Three Paths to Christ E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 501

Beschreibung

Replete with fresh immediacy, rich spiritual content, innovation and occasional humour, these talks were given at a time when Rudolf Steiner was preparing for independence from the Theosophical Society. Alongside the much-loved lectures 'Nervousness and Ego Development' – in which Steiner shares practical exercises for coping with contemporary life's challenges – and 'Love and Its Significance in the World', the collection finds a focal point in descriptions of the 'Three Soul Paths to Christ'. The first of these is via the Gospels, the second through 'Inner Experience' and the third 'Initiation', which Steiner characterizes as a path transcending religion. He further elaborates these themes in a lecture entitled, 'Mysteries of the Kingdoms of Heaven in Parables and in Real Form'. Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis form a golden thread throughout, appearing as a fourfold herald of a true Christianity of the future. A moving yet astringent tribute to the founder of Theosophy, H.P. Blavatsky, on the tenth anniversary of her death, adds the Christian verities not embraced by Blavatsky during her lifetime, and two stirring talks that set the mood for Christmastide – via St Matthew, Eudocia and St Luke – round off the volume with paeans to Novalis. The lectures are complemented with an introduction by Margaret Jonas, detailed notes and an index. Fourteen lectures, various cities, Jan.–Dec. 1912, GA 143

Leseprobe

THREE PATHS TO CHRIST

EXPERIENCING THE SUPERSENSIBLE

14 lectures given in various cities betweenJanuary and December 1912

TRANSLATED BY CHRISTIANA BRYAN

INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET JONAS

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 143

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

Originally published in German under the title Erfahrungen des Übersinnlichen, Die drei Wege der Seele zu Christus (volume 143 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revized by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the fourth German edition (1994), edited by Robert Friedenthal and Hella Wiesberger

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1994

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 645 6

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Margaret Jonas

LECTURE 1

MUNICH, 11 JANUARY 1912

Nervousness and Ego Development

The application of spiritual science in life. Nervousness as a modern problem. Types of nervous anxiety. Haste in soul life, indecisiveness, imitating organic pathologies. The causes of nervousness: weakening the ether body in contemporary culture and carrying out work without interest. Strengthening the ether body with simple exercises, its influence on the physical body. 1: Conscious placing of objects to counteract forgetfulness. 2: Changing handwriting habits. The importance of connecting one’s inner core with activities. Effects of exercises on the ether body that prove its existence. 3: Reversing the sequence of events in thinking. 4: Observing one’s own gestures, doing things differently on purpose, such as writing with the opposite hand. Controlling astral activity with one’s I and the help of will cultivation. 5: Denial and suppression of small wishes. 6: Suspending one’s own debate regarding for-or-against an issue and 7: through withholding opinions and judgements, especially when one is involved. Observing how the single actions of another chime together. Self-education and—discipline, controlling the elements of our being in this way.

Pages 1-16

LECTURE 2

WINTERTHUR, 14 JANUARY 1912

Human Soul Activity through the Ages

Application of reason to results of spiritual science. The threefold nature of inner experiences and its relation to the moment of falling asleep: 1: Concepts being tiring, falling asleep easily. 2: Fluctuating feelings, self-interest—difficulty in falling asleep. Clairvoyance as conscious sleep. The transformation of medical forces into clairvoyance in Nostradamus. 3: Impulsions of will: feelings of bliss resulting from good motivation, pangs of conscience as a hindrance to sleep. The connection between soul life and higher worlds. The sense for reincarnation. Training of soul capacities throughout cultures. Today’s culture: conceptual life, Graeco-Roman culture: perceptions. In future cultures: educating the fluctuations of feeling and, finally, training in morality. The laming of intellectual capacities resulting from bad impulses of will. The connections of perceptive abilities with the physical, conceptual-imaginative capacities with the astral world, fluctuations of feeling with lower- and morality with higher Devachan. Perception of Christ in different epochs. Present perception of Christ in concepts and Imaginations.

Pages 17-27

LECTURE 3

ZURICH, 15 JANUARY 1912

The Path of Knowledge and its Connection with Human Morality

Soul purity and morality as a basic requirement for inner development. The nature of morality; no outer causes but the emergence of morality through awareness of one’s inner core. The emergence of luciferic motivations in the astral body. The axiom of occultists: the inner path of knowledge modelled on moral imperatives. The structure of the Ten Commandments. Three relate positively to spiritual circumstances (Thou shalt…) while seven relating to the physical world are negative (Thou shalt not…). The exception is the fourth Commandment. Suppressing outer impulses in moral action and in pursuit of clairvoyance. The false path to clairvoyance through ‘pumping up’ hidden forces from the three lowest elements of the human being into the conscious I (weakening truthfulness). Opposed to this, a direct path through the conscious I and moral impetus, aesthetic and mathematical judgement. Four prerequisites for the path of knowledge: awe, reverence, sense of harmony and submission to world processes. Morality as Earth’s goal. Three Rosicrucian sayings as the three moods of western esotericism.

Pages 28-43

LECTURE 4

BRESLAU, 3 FEBRUARY 1912

Anthroposophy, Conscience and Wonder—Pointers to Past and Future Spiritual Vision

Two facts of everyday life that indicate the spiritual world and its disconnection during dreaming. 1: wonder and 2: human conscience. Wonder as the origin of all knowledge. Transformations of conscience from clairvoyant (Erinyes, Furies) to inner experience. Precondition to amazement: something known in different guise. Dreams as remnants of earlier clairvoyance. Human descent to Earth to gain knowledge and conscience. Experiencing the spiritual world. The significant moment of falling asleep. Conscience as a premonition of human condition necessary to enter spiritual worlds. Amazement indicating earlier vision, conscience indicating future vision: living signs of a spiritual world. Ability to wonder even at the mundane indicating more advanced souls. ‘Reflective’ natures know of reincarnation in last life. Future vision of karmic balancing of our lives. Future suffering of robust, material natures.

