Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution
GA 212

7 May 1922, Dornach

5. The Human Soul in Relation Sun and Moon

Very much more could be said about the present subject; however, some indications, only, could be given and with these we must for the moment be satisfied. Today I shall try, by means of a kind of comprehensive overview, to show how the soul of man is incorporated into world evolution as a whole.

When we, as ensouled beings between birth and death, let the external world act upon us, we receive in the first place a number of impressions. Present-day man has for centuries been in the habit of regarding the external world as the most essential; this attitude is largely due to the scientific education which he receives already from the lower school onwards. Lately even psychology is dealt with as if it were one of the natural sciences, not only by the experts but by the simplest people. This all stems from the fact that modern man has little talent for examining his own inner being. Consequently, it is not easy for him to become aware of things such as those we spoke about yesterday. Present- day man has no inclination to look into himself objectively; he is not in the habit of doing so. He is aware of all that which I referred to yesterday as the up-surging waves of instinctive life—urges, cravings and passions—in fact, all emotions in general. But he is little inclined to look at these in an objective way because when he observes himself all that emerges are just these cravings. Through education they often become refined, but it is still instinctive life that wells up. On the other hand, man forms at least some ideas concerning the external world in which he is not personally involved; these ideas therefore have a certain objectivity.

There are many people who do not care for such objective ideas; they prefer to keep to what is subjective and personal. However, modern cultural life brings up in every field such objective concepts concerning external nature and has done so for centuries. These concepts about the world fill man's inner being. Whether it is only a little local paper he reads or one of the Sunday supplements, he is learning, in both, to look at the world according to such concepts. He is not aware that, even from the smallest publication, he absorbs a natural-scientific view of the world, but he does so nonetheless. So it can be said that the only thing that really occupies man today is the external world. I am not saying this in criticism of individuals. It is more a criticism of the age; or, better said, a characterization of the age, for there is no point in criticizing. The whole situation is simply a necessary outcome of the time. People today are so little interested in man as such that it has become a matter of indifference whether a living actor is seen on the stage or a specter on the cinema screen. In reality, it naturally does make a considerable difference. But today there is no deep fundamental feeling for this difference. If there were, then there would also be more concern for the considerable part played by the cinema and similar phenomena in the decline of our civilization.

The concepts which are today imparted to man's soul are simply accepted through blind faith in authority. When told that science has achieved this or established that, he is immediately convinced. One really must be clear about the fact that utterly blind faith in authority is involved in the way ideas about the world are conveyed. Things are accepted simply on the basis of a statement without the slightest knowledge of what actually takes place in the laboratories and so on.

It was by no means always so. I have often drawn attention to the fact that if we go back in the history of mankind's evolution, we arrive at a time when something was present in man which I have always designated as an instinctive, dreamlike clairvoyance. This clairvoyance was indeed instinctive and dreamlike, yet far better able to enter into the nature of things than the so-called scientific ideas of today. Through those conceptual pictures, which today are considered to be merely symbolic or allegoric or else flights of fancy, one was actually transported into the reality of things. Whether a particular picture corresponded quite exactly to the external object was not what mattered. Of importance was rather that, with the picture, one also received the spiritual reality of the object. Today it is, of course, essential that the idea one has formed corresponds exactly to the external fact, for this correspondence is all man has to hold on to.

This touches on something we must be quite clear about because it is of immense importance for judging our present civilization. It must be strongly emphasized that, formerly, man in his instinctive clairvoyance had a living quality within him. Modern man believes that it was mere fantasy and that it had nothing to do with external objects.

In a certain sense, it is of particular importance, if our insight is firmly rooted in Anthroposophy, that we accept this modern approach in which, disregarding the inner reality of external nature, we formulate faithful copies of her. Perhaps you are aware of how scientifically scrupulous Anthroposophy does just that, by declining every kind of hypothesis about the phenomena of nature. On the contrary, we remain in our phenomenalism, as it must be termed, strictly within the phenomena themselves—that is, within what nature conveys—and that we allow the phenomena to explain themselves, in the Goethean sense.1Goethe's Natural-Scientific Writings. We do not think into them all kinds of atom-bombardment or atom-splitting and the like, as is usually done nowadays because of the inertia of old habits. When we speak about external nature, on the basis of Anthroposophy, it is essential that we do not hypothetically add anything to what the phenomena themselves reveal.

Modern technology is an example of how not to think anything into the phenomena. It has arisen with the natural- scientific world view in recent times. When we utilize nature's laws in technology we actually create the phenomena ourselves. True, something is left out of account in the phenomena, in electricity, for example, of which the modern researcher says that he uses it, but does not know what it is. He speaks similarly about all nature forces such as heat and light, etc. In other words, there is always an element which is not explained. However, what really matters in technology is that which we want to control. And as it is we ourselves who put everything together in the experiments, we can survey every detail.

It is just because every detail is surveyable that one can have an immediate feeling of certainty about what is built up technically—for example, in chemistry; whereas, when one turns to nature there is always the possibility of several interpretations. So it must be said that a thinking which is truly of our time is to be seen at its most perfect in the technician. Someone with no inkling as to how a machine or a chemical product is made, and works does not yet think in the modern way. He lets other people think in him, as it were; people who are in the know, who think technically. The external achievements of technology such as mechanisms, chemistry and so on, have gradually become the basis for a modern view of the world. In the course of time this approach has spread to what is today regarded as a world conception.

What is modern astronomy? For a long time it has represented nothing but a world mechanism. The way the sun is seen in relation to the planets and their movements is nothing but the picture of a huge machine. Lately, chemistry has been added to this in the form of spectral-analysis.2Spectral-analysis: Chemical analysis by means of spectroscope. Astronomy does not venture further. This science of the universe is today only concerned with the question of whether our mental picture of it will correspond to reality if it is simply built up on concepts taken from technology; that is, if what can be derived from technology is imagined transposed into outer space. We should then have a science, it is thought, containing valid ideas, if one excludes those of neo-vitalism3Neo-vitalism: developed by Hans Driesch, 1867—1941, biologist. and all talk of psychoid4Psychoid: Concept of Vitalism. Description of certain strata of soul (C.G. Jung). and the like. A world view would be obtained in which the effectual ideas would be those applied in chemical preparations and the construction of machines. These ideas are then carried over to the structure of the universe and thus represent that, too, as a huge mechanism in which certain chemical processes occur.

This was not always the view. Right up to the 15th Century—I am referring to the civilized part of the world—man lived with mental pictures of the world which were not merely technical. They were inner pictures in which he could participate. What is of a technical nature is quite external to man; it is completely separate from him. Formerly, man experienced what he knew; he, so to speak, lived within his knowledge. Modern man does not participate in what he knows. This is why, nowadays, clever people in particular feel that man in former times dreamed all kinds of things into his environment, he indulged in fantasies; whereas today we have at last the possibility to represent the world to ourselves without such fantasy. It is even believed that technical concepts are the only kind that ought to be applied to the world, because only then can the danger of fantasy be avoided, and true knowledge obtained.

However, something of a very much more fundamental nature lies at the basis of what has just been stated; something which was prophesied already in the ancient mysteries by initiates who had attained a certain grade. In fact, it is characteristic of the mysteries, at the time when the ancient clairvoyance was prevalent, that they prophetically foresaw the kind of view of the world that was bound to come.

Something like the following was said: If the view of the world prevalent today—this “today” was in very early times when man, in an instinctive, dreamlike way, participated in his environment—is preserved for future mankind then the human being will never become free. His impulse to action will always come from his inner experience of the world. In his heart a divine world will speak, but a divine world that makes him dependent. People in the ancient civilizations were always unfree. They were aware that, when they were not obeying laws of state, laid down by their rulers, they followed divine commands. They were, so to speak, beings who simply carried out the impulses prompted by the divine within them. Therefore, in the mysteries it was said: A time must come when the divine influence within man must cease. A time must come when he looks out on an external world and sees only objects and events that have nothing to do with his humanity, a world of which he only takes into his soul the external aspect. Man can be free inwardly just when he witnesses, and experiences only forces of nature and not those that sustain him. Then his inner being will be unburdened because nothing will fill his soul except what is external to his nature.

A phase had to come in mankind's evolution when he would see external nature as something apart from himself and thus achieve independence. This was foreseen in the ancient mysteries where the initiate said: What at present we can give human beings, whose instinctive clairvoyance enables them to meet us with understanding, will not always be possible to give to men, because it makes them dependent. Man must acquire a knowledge which does not determine his inner impulse to action but leaves him free. A knowledge that only conveys concepts of what exists outside his being will awaken his inner impulse to freedom.

This characterizes the extreme problem I was faced with when I felt impelled to write, first the introductory essays, and then my Philosophy of Freedom. The fact had to be fully recognized, with all its implications, that the age in which we live is completely orientated towards knowledge of a technical nature. There is no choice but to adapt to this approach; otherwise the doctrines derived from the instinctive experience of the world in ancient times, and still preserved in the creeds and so on, will be distorted. No other possibility exists than to make use of concepts which are also applicable to the construction of machinery and so on. We live in a world that is thought of as a huge machine and as a huge chemical plant. If we are to find again what is spiritual in the world then we must simply break completely with everything that has come down in the form of mysticism from former times. In the mechanical world, devoid of spirit, given us by modern science, there we must find the spirit.

Let me sketch on the blackboard the situation that had to be reckoned with when I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom. If this is man (see drawing on the left, white lines) and this his surrounding world (yellow lines) then one must depict the situation in ancient times as follows: When man looked into the environment he experienced—also within himself—what his instinctive, dreamlike, clairvoyant pictures transmitted to him (red lines). And he related his inner experiences to what he saw outside. Therefore, he perceived the environment as spiritual through and through (red lines within yellow ones). He saw elemental and also higher beings in everything, because he brought towards them the right inner condition.

Modern man of the civilized world, for whom in the early Nineties I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom, has a different relation to his environment (drawing on the right). He no longer unites his inner being with what he perceives; he focuses on what can be worked out in technical terms. He traces the laws at work in the environment, but these are laws of nature and in them no moral impulses are to be found; whereas man in ancient times, as I drew it here (drawing on the left), was still inwardly connected with the environment. He saw in stone, animal, and plant moral impulses, because everything contained divine spiritual beings. In the laws of nature there is only what applies to mechanical construction.

What then did the Philosophy of Freedom set out to do? The necessary task to be accomplished was to show that if man is unable to find moral impulses, when he stands outside of nature, because through his senses he can reach only natural laws, then he must go out of himself. He can no longer remain within the confines of his body. I had to describe this first going out, when man leaves behind his bodily nature. This first going out is accomplished in pure thinking in the way it is described in the Philosophy of Freedom. Here man does not project himself into the environment by means of instinctive clairvoyance; he goes out of his body altogether. He transfers his consciousness into the external world (green lines). And what does he attain there? He attains moral intuition because he has reached the very first delicate degree of clairvoyance—or you may wish to use the subjective term I used then: moral imagination. Here man goes out of himself to find within the technical the spiritual—the spiritual is, after all, within it—where it is first to be found: in the sphere of morality.

But people do not recognize that what is described in the Philosophy of Freedom is the very first degree of the new clairvoyance. This is not recognized because people still think that clairvoyance means plunging into something obscure and unfamiliar. Here it is just the familiar that is sought; here one goes out with a thinking that has become independent of matter. It is a thinking that sustains itself, so that, through this self-sustaining thinking, the world is grasped for the first time purely spiritually. Indeed, the world is grasped through the very purest spirituality.

Mystics find in the Philosophy of Freedom too much emphasis on thinking. According to them it is just too full of thoughts. Others, such as rationalists and scientists and even modern philosophers, can make nothing of it for the very reason that it leads into a realm of spiritual sight where they do not want to go. They want to remain within the realm of external sight even when their subject is philosophy. The whole approach and content of the Philosophy of Freedom fulfils the obligation placed upon modern man.

This is what in an elementary way can be said in connection with what was prophetically forecast in the ancient mysteries. The initiates saw the future situation in exact details, both in relation to the human soul and also to world evolution. They saw clearly that the world, which man would later come to know, would be not only external to man but also to the Gods. It would be a world outside the realm of that divine creation about which they—the initiates—spoke. They sought revelations of the divine through initiation; thus, they were able to commune with the Gods. The various heathen peoples communed with their own divinities. The Jews, for example, with Jahve or Jehovah, and, insofar as they were initiates, did so not just in thought, but in actual fact. It is absolutely correct to speak about real communion with divine beings. The initiates achieved this within the mysteries. When they and their pupils were in the outside world they saw the surrounding world, and in it what their instinctive clairvoyance conveyed. The initiates in particular and also their pupils knew that the external world they saw resisted, in a certain sense, what they projected into it through their clairvoyance. They knew that a time would come when it would no longer be a question of resistance only, but one would only see merely that which can be seen without such projection.

These initiates recognized a truth which modern man would not have the courage to admit because his knowledge would be too shallow. The initiates said, “The external world we see is non-divine unless we project into it what the Gods have bestowed upon us.” For what they saw within the external world had been bestowed upon them by the Gods since the beginning of world evolution. They said, “We have around us a world which has not originated from the Gods with whom we commune in the mysteries.”

