Central Europe Between East and West

GA 174a — 23 March 1915, Munich

Third Lecture

The first part of our lecture today is devoted to insights that are connected with real experiences that our social karma has led us to in recent times. The second part is intended to cast some highlights on what may interest us particularly in current events.

In these two public lectures, I had to emphasize how it is necessary for the presentation of the spiritual worlds to gradually get used to a kind of different language than the one we use to characterize the insights of the worlds in which we find ourselves through our sensory observation and through the mind that is bound to the brain. To support our friends, I would like to refer to specific recent experiences that have taken place within our wider circle, events for which I could certainly choose others, but I choose these events because they tie in with, I would say, recent experiences and can give us ideas about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds.

I have always emphasized that when the soul on its path of knowledge crosses the threshold that leads into the spiritual world, then one of the first experiences is becoming one with what one experiences, observes. Here on the physical plane, one is, so to speak, enclosed in one's skin when facing the things one observes. As soon as one enters the spiritual world, has something to do with the spiritual world, one does not feel enclosed in the way one does in the physical body in the skin; one feels one's whole being spread out, as if identified with the beings and events one is dealing with. To explain this, I will go into positive events.

Recently, an elderly member passed through the gate of death. For years this member had lived with all his mind and soul in the ideas that one acquires when one really feels what spiritual science can give. It is of very special importance and is therefore mentioned so often that the theoretical absorption of what is given as spiritual-scientific ideas cannot be everything. It can be a starting point, but not everything. These ideas must take hold of our feelings and perceptions. In my public lecture, I was even able to explain how the sentient soul is currently much more closely related to the eternal core of the human being, while what is experienced from the consciousness soul is more relevant to what the human being experiences in connection with the physical world in the present epoch. That is why it is so important to feel what one can feel when absorbing spiritual knowledge, because this feeling has a much greater power to grasp our soul and to really bring it into contact with the supersensible world than mere thinking, intellectual reasoning. So the personality I am talking about has lived a great deal in our spiritual-scientific ideas, and now I can see, I can say, a very short time after death – before the actual occurrence of death on the physical plane has been reported to me in any way , how this personality, while still in its etheric body, processed within itself what it had absorbed in the way of feeling and intuitive powers, what it had become through living for years in the spiritual-scientific current. When its etheric body was still united with the astral body and the ego, what I have described above entered of its own accord. The personality that had passed through the gate of death came and told me that she now feels within herself what she has become through spiritual science, what she feels within herself now that she is no longer confined by the physical body. And so, as it were, sentences sounded from the individuality that had passed through the gate of death, which I will read aloud.

You will notice that in the first three lines the dead personality uses a word that cannot really be justified when used by an individuality that has already discarded the physical body; but that is not the point. The word, which refers to the physical heart, is meant in a symbolic sense. Heart here stands for the etheric organ of feeling. We have here the case of an individuality that has passed through the gate of death, which summarized its strongest experience before death as a result of life, in order to say to itself: I am now in a certain situation to experience the nature of my self, how this nature of my self arises for me by dealing with it with the understanding that I have gained in my feeling recognition through spiritual science. So it was that this individuality, who had at most passed through the gate of death two hours earlier, allowed something to resound from within that sounded in such a way that I must say that the words were put in such a way that I myself did nothing to them, I only took in the words that came from this self. These words then served as the beginning and the end when I had to give the funeral oration at the cremation. They are read:

In world-wide I will carry
My feeling heart, that it may become warm
In the fire of sacred power; In world-thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, that it may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life; I will dive into the depths of the soul
With devoted thoughts, that they may become strong
For the true goals of human endeavor. In God's rest I strive so,
With struggles and worries,
Preparing my self for the higher self; Longing for a peace that is joyful to work for,
Sensing the existence of the world in my own existence,
I would like to fulfill my duty as a human being; Then I may live in anticipation
of my destiny,
which will grant me a place in the spiritual realm.

Let us hear here, as it were, from the self, what the self feels within itself, through what it has become by filling itself with spiritual-scientific feeling. It is important to bear in mind that we are dealing here with a personality who had reached a ripe old age in this physical life and that the possibility of wanting to characterize the self is connected with this attainment of a higher age, that the self only after after death expresses itself so completely in its own being that one has nothing to do but to observe it, to lose oneself completely, to surrender, to identify with the being, that one can let it express itself completely.

