ONCE UPON A TIME …!

FOUR WORDS ONLY, yet they are like a magic formula; for they bear within them the quality of instantly arousing some special intuitive perception in every human being.

Seldom is this intuitive perception of the same kind.

Similar to the effect music has.

Exactly as with music, these four words also find their way straight to the spirit of man, his real “ego”.

Naturally only to those who do not keep the spirit completely locked within them, and have thus already lost their real humanity here on earth.

On hearing these words, however, every human being will involuntarily and instantly think back to some former experience.

This rises vividly before him, and with the picture also a corresponding intuitive perception.

With one it will be a yearning tenderness, a melancholy happiness, or also a silent longing impossible of fulfilment.

With others, however, pride, anger, horror or hatred.

Man will always think of some experience which made an exceptional impression upon him, but which he also thought long since extinguished within him.

Yet nothing has been extinguished in him, nothing lost of what he once really experienced within himself.

All of it he can still call his own, as really acquired by himself, and thus imperishable.

But only that which has been experienced!

Nothing else can arise with these words.

Man should for once closely heed this with care and with an alert mind, then he will soon recognize what is really alive within him, and what can be designated as dead, as a soulless shell of useless memories.

Only what has so deeply affected him during his earth-life as to stamp an indelible and ineffaceable imprint on his soul serves to benefit man, by whom we must not imagine the physical body.

Only such imprints have an influence on the forming of the human soul and thereby, going further, also on the advancement of the spirit for its continual development.

In reality, therefore, only that which leaves such a deep impression is experienced and thus made one’s own.

All else flits ineffectively by, or at best serves to help in the development of events that are capable of calling forth such great impressions.

Happy is he who can call his own many such powerful experiences, no matter whether called forth by joy or sorrow; for the impressions they leave will one day be the most precious that a human soul takes with it on its way into the beyond. —

Purely intellectual work, such as is customary today, when properly applied serves only to facilitate physical life on earth.

Closely considered, that is the actual ultimate aim of all intellectual activity!

In the final analysis there is never any other result.

With all erudition, irrespective of which branch of education, and also with all activities whether in public affairs or in the family, with every individual or with nations, as also finally with humanity as a whole.

But unfortunately everything has subjected itself quite unconditionally to the intellect alone, and therefore lies in heavy chains of earthly limitation of the perceptive capacity, which was naturally bound to bring in its wake disastrous consequences in every activity and happening, and will continue to do so.

To this there is only one exception on this whole earth.

This exception, however, is not perhaps offered to us by the church, as many will think and indeed as it should be, but by art!

Here now the intellect unquestionably takes second place.

But where the intellect gains the upper hand, art is at once reduced to craftsmanship; it is immediately and quite incontestably degraded from its lofty position.

This is a logical consequence which in its simple naturalness cannot possibly be otherwise.

Not one exception to it can be pointed out.

Of course, the same conclusion must also be drawn in all else!

Does this not make man think?

Surely it must be as though scales fell from his eyes.

This quite plainly indicates to the thinking and discriminating person that with everything else dominated by the intellect he can indeed obtain but one substitute, the inferior!

From this fact man should recognize the place assigned by nature to the intellect, if anything that is right and of value is to arise!

So far only art is still born out of the activity of the living spirit, out of the intuitive perception.

Art alone has had a natural and therefore a normal and healthy origin and development.

The spirit, however, does not express itself in the intellect, but in the intuitive perceptions, and only manifests in what is generally called “deep inner feeling” (“Gemuet”).

That is just what the intellectual man of today, who is so inordinately proud of himself, likes to mock and ridicule.

Thus he derides what is most valuable in man, yes, the very thing that really makes man a human being!

Spirit has nothing to do with the intellect.

If at length man wishes for improvement in all things he must take heed of Christ’s words: “By their works ye shall know them!”

The time is at hand when this will come to pass.

Only the works of the spirit from their very origin bear life within them, and with it permanence and stability.

Everything else must collapse from within when its time of blossoming is past.

As soon as the fruits of it are due to appear, the barrenness will be exposed!

Just look at history!

Only the work of the spirit, that is to say art, has outlived the peoples who have already collapsed through the activity of their intellect, which in itself is lifeless and cold.

Their great, much praised knowledge could not offer them any salvation from collapse.