Pages 44-57

LECTURE 5

MUNICH, 25 FEBRUARY 1912

Reflecting Levels of Consciousness

The reflective quality of sense organs and brain for normal consciousness. Revelation of subconsciousness in artistic creation, dreams and disposition. Possible errors when descending into soul depths. Mistaking projections of one’s own inner life with objective spiritual facts e.g. mistaken self-identification as reincarnation of Mary Magdalen. Careful training to avoid error. Exercise to develop feeling for karmic connections: ‘construction’ of a person conscious of—and contributing to—all unexplained events. Taking karma calmly creates discernment of truth and falsehood in soul’s depths. Blavatsky’s antipathy towards things Hebrew and Christian. Christ’s temptations. Emergence of higher sense organs in astral and their reflection in ether bodies. Similarities of experience in soul depths with Kamaloka: being locked in to one’s own desires and passions. Congruence of natural and spiritual laws in Devachan. Life in Devachan is dependent on quality of person e.g. effects of lying, ambition, vanity. Physical plane: spiritual laws are hidden behind natural laws e.g. volcanic eruptions. Relationship of beauty and morality in differing worlds; ugliness destructive, beauty a fructifying element in Devachan. Truthfully worked-through feelings become truth detectors.

Pages 58-78

LECTURE 6

MUNICH, 27 FEBRUARY 1912

Hidden Forces in Soul Life

Conscious soul life: concepts, feelings, will forces. Hidden, unconscious soul levels: Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, premonitions, visions, ‘second face’. Their correspondences in physical organisms. Vision as primitive Imagination, premonitions as primitive Inspiration. The connection between the living and the dead. The helplessness / fainting of normal consciousness in the sense world. The powerful effect of sympathy and antipathy in the subconscious; their connection with breathing and blood circulation. Nurturing and destructive influences in feeling realm e.g. lax attitude to lying. Differentiating subjective from objective in vision and imagination by the power of active watching. Kamaloka: built of our own inner world. Influence of our experiences on the elemental world after death. Consequences of training nuances of feeling on colours and tones for clairvoyance. Perceiving one’s own physical constitution. Effects of forces sent from the dead into the physical world e.g. polter activity, most easily perceived while falling asleep or waking up. The connection of human experience with realities of the subconscious (magic).

Pages 79-91

LECTURE 7

STOCKHOLM, 16 APRIL 1912

Three Soul Paths to Christ (in Two Parts)

First Part: The Path via the Gospels and the Path of Inner Experience

Today’s longing for a deeper understanding of Christ. Three paths to Christ: 1: through the Gospels, 2: through inner experience and 3: by initiation. Experiencing the Gospels in previous centuries. Interest through images conjured in feeling, not in historical reality. The Gospels and spiritual science; an understanding of human nature as a requirement for the path of inner experience. The twofold course of inner human development caused by luciferic influence. Elaboration of the I entity at age 20-21. Emergence of I-consciousness around age 2-4. Effects of the sundering of I-consciousness from I-entity; illness, age and death but also opportunity for freedom. Strengthening the I through Christ’s impetus. The difference between Christ and Buddha. The feeling for Christ in the first three post-Atlantean cultural epoch: their relation to ancient planetary conditions; seven holy rishis—old Saturn; Zarathustra culture—old Sun; Osiris culture—old Moon. The possibility of inner Christ experience within one life.

Pages 92-106

LECTURE 8

STOCKHOLM, 17 APRIL 1912

Second Part: The Path of Initiation

Initiation as a path transcending religions; anthroposophy’s task of disseminating Initiation Mystery wisdom; its possibilities for the honouring and recognizing all other religions such as Buddhism. Origins of religion: personalities of founders. Origin of Christian initiation: the death of Christ, the Mystery of Golgotha. Illness and death as the bastions created by benevolent powers against the influences of Lucifer. The relationship of humans to the animal kingdom: consequences of maltreatment rectified on Jupiter in the embodiment of parasitic entities in humans. ‘Bacillii’ as forerunners of these parasites. The Mystery of Golgotha. The principle of transformation in supersensible worlds. Christ’s entry in the world to counteract the luciferic principle, seen from earthly and spiritual perspectives. Initiation principles revealed. The Osiris-Seth myth in this connection. The valuing of single incarnations in Egypto-Graecian times (Pythagoras and Euphorbos). Christ as the lord of karma. Tending Christian initiation in the brotherhood of the Grail and in the Rosicrucian community; the reason for the hundred-year silence regarding their leaders. No further prophets since the Mystery of Golgotha. Anthroposophy as a synthesis of all religious faiths.

Pages 107-125

LECTURE 9

COLOGNE, 7 MAY 1912 (WITHOUT INTRODUCTION)

Mysteries of the Kingdoms of Heaven in Parables and Real Form

The revelation of mysteries in parables. External nature as a parable. Spring and autumn in relation to waking and sleeping. Elemental beings’ ecstasy at St John’s tide. The festival of the Spirit of the Earth at Christmas. Withdrawal of spirits into sacred spheres at Easter. The significance of Easter as a moveable festival. The present fifth epoch as a reflection of the third, Egyptian epoch. Re-emergence of Ancient Egyptian wisdom in Tycho Brahe. The spiral growth of plants mirroring the movement of planets. Outer signs of inner processes: renewal of ancient astrology in the Soul Calendar (Twelve Moods). Calculating time in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, a universal deed for humankind. The weekly verses in the Soul Calendar—formula for connecting inner soul life with processes of divine-spiritual experience.

Pages 126-136

LECTURE 10

COLOGNE, 8 MAY 1912

Prophecy and Heralding Christ’s Impetus. The Spirit of Christ and its Sheaths:

A Whitsun Message in Memory of H.P. Blavatsky

Thoughts in memory of H.P. Blavatsky on the anniversary of her death day (White Lotus Day). Recitation of Hegel’s poem ‘Eleusis’. Mention of Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. Reasons for the choice of Blavatsky as an ‘instrument’ of the Masters. Her antipathy towards Hebrew and Christian elements. The Secret Doctrine, ‘an assemblage’. The need to complete the theosophical movement by adding the Sinai revelations and the Mystery of Golgotha. The necessity for a pure sense of truth. Juxtaposition of oriental culture’s focus on individuals over several incarnations versus occidental focus on the single individual’s life. Fourfold heralding of Christ’s impulse by the same individuality in the personalities of Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis. The Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ as Spirit of the Earth. Forming Christ’s sheaths from humanly-developed forces: 1: Forming an astral body through wonder and amazement, 2: Forming an ether body through compassion, shared joy and love. The conflation of love with sex—worst manifestation of the present age. 3: Forming a physical body through conscience. Future depictions of Christ in art.