It was different in another case. There one had to deal with a relatively early death. To look at such a case, especially the events of the time urge us, since so many people today pass through the gate of death at a young age. In the case I am talking about, it was not the cause that is the cause in many cases today, but it was an early death. When death occurs so early that one can say: If the person had grown old, he would have lived for many decades more, then we are dealing with an etheric body that will indeed be laid aside, but it is such that it could still supply the physical body with forces for many decades. Someone who dies in such a way that he could have lived for decades hands over to the spiritual elementary world an etheric body that is still unused. Countless such unused etheric bodies are now entering the spiritual world. When we say that we have great hope for the age that is developing from the womb of our events, based on spiritual science, it should be borne in mind that those who are now passing through death will be witnesses in the spiritual world for a spiritual work and will send forces into earthly life through their individuality. But their etheric body is still there as something second, something special, it is unused. A large number of such etheric bodies will represent a force that will have an effect on people who will live when peace has been restored, and they will be helpers so that the materialistic world view can be replaced by a spiritual one.

We can become attached when we experience people dying at a young age and we can then, so to speak, perceive what is happening.

In the second case, where again the karma of our spiritual current led to me having to speak at the cremation of a personality who had passed through the gate of death, it was the case that a long time had passed between the onset of death and the cremation, from Wednesday to Monday. By then, this etheric body had already been separated, and for my occult observation, I had lost the etheric body, so to speak, on the night before I had to speak; the etheric body had been lost for the observation. The individuality had already been separated from the astral body and I. Here the observing soul was confronted with an astral body and I, and the impulse arose to introduce and conclude the eulogy with words that had something to do with individuality. Something did not arise that the individuality itself had expressed. Because it was released from the etheric body and the physical body, it was possible to put into words, which I believe were precise, the whole way this individuality had been here on earth. Again, these words are not the way I made them, but the way an inspiration impulse made them, the way they had to be, the way they characterize the individuality that had passed through death. They arose as the inspiration of the contemplating soul, yielding to the impression of the personality that had passed through the gate of death. The words arose:

You came among us.
Your gentle nature moved
Spoke from your eyes of silent strength
Calm that soulfully animated,
flowed in the waves
with which your gaze
to things and to people
carried your inner weaving; –
And this being was imbued with it
your voice, which eloquently
through the nature of the word more
than in the word itself
revealed what dwells hidden
in your beautiful soul;
But the part of devoted love of compassionate people
revealed itself wordlessly in full – –
This being, of noble, silent beauty,
told of the receptive feeling of the creation of the soul of the world.

These words were spoken at the cremation, and the peculiar thing turned out to be that the moment, which could only be called a moment of awakening, occurred when the heat of the furnace was just taking hold of the personality's physical body. And so, for this personality that had passed through the gate of death, there was a moment when it was possible to develop consciousness, and not during the funeral ceremony, but when the heat surrounded the body that had been given over to the fire. Then unconsciousness set in again. After being interrupted by unconsciousness, such moments of consciousness can occur again until full consciousness sets in some time after death. In this case it was particularly clear how consciousness works when a person has passed through the gate of death. This consciousness perceives time in a different form than a person perceives time when he lives here in the physical body. In such a case, it is particularly meaningful. The perception of time by someone who does not have a physical body can only be compared to our perception of space. Here in the physical body, we can always look back; what we have seen remains. If something has passed us by in time, we have to look back on the image in our memory, it has to rise up in our consciousness. This is not the case with someone who no longer has a physical body. The disembodied soul looks back as we do in space.

So the dead woman looked back at what had been said, as one looks back in space. What had been said now stood before her soul. It is precisely in such concrete cases that the peculiarity of the spiritual world becomes apparent. Now I just said that at the time when the words of the funeral oration were to be formed, I had, so to speak, lost the etheric body for the observation, but a second observation showed that it was precisely this etheric body that made it possible to have the inspiration that was shaped into these words. When I was able to find the ether body again - I mean for the observation - I became aware of where this ether body was when I shaped the words. It was in the night from Sunday to Monday. I said I had lost it, I only realized much later where it actually was: I was in it myself. It was a dissolving cloud. The ego and the astral body had already been separated. Because I was inside it, I did not perceive the aetheric body, like a cloud in which one is stuck; but what lived in it gave the inspiration to shape the words I read.

