The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Human Spiritual Activities Through the Ages

[ 1 ] It might be a good idea today to reflect on some questions in the field of Spiritual Science that could be of use to some of us when it comes to defending Spiritual Science to the outside world. For it is precisely when one first gathers in a place where, so to speak, a kind of starting point or foundation for the Spiritual Science movement is to be established that it is quite helpful to bring to mind some of the moral questions that often come our way, especially when we ourselves are already working in this or that branch and then stand before people who enter without any familiarity with the Spiritual Science and want to know something that might lead them to a conviction or at least to a relationship with the Spiritual Science.

[ 2 ] Spiritual Science must, of course, draw upon supersensible, spiritual experience. And just as the message of the worldview of Spiritual Science is conveyed to us today, it is a narrative, a narrative of what the spiritual researcher—by making his soul an instrument for research in the spiritual world — and which holds for him the same certainty as the fact that there are roses or tables and chairs holds for external perception, that is, a certainty of direct perception.

[ 3 ] But what does that matter to us, who do not have such direct, intuitive certainty? — the others might ask. For us, it can only lead to our believing what the spiritual researcher says. — Now, I have always emphasized that this is not the case. It is true that the things of the higher world can only be known by entering into them; but once they are presented logically, anyone can understand them if they apply their reason correctly, so that they can say to themselves: Everything that is said here corresponds more closely to the facts than anything said by any other philosophy. — We can therefore confidently apply our reason and find that the matter can already be understood from the logic underlying these things. Admittedly, it is not so easy, but it does come to pass that even the non-seer can form a well-founded conviction.

[ 4 ] Of course, this won’t be enough to serve as actual proof—that is, to convince outsiders. But if we take certain things that anyone can know and compare them with what the spiritual researcher says, we can actually get quite far. Let us take just one very basic truth of Spiritual Science: the truth that the human being consists of four members—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and what we call the I. Of these four members, the outer world knows only the physical body, and everyone is of course free to deny that there is such a thing as an etheric body, an astral body, or the ego.

[ 5 ] One might say: Everyone speaks of the self; yet this is refuted. The self is like a kind of flame that is consumed by the fuel of the physical body, just as a wick is. — This is how people have sought to refute the philosopher Bergson, who invokes the continuity of the self.

[ 6 ] However, we can see how the self survives individual mental images. Every day demonstrates this, since the self is extinguished every night and cannot be experienced as something that continues uninterrupted.

[ 7 ] One might accept that these supersensible elements can be denied; but there is one thing a person cannot deny, namely, that they perceive three kinds of inner experiences within themselves. The first is that they experience mental images in their soul. For everyone knows that when they look at an object and then turn away but still retain an impression of it, they have experienced a mental image. The second thing a person experiences—and which they must distinguish from their mental images—are the emotions: pleasure and sorrow, joy and pain, sympathy and antipathy. And there is a third thing a person cannot deny: that they have impulses of will.

[ 8 ] Let’s take the realm of imagination: A person can form a mental image by allowing the world of perceptions to take effect on them. They can also form mental images by reading a novel, for a person also forms mental images when they read something. You all know that people sometimes find it difficult and sometimes less difficult to form mental images. The mental images to which people instinctively give themselves over have a different effect than those to which they give themselves over with reluctance or which cause them difficulty. You all know that a difficult calculation has a different effect on your imagination than a novel. We notice that we grow weary of our imaginative life when it requires effort. This can be all the more certain, since it is a means of falling asleep more easily. However, it need not be mental images that particularly irritate us, nor those that cause worry, but rather those that are difficult for us. In any case, there is one thing every person can experience for themselves: that they fall asleep relatively easily on the outside if, before falling asleep, they immerse themselves in a world of mental images to which a sense of duty binds them.

[ 9 ] Let us now consider emotional states. Pleasure and sorrow, joy and pain, worries, grief, and the like are things that, under certain circumstances, can make it difficult for us to fall asleep. A person who is deeply affected by their emotions has trouble falling asleep. Even joyful experiences will prevent them from falling asleep peacefully.

[ 10 ] If one pays attention to such things, one will soon notice that emotional stirrings pose a greater obstacle to falling asleep than mental images, and in particular those emotional stirrings associated with the ego’s most intense interests. When a person has a particular event awaiting them, they often cannot sleep for weeks. Just try it once: an event that is bound to occur with a certain degree of certainty—for example, the appearance of a comet—will put you to sleep quite easily, unless you happen to be an astronomer with a personal stake in the matter. Not the astronomer, however, because he has made his calculations and is waiting anxiously to see if they are correct.