Pages 137-156

LECTURE 11

MUNICH, 16 MAY 1912

Synthesizing Worldviews—A Fourfold Herald

Spiritual science as a tool for mutual understanding e.g. Buddhism and Christianity as opposed to today’s studies of comparative religion. Max Müller’s criticism of H.P. Blavatsky. Metamorphosis not death in spiritual kingdoms. The Mystery of Golgotha as a circumstance of the Gods and to compensate for Lucifer’s actions. The fundamental trait of Christianity: not an individual founder but a deed, an event, as its origin. Oriental ways of thinking: focus on an individual over many incarnations, occidental view: focus on individual incarnation. The four personalities of Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis: a fourfold heralding of Christianity by the same individuality. Enlarging the limited view of a personality by including a spiritual-scientific view of the individuality. Waking up and falling asleep of earth spirits in autumn and spring compared with these activities in human beings. The rushing ascent of elemental spirits at St John’s. The Earth awakening in winter. The essential mobility of the Easter festival. The significance of the Soul Calendar for spiritual life and the particular way time is calculated.

Pages 157-171

LECTURE 12

ZURICH, 17 DECEMBER 1912

Love and its Significance in the World—with a question answered

Does one have to know about Christ’s incisive deed into history for his strength to imbue the soul? The non-egotistical love of wisdom with increasing age. Life’s wisdom as the seed for the subsequent life; interpreting this seed as a divine spark among Mystics. Karma and love. Deeds of love not initially rewarded in a subsequent life. Love as ‘repayment for debts already incurred’. Morality as the Sun of the world. Interest in all existence is a human duty. Love as all that is creative in the world. Love in comparison with wisdom and power: power and wisdom can be graduated, love cannot. God retains love, power and wisdom given to Ahriman and Lucifer respectively. Love as perfect and complete; humans can only gradually absorb it. Christ’s deed as counterweight to Lucifer’s actions. The connection of love-united-with-wisdom (philosophy) and Christ’s impetus. Three Rosicrucian sayings. Self-completion/fulfilment and love. Love—making sense of evil.

A question about necessary lies: These are a complex, egotistical act, binding the perpetrator with the weakness of the other being ‘protected’.

Pages 172-182

LECTURE 13

BERLIN, 24 DECEMBER 1912

The Birth of the Light of the Earth out of Christmas Darkness

Christmas, festival of love. Threefold aspect of Christ’s impulse and the four Gospels. 1: the spiritual-regal aspect in Matthew’s Gospel. Three Wise Men, Magi. 2: the cosmic perspective of Mark and John’s Gospels. The clash of old pre-Christian and the Christian worlds in Empress Eudocia’s poem about Cyprian. 3: the childlike perspective of Luke’s Gospel. The greatness of love compared with wisdom and power. Lucifer, opponent of wisdom, Ahriman, opponent of power. Omniscience, almightiness-omnipotence, universal love. The child Jesus in Luke’s Gospel as personification of love between the all-wise and the all-powerful. Roman Saturnalia and the Christian Christmas festival. The task of Christmas and the tasks of the new Anthroposophical Society.

Pages 183-197

LECTURE 14

COLOGNE, 29 DECEMBER 1912

Novalis—Proclaimer of a Spiritually Conceived Christ Impetus

Novalis as the prophet of recent times; his irradiated suffusion with Christ’s impulse. The reincarnated soul of Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael in Novalis. Novalis’ contemporaries Goethe, Schiller, Fichte. Goethe’s relation with Spinoza and Leibniz; the relatedness of Monadism with Sankya philosophy. Fichte’s resuscitated Vedanta words. Novalis’ spiritually-borne—also Schiller’s—ethical individualism. Novalis’ praise of Schiller. Goethe’s saying: ‘Wisdom is only in wisdom’ as a motto. Novalis’ path of incarnation as a guiding star: his poem ‘When numbers and figures…’

Pages 198-203

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE first lecture of this volume (11 January 1912, given in Munich), which in terms of content bears a completely different character to the other lectures of this period, is likely to have been the result of the following letter, dated 8 November 1911:

Dear Doctor!

You are unlikely to remember that on 19 July of this year I asked you for your kind advice on how I could learn to control my thoughts when I was nervous. At the time, you recommended that I recite, for a reasonable amount of time every day, German poems, or something similar, backwards. I was to report to you on the success after a few months, and you would then be kind enough to offer further advice. I did these exercises regularly. Since I soon ran out of German poems, I conjugated Greek irregular verbs backwards and said historical charts backwards. The success was obvious, and I am extremely grateful to you, dear Doctor, for your friendly advice. It is true that success is still in its infancy, but I am already dealing with the thoughts that used to dominate and depress me in a completely different way. Would you be so kind as to give my brother-in-law or sister-in-law, who is handing you this letter in person, another new exercise or rule of conduct, which they will then kindly report to me?

With heartfelt thanks again for your advice on this matter, which is so important to me.

Your very devoted Professor Dr K

INTRODUCTION

IT is helpful to approach these lectures if we look at them in their relevant historical context. They were given throughout 1912, which was a critical year for the development of anthroposophy. Until the end of 1912, Rudolf Steiner was still the leader of the German Section within the Theosophical Society but relations had become extremely strained due to the activity of the Society’s leaders Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater’s having, since around 1909, set up an order within the Society known as ‘The Star of the East’. The pair had perceived a certain spiritual stature around the young Indian boy Jiddu Krishnamurti and proclaimed that he was to be the vessel for a physical reappearance of Christ Jesus. In adulthood, Krishnamurti was to publicly reject this claim, break from the Theosophical Society and establish his own pathway of spiritual development. Rudolf Steiner knew from his own esoteric research that Christ had entered the earth in a physical body once and once only, and rejected the claim wholeheartedly. By Christmas 1912 the Anthroposophical Society was formed and was formally expelled from the Theosophical Society in 1913. Therefore, a number of these lectures allude to these events and the term ‘theosophy’ is used, whereas later it would be replaced by ‘anthroposophy’.

