Knowledge of Soul and Spirit

GA 56 — 28 November 1907, Berlin

Initiation or Consecration

Some topics that are currently unpopular and only tolerated had to be touched upon in the course of our winter lectures on Spiritual Science. However, it can be said that hardly any topic is as unpopular and as little tolerated as the one that will be the subject of our consideration today: initiation.

When we speak of the spiritual, higher worlds in the sense that we intend to do throughout this series of lectures, the question naturally arises: How does the human being attain knowledge and insight into these higher worlds? Today's consideration of initiation will provide us with at least a preliminary answer — a complete answer can only be given by all the lectures this winter. We must start from the two principles of all Spiritual Science, which we already touched upon in the very first of these lectures: The first is the realization that behind and beyond our world, which can be perceived by the senses and understood by the ordinary mind, there is another or even a series of other worlds, supersensible, superphysical worlds, as we have called them. The second realization is that these worlds, which exist outside our sensory, visible world, can gradually become accessible to human beings, so that it is possible for them to recognize them through their own development. Of course, Spiritual Science naturally provokes opposition from the outset from all those whom we have called in recent lectures the “we” people and the “one” people of the present. “We” people are those who, when talking about these things, most often use the words: ‘One’ cannot or “we” cannot know. This immediately establishes a kind of absolutism of knowledge, a kind of infallibility on the part of the speaker, who makes himself and what he can know the standard measure of all human knowledge. Spiritual science takes exactly the opposite point of view. It takes the view that human beings have abilities and powers of knowledge that lie dormant within them and can be developed higher and higher. It must be admitted that it is quite correct when someone says that they cannot perceive certain higher worlds. But at the same time it must be said that these higher worlds cannot be penetrated with the powers of cognition that they believe they have, and that logically no one has the right to say: My powers of cognition are the only ones that exist; what I perceive represents the limit of all possible knowledge. For in doing so, one rejects the capacity for human development and denies from the outset that human beings can ascend to higher and ever higher levels. However, the fundamental conviction of every person who views the world impartially is that human beings are capable of this, and especially within our German education system, it is easy to work one's way up to the recognition of this principle.

Goethe repeatedly expressed and emphasized in a wide variety of beautiful sentences and phrases that which forms the basis of a way of thinking that leads to initiation or initiation. Let us begin today's lecture with the words with which Goethe, in his deeply thoughtful fragment “The Secrets,” points to that inner human power that strives ever further and further, ever higher and higher, which is indeed constricted by what surrounds us, which is inhibited at every moment by what is imposed on us from outside, from all sides, as the sensual, as the inhibiting force, but which nevertheless has a means of attaining inner knowledge, knowledge of the world. Goethe says in this poem “The Secrets,” in which he speaks of a special initiation of the Rosicrucians and thus alludes to the principle of initiation in profound words:

For all power pushes forward into the vastness,
To live and work here and there;
But on every side, the stream of the world inhibits and constricts us,
And carries us away;
In this inner storm and outer strife,
The spirit hears a word that is difficult to understand:
From the power that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes themselves is freed.

It is entirely in Goethe's way of thinking to seek this power of the human being, which can be developed into higher powers of cognition, to seek ways and means to a truly objective wisdom of cognition that looks into the inner, that is, spiritual, nature of things. It is in his way of thinking, if we listen to him where he most intimately expresses his point of view on knowledge. There we find many references that clearly express this to us.

At the beginning of his Theory of Colors, this much-misunderstood work—the time has not yet come to understand this work of Goethe's, but perhaps in some time, when the perspectives I mentioned in my lecture “Natural Science at a Crossroads” come to fruition—Goethe says that the eye is formed “in the light for the light.” He says that it was an indifferent organ, not sensitive to light. Through light, it was called upon to become the organ that can now see light and perceive illuminated, light-filled objects. So, in Goethe's sense, we should think of what I have said in the sense of Spiritual Science: that in distant primeval times, human beings did not have eyes that could perceive light, that the eyes emerged from organs of a completely different nature. And what force brought about this transformation? Light itself! It conjured up the eye, which had become sensitive to light. And at the same time, Goethe suggests that there may be other, unknown and unrecognized abilities in human beings which, when developed, open up a new world, just as the eye, when it is brought forth, opens up the world of light and colors. And in no other sense do we speak in Spiritual Science of the higher, supersensible worlds.

