Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy

GA 111 — 10 March 1908, Arnheim

XXV. Man's Life in the Light of Occult Science

Dear attendees!

In our time, theosophy should deepen our entire cultural life on the spiritual side, so that through the theosophical cultural movement, humanity is once again pointed to the fact that everything in our physical, sensual life is based on the spiritual, the supersensible life.

All theosophical worldviews are based on two fundamental truths. The first fundamental truth is that our world, which is perceptible to our senses and our minds, is based on a supersensible, a spiritual one. And the other fundamental truth is that it is possible for man to penetrate into this supersensible, into this spiritual world.

In doing so, anyone who stands on the ground of this theosophical world view will very soon encounter resistance from some of our contemporaries and from those who claim that our science is beyond prejudice, that behind our physical world there is no superphysical, no supersensible world.

Others come and say: Of course, one may admit that there might be a supersensible, a superphysical world somewhere, but man's powers of knowledge, his faculties of perception, are in any case insufficient to reach such a world. The secret-scientific or theosophical world view should make man aware that although those powers of perception and abilities that make it possible for us to perceive the ordinary world around us do not lie in the supersensible world, the powers that lie dormant in every soul, when awakened, lead man into supersensible worlds. And if we want to clarify the whole relationship of man to the supersensible world in the sense of the theosophical world view, we do this best by means of a comparison, which shows that it is not fantasy and superstition when the theosophist speaks of distant spiritual worlds, but that these spiritual worlds are there, just as our world is there.

Let us assume that we could lead someone born blind into this room. He is surrounded by darkness and gloom, while you can see objects in light and color and shine. All that is around you is not there for the blind man. In the moment that we have the good fortune to operate on this blind man and give him the gift of sight, light and color and radiance emerge from the darkness. The whole world is now filled with new qualities and facts. And why? Because an organ of knowledge has been opened for him.

Just as a physical organ has been opened for this person, and a great experience is entering his soul, flooding it with a new world, so it is also possible that spiritual powers of knowledge and soul abilities, which lie dormant in every person, are awakened and that unknown worlds with spiritual facts and spiritual beings flow into the human soul. We cannot operate on everyone born blind, but these dormant abilities can be awakened in every human soul, enabling him to enter the [spiritual] worlds around him.

All that the spiritual, esoteric and theosophical spiritual current has to say to people today comes from such higher insights.

Now, our contemporaries who believe themselves to be on solid scientific ground will think that such a worldview will make us unworldly, will lead us away from the world, and will alienate people from the practical side of life.

Today we shall deal with a subject that is particularly suitable for showing how esoteric science or theosophy, based on its esoteric knowledge, is particularly suited to intervene directly in practical life; how it is precisely by revealing the forces and facts of the spiritual world that it becomes a useful means for people to work safely and appropriately in life.

We will follow a human life, a human course from birth to death, follow it from this theosophical or esoteric point of view, and see what practical aspects this theosophical school of thought can give us for such a view of life, which directly addresses the everyday, what is around us.

We do not want to talk about what Theosophy can bring in terms of knowledge for people, what extends beyond birth and death, not talk about repeated life on earth, not talk about the fact that Theosophy speaks of spiritual causes. We only want to look at the individual human life between birth and death with all the joy and pain, with all the expectations and hopes, with all the strength we need to lead this life as valuable as possible.

We see the human being enter life. But you all know that when a person enters life, they have already completed an important, essential part of their life, which is the part they go through as a human germ in the mother's body. There he is enveloped in a protective mother's shell, there he lives in this shell, and what does birth consist of other than in the fact that the human being, so to speak, sheds this protective mother's shell and steps out, so that his senses and his organism freely face the world and the elements?

Then, however, if we want to look at the effects of this external world on the human organs, we have to understand that the teaching of esoteric science does not only take this being as that which the external senses of human beings see, what the eyes perceive, what the hands can grasp, that for the theosophical view this is only part of the whole human being. When physical science takes this one part of the human being for the whole human being, it is not aware of the life that lies behind it in the superphysical.

In occult science, there is also talk of other garments, of a second garment; and you will immediately get an idea of what is meant by this second garment if we realize that spiritual science, like physical science, is based on facts, that [in the world of the supermundane life] the same substances are united by the same forces as outside in our seemingly inanimate environment.

