[Music] but as the angel dumott, our astral body, our anthroposophical understanding of the Spirit is not just a theoretical worldview but rather an inspiring purpose for our life and a vital force. It is only when we can strengthen the other Bussaco worldview in us so that it comes to life for us, then it can truly fulfill its task. Indeed, by uniting our soul with the other Basava chol understanding of the Spirit, we have, in a sense, become the guardians of certain specific and highly significant processes of humanity's development. Generally, people choosing this or that worldview are convinced that thoughts and ideas only live in their soul but have no other role or existence in the larger context of the world. That is, the adherence of most worldviews believed that their thoughts, ideas, and ideals will become a reality in the world to the extent that people manage to implement them through their physical actions. In contrast, accepting the other Vassago view means realizing that making our thoughts and ideas come true takes

more than just what we can accomplish with our actions in the sensory world. This basic and essential fact already implies that we after Passa fists are called upon to participate and watching over the signs of the times. Much is happening in the development of the world, and now more than ever, it is up to us to develop a true understanding of what is going on in that development in which we also participate. Everyone knows that to understand an individual, we must consider that person's development and not only his or her outer circumstances. For example, the events happening now in the sensory world around us concern us all, whether we are 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, or 70 years old. Yet no reasonable person expects that we will have that we all have the same relationship to the events, regardless of our age. To determine how people should relate to their outer environment, we need to consider their individual development, and nobody would doubt this. However, just as the individual undergoes a specific development and has different strengths in childhood, in middle age, and in old

age so humanity as a whole has developed different forces in the course of its development. In a sense, we are sleeping through the world's development if we fail to notice that humanity is essentially different in the 20th century than it was in the 15th or in the time of the mystery of Golgotha or even before that. It is one of the great failings and troubles of our time that people refuse to consider what I just pointed out and believed that they could speak of humanity or of the human being in general and in the abstract without having to take into account that humanity is always developing. The question then is how we can better understand these things, and we've often talked about important aspects of humanity's development. For instance, we know the Greco-Roman era, which lasted roughly from the eighth century before Christ to the 15th century of the Common Era, as the cultural epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul. In the period since the 15th centuries, that of the

consciousness soul. This alone already tells us something essential about our time in particular, namely that human development between the 15th century and the beginning of the fourth millennium depends primarily on the consciousness soul. However, in spiritual science, we must not content ourselves with generalities and abstractions but must always strive to comprehend concrete facts. Abstractions satisfy at most a very ordinary curiosity but are otherwise of no use to make spiritual science come alive for us and be a vital force in our life. We must be more serious rather than merely curious and must not stop at abstractions such as the ones I've just mentioned. Without a doubt, it is true and very important that we're living in the epoch of the consciousness soul and its development, but we must not stop there. To understand all this more concretely and specifically, we must look more closely at human nature, at what we are like essentially. According to spiritual science, we can distinguish four members of our being. These are, from the top-down: the I (capital), the astral body, the

etheric body, which I've recently also called the body of formative forces, and finally the physical body. Of these, the eye is the one in which we live and are active with our soul and spirit. The eye is essentially given to us by our development on earth and the spirits of form that direct it. Everything that enters our consciousness comes in by way of the eye. It is the eye that connects us with the world around us, and if it cannot develop so that it can stay connected, albeit only through the physical body, with the outside world, we will be as unconscious in our waking hours as we are while sleeping. The astral body, on the other hand, is given to us during the moon evolution that precedes our earthly evolution. The etheric body goes back even further to the Sun evolution, and the first rudiments of our physical body were formed during the Saturn evolution. My book titled An Outline of Esoteric Science describes in more detail the complicated processes that led to what we now are as beings composed of the

four above-mentioned members as the facts presented in that book indicate. Spirits of various hierarchies have worked together on the three components that can develop our eye: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, each of which is a very complex structure in itself. Moreover, the hierarchies were not only involved in creating the three spheres around our eye but are still working in them now. Ultimately, as long as we believe that we are nothing more than an amalgam of bones, blood, flesh, and so on—that is, of elements studied by the ordinary natural sciences, particularly by physiology, biology, and anatomy—we cannot understand ourselves as human beings. Studying the members of our being more closely will reveal that spiritual beings of the hierarchies are working purposefully and wisely together in the processes that run their course in our body outside of our awareness. Even the relatively sketchy outline in my above-mentioned esoteric science shows you already how complicated this collaboration of the various spirits of