Egyptians, Greeks and Romans went this way; later also the Spaniards and the French, now the Germans – yet the works of genuine art have outlived them all!

Nor can they ever perish.

But no one has perceived with what strict regularity these events have recurred.

No person thought of getting to the real root of this great evil.

Instead of searching for this root, and for once calling a halt to the ever-recurring decline, men have blindly submitted to it, and with laments and complaints have resigned themselves to the idea that “nothing can be changed”.

Now finally it will strike all mankind!

Much misery already lies behind us, still greater is to come.

And deep affliction moves through the dense ranks of those who have even now to some extent been affected by it.

Think of all the peoples who have already had to fall on reaching full bloom, the zenith of the intellect.

The fruits which developed from the blossom-time were everywhere the same!

Immorality, shamelessness and debauchery in various forms, inevitably followed by decline and ruin.

The complete similarity is very obvious to everyone!

And also every thinking person must discover a very definite nature and consistency of the strictest Laws in this happening.

One after the other these peoples had finally to recognize that their greatness, their power and their glory were only apparent, upheld solely by force and compulsion, and not secured by an inner soundness.

If you would only open your eyes, instead of despairing!

Look about you, learn from the past, and compare it with the messages that have reached you already thousands of years ago from the Divine, and you must discover the root of the devouring evil, which alone forms the obstacle to the ascent of all mankind.

Only when the evil has been thoroughly eradicated will the path to general ascent be open, not before.

And this will then be lasting, because it will be animated by the living spirit, which has hitherto been impossible. —

Before going into this subject more deeply, I want to explain what spirit, as the only really living part in man, is.

Spirit is not wit, and not intellect!

Nor is spirit acquired knowledge.

It is erroneous, therefore, to call a person “rich in spirit” because he has studied, read and observed much and knows how to converse well about it, or because his brilliance expresses itself through original ideas and intellectual wit.

Spirit is something entirely different.

It is an independent consistency, coming from the world of its homogeneous species, which is different from the part to which the earth and thus the physical body belong.

The spiritual world lies higher, it forms the upper and lightest part of Creation.

Owing to its consistency, this spiritual part in man bears within it the task of returning to the Spiritual Realm, as soon as all the material coverings have been severed from it.

The urge to do so is set free at a very definite degree of maturity, and then leads the spirit upwards to its homogeneous species, through whose power of attraction it is raised.*

Spirit has nothing to do with the earthly intellect, only with the quality which is described as “deep inner feeling” (“Gemuet”).

To be rich in spirit, therefore, is the same as ’’having deep inner feelings” (“gemuetvoll”), but not the same as being highly intellectual.

Just to discover this difference more easily, man should now make use of the expression: “Once upon a time!”

That alone will help very many seekers to find clarification.

If they observe themselves carefully they can recognize what has so far proved beneficial to their souls in their earth-life, or what has merely served to ease the conditions of their life and work in the earthly environment.

In other words, what is of value to them not only on earth but also in the beyond, and what serves only earthly purposes but remains valueless for the beyond.

The one can be taken over by man, but the other he leaves behind on his departure as belonging only here, because it can be of no further use to him.

What he leaves behind, however, is but the tool for earthly events, an aid for the time of earth, nothing more.

* Lecture II–52: “I am the Resurrection and the Life…!”

If a tool is not used solely as such, but is valued much more highly, it obviously cannot come up to the higher demands made upon it; it is in the wrong place and will thereby naturally also produce many kinds of deficiencies, which in time will have quite disastrous consequences.

The first and foremost of these tools is the earthly intellect which, as a product of the human brain, must bear within itself the limitation to which anything physical-gross-material by its own consistency is always subject.

And the product cannot possibly be different from its origin.

It always remains bound to the nature of the origin.

Likewise the works that develop through the product.

For the intellect this naturally results in the most limited, purely earthly comprehensive capacity, closely bound to time and space.

Since it originates in the World of Gross Matter, itself inert and with no life of its own, the intellect is also without living power.

This condition, of course, is likewise perpetuated in all the activities of the intellect, for which it thereby remains impossible to impart life to its works.

In this inflexible natural happening lies the key to the unhappy events during man’s life on this small earth.

We must at last learn to differentiate between the spirit and the intellect, the vital core of man and his tool!

