diff --git "a/GA054.json" "b/GA054.json"
new file mode 100644--- /dev/null
+++ "b/GA054.json"
@@ -0,0 +1,200 @@
+[
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-1",
+    "title": "Haeckel, 'The Riddle of the Universe,' Theosophy",
+    "date": "5 Oct 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/Singles/19051005v01.html",
+    "book_title": "Two Essays on Haeckel",
+    "content": "Translated by Dr. Bertram Keightley\nIn selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy ,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe . Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.\nNow, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication — one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.\nFurthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.\nThe very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe — fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.\nIn gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.\nAnother fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.\nYou will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents , as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century , I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.\nIf you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life — a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.\nAll attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness — a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher — that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory — was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”\nWhat we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.\nIf you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century — for instance, to those of Burdach — you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.\nWhen, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body — when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.\nAt that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.\nNow, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.\nMan had now — and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe — to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.\nIt is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.\nThe whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory — all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature — indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.\nIt is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.\nMaterialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species , as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree — in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.\nAnd yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.\nIn the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce — to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.\nAmong those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view — a strange one, coming from him:\n“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”\nIn these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man — a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:\n“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.” 1 Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso , as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley , published by William Blackwood & Sons: “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort: “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”\nThus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation , and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.\nHaeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.\nLet us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.\nNow, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.\nThe results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.\nAt the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:\nThe origin of energy and matter.\nHow did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?\nHow did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”\nHow is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?\nAssuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.\nHow do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?\nHow can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?\nIt was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe . His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.\nAt the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere — such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows: —\n“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”\nHe considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple” — if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words: —\n“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’ — ‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.\nBy the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions — spiritual eyes — are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.\nFor this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”\nThe scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.\nThis also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”\nTheosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible — nay, that it is certain — that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs — spiritual eyes — to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”\nThis must be taken on faith at first — nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.\nThe ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.\nThere is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there — life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results , Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.) 2 Now published by the Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., in one volume, The Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment . Cloth, Crown 8vo, pp. 221, 6s.\nNow, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.\nThose who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.\nThen the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.\nTones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust , pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds:\n“Tönend wird für Geistes-Ohren, Schon der neue Tag geboren!”\n(“Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!”)\nFaust, Part II.\nHere we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel — a structure none can admire more profoundly than I — then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.\nI will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.\nThe true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.\nFor all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.\nJust as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.\nNatural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.\nFrom the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.\nWe will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.\nMaterialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”\nNow, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.\nIt is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.\nWe may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”\nBut we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.\nIn actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.\nThe creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.\nExternally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.\nHence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile — after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.\nIt depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words:\n“The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.”\nThe same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase:\n“Were the eye not sun-like — how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision — could it enrapture us?”\nand an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.\nThe fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.\nIt is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms! 3 The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer. The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man — God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says:\n“Du gleichst dem Geist den du begreifst, nicht mir!” (“Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”)\n(Bayard Taylor's translation.)\nThus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-2",
+    "title": "The Situation of the World",
+    "date": "12 Oct 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/Singles/19051012v02.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "This single lecture is the second of twenty-two lectures in the lecture series entitled, Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy , published in German as, Die Weltraetsel und die Anthroposophie . It is also known as, The Present Situation in the World, War and Peace , published in the Anthroposophic News Sheet , Volume 14, 1945, p.249, and as War, Peace, and the Science of the Spirit , in Anthroposophic Review , Volume 7, 1985, No. 3.\nSpiritual investigation cannot meddle with the immediate events of the day. But at the same time, one should not believe that spiritual science floats in the clouds above every reality and that it has nothing to do with practical life. To-day we shall not speak of the events that are stirring the world just now, events of the kind: described in the daily newspapers, nor do we belong to those who prefer to be blind and deaf to the occurrences that move the human heart. The spiritual-scientific investigator must always thread his way between two rocks; he never loses himself in the ruling opinions and views of the day, and on the other hand he never becomes involved in empty abstractions and authoritative concepts. On many occasions I had the opportunity to tell you that spiritual science should make us practical; far more practical than is generally believed to be the case by the men of daily practical life. It should make us practical, by leading us to the deeper forces which lie at the foundation of life and throwing light upon everything from these deeper forces, and by guiding our actions so that they are in harmony with the great laws of the universe. We are able to achieve something in the world and we can influence its course of events only if we act in accordance with the great laws of the universe.\nAfter these introductory words, let me begin by pointing out a few facts for the sole purpose of calling up in your mind the importance of present-day problems, I might say the actuality of these problems.\nOne, fact which everyone may perhaps remember is that on the 24th of August 1898 the Czar's authorised representative sent a circular to all the accredited foreign representatives at St. Petersburg, containing among other things the following words: The maintenance of peace and thee diminution of armaments that weigh upon the nation constitute an ideal of modern civilisation, an ideal upon which the governments of all nations should turn their attention. My sovereign completely dedicated his strength to this task. Hoping that this, may be in keeping with the desire of most of the other lowers, the Imperial Government holds that it is now the best moment to ensure peace upon the basis of international discussion and to put an end to the present uninterrupted arming.\nThis document also contains the following: Since the financial means required for armaments are constantly rising, capital and labour are deviated from their true paths and are devoured unproductively. The armaments consequently correspond less and less to the purpose allotted to them by the respective governments. The document concludes by saying that a Conference with God's aid would be a good omen for the new century.\nTo be sure, this is not exactly a new resolution, for we can go back many centuries, and in the l6th/17th century we come across a ruler, Henry IVth of France, who then advanced the idea of holding such a universal Peace Conference. Seven of the sixteen nations of that time had already given their consent, when Henry IVth was murdered. No one continued his work. If necessary, it would be possible to trace intentions and plans having this aim and flowing from such quarters, much further back still.\nThis is one sequence of facts. The other one is: the Conference of The Hague. You all know the name of that praiseworthy person who pursues her ideals with such rare devotion and with such a good knowledge of the facts: Bertha von Suttner. One year after the Conference at The Hague she collected the acts into a book in which she recorded speeches which were sometimes very beautiful. She also wrote an introduction to this book. Please bear in mind that one year passed by since Bertha von Suttner envisaged this book about the Peace Conference.\n(At this point there is an interruption in the text.)\nWar has now broken out, in diametrical opposition to these ideas, war due to refusal of intermediation — the cruel Transvaal war. If we now look around in the world, we find that very noble-hearted men are lighting for the ideal of Peace and the love for universal peace lives in the hearts of high- minded idealists — nevertheless so much blood has never before been shed on earth as during this short time. This is an earnest very earnest matter for everyone who is also interested in the great problems of the soul.\nOn the one hand we have the devoted apostles of Peace and their untiring activity, we have the excellent books of Bertha von Suttner who knew how to set forth the terrors of war with such rare skill — but do not let us forget the other side. Do not let us forget that many clever men who belong to the other side assure us again and again that war is necessary for human progress, that it steels the forces. The strength increases by having to face opposition. The scientific investigator who attracted so many thinkers to his side, often said that he desired war, that only a fierce war could advance the forces in Nature. 1 See the lecture of October 5th,1905: HAECKEL, THE RIDDLES OF THE WORLD AND THEOSOPHY Perhaps he did not express himself so radically, nevertheless many people harbour these thoughts. Even within our spiritual-scientific Movement some people voiced the view that it would be a weakness, nay a sin against the spirit of national strength, if any objection were raised against the war which had led to national honour, national power. In any case, the opinions in this sphere are still strongly opposed.\nBut the Conference at The Hague brought with it one thing. It brought to our notice the views of many people who are at the head of public life. Many representatives of Governments at that time agreed that the Conference at The Hague should take place. One might think that a cause which had gained the support of such high quarters, would be highly successful. -\nIn order to. view things in the way in which they have to be viewed from the aspect of a spiritual conception of the world and of life, we must penetrate more deeply into the whole subject. When we study the problem of peace as an ideal problem and see how it developed in the course of time, but at the same time observe the facts of battle and strife, we must say that perhaps the way in which this ideal of peace has been pursued, calls for a closer investigation and claims our attention.\nYou see, even the hearts of many soldiers are filled with pain and abhorrence for the consequences and effects of war. Such things, may indeed induce us to ask: Do wars arise through anything which can be eliminated from the world by principles and opinions? These who look more deeply into the souls of men know that two quite distinct and separate directions produce that which leads to war. One direction is what we designate as power of judgment and understanding, what we name idealism; the other direction is human passion, the human inclinations, man's sympathies and antipathies.\nMany things would be different in the world if it were possible, without further ado, to control desires and passions in accordance with the principles of the heart and of the understanding. For this is not possible, the very opposite has so far always been the case in human life. The understanding, the heart itself, provide in idealism the mask for what is pursued by passion and desire. And if you study the history of human development, you may again and again ask, whenever you come across certain principles, whenever you see idealism flashing up: What are the passions and desires which lurk in the background?\nYou see, if you bear this in mind, it is quite possible that with the best principles one cannot as yet achieve anothing; perhaps something else will be required, because the human, passions, instincts and desires are not sufficiently developed to follow the idealism of individual men. The problem has, as you see, a deeper root and we must grasp it more deeply.\nIf we wish to judge the whole matter rightly, we must cast a glance into the human soul and its fundamental forces. We do not always survey the course of development to a sufficient extent, generally we only survey a short space of time, — so that an encompassing conception of the world must open our eyes, giving us on the one hand a deep insight and on the other a survey of larger epochs of time, in order that we may form a judgment of the forces which are to lead us into the future.\nLet us consider the human soul, where we can study it deeply and thoroughly. Let us consider from another aspect something which we mentioned eight days ago. 2 In the lecture on Haeckel. We have, a natural-scientific theory, the so-called Darwinism. There is one idea which plays an important part in this natural-scientific conception. It is the idea designated as the “STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE,” the “BATTLE OF LIFE.” Our whole natural science, our whole conception of life stood under the sign of this struggle for existence. The scientists declared: In the world the beings that can best assert themselves in the battle of life, that can gain the greatest advantage over their fellow-creatures, are those who survive, whereas the others perish! Consequently, we need not be surprised that we are surrounded by beings, who adapted themselves best of all, for they developed throughout millions of years. The fittest survived and the unfit perished.\nThe struggle for existence has become the watchword of scientific research. From where did this struggle come? It has not been taken from Nature. Darwin himself, though he sees it in a greater style than his followers, took it from a conception of Malthus, 3 Thomas Robert Malthus, 1760-1854 spreading over the history of human development, a conception according to which the earth produces food in a progression rising in a far more reduced measure than the increase of the population. Those who versed in these questions will know that one says: The increase in food is in accordance with arithmetic progression, whereas the increase in the population is in accordance with geometrical progression. This produces a struggle for existence, a war of all against all. Setting out from this idea, Darwin placed the struggle for existence also at the beginning of the life of mature. This conception is not only in keeping with a mere idea, but with the modern ways of living. This battle of life has become reality reaching as far as the conditions of individual existence, as expressed in the form of general economic competition. This battle of life was observed at close quarters, it was looked upon as something natural in the kingdom of man, and then it was taken over by natural science.\nErnst Haeckel set out from these ideas, and in warlike activities, in war itself, he even saw a lever of civilisation, Battle strengthens, the weak must go under, — civilisation demands that the weak should perish. National economy then applied this struggle to the human sphere. We thus have great theories in national economy, in the conceptions of social life, theories which look upon the struggle for existence as something quite justified which cannot be severed from the development of humanity. With these principles, not with prejudices, one went back to the remotest times, and one tried to study the life of the wild barbaric peoples; one believed that it was possible to listen to the development of human culture and thought to discover in it the wildest principle of war. Huxley said: If we survey the animals in Nature, their struggle for existence resembles a fight of gladiators — and this is a law of Nature. And if we turn our attention from the higher animals to the lower species in keeping with the course of world-development, we find that the facts prove everywhere that we live in the midst of a general struggle for existence,\nYou see, this idea could be expressed, it could be accepted as a general law of the universe. Those who realise that no words can be uttered which are not deeply rooted in the human soul, must say to themselves that the feelings, the soul-constitution even of our best people are still based upon the idea that war, battle, in the human race as well as in Nature, constitutes a law, something from which we cannot escape.\nNow you can say: These scientists were perhaps very humane, perhaps in their deepest idealism they longed for peace, for harmony. But their profession, their science convinced them that this was not so, and perhaps they wrote down their theories with a bleeding heart.\nThis might stand as an objection, if something quite different had not arisen. We can say that the above-mentioned theory was universally accepted by all those who believed that they were sound thinkers, scientifically and economically, in the sixties and seventies of the 19th-century. generally accepted was- the view that war and strife were, a law of Nature, from which one could not escape. The old conception of Rousseau 4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 28 June 1712- 2 July 1778 had been disposed of completely — so people thought — for Rousseau held that only man's wickedness had brought battle and strife into the general peace of Nature, opposition and disharmony into its harmony. At the end of me loth century the Rousseau atmosphere was still prevalent, according to which a glance into the life of Nature which is still uninfluenced by man's super-culture, reveals everywhere harmony and peace. It is man, with his arbitrariness and culture, who brought strife and battle into the world.\nThis was still Rousseau's idea and during, the last third of the 19th century the scientists assured us: it would be fine if this were true, but this is not the case: the facts show us a different state of things. Nevertheless, let us ask ourselves earnestly: Has human feeling expressed a verdict, or the facts themselves? ... It would be difficult to raise any objection if the f acts themselves spoke in this way.\nBut a strange man appeared in the year 1880, who gave a lecture in St. Petersburg in Russia, during the Congress of Scientists of 1880. This lecture is of profoundest significance for all who are really interested in this problem. This man is the zoologist Kessler. 5 Karl Fedorovich Kessler, On the principle of Mutual Help , lecture by Prof. Kessler, Dean of the St. Petersburg University, given in January 1880 during the congress of Russian Scientists. (Kessler died in 1881) He died soon after. His lecture dealt with the principle of mutual help in Nature. All those who earnestly deal with such questions, will find in the research and scientific maturity contained in this lecture a completely new impulse. Nor the first time in our modern epoch facts were collected from the whole of Nature proving that all the former theories on the struggle for existence are not in keeping with reality.\nYou see, this lecture expounds and proves by facts that the animal species, the groups of animals, do not develop through the battle of life, in reality, a struggle for existence only exists exceptionally between two different species, but not within the same species, for the. individuals belonging to it on the contrary help each other. Those species are the fittest, where the individuals belonging to it are most inclined to this mutual help. Long existence is guaranteed not by a struggle for existence, but by mutual help.\nThis opened out a new aspect, by. a strange coincidence and chain of circumstances in modern scientific research, this subject was continued by a man who adopted the most extraordinary standpoint, by Prince Kropotkin: He was able to prove in the case of animals and certain tribes, by bringing forward innumerable sound facts, the great significance of this principle of mutual help, both in Nature and in human life. I would advise everyone to read his took. 6 Peter Kropotkin: MUTUAL HELP IN ‘EVOLUTION’ It brings a number of ideas and concepts which are a good school for an ascent to a spiritual outlook.\nBut these facts can be grasped in the right way only if they are considered in the light of a so-called esoteric conception, if we gain insight into these facts upon the foundation of spiritual science. I might adduce many facts which speak very clearly, but you can read them in the above-mentioned book. The principle of mutual help in Nature declares that those in whom this principle is developed in the highest measure are those who advance furthest. Consequently, the facts speak clearly and will speak more and more clearly for us.\nWhen we speak of a single animal-species in the theosophical conception, we speak of it in the same way in which we speak of man's single individuality. An animal species is upon a lower sphere the same as the single human individuality upon a higher sphere. I already explained before that there is one fact which, we must clearly envisage in. order to grasp the difference which exists between man and the whole animal kingdom. This contrasting difference may be expressed in the words: Man has a biography, but the animal has no biography. In the case of an animal it suffices to describe its species. lather, grandfather, grandson and son — these distinctions do not count in the case of a lion; we do not need to describe each one in particular. Certainly I knew that many objections can be raised: I know that those who. love a dog or a monkey think that they can write a biography of the dog or of the monkey. But a biography should not contain what another person knows of the being that is the subject of a biography, but what that being himself knew. Self-consciousness is essential for a biography, and in this meaning, only the HUMAN BEING has a biography. This would correspond to a description of a whole animal-species. That each group of animals has a group-soul, is the external expression for the fact that each individual human being bears a soul within him.\nI was able to explain to you here that a hidden world is immediately connected with our physical world; it is the astral world which does not consist of the objects and beings that can be perceived through the senses, but which are woven of the same substance of which our passions and desires are woven. If you examine the human being you can see that he led down his soul as far as the physical world, the physical plane. But the animal has no individual soul upon the physical plane, — you find instead the animal's individual soul upon the so-called astral plane, in the astral world that lies concealed behind our physical world. The groups of animals have individual souls in the astral world.\nYou see, here you have the difference between man and the animal kingdom. If we now ask ourselves: What is really waging battle, when we observe the struggle for existence in the animal kingdom? — we must reply: In truth, the astral battle of the soul's passions and instincts stands behind this struggle of the different species in the animal kingdom, the battle of soul-passions and instincts which is rooted in the double souls, or in sex. But if we were to speak of a struggle for existence WITHIN the same species in the animal kingdom, this would be the same as if the human soul were to wage war upon itself in its different parts. This is a very important truth«, We cannot accept the rule that a struggle exists within the same animal species, but a struggle for existence can only take place between DIFFERENT SPECIES; for the soul of one whole species is the same for all the animals belonging to it ... and because of this it must control the single members. In the animal species we can observe mutual help and assistance, which is simply the expression for the uniform activity of the species or of the group-soul. And if you consider all the examples mentioned in the. above-named interesting book, you will obtain a beautiful insight into the way in which these group-souls work. We find, for example, that when a specimen of a certain species of crab has accidentally fallen on its back, so that it cannot turn around alone, a number of animals in its neighbourhood come along and help it to get on its legs again. This mutual support comes from the soul-organ which the animals have in common. Follow the way in which beetles help each other when they have to protect a brood, or tackle a dead mouse, etc., how they unite and carry out their work together, there you can observe the activity of the group-soul. It is possible to observe this right up to the highest animal-species. Indeed, those who have some understanding for this mutual support and assistance among animals, also obtain insight into the activity of the group- souls and an idea of how they work — and just there they can develop a spiritual vision. The eye acquires sun-like qualities.\nIn the case of man, we have an individualized group-soul. Such a group-soul dwells in each single human being. We must therefore apply to the human beings what must be applied to the different animal species, so that in the case of man it is possible that one human being fights, against another human being; an individual strife is possible.\nBut let us now consider the purpose of strife, whether battle exists in the development of the world for the sake of battle. For what has become of the struggle of existence among the species? The species that supported each other most of all survived, and those who fought against each other perished. This is a law of Nature. Consequently, we must say that in external Nature development progresses through the fact that peace replaces the struggle. Where Nature reached a definite point, where it arrives at the great turning point, we really find harmony; the peace which is the final outcome of the whole struggle, can really be found there. Consider, for instance, that the plants, as species, are also engaged in a struggle for existence. But consider at the same time how wonderfully the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom support each other in their common process of development: for the animal breathes in oxygen and breathes out nitrogen, whereas the plant breathes in nitrogen and breathes out oxygen. Thus peace is possible in the universe.\nWhat Nature thus produces through its forces, is destined to be produced by man consciously, out of his individual nature. Man progressed gradually and what we designate as the self-consciousness of our individual soul unfolded little by little. We must look upon the present situation of the world as the result of a course of development, and then follow its tendency towards the future. Go back into the past; there you will find group-souls at the beginning of human development. These group-souls were active within small tribes and families, so that we also come across group-souls in the human beings. The further back you look into the development of the world, the more compact you will find the structure of human life, the people will appear to you harmoniously united. One spirit seemed to pervade the old village communities; which afterwards became the primitive State. You can study that when Alexander the Great led his armies into battle, it was a different thing from leading modern armies into war, with their far more developed individualized will-forces. This must be seen in a true light.\nThe progressive course of civilisation consists in the fact that the human beings became more and more individualized, more and more independent and self-conscious. The human race developed out of groups and small communities. Even as there are group-souls that guide and control the single animal-species, so the different nations were guided by the great group-souls. By his progressive education, the human being more and more emancipates himself from the guidance of the group-soul and becomes more and more independent. Whereas formerly he confronted his fellow-men with more or less hostility, his independence brought him to the point of standing in the midst of a battle of life which now takes hold of the whole of humanity. This is the present situation of the world, and this is the. destiny particularly of our epoch or race, that is to say, of the immediate present.\nSpiritual science distinguishes in the present development of the world five great races, the so-called sub-races. The first sub-race developed in ancient times, in distant India. This sub-race was to begin with filled by a culture of priests; It is this culture of priests which gave our present race its first impulses. It had come over from the Atlantean culture; this developed in a region which is now the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The leading note was given by this race and it was followed by the others; now we live within the fifth sub-race. This subdivision is not taken from anthropology or from some racial theory, but will be explained more in detail in my 6th lecture (of the 9th of November 1905: FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF THEOSOPHY ).\nThe fifth race is the one which made us progress furthest of all in our individual existence, in our individual consciousness. Christianity was in fact a preparation for the attainment of this individual consciousness; man had to attain to this individual consciousness.\nIf you go back to the time before Christ, to ancient Egypt where the gigantic pyramids were built, you will find there an army of slaves who carried out tasks so difficult and fatiguing that it is hardly possible to conceive this to-day. But for the greater part of the time these workmen built the immense pyramids as a matter of course and they were filled by an immense peacefulness. They submitted to their work because at that time the teaching of reincarnation and of karma was a natural thing. No books tell you about this, but if you penetrate into spiritual science this will be quite clear to you. Each slave who toiled until his hands were sore and who lived in pain and misery, knew: This is one of many lives, and what I am suffering now must be borne as the consequence of what I prepared for myself in my former lives! If this is not the case, I shall experience the effect of this life in my next; and the one who now orders me about, once stood upon the same stage on which I am standing now, or he will do so one day.\nWith such a mentality, however, it would have been impossible to develop a self-conscious earthly life, and the High Powers that lead human destiny as a whole, knew what they were doing, when for a time — which lasted many thousands of years — they blotted out the consciousness of Karma and of Reincarnation. This disappearance was brought about by the great course of development of Christianity, up to the present time; it eliminated the power to look up to another world which brought a harmonising influence, and drew attention instead to the immense importance of this life upon the earth.\nThough this might have gone too far in its radical application, it was never the less necessary, for the world's course of development does not follow logic, but quite different laws. From earthly life people deduced an eternity of punishment, and although this is nonsense, the tendency of human development led to this. Humanity thus learned to grow conscious of this one earthly existence and the earth, the physical plane, thus assumed an immense importance for the human being. This had to come, the earth had to acquire this great significance. Everything that takes place to-day in the form of a material conquest of the earthly globe, could only grow out of a mentality based upon an education cut out for this earth and emitting the idea of Reincarnation and Karma.\nWe now see the result of such an education: man came down completely to the physical plane during his earthly life; for the individual soul could only unfold upon the physical plane, where it is isolated, enclosed within the body and where it can only look out into the world through the senses, as an isolated individual existence.\nThis brought human competition into the human race, in an ever-growing measure, and the effects of such an isolated existence. We must not be surprised that to-day the human race is not by a long way ripe enough to eliminate once more what was thus drawn in. We saw that the present species of animals reached their state of perfection by mutual help and that the struggle for existence only exists between the species, passing from species to species. But if the human individuality is upon a higher stage the same as the group-soul of the animals, then the human soul will only be able to attain self-consciousness by passing through the same struggles through which the animal-species passed in Nature. This struggle will last until the human being will have developed complete independence. But he is called upon to reach this consciously; consciously he must attain what exists outside upon the. physical plane. Along the stages of consciousness pertaining to his own sphere, he will be guided towards mutual help and support, because the human race is one species. The absence of struggle which exists in the animal kingdom must be attained for the whole human race in the form of an all-embracing, complete peace. It is not struggle, but mutual help and support that led the single animal-species, to their present state of development. The group-soul that lives in the animal-species as an individual soul is at peace within itself and a uniform soul. Only man's individual soul has a special structure within its isolated physical existence.\nYou see, the great acquisition which spiritual development can bring to our soul is to recognise truly the one soul that, fills the whole human race, the unity with humanity as a whole. We do not receive this as an unconscious gift, but we must conquer it for ourselves consciously. It is the task of the spiritual- scientific world-conception to develop really and truly this uniform soul that lives within the whole human race.\nThis is expressed in our first fundamental principle, to establish a brotherly league throughout the world, independently of race, sex, colour, etc. This implies the recognition of the SOUL that lives in the whole of humanity. The purification enabling us to discover the same soul also in our fellow-men must go as far as our passions. In physical life we are separated, but in the life of the soul we are one with the Ego of the human race. This can only be grasped in real life; true life alone can lead us to this. Consequently, only the development of spiritual life can permeate us with the breath of this one Soul. Not the people of the present, but those of the future who will more and more unfold the consciousness of this One Soul, shall lay the foundation of a new human race that will devote itself entirely to mutual help. Our first principle therefore means something quite different than is generally supposed. We do not fight; but we also do not oppose war or any other thing, because opposition and battle do not lead to a higher development. Each animal-species developed into a special race by coming out of the struggle for existence. Let us leave fighting to the bellicose who are not yet mature enough to go in search of the common Soul of the Human Race in spiritual life. A real Society of Peace is one that strives after a knowledge of the Spirit, and the spiritual-scientific current is the true Peace Movement, if is the Peace Movement in the only form in which it can exist in practical life, because it envisages what lives within the human being and what will unfold in the future.\nSpiritual life always developed as a stream that came from the East. The East is the region where spiritual life was fostered. And here in the West we have the region where the external. materialistic civilisation was unfolded. That is why we see in the East the land where people dream and sleep. But who knows what is going on in the souls of those whom we call dreamers or sleepers, when they rise up to worlds which are quite unknown to the peoples of the West? We must now come out of our materialistic civilisation, and yet bear in mind everything that surrounds us in the physical world. We must ascend to the spiritual with everything which we conquered upon the physical plane.\nIt is more than symbolically significant that in England Darwinism should have found a new representative in Huxley who deemed it necessary to state out of his western conception: Nature shows us that the human apes fought against each other and the strongest remained on the field ... whereas from the East came the watchword: Support, mutual help, this is the guarantee for the future!\nHere in Central Europe we have a special task: It would be of no use to use to be one-sidedly Oriental, or one-sidedly English. We must unite the morning dawn of the East with the. physical science of the West so that they become, a great harmony. Then we shall be able to grasp how the idea of the future may be connected, with the idea of the struggle for existence.\nIt is more than a coincidence that in one of the fundamental books of Theosophy those who penetrate more deeply into spiritual life will find light upon the path, for the second chapter significantly closes with a sentence which coincides with this idea. “Light upon the Path” does not contain it as a phrase, for spiritual development will lead us to a paint where we shall recognise that the beautiful words at the end of the 2nd chapter in “Light upon the Path” harmonize with the One Soul that enters the individual human soul, flashing up and coming to life within it. Those who immerse themselves in this beautiful little book — which does not only fill the soul with a content that makes us feel inwardly devout and good and that gradually gives man real clairvoyance by the. power of its words — will discover in the single individual this harmony, when they experience what is written in every chapter. The final words, “Peace be with you,” will then descend into the soul. In the end this will be experienced by the whole of humanity, for the most significant words will then be: “Peace be with you.”\nThis opens out to us the true perspective. Then we must not only s p e a k of peace, not only envisage it abstractly as an ideal, make treaties or long for the verdicts of a court of arbitration, but we must cultivate spiritual life, the Spiritual. We then awaken within us the strength which will be poured out over, the whole human race as the source of mutual help and support. We do not oppose, we do something else: we foster love, and we know that by fostering love, every opposition must disappear. We do not set up struggle against struggle. We set up love against struggle, by developing and fostering love. This is something positive. By pouring out love we work upon ourselves, and we establish a society based upon love. This is our ideal. If this livingly penetrates into our souls, we shall realize an old saying in a new way, and this will be in accordance with Christianity. And a new Christianity, or rather the Christianity of the past, will arise again for a new humanity. Buddha gave his people a motto which envisages this. But Christianity contains even more beautiful words on the unfolding: of love, words which should be grasped in the right way: Not by strife we overcome strife, not by hatred we overcome hatred, but strife and hatred can in reality be overcome by love alone."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-3",
+    "title": "Fundamentals of Theosophy Soul and Spirit of Man",
+    "date": "19 Oct 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19051019v01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "It was not at all that long ago that one considered as something unscientific in certain circles to speak about the human soul as a particular entity. The least understanding is there today if one speaks even about the mind or spirit besides the soul. The subject, which we set ourselves today, is rather extensive. I am only able to show some outlines. Within the spiritual-scientific worldview we are led to that older division of the human being, which is a trichotomy compared with that which has still validity almost entirely in the consciousness of the present humanity, compared with the division in two parts of body and soul. The trichotomy to which the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview has to go back again is that of body, soul and mind or spirit. Let us come to an understanding first of all about what we understand, actually, by body, soul and mind or spirit. The body of the human being is something about which we do not require many ideas to understand it. However, on the other side, the idea of the physical, of the external physical is so much the only thing that occupies our present humanity that the understanding about the difference of soul and mind and already about the entity of the soul is rather difficult. Today we have to be mindful — in contrast to some other talks I have held here — of a rather intimate exactness of our concepts and ideas which we want to develop here and, hence, I ask to be allowed to engage your attention to finer distinctions in the human ideas.\nIf a human being stands before you, you will admit without further ado that in the space, which the concerning person fills, his body exists. Because your senses attest this human body to you. However, the human being can look at himself with his senses at least partially, and we can say without thinking, the human being is a bodily being for another sensory-gifted human being. However, in the space, which the human being fills, even more exists certainly, than what your senses can see. It is maybe for the human life — understood in its entirety — the least that the other human being can see with his eyes and touch with his hands. For if the human being speaks about his life, he speaks very seldom about his bodily appearance perceptible to the senses. Then he speaks about his destiny, about joy and sorrow, about pain and everything that lives inside and is not perceptible to the senses at first.\nA human being may stand before you and another beside him. What your senses perceive of both human beings is not the essential at first, but it is to be added that perhaps in the one human being a sad soul lives and in the other human being a joyful, happy soul exists. In both cases, the internal being of the person fills the space somewhat different from the physical existence. If you put a blind person before another person, this blind person does not perceive the bodily existence of the other person at first. He may be tempted to state under circumstances — if he does not take notice with his sense of touch or in another way — that nobody is in the room because his eye is unable to see. One just needs senses to be convinced of an external sensory existence, senses that are able to perceive this external bodily existence.\nNow we must ask ourselves, would this external bodily existence not be there if one did not perceive it? Would I not stand also in this place if on all sides nothing but blind and deaf people were who cannot see and hear me? As for me, I would be there, I would be in myself. Just as I am in myself according to my bodily existence, and this must be distinguished from the perception by the others. We have now to soar a view that the same difference exists for that which I have called the second way of existence, for the desire and pain, for the life, which fills the space, but this space fulfilling is not perceptible to the senses. If a person stands before a blind person and this blind person becomes suddenly sighted, the external existence becomes a discernible existence for him. Then the question arises: could not be joy and pain, rage and passion — not perceptible to the senses at first, but living also in the human being like his red blood, his nerves and bones — a discernible entity perceptible to the other human beings?\nThe human being knows what he can perceive. He is a developing being, a being that has developed from imperfect levels in a distant past to his present existence. All organs, which are at and in the human being, have developed gradually. The abilities of seeing and hearing developed bit by bit; the external physical world became a discernible world for the human being, a world that he knows, that he can observe. If the human being develops that way, could we not ask there, whether he is not also able to improve himself further? May it become discernible to him what is not discernible to him even today? — Just as the room in which a human being stands is dark for a blind person at first and he starts perceiving colours and the physical figure if he becomes sighted, nonetheless, it could also be that that which still lives in the room what flashes through the soul would also be made visible, discernible. The human being was led to his external, sensuous visibility by the external forces of the world. He has added nothing there. He was put on the physical plane by the order of nature, equipped with senses to perceive the sensuous world. However, the human being himself can take in hand his further development; he can make himself able to experience other things except the sensuous world round him.\nThis development of a higher life was always nourished and cherished in certain human communities from times immemorial. Just as the human beings have sensuous eyes and sensuous ears at first, the ability to perceive with the eyes and ears of the soul — if I may express myself this way — was developed by the own activity of single human beings. As true as it is that the eye if it opens perceives a coloured world round itself, where, otherwise, darkness was, it is also true that the mental eye is unlocked by a suitable training, so that that which lives in the affects, in desire and grief becomes discernible. The instruction that leads to such higher development of the human being is different from the usual lessons. Our ninth talk will discuss that in detail what one can generally discuss on this internal development publicly. Somebody who wants to know more about this internal development can find out more about that. Today I can refer only to the ninth talk. However, the most necessary should be suggested.\nThe present external civilisation knows very little about those instructions, which the human being must receive to get mental eyes and ears. Only marginal knowledge is there. However, just the spiritual-scientific worldview is appointed to rouse an understanding of the supersensible because it is a necessary requirement for the culture. Today all lessons intend to fill the mind and reason mostly. However, this means that a world of ideas is woken in us that is connected with the external sensuous world. Our external sensuous knowledge attracts more and more increasing attention. However, this is not such necessary; it does not deepen the human being, as splendid as the achievements of our civilisation may be. There was another instruction at all times, an instruction that does not aim at the external expansion of the sensory world, but at the deepening of the world being. I describe it to you only with a few words to give an idea of it.\nEverything that you read in the scientific writings today has come about by external sensuous observation. Science considers it more or less as something that must not contain what has not come about by external observation. One presupposes that the human being should remain, as he is that he already has the ability to absorb what this science can offer him. However, it is completely different if it concerns the instruction, which should lead the human being to the ability of mental perception. In such schools, one taught something else. At first, no teaching material is handed over to the student that contains as many concepts as possible. Rather a student went to a master and the master accepted him if he considered his disposition as ripe for developing the internal senses. Then he had not to take up much new contents in himself, but he had to become another human being at first. He did not get a book, not special contents, but so-called eternal contents of thought at first, something eternal that was due to those human beings who were further in their development than the remaining civilised human beings were. We have to come to an agreement about what we understand by such eternal contents of thought.\nTry once to look around in your soul and to ask yourselves: how much of the ideas and thoughts living in me, of the feelings and what is, otherwise, in my soul, belongs to the time and the place in which I live? — Try once to think about what moves your soul from the morning up to the evening, and what would be different, completely different, if you were in Moscow instead of in Berlin, and if you did not live at the beginning of the 20th century, but at the end of the 18th century. Subtract everything that you have taken this way from space and time in which you live, from your soul contents. Try to understand how much of that which you imagine would also apply to a person in another place and time. It is not much. However, there are things, which do not only apply to today and to Berlin, but also to other places and other times. If we ascend in this sense, we detect more and more that our sense is led, like by a great spiritual guide of humanity, to such eternal contents of thought.\nThe religious scriptures of all times are full of such things, which are independent of space and time. To mention the most trivial I can say that mathematics is something that is independent of space and time. What deals with time and space is itself temporal and transient. However, if the soul devotes itself to the imperishable, it becomes everlasting and imperishable and absorbs what is immortal. Hence, the master gives everlasting contents of thought to the soul at first. The contents that are only related to the core of the soul can be given to everybody, indifferently whether he lives in America, in Japan or in Africa.\nThen the student had to cut himself off the sensuous outside world and to live with that which lives as strength in him. With immense patience, the deepening had to happen on the inside of the soul. The human inside is something living, and as from the mere cell mass the wonderful construction of the physical eye has originated, the spiritual eye originates in the soul from the everlasting spiritual contents if it becomes engrossed that way and lives in meditation. The physical eye was not always there. It has originated from the confluence of the external physical forces. The human being is able to wake the spiritual eye in the soul if he can be developed by the spiritual contents. Such pupils awaited and awaited in patience, they had to use a big part of the day to their exercises. There were times in which this was possible. Thus, they waited until the internal forces woken by the mental deepening gave them the perception of that which filled the space as desire and grief, as instincts, passions, and impulses.\nA physical eye sees because the external source of light throws rays on an object. One cannot see without light. Eye and light belong together. In the sensuous outside world, eye and light are two separate things. In the soul, the spiritual eye is woken, and this is at the same time the source of a new mental light. We ourselves must emit this light which makes the mental visible that stands before us. If you have received the inner light this way, by sinking in your inside and the awakening of the internal life linked with it, your own astral body starts shining from the inside and lights up everything in truth and reality like the sun the objects. However, you do not light up the external world, but that which is mental which lives in the human being as an affect; this becomes visible by the rays, which you yourselves emit. Thus, the human being is able to make discernible for himself what is not discernible externally.\nAll great guides of humanity who have spoken to us about the soul — do not believe that they had empty phrases and words in mind only. One knows nothing of the depths that have moved and caused the human culture if one believes only in the sense world. One normally speaks from the immediate view. Envisage, for example, the relation of soul and body as I have just discussed it, then you must say to yourselves, this relation of soul and body is such that something mental penetrates the bodily that stands before. As true as it is that this body that you call your own is fed from the outside by foodstuffs and is thereby animated and supplemented from outside, as true it is that this body is animated, penetrated and lighted by the mental. If this body sleeps, the mental is not in it at first, then it is separated from it, it is outside it. Then we cannot speak of the fact that the mental streams into the body. A German theosophist, a deep spirit, characterised this relation of soul and body in a wonderfully attractive way, which one understands only properly if one makes such requirements as we have just done. This theosophist — we are allowed to call him a theosophist — speaks about the sleep, when the soul is not in the body, in a peculiar way. He says, “Sleep is the digestion of the soul; the body digests the soul. Being awake means the effective state of the soul — the body enjoys the soul.” It is a wonderful comparison. As one enjoys the food with the absorption of nutrients, the body enjoys — this theosophist thinks — the soul, which lives in it. As well as the body, after it has enjoyed the food, digests it, the body digests in the sleeping state what the soul has sunk into it. This saying of our German poet and theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801, poet) is very beautiful. You can find a source of the most beautiful spiritual-scientific wisdom with him. Only the spiritual-scientific worldview can understand him. I could state countless things of the German culture that would show you how the great seers of humanity spoke of soul, body, and their relation to each other with expertise.\nThe third thing about which we have to speak is the mind or spirit. We summarise desire and grief, pain and joy, passion, instinct and avidity and what else under the name “soul.” If one asks what the soul is, then we say, what gets the living existence inside at first. Someone can attain the perception of this soul who has received an education as I have just described it. Mind or spirit exists not only inside of the human being, but also everywhere in the world. You can convince yourselves of that by a very banal thinking activity. All human beings in the world think, think in that which is round them. They get knowledge of the world round them with their thoughts. These thoughts are not only expression of that which lives in the outside world, but also of something that does not live in the outside world. If you oversee the universe, your sense sees an enormous sum of stars and processes, and then there comes your reflection and gets a concept of these stars. If your sense sees a drop of water, your reflection gets a concept of this drop of water. Briefly speaking, you are not contented to perceive the things; you also want to understand them. This is something different from mere sensuous perceiving. If you have a glass without water in it, you cannot pour out water from it. If no thought and no concept were in the space outside, one could also not get out them. It would be illusionary to think about the world if the world were not built up according to thoughts. The stone about which you think and which you understand must have originated from a thought, otherwise the thought could not be got out. If you do not want to get involved in absurd contradictions, you have to admit that the thoughts are as true in the world outside as the thoughts in your head inside. You think, and the thoughts that live in you are not different from those, which have built up the world.\nThus, we have three aspects:\nThe sensuous in the world, the material existence, perceived by the external senses;\nThe soul which we experience and which that soul, which is instructed in that way about which I have spoken, can also perceive, and\nThe mind or spirit that we assume all over the world as that which flows through it like a fluid and announces the being of the things to us at first.\n\nThe human being can perceive this spirit first of all where it appears as such. What he can perceive is its external physiognomy, its sensuous expression. You do not see the spirit in the world, but its sensuous expression.\nThe human being thinks in the spirit. Indeed, the thought lives in the world, but the human being cannot see it. He can only think it. As true as you yourselves think about the world and as true as a spiritual mirror of the world forms, as true it also forms in every other human being. This other human being is not only desire and passion, but this spiritual mirror of the world also lives in him. One can perceive this with the spiritual eyes and ears. It is true that that internal training about which I have spoken produces not only the ability to perceive the soul of the human being, but the human being can also develop the ability in himself to see the thoughts of his fellow-man, to understand and perceive the worldview, the whole environment. When the human being perceives not only the external portrayal of his thought, but the thought itself, when he is able to open his spiritual ears to the universe, then he will really perceive the thoughts, the spirit of the world. Then the star appears to him not only as a star, but the star says something to him. The stones, the rock crystal, for example, appear to him not only water-clear, but it also announces its being to him. Then the human being can face everything in a new way with such a deepening, as it has been suggested, so that the things speak sounding round him, say their innermost names to him, announce their being to us.\nThe old Pythagoreans meant this. They had such a training and initiated into such a hearing of the world speaking of the sphere music. It was not a mere comparison; it was the immediate percipience and the bringing to awareness of that which is hidden, otherwise, behind the things. The spiritual eyes disperse this veil of nature, and the harmony that is hidden behind this veil starts sounding. Goethe also means that with his words in the Prologue in Heaven (Faust I) . You read no phrase there. It would be a phrase if Goethe spoke of the sounding sun. However, no, he speaks: “In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres the sun still sings its glorious song and it completes with thread of thunder the journey it has been assigned.” These words sound from the world music of the world spirit. Goethe continues this later once again, where he says, “Hearken! Hear the onrush of the Horae! In these sounds we spirits hear the new day already born.” If the human being develops this ability, he becomes aware of the spiritual. Then his soul perceives the thought as distinctly as the usual human being perceives his body.\nBody, soul, and spirit are the three members of the human being. He is a bodily, physical being at first. In his inside, the mental existence lives and develops. In this the spirit of the whole world — as far as the human being can grasp it — is reflected and lives as the third member. From the outside into the inside and from the inside again to the outside, this is the way, which the human being walks from the body through the soul to the spirit. What gives us generally the possibility to have such a mental existence? We owe this possibility to the fact that we can live in the soul. We live in desire and grief, in pain and joy even if we do not perceive it externally. We also live in our body, but we perceive it also from the outside. It is a difference between these two fields of existence. In the spiritual-scientific worldview, one calls that which one has round himself as one has the external bodily round himself: existence of complete consciousness. Our consciousness combines with the bodily existence first. This consciousness lives only on the physical plane that way and we call that the physical plane, which spreads out round us to the senses. What lives in our soul is different. One calls it life, and one calls this life existence on the so-called astral plane. The physical plane and the astral plane are both realms in which the human being lives. On the physical plane, the human being is aware, on the astral plane, he lives only. There he forms the things that are outside him not yet consciously. However, he lives in the mental or astral.\nThe third kind of existence is the spiritual existence. In general, as present human beings we do not yet live in it or only partially at most. However, while we settle in the spirit, this spirit combines with our soul bit by bit. We could say that this soul spreads over the whole environment, it becomes bigger and bigger. If the human being seizes the outside world, grasps the sense and the spirit of the outside world, then he is no longer concluded in his inside. Then he walks daringly out of himself and combines with the things around him. Compare the animal with the human being in this respect. The animal lives, so to speak, completely in the soul. It does not create concepts of the environment. It does not spread its soul over the spiritual of the world. This is also the difference between the human being and the animal. The animal lives and weaves, so to speak, in his inside. However, the human being emerges again from his inside. We could also say, the human being exceeds his self (German nonce word: sich entselbsten ) . The human being has always soul, inner life. This inner life is there. However, the development of the human being consists of the fact that he spreads this inner life over his environment, over that what is around him, over the spirit; it streams out over the whole world. If this happens, the human soul combines with the everlasting of the human being. Then this marriage of the human soul with the everlasting, the world spirit, takes place. When this union of the human being with the everlasting world spirit takes place, this whole sum of joy and grief changes, this whole world of impulses, desires, and passions in our inside, the whole astral body of the human being becomes different. That desire, those instincts of the human being, which he got, when he arose from nature's hand, which he has in common with the animal, all this soul life disappears and passes and belongs as such to the transient. Try to visualise once what lives in such instincts, sufferings, and joys in the human being and how this life takes place in the human being. They are connected with the transient.\nThe human being starts stepping out of the circle of this transient. He refines his impulses and desires, his passions, he ceases to appreciate or displease what is bound to place and time. He rises to that which lies behind the things and is just hidden by the veil of the sensuous. This is something important if the human being starts enjoying not only what his eye gives him, but also what the impressions of his eyes bring from the spiritual world to his soul. This is a great moment in the human development when the human being is no longer following his sensuous instincts only, but is led by supersensible motives, by moral ideas and concepts that do not penetrate from the outside but from the spirit. Just as the body is interspersed with the soul, the soul is interspersed with the spirit. Consider the human being on certain former stages of development, there you find his physical being, which is interspersed with the soul. While the human being stands as a body before you, he realises his existence in his desires and passions. More and more comes from the supersensible into the soul. It is infiltrated with the spiritual. This process lifts the soul out of time and space. What is beyond time and space is imperishable, remains as the everlasting in the soul. Thus, you see that just as the soul is embedded in a body, the spirit is embedded in the soul. As the imbedding of the soul in the body points us to a distant past, in which they were connected bit by bit with each other, the union of the soul with the spirit points to the future of humanity. This development takes place gradually. It takes place at first in such a way that the spirit penetrates the soul more and more.\nConsider how the beginning of the spiritual contents is in the soul at first. Imagine, you have an object before yourselves. You look at it as a sensuous object. You turn round: the sensuous object is no longer before you. However, a picture of this sensuous object is before you. We call this the idea of the object, the memory of it in a certain respect. This remains in the soul. This is the first element that the spirit gains ground in the soul as memory. We could not absorb anything from the spirit of our environment if we were not able to know anything about the objects when they do no longer stand before us. The first element of the spirit lives in the human being. It is to the objects of the environment, as it is also to our own soul. Get clear in your mind, which role memory plays in our soul life. The animal completely lives in the present. Of course, the levels or degrees, which I indicate, are more extremely expressed than they are in reality. The animals have also to go through a certain spiritual development, but I have to express it somewhat extremely to bring the matter to mind.\nWhat the animal feels and experiences today is the central issue for it. The spiritualisation of his whole being means to the human being that he is able to live beyond the present. While we take the memory with us from our spiritual into our present, we spiritualise ourselves more and more; thereby we grasp the spirit in the first element. I have the spiritual before myself, if I remember the experience of yesterday. Memory is one of the most important moments for the spiritualisation of the soul life. Memory ties on the spiritual-mental existence that is connected with the external from birth up to the present. If we could not remember the past days, we would have little spiritual contents only. There are tribes even today that do not have such memory. There are still tribes which forget the experience in the cold, and that is why they must look for a protecting shelter for themselves every evening anew. Somebody who strives for a higher development takes up the memory and trains it more and more. Here begins the possibility to look beyond our transient existence, which is enclosed between birth and death.\nImagine that you have made a point of bringing in sense and reason to life by memory, and of living not only in the present, but learning more and more to have the whole life like a tableau before yourselves, with the consciousness that that can flow out only from your whole temporal being what you want to accomplish. If this is the case and if this is used again to wake up the internal forces as I have indicated this just now when I spoke that you have to live up the soul contents by contemplation, then you can try to extend the review farther and farther, make it more and more concrete and go back to birth. You can do this. However, infinite patience belongs to it; we shall still speak of these methods. Then you also see that of the soul which is not enclosed between birth and death. Then you learn to tie in with other things what takes action within this life between birth and death. There you learn to tie in your present with your past by the very own consideration in the memory and to reasonably connect the effect of today with the cause of yesterday; there you learn to pursue the inner thread of cause and effect in your soul. Then the same strength, which leads you back to your present life, leads you beyond birth. Because you have learnt to look at cause and effect in the soul independently, you experience what was before your birth, how you lived before your birth.\nBy the gradual development of this sense, the human being gets knowledge of his previous lives. The principle of re-embodiment or reincarnation becomes a fact to him. Sharpening the sight for the temporal in the inside world we attain the mental ability to make reincarnation or re-embodiment a fact for us. What do we do in this case? In this case, we penetrate the soul with that which connects us with the mental. There our sight extends inside. While we grasp the spirit of the outside world by understanding the outside world, pour out our soul over the outside world, and extend it, we spread the consciousness about the mental itself coming beyond our birth. Thus, our sight extends more and more, and thus we look from that which is bound to place and time to that which follows each other in the sequence of times. From there, we take possession of the essence of the human being that is imperishable and everlasting.\nThe human being spiritualises himself more and more. The first stage is if he comes out of joy and sorrow and develops feelings for the supersensible, a sort of joy and sorrow. The further he develops this, the more Plato's beautiful sentence comes true to him: the body is transient because it subsists on transient food; however, the spirit is imperishable because it subsists on everlasting food. — The relationship of body, soul, and spirit is this way. The body passes. What you can see of the human being is handed over to the earth at death. However, what lives as joy and sorrow in the human being, the soul, has not originated at birth, but is tied together with something that extends beyond birth. Thus, the soul existence extends beyond the borders of birth and death. However, what the human being absorbs in himself, while he goes out of his soul again and combines with the spirit, connects this soul with the everlasting springs of existence. This deifies the soul. The human soul becomes visible outside the body. As far as it is bound to the body and is one with it, it is something transient. If the soul combines with the spiritual, it thereby becomes more and more everlasting and imperishable. With it, we come to the point where we understand what human self-knowledge is, what true cognition of the human inside is.\nAt first, the human being experiences his soul in his inside undergoing joy and sorrow. However, then this soul realises images which disappear again. Something revives that is hidden to the mere senses. The human being has as the bare thought in himself what revives there in the soul. However, he connects this thought with his soul in the course of his life. He learns to feel and sympathise with the spiritual and, in the end, he likes the spiritual with pleasure as he only liked the sensuous with pleasure before. The desire applies, in the end, to everything spiritual. Selfishness becomes the unselfish love of the imperishable. In selfishness, the human love is grasped in the soul. But while we grasp it deeply inside as spirit, we realise that we find this self in the whole remaining world, that we are connected with the whole remaining world and that as we are born from the physical it is as true that we are born as a spirit any time from the spiritual universe, the spiritual-divine world. If we look for our higher self, which exists like a spark in us, we see the spiritual in the whole environment. This is the great knowledge of wisdom that the Vedanta philosophy sums up in the saying: tat tvam asi — Thou art that. — If the human being is aware of his spirit and his development begins to go out into the world, then his self extends to the spirit of the universe, to an existence of a spirit self, and we are with our very own being everywhere. Then that which was mere understanding becomes emotionally related content, and this is the real elevation of the soul to the spirit, the elevation to the real spiritual life.\nThere is a beginning of the spiritual life; however, it is dry and cold. There are people who only become warm if it concerns something mental, human beings who are glad and suffer, only if it concerns something mental, pain and desire. They say that the spiritual is something dull and cold. If they look up to the stars, they regard the thoughts about them as abstract; but they are dry and cold in their intellect. However, if the soul seizes the spirit, we feel, we think not only with the universe, because then the view changes by reason and mind into the mental conception of the whole universe. What was only desire once becomes now the desire of the spiritual, what was love in the mental becomes now love of the spiritual-divine in the world. Our feeling, which we have closed inside, spreads about the whole world. Our self flows out, and we become one with the all-embracing spirit. We lose our selves and we find ourselves in the all-embracing spirit. This is something higher than the mere thinking. In the mental, the human being has got the sensation. In the spiritual, he starts being able to operate the spirit. However, he will also come there where he reaches the spirit with the sensation. Then he is on the divine stage. He has to climb up this ladder with his own strength of connecting the soul with the spirit, so that they become one. This is true self-consideration. If we grasp the divine spirit flowing through the world not only with the reason but also with the heart — as we meet a friend and feel warmth in the heart — then we penetrate from the head and its wisdom to the heart and its love of wisdom of the whole world. Thus, we rise raising our soul, and we get not only to know our narrow-minded inside this way, but we extend our selves and find ourselves outside in the world. I have stressed it often and often: Look at your inside only, there you find the divine human being. No, you only find in yourself what you have in yourself. If you want to find more in yourself, you must develop this higher self first, and you develop it, spreading out the higher self about the whole world. Those who advised self-knowledge to a human being did not mean idle examining of his inside. This self-knowledge is considered as we have grasped it now, as an ascent of the soul to the spirit. Then the human being no longer feels any difference between himself and the animal, the plant and the stone. A general feeling of a universal brotherhood permeates his heart. And then, and only then if the human being has this in mind, he understands as the last destination of the development from the bodily-mental to the mental-spiritual the beautiful word of the poet and seer ( The Novices at Sais by Novalis, 1802): “Somebody was successful to lift the veil of the goddess at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — miracle of miracles — his self!” The spiritual scientist adds: he finds the divine in his self, and this is just theosophy, divine wisdom to raise the heart, the soul to the spirit, so that one succeeds in connecting wisdom with the divine and to have not only understanding, but the general feeling of the divine world."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-4",
+    "title": "The Social Question and Theosophy",
+    "date": "2 Mar 1908",
+    "city": "Hamburg",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19080302p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "With somebody who hears the word “social question” today, the most different sensations stir according to his situation and experience and the seriousness with which he is able to take life. Thus, it must be compared with a question that should deeper occupy our time, actually, than it occupies it. Indeed, this seems to be paradoxically expressed. Those who are touched immediately by that which the word social question encloses deal indeed enough with it. However, those who are preserved even today to come into immediate contact with that which forms the basis of the social question as a cause are not still convinced thoroughly enough that every thinking human being should absolutely occupy himself with it.\nThose who take each day as it comes and probably blink the requirements of the day may experience that either they themselves or their descendants have negative experiences just because of their ignorance. You hear even today when people speak of the social question in the sense that our time must find a way out from the situation in which many human beings got into because of the form of our social life: there were always rich and poor people; there was always a social question as long as humanity lives and strives. Hence, it is not surprising if in our time those want to express this more or less distinctly who are not blessed with worldly goods and want to conquer that in conflict which fortune does not give them. There were always rich and poor human beings, those who were depressed and those who were blessed more or less with possessions.\nWith these words, one probably wants to wipe away the peculiarity of the social question, wants to darken it. One points to the slave revolts of antiquity, to the revolts in the Middle Ages and to other events where the depressed ones tried to get their rights, and one consoles himself with such phenomena.\nToday everybody should know, actually that the social question is really something new in the human life, that it is something different from similar movements in other times of the historical life. For those who look for a solution of the social question today are persons within our social order first who exist with this character and stand before us since a short time only. This depressing fact is a result of the last 120 to 130 years at most; this originated due to the present, infinitely important progress of the human civilisation. We see this progress coming up at the end of the 18th century, when those machines etcetera emerged from the heads of our inventors.\nSince life flows together more and more in the industrial centres and cities, the wageworker, the proletarian appears in the modern sense of the word. One cannot separate the social question from this human class actually created due to the immense progress of civilisation. The slave of antiquity struggled, actually, only if he felt depressed in particular, and he did not have the consciousness that his life could be improved or his oppression could be reduced with any other social order. It was similar in the Middle Ages, too. However, the modern proletarian demands more and more that not this or that single matter is to be combated, but that only a thorough reform, maybe also a radical change of the conditions, can generally change his situation. This conviction has found an immense propagation, a much bigger propagation within the working class than those believe who close their eyes. It is sometimes for someone who figures the matters out quite astonishing that; nevertheless, there are always still people who do not have seriousness enough to go into these matters.\nIt could seem rather odd if anybody examined such a practical demand of the day, such a question of life from the point of view of spiritual science. For the most people have the idea of it that it is something impractical, the most impractical stuff of the world that it has arisen from the heads of some dreamers and deals with all kinds of matters not dealing with reality. Indeed, people hear that there is the spiritual-scientific movement, which teaches about various things and beings of a supersensible world round us and about the supersensible basis of the human being himself. Indeed, one also hears that this spiritual research speaks of many facts, for example, of the repeated lives on earth and of the great principle of the spiritual causing of our actions and destinies. One hears that it leads up to all kinds of higher worlds et cetera. Now someone can simply think, which practical and interesting facts of such a question of life like the social one can anybody recognise who occupies himself with such things!\nHowever, life praxis has a particular explanation. We want to speak once about this subject just to show how spiritual science has a real significance only if it is able to intervene in the practical questions of life. At the same time, we ask ourselves, what have we to direct our attention upon, if there is talk of the social question? — The social question exists, the appearance can convince us of it, and this appearance convinces somebody most urgently who deals with life. We could show that with the boom of our industry — just in England — social conditions of the most dreadful kind have originated. It was for those who wanted to make industry fertile for what they called their world solely the question: how does one get labour force the cheapest? — There we see those excesses then which were often described how industry also produces strong shadow beside strong light and how the blessings of our machines, railways, and steamboats develop during the 19th century. However, we also realise that in the wake of that the human being must work, now and again for working hours, which certainly exceed all that is humanly possible. We know that in the 19th century not only adults had to work for 12, 16, 18 or even 20 hours. People who are not immediately touched know nothing about these matters. We also know that one employed children of the tenderest age in an almost unbelievable way in factories. We know how people have become blind to the impossibility of such a thing.\nWe only need to point to a fact that once in a parliament one discussed whether it is not incredible that children are employed in the industry for eighteen to nineteen hours, as it was the case, and a doctor countered that this had to be that way in some cases! One asked the gentleman whether he did not regard a working time of 24 hours as something impossible. He replied, I have convinced myself by deep reasons that the commonplaces that are talked in such matters cannot always be taken seriously, and I cannot furnish particulars of any working time below 24 hours, which could be anyhow detrimental to health. — Such a thing characterises the situation more than even the fact in which humanity has been brought by that which is such a blessing for it at the same time. Who has not realised in life — if he is able to open his eyes — that now and again human beings of the tenderest age cannot learn anything if they are sent to school. All attempts and ideals to make them human beings are of no avail because they are not equipped — because of the social need — with those forces which are sufficient to a humane existence.\nIt is impossible to describe the social need in which humanity was often brought; I had to unroll too many pictures. However, we can no longer deny that one fact is sure: that big progress of the human mind, which has constructed the machines etcetera, which has spun round our whole earth with a matchless traffic network, this development of the human mind did not keep abreast of the reflection that is the optimal way of the human living together. Today nobody would believe that a machine constructs itself that no intelligence, no mental power must be applied to bring a machine into being and to create a traffic system. However, how many are there today who — even if they do not admit it — take the view in their innermost feeling that the human co-existence originates completely from itself that one does not need any mental strength to intervene in it as one intervenes in a factory.\nIndeed, one does not need to go as far as a great naturalist of the 19th century who said, oh, humanity has made immense progress of the knowledge and understanding of the world; however, concerning morality it has not taken a step forward! — One does not need to go so far, but it is a fact which nobody can deny that only a very few human beings who are not immediately touched by the social misery feel the necessity today to deal with the social question.\nHowever, if we look at those who deal or should deal with the social question, what about them? There a book appeared, for example, not so very long ago by the councillor Kolb: As a Worker in America (1904). The man left his office with immense unselfishness, with a real devotion for a while and went to America. He worked hard in a bicycle factory to get to know the social life. I have to say first — that nobody may reproach that I judge unfairly — that his action is an exceptionally meritorious one that one cannot appreciate it enough. However, we want to look at a single statement of this book. You read a rather typical sentence in it: “How often have I asked once seeing a healthy man begging with moral indignation: why does this beggarly fellow not work? — Now I knew it.” He adds, “In theory, one looks at it somewhat different from in practice, and one deals even with the most joyless categories of economics still quite tolerably with the study.”\nOne would like to say that a whole world of human sensations and human work speaks from such a sentence. We have a man before us who got the position of a councillor. He discloses that he has known life so little that he called everybody a beggarly fellow who did not work, that he had to leave his office and go far away to America to get to know the life for which he should give advice, to which his actions referred. One can study; one can advance to an excellent position and can be in need of such! One does not have eyes to see to the left and to the right; one knows nothing about life. This is possible!\nIf we notice such a matter, we may raise the question whether it could not be that the conditions of certain matters are bad because anybody on whom it depends disdains to get to know life. One talks about a lot of improvements, proposals, and matters that one should establish. Human beings must establish them. May there not be a little difference between things, which persons have established who understand something of life, and things, which such persons have established who admit so brilliantly that they understand nothing? What is the use of all talking if one does not see that it depends on somebody who talks about it and knows something about it? How much of that which whirrs through life may be quite empty gossip and how much could be really accomplished and come into being?\nThe question is probably justified. Many people think about the social question; too many, if we consider the question more seriously if we consider what is necessary to understand something useful of this question. Today there are many people who say: at the moment when the conditions become better when the conditions are changed, the life of the human beings and their situation will be better, too. — We know that above all the most comprehensive social theory in the present, socialism, also positions itself on this point of view. We know that it always stresses, do not give us all kinds of proposals how the human beings should become better how the human beings should behave! Do not give us all kinds of moral demands! What it depends on, is merely — they stress this — to improve the conditions.\nSymptomatically you can face such a starry-eyed idealist who represents his social theories at different places of Germany and says repeatedly, yes, people state that the human beings had to become better first if the conditions should become better. However, he says, everything depends on the fact that humanity is transported to the right conditions. — He also tells that one limited the pubs here and there once and that then less drunkards were there, and, therefore, some people were doing better. Then he preaches to the workers that charity, mutual brotherliness is an empty phrase. Everything would depend on causing such conditions of employment and life that everybody has his sufficient existence, and then the moral condition would already become better by itself, too.\nYou know that socialism develops such a view extensively. This is nothing else than a result of the materialism in our time, that materialism which cannot look, like spiritual science, into the inside of the human being and cannot recognise that any social condition is created by human beings, is the result of human thoughts and feelings. Socialism, however, believes that the human being is a product of the external conditions. This belief paralyses the fruitful consideration of the social life in the highest degree. It is paralysing, and we do not want to state any theoretical proof of it, but we want to adduce a historical evidence.\nIf anybody was suited for a social reformer, it was Robert Owen (1771-1854) living around the turn of 18th to the 19th centuries. He had two virtues that enabled him to intervene in the social life from his point of view: a candid look for the industrial progress and for the damages, for human welfare and human luck, which this progress brings. He had a candid look and an open heart for human grief, and on the other side, he had a good will and initiative to give at least a number of human beings a worthy existence. He lived in a materialistic time at first and, therefore, he was, like so many, depending on the theory that one needed to cause suitable conditions only to develop a thoroughly moral humanity.\nTherefore, he founded a little colony in America, which one could call a model in every respect if the condition had been right. He had guaranteed a humane existence by means of external facilities to the people. Among diligent and keen people, he had neglected ones whom the example of the first should inspire to become decent human beings. An exemplary economy developed that induced the idea in him to try the same in a bigger scale. Then there came the second colony, which was formed as practically and humanely as the first. However, he who had put up not only the theory that the improvement of the conditions must cause the improvement of the human destinies had to experience the disillusion which we characterise with his own words. Because the human beings were not ripe for the conditions he wrote, what does any improvement of the conditions help if not the general moral and knowledge are raised before? First, it depends on informing the human being about his inner life, above all, about his soul forces; then only one can envisage to solve the social question rather worthily.\nA practitioner, no theorist judges that way, and it is typical in certain respect how little humanity learns from facts that one maintains the same theories in spite of this repeatedly. However, someone who is able to see a little deeper into the human souls knows that such an individual case is generally connected with the development of the human souls in the present. Whether the one or the other admits it or not, it is the basic conviction that everything can be done if one changes the external conditions, and finds a remedy quickly with the damages which threaten humanity. These are the basic convictions in our time. If we see, for example, repeatedly that laws are justified saying: one is not allowed to deliver the inexperienced humanity to these or those people, and then one does not notice at all that one would have another task than to make laws, that one should teach the inexperienced humanity, so that it could determine their actions itself.