistakes in thought occur very frequently. Indeed, it must be said that in modern Science conclusions of this kind are drawn day by day, with a complete reversal of cause and effect. It is only not perceived because people fail to put before them the possibilities of thought.

One more example may be given, to show you as vividly as possible how such mistakes in thought come about, and how they will no longer happen to a man who has done the kind of exercises which have here been indicated.

A learned scientist says to himself that man, as he is to-day, is descended from an ape. That is to say, what I learn to know in the ape—the forces at work in the ape—evolve to greater perfection and so result in the human being. Now in order to indicate the significance of this as thought, let us make the following supposition. Suppose that by some circumstance the man who will propound this theory be placed on the earth alone. There are no other human beings around him; there are only those apes of which the said theory declares that human beings can originate from them. Let him now make an accurate study of them. Entering into the minutest detail, he forms a conception of what there is in the ape. Albeit he has never seen a man, let him now try to develop the concept of a man out of his concept of an ape. He will see that he cannot. His concept “ape” will never transform into the concept “man.”

If he had right habits of thought, he would say to himself: “I see that the concept of an ape will not transform itself within me into the concept of a man. Therefore what I perceive in the ape is also not capable of becoming man, for if it were, the same power of evolution would be latent in the concept. Something more must come in, something that I am unable to perceive.” Thus, behind the visible ape, he would have to imagine something invisible and super-sensible—something which he could not perceive, but which alone would make the transformation into man a possible conception.

The impossibility of the whole thing need not here concern us; we only wanted to reveal the faulty thinking which lies behind that theory. If the man's thinking were right, he would be led to the conclusion that he could not think the theory at all without postulating something super-sensible.

If you consider it, you will readily see that in this matter a whole succession of thinkers have committed a grave error. Such errors will no longer be committed by one who trains his thinking in the way here indicated.

A large proportion of modern literature (and particularly of the scientific literature) is positively painful to read, for a man who is able to think rightly. Its crooked, perverted ways of thought are distressing to have to follow. In saying this, we are by no means depreciating the wealth of observation and discovery that has been accumulated by modern Natural Science with its objective methods.

All this has to do with short-sightedness of thought. It is a fact that men seldom know how very little to the point their thinking is, and to what a large extent it is the result of mere habits of thought. And so, one who penetrates the world and life will judge differently from one who lacks this penetration, or who has it only to a very small degree—a materialistic thinker, for example. It is not easy to convince people by grounds and arguments, however good, however genuine. It is often a thankless task to try to convince by grounds and reasoned arguments a man who knows little of life. For he simply does not see the reasons which make this or that statement possible. If, for instance, he has grown used to see nothing but matter in things, he simply adheres to this habit of thought.

As a rule it is not the alleged reasons which lead people to their statements. Beneath and behind the reasons, it is the habits of thought which they have acquired, and which determine their whole way of feeling. While they put forward reasons, they are only masking feelings that are instinctive with thoughts that are habitual. Thus often, not only is the wish father to the thought, but all the feelings and habits and ways of thinking are parents of the thoughts. A man who knows life, knows how little possibility there is of convincing people by logical grounds and arguments. That which decides in the soul is far deeper than the logical reasons.

And so there is good reason for this anthroposophical movement, working on in its different groups and branches. Everyone who works in this movement will presently perceive that he has acquired a new way of thinking and feeling about things. For by our work in the groups we are not only finding the logical reasons for this and that; we are acquiring a wider mental outlook, a deeper and more far-reaching way of feeling.

How, for example, did a man scoff a few years ago, when he heard a lecture on Spiritual Science for the first time! And to-day, perhaps, how many things are clear and transparent to him, which a short time ago he would have considered highly absurd! By working in this anthroposophical movement we not only transform our thoughts; we learn to bring all our life of soul into a wider perspective.

We must understand that the colouring of our thoughts has its origin far deeper than is generally imagined. It is the feelings which frequently impel a man to hold certain opinions. The logical reasons he puts forward are often a mere screen, a mask for his deeper feelings and habits of thought.

To bring ourselves to the point where logical reasons really mean something to us, we must first learn to love the logic in things. Only when we have learned to love what is real and objective, only then will the logical reasons be the decisive thing for us. We gradually learn to think objectively—independently, as it were, of our affections for this thought or that. Then our vision widens and we become practical—not in the sense of those who can only think on along the accustomed lines, but practical in the sense that we learn to draw our thoughts from out of the things themselves.

Practical life is born of objective thinking—that thinking which flows out of the things themselves. It is only by carrying out such exercises that we learn to take our thoughts from the things. And these exercises must be done with sound and healthy things—things that are least perverted by human civilisation—things of Nature.

Practising our thought as here described in connection with the things of Nature, will make us practical thinkers. This is a really practical thing to do. And we shall take hold of the most everyday occupations in a practical way, if once we train this fundamental element in life: our thinking. A practical frame of mind, a practical way of thinking, forms itself, when we exercise the human soul in the way here indicated.

The spiritual-scientific movement must bear fruit: it must place really practical men and women out into the world. It is less important for a man to feel able to accept the truth of this or that teaching. It is more important that he should develop the faculty for seeing things and penetrating things correctly. It is not a matter of theorising away beyond the things visible to the senses,—spinning theories into the spiritual realm. Far more important is the way in which Anthroposophy penetrates our soul, stimulates our activity of soul, widens our vision. It is in this that Anthroposophy is truly practical.

My task in these lectures will be to give you a picture of the theosophical conception of the world based upon the so-called Rosicrucian method. Please do not misunderstand this statement by expecting an historical account of Rosicrucianism. The expression “Rosicrucian method” is intended only to imply that theosophy will be presented in accordance with the method always adopted in the Mystery Schools of Europe since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and called Rosicrucian training.

You know that theosophy is the truth that was imparted to mankind in ancient times in order that there might be formed in hearts everywhere a basic fount of human knowledge. But the further back we go into the past, the greater was the secrecy in which this knowledge was held. What was the reason for such secrecy? In the course of these lectures I shall return to the question why this universal wisdom was communicated in secret schools and centers to individuals who were destined not only to learn but to undertake training that transformed their souls to such an extent that they developed clairvoyance and insight into higher worlds. Such individuals were then sent out as emissaries, charged with guiding and leading others. But progress consists in the fact that more and more human beings become capable, through their power of judgment and intellect, of grasping this wisdom. Hence it has become necessary for what was formerly kept secret gradually to be made publicly known.

In the course of the nineteenth century, as the result of external conditions that we shall come to know, it became necessary to allow a great deal, indeed, a very considerable amount, of knowledge of occult science to make its way into the open for the sake of the well-being and progress of humanity. In the nineteenth century the Guardians of this knowledge said to themselves that in earlier times the communications of spiritual teaching made to human beings in the religions or by other means, were able to satisfy their needs in regard to eternal truths. But the needs of humanity change. So these Guardians of the primeval wisdom were obliged to realize that in the future there would be an increasing number of human beings whose souls could no longer be satisfied by the old forms of communicating spiritual truth.

Such people can find satisfaction in anthroposophy. This new form of communication springs from observation of a need of humanity in the modern age. The Guardians of the secret knowledge were naturally aware that such conditions were inevitable in the future, but not until a certain point of time was it necessary to make actual preparation for the influx of this wisdom into humanity and to emphasize that these secrets must also be grasped by the general intelligence prevailing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This was realized in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There were few at that time who were aware of this starting point of preparation in Europe. The first Rosicrucians were those who gathered around a significant individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. It was he, Christian Rosenkreutz, who could affirm with the most convincing clarity, “From the Mysteries we have received a treasure-store of knowledge and wisdom of the super-sensible. If we adhere to this, we may hope in the future, too, to succeed in doing what was done in the past, namely, to send out individuals trained in our schools to instruct others when they have learnt and discerned the secrets of the primeval wisdom.”

This old method of promulgating the primeval wisdom was to continue, but preparation was to be made for something else as well. He, Christian Rosenkreutz, spoke as follows. He said, “A far greater number of human beings who long for the primeval wisdom will come to us and we could communicate it to them in the form in which we now possess it. But its acceptance demands belief in and recognition of our authority in a high degree—an attitude that will progressively disappear from mankind. The more men's power of judgment increases, the less will be their belief in those who teach them. Belief and trust were preconditions for the earlier form of communication.”

At the present time one would have to say, “People will come who wish to test for themselves what is communicated to them. They will insist that they wish to apply to what is told them the same logical intellect that is used for observation of the material world. They admit that something in addition to this intellect is necessary for investigation of the spiritual world, but for all that they insist upon testing things by means of this intellect.” Hence, at the beginning of our epoch it was necessary to clothe the primeval wisdom in new forms. The work of the Rosicrucians was to give expression to the primeval wisdom in a form enabling it to be acceptable to the modern mind and the modern soul.

What is theosophy when presented according to the Rosicrucian method? Theosophy in itself is always and everywhere the same. A Rosicrucian theosophist today is a theosophist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the forms it takes, its wisdom is adapted exactly to what human beings desire and need to understand. What is the specific characteristic of our time? The course of the evolution of humanity was such that men were obliged to become ever more familiar with outer, physical reality. Look back into olden times, for example into the ancient Egyptian culture, and you will realize with what simple measures and forces men worked, erected their buildings, satisfied their personal needs. Then think of our modern life with all its ingenious gadgets for physical comfort. What tremendous spiritual force and mental activity are expended on the physical needs of daily life! This, of course, was necessary, because the specific task of the Western world was so to shape external culture and gain such control of outer nature that the physical plane came truly under the control of the human spirit. A world such as our own needs measures different from those current in antiquity to be capable of imbibing the wisdom guarded in the secret schools.

On the other hand, when we compare the knowledge possessed by the Chaldeans and their grasp of spiritual realities with our present knowledge, the Chaldeans admittedly tower heavens high above us. Today we admire a Copernicus, a Galileo and what is recorded by external science, but this is all child's play compared with the wisdom of the ancient Chaldeans. To the modern researcher the planet Mars, for example, is an objective body whose course and movement can be measured. But the Chaldeans knew as well what forces and entities are connected with Mars, what divine will governs all this, what connection there is between these forces and man. The mystery and sway wielded by these spiritual forces were known to the Chaldeans. That is why the modern researcher is so powerless in face of the inner character of this ancient Chaldean culture. External means for its investigation are at his disposal but there are no longer any inner means. Theosophists and Rosicrucians, however, have the spiritual, esoteric possibilities for penetrating into the spirit of that ancient culture.

The great scientific authorities, of whom we read that they excavate clay cylinders and fragments covered with inscriptions of the ancient Babylonian wisdom, stand before these objects like three-year-old children facing some electrical apparatus. The researcher does not know what to make of what he excavates from such ancient sites, so penetrating, so unbounded was the spiritual knowledge current in that era. But to produce by means of the intellect and the external devices of our civilization what we justifiably admire today as evidence of the great progress made during recent centuries—this was first possible for modern science. Such an era, however, needs a different kind of thinking and perception in order to understand the spiritual. At this point, perhaps, a warning may be given. People speak so much today about higher or lower degrees of evolution, arguing about whether Buddha or Christ is the greater. But that is not the essential. Whether the Assyrian wisdom or our own is the higher is not important. We are living in the present, materialistically-minded age and the inflow of spiritual knowledge into our culture is needed in order that mankind's longing for such knowledge may be satisfied. It is the Rosicrucian wisdom that gives this knowledge to modern man in the form suitable for him. What is being said here may possibly seem rather daring, but please accept it now for what it is and later on it will become clear. As a matter of fact, Rosicrucian wisdom has been more greatly misunderstood than anything else in the world.

As time went on, the great individuality who was Christian Rosenkreutz foresaw what demands of understanding would be made by rationalistic thought and he realized that already in that period it had become necessary to promulgate all spiritual knowledge in the form demanded by the modern age. We must realize that for the Rosicrucians it was much more difficult than for any similar movement of an earlier period, because their initial activity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries took place at the time when materialism was approaching apace. All modern achievements such as steam engines, telegraphy and so on were bound to place human beings firmly on the physical plane. The Rosicrucians were obliged to work for an era when men's thinking would be guided by mathematical principles. They were obliged to make their preparations with this in view and hence were entirely misunderstood. For this reason one cannot be informed truly about Rosicrucianism by what is said about it in public. Nothing of what was cultivated in true Rosicrucianism is to be found in literature. The deepest spiritual truths cultivated by the Rosicrucians were interpreted in such a mistaken way as to suggest that spiritual phenomena can be produced in alchemists' cellars with the help of retorts and so forth! This conception of alchemy gave rise to the materialistic caricature of Rosicrucianism that is presented in literature today. The task of the Rosicrucians was to formulate a science by means of which they would be able to let their wisdom flow gradually into the world.

From all this you will realize that when we present theosophy to people today it must be Rosicrucian theosophy. By using an older terminology we could win over a certain number of people, but they would necessarily be individuals who are connected with every fiber of their being with the modern world and its culture. There are egoists who withdraw from the tasks of the present age. We, however, wish to take modern life and its forms of expression seriously. We must accept our epoch as it actually is but endeavor to influence it spiritually. This is the conception that Rosicrucian theosophy must have of its task.

In the course of this Congress there will have been opportunity for you to realize what a fruitful effect theosophy can have, for example, in the sphere of medicine. Suppose medicine continues to develop along materialistic lines. If you could see forty years ahead you would be horrified by the brutality of the procedures to be adopted by medicine, by the forms of death with which medical science will set out to cure human beings. How does medical science today investigate the effects of its remedies? By means of the human material it finds in the hospitals and elsewhere; therefore, by outer observation. But spiritual wisdom, by its very nature, penetrates into the inner relationships of the spiritual, knows what in the physical world corresponds to the spiritual. A completely new creation of all medical science will proceed from what is called Rosicrucianism. But that is only one domain.

Compare the complicated conditions of our existence today with those of the ancient Chaldeans. Think what an amount of intellectual energy and what complicated cooperative measures are essential to enable a check issued in New York to be cashed in Tokyo. An era of this character, which has spread such culture over the globe, needs methods of spiritual activity different from those of earlier epochs. Occultists are aware of this. Modern thinking is simply unable to cope with and master the chaos of outer conditions and tasks in which man is becoming so deeply involved. Thinking itself will become rigid. Today we are living in an age of transition but thinking will soon no longer be sufficiently fluid and flexible to grapple with and transform the complicated conditions of life.

Why do we promulgate theosophy? In order to achieve practical effects. Theosophical thoughts make thinking more elastic, more flexible, enable a more rapid survey of far-reaching circumstances. Rosicrucianism has therefore to fertilize every domain of life. To realize the practical effect of theosophy you may turn to my essay, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. It is impossible for you to under-stand its content without Rosicrucian theosophy, which must not remain theory but become a helping hand in practical life. This element is simply not present in the earlier forms of theosophy. The role of Rosicrucian theosophy or occultism is to satisfy the spiritual longings of men and to enable spirit to flow into the daily round of their duties. Rosicrucian theosophy is not there for the salon or for the hermit, but for the whole of human culture.

Wisdom is always and forever one. But just as the individual man lives and evolves to further and further stages, so too does humanity as a whole. For this reason the forms of the wisdom revealed to men must change in order to be in keeping with the course of their evolution. The great teachers of humanity are working among us today, as always. We, too, who are present here as souls, were incarnated in earlier times, have lived through all the periods of evolution, the Greco-Latin, the Egypto-Chaldean and epochs still further back in time, in order to benefit from constantly new achievements and acquire constantly new knowledge. Think of a soul in an Egyptian incarnation, surrounded by the gigantic pyramids and mysterious sphinxes. What a different effect all this had upon the soul from what surrounds it today! For as long as the earth has something new to display—and the earth is forever making progress—for so long does the soul undergo constantly new experiences.

The soul does not incarnate on the earth in order to please the gods, but in order to learn! The face of the earth was quite different when the soul incarnated for the first time and will again be different when the final incarnation is reached. We return to this earth when, and not until, there is something new to be learned here. That is why the interval between two incarnations is lengthy. Only think how greatly Northern Europe, merely as landscape, differed from what it is today at the time when Christ was on the earth. We do not come to the earth twice without being able to learn something new. Everything in the world is in process of evolution, but evolution means the elaboration and later manifestation of the new.

Not only men but all beings evolve. We have to seek the way to beings who are at stages of evolution higher than that reached by man, although in this life he comes into relation with them in many ways. These beings are also subject to the law of evolution and just as our souls were different thousands of years ago, so, too, in earlier epochs, were the beings now revealing themselves. They also are perpetually learning. When we are speaking of one of the higher beings who has descended to our world in order to reveal to us with the resources of the spirit the mysteries of the higher worlds, we must affirm that that is a sublime art that must be mastered. Even a god has to master it.

Human beings of today must be addressed differently from those who were living ten thousand years ago. The higher beings, like men, undergo evolution, and what I have said during this Congress about the event of Damascus indicates how they evolve. A man with spiritual vision sees not only the outer environment but also everything that belongs to the spiritual aura of the earth. Just as human beings are surrounded by an aura, so, too, are the cosmic bodies. A clairvoyant is eventually able to perceive the aura of a cosmic body. What a clairvoyant would have seen in the earth's aura two thousand years ago would be quite different from what would have been seen a thousand years ago and different again from what would be seen by one who has developed clairvoyance today. Just as the picture of outer nature changes, so, too, does the picture of the spiritual world into which vision penetrates.

I shall now refer to an event of which I shall speak again later on, namely, the event of the burning thorn bush and the proclamation from Sinai. What happened to Moses at that time? His clairvoyant power had developed to a certain stage and he beheld the super-sensible reality in the physical phenomenon. An individual who was not clairvoyant would simple have seen a happening in nature. Moses, however, beheld in the burning thorn bush the Being who proclaimed Himself as “I AM the I AM.” He knew that this Being was there in very truth, that the fire was not only outer fire but harbored a spiritual reality. A Being belonging intimately to the whole further evolution of humanity, who announced His name as the “I AM the I AM,” had revealed Himself to Moses. What was it that was now known to all the pupils of Moses? In the Mystery Schools of that era they had learned that the same Being who had revealed Himself on Sinai would one day come down to the earth, live in a human body, and speak for three years in a man, Christ Jesus. This was known to the initiates. It was also known to Saul, who later became Paul. But he said to himself, “This Being exists in very truth and will come down to the earth. But I cannot conceive that the Being who revealed Himself in the burning thorn bush as Jehovah could suffer the shameful death on the Cross.” What was it that eventually convinced Saul? The event of Damascus! At the moment when he became clairvoyant and the earth's aura was visible to him, when in that aura he beheld the Christ, the living Christ, who revealed Himself as the same Being who had died on the Cross, at that moment Saul became Paul.

But that vision could not previously have been possible. Earlier than two thousand years ago Christ was not yet present in the earth's aura but He was still visibly present in the sun. Zarathustra beheld the sun surrounded by an aura he called Ahura Mazdao, the great Aura of Ormuzd. But this Being had descended, had first revealed Himself to Moses in the burning thorn bush and had then lived on earth as a man in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence Christ could say of Himself, “I am the Light of the World.” Before then, nobody could have spoken these words, because the Light of the World had not previously been present in any being.

We will study these themes until they are fully understood. Today, however, it will merely be indicated that it was not possible for the Christ Being always to reveal Himself as He did, for example, in the case of Paul. The Christ Being had first to muster the necessary power, to develop it to the point where this revelation was possible. Earlier than two thousand years ago this could not have taken place. Each soul, in each incarnation, makes progress. This is what has happened in the case of leading individualities. We must realize that Christ has not always been the same and in His distinctive ways of working we must recognize how He, too, advances from one evolutionary stage to another. It gives rise to an overwhelming feeling of exultation when a man is made aware that just as in the case of his own soul and its incarnations and progress, the spiritual beings also reach higher and higher stages and become more and more powerful. This realization gives one a living feeling of evolution. It is an essential part of Rosicrucian esotericism to show how a being such as Christ has worked both in the past and at the present time, in Moses and in Paul, and to see from this how even a Being of such sublime eminence makes progress. This gives a rise to an intimate concept of evolution.