When this tool is placed above the living core, as it has hitherto been, the result will be something unsound, which even at its inception must bear within it the germ of death; and thereby the vital, the highest and most valuable part, is constricted, bound and cut off from its necessary activity, until in the inevitable collapse of the lifeless structure it rises free but incomplete from the ruins.

Instead of “once upon a time” let us now picture to ourselves the question: “What was it like in former times?” How different is the effect.

The great difference is immediately perceived.

The first question speaks to the intuitive perception, which is linked with the spirit.

But the second question is directed to the intellect, and entirely different pictures emerge.

From the outset they are limited, cold, without warmth of life, because the intellect has nothing else to give.

From the very beginning, however, mankind’s greatest guilt has lain in placing this intellect, which can only produce what is incomplete and without life, on a high pedestal, and virtually dancing around it in worship.

It was given a place that should have been reserved for the spirit alone.

This action is entirely opposed to the ordinances of the Creator and thus to nature, because these are anchored in what takes place in nature.

Therefore nothing can lead to a true goal either, but everything must fail at the point where the harvest is due to set in.

It cannot be otherwise, but is a natural happening that is to be expected.

Only in purely technical science, in all industry, is it different.

This has reached great heights through the intellect, and will even advance much further in the future!

This fact, however, serves to prove the truth of my explanations.

Technical science in all its aspects is and will always remain purely earthly, lifeless.

Now since the intellect likewise belongs to all that is earthly it is able to develop brilliantly in the technical sciences, and can accomplish really great things.

Here it stands in its right place, in its real task!

But wherever anything ’’living”, thus purely human, has to be considered as well, the intellect by its nature is not adequate, and must therefore fail if it is not then guided by the spirit!

For spirit alone is life.

Success of a specific kind can always be achieved only by the activity of the homogeneous kind.

The earthly intellect will therefore never be able to do spiritual work!

For this reason placing the intellect above life has become the grave offence of this mankind.

Contrary to the creative, thus wholly natural ordinance, man has therewith directly reversed his task, and has, so to speak, turned it upside down by yielding the supreme place that belongs to the living spirit to the intellect which comes in the second and purely earthly place.

Through this it is again quite natural for man now to be obliged painfully to seek from below upwards, whereby the superimposed intellect, with its limited capacity to comprehend, obstructs any broader view, instead of his being able to look down from above through the spirit.

If he wishes to awaken he is compelled first to “transpose the lights”.

To put the intellect, which is now above, in the place given to it by nature, and restore the spirit to the supreme position.

This necessary transposition is no longer so easy for the man of today. —

The change of order that men introduced in bygone times, so incisively directed against the Will of the Creator, thus against the Laws of Nature, was the actual “fall of man”, the consequences of which cannot be more terrible; for in due course it developed into “inherited sin”, because the elevation of the intellect to the position of sole ruler again brought in its wake the natural consequence that, in the course of time, such one-sided cultivation and activity also strengthened the brain one-sidedly, so that only the part which has to do the work of the intellect grew bigger, and the other part was bound to become stunted.

Thereby the part that has become stunted through neglect can only operate today as an unreliable dream-brain, even then being still under the powerful influence of the so-called day-brain, which activates the intellect.

Thus the part of the brain which should form the bridge to the spirit, or rather the bridge from the spirit to everything earthly, is thereby paralyzed; a connection is broken, or at least very much loosened, whereby man has cut off for himself all spiritual activity, and with it also the possibility of “animating”, spiritualizing and inspiring his intellect.

Both parts of the brain should have been developed absolutely equally, for joint harmonious activity, like everything in the body.

The spirit leading and the intellect carrying out here on earth.

It is obvious that because of this all the activity of the body too, and even the body itself, can never be what it should be.

For naturally what has taken place affects everything!

Because the most essential factor for all earthly things is thereby missing!

It is easy to understand that the cutting off was simultaneously linked with the withdrawal and estrangement from the Divine.

Indeed, there was no longer any way to It.

Finally this in turn had the disadvantage that already for thousands of years, owing to the ever-increasing hereditary factor, every child’s body that is born brings with it to the earth the frontal intellectual brain so large that, from the outset and because of this condition, each child is again readily submitted to the intellect the moment this brain develops its full activity.

