From Mammoths to Mediums
GA 350
VI. The deeper reasons for the disastrous World War
16 June 1923, Dornach
Have you thought of something, gentlemen?
Mr Dollinger: 1 wanted to ask about human destinies. Millions of people have died in the Great War. Did they bring this with them into the world as their destiny? How does this look in the world of the spirit and in relation to world evolution?
Rudolf Steiner: This is something we can also discuss in connection with other things, for in anthroposophy it is certainly necessary for us not to explain things the way other people sometimes do. The things we say have to be scientific. I'd like to tell you something especially in connection with this that will then guide us to understand how the disastrous situation we have now, this terrible misery so many people are going through in the world today, has actually been possible. People usually no longer pay much attention to the way one individual is connected with another. The situation is that people are really isolated individuals in the world today. Even when people know about the kind of things I spoke of the last time we met, knowing them from habit or as some remnant of superstition, they'll generally give a wrong explanation.
Now let me tell you a simple story24The story was published in Carl du Prel's book (see note 20), page 194 f.:
Professor Perty tells the story like this: 'One afternoon in August 1853, Miss Sophie Swoboda—she was 20 at the time—lay down on the sofa in her mother's room because she had a severe headache, and she finally went to sleep. It then seemed to her that she was quietly leaving the room; she awoke. Sophie now felt quite weightless and free from pain; she rose quickly to hurry after her mother into the third room and tell her that there had been this change for the better. Her mother was sitting at her knitting, and opposite her sat Sophie's father, reading aloud from Bonaventura's (Schelling's) Mystische Nächte. Sophie stood beside the two of them, waiting for a break in the reading to tell her story, but her parents took no notice of her, in spite of the fact that they would look up every now and then and talk to each other about the text they were reading. Sophie, feeling put out by this, withdrew into a window alcove and listened to the text. Before long her mother got up, saying: "Sophie's not well, and that worries me; I must go and see how she is." Sophie quickly went up to her to reassure her, but her mother did not look at her but went straight to the door and to the first room. Sophie, wanting to make herself noticed, wanted to surprise her with a kiss as she came up behind her. But her mother, seriously concerned, went quickly up to the sofa where Sophie had lain down before, calling out to her sister, who had come in by another door: "How pale she looks!" Sophie now looked in the same direction and was greatly surprised to see herself lying on the sofa, her face pale as death and her eyes closed. Her mother and sister were much concerned, bending over her, calling her by name, and this made Sophie go up close, so that they might finally see her. At that very moment she felt herself flung on the sofa with great suddenness. She opened her eyes with great difficulty and much effort and then her mother and sister helped her to sit up. When Sophie had recovered a little, she told her parents of her experience and they were not a little surprised to hear her quote the passages her father had read and the views her parents had expressed, some of it word for word. She had, after all, been three rooms away, with the door closed.' (Psychische Studien 1979, 294) to show you that people no longer remember at all that one person is in some way connected with another. The following once happened, its truth is pretty well assured, like a scientific fact. One of the younger members of a family, a girl aged 18 or 19, was sick, not so sick as to have to stay in bed, but she had to lie down every now and again. She was lying on the sofa, with her mother looking after her, and once, when she'd pretty well gone to sleep, her mother went to another room, where she read something from a book to her husband and other members of the family. This was in a room that was quite a long way from the one where the sick girl was.
The sick girl was then aware of the following. When her mother had left the room, she suddenly felt the urge to get up. She got up and followed her mother through two other rooms into the third, where she found her reading to the others. She was greatly surprised that they were not at all amazed. The sick girl, hardly able to walk and sleeping when her mother left her just a moment ago, had now appeared in the room where her mother only intended to be for a time, because she wanted to do something for the others as well. The girl thought it a bit strange that they remained so calm. Then her mother, who was reading, suddenly said: 'Now I must go and see how our daughter is!' and left the room. The daughter followed her, however. Her mother went through those other two rooms again and found her daughter lying on the sofa, looking very pale. She did not address her immediately. But when she did, the girl did not answer, but lay there looking quite pale. The daughter herself had followed her mother all the way and saw now how her mother went into her room where she saw herself lying on the sofa. And the daughter was again very surprised, firstly to see herself lying on the sofa, and secondly to hear her mother address her. At that moment the daughter felt as if she was struck with great force, and then the form lying on the sofa gained a somewhat better colour and things were as they had been before.