[ 11 ] Now we can consider these emotional states from another perspective. In a certain sense, we can indeed link sleep to a person’s clairvoyant abilities. The state of sleep is one in which a person is unconscious. Clairvoyance is simply: sleep permeated by spiritual light, conscious sleep, if we may define it that way. It would therefore be conducive to clairvoyant states if one were free from all emotional stirrings, and unfavorable if one were filled with them. This can be confirmed by various things that can also be known from external sources, for example in the case of Nostradamus, who in the 16th century was a significant clairvoyant of the kind who possessed prophetic clairvoyance, so that even pure historians cannot doubt that events he put into verse came to pass and which, when compared, show that he made quite marvelous predictions. Even the historian Kemmerich acknowledges this, because it cannot be denied. Kemmerich himself recounts that he had set himself quite different tasks: he merely wanted to provide proof that health conditions for humans have improved since the 16th century. And that is how he came to study Nostradamus.

[ 12 ] When we examine Nostradamus, it is interesting to consider his life circumstances. He was a man who possessed clairvoyant powers rooted in a natural predisposition, so much so that they were found throughout his entire family. In his case, however, they manifested themselves in a special way because he was a devoted, remarkable physician. He performed great deeds, particularly during a plague epidemic in Provence. But then it came to light that people said he was a secret Calvinist. This harmed him so much that he had no choice but to give up his medical practice. One must understand what that means! The powers are, after all, in the personality! Physicists find that when forces in nature dissipate in one place, they are utilized elsewhere. — But in spiritual realms, people don’t want to hear about such things. If a person develops such powers in their profession—and unfolds them as beneficially as this man did as a physician—then those powers that are released must manifest themselves elsewhere. And in Nostradamus’s case, they all transformed into clairvoyant powers, because he possessed a certain innate clairvoyance, just as Paracelsus did.

[ 13 ] Now look: Nostradamus is actually describing quite beautifully how he came to foresee future events. He had a laboratory. But it was not a laboratory like the ones chemists have. It was a room, a chamber, next to his apartment, with a glass roof. From there he observed the course of the stars, allowing the shifting of the constellations to affect his soul. And that is where the things he could say about the future came to him. It arose as an intuition. It sprang from his mind. But for such things to come to him, he had to be completely free of sorrow, worry, and emotional agitation. Here we have an example of how, in clairvoyance just as in sound sleep, one must be free of emotional turmoil.

[ 14 ] Now let us move on and examine the relationship between human beings and their impulses of will, insofar as these impulses of will are connected to morality. Let us again consider the moment of falling asleep. This is an important moment for human beings, for, as Spiritual Science tells us, it is then that they pass into the astral world.

[ 15 ] Let us consider the moral impulses at this moment of falling asleep. To observe them, one must pay close attention to such processes. Those who pay such attention have the following experience: The moment of falling asleep is approaching. Whereas the eye had seen clearly before, the outlines of objects now become more indistinct. Something like a mist settles over them. It is as if the person were feeling cut off from their surroundings. A change also occurs in the physical body with regard to a certain aspect: one can no longer move one’s limbs. They can no longer follow a force they once followed. Furthermore, the person notices that they feel as though certain things—which must be described as impulses of the will—are brought before the soul of their own accord. The things they have done appear before them as a unity; things they have done in such a way that they need not reproach themselves. And they feel an immense bliss over everything they have done well. Through good spirits, people are protected from the evil that might otherwise come before the soul. To feel bliss over the good that has been done cannot, of course, occur if nothing good has been done. But people are generally not so bad that they do nothing good at all.

[ 16 ] Those who pay attention sense how something arises like a thought that remains obscure yet distinct before the soul: Oh, if only this moment could be captured, oh, if only it could remain this way forever! Then comes a jolt, and consciousness vanishes.

[ 17 ] While positive impulses bring about a sense of bliss and promote sleep, negative impulses hinder it even more than emotional turmoil. A person finds it extremely difficult to fall asleep when plagued by remorse. Under certain circumstances, impulses of the will can be an even greater obstacle than emotional stirrings to entering the spiritual world into which we are meant to enter. The life of the imagination makes it relatively easy; emotional stirrings make it more difficult; and remorse over actions for which we may reproach ourselves prevents us most of all from entering the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] Usually, our mental images—that is, our thoughts—keep watch over us; as we let the day’s images pass before our eyes, we usually fall asleep quite easily. But when sensations come into play, they are a less reliable sentinel; we fall asleep less easily when we are agitated. But what keeps watch over our sleep most of all, ensuring that we enter Devachan most successfully, are the impulses of the will—the impulses of the will that have led us to moral deeds. When, in our review, we come to a point that fills us with satisfaction, with moral satisfaction over a good deed in which our volitional impulse has found expression, then the moment of bliss is there, which carries us over into Devachan.