The gulf between the two parts of the brain has now grown so wide, and their functions so proportionately unequal, that with the majority of all mankind an improvement can no longer be achieved without catastrophe.

The intellectual man of today is no longer a normal human being, but lacks any development of the principal part of his brain that belongs to the complete human being, because he has allowed it to become stunted for thousands of years.

Without exception, every intellectual has only a crippled normal brain!

Therefore brain-cripples have been ruling the earth for thousands of years; they regard the normal human being as an enemy and seek to subjugate him.

In their crippled condition they imagine that they accomplish a great deal, and they do not know that the normal human being is in a position to achieve ten times as much, producing works of a permanent nature which are more perfect than the present efforts!

The way is open to every really serious seeker to acquire this ability!

An intellectual, however, will no longer so easily become able to grasp something that belongs to the activity of this stunted part of his brain!

He is simply incapable of it, even if he should desire it; and solely because of his voluntary restriction he ridicules everything that he is unable to attain, and which owing to his really retarded, not normal brain will never at any time be understood by him either.

Just therein lies the most terrible part of the curse of this unnatural aberration.

The harmonious co-operation of both parts of the human brain that absolutely belongs to a normal human being, is definitely impossible for the present-day intellectuals, who are called materialists.—

To be a materialist is really no recommendation, but evidence of a stunted brain.

Thus the unnatural brain has hitherto ruled on this earth; and finally its activity must obviously also bring about the inevitable collapse in all things, since everything, no matter what it wishes to produce, naturally contains discord and ill-health even from the very start, owing to the stunting.

Nothing of this can now be changed any more, but one must calmly let the naturally developing collapse come about.

Then, however, will be the day of resurrection for the spirit, and also for a new life!

The slave of the intellect, who has held the reins for thousands of years, will thus be disposed of for ever!

Never again will he be able to arise, because the evidence and his own experience will finally compel him voluntarily to submit at last, ill and spiritually impoverished, to that which he was unable to grasp.

Never again will he be given the opportunity to oppose the spirit, either by scoffing or by the semblance of right through imposing force, such as was also used towards the Son of God, Who had to fight against it.

Then there would still have been time to avert such misery.

But now it is too late; for in the meantime the loosened connection between the two parts of the brain can no longer be bridged.

Many intellectuals will again try to ridicule the explanations in this lecture, but except for empty platitudes, they will be unable to present even one really objective counter-argument.

Yet any serious seeker and thinker will have to take such blind zeal simply as fresh proof of what I have set forth herein.

However hard they try, it is impossible for these people.

Let us therefore regard them from now on as sick persons, who will soon be in need of help, and … let us calmly await the time.

No struggle and no act of violence are needed to enforce the necessary progress; for the end will come of itself.

Here too, through the immutable Laws of all reciprocal actions, the natural course of events will take effect quite inexorably, and also punctually. — —

Then, according to various prophecies, a ’’new generation” shall arise.

However, this will not only be made up of the newly-born, such as are now already observed in California and also in Australia to be endowed with a “new sense”, but mainly of people already living, who in the near future will become “seeing” through the many impending events.

They will then possess the same “sense” as those now newly-born; for this is nothing more than the ability to stand in the world with an open and unrestrained spirit, no longer allowing itself to be suppressed by the limitation of the intellect.

Inherited sin will thereby be eliminated!

But all this has nothing to do with what has been hitherto described as “occult faculties”.

It is then simply the normal man as he should be!

To “become seeing” has nothing to do with “clairvoyance”, but signifies “insight”, recognition.

Men will then be in the position to observe everything impartially, which means nothing else than to assess.

They will see the intellectual man as he really is, with the limitation so dangerous to himself and his environment, in which there simultaneously arise the arrogant lust for power, and the disputing that is actually part of it.

They will also see how, with strict consistency, all humanity has suffered under this yoke in one form or another for thousands of years; and how this cancerous sore, as the hereditary enemy, has always been directed against the development of the free human spirit, which is the main object in human existence!

Nothing will escape them, also not the bitter certainty that affliction, all suffering, and every downfall, were bound to come about through this evil, and that there could never be any betterment because from the start all insight was ruled out owing to the limitation of the perceptive capacity.

But with this awakening all influence, all power of these intellectuals has ceased.

For all time; for then begins a new and better epoch for mankind, in which the old can no longer survive.

