The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922

GA 251 — 30 May 1918, Vienna

31. Leading an Expectant Life

As you may have seen in the last few days, and as can also be gathered from the public lectures, it must be clear from my current thinking that important necessities must be pointed out with regard to the transformation of certain perceptions, concepts and ideas. We are still living through a catastrophic time, a time that has been so often and repeatedly pointed out as being incomparable to anything that has happened in the past, usually in the conventional, world-historical version.

It is true that even when the significance and uniqueness of this time is discussed, unfortunately the phrase has become quite prevalent, and that what is said does not always come from the depth of the heart, but rather from the depth of understanding; but much of what comes from this direction is true. But not much is said about another thing. About how much this time should urge us to change our perceptions and concepts, our ideas and feelings.

For those of us who have been involved in this movement for years, this necessity will not be completely foreign, because I would like to remind you, my dear friends in Vienna, that I pointed out in a lecture cycle held here before the war that a kind of carcinoma – a cancerous disease – is spreading in social life and weaving across the earth. That was in view of the serious events that were imminent. One could not point out what was coming with cudgels, and when considering the times, it depends not on being a true prophet, but rather on bringing forth those things that can be used to impel the will and intentions of people. When we look back today on some of the things we have experienced in recent years, the most important impression in a certain direction is probably that we have to say to ourselves that some of the things that were very close to our souls before 1914 have become so far from our souls in many respects, like circumstances that may have occurred centuries ago. I keep thinking of one thing in this regard. In my lectures, I have often referred to a spirit with a very significant world view, Herman Grimm. When I referred to him in the years preceding 1914, it was as if he were standing beside me. At that time, his views were something present, something that could be treated as present; yes, my dear friends, that is no longer the case. Now, what seemed quite modern to us back then seems so, not if it were separated from us by decades, but by centuries. One would like to understand it as history. I don't think that anyone can say that, who has felt with all their intensity what has emerged over the years for the development of humanity. Not everything that has happened is there yet; /gap in transcription] This is a general sign that seems so sad to us, especially in these years, that the materialistic age has so dulled people's minds that even the most insistent speakers of world-historical development are asleep. By sleeping I do not just mean a dull existence, which is also the case with many people in the present, who let everything that happens come close to them – by sleeping I also mean the lack of incentive to evaluate the events of the present, to properly consider these events of the present. I could give many, many examples of this kind of sleeping. I will content myself with one, because you will see from the one what I actually want to illustrate.

You see, last fall, strange news was reported in the newspapers of all the neutral countries vis-à-vis the Central Powers, including a very strange interview that someone had - and that actually spread all over the world - that someone had in St. Petersburg with Rasputin. In this interview, not only was everything described that shed a clear light on the entire position that Rasputin had taken in the current events of the present, I would not even consider that to be the most important thing, but in this interview it was clearly predicted that it would not last long last long – of course, in the way one predicts something in an interview – it was clearly predicted that it would not last long, that Rasputin would no longer be around, and the assassination of Rasputin would be followed by events concerning much higher-ranking personalities. This news spread throughout the world, that is, from the fall onwards, a fairly large number of people throughout the world were actually quite well informed about what happened the following spring. Later on, I had the opportunity to talk to a person who, well, let's just say, is considered an authority on Russian affairs; people listen to him when it comes to finding out about Russian affairs. I tried in every possible way to tie in with this interview. The person in question didn't understand anything, didn't see through anything that was actually important.

