Anthroposophy as a Substance of Life and Feeling

Lecture by Rudolf Steiner given in Tübingen, February 16, 1913

If we pause at times in the midst of our anthroposophical considerations and then ask ourselves: What leads us into a spiritual movement such as our anthroposophical movement? ... we may of course answer a similar question from many different stand-points. One of the standpoints (although it is not the only one, it is nevertheless the most important one) which is able more than any other to supply a satisfactory answer is the contemplation of the course of life which the human soul experiences in feelings between death and a new birth. Indeed, the events which take place during the long span of life between death and a new birth are not less important or detailed than the events which take place between birth and death; yet we are only able to single out a few of the important things which we must experience. We may say, however, that whenever and at whatever point we observe the life between death and a new birth it always convinces us that humanity must prepare itself for a time when it will know and feel something concerning the supersensible worlds.

Let us now penetrate at once into definite and concrete facts. If a clairvoyant who is able to contemplate life between death and a new birth perceives what will be described below, this sight may indeed induce him to consider it as an urgent task to spread the knowledge of the spiritual world! Let us take the case of a man who has died. The clairvoyant seeks him, he tries to see him some time after the person in question has passed through the portal of death. In the manner in which it is possible to communicate with the dead, he may hear the following words spoken by the departed one. (This is a concrete case.) The departed one will speak to him as follows: “I have left my wife behind; I know that she is still dwelling in the physical world.” (Of course, the dead man does not express himself with physical words.) “While I was living with her in the physical world, and while I attended to my work at the office from morning to night, she has always been the sunshine of my life. Every one of her words filled me with happiness; indeed, my life was so that I could not imagine it without the sunshine shed over it by the partner of my life. I then passed through the portal of death and left her behind. Now I am longing to be back again, I feel how I miss everything and my longing soul seeks to find a path leading to the companion of my life. But I cannot find this soul, I cannot penetrate to where she is dwelling, it is just as if she were no longer there. And if at times I have an inkling of her presence and feel as if she were there, as if I were in her neighbourhood, she is dumb, so that I only compare this with the case of two people, one of whom is filled with the desire that the other one speak a few words to him, while the other silent and cannot speak. Thus the soul that has filled me with bliss for such a long time during my physical life has now grown silent”.

You see, if we investigate what may be the cause of all this we obtain the answer: there is no language in common between the departed and the living who have remained behind. Nothing fills the soul with a substance which would continue to render it perceptible. Because a language in common is lacking, two souls feel separated.

This was not always the case. If we go back further into human evolution we find that the souls possessed a certain spiritual inheritance, a spirituality rendered them perceptible to one another not only upon the physical plane, but also when one of them dwelt in the physical and the other in the spiritual world. But the old heirloom of spiritual inwardness has been used up and to-day it exists no longer, so that the distressing case may really arise that one soul who has been loved by the other as dearly as I have just described, cannot be found beyond death by the soul, because nothing of what can be perceived by the departed soul lives within the soul who has remained upon the earth. What can be perceived by the departed soul is spiritual knowledge and spiritual feelings: this is the link which connects the soul upon the earth with the spiritual world. If here upon the earth a soul who has remained behind has fostered the knowledge of spiritual world, and if thoughts connected with the spiritual world have passed through this soul, these thoughts may be perceived by the departed soul, even the old religious feelings suffice to give soul something which may be perceived by the other soul. If it were possible to trace this case still further, the seer would discover that even when both souls have passed through death the departed souls are only able to perceive one another dimly; they are quite unable to establish a reciprocal connection, or they have the greatest difficulty in doing this, because they have no language in common. Clairvoyance reveals the deeper meaning of Anthroposophy: it is the language which will gradually be spoken both by the living and by the dead, by those who dwell in the physical world and by those who live between death and a new birth. The souls who have remained behind and who have taken up within them thoughts concerning the supersensible worlds become visible to the souls of the departed. If they have strewn out love before death, they will do this also after death. This may convince us that Anthroposophy is a language which renders perceptible to the supersensible world what takes place in the world of physical events. Indeed, the danger threatening humanity upon the earth is that the souls will become more and more estranged from one another and will be unable to build a connecting bridge, if spiritual ideas do not enable them to find the thread which links up souls. This is the reality of Anthroposophy, for it is not a mere theory. Theoretical knowledge is the very least; what we take up within us is a real soul-elixir, real substance. This substance enables the soul who has passed through death to see the soul who has remained behind. We may say that the seer who has an insight into these things, who has once perceived a soul filled with longing to see what it has left behind upon the earth, but unable to see it because its family has not yet found Anthroposophy — the seer who has perceived how the souls suffer under similar privations, knows that he cannot do otherwise than to speak to his fellow-beings about spiritual wisdom, and to consider that the time has come when spiritual wisdom must enter the hearts of men. We may say that those whose mission is based upon the knowledge of the supersensible worlds feel that it is an urgent necessity to speak about the supersensible worlds, a necessity which cannot be overlooked, for this would be the greatest sin of all. Thus they feel the necessity of proclaiming anthroposophical truths, of making revelations concerning the supersensible worlds.

What has just been said may show you the tremendous earnestness connected with the necessity of revealing spiritual truths. But there is still another aspect of the communication between the living and the dead. We have not advanced very far in this direction, but we shall gradually progress. In order to understand how the living will gradually be able to establish a kind of communication with those who have departed, we must bear in mind the following things. Very little indeed is known concerning the physical world. For how is this knowledge of the physical world acquired? By using the senses and applying thought, by feeling what comes toward us from the world outside. But this is only the very least part of what is contained in the world outside. It contains still other things. I would like you to have some idea of the fact that there are still other things in the world which are far more important than what is real in a physical sense. I do not mean the supersensible world, but something else. Imagine, for instance, that you are accustomed to go to your office every day at 8 a.m. One day you discover that on that particular morning you are three minutes late, and you happen to cross a certain square where you would have been obliged to pass through a kind of garage with a roof supported by columns. On that particular day on which you cross the square three minutes later than usual you realise that had you been punctual — that is to say, had you not been three minutes late — you would have been killed by the collapsing roof. Try to imagine this quite vividly You may also take the case of a man who misses a train which is afterwards wrecked in a collision; he would have been killed had he left by that train! All these are things which have not taken place, and this is why people do not notice them. But if something similar faces you, so that you must hit upon it, it will undoubtedly make an impression upon you. The day's course from morning to night always contains things which have not occurred to you. These are beyond your range of sight, things which may perhaps seem “invented”, yet they belong to the most important ingredients of life. You will have an inkling of these facts if you consider, for instance, the case of certain man in Berlin who had booked a berth on the Titanic. He met an acquaintance who told him: “I wish you would not leave on the Titanic!” He actually succeeded in persuading him to postpone his departure. The Titanic was sunk, and so this man escaped death. This undoubtedly made an indelible impression upon him. This is a special case, yet similar cases continually occur unnoticed: if they are noticed, they make a deep impression upon the human soul.

Let us now observe things from another aspect: How many impressions and feelings escape our attention because we are unable to perceive the dangers from which we have been preserved!

If we could observe everything that is so closely connected with these things and that escapes notice, we would pass through the world with entirely different feelings. The seer discovers the following possibility: Let us suppose, that the above-mentioned example is true. You actually cross that square three minutes later than usual. The moment in which you cross the square is the most appropriate one in which to hear a dead person who wishes to be perceived by you, who wishes to speak within you. You may then think or feel: Whence do the feelings come which now arise within my soul? This is not necessarily restricted to these particular cases, it may occur in many ways. Men will begin to feel these things if they observe also the world of possible events, not only the world of physical happenings. Real are, for instance, a great number of herrings in the sea; but they are possible only because an infinite quantity of eggs has been laid. Thus an infinite wealth of possibilities lies concealed within the depths of life. What is real, is related to the example of the herrings in the same way as the life destroyed within the eggs. This is what makes such an infinitely significant impression upon the seer who reaches the boundary line separating the two worlds. The seer may there obtain the following impression: “How infinitely great and full of contents are, events which take place in the supersensible world, yet only a small part of all this becomes real in our world of the senses!” If this has been experienced, also the following may be felt: “Infinite things lie concealed within the depths of life.“ This feeling will develop with the aid of anthroposophical thoughts. We shall be able to feel that every point containing something which is real in the physical meaning, conceals something within it. Behind every flower, every breath of air, little stone and crystal lie infinite possibilities. Anthroposophists will gradually develop this feeling, so that reverence and devotion for what lies concealed within things will gradually unfold. If human beings gradually develop this feeling they will discover quite independently that during moments such as those which have just been described they will enter into a relationship with those who are dead as far as earthly life is concerned. The dead will begin to speak. In the future, men will experience as something quite normal that a dead person is speaking within their soul. They will gradually learn to know the source of these communications; that is to say, they will recognise who is speaking to them. Only because to-day men pass by so carelessly before the infinite world of the dead and the infinite depth of what is possible, only because of this they do not hear what the dead wish to speak within the hearts of the living.

The twofold aspect of the things which I have just explained to you, namely, that through the living souls, through the thoughts of anthroposophists, something is formed here which can be perceived by the dead — and that the dead will be able to speak to the hearts that have found their way into anthroposophical feelings — may show you the transformation which can take place for the whole of humanity through the spreading of Anthroposophy. A bridge will be built uniting these worlds with the worlds beyond. And it is a fact that the life between death and a new birth will change. It will not merely be a theory, it will become a reality, so that communication will be established between the so-called living and the dead, who are, however, more alive than we. The souls upon the earth will then also be able to feel what can be so fruitful for the dead. For if we do not feel how beneficial it is for the dead, if we reach out to them, we cannot do this in the right way.

