The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History

C O N T E N T S:

Introduction by the Editors

1. March 11, 1923: The human being’s two biographies: the physical and the etheric body, on the one hand, the astral body and the “I,” on the other. The importance of language for the soul development of humanity. The aftereffects of speech during sleep. The need for cultivating understanding with the angels and archangels. The prevention of such understanding through materialism. 1859 as the centenary of Schiller’s birth and the year of the death of true idealism. The feeling for the older generation’s lack of ideals and the emergence of the Youth Movement.

2. March 12, 1923: The relationship of the “I” and the astral body with the elemental beings and the beholding of the hierarchies during sleep. The weakening of our nightly relationship with the spirit world since the fifteenth century. Goethe’s journey to Italy as a consequence of his longing for a right relationship to the archai. Goethe as a whole human being in contrast to the purely head-people of his time and our time. The knowledge of the work of the elemental beings in Paracelsus and in older medicine. The tendency to automatism and passivity as a consequence of today’s education. The demand for education toward inner activity as an impulse of the Youth Movement.

3. March 16, 1923: The rulership of the cosmic thoughts by the hierarchy of the exusiai in the Greek age. The transfer of this rulership to the archai in the fourth century AD as the cause of the change of consciousness in humankind. The revelation of the divine world in the music of sevenths during the Atlantean age. The weakening of this experience in the music of fifths and the transition to the merely human experience in the music of thirds. The ninth as the interval of the Lemurian age and the octave-spanning major and minor third as an expression of the jubilation and lamentation of the gods.

4. March 17, 1923: The confrontation between backward spirits of form and advanced archai. The effects of this confrontation in the historical life of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Augustine’s spiritual struggle from a supersensible point of view. The spiritual influence of normally evolved and backward archangels, which had an impact on the religious struggles of the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War. Concrete knowledge of the impulse of spiritual powers as the task of anthroposophy.

5. March 18, 1923: In the past, human beings received thoughts from the spirits of form; in our time, they must develop independent thoughts and moral impulses with the help of the archai—The Philosophy of Freedom as an expression of this changed consciousness. Holding on to the old way of thinking through the work of the backward spirits of form: a basic problem of our time. The theological struggles around the school of Ritschl. The calamity of Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” seen from a spiritual point of view. People’s inability to grow old and the resulting discontent of the young.

6. March 22, 1923: Our thinking as a corpse of pre-earthly, living thinking. The inability of such thinking to grasp the sense world—the loss of real cognition. Eduard von Hartmann on epistemological questions. The experience of human life after the age of twenty-eight in earlier cultural epochs. The loss of this experience as a precondition for freedom. The need for an active vitalization of thinking in order to grasp the living content of the world. Effects of poisonous and remedial plant substances in the human etheric organism.

7. March 23, 1923: The human being, experienced as divine imagination, revealed in physiognomy, during the ancient Indian cultural epoch; as divine thought, revealed through weather phenomena at birth, during the Persian epoch; as cosmic being, grasped through calculation of the constellations, during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch; as earthly human being, living in the blood, during the Greek epoch. The characteristic of the present epoch: the human being grows together with the earth through thinking. The task of our age, presented in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival as the path of the soul from dullness through doubt to blessedness. The possible consequences of the intellectualization of human thought: the destruction of the atmosphere of warmth, the atmosphere of air, and the fluid element of the earth in the fifth, sixth, and seventh cultural epochs.

Facsimile of a Verse by Rudolf Steiner
Editorial and Reference Notes
Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works
Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner
Name Index
Rudolf Steiner’s Blackboard Drawings

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (b. Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner, 1861–1925) was born in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia), where he grew up. As a young man, he lived in Weimar and Berlin, where he became a well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, known especially for his work with Goethe’s scientific writings. Steiner termed his spiritual philosophy anthroposophy, meaning “wisdom of the human being.” As an exceptionally developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern, universal “spiritual science” that is accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unbiased thinking. From his spiritual investigations, Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of numerous activities, including education (general and for special needs), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, Christianity, and the arts. There are currently thousands of schools, clinics, farms, and initiatives in other fields that involve practical work based on the principles Steiner developed. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of human beings, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods for personal development. He wrote some thirty books and delivered more than six thousand lectures throughout much of Europe. In 1924, Steiner founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches around the world.