There is a great difference between how these forces occur in a mineral and how they occur in human life or in any living life. This living life is the same forces that are out there in the inanimate world in the mineral kingdom, they are so intricately combined, so complicated, that this combination would immediately disintegrate if there were not a fighter against this disintegration of life in every moment of life. And this fighter is the second garment of the human being. We call it the etheric body or life body. And we say: every living being has such an etheric body, which prevents physical substances and forces from following their own laws between birth and death. Look at a crystal or another mineral. It has a form in which it presents itself to you. Through its chemical power it remains as it is.

A living being would never remain as it is through these forces. This is evident at the moment of death. Why then does the living being become a corpse according to its physical body? Why does it die? [Because at the moment of death the physical body has separated from the etheric body or life body.] Then the physical body follows its own substances and forces, its own laws, then it decays.

But spiritual science is well aware of the objections of physical science against the ether. However, this is not what we want to deal with today. We just want to sketch out how we have to consider the body according to the teaching of secret science.

We therefore have this second garment, which is a constant fighter against the disintegration of physical life. Then there is a third garment. This third garment is to be imagined as being in front of the soul. If you imagine a person standing before you and you ask yourself: Is there not something about this person that is much closer to them than a large part of their physical body and than their etheric body, they would admit: Within the skin of their physical body, they have something that is closer to them than their physical body and their etheric body. There is something even closer, especially if he is a naive person, if he is a primitive person who has not first convinced himself through scientific studies of what the inner man - his blood, his nerves, his muscles, everything that makes up a person - looks like, that is his urges, instincts, desires and passions. That is the body of sensations and perceptions, which flows up and down. This body of sensations and perceptions, the bearer of these cravings and passions, is the third garment of the human being, the astral body, as it is called for certain reasons in Theosophy.

This body is no longer shared by man with the plants. This body is shared only by the animals. The animals have just, like man, an astral body.

[But what makes man – the crowning glory of creation – stand out from animals is the fourth garment.] It is the sum of powers that command him to call himself an “I”. These abilities to call oneself an “I” mean more than many people consider.

This 'I' - or as one also says 'I am' - was, for example, called the 'unspeakable name of God' in Old Testament religions. Why? Because it was said that everything else in our environment, when it speaks or wants to speak to our soul, will speak to us in such a way that it speaks to our soul through the organs of the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

But that which flows through the world from divine beings does not need an organ to come to life in the soul. This announces itself to us indirectly in the soul. And when the soul says to itself, 'I am', and recognizes its own existence, at that moment it is rightly thought of as a drop or spark of divinity in the soul.

Some might object: Then you theosophists make a god out of man when [you claim] that the divine substances are contained in his ego. Anyone who makes such an objection could also say: If we take a drop from the sea and claim that this drop is of the same substance and essence as the sea water, then we claim that the drop is the sea. [Man's innermost self is divine in nature. It is a drop, a spark of the sea, of the divine, and therefore man also participates in the divine that flows through the world.] Just as the drop is part of the sea, so man is part of the divine.

These are the four garments. The physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the body in which the powers lie, whereby man can express his “I am”.

If man has even the slightest grasp of the facts of life, then he can understand the various facts of life in relation to these different garments of the being. He would soon see the difference between sleeping and waking. One would see that during sleep, only the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed. The astral body and the I are lifted out of the physical and etheric bodies, and because the astral body is the carrier of joy, pain, desire and suffering, of all perceptions and sensations, the experiences of the soul, when the astral body is lifted out, descend into unconsciousness. Why is that the case? Where then is this astral body, where then is this “I” in the night?

It would be illogical if any person were to say that man dies every night and is born again in the morning. [Only this can make it understandable, if one understands that the ego and the astral body submerge into the physical and etheric body in the morning, that the ego and the astral body use the hands, the eyes, the ears, the whole physical body with the brain, use the physical body as a tool to be able to do everything.]

The ego is the spiritual essence of man, which in the morning descends into physical life and which in the evening, when man falls asleep, goes into other worlds, into spiritual worlds.