[ 19 ] If one considers what Spiritual Science tells us, one will find that there is already a correspondence between these observations and what is discovered through clairvoyance. For Spiritual Science tells us: Through his etheric body, the human being belongs to the astral world. Because he belongs to the astral world through his etheric body, he lives in his mental images as in something that is not at all characteristic of the physical world. The physical world gives us perceptions. But we must turn away from them, and then something remains: mental images. They are already something supersensible. Human beings have these mental images because the forces of the astral world reach into their etheric body, so that through their mental images, human beings stand in a certain connection with the astral world. Secondly, Spiritual Science tells us: emotional stirrings are something that is connected not only with the astral world, but also with a higher one; for human beings also experience emotional stirrings in connection with the lower Devachan. Thirdly, Spiritual Science and all occultism teach that through the moral effects of the impulses of the will, human beings are connected to the higher Devachan world, the world of the so-called formless Devachan.

[ 20 ] Thus, in human beings, these three types of soul life point to three types of connection with the higher worlds. Compare what is experienced in ordinary life with what Spiritual Science teaches. They correspond. Mental images do not hinder sleep; for we must enter the astral world through them. On the other hand, to enter the Devachan world, we must have emotional stirrings that allow us to enter a higher spiritual world. Such emotional stirrings, which cause us to toss and turn in bed, prevent us from falling asleep. The world of moral volitional impulses signifies our connection with the higher Devachan world. We will certainly not be admitted there if we do not have such volitional impulses about which we need not reproach ourselves. We cannot, therefore, fall into true sleep if we have pangs of conscience. We are barred from entering there. And the bliss described, which we feel upon performing a good deed, is like an outward sign of this: You may enter the Devachan world. — No wonder that people experience this as a bliss in which they would always like to live. They feel a kinship there with the higher Devachan world, so that they wish to remain there. Unless a person is a clairvoyant, they can form no other mental image of these highest states than the sensation of falling asleep, which occurs there as bliss and a moral feeling.

[ 21 ] In this way, we can show people: You have your inner life within you. The mental image you create manifests itself in such a way that it connects you to a higher realm, and does so in a way that makes it easiest for you to enter the higher world; it is related to the astral realm. What a person experiences in this way is like a shadow of the higher world. Emotional feelings separate us even more, because through them a person is connected to the lower Devachan world; impulses of the will, on the other hand, separate us even further, for they are connected to the higher Devachan world.

[ 22 ] However, all of this is connected to other facts: what is most influential in the Kamaloka after death are emotional states and moral impulses. Mental images of the sensory world fade away; only those of the supersensory realm can a person carry with them. In contrast, emotional stirrings pursue us with great intensity after death and remain. For it is they that keep us in the Kamaloka for a certain time. For example, a person who was entirely wicked would, due to his pangs of conscience, be unable to ascend to Devachan at all between death and rebirth, but would have to reincarnate without having done so. Without moral impulses, he would not ascend to the higher Devachan world; he would return shortly and have to make up for it. Since he had no good emotions, even the lower Devachan is closed to him.

[ 23 ] In this way, we can compare and demonstrate that we can gain an understanding of the facts of ordinary life and the ordinary life of the soul when we explain them through what Spiritual Science has to say.

[ 24 ] I would like to follow up on what I just said with another fact that will seem important to you when you turn your spiritual gaze to the doctrine of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives. If we repeatedly incarnate on Earth, there must surely be a certain purpose to it. After all, evolution would serve no purpose if we did not experience something through it! What is the point of reincarnation? Through spiritual insight, we come to see how vastly different human life is across the various ages. Let us think back to ancient times, when people spoke Greek or Latin and did what was customary back then! What is required today—sending children to school—only emerged much later. While today we view an illiterate person as uneducated, that was not the case in the past. Otherwise, our statistics would, for example, have to classify Wolfram von Eschenbach as an uneducated person. Something else that is not considered education today was, for example, common in ancient Rome: there, every Roman citizen—even the one plowing his field—knew exactly the content of the Twelve Tables and much else related to the structure of the civil state. The Roman had no need to run to a lawyer over every little thing. — That is one example. If these great differences were known, people would stop asking why we must be reincarnated as children again and again; surely that isn’t necessary! No, that is not the case! Every time we return, culture has changed so much that we must learn something new. So: We were born into entirely different circumstances, and it is absolutely necessary to keep coming back until the Earth has reached its destination.

