The Destiny of Individuals and of Nations
GA 157
22 June 1915, Berlin
13. The Prophetic Nature of Dreams: Moon, Sun and Saturn Man
Dear friends, once again let us first of all remember those who are out there at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be With you and the hard duties you have to perform.
Today it will be my task to sum up some of the things we may know already, though it is good to review them again and again, for they may serve as guide-lines for our work in spiritual science.
Above all we must every now and again return to the thought that our present life on earth, between birth and death, really is an interlude between our many past earth lives and the many lives we have already lived between death and rebirth on the one hand and the many earth lives and lives between death and rebirth that lie ahead in the future on the other. An interlude is what I have called this life of ours. We may therefore expect to find something in our present life that may, as it were, be considered to have arisen out of what has gone before, and also something that may be seen to point us towards the future. Some of the things we shall discuss today will relate particularly to the latter.
A person could easily believe, in considering his life, that there is really nothing in this life to indicate that the germs, the seeds of our future life are already within us. Yet that is the case. It really is the case that what is to happen with us in the future is already in preparation. We merely have to interpret our lives correctly and we shall find out that something already lies hidden within us just as the plant now before us holds within it the hidden seed of the future plant' for a plant that is still to come into being.
One element in our present life which often tends to be incomprehensible is our dream life, a subject only too well known to us all. Our dream life does of course have aspects that we may consider to be to some extent comprehensible. We dream about things which remind us of something or other we have gone through in life. It does, of course, often happen that things we have gone through the day before or some time ago appear changed in our dreams, that they have undergone some kind of transformation. But still, it will often be fairly obvious that part of the life we have behind us comes up in what we are dreaming, even if it has changed. On the other hand I think no one who pays at least some attention to himself and the world of his dreams can deny that there are dreams which show us such strange things that we really cannot say they derive from something or other we have gone through in our lives. It really is a fact that a person only needs to reflect a little on his dreams and he will be perfectly aware that things come up in his dreams which he could never have thought up, could never have had an idea of, at least as far as he is aware from what he remembers.
We shall understand how all this fits together if we take a closer look at what really happens when we dream. As you know, when we are asleep we are outside the physical and ether bodies with our astral body and ego. The physical and ether bodies are lying on the couch; with our astral body and ego we are outside them. Under present conditions on earth it is not possible for any one to have conscious awareness of what the astral body and the ego go through whilst they are asleep—unless they somehow acquire special faculties. These things are at a subconscious level. However, clairvoyant perception shows that what the astral body and ego live through outside the physical body is just as rich and varied, just as clearly defined, as what the physical body experiences. It is just as rich and varied, showing just as great a variety of form as many of the things we experience here on the physical plane. Our consciousness cannot take it in, but it is there and it is experienced. The astral body and the ego are normally so far away from the physical and ether bodies during sleep that these are not aware of anything that goes on in the astral body and the ego. Dreams arise when the astral body and the ego come so close to the physical and ether bodies that the ether body is able to receive impressions of what goes on in the astral body and the ego. When you wake up knowing that you have been dreaming, it strictly speaking means that the contents of your dream have become conscious because the astral body and the ego were re-entering. And before the physical body was able to become conscious of having the astral body and the ego within itself again, the ether body became conscious of this. The ether body rapidly took in what the astral body and the ego had experienced and this gave rise to the dream. A dream therefore arises through interaction between astral body and ether body.
As a result the dream is given a particular colouring. It is given a kind of coating, one might say. As you know, at death the human being departs with his astral body, ego and ether body and the ether body then immediately sees the past life in retrospect. This vision of the past life is in fact attached to the ether body and the review comes to an end when this dissolves. The ether body therefore has the capacity for carrying the imprint of all the events in one's life. The ether body really bears the imprint of everything we have gone through in life.
This ether body has a very complex structure. If we were able to dissect it out in such a way that it retained its form, it would be a mirror of our present life, a picture of our life going back to the moment, the point in time, to which our memory extends. As we enter into the ether body with our astral body and ego and the ether body comes to meet the incoming astral body, it carries things—memories of things it has experienced—towards that which is coming in with the astral body and it uses its own images for what in the astral body is something real.
I want to put it more precisely. Let us assume someone is asleep and with his astral body and ego out there encounters, let us say, another individual. The person will know nothing about this. He experiences the encounter; he experiences a certain friendly feeling towards the other and knows that he is about to do something together with this other individual. Let us assume he experiences this outside his ether body. This is possible. Yet he'll know nothing about it. Then the moment of waking comes. The astral body and the ego return to the ether body, bringing towards the ether body whatever has been experienced. The ether body meets the astral body with all that is inherent within it, with its world of images, and the sleeper dreams. He dreams of something he undertook maybe ten, twenty years ago. And the person will say to himself: ‘Ah yes, I have been dreaming about something I experienced ten, twenty years ago.’ But if he reflects carefully he may well find that the past event has undergone a complete change. It will still, however, remind him of something he experienced in the past. Now what did really happen in this case? If we follow the process carefully, using clairvoyant perception, we find that the ego and astral body have experienced something that in fact Will only take place during the person's next incarnation: an encounter with an individual, something or other which has to do with the individual. But the person is not yet able to take this in with his ether body, for this only contains, is only able to hold, the images of his present life. When the astral body enters, the ether body expresses what really is part of a future life in images belonging to the present life. This peculiarly complicated process actually takes place all the time in the human being when he is dreaming.
Considering everything you have already heard in spiritual science, this will not seem strange to you. We must be aware that in the principles which depart from our physical and ether bodies, in the astral body and the ego, we have that which tends towards our next incarnation, which is preparing in us for our next incarnation. As we gradually learn to separate our dreams from the images deriving from our present life, we come to know the prophetic nature of dreams. The prophetic nature of dreams can indeed be revealed to us; we merely have to learn to strip our dreams of the images in which they are clothed. We need to consider the nature of the experiences in our dreams rather than the actual experience. We might say to ourselves for instance: The fact that I dream of an individual is due to the nature of my ether body, the way in which my ether body goes out to meet the experiences gained by the astral body with images relating to the present. To identify the things which have already been prepared for our next life, we have to focus our attention more on the manner or essential nature of the dream, separating it from the image belonging to the ether body. Through our dreams we really have prophecies in us of things that will happen in the future. It is really most important to pay serious attention to this. Human life will be more and more revealed the more we take account of its complex nature. We'd like to have it simpler, that would be easier, but the fact is that it is complicated.
You see, someone who is in the outer, physical world does not realize that there are all kinds of things within him. We have just come to see that there is a foreteller of future lives within us. But there are many other things in us, and in gaining self-knowledge we come to see more and more of what there is in us, what is at work within us, making us happy or unhappy—for all the things that are in us make us happy or unhappy. People do not usually realize that prior to this earth life they went through life on Moon—not they themselves but that which has made them human beings on earth. We know something of life on Moon and also of earlier life stages on Sun and on Saturn. Let us first of all consider life on Moon. At present we are of course living earth lives, but life on Moon was essential if earth life was to come about. Life on Moon was preparatory, producing the causes of life on earth, and in a certain way this Moon life is still in us. On Moon man had a dream-like clairvoyance. He perceived reality through dream images. Today we still have in us what we once have been on Moon; it is still in us. Yes, I know Moon man has become earth man, but this effect still holds its original cause within it, we still have Moon man in us. Looking upon this Moon man we are able to say: ‘He is what we call the dreamer in us.’ Yes, indeed, We all carry a dreamer in us, a dreamer who actually thinks and feels and uses his will in a less dense, in a thinner, way, but who is really also wiser than we earth individuals are. We have a dreamer in us. We all carry another subtle human being within us. The way we walk about on earth, thinking, feeling and using our will, is something we have been given in the course of earth evolution. What Moon evolution has left in us is a dreaming human being. We are however given more in this dreamer than we are able to have in our thoughts, feelings and will impulses, and this dreamer is not entirely inactive. We do not take him into account, but we do many, many things that we are really only half aware of, things the dreamer in us is directing and guiding. We arrange things, but the dreamer in us also does his part, guiding our thoughts in this or that direction. We may think up a sentence, for example. The dreamer will make us say that sentence in a specific way, giving it a point, a particular nuance of feeling. The dreamer is what is left in us of Moon. Let us refer to an outstanding individual and show how the dreamer can be found in him. When people get to know people in life, or get to know outstanding individuals through their writings, they usually consider the other as a human being on this earth and not as a dreamer, a poet. Yet it is there that he expresses himself more profoundly.
Emerson was a great writer.78Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–82) American philosophic writer and essayist. Quotes taken from his Essays and Poems Collins, London & Glasgow 1954. He had the peculiarity that he always became so engrossed in whatever subject he was dealing with that it is easy to show up the occasional contradiction in his work. The reason is that he was always completely taken up with the subject he was dealing with at the time, failing to take into account that what he was characterizing at the moment was contradictory to the characterization he had given when involved in another subject. In the case of Emerson it is always possible to detect subtle undertones of his Moon being, of the dreamer, wherever he became completely involved in a person or an object. Emerson wrote two excellent essays—one on Shakespeare as the typical poet and one on Goethe as the typical writer. Now what happens is that people read this and that in Emerson's essay on Shakespeare and read this and that in the essay on Goethe and this satisfies them, they are content. But we can also take things further and say to ourselves: 'Surely there is some subtle touch of something unusual in these works of Emerson?' And We shall discover something very strange indeed, for Emerson's intention was not to characterize Shakespeare as Shakespeare, but to make him the representative, the example, of poets. It is very strange to see what has come about through Emerson's becoming engrossed in Shakespeare—if we perceive the subtle undertones that are present in this work.
You know I would not say anything derogatory about Shakespeare out of chauvinism, for nationalistic reasons. Of course I consider Shakespeare a great poet, certainly one of the greatest poets of all time. But let me bring out those subtle undertones that are there in Emerson's characterization of Shakespeare. He wrote that it was not originality which made a great man. Characterizing a great poet one should not demand such a great person to be original in everything he did.
And you'll find that in his characterization of Shakespeare Emerson makes it clear that the poet went to all kinds of sources, taking anything he liked and using it in his own poetic works. Emerson was making an effort, as it were, to excuse Shakespeare for not being original, for collecting his material from all kinds of sources—Italian, Spanish, French and German—and of course also from English history. Oddly enough, Emerson, a man giving such loving concern to the work of Shakespeare, characterized Shakespeare in the following words:
‘Great men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and making bricks, and building the house; no great men are original. Nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men.’
He excused Shakespeare's lack of originality, the fact that he collected his material from many sources. Indeed, he went so far as to say that one had to consider the nature of English audiences at the time, for Shakespeare sought to be to their taste. Emerson wrote some strange things about Shakespeare:
‘It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labour, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.’
And the strangest thing Emerson said about Shakespeare in his loving characterization, the strangest thing—please listen to this:
`It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.’
Emerson was therefore trying to demonstrate Shakespeare's world renown exactly by showing that great men plagiarize on each other's works and that the themes he used in his numerous works were actually taken from the work of others. That is the subtle undertone to be found initially in Emerson's Shakespeare characterization.
Let us now consider his loving appreciation of Goethe. Emerson characterized Goethe as representative of writers. Yet he said with reference to Goethe that nature depended on her wonders being put in words. Every stone, every plant, every creature in nature was waiting to be uttered in words by the soul of man. The writer, Emerson said, would be in immediate contact with nature. It was as though the creator himself has first made provision for the idea and then one day the writer would appear. It was strange, Emerson said with regard to Goethe, how this man owed none of his gifts to his people, his country, his environment, for everything bubbled up out of him. Truth and error, too, was determined by Goethe himself, everything was his own.
In his characterization of Goethe, Emerson sought to find his concepts from all kinds of sources. Characterizing Shakespeare as a splendid robber he presented Goethe as someone working out of the centre of the world, as nature herself. Here are some passages from Emerson's description of Goethe:
‘The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know in the high refinements of modern life, in arts, in science, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honour every truth by use.’
Elsewhere he said:
‘I find a provision, in the constitution of the world, for the writer.’
He characterized Shakespeare as being the way his audiences wanted him, Goethe as a man who had been envisaged from the very beginning of the world.
‘He is not a debtor to his position, but was born with a free and controlling genius.’
And again:
‘He sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation towards truth. He will realize what you say. He hates to be trifled with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable, that has had possession of men's faith these thousand years.’
Those words were used to characterize Goethe. In his characterization of Shakespeare, Emerson said that he could never do enough to collect material from all kinds of sources, particularly written sources. I would say that in his characterizations of Shakespeare and of Goethe Emerson succeeded marvellously well in bringing out the difference between Shakespeare and Goethe. Out of what we feel about this we are then able to discover what the dreamer has contributed in either case, that is how Emerson came to characterize Shakespeare as a great robber and Goethe as the great ally of the truth. This is extremely interesting, for there was no conscious intention; yet there is this particular tinge to both essays.
You see, there is another way of reading than just picking up a book and going through it. In fact we do not find out the most important aspects of things if we just take them by themselves, but only by comparing them, by letting one thing act on us side by side with another.
It has been possible for me to give this example because in the case of Emerson it is often the dreamer who is speaking. It is absolutely possible to be aware of two persons speaking in his voice. Emerson was of course aware of the contradictions which your run-of-the-mill reader finds in his works. After all, some of the contradictions In Emerson are so glaringly obvious you really cannot miss them. On the one hand he calls the English the greatest nation on earth, on the other he puts the Germans above them. One thing is said out of surface consciousness, the other out of the dreamer. It is particularly interesting to read the two conclusions to the essays on Shakespeare and Goethe one after the other, taking them simply as conclusions. In the essay on Shakespeare, Emerson wrote that none has as yet attained to what the poet represented in the world: 'The world still awaits the poet-priest.' Something of a feeling of resignation is apparent in the conclusion of the Shakespeare essay. At the end of the Goethe essay we find the exact opposite: that we are spurred by him to revere all truth by not merely giving it recognition but also making it the guide-line for our actions. The Shakespeare essay ends in words of resignation, the Goethe essay in words of confidence and hope.
We are living in an age when it is important to consider these things to some extent, to realize them to some extent. We shall find that in all human beings there is a dreamer who makes himself known through their actions. Clairvoyant awareness is able to perceive him directly; in ordinary life we can recognize him by studying people. That is something we can do in the case of Emerson. Studying Emerson is of definite interest.
The dreamer is the principle in us which is influenced by everything that is supposed to influence us from the spiritual world without our being aware of it. In the experiences we gain as human beings on earth we form thoughts and will impulses. The things we know In the ordinary way are the things we discover in the course of life. Into our dreams however come the Inspirations of the angels, of the entities known as the Angeloi. These in turn are inspired by entities from higher hierarchies. Into our dreams enter things—more so in some and less in others—that are more sensible than anything we have gained from everyday life, anything we encompass in everyday life as we think, feel and use our will. The element that guides us, the element which is more than earth-dwelling man is or ever was, enters into the dreamer in us.
You see, this dreamer is capable of evoking many things that at present are unconscious in us. Oh yes, everything influencing us from the higher world by way of the entities belonging to the hierarchy of the Angeloi influences the dreamer; but all Ahrimanic, all Luciferic influences also influence the dreamer, they really act on the dreamer. A great deal of what people put forward—not entirely from their consciousness, I'd say, but at an instinctive level—is due to influence brought to bear on the dreamer from the spiritual world.