“Why does man know nothing of these spiritual worlds?” one might ask. He knows nothing of these worlds only in his present development because this astral body of the evening goes out of the physical body and in the average man of today there is no spiritual organ of perception. But when these spiritual organs of perception are developed – these are the slumbering abilities of the soul – the soul perceives in the environment of the night. And that which we have referred to as the spiritual world that is around a person is at the same time the world in which the soul is at night.

This is an experience that every person has every day from the alternation of sleeping and waking. But in death there is a completely different experience. Then the physical body separates from the etheric body and the astral body and I, which remain together for a while in the next moment. And because the physical body separates from the etheric and astral bodies, because the fighter who was there from birth to death is no longer there, the physical body follows its own forces and laws and falls apart.

We had to learn this in order to understand the course of human life, because in spiritual science, only the physical human being is born at the moment of birth, the physical birth, when the human germ leaves the mother's body. What is initially exposed to the external elements is initially only the physical human body, because from a theosophical point of view, we are not just talking about one birth, but about several births, and this language of multiple births makes the course of a person's life fully understandable.

We speak first of a second birth of man, which occurs approximately around the seventh year, or rather when the human being changes teeth. For many people, speaking of a second birth seems very strange.

Just as the germ is in the mother's womb until physical birth, so is the human being's etheric or life body, the second garment of the body, enclosed by an etheric sheath, by the etheric mother, until the change of teeth, and only then is this etheric sheath gradually pushed aside.

At first this may seem like a gray theory, but it is not. Only those who know that physical life is born at the time of physical birth and that the etheric body is only present at the change of teeth, only then does this etheric body freely face the world, can unfold principles for the education of the child. Now we present what follows from this: as long as the human germ is in the mother's womb, it does not come into contact with external light or external influences. This would be impossible, otherwise the germ would be destroyed. They have to wait to influence the light until the eyes, until the person is born. Every materialistically thinking person can see that. But they do not know that it is just as bad for the spiritual person to allow influences to flow into the etheric body that should only flow in after the change of teeth, when the etheric body is exposed on all sides. This means nothing other than that we have to base our educational principles on this.

However, until the age of seven, when only the physical body is exposed to external conditions, particular attention must be paid to the development of the body in the growing person, because all the forms in which the physical body must take shape are developed by the year the teeth change. And whatever is not laid down in the body in terms of form, in coarse or fine form, is lost for the whole of human life. The human being grows and develops, but the forms that become larger are laid down in the finest form up to that point. Therefore, during this time, when one does not have an effect on the etheric body, everything must be done to make the forms as good as possible.

We can only mention a few aspects that will show how to do this. There is a word that comes before the soul like a magic word in development, for this time until the seventh year, that is, until the change of teeth, and this word is: “imitation.” There is nothing as important for the development of the physical body as imitation. Everything that affects a person only works through imitation. What the child sees in his environment affects him through the senses. And not only physical things, but everything that happens in the physical world, including the moral things that the child sees around him, also affect the forms until the teeth change.

Imagine a child who has seen only evil and wickedness for seven years. This has an effect on his physical body. It causes such forms in the brain that these forms will be particularly suitable for becoming a special instrument for immorality, and it is no longer possible to improve in education what one has neglected to teach the child through ignorance.

“Imitation” is the magic word to work from the outside so that the child can see. You see, it is important to understand the word ‘imitation’ in the most complete way possible.

I will give you an example from which you will see that everything we show the child, everything we teach him as principles, is imitated by the child.

Let's take a very good boy - a really good boy - who embarrasses his parents by taking some money from the till one day. The thought arises in the parents' minds: How can it be that a boy we have raised in this way takes money from the till? The child has stolen, the parents think. No, they say from the theosophical point of view. It is precisely because he is a good boy that he has done this. But what have you done? Day after day you did it, every day you took money from the cash box, the boy saw it every day. He should do everything that his parents do, and that is right. Therefore, he also took money. The boy was not a thief, he did not want to use the money for himself at all, or use it, he gave it to another boy. He just showed himself to be particularly moral, especially in this act. You have to make it a principle to only do in the children's environment what the child could actually do. What it must not do must not happen in its environment.

This is also very important for the plastic development of the organs, and only spiritual science can provide the right principles for this.