It was this which later, in the Middle Ages, led to a particular form of contempt for nature and to asceticism and which still is to be found in certain religious confessions, though often hypercritically. This attitude had its first beginning in the ancient mysteries when man had to acknowledge: When I look into my inner being I can commune with the Gods, but the world I see around me does not originate from them. This world is not created by those Gods whom I seek when I go through initiation.

Through initiation within the mysteries it was learned that the external world had not originated from the Gods. This was accepted more and more as a fundamental objective truth. The Gods had intended quite a different world.

A particular event had caused man to sink down into a world not at all willed by the Gods. If time allowed, it could be shown that all ideas concerning the fall of man—his expulsion from paradise—stem from the recognition that the world around him is not a world created by the Gods.

Attempts were made to discover the will of the Gods in regard to the world they had not created, and it was realized that what the Gods wanted was the disintegration, the annihilation of that world. This fact, too, the initiates in ancient times had to face. The Gods whom they reached up to revealed that their decision regarding this world was its destruction. Yet the initiates also knew that man, in order to become independent, had at some time to derive his human knowledge precisely from the world which the Gods found ripe for extinction.

In the early Greek mysteries this knowledge was understood in a specific way. There the aim was to interpret the world through art. At that time there was no inkling of a natural-scientific approach such as we have today. Through plastic art and particularly through the Greek tragedy—in fact, through art in general—the aim was to create something through man which, though associated with this world, nevertheless transcended it. The initiated Greek said to himself: The world I see around me with its trees, its springs and so on, all this will disintegrate; however, what from this world has been secreted into a Venus de Milo, a Zeus or Athene, or into the dramas of Sophocles, will surely pass over from the realm of the visible into the invisible. The thoughts which had gone into a work of art would remain and would secure the continuation of the earthly world—which otherwise might disappear completely—even if the earth itself disintegrated.

Already the very early Greeks, at the time when art still proceeded from the mysteries, visualized that the world must be saved through art. For the world, though derived from the Gods, had absorbed a content which the Gods themselves wished destroyed. Certain fundamental facts of science were fully known to the initiates; this can be proved even historically. Certainly we have added much by way of technical construction in the course of recent centuries, particularly the 19th Century. But certain fundamental things which are still operative in technology were well known to the initiates of old. They knew much more than can be derived from what they told others who were not initiated. This knowledge led the initiates in the mysteries to say: If by combining natural forces we simply put together something technically we shall have something in the nature of a machine. We shall be making something which will be destroyed together with that aspect of the earth which the Gods themselves wish annihilated. For every initiate knows, and did know, that those Gods they venerated and communed with in the ancient mysteries—and with whom one can naturally still commune—those Gods hate nothing so much as, for example, a locomotive or a motor car. That to them is something dreadful. Those Gods say, “Not only must we endure that Ahriman has made the earth machinelike: now added to that, human beings are imitating the work of Ahriman. Our task in destroying Ahriman's endeavors is great enough and now we have in addition all these steam engines, all these electric machines and all that trash which has to be destroyed as well.”

Therefore, the initiate in ancient times said: It is of no help at all if we simply add to the outer forces of nature, which no longer contain anything spiritual, by constructing technical works like machinery or chemicals. The initiates were absolutely convinced that this was how matters stood and they decided, therefore, that as much as possible of the world must be rescued. As mentioned already, in Greece the impulse to do so was through art. If we go further towards the East people would say: As far as man's true evolution is concerned, everything that works according to so-called natural laws has, in reality, no meaning. The Gods will eventually destroy it. We shall, therefore, clothe all we do in such a way that the spiritual can live within it. This is how the cult in its earliest form originated. The spiritual cannot enter a creation such as a machine or a chemical, but it can enter the act of worship. It was considered that what one did should be something sacramental, something in which the spirit could live and participate. The aim of the cult was to rescue as much as possible from earth evolution.

I have often spoken of this on earlier occasions when I illustrated it by saying that we must reach a point in our technical research when the bench in the laboratory becomes an altar for divine service; so that we perform a moral-spiritual deed on the bench which in the laboratories of physics or chemistry has become an altar. I have often spoken of this; today I approached it more from the historical aspect.

This was the origin of religious cults to which people are again returning because they cannot rouse themselves to spiritual activity. It is remarkable that it is just people of intelligence who are today returning in great numbers to the bosom of the Catholic church. They do this for the simple reason that they want to be saved. They want to stay with what will remain when the earth disappears without trace, through the will of the Gods. Little attention is paid to what is happening in our time; so this present flow of intelligent people into Catholicism goes on unnoticed. It is happening because people want to escape from destruction. They want to participate in something, like the Catholic ceremonies and Mass, which, resting as they do on very old traditions, will at least belong to what will remain. It is happening because people lack the motivation to discover something new and essential for the future. People lack inner strength because they have lost it in our technical age.

At a certain moment it ought to have been realized that our world of technology is a negative world; it contains no inner impulses as was formerly the case. It should have been recognized that now it is necessary to achieve moral intuition and moral imagination. It is just those who are blind to this necessity of the age who are now returning to Catholicism. The explanation lies in the weakness of our time.

That this situation would arise was known to the initiates in ancient times. They asked themselves: What is going to happen? We know that the Gods with whom we commune in the mysteries want the destruction of the earth. But if human beings are to become free and independent they must of necessity become ever more like the things of earth. Only through technical knowledge can man become free. If the initiates of old could have foreseen no more than this, they would have faced a dreadful prophetic revelation. They would have foreseen that man, in order to become truly man, had to entangle himself completely in the Ahrimanic world bereft of God, and must turn to dust with the earth when the Gods dissolve it. Men themselves would gradually become mechanisms, become ever more like machines. Eventually, only technical impulses would activate their thoughts. Astronomy is basically nothing but thoughts about a huge world machine. Man's thoughts concerning astronomy are of a mechanical nature. If the thoughts are of the same technical pattern it ultimately makes no difference whether one thinks of nuts and bolts or about Venus and Mercury.

But in the mysteries, prophetically, something else was foreseen before it happened on earth: the Mystery of Golgotha. Once it had taken place it would gradually be understood more and more. This the initiates in ancient times learned from their Gods with whom they communed. The Gods knew all things; from them the initiates could receive an all-embracing wisdom. But there was one thing they could never learn from these Gods; they could never learn anything relating to birth and death. Particularly about death the Gods knew nothing. But in the mysteries, it was known that the God who was later called the Christ would come down, and that on earth he would know death. Thus, the Mystery of Golgotha consists of the fact that one of the Gods, who till then had known neither death nor birth and heredity, would learn to know death. Through knowing death, he could unite with earth evolution and create a counterweight to what necessarily had to happen for the development of freedom: the ever-increasing union of man with the disintegrating earth. Man can now create in himself the counterweight. He must, on the one hand, devote himself completely to modern cognition, really take into himself modern natural-scientific knowledge; yet, on the other hand, turn to the God who has come to know death and birth—the Christ. Now it is possible for man to incline fully towards what is necessary for attaining freedom; but he must, on the other hand, find the counterweight by balancing this knowledge with that of the other realm. He must find the path leading to the Pauline saying, “Not I, but the Christ in me.” Then man will again find the possibility, through pervading the world with his Christianized thinking, to transform from within himself what must otherwise fall away from the world of the Gods, to which man, in reality, belongs.

Thus, the Ahrimanic powers, active on earth in what is disintegrating, are being opposed by the Christ, Who through an extra-earthly decision of the Gods is now active in the earth. It was not necessary for him to become free; He is a God and remains a God after going through death. He does not become akin to the earth. He lives as a God within the being of the earth. As a consequence, man now has the possibility to restore the balance by the development of freedom. He can go to the highest limit of individualism; for only in individual man can moral imagination be attained.

My Philosophy of Freedom has been called the most extreme philosophy of individualism. It cannot be anything else because it is the most Christian of philosophies. Thus, one must place on one side of the scales everything that can be attained through knowledge of the laws of nature, which can only be penetrated with spirituality by ascending to pure independent thinking. Independent thinking can still be restored within pure technical knowledge. However, there must be placed on the other side of the scales a true recognition of Christ, a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

It was, therefore, a matter of course that I wrote, on the one hand, the Philosophy of Freedom and, on the other, found it essential to point to the Mystery of Golgotha in my Christianity as Mystical Fact and Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age. These two things simply belong together. Yet there are people who superficially see a contradiction in these two kinds of books. To them it is as if meat were placed on one scale and a weight on the other and they exclaim: What nonsense—these two things belong together. In short, everything must be mixed up. So, they take the weights and put them with the meat. Well, you do not get balance that way. Yet that is the way of modern critics. Having placed mysticism on one side and philosophy on the other they proceed to mix them together. But if modern man wants to stand in the right way within world evolution then there must live in his soul, on the one hand, a strong impulse towards freedom, towards independence, and, on the other, a strong impulse towards a deep inner experience of the Mystery of Golgotha.

This must gradually develop in the life of the individual and must also be developed in the sciences. The individual must overcome the old instinctive mysticism and clairvoyance. He must rely solely on knowledge of the kind needed for understanding, say, how a steam engine works. In my

Philosophy of Freedom, when I spoke of knowledge of external nature, I presupposed only the kind of concepts needed for understanding a steam engine. However, in order to understand a steam engine, one must set aside one's whole human personality except for the very last: pure thinking. The latter must be inwardly cultivated and then carried outside into the object, where it will be found to exist already.

Thus, one can take one's stand fully on the ground of freedom provided one also stands fully on the ground of the Christ fact. This applies also to science. And it will be seen to apply when it is realized that, no matter how extensively external nature is investigated according to Haeckel,5Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919. Natural scientist. Founder of Monism. Defender of Darwin's Origin of Species.

something is always left unexplained, something always remains which cannot be understood with concepts of that kind. Let me put it somewhat more strongly: We are, after all, earnest people who have come together to understand something and not to enjoy five o'clock tea. So let me put it this way: The two things of which I have spoken must enter civilization in the right manner. In earlier times, when one was aware through instinctive clairvoyance of man's connection with the spiritual in the external world, it led to depicting the halo. The halo was particularly cultivated in very early times, appearing frequently in many different forms, even in the cult itself. With the approach of the Middle Ages and the first awakening of materialism there was a preference for depicting something else: the pregnant woman. Just look at the many pictures from the Middle Ages in which all the women are pregnant. So, you have, on the one hand, the halo which is the loftiest proclamation of the spiritual world and points to man's salvation after death, and, on the other, what points to that which again and again brings man into the physical world—birth.

This is all related to man's inner spiritual drive towards evolution, which is always alive in his soul. Thus, there is a connection, even in regard to the most intimate facts, between soul experiences and world evolution. Science must gradually accommodate itself to this situation and recognize that however minutely the world is scrutinized according to Haeckel's concepts, two things remain unexplained: one is death, the other birth. The kind of ideas that explain chemistry and machinery—i.e., ideas applicable to technical constructions—can never explain birth and death. Death and birth are the two portals that lead out beyond the physical and must be approached with a different kind of observation. As long as one is concerned with the question of freedom one can remain within the ideas that also apply in technology. And when one writes a Philosophy of Freedom one writes it for people who have reached their middle years—naturally not for children, they cannot be free, for in them the divine is still active, they are unfree—only with the middle years does one become free. When one begins to write about the other aspect one immediately becomes concerned with man's comprehension of death. Therefore, you will find that the very first chapters of my writings on mysticism deal with the archetypal mystery of earth: namely, death and the intimate experience of death and spiritual rebirth.

When the present-day world is contemplated one cannot but recognize the need for the things I have described. There is nothing nebulous about it; the need is comprehensible through and through. It must, therefore, be said that the soul in its striving towards freedom brushes against the Ahrimanic. In the soul's religious experiences, even when they concern the Mystery of Golgotha, it comes very near the Luciferic. If egoistical religious instincts alone are cultivated, which is often the case today, it is all too easy to cultivate Luciferic instincts and desires as well.

This is what in the immediate present must concern the human soul; it is also what Christ taught his intimate disciples directly after the Resurrection. His intimate disciples were successors of the initiates of old. They were to teach that He had descended from the world of the Gods who did not yet know death, and who therefore in primordial times could tell man nothing about death. They were to teach that Christ had descended in order to experience the mystery of birth and death. Teachings about the birth and death of Christ have remained so obscure because human beings could not find a way to explain these things. Yet after the Resurrection, in the original Christian mysteries, Christ Himself imparted to His first initiated pupils the secret of a God's learning about earthly death. In their true form the Christian mysteries disappeared already in the Fourth Century. They disappeared because the impulse to freedom had to be developed first. However, the original wisdom had already been imparted to man by the ancient Gods. It had increasingly been transmitted to later generations, becoming all the time more diluted. What Christ imparted to His intimate disciples after the Resurrection was the original revelation concerning the meaning of earth evolution. This revelation was the spiritual foundation for the further life of the human soul. What the ancient Gods had taught in the mysteries was basically the secrets of Saturn, Sun and Moon. The essential secret of the Earth could be imparted to the human soul only after this secret had been experienced by a God on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Birth and death, in the human sense, did not occur until the earth evolution. Previously only metamorphosis and transformation took place.