Now let us think of a child. He is born, sees the light of the world—this is the usual expression—and in the very first years of life changes particularly quickly. Compared with the later epochs of life it is then that the course of evolution is the most rapid. Materialistic science itself could make many relevant discoveries here. When the brain is examined, which is possible by external means, it can be observed how on the top of a child's head at the place that remains soft for a considerable time, the skull bones do not close immediately and the brain itself takes shape only gradually. The function of articulation is to pro-duce an instrument for a power of which the child will only later be capable, namely, the power to think, to correlate his perceptions. A clairvoyant sees how during the very first weeks and months after birth the child is surrounded by intensely active, powerful forces belonging to the etheric body, the second member of man's constitution. We know that in an adult human being of today the dimension of this etheric body is practically the same as that of the physical body, but in a young child it still extends far beyond the physical body, especially around the head. The activity of the forces, which to a clairvoyant seems to be like a play of light, is particularly strong here. It is wonderful to see how certain forces surge up from the body below and then stream from the nape of the neck in all directions, wherever hair appears; the forces radiate in a living play of light to become an astral-etheric radiance in the child's etheric body, a radiance that fades away in the course of time. In this radiance lie the forces that create the connective tissues in the brain. The brain is formed out of spiritual substance after the child has been born. Forty to fifty streams of forces can be seen working together. The body of light is composed of these streams. A wonderful spectacle is presented by a child during the first weeks of life. This body of light gradually presses into and is then within the child's brain. To begin with, the etheric body was outside the child, surrounding the head, and was entirely primitive. This was surrounded by a body of light from which the etheric body gathered forces, and now it penetrates gradually into the child's head and remains there as the complicated etheric organism.

What is so wonderful about the process of evolution is that everything physical is produced from the spiritual, formed by the spiritual, which we then receive into ourselves. The psyche has itself fashioned the dwelling place in which it subsequently resides. So we see that what takes place in the microcosm, the little world, in the brain of a human child, also takes place in the macrocosm, the great world. Now think of an outstandingly advanced individuality, such as Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body Christ lived as soul for three years. Just as in a child the etheric body itself prepares the physical brain into which it subsequently passes, so, too, had Christ previously prepared the abode in which He was to dwell. He had to accomplish this by His own activity. To begin with He was only outwardly connected with the earth, which could not yet have received Him. The most highly evolved souls had, however, worked at the earth in such a way that the Christ was able to draw nearer and nearer, and He Himself had participated in this work. Who, then, had so transformed the body of Jesus of Nazareth and finally brought it to the stage where it was able to receive the Christ? The Christ Himself had done this! To begin with He had worked upon the body from outside and was subsequently able Himself to pass into the human being concerned.

What takes place in the microcosm also takes place in the macrocosm, and it is because the beings above us also develop that evolution is possible. It was only because Christ could reveal Himself supersensibly that He became the planetary Spirit of the Earth. The microcosmic invariably tallies with the macrocosmic.

I have not been able today to present even the first chapter of Rosicricianism to you. All I have done is to indicate how a man of the present age should learn to think and perceive. The true meaning of the mandate, “Know thyself!” lies in our following in this way the evolution of the cosmos. Where is our self? Certainly not in us alone! To think that would be egoistic. The self is formed out of, born out of the whole universe and our own ascent leads us finally to merge in the whole cosmos. The aim of self-knowledge is to give man his place in the great world in order to reveal to him there the true meaning of the word, self-knowledge.

As I said yesterday in the introductory lecture, the intention in this course is to give a picture, a kind of review of the theosophical world conception. It will be necessary to speak of a number of subjects with which many in the audience are already familiar. But only by learning of these truths from their very foundations will it be possible later on to consider higher regions.

Before beginning the actual theme, I want to speak of a matter of exceptional importance. Why is it that we must concern ourselves with theosophical ideas and theories before we can ourselves actually experience anything in the spiritual world? Many people will say, “The results of clairvoyant investigation are made known to us, but I myself cannot yet see into the spiritual world. Would it not be wiser if, instead of the results of investigation being communicated to us, I were told how I can myself develop clairvoyance? Each individual would then be able to undertake the further development himself.”

Those who are unacquainted with the principles of occult investigation may believe that it would be better if such facts had not previously been made known. But in the spiritual world there is a definite law, the significance of which we will make clear by an example. Suppose that in a certain year some properly trained clairvoyant had perceived this or that in the spiritual world. Now imagine that ten or twenty years later, another equally trained clairvoyant could see the same thing even if he had known nothing whatever about the result obtained by the first clairvoyant. If you were to believe that this could happen, you would be making a great mistake, for the truth is that a fact of the spiritual world that has once been discovered by a clairvoyant or by an occult school, cannot be investigated a second time if the would-be investigator has not first been informed that it has already been discovered. If, therefore, in the year 1900 a certain fact had been investigated and in the year 1950 another clairvoyant reaches the stage of being able to perceive the same thing, he can succeed only if he has realized that someone has already investigated and fathomed it. Therefore, already known facts in the spiritual world can be perceived only when their import has been consciously grasped as communications already made. This is the law that establishes for all epochs the foundation of universal brotherliness. It is impossible to penetrate into any domain of the spiritual world without a link having first been made with what has already been fathomed by the Elder Brothers of humanity. The spiritual world sees to it that nobody can become a law unto himself, saying, “I am not concerned with what is already there. I shall investigate only for myself.” None of the facts communicated in spiritual science today could be perceived by individuals, however highly developed and advanced, if they had not been previously known. Because a link must be there with what has already been discovered, the theosophical movement had also to be founded on this basis.

In a comparatively short time from now, many individuals will become clairvoyant, but they would be able to see only unreality, not truth, in the spiritual world if they had not heard of what had already been investigated. First one must have knowledge of these truths, such as is given by theosophy, or the science of the spirit, and only then can they be actually perceived. Even a clairvoyant must get to know what has already been discovered, and then, after conscientious training, he can perceive the facts himself. It may be said that the divine beings fertilize a faculty of seership only once in a human soul and if this single, virginal fertilization has been achieved, then other human beings must pay attention to what this first soul has discovered in order to have the right to see it themselves. This law lays the foundations of an inner, universal brotherliness, a true brotherhood of men. From epoch to epoch wisdom has passed through the occult schools and been faithfully harbored by the Masters, and we, too, must help to preserve this treasure and maintain brotherliness with those who have already achieved something if we wish to make our way into the higher regions of the spiritual world. What is striven for on the physical plane as moral law is natural law in the spiritual world.

Theosophy teaches us that everything physical or material is born out of the spiritual. But in our epoch it behooves us not to be satisfied with this bare realization of a spiritual world. That behind everything material, everything physical, there is the spiritual, is an essential, but abstract, consciousness of spirit. What is necessary is to develop definite concepts and ideas of how the spiritual becomes manifest in each domain. Today one can only guide some other individual by conscientiously ensuring that he takes all the steps leading from the external into the spiritual world.

The first kingdom to be observed among the physical kingdoms around us, is that of the minerals, the world of stones. The kingdom of the minerals is distinguished from the human kingdom, for example, by the fact that a man knows that if he has given someone else a hard blow, the latter feels pain. There is no outer evidence that a mineral feels pain from a blow. From this the conclusion is drawn that in man there is a soul that feels pleasure and suffering, but not in the mineral. We will not at the outset insist that the mineral also has a soul, because there we must already take note of the results of clairvoyant investigation. The stone as it lies before us has in it nothing of the nature of soul. But what is essential in a spiritual world conception is that observation shall be directed to the right place and not to a false one. Think of a tiny animal observing a human being but actually able to see only his fingernails. It would say that these fingernails are objects on their own, for the tiny animal cannot realize that the nails belong to and are part of an organism. When it is able to survey and see the whole, then its observation will be true. The same principle applies to the spiritual investigator and the mineral world. If you regard the stone as being something complete in itself, you are in the position of the tiny animal that takes the fingernails or the teeth to be the whole man, a complete being.

Think of the rocks on the earth. They can only be conceived as having grown out of the whole organism of the earth. But where is the being of which these rocks are parts, to which all these rocks belong? There are spiritual beings to whom the whole world of stones belongs. These beings feel happiness and pain, pleasure and suffering just as does the human soul, so that we can properly speak of a mineral soul. You must not, however, judge on the basis of mere analogies, because that might lead you to think that when a stone is smashed the mineral soul feels pain, but that is not the case. A man feels pain if one of his fingers is crushed, but in similar circumstances the mineral soul feels contentment and pleasure. The being belonging to the mineral experiences great happiness when stones are crushed, and pain when the fragments are put together again. Because in the external world, mineral fragments are constantly being separated off and put together again, pleasure and pain are continually being felt in the souls of the beings who belong to the mineral kingdom. Suppose we have salt here and a glass filled with warm water. What happens if we drop the salt into the water? To clairvoyant observation the grains of salt do not only dissolve in the water but feelings of well-being arise; actual pleasure becomes evident when the salt permeates the water in the glass. Then, when the water cools and a cube of salt crystallizes out, this causes suffering to the mineral soul. In mountain ranges where rocks have formed this is what has happened. When crystals form in the earth the process is accompanied by suffering and pain for the beings belonging basically to the mineral kingdom.

When a planet is born, collects into a coherent mass and condenses, this process causes pain and suffering to the spiritual beings involved in it. When a planet such as our earth comes into existence, the process is accompanied by pain and suffering. You may now ask me where then these beings are that the eye does not see, that feel pain and suffering, well-being and happiness, when, for example, stones are broken up by workmen in a quarry. Where are these beings? In a comparatively lofty spiritual world! The mineral substance seen by the eye is only a shadowy image of these beings. They live in a world we call the world of formlessness. Spiritual beings live in our whole mineral world-in the world of formlessness according to occult investigation. Why do we use this expression, “world of formlessness?” This will be understood at once when we turn to the world of plants.

The plant, too, is the expression of certain beings of soul. Here again we will study the results of spiritual investigation. This tells us that when, for example, in the autumn, the corn is mown and the scythe cuts through the stalks, no suffering is felt by the soul-beings whose bodies are the plants. No indeed! We must not think of suffering here because whole streams of joy and contentment weave over the area. Equally, when the animal is turned out to graze, it means happiness for the plant souls, not pain. It can be compared with the feeling experienced by a mammal when its offspring sucks its milk; this gives a feeling of bliss. What our planet furnishes on its surface in the way of nourishment for the beings inhabiting it, is, so to speak, milk for the beings that belong to the planet and have their habitation in the center of the earth. You may ask if all of them are able to find a place there. Certainly they are, because of the prevailing law of permeability. Their self-surrender, when a certain degree of maturity has been reached, means bliss for the plant soul. Pain is caused when plants are torn out of the soil. Now you. may say: Yes, but when mischievous boys and girls uselessly tear off flowers how can that possibly cause happiness to the plant soul? Would it not be much better to root out the plant altogether? How can that cause it pain? From the point of view that is valid for the physical world you are certainly right in saying this. But it must not be forgotten that these points of view are by no means always authoritative for the spiritual worlds. A person may look more handsome when he has torn out the first grey hairs that have appeared on his head but pain is caused nevertheless. It is all a matter of the point of view concerned and we cannot struggle against the occult world with moral considerations. Beings, souls—they also belong to the plants—beings and souls for which the plant world supplies the bodies. We will now try to form an idea of how happiness and suffering take their course in the plant world.

The plant world is a shadow of the spiritual world. Where, then, are the beings that belong to it? In the world of form. They are also known by different names. The spiritual beings belonging to the mineral kingdom inhabit a spiritual realm, the realm of formlessness; the spiritual beings belonging to the plants live in the realm of form.

Realm of Formlessness, Arupa or Upper Devachan.

Realm of Form, Rupa or Lower Devachan.

The souls of the minerals belong to a definite region of the spiritual world, indeed, to its upper region. This must not surprise you, for the higher the realm in which the souls live, the more thoroughly they conceal themselves. Why is the one realm called the realm of formlessness and the other the realm of form?

When a crystal is smashed it is its form alone that is destroyed. This can, however, be reconstructed somewhere else, independently of the form that was destroyed. When a salt crystal comes into existence in nature it need not necessarily do so out of another crystal. It can only arise from the substance of salt and disappear again as form. That is the characteristic of formless substance. In the case of the plant, the form cannot come into existence in the same way, out of substance, out of the formless. The plant—this is its essential characteristic—must develop out of a parental plant. The form must pass over from progenitor to offspring in the case of the souls of the beings in the realm of form; procreation takes place as the result of transmission of the form. The form alone, nothing else, is contained in the seed.

It is a superficial belief of science that there is no great difference between plant seed and animal egg. In the animal egg, form and life are transmitted from progenitor to off-spring: Life is transmitted. In the seed of the lily nothing except the form is preserved and it is transmitted to the new lily. What happens in the mineral is that the forces that, so to speak, implant the form arise in the higher realm of Devachan. In the case of the crystal, the formlessness shoots as it were into the form confronting the eye. We must, therefore, say that the whole planet upon which plant life unfolds is surrounded by collective life containing the impulse that enables the life of the plant to arise from it, and from the plant seed only the form. From the life of the old lily nothing passes over to the flower bed or flower pot in which the seed is lying. That the new lily is imbued with life is due to the fact that the seed has been received into the. universal life of our earth.

Here we come to the transition to the animal kingdom. The form alone is passed on through the seed; life arises because the seed is received into the universal life of our earth. The quality of soul in the animal is visually perceptible and it is therefore self-evident to speak of happiness and suffering, joy and pain in this case. If we are to be clear about what happiness and suffering mean in the plant kingdom, we must turn to the study of other beings because happiness and suffering are felt outside single plants; the whole organism of the earth feels them, just as when you cut a finger the pain is not in the finger itself but is led over to the whole organism. If you want to understand what pain is in the plant, you must turn to the earth as a whole in order to contact the soul of the plant there. The essential difference lies in the fact that if an animal is wounded, the pain is situated inside its skin, as is also the case with the animal nature of the human being. Here we are coming ever nearer to individualization; the higher the evolution of the kingdoms of nature ascends, the nearer we come to beings whose center is within themselves. We study the plant rightly only when we study it in connection with the earth as a whole. The animal has a soul and admittedly feels happiness and suffering within the limits of its skin. We do not actually see this soul because it is in the realm we call the astral world. The animals are creatures that have a center in themselves and their souls live in the astral realm. Thus there is a certain systematic order in our idea of the world. The mineral conceals its soul deeply, the plant less deeply and the animal less deeply still; the animal has its center in itself, in the realm that is invisible. We must look for the souls of the animals in a world other than the physical.

Thus we distinguish four kingdoms. Firstly, the realm of the visible forms of minerals, plants and animals, the physical world. Secondly, the realm where the invisible nature of the animal is to be found, the astral world. Thirdly, the realm of the plants, the souls of which are hidden in lower Devachan. Fourthly, the realm of beings whose souls are hidden in upper Devachan. The differentiation is obvious even from observation of the external world. We will now, however, turn to the results of clairvoyant investigation.

In the space occupied by the mineral as such, nothing of the nature of soul is present. This space is void of soul, black, but round about and outside it luminosity begins; further away this luminosity increases in strength. What is it? It is the etheric body of the mineral that originates in the cosmos, drawn from a part of the ether where no actual mineral exists. The cosmic soul forces of the mineral experience joy and sorrow in the space where the etheric body of the mineral is present. There suffering begins, or happiness, perhaps, anticipates the severance of stone from a quarry like a spiritual ray of light. The etheric body of the mineral encircles its physical body. It could be said that where the mineral exists as such, the etheric body has densified to such a degree that it has become physical. The difference between mineral and plant arises through the fact that the etheric body of the plant is within it, permeating every single part. The green pervading the plant is the substance described previously as being the etheric body of the mineral outside it.

But if all that could be said about the plant were that it is permeated by an etheric body, it would not blossom but only produce green leaves. When the plant begins to blossom, clairvoyant consciousness sees something spreading over and playing around it. This is the astral life, which brings about the crowning of the growth. The green plant grows and finally something new, the astral element, spreads over and plays around it but never penetrates into it.

The animal has spiritually within it what hovers around the plant. When what hovers around the plant is inside the skin, the being is an animal. What hovers above the plant, the astral element, surrounds the whole earth. It is the collective astrality of the earth that hovers like smoke above the plant when it is about to flower. Happiness and suffering are not seated within the plant itself but are felt by the earth. The animal itself experiences happiness and suffering; the astral body within the animal weaves and is astir in the whole astrality of our earth. The mineral kingdom is as though embedded in an etheric world and has its etheric body around it. The plant is permeated by an etheric body and because the plant world is embedded in an astral body that is part of the collective astrality of the earth, pain and happiness are experienced outside the plant itself. The being that is not only swathed by the astral element but can actually take it into itself, is the animal.

Thus we have now surveyed the three kingdoms of the world surrounding us and their connection with the higher worlds.

Man is a little world in himself, the product of all that surrounds him. What we have discovered today we will use tomorrow in order to comprehend the structure of the human being.

In the lecture yesterday I endeavored to give a general survey of the different manifestations and functions of the life of soul in the world around us. Today we will study the nature and being of man himself in greater detail, referring as well to a great deal of what is already known. We will think, to begin with, of facts connected with the nature of man that form part of the picture I was able to give you yesterday.

To begin with, in respect of his lowest body, the human being seems as if he had grown out of the first kingdom that surrounds us, that of the minerals. What immediately catches our eye when a man is standing in front of us, is the most tangible part of all, namely, his physical body. But the occultist knows that this is only one member of his constitution. It is easy to form an erroneous idea of this physical body when it is taken for granted that the physical body is what can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. That would be as mistaken as it would be to take hydrogen for water. The higher members of man's constitution are intermingled with his physical body. As it confronts us, this physical body is already permeated by the other members of man's nature, so that the structure of flesh and bones before us cannot without further ado be called the physical body. This physical body of man consists of the same substances and forces that are to be found in the mineral world outside, interwoven with consummate art in the structure of the human body. That this body looks and feels as it does is due to the fact that the other members of man's nature and constitution are mingled with it. The body of man seen by the eye is not, properly speaking, the physical body. The physical body as such is present when the human being has gone through the gate of death. The remaining corpse is the real physical body, the body freed from all the higher members of man's nature. When it is left to itself this physical body follows laws quite other than those followed until the moment of death. Before then, it has, in truth, been consistently repudiating the laws of physical chemistry. In earthly existence the body of man would be a perpetual corpse if it were not permeated by the etheric body that throughout life fights against the decay of the physical body. The ether or life body is the second member of man's being.

We will now take it for granted that both the plant and the animal have etheric bodies. Nevertheless, in a certain respect the human being differs from the animal in his etheric body as well, and it is this difference that is of particular interest to us. In what respect does the etheric body of man differ from that of the animal? First let us ask how clairvoyant consciousness is able to acquire knowledge of man's etheric body. To answer this question we must describe what clairvoyance is.

An individual who has developed a certain faculty of clairvoyance has also acquired such mastery of his mental activity that he is able to focus his attention upon or divert it from something with far greater strength than before. If you were to expect an average human being to be able to control his attention to the extent of suggesting away a physical form in front of him, you would find that it would be possible in the rarest instances. A clairvoyant, however, is quite capable of doing this. The space otherwise occupied by the physical body is then, for the clairvoyant, filled through and through by this etheric body. It has approximately the human form in the head, torso and shoulders, but the lower the area in the body, the less similar it is to the human figure.

The etheric body of an animal is different from its physical body. The etheric body of the horse, for example, extends far beyond its physical form. If you could see the etheric body of an elephant clairvoyantly you would be amazed at its gigantic proportions. In the case of the human form, the lower the level the greater is the difference between the etheric body and the physical form. Otherwise, in a certain respect, left and right correspond in the physical body and in the etheric body. The physical heart lies slightly to the left; the corresponding organ in the etheric body is the etheric heart, which lies to the right. The greatest difference, however, between the physical and the etheric body is that the etheric body of a man is female and the etheric body of a woman, male. This is a fact of great significance and many riddles of human nature are explicable on the basis of this finding of occult investigation. Thus, in the case of the human being there is a kind of correspondence, and in the case of the animal a great difference, between this second member of man's nature and the first.

Of man's astral body it is possible to have a much clearer idea. It is the third member of his constitution. The etheric body of man is a reality to one who is clairvoyant; to a materialist it is simply an illusion. Anatomists and physiologists investigate man's physical body only. But in this physical body there is something—the blood and nerves—that is much more closely related to man's consciousness. This consciousness is aware of his happiness, suffering and joy, all of which take effect in the space filled by his physical body. The bearer of these experiences is invisible to the individual concerned but it is visible to clairvoyant consciousness as a luminous cloud. This is the astral body. It differs greatly from the etheric body.

