CAN SUPERSENSIBLE FACTS BE PROVEN? by Hermann Poppelbaum

JOHN KEATS: FORERUNNER OF A NEW AGE byMargaretMahle

THE SPIRIT IN RUDOLF STEINER’S MYSTERY DRAMAS by Hans Pusch

IN THE HIGH ALPS byHenry B. Monges

STUDY-NOTES ON A CYCLE OF LECTURES BY RUDOLF STEINER byGeorgeO'Neil

As well as articles by Frederick Heckel and Gilbert Church. Poem by Christy Barnes, an Orphic hymn, and a poem and little myth by Albert Steffen.

NUMBER 11 SPRING, 1970 There slumber in every human being faculties by means which he himself can acquire knowledge of higher worlds.

Rudolf Steiner Can Supersensible Facts Be Proven?

HERMANN POPPELBAUM

The remarkable success that our century has witnessed in all fields of science, theoretical and applied, has often betrayed us into optimistic dreams of progress. Recently, however, the use of the atom bomb, deadly pesticides, etc., has raised such moral questions that many of those who previously believed in an automatic improvement of culture through science have been seized by a profound scepticism and now put their hopes in a return to a pre-scientific past. Whether we share such hopes or not, we must admit that the reputation of science, even of human knowledge itself, is at stake. We have come to a crisis of confidence in scientific pursuits. Even those who do not doubt must realize that the road forward will be blocked if human knowledge is curtailed and hemmed in as it has been in recent centuries. Unfortunately, they do not see how one could try to extend its limits without inviting disaster. Only a small minority venture to speak of an extension of knowledge beyond its traditional limits. They regard this possibility as having been opened up by Rudolf Steiner in the development of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy and they are therefore necessarily interested in finding what justification there is for the claim of Anthroposophy to be a legitimate and safe extension of knowledge into the realm of supersensible facts. They realize, of course, that any description of alleged supersensible facts must meet the rigorous standards for knowledge that have been set up for our age. This leads at once to the problem of proof. The mere claim that anyone has “experienced” supersensible facts cannot satisfy a conscientious seeker. Are not, he will say,

1 hallucinations experienced, too? What guarantee is there that the so-called spiritual investigator is not under a constant illusion that has grown in him into an elaborate and coherent system? Nor can the intensity with which a supersensible impression “comes” be called upon as a support. It speaks against rather than in favor of its validity, since everybody knows that the danger with all illusions is that they are so obviously “there” — for those who have them. Can, then, supersensible facts be proven? For the sake of fairness to the seeker this question must find a straightforward answer.

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Let us first find out what is regarded as a proof in the common sense of the word. The man in the street calls proof any evidence that is brought before the bodily senses and recognized as an integral part of the thing to be proven, as a broken safe and its missing contents are “proof” of an act of burglary. It is usually not realized, however, that the evidence itself can only be assessed by thinking. A broken safe found in the morning in an office is not seen as evidence of burglary with the eyes of the body but only as the result of piecing together a whole situation. Even in common things the conclusiveness of a proof appears only to one who is ready to do some thinking. It is similar with scientific proofs. They never lie in an object or process perceived, but in the context in which the object or process has its place. This must by no means be overlooked. A long road must be traversed before an experimental contrivance for a proof in natural science can be built and put to use. After the apparatus is set up, we tend to overlook the fact that its parts reflect the thought-operations that have led to its construction. Yet only thinking can tell us how far such an apparatus can serve for producing evidence. Take the following example. A twisted tapering tube of newspaper, with a short piece of glass tubing tied to it at the narrow end, is inserted obliquely into the clamp of a laboratory stand. For those who know a

2 little chemistry, it is reasonable to say that this modest apparatus duplicates the essentials of a gas factory. Ignite the lower end of the paper tube, and the rising vapors escape from the glass tube above, where they can be kindled. It all seems very clear for those who understand it. But mere looking at the apparatus does not tell us that this is a gas factory on a small and simplified scale. It certainly looks totally unlike a factory. Only an analysis of the conditions obtaining in both can reveal what they have in common and why the one is a duplication of the other in spite of the lack of any resemblance. The apparatus can “prove” that the dry distillation of wood-substance produces combustible gas, but no simpleton can ever see it. Thinking is required. Take an example from modern chemistry. The investigations of Henry Moseley about the kinship of chemical elements and their arrangement in an ascending scale of atomic numbers (the so-called periodic system) were carried out with an instrument enabling one to measure the defraction of cathode rays. One can hardly overlook the enormous work that had to be done, long before Moseley, to make this method possible. When the instrument is used, however, the only thing to which attention is paid is the angle at which the rays are bent; various angles correspond to various elements. All the rest is inference drawn from the logic already incorporated in the setting. It is only in the context of this setting that the reading of a given angle of defraction makes sense and allows one to arrive at far-reaching conclusions. No person who has not understood the complicated thoughts embodied in the visible set-up and its applications can have any idea of how the conclusions are arrived at, and he remains literally unable to subscribe to these conclusions. By no art of persuasion can he be convinced. The conclusions are for him just so many words, and the whole enterprise may even appear to him as a fake. There is no such thing as “sensory evidence” for scientific truth. The proof never becomes visible to outer eyes. It remains an operation in the sanctum of the scientific mind. To take an example from modern biology, let us consider

3 how Mendel’s law of segregation is arrived at. True, there are visible objects involved in the experiment, namely the individual plants with their different characteristics such as red or white flowers. The procedure consists in counting the individuals that bear one of the two traits through several generations produced by crossbreeding. The results are expressed as percentages of the progeny. A number of assumptions have to be made as part of the argument. The outcome of the experiments is recorded through several seasons. The conclusions are drawn from the interpretation of the records. Thus they are “proven”. Everybody who can follow the argument can also see how far the proof is conclusive. This is frankly admitted, but the reverse is often overlooked: namely, that nobody who does not see the argument through to its end can possibly regard the proof as actually established. The obviousness of the proof, to say it once more, is to be found in the connecting thought-operations, which must not contain any gap or jump and must be invulnerable to various lurking fallacies. Otherwise the proof does not “stand” criticism. It must lead also to further inferences to be tested by simila r mental operations. In short, the findings, although they can and must be cross-checked, are found by thinking and not by sense-observation. This does not in the least belittle the validity of scientific proofs. On the contrary it points out the region in which their conclusiveness must necessarily be sought. For in popular ideas about science the region of confirmation is very often clouded, and semi-scientific, so-called popular presentations are often especially guilty of vagueness in this respect. They have nourished the common fallacy that sense-evidence “underlies” statements of science. In passing from the accepted sciences to the science of supersensible findings, it will be well to keep in mind the character of the evidence that is justly considered as proof. The claim of this science of supersensible facts (Anthroposophy) is that it makes spiritual facts available in the same sense that the

4 accepted sciences make their facts available. We can easily see that, whatever the content of supersensible observations may be, conclusions can be based upon them only if they are checked by the logical thought-operations that connect one observation with the other. We must pass from one observation to the next by thinking, just as we do in common science. The evidence is contained in the obviousness of the transitions we make as — while the process of linking-up goes on — a wealth of observations (supersensible perceptions) is brought into a closely-knit web of logical links. Be it understood, however, that logic alone could never bring about the perceptions; there must be no speculation, no mere guessing. The perceptions stand on their own feet just as sensible perceptions do. Observations, for instance, of the experience that the soul goes through in sleep may stand before the seeker just as abruptly and challengingly to begin with as do the outer characteristics of a chemical process. They demand to be understood just as well as the latter. Unless they are penetrated by thinking they do not yet tell their story, just as little as do disconnected observations concerning the melting point and boiling point of a substance. It is left to our thinking to find the concept that connects them and to seek the relationship to other facts independently observed. Thus, it appears to spiritual research that the “sleep experience” consists in a review of the deeds and omissions of the previous day, and further that this review anticipates an experience of the soul after death. The latter experience must, however, first be independently found before it can be tied up with the sleeping experience, which was observed by itself without as yet casting about for resemblances. The resemblance, its quality and degree, and also the differences, appear to the thinker only after surveying his observational results. Just like an ordinary thinking observer, the spiritual investigator has to find how far this resemblance goes. He is “struck” by this resemblance, no matter whether he or another person has made the observation. This is why Rudolf Steiner, stressed that a supersensible investigator, besides using his

5 clairvoyant faculties, must always have his own thinking self as a judge of truth beside him. Only as a thinker can he ascertain how far his various observations make sense. He can not accept any supersensible observation at its face value. He must try to make this observation repeatedly, under varying circumstances, from different starting points. He must “cross-check” it with others in order to validate it. The beginner in the study of such facts, attracted by their novelty and surprising character, may care little what trouble it took the first discoverer to make them safe against fallacies, which beset this way of research no less than they endanger ordinary scientific results. But in progressing with his study, the pupil will grow conscious of the infinite care that had to be taken before the results were brought before him as definite statements. His own thought is challenged just as was the judgment of the original discoverer. He needs no belief because his own thinking is called upon.(note l) The following-up of supersensible data recorded and presented in the context given in anthroposophic publications requires the thinking cooperation of the student. He is not only allowed, but factually required, to see whether the describer “talks sense”. What he could never do were he faced with an isolated observation, he can and even must do when he examines the context of the multiple data arrayed before him. He must get an independent and genuine impression of how they support one another. This does not mean that he will find no contradictions among the facts recorded. If it were so, if he found them merely agreeing with one another, he would have cause for suspicion. Every student of philosophy knows that the most unsound systems have boasted of their inner coherence. It was the error of Rationalism that mere coherence was taken to be proof of the validity of a thought-out system. The crystal clarity of a

1-Compare the article on “The Will to Believe and the Duty to Know” in the author’s Man’s Eternal Biography — Adonis Press. New York.

6 rationalistic thought-web is no proof of its real value, but only of the cleverness of him who has woven it. Anthroposophical facts, on the contrary, may often appear to contradict each other when first found. They are not made up from “principles” but independently observed, and thus it remains to be seen how they can tie up. It is with them as it is with observations of the same object in physical space from various angles. Rudolf Steiner often warns his readers of apparent inconsistencies, which might at first sight shock them and raise doubts as to whether two statements are both true. Entering into the statements more carefully, the student, can find them to be supplementary just as are two photographs of the same tree taken from opposite directions. And just as two photographs, when compared and attributed to their respective points of direction, give a fuller picture than one, so two anthroposophic descriptions, by means of their seemingly contradictory nature, evoke in the student a fuller impression of supersensible reality as soon as he “puts them together”. Complete descriptions are “all-around” descriptions in the supersensible as in the sensible field. Having thus gained an insight into the role of thinking in the coordination of supersensible facts, the student may feel ready to take another step, namely to realize that in supersensible research the polarity of observation and thinking is modified in a peculiar way. Their contrast is not as sharp as we might theoretically expect. When describing the way in which the perceptual organs for spirit-observations grow and mature, Rudolf Steiner found himself compelled to say that it is from the faculty of thinking that they draw their powers. The first stage of supersensible vision at least may be called a transformed thought-activity. Thinking, which in ordinary conditions is only applied to observations made by the senses, becomes, as it develops, an organ of sight quite by itself. Ordinary thinking is used to link and separate sensible observations; abstract thinking grasps their relationships, and even links up several relationships with each other. As the independent (body-free) ability of thinking further matures (through exercises designed for the

7 purpose 2) it becomes of itself able to behold facts of a supersensible nature. The sound judgment must nevertheless, as we mentioned before, remain unimpaired and therefore able to manipulate and coordinate the facts that the transformed thinking begins to supply. In this sense, observation and thinking still remain as two separate faculties applied in closest cooperation. Thinking itself, on the way of higher development, provides the light that makes facts visible as it is directed on them. The seer, after perception, does with the object grasped just as does the thinker with a sense-object: he judges it and places it into a reasonable context. In this context, the supersensible facts can be made understandable to anyone who is interested in them. He needs no seership to make them his own. He can make them his convictions and, within reasonable limits, expound them to others just as every student can with facts of the usual scientific order. In this ability to “convey” spiritual facts to the listener or reader in such a manner that he can convince himself of their reasonability lies the difference between a mere clairvoyant and spiritual investigator. It is evident that only the latter has an orderly scientific method that lays his findings open to later corroboration, correction, or replacement by better ones. The mere clairvoyant must demand belief because he cannot convince.