Let us now take an extreme case. You may experience it if you are an anthroposophist and live with someone else as brother or sister, father or mother, husband or wife. Whereas one of the two feels attracted by Anthroposophy, the other one may be filled with hatred while the former is approaching Anthroposophy! How often we come across this! It may indeed take on this form in the sphere of consciousness, but not within the soul. Something else may take place there. In the astral body there is the sub-consciousness. Whereas someone may be raging violently against Anthroposophy, his sub-consciousness may be filled with an intense desire to know something about Anthroposophy. The more someone inveighs against Anthroposophy, the more he will have in his sub-consciousness the longing and the impulse to know something about Anthroposophy. When we cross the threshold of death, things take on their true aspect and nothing can be masked. Here upon the earth we may tell lies and pretend to be different from what we really are; but after death everything becomes true and shows its real countenance. If during our life on earth we have inveighed strongly against Anthroposophy, a longing for Anthroposophy will arise after death, and we shall suffer torments because this longing cannot be satisfied. A person who is still alive could, for instance, imagine that he is sitting in front of a departed one; he should then harbour anthroposophical thoughts, for the departed soul will understand these thoughts, even if he has not been an anthroposophist during his lifetime. If the living person is an anthroposophist, the departed one will in that case be able to perceive him.

What we may call, a certain inclination toward the language spoken during life, this is a fact which should be borne in mind, because soon after death the dead person still has a certain connection with the language which he has spoken during his life. For this reason, we should clothe our thoughts in the language which the dead person was accustomed to speak; after five, six, eight years, however — in some cases even sooner — it is evident that the language of the Spirit is able to overcome the obstacles arising out of the external form of speech, and the deceased can understand anthroposophical thoughts even if he has spoken another language during his lifetime. In any case, it has proved to be something very beautiful if an anthroposophist has read to a departed friend, particularly to one who has not been an anthroposophist during his lifetime. This has proved to be an enormous benefit to the dead, one of the greatest services of love. We do not merely wish to spread Anthroposophy as a teaching — this should be done, of course, for it is necessary — but Anthroposophy should also be active within the soul in a far more unobtrusive way. Spiritual tasks, even spiritual offices, may, as it were, develop and be of great help to the souls in their development after death. And this is what we should strive after more and more: to help the souls who live between death and a new birth to overcome a great difficulty, consisting therein that the old spiritual inheritance does not exist any longer, for a time has come in which it is very difficult for the souls to find the right direction after death, in which it is almost impossible for the souls who dwell between death and a new birth to find their way about.

The seer may then discover that, between death and a new birth, there are souls who are forced to undertake certain tasks, which they do not, however, understand. This, for instance, is a fact: The seer who directs his clairvoyant gaze toward the life between death and a new birth may discern souls who are obliged to fulfil definite tasks. For a certain length of time they must be the servants of powers who are known to us as the spirits of death and illness. We must here speak of a death which does not occur as a regular phenomenon, but takes hold of men before their time, so that they die in the flower of their life. When illnesses arise, these are physical events, but they are caused by forces coming from the supersensible worlds. The deeds of supersensible beings lie at the foundation of illnesses which spread rapidly. It is the task of certain spirits to bring premature death. That this is nevertheless rooted in wisdom, is a fact which we cannot consider just now; but it is essential to observe that we come across souls who are under the yoke of these beings. And although the seer must have grown accustomed to a certain composure and calmness, it is nevertheless painful and distressing to watch these souls labouring under a yoke, who are obliged to bring illness and death to the human beings upon the earth. And if the seer tries to retrace the path of these souls until he comes to their preceding life upon the earth, he will discover why these souls are now condemned to be the servants of the spirits of illness and death. The cause lies in the unscrupulousness which these souls have unfolded during their physical life. To the extent in which they have been unscrupulous during their life upon the earth, they now condemn themselves to be the servants of these evil beings. Just as cause and effect are connected when two balls collide, so must unscrupulous people become the servants of these evil powers. This is a deeply moving fact! There is still another thing which the seer perceives: there are souls who are under the yoke of ahrimanic spirits; they must prepare the spiritual causes of everything which occurs here in the form of obstacles and hindrances to our actions. Ahriman also has this task. All the obstacles which arise here, are the result of influences emanating from the spiritual world. Servants of Ahriman do this. Why are these souls compelled to perform these services? Because they were addicted to a comfortable, indolent way of living during their existence between birth and death. And if you consider how many people are indolent and lazy, you will find that Ahriman may expect a very great number of recruits! It is this lazy indolence which influences human life to a great extent. Even modern political economists now take into account not only human egoism and competition, but also this inclination toward a comfortable life. Comfort has become a life-factor.

It is another matter, however, if we have these experiences so that we are able to find our way about and know why we must experience them, or whether we experience them unconsciously, without knowing why we must serve these spirits. If we know why we are under the yoke of the evil spirits who bring epidemic diseases, we also know what good qualities will be required in our next life in order to bring about a cosmic adjustment annulling the evil influences. If we cannot understand these experiences, we do indeed form the same karma, but we create something which will be adjusted only in the second incarnation, so that we retard our real progress. For this reason, it is important to learn to know these things here upon the earth, for after death we shall experience them. We must learn something about them here upon the earth. Also this shows us how urgently necessary it is to render this new knowledge accessible to men by spreading spiritual truths, because the old form of knowledge no longer exists. The question, “Why are we anthroposophists?” should be answered by the spiritual facts themselves, which appeal profoundly not only to our understanding, but also to our feelings. Thus we gradually learn to consider Anthroposophy as a universal language enabling us to break down the barrier between the worlds in which our soul alternately dwells within a physical body and outside a physical body. The dividing wall hiding the supersensible world from our sight will fall if spiritual science really penetrates into the souls of men. We must feel this, and then we shall have a true, inward enthusiasm for Anthroposophy.

Let me speak of still another phenomenon. The seer will experience that a special moment enters the life of the souls between death and a new birth, a moment which has an enormous influence upon the seer, and also upon those who are passing through it. This moment will lie further back in the case of some souls, and in the case of others it will appear sooner. If we observe sleep with a clairvoyant eye, when the human being is outside his physical body with his astral body and his Ego and looks back upon the physical and etheric bodies, we shall generally gain the impression that the physical body appears to be slowly dying. Only during earliest childhood, until the child acquires an understanding and his memory begins, the sleep in the child's body appears as something which blossoms and flourishes; but very soon, and in a way which is clearly evident to the seer, the body begins to wither away soon after it has entered physical life; death is merely the last stage of this process of decadence. Sleep exists in order that the used-up forces may become regenerated. But this regeneration is incomplete. The unregenerated part which remains behind is always, to a small extent, a cause of death. If these unregenerated parts accumulate, so that the forces of regeneration can no longer assert themselves, the human being falls a prey to physical death. Thus, if we observe the human body, we see that death is a gradual process. We really die slowly and gradually from the moment of birth onward. This makes a very profound impression upon us when we first become aware of it.

Between death and a new birth the soul is faced by a moment in which it begins to develop forces enabling it to enter the next existence. Let me indicate an example showing you what I really mean: To-day there are already quite a number of books dealing with Goethe's character and natural dispositions. Scientists endeavour to discover the ancestors from whom Goethe may have inherited this or that capacity. The source and cause of spiritual capacities are therefore sought in the physical line of heredity. I do not wish to contest this, but if one follows the path of the soul between death and a new birth, the following fact may be discovered: Let us take Goethe's soul. Long, long before it is born, it already exercises an influence upon its' ancestors from the supersensible worlds, and it is already connected with the ancestors through forces living within it. Its influence is even of such a kind that it brings together in an appropriate way the men and women who are able to supply, after a long time, the qualities required by the soul. This is not an easy task, for many souls are involved in it. If you bear in mind the fact that men of the 18th century descend from souls of the 16th century, and that all these souls have been working together, you will realise that such an understanding is most important. Souls who are born in the 18th or 19th century must come to an understanding with other souls already during the 16th century in order to arrange the whole net of relationships. A great deal of work must be done between death and a new birth. We do not only work in an objective way by filling up one part of our time with services rendered to the spirits of hindrance, and so forth, as explained above — but we must also develop forces which render it possible for us to reincarnate. It then appears that we must prepare our form in a primal image. This makes the very opposite impression of what the seer perceives when he looks clairvoyantly upon the sleeping physical body and the etheric body. During sleep, the physical and etheric body appear to be withering away; but what is formed there as a primal image which gradually penetrates into physical Nature gives us the impression of something which blossoms and flourishes.

An important moment, therefore, appears between death and a new birth: it lies between the recollection of the preceding life and the transition to the next existence, when the human being begins to build up his physical organism. If you imagine physical death and compare it with this moment, you will find that it is the exact opposite of physical death. Physical death is the transition from physical existence to a non-existence; the moment described above is the transition from non-existence to a growing existence. If we are able to understand this moment, we experience it in an entirely different way than if we do not understand it.