Movement in the physical body cannot be compared with the extraordinary mobility of the etheric body. In a healthy human being the color of this etheric body is that of the blossom of a young peach tree. Everything in the etheric body gleams and glitters in shades of rosy red, dark and light, becoming a radiant white. The etheric body has a definite boundary, although this fluctuates. The astral body is quite different. It displays the greatest possible variety of colors and changing forms, like a cloud floating by with ever changing movement. The colors and forms that appear in the cloud are expressions of the feelings and experiences that play between one human being and another. If a clairvoyant sees a bluish-red color in the astral body, he perceives love streaming between human beings, but another time he will also see the feelings of animosity that pass between individuals. As a man's activity of soul is constantly changing, so, too, do the colors and forms change in the astral body, appearing and disappearing in a multicolored play.

The fourth member of man's constitution is the bearer of the ego. Thus we have his physical body, which in external nature is comparable with the mineral, then his etheric body, which is comparable with the plant, and then his astral body, which is common to both animal and man. The astral body in man, however, is far more mobile than it is in the animal.

The ego bearer, the fourth member of man's nature, is seen as a kind of oval form, the source of which can be traced to the anterior part of the head. It is visible there to the clairvoyant as a bluish, luminous orb. A kind of bluish sheen streams out from this orb and passes into the human being. When, but not until, the clairvoyant can also suggest away a man's astral body, he is able to perceive the ego bearer. Man has the other three bodies in common with the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of nature. But the ego bearer distinguishes him from these kingdoms and he becomes thereby the crown of creation.

In studying the fourfold nature of man we have actually been envisaging the dowry he has received from the higher worlds, no matter what his stage of evolution may be. The fact that he has the fourfold constitution of which we have spoken makes him man. Not until the “I,” the ego, works on the three bodies does his own task begin in the real sense. Whether the development achieved by a human being has reached a higher or lower stage depends upon how effectively he has worked upon the lower members of his constitution. The ego begins first of all to work upon the astral body. The effect of this work differs depending upon whether the individual concerned has reached only a low stage of development or is a highly evolved personality such, for example, as Schiller. The one has achieved less than the other in the process of transforming his astral body. This inner work upon oneself is known in occultism as purification, cleansing or catharsis. In this way the ego works at the perfecting of the astral body. In every human being, therefore, it will be found that the astral body is twofold. One part has been worked upon and purified, not so the other. Let us now suppose that the ego continues to work unswervingly upon the astral body. If this is the case, the individual concerned will gradually reach the stage of no longer having to force himself to do what is good, because it will become habit. There is obviously a difference when an individual is obeying a command, or has so much love in him that willy-nilly he will do what is good, meaningful and beautiful. If an individual is simply obeying a command, his ego is indeed working upon his astral body, but if doing the good becomes a habit, then the ego is working upon the etheric body as well.

To understand how the ego works upon the etheric body we will think of an example. When something or other is explained to you and you have understood it, then the ego has worked into the astral body. But if day after day you repeat a prayer, perhaps the Lord's Prayer, you are working into the etheric body because of the repetition every day; the soul is exercising the same activity over and over again. Repetition is an entirely different matter from a momentary understanding. We will clarify our minds as to how, in the latter case, the ego works upon the astral body and, in the former, upon the etheric body through repetition.

Think of the growth of a plant. The living seed produces the stalk and leaf after leaf; constantly new green leaves are added. This is possible because the plant is endowed with an etheric body and the underlying, active principle of the etheric body is repetition. Wherever repetition occurs, an etheric body is at work. The culminating feature of the plant, the blossom, is the product of a different principle, namely, the overshadowing astral body. Culmination, therefore, is brought about by astrality. This can also be observed in the structure of man's physical body. The spine with its numerous vertebrae is an expression of the etheric body in the physical body. Now think of man's head, of the brain. There you have the culmination, the work of the astral body in the physical stature. Spiritually, this is the same process as the manifestation of understanding resulting from the effect made upon the astral body; activity generated through daily repetition of the same prayer or meditative exercise is the product of work upon the etheric body. The essence of meditation is that through repetition it has an effect not only upon the astral body but also upon the etheric body. The reason why the effect made by the great religious teachers has been so dynamic is because they have imparted to humanity principles embodying a power that works ever onward. The etheric body of man is also twofold; one part has been worked upon by the ego, although in the average individual still to a limited extent, while the other part has not yet been worked upon at all.

There is still a third possibility for man. He can work from his ego into the physical body. This is the hardest task of all. Man has already worked continuously upon his physical body unconsciously, but not from his ego. This is possible only for the most advanced individuals.

We have thus studied the four lower members of man's constitution and have been made aware that three higher members are products of the transformation of the lower members as the result of the work of the ego. In this work upon the three lower members there is considerable difference in that it proceeds either consciously or unconsciously—unconsciously, that is to say, without the individual concerned being aware of it. The transformation occurs perhaps through the study and contemplation of works of art, pictures, and so forth, or through pious devotion and prayer. But these individuals are not conscious that they are working upon their astral and etheric bodies; conscious work begins at a comparatively late state. We have therefore to distinguish between conscious and unconscious work upon the lower members of man's being. His astral body is twofold; one part is the product of unconscious activity, the other of conscious effort. The part of the astral body that was worked upon unconsciously by the ego is called the sentient soul, which today is finished and complete in man. What was worked upon the etheric body unconsciously from the ego is the intellectual or mind soul. What has been worked upon in the physical body, unconsciously for long ages, is the consciousness or spiritual soul. Thus in man we distinguish physical body, etheric body, astral body and the ego. The ego, working unconsciously upon the astral body produces the sentient soul, upon the etheric body, the intellectual or mind soul, upon the physical body, the consciousness or spiritual soul. We have, therefore, spoken of six, or rather seven members present in man's nature because he has worked unconsciously upon his own nature and constitution.

Now the conscious work begins. What comes into existence as a result of it? Spirit self, or manas, is the outcome of what a man consciously instils into his astral body; what he consciously instils into his etheric body, but this is dependent upon occult training, is known as buddhi or life spirit. What happens if the ego eventually becomes able to work consciously into the physical body, to inculcate forces into the physical body itself? Through occult training this can actually be brought about consciously through the breathing process but there must be great caution and sensitivity of procedure, for through false methods of training such as are often given in public literature, a European body can be seriously harmed; knowledge of what is suitable for the constitution of a modern human being is essential. Through a conscious method of breathing the physical body can be transformed by the ego into atman or spirit man.

Man was a fourfold being when he assumed earthly form. In his first incarnation on earth he had already begun to work upon his own being through the ego. In the course of the following incarnations he has developed, unconsciously, the three functional aspects of the soul: sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul, consciousness or spiritual soul. We shall subsequently learn how the conscious transformation is achieved of physical, etheric and astral bodies into the three higher members. Meanwhile, you have heard how the sevenfold being of man evolves through the incarnations. The four members, physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, form the so-called sacred quaternary that was revered in all occult schools and with which a sacred trinity was allied, consciously forming a sevenfoldness or tenfoldness. We have thus a picture before us of man who has within him everything that is out-spread around him but which he transcends by virtue of his ego bearer.

We will now study the human being in waking life and in sleep in order to learn how the bodies are connected. What is happening when joy and pain in a man are stilled, when his consciousness sinks into sleep? His astral body and ego are then outside his physical and etheric bodies. In the state of sleep something striking happens to man. In sleep at night he has descended as it were to the level of the plant by day. He has become a twofold being; his physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed and his astral body and ego are outside. You may now ask whether it can be said that man is a plant while he is asleep. No, but man and plant then consist of the same combination of bodies. On our earth a being with a physical body and an etheric body only is a plant. When an astral body and ego are present, the physical and etheric bodies change. In the plant there are no nerve strands, and it is only a physical body in which there is an ego, that has warm blood. The higher animals must be regarded as degenerate forms of the original man. In the physical body the ego comes to expression in the blood, the astral body in the nerves, the etheric body in the glandular system and the physical nature of man in his own body. If, therefore, the astral body is the creator of the system of nerves, which is actually the case, this system of nerves is in a doleful situation, for during sleep it is abandoned by its creator. Not so the glandular system, for the etheric body remains with it. But the blood system of the physical and etheric bodies is faithlessly forsaken by the ego during the night. The physical body can exist on its own, because the physical nature remains the same, as does the glandular system, since the etheric body remains in the physical body during sleep. The system of nerves, however, is forsaken by its master. We will now ask clairvoyant consciousness what is then happening in the physical body? To the extent to which man's astral body goes out of the physical and etheric bodies during the night, to that same extent a “divine-spiritual” astral body moves into the bodies lying in the bed. The same applies to the blood system; a divine-spiritual ego enters into it and provides for its maintenance. In the night, too, man is a fourfold being but beings of a higher order take possession of the two bodies remaining in the bed. When man's astral body and ego return in the morning to his etheric and physical bodies, his own astral body expels a being of greater power. The same happens in the case of the blood system. Man's ego drives out the divine-spiritual ego that has provided for the blood system during the night.

Divine-spiritual beings are present in our environment all the time. By day they must withdraw, just as we ourselves withdraw during the night. These divine-spiritual beings sleep by day, whilst human beings sleep by night. In the evening a divine-spiritual ego and a divine-spiritual astral body draw into the physical and etheric bodies of the man asleep in bed and leave these bodies in the morning. The process in man is exactly the reverse. In the evening he abandons his bodies and in the morning resumes possession of them. Even in religions a feeling has remained that the gods sleep by day. There are countries where the churches are shut at midday because the gods are then most deeply asleep.

We will now think about what is outside man's body at night, namely, the astral body and the ego. We know that desires, urges and passions are rooted in the astral body but during the night man is not aware of them. Why is this? It is because at the present stage of evolution man's astral body and ego have no organs that would make this awareness possible. Man as he is at present can perceive only by means of physical organs. There are around man as many worlds as he has organs to perceive them. If he has one organ more, a new world reveals itself to him. His astral body, if he has not yet become clairvoyant, has no organs, hence during the night he cannot be aware of anything. It is easy to imagine that during sleep he may be without senses. There are blind people and also people in whom other senses are lacking. No world is present for one who is unable to use his senses. Hence, in the morning, when a man can again make use of his physical senses, he becomes aware of the world around him. But at death it is different. Through the whole of life the etheric body and the physical body remain connected with each other; at death, the etheric body, for the first time as a rule, abandons the physical body. The moment of death is therefore described by those who have knowledge of the subject as the moment when a retrospect of the whole past life passes like a panorama before the human being. What is the explanation of this? It is because the etheric body is the bearer of memory and this memory now becomes free. As long as the etheric body is in the physical body it cannot unfold all its power but only as much as the physical instrument permits. Now, however, at death the etheric body becomes free of the physical body and can unfold what has been inscribed in it during life. This panorama can also arise as the result of a shock but in that case the man concerned must not lose consciousness as he does at death. The shock may be caused by danger of death. But this is an exceptional case.

Now you may ask how long this tableau lasts. The time varies a great deal in human beings. Speaking generally, it can be said that the tableau lasts for as long as the individual concerned could stay awake during life without being overcome by sleep—twenty hours, fifty, sixty to eighty hours. The extreme limit of time during which waking consciousness can be sustained is approximately that of the duration of this panorama. The retrospect persists for as long as this. Then it fades away and a clairvoyant sees how the etheric body detaches itself at the same time—not entirely, however, and that is the important point. The individual concerned takes with him an essence, an extract of his etheric body and with it the fruits of his last life. He ascends, retaining the essence of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego until he also lays aside his astral body. He has now laid aside two corpses, and then he passes into the spiritual world.

Tomorrow we shall study the life after death and the entry into the devachanic world.

Yesterday we heard about what takes place at the moment of death, how the etheric body, the astral body and ego bearer pass out of the physical body and the tableau of memory is arrayed before the soul. An intrinsic feature of this tableau is that the events present themselves simultaneously and provide a review in the form of a kind of panorama. The essential point, however, is that it is perceived as a picture. Events in physical life are connected with happiness or pain but there are no such experiences during the first few days after death. The tableau of memories is an entirely objective picture. Let us try to make this clear by means of an example. We see ourselves in a fatal, agonizing situation and follow the course it takes, but there is no experience of pain. It is like a picture at which we are looking, which, let us say, depicts martyrdom. We do not feel the pain that is involved, but merely see the event objectively. The same applies to the memory tableau after death. It appears directly the etheric body emerges, frees itself from the physical body and then dissolves in the universal cosmic ether. The extract, or essence containing the fruit of the past life, remains.

There now begins for the soul an essentially different period, the period of breaking its attachment to the physical world. The best way to think of this is to remind ourselves that for an occultist, urges and desires are realities. What is contained in the astral body is not nullified after death when the physical body has been laid aside, but all the urges and desires are present. An individual who was a bon vivant during his life does not, at death, lose his desire for tasty foods, for desire clings to the astral body and he has lost only the physical equipment of palate, tongue and so forth, by means of which his greed can be satisfied. His condition—the same applies in different circumstances—is comparable with that of someone suffering from terrible thirst without any possibility of quenching it. He suffers from these longings and from having to forego the prospect of satisfaction. The purpose of this suffering is to realize what it means to have desires that can be satisfied only through physical instruments. This condition is called kamaloka, the realm of desires, where habits are broken. It lasts for a third of the time spent by a human being between birth and death; perhaps it may be possible later on to go into the matter with greater exactitude. So if somebody dies at the age of sixty, it can be said that he spends twenty years, a third of his past life, in kamaloka. As a rule, therefore, kamaloka lasts until a man has rid himself of all the desires that still link him with the physical plane. This is one aspect of the period of kamaloka, but we will study it from still another.

What a human being experiences in the physical body is of value to him because he evolves to higher and higher stages as the result of what he achieves on earth. That is the essential point. On the other hand, between birth and death there are many inducements for individuals to create hindrances to their development, for example, everything that we do to injure our fellowmen. Every time when, at the cost of our fellowmen, we provide satisfaction for our own aims or embark for self-seeking reasons on a project that in some way affects the world, we create a hindrance to our development: Suppose we give someone a box on the ear. The physical and moral pain connected with it is a hindrance to our development. This hindrance would cling to us for all our subsequent lives in future epochs if we did not expunge it from the world. During the kamaloka period an impetus is given to a man to get rid of these hindrances to his development. During the period of kamaloka the individual concerned lives over his whole life in backward order, three times as quickly. The significant characteristic of the astral world, of kamaloka, is that things appear as mirror images; this is the confusing element for a pupil when he enters the astral world. For example, he must read the number 346 as 643; he must reverse everything when he is looking into the astral world. So it is, too, in the case of all passions.

Suppose that as the result of genuine training or of pathological conditions, someone becomes clairvoyant. To begin with he sees his own urges and passions streaming out of him; they appear to him in the form of varied shapes and figures and approach him in rays from all sides. Whoever becomes clairvoyant in the astral realm, either in a well-regulated or irregular way, immediately sees these figures, which in the form of goblins or demonic beings, rush upon him. This is a distressing experience, especially for individuals who become clairvoyant but know nothing of it. It will become less and less infrequent because we are living today in a stage of evolution when in a number of people the eyes for sight of the spiritual world are opening. This must also be said in order that those who have the experience shall not be alarmed. Spiritual science is there in order to lead human beings into the spiritual world. For many who become clairvoyant this process is fraught with much unhappiness of soul because they are ignorant of the facts and conditions. They see things in the astral world as mirror images and they see other things too in the spiritual world. In the physical world, when a hen lays an egg, you see the hen first and then the egg; astrally you see the process of the egg going back into the hen. Everything is experienced in reverse order.

Think of a man who dies at the age of sixty and then, in kamaloka, comes to the point when, at the age of forty he gave someone a box on the ear. Now, in kamaloka, he experiences everything that the other person experienced; he is literally within the body of the other. Thus, a man lives his life in backward order to his birth. But he does not experience pain only, he also experiences the happiness, the joy he has given to others. Little by little the soul discards the hindrances to its development and evolution and must be thankful to the wise guidance that makes compensation possible. Together with the will to make compensation, the soul receives something like a token, an impulse of will, to make reparation for what hinders its development, and in the coming life it is able to do this. We realize, therefore, that the objective tableau is something altogether different from the retrospective experiences in kamaloka. In kamaloka a man experiences exactly what the other person felt as the result of his behavior; he experiences the other side of his own deeds. But not only has this cross to be experienced. What has been experienced here (in physical life) as pain, is experienced in yonder world as happiness and joy—happiness and joy, therefore, as the opposite of what they were in the physical world. The purpose of kamaloka is to impart to the soul what the tableau of memory cannot impart, namely, the experiences of pain and joy in retrospect.

When kamaloka has been lived through, a kind of third corpse is discarded. The physical corpse was the first to be discarded, then the etheric corpse, which dissolves in the cosmic ether, and now the astral corpse is laid aside. This astral corpse comprises whatever from a man's astral body has not yet been purified and regulated by his ego. What was once his as the bearer of his urges and passions and has not been transformed and spiritualized by his ego, frees itself after the period of kamaloka. On his further path the human being takes with him an extract of his astral body: firstly, the sum total of all the good will impulses, and secondly, what he has transformed through his ego. Whatever urges he has ennobled into beauty, goodness and morality form the extract of his astral body. At the end of the kamaloka period the human being consists of the ego and around it he has laid, as it were, the extracts of the astral body and of the etheric body, the good impulses of will.

There now begins for a man a new condition, namely a life free from sorrow, the spiritual life of Devachan. It is encouraging when the occultist experiences these truths as realities and then finds them again in the sacred records and scripts. An example is this sentence in the New Testament: “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” This is an indication of the experience of living the course of life in backward order; it is an example of a sublime moment when studying the sacred records of religion. You must understand me correctly here. An occultist does not swear by any original record or authority. The facts of the spiritual world alone are conclusive as far as he is concerned, but the value of the original records dawns upon him anew. Spiritual science is not based upon any original record or religion but upon the investigation of spiritual facts. The foundation of all spiritual science is objective investigation. Then, if the content of the original records proves to be identical, the occultist will be in a position to value them truly.

Life now begins in Devachan, in the Spiritland, the “World of the Spirit.” This spiritual world can at all times be seen; although it is actually entered for the first time at death, it is always present. Later on we shall hear about the methods by means of which it can be observed. It is difficult to describe this spiritual world because our words are coined for the physical world. Hence, it can be described only by using analogies. Here, in our terrestrial world, we have the solid earth upon which we move about, fluidity, a sphere of air and the whole permeated by warmth. You can form an idea of the Spiritland by means of analogy. A solid land can be found there, formed in a remarkable way. It is the “continental” region of Devachan, containing the archetypal forms of everything mineral. You know that where a mineral appears, a clairvoyant sees nothing in the space concerned; the space is hollowed out and round-about the mineral are the spiritual forces that appear to clairvoyant sight rather like etheric figures of light. Try to visualize a crystal. When consciousness is raised into the spiritual world, the physical substance is not the important thing; what is important are the spiritual forces visible round about it. The crystal cube presents itself to the clairvoyant in negative. The forms in our physical world form a solid soil in Devachan. There is, of course, a great deal else in Devachan. All life on earth and its distribution among the different plants, animals and humans appears to the seer as the fluid element of the spiritual world, like the sea and water systems of our earth. This flowing life in Devachan cannot, however, be satisfactorily compared with our rivers and seas but far rather with the blood that flows through the human body. This is the “oceanic” and the “fluid” region of Devachan. The solid and fluidic regions do not appear in stages but in a relationship similar to that between land and sea here on earth.

The third region is comparable with our air. This region of Devachan is formed of that of which our feelings and those of animals consist. It is the sum total of whatever is present in the astral realm. Flowing pain, flowing joy is the substantiality in Devachan that can be compared to the air on earth. Picture to yourselves a clairvoyant looking from Devachan at a battle. Watching it physically you would see soldiers, guns and so forth, but the clairvoyant would see more than the physical figures of human beings and physical weapons. He would see the passions of the fighters arrayed in opposition. From Devachan you would see what is present in the souls of those involved in the battle, how passion is hurled against passion. Like a terrible tempest raging among high mountains—that, approximately, is how such a battle would appear to a clairvoyant looking from Devachan. But loving feelings are also seen from there; they pervade the airy sphere of Devachan like a sound of wonderful sweetness. Thus we have named three regions—solid, flowing and airy—and have compared them with those of our earth.