It is precisely in the spirit of the saying of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great thinker, that we speak of such supersensible perceptions. Fichte says: If a single sighted person goes among people who are all blind and tells them about light and colors, they will probably consider him a fantasist. Likewise, what he, Fichte, had to say to his listeners at that time was only for an organ that had yet to emerge, and that — only at a higher level — could be compared to the organ of a person born blind, who before the operation had only known the world through touch, but afterwards saw it light up in colors and light. Thus, through the development of powers slumbering within human beings, it is possible to elicit abilities to perceive new forces and objects in the environment that can only be perceived by spiritual faculties. It is not in an illogical sense, but in this entirely logical sense that Spiritual Science speaks of higher worlds.

Those who doubt the existence of higher worlds are on the same level of judgment as those who are born blind and say: There is no world of light and colors because I cannot see it. No one can make a real judgment about possibility. But those who know can decide about reality. It is not those who know nothing about a thing who should decide about it, but only those who know something about it. Thus, in fact, only the principle of experience, of living through something, can decide about what is called initiation.

But does that mean it is unnecessary to talk about these things? No, it is not unnecessary, for in what sense does the one who communicates about such higher worlds speak? He speaks about them because he knows that purely through these communications, purely through this knowledge, the abilities and powers that lie dormant in all human beings can be awakened in order to truly penetrate these worlds. And those who resist receiving knowledge of these worlds are like those who once resisted participating in the development from the stage of human organization where no eyes had yet developed to the emergence of these organs with which humans can see the sun. They could also have said: Why should I allow something to develop so that I can recognize the sun and the light? Before that, he did not know the sun and light. Only through an external force that approaches us can the inner germ in human beings develop. Only when we can freely open our souls to the messages about the higher worlds do we receive the first impetus to develop the higher powers that ultimately make us seers, initiates.

The principle of initiation has been spoken of throughout all ages of human development. However, the relationship to public activity was different than it must be in our age. Whether we go back to the ancient Indian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman cultures, or whether we wander through the Middle Ages, through the 16th and 17th centuries to our own time, there have always been initiates and disciples of the initiates. Only, people did not speak about it publicly. Initiated! What was that? There is a difference between an initiate, a clairvoyant, and those who use higher powers in the service of the physical world. But we will not go into these finer distinctions today. A clairvoyant is someone who can see into the supersensible worlds, for whom the worlds that are hidden from ordinary people are open, perceptible worlds. Why was the introduction to such higher worlds carried out in secret, so to speak? Why was it not spoken of publicly in earlier times? Next time we will talk about the dangers of initiation. Today, we will only point out that a certain danger indeed lurks for human beings at the boundary between the sensory-visible world and the invisible-supersensible world, and that those who wish to become initiates must first overcome this danger. This danger consists in the fact that at the boundary between the physical and the superphysical world it is extremely difficult to distinguish illusion from reality, dreams from reality, vision from real perception. In this realm it is very easy to confuse the fantastical constructs of one's own soul with what is real, objective, and true. Various qualities, which will be discussed below, are required in order to maintain a cool head, peace of mind, courage, perseverance, and energy at the border, for if a person were to lose clarity about what is illusion and what is reality at this border, they would have lost their mind and would be a fool instead of an initiate.

Now, when most people hear about such things, they certainly feel an immense greed, a real rage to see something of the higher worlds. However, most people do not have the same perseverance and will, and above all, the strength to overcome everything that is necessary to eliminate the dangers that have been indicated. Therefore, it has always been necessary to first examine the people who have been admitted to initiation in terms of their intellect, their spiritual and moral abilities, and their feelings. Only those who could pass the test before the sure eye of the initiate could be admitted to initiation. These had to be people who, by virtue of their entire life situation, were able to truly submit to what enabled them to distinguish between appearance and truth, vision and reality at the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The question may now arise: Why, if they have been able to remain silent for so long, do those who know something about these things not remain silent today? Why is the principle of strict secrecy regarding initiation into the higher worlds not still practiced today? Why is it being broken? There is a good reason for this. Humanity is progressing. It is different in the various epochs of its development. And history is also much more diverse in its form and stages of development than the layman believes. Those who do not know these things imagine that people today are the same as they were centuries ago. Even those who have studied history and anthropology tacitly share this mental image. In fact, people from different centuries, who appear to be the same in terms of their external anatomy and physiology, differ greatly from one another. The differences do not usually lie in the gross aspects, and external anatomy and physiology know nothing about where they do lie. Humanity is progressing, and in our era we have arrived at a configuration of the human spirit and soul in which the knowledge of the secrets of the world, the insights, concepts, and ideas that lead us into the depths of things that were otherwise always preserved in the so-called secret schools, are needed for the common good and the progress of humanity.