Again I would like to give you an example. I would like to take this example from contemporary history on a somewhat wider scale. I have told you on several occasions that we come to know the European peoples by understanding the way the folk soul speaks through the sentient soul to the Italian, through the intellectual or mind soul to the French, through the spiritual soul to the English, through the ego to the Germans, through the spirit self to the Russians. This communication through the spirit self in the case of the Russians takes the form of instincts today that will only develop further in the future. What the Russian folk soul has to say will only become apparent in the distant future, once the human soul has developed as far as the spirit self. This is why everything that emerges to the east of us is still only germinal. Those peoples to the east of us are, however, instinctively aware that they belong to a different cultural stream. They feel that they must wait. Yet no one likes to wait in reflecting on his awareness of the present. The point is that they are supposed to wait and consciously absorb European culture. Yet there is an instinct in them that they ought to lead and to guide, that they cannot put Europe to death quickly enough. The natural course of events, however, is that in Central Europe there develops whatever can develop in the dialogue between the folk soul and the ego.
As for the Russian folk soul, it must learn its lessons from Central Europe. Once it has worked through what is already being worked through in advance in Central Europe, it will be able to make its own Contribution to European culture. Instead, wild, chaotic instincts are giving rise to something very strange so that we are able to see that these instincts are brought to life in the dreamer out of all kinds of Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. It is due to these Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses that the East of Europe has now turned against Germany in such a horrific way.
One mind in whose utterances the dreamer is apparent is that of Yushakov79Yushakov, Seigel (1849–1910): Der Englisch-Russische Konflikt Ptersburg, 1885. He gave his views in 1885 on the relationship between Russian and English culture. I suggest you consider his ideas, for it seems most desirable that as many people as possible today ideas like those which not all that long ago arose in the mind of a Russian who then wrote them down. We should consider these ideas not so much for their content but rather as symptoms of something to be found in all Russian peoples. develop
Yushakov said that the West had grown decadent and was ripe for decline—everything in the West had outlived its time and had to disintegrate. Russia would have to come in at this point. But Russia should not merely cultivate the West, redeem the West from its barbarism; Russian would have to redeem the whole world and Particularly Asia. The way Yushakov envisaged this redemption of Asia for the sake of the soul is as follows.
Let us consider Asia. Asiatic culture really originated from Iran. Iranian culture based on Ormazd.80Ormazd (German spelling ‘Ormuzd)’ is equivalent to Ahura Mazda (translator). The Iranians had realized that there was conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman and it has always been possible to see how the Iranians did everything in their power to spread the beneficial influence of Ormazd in Iran. Then, however, the Turanian peoples appeared on the scene. They were independent of Ahriman and constantly harried, fought and overcame the Ormazd culture. First Ormazd was in conflict with Ahriman in Iran. But If we look at the way the peoples of Europe behaved towards this Ormazd culture we find that this lovely culture had spread in the areas which were then predominantly colonized by the English. The English were absolute barbarians when it came to the Ormazd culture. Russia will have to make up for many crimes committed by the English in Asia. The English went there, took possession of large parts of Asia and exploited the Ormazd culture, sucking it dry. What did the English have in mind? Those Englishmen believed the Ormazd culture to exist for their benefit; those Englishmen said that all those parts of Asia existed only to wear English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English dishes and play with English trinkets. Asian culture, they felt, existed for no other purpose. The whole of Asia was to their mind booty won by England. Yushakov put it very precisely:
‘England is exploiting millions of Hindus, and her whole existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting that rich peninsula. I desire nothing of this kind for my own country—I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this brilliant yet at the same time also lamentable situation.’
That was written in Russian by Yushakov in 1885. And what did the Russians do? Yushakov asked. They had not been able to emulate the Western European nations, the English, and without legal justification attack and arrogate for themselves the Ormazd culture which existed in Asia. They only went to the places where the Ahriman culture had spread, holding back the peoples in whom Ahriman was at work, so that they could do no further harm to all that Ormazd had achieved for Asia. Once the Russians had liberated the peoples of Asia from the evil of Ahriman they would have to liberate them from the evils due to the sins the English had committed against the Ormazd culture in those areas. To prepare for their future mission in Asia, following the liberation of Asia from Ahriman, they would also have to make good the harm European peoples, and above all the English, had done to the Ormazd culture. Asked why those peoples were unable to carry on with the Ormazd culture, Yushakov's reply was that they had become slaves to industrialism and individualism, that they always thought of themselves first whilst the Russians always thought of themselves last. Such people were of no use. Having blended industrialism into their individualism they had become bloodsuckers in Asia. Russia, he said, would forge different links; a link between the Cossacks, with their brilliant military skills, and the country people who were working with nature. Out of this would come the people who were to liberate the people of Asia. The individual who was to liberate human evolution would come from Asia. That was Yushakov's ideal—that the one to liberate the world would come out of the union between the Cossacks and the country people tilling the soil.
Dear friends, you see an ideal set up here that surely makes it clear beyond doubt that something of the Ahrimanic spirit entered into Yushakov's own mind, into the dreamer. This influence on the dreamer has gradually created a mood in a whole nation—the mood we now perceive in the people who are to the east of us. We are dealing here with a popular mood, a mood brought to expression in Yushakov's words.
You see, I also wanted to show how spiritual science lets us enter more and more closely, giving us deeper insights, into what people say and dream. We all have the dreamer in us, the dreamer is in all of us. Both good and evil powers influence the dreamer.
We have the dreamer in us who has brought Moon nature into us, and we also have a Sun man in us from Sun evolution. This Sun man, however, is no longer able to dream. His conscious awareness if of the same kind as that of the plants. We have within us a plant or Sun man, who is asleep. And then we have in us a Saturn man who is completely dead, as dead as a stone. We have the Sun man in us who is asleep and also Saturn man who is at an even lower level of consciousness, below the level of consciousness we have in sleep. Saturn man I'd say, is our oldest cause, the innermost core in us. All the knowledge man gains at the present time in external life or in science is gained because the external world influences the Saturn man in us. We are not aware of being influenced in this way, but we are nevertheless influenced. Everything we think, feel and will penetrates to Saturn man. And Saturn man is what finally remains of us on this earth, irrespective of whether we are cremated as far as our physical body is concerned or whether we decompose.
The principle we call the dreamer does not endure; the Sun man does not endure. Saturn man becomes part of the elemental realm of the earth in form of very, very fine dust particles. This endures. The earth will always contain a trace of what there has been in us. If you investigate the elemental world today you can find in it the remains of Abraham, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, though in the form of very very fine dust particles. You can find the part of them that was their Saturn man. The part of man that was his Saturn man is given to the earth, remains with the earth, remains in the earth with our permanent essential character.
It was not like this in earlier times. It has been like this since the 15th and 16th centuries. Previously, the whole of the human being dissolved; only those who had been well ahead of their time, like Abraham, Plato and Socrates, left their remains to the earth. By now, or course, it has gradually come to be like this for all people. For this is what is so strange: everything presently achieved by following the path of external science is imprinted in this Saturn man and becomes part of the earth when he does.
Everything else there is to man will be lost, dissolving into the universe once the earth has reached its goal. The minerals, plants and animals around us will pass away. Only the Saturn man you have been remains, in the form of fine dust particles. It will go over from earth to Jupiter existence, forming the solid skeleton of Jupiter. Those are real atoms for Jupiter. People studying external science today, people thinking in an external way, influence their Saturn man to the effect that they produce atoms for Jupiter in their Saturn man. That is how Jupiter get its atoms. If that, however, were the only thing to happen, the whole of Jupiter would be merely a mineral or mineral-like sphere. Jupiter would merely be a mineral-like sphere without plant growth. What we are able to take across to Jupiter through the Saturn man in us merely causes Jupiter to be a mineral sphere. Plants could not grow on it. If plants are to grow on Jupiter the Sun man in us must also be given something. This Sun man in us only receives something from now on and into the future if men and women absorb concepts developed in spiritual science; for the concepts we absorb outside, from external science, enter into Saturn man. What we absorb by way of thoughts engendered through spiritual science enters into the Sun man. This is why spiritual science calls for greater activity. Its thoughts differ from those of external science in that they are active. They have to be grasped in a living way and it is impossible to remain passive towards thinking activity the way we do in the external world. In spiritual science everything has to be actively thought out, we have to be inwardly active. This has an effect on the Sun man in us. And if there were no Sun principle in man, the Jupiter of the future would be entirely mineral, with no plant world. People going through spiritual development take something across that will give rise to a plant world on Jupiter. Through the Sun principle in us we take across the future plant world. All we have to do to make Jupiter barren is reject spiritual science. We can establish spiritual science now in order that there shall be vegetation on Jupiter.
Unlike others, we spiritual scientists do not talk of the marvellous progress we have made. Just listen to a modern physician, one who is very much taking the present-day point of view, or to a modern philosopher and so on. They say: ‘We need not go far back to find people who amounted to nothing at all. Someone like Paracelsus really was in idiot, and a grammar school teacher today is cleverer than Plato every was.’ Plato's philosophy was thoroughly picked to pieces by Hebbel. The latter put down in his diary, as an idea for a play, that a grammar school teacher had a reincarnated Plato in his class.81Hebbel, Friedrich (1813-63): Tagebücher No. 1335:
‘The transmigration of souls makes it possible for Plato to be getting a thrashing at school today because he is unable to grasp Plato.’ He intended to make a dramatic figure of him, showing the schoolmaster to be dealing with his reincarnated Plato who was quite incapable of grasping anything his teacher was saying about Plato. Hebbel intended to make a play of this. It really is a pity he did not do so, for it really is a very good idea.
But we do not consider ourselves to have made marvellous progress. We hold a different point of view. What people consider philosophy today holds the ego-boosting view that anything going back ten years is already out of date. We know that we have to present spiritual science today the way we do. We also know, however, that a time must come when everything we now present as spiritual science will be a nonsense in a future where quite different work will have to be done within mankind. What we have to present as spiritual science today has the form appropriate for the moment, seeking out from eternity what will be for the benefit of the present age. A time will come, however, when it will be necessary for us to try and influence the dreamer in us just as we influence the Sun man, and the whole of our external science influences Saturn man. Jupiter as mineral mass will be based on what external science makes of Saturn man. Its vegetation will be based on what spiritual science makes of Sun man. Animal life on Jupiter will arise from something that is going to follow on after spiritual science. It will be based on the spiritual science of the future. Then something else will follow which will influence man on Jupiter, something which is still to come. It will provide the basis for Jupiter culture in the real sense.
At present, therefore, we are in a period in life where we prepare the mineral nucleus of Jupiter through external science and where spiritual science influences its plant life, providing the basis for vegetation on Jupiter. The future will bring the principle that influences the dreamer, and this will provide the basis for animal life on Jupiter. Only after this will come the principle which corresponds to what man is today producing in his thinking, feeling and will activity. This is guided by higher wisdom to the effect that when earth evolution has come to an end man will be able to take himself, as man, across to Jupiter.
This is how we are involved in the evolution of the earth, and we perceive, out of our very own human nature, that we are part of the great world, of the macrocosm. We know that everything we do is of account. We know that in joining in the pursuit of spiritual science we contribute to vegetative life for Jupiter and that through the things we put in words we create what will be given to the future at the Jupiter stage of the world.
Just think, dear friends, as I have told you, everything belonging to the mineral kingdom will disperse in the world; everything belonging to the plant kingdom will disperse; everything belonging to the animal kingdom will disperse. Nothing will continue on from the earth except for the mineral atoms coming from man, from the Saturn parts of human beings. Nothing of the mineral, plant and animal worlds passes across to Jupiter. The only thing which will continue is the Saturn man now within us. This will be the mineral kingdom on Jupiter.
I do not know if some of our friends still remember how we first started many years ago in Berlin. We were a small band in those days—some who shared in the experience are still with us—and we started to consider these things.
Let us imagine ourselves on the Jupiter of the future. What are the atoms of Jupiter? They are the Saturn parts of present-day man. It is a nonsense to talk of atoms of the kind modern physicists speak of. Everything man gains from the whole of the earth enters into Saturn man and later becomes Jupiter atoms. It is pure nonsense to say that our minerals, animals and plants contain what physicists are looking for in them. Our present earth atoms were prepared during Moon existence and are what will prepare us to be Sun men, just as we are now preparing the Saturn man in us. I have previously spoken of the way the atom is prepared our of the whole cosmos. You'll find this in the lectures given at the very beginning of our work in Berlin.82See the lectures given in Berlin on 16 and 23 December 1904, in Die Tempellegende and die goldene Legende (GA 93); in English as The Temple Legend Or. John M. Wood) Rudolf Steiner Press. London 1985. Today I'll have to be brief, also taking into account what we have gone through in the meantime.
Our stars, too—the external physical stars, the physical sun, the physical moon we see out there in the universe—that, too, is not the way physicists see it. Physicists would be most surprised if they managed to get up to the sun, for they would find nothing at all of what they have construed. They'd be most surprised at what they saw there. What we would find if we ever could travel up there—in accord with the times it would have to be in a balloon that is still to be invented, in an ether balloon—we'd find the unexpected. We would not find what the physicists have construed; we'd find nothing at all by way of a physical body. It merely looks like that. The sun, moon and stars are part of a whole that arose at some point after Moon evolution. After Moon evolution it was not only the Moon which perished but everything that is part of the visible universe entered into night. And everything there is in the universe today really belongs to the earth, so that the end of the earth will not only mean the plant and animal kingdoms perishing with it but everything out there in the cosmos perishing as well. The stars in their present form will perish into night. And then the future Jupiter world will emerge. Its atoms will be the Saturn parts of present man. Its environment will look very different from our earth environment.
A person considering all this today might ask: 'What will remain of the present world when earth evolution has come to an end?' Mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—all that disperses and passes away. What man gains today by virtue of being man, the external power of discernment he is acquiring, will pass over into the mineral kingdom of Jupiter. The spiritual science he gains will pass over as Sun man and establish the vegetation. What we say—the words we speak—will pass over. Anything moral that happens will pass over.
Was not the One who was to give meaning and direction to the whole of earth evolution able to say some very special words? Was he not able to say: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’?83Mark 13:31.Mark 13:31. Are we not now beginning to grasp the utter profundity of the words Christ spoke: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’? Is that not literally true?
Words coming from external science influence Saturn man and become the atoms of Jupiter. Words coming from spiritual science and influencing Sun man pass across to form the vegetation on Jupiter. That which acts on the dreamer passes across to form the animal kingdom on Jupiter. The moral progress made by man and what he gains through words of the spiritual science of the future—that will be man on Jupiter. It will be words, wisdom of thoughts. This shall endure. Everything all around us in the cosmos will perish. ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’
So we gradually come to see words of profound wisdom flowing from this central place of activity we call Golgotha. They flow from that point. As I once said, the whole earth evolution to follow exists so that gradually men shall come to understand the words spoken by the One who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. Today I have tried to explain to you, out of the whole of spiritual science as we know it so far, Christ's words: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’ Again and again in the future there will be people who know how to explain other words spoken by Christ out of spiritual science. There will have to be many of them before the full meaning of Christ's words can be understood, for they are words of guidance, words given out of the spirit, yet it will only be in the course of time that they can be understood out of what human beings are able to summon up out of the science of the spirit.