Just as warmth pervades the three lower regions in our physical world, so does one common element pervade the three regions of Devachan that have been named. What pervades everything is the substance of our thoughts, which live there as forms and beings. What the human being experiences here in the way of thoughts is only a shadow image of the thoughts in their reality. Think of an outstretched canvas with living beings and figures behind it; on the canvas, however, you would be able to see only their images. This is exactly how the thoughts familiar to man in the physical world are related to what thoughts are in Spiritland. There they are beings with which one can associate and which pervade the whole sphere of Devachan as states of warmth. It is into this world that a man passes. During this life after death he has a definite feeling of the moment when he enters Devachan.

It must also be stated that to the extent to which the human being in kamaloka has broken away from physical connections, to that extent his consciousness lights up again. After the clear tableau of his life, a darkening of consciousness begins during postmortem existence, its intensity depending upon the strength of desire for physical life. But the more the human being breaks his attachment to physical things, the clearer does his darkened consciousness become. In Devachan a man's experiences are conscious, not dreamlike; all events are experiences in Devachan. We will speak later of how the relevant organs are formed.

A human being knows with exactitude when he enters the spiritual world. The first impression he has of Devachan is that he is seeing the form of the physical body of the previous life outside his ego, his “I.” This body is, of course, incorporated into the “continental” region of the spiritual world and belongs to the solid land of Devachan. When in physical life, you say, “I do this,” you affirm that you are living in your physical body and hence say “I” to it; not so in Devachan. You are then outside the physical body but in its form you become conscious of it when you enter Devachan and you say to it, “That art thou!” You no longer say “I” of your physical body. This is an incisive, significant event for the soul, which now realizes, “I am now no longer in the physical but in the spiritual world.” Hence you no longer speak of your physical body as “I,” but you say, “That art thou!” These words from the Vedanta philosophy, Tat twam asi, are based upon this experience. Utterances of this kind in Eastern philosophy represent facts of the spiritual world. When the Vedanta teaches the pupil to meditate on the “That art thou,” it means that already in this life, he should awaken in himself those ideas and conceptions that will arise in him when he enters Devachan. Genuine meditative formulae are actually “photographs” of facts of the spiritual world, and the Tat twam asi is the boundary sign or signal that one is about to enter the spiritual world. We learn gradually to contemplate objectively, without sympathy or antipathy, what is connected with our own physical lives, like pictures at which we gaze.

The soul's experiences in connection with the flowing life of Devachan are again different. In the physical world, life is distributed among the many individual beings. In Devachan, life manifests as a single whole. We encounter there the one all-embracing life, and perception of it is of great intensity, for in this uniform life experiences are not contained as abstractions. Just think of how everything introduced into life by the great founders of religion is in turn received by man into his astral and etheric bodies; such truths are experienced again in Devachan as a source of exaltation. What had flowed from the founders of religion into the individual incarnations—and the most valuable knowledge is seated in the etheric body—is an experience facing you in Spiritland. Everything that had streamed into the physical life is present before you in great, impressive pictures. You experience in Devachan what unites human beings and promotes harmony among them; what divides us, what is alien to us here, we bring into unison in yonder realm. The pleasures and sufferings in which we are so strongly involved here are made manifest to us there as wind and weather. We experience in pictures or images around us what we formerly experienced inwardly; it is now the airy sphere around us. What we feel personally in physical life is experienced in yonder world in connection with the totality. We only feel joy in connection with the totality of joy, pain in connection with the totality of suffering. Thus, the importance of our personal joy and suffering for the totality is made manifest. Such is the knowledge concerning joy and suffering that we acquire in the life after death. We live there with thoughts that are realities.

Now we ask how man's being is affected by this life within the whole in Devachan. Let us clarify this by means of a comparison. What enables man to have sight in the physical world? The fact that light comes to him and forms the organ for its reception. Goethe said with deliberate purpose, “The eye is formed by the light for the light.” The truth of this is confirmed by the fact that if animals go to live in dark caves, their eyes may degenerate, and other organs, for instance, the organs of touch that are essential there, develop greater sensitivity. The organ of perception is created by the relevant external element. If there were no sun there would be no eye; the light has produced the eye. Our organism is a product of the elements surrounding it; everything physical in us has been created by the surrounding world. Similarly, in Devachan the spiritual organs in man are built by the spiritual environment. During the time in Devachan, a man takes in something from the life of his environment, and from the elements around him builds for himself a kind of spirit organism. In Devachan he feels always as if he were a being in process of becoming, in whom member after member of his spirit organism is coming to birth. Now think of this. All awareness of productivity is accompanied by a feeling of blessedness, as indeed is the case in physical life, too! Think of an artist, or an inventor. This growing and becoming give rise to a feeling of blessedness in a human being as he passes through Devachan, and there he creates for himself the spiritual archetype of a man. He has already often done this whenever he sojourned in Devachan after death, but every time there is built into this archetype, as something new, what the man has taken with him into Devachan as the fruit of his last life, as an extract in his etheric body.

When man entered Devachan for the first time, he had already created spiritually an archetype that then densified to become physical man. Now, when he has lived through many incarnations, he takes with him every time into Devachan the extract of the past life, and then, in accordance with it, he creates the archetype of a new man. This operation takes a long time; today we will speak of it only in general terms.

Thus, it is by no means fortuitous that the human being appears on the earth in successive incarnations and passes through Devachan ever and again. The earth reveals a different countenance to him each time and new experiences are available in external culture and through relationships of every kind. The soul does not return to the physical plane until new experiences can be offered there. I will give you in figures later on the length of time between two incarnations; it is the time needed by the human being for the creation of his new archetype. Once it is created, this archetype has the impulse every time to appear on the earth again. This archetype is, after all, the human being himself. It is not easy to describe this impulse so we will take an example. Someone has a particular thought and also the urge to give expression to it. The impulse has led the thought to take on physical form.

The power to shape and elaborate the archetype that has been created by himself in Devachan does not yet lie within the power of human will. In the present cycle of life, man cannot yet direct his reincarnations himself; he needs lofty spiritual beings to guide him to the parents who are able to provide the physical body that is suitable for the archetype. These beings direct him to the people and the race best suited to the archetype. If the time for the reincarnation has come, man surrounds himself first of all, in keeping with the archetype created in Devachan, with astral substance. This actually forms itself and shoots in, as it were. The process of being directed by higher beings to the parental pair now begins. Because the physical body to be provided by the parents can be only approximately suitable for the astral body and ego, these higher beings meanwhile incorporate into the individual concerned the etheric body through which the best possible adjustment is achieved between the earthly and what comes from the spiritual world. Of this incorporation of the etheric body and of the physical birth we will speak tomorrow, but we now realize today that at birth, when the human being appears again on the earth, the course of the process is the exact opposite of what takes place after death. At birth the astral body is incorporated, then the etheric body and finally the physical body, whereas at death the human being first lays aside the physical body, then the etheric body and lastly the astral body.

When a human being receives the etheric body, something happens to him analogous to what takes place when he goes through the gate of death. Then he had a backward view of his past life, now he has a preview, a prophetic view of the life he is about to begin. This is of great importance for him. It takes place at the moment when the etheric body is being incorporated. The moment then vanishes from his memory. He does not see particular details but a picture of the life's possibilities. This preview can be disastrous for him only to the extent to which he is shocked by it, which means that he struggles against entering into the physical body. If the entry is as it should be, the etheric body and the physical body harmonize; in cases where there is a shock they do not. The etheric body then does not pass in its entirety into the physical body, but especially around the head projects outwards. It cannot then mould the organs of intelligence properly. Some cases of idiocy are due to this, but by no means all, emphatically not all.

Physical life becomes intelligible through the spiritual life behind it. This recognition will help us to dedicate our knowledge to the service of altruistic life.

Some explanation must now be given of how the conditions prevailing in our physical world are related to the spiritual world through which man passes between death and a new birth. For anyone who concerns himself with the truths of spiritual science it is self-evident that every happening in the physical world is an expression of spiritual influences, facts and beings. The foundations of all physical happenings are therefore to be sought in the spiritual world, in Devachan. You may now ask if, inversely, our physical world produces effects in the spiritual world. Yes, that is the case, and the best way to understand these relationships will be to study the life of a human being. Threads from soul to soul are woven here in the physical world as the result of the manifold circumstances of existence. Bonds of friendship, of love, and so on, are firmly knit, and every contact made between one human being and another has significance and reality not only for this physical world but also for the spiritual world. Indeed, it may be said that the more spiritual the relationships here have been, the more significant they are for the world of Devachan. When the individual dies, everything that is physical in these relationships of love and friendship falls away from them and only what was of the nature of soul and spirit remains. The relationship between mother and child is an example. To begin with, this relationship is founded upon nature; it becomes more spiritual as time goes on, until finally the original, natural circumstances simply provide an opportunity for a bond to be woven between soul and soul. When the human being dies, the factors provided by nature are eliminated but the bond that has been woven remains. If you try to picture the whole human race on the earth and all the bonds of friendship and of love that have been woven, you must picture these relationships as a great network or web, which is, moreover, actually present in Devachan. When a clairvoyant gazes at the earth from the standpoint of Devachan, he perceives this web of spiritual relationships that a human being finds again when he passes into Devachan after death. He is involved in all the spiritual relationships he himself has woven.

This is also the answer to the question: In Devachan do we see again those who were dear to us? Yes, we see them again, freed moreover from all the obstacles of space and time that here on earth lie like veils over these relationships of the soul. In Devachan, souls confront each other directly. The relationship of soul to soul is far more intimate and inward than it is in the physical world. There can never be any doubt in Devachan about one soul recognizing the other again, even when one of them passes into Devachan before the other. Recognition of loved ones is not particularly difficult there, for each soul bears his inner, spiritual reality inscribed as it were upon his spiritual countenence. He himself proclaims his name, indeed, in a much truer form than is possible here, as the basic tone, which, as it is said in occultism, he represents in the spiritual world. An absolutely undisturbed communion is actually possible only when both souls are in Devachan. Nevertheless, the disembodied soul does not lose all consciousness of the one who is still on earth; he can actually follow the latter's actions. The soul who is first in Devachan is naturally unable to see physical colors and forms belonging to the earth because in that spiritual realm he has no physical organs. But everything in the physical world has its spiritual counterpart in Devachan and that is what is perceived by the soul already there. Every movement of the hand in the physical world, because it is preceded by an impulse of will that is either conscious or unconscious, every change in the physical human being, has a spiritual counterpart that can be perceived in Devachan by the soul whose death preceded that of the other human being concerned. Existence in Devachan is not a kind of dreaming or sleeping but in all respects a conscious life. It is in Devachan that a human being develops the predispositions and impulses that enable the bond with those whom he loved to remain closer, in order that in a later incarnation he will find them again on earth. In many respects the purpose of incarnation on earth is to forge bonds of ever greater intimacy. Companionship in Devachan is, to say the least, as intimate as any life here on earth. Fellow feeling in Devachan is much more alert, much more intimate than it is on earth; one experiences another's pain there as one's own. On earth, greater or less personal prosperity is possible at the cost of others but in Devachan that is out of the question. There, the misfortune caused by someone to another human being in order to better himself, would reverberate upon him; nobody could prosper at the expense of another. Adjustment starts from Devachan. It is from there that the impulse is brought to make brotherliness a reality on the earth. A law that is a matter of course in Devachan is a task that has to be fulfilled on earth.

A great deal more could be said about the connection between the spiritual world and the earth. You can now think exhaustively about this and be able to answer many questions yourselves about meeting and being together in Devachan with those we love.

It was said yesterday that when the human being in Devachan has developed his spiritual archetype, the impulse comes to him to descend again to the physical plane. To express it more or less abstractly, it is rather as if a thought matures and you feel an urge to turn it into deed. What is it that actually induces the soul to descend again into the physical world, that gives it the definite impulse to do this? During the kamaloka period, when the soul gradually rids itself of the urge to cling to physical life, it is continually receiving, in the experience it undergoes, impulses that kindle the will to sweep away hindrances to evolution. The soul itself experiences the pain and harm it has caused to others. In thus experiencing the pain of the other being, there arises in the soul the temporarily ineradicable impulse that reparation must he made for this. Thus, step by step the soul takes with it from kamaloka into Devachan the impulse to rectify its faults. In the higher worlds there is even more possibility of everything remaining preserved in the suitable way. When, after the period of kamaloka, the human being lays aside his astral body as a third corpse, everything upon which the ego has not yet worked separates from him. But in the astral world there remains behind something like a web, consisting of whatever hindrances to evolution he has himself brought into the world. The human being himself paves his path through the world with all the forms that are evidence that he has caused injury of some kind to others. If the human being concerned has completed the development of his archetype in Devachan and has woven into it everything that came with him from the last incarnation as the extract of his etheric body, a kind of fecundation now takes place. The archetype is permeated by the web of its own unrequited deeds. Thus, the first thing that happens to the soul after it has reached maturity in Devachan is that it is permeated with what we call karma, and this gives it the impulse to descend again to the earth in order to make compensation for as much as possible of the harm previously caused. At the end of the period in Devachan the soul is permeated with the consequences of its own deeds. Not until then is there complete readiness for the descent into a new existence on earth.

Everywhere in the astral world a clairvoyant sees souls who want to incarnate. Conditions of space and time in the astral world are of course different from those in the physical world. Such a soul can move with tremendous rapidity in the astral world and is impelled by certain forces to the locality where a physical and an etheric body befitting this soul are produced. Distance such as that between Budapest and New York plays no part whatever. Time factors come into consideration only insofar as the earthly possibilities of the most favorable conditions for incarnation can be achieved. From the earth there comes to this soul, which has the form of a bell, widening from above downwards as it flies through astral space, the physical element produced by the line of heredity.

We must now speak briefly of what draws the soul down to the earth and what it is that will incarnate. You know that procreation is connected with certain impulses of feeling, impulses of love, sympathy born of love. The process of procreation is preceded by “sympathy born of love,” which is perceived by a clairvoyant as a play, a surging hither and thither of astral forces, of astral streams, between the man and the woman. Something is alive there that is not present if the human being is alone; the companionship between the souls themselves is expressed in the play of the astral streams. But of course every process of love is individual and issues from a specific individuality. Now, before earthly fertilization, before the physical act of love, there is reflected in this play of astral forces, the individuality, the being who is coming down again to the earth. That is the essential reality in the procreative act. So one can say that before physical fertilization, what is descending from the spiritual world is already beginning to be active. The spiritual world is also instrumental in bringing about the meeting of the man and woman. A wonderfully intimate play of forces from the spiritual world is taking place here. The being who is descending is, generally speaking, connected from the beginning with the product of fertilization. It is emphatically not the case that an individuality connects with it only after a certain time. From the moment of conception this individuality is in touch with the outcome of physical procreation. There are exceptions, of course, there, too. During the first days after conception, this spiritual individuality who is descending does not yet actually affect the development of the physical human being, but it is close by, as it were, is already in contact with the developing embryo. The actual attachment takes place from about the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first days after conception; what is descending from a higher world is then already working together with the being who is in process of coming into existence. Thus the delicate, organic texture that is necessary if the human individuality is to use the physical body as an instrument, is prepared from the beginning in accordance with the earlier faculties. That the human being is an integrated unity originates from the fact that the smallest organ is in keeping with the organism as a whole, that is to say, even the smallest unit must be such that the whole structure is able to ensure that from the eighteenth to the twenty-first day after conception, the ego can participate in the development of the physical and etheric bodies.

Now to what extent have the female and male elements influence upon the development of the being who is coming into existence? If you study what occultly and spiritually underlies the physical creation, a great deal will become intelligible to you; naturally only the essentials can be touched upon here. We shall hear presently that in earlier times, before the separation of the sexes, procreation took place without participation by the male. If it were still the same today, what would happen? If the female element alone were to participate in the process of human procreation, to what extent would it be involved? If the female element alone were to operate, the further evolution would result in the child resembling the forefathers to the highest possible extent. Beings coming into existence would all be completely homogeneous. The principle of generality, homogeneity, originates from the female element. Only through the separation of the sexes has it become possible for human individuality to develop, for it is due to the influence of the male that there are differences between the successor and his forefathers. The male element provides individuality.

Hence, not until bi-sexuality had been established on the earth were successive embodiments or reincarnations possible. Not until then was man able to embody on the earth the product of earlier existence. That there is harmony between what is executed below on the earth and the individual entity who must evolve and be enriched from incarnation to incarnation, is due to the fact that the male element and the female element work together. The human ego would no longer find a suitable body today if the principle of the “universal human” were not modified by the activity of the male element, that is to say, if the universal type were not individualized. It is essentially the etheric body that is worked upon by the female element. In the etheric body, where the permanent tendencies are rooted, the driving force of the female element is at work. The principle of generality, of the generic., is anchored in the etheric body. In the etheric body of the woman there is still present today the counterpart of what exists outwardly as the folk soul, the race spirit. Folk soul and race spirit are identical.

If we now bear in mind the spiritual reality underlying conception, we must say that conception in itself is nothing else than a kind of deadening of the living forces of the etheric body. Death, at conception, is already woven into the human body. It is a happening that hardens, as it were, and deadens the etheric body, which otherwise would multiply ad infinitum. The etheric body, which originates from the female principle and would otherwise produce copies only, is densified as a result of the male influence and thereby becomes the producer of the new human individuality. Propagation consists in the production of a copy of the etheric body of the woman; through being hardened, in a certain respect killed, it is at the same time individualized. In the deadened etheric body there lies hidden the formative force that brings forth the new human being. Thus do conception and propagation amalgamate. Thus we see that two conceptions take place: below, the physical, human conception, and above, the conception of the archetype as the result of its own karma. We said that from the eighteenth to the twenty-first day after conception onwards the ego is already working on the embryo; but not until much later, after six months, do other forces also work on the embryo, forces that determine the karma of the human being. This can be expressed by saying that the web woven out of karma there takes hold; gradually these forces come into play. Now exceptions occur here, too, so that later on an exchange of the ego may take place. We will speak of that later. The ego is the first factor to intervene for the purpose of development.

If we want to have an approximate picture of what exists in the spiritual world and is about to descend, we must say that it is the individual who is in the process of incarnating who brings together those who love one another. The archetype wishing to incarnate has drawn to itself the astral substance that now has an effect upon the passion, the feeling of love. The astral passion surging hither and thither on the earth below, mirrors the astral substances of the descending entity. So the astral substance coming from above is encountered by the astral feeling of those who love each other, which is itself influenced by the substance of the entity descending to incarnation. When we think through this thought to its conclusion, we must say that the reincarnating individual definitely participates in the choice of his parents. According to who and what he is, he is impelled to the parental pair concerned. It is often glibly stated that if the choosing of parents were accepted as a fact, the feeling of finding a new life in one's children would be lost and that the love based upon having transmitted one's own nature to them would thereby be lessened. This is a groundless fear, for maternal and paternal love assume a higher and more beautiful meaning when we realize that in a certain sense the child loves the parents even before conception and is thereby impelled to them. The parents' love is therefore the answer to the child's love, it is the responsive love. We have thus an explanation of parental love as the reproduction of the child's love that precedes the physical birth.

It has already been said that higher beings participate in the embodiment of the new human being. You will grasp what this means if you realize that there is never a perfect correspondence between what is coming down from above to embodiment and the sheaths that this entity acquires down below. A perfect correspondence between the higher and the lower cannot take place until man has reached the goal of his evolution, when he has attained spirit man. When he has transformed the physical body into spirit man, the etheric body into life spirit, and the astral body into spirit self, man stands at the point in evolution where, with a will that is completely free, he himself chooses his final incarnation. Before this point, full accordance is not possible. As he is today, man has transformed only part of his astral, etheric and physical bodies, and of this part alone is he master. But what he has not yet transformed must be integrated into him from outside by other beings. Two different categories of beings participate in this process, those who integrate the etheric body into him and those who lead him to the parents. At the present stage of his evolution, man could not himself make the etheric body an integral member of his constitution. It is through the forces contained in the etheric body that the human being has the pre-vision spoken of in the lecture yesterday.

When the human being already has the etheric body and the astral body, and the physical body is added, the moment comes when the pre-vision must disappear; the etheric body must blend with the physical body. The etheric body is, of course, not only the bearer of memory but of everything to do with time, that is, remembrance and foresight. But when the etheric body passes into the physical body it becomes subject to the laws of physical existence and these laws extinguish its power in a certain respect. Just as through the influence of the physical body a man can unfold his memory only to a certain degree, whereas after death, when the etheric body is again free, it presents the whole tableau of memories, so it is with the pre-vision; in the physical world, vision of the future is limited by the physical body. That is the normal course of incarnation. The shock mentioned previously is experienced by the soul as the result of an abnormal pre-vision of difficult circumstances in the future life.