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There is, however, also an indirect way in which spiritual findings can be put to the test. This is especially the case where they bear upon a field in which there are also findings gained by the standard methods of natural science. Rudolf Steiner provided innumerable opportunities for verification by deliberately bringing his results to such concreteness that they come within reach of current experimental procedures. He

2-Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophic Press, New York. welcomed such a critical approach as wholesome, for it is a step beyond barren theoretical scepticism. It is clear that theoretical objections vanish as soon as the practical experiment has positive results. In this case the tables are turned; the one who undertakes to experiment scientifically with spiritual data and finds that they “work” is at once himself tested for his readiness to give up previous opposition. This kind of testing cuts both ways. The scientific, medical, and agricultural lectures of Rudolf Steiner teem with concrete data, that may so challenge a conscientious investigator that he will want to test their possibilities. Not always does he need complicated apparatus; in some cases he can go to work as soon as he can get the objects together in a suitable arrangement. Let us take an example from the field of agriculture and gardening. The suggestions of Rudolf Steiner concerning improved and refined fertilizing methods (summarized now under the name of “Biodynamics”) have earned a good reputation since they were first made in 1924. A number of preparations of extremely high dilution can be manufactured from certain common plants, which were studied by Rudolf Steiner by means of spiritual scientific methods. He indicated which of them, when sprayed on the soil or on certain fodder plants, would further the growth of roots or improve the foliage or seeds. He made his statements without himself trying them out, but right from the first these sprays proved singularly effective. The predicted effects appeared and could be established beyond doubt by careful comparison with untreated plants under identical conditions, and by weighing and analysing the ashes. The plants had undergone definite changes under the impact of the sprays in spite of the minute amounts applied. The procedures that produced the sprays were devised entirely out of direct spiritual insight into the plants’ formative secrets. No speculation could ever have yielded suggestions of such concreteness, nor could any person unfamiliar with the spiritual aspects of plant-chemistry have anticipated that such odd and novel methods would produce any results at all. The tests were made on a small scale and then on larger plots,

9 with all the necessary precautions; they were countertested in control-experiments and repeated under varied conditions; in short, they were conducted in the same way as any scientists would test a “working hypothesis”. The results bore out the expectations and yielded a wealth of findings not contained in the original suggestion. So the testing experiments did not only prove what the spiritual investigator had said about the forces working in plant and soil, but added useful knowledge about dosage, time of application, influence of climate, and the like. A substantial contribution was thus made to the practical handling of soil and plants. We remind the reader that this was only one example chosen to show how spiritual-scientific data, besides being dealt with in their own proper sphere, can also be put to test where their consequences extend into the sphere of accepted experimental methods. This is what we called above the indirect proof of the validity of data that have been gained in a way that often meets with stubborn scepticism today. The broadening experience of courageous practical workers must gradually wear down the resistance of habitual prejudice; and it has already gone a long way towards doing this. The fact that a whole school of medical knowledge and practice developed from the lectures of Rudolf Steiner to physicians3 is another example of how spiritual facts can be put to a practical test. Such testing, needless to say, is independent of the physician’s knowledge, or even approval, of the way in which the original spiritual discoveries were made. If, for instance, he finds a description of a relationship between processes in the kidney system and in the brain (as can be found in one of the lectures), he can set to work with it as a hypothesis. The image of the counterpart-character of both processes is in his mind, but the physiological details pointing toward it are found independently of this image. As he finds

3 - Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science and Medicine. Twenty lectures to doctors, 1920: Geisteswissenschaftliche Gesichtspunkte zur Therapie, Nine Lectures, 1921: Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine, 1922.

10 ever more single facts and adds to these still others as he proceeds to therapeutic measures in accordance with them, his own picture of the polarity in question grows richer. By and by he can say that he now has a sensible-supersensible picture of a basic spiritual fact. The same will happen with other facts, all of which can thus be “substantiated” and are no longer to be called hypothetical. Gradually, through a deliberate empirical attitude, the status of these facts is so altered that they make part of the physician’s knowledge. They are now really his own. This is a striking example of how Anthroposophy brings about a transformation of our rigid traditional conceptions. Even the concept of a proof is affected. It is no longer a merely logical operation applied to perceptions in a neutral fashion. The proof is no longer superadded to the facts, but it is already implicit in the way by which the facts are sought.4 The old type of super added proof can still be applied to propositions in the inorganic realm. The new type of proof is suited to all problems of an organic nature. A proof of this kind does not lose in conclusiveness. It is in fact the only way to do justice to living interrelations such as are studied in biology, physiology, and psychology and handled practically in agriculture and medicine. Let there be no misunderstanding. We have not given here an introduction to a spiritual-scientific medicine and agriculture. The reader will have to find his own way into both fields if he is interested in them. We have only taken our examples from these fields, examples intended to show what kind of proof can be called adequate in them. We realize that by sheer force of habit the demands for the “superadded proofs” to spiritual- scientific statements will continue to be raised. Nevertheless it is time to show that it is mere habit and not the innate necessity of the subjects which raises these demands. It must also be understood that the step from the “superadded proof” to the “proof embodied in the search for facts” is not a retreat from a rigorous standard of testing to

4 - Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science, an Outline.

11 something less demanding. It would be most unfortunate if we felt we had to apologize for not living up to accepted standards. We are not failing to comply with a justified demand, but are asserting that the new type of proof here described is the one that does justice to the peculiar field for which it is designed. The step does not yield ground, but proceeds from a questionable adequacy to a more obvious one. The proving procedure, to repeat it once more, is transferred from outside to within, since it works already in the search for facts. It operates in conjunction with the perceptual activity. In the accepted sciences, thinking must control research or else the findings may be wrong; in supersensible science thinking must become itself an organ of search or else nothing valuable will be discovered at all. But anything that is discovered in this way bears clues indicating to which other facts it belongs. Indeed, facts of the supersensible order need not be tied artificially to others but join them quite spontaneously like letters magically arranging themselves to form words. The phenomena, by their natural relationships, begin to express themselves as to the underlying more general fact (law) almost without the interference of the seeker, who merely observes how they strive towards each other. He attends, as it were, a meeting of the single phenomena; they communicate their law to him. And he can put this into human language. It was this that Goethe experienced many times and that enabled him to find the famous formula: “Do not seek anything hidden behind the phenomena; they in themselves are the theory.” One could, with little change, adapt this sentence so that it expresses the new form of spiritual validation: “Do not add any proof to the phenomena from outside; your path of search for their context contains in itself the proof.”

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It remains to be said that the most comprehensive testing of spiritual truth lies in its insertion into the course of actual human life. To carry a spiritual truth with us and to find how it progressively validates itself in experience is the most realistic corroboration. “Truth is what works" — this sentence must not

12 be understood in a short-sighted manner, as if it meant that each contention is true that produces cheap success or gives a merely personal satisfaction. Nothing can be farther than such narrow pragmatism from the self-validation that is a gradual and even painful process for which the human soul is the stage of action. Not the subjective approval of a statement is here the point, because this would only lead to self-satisfaction; and such self-satisfaction is only a “shabby indulgence”, as Nietzsche said. Man loses his dignity by thus trivialising his standard. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” — this may hold good on the pudding-level, but Truth requires another measure than that of “feeling good” after accepting a part of it. We cannot judge it by whether or not it “agrees” with us.5 A final possibility for verifying a spiritual-scientific description is one that must be left entirely to the free decision of the seeker. It is the possibility of traveling the path of supersensible knowledge. We have shown above that the student has a number of other criteria from which to judge. So the contention, often made, that he who wants to convince himself of spirit-facts must become a spiritual investigator himself, is obviously at variance with the true situation. Indeed, if every seeker had to become an investigator, we would not need a spiritual science at all. For, just as in ordinary science, the benefit of its existence is for the many, while the original work of discovery has to be carried out by a minority. But for those who want to try for themselves, detailed advice as to how to proceed is given in spiritual-scientific writings and lectures. In fact, each of the major works of Rudolf Steiner contains a chapter on the “Path of Knowledge”. Furthermore, the ‘School for Spiritual Science’ in Dornach, Switzerland, provides an objective course of training under conditions similar to those used in current science for the purpose of avoiding amateurish dabbling. We need not here point out the stages of the education for such spiritual-scientific research because these

5 See- also: “The Will to Believe and the Duty to Know” in the author’s Man’s Eternal Biography.

13 are described sufficiently in anthroposophic literature.6 What matters here is that the mere examination of the methods — without using them — leads to an insight into their reasonability. And thus again Anthroposophy has something in common with the accepted practice of ordinary science, namely that the publicity of the methods used permits the critic to see “how it is done”, even if he is not ready or able to “do it” himself. Everybody who studies science can see how a telescope or a microscope is built and used, and thus without doing any research work himself he can gain a justified confidence in the reasonableness of using such instruments. What would become of astronomy if every student wanted, or was expected, to postpone the learning until he could do research work himself? And would not all the labors of astronomers throughout the centuries have been in vain if every one had to begin at the beginning? It is no different with the spiritual facts presented by Anthroposophy. They are there to work with, no matter whether the student ever reaches the point where he can add to them. That he does not require belief has been pointed out above. And the safeguard will always be present if he is ready to put his thinking into operation and allows his intelligent experience to broaden and deepen. Anthroposophical truths appeal to a healthy unprejudiced judgment. They have nothing to fear from such a court of appeal. They are handed to mankind in full confidence, which is the basis of Rudolf Steiner’s memorable words: “Let people scrutinize what we do and test what we say. The more carefully they examine, the more confident shall we feel.”

6-Particularly in Theosophy, Occult Science, an Outline, and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.

14 John Keats: Forerunner o f a New Age

MARGARET MAHLE

In the Age of Romanticism in England some poets and artists separated themselves from the Classical tradition which had become frustrated by materialism and moved toward an individual freedom in thinking. John Keats was one of these poets, who, far outreaching the boundaries of his age, pointed with poetic insight to the dawning of a new spiritual consciousness. It is impressive what tremendous effort Keats made to metamorphose what rested in him as a gift, a living memory of the spirit-world, into an acquired consciousness. But why did he feel a need to outstep this gift of poetic imagination which was blossoming in other poets and artists in their praises of Beauty? Without deviating from the rarity of his perception or becoming influenced by conventional trends of thinking, one realizes, in following his thoughts, how his search for a philosophy is directly connected with an energetic impulse to face himself as if from outside. It was this astonishing dual experiencing of himself which eventually led Keats to the revelation of a threefold capacity in man. Precisely because of being awakened to man’s dichotomous position on earth by his confrontation with death, Keats felt a need to reach beyond its limitations toward a new empiricism whereby one might sustain the concept of freedom in the face of any opposition, even death. Thus John Keats becomes increasingly relevant to the emancipated thinking possible today. Early in his youth, Keats was eager to tell about a spiritual world whose memory was living in his imagination. Wanting to express through poetry some of the thoughts concerning the

15 relationship of that world to his earthly life, he began writing, impatient with the general attitude of his age which disregarded its reality. “Is there so small a range In the present strength of manhood, that the high Imagination cannot freely fly As she was wont of old?

Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism Nurtured by foppery and barbarism Made great Apollo blush for this his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand His glories: with a puling infant’s force They sway’d about upon a rocking-horse And thought it Pegasus . . . Beauty was awake! Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead To things ye knew not of . . . . ” John Keats was just five feet tall with large blue eyes and auburn hair and a “countenance of singular beauty and brightness. It had an expression as if it had been looking on some glorious sight.” Already in 1816, at the age of twenty-one, he had written: “O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in Poesy, so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed.” Two years later, in a letter to friend he had written: “I am ambitious of doing the world some good.” In this struggle to fit his soul’s “deed” into an earthly service, he faced life’s circumstances with probing and came to certain moral insights: that he must be able to associate the fleeting, transitory aspects of daily happenings with their eternal values and that this association implied a transforming of the human energy ordinarily extended in its flux of joy and sorrow, into a

16 determined moral activity to transcend finite values. This became a conscious effort to transpose into thinking what his Imagination had already perceived as Truth. Living out courageously the drama of a human being who is both “earth-born and sky engendered,” he observed his identity critically and developed a real comprehension of man’s spiritual capacity to overcome hindrances and transform his temporal nature. Is this not each human being’s potential? Look for a moment at the bleak chronology of Keats’ life:

Born October 2, 1795 Father dies 1804, Keats 9 years old Mother dies 1810, Keats 15 years old Grandmother dies 1814, Keats 19 years old Brother dies 1816, Keats 21 years old Keats dies 1821, almost 26 years old. It is significant how life’s external circumstances emphasized the principle of death in so short a span of time, but how, in following the development of his poetry, Keats’ inner life, with its continuing memory of the Spirit, emphasized the principle of Beauty. It was the conscious experiencing of this conflict which awakened him to a deeper perception of human destiny and in a few years made it possible for him to transform the spiritual fervor of his soul into moral courage, thus identifying his Imagination of Beauty with man’s destiny on earth. Ever responsive to the metamorphic processes of life and death, he once wrote: “The intensest pleasure he had received in life was in watching the growth of flowers” and that his mind was ever “startled by the leap of buds into ripe flowers.” Whereas his own personal circumstances were constantly confronted by its dying forces so that he became increasingly aware of death as an equally vital power and early asked, “Can Death be sleep when life is but a dream?”, he knew that, just as millions of seeds never come to fruition, so many human earthly potentials are frustrated because of an unforeseen element seeming to bear in upon them, disallowing completion. Contemplating the mystery of these thousands of ‘deaths’, the

17 interrupted portions of life, he searched for a higher promise and found himself face to face with the fact that it was precisely ‘Death’ which allowed renewing life and that indeed only with ‘Death’ came life’s highest consummation. With this imagination of nature’s rhythmic cycle of life and death, he arrived at a concept of the metamorphic forces potential in man, a “dying into life”, as he called it. This “yeast”, “to make us feel existence and to know how quiet death is,” became an intimate experience, permeating all his thinking, outstepping the traditional concept of a polaric view of man’s life between a birth and death span into intimations of a timeless rhythm-of- the-spirit. It was this sensitivity to the metamorphic processes of life which brought him gradually to an understanding of man’s threefold nature. This development of Keats’ thinking is apparent in his poetry. In an early major poem, “Endymion”, written in 1817 when his mind was still crowded with imaginations, born out of a living memory of the spirit world, he admonished, “descend!” “He ne’er is crowned With immortality, who fears to follow Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow, The silent mysteries of earth, descend!” But in a later major poem, “Hyperion”, 1818-19, after life had brought him into direct contact with many aspects of death, he said:

“If thou canst not ascend these steps, die On that marble where thou art.

Thou has felt What ‘tis to die and live again before Thy fated hour ...” He pointed to an activity of the soul which transcends a materialistic boundary of consciousness. However, it did not come without its monitor of pain and suffering.

18 “None can usurp this height ... But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest. All else who find a haven in the world Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days If by a chance into this fane they come, Rot on the pavement . . . ” Intimating the high mission of calamity in this world but also pointing to a potential self-development, he acknowledged the spiritual being of man. “Call the world,” he wrote in 1819, “a place of soul-making. Soul as distinguished from an intelligence ... it is a system of spirit-creation, affected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other ... these three materials are the Intelligence, the human heart and the world or elemental space suited for the proper action of mind and heart on each other and for the purpose of forming the soul or intelligence destined to possess the sense of identity ... I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive, and yet I think I perceive it ... ” Then, interrupting his major poem, he wrote two tales relating the poignant experiencing of the unfulfilled. These are his great poems in honor of man’s human sorrow, the passing away of his cherished earthly love and how it — “Like a moon in wane, Faded before him, cowered, nor could restrain Her fearful sobs, self-folding, like a flower That faints into itself at evening hour ...” However, it is not so much the pain of a loss, but what the experience of such a loss leads into, which directed his attention. Perhaps in no more penetrating light has anyone related this tender weighing of the human heart in balance with the sensitive vision of the mind. “Lamia” and the “Eve of St.

19 Agnes” are the stories of the unfinished in life, the mortal, but told in such a way that one is infused with a feeling for a new aspect of death, than that of finality generally implied. Not only the darkness of it is evident, but the unseen light behind the shadow, that counterpart which rests expectant through the dedicated worship of a potential ideal in the temple of man’s soul. In July, 1819, he wrote in a letter to a friend: “I have of late been moulting: not for fresh feathers and wings, they are gone, and in their stead I hope to have a pair of patient sublunary legs. I have altered, not from a Chrysalis into a butterfly, but the contrary; having two little loopholes whence I may look out into the stage of the world ...” “Lamia” is the story of this first “Chrysalis” experience. The contrast of his imagination with his reasoning mind, which was seeking a foundation on “patient sublunary legs,” impressed him painfully. “ . . . Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust; Love in a palace is perhaps at last More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast: — That is a doubtful tale from faeryland Hard for the non-elect to understand.”

He pictured the intellectual materialistic philosophy of the day against that imagination out of which he sensed a new way of thinking would have to be born.

“ . . . Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings, Conquer all mystery by rule and line,

20 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine — Unweave a rainbow ...” So Keats wrote “Lamia” and the “Eve of St. Agnes” out of a nostalgia for the eternal existing in the mortal, passing delights of the finite. Just as deeply and truly as he experienced the high imagination of Beauty, so deeply and truly did he experience its fragile, fragmentary counterpart on earth. He was indeed becoming the “Miserable and mighty poet of the human heart.” But gradually from this “Chrysalis” state of closed intimacies of the individual experience, he pressed toward a thinking which freed him from such boundaries, pressed outward through “two loopholes” of Ego-consciousness. Is this not everyone’s task today? But only in picturing the relationship of a human being to his destiny on the earth as being a potentially creative one, able to develop in the midst of a polarity of birth and death, can one appreciate Keats’ thinking at this time of his life. Out of a living memory of the spirit, through imagination, he announced his principle of Beauty in all things. But more than that, he realized that in his own thinking he was meeting a power which was awakening him to act on the earth in the face of its dilemma. This became his truth. In nature, he already recognized a Beauty which was spontaneously Truth. But as a human being, with the calamities of ordinary life, including death, Beauty and Truth seemed separated by a boundless gulf. That gulf could be bridged only by what he termed this “dying into Life.” In a long journal letter to his brother and sister-in-law, April, 1819, he explored his thinking on the subjects of life and death and the possibility for human development. Having been reading Voltaire, he described vividly the materialistic picture of man’s life on earth and its bitter dichotomy and asked, “Who could in such a case bear with death?” With poetic logic, he continued: “The nature of the world will not admit of it ... The common cognomen of this world among the misguided

21 and the superstitious is a ‘vale of tears’, from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to heaven — What a little circumscribed straightened notion!” Instead, he continued: “Call the world if you please ‘the vale of soul-making.’ Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature, admitting it to be immortal, which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it). I say ‘Soul-making’ — He described what he felt might be a creative interpretation of human life whereby one’s freedom to develop is maintained and thus one’s confrontation with death resolved. A year earlier in a letter to a friend, Reynolds, May 1818, he had written of a striving toward a concept of life which did not “offend the human being.” “I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut to me — The first we step into, we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think — We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle within us — we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However, among the affects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one’s vision into the heart and nature of man — of

22 convincing one’s nerves that the world is full of misery and heart-break, pain, sickness and oppression — whereby this Chamber of Maiden-thought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open — but all dark — all leading to dark passages — We see not the balance of good and evil — we are in a mist — We are now in that state. We feel the ‘burden of the Mystery’.” Later, in the same letter he added: “ ... but I know — the truth is there is something real in the world. Your Third Chamber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one — stored with the wine of love and the bread of friendship.”

Thus one meets, through Keats’ moral Imagination, a sacrament whereby man, his own priest, lifts his earthly relationships from the secular into the sacred. Indeed, it is not possible to enter into the development of Keats’ mind without connecting it with what must be known as being the Christ-Impulse, the impulse toward man’s free development of his spirit-being. From such a source Keats sought a new philosophy, a thinking which would not separate man from daily life, but become rather a science of service in its midst. “I find there is not worthy pursuit but doing some good for the world — some do it with their society — some with their wit — some with their benevolence — some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good-humor on all they meet — and in a thousand ways, all dutiful to the command of great Nature — there is but one way for me. The road lies thru application, study and thought. — I will pursue it; and for that end, purpose retiring for some years. I have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious and a love for philosophy, — were I calculated for the former, I should be glad. But as I am not, I shall turn all my soul to the latter.”

23 It is at this point that Keats outsteps the limitations of pure Romanticism and moves into new dimensions of thinking, identifying himself, as poet, with all mankind. “ . . . Who alive can say ‘Thou are not Poet — may’st not tell thy dream?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions . . . ” Then he finished the introductory passage to the first Canto with a remarkable emphasis on the physical hand: “Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.” To what authority was Keats pointing? And why was it important to designate such an authority in order to substantiate his “dream”? But before naming an authority or coming to this unique drama in the realm of poetry, first it is important to continue through “Hyperion, A Vision”, which, in the form of an allegory, originated from a deep yearning for a knowledge of man’s wholeness. “ . . . And Appetite, More yearning than on earth I ever felt, Growing within me, I ate deliciously.” Keats pictured this yearning for the spirit in the form of a mortal’s appetite; just as Homer described the feasts of the gods in the “Iliad” as being pictures of man’s appetite for spiritual nourishment. “And after not long, thirsted: for thereby Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice Sipped by the wandered bee, the which I took And pledging all the mortals of the world, And all the dead whose names are in our lips, Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme.” And so, through allegory, begins a description of an inner

24 experience wherein the superficialities of physical life are slowly purged. “ ... ‘If thou canst not ascend These steps, die on that marble where thou art. Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust, Will parch for lack of nutriment; thy bones Will wither in few years, and vanish so That not the quickest eye could find a grain Of what thou now art on that pavement cold. The sands of thy short life are spent this hour And no hand in the universe can turn Thy hour glass, if these gummed leaves be burnt Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps,’ I heard, I looked . . . ”

Then, with effort through physical terminology, Keats described an inner sense-freeing experience. “ ... I strove hard to escape The numbness, strove to gain the lowest step. Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold Grew stifling, suffocating at the heart; And when I clasped my hands I felt them not. One minute before death my iced foot touched The lowest stair; and as it touched, life seemed To pour in at the toes; I mounted up As once fair angels on a ladder flew From the green turf to heaven.” Three years earlier, presaging this later, conscious experience described in “Hyperion”, Keats had written with youthful and innate enthusiasm from a memory-consciousness. “I stood tiptoe upon a little hill ...... I was light hearted And many pleasures to my vision started . . . ” ending with a questioning: “Was there a Poet born? — But now no more

25 My wandering spirit must no further soar.” What a tremendous maturity of self-consciousness is evidenced in those brief intervening three years! Again, in “Hyperion”, the voice of the inner self:

“ ... ‘Thou hast felt What ‘tis to die and live again before Thy fated hour’ . . . ” adding, out of the deepening message of his mind: “ ‘None can usurp this height,’ returned that shade ‘But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest. All else, who find a haven in the world, Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days, If by a chance into this fane they come, Rot on the pavement where thou rottest half.’ Through this conflict, there developed an appraisal of the nature of poetry and the responsibility Keats felt in becoming a poet. Already in 1817 he had written to Leigh Hunt: “I have asked myself why I should be a poet more than other men.” In 1818 he had written to Taylor some definitions of poetry: “In poetry I have a few axioms and you will see how far I am from their centre. 1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. 2nd. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think

26 what poetry should be, than to write it — and this leads me to another axiom — that if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. . . ” In 1819, during the revision of “Hyperion”, he wrote to his friend, Reynolds: “I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing the top thing in the world.”