Therewith the necessary victory of the spirit over the failing intellect, already longed for by hundreds of thousands today, will come.

Many of the masses who have hitherto been led astray will then still recognize that until now they had completely misinterpreted the term “intellect”.

The majority simply accepted it as an idol, without examination, just because the others also did so; and because all its adherents always knew how through force and the laws to pose as infallible, absolute rulers.

That is why many do not even take the trouble to expose the real hollowness of these people, and the deficiencies it has concealed.

There are certainly also some who already for decades have been fighting against this enemy with tenacious energy and conviction, in secret and to some extent also openly, occasionally also being exposed to most bitter suffering.

But they fight without knowing the real enemy!

And this has naturally made success more difficult.

Indeed, it has made it impossible from the outset.

The warriors’ sword was not well sharpened, because they were always striking at nonessential things that dented it.

With these non-essentials, however, they have always struck to one side, missing the mark, wasting their own strength, and only causing disunion among themselves.

In reality there is only one enemy of mankind all along the line: The hitherto unrestricted rule of the intellect!

That was the great fall of man, his most grievous guilt, which brought all evil in its wake.

That became the hereditary sin, and that also is the Antichrist of whom it is proclaimed that he will raise his head.

More plainly expressed: The mastery of the intellect is his tool, through which men have fallen prey to him.

To him, the enemy of God, the Antichrist himself … Lucifer!*

* Lecture I–3: “The Antichrist”

We are in the midst of this time!

He dwells today in every human being, ready to ruin him; for his activity immediately brings estrangement from God as quite a natural consequence.

As soon as he is allowed to rule he cuts off the spirit.

Therefore, let man be keenly on his guard. —

He must not on that account belittle his intellect, but must make it what it is, his tool; not, however, his authoritative will.

Not his master!

The man of the coming generation will be able to regard past times only with disgust, horror and shame.

Rather as we feel on entering an old torture chamber.

There, too, we perceive the evil fruits of the cold, calculating domination of the intellect.

For it is surely quite undeniable that a person possessing only a little inner feeling, and thus spiritual activity, could never have devised such atrocities!

Still, on the whole it is no different today, only somewhat more camouflaged; and the miseries of the masses are just as rotten fruits as was the individual torture in olden times.

On looking back into the past, man will only be able to shake his head in sheer amazement.

He will ask himself how it was possible to suffer these errors calmly for thousands of years.

The answer, of course, is simple: by force!

Wherever one looks it can be recognized quite clearly.

Leaving aside the times of remote antiquity, we need only enter the aforementioned torture chambers which can still be seen everywhere today, and the use of which does not lie so very far back.

We shudder as we look at these old implements.

What cold brutality, what bestiality do they reveal!

Hardly anyone today will doubt that the most grievous crime lay in those past proceedings.

Upon the criminals an even greater crime was thus perpetrated.

But also many an innocent person, dragged away from family and freedom, was roughly cast into these dungeons.

What lamentations, what shrieks of suffering died away here from those who, completely defenseless, were at the mercy of their tormentors.

People were compelled to suffer things the contemplation of which simply fills one with horror and loathing.

Involuntarily every one asks himself whether it was really humanly possible – all that happened to these defenseless ones, and moreover under the guise of justice.

Of a justice that after all once had only been obtained by force.

And now again, through physical pain, confessions of guilt were forced from those under suspicion, so that they could then be murdered at leisure.

Even though these confessions of guilt were only extracted under compulsion, in order to escape these insane physical tortures, yet they nevertheless satisfied the judges, because they needed them to comply with the “letter” of the law.

Did these so narrow-minded ones really imagine that in this way they could also whitewash themselves before the Divine Will, and escape the inexorable working of the basic Law of Reciprocal Action?

Either all those who dared to pass judgment on others were the scum of the most hardened criminals, or it clearly showed the unhealthy limitation of the earthly intellect.

There can be nothing between.

According to the Divine Laws of Creation every person in authority, every judge, no matter what office he holds here on earth, should never stand in his actions under some protection of his office, but like any other person he must alone and purely personally, unprotected, bear full responsibility himself for all he does in his office.

Not only in the spiritual but also in the earthly sense.

Then everyone would regard things much more seriously and carefully.

And so-called “errors”, whose consequences are forever irreparable, will certainly not so easily occur again.

