VII. Whitsuntide Lecture

What life must bring forth and what the future requires is that people should begin to look upon the spiritual as a reality. What is alone known to man today as “spirit”? On the whole, nothing but a mass of abstract concepts. Man acquires a mass of abstract concepts, such as are characterized by the fact that they can be quite well received up to the 27th year. But besides the fact that we live here on the Earth between birth and death and have at first a sprouting and budding life, then with our 28th year stand still in our development and then begin our descending life, we have also a real concrete spirituality, which changes just as the exterior man changes, but undergoes a reverse process to that of the outer man. The outer man grows old and wrinkled; but his etheric body, his formative-forces body, it becomes ever younger; only man does not trouble himself today about this formative-forces body which grows younger in old age. Men go about with bald heads and gray hair and do not know that they have a body of formative forces, which has a sprouting and budding life just when they begin to get gray, and which only then can give them certain things which could not be given earlier. Certainly this depends upon the character of the times. But the times in this respect need a reversal. Times need a change of ideas. One thing which must especially be brought about by the change is that thoughts should become more forceful and healthy and not cling to what only comes from outside; otherwise we shall become frightfully one-sided in all spheres. What we must do is to penetrate reality with our thoughts in all spheres. We cannot understand the historical life of man unless we are able to bring inner wisdom to bear on what is considered externally as wisdom. For various reasons connected with the schism, with the rent which is going on in human evolution, we have ceased to understand much that is great and which has still been found in an atavistic way. In many domains men today believe themselves to be original.