They provide an insight into the intimate secrets of the human soul's coexistence with the spiritual worlds. I would not dare to say so out of hand if this had only occurred in a single case, but it was confirmed to me again in the third case. There I was again in the same situation of shaping words that characterized the individuality of this third personality who had passed through the gateway of death and was part of our circle. The death of this personality had something particularly painful for our feelings on the physical plane, because it gave the best hopes with regard to the spiritual scientific work within our circle. This personality, during the time she lived here on earth, absorbed much of what can currently be called scholarship, became completely immersed in it and had the firm desire to do something that is necessary in our spiritual movement, namely to immerse oneself in what is currently called science, and to transform this science in the soul itself in such a way that it gives birth again on a higher level to spiritual-scientific insight. Not everyone can do this, but it is one of the necessities of our spiritual science. Concordance between science and spiritual science can often lead someone who is unfamiliar with spiritual science to a conviction, but it is necessary to become imbued with contemporary science, and when this is there, to ascend with it in a living way in spiritual science. One then comes to a certain point where one feels so surely, so knows so surely in one's inner experience the agreement between what present science gives and what spiritual science gives that one can no longer be misled by anything that comes from the present materialistic culture of our time.

When this personality passed through the gate of death, the necessity arose again to shape the beginning and end of the funeral oration in a certain way at the cremation, and the special impulse arose, precisely in the face of this individuality, to point out the bridge that exists for our spiritual science movement between the physical plan and the spiritual world. For our feelings on the physical plane, it is particularly painful that this personality was taken from us young. But the spiritual current in which we live would not be able to awaken as much hope as it must awaken if we were not sure that the forces flowing in spiritual science come not only from those who live on the physical plane, but that such forces also come from those who have already passed through the gate of death and are equipped with spiritual science. Thus the soul was faced with the necessity of emphasizing: At this moment you are given a great thing where you have gone through death: a call to remain a loyal co-worker even now that you have gone through the gate of death.

Especially those who take spiritual science seriously must count on those who are no longer on the physical plane as real co-workers.

Thus it became necessary to coin words, in the coining of which I am, so to speak, completely uninvolved, which resulted from a necessary impulse in the way I will read them now. You will see in a moment what the significance of such coined words is. The words are as follows:

A hope that brings us happiness:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms,
Through the power of the soul's being,
Want to show themselves to research. Your pure love of truth was your longing was kindred;
To create from the light of the spirit
Was the earnest goal of life
You strove for tirelessly. You cultivated your beautiful gifts
in order to walk the bright path of spiritual knowledge,
unperturbed by the contradictions of the world,
as a faithful servant of the truth,
with sure steps. You practiced your spiritual organs
So that they bravely and persistently
On both sides of the path
You pushed error aside
And created space for truth. To reveal your true self
To create pure light,
So that the soul's solar power
radiates powerfully within you,
was your life's concern and joy. Other concerns, other joys
hardly touched your soul,
because knowledge appeared to you as light,
which gives meaning to existence,
as life's true value. A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms
Through the power of the soul's being
Would like to show themselves to research. A loss that deeply hurts us,
So you disappear from the field,
Where the spirit's seeds of creation Matured in the womb of the soul, Your sense of the spheres. Feel how we look lovingly Into the heights that now call you Towards other work. Give your strength from spiritual realms To your abandoned friends. Hear our souls' request,
Sent to you in trust:
Here for our earthly work we need
Strong power from spiritual realms,
Which we thank our dead friends for. A hope that makes us happy,
A loss that deeply pains us:
Let us hope that Thou, far-near,
Unlost, to our life dost shine
As a soul star in the realm of minds.