To continue with “Hyperion”, Keats pictured what he was experiencing of spiritual insight through his own conscious efforts in thinking, rather than out of his memory-consciousness. “Then saw I a wan face Not pined by human sorrows, but bright-blanched By an immortal sickness which kills not: It works a constant change, which happy death Can put no end to; deathwards progressing To no death was that visage; it had past The lily and the snow; and beyond these I must not think now ... tho’ I saw that face.” What more weighty description of the Self has poetry expressed, when the every-day intellect gives way to a larger participation and thinking rises into Imagination?

“I saw that face.” and the seeing becomes an inner experience. What Keats had expressed in his concept of the identity of Beauty and Truth in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was now being experienced in his own soul. It was the experience of a new ‘Death’, a metamorphic one, which sorrow and pain had ushered in. “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced,” he wrote in a long letter to his brother and sister-in-law at this time and included the thought-provoking sonnet, “Why Did I Laugh Tonight.”

27 “I did not intend to send you the following sonnet, but look over the last two pages and ask yourselves whether I have not that in me which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment on my sonnet; it will show you that it was written with no agony but that of ignorance; with no thirst of anything but that of knowledge when pushed to the point, though the first steps to it were thru my human passions — they went away and I wrote with my mind — and perhaps I must confess a little bit of my heart.”

In this sonnet about a need for ‘death’ in order to pass beyond the sleep of mere earth sensuality, toward a “knowledge when pushed to the point”, in this sonnet rings out the strong announcement of the Self.

“Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell; No God, no Demon of severe response Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell; Then to my human heart I turn at once. Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone; I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain! O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan, To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease, My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; Yet would I on this very midnight cease, And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds; Verse, Fame and Beauty are intense indeed, But Death intenser — Death is life’s high meed.” Is Keats not passing into a new “chamber” of consciousness compared to that of his earlier memory-picture of life and death? In 1816 he had painted the youthful, unquestioning and beautiful portrait of eternity in a sonnet:

“As from the darkening gloom a silver dove Upsoars and darts into the eastern light,

28 On pinions that naught moves but pure delight, So fled thy soul into the realms above Regions of peace and everlasting love; Where happy spirits, crown’d with circlets bright Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight Taste the high joy none but the blest can prove. There thou orjoinest the immortal quire In melodies that even heaven fair Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire, Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air On holy message sent — what pleasure’s higher? Wherefore does any grief our joy impair?” But there had followed grief and there were questions. In the later provocative sonnet he placed himself in the midst of life’s poles of birth and death, more than ever conscious of his mortality and the mystery related to it and turned forcefully from a concept of ultimate death to a new ‘death’ which is needed by life, rather than poised only as its negator or opposite. In other words, death had become metamorphic. So in the revised “Hyperion”, his mind was pressing toward this new “dying into life” faculty and moved closer and closer to an experiential enlightenment. “Deathwards progressing — to no death — It had passed the lily and the snow — ” But meanwhile, with his medical knowledge, he was not deceived about his illness. A year prior to his physical death at the time of a serious hemorrhage, he had said: “I know the color of that blood — that drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.” Thus the revised poem began with a direct emphasis on this new-found authority, ‘Death’. “ Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave A paradise for a sect ... Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.”

29 Why does Death become the authority for his poetic vision? Why did he not hope to have his dream acknowledged while he was still on earth? But had he not written the poem “pledging all the mortals of the world and all the dead whose names are in our lips,” intimating that only a living communion between man on earth and man in the spiritual world might acclaim his dream as truth? This Intuition is indeed that very substance of his poetry which remains a constant inspiration to man. But if it is to become an actual deed, it remains for man to confirm it. He indicates something of the disposition of soul to be attained for such an experience, intimating how on earth one needs to become as familiar with the spiritual as one is ordinarily familiar with the physical world.

“ ... Whereon there grew A power within me of enormous ken To see as a god sees, and take the depth Of things as nimbly as the outward eye Can size or shape pervade.” With difficulty Keats continued, wanting to declare out of his own conscious efforts the same exultancy he had so singingly declared out of an inherent memory-consciousness. Rudolf Steiner wrote of him: “His whole life was a yearning to be at one with the everlasting forms ... Allegory was his favorite form, into which he poured his deep sense of nature and he reached therein a perfection of plastic force which can hardly be matched by anything else . . . “

But he became more and more weary and less hopeful of his earthly destiny. With beautiful gentleness, he writes to his beloved of the unfulfilled aspect of mortal life.

“According to all appearances I am to be separated from you as much as possible. How I shall be able to bear it, or whether it will not be worse than your presence now and then, I cannot tell. I must be

30 patient, and in the meantime, you must think of it as little as possible. Let me not longer detain you from going to town — there may be no end to this emprisoning of you ... You know our situation — what hope is there if I should be recovered ever so soon — my very health will not suffer me to make any great exertion. I am recommended not even to read poetry, much less write it. I wish I have even a little hope. I cannot say forget me — but I would mention that there are impossibilities in the world . . . ” Is this not already an out-reaching hand? He is not able to promise an earthly paradise for what he knows can only be a spiritual attainment and so he brings one to the very gateway of that inner experience. “ ... Ye may read who can unwearied pass Onward from the antechamber of this dream. Where, even at the open doors awhile I must delay, and glean my memory Of her high phrase — perhaps no further dare.” Out of himself as man he is not able to speak. Rather one pictures him waiting patiently for a new birth of consciousness which he only briefly intimates: “Now in clear light I stood Relieved from the dusk vale . . . ” One feels he would have us enter into a larger vista of perception, but that he was dissatisfied with his ability to identify his experience with any general philosophy for mankind, even his poetic sense of allegory failed him here and so he ended the poem abruptly: “Anon rushed by the bright Hyperion His flaming robes streamed out beyond his heels, And gave a roar as if of earthly fire, That scared away the meek ethereal hours, And made their dove-wings tremble. — On he flared.”

31 There is pictured the unmistakable dilemma in which Keats found himself in an age which had not yet acknowledged spiritual evolution. Only in the inimitable Odes is the purity of his affiliation with the spirit revealed as crystal-clearly as spring water: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone; . . . ” Dissatisfied with “Hyperion”, he puts it again aside. “I have given up “Hyperion” — there were too many Miltonic inversions in it. Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or rather, artist’s humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations.” One concludes how hesitant Keats was to use familiar poetics to set forth what his own life was unfolding with intense pain. But like the Old Testament story of Jacob and the Angel, he did not dicard what he had been grappling with so long, before it ‘bless’ him. His hand had touched the presence of death and felt its stamp of transiency on all earthly things. Still, through a loving relationship to life’s totality, he would testify to the eternal reality revealed to him in the hidden mystery of its infinite parts, transcending their separate deaths. He had gone beyond the “lily and the snow”, life’s straight line of birth and death, and experienced its rhythm-of-the-spirit. During the last weeks of his life he turned away from contact with the outer world, did not read nor write letters and must have spoken very little about his thoughts as he continued living what he called his “posthumous” existence. The silence of the last months of earthly life is like the silence of winter when deep within the frozen earth rest the seeds being nourished toward germination in the Spring. But he must have thought much through the long lonely hours of illness, pressing into seed-form the fruits of his thinking, climaxing an effort to

32 interpret into mortal’s meaning what he experienced of the spirit. As he had written earlier: “They do not know me, not even my most intimate acquaintance,” so, at this time, not even his faithful nurse, Severn, knew his thinking nor could follow his inspiration, because he had not experienced a “dying into life” and could not know of its inner life-activity. However, some of his best friends were aware of a quality of character which betokened such development. One wrote how he had a “rare quality of purifying himself” and another of his gentle patience. As death stood by his side, Keats’ own words to console his friend were: ... “don’t be afraid — I’ll die quietly — thank God it has come . . . ” But during the last months of his “posthumous existence”, stepping outside his dying physical body, he had written seven lines, culminating Nature’s creed of “Beauty is Truth; Truth, Beauty”, in an intuition of man’s emerging triumph over death. It is these seven lines which now reach across the Threshold and become a message to him who would bear its truth. However, the message is not in the form of a thought, because there was no such thinking possible then, rather it is a gesture. “This living hand, now warm, now capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again And thou be conscience-calm’d — see, here it is — I hold it towards you.” Of all the many descriptions in his poetry of the physical hand, sometimes transmuted into “wings”, this last dramatic moral imagination presses with special emphasis into the heart and mind of each individual who meets it. In the relationship of mortal to immortal, of subject blending with object, in new identity, there remains each one’s free deed: that one’s potential of poetic consciousness become indeed awakened in order to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the “heard” into the “spirit

33 ditties of no tone” and thus become as familiar with the spirit as one is familiar with the physical. So Keats reaches his hand across the threshold of death to him who, with his heart’s blood, would bear witness to the eternal. “See — here it is — I hold it towards you — ” There it is — his message, wrapped in the form of the physical hand, outstretched to him who would reach and grasp it, and grasping, let the flow of recognition rejuvenate the forgotten spirit by awakening a new and living relationship between man and the Spirit-world.

All enwalled in leaden waters, weighted with weariness, I sink, sucked down through vortexes of blackness, doomed and awed, into the ocean-hold of sleep’s eclipse. And there where battered, bruised and broken I am hurled, flung up on infinite star-shining shores, Oh there, may I be dismembered and re-kneaded, undone, unclasped, outpoured and re-created, all re-molded in steep light-shafts and thunder of fiery laws — remade — and in death’s music: poetry, restored.

Christy Barnes

34 The Spirit in Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas II.

HANS PUSCH

The new meanings which Rudolf Steiner gave to the words, body, soul and spirit, were described in the preceding article. (note 1) The soul is the mediator between the physical and spiritual worlds. The more it turns toward the influence of the spirit, the stronger become its forces to grow above its lower nature. The impact of spirit on man’s inner life is a dramatic one, in so far as it leads through trials to a new awareness, a higher consciousness, an awakening of the higher self. Another dramatic element which evolves from Rudolf Steiner’s style in his writings and lectures has already been referred to. The reader or listener is challenged to active questioning and probing. As a playwright, Rudolf Steiner lifts these dramatic elements into a purely artistic sphere. He does not attempt to stage anthroposophical theories, but rather brings the workings of spirit on human souls to visible life. He did not have to invent a plot. The idea for the first play, The Portal of Initiation, came very early to him. He gave to the maturing a long interval. It was in 1882, when he was 21 years old, that he read for the first time The Conversations of German Emigrants by Goethe. These Conversations end unexpectedly with a fairy tale, the “Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. Its special place in literature has been recently recognized by a new translation by Alice Raphael under the title: “The Parable”, published by Harcourt, Brace & World,

Note 1Note -Journal for Anthroposophy, Number 9, Spring, 1969.

35 1961. A commentary stresses its importance and brings it under the scrutiny of modem psychoanalysis. The Tale has puzzled many minds since its publication in 1795. Although Goethe himself collected a whole series of interpretations, he never offered any explanatory remarks. Rudolf Steiner, even at 21, realized immediately its esoteric significance, for its images speak of the reality of that supersensible world which had been perceptible to him from early childhood. The Tale heralds a time when the spirit will be made manifest again to the whole of humanity. The subterranean temple rises to the surface and is visible to all men. Many are the wanderers who cross the bridge to its open sanctuary. Rudolf Steiner realized that this prophecy was soon to be fulfilled. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he came to the decision that it was his task to inaugurate the science of the spirit of Anthroposophy. The inspirational source of Goethe’s Tale played a decisive part at the beginning of the anthroposophical movement. When Goethe sent the manuscript of “The Tale” to his friend Schiller in whose magazine, Die Horen, the preceding parts of the Conversations of German Emigrants had been printed, he accompanied it with a note:

“How serious every small detail becomes when one treats it artistically has been my experience again this time. I hope the eighteen dramatic figures (Figuren dieses Dramatis) will be welcome, as so many riddles, to those who love riddles.” I After the first reading, Rudolf Steiner saw in these figures characters adaptable to modern times. Twenty-eight years later, in 1910, he began preliminary studies to the final script of The Portal of Initiation which was to be completed and performed almost immediately in Munich. We are fortunate in having access to these first sketches; they were published recently, in an enlarged edition, in Entwuerfe, Fragmente und Paralipomena zu den vier Mysteriendramen, Verlag der Rudolf Steiner- Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, 1969.