Of course, something like this is only a symptom, but you will recognize from the lecture given yesterday that our view of history needs to adopt a symptomatic way of thinking in general. We cannot arrive at a healing development if we do not learn to consider this or that event as more or less important, in order to view the individual event in such a way that we see important developmental impulses. Symptomatology will essentially have to become a consideration of history. But to practise symptomatology, a person must have sharpened their inner soul powers, their power of knowledge, through what spiritual science can give them, because this spiritual science does not want to be taken only for what it is in terms of content, for then it would again be mere theory. It should not be that way under any circumstances. What is communicated from spiritual science in terms of content, of wording, what is written in the books, may be verified - much of it may have to be said in a completely different way. Although we already have a certain basic foundation for truth that will remain for a long time, I do believe that the examination will reveal that some things will have to be different in wording than how they are said today. But the content, the theoretical outlook, is not what matters. Man must acquire a certain way of thinking, he must free his thinking from all narrow-mindedness, limited to the immediate interests, so that he is compelled to broaden his horizons, to orient himself within a broad perspective, that he must immerse himself in reality. Today, not wanting to immerse oneself in reality has become a truly world-historical phenomenon. Today, people talk about all kinds of things that they present as ideals. Of course, one can understand that people feel a certain intellectual pleasure when they can talk about this or that ideal. But when it comes to ideals, it depends on whether one is in the real truth with the formation of these ideals. For example, someone who thinks realistically reads a message from Wilson and says to himself: What is in there and so many people admire is, after all, ancient, it can almost be called historical. These are things that go through all centuries as a phrase, that can be said and applied everywhere. What is important is not introducing such things into people's minds, but striking the right note in terms of ideas that are realistic in a particular age.

Indeed, in order to live realistically in the highest life - in this life that follows the present one - people will have to acquire many things of which they have not yet acquired much today.

Last Sunday we spoke about the fact that a world view must come to establish spiritual science, which, so to speak, enables people to grow old, to lead an expectant life. We should not take such a matter lightly; because precisely such a matter is extraordinarily important. We have — as we saw last Sunday — today really only the gift to believe in the growing, sprouting life into our twenties, then we want to be ready to continue living life in the same breath, as it were; then we have — one has gone through university, the other has learned a trade, the third has not learned anything either, but all consider themselves to be finished with everything that they have incorporated into themselves up to their twenties. We must relearn to wait for what is to come throughout our lives, we must learn to say: When I am 25 years old, then simply by the fact that I am 25 years old, I say: The 35th [year of life] will be able to reveal new secrets to me, the 45th again new ones. We must learn to live in expectation. This is not only important for the individual, it also has a social significance. These things, the establishment, the regulation of the mutual relationship of people can be turned, socialism does it and other associations – for what do you not found all kinds of associations – have done it, but my dear friends, we have to keep reminding ourselves that talking about certain things is one thing, which, as I said, can give an intellectual, voluptuous pleasure that can be proven as something necessary, but it leads to nothing. No matter how many ethical and social demands arise, that the relationship between people - whether for ethical or economic reasons - should be arranged in such or such a way, that this or that position is ideal, no matter how much is preached, it is of no more use than telling the stove: You are a stove, and as a stove you have the duty to warm the room, so warm the room! But it does not warm the room; only if they put wood in and light a fire, then it warms the room. It is often the greatest pulpit orators who are motivated by such an attitude. What matters is that we draw real strength from our world view, which gives life to our soul, emotional life, will life.

Among the many aspects of creative, real power is the fact that we learn to believe in the whole of human life through it, and learn to live in expectation. But if that is not a theory, not a teaching, if that is an inner life force, if that lives in the soul, then it is quite natural that it also means that people do not enter into an abstract relationship with one another, but see that it also plays a role here, that a variety of concrete circumstances play a role when it is important, that they play a role. What social culture is cannot be regulated; it can only be established by giving in the establishment that which gives strength and life to our soul. And take some of what I said last Sunday: We can directly follow up on an idea from last Sunday that related to the coexistence of people here in physical life with the souls of those who have passed through the gateway of death. What the idea of immortality is, has also, over time, taken on a rather selfish character to a greater or lesser extent. Actually, people are hardly more interested in immortality than in what will become of their own soul when they have passed through the gate of death. Yes, that is certainly an important and essential thing, which continues to have an effect if we see it correctly; but something else comes when we really grasp the idea that we have to recognize the meaning of this life throughout our entire life, that our development is not complete at the age of twenty, but that every year of life can reveal something new to us and that it becomes real experience for us, which it can become; then the other thought will not be far from us either, truly not far from us, that life, the event of life, which outwardly presents itself as an event of death, basically does not stop the development of our earth either. For] those who can do spiritual research, this is particularly clear for the present development cycle of humanity. When people will understand that actually spiritual is revealed through all decades, when they do not believe that life has lost its meaning when a person has passed through the gate of death. Not only that a person carries a certain content, a certain essence into the other world, but in a way he is endowed with the richest life experience when he closes his life here. Even if you are no longer able to live life to the full as you age due to memory loss, the wisdom you have gained is still there in your soul, and this is not only important for the people who have passed through the gateway of death in themselves, but also for their future lives on Earth. A person who passes through the gate of death in this present cycle of humanity has not yet lived out everything that is in him. His worldly wisdom can still come in handy, if only people look for such a way of life.