[ 25 ] We can best distinguish what a human being can become across successive cultures if we recognize that the various qualities listed today as aspects of inner spiritual life develop gradually within external culture. A characteristic feature of our time is that, of the impulses listed, the greatest value is placed on the mental images. We live in a culture of the imaginative life. The intellect is developed. In Greek and Roman culture, people did not think as much, but they perceived more than people do today. There is something comical, yet at the same time something magnificent, in what the playwright Hebbel wrote in his notebook: Let us suppose that Plato were to be reborn; he would then be a college student and would have to read Plato in Greek, and the high school teacher, terribly dissatisfied because he does not understand Plato, would beat him. — That is what Hebbel wanted to dramatize. Well, on the one hand that is quite funny, but on the other quite understandable. For it is true that today the high school teacher creates a much more extensive mental image than even the great philosopher Plato did in his time. It’s just that today we view the world in a somewhat short-sighted way. Today’s farmer thinks more deeply than the Greek philosopher ever did. In contrast, back then, the faculty of perception was far more highly developed. Human beings were connected to the whole of nature. Perception was then what a mental image is for us now. Today, perception is hardly taught at all, except to those who undergo specialized training. It is quite possible for someone to go far in what they learn in a laboratory setting, yet remain very inexperienced in the outside world, unable to distinguish wheat from rye. So we can say that people today have a great deal of imagination, whereas back then they were trained in perception. Therefore, we can distinguish two epochs: an epoch of perceptions and one of mental images. Then a third will follow, through which the emotional responses will be developed that today are merely incidental. A person who begins to undergo a certain development must, in fact, already anticipate what general human culture is to become in later times. He must therefore foster these emotional responses. It can easily happen that a person has begun to develop their emotional responses toward higher worlds and then, in contact with other people, encounters the culture of ideas. They will then observe that sometimes the right thing was felt, and at other times the wrong thing. A purely intellectual person will, for logical reasons, accept the right thing and reject the wrong. It will be a long time before a higher cultural stage arrives in which one feels a sense of pleasure toward what is right and a sense of displeasure toward what is wrong. This then gives one certainty regarding true and false nature; for what is required is not merely a mental image of true and false nature. We do not have to spend much time proving a matter, since we grasp it in an instant. Today we must prove and develop. Then there will be no need to prove, but rather to please. Therefore, the culture of perception of the Greeks and the culture of imagination of our time will be followed by a culture of the soul when we incarnate again. Then a culture relating to impulses will follow; then the impulses of the will will undergo a great development. Those people who will incarnate there will pursue what is, so to speak, a Socratic ideal. Were it not so, a person, no matter how clever, could be an ideal scoundrel; Hamlet would have written in vain on his tablet that one can smile and always smile and yet be a complete scoundrel.

[ 26 ] The era of emotional upheavals will be followed by an era of pronounced morality. As occult research shows, a very special situation will arise then. Let us suppose that people were to become wiser and wiser. One can become so, according to today’s way of thinking. One can even use one’s cleverness to orchestrate evil deeds. But strangely enough, in the epoch two from now, what will happen is that the wickedness of the will impulses will have a paralyzing effect on intellectuality! This will be the peculiar feature of the moralistic cultural epoch: that immorality will have the power to kill intellectuality. A person of this epoch must therefore develop in such a way that their morality keeps pace with their intellectuality. We can thus say: We have the Greco-Roman culture as the age of perceptual culture, our own as the age of intellectual culture. Then comes the age of emotional culture, and following that, the age of true morality.

[ 27 ] It is interesting to observe how a significant impulse affects people during these successive cultural epochs. Here we must refer to what was said earlier, namely that the faculty of perception connects us to the physical, the faculty of imagination to the astral, the emotions to the lower Devachan, and morality to the higher Devachan.

[ 28 ] If, then, an impulse were to approach human beings in Greek and Roman times, they were trained to perceive especially that which approaches from the outside. Therefore, the impulse of the Christ event enters the world as an external perception. Now we live in the culture of mental images. Therefore, our cultural epoch will reach its goal through the fact that Christ will be known as something perceived from the astral world as a mental image. As an etheric figure, he will reveal himself from the astral world. In the next epoch, the epoch of emotional movements, human beings will express their emotional movements in a very special way in order to see Christ astral. And then, in the epoch of morality, Christ will reveal himself as the highest thing a human being can experience: as an I that shines in from the higher Devachan world.

[ 29 ] Thus, the perception of Christ will also continue to evolve. In their mental images and imaginations, people will now perceive Christ in a natural way.

[ 30 ] From these descriptions, we can see that a person can find a certain correspondence between what Spiritual Science says and what happens in the world—provided that the person responds to it in kind.

[ 31 ] These are the kinds of issues that a local association might address in order to answer some of the many questions through which people can approach the spiritual world.