This is a story we can pretty well rely on; the thing did happen. But now there are all kinds of people wanting to explain it. They'll explain it as follows, for example. 'Well, apart from having a physical body the daughter also has an astral body.' The astral body is something people used to talk about up to the sixteenth century, which is now about 400 years ago, the way we talk about a nose or an ear. But it is not something that has survived to this day; has been generally forgotten. So people would talk about the astral body in the past and say: 'Ah well, the astral body went out, walked through those rooms, took in what the others were reading, and so on, went back again and slipped in again the moment the mother addressed the girl.'
But, gentlemen, you have to be clear in your minds that when someone explains the matter like this, he's explaining it as if there were a second physical person inside one, as if there was a circle around one, and this circle would be large, and as if one slipped out and walked around like a physical human being. Today it is a powerful superstition to explain it like that. This superstition is widespread among academics today, otherwise things like those with Oliver Lodge that I've told you about would not happen. It is always important to know exactly what went on.
Now what really went on is the following. The mother had been sitting by her daughter, nursing her. You know, this is a case of what we call 'tender loving care', and the daughter found it most pleasant to be cared for by her mother. She experienced her mother's love. At such a moment, gentlemen, when someone feels the love of another so strongly and at the same time is also rather weak, the strange thing happens that he no longer thinks with his own astral body. This grows dull and the astral body of the other person gains power over one's own astral body. Then it can actually happen that one begins to think with the thoughts of the other person who is beside one. Now the situation was that whilst the mother was still nursing her daughter, the feeling which arose in her transferred to her daughter in such a way that the daughter felt and thought just as her mother did. Then the mother went away. Just as a ball will keep rolling if I give it a push, so the daughter was then not thinking with her own thoughts but with those of her mother. And as the mother went through those two rooms, the daughter was all the time thinking her mother's thoughts. And when the mother was reading aloud, the daughter was thinking her mother's thoughts.
The daughter did of course continue to rest on the sofa, but she was all the time thinking her mother's thoughts. And when the mother grew concerned and went back again, the daughter thought she, too, was walking back. And now you need not be surprised that the daughter grew pale. You'd be pale, too, if you were to lie as though in a deep swoon for a time. For a situation like that, where one thinks with the thoughts of someone else, does of course create a condition similar to a faint. And when the mother returned, the effect on the daughter was that she was deeply shaken and therefore able to have her own thoughts again. So you see that in this case, the right explanation is that one person has a most powerful influence on another, particularly in mind and spirit. This will happen particularly if the one who is influenced is in a greatly weakened condition, that is, if he is unable to develop inner strength, then the inner strength of the other person will easily influence him.
But that is how it is in life quite generally. One often does not consider the great influence people have on one another. Do you think that if someone tells you something and you then believe it, you actually always have reasons, sensible reasons, to be convinced of the truth of it? That is not at all true. If you like someone you believe that person more than you do someone you hate. The thing is that the one person's soul has an extraordinarily strong influence on the soul of another. I therefore have to know very exactly how things are in the realm of the spirit if I am to talk about them at all. Let me give you another example, which I'm telling you for a particular purpose. For someone might now say: 'Well, Dr Steiner clearly does not believe at all that a human being can go out of himself; he only believes that one person is able to influence another.' No, I was only giving you an example that would clearly show you how one individual influenced another, in this case the mother the daughter. Now another example, where one cannot in the least say that someone was influenced. Two students were sharing a room. This happens all the time with students. One was studying mathematics, the other was studying philology and knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about mathematics. One evening they were swotting terribly hard, which is the term students use, one of them his Latin grammar, the other a mathematical problem which he wanted to solve but simply could not get right. He was quite unable to do anything with it. The one managed reasonably well with his language studies and went to bed feeling reasonably satisfied. But the mathematics student did not feel satisfied on going to bed, for he could not solve his problem. With a language you usually don't know if you've got it right or not. At most you get things wrong but may well think they are right. The situation with mathematics is that you'll not get any result if you can't do it. That is the difference. So they went to bed; the two of them went to bed somewhere about 11.30 or 12 o'clock.
At about 3 o'clock in the morning the mathematics student got up—the language student looked at the clock and noted the time—sat down again at his desk and started to calculate and calculate and calculate. The language student was really surprised at this, but he had sufficient sense to wait calmly to see what would happen. The other one went on calculating, then got up off his chair, went to bed and slept on.