\nOne does not easily look from the conditions to the human beings. However, this is the task of spiritual science. It completely turns away from the conditions and completely to the human beings. We ask ourselves, where from do the conditions round us come? — In so far as they are not imposed by nature, they are the results of the human feeling and thinking. The conditions of today were thoughts and intentions of human beings who have lived once. The conditions are in such a way because human beings have thought them that way. If we want to improve conditions, we have to learn above all to develop better thoughts, feelings, and intentions. However, if we look around among the social theorists, even among the most radical ones, the social democrats if you like, then these theories mostly do not go beyond that which the human beings have always thought. They have originated from the same thoughts and impulses from which our conditions have arisen and have led to our situation. We must be able to have human beings who know life and know what is about the forces that work behind life.\nWhat did Robert Owen lack? He himself had to admit: knowledge of human nature! — One never gets to know the human being if one puts up a worldview that is directed only to the external appearance. As long as the human being does not know what is hidden behind this physical corporeality and he thereby does not attain the ability to look, so to speak, behind the scenes, he is able by no means to understand something about the forces controlling life. However, this is just the task of spiritual science. One may admit that it does not fulfil its task everywhere sufficiently; one has to admit that within the circles looking for it one often plays with the highest questions of existence. That does not matter, but it matters what the spiritual investigation can mean to us. It can be not only something that teaches us that gives us dogmas, but it can be a powerful education of our innermost soul forces. This is the best that one can gain from spiritual science if we consider the spiritual-scientific worldview from the point of view how it transforms the human being. Then the picture presents itself this way.\nWe speak here about views that the spiritual investigation has about the various fields of life. We were able to speak about this and that of its teachings. However, we will not speak about that. Someone who familiarises himself with spiritual science will notice one thing: concerning one important point it distinguishes itself from everything that is, otherwise, theory today. This is important. In most cases, the human being soon finishes if he should develop a worldview, and he likes it very much if he can have a rounded off worldview as soon as possible. It is clear to experts of the conditions that many a materialist is a materialist only because he does not go far with his thoughts because he falls short. Materialism makes it easy for its followers, very easy. One can oversee the construction of the world from purely material facts easily and see — particularly if it is still illustrated with photos — how the human being has developed. One needs only to stare at them and can pursue the whole way of the world evolution using the usual ideas of life. It is simple to follow what the materialists say about the riddles of the world because the thoughts do not tangle up because no particular requirements are imposed.\nThe matter is not so easy with spiritual science. It does not make it easy for the human being, because it starts from the real and the true requirement that the secrets of the world are deep and that you must dig up deeply into the basis of the things if you want to understand the world. What spiritual science teaches about the development of the universe and the human being gets the thoughts in manifold tangles. That forces the human being sometimes to deal with details and, on the other side, he is led to the greatest perspectives. However, that has a certain result, and about this result, I want to speak openly. It trains and prepares thinking there where we face this complex human life in the single case to understand this life. Someone will say, the worlds that spiritual science describes have made me quite dizzy.\nIs this a bad sign of spiritual science? It would be better if this approach did not make the human being dizzy, but strengthened him, and then he would be ready to understand life with strong soul forces. However, the practical ideas about the world and life are such ones: if a human being thinks about the riddles of the world in short thoughts, he also thinks about the social order in short thoughts. Thus, we see that that which famous people think about social questions is a rather precise picture of that which is offered to us as a materialist worldview unable to penetrate into the depths of life. Besides, everybody has the uncertain feeling that that which causes difficulty for him is a fantastic, dreamlike stuff, and that spiritual science would have to be a fantastic, dreamlike, at least rather idealistic stuff, in any case, unsuitable for practical purposes in life. Indeed, Fichte (Johann Gottlieb F., 1762-1814, philosopher) said more than hundred years ago to his Jena students: those practical people to whom comprehensive ideas always seem impractical because ideas and ideals are not always applicable in life prove only that in the plan of creation one did not count on them. May a benevolent providence give them sunshine, food, and clever thoughts! — Fichte also spoke about the incapability of some people to imagine the spiritual aspect of the ego: “One could most people convince to regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon than as egos.” However, it is a necessity of life to imagine the ego.\nIf we consider life and the social question from this point of view, we must say that we consider spiritual science as the great school of life. It makes it impossible that one goes through life, receives a certain position, even becomes a councillor and becomes a life coach, and has to go far, far away to get to know life once during a vacation in order to be convinced of the fact that not everybody who does not work is a beggarly fellow. Such a thing becomes impossible by spiritual science.\nHence, we do not speak only about a spiritual point of view, about any spiritual-scientific views concerning socialism, but we talk about something else. We consider spiritual science as a real thing, not only as a sum of dogmas, but as something that gives knowledge and wisdom, which flows directly in the immediate life at every moment and opens our eyes, so that we cope with this life. Thus, spiritual science is the general basis of any judgment whether we judge in the field of the social life or that of education.\nOur judgment becomes sounder because it arises from the true human nature, if we start from spiritual-scientific points of view. We say that someone himself, who is infiltrated with that which spiritual science is able to give, gets to a correct judgment. Anybody may ask, how does a follower of spiritual science think in which way this or that parliamentarian has to judge about a question if he has judged wrongly according to his view? — This is no correct question from the spiritual point of view, but one has to say, it does not concern of saying how this or that should think, but one is convinced that he has — if he is filled with basic truth — a clear judgment on every post. We do not dictate his judgment to him, but he finds the correct judgment. In this respect, spiritual science is the most liberal life principle that can be there. It is not dogmatic, but it gives the human being the possibility to have his own, sound free judgment always and everywhere.\nConditions — we have started from it — are often regarded as that which can change the human being, and one thinks in the abstract how conditions can be changed. Spiritual science is solely concerned with the real human soul, with the relations from human being to human being. It is quite impossible today to go into single concrete matters of the social question. However, I want to point to this or that to find the components that show us the way where we are in life to intervene correctly. For it is our task to intervene. If we want to find the components, we ask ourselves, which is, actually, the basic fact, the basic phenomenon on which all misery, all social grief may generally depend in the world? — Spiritual science can show us this basic fact, putting us before a fact that most people do not understand and acknowledge today. This fact is connected with a basic phenomenon of any development. I would like to say, speaking dryly, it shows us by deeper views on life that poverty, grief and misery not only — and least of all if one finds the underlying cause of the things — depend on external conditions, but on a certain soul constitution and in the connection with it on its external effects.\nThe practitioner who regards himself as much cleverer thinks that this is ridiculous. However, one can only stress that it is the most practical in life. It is the sentence of which you persuade yourselves more and more that need, misery and grief are nothing else than the results of egoism. Like a physical law we have to understand this sentence, not in such a way that possibly with a single human being need and grief happen if he is always selfish, but that this grief is connected with this egoism — maybe at another place. Like cause and effect, egoism is connected with the need and grief. Egoism leads to the struggle of existence in the human life, in the social human order. The struggle for existence is the real starting point of need and grief, if they are social. Because of our modern way of thinking there is a conviction to which appears absurd what I have just stated. Why? Because one is persuaded today that a big part, by far the biggest part of the human life must be built on egoism. Indeed, with words and theories, one does not want to admit it, but in practice, one will soon admit it. One admits it in the following way. One says, it is quite natural that the human being is paid for his job that he receives the yield of his work personally — and, nevertheless, that is nothing but the implementation of egoism in the economic life. Egoism controls us as soon as we live by the principle: we have to be paid personally; one has to pay to me what I work. — Truth is a long way from this thought so that it seems quite senseless. Who wants to convince himself of the truth about egoism has to go more intimately into various universal principles. He would have to abandon himself thoughtfully to the question whether the work that is paid personally is really life-sustaining, whether it depends on this work? — It is curious to put this question. However, not sooner than one thinks about it, one is able to inform about the social question.\nImagine — this is a paradoxical comparison — a man transported to an island. He has only to supply himself. You say, he must work! — However, he must not only work, this is not the point, but something must be added to his work. If the work is only work, it can eventually be useless for his life. Think once that the man on the island would do nothing but to throw stones during fourteen days. This would be a strenuous work, and according to usual human concepts, he could earn quite a lot of wage. Nevertheless, this work is not at all connected with life. Work is life-sustaining and has value only if anything else is added. If this work consists of the cultivation of the soil and one receives the products of the earth, then work has something to do with life. We see even with lower beings that work is separated from production. Thus, we see a possibility to get to the tremendously important sentence that work as such has no meaning for life, but only that work which is guided wisely. What is to be produced using human wisdom serves the human being. The modern social thinking offends against this sentence because it does not understand in the least.\nIt does not depend on the fact that anybody invents beautiful abstract theories, but the real progress depends on the fact that every single human being learns to think socially. Modern thinking is often antisocial. It is antisocial, for example, if anybody is on Sunday afternoon outdoors and says, animated by occasion: I write twenty postcards. It is correct and socially intended to know and to feel that these twenty cards cause so many postmen climbing so and so many stairs. It is social thinking to know that any action, which one does, has an effect in life. Now, however, somebody comes and says that he thinks socially inasmuch as he understands that more postmen must be employed and get their bread because of this card writing. — This is, as if one thinks of anything that one wants to build in order to employ unemployed workers. However, it does not depend on job creation, but that the work of the human beings is used solely to create valuable goods.\nIf one thinks that through to the last consequences, it does no longer seem so strange if the ancient sentence of spiritual science is pronounced which sounds today as incomprehensible as possible: in a social living together, the impulse of working must never be in the own personality of the human being, but only in the dedication to the community. This is also often emphasised, but it is never understood in such a way that misery and need originate from the fact that the single human being wants to have paid what he has worked for. However, it is true that real social progress is only possible if I do that which I work for in the service of the community, and if the community gives me what I need, if, with other words, what I work for does not serve me. The social progress depends solely on the recognition of this sentence that someone does not want to get the yield of his work as a personal remuneration. Somebody leads an enterprise to quite different purposes who knows that he should have nothing for himself from that which he works for, but that he owes work to the social community, and that, vice versa, he should claim nothing for himself, but limits his existence to that which the social community gives him. As absurd this is for many people today, as true it is. The opposite fact influences our life today: by the claim of the worker to get the full yield of his work more and more. As long as the thinking moves in this direction, one comes into worse and worse situations.\nThis antisocial thinking tempts to shift all concepts. Think once how within the widespread socialism one speaks of exploiters and exploited. Who is the exploiter, and who is the exploited from the view of clear thinking? Let us look at a worker who produces a garment for starvation wages. Who is his exploiter? Perhaps, the man who buys the garment and pays a very low price for it. Does only the rich man buy this garment? Does the same worker who complains about exploitation not buy this cheap garment? Does he not require today, within the social order, that it should be as cheap as possible? You see the working woman who works with bloody fingers during the week can wear the dress for a cheap price on Sunday because the human labour of another person is exploited!\nThat has nothing to do with wealth or poverty in front of the clear thinking, but solely with our idea of human relations in the world. Anybody could easily say, if you demand that the existence of the human being should be independent of his performance, then an official complies with the ideal most nicely. The modern official is independent. The measure of his existence is not depending on the product, which he produces, but from that which one regards as necessary to his existence. — Indeed, but such an objection has a very big mistake. It depends on the fact that everybody is able to respect this principle and to implement it in life freely. It does not matter that this principle is carried out by general power. This principle has to penetrate every single human life to make the personally acquired independent from that which one works for the community. How does it assert itself?\nThere is only one possibility to assert itself, which will seem rather impractical to the so-called practitioner. There must be reasons why the human being works; nevertheless, namely rather diligently and devotedly if no longer the self-interest is the impulse of his work. Somebody does not create anything real concerning the social life in truth, who takes out a patent of any achievement and shows this way that he regards the self-interest as significant in life. However, somebody works really for life who is led by his forces to right achievements merely by love, by love to the whole humanity, which he gives his work with pleasure and willing. Thus, the impulse of work must be in anything else than in remuneration. This is the solution of the social question: separation of remuneration from work. For this is a worldview which aims at the spirit to wake such impulses in the human being that he does no longer say: if my income is secure, I can be lazy. — A spiritual worldview can only achieve that he does not say this. Any materialism solely leads to its opposite in the long run.\nAnyone may now say: this is a nice little test of the social question; this is rather cute! Have we not always preached this, the one may say, that the human beings are selfish, and that one must count on their egoism? Now there comes the spiritual worldview and says that this can change. — Indeed, one has always preached that this could not be different and one was very proud of it and said, someone is a true practitioner who counts on the human egoism. — Indeed, but here the thinking of the people does not turn the tables. For those who blame everything for conditions, for facilities must admit that at least — because just the conditions were in such a way as they have developed up to now — that also this desire and impulse came into the human being. However, there the thinking becomes too short. For, otherwise, they would have to say, yes, quite different surroundings are created at any rate, if the idea becomes established that it is indecent to found everything on personal self-interest. Materialism becomes inconsistent there even compared with its own requirements.\nWe must understand that the impulses of spiritual science could never be given to the human development up to now. In this respect, it is a new spiritual movement, and it will have the strength to work on the innermost soul because it penetrates into the innermost world. Only a worldview that penetrates the core and fetches truth there can show us the true face of the world. It is never right that we can become bad by true knowledge if we see the true face of the world. Nevertheless, it is true that the bad in the human being can come only from mistake and error. Hence, spiritual science bases because of its knowledge of the human nature on the fact that it will achieve that with which just the noble Owen deceived himself so much.\nHe says, it is necessary that the human beings are enlightened first so that moral is improved. — Spiritual science, however, says, it is not sufficient to emphasise this principle, but the means must be given by which the soul can be improved. If a spiritual worldview improves and strengthens the souls, the conditions and external relations will follow because they are always reflections of that which the human beings think. The human beings are not determined by conditions, but the human beings make these conditions, as far as the conditions are social. If the human being suffers from conditions, he suffers in truth from that which his fellow men bring on him. Any misery that has come with the industrial development came only from the fact that the human beings did not bother to apply the same strength of mind, which they had applied to the beneficial external progress, to the improvement of the destinies of those persons who are needed for the transformation of this progress.\nWhatever you have studied in the external life, study the laws of the human living together equally busily! If, however, human beings live together, not only bodies, but also souls, minds live together. Hence, only spiritual science can be the basis of any social worldview. Thus, we see that, indeed, the deepening of the mind can enable us to assist from our low posts within our sphere in the big social progress. For this progress is not achieved by an abstract rule, but it is a sum of that which the single soul does. Only a worldview like spiritual science approaches the single soul in such a way that it really raises this soul above it. If our social misery has its reason in the personal self-interest, in the position in our social orders, then only a worldview can help which raises the ego out of the personal self-interest. As peculiar as it appears, food originates not only from our work; food originates also from the spiritual-scientific deepening instead of need, grief, and misery. Spiritual science is a means to give the human being food and prosperity, in the true sense of the word.\nThus, it is really justified, even concerning our changed conditions, what Goethe said about the real liberation from all obstacles and misfortune of life. Goethe says in the poem The Secrets : “From the power that ties all beings that human being frees himself who overcomes himself.”\nThat sentence that Goethe said about the single human being also applies to humanity in as much as this human being is a social being: those human beings who overcome themselves free the world from the power that ties all beings."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-5",
+    "title": "Women and Society",
+    "date": "17 Nov 1906",
+    "city": "Hamburg",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/Singles/19061117p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "Translator Unknown\nIt may perhaps seem strange that something like our theme today, which touches so strongly on current everyday issues, could be considered from the world-view of Spiritual Science, from a view of life and the world today which looks to the very greatest enigmas of human existence. In many circles which occupy themselves with Spiritual Science, or in such circles as have heard something of the spirit in this world-outlook, there is the view that Spiritual Science is something that does not concern itself in any way with current questions, with the interests of immediate life. People believe — some as a reproach to the Theosophical movement, and others seeing this as one of its advantages — that Spiritual Science concerns itself only with the great questions of Eternity, that it holds itself aloof from everyday events. People consider it, in both a good and a bad sense, to be something unpractical. But if, in our time, Spiritual Science is to fulfill a task, a mission, then it must take hold of what moves the heart, it must be able to take up a position with regard to those questions which play into our day-to-day thinking and into our day-to-day striving and hope.\nIt must have something to say about those questions which are a part of our times. For how could it be that questions which come so close to the human soul — like the question concerning women which is to occupy us today — how could it be that these, too, should not be judged from a world-view which looks to the great problems of human existence. And it is just this that is often and rightly said against Spiritual Science; that it has not found the way to life as it is in reality. Nothing would be more wrong than if Spiritual Science were to be led increasingly into asceticism, into a direction hostile to life. It will prove itself far more by building a real foundation for the practice of life. It must not float in Cloud-cuckoo land or lose itself in bare abstractions, but must have something to say to human beings of the present.\nJust as we have spoken here about the social question, today we want to speak from a great cultural standpoint, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, of the question regarding women. Of course, no one must imagine that Spiritual Science should speak about this question in the same way as do politics or current printed matter. But then again, one should not believe that what, in effect, is a sort of parochial politics is the only thing that is practical. The individual who has always shown himself to be truly practical is the one who can see beyond the immediate present. And who was the practical individual when in the last century the postage stamp had to be invented and introduced into everyday life, and which since then, has transformed the whole of our life of public commerce, our whole social life? It happened little more than fifty years ago. The idea of this arrangement — the practicality of which is doubted today by no one — came at that time from someone not engaged in practical things. The Englishman, Hill, did not work for the Post Office. But one who did, had the following ingenious comment to make; One could not believe that this arrangement would cause such a great change in commercial or business life, but were that to be the case, the post office buildings would not be large enough to cope with the postal demands!\nAnother example. When the first railway was to be built from Berlin to Potsdam, the head of the Post Office, Nagler said, ‘Well, if people want to throw their money out of the window they might as well do so directly. I send two post-coaches and nobody travels in them.’ And of course you know the other incident which occurred in the Bavarian college of doctors: the learned gentlemen were asked, purely from a practical, medical point of view, if the nervous system could stand it if railways were built. The learned gentlemen said it was unpractical to the highest degree, because it would cause severe damage to the nervous system.\nThis is by way of illustration of the relation of the ‘practical people’ — in matters of the issues of the day — to those who, with somewhat broader vision, see beyond into the future. These, the disparaged idealists who do not remain attached to what has been the ‘done thing’ since the days of yore, these are the really practical ones. And from this point of view Spiritual Science appears also today as a vehicle which carries the answers to many questions — and also for our question today. For this reason anyone who deals with these questions from a higher point of view can accept such a reproach without feeling uneasy, and can remember other examples where, believing they had a monopoly in practicality, people have judged in a similar way.\nFew will deny that the question regarding women is one of the greatest present questions of our culture, for today this is simply a fact. There are opponents to certain views on the question of women, but the fact that this question exists will be denied by no one. Yet if we look back to times that are not so far behind us, we find that even the leading scientific and other great minds have seen in the women's question something absurd, something to be suppressed by all possible means. As an example, we can recall the statements of the anatomist, Albert, a truly significant man, who twenty five years ago, pitted himself with the greatest energy against the admission of women into the learned professions, and who, from the standpoint of his anatomical-physiological knowledge, tried to prove that it would be impossible for women to get into the educated professions or ever be able to fulfill the profession of a doctor. With the great authority of natural science it is hardly surprising that one believes those to be capable of judgment who, in relation to the natural-scientific view of the human being, are supposed to know something. A short while ago a booklet came out in Germany: ‘Uber den Physiollogischen Schachsinn des Weibes’ (Concerning the physiological feeble-mindedness of women). This booklet stems from a man Möbius, who indeed, is not at all an insignificant physiologist, who has said some good things, but who, on the other hand, has exposed not so much himself but the science of Physiology to ridicule by presenting, little by little, all the various great personalities of world-historic development of recent times — Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche — as pathological phenomena. He has done this, furthermore, in such a grotesque and radical manner, that one would have to ask with each genius, ‘Where does the insanity lie?’ Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche — all are dealt with from the standpoint of psychiatry, of psychological pathology.\nWhen one goes more deeply into these things, they all fall into only one category — one that is characterised by the example of the famous naturalist who tried some time ago to attribute the ‘inferior talent’ of women to the lighter weight of the female brain! This is no fable! This man asserted that the greatness of the spirit was dependent on the size of the brain, and that women, on average, have a smaller brain than men. And quite truly it then happened that the methods of this learned professor were applied to himself. After his death, his brain was weighed, and it turned out that he had an abnormally small brain, a much smaller brain than those women whom he held to be of inferior mind because of their lighter brain weight. It would be mischievous if one were to try and examine, from a psyche-pathological standpoint, a booklet like this one on the physiological feeble-mindedness of women, and if one were to try to catch out the writer in question as happened in the case of Professor Bischoff.\nSo you can see that the women's question does not bear witness to the fact that those who opposed it were particularly discerning The question regarding women includes far more than that of admitting women into the learned professions, and of the question of women's education. The issue concerning women embraces an economic, a social and a psychological side, and many other aspects as well. But it is precisely the question of women's education that has, in fact, borne fruits. Almost all the opinions in this area that have been formed out of theory have been refuted by actual practice. Little by little women have fought for, and won — in spite of the opposition of the opinions of a man's world — admission to most male professions, including that of lawyer, doctor, philologist and so on. Women have taken up these professions under significantly less favourable conditions than men. One has only to consider under what unfavourable circumstances women have recently entered universities. With the normal educational preparation this is really not to difficult, but women had to get there with very much less preparation. Not only through tremendous hard work, but also through a broad spectrum of abilities, they have for the most part overcome all the difficulties. In determination, in hard work, and also in mental ability they are in no way inferior to men, so that reality in practice, has resolved the matter in a completely different way than many, twenty to thirty years ago, had imagined in theory.\nVarious professors, led by their prejudices, refused women entry into university. And yet today, very many women graduates stand in the world, in no way less able or less perceptive than men.\nThis however, illustrates the outer situation alone, and only shows us that we must look more deeply into the nature of the human being, into the nature of women, if we want to understand the matter as a whole. For there is no one today who would not be affected in some way by the significance of this question. Although women have won access to the learned professions — and to numerous others — and although, in actual practice a large part of the question concerning women's abilities has been answered, nevertheless, if we wish to progress consciously, clearly, and with insight, if we wish to discuss this question from all sides, then we must look more deeply into the nature of the human being.\nWhat a lot has been said about the difference between man and woman! Everywhere today you can read in short reviews how many different opinions there are concerning the difference between men and women, and how, from these differing opinions people have tried to form a view concerning the question of women. A great deal has been written on the psychological aspect of the women's question. There is no better book on this aspect — in so far as such books are written by non-theosophists — than the one by a gifted woman who is active generally in present day literature: ‘Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit’ (A critique of femininity) by Rosa Meyreder . You can find different views catalogued elsewhere so let us look at a few of them.\nLet us take the man Lombroso . He describes Woman by saying that at the centre of her emotional character is the feeling of submissiveness, the feeling of dependence. George Egerton on the other hand says that every woman who looks dispassionately at a man sees him as a big child, and it is precisely from this that the love of power, of domination comes, which is so totally inherent in a woman that it insinuates itself more and more into the central position in the female soul.\nA great scientist, Virchov , says that if one studies Woman from an external, physiological standpoint, one finds gentleness, mildness and calmness to be the basis of her being. Havelock Ellis , an expert of equally high standing in these matters, says that the fundamental characteristic of the female soul is quick temperedness, initiative and daredevilry. Mobius finds the basic feature of the female nature to be conservatism: to be conservative, he maintains, is the life-element of the female soul. Against this we can put the judgment of an old and good expert of the psyche, Hippel . He says that the real revolutionary within humanity is Woman.\nGo to the vast majority of people and you will find a very strange but fairly common view of the relation between intellect, feelings and passion in men and women. Then, in contrast look at Nietzsche's view. He says that the intellect belongs primarily to Woman, and feelings and passion to Man. Compare this with the common view. It is the exact opposite. Thus we could say a great deal and, on the one side, could list all the views which ascribe to woman all the passive, the weak qualities, and on the other side all those which maintain the opposite. But certainty comes somewhat to a standstill when so many different views are possible.\nScience too has occupied itself a great deal with this question, and Science enjoys great authority. But the statements of scientists concerning the real fundamental characteristics of woman immediately start contradicting one another. And if we move on from scientists and psychologists to cultural history and hold to what has always been said — that man is the really creative active one, and woman more the companion, the follower — then such a view would be prejudiced because we have taken too short a time span into consideration, one has only to look at those peoples who still represent what is left of ancient cultures, or at primitive peoples, and one has only to follow the history of humanity's development to see that there were times once, and there are still such peoples today, in which the woman, in the most eminent sense, participated and participates in ‘masculine’ work.\nIn short, the opinions vary in all directions. Even more noticeable for us is the fact that a woman of one particular people (or nation or tribe) will differ far less from a man of the same people than from a woman of another. From this we can draw the conclusion that we should not talk at all in terms of man and woman, male and female, but that, alongside the characteristics of sexual gender, there is possibly something far more important in human society than the sexual characteristics of gender and which is quite independent of them. If one looks impartially at the human being, it is usually possible to distinguish what is of necessity connected to all that is related to the sexes, and what points beyond these connections into other realms entirely. Of course a materialistic view of the world and of the human being, which recognises only what can be touched and seen, naturally sees in man and woman only the big physiological differences; and anyone who remains with this materialistic view will simply miss, will overlook something that is far greater and more decisive than sexual differences — he will overlook the individuality which goes beyond gender and is independent of it.\nTo shed light here, to see the human being here in the right way: this must be the task of a world-view oriented towards the spirit.\nBefore we look at the women's question from this point of view, we will just look at aspects of what this question represents.\nPeople talk about ‘the women's question’ in general, but this also, like the concept of Woman, is an unacceptable generalisation. One should not really speak of the women's question in general at all, because this question must he modified in relation to the different social classes of humanity. Does the question concerning woman exist in the same way in the lower classes, in the manual-worker class, as in the educated classes? The lowest classes, the actual manual workers, try with all means at their disposal to get their women out of the factories and the textile mills, so that they can be with the family. The higher classes strive for exactly the opposite. They strive to make it possible for the woman of the family to work in the world outside. This then is something of the social aspect of the women's question.\nAlongside this, of course, there is also the general social question concerning women which demands for them in the political and cultural context the same rights as those enjoyed by men. People have the view today that they are speaking of things which must follow from the very nature of humanity itself. People do not consider, however, that the life of humanity changes far faster than on the surface it may appear to do. A man, Naumann , who from his political standpoint also occupied himself with the women's question, was at pains to study in connection with this the St. Paul's Church discussions of 1848 in which a lot was said concerning human rights. There they debated to and fro the self-evident rights of man. Nowhere, however, is it mentioned that these rights should be the same for women as for men. That never entered anyone's head. The women's question came into this area only in the second half of the 19th century. And it seems fully justified here to throw up the other question: How is it then that this aspect of the women's question has been considered only in our time? Let us be quite clear about this.\nIn many ways today the women's question is presented, from both the masculine and the feminine side, as though it is only now that women have to struggle to gain a definite and significant influence in all areas of life. In many respects these discussions are characterised by great shortsightedness, for one must ask oneself: In other times, in all earlier times, have women then had no influence at all? Have they always been fettered beings? It would be ignorance if one were to assert such a thing.\nWe can look at the age of the Renaissance and take one of the most widely-used books about that period — the book by Burckhardt. Here we see what a profound influence women had, for example, on the whole intellectual life of Italy; how woman stood in the foreground of intellectual life, how they were equal to men and played a great part. And finally, had one spoken of women's lack of influence in the first half of the 19th century to such an individual as Rahel Varnhagen, she would have been astonished that such a theme could have been brought up. She would not have understood how anyone could think in such a way. But there is many a man today who exercises his general right to vote, or even debates in Parliament and gives long speeches, who is truly a non-entity when one thinks of the entire cultural progress that has been brought forth by this woman, Rahel Varnhagen. Anyone who studies the intellectual life of the first half of the 19th century and sees what sort of influence this woman had on the men of the 19th century, will no longer be tempted to say that woman was a being without influence on those times. The matter simply rests on the fact that opinions have changed. One did not believe at that time that one needed a simple right to vote, that one had to debate in Parliament, or that one had to study at university in order to have an influence on the course of culture. One looked at it differently in every way. This is not said with any conservative intention, but as evidence that the whole question is a product of our present culture and can be posed only today in the way it is posed at present, and can be posed only today in all areas of life (not only in the area of higher education).\nJust take a look at the relation of man and woman in earlier times when quite different economic conditions prevailed. Look at the peasant woman, the female labourer in earlier centuries. One cannot say that the peasant woman had fewer rights than the peasant, or a more limited sphere of influence. She had one particular department to look after and he another. And it was just the same in the crafts. What in the working classes has today become the real women's question has become so because in past centuries and particularly in the last century, our culture has become, in the greatest sense, a male culture (Männerkultur). The age of the machine is a product of the male culture, and it is simply the quality and nature of this culture that renders far more impossible the way a woman can work and be active than was the case in earlier economic life. Woman is not suited to the factory and there are quite different problems there than when she is engaged in the farmyard, in the house or in the old craft-industries as manageress, contractor or co-worker. Also, as regards the academic professions, everything in our world, in our perception, has changed. Our whole estimation of the professions has become something different. It is not so long ago that what today is regarded as a learned profession was really little more than a higher craft. There was a particular way of being active in law, in medicine, and even a relatively short time ago it would never have entered anyone's head to derive a religious world-view from what was presented in medicine, in law or in natural science. Today it is the specialist knowledge of what is researched in the laboratory that has gradually become the domain of men; and it is from this that a higher world-view is extracted. Earlier, however, like a spirit over everything that was studied in the university faculties, there hovered Religion and Philosophy — and it was within these, to begin with, that higher education was to be sought. The truly human element that which spoke to the heart and soul, that which spoke to the human being of his yearnings and hopes of eternity, that which gave him strength and certainty in life — this element was the same for both men and women, it arose from an origin other than from the laboratory or from physiological research. One could attain to the highest heights of philosophical and religious development without any kind of academic education at all. One could do this at any time — even as a woman. Only because the materialistic age has made so-called positive science with its so-called facts and basis of higher problems only because of this is it so that, alongside the general inclination arising from practical life, another inclination, one of the heart, a longing of the soul had to arise and drive women even to look into the mysteries offered us by the microscope, the telescope, and the research of physiology and biology. For, as long as people thought that decisions could not be made by means of a microscope concerning the life and immortality of the human being, so long as people knew that these truths had to be drawn from quite other sources, there could not be such a clamouring for scientific studies as there is today. We must be aware of this: that the trend of our age has generated this desire for academic education and that the women's question itself has come up in our time through the whole nature of our culture.\nHowever, in contrast to everything that this new age has brought, in contrast to everything that rests on a purely materialistic basis, we also meet, in the spiritual-scientific outlook, a movement that is still little heeded. It is the spiritual-scientific world-view which will have to solve the questions of Life and co-operate in all the cultural streams and strivings of the future. But no one can fail to recognise this world-view when one believes it to be nothing but the imaginings of a wild fantasy. Yet it is the outcome of the spiritual research of those best acquainted with the needs and longing of our time, who take it most seriously. Only those who do not wish to know anything about the needs of our time can still remain distant from this world-stream which extends eminently and practically into all questions. Spiritual science is not something that indulges in unfruitful criticism, it is not something conservative. It regards materialism as justified, and takes into account that it arose in the last century. It was necessary that old religious feelings and traditions lost their importance in comparison to the claims of the natural sciences. Spiritual science can see how it has come about that physiology and biology have become deniers of immortality, even if it doesn't agree with them. This had to happen. But humanity will never be able to live without a glimpse of, without knowledge of real super-sensible, spiritual things. Only for a short time will people be able to keep on making do as they do today with specialist knowledge and with what arises in many ways from this direction as religious results or non-results.\nBut a time will come when people will feel that the wellsprings of the spirit in life must be opened. And Spiritual Science is the advance post of this battle for the opening of the true spiritual wellsprings of humanity. Spiritual Science will, on a much broader basis, be able again to tell humanity how it is related to the being of the soul, to what rises up above the transient and the fleeting. On a far broader basis than was ever formerly the case in the public world, Spiritual Science will proclaim that which gives certainty, strength, courage and endurance in life, that which can shed light into those questions which occupy day-to-day living and which cannot be solved from the material side alone.\nIt is a strange coincidence — many will understand this that at the beginning of the Theosophical movement there stands a woman, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky — that precisely here we have the unprecedented experience, that here we have a woman with the most all-embracing mind, with the most penetrating force and energy of mind who has written works compared to which all the spirituality which our culture (Geisteskultur) has otherwise produced is but a trifle.\nNow, perhaps you believe nothing of the so-called occult teachings, the so-called insights into the spiritual world that are contained in Blavatsky's ‘ Isis Unveiled ’ or the so-called ‘ Secret Doctrine ’ — perhaps you believe nothing of this; but take a look at these books some time and ask yourself: ‘How many thinkers of today have known more penetratingly about so many things as Blavatsky?’\nThe two enormous volumes of The Secret doctrine give information on almost all areas of spiritual life, ancient culture, ancient religion; on all possible branches of natural science, social life, astronomy and physiology. Perhaps what is said there is incorrect; but even if it were, I would still ask you: who is in the position today to speak in such a competent way even if incorrectly — about all these areas, and to show thereby that he has acquainted himself deeply with all of them? you need only take into account not solely the correctness, but also the breadth of mind — which cannot be denied — and you have the example of a woman who has shown, not in this or that branch of human thinking, but in the entire range of human mental and spiritual life what the female mind can achieve with regard to a higher world-view. Even if one takes an unbiased view of Max Muller's works on religious history, and compares their content with the all-embracing content of the Secret Doctrine , one will see how far the latter surpasses the former. Thus it is a strange circumstance that a woman stands at the outset of this Theosophical movement. This is perhaps explained precisely through those things which have also shown us the women's question as arising from our present intellectual and spiritual life.\nIf we look more deeply into the course of human spiritual development, then what otherwise might astound us will perhaps appear as a spiritual-historical necessity. In order, however, to be able to do this fruitfully, we must briefly look once more into the being of Man. We will give a picture, sketching human nature in broad outline.\nWhat materialism, what the everyday world-view of human beings is aware of, is regarded by spiritual-scientific research, by Theosophy, as just one part of the human being. I can only give you a few rough sketches today. They are not mere imaginings or daydreams, but are things that are as certain as mathematical judgments are for mathematicians.\nSo, what the human being knows in his everyday view, in his usual knowledge of human beings, is just one part of the human being: the physical body. This human physical body has the same physical and chemical forces, laws and substances that are found outside in so-called inanimate nature. Outside are the forces which form the dead stone and are the ‘life’ within the stone and the same forces are also in the physical body of the human being. Beyond this, however, the spiritual-scientific world-view sees a second body in man's nature, to begin with, which man has in common with plants. Present-day science in its speculations already speaks a little of that which Spiritual Science is pointing to, of a particular ‘life-principle’, for the laws of materialism which, fifteen years ago were still valid for many, have been overcome by those with insight. But present day scientific research will only be able to deduce this second body through a kind of speculation. Theosophical, spiritual research, however, has reference to the testimony of those who have a higher faculty of perception, and who have a similar relation to the average person in the street as does a sighted man to a blind one. This research has reference to the testimony of such individuals who know this second body as something real, something actually there. Anyone who knows nothing of this has no more right to judge than a blind person has the right to pass judgment on colours.\nAll talk of limits to human knowledge is a nonsense. One should rather ask: Is it not possible for the human being to rise to a higher level of knowledge? Are not what one calls the eyes and the ears of the spirit perhaps a reality? There have always been individuals who have worked on certain latent faculties and who can thus see more than others. Their testimony might be just as valid as the testimony of those who look through the microscope. How many people have actually seen what the scientific history of creation teaches? I would like to ask, how many people have seen what they talk about? How many, for example, have in actual fact, proof of the development of the human embryo? If they were to ask themselves such questions they would see what a blind faith it is that governs them. And if it is a justified faith, then the faith based on the testimony of the Initiates who speak from their spiritual experiences is equally justified.\nThus, in a spiritual-scientific sense, we speak of a second body of man's being. It is the same thing which, in the Christian religion, we find designated by St. Paul as the spiritual body . We speak of the etheric or life-body. Any particular sum of chemical and physical forces would never crystallise themselves into a life form if they were not formed principally by that which permeates every living body as its etheric or life-body. Thus we call this second body the etheric or life body. It is that which the human being has in common with the entire plant and animal world.\nBut the plant does not have what we call urges, desires, passions. A plant has no inner sensation (Empfindung) of pleasure or pain, for one cannot speak of sensation when one observes that a being reacts only to what is external. One can only speak of sensations when the outer stimulus is reflected inwardly, when it is there as an inner experience. This domain of present-day physiology, which speaks of a body of sensations in the plant, only shows a tremendous dilettantism in the comprehension of such concepts.\nWhere animal life begins, where pleasure, pain, urges, desires and passions begin, one speaks of the third body of the human being, the astral body. Man has this in common with the whole animal world.\nNow there is something in the human being which goes over and beyond the animal world and which makes man the crown of creation. We can best bring this before our souls by making a small and subtle observation.\nThere is in the whole range of the language one name which differs from all others. Everyone can say ‘table’ to a table, or ‘chair’ to a chair. But there is one name which cannot be used in the same way. No one can say ‘I’ to me and mean me. The word ‘I’ can never fall on our ears when it means me. People have always felt this to be something of essential importance. And one found, even in the most popular of ancient religious faiths, that an important point regarding the soul lay here. Where the soul begins to feel the divine in itself, where it begins in this dialogue with itself to say ‘I’ to itself, to converse with itself in such a way that cannot come from outside, then that is where the divine being of the soul begins its path of development in man. The god in the human being is made known here. The secret and ancient teachings of the Hebrews perceived this. Thus this name was called the unutterable Name of God, the name which means: “I am the I-am”.\nIn the belief of the Old Testament, this name signified the annunciation of the Godhead in the human soul. For this reason tremendously powerful feelings and sensations went through the throng when the priest announced this name of the Godhead in the human soul: Jahve. This is the fourth body in the human being, with which his external nature ends and his divinity begins. And we have seen how man is guided, as it were, by outer forces upwards to the ‘I’. There he stands, and from then onwards he begin to work in himself. This ‘I’ works downwards into the three other parts of the human being. Be quite clear about this difference that exists between human beings from this point of view. Compare a savage with an average European, or with a noble idealist perhaps Schiller or Francis of Assisi.\nIf the astral body is the bearer of desires and passions, we must say: the astral body of the savage is completely surrounded by the forces of Nature, but the average European has worked something into his astral body. He says to himself of certain passions and desires, ‘you cannot pursue these’ — for he has transformed his astral body. And it has been transformed even more by such a personality as Schiller, and still more by a personality who stands in no relation at all to passions — such as Francis of Assisi — and who has completely purified and is master of this astral body, over all urges and desires. Thus one can say of a human being who has worked on himself, that his astral body consists of two parts. One part is that which is given by Nature, by divine powers; and the other is that part which he himself has developed within it. This second part, the part transformed by the ‘I’, we call Spirit-Self or Manas.\nNow there are things which go more deeply still into the nature of man, where the ‘I’ works down further than just into the astral body. As long as you check your vices simply by moral and legal maxims, you are working on your astral body. But there are other cultural means whereby the ‘I’ works on itself, and those are the religious impulses of humanity. What stems from religion is a driving force of the spiritual life, is more than external legal maxims or moral tenets. When the ‘I’ works on the basis of religious impulses it works into the etheric body. In just the same way, when the ‘I’ is absorbed in gazing on a work of art and gains an intimation that behind the existence of the senses there can be embodied an eternal, hidden element, then the artistic image works not only into the astral body of the human being but ennobles and purifies the etheric body. If you could only observe, as a practicing occultist, the way in which a Wagner opera works on the different members of the human nature, it would convince you that it is especially music which is able to send its vibrations deep into the etheric body.\nThe etheric body is also the bearer of everything that is more or less permanent in human nature. One must be quite clear what kind of difference exists between the development of the etheric body and the astral body. Let us recall our own life. Just think of all you have learnt since you were eight; it is a tremendous amount. Consider the content of your souls: principles, mental pictures and so on. These are changes, transformations of your astral body. But now think how little in most people — there has been a change in what we call habits, temperament and general abilities. If someone is short-tempered, this already showed itself early on and has changed little. If someone was a forgetful child, he will still be a forgetful person today. One can show this unequal development by a small example. Think of this development as if the changes in the astral body could be shown by the minute-hand of a clock, and the changes in the etheric body by the hour-hand. What the human being changes in his etheric body, what the ‘I’ has made out of the etheric body, is called Buddhi or, if one wishes to use the term — Life-Spirit.\nThere is a still higher development which the occult pupil undergoes. This rests on the fact that one becomes a completely different human being in the etheric body. When the ordinary person learns, he learns with the etheric body. When the pupil of Spiritual Science learns, he must become a different person. His habits and temperament must change; for it is this that allows him to see into other worlds. His whole etheric body is gradually transformed.\nThe most difficult thing for a human being is to learn to work, even into the physical body. One can become master of how the blood circulates; one can gain influence over the nervous system over the process of breathing and so on; one can also learn here. When the human being is able to work into his physical body and learn thereby to enter into a connection with the Cosmos, he develops his Atman. This is the highest member of the being of Man; and because it is connected with the process of breathing (Atmung) it is called Atman. Spirit-Man is then found in physical man.\nThus, just as the rainbow has seven colours and the scale seven notes, so we have seven members of the being of man. The human being, then, consists of: first, the physical body; second, the etheric body; third, the astral body; fourth, the ‘I’; fifth, Manas; sixth, Buddhi; and seventh, Atman. When Man arrives at the highest stage of his development, when he makes his own physical body, then we have true Spirit-Man.\nNow with regard to the question concerning us today, we must look more closely at this being, at this nature of Man. A riddle in the relations between man and woman will resolve itself here in a strange way out of human nature itself. It is precisely occultism, or the intimate observation of the human nature, that guides us into the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the ‘I’, and that which the ‘I’ has done.\nIn every human being — this is a fact — the etheric body consists of two parts; the etheric body of a man, as he lives among us, shows itself to have feminine features, and the etheric body of a woman to have masculine features. Many facts in life become clearer when we recognise that in a man there is something of the feminine nature, and in a woman, a more masculine nature. From this it can be explained why certain character features can arise in Man. In truth we never have before us in the physical, material human body anything other than a physical expression of the totality of the individuality. The human soul forms for itself a body with two poles, just as a magnet does. It forms for itself a masculine and a feminine part, each of which can be either a physical body, or reacts at another time as the etheric body. Hence, with regard to those emotions which are associated with the etheric body — devotion, courage, love — a woman can clearly evince masculine characteristics, and a man womanly characteristics. In contrast, with regard to all those characteristics which depend more on the physical body, the consequences of gender will express themselves in outer life.\nHence it seems clear that in every human being, if we wish to consider him as a totality, we have a phenomenon before us with two parts — one revealed and material, and one hidden and spiritual. And only that man is a complete human being who is capable of combining an external masculinity with a beautiful feminine character within. And it is precisely this that the greatest spirit, namely, those of a mystical nature, have always felt in the spiritual life of the past.\nThis is an important point. Men have played a greater part because materialism impels itself towards an external culture. This external culture is a man's culture because it was meant to be a material culture. But we must also be aware that in the development of world history one cultural epoch gives way to another, and that this one-sided masculine culture must find its completion through that which lives in every human being. One senses this precisely in the age of this masculine culture. That is why, when the mystics spoke from the innermost depths of their souls, they defined this soul as something feminine. And it is from this that you find everywhere the comparison of the soul, receptive as it is to the world, with Woman; and on this is based Goethe's saying in the ‘Chorus mysticus':\nEverything transient Is but illusion The inadequate — Here it becomes event; The indescribable — Here it is done; The Eternal-feminine Bears us aloft.\nIt is nonsense to analyse this saying in a trivial way. One can analyse it in a right way, and in the true Goethean sense, when one says: He who knew something of noble spiritual culture also pointed to the feminine character of the soul; and precisely from this masculine culture did the saying: ‘The Eternal feminine bears us aloft’ struggle free. Thus the greater world, the Macrocosm was pictured as a man, and the soul, which was fructified by the wisdom of the Cosmos, as the feminine.\nAnd what then is this peculiar way of thinking which has developed in men over the centuries, this logic? If we wish to look into the depths of its nature, then we must see something feminine — imagination — which must be fructified by the masculine.\nThus, when we consider that which grows over and beyond the differences of gender, we see the higher nature of the human being — that which the ‘I’ creates out of the lower bodies. Man and woman must look on their physical body as an instrument which enables them, in one direction or another, to be active as a totality in the physical world. The more human beings are aware of the spiritual within them, the more does the body become an instrument, and the more do they learn to understand people by looking into the depths of the soul.\nThis, indeed, will not give you a solution to the Woman's question, but it will give you a perspective. You cannot solve the Woman's question with trends and ideals! In reality you can only solve it by creating that concept, that disposition of soul which enables men and women to understand each other out of the totality of human nature. As long as people are preoccupied with matter, a truly fruitful discussion on the Woman's question will not be possible.\nFor this reason it should not surprise us that, in an age that has given birth to a masculine culture, the spiritual culture which has begun in the Theosophical movement had to be born from a woman. Thus this Theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement will prove itself to be eminently practical. It will lead humanity to overcome gender in itself and to rise to the level where Spirit-Man or Atman stands which is beyond gender, beyond the personal — to rise to the purely human. Theosophy does not speak of the genesis and development of the human being in general, so that it is gradually recognised. Thus there will gradually awake in woman a consciousness similar to that which, during this masculine culture, has awoken in men. Just as Goethe speaking from the depths of soul, once said, ‘The Eternal-feminine bears us aloft’, so others too who, as women feel in themselves the other side of the human being, and who, in a truly practical sense understand it spiritual-scientifically, will speak of the Eternal-masculine in the feminine nature. Then true understanding and a true solution of soul will be possible for the Women's question.\nFor external nature is the physiognomy of the soul life. We have nothing in our external culture other than what human beings have created, what human beings have translated from impulses into machines, into industry, into the legal system. In their development, external institutions reflect the development of the soul. An age, however, which clung to the outer physiognomy, was able to erect barriers between men and women. An age that is no longer entrenched in what is material, what is external, but which will receive knowledge of the inner nature of the human being which transcends sex, and will, without wishing to crawl into bleakness or asceticism or to deny sexuality, enable and beautify the sexual and live in that element which is beyond it. And people will then have an understanding for what will bring the true solution to the woman's question, because it will present, at the same time, the true solution to the eternal question of humanity. One will then no longer say: ‘The Eternal-feminine bears us aloft’, or ‘The Eternal-masculine bears us aloft’, but, with deep understanding, with deep spiritual understanding one will say: ‘The Eternal-human bears us aloft’."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-6",
+    "title": "Fundamentals of Theosophy: The Human Races",
+    "date": "9 Nov 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19051109p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "One has often said that the human being himself is the best and most important study of the human being, and that the human being himself is the biggest riddle of the human being. In view of certain facts, one has to emphasise that this riddle faces the human being in manifold forms. The human riddle appears as multiplied to us and looks at us from all sides. The manifold forms of the human being, the races, are certainly such a multiplication of the human riddle. Natural sciences and spiritual science have always tried to bring in light to this variety of the human existence, in these different forms of the human being. Besides, we realise plenty of questions. We have the consciousness in ourselves that in all human beings a uniform nature and being exists. However, how does this uniform nature and being behave to the manifold forms and physiognomies, which face us as races? In particular, this question approaches us if we see which different abilities the single human races possess.\nApparently, to our consideration, the one human being is on the highest cultural level, the other on the most primitive, subordinated one. All that makes it appear strange to us that the human being who has, nevertheless, a uniform nature can appear in such a different and imperfect figure. One feels it often as an injustice of nature that it condemns one to an existence in a lower human race and raises the other to an apparently perfect race. To put a new contemplation to this mystery, to lighten up this riddle, the spiritual-scientific worldview seems to be more suitable than any other is. For this spiritual-scientific worldview does not speak in the same sense of the uniform human being as the other worldviews. It has a concept of it, which is different from that of the philosophers, religions et cetera, and it speaks of a recurrence of the human soul. It says to us that the soul, which lives in the modern human individual, was already often on this earth and will still often return. If we look at the matter even closer, we see that the souls of the human beings go through the different races. Thus, the variety of the races gets sense and reason. Thus, we see how the one is not condemned to live only in a primitive race and the other to be on the developmental levels of race existence.\nEach one of us goes through the most different levels of the races, and this passage just signifies a further development of the single soul. Someone who appears as a member of the European race today went through other races in former times and will go through others than ours later. The races appear to us as levels, and this variety becomes coherent and reasonable.\nHowever, if we want to see this sense quite thoroughly, we have to investigate the developmental basis of the different races deeper. Someone who rises above the only sensuous view to the invisible, supersensible world and tries to answer this question from such realms can really get an adequate solution of the riddle.\nThe usual natural sciences, which have to confine themselves to the sensuous observation in this question, were only able to bring in one leading thread in these cases concerning the human types. They are able to lead us back to the imperfect levels of human existence according to the modern Darwinist point of view. They trace the human being back to the former epochs of the earth evolution. They show us how the human being experienced stages in the former times in which he satisfied his needs with simple, imperfect tools with which he could only perform small work. To even former times the natural sciences want to lead us back in which the human being developed from the animal realm. We are led to the statement that we can no longer prove the earliest developmental stages of the human being scientifically, presumably because the areas of the earth in which the human being developed at that time are covered with the floods of the ocean. The natural sciences only point to an area repeatedly. This is the area in the south of Asia, in the east of Africa and down to Australia. Ernst Haeckel supposes that an ancient, extinct continent is to be sought there and that the interstates of animal and human being developed there. He calls this continent Lemuria.\nIndeed, in the same sense in which Haeckel speaks about this continent and his inhabitants, about pithecoid human beings as the ancestors of the modern human beings, spiritual science cannot speak about this matter out of its experience. I have tried to show that there are other methods and means to find out something of the prehistoric times as those are on which the natural sciences must rely, other methods than the investigation of the leftovers, which one has found in the earth. You find everything about the origin of the human being and his classification in different races that has always been taught in the so-called secret schools out of inner mystic experience in my essays From the Akasha Chronicle (CW 11). Physical records and sensuous experience cannot lead us to the times, which can really teach us the decisive of this question. The supersensible experience only can teach us this. Today, I can only give a spare concept of this supersensible experience, and only a comparison should show us where from that is taken which we want to discuss in the main.\nYou know that my words I speak here are carried away by the undulations, which are stimulated in the air. The oscillatory air brings my words through your organ of hearing into your soul. While I am speaking here, this whole airspace is filled with sound waves. Imagine that these sound waves could be fixed, one could get an imprint with any means at every moment of that which is spoken here. Then you would have a recording of everything that is spoken here. Just as the word that I speak here makes an imprint on the medium around us also the other expressions of the human nature do, indeed, not on the air, which is somewhat coarse in relation to many other and subtler substances, because there are subtler substances than the air is. I point only to the ether, although our consideration deals nothing with it. However, I mean, actually, the finest matter, the akashic matter in which not only the spoken words imprint themselves, but all thoughts, feelings and will impulses of the human being.\nThis akasha matter with its imprints really forms a large phonograph. While these sound waves pass here in the air perpetually, last only as long as the sound is heard, the imprints that the human achievements up to the thoughts cause in this so-called akasha matter always persist. Somebody who is able to develop so far to read in this akasha matter can read the recordings, which have been put down since primeval times. From this chronicle, from the higher spiritual experiences the information comes which spiritual science announces about the human development through the different races. We are led back not only to the human beings who the natural sciences and archaeology register investigating the leftovers of human beings who had primitive tools and weapons in the caves of France or anywhere. These human beings had low receding foreheads and were backward in their intellectual development compared to the modern civilised human beings.\nThese researches do not lead us back to those forms of humanity that the spiritual-scientific worldview teaches us, even if the modern naturalists think that they lead us back ten to fifteen millennia, maybe even farther. All those human forms and racial forms that the naturalist can find in the earth point again back to quite differently formed human physiognomies, to races which have lived on another earth area, on Atlantis which extended between Europe, Africa and America. The idea is also no longer strange to the natural sciences that the Atlantic was once land. The resemblance of the fauna, of the animal realm and the various soil formations, also some relationships of languages, all these matters point the naturalist to the fact that we deal with a big earth subsidence, with a flood of a large land domain that took place in very early times of our development. Plato tells about an island Poseidonis which is still stated by him as an island in the ocean, it was the last rest of the past world. The spiritual-scientific view teaches us that, too.\nIf we go back to the inhabitants who lived in Atlantis, then something appears to us that is different from today. We get to know a race in which the most significant abilities, which make the modern civilised human being a civilised human being, did not yet exist. The Atlantean race did not yet have these abilities, the ability of combining, of counting, of logical thinking. These human beings had memory and language at that time. That had only developed in them. However, in return, they had other abilities. A progress of the human abilities takes only place if certain so-called higher levels of the human existence are purchased with the disappearance of former levels of development. Exactly the same way as the human being has a very low ability of smelling compared to certain animals, whereas the animals have less developed higher senses, the brain in particular, however, they bring the lower abilities to perfection. It is the same here on these higher levels of humanity.\nThe Atlantean had an almost omniscient memory. His knowledge was generally based on his memory. He did not know what we call law or rule. He did not calculate in such a way that he knew a multiplication table; indeed, he did not know this. His memory was the basis for his whole thinking. He knew if he had piled up twice five beans that this was a small heap of so and so many. He did not count, but he kept it in his memory. His language was also different from ours. I will come back to this phenomenon in the course of this talk. Because the Atlantean had developed these abilities only, a certain clairvoyant talent belonged to him inevitably which withdrew when our day consciousness, our reason, our mathematical, logical consciousness, our cultural consciousness developed. The Atlantean was able to quite different sense to work on the growth of plants out of his nature using the special magic willpower. Without sensuous mediation, the Atlantean was able to carry out certain magic effects. All that also was connected with a completely different body structure, above all with a receding forehead and with a defective formation of the forebrain. On the other side, other parts of the brain were unlike those of the modern civilised human being. This enabled him to use his big abilities of memory.\nIf we observe such an Atlantean according to the recordings of the Akasha Chronicle, we find that at the same time the brightness of our present consciousness was not yet achieved. It was a dream consciousness. It was brighter than this, but it did not yet have that bright clarity of the intellect, which our modern consciousness has. It was more a brooding and dreaming one. What worked with him was also not in such a way that he could regard himself as the master of that which he caused, but it was in such a way that everything that was in him was like a kind of inspiration. He felt to be connected with other forces, like with a spirit flowing through him. The spirit was something concrete to him, it was that which was in the wind, in the clouds and which grew up in the plants. The spirit was something that one could feel if one moved the hands through the air, if the trees rustled. This was the language of nature. The independence of the Atlantean was also not as great as that of the modern human beings.\nIf we look back farther, we come to the ancestors of this population, to those human beings who lived on a part of the world, which the natural sciences know as well as spiritual science: on Lemuria, the land between Asia, Australia, and Africa. However, spiritual science has to portray the appearance and figure of those human beings quite different from the naturalists. The portrayal of the figure of these human beings, which the spiritual researcher gives, is not so different from that which the naturalist supposes. However, it is spiritually completely different. The Lemurian was much more clairvoyant than the Atlantean. He had a gigantic willpower; he was a human being with whom language and memory were not yet developed. The language began only in the later Lemuria. However, the Lemurian could make the plants grow, he could command the wind, he could take natural forces out of the earth like with magic, briefly, what the Lemurian was able to do borders on the miraculous compared with the modern ideas. However, all that was in a vague consciousness, in a deeper dream sleep than it existed with the Atlantean. Completely conducted by higher influence, by higher spiritual beings, this Lemurian was a dependent creature in the hands of higher forces, which gave him the impulses of his intentions, of his actions.\nWith it, we have three successive developmental forms of our race. This Lemurian developed out of the not yet human companion of the ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, et cetera. These fabulous animals were there still before our mammals and perished because of big physical revolutions in these continents. The volcanic formations that stand out of the ocean are the remains of that old Lemurian age. In addition, those primitive constructions of gigantic size and strange form, as they are found on the Easter Island, are remains of the cyclopean constructions, extend into our time like monuments of those human beings whose soul life was completely different from ours.\nOnly with a few words, I would like to point to the relation between the human being and the different animal forms. The modern naturalist, accustomed to materialistic ideas, supposes that the human being developed from lower animal forms. The spiritual researcher is not able to do this. He supposes that the spiritual led the way of the material that the primal ground of the outside, of the material is founded in the spiritual that the external human body of the human being is an expression of the human soul. What the spiritual researcher describes as an astral body developed much earlier than the physical body of the human being. This astral body experienced a compression and it forms the etheric body this way, and only the compression of this etheric body forms the physical body.\nThe denser condition evolved only later. The thinner one, the astral one in particular, existed in much earlier times. Thus, spiritual science shows us that a being did not originate from an accidental agglomeration of physical matter, which has such impulses, passions, and instincts as the human being, but that these impulses and passions are the origin of the encasing matter. The passion did not create this matter, but the former passions created the forms of the physiognomy. Thus, the human being goes through a process of compression. Indeed, if we go back to the Lemurians, we see that their bodies become thinner and thinner, until we come back to human beings whose physical matter is very similar to the gelatinous matter of certain present animals. If we went back even farther, we would find ancient human ancestors, formed in a matter, which one cannot see with the usual physical eyes: the etheric human being. However, I do not want to go back to this very ancient time.\nWe want to begin our considerations with those human beings who start appearing in such a carnal cover as the present human being carries it, although the covers of the human beings who inhabited Lemuria and Atlantis were completely different from the construction of our muscles and skeletons. All that was much softer, more pliable, and flexible, and complied with the requirements of those vague, dreamlike soul forces I have described to you. Just by the fact that the physical matter of the human being becomes denser and denser; the pole of the physical matter is created on the other side, which is the tool of intelligence. With the creation of the brain, a compression of the remaining human organs took place at the same time.\nThus, the brain becomes the tool of the intellect, of the mind. If we summarise these three stages, we have them in the civilised human being. First, we have the Lemurian human being, his consciousness is trance-like, then we have the Atlantean human being who develops memory and language and then we have the actual civilised human being, the human being of our time.\nIf we consider the modern human beings, they developed from these former stages of existence. The primitive stage does not disappear at once when the higher one appears. It survives for the time being and changes in manifold ways. So that we can say: a part of the former Atlantean population migrated from Atlantis to Europe and farther to Asia and established colonies, a part stayed behind, so that we have the most manifold stages side by side. Every progressive part leaves behind as it were the stages of development like memories. That also applies to the human being in a similar way. He developed the most different forms of the animals from himself. Just as humanity leaves lower races behind, the human being leaves certain animal forms behind on even former stages which are like externally preserved memories of his former existence. Looking at the animals, we can say that they show the stages of our own development, from the lower animal form up to the forms of our race. However, our own forms did not look like that which stayed behind. At that time, the conditions were still different.\nOne normally does not imagine at all how infinitely big the changes were which took place on the earth. In the old Atlantis was no distribution of rain and sunshine, air and water as today. There was another air saturated with water. There was not yet rain at that time. Myths and legends hold on these things vividly. Hence, the Nordic legends also speak of “Niflheim,” “nebulous home.” A real fact forms the basis of that. The forms of our ancestors were different from ours, and those human beings whom they left behind got to conditions, which they did not stand. Hence, they had to develop to lower stages, they became decadent, and they degenerated.\nThe physical conditions of our present earth make it possible that the mind develops with a certain level of the beings. If the earth had not developed from the completely different conditions of rain and sunshine to our advantage, the human being would never have been able to develop to the stage on which we are today. We see that only the progressive race is able to develop suitably. However, what maintains the former form and is as a reminiscent sign of it, becomes degenerate because it does not comply with the later conditions. If we go back to the former times, we understand that that which we were once was completely different from the present animals. These changed because of the completely changed conditions. We also have to regard the subordinated races as stages of former human existence that were adapted, actually, to other earthly conditions according to their nature.\nThe matter becomes much more understandable, if we look into it that way. Then we understand that the Indian population of America, which appears to us so mysterious with its social structures and peculiar instincts must be completely different. The African race, the Ethiopian one, the black race is different in another way. There are the instincts that tie in with the lower human. We find a certain dreamlike element with the Malayans. Within the Mongolian population those qualities exist which are based on a special energy of the blood. There are also certain mental qualities, which developed quite typically. Hence, the Mongolian race always refuses to accept a pantheistic view. Its religion is a belief in demons, a cult of the dead. The population, which one calls the Caucasian race, constitutes the real civilised race, which is appointed to develop the logical thinking, to create tools for the work on nature using the mere reason of the human being who can no longer use the magic forces but has to rely on the mechanical. Everything that the human being had in the times of the old Atlantis in this way got lost, and, therefore, he manufactured tools because he could no longer work as he worked once; hence, he required tools for the mechanical effect.\nThe physical research tried in manifold ways to divide the different races. It tried to divide them according to the shaping of the skull in those, which have a narrow and backwards long skull, in those, which have a short and broad skull, and in those, which are between the both. One divided the human beings also according to their skin colour, into black ones: Black, Ethiopians; in yellow-brown: the Malayans and Mongols, and in white ones, the Caucasians. This division is done more according to external signs and gives certain differences, however, is not exhaustive. In the newer time, one has taken the language as a basis. However, if you consider the past spiritual-scientifically, you get quite different views. You find that our white civilised humanity originated from the fact that certain parts separated themselves from the Atlanteans and developed higher under other climatic conditions. Certain parts of the Atlantean population stayed behind just on the former stages, so that we have to observe remains of the different Atlantean races in the population of Asia and America. However, they have changed; they differ from the original Atlantean population.\nWe distinguish seven human sub-races within the Atlantean population. Five of these seven sub-races are in an ascending development. I only want to mention here that the Chinese are descendants of the fourth sub-race of the Atlantean population, and that the Mongolians are descendants of the seventh sub-race of this Atlantean population. Memory and language gradually developed. Only with the third sub-race, with the Primal Toltecs, language appeared clearly. There also appears a culture supported on memory. The fifth sub-race which we call the primal Semites and which had established its main residence in Ireland was the first germ of our present Caucasian or — as spiritual science also calls it — Aryan human race.\nA part of this sub-race — it was very unlike the modern Jewish population but was still called Semitic rightly because of certain processes — moved to Asia and developed the intellectual culture which spread then over Europe, southern Asia and over the population of northern Africa. On the other side, around this centre is a belt of human population that had manifold remains in its character from inhabitants of former times, remains of the Atlanteans. All these inhabitants left behind descendants, and thus we can imagine that the train, of which I have just spoken surged to Asia, collided there with a population that was left from Atlantis and maybe from Lemuria, and formed the Malayan races then. With them, one can perceive a drowsy being and a prematurity concerning passions and sexuality. In such a way, the Indian-Aryan race developed from a choice branch of the Atlantean population, with mixing in of remains of the old population. It connected a certain dreamlike, clairvoyant being with a peculiar intellectual worldview. Perhaps, in no other worldview the clairvoyant view of deeper forces of nature and a system of thinking with such an architectural unity and pervasive astuteness were connected with each other. We find other new populations of quite different forms in the direction to the Middle East.\nMoreover, another train of Atlanteans went to America — the spiritual-scientific worldview can prove this. There were rests of Lemurians and of Atlanteans who intermingled in many respects. This Indian population faces the European immigrants later. There two very different human developments collided. What lived in the ancient times, a completely different soul element, something clairvoyant, something of the spirit flowing through the whole world still lived in this Indian population. A speech is preserved to us that an Indian chief held at a clash of Indians and Europeans. He condemned the breach of promise by the Europeans. One had promised to the Indian population, after one had taken their residences from them, to give them other residences. He possibly said the following, oh you pale-faces, you do not understand what the Great Spirit teaches us. This comes from the fact that you pale-faces read everything that the gods say from books that the letters in your books tell you what is true. You promised us that you give us land again, but you have not kept your promise because your god does not teach you the truth and keeping your word. We know a god who speaks to us in the clouds, in the waves, in the rustling leaves, in flash and thunder. The god of the red man keeps his word. The god knows that he has to be loyal to the tribe. — This was a great speech. The Great Spirit was a rest of a human view that originated from a dreamlike consciousness, from inspirations of higher forces. Hence, at the same time it was closer to the divine, the springs of the divine.\nThe languages teach us something similar. If we compare the different human races, we find a quite different structure in the languages of this external belt of peoples. We find the old Atlantean structure in the Mongolian languages, and we find something of Atlantean origin expressed in the structure of certain African languages. They emphasise the nouns, and they express by prefixes what we express by inflexions. We learn from that that they originated from an excellently working memory. The Mongolian languages show that they originated at a time in which memory did no longer function in such a way, as it was the case once. There the verbs are more developed which already tend to the reason. The Atlantean did not at all talk, actually, from memory. Everything was present to him. Not before one starts forgetting, the verb forms in the language. I would like to say that a magnificent monument of the middle of the Atlantean culture has remained, and this is the Chinese language. This language has something purely composing and at the same time something original where in the sounds even something inside, mental and a certain relation to the outside world is expressed. If we studied certain parts of the population in the connection with it, we could understand this completely.\nWe can understand our race if we pursue it in two currents, which we can clearly, prove. There we have that current at first, which moves from the west, maybe from England to Asia. It probably gave cause for the Indian, the Near Eastern-Semitic, for the Indo-African-Semitic races as well as for the Arabian-Chaldean race. Then, however, we must imagine another current that did not progress so far which came maybe only to Ireland or Holland, or also to the area that the ancestors of the ancient Persians inhabited. There we have a belt of related population through the area of the Persians via the Black Sea to Europe.\nThus, we can verify two zones of human population. One extends from India over here and encloses the southern peninsulas of Europe; the other encloses the zones located to the north with different gradations. There we have the Aryan one and the different Semitic gradations in Asia and Africa; then in Greece and Italy the Greek-Latin population. However, we have to imagine them also in such a way that it originated from the mixture with the northern belt which also encloses the Persian population and everything that developed, like from undergrounds, the Slavic and the Germanic populations in the west, and that which provides the basis more or less of all, the ancient Celtic population. We can imagine that we had an ancient Celtic population in the west of Europe. This part of the current of peoples lies farthest to the west, while the Persian population is that part which went the farthest to the east. The Slavic and the Germanic peoples stand between; intermingled with the southern belt, these established the Greek-Latin race. You can prove it in the languages that a relationship of the population exists, which expresses itself the strongest in the deep relationship of the languages in the northern belt.\nThere we have languages that are completely different from that which constitutes the character of the Semitic-Egyptian culture. The structure of the Semitic-Egyptian languages express what developed in the fifth sub-race of Atlantis as a Primal Semitic culture. It is characterised by the first lighting up of the intellect in the human development. Here logic and intellect developed first. The former dreamlike clairvoyant element intermingled in the most different way, and the different religions formed. However, the Semitic language does not have an atomistic character like the Chinese one, but an analytic character. On the other hand, the Caucasian languages have a synthetic character.\nWe distinguish five human races. I leave it undecided whether the word is used rightly or wrongly. The ancient Indo-Aryans with their marvellous visionary thinking established the first culture. This culture preceded the Vedic culture. That is why there are no recordings of it. What you read in the Vedas is only an echo of the ancient visionary Indian culture. Then the ancient Persian culture comes as the second race, that population which preferably applies the intelligence to the external work. The ancient Indian culture has something unworldly. In these northern regions, we find human beings who enclose the world who want to conquer the world who use tools and the like. Hence, we see in this culture how there the consciousness develops that humanity has to achieve something that there is good and bad. Here Ormuzd and Ahriman confront themselves. Then we come to the Near East. There develops another race. What expresses itself in the structure of the Semitic language is the combinatorial, the mathematical, and the logical-conceptual aspect. This faces us in the architecture of Egypt; this is expressed in the pyramids and in the great thought structures, then in the marvellous science, in the astrological form of astronomy.\nWe have three sub-races now. We come now to Europe to the southern peninsulas. There we find that which flows from the north and expresses itself in old cultural peoples. We find that something develops that looks for the inner life. While the Egyptian builds up externally, with internal symbolism, the Greek starts erecting monuments and cultivating sculpture stimulated by the mystery dramas. However, the most significant action within this fourth sub-race or culture epoch is the rise of Christianity. The southern peoples are not able to understand this Christianity in its peculiar figure. In Greece, it is Grecized, in Rome it is Romanised and becomes state church. This happened while the fifth sub-race approached gradually in the Middle Ages. This is our own sub-race. It had the task to bring the culture down to the physical plane. This indicates that sense and reason is in the succession of races.\nStill in another sense, sense and reason are in this racial development. The human being consists of three members according to his lower nature: of physical body, etheric body, and astral body. The physical body is that which we see with eyes, can touch with hands. The astral body is the bearer of our desires, passions, and instincts, of our emotions, affects, of rage and hatred. The etheric body is the bearer of the vital forces. The human ego lives in them. This expresses itself differently.\nI immediately want to begin with the way in which it expresses itself in our present cultural epoch. It has developed the physical body most remarkably, elaborated it most marvellously. The body, the brain became the tool of the intellectual life and thinking. Gradually the body had to be conquered. If you were able to look back, you would see that during the Lemurian age the body looks like an awkward huge thing. The astral body is not yet able to move the limbs. The ancestors of the Lemurian age were clumsy. You see this still echoing in the Native American population. On one side, the instincts still fight because the human beings do not yet have the consciousness to penetrate themselves from the inside, they work on the body from the outside, they tattoo it because it does not yet appear finished to them. If we go up to the other races, we see the human being conquering the etheric body. The functions of life and nutrition developed, so that the human being becomes a conscious and autonomous being from an unaware one.\nThe human being gradually starts the campaign of conquest through his own being. The Lemurians conquered the astral body, the Atlanteans the life body, and our present humanity conquers the physical body. The conquest of the spiritual-mental forces follows, which is the task of our time. Thus, the racial development gets an even higher sense and we understand that it is a training of the developing human mind. We look back to areas where the human being is structured quite differently. Our souls embodied themselves at that time and got to know the phenomena of the external world. Later they returned to the earth in another race and learnt to look into the world in another way. Moreover, it goes on that way. The human being goes through race by race. Those who are young souls reincarnate in those races that remained on their former level.\nThus, that which lives as race and souls round us fits into each other organically and mentally. Everything gets a sense, becomes transparent, and becomes explicable. We approach the solution of these riddles more and more and we can understand that we have to go through other epochs in the future that we have to go other ways than the race made them. We must be clear in our mind that mental and racial developments are different. Within the Atlantean race our own souls lived which developed then upwards to a superior human race. This gives us a picture of the human development up to our time.\nHence, we also understand the principle to found the core of a general brotherhood without taking into consideration race, colour, social rank et cetera. I shall explain this thought in particular. I wanted to show today only how in the different figures the same being exists, namely in a much more correct sense than the natural sciences teach it. Our soul steps from stage to stage, that is, from race to race, and we get to know the significance of humanity if we look at these races. We learn to understand one thing more and more, namely how deep and true the saying is, “Somebody was successful, and he lifted the veil of the goddess of Sais. However, what did he see? He saw — miracle of miracles — himself!” We see ourselves everywhere and in the manifold figures. — This is self-knowledge! The great saying in the temple of the Greek school of wisdom comes true: human being, recognise yourself."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-7",