A thought such as this one, dealing with the opposite aspect of death and with what occurs between death and a new birth, should really become a feeling within the soul of an anthroposophist. It should not merely be grasped with the intellect, but should be felt and permeated with feeling. Then we shall be able to experience how much richer our life becomes if the soul takes up similar ideas. Something else will then arise: namely, that, generally speaking, the soul will gradually acquire a feeling for the many things which exist in the world. If we walk through a wood in the spring and have first meditated upon the idea which I have described above, we shall not be far — if we really notice these things — from perceiving the spirits that weave and work in between the physical things. The perception of the spiritual world would really not be so difficult if the human beings themselves would not render it so difficult. If we try to permeate our feelings with what we have taken up in our thoughts, if we try to awaken them inwardly to life, this striving will open our spiritual eyes. Things such as those which have been explained to-day are intended as a help, so that anthroposophical striving may acquire life. The description of similar things always makes us feel that it is like a stammering, because our language is adapted only for the physical world, and it requires a great effort in order to produce at least a faint idea of the reality of these things; in fact, special means of description must come to our aid. But just this way of speaking about these things may awaken within our hearts what we may designate anthroposophically as a substance of feeling.

Anthroposophy should become for us a substance of feeling and a life-substance, so that we may not look upon the acquisition of anthroposophical ideas as something insignificant, but gladly take hold of them, and attribute the chief importance not to the thoughts themselves, but to what Anthroposophy makes of us.

Source: http://www.webcitation.org/5sUuhnfZe

"The important thing is not what Christ Jesus taught"

"The important thing is not what Christ Jesus taught but what he gave to mankind. His Resurrection is the coming to birth of a new member of human nature: an imperishable body."--Rudolf Steiner

The Concealed Aspects of Human Existence and the Christ Impulse

Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, The Hague, November 5, 1922.

In connection with the public lectures and public gatherings, it always affords me a satisfaction also to be able to address this Group here in The Hague, and I shall try this evening to say some things that may be to you a more intimate continuation, a supplement, of what I was able to express in the public lectures. (Lectures given in The Hague, Rotterdam, and Delft, Holland, from October 31 to November 6, 1922)

In order to have knowledge of the spiritual world and for the acquirement of an inner life with the spiritual world, it is necessary most of all to see in the right light that which one might call the concealed aspects of human existence. Indeed, the concealed aspects of human existence are the more important aspects for the comprehensive judging and evaluation of human life. This may not be admitted willingly by people who merely think superficially and materially, but it is none the less true. No one can become acquainted with human existence, unless he is able to enter into its concealed aspects.

One could, perhaps, if I may thus express myself, demur against the Gods and say that they have put the most precious thing for man into the concealed aspects of his life; that they have not afforded him what is most precious in the visible aspect of life. If this had been done, man would in a higher sense remain impotent. We acquire spirit-soul strength, which then can permeate our whole being, through the very fact that we must first achieve our genuine human dignity and our human nature, that we must first do something in the realm of our soul and spirit in order to become man at all in the right sense of the word. And in this victory, in this necessity of having first to accomplish something to become man, in this lies that which can fill us with strength, which can permeate with forces the innermost depth of our being.

In order, therefore, to explain more definitely this leading theme which I have introduced today, I will speak to you again from a certain viewpoint about that concealed aspect of human existence which is enveloped in the unconsciousness of sleep. And then I will bring to your attention something of that which lies enveloped in states of existence that remain unconscious during earth life: those states of existence in pre-earthly life and the life after death.

The sleep life takes place in such a way for man that, after the transition through dreams — which have, however, but a very dubious existence and a very dubious significance for human life, if one simply accepts them as they present themselves — he falls into the unconsciousness of sleep, out of which he emerges only on awakening, when he immerses himself with his ego and his astral body in the ether body and physical body; that is, when he makes use of both these principles as a tool in order to perceive his physical environment and then to work within this physical environment through his will. But that which lies beyond birth and death is enveloped in that very part of man's being which becomes unconscious when he falls asleep... And the conditions which the human being experiences there I will describe to you as though they were conscious. They can become conscious only to the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive consciousness. But the difference between this and what every man experiences in the night is only a difference in knowledge. The individual who, as a modern initiate, looks into the sleep life knows how it is, but this does not make the life of sleep into something different for him from what it is for every man, even for the one who passes through it quite unconsciously. Thus our description can be in conformity with reality when we describe that which remains unconscious as though the human being experienced it consciously. And this is what I shall now do.

After the transition through dreams — as I intimated before — man passes, as regards the normal consciousness, into unconsciousness. But the reality of this unconscious state, as it manifests itself to the higher, supersensuous knowledge, is that, directly after falling asleep, man enters into a sort of contourless existence. If he should realize his condition consciously, he would feel himself poured out into an etheric realm. He would feel himself outside of his body, not limited, however, but widely diffused; he would sense or observe his body as some object outside of himself. If this condition should become conscious, it would be filled, as regards man's soul nature, with a certain inner anxiety or uneasiness. He feels that he has lost the firm support of the body, as though he stood before an abyss.

What is called the Threshold of the Spiritual World has to exist for the reason that the human being must first prepare himself to have this feeling, the feeling of having lost that support which the physical body affords, and to bear that anxiety in the soul which is caused by his facing something entirely unknown, something indeterminate.

As I stated, this feeling of anxiety does not exist for the ordinary sleeper; it is not in his consciousness, but he does pass through it, nevertheless. That which constitutes anxiety, for instance, in every-day physical existence is expressed in certain processes, even though they be subtle processes of the physical body: when man senses anxiety, certain vascular activities in the physical body are different from what they are when he feels no anxiety. Something occurs objectively besides what the human being feels as anxiety, restlessness, etc., in his consciousness. This objective element of a soul-spirit anxiety man experiences while he enters through the portal of sleep into the sleep state. But with the feeling of anxiety something else is connected: a feeling of deep longing for a Divine-Spiritual Reality that streams and weaves through the cosmos.

If man should experience in full consciousness the first moments after falling asleep — or even hours, perhaps, in the case of many persons — he would be in this state of anxiety and of longing for the Divine. The fact that we feel religiously inclined at all during the waking life depends first of all upon the fact that this feeling of anxiety and this longing for the Divine which we experience in the night have their after-effects upon the mood of the day. Spiritual experiences projected, so to speak, into physical life fill us with the after-effect of that anxiety which impels us to crave to know the Real in the world; they fill us with the after-effect of the longing we bear while asleep, and they express themselves as religious feelings during the waking hours of the day.

But such is the case only during the first stages of sleep. If sleep continues, something peculiar occurs; the soul exists as though split, as though split up into many souls. If the human being should experience this condition consciously — which only the modern initiate can completely behold — he would have the sensation of being many souls and consequently think that he had lost himself. Every one of these soul beings, which really are merely shadowy images of souls, represents something in which he has lost himself. In this state of sleep the human being has a different appearance according as we observe him before or after the Mystery of Golgotha. Namely, the human being requires cosmic aid from without in regard to this condition, if I may so express it, of being split into many soul reflections.

In olden times, preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, the initiates, the old initiates, gave to the people indirectly through their pupils, through the teachers whom they sent out into the world for mankind, certain religious instructions which evoked feelings during their waking life. And these instructions, which were expressed by the people in ritual acts, strengthened their souls so that the human being carried, in turn, a sort of after-effect of this religious mood over into his sleep life.

You can see the reciprocal action between being asleep and being awake! On the one hand the human being, in his longing for the Divine during the first stage of sleep, experiences that which induces him to develop religion during waking life. If this religion is developed during the waking life — and it was developed through the influence of the initiates — it has its effect again upon the second stage of sleep: through the after-effect of this religious mood the soul has then sufficient strength to bear the sensation of being split — at least to exist at all amidst this plurality.

This truly is the difficulty that irreligious people have: they have no such aid during the night in regard to this being split into many souls and thus they carry these experiences over into the waking life without the strength that religion affords. For every experience we have during the night has its aftereffect in the waking life. It has not yet been a very long time since irreligion and non-religiousness began to play so large a part among mankind as it did during the last century, the 19th century. People still experienced the aftereffect of the influence of what earlier, more sincere, religious times meant to the human being. But, since the irreligious times continue, the ultimate result will be significant: people will carry the after-effect of this splitting of their souls from their sleep state over into their waking life, and this will principally contribute to the fact that they will not have the forces of coherence in their organism to distribute properly the nourishing effect of the food in their organism. And mankind will be afflicted with significant diseases in the near future as a consequence of this irreligion.

We must, indeed, not think that the spirit-soul part of our being has no bearing upon the physical! Its relation is not such that irreligious development will be immediately punished with disease by some kind of demoniacal gods — life does not run its course in such a superficial manner — but there does exist, nevertheless, an intimate relation between our experience in the realm of soul and spirit and our physical constitution. In order to possess health during the waking hours of the day, it is essential that we carry into our sleep life the feeling of our unity with the divine-spiritual Beings, in whose realm of activity we immerse the eternal kernel of our own being. And it is only by a right existence within a spirit-soul world between falling asleep and awakening that we can produce the right and health-bringing forces of a spirit-soul element, so necessary for our waking life.