We need to enter into this with our feelings if we are to get a feeling for the utter uniqueness of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through perception directed upwards to the infinite we shall gain the marvellous insight into the one thing that has given the earth meaning from the world's beginning to its very end—the Mystery of Golgotha.
Dear friends, it will be another few weeks until we can talk again. And so it has been my task today to speak of something we are able to take into our hearts and minds and meditate on a great deal in the weeks to come. I wanted to put some ideas into your hearts and minds which you could then develop further. It always has been our summer task in spiritual science to develop further what has entered into our hearts and minds so that our souls shall grow more alive and mature. We do not progress in spiritual science by absorbing it as something theoretical, by merely absorbing ideas, but rather by transforming those thoughts into our whole inner life, letting them become living experience. If we let this thought of how man is part of the whole macrocosm act on our souls, we will come to feel part of it all as human beings. Faintheartedness, hesitation, lack of hope will have to vanish before the magnitude of this thought. We must then at last come to feel ourselves human beings in all humility. And all we have been able to absorb of spiritual science, all that can and shall come alive in us out of spiritual science—as has always been our principle until now—needs to be given emphasis in the present day. Again and again we have to remember, as we consider things today, that the great events happening in our time are a warning. We must remember those who are leaving their ether bodies behind for us while still young, ether bodies that will be a great help to us in letting the spirit enter into the culture of the future. If the spirit is to come in there must be souls that understand something of these spiritual things, souls that look up into that world and know that up there is not only what, in abstract terms, is called attraction, but up there are the living dead, up there is what they have given to mankind on earth of their own life—their unused ether bodies. Souls that have some understanding of these things will have to work together, souls whose thoughts reach upwards to meet what is streaming down from the unused ether bodies of those who have died before their time.
We must fill our souls with this image of the spiritual streaming down to join the earthly. Above all, we must look up to the spiritual realm with all our thoughts, with the part of us that is already spiritual. This I have always summed up in conclusion in the words that shall also be our conclusion today:
Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.
Dreizehnter Vortrag
Meine lieben Freunde, wir gedenken wiederum zuerst derjenigen, die draußen auf den großen Feldern der Ereignisse der Gegenwart stehen:
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter,
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Erdenmenschen,
Daß, mit eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.
Und für diejenigen, die infolge dieser Ereignisse schon durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind:
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter,
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Sphärenmenschen,
Daß, mit eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.
Der Geist, den wir durch unsere erstrebte Geist-Erkenntnis suchen, der Geist, der zu der Erde Heil, zu der Menschheit Freiheit und Fortschritt durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist, der sei mit euch und euren schweren Pflichten!
Es wird heute meine Aufgabe sein, einiges zusammenzufassen von dem, was wir zum Teil schon wissen, was aber immer zusammengefaßt werden kann, so daß es uns wiederum gewisse Richtlinien gibt für unser geisteswissenschaftliches Streben. Wir müssen uns vor allen Dingen öfter mit dem Gedanken bekanntmachen, daß unser Erdenleben, so wie wir es führen zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode, im Grunde ein Zwischenleben ist zwischen dem, was vorangegangen ist an zahlreichen Erdenleben und an zahlreichen Leben, die verlaufen sind zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, und wiederum zwischen dem, was in der Zukunft liegt an zahlreichen Erdenleben und an zahlreichen Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Ein Zwischenleben sage ich, ist dieses unser Leben. Danach können wir erwarten, daß sich in unserem Leben etwas zeigt, was wir gewissermaßen ansehen können wie eine Wirkung des Vorhergehenden, daß aber auch in unserem Leben etwas liegt, was wir ansehen können wie etwas, was uns nun hinweist auf Zukünftiges. Insbesondere in bezug auf das letztere sei heute einiges besprochen.
Der Mensch könnte nämlich leicht glauben, wenn er so sein Leben betrachtet, daß eigentlich nichts in diesem Leben ihn hinweist darauf, daß in uns schon die Keime, gleichsam die Samenkörner für ein zukünftiges Leben liegen. Nun ist das aber doch der Fall. Es ist wirklich der Fall, daß in uns sich vorbereitet dasjenige, was mit uns in der Zukunft geschehen soll. Wir müssen nur unser Leben in der richtigen Weise deuten, dann werden wir darauf kommen können, was in uns gleichsam so für die Zukunft verborgen liegt, wie in der gegenwärtigen Pflanze das Samenkorn für die zukünftige Pflanze liegt, für die Pflanze, die erst entstehen soll. Etwas Unverständliches im gegenwärtigen Leben bildet ja vielfach das uns allen sattsam bekannte Traumleben. Dieses Traumleben, gewiß, es hat etwas als einen Teil in sich, von dem wir ja wirklich sagen können, er ist uns bis zu einem gewissen Grade verständlich. Wir träumen von Dingen, die uns an dies oder jenes erinnern, das wir im Leben durchgemacht haben. Gewiß, es kommt sehr häufig vor, daß dann jene Dinge, die wir gestern oder vor Zeiten durchgemacht haben und von denen wir träumen, dann verändert sind, daß sie eine andere Gestalt haben im Traum, daß sie sich irgendwie verwandeln. Aber wir werden doch in einem solchen Fall oftmals mit einer gewissen Leichtigkeit einsehen können, daß in dem, was wir träumen, wenn es sich auch verändert hat, da drinnen Teile unseres Lebens stecken, so wie wir es hinter uns haben. Aber ich glaube, kein Mensch, der nur einige Aufmerksamkeit auf sich und seine Traumwelt wendet, wird andererseits sich verhehlen können, daß es Träume gibt, welche uns so Merkwürdiges vorführen, daß wir wirklich nicht sagen können, das sei nur zurückzuführen auf dasjenige, was wir im Leben da oder dort durchgemacht haben. Es ist wirklich so, daß der Mensch sich nur ein wenig auf seine Träume zu besinnen braucht, und er wird schon deutlich merken können, daß ihm, wenn man so sagen darf, Sachen träumen, welche wahrhaftig nicht von ihm, nach allem, woran er sich erinnern kann, jemals hätten eigentlich ausgedacht werden können, auf die er jemals hätte kommen können.
Verstehen werden wir diesen ganzen Zusammenhang, wenn wir uns die Natur desjenigen einmal genauer vergegenwärtigen, was im Träumen eigentlich geschieht. Im schlafenden Zustande sind wir, wie uns bekannt ist, mit unserem astralischen Leib und mit unserem Ich ja außer unserem physischen und Ätherleib. Der physische und ätherische Leib liegt auf der Lagerstätte; mit dem astralischen Leib und dem Ich sind wir heraußen. Nun ist es für den Menschen, so wie es gegenwärtig auf der Erde steht - wenn er sich nicht irgendwie besondere Fähigkeiten erwirbt —, nicht möglich, dasjenige bewußt zu erleben, was der Astralleib und das Ich durchmachen, wenn der Mensch schläft. Das geht im Unbewußten vor sich. Aber die hellseherische Erkenntnis zeigt uns, daß dasjenige, was da durchlebt wird, ebenso mannigfach, daß ebenso ausgeprägt ist, was da außerhalb des physischen Leibes ist, wie das, was erlebt wird von dem physischen Leibe, daß es ebenso mannigfaltig, ebenso vielgestaltig ist wie manches, was hier auf dem physischen Plan erlebt wird; nur das Bewußtsein kann es nicht in sich hineinfassen, aber vorhanden ist es, erlebt wird es. Das Träumen nun entsteht dadurch, daß der astralische Leib und das Ich, die sonst gewissermaßen so weit außer dem physischen und Ätherleib sind, daß der physische und der Ätherleib nichts merken von den Vorgängen, die mit dem astralischen Leib und dem Ich geschehen, in solche Nähe des physischen und Ätherleibes kommen, daß der Ätherleib imstande wird, als solcher jetzt Eindrücke zu empfangen von den Vorgängen im astralischen Leib und im Ich. Wenn Sie aufwachen und wissen: ich habe geträumt, so ist es eigentlich ganz genau gesprochen so, daf dasjenige, was der Inhalt Ihres Traumes ist, dadurch zu Ihrem Bewußtsein kommt, daß der astralische Leib und das Ich untertauchen; und bevor der physische Leib fähig ist, zum Bewußtsein zu kommen, daß er den Astralleib und das Ich wieder in sich hat, wird es der Ätherleib; und indem der Ätherleib rasch aufnimmt, was der Astralleib und das Ich erlebt haben, entsteht der Traum. Es ist also eine Wechselwirkung zwischen astralischem und Ätherleib, wodurch der Traum entsteht.
Dadurch aber bekommt der Traum eine ganz bestimmte Färbung. Er bekommt, ich möchte sagen, eine Art von Überzug. Sie wissen ja, daß, wenn im Tode der Mensch mit dem Astralleib und Ich und dem Ätherleib herausgeht, der Mensch im Ätherleib eine unmittelbare Rückschau hat auf das Erdenleben. Diese Rückschau ist eigentlich am Ätherleib haftend; wenn er aufgelöst ist, hört die Rückschau auf. In diesem Ätherleib steckt also die Möglichkeit, all die Ereignisse unseres Lebens in sich abzudrücken. Im Ätherleib ist wirklich also abgedrückt, was wir im Leben durchgemacht haben.
Dieser Ätherleib ist ein sehr kompliziertes Gebilde. Wenn wir diesen Ätherleib herauspräparieren könnten so, daß wir ihm seine Gestalt lassen, so wäre er uns ein Spiegel unseres gegenwärtigen Lebens, ein Bild unseres Lebens bis zu dem Punkte, bis zu dem Momente, wo wir uns erinnern können. Dadurch, daß wir untertauchen mit dem Astralleib und Ich in den Ätherleib hinein und der Ätherleib entgegenkommt dem untertauchenden astralischen Leib, bringt er Dinge, Erinnerungen von Dingen, die er erlebt hat, dem entgegen, was da im Astralleib hereinkommt, kleidet das, was im Astralleib wirklich ist, in seine eigenen Bilder.
Ich will mich genauer aussprechen. Nehmen wir einmal an, jemand erlebt draußen im schlafenden Zustande im astralischen Leib und im Ich, sagen wir, eine Begegnung mit einer Persönlichkeit. Davon weiß der Mensch dann nichts. Er erlebt eine solche Begegnung; er erlebt, daß er zu dieser Persönlichkeit ein gewisses freundschaftliches Gefühl haben wird, daß er mit dieser Persönlichkeit ein Gemeinschaftliches unternehmen werde. Nehmen wir an, das erlebt er außerhalb seines Ätherleibes. Das kann sein; aber er weiß nichts davon. Jetzt kommt der Moment des Aufwachens. Da geht der astralische Leib und das Ich zurück in den Ätherleib, bringt sein Erleben entgegen dem Ätherleib. Der Ätherleib bringt das, was in ihm ist, seine Bilderwelt, dem Astralleib entgegen und der Mensch träumt. Er träumt ein Ereignis, das er unternommen hat vor vielleicht zehn, zwanzig Jahren. Da sagt sich der Mensch: Ja, ich habe geträumt von dem, was ich vor zehn, zwanzig Jahren erlebt habe. Vielleicht aber ist das, wenn er sich genau besinnt, ganz verändert. Aber es erinnert ihn doch an etwas, was er früher erlebt hat. Was ist da eigentlich vorgegangen? Wenn wir genau mit Hilfe hellseherischer Erkenntnis den Vorgang verfolgen, sehen wir, das Ich und der Astralleib haben etwas erlebt, was eigentlich erst in der nächsten Inkarnation sich abspielen wird: die Begegnung mit einer Persönlichkeit, irgend etwas, was man mit dieser Persönlichkeit zu tun hat. Aber der Mensch kann das noch nicht fassen in seinem Ätherleib, der in sich nur enthält, der nur fassen kann die Bilder des gegenwärtigen Lebens. Taucht jetzt der astralische Leib unter, dann kleidet der Ätherleib das, was eigentlich dem zukünftigen Leben angehört, in die Bilder des gegenwärtigen Lebens. Dieser eigentümliche komplizierte Vorgang geschieht eigentlich fortwährend mit dem Menschen, indem er träumt.
Wenn Sie alles das zusammennehmen, was Sie bisher schon gehört haben in der Geisteswissenschaft, dann wird es Ihnen nicht absonderlich vorkommen. Dessen müssen wir uns bewußt sein, daß wir in dem, was herausgeht aus unserem physischen und dem Ätherleib, in unserem Astralleib und dem Ich, dasjenige darinnen haben, was in die nächste Inkarnation hinüber will, was sich in uns vorbereitet für die nächste Inkarnation. Und lernt man allmählich die Träume trennen von dem, was Bilder sind vom gegenwärtigen Leben, so lernt man die prophetische Natur der Träume kennen. Die prophetische Natur der Träume kann sich einem wirklich enthüllen, man muß nur lernen, die Träume von den gegenwärtigen Bildern, in die sie eingekleidet sind, zu entkleiden. Man muß bei den Träumen mehr sehen auf die Art und Weise, wie man erlebt, als auf das, was man erlebt und sich zum Beispiel sagen: Daß ich von einer Persönlichkeit träume, das kommt von der Art meines Ätherleibes, von der Art, wie mein Ätherleib mit seinen gegenwärtigen Bildern den Erlebnissen des Astralleibes entgegenkommt. Bei dem, was man erlebt, muß man, um das zu erkennen, was schon vorbereitet ist für das nächste Leben, mehr die Art und Weise ins Auge fassen, um es zu trennen von dem Bilde in unserem Ätherleib. In der Tat, in den Träumen haben wir wirklich in uns stekkende Propheten unserer zukünftigen Erlebnisse. Das ist außerordentlich wichtig, daß wir das gehörig ins Auge fassen. Das Menschenleben enthüllt sich überhaupt immer mehr und mehr, je mehr wir es als etwas Kompliziertes betrachten. Man möchte es einfacher haben, das wäre ja bequemer, aber es ist nun schon einmal so, daß es kompliziert ist.