+    "title": "The Kernels of Wisdom in Religions",
+    "date": "16 Nov 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19051116p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "If anybody reads a popular book, about astronomy, for example, then probably above all because he wants to inform himself about the mysterious facts of the universe. He finds his satisfaction, perhaps in such a book if the information makes sense to his reason, sensation, and feeling. He also tries perhaps to penetrate into the matters as far as it is possible to convince himself of such truth, such knowledge, visiting popular talks in which one makes experiments or observatories, laboratories et cetera. However, in any case, one fact remains in force. The human being who reads such things has to assume that still other human beings exist who have these abilities with particular research methods, with particular scientific and technical schooling.\nWho reads Haeckel's Natural Creation History may possibly say to himself, yes, this makes sense to my intellect, to my reason and to my feeling. — However, he also becomes aware of the fact that it requires a lot of work to ascertain these facts only. Then maybe he assumes that there is a little group of human beings which deals with the finding of such facts. In quite a similar way, a big part of humanity probably behaves towards other writings which want to bring facts of another field home to the human being, namely towards the so-called religious scriptures.\nIt is no other relation than that I have just described. Also towards the religious scriptures, the human being asks himself at first, does this speak convincingly to my sensation, emotions, and reason? — Also here, he assumes or assumed in past times at least just as for the external, sensuous facts, which we possibly get to know from the Natural Creation History by Haeckel or from popular representations of astronomy, who know the methods, have the key to ascertain these facts. Thus, the human being also assumed concerning the religious documents that there are single human beings who are able not only to read this truth but also to ascertain it. He assumed that there are single human beings who have the key of them and know methods how one can convince oneself of them directly. Briefly, one has to demand from the religious scriptures, as from any other representation of facts that they come from knowledge, from immediate experience.\nThe human being assumes that there are single people who ascertain the described sensuous facts using telescopes, microscopes, biological and other methods of investigation. Concerning the communications that are included in the religious documents we must also assume that there are human beings who know the methods to penetrate by the experience into the field, which is described in the religious scriptures. Just as in the Natural Creation History the field of the sensuous facts and in the popular talks the field and the facts of astronomy are portrayed, the field of the supersensible, the invisible, the spiritual is portrayed in the religious scriptures. If we who do not research have to offer the same trust, the same confidence to the religious scriptures, we must assume also that there are single persons in the world who made it their particular task to collect experiences in the world of the supersensible, which forms as spiritual causes the basis of the sensuous world. The human being is not allowed to behave differently towards the representation of a natural creation history and the representation of a supersensible creation history.\nNot the behaviour of the human beings towards these matters is different, only the fields are different about which the concerning writings tell. With it, one says that there must be knowing people who are able to ascertain the facts in the religious scriptures. Indeed, up to a certain degree this consciousness has got lost just in our time. Just as it would be of little use if anybody were not able to assume that researchers exist behind the popular scientific representations, also it would not make much sense basically if we did not assume that researchers are behind the statements of the religious scriptures. It is the task of theosophy or spiritual science today to renew and animate the consciousness that there is also a research in the supersensible fields. Spiritual science wants nothing else than to evoke the consciousness in the larger circles again that it is in such a way as I have said it now.\nOne often translates the word theosophy saying that theosophy is knowledge, wisdom of God. This translation is not right; at least it does not describe what theosophy wants. Knowledge of God is something that the theosophist has in mind as an inkling at first, as something that signifies the last purpose of all knowledge. As little as we already have awareness of all means and abilities of knowledge, just as little as we are allowed to say that we can have a comprehensive or final knowledge of the divine primal ground of the universe today. Humanity develops, advances, also its abilities of knowledge. Perhaps, even the most advanced people cannot form an idea of the insights into the mysterious worlds of existence the human being can get on this way. We have to absolutely realise that European civilised human beings have another concept of divinity than, for example, the so-called savages of Africa or the barbarians who invaded the Roman empire from the north at the beginning of the Middle Ages.\nWe have to assume that a usual educated person also has another idea of the divine being than Goethe had. Thus, we can also imagine that the human being advances further, that abilities develop in him compared with which Goethe's intuitive and imaginative strength was undeveloped. There we can have an inkling how much more elated and more magnificent the concept of God of those human beings will be than ours are. We can say that we exist, work, and live in Him; however, the knowledge of Him can never be completed. Therefore, theosophy does not think that it wants to be knowledge of God. Theosophy is that knowledge, namely, which attains the deepest, innermost being of the human being, in contrast to the usual, everyday knowledge that acquires the external, sensuous, transient nature of the human being.\nLet us realise once: we see colours, light, we hear tones, smell and taste, seize objects, feel heat, cold, and so on, everything with the help of our outer senses. We can also imagine that for anybody who has no ear no sounding world, but a dumb world is around him, for anybody who has no eyes no luminous, no colourful world but a dark one exists. All that is only a summary of that which the human being can perceive with the senses. However, the senses consist of material forces that are handed over to the earth again. What we perceive with them is also something transient. With it, we have realised the transient human being. The physicist shows us that a time comes when the earth is dispersed in countless atoms in which it does no longer exist. Then also no colours, lights, tones, the present forms of minerals, plants and animals exist, the human form itself does no longer exist.\nThus, we have characterised the extent of the transient in the human being. What this transient human being recognises is everyday science, is our official science. With it, I say nothing against this official science. However, this whole science is nothing else than preoccupation with transient matters. However, there is still another possibility to look at the world, namely with those abilities in the human being which are imperishable. The human being bears an imperishable core in himself.\nThe human being bears an imperishable core that we find in ourselves by introspection, by self-observation to a new existence in the times when the earth is dispersed. He carries this imperishable core to other worlds, and carries that which he recognised as the fruit of this life on earth to another world. What the divine core recognises is the content of spiritual science. Theosophy is not knowledge of other matters of the human being but knowledge of the other part of the human being. Hence, theosophy or spiritual science does not come from such people who want to rise with the usual reason, with the usual senses to a consideration of the spiritual from the sensuous, but from such people who have woken the abilities slumbering in the human being and are thereby able to investigate the supersensible, the imperishable. The usual science considers plants, animals, and human beings according to their usual qualities as they present themselves to the senses. In addition, the spiritual research looks only at that which surrounds us in the world. However, it looks at it with other forces and other abilities and, hence, gets to know the everlasting and imperishable qualities of the things. This is theosophy.\nSuch researchers who have woken such abilities in themselves are able to ascertain the supersensible facts independently which the confessions communicate. As well as the naturalists ascertain in the laboratory and on the observatory using the strength of the senses and their instruments what you can then read in the popular books, the researchers of the supersensible ascertain by their own experience what was communicated to humanity in the religious documents. In the same sense as we speak of the scientific laboratories and astronomical observatories as research sites, in the same sense we speak of spiritual research sites. We call this spiritual research site — the term does not matter — the Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom.\nBecause all wisdom must be based on a common origin, because all those who are in a spiritual relationship to these teachers are penetrated and irradiated by that wisdom, all researches also go back to the spiritual primary source. They go back, to the big brotherhood of the most advanced sages who have recognised what those religious documents announced from own observation by the means of spiritual research. You may call this basis of all religions the “spiritual laboratory of humanity,” or the “great White Lodge,” it is the same. Now we know what it means. As any popular book goes back to something that has really been investigated anywhere, each of the great religions goes back to that which was investigated in the spiritual sense in this laboratory of the white brotherhood of humanity. Those who founded the religions were great, excellent individualities who experienced the lessons and instructions of that brotherhood in this big spiritual laboratory. They were introduced into the spiritual life, which forms the basis of all phenomena, and were then sent from there to the various peoples to speak to them in their language and according to their characters.\nOne taught a uniform ground of knowledge, an ancient truth in that spiritual laboratory, and it is possible that those who advance further by internal development learn the methods of research and can use them as Haeckel and other naturalists used the sensuous methods. It is possible that these find access to the researchers of the spiritual laboratory, that they get to know from which central site the great sages came who went to the south and the west, and brought the great messages to humanity. It is possible that they find the way to those from whom they can learn how all that has come about.\nThe ancient religious teachers were sent out from the same site, the great founders of a religion who brought the first messages to India the echo of which the European researchers admired so much when they faced the wisdom, which is contained in the old Brahmanism. The same site of wisdom sent out the various Buddhas who brought their messages to the single members of the Asian religions. It sent out the Egyptian Hermes, too, who founded that marvellous religion about which anybody said to Solon (~640-~560 B.C., Athenian statesman, lawmaker and poet): what you know is like the knowledge of children compared with the wisdom of our initiates.\nPythagoras (~570-~495 B.C., philosopher, and mathematician) came out of it, the great teacher of the Greek people. That man came out of it who illuminates the future, whose religion becomes more and more comprehensive and spiritual, Jesus himself. There we have the spiritual connection, and we see how the different religions point back to the central site where the loftiest human wisdom is cultivated. Who looks at the different religions can convince himself that their qualities point to such a central site. Our materialistic cultural researchers have also often recognised resemblances of the different confessions. Zarathustrism, the ancient Indian culture, Buddhism, even the religion that lived in the old America contain all components in which marvellous accordance exists. However, one has believed that this accordance comes from external reasons. One has not penetrated deeply enough because one had lost the key of it. Who gets involved, however, really in the core of truth of the religions can obtain the conviction concerning the religions that the accordance cannot come from the outside, but that it arises from a common core of wisdom, and that they were differently organised considering the single peoples and the different epochs.\nIf we look at Asia, we still find the remnants of an ancient religion at first, which one cannot understand, actually, as religion in the modern sense. We find this religion in the strange culture of the Chinese. I do not speak about the religion of Confucius, not about that which spread as Buddhism in India and China, but I would like to speak of the remains of the ancient Chinese religion, of Taoism. This religion points the human being to Tao.\nOne translates Tao as the way or the goal, the destination. However, one gets no clear idea of the being of this religion if one simply sticks to this translation. For a big part of humanity, Tao expresses and already expressed the highest to which the human beings could look up. They thought that the world, the whole humanity would attain it once, the loftiest that the human being bears in himself as a seed and that develops once as a ripe flower from the innermost human nature. Tao signifies a deep, concealed soul ground and an elated future at the same time. Somebody who knows what it concerns not only pronounces it but also thinks of it with shy reverence. Taoism is based on the principle of development. It says, what is around me today is a stage, which will be overcome. I must be clear in my mind that this development in which I am has an aim that I develop to an elated aim and that a force lives in me that urges me to arrive at this destination Tao.\nIf I feel this big strength in myself and if I feel that with me all beings strive for this goal, then this strength is to me the steering force which blows from the wind against me, which sounds towards me from the stone, which shines towards me from the flash, which sounds towards me from the thunder. It appears in the plant as force of growth, in the animal as sensation and perception. This force produces form by form repeatedly up to that elated goal by which I recognise myself as one with the whole nature, which streams into me and streams from me with every breath, which is the symbol of the loftiest developing spirit that I feel as life. I feel this force as Tao. — One did not speak in this religion of a transcendent god at all, one did not speak about anything that is beyond the world, but of something that gives strength to the progress of humanity.\nThe human being felt Tao intensely when he was still connected with the divine original source, in particular in the Atlantean age. Our ancestors still had no such advanced reason, no such intelligence like the modern humanity. In return, however, they had a more dreamlike consciousness, an instinctively ascending imagination and their life of thought was in such a way that they were almost innumerate. Imagine the dream life, but increased, so that it makes sense and is not chaotic, and imagine a humanity from whose souls such pictures arise that announce the sensations which are in the own soul, which echo everything that is external round us. One has to imagine the soul world of these prehistoric human beings quite unlike ours. The human being today strives for forming thoughts and images of the environment as exactly as possible. However, the prehistoric human being formed symbolic images, which appeared in him full of life.\nIf you face a person today, you try above all to form an idea of him whether he is a good or a bad, a clever or a silly person, and you try to get an idea very soberly which corresponds to the external human being. This has never been the case with the prehistoric Atlantean. A picture arose in him, not a rational concept. If he faced a bad human being, a picture arose in him, which was vague and obscure. However, this perception did not become a concept. Nevertheless, he acted on this picture. If he had a bright, beautiful picture before himself, which appeared dreamlike in his soul, then he knew that he could trust in such a being. He got fear of a picture if it arose in black, red, or brown colours in him. He did not yet grasp realities with reason and intellect, but they appeared as inspirations. He felt as if the divinity working in these pictures was also in him. He spoke of the divinity, which announced itself in the blowing of the wind, in the whispering of the woods and in the pictures of his soul life if he felt the urge to look up to an elated human future. He called this Tao.\nThe present human being who replaced this ancient humanity relates to the spiritual powers differently. He has lost the strength of the immediate beholding, which was more vague and twilighted than ours in certain respects. He has attained the developmental stage of the intellectual and rational ideation, which is higher in certain respects, however, also lower in certain respects. The modern human being thereby outranks the prehistoric human being because he owns a sharp, pervasive intellect; but he is no longer feeling the lively connection with the divine Tao forces of the world. That is why he has the world as it reveals itself in his soul, and on the other side his intelligence. The Atlantean felt the pictures living in him. The modern human being hears and sees the external world. These two things, outside and inside, are opposing each other, and he is no longer feeling the connection of both.\nThis is the great sense of the human development. Since the land masses have risen again, after the floods of the oceans had flooded the continents, since that time humanity longs for finding the connection of inner soul life and external sensuous world again. That is why the word religare (Latin) — religion is justified. It means nothing else than to combine again what was connected once and is separated now, the world and the ego. The different forms of the confessions are nothing else than the means, than the ways taught by the great sages to find this connection again. Therefore, they are formed so differently to become understandable in this or that form to the human beings of any cultural level.\nThe ancient Indian had an excessively growing plant world around himself, which made him dreamy in his soul and did not make it necessary to produce external tools and external culture. He had to get religion in another form than the modern human being. If the human being lives quietly, other images appear in his soul, than if he works with coarse tools and must be technically active. The external nature is different in the different areas of the earth, and the inner soul life of the human beings is different, too. Because the connection should be sought by the different religions, it is only a matter of course that the masters had to determine the way of finding the connection differently for different peoples and different times.\nThe first way to determine this connection, to look for the ancient Tao of Atlantis, is the religion of the ancient India. This received the instructions of the holy Rishis, great initiates in ancient times whose elated teachings still go on sounding in the marvellous Vedic poems and in the Vedanta philosophy of the ancient Brahmans, which extends to the loftiest levels of human understanding. It was announced to humanity in broad outlines there that there is something that as a uniform world ground serves everything as a base. One called it Brahman, Parabrahman, Bhagavad and so forth.\nWhat we find in the Vedas, which are only an echo of the original old teachings, shows us how great and stupendous and, at the same time, how sublime the concepts were by which that subtle spirituality attempted to reach the divine original source of being. One could circumscribe it as follows: once the spiritual hosts assembled round the original being and asked it who it was, and it said, I am not that who I am if I am able to define myself by anything other than by myself. If you define a thing, you look for a higher concept. You define the single animal beings, the lion, the eagle, the dog, the wolf, while you change over to the superior concepts of the cat species, the dog species, the bird species et cetera. You define the single winds, while you change over to the general concept of wind. Thus, anything in the world has its name that indicates what stands above it. I, however — the Brahman said to the spirit hosts — I have no name which stands above me. I am the I-am.\nFrom this original source, the human being started; he shall come to it again. There was also development in the ancient India. Development was the magic word by which the human being felt his destination. There must have been anything, as the confession says, that leads to the point on which the human being stands today. Once there must have been a longing that leads him from the divine origin down into this world, to the necessary stage on which we stand today. As true and inevitable as it was that there was such a yearning and desire which leads into the world, as true it is that there must be a force that leads the human being again out of it, so that he brings the fruits of this world back again to the divine original source. This force is the overcoming of the desire by the divine desires, the purification of the destinations by the divine destination.\nNow it was something else that was felt as a religion than in the ancient times of which we have spoken. Now, it was no longer the god who revealed himself to the inside, now it was the god revealing himself from the outside, because the human being had to create an abyss between himself and the outside world. The word obviously replaces the immediate life and the sheer strength, and Veda means nothing else than “word.” By this word, advanced, wise human beings announced the origin and destination of the human being, which forms the basis of the universe. One had another idea of this word in ancient times than today if one speaks of the word.\nI would like to try to give you an idea of that which one felt speaking of the Veda, of the Logos, and later of the Word. The human being gives names to the things. He says, this is this and that is that. However, if his mouth names the things, it is no arbitrariness, but these are the same names, which once the divine original soul of humanity pronounced from itself and thereby created the things. The human being sees the things and pronounces the names afterwards. However, once the original soul spoke the names first and according to the word, the things formed. This is why there an original soul was in the ancient times, which expressed the words of creation. The words became things and the human soul afterwards found the words out of the things, which the god had put into them.\nIt revived the sleeping words out of the things. The human being behaved to the divinity this way where one had religious sensation, the sensation towards the word, which lived with the ancient Indians really. Therefore, the opinion combined with the word that there are human beings who are able to look deeper into nature and the being of the world, who are able to directly echo in their words and announce what once the divinity breathed out of itself into the world. One perceived such human beings as initiates. The ancient Indian considered his Rishis not as usual human beings, but as such beings who had reached the level of immortality already in the physical body and live not in the sensory world, but with their souls in the higher heavenly world and have contact with the gods, with the spiritual beings who form the basis of the world. While one looked up at the human beings who had developed the Tao in themselves in this way, one was aware that every human being would also attain this stage once.\nThe doctrine of rebirth, of the repeated return was combined with it. Buddha did not speak out of his imagination but out of his perception when he spoke to his believers and said, I see back at one, two, three, four, ten, hundred lives. — He spoke of these hundred lives as the human being speaks of one life. In these many lives, he obtained everything that enabled him to speak no longer about the experience of the sensuous world, but about the experience of the supersensible worlds and to bring the message of these supersensible worlds to humanity. This supersensible knowledge is an original component of all religions.\nIf we put ourselves once again in the peoples feeling the Tao. They not only tried to unite in the religion with the divine, but they also considered themselves as embodiments, as covers of the divine. This was their immediate consciousness. There were human beings who could not think correctly; they were not as clever as we are, but had a direct consciousness that they surrounded a divine core as a fruit surrounds the pit. They saw and felt this core, and they looked through it at the past and the future. They thereby felt the doctrine of reincarnation in themselves.\nAt that time, the immigrants found such a consciousness. At that time, the ancient Indian teachers who gave the first Brahma culture to the Indians still found a lively view of re-embodiment. Hence, all religions, which started from this site, have the teaching of reincarnation. One felt the Tao in its different creation of human activity. It is only a matter of course that the human being of our period who has separated his soul life from the big external powers could not overlook so many lives, but only saw that he represented this limited soul life. From every next stage, which extends northbound then — starting from the ancient Persian religion — the consciousness of the fact disappeared that the human soul is a cover around the core reincarnating forever. The consciousness confined itself to the zenith between birth and death and to how within birth and death “religare“, religion, has to be sought for. There one felt the contrast of a duality instead of the unity for the first time.\nWhereas the Taoist human being of the Atlantean age felt his connection with the original source vividly, and the Brahmanic human being still tried to rouse the Brahman, which is thought outside and within the human being as the same, the human being felt a certain duality, a dualism in Persia first. He felt that which has originated from the human being, as an inside and outside, as an original ground and present human figure. He looked up to the original ground from which everything had risen round him, he looked up to the word from which plant, animal, and human being had arisen according to the physical figure. However, he still felt something else: he felt that anything was therein that did not be in accordance with the original harmony that has to become only again like the original divine. He felt the latter as renunciation from the original divine. He faced the contrast, the duality of light and darkness or of male and female. They represent the original ground and that which expects the human soul in the material compression. This is the second level of human development.\nThe third stage faces us in the prehistorical and historical Egypt; it is preserved for us as the Book of the Dead . There the human being felt a third aspect besides the duality. He saw a light, the sun, illuminating the earth and saw it penetrating this with its beams and enlivening the seeds and beings slumbering in the earth, and saw how the primal ground had to be fertilised. We find this triad original ground, conception, new life, symbolised as Osiris, the sun, the god of light; as Isis, the matter, and as Horus, the life developing from it. These were three Egyptian divinities. The triad appears here. This triad becomes a basic core in all later confessions.\nAs trinity the divinity faces us in the confessions where it is called Father, Word and Holy Spirit — Isis, Osiris, Horus — atma(n), buddhi, manas. We find the triad everywhere in the religions now. We have recognised the reason. It faces us with pictures or words in Asia, in Egypt with the priests, but also in the Greek-Roman world, with Augustine, then as nuances in the Middle Ages.\nIf we have got a bigger perfection in the future, that strength will have appeared as a forming one to which we owe our existence and which works today as a concealed primal ground of the being in us. One felt this as the divine, the inexpressible of the human being that is identical with the first essential component of the tripartite world. One felt then what lives in the human being, what strives for this highest as the word active in the present, the son, who originated from the father who rests unutterably in him. As true as this Father's ground forms the future, more perfect human being, he created the developing son, the buddhi, the second human member, which is not yet perfect but is the reason why we strive for perfection. This is the second being. Also in the past this original ground worked. As well as the sensuous human being was created by the universal primal ground in the past, also that which has already assumed and given off shape in him has something that has likewise arisen in the past from the primal ground and is already developed now.\nLet us look at the universe, how it makes itself perceptible as colours, tones, smells and tactile sensations, it streamed from the inexpressible primal ground. In such respect, we may call this primal ground, which appears to us, the creatures, spirit, also in the Christian sense. However, the creation of the world is not finished. The world is a germ, something that has a soul that has the impulse of the future in itself. This is the son. Hence, one called this striving the Word, Veda, Edda. The third one is a strength in us that becomes discernible in the future in us: the Father's ground of all being deep set in any of our souls.\nFeeling this vividly means feeling the trinity, making it the being of the entire internal imagination. Persona (Latin) signifies mask or external figure, cover. Hence, the religion shows this core of truth, which I have just explained, in three different masks, in three persons. God has three different persons. That means that he appears in three different masks: Spirit, Word, and Father. With it, we have touched that confession at the same time that then led to Christianity. If you understand this really, you find this truth also expressed in it. If you correctly understand the deepest Gospel, that of John, you find the same consciousness of religare, of the connection with a higher consciousness that appeared in human form. It is the teachings of the incarnate Logos, the incarnate divinity, the present divinity that lives in brotherliness with both forms of the divinity, with the active Spirit coming from the past, working in the present, and the Father creating in the present into the future. Thus, the Son originated from the Father, is connected with the Spirit at the same time, and that is why the Son is the great preannouncement that will lead to the Father.\nThe words no one comes to the Father except by me (John 14:5), by the divine essence of the present, point to this. He says that he sends the Spirit again, the essence of that which is already in the world. As true as Christ said, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20), it is also true that he will come again that the whole Christianity has been a preparation of the new figure. The Spirit is there provisional, the knowledge, the science, the religions were taught provisionally as they were taught in the past. The religious documents were preserved to us and now the theologians try to interpret them and to teach according to them. This is the way now theology works in place of wisdom. Theosophy means wisdom and truth, theology means the doctrine of wisdom and truth. As well as theology originated from spiritual science, theology has to go back to spiritual science.\nI have often drawn your attention to the condition of former research, and that then a reversal took place. Once one trusted in the books of the old sages, in Plato, Aristotle and others at all sites where one taught. Researchers were not there, but interpreters. I have that strange time in mind about which theology tells that one could no longer understand later when one learnt to read in the book of nature. The confidence in the written was almost absolute. If, for example, a naturalist had stated that the nerves do not start from the heart, but from the brain, one said, nevertheless, Aristotle says differently, and Aristotle is right, although one saw the demonstrated phenomena. Today in wide sections of the population, the consciousness does not yet exist that there is a key that there are research sites and research methods that ascertain the facts of the spiritual worlds as the observatories or the laboratories ascertain the facts of the sensuous world.\nSince thirty years it has been announced again that there is such a thing like a spiritual central site of humanity, and with it the theosophists say nothing more unbelievable, than if Haeckel says: this is in that and this way. — If Haeckel argues anything, we assume that he has found the proofs of it in his research. We assume also that the statements in the religious documents were proved by the facts to be true, and that there are persons among us which themselves can go back again to the sources. Theosophy or spiritual science means drawing the attention to the spiritual researchers and to the central site. It speaks again from experience about the matters of the supersensible, as those did who originally created the religious documents, from their inner experience. As well as 400 years ago, the natural sciences experienced a revival, theosophy or spiritual science should today signify a revival of the immediate spiritual research.\nThus, we are put in the necessity to return to that core of truth, which I tried to outline from the Tao up to the appearance of the great saviour of humanity. I wanted to generate awareness of the relation of spiritual science to the central point, the core of truth in the different religions. Those who have not yet approached spiritual science maybe come again to hear more. However, some may also say that it is a kind of neo-Buddhism, a new religion, something oriental; it wants to bring in something foreign to our world. However, this is not the case; this would not be spiritual-scientific. Only those speak in such ways who do not have the will to listen to that which spiritual science says. The aspiration of spiritual science is to look for the core of truth in our external confessions, to go back to the sources from which the books existing today were created. It is necessary to go back to the facts, then the books are better understood, then new life flows in humanity.\nChristianity is to be understood as a religion that has to prepare humanity for the future, as the religion of the Son by which one finds the Father on the same ways. At the same time, it is one of the most important tasks of spiritual science to get this religion across. Therefore, it searches for the core of truth in all religions to find it in our own. We recognised that religion originated not from childish images, but from the highest wisdom, from spiritual research. However, we also learnt that one can abreast with science and be, nevertheless, a religious person. If this knowledge finds an echo again, the lively feeling awakes for that which one of the theosophists, Goethe, called into the world more than hundred years ago like a program, like a beautiful and marvellous saying to humanity. I would like to close with this saying today, confessing that there can be no true science, no deeper human observation, which shows the religious truth as something childish; and that all religions contain as a core of our highest destination:\n\nWho has science and art, Has religion, too; Who does not have both, Should have religion."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-8",
+    "title": "Brotherhood and the Struggle for Existence",
+    "date": "23 Nov 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19051123p02.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "It is our task today to speak about two soul contents one of which fraternity, represents a great ideal penetrating humanity, and the other represents something that we meet in life at every turn wherever we go, the struggle for existence: fraternity and struggle for existence. Those of you who have occupied themselves only a little with the aims of the spiritual-scientific movement know our first principle to establish the core of a fraternity founded on general altruism, without difference of race, gender, profession, confession et cetera. With it, the theosophical society itself ranked this principle of a general fraternity first and made it its most important ideal. It has indicated that way that this great moral pursuit of fraternity — a pursuit that is necessary besides other cultural aspirations — is intimately connected with the main destination of humanity.\nThe spiritual-scientific striving human being is convinced, and not only convinced, he is quite clear in his mind that the deep knowledge of the spiritual world must lead to fraternity if it seizes the human being really, that fraternity is just the noblest fruit of deep, innermost knowledge. However, with it the spiritual-scientific worldview seems to contradict something that approached humanity lately. One pointed in certain circles to the progressively working strength of the struggle. How often we can hear even today that the human forces grow with resistance that the human being gets strong will and intellectual initiative because he must measure his strength with the adversary. A worldview which has arisen from bases full of mind, the worldview of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher), has among other enthusiastic pugnacious sentences also this: I love the critic, I love the great critic more than the little one. — We can find this over and over again most variously just with Nietzsche as something that completely belongs to his approaches to life.\nIt depends on certain economic views, which prevailed for a long time that one regards the general competition in the struggle of all against all as a powerful lever of progress. How often one has said that thereby, humanity can progress best of all that the single human being benefits himself, as well as possible, and establishes his position. The word individualism has become almost a catchword, admittedly, more in the external material life, but also to some extent in the inner spiritual life.\nThe human being benefits his fellow men the best if he obtains as much as possible economically from life, because he becomes economically strong, he can also be more useful to the public: this is the creed of many economists and sociologists. On the other side, we hear repeatedly emphasised that the human being should not become stereotyped that he should develop the forces lying in him universally that he should enjoy life wholeheartedly that he should develop what lies in his inside and that he can thereby benefit his fellow men mostly.\nThere are many among our fellow men who are virtually eager for the pursuit of this principle who enjoy life as intensely as possible. The spiritual-scientific worldview does not misjudge the necessity of the struggle for existence, just not in our time, but at the same time this worldview realises also that today — where this struggle for existence peaks — the deep significance of the principle of fraternity must be brought near to an understanding again.\nThe most important question is: is it right what so many people believe that the human forces grow in particular with the resistance that it is the struggle above all which the human being has to fight that has made him great and strong? In my talk on the idea of peace, which I held before you, I pointed already to this principle of the struggle for existence in the human life that receives strong support by the fact that the natural sciences have made it a general natural world principle. They, in particular in the west, believed for a while that those beings in the world are formed most suitably, which have out-competed their adversaries and have been left in this struggle for existence.\nThe naturalist Huxley (Thomas Henry H., 1825-1895) says: if we look at life outdoors, it appears to us like a gladiator fight, the strongest remains as the victor, the others perish. — If one believed the naturalists, one would have to suppose that all beings, which populate the world today, have been able to out-compete the others, which were there earlier. There is also a school of sociologists, which wanted to make this principle of the struggle for existence almost a doctrine of human development. In a book, entitled From Darwin to Nietzsche (1895), Alexander Tille (1866-1912, German philosopher, economic functionary, and lobbyist) tried to show that the future happiness of humanity depends on the fact that one accepts this struggle for existence wholeheartedly in the development of humanity. One should arrange it in such a way that the incapable perishes, however, that one must care for the strong ones and encourage them in the struggle for existence. The weak ones should perish. One said that we need such a social order that suppresses the weak ones because they are injurious. — I ask you, who is the strong one, who has an ideal mental power but a feeble body, or the other one who owns a less high mental power in a robust body? — One achieves nothing with general rules as you see. It is hard to decide who should be left, actually, in the struggle for existence. If it concerned practical measures, this question would have to be decided first. Now we ask ourselves, what becomes apparent to us if we look at the human life? Has the principle of fraternity or the principle of the struggle for existence achieved great things in the evolution of humanity, or have both contributed something to it?\nOnly with brief words, I would like again to draw your attention to what I already said in the talk on the idea of peace that even the modern natural sciences do no longer stand on the ground on which they still stood one decade ago. I have already pointed to the basic talk of the Russian researcher Kessler (Karl Fedorovich K., 1815-1881, German-Russian zoologist) in 1880 where he showed that the actual progressive animal species capable of development are not those which struggle the most, but which help each other. With it, it should not be asserted that struggle and war do not exist in the animal realm. Indeed, they exist, but it is another question what promotes development more, the war, or the mutual aid? One put an additional question: do those species survive whose individuals fight perpetually with each other, or those, which help each other? Here the above-mentioned research has already proved that not the struggle, but the mutual aid actually supports the progress. I have already pointed to the book of Prince Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921, Russian geographer, anarchist) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution . In this book, you find some nice contributions to the questions, which occupy us here.\nWhat did fraternity achieve in the human evolution? We only need to look at our ancestors on the same land on which we live today. You can easily get the idea that hunting and war were the actually supporting and caused the character of those human beings primarily. However, who defers deeper to history, finds that this is not right that those, also among the Germanic tribes, prospered best of all, on the contrary, those who had developed the principle of fraternity extraordinarily. We find this principle of fraternity above all how in the times before and after the migration of the people's property was regulated. In a great measure, there was a common property of land. A village in which the human beings lived together had a common property, and with the exception of a few things that belonged directly to the domestic use, with the exception of the tools, maybe of a garden, everything was common property. Every now and then, the land was divided again among the inhabitants, and it became apparent that these tribes had become strong because they had extraordinarily maintained fraternity concerning material goods.\nIf we go on some centuries, we find that this principle faces us in an exceptionally fertile way. The principle of fraternity, as it is distinct in the old villages, in the old conditions where the human beings found their freedom in the brotherly living together, expressed itself typically in the fact that one went so far to burn everything that a dead person had possessed. For one did not want to possess anything that the dead had possessed. When the principle was broken because of different conditions, in particular because single human beings had acquired a large estate and the persons in the surrounding area were thereby forced to serfdom and corvée, the principle of fraternity asserted in another, luminous way. Those who were depressed by their lords, the owners, wanted to free themselves from this oppression. Thus, we see in the middle of the Middle Ages a big liberation movement going through entire Europe. This liberation movement was characterised by general fraternity from which a general culture blossomed. We are in the so-called urban civilisation in the middle of the Middle Ages. Those human beings who could not stand the labour work on the manors escaped from their lords and sought for freedom in the enlarged cities.\nPeople came from Scotland, France, and Russia, from everywhere and brought about the free cities. The principle of fraternity thereby developed, and it promoted culture in the extreme. Those who had common activities of the same kind united to associations which one called confraternities and which grew up to the guilds later. These associations were far more than mere unions of artisans or merchants. They developed from the practical life to a moral height. The mutual aid was highly developed with these associations, and many matters, which almost nobody cares about today, were objects of such assistance. Thus, for example, the members of such a confraternity provided assistance supporting each other in cases of illness. Two brothers were determined from day to day who had to keep vigil at the bedside of an ill brother. Sick people were supported with food.\nEven beyond the grave, one thought brotherly, while one regarded it as something particularly honourable to bury a brother suitably. Finally, it also belonged to the honour of the association to supply the widows and orphans. Thus, you see how an understanding of morality arose in the common life how this morality formed on the ground of a consciousness an idea of which the modern human being can hardly conceive. Do not believe that here the present conditions should be rebuked in any way. They have become necessary, as well as it was necessary that the medieval conditions were expressed in their way. We have only to understand that there were also other phases of development than the modern ones.\nEverywhere in the free cities of the Middle Ages, the trade in the market places and the prices were controlled. What did this mean? I want to illustrate it with a concrete example. If products were brought from the surrounding farmland to a market place of a city, one was only allowed to sell them in retail in the first days. Nobody was allowed to buy wholesale or to be an intermediary. At that time, one never thought to regulate the prices by supply and demand. At that time, one was able to adjust both. The authorities of the cities or the guilds had to fix the prices of the goods after one had determined everything that was necessary to their production. Nobody was allowed to exceed the prices. If we look at the labour conditions, we see that a thorough understanding existed of that which a person needed. If we look at the wages of the past taking into account the completely different conditions, we must say to ourselves that we cannot compare the remuneration of a worker of that time with that of a worker of today. The researchers have often interpreted this fact quite wrong.\nAccording to practical points of view, these associations were formed and, hence, they formed gradually according to such practical points of view. Then they spread from one city to the other, because it was a matter of course that those who had a common craft and common interests combined in the various cities and supported each other. Thus, the associations extended from town to town.\nAt that time, humanity was not yet united by police rules, but by practical points of view. Who bothers to study the conditions, which were visible steadily in the towns of Europe at that time, notices very soon that we deal here with a particular phase of the deepening of the fraternity principle. This becomes apparent in particular, if we see which fruit developed from it. We could point to the highest summits, to the enormous artistic achievements of the 12th and 13th centuries. They would not have been possible without this deepening of the fraternity principle. Dante's tremendous work, The Divine Comedy , we understand cultural-historically only if we understand the development of the fraternity principle. Have a look further at that which originated in the cities under the influence of this principle, for example, how art of printing, copperplate engraving, paper preparation, horology, and the later appearing inventions prepared under the free principle of fraternity. What we are used to call bourgeoisie arises from the maintenance of the fraternity principle in the medieval cities. Many things that were produced by the scientific and artistic deepening would not have been possible without maintenance of this fraternity principle. If a cathedral should be built, for example the Cologne Cathedral or any other cathedral, then we see that at first an association, a so-called construction guild formed. A determined cooperation of the members of such a guild came into being that way. One can see — if one has an intuitive look — this fraternity principle expressed even in the architectural style, one can see it expressed everywhere almost in every medieval city, and you find it going northwards to Scotland or to Venice, looking at Russian or Polish cities.\nHowever, we have to emphasise one thing, namely that the fraternity principle originated under the influence of a decidedly material culture and, therefore, everywhere we see the material, the physical in this developing higher culture and in that which remains as a fruit of that time. It had to be maintained once, and to maintain and to organise it properly this fraternity principle was necessary in those days.\nFrom an abstraction, this fraternity principle arose at that time and our life was split by this abstraction, by this rational thinking, so that one does no longer know and understand exactly today how the struggle for existence and the fraternity principle mutually co-operate. On one side, the spiritual life became more and more abstract. Morality and justice, views concerning the political system and the other social conditions were considered under more and more abstract principles, and an abyss separated the struggle for existence more and more from that which the human being feels, actually, as his ideal. In those days, in the middle of the Middle Ages, a harmony existed between that which one felt as his ideal and which one really did. If ever it was shown once that one can be an idealist and practitioner at the same time, it might have been good so in the Middle Ages. In addition, the relation of the Roman law to life was still a harmonious one. However, look at this matter today, and then you see our legal relationships hovering over the moral life. Many people say: we know what is good, right, and proper, but it is not practical. — This comes from the fact that the thinking about the highest principles is separated from life.\nFrom the 16th century on, we see the spiritual life developing more under rational principles. A member of a guild who sat with other twelve lay judges in judgement of any offence that another member of the guild had committed was the brother of that who should be judged. Life combined with life. Everybody knew what the other worked and tried to understand why he deviated from the right way. One looked, as it were, into the brother and wanted to look into him.\nNow a kind of jurisprudence developed that the judge and the lawyer are only interested in the code that both only see a “case” to which they have to apply the law. Consider only how everything that is intended morally is detached from jurisprudence. We saw this condition more and more developing in the last century, while in the Middle Ages under the principle of fraternity something had developed that is inevitable and important to any prosperous progress: expertise and trust which disappear as principles more and more.\nThe judgment of the expert has almost completely withdrawn compared with the abstract jurisprudence, compared with the abstract parliamentarism. Today the ordinary intellect, the majority should be authoritative, not the expertise. The preference of the majority had to come. But just as little as one can vote in mathematics to get a right result — for 3 times 3 is always 9 and 3 times 9 is always 27, it is there also. It would be impossible to carry out the principle of the expert without the principle of fraternity, of brotherly love.\nThe struggle for existence is justified in life. Because the human being is a special being and must go his way through life as a single, he depends on this struggle for existence. In certain respects, the saying by Rückert (Friedrich R., 1788-1866, German poet and translator) also applies here: if the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden. — Unless we make ourselves able to help our fellow men, we are only able to help them badly. Unless we see to it that all our dispositions are trained, we are only less successful to help our brothers. A certain egoism must exist to develop these dispositions, because the initiative is connected with egoism.\nWho knows not to be led who knows not to let any picture of the surroundings work on himself, but knows how to descend in his inside, where the springs of the forces are, becomes a strong and capable human being who is more capable to serve others than someone who complies with all possible influence of his surroundings. It is obvious that this principle, which is necessary for the human being, can be radically elaborated. However, this principle only bears the right fruit if it is paired with the principle of brotherly love.\nJust for this reason, I have instanced the free city guilds of the Middle Ages to show how the practice became so strong just under the principle of the mutual personal, individual aid. Where from did they get their strength? From the fact that they lived fraternally together with their fellow men. It is right to become as strong as possible. However, the question is whether we are generally able to become strong without brotherly love. Someone who soars a real soul knowledge has to deny this question categorically.\nWe see models of cooperation of single beings in a whole in the whole nature. Take only the human body. It exists of independent beings, of millions and millions of single independent living beings or cells. If you look at a part of this human body under the microscope, you find that it is composed of such independent beings. How do they co-operate? How has that become unselfish which should establish a whole in nature? None of our cells asserts its selfhood egotistically. The marvellous tool of thinking, the brain, is likewise formed from millions subtle cells, but they all work on their place harmoniously with the others. What does the cooperation of these little cells cause, what does it cause that a higher being is expressed within these little living beings? It is the human soul, which produces this effect. However, never could the human soul work here on earth unless these millions little beings gave up their selfhood and serve the big, common being which we call the soul. The soul sees with the cells of the eye, thinks with the cells of the brain, and lives with the cells of the blood. There we see what union means. Union means the possibility that a higher being expresses itself by the united constituents. This is a general principle of life.\nFive human beings who are together and think and feel harmoniously, are more than 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, they are not only the sum of five, just as little as our body is the sum of five senses. However, the living together and living in each other of the human beings signifies something quite similar as the living in each other of the cells of the human body. A new, higher being is among the five, already among two or three ones. “For where two or three meet together in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:29). It is not the one, the other and the third, but something quite new originates from the union. However, it originates only if the single human being lives in the other, if the single human being not only gets his strength from himself only, but also from the other. However, this can happen only if he lives unselfishly in the other. Thus, the human unions are the mysterious sites, in which higher spiritual beings delve themselves to work using the single human being, as the soul works using the parts of the body.\nIn our materialistic age, one hardly believes that, but in the spiritual-scientific worldview, it is not only something pictorial, but also something real to the highest degree. Hence, the spiritual scientist does not only speak of abstract things speaking of the folk soul or of the folk spirit, of the family spirit or of the spirit of another community. One cannot see this spirit that works in a union, but it exists because of the brotherly love of the human beings working in this union. As the body has a soul, a guild, a fraternity also has a soul, and I repeat once again, I do not speak of anything figurative but of anything real.\nThe human beings who co-operate in a brotherhood are magicians because they draw higher beings into their circle. One does no longer need to refer to the machinations of spiritism if one co-operates with brotherly love in a community. Higher beings manifest themselves there. If we are merged in the fraternity, we harden and strengthen our organs. If we act or speak then as a member of such a community, the single soul does not act or speak in us, but the spirit of the community. This is the secret of the future human progress to work out of communities. As an epoch replaces the other and any epoch has its own task, it is also with the medieval epoch in relation to ours, with our epoch in relation to the future one.\nThe medieval guilds worked in the immediate practical life, in the basic useful skills. They showed a materialistic life only, after they had received their fruits, after the basis of their consciousness, namely brotherliness, had dwindled more or less, after the abstract state principle, the abstract, spiritual life had replaced real empathy. It is the future task to found brotherhoods again, namely out of the spiritual, out of the highest ideals of the soul. Human life produced the manifold unions up to now; it has caused a terrible struggle for existence, which has almost arrived at its peak today. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to train the highest goods of humanity in the sense of the fraternity principle, and then you see that the spiritual-scientific world movement replaces the struggle for existence with this fraternity principle in all fields. We have to learn to lead a common life. We are not allowed to believe that the one or the other is able to carry out this or that.\nProbably everybody would like to know how to combine the struggle for existence and brotherly love. This is very easy. We have to learn to substitute struggle by positive work, to substitute the struggle, the war by the ideal. Today one does not sufficiently understand what that is. One does not know of which struggle one speaks, because one speaks in life generally only of struggles. There we have the social struggle, the struggle for peace, the struggle for the emancipation of the woman, the struggle for land, et cetera, where we look, we see the struggle.\nThe spiritual-scientific worldview strives for replacing this struggle by positive work. Someone who has settled down in this worldview knows that the struggles lead to a real result in any field of life. Try to apply that which proves to be the right thing in your experience and knowledge to implement in life, to assert it without fighting against the opponent. Of course, it can be only an ideal, but such an ideal must exist, which is to be implemented today as a spiritual-scientific principle in life. Human beings who join human beings and who use their strength for everything are those who deliver the basis of a prosperous development in future. The theosophical society wants to be exemplary even in this respect; therefore, it is no propaganda society like others, but a society of brothers. One works in it by the work of every single member. One has to understand this correctly once. Someone works best who wants to push through not his opinion, but that which he guesses by looking at his co-brothers; who does research in the thoughts and feelings of the fellow men and serves them. Somebody works best of all within this circle who is able not to spare his own opinion in the practical life. If we try to understand this way that our best forces arise from the union and that the union is not only considered as an abstract principle, but also is to be operated above all theosophically with every handle, at every moment of life, then we advance. We must be patient advancing this way.\nWhat does spiritual science show to us? It shows a higher reality, and it is this consciousness of a higher reality that furthers us in the activity of the fraternity principle.\nOne still calls the theosophists impractical idealists. It will not last long, and they will prove to be the most practical people because they envisage the forces of life. Nobody doubts that one injures a person if one throws a stone at his head. However, one does not consider that it is much worse to send a hatred feeling to the human being that injures his soul even more than the stone injures the body. It completely depends on it with which attitude we face the fellow men. However, our strength of a prosperous work in future also depends on it. If we try to live fraternally that way, then we carry out the principle of fraternity practically.\nBeing tolerant means, something else in a spiritual-scientific sense than what one normally understands by it. It means to pay attention also to the freedom of thought of other people. It is boorishness to push another away from his place; it is boorishness if one does the same, however, in thoughts, because nobody regards that as wrong. Indeed, we speak a lot of the appreciation of the other opinion; however, we are not inclined to apply this to ourselves.\nA word almost does not have any significance to us; we hear it and have not heard it, nevertheless. However, we must learn to listen with the soul, we must know how to grasp the most intimate matters with the soul. That always exists in spirit at first, which originates later in the physical life. We must suppress our opinion to hear the other completely, not only the word, but even the emotion, also if in us the emotion should stir that it is wrong which the other says.\nOne is much more strengthened if one is able to listen, as long as the other speaks, than to interrupt him. This gives a completely different mutual understanding. Then you feel, as if the soul of the fellow man warms and illuminates you, if you consider it with absolute tolerance. We should not only grant freedom of the human being, but we should also esteem complete freedom, even the freedom of the other opinion. This is only one example of many. Someone who interrupts the other does — considered from a spiritual worldview — something similar as someone who gives him a kick. If one is able to understand that it is much stronger influencing to interrupt another than to give him a kick, then only one gets around to understanding the fraternity at heart, then it becomes a fact. This is the great thing of the spiritual-scientific movement that it brings us a new confidence, a new conviction of the spiritual forces flowing out from human being to human being. This is the higher principle of spiritual fraternity. Everybody may imagine how remote humanity is from such a principle of spiritual fraternity. Everybody may educate himself — if he finds time — to send thoughts of love and friendship to his dear. The human being regards this normally as something meaningless. But if you are once able to see that the thought is as well a force as the electric wave which goes out from an apparatus and streams to the receiving apparatus, then you also understand the principle of fraternity better, then the common consciousness becomes more distinct bit by bit, then it becomes practical.\nFrom this point of view, we can realise how the spiritual-scientific worldview understands the struggle for existence and the fraternal relationship. We know for sure that quite a few people who are put to this or that place in life simply would perish if they did not do in Rome as the Romans do, if they did not fight this struggle for existence as cruelly as many others. For somebody who thinks materialistically there is almost no escape from this struggle for existence. Indeed, we should do our duty at the place where karma has put us. However, we do the right thing if we understand that we would perform much more if we refrained to see the results, which we want to get, in the immediate present. If you are in the struggle for existence with bleeding soul, have the heart to let flow your thoughts affectionately from soul to soul to anybody whom you hurt in the struggle for existence. As a materialist, you maybe think that you have done nothing. After these discussions, however, you see that this must have its effect later; for we know that nothing is lost which takes action in the spiritual.\nThus, we may wage the struggle for existence with hesitating soul sometimes, with melancholy in the heart and transform it with our cooperation. Working in this struggle for existence in such a way means transforming it in practical respect. This is not possible overnight, but no doubt, we can do it. If we work on our soul in the sense of brotherly love, we benefit humanity mostly because we benefit ourselves. For it is true that our abilities are uprooted as a plant is eradicated from the ground if we remain in selfhood. As little as an eye is still an eye if it is torn out of the head, as little a human soul is still a human soul if it separates from the human society. You will see that we develop our talents, best of all, if we live in brotherly community that we live most intensely if we are rooted in the whole. Of course, we have to wait holding communion with ourselves until that which takes roots in the whole becomes fruit.\nWe must not get lost neither in the outside world, nor in ourselves, for that is true in the highest spiritual sense, which the poet said that we have to be quiet with ourselves if our talents should appear. Nevertheless, these talents are rooted in the world. We can strengthen them and improve our character only if we live in the community. Therefore, it is true in the sense of the principle of real fraternity that brotherliness makes the human being the strongest just in the struggle for existence, and he will find most of his forces in the silence of his heart if he develops his whole personality, his whole individuality together with the other human brothers. It is true: a talent forms in the silence —, however, it is also true: a character and with it the whole human being and the whole humanity form in the perpetual current of the world."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-9",
+    "title": "Inner Development",
+    "date": "7 Dec 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/EsoDevel/19051207p01.html",
+    "book_title": "Esoteric Development",
+    "content": "Translated by Gertrude Teutsch\nThe concepts concerning the super-sensible world and its relationship with the world of the senses have been discussed here in a long series of lectures. It is only natural that, again and again, the question should arise, “What is the origin of knowledge concerning the super-sensible world?” With this question or, in other words, with the question of the inner development of man, we wish to occupy ourselves today.\nThe phrase “inner development of man” here refers to the ascent of the human being to capacities which must be acquired if he wishes to make super-sensible insights his own. Now do not misunderstand the intent of this lecture. This lecture will by no means postulate rules or laws concerning general human morality, nor will it challenge the general religion of the age. I must stress this because when occultism is discussed the misunderstanding often arises that some sort of general demands or fundamental moral laws, valid without variation, are being established. This is not the case. This point requires particular clarification in our age of standardization, when differences between human beings are not at all acknowledged. Neither should today's lecture be mistaken for a lecture concerning the general fundamentals of the anthroposophic movement. Occultism is not the same as anthroposophy. The Anthroposophical Society is not alone in cultivating occultism, nor is this its only task. It could even be possible for a person to join the Anthroposophical Society and to avoid occultism altogether.\nAmong the inquiries which are pursued within the Anthroposophical Society, in addition to the field of general ethics, is also this field of occultism, which includes those laws of existence which are hidden from the usual sense observation in everyday human experience. By no means, however, are these laws unrelated to everyday experience. “Occult” means “hidden,” or “mysterious.” But it must be stressed over and over that occultism is a matter in which certain preconditions are truly necessary. Just as higher mathematics would be incomprehensible to the simple peasant who had never before encountered it, so is occultism incomprehensible to many people today. Occultism ceases to be “occult,” however, when one has mastered it. In this way, I have strictly defined the boundaries of today's lecture. Therefore, no one can object — this must be stressed in the light of the most manifold endeavors and of the experience of millennia — that the demands of occultism cannot be fulfilled, and that they contradict the general culture. No one is expected to fulfill these demands. But if someone requests that he be given convictions provided by occultism and yet refuses to occupy himself with it, he is like a schoolboy who wishes to create electricity in a glass rod, yet refuses to rub it. Without friction, it will not become charged. This is similar to the objection raised against the practice of occultism.\nNo one is exhorted to become an occultist; one must come to occultism of one's own volition. Whoever says that we do not need occultism will not need to occupy himself with it. At this time, occultism does not appeal to mankind in general. In fact, it is extremely difficult in the present culture to submit to those rules of conduct which will open the spiritual world.\nTwo prerequisites are totally lacking in our culture. One is isolation, what spiritual science calls “higher human solitude.” The other is overcoming the egotism which, though largely unconscious, has become a dominant characteristic of our time.\nThe absence of these two prerequisites renders the path of inner development simply unattainable. Isolation, or spiritual solitude, is very difficult to achieve because life conditions tend to distract and disperse, in brief to demand sense-involvement in the external. There has been no previous culture in which people have lived with such an involvement in the external. I beg you not to take what I am saying as criticism, but simply as an objective characterization.\nOf course, he who speaks as I do knows that this situation cannot be different, and that it forms the basis for the greatest advantages and greatest achievements of our time. But this is the reason that our time is so devoid of super-sensible insight and that our culture is so devoid of super-sensible influence. In other cultures — and they do exist — the human being is in a position to cultivate the inner life more and to withdraw from the influences of external life. Such cultures offer a soil where inner life in the higher sense can thrive. In the Oriental culture there exists what is called Yoga. Those who live according to the rules of this teaching are called yogis. A yogi is one who strives for higher spiritual knowledge, but only after he has sought for himself a master of the super-sensible. No one is able to proceed without the guidance of a master, or guru. When the yogi has found such a guru, he must spend a considerable part of the day, regularly, not irregularly, living totally within his soul. All the forces that the yogi needs to develop are already within his soul. They exist there as truly as electricity exists in the glass rod before it is brought forth through friction. In order to call forth the forces of the soul, methods of spiritual science must be used which are the results of observations made over millennia. This is very difficult in our time, which demands a certain splintering of each individual struggling for existence. One cannot arrive at a total inward composure; one cannot even arrive at the concept of such composure. People are not sufficiently aware of the deep solitude the yogi must seek. One must repeat the same matter rhythmically with immense regularity, if only for a brief time each day, in total separation from all usual concerns. It is indispensable that all life usually surrounding the yogi cease to exist and that his senses become unreceptive to all impressions of the world around him. He must be able to make himself deaf and dumb to his surroundings during the time which he prescribes for himself. He must be able to concentrate to such a degree — and he must acquire practice in this concentration — that a cannon could be fired next to him without disturbing his attention to his inner life. He must also become free of all memory impressions, particularly those of everyday life.\nJust think how exceedingly difficult it is to bring about these conditions in our culture, how even the concept of such isolation is lacking. This spiritual solitude must be reached in such a way that the harmony, the total equilibrium with the surrounding world, is never lost. But this harmony can be lost exceedingly easily during such deep immersion in one's inner life. Whoever goes more and more deeply inward must at the same time be able to establish harmony with the external world all the more clearly.\nNo hint of estrangement, of distancing from external practical life, may arise in him lest he stray from the right course. To a degree, then, it might be impossible to distinguish his higher life from insanity. It truly is a kind of insanity when the inner life loses its proper relationship to the outer. Just imagine, for example, that you were knowledgeable concerning our conditions on earth and that you had all the experience and wisdom which may be gathered here. You fall asleep in the evening, and in the morning you do not wake up on Earth but on Mars. The conditions on Mars are totally different from those on Earth; the knowledge that you have gathered on Earth is of no use to you whatsoever. There is no longer harmony between life within you and external life. You probably would find yourself in a Martian insane asylum within an hour. A similar situation might easily arise if the development of the internal life severs one's connection with the external world. One must take strict care that this does not happen. These are great difficulties in our culture.\nEgotism in relation to inward soul properties is the first obstacle. Present humanity usually takes no account of this. This egotism is closely connected with the spiritual development of man. An important prerequisite for spiritual development is not to seek it out of egotism. Whoever is motivated by egotism cannot get very far. But egotism in our time reaches deep into the innermost soul. Again and again the objection is heard, “What use are all the teachings of occultism, if I cannot experience them myself?” Whoever starts from this presumption and cannot change has little chance of arriving at higher development. One aspect of higher development is a most intimate awareness of human community, so that it is immaterial whether it is I or someone else having the experience. Hence I must meet one who has a higher development than I with unlimited love and trust. First, I must acquire this consciousness, the consciousness of infinite trust toward my fellow man when he says that he has experienced one thing or the other. Such trust is a precondition for working together. Wherever occult capacities are strongly brought into play, there exists unlimited trust; there exists the awareness that a human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The first basis, therefore, is trust and faith, because we do not seek the higher self only in ourselves but also in our fellow men. Everyone living around one exists in undivided unity in the inner kernel of one's being.\nOn the basis of my lower self I am separated from other humans. But as far as my higher self is concerned — and that alone can ascend to the spiritual world — I am no longer separated from my fellow men; I am united with my fellow men; the one speaking to me out of higher truths is actually my own self. I must get away completely from the notion of difference between him and me. I must overcome totally the feeling that he has an advantage over me. Try to live your way into this feeling until it penetrates the most intimate fiber of your soul and causes every vestige of egotism to disappear. Do this so that the one further along the path than you truly stands before you like your own self; then you have attained one of the prerequisites for awakening higher spiritual life.\nIn situations where one receives guidance for the occult life, sometimes quite erroneously and confusedly, one may often hear that the higher self lives in the human being, that he need only allow his inner man to speak and the highest truth will thereby become manifest. Nothing is more correct and, at the same time, less productive than this assertion. Just try to let your inner self speak, and you will see that, as a rule, no matter how much you fancy that your higher self is making an appearance, it is the lower self that speaks. The higher self is not found within us for the time being. We must seek it outside of ourselves. We can learn a good deal from the person who is further along than we are, since there the higher self is visible. One's higher self can gain nothing from one's own egotistic “I.” There where he now stands who is further along than I am, there will I stand sometime in the future. I am truly constituted to carry within myself the seed for what he already is. But the paths to Olympus must first be illuminated before one can follow them.\nA feeling which may seem unbelievable is the fundamental condition for all occult development. It is mentioned in the various religions, and every practical occultist with experience will confirm it. The Christian religion describes it with the well-known sentence, , which an occultist must understand completely, “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This sentence can be understood only by he who has learned to revere in the highest sense. Suppose that in your earliest youth you had heard about a venerable person, an individual of whom you held the highest opinion, and now you are offered the opportunity to meet this person. A sense of awe prevails in you when the moment approaches that you will see this person for the first time. There, standing at the gateway of this personality, you might feel hesitant to touch the door handle and open it. When you look up in this way to such a venerable personality, then you have begun to grasp the feeling that Christianity intends by the statement that one should become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Whether or not the subject of this veneration is truly worthy of it is not really important. What matters is the capacity to look up to something with a veneration that comes from the innermost heart.\nThis feeling of veneration is the elevating force, raising us to higher spheres of super-sensible life. Everyone seeking the higher life must write into his soul with golden letters this law of the occult world. Development must start from this basic soul-mood; without this feeling, nothing can be achieved. Next, a person seeking inner development must understand clearly that he is doing something of immense importance to the human being. What he seeks is no more nor less than a new birth, and that needs to be taken in a literal sense. The higher soul of man is to be born. Just as man in his first birth was born out of the deep inner foundations of existence, and as he emerged into the light of the sun, so does he who seeks inner development step forth from the physical light of the sun into a higher spiritual light. Something is being born in him which rests as deeply in most human beings as the unborn child rests in the mother.\nWithout being aware of the full significance of this fact, one cannot understand what occult development means. The higher soul, resting deep within human nature and interwoven with it, is brought forth. As man stands before us in everyday life, his higher and lower natures are intermingled, and that is fortunate for everyday life. Many persons among us would exhibit evil, negative qualities except that there lives along with the lower nature a higher one which exerts a balancing influence. This intermingling can be compared with mixing a yellow with a blue liquid in a glass. The result is a green liquid in which blue and yellow can no longer be distinguished. So also is the lower nature in man mingled with the higher, and the two cannot be distinguished. Just as you might extract the blue liquid from the green by a chemical process, so that only the yellow remains and the unified green is separated into a complete duality, so the lower and higher natures separate in occult development. One draws the lower nature out of the body like a sword from the scabbard, which then remains alone. The lower nature comes forth appearing almost gruesome. When it was still mingled with the higher nature, nothing was noticeable. But once separated, all evil, negative properties come into view. People who previously appeared benevolent often become argumentative and jealous. This characteristic had existed earlier in the lower nature, but was guided by the higher. You can observe this in many who have been guided along an abnormal path. A person may readily become a liar when he is introduced into the spiritual world, because the capacity to distinguish between the true and the false is lost especially easily. Therefore, strictest training of the personal character is a necessary parallel to occult training. What history tells us about the saints and their temptations is not legend but literal truth.\nHe who wants to develop towards the higher world on any path is readily prone to such temptations unless he can subdue everything that meets him with a powerful strength of character and the highest morality. Not only do lust and passions grow — that is not even the case so much — but opportunities also increase. This seems miraculous. As through a miracle, the person ascending into the higher worlds finds previously hidden opportunities for evil lurking around him. In every aspect of life a demon lies in wait for him, ready to lead him astray. He now sees what he has not seen before. As through a spell, the division within his own being charms forth such opportunities from the hidden areas of life. Therefore, a very determined shaping of the character is an indispensable foundation for the so-called white magic, the school of occult development which leads man into the higher worlds in a good, true, and genuine way. Every practical occultist will tell you that no one should dare to step through the narrow portal, as the entrance to occult development is called, without practicing these properties again and again. They build the necessary foundation for occult life.\nFirst man must develop the ability to distinguish in every situation throughout his life what is unimportant from what is important, that is, what is perishable from the imperishable. This requirement is easy to indicate but difficult to carry out. As Goethe says, it is easy, but what is easy is hard. Look, for instance, at a plant or an object. You will learn to understand that everything has an important and an unimportant side, and that man usually takes interest in the unimportant, in the relationship of the matter to himself, or in some other subordinate aspect. He who wishes to become an occultist must gradually develop the habit of seeing and seeking in each thing its essence. For instance, when he sees a clock he must have an interest in its laws. He must be able to take it apart into its smallest detail and to develop a feeling for the laws of the clock. A mineralogist will arrive at considerable knowledge about a quartz-crystal simply by looking at it. The occultist, however, must be able to take the stone in his hand and to feel in a living way something akin to the following monologue: “In a certain sense you, the crystal, are beneath humanity, but in a certain sense you are far above humanity. You are beneath humanity because you cannot make for yourself a picture of man by means of concepts, and because you do not feel. You cannot explain or think, you do not live, but you have an advantage over mankind. You are pure within yourself, have no desire, no wishes, no lust. Every human, every living being has wishes, desires, lusts. You do not have them. You are complete and without wishes, satisfied with what has come to you, an example for man, with which he will have to unite his other qualities.”\nIf the occultist can feel this in all its depth, then he has grasped what the stone can tell him. In this way man can draw out of everything something full of meaning. When this has become a habit for him, when he separates the important from the unimportant, he has acquired another feeling essential to the occultist. Then he must connect his own life with that which is important. In this people err particularly easily in our time. They believe that their place in life is not proper for them. How often people are inclined to say, “My lot has put me in the wrong place. I am,” let us say, “a postal clerk. If I were put in a different place, I could give people high ideas, great teaching,” and so on. The mistake which these people make is that they do not enter into the significant aspect of their occupation. If you see in me something of importance because I can talk to the people here, then you do not see the importance of your own life and work. If the mail-carriers did not carry the mail, the whole postal traffic would stop, and much work already achieved by others would be in vain.\nHence everyone in his place is of exceeding importance for the whole, and none is higher than the other. Christ has attempted to demonstrate this most beautifully in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, with the words, “The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.” These words were spoken after the Master had washed the feet of the Apostles. He wanted to say, “What would I be without my Apostles? They must be there so that I can be there in the world, and I must pay them tribute by lowering myself before them and washing their feet.” This is one of the most significant allusions to the feeling that the occultist must have for what is important. What is important in the inward sense must not be confused with the externally important. This must be strictly observed.\nIn addition, we must develop a series of qualities. 1 For another description of these exercises, see Occult Science, an Outline (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1972) Chapter 5, p. 283. To begin with, we must become masters over our thoughts, and particularly our train of thought. This is called control of thoughts . Just think how thoughts whirl about in the soul of man, how they flit about like will-o'-the wisps. Here one impression arises, there another, and each one changes one's thoughts. It is not true that we govern our thoughts; rather our thoughts govern us totally. We must advance to the ability of steeping ourselves in one specific thought at a certain time of the day and not allow any other thought to enter and disturb our soul. In this way we ourselves hold the reins of thought life for a time.\nThe second quality is to find a similar relationship to our actions, that is, to exercise control over our actions . Here it is necessary to undertake actions, at least occasionally, which are not initiated by anything external. That which is initiated by our station in life, our profession, or our situation does not lead us more deeply into higher life. Higher life depends on personal matters, such as resolving to do something springing totally from one's own initiative even if it is an absolutely insignificant matter. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.\nThe third quality to be striven for is even-temperedness . People fluctuate back and forth between joy and sorrow. One moment they are beside themselves with joy, the next they are unbearably sad. Thus, people allow themselves to be rocked on the waves of life, on joy or sorrow. But they must reach equanimity and steadiness. Neither the greatest sorrow nor the greatest joy must unsettle their composure. They must become steadfast and even-tempered.