Thus, the most fundamental revelation after the death of Christ is at the same time the foundation from which the human soul can set out to accomplish the salvation of earthly life.

You see how human souls are connected in manifold ways with the evolution of the earth, indeed with the evolution of the world as a whole, not only through the various facts I have presented to you during the last few days, but above all through their understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what I wished to impart to you in these lectures.

Fünfter Vortrag

[ 1 ] Es wäre selbstverständlich über unser Thema noch außerordentlich viel zu sagen, allein man kann bei einem solchen Thema nur einzelne Andeutungen geben, und mit denen müssen wir uns auch zunächst begnügen. Ich werde heute versuchen, durch eine Art umfassenderen Überblicks Ihnen das Drinnenstehen der Seele in der ganzen Weltentwickelung zu zeigen.

[ 2 ] Wenn wir als beseelter Mensch zwischen Geburt und Tod die Außenwelt auf uns wirken lassen, so bekommen wir zunächst von dieser Außenwelt eine Summe von Eindrücken. Der heutige Mensch ist Ja insbesondere auch durch die wissenschaftliche Erziehung, die bis in die niedersten Schulen hineingeht, seit Jahrhunderten daran gewöhnt, diese Außenwelt als das Wesentliche zu betrachten. Man hat in der neueren Zeit sogar angefangen, die Seelenwissenschaft als eine Art Naturwissenschaft zu konstruieren. Das tun nicht nur die Gelehrten, das tut im Grunde genommen heute der einfachste Mensch. Alles das rührt davon her, daß der heutige Mensch wenig dazu veranlagt ist, zurückzuschauen in sich selbst. Daher wird er gar nicht leicht aufmerksam auf solche Dinge, wie sie gestern hier besprochen worden sind. Der Mensch der Gegenwart ist wenig geneigt, wenig gewöhnt, auf sich selbst in objektiver Weise zurückzuschauen. Er sieht auf dasjenige hin, was ich gestern als die heraufwellenden und -wogenden Triebe, die Begierden, die Leidenschaften, die Emotionen überhaupt genannt habe. Aber er ist wenig geneigt, in objektiver Weise auf dieses hinzuschauen, weil von dem, was in seinem Inneren ist, bei einer solchen Selbstschau nicht viel anderes heraufkommt als eben diese Begierde. Wenn sie auch manchmal durch die Erziehung verfeinert wird, sie bleibt doch diese Begierde, die heraufkommt, während der Mensch allerdings von der Außenwelt sich gewisse Ideen bildet, denen gegenüber er nicht persönlich beteiligt ist, die eine gewisse Objektivität haben.

[ 3 ] Es gibt viele Leute, die wollen nicht gerne solche Begriffe, die halten sich mehr an dasjenige, was in ihrem Inneren subjektiv und persönlich lebt. Aber die Zivilisation der Zeit bringt ja überall solche Begriffe über die äußere Natur, wie wir sie einmal heute und seit Jahrhunderten schon auffassen, an die Menschen heran. Mit diesen Begriffen über die Natur füllt dann der heutige Mensch sein Inneres aus. Er lernt heute schon durch die kleinsten lokalen Zeitungsblättchen, wenigstens durch die Sonntagsbeilagen, die Welt so betrachten, wie es eben in diesem Sinne geschehen kann. Er weiß nicht, daß er eigentlich schon mit dem kleinsten Zeitungsblättchen die naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung aufnimmt, aber er tut es eben. So daß man sagen kann: Das einzige, womit sich der Mensch heute wirklich befaßt, das sind die Begriffe der äußeren Natur. Ich sage das nicht als Kritik des einzelnen, sondern als Kritik der Zeit oder eigentlich nur als Charakteristik der Zeit, denn zu kritisieren ist dabei nichts; die Sache ist eben einfach ein notwendiges Zeitprodukt. Der Mensch ist so wenig interessiert an dem Menschen selbst, daß es ihm eigentlich schon gleichgültig geworden ist, ob er den lebendigen Schauspieler auf der Bühne sieht oder ob er das Gespenst des Kino sieht, was natürlich in der Realität doch einen beträchtlichen Unterschied gibt. Aber es ist nicht eine tiefe Empfindung, eine gründliche Empfindung für diesen Unterschied in der heutigen Zeit vorhanden, sonst würde man auch mehr Gefühl, mehr Empfindung haben für den großen Anteil, den an dem Niedergang unserer Zivilisation gerade solche Erscheinungen wie die Kinokultur haben.

[ 4 ] Die Ideen, die dem heutigen Menschen für seine Seele vermittelt werden, nimmt er einfach dadurch auf, daß er aus blindestem Autoritätsgefühl heraus sofort überzeugt ist, wenn man ihm sagt: Die Wissenschaft hat wiederum das und das gebracht, wiederum das und das konstatiert. - Man muß sich nur klar sein darüber, was das eigentlich heißt, daß man diese Dinge so hinnimmt, wie sie heute geschildert werden. Man weiß durchaus nicht, indem man die Schilderung entgegennimmt, was da eigentlich in den Laboratorien und so weiter vorgeht. Kurz, es ist der blindeste Autoritätsglaube an dasjenige vorhanden, was in dieser Weise an Ideen über die äußere Welt den Menschen mitgeteilt wird.

[ 5 ] Nun war das keineswegs immer so. Ich habe schon oftmals aufmerksam darauf gemacht, daß, wenn wir zurückgehen in der Geschichte der Menschheitsentwickelung, wir auf alte Zeiten kommen, in denen bei den Menschen etwas vorhanden war, was ich immer genannt habe ein instinktives traumhaftes Hellsehen. Instinktiv und traumhaft war dieses Hellsehen, aber es war doch geeignet, tiefer in das Wesen.der Dinge einzudringen als dies ogenannten wissenschaftlichen Ideen von heute. Man lebte sich einfach durch diese Begriffe, durch diese Vorstellungen, durch diese Bilder, die heute den Leuten nur mehr symbolisch oder allegorisch vorkommen oder so, als ob sie aus der Phantasie geschöpft wären, in die Wirklichkeit hinein. Ob das einzelne Bild etwa ganz genau einem objektiven Tatbestand entsprach, darauf kam es nicht an, sondern indem man mit dem Bilde in der Wirklichkeit lebte, war man lebensvoll in dem Geistigen drinnen, während heute es natürlich darauf ankommt, ob eine Idee, die man sich macht, genau übereinstimmt mit irgend etwas draußen, denn dieses Übereinstimmen ist das einzige, woran sich der Mensch halten kann.

[ 6 ] Nun, wenn wir dies überblicken, dann müssen wir einmal recht schroff vor unsere Seele etwas hinstellen, was für die ganze Beurteilung auch unserer heutigen Zivilisation von einer ungeheuren Wichtigkeit ist. Wir müssen ganz schroff das hinstellen, daß ja der ältere Mensch mit seinem instinktiven Hellsehen etwas in seiner Seele lebendig hatte, wovon der heutige Mensch sagt: Das ist Phantasie, das ist gar nicht enthalten draußen in den Dingen.

[ 7 ] In einem gewissen Sinne müssen wir gerade, wenn wir verständnisvoll auf anthroposophischem Boden stehen, dieses treue Abbilden der äußeren Natur, wo man nicht mehr drinnensteht in der äußeren Natur, sondern sie nur abbildet, mitmachen. Und Sie wissen vielleicht, daß wir es wissenschaftlich im extremsten Sinne mitmachen, indem wir ablehnen jede Art von Hypothesenbildung über das, was Erscheinung der Natur ist, sondern in unserem Phänomenalismus, wie er genannt werden muß, innerhalb der Phänomene bleiben, das heißt innerhalb der äußeren Naturerscheinungen, die sich selbst erklären müssen, um im Goetheschen Sinne zu sprechen; zu denen man sich nicht allerlei hinzudenkt von Atombombardement, Atomsprengungen und so weiter, wie das heute noch, ich möchte sagen, aus der Trägheit einer alten Gewohnheit üblich ist. Wir müssen uns auf anthroposophischem Boden im strengsten Sinne, wenn es sich um die äußere Natur handelt, gerade an die Erscheinungen selbst halten, es ablehnen, da irgend etwas in die Erscheinungen hineinzudenken.

[ 8 ] Der Mensch kann am besten lernen, wie man nichts in die Erscheinungen hineindenkt, wenn er sich an etwas hält, was ja auch mit der naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung heraufgekommen ist in der neueren Menschheitsentwickelung, wenn er sich hält an die Technik. Wenn wir die Naturgesetze technisch verwerten, so machen wir eigentlich die Erscheinungen selbst. Gewiß, es bleibt noch immer in den Erscheinungen selbst drinnen, sagen wir zum Beispiel die Kraft der Elektrizität, von der Ihnen der heutige Forscher dann sagt: Ich verwende sie, aber ich kenne ihr Wesen nicht. — Er spricht oftmals so, von allen Naturkräften, auch von der Wärme und dem Lichte und so weiter. Es bleiben also Reste. Aber das, worauf es uns eigentlich ankommt bei der Technik, was wir beherrschen wollen, das ist dasjenige, was wir im Experimente selber zusammenstellen, wo wir also ein gewisses Durchschauen der Sache haben.

[ 9 ] Es ist auch durchaus für den, der sich solcher Dinge bewußt sein kann, die Empfindung vorhanden: In dem, was ich technisch konstruiere, sei es auch auf dem Gebiete der chemischen Technik, liegt etwas drinnen von einer unmittelbaren, überschaubaren Gewißheit —, während, wenn man über die Natur, die man so beobachtet, spricht, man die Möglichkeit hat, in dieser oder jener Richtung verschieden zu denken. So daß man sagen kann: Das Denken der modernen Zeit ist eigentlich am vollkommensten vorhanden bei dem Techniker. Das ist durchaus so. Wer heute an einer Maschinenkonstruktion oder, sagen wir, an der Herstellung eines chemischen Präparates und seiner Verwendung ahnungslos vorbeigeht, der denkt noch nicht im Sinne unserer Zeit; ich möchte sagen: der läßt in seiner Seele die anderen denken, denn die maßgebenden Leute denken eben doch technisch. Und so ist die Weltanschauung der neueren Zeit eigentlich nach und nach das geworden, was man äußerlich verwirklicht findet in der Technik, im Mechanismus, im Chemismus und so weiter. Das hat sich allmählich auch ausgedehnt auf das, was man heute noch als Weltanschauung gelten lassen will.

[ 10 ] Was ist denn schließlich unsere Astronomie? Unsere Astronomie war lange Zeit nichts anderes als die Darstellung der Weltmaschinerie. Es war eine große Maschine, wie man sich die Sonne im Verhältnisse zu den Planeten und die Bewegungen da vorstellte. Dazu ist in der neueren Zeit der Chemismus gekommen in der Spektralanalyse. Aber weiter geht eben die Astronomie nicht. Die Astronomie, diese Wissenschaft des Weltalls, beantwortet sozusagen heute lediglich die Frage: Wie kommen wir mit der Vorstellung des Weltalls zurecht, wenn wir die aus der Technik uns bekannten Vorstellungen einfach auf das Weltenall anwenden, wenn wir uns dasjenige hinausversetzt denken in den Weltenraum, was wir in der Technik beobachten können? - So daß unsere Wissenschaft eigentlich von wirklich geltenden Ideen mit Ausnahme von den, man möchte fast sagen, Faseleien, wie der Neovitalismus sie enthält, mit Ausnahme von Redereien über Psychoide und dergleichen, brauchbare Vorstellungen in der Weltanschauung nur so weit hat, als wir Maschinen und chemische Präparate konstruieren können. Die Vorstellungen, die wir an diesem Konstruieren gewinnen, übertragen wir dann auf den Weltenaufbau und stellen uns den auch als eine große Maschine vor, innerhalb welcher noch diese oder jene chemischen Vorgänge stattfinden.

[ 11 ] So war es eben durchaus nicht immer. Der Mensch noch bis ins 15. Jahrhundert herein - ich rede da gerade von den zivilisierten Gebieten der Erdenentwickelung - lebte in solchen Vorstellungen über das äußere Weltenall, die nicht bloß technisch waren, sondern die so waren, daß der Mensch etwas miterlebte. Das Technische ist ja ganz außerhalb des Menschen. Das ist abgesondert vom Menschen. Es lebte der Mensch früher dasjenige mit, was er wußte. Heute lebt er es nicht mehr mit, was er weiß. Deshalb haben auch unsere gegenwärtigen sehr gescheiten Leute immer das Gefühl: In älteren Zeiten, da träumten eben die Menschen in die Gebiete der Welt alles mögliche hinein, machten sich Phantasievorstellungen. Heute haben wir erst die Möglichkeit, die Welt ohne solche Phantasievorstellungen vorzustellen. — Man glaubt eben, die technischen Vorstellungen seien die einzigen, die man in die Welt hineindenken dürfe, ohne sich in die Gefahr zu begeben, über die Welt zu phantasieren, sie nicht zu erkennen.