The details will be presented in the following lectures. Today, we need only point out the enormous difference that has taken place in humanity over the course of a few centuries. We need only mention one thing that has had a profound impact on human development: the art of printing. Just think how people lived in terms of their souls and their spiritual education before the art of printing, how communication took place between those who knew something and those who wanted to learn something before books existed, and how today the communications of science and scholarship reach every soul through thousands upon thousands of aids, through popular writings and newspaper articles. And if you imagine this further, you will be able to picture that things look different in souls today, and you will not think that what lives in souls in terms of feelings, thoughts, and impulses has no influence on life as a whole. Those who believe that everything that is manifest is an imprint of the spiritual will say to themselves that people today have different physical and social needs than in times past. In the past, it was possible for individuals to know something about certain events, about truth and wisdom. Today, however, what was once the principle of initiation must be made accessible to everyone. Out of a sense of duty to humanity, the strict secrecy and seclusion of earlier times has been broken, so that today we not only speak about what can be said from the standpoint of spiritual research about the higher worlds, but also, in a certain way, at least in elements, about how human beings themselves can ascend to these worlds, how they can complete the first stages of initiation. From the outset, however, it must be pointed out that no one should believe that the principle of initiation is to be taken lightly and with little seriousness because today, basically, the first stages of initiation are accessible to everyone. These first stages, as you will hear, can be completed by anyone in any situation in life. But then higher and higher stages begin, up to what can truly be called an initiate in the true sense of the word.

It is my task first of all to characterize this concept. What is an initiate? If I assume that there are ever higher and higher worlds behind our sensory world, then an initiate would be someone who has insight into these higher worlds. The training for initiation consists of the person receiving the means and instructions on how to develop their spiritual eyes and ears in order to be able to see into this spiritual world, just as they see into the physical world with their physical organs.

Basically, all this is only preparation for the actual initiation. Those who become disciples of initiation receive certain instructions from their teacher on how to develop the abilities that lie dormant within them. All of this aims at a point that, in the highest sense of the word, leads people into a preliminary depth of the world, into a center from which the rays of world creation and world law emanate. Such a thing exists. This secret could even be expressed in words, and yet it is not expressed. Allow me to make this suggestion from the outset, for even if it sounds mysterious, anyone who thinks about it will find that even the way in which such a thing is expressed is very significant for the feeling one must acquire in order to understand the principle of initiation.

The student is prepared to receive the secret of the world, which could be expressed if it were permissible to do so. The initiate is the one who knows a certain secret that is of the utmost importance for human life. It is a secret because if it were spoken aloud in everyday life, it would seem foolish, crazy, absurd, paradoxical. Well, that would be the least of it. But there are other reasons why the one who could speak the secret is not allowed to do so. The reason is so profound that this secret, which forms the conclusion of certain stages of initiation, could not be wrested from anyone, absolutely anyone, who knows it, even if they were tortured. This is a secret that can never be wrested from them. For this secret is not passed from person to person by being communicated in words; rather, the essential thing is to bring the student to the point where, through the indicated development of his own abilities and powers, he comes to solve the riddle behind the matter from within himself, so that, as it were, the student stands before the teacher with that shining eye that announces: I have found it!

Training here means guidance toward self-discovery. A large part of what human beings must achieve in order to penetrate into the higher worlds lies precisely in that great and powerful feeling that takes hold in the soul when, after being led up to the higher abilities and stages of development, the soul awakens and feels as if it were newly born. It is like the feeling of a person born blind, who until then could only grope, and to whom light and color, brilliance and forms gradually appear out of the dark gloom after the operation. Only when this relationship exists between teacher and student is the relationship a healthy one. It is built on the highest thing that can exist between human beings: freedom. There must be a relationship in which there is nothing, absolutely nothing, of any unjustified influence on the part of the teacher, because everything that is to be developed is brought out of the student himself.