I don't like to do it, but I always like to cite a personal experience when it comes to this matter. Those who have known me longer know that in my first decades as a writer, I spent a lot of time trying to make Goethe's ideas fruitful for our age. I didn't do this in the same way as Goethe researchers; I tried to develop them further. What I have done in my field in this direction has emerged only from the impulse to confront not the dead Goethe but what Goethe had acquired in worldly wisdom in 1832 and what could continue to develop, what could become fruitful for the earth. In this real sense, I tried to write about one thing or another that Goethe would speak about in a later period. One can only take such a stand on such a matter if one is clear about the fact that what a person has worked for until his death continues to be important for the earth. In saying this, I am expressing a thought that still seems quite paradoxical to people today, but which is becoming more and more important; and I am convinced that the time must come when, for example, the following will be done, when people will say to themselves: In our time, this or that question has become important for social coexistence or something else. Let us not only ask our contemporaries about such a question, let us also ask the spirits of the past, but let us ask them in such a way that they would speak to us today, when the wisdom they have gained has been expanded.

I know that many people would not consider this a truly useful thought for humanity. If not only Mr. So-and-so were heard in the parliament of the present, but if Goethe or Schiller were also heard in the parliament, but really heard. In short, I believe that the idea of immortality can be grasped in a completely different way than in the selfish sense. It can be grasped in such a way that we not only believe in the existence of what a person has processed in his soul after death, but also in the fertility, in the effective influx of what has now been processed by him into life. Sometimes it is difficult to express such a thing in general terms, because among the thoughts that I mentioned last Sunday as emerging from the depths of the soul like our ideas, some are the thoughts of the dead. We have to realize that while we think we are having an idea, a dead person is speaking to us. Those who familiarize themselves with this idea know very well that many a dead person speaks through the heart of a living person after his death, saying things that he can only express after his “death. Until his physical death, a person may have had an obstacle in his physical organization that prevented him from seeing clearly. When his life organism has fallen away, he expresses himself about this matter in a way that corresponds to his life experience. Then one must only meet him halfway, then one must be able to free oneself from vanity, not to take some things as one's own idea, but as the saying of a dead person, which he may say after three to four years.

Believing in the effectiveness of those who have passed through the gate of death must become part of the future idea of immortality. My dear friends, it will be of no use to future humanity if it is merely convinced that there is a spiritual life. It will be of use to future humanity, of course not in a trivial sense, it will be of use to humanity only if it knows how to make fruitful for the living what the dead still achieve after their death, if it can be established that the living and the dead can live together. This will be possible if spiritual science is not treated as a theory, but is accepted as something that fertilizes our feelings and permeates our entire soul life. We will certainly have to get used to communicating with the dead!

We have already mentioned a number of things in our reflections on the relationship between the living and the dead, but I must always point out one thing. We must hold on to the fact that we remain connected to those who leave the earth and with whom we have somehow been karmically connected. The connection must not be an abstract one. The connection should become a concrete one, because the most striking thing in the life of the soul after death is that the life of the soul after death is pictorial, that what is to be established as a community between the soul of a living person here and the soul of a dead person must be clothed in imagery. Remembering does not build a bridge. Only when we remember in a concrete way, remembering life situations in which we were with the dead person, remembering them so clearly as if we had them in front of us, seeing each other, hearing the sound of his words, but the words he really spoke – what we have shaped from him in this way is an image that once existed, that once really lived on earth. We then proceed to behave within this image as we would have behaved if the “dead man were still alive; we ask him a question, we tell him this or that; he will not answer us at first, but in the way we indicated on Sunday, we may receive an answer under certain circumstances. It all depends on the image and on the fact that you really develop the images, complete them in your mind and present them to your soul. You cannot remain cold in the process; our whole soul is involved. Those who develop an image in this way will live out exactly the same love that they lived out here when the dead person was still around. If this love is not lived out, it is only because we do not make the effort to bring the image to life. If we stimulate our minds in this way to turn to the dead in a concrete way, in a pictorial way, in a way that is imbued with the soul, we gain the opportunity to build a bridge from us to that realm where the dead live and weave, then we gradually gain the opportunity to be able to bring in a living way the impulses that emanate from the dead. Our social and ethical life must become such that the dead live among us as souls, that they continue to work, but they cannot work in a ghostly way. Only by opening our souls to them can they enter into a real exchange. It is of infinite importance to acquire a sound judgment in this area, because it is precisely in this area that what I have said in general must be observed in each individual case.