It was sometime during the following night when, as if it were an answer, it sounded to me from the being in question, not from its consciousness, but from its essence, so that one could immediately feel it as an answer to the words. Not as if the individuality had said it from the consciousness. The individuality resounded as if in sounds:

To shape my self to a revelation
of pure light,
That the soul's solar power
might radiate powerfully within me
Was my life's care and joy. Other worries, other joys,
They hardly touched my soul,
Because knowledge appeared to me as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

Only now did I realize that this was only a rearrangement of the two verses, a rearrangement of the second person into the first. From this example you can see how a correspondence takes place between the soul that dwells here in physical life and the soul that has passed through the gate of death. I would like to draw special attention to the fact that such things are given in such a way that the words cannot be changed, and you can see that I was not at all aware why the words of the two verses were so shaped. I only realized this from the answer that came the following night from the soul that had passed through the gate of death. We must get used to the fact that in this respect too, we cannot have direct feelings towards the spiritual worlds that are taken from our experiences here in the physical world. Note that much depends on this if we are to gain a true understanding of the relationship with the spiritual world. As a small example, I could also mention something that was taken from a completely different side. When these difficult days began, these formulas that we are using now were given as if from the spiritual worlds, which I also use today to guide the souls of those who are in the fields of the events or have passed through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,
your wings may bring
the love of my soul imploring
to the spheres (earthly people) entrusted to your care, so that, united with your power,
my plea may help to radiate to the souls that seek them lovingly.

It says: “Spirits of your souls.” I had to experience in Berlin that someone objected that this is grammatically incorrect, and now one does not know in the second line what the “your wings” refer to, because if one says, “spirits of your souls,” one turns to those who live as human beings, but one still turns to the spirits of those who live there. So the pedant might think that one should say, “Spirits of their souls.” Yes, we have to get used to the fact that in the spiritual world, the grammar that applies quite naturally to the sensual world is not always adhered to, that one must have more flexibility in the soul. One turns: “Spirits of your souls,” but in the second line it is understood that one does not turn to one or a number of people, that one turns to the protecting spirits there. Grammar is not the deciding factor. We must realize that in the higher worlds everything is much more mobile, that one does not need to divert one's conception of the human being when one turns to the protecting spirit. He is much more closely connected with the man himself than two people here. There one must apply physical grammar, because there need not be such a connection between two physical people as between the protecting spirit and the human being. So one could say: It is precisely through these given words, which are contestable before physical grammar, that something is given that is peculiar to the higher worlds. When one receives such things from the higher worlds, the words become teachings. Sometimes one only understands such things much later, and sometimes this learning is not as easy as prying into grammar, which is not a great art. We have to find our way into such an intimate relationship with the spiritual world. Even in the presentation of the higher worlds, it is important that one does not grasp them with the rough word combinations that one has acquired here in the physical world, so that it is often quite easy to find a presentation of the higher worlds, in which the realm of the spirits of form loses its special power, contestable. Crossing the threshold, we enter the realm of the spirits of movement. Even the style must become more flexible there. The spirits of form are for the world around us. Style must adapt to the realm of the spirits of movement. The time will come when we will find our way into such things, and we must not believe that we can truly depict what is mobile and fluid in the spiritual world with a style that is suitable for the physical world.

I wanted to explain a few things about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds, using specific cases that our social karma has brought us into contact with. Even more than in abstract descriptions, such concrete involvement in individual conditions of the spiritual worlds, and above all, we can develop a feeling that through our spiritual scientific movement, a living interaction between the physical world and the higher world must gradually come about. After the manifold experiences that have had to be made in recent times, it can be said that the hopes that certain things will already happen in relation to our spiritual movement can only be firmly held inwardly if one is certain that those who have already passed through the gate of death will be our helping co-workers. This does, however, require that we take the content and intention of our spiritual science with the utmost seriousness.

In summary, I would like to say something that has already been discussed in detail in the cycle in Vienna about life between death and a new birth, which is important to consider. One can say, because one must use certain words that serve the physical life: After death, the human being is in a kind of unconscious, sleeping state. Then he awakens, but “awakens” is not quite the right word. It seems as if one comes to a kind of consciousness upon awakening. This is not the case. When the human being has discarded the etheric body, he does not have too little or sleeping consciousness, he has too much consciousness. He has a kind of overflowing consciousness. Just as one cannot see when blinded by flooding light, so there is too much consciousness after death. We are completely flooded by infinitely effective consciousness, and it must first subside to the degree that we have acquired after our development in the physical world. We have to orient ourselves in the abundance of consciousness. What is called “waking up” is only an accustoming to the much higher degree of consciousness that we enter after death. It is a dimming of consciousness to the degree that we can bear.