During this second stage of sleep the human being acquires, not a cosmic consciousness, but a cosmic experience in lieu of the ordinary physical consciousness. As stated before, only the initiate goes through this cosmic experience consciously, but everyone has this experience in the night between falling asleep and waking up. And in this second stage of sleep the human being is in such a state of life that his inner nature carries out imitations of the planetary movements of our solar system. During the days we experience ourselves in our physical body. When we speak of ourselves as physical human beings, we say that inside of us are our lungs, our heart, our stomach, our brain, etc. ... this constitutes our physical inner nature. In the second stage of sleep the movement of Venus, of Mercury, of the sun, and of the moon constitute our inner spirit-soul nature. This whole reciprocal action of the planetary movements of our solar system, we do not bear it directly within us, not the planetary movements themselves; but facsimiles, astral facsimiles of them then constitute our inner organism. To be sure, we are not spread out into the entire planetary cosmos, but we are of extraordinary size, compared with our physical size in the daytime. We do not bear within us the real Venus each time that we are in the state of sleep, but a facsimile of its movement. In the second stage of sleep, between falling asleep and awakening, that which occurs in the spirit-soul part of our being consists of these circulations of the planetary movements in astral substance, just as our blood circulates through our physical organism during the day, stimulated by the movement of breathing. Thus through the night we have circulating within us as our inner life, so to speak, a facsimile of our cosmos.

Before we can experience this circulation of the planetary after-effects we must first experience the splitting of the soul. As I said before, the people of olden times, previous to the Mystery of Golgotha, received instructions from their initiates, in order that they might be able to bear this splitting of the soul and that the soul should find its way within these movements which now constituted its inner life. Since the Mystery of Golgotha something else has taken the place of this old teaching. Namely, something has occurred which the human being can now appropriate inwardly to himself as a feeling, a sentiment, a soul life, and a soul mood, when he really feels himself one with the deed which was accomplished for mankind by the Christ Being through the Mystery of Golgotha here on earth. The individual who truly feels his unity with the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha to the degree that in him are fulfilled the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me,” he has, through this unity with the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, developed something in his feeling which has its after-effect in sleep, so that he now has the strength to overcome the splitting of his soul and the power to find his way in the labyrinth of the planetary orbits which now constitute his inner self. For we must find our way, even though we are not conscious in our inner being of that which constitutes for the soul the planetary circulation in place of the blood circulation during the day, which now continues in the physical body we have abandoned.

After this experience, we enter the third stage of sleep. In this third stage we have an additional experience — of course, the experiences of the preceding stage always remain and the experiences of the next stage are added thereto — in the third stage is included, what I should like to call the experience of the fixed stars. After experiencing the circulation of the planetary facsimiles we actually experience the formations of the fixed stars, that which in former times, for instance, was called the images of the Zodiac. And this experience is essential to the soul aspect of the human being, because he has to carry the after-effect of this experience with the fixed stars into his waking life in order to have the strength at all to control and vitalize his physical organism at all times through his soul.

It is a fact that, during the night, every human being first experiences an etheric preliminary state of cosmic anxiety and longing for the Divine, then a planetary state, as he feels the facsimiles of the planetary movements in his astral body, and he has the experience of the fixed stars in that he feels — or would feel if he were conscious — that he experiences his own soul-spiritual inner self as a facsimile of the heavens, of the fixed stars.

Now, my dear friends, for the one who has insight into these different stages of sleep, a significant question arises, I might say, every night. The human soul — the astral organism and the ego being — leave the physical body, their inner self is filled with facsimiles of the planetary movements and of the constellations of the fixed stars. The question arising now is this: “How is it that every morning, after each sleep, the human being returns to his physical body again?”

And it is here where the science of initiation discovers that the human being would actually not return if, on entering the planetary movements and the constellations of the fixed stars, he did not also live his way into the forces of the moon while expanding outward into the facsimiles of cosmic existence. He lives his way into the spiritual forces of the moon, into those cosmic forces which are reflected in the physical moon and in the moon-phases.

While all other planetary and fixed star forces actually draw the human being out of his physical body, it is the lunar forces which again and again return him, when he wakes, to his physical body. The moon is connected in general with all that brings the human being from his spiritual life into the physical life. It, therefore, makes no difference — the physical constellation is not the thing to be considered, although a certain significance attaches thereto — whether we have to do with new moon, full moon, the first or last quarter of the moon; in the spiritual world the moon is always present. It is the lunar forces which lead the human being back into the physical world, into his physical body.

You can see, my dear friends, that, as I briefly describe to you the experience the human being has between falling asleep and awakening, I am, upon the whole, giving you something of a general description of his sojourn in the spiritual world. And this is the state of the matter. Fundamentally, we experience every night a reflection of the life between death and a new birth. If we look into pre-earthly life with the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive consciousness, we see ourselves first of all as spirit-soul human beings in a very early state of pre-earthly existence. We see ourselves possessed of a cosmic consciousness. Our life there is not a reflection of the cosmos, as is our sleep life, but we are actually diffused through the real cosmos. About the middle of our life between death and a new birth we feel ourselves as spirit-soul beings, fully conscious — in fact with a much clearer and more intensive consciousness than we could possibly have anywhere upon the earth — surrounded by divine-spiritual Beings, by the divine-spiritual Hierarchies. And, just as we work with nature's forces here on earth, just as we use external objects of nature as tools, so in the same way does work take place between us and the Beings of the higher spiritual Hierarchies.

And what manner of work is this? This work consists in the fact that the spirit-soul human being, conjointly with an enormous number of sublime spiritual Beings of the cosmos, is weaving the cosmic spirit-germ of his physical human body in the spiritual realm. However peculiar this may seem to you — to weave the physical human body as spiritual germ out of the whole cosmos — it is the greatest, the most significant piece of work conceivable in the cosmos. And not only does the human soul in the state described work at this, but the human soul works at it conjointly with whole hosts of divine-spiritual Beings. For, if you visualize the most complicated thing that can be formed here on earth, you find it primitive and simple in contrast with that mighty fabric of cosmic vastness and grandeur which is woven there and which, compressed and condensed through conception and through birth, becomes permeated with physical earth matter and then becomes the human physical body.

When we refer to a germ here on earth, we think of it as a small germ which afterwards becomes relatively large. But, when we refer to the cosmic spirit-germ in relation to the human body as a product of the spiritual, this germ is of gigantic size. And from that moment on, which I have pointed out to you, when the soul is coming towards its birth, the soul-spiritually magnificent human germ is gradually diminishing. The human being continues to work at it with the aim constantly in view that this will be woven together, pressed together, condensed into the physical human body.

It was really not without reason that the older initiates — through a kind of clairvoyance which, to be sure, is no longer suitable to us, although the more recent science of initiation shows the same fact — that the older initiates called the human body the Temple of the Gods. It is the Temple of the Gods, for it is woven out of the cosmos by the human soul conjointly with divine Beings each time between death and a new birth. Later on — in a manner still to be described — the human being is given his physical form. While the human being is weaving the spirit-germ of his physical body at the stage indicated, he is, as regards his soul being, in a condition, in a mood, that can only be compared with what the modern initiates call intuition. The human being lives with his soul within the activity of Gods. He is wholly diffused in cosmic-divine existence. In this state halfway between death and a new birth he is participating in the life of the Gods.

But then, as the human being proceeds on his way, as he comes closer to conception or birth, a change takes place. In a certain way, his consciousness is then impressed with the fact that the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are withdrawing from him. And there appears to him only something like a revelation, like a reflection, as if the Gods had withdrawn and only their nebulous images were still standing before the human soul, and as if a kind of veil were being woven as a nebulous imitation of that which in reality had been woven before. The intuitive consciousness he formerly possessed now changes to a cosmic inspired consciousness. The human being lives no more with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; he lives with their manifestation. But in place of this an inner ego develops more and more within the soul consciousness. During the climax, I might say, of life between death and a new birth, the human being lives entirely with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; the ego has no inner strength; it becomes conscious again of its inner self only when the Gods withdraw and only their manifestation remains. The glory of the Gods, their radiation, enters a kind of inspired consciousness; but, as a recompense, the human being feels himself as a self-existent being. And that which now awakens first in him is, I might say, an eager desire, a kind of craving.

Midway between death and a new birth, the human being works at the spirit-germ of his physical body, so to speak, out of a deep inner satisfaction. Although he realizes that the ultimate goal will be his physical body in his next earthly life, he is not permeated with an eager desire, but only — we might say — with admiration for this physical human body, considered from a universal standpoint. At the moment when the human being is living no more in divine worlds, but only in the manifestations of divine worlds, the eager desire arises in him to reincarnate upon the earth. Just while the ego consciousness is becoming continually stronger does this eager desire awaken. We withdraw, so to speak, from the divine worlds and come closer to what we shall become as earthly human beings. This eager desire becomes continually stronger, and what we see around us is also undergoing a change. Prior to this, we were living in nothing but Beings, in the divine-spiritual Hierarchies; we knew ourselves to be one with them. When we spoke of our inner self we were really speaking of the cosmos — but the cosmos itself consisted of Beings, Beings in sublime stages of consciousness with whom we were living. Now an outer glory is to be seen, and in this outer glory the first images gradually appear of that which, ultimately, are the physical reflections of the divine-spiritual Beings. This glory emanates from the Being which man knew there beyond as the Sublime Solar Being, and in this glory appears, so to speak, the sun as seen from without, or as seen from the world. Here on earth we look up to the sun. There, while descending to the earth, we at first see the sun from the other side. But the sun emerges, the fixed stars emerge, and behind the fixed stars the planetary movements emerge. And with the emergence of the planetary movements a quite definite kind of forces emerges: the spiritual forces of the moon; they now take control of us. It is these lunar forces which, little by little, carry us back into the earthly life.