Having characterized in this way the mood that should prevail in the principle of initiation, let us go into a little more detail about what is called the development of the abilities that lie dormant in human beings. We will start with the obvious and move on to the more distant. Three abilities are already there for ordinary observation: thinking, feeling, and willing, thought, feeling, and will. That is what you find in the human soul. That is the level of the average human being. All three abilities are capable of development. First, thinking: even if it is developed to the finest and most intimate degree, thinking cannot take human beings beyond this physical world. Nevertheless, thinking is the first stage of development when it comes to going beyond the physical world. This is an apparent contradiction, but one that will soon be resolved. I will shortly speak about the principles of initiation that were common in the secret schools over the last few centuries and which today may be communicated to the public in their basic principles by those who know something about them.

The first thing the student must develop is thinking free of sensuality. What does thinking free of sensuality mean? When human beings observe the world around them through their senses, they form mental images of the world, ideas of the world, in their minds. These mental images and ideas make the world comprehensible to them. But none of this is thinking free of sensuality. Even though today's science, out of a certain inner weakness, often refuses to accept a different way of thinking, there is another way of thinking that has its source solely in the human inner being, in the human soul. However, very little is known to people today about the vast majority of this thinking free from the senses, and when something does reach them, they reject it and refuse to accept it.

For human beings can have thoughts not only based on the sensory world, on what they see and hear, smell and taste; they can also have thoughts that spring from an inner power that can never be stimulated by anything external. Even philosophers do not yet recognize this today. I can provide proof of this. A science that is not widely known to the public, mathematics, geometry, can provide it. No one can see a real circle in reality outside, no one can see outside what the law of nature tells them: 2 x 2 = 4. But through pure inner meditation, without counting beans, one can figure out that 2 x 2 = 4, or one can construct the circle through inner visualization, so that the circumference is always equidistant from the center. What did the great Plato write about his school? He said that no one could be admitted without knowledge of geometry. This did not mean that one had to know all of geometry, but that one had a corresponding sense for it. If we were to reproduce only the outer circle in terms of concepts, we would never be able to form a true circle. But we can form a circle in our minds and thus form the laws of the circle. So we must work out the circle from our own minds. This is what has been called non-sensory thinking in the secret schools. Mathematics is not popular, and yet it is the only non-sensory thinking that is practiced in our schools. Most people will laugh at you if you say that there are other concepts that can be found purely in the mind than those relating to space, numbers, and figures. People disregard and despise the philosophers and thinkers who have claimed that human beings can construct a system of ideas that is in harmony with the world.

The person who, within our German education and culture, has established such ideas free of sensuality for areas other than spatial structures in geometry is, once again, Goethe, and what Goethe has achieved with the type of plants, with the archetypal plant, and the type of animals, the archetypal animal, is a wonderful, tremendous achievement of the intellectual life of humanity. What are these ideas? Goethe himself seeks to clarify them in his own way. Many have written about them. But most of it is nonsense, because most people do not have the ability to understand how a spiritually constructed circle, whose laws we can understand, relates to the circle drawn on the blackboard, which is nothing more than a number of chalk particles. But this is how what Goethe calls the primordial plant relates to the plant that can be perceived externally and sensually. Outside are the various plants—so Goethe thought—one looks like this, the other like that. But within us lives an inner spiritual power through which we are able to find the concept of the primordial plant from our inner production. Botanists thought Goethe meant an imperfect plant. That's nonsense! He meant the spiritually perceived plant! That is what I have attempted to reconstruct in one of my books as this archetypal plant, just as one constructs the circle in the mind. Goethe's archetypal plant contains, if one is able to conjure up all its possibilities in the mind, all possible plants; his archetypal animal contains all possible animals. What Goethe created is a spiritual organic whole. It gives us the opportunity to create in the mind that which cannot appear to our senses. However, we are starting from a profound and significant spiritual fact. And Goethe proceeded from this fact, from which he was given what he found as the archetypal plant. For him, this was not a mere idea, but rather the creative force in all plants. For him, the archetypal animal was the creative force in every animal.