People today already have the longing, the instinctive need, to come into contact with the spiritual world, they just reject the only possible ways of doing so at present. In this respect, even the most enlightened people prove to be very stubborn. I will give you an example that you may already know, but which I still want to present.

You see, a very important English naturalist is Sir Oliver Lodge. He has devoted much thought to the connection between man and the spiritual world, especially to the part where the so-called dead are. Now the war in particular led him to devote a great deal of attention to this matter. Mr. Lodge's son was called up to serve at the Franco-German front. And while Mr. Lodge's son was serving there, the father received a letter from America informing him that his son would be in a difficult situation in the near future, that is, in the west in the fall of 1915, but that after the disaster had occurred, old friend Myers, who had long since died, would protect his son.

Those who are familiar with the machinations in this area will not be surprised. This letter could be correct in two cases, among others. One could be: Mr. Lodge's son was almost killed at the front, but escaped with his life. In America, whoever made this announcement would have said that Myers had held his protective hand from beyond the grave to keep him from being shot. But if he had been shot, which is what happened, people believed that Mr. Myers would have held his hand protectively over it. But most people are very satisfied with such general things. Well. Mr. Lodge's son fell, and the waves from America followed up the matter. He received more letters that Myers held his hand over the soul and that the son's soul longed to connect with Lodge and his family. As is done in such a case, it all happens by itself, but the strings are pulled behind the scenes. Several mediums came to the Lodge home and behaved as mediums. All kinds of things were communicated that the soul of Mr. Lodge's son wanted to share with the family. Lodge wrote a thick book about it. It is exemplary in a sense because Lodge is a skilled naturalist and has mastered the scientific method. So everything is conscientiously carried out that you really have the opportunity everywhere in this book to see what was available. The book caused a tremendous stir. It was like a testimony to the existence of a world that connects to ours, in which the dead live, and that people long to know something about. But for those who read the book with the appropriate critical spirit, these things are not convincing.

The following passage caused the most sensation. The one medium reported from the son of Mr. Lodge that he had himself photographed with a group of comrades 14 days before he was killed at the front, and the medium described exactly: He sat with his comrades, the photographer took two pictures, and [in the first] picture, the son of the gentleman was holding his neighbor's hand like this, then the change that was made with the hand, with the whole gesture of the son of the gentleman Lodge - [all of that] was indicated exactly. [It] briefly [said] described the photograph in its various shots. The strange thing was that this photograph had not yet arrived in England, no one in the family could know anything about the photograph, so there could be no question of thought transfer. It was striking. It was, so to speak, an experimentum crucis. Because the photographs only arrived 14 to three weeks later, exactly as the medium had described them. This is, so to speak, the crowning glory of this thick book, which caused a tremendous stir in England and America. A conscientious naturalist, my dear friends, all kinds of things are presented to us, and one can understand that laypeople really have a hard time when a conscientious naturalist describes how to get out of the web that is spun there. However, I was a little surprised that Lodge did not know anything specific. For what was actually going on here? It was a very characteristic, beautiful school case of remote viewing. Everyone who is familiar with the spiritual scientific literature knows the cases where not only [spatial] but also [temporal] remote viewing occurs, where someone sees something today that will happen in a fortnight. The medium has done nothing more than describe the photographs that will be in front of the people 14 days or three weeks later. The whole manifestation is not the slightest proof that the soul of the son of Lord Lodge has manifested itself. A remote vision that was seen in Lodge's house in London three weeks ago, which was to happen. The vision did not go beyond the physical plane. It was a vision, but it did not go beyond the physical plane. Just such a distinction must be learned if one is to be truly spiritual. External events can deceive even those who are great practitioners in the mediumistic field.