Such is actually the aspect of things which the human being beholds on his descent from cosmic worlds to earthly existence: that, after an experience of divine-spiritual Hierarchies, he proceeds to images of them. But these images of Beings gradually become star-images, and the human being enters into something which, I might say, he first sees from behind: he enters that which is manifest from the earth as the cosmos. The details of what the human being there consummates can be discerned, and the modern science of initiation can penetrate quite deeply into what man there experiences.

Just through details in this domain do we begin to become acquainted with life. For no one knows life who is able to see the human being in connection with earthly existence alone. What great value does our connection with the earthly existence have for us then? During the enormously long stretches of time between death and a new birth the earth, at first, really means nothing to us, and that which gleams towards us, as the external, so to speak, is transmuted into entire worlds of Gods, in which we live during these long stretches of time and which appear externally to us again as stars only when we are nearing the earth for another earthly existence.

What the human being at first wove, as the spirit-germ of his physical body, he knows, for the time being, to be one with the whole universe, with the spiritual universe. Later, when he sees only the manifestation of the divine-spiritual worlds, this germ gradually becomes his body, which is now also a facsimile of the cosmos. And out of this — his body — arises the eager desire for an earthly existence, for an ego consciousness in his body.

This body now still contains much which is untouched by the earthly existence, for it is a spirit body. As regards this body, the fact still remains entirely undetermined at a certain stage whether, for instance, the human being will be a male or a female personality in his next earthly existence. For, during this whole time between death and a new birth, up to a very late stage, before we are born upon the earth, there is no meaning in the question of man or woman. The conditions there differ entirely from those that are reflected on earth as man and woman. There are also conditions which occur in the spiritual existence and are reflected on the earth; but that which appears on earth as man and woman acquires significance only relatively late, prior to our descent to earth. When human beings, according to certain former karmic connections, think it best to experience their next incarnation on earth as a woman, we can trace in detail how, on their descent to the earth in order to unite with the physical embryo, they choose that time which is known here an earth as the time of full moon.

We can say, therefore, when we are looking from any region here on earth at the full moon, that we then have the time which the beings choose for their descent to the earth who desire to become women, for then only is this decision made. And the time of new moon is the time which beings choose who wish to become men.

Thus, you see, human beings enter their earthly existence through the portal of the moon. But the force which the male requires in order to enter life on earth is then flowing out into the cosmos; we move toward it as we come in from the cosmos, and this force is radiated by the moon when it is known as new moon for the earth. The force which the female requires is radiated from the moon when it is the full moon; then its illuminated side is turned toward the earth, and its unilluminated side is toward the cosmos — and this force, which the moon can send out into the cosmos from its unilluminated side, the human being requires if he wishes to become a woman.

What I have now been describing to you shows that the ancient concept of astrology, which nowadays has been brought to a complete decadence by the ordinary astrologers, was well grounded. Only, we must be able to achieve an inner view of the connection of things. We must not look merely at the physical constellation in a calculating manner, but must see into the corresponding spiritual element. There it is really possible to enter into details.

As you know, the human being descends from the cosmos in a definite state. From the spiritual cosmos he enters the etheric cosmos. Now I am still speaking of the etheric cosmos alone; the physical aspect of the stars is, in this connection, taken less into consideration, as is, likewise, the physical aspect of the moon. The essential moment when the human being decides to descend to the earth depends, as I have stated, upon the phase of the moon during this descent, and thus it may happen that he exposes himself to a decisive new moon in order to become a man, or to a decisive full moon to become a woman. But then — since the descent is not made so very rapidly, but he remains exposed for some time — if he is descending through the new moon as a man, he may still, for one reason or another, decide to expose himself to the coming full moon. Thus he has made the decision to descend as a male; he has made use to this end of the forces of the new moon; but, during his descent, he still has at his disposal the remainder of the moon's cycle, the phase of the full moon. He then fills himself with lunar forces in such a way that they do not affect his condition as man or woman, but rather the organization of his head, and what is connected with the organization of his head from without, from the cosmos, if that constellation occurs of which I have just spoken. Thus, after the human being has made the decision “I shall become a man through the time of the new moon” and continues living in the cosmos, so that he has not passed completely through the lunar influence but is still exposed to the next full moon, then, through the influence of the lunar forces in this condition he will, for instance, have brown eyes and black hair. Thus we may say that the manner in which the human being passes the moon determines not only his sex, but also the color of his eyes and hair. If, for instance, the human being has passed the full moon as a woman and is later exposed to a new moon, the result may be a woman with blue eyes and blond hair.

Grotesque as this may seem, we are absolutely predestined by the manner of our experience through the cosmos as to the way in which our soul-spirit organism works its way into our physical and our etheric organism. Prior to this time there has been no decision made as to our becoming a blond or a brunette; this is determined only by the lunar forces as we pass them, on our descent from the cosmos into earthly existence.

And just as we pass by the moon, which really guides us into earthly existence, so do we pass by the other planets. It is not immaterial, for example, whether we pass Saturn in one or another way. We may pass by Saturn, for instance, when the constellation is such that the force of Saturn and the force of Leo in the Zodiac co-operate. Because of our passing the region of Saturn just as its force is being increased through Leo in the Zodiac, our soul will — conditioned, of course, by our preceding karma — acquire the strength to meet intelligently the outer contingencies of life so that they do not defeat us over and over again. If, however, Saturn is being dominated more by Capricorn, we shall become weak human beings that do succumb to the outer contingencies of life.

All these experiences we bear within us as we prepare from the cosmos our earthly existence. Of course, we can overcome this through an appropriate training, but not by voicing the opinion of the materialists that all this is nonsense, that we need not pay any attention to it at all. On the contrary, it can be overcome by the fact that we develop these forces, really develop them. And in the future mankind will learn again, not only to insure that a child shall have good milk to drink and good food to eat — although no objection is to be made to this — but mankind will learn again to observe whether this or that person has within him forces of Saturn or Jupiter active under this or that influence.

Let us suppose that we find that a human being has within him, through his karma, forces of Saturn under the most unfavorable influence — of Capricorn or of Aquarius, for instance — so that he is exposed to all life's difficulties. Then, in order to strengthen him we shall search most carefully for other forces within him. For instance, we shall ask ourselves whether he has experienced the passage through the sphere of Jupiter, of Mars, or through any other sphere. And we shall always be able to correct and annul one condition by means of the other.

We shall simply have to learn to think of the human being not only in relation to what he begins to eat and drink in the earthly existence, but we shall have to consider him in relation to what he becomes because of his having passed through the cosmic worlds between death and a new birth.

When the human being is close to his earthly course of life, then he experiences a sort of loss of his being. You know from my description that he was connected with what he has woven as the spirit-germ of his physical body. Into this spirit-germ he has woven, besides, the experiences during the descent through fixed stars and planets. At a definite stage, actually quite close to conception and birth, this spirit-germ is no longer there. It has, in the meanwhile, descended with its forces as a system of forces to the earth. It has fallen from the human being. It has united itself on the earth independently with the physical substance of heredity which the ancestors, father and mother, afford. What is being woven there in the organism descends to the earth sooner than the human being himself as a spirit-soul being. And then, when the human being realizes that he has actually surrendered to the parents that which he himself had woven in the cosmos, he is able, in the last stage prior to his earthly existence, to take to himself from the etheric world what is essential for his own etheric organism — since there is no longer a necessity to do any more weaving on his physical body, which is essentially complete and has been surrendered to and been made a part of the flow of heredity. Now he draws together his etheric organism; and, together with this latter, he unites with that which he himself has prepared through his parents. He takes possession of his physical body, in which all this cosmic fabric of the spirit-germ is drawn together, and which is interwoven with what the human being himself united with it as he descended through this or that stellar region. It is, indeed, not arbitrarily that he passes through new moon or full moon and causes himself to become man or woman, or to have black or blond hair or blue or brown eyes, but all this is intimately connected with the results of his preceding karma.

This shows you that, whereas the human being in the sleep state experiences as his inner nature merely facsimiles of the planetary world, the world of the fixed stars, he now passes through these worlds in their reality between death and a new birth. He passes through these worlds; they become his inner nature. And it is always the lunar forces which bring us back to the earth. They differ essentially from all other stellar forces in this respect, in that they bring us back to the earth. In the sleep state they bring us back to the earth; they bring us back also after we have experienced all that I have briefly described, in order to enter once more a life course on the earth.

But let us consider once again that which is there outside of the physical body, in the form of astral body and ego organization, between falling asleep and awakening. It is not fabricated from physical bones and physical blood; it is a spirit-soul entity. But our whole moral intrinsic quality is woven into it. Just as we consist, when awake, of bones, blood, and nerves, so does that which leaves us during sleep and returns on awakening consist of the actualized judgments of our moral deeds. If I have accomplished a good deed during the day, its effect is reflected in my sleep body within the spirit-soul substance that leaves me during sleep. My moral quality lives within this. And, when the human being passes through the Portal of Death, he takes with him his whole actualized moral evaluation. It is a fact that, between birth and death in the earthly life, the human being creates within himself a second being. This second human being, who leaves the body every night, is the result of our moral or immoral life, and we take it with us through the Portal of Death. This result, which is merged with our eternal essential being, is not the only element we possess within the spirit-soul substance which passes out of us during the night. Just after death, however, when we are first in the ether body and then in the astral body, we hardly see anything in ourselves but this moral entity of our being. Whether we were good or bad, this is what we behold; we are this. Just as here on earth we are a human being in whom the skin forces, or the nerve forces, or the blood forces, or the bone forces predominate, so, after death, we are, to our own perception, what we were, morally or immorally.