You know that a muscle becomes more plastic when it is used correctly. At this age, everything must be shaped plastically. The colors that are in the environment – be it red, blue, green and so on – all have a certain deep meaning for the development of the internal organs, as far as the physical organs are concerned; and many mistakes are made here. Because, as you know, there are many people who talk about what have been called nervous children, children who have a very restless nature. They believe that green, blue and dark colors should be introduced into the environment to calm them down. Others have very calm children and they believe that they should be dressed in light, red and white clothes. The opposite is true, because it is not the colors that affect these children. It depends on how these colors affect the children's inner being. For example, if you see a red spot on a black background, you will soon see that green lingers. This means that while you are looking at red, the inner organism perceives green. And so, when a child is excited and you bring red into its environment, red will not affect the child as you think it will. And it is precisely this that the child needs until the second dentition, that is, until the seventh year. Therefore, you have to dress a child who is restless in red clothes, while conversely, when a child is very calm, too calm, lethargic, green, blue, dark colors are needed.

You have to listen to me carefully. It is very easy to make the following objection, which is made again and again. People then say to me: “You see, when I put a red umbrella on the lamp in the evening, it makes me feel agitated.” The answer I have to give to such a lady or gentleman is: “Yes, but you are not a child before the change of teeth either. Of course, one must not forget that, and should bear in mind that for further development, other conditions are also present.

As soon as the soul has left the etheric shell, it is a matter of finding the right occupation for the child, and there is much in life for which a materialistic approach is quite, quite wrong.

One could – although someone who is grounded in spiritual science should not do this – one could become sentimental when looking at the many mistakes and their effects that are made in these areas. One could cite many things from the youth and life of a person who has become a great materialist, who denies everything else because he believes that everything results from the combination of molecules and atoms. This is because this person did not receive the right toy in his childhood, the one that can present life to him. If, for example, you give a child a toy like this, where it can create a whole new picture by putting together stones, thereby combining them, then new forms are formed through this. Any toy that evokes imagination is the right toy. This toy creates the impulse for the child to develop. For example, give a healthy child a doll that you made out of an old handkerchief, with two plaits for legs, two plaits for hands and a few eyes drawn on with ink. In the long run, the healthy child will most likely enjoy such a doll more than a real doll with real hair and beautifully painted cheeks, because such a beautiful doll – which is nevertheless always hideous – does not activate the powers of creative imagination, whereas if you give the child a doll made out of a handkerchief, it will see that this is not a human form. Then the imagination must be allowed to work. Then the inner plastic forms are called upon to be formed, and must be formed. These forms lie fallow if you give the child a toy that does not allow it to use its imagination. If you are aware that, as with the change of teeth, the child has to shape itself plastically, then you will find a great deal of support for the whole of education in theosophy, all of which has a good, deep foundation. We can only mention a few points here, for example, in the feeding of children, how the child is to be “educated”.

It used to be thought that young children should be fed a lot of eggs. Now, the best principle for this age is to absolutely not exceed the necessary protein requirement, because an excess of protein causes the child to lose its food instincts and the ability to shape its forms. A child to whom you do not give much protein will only demand what is healthy for him, and that is what the child needs to develop plastically. What is in the protein is something that, through its power, makes the plastic form exceed itself, and in this way secure instincts are not developed. By overfeeding the child with protein, you kill the power.

This, then, is the care of the physical body, the body that is born first. Now, with the change of teeth, the etheric covering withdraws, and the physical body and etheric body are now there. Now is the time to work with all our might from the outside to develop the etheric body. We must therefore first realize what forces the life body is the carrier of. Today, we want to give special consideration to the spiritual. This body is also the carrier of everything, especially memory, and then it is the carrier of the worldly power of imagination. Everything that a person does not grasp with his dry intellect, but rather what he can grasp through the image. If one knows this, then one will realize that at the moment the etheric body is born, an education must take place that takes particular account of this. This is therefore the second birth.

[The third garment is now still surrounded by an outer shell, by a protection.] This protection, the astral shell, will also be withdrawn, repulsed, and stripped off later, but only around the fifteenth year, at the time of sexual maturity.