Sehen Sie, der Mensch, der in der äußeren physischen Welt steht, wird sich nicht bewußt, daß in ihm Allerlei steckt. Jetzt haben wir kennengelernt, was in uns steckt als ein Prophet zukünftiger Leben. Aber mancherlei anderes steckt noch in uns, und Selbsterkenntnis beruht darauf, daß wir immer mehr und mehr erkennen, was in uns steckt, was in uns arbeitet, uns glücklich und unglücklich macht, denn alle Dinge, die in uns stecken, machen uns glücklich und unglücklich. So werden die Menschen sich gewöhnlich nicht klar, daß sie Ja durchgemacht haben vor diesem Erdenleben - nicht sie selbst, aber das, was sie zum Erdenmenschen gemacht hat — das Mondenleben. Wir wissen einiges von dem Mondenleben, auch von dem vorangegangenen Sonnenleben und dem alten Saturnleben. Blicken wir zuerst auf das Mondenleben! Gegenwärtig führen wir allerdings das Erdenleben, aber das Mondenleben war nötig, damit das Erdenleben zustande kommen konnte. Im Mondenleben bereitete sich die Ursache für das Erdenleben vor, und in einer gewissen Weise steckt dieses Mondenleben noch in uns. Auf dem Monde war der Mensch ein traumhafter Hellseher. In Traumesbildern hat er die Wirklichkeit in sich aufgenommen. Dasjenige aber, was wir auf dem Monde waren, das tragen wir heute noch in uns, das steckt in uns. Gewiß, der Mondenmensch ist zum Erdenmenschen geworden. Aber in dieser Wirkung steckt die Ursache noch drinnen, den Mondenmenschen tragen wir noch in uns. Wenn wir auf diesen Mondenmenschen hinblicken, so können wir sagen: er ist das in uns, was wir den Träumer nennen. In der Tat, wir tragen alle einen Träumer in uns, einen Träumer, der eigentlich zwar, ich möchte sagen, weniger dicht, der dünner denkt und fühlt und will, aber der eigentlich weiser ist, als wir als Erdenmensch sind. Wir tragen einen Träumer in uns. Einen subtilen Menschen tragen wir alle in uns. Indem wir so herumgehen als Erdenmenschen mit unseren Gedanken, unserem Fühlen und Wollen, ist es das, was die Erdenentwikkelung uns gegeben hat. Von der Mondenentwickelung ist etwas geblieben in uns, was ein träumender Mensch ist. In dem Träumer ist uns aber mehr gegeben als in dem, was wir in unseren Gedanken, Gefühlen und Willensimpulsen haben können, und dieser Träumer ist nicht ganz untätig. Diesen Träumer berücksichtigen wir nicht, aber wir tun vieles, sehr vieles, was wir eigentlich nur halb selber kennen, was der Träumer in uns richtet und lenkt. Wir legen es zurecht, der Träumer aber tut auch etwas in uns, der lenkt unser Denken dahin und dorthin; zum Beispiel denken wir einen Satz aus; der Träumer macht, daß wir den Satz in einer ganz bestimmten Weise aussprechen, daß wir ihm eine Spitze geben, ihn in irgendeine Gefühlsnuance kleiden. Dieser Träumer ist das, was vom Monde in uns geblieben ist. Ich möchte auf eine hervorragende Persönlichkeit hinweisen und aufmerksam machen darauf, wie dieser Träumer in ihr zu bemerken ist. Wenn die Menschen im Leben einander kennenlernen oder wenn sie hervorragende Menschen durch das Schrifttum kennenlernen, so kümmern sich die Menschen zumeist um das, was der andere als Erdenmensch ist und nicht um das, was er als Träumer, als Dichter ist. In dem aber spricht er sich tiefer aus.
Da ist ein großer Schriftsteller: Emerson. Emerson hatte wirklich die Eigentümlichkeit, daß er sich immer so in den Gegenstand vertiefte, den er gerade behandelte, daß man ihm leicht wird manchmal Widersprüche nachweisen können, weil er immer in dem Gegenstand, den er gerade behandelt, ganz darinnen steht und in dem Gegenstand dann ganz aufgeht und nicht Rücksicht nimmt, daß das, was er dann charakterisiert, Widersprüche hat gegen das, was er charakterisiert hatte, als er in einem anderen Gegenstande darinnen steckte. Aber gerade bei Emerson ist immer bemerklich, daß, wenn er sich ganz in einen Menschen oder in einen Gegenstand vertieft, dann leise Unterklänge von Emersons Mondenmenschen, daß der Träumer mitspricht. Nun hat Emerson zwei schöne Abhandlungen geschrieben: eine über Shakespeare als den charakteristischen Repräsentanten des Dichters; eine über Goethe als Repräsentanten des Schriftstellers. Nun ist es so, daß die Menschen herumlesen in der Betrachtung Emersons über Shakespeare, herumlesen in der Betrachtung über Goethe und dann zufrieden sind, sich damit zufriedengeben. Aber man kann weitergehen und sich sagen: Fühlt man nicht leise da mitschwingen etwas Besonderes bei Emerson? Und da entdeckt man etwas höchst Merkwürdiges: Emerson will Shakespeare nicht bloß als Shakespeare charakterisieren, sondern will ihn als Exempel, als Beispiel für den Dichter hinstellen, und es ist nun sehr eigentümlich, indem sich Emerson genau in Shakespeare vertieft, was da zustande kommt, wenn man das leise Geklinge von Untertönen, die mitschwingen, vernimmt.
Sie werden mir nicht zutrauen, daß ich aus Chauvinismus, aus nationalen Gründen heraus irgend etwas Abfälliges über Shakespeare sagen will. Natürlich ist Shakespeare für mich der große Dichter, ich sehe ihn selbstverständlich als einen der größten Dichter aller Zeiten an. Aber ich will die leisen Untertöne einmal herausholen, die Emerson geltend macht, indem er Shakespeare charakterisiert. Er sagt, Originalität ist eigentlich nicht dasjenige, was einen Menschen zum großen Mann macht. Man sollte nicht, wenn man einen großen Dichter charakterisieren will, fordern, daß diese große Persönlichkeit durchaus originell wäre.
Und nun sieht man, daß Emerson, um Shakespeare zu charakterisieren, hervorhebt, daß der Dichter überall hingeht, um das zu nehmen, was ihm gefällt, und das in seine Dichtung aufzunehmen. Emerson bemüht sich gleichsam zu entschuldigen, daß Shakespeare nicht originell ist, daß er von überall her, aus italienischen, spanischen, französischen und deutschen Quellen und natürlich aus der englischen Geschichte, alles das zusammengetragen hat, was er in seiner Dichtung verarbeitet hat. Es ist sehr eigentümlich, daß Emerson, der sich so liebevoll vertieft in Shakespeare, gegenüber Shakespeare die folgenden Worte braucht, um Shakespeare zu charakterisieren: «Große Männer zeichnen sich mehr durch umfassenden Geist und durch die Höhe des Standpunktes aus, von dem sie herabschauen, als durch Originalität. Fordern wir jene Originalität, welche wie eine Spinne aus ihren eigenen Eingeweiden das eigene Gewebe zieht, welche selbst den Lehm findet, Steine daraus formt und das Haus aufrichtet, dann sind große Männer keineswegs original. Das Wesen wahrhaft wertvoller Originalität liegt nicht in der Unähnlichkeit mit andern.»
Also er entschuldigt Shakespeare, daß er so wenig originell ist, daß er überall alles zusammengesucht hat. Ja, er geht so weit, zu sagen: um Shakespeare zu verstehen, muß man auf das ganze englische Publikum der damaligen Zeit blicken, dessen Geschmack entgegenzukommen Shakespeare sich bemüht. Merkwürdige Worte spricht Emerson über Shakespeare: «Leicht ist es, zu erkennen, daß alles, was in der Welt jemals am besten geschrieben und getan ward, nicht eines Mannes Werk war, sondern durch weitverzweigte, gemeinschaftliche Arbeit, wo tausend wie einer, alle von einem Impulse getrieben, die Hand anlegten, zustande kam.» Und das Merkwürdigste, was Emerson über Shakespeare sagt, der ihn liebevoll charakterisiert, das Merkwürdigste, bitte, hören Sie: «Es ist bei den Schriftstellern eine Art praktischer Regel geworden, daß, wer sich einmal befähigt gezeigt hat, selbst Originales zu schaffen, hinfort auch die Werke anderer auf diskrete Weise bestehlen dürfe.»
Also Emerson versucht, Shakespeare gerade dadurch so recht seine Weltstellung anzuweisen, daß er zeigt, daß große Menschen andere bestehlen. Daß eigentlich zusammengestohlen sind die Motive seiner vielen Arbeiten. Das kann man zunächst als leichten Unterton in Emersons Shakespeare-Charakterisierung finden. Und jetzt wenden wir uns an die liebevolle Betrachtung Goethes. Goethe charakterisiert Emerson als den, der den Schriftsteller repräsentiert. Aber gegenüber Goethe sagt Emerson: Die Natur ist überall darauf angewiesen, daß ihre Wunderwerke ausgesprochen werden. Jeder Stein, jede Pflanze, jedes Wesen in der Natur wartet darauf, einmal durch des Menschen Seele ausgesprochen zu werden. Der Schriftsteller wird immer mit der Natur in unmittelbarem Zusammenhange stehen. Es ist, als wenn der Schöpfer selbst vorbereitet hätte den Gedanken, daß der Schriftsteller einmal auftrete. Es ist merkwürdig, sagt nun Emerson in bezug auf Goethe, wie dieser Mann in bezug auf seine Begabung gar nichts seinem Volke, seinem Land, seiner Umgebung verdankt, sondern wie alles hervorsprudelt aus ihm selber. Auch über Wahrheit und Irrtum entscheidet Goethe allein, stammt alles aus ihm selbst.
Wenn Emerson Goethe charakterisiert, sucht er von allen Seiten die Begriffe zusammenzutragen; während er aber Shakespeare als großartigen Räuber charakterisiert, stellt er Goethe dar wie eine Person aus dem Zentrum der Welt, als die Natur selbst. Hören wir einige Stellen, die Emerson über Goethe spricht: «Das Geheimnis des Genius ist, nicht zu dulden, daß eine Lüge für uns bestehen bleibe. Alles, dessen wir bewußt sind, zu einer Wahrheit zu machen, im Raffinement des modernen Lebens, in Kunst und Wissenschaft, in den Büchern und in den Menschen Glauben, Bestimmtheit und Vertrauen zu erwecken, und zu Anfang wie am Schluß, mitten auf dem Wege wie für endlose Zeiten jede Wahrheit dadurch zu ehren, daß wir sie nicht allein erkennen, sondern sie zu einer Richtschnur unseres Handelns machen.» Oder er sagt von Goethe: «In meinen Augen steht der Schriftsteller als ein Mann da, dessen Stellung beim Aufbau der Welt vorgesehen ward.»
Shakespeare charakterisiert er so, daß er so ist, wie das Publikum will; Goethe als einen Mann, der von Anfang der Welt vorgedacht war; dem Beruf, der Stellung, «welche er einnahm, verdankt er nichts, sondern er trat in die Welt von seiner Geburt an als ein freier überwachender Genius ... .» oder: «Er ist ganz Auge und wendet sich instinktmäßig dahin, wo die Wahrheit liegt. Sage etwas, er wird sogleich wissen, ob es wahr oder falsch sei. Es ist ihm verhaßt, die Altenweibergeschichten, und wenn sie tausend Jahre lang den guten Glauben der Menschheit für sich hatten, noch einmal nachzubeten und sich von ihnen zum Narren haben zu lassen.»
Dieser Satz steht in der Charakteristik Goethes. In der Charakteristik Shakespeares steht, daß er überall nicht genug tun kann, besonders alles, was geschrieben ist, zu sammeln. Es ist, ich möchte sagen, in ganz wunderbarer Weise Emerson gelungen, herauszuarbeiten in der Charakteristik Shakespeares und Goethes den Unterschied zwischen Shakespeare und Goethe. Aber dann kann gefunden werden aus dem Gefühl heraus, was der Träumer in den beiden gestaltet, das heißt wie Emerson dazu gekommen ist, Shakespeare zu charakterisieren als einen großen Räuber und Goethe zu charakterisieren als einen großen Verbündeten der Wahrheit. Das ist äußerst interessant, denn es ist nicht vom Bewußtsein gewollt; aber dieser Hauch ist ausgebreitet über die beiden Betrachtungen.
Sie sehen, es gibt noch ein Lesen, das anders ist, als das Buch sich einfach vornehmen und es durchgehen. Das Wichtige über die Dinge erfährt man überhaupt nicht dann, wenn man sie bloß einzeln in sich aufnimmt, sondern wenn man sie vergleicht, wenn man das eine neben dem anderen auf sich wirken läßt.
Ich durfte dieses Beispiel anführen, weil bei Emerson wirklich häufig der Träumer spricht. So könnte man wirklich handgreiflich finden, wie zwei Persönlichkeiten in ihm sprechen, denn dasjenige, was Alltagsleser als Widersprüche finden, das wußte ja schließlich Emerson auch. Schließlich sind doch so grobklotzige Widersprüche bei Emerson da, daß es jedem auffallen muß. Auf der einen Seite nennt er die Engländer das erste Volk der Welt, auf der anderen Seite stellt er die Deutschen höher. Einmal ist das aus dem Oberbewußtsein, einmal aus dem Träumer heraus gesprochen. Und ganz besonders interessant ist es, wenn Sie die beiden Schlüsse der Betrachtungen über Shakespeare und Goethe einfach als Schlüsse hintereinanderlesen. Bei Shakespeare kommt Emerson darauf zu sagen: Alle, die bisher gewirkt haben, haben noch nicht erreicht, was der Dichter in der Welt ist: «Noch wartet die Welt auf den Dichterpriester.» Es ist etwas wie Verzicht, was als Gefühl am Schlusse durch die Shakespeare-Betrachtung hindurchgeht. Am Schlusse der Goethe-Betrachtung steht gerade das Gegenteil: daß man durch ihn angeeifert werde, jede Wahrheit dadurch zu ehren, daß wir sie nicht allein erkennen, sondern sie zu einer Richtschnur unseres Handelns machen. Während ein Verzichtssatz steht am Schlusse der Shakespeare-Betrachtung, steht ein Zuversichtssatz am Schlusse der Goethe-Betrachtung.
Wir leben jetzt in einer Zeit, wo es gilt, diese Dinge ein wenig zu berücksichtigen, diese Dinge ein wenig zu erkennen. Wir werden dann finden, daß in jedem Menschen dieser Träumer lebt, er kündigt sich an in den Handlungen der Menschen, und während er im hellsichugen Bewußtsein geschaut wird, können wir ihn im gewöhnlichen Leben erkennen, wenn wir die Menschen studieren. Das können wir bei Emerson. Emerson zu studieren ist von Interesse.
Dieser Träumer in uns ist dasjenige, auf welches nun wirkt alles, was, ohne daß wir es wissen, aus der geistigen Welt auf uns wirken soll. In dem, was wir als Erdenmenschen erleben, machen wir Gedanken, bilden uns Willensimpulse. Was wir so wissen, das ist, was wir finden aus unserem Leben. Aber in unsere Träume hinein spielen die Inspirationen der Engel, die Wesen der Angeloi, und diese sind wieder inspiriert von Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien. In unsere Träume kommt hinein, bei dem einen Menschen mehr, bei dem anderen weniger, was gescheiter ist als dasjenige, was wir aus unserem Alltagsleben in uns haben, als alles, was wir im Alltagsleben im Denken, Fühlen und Wollen überschauen. Dasjenige, wovon wir geleitet werden, dasjenige, was mehr ist, als der Erdenmensch ist und war, das geht in unseren Träumer hinein.
Sehen Sie, dieser Träumer, er ist auch dasjenige, was vieles, aber jetzt Unbewußtes in uns hervorrufen kann. Gewiß, alles dasjenige, was aus der höheren Welt auf dem Umwege durch die Wesenheiten, die den Hierarchien der Angeloi angehören, auf uns hereinwirkt, wirkt auf den Träumer; aber auch alles Ahrimanische, alles Luziferische wirkt zunächst auf den Träumer, wirkt wirklich in den Träumer hinein, und ein großer Teil dessen, was die Menschen, ich möchte sagen, nicht so ganz aus ihrem Bewußtsein heraus, aber aus Instinkten heraus geltend machen, das ist hineingewirkt aus der geistigen Welt in den Träumer hinein.