[ 12 ] Dem aber, was ich da darstelle, liegt etwas viel, viel Tieferes zugrunde. Es liegt etwas zugrunde, was die Prophetie der alten Mysterien schon betont hat für einen gewissen Grad der Einweihung, der Initiation. Das ist gerade das Eigentümliche der Mysterien in jenen Zeiten, in denen das alte Hellsehen vorhanden war, daß in den Mysterien prophetisch vorausgesehen wurde, was für eine Weltanschauung einmal kommen muß. Man sagte sich in den Mysterien etwa in der folgenden Weise prophetisch das voraus: Wenn wir für die Menschheit die Anschauung, die heute da ist — dieses «heute» war also in sehr frühen Zeiten, wo die Menschen die Umgebung miterlebten in einer instinktiv träumerischen Art -, beibehalten würden, dann würde der Mensch niemals ein freies Wesen werden können. Dann würde der Mensch immer durch das, was er da in seinem Inneren erlebt über die Welt, auch für seine Handlungen die Impulse bekommen müssen. Es würde eine göttliche Welt in seinem Herzen aufgehen, so sagte man sich; aber diese göttliche Welt würde ihn unfrei machen. — Die älteren Zivilisationen hatten eben durchaus unfreie Menschen. Was sie taten, von dem waren sie sich bewußt, wenn es ihnen nicht die Staatslenker als Staatsgesetze auferlegten, daß sie göttlichen Geboten folgten. Also sie waren sozusagen bloß Wesen, die das vollführten, was das Göttliche in ihnen impulsierte.

[ 13 ] So sagte man sich in den Mysterien: Es muß einmal eine Zeit kommen, wo diese Art des göttlichen Wirkens in dem Menschen aufhört, wo der Mensch dazu kommt, nur in die Außenwelt hineinzuschauen und in der Außenwelt das zu sehen, was mit dem Menschlichen nichts mehr zu tun hat, und auch aufzunehmen in seine Seele nur die Außenwelt. Wenn der Mensch nicht mehr auf die Kräfte des Menschen erkennend und erlebend hinschauen kann, sondern nur auf die Kräfte, die draußen in der Welt leben, mit denen der Mensch nichts zu tun hat, dann ist er innerlich frei, dann wird er innerlich entlastet, dann füllt seine Seele nichts anderes aus als das, was seine eigene Organisation nichts angeht.

[ 14 ] Es mußte diese Phase der Entwickelung für den Menschen einmal eintreten, daß er sozusagen die Natur nur außermenschlich anschaute, so daß er frei werden konnte. Das sagte man sich in den älteren Mysterien. In diesen älteren Mysterien sagte man sich deshalb: Was wir jetzt den Menschen, die uns Verständnis entgegenbringen aus ihrem instinktiven Hellsehen, geben können, das wird man ihnen nicht immer geben können, denn sie würden dadurch unfrei bleiben. Es wird eine Wissenschaft über sie kommen müssen, die zwar in ihnen keine Impulse erregt, die ihnen aber Ideen liefert von demjenigen, was außer ihnen ist, so daß sie sich in ihrem Erkennen immer nur halten an das Äußere, also in bezug auf ihre inneren Impulse zur Freiheit sich erziehen.

[ 15 ] Sehen Sie, vor diesem Tatbestand stand ich ja auch im allerextremsten Sinne, als ich mich gedrungen fühlte, zunächst die vorbereitenden Schriften und dann meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» zu schreiben. Die Grundfrage für das Schreiben dieser «Philosophie der Freiheit» war die folgende: Es handelte sich darum, daß man sich mit aller Klarheit sagte: Wir stehen einfach im technischen Zeitalter. Wir haben, wenn wir nicht laienhaft das Alte fortfaseln, was noch erhalten ist in den Bekenntnissen und so weiter aus den alten instinktiven Weltanschauungen, keine andere Möglichkeit, als uns zu halten an das, was technisch über die Welt gedacht werden kann, was sich also erschöpft in Mechanismen und so weiter. Wir stehen in der Welt drinnen, indem wir sie wie eine große Maschinerie und wie einen großen Chemismus überblicken. Wir müssen einfach, wenn wir wiederum zum Geistigen kommen wollen, radikal brechen mit alledem, was als Mystik von alten Zeiten überkommen ist, und wir müssen in der, ich möchte sagen, geistlosen, mechanischen Welt, die uns die moderne Wissenschaft gegeben hat, den Geist finden.

[ 16 ] Ich möchte schematisch diese Situation, vor der man stand, als ich meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» schrieb, Ihnen auf die Tafel zeichnen. Wenn das der Mensch wäre (Zeichnung links, hell) und das die Umwelt (gelb), so hätte man für frühere Zeiten sich die Sache so vorzustellen: Der Mensch sah hinaus in die Umwelt. Dann erlebte er aber auch im Inneren das, was ihm instinktiv traumhaft-hellseherische Vorstellung lieferte (rot). Das verband er mit dem, was er in der Umwelt sah, und er sah die Umwelt deshalb durchgeistigt (rot im Gelb). Er sah in allen Wesen elementare oder auch höhere Wesenheiten dadurch, daß er die Bedingungen aus seinem eigenen Inneren dem entgegenbringen konnte.

[ 17 ] Der neuere Mensch, derjenige Mensch, für den ich also eigentlich als dem zivilisierten Menschen Ende der achtziger Jahre, Anfang der neunziger Jahre meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» schrieb, den zeichne ich hier (Zeichnung, rechts, hell) und die Umwelt hier (gelb). Jetzt gibt der Mensch nichts mehr aus sich heraus in die Umwelt hinein, sondern er verfolgt nur dasjenige, was sich eben auch technisch konstruieren läßt; er verfolgt die Gesetzmäßigkeit der Umwelt selbst. Da heraus läßt sich aber kein Moralimpuls finden. Auf diese Art lassen sich nur Naturgesetze bilden. So wie ich das hier gezeichnet habe (links), weil der ältere Mensch noch verbunden war mit dem Äußeren, waren in allem, was er sah, in Stein, Tier, Pflanze, noch wahrzunehmen die Moralimpulse, weil in alledem enthalten waren die göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten. Davon ist in den Naturgesetzen nichts mehr drinnen. In den Naturgesetzen ist nur das drinnen, was in die Maschinen oder in den Mechanismus übergeht.

[ 18 ] Was war daher die notwendige Aufgabe gerade dieser «Philosophie der Freiheit»? Ihre notwendige Aufgabe war diese, daß man sagte: Wenn der Mensch, indem er außerhalb der Natur steht, nichts mehr von Moralimpulsen finden kann, weil er nur Naturgesetze auf diese Weise hereinbekommt durch seine Sinne, dann muß halt der Mensch aus sich herausgehen, dann kann er nicht mehr in sich bleiben. Und ich mußte das erste Herausgehen schildern, wo der Mensch seine Leiblichkeit verläßt. Und dieses erste Herausgehen ist im reinen Denken, wie ich es dort in der «Philosophie der Freiheit» dargestellt habe. Das heißt: Jetzt rückt der Mensch nicht mit seinem instinktiven Hellsehen heraus, sondern jetzt rückt er aus seinem Leibe überhaupt heraus, versetzt sich in die Außenwelt (grün). Und was hat er da ? Da hat er, indem er das allererste feinste Hellsehen vollzieht, die moralischen Intuitionen, oder wenn Sie es mit dem Ausdruck bezeichnen wollen, subjektiv, den ich damals gebraucht habe, er hat die moralische Phantasie. Da geht der Mensch von sich weg, um nun innerhalb des Technischen - das Geistige ist ja deshalb doch drinnen - dieses Geistige auf dem ersten Gebiet, auf dem Moralgebiet zu finden.

[ 19 ] Die Menschen haben nur nicht erkannt, daß das die erste Stufe des modernen Hellsehens ist, die in der «Philosophie der Freiheit» zur Geltung gebracht worden ist, weil die Menschen sich noch gedacht haben: Nun ja, Hellsehertum, das ist etwas, wo man so untertaucht in Unklarheit, wo man in das Unbekannte kommt -, während hier gerade das Bekannte gesucht wurde, während hier das Herausgehen mit dem Denken gesucht wurde, das nun nicht mehr sich an die Materialität hält, sondern das sich in sich selber erfaßt, weil in diesem zuerst, also in der reinen Geistigkeit, sogar in der reinsten Geistigkeit, die Welt erfaßt worden ist.

[ 20 ] Und deshalb hatte auch die «Philosophie der Freiheit» das Schicksal, daß sie den Mystikern zu gedanklich war. Sie sahen nach ihrer Art zuviel Gedanken darinnen. Und die anderen wiederum, die Rationalisten und Naturwissenschafter oder auch Philosophen der neueren Zeit waren, konnten wiederum nichts mit ihr machen aus dem Grunde, weil sie in das Gebiet des Schauens führte, wo sie nicht hereinwollten, denn sie wollten bleiben bei dem bloßen äußeren Beobachten, auch wenn sie von Philosophie sprachen. Es war also gerade mit der ganzen Haltung, in dem Habitus der «Philosophie der Freiheit» das erfüllt, was einfach dem modernen Menschen auferlegt war.

[ 21 ] Das wäre sozusagen das Elementare von dem, was man in Anknüpfung an das sagen kann, was man in den alten Mysterien prophetisch verkündete über das, was da kommen müsse. Aber die alten Initiierten in den Mysterien sahen die Sache doch noch genauer, sahen sie noch mehr im Zusammenhang mit der menschlichen Seele und der Weltentwickelung. Sie sahen nämlich auch das Folgende: Sie erkannten klar: Ja, die Welt, die man da einmal entdecken wird durch die spätere Erkenntnis, diese Welt ist eigentlich nicht nur außermenschlich, sondern sie ist auch außergöttlich, außer dem Gebiete desjenigen göttlichen Schaffens, wovon wir - ich meine jetzt die alten Eingeweihten mit dem «wir» - eigentlich sprechen. Wir suchen die Offenbarung des Göttlichen in dem, was wir erreichen durch unsere Initiation; wir verkehren durch unsere Initiation mit den Götterwesenheiten. — Die verschiedenen heidnischen Völker verkehrten mit ihren Wesenheiten, die Juden zum Beispiel mit ihrem Jahve oder Jehova. Sie verkehrten, insofern sie Initiierte waren, nicht nur in Gedanken, sondern in der Wirklichkeit mit ihren göttlichen Wesenheiten. Man sagt da durchaus etwas Richtiges, wenn man von einem realen Verkehr mit diesen göttlichen Wesenheiten in den alten Mysterien spricht. Ja, die Eingeweihten verkehrten mit diesen göttlichen Wesenheiten; aber wenn sie außerhalb der Mysterien waren, und wenn ihre Schüler außerhalb der Mysterien waren, so sahen diese alle wiederum die Umwelt. In diese Umwelt sahen sie allerdings das hinein, was ihnen ihr instinktives Hellsehen gab. Aber namentlich die Eingeweihten selber und die Schüler dieser Eingeweihten wußten: Ja, was da draußen ist, das wehrt sich doch in einer gewissen Weise gegen das, was wir da hineinschauen, und es wird einmal einfach eine Zeit kommen, wo es sich nicht nur wehren wird, sondern wo man nur das anschauen wird, was man ohne solches Hineinschauen wahrnehmen kann.

[ 22 ] Wozu der heutige Mensch, weil seine Erkenntnis oberflächlich und nicht tiefgehend ist, gar nicht den Mut hätte, es sich zu gestehen, das gestanden sich eben diese alten Eingeweihten als eine Wahrheit. Sie sagten sich: Die Welt, die wir da draußen sehen, wenn wir nicht erst das in sie hineinschauen, was uns unsere Götter mitgegeben haben - denn das, was sie da hineinschauten, hatten ihnen beim Anfang der Weltenentwickelung ihre Götter gegeben -, dann ist diese Welt ja ungöttlich. Also haben wir in der Umwelt eine Welt, die gar nicht herrührt von den Göttern, mit denen wir in den Mysterien verkehren.

[ 23 ] Das war es, was dann in der besonderen Form der Naturverachtung und der Askese fortgelebt hat im Mittelalter, und was bis in die neueste Zeit in gewissen Bekenntnissen lebt, wenn auch in manchen Bekenntnissen sehr heuchlerisch lebt. Das ist das, was, aus den alten Mysterien herstammend, der Mensch sich eigentlich sagen muß: Wenn ich in mein Inneres hineinschaue, kann ich mit den Göttern verkehren; aber von den Göttern stammt gar nicht die Welt, die um mich herum ist. Diese Welt ist gar nicht geschaffen von denjenigen Göttern, zu welchen ich mich durchringen will, wenn ich mich einweihen lasse.

[ 24 ] Das war überhaupt eine Grunderkenninis, in die man immer mehr und mehr sich ganz sachlich hineinlebte, daß die äußere Welt gar nicht von den Göttern herrührt, die man durch die Mysterien und die Einweihung kennenlernte. Diese Götter haben eigentlich eine ganz andere Welt gewollt. Der Mensch ist durch ein besonderes Ereignis heruntergesunken in diese Welt, die seine Götter gar nicht gewollt haben. Alle Ideen vom Sündenfall - man könnte sie jetzt alle entwickeln, aber dazu reicht heute nicht die Zeit - rühren davon her, daß die Menschen erkannt haben: Die Welt, die wir da als Umwelt kennen, ist ja gar nicht diejenige, die diese Götter geschaffen haben.