Another thing is that, I would say, every observation shows more and more how, for certain conditions of existence, the experience in the spiritual worlds is exactly the opposite of the experience in the physical world. This is also the case with the one I am about to mention. Between birth and death, no one actually remembers their birth without higher knowledge. For no one is it a matter of their own observation. If you were to listen to those people who say they believe nothing except what their five senses give them, you might object: Then you cannot believe that you were once a small child either. You only believe that from the following two reasons: Because you see that all other people begin their lives that way, you conclude that it was the same for you. That is only an analogy, or the others have told you. - It is known through communication and not through observation that one also enters life through birth. No one realizes that this is only an analogy. One would have to say: I cannot know from my own observation about the origin of this physical body. When a person looks back in physical life, he does not see as far as his birth. It is different between death and a new birth. This is shown by the very case in which the inner impulse arose to send the one who had passed through the gate of death such words that had something to do with his self, that characterized him. This impulse comes from the urge to serve the one who has gone through the gate of death, to make it easier for him to have what he needs as soon as possible: an unobstructed view of the moment of death. For just as little as one looks back on birth in physical life, it is indispensable to look back on death between death and a new birth. Death is always there in retrospect, only from the spiritual side it looks different. From the physical point of view it may have been a terrible death, but from the other side it is the most glorious event one can look back on. It shows the glory of the spirit's victory over the physical by freeing itself from it. This is one of the most beautiful experiences one has between death and a new birth in retrospect. This is another example of how the physical world and the spiritual world are opposed to each other.

We are gradually getting to know the peculiarities of the spiritual world. These are aspects that I wanted to develop before you today in aphorisms. Another aspect is indirectly significant for things that we are experiencing now: the aspect that in the case of a person who could have lived here for a long time under normal circumstances, an unused etheric body stands as an individuality alongside the individuality. The dissolution of the etheric body only takes a short time in older people. We are always surrounded by such as yet unresolved etheric bodies. We are living towards a time when this will be particularly noticeable, because a kind of atmosphere is formed indirectly from these etheric bodies, the like of which has not yet been seen in the development of the earth. One might think that something similar has already occurred in earlier wars, but things are changing because people in the past went through death differently. There were not as many people in the past who were surrounded only by material thinking as there are now. This justifies the fact that these etheric bodies will give off spiritual impulses. Furthermore, there will be people here on earth who will feel and sense this. I have already hinted at this in the lectures I would like to call the lectures on current events. What our time wants to teach us is that, in addition to the spiritual shallowness, we also need to deepen what will later appear as the accompanying phenomena. Should we not be deeply saddened to learn that in our time, which considers itself so enlightened in terms of logic, where scientific culture has spread through all kinds of popular channels to the widest circles, that something can take hold again in the widest circles that we must regard as a judgment born of passion?

Those who follow the voices of those who consider Central Europe to be locked up in a large fortress will already have realized what this passion is doing to people's souls. One need only look to the west and northwest, where one can stand in amazement at what human passionate judgment has brought about. Better newspapers will be particularly instructive there. How is it shouted out by these or those: We did not want this war! — How is it senselessly blamed for this war by those who are hostile to the German essence, to that area that had the least reason for this war: the Central European one.