The lecture given in May 1912 in memory of the Theosophical Society co-founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, shows that Steiner continued to revere her enormous contribution but that she was unable to understand and appreciate Christianity (and Judaism) properly. He indicates here how people can create new ‘sheaths’ for Christ’s continuing work in the earthly sphere by learning to develop the qualities of wonder, amazement, compassion, love and conscience. He was thus anxious to make clear that the newly developing Society would be following a very different path, one which would be the successor to the Rosicrucian movement of earlier centuries.

The lectures here were given in various cities in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden and therefore a certain amount of repetition inevitably occurs. This need not feel tedious as each lecture often expresses something in a slightly different way and casts additional light on the subject. They cover a variety of themes and only a few have been published in English previously.

The title of the series Three Paths to Christ refers in fact to just two lectures of the same name given in April 1912 in Stockholm, but in a sense they are at the heart of the collection, describing the three principal paths to finding Christ: via the Gospels, inner (mystical) experience and initiation. The first two are still significant paths although they present certain difficulties for contemporary people, but the path of initiation as revealed by spiritual science makes clear the understanding that, in order to combat the activities of the adversary powers, the higher Gods sent Christ to earth to experience death in a physical human body, which no God had previously done. This would make human incarnations continue to be possible until no longer needed in the same form. This ‘deed’ of Christ is what distinguishes Christ Jesus from other spiritual teachers, who have nevertheless given humanity the most profound teachings. Steiner goes on to speak of the protectors of this Christian path as being those who taught the mysteries of the Holy Grail and later the Rose Cross. He makes clear that it is not possible to identify publicly certain personalities as bearers of these Christian mysteries whilst they are still in physical incarnation. Had this lecture been republished in English since it first appeared in 1942 and been made better known, it might have saved considerable strife within the anthroposophical movement.

One significant lecture describes how we can overcome ‘nervousness’ – a term broader than anxiety, here covering a restless instability of thought, memory and hasty action. This lecture has appeared in print before, and gives helpful exercises such as changing one’s handwriting, going through events in our memory backwards, and suppressing any unnecessary and trivial desires and wishes. A number of lectures stress the path of ‘moral’ development: sympathy for what is good and beautiful, aversion to evil and ugliness; combining other exercises with moral judgement; and being prompted from our innermost core to act without reference to our physical needs. We learn to develop wonder, reverence and harmony—here the latter means being in harmony with cosmic processes, in other words karma—and that we ourselves choose and bring about subconsciously those unpleasant things that happen to us, which we think we do not want, as karmic recompense for our past actions. Understandably, this latter is a very difficult and sensitive subject to treat and can’t be spoken about glibly but only worked on inwardly over a period of time.

In Lecture Four we learn that development is easier for more ‘pensive’ types of people, who can experience amazement and awe easily and who have stronger consciences, because they have had direct experiences of incarnating in cultures where reincarnation was taught. More ‘robust’ types had lives where it was not known about and these people are in the majority nowadays. This may explain many attitudes found in outer life.

In Lectures Five and Six, Rudolf Steiner makes clear how our health and our moods are less affected by outer circumstances than by suppressed painful memories in the subconscious, causing ‘waves’ in the soul—a tenet of most paths of psychotherapy today. We can reach these memories by developing Imagination—an enhanced power of thought reaching into our life tableau—but there can be a danger of errors: we may be overwhelmed with images and imagine that we lived before as an important historical personality—Steiner recounts the number of Mary Magdalenes, Julius Caesars, etc. that he has encountered! Reflecting on those things that have happened and that we have not consciously wished for in our lives as an exercise, helps us to discriminate when faced with ‘visions’. The higher spiritual world or ‘Devachan’ will reject any lying, vanity and ambition in our souls after death. The next lecture continues with this theme of ‘visionary’ experiences such as ‘second-sight’, which is basically atavistic though hereditary in certain populations. These two lectures are both helpful in situations where people may be struggling with a surge of visionary images on their path of spiritual development.

Other lectures mention our connection to sleeping and waking and introduce the newly created Calendar of the Soul, on which by meditating can lead us into experiencing the seasonal path of the year in harmony with spiritual beings and processes. As a comfort to those who find this difficult to connect with, Steiner points out that it can take years to really make these meditations one’s own. Further themes touch on the reappearing of Christ within the earth’s etheric; the previous and subsequent incarnations of John the Baptist; that Raphael’s School of Athens painting depicts St Paul preaching Christianity (not Plato and Aristotle), a little known Christmas lecture and one on Novalis.

Last but not least, we find included that most important lecture on ‘love and its meaning for the world’ and how giving love does not accrue karmic credit but is really a ‘repayment’—we are not rewarded for it. The spiritual significance of love is highlighted with the all too necessary reminder that if spiritual science were to develop without love it would actually be a danger to humanity.

There is much to enhance and enrich our lives, to reflect upon and work with in these fourteen, highly relevant lectures.

Margaret Jonas

February 2023

LECTURE 1

MUNICH, 11 JANUARY 1912

Nervousness and Ego Development

IN the context of much of what we already know—which may still be useful to some of us—a stimulus will today be given, which could lead to a more focused way of observing the nature of human beings and its connection with the world. Anthroposophists will have ample opportunity—aside from the usual ripostes and objections to spiritual science encountered in recent public lectures1—to encounter what those outside anthroposophy often assert. Ever and again we face objections from both learned and untutored people when in spiritual science we speak of a stratification of the whole human being into the four elements we always cite: a physical body, an ether, etheric or life body, an astral body and an I or ego.