Knowledge of nature must be experienced in such a way that one can say of these experiences: they cannot lead one into the spiritual world, even if they bring to light such facts that require forces other than those usually possessed by man. Only then will spiritual science be imbued with the right meaning it is intended to have. It must not be less critical and less exact than science. One must beware of what even a learned naturalist experiences through deception; but one will gradually become knowledgeable in such things. This will lead to the fact that spiritual-scientific methods, which are meant here, really lead to making the ideas of immortality fruitful. We must familiarize ourselves with the thought that the dead walk among us, that human social and ethical structures are pieced together with us.

Yesterday, because such thoughts must be said at most to those who are open to suggestions, I pointed to a certain basic law. While we must strive to seek the impulses in the soul itself that allow us to lead an awakening life even after the twenties, in the older times of human development after the Atlantic catastrophe, this was a natural, elementary fact of life in the older times of human development after the Atlantic catastrophe, that man lives to be old. In the first post-Atlantean period, it was really the case that he experienced his second dentition, his sexual maturity, in such a way that his spiritual life was dependent on the physical until the fifties, in the Persian period until the forties years, in the Egyptian-Chaldean time until the 25th to 32nd year; in a sense, humanity is getting younger and younger; it must be able to make itself older through inner spiritual schooling. We also spoke about this here on Sunday, insofar as [...] can be spoken in a public lecture. If you do not rely on the external historical documents, which are by no means correct, you will find in the seventh to eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha that before the period, due to the special state of mind of the soul that was present, people actually knew about repeated earthly lives because living with the physical body beyond the age of 35 gave them that knowledge naturally. In ancient times, it was a matter of course for those who were not asleep to speak of repeated lives on earth. It was only after the seventh or eighth century BC that humanity lost the ability to speak of repeated lives on earth through atavistic contemplation.

What is this based on? You see, this human life, even as we find it here on earth between birth and death, is actually a very complicated thing. We are a microcosm and the macrocosm plays into this microcosm. Anyone who believes that human life is something simple only wants to follow his or her own convenience. When we have passed the age of 35, our physical organism enters into a certain organic stage, which can be described as such. Before that, however, only in the fine structures, which anatomists do not come across, life really goes downhill, and there were previously sprouting, sprouting forces. We no longer experience this today, because we only experience up to the 27th year. But because we do not experience this, we do not actually experience in a conscious sense today what can give us certainty of repeated earthly lives. Until the seventh or eighth century, all people had this certainty beyond the age of 35. From this 35th year onwards, the forces of Ahriman begin to play a strong role in our physical life. These Ahrimanic forces have the task of bringing about the other phenomenon of decline. If we live with them and transform them into knowledge, we have pointed Ahriman in the right direction. The Egyptians experienced the phenomenon of decline, experienced Ahriman. They experienced the knowledge of repeated earthly lives through what Ahriman causes in the phenomenon of decline of life. Then Ahriman became, so to speak, untraceable, insensible; one could no longer know through inner experience the repeated lives on earth. But another time will come, approximately in the year 4000 of the Christian era, so still a fairly long span of time from now on. Around 3500, as humanity continues to move downwards – today to 27 /gap in transcription] to 15. [gap in transcription] 28. [gap in transcription] 29. [gap in transcription] 30. [gap in transcription] 31. [gap in transcription] 32. [gap in transcription] 33. [gap in transcription] 34. [gap in transcription] 35. [gap in transcription] 36. [gap in transcription] 37. [gap in transcription] 38. [gap in transcription] 39. [gap in transcription] 40. [gap in transcription] 41. [gap in transcription] 42. [gap in transcription] 43. [gap in transcription] 44. [gap in transcription] 45. [gap in transcription] 46. [gap in transcription] 47. [gap in transcription] But the child's sprouting process obscures the Luciferic today. The physically sprouting, growing power lives in us; it attacks and drowns out the Luciferic influence. It will no longer be possible to drown it out. It will become apparent. It will live freely. The change will have taken place in the human organism in that the human being will complete his ability to develop much earlier. The consequence will be that from that point on, the forces that regulate the organism will no longer be able to organize the entire brain. A separate, hardened brain will develop. And from that point on, man will again see the repeated lives on earth in a different way if he does not want to be an idiot. — This is also a real result of spiritual science.