36 Before we look into the workshop of the playwright, a few words should be said about the composition of the Convers­ ations of German Emigrants, of which the Tale forms a surprising finale. There is a Boccaccio-like framework. During the French Revolution, several German landowners had to flee from their estates to the other side of the Rhine, where they tried to sit out the crisis. We meet a widow with her grown-up daughter and son, a young cousin, a retired clergyman attached to the family as an old friend and adviser, and, among other friends and relatives, an elderly aristocratic couple. The cousin, a rebellious Hotspur, who soon clashes with the views of the aristocrat, loses his self-control during a political dispute and expresses in no uncertain terms his wish to see a few heads rolling also in Germany. Taking this remark as unmistakably directed to him, the older gentleman removes himself and his family speedily from the company. The remaining group feels deeply embarrassed about the situation; this results in some frank and upsetting conversations. The young daughter shows a sharp, critical mind which she turns against the clergyman. On reading it today, one gets the impression of a modem situation: youth versus establishment. The cousin is in an apologetic, conciliatory mood. The mother finally makes a suggestion which is received with enthusiasm: to come together in a more peaceful fashion and listen to stories which will carry them away from the present problems into a more general concern about human affairs. The old clergyman has accumulated many kinds of tales and tells one after the other with a definite aim in mind. They are all concerned with man’s attitude to various seemingly inexplainable phenomena and to the unexpected changes and blows of destiny through which man gradually learns to master his own desires and actions. In one of the stories, we find this put into words: “Error and hope are no longer needed when we become acquainted with the good and powerful I that dwells within us so silently and quietly. Until it gains

37 control over us, it calls its presence to our attention incessantly through gentle reminders.”

When his listeners complain that the stories remind them of their own situation and therefore have a disquieting effect, the old clergyman promises for the next evening something quite different: “a fairy tale which will remind you of nothing and of everything.” It is the “Tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. To see these people sitting together in a mood of homelessness and despair, longing to hear something that will lift their minds and spirits away from the turmoil of the present situation and carry them into spheres of peace and growing harmony; to imagine how the pictures of the fairy tale sink into some of their minds as a language that contains the mystery of “everything”, whereas others will find “nothing” in them — do we not experience the same situation in mood and attitude of those who form the audience of a performance of the Mystery Dramas by Rudolf Steiner? It is the longing for a knowledge of the workings of true spirit forces within the soul which brings them together. It depends on everyone’s stage of inner maturity if what is seen and heard will become “everything” or remain “nothing”. It was Rudolf Steiner’s intention to transform the gently- drawn figures and events of the Tale into living characters of the 20th century and into dramatic happenings resulting from a modem approach to the supersensible worlds. As the manifold sketches which preceded the final script of the first play show, the task was not an easy one. Many speeches and short scenes were discarded before the completed composition of The Portal of Initiation could be presented for its first performance on August 15, 1910, in Munich, in a rented theatre. The dramatic interest is focused on Johannes Thomasius, the artist. We witness his first experiences in the elemental, soul, and spirit world. It is a sequence of imaginations which assemble many of the scenes of the Tale. An artist is especially predestined to enter the world of images. It is therefore quite in

38 character that Johannes during his meditations encounters figures similar to those of the Tale, and yet related to those he knows in ordinary life. This is staged in Dornach and elsewhere in such a way that Johannes sits in meditation on the far side of the stage while the actions unfold behind a gauze curtain. We see the Ferryman with the Will o’ the Wisps in the figure of the Spirit of the Elements meeting on the stage the souls of Capesius and Strader. With them appears the Other Maria, the counterpart of the Green Snake. We witness the events in the subterranean Temple with its Four Kings, and again the Other Maria; in Felix Baelde we recognize the Old Man with the Lamp. In the following scene, the payment demanded by the Ferryman from the Woman with the basket is transformed into the request for a fairy tale from Felicia Baelde. The spirit of the Earth-Brain (the Giant) reacts to it by trying to copy her. Everything that speaks to us in the Tale through its gently flowing imagery comes now to expression in a dramatic form based on the formative forces of speech. The quality of speech sounds, the rhythmical value of various verse feet, iambic, trochee, anapest, etc. become the very instrument on which the dramatic action plays. One is reminded of the metres and rhythms of the early Greek tragedies which originated in the ancient mystery centers. Modem initiation wisdom has to revive these formative forces of the spoken word in order to create a new dramatic style, able to express the workings of genuine spirit in the souls and lives of men today. Goethe speaks of eighteen figures in his letter to Schiller. Besides the sixteen more or less human shapes, he takes into account two bird figures: the hawk and the canary. Both become human characters in the play. In Theodora, the seeress, we recognize the hawk, and in the child reared by Maria, the canary. It is interesting that Rudolf Steiner used at first in his dramatization the names of the Tale: Youth, Lily, Golden King, Will‘o’the Wisps, Old Woman and Hawk. We notice that these seven become the characters listed only with their names without any special characterization:

39 JOHANNES THOMASIUS MARIA BENEDICTUS PROFESSOR CAPESIUS DOCTOR STRADER DAME BALDE THEODORA. The remaining eleven characters carry in parenthesis a special description; they reveal themselves during the action as carriers of unique ‘archetypes’, Through spiritual science this riddle can be solved. The most advanced individualities of our age have detached themselves from any adherence to the part of the cosmos or spirit world from which they descended for a new incarnation on earth. They have to be judged on their own merits. The majority of present humanity, however, un­ consciously bring with them an attachment to various forces with which they were connected during their journey through the spirit world before birth. The list of characters mentions, therefore different associations or ‘archetypes’:

THEODOSIUS as carrier of The Spirit of Love; ROMANUS as carrier of The Spirit of Strength in Action; GAIRMANUS as carrier of The Spirit of the Earth Brain; PHILIA, ASTRID as carriers of The Soul Forces of Maria; LUNA FELIX BAELDE as carrier of The Spirit of Nature; THE OTHER MARIA as carrier of The Soul of Love; A CHILD as carrier of A Young Soul.

Of Retardus and The Spirit of the Elements it is said they appear “as spirits only”. Besides these eighteen characters, based on the figures of the Tale, two significant spirit beings have been added: Lucifer and Ahriman. In the person of Helena who appears only in the first scene, Johannes Thomasius recognizes a power at work which reveals itself to him as Lucifer. Ahriman is described as to be “thought as active only as soul.” — Not

40 belonging to the drama itself are Sophia with her two children, and Estella whom we meet in the Prelude and Interlude. That the leading persons appear from the outset unconnected with any particular cosmic background, that they can present their individual character clearly in their earthly incarnation, is the sign of our age and its relationship to the spirit. But whereas in the mystery plays this detachment leads to an independent approach to the spirit, our modern civilization in its denial of the reality of spirit does not offer to such a self-reliant attitude any challenge or direction. In an atmosphere deserted of spirit, man steps into an unknown world. The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ bears witness to it. Man deprived of any purpose, of any content of soul and mind, facing a meaningless course of life, feels himself naked and isolated, waiting for something that seems never to happen: this has been depicted, for example in Becket’s Waiting for Godot. Only through the recognition of the spirit’s working within man’s soul does the seeming nothingness change into the ‘everything’, though this change may appear abrupt and radical. Do we not usually find our way gradually towards the realities of life by asking ‘what does it mean?’ what is it good for?’ ‘how does it work?’ But there is one sphere of life where these questions are irrelevant, where even conversations take on a different value; there we do not listen in order to reach the ‘I see what you mean’, but we listen for listening’s sake. That is the sphere of the artistic, in the sphere of stage and drama as well as music. The enjoyment of the presentation makes us forget our cogitating. We are much more deeply involved in what we hear and see. Our heartbeats may become faster, our breathing lighter, — with our whole being we are caught up, feeling a tingle down into our toes. It is a rare moment of joy and enchantment, even when the words and lines remain obscure. We don’t mind, because within this world of so-called make-believe we feel the deeper streams of life revealing much more than the fleeting moment of sense-impressions can ever convey to us. We do not mind being left in the dark as to meaning and conceptual understanding. This kind of being left in the dark liberates us from any pressure to reach a certain

41 finality. We know that there is more to it than the average mind can grasp. The enjoyment is the greater when the presentation has that easy and seemingly effortless flow which good artists are able to create. In this artistic sphere a sensitive mind and soul finds the ‘everything’. In the case of the mystery dramas it is obvious that this kind of enjoyment springs only from an awareness of the reality of spirit forces, be it through the innate longing for the supersensible or through a study of spirit science. It is a gradual awakening within the soul which brings these plays closer and closer to oneself. And yet, there comes the moment when a crisis sets in, in so far as a full understanding becomes more and more a necessity. One can compare this with the attempt to penetrate the dark in order to orient oneself. In one of the scenes of the Fourth Play, The Souls’ Awakening, Strader characterizes this critical moment: what he hears from his friends “hides dark meaning in clear words.” A good many listeners arrive at this crucial stage and may turn away from the plays, irritated by the experience of darkness which cannot be enlightened by just asking, ‘tell me what it means’. Because no one can tell it in so many words. It has to grow on you, just as darkness and music do when approached in the right mood. A passage from an autobiography by the Russian writer and poet, Konstantin Paustovsky, gives a telling account of such a situation. In Years o f Hope he describes the troublesome time of 1920-21, after the revolution. Arriving by boat in Sebastopol towards evening, the passengers were warned by the captain to stay on board until morning. In the night the city was not safe; one risked being shot at or arrested. But Paustovsky could not resist tempting fate. The darkness that had descended seemed to draw him into its circle. He describes his attitude: “I had no fear ... Coolly and calmly I reminded myself how to behave in the dark — move silently, by stealth, hugging the walls, careful not to give myself away by so much as a sigh. The night was my cover. The only dangers (but they were mortal) were either a

42 betraying sound — a cough, shuffle, a wheezing breath, the crackle of a leaf underfoot — or actually stumbling into someone in the dark ... Warned by my sixth or my twelfth sense — whatever it was I possessed it — I knew that a few steps away a man stood listening ... It occurred to me that man is more noisy than we usually think. Even the movement of turning one’s head and still more one’s whole torso, makes a sound which is sometimes plainly audible.” This sensitivity of an artistic person can be compared with the growing inner awareness of someone who is going through esoteric training. The exercises and guidelines in the Knowledge o f Higher Worlds and its Attainm ent lead to similar experiences of complete silence, courage and tranquility which Paustovsky relates to his ‘twelfth’ sense. Spiritual science calls the twelfth of our senses the sense of the ego of the other person. With this heightened perception we stand already at the threshold of extrasensory observation. We become aware of the workings of the spirit in man’s soul. What was before shrouded in darkness becomes ‘wesenhaft’, i.e. takes on the shape of being. It dawns on us that the world around us and within us brings us in relationship with beings not visible to the physical eye or audible to physical ears. It is the dawn of a new day, which unfolds before us in the mystery dramas in events enacted in the supersensible realms of soul and spirit. As the plays lead up to the fourth one, The Souls’ Awakening, so we ourselves are moving towards an awakening. What seemed first so remote, becomes more and more a familiar stage of actions. What the words first seemed to hide becomes action in itself. The ‘dark meanings’ are actually deeds which progress and evolve. A performance of a whole mystery drama takes place during a full day. The length of each play makes it necessary to start in the morning and run, with a midday intermission, into the late afternoon. Usually we prefer the evening for artistic events, but in this case the full-awakened day-consciousness is challenged to enter the enhanced world of imagery in word and action,

43 displayed on the stage, It is a unique and festive mood in which the audience receives it. It is a most rewarding experience, a true Festival of the Spirit.

To A Rose

I see myself in you, and you in me. As I the snake have been, so you the flower. We both partook earth’s food in Eden’s bower, In you ate God! A beast still fed in me.

The earth grew holy ground for you alone. You rooted deep, you willed to hold her near; While I could only yearn and famish here. I search the spheres for that which is my own.