[ 25 ] Aber man versuchte zu erfassen, was nun dieser von ihnen nicht geschaffenen Welt gegenüber diese Götter, mit denen man verkehren wollte, eigentlich wollten mit dieser Welt. Das konnte man von ihnen erfahren. Und man erfuhr von ihnen, daß sie eigentlich die Zerstäubung, daß sie die Vernichtung dieser Welt wollten.

[ 26 ] Vor diesem Faktum standen auch die Initiierten der älteren Zeiten. Sie standen vor dem Faktum, daß die Götter, nach denen sie hinstrebten, ihnen als ihren Entschluß eigentlich die Vernichtung dieser Welt offenbarten. Und dennoch wiederum wußten sie: Einmal muß sich, damit der Mensch frei werden könne, die menschliche Erkenntnis knüpfen gerade an diese Welt, die die Götter reif zum Untergange finden, die die Götter eigentlich vernichten wollen.

[ 27 ] In den älteren griechischen Mysterien wurde das dann auf eine ganz eigenartige Weise aufgefaßt. In den ältesten griechischen Mysterien arbeitete man namentlich auf eine künstlerische Gestaltung der Welt hin - von einer naturwissenschaftlichen Auffassung, wie wir sie heute haben, hatte man im alten Griechenland noch keine Ahnung -, man arbeitete in der Plastik, namentlich auch in der Tragödie, kurz, in der Kunst darauf hin, durch den Menschen etwas zu schaffen, was zwar sich anlehnt an diese Welt, was aber über diese Welt doch hinausgeht. Und der eingeweihte Grieche, der hatte die Vorstellung: Die Welt, auf der du stehst, die Welt der Bäume, die du siehst, die Welt der Quellen, die du wahrnimmst und so weiter, die wird zerstäuben; was du aber in deine Venus von Milo, in den Zeus, in die Athene, was du in das Drama des Sophokles hineingeheimnißt hast aus dieser Welt heraus, das wird zwar aus dem sichtbaren Reiche ins Unsichtbare übergehen, es werden nur die Gedanken gleichsam schwebend bleiben, aber das wird, wenn diese Erde zerstäubt, hinausgehen und wird retten den Fortgang der Erdenwelt, der sonst eben nur darin bestehen könnte, daß diese Erdenwelt einmal radikal zugrunde ginge.

[ 28 ] Die Griechen der ältesten Zeit, solange die Kunst noch aus den Mysterien hervorging, stellten sich schon vor: Durch die Kunst wollen wir retten den Untergang derjenigen Welt, die von den Göttern herrührt, die aber einen Einschluß bekommen hat, den die Götter selber vernichten wollten. - Und das, was man da wußte, das führte eben dazu, sich folgendes zu sagen. Sehen Sie, gewisse fundamentale naturwissenschaftliche Tatsachen waren ja, wie auch geschichtlich nachgewiesen werden kann, den alten Mysterieneingeweihten durchaus bekannt. Gewiß, wir haben viel Neues im Laufe der letzten Jahrhunderte, namentlich des 19. Jahrhunderts, in bezug auf technische Konstruktionen hinzugebracht; aber gewisse fundamentale Dinge, die heute noch fortwirken in der Technik, die waren durchaus den alten Eingeweihten bekannt. Es war ihnen viel mehr bekannt, als dasjenige ausmachte, wovon sie zu den Menschen sprachen, die nicht eingeweiht waren. Aber sie sagten sich folgendes: Wenn wir einfach technisch so etwas zusammenstellen, was Naturkräfte kombiniert, so daß wir etwas Maschineriehaftes vor uns haben, so machen wir ja im allerextremsten Fall etwas, was zerstäubt mit dem Erdenwesen, wovon die Götter selbst den Untergang wünschen. - Denn das weiß ja jeder Eingeweihte, daß diejenigen Götter, zu denen man in den alten Mysterien hinaufsah, mit denen man in den alten Mysterien verkehrt hatte, mit denen man selbstverständlich auch heute noch verkehren kann, daß diese Götter nichts so sehr hassen wie zum Beispiel eine Lokomotive oder ein Auto! Das ist ihnen etwas Furchtbares. Denn sie sagen, diese Götter: Dasjenige, was wir uns gefallen lassen müssen von Ahriman, daß er uns die Erde gebildet hat in dieser maschineriehaften Weise, das machen jetzt die Menschen dem Ahriman noch nach; sie machen noch zu dem etwas hinzu. Unsere Arbeit ist schon groß für das, was wir vernichten müssen, wenn wir wenigstens bloß die Werke des Ahriman hätten; aber wir haben zu alledem noch diese Dampfmaschinen, diese elektrischen Maschinen und all das Zeug; das müssen wir noch dazu vernichten.

[ 29 ] Also die alten Eingeweihten sagten sich: Das nützt gar nichts, wenn wir einfach die äußeren Naturkräfte, in die nichts mehr Geistiges hineingesehen wird, in technischer Maschinerie oder in technischem Chemismus vermehren. - Es war eine Grundüberzeugung der Initiierten, daß das so ist. Daher sagten sie: Man muß so viel wie möglich von dieser Welt retten. - Wie gesagt, in Griechenland war es so, daß man durch die Kunst retten wollte; wenn wir mehr nach dem Orient hinüberkommen, war es so, daß die Leute sich sagten: Was bloß nach sogenannten Naturgesetzen verläuft, hat im Grunde genommen für die wahre Menschheitsentwickelung gar keinen Zweck, denn das werden die Götter einmal zerblasen; daher kleiden wir das, was wir machen, so, daß darinnen Spirituelles lebt. - Und daraus entstand der Kultus im älteren Sinne, eben nicht die Formung einer Maschinerie oder eines Chemismus, sondern die Kultushandlung. Man sieht in dem, was man tut, etwas Sakramentales, etwas, wo Spiritualität drinnen ist, wo der Geist mittut. Im religiösen Kultus wollten die Leute eben so viel wie möglich retten von dem, was zu retten ist von der Erdenevolution.

[ 30 ] Ich habe das bei früheren Gelegenheiten oftmals dadurch ausgesprochen, daß ich ein Bild gebraucht habe: Wir müssen wiederum gegenüber unserer bloßen Technik dahin kommen, daß uns der Laboratoriumstisch ein Altar wird, daß wir tatsächlich eine Art göttlichen Dienstes verrichten, indem wir im physikalischen, im chemischen Laboratorium arbeiten, daß also der Laboratoriumstisch zum Altar wird, daß wir tatsächlich da hinein moralisieren und spiritualisieren. — Ich habe das früher so ausgesprochen; es ist im Grunde genommen dasselbe, was ich heute mehr historisch ausspreche.

[ 31 ] So also entstand der religiöse Kultus, zu dem heute die Menschen, weil sie sich nicht aufringen können zu einer Aktivität in bezug auf das Geistige, wiederum zurückkehren. Es ist merkwürdig, wie gerade intelligente Menschen heute in großer Zahl in den Schoß der katholischen Kirche zurückkehren, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil sie sich retten wollen zu dem, was von der Erde bleibt, aus demjenigen, was ja spurlos verschwinden muß durch Götterwillen selber. Dieses Hinströmen gerade gebildeter Menschen heute in den Katholizismus hinein wird von denjenigen, die nicht die Gegenwart aufmerksam betrachten, eben auch gar nicht beachtet. Das besteht darinnen, daß die Leute heraus wollen aus dem, was vernichtet wird, in etwas hinein, was, wie die katholischen Zeremonien und Kultushandlungen, die auf sehr alten Einrichtungen beruhen, formen will wenigstens das, was da bleibt, weil den Leuten fehlt jene Aktivität, wodurch etwas Neues, etwas, was wir brauchen für die Zukunft, wirklich gefunden werden kann. Es fehlt den Leuten die innere Kraft. Die ist ihnen schon verlorengegangen innerhalb unseres technischen Zeitalters.

[ 32 ] Man hätte sich eben in einem gewissen Momente energisch sagen müssen: Also wir stehen in der negativen Welt der Technik. Da drinnen lassen sich nicht mehr Impulse finden in der alten Art. Da muß zu der moralischen Phantasie, zu der Intuition geschritten werden. — Das hätte man sich sagen müssen. Diejenigen, die vorbeigehen an dieser Notwendigkeit der Zeit, die kehren eben zum Katholizismus zurück. Erklärlich ist die Sache durchaus aus der Schwäche der Zeit.

[ 33 ] Und daher, weil das so war, und weil das eine Erkenntnis war bei den alten Initiierten, fragte man sich: Ja, wie wird es denn nun werden? Also die Götter, von denen wir wissen, mit denen wir durch die Mysterien in Verkehr stehen, alle diese Götter wollen die Vernichtung der Erde. Aber die Menschen werden, wenn sie freie Menschen werden wollen, immer ähnlicher gerade dem, was da auf der Erde ist; denn nur dadurch, daß technische Erkenntnis wird, können die Menschen frei werden. -So hätten die alten Eingeweihten, wenn sie das nur allein hätten überschauen können, vor der furchtbaren, sich vor ihnen prophetisch enthüllenden Zukunftstatsache stehen müssen: Die Menschen müssen, um wirklich Menschen zu werden, sich ganz und gar in die ahrimanische Welt der Gottlosigkeit verstricken, und sie müssen zerstieben mit der Erde, wenn die Götter diese Erde auflösen. Denn die Menschen werden selbst nach und nach zur Maschinerie; sie werden den Maschinen immer ähnlicher. Sie werden in ihren Gedanken so, daß nur noch die technischen Impulse in den Gedanken wirken. Die Astronomie ist im Grunde genommen nichts anderes als das Denken über die große Weltmaschinerie. Da ist also nichts im Menschen als das Denken über die Maschine; denn schließlich ist es einerlei, ob man über Schrauben und Räder oder über Venus und Merkur denkt nach demselben rein technisch zu konstruierenden Muster.

[ 34 ] Also vor einer furchtbaren Zukunftstatsache hätten diese Initiierten stehen müssen. Und das war ihnen ganz klar: Ihre alten Götter wollten in dieser Weise den Untergang, weil sie den Untergang des Ahrimanischen wollen mußten, und weil sie so, wie die Sachen zunächst waren, die Menschen nicht retten konnten.

[ 35 ] Das andere, was nun schon in diesen alten Mysterien wiederum prophetisch entgegengestellt wurde, das war eben das Mysterium von Golgatha, bevor es geschehen war auf der Erde, prophetisch. Nachdem es geschehen ist, konnte man immer mehr und mehr dazu kommen, es in irgendeiner Weise aufzufassen. Das war eben einfach dieses, was die alten Initiierten in den Mysterien von den Göttern, mit denen sie verkehrten, erfuhren. Die Götter wußten alles; von denen konnten sie umfassende Weisheit erzielen. Aber eines konnten sie nie erfahren von diesen Göttern: das waren diejenigen Dinge, die sich auf Geburt und Tod des Menschen bezogen. Namentlich vom Tode als solchem wußten diese Götter nichts. Aber man wußte zugleich in diesen alten Mysterien, daß einer aus ihren Reihen heruntergeschickt werden solle, derjenige, den man später den Christus nannte, und daß er auf der Erde den Tod kennenlernen sollte. So daß das Mysterium von Golgatha darin liegt, daß einer der Götter, die früher den Tod und damit auch die Geburt und die ganzen Vererbungsverhältnisse nicht kannten, diesen Tod kennenlernte und dadurch, daß er ihn kennenlernte, sich mit der Erdenevolution verbinden und das Gegengewicht bilden konnte gegen dasjenige, was durch die Entwickelung zur Freiheit hin notwendig hätte geschehen müssen: Das immer mehr und mehr Verwandtwerden des Menschen mit der zerstäubenden Erde. Indem sich der Mensch auf der einen Seite wirklich nun der modernen Erkenntnis hingibt, die modernen naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse wirklich aufnimmt, auf der anderen Seite aber sich zu dem Christus wendet, der derjenige der Götter war, der den Tod kennengelernt hat und damit auch die Geburt, damit bildet der Mensch in sich selber den Gegenpol.

[ 36 ] Man kann daher auf der einen Seite völlig hinneigen zu demjenigen, was notwendig ist für die Freiheit, muß aber auf der anderen Seite, ich möchte sagen, auch das andere Gebiet auf die Waagschale legen, den Weg hinfinden zu dem Paulinischen Worte: Nicht ich, sondern der Christus in mir. - Dann wird der Mensch wiederum die Möglichkeit finden, indem er die Welt durchchristet, von seiner Seele aus dasjenige umzugestalten, was sonst abfallen müßte von derjenigen Götterwelt, zu der der Mensch eigentlich gehört.