Auch dafür möchte ich Ihnen ein Beispiel geben. Ich möchte dieses Beispiel aus der etwas größeren Zeitgeschichte vorführen. Ich habe Ihnen öfters gesagt, daß man die europäischen Völker dadurch erkennt, daß man versteht, wie die Volksseele spricht zu den Italienern durch die Empfindungsseele, zu den Franzosen durch die Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele, zu den Engländern durch die Bewußtseinsseele, zu den Deutschen durch das Ich, zu den Russen durch das Geistselbst. Aber dieses Sprechen durch das Geistselbst bedingt, daß bei den Russen heute Instinkte sind, welche sich erst entwikkeln werden in der Zukunft. In einer fernen Zukunft wird erst zutage treten, was die russische Volksseele zu sagen hat, wenn einmal die Menschenseele hinentwickelt ist bis zum Geistselbst. Darum hat alles, was im Osten zutage tritt, noch etwas Keimhaftes. Nun fühlen aber diese Völker des Ostens instinktiv, daß sie einer anderen Kulturströmung angehören. Sie fühlen, daß sie zu warten haben. Aber kein Mensch wartet gern, wenn er sich auf sein Gegenwartsbewußtsein besinnt. Das ist ja dasjenige, daß sie warten sollen und bewußt aufnehmen, was europäische Kultur ist. Dagegen lebt in ihnen der Instinkt, daß sie zu lenken und zu leiten haben, daß sie nicht schnell genug Europa totmachen können, während der natürliche Gang ist, daß sich in Mitteleuropa entwickelt, was sich entwickeln kann aus dem Zwiegespräche der Volksseele mit dem Ich.
Bei der russischen Volksseele liegt es so, daß sie in die Schule zu gehen hat bei Mitteleuropa, und wenn sie verarbeitet hat, was in Mitteleuropa vorgearbeitet wird, dann wird sie einmal beitragen können, was sie beizutragen hat zur europäischen Kultur. Statt dessen kommt in ungeordneten, chaotischen Instinkten etwas ganz Sonderbares zustande, woraus wir ersehen können, daß diese Instinkte in dem Träumer angeregt werden von allerhand ahrimanischen und luziferischen Impulsen. Diese ahrimanischen und luziferischen Impulse sind überhaupt die Ursache, daß sich der Osten jetzt in solch schauerlicher Weise gegen Deutschland gewendet hat.
Sehen Sie, da ist ein Geist, aus dem sein Träumer spricht: Jushakow. Ich möchte Sie auf die Ideen dieses Geistes, der 1885 über die Beziehungen der russischen Kultur zur englischen Kultur sich ausgesprochen hat, aufmerksam machen, und man möchte jetzt gern, daß recht vielen Leuten der Gegenwart aufgingen solche Ideen, die vor nicht sehr langer Zeit aus einem russischen Kopf entsprungen und von ihm aufgeschrieben sind. Wir müssen diese Ideen betrachten nicht ihrem Inhalt nach, sondern als Symptome dessen, was im ganzen russischen Volke lebt.
Jushakow sagt: Da haben wir den verfaulten Westen, der reif ist zum Untergange. Alles, was im Westen ist, hat seine Zeit überstanden, muß sich auflösen. Da muß Rußland eintreten. Aber Rußland muß nicht allein den Westen kultivieren, den Westen erlösen von seiner Barbarei, sondern Rußland muß überhaupt die ganze Welt, insbesondere Asien, erlösen. Und diese Erlösung Asiens für die Seele stellt Jushakow in folgender Weise dar.
Sehen wir hinüber nach Asien. Die eigentlich asiatische Kultur ist von Iran ausgegangen. Diese Iran-Kultur ist von Ormuzd ausgegangen, diese Iraner haben erkannt den Kampf zwischen Ormuzd und Ahriman, und man hat da immer gesehen, wie die Iraner alles getan haben, um die Segnungen des Ormuzd in Iran zu verbreiten. Da aber kamen die turanischen Völker, die abhängig waren von Ahriman, und die haben fortwährend die Ormuzd-Kultur bedrängt, bekämpft, überwunden. Erst kämpften Ormuzd und Ahriman im Iran. Aber wenn wir sehen, wie sich die Völker Europas benommen haben gegen diese Ormuzd-Kultur, da sehen wir, wie die schöne Ormuzd-Kultur sich ausgebreitet hat in den Gegenden, derer sich vor allen die Engländer bemächtigt haben. Die Engländer haben sich gegen die Ormuzd-Kultur als die schlimmsten Barbaren gezeigt. Da hat Rußland in Asien viel gutzumachen an dem, was diese verruchten Engländer in Asien verbrochen haben. Die Engländer sind dahin gegangen, haben sich ganzer Teile Asiens bemächtigt, haben die Ormuzd-Kultur ausgenutzt und ausgesogen. Was haben sich die Engländer vorgestellt? So ein Engländer, er hat sich vorgestellt, daß diese Kultur für ihn da ist, ein solcher Engländer sagt, daß dieses ganze Asien für nichts anderes da sei, als sich in englische Gewebe zu kleiden, untereinander mit englischen Waffen zu kämpfen, mit englischen Werkzeugen zu arbeiten, aus englischen Gefäßen zu essen und mit englischem Flitter zu spielen. Asiens Kultur sei für nichts anderes da. Ganz Asien wäre eine Beute Englands. Er drückt sich sehr genau aus: «England beutet Millionen von Hindus aus, seine ganze Existenz aber hängt von dem Gehorsam der verschiedenen Völker ab, von denen die reiche Halbinsel bewohnt wird; ich wünsche meinem Vaterlande nichts Ähnliches — ich kann mich nur freuen, daß es von diesem so glänzenden wie traurigen Zustande hinreichend entfernt ist.» 1885 in russischer Sprache geschrieben von Jushakow. Was haben die Russen getan? — sagt Jushakow — die Russen konnten es bisher nicht so machen, wie es die westeuropäischen Völker, wie es die Engländer gemacht haben, daß sie widerrechtlicherweise hergefallen sind und sich angemaßt haben das, was in Asien als Ormuzd-Kultur war. Sie sind nur da hingegangen, wo Ahriman-Kultur war und haben die Völker, in denen Ahriman gewirkt hat, zurückgehalten, daß sie nicht weiter schädlich werden konnten für das, was Ormuzd für Asien geleistet hat. Nachdem die Russen die Völker Asiens von dem bösen Ahriman befreit haben, haben sie sie zu befreien von dem, was die Engländer in jenen Gegenden an der Ormuzd-Kultur gesündigt haben. Damit sie vorbereiten können, was sie weiter als Aufgabe haben für Asien, nachdem sie Asien von Ahriman befreit haben, haben sie noch gutzumachen, was die europäischen Völker, namentlich die Engländer, der Ormuzd-Kultur getan haben. Und fragt man, warum diese Völker die Ormuzd-Kultur nicht fortsetzen können, so beantwortet er diese Frage damit, daß diese Völker dem Industrialismus und dem Individualismus verfallen sind, daß sie zuerst nur immer an sich selbst denken, während die Russen erst zuletzt an sich selbst denken. Solche Menschen könne man nicht brauchen; und indem sie den Industrialismus mit ihrem Individualismus verwoben, wurden sie die Blutsauger Asiens. Rußland wird andere Verbindungen bringen; die Verbindung der glänzenden miltärischen Kosaken mit dem die Natur bebauenden Landmann. Und aus dieser Verbindung werden die Befreier der Menschheit in Asien entstehen. Der Befreier der Menschenentwickelung wird in Asien entstehen. — Das ist das Ideal Jushakows, daß aus der Verbindung der Kosaken mit dem die Erde bebauenden Landmann der Befreier der Welt entsteht.
Sie sehen, meine lieben Freunde, ein Ideal aufgebaut, das Sie kaum in Zweifel darüber lassen wird, daß von dem Geiste des Ahriman etwas in den eigenen Geist des Jushakow, und zwar in den Träumer, hineingewirkt hat. Aber dieses Hineinwirken in den Träumer hat nach und nach als ganze Volksstimmung dasjenige hervorgerufen, was eben in diesem Osten Europas als Volksstimmung jetzt zu finden ist; denn man hat es hier mit einer solchen Volksstimmung zu tun, wie sie in den Worten des Jushakow zum Ausdruck gekommen ist.
Sehen Sie, ich wollte auch darauf hinweisen, daß es mit der Geisteswissenschaft etwas ist, was uns immer näher hineinschauen, immer mehr hineinblicken läßt in das, was die Menschen sagen und träumen; denn diesen Träumer tragen wir alle in uns, dieser Träumer ist in uns allen. Auf diesen Träumer haben die guten, auf diesen Träumer haben die bösen Mächte Einfluß.
So wie wir diesen Träumer in uns haben, der die Mondennatur in uns hineingetragen hat, so tragen wir auch in uns den Sonnenmenschen aus der Sonnenentwickelung. Der allerdings kann nicht mehr träumen. Der ist aufgebaut in seinem Bewußtsein nach Art der Pflanzen. Einen schlafenden Pflanzen- oder Sonnenmenschen tragen wir in uns. Und dann auch tragen wir in uns einen vollständig toten, den wie Stein toten Saturnmenschen. Ebenso wie den Sonnenmenschen, der nun schläft, tragen wir in uns den, der noch tiefer in seinem Bewußtsein, der unter dem Schlafbewußtsein steht, den Saturnmenschen. Was in uns Träumer ist, ist Mondenmensch, was in uns lebt mit dem ständigen Schlafbewußtsein, ist Sonnenmensch; und der Saturnmensch liegt, ich möchte sagen, als unsere älteste Ursache, als der innerste Kern in uns. Aber dieser Saturnmensch hat eine tiefe Bedeutung in unserem ganzen Leben. Alle die Erkenntnisse, die der Mensch heute gewinnt, sei es im äußeren Leben, sei es in der Wissenschaft, entstehen dadurch, daß die Außenwelt wirkt auf den Menschen als auf den Saturnmenschen. Diese Wirkung kommt dem Menschen nicht zum Bewußtsein, aber sie ist da. Dasjenige, was wir denken, fühlen, wollen, das geht bis zu dem Saturnmenschen hinein. Und dieser Saturnmensch ist dasjenige, was unserer Erde zuletzt bleibt von uns, gleichgültig, ob wir verbrannt werden in bezug auf den physischen Leib, gleichgültig, ob wir verwesen.
Dasjenige, was der Träumer ist, das bleibt nicht; dasjenige, was der Sonnenmensch ist, das bleibt nicht. Der Saturnmensch geht in feinen, feinen Staubkörnchen in die elementarische Welt der Erde über, das bleibt, und sie trägt immer die Spuren dessen, was in uns war. Sie können heute finden, wenn Sie die elementarische Welt prüfen, dasjenige, wenn auch in feinen Körnchen, was die Überreste Abrahams, Platos, Sokrates’, Aristoteles’ gewesen sind, Sie können finden, was ihr Saturnmensch war. Das, was der Saturnmensch war, wird der Erde gegeben, das verbleibt der Erde, bleibt mit unserem ständigen Charakter in der Erde.
Das war in früheren Zeiten noch nicht so. Das ist gerade in der jetzigen Zeit, seit dem fünfzehnten und sechzehnten Jahrhundert so. Früher löste sich der ganze Mensch auf; nur diejenigen, die wie Abraham, Plato, Sokrates ihrer Zeit vorausgeeilt waren, gaben ihre Reste der Erde. Jetzt natürlich ist es allmählich bei allen Menschen so. Das ist nämlich das Eigentümliche: alles das, was gegenwärtig auf dem Wege der äußeren Wissenschaft errungen wird, drückt sich in diesem Saturnmenschen ab und geht mit diesem Saturnmenschen hinein in die Erde.
Alles, was der Mensch sonst hat, geht verloren, löst sich im Weltall auf, wenn die Erde einmal an ihrem Ziel angelangt ist. Was Sie als Mineralien, Pflanzen, Tiere um sich herum haben, vergeht, nur was Sie als Saturnmensch waren, bleibt als feine Staubteilchen vorhanden, geht hinüber von der Erde zum Jupiterdasein und bildet dann das feste Gerüste des Jupiter. Das sind die wirklichen Atome für den Jupiter. Diejenigen Menschen, die heute äußere Wissenschaft studieren, die heute äußerlich denken, die wirken auf ihren Saturnmenschen so, daß sie in diesem Saturnmenschen die Atome für den Jupiter bilden. Dadurch bekommt der Jupiter seine Atome. Aber wenn nur das wäre, so würde der ganze Jupiter so entstehen, daß er eigentlich nur eine mineralische oder mineralähnliche Kugel wäre, daß keine Pflanze auf ihm wüchse. Dasjenige, was wir durch unseren Saturnmenschen hinübertragen können auf den Jupiter, bewirkt nur, daß der Jupiter eine mineralische Kugel sein würde. Pflanzen könnten da nicht auf ihm wachsen. Wenn Pflanzen wachsen sollen auf dem Jupiter, dann muß der Sonnenmensch in uns auch etwas bekommen. Dieser Sonnenmensch in uns, der bekommt aber erst so recht etwas von jetzt ab und in die Zukunft hinein dadurch, daß die Menschen Begriffe der Geisteswissenschaft in sich aufnehmen, denn diejenigen Begriffe, die wir draußen aufnehmen, die wir aufnehmen von der äußeren Wissenschaft, die gehen in den Saturnmenschen hinein. Was wir aufnehmen als Gedanken der Geisteswissenschaft, das geht in den Sonnenmenschen hinein. Darum erfordert die Geisteswissenschaft mehr Aktivität. Dadurch unterscheiden sich ja ihre Gedanken von den Gedanken der äußeren Wissenschaft, daß sie aktiv sind. Sie müssen lebendig erfaßt werden, man kann sich nicht wie draußen in der Welt passiv verhalten gegenüber dem Denken. In der Geisteswissenschaft, da muß alles aktiv erdacht werden, da müssen wir innerlich tätig sein. Das wirkt auf unseren Sonnenmenschen. Und wenn kein Sonnenwesen im Menschen wäre, so würde ein Jupiter entstehen, auf dem alles mineralisch ist, wo es aber keine Pflanzenwelt gäbe. Die Menschen, die sich geistig entwickeln, tragen etwas hinüber, was auf dem Jupiter zu einer Pflanzenwelt führt. Mit dem Sonnenwesen in uns tragen wir hinüber, was als Pflanzenwelt entsteht; und man braucht nur, um den Jupiter kahl zu machen, Geisteswissenschaft zurückzuweisen. Wir können jetzt diese Geisteswissenschaft begründen, damit es auf dem Jupiter Vegetation gibt.
Wir Geisteswissenschafter sind jedoch nicht so, daß wir wie andere Menschen davon sprechen, daß wir es «so herrlich weit gebracht haben». Hören Sie nur einmal einen Arzt der Gegenwart, der so recht auf dem gegenwärtigen Standpunkte steht, oder hören Sie einen Philosophen der Gegenwart und so weiter, sie sagen: Wir brauchen gar nicht so weit zurückzugehen, da treffen wir Leute, die eigentlich gar nichts waren; ein Mann wie Paracelsus war eigentlich ein Idiot, und der Gymnasiallehrer von heute ist gescheiter als Plato. Das ist eine Philosophie, die schon von Hebbel durchgehechelt ist. Als dramatische Idee in seinem Tagebuch verzeichnet findet sich die Idee, daß? ein Gymnasiallehrer den wiederverkörperten Plato in seiner Klasse hatte. Das wollte Hebbel als dramatische Figur darstellen und zeigen, wie der Schulmeister den wiederverkörperten Plato vornimmt, der absolut nichts begreifen kann von dem, was der Schullehrer über den Plato sagt. Das wollte Hebbel in einem Drama darstellen. Es ist wirklich schade, daß er diese Idee nicht dargestellt hat in einem Drama, denn es ist wirklich eine sehr schöne Idee.