In this respect, the way in which German character has developed makes it objectively possible for the German people to achieve a kind of national self-awareness that is sorely lacking in other nations. It will certainly be a long time before most people, especially outside of Central Europe, will be able to see the situation clearly enough to get past the most foolish judgments of the present. For us, who are part of a spiritual movement that not only wants to pass on theory, it should be clear that an objective judgment can be gained in the face of such difficult events and that we can clarify many things in the present precisely because we live in these fateful days. How easily some short-sighted minds criticize what belongs to the impulses, to the core of our spiritual science. Painful things have had to be experienced in this field in recent months. There is a spiritual science movement that says it is lovingly working to want to reach people without distinction of race and so on. One can say: How does what I have put forward in this time relate to this? Before these difficult, fateful days befell us, I warned against interpreting the principle of equality in such a way that it is transformed into something completely abstract. Do you remember how I often said: When people come and say that Buddhists, Mohammedans, and Christians are only different forms of one being, that is like saying: salt, sugar, pepper are all food additives, so it doesn't matter what I take – and sprinkle sugar into soup and beer because it is a food additive. It may be convenient to apply such a principle in such an abstract way, but for the one who is seriously seeking, it cannot be the point. If we lovingly engage with the essence of the individual European nations, we come to recognize that the soul of the people speaks to the sentient soul in the Italians, to the intellectual soul in the French, to the consciousness soul in the British, and to the I in the Germans. We do not come to understand these things by pouring love over everything in the abstract. The essential thing in our movement is that the human soul, while recognizing national peculiarities, wants to rise to the general human level. Spiritual science can bring it about that someone born in Britain this time says: “I have recognized that I have the folk soul speaking particularly through the consciousness soul, through that which regulates the soul's relationship to the physical plane, which makes the human being suitable for being material. When he recognizes this, he recognizes that he must discard what stands in his way from his nationality if he wants to rise to the general humanity. This knowledge always helps, and it is important to recognize what is peculiar to the individual national entity. When the member of Russian culture will say to himself: The peculiarity of the national soul is that it hovers like a cloud over the individual, that the individual, in chaotic thinking, looks up to the national soul, and thus relies on finding his way into the productive life of other nations – then he will find his way. Those who recognize the essence of the Russian national soul through spiritual science will say: Why am I Russian? The strength that I have acquired as a result, I have to absorb the strength of other nations.

The German will recognize through spiritual science — he needs to understand this in all objectivity and humility — that he is predestined to seek the universal human through his nationality through what the national soul speaks to his ego. That he perceives what leads him beyond nationality, that is the national essence of the German. The specifically national essence of the German consists in this, that through nationality it is driven beyond the nation into the general human essence. Therefore the transition from German idealism to spiritual science is to be found in the flowing of German idealism into spiritual science. It is necessary to struggle through to a concrete grasp of spiritual realities. Spiritual science makes it possible to grasp these things concretely. When one learns that a Frenchman like Renan says that what he has received in German culture seems to him like higher mathematics compared to the lower mathematics of the experiences of other peoples, then what characterizes the German essence is being stated. It is our fate to have to recognize this. We must recognize it, we cannot help but recognize it, but with the same objectivity we must recognize that it is our destiny, if we are true Germans, to progress to spiritual life, just as it is necessary for the British to shed materialism in order to enter into the spiritual. Different tasks arise for different nations from their national character. It is particularly important for the German to immerse himself in the spiritual worlds of that which flows through German culture. For the Russian, there is no such thing as a national culture. For him, there is only the possibility of gaining the strength of blood that makes it possible for him to accept the essence of others. It turns out that the German essence underwent an important development in the evolution of the folk soul.

The folk souls, like human beings, undergo development. Between 1530 and 1550 something special happened to the Italian folk soul. Before that time this culture was not yet as separate from the rest of Europe as it was afterwards. Before that time the folk soul worked in the soul; afterwards it reached beyond the soul, shaping the physical into the national. The human being progresses to becoming independent of the physical. The folk soul does the opposite. It first affects the soul, then the body, so that the Italian folk soul before the 16th century only affected the soul, but later it reaches beyond the merely soulful into the physical, shaping the nervous system, shaping the etheric body, so that the human being is also defined and identified in terms of the physical. The human being becomes more rigid, more closed to the other cultures.

For the French national soul, such a point in time occurs in the middle of the 17th century. At that point, the national soul begins to shift from the soul to the body, making the nation rigid. For the British, this only happens from the middle of the 17th century onwards, and Shakespeare does not yet belong to an age when the national soul shifts to the body. In the period between 1750 and 1850, a kind of spillover from the German folk soul from the spiritual to the physical takes place, but it withdraws again. In Western peoples, the folk soul floats higher at first, then descends into the physical. That which previously descended into the physical then rose again into the spiritual. The descent occurred between the mid-17th and 18th centuries. As a result, the German national soul remains more flexible. It does not remain down there permanently, it goes up and down, takes hold of people and then releases them again.