To say nothing of the physical and psychic suffering of the victims and their relatives.

But let us further consider another aspect of this subject, the trials of so-called “witches”!

Anyone who has ever had access to the court records of such trials would wish, in an outburst of burning shame, never to be numbered among this mankind.

In those days if anyone even had knowledge of healing herbs, either through practical experience or tradition, and if he used this knowledge to aid sufferers asking him for help, he was relentlessly tortured for it.

Final release from these tortures only came with death at the stake, if his body had not already succumbed to these cruelties.

Even physical beauty, especially chastity that did not yield willingly, could in those days give rise to such tortures.

And then the horrors of the Inquisition!

Comparatively speaking, only a few years separate us from “that time”!

Just as today we recognize this injustice, so also did the populace feel at that time.

For the “intellect” had not yet limited them to such an extent, and here and there the intuitive perception, the spirit, broke through in them.

Do we not recognize today the absolute narrow-mindedness in all this?

The irresponsible stupidity?

Although these things are spoken of with an air of superiority and a shrugging of the shoulders, yet fundamentally nothing has changed.

The stupid presumption towards everything not understood is still exactly the same!

Except that instead of these tortures men now publicly scoff at everything which, owing to their narrow-mindedness, they do not understand.

Many a person would do better to search his heart for once and think seriously about this without sparing himself.

Upholders of the intellect, which means those who are not quite normal, and often even the law courts, will from the outset regard as a swindler every person who possesses the ability to know something that is concealed from others; he may be able also to see the Ethereal World with his ethereal eyes as a natural occurrence, which will very soon no longer be doubted, much less brutally opposed.

And woe unto him who does not himself know what to make of it, but naively speaks of what he has seen and heard.

He must fear the consequences as did the first Christians under Nero, with his helpers always ready for murder.

Should he even possess still other abilities which can never be grasped by the out-and-out intellectuals, then he will most certainly be mercilessly hunted, slandered and ostracized unless he complies with everyone’s wishes; if at all possible he will be rendered “harmless”, as it is so charmingly expressed.

Nobody has any qualms of conscience about it.

Even today such a man is regarded as the free prey of anyone, and sometimes of inwardly very unclean persons.

The more narrow-minded, the greater the delusion of cleverness and the propensity to conceit.

Man has learned nothing from these happenings of the olden days, with their tortures, burnings at the stake, and records of ridiculous trials!

For even today anyone is still free to defile and insult with impunity all that is unusual and not understood.

In this respect it is no different now from what it was then.

The proceedings of the Inquisition, which were instigated by the Church, were even worse than those of the courts of law.

Here the shrieks of the tortured were drowned by pious prayers.

It was a mockery of the Divine Will in Creation!

The ecclesiastical representatives of those days thus proved that they had no idea of Christ’s true teaching, nor of the Godhead and Its Creative Will, Whose Laws lie irrevocably anchored and work on in Creation, the same even from the very beginning to the end of time.

God endowed the human spirit by its very nature with the free will to decide.

Only through this can it mature as it should, refine itself and develop fully.

Only therein lies the possibility for it to do so.

However, should this free will be cut off, then this is a hindrance, if not a violent throwing back.

But in those days the Christian churches, as well as many religions, fought this Divine ordinance, opposing it with the greatest cruelty.

By means of torture and finally death, they sought to compel people to pursue courses and make confessions which were against their conviction, thus against their will.

Thereby they violated the Divine commandment.

And not only that, but they hindered men’s spiritual progress, even throwing them back centuries.

If only a spark of real intuitive perception, thus of the spirit, had shown itself, this should and could never have happened!

Therefore such barbarities were only the cold-blooded work of the intellect.

As history proves, many a Pope even permitted the use of poison and dagger to realize his purely earthly wishes and aims.

That could only happen under the domination of the intellect, which in its triumphal march subjugated everything and stopped at nothing. —

And supreme over all the Will of our Creator inexorably manifested and manifests in the irrevocable march of events.

On passing into the beyond every human being is divested of earthly power and its protection.

Name, position, everything is left behind.

Only a poor human soul passes over, there to receive and experience what it sowed.

Not a single exception is possible!

On its path it is led through all the wheels of the relentless reciprocal action of Divine Justice.

There is no church, no state, but only individual human souls who must personally account for every error they have made!