The higher hierarchies really are complicated or not to understand our being. We must study these things closely in concrete detail. To start with, we can ask a concrete yet immensely complicated question, namely, what is the hierarchy of the Seraphim or the Dunamis, for example, doing now in 1918 in our etheric body. Indeed, we can ask this kind of question with just as much justification as we can ask whether it is currently raining in Lugano. In both cases, the answer cannot be found by simply thinking or theorizing about the subject; rather, we must get at the facts. For example, we would have to send a telegram or letter to find out whether it's currently raining in Lugano. Similarly, we must delve into the facts to find out, for example, what tasks the spirits of wisdom or the Thrones are currently fulfilling in our etheric body. Of course, such questions are extremely complicated, and our answers can only be approximate. This will keep us from becoming proud and arrogant in our striving for true insights and knowledge.

In a sense, the higher beings that concern us directly are the ones about whom we can attain some clarity and certainty. They are also the ones we need to understand clearly so that we're not asleep in regard to their role in our development. We can start with a question that is not as vague and undefined, though it was also quite specific as the above-mentioned one about the work of the Denham ease or thrones in our etheric body. A question to start with, and one that concerns us directly, especially in the present time, asks about the work the angels, the higher beings in the hierarchy immediately above us, are currently doing in our astral body, in our inner organization. The astral body is directly adjacent to our eye, and we thus have every reason to hope that answering the above question will be important to us. Moreover, the angels are the hierarchy directly above ours and are thus, of all hierarchies, the closest to us. Clearly then, the answer to our modest question about the work of the angels in our

astral body at this time in humanity's development that is in the 20th century in the cultural epoch that began in the 15th century and will last until the beginning of the 4th millennium is of great significance for us to begin answering such a question we must take spiritual science seriously we're not just playing with words and ideas here but our spiritual science works in areas where the spiritual world becomes accessible and the hierarchy immediately adjacent to ours can indeed be made palpable and comprehensible not surprisingly the above-mentioned question can only be answered meaningfully in the epoch of the consciousness soul you might think that this question could have been asked and even answered in other epochs but in fact it could not have been answered at all in either the era of atavistic clairvoyance or that of the greco-roman culture indeed the images atavistic clairvoyance generated in the soul obscured the activities of the angels in our astral body so that they could not

be observed in other words. Those activities could not be seen because of the images generated by atavistic clairvoyance. In the Greco-Roman epoch, human thinking was not yet as strongly developed as it is now. Human thinking has undergone a development and becomes stronger, particularly as a result of the modern scientific age. Consequently, the age of the consciousness soul is the only one in which we can consciously approach questions like the one I mentioned above. As you see, spiritual science does not inundate mere theories; rather, it offers concrete insights of far-reaching significance and, in this way, proves its usefulness for our life. To find out what the angels are doing in our astral body, we must advance to a certain level of clairvoyant perception so that we can look into our astral body and see what is going on there. In other words, we have to achieve at least a certain level of imaginative perception if we want to answer the question under discussion. Then we will be able to see that the hierarchy of the Angels is forming.