These are things that will only be fully understood in the future. We must say that we cannot empathize enough with the present difficult time, with all its greatness and significance, in the depths of our soul. These present events must be infinitely significant for anyone who is interested in the spiritual essence that is weaving through the world. When people reflect on the causes that led to the present war events, one thing will become clear: the antagonism between the national souls has contributed to these present war events, but no matter how hard someone in the future will search for the causes on the physical plane, they will always find something that does not clarify the matter, because the causes do not lie on the physical plane, but because one can say about these events: spiritual individualities, spiritual impulses have an effect. Only when mankind will recognize this, will one speak reasonably about the causes that have led to these events. One will recognize that people were only the tools through which good and evil forces have worked. To come to this judgment, it is necessary to be unprejudiced, by penetrating ourselves with what spiritual science can be to the innermost part of the soul, not just to the intellect.

It may be important at some point to realize how much of what the British world has taken part in is really intimately connected with the national character. Then one will have to recognize something that has been impressed on me since July, before the war had even begun. Then one could hear different judgments. I am reporting objectively and would like you to disregard the personal aspect. It occurred to me that the world was in danger because such a terrible fool was in charge of foreign affairs in London. The world considers Grey to be a clever, perhaps shrewd man. I could never consider him to be anything other than a fool, from intuitive impressions, and today I must consider him to be an especially foolish person, chosen by Ahrimanic powers because he could cause particular harm through his ignorance of things. It is not really possible to prove that such a person is a fool on the basis of external reasons. Yesterday I bought a book and found a letter in it that a colleague of Grey's wrote. I only learned about the letter yesterday, but I have considered Grey a fool chosen by Ahriman to wreak havoc since July. It is interesting for us to see how the writer of the letter characterizes his cabinet colleague: “It is very entertaining for us, who have known Grey since the beginning of his career, to watch him impress his continental colleagues. They seem to suspect something in him that is not there at all. He is one of the Kingdom's most outstanding sports anglers and a reasonably good tennis player. He has no political or diplomatic abilities, unless one were to recognize a certain tiresome dullness of speech and a strange tenacity as such. Earl Rosebery once said of him that he makes such a concentrated impression because he never has an idea of his own that could distract him from a task that has been handed to him with precise instructions. When a somewhat temperamental foreign diplomat recently expressed admiration for Grey's quiet manner, which never revealed what was going on in his mind, a cheeky secretary said, “If a clay money box is filled to the top with gold, it certainly doesn't rattle when you shake it. But if there isn't a single penny in it, it doesn't rattle either. With Winston Churchill, a few nickels rattle so loudly that it gets on your nerves; with Grey, not a single rattle. Only the person holding the box can know whether it is completely full or completely empty!” That was impertinent, but well said. I believe that Grey has a very decent character, even if a certain stupid vanity may occasionally tempt him to get involved in matters that hands that insist on absolute cleanliness would do better to stay away from. But his excuse is always that he is incapable of overlooking and thinking through a matter on his own. He, who is in no way a schemer in his own right, can, as soon as a clever schemer uses him, appear to be the most accomplished schemer. This has always been a temptation for political schemers to choose him as their tool, and it is only thanks to this circumstance that he owes his present position."

This is an example of how one can err if one does not try to look at things objectively. In this personality, who is not distinguished by particular cleverness but by personal angling skills that have nothing to do with the skills that matter, one sees the Ahrimanic powers at work, which necessarily had to work from the inner side for the events to occur. We shall gradually realize that in the face of these events in particular, we must be clear about how the supersensible must be acknowledged in both good and evil. If we try to understand these events on the basis of what can be observed on the physical plane, we will not be able to understand them. One will realize how the various impulses have streamed across, how for a long time the East has been preparing what gave the impulse for these events, how from those things that can be observed in Eastern Europe, the factors developed which must necessarily one day ignite the torch of war, how the present moment brought the war because the western factors allowed themselves to be drawn into the arson from the east, for reasons that can only be recognized if one goes into the important causes. It will be important that precisely these historical events will force people, if they want to recognize the causes, to look to the supersensible, not to remain on the physical plane, because otherwise they will be able to argue for a long time. We shall have to recognize that it is more necessary for the man of letters than for other men to place himself on a surer horizon than that which can arise from the experience of the affairs of the physical world.