The conversation I often refer to, which Goethe and Schiller had about plants at the very beginning of their acquaintance, when they came from a lecture at the Natural History Society in Jena, has become famous. Schiller said that it was unsatisfactory to look at beings in such a way that one could not see their connection. Goethe replied that there could also be another way, where one could see the commonality, the spiritual bond that holds everything together. Goethe describes the conversation to us, and how he then took his pencil and sketched the image of his primordial plant with a few characteristic strokes. Then Schiller, the speculative poet, said: But that is not a fact, it is an idea, not reality. “Then,” said Goethe, “if that is an idea, I see the ideas outside with my eyes!” — The plant contains the life-giving force. Because of the deep insight that Goethe's spirit had into such a being, it was possible for his spirit to awaken that which creates in all animals and plants. There is a secret bond between the human interior and what is spread throughout the entire animal and plant world. When man conjures up the primordial plant within himself, he conjures up the form according to which plants were created. In this way, we feel ourselves to be spiritual participants in the productions of nature. For Goethe, it is a matter of immersing oneself in things and conjuring up the spirit that lives in things, in his spirit. This is what Goethe presents to human beings.

One can also try the same thing in higher realms. A German philosopher did so, not sufficiently, but in a fundamental and tremendously profound way that has not been understood. If an anecdote that is told were true, it would testify to this fact in its depth! The much-maligned Hegel is said to have said: “Only one person understood me, and even he misunderstood me.” Hegel attempted to create concepts free of sensuality that live in the human environment and in human history. Hegel's “Philosophy of History” has now been published in Reclam's Universal Library, in which he gives a broad overview of the entire history of the world. Much of it is not correct, much of it is unfortunately as one-sided as only Hegel could be one-sided, so that the book can only serve as inspiration. However, it will serve well in finding the principle. Hegel strove for non-sensual thinking, so that he lets everything appear in his own mind, which is the same mind that has guided humanity. Anyone who wants to do this needs a more intimate knowledge of the spirit of man and of peoples than Hegel could possess. Everything therefore appears abstract, gray, logical in a bad sense; but the things are witty and stimulating. And here one must say: what is wrong there can be of much more use to humanity than even so much that is right but trivial.

Just as one can think and create in mathematics without sensuality, as one can also do in history, so my “Philosophy of Freedom” is intended to provide a picture of the inner development of man with his entire cognitive capacity, as this can be grasped from thinking without sensuality. This is a book like an organism, where one sentence follows another, a book of self-propelled and self-contained thinking. In it, I have sought to show how human beings who wish to gradually move from sensuality into the supersensible must cultivate their thinking. Today, of course, there are easier means, namely those communicated by Spiritual Science. What we can read in the works of Spiritual Science about the various elements of the human being, about reincarnation and karma, life after death, the development of human races and cultures, and about which we will speak further, is something that you cannot see with your senses, but it is something that you can understand if you are open to human understanding. What Spiritual Science offers is non-sensory thinking, as was given in the secret schools of old, and as human beings must have before they can look into the spiritual worlds. To seek out what is in the spiritual worlds requires clairvoyance and initiation. But those who have in some way acquired the ability to communicate can build a bridge. Then everyone can convince themselves that things are true through comprehensive logical thinking and sound judgment. Seeking requires clairvoyance, but understanding higher wisdom requires only sound judgment and logic.

However, today many people are obsessed with more or less materialistic thinking or with that conceit of infallibility that stems from positivist science. This is pure fantasy. If only people knew that they are basically living under suggestion, that they do not know what is real and what is not real! They do not want to acknowledge the infallibility of the Pope, but they consider themselves infallible. Those who stand on the side of science are the most intolerant today. They regard the spiritual scientist as a fool, and themselves? Well, as infallible human beings! The world that is inaccessible to the senses can only be communicated through thinking that is free of sensuality. Therefore, the first training is the training of thinking, which makes it possible to develop thinking and lead to a real insight into the spiritual worlds.

The second is the training of feeling. No one should train feeling before they have brought non-sensual thinking to a certain level. Those who know what these higher worlds are like will tell you one thing: when you ascend to the higher worlds that lie above our physical world, you enter the astral world and then the spiritual or devachanic world. The impressions there are very different from what people who only know the physical world can imagine. Even though all experiences are different, one thing remains the same: logic, healthy thinking. The person who acquires healthy thinking, who is a reasonable person standing firmly on their own two feet, will not be able to go off the rails when they ascend into the worlds that lie beyond the physical world, which offer them surprise after surprise. Those who develop this thinking, which springs from the inner source of the soul and is certain of itself, have a reliable guide even beyond that boundary where it is difficult to distinguish between the physical and the superphysical. With sound thinking, one can cross the abyss that opens up there. If one sails without sound thinking and says: You give me only thoughts; but the power of a god lives within me, why should I not be able to ascend to the higher worlds? — I can only reply: Those who speak thus have no idea what it is like in the higher worlds, where we are not guided by the outer world, where we must have the guide within us if we are not to go astray.