images in our astral body. The angels are both working jointly and also individually since each one of them has a specific task to fulfill for the person under his charge. And each of us has an angel, as I've explained before. The angels are forming images in our astral body, and they do so under the direction of the spirits of form. Without imaginative perception, we could not know that the Angels are continuously forming images in our astral body—images that appear and then vanish again in constant ebb and flow. Without these images, we could not develop toward a future that is in line with the intentions of the spirits of form. What the spirits of form want to achieve with us until the end of our earthly development must first be embodied in images, and these images will later be instrumental in transforming humanity. They will then become real. Those are the images the spirits of form are already now creating in our astral body with the help of the angels and reality. We can see and access the images the angel generates in our astral body once we have

developed our thinking to a certain level of clairvoyance. We can then observe these images and see that they're formed according to very specific impulses and principles. We'll find that the process that gives rise to these images holds within it the forces for our future development. Strange as this may sound, we can observe the Angels as they're working and see that with their work, they're carrying out a definite intention for the social structure of our future life on earth. In other words, they want to generate images in our astral body that will lead to specific social conditions and structures for the human society of the future. Whether we acknowledge the work of the Angels for our future or deny it does not matter at all. The angels are working on our ideals for the future regardless. Their work is guided by a specific principle, namely that in the future, nobody shall enjoy happiness in peace as long as there are others who are unhappy. That is a certain impulse of universal fellowship, of community fellowship understood in the right way that prevails in regard to social

conditions in the physical world. This is one of the impulses according to which the Angels form pictures in our astral body. The second impulse that guides the Angels' work concerns the intention they have for our soul, our soul life. Regarding this soul life, the Angels want to impress images on our astral body that will, in the future, lead us to see every person we encounter as carrying a spark of the divine concealed within. In other words, the angels are working on changing things. What the Angels intend for us is that we no longer consider ourselves merely as higher animals and solely on the basis of our physical nature. Instead, in our encounters with others, we are to see in everyone a revelation coming from the divine ground of the world, a revelation in flesh and blood. A strong feeling of the divine revelation in every person we meet must animate and guide us at all times. Through their work, the angels are preparing us for seeing everyone as an image that reveals itself to us from out of the divine ground of the world, and

they embody understanding as seriously, as strongly, and as compassionately as possible in the images they impress on our astral body as a result of what the Angels intend. In the future, people will only become religious on the basis of seeing everyone as an image of God, and this will not be mere theory but permeate their everyday life. This means that in the future, there can no longer be a compulsion for people to join a particular religion or denomination. Indeed, that will no longer be needed because every encounter with another person will be a religious act, a sacrament. Churches of any kind and their external institutions in the physical world will no longer be needed to sustain religious belief. In other words, if the churches understand themselves rightly, they cannot have any other goal but to make themselves redundant on the physical plane by turning all of life into an expression of the super sensory or spiritual realm. In any case, at the bottom of the impulses guiding the work of the Angels is the intention to spread religious

freedom over all of humanity. In addition, the Angels want to enable us to come to the spirit by way of our thinking, to bridge the abyss between the physical world and the spiritual realm with our thinking. In other words, spiritual science for the spirit, religious freedom for the soul, and fellowship for the body. These are the principles resounding like a cosmic melody through the workings of the angels in our astral body. All we need to experience firsthand the Angels' wonderful activity at our astral body is to raise our consciousness to a certain higher level. In summary, we are now living in the age of the consciousness soul, and in this epoch, the Angels work in our astral body as I've just described. As part of our development, we must gradually come to realize what I've explained. You may wonder where we can find evidence of the Angels' work, and at this point, we can only find it in the sleeping person. The evidence can be seen in the time between our falling asleep and waking up, as well as in waking sleep states. As I've often pointed out, even

When we are awake, we often sleep right through our lives' most important events. And unfortunately, I can assure you that when you look around with open eyes, you will see that these days very many people are really deeply asleep. They don't care about what happens in the world and remain indifferent and detached. The great events of world history often passed them by, just as we don't notice what happens in the city at night while we're sleeping. Though people seem to be awake, in reality, they're asleep to what is going on. And it is precisely when people in their waking hours sleep through significant events that we can see how the angels are working in their astral body in the way I've described. And their work is taking place whether we want to believe it or not. All this seems mysterious and paradoxical. We often consider this or that person to be unworthy of any kind of relationship to the spiritual world when in reality the individual in question turns out to be merely quite a sleepyhead.