Then, in the fifteenth year, the third birth takes place, and everything that penetrates the astral body from the outside and sends out its effects without realizing that it is still enveloped, has the same effect as light would have on a germ while it is still in the mother's womb. Now, for the second period of human development, which runs between the change of teeth, i.e. the seventh year, and sexual maturity around the fifteenth year, there is again a certain path that we have to follow. Here, too, there is another magic word that is just as important as imitation for the first seven years, and the word for this second period of life is 'authority'.

There is nothing that could ever replace the tremendously beneficial influence of the right authority in this age of life in later life. Just as everything around us awakens us to imitation up to the age of seven, so between the ages of seven and fifteen, no intellectual judgments have any effect on the human being. No moral principles can influence this person. That is all a matter for the astral body, and that has not yet been born. But when we look at the embodiment, the ideal striving, and confront the child with a true authority, then the right forces are awakened in the soul, which could not otherwise be reached later. If only people knew how important and significant the right kind of authority is! This authority is something very important for the human being in his life between birth and death. And in this time between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, all teaching and education must be built upon it. It is not enough for us to only say good things to the child; we must influence it through authority. We must teach the child everything there is to know through pictures, because only when the child has absorbed the image for the various 'whys' of nature within itself will it be able to receive everything it has seen in concrete forms so far in abstract concepts of the mind when the astral body is born.

It is necessary for the child to know how everything relates to the soul. You have to teach it this in pictures. When you show the child the butterfly puppet and show how the puppet develops until the butterfly flies out, and you tell him that the immortal soul leaves the body just as the butterfly flies out of the puppet, how it goes to the other world. Now, in our time, one can object: But children don't believe that! Do you know why they don't believe it? Because the teachers, because the educators themselves do not believe it. Now the materialistically thinking person says: Now you demand not only that children believe it, but also that teachers believe it!

Theosophy wants to make it clear again how the soul continues to exist after it has left the physical body, just as it is the case with the chrysalis and the moth. Yes, we will be able to believe in it again, and that is the most beautiful achievement of theosophy, that we do not see these things as a mere intellectual exercise, but that we have truths again that can also be understood through feeling. When people understand this, then faith is also passed on to the child, and the more the child is supposed to grasp of it, and the more the child is taught about it, the better it is for the child to learn to understand it through imagination. It is quite a different matter whether a child has experienced the secrets of nature through feeling and thus comes to the abstract concept, than whether a child has to understand the dry concept beforehand, without feeling coming into it. And this feeling works best when the etheric body is developing – and that is why particular emphasis must be placed on this in education.

In our time, in many areas of Europe, there are views that one should not turn the child into a memory machine. It is said that the child must learn to think. They teach him that Ix1=1 very early on, and the child must learn many other things soon. But there is nothing worse than having to exert the pure powers of reason too early. First, a fund of knowledge must be available, then one can judge what one knows. Today, children are taught history without understanding it, because children cannot yet judge cause and effect. The child must first have a sufficient amount of thoughts, and when the child sees many things in his soul, he can compare. If you only know a little and you start judging, you cannot compare, and [then] man is stupid. You cannot do anything worse for development in this [section] of life, in which our memory should really be enriched, than not to pay close attention to the child's ability to compare, which enables him to judge better. This is not yet understood today, [and that has already led to bad things]. Young people today give their judgment on everything, and we have to experience that articles appear in newspapers written by young people whose astral body has only recently been born.

If one knew how the laws work, then one should know that the astral body is only really born at the time of sexual maturity – around this time – and before this time the child does not yet have the ability to judge. The time from the change of teeth to sexual maturity should have the magic words: 'authority', 'image' and 'memory'. We could mention many things here, but one thing is particularly important: as soon as the astral body is born, the development of the powers of the mind and the aesthetic disposition of the human being come into consideration. Just as during the first seven years the physical body was developed, from the seventh to the fifteenth year the etheric body was developed, so now the astral body comes into consideration. If we want to assess this correctly, we need to be clear about a great many things, because during this time a great many images are placed before the soul. During this time, the human being must have good role models and ideals to strive for. The magic word for this epoch of human development is “emulation”. One must give these people pictures of great men and women and make clear to them what these people have done in the development of the world. And what has been neglected during this time in order to educate the senses for the beautiful and artistic cannot be made up for later. With sexual maturity, what has been inherited from previous generations, from the family and so on, comes out with the person, so to speak.