Sceptics might object that for someone in whom certain usually concealed soul forces have been developed it might be possible to discern something of this fourfold nature, but for someone not able to see such an organism, there would be scant grounds for surrendering to any such view. Now it must be emphasized that human life—observed attentively—not only confirms what spiritual science has to say but rather that, when what can be learnt from spiritual knowledge is applied in practical life, it turns out to be exceptionally useful. You will discover that these uses—I don’t mean uses in their base sense but benefits in a more elevated sense—will eventually confer on us a sort of confidence, even if we do not want to commit to what clairvoyant observation offers.

It is only too well known that nowadays people complain at length about what is implied in those much-feared words nervousness or anxiety.We need not be surprised that some feel compelled to claim that nowadays there is hardly anyone who is not to some extent nervous. Why would we not find such a statement plausible? Regardless of social relations and conditions to which causes of nervousness could be ascribed, conditions described collectively as nervousness simply exist and they manifest in the most diverse ways.

At their simplest and least uncomfortable, we might call such people soul-fidgeters or soul-fretters. They can be described as unable to hold onto a thought properly nor to follow it to its conclusion, who continually jump from thought to thought and, if one tries to anchor them to a single thought, have already leapt on to another. A certain haste in their soul life is often the mildest form of nervousness.

Another type of nervousness is one whereby the person hardly knows how, of themselves, to initiate action or, in relation to things they need to resolve, are unable to make progress and actually never quite know what they should do in a given situation.

This can in turn lead to other, more serious, conditions where nervousness leads increasingly to other forms of illness for which no organic cause can be found, but which speciously mimic organic pathologies such that one might believe a person was suffering from a severe stomach complaint when in fact they have nothing more serious than what can be summed up under the minor heading of nervousness. They are, of course, symptoms under which the person concerned suffers just as much as if the illness originated from an organic source.

Numerous other conditions could be mentioned and who has not experienced examples of this through their own suffering or that of those in their environs? One doesn’t need to go far—I am not about to digress onto other subjects—in order to speak of the momentous events of outer life as ‘political alcoholism’, something recently couched in terms of anxiety-ridden happenings in public life and which manifest as if driven by the sort of conduct usually only seen when an individual is slightly affected by alcoholism. The term is apt for the ways and means by which political affairs have been conducted in recent months in Europe. Here in external life you see not only such manifest nervousness, but also that it is experienced as highly distressing. Such nervous anxiety is perceptible on every hand.

What has just been described will certainly not improve for people in the near future, but will become ever more acute. Auspicious prospects for humanity’s future are not warranted if people remain as they are today, because there are many pernicious influences affecting our lives to an exceptional degree and, transferred from person to person in a way I have to call epidemically, result in affecting not only those who are predisposed but also those who are fundamentally healthy, if perhaps somewhat weak.

Something incredibly detrimental for our times is that a large number of those attaining leading positions in public life have studied in the way presently favoured. There are whole branches of scholarship nowadays, of which it can be said that one’s year-round university life is spent following pursuits other than those demanding thorough deliberation and perusal of what college professors have to say. One goes in now and then but whatever needs to be known for passing exams can be acquired in a couple of weeks. In other words, one crams the bare necessities. The worst aspect of this is the cramming itself. Because to some extent this attitude to study reaches back into lower schools, the damaging results are not inconsiderable. The main trouble with cramming is that any real connection between soul-interest—that innermost core of a person’s being—and the matter being swotted is not present. Even among pupils in schools the prevalent opinion is: Oh well, no matter if what I learn is soon forgotten; so that the passionate longing to retain what one has learnt is absent. A lean band of interest links the core of the human soul with whatever it is embracing.

As a direct consequence of this fact, human beings cannot develop themselves sufficiently to engage in public life with much effectiveness. This outcome of cramming what they should have embraced results in finding no connection with the tasks of their profession; in soul they remain remote from what they have been pursuing with their heads. There is hardly anything worse for the essential being of humankind than remaining remote in heart and soul from what one has to carry out with one’s head. This is not only inconsistent for more sensitive souls but is something that greatly undermines the strength and energy of ether bodies, specifically the human ether body. Ether or life bodies become ever weaker under such driven conditions due to the meagre bond existing between the core of the human soul and what it carries out. The more a person has to perform actions in which they have no interest, the more do they weaken their ether or life body.

Anthroposophy is intended to work upon those who assimilate anthroposophy healthily in such a way that they not only learn about a human being consisting of physical body, ether body and so on, but that these four elements in human nature can evolve strongly and vigorously.

If a person carries out a simple experiment but repeats it diligently, this trifle can work wonders. Forgive me if I talk about isolated observations, about details that are and can become meaningful for human life. The occasional slight forgetfulness shown by some people relates closely to what I have just characterized. Slight forgetfulness disturbs us. Yet anthroposophy can show how this forgetfulness is most extremely harmful to health. However odd this may sound, it is true. Many outbreaks within the human constitution bordering on the further reaches of pathology could be avoided were human beings less forgetful. Now you could object that people just are forgetful. Who can—and we can easily clarify this with an overview of life—who can totally absolve themselves of forgetfulness?

Let us take a frequent yet trivial example: people catch themselves being forgetful, never remembering where they have put objects they need. Isn’t this what often happens in life? One person can never find his pencil, another always misplaces his cufflinks in the evening, and so on. It may seem banal and trifling to talk about such things, yet they happen in life. Observing what can be learnt from anthroposophy, there is a good exercise relating to the matter in hand, namely that the kind of forgetfulness just characterized can be remedied very easily. Let us assume a lady puts her brooch—or a gentleman his cufflinks—somewhere and they find next morning that they cannot locate them.

Now you could certainly maintain that they could get used to putting them in the same place every day. One couldn’t do this for every single item, but let’s not talk about this right now, but rather about a more effective method of curing oneself. Let’s assume a person who had noticed their absentmindedness might say: I am going to put that item I need to find in various places. I will never put that object in places other than the one about which I have generated the thought: I place this item in this specific place. I note pictorially the environs in terms of shape, colour and so on and I try to allow all this to imprint itself upon me. Let’s say we place a safety pin on the corner of a table, just at an angle, accompanied by the thought: I am putting this on the edge and I imprint on my mind in pictorial form the right-angled corner and the way the safety pin is near two intersecting edges and so on. Relieved, I now leave the item. I will see—maybe not if I find the item once, but if I make a rule of linking such thoughts with the item over time—that my forgetfulness will gradually diminish.