In this incarnation, one who sleeps through everything going on around him or her. However, at the same time, the angel is at work in that person's astral body as part of the whole community of angels that is working on the future of humanity. The angel makes use of that individual's astral body regardless, and we can observe the work being done in that astral body. What matters here is that such insights are increasingly pushing their way into our consciousness, but we must therefore develop our consciousness soul to the point of acknowledging what can be discovered only in this way. Based on these conditions, you will understand that this epoch of the consciousness soul is moving forcefully toward a particular event or change. And because we are dealing with the consciousness soul, it depends on us how this change will play out in our development, whether sooner or later, by a hundred years or so. What will surely occur in our development eventually is that purely by means of our consciousness, so our conscious thinking, we will learn to see how the angels are

preparing our future. In other words, what spiritual science teaches us in this regard must become practical wisdom for our daily life. We must make it our own to such an extent that we can be firmly convinced that the Angels work toward the intentions I have outlined above. Since we have already progressed quite far in our development toward freedom, it will depend entirely on us whether we will sleep through the above-described change or move toward it consciously. To move toward this change consciously would mean primarily to study spiritual science. It is offered to us, and all we need to do is study it. In addition, we can support this change by following the suggestions for meditation and other practical directions offered in my book titled Out of No Higher Worlds. Yet all that is really necessary is to study spiritual science and understand it consciously. You can study spiritual science even without first developing clairvoyance. Spiritual science is accessible to anyone who will not put prejudices in his or her way. The more people study spiritual science, the more they make its concepts and ideas their

own the more they will awaken in their consciousness and not sleep through things but experience them consciously yet knowing what the angel is doing in our astral body is only the first step beyond that the most important thing is to realize that at a certain point three changes it will occur as I said whether they happen sooner or later will depend on us and in the worst case those changes will not occur at all what is supposed to happen is for three insights to be revealed to us through the world of the Angels the first insight is that we can understand the deeper dimensions of our nature with lively active human interest indeed there will come a time we don't want to sleep through a time when we will receive through our angel an inspiring impulse from the spiritual world that impulse will inspire us to become much more deeply interested in everyone else than we are now this enhanced interest in our fellow human humans will not develop gradually and conveniently remaining primarily subjective on the contrary it will come in one fell swoop.

when the spiritual world pours into us the mysterious realization of what every person really is. I'm talking about something very concrete and specific here, not some theoretical considerations or reflections. And what I mean is this: people will learn something that makes them interested in everyone else. This is one of the changes I mentioned, and it will immeasurably enrich our social life. The second revelation from the world of the Angels will show us irrefutably that the Christ impulse leads to religious freedom, among other things, and that the hallmark of true Christianity is that it makes absolute freedom of religion possible. The third revelation is the incontrovertible realization that the world is spiritual. As I've explained, this is to occur in such a way that our consciousness so forms a particular relationship to it, and it is an event that will come at some point in our development because it is what the angel is preparing us for with its images in our astral body. Moreover, the coming event is already embodied in our will. As you know, we can

do or fail to do many things, and these days many people still fail to do what can lead us toward an experience of the change indicated in a fully awake condition. At the same time, there are beings that have an interest in knocking us off track: the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings. What I've just explained is part of our divine development. Indeed, if we followed our own spiritual nature, we would have to realize what the angel is unfolding in our astral body. However, the Luciferic influence in our development pushes us off course and thus prevents us from realizing the work of the hierarchy of the Angels. The Lucifer beings push us off track by interfering with our free will and keeping us in the dark about carrying out our free will. Though they make us into good people indeed in this context, Lucifer wants us to be good and spiritual. They also try to make us into automatons and rob us of our free will. In other words, the Lucifer beings want to help us become clairvoyant.