We have now come to the point when the ego itself, the real man, begins to work upon what has been given him and with which he has been connected in the physical world. The forces of the various spiritual members of man that are at work in the period before birth, are first active through the corresponding members of the maternal organism. During the period just before birth, the human being is able to live only because he is enveloped on all sides by the maternal sheath. At birth the human being thrusts away this physical maternal sheath. At first, it is only the physical body that becomes free; the etheric body—the clairvoyant sees this—is still enveloped by a maternal etheric sheath and remains protected and guarded by this sheath until the time of the second dentition. It is an important point in the evolution of humanity when the maternal etheric sheath is cast off and a second birth takes place. Then, when the etheric body has cast off its maternal sheath, the etheric body as such is born, it becomes free. This is an event of great significance for the evolution of a human being. Until the change of teeth there is still the possibility of the bodily structures remaining elastic in one direction or another, of changing in certain respects. From this time onwards they will only be subject to growth. When the change of teeth takes place, the development of the bodily forms has, in essentials, been completed. It is important that this should be known. Hence, everything that from outside is to become a formative influence on the physical body, to be a permanent quality of it, must be thoroughly taken into consideration and carefully formulated until the time of the change of teeth. But now, every external factor—light and color, for example—that has an effect upon the human being, has a formative effect upon his finer members and organs. All external factors have an essentially formative effect until the seventh year of life. Hence, it is not a matter of indifference what color, what environment the child has around it, and what he is allowed to do. If you were never to use your hands, they would atrophy. The same applies to all organs; the more delicate ones also develop through activity. The effect of red, for example, upon the finer organs in the hurnan being, is different from the effect of blue. Thus the effect differs according to the color that is around the child. While there is activity, the organs develop. The eye sees by habit, certainly, but what it sees has an effect upon the whole of man's nature. For the child's development it is not a matter of indifference whether the eye is looking at red or blue. It is here that spiritual science, in a time by no means far distant, will prove to be eminently practical. Why do we put spiritual science into practice? We do this out of love for man, because it equips us even in this sphere of activity to play a useful part in such subtle matters.

At the seventh year of life, then, the etheric body becomes free. It is the bearer of memories. In regard to a child's memory, the most important thing of all is that before the seventh year of life it shall not be developed by current pedagogical methods. Only from the seventh year onwards has the time come when a true art of education should influence the training of the memory. It is often argued that nature sees to it that the child uses memory long before the age of seven. That is true, but it is the preliminary work that is accompanied by nature. The eyes of a child have been made ready by nature before birth in the mother's body, but what would happen if you were to allow the sunlight to work upon the eye of the embryo? Precisely in order that later on the sunlight can have the right effect upon the eye, the preliminary work upon it must be done by nature, before birth. The same applies to the other organs before physical birth. Nature produces them in advance but they are protected by the outer covering of the maternal sheath. So up to the seventh year of life, the child's memory should be worked upon by nature in order that then, from the seventh year onwards, it can be further developed in the right way. How, from then onwards, ought one to work on the child's memory? Just in the way that nature works until the child's physical birth.

The human being bears a maternal astral sheath around him until puberty in his fourteenth or fifteenth year. Then this sheath is cast aside and the astral body becomes free; a third birth, so to speak, takes place. The astral body is the bearer of the faculty of human judgment, of discrimination. The opinion that the child ought to develop the faculty of independent judgment at as early an age as possible, should be abandoned. From the seventh to the fourteenth year it is essential to amass a rich store of memories for the purposes of life, in order that when the astral body is born, as ripe and rich a content of soul as possible shall be produced. Only then should the power of judgment begin to be exercised. The earlier method used in schools which let the “one times one” be learned by heart, that is, 1 x 1 = 1, and so on, being a matter of actual memorizing, is decidedly preferable to the abstract method at present in vogue of demonstrating the “one times one” with red and white beads on the abacus. This method is decidedly harmful. The same principle applies here as in the case of the young child; he understands speech a long time before he is able to speak himself. He should therefore not be encouraged to excercise judgment until he has gathered a good store of memories for the etheric body, until he has developed certain lasting inclinations and habits.

It is important to develop the life of feeling. Gratitude, reverence and holy awe are feelings that in later life come to expression as the power of blessing, as outstreaming human love. The strongest impulses are given to the etheric body through religious experiences, through the feeling of being attached to the divine-spiritual, to the cosmic All. The faculty of abstract judgment should first be developed about the time when what flows from the etheric body has been made by the human being so pliable and flexible that the danger of forming the habit of abstract thinking lacking in piety is averted. The more the knowledge conveyed to the child is illustrated with imagery and symbols, the better. The world of feeling develops through being made acquainted with allegories and symbols, especially through the narration of the history of representative men and through intense absorption in the mysteries and beauties of nature.

How a child's questions are answered is of great importance; for example, as explanation of the birth of a human being, of death and birth, the butterfly coming into existence out of the chrysalis. This is a picture of man's soul nature emerging from the physical body. But naturally, when we tell this to the child, we must believe it ourselves, for otherwise the child will not believe it either. Facts that confirm the truth of this imagery are to be found in nature everywhere. The occultist knows that the imagery of the butterfly and the chrysalis can serve as a symbol of a process at a much higher level. We must learn to believe again in what only an abstract philosophy will stigmatize as saga and fairy tale. The fairy tale of the stork, also songs such as, “Fly, beetle, fly,” can be ingeniously interpreted. The fairy tale of the stork was not invented in days of yore in order to tell children an untruth, but it was devised by one who knew that at birth something comes down from the spiritual world. In future time it may well be declared that it is a lie that in the past there were people who were expected to believe that at the birth of a new human being the only process that takes place is the physical connection of man and woman. This is a fairy tale, the fairy tale of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “We ourselves know better,” that is what will be said in the future. It is to be hoped that those who come after us will understand and be more lenient with our weaknesses than we are with those of our predecessors!

The symbol is the best means for working on the astral body. Ideation, mental pictures, should he cultivated until the time comes for the training of the liberated astral body, and only then should the power of judgment be developed. Why is it that so many human beings of the present age are, sad to say, crippled in their life of soul? Why is this? Because they have to say “Yes” and “No” to things at much too early an age. In the period until puberty they should learn to revere the great prototypes, the great processes in nature; only between the fourteenth and twenty-first years should the power of judgment come to maturity. Fewer voluble authors would then be let loose upon humanity. The outcome of premature forming of judgment in immature, though literary-minded men, is the shallow materialism of our present age. This veiled materialism is far more sinister than the scientific kind. An opinion has weight only when it is supported by what the soul has genuinely experienced. Human beings must learn how to form judgments; opinions are so deeply at variance because they have been formed at far too early an age. It is not until the twenty-first year that the ego is born and only from then onwards can there be any question of the individual being able to judge the world correctly, because it is only now that he confronts the world as a truly independent being.

Further, from about the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year the development of what is called sentient soul takes place, then the mind soul and the consciousness (or spiritual) soul in periods each of seven years duration. Hence it is an occult law that no individual before his thirty-fifth year is in the position of being capable of imparting or attaining anything in the field of occultism. The thirty-fifth year is particularly important. Let me remind you of Dante, of his vision of the spiritual world; if you can calculate it you will find that he had the vision in his thirty-fifth year.

Where occult tradition survived it was known that such cycles also occur in the lives of individuals. It was known how the spiritual forces of the human being who is descending, work, where they take hold and how long they need for their proper development. It was known that all life is one great whole and that community in human society must be formed on the basis of this insight. Theosophy should teach us that wisdom must pass into deed, into social deed and into the daily round of life. The value of theosophy is that the greater it is, the less it remains abstract wisdom and the more forcibly it streams through the soul into the dexterity of the hands. Manual skill is then a kind of physical expression of the spirit of the world, a material expression of the spiritual.

In continuation of the lecture yesterday concerning man's evolution, we will go back in thought today to epochs in the remote past and consider matters relating to them. Before speaking of the fact of reincarnation and discussing questions of human destiny, however, we will pass in review lengthy periods in ancient epochs of the evolution of humanity.

Man of the present age confronts us as an assemblage of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—the bearer of the ego, which means complete independence. Neither the ego nor the astral body are the most perfect members of man's being by reason of being more spiritual; the physical body, a structure consisting of the most wonderful components, is the most perfect member. What a truly magnificent structure it is, this physical body of man! The astral body is admittedly more inherently spiritual but it is less perfect; it is the bearer of joy and pain of urges, desires and passions. Why is the physical body the more perfect? Think of man's physical heart. It is a marvellous structure, holding its ground all through life against attacks! The same applies to all the other organs of the physical body. Wisdom itself is articulate in them. How does the astral body behave toward the heart? Certainly not always wisely! Because of its longings, the astral body needs to have the means for enjoyment and it continually maltreats the physical body, continually launches attacks upon the physical heart, which offers resistance. Why? Because the process of building the physical body has occupied a far longer period in the past than have the other bodies. The physical body is the oldest member of man's being, hence also the most perfect. A host of more advanced beings have already worked on it. Everything physical and material has evolved from spirit, has developed into its present form. The very first beginning of the human being in the physical world was the establishment of his physical body. At that time there were still no rudiments in the physical world of the etheric body, none of the astral body nor of the ego-bearer.

Everything in the universe is subject to the process of evolution, not only man but also a planet such as our earth. Our earth, like man, has already existed in other planetary embodiments, the first of which we call Saturn, the second, Old Sun, and the third, Old Moon. We must not think here of the present moon, which is only residue, dross or slag of the Old Moon.

We will now hear why our moon has since olden time been called “moon.” Here it must be remembered that the giving of names by the old occultists was by no means fortuitous but of deep significance. The name given to a thing or a being was always organically linked with what each was to express. The preceding planetary embodiment of our earth was the Old Moon; the still earlier embodiment was the Old Sun, not the present sun, which is like a remembrance of that ancient Sun. Then we come to that cosmic body to which it is now possible to look back with occult sight; this cosmic body is Saturn, Old Saturn, of which we have already spoken.

I will now speak briefly of the evolution of this ancient Saturn. To begin with, we must be clear in our minds about the character of the basic elements of our outer world, according to occultists. Ancient occultism distinguished the four elements of earth, water, air, fire or warmth. For a modern physicist this no longer has meaning; what modern science calls an element does not coincide with what the occultist means by the word. The modern expression “aggregate condition” means roughly the same as “element.” Everything that is solid in present temperatures on the earth is called by the occultist, “earthy” or “solid”; a quartz crystal, for example, in conditions of present-day temperatures, is “earth” for the occultist. Everything fluid, also fluid metals and so on, is “water” for him; everything aeriform is “air.” What the modern physicists regards as a state of the three “aggressive assemblages,” namely, fire, is for the occultist, the fourth element. I well know that modern science considers it a veritable abomination when fire is regarded not merely as a condition but as something on a par with earth, water or air. On Old Saturn you would have found no earth, water or air; warmth or fire alone was in existence. If at that time—perhaps by putting a chair in cosmic space—you had been able to observe the Saturn evolution with clairvoyant sight, perception of it could only have been through the sense of warmth; at first, this was purely warmth of soul, inner warmth. With the exception of man, no single one of the beings on the earth today was present. There was no mineral, plant or animal kingdom. Under the conditions prevailing today, man needs the three kingdoms for his organic structure; in that period of ancient Saturn it was not so. The whole human being was a formation consisting only of warmth. Otherwise, nothing whatever of man was in existence. Try to think away from man as he is today everything physically perceptible, even the in-haled air, and imagine that he consists only and entirely of the warmth of the blood circulating in him, thus forming a picture of the blood system as it is today. Such was the constitution of all human beings on Saturn. For the occultist, a celestial body is only an assemblage of spiritual beings. The earth, too, is an assemblage of beings belonging to the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms.

The consciousness of the men of ancient Saturn was also evolving. It was dull but comprehensive. Only on the earth has the clear day consciousness of the present time become possible. The consciousness of human beings on Saturn was dull and in a curious state. Man, as you know, is today unconscious during sleep. Now think of the plant, simply the physical plant without the beings concealed behind it. There you have a demonstration of a still deeper state, namely, dreamless sleep. The plant is a being in a condition of deep sleep. Now think of a state of sleep that is still deeper, still dimmer. this is the state of deep trance—the Saturn consciousness. I will describe it to you by means of an example of conditions that are abnormal in the modern age, occurring in a human being whose consciousness remained backward. A girl who up to her eighteenth year was totally unaccustomed to any form of alcoholic beverage was tempted by certain circumstances to drink rapidly a number of glassfuls of red wine. On account of certain organic conditions this made such an impression that she fell into a moribund state. A pencil was put in her hand and she began to make all kinds of drawings to which she added names. She had no consciousness whatever of what she was doing. She was like a machine, without life or consciousness. If you were to compare what this girl wrote down with what is said in theosophical books about planets, the structure of the universe today, and so on, you would find that what she wrote is, it is true, a strange cosmology but, for all that, one that in certain respects tallies with occult cosmology. The girl was in a state of consciousness deeper than that of ordinary sleep. In such a state the individual concerned is able in his dull consciousness to move far, far over the earth and to give expression to cosmic facts. The occultist knows that such a consciousness, dull and comprehensive, without the pertinent ego, is present in a physical stone, and that if the stone could be articulate it would be able to do what the girl did. This consciousness, although dull, embraces vast regions. Such was the consciousness of men on ancient Saturn.

Saturn itself was an entity unconscious of its own identity, or better said, was possessed of a low form of consciousness to be described by saying that it bore within it a mirror-image of the whole cosmos and would have been capable of delineating it. To understand what this implies we must consider other matters. While man was finding on Saturn the sphere where the first rudiments for his physical body could take shape, Saturn was at the same time the stage at which other beings also were able to evolve, beings whose rank today is much higher than that of man. We will clarify this by quoting an utterance once made by an Egyptian sage to a Greek. He said, “You Greeks remain forever big children. You know nothing about the greatest secret of the Mysteries, namely, that gods were once men.” It is no longer necessary for these beings to enter into physical existence.

On ancient Saturn, then, man was a kind of mineral; his consciousness was also on a par with that of the mineral. But beings who today are at a stage far higher than that of men once lived in human bodies. These are the Archai, First Beginnings, or Spirits of Personality. They passed through their “human” epoch on Old Saturn.¹ They were not men as we are today but merely made use of the then “physical” body in order to experience their human epoch, to acquire ego consciousness. These sublime beings therefore acquired ego consciousness on Saturn and used the human body as a vehicle deputizing as their bodily dwelling place. Certain beings permeated the human physical body together with their distinctive characteristics and for these, man today owes twofold thanks. First, the faculty that alone enables an ego-bearer to find a footing in him; it was these Spirits of Personality who endowed the human body at that time with the form proceeding from their own nature. But second, they also made it possible for man to develop selfishness. Through the influence of the Spirits of Personality, man's body was endowed with the germinal capacity to develop as a free personality but at the same time to cultivate selfishness, egoism. If I wanted to describe all the pertinent details of this process I should need not one lecture or one lecture course but years. Hence, we can study steps or stages only and we will consider seven such stages in the Saturn evolution, each differing from the others.

At the first stage you must picture to yourselves that as yet no physical warmth was present but that this was only in preparation. All that was present was purely of the nature of soul; soul warmth was present, and not until the midpoint of Saturn evolution was the physical human body in existence, composed of physical warmth substance. At the end of the Saturn evolution this human body of warmth dissolves. There are seven stages: three preliminary stages, a stage of physical warmth and three descending stages; each of these seven stages has again seven sub-divisions of which it is better not to speak at this point and to which we will return in the course of studying the evolution of the earth. In modern theosophical literature these stages are called rounds and globes.

But now we will ask, “Whence came the substance out of which the human body was formed?” Sublime spiritual beings poured forth their own being and let it flow down as substance for the physical body of man. These beings were the Spirits of Will or the Thrones. They made the sacrifice of allowing the outpouring of their own being to take place. On Saturn, then, we find the Spirits of Will or the Thrones who give the substance for the human body, then the Spirits of Personality who inhabit Saturn during their human epoch and man himself as a physical germinating entity. The Saturn evolution takes its course in such a way that we must picture the beginning, the zenith and the ebb. Thereafter, the whole planet passes through a pralaya. We can think of the process in connection with the plant. The seed is laid in the earth, decays and carries over the form into a new existence. Just as between the first and the second plant there is an intermediate condition, a hidden condition, so is it in the case of the planet. This condition is called the “sleep of worlds.”

After this sleep of worlds, when Saturn appeared again but metamorphosed, it was the Old Sun that now came into existence. The difference between Saturn and Sun is that the warmth substance of Saturn had densified to a gaseous state. Old Sun retained the warmth but evolved something as well, namely, air, so that on the Old Sun there was now warmth and air, and moreover light. Saturn consisted of dark warmth; the second planet, Old Sun, consisted of light—burning gas—warmth ether and air. Through Saturn there came into existence once and forever the foundation for the existence of the seed of the physical body of man. Now, on Old Sun, something new is added. The etheric body is poured into this substance by spiritual beings. This is the second planetary condition in which man has achieved the status of a plant. There is life in him. Through the integration of the etheric body, however, the physical body of man has also changed. It does not retain the egg-form of the Saturn period but is membered in itself. It is now a vibrant warmth egg in which forms of light gleam and fade away and in which there are indentures. The etheric body now works upon and elaborates the physical body.

Whereas on Saturn the Thrones poured out from them-selves the substance of the physical body, it is now other beings who pour out substance as their great sacrifice. These beings are the Spirits of Wisdom, Dominions or Kyriotetes. The more difficult sacrifice had been made by the Thrones. Had they not created the foundation, the Spirits of Wisdom could not have begun their work.

Again there were beings who passed through their “human” epoch on the Sun, namely, the Archangels or Fire Spirits—Archangeloi in Christian esotericism. Acting as substitutes they indwelt the body of man and in this way developed their ego consciousness.

Something must here be mentioned that it is important to remember. If, after pralaya, Saturn had emerged directly as Sun, the bodies of men could not have received the etheric body into themselves. On the new planet, Old Sun, there had first to be a brief recapitulation of Saturn, during which the beings concerned were obliged to assume their old form once again.

What other kind of beings were to be found on Old Sun? Certain Spirits of Personality had not reached their human stage on Saturn, had not succeeded in acquiring their ego consciousness on Saturn. They were obliged to make up for this on Old Sun and were therefore still at the same stage as their companions on Saturn. Hence, on Old Sun they were obliged to live as it were in a husk, in a mineral body that was not permeated by an etheric body. On Old Sun, therefore, a structure consisting only of physical body came into existence. Thus, structures of a lower grade existed side by side with those that consisted of physical body and etheric body, and these were the predecessors of our present animals. On Old Sun, therefore, there were two kingdoms: a human kingdom and the kingdom of the beings who, on Old Sun, were at the stage of the Saturn evolution. They constitute our present animal kingdom. On Old Sun there were thus two preliminary kingdoms, a human kingdom and an animal kingdom. The successors of the latter are the present higher animals.

Old Sun now passes again into a kind of “cosmic night” and is born again in a third metamorphosis as Old Moon, which is able, at the beginning, to recapitulate the earlier stages to which fluid or watery substance is now added. When the separation of the Sun takes place, warmth and light go with it; sublime beings also go forth together with the finer essences. What has become fluid or “watery” goes forth as Moon, condenses further and becomes a kind of secondary planet. At that time on Old Moon, therefore, there were warmth, light and water. Man has his etheric or light body as on Old Sun; the new element that is added on Old Moon is what may be called tone or sound. In order to realize more clearly what this means I will give an illustration. Think of a metal plate covered with powder, across the edge of which a violin bow is drawn. The powder shapes itself into definite forms—the sound figures of the physicist. What we today recognize as sound or tone is the physical configuration of the sound. The “water” on the Old Moon was permeated with sound and thereby stirred into regular movement. Inner experience is thereby made possible in the physical bodies of beings on Old Moon; organs take shape, for example, the liver, but it passes away again. The process is one of the forming and disappearance of organs, an experience of figures and rhythms. The bodies present are thus made ready to receive astral substance into themselves. The impact of the primeval tone in the watery substance is expressed in the Bible as follows: God arranged everything according to measure, number and weight. The essentially new feature of Old Moon evolution is therefore the process of inner oscillation that is forced, as it were, into the physical substance. You must think of Old Moon as being permeated by this inner oscillation, which is diversified into regular, numerical rhythms. Earlier, on Saturn, it had been warmth formations that built the human body; later, on Old Sun, it had been aeriform formations, appearing like an aerial mirage, like a Fata Morgana. On Old Moon, substance was now water, stirred into movement by inner oscillation. Organic members involved in a process of inner metamorphosis were brought into existence by this oscillation and shimmered through the human body. You must conceive of this as a transient process of coming into being and passing away again; thus, a liver or lung was formed in the human body and then dissolved. Such were the conditions on Old Moon. The Bible expresses it as follows: God once ordered everything according to number, measure and weight. The inner oscillation is here meant.