This is based on the fact that a quite specific thought has been grasped, namely: I am putting the safety pin here. My I is brought into connection with the action, with what I am carrying out, to which is added a pictorial image. Clear imagery in thinking, visually imagining what I am doing in addition to associating my action with my soul-spiritual essence—with the core of my being, with my I—this is what can sharpen our memory quite significantly. This is how becoming less forgetful can benefit our lives. You need not worry that you are achieving only this aim because far more is gained through it.

Let’s assume that it had become a sort of customary habit for people to foster such thoughts when putting certain items down. This simple habit would generate a strengthening of human ether bodies. Through doing this, the human ether body is ever more consolidated, becomes ever stronger and stronger.

We have learnt from anthroposophy that the ether- or life-body serves in a certain way as the bearer of memory. If we do something that fortifies our forces of memory, we can immediately understand that strengthening our memory is going to be of benefit to our ether- or life-body. As anthroposophists we need not be surprised by this. Imagine that you would not only recommend this method to a forgetful person, but to someone exhibiting symptoms of a nervous condition. Imagine you would advise a fidgety or nervous person to carry out the exercise of placing articles and accompanying this action with thoughts in the way described. You would notice that not only do they become less forgetful through intently practising this exercise but, by strengthening their ether body, they gradually become capable of overcoming their nervous or anxious condition.

Here everyday life provides us with proof that what anthroposophy says about the ether body is true. When we relate appropriately to the ether body, it becomes apparent that it gains forces, gains strength. In achieving such successes, we are provided with proof that accepting the ether body as characterized is justified.

Let us move on to another subject, which again appears minor but which is extraordinarily important. You know that the elements with which we are familiar as the physical and ether bodies exist in immediate proximity to each other in the human being. The ether body is intimately embedded in the physical body, that is, these two bodies interpenetrate one another. Nowadays you can observe an idiosyncrasy, which is far from rare and about whose existence those in whom it is observed can do nothing. In observing this—while having a healthily compassionate soul in our breast—we will feel sorry for those observed to have this condition.

Have you ever noticed in officials at a post office counter—or others who write a great deal with pens—how they make peculiar movements before setting pen to paper? They create a sort of run-up in the air with their pens before starting to write. Though it may not actually transpire, it indicates a tendency to a worse condition when people do things like this in their profession. It might stay at this stage—you can observe it yourself—that when people write they first have to give themselves a certain shove for each stroke, or they may write in jerky bursts instead of flowing evenly up and down. You can see it in handwriting written like this.

A condition such as this can be understood in terms of spiritual-scientific knowledge as follows. In completely healthy human beings—healthy as far as their physical and etheric bodies are concerned—the ether body, which is directed by the astral body, needs to be totally capable of acting on the physical body. The physical body in turn has, in every one of its movements, to be capable of serving as the tool of the ether body. If the physical body produces movements of its own accord that go beyond what the soul can intend—what the astral and ether bodies intend—this is an unhealthy state and a predominance of physical body over ether body is evident.

In all those having the condition described, we are dealing with a weakness of the ether body, which manifests in its inability to fully direct its physical body. A relationship between the etheric and physical bodies of this kind underlies—from an occult perspective—all cramp-like, convulsive conditions. This is the fundamental connection between an ether body exercising less command over its physical body than it should, allowing the latter to dominate and make all sorts of involuntary movements, whereas the movements of a healthy person are subservient to the intentions of their ether and astral bodies.

There is an opportunity to help such a person if their condition is not too entrenched. However, the spiritual facts have to be taken into account, and this includes strengthening the ether body itself. This involves to some extent believing that the ether body exists and that it is capable of being strengthened. Imagine the poor person who is in such a bad way that his fingers incessantly fidget before writing a single letter. It will always be beneficent to advise they go on holiday, have a break from writing so much and their nervous tics will vanish. But this is only half the story.

Much more could be achieved by adding another, second element to this advice, such as: Make the effort—without over-exerting yourself (fifteen to thirty minutes suffice)—to adopt a different script. Change your handwriting so that you are obliged to abandon your mechanical way of writing and instead pay attention to how you shape each letter. Let’s say you write an F like this, now try to make it different, more sharply slanting, so that you have to take more notice. Get used to carefully drawing each letter.

Were spiritual knowledge to be more widespread, managers would not—when someone afflicted returned from leave—say: You crazy individual, you’ve changed your handwriting; it’s completely different! An anthroposophist employer would understand that this is a significant remedy. By changing their handwriting, a person is forced to direct their attention to what they are doing. Deploying attentive focus onto what we are doing always involves bringing our innermost core into close congruence with our actions.

Everything that unites the inner core of our being with our deeds reinforces our ether- or life body and we become healthier as human beings. It would not be in the least foolish to work towards strengthening ether bodies throughout education and in schools while pupils are still young. This is where anthroposophy should be putting forward proposals—which will not be taken up in practice because anthroposophy has long been regarded by those at the forefront of controlling education as something hare-brained—but no matter.

Imagine, when teaching children to write, that they would initially be taught a certain style; one would wait a couple of years and see to it that they changed their writing without inducement. A change in writing of this kind and its attendant increase in attentiveness would have an enormously strengthening effect on their developing ether bodies. In later life these young people will suffer from fewer nervous conditions.

So you see that, throughout life, we are always capable of doing something to fortify our etheric or life body, and this is exceptionally important because it is precisely such weaknesses in the etheric or life body that attract countless harmful conditions today. It can even be said—and it is actually not said often enough—that certain forms of illness, which may be based on things against which seemingly not much can be done would, with a strong ether body, take quite a different turn from that taken by the weakened ether bodies so characteristic of present human beings.

Here we have indicated something we can call conditioning the etheric or life body. We implement certain exercises to strengthen the ether body. No such exercises can be brought to bear on something we deny or claim is not there. By showing that it benefits our ether body when we carry out certain exercises and can demonstrate their effectiveness, we prove that an ether body exists and is present. Everywhere, life provides the corresponding evidence for what anthroposophy has to offer.