[ 37 ] Und so ist den ahrimanischen Mächten, die eigentlich sonst auf der Erde in dem wirkten, was abgefallen wäre, der Christus entgegengesetzt worden. Durch einen außerirdischen Götterentschluß ist der Christus entgegengesetzt worden, damit er nun in der Erde wirkt. Er hat es nicht nötig, frei zu werden, er ist ein Gott, bleibt es auch, indem er durch den Tod durchgegangen ist. Er wird nicht ähnlich der Erde. Er lebt als Gott innerhalb des Erdenwesens. Und die Folge davon ist, daß der Mensch nun auf der einen Seite die Möglichkeit hat, auf die Waagschale der Freiheit so viel als möglich zu legen, da wirklich bis zu den letzten Konsequenzen des Individualismus zu gehen, denn nur im individuellen Menschen wird die moralische Phantasie gefunden. Daher hat man eben meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» die Philosophie des Individualismus genannt im extremsten Sinne. Das mußte sie auch sein, weil sie auf der anderen Seite die christlichste der Philosophien ist. Daher mußte man also auf die eine Seite dasjenige legen, was im vollsten Sinne darbietet, was äußere Naturerkenntnis ist, in die man nur hineinkommt mit dem Geistigen, indem man sich zu dem reinen, freien Denken erhebt. Das kann man noch retten innerhalb der rein technischen Erkenntnis. Auf die andere Waagschale muß aber gelegt werden das, was die wirkliche Christus-Erkenntnis, die wirkliche Erkenntnis von dem Mysterium von Golgatha ist.

[ 38 ] Es war daher ganz selbstverständlich, daß ich auf der einen Seite die «Philosophie der Freiheit» versuchte zu schreiben, so schlecht und recht natürlich als sie sein konnte, weil man nicht gleich auf den ersten Anhub alles gut machen kann. Auf der anderen Seite aber mußte gerade auf das Mysterium von Golgatha hingewiesen werden durch meine «Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhältnis zur modernen Weltanschauung» und durch mein «Christentum als mystische Tatsache». Diese zwei Dinge gehören einfach zusammen. Aber diejenigen Menschen, die nun äußerlich darin einen Widerspruch finden, die finden, ich verfahre eigentlich so, wie wenn sie auf der einen Waagschale Fleisch und auf der anderen Waagschale Gewichte haben und nun sagen: Was ist das für Unsinn! Das gehört zusammen; kurz, man muß alles durcheinandermischen. — Und nun nehmen sie die Gewichte weg und werfen sie zum Fleisch dazu. Ja, da ist natürlich kein Gleichgewicht. So machen es die heutigen Kritiker. Sie setzen auf die eine Seite Mystik, auf die andere Seite Philosophie, und dann schießt, was in der Mystik ist, in die Philosophie hinein oder umgekehrt. Nun finden sie allerdings, daß die Welt sich in einer furchtbaren Weise benimmt; aber das ist ja mit Ausschluß wirklich alles desjenigen, was für die Gegenwart gefordert wird, für die das durchaus notwendig war. Und so muß eben, wenn die gegenwärtige Seele sich in richtiger Art hineinstellen will in die Weltentwickelung, in ihr leben auf der einen Seite ein starker Freiheitsimpuls, auf der anderen Seite muß in ihr leben ein starker Impuls zum innerlichen Durchleben des Mysteriums von Golgatha.

[ 39 ] Das muß sich aber nach und nach sowohl im einzelnen Menschenleben ausgestalten, wie es sich ausgestalten muß im Wissenschaftlichen. Im einzelnen Menschenleben muß der Mensch einmal dazu kommen, die alten instinktiven Arten des Mystischen und des Hellseherischen zu überwinden und sich ganz und gar eben auf den Standpunkt einer solchen Erkenntnis zu stellen, wie wir sie haben, wenn wir, sagen wir, eine Dampfmaschine begreifen. Nur solche Ideen für die äußere Naturerkenntnis setzte ich meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» voraus, wie man sie notwendig hat, um auch eine Dampfmaschine zu begreifen. Aber man muß, um eine Dampfmaschine zu begreifen, zwar seinen ganzen Menschen ablegen, aber nicht jetzt das Letzte, das reine Denken. Das muß man schon noch im Menschen ausbilden und dann hinaustragen. Aber das ist zu gleicher Zeit das, was in den Objekten lebt.

[ 40 ] Man kann sich also auf der einen Seite ganz und gar auf den Boden der Freiheit stellen, muß aber auf der anderen Seite sich auf den Boden der Christus-Tatsache stellen. Das muß aber auch in die Wissenschaft hinein. Und das wird so in die Wissenschaft hineinkommen, daf man sich sagt: Da ist die äußere Natur. Ich beschreibe sie meinetwillen so Haeckelisch, als es nur sein kann. Aber da bleiben Reste. Da bleiben die Reste, die nie zu begreifen sein werden mit diesen Ideen. Verzeihen Sie, wenn ich mich ein klein wenig deutlich ausdrücke, aber wir sind ja als ernste Leute, die etwas verstehen wollen, beisammen, und nicht beim Five o’clock tea. Also ich möchte sagen: Die zwei Dinge sind notwendig, daß sie in unsere Zivilisation in der richtigen Weise hineingehen, die da lagen darinnen, daß man in älteren Zeiten — wobei man durch sein instinktives Hellsehen sich bewußt war der Anknüpfung des Menschen an die spirituelle Außenwelt — den Heiligenschein ausgebildet hatte. Es war in diesen ältesten Zeiten der Heiligenschein ganz besonders ausgebildet; er tritt vielfach hervor in den verschiedensten Formen, auch beim Kultus. Als aber aus dem Mittelalter heraus in den Gefühlen der erste Materialismus erwachte, da wurde etwas anderes besonders gern abgebildet: die schwangere Frau. Sehen Sie sich doch nur viele Bilder des Mittelalters an: die Frauen sind auf diesen Bildern alle schwanger. Sie haben auf der einen Seite dasjenige, was über den Tod hinausrettet und was sich im Höchsten in der Verkündigung der geistigen Welt im Heiligenscheine ausdrückt, und auf der anderen Seite dasjenige, was den Menschen immer wieder hereinbringt in die physische Welt: die Geburt.

[ 41 ] Diese Dinge hängen alle mit dem inneren geistigen Entwickelungsmotor der Menschen zusammen. Die Seele lebt immer in dem, was innere Entwickelungsmotoren sind. So ist ein Zusammenhang zwischen dem seelischen Erleben und der Weltenentwickelung selbst in bezug auf die intimsten Tatsachen, und die Wissenschaft wird sich auch dem nach und nach anbequemen müssen und wird sagen müssen: Ich erkenne die Welt so Haeckelisch als möglich, aber zwei Dinge bleiben übrig: das eine ist die Geburt, das andere ist der Tod. Die lassen sich nicht mit den Ideen aus der Chemie und der Mechanik begreifen, also aus dem, was technisch konstruierbar ist. Das sind die beiden Tore, die hinausführen, und da muß man anfangen mit einer anderen Betrachtungsweise. Solange man die Freiheit betrachtet, kann man bleiben innerhalb der Ideen, die sich auch in der Technik ausleben. Und wenn man eine «Philosophie der Freiheit» schreibt denn die Kinder sind ja noch nicht frei, da wirkt noch das Göttliche in Unfreiheit in ihnen -, schreibt man unmittelbar für Menschen, die in ihrem mittleren Lebensalter drinnenstehen, denn da wird man ja doch eigentlich erst frei. Fängt man an, die anderen Teile zu schreiben, dann wird man unmittelbar geführt auf die Auffassung, die der Mensch in seiner Seele haben kann über den Tod. Daher ist das Urmysterium das Erleben des Todes, und das innerliche Erleben des Todes und die geistige Wiedergeburt dasjenige, was Sie auch in den allerersten Kapiteln meiner mystischen Schriften finden.

[ 42 ] Das ist etwas, was einfach aus der gegenwärtigen Weltenbetrachtung sich von selbst ergibt, aber jetzt nicht in einer nebulosen Weise, sondern in einer solchen Weise, die wirklich das, was nötig ist, durch und durch eben begreifen will. Und so muß man sagen: Mit demjenigen, was die menschliche Seele nach der Richtung der Freiheit erlebt, streift sie in der Welt heran an das Ahrimanische. Mit demjenigen, was sie erlebt nach der Seite des Religiösen, auch wenn es zu dem Mysterium von Golgatha hingeht, streift sie sehr nahe heran an das Luziferische. Und da kann sie sehr leicht, wenn sie die bloßen religiösen egoistischen Instinkte ausbildet, wie es in der Gegenwart auch in dem Religionsbetrieb sehr leicht der Fall ist, auch in die luziferischen Triebe, Instinkte hineinfallen.

[ 43 ] Das ist es, was aus der unmittelbaren Gegenwart heraus für das Seelische berücksichtigt werden muß, und das war es auch, was der Christus unmittelbar nach seiner Auferstehung seinen intimen Schülern gelehrt hat. Diese intimen Schüler, die die Fortsetzer der alten Mysterieneinweihung waren, sollten lehren, daß er heruntergestiegen ist aus derjenigen Welt der Götter, die den Tod noch nicht gekannt haben, die daher dem Menschen in der Urerdenzeit vom Tod nichts sagen konnten; daß der Christus heruntergestiegen ist, um die Geheimnisse über Geburt und Tod zu erfahren. Daher sind auch so unklar geblieben die Lehren von Christi Tod und Geburt, weil die Menschen nicht den Weg fanden, um diese Dinge zu erklären. Aber in den christlichen Urmysterien, deren eigentlicher Sinn, weil zunächst der Freiheitssinn ausgebildet werden sollte, schon im 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert verschwunden ist, wurde durchaus von dem Christus selbst seinen ersten eingeweihten Schülern nach seiner Auferstehung dieses Geheimnis von dem Erkennenlernen des Erdentodes durch einen Gott mitgeteilt. Das geschah aber allerdings, nachdem die alte, die ursprüngliche Weisheit von den alten Göttern den Menschen mitgeteilt worden war, dann immer weiter und weiter übertragen wurde auf die späteren Generationen und immer mehr und mehr verwässert wurde. Das, was da der Christus nach seiner Auferstehung seinen intimen Jüngern mitteilte, das war die eigentlichste Uroffenbarung im irdischen Leben, das war es, was nun als das Fundament, als das geistige Fundament das Leben der Seele weitertragen sollte. Denn im Grunde genommen, was die alten Götter, wenn sie in den Mysterien heraufgestiegen sind, die Menschen gelehrt haben, das waren die Geheimnisse von Saturn, Sonne, Mond; das eigentliche Erdengeheimnis -— denn auf der Erde erst ist im menschlichen Sinne aufgetreten Geburt und Tod, früher gab es nur Metamorphose, Verwandlung -, mußte ein Gott erst durch das Mysterium von Golgatha auf der Erde selbst erfahren, um es dem Leben der Menschenseele zu vermitteln. So daß also durch diese fundamentalste Offenbarung nach Christi Tod auch das Fundament geschaffen wurde, das die Menschenseele in sich aufnehmen muß, um von diesem Fundamente aus eben die Rettung des Erdenlebens zu vollziehen.

[ 44 ] So hängen dann die Menschenseelen zusammen mit der Evolution der Erde, mit der Evolution der Welt überhaupt; so hängen sie zusammen durch die anderen Tatsachen, wie ich sie Ihnen in diesen Tagen dargestellt habe; so hängen sie zusammen, indem sie in richtiger Weise aufnehmen den Impuls des Mysteriums von Golgatha. Das wollte ich Ihnen in diesen Vorträgen ausführen.

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] There is, of course, an extraordinary amount to say about our topic, but with such a subject one can only give a few hints, and we must be content with those for now. Today, I will attempt to show you, through a kind of comprehensive overview, the place of the soul in the entire development of the world.

[ 2 ] When we, as animated human beings, allow the external world to influence us between birth and death, we initially receive a sum of impressions from this external world. Modern human beings, especially through scientific education, which extends even to the lowest schools, have been accustomed for centuries to regard this external world as the essential reality. In recent times, people have even begun to construct the science of the soul as a kind of natural science. This is not only done by scholars, but basically by the simplest human beings today. All this stems from the fact that modern man has little inclination to look back into himself. Therefore, he does not easily become attentive to such things as were discussed here yesterday. The man of the present day is little inclined, little accustomed, to look back on himself in an objective way. They look at what I called yesterday the surging and swelling drives, the desires, the passions, the emotions in general. But they are not inclined to look at this objectively, because when they look within themselves, not much else emerges from their inner being than these very desires. Even if it is sometimes refined by education, it remains this desire that arises, while the person forms certain ideas about the outside world in which he is not personally involved, which have a certain objectivity.

[ 3 ] There are many people who do not like such concepts; they stick more to what lives subjectively and personally within them. But the civilization of our time brings to people everywhere such concepts about external nature as we understand them today and have understood them for centuries. Modern man fills his inner life with these concepts about nature. Even today, through the smallest local newspapers, or at least through the Sunday supplements, he learns to view the world in this way. He does not realize that even the smallest newspaper is feeding him a scientific worldview, but that is what it is doing. So one can say that the only thing people are really concerned with today are concepts of external nature. I am not saying this as a criticism of the individual, but as a criticism of the times, or rather as a characteristic of the times, for there is nothing to criticize here; the matter is simply a necessary product of the times. Man is so little interested in man himself that he has actually become indifferent as to whether he sees the living actor on the stage or the ghost of the cinema, which of course makes a considerable difference in reality.

But there is no deep feeling, no thorough feeling for this difference in today's world, otherwise we would have more feeling, more sensitivity for the large part that phenomena such as cinema culture play in the decline of our civilization.