in accordance with the principles of good, but without free will, they want to turn us into clairvoyant automatons, so to speak, by robbing us of our free will. They also take away our ability to choose evil. They want us to act based on spiritual principles, but only as a sort of imitation or copy, without free will. Basically, if the Luciferic beings have their way, they will turn us into automatons. To explain this, we have to take into account certain mysteries of evolution. As you know, the Luciferic beings stopped developing at a certain stage in their evolution and now bring alien elements into our otherwise normal development. These Luciferic beings are greatly interested in preventing us from fully developing our free will because they themselves have not been able to develop it. Free will can only be attained here on earth, but those beings don't want anything to do with the earth. They are content with having gone through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolution, and that's where they want to stop, rather than be part of earthly

evolution. Basically, they hate our free will. They act very spiritually but do so automatically, and this is extremely important. They want to raise us to their level, to their spiritual level. In other words, they want us to be automatons, albeit spiritual ones. The danger there is that if we become spiritual automatons before our consciousness (soul) is fully functional, we will sleep right through the revelation that is to come, the one I have described above. The Aaronic beings are also working to oppose that revelation. They don't want to make us particularly spiritual but instead aim to deaden our consciousness of our own spirituality. That is, they want to instill in us the belief we are nothing more than perfectly developed animals. The Saruman is the great teacher and advocate of materialistic Darwinism and of those technical and practical activities in our earthly evolution that accept only the outer sensory life as real and to deny everything else. Armand is behind all endeavors aimed solely at spreading technology for the purpose of more efficiently satisfying our need for food.

and drink and our other physical needs that we have in common with the animals. They are demonic spirits in our time, striving to kill or darken our awareness of being made in the image of God. They want to kill the consciousness within us by means of all kinds of sophisticated scientific advances. In previous ages, it would not have done any good for the demonic spirits to try to obscure the truth with their theories because, during the Greco-Roman epoch and even more so in still earlier times, people still had atavistic clairvoyance and the pictures it provided. Therefore, it didn't much matter what people were thinking; with the help of those inner pictures, people could see into the spiritual world. Thus, whatever our Imam might have tried to teach them about their relationship to the animals would not have made any difference in their life. It is really only in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in the 15th century, that thinking has become powerful. We could

say it is mighty in its powerlessness. Unlike in previous times since the 15th century, thinking has become able to lead the consciousness soul into the spiritual realm, and at the same time, it also gained the power to prevent that soul from entering the spiritual world. In contrast to earlier eras in our time, theories and sciences are consciously trying to rob us of our divinity and of our experience of the divine. This has not been possible prior to the age of the consciousness soul, and that is why the aromatic spirits are trying especially hard now to spread teachings that blot out our awareness of our divine origin. These explanations of the forces opposing our normal divine development already tell you what you need to do in your life so that you will not be asleep to the revelation that is to come into human evolution. If we're not awake for the coming change, we run the risk that instead of a significant event that is to intervene powerfully in our future earthly evolution, everything detrimental and dangerous to that evolution will

take place; therefore, we must be careful and on the alert. After all, certain spiritual beings advance in their development through hours; that is, they develop right alongside us. For example, the angels that are forming images in our astral body are not doing this just for fun, but to accomplish something. What they must accomplish can only be achieved in our earthly development. Therefore, if we were to deliberately ignore all this after the development of our consciousness soul, then everything the angel did was for nothing and is reduced to nothing but a game. That is, if we deliberately and consciously ignore what I've talked about here today, the work of the angel is reduced to just a game; it is rendered futile. It is only when we allow these things to become real that the Angels' work is redeemed in all its seriousness and purposefulness. This also tells you that the work of the Angels must remain serious, no matter what. After all, you can imagine the chaos behind the scenes of existence if we could turn the work of the angels into a game merely by being