Wir stehen aber nicht auf dem Standpunkt, daß wir es «so herrlich weit gebracht haben». Wir stehen auf einem anderen Standpunkt. Das, was jetzt Philosophie heißt, steht auf dem erhebenden Standpunkt: Was zehn Jahre zurückliegt, ist schon ein überwundener Standpunkt. Wir wissen zwar, daß wir heute Geisteswissenschaft so aussprechen müssen, wie wir sie aussprechen; wir wissen aber auch, daß eine Zeit kommen wird, wo das, was wir jetzt als Geisteswissenschaft aussprechen, ein Unsinn sein wird in der Zukunft, wo ganz anders wird innerhalb der Menschheit gewirkt werden müssen. Dasjenige, was wir jetzt als Geisteswissenschaft aussprechen müssen, hat die Form der Gegenwart, sucht heraus aus der Ewigkeit, was der Gegenwart zu Heil und Frommen ist. Aber eine Zeit wird kommen, die es nötig haben wird, daß wir ebenso, wie wir den Sonnenmenschen beeinflussen, auch auf den Träumer zu wirken suchen, wie unsere ganze äußere Wissenschaft auf den Saturnmenschen wirkt. Was äußere Wissenschaft aus dem Saturnmenschen macht, begründet den Jupiter als mineralische Masse; was Geisteswissenschaft aus dem Sonnenmenschen macht, begründet seine Vegetation. Dasjenige, was tierisches Leben sein wird auf dem Jupiter, wird durch etwas herausgebildet, was auf unsere jetzige Geisteswissenschaft folgen wird, wird begründet werden durch das, was Zukunft der Geisteswissenschaft sein wird. Dann folgt noch etwas, was auf den Menschen auf dem Jupiter wirkt; das wird noch ausgebildet werden, und das wird uns die Grundlage für die eigentliche Jupiterkultur geben.
So stehen wir im Leben jetzt in der Periode darinnen, wo wir vorbereiten für den Jupiter durch die äußere Wissenschaft den mineralischen Kern, und wo Geisteswissenschaft auf sein Pflanzendasein einwirkt und die Vegetation auf dem Jupiter begründet. Kommen wird etwas, was auf den Träumer einwirkt, was dann die Tierwelt des Jupiters bewirken wird. Und dann erst das, was dem entspricht, was jetzt der Mensch durch Denken, Fühlen, Wollen hervorbringt, was durch eine höhere Weisheit so geleitet wird, wenn die Erdenentwickelung beendet ist, daß der Mensch selbst sich hineintragen kann als Mensch auf den Jupiter.
So stehen wir in der Entwickelung der Erde darinnen, so sehen wir aus unserem eigenen Menschlichen heraus, wie wir hineingestellt sind in die große Welt, in den Makrokosmos. Und so wissen wir, daß wir nichts treiben, was nicht wichtig ist. So wissen wir, daß, indem wir zusammen Geisteswissenschaft treiben, wir die Vegetation des Jupiter fördern, daß wir durch das, was wir in Worte prägen, dasjenige schaffen, was im Jupiterdasein der Welt der Zukunft übergeben wird.
Denken Sie einmal, meine lieben Freunde, ich habe ja gesagt, alles, was mineralische Welt ist, verflüchtigt sich in der Welt, alles, was Pflanzenwelt ist, verflüchtigt sich, alles, was tierische Welt ist, verflüchtigt sich. Nichts geht von der Erde hinüber als die mineralischen Atome vom Menschen, von den Saturnteilen der Menschen. Von den Mineralien, Pflanzen und Tieren geht nichts hinüber auf den Jupiter. Nur das geht hinüber, was jetzt in uns Saturnmensch ist; das wird Mineralreich auf dem Jupiter.
Ich weiß nicht, ob sich einige unserer Freunde erinnern an unseren Ausgangspunkt, wie wir vor vielen Jahren in Berlin — zuerst in einem kleinen Häuflein, einige sind noch darunter, die es miterlebt haben — Betrachtungen über diese Dinge angestellt haben. Versetzen wir uns auf den späteren Jupiter. Was sind die Jupiteratome? Das sind die Saturnteile des gegenwärtigen Menschen. Und Unsinn ist es, von solchen Atomen zu sprechen, wie die Physiker es tun. Dasjenige, was der Mensch auf der ganzen Erde gewinnt, geht in den Saturnmenschen hinein und wird zu Jupiteratomen. Zu sprechen davon, daß in unseren Mineralien, Tieren und Pflanzen das steckt, was der Physiker darin sucht, ist der reine Unsinn. Dasjenige, was jetzt Erdenatome sind, hat sich im Mondendasein vorbereitet, ist das, was uns zu Sonnenmenschen zubereiten wird, wie wir jetzt unseren Saturnmenschen zubereiten. Ich habe über das Atom, als zubereitet aus dem ganzen Kosmos heraus, früher einmal gesprochen. In jenen älteren Vorträgen können Sie das wiederfinden, die ganz im Anfang unseres Berliner Wirkens gehalten wurden. Jetzt kann ich es nur kurz machen, nach Voraussetzung dessen, was wir in der Zwischenzeit durchgemacht haben.
Aber dasjenige auch, was unsere Sterne sind, die äußeren physischen Sterne, die physische Sonne, der physische Mond, die wir draußen im Weltenall erblicken — so wie der Physiker es ansieht, so ist es nicht. Die Physiker würden sich sehr wundern, wenn sie einmal zu der Sonne hinaufkommen könnten und da ganz und gar nicht finden würden, was sie sich konstruiert haben. Sie würden sich sehr wundern über das, was sie da zu sehen bekämen. Was man da finden würde, wenn man einmal hinauffahren könnte — zeitgemäß würde das in einem Luftballon der Zukunft, in einem Ätherballon sein —, es wäre apart, was man da finden würde. Was die Physiker konstruieren, das würde man nicht finden; ganz und gar keinen physischen Leib würde man finden. Das sieht nur so aus. Dasjenige nämlich, was uns als Sonne, Mond und Sterne umgibt, gehört zu dem Ganzen, was einmal nach der Mondenentwikkelung entstanden ist. Nach der Mondenentwickelung ist nicht nur der Mond zugrunde gegangen, sondern alles, was sichtbares Weltall ist, ist damals in die Nacht hineingegangen. Und alles, was da ist im Weltenall, gehört zur Erde eigentlich hinzu, so daß, wenn einmal die Erde untergehen wird, nicht nur Pflanzen- und Tierreich mit der Erde untergehen wird, sondern alles, was da draußen im Kosmos ist, wird mit untergehen; die gegenwärtige Form der Sterne wird untergehen in die Nacht hinein. Und dann baut sich auf, was der Jupiter sein wird. Seine Atome werden die Saturnteile der Menschen sein. Seine Umgebung wird ganz anders aussehen als unsere Erdenumgebung.
Betrachten Sie das alles, so könnte ein Mensch, der dieses alles heute auffaßt, das Folgende sagen: Was bleibt also von der gegenwärtigen Welt, wenn die Erdenentwickelung zu Ende sein wird? Mineral-, Pflanzen-, Tierreiche, alles das verteilt sich, vergeht. Was der Mensch heute als Mensch gewinnt, was er heute aus der äußeren Urteilskraft bildet, das geht über in das Mineralreich des Jupiter, was er als Geisteswissenschaft gewinnt, geht hinüber als Sonnenmensch und begründet die Vegetation; was wir sprechen — die Worte — geht hinüber; was an Moralischem vorgeht, geht hinüber.
Konnte nun derjenige, der der ganzen Erdenentwickelung Sinn und Richtung geben sollte, nicht ein ganz besonderes Wort aussprechen, konnte er nicht sagen: «Himmel und Erde werden vergehen, aber meine Worte werden nicht vergehen»? — Beginnen wir jetzt nicht zu begreifen den ganz ungeheuer tiefen Sinn der Christus-Worte: «Himmel und Erde werden vergehen, aber meine Worte werden nicht vergehen»? Ist das nicht wörtlich wahr?
Worte, die aus der äußeren Wissenschaft fließen und auf den Saturnmenschen wirken, die gehen hinüber und bilden die Atome des Jupiter. Worte, die der Geisteswissenschaft entspringen und auf den Sonnenmenschen wirken, die gehen hinüber und bilden die Vegetation des Jupiter; was dann auf den Träumer wirkt, das geht hinüber und bildet das Tierreich des Jupiter; und was der Mensch an Moralischem und durch Worte der Geisteswissenschaft der Zukunft gewinnt, das wird zum Menschen des Jupiter. Worte werden es sein, Gedankenweisheit wird es sein. Das wird bestehen. Was rings herum ist im Kosmos, das vergeht. «Himmel und Erde werden vergehen, aber meine Worte werden nicht vergehen.»
So merken wir nach und nach, wie von dieser zentralen Werkstätte, die wir das Mysterium von Golgatha nennen, tiefe Weisheitsworte fließen. Sie fließen da her. Ich habe einmal gesagt: die ganze folgende Erdenentwickelung wird da sein, um das nach und nach zu verstehen, was der gesagt hat, der durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist. Heute versuchte ich, Ihnen aus der ganzen Geisteswissenschaft, die wir bisher getrieben haben, ein Wort zu erklären, das Christus-Wort: «Himmel und Erde werden vergehen, aber meine Worte werden nicht vergehen.» Immer wiederum und wiederum werden Leute kommen, welche andere Christus-Worte aus dem, was Geisteswissenschaft zu erklären weiß, deuten werden. Vieles wird kommen müssen, um den ganzen Sinn der Christus-Worte zu verstehen, weil sie Richtworte sind, Worte, die gegeben sind aus dem Geiste, die aber erst im Laufe der Zeit aus alledem, was aufgebracht wird aus der Wissenschaft des Geistes, verstanden werden können.
Wenn wir das in ein Gefühl umsetzen, dann bekommen wir erst eine Empfindung von der ungeheuren Einzigkeit des Mysteriums von Golgatha, bekommen durch die Wahrnehmung, die aufblickt zu dem Unendlichen, jene wunderbare Erkenntnis von dem, was der Erde Sinn gibt vom Weltenanfang bis zum Weltenende — dem Mysterium von Golgatha.
Ich hatte heute, meine lieben Freunde, die Aufgabe, weil ja wiederum ein paar Wochen kommen werden, wo wir nicht miteinander werden sprechen können, zu sprechen von etwas, was wir in unsere Seelen aufnehmen können und in den nächsten Wochen viel, viel darüber meditieren. Ich wollte einige Gedanken in Ihre Seele legen, die Sie dann weiter ausbauen können. Das ist ja immer unsere sommerliche geisteswissenschaftliche Aufgabe gewesen, daß wir uns, was in unseren Seelen Platz gegriffen hat, weiter ausbauen und daß dadurch unsere Seelen lebendiger und reifer gemacht werden; denn nicht dadurch, daß wir Geisteswissenschaft aufnehmen wie etwas Theoretisches, nicht nur dadurch, daß wir bloß aufnehmen Ideen, kommen wir weiter in der Geisteswissenschaft, sondern dadurch, daß wir verwandeln diese Gedanken in unser ganzes Seelenleben, in unser lebendiges Empfinden. Ja, wenn wir diesen Gedanken von dem Darinnenstehen des Menschen im Makrokosmos so auf unsere Seelen wirken lassen, fühlen wir uns als Menschen in dem Ganzen darinnen. Aller Kleinmut, alle Zaghaftigkeit, alle Hoffnungslosigkeit muß schwinden gegenüber der Größe dieses Gedankens. Wir müssen uns als Menschen so erst fühlen in aller Bescheidenheit. Und alles dasjenige, was wir als Geisteswissenschaft in uns aufnehmen können und was als Lebendiges von der Geisteswissenschaft in uns wirken kann und soll - was bisher immer unser Prinzip war -, wir müssen es in der Gegenwart ganz besonders betonen; denn immer wiederum und wiederum müssen wir bei unseren Betrachtungen in der Gegenwart an dasjenige erinnern, was so mahnend dasteht in den großen Ereignissen der Zeit, immer wieder müssen wir denken an diejenigen, die uns ihre Ätherleiber zurücklassen in jungen Jahren, die eine große Hilfe sein werden für die Durchgeistigung der zukünftigen Kultur. Wenn diese Vergeistigung eintreten soll, dann müssen Seelen da sein, die etwas von diesen geistigen Zusammenhängen verstehen, die hinaufschauen in diese Welt und wissen, da oben ist nicht nur, was man im abstrakten Sinne Anziehung nennt, sondern da droben sind die lebendigen Toten, dasjenige, was sie aus ihrem eigenen Leben heraus einer Erdenmenschheit gegeben haben, die unverbrauchten Ätherleiber. Zusammenwirken werden müssen die Seelen, die etwas verstehen von diesen Dingen, deren Gedanken hinaufgehen zu dem, was herunterströmt von den unverbrauchten Ätherleibern der vor der Zeit Dahingeschiedenen.
Daß wir unsere Seelen durchdringen müssen von dieser Zusammenströmung des Geistigen mit dem Irdischen, vor allem mit all unseren Gedanken, mit dem, was in uns selber schon geistig ist, zum Geistigen hinaufschauen, das fasse ich zum Schlusse immer in die Worte zusammen, die auch heute den Schluß unserer Betrachtung bilden sollen:
Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht —
Lenken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.
Thirteenth Lecture
My dear friends, we again remember first those who stand outside in the great fields of present events:
Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To those earthly beings entrusted to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our plea may shine helpfully
Upon the souls that seek it lovingly.
And for those who have already passed through the gates of death as a result of these events:
Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To the people of the spheres whom you protect,
That, united with your power,
Our plea may shine helpfully
To the souls that seek them lovingly.
The spirit that we seek through our striving for spiritual knowledge, the spirit that has gone to the earth to bring healing, freedom, and progress to humanity through the mystery of Golgotha, may it be with you and your difficult duties!
It will be my task today to summarize some of what we already know, but which can always be summarized in such a way that it gives us certain guidelines for our spiritual scientific endeavors. Above all, we must familiarize ourselves more often with the idea that our earthly life, as we live it between birth and death, is basically an intermediate life between what has gone before in numerous earthly lives and in numerous lives that have passed between death and new birth, and again between what lies in the future in numerous earthly lives and in numerous lives between death and new birth. I call this our life an intermediate life. We can therefore expect that something will appear in our life that we can regard as an effect of what has gone before, but also that there is something in our life that we can regard as pointing us toward the future. Let us discuss the latter point in particular today.
For if we look at our lives in this way, we might easily believe that there is actually nothing in this life that indicates to us that the seeds, so to speak, of a future life already lie within us. But this is indeed the case. It is really the case that what is to happen to us in the future is being prepared within us. We only need to interpret our lives in the right way, and then we will be able to discover what lies hidden within us for the future, just as the seed lies hidden in the present plant for the future plant that is yet to come into being. Something incomprehensible in our present life is often the dream life with which we are all thoroughly familiar. This dream life certainly has something in it that we can truly say is understandable to us to a certain degree. We dream of things that remind us of this or that which we have experienced in life. Certainly, it often happens that the things we experienced yesterday or in the past and which we dream about are then changed, that they have a different form in the dream, that they are somehow transformed. But in such cases, we can often see with a certain ease that, even if what we dream has changed, there are parts of our life in it, just as we have lived it. But I believe that no one who pays even a little attention to themselves and their dream world can deny that there are dreams that present us with such strange things that we really cannot say that they can be attributed solely to what we have experienced in life here or there. It is really the case that a person only needs to reflect a little on their dreams to clearly notice that they dream things which, if one may say so, could truly never have been conceived by them, according to everything they can remember, and which they could never have come up with.