\nFourth is the understanding for every being . Nothing expresses more beautifully what it means to understand every being than the legend which is handed down to us, not by the Gospel, but by a Persian story. Jesus was walking across a field with his disciples, and on the way they found a decaying dog. The animal looked horrible. Jesus stopped and cast an admiring look upon it, saying, “What beautiful teeth the animal has!” Jesus found within the ugly the one beautiful aspect. Strive at all times to approach what is wonderful in every object of outer reality, and you will see that everything contains an aspect that can be affirmed. Do as Christ did when he admired the beautiful teeth on the dead dog. This course will lead you to the great ability to tolerate, and to an understanding of every thing and of every being.\nThe fifth quality is complete openness towards everything new that meets us. Most people judge new things which meet them by the old which they already know. If anyone comes to tell them something new, they immediately respond with an opposing opinion. But we must not confront a new communication immediately with our own opinion. We must rather be on the alert for possibilities of learning something new. And learn we can, even from a small child. Even if one were the wisest person, one must be willing to hold back one's own judgment, and to listen to others. We must develop this ability to listen, for it will enable us to meet matters with the greatest possible openness. In occultism, this is called faith. It is the power not to weaken through opposition the impression made by the new.\nThe sixth quality is that which everyone receives once he has developed the first five. It is inner harmony . The person who has the other qualities also has inner harmony. In addition, it is necessary for a person seeking occult development to develop his feeling for freedom to the highest degree. That feeling for freedom enables him to seek within himself the center of his own being, to stand on his own two feet, so that he will not have to ask everyone what he should do and so that he can stand upright and act freely. This also is a quality which one needs to acquire.\nIf man has developed these qualities within himself, then he stands above all the dangers arising from the division within his nature. Then the properties of his lower nature can no longer affect him; he can no longer stray from the path. Therefore, these qualities must be formed with the greatest precision. Then comes the occult life, whose expression depends on a steady rhythm being carried into life.\nThe phrase “carrying rhythm into life” expresses the unfolding of this faculty. If you observe nature, you will find in it a certain rhythm. You will, of course, expect that the violet blooms every year at the same time in spring, that the crops in the field and the grapes on the vine will ripen at the same time each year. This rhythmical sequence of phenomena exists everywhere in nature. Everywhere there is rhythm, everywhere repetition in regular sequence. As you ascend from the plant to beings with higher development, you see the rhythmic sequence decreasing. Yet even in the higher stages of animal development one sees how all functions are ordered rhythmically. At a certain time of the year, animals acquire certain functions and capabilities. The higher a being evolves, the more life is given over into the hands of the being itself, and the more these rhythms cease. You must know that the human body is only one member of man's being. There is also the etheric body, then the astral body, and, finally, the higher members which form the basis for the others.\nThe physical body is highly subject to the same rhythm that governs outer nature. Just as plant and animal life, in its external form, takes its course rhythmically, so does the life of the physical body. The heart beats rhythmically, the lungs breathe rhythmically, and so forth. All this proceeds so rhythmically because it is set in order by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, particularly the astral body, have been, I would like to say, abandoned by these higher spiritual forces, and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity relating to wishes, desires, and passions is irregular, that it can in no way compare with the regularity ruling the physical body? He who learns to know the rhythm inherent in physical nature increasingly finds in it an example for spirituality. If you consider the heart, this wonderful organ with the regular beat and innate wisdom, and you compare it with the desires and passions of the astral body which unleash all sorts of actions against the heart, you will recognize how its regular course is influenced detrimentally by passion. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as those of the physical body.\nI want to mention something here which will seem grotesque to most people. This is the matter of fasting. Awareness of the significance of fasting has been totally lost. Fasting is enormously significant, however, for creating rhythm in our astral body. What does it mean to fast? It means to restrain the desire to eat and to block the astral body in relation to this desire. He who fasts blocks the astral body and develops no desire to eat. This is like blocking a force in a machine. The astral body becomes inactive then, and the whole rhythm of the physical body with its innate wisdom works upward into the astral body to rhythmicize it. Like the imprint of a seal, the harmony of the physical body impresses itself upon the astral body. It would transfer much more permanently if the astral body were not continuously being made irregular by desires, passions, and wishes, including spiritual desires and wishes.\nIt is more necessary for the man of today to carry rhythm into all spheres of higher life than it was in earlier times. Just as rhythm is implanted in the physical body by God, so man must make his astral body rhythmical. Man must order his day for himself. He must arrange it for his astral body as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. In the morning, at a definite time, one must undertake one spiritual action; a different one must be undertaken at another time, again to be adhered to regularly, and yet another one in the evening. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable for the development of the higher life. This is one method for taking life in hand and for keeping it in hand. So set a time for yourself in the morning when you concentrate. You must adhere to this hour. You must establish a kind of calm so that the occult master in you may awaken. You must meditate about a great thought content that has nothing to do with the external world, and let this thought content come to life completely. A short time is enough, perhaps a quarter of an hour. Even five minutes are sufficient if more time is not available. But it is worthless to do these exercises irregularly. Do them regularly so that the activity of the astral body becomes as regular as a clock. Only then do they have value. The astral body will appear completely different if you do these exercises regularly. Sit down in the morning and do these exercises, and the forces I described will develop. But, as I said, it must be done regularly, for the astral body expects that the same process will take place at the same time each day, and it falls into disorder if this does not happen. At least the intent towards order must exist. If you rhythmicize your life in this manner, you will see success in not too long a time; that is, the spiritual life hidden from man for the time being will become manifest to a certain degree.\nAs a rule, human life alternates among four states. The first state is the perception of the external world. You look around with your senses and perceive the external world. The second is what we may call imagination or the life of mental images which is related to, or even part of, dream life. There man does not have his roots in his surroundings, but is separated from them. There he has no realities within himself, but at the most reminiscences. The third state is dreamless sleep, in which man has no consciousness of his ego at all. In the fourth state he lives in memory. This is different from perception. It is already something remote, spiritual. If man had no memory, he could uphold no spiritual development.\nThe inner life begins to develop by means of inner contemplation and meditation. Thus, the human being sooner or later perceives that he no longer dreams in a chaotic manner; he begins to dream in the most significant way, and remarkable things reveal themselves in his dreams, which he gradually begins to recognize as manifestations of spiritual beings. Naturally the trivial objection might easily be raised that this is nothing but a dream and therefore of no consequence. However, should someone discover the dirigible in his dream and then proceed to build it, the dream would simply have shown the truth. Thus an idea can be grasped in an other-than-usual manner. Its truthfulness must then be judged by the fact that it can be realized. We must become convinced of its inner truth from outside.\nThe next step in spiritual life is to comprehend truth by means of our own qualities and of guiding our dreams consciously. When we begin to guide our dreams in a regular manner, then we are at the stage where truth becomes transparent for us. The first stage is called “material cognition.” For this, the object must lie before us. The next stage is “imaginative cognition.” It is developed through meditation, that is through shaping life rhythmically. Achieving this is laborious. But once it is achieved, the time arrives when there is no longer a difference between perception in the usual life and perception in the super-sensible. When we are among the things of our usual life, that is, in the sense world, and we change our spiritual state, then we experience continuously the spiritual, the super-sensible world, but only if we have sufficiently trained ourselves. This happens as soon as we are able to be deaf and dumb to the sense world, to remember nothing of the everyday world, and still to retain a spiritual life within us. Then our dream-life begins to take on a conscious form. If we are able to pour some of this into our everyday life, then the next capacity arises, rendering the soul-qualities of the beings around us perceptible. Then we see not only the external aspect of things, but also the inner, hidden essential kernel of things, of plants, of animals, and of man. I know that most people will say that these are actually different things. True, these are always different things from those a person sees who does not have such senses. The third stage is that in which a consciousness, which is as a rule completely empty, begins to be enlivened by continuity of consciousness. The continuity appears on its own. The person is then no longer unconscious during sleep. During the time in which he used to sleep, he now experiences the spiritual world.\nOf what does sleep usually consist? The physical body lies in bed, and the astral body lives in the super-sensible world. In this super-sensible world, you are taking a walk. As a rule, a person with the type of disposition which is typical today cannot withdraw very far from his body. If one applies the rules of spiritual science, organs can be developed in the astral body as it wanders during sleep — just as the physical body has organs — which allow one to become conscious during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes or ears, and the astral body walking at night is blind and deaf for the same reason, because it does not yet have eyes and ears. But these organs are developed through meditation which provides the means for training these organs. This meditation must then be guided in a regular way. It is being led so that the human body is the mother and the spirit of man is the father. The physical human body, as we see it before us, is a mystery in every one of its parts and, in fact, each member is related in a definite but mysterious way to a part of the astral body. These are matters which the occultist knows. For instance, the point in the physical body lying between the eyebrows belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. When the occultist indicates how one must direct thoughts, feelings, and sensations to this point between the eyebrows through connecting something formed in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body, the result will be a certain sensation in the astral body. But this must be practiced regularly, and one must know how to do it. Then the astral body begins to form its members. From a lump, it grows to be an organism in which organs are formed. I have described the astral sense organs in the periodical, Lucifer Gnosis. They are also called Lotus flowers. By means of special word sequences, these Lotus flowers are cultivated. Once this has occurred, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world he enters when passing through the portal of death, a final contradiction to Hamlet's “The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”\nSo it is possible to go, or rather to slip, from the sense world into the super-sensible world and to live there as well as here. That does not mean life in never-never land, but life in a realm that clarifies and explains life in our realm. Just as the usual person who has not studied electricity would not understand all the wonderful workings in a factory powered by electricity, so the average person does not understand the occurrences in the spiritual world. The visitor at the factory will lack understanding as long as he remains ignorant of the laws of electricity. So also will man lack understanding in the realm of the spirit as long as he does not know the laws of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that is not dependent on the spiritual world at every moment. Everything surrounding us is the external expression of the spiritual world. There is no materiality. Everything material is condensed spirit. For the person looking into the spiritual world, the whole material, sense-perceptible world, the world in general, becomes spiritualized. As ice melts into water through the effect of the sun, so everything sense-perceptible melts into something spiritual within the soul which looks into the spiritual world. Thus, the fundament of the world gradually manifests before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.\nThe life that man learns to know in this manner is actually the spiritual life he carries within himself all along. But he knows nothing of it because he does not know himself before developing organs for the higher world. Imagine possessing the characteristics you have at this time, yet being without sense-organs. You would know nothing of the world around you, would have no understanding of the physical body, and yet you would belong to the physical world. So the soul of man belongs to the spiritual world, but does not know it because it does not hear or see. Just as our body is drawn out of the forces and materials of the physical world, so is our soul drawn out of the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognize ourselves within ourselves, but only within our surroundings. As we cannot perceive a heart or a brain — even by means of X-ray — without seeing it in other people through our sense organs (it is only the eyes that can see the heart), so we truly cannot see or hear our own soul without perceiving it with spiritual organs in the surrounding world. You can recognize yourself only by means of your surroundings. In truth there exists no inner knowledge, no self-examination; there is only one knowledge, one revelation of the life around us through the organs of the physical as well as the spiritual. We are a part of the worlds around us, of the physical, the soul, and the spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical if we have physical organs, from the spiritual world and from all souls if we have spiritual and soul organs. There is no knowledge but knowledge of the world.\nIt is vain and empty idleness for man to “brood” within himself, believing that it is possible to progress simply by looking into himself. Man will find the God in himself if he awakens the divine organs within himself and finds his higher divine self in his surroundings, just as he finds his lower self solely by means of using his eyes and ears. We perceive ourselves clearly as physical beings by means of intercourse with the sense world, and we perceive ourselves clearly in relation to the spiritual world by developing spiritual senses. Development of the inner man means opening oneself to the divine life around us.\nNow you will understand that it is essential that he who ascends to the higher world undergoes, to begin with, an immense strengthening of his character. Man can experience on his own the characteristics of the sense world because his senses are already opened. This is possible because a benevolent divine spirit, who has seen and heard in the physical world, stood by man in the most ancient times, before man could see and hear, and opened man's eyes and ears. It is from just such beings that man must learn at this time to see spiritually, from beings already able to do what he still has to learn. We must have a guru who can tell us how we should develop our organs, who will tell us what he has done in order to develop these organs. He who wishes to guide must have acquired one fundamental quality. This is unconditional truthfulness. This same quality is also a main requirement for the student. No one may train to become an occultist unless this fundamental quality of unconditional truthfulness has been previously cultivated.\nWhen facing sense experience, one can test what is being said. When I tell you something about the spiritual world, however, you must have trust because you are not far enough to be able to confirm the information. He who wishes to be a guru must have become so truthful that it is impossible for him to take lightly such statements concerning the spiritual world or the spiritual life. The sense world corrects errors immediately by its own nature, but in the spiritual world we must have these guidelines within ourselves. We must be strictly trained, so that we are not forced to use the outer world for controls, but only our inner self. We are only able to gain this control by acquiring already in this world the strictest truthfulness. Therefore, when the Anthroposophical Society began to present some of the basic teachings of occultism to the world, it had to adopt the principle: there is no law higher than truth. Very few people understand this principle. Most are satisfied if they can say they have the conviction that something is true, and then if it is wrong, they will simply say that they were mistaken. The occultist cannot rely on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always be in consonance with the facts of the external world, and any experience that contradicts these facts must be seen as an error or a mistake. The question of who is at fault for the error ceases to be important to the occultist. He must be in absolute harmony with the facts in life. He must begin to feel responsible in the strictest sense for every one of his assertions. Thus he trains himself in the unconditional certainty that he must have for himself and for others if he wishes to be a spiritual guide.\nSo you see that I needed to indicate to you today a series of qualities and methods. We will have to speak about these again in order to add the higher concepts. It may seem to you that these things are too intimate to discuss with others, that each soul has to come to grips with them on its own terms, and that they are possibly unsuitable for reaching the great destination which should be reached, namely the entrance into the spiritual world. This entrance will definitely be achieved by those who tread the path I have characterized.\nWhen? One of the most outstanding participants in the theosophical movement, Subba Row, who died some time ago, has spoken fittingly about this. Replying to the question of how long it would take, he said, “Seven years, perhaps also seven times seven years, perhaps even seven incarnations, perhaps only seven hours.” It all depends on what the human being brings with himself into life. We may meet a person who seems to be very stupid, but who has brought with himself a concealed higher life that needs only to be brought out. Most human beings these days are much further than it seems, and more people would know about this if the materialism of our conditions and of our time would not drive them back into the inner life of the soul. A large percentage of today's human beings was previously much further advanced. Whether that which is within them will come forth depends on many factors. But it is possible to give some help. Suppose you have before you a person who was highly developed in his earlier incarnation, but now has an undeveloped brain. An undeveloped brain may at times conceal great spiritual faculties. But if he can be taught the usual everyday abilities, it may happen that the inner spirituality also comes forth.\nAnother important factor is the environment in which a person lives. The human being is a mirror-image of his surroundings in a most significant way. Suppose that a person is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings that awaken and develop certain prejudices with such a strong effect that the higher talents cannot come forth. Unless such a person finds someone who can draw out these abilities, they will remain hidden.\nI have been able to give only a few indications to you about this matter. After Christmas, however, we will speak again about further and deeper things. I especially wanted to awaken in you this one understanding, that the higher life is not schooled in a tumultuous way, but rather quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakens and enters into the higher life actually arrives like the thief in the night. The development towards the higher life leads man into a new world, and when he has entered this new world, then he sees the other side of existence, so to speak; then what has previously been hidden for him reveals itself. Maybe not everyone can do this; maybe only a few can do it, one might say to oneself. But that must not keep one from at least starting on the way that is open to everyone, namely to hear about the higher worlds. The human being is called to live in community, and he who secludes himself cannot arrive at a spiritual life. But it is a seclusion in a stronger sense if he says, “I do not believe this, this does not relate to me; this may be valid for the after-life.” For the occultist this has no validity. It is an important principle for the occultist to consider other human beings as true manifestations of his own higher self, because he knows then that he must find the others in himself. There is a delicate distinction between these two sentences: “To find the others in oneself,” and “To find oneself in the others.” In the higher sense it means, “This is you.” And in the highest sense it means to recognize oneself in the world and to understand that saying of the poet which I cited some weeks ago in a different connection: “One was successful. He lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. But what did he see? Miracle of miracles! He saw himself.” To find oneself — not in egotistical inwardness, but selflessly in the world without — that is true recognition of the self."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-10",
+    "title": "The Christmas Festival as a Symbol of the Sun Victory",
+    "date": "14 Dec 1905",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/SignSymbols/19051214p01.html",
+    "book_title": "Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival",
+    "content": "Just think how few people today are able to awaken in their souls a clearly pertinent understanding of all the preparations now being made everywhere for Christmas. Clear ideas about this festival are scarce, and most of them correspond only in small degree with the intentions of those who in the past established the great festivals as symbols of the Infinite and Imperishable in the world. The preparations being made for Christmas that are published in our newspapers convince us of this. There is hardly anything more hopeless and alien to a true understanding of Christmas than the material being published today.\nNow let us summarize in our souls the whole range of spiritual science that has been offered in various lectures this autumn. Let us not make it the pedantic summary of a schoolmaster, however, but one that will arise in our hearts when, from the standpoint of spiritual science, we connect it with a Christmas festival imbued with a spiritual-scientific concept of life that is not gray theory or an outer confession and philosophy, but life itself pulsing through us. Modern man, more than he thinks, confronts nature as a stranger — certainly more so now than in the time of Goethe. Who today can still experience the great depths of the words spoken by Goethe at the beginning of the Weimar period of his life? At that time he addressed a hymn or prayer to nature with its mysterious forces:\n“Nature! By her we are encompassed and enfolded, unable to withdraw from her, nor yet to penetrate her deeper. Unbid and unforewarned, into the gyrations of her dance she lifts us, whirling and swirling us onward, until exhausted from her arms we fall.\n“Unceasingly she generates new forms; what exists was never here before, what was does not return — all is new yet always the old.\n“We live in the midst of her and are strangers to her. She speaks with us unceasingly and does not divulge her secret to us. We affect her constantly and yet have no power over her.\n“She seems to aim in everything toward individuality, and does not trouble about individuals. Now she builds and now destroys, and her workshop is inaccessible.\n“She lives in countless children, and the mother, where is she? She is the only artist: from the simplest substance to the greatest contrasts, without seeming exertion to the greatest perfection, the most exact acuteness, always clothed with gentleness. Each of her works has its own being, each of her phenomena the most isolated concept, and yet all is one. She acts a show: whether she sees it herself we do not know, and yet she plays for us who are standing in the corner.\n“An eternal living, growing and moving is in her, and yet she does not advance. She is forever changing and in her, nothing for a moment still. She has not concept of rest and has attached her curse to stagnation. She is firm. Her tread is measured, rare her exceptions, her laws immutable ...”\nWe are all children of nature and when we believe we are not acting in the least according to its laws, we are acting perhaps all the more in accordance with the great law flowing through it and streaming into us. Who can feel deeply today these other significant words of Goethe in which he tries to express how man can penetrate with his feelings into the hidden forces common to himself and nature? Here Goethe addresses nature not as a lifeless being, as modern materialistic thought would have it, but as a living spirit:\nSpirit sublime, thou gav'st me all, gav'st me all For which I prayed. Thou has not turned in vain Thy countenance to me in fire and flame. Thou gav'st me glorious nature as a royal realm, The power to feel and to enjoy her. Not Amazed, cold visits only thou allow'st; Thou grantest me to look in her deep breast Even as in the bosom of a friend. Thou leadest past a series of the living Before me, teaching me to know my brothers In silent covert and in air and water. And when the storm roars screeching through the forest, When giant fir-tree plunges, sweeping down And crushing neighboring branches, neighboring trunks, And at its fall the hills, dull, hollow, thunder: Then leadest thou me to the cavern safe, Show'st me myself, and my own heart becomes Aware of deep mysterious miracles. 1 From Goethe's Faust , translated and edited by George Madison Priest; copyright by, and reprinted here with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.\nHere is expressed the mood through which Goethe, out of his feeling for nature, endeavored to enliven what flowed out of feeling allied with knowledge. This is the mood of a time when wisdom was in league with nature and there were created those signs of feeling united with nature and the universe, which we in spiritual science recognize in the great festivals. Now they have become abstractions, and the soul and heart meet them almost with indifference. In many instances today, the word, which we can dispute or swear by, means more than what it originally represented. What has become an external, literal word was really intended to be the representative, the herald, the symbol of the great creative Word that lives in nature and the whole universe and that can again arise in us if we truly know ourselves. The intention, when the great festivals were established on the occasions provided throughout the course of nature, was to make men conscious of this Word. Let us use the knowledge acquired in the course of our spiritual-scientific lectures to understand what the ancient sages expressed in the Christmas festival.\nThe festival held at Christmas time is not only a Christian event. It has existed wherever religious feeling was expressed. If you direct your gaze back thousands of years before our era to ancient Egypt, Asia or other regions, you find a festival being celebrated at the same time of year that Christianity recognizes the birth of Christ.\nWhat was the nature of this primeval festival that was celebrated all over the earth at this time of year? In answering this question, we shall restrict our considerations today to those marvelous fire festivals that were celebrated in ancient times in regions of Europe, Scandinavia, Scotland, and in England by the ancient Celtic priests, the Druids.\nWhat was the nature of their celebration? They celebrated the end of the winter season and the approach of spring. Though, to be sure, winter deepens as we move toward Christmas, nevertheless, a victory proclaims itself in nature at this time that is the symbol of hope, confidence and trust for man. In this way the victory of the sun over the counter forces of nature was expressed in most languages. Today we have felt how the days have grown shorter, which is an expression of the withering and falling asleep of the forces of nature, and this will continue until the day we celebrate as Christmas, a day that was also celebrated by our ancestors. From this day on, the days begin to grow longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Materialistic thought does not reflect much on this event, but for those endowed with vital feeling and knowledge, it was the living expression for a spiritual experience of the Godhead that guides our lives. As an important and decisive event is experienced in the individual personal life of a man, so the winter solstice was experienced as a decisive event in the life of a higher being — as the memorial of something uniquely sublime. We are thus led to the fundamental concept of the Christmas festival as a cosmic festival, a festival of the first order for humanity.\nIn those ages in which genuine esotericism was alive and active like the very life blood of people — a fact that is denied by the materialistic world view of today — one observed an event taking place in nature at Christmas time that was considered a monument, a memorial of a great event that once had taken place on earth. During those days the priests collected the faithful ones, the teachers of the people, around them at the midnight hour and endeavored to divulge a great secret. What they said to them was somewhat as follows. I am not relating something here that has been discovered and thought out by abstract science, but what has lived in the Mysteries, in the secret shrines, in those earlier times.\nToday, so said the priests, we see the victory of the sun over darkness ushered in. This also once took place on earth in a larger sense when the sun celebrated its great victory over darkness. Up to that time, everything physical, all bodily life on earth had only reached the level of development of the animals. The highest kingdom on earth at that time, prepared itself for the reception of the immortal human soul. Then, in this primeval age, the great moment in the evolution of mankind arrived when the immortal soul descended from divine heights. The surging life had developed to the point where the human body was able to receive the imperishable soul. This human ancestor was at a higher stage than that imagined by materialistic naturalists, but even so the spiritual, immortal part did not live in him yet. The human soul descended to earth from a higher planet, and the earth was now to become its field of action, its dwelling place.\nWe call these human ancestors the Lemurians. They were followed by the Atlanteans, who preceded the present-day Aryans. The human bodies of the Lemurians were fructified by the higher human soul — a great moment in the evolution of man that spiritual science calls “the descent of the Divine Sons of the Spirit.” Ever since Lemurian times the human soul has worked in and formed the human body for its higher development. I can only give an indication of what I am now going to say, but I have spoken in detail about these things in other lectures. Those who are here for the first time should take this into consideration and not take what I say as mere fantasy.\nAt the time when the human body was first fructified by the imperishable soul, the situation was quite different from the way materialistic natural science conceives of it today. An event took place in the universe that belongs to the most important in the evolution of man. Gradually, the constellation of earth, moon and sun arose that made the descent of the souls possible. It was in that period that the sun gained its significance for the growth and prospering of man on earth, and also for his fellow creatures, the plants and animals. To grasp this connection of sun, moon and earth with earth-man in the right way, one must make spiritually clear to himself the whole development of man and earth. There was a time — so ancient wisdom taught — when the earth was united with the sun and moon, forming one body. At that time, the earth beings of today had different shapes and appearances that conformed with the consolidated cosmic body of sun, moon and earth. Every living thing on earth received its being through the fact that first the sun, and then the moon separated from the earth and formed an external relationship to it. The mystery of the union of the human spirit with the universal spirit is connected with this development. In spiritual science the universal spirit is called the Logos. It embraces the sun, moon and earth, and in it we live, weave and have our being.\nJust as the earth was born from the body that also comprised the sun and moon, so is man born from a spirit or soul to which the sun, earth and moon belong. When man looks up to the sun or the moon, what he sees should not be limited only to these external physical bodies, but he should perceive them as the external bodies of spiritual beings. Modern materialism can no longer accomplish this. Yet, one who is unable to see the sun and moon as bodies of spirits, will be unable to recognize the human body as that of a spirit. As truly as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, so the celestial bodies are likewise bearers of spiritual beings. Man belongs to these spiritual beings. His body is separated from the forces that rule in sun and moon but his physical nature nevertheless harbors forces that are active in them. The same spirituality is active in his soul, however, that governs the sun and moon. By becoming an earth being, man became dependent upon the sun's activity as a separate body shining upon the earth.\nOur ancestors felt themselves to be spiritual children of the whole universe and understood that we have become human beings through what the sun spirit had called forth as our spirit. For us, the victory of the sun over darkness signifies a memory of the victory for our soul when for the first time the sun shone down upon the earth as it does today. It was a sun victory when the immortal soul descended into the physical body and immersed itself in the darkness of instincts, desires and passions.\nLet us visualize the life of the spirit. For early man, darkness, which followed upon a previous sun period, preceded the victory of the sun. But the human soul, which sprang from the Divinity, had to dip down into unconsciousness for a time in order to form there the lower nature of man. It was the human soul that gradually built up the lower nature of man so that later it could come to dwell in it. If you imagine an architect using the best forces in himself to build a dwelling into which he subsequently moves, you will have an adequate likeness of the entrance of the immortal human soul into the physical body. At that early time, however, the soul could work only unconsciously on its dwelling place, and it is this that is expressed in the picture of darkness. The lighting up of consciousness in the human soul is expressed, of course, in the picture of the sun victory.\nFor those who had a living feeling for the connection of man with the universe, the sun victory signified the moment in which they received what was of the greatest importance for their earth existence. It was this great moment that was commemorated in the festival celebrating this event at the winter solstice.\nIn all earlier times, man's course through his earth development was seen to resemble increasingly the regular rhythmical course of nature. When we look up from the soul of man to the course of the sun in the universe and all that is related to it, we experience the great rhythm and harmony existing there as contrasted with the chaos and disharmony of our own natures. How rhythmical is the path of the sun; how regular is the return of the phenomena of nature in the course of the year and day!\nI have frequently mentioned the rhythmical nature of the development of the lower beings. Just imagine the sun leaving its orbit for a fraction of a second and the unbelievable, indescribable disorder that would result. Our universe is only made possible through the great, tremendous harmony of the sun's orbit. With this harmony are connected the rhythmical life processes of all the beings dependent upon the sun. Picture to yourself how the sun calls forth the beings of nature in spring. It is not possible to think the violet might bloom at a different time from the one we are accustomed to. Imagine seeds to be broadcast or harvests to be gathered at times different from the usual ones. Right up to animal life we see how everything is dependent upon the rhythmical course of the sun. Even in man everything is rhythmical, regular and harmonious insofar as it is not subject to human passions, instincts and the human intellect.\nObserve the pulse or the processes of digestion and admire the great rhythm and infinite wisdom of nature flowing through them. Then compare them with the irregularity and chaos holding sway in human passions, instincts, desires and particularly in the human intellect. Visualize the regularity of the pulse and breath and contrast it with the irregularity of thinking, feeling and willing. They are will-o'-the-wisps in comparison. Imagine the wisdom with which the life forces are organized, or how the rhythmic system must struggle against rhythmless chaos. Just think how much human passion and the desire for enjoyment trespass against the rhythms of the body! I have often mentioned how marvelous it is for the person who, through an anatomical study of the heart, learns to know the beautiful construction of this organ. Such a person must then come to realize how miraculous it is that the heart still continues its harmoniously rhythmical pulsation in spite of the abuse that can be heaped upon it through the use of tea and coffee. But, like our ancestors, who were filled with admiration for nature with its soul, the sun, in rhythmical orbit, we, too, can acquire feelings for all of nature, permeated as it is by rhythm and wisdom.\nIn looking up to the sun, the sages and their followers said, “You are the image of what the soul born in me will become.” The divine world order revealed itself in its great glory to these wise men. This is also expressed in the Christian view when it says there shall be glory in divine heights. “Glory” means “revelation.” “Today God reveals Himself in the Heavens.” This is what “Glory to God in the Highest” means. It is the expression of the glory permeating the world. This world harmony was presented as the great ideal for those who, in earlier times, were to be leaders of mankind. In all times and wherever a consciousness of these things was alive, it was the Sun Hero who was spoken of.\nThere were seven degrees of initiation in the ancient Mystery Temples. I shall cite them for you with their Persian names. In the first degree, man went beyond everyday feeling and attained to a higher soul experience and cognition of the spirit. Such a man was designated a “Raven.” The Ravens were those who communicated to the initiates in the temples what happened in the outside world. This was the case in the medieval saga of the Emperor Barbarossa who, surrounded by the earth's treasures of wisdom, awaits inside the earth the great moment when mankind is to be rejuvenated by a newly deepened Christianity. Here also the Ravens are the messengers. Even the Old Testament speaks of the Ravens of Elijah.\nThose initiated into the second degree were called the “Occult Ones,” those of the third, the “Warriors,” and those of the fourth, the “Lions.” The initiates of the fifth degree were called by the name of their people — Persian or Indian, for example — because only these initiates were true representatives of their peoples. The initiate of the sixth degree was called a “Sun Hero,” that of the seventh, bore the name “Father.”\nWhy was the initiate of the sixth degree called a Sun Hero? Such a one, who had climbed the ladder of spiritual knowledge to that stage, had so far developed his inner life that the pattern of its course followed the divine rhythm of the universe. His feeling and thinking no longer contained anything chaotic, unrhythmical or disharmonious, and his inner soul harmony was in accord with the external harmony of the sun. This level of development was demanded of the initiates of the sixth degree, and as a result, they were looked up to as holy men, as examples and ideals. Just as it would be a great disaster for the universe if the sun were to leave its path for only a quarter of a minute, similarly, it would have been just as great a disaster if it had been possible for a Sun Hero to stray only for a moment from his path of high morality, soul rhythm and spirit harmony. He who had found as sure a path in his spirit as the sun outside in the universe, was called a Sun Hero, and they were to be found among all peoples.\nOur scientists know little about these things. To be sure, they see that sun myths are crystallized around the lives of all the great founders of religions. But they do not know that in the initiation ceremonies the leaders were raised to Sun Heroes, and it is not at all remarkable when materialistic research rediscovers these customs of the ancients. Sun myths connected with Buddha and even with Christ have been searched out and found. Here you have the reason why they could be found in these myths. They had been put into them in the first place because they represented a direct imprint of the sun rhythm and were the great examples that should be followed.\nThe soul of such a Sun Hero who had attained this inner harmony was no longer considered to be a single individual human soul, but one that had brought to birth in itself the universal soul streaming through the whole cosmos. This universal soul was called “Chrestos” in ancient Greece, and the sublime sages of the Orient knew it by the name, “Buddhi.” When one has ceased to feel himself to be only the bearer of his individual soul and comes to experience the universe within himself, then he has created an image in himself of what as Sun Soul was united with the human body at that time. Then he has achieved something of tremendous significance for the evolution of mankind.\nWhen we consider such a human being with his soul ennobled in this way, we can visualize the future of the human race and the whole relationship of this future to the idea, the percept of humanity in general. Today, disputing and quarrelling, people decide things by majority vote. As long as such majority resolutions are deemed to be the ideal, one has not yet grasped real truth. Where does real truth live in us? Truth lives in us when we endeavor to think logically. It would be nonsense to decide by majority vote that two times two equals four, or that three times four equals twelve. Once man has recognized what is true, millions of others may dissent but he will remain certain within himself.\nIn scientific thinking we have advanced as far as the use of logic, that is, thinking untouched by passions, drives and instincts. Wherever these come into play, they bring about chaos and cause men to quarrel and fight in wild confusion. When, however, in the future, these passions, drives and instincts will have been purified and become what is called Buddhi or Chrestos, when they will have reached the level of development at which logical, passionless thinking stands today, then the ideal of mankind, which radiates from the wisdom of ancient religions, from Christianity, and from the anthroposophical science of the spirit, will have been reached. When our feelings will have become so purified that they sound harmoniously together with what others feel, when for our feelings and sensations the same stage will have been achieved on earth as that of our intellects, when Buddhi and the Chrestos will have been incorporated into the human race, then the ideal of the ancient teachers of wisdom, of Christianity and of anthroposophy will have been fulfilled. Then it will not be necessary to determine by vote what is good, noble and right any more than one needs to decide by vote what is logically correct or logically false. Everyone can place this ideal before his soul and in so doing he raises the ideal of the Sun Hero, of all initiates of the sixth degree.\nThis was felt by the German mystics of the Middle Ages when they spoke the important word for “becoming Godlike,” “becoming one with the Divine” ( Vergottung ). What does this word signify? It means that those beings, whom we consider today to be the spirits of the universe, also passed through the stage of chaos upon which mankind stands today. The leading spirits of the universe have struggled up to the divine stage where their living utterances resound harmoniously through the All. What appears to us in the harmonious annual orbit of the sun, in the growth of plants, the life of animals was, in past ages, chaotic and a struggle had to be made to arrive at its present sublime harmony. Man stands today at a stage of development at which these spirits once stood. But he will develop out of chaos into a future harmony patterned after the present sun and the presiding universal harmony.\nTo allow these ideas to sink into our souls, not as theory or doctrine but as living sensation, yields the anthroposophical Christmas mood. Let us feel vividly that the glory and the revelation of divine harmony appears in the heights of heaven. Let us realize that the revelation of this harmony will resound from our own souls in the future. Then we will feel the peace of those who are of good will that will come about in mankind through this harmony. When from this great perspective we look into the divine world order, into the revelation and its glory in heavenly heights, when we look out upon the future of mankind, we may have now, today, a presentiment of the harmony that will reign in human beings on earth in the future. The more we let the harmony in the outer world sink into us, the more will there be peace and unity on earth.\nIf, during the time of Christmas, we feel and experience the orbit of the sun in nature in the right way, the great ideal of peace will be presented to our souls as a feeling of nature of the highest order. If we feel during these days the victory of the sunlight over darkness, we will gain from it the great confidence that unites our own developing souls with this cosmic harmony, and it will not flow in vain into our beings. Then something will flow and live in us that will be harmonious, and the seed of peace upon earth will sink into our souls. Those men are of good will who feel this peace, a peace that will prevail when the higher stage of harmony, which today has been attained only by the intellect, is reached by the feelings and heart. Strife and disharmony will have been replaced by the all-pervading love of which Goethe speaks in the Hymn to Nature I have quoted, when he says that a few draughts from the chalice of love are compensation for a life of trouble.\nIn all religions this Christmas festival has been a festival of confidence, trust and hope because they have felt that during these days the light must be victorious. This seed, placed in the earth, will sprout forth and prosper in the light of the newly arising year. A seed of a plant, when buried in the earth, will burgeon forth into the light of the sun. In the same way, divine truth, the divine and truthful soul, is sunk in the depth of the life of passions and instincts. There, in darkness, the divine Sun Soul will ripen. A seed in the earth sprouts as a result of the victory of light over darkness, and likewise, through the continuous victory of light over the darkness of the soul, the soul will become filled with light. In darkness there can only be strife; in light, only peace. Through true comprehension, world harmony, world peace will prevail. This is the deep and true word also of Christianity during these Christmas days: Glory, revelation of the divine powers in the heights of heaven, and peace to men who are of good will!\nOut of this great cosmic feeling, the Christian Church resolved in the fourth century to establish the festival of the birth of the World Savior at the same time of year that all great religions had celebrated the victory of light over darkness. Before the fourth century, the time of the Christian festival, the festival of the birth of Christ, varied. It was not until the fourth century that it was resolved that the Savior of the Christians be born on the day on which the victory of light over darkness had always been celebrated.\nToday we cannot deal with the wisdom of the teaching of Christianity itself. This will be the subject of a lecture next year. But one thing shall and must be said today. Nothing could have happened with more justification than the establishment of the birthday of Christ at that time of year. For that Divine Individuality, the Christ, is the guarantor for the Christian that his divine soul will be victorious over all that is darkness. Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all great world religions, and when the Christmas bells ring, we can remind ourselves that this festival was celebrated during these days throughout the world in the past. It was celebrated wherever on earth there was comprehension of the true progress of the human soul, wherever a knowledge prevailed of the significance of spirit and spiritual life, wherever self-knowledge was practiced.\nWe have not spoken of an abstract feeling for nature today. We have, rather, spoken of a feeling for nature in all its living spirituality. When we have connected our considerations with the Goethean words, “Nature! We are encompassed and enfolded! ...” we may be clear about the fact that we do not interpret nature in the materialistic sense. We see in it the external expression and physiognomy of the divine cosmic spirit. Just as the body is born out of the corporeal, the soul and spirit out of the divine soul and divine spirit, and just as the body united itself with merely material forces, so the soul unites itself with the spirit.\nThe great festivals stand as symbols leading us to use our feeling and thinking in order to bring about an experience of the union with the universe, not in an indefinite way but in a most decided fashion. If this is felt again, the festivals become something different from what they are today. They will become implanted in soul and heart in a living way, and they will become what they are intended to be for us, that is, focal points in the year that join us to the spirit of the universe. If, as the year proceeds, we have fulfilled our duties and tasks for everyday life, we can look to these focal points to what unites us with the eternal. Although we have had a hard struggle in the course of the year, during these festival days the feeling arises in us that beyond all struggle and chaos, peace and harmony exist. Therefore, these festivals are celebrations of the great ideals. The Christmas festival is the festival of the greatest ideal of humanity, and humanity must make it its own if it wishes to reach its destination. The Christmas festival, rightly understood, is the festival of the birth of mankind's highest feelings and will impulses.\nThe anthroposophical science of the spirit intends to contribute to this understanding. We do not wish to send a dogma a mere doctrine or philosophy into the world, but life itself. It is our ideal to have all that we say and teach, all that is contained in our writings and science, pass over into life itself. This will happen if men practice spiritual science in everyday relationships, if from the pulpits spiritual-scientific life resounds in the words that are spoken to the listeners, without special emphasis being put on the term, spiritual science. If in all courts of justice the deeds are judged with spiritual-scientific sensitivity, if the medical doctor feels and heals with spiritual-scientific insight, if in the schools the teachers develop spiritual science concerning the growing child, if on all the streets spiritual-scientific thoughts, feelings and actions prevail to the point of making spiritual-scientific teaching superfluous, then our ideal will have been achieved. Then the science of the spirit will have become an everyday affair. Moreover, spiritual science will then also be alive in the focal points of the great festivals throughout the year, and man will join his everyday life to the spirit through anthroposophical thinking, feeling and willing. Then the eternal, imperishable Spirit Sun will shine into his soul at the great festivals of the year, reminding him that in him there lives truth, a higher self, a divine, sun-like, light-filled Being. This Being will ever and again be victorious over all darkness and chaos, and will achieve soul peace and balance in the face of all disharmony, struggle and war in the world."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-11",
+    "title": "The Wisdom Teaching of Christianity",
+    "date": "1 Feb 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060201p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "The world appears in bewildering variety to the human being looking around at first, both the external nature and the human life. He directs his look up to the starry heaven and tries to fathom the sense of the marvellous, but at first mysterious variety of the stars of the luminous sky. The thoughtful human being will probably try to recognize the sense of the ways of the stars and the elements working during the day.\nIf we look down at our earth,\nIf we try to understand our mountains with their coloured variety of rocks, woods and vegetation,\nIf we try to understand the things that surround us as plants, animals, and human beings, and try to see in the phenomena of nature that approach us more or less dark, briefly,\nIf we try to see reason and sense in everything,\nThen we probably feel a kind of faint at first towards all bewildering, which faces us. However, the most bewildering is that for us which faces us in the real life of the human being, in the historical development of the human being since millennia. Science, religion, and other human striving, feeling, intellect, and reason have always tried to introduce sense and coherence into the coloured variety of the stars, into life and into the activities of the beings on our earth.\nWho could deny that the human mind has brought it so far in this respect and that it can hope to go farther and farther. However, also a legitimate sense, a kind of spiritual coherence is included in it what we call human development in history. Nevertheless, this seems to somebody rather doubtful, if he looks at the course of destiny with all misery which single human beings, tribes and peoples experience undeservedly, with all luck which meets the single or also many apparently undeservedly, with all sequences of historical experiences of the single peoples, races and nations. If we look into all that, then it probably appears to us as the pure chaos sometimes. There some people probably believe to look in vain for sense or coherence, believe to be unable to understand all that.\nGreat, astute spirits never doubted that the human mind is able to find sense and reason, lawful necessity also in the course of the historical events. I need to draw your attention only to the fact that our great German poet and thinker, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781), in the testament of his life, in his last work, explained this human development as an education of the human race. He represented the antiquity as the childhood of humanity with the Old Testament as the first elementary book, the following age as a kind of youth from which we have the possibility to look at the future that should bring us something mature and male. I would still like to remind you that another great German thinker whom, admittedly, only a few know, even those who are destined to study him, the great German philosopher Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770-1831) called history an education of the human being to become conscious of freedom. We could still add a hundred examples, and we would see everywhere that those human beings who look ingeniously into this activity, in this bewildering, apparently chaotic activity never doubted that there is also a lawful necessity, above all a higher order than outdoors in nature, in the world of the stars, plants, animals and physical beings generally.\nIf we let our eyes wander over the development of humanity, one thing faces us that is no longer felt with that liveliness with which it should be felt: a duality, a drastic division in two parts. It is this apparently something quite trivial that it seems so trivial, however, because the human beings are used to it. We reckon with the long period before Christ's birth and with the long period after Christ's birth. One no longer feels this as anything significant because humanity is used to it. However, is it not anything significant in the highest sense that our whole history was split after this sole event in two parts? That anything must have worked so incredibly as a strength that it was recognised by a big part of humanity? The fact that this could happen shows us that something of the consciousness of the unique, immense significance of the action of Christ Jesus is deeply hidden in the human breast. Who could deny, however, that today this significance has become somewhat questionable to many people, so that few of those who count themselves to the most sophisticated persons can really account to themselves why this is in such a way from which infinite depth, actually, humanity was induced to this division of history?\nThis question should occupy us today, the Christian doctrine of wisdom from the point of view of a detailed spiritual worldview. Among other things, the theosophical movement that spreads out more and more since thirty years in the educated world also tries to deepen the Christian doctrine of wisdom. Those who have already occupied themselves a little bit with the anthroposophic spiritual science know that the second principle of the spiritual-scientific movement is to search for the core of wisdom in all great religions. Just concerning the anthroposophic view of Christianity there are the conceivably biggest misunderstandings, and among those who are called to teach and explain Christianity are just only a very few who show real understanding of the anthroposophic striving. One said repeatedly, anthroposophy wants to transplant some Eastern teachings, a new Buddhism to Europe. This would be the most un-anthroposophic that one can imagine. If we mean it sincerely with the principle of searching for the core of wisdom in all religions, then we must be aware that we have to search for this core of wisdom in Christianity above all, in the religion by which the whole culture of Europe was created and from which the noblest currents of the West originated.\nWho does not understand Christianity today, does not understand himself, and if Christianity has to perform anything great for Europe in the future, it has to be deepened. If spiritual science shall have a share of this big achievement, it has the task to penetrate into the depths of Christianity and to search there for those springs which are able to flow in the future which are able to wake cultural hopes for the future.\nWhen I spoke in a city of South Germany some time ago (Colmar, 21st November 1905, no transcript) about the teaching of wisdom of Christianity, about our subject today, also various Protestant pastors and Catholic priests were there. After the talk, the Catholic priests said to me, what you have said to us is the choicest Christianity, but it is only for the choice ones who want to have Christianity in such detailed way. However, we announce Christianity in a form in which everybody understands it and which it is accessible to all. — There I said, if you were right, you could be sure that it would never have occurred to me to speak about the core of wisdom of Christianity, because I would consider it as superfluous in the world. If you were right, could then there be a human being who felt compelled to secede from the way you teach? Then the number of those people could not increase with every day who find no satisfaction with the way you teach. Indeed, there are many for whom you can speak today. However, the fact that it is possible that numerous human beings do no longer find their satisfaction with you proves that there are human beings to whom one has to speak differently. It does not depend on the fact that we imagine that we find the way to everybody. We can do this easily and mean that we communicate in such a way that we find the way to everybody. However, it does not depend on it which opinions we have about what we regard as the right way. It depends not on our imaginations, but on the facts. If you observe this and let not speak what you put as your subjective confession, then you realise that you do no longer speak to many people. To those one has to speak in a new form. They are those to whom the spiritual scientist speaks.\nHowever, spiritual science has not only to speak to those. It will also speak to those who remain in full Christian devoutness in old Christian traditions, and to those it will be a deepening, a spiritualisation of the truthful teachings of Christianity. The spiritual-scientific saying, nothing is higher than truth, is surely often misunderstood by such like the priest whom I have quoted. One believes, it is sufficient if one only has the belief that something is true. No, that is not enough that we have the subjective conviction and imagine we would have the right way. Just the spiritual-scientific world movement should overcome this. Truth is not in our opinion, but in the facts. The observation of the facts must be higher for us than our belief. This is the sense of the saying. What we believe is our personal affair. Transpersonal is that which speaks to us by the world of the facts. We have to submit to it, we have to follow it.\nIndeed, it is true that the human development was split by the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, and, hence, we have to look a little deeper into this way of the human development. Who penetrates only somewhat into a spiritual investigation of existence will soon recognize how vapid and superficial any materialist worldview is, that any material is only the expression of the spiritual, that the spiritual is the origin and spring of any external sensuous existence.\nThe earthly human being as this sensuous being, who developed since the times about which history, the human thinking generally reports, is only the expression of a supernatural spiritual being. I do not have the time today to explain these great thoughts in a complete, possibly scientific way. This has oftener happened here in these talks. Today I can show it only figuratively, and Christian and pre-Christian thinkers showed it always figuratively in such a way that the supersensible human being who was not yet touched by the matter descended and embodied himself in the sensuousness. We consider that human being who comes from other spiritual worlds into this sensuous world as the Adam Kadmon of the Jewish secret doctrine, the kabbalah. This coming in is called “fall.” However, you must not misunderstand this. Great Christian authors understood this as a fall, and the action of Christ Jesus was understood as a rise from this fall to a new spiritual height. We shall still see how Paul's remark that Christ Jesus is the reverse Adam has a deep spiritual sense (1 Corinthians 15:44ff) . If we understand the human being quasi — I ask you not to tip the scales at the word “quasi” because it should be only an indication of the true relation — quasi descended from spiritual heights and embodied in the sensory world, then we also understand which task the human being had initially in the first times of historical development.\nWhat had the human being to do on this earthly scene in the first times of historical and prehistoric development? His sensuous members were the tools whose use he had to learn in the first times. Now the high spiritual human being was embodied in the sensory world. He learnt there in the first epoch of his existence, which I would like to call the instinctive epoch of human development, to use his own tools. This was the first task of the first quarter of human development — we do not want to go back to the very old times.\nThe human being gradually learnt to use his hands and the remaining limbs; he learnt to fit into the world and nature surrounding him. He needed no intellect for that; this was an instinctive empathising and settling in existence. When humanity learnt to control itself and acquired the use of the limbs as tools, it lived in the tribal history. The people were that within which the human being lived. It was a natural coherence, which was given by blood relationship. A sort of an animal instinct kept humanity together. Only the great masters were beyond the instinctive life. In the most different way, the human beings learnt to use their limbs, according to the state of the countries, regions, and times in which the peoples lived. The development generated a big variety in the human structure. That which was given to the human being developed most diversely. We can go back everywhere: we find this instinctive epoch of development with all peoples.\nThen we find the second epoch. There the human being learns something that the Bible and other worldviews comprise with a certain word, with a word that is exceptionally important to understand properly. We understand this word properly if we realise what the first period of human development preferably had to produce. The instinct had taught the human beings most diversely to use their limbs, in one area in this way, in the other that way. People developed in the hot zone with a rampant plant growth where without effort the food was supplied, another developed in a cold, inhospitable area where it had to produce his food and create the conditions of existence with big trouble and that is why the human being had to form his limbs with big trouble. Because the human beings had so little intellect, they faced each other as it resulted from the different instinctive development. Something new took place due to the law, which the intellect created. The instincts of the peoples are different, the intellect is the same, and at the moment, when the uniform intellect was applied to the human living together, that appeared in the world which also the Bible calls the law.\nThe human being learnt to control his whole body as his tool first. Then the lawful period occurred where the human being tried to harmonise and order his community where he tried to compensate the instincts in the mutual action where he wanted to create conditions on this earth as they correspond to the intellect. The intellect was introduced by the way how the human being lived together. Thus, humanity developed in the first two quarters of existence. However, humanity was there not without guidance. The instinct developed to bigger and bigger brightness, until the law took on the form of the intellect widespread in the farthest circles.\nWhere from did all that come? Humanity would never have come so far without such brothers who were way ahead of their fellow men. At all times, always and everywhere there have been human beings, who developed the stages of existence faster to be able to lead the other human beings. Spiritual science calls such personalities, such individualities the guardians of wisdom, the guardians of human progress. There were always such guardians of human progress. Even today, there are some. These great persons, these personalities who have arrived at a stage of existence today where the majority of humanity will come only in a very distant future existed also in the pre-Christian times, in the first two quarters of human development.\nThey led the world; they were the shepherds of humanity and introduced order and coherence into humanity. Where from did those leaders of the human race get their knowledge, their wisdom? What did this wisdom consist of? — One led the visible by the invisible, the sensory by the extrasensory. One led the material connections by that which slumbers invisibly in the material. Does it slumber invisibly in the material? A simple reflection can convince you. Look up at the cloud. It appears bright and dark to you. It announces a thunderstorm. Moreover, while you are still looking upwards, the flash streaks through the cloud, the thunder rumbles. Where was the flash, where was the thunder? They slumbered; they slept as concealed material forces. As well as flash and thunder slumbered, a lot of concealed forces slumber in the visible as something invisible, in the sensory as something extrasensory. As well as our external civilisation has reached its present state, because the human being has learnt to wake up forces and abilities slumbering in the matter, the great spiritual culture comes from the fact that the guardians of humanity are able to wake up the supersensible forces slumbering in the sensuous and to control the lower by the higher.\nAs well as the master builder uses the force of gravity to lay the beam on the column, so using a force slumbering in the matter to erect our buildings by the different combination of columns and beams,\nAs the electrician controls our engines and other electric apparatuses with the invisible electric power,\nThe guardians of wisdom and human progress control the earthly forces by that which is not perceptible by the senses.\nThe visible is controlled not by the visible, but by the invisible. None is unworldly who rises by the invisible above the visible, but someone who is stuck in the visible. The true realist is that who controls the world by that which slumbers in him, so that he forms and builds up reality and introduces it into the service of human progress. As well as the master builder and the electrician use the forces slumbering in the matter to build houses, to create mechanical civilisation, the great guardians of wisdom and human progress use the forces existing in humanity to lead the human beings to their aim to order that which whirls chaotically in the outside world and to give it significance. Never was the advancement sensory from the instinctive, then lawful periods up to ours.\nHowever, the wise guardians of humanity had to find out and to experience this at first; they had to be steeped in it completely, not due to blind faith, not due to vague convictions, but due to spiritual experience. They had to be clear in their mind\n\nThat there is something extrasensory, something extrasensory inside and outside the human being\nThat that which happens between birth and death is only one side of our existence and\nThat an essence outreaches birth and death\nThat there is something in the human being that is more comprehensive than all sensuous and is the creator of the form and the preserver of everything sensuous, and this not based on a supposition, but based on the immediate extrasensory, everlasting view.\n\nOut of this view, the guardians of humanity had to act, then out of the knowledge that death is to be defeated, that a consciousness is to be gained that there is something that lets death appear as an event like other events of life. Only from such an experience the force arises to the human being to control the sensory from the extrasensory, the visible from the invisible. Had I to say with few words what the big secret of the great guardians of humanity is, I would say, these guardians of wisdom and human progress knew that there is something in the human being that defeats death.\nThey had to go behind the scenery of existence, to look behind the regions of existence, which the human being enters after death. What exists behind the sensuous had to be accessible to the students by experience. They learnt to know that in the temples of initiation of the ancient Egyptian priests and teachers of occultism, in the Eleusinian and other Greek schools or temples of initiation. Those who were mature to acquire these convictions were initiated into these secrets. Only with few words — I explain the other matters in the next talks — I can indicate what was imparted to the human beings in these temples of initiation, in these high schools of spiritual life.\nThere the human being went through death at first; he already experienced within this life that rise which takes place in the human being if he passes the gate of death. If he passes the gate, which leads to the other world with his natural death, he enters another land, the land on the other side of existence. One can enter it also already during this life, one can enter it by another state of consciousness, awakening the abilities which slumber in the human breast, which enable us not only to experience the unconscious state during sleep in the spiritual environment, but to enter the beyond using the spiritual qualities, to be a citizen of the spiritual world. One called this death, resurrection, and ascension.\nThey experienced the great initiates. If I may express myself in such a way, they experienced death with the living body, for three and a half days, they were dead, so to speak, they came out of their physical bodies and experienced the facts of a higher world, a spiritual world, that world to which the human being belongs according to his deeper nature. This happens to that part of the human being that enters the extrasensory existence. After the human being had passed this higher world, those who were already initiates recalled him to his earthly existence. Then he was a new human being whom one called a risen one. As a symbol of it, he got a new name that had a deeper meaning. Such a human being who had come into the mysteries and the temples of initiation to behold spoke a new language, and in his words, the spiritual world sounded which he had experienced during his initiation. He was a messenger of higher worlds, his words had wings because of the experiences in the spiritual world, and he spoke another language. He was one of those who talk the language of the gods, as one said, he talks the wisdom which the gods know. This is fundamentally theosophy, the divine wisdom.\nOne called such a human being a blessed (German: selig) one if one translates the word in German. The words have a deep meaning if one understands them in the right sense; they did not originate by chance. About such a man, who felt sympathy for the spiritual world because he had beheld it, one said, he is blessed. Those who know something about that great bliss, about those marvellous experiences of another world tell about it, even if they write profane writings about it. The most important of these matters was never written down and can never be written down.\nHowever, those who tell and write down something of it write about it in tones that sound quite different from those who say something about a sensuous existence. Those who knew something of initiation speak of a renewal of the whole human being. One of them said, that only has become a human being in the true sense of the word who was blessed with his everlasting essence in the mysteries, while the others have still to wait, until they also get this mercy. — Plato, the unique Greek philosopher, says: those walk in the mud who got to know nothing of the divine of initiation.\nThus, we could still state many voices of antiquity and of the pre-Christian time, which emphasise the holiness, the power, and greatness of initiation, so that it resonates in our souls. Only a few, choicest ones could be blessed with the higher spiritual life in such a way, immediately beholding. The crowd received nothing but the announcements of such initiates.\nThen Christianity appeared and changed these conditions completely. The depth of this change of humanity is expressed in a powerful saying, and that is: “Happy (Blessed) are they who find faith without seeing me” (John 20:29). The secret of Christianity is contained in this saying, and we understand it only if we take it as literal as possible. What does it mean? We know that somebody who had experienced initiation in the temple knew that he defeated death that he took part in the entombment and was blessed by the vision. Now a great individuality came who carried out this great event on the external plane of history in front of all, as far as they wanted to see it or could take up it by faith, by the union with the unique personality. That happened once on the historical plane, which had often happened to the initiates in the deep darkness of the mystery temples. This event took place in Palestine in the year 33.\nWhat was received and protected till then more or less symbolically in the depths of the temples had become historical truth, historical reality on the big stage of life. One must understand this, because this is important. I entitled my small writing about Christianity really with full care not Mysticism of Christianity but Christianity as Mystical Fact (CW 8). I wanted to show not the mysticism of Christianity, but Christianity itself should be understood as a mystical fact. It should be understood that the event in Palestine is a fact of deep symbolism and at the same time something that is actual reality, actual truth. We should understand each other just concerning this point, because it belongs to the most important points of the knowledge of Christianity. If one speaks of the fact that in Palestine the event of death, resurrection, entombment and ascension took place as a historical event in 33 and says that this event has happened also before so and so often in the mystery temples, then one does not regard that as something real, then one does not believe in the real Christ. On the other side, other people who believe in Christ think that death, entombment, and resurrection are profound symbols. It is hard to understand that something can be fact and symbol at the same time.\nSomebody never understands who explains history “really” and considers it indifferently that a fact also has deep symbolic significance. He has never grasped that there are high and low mountains in history, high mountains that outreach the high that they are facts and symbols at the same time. That is the point. Now we have put an event before all human beings, which pronounces before them that death can be defeated and that there is a spiritual life, which outreaches death, because the only One had defeated death. In front of all human beings, he had experienced what the initiates experienced in the mysteries. Now, one did no longer need to go into the mysteries to behold, now, one could believe and feel connected with Him who experienced the great event of the victory of life over death in the physical world. Now, one could believe even if one did not behold. That understands the religious books correctly who brings himself to a literal understanding again. Beholding means literally the beholding in the mysteries, and faith is the faith in the fact that death was defeated by Christ's life. Hence, we are allowed to say that the greatest teaching of wisdom of Christianity is that the teachings of wisdom of the various religions became fact in Christianity.\nWhat were the teachings of wisdom of the various religions? Deepening really in the spiritual-scientific teachings you can convince yourselves that the religions comply with each other concerning their teachings. Take the teachings of Hermes, Pythagoras, and Zarathustra or also of other religious founders: in that which they expressed and taught one can find a deep consistent core of wisdom. All teachers who announced the great teachings of wisdom could say, I am the way and the truth. — For truth flowed out of their mouths; that truth which they had experienced in the mystery temples, they had become messengers of the divine truth. With Christ Jesus, it was another matter.\nHe could say more of himself. He became that which is expressed in the great and beautiful saying: I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He taught that in front of everybody, which the other religious founders said, living concealed to the rest of humanity in the twilight of the mysteries. The life by which experience was won inside of the mystery was invisible. It became visible because of the event in Palestine.\nThus, Christianity outranks the old pre-Christian religions. That wisdom which was won by the concealed life of the initiate came out to the public, and we have in the newer time in Christianity the truth that became person, life, and existence. Hence, it does often not depend with the old religions on telling how the religious founders lived. We do not hear telling, how the Egyptian Hermes, the Indian Rishis, how Zarathustra, how Buddha lived. If we receive the teachings and raise our hearts and our senses in them, the blessing flows from them to us. However, if we want to understand Christianity, we have to consider that Christ did not speak only that way, but also that he went his own way. Hence, no book by him, but only books about him are preserved. The good news, the Gospels, is not the wise language of Jesus. They are the stories of the life of Jesus. Others spoke about him. If the disciples of Buddha and Hermes spoke, they would say, we have heard this, these are his holy words, and we want to echo them to you. — However, if the disciples of Jesus moved into the world, they emphasised that He was there that they were connected with Him that they were His companions. They attempted to keep up the tradition, to reproduce it from generation to generation: we ourselves heard the word on the holy mountain together with Him; we laid our hands in His wounds. — It was the truth element of the living together that should transfer the liveliness to the future generations. This is somewhat different from that which existed before in the other religions. This is new.\nIf we want to imagine the whole significance of this new, we have to realise the difference that existed between the first quarter of human evolution and what happened now. What happens now? What does Christianity prepare humanity for, actually? Why had somebody to experience the great event in such a way that the human beings could look at him, could look up at him as evidence of the victory of life over death? One needed such evidence because now another historical epoch of humanity began, because now the intellect, the strength of mind was used for something different for centuries, even for millennia. With the propagation of Christianity, that approximately begins which we can call the triumphal procession of humanity about our material world. Christianity had to prepare for it first. In the middle of the Middle Ages, the material victory of humanity begins, the laws become more and more perfect with which the human beings found it. The human being becomes the master of nature by the perfection of his mechanisms, establishes a big system of, traffic and trade. The human intellect wins over our earth.\nThat did not exist in the pre-Christian times. Try to realise how our science begins in the times when also Christianity arises. You know that Thales (~624-~547 B.C.) was the first philosopher. Then Christianity prepares the ground for the use of the human strength to control the external nature. It was necessary that the conviction of a spiritual life comes from quite a different side so that humanity is not completely isolated from spiritual life. Now the efficient personality had to be used to conquer the globe in a material respect. Hence, science had to separate from the feeling, from faith. It was the characteristic feature of those who were initiated into the mysteries that science and faith, feeling and faith were one. For that who comes out of the material there is no separation between faith and knowledge, between truth and feeling. The forms in which the stars were arranged were the letterings of the godhead with the Chaldean initiates. This had to change in the new time. At first, the human being directed his look up at the starry heaven, and a science divested of divine feelings encompassed the skies and the earthly existence in all its phenomena. The knowledge of the world could no longer go the same way as faith and wisdom.\nBecause both had to separate, an event had to take place that guaranteed faith that founded such a firm feeling in humanity that faith could found itself besides the material science and that faith lived on throughout the material time. Thus, we have the firmly founded faith and science side by side, which does not have faith, but looks at the personality, at Christ. A personal relationship to the only One establishes itself besides the material striving. Thus, that which was put in Palestine in 33 was the bulwark to preserve the everlasting, the consciousness of the spiritual during the development of humanity towards materiality. Those had to be blessed who could believe in the only One, while they had to use their looking for the achievement of the material life. Thus, the second epoch of antiquity points prophetically to Christ Jesus. Not without good reason the teachings of the Old Testament are interpreted as predictions of Christ Jesus. Any initiation was such a prediction. What the initiate experienced, he experienced it spiritually first, then symbolically, then it was there in the world. Then it was a fulfilment, the fulfilment of the Old Testament was the New Testament. In addition, this word appears to us in its full significance if we grasp it in its depth. Thus, I have described three epochs of human evolution that go side by side, of faith, knowledge, and wisdom.\nLet us carry our mind back to the times in which the poor Egyptian slaves dragged the big, massive boulders and worked themselves to blood on huge stone giants. The modern worker cannot imagine that labour. Bliss and contentment were the feelings, which penetrated the soul of the wretched slave. However, this slave knew one thing. He knew that the life that he lived in such a hard work was one life of many. The initiate often said it to him to make humanity aware of the fact that the human being embodies himself repeatedly and that he experiences that which he prepared himself, and that he is recompensed in future lives. Thus, the riddle of human destiny is solved for him really. Among the hard working slaves, bliss and religious feeling prevailed. The slave said to himself, he who commands me today was once as I am and I become once, as he is if I carry out all that now. — The prudent men who conquered the material world later, who dealt with the merely material science would not be able to achieve this, as overwhelming the teachings of Galilei and Copernicus, the teachings of the modern investigation of the sensory material existence may be.\nIndeed, nothing should be said against these teachings and nobody can estimate its greatness and power more than I do. Nevertheless, it is true and one has to say also that the materialistic researchers could not find those fiery words, that spirit which opens the souls which gives the human being hope forever which gives the human beings the certainty of the mental-spiritual life. However, this certainty came from the personal connection with the unique Christ. The external science was also gradually deepened again. Science became wisdom bit by bit again, and the result of the fact is that this external science claimed to appear again as founder of a religion. What then are the enlighteners, the freethinkers? What do they want? They are, actually, religious natures. They want to found a religion; they want to conjure up such a religion from the modern science. In particular, Moleschott (Jacob M., 1822-1893, Dutch physiologist and philosopher), Haeckel and others with their books which founded a kind of materialistic Gospel for many are nothing else than founders of a materialistic religion. Because the worldly-sensuous has won such an immense strength and authority that the human being wants to gain the highest by science and its wisdom, the scientists have turned away from Christ Jesus, also those who feel only a bit of the power of science and have something to inform of the greatness and the power of science. Thus, we have the separation of science. However, Jesus spoke a word, a word that we cannot grasp deeply enough, and this is, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20).\nWe do not need to borrow this wisdom only from traditions and books, but if we rise into the higher worlds, we have the greatest experience in ourselves again, which can be experienced only in the higher worlds beyond the gate of death. Then He speaks again to us, then He shows us that He is there today that we can hear Him immediately in the present. Hence, we need such a deepening of humanity again that the human being has the experience of Christ in himself and that the human being can find out something similar like the initiates in the ancient mysteries again in himself. At least a reflection of the great, significant experience of the mystery temples should be delivered gradually to those who turn to anthroposophy. They enter the spiritual region, the other side of life already here during this life. Thus, they can experience what Goethe expressed significantly in his poem, which begins: “Tell nobody except the wise, because the mob is immediately scornful,” and closes: “And so long as you don't have it, this “Die and be transformed!,” you will only be a gloomy guest on the dark earth.”\nToday it concerns this passing away and becoming. There are methods of spiritual development with which we can wake the inner divine essence in ourselves, with which we can outgrow into the spiritual world. Our eyes are opened there for the spiritual world; our ears become active, so that we hear something higher speaking. We are able to become citizens of a higher world; we find that Christ is with us to the end of the world. Then we can also hear that language again, which spoke to the disciples on the mountain. This is indicated in the deepest mystery of Christianity.\nLet us consider this great mystery at the end. Christ had initiated pupils too; he also led them away from the crowd. When he wanted to explain what he had said to the crowd in parables, he led his three initiated disciples: Peter, James, and John on the Mount Tabor. They beheld the transfiguration there (Matthew 17). Who understands the transfiguration recognizes the deepest mystery of Christianity. The disciples are translated from the sensuous existence. What faces them? Elijah and Moses. Elijah is the word meaning way or aim, Moses is simply the esoteric word meaning truth, and Jesus is life. While eternity appeared to them in temporality, while those who are dead long since appeared to them, before their spiritual eyes, it means that they had ascended to the spiritual world. Peter says to Jesus, it is good that we are here. Would you like me to make three shelters...? You can read the expression “make shelters” where a pupil attains the second stage of chelahood. One says of him that he makes shelters in the beyond.\nThe great truth in the religious documents is recognized everywhere by that who recognizes the so-called key words. The saying “I am the way, the truth and the life” faces you there. When they descended from the mountain, Jesus forbade them to tell anyone about the vision, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. They questioned themselves: what is “rising” from the dead? — They said to Jesus, the scribes say that Elijah must come first. — He answered, Elijah is to come and set everything right. — The disciples, in the most intimate sanctum, speak here about reincarnation as about something that is a matter of course to them. The Lord Himself spoke about it like about a matter of course, saying, Elijah has already come, John the Baptist is Elijah, but they failed to recognise him. — This is the testament on the mountain. “Mountain” is the key word for initiation. Where initiation is concerned, the term “on the mountain” is applied. What means: do not tell anybody that I come again? That is, until I speak again to you, until you yourselves are there again in such figure that humanity can again perceive the word of truth. Christ Jesus was as a deputy on earth. Looking at his death, humanity should feel the victory of life over death. The faith by which even the Egyptian slave knew of the beyond should be substituted by the faith that the everlasting is in the essence, which passes through the physical. Now they had to start the triumphal procession through the world. Nothing material remains to us of that which is wisdom, immediate knowledge of the beyond. Nothing of reincarnation should be taught to humanity during the following two millennia. Jesus determined this as his testament. Not before the human beings have gone through the third epoch of development, they have gained this material victory over the globe; they will have applied intellect and reason to the external civilisation. Then only a new epoch is permitted to begin, then wisdom can understand that again which lived uniquely. Then Christ appears again on earth, so that He can be grasped immediately.\nThen the human being does no longer need the life on Tabor, and then he experiences the initiation in himself, finds the divine human being in himself. Then he will look up again at the divine life that was common property of humanity in the pre-Christian times. The anthroposophic teaching has introduced this new epoch. What Christ left on the mountain Tabor, the spiritual-scientifically striving human beings feel this as their mission, as their vocation. Christian mystics of the Middle Ages already indicated this. You find it expressed by Angelus Silesius, the great Silesian initiate: “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you still are lost forever.” As the blind person experiences the awakening of light, somebody who arrives at the new condition can experience the apparition like that on Tabor. This is the future. Thus, we had a Christianity of faith in the third epoch of humanity, and we shall have a Christianity of wisdom in the fourth epoch. What did humanity perform in the third epoch? The instinctive period is the pre-Christian time. We have had the period of the external material civilisation, and now we enter the fourth period of human development.\nThe human being has encompassed the world with industry and trade; without distinction of nation and race industry and trade work. The machine prepares the same goods in Japan, Brazil, and Europe. The same railways cross the globe in all areas without distinction of race, nation, and class. The differences within humanity have fallen in our civilisation. The cheque, which is written here in Berlin, can be redeemed in Tokyo. Everything in our civilisation has taken place in such a way that we can put up as a principle of the third period what no one could have put up as a principle in the starting point of our civilisation: we want to found a civilisation that encompasses the globe, without distinction of race, gender, occupation, and confession. This material civilisation has encompassed the world under this motto. This civilisation must receive soul. It is the task of the fourth epoch of humanity; it is the task of anthroposophy and of our lifestyle to introduce this cultural soul into humanity. We have a material civilisation, and we need a spiritual culture with the same qualities. The human beings are strong where they founded the moral connection. The Japanese trader understands the traders of all other countries. The human beings must understand each other in their souls.\nThis will be if these achievements are also made fruitful for the human science. The cultural body has three epochs. It needs a soul. The fourth epoch has to bring cultural spirit. This is the great basic idea, the big aim, which the big cultural movement must have, if it wants to be something else than a mere play for those who deal with nothing but brooding over mystic thoughts. If the Theosophical Society continues to exist, it manages this. Hence, it has to understand Christianity in its deepness. It has to understand its deepest teachings of wisdom and must also have the strength to practice these teachings of wisdom not in old traditional form, but to reshape them so that they live on usefully at all times. With it, Christianity is not anything past, but has the living strength to work on future more and more. Thus, anthroposophy, the anthroposophically understood Christianity is no doctrine, no dogma, no sectarianism, but it is something else. It is something that makes hearts leap for joy in the best sense of the word; it is something that raises the soul to the biggest tasks of the present because the biggest tasks can only correspond to the beneficial hope for the future.\nThen we have understood Christianity if it gives us life for the future. Then we understand the high spirits correctly if they become our future teachers. We are their right pupils if we do not want to reproduce authoritatively what they themselves had said, but if their words, their actions have become the energy for the new that we create. This is the great secret, the big lawfulness and necessity that shall fulfil us in the progress of human evolution and that shall constitute our life in the highest sense of the word. This is the true education of humanity that we receive the strength of creating in the future and the hope for a beneficial effect in the future from a real knowledge of the great actions of our ancestors."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-12",