How narrow the physical horizon can become has been evident for years. For many, historical consideration only began in July. Even some in our circles made strange judgments. The elements of what I want to say have already been given in the cycle 'The Mission of Individual National Souls' in Kristiania. It also says that what wants to come forth in the sixth post-Atlantic culture is preparing itself in the East. We live here in the fifth culture. If you think abstractly, that humanity is rising higher and higher from the fifth culture to the sixth and seventh cultures, then you may get a stiff neck. But such penetration is not the progress of the cultural development of humanity. Up to the fourth culture, there was a repetition of the development of the earth. The fifth culture is the one that matters; it is something new that has been added, that must be carried over into the sixth age. The sixth culture will sink into decadence; it will be a descending culture. This must be taken into account. Connected with this is the fact that a mind like Solowjow, which in certain respects has outgrown the Russian national character with its habitual traits, has sunk into the Western world, that his philosophy is Western, although it is enclosed in the temperament of the East, but in the way the sentences flow, it reveals the Russian. It would be foolish to say that someone steeped in Western European culture could be given something that went beyond that Western European culture.

These have again been only brief sentences, but you will hear the appeal to our spiritual science to try to use this difficult time to see with concreteness and to grasp with concreteness that which can really flow into our feeling when spiritual scientific ideas flow into this our feeling. In the future, our spiritual science will have to prove itself precisely by finding its way through the raging passions of our time.

I am well aware that since the beginning of this difficult time for us, I have spoken neither here nor elsewhere about these matters in any other way than so that one can advocate these matters before an objective world view. But what all could one hear! From what has happened in the last few months, one can also learn how things stand with regard to much of what is being criticized in the outside world. One often had to hear the judgment that a large part of the members only listened to the judgment of one person, that it was all based on blind trust. — How far that blind trust went could be seen at that moment.

About what was said about me, one could hear: He uses his occult abilities to waste them on checking the Wolffian telegrams. — Strange trust for someone who is in our movement to say that I use the truth of the Wolffian telegraph office in favor of the enemies of Germany! That is only one of countless judgments. There you see how what is now flooding the world in desires and passions also plays a role in spiritual science. This must not deter us from fathoming the truth with regard to what it is our duty to emphasize now. You will be able to see that.

Basically, it has always been as it is now. What has been said now has always been said and done. I have emphasized before that this Theosophical movement, which has become the Anthroposophical movement, never wanted to develop in any other way than in the direct progression of Central European culture. It was never a matter of being taken in tow by someone. On the English side, when this was noticed, mistrust was immediately aroused against these Central Europeans, who were not the imitators of what was given by British Theosophy. The sense of truth had to reject the British view of the Christ problem, it was of such a nature that the belief could arise that Christ would re-embody himself in the physical body, because one could not understand a spiritual coming of the Christ. This showed the impossibility of the two directions going together. In English theosophical magazines you will now find letters from Mrs. Besant, who in every way calls upon the world of Theosophy to work against Germany. There you will find a subsequent explanation of why the German Theosophical movement had to break away from the English one at that time. Mrs. Besant says: ” Now, looking back, in the light of the German methods, as revealed to us by the war, I see that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I thwarted those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace instead of giving honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here (in India) to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into an armed force against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader, instead of standing, as it always has, for the equal alliance of two free nations, then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

[Gap in the transcription] This personality has come up with what I wanted at the time. - There you can see the causes of why this war between Germany and England broke out. But you can also see that our spiritual struggle has preceded it. Many things that had to happen there will perhaps be understood differently now.

The assertion of occultism [...] is a double-edged sword. It must be said again and again that a sense of truth must intensively permeate the souls who, through occultism, want to bring salvation and not disaster into the world. How this is connected, what must penetrate our soul through the events of the time, what we, as occult students, should learn from the events of the time, can be revealed to us by the thought: When peace returns, there will be unused etheric bodies in the spiritual world that want to bring down forces. From souls that are stimulated by spiritual science, forces should also go up to connect with the forces from above. Then, for the progress and salvation of humanity, what spiritual science can be will be significant. If there are really quite a number of souls that feel this in truth and objectivity, if many souls with thoughts inspired by the spiritual world view long to reach up into the spiritual worlds, then the difficult times of our time will also have value for these souls. That is why I would like to express the connection of our spiritual striving today through the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit will grow
Guiding souls, spirit-conscious
Their minds into the spiritual realm.