[ 4 ] The ideas that are conveyed to people today for their souls are simply accepted because they are immediately convinced by a blind sense of authority when they are told: Science has once again brought this and that, once again established this and that. One must be clear about what it actually means to accept these things as they are described today. When we accept the description, we have no idea what is actually going on in the laboratories and so on. In short, there is the blindest belief in authority in the ideas about the external world that are communicated to people in this way.

[ 5 ] Now, this was by no means always the case. I have often pointed out that when we go back in the history of human development, we come to ancient times when people possessed something that I have always called instinctive, dreamlike clairvoyance. This clairvoyance was instinctive and dreamlike, but it was nevertheless capable of penetrating deeper into the essence of things than the so-called scientific ideas of today. People simply lived their lives through these concepts, these ideas, these images, which today seem to people to be only symbolic or allegorical, or as if they were drawn from the imagination, into reality. Whether the individual image corresponded exactly to an objective fact was not important; rather, by living with the image in reality, one was fully alive in the spiritual realm, whereas today it is of course important whether an idea one forms corresponds exactly to something outside, because this correspondence is the only thing to which human beings can hold fast.

[ 6 ] Now, when we look at this, we must place something quite bluntly before our souls that is of tremendous importance for the entire assessment of our present-day civilization. We must bluntly state that older people, with their instinctive clairvoyance, had something alive in their souls that modern people say is fantasy, that is not contained in things outside.

[ 7 ] In a certain sense, if we stand on an understanding basis with anthroposophy, we must participate in this faithful reproduction of external nature, where one no longer stands within external nature but only reproduces it. And you may know that we do this scientifically in the most extreme sense by rejecting any kind of hypothesis about what the appearance of nature is, but remaining, in our phenomenalism, as it must be called, within the phenomena, that is, within the external natural phenomena, which must explain themselves, to use Goethe's expression; to which one does not add all sorts of ideas about atomic bombardment, atomic explosions, and so on, as is still customary today, I would say, out of the inertia of an old habit. On anthroposophical ground, in the strictest sense, when it comes to external nature, we must adhere strictly to the phenomena themselves and reject the idea of thinking anything into the phenomena.

[ 8 ] Human beings can best learn how not to read anything into phenomena by adhering to something that has also emerged with the scientific worldview in recent human development, namely technology. When we make technical use of the laws of nature, we are actually creating the phenomena themselves. Of course, they still remain within the phenomena themselves, for example, the power of electricity, about which today's researchers say: I use it, but I do not know its nature. They often speak this way about all natural forces, including heat and light and so on. So there are remnants. But what really matters to us in technology, what we want to master, is what we put together ourselves in experiments, where we have a certain insight into the matter.

[ 9 ] Those who are aware of such things also have the feeling that there is something of an immediate, comprehensible certainty in what they construct technically, even in the field of chemical engineering, whereas when one talks about nature as observed, one has the possibility of thinking differently in this or that direction. So that one can say: modern thinking is actually most perfectly present in the technician. That is absolutely true. Anyone who today walks past a machine construction or, say, the manufacture of a chemical preparation and its use without any idea of what it is, is not yet thinking in the spirit of our time; I would say: he lets others think in his soul, because the people who matter think technically after all. And so the worldview of modern times has gradually become what we find outwardly realized in technology, in mechanism, in chemistry, and so on. This has gradually extended to what we still want to consider a worldview today.

[ 10 ] What, then, is our astronomy? For a long time, our astronomy was nothing more than a representation of the machinery of the world. It was a great machine, as one imagined the sun in relation to the planets and their movements. In more recent times, chemistry has come into play in spectral analysis. But astronomy does not go any further than that. Astronomy, this science of the universe, today answers only the question: How do we cope with the idea of the universe if we simply apply the ideas familiar to us from technology to the universe, if we transfer what we can observe in technology to outer space? So that our science, with the exception of what one might almost call nonsense, such as neovitalism, and with the exception of talk about psychoids and the like, has useful ideas in its worldview only to the extent that we can construct machines and chemical preparations. We then transfer the ideas we gain from this construction to the structure of the world and imagine it as a large machine within which this or that chemical process takes place.

[ 11 ] This was certainly not always the case. Until well into the 15th century, human beings – I am speaking here of the civilized areas of the Earth's development – lived with ideas about the external universe that were not merely technical, but such that human beings experienced them as something they were part of. Technology is completely outside of human beings. It is separate from them. In the past, people experienced what they knew. Today, they no longer experience what they know. That is why even our very intelligent people today always have the feeling that in earlier times, people dreamed all kinds of things into the world and created fantasies. Today, we have the opportunity to imagine the world without such fantasies. People believe that technical ideas are the only ones that can be conceived of in the world without running the risk of fantasizing about the world and failing to recognize it.

[ 12 ] But what I am describing here is based on something much, much deeper. There is something underlying it that the prophecies of the ancient mysteries already emphasized for a certain degree of initiation. This is precisely what was peculiar to the mysteries in those times when ancient clairvoyance existed, that the mysteries prophetically foresaw what kind of worldview would one day come about. In the mysteries, it was prophesied in the following way: If we were to maintain for humanity the view that exists today — this “today” was in very early times, when people experienced their surroundings in an instinctively dreamlike way — then human beings would never be able to become free beings. Then human beings would always have to receive the impulses for their actions from what they experienced in their inner lives. A divine world would arise in their hearts, it was said, but this divine world would make them unfree. — The older civilizations had people who were completely unfree. They were aware of what they were doing, unless the rulers imposed state laws on them, telling them that they were following divine commandments. So they were, so to speak, merely beings who carried out what the divine within them prompted them to do.

[ 13 ] Thus it was said in the mysteries: There must come a time when this kind of divine activity in man ceases, when man comes to look only into the outer world and see in the outer world that which has nothing more to do with the human, and to take into their souls only the external world. When human beings can no longer look with understanding and experience at the forces of humanity, but only at the forces that live outside in the world, with which human beings have nothing to do, then they are inwardly free, then they are inwardly relieved, then their souls are filled with nothing but what does not concern their own organization.

[ 14 ] This phase of development had to come once for human beings, so that they could look at nature, so to speak, only as something outside themselves, so that they could become free. That is what was said in the older mysteries. In these older mysteries, it was therefore said: What we can now give to people who show us understanding from their instinctive clairvoyance, we will not always be able to give them, because they would remain unfree. A science will have to come to them which, while not exciting any impulses in them, will provide them with ideas of what is outside them, so that in their cognition they will always hold fast to the outer, and thus educate themselves in relation to their inner impulses toward freedom.

[ 15 ] You see, I was faced with this situation in the most extreme sense when I felt compelled to write first the preparatory writings and then my Philosophy of Freedom. The fundamental question behind the writing of this Philosophy of Freedom was the following: It was a matter of saying to oneself with complete clarity: We are simply living in the technological age. Unless we amateurishly ramble on about what remains of the old ways in creeds and so on from the old instinctive worldviews, we have no other option than to stick to what can be thought about the world in technical terms, which is exhausted in mechanisms and so on. We stand inside the world, viewing it as a great machine and a great chemical process. If we want to return to the spiritual, we must radically break with everything that has been handed down to us as mysticism from ancient times, and we must find the spirit in the, I would say, spiritless, mechanical world that modern science has given us.

[ 16 ] I would like to sketch on the board the situation we faced when I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom. If this were man (drawing on the left, light) and this were the environment (yellow), then one would have to imagine things in earlier times as follows: Man looked out into the environment. But then he also experienced within himself what his instincts provided him with in the form of dreamlike, clairvoyant images (red). He connected this with what he saw in the environment, and therefore saw the environment as spiritualized (red in yellow). He saw elementary or even higher beings in all beings because he was able to bring the conditions from his own inner being to bear on them.

[ 17 ] The newer human being, the human being for whom I actually wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom” at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s as the civilized human being, is depicted here (drawing, right, light) and the environment here (yellow). Now, humans no longer give anything of themselves to the environment, but only pursue what can be constructed technically; they pursue the laws of the environment itself. However, no moral impulse can be found in this. In this way, only natural laws can be formed. As I have drawn here (left), because older people were still connected to the external world, moral impulses could still be perceived in everything they saw, in stone, animals, plants, because divine-spiritual beings were contained in all of these. There is nothing of this left in the laws of nature. The natural laws contain only that which passes into machines or mechanisms.

[ 18 ] What, then, was the necessary task of this “Philosophy of Freedom”? Its necessary task was to say: If human beings, standing outside nature, can no longer find moral impulses because they only receive natural laws through their senses, then human beings must go outside themselves; they can no longer remain within themselves. And I had to describe the first stepping out, where man leaves his physicality. And this first stepping out is in pure thinking, as I have described it in the Philosophy of Freedom. That means: now man does not step out with his instinctive clairvoyance, but now he steps out of his body altogether, places himself in the external world (green). And what does he have there? There, by performing the very first, most subtle clairvoyance, he has moral intuitions, or if you want to use the subjective expression I used at the time, he has moral imagination. There, man departs from himself in order to find this spiritual element within the technical realm—for the spiritual is indeed within it—in the first realm, the realm of morality.

[ 19 ] People have simply not recognized that this is the first stage of modern clairvoyance, which was brought to light in The Philosophy of Freedom, because people still thought: Well, yes, Clairvoyance is something where you are immersed in uncertainty, where you enter the unknown — whereas here it was precisely the known that was being sought, whereas here it was a departure with thinking that was being sought, thinking that no longer clings to materiality but grasps itself, because it is here first, that is, in pure spirituality, even in the purest spirituality, that the world has been grasped.

[ 20 ] And that is why The Philosophy of Freedom was doomed to be too intellectual for the mystics.

[ 20 ] And that is why the Philosophy of Freedom was doomed to be too intellectual for the mystics. In their way, they saw too many thoughts in it. And the others, the rationalists and natural scientists or even philosophers of the modern era, could not do anything with it because it led them into the realm of intuition, where they did not want to go, for they wanted to remain with mere external observation, even when they spoke of philosophy. Thus, it was precisely the whole attitude, the habitus of the Philosophy of Freedom that fulfilled what was simply imposed on modern man.

[ 21 ] That would be, so to speak, the elementary element of what can be said in connection with what was prophetically proclaimed in the ancient mysteries about what was to come. But the ancient initiates into the mysteries saw the matter even more clearly, saw it even more in connection with the human soul and the development of the world. For they also saw the following: They clearly recognized that the world that would one day be discovered through later knowledge is not only extra-human, but also extra-divine, outside the realm of that divine creation of which we—and by “we” I mean the ancient initiates—are actually speaking. We seek the revelation of the divine in what we attain through our initiation; through our initiation we commune with the divine beings. — The various pagan peoples communed with their beings, the Jews, for example, with their Yahweh or Jehovah. Insofar as they were initiates, they communed with their divine beings not only in thought but in reality. It is entirely correct to speak of real contact with these divine beings in the ancient mysteries. Yes, the initiates communed with these divine beings; but when they were outside the mysteries, and when their disciples were outside the mysteries, they all saw the environment again. However, they saw into this environment what their instinctive clairvoyance gave them. But the initiates themselves and the disciples of these initiates knew that what was out there was resisting in a certain way what they were seeing, and that a time would come when it would not only resist, but when they would only be able to see what could be perceived without such insight.

[ 22 ] What modern man, because his knowledge is superficial and not profound, would not dare to admit to himself, these ancient initiates admitted as a truth. They said to themselves: The world we see out there, if we do not first look into it with what our gods have given us—for what they saw there was given to them by their gods at the beginning of the world's development—then this world is ungodly. So we have in our environment a world that does not originate from the gods with whom we commune in the mysteries.

[ 23 ] This was what then lived on in the Middle Ages in the special form of contempt for nature and asceticism, and what lives on in certain creeds to this day, albeit very hypocritically in some creeds. This is what, originating from the ancient mysteries, man must actually say to himself: When I look into my inner self, I can commune with the gods; but the world around me does not originate from the gods at all. This world was not created by those gods to whom I want to devote myself when I allow myself to be initiated.

[ 24 ] This was a fundamental insight into which people increasingly and objectively lived themselves, that the outer world did not originate from the gods they had come to know through the mysteries and initiation. These gods had actually wanted a completely different world. Through a special event, humans sank down into this world, which their gods did not want at all. All ideas about the Fall – one could develop them all now, but there is not enough time for that today – stem from the fact that humans realized: The world we know as our environment is not the one that these gods created.

[ 25 ] But people tried to understand what these gods, with whom they wanted to communicate, actually wanted with this world that they had not created. They were able to learn this from them. And they learned from them that they actually wanted the destruction, the annihilation of this world.

[ 26 ] The initiates of earlier times were also faced with this fact. They were faced with the fact that the gods they were striving for actually revealed to them that their decision was to destroy this world. And yet they also knew that in order for human beings to become free, human knowledge must be linked precisely to this world, which the gods consider ripe for destruction, which the gods actually want to destroy.