Within Old Moon there now, firstly, come into existence again the earlier structures of the human body; the physical and etheric bodies are formed again. Why? Because what first takes place on Old Moon is a repitition of the Saturn and Old Sun embodiments. Only then does the real Old Mood come into existence. Into the physical human body, which now contained the watery substance on the one hand, and on the other, as a result of the inner oscillation, was permeated by the primal tone and the etheric body, the Spirits of Movement, Powers or Dynameis pour the astral body of man. They, as the Spirits of Will on Saturn and the Spirits of Wisdom on the Sun had done, now offer up, out of their own substance, the human astral body. Thus, the development of the earth is continually progressing, and also that of man himself who is to inhabit it.

The human physical body, as you have heard, developed on Saturn. Through the three metamorphoses—Saturn, Sun, Moon—it has now reached the third stage of perfection. On Old Moon this physical body of man had come still nearer to resemble its present form. But the further development that was necessary for man's astral body would not have been possible on the earth if a severance had not taken place at a certain point of time. A basic mass of substance of the planet—the Old Moon—remained; part of it went out and surrounded the basic mass. Firstly, there was Saturn; secondly, Sun; thirdly, Moon. The best substances and beings have now separated into a basic body which, during the earth period, again separates and becomes a fixed star, higher in rank than a planet. Still another body separates and remains a planet. The sun of today was once a planet. If you were to take the present sun, the present moon and the substance of our earth with its beings, and combine them in a huge vessel, you would have Old Sun. If you were to combine earth and moon you would have Old Moon.

In the course of the evolution of humanity, our sun separated from the planet earth. With it the best substances and the best beings went out of the earth. The watery element, becoming denser and denser, accompanied the sun. The dense figures and forms are the bearers of the beings who inhabited Old Moon. Human beings now chose a separate scene of action. A fixed star, a sun, always comes into existence as the result of a planet having advanced. During this process of evolution, men were not the only beings who were present and had evolved to the stage of having as members the three bodies, physical body, etheric body and astral body. There were also other beings who had remained behind in their development.

The beings who had passed through their “human” epoch. on Old Moon were the Angels, called Angeloi in Christian esotericism and in India, Lunar Pitris. The consciousness of these beings was different from that of men today. But on Old Moon there were other beings as well. There were certain Archangeloi who had remained backward on Old Sun and were now obliged to repeat their “human” stage on Old Moon. There were also beings who had reached the stage of Spirits of Personality, (i.e., the Saturn stage of humanity) on Old Moon for the first time.

The Archangeloi who had become backward on Old Sun, produced as human bodies structures that had physical and etheric bodies only. This was a kingdom below that of man, a kingdom that continued on the earth as the animal kingdom; the beings belonging to it were the precursors of the physical bodies of the present animal world, and beings who on Old Moon had only a physical body were the precursors of the present plant kingdom, Thus, on Old Moon there was a human kingdom, an animal kingdom and a plant kingdom, on Saturn there was a human kingdom only, and on Old Sun a human kingdom and and animal kingdom. The mineral kingdom is the last of the kingdoms that have come into existence in the process of cosmic evolution. Man, the human kingdom, is the oldest kingdom in the evolutionary process; he was already there before the earth was in existence. On the earth he then receives, in addition to this three bodies, the fourth member of his being, the bearer of the ego.

• 1. For an explanation of “human” epoch, see An Outline of Occult Science, Anthroposophic Press, 1972, pp. 125–6.

The lecture yesterday brought our study of the evolution of our planet to the stage known as Old Moon. We heard that the first embodiment of our planet was that of Old Saturn, the second that of Old Sun and the third that of Old Moon. We came to the point in yesterday's lecture where it was made clear that if everything had progressed exactly as hitherto, man would not have been able to keep pace with the tempo of the cosmic evolution of other beings. Hence a kind of severance took place at a certain point during the Old Moon embodiment. The Sun, progressing as it was within the cosmic expanse, separated from the planetary body together with the finest substances and higher beings. The less progressed part of the planetary body, namely, Old Moon itself, still containing all that constitutes our present earth and present moon, remained as a kind of cloud-body. Certain conditions brought about a densification or hardening on Old Moon and the same happened to the beings inhabiting it.

When the Sun had separated, its forces worked upon Old Moon from outside. The subsequent human-animal-plant kingdom that came into existence on Old Moon now received the forces of the Sun from outside. After the separation, the three kingdoms on Old Moon came into existence. As yet there was no mineral kingdom but what took shape, after the hardening process, as the lowest kingdom was a kind of mineral-plant kingdom—mineral substance that was plantlike in character, or, if you prefer, plant substance that was mineral in character. This formed the ground of Old Moon; it was a kind of semi-solid, semi-fluid foundation. On the earth today we walk about on a mineral ground, on Old Moon it was semi-solid, semi-fluid ground, a kind of plant-mineral soil. Think of a mass of spongy, plantlike substance on which human beings walked. This was the character of the lowest kingdom on Old Moon, a kingdom that was at the same time half-living. The ground of our earth today has become comparatively static; volcanic activity is the only reminder of a certain inner life. On Old Moon there were no such conditions. We may perhaps speak later on about what an occultist has to say on the subject of earthquakes and volcanic activity. Just as organs in a plant grow and subsequently die, so did this half-living substance on Old Moon. The Old Moon was like a great organism, living and mobile, on which the beings living might have felt like parasites of today. These Old Moon plants were composed of mineral substance, had life in them and were mobile; they were plant-mineral in character. Nothing would have been found resembling our rocks of today; instead, there were horny or woody formations. In the environment of Old Moon, like a kind of atmosphere, were a few cloud-masses composed of a half-watery, half-living substance in which the beings of the next kingdom, half animal, half plant in character, were embedded. If you were to crush a tree, causing something akin to the feeling experienced by an animal, that would be remotely comparable with what was experienced by this animal-plant kingdom, which could not exist as such on the earth today.

As has often been said, not only are there pupils in school who make no progress but in the whole process of evolution there are always beings who remain at a standstill and who, together with the forms that belong to them and express what they are, become retarded. Thus, on the earth itself there were still certain moon beings who were not sufficiently advanced to keep abreast of evolution on the earth. These beings were obliged to create in their outer expressions the condition that had been essential to their life on Old Moon. As you know, plants on Old Moon were not rooted in mineral soil as they are today but in the half-living ground of the planet. Mistletoe, for example, is a descendant, a straggler, of an Old Moon form; it is obliged to take root in plant-soil. In folk myths there are many indications of this, for example, in the legend of Baldur and Loki. The latter is a being belonging to Old Moon, whereas Baldur is a being inwardly connected with earth and sun evolution. To interpret a legend or myth it is necessary to know in which sphere of occult investigation the connections can be discovered. External science could be so enriched by the fruits of clairvoyance that it would recognize in a legend much more than folk fantasy. Spiritual science must teach one to investigate with the whole soul instead of with the intellect only.

There was still a third kingdom on Old Moon, between the animal and human kingdoms; it was the animal-human kingdom. The forms of those animal-men were quite different from what is pictured by materialistic science today. They were animal-men although certain important members of their constitution were not yet actually within them. While he is asleep today, man's physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed and his astral body is outside. Fundamentally speaking, during sleep he is therefore in the physical world with only the lesser half of his constitution. Man's physical and etheric bodies belong to an earlier, cosmic stage of consciousness. Clairvoyant vision reveals this condition to have been permanent on Old Moon. The astral body then was never entirely within the physical and etheric bodies but was nevertheless connected more fundamentally and definitely with the human being than is the case during sleep today. The head of the man of Old Moon was not self-enclosed as is the case today. A residue of what the organs in the head were at that time is the place at the top of a baby's head that stays soft and open for a long time. On Old Moon the head of the human being was still open. Were you to draw a line vertically downward from this soft area, you would meet the pineal gland. Today it is stunted and withered but it was an important organ during the Old Moon embodiment. It was a kind of sense organ that connected man's physical and etheric bodies with his astral body. Through this organ, which was a delicate, luminous body, man's astral body radiated into the other bodies. His consciousness was neither that of sleep nor of waking life. He did not perceive outer objects. His consciousness might be compared with that of the dream to-day. The pineal gland at that time was a kind of warmth organ, emitting powerful, luminous rays of warmth. When on Old Moon man was moving about, the function of this organ was to show him the direction he must take. Man's perception on Old Moon consisted in something like a dream picture rising up within him. There was as yet no seeing or perceiving objects but man felt an inner up-and-down surge of living pictures of which the dream pictures of today are only a feeble shadow. Everything a man set out to do on Old Moon, how he searched for his food and so forth, was always activated by these pictures that were connected with the outer world. He could allow himself to be directed and led by them. When he was looking for food he was guided by certain pictures that rose up before him, and he was warned of danger also by them. The astral body extended far beyond the physical and the etheric bodies; the form of the physical body alone could be called human.

On Old Moon man's inner warmth was not yet constant. Today, on the earth, this has been achieved. On Old Moon man absorbed warmth from the warmth around him and emitted it again, just as he inhales and exhales air today. The process became visible in his organ of warmth. It gleamed and was luminous when he was absorbing warmth and darkened when he was exhaling it. If you could have seen what was happening, the process would have suggested the image of a fire-breathing dragon. All these happenings have a deep significance. Figures such as the Archangel Michael with the fire-breathing dragon under his feet, or St. George. fighting with the dragon, are pictures reminiscent of those conditions. The fire breather of Old Moon, the ancient Dragon, is a figure that once actually existed. It portrays a stage that would have to be surmounted.

This is the explanation of such matters that is derived from occult knowledge. Later on, when spiritual science is more widely known, there will be a different view of truths that have been preserved in imagery and pictures of this kind. This animal-man form was quite different from that of man today because the astral body did not sink into the physical body as deeply as it did later on the earth. Man is the figure he is today because the astral body eventually sank right down into him. It could be said that what did not, during the Old Moon period of evolution, allow itself to descend into the depths of the physical world, now resolved to do so during the earth period. But if this process in the cosmos had taken place at an earlier time, man would have remained at a much lower evolutionary stage. During the period of earth evolution, he succeeded, with the help of the spirit, in acquiring for himself the noble, godlike form that is now his. If the possibility of developing this stature had already existed on Old Moon, the descent of the astral body would have taken place prematurely. The divine Guides have always chosen the right moment. The essential achievement of Old Moon evolution was that time was left for the evolution of the physical body, and on the earth man was to be permeated by the astral body after having evolved physically on Old Moon at a lower stage. Then again there took place a certain recession of the Moon into the Sun, which had previously separated; the Old Moon globe was again absorbed by the Sun and everything passed into a cosmic sleep, a pralaya. This began at the time when the Moon returned again into the Sun.

Hence the evolution of Old Moon proceeded by the following stages: firstly, a kind of preparation; secondly, separation into Sun and Moon; thirdly, formation of three kingdoms on Old Moon; fourthly, return into the Sun; fifthly, ebb; sixthly, the cosmic sleep.

The fourth metamorphosis of our earth, our own planet earth itself, then came forth from the cosmic sleep. This first configuration of the earth was, of course, quite different from its configuration today. When the earth emerged from the cosmic night, from the darkness of twilight, it was gigantic in size, for again sun and moon were contained within it; the separations took place later on. So enormous was the size of the earth that it reached as far as the Saturn of today. Differentiation in the solar system did not take place until a much later time. As far as is possible in terms of philosophical thinking, the Kant-Laplace theory is an entirely intelligible exposition of this first form of our earth. It speaks of a kind of archetypal nebula in which everything was dissolved and out of which the whole solar system came forth. Through the rotation of this nebula, rings took shape; they densified and then, still as the result of rotation, the planets were formed. In schools this process is often illustrated by means of an experiment. A globule of oil in liquid of equal density is made to rotate by a simple mechanical device. It can then be observed that this globule flattens, that drops separate from it and form themselves again into globules that circle round the central globule. In this way one can see in miniature a kind of planetary system coming into being through rotation. This has an immensely suggestive effect. Why should we not picture the process in this ways This experiment shows how a planetary system comes into existence through rotation; it is there before our very eyes.

But one thing is forgotten. One of us, or the teacher, actually causes the rotation! Nothing is really explained by this external illustration. No cosmic system comes into existence out of nothingness. It does not arise of itself from the nebula, but it comes into existence because many spiritual beings have been working on it and at a certain point in their evolution have drawn out the finest substances from the chaotic root substance and cast out the coarser substances, namely, the moon.

During the first period after pralaya, the earth, in which all the substances and beings were again united, recapitulated the Saturn condition. At the beginning of this phase of evolution the earth was not a globe of gas as has often been falsely assumed, but a globe of warmth. For it (the earth) was re-capitulating the condition of the Saturn embodiment and extended to the sphere of the present Saturn. At a certain stage the spiritual beings involved take their substances with them. Spirit is the foundation of everything, both when the Sun separates and during the evolution of Old Moon. No external factor was responsible here; it was an inner necessity for one section of the beings. The higher beings separate what they need from the chaotic substance. Everywhere it is the spirit that directs the external reality. When the earth first came into existence everything was contained in it; the spiritual beings indwelling it were at different stages of their evolution. We shall bear this in mind during the following studies.

Thus after pralaya the earth first of all recapitulated the Saturn condition; it was a condition of warmth. Then this gigantic globe of warmth condensed to the gaseous state and only when a definite point had been reached was it possible for the globe to form the fluid element and recapitulate the Old Moon condition. At this point on the earth there was a repetition of what had previously happened on Old Moon: the sun separated from the earth and earth-plus-moon became one independent body, containing the substances and beings of earth and moon, as they are still present today. Thus for a time earth and moon, and sun were one united whole. The earth-plus-moon was ejected because man could no longer keep pace with the tempo of the sun. Had the sun remained in the earth man would have been old practically at birth. The beings of the cosmos are at entirely different stages of evolution. It will only be possible to indicate the most important features of this evolution during the fourth period, that of the earth. Even the more mature beings belonged to grades at every possible level. There were some who could neither profit by the rapid tempo of the sun nor by the slow tempo of the earth. These beings departed already before the separation, when sun, earth and moon were still united. They created special arenas for their activity and these were the domains suitable for their rulership. It was thus that the outer planets, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, were formed.

During the recapitulation of the Saturn embodiment, Uranus, Vulcan and Saturn separated from the earth. During the recapitulation of the sun embodiment, Jupiter and Mars separated. After the sun had left the earth, Mercury and Venus separated from it. After the separation of the sun, the earth cast out the moon. The dispersal of Old Moon was brought about by the forces of the progressed beings who drew out the solar body, while the normal and retarded beings produced the moon circling around it. In all the mysteries these happenings were called the strife in heaven. The detached planetoids are the ruins of that battlefield. It is here that the primal secret of the origin of evil must be sought.

The planetary spirits involved could not have waited until the sun separated from the earth because they would not have found the right soil for their activity; evolution at this time was turning into different channels. The planetary conditions of space and movement are all the expression and effect of the activity of their beings; these conditions indicate the evolutionary rank of the spiritual beings inhabiting the planets. Beings who had believed that they, too, could accompany the sun because this had formerly been possible but who could not now do so, separated from the sun, but only after it had itself separated from the earth. These beings separated from the sun after this event and are at a far higher stage of evolution than men. Venus and Mercury are the two bodies that, having separated from the sun after the latter's separation from the earth, formed the inner planets of our solar system.

After the severance from the sun a difficult, sombre period now began for the earth, in a certain respect its darkest, hardest era. While still united with the moon, the earth drew into itself all the forces that were retarding evolution. To obstruct life is characteristic of the forces principally active in the moon. During this period, these obstructive forces were working far too strongly in the earth. If the earth had remained connected with them, life would not have taken its course in the right tempo. Man would have hardened to the stage of mummification. The earth would have become a veritable cemetery, one vast graveyard containing statues of mummified human bodies. No procreation would have been possible. When the sun had left the earth, fearful desolation and hardening of all life took place. So already at that time there were periods when the human physical body was abandoned by its spiritual members, just as today the physical body is abandoned by its spiritual members at death.

In that past era, withdrawal and emergence of the being of spirit and soul from the physical already took place and a new search for the physical body began, as happens today when incarnations are to take place. But more and more frequently it happened that when the being of soul and spirit desired, while the moon was still united with the earth, to find a human body again, none was to be found, because bodies were no longer fit to receive the being of spirit and soul. Just imagine that great masses of human beings were to have died today and because of the character of the physical substance these bodies had become so decadent that the souls would have said: We cannot make use of these bodies, they are too decadent for us, they offer no possibility of further evolution. Suppose that because of an extensive spread of alcoholism, for example, successive generations had gradually become so degenerate that the bodies were simply useless for the descending souls. This is more or less a picture of the state of the earth at that time, before the exit of the moon. Everything that should have been habitable down below was often hardened, crusted, withered, mummified. There was actually a period when souls were seeking in vain for bodies for their own evolution on earth. The consequence was that certain beings simply could not at that time have returned to the physical plane as men. They could not have incarnated again on the earth. These beings then went to other cosmic bodies that had separated from the sun, namely, to Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. There was a time when the majority of these beings who should normally have incarnated on the earth according to their nature and their stage of evolution, placed themselves under the protection of the beings of Mars, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn, having ascended to and populated these cosmic bodies. Only the strongest souls found it possible to cope with the stubborn bodies and keep them flexible. Please understand me well. It was only the best soul material that then came again to the earth, because its power to master the stubborn bodies was the greatest. But under such conditions evolution could not have progressed.

The beings of the highest rank belonging to our solar system now adopted a new procedure. The most impermeable substances were extracted and separated from the earth; the severance of the moon was brought about. The result of this was that the forces that had remained behind were no longer frustrated in their evolution. But it was not until later that this moon became what it is today. The time had now come when the physical and etheric evolution of man could find the tempo befitting its stage. The forces both of the sun and the moon now worked upon the earth from outside, maintaining the balance. Gradually, while the moon was emerging, a kind of softening, an amelioration of the bodies of men, again took place. The period just described is called in occultism the Lemurian epoch, the epoch of the separation of the moon during the physical embodiment of the earth. The epoch when the sun left the earth is called the Hyperborean age, and the epoch when the sun, moon and earth were still united is called the Polarian age.

During the whole period when the sun was separated from the earth and the moon produced a hardening process on the earth to begin with and then left the earth during the whole of that period, sublime beings were influencing the differentiation. Their most important servants were the Spirits of Form, called the Exusiai in Christian esotericism, also Spirits of Revelation, Powers.

On Saturn it was the Thrones, the Spirits of Will who made the sacrifice of pouring out from their own substance the material for man's physical body. On Old Sun it was the Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom who provided the substance for the etheric body, and on Old Moon it was the Spirits of Movement or Mights who made possible the formation of the astral body. On the earth the Spirits of Form or Powers instill the ego, bringing it about that in this phase of evolution the ego enters gradually into what had come into existence, namely, man's physical body, etheric body and astral body. This is the work of the Spirits of Form. In order that an ego-man could come into existence at all as the expression of ego consciousness, and that this coordination of the physical, etheric and astral bodies could take place, everything that has now been described was essential. The separation of sun and moon from the earth was necessary; it was also necessary for man to undergo a process of hardening followed by a certain softening. This could take place because the wise beings who guided and directed these happenings undertook it all as probationary measures for the good of evolution. A great deal in the evolutionary process of the earth is still done today by the sublime beings concerned, as probationary measures.