Then, when a person has reached sexual maturity, when he has shed his astral shell, the qualities that he has brought with him from previous lives come to light. Their shadows had already been cast over the young child, but if we look at the essential, what emerges is what goes beyond death and birth: individuality.

At puberty, the astral covering is pushed back and the astral body is released. And now there come times for the person when other things are important. Now, consideration is given to education, to the power of judgment, to a person's sound judgment. But something else is even more important. That which the person has brought with them from their previous life comes to the fore in a special way, that they want to shape in this life between birth and death. During this time, the human being is not yet capable of observing the external world in an objective way. But that which enters the world is of a beautiful, ideal nature. [This nature also wants to come out, and here it is a matter of how this nature, insofar as it comes out as idealism, will face life as hope.] This hope and idealism reveal themselves in their true form between the ages of 14, 15 and 21 to 22. During this time, everything that wants to come out reveals itself, even if it contradicts reality. These are all memories from previous lives, with the new fresh powers of the astral body. Woe betide people whose ideals of hope are clouded during this time, whose expectations are dimmed, who are told that a large part of these things will later appear merely as spring hopes, that these are merely unattainable ideals and hopes. That is not the point. It does not matter whether the ideals can be achieved, but rather it is a matter of the forces that lie within them. These are the favorable life forces that, if well trained, make our astral body safe and secure for life. When we have these ideals, we make ourselves a strong third garment, and there is nothing worse than not taking care for this time, that idealism can develop, when one encounters this idealism with a Philistinism that wants to try to break the idealism.

Because it is only around the twentieth year that the actual self in man, which has been in its shell until now, is fully born. And with that, the human being enters the world in free communication, and has become a being that places itself in absolutely free communication with the outside world.

Only then is everything that was in him out. Now he has to educate himself by grinding down. This takes a long time. It continues like this until the thirty-fifth year. This is an important year in a person's life. This thirty-fifth year is considered a turning point by those who stand on the ground of theosophical spiritual science.

If we look at the average lifespan, we see that the thirty-fifth year marks the end of everything that was predisposed in the human being. Up to this point, he has acquired everything he could practise. Towards the end of the thirty-fifth year, when the time of apprenticeship and wandering is over, he begins to exercise his powers and abilities. But then the powers begin to decline again. From the age of thirty-five, the astral body, which until then had been in free contact with the outside world and in which everything that had been established was engraved, now begins to harden and regress. This lasts until the age of forty. This is an important epoch in the development of man, because this degeneration is one side of the matter - and the other side is much more important.

The moment the shell, the astral body, begins to recede, the moment the forces of the astral body are consumed, that is the moment the core in man, the eternal core, is emphasized. If a person is educated correctly, this core can develop all the more for the times after death. While the temporal disappears downwards, this eternal in man grows. This is very evident in the fortieth year, when, after the astral body, the etheric body also begins to disintegrate. Just as it happened first with the astral body, so it now happens with the etheric body, which has now begun to regress. We can see this clearly in many people who, around this time, remember a lot of what they experienced as a child. Especially from the seventh to the fourteenth year, while they have completely forgotten many things that they have experienced recently. These old memories come back when the etheric body recedes.

The last epoch is when the physical body declines. This is, by and large, when the physical organs, the entire bone system, deteriorates. We do not need to describe this physical deterioration, but we point it out so that you can see what can actually be said about this epoch of life.

Now all this is no longer generally known, but there were times, very long, long ago, when all this was known, when it was known, for example, that the thirty-fifth year is the midpoint of life, and that only after this time, when you are completely finished with yourself - and that is around the thirty-fifth year - that you are only then mature enough to give to others, to spend what you have in abundance. Only after the thirty-fifth year do you have an abundance. Until then, man has to take care of the development of his clothes. So until his thirtieth year, man has to deal with himself. When he no longer has to deal with himself – only after his thirty-fifth year, because then the bodies regress – then the forces that previously flowed into his physical body flow into his spiritual body, in order to have an effect on his environment. In the times when people had an inkling of these things, this thirty-fifth year was therefore considered so important. A person was only trusted with judgment after he had reached the age of thirty-five, when he had received all his powers. Only then, it was said, did a person become capable of judgment. Other people should listen to his judgment when he no longer has anything to do with himself; and then it was valid as long as the person had his astral body. When the etheric body begins to fade away, then his judgment is not only decisive to be listened to, but to be accepted as something that applies not only to him, but to the community in which he finds himself.