At 8 in the morning they both got up. The mathematics student said: 'Wow, I've got a really thick head today, as if we'd been to the pub all night. But surely we stayed at home?' The other one then said: It does not surprise me in the least! Why did you get up during the night and work?' 'What, me? Work? That never came into my head! I was in my bed all night,' said the mathematics student. 'But you did get up,' the other one said, 'you picked up your pencil and worked on and on.' 'Well,' said he, 'absolutely not.' 'Well, let's look and see,' said the language student, 'the stuff you've written must be there.' The mathematics student went to look. The whole problem had been solved, everything he'd been unable to do the night before had now been done.
Now you see, here you have an example where there can be no question of the other student cheating, for he could not have solved the problem. He was a student of languages and he also watched everything that happened. The other student got up, knowing nothing about it, and solved the whole problem. But there was no question of one of them influencing the other in any way. The student did in fact get up in the night.
But when one explains it, something very odd comes out. You see, as you know, we have first of all our physical body, then the ether body, the astral body and the I-body. I call them all ‘bodies’; they aren't, of course, bodies in any outer sense, but I call these four parts of the human being 'bodies' Well now, gentlemen, when we are sleeping, only our physical body and ether body lie in the bed; the astral body and the I-body are outside. We see them around the physical body and ether body on the outside. I have explained all this to you before. And that is also what happened with our mathematics student. He went to bed. He was able to sleep, so that his astral body and I-body went outside, but he was upset because he had not solved his problem. Now if the astral body and the I-body had then slipped into his physical body and ether body, he would have woken up and again been unable to do anything, probably not solving the problem. But the astral body and the I-body did not do this. But the unrest which had developed made it nudge the student. The astral body can nudge one, it can even nudge the skin a little. But this can only happen by means of the air, not physically, for the astral body is not the least bit physical. It can, however, set the air in motion. And this has an effect especially on the eyes, a bit on the ears, and especially on the nose and the mouth. Wherever you have sense organs, the nudging breath of the astral body has quite an effect.
So our mathematics student had gone to bed, the astral body was nudging him from the outside all the time, but not coming in. But because of this nudging, the physical body with the ether body felt compelled to get up, quite automatically, like a machine. The astral body stayed outside, however, for if it had been inside the student would have become conscious. So he sat down. His astral body and his I were not prepared to go inside. So who was doing the sums? The physical body and the ether body were doing them, and the ether body was able to do all the calculations which the student could not do when the astral body and the I were inside him.
You see from this, gentlemen, that you're all a great deal more intelligent in your ether body than you are in your astral body and your I. If you were able to do and know everything you can do and know in your ether body, wow, what clever fellows you'd be! For all learning really consists in bringing up into the astral body something which we already have in our ether body.
So what really happened with our mathematics student? You know, in earlier times there were hardly any teetotallers among students, and they really would drink rather a lot normally. And those two students did not swot every night but also went to the pub a lot, and because of this—with the blood under the influence of alcohol—the astral body was ruined. The ether body was not ruined so much. And the result was that the mathematics student could have solved his problem quite well if he had not gone to the pub so much; but because he had allowed his astral body to be greatly influenced he could not solve it when awake. He first had to get rid of his ruined astral body; then he could sit down at his desk, and his ether body, which was still quite clever, solved the problem. So the things the rational mind does we actually do with the ether body. We can't love someone with the ether body, that is something the astral body has to do, but everything the rational mind does is something the ether body is able to do, this is where the ether body has to do its job. We are therefore able to say that we can see quite clearly from this example that in this case there was no influence from somewhere else, but the mathematics student just had to do it by himself.
Let us have a clear picture of this. There [Fig. 14] we have the physical body; here the ether body [yellow] which goes through the physical body. And now, so that we get a better picture of the whole human being, I am going to draw the astral body outside, where it is during the night. It is quite small at the top and enormous, bulging out, down below. So at night we are really two people. You should not, of course, imagine that this is a second person who is also physical, for the part that is outside is entirely spiritual. If you were to fail to think of it as spiritual you'd fall too much into materialism again. But you can certainly take the view that in himself man really is this twofold creature, one part that is spirit and soul, and a physical part combined with the ether body. Someone who is awake is only the way he is because every morning the astral body and the I-body are brought into the physical and ether body [arrows].