He who acts against God’s Will, and thus commits a sin in Creation, is subject to the consequences of this transgression.

It matters not who he may be and on what pretext he acted.

Be it an individual under the cloak of the church or of the law … a crime committed against body or soul is and remains a crime!

Nothing can alter it, not even the semblance of justice, which is by no means always justice; for of course the laws, too, were made only by intellectuals, and therefore must be subject to earthly limitations.

Just consider the law in so many states, especially in Central and South America.

The man who today presides over the government, enjoying all the honors connected with it, may even tomorrow be thrown into prison or executed as a criminal, if his opponent succeeds in seizing the reins of this government through an act of violence.

Should he not be successful, then it is he who, instead of being recognized as the ruler, will be looked upon as a criminal and persecuted.

And all the public officials are as willing to serve the one as the other.

Even a world traveler, to remain in good standing everywhere, must change his conscience as often as he would his clothes when passing from one country to another.

What in one country is considered a crime is very often permitted in another and, what is more, may even be welcomed.

This is naturally only possible in the achievements of the earthly intellect, but never where the intellect must occupy its natural place as a tool of the living spirit; for he who listens to the spirit will never neglect the Laws of God.

And where these are used as the foundation there can be no flaws, no gaps, but only a uniformity that brings in its wake happiness and peace.

In their basic features the expressions of the spirit can always and only be exactly the same everywhere.

They will never contradict each other.

Also the arts of justice, healing and statesmanship are bound to remain merely deficient crafts where only intellect can form the foundation, and the spiritual is lacking in them.

It cannot possibly be otherwise.

Here naturally always starting from the true conception of “spirit”. —

Knowledge is a product, but spirit is life, the value and power of which can only be measured according to its connection with the origin of the spiritual.

The closer this connection the more valuable and powerful will be the part which emanated from the origin.

But the looser this connection becomes, the more distant, alien, isolated and weak must also be the emanated part, thus the human being concerned.

All these are such simple self-evident facts that it is impossible to comprehend how the erring intellectuals can pass them by over and over again as if they were blind.

For what the root provides, sustains the trunk, the blossom and the fruit!

But here also this hopeless self limitation in understanding reveals itself.

They have toiled to erect a wall before themselves which they can now no longer see over, much less see through.

However, with their conceited, superior and mocking smile, with their arrogance and looking down upon others less deeply enslaved, they must sometimes appear to all spiritually alive people like poor, sick fools who, in spite of all pity, must be left to their delusion, because their limited understanding even allows facts that prove the contrary to slip by without making any impressions.

Every effort to bring about an improvement must simply prove as fruitless as trying to heal a sick person by hanging a new and resplendent cloak around his shoulders.

Even today materialism is past its climax, and now, failing everywhere, it must soon collapse.

Not without also tearing down much that is good.

Its devotees are already at the end of their ability, and will soon become confused about their work and then about themselves, without perceiving the abyss that has opened up before them.

They will soon be like a flock without shepherds, one not trusting the other, each pursuing his own way, and yet still proudly looking down upon others.

Not thinking matters out carefully, but merely following old habits.

With all signs of the outward semblance of their hollowness, they will end by blindly falling into the abyss.

They still regard as spirit what are only the products of their own brains.

But how can lifeless matter produce living spirit?

They are proud of their meticulous thinking in many things, but quite unscrupulously and most irresponsibly leave gaps in the most important.

Every new step, every attempt at improvement, will ever again have to carry within it all the barrenness of the intellectual work, and thus the germ of inevitable doom.

All that I am saying here is neither prophecy nor loose prediction, but the unalterable consequence of the all-animating Creative Will, Whose Laws I explain in my lectures.

He who follows with me in spirit along the paths that are clearly indicated therein must also survey and recognize the necessary end.

And all the signs for it are already here.

People complain and cry out, they see with disgust how the excrescences of materialism today take on scarcely believable forms.

They beg and pray for deliverance from the affliction, for improvement and recovery from the overwhelming downfall.

The few who have managed to save some stirring of their inner life from the tidal wave of the incredible happenings, who have not suffocated spiritually in the general downfall that deceptively bears the name of “progress” proudly on its brow, feel like outcasts and backward people, and are also regarded and ridiculed as such by the soulless followers of modern life.