sleepyheads. You may wonder what will happen if humanity insists on sleeping through the important spiritual revelation that is coming. For example, if people were to sleep through the second part of that revelation, that is, the part about freedom of religion, and thus would miss the recurrence of the mystery of Golgotha on the etheric plane, then the angels would have to find a different way to do what they had intended to accomplish with the images in our astral body. I've often talked about the coming of the etheric Christ, and if people are not awake for it and for the other simultaneous occurrences, then the angels would have to find another approach, as it turns out. But we don't allow the angels to accomplish by our refusing to wake up to things; they will then have to carry out by means of our sleeping body. In other words, what we are sleeping through in our waking hours and thus prevent the angels from fully accomplishing those things would then have to be achieved with the help of our

sleeping physical body and our etheric body, both of which remain behind in our bed when we're asleep. Let me read that sentence again. In other words, what we are sleeping through in our waking hours and thus prevent the angels from fully accomplishing those things would then have to be achieved with the help of our sleeping physical body and our etheric body, both of which remain behind in our bed when we're asleep. The angels would then be looking in those bodies for the forces they need to help them accomplish their tasks, the tasks that could not be carried out while we are awake, and our waking soul is in our etheric body and physical body. Will then have to be done with our sleeping at their body and physical body. That is, during the time when our I and our astral body are outside us while we are sleeping. When we're asleep like this to the important events around us, we run a great risk. That is, if humanity continues with its refusal to turn to the spirit, then at some point before the third

millennium. The consequences of our stubborn resistance could descend upon us. It's really not long anymore to the third millennium, which begins in the year 2000. If the Angels have to work with our sleeping body instead of being able to use our waking soul to accomplish their task, they would have to move all their work out of our astral body and immerse it in our etheric body in order to carry out their mission. However, we will not be there and thus not be part of this. If the Angels have to carry out their task in the etheric body, they can do so only if we're not there, because if we were there in our waking state, we would keep the Angels from doing their work. This gives you a general picture of the risk involved in not wanting to be awake to things in particular. If the Angels had to do their work in our etheric body and our physical body while we're sleeping, that is, they would have to work in our absence. Three things will occur in

humanity's development, first of all, as the angels work in our sleeping body in the absence of our astral body, and I a certain instinctive power will be created, and we will find simply fine, that is, find it there when we wake up in the morning. In other words, we'll simply be given certain instinctive insights rather than having to attain them through our freedom. What we find as we wake up every morning will be instinct rather than being based on our free consciousness. These instinctive insights are indeed part of our development and are connected to the mysteries of conception and birth, to our whole sexual life. They become dangerous and harmful when we receive them as a result of the above-described refusal to wake up to the Angels' work in our astral body. If these angels then have to work in our etheric body in our absence, they themselves will undergo a certain change that I cannot talk about because it is one of the higher secrets of initiation science that must not yet be revealed. However, what I can tell you

is that if human development takes the turn described above, then certain sexual instincts will emerge and gain ground, not in a beneficial or useful way in our waking clear consciousness, but in a destructive way as pure instincts. These instincts will not only sidetrack us, but they will also influence our social structures. In particular, what will then enter our bloodstream as a result of our sexual life will keep us from developing any kind of fellowship on earth. Instead, these instincts would go to us at all times into rebelling against fellowship, a rebellion that would be purely instinctual. Thus, we face a moment of decision, a decisive crossroads: whether we go to the right, and then we must be awake to things, or we go to the left, and then we can sleep through everything. However, in this latter case, instincts will emerge that will have dreadful consequences. Natural scientists' response to the emergence of these instincts will be to say that this development was inevitable and an absolute necessity. Then it is simply inherent that it is.