But now imagine that this might not always happen in the proper way. There are some strange cases of this. There was a girl—if they happen of their own accord and not because of exercises, such things always happen when the individual gets a bit weak, in the case of young girls for instance when they have just reached maturity, when they have just entered into womanhood—so there was a girl of 19 or 20 and it was like this with her. There were days when she'd talk but the people in her family could not understand a thing she was saying, nothing at all. She would talk of completely unknown things. It was very strange. She might say, for example: 'Ah, good day, I am delighted at your visit. We met two days ago in ...—yes, we went for a walk in those lovely woods. There was a spring there.' Then she'd wait. It was just like on the telephone; you did not hear the other person, but only her reply. It was as if she was replying to something: 'Yes, of course, you took the glass and drank.' And so one would always hear what she said in reply to something someone else was supposed to have said. The people around her could not see the other person. But she was in a very different world and having a conversation in it.
The following would happen, for instance. Now, you see, she could not move, she'd stay quite still on those days. But if she sat there and you nudged her, she'd not say: 'Why are you nudging me?' She'd say: 'The wind is terrible. Close the window, there's such a draught!' She had completely different ideas if one nudged her, for instance. She'd be like that for one or two days. Then there would be some days, or a longer period, when she was perfectly sensible, talking normally to people, and knew nothing about what had happened on those other days. She did not remember any of it. If people told her some of it, she'd say she knew nothing about it. It was just as if she'd been asleep. But something else would happen instead. When she was in this other condition, she'd remember everything that had to do with this condition, and nothing of what had happened when she was in her usual state. She was able to review the whole life she'd known in that other world which people said she'd dreamed up.
What was it with this girl? What I am telling you now does, of course, happen many, many times, and sometimes in a ghastly way. You see, I knew someone with whom 1 worked together for some time. He then became a professor at a German university, and one day he simply disappeared. No one knew where he'd gone. All enquiries ultimately led nowhere. The only thing people were able to find out was that he'd gone to the station from the place where he lived and bought a ticket. But quite a number of people had got on the train and so people did not know the destination to which he'd bought a ticket. He went away. And he did not come back for a very long time.
One day a stranger arrived at a hostel for the homeless in Berlin and asked to be admitted. When they asked for his papers it was found he was Professor XY from such and such a place. He had ended up in that hostel in Berlin. He came home again and was able to continue his work as a professor quite well. You know, things go on automatically; it does not matter if there is a bit of a break. But his family—he was actually married—made further enquiries as to what had happened in the meantime. And it was more or less that he'd bought a ticket to a station that was not that far away. He had been quite crafty about it all. He'd got off the train, bought another ticket—you did not yet need a passport at that time—and gone to another country, and then another country, then he'd taken a completely different route, to a town in southern Germany where he'd once been stationed, and on to Berlin where he lived in the hostel. He knew nothing, absolutely nothing of it all, being in a completely different state of consciousness.
What is going on in such a case? You see, with someone like that it is just as it was with that girl. When such a person is due to wake up, the astral body and the I-body do not come in fully, merely nudging the person from the outside, and then the physical body and the ether body go through all those things. Such people behave in a tremendously clever way. This story has also been fully confirmed. It is similar to the one I experienced with someone of my acquaintance.
Another story. Someone took a train ticket, did the same thing, going to a station that was not far away. He then had to think up all kinds of clever dodges; it was his ether body which did it all. He got all the way to India and stayed there for some years. And then, having forgotten all about it, he went on with his life as before.
Yes, you see these things really are such that one has to say: There one gains deep insight into the whole nature of the human being. For what happened later with the person I knew well, who'd travelled through two countries and ended up in a hostel? He returned to his university, and was even called to another university to take the place of a renowned professor. One day I happened to be in that town. We were no longer in touch, for it happened quite generally that when I gave anthroposophical lectures people I'd known well before would no longer have anything to do with me. One day people said Professor XY had gone off again. This time he did not reappear but his body was found. He had drowned himself.
What had happened? You see, what had happened was that he again returned to the state where the astral body would only nudge him. He then recalled the earlier events in his ether body and got such a fright that he committed suicide. So one is able to see deeply into human nature in that case, if one knows how the different bodies of the human being work together.
Now the matter is this. There was someone once who also got into such states, and then he'd talk in such a way as if he were someone quite different than he now was, so that other people did not understand any of it. He spoke—this was in the nineteenth century—of being involved in the French Revolution, describing whole scenes. What had happened to him? It was similar to the situation of the people I have just told you about. But what had happened in his case?