+    "title": "Reincarnation and Karma as Key to the Mystery of Man",
+    "date": "15 Feb 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060215p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "There are riddles of the world in which somebody takes an interest who wants to deeper penetrate into the structure and texture of our existence. Such riddles of the world are, for example, these: where from do materials and forces come, where from does life come into the world? Where from the purposiveness of nature, where from consciousness? How have we to assess the question of the origin of language, how the question of the riddle of the free will? These questions force themselves to somebody who wants to deeper penetrate into the understanding of existence indeed, questions which are not far from an advanced, educated intelligence. But before these questions there are more obvious, big human questions which have no theoretical, no scientific value at first, but which force themselves, which allow us to look up from the works and efforts of life at that which we want to call the imperishable compared to the transient. These questions are connected with that which meets us wherever we go, with that which must face us everywhere in the world as a riddle. These are questions on whose reply not only the satisfaction of our theoretical or scientific interest depends, but it also depends on them whether we have strength, courage and assurance in life, whether we have hope for a prosperous future of the human race and the single human being.\nSuch vital matters face us if we turn our look at the immediate existence of the human being, if we see how one is equipped at his birth with a low ability and strength and is inclined by these dispositions and talents. With it, we can foresee how he is condemned to a wretched, miserable existence that he has to carry on between birth and death. He may be born into a family so that he seems to be condemned to misery already without any guilt due to the circumstances and facts. The other is born into a family which makes sure from the start that he has a happy existence full of joy; he has talents and abilities so that we can say, he accomplishes something great and significant in his life. All that and other things embrace the big and immediate riddles, if we consider life, as it faces us, impartially. The great worldviews and their preachers always tried hard to solve these riddles of existence. However, in every new time the riddles of existence need a new solution. Not as if the old truth is no longer true, it does not concern this, but the fact that thinking and feeling of the human beings change, that the feeling of the soul changes more than one assumes usually, that one does not put other questions, but that one puts the old questions differently. The theosophical or spiritual-scientific approach to life, spreading out for thirty years in educated cultures, tries to solve the riddles of existence in such a way that the modern human being can be satisfied with such a solution.\nThere are two spiritual-scientific concepts that should form the object of our issue today and give answer to the raised questions: the idea of reincarnation or of the repeated earth lives, and the idea of karma or the big principle of existence. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to answer the riddles of existence with these both ideas as the physical researcher answers his questions from knowledge, not from mere belief. What the spiritual-scientific worldview wants to give has the same character as what the remaining research wants to offer. The only difference may be that for the understanding of the scientific truth preconditions are necessary. A certain scientific basis also belongs almost to the complete popular scientific representation. However, the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview is understandable for every human being. It satisfies every human being, from the simple, naive mind which is only able to follow the questions and answers with sensation and feeling up to the most sophisticated sage who approaches these matters with the biggest doubt at first and who — if he only has the patience and perseverance to come to grips with these matters — finds his satisfaction. They all find not only satisfaction, not only that releasing feeling which approaches us in the soul if we have longed a long time for getting an answer to any question — who knows this feeling knows something about the intimate happiness of the soul —, but also concerning the vital matter it gives something quite different. There does not come into consideration what satisfies our thirst for knowledge, but something that gives us the assurance of life, something that should not give an answer only for single but for all soul forces.\nBecause we deal with so important and basic questions today, let me say first, in which sense the spiritual-scientific answers are to be understood based on life. One often counters the spiritual scientist, out of an entire misunderstanding: bring forward proof of that which you state there if we should believe you what you say about higher, spiritual worlds and about matters that are inaccessible to the usual senses of experience at first. — The spiritual scientist can appropriately answer only: nobody needs to believe me, from nobody I ask more than trust in my assertions, because there cannot be such proofs of the spiritual-scientific truth as one normally demands them. Who demands them does not understand the character and the sense of the spiritual-scientific truth.\nLife delivers the proofs of the spiritual-scientific truth and life delivers them if not only we look with the senses here within that which our own eyes, ears, and our sense of touch teach us, but life in its entirety up to the highest spiritual parts of life. If anybody comes and says: I do not believe what you tell there, because this may be anything that you have devised, this may be fantasies —, and one can answer: well, believe it, believe that the spiritual scientists are the biggest swindlers of the world. However, something else is between belief and disbelief. This is an impartial listening. — Take a drastic proof. Take a map of Asia Minor. A man says, this is no map of Asia Minor, you have thought up this. — One can only answer to him: well, never mind, but remember what I have shown to you on this map, take note of it, and memorise it. If you come to Asia Minor once, you see that it is right. — The same applies to the spiritual-scientific teachings. No one needs to believe them. If only we want to observe carefully and impartially, there are enough proofs of it in life, also for that life when we have passed the gate of death, when we are on the other side.\nOne has to answer the old questions in a new way. Still in the 17th century, it was not only a superstition of the big mass, but also a common conviction of all learnt people who believed to understand something of natural sciences that not only quite low animals, but also even earthworms can grow out of ordinary river mud. One thought this generally. One did not have the conviction that an earthworm must come from an earthworm, but one believed that it originated from mud. The Italian scientist Redi (Francesco R., 1626-1697) put up the sentence: life comes only from life. Never comes life from lifelessness. The earthworm originates not from the mud, but by a reproduction of an earthworm. — So young is this conviction! Thus, the human race advances concerning truth. Everybody would be regarded as a fool today who believed that earthworms could grow out of mud. What Redi expressed at that time — who escaped the destiny of Giordano Bruno by the skin of his teeth —, applies to the spiritual-scientific worldview today. As well as it was contrary to the ways of thinking at that time to admit that life must come from life, the teaching of reincarnation is contrary to the present ways of thinking.\nSome run literally wild by the spiritual-scientific truth as in those days the human beings ran wild if anybody stated that the earthworms do not grow out of mud. In the same sense, like that which I have stated now the spiritual-scientific worldview says, spirit and soul come only from spirit and soul. If folly does not win over reason, there is no doubt that in two centuries exactly just as the scientific truth, the spiritual-scientific worldview will have seized all circles.\nWhat does it mean that spirit and soul come only from spirit and soul? Spirit and soul face us if we consider the destiny of the human being how it depends on external facts, on dispositions and abilities, on the overall character. Only someone who is not able to observe the fine, intimate peculiarities of a human soul in its becoming, who only has a sense of the coarse physical can deny that we see something growing up in the child that can be explained just as little from a non-mental, a non-spiritual as the earthworm from mud. Schiller's nose, Schiller's red hair and some other of his physiognomy are indeed explicable by bodily inheritance, exactly as the carbon particles and the oxygen particles in the earthworm come from other carbon particles and oxygen particles of the surroundings.\nThe lifeless parts of the earthworm come from the lifeless parts of the surrounding nature and the physical parts of our body come from the physical surroundings. However, we can explain Schiller's abilities and talents from the surroundings just as little as the earthworms from the mud. Nevertheless, it does not depend on Schiller. He is given only as a radical example. It applies to every human being, also to the simplest, that he develops gradually from the type. It is impossible to derive the individual from the physical inheritance. One can see that easily. Try to understand once how Goethe's saying applies here,: “Nature, mysterious in day's clear light, lets none remove her veil, and what she won't discover to your understanding you can't extort it with levers and with screws” (Faust I) . This is nothing for pliers and microscope. Have a look at the child how it faces you in the first months and years. On its face expresses itself what it has from father, mother, and ancestors. The general-human expresses itself, the type, the character of the clan, of the family. We often say, the mild trait of the child comes from the father, from the mother, from uncle or aunt.\nHowever, when we see the child growing up, a strange change takes place that is visible to a subtler sense. What we can perceive as the confluence of father, mother, grandmother et cetera like an imprint changes and takes shape from its inner being. What lives in the core one cannot derive from father and mother expresses itself gradually in the traits. The more something individual is in the soul that is above the type, the more the soul creates in the body from inside and transforms it. How could one explain the face of a great thinker, of a great world benefactor by inheritance who works from his inside and enriches the world with anything new? From the face, you can see how the human being outgrows the mere type. In every human being, just a spiritual essence reveals itself, which is not born out of physical inheritance, but is born into it. If you cannot lead back this spiritual core to father and mother, to the ancestors, we must be able to lead it back to something spiritual. Soul and spirit come from the soul and spirit. There is only the idea of development, the idea of repeated incarnations. The being that impresses its traits to the child already existed, was already repeatedly in a body. There you find an explanation of soul and spirit just as you find an explanation of the earthworm if you say, the earthworm has originated from an earthworm and not from mud or sand. Once there was something imperfect, however, we cannot go into it in this talk.\nHow does spiritual science explain the perfect and the imperfect in the mental-spiritual realm? As well as the small plasmodium originated, according to Haeckel from simple living conditions, and as the following animal formed bit by bit by the development of the external physical figure, we can say about a perfect soul that it gradually formed from an imperfect soul which became more perfect bit by bit. The imperfect savage with his childish soul has preserved that figure of our soul through which we had to go to raise ourselves to the spiritual figure of our soul. On the other hand, compare the soul of an average European with the soul of a human being as Darwin still met one. The soul of a modern human being has concepts of good and bad, of right and wrong, of false and true.\nDarwin wanted once to make clear to a savage who was still a cannibal: you are not allowed to eat a human being, because it is bad. — The savage looked at him peculiarly and said, why? Where from can you know this without having eaten him? If we have eaten him, we know whether he was good or bad. — Thus, you have an imperfect soul that develops more and more completely. Our soul comes into the world not as a baby, but this soul has developed in imperfect incarnations first where it had understood nothing of good and bad but the pleasant and the disagreeable to the palate and the like. It developed through such stages and advanced to our level through many incarnations. We carry our soul in ourselves with the abilities and forces, which we have, with the destiny, which it experiences. We see more precisely if we come again in another incarnation on earth; we appear more perfect on earth, until that stage is attained on which we are able to ascend to a higher and more divine existence of which we do not need to speak today. There are indeed still other explanations of existence than the teaching of reincarnation, but this can solely solve the riddles of human existence.\nA core of existence faces us in that human being about whom we say that he goes through many lives, through repeated lives. The materialistically minded says to us that mind and soul are only attachments to the body, developed only from the body; the thoughts and language are only higher forms of that which we meet also in the physical-animal realm. The materialist brings us to mind that our most elated moral ideals, our holiest religious feelings are nothing but the results of our physical organization. On the contrary, the spiritual-scientific worldview shows us that everything that rests in our souls is our everlasting essence, which formed its body step-by-step. The physical-bodily comes from the spiritual-mental: this is the teaching of the spiritual-scientific worldview, which becomes clearer and clearer, the more you immerse yourselves in it. It is a teaching that is not based on blind faith, although — if one wants to show it popularly in one short hour — one can outline it only briefly and cannot introduce in it extensively. However, it is a teaching that is founded as certainly and firmly like any scientific teaching. It works with the same methods, only in the spiritual realm, as the sensuous science in the physical realm.\nSpiritual science speaks of the fact that the human being consists of a higher and a lower nature, and that his lower nature — when he walks through the gate of death — is given back to those elements, which it belonged to. The body is handed over to the earth; other parts are handed over to other elements. However, an everlasting essence is in the human being that always takes on a new human figure and form like the lily as a species always takes on new forms, while it goes repeatedly through the grain to come to a new life.\nThis teaching of reincarnation of the being, which shows us the development in the spiritual realm as the higher counter-image of the development in the sensory realm, leads us to see those finer, more intimate things in the human being. We speak of the fact that this essence of the human being contains a triple basic being, that it is of triple nature. We speak of the fact that something exists in the deepest inside of the human beings that is quite undeveloped with the normally educated people, exists only embryonic. We call this innermost essence of the human being atman or spirit man. With the most human beings, it is not even visible by vision.\nThe second member of this spiritual essence of the human being is the buddhi. In English, we would call it life spirit. This second element in the human soul is something that is expressed with the most developed human beings, with the leaders of humanity in a certain way. We can describe this life spirit in a certain way. This buddhi of the highest glory and sublimity inhabited the old religious founders, Hermes, Buddha, Zarathustra and — in the extreme — Christ Jesus. If I make clear what this buddhi signifies in the spiritual realm, I can do it only by a symbol. One must behold the spiritual either, or one has to sum up the everlasting in a symbol, like Goethe does who says: “All that is transitory, is only a symbol.” I would like to give such a symbol of buddhi. If you imagine the usual productive strength in the usual sensuous life, combined with love, but not with receptive love, but with devoted love: this is buddhi. There is in nature no other symbol than the hen, which sits on the egg, conjuring up a new life with its own warmth, sacrificing its own existence in love for the new life. Now imagine this transferred to the spiritual, imagine an individuality who produces the big, propelling forces, the spiritual impulse in the human nature for the further development in such a way as I have just described, then you have it.\nThe element of Christian feeling and sensation had been a basic strength since two millennia. It flowed as blessing through the Western hearts and fulfilled them with bliss. Did Christ not generate it and did it not exist in Christ? Was it not brought into this world with the highest glory, showing that spiritually, which lives in the sensuous, the devoted love which creates — which does not create a human being, but spiritual love which brings forth the universal wisdom, for centuries? Imagine this element in the human nature, and then we have what we call Christ in the Christian mysticism, Chrestós in the Greek mysticism, buddhi in the Eastern mysticism, the life spirit in its highest potentiality. Everybody who feels something of that which it means to produce spiritually what is incorporated as a force in the human development, everybody who feels something of it has a feeling of spiritual, bright clearness like that which expresses itself here below by a symbol, the true blissful sensation with which the chicken sits on the egg. This is buddhi. It exists in every single human being to a certain extent, at least as disposition.\nThe third soul force is that by which we understand the world. It would be brainless in the highest degree to believe that one could get water out of a vessel if no water is in it. However, such brainless people are those who say that they can get the wisdom of the world if it is not there. The astronomer tries to calculate and to understand the wisdom in the universe. The world is to be understood only by wisdom. Would it not be the biggest folly to want to take wisdom from the universe unless wisdom were in it? If not wisdom were given, we could never get wisdom there. The universe is created by the same wisdom by which we want to understand it. This is the third element that flows through the whole world. This is the manas. In English, it is translated best of all saying: wisdom is born out of the world, our spirit self is this third element. If you take these three things: atman, buddhi, manas, and then you have the deepest essence of the human being. Then you have what walks from incarnation to incarnation what is imperfectly formed with the savage where this triad also exists on a low level, up to where we see it with the modern human being, up to the great leader of humanity. The human being walks from incarnation to incarnation, from the cultured man up to the spiritually not only ideal, but also holy leader of humanity, up to Francis of Assisi, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) or others. The student can completely get to know the passage through the repeated earth-lives by the way the human beings stand side by side in this development.\nWhat I have stated expresses itself in the whole human being to somebody who sees more intimately. I have said, this essence of the human being exists only as disposition with the normally educated person. It becomes perfect. However, what we form from our essence today formed and created us from the outset. Thus, we see this tripartite being, this essence working in the human being unconsciously at first and then consciously. Just now I have only mentioned an example how the inner being expresses itself in the physiognomy of the thinker. Not only in the steady physiognomy, but also in the gesture and in the mobility of the traits the essence expresses itself. They are accordingly formed bit by bit, depending on the essence growing out with the child. Spiritual research, occultism gives you the coherence of this tripartite being of the human being and that, which is expressed externally in his body, in his instrument. The so-called occultist says, with the man the spirit self-expresses itself in the traits at first. Buddhi develops in his organ of speech, lives in his voice, preparing future levels. The third force, atman, lives in man's gesture, in the movement of his hands. I said, in the organ of speech and in the voice the second member, buddhi, or Christ, lives as you have seen just now. The Christian mysticism expressed this the deepest in John's Gospel where you read: “In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God's presence, and what God was, the Word was.” John directly calls the speech Christ. In the female nature, it is somewhat different. Of course, I would like to say nothing against the absolute gender equality practiced in theosophy. Atman, buddhi, manas are the same with the man and with the woman. They have nothing to do with the gender, however, with the external figure. With the woman manas comes into its own in the speech, buddhi in the gesture of the hands, and atman appears in the whole body. These are the so-called occult differences between the male and the female figures, not between the essence of man and woman.\nWhat is now this idea of reincarnation compared with the principle of karma? Karma comes from or is connected at least with the Sanskrit word karnoti that means acting, doing, and working. It is exactly the same stem like in Latin “creare,” create. Creare, do and create is the same. Karma and creating is the same, expressed only in two different languages. Now we want to realise what one calls karma. Karma is called, in English expressed, activity, becoming, and action. With a simple example, let me make clear what one calls karma. Imagine, you work on anything from morning to night. Then you go to bed, sleep the whole night through, and get up in the morning again. If now you say to yourself, what I have worked yesterday does not concern me, I start afresh today, and then you are brainless, are you not? Nevertheless, the only possibility is that you take up in the morning again, what you have left in the evening, saying to yourself, this is my work and where I have stopped yesterday, I must resume today. What does that mean? That only means that my destiny of today is determined by my work of yesterday. Yesterday I have created my destiny of today. With it the whole concept of karma is given. Every being makes his future destiny.\nTake another example. Once animals walked into dark caves. Something peculiar occurs to these animals. They lose their sight. The food juices move to other parts of the body that they need them more than the eyesight. The result is that the faculty of seeing withdraws, the animals become blind. What do we have before ourselves if we see these animals producing blind generations repeatedly? There we must say, in the blindness of the animals we have the effect of the fact that the animals have moved into dark caves. By which have these animals created their present figure? By their preceding action. Nothing else is karma, as if one prepares his future destiny by his work in the past. Cause and effect are always connected. If the human being goes through a life on earth between birth and death, he commits a number of actions. He goes in the interim through death and new birth and enters a new life then. It is as well as if we wake up and take up again what we have left in the evening. What we have sowed in the past life on earth, we harvest this as a fruit in the new life on earth. If we he have made a bad, disgusting destiny in the past life, the effect of our own actions faces us in the new earth-life.\nIf we have caused anything bad to a person, he appears to us in the new life again and causes something bad to us as compensation. If a person faces me and commits anything bad to me, I can suppose that I had already been together with him in a previous earth-life and caused that which he now does. Thus, the destiny of the single human being becomes more transparent and explicable with the help of the big principle of karma, and the biggest riddle of life, which meets us at every turn, receives light and solution. Now I get an explanation why one is born in the deepest need and misery and why such a disgusting destiny affects him apparently undeservedly. It is the same as if someone has not done his work properly. He is condemned by the bad preparation of yesterday to do bad work again today. Thus, the same applies if I say that anybody who lives in need and misery now himself caused it in a previous life. I also know that nothing remains without effect. That has its effect in the coming life, which I do well or wrongly. The effect in the world is connected with the cause, the observation of the stars and the sun teaches that. The same applies also to the astral and spiritual worlds. What we do now is compensated in a later life. The biblical saying is right: “God is not to be fooled, everyone reaps what he sowed” (Galatians 6:7). —\nPaul as an initiate knew why he especially pronounced such words. This is the big world principle that leads the human destiny. Now I know very well that it is also necessary to get an idea how this principle works, and about which I would still like to say some words. Who has heard some of my talks, already knows what I want to indicate herewith. If we look at the human being with spiritual sense, he does not face us as this physical body, but we know that this physical body is only one part of the big being, that behind him something is that Paul calls the spiritual body and that the spiritual scientist calls the etheric body. The etheric body is like a portrayal of the physical body, or better vice versa, the physical body is a portrayal of the etheric body. This is the second member of the human being, the etheric body. The third member is the astral body, that which the human being bears in himself as joy and sorrow, instincts, desires, passions, everything that faces us if a human being faces us that we do not see or perceive, however, with sensuous-physical means. What do we see if a human being stands in front of us? We see the skin, its colour and so on.\nThe anatomist can look with physical means still at bones, at muscles, nerves et cetera, but the desire and pain, instincts, and passions that are also in the same room are not sense-perceptible. One calls this the astral body and in it only the spiritual being of the human being exists which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-consciousness. While we have this, we become on our part again the bearers of atman, buddhi, manas, of that which I have described as spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man.\nThe animal already has the astral body. It has desire, joy, and pain. What exists, however, in the highest configuration with the leaders of humanity and exists as disposition with all human beings is the everlasting essence of the human being who advances from incarnation to incarnation. If now the human being dies, what remains there and what passes? The physical body, what one sees with eyes and can feel with hands is handed over to the earth. The etheric body is merged in the general life ether, namely not long after we have gone through death. The third member is the astral body on which the human being has already worked. Take such a soul that lives in the civilised human being, there you have the inner essence and the sum of his desires and passions. With the savage, on the first stage of incarnation, atman, buddhi, manas have worked a little on the instincts. Hence, they are still animal. What does the spiritual essence do? It works perpetually, while it improves the animal passions. The civilised human being differs from the savage because his astral body is no longer animal. Then the human being dies and goes to the astral and spiritual worlds.\nOne sees there what was still in him as desire from the first-time incarnation. If the human being enters incarnation for the first time, the animal passions are not purified. He eats his fellow men et cetera. Then the results appear. He starts roughly understanding something. We suppose the radical case that he says to himself if I can eat the other, he also can eat me. He understands that he can be also eaten up. The consequence becomes clear to him at the last minute, and there the first moral consciousness dawns on him. Then he purifies his desire by the judgement that he has formed, and this judgment comes from his spiritual essence. His judgment appears with the second incarnation as disposition. He has become somewhat nobler. He is now purifying his passions and desires more and more. He enhances them from incarnation to incarnation. That really happens if the human being dies. The physical body is delivered to the earth; the etheric body is merged in the life ether. What happens now with the human being, what takes place now?\nNot only the ability to look clairvoyantly at the world but already the intellect could teach somebody who thinks deeper what must happen. The human being is disembodied, he has no physical body. What has he done, however, throughout his whole life? He has the conveniences of food by the sense of taste throughout the whole life.\nThis convenience of food, the taste of the dishes, the palatal pleasure is mental. The palate itself is physical. If the human being did not have the physical, he could not get the mental pleasure. If he had no physical ear, he could not hear, had he no physical eye, he could not see. We perceive everything that we perceive with the physical senses at first. The modern human being can perceive nothing without his physical senses. He is used to them. He is used to satisfying such wishes that can be satisfied by the sense organs. The habit to have wishes, to have pleasures, remains, the means by which he can satisfy them disappear; tongue, eyes and ears disappear. He does no longer have them. Now he misses them after death. He is still thirsting for the pleasure, which can only be satisfied by the sense organ. The result is that the human being comes to a state of consciousness after death, which consists in breaking the habit of being satisfied only by the sense organs. The soul must stop asking for sensuous satisfaction, has to purify itself beyond that which satisfied it on earth and can be satisfied only by sensuous, physical means. That is kamaloka in the theosophical worldview. We know it as the purgatory. One can compare that not improperly, which the human being experiences there, to a feeling of burning thirst, to a kind of burning privation. This is the state after death. The suitable means is not there sensuous-physical after death; the organ is not there by which the thirsting soul can be satisfied. If a soul has finished this connection with the physical in the course of years in the kamaloka, it lives in the spiritual world, to which it belongs as soul. It takes that along into the spiritual world. The spiritual-scientific worldview calls this spiritual world devachan or spirit land. What does the soul take along?\nThe purified desires and passions are now spiritualised. If the human being was incarnated on earth, he takes what he has gained to the devachan and processes it there for a new earth-life. A strength of life has to emerge from his experience. It is not enough that the human being experiences anything. Consider the difference between the experience and strength of life exactly. If an undeveloped soul finds out by consequence that it is impossible to eat his fellow man without putting himself in danger and damaging himself, if this faces the soul as experience, then it is this experience that must be transformed into strength, so that an inner voice exists: you are not allowed to eat a human being.\nThis becomes will, the voice of conscience, which becomes more and more perfect, the more embodiments we have experienced. Experience changes into will, in the voice of conscience in the course of our incarnations. You know now what the human being does in the devachan. In the kamaloka, he purifies himself, in the devachan; he transforms the experiences, which he had, to strength for the next earth-life to appear as a powerful, inner, individual nature. Hence, you can perceive it if an undeveloped soul appears in the savage; you can perceive this in his gestures and traits, in the movements of his hands as something typical. The more incarnations we have lived through, the more our individual comes out. What is elaborated? The experiences of his former incarnations which become his character.\nYou can raise another question: why does the human being not remember his former incarnations? — This question has little sense if it is put in such a way. You immediately realise this. It is in such a way, as if anybody comes and says: the human beings are called human beings, and a four-year-old child stands before us which is innumerate —, and now he says: this child is innumerate, however, it is a human being, so the human beings are innumerate. — However, this is a question of development. Every human being arrives at that level once where some advanced persons have already arrived who can remember their former earth-lives. If he cannot remember, it is because he must acquire this ability to himself first, as the child acquires the ability of reading, calculating, and writing. The human being is not allowed to let destiny pass himself in dullness if he wants to achieve the point of view by these experiences to remember his former earth-lives. How does this recollection of the former earth-lives appear?\nThis life is bound to the fact that the human being has developed as much as possible of his inner spiritual essence. The more free and independent from sensuousness the human being has become in this life, the more he lives in the soul, the less he is dependent on the pleasures provided by the senses, the more he approaches the state where he recognises himself in the former states. However, how should such a human being remember former earth-lives? Examine only once what normally fulfils a usual human being. Only that which the sensuous view offers! Of course, this disappears, because a recollection of former earth-lives is not possible. Not before the human being leads a life in his divine self, he remembers in the same extent what he has experienced in his former incarnations, and those who become engrossed in the spiritual life are certainly reincarnated with a recollection of the spiritual life.\nAnother objection is normally done against the teaching of karma. One says, well, it is the old principle of fate. Now one says, the human being has prepared everything for himself in his former earth-life. Destiny and character are thereby determined irreversibly. There is no longer freedom nor free will. There we are subject to fate. — If anybody said so, this would be as clever, as if anybody wanted to say: here I have a cashbook. On the left, I have all debits, on the right all credits. If I add both sides, a certain number results. If I subtract both figures, the profit or the loss arises as a result. If I add this on one side again, we have a balance. — Indeed, this is also with a life balance. The good actions are on one side, the bad and foolish actions on the other. There is also a life account with the life balance as there are accounts and balances in the accounting. Imagine now a businessman who said, my annual accounts are done, I am no longer allowed to register anything, I am no longer allowed to bargain, because everything that I am still allowed to do is predetermined by the previous registrations.\nThe same would be if the human being said, I am no longer allowed to commit new actions. The registrations and the balancing do not forbid him this. Just as little as the accountancy forbids the businessman to do new deals, just as little the karma forbids him good or bad actions. At every moment, we can register new posts; at every moment, we can increase the debit side and the credit side. Some people also say, if I help anyone who is in need and misery, I intervene in his karma. However, I am not allowed to do this. — This is not true. You can help the person to register new and good posts in his karma and to transform his life account to a favourable one. What you register as laziness, neglect, and fatalism is not connected so positively with the principle of karma. However, something else is connected with it.\nIf you see a chemist going to his laboratory, he will maybe go in with the idea: if I bring together sulphur, oxygen, and hydrogen in a certain way, sulfuric acid originates according to an irrevocable principle. Nothing is to be argued against this principle. However, the chemist can also omit to carry out the mixture, he can do it or not. The principle does not impair his free will at all. Nevertheless, the principle gives him the certainty that that really happens which shall happen. You cannot get carbonic acid one time and sulfuric acid the other time from the same mixture. The principle allows us to build on a certain effect. That also applies to karma. The principle of karma can keep us from no action, but there is the certainty that a right and fair balance must take place in life that every good action must have its good effect and every clever action its corresponding effect. The fact that everything happens according to a spiritual principle gives us the certainty. It shows us that nothing is accidental that we do but that everything we do is done in such a way that we can build on a right world connection.\nThus, this principle of karma is not only a scientific principle, not something that satisfies the theoretical interest only, but something that contains the solution of the riddle of life, the riddle of the world. It gives strength and certainty in life, it works in such a way that we know that everything in this life is connected according to a principle that is recognised more and more that we interpret unconsciously at first and then more and more consciously. Not only is the urge for knowledge satisfied with the spiritual-scientific worldview. Something else is given, namely strength, courage, and certainty. Not only one tells something of our determination to us, but at the same time we get the possibility to live according to our determination, to live in such a way that we advance to a more and more perfect existence. The solution of the riddle of life is not dogmatic and doctrinal, but full of life and mind-impregnated because of the facts of the principles of karma and reincarnation.\nAll those who looked deeper in nature, in the nature of the spiritual life found more or less this principle of karma and reincarnation. Giordano Bruno was a supporter of the principle, and when from a dullness a new intellectual culture emerged, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781, writer, philosopher, dramaturg) concluded his wisdom in the teaching of reincarnation. I know that many people do not want to criticise Lessing. However, if one likes to praise him, they will not go along. It is strange towards a great man that one only accepts from him what suits one. This also applies to Giordano Bruno and Goethe with whom one regards these ideas as senility or the like. We see that also our German theosophy is deeply penetrated by this view. Only today, only since some decades it is possible again to inform in public about this view. For the centuries of the new development, this was not possible because the human culture had another task as I have already explained.\nThe teachings of karma and reincarnation appeared in the dawn, and also these great spirits were only able to announce them figuratively, symbolically, they understood them full of life. Where life could become explicable to them in its deepest depths, they often pointed with big life humour to this truth, to this everlasting principle of reincarnation that determines what we now experience between birth and death. Goethe pointed to it when he wanted to explain his deep soul friendship to Mrs. von Stein saying, “Oh you were my sister or my woman in past times.” However, Goethe also expresses the principle of karma like other great spirits. He expresses the fact that we enter the world according to our disposition following the principle of cause and effect like everything in the world in the nice words:\n\nAs on the day that lent you to the world The sun stood to greet the planets, You instantly thrived and continued to do so In accordance with the law by which you made your appearance. Thus, you must be, you cannot escape yourself, Thus, sibyls and prophets have already spoken, And no passage of time nor any can break into bits A moulded form that develops as it lives.\n\n( From: Primal Words. Orphic. Daimon )\n\nHowever, he said the deepest what he had to say figuratively, among other things, in the beautiful poem where he compares the human soul with the water and the human destiny with the wind. He compares with that which flows along from embodiment to embodiment in the life stream; and the destiny is the wind, which lets the soul surge up and down in perpetual waves. As every following wave is dependent in its figure on the preceding one, the soul is depending on its previous figure, and as well as the wind becomes always new, in the life account of the human being always something new is registered. “Soul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind!” he says at the end of the poem where he downright shows the reincarnation in the earth-life. “The soul of man resembles water, it comes from heaven, it rises to heaven, and it must descend back to earth, in eternal alternation.” Goethe shows the soul that way. It comes from the spiritual world, descends to the earth, goes back to heaven and comes again in a new incarnation\n\nThe soul of man resembles water: it comes from heaven, it rises to heaven, and it must descend back to earth, in eternal alternation.\n\nThe pure jet streams from the lofty, steep rock wall, then falls as charming droplets in cloudy waves on the smooth rock, and, gently received, it bubbles with a veil of mist and a quiet murmur down to the depths.\n\nIf cliffs loom up to meet its plunge, it foams indignantly, in stages, into the abyss. In its flat bed it moves quietly down the meadowy valley and in the smooth lake all the heavenly bodies cool their faces. Wind is the wave's amorous lover wind stirs foaming waves up from the very bottom Soul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind! ˂˂ Previous Table of Contents Next >>\n\nIn its flat bed it moves quietly down the meadowy valley and in the smooth lake all the heavenly bodies cool their faces. Wind is the wave's amorous lover wind stirs foaming waves up from the very bottom Soul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind! ˂˂ Previous Table of Contents Next >>\n\nWind is the wave's amorous lover wind stirs foaming waves up from the very bottom Soul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind! ˂˂ Previous Table of Contents Next >>\n\nSoul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind! ˂˂ Previous Table of Contents Next >>"
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-13",
+    "title": "Esoterics I: Lucifer",
+    "date": "22 Feb 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060222p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "The Persian legend speaks of two contrary divinities, of Ormuzd, the good god, and of Ahriman, the bad god. Both divinities battle for the human being, generally for everything that develops here on earth as life. One holds out in prospect that once the good divinity wins the victory over the bad divinity.\nWhatever one thinks about this legend, everybody sees a portrayal of this idea in nature, in the surrounding world. To get an example, look at the fire on one side. We owe our culture to it, our comfort and our advancement here within our life, and on the other side look at the destroying power of the forces related to the fire in any respect as for example the earthquakes and the volcano eruptions. So, on one side, beneficent, preserving, life-sustaining, and life-giving powers prevail, and, on the other side, life-destroying and hostile powers. The scene on which the fights of these both powers take place is not only the external human being but also the internal one. The human soul is torn between hostile powers: between pain, evil, grief, and the beneficent powers of existence, fulfilling us with joy, raising our hearts and pointing us to the spiritual spheres of heaven.\nDeeper natures have always seen the unity, basically, the harmony between these two contrary powers. I need only to remind of something completely known and you imagine how a choice spirit of our own German culture expressed the unity and uniformity of these contrary powers. Schiller's Song of the Bell contains the nice words just in this regard:\n\nBenevolent is the fire's might, If man tames and watches it, For what he builds what he creates, He owes to this heavenly power; But terrible this heavenly power is, If she, casting off the shackles, Strides along on tracks her own, This free daughter of nature.\nThe same under two different points of view!\n\nIf we look at the external and internal human being in such a way, we see reluctant powers in him everywhere. One of these powers of which since ancient times prudent and not prudent people have spoken shall be an object of our today's consideration: that power which one always called Lucifer. — Not only from the scientific, historical point of view, but also from the internal, the so-called esoteric point of view we want to deal with this subject.\nThe word Lucifer means light bearer (Latin: lux — the light, fer, ferre — bear). If we keep this word in mind, we must already say to ourselves, those who named this power could impossibly mean only that which various positive religious convictions summarise as the destroying, grief, and downfall bringing power that they see in the symbol of the snake and the evil dragon. — However, the religious system best known in Europe, the Christian one, complies with what in the vernacular one calls devil or Satan, whom one regards as the life-destroying power and as that power which draws us down. You all know the snake as the seducer of humanity. You can read it at the beginning of the Genesis, the Bible, and it lives in the consciousness of many people that way.\nNot always and not in all confessions the snake was regarded as the symbol of the evil, as the ruining power, as power that draws us down. If we look at the Christian-Jewish myth, it cannot appear to us completely that way. For who would today count that power which brought the knowledge of good and evil to the human beings, of which one says that it opened men's eyes, absolutely to the hostile powers? A big change has taken place just in the last century.\nWe only need to remind of the name of the great genius Goethe to say which changes have taken place in the course of the last centuries. You all know that Goethe transformed the medieval Faust legend, not only covered it anew. If you pursue this medieval Faust legend, Faust stands there as the representative and type of the human striving, of the striving that is built on freedom and independence and on science, not of that which should be built on revelation, on faith.\nEven in the 16th century, the folk spirit represented this Faust, this genius of the liberal striving for human knowledge so that he must absolutely become a slave of the evil, life-hostile powers. Faust must go to ruin because he turned away from the faith, from the tradition of the millennia, from revelation. One tells of him that he did no longer want to be a theologian; one says of him that he laid the Bible behind a bank and became a worldly person. A worldly person was such a person who wanted to found his existence on own knowledge and on own insight of the forces. Such a person had necessarily to become a slave of the evil forces, according to the point of view at that time. Goethe shows us this fight in a new way. How does he close Faust's destiny? He lets the choir of angels sing: “For him whose striving never ceases we can provide redemption.” In addition, here, Faust makes the pact with the powers that are connected with Mephistopheles, but he is redeemed, although he founds himself on freedom and self-determination. Faust reaches to the pacification of his existence. This soul change took place there. Lucifer is no longer recognised in the old way as fateful.\nIf we look around in the old religions, Lucifer was not always fateful. In the old Indian religions. One called the sages, the leaders, those who illuminated the human beings with spirit “snakes.” It is similar in many religions. Why? What does Lucifer represent in these old religions? What does he represent, finally? This and the like shall occupy us today. What does he represent to the occultists, the explorers of the forces slumbering in nature, of the deeper forces of nature who speak about Lucifer in the sense of this knowledge as that who shall bring the light to the human being who builds on himself and does not build on revelation and faith, but on knowledge and science?\nIf we want to penetrate into this matter, we must touch something that leads us to bygone times of human existence, so to speak, to the starting point of human evolution. This object, which can only be touched here at the beginning, occupies us completely when we speak about the evolution of the planets. Nevertheless, we have to start already today from this time of human evolution. Evolution is that which appears to us today as a magic word and wants to make the human existence comprehensible, what faces us today in certain perfection and completion and from which we hope that it advances to higher and higher levels of perfection. We attribute everything that lives round us to a development from imperfect to the perfect. That applies to the human being also, to the human being who enters existence according a deeper teaching of development before ancient times in which our earth still did not look like today and in which its natural forces worked quite differently. In the sense of the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview, we also speak about this starting point of human evolution, but we speak of an evolution that leads us back to times that are even more distant and to a starting point, which are before our earth evolution. I can only indicate this.\nWhen the human being entered into existence, he was alone, so to speak, with and among the physical realms in the world. If we look at the human being in such a way, he appears to us as the highest member, as the last link in a developmental chain compared with the remaining physical realms, compared with the mineral, plant and animal realms. However, as foolish as it would be if a plant, a stone, or an animal spoke: with me the development ends —, as foolish and senseless it would be if the human being spoke of himself: with me the development ends, I am the highest of the beings, which are possible here on earth. — We must look up at other beings, which we cannot reach with the sensuous eyes, which we reach, however, if the slumbering deeper, spiritual forces are woken if the spiritual eyes are opened.\nThe theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview has to bring a consciousness of these advanced beings again who are related to the human beings as the human being to the lower realms of nature. When the human being entered into existence, he was not created from nothing, but he originated from former developmental links. In addition, other beings went through such developments. They outranked the human being. The religion, also the Bible speaks of these beings. It speaks of beings who could feel as perfect at that time as the human being feels once when he has finished his present development on earth. We say in the spiritual-scientific worldview, in the human being, in his deepest inside a god is originating. With the Christian mysteries of the Middle Ages we speak that the human being can rise to realms which stand above those in which he lives today. The Christian mystic Angelus Silesius says this: “If you rise above yourself and let God prevail, your spirit experiences Ascension.” Then he does not merely receive from the creative powers like today, but he is then a creative, a spiritualised and deified being.\nAt the starting point where the forces, which have reached certain levels of perfection today, were still in their childhood, there were beings beside him who had already gone through such stages which he has to finish today. They were that — if we understand the Bible rather internally — from which the gods descended. The gods have also developed, even in the sense of the Bible. The Elohim are not something that simply stands there, but they are something that has become and has developed to that height. They stood on that level in the past to which the human being develops once. These gods have reached a certain completion. However, as well as on the stages of our present existence beside more developed human individuals also those are who have only reached a lower degree of perfection, at that time still beings also stood between human beings and gods who were higher than the human beings, but lower than the creative gods. I know how ambiguous such things are, even if one takes them seriously. I know that the materialistic worldview almost forbids, because it regards it as superstition, to speak of developmental stages of such beings.\nHowever, this cannot prevent us from facing the truth and from speaking of developmental stages of the human being. The gods were in lofty heights above the human beings, and immediately about these were beings who stood in their development between the gods and human beings, but did not complete it at that time. They went through their development among the human beings, because they were closer to them. These beings made up as it were on our earth within their development for that which they had omitted earlier. The secret doctrine, occultism complies with the old religions and the deeper profundities of our time. They subsume these powers as Lucifer. The theosophical worldview shows that a god lives in the human being who expresses himself in the slumbering dispositions that are, however, divine dispositions one day, that the human being has developed at the end of the evolution, but also the luciferic principle lives in the human being and belongs to his soul.\nAfter we have made this clear to ourselves, we are free to speak of gods and luciferic powers, of the divine and of the luciferic principles in us as the physicist speaks of electricity and magnetism. The gods stood there as elated beings. Now we must realise both — gods and luciferic powers — as the big principle which lives in any development and work. Look once at nature round yourselves. As the lowest of a sequence the lifeless world of the mineral, then the plants, then the animal and finally the human realms face us; and then even further up the realms of the higher beings. If the plant could open the eyes and look with bright, clear knowledge around it, then it would say to itself, I owe my existence to this mineral realm, which lives round me; if it were not, I could never be. From it, I get my vitality. This realm forms the ground, from which my roots grow. Without this realm, I could never be there. — Again, if the animal could look at the lower physical realms in the same way, it would be the same. It would have to look down at the lower plant realm and say: I have grown out of it, I owe my food to it; if the plant realm did not exist, I would not be. —\nIt is the same with the human being. He also has to say to himself: I have grown out of these lower realms of nature, I owe my existence to them; if they were not, then I would not be. There the higher realm faces the lower one again and helps, so to speak, to further its existence. Imagine only once that the mineral realm would only have developed on earth! What would the earth have become? A rigid, lifeless body that hurried through the space. Life would have remained in the mineral realm like slumbering in a grave. Now this life has escaped, so to speak, to a higher realm, to the plant realm, and the mineral realm on earth is made again a living one by the plant realm. The mineral holds and carries the plant realm; the plant realm transforms the mineral perpetually in the living circulation. Consider what the plant makes with the mineral forces on earth! If there were no plants on earth, the substances of the mineral realm rested in the dead rock. However, because there is a plant realm, it soaks up the substances, revives itself with them, and returns them. The lower realm offers the basis and forces to the higher one, and the higher realm helps again to preserve the existence of the lower one. Thus, it is with any next higher realm. The animal realm lives together peacefully with the plant realm, it inhales oxygen and exhales carbonic acid; the plant builds up its body from the carbon and delivers oxygen for it.\nWhat is about the human being? He also lives by means of the lower realms of nature. There we gradually come up to the human being who approaches the spirit, subsists on the spirit. If we go over to the spiritual powers, there is exactly the same relation between the gods and the human beings as between the lower realms of the universe, a relation, similar to that between the plants and the minerals or between the other higher realms of the universe. We know what the plant contributes to the formation and stimulation of the mineral realm, what do the spiritual realms contribute, what do the gods do with the human being at the starting point of development and in its progress? What did they do with the human realm?\nThe gods have completed their development. They have no immediate interest in the human realm — if we want to speak here evidently, even if not quite appropriately. However, they have an indirect interest; they give it the forces, which bring the slumbering and solidified life in the human being back to existence, as well as the plant gives the dead stone life. Have a look at the mineral, the plant, and the animal realms. How are they opposing each other? The esoteric who investigates the deeper forces of nature says, the mineral, the plant, and the animal realms face each other like wisdom, life, and love. — Try to understand that!\nIf you look at the mineral realm as it faces us in nature: everywhere you try to understand it with your intellect and wisdom. You investigate the stars and their orbits, the physical principles of the mineral world. The plant pulls wisdom and the world regularity out of the mineral world. We say without thinking, wisdom, regularity rests in the mineral realm; it is the embodied wisdom. However, poor, sober, and dead would this mineral realm be with its wisdom unless the plant world had come along and its stimulating principle had woken the sprouting life in this slumbering wisdom. Love and wisdom exchange the forces with each other, while the plants and minerals interact with each other. In a similar way, it is also between the gods and the human beings. When the human being began his development on earth, life rested in him at first; the gods stoked it up again for a new earthly development. What is associated with this earthly development? Again, the human realm and the divine realm are related to each other like wisdom and love.\nHence, esotericism, all deeper confessions — also Christianity — speak of the fact that God or the gods are love, the stimulating principle. This principle causes the sensual love at first. That is why Jehovah is shown in the Jewish religion of the Old Testament as the bringer of the sensual desire, as the giver of growth and reproductivity. In the sensual desire lies the principle of the further development that drives from the imperfect to the perfect that is the development from the animal realm up to where love founds states. In this love, which appeals, so to speak, the human beings for communities, which penetrates what is solidified in the human being with sprouting life, as the plant appeals the stone for life, we have the revealing, original divinity in it at first. This is the case in all religions and in the esoteric science too. Now we must take stock of the fact that we have here to see the divine driving forces in the human evolution. The human being had forever to regard that which propels him, which furthers him, as a gift, as a revelation of a divine principle.\nThe luciferic principle enters among him and the gods. Thereby he is enabled to take charge of that which lives unconsciously as a divine principle in him, in his unaware desire of reproduction and development. Thereby he ascends to independence and freedom in his development. Why this? Because that which lives in Lucifer is closer to him, so to speak, is a younger brother of the divine principle. When the development was still in an older phase, the gods were on the level of humanity; there they looked for their own development independently within the human level. However, after they have developed, the human being is a creature among them; they control the human being and work in him. Now the luciferic principle comes along. This still has a more familiar and more intimate relation to the human being; it has not yet completely outgrown the level of humanity. It is something that rises above the present point of view of humanity, but is associated intimately with it, so that it melts more together with the human being and works as own desire in the human being to further himself. These are three levels, which work in the human being as his developmental forces: his humanity, the luciferic principle, and divinity. If we want to understand the human being, as he faces us on the present level of development, then we must see in the sense of the spiritual-scientific worldview that he has developed the so-called four lower principles. At the same time, I assume something that the theosophical worldview teaches. I want only to give a short explanation of it.\nAt first we have the physical body of the human being, then the principle of the etheric body, the stimulating one, the formative one, then his desires and passions, the animal in him; this has awoken to independence due to the fourth principle, to the real ego of the human being with which he has outgrown the animal. This human ego is that which develops, actually. This ego lives in three lower principles. It is the fourth. Within this fourth principle, the divine powers work which have already passed the fourth principle in their development and control it from above. We have the luciferic powers still associated with the fourth principle. The gods have ascended from the level of egoity to unselfishness, to devotion and to the overcoming of any special existence. The luciferic in the human being is enclosed with the bigger part of its being still within the ego; it is still within the human interests. With it, we see that everything that lives as unselfishness and willingness to make sacrifices in the human being is the divine principle in the human being, and that beside this divine principle another driving force is in him. Who practices true introspection learns to recognise the other principle. It is the luciferic one.\nIt strives for divinity, not only in complete devotion sacrificing its self, but it strives for the high stages of perfection, with enthusiasm, indeed, but just from the deepest interest of the self: not only because I love it, but because the higher perfection coincides with that which I must love. I want to strive for it as a human being in divine freedom. The divine powers do not strive for this perfection. By the luciferic striving, however, I make the divine perfection my very nature.\nThat is why we can say, if this luciferic principle were not in the human being, the gods would him leave in a certain passiveness, in a certain idleness, and they would lead him to. He would be in the state of being a child of the gods. Indeed, his being would strive to perfection, but not he would be that who strives in such a way but the God in him. — Besides, the other, the luciferic strength is added. It makes this striving its own issue. It sets itself the goal of perfection. The biblical myth also shows this also wonderfully. The gods created Adam and Eva, fated to be led by the divine powers to divine perfection without any own activity. However, because the snake comes that gives knowledge and freedom and thereby the possibility of perfection, it brings the possibility of the bad too.\nBecause the decision between good and bad is now laid in the man's own hand and knowledge, the desire, the love is made the bearer of an unaware, but divine striving for perfection. Everything that should live in this striving for perfection should be aglow with this love, with that which reveals itself to the human being in this love. On the other side, that power opposes it leading the human being, while it takes possession of this fourth principle, of the ego, it wakes him for own choice, gives him light to own knowledge, so that he walks to perfection in the light. Thus, we have the bearer of love and the bearer of light as two real forces prevailing in the human being.\nI have expressed in modern form what you can find in all confessions, in all occult worldviews as the divine principle and the luciferic principle. Only those confessions which have gone over more and more to founding themselves only upon revelation, only on faith have felt what works in the human being and lives as own principle of perfection as the bearer of the bad. Therefore, Lucifer, the light bearer, became the seducer from that who invokes the human being for freedom, for independence, for the bright, clear knowledge.\nThis is one side. All those religions which have left their starting point — for they all have the right view of God and Lucifer at their starting point — which only search for the God who leads the human beings in unconsciousness to bliss, at the same time they all feel that in which the God himself works also as something causing ruin. They feel nature as sin; they feel the mind, the bright, clear knowledge as the perverting Lucifer. Goethe pronounced this, “Nature is sin and Intellect the devil, hermaphroditic Doubt their child, which they together foster” (Faust). Yes, it is true, very true that the doubt is between divine revelation and striving for freedom. However, it is also true that this doubt is necessary to the human being if he really wants to strive for godliness from his own ego by his own merit. We have to go through the doubt, and not before we can doubt all truth, we are able to take possession of truth really. Who has never doubted does not know how the human being is connected with truth. However, who overcomes the doubt gains higher knowledge than if it has become his possession out of blind revelation. This is the pedagogic value of doubt. Therefore, it stands rightly between the divine that cannot be separated from nature and is regarded as sin, between that which is diabolical, is luciferic and the level of perfection.\nConsidered this way, the human development seems to be put in a certain perspective. The whole development of the Old Testament appears to us in such a way that the God prevails as love in the progress of the human race, in the sensuous love and in everything that it founds: blood relationship, family, clan et cetera. We have perfect with the Jewish people in Jehovah. He is nothing else than the personified power of nature, if one notes how he prevails in the mineral realm, in the sprouting plant realm, in the animal realm feeling joy and sorrow, and in the human being himself. The human God, the Christ impact allows the mineral to form the crystal, it makes the plant sprout and the animals go through the instinctual life, and it leads the human being from the imperfect to the perfect. Ascended the human being to the higher realms, he would remain a mere nature being unless the other spirit, but the spirit beneficent to the human being, Lucifer, prevailed in him who evokes selfishness, indeed, but also independence and freedom. He makes the human being his own being, a special being and raises him above the mere power of nature that way. As true, as it is for the feeling of the servant of Jehovah that Jehovah himself is the basis of the human world that he is the godhead, as it is true that Lucifer rebels against this power of nature and leads the human being to knowledge, calls on him for a clear consciousness.\nThus, the human being raises himself to independence. He releases himself from the ties of the blood relationship, of the clan and the people. He becomes gradually a personality, indeed, an egoistic personality. There Jehovah approaches him out of the same spirit, the governor of the higher life, who regulates the development by law, by commandment. If we have the god working in nature by the sensuous love with necessity, we have him as legislator now, as the god of the Ten Commandments. We have him as Jehovah, who gives the human beings the law, which they have to obey, which shall arrange the awaking personality, which shall harmonise and balance it. What is sensuous love below is a commandment of morality above. That should also be raised which works not only as a physical power, as a commandment which strives not only out of divinity to perfection, but it should also be raised to the human ego. Thus, the general physical lawfulness gives that the mere power of love changes into the principle of spiritual love that Christ originates from the sensuous Jehovah. This spiritualised love does no longer work only in the physical instinct but spiritualises life, which once law could only control.\nThus, Christ becomes the founder of the law that does not approach the human being from without like the usual law, but becomes a soul force like the innermost desire of morality. If Jehovah gives the commandment, Christ gives the power of working. If the god Jehovah determines what is good, Christ prevailing in the human being gives birth to the good out of the strength in the human being himself. The forces of nature are raised to the soul; what was sensuous love becomes spiritual love due to Christ. The law itself is warmed up by the divine, it works in the world as divine grace — using a Christian term.\nThus, we see with the big progress in the turn of the eras the sensuous love, the principle of the natural force only imagined as divine, being refined and spiritualised to the mental love, to the power which does no longer work on the physical plane but on the moral plane.\nAt first the Christian caritas, the Christian love is the refined power, which produces a moral coherence among the human beings. This coherence considers the human beings strictly as human beings and makes them all equal compared to the highest perfection. It immerses morality in love, as instincts were once immersed in love. This is the first time of Christianity. Hence, the Christian virtue became the virtues of community, the virtues of the harmony of the human souls. The god who brings together the human beings wanted to work in mental love, and this is the principle of the Christian religion. As once, body found body in the natural principle, now in Christianity soul meets soul in the higher love due to the Christ principle. As the Jehovah principle created human communities based on blood, based on family, clan, and people, Christ was called to cause that souls find souls without mediation of the blood. The sensuous love is refined to the self-sacrificing devotion; the physical power is refined to the moral action of the god. As well as in the course of the Old Testament the other principle worked, the luciferic principle, as a divine natural force penetrating the human beings bringing them independence and freedom, in the newer times this principle penetrates the human development as a bearer of light, as bearer of freedom. It is not the opponent; it is the necessary supplement of the Christ principle. It is connected with this Christ principle in a unity, as well as all reluctant forces of nature are imagined as connected by those who have understood nature and universe. As well as Schiller speaks of it:\n\nBenevolent is the fire's might, If man tames and watches it, ... But terrible this heavenly power is, If she, casting off the shackles, Strides along on tracks her own, ...\n\nIt is the same here. On one side, the Christian caritas, the Christian love, the divine that leads soul to soul and, on the other side, the bearer of light, the bearer of independence and freedom.\nBy the soul love, humanity would also live only in an unconscious perfection. However, because the soul is impregnated and warmed up, is illumined with the bright, clear knowledge, warmed up by the light of the spirit, because in the human being the bearer of light lives and works, the Christian love thereby works on the free development of the human being also in future. Thus, both powers — revealed wisdom and science gained by the human being — face each other. Soul and consciousness face each other in such a way: the soul glows in spiritual love, and the consciousness penetrates and illumines this spiritual love with the principle of clearness and freedom. Thus, the human being lives between these poles of his being; he works and lives between these powers. To somebody, who looks deeper at the things, Lucifer, the bearer of light, is no hostile power. Lucifer — even if he himself casts off his shackles and strides along his own track, as a free will of the universal power —, always creates the good — to speak with Goethe's words — even if he wants the bad. Lucifer opposes us inevitably as that which must complement another principle in the human being. He proves to be the close friend of the human being who faces him as a brother, whereas on the other side the human being looks up at the elated gods to whom he obeys in quiet devotion, who bear him in their love.\nThus, life appears really as a fight between light and love. It is that way in the present stage of development. As well as the physicists put positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism as two poles, which belong together inevitably, light and love in the higher area of human life belong together like two poles of human existence. Never there originates only one kind of electricity; if you rub a glass rod with a cloth, it becomes positively electric; however, the cloth becomes negatively electric. That applies everywhere. Never can work only one force in the development of life, always the other force must be added as necessary complement. In the human life, the two poles are love and light. The one is not possible without the other.\nAs well as the old law, the commandments of Jehovah, which he gave symbolically on Sinai, changed because of the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, love also changes. Love is something mental that appeared as a higher stage of the physical power in the sensuous love. That is why it is also possible that on the higher stage something clearer appears, namely knowledge.\nWhat was knowledge? It was, if you look back, something that is similar to Jehovah's law, the Ten Commandments, and it has to be remelted. As by Christ's death the love of the sensuous stage was remelted to the mental stage, the principle of mere knowledge, the luciferic knowledge, has to be transformed into a higher one.\nWe are included in this change today. In certain respects, we experience such a renewal of that which took place in Christianity. As the law changed into grace, science has to change into wisdom. As grace must be borne by our own soul, wisdom has to be borne by the human soul. As Christ is the god who can also prevail in the human being and enables him to become his own legislator in grace, wisdom is born out of the human science. As our science is built on external experience which is given from the outside like the Jews got the commandments on Sinai, this science will be born in wisdom as the law has been born anew by and in Christ. This is the spiritual-scientific striving. We have science given from without, given by the senses, up to now and this has reached the highest level in our cultural life in certain respects. The future must bring that the human being produces this science from his inside as his very own possession, that he changes Lucifer into that who lives and works from the human being. Spiritual science wants nothing else than such a deepening of knowledge. Just as the law or commandment became internal in the Christian virtue and as in the Christ virtue the human development advances in love in the soul life, our material science will progress emotionally if it is reborn from the soul. Spiritual science should aim at this rebirth.\nThere is a quite analogous event of the human development: Christianity has put up moral virtue instead of the mere physical power in love. The future development brings inner virtue by evoking inner, concealed forces in the human being. As we look back to a development that brought internalisation, law, we see back in the external academic life to a scientific striving, which brings internalisation. As the law was deepened to grace, science will be deepened to wisdom. That means, however, to look for inner development. The law was transformed into the soul by Christian grace. Our science is transformed out of the strength of the own soul into human skill and achievement. Spiritual science wants to rouse the inner, slumbering abilities.\nIf the Christian works out of the love of his soul compared to the servant of Jehovah, somebody who recognises works out of the wisdom of his heart in the future and attains an even greater deepening of the human development with it. Christianity also promises development of the external soul life. Christianity promises a citizen of the spirit, who connects human being with human being externally without distinction of race and gender. This striving will make the human being such a citizen in the higher spiritual worlds by inner esoteric development.\nThis is the relation between spiritual science and the external Christianity: the external Christianity looks for external virtue to gain the spiritual with it; the occultist rouses inner virtues slumbering in the human being to gain the even deeper sense of the higher spiritual worlds. What we are talking about is only a deepening of Christianity itself. The Christian principle deepened the law; the spiritual-scientific principle will deepen science. We have the luciferic principle in the entire human development not as an enemy, but as a pole belonging inevitably to the other pole. We have put it to Christianity, as it was up to now. However, just there we have recognised that the principle of the light bearer associates with the principle of love to a higher unity. If inner spiritual abilities are added by the development of the only external Christian virtues, we have an even deeper Christianity, a Christianity that cannot be dictated by the church but that everybody develops by the abilities still slumbering in himself today. Everybody develops the god by own strength, and all souls co-operate in free striving. Lucifer adds freedom, science, and independence to love and goodness. Only that who wants to stop at an epoch of human development can bring himself to turn away the look from that auspicious future perspective.\nAny past would be infertile unless it contained a new higher future within itself. The understood spiritual science makes hearts leap for joy and fulfils them with another enthusiasm. What could be achieved by the external institutions up to now could be forced upon the human being in noble, but external kind. The human being once produces that out of the strength of his own soul. An inner church, an inner temple will be there that transfigures and spiritualises the external one. Everybody will be a Christian because Christ shall awake in him, because the inner Christ lives in him and comes along to the Christ who released humanity as a whole. Christ redeemed this humanity as a whole; the human being will understand this if he is internally free and redeemed, if he believes not only in the redemption, but relives this redemption.\nThose remind us always who want to point us to Christianity: you aim at self-redemption, but you misunderstand what Christ did. That is not right with which spiritual science is confronted. Spiritual science is not an adversary, but a friend and co-worker of Christianity; not of the Christianity of the last time, but of that Christianity, which knows what Jesus said, “I will be with you, to the end of time” (Matthew 28:20) , of that Christianity, which develops to higher and higher perfection. Spiritual science is not hostile to the redemption principle of Christ, because it does not stand on the one-sided point of view that every human being should do something only for himself. This would be the most destructive egoism, even if the human being wanted to strive only in himself for the noblest forces. Humanity is a whole, and if a single — Christ — accomplishes the death of redemption, this death of redemption is for the whole humanity. However, one has to penetrate it with consciousness; any single human being has to relive it. The redemption itself must be reborn in freedom. The principle of St. John's Gospel of the new birth of the human being also applies to it. Anybody is no real human being who is not reborn in spirit and in truth. Christ Jesus said this. He still lives according to his sentence today, he says in no uncertain manner about his own death of redemption, indeed, I died once for the whole humanity to bring humanity the certainty that death can be defeated by life, but this death must be reborn in the soul of the single human being. The redeemed human being is really redeemed only if he has also reborn the redemption in himself.\nThis is the living Christ principle, deepened by spiritual science. Thus, the soul is in every single human being that develops love with the noblest ideals of humanity. This love is added to the mere sensuousness as spiritual love and leads the human being to divine perfection. On the other side, the Lucifer principle is illumined by science, freedom, and independence. Love in bright clearness, the consciousness is added to the soul. The soul brings the strength of love, and consciousness penetrates and illumines this strength of love with bright clearness. The human being walks through the soul and consciousness to perfection.\nHe would progress to divinity by a trial not clear to him if he were only a feeling soul; he would rise to the cold, only reasonable perfection if he were only consciousness. Nevertheless, soul and consciousness have always to penetrate each other. Therefore, someone who strives for spiritual science looks back and forth. He looks at the soul with its feeling and its sensation, and he looks at the consciousness with its light and wisdom and says to himself, I want to be not the human being living in dullness, but the human being prospering in bright clearness. — Those virtues have to be added to all other virtues that are founded on science, freedom, and independence. However, freedom has to be deepened by love; otherwise, it becomes arbitrary and brings the human being only nearer to his instincts.\nOn the other side, love must deepen science: then it becomes wisdom, true spirituality carried by action. Otherwise, it gets cold, desolate, and abstract. Independence must also combine with love, otherwise, it becomes blind egoism, and otherwise, it becomes rigid. This is the deeper truth of life of the spiritual scientific worldview and lifestyle that again three virtues must completely develop as the necessary principles of the human soul: science, freedom, and independence, which must be deepened, however, by the strength of love. Then love transforms science into wisdom, freedom into willingness to sacrifice, into the devotion and admiration of the divine, and independence into unselfishness, into that principle in the human being that overcomes the special being and is merged in the universe and gains divinity in freedom this way."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-14",
+    "title": "Esoterics II The Children of Lucifer",