simply inherent in human evolution. That is why the natural sciences cannot warn us about such things or tell us much about them. After all, whether human beings turn into angels or devils, the natural sciences would have an explanation in either case. For to them, everything happens as a result of what precedes it. There you have the great wisdom of explanation based on causality. The natural sciences will not even notice the event I've described here today because they will naturally come an absolute necessity that people become near devils because of their sexual instincts. Basically, we cannot explain these things by means of the natural sciences because for them, everything can be explained scientifically. It is only through spiritual, supersensible insight that these things can be understood. The second consequence that will follow from the work that will cause changes in the angels is an instinctive but detrimental knowledge of certain remedies. Indeed, everything related to medicine will get a tremendous boost in the materialistic sense. People will instinctively perceive the healing properties of certain substances and certain activities and

will do great harm with that, but they will call the harm they do useful and beneficial. As a result, people will call the silk sick, healthy fur. They will realize that then they can get involved in certain activities, perform certain actions that they will enjoy. Indeed, people will enjoy doing what is unknown. Basically, there will be growing knowledge of the healing properties of certain processes and activities, but it will lead us on to dangerous ground. Above all, people will learn through certain of their instincts which illnesses are caused by certain substances and actions, and then they can decide on the basis of purely egotistic motives whether to produce these illnesses or not. The third consequence of the above-described turn in human development will be that we come to know certain forces that can easily be manipulated to unleash vast mechanical power over the whole world. Simply harmonizing certain vibrations can release tremendous powers. As a result, we will be able to instinctively exert some control over the realm of mechanics and machines, and then technology as a whole will be on

dangerous ground. Our egotism will be pleased with this development and find it useful to properly appreciate these concrete details concerning our development. We must develop a spiritual view of life, for without it, if we rely on an unspiritual view, these things will remain unclear to us. Without a spiritual view of life, we would be at a loss when the above-described harmful medicine takes hold, when our sexual instincts go badly astray, when the world mechanism goes awry regarding the use of natural resources through spiritual powers. Without a spiritual worldview, we would not be able to understand or even notice these things and how they are pushing us off our true path. Indeed, without spiritual understanding, we would be much like the sleeping person who does not notice the thief coming at night to rob him and only sees the damage later when waking up, and by then, it is too late. It would be a rough awakening indeed. We would delight in the expansion of our instinctive knowledge of the healing properties of certain substances and processes. We would enjoy living out our

sexual instincts gone awry, and we would praise particularly this last aberration as an exceptionally fine form of the superhuman and of impartiality and tolerance. In a sense, what is ugly would become beautiful for us, and vice versa, and we would not even notice this because it would appear to us as an absolute necessity, as the way things must be. Nevertheless, we would be off our true course, which has been prescribed for us, even in regard to our own inner nature. In contrast, once we accept spiritual science and develop a sense for how it can color our outlook on everything, we can seriously consider the truths I've talked about here today. Then, we can draw from these truths, but we can also draw from spiritual science as a whole, namely that spiritual science also implies a certain commitment, a lifetime commitment, regardless of what we're doing or where we are. The important thing is always to remember that everything we do must be steeped in and illuminated by our at the Safa core consciousness, and that is how we can

contribute to advancing the development of humanity in the right way. Indeed, it is a grave mistake to believe that spiritual science understood rightly and sincerely would ever lead us away from the practical and important work of our life. True spiritual science awakens us to the things I talked about today, and the question then is whether our waking life can ever be bad for our sleep. We can use an analogy here and say that insight into the spiritual world is to our normal waking state like a further waking up, just as our normal waking state is an awakening from sleep. Our question then is whether this waking life can ever interfere with our sleep. Of course, our sleep will suffer if we need an irregular, disorderly life. If we live a wholesome, orderly life while we're awake, then we'll sleep well and wake up rested and refreshed. However, if we spend our waking hours daydreaming, snoozing off, idly lounging about rather than working, then we won't sleep well. The same applies to the waking life we attain through spiritual science. If we