You overcame all death with color’s raying And suck the clay, eternal life thus gaining. I ever come again to earth returning; —

For ah! ‘tis but by starving, yearning, straying, And by my many deaths new life attaining That I may woo just you, red rose, deep burning.

Albert Steffen tr. George DeRis

44 In The High Alps

HENRY B. MONGES

Today, as I was walking along the banks of the wild, rushing mountain stream, cold and clear, flowing down from high-lying, melting snows, the real revealed itself to me. I beheld the Undines, laughing and playing in the splashing, dashing water’s foam, weaving myriad wondrous forms on the surface of the singing stream, and with them, interblending, were the Sylphs, the spirits of the air, streaming down from on high, in the gleaming, sparkling sunlight, playing through the branches of the tall sweet fir trees, standing dark and evergreen on the edge of the scintillating waters. And interwoven with Sylph and Undine were the spirits of fire and flame: Salamanders — wildly dancing, hither, thither, in glistening sun beams. Warming now the cold water, now the scent-laden air; and now, air, fire and water danced and sang together, weaving multitudinous magic shapes as they played high up in space, then low in the rocky water bed. As they wavered to and fro, up and down, in and out, the rocks and earth too became alive, and out of the darkness and depths of the mysterious earth-body the earth spirits, the Gnomes, streamed forth and laughing with wild mocking laughter drove back the united shining ones from the higher regions. Underneath, all-embracing, wide-into-space-extending, was the Great World-Spirit, the Great Earth-Mother, in whose all- embracingness all these creatures find life and being. No more was the firm earth a dark dense inertness of dead substance. Out of her streamed innumerably the invisible hosts of life. The spirits of the trees, of the grasses, of the flowers

45 arose in endless colorfloods like the flaming lights of the Northern Borealis, but living and all uniting. Back of me arose the great tall mountain peaks, the thrice ancient Alps, looming, lowering like great snow-tipped giants, rugged and majestic. They had become alive, the swelling breasts of the great Earth-Mother. Yet man, in the midst of such a wondrous living, breathing world, worships death and destruction. For, in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West, above all this light and life, black mists arise: fearsome and terrible forms and shapes spring from the thoughts of m en, men who worship only those dark and dreadful creatures of the nether-world. Selfishness and greed, lust and hate breed the foul brood or draw them from out the dark corners of the universe. But for some of us the Beings of Heavenly Light are always there, singing, calling, helping the children of men. Adelboden, Switzerland, July 1920.

To the Aether

O lofty rooftree of God, you bearer of forces unflagging; Orderer you of the stars, of the sun and the moon in their courses; Tamer of all things, fire-snorting, of all living creatures the kindler; High-shining Aether, you, the fair ordered world’s first beginning; Glistening blossom, O bright one! you voice of the heavenly bodies: Calling, I humbly beseech you: To us be repose that is movement!

English rendering from the Greek by Rex Raab

46 Henry B. Monges

INDIVIDUALIST AND SERVANT OF MANY

FREDERICK HECKEL

History might be described as the deeds of individuals. Groups, large or small, may be affected by what they do, but the actions sprout from individual initiative. All of which comes to mind in thinking of a certain hundred-year-old friend. True, this friend hasn’t been about for more than fifteen years, having died July 19th, 1954, in his eighty-fifth year. But his birthday was just about one hundred years ago — January 4th, 1870. His influence, expressed in the continuing activity of the things to which he gave all his forces, goes on in a lively way, and the things he said and did still often come to mind. So one may truly enough speak in a present tense of a “hundred-year-old friend.” Henry B. Monges gave the last half of a full life to the service of Anthroposophy. He worked hard and long after he’d found what he wanted to work for: knowledge of the spiritual in man and in the world. This was something, he confided later, for which he had been filled with a deep longing since his early childhood. The encounter took place in 1915, when he discovered, in a bookstore in New York City, Rudolf Steiner’s book, The Way o f Initiation (the first part of what later was published as, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment). He knew after having read the first few lines, he said, that he had found what he had been looking for all his life. To meet Rudolf Steiner, however, he had to wait another four years, until September, 1919, when the frontiers were open and he could go to Dornach, Switzerland.

47 In the meantime, Harry Monges had been active with the Red Cross, and in 1919 he was a Director of the Section of Fine Arts at the American Expeditionary Forces University at Beaune, France. This was a post for which he was well qualified, since he was not only a practicing architect but a talented painter. Born at Bellville, Texas, the son of a clergyman, he received his higher education in California. He held B.S. and M.S. degrees in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, and he taught Projective Geometry and Graphic Statics there from 1906 to 1915. He also graduated from the California School of Design, with a certificate for teaching Art in the normal schools of California. He exhibited water color paintings at the 1915 Worlds Fair in San Francisco. After he became a personal pupil of Rudolf Steiner in 1919, his life was dedicated to the study and spreading of Anthroposophy. He attended the vital Christmas Foundation Meeting at Dornach in 1923. With Rudolf Steiner’s approval, he was chosen as the first General Secretary and President of the Anthroposophical Society in America, and held these posts from 1923 until his retirement in 1948. Among his important contributions was the founding of the Anthroposophic Press in 1922. He served as its president and manager until his death in 1954. What this meant must be visualized in terms of hard, personal work, editing translations of Rudolf Steiner’s writings and lectures, making numerous translations himself, and seeing all these books through publication. His translations include two of the basic works, Occult Science, an Outline, and Theosophy. All these important things must be recounted in a birthday commemoration. But the fact is that, in line with Goethe’s principle, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Harry Monges was outspoken, he could be brusque, but what lit him up was a truly Christian, not sectarian but Christian, love for his fellowman. Its expressions ranged from the hard work involved in what has been recounted, to a truly endless patience with the flow of questions from eager and very ignorant young

48 people. Such things are remembered. They were part of our experience of the man.

Gardening A LITTLE MYTH

ALBERT STEFFEN

I used to know a quiet little boy. He was an invalid and could not go to school. But he loved to draw the letters of the alphabet with his colored crayons on a shining sheet of paper. When he died, I kept the book to remember him by. One day as I was looking at it, it seemed as if a hand were laid across my eyes. An inner vision woke in me. The lad came up to me in the spirit and said: “Drawing the letters is the same as gardening. “F” “F” “F” “F” are fences. “P” is a pavilion, “V” is a rivulet.” And as he sang these words, a park appeared: leafy walks, fruit trees and flower beds. The lad strung garlands and tied vines. “Best of all I love the blossoms,” he said. “ ‘Oh’ the rose! ‘Ah’ the anemone! ‘Uh’ the tulip! ‘Ih’ the lily! T the violet!” Mightily the sounds re-echoed all about. And when I looked up to see why they rang so wonderfully, I discovered a whole host of angels who were singing too. Translated by Sophia Walsh

49 Study-Notes On A Cycle of Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, From Jesus to Christ: Karlsruhe, 1911

GEORGE O’NEIL

INTRODUCTION Rudolf Steiner stressed that the study of spiritual science is itself already a first step upon the path leading to knowledge of higher worlds. An initiate who speaks and writes for the 20th century does so in such a way that an awakening power works in the very style he uses. However, the student must engage himself with his whole being, with feeling and will as well as with his reflective, abstract intelligence. Like a mountaineer, the student of Anthroposophy must be ready to climb the peaks o f his themes from many sides. He must learn to read, to hear, to see what lies within and behind the words. Rhythm, sounds, pictures, structure and composition are fused with content and meaning and he must penetrate to the living experience which has been clothed in the language o f his day. As he does so, the student's own being is formed, made malleable, awakened, and his thinking takes on more o f a living spiritual activity and perception. The study of a book by Rudolf Steiner or of a cycle of his spoken lectures is in itself a path of experience. They are works of art with their own forms and movement. To study them means to practice them, to recreate them as well as one is able. When this is done in an active group, the counterpoint o f personalities, of insight and experience creates a new harmony of its own, just as the members of an orchestra find themselves united through the music o f Beethoven or Mahler.

50 The notes, or brief, aphoristic essays which follow here arose as part of such a work. For several years, some fifty to sixty persons in New York City have engaged in the study of cycles of lectures by Rudolf Steiner under the leadership of George and Gisela O’Neil and a group of active co-workers. Their effort has been to study in such a way that creative capacities are called forth in all those who participate. Each month, in preparation for the Branch evening and as a fruit of an interim study session, one of the O’Neils wrote a preview of the work to come. Those written during the 1968-69 season for the study of the cycle From Jesus to Christ, ten lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Karlsruhe in October 1911, are published here. Through them one may gain insight into the nature of this extraordinary series as well as into a way of working which has proved fruitful in bringing this content to life. The Editor.

ON LECTURE ONE: The Branch study this year deals with the renewal of man — not only renewal of man’s health and well-being, his achievements of social community with his fellow men, but also growth of spiritual capacity whereby he becomes truly productive. Perhaps never before in history has the need for renewal been felt so widely as it is today. The world problem is now: Can man save himself from self-destruction? Our work this year is no small challenge. In approaching a lecture cycle by Rudolf Steiner some orientation is needed, otherwise its full impact is lost. This is especially true in understanding the opening lecture. In 1911 Rudolf Steiner faced rejection by the Theosophists, the spread of false notions of Christianity, and the accusation of having Jesuit affiliations. He also faced the inner problem of how to make clear to his students that in the twentieth century spiritual science must be presented in a new way, and that it is morally impossible to use old techniques.

51 We therefore can see why such emphasis was placed on comparisons of old and new methods, on Jesuit and Rosicrucian schoolings, on misunderstandings and errors of past and present. We see also why the first half of the cycle had to lay the foundations for a grasp of the central problem of man’s renewal, the redemption of his actual physical being, the instrument whereby the ego becomes self-aware and finds his return to spirit experience. The ground had to be cleared before the event in Palestine could be made understandable. As to Lecture One, we deal with the twentieth century teacher problem. How are ideas communicated so as to reach the will? How legitimately motivate another person? These are the burning questions everywhere today, in schools, universities, on the political scene and in the business world as well. Dare man work today directly on the will of another? If not, how does a teacher, an idealist, a socially minded man function? This was already the question in 1911. The answer is made very clear: Mankind has been given the powers to think, to receive inner light. With this light he himself can kindle enthusiasm, his own warmth. With this warmth he can stir his own will forces and set himself in action. In the age of freedom today, direct action, direct influence of another’s will is morally impossible. It leads to violence and death. In the end nothing is achieved. Lecture One centers around the picture of Christ’s relation to his apostles, an archetypal teacher-pupil relationship. We see the difference between their relation with Jesus before the Resurrection and with Christ afterwards. We are shown how the Spirit, sent to make man free, sets the stage for the new way of teaching appropriate for free men. In order for us to understand this, the lecture opens with a study of modern man — how his will forces well up through three levels of consciousness: From the unconscious to the subconscious and into the full waking-consciousness. These are identified with the theological categories of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Influences from others can only be received in

52 Freedom in the sphere of man’s spirit which comprises all fully conscious soul activities, including the sense experiences, aesthetic feeling, and moral ideals. Any influence below this, working on the subconscious by suggestion, or directly on the will, is today for an adult relationship both dangerous and morally disastrous. This account of the spiritual situation of man today is then illustrated by a comparison of two occult schools, the Rosicrucian initiation of the spirit and the Jesuit initiation of the will. The first employing the indirect method, the second the direct method of reaching the will. The key difference lies in the Jesuit emphasis on imaginations that become coercive, hypnotic forces in the soul; and in the Rosicrucian schooling, going beyond imaginations to inspirations and intuitions that work as light of wisdom, leaving the student free. Jesuitism today is no longer what it was. Its methods have permeated all spheres of life. Commercial life abounds with direct action through hypnotic pictures. The behavioral sciences, stemming from Pavlov and from Watson, give the techniques. Influencing public opinion by image making has now become cult. Educational theory, programmed methods in texts and machines are all direct action, nullifying the free initiative. And Youth is up in arms. The cultural rebellion today arises out of the forces of the Spirit which were sent to make man free. And these forces will tear apart the fabric of society unless we understand them — unless we find ways to allow the wills of men, which arise from the subconscious, from the sphere of the Son, to have their due. Renewal of man is world necessity. To prepare ourselves to receive this wisdom’s light, is the purpose of Branch work. Anthroposophy is our field of action.