In the year 4000, there will be a different influence. Then people will become aware of what is strongest in this respect at the beginning of their lives, because the ability to develop will end so early.

Another real result, which, you may find [gap in the transcript], although it is an enormous and disturbing event for the spiritual researcher to learn about, when it goes further down into the seven thousandth year, where the physical body will give even less. Women will be infertile in the seven thousandth year. The kind of human reproduction that is now, will no longer be possible. Another kind of reproduction will occur. The transformations that will occur to the earth will be great. These things sound crazy to today's people who have today's ways of thinking.

A professor in London gave a very witty lecture. Dewar described the final state of the earth, which will occur after millions of years. He used completely correct physical methods, of course, from the point of view of a physicist – absolutely nothing – to show that because the earth will cool down so much, the air we breathe today will be liquefied. What is now sea will be liquid air, and it will cover the earth as a liquid. Other gases will have become denser. And now he describes very ingeniously how the other substances will have changed. Certain wires, because they are thin, can only withstand a few kilograms today, but will then support tons because of the different state of the gases. All materials will have different properties. Other materials will become luminescent, the protein, it will be able to glow at night. And now, as he says very ingeniously, one will be able to read newspapers by the light that is then created by the walls coated with protein.

Anyone who is capable of thinking will wonder how it will happen that the milk that has been solidified will be milked by the newspapers, how the newspapers will be printed – in short, you can't get to the end of it. But the calculation is correct, the method is scientific. There is nothing to be said against the physical. But how is it done? You can follow the finer anatomical and physiological structure of the stomach or another human organ as it is in its 21st, 22nd year and so on. You can calculate further and work out what the organ will be like in 300 years. You can say: After 300 years the stomach will have this structure – only after 300 years the person will no longer have the stomach. So it is with calculations based on science; they are scientific, but not realistic. It will be possible to coat the walls, it will be possible to read newspapers with luminescent protein, it will be possible for milk to solidify - but the earth will have perished.

People will have to learn to think not only scientifically but also realistically. Because only in direct spiritual vision can one grasp what is happening. But there are such laws as I have described to you now. Humanity must learn not to shrink from what seems paradoxical to it today. Even the way of thinking. The healthy-sensing human being has always revolted against something like Laplace's theory. Grimm says: Long before Goethe's youth, it was known what was later called Laplace's theory; the sun is said to have formed with the planets in a certain time, then man, the animals; nothing else has to happen but that the sun is maintained at the appropriate temperature. Grimm adds: A piece of carrion circled by a hungry dog is a more appetizing piece than this theory of Laplace.

Just the most fundamental things of the present, that in the place of the today safely believed, but just fanatical /gap in the transcript] truth. But there people will often have to learn to stick to the truth, to really take in the truth in their soul, so that it becomes the basic character of the being, no longer to stick to the excuse: I heard it this way, I couldn't have known it any other way. The obligation to tell the truth.

Perhaps one would believe that in no other field is the obligation to tell the truth more far-fetched than in the field of present-day science. There one experiences quite distressing things. I will not speak of such things, which, as it were, are close to us personally. You will find a nice example in the second chapter of “Seelenrätsel,” where I showed how a contemporary researcher reads; another example of the same kind in the second edition of the same writing by the writer in question. There the person in question says that my “Philosophy of Freedom” is my first work. No one can take it any other way than as my first work. He looked it up and tried to talk his way out of it. He did not mean that it could be easily seen that this was my first book, but that it was my first theosophical book. Those who know the facts can only laugh at that.