A laurel wreath to all those who had the courage to refrain from joining the masses!

Who have proudly stayed behind on the steeply sloping path!

He who today still considers himself unfortunate because of this must be a sleepwalker!

Open your eyes!

Do you not see that everything that oppresses you is already the beginning of the sudden end of materialism, which at the moment only appears still to rule? The whole structure is already collapsing, without any assistance from those who have suffered and must still suffer under it.

Intellectual mankind must now reap what for thousands of years they have produced, nourished, reared and acclaimed.

In human reckoning it is a long time, but for God’s self-acting mills in Creation a brief span.

Wherever you look there is failure everywhere.

It surges back and heaps itself up menacingly like a heavy rampart that will soon topple over and crash down upon its admirers, burying them beneath the ruins.

It is the inexorable Law of Reciprocal Action which during this manifestation must have a terrible effect, because in spite of the many kinds of experiences gained there has never in thousands of years been any change towards higher things, but on the contrary the same wrong road has been trampled wider and wider.

Despondent ones, the time is at hand!

Hold up your heads , which you have so often had to hang in shame when injustice and stupidity were able to cause you such deep suffering.

Now look calmly at the opponent today who thus sought to suppress you!

Already the fine raiment worn up till now is very badly tattered.

The figure in its true form is at last visible through all the rents.

The exhausted product of the human brain, the intellect, which allowed itself to be enthroned as spirit, less confident but no less conceited, looks forth confounded!

Just confidently take the bandage from your eyes and look about you more keenly.

Alone the perusal of newspapers which are otherwise quite good reveals all sorts of things to the clearsighted.

There are desperate efforts still to cling to all the old illusions.

With arrogance, and often very coarse jokes, people seek to cover up the lack of comprehension that becomes more and more evident.

A person will frequently use absurd language to judge something, of which in reality he has quite obviously no shred of understanding.

Today even people with quite good abilities helplessly take refuge in questionable courses rather than confess that so many things are beyond the grasp of their own intellect, on which alone they have hitherto sought to rely.

They do not sense the absurdity of their behavior, do not see the weaknesses which they only help to increase thereby.

Confused and dazzled, they will soon stand face to face with the Truth, and mournfully look back over their bankrupt life, at last recognizing with shame that stupidity lay just where they thought themselves wise.

What have things already come to today? The man of muscle is the hero!

Has an earnest scientist, who after decades of arduous research has discovered a serum giving protection and also help against fatal diseases year after year to hundreds of thousands, young and old, ever been able to celebrate such triumphs as a boxer, who with purely physical, crude brutality overpowers his fellow-man? Yet does this in any way benefit even one human soul? It is only earthly, all earthly, which means low in the whole Work of Creation!

Entirely corresponding to the golden calf of intellectual activity.

As the triumph of this so earthbound clay effigy of a monarch over narrow-minded mankind! — —

And no one sees this mad rush downwards into the gruesome abyss!

He who intuitively perceives this will still keep silent for the present, in the shameful awareness of being ridiculed in any case should he speak.

It is already a wild frenzy in which, however, there is a dawning recognition of powerlessness.

And with the growing awareness of that recognition people become even more rebellious, out of sheer obstinacy, out of vanity, and last but not least from fear and horror of the impending events.

They simply refuse already to think of the end of this colossal error!

Convulsively they cling to the proud structure built up over past millennia, which closely resembles the Tower of Babel, and which will end in the same way!

This hitherto uncurbed materialism carries within it a foreboding of death, which becomes more evident every month! —

Yet in many human souls, in all places, on the entire earth, something is astir!

The radiance of the Truth is still only covered by a thin layer of old, false conceptions, which the first gust of a purification will sweep away, thus setting free the core, whose light will unite with that of so many others to unfold its cone of rays, rising like a fire of gratitude to the Realm of Pure Joy, to the Feet of the Creator.

That will be the time of the much-longed-for Millennium, which lies before us in brilliant promise as the great Star of Hope!

And with this the grievous sin of all mankind against the spirit, which has kept the spirit bound on earth through the intellect, is at last redeemed!

Only that then is the right way back to what is natural, to the way of the Will of the Creator, Who desires men’s works to be great, and suffused with living intuitive perceptions!

The victory of the spirit, however, will at the same time also be the victory of purest Love!

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