What, then, is the anthroposophical movement? It came into the world because the lofty beings we call the Masters, who live in human physical bodies but have reached the far higher stage of evolution than the average man of today, poured out a certain amount of wisdom from the last third of the nineteenth century onwards. The living influx of this wisdom from higher realms into our culture is the actual basis of our anthroposophical movement. Do not imagine that there was no possibility of the attempted influx of wisdom falling upon deaf ears in humanity. Even if there had been deaf ears, the Masters would have said that an attempt must be made later on, when human beings would be ready to receive the wisdom. In occultism this is known as the test of maturity in men. The fact that wisdom pours into humanity from higher beings such as these is not in itself sufficient; what matters is how it is received; the success of the test depends upon that. Such tests have already been made several times but have not always succeeded. It was often within narrow limits that humanity proved to be ripe for the tests; receptive souls and hearts were not always to be found. When the ego of humanity was to be instilled, the test consisted in gradual attempts to permate what had formerly been astral body only, with the ego. Then it turned out that the astral body, permeated by the ego, was incapable of penetrating the physical body. Adjustment was therefore necessary and this was made possible by the separation of the moon. It was in the middle of the Lemurian epoch that the entry of the ego, the Christ principle, was first achieved.

But the following was connected with this. During and after the separation of the moon, the earth was depopulated. We have heard that the bodies had become so contaminated that they could no longer provide habitations for the souls. Cosmic happenings such as these have been preserved in legend and saga, but occult investigation reveals their true origin and teaches us that while the separation of the moon was taking place, when the earth was depopulated, many souls were searching for suitable embodiment in cosmic space; they departed from the earth and assumed bodies on other planets. But when the moon had finally left, it became apparent that the earth was capable again of providing suitable bodies. Now, the souls, who during the latest Lemurian epoch and thereafter in the Atlantean period had gone to the planets, presented them-selves again on the earth and incarnated in the bodies there. Groups of human beings now formed on the earth. Some provided bodies for souls coming from Jupiter incarnations, or from Mars, Venus or Saturn. These souls now found bodies that were appropriate for them. This grouping of souls gave rise to the birth of races. Hence there is a certain connection between the races and cosmic bodies and thus it was possible to speak of Saturn men, Jupiter men and so on. What can be called the concept of race had now, for the first time, its justification.

On Old Moon, and also on the earth while it was still united with the moon, there were human beings at different stages of evolution. This can be perceived right on into the Lemurian epoch, when owing to the exodus of the moon, differentiation took place in humanity. Thereafter the concept of race arose and from then on began to have a certain meaning, a certain significance. Race is something that comes into being and subsequently passes away again. The epoch of the formation of the races is that embraced by Lemuria and Atlantis. Today only stragglers of the races are present.

The lecture yesterday covered the steps up to the Lemurian epoch in the evolution of our earth. During that epoch a great cosmic event took place, namely, the exit of the moon from the substance of the earth. The direct result of this was that the right tempo was introduced into the evolution possible for man. In respect of form and temperature the earth at that time was essentially different from what it is today; its temperature was so much higher that contemporary man could not have lived upon it. Gradually the earth densified and solid substances were formed. When in the lecture yesterday it was said that bodies “hardened,” this is not to be understood in the physical sense but as meaning in respect of strength and quality. Certain substances dissolved. The whole earth was in a seething-fluidic state and it solidified only be degrees. But it must not be thought that this means hard and dense in the modern physical sense; it relates only to strength and quality. These forces would have mummified human beings. Out of the seething-fluidic state of the earth, formations resembling islands emerged and the beings living on them were slightly similar to our present animals and plants. During the first half of the Lemurian epoch, man himself did not live actually on the earth but in the sphere above the earth, in a fine, rarefied corporeality; his constitution was much more spiritual. At the beginning of the Lemurian epoch man had not, as yet, his later bodily nature, nor did he take the more solid kind of nourishment. Indeed, even at the end of the Lemurian epoch you would not have found even the densest forms of man's body equipped with bones such as exist today. The substance of man's physical body at that time was still flexible, gelatinous, hardly distinguishable outwardly from the surrounding sub-stance. The souls who had descended to the earth too soon drew this kind of densest substance into their bodies, with the result that then there were living on the earth men whose constitutions were least spiritual, while the others were still living above the earth.

It was only now, during the Lemurian epoch, through the ejection of fine ashes and fiery-fluidic metallic masses, that the first foundation of the mineral kingdom was laid. These masses formed the beginning, as it were, of islands. This is a more pictorial way of expressing it but that is how the process of gradual densification presents itself to clairvoyant sight. Out of these masses there emerged what we may call a plant kingdom and only later on the animal kingdom. It would lead too far if I were to attempt to tell you in detail how the physical world densified. Everything really descended out of higher spheres, including the continents as they densified. But the being who is man today still tarried, as it were, in a sphere above the earth. Men lived within this more ethereal sphere and there developed their finer bodies. The human etheric and astral bodies there were not yet connected strongly with the physical body but were freer from it. With the solidification of the physical body, which now became progressively denser, however, the connection with the etheric and astral bodies became closer. Instead of hovering and floating above the earth, man became a being who now trod the earth itself.

At this time an important influence asserted itself upon man. If there had been no such influence, what would have happened to him? For long, long ages he would have remained a being without initiative, without inner independence, an automaton, propelled by the forces of higher spiritual beings. Forces from the spiritual beings streamed perpetually into his physical, etheric and astral bodies. Among these beings there were some who worked chiefly upon his astral body and had themselves remained backward in their own evolution; these were the luciferic beings. They drew man down to the physical plane more quickly than the good, normally evolved spiritual beings had done.

The luciferic beings were spirits who ought in reality to have completed their task on Old Moon. Had they asserted their influence upon men then, they would have been able to work only upon the astral body for that was the highest member of man's constitution on Old Moon. They were, however, incapable of this because they were retarded beings. Nor could they affect the ego, because on Old Moon they had not known of its existence. The luciferic beings had eventually evolved to the stage of being able to work upon man's astral body, but man himself had meantime progressed and the ego had been membered into him. The luciferic beings could not yet have worked upon the ego; higher beings were doing so, and also upon the astral body, but only through and by way of the ego. These higher beings would not have allowed themselves to work directly upon the astral body, for that was a task they had already accomplished during the Old Moon period. If the luciferic beings had failed to have any influence upon man, the higher beings alone would have worked upon his astral body by way of the ego and so have purified the astral body. Instead of this, however, during the Lemurian epoch the luciferic beings worked directly upon man's astral body from every side and consequently the astral body was exposed to all the influences that should have been worked out on Old Moon. As a result there were implanted into man urges, desires and passions that would not have been his lot if the higher beings alone had worked upon him. The gods would not have allowed these influences to have access to him. The luciferic influence had a twofold effect upon man. Firstly, a certain enthusiasm, a certain zeal could be kindled in him to do one thing or another; but this zeal was not guided by his ego, not influenced by the higher beings working in him. Secondly, it was made possible for him to secede from the higher beings, to do evil, but also to have freedom. Thus, initiative, enthusiasm and freedom for man were due to the luciferic beings but the possibility of doing evil also existed. The luciferic beings insinuated themselves into man's astral body. Fundamentally speaking, this is still the case today; it is they who on the one side make man free and on the other entice him to evil.

Owing to the fact that man's astral body was permeated by the luciferic beings, he was led prematurely down to the earth from the atmosphere above it. For this the luciferic beings are essentially to blame. They were the cause of the deterioration and premature densification of man's astral body; otherwise, he would still have remained for a long time in the atmosphere. This, in the Bible, is called Paradise.

Thus, the expulsion from Paradise was due to the influence of the gods. You should therefore picture the earth in its seething fluid condition and man being led by the luciferic beings too soon down to the earth on which continents were forming. At that time man's astral body still had a far greater influence upon his environment, greater magical powers than were his later on; there was as yet no such drastic separation between the laws of nature and the will of man. In this connection an evil man today would be unable to cause any special damage to nature. He would be incapable of this. In that early period it was different. Evil lusts in the soul of man had a visible, magical effect in nature; they attracted the forces of fire above and on the earth. Through his evil lusts and magic will, man set the forces of nature ablaze. Today this is no longer possible, but at that time fire flashed through the air when men were evil.

Through the wickedness of masses of human beings and the fact that man succumbed too completely to the influence of the luciferic beings and lent himself to evil, the forces of fire in Lemuria were kindled. Thus, Lemuria perished as the result of the raging fires and the wickedness of a large section of its population. The human beings who were saved went to the West, to a continent lying between the present Africa, Europe and America, namely, Atlantis. There the evolution of humanity continued for long, long ages. The number of human beings gradually increased and the souls who had gone to Jupiter, Mars, and so on, during the period of desolation, came down to this continent. The process lasted for a long time. It was thus that the concept of race developed in ancient Atlantis. In occultism it is said that there were human beings in Atlantis whose bodies were inhabited by souls who had previously been on Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so on. They were called Mars men, Jupiter men, for example. The external forms of the bodies differed for this reason. During the whole first half of Atlantis the texture of the human body was much softer, much more flexible, and yielded to the forces of the soul. These soul forces were essentially more powerful than they are today, and they both shaped and overpowered the physical body. A man of ancient Atlantis would have been able to break a railroad track, let us say, with ease, not because his physical forces were strong, for his bony system had still not developed, but through his magical, psychic forces. A cannon ball, for example, could have been repulsed by this psychic force. The density of flesh developed only later. A similar phenomenon is still to be found today in certain lunatics who on account of the liberation of strong psychic forces—in that condition the physical body is not properly connected with the higher bodies—can lift and throw heavy objects.

Because in Atlantis man's physical body was still pliable, he could more easily adjust himself to processes in the life of soul; the physical stature could be made to decrease or increase in size. If, for example, a man in Atlantis was, let: us say, stupid or sensual, he fell into matter, as it were, and became a giant in stature. The more intelligent human beings developed a delicate constitution and were smaller in stature; those who were dull-witted were giants. Man's external form was far, far more strongly influenced by the forces of soul than is the case today when substance has become rigid. The bodies of men developed in accordance with the qualities of soul, and this accounted for the great differences in the races.

When myths and legends have described the dwarfs as being clever and the giants as dull-witted, we recognize once again the reflection of a profound, occult trend. When a soul came down again to the earth from Mars, the qualities with which it had been connected there continued for a long time to influence it and the body it inhabited. This fact explains the differences in races and racial characteristics.

If the evolution of humanity until the middle of the Atlantean epoch had proceeded without the influence of Lucifer, man would by then have developed a picture consciousness imbued with a high degree of clairvoyance. There would have been in his soul something that through its power would have revealed the external world to him in inner pictures; he would not have perceived objects outside through his eyes. As a result of the luciferic influence man had perceived the physical world at an early stage, but not rightly. He saw the external world through a veil, as it were. Evolution as provided for him by the divine-spiritual beings was that in place of the dull, clairvoyant consciousness with which his inner world was perceived in pictures, he would have seen the external world but in such a way that behind everything material, spirit would have been present. He would have seen the spirit behind the physical world. All of a sudden—but please do not take that literally, for the process was obviously lengthy—the external world would have appeared to man at a certain time; he would have awakened. The inner world would have suddenly vanished but the consciousness of the spirit whence that world originated would have remained. Man would have seen not only the plants, animals and so forth but simultaneously the spirit whence they had come forth. Because the luciferic beings drew man down to the earth too soon, the external world had the effect of hiding the world of spirit from him; physical matter became opaque for him. Otherwise, he would have seen through it to the primordial spiritual ground of the world. Because man had come down too soon into matter, it proved to be too dense for him and he could not penetrate it. But from the middle of the Atlantean epoch onward, other retarded spiritual beings were able to impregnate this matter, in consequence of which it was as if clouded, made turbid, and man was again no longer able to behold the spiritual. These were the ahrimanic or Mephistophelian beings. Mephistopheles—Ahriman is not the same being as Lucifer. Through untruth Zarathustra calls Ahriman the liar. He beclouds the purity of the spirit of man, conceals the spiritual from him. Ahriman comes after Lucifer and instils into man the illusion that matter is a reality in itself. So in his progress, during which the divine-spiritual beings wanted their influence to work upon him, man allowed himself to be subject to two other influences: those of Lucifer who assails man in his inner nature, in the astral body, endeavoring to confuse and mislead him, and Ahriman, who, working from outside, deludes man to a certain extent, causing the external world to appear to him as maya, as matter, We must speak of Lucifer as the spirit who is active within man. Ahriman, on the contrary, is the spirit who spreads matter like a veil over the spiritual and makes recognition of the spiritual world impossible. These two spirits hold man back in his development to spirituality. It was especially the ahrimanic influence that asserted itself in man and caused the Atlantean part of the earth to perish.

In Lemuria, with their magical forces, men had a strong effect upon nature. They could, for example, control fire. The Atlanteans were no longer capable of this. But with their will they could control the germinal forces in which deep secrets lie hidden—the forces of air and water. Fire was beyond their control. Let us be clear that when we look at a locomotive today, constructed by and controlled by man, this is something quite different. Today man understands how to make the forces contained in coal serve his purposes, to turn them into a propelling power. This process means that he controls the lifeless, mineral force in the coal. The Atlantean, however, controlled the actual life force contained in seeds. Think of the life force that causes the blades of grass to sprout from the earth. This life force was extracted from the seed by the Atlanteans and put to use. In their sheds where the Atlanteans kept their “air ships” they laid up enormous stocks of seeds, just as we today store coal. With the force accumulated from the seeds they propelled their vehicles. When the clairvoyant looks back to that epoch, he sees these vehicles near the earth in the air that was still dense to a certain extent; equipped with a kind of steerage apparatus, they rose up and moved. The Atlanteans controlled these forces. Now it is unthinkable to imagine that the forces of plants—soul forces, that is to say—can be applied by magical means without at the same time influencing the forces of air and water. When the will of the Atlantean turned to evil and used these forces for egotistic purposes, he simultaneously evoked the forces of water and of air, released them, and ancient Atlantis perished as the result. The continents came into existence through the cooperation of the elements and man. But now the ahrimanic influence was gradually able to become so strong that man could no longer see the spiritual. Behind physical matter he could see nothing except the mineral element, the inorganic, and therewith the magical powers vanished ever more completely from him.

In the Atlantean epoch man was able to control and master the life force in the plant kingdom. In the Lemurian epoch it lay within his power to control the seminal forces of animals, and indeed it actually came to the point of Lemurian man applying these seminal forces of animals to transform animal forms into human forms. Every such magical action performed by man with the seminal forces, causes a release of the forces of fire. When such will becomes evil, the worst forces of black magic are generated and evoked. Today the most evil forces on the earth are still released when black magicians mishandle forces that are, generally speaking, withheld from mankind. These forces are powerful and at the same time holy. They are forces that, in the wise hands of worthy guides, can be applied in the highest and purest service of humanity.

Man now gradually became incapable of moulding his body. Cartilage and bones, the hard constituents, were integrated into it and man's resemblance to his present stature constantly increased. It was in the Atlantean epoch that what has been described first took place and it is therefore comprehensible that ancient Atlantis cannot be found by modern researchers. Hopes cherished by learned men of still being able to find traces of human evolution in those olden times, will never be fulfilled, because man was then a being whose limbs still consisted of soft, flabby substance. Such a body cannot be preserved, just as after a hundred years no remnants of the soft-bodied mollusks are to he found. Remnants of animals from ancient periods can still be found because the animals had already hardened while man's constitution was still soft and pliable. The animals came down into matter too soon; they were not able to wait. Out of the earliest human figures who had become physical too soon the most stunted human figures have come into existence. The noblest human figures stayed above the earth the longest, and remained soft and pliable. They waited until they were able to avoid an epoch during which they would have been obliged to remain stationary at a certain stage of hardening, as in the case of the animals. Because they were not able to wait, the animals have remained at a stage of rigidity and hardening.

The evolution of the earth has now been described up to the time when the forces of water were unleashed and ancient Atlantis perished. The human beings who were saved from Atlantis made their way on the one side toward America, on the other, to the Europe, Asia and Africa of today. These great migrations continued for long ages.

We will now think once more of ancient Atlantean culture. In the earliest period man possessed strong magical powers. With these powers he controlled the seed forces, mastered the forces of nature and in a certain way was still able to see into the spiritual world. Clairvoyance then gradually faded. Men were destined to found the culture belonging to the earth; they were to descend to the earth in the real sense. Thus, at the end of Atlantis there were two kinds of human beings within the peoples and races. Firstly, at the height of Atlantean culture there were seers, clairvoyants and powerful magicians who worked by means of magical forces and were able to see into the spiritual world. Beside them were people who were preparing to be the founders of present humanity. They already had within them the rudiments of the faculties possessed by men today. They could emphatically no longer equal the achievements of the old Atlanteans but they were able to make preparation for intelligence, for the power of judgment. They possessed the elementary faculties of calculation, computation, analysis and so forth. They were the people who developed the rudiments of the intelligence of today and no longer made use of the magical forces applied. by the Atlantean magicians at the time when their application was already fraught with danger on account of the powerful ahrimanic influence. They were those “others,” the despised people, rather like the anthroposophists today who meet together in small groups, or like the first Christians in ancient Rome who gathered together in the catacombs.

Now in Atlantis there were also centers of culture and ritual—we will call them the Atlantean Oracles—where what is called the Atlantean wisdom was harbored and practiced. In accordance with the differences in human souls due to their having come down to the earth from different planets, there were necessarily different Oracles for men of different constitutions. There was a Mars Oracle, a Jupiter Oracle, a Venus Oracle, and so on. These Oracles were sanctuaries where the initiates, who were sages of a certain degree, guided and led the Mars race, the Jupiter race, and so on. All these Oracles, however, were in turn led by the still more powerful Sun Oracle. This was the leading center of the Mysteries whence the cultural instructions for the other Oracles proceeded. As well as this highest leadership, all Mars men were under that of the center where the initiate of the Mars Oracle resided, together with his pupils; all Mercury souls were led from the Mercury Oracle, all Jupiter souls from the Jupiter Oracle, and so on. All these Oracle centers, however, were subject to the authority of the great initiate of the Sun Oracle.

This great leader of the Sun Oracle, the greatest initiate of Atlantis, directed his attention above all to that section of human beings who differed from the ordinary population in ancient Atlantis. They were simple people who were looked down upon and who no longer possessed magical powers. But it was they who were gathered together by the great initiate because they had developed the new faculties, even if only in a primitive form. It was from them that understanding of the new age was to be expected. The great initiate gathered together this useful material for the future, and also those old initiates or magicians who had not persisted in clinging egotistically to the former practices. Our present age presents a similar picture and can be compared with the conditions prevailing in Atlantis at that time. Today, too, there are on the one side the influential figures in the prevailing forms of culture, people who in their own way are magicians, working only with what is inorganic; on the other side, there are the despised people who still today want to work for the future. At that time, in Atlantis, the representatives of culture, the old magicians, also looked down with disparagement upon the small number of those who had developed the new faculty, which was useless in ancient Atlantis. The great initiate of the Sun Oracle did not, however, despise these people; today, too, the proud bearers of our culture look down upon a small number of human beings, upon the anthroposophists who gather in small, insignificant meeting places and are said to engage in all kinds of foolish activities. Generally speaking, they are unprofessional laymen who claim to be inaugurating the future. These are the people who are developing and preparing in themselves a faculty that to the others seems useless, but because it has a foreboding of the future is able to create a connection again with the spiritual world. In Atlantis long ago it was a matter of finding the connection with the physical, material world; the task today is to discover the spiritual again. Just as at that time the old initiate gathered his host together locally, directing his call to the simple, despised people, so today again, under different—not local—conditions, a call goes forth from the great Masters of Wisdom who are allowing certain spiritual treasures of wisdom to flow into humanity. Those possessed of certain qualities respond to this call as did certain human beings long ages ago; they were individuals who had within them primitive talents for calculation, computation and so forth.

This wisdom is not imparted in order that theosophical dogmas shall be grasped by the intellect but that they shall be understood by the heart. A man is then strong enough to know why theosophy is there today. It is there to meet a great challenge of evolution, and he who knows this also finds the strength to conquer all obstacles, come what may. He proceeds along his path because he knows that what is intended to come to pass through theosophy must come to pass for the further progress of humanity on the path to the spirit.

The great initiate of the Sun Oracle led the small group of human beings and founded a kind of cultural center in Asia. He drew these individuals to him in order to make them capable of founding post-Atlantean culture. During the great migration, everything that had come into existence in Atlantis had been mingled, jumbled together. It follows that in the post-Atlantean epoch one should no longer speak of races but of civilizations, cultures.