And now after death we proceed on our way, first through the sphere of the moon, then through the sphere of the fixed stars... until the time arrives when we can begin to work with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies on the spirit-germ of our future physical body. But, if we were to take this moral element up into the highest worlds, where we are to weave our future physical organism in its spirit-germ, this physical organism would turn out to be a monstrosity. For a certain length of time between death and a new birth, the human being must be separated from what constitutes his moral quality. Indeed, he leaves his moral quality behind in the moon sphere.

It is an actual fact that, when leaving the moon sphere, we leave our moral and immoral human being in the moon sphere and enter into the pure sphere of the Gods, where we can weave our physical body.

I must now revert again to the difference between the times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha and those following it, including the present. The older initiates made very clear to their pupils — and through them to all mankind of the civilization of that time — that, in order to be able to find the transition from the world which I called in my book Theosophy the soul-world, and which we really experience in its entirety while still in the moon sphere, into the world which I called the spirit-land, the human being must develop on earth the feelings that enable him to be led upward by the spiritual Sun Being, after having left behind the whole bundle of his moral after-effects in the moon sphere.

All that history relates to us in regard to the first three Christian centuries, and even the fourth century, is fundamentally a falsification; for in those centuries Christianity was quite different from the thing described. It was something quite different for the reason that within it there held sway the conception which came from understanding the ancient science of initiation. From this wisdom of initiation it was known that, in the life after death, the sublime Sun Being led the human being out of the moon sphere, after he had left behind his moral bundle, and, on his return, led him back again into the moon sphere. This gave the human being the strength — which he could not have had through himself — to make this moral being a part of himself, at a certain time before his birth, in order to fulfill his destiny on earth within his soul, and to prevent it from entering his body. For otherwise, the human being would be born a monstrosity and be utterly diseased in his body. This moral bundle had to be taken over again in the moon sphere, during the descent, in order that it should not enter into the body.

Those initiates who were living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and even in the three or four centuries following thereafter, said to their pupils: Previously the sublime Sun Being was only above in the spiritual worlds. But, as mankind progressed, the ego consciousness has become so bright upon the earth that it becomes all the more obscured in the spiritual world. In other words, the brighter our ego consciousness is by means of the physical body only, here below an the earth, the darker is it above. The human being would no longer come into contact with the Sun Being, he would not find through his own power the transition after death from the moon sphere to the higher spheres, had the Christ not descended and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Being whom the human being met formerly after death only in the spiritual world has now descended; He has lived here upon earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha; and now the human being can establish a relation to Him according to the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” In this way the human being takes strength from the earth with him, strength given to him by the Christ here on this earth, which enables him to leave behind in the moon sphere his moral being which he creates within himself and to proceed to higher spheres, there to work on the spirit-germ of his physical body. It also gives him the strength on his descent through the moon sphere to take up his karma again of his own free will, take up the after-effects of his good and evil deeds. In the course of historical evolution, we have become free human beings. But the reason we have become such is that the Christ force we have acquired has enabled us through free inner strength to take over our karma on our descent through the moon sphere. No matter whether we like this or do not like it here on earth, we do this at the stage I have described, if we have become true Christians on earth.

I have been endeavoring, my dear friends, to show you a little of the way in which the modern science of initiation can see into worlds which we might call the concealed aspects of human existence, to show you how really everything pertaining to the human being can be elucidated only as we are able to see into these concealed aspects. And at the same time I tried to show you in connection therewith what the Christ Impulse means to mankind of the present time; for we will have constantly to revert to it. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we cannot be a whole human being unless we find the way to this Christ Impulse. Therefore it is necessary that Anthroposophical spiritual science shed light more and more upon the Christ Impulse in the right way. For the manner in which light was shed on the Christ Impulse in the past, when man's consciousness was obscured, would, if continued, deprive a large part of mankind — just think of the Orientals, think of the inhabitants of other continents — of the possibility of embracing Christianity. But that Christianity which is rooted deeply in Anthroposophical spiritual science will actually — if once the essence of spiritual science, as it is here intended, is understood thoroughly — be eagerly grasped particularly by the Orientals, who are endowed with an ancient spirituality, even though it is in decadence.

In this way only can that peace prevail on earth which must proceed from the soul and spirit of men, and which is so indispensable to the earth, as every impartial person feels today. We shall have to be much more convinced of the fact that all present-day thinking concerning outer institutions is really worthless, and that it is very necessary, on the other hand, to appeal directly to human souls. But we can appeal to the souls only if we are able to say something to them about the true home of the soul, about the experiences of the human being that lie beyond his physical existence, in those states of consciousness I have been describing to you today. Even if those states of consciousness do not exist during the earth life, their effects do exist. Oh, my dear friends, the one who has insight into life sees in the countenance of every human being a reflection of cosmic destinies which the individual has experienced between death and a new birth!

I have described to you today how destiny — whether one has become a man or a woman — can be understood by means of the cosmos, even how the color of the eyes and hair can be understood only when we can look into cosmic existence. Nothing in this world is comprehensible unless it can be understood by means of the cosmos. The human being will feel himself to be truly a human being only when we can inform him through true spiritual knowledge of his relation with that which is back of the sensuous-physical existence. Even though the human beings on earth are not yet aware of it, mankind unconsciously thirsts for such a knowledge. What is developing convulsively today in all domains, be it the domain of the spiritual, the externally juridical, or the economic life, all is ultimately a result of the spiritual. Only as the human being learns again to know of his relation with extra-physical existence can all this be transformed from forces of decadence into upward-moving forces. For physical existence is meaningless unless seen in connection with super-physical existence. The physical human body becomes significant only then when we can see it, so to speak, as the confluence of all those sovereign forces that are woven between death and a new birth. This is the tragic character of materialistic knowledge of the world: that, in the final analysis, it does not know matter itself. We lay the human body upon the dissecting table; we examine it most carefully as to its tissues and its individual physical component parts. This is done in order to acquire a knowledge of matter. But we do not learn to know it in this way, for it is the product of spirit, and only as we are able to trace it back to those stages where it is woven out of spirit do we know it. Human beings will comprehend precisely this physical-material existence only when their souls are led cosmically into the realm of soul and spirit.

If we permeate ourselves with the consciousness that we should comprehend more and more our connection with the spirit-soul realm of the cosmos, we then become true Anthroposophists. And you, my dear friends, will surely not ridicule me when I say that the world is in need today of true Anthroposophists who will bring about an ascent for humanity through that consciousness which results from experiencing the spiritual, even though at first we should only grasp it as a reflection and not ourselves have attained to clairvoyant knowledge. We need not be clairvoyant in order to work beneficently after we possess spiritual knowledge. Just as little as a person needs to know what constitutes meat when he is eating it and it nourishes him, just as little does a person need to be clairvoyant in order to be efficacious through his work and through his whole association with the life of the higher worlds. If we accept spiritual science before we are clairvoyant, it is as though we were consuming it. Fundamentally, clairvoyance adds nothing to what we can become for the world through spiritual knowledge. It satisfies merely our knowledge. This knowledge must, indeed, exist. Of course, there have to be people who examine the composition of meat, but this knowledge is not required in order to eat. Likewise there must be clairvoyant persons today who can investigate the nature of man's connection with the spiritual world; but, in order to bring about that which is essential to mankind, it is necessary that we be healthy human souls. If they are informed of the science of the spirit, they will sense the digestive power of the soul nature; they will appropriate this spiritual science, digest it, and assimilate it into their work. And this is what we need today throughout the civilized world: external human work which is spiritualized through and through in the right and true sense.

Source: http://www.webcitation.org/5sQaEkbxZ

How is it that every morning, after each sleep, the human being returns to his physical body again?

Rudolf Steiner: "How is it that every morning, after each sleep, the human being returns to his physical body again? ... the human being would actually not return if, on entering the planetary movements and the constellations of the fixed stars, he did not also live his way into the forces of the moon while expanding outward into the facsimiles of cosmic existence. He lives his way into the spiritual forces of the moon, into those cosmic forces which are reflected in the physical moon and in the moon-phases. While all other planetary and fixed star forces actually draw the human being out of his physical body, it is the lunar forces which again and again return him, when he wakes, to his physical body. The moon is connected in general with all that brings the human being from his spiritual life into the physical life."

"All genuine art seeks the spirit."

Rudolf Steiner, a lecture given June 9, 1923

I have often dealt with the genius of language, and you know from my book Theosophy that we refer to real spiritual entities when we speak of spiritual beings in an anthroposophical context. Thus “genius of language” designates the spiritual entity behind any specific language, an entity with whom man can become familiar and through whom he can receive, from the spiritual world, strength to express his thoughts which, at the outset, are present in his earthly self as a dead heritage from that higher world. It is, therefore, appropriate for anthroposophical students to seek, in the formation of language, a meaning which is independent of man because rooted in the spirit.