We will understand this whole connection when we consider more closely the nature of what actually happens in dreams. In the sleeping state, as we know, we are outside our physical and etheric bodies with our astral body and our I. The physical and etheric bodies lie on the bed; with the astral body and the I, we are outside. Now, as things currently stand on Earth, it is not possible for human beings — unless they acquire special abilities — to consciously experience what the astral body and the ego go through when a person is asleep. This takes place in the unconscious. But clairvoyant knowledge shows us that what is experienced there is just as manifold just as distinct, just as varied and multifaceted as what is experienced by the physical body; only consciousness cannot grasp it, but it is there, it is experienced. Dreaming arises from the fact that the astral body and the ego, which are otherwise so far removed from the physical and etheric bodies that the physical and etheric bodies are unaware of the processes taking place in the astral body and the ego, come so close to the physical and etheric bodies that the etheric body is now able to receive impressions from the processes in the astral body and the ego. When you wake up and know, “I have been dreaming,” it is actually quite precise to say that the content of your dream comes into your consciousness because the astral body and the ego submerge; and before the physical body is able to become conscious that it has the astral body and the ego within it again, it becomes the etheric body; and as the etheric body quickly absorbs what the astral body and the ego have experienced, the dream arises. There is therefore an interaction between the astral body and the etheric body, through which the dream arises.
This, however, gives the dream a very specific coloring. It acquires, I would say, a kind of coating. You know that when a person leaves the astral body and the ego and the ether body at death, the person in the ether body has a direct view back on earthly life. This review is actually attached to the etheric body; when it dissolves, the review ceases. This etheric body therefore has the ability to imprint all the events of our life within itself. What we have gone through in life is actually imprinted in the etheric body.
This etheric body is a very complicated structure. If we could dissect this etheric body in such a way that we left its form intact, it would be a mirror of our present life, a picture of our life up to the point, up to the moment, where we can remember. Because we submerge ourselves with the astral body and the I into the etheric body, and the etheric body meets the submerging astral body, it brings things, memories of things it has experienced, to what is coming in through the astral body, and clothes what is really in the astral body in its own images.
Let me explain more precisely. Let us assume that someone experiences something outside in the astral body and in the ego while in a sleeping state, let us say an encounter with a personality. The person knows nothing about this. He experiences such an encounter; he experiences that he will have a certain friendly feeling toward this personality, that he will undertake something communal with this personality. Let us assume that he experiences this outside his etheric body. That may be the case, but he knows nothing about it. Now comes the moment of awakening. The astral body and the ego return to the etheric body, bringing their experience back to the etheric body. The etheric body brings what is in it, its world of images, back to the astral body, and the person dreams. He dreams of an event that he experienced perhaps ten or twenty years ago. The person says to himself: Yes, I dreamed of what I experienced ten or twenty years ago. But perhaps, when he thinks about it carefully, it has changed completely. Nevertheless, it reminds him of something he experienced in the past. What actually happened there? If we follow the process closely with the help of clairvoyant knowledge, we see that the ego and the astral body experienced something that will actually only take place in the next incarnation: an encounter with a personality, something that one has to do with this personality. But the human being cannot yet grasp this in his etheric body, which only contains and can only grasp the images of the present life. When the astral body now submerges, the etheric body clothes what actually belongs to the future life in the images of the present life. This peculiar and complicated process actually takes place continuously in the human being while he dreams.
If you take together everything you have heard so far in spiritual science, it will not seem strange to you. We must be aware that in what emerges from our physical and etheric bodies, in our astral body and the I, we have within us that which wants to pass over into the next incarnation, that which is preparing itself within us for the next incarnation. And if you gradually learn to separate dreams from what are images of your present life, you will come to know the prophetic nature of dreams. The prophetic nature of dreams can really reveal itself to you; you only have to learn to strip the dreams of the present images in which they are clothed. In dreams, one must look more at the way one experiences than at what one experiences and say to oneself, for example: “The fact that I am dreaming of a personality comes from the nature of my etheric body, from the way my etheric body, with its present images, encounters the experiences of the astral body.” In order to recognize what is already prepared for the next life in what we experience, we must focus more on the manner in which it is separated from the image in our etheric body. In fact, in dreams we truly have prophets of our future experiences dwelling within us. It is extremely important that we take this properly into account. Human life reveals itself more and more the more we regard it as something complicated. We would like it to be simpler, that would be more convenient, but it is now a fact that it is complicated.
You see, the human being who stands in the outer physical world is not aware that all kinds of things are within him. Now we have learned what lies within us as prophets of future lives. But there are many other things within us, and self-knowledge is based on our increasingly recognizing what lies within us, what works within us, what makes us happy and unhappy, for all the things that lie within us make us happy and unhappy. Thus, people are usually not aware that they have gone through Yes before this earthly life—not they themselves, but that which made them earthly human beings—the lunar life. We know something about the lunar life, also about the preceding solar life and the old Saturn life. Let us first look at the lunar life! At present, we are living our earthly life, but the lunar life was necessary for the earthly life to come into being. In the lunar life, the cause for the earthly life was prepared, and in a certain sense, this lunar life is still within us. On the moon, human beings were dreamlike clairvoyants. They took in reality in dream images. But what we were on the moon, we still carry within us today; it is still within us. Certainly, the moon human being has become an earth human being. But the cause is still contained in this effect; we still carry the moon human being within us. When we look at this moon human being, we can say: he is what we call the dreamer within us. In fact, we all carry a dreamer within us, a dreamer who, I would say, thinks, feels, and wants in a less dense way, but who is actually wiser than we are as Earth humans. We carry a dreamer within us. We all carry a subtle human being within us. By going around as earth humans with our thoughts, feelings, and desires, this is what earthly development has given us. Something has remained within us from lunar development, which is a dreaming human being. However, we have been given more in the dreamer than we can have in our thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will, and this dreamer is not entirely inactive. We do not take this dreamer into account, but we do many, many things that we are only half aware of, which the dreamer within us directs and guides. We arrange things, but the dreamer also does something within us, directing our thoughts here and there; for example, we think out a sentence; the dreamer makes us say the sentence in a very specific way, giving it a certain emphasis, clothing it in some emotional nuance. This dreamer is what remains of the moon within us. I would like to point out an outstanding personality and draw attention to how this dreamer can be noticed in her. When people get to know each other in life, or when they get to know outstanding people through literature, they usually concern themselves with what the other person is as an earthly human being and not with what he is as a dreamer, as a poet. But it is in this that he expresses himself more deeply.
There is a great writer: Emerson. Emerson really had the peculiarity of always immersing himself so deeply in the subject he was dealing with that it is sometimes easy to find contradictions in his work, because he is always completely absorbed in the subject he is dealing with and then becomes completely absorbed in it, without considering that what he then characterizes contradicts what he had characterized when he was immersed in another subject. But with Emerson in particular, it is always noticeable that when he immerses himself completely in a person or a subject, there are quiet undertones of Emerson's moon people, of the dreamer speaking along with him. Emerson wrote two beautiful essays: one on Shakespeare as the characteristic representative of the poet; one on Goethe as the representative of the writer. Now it is the case that people read Emerson's reflections on Shakespeare, read his reflections on Goethe, and then are satisfied, content with that. But one can go further and say: Doesn't one sense something special resonating quietly in Emerson? And then one discovers something highly remarkable: Emerson does not merely want to characterize Shakespeare as Shakespeare, but wants to present him as an example, as a model for the poet, and it is very peculiar, in that Emerson delves deeply into Shakespeare, what emerges when one hears the faint ringing of undertones that resonate.
You will not believe me capable of saying anything derogatory about Shakespeare out of chauvinism or nationalistic motives. Of course, Shakespeare is the great poet for me; I naturally regard him as one of the greatest poets of all time. But I want to bring out the subtle undertones that Emerson asserts in his characterization of Shakespeare. He says that originality is not actually what makes a man great. If one wants to characterize a great poet, one should not demand that this great personality be entirely original.
And now we see that, in order to characterize Shakespeare, Emerson emphasizes that the poet goes everywhere to take what he likes and incorporate it into his poetry. Emerson tries, as it were, to excuse Shakespeare for not being original, for gathering everything he used in his poetry from everywhere, from Italian, Spanish, French, and German sources, and of course from English history. It is very peculiar that Emerson, who is so lovingly immersed in Shakespeare, uses the following words to characterize Shakespeare: “Great men are distinguished more by the breadth of their minds and the height of the vantage point from which they look down than by originality. If we demand that originality which, like a spider, draws its own web from its own entrails, which finds the clay itself, forms stones from it, and builds the house, then great men are by no means original. The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity from others.”
So he excuses Shakespeare for being so unoriginal, for having gathered everything from everywhere. Yes, he goes so far as to say that in order to understand Shakespeare, one must look at the entire English audience of the time, whose tastes Shakespeare strove to satisfy. Emerson says strange things about Shakespeare: “It is easy to see that everything that has ever been written and done in the world was not the work of one man, but came about through a widespread, collective effort, where thousands worked as one, all driven by the same impulse.” And the strangest thing Emerson says about Shakespeare, whom he characterizes affectionately, the strangest thing, please listen: “It has become a kind of practical rule among writers that once someone has shown themselves capable of creating something original, they may henceforth discreetly steal the works of others.”
So Emerson tries to assign Shakespeare his rightful place in the world by showing that great people steal from others. That the motifs of his many works are actually stolen. This can initially be found as a slight undertone in Emerson's characterization of Shakespeare. And now let us turn to Goethe's loving observation. Goethe characterizes Emerson as the one who represents the writer. But to Goethe, Emerson says: Nature is everywhere dependent on its wonders being expressed. Every stone, every plant, every being in nature waits to be expressed by the human soul. The writer will always be in direct connection with nature. It is as if the Creator himself had prepared the idea that the writer would one day appear. It is remarkable, says Emerson in reference to Goethe, how this man, in terms of his talent, owes nothing to his people, his country, or his surroundings, but how everything springs forth from within himself. Goethe alone decides on truth and error; everything comes from within himself.
When Emerson characterizes Goethe, he seeks to gather concepts from all sides; but when he characterizes Shakespeare as a magnificent robber, he portrays Goethe as a person from the center of the world, as nature itself. Let us listen to a few passages in which Emerson speaks about Goethe: “The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie remaining a lie for us. To make everything we are conscious of into a truth, to awaken belief, certainty, and trust in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to honor every truth at the beginning as at the end, in the middle of the way as for endless times, not only by recognizing it, but by making it a guiding principle of our actions.” Or he says of Goethe: “In my eyes, the writer stands as a man whose position in the structure of the world was foreseen.”
He characterizes Shakespeare as being what the audience wants him to be; Goethe as a man who was conceived at the beginning of the world; he owes nothing to the profession or position he held, but entered the world from birth as a free, supervising genius ... or: “He is all eye and instinctively turns to where the truth lies. Say something, and he will know immediately whether it is true or false. He hates to repeat the stories of old women, even if they have been accepted as true by mankind for a thousand years, and to allow himself to be made a fool of by them.”
This sentence appears in Goethe's characterization. In Shakespeare's characterization, it says that he cannot do enough, especially when it comes to collecting everything that has been written. I would say that Emerson has succeeded in a wonderful way in bringing out the difference between Shakespeare and Goethe in his characterizations of Shakespeare and Goethe. But then, based on the feeling of what the dreamer creates in both of them, one can discover how Emerson came to characterize Shakespeare as a great robber and Goethe as a great ally of truth. This is extremely interesting because it is not consciously intended, but this hint is spread throughout both characterizations.
You see, there is another way of reading that is different from simply picking up a book and going through it. You don't learn the important things about things by taking them in individually, but by comparing them, by letting one thing influence you alongside another.
I was allowed to use this example because Emerson really often speaks as a dreamer. So one could really find it tangible how two personalities speak in him, because what everyday readers find to be contradictions, Emerson himself was also aware of. After all, there are such gross contradictions in Emerson that everyone must notice them. On the one hand, he calls the English the first people in the world, on the other hand, he places the Germans higher. Once this is spoken from the higher consciousness, once from the dreamer. And it is particularly interesting when you simply read the two conclusions of the reflections on Shakespeare and Goethe one after the other. In Shakespeare, Emerson comes to say: All those who have worked so far have not yet achieved what the poet is in the world: “The world is still waiting for the poet-priest.” It is something like renunciation that comes across as a feeling at the end of the reflection on Shakespeare. At the end of the reflection on Goethe, the opposite is true: that he inspires us to honor every truth not only by recognizing it, but by making it a guiding principle for our actions. While a statement of renunciation stands at the end of the reflection on Shakespeare, a statement of confidence stands at the end of the reflection on Goethe.
We now live in a time when it is important to take these things into account a little, to recognize them a little. We will then find that this dreamer lives in every human being, he reveals himself in people's actions, and while he is seen in clear consciousness, we can recognize him in everyday life when we study people. We can see this in Emerson. It is interesting to study Emerson.
This dreamer within us is what everything that is supposed to affect us from the spiritual world without our knowledge now acts upon. In what we experience as earthly human beings, we form thoughts and impulses of will. What we know in this way is what we find in our lives. But the inspirations of the angels, the beings of the Angeloi, play into our dreams, and these are in turn inspired by beings of the higher hierarchies. What enters our dreams, in some people more than in others, is something more intelligent than what we have in us from our everyday life, than everything we perceive in our everyday life in our thinking, feeling, and willing. That which guides us, that which is more than the earthly human being is and was, enters into our dreamer.
You see, this dreamer is also that which can evoke much that is now unconscious in us. Certainly, everything that comes to us from the higher world via the beings belonging to the hierarchies of the angeloi has an effect on the dreamer; but everything Ahrimanic, everything Luciferic also has an effect on the dreamer, really works into the dreamer, and a large part of what people assert, not entirely out of their consciousness, but out of instinct, has been worked into the dreamer from the spiritual world.
I would like to give you an example of this as well. I would like to take this example from a somewhat broader period of history. I have often told you that one can recognize the European peoples by understanding how the soul of the people speaks to the Italians through the sentient soul, to the French through the intellectual or emotional soul, to the English through the conscious soul, to the Germans through the ego, and to the Russians through the spirit self. But this speaking through the spirit self means that the Russians today have instincts that will only develop in the future. Only in the distant future will what the Russian national soul has to say come to light, once the human soul has developed to the point of the spirit self. That is why everything that comes to light in the East still has something embryonic about it. Now, however, these peoples of the East instinctively feel that they belong to a different cultural stream. They feel that they have to wait. But no one likes to wait when they reflect on their present consciousness. That is precisely what they must do: wait and consciously take in what European culture is. On the other hand, they have an instinct that they must guide and lead, that they cannot destroy Europe quickly enough, whereas the natural course of events is that what can develop in Central Europe develops from the dialogue between the soul of the people and the ego.