Our ether bodies can grow stronger if we do something else to improve our memory, something referred to in another context, but which will be repeated here because, for all illnesses in which nervousness plays a part, one ought to be able to resort to such advice. One can strengthen one’s ether or life body enormously by mentally running through things one knows, not just in the way one usually thinks of them, but by running through them in reverse order.

Let us say, for example, that at school one is required to memorize a sequence of dates—of battles, of rulers—with their corresponding years. It is extremely good not just to learn them in their conventional, neat sequence but to assimilate them in the opposite order by going through everything from end to beginning. This is exceptionally important. Because when we do this comprehensively we are contributing enormously to increasing the vitality of our ether body. Thinking through whole dramas from end to beginning or recalling in reverse stories we have read, these activities are of the highest importance for consolidating the ether body.

Today you can experience how almost everything known to be effective in strengthening our ether bodies is not in fact carried out, either with requisite regularity or indeed at all. There is little opportunity in today’s restless daily busy-ness to create the inner quietude needed to tend such practices. Most working people are usually too tired by evening, too harassed to think about where they are placing their things, or with which deliberation they are doing so. If, however, spiritual science were to really permeate hearts and souls, it would become evident that much of what goes on in today’s world could be avoided and that the time spent on these strengthening exercises would be abundantly rewarding for each person. Remarkably beneficial results would soon become apparent, especially when care is taken of this advice in education.

Let me mention another detail, one which may be of slightly less benefit in later life, but which is nevertheless worthwhile, especially if it has not been tended in their youth. That is: that we immediately review what we have done or accomplished—regardless of whether it does or does not leave a trace. This is relatively easy with handwriting. I am sure that many would drop their ugly writing habits were they to try and review—letter for letter as their glance swept over it once again—the manner in which it had been written. Reviewing one’s handwriting contemporaneously—evaluating what one has done—in this way is relatively easy.

Yet there is another sound practice—albeit one that ought not to be practised for long—that involves watching yourself while walking; how your hands move, how you tilt your head, the way you laugh, taking conscious pictorial account of your gestures. You will see from observing life how few people are aware of their gait, how few can visualize what they look like when walking.

But it is useful to gain an impression of the results of one’s deeds, though, as I said, it must be a short-lived exercise if it is not to contribute too greatly to vanity. Apart from the fact that we will certainly correct several aspects of ourselves in life, this task is of enormous positive value in consolidating the ether or life body and also in enhancing the astral body’s control of it. In observing their movements, in watching what they do while making imaginative images of this, people can succeed in increasing the benefit they gain from their astral body being in ever stronger control of their ether body. In this way, they can be in a position deliberately to suppress, change or eliminate, when necessary, some trait or modus operandi that lies within their habits.

It is among the greatest achievements of human beings, in some circumstances, to vary the way they do things. It is certainly not the aim here to found some sort of school of handwriting conversion. People usually only contort the strokes of their writing in aid of some wrongdoing. Yet it is helpful—with honest intent—in fortifying one’s ether body to consciously vary the way one forms one’s script. It is entirely healthy to be able to bring variety to the way in which one carries out something one intends to do, instead of being compelled to do it only in one way.

Similarly, while nobody needs to become fanatically ambidextrous—using left and right hands with identical facility—it is nevertheless valuable to try to do at least certain jobs with a measure of fluency in both hands, perhaps using your left hand instead of the usual right hand, and again not being reliant on one single method. This need not be continued beyond a basic ability, yet it will have a most positive effect on the astral body being able to take charge of the ether body as it should. Fortifying human beings in the sense described through spiritual science is something that needs to be brought into our culture through the dissemination of anthroposophy.

What one can call a culture of will is of great concern. It has already been pointed out that nervous anxiety may often manifest precisely in modern people not knowing how to start doing what they really intend to do. They are frightened of carrying out their intentions; they simply do not manage to do things. What can be summarized as a certain weakness of will is caused by the diminished ability of their I to take proper control of its astral body.

Insufficient control of an astral body by an ego is always symptomatic of people wanting something—or perhaps not wanting something—or at least not getting round to carrying out their intention. Some cannot even muster a serious enough will to will what they should be willing. Now, there is a simple means of strengthening your will for your daily life. This remedy is: to suppress wishes you harbour, precisely not to carry out their fulfilment—and obviously not to do this were such non-action to cause harm. If you check yourself all day long in daily life, you will notice countless things for which you wish and whose fulfilment would be very nice. Yet you will find just as many wishes whose fulfilment you can afford to relinquish without detriment to yourself or anyone else, without reneging on a duty, wishes which might have brought you joy but which can just as well remain unimplemented. If you proceed systematically in suppressing—among other wishes—those of which you can say: No, that wish can remain unsatisfied—this means avoiding those wishes that could cause harm, and only those that give delight, joy and contentment—then each denial of some small desire will contribute to an influx of willpower, to an empowering of your I over your astral body.

We would to some extent be able to catch up with such a process of self-education in later years, a practice which is largely neglected in the education of children nowadays.

It is basically difficult to work therapeutically in education in the area just characterized. One has to take into account that if, in a teaching situation, one is in a position to grant a child or young person’s wish and one then denies it, one not only denies the wish but a certain antipathy can be elicited. Educationally, this can be upsetting.

Some might say there is a dubious aspect to wish-denial if antipathy is the result. Here you are on something of a cliff edge. If a father wants to educate his son by saying: No, Charles, you are not having this, the result may well be that the antipathy this calls forth towards his father is worse than the desired effect of being denied a wish. You may ask: What should one do here? There is a very simple remedy: you do not deny the child their wishes but instead deny yourself, so that the child becomes aware that you are foregoing something.

In the first seven years—and also later in life, as an after-effect—children have a strong urge to imitate, and we will see that when we firmly deny ourselves this or that in the presence of children we are to educate, that they will imitate it and, however unconsciously, perceive it as an aim worth pursuing. In this way we will have achieved something of enormous significance.

Here we see how our thoughts just need to be directed and guided in the right way through all that spiritual science can offer. Then spiritual science will not just remain a theory but will become life’s wisdom, something that can really support and guide us throughout life.