Perhaps I can illustrate this point with another example. I gave a public lecture in which I was obliged to illustrate something that I drew, how the human physical organism is nothing short of a miracle. How it works in such a way that you can really see: what happens inside a person, even in just one part of the organism, is infinitely more wonderful than what happens externally on a musical instrument when the most wonderful piece is played. If you observe how the cerebrospinal fluid, in which the brain is embedded, is driven up and down through the spinal canal with each breath, through places that can more or less narrow or widen, will experience something like an interaction with the meninges of the spinal canal – sometimes one meninx widens more, sometimes less – and will really come to understand [that the human organism can be seen as an image of the macrocosm]. I was obliged to speak of cerebral fluid, and in the same lecture I was obliged to refute the merely symbolic view. The reporter wrote, among other things, the following: I had indeed rejected the symbolic, but I would use the most impossible terms in the most impossible places, for example, “cerebral fluid”.

My dear friends! Brain water is something very real, otherwise the brain would crush the blood vessels that lie beneath it. Brain water makes it possible for the brain to lose so much of its weight that it does not crush the veins. But the man who writes this has no idea that brain water is something real and not something symbolic to describe something that is not true.

There are thousands, millions of examples like this. I just want to point out that it is so necessary, that we feel obliged to say what we say, to give the prerequisite [gap in the transcript]

We will truly have to become clearer about some things than we are inclined to be today. We all know, of course, the development of Christianity, but you see, my dear friends, this is also necessarily connected with the fact that we are now also pursuing the outer side of the church in its truth, that we are looking into everything that must change if it is not to turn out even more disastrously. But the connection that exists is not known to some people at all. It lives between the lines of popular literature and creeps into the human soul. Not only do people who live on the outside not know, but neither do those whose profession it is. Very strange things are happening, and we must consider it our task in the present to look into such things. You know that you will get nowhere if you divide people into body and soul. Philosophy claims that it is an unconditional science. If you examine the individual links, you come to strange things. Wundt: “Body and soul” - he has no idea how little prejudice this division is. Where does it come from? It was elevated to a dogma after the Council of Constantinople in 869: “Man consists not of three, but of two members.” From this it became the case that in the Middle Ages the Trinity was frowned upon, was hereticized, and the philosophers live off that.

Recently, a wonderful piece occurred. A professor who is actually quite average and does nothing writes a little book in the collection of “nature and the spiritual world”, in which he speaks as befits a doctor [of classical philology, astrology and astronomy]. In the final chapter, he commented on Goethe's horoscope. He talked about what it is as a whole, he just wants to show that in the course of Goethe's life these things have turned out in such a way that the matter corresponds to the horoscope. He does not say: anyone who believes in a [gap in the transcript] is a rhinoceros; but he does say quite clearly that this is his opinion. Mauthner was furious that the professor was writing about a horoscope at all, and because he was angry, he didn't notice that the professor was writing from the same point of view, and wrote an angry feature article against this book. Those who know this book and the feature article couldn't imagine why Mauthner was so terribly angry. He means exactly the same thing.

Then the professor sent in his justification, explaining that he fully agreed with Mauthner, that it was based on a misunderstanding. The relevant journal wrote: They had nothing to add; they had not been able to convince themselves that a misunderstanding had occurred. They had sent the essay to Mauthner and he had not found that he had anything to say about it either. The people agree, but then they jump each other.

But that is significant of what is happening today in all possible fields. People wage war against each other, people feud with each other, and sometimes things are like between this gentleman and Mauthner. In their hearts of hearts they don't know why, because one is far removed from having such ideas, such conceptions, that are immersed in life, that are realistic. A thing can be very logical, but not realistic.

[This includes, my dear friends, a certain inner courage that must glow in the soul, a courage that people today know nothing about. When we point out in the present how spiritual science, in contrast to a world view that believes it offers reality but is far from it, how spiritual science has to bring the soul to immerse itself in reality, to live with the real. If we teach [gap in transcript] to live with the [gap in transcript], to grasp it, then some of what humanity needs so much to get out of the [gap in transcript] can be achieved, and the sense of unreality, the unreal thinking, is not to blame for the least part. If we try to make our relationship to time our guiding principle in this way, then we will understand spiritual science not only in theory, but [...] Again, it is particularly important here that not only what is among you lives, but that the intention lives on and is realized. The most important thing about spiritual science is that it works in our souls as a living impulse, in our soul continues [...]