The Russian national soul has to go to school in Central Europe, and once it has processed what has been prepared in Central Europe, it will one day be able to contribute what it has to contribute to European culture. Instead, something very strange comes about in disorderly, chaotic instincts, from which we can see that these instincts are stimulated in the dreamer by all kinds of Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. These Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses are the very cause of the East now turning against Germany in such a gruesome way.
You see, there is a spirit speaking through its dreamer: Yushakov. I would like to draw your attention to the ideas of this spirit, who in 1885 spoke about the relationship between Russian and English culture, and one would now like many people of the present day to understand these ideas, which sprang from a Russian mind not so long ago and were written down by him. We must consider these ideas not for their content, but as symptoms of what lives in the entire Russian people.
Yushakov says: There we have the rotten West, ripe for destruction. Everything in the West has outlived its time and must disintegrate. That is where Russia must step in. But Russia must not only cultivate the West, redeem the West from its barbarism, but Russia must redeem the whole world, especially Asia. And Yushakov describes this redemption of Asia for the soul in the following way.
Let us look over to Asia. The true Asian culture originated in Iran. This Iranian culture originated with Ormuzd, and the Iranians recognized the struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, and one has always seen how the Iranians did everything to spread the blessings of Ormuzd in Iran. But then the Turanian peoples came, who were dependent on Ahriman, and they continually harassed, fought, and overcame the Ormuzd culture. First, Ormuzd and Ahriman fought in Iran. But when we see how the peoples of Europe behaved towards this Ormuzd culture, we see how the beautiful Ormuzd culture spread in the areas that were seized above all by the English. The English showed themselves to be the worst barbarians against the Ormuzd culture. Russia has much to make up for in Asia for what these wicked English have done there. The English went there, seized whole parts of Asia, exploited and sucked the Ormuzd culture dry. What did the English imagine? An Englishman imagined that this culture was there for him; such an Englishman says that all of Asia is there for no other purpose than to dress in English cloth, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels, and play with English trinkets. Asian culture is there for no other purpose. All of Asia is England's spoils. He expresses himself very precisely: “England exploits millions of Hindus, but its entire existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I wish nothing similar for my fatherland — I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this glorious and sad state.” Written in Russian by Yushakov in 1885. What have the Russians done? — says Yushakov — the Russians have not been able to do what the Western European peoples, like the English, have done, unlawfully invading and appropriating what was the Ormuzd culture in Asia. They only went where the Ahriman culture was and held back the peoples in whom Ahriman had worked, so that they could no longer harm what Ormuzd had done for Asia. After the Russians freed the peoples of Asia from the evil Ahriman, they had to free them from what the English had done to the Ormuzd culture in those regions. In order to prepare for their further task for Asia after they have liberated Asia from Ahriman, they must make amends for what the European peoples, especially the English, have done to the Ormuzd culture. And if one asks why these peoples cannot continue the Ormuzd culture, he answers that these peoples have fallen prey to industrialism and individualism, that they always think of themselves first, while the Russians think of themselves last. Such people are of no use; and by interweaving industrialism with their individualism, they have become the bloodsuckers of Asia. Russia will bring other connections; the connection between the brilliant military Cossacks and the farmer who cultivates the land. And from this connection will arise the liberators of humanity in Asia. The liberator of human development will arise in Asia. — That is Yushakov's ideal, that from the connection between the Cossacks and the farmer who cultivates the earth will arise the liberator of the world.
You see, my dear friends, an ideal being constructed that will leave you in little doubt that something of the spirit of Ahriman has worked its way into Yushakov's own spirit, namely into the dreamer. But this influence on the dreamer has gradually brought about, as a whole mood of the people, what can now be found as the mood of the people in this part of Eastern Europe; for we are dealing here with a mood of the people as expressed in the words of Yushakov.
You see, I also wanted to point out that spiritual science is something that allows us to look ever more closely, ever more deeply into what people say and dream; for we all carry this dreamer within us, this dreamer is in all of us. The good forces influence this dreamer, and so do the evil forces.
Just as we have this dreamer within us, who has carried the nature of the moon into us, so we also carry within us the sun-human being from the evolution of the sun. However, he can no longer dream. He is structured in his consciousness like a plant. We carry within us a sleeping plant or sun man. And then we also carry within us a completely dead, stone-dead Saturn man. Just as we carry within us the sun man who is now asleep, we carry within us the Saturn man who is even deeper in his consciousness, who stands below the consciousness of sleep. What is dreamer in us is the moon man; what lives in us with constant sleeping consciousness is the sun man; and the Saturn man lies, I would say, as our oldest cause, as the innermost core in us. But this Saturn man has a profound meaning in our whole life. All the knowledge that human beings gain today, whether in their outer lives or in science, arises from the fact that the outer world acts upon human beings as upon Saturn beings. This effect is not conscious to us, but it is there. What we think, feel, and want goes into the Saturn human being. And this Saturn human being is what ultimately remains of us on Earth, regardless of whether we are cremated in relation to the physical body, regardless of whether we decay.
What the dreamer is does not remain; what the sun man is does not remain. The Saturn man passes into the elemental world of the earth in fine, fine grains of dust, which remain and always bear the traces of what was in us. Today, if you examine the elemental world, you can find, albeit in fine grains, what the remains of Abraham, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle were; you can find what their Saturn man was. What the Saturn man was is given to the earth; it remains in the earth, remains with our constant character in the earth.
This was not the case in earlier times. It has only been so in the present age, since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In earlier times, the whole human being dissolved; only those who were ahead of their time, such as Abraham, Plato, and Socrates, gave their remains to the earth. Now, of course, this is gradually becoming the case for all human beings. That is the peculiar thing: everything that is currently achieved through external science is expressed in this Saturn man and goes with this Saturn man into the earth.
Everything else that humans have is lost, dissolves into the universe once the earth has reached its destination. What you see around you as minerals, plants, and animals passes away; only what you were as a Saturnian human remains as fine dust particles, passing from the earth to Jupiter and forming the solid framework of Jupiter. These are the real atoms for Jupiter. Those people who study external science today, who think externally today, have such an effect on their Saturn people that they form the atoms for Jupiter in these Saturn people. This is how Jupiter gets its atoms. But if that were all, the whole of Jupiter would come into being as nothing more than a mineral or mineral-like sphere, on which no plant could grow. What we can transfer to Jupiter through our Saturn being would only cause Jupiter to be a mineral sphere. Plants could not grow on it. If plants are to grow on Jupiter, then the Sun man in us must also receive something. However, this Sun man in us only really receives something from now on and into the future through people taking in concepts of spiritual science, because the concepts we take in from outside, which we take in from external science, go into the Saturn man. What we take in as thoughts of spiritual science goes into the sun man. That is why spiritual science requires more activity. This is what distinguishes its thoughts from the thoughts of external science: they are active. They must be grasped alive; one cannot behave passively toward thinking as one does outside in the world. In spiritual science, everything must be actively conceived; we must be active inwardly. This has an effect on our sun-human beings. And if there were no sun-beings in human beings, a Jupiter would arise on which everything would be mineral, but where there would be no plant world. People who develop spiritually carry over something that leads to a plant world on Jupiter. With the sun-being within us, we carry over what arises as a plant world; and all one needs to do to make Jupiter barren is to reject spiritual science. We can now establish this spiritual science so that there will be vegetation on Jupiter.
We spiritual scientists, however, are not like other people who talk about how “wonderfully far we have come.” Just listen to a contemporary doctor who is really up to date, or listen to a contemporary philosopher, and so on. They say: We don't need to go back very far to find people who were actually nothing; a man like Paracelsus was actually an idiot, and today's high school teachers are smarter than Plato. This is a philosophy that has already been thoroughly criticized by Hebbel. In his diary, he recorded the dramatic idea that a high school teacher had Plato reincarnated in his class. Hebbel wanted to portray this as a dramatic figure and show how the schoolmaster deals with Plato reincarnated, who can understand absolutely nothing of what the schoolteacher says about Plato. Hebbel wanted to portray this in a drama. It is a real shame that he did not portray this idea in a drama, because it is truly a very beautiful idea.
However, we do not take the view that we have “come so wonderfully far.” We take a different view. What is now called philosophy stands on an exalted position: what was true ten years ago is already an outdated point of view. We know that today we must express spiritual science as we do; but we also know that a time will come when what we now express as spiritual science will be nonsense in the future, when something completely different will have to be done within humanity. What we must now express as spiritual science has the form of the present, seeking out of eternity what is for the good and pious in the present. But a time will come when it will be necessary for us to influence the dreamer in the same way that we influence the sun-human being, just as our entire outer science influences the Saturn-human being. What external science makes of the Saturn man establishes Jupiter as a mineral mass; what spiritual science makes of the Sun man establishes his vegetation. What will be animal life on Jupiter will be formed by something that will follow our present spiritual science; it will be established by what will be the future of spiritual science. Then something else will follow that will affect humans on Jupiter; this will still be developed, and it will give us the basis for the actual Jupiter culture.
Thus, we are now in the period of life where we are preparing for Jupiter through external science, which forms the mineral core, and where spiritual science influences its plant existence and establishes vegetation on Jupiter. Something will come that will influence the dreamer, which will then bring about the animal world of Jupiter. And only then will that come which corresponds to what human beings now bring forth through thinking, feeling, and willing, guided by a higher wisdom, when the development of the Earth is complete, so that human beings themselves can carry themselves over as human beings to Jupiter.
This is how we stand in the evolution of the Earth; this is how we see from our own human perspective how we are placed in the great world, in the macrocosm. And so we know that we do nothing that is not important. Thus we know that by studying spiritual science together, we are promoting the vegetation of Jupiter, that through what we express in words, we are creating what will be handed over to the world of the future in the Jupiter existence.
Think about it, my dear friends, I have said that everything that is mineral evaporates in the world, everything that is plant evaporates, everything that is animal evaporates. Nothing passes from the earth except the mineral atoms from human beings, from the Saturn parts of human beings. Nothing from minerals, plants, or animals passes over to Jupiter. Only that which is now Saturn in us passes over; that becomes the mineral kingdom on Jupiter.
I don't know if some of our friends remember our starting point, how many years ago in Berlin — at first in a small group, some of whom are still here who witnessed it — we made observations about these things. Let us transport ourselves to the later Jupiter. What are the Jupiter atoms? They are the Saturn parts of the present human being. And it is nonsense to speak of such atoms as physicists do. What human beings gain throughout the Earth goes into the Saturn human being and becomes Jupiter atoms. To say that what physicists seek in our minerals, animals, and plants is contained within them is pure nonsense. What are now Earth atoms were prepared in the Moon existence and are what will prepare us for becoming Sun humans, just as we are now preparing our Saturn humans. I have spoken before about the atom as being prepared out of the whole cosmos. You can find this in those older lectures that were given at the very beginning of our work in Berlin. Now I can only speak briefly, based on what we have gone through in the meantime.
But what our stars are, the outer physical stars, the physical sun, the physical moon that we see out there in the universe — it is not as the physicist sees it. Physicists would be very surprised if they could ever go up to the sun and find that it was not at all what they had constructed. They would be very surprised at what they would see there. What one would find there, if one could ever go up there—in keeping with the times, this would be in a balloon of the future, in an ether balloon—it would be remarkable what one would find there. What physicists construct would not be found; no physical body would be found at all. It only looks that way. For what surrounds us as the sun, moon, and stars belongs to the whole that once came into being after the moon's development. After the moon's development, not only did the moon perish, but everything that is the visible universe entered into the night at that time. And everything that exists in the universe actually belongs to the Earth, so that when the Earth perishes, not only will the plant and animal kingdoms perish with it, but everything that exists out there in the cosmos will also perish; the present form of the stars will disappear into the night. And then what will be Jupiter will build itself up. Its atoms will be the Saturn parts of human beings. Its environment will look completely different from our earthly environment.
Considering all this, a person who understands all this today might say the following: What will remain of the present world when the Earth's evolution comes to an end? The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms will all disperse and pass away. What man gains today as a human being, what he forms today out of his external power of judgment, will pass into the mineral kingdom of Jupiter; what he gains as spiritual science will pass over as the sun-human being and form the basis of vegetation; what we speak—the words—will pass away; what happens in the moral realm will pass away.
Could not the one who was to give meaning and direction to the whole of Earth's development utter a very special word, could he not say: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”? — Are we not now beginning to understand the enormously profound meaning of Christ's words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”? Is this not literally true?
Words that flow from outer science and act upon Saturn humans pass over and form the atoms of Jupiter. Words that spring from spiritual science and affect the people of the Sun pass over and form the vegetation of Jupiter; what then affects the dreamer passes over and forms the animal kingdom of Jupiter; and what man gains in morality and through the words of the spiritual science of the future becomes the people of Jupiter. Words will be, wisdom will be. That will remain. Everything around us in the cosmos will pass away. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Thus we gradually realize how deep words of wisdom flow from this central workshop, which we call the Mystery of Golgotha. They flow from there. I once said that the entire subsequent evolution of the earth will be there to gradually understand what was said by the one who passed through the mystery of Golgotha. Today I have tried to explain to you, from the whole of spiritual science that we have pursued so far, one word, the word of Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Again and again, people will come who will interpret other words of Christ from what spiritual science can explain. Much will have to come in order to understand the whole meaning of Christ's words, because they are words of truth, words given from the spirit, but which can only be understood in the course of time from all that is brought forth from spiritual science.
When we translate this into feeling, then we gain a sense of the immense uniqueness of the mystery of Golgotha, and through our perception, which looks up to the infinite, we gain that wonderful knowledge of what gives meaning to the earth from the beginning of the world to the end of the world — the mystery of Golgotha.
My dear friends, today I had the task, because there will be a few weeks coming up when we will not be able to speak to one another, to speak about something that we can take into our souls and meditate on much, much during the coming weeks. I wanted to plant a few thoughts in your souls that you can then develop further. This has always been our summer spiritual scientific task, that we develop further what has taken root in our souls and that through this our souls become more alive and mature; for it is not by by taking in spiritual science as something theoretical, not only by merely taking in ideas, that we make progress in spiritual science, but by transforming these thoughts into our whole soul life, into our living feeling. Yes, when we allow this thought of the human being's standing within the macrocosm to work on our souls in this way, we feel ourselves as human beings within the whole. All timidity, all hesitancy, all hopelessness must disappear in the face of the greatness of this thought. We must first feel ourselves as human beings in all modesty. And everything that we can take in as spiritual science and that can and should work in us as something living — which has always been our principle — we must emphasize particularly in the present; for again and again in our reflections on the present we must remember what stands so admonishingly before us in the great events of the times; again and again we must think of those who leave their etheric bodies behind in their youth, who will be a great help in the spiritualization of future culture. If this spiritualization is to take place, then there must be souls who understand something of these spiritual connections, who look up into this world and know that up there is not only what we call attraction in an abstract sense, but that up there are the living dead, that which they have given from their own lives to the earth's humanity, their unspent etheric bodies. The souls who understand something of these things, whose thoughts ascend to what flows down from the unspent etheric bodies of those who have passed away before their time, must work together.
That we must permeate our souls with this confluence of the spiritual and the earthly, above all with all our thoughts, with what is already spiritual within ourselves, and look up to the spiritual, I always summarize at the end in the words that are also intended to form the conclusion of our reflection today:
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit will grow —
Souls will consciously guide
Their minds into the realm of spirits.