The two public lectures2 I have held here present a means by which much can be learnt about the I controlling the astral body. A unique feature of these lectures was that arguments both for and against were postulated. If you now examine, on a soul level, how people relate to life you will notice that their thoughts and actions usually settle upon what can be said either for or against any matter. This is the norm. But in life there is no single subject about which there can be an absolute for or against, not one. In every case there is both a pro and a con. We will do well—in every case—to become accustomed to taking account not only of one but of both sides, weighing up not only arguments for nor indeed against, but considering both the pros and the cons.

In whatever we do it is valuable to establish for ourselves why—and under which circumstances—we would do better to refrain from a particular action or at least be aware that there are also good reasons against such a course. Vanity and egotism often tend to speak against laying out counter-arguments that go against doing what one wants to do because far too often people just want to be good people. One can find proof of being a good person if one only does what is applauded yet refrains from doing what contradicts this. It is slightly uncomfortable that one can find objections to almost everything one does in life. I say this because it is extremely important for life: we are not nearly as good as we believe ourselves to be.

In every single thing we do—even when we do it because life demands it of us—this general truth only becomes useful to the extent that we also rehearse what would lead to us refraining from doing it. What can be achieved through this becomes evident when bringing before our souls the following simple example. You will certainly have met people who are so weak in will that they can barely resolve to do anything, preferring others to make decisions for them, which they only need to carry out. They shrug off responsibility, preferring to ask what they should do rather than weighing up reasons for this or that course of action. I am not just bringing this example for its own sake, but to achieve something else.

Whilst much can be said in support of what I have just said, objections can also be raised against it—in fact one can barely say anything in life against which, in certain senses, no objection can be brought—so let us take the person who is fond of asking others for instructions. Standing opposite each other are two people, both offering advice on the same subject. One says ‘Yes, do it’, the other says ‘No, don’t do it’. You will see that in life one of these advisors decisively gains the upper hand over the other. The opinion of the one with the strongest will is victorious in influencing the questioner. What phenomenon have we here? However inconsequential it looks, it is a very significant phenomenon. If I face two people and one says yes, the other no, and I carry out the yes, the willpower of that advisor works on in me, gaining such predominance that it empowers my deed. Their power of will has triumphed over that of the other advisor; the will of another person has won within me.

Assume for a moment that I do not now face two other people, each of whom advises yes and no respectively, but that I am quite alone and in my own heart lay out the yes and no, complete with their reasons so that nobody helps me. I do this alone; no other person approaches me as I weigh up the rationale for and against, then I carry out the yes, in that I have said to myself: this has unfurled a strong force, but this time within myself. What another person previously enacted through me I now carry out myself, thereby nurturing a force in my soul. So that, when inwardly faced with a choice, a strength has prevailed over a weakness. This is immensely valuable because it restores the sovereignty of your I over your astral body, re-empowering it enormously. Checking the reasons for and against in all possible detail is not something one should view as an inconvenience. You will discover just how much this does to strengthen your will if you try to carry out what has been typified here.

However, this can also have its shadow aspect, namely that, instead of strengthening will, a weakening could occur. If, after having examined the rationale of for-or-against and resolved upon the one or the other course, one fails—out of sheer slackness—to do anything at all, taking neither choice; this looks as if a choice of against has been taken, yet one is actually plain lazy. It is therefore preferable—if taking spiritual science into account to any extent—that you do not attempt any such reasoning when you are tired, leaving decisions to a time when you are not exhausted but feel strong enough and know that you are no longer worn out and can really act upon the choice you have put to your soul. You have to pay attention to the time at which you pose such soul questions.

Among further things that contribute powerfully to strengthening one’s I over the astral body is this: that we put aside everything that creates a polarity between us and the rest of the world, between us and our surroundings. This ought to belong to the basic obligations we place upon ourselves as anthroposophists. Justified criticism is unavoidable for—if it is factually objective—it would be a weakness to substitute bad for good, something one can never do. But we have to learn to differentiate between what we ourselves criticize and things whose influence on our personality is just uncomfortable and annoying. The more we can make a habit of ensuring that our judgement of others is independent of their behaviour towards us—the more we can do this—the better it is with regard to fortifying our I’s sway over our astral body. Not by way of self-congratulation saying: You are a good person because you don’t criticize your fellow human beings, but in order to reinforce your I.

To this end, it is constructive not only to refrain from judging as bad such things as you dislike because they make you feel uncomfortable, but rather—especially where appraisal of people is concerned—only to voice opinion when you yourself are not under consideration. As a theory this is easy to embrace, but exceptionally difficult to practise in real life. It is good when, for example, someone has lied to you, to suspend your antipathy towards them. This is no case for recounting to others that the person has lied to you, but rather that your feeling of antipathy is withheld. Whatever we notice about a person, how consistently they conduct their affairs on any given day, can all help to form an impression of the person in question.

Whether someone speaks sometimes like this, sometimes differently, we need only compare what they themselves say to arrive at quite a different basis for our opinion of them than just one that emphasizes their attitude towards us. It is vital to let things speak for themselves, not judging a person on each single deed but rather on how their actions chime together as a whole. You will soon find, even in those you held to be hard-bitten detractors, who cause nothing but ill, that there is much that contradicts their usual behaviour. We do not need to focus on their conduct towards us at all. We can ignore ourselves, placing the person within their own behaviour in our mind’s eye and—where necessary—coming to a view about them. In aid of strengthening the ego it is also good to ponder that the majority—nine-tenths—of the opinions we form can readily be abandoned. Experiencing—within one’s own soul—just one tenth of the opinions we form about the world is more than enough for one lifetime. Our life of soul will in no way be disadvantaged by relinquishing the remaining nine-tenths of our opinions.

Today I have brought what may seem like trifles, but now and again it must be our responsibility to look at things such as these. Precisely in this way can we demonstrate how small things can have mighty effects; how we need to grasp life from the completely opposite end, as it were, if we wish to structure the sheaths of our bodies strongly and healthily, differently from the way life is habitually grasped.