In their ordinary state of consciousness people know very little indeed about what is going on in the astral body and the I-body, but they do actually go through a lot in those bodies. Now imagine the following happens. You see, I want to describe to you what it is like when someone wakes up. As the person wakes up, his astral body first of all splits. It tears off here [Fig. 14], and one part goes into the head, whilst the other, the lower part, goes into the rest of the body. That is how it goes sometimes. Now consider this. If the head finds it easier to take in the astral body and the I than the lower part does, the astral body may be in the head sooner, before it gets to the lower part. In this case the person begins to talk as someone quite different. So what is happening? You see, for a moment the ability is there to look back into an earlier life. But the person is unable to understand or interpret this, and will therefore invent something based on history. The man who was in an altered state, because his astral body and I had entered into his head earlier, said he was a Frenchman involved in the French Revolution. This is something he had learned about and he simply reinterpreted the facts. He was actually finding himself in an earlier incarnation, an earlier life, and was unable to understand this right away; and so he interpreted it in his own way.
Now you have to understand that up to the sixteenth century—which would be four centuries ago—people would talk of such things, though in a rather silly and vague way. Wherever people forgathered—it was not that they would tell each other ghost stories, but the truth is that they took this just as seriously as other events in their lives—they told such things, knowing that they existed. It is certainly not true to say that they did not know about it. Today—well, I ask you, gentlemen, just try and tell stories like those I've told you at your party conferences and you'll be chucked out immediately—today there is no way of speaking of these things naturally or sensibly. People do not speak of them at all. And the academics have least to say about them. Let me prove to you that they know least of all about them.
Think of one of the most important scientific events in the nineteenth century. A citizen of Heilbronn had qualified as a medical practitioner. The people at Tübingen University thought he was not very gifted and so he did not have any real prospects. He therefore let himself be hired as a ship's doctor in 1839 and went to Indo-China on a ship that had quite a lot of people on it. The journey proved to be a fairly difficult one, with the seas fairly restless so that people got seasick. Practically the whole crew were sick when they arrived in Indo-China. The ship's doctor was kept very busy. At the time, it was still customary to let blood when people had one kind of sickness or another. That was the first thing.
People have two kinds of blood vessels. When one kind is opened, the blood that splashes out is reddish in colour. Another kind of blood vessel runs right alongside the first kind. If this is opened, the blood is bluish; bluish blood will come out. Ordinarily, when you bleed someone, you do not let the red blood flow out. The body needs this blood. You let the bluish blood flow out. Physicians know this very well. They also know where the blue blood vessels are and do not open the red ones. Dear Julius Robert Mayer,25Julius Robert Mayer (1814-78), German physician and physicist. Established the law of conservation of energy in 1842, and the mechanical heat equivalent in 1851. who was that ship's doctor, therefore had to do a lot of bloodletting. But every time he opened a vein the blood that came out was not the proper bluish colour but pale red. Oh dear, he thought, I've opened the wrong one! But when he did it for the next person, taking special care, the blood was again a pale red. In the end all he could do was tell himself that when one gets to the tropics, the hot regions, things are not the way they usually are, and blue blood turns reddish because of the heat. Julius Robert Mayer thought this a most important discovery, quite rightly so. He had seen something that was extraordinarily important.
We now have to have a hypothesis, make an assumption. Imagine this had happened to someone in the twelfth rather than the nineteenth century. He would have travelled somewhere or other with people. Travels did not range far in those times, but it could certainly have happened that a whole crew fell sick. Let us assume, then, that a whole crew got sick, the physician bled them and found that the blood which should really be blue was reddish instead. Now in the twelfth century he would have said: 'What is it that causes the blood to turn blue?' And since he would have known all the things I have been talking about, though rather vaguely—for there was no anthroposophy then and things were rather vague—he would at least have had an inkling and would have said: 'Wow, yes, there the astral body does not enter as deeply into the physical body as it does in people whose blood is quite blue.' For he would have known that it is the astral body which makes the blood blue. The heat keeps the astral body out, however. The blood therefore grows less blue and looks similar to the red blood. He would have said: 'This is an important discovery, for now I understand why the ancient peoples of the East had such great wisdom. With them, the astral body did not enter so deeply into the physical body and ether body.' He would have had a profound respect for the wisdom of the ancient Orientals and he would have said to himself: 'Today the people of the Orient have merely been infected by the people who have a lot of bluish blood, and it therefore is no longer possible for them to bring their ancient wisdom to light.' That is what a twelfth-century ship's doctor would have said.