I have already drawn attention to the peculiar way the German language designates the beautiful and its opposite. We speak of the opposite of the beautiful (das Schoene) as the ugly or hateful (das Haessliche). Were we to denote the beautiful in the same way we would call it — since the opposite of hate is love — the lovely or loving. As it is, we make a significant difference. In German the word beautiful (das Schoene) is related to shining (das Scheinende). The beautiful shines; brings its inner nature to the surface. It is the distinguishing quality of the beautiful not to hide itself, but to carry its essence into outer configuration. Thus beauty reveals inwardness through outer form; a shining radiates outward into the world. If we were to speak, in this sense, of beauty's opposite, we would call it the concealed or non-radiant, that which holds back its being, refusing to disclose it in any outer sheath. To put it another way, “the beautiful” designates something objective. If we were to treat its opposite just as objectively, we would have to speak of concealment, of something whose outer aspect belies what it really is. But here subjectivity enters, for we cannot love what conceals itself, showing a false countenance; we must hate it. In this way the ugly calls up quite a different emotional reaction than the beautiful; we do not respond to it out of the same recesses of our nature.

Thus the genius of language reveals itself. And we should ask: When in the broadest sense we strive for the beautiful in art, what is our goal? The very fact that the German word for “beautiful” proceeds outward (as its opposite suggests a remaining within our emotions, our hate) means that the beautiful bears a relation to the spiritual outside us. For what shines? What we apprehend with our senses does not need to shine for us; it exists. It is the spiritual that shines, radiating into the sensory, proclaiming its being even in the sensory. By speaking objectively of the beautiful, we take hold of it as a spiritual element which reveals itself in the world through art. The task of art is to take hold of the shining, the radiance, the manifestation, of that which as spirit weaves and lives throughout the world. All genuine art seeks the spirit. Even when art wishes to represent the ugly, the disagreeable, it is concerned, not with the sensory-disagreeable as such, but with the spiritual which proclaims its nature in the midst of unpleasantness. If the spiritual shines through the ugly, even the ugly becomes beautiful. In art it is upon a relation to the spiritual that beauty depends.

Proceeding from this truth, let us consider one of the arts: painting. Recently we dealt with it insofar as it reveals the spiritual-essential through shining color. In ancient times man, by surrendering in the right way to the genius of language, showed his inner knowledge of color in his vocabulary. When an instinctive clairvoyance prevailed, he felt that metals revealed their inner natures in their colors, therefore gave them, not earthly names, but names connecting them with the planets. Otherwise people would have felt ashamed. For man looked upon color as a divine-spiritual element bestowed upon earthly substances only in the sense of our recent lectures. Perceiving the gold in gold's color, he saw not merely the earthly in that metal but the sun proclaiming itself from the cosmos in its gold color. Indeed, from the very start man saw something transcending the earthly in the colors of earthly objects. But it was only to living things that particular colors were ascribed, for living things approach the spirit in such a way that the spiritual shines forth. Animals were felt to have their own colors because in them the spirit-soul element manifests directly.

In ancient times, when man's artistic sense was not outward but inward, he painted not at all. To paint a tree green is not true painting for the reason that however well one imitates her, nature is still the essential thing; nature is still more beautiful, more vital; it needs no copy. A real painter never imitates. He uses an object as a recipient or focus of the sun, or to observe a color reflex in that object's surroundings, or to catch, above it, an interweaving of light and darkness. In other words, the thing painted is merely an inducement. For example, we never paint a flower standing in front of a window; we paint the light which, shining in at the window, is seen through the flower. We paint the sun's colored light; catch the sun.

In the case of a person, this can be done still more spiritually. To paint a human forehead the way one believes it should look is nonsense; this is not painting. But to observe how the sun rays strike that forehead, how color shows up in the ensuing radiance, how light and darkness intermingle, to capture with one's paint brush all that interplay: this is the task of the painter. Seizing what passes in a moment, he relates it to the spiritual.

If, with a sense for painting, we look at an interior view, the matter of most importance is not the figure or figures therein. I once accompanied a friend to an exhibition where we saw a painting of a man kneeling before an altar, his back toward us. The painter had given himself the task of showing how sunlight falling through a window struck the man's back. My friend remarked that he would much rather see a front view. Well, this was only material, not artistic, interest. He wanted the painter to show the man's character, and so forth. But one is justified in doing this only if one expresses all perceptions through color. If I wish to paint a human being sick in bed with a certain disease, and study his facial color in order to apprehend how illness shines through the sensory, this may be artistic. If I want to show, in totality, the extent to which the whole cosmos manifests in the human flesh color, this may also be artistic. But if I try to imitate Mr. Lehman as he sits here before me, I will not succeed; moreover, this is not the task of art. What is artistic is how the sun illumines him, how light is deflected through his bushy eyebrows. Thus for a painter the important thing is how the whole world acts upon his subject; and his means of holding fast to a transitory moment are light and darkness, the whole spectrum.

In times not so long ago one could not imagine a presentation of Mary, the Mother of God, without a face so transfigured it had passed beyond the ordinary human state; a face overcome by light. One could not imagine her clothed otherwise than in a red garment and blue cloak, because only so is the Mother of God placed rightly into earthly life; the red garment depicting all the emotions of the earthly, the blue cloak the soul element which weaves the spiritual around her; the face permeated and transfigured by spirit, overcome by light as a revelation of the spirit. We do not, however, properly and artistically take hold of these truths if we stop with what I have just described. For I have translated the artistic into the inartistic. We feel them artistically only if we create directly out of red and blue and the light by experiencing the light, in its relationship to colors and darkness, as a world in itself. Then colors speak their own language, and the Virgin Mary is created out of them.

To achieve this one must live with color; color must become emancipated from the heavy matter opposing its innermost nature. Palette colors are alien to true painting in that, when used on a plane surface, they have a down-dragging effect. One cannot live with oil-based colors, only with fluid colors. When a painter puts fluid colors upon a plane, color — owing to the peculiar relationship between man and color — springs to life; he conceives out of color; a world arises out of it. True painting comes into being only if he captures the shining, revealing, radiating element as something living; only if he creates what is to be formed on the plane out of this element. For to understand color is to understand a component part of the world.

Kant once said: Give me matter, and out of it I shall create a world. Well, you could have given him matter endlessly without his ever being able to make a world out of it. But out of the interplaying medium of color a world of sorts can indeed be created, because every color has direct relationship with something spiritual. In the face of present-day materialism, the concept and activity of painting have — except for the beginnings made by impressionism and, still more, by expressionism — been more or less lost.

For the most part modern man does not paint, he imitates figures with a kind of drawing, then colors the surface. But colored surfaces are not painting for the reason that they are not born out of color and light and darkness.

We must not misunderstand things. If somebody goes wild and just lays on colors side by side in the belief that this is what I call “overcoming drawing,” he is mistaken. By “overcoming drawing” I do not mean to do away with drawing, but to let it rise out of the colors, be born from the colors. Colors will yield the drawing; one simply has to know how to live in colors. Living so, an artist develops an ability — while disregarding the rest of the world — to bring forth works of art out of color itself.

Look at Titian's “Ascension of Mary.” [view a lower-res image or a high-res image. e.Ed.] This painting stands at the boundary line of the ancient principle of art. The living experience of color one finds in Raphael and, more especially, in Leonardo da Vinci, has departed; only a certain tradition prevents the painter from totally forsaking the living-in-color.

Experience this “Ascension of Mary.” The green, the red, the blue, cry out. Now take the details, the individual colors and their harmonious interaction, and you will feel how Titian lived in the element of color and how, in this instance, he really created out of it all three worlds.

Look at the wonderful build-up of those worlds. Below, he has created out of color the Apostles experiencing the event of Mary's ascension. One sees in the colors how these men are anchored to the earth; colors which convey, not heaviness in the lower part of the painting, only a darkness which fetters the watching ones to earth. In the color-treatment of Mary one experiences the intermediate realm. A dull darkness from below connects her feet and legs with the earth; while, above her, light preponderates. This third and highest realm receives her head and radiates above it in full light, lifting it up. Thus are set forth, through inner color experience, the three stages of lower realm, middle realm, and the heights where Mary is being received by God the Father.

To understand this picture we must forget everything else and look at it solely from the standpoint of color, for here the three stages of the world are derived from color not intellectually but artistically. True painting takes hold of this world of effulgent shining, of splendid manifestation in light and darkness and color, in order to contrast what is earthly-material with the artistic. But the artistic is not permitted to reach the spiritual. Otherwise it would be not “shine” but wisdom. For wisdom is no longer artistic, wisdom leads into the formless and therefore undepictable realm of the divine.

With artistry like Titian's in “The Ascension of Mary,” we feel, on beholding the reception of Mary's head by God the Father, that now we must go no further in the treatment of light; we must halt. For we have reached the limit of the possible. To carry it further would be to fall into the intellectualistic, the inartistic. We must not make one stroke beyond what is indicated by light, rather than contour. The moment we insist on contour, we become intellectualistic, inartistic. Near the top this picture is in danger of becoming inartistic. The painters immediately after Titian fell prey to this danger. Look at the depiction of angels right up to the time of Titian. They are painted in heavenly regions. But look how carefully the painters avoided leaving the realm of color. Always you can ask yourself in regard to these angels of the pre-Titian age, and of Titian too: Couldn't they be clouds? If you cannot do that, if there is no uncertainty about existence, being, or semblance, shine, if there is an attempt fully to delineate the essence of the spiritual, artistry ceases.