THE PATH FOR MODERN MAN: LECTURE TWO

At this month’s Branch Meeting we want to present the unique and new features of the anthroposophic path of

53 initiation. It is important that we do this before investigating more ancient sources of knowledge of the mysteries. We shall then have a basis for comparison. During our last session stress was laid on the modem demand for respecting the individual human will. Old methods of direct influence, once good are now a source of evil. This time we want to bring out that the thought content itself, of the path, has changed. Not only have the ideas of Reincarnation and Karma been added, but the focus of the exercises for spiritual development have changed, deriving now from man’s own experience. Also, the inner soul experiences on the path are quite other than once they were. It is as though today, a man must start from where he is, must spiritualize his earth experience by his own powers, to gain access to higher worlds. Nowadays this approach is spoken of as Existentialism. We should speak of anthroposophically oriented existentialism. It is very important for us to realize the degree to which Rudolf Steiner’s work points to the future. And we should counter every notion of kinship with earlier forms of Occultism. To do this calls for heightened discrimination, sharpened judgment. For instance, do we realize that what we call Reincarnation and Karma is not what goes by this name among cultists, Cayceites or Buddhists? And can we make clear the differences? The new scientific thought-forms of Darwinian evolution, human psychology, even the radiant nature of matter, have made possible the new concepts for a future understanding of repeated earth lives and the laws of spiritual compensation. These problems we must discuss together. With the rising tide of popular occultism, it behoves us to be aware that we are bearers of a new spiritual impulse. And our worthiness to carry it depends upon our individual ability to form crystal clear judgments of what takes place around us. Only in this way can the substance of Rudolf Steiner’s work be kept alive.

54 MANKIND AT THE GATES OF DAMASCUS: LECTURE THREE

A new power of vision is to be born to mankind commencing now in the 20th century. It will transform man’s relation to himself, revolutionize our social forms, awaken a sense of kinship of all peoples. Today, the first signs of a moral upheaval are already with us, the world over. But the accompanying symptoms are ominous and frightening. Are we justified in being hopeful? Can we be certain of the outcome? Is there actually something spiritual at work, a new vision? How are we to grasp this? It was not easy in 1911 to speak prophetically of coming moral upheavals in the souls of men. After two preparatory lectures on changes today in man’s will life in the age of freedom, and changes in the modern esoteric path to include Reincarnation and Karma, Rudolf Steiner gives a lecture unique in literature. One that makes this Cycle famous. In order to show concretely how religious faith was born in man, how it evolved, the forms it went through and its final transformation into natural spiritual visions two great dramas in the supersensible are depicted, one today, the other 2000 years ago. In this way, with a final section devoted to Solovioff who raises faith to its highest form, that of self knowledge, we realize that the world drama today can be seen as a direct and continuous development out of the past, both spiritual and earthly. Hope is justified! We even feel intimations of having vision. This extraordinary 3rd lecture of our Cycle stands midway in the first half, as a flowering of the idea: Mankind’s Ways to the Christ. Around it are grouped lectures 2 and 4 and 1 and 5, polar in themes. Opposite stands Lecture Eight devoted to the preparation of the Jesus body, wherein we find the flowering of the idea of the second half: the Mystery of the Phantom and Redemption of Man. Toward the end of the 20th century the Christ takes over the office of Lord of Karma for the evolution of mankind. Man’s destiny and the karmic consequences of our deeds will now take

55 on a new character. Making good for past failings can take many forms. We can already experience how impulses are arising in the souls of young people, how they want to help, not individuals but peoples and groups. The Mosaic concept of stern law will give way increasingly to striving to compensate by helping the world. In time this can revolutionize our entire system of legal justice. A sense of accountability of my actions to the Spirit of Mankind, a feeling that others cannot suffer and I live at peace, these experiences will awaken in me the new organ of vision. This is the first drama of karma, the one we witness today. The drama of faith of which man was spectator 2000 years ago, was a transaction among the Gods. In panoramic pictures we are shown the original separation of man from the heavens, his entanglement in matter, his achievement of freedom and egohood, the danger of his total annihilation. The act of love performed by the Christ Being centers around the preparation of a Christ bearer, “the true man” in which a God could incarnate, overcome death and bring new forces into the evolution of the world and of the human spirit. The fruit of this drama was the appearance in men’s souls subsequent to Golgotha, of a feeling experience of the Sun-being, an experience we have come to call faith. Faith, as a mighty force carried western man for centuries. A first direct source of spiritual knowledge until the middle ages was felt as a force of will, diluted gradually into feeling and finally becoming mere belief supported by knowledge of the sense world. However, in representative souls, (Pascal and Solovioff are cited), faith went through a metamorphosis linked with self knowledge. Denial of self was felt to be the denial of the meaning of life, of mankind, of the inner God. Echos of this are seen in the 20th century Existentialism, in the writing of many poets. Man’s spiritual entelechy, his very being, becomes witness to the divine. Self knowledge is the path of spiritual science, it leads past the lesser guardian, the subconscious being of man, through the

56 thickets of pride and paralyzing fear, to the greater guardian the Angelos figure which merges with the imagination of the Spirit of Mankind. Here both the exoteric path and the esoteric path become one. In our century now, a natural vision of the etheric world and of the Christ Being becomes possible for a few. However, to be a blessing, to work as a healing force socially for the good of men, it must be supplemented by spiritual scientific knowledge. To see and to hear and not to understand bodes ill. So the task of Anthroposophy, and its foretelling of things to come becomes clear.

WHEN THE HEAVENS OPENED WITHIN: LECTURE FOUR

A mood of subdued hesitancy pervades our fourth lecture. We approach now the deepest of truths of human evolution. We are challenged to find ways of understanding how men of wisdom from the earliest centuries of our era down to today, have wrestled with these truths, how at times they have fallen into error making way for the greatest of evil. We must reflect upon the mystery of how an apparent external historic event can have actually changed the soul- experience of every human being since that time — a fact which historians are loath to face, even in the presence of evidence that human cultures subsequent to that date have all undergone transformation. We must reckon with a mystical fact. One which has been given pictorial expression in legend and myth. The Baptist called for repentance, a looking to the future, no longer to the past. The Grail stories speak of the Blood of Christ, of the Crown of Lucifer. We remember the words: The Truth that shall make man free. With the descent of the Sun Spirit something flowed out into the living atmosphere of the earth, and this something, spoken of as the Christ Impulse, has opened the heavens to the creative spirit of men. Certain things were still realized fully by the early Christians as evidenced by the reverent awe and sense of powerlessness that breathes through their teachings. A counterpart today of this

57 humility and modesty, in this age of intellectual arrogance must again be found. Especially by those who seek to inquire into, or read and study what can be given us, at this time, of these truths. Lest harm be done, dare we speak, dare we communicate these truths abroad, without the soul attitude of utter selflessness and maturity which permits them to enter us in their proper form? Lecture Two describes the esoteric path of soul-preparation. Then, in Lecture Three, we experience the dramas of the great Christ events and the force of Faith which has carried men and now becomes vision. Lecture Four introduces the concept of Grace, the bestowal upon those who are prepared, and are worthy of the insight they seek. We are given a glimpse into the spiritual sources of truth now open — open to the teachers of mankind who would interpret to us our heritage. And we realize that it is from these Akashic sources that the wisdom flows which we are to share in the lectures that follow.

THE BEING OF MAN AND HIS FORM - A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: LECTURE FIVE

In this lecture we prepare the way for understanding the central Christian mystery, the one which today is all but lost. It is important to realize how carefully this problem is approached. One simply cannot, in spiritual matters, spell out ultimate truths without grave danger of being misunderstood, without doing harm. The intellect which so easily grasps everything, converting it to information, actually produces a kind of soul poison out of spiritual ideas. And does so out of the very thoughts which must be given to man in a form in which he can inwardly experience them, in order for him to survive. This danger was the theme with which we ended in Lecture Four. We seek now to understand the spirit nature of the physical body, how redemptive forces have become accessible to man since the Mystery of Golgotha. For this we must inquire into earlier cultural settings, circa 500 B.C. This throws light on crucial phenomena of today, existential riddles, the curious

58 trends in art and psychology, even such incredible symptoms as the flaming immolation by Czech youths as social protest. The bodies of men have an intimate link with the self, with the Ego. — This then is the inquiry. Our lecture can be felt as a question followed by three answers, two in opposition, one forming the basis for the Christ-idea, the resurrection and its meaning for the human spirit. The question is startling. In brief: Is the physical body mere Maya or illusion of which nothing remains after death? Are you so sure? What is your view of this vehicle that has carried you through life, in which you’ve had your being? What of the work of the hierarchies through the ages preparing, adapting a physical form to be an ego-bearer? Do you take this all for naught! — Consider what the Greeks thought: immersed in reverence for the beauty of the human form, they built an entire culture, but one plagued by fear of death, fear of loss of the body in which they felt themselves as heroes, as Ego-men. Consider what Buddha taught early in the Greek age concerning the body as cause of suffering through birth, illness, old age, and death. All were to be thrown off, escaped from and the illusion of the ego as Self-less vapor to be absorbed by the infinite. Both the Buddhist and Greek tragic attitudes toward the physical body are with us still today; who doesn’t count “Buddhists” and “Greeks” among his friends? Some have total disregard of the body, and escape perhaps in the infinitude of alcohol. Others are obsessed with physical beauty overladen by an abysmal fear of death. But consider now the first great Faust story, that of Job, surely the richest man in all Arabia at the time of the Prophets. Recall how God let Satan put him to the trial of his integrity, his sense of being right, of knowing he was not at fault. Think how he resisted demonic efforts to break his conviction of his being one with his God. Here we observe the first expression of the thought: This body of mine bears within it that which will rise again because I know my Redeemer liveth. This resurrection thought has become the seed-force for every great lonely thinker in the past and in our day, however he may

59 find ways of expressing it. This thought prepared the way for later understanding of the Redemption Mystery, and of the promise of the fully conscious spiritual life.

THE MYSTERY OF THE SPIRIT FORM: LECTURE SIX

The second part of our cycle leads us to the very core of Christianity: The Mystery of Resurrection. Christianity began with Paul, he based it on the fact of the Resurrection. Modern man has lost this foundation. The Resurrection of the physical body has become a myth. — But the occult reality is still to be grasped. And it is not simple. In Lecture Six we approach it in four great steps. The gospels must be seen as initiation scripts. They have traits in common with the biography of every great initiate. Yet they are saturated with realistic detail, facts of everyday life. The Resurrection can be understood as a transformation into historic fact of ancient rituals. A God became man who went through an initiation-death outside of the temple. Paul's Resurrection message, not merely of the soul as in the mysteries, but of the Physical Form. He saw it, and he conceived the reality of the genealogies of man: the physical descent from the First Adam, resulting in the mortal body of man, and then his spiritual descent from the Second Adam, the Risen One, leading to the immortal body of man. Then the mystery of the human form which is not identical with the visible human body. This permanent, transparent form-shape of man, called the phantom , is the gift and creation of the highest Hierarchy. They developed it during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods. On Earth it has become the abode of the Elohim, they live in it. How has man become visible? Through the fall into matter, through the Luciferic influence. This has permeated the Phantom with external substances. They made it opaque and tangible. Jesus of Nazareth, like every human being, was under the Luciferic influence up to the time of Baptism. With the incarnation of the Cosmic Christ, this influence ceased, but

60 Luciferic remnants remained in the astral body which accounted for the visibility of the Christ Being. Four great steps: The Resurrection Event, Paul’s Resurrection Theory, the History of the Phantom, the Spiritual Form of Man, and the Fall into Matter, into Visibility. If we grow to grasp the message, we may also learn to see the Spirit-Form in which it was given so that it can live in us. Gisela O ’Neil

NOTE — As the seventh Branch Meeting fell on Good Friday, the evening took on the character of an Easter Festival based on the study o f Lecture Seven. As George O ’Neil’s Study-Notes in preparation for this meeting had been devoted to the celebration of Easter, the report of the Branch Meeting, written by Nina Fowler and slightly edited, follows here.

THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION: LECTURE SEVEN

Our cycle, From Jesus to Christ, is, in a very real sense, an Easter cycle and the experience of these thoughts will help us approach the Festival with new depth and awareness. Lecture Seven points out the difficulty of the 20th century intellect to understand the Resurrection of the physical body — the key concept for a new understanding of Christianity. Through the concept of the Phantom developed in the last lecture, we can come to a new understanding and become aware of the dependence of our ego-consciousness on this spirit force-form filled with mineralized substance. The development of ego-consciousness is traced from Lemuria, when the germ of the ego was given to man, through the dim Atlantean consciousness to the time when the etheric body contracted and coincided with the physical body bringing the dim clairvoyance to an end. The post-Atlantean consciousness became clearer, but manifested as a folk ego in the Hebrew people — the individualized ego is an experience of modern man only.

61 The Fall of man is described as it was brought about by Lucifer, bringing illness, death and the distortion of the Phantom — a development not intended by higher Beings. Through this, the physical body with the brain which does not produce thoughts but mirrors them, has become imperfect resulting in today’s vague concept of the ego. Without this influence man would have a conscious awareness of his higher self as a spirit entity. Today’s concept of the Resurrection as a miracle about which one is unable or unwilling to think illustrates a Good Friday mood. If man relates to the Christ in the right way, he can inherit the perfect Phantom which rose from the grave at Golgotha for all men. How to find the right relationship is the Easter message of Anthroposophy — the tools are the books of Rudolf Steiner that have been given to all mankind. It was explained how the concept of the sense-perceptible fact (the physical body of man originates in a single cell and multiplies into countless cells) can be applied to the super-sensible in order to understand the Phantom, the incorruptible body of Christ, multiplied to be available to all. In this gift to mankind of the perfect Phantom of Christ is found the essence of Christianity. The appropriate meaning of the term Christ the Saviour, is grasped when we realize His deed was a deed of rescue of the ego. Consciousness in the spirit world after death had grown dark. Through the forces made available at Golgotha, man’s descent to a dimmer consciousness was reversed and he regained the possibility for a greater illumination of ego-consciousness. The original Easter was a new beginning, a turning point for humanity through the deed of a God become Man who went through initiation for the first time outside the Mystery Centers, in full public — an initiation lived through even into the physical body. What Paul called the Incorruptible Body and Rudolf Steiner calls the Phantom — a new member of man — came into existence through the deed of Golgotha. If we learn to grasp these tremendous thoughts, live with

62 them, permeate ourselves with them, Easter can become a reality for us. Nina Fowler

THE HOLLOW SPHERE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE JESUS BEING: LECTURE EIGHT

When we study the altar paintings of Matthias Gruenewald, we see a procession of beings leading to the birth of the child Jesus. In the house of God, prior to the birth, borne by Archangels, is a mysterious hollow blue sphere. And this same spherical blueness surrounds the figure of the resurrected Christ Jesus. This was the painter’s imagination of what Paul saw: the unique wonder of a physical-spirit form, gravity-free, filled with the light of the sun, an archetype of the four-fold being of man. Macrocosm and microcosm in one. Our theme for the Branch evening is to be a four-part symphony. The setting: the two streams of Zarathustra and Buddha; the history of the Adam-soul: the pure phantom permeated by elohim substance, the last man to incarnate; then the wonder of Zarathustra’s preparation of the Jesus bodies to receive the Sun-Being, that moon-node period of 18 years; end to close: the secrets of Salt and Ash, how for the first time a cosmic initiation was possible, a perfect physical body went through death and arose, so that the ego consciousness of all human beings could be rescued from disaster. These are central truths of the Wisdom of Man, and we shall need an understanding audience, one who knows the music well and loves the themes. Do play the symphony to yourselves at home. Read the lecture and come prepared to hear inwardly beyond what can be brought to word. Our orchestra can only do its best.

THE LOST TRAIL AND THE WHITSUN IDEA: LECTURE NINE

Whitsuntide is a festival of the creative spirit. Man’s spirit on its path to becoming free may celebrate the time yet to come

63 when spiritual communion will permit us to participate consciously in the work of the Gods and the destiny of mankind. Especially in these days is the Whitsun-Idea of great importance. Lecture Nine tells the story of the Lost Trail: how the exoteric path of the magical book and the ritual of the spiritualization of substance were decimated by the sharp instruments of inquiry — why the mysticism of European Theosophy failed to hold its own against modern thought. It tells of the promise of the future which a Christ-permeated thinking offers, if men today teach themselves the art of communion in living thought with beings who would help us to achieve our goals.

THAT GOOD SHALL BE ... LECTURE TEN

It is one of the miracles of the power of the word that in a time of cultural darkness, of a social chaos of despair, a light can be kindled, an understanding awakened which truly offers hope. This last lecture of our cycle deals with the present day, the crisis on earth and the momentous event of our age which concerns everyman’s destiny. The underlying theme is man’s freedom, the rescue of the Self, man’s egohood. Specifically it deals with how the link is made with the Phantom, the prototypal spiritual form in which it is possible to live truly as earthman and which gives man his immortality. Since Golgotha this link has been established through the mystical death of the Christian initiation. The Rosicrucian path too achieves this in another way. But from our time onward far-reaching changes are occurring. The Spiritual interpenetrating the physical, now effects everyone’s life. Nothing is as it was. On the 14th of October 1911 the great Lord of Karma lecture was given us. We were told of new experiences open to man during the 20th century in which insight into our very own destinies would show the way, establish the link with the Christ Impulse. In August 1924 this theme was returned to again, but

64 in the context of the karmic significance of membership in the Anthroposophic Society. And much more could be said in 1924 of the crisis in heaven among the Angels, of the repercussions among men, the disorders ensuing, all of which then, were prophetic, though now no longer. But yet more hope is promised, of a creative kind. Such that should warm the courage of every teacher, of everyone who works with others. A magical power of the spoken word can be ours, whereby ethical forces can leap from mouth to ear. Whereby the dictum in Knowledge o f Higher Worlds that Ideas become Ideals, is realized, and spiritual truths can be so formed as to permeate the will. Socrates’ Virtue will be able to be taught! Rudolf Steiner here speaks of the character of the mission of the great teacher of mankind known as the Bringer of the Good through the power of the Word. His task is to provide those who know and love the Word with those magical capacities to speak spirit truths in such a way that those who hear can morally transform themselves. Taking these words to heart as a stimulus to further effort, we realize that not only is our own existence as a human being secured, but that the means are at hand to work for mankind — if we but learn to speak — speak as we have been shown by one in whose words the Christ forces resounded.

65 William Blake: Painter, Poet, Visionary

AN ATTEMPT AT AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK

KAETHE WOLF-GUMPOLD

Translated from the German by Ernest Rathgeber and Peter C. Button. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1969. Available in the United States from The Anthroposophic Press, 211 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Price, $4.25. The author of this sensitive book was an artist and minister of the Christian Community who, during the last twenty years of her life, took on the insuperable task of translating Blake’s works into the German language. From her studies has come this admirable portrait of Blake the man, the artist, the visionary. Anyone who undertakes to portray the life of another person obviously chooses those characteristics and incidents in the other person’s life that reflect the experiences of the biographer. With Blake, this has all too often led to chaos. The trouble has always arisen from the fact that, as he repeatedly reminds us, he undeniably stood as much in this earthly realm as in the spiritual, and too few of his biographers and critics have been willing to take him seriously on this point. It is just here, however, that Kaethe Wolf-Gumpold succeeds. She takes Blake’s life, physical or otherwise, for real. As a result, she has managed to piece together an image that reveals Blake in his wholeness and uniqueness as a human being. I know of only one other biography that accomplishes a similar end, and that is Virginia Moore’s study of William Butler Yeats, The Unicorn. Blake’s family must in many ways have been as unique as he. When the young Blake exclaimed over the angels he saw climbing around in the apple tree in the backyard, or God, the

66 Father, revealing himself in the clouds, his understanding father protected him from the destructive derision of his two older brothers. But then, when his brother Robert was born and turned out to be able to verify young Blake’s stories, Blake found in him an ally who, you are made to feel, was a gift from his father to help alleviate the burden of his singularity. William and Robert were intimately connected throughout their lives. Upon Robert’s death, Blake, then thirty years old, entered into a profound sleep from which he did not awaken for three days. In the years that followed, though Robert was no longer physically present, the bond between the two brothers continued stronger than ever. The elder Blake, a Swedenborgian business man, though he had sent his two older sons to school, did what no father I know today, even given the insight, would dare do. He had sense enough to let young Blake run free until he was ten. Then, recognizing his talents as an artist, he sent him to art school, and later apprenticed him to an engraver. Because of his father’s exact recognition of him as an individual, it was thus made possible for Blake to develop his enormous talent unhampered by a formal education. In his later life, Kaethe Wolf-Gumpold shows us a Blake as much at home in the spiritual world as in the physical. To her, his visionary revelations are as practical as are his dealings with friends, employers and patrons. We are shown how much of Blake’s poetic and graphic output depended upon, and was influenced by, contemporary world events, and we are shown Blake speaking directly from out his spiritual vision. All of this, told with his wife, Catherine, gently and quietly hovering in the background, touchingly helping and administering to his needs throughout his long life, goes to make a beautifully warm story indeed. The book contains an introduction by A. C. Harwood, and numerous colored, and black and white illustrations — all well-chosen. The translation from the German is adequate but marred by careless editing. —Gilbert Church, Ph.D.

67 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

HERMANN POPPELBAUM, author of Man and Animal, A New Zoology, Man's Eternal Biography and other volumes not yet translated as well as numerous articles and essays, is head of the Natural Science Section of the School for Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland. ■ MARGARET MAHLE, poet and writer, is a student of Rudolf Steiner and member of the Anthroposophical Society. She lives in Kutztown, Penna. ■ CHRISTY BARNES, poet and teacher, author of Wind in the Grass and Out of Chrysalis has taught English and English literature in the upper grades of the Rudolf Steiner School, New York, since 1959. ■ HANS PUSCH, actor, director, lecturer, was a member of the original stage company at the Goetheanum where he acted the role of Johannes Thomasius in Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas for many years. He directed theater groups in Santa Barbara, California, and in New York City and vicinity, including several devoted to the study and performance of Steiner’s Mystery Dramas. ■ ALBERT STEFFEN, Swiss poet, dramatist, essayist, was President of the Anthroposophical Society from 1926 until his death in 1963. He also edited the weekly periodical Das Goetheanum for forty-two years. His works have appeared in English translation in the Adonis Press, New York, and the Verlag fuer Schoene Wissenschaften, Dornach, Switzerland. ■ HENRY B. MONGES (1870-1954), architect, painter, teacher of art, became a student of Rudolf Steiner in 1915 and an early leader of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Founder of the Anthroposophic Press, he was responsible for the publication of many of Rudolf Steiner’s books and lectures, of which he also translated several volumes personally. ■ DANILLA RETTIG, poet, eurythmist, teacher, is a teacher of eurythmy in the high school of the Rudolf Steiner School, New York. ■ FREDERICK HECKEL is a former staff reporter of the New York Times and editor of Proteus magazine and was co-editor of the quarterly Bio-Dynamics, published by the Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association. He is a member of the board of the Anthroposophic Press and edited Rudolf Steiner’s Threefold Social Order, revised edition 1966. ■ GEORGE O’NEIL, teacher, lecturer, writer, is a leader in the work of the New York Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America. ■ GILBERT CHURCH, Ph.D., is a biologist and teacher who is currently director of the Anthroposophic Press, New York.

68 The Journal for Anthroposophy is published twice a year by the Anthroposophical Society in America. Editor, Henry Barnes. Subscriptions $2.00 per year. Back numbers including contribu­ tions by Albert Steffen, Bruno Walter, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Russell Davenport, Christoph Linder, Olin Wannamaker, Rex Raab, Arvia MacKaye Ege and many others may be obtained upon request from Journal for Anthroposophy, 211 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Title design by Walther Roggenkamp.