[ 27 ] In the older Greek mysteries, this was then understood in a very peculiar way. In the oldest Greek mysteries, people worked specifically toward an artistic shaping of the world—they had no idea of the natural scientific view we have today in ancient Greece—they worked in sculpture, especially in tragedy, in short, in art, toward creating something through human beings that was based on this world but nevertheless transcended it. And the initiated Greek had the idea that The world on which you stand, the world of trees that you see, the world of springs that you perceive, and so on, will be scattered; but what you have imbued in your Venus de Milo, in Zeus, in Athena, what you have imbued in Sophocles' drama from this world, will indeed pass from the visible realm into the invisible, only the thoughts will remain, as it were, floating, but when this earth is scattered, they will go forth and save the continuation of the earthly world, which otherwise could only consist in the radical destruction of this earthly world.

[ 28 ] The Greeks of the earliest times, when art still sprang from the mysteries, already imagined: Through art we will save the destruction of that world which originated with the gods but which has been subjected to a restriction that the gods themselves wanted to destroy. And what was known at that time led to the following statement. You see, certain fundamental scientific facts were, as can be proven historically, well known to the ancient initiates of the mysteries. Certainly, we have achieved much that is new in the course of the last centuries, especially in the 19th century, with regard to technical constructions; but certain fundamental things that still have an effect in technology today were well known to the ancient initiates. They knew much more than what they told people who were not initiated. But they said to themselves: If we simply put together something technical that combines natural forces so that we have something machine-like in front of us, then in the most extreme case we are doing something that will be destroyed along with the earthly realm, something that the gods themselves wish to see destroyed. For every initiate knows that the gods whom people looked up to in the ancient mysteries, with whom they communed in the ancient mysteries, with whom they can of course still commune today, that these gods hate nothing so much as, for example, a locomotive or a car! This is something terrible to them. For these gods say: What we have to put up with from Ahriman, that he formed the earth in this machine-like way, is now being imitated by human beings; they are adding something to it. Our work is already great for what we have to destroy, if we had at least only the works of Ahriman; but we also have these steam engines, these electric machines and all that stuff; we have to destroy that too.

[ 29 ] So the ancient initiates said to themselves: It is of no use simply to increase the external forces of nature, in which nothing spiritual can be seen, through technical machinery or technical chemistry. It was a fundamental conviction of the initiates that this was so. Therefore they said: We must save as much as possible of this world. As I said, in Greece, people wanted to save through art; when we move more towards the Orient, people said to themselves: “What proceeds according to so-called natural laws has, in essence, no purpose for the true development of humanity, because the gods will one day destroy it; therefore, we clothe what we do in such a way that the spiritual lives within it.” - And from this arose cult in the older sense, not the formation of a machinery or a chemistry, but cult activity. People see something sacramental in what they do, something in which spirituality is present, in which the spirit participates. In religious cult, people wanted to save as much as possible of what could be saved from earthly evolution.

[ 30 ] I have often expressed this on previous occasions by using an image: We must once again come to see our mere technology in such a way that the laboratory table becomes an altar, that we actually perform a kind of divine service by working in the physical and chemical laboratory, that the laboratory table becomes an altar, that we actually moralize and spiritualize there. — I have expressed this in the past; it is basically the same thing that I am expressing today in more historical terms.

[ 31 ] This is how the religious cult arose, to which people are now returning because they cannot bring themselves to engage in spiritual activity. It is remarkable how large numbers of intelligent people today are returning to the bosom of the Catholic Church for the simple reason that they want to save themselves to what remains of the earth, from what must disappear without a trace by the will of God Himself. This influx of educated people into Catholicism today is not even noticed by those who do not observe the present attentively. This consists in the fact that people want to escape from what is being destroyed into something that, like Catholic ceremonies and cult practices based on very old institutions, at least wants to shape what remains, because people lack the activity through which something new, something we need for the future, can really be found. People lack inner strength. They have already lost it in our technological age.

[ 32 ] At a certain point, we should have said emphatically: We are living in the negative world of technology. There are no more impulses to be found there in the old way. We must move toward moral imagination, toward intuition. That is what we should have said. Those who ignore this necessity of the times are simply returning to Catholicism. This can be explained entirely by the weakness of the times.

[ 33 ] And because that was so, and because that was a realization among the ancient initiates, people asked themselves: Yes, how will it be now? The gods we know, with whom we are in contact through the mysteries, all these gods want the destruction of the earth. But if people want to become free, they will always become more like what is on Earth; for it is only through technical knowledge that people can become free. Thus, if the ancient initiates had been able to see this alone, they would have had to face the terrible fact of the future that was prophetically revealed to them: In order to become truly human, people must become completely entangled in the Ahrimanic world of godlessness, and they must be destroyed along with the Earth when the gods dissolve it. For people themselves are gradually becoming machinery; they are becoming more and more like machines. Their thoughts are becoming such that only technical impulses are at work in them. Astronomy is basically nothing more than thinking about the great world machine. So there is nothing in human beings except thinking about the machine; for ultimately it is all the same whether one thinks about screws and wheels or about Venus and Mercury according to the same purely technical pattern of construction.

[ 34 ] So these initiates must have been faced with a terrible future reality. And that was quite clear to them: their old gods wanted destruction in this way because they had to want the destruction of the Ahrimanic, and because, as things were at first, they could not save humanity.

[ 35 ] The other thing that was prophetically opposed in these ancient mysteries was the mystery of Golgotha, before it happened on earth, prophetically. After it happened, it became possible to understand it more and more in some way. This was simply what the ancient initiates learned in the mysteries from the gods with whom they communed. The gods knew everything; from them they could obtain comprehensive wisdom. But there was one thing they could never learn from these gods: that was everything related to human birth and death. These gods knew nothing about death as such. But at the same time, it was known in these ancient mysteries that one of their number would be sent down, the one who would later be called Christ, and that he would experience death on earth. Thus, the mystery of Golgotha lies in the fact that one of the gods, who previously knew nothing of death and therefore also nothing of birth and all the conditions of heredity, came to know death and, through this knowledge, was able to connect himself with the evolution of the earth and form a counterweight to what would have been necessary through the evolution toward freedom: the increasing kinship of human beings with the disintegrating earth. By truly devoting themselves to modern knowledge, truly accepting modern scientific discoveries, on the one hand, but turning to Christ, who was the god who experienced death and thus also birth, on the other, human beings form the opposite pole within themselves.

[ 36 ] On the one hand, therefore, one can lean completely toward what is necessary for freedom, but on the other hand, I would say, one must also put the other side of the scale, find the way to the Pauline words: Not I, but Christ in me. Then, by permeating the world with Christ, human beings will again find the possibility of transforming from their souls that which would otherwise fall away from the world of gods to which human beings actually belong.

[ 37 ] And so the Christ was set against the Ahrimanic forces that would otherwise have worked on Earth in what would have fallen away. Through an extraterrestrial divine decision, Christ was opposed so that he might now work on earth. He does not need to become free; he is a god and remains so, even though he passed through death. He does not become like the earth. He lives as a god within the earth's being. And the consequence of this is that human beings now have, on the one hand, the possibility of placing as much as possible on the scales of freedom, of going to the ultimate consequences of individualism, because moral imagination is found only in the individual human being. That is why my Philosophy of Freedom has been called the philosophy of individualism in the most extreme sense. It had to be so, because on the other hand it is the most Christian of philosophies. Therefore, on the one hand, one had to place that which in the fullest sense presents what is external knowledge of nature, which one can only enter with the spiritual, by rising to pure, free thinking. This can still be saved within purely technical knowledge. On the other side of the scale, however, must be placed that which is the real knowledge of Christ, the real knowledge of the mystery of Golgotha.

[ 38 ] It was therefore quite natural that I attempted to write The Philosophy of Freedom, as poorly and as well as I could, because one cannot do everything well at the first attempt. On the other hand, however, it was necessary to point to the mystery of Golgotha through my Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and Its Relationship to the Modern Worldview and through my Christianity as Mystical Fact. These two things simply belong together. But those people who now find a contradiction in this outwardly, who think that I am actually proceeding as if they had meat on one side of the scales and weights on the other and now say: What nonsense! These things belong together; in short, you have to mix everything together. — And now they take away the weights and throw them in with the meat. Yes, of course there is no balance. That is what today's critics do. They put mysticism on one side and philosophy on the other, and then what is in mysticism shoots into philosophy or vice versa. Now they find, of course, that the world is behaving in a terrible way; but that excludes everything that is required for the present, for which it was absolutely necessary. And so, if the present soul wants to place itself correctly in the development of the world, there must live in it, on the one hand, a strong impulse toward freedom, and on the other hand, a strong impulse toward inwardly living through the mystery of Golgotha.

[ 39 ] But this must gradually take shape both in the individual human life and in science. In the individual human life, the human being must eventually overcome the old instinctive forms of mysticism and clairvoyance and place himself entirely on the standpoint of such knowledge as we have when we understand, say, a steam engine. I presupposed in my Philosophy of Freedom only such ideas for the external knowledge of nature as are necessary in order to understand a steam engine. But in order to understand a steam engine, one must indeed lay aside one's whole human nature, but not the last, the pure thinking. That must still be developed in man and then carried out. But that is at the same time what lives in objects.

[ 40 ] So, on the one hand, one can stand entirely on the ground of freedom, but on the other hand, one must stand on the ground of the Christ fact. But this must also enter into science. And it will enter into science in such a way that one says: There is external nature. For my own sake, I describe it as Haeckelian as possible. But there remain remnants. There remain remnants that can never be understood with these ideas. Forgive me if I express myself a little clearly, but we are serious people who want to understand something, and we are not at five o'clock tea. So I would like to say: The two things are necessary, that they enter our civilization in the right way, that in earlier times—when people were aware of their connection to the spiritual world through their instinctive clairvoyance—they had developed the halo. In those earliest times, the halo was particularly well developed; it appears in many different forms, including in worship. But when the first materialism arose in people's feelings during the Middle Ages, something else became particularly popular to depict: the pregnant woman. Just look at many pictures from the Middle Ages: the women in these pictures are all pregnant. On the one hand, you have that which saves us from death and which is expressed in the highest form in the proclamation of the spiritual world in the halo, and on the other hand, you have that which brings human beings back into the physical world again and again: birth.

[ 41 ] These things are all connected with the inner spiritual motor of human development. The soul always lives in what are inner motors of development. Thus there is a connection between the soul's experience and the development of the world itself in relation to the most intimate facts, and science will gradually have to come to terms with this and say: I recognize the world as Haeckelian as possible, but two things remain: one is birth, the other is death. These cannot be understood with the ideas of chemistry and mechanics, that is, with what can be technically constructed. These are the two gates that lead out, and there one must begin with a different way of looking at things. As long as one considers freedom, one can remain within the ideas that are also expressed in technology. And when one writes a “philosophy of freedom”—for children are not yet free, the divine still works in them in bondage—one writes directly for people who are in the middle of their lives, for that is when one actually becomes free. When you begin to write the other parts, you are immediately led to the view that human beings can have in their souls about death. Therefore, the primordial mystery is the experience of death, and the inner experience of death and spiritual rebirth is what you will also find in the very first chapters of my mystical writings.

[ 42] This is something that simply arises from the present view of the world, but not in a nebulous way, rather in a way that truly wants to understand what is necessary through and through. And so one must say: with what the human soul experiences in the direction of freedom, it touches upon the Ahrimanic in the world. With what it experiences in the direction of religion, even if it leads to the mystery of Golgotha, it comes very close to the Luciferic. And there it can very easily fall into the Luciferic instincts and drives if it develops mere religious egoistic instincts, as is very easily the case in the present religious life.

[ 43 ] This is what must be taken into account for the soul out of the immediate present, and this was also what Christ taught his intimate disciples immediately after his resurrection. These intimate disciples, who were the continuers of the ancient mystery initiation, were to teach that he had descended from the world of the gods who had not yet known death and who therefore could tell human beings in the primeval earth period nothing about death; that Christ had descended in order to learn the secrets of birth and death. This is why the teachings about Christ's death and birth have remained so unclear, because people could not find a way to explain these things. But in the Christian primordial mysteries, whose actual meaning, because the sense of freedom had to be developed first, had already disappeared in the 4th century AD, Christ himself revealed this secret of learning about earthly death through a god to his first initiated disciples after his resurrection. However, this happened after the ancient, original wisdom of the old gods had been communicated to people, then passed on further and further to later generations and increasingly watered down. What Christ revealed to his intimate disciples after his resurrection was the most authentic revelation in earthly life; it was what was now to carry on the life of the soul as its foundation, as its spiritual foundation. For basically, what the ancient gods taught people when they ascended in the mysteries were the secrets of Saturn, the sun, and the moon; the actual mystery of the earth — for it was only on earth that birth and death appeared in the human sense; previously there was only metamorphosis, transformation — had to be experienced by a god on earth itself through the mystery of Golgotha in order to be conveyed to the life of the human soul. Thus, through this most fundamental revelation after Christ's death, the foundation was also laid which the human soul must take into itself in order to accomplish the salvation of earthly life from this foundation.

[ 44 ] Thus, human souls are connected with the evolution of the earth, with the evolution of the world in general; they are connected through the other facts I have presented to you in recent days; they are connected in that they correctly absorb the impulse of the mystery of Golgotha. That is what I wanted to explain to you in these lectures.