In ancient times, when this was understood, when it was known that the one who had entered this age no longer needed to add anything to his etheric body because it was already declining, in that age the person could give his judgment in the council of the community. In the times when people knew about this, when they knew life in this way, they organized their lives accordingly, and they said something wonderful in those times when they felt these things. They said: Only when a person has reached the age at which his physical body gradually decays, so that he no longer demands anything and his time fades away, only then can you listen to him, only then is his judgment exalted. You can accept his judgment. Such things have existed, and many were aware of them.

I will remind you of just one fact. Just read the beginning of Dante's 'Commedia'. Then read how he describes what he experienced, where he writes that the most powerful thing he experienced was in the middle of his life – that is when he was thirty-five. There he experienced this initiation, which could be called the 'initiation into the mysteries of existence'. And there is a secret training, an initiation into the secrets of existence in special schools, in mystery schools, under such conditions that a person is never declared mature enough to speak about the facts of secret science, a person who still has something to do with himself, who is not already on the descending line.

If you take all this together from the spiritual-scientific point of view, you will see that on the one hand you have a path along which the various bodies - the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body - develop, and a path along which these bodies regress, an ascending and a descending path. But it is on the latter, on which the eternal in man grows, on which the source decreases, and man then has to pass through the gate of death. Then the powers that have been mysteriously developing in the sheaths emerge. And the more a person strives to develop himself in his life, and the more he applies theosophical views in the practical world, the better he has understood the true spirit of them.

We have now seen that we have gained practical principles directly from these theosophical views, and yet there are many people who say: There are such strange people in the world who call themselves Theosophists, who claim such strange things about a world that [in addition] is supposed to still exist [which we cannot possibly know about]. A reasonable person considers all this to be fantasy. You can say all that, but we assume that such people rise up until they say: Now, when you meet and talk to a theosophist like that, they do have a reasonable judgment about other things. So let us listen to the matter for once, even if they tell us something that we cannot yet understand directly; perhaps there is something good in what these strange people claim, but we can try it.

You can make life itself the proof. You can prove through life what is right. All the talking and discussing is only partially very good, but it is not the right thing. With discussion, you can prove virtually anything you want. It is the same with remedies. The healer thinks that his remedy is the best. But someone else may come along and say that what he has is definitely better, that his remedy is the best there is. Then someone else may come along and say: none of it is worth anything, and he proves it too. You don't get anywhere with such discussions. You only get ahead by using the remedy. If this remedy helps, then it is proven that it is good. If it does not help, then it is not proven.

If Theosophy is to have any influence on our lives, then life must be the proof for such things. Let man dare to put life under the facts that Theosophy talks about. You will then see that man comes up higher, healthy in body and soul, that man will develop better. You will see that life is the proof of the correctness of what Theosophy has to give, and you may place your whole life under the sign of the views, the facts, and you will see that the whole of life will develop more beautifully. You will see that it is not necessary for our hopes and our efforts to wane for it. If we fail to prove the correctness of our views to you, then they were not correct for you. But we know that what we say is right. We feel and know that the temporal dies and that the eternal grows. We run counter to the moments when we are to pass through the gate of death.

Thus, Theosophy, spiritual science, gives us the means to intervene in our immediate, practical lives in a healthy way, and the lives that have been influenced by this will provide the best proof of its truth. People today need the influence of Theosophy in their everyday lives. And life becomes healthy and fresh and hopeful and capable of work when man knows everything that confronts him in the outer world through the strong powers of the spirit, on which everything is based. Then everything should be a reflection of spiritual facts. Then, in all truth, spirit encounters spirit in evolution, and when spirit ignites spirit in evolution, then this development truly progresses, upward to the salvation of all life, to the salvation of all existence.