We will now turn to consider the consecutive civilizations in the post-Atlantean epoch, the first of which is the ancient Indian. A remarkable mixture of peoples had been saved after the Atlantean catastrophe and had congregated in primeval India. The human beings who lived there still had the deepest, overwhelming yearning for the spiritual world, knowing that from it they had been born and that now they had lost it. Thither the great initiate of the Sun Oracle sent the seven Holy Rishis. With longing fraught with pain, the man of ancient India maintained that the world of the senses is untrue and that the spiritual world from which he has descended is the only true world. It was, therefore, easy for the Holy Rishis to teach what they had to say about the primeval wisdom, about the Mysteries, to those who still harbored a longing for the spiritual world. To the ancient Indians the material world was maya, the great illusion.

Already a different attitude of soul prevailed in the second post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the ancient Persian epoch. Western thinking and research in the physical world realize that this wonderful world, constructed as it is according to laws of perfect harmony is worthy to be penetrated by the spirit. The people of Zarathustra had a boding realization of this. Those who have knowledge of the people of ancient Persia will be able to distinguish clearly between them and the people of India. To the latter, everything around them was maya, illusion; the spiritual world alone was real and a worthy goal of aspiration; that world alone was permeated by the highest self. Such an attitude of soul could not master the physical world. This became possible for the first time with the culture inaugurated by Zarathustra, the great pupil of the mighty initiate of the Sun Oracle. He knew and taught that the world outside is not maya but the expression of divine-spiritual reality, that behind it lies what Ahriman had hidden from man. What thus lies behind the world of sense must be disclosed and Zarathustra's aim was to find the spirit in the material world. That was his mission. In Ormuzd and Ahriman light and darkness are pitted against each other.

In the third epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian, man had already formed a close link with the physical world. Lifting his eyes to the stellar script in the heavens, the deeds and the wisdom of the gods were revealed to him and he tried to understand and fathom them. The wonderful stellar wisdom of the Chaldean priesthood is a memorial of these strivings.

The fourth culture, that of Greece and Rome, leads man right down to the physical plane. He has now come to love it so dearly that he has quite forgotten his origin. He no longer understands the spiritual world. This is clearly indicated in the saying of the Greek hero, Achilles: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.” The wonderful sculpture of Greece and the citizenship of Rome are the hallmarks of this fourth epoch of culture. The fifth cultural epoch is our own. Materialism and the department store give it a certain characteristic stamp.

The purpose of all these cultures is, after all, that the physical plane shall be gradually mastered by man. Two fundamental streams come to expression in the cultures that have existed until today. The views and trends of feeling of the Eastern and Western worlds confront each other at the present time. The Eastern world calls the physical plane maya or illusion and does not want to be entangled with it either in thoughts, acts or feelings. The basic aim of the Western conception of the world, however, is to penetrate into this material world, come to grips with it. Outwardly, therefore, things may come to a confrontation but each world has its own complete justification. Let the Western world concern itself with external culture and by this means develop the forces of the soul, and let the Eastern take its path. At the summit they come together.

Thus we think of the Indian who leads an inner, spiritual life, withdrawn from the outer, material world, and the Persian who still sees something inimical in matter but nevertheless infuses spirit into it. The Egyptian contemplates the spirit and its laws; the Chaldean sees in the movements of the stars the script of the gods in space and reveres the stellar wisdom as the expression. of divine-spiritual beings. We see the Greek who knew how to imprint in matter itself the ideal of beauty and perfection of what nature has created; the Greek personifies the epoch when we can marvel at the marriage between spirit and matter in the physical masterpieces of art. Reference must be made here to a deep, occult background. Think of the Greek temple in its majestic purity and beauty; it is the actual dwelling place of the god. The essential difference between these works of architecture and sculpture and those of other cultural epochs is that the Greek temple in its pure form is so supreme in the perfection of its lines, even from the architectonic, artistic standpoint, that nothing can equal it. if the soul steeps itself in these lines—in the ruins of the temple at this is still to be seen—if it contemplates a Doric or an Ionian temple and has something of what is called space consciousness, it perceives how these lines are actually integrated in space. You yourselves are aware that certain currents, certain streams, are present in space. The Greek temple follows the inevitable courses of these streams and presents them in physical reality. The Greek creates in space what he has actually found there. The essential secret of the Greek temple is the presence within it of the god himself. Whereas the congregation of the faithful is an integral part of the Gothic cathedral, the Greek temple is a whole in itself. The Gothic cathedral, with its pointed arches and windows, is only conceivable together with its congregation, whose hands, folded in devotion, mirror its forms and together with it constitute a whole. Spirituality was actually present in the Greek temple; it afforded the spiritual being an opportunity to descend and find a dwelling place.

But during this epoch, which has so well understood how to adorn the earth with masterpieces of art, men increasingly lost connection with the spiritual world. The physical world was full of brightness and light for a man but when he passed through death during the epoch of Greco-Latin culture, the spiritual world was barren, cold and dark for him. During the post-Atlantean era, man had conquered the physical world but in the spiritual world sadness and gloom were his lot. Even the initiates, who both here and in yonder world are the teachers of mankind, could bring no consolation. When they told those who were living between death and a new birth about happenings in the physical world, those human souls became even more sorrowful; with every fiber of their beings they clung to the material world that was now taken from them. Here, too, a change took place through the event of Golgotha and the appearance of Christ Jesus on the earth. After His death on the Cross He descended into the Underworld—this is called the journey to Hell—and to those who were no longer living in a physical body He proclaimed that in very truth life had been victorious over death. It was thereby again made possible for souls to rise into the spiritual world.

It has often been emphasized that the present can best be understood in the light of the past and its happenings, and we shall most easily discover and understand the characteristics of our spiritual ideals for the future by looking back into times of remote antiquity. Today, therefore, we will consider developments that took place after the destruction of ancient Atlantis and, in connection with those developments, man's experience during the life after death.

The conditions experienced by the soul between death and a new birth have not always been the same. They, too, have changed in the course of evolution. During the great cultural epochs—the ancient Indian, the epoch of the Holy Rishis; the ancient Persian, epoch of the Zarathustrian culture; the Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin and our present epoch—man has connected himself ever more closely with the physical plane, which he grew to love more and more intensely. In every such epoch the human soul descended deeper into the material world. The greater the understanding acquired by man for this world, the stranger the spiritual world became for him after death. This was the case most strongly in the Greco-Latin epoch. The Greeks loved the physical world because in their glorious art, in that splendid adornment of physical existence, their whole soul could live joyfully. The physical world was dear to the Roman because in his discovery of the ego, the “I,” the feeling of his own personality could develop to the full. The concepts of Roman citizenship and Roman rights are hallmarks of this cultural epoch. The Roman felt at home in this physical, material world. The concept of rights has existed only since that epoch, so it is quite correct to say that jurisprudence began in the Roman Empire; it is the sign of reverence for the single personality. Death was the great unknown and evoked fear. The utterance of Achilles: “Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of Shades,” aptly indicates the conception prevailing in that epoch of the soul's experience during the life after death in the spiritual world. The more fully these souls had given expression in the realm of earth to all their faculties, the more did the capacity to find their bearings in the spiritual world after death depart from them. The soul felt isolated in the spheres it had now entered. Even in spiritland (Devachan) the soul felt that everything around it was dark, empty and cold. The soul was no longer capable of experiencing the spirituality of yonder world. Even the great leaders of mankind, the initiates, could not change this condition, yet they are the teachers of men not only here on earth but also in yonder worlds. When they told the dead anything about the world this side of the threshold, these souls felt still greater pain at having been obliged to leave the physical world that had become so dear to them. The teachers could bring with them nothing that would help or be of value to the dead, all of whom longed for reincarnation. A human being felt as though he were shut away from his brothers, abandoned even in the realm of the spirit. Had these conditions remained, love and brotherliness would also have gradually disappeared from the earth. For this sojourn in the realm of spirit would have meant that these souls would bring egoism with them into the physical world and into a life wholly centered in the individual self.

In the ancient. Indian epoch man still regarded the earthly world as maya, but things changed in the course of evolution. Zarathustra already proclaimed that the spiritual can also be found by man in the physical world. He revealed the path by which the people were ultimately to realize that the sun with its light is only the external body of a sublime spiritual being whom he called Ahura Mazdao, the Great Aura, in contrast to the little human aura. His aim was to proclaim that this being, as yet far off, would one day come down to the earth in order to unite with its very substance and to work further in the evolution of humanity. For the people of Zarathustra this heralded the same being who in later history lived on the earth as Christ. To his pupils Zarathustra proclaimed, “If you learn to understand that the spiritual is present in everything physical and material, that the physical is permeated by the great Sun Aura, by Ahura Mazdao, then Ahriman will no longer lead you astray.”

At other times Zarathustra said, “So great, so mighty is He who has revealed Himself to me in the sun that I sacrifice everything to him. Gladly I offer to Him the life of my body, the etheric existence of my senses, the expression of my deeds, the astral body.”

This was the pledge once made by the great Zarathustra. He announced to his pupils that the great Sun Spirit would reveal Himself directly in the earth itself, in the realities of earthly existence. Thus did Zarathustra inaugurate the teaching that the material is only the physiognomy, the expression of the spiritual.

Then came the time when the being who had been heralded by Zarathustra revealed himself to Moses in the burning thornbush and on Sinai. Moses taught that this Sun Being is also the Ego Being, the highest principle that can be membered into man. But it is not only into man that a particle of the Sun Spirit has descended; it has also descended into everything in external nature, into the elements, everywhere. The same divinity who, in the name of the “I am the I am,” the principle once revealed to Zarathustra as Ahura Mazdao, as the innermost core, the primordial ground of all existence, was proclaimed by Moses to a whole people as the supreme being whose name was inexpressible and might be uttered only in the innermost sanctuary by the officiating priest. The Godhead who dwells in man, who does not reveal Himself only in the elements, in the flaming fire, is He who is here proclaimed.

Thus we can regard Zarathustra as the herald of Jehovah, of the same being who at the beginning of our time-reckoning dwelt for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the same God who had been proclaimed by Moses and Zarathustra.

Christ says, “How shall ye believe me if ye have not believed )Moses and the prophets?” Herewith Christ confirms that the Old Testament had proclaimed in advance, only under different names, the same God whom He, Christ also proclaims. All events in the world need a certain time to take effect. On Sinai, in the burning thornbush, this Sun Being, descending from the heights of the spiritual world, had reached the point where He could announce Himself to man through the elements. He now came nearer and nearer to the earth, into the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism in the Jordan, and when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the earth and the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, this was not only the expression of a great cosmic event but also of the greatest of all earthly events: the Christ passed into the earth's aura as the Spirit of the earth. A new impetus had been given and could be perceived by clairvoyance, for at that moment the earth's aura changed, revealing particular colors. New colors were revealed and new powers were incorporated in the earth's aura. At the moment when the blood that is the physical expression of the ego flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha, at that moment the ego of Christ united with the earth. But the moment had also come when conditions in the spiritual world could begin to change for souls after death. This was the meaning of Christ's descent into Hell.

A clairvoyant, living before the event of Golgotha, would not have seen in the earth's aura what could be seen there later on, when Christ Jesus had passed through the death on Golgotha. Let us now think of the event of Damascus. Saul who, as an initiate of the Jewish Mysteries, knew full well that the “Great Aura,” Ahura Mazdao, would one day unite with the earth, rebelled against the belief that this being could have died on the shameful cross. Although he had participated in the events in Palestine, he did not believe that this great spirit had dwelt on the earth in Jesus of Nazareth. It was when he became clairvoyant near the gates of Damascus that in the earth's aura he beheld the Christ spirit, the living Christ, who could not previously have been seen there. He then said to himself, “Yes, it was predicted that the earth's aura would change, and that has now come to pass.” Then Saul became Paul. Paul spoke of himself as one who had been born prematurely, one who had become clairvoyant through grace; his was a premature birth because maturity had not yet been fully reached; he had not descended so deeply into matter and was less firmly connected with the physical body. Those who follow the course of Christianity know that the personality in it of supreme importance is Paul. He achieved more than anyone else for its propagation.

It was an occult fact, an occult event, by which Paul was converted, and it can justly be said that through that clairvoyant experience humanity was led to Christ. At that time a change took place in the earth's aura, and since then it has been changed. The words of St. John's Gospel were thus fulfilled: “He who eats my bread treads upon me with his feet.” Since then Christ has been the Spirit of the earth, the planetary Spirit. The earth is the body of Christ; His habitation is within the earth. This profound utterance in St. John's Gospel is not to be understood in an adverse sense or as a pointer to Judas who betrayed Christ. Rather, the reference is to the Christ-Jehovah Divinity and His relation to the earth.

When the occult investigator compares the effect of the art of the Greeks and post-Christian art upon the world man enters after death, he still finds that when a clairvoyant contemplates with physical eyes a Greek temple with its Doric pillars—for example, the ruins at Paestum-he may well be entranced by the harmonious forms that follow the spiritual lines of direction and thereby make this temple an actual dwelling place of the god. Just as a soul feels drawn to the body that is fitting for it, so does the god descend into these forms that harmonize so perfectly with his nature and being. But when a seer turns his eyes to the spiritual counterpart of his temple, he finds nothing in the spiritual world. The temple seems to have been obliterated from that world and a space left empty there: nothing of the temple is to be seen. If, on the other hand, a seer is contemplating works of art of the post-Christian era or, for example, contemplating the Gospel of St. John or the passages in the Old and New Testaments that have to do with Christ-Jehovah or Raphael's Madonnas—if the seer contemplates these creations first with physical eyes and then with clairvoyant sight, they are by no means invisible in the spiritual world but radiate there in even greater splendor. This is especially true of the Gospel of St. John. It is in the spiritual world that the greatness of that creation is first realized. It is in the spiritual world that whatever is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha first becomes radiant and clear in the fullest sense.

Simultaneously with the historical event on the physical plane, a spiritual happening, which was also a symbolic happening, took place when the blood flowed from the Redeemer's wounds. When Christ was no longer living in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, at the moment when He died on Golgotha, He appeared in the spiritual world to the souls living between death and rebirth, and the darkness abated. The spiritual world was suddenly filled with light. Just as the objects in a dark room suddenly become visible when a ray of light shines into the room and you see the objects that were always there although you could not previously detect them, thus did light pour into the world of the dead. The souls there were again able to perceive what was around them, to feel united in the realm of spirit with their brothers and could now bring into the physical world the qualities of love and brotherliness. Thus a new light came into this world of the dead, for the Mystery of Golgotha has significance not only for the world in which it took place physically but for all the worlds with which man is connected in the course of his evolution. If the spiritual world had remained as the dead experienced it during the Greco-Latin epoch, if the human soul had remained in the icy coldness and loneliness then prevailing, brotherliness and love would have gradually vanished from the world. Man would have brought with him from Devachan the longing for seclusion. For the light that then streamed into the earthly world and also into the world of the dead was meant to establish the kingdom of brotherliness and love on the earth. That is the mission of the Christ impulse.

We will now consider from still another side the Mystery of Golgotha and the secret of the blood flowing from the wounds of the Redeemer.

We know that man on the earth has received an inheritance from Old Moon. The three lower bodies, physical body, etheric body and astral body had been prepared for him and it was on the earth that the ego was first added—the ego as the expression of human freedom and independence. In ancient times it was important to establish the homogeneity of mankind. At the beginning, conditions were such that the relations of one human being to another were saved only by being given a physical foundation. The blood is the expression of the ego. Blood kinship and the ties of blood were the ruling principles. The physical blood was the medium operating from man to man. This was how things were in times of antiquity. But through Christ Jesus love became a non-material bond. The activity of the human group ego declined. In earlier times the human being belonged to a communal tribal ego and he felt safe and secure within it, within the bosom of Father Abraham. This kinship was much more important to him than his personal identity. His higher self continued to exist in the ties of blood kinship. In the Old Testament we hear of Noah and other tribal fathers that they lived for hundreds of years. We are there led back to times when the human being not only had a memory of what he himself had experienced but also to a time when this memory extended far back into the generations. He did not say “I” of himself but he lived in his “I” right back to remote ancestors. His life did not begin with his birth; it was not then that he began to say “I” of himself but he said “I” of everything his ancestors had experienced.

It was against love based on blood that the luciferic beings at all times directed their sharpest attacks. Their aim was to make each single human being dependent upon himself alone, to instill consciousness of self into man even between death and a new birth. But divine beings, bearers of love, strove to bring individuals together through bonds other than those based on ties of blood, which take no account of freedom. The Christ principle unites with the full expression of the “I” the power flowing from the spirit of love and lets it hold sway from individual to individual. Hence there is a saying, Christ is the true Lucifer (Christus verus Luciferus) or Light-bringer, and finally the opponent of the fallen Lucifer. The love based on blood was transformed by Christ into spiritual love, into the brotherly love streaming from soul to soul. Christ's utterance, “He who forsakes not father and mother cannot be my disciple,” is to be understood in the sense that love based on blood must be transformed into the brotherly love that embraces all human beings with equal strength. Spiritual science takes nothing away from any of these biblical utterances but when it is rightly understood can only enrich them with a deeper understanding of Christian grace. The power of spiritual love was brought to the souls of men for the first time by Christ when He appeared on the earth; and with the blood that flowed on Golgotha from the wounds of the Redeemer the superfluous blood of humanity was as it were sacrificed. Through this act the teaching was confirmed that individual must confront individual as human brothers. In the world today there is still little understanding of Christ. Mankind has first to learn to realize the greatness of this most. mighty cosmic event. A few individuals have always had a divining of the whole significance of the Christ Being and His appearance on the earth. How have they thought of that event? Think of the human beings and peoples who preserved for some considerable time the connection with the spiritual world. The ancient Indian set little store by his connection with the physical world. He was intent upon the acquisition of super-sensible truths and lofty spiritual life in the spiritual world but had no desire to love physical existence. Let me tell you about an Eastern saga, which indicates in a splendid way how the Christ principle was tentatively grasped there.

In the course of time, so runs this saga, there appeared the power that guides our earth. An oriental legend, which reports it, was narrated in the temples of Northern Tibet to the pupil of the wisdom of the Buddha, and has been preserved ever since. This Eastern legend narrates that Kashyapa, the worthiest pupil of the Buddha, lived at a time when, even in the East, little understanding of wisdom was to be found. When he felt his end approaching he withdrew into a cave where he lived for long ages; his corpse was to be preserved there to await the appearance of the Maitreya Buddha in order then to ascend to heaven.

The gist of this legend follows. If there had been no special event, that is to say, if Christ had not appeared on the earth, neither the East nor the West would have been able to find the path into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa is pre-served until the Maitreya Buddha releases the corpse from the earth. This means that in the future man will again have powers whereby what is earthly can be spiritualized. The sublime being who conducts Kashyapa's body into the spiritual world will have descended more deeply than any being has ever done. Christ Himself releases the body of Kashyapa. In the period following this event the body is no longer there. What does this mean? It means that the body was immediately transported into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa can be liberated in the element of fire. Where is this fire? When seen by Paul before Damascus it was spiritualized. Thus the appearance of Christ on the earth is the great turning point when man can ascend again from the physical into the spiritual world.

Now think of the Buddha's teaching. Through observing old age, illness, death, and so forth, the great truth concerning suffering dawned in him. He now taught of the cessation of suffering, of release from suffering through the elimination of the desire for birth, for physical incarnation.

Now think of humanity six hundred years later. What do you find? Humanity reveres a corpse. Men gaze at Christ on the cross, Christ who dies and through His death brought life. Life has vanquished death.

One: To be born is suffering? No, for Christ entered into our earth and henceforward for me, a Christian, to be born is no longer suffering.

Two: Illness is suffering? But the great medicine will exist, that is, the power of the soul that has been kindled by the Christ impulse. In uniting himself with the Christ impulse, man spiritualizes his life.

Three: Old age is suffering? But whereas man's body becomes frail and infirm, in his real self he grows ever stronger and more powerful.

Four: Death is suffering? But through Christ the corpse has become the symbol of the fact that death, physical death, has been vanquished by life, by the spirit; death has been finally overcome by life.

Five: To be separated from the being one loves is suffering? But the man who has understood Christ is never separated from the one he loves, for Christ has brought light to the world stretching between death and a new birth; so a man remains united with the object of his love.

Six: Not to receive that for which one craves is suffering? He who lives with Christ will no longer crave for what does not come to him, or is not given to him.

Seven: To be united with what one does not love is suffering? But the man who has recognized Christ kindles in himself that universal love that envelops every being, every object according to its value.

Eight: To be separated from what one loves is no longer suffering, for in Christ there is no more separation.

Thus for the illness of suffering, which Buddha proclaimed and recognized, the remedy has been given through Christ.

This turning of humanity to Christ and to the dead body on the cross is the greatest transformation that has ever come to pass in evolution.