The training of feeling takes place with the help of imagination in the school of the initiates. The student first creates a pictorial mental image of the world; then he must quietly contemplate his view of the world under Goethe's saying: “Everything transitory is only a parable.” I would like to show you, using an example I have given several times before, how to lead those who strive for spiritual development into the depths of things, how to teach them to train their feelings through imagination. If you want to grasp the development of beings with your thinking and remain stuck in thinking, you will never be able to take a proper step out of this sensory world. You can acquire all kinds of concepts about how subordinate beings develop higher and higher until they reach the human stage; you can even take the spiritual-scientific doctrine of evolution, how the Logos poured forth and formed ever more complex forms and worlds: plants, animals, humans and human kingdoms, how all differentiations came into being, evolutions and involutions, and so on. These are teachings that you will find in theosophical books, beautiful and interesting concepts. But you cannot enter the higher worlds in this way. You can form mental images that are analogies of higher worlds, but you can never enter these worlds with them. For that you need imagination. This is not something imagined. It is something that is brought forth with a productive force and does not merely take shape in concepts, so that these concepts, like Goethe's archetypal plant and archetypal animal, correspond to external realities; rather, images are formed that correspond to something much deeper, that correspond to the spirit that creates behind these things.

I would like to present in the form of a dialogue what has always been said to the students of occultism in such secret schools. I am telling you this to clarify the principle, the method of initiation. What I am expressing in a few words takes a long time to learn. The dialogue I describe never actually took place, but what it represents has always taken place in every spiritual school. The student is told: Look at the plant, which points its roots into the earth and lets its stem, leaves, and flowers grow upward, and compare it with the human being. You would be making a false comparison if you tried to compare the head with the flower and the foot with the root. As an aside, I would like to say that even the person who laid the foundations for modern science in such a magnificent way came to this view. He compares the root with the human head and sees the plant as the inverted human being and the human being as the inverted plant. The root is the head that the plant stretches toward the center of the earth, just as the human being can stretch his head, which he holds in the opposite direction, toward the sun or the celestial forces of the universe. The plant's reproductive organ, the flower, from which the seed for a new plant emerges, turns chastely toward the sunbeam, which in medieval secret schools is called “the holy lance of love,” which touches the ovary and, after fertilization, conjures up the new plant germ, which causes the plant to grow in that direction. Humans are exactly the opposite. They stretch their fertilizing organs toward the center of the earth, their heads out into space. In between, the student is told, is the animal, which makes a half-turn so that its spine is horizontal. Look at plants, animals, and humans, and you will understand Plato's statement that the world soul is nailed to the cross of the world. By world, Plato means plants, animals, and humans. The plant stands upright, opposite it is the human being, who turns his gaze with his head toward the free world ether, and the crossbeam is the animal. This is the archetype of the cross, which was known in ancient times and in all secret schools.

Now the following is said to the student: Imagine the plant in its pure, chaste substance. Man stands on a higher level than the plant. You can learn more about this from the lectures I have given in the past. The plant resembles a sleeping human being. As it stands before us, it has a physical body and an etheric body or life body. When a human being sleeps, only the physical body and the etheric or life body remain in bed. As a sleeper, the human being is actually outside the physical and etheric bodies. That which thinks and feels within him, experiences pleasure and pain, is switched off in the state of sleep. The plant therefore has a consciousness that we know as sleep consciousness and can also describe as such.

What does the development through the horizontal line to complete rotation mean? It means that the human being has attained his present bright daytime consciousness. By passing through the animals, the human being has become a being with bright daytime consciousness. In return, he has had to lose something else. Look at the plant: it is not permeated by the body of desire, by the astral body. The plant substance has a physical body and an etheric body. Man must pass through the animal and integrate instincts, desires, and passions. Man has risen higher by integrating the nature of desire into the plant body.