A ninteenth-century ship's doctor no longer knew anything of all the things I have been telling you. What did he say to himself? He'd say: 'Well, there's the heat. It burns things up. The blood therefore burns up more when one is in the hot zone.' He discovered the law of the transformation of heat into energy which plays such a big role in modern physics, a completely abstract law. The rest does not interest him at all. He found the law that plays a big role in the steam engine, for example, where heat is transformed into work. And he said: 'The fact that the blood flows red there shows that the organism works harder in the hot zone and therefore produces more heat.' Julius Robert Mayer thus found something that is wholly mechanical.
You see, that is the big difference. In the twelfth century, people would still have said: 'The blood is redder there because the astral body does not go in so deeply.' In the nineteenth century, people no longer knew anything of all this spiritual side and simply said: 'There the human being is like a machine, and the situation is that heat generates more work and because of this more heat is converted in the human organism.' Yes, gentlemen, what Julius Robert Mayer did there as a greatly learned man is more or less the way people generally think in our day. That is how it is. But because people are now only able to think and feel about things that are no longer of the spirit, they have lost their connection with other people. And it will at most be when they are sick and weak like the girl I spoke of that they'll enter so much into the other person that they actually go along with that person's thoughts into another room. That's an enormous difference, of course. Yes, we have made tremendous progress today, but our humanity has not progressed; it has grown less. We only speak of the human physical organism as if it were only a machine today. Even the greatest scientists now speak of it only as a machine, as Julius Robert Mayer did.
Yes, gentlemen, if things were to go on like this on earth, all thinking would fall into chaos. All horrors and disasters would come. People already no longer know what they should really do. They therefore go at things with might and main, saying: 'Yes, common sense no longer keeps us together, and so nationality must keep us together.' National states only arise because people no longer know how to keep together. And the fact, gentlemen, that people no longer know anything of the spiritual world has brought about the tremendous misery—all the rest are only external factors. It is this which has brought about the tremendous human misery. And to say that people deserve it because they've done bad things in their previous life is, of course, nonsense, for this is not the destiny of an individual person, it is the common destiny shared by each and every one. But every single individual knows it now in this life. Just think how much misery people know in this present life. That does not come from their previous life. But in the next life they will know the consequences of the present misery. The consequence will be that they'll be wiser, and the world of spirit will enter into them more easily. The wretched state they are in today is educating them for the future.
There is something else we can see from this. Just think that anthroposophy started as early as 1900 and has really got quite well known. But people have resisted it, not wanting to hear of the spiritual world. Well now, gentlemen, if you had a schoolboy in earlier times who did not want to learn—this has changed now; I'm not going to say if it was right or wrong—he'd be given a thorough beating. Some would then start to learn after all. It did help with some of them. Humanity has not been wanting to learn anything of the spirit until 1914. They have now had a beating for this from world destiny, their common destiny. We shall see now if it has done any good.
That is how it is, gentlemen, we have to see it as a common human destiny. For what did happen? You see, the girl I told you about thought her mother's thoughts. People have gradually got out of the habit of thinking altogether and now only think the thoughts of those whom they consider to have authority. People must start to think for themselves again, every single one of them, otherwise they will all the time be influenced by the world of the spirit, if they do not know anything about it, but in a bad sense. And it would then be fair to say that the misery which has come for humanity may be seen as a beating given by destiny, I'd say, and we can learn from this.
People can have as many congresses as they like; none of it will help. People who want to support the German mark, thinking the way they do today, will make it go down twice as much afterwards, for an understanding that is wholly of the earth is absolutely no use at all. If a body does not have enough fluid in it, it grows sclerotic, it calcifies. And if the soul does not know anything about the world of the spirit, it ends up with an understanding that is of no use at all. And that is the destiny humanity is moving towards, unless nourishment comes to them all the time from the world of the spirit.
So the only real way is for people to begin to take an interest in the world of the spirit. You see, that is how one has to answer the question put by Mr Dollinger. One has to put things in a fairly radical way, but that is how they hang together.
I have to go to Stuttgart next week, but I'll soon be back. I'll get them to tell you when our next session will be.