In the seventeenth century it was otherwise, for materialism affects the presentation of the spiritual. Now angels began to be painted with all kinds of foreshortenings, and one can no longer ask: Couldn't that be clouds? When reason is active, artistry dies.

Again, look at the Apostles below: one has a feeling that in this “Ascension of Mary” only Mary is really artistic. Above, there is the danger of passing into the formlessness of pure wisdom. If one attains the formless one attains, in a certain sense, the zenith of the artistic. One has dared to press forward boldly to the abyss where art ceases, where the colors disappear in light, and where, if one were to proceed, one could only draw. But drawing is not painting. Thus the upper part of the picture approaches the realm of wisdom. And the more one is able to express, in the sensory world, this wisdom-filled realm, and the more the angels might be taken for billowy clouds shimmering in light, the greater the art.

Proceeding from the bottom of the picture to the really beautiful, to Mary herself rising into the realm of wisdom, we see that Titian was able to paint her beautifully because she has not yet arrived at, but only soars up toward, the realm of wisdom; and we feel that, were she to rise still higher, she must enter where art ceases. Below stand the Apostles. Here the artist has tried to express their earth-fettered character. But now a different danger threatens. Had he placed Mary further down, he could not have depicted her inward beauty. If Mary were to sit among the Apostles, she could not appear as she does as a kind of balance between heaven and earth; she would look different. She simply does not fit among the Apostles with their brownish tones. Not only are they subject to earthly gravity; something else has entered: the element of drawing takes hold. This you can see in Titian's picture. Why is it so?

Well, brown having already left the realm of color, it cannot express Mary's beauty; something not belonging entirely to the realm of the beautiful would be injected. If Mary stood or sat among the Apostles and were colored as they are, it would be a great offense. I am now speaking only of this picture and do not maintain that when standing on earth Mary must be in every instance, artistically speaking, an offense. But in this picture it would be a blow in the face if Mary stood below. Why?

Because if she stood there colored like the Apostles we would have to say that the artist presented her as virtuous. This is the way he presents the Apostles; we cannot conceive of them otherwise than looking upward in their virtue. But this for Mary would he inappropriate. With her, virtue is so self-evident that we must not express it. It would be like presenting God as virtuous. If something is self-evident, if it has become the being itself, we must not express it in mere outer semblance. Therefore Mary soars up into a region beyond all virtues, where we cannot say of her, through colors, that she is virtuous, any more than we can say of God that He is virtuous. He may, at most, be virtue itself. But this is an abstract, philosophical statement having nothing to do with art. With the Apostles, however, the artist succeeded in representing, through his color treatment, virtuous human beings. They are virtuous.

Let us look at how the genius of language reflects this truth. Tugend (virtue, in German) is related to taugen (to be fit, in German). To be fit, to be able to cope with something morally, is to be virtuous. Goethe speaks of a triad: wisdom, semblance and power. Art is the middle term: semblance, the beautiful; wisdom is formless knowledge; virtue is power to carry out worthwhile things effectively. [ 1 ]

Since ancient times this triad has been revered. Once, years ago, a man said to me — and I could appreciate his point of view — that he was sick and tired of hearing people speak of the true, the beautiful and the good, for anyone in search of an idealistic expression mouthed the phrase. But in ancient times these realities were experienced not externally but with complete soul participation. Thus in the upper region of Titian's picture we see wisdom not yet transcendent, radiating artistically because of the way it is painted. In the middle, beauty; below, virtue, that which is fit. What is the inner nature of the fit? Here is manifest the genius, the profundity, of the languages active among men. If we proceeded in an exterior way we might be reminded of a certain hunchback who went to church and listened to a priest describing quite externally how everything in the world is good and beautiful and fit. Waiting at the church door, the hunchback asked the priest: You said the idea of everything is good — have I, too, a good shape? The priest replied: For a hunchback you have a very good shape.

If things are considered as externally as this, we shall never penetrate to the depths. In many fields modern observation proceeds so. Filled with external characteristics and definitions, men do not know that their ideas turn round and round in circles.

In respect to virtue it is not a question of fitness for just anything, but of fitness for something spiritual, so that a person places himself into the spiritual world as a human being. Whoever is a complete human being by reason of his bringing the spiritual not merely to manifestation but to full realization through his will is — in the true sense — virtuous. Here we enter a region which lies within the human and religious, but no longer within the artistic, sphere, and least of all within the sphere of the beautiful. Everything in the world contains a polarity. Thus we can say of Titian's picture: Above Mary he is in danger of passing beyond the beautiful, there where he reaches the abyss of wisdom. Below, he comes to the brink of the other abyss. For as soon as a painter represents the virtuous, meaning that which man realizes through his own being, out of the spiritual, he again leaves behind the beautiful, the artistic. The virtuous human being can be painted only by characterizing virtue in its outer appearance, let us say by contrasting it with vice. But an artistic presentation of virtue as such is no longer possible.

Where in our age do we not forsake the artistic? Simple life conditions are reproduced crudely, naturalistically, without any relation to the spiritual, and without this relation there is no art. Hence the striving of impressionism and expressionism to return to the spiritual. Though in many cases clumsy, tentative, exploratory, it is better than the inartistic copying of a model.

Furthermore, if one grasps the concept of the artistically-beautiful, one can deal with the tragic in its artistic manifestations. The human being who acts in accordance with his thoughts, who lives his life intellectualistically, can never become really tragic. Nor can the human being who leads an entirely virtuous life. The only tragic person is one who in some way leans toward the daimonic, that is to say, toward the spiritual, whether in a good or bad sense. Today in this age when man is in the process of becoming free, daimonic man, that is man under the influence of tutelary spirits, is an anachronism. That man should outgrow the daimonic and become free is the whole meaning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. But as he progresses in freedom the possibility of tragedy diminishes and finally ceases. Take ancient tragic characters, even most of Shakespeare's: they have a daimonism which leads to the tragic. Wherever man had the appearance of the daimonic-spiritual, wherever the daimonic-spiritual radiated and manifested through him, wherever he became its medium, tragedy was possible. In this sense the tragic will have to taper off now; a free mankind must rid itself of tutelary spirits. This it has not yet done. On the contrary, it is more and more falling prey to such forces.

But the great task and mission of the age is to pull human beings away from the daimonic towards freedom. The irony is that the more we get rid of the inner daimons which make us tragic personalities, the less do we get rid of external ones. For the moment modern man enters into relation with the outer world, he encounters something of the nature of daimons. Our thoughts must become freer and freer. And if, as I say in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, thoughts become will impulses, then the will also becomes free. These are polaric contrasts in freedom: free thoughts, free will.

Between lies that part of human nature which is connected with karma. And just as once upon a time the daimonic led to tragedy, so now the experiencing of karma can lead to inmost tragedy. Tragedy will flourish when man experiences karma. As long as we live in our thoughts we are free. But the words with which we have clothed our thoughts, once spoken or written, no longer belong to us. What may happen to a word I have uttered! Having absorbed it, somebody else surrounds it with different emotions and sensations, and thus the word lives on. As it flies through the world it becomes a power proceeding from man himself. This is his karma. Because it connects him with the earth, it may burst in on him again. Even the word which leads its own existence because it belongs not to us but to the genius of language may create the tragic. Just in our present time we see mankind at the inception of tragic situations through an overestimation of language, of the word. Peoples wish to separate themselves according to language, and their desire provides the basis for the gigantic tragedy which during this very century will break in upon the earth. This is the tragedy of karma. If past tragedy is that of daimonology, future tragedy will be that of karma.

Art is eternal; its forms change. And if in everything artistic there is some relationship to the spiritual, you will understand that with the artistic we place ourselves, creatively or through enjoyment, in the spirit world. A real artist may create his picture in a lonely desert. He does not worry about who will look at his picture or whether anybody at all will look at it, for he creates within a divine-spiritual community. Gods look over his shoulder; he creates in their company. What does he care whether or not anybody admires his picture. A person may be an artist in complete loneliness. Yet he cannot become one without bringing, by means of his creation, something spiritual into the world, so that it lives in the spirituality of the world. If one forgets this basic connection, art becomes non-art.

To create artistically is possible only if the work has a relationship to the world. Those ancient artists who painted pictures on the walls of churches were conscious of this fact; they knew that their murals stood within earth life insofar as this is permeated by the spirit; that they guided believers.

One can hardly imagine anything worse than painting for exhibitions. It is horrible to walk through a picture or sculpture gallery where completely unrelated subjects appear side by side. Painting lost meaning when it passed from something for church or home to an isolated phenomenon. If we paint or view a picture in a frame, we can imagine ourselves looking out through a window. But to paint for exhibitions — this is beyond discussion. An age which sees value in exhibitions has lost its connection with art. By this can be seen how much waits to be done in culture if we would find our way back to the spiritual-artistic. Exhibitions must be overcome. Of course some individual artists detest exhibitions. But today we live in an age when the individual cannot achieve very much unless his judgment grows out of a world-conception permeating fully free human beings; just as world-conceptions permeating people in less free ages led to the rise of genuine cultures. Today we have no real culture.

Only a spiritual world-conception can build up true culture, the indubitably artistic.



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Note: The English word virtue, derived from the Latin vir, man, carries a similar connotation of power. (Translators)




Source: http://www.webcitation.org/5sNQnRenO