Now Spiritual Science presents him with a great ideal, a real ideal. This Spiritual Science shows man how he can gradually develop within himself the power that leads back to the purification and cleansing of the nature of desire, which leads him to a place where, while retaining his present state of consciousness, he will live again in the pure, chaste body at higher stages of development, at future stages of development, where he will have overcome what he necessarily had to take into himself during the transition to the higher stages. What the teacher presented to the student was a real ideal for the future: You will have the plant nature again! And he was given the means to attain it. He was told that all of humanity would one day return to this stage, where human beings would have developed pure spiritual power from within themselves. Then they would no longer be bound to their lustful nature, no longer holding a lustful organ of fertilization up to the spiritual ray of the sun. This organ, which humans will then have attained and which was presented as a real organ, even though it is a spiritual organ that will be held up to the spiritual sunbeam in the future, is called the Holy Grail in the initiation training.

And now consider the difference between the dry, abstract concepts presented to you in mathematics or idealistic writings, and this imagination, where we ascend through the animal to the human and again up to further future stages of humanity. When we place such a picture of the future before our soul, then, if we are capable of thinking, feeling, and sensing the spirit, we will accompany this imagination with our feelings and sensations. We will not only see this development in our minds, we will feel and sense it. The development in the universe will appear great and powerful to us when we grasp it in this way, not in abstract terms. In this way, the whole universe, with all its mysteries, was presented to the student of occultism. This engaged not only their thinking, but also their feelings and sensations. It was as if his whole soul went out and lived itself into everything around him. Just as Goethe's archetype creates something in us that lives in all plants and animals, so too, when our developed feelings lift us out of ourselves, it is as if we feel the world soul flowing as a force through all beings.

Thus, everything around the student became alive for him; it became imagination. Wherever he walked through fields and meadows, the images in his soul were at work. This unleashed an inner power in him, and he gradually began to see behind beings and things. When you hear it described like this, it seems almost unbelievable. When the student was guided by the teacher into the imaginative world, he was not only introduced to thinking, but also to the feelings and impulses that flowed from the soul of the creator of the world. He was introduced to a world of beings. And then it continues from the development of feeling to the development of will.

Just as feeling is developed through images, so will is developed through the signs of occult writing. This will is the deepest of the hidden powers. This will becomes like a skeleton, which the human being pushes out into the outer world through this will. If you remember the images from the Munich Congress, the columns and seals: these are there to train the will. You have reproduced this in the folder we have published as “Images of Occult Seals and Columns.” I would like to discuss the principle of these occult seals and columns and explain their significance for initiation. Each of the seals represents what you can find in the “Apocalypse” or the “Secret Revelation of John.” In this folder you will find symbols. Each sign has a powerful, stimulating effect on human beings. On the first seal you will find a human figure; its feet are like liquid brass, and a fiery sword comes out of its mouth. I will not describe anything else. Anyone who delves into this seal will see that it, in particular, through this contrast, gives them something wonderful. In the last lecture of this winter series on “Sun, Moon, and Stars,” we will hear that Spiritual Science also takes us back to states of the Earth when it was in a fiery, liquid state and that — in contrast to materialistic science — human beings already existed then. Spiritual science itself can address the objection that human beings could not live in a fiery, liquid state. Human beings themselves were formed from fiery liquid mass at that time. This beginning of the Earth is represented to us in the fiery liquid metal feet. A later future state is represented to us by the fiery sword that comes out of the mouth, which reappears in all myths. I can only hint at what this is about. You will see how Spiritual Science is deeply connected with the innermost core of the world.

When we speak today: How does communication take place when I speak to you? What I speak are first of all my thoughts. These take on sounds that cause the air to vibrate. This sets the air in motion in this hall. The vibrations of the air reach your ear, reach your soul, communicate with your soul. My words live here in this room in certain forms of vibration. If you could see them, you would see very specific vibrations when I say the word “soul.” Just as humans today are able to shape the air and bring what lives in their souls into being in vibrating air, so will they be able to shape organs. There are organs in humans that are at the beginning of their development and organs that are at the end. At the beginning of development are the human larynx and heart. I know that I am saying something monstrous for positive science, because these two are presented as mechanical devices, the heart as a pump. However, the theories of the heart and blood circulation will undergo significant changes in the not too distant future. It will be found that the circulation of blood originates from something quite different from the heart, and that the heart is only moved by the circulation of blood. When a person feels shame, they blush. This is an influence of the blood. In the future, the heart will be a voluntary muscle, and it is preparing to become a voluntary muscle.