+    "date": "1 Mar 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060301p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "A week ago, I spoke before you about the idea of Lucifer. In connection with the last talk, I would like to explain something about the same idea and its significance for the human evolution and I may connect with an excellent piece of art, with The Children of Lucifer (1900) by Édouard Schuré (1841-1929, French writer, theosophist).\nSomeone who regards theosophy only as a sum of teachings and dogmas or the Theosophical Society only as a sect that deals with particular religious-philosophical or other ideas and aims at a corresponding lifestyle that is maybe somewhat surprised about the subject of this talk. However, who regards theosophy as something that one has to regard as deepening of our whole spiritual life, even more, as deepening of our whole culture, finds it comprehensible that theosophy is not only looked for within the narrow borders,, but in all regions, in all branches of life and, hence, also in art above all.\nMany people have a point of view that leads them to believe that theosophy is something unworldly, even somewhat life-hostile. Those who believe in such a way have not yet adopted the real basis of the theosophical world movement.\nJust a piece of art like Édouard Schure's The Children of Lucifer shows us that the living creating of the artist not only is not impaired by the theosophical deepening, but that the true theosophy and the true theosophical life is just able to inspire art in the most eminent sense and give it exceptionally strong impulses.\nIndeed, I would like to link to this drama The Children of Lucifer. However , if we just embark on the mode of formation of this dramatic poetry in our time and on the peculiar structure of the spirit out of which this piece of art has arisen, we are able to look deeper at the theosophical life at the same time.\nSchuré has probably drawn the best forces of his work just from the theosophical worldview, and he belongs certainly to the most exquisite authors in the theosophical field. Who wants to find access to the theosophical life from any other point of view than that of the known compendia and smaller manuals can do it with the help of Schuré's works. Already the characteristic how Schuré came to that which should inspire his mind to express artistically what we have in The Children of Lucifer is theosophically extremely interesting.\nIt is told to us in the fine monument he erected in honour of somebody who had influenced his soul life the conceivably deepest. An extremely interesting fact of the modern cultural life confronts us here. Édouard Schuré published a book and provided it with an introduction that comes from a personality who had deeply looked into the secrets of existence. It is a book in which one recognises the artist. In this book a spirit breathes, which differs from that which we can find, otherwise, in similar writings, a spirit that has immediately processed and taken up real theosophy in himself as life. Schuré calls this personality — Marguerita Albana Mignaty (1827-1887), who wrote about Corregio (Antonio Allegri da C., 1489-1534. Italian painter) — his leader during her life, he calls her the spirit of his soul after her death. One cannot express that more appropriately than he did if one looks into the psychology of Schuré's creating.\nIn the last third of the 19th century it was granted to some deeper inclined natures to look into true spiritual life once again, after one had understood the word spirit hardly as anything else than a sum of abstractions long time, after one did not connect, actually, anything real with the word spirit long time.\nIf — on one side — we delve into Schuré's creating and — on the other side — into the mind of that personality which he calls his leader, we are immediately recalled of that which was understood within the Greek mystery view in the aurora of our western cultural life by the concepts of god and of the divine life. The word theosophy originated later. The first to use it was the apostle Paul. However, it was a common property of all deeper recognising people. We need to get involved only in that which existed within the spiritualised Christianity as theosophy, as a divine concept, as a concept of the divine life, and you are able to grasp the fact of the spirit immediately in another way than it is possible with the modern concepts, as they are still quite usual. The Greek understood by god, by the divine being still nothing else than such a being that surmounts the human being, indeed, concerning his qualities, concerning his abilities, but that is similar to the human being. He calls the human being a becoming god, and he understands any god in such a way that he has once gone through the school of humanity. If the Greek looked up at his god, he said to himself, the gods once went through the sufferings and joys, the experience of life, which I have to go through now. They once went through this school of life, which I have finished now, and I soar those spheres of creating later, on which the gods are today. — The Greek calls his gods older brothers in the entire cosmic evolution, and regarded the human being himself as a draft that should become the same once as the gods are today.\nThis gives another relation to the divine than that which only looks up at something divine, only foresees something in the beyond. As well as here in the physical world for the Greek the external physical realms establish, the sensory physical realms, from the mineral, to the plant and animal realms up to the human realm, the hierarchy, the sequence of the gods outranked the human. He considered the realms beyond the human one as the world of the gods. He did not call that which the Greek should experience in those schools — which were cult sites at the same time, which one called mysteries — abstract, only scientific knowledge of some higher principles, of some forces of nature. The Greek did not understood it symbolically but as something real that the human being associated with the gods in the schools. The mystery pupil did not feel towards the gods, unlike the child feels if it looks up at the adult who has already reached what it itself reaches in a future life epoch. Something completely real was this experience to the Greeks. Hence, theosophy was for those, who coined the word first, not knowledge of the gods, but the knowledge that was obtained in this peculiar way by the contact with the higher spiritual beings. Anybody who was initiated into the mysteries not only obtained knowledge, but he was enabled to associate with the gods, with the spirits, as well as he associates here on our earth with human beings. One called natural knowledge that knowledge that the human being acquires with the senses.\nHowever, one called that knowledge, which one received from the gods, divine knowledge: theosophy. I know very well that the most people of those who think from the modern point of view regard such a phrase, as I have just used it, as nothing but an only poetic picture, as a symbol or something extremely fantastic and superstitious. It is neither this nor that; it is something that the human being can really experience. The human being can bring himself to turn his look to the spiritual beings outranking him as he directs his look to the sensuous beings. These spiritual beings avoid the sensuous eye, like all senses, because they have accomplished the stages of spirituality and do no longer have any existence for the senses. The mysteries of the Greeks aim at this: a development of the human being to get contact with the higher beings.\nIn the last third of the 19th century, it was granted, as I said, again to some deeper natures to understand something of that which is meant, actually, with such a thing. Above all, a person was part of it like Marguerita Albana. However, I would like to say that such a personality was not initiated by means of that big spiritual art which somebody had to go through who wanted to maintain the contact with the gods within the Greek mysteries. Such a personality was an initiate by nature as there are poets by nature. However, I cannot get involved further in the fact that a soul, which is initiated by nature in the former stages of existence, is already over some experiences, so that that which it experiences now is only recollections of former stages of existence. However, the possibility to behold in the higher world, transforming particular lower forces of our existence, forms the basis of such a spiritual person like Marguerita Albana. What does that mean?\nAny means of higher knowledge are transformations of subordinated forces. What still the undeveloped human being had in far-away prehistoric time as undeveloped vague senses can be transformed into the eye which opens the splendour of the sunlight to us. On the other hand, visualise once how imperfect the organ of the ear is on the lower developmental stages! All higher organs that open the marvellous nature round the human being are transformations, metamorphoses of lower forces. Human forces can also today be transformed into higher senses.\nThus, some human beings were equipped with higher senses just in the last third of the 19th century. That is why they could behold into the spiritual environment. What other human beings have only in abstractions or notions, the reality of the divine existence, was to them as certain as the sensuous things to the other human beings. Such personalities could give information of the higher worlds. Just such persons could inspire the receptive nature of Édouard Schuré to the nicest and biggest. Édouard Schuré combined soul, mind, and deep esoteric knowledge with a real Schillerean diction and strength of language in this drama, whose translation you can receive from Marie von Sivers here. The drama The Children of Lucifer is something that is created not only out of the spirit of the present, as it is embodied in few people now, but it is created almost out of the spirit of the next human future. In this work, those who have the disposition and talent may develop something according to the highest and most significant theosophical ideas. Édouard Schuré just realised what took place in the Greek mysteries and in those acts of consecration.\nYou all know that also within the German cultural life in the last third of the 19th century a breath was to be felt that originated from a kind of understanding of the Greek mysteries. Richard Wagner (1813-1883, German composer) and his circle was inspired by the spirit of the Greek mysteries in certain ways. We still have to speak something about this chapter in the next talks. You know also that one of those spirits who were close-knit with Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, philosopher), wrote his first work about the Greek tragedy and that he wanted to show how this Greek tragedy came into being from an ancient spiritual life. He did not go as far as Édouard Schuré, not into the mysteries, however, to the gates of the mysteries when he wrote the work The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1869).\nTwo words faced his mind: the Apollonian, on the one side, and the Dionysian, on the other side. What did Nietzsche mean with these words? He understood two spiritual currents by them.\nThe Dionysian, he says, is that which completely lives in that element of the human cultural life, which is at one with the cosmic spirit all around. The Dionysian is to Friedrich Nietzsche a rapture that the human being experiences if he completely penetrates his being with that core of the highest spiritual life, which flows through the whole universe. Nietzsche anticipated such a thing that the Pythagoreans called music of the spheres, something of that old choir of which also Goethe speaks while he lets his Faust begin with the words:\n\nIn ancient rivalry with fellow spheres the sun still sings its glorious song, and it completes with tread of thunder the journey it has been assigned.\n\nNietzsche anticipated something of that mysterious hearing and listening to that which flows through the universe, which makes the planets dance around the sun, which animates the spheres. He anticipated that in this dance something divine enjoys life and that the human beings can penetrate themselves with the breath of the divine, and that the human being then feels at one with the whole universe. Then, Nietzsche thinks, the human being lives in a kind of rapture, then he experiences what flows through the whole universe, then an echo of that god whom the Greek calls Dionysus lives in him.\nAs to Nietzsche, this god is that who poured out into the material world round us who is buried in the material world and who celebrates his resurrection then in the human mind, in the human soul. So that the disciple of Dionysus accomplishes his songs, his inspirations under the influence of this god and allows to flow out what one calls the immediate Dionysian art arisen from the divine. Thus, the Dionysus dancer and Dionysus singer was the representative of the divine Dionysian principle in the world. Nietzsche regards this Dionysus drama as the original drama, the later drama originated only from the fact that an image was created, a quiet, dreamlike image of the original Dionysian rapture. The Dionysus disciple receives what arises before his senses, and he can mirror this in serene Apollonian kind. Thus, the Apollonian art is something that was created afterward as an image of the Dionysian art. It is the image, the notion of something that lived in old Greece. Nietzsche pointed already to the primeval times, in which the Dionysus disciples did not only speak of the god, but lived the divine in their movements, in their voices and works as the original artists. Any later art appeared to Nietzsche only as a late echo of this old art. Any science appeared to him only as a shadowy image of the forces represented once by the human beings.\nIn Richard Wagner's art, Nietzsche saw a renewal of that great art which connects the human beings again with the divine. Therefore, it was clear to Nietzsche that Richard Wagner could not bring human figures on the stage, but that he needed supernatural figures which did not show only what happens in this world, but also what works behind this world in spirit. As well as in the Dionysus drama the Greek artist was able to do it, Richard Wagner's figures, put down on the stage, had also to have outgrown the usual human in the sense of Nietzsche, so that they can embody something about which the human being can say, they are there to that which comes once. In his book Le drame musical. Richard Wagner, son Suvre et son idée (1875), Schuré also created out of this spirit which was round Wagner, and he represented the idea of the musical drama greatly; for Marguerita Albana had introduced him in the true spiritual world, in the spiritual reality. Inkling became reality to him, and with it, he could find the key to the inside of the Greek mysteries. Better than someone else, he was capable to illumine what took place within the holy mysteries of Greece. In his work Sanctuaires d'Orient (1898), he was able to rebuild the so-called Greek original drama with great ingenuity. What was now the Eleusinian original drama?\nIt is a reproduction of an experience which cannot be experienced at all within the sensuous world which can be experienced only if the human being himself develops to that level where higher senses awake in him where he realises that all physical principle, which he get to know, are real thoughts of the beings whom the Greeks called gods. As well as the human being creates with his thoughts today, and as he puts his thoughts into his works, his older brothers, the gods, put their thoughts into the world of existence.\nLet us get into the mind of such a Greek mystery pupil who has been initiated. He said to himself if he could have spoken with our words: look at a piece of art, at a machine, what are they? They are works of human beings, formed according to human thoughts. If you stand before the piece of art, before the machine, you see also the artist, the mechanic through their work, and I understand the work if the principles are disclosed. What are these principles? They are what lived first in the head, in the spirit of a human being.\nThe thoughts of the mechanic, of the artist are crystallised as it were in the material tool, in the marble piece of art. As I look from the piece of art and from the machine at the artist and at the mechanic, the Greek artist looked from the earth at the higher beings. If he wanted to understand the principles that build up an animal, he said to himself, thoughts of beings of divine nature are therein. As well as the thought of the mechanic is in the machine, the thoughts of a creator, of a god are in the animal, in the crystal, in the starry heaven. — This god is to him a being to whom he feels related, who is on a level that the human being himself reaches once. The Greek regarded the god as a being, which has arisen from a human level, and the human being is a being that once attains a divine level. Thus, he associated with the gods in the mysteries. He associated with the gods like with older brothers, and the feeling, which expresses itself in it, is something quite natural. One has only to settle in such a kind of thinking. From such a kind of thinking, the mystery pupil looks up at those beings that are slumbering, as it were, or are embodied in their thought in the whole nature surrounding us.\nThe mystery pupils saw the slumbering divine thoughts in the whole nature. The being of the divinity poured out into it, and the human being is there only, so that in him these divine thoughts can recover their very own existence. All thoughts in the soul of the human being are the resurrection of the god in the world. Placed in the universe in such a way, the own human life appears as an after-image of the descent, the suffering and death of the godhead and the grave of the godhead in the matter. The human being is called to redeem the gods again from the matter. This is the way of Dionysus, the way that all gods have taken. Thus, the gods live in their thoughts.\nTheosophy calls Dionysus the last-born of the gods. You know that in the legend he is a son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. One says that his divine father snatched him from his mother when Zeus struck her with a streak of lightning. Then, however, the mother of the gods, Hera, became inflamed with jealousy against this child not stemming from her. She set the titans against the child who tore it and scattered the pieces all over the world. Pallas Athena saved its heart only and brought it to Zeus who formed Dionysus anew.\nWe realise that this god was there already before, and we realise that this divinity has a special relation to the world. What is it? It was shown in the mysteries as the creator of that in the human being, which humanity attained last. The human being appears partially as originating from the hands of the gods. In the first years of his life he also faces us in such a way, because he has not yet formed own existence. Bit by bit he matures and becomes independent. Then he works and forms on his own existence. More and more the strength awakes in him that makes him the creator of his innermost being, the creator of his soul strength and mental power. Now one says within the mystery schools that as it were the last step in the life that the human being receives from nature or from God is connected with the god Dionysus.\nThere we touch one of the deepest secrets of the Greek mysteries, namely the sexual maturity of the human being. The time, when he comes out of the undifferentiated sexual life to the differentiated one of man and woman, is still the last step which nature accomplishes with the human being leading him to this maturity, where in him the desire awakes for the other sex. What he then makes of this desire, how he refines it, how he penetrates it with soul, and what he makes of love in spiritual respect, this is the own work of the human being. The last step that the gods accomplish with the human being is that they develop him to the young man and woman during puberty. The force that expresses itself everywhere in nature, in any knowledge, in any sensuousness and in all mental forces on the different levels, the mystery pupil also recognises it now in the proclivity of one sex for the other.\nHow does the human being perceive any way, the Greek mystery pupil asked himself, how does any being perceive anyway? If we imagine an animal eating the plants instinctively, which are useful and necessary for its prosperity, it is a kind of perception. Nevertheless, it is a higher level of percipience if our eye turns to the light and soaks it up as it were. Sensuousness is percipience, vision is percipience, and it is percipience if one sex inclines towards the other. Then the transformation of the lower forces to higher and higher ones takes place. The last step which nature, or God, spoken in the freer sense, has undertaken with the human being can also be transformed. Sensuousness changes into love. It spiritualises itself; it ensouls itself. Dionysus was the god who represented this strength of sexual maturity to the Greek of the mystery. Dionysus did not only have this function with it, because the sexual maturity is still connected with something quite different. Dionysus is understood as the last-born of the gods only with it.\nIf we look at the human being as he faces us today, we have a being before us in which the more astute human being — and someone who embarks on the theosophical worldview is led to this deeper look bit by bit — sees something that has become man and woman gradually. You need only to read Plato and to take him seriously in order to understand the Greek kind of view and you find how he points to a time when there was not yet man and woman, while the human being was still man and woman at the same time. The biblical legend points also to such an undifferentiated human race, and the Fall of Man is nothing else than the symbolic representation of the sexual differentiation. If we understand that the human being, as he faces us, originated from a bisexual being, we say to ourselves, in the course of evolution, the human being acquired his one-sided sexuality. He developed from the double sexuality to uni-sexuality. He lost half of his productive power. This half has awoken on the other side as the strength of our soul, as the strength of our mind. So that the human being became unisexual — a deeper look into nature shows this —, the human being became productive spiritual-mentally because he has given away half of his physical productive power.\nThereby the human being became capable of self-consciousness and could say to himself “I”, he is an independent being that — if we may express ourselves figuratively — was dismissed from the hands of the gods and became his own creator. Thus, it is connected in the development that the human being feels that strength which forms, indeed, the basis of his egoism that makes him, however, a free, self-conscious being. Hence, on every stage the emancipation of the human being recurs where sexuality finds its further development in any way.\nThe god Dionysus is the last-born of the gods. That means that the Greeks imagined that he developed the human being up to his present independence. Zeus, Cronus, the older gods, created the human being up to the point when he was a double-sexual being that lived in a vague consciousness, when he was not able to say “I” to himself, when he was without self-consciousness and without freedom. The creator of independence is Dionysus. With it, the divine principle poured out uniformly into the whole nature up to the point when the human being became independent. Then the human being faces us in countless individuals.\nLet me illustrate this. If we put back ourselves in the time when the human being was not yet independent when he was still a double-sexual being with dim consciousness. There one could say, as well as my hand is a limb of my own organism, the human being was a limb of the whole divinity in those days. His consciousness still rested in the bosom of the divine consciousness. One could still see through the human being to the divine soul. Now, after the human being became independent, was separated from the divine consciousness, this soul is divided in as many individuals as there are human beings. This was greatly symbolised in the divided god Dionysus, who was dismembered by the Titans. Pallas Athena was the symbol of the human wisdom. We felt her with our hearts, with our higher minds as the common consciousness of the whole humanity. While we feel at one again, a mind of the same kind develops in the whole humanity, the heart of the god Dionysus is saved and again carried upwards to the dwelling of the gods. Thus, the Greek imagined that the god Dionysus led the human beings up to the separation of the sexes and, finally, to sexual maturity. One regarded the proclivity of one sex to the other as one of many forces, which come from the god Dionysus. Then two spiritual currents work on the human being, who stands in the world as a creature of the god Dionysus. These spiritual currents are the starting point of our own culture.\nOne current is that where the spirit works in the external, serene form and in wisdom to develop the beauty of the external form and the order in the sensuous urge. It should not work fiercely and irregularly, by which Dionysus brought the human being up to the present level, but it should comply in harmony and order. One sees this principle of the external formal creation of Dionysus best of all in the Greek and Roman art, in the Greek beauty and in the Roman statecraft. They introduced order and beauty in the social life of the human beings created by Dionysus as independent beings. The soul which animates and ensouls this urge was refined and deified by Christianity; everything that regulates the human community in such a way that not blind urge, but spiritualised, deified urge prevails is caused by the understood Christianity. Spirit and love are two currents in the human development.\nThe present development and that of the last millennia face the poet of The Children of Lucifer. He considers what Greek spirit and Roman statecraft created as a living and uplifting principle of the Dionysian human being and on the other side the deepening of the principle of love by Christianity. Now we also understand how Édouard Schuré got around to processing these ideas in a piece of art that he called The Children of Lucifer.\nIn Dionysia, a city of Asia Minor, the following happened. This city had a cult that was dedicated to the god Dionysus. These Dionysian mysteries were celebrated in Dionysia and had there a mystery site. Then this Dionysian current was intermingled with the second current. It was in the fourth century of the Christian calendar. It was the Roman world domination and made those who were worshippers of Dionysus, who knew that a spark of a divine soul lives in them, members of the Roman statecraft. Now the Greek spirit and the Roman statecraft conflicted with each other. The original spirit must revolt. Why must it revolt? It must revolt because the external form wants to integrate the independent. This can easily become an external order. That which should make order, harmony, and unity easily becomes that which suppresses and subjugates the human freedom and independence. This also applies to the Roman spirit — which was born out of the Dionysian spirit — in the fourth century. These two currents of the human spirit face us in Dionysia: on one side the spirit, on the other side the stiffened state formalism. These are two currents that extend via the Dionysian mysteries to Christianity, which should spiritualise the drive of the human being to the other human being, which should refine the actions of Dionysus and put them in a higher light purifying the mere desire.\nHowever, it degenerated in that time, in the fourth century, to an external formalism that subjugated and suppressed what it should refine. Thus, we look at the subjugating Caesar on the one side and on the other side at the subjugating Christian priest who does not get love out to refine it, but to deaden it. We see how in Édouard Schuré's drama two persons as representatives of the Greco-Roman spirit meet, on one side a young man, who is called Theokles first and then Phosphorus, and on the other side a virgin who was consecrated to the service of Christianity as chaste sacrificial virgin. We see Phosphorus revolting who wants to originate the Dionysian human being in the highest refinement against the solidifying, the Caesar principle, and on the other side the Christian virgin who is not so spiritualised that she is world-enraptured but so spiritualised that she herself is called to work and create in this immediate world. These two persons deepen each other. How nicely, greatly and tremendously the development of these persons is shown. Phosphorus sees the Caesar principle subjugating his hometown on the one side, the Christian principle subjugating it on the other side. On one side, he sees the divine Caesar, on the other side the merely good, world-enraptured shepherd and those who should adore him. He is led to an old person, whom one calls the old man of the unknown god in Greek.\nIt is a big transformation that our Phosphorus experiences. In a distant canyon, he looks for a landmark, and he encounters one of the temples, which were considered as initiation temples. He meets an old priest there, one of the sages of the unknown god. Which god? That god whom one does not confess whom one does not revere in this or that figure. That god who does not answer if one asks him because everybody must answer to himself what is not to be put into words what lives, however, as a spark in every human being. As true as it is that the human being becomes aware of the divine spark, he can also realise that he is on the way to the big god all his life through. This god forms the basis of that which lives in the stars which is in the human breast, and what still forms the basis of everything that the human being performs on his higher level. For he is not a god of the past, but a god of the future, not a god of the thought of the past or the present, but a god of the thoughts, which the human being once is able to think as the highest on the current developmental level.\nThat is why he is called the unknown god because the human being cannot serve a god who gives him a completed existence, but because he wants to serve a god who can stand there in perfect figure only in the future. Therefore, the free human being adheres to the divine spark in his breast; therefore, he adheres to that which exists as the dismembered Dionysus at first in the world outdoors. Then he cannot find strength from anything else than from this separated divine spark, the strength of the upward development, then, however, he also knows that this upward development is connected with the passage through knowledge and suffering, with the passage through the bad because the human being is detached, according to his inner spirituality, from the divine. Hence, free forces must emerge in him to lead back this spark to divinity. If we had remained in the bosom of the gods without splitting in the sense of the Dionysus legend, the divinity itself would lead us to godliness. Thus, we appear like apostatised sons of god. This strength in us, which should lead us as sons of Dionysus to this godliness, is Lucifer's strength, the luciferic principle, that light, which the human being freely kindles in himself, in order to find the whole god as a part of the divine being once.\nThe strength that works in him is the light. Lucifer, the bearer of light, is the teacher and leader who bears the light in the human being and in the whole humanity. All those who develop such an attitude like Phosphorus are the children of Lucifer. Thus, they are not anti-Christian. They are so minded that they say: in Christ, the god appeared who became a human being who descended and enjoyed life in the human body. However, the human being has to develop so that he unfolds the god in himself in such a way that the deified human being meets the incarnate god that the human being who ascends from below finds a similar being. As Christ is now that who descended the deepest from above as the revealing god, Lucifer is the god whom the deified human being meets. Christ and Lucifer belong together, understood in the right sense. Thus, we find Phosphorus, while any Caesarism cannot keep him by any suppression of the free Dionysian principle in the world from rushing to the temple of the unknown god to receive the light that carries him upwards to become a son of Lucifer that way.\nAs well as Phosphorus pursues this way and raises his mind up to that view which recognises Lucifer as the developmental principle, Kleonis develops from a Christian virgin to a universal principle. She should solely direct her love to the incarnate god. She develops to such a degree that she anticipates that love can be refined in the human being in such a way that the divine love of the incarnate god combines with the human love in the human nature itself. Thus, the Christian virgin soars the point where she can meet the unknown god. Christ has come to life in the Christian virgin because she joins not only in the view and in admiration with the divine, but achieves that she rises to the Christian love. Phosphorus has ascended to the point where the spirit shines to him in the light. With it, the mind of the man and the soul of the woman are on the same level. They now work together on the same level, namely in such a way that always instead of Dionysus the free human couple stands at first which embodies the inkling of a future which should still arise once. Christianity and Caesarism developed to that which unfolded in Dionysia: it subjugated and enslaved the human beings. However, they both stand there upright and freely.\nThey are expelled. They cannot save the old Dionysia. The old Dionysus, who perishes in Romanism and in the external Christian formalism at first, cannot host both who have got free; they are expelled. While they show the life of the future in the present, they must live in the present. They find the way to the unknown temple again. Where Phosphorus was consecrated, where the star of Lucifer appeared to him, the clear star of Lucifer appears to them in the hour of death, both ways uniting. Lucifer leads the human beings in freedom to the highest development, and we attain the cross of Christ, the symbol of redemption, if the incarnate god touches the deified human being.\nThus, both who got free have to save at death what they have achieved. They cannot save Dionysia. That is the course of human development. This was something that one already experienced in the Greek mysteries in a higher life: that life forever overcomes death, that death is only something apparent with the single human being and something apparent in the entire human culture. Thus, we anticipate at the end of Schuré's drama that that which they both gained in themselves has an everlasting significance beyond the grave. The whole drama ends magnificently, in the sure certainty that the spirit must overcome matter.\nAs well as death is the winner over life here, one can represent it only if one knows anything about the true and real life of the spirit and knows that death is only something apparent. Someone who does not know that everything dead is something apparent must say to himself, if death were anything real to the noble pair that gained freedom because it was expelled and driven out by the enslaved Dionysia that would perish which they both have taken along. For all those who remained in Dionysia are slaves of a dying human epoch. Apparently, nothing is left. If this semblance were reality, we could no longer believe anyhow in the fact that it has a significance if anybody has purchased a higher life with death. For then this drama would close with nothing. Solely the belief and knowledge that the spirit is real carries this drama, and that from the death of the freed couple a real spiritual blossom sprouts which later works and lives in humanity which has remained, which is planted in the whole spiritual human development. From the death of Kleonis and Phosphorus, a spiritual human flower grows which is there then.\nThat which the human being experiences by the light and what he recognises lives on. Schuré owes this certainty to the fact that the former Greek world had arisen in him due to Marguerita Albana. He owes to Christianity that he was not only an external artist, but also that he can have a deep look into the spiritual development of humanity. He has shown this sight in his book The Great Initiates . There he has spread out the historical tableau of humanity from Rama (seventh incarnation of Vishnu) , Krishna, Hermes, Plato and other initiates up to Christ Jesus. He has shown this human tableau, this spiritual development.\nWith it, he has delivered a historical consideration which is theosophical in the most eminent sense and which has led countless people in Europe to the theosophical worldview. Out of the spirit of his consideration he created The Children of Lucifer , this little marvellous dramatic work in which in every line and in every scene theosophical spirit lives. Thus, the theosophical worldview becomes life; art becomes the expression of the theosophical spirit if the truth of the spirit is mirrored to us as beauty.\nThe human beings can create three things at first, Édouard Schuré says. At first, we are concerned with ontology. It leads us to the big principles of the world, but now we look at them — if we are deepened theosophically — not as anything dead, but as abstract divine thoughts. Then we are concerned with mysticism that leads us to the gods and higher beings whom we recognise as our older brothers. Then we are concerned with symbolism that shows us the god in the external sensuous picture and as a shadowy reflection in art. Thus, Édouard Schuré is a real theosophist and a real artist and shows more than all theosophical dogmatics what a theosophical world task consists in.\nIt is typical that under the title Lucifer the first theosophical journal appeared which we have renewed in our German magazine Lucifer-Gnosis where the whole way of thinking, the future task of the theosophical worldview has been expressed clearly, as it lives artistically in the drama with the title The Children of Lucifer. Only those who regard art as something external misjudge that in this piece of art something lives in the highest degree that has not missed the creative power because of its deepness. If this drama satisfies the artist completely, something of that impetus flows from this drama to the unknown god who works in us all and whose name theosophy just bears. Thus, this drama is the expression of that theosophical attitude which takes the true deepening and the human freedom seriously.\nNo one can be free in the highest sense of the word who does not find the divine in himself, who is not an associate, not a brother of the divine being. If the human being becomes this, he himself becomes a part of that force which is a bearer of the light that is Lucifer. Then he becomes a child of Lucifer. Those who understand something of the mysterious force working in the universe that one cannot see only with the eyes and perceived with instruments, of the forces that flow through the moral and religious life and work in our whole universe. Those who know a little bit about it speak of the forces that one calls the astral light.\nThe experts describe it in such a way that it flows through the space like other forces, like gravity, and works on the beings. The astral light flows through all beings; it lives in the higher animals and in the human being generally. If the human being does something and says, I act, or I am driven instinctively — it is in truth the astral light which works and lives in him. He can dedicate himself to this astral light, unconsciously, with dim consciousness. This always happens if passions and instincts press the human being. However, this does not happen if he becomes the bearer of own light if he connects himself with the force of Lucifer. Then he changes this astral light, this creative force in the world into a conscious, creative force in himself. Then he becomes a citizen in the higher spiritual worlds. If he leaves himself to the astral light with dim consciousness, he can say, indeed, the gods live, and they flow through me, but I am destined to emerge from unconsciousness, to let the light appear as something free, to illumine my actions independently with divine forces.\nEverything that originates from the twilight of the consciousness, what the bearer of the light does not cause hampers our development. What leads to the aim and to the true human ideal is that which comes from the light, from the real knowledge. Therefore, the human being is only allowed to throw himself really into the stream of life if he has grasped the god in himself if the god is his leader. Theosophical attitude means waking the divine consciousness in oneself and becoming mortal with the aid of the forces which are in the own breast. Marguerita Albana whom Édouard Schuré calls his leader expresses that in a short saying which could be regarded as a motto of the theosophical attitude and which should also close our considerations today:\nTrust in the god in your breast, and then leave everything that is in you to the stream of life ( Crois au Divin qui est en toi, et puis prête l'oreille au fleuve de la vie )."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-15",
+    "title": "German and Indian Secret Doctrine",
+    "date": "8 Mar 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060308p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "Many a time I have already pointed here to the fact that it is a prejudice if one declares the present theosophical movement in the strict sense of the word as a Buddhist or neo-Buddhist one. Theosophy or spiritual science does not want to implant a foreign worldview from without, but to show how also within our European culture deeper teachings of wisdom form the basis of the striving of humanity that express themselves most distinctly. Next time I venture to show how in a newer epoch of the German spiritual life theosophical feeling and thinking were expressed in a quite extraordinary measure, I would like to say, in its intellectual purity around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, however, I would like to show — as far as I can press it in a single talk — how within the Germanic-German folk culture an impact exists which goes back to views that we meet in theosophy.\nA careful comparison between the basis of the European religious and worldview with that which has been expressed over there in the East in such a peculiar, spiritual way will show us how little the misunderstanding is justified that the theosophical spiritual current wanted to force something completely strange on the European life. We have to characterise — if we want to carry out this comparison really — the basic view of the so-called theosophical worldview with a few words at least. If only just, let us once visualise the often-discussed basic view of the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview.\nThe human being is, according to this theosophical worldview, at first a being who has a double nature as basis, namely a transient so-called cover part, an external member of his nature, and an imperishable everlasting essence. The external cover is as it were the sheath or the tool of the human being with which his immortal essence works and is active in this world. This cover is clearly divided into four members. The first member is the so-called physical body, the body that one can see with the eyes and perceive with the other senses. The second member is the so-called etheric body. Life lives in this body. It has the same figure approximately as the physical body, but it forms the basis of the physical body as the bearer of the life principle. The third member is the bearer of the feelings, of joy and sorrow, of the instincts and passions. We call it the astral body, because the forces, which are effective in it, prove to be to someone who can deeper look into the world the forces that live outdoors in the starry heaven, in the astral, and are essential. We call the fourth member the real human ego. We call it in such a way because the human being has the three other members, physical body, etheric body, and astral body in common with the remaining beings, which are round him.\nEvery mineral has a physical body. The plant has a physical body and etheric body, the animal has a physical body, etheric body, and astral body. The human being besides has a fourth member to live within this world that enables him to say to himself “I.” This ego is the final member, the final point of the development of the three above-mentioned bodies that they have striven for since primeval times. It lives in the three covers, which surround it not like onionskins, but they interact regularly, penetrate each other powerfully, and take shape. At the same time, the ego is the bearer of a higher tripartite nature we call spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man best of all. These members are today included only as gifts in the majority of the human beings. The Eastern mysticism calls the spirit self “manas,” the life spirit “buddhi,” and the highest, innermost member “atman.” It is the real spirit of the human being, the innermost core, the immortal within the human nature. With it, we have seven members of the human nature as we have seven tones of the musical scale or seven colours in the rainbow.\nThe lower members are a confluence, an essence of the three realms, which surround us: the mineral, plant and animal realms. The higher members, manas, buddhi, and atman are not to be perceived by the senses, they are of divine nature. The human being has these members also in common with higher realms of existence, as he has his lower members, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body in common with the realms of nature surrounding us on earth. As he extends with these three lower bodies into the earthly existence, he strives with the higher spiritual members of his nature up into the realms of the divine that is tripartite like the external nature. Thus, the human being is rooted in the earthly and he extends with his branches into the spiritual-divine world. As he developed out of the earthly world from lower beginnings, he develops spiritually upwards, becoming more and more similar to the higher spiritual beings. Therefore, we can also say, the human being is divided in three parts.\nWhile we connect the lower members and the upper ones, we have the ego in the middle. It has a share of both, of the earthly and the divine. It penetrates the etheric body and the astral body. We call this ego soul. We call the real immortal inside of the human being, atman, buddhi, and manas, mind or spirit. By these three members of his nature, the human being is a citizen of three worlds at the same time. He is a citizen of the usual physical world here. When he has left the physical world here, when he has left his physical body, also the etheric body, he enters another world, a kind of intermediate world, an astral world, as we say, the soul world. At first immediately after death, he has to purify himself for a number of years from that, which still adheres to him from the connection with the earthly-physical world. We call this state kamaloka or stay in the astral world. This is no place, but a state. The disembodied human being, as long as he still has certain effects of his physical nature in himself, stays in the soul world and ascends then to a still higher world that we call devachan or the world of spirit.\nYou know now that the spiritual-scientific worldview assumes not only a one-time stay of the human being in this physical world, but that it knows that the human being has to go through repeated earth-lives. His immortal essence can deify itself more and more only thereby, can ascend to spiritual regions going through experiences, through lessons in the earth-life repeatedly. Thus, the human being returns to the physical world when he has gone through the worlds of soul and spirit, then he returns again to the spiritual world and so on. These repeated incarnations are held together according to the so-called principle of karma, according to the law of cause and effect. If a human being, after he has gone through repeated earth-lives, appears again, he is born with dispositions and abilities, which he has appropriated in the former lives by experience, and with the guilt, which he has burdened himself in former lives. Thus, the one appears happy, the other unhappy and miserable because he himself has prepared this. What we have compiled here appears in the future earth-life again. The human being thereby ascends and descends, goes to and returns from the three worlds: physical world, astral world and devachan world.\nThe human being is not only a being, which belongs to these three worlds, but he also has companions in these three worlds. Someone, who searches spiritual-scientifically in the other worlds, not only in the physical world, which the human being perceives with his senses and can seize with hands, knows that there are not only such beings which have the three members of the human nature: body, soul and mind. However, there are also beings, which are lower than the human being is, and beings, outranking the human being. How we have to imagine the beings, which are lower than the human being is? We have to imagine them in such a way that they have not a spiritual core as the highest like the human being, but they have a mental one only. As well as the human being has mind, soul and body, the lower beings only have soul, body and something that is lower than the body. If you like, we call this unknown third world the underworld and we can say, such beings have a tripartite nature, too, whose lowest member is the underworld whose middle member is the physical world and whose uppermost member is the soul world.\nHowever, there are also beings who have two members in the spiritual and a third member beyond the sphere of devachan, beyond the sphere of the spiritual. Thus, you see that you can construct a whole number of beings to yourselves. Such beings really exist as experience shows. The human being belongs to the three worlds. Such beings also belong to the three worlds and as well as the human being is developing from a level on which his soul was his uppermost being in which the spiritual core was implanted, these other beings are also developing perpetually. You see that those who have experience of such things must say to themselves that the human being — after he has left this physical body and ascends to the worlds of soul and spirit — is just the companion of other beings, of beings whose lowest member is the mental nature.\nThis is the outline of the worldview that is not only spread about any part of the world civilisation, but forms the basis of all deeper religions and should be only renewed by the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview. However, at the same time this also is a worldview which is in perpetual development, not a worldview which one has to consider as something that was once determined in the abstract, but a worldview, which develops through the various states of human development most differently.\nThe human being becomes more and more mature in the course of development, which is also arranged variously. Now, however, the human being takes not only share in this development, but the basic teaching of all world cultures shows that certain single human individuals can go through a faster development that they can ascend quicker to higher levels of perfection that they are able to rush ahead of their fellow men, so to speak. Then they have already attained, while they are still in the sensuous body, an insight into those worlds, which the human being enters when he has passed, otherwise, the gate of death. All religious cultures preserve this as a secret that the human being is capable to behold into the worlds, which are closed to him while he lives in the sensuous body. However, the human being can already cross the gate of death in this life and get a sight of those worlds which he has later to enter developing upwards. As well as the human being rushes ahead of the animal, such persons rush ahead of the remaining humanity. All deeper teachings of the world culture call these persons initiates. You see, there we get really the sequence about which I was speaking already last time in the talk on Lucifer. We get a whole sequence of beings, which puts the human being wonderfully, however, comprehensibly in the quite natural spiritual world. Thus, the principle forms the basis of every religion and every bigger worldview that there are divine natures beside and above the human beings that, however, these divine natures have gone through the stages in bygone times, which the human beings go through today. They have gone through them under other conditions and in another way; for nothing recurs in the universe.\nSo we can say, those who today are gods were once human beings, and the human being develops up to divine nature in future. He is becoming a god, and the gods are nothing else than perfected human beings. This is the basis of any secret doctrine as one calls it. Understanding this sentence in its entirety means just to be an “initiate.” However, one must not understand this only in the abstract with the intellect, but in the experience. The ray of spirit accessible to the human being now is necessary to it. Then only one knows which big, infinite significance this sentence of any secret doctrine has, this sentence, which, so to speak, penetrates all worldviews as a leitmotif.\nAllow me now to look at the different images of the Germanic and German prehistoric time, partly until the present time. Perhaps, I am allowed to go back to the fact that science has only taken a little into consideration, unfortunately, how these things are. At the end of the eighties, a book by my dear friend Ludwig Laistner (1845-1896, novelist and literary historian) appeared — its title is The Riddle of the Sphinx (1889) —, a nice, two-volume work. It does not deal with some exceptionally high teachings, but starts from the very simple. It starts from a quite simple fact that takes place within our present folklore still in numerous forms. There still exists, for example, the folk legend of the Lady Midday with the Wends (Slavic people in Germany) . It runs as follows: if certain people who work in the field outdoors do not break off for lunch, but remain on the field between twelve and two o'clock, the Lady Midday comes and puts questions to them. She asks, for example, the flax farmer about the linen weaving or something else. The people must answer these questions. If they stall with a question, it is all up with them. Until two o'clock, they must come through with the answer. If they cannot properly give an answer, the Lady Midday strangles them or cuts off their heads with her sickle. The farmers use different means against her. The person concerned must be able to pray the Lord's Prayer inversely. If he is able to do this, the Lady leaves him; otherwise, she offends or kills him.\nYou see a legend researcher, Ludwig Laistner, starting from simple legends. Then he investigates similar legends. Still today, they are to be found in our folklore. He visits them in the manifold regions and thinks at the same time that this is a simple example of the so-called interrogative torment, of the dilemma in which the human being is placed by the fact that spiritual beings ask questions he has to answer. He shows how in another legend forms the same thing becomes more and more complex, until one ascends to the riddle which the sphinx puts to the human beings, and which Oedipus solved. Laistner explains this nicely where he shows how the legend of the Lady Midday relates to the complex question of the human riddle, put by the sphinx.\nLaistner then shows something else. I must tell this because you learn from it how exceptionally important it is for theosophy. He started, like most legend researchers, from the different concepts of god, and he got around to seeing symbols in them. You know that some gods are understood as symbolic representations of the clouds, the sun, the moon et cetera. This is a widely ramified view you can find everywhere. But it is put up by such people — Laistner has exactly got to know in his own personality — who do not know in reality, how the imagination of the people works, who do not know that it is far from the imagination of the people to make up gods from wind and weather, from flash, thunder, sunshine, and rain. Laistner also already realised this when he was still dependent on the academic life that there can be no talk of it. Now in the book of the sphinx he asked, what is there, actually, if the Lady Midday comes and torments everybody with questions? — There is — and Ludwig Laistner proved it almost exactly — that these things have arisen from another state of consciousness, the dream state. He proved that the Lady Midday is nothing else than the product of a dream experience which those have had who slept during noon on the field. Not the day consciousness fantasised, but the dream has become symbolic. Laistner distinguishes sleeping in a room and sleeping on free field. As well as the human being can dream with the blanket in the hand of a frog which he holds in the hand, the outside world symbolises itself in the Lady Midday. This has arisen from a dream experience. Laistner tried to develop this thought. He did not yet know spiritual science. Hence, he had to point to the fact that important components of our legend poetry have arisen from real dream experiences.\nHowever, dream experiences are only rudiments of another state of consciousness. Someone can attain this other state of consciousness that goes through a certain inner development about which we still speak in the talk of 19 April. Who has visited these talks knows that if he goes through certain exercises, trains himself spiritually, he can transform the usual chaotic dream world into a quite regular world which does not show him only parts of the usual reality as memories, but introduces him also in the higher spiritual world which he can then take along in reality. This is the higher state of consciousness; this is the astral or imaginative consciousness. It begins with the fact that the dream experience becomes regular and that the person concerned realises one day that he experiences a new reality. Then he can rise to a still higher spiritual reality.\nThat the human being rushes ahead of his fellow men, that he can already reach what the future gives all human beings that he can look into the worlds of soul and spirit, this was there in a certain way in past times. Because the human development consists of the fact that he develops from one level of consciousness to the next higher one. The present human consciousness where he perceives with external senses and works on the sensory impressions with his reason only originated from a consciousness, which was not the same, but was similar to the dream consciousness. This dreamlike consciousness was somewhat darker. However, the human being did not perceive immediate impressions but symbols. What took place in life expressed itself as pictures in the human being. He lost this consciousness and bought the clear day consciousness for it. At that time, he did not have the present clear consciousness. He could not perceive with the senses, could also not see the daylight. He had to see this consciousness sinking in darkness to attain the present consciousness of the bright day. In future, he attains a consciousness where he has both, the imaginative consciousness, which leads him into the astral world, and furthermore the bright, clear day consciousness. These are the contents of all secret doctrines, which form the basis of any culture.\nThus, the human being can look at a time in which he can say to himself, at that time I saw the world around myself as a soul world. It caused a pictorial consciousness in me. This was internally bright and clear. No external sun appeared to the external eye, but an internal light illumined the mental all around. This inner light descended into the darkness, and the external light ascended which the human being perceives with the external senses. As rests, as rudiments of all things remain, rests exist with those classes of the population, which have lagged behind, which have not sharpened their intellect so much, which have forced back not so much what the picture consciousness answered to them, which deduced less, which are less prudent. Thus, their dream consciousness is much brighter. There they experience not only chaotic dreams, but they also experience higher truth for which perhaps they cannot account to themselves properly. They experience just like the clairvoyant, and they experience another astral world if the inner consciousness has awoken. They get to know beings that do not exist here and have a certain relationship to the human inner nature. It is more or less clear to the usual people, and they only experience the picture of the Lady Midday.\nHowever, others have a more developed imaginative consciousness. They experience still more. In present primitive legends, rests of an ancient astral consciousness are preserved. We look back at a human past, in particular here in Central Europe and in Western Europe, at a past, in which — the further we go back — more and more of that consciousness exists which was substituted by the present bright day consciousness. Only that remained to the people as recollection of bigger or lower clearness, the disappearance of the astral consciousness in a dark past, in darkness. Of course, I do not say, the thoughts of the people, but I say, something that lives in the people and that I want to grasp in thoughts only. — That is which the human being of the people says to himself without realising that: I have to move the consciousness away from the day view; I must sleep, then I get entrance in that world again which my forefathers experienced, in a world which disappeared to the human beings. I do not experience it as a clear image, but as an obscurely assembled recollection.\nSuch a thing lives in the people, and, hence, people know that the astral experiences were richer and richer; the further one goes back in the past. What did the people experience whose scanty rests they have today like the questions of the Lady Midday? This is the recollection of beings that inhabit the astral world; this is the recollection of the old gods. The images of the gods are taken from them. Now you remember that I have emphasised as especially noteworthy that one should pray the Lord's Prayer inversely. Those who have heard me occasionally here know that one must read everything inversely in the astral. One must read the number 341 in the imaginative world as 143. This applies to our passions, too. The passions that go out from us appear — if the astral world has opened to us — as beings which hurry towards us. This is very painful for those who did not prepare themselves before. Everything that flows from us flows apparently to us. Hence, they see animals and all possible beings rushing towards themselves. With pathological conditions, for example, with insanity, you notice that there suddenly beings appear in the form of animals. These are beings living in the person concerned flow out of him and appear reflected in the form of animals.\nSomething that moves in the sensuous world from behind forwards moves in the astral world inversely. One has to pray the Lord's Prayer from behind forwards to satisfy the Lady Midday in the world in which she is. You can see how the legend adheres this. Now we could go through the entire Germanic world of gods and we would find that that is reflected in it, which I have shown at the beginning of the talk as the secret doctrine of all cultures. What I have shown in great thoughts and outlines as the worlds which apparently pile on top of each other — in truth, they are in each other — all that is reflected popularly in the Germanic world of gods. When the human being lived once in a world in which he still had a picture consciousness in which he had not yet advanced to the present deducing intellect, his ego was not yet as powerful as today. Indeed, he did not think and act as an animal, but the lower members: physical body, etheric body, and astral body prevailed in him. The ego did not yet have senses. It still lived an inner life; thereby he still controlled the external. It was another form of human beings, they could not yet think with that consciousness we have today.\nThe human beings were much more imperfect than the present ones, but they were more perfect concerning the lower members. They had developed them more powerful and more varied. Hence, they did not yet belong to the spiritual world. They were soul beings in certain respect whose highest member belonged to the astral world whose middle member was also mental, and the third member was still lower. The imaginative consciousness meets such beings on the astral plane; there it discovers their highest essence. These beings, in certain respect ancestors of the human beings, are reflected in the Germanic folk consciousness as the giants. They are nothing else than predecessors of the human beings. Then the world developed. The human beings developed up to higher spheres. They received their thinking and became companions of spiritual beings that are finer organised in certain respect than the giants are because they took part in the higher spiritual worlds. These beings are reflected in the Germanic folk consciousness as the Æsir. The original Germanic mythology did not see anything miraculous in all that, but it saw in it an expression of the sentence, which I have stated: the human being is a becoming god, and the gods are those whom one can call perfect human beings, deified human beings. Gods are beings who have gone through their human level in bygone times. Thus, you see that the sequence of the beings of the Germanic mythology also expresses itself in the difference between the giants and the Æsir.\nStill more expresses itself in it. It expresses itself in the fact that the development of such beings definitely takes place in the same sense as the human development. The present human beings — the Germanic mythology understands it that way — learnt from Wotan what they learnt. Who was Wotan originally? We hear that our ancestors learnt the runes, the art of poetry, and still other things from Wotan. However, one always attributed this to the great initiates. Thus, an individuality expressed itself in Wotan whom we had to call a great initiate just now in the sense of the secret doctrine, a being who rushed ahead of humanity and who had already gone through the stages which humanity has to go through only now.\nHow did Wotan become the great teacher of the prehistoric times? Like other initiates in the other secret doctrines. There are initiates in all secret doctrines. Today these experience the same as at that time, while they outgrow their lower ego, develop the spiritual essence in themselves, and become citizens of a higher world already in this life. At the same time, however, it is made clear to us that at a certain hour the lower nature faces them. In every human being is a sum of passions, desires and wishes, which cling to his lower nature. From all that the human being has to come out first. Then it appears like a being before him. If the human being rises up to his higher nature, his lower nature is like something that is outside of him, while he is, otherwise, embedded in the desires and passions. Just as little anybody can lay his brain on a plate and look at it, just as little you can see your inner life, your inner lower nature. One calls this detached being the guardian of the threshold.\nHis lower nature stands as a being beside the human being, and he must say to himself once, that are you! You must detach this! — In all initiations, one calls this the descent into hell. One has to become a companion of the infernal powers, to descend into the depths of the world because the human being is simply embedded in them and his higher nature lives only halfway in him. One calls this being the guardian of the threshold because the human beings who do not appropriate courage and presence of mind do not overcome that. Those are called initiates who have crossed this threshold. Gradually the human being goes through development. He overcomes a stage at first where the human being becomes aware of his lower nature. Whereas he identifies himself with it, is embedded in it, it faces him like something else, as well as the table stands before me now. In all initiations, one calls this stage crucifixion. The human being is crucified to his own body because it is to him as irrelevant as an external cross to which he is nailed. If he has overcome this stage, he ascends higher. Then he became wise. One calls him with a symbolic expression “serpent” for the same reason, because generally the serpent is the symbol of wisdom. There he drinks from the springs of wisdom in the world. Then he still goes through a third stage.\nOne has to go through this stage in the different religions most variously. Look at Wotan. What is shown to us by him? These three stages of initiation are shown to us. One tells us first that Wotan would have had to hang once on the holy wood. During nine days, he suffered there and shouldered the sufferings of the world. There the giant Mimir came to him and gave him a drink from the cup of wisdom. He was released from the holy wood. This was the first initiation of Wotan. After he had gone through this, he was longing for the cup from which the potion can flow, which his uncle Mimir had given him at the gallows. Then, however, one further says that this cup of wisdom is protected in the abysses of the mountains and that Wotan crept in the figure of a serpent through the abysses to Gunnlod in order to seize the cup of wisdom. This was the second initiation.\nThe third stage is that where one tells us — and this is something very significant — that Wotan himself went to the spring of that wisdom which is the wisdom of the present and is to be found with that spring which is in the root of the world ash Yggdrasil. There lived the giant Mimir. Wotan here attained the initiation that enabled him to be the teacher of the prehistoric time, namely the present wisdom. Once he had attained wisdom from the abysses of the mountains, from the higher worlds. However, he should become a teacher of our wisdom, of that wisdom which is obtained by the senses and by the mind. He obtains the strength to this here. This was expressed in a nice symbol. One says that he lost an eye. What is the eye that he must leave behind to find the present wisdom? This is the astral eye. Now, because he should take up the wisdom of the runes, the wisdom of the present, he loses the astral eye, so that he can be a leader on the sensuous plane to which humanity has developed. These things show in no uncertain manner how in these three successive pictures the secret doctrine, which forms the basis of all religions, is also expressed in the Germanic mythology.\nIn another way, deep truth is expressed if we look, for example, at the legend of Baldr who is killed by the blind Hodur with the mistletoe at Loki's instigation. Loki is the adversary of Baldr. If we consider this legend, we realise that many people say that Baldr symbolises the sun, the setting sun. They say this without having an idea of the fact that no people write that way. The people experienced in the primeval times on the astral plan in pictures what we have got to know as the basis of the secret doctrine at the beginning of this talk. What did the folk experience in this respect? I have already pointed to the images that appear like obscure recollections, but not in the clear consciousness, I have pointed to the astral light disappearing in darkness, so that the present sensory life originated. The former astral consciousness, Baldr, is killed by the present darkness, mental darkness, by the present sensuous looking which Hodur symbolises, namely at the instigation of Loki. Who is Loki?\nLoki's name is already connected with the fire. What, however, is the fire in the secret doctrine? It is not the physical fire. The physical fire is only the external expression of an internal one, of that which the secret doctrine knows as the soul of the fire. This also lives in the human being in certain ways as his desires and passions. Only that separated itself during the further development that lives in the human being as desires and passions. It is no longer connected with the external fire, but the secret doctrine points to that. You get to know this more and more if you get involved with the occult side of theosophy or spiritual science. It shows how passions and desires are connected similarly with the fire as the positive and the negative poles of a magnet: the passions are one pole and the physical fire the other, however, they belong together. With the iron, you have both poles unseparated. This seems absurd to the materialistic worldview, I know this well. However, everything seems to be absurd to that who does not want to get involved with the depths of occult science. The look goes back to those times when one speaks of figures, as Loki is one. This being had an original existence and an immense strength when passion and fire were not yet separated when the passion still flowed through the seething fire. Such a fire being was Loki. Then the world developed further in such a way that from Loki, the fire, the lower nature formed and from the Æsir the higher nature. Both have arisen from Loki's nature.\nThis forms the basis of the Germanic legend. This is the secret of the Germanic mythology, that the world of the gods originated, while the beings developed further in the passionate primordial bases as well as in the spiritual. One tells us of three children of Loki. The first child is the Fenriswolf, the second is the Midgard Serpent, and the third is the goddess of the dead, Hel, who is bright on one side and has a black body on the other side. What does she show? She shows the lower human nature, which causes birth and death. Hence, Hel appears black and white. The Midgard Serpent that entwines the continents of the present world represents the etheric body that is tied to the present lower human nature. The third member represents what has arisen from the lower passions. Loki has remained from a former development. He had to deliver his children, so that the present world could originate which is thereby provoked to opposition and falls a victim to that which was the view of the former world.\nBaldr has to descend to Hel, into the depth. The depth symbolises the usual physical human nature. What is Baldr? Baldr exists as sub-consciousness if, for example, in trance the usual surface consciousness is extinguished and the old consciousness is roused again. Baldr is killed for us now. However, with Hel he still exists as the strength, as the strength of passion connected with the nature of fire.\nThus, we could call every member of the Germanic world of gods an external expression of this secret doctrine. You would see if we had fifty talks instead of one that all that is wonderfully right in the minute details, that we are concerned with a secret doctrine, which forms the basis of the pictorial ideas of the Germanic mythology. We also here find initiates, sages, who knew what I have told at the beginning of the talk. However, the people got to know beings of other worlds by means of various rests of their consciousness. They ranked these folk spirits in the world of the old gods. That is why the Germanic mythology appears as born out of the folk consciousness. How Siegfried, who is overcome, finds his higher self, this presents itself to us as an expression of deep secret teachings. This is not contrived, but it becomes completely certain that it is so to someone who is able to go back in such way in the spiritual depths of the prehistoric time. If we go through the Germanic mythology, we get a pictorial impression.\nIf we look at the East, we see the same secret doctrine as I have explained it at the beginning of the talk. However, we see it differently formed. With few sentences, we can characterise it. Not with Buddhism and not with Hinduism we want to get involved. We only need to know that they revere the brahma as a spiritual original being that forms the basis of all. The main ability of brahma is the creative knowledge, called vidya. Imagine a person standing beside a machine and studying it. He has a receptive knowledge. Imagine, however, the inventor who made the machine originally, he composed it from single parts. He had creative knowledge first. Such a creative knowledge, spread about the world surrounding us, is vidya, and the receptive knowledge is avidya. Thus, there are different gradations of vidya and avidya. However, brahma is the owner of all that is subsumed in vidya and avidya. Everything is born out of the thought and the human being himself is born out of it. But he has to develop again back to vidya, to the creative knowledge. This is the sense of human development.\nThe human being is led again through three places that the Indian doctrine calls loka. When the human being has died, he must stay in Bhurloka for a while, it is the same as kamaloka. The highest world is the spiritual world, Svargaloka. It is the devachan. From there he goes back again to the Bhurloka and back to the physical world. Thus, one sees how he takes up the most various forces and materials in the physical world. These came into being from Vidya of the enclosing Brahman. There we have the finest material world on top, the world of the Akasha. Akasha is only a material expression of Indra, which is the soul of this world. Then we come to the world of fire, to Agni. This is the material expression of the god Agni and the same as the god Loki in the Germanic mythology, only in another shade. Then we come down to the air, Vayu, then to the water and, finally, to the solid. Thus, the Indian doctrine imagines the construction of the external world. The Indian cult is the external symbolic expression of this secret truth.\nIf we ask ourselves which characteristic the Indian secret doctrine has that it developed other pictures, we can say that it bears a less symbolic character, but a more conceptual one. This is generally the difference between the Indian and the Germanic secret doctrines. Internally they are the same, an external difference exists, however, because the external religions in Europe have taken on a pictorial character that corresponds more to the beings of the astral plan, while the Indian people advanced a further step and gave them characters reminding of external impressions. We must indicate this as a difference of the Germanic and Indian doctrines that the Germanic doctrine is closer to the astral, the Indian one, however, to the thinking. Hence, it is also clear that the Indian doctrine is closer to that which the human being regards today as his innermost possession that one understands it easier than the world of the Germanic gods that has faded away into the unknown.\nThese doctrines were differently developed. As we see two configurations in Europe and India, we see one more, in the middle, so to speak, in Greece. We can see that two quite different forces in nature cause the Indian and the Germanic characteristics. The Indian characteristic approaches more the present ego. Hence, the Indian looked for his higher consciousness in the contemplation in his inside. He attempted to advance from Avidya to Vidya, from the receptive knowledge to the creative knowledge. A science of knowledge, a higher doctrine than a doctrine based on astral pictures is the Indian doctrine, and a doctrine based on astral pictures is expressed in the Germanic mythology. Why is this the case? The Germanic mythology gives us a great and fine answer. The higher consciousness that the human being should attain is represented in all secret doctrines as the female principle, as the soul. What is taken up from the outside what fertilises the soul is shown as the male principle. We have there the female soul that is fertilised by wisdom, by the spirit of the outside world. Thus, the human being moves up if he develops spiritually, figuratively spoken, to the higher female principle in his nature. Goethe means that saying: “The eternally-female pulls us upwards.” You must not understand this pedantically, because you read it in the “Chorus Mysticus” (Faust II) . If we understand this that way, we understand what the Teuton means if he says, if the warrior is killed on the battlefield, the Valkyrie meets him, there he reaches the higher mental. — The mentality of a warlike people, the passage through the gate of death and the attainment of a higher consciousness is symbolised by the approaching Valkyrie, taking up the soul in Valhalla, the connection with the higher consciousness, with the Valkyrie. The highest god is in the original Germanic the god Ziu (Týr) from whom Tuesday has its name. This is the same god as Mars in the Roman and as Ares in the Greek mythologies. Mardi (French) is the day, which is consecrated to the god of war, Mars. It was a warrior religion and it differs from the internal religion of the Indian.\nWho lives in the inner world develops the passions less that live in the astral world and are expressed in it. Thus, the consciousness, the warlike nature of the Teutons is reflected in the world of their gods. The Valkyrie is the higher consciousness naturally. Because the passion of war was here the creator of the mythology, the world of the gods was expressed in astral pictures; because over there in Asia, in India the creator was the introversive sense, therefore, a more spiritual religion was expressed. Both worldviews found their higher unity, their harmony when the Germanic one got the inside from Christianity.\nThus, you see that a deep internal sense forms the basis of the human development, and that one must look for this deep internal sense. Then one comes to the profundities of the world development, and then one does not stop at abstractions, as if one single figure of humanity formed the basis, but one understands that it is a variform wisdom. The secret doctrine had to be different in India, different in Europe, different with a warlike people, and different in Greece, with the people endowed with art. Humanity develops through the most various forms of cultural existence — the course of this world development always forward and always upward at the same time."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-16",
+    "title": "German Theosophy from the Beginning of the 19th Century",
+    "date": "15 Mar 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060315p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "It is a frequently mentioned fact that it is exceptionally difficult to obtain an understanding concerning the spiritual-scientific movement with our academic leaders in scientific circles. This is a fatal fact that science is today surrounded by such a big belief in authority. Everything that is scientific exercises such an impressive power in all directions that a spiritual movement has a hard furrow to plough if the predominating part of the scholars, one can say, almost any academic circle treat such a movement like our spiritual-scientific one in such a way, as if it were dilettantism, blind superstition or anything else.\nIt may be deplorable, but understandable in any case, if one hears the judgements of such academic circles about theosophy or spiritual science. If one examines these judgements, it is obvious that they belong to the judgements that were obtained without any expertise. If we then still ask the so-called public opinion, as it is expressed in our journals, we need not to be surprised, if it faces the theosophical movement not quite understanding. For this public opinion is controlled completely by the impressive power of the scientific authority and is completely dependent on it.\nThere are different reasons, which make this clear to us. We can see one of these reasons concerning the German cultural life simply in the fact that the academic circles, actually, left an important impact on our German cultural life, a culminating point of our deepest life of thought completely out of consideration. Indeed, you find some notes about this in any manual of philosophy, in any history of literature; but a really penetrating understanding of this most significant side of our cultural life and of that which around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries the most important German thinkers performed does not exist. In particular, there is a lack of understanding how these results of the German life of thought are rooted in the general German cultural life a hundred years ago.\nIf this fact were not such a one, if our academic circles were concerned with that deepening of the German life of thought around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries, there would be, for example, an understanding of Fichte's, Schelling's, and Hegel's great life of thought among our philosophers. The compendia of philosophy would not contain only single inadequate extracts of the works, but one would know what generally thought achieved in Germany. Then one would also obtain access to the spiritual-scientific movement from the point of view of scholarship.\nOf all pre-schools of theosophy or spiritual science which one can go through today this school of the German thought of the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for the present human beings. Indeed, it is not accessible to anybody, because how should the bigger national circles understand the great German thinkers really if the university circles, the academic circles lead the way to this understanding so little, if they do so little to cause a real popularity of these thinkers. One is not allowed to reproach the big audience, those who should turn to theosophy that they are not able to do it. To those, however, whose occupation it would be to let flow in the spiritual treasures of the West in the national culture, to those must be said that they fulfil their obligations in this respect in no way.\nI do not name unknown names to you, but I maybe have to represent the peculiar fact that one can relate names, which you find in every philosophical compendium, with theosophy. It is peculiar that one likes to say that it is senseless to use the title “Secret Doctrine.” The Western researchers, for example, who concerned themselves with Buddhism, have repeatedly denied that Buddhism contains a secret doctrine that anything would exceed what you can read in the books.\nIt is not at all surprising that such academic circles assert such things. For one can conclude from it that the most important things have remained a secret doctrine to them. How should they know that there is a secret doctrine, because they have never found access to it! The most important that was performed in connection with the great German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte is to the majority, also even today, a deep secret doctrine. It is true, as deplorable as it may appear, the German spiritual life of the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries originated from the so-called Enlightenment. We may characterise this Enlightenment with a few words. It was a necessary event in the modern spiritual development. The most significant spirits of the 18th century had taken up the cause of it. Kant says, enlightenment simply means what can be summarised in the sentence: “Dare to use your own reason” (first by Horace: sapere aude) . This enlightenment was nothing else than an emancipation of the personality, the relief of the personality from the traditions. What one has thought for centuries, what everybody has taken up from the common spiritual substance of the people should be checked. Only that should be valid which the single personality affirms. You know, great spirits developed from the Enlightenment. One only needs to remind of the name Lessing to call one of the best. Everything that is connected with the name Kant is nothing else than a result of the Enlightenment.\nSomeone who has broken with this Enlightenment in a peculiar way is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If I say, he has broken in peculiar way with this Enlightenment, and then you do not believe that I am determined to represent Fichte as an opponent of the Enlightenment. He has broken in the way that he examines all results of the Enlightenment and has continued building on its basis, but Fichte went quite thoroughly beyond that which is only enlightenment, beyond the trivial. Just Fichte gives somebody who has the possibility to become engrossed in his great lines of thought something that one can obtain among the newer spirits only from him.\nAfter we have heard many merely popular talks, we want to hear a talk today, which seems to be far off the usual way, which our spiritual-scientific talks take in this winter. I will endeavour to show something as comprehensibly as possible that took place in the German life of thought, actually, at that time, around the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries. It can only be sketchy what I have to say. At first this German life of thought impeded the access to the real spiritual world and then to the living and immortal essence of the human being. Today I cannot go into the worth or worthlessness of Kant's philosophy. The official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer and regards his system of theories as a philosophical action first-rate. Today I would like only to remind of a word which is known perhaps also with those who do not have the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the matter, to the word of the “thing in itself.”\nThe human cognitive faculties are limited in the sense of Kant's philosophy. They cannot penetrate to the “thing in itself.” Whichever ideas and concepts we form, whatever we get to know in the world, we deal with phenomena and not with the true “thing in itself” in the sense of Kant's philosophy. This is always concealed behind the phenomena. With it, blind speculation is encouraged — and we have seen it in the spiritual development of Germany very well — which wants to define and restrict the human cognitive faculties in all directions. However, at the same time the trend of the human being to penetrate to the true, to explore the depths of existence should be stopped.\nIt should be shown that the human being cannot automatically approach the primary sources of existence. Now it may be true that such an attitude was necessary in the course of the spiritual life of the 18th century. However, Kant's philosophy put big obstacles in the way of the further development of the spiritual life. Indeed, I know very well that there are people who say, what did Kant different from all those great spirits who have always emphasised that we deal with phenomena that we cannot come to the “thing in itself!” That is apparently right, however, it is wrong. The real spiritual researchers of all times state quite different that the world only consists of phenomena.\nNo true spiritual researcher has ever denied that in such a way, as we investigate the world with senses, understand it with the intellect, it offers us only phenomena. However, higher senses are to be woken in us that go beyond the usual, which penetrate deeper into the sources of existence, can, and must lead slowly and gradually to the “thing in itself.” No Eastern philosophy, no Platonic philosophy, no self-understanding worldview penetrating into the spirit has ever spoken of the world as Maya in another sense. They always said only, to the lower human cognition, a veil is before the “thing in itself,” to the higher human cognition this veil is torn, the human being can penetrate into the depths of existence. The Enlightenment reached a blind alley concerning the question in certain respects, and this is characterised best of all with a remark which you find in the preface to the second edition of Kant's main work Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and with which the Enlightenment can be caught at its despondency because it does not want to advance further.\nOne reads: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith.” This is the nerve of Kant's philosophy and of that thinking to which the 18th century came and beyond which our philosophical scholarship has not yet come which still suffers from it. As long as it suffers from this illness, philosophy is never destined to understand theosophy. What does that mean: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith”? Kant says, the thing in itself remains concealed, consequently also the thing in our breast. We do not know what we ourselves are; we can never come to the true figure of the things. As from uncertain worlds the so-called categorical imperative sounds: you shall do this or that. —We hear it, we cannot prove it, however. We just have to believe it. We hear about the divine being. We have to believe it. Just as little as we know about the destiny of the soul, about immortality and eternity. We must believe them. There is only faith in these matters that connect the human being with the divine, because no knowledge can penetrate into the divine. The human being believes knowledge if he presumes to penetrate into the divine. This divine is thereby falsified, is cast in a wrong light due to wild speculation.\nTherefore, Kant wanted to save all spiritual for the mere faith and apply cognition — what one can know — only to the external impressions, to the appearance. Whatever you may read and study, otherwise, about Kant's philosophy, this thought is the essentials that it depends on. This thought became the essentials in the further development of Kant's thinking. However, someone who broke with this thought definitely out of a courageous attitude was Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).\nIt is a peculiar thing that the theosophical thinkers of modern India, the renovators of the Vedanta philosophy made an astounding discovery — namely that the Germans have a great thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. An Indian says this who writes under the name Bhagavan Das (1869-1958). I have got to know German theosophists who have only found out from him that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a deep German thinker.\nYou can experience a lot in this regard. Weeks ago, I was in a South German city. One of the theosophical friends there said to me, now we have a university lecturer here who means, it would be good if people studied Fichte, because he got the idea that many deep thoughts were in Fichte. — That is a strange confession of a German university professor! If more than one century after Fichte a German university professor makes the discovery that Fichte achieved something great, throws a characteristic light on this kind of German scholarship.\nFichte represented the doctrine of the ego, of the human self-consciousness not speculatively, but out of the whole depth of his being, among his Jena students in the last decade of the 18th century. He did not represent it in the same way as we do it today from the spiritual-scientific point of view. He represented it in such a way that a number of persons would have come to theosophy if they had educated themselves according to his great conceptual demands; they would have come to it in a healthy way, illumining the real inside brightly. Not without reason his speeches inspired the Jena students in those days. For the following lived in him. Although he walked on the heights of thought, although he spoke in the purest, clearest, and logically sharpest thoughts, a quite warm and deep immediate personality and being expressed themselves in his thoughts at the same time. He himself pronounced the word that characterises him deepest that everyone has a philosophy, depending on which sort of a person he is.\nIf one expresses this trivially, one could say, it does not depend on whether anybody can think logically well or badly, because one can reason a hollow philosophy very logically, it does not depend on astuteness but on the internal experience, on that which one has fathomed with all his soul forces. This expresses itself in the language. If one is also a flat materialist, nevertheless, he can be a sharp logician, and on the other hand, someone can be a spiritualist and be logically weak. One proves no worldview, but the worldview is the expression of the innermost human being, the inner experience. Fichte pronounced this not only, but lived it also. Kant stimulated him. However, as one is stimulated by that to which one can add the drawback in his inside — because there the deepest organs emerge in the human being —, nevertheless, this was clear to Fichte.\nNow follow me, I would like to say, for a short moment into the icy, but not less important regions of thoughts from which Fichte got the being of self-consciousness. I do not describe with his own words, because this would be too difficult here, but in outlines, which do not contain less truth. I would like to say what he conjured before his Jena students at that time: there is one thing for everybody in which the “thing in itself” announces itself to him, in which he expresses himself. That is his own inside. Look into it and you discover something that you can discover nowhere else at first. — We see that Fichte knew that not anybody discovers what he has to discover there, because he says a very nice word, even if it is rude to most human beings. He says, if the human beings were able to come to real self-knowledge, they would find the most significant in themselves. However, a few are successful, because they rather regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon than as self-conscious beings.\nWhat is self-consciousness for our time? One shows it as a conglomerate of cerebral atoms. However, one does not strive for recognising himself; one does not do this. There is no great difference whether one says that it is a conglomerate of cerebral atoms or molecules or a piece of lava on the moon. — Here Fichte draws attention clearly to the fact that that knowledge of the inside which only wants to observe how it is not the right knowledge of the inside. For the nature of the human being differs in its inside from any other being. By which does it differ? It differs by the fact that decision and action belong to the nature of the human being. From this icy region of thoughts, we want to come to flowery fields soon. Fichte calls self-knowledge not brooding in oneself, not looking into oneself, no, Fichte regards it as action. This word leads you from the wrong self-knowledge to the true self-development. The human being is not able to look simply into himself in order to recognise who he is. He has to give that to himself, which he shall become. He must become engrossed in the divine of the world and get the sparks from the divine with which he has to kindle his self perpetually. We look at a stone. It is what it is. We recognise it. We look at the plant. It is what it is. We look at our own body, our etheric body, and astral body. They are also that which they are. The human being is only that which he makes of himself, and self-knowledge is an intimate activity, no dead knowledge. While Fichte uses the (German) word “Tathandlung” (~ self-conscious action and result of the action) , he says something that only the old Vedanta philosophy says in this significant kind. He reached the point that just the theosophists seek again. Often and often, I have said here that theosophy wants to show how the human being soars the divine, how it should stimulate the divine strength slumbering in the human being with which then he also becomes aware of the divine round himself. Fichte completely strives for the same. The wrong self-knowledge, he says, consists of the fact that one says, look into yourselves and you find the god in yourselves.\nThe right self-knowledge says something completely different. It says, if you brood in yourself, it is in such a way, as if you look into your own eye. However, this is not the task of the eye. We get to know the light with the eye. Thus, we also get to know the light of the ego with the soul. One can compare the eye with waking the inner self. As little as you find the soul in the organism, the light in the eye, just as little you find the god in yourselves. However, we find the possibility to develop the organs to find this god. The activity in the ego, which develops our spiritual organs, is the being that the human being gives himself. This is the “Tathandlung,” this is Fichte's self-knowledge. From this point, Fichte advances gradually. If you completely settle down, you educate yourselves to his thoughts, then you find a healthy access to theosophy, and nobody has to regret it one day if he settles down into the clear lines of thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, because he finds the way to the spiritual life.\nHowever, there is a peculiar fact. When Johann Gottlieb Fichte has ascended to these etheric heights of thought, he lacks the view to which he did not come at that time, which the spiritual-scientific worldview brought back like a solution of the world riddle: the teaching of karma and reincarnation. If you see this, then you know to apply it to your own development. The human beings would like to judge all times, according to the same pattern. However, the human spirit is in perpetual development, and every age has other tasks. That century whose end forms in conceptual respect Johann Gottlieb Fichte had the task to emancipate the human personality. This was the good side of the Enlightenment. However, the personality is that member of the human nature, which just does not return, as well as it is. Our deepest essence that expresses itself within the personality returns in the various earth-lives. However, the single life on earth expresses itself in the personality.\nLet us consider the being of the personality properly. We have four human covers basically that are not to be imagined, however, like onion skins: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and in them that which the human being works for, his refined astral body, that part on which the human ego has already worked. We have these four covers. However, in them only the imperishable everlasting essence of the human being, the so-called spiritual triad exists: manas, buddhi, and atman — spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These go from earth-life to earth-life and ascend then to higher states of existence. The last external cover expresses itself in the personality. It has still another importance and it has received it more and more in the human development. If we go back to the old times, we find that the human beings appreciated the individuality during the former centuries less and less; instead, the personality became more and more powerful. Today one easily confuses the concepts of individuality and personality. The individuality is the everlasting that runs through the earth-lives. Personality is that which the human being develops during an earth-life.