use spiritual science to develop a solid and orderly relationship to the spiritual world. Then, this right relationship will get us on the right track in our ordinary sensory life here in the physical world. If we're at all awake these days, we cannot fail to notice that, especially in recent decades, people often boast of their so-called practical experience in life. Indeed, these days, those who have the greatest disdain for ideals and everything spiritual have managed to get into leadership positions all over the world. They could proclaim all they wanted about this practical experience as long as humanity did not get dragged into the abyss with them. However, now some of them are starting to groan instinctively for the most part and call for a new era to begin and for new ideals. But it's just instinctive groaning, and if these things were to come about without people consciously delving into spiritual science, they would be more conducive to the deterioration of what we are to experience in our waking state rather than to any kind of beneficial advance in our development. Nowadays, those who

speechify and trot out the old saws may still meet with applause, but people will have to get used to hearing other words, other ideas, if a social Kosmos is to arise out of the current chaos. The truth is that if we fail to be awake when we should be and thus do not discover what should be happening, then nothing real can happen. Instead, the ghost of the preceding epoch will haunt us, much as many religious denominations of our time are haunted by the ghosts of the past, and as our laws are haunted by those of ancient Rome. Particularly in this regard, the mission of spiritual science in the age of the consciousness soul is to set us free by leading us to the true observation of a spiritual fact, namely the work of the angel in our astral body. Talking abstractly about angels and so on cannot be the first step. True progress can be made only if we speak concretely, that is, if we answer the most burning question that concerns us in relation to our specific time.

question. We've talked about here today concerns us deeply because the angel weaves images in our astral body that are to give a certain form to our future, a form that is to be implemented by the consciousness soul. If we did not have a consciousness soul, we would not have to concern ourselves with these things. In that case, other spirits and other hierarchies would intervene to accomplish what the angel is weaving in our astral body. However, since we are to develop our consciousness soul, no other spirits can step in to take the place of the angel and carry out what the angel is weaving. Of course, the angels were also at work in the human astral body in the ancient Egyptian period, but very soon other spirits stepped in, and as a result, people's atavistic clairvoyant consciousness was obscured. In other words, thanks to their atavistic clairvoyance, people could see the angels' activity and therefore wove a thick dark veil to cover the work of the angels. However, now

In our time, our task is to unveil the angels' activity. That is why we should not sleep through what will be carried into our conscious life in our age, which will end before the third millennium at the past vocal spiritual science. Therefore, wants to give us not just teachings and insights, but above all intentions, intentions that will give us the strength to be awake. Indeed, we can make it a habit to be awake if we become more attentive to begin with. If we pay attention, we find that not a day goes by that a miracle doesn't happen in our life. We can turn this around and say that if on any day we don't find a miracle in our life, it's only because we have lost sight of it. Simply review your day in the evening, and you'll find some event, whether small or big or medium-sized, that what you have to say that it was a strange thing to have happened and that it has come into your life in a peculiar way. You'll see this clearly if you just

widen the horizon of your thinking and consider your life in a sufficiently comprehensive context. Of course, people generally don't do this because they usually don't ask themselves what events were prevented from occurring simply because something else took place. By and large, we don't concern ourselves with the events that did not happen but were prevented and that would have changed our life radically if they had occurred. Yet, what is behind these events that are in this way kept out of our life can teach us to be awake and alert. For example, as we review our day in the evening, we could ask what could have happened to us that day when we look at this or that event and think about what consequences it could have had. The reflections this evokes can then teach us to be awake and disciplined. This is just a beginning, but from there we can progress almost effortlessly further and further. Finally, we will begin to think more deeply about the significance of events for our life. For example, if we had planned to go out at 10:30 in the

morning but are delayed because someone drops by for a visit at the last minute. We may be annoyed at the delay but will then also think about what might have happened if we had left the house as planned. We will then consider what changes have been wrought in our life as a result of our not leaving on time. I've talked about these things here previously in greater detail. A straight path leads from the perception of the negative in our life, which can nevertheless testify to the wise guidance of our life, all the way to the perception of the angel working and weaving in our astral body. It is a straight, safe, and clear path that we can easily follow. [Music] you [Music]

What Does the Angel Do in Our Astral Body By Rudolf Steiner

What Does the Angel Do in Our Astral Body By Rudolf Steiner