There is something here that will literally shape the future of human beings externally and physically. For ordinary anatomy and physics, the heart is a crux. It has the configuration of a voluntary muscle, while today it is not yet a voluntary muscle. A voluntary muscle has striated muscle fibers. The heart has such striated fibers, although it is not yet voluntary. However, it is on its way to becoming a voluntary muscle.

The larynx will also have a different function in the future. It will be the reproductive organ of humans. The larynx, which today produces words of the soul, will later take on the task of reproduction. The principle of fire is speech, and the principle of fire in speech will be a creative principle; hence the sword in the mouth. This sword of fire is intimately related to the forces of the world. When human beings immerse themselves in its image, it strengthens their willpower. All this can only be said in this way. Those who do so will experience it. They will then not only sense, think, and feel, but penetrate into things with their willpower. This is the path through occult scripture.

It is therefore possible to specify quite concretely how thinking, feeling, and willing should be developed. Once the powers slumbering within human beings have been awakened, thinking, feeling, and willing become very specific organs, those organs that are today called the eyes of God, the eyes of the spirit. They become the spiritual eyes that show us the world of flowing spiritual light and its colors, and the spiritual forces behind our physical world. The trained powers of will become the spiritual ears, of which Goethe, who was deeply initiated into these things, also speaks:

The sun resounds in the old way
In brotherly spheres, singing in competition,
And completes its prescribed journey
With a thunderous roar.

And Goethe remains in the right image. When one is introduced to the higher spiritual world, one is introduced through the ear. When one enters the spiritual realm, one immediately hears: “The new day is already being born, resounding for spiritual ears.” To those who believe they understand and know Goethe, but who say that this is nonsense and need an explanation that cannot be expected of the poet, the answer is: No, one cannot expect a poet like Goethe to write nonsense: “The sun sounds...” is only nonsense if one applies it to the physical world.

So we have seen that the principle of initiation is based on bringing out certain powers that lie dormant within the human being, so that these powers lead the human being into the spiritual world that surrounds him. What is it that brings these powers out of the human being? We must explain this in accordance with Goethe's thinking. Once upon a time, there was a sensory organ, an indifferent organ in his sensory body, which was flooded with light. The light turned it into an eye, so that man could see the colors and shapes around him through his eyes. This is how the eye came into being. Unknown and unrecognized organs, which people do not want to acknowledge, lie dormant within man. But there are other worlds around us besides the world of light and colors. Just as the blind man's eye was awakened to see, so in clairvoyance and clairaudience the spiritual ears and eyes are developed so that man can look into the surrounding spiritual world.

Today, man has attained self-consciousness within himself. They have become capable of relating everything to themselves. But by developing their spiritual eyes and ears, by following the principle of initiation, they dive back into the outer world. They find their higher self in this world. We must not say that we find the divine and spiritual within ourselves. That is an incorrect expression. “Know thyself!” is an old saying. But we must understand it in the same way that the old Adam knew his wife. He fertilized her. It is the same with the organs. Fertilize yourself, let yourself be fertilized by the world. — So what man should achieve is the development of the powers that lie dormant within him... What Goethe says is true:

Were not the eye sun-like,
it could never behold the sun;
were not God's own power within us,
how could the divine delight us!

Certainly, the power of the sun lies within us, and the eye does not create the divine being, does not create the sun, but sees it after it has been created itself.

This is the way we can develop higher powers and penetrate ever deeper into the world. Then the outer world no longer appears to us as something that inhibits and restricts us, but as something that presents us with true, genuine, and spiritual reality. Then harmony is created with the power that wants to move forward and ever forward. Harmony is created between human beings and the world. In this way, we overcome the lower self that looks out into the sensual world. We attain the higher self, the higher ego of the human being, which is spread throughout the entire universe. This is what Goethe means when he alludes to the principle of initiation in his poem “Die Geheimnisse” (The Secrets) with the words with which we would like to conclude, and which show how, through self-transcendence, the human being flows out and flows into the feeling that streams through the world, into the spirituality of the world, into the will of the world spirits pulsating through the world:

For all power pushes forward into the vastness,
To live and work here and there;
On the other hand, the stream of the world constricts and inhibits us on all sides
And carries us away with it;
In this inner storm and outer strife
The spirit hears a word that is difficult to understand:
From the force that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes themselves is freed.