\nIf we want to study the individuality, we have to look at the bottom of the human soul. If we want to study the personality, we have to observe how the essence expresses itself. The essence is born into the people, into the occupation. All that determines the inner being, it personifies it. With a human being who is still on a subordinated level of development one can perceive a little of the work on his inside. The mode of expression, the kind of the gestures and so forth is just in such a way as he has them from his people. However, those are the advanced human beings who give themselves the mode of expression and gestures from their inside. The more the inside of the human being is able to work on his appearance, the higher this develops the human being.\nNow one could say, the individuality is expressed in the personality. Someone, who has his own gestures, his own physiognomy, has a peculiar character in his actions and in relation to the surroundings, has a distinct personality. Is that lost at death forever? No, this does not get lost. Christianity knows for sure that this is not the case. What one understands by resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing else than the preservation of the personal in all following incarnations. What the human being has gained as a personality remains to him because it is attached to the individuality and this carries it further into the following incarnations. If we have made something of our body that has a peculiar character, this body, this strength, which has worked there, resurrects. As much we have worked on ourselves, as much we have made of ourselves, we do not lose it. Generating awareness of this knowledge is something that has not yet happened. This happens by theosophy. However, it was the task of the Enlightenment to acquire an uncertain feeling. It showed the task of the personality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte has put the idea of the personality in its everlasting importance in his construct of clear ideas. There the right thing immediately emerges for the epoch of the recognition of the everlasting and imperishable in the personality. Fichte accomplished that.\nOne has often said, the great human beings have the big mistakes of their big virtues, and because Fichte was able to measure out the personality with the thought uniquely, he did not penetrate to the individuality; also not his successors. However, they have implanted the thought in the personality. Someone who finds it there carries it in a healthy way through the repeated earth-lives if he approaches spiritual science. It does not depend on dogmas, but on the education that we can obtain in his spirit. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was an educator in the proper sense.\nIt does not depend on the fact that we become servile students of such a man, but that we also go through that strength which he went through. Then we may get other thoughts by his forces in another age. One faces such a spirit in this way. This was expressed in a certain way at his time. His personality can educate us and find pleasant expression in the distant future.\nSpiritual science is so little dogmatic that it leads to the great human beings and shows that we can learn from them even more than what they have said. The expression of that which they are is the language. However, more than the expression lives in every human being, the immortal soul lives in them to which we can rise as to the true essence. Therefore, Fichte was already in the highest degree stimulating for those, at the end of the 18th century, who were sitting at his feet and listening how he measured out the human personality with world-spanning lines of thought. He inspired them to penetrate conceptionally to the soul and to acquire still quite other treasures from it than Fichte himself did.\nOne of those who sat at Fichte's feet and looked reverentially to him, one of those who got out the philosophical ideas, was the young short-lived German theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, German Romantic poet and author, 1772-1801). He died around the turn of 18th to the 19th century, not yet thirty years old. Who becomes engrossed in his works goes through the finest training of theosophy. Perhaps it could be to that who is educated in the western science a much better elementary training to go through his tremendous light flashes, than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar writings that remain more or less strange to the West. Just now, it is possible to become engrossed completely in that which this great soul achieved.\nHe wrote a book in which he describes how a young person is introduced in the subterranean structure of the earth, in the geologic layers of the rocks and minerals by great geologists and mineralogical works. There he readily gets thoughts such as, you, rocks, I look only for you, however, what you say I look for continually. — Runes, letters, words were the stones to him, which he investigated as a miner underground; spiritual beings created in the earth and produced every single rock. He saw the spirit and soul in the earth, and every stone was to him the expression of that which the earth has to say to him. Mineralogy and geology became a runic science to him, and he attempted to penetrate to the spirit of the earth, while his great teacher made the layers and resemblances of the rocks clear to him. Just those who work in the depths of the earth are often led to deeper worldviews. Not least, miners did deep looks into the spiritual world. Staying underground has a peculiar effect on the spiritual experience.\nHowever, something else appeared with Novalis. To understand it we only need to remember that at the front gate of Plato's school one could read the words: let none but geometers enter here. — The Platonic school demonstrated its elementary knowledge in geometrical forms, and Novalis, who illumined the secrets of existence with so big light flashes, revered mathematics like a religion. It is something sacred to him. Take this as a psychological phenomenon of peculiar kind. These strange human beings are able to feel something sacred and something like music with the abstract lines of mathematics and geometry. How circles and angles form a group together, how the different forms like polyhedra, dodekahedra and such build themselves up, then one can feel something that comes from Novalis speaking about mathematics. However, you can only take up that if you do not take up it in such a way as in our schools, but if you become engrossed in the inner music of space. Mathematics is the access to the infinite truth.\nThen he heard Fichte, and from him the great truth of the ego as a personality. Then we see in this strange spirit almost the whole occultism reflected in certain ways. For someone who has knowledge in this respect Novalis is a peculiar personality. He is a personality who had already experienced the deepest initiation in former incarnations. Everything was a recollection that he experienced in the last, the third decade of his life. It becomes apparent in his life that it was more recollection of former incarnations than of the current one. This comes out in his imagination. The former incarnations completely became imagination in Novalis because they cast their shadows and found their expression as pieces of art.\nThus, we have to understand Novalis as a peculiar, tender, and intimate being. If Fichte arranges his razor-sharp thoughts and carries us off by this sharpness, then Novalis is wonderfully gentle and shows the spiritual life from a completely different side. Thus, he is the necessary supplement for someone who wants to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy. Our best went through this pre-school in those days. We can call names of many people who attempted to penetrate in their kind, according to their character in those days into the truth which spiritual science gives humanity back today. These are names that are known more or less, however, whose bearers one has to deeper consider.\nAt first, we have Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., German philosopher, 1775-1854). If we open ourselves to his youth writings, where he became independent, he works so strongly on that who gets involved with him because he expressed a thought of Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, German-Swiss physician, occultist, 1493-1541) in the way usual at that time. This thought was expressed not only by Schelling, but also by the great Steffens (Henrik St., Danish philosopher, 1773-1845), and in particular by the naturalist Oken (originally Lorenz Okenfuß, 1779-1851), by the great predecessor of the modern theory of evolution and founder of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians. This thought is an eminently theosophical one.\nIt was usual in natural sciences, also in the philosophy of Schelling and Steffens, also in that of Novalis. These thinkers said: if we look out at the world, we see a number of animals. Every animal shows certain human qualities one-sidedly developed. What the amphibians have, what the snails have is also found in the human being. Those snails, amphibians and so on have something one-sidedly physical. If one makes, however, a whole of it, one gets the harmoniously developed human body that summarises everything that is spread out outdoors. As Paracelsus says, we find letters outdoors in nature, and if we compose them, they yield a word and this word is the human being. A great theosophist — not a German one — of the 18th century (presumably Claude de Saint Martin, 1743 - 1803) just took this principle as the basis of his theosophical investigating. Therefore, he came so far to say, if we look at the human being, we see the remaining animal realm. This is the opposite principle of that how one studies these things today. The theorists of evolution of that time said something different from those of today.\nThey said, if you face a person about whom you do not know that he is, for example, a great watchmaker, and then you are not able to recognise the person. At first, you have to become engrossed in his astuteness that makes him create what he produces. What he produces, that is the point. However, nature has produced the human being as a keystone. There you have the compendium of the whole nature. If you understand this in such a way, you understand nature. — One must recognise the remaining nature from the human being and not the human being from nature. If you carry out that really, you also understand how it could emerge as a certain reflection with Schelling and Oken. With Schelling and Oken you can read, the snail is a groping animal, the insect is a light animal, the bird a hearing animal, the amphibian a feeling animal, the fish a smelling animal. Thereby they express how the senses are spread over the single animals. They are harmoniously contained in the human being. One only needs to distribute the qualities of the human being to understand the remaining nature.\nIn 1809, Schelling published a writing, which is of big significance for theosophy. He had got to know the deep German thinker Jacob Boehme. He became engrossed in him, and thus he got to know the nature of the bad and its coherence with freedom. You find this in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom . There he shows that God is the light and that from the light everything comes that shines that, however, the light has to shine into the darkness and that where light is shadow originates. Only by this comparison, one can realise what one reads in this writing. If you let the sun shine into darkness, there originates shadow; shadow must appear if the light is there, but the light does not generate it. Hence, he says, from the divine primal ground of the light everything great arises in the world. However, as well as the light is opposed to the darkness, the non-ground faces the primal ground, and from this the shadow of the good emerges, the bad. This is the indication of an infinitely deep involvement. Again, you can educate yourselves to the theosophical life if you take up that in yourselves.\nAnother writing by Schelling is still significant: Bruno or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things (1802/1843). In pleasant dialogue form, like with Plato, he discusses here about the coherence of soul and spirit in the theosophical sense. Therefore, Schelling would be able to become a theosophist. He understood how to practice inner sight. Schelling was also an eager teacher at the Jena University first, and then he worked still at other sites and, finally, withdrew completely. In Munich, he lived a long time and was together with Baader (Franz Xavier von B., philosopher and theologian, 1765-1841), that spirit who renewed Jacob Boehme in such a fine way in the 19th century again. He stimulated Schelling. He wrote scarcely anything in that time. In 1809, his writing about freedom originated. Then he wrote almost nothing up to his call to Berlin by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who may be challenged in certain ways, who is not yet appreciated enough concerning insights into big, deep, and internal spiritual connections. In 1841, Schelling was appointed to Berlin. He should explain before the students what he had lived through such a long time.\nHe held two courses of lectures: about the Philosophy of Mythology (1856) and about the Philosophy of Revelation (1858). There he led into the essence of the old mysteries and showed how Christianity originated from them and what Christianity concerns. Then we who live more than half a century later are led automatically to reincarnation and karma. If you become engrossed in the philosophy of mythology and in the philosophy of revelation, you find, this is theosophy. However, all trivial people of that time railed against that. They could not understand what Schelling reported at that time. If the theosophists wanted to become engrossed in these writings, they would see from which depths all that is taken.\nFichte could speak of a special spiritual sense because he was one of those who wanted to open the eyes of the human beings. Fichte gave the definition of theosophy already in 1813. He said, “Appear as a sighted man in a world of blind people and speak to them of colours and light. Either you talk to them of nothing — and this is the more fortunate case if they say it, because in this way you soon notice the mistake and stop talking without success — or the more gifted people say, you are a daydreamer.” — All those experience that who are gifted with a special sense. They appear like among blind people. However, this sense can be evoked with everybody, slowly with the one, faster with the other. By the special sense, Fichte shows quite clearly that he knew what depends on in theosophy. This was the real definition of theosophy. Others scooped from such sources, from such currents of the spiritual life.\nHowever, I would like to remind of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich H., 1770-1831, philosopher) above all. I cannot get involved to explain Hegel's peculiar view. I would also like to remind of the name of an exceptionally gentle person, of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860, physician and naturalist), who wrote books about the essence of the soul. Schelling wrote to Schubert still in 1850 when the sixth edition of a book about the essence of the soul had appeared: you are, actually, in a more fortunate position than I am. I must get involved with the world-spanning thoughts, which introduce in the spiritual life. However, you live the intimate side that the human being meets if he investigates all intimacies of the soul.\nSchubert studied that soul life which is the border area between consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness, but also the border area between everyday consciousness, dream, and clairvoyance. With Schubert, you already find explanations about the principle that controls the dream world. About that, you can find a lot with him. He studied Swedenborg (Emanuel S., 1688-1772, scientist, philosopher, and mystic) in the time in which it was possible to point to these characteristics of the human spiritual life with great thoughts in a healthy way. He represented the view that there is an etheric body and an even higher etheric body than that which decomposes after death with every human being. Schubert already pointed to that which the Vedanta philosophy calls the “fine body” (sukshma-shariram). He wrote a very nice consideration about this higher body of the human being. You can find there fine remarks with him.\nYou can see how at that time already the single currents flowed into each other, you can see this with a poet who interlaced these things in his poetries, with Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who represented a peculiar prince in his Prince of Homburg and created Katie of Heilbronn , a peculiar figure, too. He was stimulated to them by talks on somnambulism and on higher spiritual life.\nSchubert speaks of a pre-being of the soul; he also discusses the question of reincarnation. At that time, he did not yet regard it as Christian. However, he speaks of a pre-being whose destiny he exactly pursues. Then from this, the brilliant book originates by Justinus Kerner (1786-1862, practical physician, poet and writer): The Seeress of Prevorst (1829). When in the 19th century the book about this strange woman appeared, he used a lot of theosophy for its explanation. The occultist already recognises Justinus Kerner as an expert in the basic definition that he gives about this seeress (Friederike Hauffe, 1801-1829). He was an expert because he lived in the time, which had such thoughts as I characterised them. He says of the seeress of Prevorst — she had two children and was somnambulistic in the extreme — that the mental-spiritual world was open round her and that she could observe the spiritual side of the human beings. He describes her in such a way: imagine somebody retained at the moment of death, so that the peculiar state continues for some years; the emergence of the etheric body and the odd relationship of the astral body to the etheric body lasted for years. Because her soul condition was in such a way, she was able to behold the still existing part of the etheric body of someone who had lost a limb. She could also perceive many things besides. Kerner gives appropriate explanations even if they are not at the height of our time.\nYou can find explanations also with Eckartshausen (Karl von E., 1752-1803, philosopher, mystic) who also wrote about the inner spiritual development. Kosti's Journey or also The Hieroglyphics of the Human Heart are writings that are adapted to open the human soul to a higher vision. He also described what he calls a soul body appropriately. Another writer is sometimes rather stimulating: Ennemoser (Joseph E., 1787-1854, physician, mesmerist) who wrote theosophy, too, informed a lot of animal magnetism and the mysteries in his works, and contributed much to show the Greek mythology in the right light.\nThus, you see a painting of the first time of the 19th century, from the first thoughts that can work educationally on the human being up to the facts that bring theosophy together with immediate spiritualistic experiences. At that time, you find everything in a pure and sometimes nobler way expressed than it was shown later by the respective authors. You can learn much more about magic spiritual life there than in that which was published by Schindler (Heinrich Bruno Sch., 1797-1859, physician and author) and Albertus (?, perhaps hearing defect, probably Carus , Carl Gustav C., 1789 - 1869, physician, scientist, and naturalist).\nLater the interest changed more and more into an interest, similar to curiosity, the mere urge for knowledge. In the first half of the 19th century, even such spirits who could not go very deeply had the desire of ascending to spiritual heights, developing inner soul organs, and knew something concerning self-knowledge and self-development. Novalis knew how to speak in miraculous tones in his Heinrich of Ofterdingen about that all. He put the big treasure of former initiation memory in that which he has like a recollection of former lives. In the Novices of Sais he shows how Hyazinth gets to know the girl Rosenblüth (rose flower). Only the animals of the wood know something of this extremely subtle love. A wise man comes and tells about the magic life, about spiritual secrets. Hyazinth and Rosenblüth get the desire to walk to the initiation temple of Isis. However, nobody can give some indication, which is the right way to the temple. He walks and walks. There he sits down, tired among nice physical things, in particular also because of that which nature speaks to him. He drops off to dream in a ghostly way.\nThe temple is round him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled picture, and what does he see? Rosenblüth. He lovely describes how Rosenblüth is that feeling of unity, that uniform idea of the whole nature, how it extends over the whole nature, and how he looks for the hidden secret that life often shows to us that we only need to understand. This is wonderfully indicated. Thus, you can prospect with Novalis wonderfully if you get yourselves in how intimately he expressed the experiences of the world at that time.\nI was allowed here to speak about Goethe, Herder, and Schiller and to show how they were theosophists. In a theosophical way, Novalis just pronounces what is a characteristic trait of that time what controlled it like a theosophical motto spiritually. It is included in the words: “Someone succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — However, what did he see? He saw — miracle of miracles — himself.”\nThus, the human being comes out, after he has developed the spiritual organs in himself, and searches for himself all over the world. He does not search for himself in himself, he searches for himself in the world, and with it, he searches for God. This search of God in the world, as he expresses it so nicely in this saying, is theosophy."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-17",
+    "title": "Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods",
+    "date": "22 Mar 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060322p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "It is a frequently mentioned fact that it is exceptionally difficult to obtain an understanding concerning the spiritual-scientific movement with our academic leaders in scientific circles. This is a fatal fact that science is today surrounded by such a big belief in authority. Everything that is scientific exercises such an impressive power in all directions that a spiritual movement has a hard furrow to plough if the predominating part of the scholars, one can say, almost any academic circle treat such a movement like our spiritual-scientific one in such a way, as if it were dilettantism, blind superstition or anything else.\nIt may be deplorable, but understandable in any case, if one hears the judgements of such academic circles about theosophy or spiritual science. If one examines these judgements, it is obvious that they belong to the judgements that were obtained without any expertise. If we then still ask the so-called public opinion, as it is expressed in our journals, we need not to be surprised, if it faces the theosophical movement not quite understanding. For this public opinion is controlled completely by the impressive power of the scientific authority and is completely dependent on it.\nThere are different reasons, which make this clear to us. We can see one of these reasons concerning the German cultural life simply in the fact that the academic circles, actually, left an important impact on our German cultural life, a culminating point of our deepest life of thought completely out of consideration. Indeed, you find some notes about this in any manual of philosophy, in any history of literature; but a really penetrating understanding of this most significant side of our cultural life and of that which around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries the most important German thinkers performed does not exist. In particular, there is a lack of understanding how these results of the German life of thought are rooted in the general German cultural life a hundred years ago.\nIf this fact were not such a one, if our academic circles were concerned with that deepening of the German life of thought around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries, there would be, for example, an understanding of Fichte's, Schelling's, and Hegel's great life of thought among our philosophers. The compendia of philosophy would not contain only single inadequate extracts of the works, but one would know what generally thought achieved in Germany. Then one would also obtain access to the spiritual-scientific movement from the point of view of scholarship.\nOf all pre-schools of theosophy or spiritual science which one can go through today this school of the German thought of the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for the present human beings. Indeed, it is not accessible to anybody, because how should the bigger national circles understand the great German thinkers really if the university circles, the academic circles lead the way to this understanding so little, if they do so little to cause a real popularity of these thinkers. One is not allowed to reproach the big audience, those who should turn to theosophy that they are not able to do it. To those, however, whose occupation it would be to let flow in the spiritual treasures of the West in the national culture, to those must be said that they fulfil their obligations in this respect in no way.\nI do not name unknown names to you, but I maybe have to represent the peculiar fact that one can relate names, which you find in every philosophical compendium, with theosophy. It is peculiar that one likes to say that it is senseless to use the title “Secret Doctrine.” The Western researchers, for example, who concerned themselves with Buddhism, have repeatedly denied that Buddhism contains a secret doctrine that anything would exceed what you can read in the books.\nIt is not at all surprising that such academic circles assert such things. For one can conclude from it that the most important things have remained a secret doctrine to them. How should they know that there is a secret doctrine, because they have never found access to it! The most important that was performed in connection with the great German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte is to the majority, also even today, a deep secret doctrine. It is true, as deplorable as it may appear, the German spiritual life of the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries originated from the so-called Enlightenment. We may characterise this Enlightenment with a few words. It was a necessary event in the modern spiritual development. The most significant spirits of the 18th century had taken up the cause of it. Kant says, enlightenment simply means what can be summarised in the sentence: “Dare to use your own reason” (first by Horace: sapere aude) . This enlightenment was nothing else than an emancipation of the personality, the relief of the personality from the traditions. What one has thought for centuries, what everybody has taken up from the common spiritual substance of the people should be checked. Only that should be valid which the single personality affirms. You know, great spirits developed from the Enlightenment. One only needs to remind of the name Lessing to call one of the best. Everything that is connected with the name Kant is nothing else than a result of the Enlightenment.\nSomeone who has broken with this Enlightenment in a peculiar way is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If I say, he has broken in peculiar way with this Enlightenment, and then you do not believe that I am determined to represent Fichte as an opponent of the Enlightenment. He has broken in the way that he examines all results of the Enlightenment and has continued building on its basis, but Fichte went quite thoroughly beyond that which is only enlightenment, beyond the trivial. Just Fichte gives somebody who has the possibility to become engrossed in his great lines of thought something that one can obtain among the newer spirits only from him.\nAfter we have heard many merely popular talks, we want to hear a talk today, which seems to be far off the usual way, which our spiritual-scientific talks take in this winter. I will endeavour to show something as comprehensibly as possible that took place in the German life of thought, actually, at that time, around the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries. It can only be sketchy what I have to say. At first this German life of thought impeded the access to the real spiritual world and then to the living and immortal essence of the human being. Today I cannot go into the worth or worthlessness of Kant's philosophy. The official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer and regards his system of theories as a philosophical action first-rate. Today I would like only to remind of a word which is known perhaps also with those who do not have the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the matter, to the word of the “thing in itself.”\nThe human cognitive faculties are limited in the sense of Kant's philosophy. They cannot penetrate to the “thing in itself.” Whichever ideas and concepts we form, whatever we get to know in the world, we deal with phenomena and not with the true “thing in itself” in the sense of Kant's philosophy. This is always concealed behind the phenomena. With it, blind speculation is encouraged — and we have seen it in the spiritual development of Germany very well — which wants to define and restrict the human cognitive faculties in all directions. However, at the same time the trend of the human being to penetrate to the true, to explore the depths of existence should be stopped.\nIt should be shown that the human being cannot automatically approach the primary sources of existence. Now it may be true that such an attitude was necessary in the course of the spiritual life of the 18th century. However, Kant's philosophy put big obstacles in the way of the further development of the spiritual life. Indeed, I know very well that there are people who say, what did Kant different from all those great spirits who have always emphasised that we deal with phenomena that we cannot come to the “thing in itself!” That is apparently right, however, it is wrong. The real spiritual researchers of all times state quite different that the world only consists of phenomena.\nNo true spiritual researcher has ever denied that in such a way, as we investigate the world with senses, understand it with the intellect, it offers us only phenomena. However, higher senses are to be woken in us that go beyond the usual, which penetrate deeper into the sources of existence, can, and must lead slowly and gradually to the “thing in itself.” No Eastern philosophy, no Platonic philosophy, no self-understanding worldview penetrating into the spirit has ever spoken of the world as Maya in another sense. They always said only, to the lower human cognition, a veil is before the “thing in itself,” to the higher human cognition this veil is torn, the human being can penetrate into the depths of existence. The Enlightenment reached a blind alley concerning the question in certain respects, and this is characterised best of all with a remark which you find in the preface to the second edition of Kant's main work Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and with which the Enlightenment can be caught at its despondency because it does not want to advance further.\nOne reads: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith.” This is the nerve of Kant's philosophy and of that thinking to which the 18th century came and beyond which our philosophical scholarship has not yet come which still suffers from it. As long as it suffers from this illness, philosophy is never destined to understand theosophy. What does that mean: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith”? Kant says, the thing in itself remains concealed, consequently also the thing in our breast. We do not know what we ourselves are; we can never come to the true figure of the things. As from uncertain worlds the so-called categorical imperative sounds: you shall do this or that. —We hear it, we cannot prove it, however. We just have to believe it. We hear about the divine being. We have to believe it. Just as little as we know about the destiny of the soul, about immortality and eternity. We must believe them. There is only faith in these matters that connect the human being with the divine, because no knowledge can penetrate into the divine. The human being believes knowledge if he presumes to penetrate into the divine. This divine is thereby falsified, is cast in a wrong light due to wild speculation.\nTherefore, Kant wanted to save all spiritual for the mere faith and apply cognition — what one can know — only to the external impressions, to the appearance. Whatever you may read and study, otherwise, about Kant's philosophy, this thought is the essentials that it depends on. This thought became the essentials in the further development of Kant's thinking. However, someone who broke with this thought definitely out of a courageous attitude was Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).\nIt is a peculiar thing that the theosophical thinkers of modern India, the renovators of the Vedanta philosophy made an astounding discovery — namely that the Germans have a great thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. An Indian says this who writes under the name Bhagavan Das (1869-1958). I have got to know German theosophists who have only found out from him that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a deep German thinker.\nYou can experience a lot in this regard. Weeks ago, I was in a South German city. One of the theosophical friends there said to me, now we have a university lecturer here who means, it would be good if people studied Fichte, because he got the idea that many deep thoughts were in Fichte. — That is a strange confession of a German university professor! If more than one century after Fichte a German university professor makes the discovery that Fichte achieved something great, throws a characteristic light on this kind of German scholarship.\nFichte represented the doctrine of the ego, of the human self-consciousness not speculatively, but out of the whole depth of his being, among his Jena students in the last decade of the 18th century. He did not represent it in the same way as we do it today from the spiritual-scientific point of view. He represented it in such a way that a number of persons would have come to theosophy if they had educated themselves according to his great conceptual demands; they would have come to it in a healthy way, illumining the real inside brightly. Not without reason his speeches inspired the Jena students in those days. For the following lived in him. Although he walked on the heights of thought, although he spoke in the purest, clearest, and logically sharpest thoughts, a quite warm and deep immediate personality and being expressed themselves in his thoughts at the same time. He himself pronounced the word that characterises him deepest that everyone has a philosophy, depending on which sort of a person he is.\nIf one expresses this trivially, one could say, it does not depend on whether anybody can think logically well or badly, because one can reason a hollow philosophy very logically, it does not depend on astuteness but on the internal experience, on that which one has fathomed with all his soul forces. This expresses itself in the language. If one is also a flat materialist, nevertheless, he can be a sharp logician, and on the other hand, someone can be a spiritualist and be logically weak. One proves no worldview, but the worldview is the expression of the innermost human being, the inner experience. Fichte pronounced this not only, but lived it also. Kant stimulated him. However, as one is stimulated by that to which one can add the drawback in his inside — because there the deepest organs emerge in the human being —, nevertheless, this was clear to Fichte.\nNow follow me, I would like to say, for a short moment into the icy, but not less important regions of thoughts from which Fichte got the being of self-consciousness. I do not describe with his own words, because this would be too difficult here, but in outlines, which do not contain less truth. I would like to say what he conjured before his Jena students at that time: there is one thing for everybody in which the “thing in itself” announces itself to him, in which he expresses himself. That is his own inside. Look into it and you discover something that you can discover nowhere else at first. — We see that Fichte knew that not anybody discovers what he has to discover there, because he says a very nice word, even if it is rude to most human beings. He says, if the human beings were able to come to real self-knowledge, they would find the most significant in themselves. However, a few are successful, because they rather regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon than as self-conscious beings.\nWhat is self-consciousness for our time? One shows it as a conglomerate of cerebral atoms. However, one does not strive for recognising himself; one does not do this. There is no great difference whether one says that it is a conglomerate of cerebral atoms or molecules or a piece of lava on the moon. — Here Fichte draws attention clearly to the fact that that knowledge of the inside which only wants to observe how it is not the right knowledge of the inside. For the nature of the human being differs in its inside from any other being. By which does it differ? It differs by the fact that decision and action belong to the nature of the human being. From this icy region of thoughts, we want to come to flowery fields soon. Fichte calls self-knowledge not brooding in oneself, not looking into oneself, no, Fichte regards it as action. This word leads you from the wrong self-knowledge to the true self-development. The human being is not able to look simply into himself in order to recognise who he is. He has to give that to himself, which he shall become. He must become engrossed in the divine of the world and get the sparks from the divine with which he has to kindle his self perpetually. We look at a stone. It is what it is. We recognise it. We look at the plant. It is what it is. We look at our own body, our etheric body, and astral body. They are also that which they are. The human being is only that which he makes of himself, and self-knowledge is an intimate activity, no dead knowledge. While Fichte uses the (German) word “Tathandlung” (~ self-conscious action and result of the action) , he says something that only the old Vedanta philosophy says in this significant kind. He reached the point that just the theosophists seek again. Often and often, I have said here that theosophy wants to show how the human being soars the divine, how it should stimulate the divine strength slumbering in the human being with which then he also becomes aware of the divine round himself. Fichte completely strives for the same. The wrong self-knowledge, he says, consists of the fact that one says, look into yourselves and you find the god in yourselves.\nThe right self-knowledge says something completely different. It says, if you brood in yourself, it is in such a way, as if you look into your own eye. However, this is not the task of the eye. We get to know the light with the eye. Thus, we also get to know the light of the ego with the soul. One can compare the eye with waking the inner self. As little as you find the soul in the organism, the light in the eye, just as little you find the god in yourselves. However, we find the possibility to develop the organs to find this god. The activity in the ego, which develops our spiritual organs, is the being that the human being gives himself. This is the “Tathandlung,” this is Fichte's self-knowledge. From this point, Fichte advances gradually. If you completely settle down, you educate yourselves to his thoughts, then you find a healthy access to theosophy, and nobody has to regret it one day if he settles down into the clear lines of thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, because he finds the way to the spiritual life.\nHowever, there is a peculiar fact. When Johann Gottlieb Fichte has ascended to these etheric heights of thought, he lacks the view to which he did not come at that time, which the spiritual-scientific worldview brought back like a solution of the world riddle: the teaching of karma and reincarnation. If you see this, then you know to apply it to your own development. The human beings would like to judge all times, according to the same pattern. However, the human spirit is in perpetual development, and every age has other tasks. That century whose end forms in conceptual respect Johann Gottlieb Fichte had the task to emancipate the human personality. This was the good side of the Enlightenment. However, the personality is that member of the human nature, which just does not return, as well as it is. Our deepest essence that expresses itself within the personality returns in the various earth-lives. However, the single life on earth expresses itself in the personality.\nLet us consider the being of the personality properly. We have four human covers basically that are not to be imagined, however, like onion skins: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and in them that which the human being works for, his refined astral body, that part on which the human ego has already worked. We have these four covers. However, in them only the imperishable everlasting essence of the human being, the so-called spiritual triad exists: manas, buddhi, and atman — spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These go from earth-life to earth-life and ascend then to higher states of existence. The last external cover expresses itself in the personality. It has still another importance and it has received it more and more in the human development. If we go back to the old times, we find that the human beings appreciated the individuality during the former centuries less and less; instead, the personality became more and more powerful. Today one easily confuses the concepts of individuality and personality. The individuality is the everlasting that runs through the earth-lives. Personality is that which the human being develops during an earth-life.\nIf we want to study the individuality, we have to look at the bottom of the human soul. If we want to study the personality, we have to observe how the essence expresses itself. The essence is born into the people, into the occupation. All that determines the inner being, it personifies it. With a human being who is still on a subordinated level of development one can perceive a little of the work on his inside. The mode of expression, the kind of the gestures and so forth is just in such a way as he has them from his people. However, those are the advanced human beings who give themselves the mode of expression and gestures from their inside. The more the inside of the human being is able to work on his appearance, the higher this develops the human being.\nNow one could say, the individuality is expressed in the personality. Someone, who has his own gestures, his own physiognomy, has a peculiar character in his actions and in relation to the surroundings, has a distinct personality. Is that lost at death forever? No, this does not get lost. Christianity knows for sure that this is not the case. What one understands by resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing else than the preservation of the personal in all following incarnations. What the human being has gained as a personality remains to him because it is attached to the individuality and this carries it further into the following incarnations. If we have made something of our body that has a peculiar character, this body, this strength, which has worked there, resurrects. As much we have worked on ourselves, as much we have made of ourselves, we do not lose it. Generating awareness of this knowledge is something that has not yet happened. This happens by theosophy. However, it was the task of the Enlightenment to acquire an uncertain feeling. It showed the task of the personality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte has put the idea of the personality in its everlasting importance in his construct of clear ideas. There the right thing immediately emerges for the epoch of the recognition of the everlasting and imperishable in the personality. Fichte accomplished that.\nOne has often said, the great human beings have the big mistakes of their big virtues, and because Fichte was able to measure out the personality with the thought uniquely, he did not penetrate to the individuality; also not his successors. However, they have implanted the thought in the personality. Someone who finds it there carries it in a healthy way through the repeated earth-lives if he approaches spiritual science. It does not depend on dogmas, but on the education that we can obtain in his spirit. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was an educator in the proper sense.\nIt does not depend on the fact that we become servile students of such a man, but that we also go through that strength which he went through. Then we may get other thoughts by his forces in another age. One faces such a spirit in this way. This was expressed in a certain way at his time. His personality can educate us and find pleasant expression in the distant future.\nSpiritual science is so little dogmatic that it leads to the great human beings and shows that we can learn from them even more than what they have said. The expression of that which they are is the language. However, more than the expression lives in every human being, the immortal soul lives in them to which we can rise as to the true essence. Therefore, Fichte was already in the highest degree stimulating for those, at the end of the 18th century, who were sitting at his feet and listening how he measured out the human personality with world-spanning lines of thought. He inspired them to penetrate conceptionally to the soul and to acquire still quite other treasures from it than Fichte himself did.\nOne of those who sat at Fichte's feet and looked reverentially to him, one of those who got out the philosophical ideas, was the young short-lived German theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, German Romantic poet and author, 1772-1801). He died around the turn of 18th to the 19th century, not yet thirty years old. Who becomes engrossed in his works goes through the finest training of theosophy. Perhaps it could be to that who is educated in the western science a much better elementary training to go through his tremendous light flashes, than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar writings that remain more or less strange to the West. Just now, it is possible to become engrossed completely in that which this great soul achieved.\nHe wrote a book in which he describes how a young person is introduced in the subterranean structure of the earth, in the geologic layers of the rocks and minerals by great geologists and mineralogical works. There he readily gets thoughts such as, you, rocks, I look only for you, however, what you say I look for continually. — Runes, letters, words were the stones to him, which he investigated as a miner underground; spiritual beings created in the earth and produced every single rock. He saw the spirit and soul in the earth, and every stone was to him the expression of that which the earth has to say to him. Mineralogy and geology became a runic science to him, and he attempted to penetrate to the spirit of the earth, while his great teacher made the layers and resemblances of the rocks clear to him. Just those who work in the depths of the earth are often led to deeper worldviews. Not least, miners did deep looks into the spiritual world. Staying underground has a peculiar effect on the spiritual experience.\nHowever, something else appeared with Novalis. To understand it we only need to remember that at the front gate of Plato's school one could read the words: let none but geometers enter here. — The Platonic school demonstrated its elementary knowledge in geometrical forms, and Novalis, who illumined the secrets of existence with so big light flashes, revered mathematics like a religion. It is something sacred to him. Take this as a psychological phenomenon of peculiar kind. These strange human beings are able to feel something sacred and something like music with the abstract lines of mathematics and geometry. How circles and angles form a group together, how the different forms like polyhedra, dodekahedra and such build themselves up, then one can feel something that comes from Novalis speaking about mathematics. However, you can only take up that if you do not take up it in such a way as in our schools, but if you become engrossed in the inner music of space. Mathematics is the access to the infinite truth.\nThen he heard Fichte, and from him the great truth of the ego as a personality. Then we see in this strange spirit almost the whole occultism reflected in certain ways. For someone who has knowledge in this respect Novalis is a peculiar personality. He is a personality who had already experienced the deepest initiation in former incarnations. Everything was a recollection that he experienced in the last, the third decade of his life. It becomes apparent in his life that it was more recollection of former incarnations than of the current one. This comes out in his imagination. The former incarnations completely became imagination in Novalis because they cast their shadows and found their expression as pieces of art.\nThus, we have to understand Novalis as a peculiar, tender, and intimate being. If Fichte arranges his razor-sharp thoughts and carries us off by this sharpness, then Novalis is wonderfully gentle and shows the spiritual life from a completely different side. Thus, he is the necessary supplement for someone who wants to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy. Our best went through this pre-school in those days. We can call names of many people who attempted to penetrate in their kind, according to their character in those days into the truth which spiritual science gives humanity back today. These are names that are known more or less, however, whose bearers one has to deeper consider.\nAt first, we have Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., German philosopher, 1775-1854). If we open ourselves to his youth writings, where he became independent, he works so strongly on that who gets involved with him because he expressed a thought of Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, German-Swiss physician, occultist, 1493-1541) in the way usual at that time. This thought was expressed not only by Schelling, but also by the great Steffens (Henrik St., Danish philosopher, 1773-1845), and in particular by the naturalist Oken (originally Lorenz Okenfuß, 1779-1851), by the great predecessor of the modern theory of evolution and founder of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians. This thought is an eminently theosophical one.\nIt was usual in natural sciences, also in the philosophy of Schelling and Steffens, also in that of Novalis. These thinkers said: if we look out at the world, we see a number of animals. Every animal shows certain human qualities one-sidedly developed. What the amphibians have, what the snails have is also found in the human being. Those snails, amphibians and so on have something one-sidedly physical. If one makes, however, a whole of it, one gets the harmoniously developed human body that summarises everything that is spread out outdoors. As Paracelsus says, we find letters outdoors in nature, and if we compose them, they yield a word and this word is the human being. A great theosophist — not a German one — of the 18th century (presumably Claude de Saint Martin, 1743 - 1803) just took this principle as the basis of his theosophical investigating. Therefore, he came so far to say, if we look at the human being, we see the remaining animal realm. This is the opposite principle of that how one studies these things today. The theorists of evolution of that time said something different from those of today.\nThey said, if you face a person about whom you do not know that he is, for example, a great watchmaker, and then you are not able to recognise the person. At first, you have to become engrossed in his astuteness that makes him create what he produces. What he produces, that is the point. However, nature has produced the human being as a keystone. There you have the compendium of the whole nature. If you understand this in such a way, you understand nature. — One must recognise the remaining nature from the human being and not the human being from nature. If you carry out that really, you also understand how it could emerge as a certain reflection with Schelling and Oken. With Schelling and Oken you can read, the snail is a groping animal, the insect is a light animal, the bird a hearing animal, the amphibian a feeling animal, the fish a smelling animal. Thereby they express how the senses are spread over the single animals. They are harmoniously contained in the human being. One only needs to distribute the qualities of the human being to understand the remaining nature.\nIn 1809, Schelling published a writing, which is of big significance for theosophy. He had got to know the deep German thinker Jacob Boehme. He became engrossed in him, and thus he got to know the nature of the bad and its coherence with freedom. You find this in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom . There he shows that God is the light and that from the light everything comes that shines that, however, the light has to shine into the darkness and that where light is shadow originates. Only by this comparison, one can realise what one reads in this writing. If you let the sun shine into darkness, there originates shadow; shadow must appear if the light is there, but the light does not generate it. Hence, he says, from the divine primal ground of the light everything great arises in the world. However, as well as the light is opposed to the darkness, the non-ground faces the primal ground, and from this the shadow of the good emerges, the bad. This is the indication of an infinitely deep involvement. Again, you can educate yourselves to the theosophical life if you take up that in yourselves.\nAnother writing by Schelling is still significant: Bruno or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things (1802/1843). In pleasant dialogue form, like with Plato, he discusses here about the coherence of soul and spirit in the theosophical sense. Therefore, Schelling would be able to become a theosophist. He understood how to practice inner sight. Schelling was also an eager teacher at the Jena University first, and then he worked still at other sites and, finally, withdrew completely. In Munich, he lived a long time and was together with Baader (Franz Xavier von B., philosopher and theologian, 1765-1841), that spirit who renewed Jacob Boehme in such a fine way in the 19th century again. He stimulated Schelling. He wrote scarcely anything in that time. In 1809, his writing about freedom originated. Then he wrote almost nothing up to his call to Berlin by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who may be challenged in certain ways, who is not yet appreciated enough concerning insights into big, deep, and internal spiritual connections. In 1841, Schelling was appointed to Berlin. He should explain before the students what he had lived through such a long time.\nHe held two courses of lectures: about the Philosophy of Mythology (1856) and about the Philosophy of Revelation (1858). There he led into the essence of the old mysteries and showed how Christianity originated from them and what Christianity concerns. Then we who live more than half a century later are led automatically to reincarnation and karma. If you become engrossed in the philosophy of mythology and in the philosophy of revelation, you find, this is theosophy. However, all trivial people of that time railed against that. They could not understand what Schelling reported at that time. If the theosophists wanted to become engrossed in these writings, they would see from which depths all that is taken.\nFichte could speak of a special spiritual sense because he was one of those who wanted to open the eyes of the human beings. Fichte gave the definition of theosophy already in 1813. He said, “Appear as a sighted man in a world of blind people and speak to them of colours and light. Either you talk to them of nothing — and this is the more fortunate case if they say it, because in this way you soon notice the mistake and stop talking without success — or the more gifted people say, you are a daydreamer.” — All those experience that who are gifted with a special sense. They appear like among blind people. However, this sense can be evoked with everybody, slowly with the one, faster with the other. By the special sense, Fichte shows quite clearly that he knew what depends on in theosophy. This was the real definition of theosophy. Others scooped from such sources, from such currents of the spiritual life.\nHowever, I would like to remind of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich H., 1770-1831, philosopher) above all. I cannot get involved to explain Hegel's peculiar view. I would also like to remind of the name of an exceptionally gentle person, of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860, physician and naturalist), who wrote books about the essence of the soul. Schelling wrote to Schubert still in 1850 when the sixth edition of a book about the essence of the soul had appeared: you are, actually, in a more fortunate position than I am. I must get involved with the world-spanning thoughts, which introduce in the spiritual life. However, you live the intimate side that the human being meets if he investigates all intimacies of the soul.\nSchubert studied that soul life which is the border area between consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness, but also the border area between everyday consciousness, dream, and clairvoyance. With Schubert, you already find explanations about the principle that controls the dream world. About that, you can find a lot with him. He studied Swedenborg (Emanuel S., 1688-1772, scientist, philosopher, and mystic) in the time in which it was possible to point to these characteristics of the human spiritual life with great thoughts in a healthy way. He represented the view that there is an etheric body and an even higher etheric body than that which decomposes after death with every human being. Schubert already pointed to that which the Vedanta philosophy calls the “fine body” (sukshma-shariram). He wrote a very nice consideration about this higher body of the human being. You can find there fine remarks with him.\nYou can see how at that time already the single currents flowed into each other, you can see this with a poet who interlaced these things in his poetries, with Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who represented a peculiar prince in his Prince of Homburg and created Katie of Heilbronn , a peculiar figure, too. He was stimulated to them by talks on somnambulism and on higher spiritual life.\nSchubert speaks of a pre-being of the soul; he also discusses the question of reincarnation. At that time, he did not yet regard it as Christian. However, he speaks of a pre-being whose destiny he exactly pursues. Then from this, the brilliant book originates by Justinus Kerner (1786-1862, practical physician, poet and writer): The Seeress of Prevorst (1829). When in the 19th century the book about this strange woman appeared, he used a lot of theosophy for its explanation. The occultist already recognises Justinus Kerner as an expert in the basic definition that he gives about this seeress (Friederike Hauffe, 1801-1829). He was an expert because he lived in the time, which had such thoughts as I characterised them. He says of the seeress of Prevorst — she had two children and was somnambulistic in the extreme — that the mental-spiritual world was open round her and that she could observe the spiritual side of the human beings. He describes her in such a way: imagine somebody retained at the moment of death, so that the peculiar state continues for some years; the emergence of the etheric body and the odd relationship of the astral body to the etheric body lasted for years. Because her soul condition was in such a way, she was able to behold the still existing part of the etheric body of someone who had lost a limb. She could also perceive many things besides. Kerner gives appropriate explanations even if they are not at the height of our time.\nYou can find explanations also with Eckartshausen (Karl von E., 1752-1803, philosopher, mystic) who also wrote about the inner spiritual development. Kosti's Journey or also The Hieroglyphics of the Human Heart are writings that are adapted to open the human soul to a higher vision. He also described what he calls a soul body appropriately. Another writer is sometimes rather stimulating: Ennemoser (Joseph E., 1787-1854, physician, mesmerist) who wrote theosophy, too, informed a lot of animal magnetism and the mysteries in his works, and contributed much to show the Greek mythology in the right light.\nThus, you see a painting of the first time of the 19th century, from the first thoughts that can work educationally on the human being up to the facts that bring theosophy together with immediate spiritualistic experiences. At that time, you find everything in a pure and sometimes nobler way expressed than it was shown later by the respective authors. You can learn much more about magic spiritual life there than in that which was published by Schindler (Heinrich Bruno Sch., 1797-1859, physician and author) and Albertus (?, perhaps hearing defect, probably Carus , Carl Gustav C., 1789 - 1869, physician, scientist, and naturalist).\nLater the interest changed more and more into an interest, similar to curiosity, the mere urge for knowledge. In the first half of the 19th century, even such spirits who could not go very deeply had the desire of ascending to spiritual heights, developing inner soul organs, and knew something concerning self-knowledge and self-development. Novalis knew how to speak in miraculous tones in his Heinrich of Ofterdingen about that all. He put the big treasure of former initiation memory in that which he has like a recollection of former lives. In the Novices of Sais he shows how Hyazinth gets to know the girl Rosenblüth (rose flower). Only the animals of the wood know something of this extremely subtle love. A wise man comes and tells about the magic life, about spiritual secrets. Hyazinth and Rosenblüth get the desire to walk to the initiation temple of Isis. However, nobody can give some indication, which is the right way to the temple. He walks and walks. There he sits down, tired among nice physical things, in particular also because of that which nature speaks to him. He drops off to dream in a ghostly way.\nThe temple is round him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled picture, and what does he see? Rosenblüth. He lovely describes how Rosenblüth is that feeling of unity, that uniform idea of the whole nature, how it extends over the whole nature, and how he looks for the hidden secret that life often shows to us that we only need to understand. This is wonderfully indicated. Thus, you can prospect with Novalis wonderfully if you get yourselves in how intimately he expressed the experiences of the world at that time.\nI was allowed here to speak about Goethe, Herder, and Schiller and to show how they were theosophists. In a theosophical way, Novalis just pronounces what is a characteristic trait of that time what controlled it like a theosophical motto spiritually. It is included in the words: “Someone succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — However, what did he see? He saw — miracle of miracles — himself.”\nThus, the human being comes out, after he has developed the spiritual organs in himself, and searches for himself all over the world. He does not search for himself in himself, he searches for himself in the world, and with it, he searches for God. This search of God in the world, as he expresses it so nicely in this saying, is theosophy."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-18",
+    "title": "Parsifal and Lohengrin",
+    "date": "29 Mar 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060329p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "Eight days ago I was allowed to speak to you about the esoteric core, about the spiritual contents of those great legends in which Central European thinking and feeling express themselves in the first third of the Middle Ages with the renewal of which Richard Wagner achieved something prophetic for our art at the same time. Today another legend type has to occupy us, two legends that Richard Wagner also renewed and which were made accessible to art significantly in our time. The Parzival and the Lohengrin legends should occupy us today. With both these legends we touch a land different from that was which occupied us eight days ago. I want to characterise in a few words once again, what takes, actually, the Siegfried and the Nibelungs legends up and what lives in them. The old spiritual experience of the ancestors expresses itself in the consciousness of the Central European population. This consciousness is sunken in the darkness of the time, and the usual sensory view has already substituted it in the epoch in which these legends originated. It was the old spiritual experience, which still lived like an echo, just as the world of the gods or legends.\nThe legends of the Nibelungs and of Siegfried are echoes of the ancient pagan time with its secret doctrines, with its views of the initiation of the old leaders of the people, and we have found Siegfried as such a great initiate of the Teutons. However, Lohengrin and Parzival are individualities of quite different type. We enter that time with them when Christianity, a worldview completely new to Central Europe, had spread out and won influence. Now the whole being of the newly emerging Christianity and everything that is connected as a result with it lives in these both legends, in the Parzival and in the Lohengrin legends. We want to imagine how the being of medieval-European development expresses itself in this legend world at first. We have emphasised eight days ago that to us the legends of Siegfried and the Nibelungs point to an ancient prehistoric time in which a kind of natural ties of love connected the single tribes, the single parts of the population. Something like an echo of this time is contained in that which Tacitus reports when he says that the Germans still revered an old tribal god at whom they looked up like at a father with whom they were connected by family ties, which extended to tribal communities.\nThe blood, the natural relationship gave that love. Every single tribe had such a tribal divinity that had a kind of ancestor again. This natural love is a result of the blood relationship, resting like a breath on these old times, and just the recollection of these old times and tribal communities, of this old love, based on blood relationship, is expressed in the legend type of the Nibelungs. We have seen that the legend type of the Song of the Nibelungs originated in a time in which the tribal love had already withdrawn. Something else replaced it: greed, everything that is symbolised by the gold that is connected with egoism and is based on it. The old love based on blood relationship was no longer authoritative, but new connections that were based on statutes, contracts and laws. This reversal is reflected in the legend of the Nibelungs.\nLater, other aims replaced these old communities, which were based on gold, so to say, on possession and mere warlike knightly bravery, which were out for possession. Other ideals gradually appeared with Christianity. The inner being of Christianity maybe was nowhere expressed as magnificently and tremendously as in the legends into which we settle down bit by bit and in which the task of Christianity within Central Europe is represented allegorically: in the Lohengrin and Parzival legends.\nWhat did Christianity have as its elixir of life? The absolute equality of all human beings. One felt Christianity that way at least at that time. One felt freedom, equality before the highest that the human being can imagine as the jewel, as the real mission of Christianity. The ancestors of the Teutons were proud of the name of their ancestors, of the name of a tribe or of a family name. They referred to it if they wanted to assign value to themselves in the world. They referred to the law, to titles and names in the time, which had superseded the family love. Now both should no longer be valid, but simply the human being had to be important who felt intrinsically in his core. The human being without title, without name was the Christian ideal. Something great was said with it. The Lohengrin and the Parzival legends express this.\nHow do both legends express this? If we take the Parzival legend, we need only to visualise the structure of the Parzival legend how it lived in the Middle Ages, lived in Wolfram von Eschenbach (~1170-~1220). We have to deal with a young person who grows on, torn out from any community, torn out from that which gave distinction and weight to the human beings at that time. The mother Herzeloide experienced that sufferings, pains could be connected with the old order that was based on titles, distinctions, and names. In the old order, her husband was led to the East where he had an accident. Now she wants to bring her son up far from all those things. He should know nothing about the striving of the worldly knights. However, one day he sees such worldly knights. There he decides to depart, and he starts hiking. We know that this hike leads him to two places that we must consider as something particularly important for the spiritual perception in the middle of the Middle Ages.\nThe first place to which the Parzival comes is the Round Table of King Arthur; the other place is the castle of the Holy Grail. What are these? In the Middle Ages one imagined the Round Table of King Arthur as a community from which all spiritual strength goes out for that which existed in the Middle Ages before the influence of Christianity as worldly knighthood, generally as all worldly. We come back to ancient times, to those times to which we could point already last time in the talk on the Song of the Nibelungs. We know that the Teutons, the ancestors of the German and Anglo-Saxon tribes took an area in possession that other tribes inhabited, the Celts in primeval times. The Celts: one only knows a little about them; history tells a little only about these past times of Europe in which these strange people had big influence which was pushed then by the invading Teutons to the west, but was also forced back there as people. The Celts were forced back as people. Their influence has remained. A spiritual sediment of this old Celtic time exists in Europe. In this Celtic time people still beheld clairvoyantly into the spiritual regions. Ideas of the spiritual world remained from that.\nAmong the Celts, the old clairvoyance was preferably home, the immediate consciousness that one could have experiences in the divine-spiritual world. The stories and dramatic actions are an echo of the instructions that the initiate Celtic priests gave to their pupils and via the pupils to the whole people. There we refer to those primeval times of Europe, when there were real initiates, initiates of the old Celtic paganism on European territory.\nWhat I have told to you about the initiation of Siegfried, of Wotan and so on, all that leads back to the old initiations of the old Celtic priests. These old Celtic priests were of the same spirit as in ancient Egypt, in ancient Chaldea or ancient Persia the priest sages were as rulers. They were the rulers. Everything that happened in the world that belonged to the external organisation was done according to the instructions of the priest sages. Everything public, everything common was controlled by the wisdom of these original scholars of Europe.\nKing Arthur about whom one says that he withdrew with his Round Table to Wales and lived there was nothing else than the learnt lord of these sages who formed a spiritual centre, a kind of spiritual monarchy. One felt that this spiritual centre, I would like to say of “original scholars,” with his choice twelve companions was there. This has good reasons. Thus, one tells that King Arthur was nothing else than the successor of that directing scholar of the old Celtic priests in Wales. With it, we immediately recognise that there was something in Europe that we call a Grand Lodge in spiritual science.\nLet us now realise the concept of a Grand Lodge. You know that we think seriously of development, that humanity develops, that humanity ascends higher and higher, that every single human being can ascend the path of knowledge up to those stages where he himself beholds into the spiritual worlds, where the primal ground behind the world manifests to him.\nIf we speak of the possibility of development of humanity, it is also not abstruse to realise that there are higher developed individualities in humanity already today who have run ahead of the remaining humanity and have walked the paths of knowledge and wisdom due to a life full of renunciation, so that they can be leaders of modern humanity. Today where one levels everything, where one does not want to recognise anything, where one talks of development, but does not want to believe in development, one does not accept this. However, in the times when one knew something of it one really spoke of the existing development.\nAccording to a natural principle, we find twelve different forces of the spirit. I have said about Goethe that he himself talks about such a secret brotherhood that he considers as Rosicrucians. One spoke of such a Grand White Lodge in the Middle Ages. From this, the strands went out which controlled life. One recognised that who directed all that in King Arthur, who lived concealed in Wales. Around him were his knights who were, indeed, no longer at the height of the priests of the old Celtic time for whom the time of love had transformed into a time of egoism when one attempted to conquer countries with the sword in the hand. However, they were still under the guidance of the White Lodge.\nIndeed, the question immediately suggests itself: if there are such lodges — also even today —, why do they not appear? — I have said often enough that it depends not only on the fact that somebody appears, but also on the fact that he can be recognised. Today also, Jesus would probably not be recognised. It is hard to recognise a sage within his time. It belongs just that to it which theosophy or spiritual science wants to bring again to humanity. If it finds its way, one understands such a thing as the Round Table of King Arthur, the directing white lodge.\nThis was the one: Arthur. The other is the castle of the Holy Grail. Only by way of a hint, we can deal with it. One says that the Holy Grail is the chalice in which once Christ Jesus with his disciples took the Last Supper, the wine, and in which his blood was then collected. Then the lance was also brought to Europe with which the side of Jesus was pierced. The chalice of the Holy Grail is on monsalvaesche (mons salvationis = mountain of salvation) where a holy castle was built up. The Holy Grail has the capacity to give everlasting youth, the force of everlasting life generally to somebody who is familiar with its miracles who lives with its sun of grace.\nAgain, these are twelve, but Christian spiritual knights now. The old Templars guard the Holy Grail, and they used the forces, which they suck from this guard to pour out the spiritual knighthood of the heart, of the inner life, over Europe. Thus, one countered the white lodge of the worldly knighthood that moved to Wales with the spiritual knighthood in the castle of the Holy Grail, which is placed on the Spanish mountain monsalvaesche.\nWhich task did the knights have who were in the castle of the Holy Grail? The task of the knights of the Holy Grail was not to make conquests, not to acquire external possession, not to appropriate seigneuries; their task was to make the conquest of the soul life. One tells to us about the treasure of the Nibelungs, about the gold as a symbol of possession, as an aim worth striving for by the Nibelungs, the Holy Grail is the spiritualised treasure of the Nibelungs, the treasure of the soul. What is the strength that goes out from the Holy Grail in reality? What do those twelve knights work who are in its castle? A spark of the divine lives in every human being, as often the theosophical worldview emphasises. The mystics of the Middle Ages had their great ideas in the same time in which also these legends originated. They spoke of the fact that the human being is a fourfold being. There is at first the external physical human being who lives here in this world who strives for possession who is on the lookout for gold. The second one is the mental human being who suffers and is glad who has instincts, desires, and sensations who must be gradually improved. The third human being is an even more internal one. He is a spiritual human being who attains admission to the spiritual world bit by bit. The innermost human being is the divine human being. This is that who today and this was felt in particular in the Middle Ages — is only in the earliest stages. To develop this disposition of the divine spark more and more, to raise the human being to the higher worlds, this one had aimed at in the initiation of the old paganism. One aims at this now within the Christian world in a new way. In addition, the Christian initiation was internalised.\nYou remember from the former talks how the initiation ceremonies were in the old times how the human being had to go through procedures that lifted out the internal soul from the physical body, so that the human being was enraptured to the higher world and could witness the qualities of the higher world. An external procedure belonged to it to go through all that. Christianity should bring an initiation that takes place only in the deepest inside, in the concealed sanctum of the soul. There the god should be searched for, the god, who brought salvation to Christianity by pouring his blood; every single human being in his soul should find this god. The single human being should really be able to attain that which Angelus Silesius, the great Christian mystic, later expressed with the words: “If you rise above yourself and allow God to prevail, then ascension takes place in your mind.” The task of the knights of the Holy Grail was to develop the internal vital spark in the human being.\nThe Holy Grail was nothing else than the deepest inside of the human nature, and it was something uniform because the internal human nature is a uniform one, because a life spent in the pursuit of wisdom raises hope that one could understand what is meant with the big unity, with the big divine spark. They were there as the brothers of the Holy Grail. Parzival wanted to find the way to the Holy Grail. The legend tells now that when he came to the Holy Grail, he found King Amfortas bleeding at that time. One had said to him to ask not much and nothing wrong. Hence, he did not ask for the wounds of the king and not for the meaning of the Holy Grail. That is why he is cast out. He should ask for the qualities of the Holy Grail and the wounds of the king. This belongs to the experiences that are to be done in the divine life that one must ask for it. He must long for it. The Holy Grail exists; one can find it, it is bestowed on everybody, but it does not impose itself. It does not come to us; we must feel the longing for the Holy Grail, the internal sanctum, the divine vital spark in the human soul. We must have the desire to ask for it. If the human soul has found the path up to the god, the god descends to it. The secret of the Holy Grail is the descent of the god who descends, if the human being develops up to the divine.\nJohn the Baptist shows this following the baptism of Jesus: a dove came down and sat down on the head, and a voice spoke from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; in you I take delight” (Mark 1:11). The Holy Grail is shown in the figure of a dove allegorically.\nParzival was not yet ripe with his first visit in the Grail castle to experience what we have just described. When he felt cast out, something came to his soul that must come to every soul once if it should really become ripe for the last stages of knowledge. Doubt, disbelief, inner mental darkness come to Parzival's soul. Indeed, someone who wants to ascend to knowledge must go through the hard school of doubt once. Not before one has doubted and has gone through the tortures and everything that doubts may bring along, he has acquired that certainty in his inside that he will never lose knowledge again. Doubt is a bad brother, but a purifying brother. Parzival goes through these doubts now, and he brings himself to that knowledge which consists of something else than of intellectual knowledge. Richard Wagner expresses this knowledge with magnificent correctness, maybe not quite philosophically or psychologically correctly but analogously, while he calls Parzival (Parsifal) the “pure fool” who becomes knowing by compassion.\nThus, we come to the description of the way that someone has to go through who still has to struggle through to the stages of higher knowledge. You know that it is the path of the pupils and that one distinguishes there three stages. If anybody has acquired the qualities that constitute the preparatory path, if he has purified himself of the uncontrolled ideas and leads a pure life, then he becomes ripe for chelahood, then he becomes ripe to get the guru, the spiritual leader. The first stage of the path to higher knowledge consists of the fact that one learns to behave quite impartially to the world, to practice love without the slightest trace of any prejudice from the inside. Why do the human beings love in the usual life at first?\nBecause they have a blood relationship, because they have been connected by any ties for long. This is right. However, who wants to go the path of knowledge must penetrate to another form of love. Nothing that ties me together with a human being in a special way is allowed to prefer him regarding my love. I am only allowed to ask for that which is outside me. Has my brother or my brother-in-law any advantage? No! With it, I say nothing against the love for our relatives; it should concern only the traits of the human being. Even if he is quite foreign to us, we recognise that he is worthy of our love, then we love him like one who is connected with us for long. Such a human being is on the first level of chelahood. We call him the homeless human being because he has lost what one calls home in the ideal sense. This is also meant by the sentence you find in the New Testament: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be a disciple of mine” (Luke 14:26). This sentence means the same, and one felt Christianity that way in Central Europe. No name and no title should give a preference of love. Someone who ascends the path of knowledge should found love for any human being on his innermost worthiness and value.\nIf the human being has climbed up the first steps of the path of knowledge, the hard moments of doubt come. While we get to know the world more and more and delve into love more and more, the more we also get to know the black and bad side of the world. These are the hard days of the initiates. The initiate struggles upwards bit by bit. Then there awakes that soul light which like an internal sun illuminates the spiritual things and beings. We see the objects round ourselves with eyes because the light shines on these objects. Actually, we see the rays only which are reflected by the objects to us. We do not see the spiritual things because no spiritual light shines on them.\nHowever, who has advanced so far that the so-called kundalini light shines to him is on the second stage of the path of knowledge. Someone has arrived at the third stage who has succeeded in feeling his ego without preference, who does not esteem himself higher than other human beings, who finds his higher ego in the love to all beings. Who does no longer hope for his own selfish ego, but hears the properties of the beings speaking has arrived at the third stage of the path of knowledge. We call him a swan in the secret doctrine, and this is a term that is used all over the world where there is spiritual research.\nWhat does this degree bring? It brings the effluxion about all beings. There we are no longer concluded like within a skin from the world. Foreign pain is our pain, foreign joy is our joy, and we live and are active in the whole existence. The whole earth belongs to us. We feel in everything. Then one does no longer know that one looks at the objects from the outside, then it is, as if one is in them, as if one had penetrated into them by love and thereby knows them. By compassion, by this empathy all knowledge has originated.\nA hermit, Trevrizent, initiated Parzival in this wisdom. The fact that he is a hermit is typical. He is somebody who is lifted out of the remaining humanity who has really left everything behind: father, mother, brother, sister, and has become a disciple of that who does not know such differences. There Parzival is informed of the higher virtues, and there he becomes ripe for entering the castle of the Holy Grail and for asking which the miracles of the Holy Grail are. He is taken up; he releases the wounded Amfortas and becomes Grail King. An internal, human way, the way that the secret doctrine prescribes all over the world, transferred into the Christian, a way on which Parzival is described. Lohengrin belongs to the Grail Table. He is the son of Parzival. Whereas the passageway of the human being to the higher self is described in Parzival, a historical-social mission of the middle of the Middle Ages is described in Lohengrin.\nInitiates led the medieval folk consciousness, it was not blind as the scholars imagine. This folk consciousness recorded an important epoch in the middle of the Middle Ages. What happens there? Briefly: an important historical event happened, the so-called urban civilisation started. The old feudal time experiences a mighty revolution. Whereas one dealt once only with land ownership, only with a rural population, now we see in Germany, France, Belgium, in Russia everywhere single cities originating. Cities are founded; one notes a jerk forward in the human development. What had happened there in these foundations of cities? The human beings were torn out from the connections to which they have belonged once. Everybody who felt enslaved went to the city. There he was on his own. There he was only as much worth as he could achieve. The bourgeoisie came into being in the middle of the Middle Ages. This mighty reversal is expressed in the legend of Lohengrin.\nWhereas Parzival shows how the human being finds a higher ego in himself, how he dedicates himself to the pilgrimage to the higher ego, Lohengrin shows how the medieval folk goes through a tremendous epoch of human development, namely the human being is freed and his personality comes to light from the old organisations.\nIf we want to understand the connection of this historical event with the legend of Lohengrin, we have to know that in all mysticism this stage is symbolised by a female personality. Therefore, Goethe also spoke at the end of the second part of his Faust of the fact that the everlasting-female draws us upwards. This must not be interpreted trivially. In truth, the human soul is meant which pulls up the human being. In the general, the soul is shown as female and that which surrounds the human being from without as male. The striving soul is always shown as female.\nIn the secret doctrine, one knows that the great leaders of humanity, the initiates, further humanity always to a higher stage. Lohengrin is the herald of the Holy Grail. The medieval consciousness regards him as the great initiate leader who furthers humanity to a higher stage in the middle of the Middle Ages. He was the bringer of the urban civilisation, who inspired the bourgeoisie in its originating. This is the individuality of Lohengrin. Elsa of Brabant is nothing else than the symbol of the medieval folk soul which has again to make a developmental step forward under the influence of Lohengrin. This progress in the history of humanity is nicely and tremendously shown in the legend.\nWe have seen that the pupil initiated in the third degree is called a swan. The master who is deeply initiated rises higher, he rises into the transcendent world, in those worlds, to which the human consciousness does not extend. He knows everything that expresses itself in humanity only in his inside. One cannot ask him, where from you are, which name do you have? — It is the swan that brings him from even higher spheres. Hence, the swan brings Lohengrin into the epoch of urban civilisation. Look at the progress, which has been made in the old Hellenism. The gods in Greece are nothing else than deified initiates. Take Zeus, who consorts with Semele; from this affair Dionysus originates. The Greek culture arises from it. All great proceedings of humanity are shown in this way. Elsa should not ask for the name and origin of that who leads her and becomes her husband. It is with all great masters that way; they go unrecognized and unnoticed through humanity. If one asked them, they would be shooed away from humanity. It is necessary that they save the sanctum from profane looks and questions. This would be also the case if one gave people an understanding of the being of such an initiate. At such a moment, such a being would also disappear as Lohengrin also did. Lohengrin is called a son of Parzival. That means that the liberation of the medieval bourgeoisie took place under the influence of Christianity.\nThus, we look into the legends of the Middle Ages and see how nicely the facts of the spiritual life are expressed in both legends. The mission of Christianity for the medieval culture became with it the mission of the liberation of the human being from the earthly human body. This mission was shown in both legends. It worked on Richard Wagner in particular. He always tried to show the pure love that makes the human being clairvoyant. Already in 1856, he started a drama, called The Victors : a Jandala girl loves Ananda, a Brahmin young man. However, Ananda is far separated from the love of the Jandala girl because of the caste division. He is not allowed to pursue the love of the Jandala girl. He becomes a victor about his nature becoming a pupil of Buddha. As adherer of Buddha, he finds the victory, there he finds himself again, and there he overcomes the human affection. One tells that the Jandala girl was a Brahmin girl in a former life and rejected the love of a Jandala young man. Then she also becomes a victor and is spiritually united with Ananda, the Brahmin. Later, Wagner wanted to use the figure of Jesus of Nazareth in a drama.\nHe had in mind the complete inner nature of Christianity and the teaching of the free human being who is not bound to title and to anything else. The Holy Grail seeks in the inside of the human soul. In 1857, on Good Friday — Wagner tells — he faced a wonderful nature in Zurich. There something flowed out to him for a moment that expressed the whole mood in him that penetrated the whole knighthood and the Christian knighthood. He says to himself, like by an inspiration, at that day when Christ Jesus died, no one is allowed to bear weapons.\nAt that time, he realised the whole greatness of the figure of Parzival who attained knowledge becoming engrossed in humanity and in all beings. Now he resumes his incomplete piece The Victors in a Christian-modern way. He shows Parzival as somebody who leaves his home who knows nothing about names and titles, about ties and nothing of father and mother. He meets, on one side, the magic castle of Klingsor and the enchantress Kundry. Meeting Kundry he experiences the whole significance of the earthly sensuous life and what it means if the human being gets to know it only by desires. On the other side, he realises in that moment when Kundry kisses him that this sensuous appears in its true acceptation in the human being only if it is free of desires. Richard Wagner nicely shows the sensuousness free of desires how it is gained by the internal strength of the spirit, the Parzival spirit that he calls the Christian one. He shows how it is gained on one side by the Holy Grail and on the other side in the magic castle. On one side by overcoming it, on the other side by deadening it. These are two sides, which are used to ascend to the spirit. The ones deaden the sensuous living ascetically; they take the organs away from themselves in order not to become addicted to weakness.\nThe others remain human beings, they do not want to ascend to higher knowledge this way, but they want to develop the higher to a bigger strength in themselves. Parzival recognised this way as the right one. One has to become stronger as strong as the temptations may be. Then it is that time to be taken up in the Holy Grail. Now he asks correctly and is initiated into the secrets of the Holy Grail, he is ripe for becoming the Grail King.\nWagner endeavours to show the Holy Grail. For years, he pursued studies, not academically, but fulfilled with artistic and visionary gifts. He pursued studies, while he complied with the spirit of the medieval legends, so that he really expresses that guidance caused by initiates of the Middle Ages where the old order is represented by Ortrud, the new order by the emerging consciousness of the people which wants to free itself. This consciousness, which the swans introduce, the chelas of the third degree, is symbolised quite appropriately by Elsa of Brabant and Lohengrin.\nWagner appropriately shows the greatness that is in it. The renewal of art was crucial to Wagner. He wanted to make something out of art again that came close to religion, he wanted to embody moods with his pieces of art that lead the human beings again to the divine by which he wanted to make the artists religious leaders. Wagner needed topics that led beyond the usual life. He also wanted to represent the spirit of Christianity, the spirit of love for humanity artistically. He felt deeply and seriously, how in the newer time the spirit of egoism, the spirit of the external possession, substituted the spirit of love. He describes that which developed as social order and with which he went along intensively and radically, as pursuit of gold, as a time the real Christian spirit of love must supersede again. He wanted to represent something like love flowing in a world where the gold rules in his music dramas with the means of the supernatural and divine living in the human being. Hence, he also resorts with these questions to the great legends of the Middle Ages. This lived in Richard Wagner.\nYou can realise how theosophy or spiritual science approaches with its view of the myths the art of Wagner. The theosophist realises above all that we have to see in the legends nothing else than pictures and expressions of great truth. The pictures of the development of the external life and the soul were given to the ancient peoples. In the Lohengrin legend, something is made clear, so that the human being knew what happens to him if he has arrived at certain stages. Truth is announced to people in such a way that they can grasp it. There were and there are tribes and peoples that can grasp the great truth only in legend form. Today we are no longer talking pictorially. Spiritual science contains the same truth that was put before the folk in magnificent legends, which Wagner tries to renew. Spiritual science speaks in another way, but what it lets stream into the world is the same spirit. Thus, we feel that not only that is true which Schopenhauer says that the great spirits like Plato and Spinoza, Buddha and Goethe, Giordano Bruno and Socrates, Hermes and Pythagoras understand each other, talk with each other, communicate mentally. Not only this is true, not only the choice individualities understand each other, but also that which lives as truth in the spirit of the people. This sounds together for a big historical sound of the spheres, and we feel this if today we realise what lives in the legends and myths, if we let it rise for the higher soul of the present. Truth lives at all times and expresses itself in the most various forms. If we penetrate into this truth, we understand how the peoples and times speak in these single forms, and we hear it echoing how in the manifold tones the one truth announces itself to all peoples, to all human beings."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-19",
+    "title": "Easter",
+    "date": "12 Apr 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/Singles/19060412p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "This is the 19th of 22 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Berlin, and dates from October, 1905 through May of 1906. The title of these lectures are: Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy , in German the title is: Die Weltraetsel und die Anthroposophie . This lecture, which is also known as The Easter Festival , was translated from a shorthand report, unrevised by the lecturer, by an unknown translator.\nGoethe has in various ways expressed a certain feeling he has often had, he says: When I observe the inconsequence of human passions, desires and actions, I experience the strongest impulse to turn to nature and seek support against the structure of her consequence and logic. — The arrangement of our festivals rests upon the endeavour of humanity since the earliest day to raise their eyes from the chaotic life of human desires, impulses and actions to the great consequential facts of all powerful nature. It is admirable, how well the big festivals are directly related to corresponding phenomena of nature. One such is the Easter festival, representing for the Christian a commemoration of his Redeemer's resurrection, and was earlier celebrated as the awakening of something of especial importance for mankind.\nWe look back to ancient Egypt with its Osiris-Isis-Horus cult expressing the uninterrupted rejuvenation of eternal nature. We then consider Greece, and find there a festival in honour of the God bacchus — a spring festival, connected in one way or another with the awakening of nature in spring. In India we have a spring festival dedicated to Vishnu. The Godhead of the Brahman is divided into three aspects — Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahman is rightly called the Great Architect of the universe bringing thereinto order and harmony. Vishnu is described as a kind of redeemer, awakener of slumbering life, rescuer, and Shiva is he who sanctifies and elevates the life awakened by Vishnu to the highest possible perfection. A sort of festival was also dedicated to Vishnu. It is said he falls into a sleep at the time of the year when we celebrate Christmas, to awake again at Easter. Those calling themselves his servants celebrate the entire intervening time in a most significant manner: they abstain from certain foods and drinks, and also meat. In that way they prepare themselves for gaining an understanding of the meaning involved when, at the Vishnu-festival, the resurrection is celebrated, — the awakening of entire Nature. The Christmas festival also has a significant relation to great natural phenomena — the power of the Sun becomes weaker, days shorter, and also that the Sun radiates more heat from Christmas onwards, so that Christmas becomes the festival of the reborn Sun. In this sense the Winter festival was felt by Christians. When Christianity, in the 6th and 7th centuries, wished to connect itself with ancient, holy events, the birth of Christ was transformed to the day on which the Sun again rose to a higher altitude. The spiritual significance of the World redeemer was brought into revelation with the physical Sun and awakening, resurrected life.\nThe Easter festival of spring also is brought into connection — as is usual with other festivals — certain solar phenomenon, one coming into expression even in common custom. During the first Christian century the symbol of Christianity was the Cross, at the foot of which is the lamb. Lamb and Ram are synonymous. During the time when Christianity was in preparation, the Sun appeared in the constellation of the Ram or Lamb. The Sun passes through the signs of the Zodiac; each year the Sun advances some distance. About 600-700 years before Christ the Sun had advanced into this zodiacal sign. For 2500 years it advances through it. Before that the sun was in the constellation Taurus — Bull. In those days the nations celebrated events which appeared significant to them in connection with human evolution through the Bull, because the Sun occupied that sign or constellation. As the Sun enters the sign of Aries — Ram or Lamb — the myths and legends the people contained references to the Ram as something significant. The Ram's skin brings Jason across from Kolchis. The Christ Jesus speaks of himself as the Lamb of God, and during the early period of Christianity is symbolised by the Lamb at the foot of the Cross. Thus can Easter be brought into relation with the constellation of the Ram or Lamb, and be considered the festival of the Redeemer's resurrection, because he summons everything to a new life after the death of Winter.\nWith these characteristics only in your mind, the two festivals Christmas and Easter seem rather similar, for the Sun has gained more power since its own festival of resurrection — the Christmas festival; therefore something more should be expressed by Easter. The festival of Easter in its deepest meaning will always be felt to be the greatest festival of the greatest mystery humanity — not merely as a sort of nature-festivity, related to the Sun, but essentially something more; It is indicated in the Christian meaning of resurrection after death . Also in the awakening of Vishnu the awakening after death is indicated. The awakening of Vishnu falls into the period in which the Sun in winter resumes its ascent, and the festival of Easter is a continuation of that ascending solar power which commenced at the festival of Christmas. We must look into the mysteries of human nature very deeply if we would understand the experiences of the old initiates when trying outwardly to express the essentials of the festival of Easter.\nMan appears as a dual being, connecting a psycho-spiritual essentiality on one side with a physical substantiality on the other. The physical part is convergence of all other natural phenomena in the environment of man; they all appear as a delicate extract in human nature. Paracelsus significantly describes man as a confluence of all outside nature which is like letters of which man forms the word.\nThe sublimest wisdom lies in his organisation; physically he is a temple of the soul. All the laws we can observe in the lifeless stone, the living plant, the animal as subject of pleasure or pain, all these are compounded together in man: in wisdom they are there fused into a unity. When we contemplate the wonderful structure of the human brain with its countless number of cells working together so that all the thoughts and feelings of man may be expressed — everything that, in one way or another, affects the soul — we realise the all-ruling wisdom in the construction of his physical body. When we look out upon the entire outer world we perceive crystallised wisdom. And if we would penetrate all the laws of our surrounding world with our perceptive faculties and then look back upon man, we see concentrated in him the whole of nature, as a microcosm in a macrocosm. It was in this sense that Schiller said to Goethe: “You take into consideration the whole of nature in order to gain light concerning the detail. In the totality you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organism you pass step by step to the more complex, so to finally arrive at the most complex of all — man — and construct him genetically from the materials of the all-embracing structure or Nature.”\nIt is by means that marvel of construction the human body — that the soul can direct her eye upon her environment. Through the senses the psychic man observes the world around him, seeking slowly and laboriously — to fathom the wisdom by which it has been built.\nLet us consider an as yet very undeveloped human being from the following point of view: — his body is the most reasonable creation possible; it is a concentration of the entire Divine reason. But in it resides a very immature soul incapable of developing even an initial thought for the comprehension of the mysterious power ruling in the heart, brain or blood. Very gradually this soul develops to an understanding of the forces which have worked in the construction of this human body. But upon it is impressed the soul of a remote past; man stands there as the crown of creation. Aeons had to pass away before cosmic wisdom was united within that human body.\nBut in the soul of the undeveloped man the cosmic wisdom first begins to grow. At first she barely dreams of the profound thoughts of the universal spirit — the architect of the human being.Yet, everything lying within man in a state of sleep — the psycho-spiritual constitution will in future be understood by man. Cosmic thought has worked through countless ages, — worked creatively in nature in order ultimately to build the crown of its agelong activity — the human body. In it slumbers the cosmic wisdom, so as to recognise itself in the human soul, to construct in the human being an eye with which to perceive itself. Cosmic wisdom without, — cosmic wisdom within — operative in the present as in the past — operative far into a future whose sublimity may only be surmised. The most profound human emotions are evoked when we thus ponder the past and future.\nWhen the soul begins to understand the wonder constructed by the wisdom of the cosmos — when she attains thoughtful clarity and illumined knowledge then the sun may represent the most glorious symbol of this inner awakening which opens for the soul the outer world through the medium of the senses. Man receives the light because the sun illuminates objects. What man sees in the outer world is the reflected sunlight. The sun awakens in the soul the power to perceive the outer world. The awakening sun-soul in man, beginning to discover; cosmic thought in the seasons of the year, recognises in the rising sun her liberator.\nWhen the sun again begins to ascend in the heavens and the days lengthen, the soul looks towards the sun, saying: To you I owe the possibility of seeing cosmic thought spread out in my environment — cosmic thought that sleeps in me as in all else. — Then man looks upon his earlier existence — the ages preceding his groping search for the cosmic thought.\nMan is indeed very, very much older than his senses. Spiritual investigation enables us to arrive at the point of time when the senses are only beginning their development, — when they are at their weakest. At that time the senses were not yet the doors through which the soul could perceive her surroundings. Shopenhauer realised this fact and described the turning-point where man became able to use his sense perceptions in the world. That is his meaning, when he says:: The visible world came into being only when an eye existed with which to perceive it. — The sun formed the eye — light created light. Formerly, before any such outer vision existed, man possessed an inner light. In the remote past of human evolution no exterior object stimulated man to outer perception, but from his inner self arose imaginations, ideas, the primitive vision was a vision in the astral light. Humanity possessed a dull, dim clairvoyance.\nIn the Germanic world of the Gods man could also perceive the Gods through a sort of dim, misty astral light. But it gradually became more dim and dark and slowly vanished; It became extinguished by the fierce light or the physical sun which appeared in the heavens and the physical world it illuminated. So the astral vision of man receded, declined. When man looks to the future, it becomes clear that this astral sight must return upon a higher level; all that which has become extinguished by physical vision, must again live, so that a fully conscious clairvoyance may be developed in mankind. To the normal vision of day will be added a still brighter and more luminant human life in the light of the future. To physical vision will come vision in the astral light.\nThe leaders of humanity are those individualities whose renunciations during earth-life enabled them to experience — before death — the state of consciousness called “passing through the portals of death”. This contains all those experiences which later will be the possession of all humanity when they have evolved astral perception which makes visible the psychic and spiritual. This making visible of the psycho-spiritual environment was always called by the initiate the “awakening”, “resurrection”, “spiritual rebirth” — giving to man — a supplement to his gifts of the physical senses, the senses of the Spirit. He celebrates an inner Easter festival who discerns within him the awakening of the new astral vision.\nSo we can understand why this spring festival is related to symbolic ideas such as death and resurrection. In man, the astral light is “dead”. It sleeps. But it will again be resurrected in man. Easter is the festival indicating this future awakening of this astral light.\nThe sleep of Vishnu begins at the Christmas time when the astral light sank into sleep and physical light awoke. When man has advanced sufficiently far to renounce the personal, the astral light re-awakens in him; he can celebrate the feast of Easter, — Vishnu can again awaken in his soul.\nIn cosmic spiritual perception the Easter festival is not connected with the awakening of the sun only, but with the reappearance of the world of plant life in the spring also. As the seed is laid into the soil and there decays in order to awaken to a new life, so had the Astral light to sink into sleep in the human body so that it may be rejuvenated. The symbol of Easter is the seed which sacrifices itself so that a new plant may arise. It is the sacrifice of one phase of nature for the sake of creating a new one. Sacrifice and becoming (germination of the new) — these two are intimately linked together in the Easter festival. Richard Wagner felt this thought profoundly. When he lived in a villa on the banks of the lake at Zurich in 1887 and looked out upon awaking nature, his thoughts concerning it gave rise to others — the deceased and resurrected World saviour, the Christ Jesus, and the thought of Parzifal seeing the Holy of Holies in the soul.\nAll leaders of mankind, who were aware of how the higher spiritual life of man arises out of his lower nature, have comprehended the significance of Easter. Dante therefore described his awakening — in his Divine Comedia — as taking place on Good Friday. That is clear at the very beginning of the poem. Dante experienced his sublime vision in the 35th year of his life; that is the middle of a normal human life. So he reckons 35 years for the development of man's physical perceptive powers; till then he continues absorbing new physical experiences. After that, man is sufficiently matured for spiritual experience to augment the physical; he is ripe for spiritual perception. When the growing, evolving physical powers in man are united, the time is ripe for the awakening of the spiritual. For that rise Dante's vision falls into the period of the Easter festival.\nA certain contradiction has been said to exist between the Christian conception of Easter and the idea of Karma inherent in Spiritual Science. Certainly, Karma and redemption through the Son of man do appear to oppose one another. This state of indecision is common with people who know little of the basic idea of this anthroposophical thought — a paradox seemingly existing in the simultaneous acceptance of salvation through Christ Jesus and the idea of Karma. Such people say: the ideas of a redeeming God contradicts self redemption through Karma. They fail to understand, in the true sense, the Easter of redemption, nor can they grasp the idea of Karmic justice. It would be wrong to withhold aid from someone suffering by saying: “You yourself are the cause of the trouble,” refuse him help because it must work itself out. That is a misunderstanding of Karma. Karma, to the contrary, says to you: “Help him, who suffers, for you exist to help”. You help to improve the credit balance of the Karmic account of necessity when aiding your fellow man. You give him the opportunity and the strength to carry his Karma; and you, to that extent, are a redeemer from evil .\nIn a similar way, instead of helping the single individual, one can come to the assistance of a whole group or nation of man.\nWhen a mighty individuality like that of the Christ Jesus comes to the aid of entire humanity, it is his sacrifice in death which permeates the Karma of mankind. He helped to carry the Karma of the whole of humanity, and we may be quite sure that redemption through Christ Jesus was absorbed and assimilated by the totality of human Karma.\nThe fundamental significance of the resurrection and redemption-concept will be made really comprehensible only through Spiritual Science. A Christianity of the future will unite Karma with redemption. Because cause and effect are complementary in the spiritual world, this great act of sacrifice must also have its effect upon human life. Upon these thoughts of the Easter festival also does Spiritual Science have a deepening effect. The thought of Easter which appears to be written in the stars and which we believe to (we) read in them, is fundamentally deepened by Spiritual Science. We also see the profound meaning of the Easter-concept in the ascendance of the spirit about to be realised in the future.\nAt present, mankind exists amidst inharmonious, disordered conditions. But man knows how the world has emerged from chaos, and that out of his chaotic inner being harmony will ultimately arise. Like the regular paths of the planets round the sun, so will the inner saviour of mankind arise, — herald and creator of unity and harmony amid all disharmony. All humanity shall be reminded by the Easter festival of the resurrection of the spirit from the present obscurity of human nature."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-20",
+    "title": "Inner Development",
+    "date": "19 Apr 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060419p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "Today, I would like to speak again to you about inner development. Those who occasionally visit these talks remember that I have already given various statements about this object. Hence, I only touch what has already been discussed earlier and add what exceeds this.\nI have talked repeatedly about the phenomena of the higher worlds, and the question immediately suggests itself, how do we come to such knowledge? — The way to this knowledge is not so easy that it can be described in one or two hours even in quite superficial way. Nevertheless, I have to drop a hint now and again how one has to imagine this development. You all know that we talk here not only about the usual physical world, but also about the worlds of soul and spirit that we got to know as astral world and devachan. The human being lives in these worlds. He does not belong to one, but to three worlds. He still belongs to much more worlds, but the knowledge of still higher worlds exceeds the usual cognitive capacities of the human being so much that one can talk about these worlds only with difficulty.\nThe question that we must put to ourselves is, how does the human being penetrate up to the astral and spiritual worlds? — These are the worlds in which he lives here, indeed, about which he knows, however, nothing, at first, in which he lives if he does no longer have a sensuous body. Everything that lives as sensuous world round us can carry no weight for us. However, then the other worlds that are attained by higher knowledge have a higher significance to us. One often asks, to which end does the human being need, actually, the knowledge of other worlds than that in which he lives? If he gives his fellow man a treat, to what end does he need to look for higher worlds? — This is an objection that must be recognised very soon as invalid. Those forces, facts, and beings that the human being meets in the higher worlds are not only efficient in these worlds but also in our physical world. For the things are not made by themselves, they have come about by the forces of the spiritual world. We also recognise ourselves only cursorily if we recognise ourselves only by the senses. We perceive with the senses only what happens between birth and death. With the birth of the human being, a whole sum of dispositions and abilities enter the world. Only a superficial judgement can say that the human being should begin with his whole world of dispositions only at the moment of birth or of the embryonic development.\nIn occultism, which deals with the worlds unknown to the senses, one speaks of the fact that the usual human being lacks the ability to discriminate the most significant facts. He does not observe intensely enough how clumsily the human being enters the world, how he learns more and more to use his only as rudiments existing organs of the spiritual life. There we see the one who is very little able to use the organs of his mind, whereas the other controls not only his whole limbs in a quite special way, but also learns to use his cerebral tools quite specially. Just the materialistic thinker would have to say, I believe in the significance of the human organs; however, why do these organs answer to the feelings and sensations of the one human being, and to the feelings and sensations of the other one?\nEverybody admits that a hammer, which the human being uses for any reasonable performance, must have come about by a reasonable work of thought at first. Everybody believes that concerning the hammer. The materialistic thinker does not believe that concerning the body, the living beings generally. Hence, someone who studies the miraculous constructions of the human brain or heart can never believe that all these things could come about by chance, by any spiritless events. However, these things present themselves with every person in another way than it can be found with the animals. All animals are copies of a general pattern, the particular differences come less into consideration. The word “individuality” makes this difference clear to us at once. Because every human being is an individuality, he comes much more into consideration. Every human being, every individuality prepares his body in his way.\nFor this body has to fit the special predisposition of every human being. When he enters his existence with birth, he existed already spiritually, and he himself has prepared the organs for his individual use, not completely, because he is also an animal creature, but the higher he develops, the more he also controls the construction of his own organs. One could at most believe that a human being — completely existing on the lowest level — has begun at his birth, However, no reasonable thinker can suppose that a thinking being was not yet there before his birth. Everybody can carry out the performances with the hammer; however, nobody is able to do the performances of the brain of the fellow man. Hence, the human being is not understandable without assuming that he exceeds birth and death, but only if one recognises the forces that have prepared the organs of the human thinking already before.\nThe rise to the astral and the spiritual worlds is connected for the single human being with certain difficulties, with renunciations to which he has to submit himself, and with certain dangers. He is accustomed to the world of the senses, but to the other worlds, he is not so accustomed. Above all, we have to realise that the causes of many matters that remain invisible in the world become clear to us in the higher worlds. The human being is thereby surprised, upset. The exercises by which he wants to advance strain him in certain ways too. Because there are dangers, some people say that one can also come to the highest knowledge of the divine world forces if one knows nothing about these spiritual and astral forces concealed behind the sensuous world. Today, one almost argues that the human being can also rise to the divine knowledge without passing the worlds first, which separate him from the highest of all.\nOnly someone can argue in such a way who has no real idea of the higher worlds. A kind of higher knowledge that is also often called theosophical is nothing else than a quite usual knowledge of the human lower self, and if he declares his lower self as his divine ever so much, he finds nothing but his lower self. Only outside himself, the human being finds his higher self, because we are born out of the external world.\nSome spiritual movements want to divert the human being from the external world; one should look for the higher self only in oneself. This point of view can never lead to a real knowledge; it is unchristian and antichristian at the same time. Only in the orientation to the world, which surrounds us, we find our higher self. We must seek for the god in the invisible worlds and in all external creatures, facts, and processes. If anybody says to us, deny the external world, this external matter does not exist, he denies the divine world; and there is for a big perspective no worse knowledge than turning away from the outside world. Just the deepening in the outside world leads to higher knowledge. Everything physical dries out, if it is raised a little above the earth, everything mental dries out, if it is raised a little above the spiritual world.\nThe human being has to live in the world with the attitude that he belongs to it as the hand to the body. This attitude really leads to higher development. Ask your own inside where the sense of a human being is located. Just as little the human being can turn away from the outside world, just as little the sense of the human being is enclosed in the skin. He belongs to the higher self of the world. While we investigate the higher self of the world, we investigate our own higher selves. It is not possible to agitate for occultism. Only someone who really wants to fulfil the conditions of the higher development must also pledge himself to explain what occultism prescribes for such high development. Hence, the real occult direction of theosophy should not be confused with that which one often calls theosophy externally. It concerns methods proved for centuries. It is left to the free will of every human being when he wants to reach the goal; hence, one cannot object that he is an outsider.\nThe higher development to which every human being can reach takes place slowly and gradually. He lives always in the visible world. You all live not only in the sensuous world, but mental and spiritual forces and events surround you here. These spiritual and mental worlds are there for someone whose spiritual and mental eye is opened. The methods are available to open the spiritual and mental eye of the human being generally. Then he lives only for these worlds; for it is something different to live in these worlds and to perceive in these worlds. The human being lives also in these worlds at night, but he does not perceive them because he still lacks the organs. The higher development lies in the fact that the soul gets organs and thereby learns to perceive.\nAt first, any higher recognising arises at night. While for the only sensually perceiving human being darkness spreads at night, the darkness is illuminated for the mentally perceiving one. There is a light, which can illuminate the world, even if no sun is there, which does not make the table discernible, however, the mental facts. This is the astral light. If you have soul organs, your soul is not blind, and then the human soul can see the astral light where the eyes saw the figure before.\nThe astral light illuminates the soul as the sunlight illuminates the body during the day. Everything that should be developed in the human being exists as a rudiment in him, as well as the human embryo has rudiments of eyes and ears, the rudiments of clairvoyance are in the soul. However, as the human embryo cannot yet see the physical world, the spiritual and mental rudiments must also be developed in the human being. He is an embryo in the mental world now, actually. What does not see the mental and spiritual will see it later. There the consideration begins, what does this soul do during sleep? — The soul is not passive there, even if it does not see. The forces of the physical human being wear themselves out in the course of the day, but the human soul works during sleep on the recovery of the physical forces. Because the soul is occupied with itself, it has no free strength at its disposal to develop organs anew. However, these forces must pay to form something new; thereby something is taken away from the human body. The human spirit has built up his physical body gradually; the soul forms the tools gradually, which the human being uses. The soul works in the same way if the physical body is worn out. During sleep, it fixes everything again.\nIf you use the forces of sleep different, you must compensate it. The harmony of the forces can substitute everything that gets lost in the struggle of the forces. Because the human being feels, thinks, and wills erratically today, where he works perpetually, where he follows any intention, in the job, with every sensation, his forces wear out due to this struggle. If then he intends to take away certain soul forces from his body, he must atone for them with certain performances taking place harmoniously. Hence, the inner development provides particular virtues to start with, so that the strength that is taken away from the body is replaced by rhythm. These virtues are: control of thoughts and actions, impartiality, endurance, equanimity, trust in the whole surroundings.\nToday, the human being is given away to any idea; however, he must be someone who controls his thoughts. Then he gets rhythm in himself. To accomplish actions from own initiative, to decide to act in such a way that the action is his very own, this produces such a calmness in him that is necessary for the soul. Endurance, standing firmly and certainly, enduring pain, grief, and joy. Further, on, the human being must acquire the biggest impartiality. He is worn out by nothing more than, if he approaches the negative aspects of the things. This causes disharmony and at the same time, he is exhausted. A Persian legend is authoritative that reports to us how Christ Jesus and his disciples once saw a rotting dead dog lying by the wayside. The disciples asked the master not to waste his time with the dog, the animal were too ugly. However, Christ looked at the dog and said which nice teeth the animal has. He looked here for the beautiful in the ugly thing. Any affirmation animates, any negation exhausts and kills. Not only because a moral strength belongs to it to turn to the positive side of a thing, but also because any affirmation animates and makes forces of the soul free and certain.\nIn such an age like ours, nervousness also prevails. Nervousness and negative criticism belong together. The provided virtues are there to release higher forces for the human being. Such virtues, which should make the lower life rhythmical, give the soul forces, so that it can dedicate itself to the higher development. This inner development proceeds completely quietly.\nI would like to tell some of the matters, which still belong to it. These matters were once the secret of the occult schools, but now they are informed because of certain reasons. If a human being has prepared his soul by such exercises, he is referred to any teacher whom he will find when he should find him. Then he goes through different stages of learning and must use the forces that he has released for the higher soul life.\nThe first thing is that a single opinion is worth nothing at all. The human being as an advanced pupil has thoroughly to overcome his personal opinion, the expression: I believe this or that about that.\nHowever, the advanced pupil must understand not only the foolishness of the materialist, but also go through the good reasons in himself, which the materialist can have for himself to understand how somebody could get around to becoming a materialist. He will find that all human beings where they say yes to the things, that is where they recognise the positive side, are mostly right; where they say no, that begins which the advanced pupil must learn to overcome. He must have got to know the reasons and the content of any worldview not only logically, but he must also have lived with it. He must put himself in the soul of any sceptic. The higher forces do not awake unless the pupil does know what can be argued against anything. Who has gone through this also rouses forces in his soul, which come definitely.\nHe must then overcome any superstition; not only the superstition of the African fetishist, but also that of the sophisticated European. Everybody knows the effects of hypnosis. Our European professors, for example, Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, physician, physiologist, and philosopher), explained hypnotism saying that certain cerebral parts were not well supplied with blood. However, this is nothing else than the superstition of the African. In this way, you could disprove all materialistic theories that speak of certain cerebral parts only. Even if Haeckel is a great naturalist, it must be clear to everybody that that which this naturalist asserts about these matters is the purest superstition. The pupil must overcome all forms of superstition.\nThe third is the knowledge of the illusion of the personal self, while the human being persuades himself that he can find the higher life in himself. If he has reached this, he is ripe for the second stage. He has to go through the illusion of the personal self; he must recognise its authorisation to get rid of it in so doing. The next is that everything must become a symbol to him, “All that is transitory is only a symbol” (Faust II) . One has to regard anything as a metaphor, a simile of that which it expresses. The single flower, even the single human being must become a metaphor for him; then he feels forces roused in his soul. — If he has learnt for a while to regard the things as metaphors, then he has to learn that the human being is a small world that nothing is in him that does not correspond to the world outdoors. A deep sense is in the Germanic mythology where we are told that from the giant Ymir the whole world is formed.\nHe must get to know how every organ is connected with the world, and then he is able to proportion his own organism. Walking through the world, he is not aware how his organs are connected with the world. He has to learn this. The Eastern occultist even teaches a quite special sitting posture, so that the pupil is also externally in a right relation to the world.\nFurther, on, he has then to learn — this may only be mentioned here — to regulate something consciously that nature regulates, otherwise, in him without his aware assistance. This is the respiratory system at first. If the human being wants to develop higher, his breathing has to become adequate to the big developmental processes. In a strictly prescribed way, he has to inhale, to hold his breath, and to exhale. If the human being regulates his breathing from the spirit, he spiritualises his breath, his life air. With it, he rises from hatha yoga to raja yoga, the royal yoga.\nThen the highest comes, the exercises of meditation and contemplation, the life of the human being within himself. If he has prepared himself and has practiced in such a way, if he has made his life rhythmic, he is completely ripe for leading an inner life. There are three stages of meditation. It can be organically integrated in the rhythmic respiratory process. At first, he has to start from the sensory world, so that he can distract himself from the external world and from its various external impressions. Taking in hand his whole attention independently helps him in the higher development. If he is able to master his attention in such a way, he must be able to become engrossed completely in the object of his attention, to add nothing else; only one thought must live in him. It is the best if his teacher gives him particular tasks according to his individuality. If he has reached that, he is not distracted if a gun fires a bullet beside him. Then he has to leave the object of his reflection, but to maintain the activity. This brings him in the highest worlds.\nIf he accomplishes this, he attains that condition, which occultism calls dhyana, after he has thought through the object, however, has then dropped it, and lives then in the activity only. He can leave this condition immediately; then his inner eye awakes.\nHe learns to practice the forces of his thinking using external objects. However, he does not come fairly far; he reaches a world, which looks like a kind of skeleton of the higher world. Now, he has to develop a feeling of particular intensity from the object, again excluding all others. Thus, he must be able to feel something quite certain if he has a crystal in his hand; he must feel something if he has an octahedron in his hand. He gets a feeling that one can have towards the lifeless world. We compare the lifeless rock to the living, blood-filled being and say to ourselves, this has sensuousness; however, the water-clear rock is without desire.\n\nIf I am able to feel how the stone left its desire, how it has become pure and chaste, and\nIf I know how to become engrossed in this feeling, so that the world dies around me and\nIf I let only this feeling live in me — may it be the feeling from the crystal, from the animal, or the human being, and\nIf I can then leave the object, and go back in the same way as just now and come into the state of dhyana,\n\nThen I notice that the feeling is not only a feeling, but that it starts becoming light, that feeling starts becoming a light phenomenon. In such a way, that appears which one perceives as a form of thought that one should better call a form of feeling.\nThese are single concepts I wanted to give you today. There have always been teachers who gave the single individuality instructions, tasks suitable for him. Any human being has his own name in the spiritual world; he is even more individual in it than in the physical world, and this own individuality must be taken into consideration carefully, especially in the higher stages concerning higher development. Hence, only a teacher can give what is necessary.\nI have today given the first steps of that which one calls recognising the self. If the human being learns to feel the objects round himself, and the objects take on colours, which become pictures, then he sees his world of feelings round himself. He must face himself objectively, and then he crosses the threshold where he perceives himself with all that which he is and not yet is. The first guardian of the threshold stands there before us who shows us, thou art that!\nAnybody must learn to recognise himself, because he gets world knowledge by self-knowledge. However, nobody is allowed to take self-knowledge for knowledge of god. Hence, one could read at the gate of the Delphic temple, recognise yourself (gnothi seauton)! If one has attained self-knowledge, one enters the innermost sanctum of the world where the divine forces prevail and spiritual knowledge is given. If the own inside feels connected with the world inside where one can only speak of inner development, if the human being approaches this knowledge worthily and not in frivolous way or with base motives, then he attains it. He gets what can develop his humanity more and more and makes him a worthier member in the development of humanity. However, nobody has to strive for higher knowledge only on his own. The human being shall develop, increase his forces, and collect knowledge only to become a servant of the whole universe."
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-21",
+    "title": "Paracelsus",
+    "date": "26 Apr 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060426p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "Indeed, it is attractive to become engrossed in the past and to look around among the great spirits who preceded us. However, with the personality about which we want to speak today quite another matter than the charm of historical consideration comes into question as point of view. It rather matters with Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541, physician, occultist) that he can give the human beings very much still today. Just a movement of the spiritual investigation of matters as spiritual science is particularly suitable to unearth the treasure, the spirit of knowledge, the investigation, and enlightenment of nature, which is hidden with Paracelsus. Today, indeed, modern research turns more or less also to spirits like Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus, and others of the end of the Middle Ages. However, the approach of our present science is so different from the spirit, the point of view of a man like Paracelsus that it cannot do justice to him in the true sense of the word.\nFor Paracelsus has to be understood in another way than it normally happens if one becomes engrossed in a spirit of the past. One has to develop a living feeling of the object and the direction of thinking to which he dedicated himself. This is in certain respect such a deepening in the spiritual life, in particular in the spiritual forces and beings that form the basis of nature, and only the spiritual-scientific approach does this. Paracelsus already belongs to an interesting time. It was the time from 1493 to 1541 in which he lived that was either just over or was still right in the middle of the emergence of the bourgeoisie. This exerted a significant influence on the entire spiritual life.\nTwo classes only had the greatest say concerning the spiritual life before the emergence of the bourgeoisie: nobility and clergy. After bourgeoisie had emerged, the intellectual culture was based more on the single personality and its efficiency. Before, the blood relationship, the clanship had a say within the nobility in the worth and the social position of the human being, on the one side, and, on the other side, the whole power and intellectual culture of the church supported the priests. It stood as a whole behind the single personality. Only in the time of the bourgeoisie, the performance of the single was based on the personal efficiency. Hence, everything that meets us in this time of the ending Middle Ages, the emerging bourgeoisie, gets a personal character and the personality has to fight for himself much more. We could quote many of such personalities who had to use their very own forces at that time.\nOne of the strangest and most interesting personalities is just Paracelsus. Other things still came into consideration in his lifetime too. This has been just in the time when the scene of the peoples increased enormously when the big discoveries of distant countries were done, in the time when the just invented art of printing pointed the spiritual life to quite different directions and currents than it was once the case. All that delivers the basic tableau, so to speak, from which this personality of Theophrastus Paracelsus emerges. To all that is to be added that we are concerned with a seldom-prominent person, with a person of revolutionary character in the spiritual sense. He was a person who was aware of that which was performed once in the realms of the spiritual life and how much his own work contrasted with it.\nIn order to understand Paracelsus, one must look at the basic character of his work as a doctor and as a philosopher, and grasp him as a theosophist, as he combined these both soul characters with each other. This personality was uniform. With brilliant look, he tried to grasp the construction of the world edifice. His surprised sight looked up at the secrets of the starry heaven, became engrossed in the construction of the earth and in particular in the construction of the human being himself. This brilliant sight penetrated also into the secrets of the spiritual life. He was also a theosophist, while he tried to enclose the nature of the astronomical knowledge and at the same time the nature of anthropology, the doctrine of the human being in connection with the doctrine of all living beings. Nothing was mere theory in him, everything was immediate in such a way that it was bent on practise, that he wanted to use all that he knew for the welfare, the spiritual and physical health of the human being. This gives his work, his thinking, and investigations the big, immense unity. This makes him appear as sharply carved from one single piece of wood. Thus, he stands before us as an original, elementary personality.\nThere were two schools for him in the field with which he was mainly concerned, with the medical art. The one went back to the old Greek physician Hippocrates (~460-370 B.C.), the other to Galenus (129-200 or 216 A.D., physician, philosopher). The father of medicine, Hippocrates, stood before him like a big ideal. The modern scholar can cope neither with that which that Greek was, nor with that which Paracelsus saw in him. Indeed, it seems rather problematic today if we hear that this medicine differentiated four humours in the human being: black bile, white or yellow bile, blood and phlegm, which were said to have a certain relation to earth, water, air and fire. These should be components of the human nature. Of course, the modern naturalist regards as a childish point of view, which a detailed knowledge had to overcome in the course of time. He does not anticipate that it depends, nevertheless, still on anything else.\nThat is why the modern academic view understands Paracelsus so exceptionally. He did not at all understand these four members of the human nature as usual physical humours and. The naturalist of that old time regarded the substances with which the human body builds itself up from the physical, sense-perceptible substances, only as the external expression of something spiritual, of the real builder of this external body.\nIn spiritual-scientific talks, we have often spoken about this builder of the human body. We have spoken about the etheric body, a fine body, forming the basis of the physical body and all its manifold materials, substances and humours. This etheric body or life body contains the forces to build up the physical body. It is in such a way that this etheric body builds up any. Sensuous research does not suffice to study this etheric body; something else belongs to it, namely intuition, spiritual research. If one uses sensuous expressions of that which is considered for this spiritual research, like black, white, yellow, green et cetera, one only means metaphors of something that is behind. It is quite wrong if one identifies them with our material things.\nThe way in which the old doctors approached the ill human beings in the medical centres was another. It was the intuitive view, which they directed not to the physical, but to the finer, the ethereal underlying the physical. One started out from the idea: if anything is ill, it is less crucial, which external changes are discernible, but what has caused them. The disorder in the external physical body corresponds to the disorder in the etheric body. The old doctors recognised how the etheric body changes in the ill organism, and they were out to cure that force, which is behind the physical body as the sculptor. If I may express myself somewhat roughly, one can say, if anybody has fallen ill with the stomach, he suffers not from the stomach, but from the finer body the expression of which the illness only is.\nParacelsus had taken up the spirit of such an intuitive medicine in himself. However, the Roman doctor Galenus worked everywhere like an authority. Indeed, he bases his medicine on these old principles, and if one reads Galenus externally, one gets the idea: what does Paracelsus really intend fighting in such a way against Galenus and taking the older medicine under his wings? Is it not the same? — It could almost seem that way, however, it is not in such a way. For Galenus externalised medicine while he materialised the originally spiritual view. The pupils of Galenus already understood by that which was once meant intuitively, as something externally material. Instead of using the intuitive view, they researched only in the matter, speculated, invented theories. The moral view had got lost.\nParacelsus opposes this method, this loss of the intuitive view. He wanted to go back; he wanted to find the means to cure the human beings from the knowledge of the big nature. Therefore, all that was antipathetic to him, which prevailed in those days officially as medicine. He did not want to take as basis that which one can read in the books, but wanted to open the fundamental book, the big book of nature. Everything that had emerged gradually as medicine was spun out from a completely deduced speculation, from a research that knew nothing of the original spiritual view. There one could no longer see the connection between a medicament and an illness because one just did no longer behold what is behind the body because one looked only materially at everything. This caused that Paracelsus said, the light of nature should shine again.\nIt brought him into a sharp conflict with the medicine of his time. Such a great insight, as he had it, his reasonable nature that grasped the big connection with the universe gave him the intensive self-confidence, which has something lovely, in the way in which he behaved towards those who practised science in generally accepted way at that time. However, the pharmacology of that time bears big analogy to that of today, with the difference that our time has no Paracelsus in the medical field. However, confusion and insecurity were almost the same as they are today. This reminds very well of that old time of Paracelsus. If we pursue medicine today, we see how a remedy is invented and then is regarded and rejected as something noxious after five years, how so and so many people are examined, but the big view of the coherence of the human being with nature has completely got lost. That reminds rather well of the time of Paracelsus. It is true that most people do not anticipate that they are again embedded in such a time and that the belief in authority has such an immense power just in this field. One struggles against the belief in authority on one side, and one considers oneself superior campaigning against the old superstition that sends people to Lourdes.\nOne may be right with it, but one does not anticipate that only the form of superstition has changed and that superstition becomes hardly smaller if one sends anybody to Wiesbaden (spa town) and other places. One can see in it something similar as it existed with Paracelsus and his time when one was inclined to oppose the conventional. Paracelsus said, “As I take the four for me, so you have to take them also and to follow me and I have not to follow you, you have to follow me. Follow me, you Avicenna (~980-1037, Persian polymath), Galenus, Rasis (854-927, Persian polymath), Montagnana, Mesue (~777-857, Assyrian physician) and all those from Paris, from Cologne, from Vienna and from the regions of the Danube and Rhine rivers, from the islands, from Italy, from Dalmatia,Sarmatia, Athens, you Greeks, you Arabs, you Israelites, follow me, I do not follow you. I become the monarch and the empire will be mine, and I lead the empire and gird your loins.” That as a characteristic and expression of his personal strength. He believed to owe this strength to his original relationship with the secrets of nature. She expressed herself for Paracelsus in such a way that he saw not only what he saw with his eyes, but with his being, which combined with nature.\nHe undertook big journeys. He did not want to listen to anything scientific from the chairs, but from the dark intuitiveness of the simple people outdoors who had not yet cut the band of feeling with nature; he wanted to learn from them. I would like to bring his soul condition to your mind by a comparison. It is rather nice to see how the animals know instinctively for sure in the field what they have to graze and what they have to leave what serves them for their welfare and what would become detrimental to them. This is based on the relationship of the being with its environment. This relationship exists in the soul forces and is able to choose what is good and what is not good.\nThe being breaks free from nature by the intellect and speculation. It is no superstition, if one says that the simple human being who lives in the countryside has still something of the original forces, which lead the animal to its food instinctively, that this relationship still delivers something of the knowledge how the single herb, how the single stone works on the human being. This feeling is different from the usual knowledge, which, however, is no longer so important for him. Hence, one finds with a human being, who has not yet gone through education, an original certainty what is useful for him within nature. Paracelsus feels related to this original feeling for nature. He emphasises repeatedly that those people are not the right ones who wander the world in such a way that they travel around the world in carriages and apart from the immediate contact with the rural population. Paracelsus travelled differently. He listened to that which the simple man could say to him. The instinct of the simple man became to him the intuition of the ingenious human being. He did not cut the connection between nature and the original intuitive force in the human being. He expresses this in such a way: “By nature I am not spun subtly, it is also not the way of life in my country to acquire something with silk spinning. We are not bred with figs, nor with mead, nor with wheat bread, but with cheese, milk, and oat bread. That cannot make subtle fellows because one is dependent on that which one has got as adolescent. Such a human being is almost rude compared to the subtle men feeling superior, to superfine people, and to those who have grown up in soft clothes and in boudoirs, whereas we grow up in fir cones, therefore, we do not well understand each other.”\nHe knew that he always walked on his journeys through Poland, Hungary to Turkey in the sun, not only in the sun of the physical world, but also in the spiritual sun. What distinguishes Paracelsus is the uniform sight in the spiritual. Hence, the human being is to him not the human being in whom one slips in with the sensory examination, but he is connected with the whole nature. He says, look at the apple and then at the apple pip. You cannot understand how the pip grows if you do not look at the whole apple.\nThat is why one also does not understand the elementary human being if one does not recognise the earth with all its substances and forces, because it has all its strength from the earth. Then a force incorporates a finer materiality in this physical elementary human being. Paracelsus calls it the archaeus. From the elementary body, he distinguishes the finer body, which is the builder of the physical body and the builder of the earth. Thus, he looks from the externally sense-perceptible at the cause, from the body at the life body, from the externally physical at that which as a force forms the basis of it. This is the first member of the human being in the sense of Paracelsus.\nHe regards the second member as a pip in a certain different way. For this second member the apple is the whole world of stars. Just as the elementary body draws his forces and humours from the earth and from that which belongs to it, the second human being draws his forces from that which lives in the stars, from the principles of the stars. Just as the blood, the muscles, the bones, and food juices are composed and the food juices change, are transformed, and as these are dependent on the earthly, Paracelsus summarises the instincts, desires, and passions, the ideas, joy and sorrow, all that as the two basic forces of the human mental nature, sympathy and antipathy. They are expressions of the whole world of stars, as the pip is an expression of the whole apple. Therefore, he calls the second body the astral body or the body related to the world of stars.\nWhat works outdoors as gravity or gravitation, as force of attraction and repulsion is in the human being like in an essence as desire and listlessness, as sympathy and antipathy, so that nothing of that which is in the human being as instincts and passions can be understood different from the astrological astronomy as Paracelsus calls it. This is a science about which our time knows precious little. Astronomy took another path. Paracelsus as a doctor wants to know nothing about it. He wants to know how the astral forces are connected in space with the astral body of the human being. He behaves compared to an astronomer like a priest to a requiem parson. A requiem parson is someone who reads the mess and is paid for it, whereas a right priest is someone who penetrates into the spirit. Paracelsus uses clear expressions what others often call rudeness. We have now understood the second part of human wisdom.\nThe third part is that which he calls spirit. This spirit relates to the spiritual world like the pip of the apple to the much bigger apple, like the divine spark in the human being to the whole sum of divine forces in the world. Thus, Paracelsus differentiates in the world: the divine-spiritual, the astrological-astronomical, and the elementary-earthly. The human being contains an essence of them: the human mind from the spiritual-divine, the astral body from the astrological-astronomical, and the physical body from the elementary-earthly.\nJust as one has to study the material, the plants, and animals and so on if one wants to understand the body of the human being, the doctor has to study and understand what goes forward in the world of the stars if he wants to understand the human being. Because Paracelsus says to himself, one understands an illness only if one goes back to its origin, he looks for the reason of the illness in the desires and passions. He considers the illness as a result of mental fallacy and finally he leads it back to moral qualities even if he also does not lead back these qualities to the stars, because he knows very well that the effect does not happen so fast.\nHe sees an expression of the spiritual everywhere in the physical. That is why he says, someone who wants to investigate the reason of an illness has to study the reason of all the sympathies and antipathies of the soul, and he can study this only if he studies the stars of the human being. Thus, you imagine how he approaches an ill human being. With an intuitive view, this soul digresses from the externally ill limb to that which lives internally in the soul of the human being.\nFrom there he goes to the astral influence of the stars and to the elementary influence of the earth. He has this in every single case before him. Just this is spiritual medicine. How he imagines this, and how he tries to make clear with his own picture, he expresses this nicely in this deciphering of the whole world: “This is something great you should consider. Nothing is in heaven and on earth that is not also in the human being, and God who is in heaven and on earth is also in the human being.” — I have often quoted another nice saying where he compares what he wanted to say here. He says, look out at nature. What is there? He sees a mineral, an animal, a plant, these are like single letters and the human being is the word that is composed of these single letters. If one wants to read the human being, one has to collect the single letters in the big book of nature. — This does not mean that Paracelsus picks up the things, but that he tries to get a synopsis of the things in nature. This has always enabled him to keep in sight the whole world with the single special case, which he has to cure as a doctor. Behind all that, the ingenious-moral strength works from which all that arises with him. At last, it is something like moral indignation that rebels in him against the way conventional at that time to cure and to find mixtures for all possible things. He says, I am not there to enrich the apothecaries; I am there to cure the human beings.\nOne has to realise that Paracelsus used words quite unlike in later time if one fairly wants to read his writings. If you read salt, mercury, and sulphur with Paracelsus, one has no right idea automatically, one thinks of what today the human being calls in such a way. Everything that one reads with Paracelsus seems then to be imperfect and childish. Who knows science today has a certain right to regard Paracelsus as childish, but one has to penetrate somewhat deeper. I want to give you an idea how you can get around to understanding what he means if he uses the terms salt, mercury, and sulphur. Paracelsus looks far back into the evolution of the earth, in the evolution of the beings, which live round him, and of the human being. If he looks back in such a way, a time faces him in which the human beings still had forms of existence very different from now.\nNobody gets as clear about what has become as Paracelsus. The earth was completely different millions of years ago. We have spoken of the transformation of the earth often enough. He looked back at a human figure that was still completely animal where the hands were still locomotive organs where the human being still lived in air and water. The earth, the surroundings were quite different. Even modern physics looks back at an age in which that which is solid today was still in a liquid state. Paracelsus, who started from the spiritual, saw a spiritual human being in connection with such an earth that still looked quite different from today. On an earth, which was so much warmer than today, the present human being could not live.\nAt that time, the human beings also lived under other conditions. At that time, the metals were still liquid, they could hardly be contained as steam in the air. At that time, the living beings could also not take shape; however, they have developed. Just as today the elementary human being is connected with the physical world as the pip with the apple, the primeval human being was differently connected with the primeval earth and with the entire surrounding astral world. Therefore, that which constitutes the present physical human being, his soul as the astral body and his mind as a divine human being had still to emerge. This was quite different from once. The human being was still closer to the divinity. The astral human being is born out of the astral world, and the physical human being is born out of the entire physical world. Paracelsus spoke in a much greater and nobler sense of the origin of the physical human being from the physical surroundings than our modern theory of evolution. Paracelsus understood this, and he emphasises it also repeatedly, but for him the human being is a confluence of all that which lives outdoors in nature. The human being has passions; he has them in himself, only in reduced form as the lion has them, for example, and as they exist in the environment. If the human being looks at the lion in the sense of Paracelsus, he sees the same force that lives today as his passion in him born out of the astral world.\nIn the lion, it is one-sided, with the human being it is mixed with other forces. The entire animal realm is to Paracelsus like a fanned-out humanity. He sees everything that is distributed in the forms of the animals in himself, invisible in his inner human being. That also applies in certain respect if the human being looks at the earth. The metals that have become physical today are born out from the same being from which the physical human being is born out. Please, understand me properly, because it is far from present ideas. Paracelsus sees back to the time when the physical human body had only built the heart. There are lower animals that have no hearts that still preserve the form that the human being had at that time. This was to Paracelsus the same time when from a much more general essence of the earth the gold also developed, so that a connection exists between the origin of the gold and the human heart. He also sees a connection between abnormalities like cholera and the arsenic. He says to himself, the possibility that cholera could originate depends on the fact that the arsenic is developed from the external world. He considers any single organ as belonging to the human unity and it is in such a way that it belongs to him like any animal, any plant, or any substance in the external world.\nI would like to read out another remark that shows you how he expresses himself in particular. This is a remark that is got out of a number of remarks of Paracelsus, which one could multiply by thousand. He regards the single human being as specifically related to the physical world and the astral world concerning his single organs and the recognition of their illnesses. It is differentiated in the most certain way. One admires the general expressions of modern pantheism, of the modern view of nature, but this is the purest dilettantism if one does not know that the great Paracelsus cannot be pleased with an all-life, which enjoys life in the single human being. Paracelsus speaks of something concrete: “That is why you should not say, this is cholera, this is melancholia, but this is arsenicus, this is aluminosum; and also he is a Saturnian, that is a Martian, and not: this man suffers from melancholia, that man suffers from cholera. For one part is from heaven, one part is from earth, and they are intermingled like fire and wood, because everything loses its name; since these are two things in one.”\nAs he explains the connection of the heart with the gold, he also explains the connection of certain phenomena with Saturn and another with Mars and that, which is related to Mars. The peculiar mind of Paracelsus positions the human being that way in nature, in the world. Even if there is to correct anything with Paracelsus: it depends on the great, on the comprehensive that lives in this soul.\nHe attributes this to single certain types. Thus, everything that originates as a precipitation in the mineral is elementary to him. At the same time, it originated in the developmental time when the human-bodily formed and took on the figure on earth, which it has today. Hence, every deposit of the mineral, everything salty is connected with the human-bodily, with the animal-bodily. He calls everything Mercurial, changeable that remains liquid after a certain precipitation has taken place. Mercury is to him a typical example of it. Thus, we have a trend towards the solidification of the liquid metal. The soul is also born out of the same universal forces from which the Mercurial was born out. The deeper connection is in such a way that one cannot discuss it publicly at all.\nSulphur and the present form of mind have a parallel cause of origin. However, they are not connected allegorically. No — these three things outdoors in the world correspond exactly to the body, the soul, and the mind of the human being.\nSulphur is connected according to its nature with the mind, mercury with the soul, and salt with the body of the human being. What the human being takes up besides is related to these in a certain respect because they are born out of them. Therefore, such an example shows us that we have to go in deeper. It is not enough if we understand the expressions of Paracelsus only; we must approach the books of Paracelsus with a deepened preparation, and then we understand him. We have to realise that he always has the whole in mind. Therefore, he says to himself, if the human being has an illness, it is an interruption, a disturbance of a certain balance. He calls it magnetic balance and — as there is never one pole in the magnetic needle, but always north pole and south pole together —, any digestion in the human body belongs to a digestion outdoors in the world, which he searches then. In the etheric human being, he searches the cause of the individual, in the material; he searches the expression of the spirit. In this respect, he calls the material the mummy. One has only to understand this significant expression. It is a certain essence that forms the basis of the bodily; the mummy is different in the healthy and the sick person because the whole and the individual is changed. Therefore, one needs only to recognise the mummy, the changes in the etheric body to recognise what a person lacks.\nBriefly, we see there into the depth of a spiritual life from which one can learn quite a lot. We have to realise that only a detailed spiritual research can understand again what is contained in Paracelsus. If one understands so detailed, he does no longer appear as a spirit whom one regards only as an interesting historical object, but as a spirit whom one has to consider from a higher point of view and from whom one can still learn quite a lot also in our time — at least from his method. One should position himself to Paracelsus in this way. Someone who does this finds in his lovely-rude manner a difference between the modern way of research and his way, a difference that he already made for his contemporaries. He distinguishes two reasons, the reason that looks into the whole realm of the spiritual life, and the reason that is only bent on the single one. He calls the one the first reason. He calls it in such a way because it leads to the concealed spirit of the things He calls the other reason a public folly compared with the concealed wisdom. He expresses himself even lovelier or more rudely saying, one has to distinguish a human-divine reason and a bestial reason.\nHe does not express himself in such a way that he speaks of the animal and spiritual nature of the human being, but of the bestial one. He considers the human being as a son of the animal genus. The animal is spread in single facets; the animal is summarised in the human being. He says once, the human being is the son of the remaining animal realm. However, if he wanted to be like the other animal beings, they would not understand this, they would look like at a wayward son and would be surprised about that which he has become.\nApart from that, you can also receive elementary instructions of certain theosophical basic concepts from Paracelsus. What Paracelsus argues about dream and sleep is in the most eminent sense what also spiritual science has to say about it, only he expresses it in his superb language. If the human being sleeps, the elementary body is in the space, and the astral human being is active. Then the astral human being can dialogue with the stars, so that he only needs to remember the dialogue with the stars to help, to cure the sick person. He is able to lead back all that to the prophets. He esteems them more than all the later ones. He calls Moses, Daniel, and Enoch not magicians, but he says, if one understands them properly, they are the precursors of this great astronomical-astrological medicine, which has worked for humanity.\nSuch a man was allowed to have a self-confidence in certain ways, and the strength of his work flows out from this self-confidence. However, he was clear in his mind also that what he had donated must live on and will live on with those who can recognise it. In spite of it all, a lot of gossip and historical gossip approached him. One examined his skull to slander him because this skull had a hole and one has to think much of such external things. One verified that he fell a victim to drunkenness and broke his skull. One wanted to judge his whole life this way. One can state the parable of Christ Jesus with the dead dog where Christ Jesus pointed to the nice teeth of the animal. The other things of such a personality do not concern us, besides that which we can learn from him, by which he has become a benefactor of humanity who overcame so much and by which he has become immortal.\nLet me close with his own words that he throws in the teeth of his adversaries: “I want to elucidate and argue in such a way that until the last day of the world my writings must remain and will remain true, and yours are recognised as full of bile, poison, and brood of vipers and are hated by the people like toads. It is not my will that you should fall down or be knocked down a year hence, but you must show your shame after a long time and you certainly fall through the cracks, I shall judge you more after my death than before, and even if you eat my body, you have only eaten filth: the Theophrastus will struggle for the body with you.”"
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "GA054-22",
+    "title": "Jacob Boehme",
+    "date": "3 May 1906",
+    "city": "Berlin",
+    "source": "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA054/English/RSA2014/19060503p01.html",
+    "book_title": "",
+    "content": "Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) is probably one of the strangest personalities of the last centuries. In the aurora of a quite new time, in the turn of the 16th to the 17th centuries, he stands there with a knowledge and a wisdom, with a worldview which appears like a completion of many centuries. He stands there as a person who was understood a little in the following time up to this day, even if he was called Philosophus Teutonicus and societies existed in Holland, in England, in Germany which tried to make Jacob Boehme's views popular. There have been always persons who occupied themselves with Jacob Boehme.\nAbout 1600, when Giordano Bruno died a martyr's death, Jacob Boehme's soul was penetrated by great, immense ideas for the first time. Who starts devoting himself to Jacob Boehme and, besides, goes out from the views of the present time finds his way in him a little. Hence, one can read in the modern books about Jacob Boehme that he showed his view in images which are incomprehensible and dark. If one reads the stuff that has been said about him in newer handbooks, one may say, it is completely comprehensible that one finds Jacob Boehme incomprehensible. What one can read in the handbooks of history of philosophy about him, however, is the most incomprehensible stuff of the world. This is the peculiar phenomenon which one experiences with Jacob Boehme.\nIf one knows the spiritual life of the 19th century exactly, in particular that German spiritual life, which especially philosophical circles influence, one can understand that Jacob Boehme was understood so little. There are hardly bigger contrasts than Jacob Boehme and Immanuel Kant. Whatever the education of the 19th century produced is far away from the spirit of this strange man. All who try to approach Jacob Boehme from the theosophical worldview are surprised that one still needed a theosophical deepening with that nation that had Jacob Boehme. One needs only to know Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme to know theosophy. Everything that they wrote is given from a deep spring, with immense deepness and magic power. Jacob Boehme was one of the greatest magicians of all times, of a greatness that has not yet been reached up to now.\nIn 1575, Jacob Boehme was born as a child of poor people. He was first a herd boy and could hardly read and write. While he tended livestock, already some strange flashes of inspiration lighted up in him. Sometimes it seemed to him, as if any leaf in the trees, as if the animals of the wood had something to say to him, as if all beings of nature spoke to him. Then he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. During his apprenticeship, he had a strange experience that cannot be discussed in the general public concerning its real basis. Jacob Boehme had to look after the shop once when his master and wife stepped out. However, he should sell nothing. A person entered whose eyes made a particular impression on him. This person wanted to buy something. Jacob said to him, he was not allowed to sell anything. The look of the stranger was something quite extraordinary to him. Then the stranger went out. After a few minutes, Jacob heard calling his name. The stranger said to him, Jacob, you are still small now, but you are destined to something great! — Jacob Boehme knew that these words transferred anything remaining to him.\nJacob Boehme tells another experience, about a mountain. Once he saw into a cave where something like gold shone to him. Again, it seemed to him like a revelation, like something that would tell about the concealed forces of nature to him. If one touched that all, it would lose its magic, which one can only understand by occult means.\nLike all young craftsmen of the past, Jacob Boehme started wanderings after his apprenticeship and then settled down as master of his craft in his hometown Görlitz. He began soon to write down what lived in his soul. It is important to illuminate the sensations somewhat that were in this personality. He felt raised above himself if he put pen to paper to write down what was revealed to him. Something was in him like a higher nature. This was so strong in him that — if he was back again in the everyday life and if he wanted to read the written down — he could not understand it. He could not follow that spirit. What he wrote down were words from the beginning, which were taken only from the centre of wisdom. Aurora or the Rising of the Dawn was the first book he wrote. Aurora or the Rising of the Dawn was always a symbol of the birth of the higher self to the mystics if the soul rises above the lower existence. The spiritualisation of the human being was always symbolised by the dawn. At that time, Jacob Boehme wrote words, which sound quite naturally with him because they carry the stamp, the seal of truth. Thus, he said once that he knows that “the sophist reproves him” if he speaks of the beginning of the world and its creation, “because I was not present and did not see it. I say to him that I was present in the essence of my soul and, when I was not yet a self, but because I was Adam's essence I was present and forfeited my glory in Adam.”\nThis simple man, who probably only read Paracelsus if any, had the consciousness that the everlasting soul that lives in the human being is not bound to space and time that there is an expansion of consciousness of this soul by which the human being is able to rise above space and time. Thus, the unity was clear to him, which lives in everything, which lives in every human soul, so that one needs only to remove the narrow borders in order to get a picture, a face that shows everything to us that goes back to the beginning of the creation of the human being. All that was founded on deep devoutness with Jacob Boehme.\nHe says about his soul condition: “When I struggled with God's assistance, a strange light emerged to my soul that was quite foreign to the wild nature. I only recognised in it what God and the human being is, and what God deals with the human being.”\nIt was an immediate experience of Jacob Boehme, the emergence of the divine soul in the usual human soul. This experience that was detached in a completely elementary way from the soul founded his enthusiasm. Thus, we see him grasping the human nature, the historical evolution of the whole humanity in a way, which — if one cannot penetrate to the springs — gives him a hard fight to understand this spirit.\nWhat we find with Paracelsus faces us in a spiritualised and transfigured form with Jacob Boehme. It already faces us in his first work, in the Aurora . This work was not printed first, but circulated only as a manuscript among his friends. It fell into the hands of a zealotic preacher. He preached against it and was successful that the City Council of Görlitz forbade Jacob Boehme to write anything in future. One regarded him as such a dangerous person already in those days. However, Jacob Boehme wrote nothing for years. All his other writings date from the last five to six years of his life, that life which one made to him continuously rather hard because one understood nothing of that which lived in this man, For the fanatical priesthood was fulfilled by zealotic hatred for anything that it had not written itself. His works were translated, before they were printed in Germany, into English, into Dutch and other languages. Jacob Boehme's destiny and works are an example of how little the ways of true spiritual life depend on the official education and how difficult it is to overcome the obstacles that are put in the way of the spiritual life by all possible powers.\nAlready in the Aurora, that faces us which lived in Jacob Boehme. At first, he said that something lives in the human being that can outgrow itself, a divine spark of life. This remained nothing abstract to him, but took shape of a big world building and human building in his thoughts, in his world of sensations. Someone who wants to understand Jacob Boehme has to recognise that only a profound spiritual-scientific education can penetrate into that which lived in Jacob Boehme. He knew of the human being that the physical human being has another, more spiritual, finer nature as its basis. Something is between the physical human being and the mental one that Jacob Boehme called “tinctura.” This is an often misunderstood word. At that time, there were also great spirits like for example Newton, who endeavoured for years to become clear in their mind about what Jacob Boehme means speaking of the tinctura.\nIf we look back at former times of the distant past, we find that there the world was still completely different from now. Jacob Boehme was completely filled with an immense doctrine of evolution. As extensive, splendid, and applicable to everything spiritual and sensuous at the same time as Jacob Boehme's view of world evolution understands it, no scientific view has shown it. He looks back at far distant periods when the earth still looked completely different from now. Jacob Boehme understood in a strange way what some naturalists have said in an amateurish way about the primeval condition of the earth. The modern naturalist pursues the living beings back to more imperfect forms. He still says then at best, everything on earth developed from a universal nebula. The forms emerged from the principles inherent in a universal nebula.\nJacob Boehme considers this development in much bigger style. He turns his look at all mental beings, at all animal beings, at all minerals, plants, and animals. He is able to behold the former conditions, the forms, which the human being had in former times when these beings were not yet such beings as they are today. In those days, they were included in a kind of original matter from which only the later world has arisen. He sees the world of appearance and the beings as they existed as rudiments at that time. He beholds an earth that is not solid, not air, not water, not fire on which neither animals nor plants do exist, but which contains everything that appeared then. Boehme does not speak of a fantastic primeval nebula, but about the tinctura that was real once when it formed our globe and that rests in secrecy on the basis of the beings today. This tinctura exists in the human being as a spiritual-mental organism behind the physical being. It is also in all other things. From the tinctura, Jacob Boehme derives the creation of all living beings with which he distinguishes seven basic qualities. With it, one comes to a very deep basis of his worldview. Equipped with it, one has a means to solve countless riddles of the world. Besides, Jacob Boehme has a wonderful language, compared with it, our modern language appears grey and lifeless with its concepts.\nWe have to imagine that the tinctura lives in the world like the primeval matter, that in it everything rests like in a maternal womb, that then the forms come out. He calls a type of the forms the acerbic ones. The human forefather was a being with a cartilaginous scaffolding, as well as the cartilaginous fishes have it today. The skeleton crystallised then from the original tinctura; with acerbity the skeleton of the earth crystallised from the original tinctura. Jacob Boehme calls this the salty in the world. One must not imagine that the original acerbic also had the form of a skeleton. However, everything that tended to become solid and earthy, that crystallised from the original spiritual matter was for Jacob Boehme the acerbic, the salty.\nThe second form of nature is that which preserves the internal mobility, so that the parts can perpetually interact with each other. Jacob Boehme calls this the mercurial.\nThe third is the sulfuric, containing the power of fire in itself like a concealed force. What one sees as fire originating from the matter is the one side, and the human and animal passions are the other one. Now they are separated from each other like North Pole and South Pole. The intuition of the folk, as well as Jacob Boehme looked back at a time of the earliest development. There was something that was not a material fire and also not passion from which, however, the fire differentiated on one side, on the other side the passion. At that time, they had a common basis. Jacob Boehme finds the same spiritual basis in the material fire as in the human passion. There is a relationship between that which slumbers in the matter and the human passion. There is something in it that is related to the spiritual side of the fire.\nThe sulphur contains the fire in itself concealed as the body contains the animal passion. Thus, Jacob Boehme distinguishes this four at first, tinctura, salt, sulphur, fire.\nIn the same way as the old German folk intuition looked back at a time when there was neither fire nor passion, Jacob Boehme looks back at such a condition, at such a thing, which becomes the fifth original form of nature if it spiritualises itself. He calls it water. It is water in the sense as we find the water in the Bible, as an external symbol of the soul. The spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water, over the soul forces slumbering in the matter, so that they can be raised.\nThe sixth form of nature originates if the inside penetrates outwardly if the inner life comes to life in such a way that it can be perceived. Jacob Boehme calls it sound. This is any soul expression that the inside of the being has in itself in such a way as the bell the peal. The sound can also express the uniform divine nature. The seventh form then originates, the wisdom, the divine force contained in the world. In these seven forms, Jacob Boehme sees the whole nature included.\nThe lowest member of the human nature has to do something with the salt-like acerbity; then it rises higher and higher up to wisdom. Furthermore, the forces of nature and the human being are related to the solar system. The relationship of all beings expresses itself everywhere. Jacob Boehme also calls tinctura everything that moves like the spiritual life blood through all beings. It is between the world thought and any matter. Jacob Boehme imagines the great master builder of the world as an artist who organised the world sensuous-physically. He calls the connection between the sensuous-physical and the creator of the world tinctura again. He searches it in any single being.\nThis is the difficult in his writings that we have to come to grips with his ideas. The human being is normally glad if he has established a few concepts to himself. Jacob Boehme does not form single abstractions that stand side by side like soldiers. He creeps as it were into all beings. He regards all beings as related, as connected with each other. In order to understand Jacob Boehme you have to make your mind flexible as nature is flexible, so that the concepts can also change as the things in nature change. Theosophists also often establish narrow concepts. However, it does not matter to have a concept, but that you are able to dissolve the concept immediately again. If you have a concept, you must be able to transform it as the things change. Nothing is more obstructive than abstract, carefully weighed concepts. Therefore, those cannot understand Jacob Boehme who read him because they form solid concepts first; however, he follows the living life of the things. The concepts must change, as well as the things change. However, people feel hovering as it were. One has really lost ground if one wants to understand the world. You have to keep the centre in yourselves only.\nJacob Boehme's soul painting is a reproduction of nature. He finds in the human mind what is related to the tinctura, the imagination. Imagination is a soul force that is in the middle between the force of thinking and the force of willing. Someone who is able to understand his concepts pictorially and to visualise them in his mind, so that not an abstract picture of the plant faces him, but a plant like of sensuous appearance. That viewable concept is impregnated as it were with real life from within. Someone who is able to do this has imagination. It can be increased in such a way that the human being works creatively and gains influence on that which lives as tinctura in the things.\nHere begins for Jacob Boehme that alchemy which is able to react on the matter, the tinctura, and from there also on the sensuous things. Thus, the imaginative human being is able to become a magician. Because Jacob Boehme understood this, we are allowed to call him the greatest magician of the new time. Jacob Boehme calls imagination the great virgin of nature, the virgin wisdom. Now, he goes back to the creation of Adam and further on to the original divine imagination. He says, the divine imagination imprinted the original spiritual human being in the matter according to its likeness. He calls this spirit man the original Adam.\nWhile this spiritual human being is there from the outset, he shows how the spiritual human being already existed in the original tinctura, how then, however, an entire spiritual change took place in the world creation. He places this change on the fourth day of creation. He did not see this original human being whom he calls the tinctura man with eyes, but inside he was clairvoyant, so that he could clairvoyantly perceive everything that took place in him. Then selfhood, independence appeared in this human being. That came during the fourth day, and the clairvoyant human being became aware of himself, started looking his own being. Spiritual-divine creation was originally all around. The primeval man beheld this clairvoyantly. He saw himself now. This was his renunciation of God. This human being would completely have solidified unless anything else were possible. The human being did no longer behold the world clairvoyantly. The point in time happened when the clairvoyant human being could perceive externally what is divine. At first, sun, moon, and stars are pictures of the divine he had seen once in himself.\nThus, the human being had seceded divinity, but due to the senses the world had become perceptible to him. It is the idea of the sensuous perception, which made the ancient tinctura man the material man. He becomes a material human being by his own idea taken from the material world, so that he himself became a sensuous human being from within due to his own imagination of the sensuous.\nJacob Boehme saw a deep relationship of all beings, of the animals, plants, and minerals. He said, everything that lives in the world in skin and bone, in flesh and blood and so on is related to something on earth. Jacob Boehme relates the whole social and artistic structure also to the constellations of the planets. He shows the connection of the planets with the human life. All that is so clear to someone who wants to understand him, but so big that a small-minded time cannot understand him.\nAnother question still entered his scope of view, the question of the origin of the evil, the evil in the world, the question, how does the evil come into the world? Is the evil contained in the primal ground of the world? The primal ground is then not a good one.\nHe finds an answer comparing the original good to the light, the pure light. No darkness is included in it. While the light appears, becomes discernible, it appears by the objects with the shadow. Are we allowed to say that darkness is included in the light? Certainly not. Pure light only goes out from the source of the light. However, from the objects the opposite of the light goes out. The light faces us in the world as the primal ground ... (gap in the text) . As it is true that the shadow must be present with the light, it is true that the bad must be in the good. We can compare the divine harmony to the human soul. It penetrates the organism. The soul puts the limbs of the human in motion. The world harmony of the divinity enjoys life in the soul in such a way that the limbs have independence. Although the harmony of the soul forms the basis, the limbs can turn against each other. If freedom should be in the world, the limbs must be able to turn against each other. Freedom and the possibility of the bad belong together, harmony and the possibility of disharmony. Just this thought of Jacob Boehme inspired Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., 1775-1854, philosopher), and you find a wonderful representation of that which lives in the freedom of the human being (Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom , 1809).\nThis writing by Schelling about the freedom of the human being is like an offering to Jacob Boehme. Schelling understood something of Jacob Boehme. Boehme lived on with Goethe and other great spirits of the 19th century. Only when materialism arose, the spiritual life was alienated from Jacob Boehme. Then one understood him less and less. A time comes again in which one will not only understand him but in which one wants to learn from him. A new era approaches for theosophy. A time comes then, when one understands such great spiritual deeds like Jacob Boehme's writings, like the Germanic mythology again when they progress towards a new glorification. A spiritualisation of all wisdom, all human energy can then be caused. If the age comes to an end, which has the task of the external control of all natural forces, then Jacob Boehme will also be understood again. Copernicus, Galilei, and Giordano Bruno also belonged to the same age to which Jacob Boehme belongs. They have the world led to the observation of the sensuous world, the external world.\nJacob Boehme appeared just in that age, and his works are like a big summary of all mental achievements of humanity. He arranges all that for the world in the dawn of an age that introduces the materialistic epoch. When the materialistic age has topped out, Jacob Boehme is also found again and everything that is contained in his works. Everything is contained in his works that the world has collected as spiritual treasures.\nWe must not consider the achievements of theosophy as something particular. The theosophical world movement must be something that is alive, that signifies life and growth. If the theosophical society represents this, it understands how to work in the sense of the great spirits of former times, in the sense of Jacob Boehme, it becomes theosophical work in the true sense of the word."
+  }
+]
\ No newline at end of file