The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven in Parables and in Reality

[ 1 ] People will only slowly and gradually come to realize the significance that Theosophy must increasingly assume for people of the present and the future. People will come to realize this as they immerse themselves in the understanding of certain things that are indeed hinted at in religious and occult writings, but which are usually not taken deeply enough. One could point to thousands upon thousands of passages in such religious and occult writings whose depth is not recognized at all because people only glance at them superficially. Today I wish only to point to a deeply, deeply significant passage in the Gospels: “To those who stand outside, the mysteries are revealed in parables, so that they see and yet do not see, that they hear and yet do not hear, that they understand and yet do not comprehend. But to you the mysteries of the kingdoms of heaven shall be revealed without parables, in their true form.” ^{1Mark 4:11ff; Matthew 13:11.}

[ 2 ] People usually don’t even think about the infinitely profound meaning of such a passage. What does this mean, and where are these most important parables that Christ speaks of to his disciples? The most important parables are those that people usually don’t even recognize as parables.

[ 3 ] Human beings perceive what they see in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms around them on the physical plane as reality, as something that actually exists. They see this animal, that plant, and form a mental image of these as things that are truly there. They see processes in the air and water and imagine these to be processes that truly exist. They do not. For all these processes in the natural kingdoms around us, everything that takes place in the air and water, is nothing other than processes in the spiritual world that reveal themselves through what happens in the physical realm. They are manifestations of spiritual processes. These are the true reality, the reality. Nothing is real except the spiritual world, and only when we can recognize the spiritual in all things and processes have we truly recognized reality. Everything in the physical world has only the value of a parable for what lies behind it, the spiritual world. We must learn to view all processes in the animal and plant kingdoms in this way, as well as everything we see in the human realm that makes an impression on the mind and the intellect. All of these are nothing but parables, and only those who learn to interpret them arrive at reality.

[ 4 ] Thus people go through the world, observing what happens around them, yet unaware that these are merely parables. Through parables, nature itself speaks to humanity; reality is only spoken of when the spirit is the subject. — Using images drawn from nature, Christ Jesus explains to his disciples events that pertain to the spirit. He speaks of the seed that is sown and experiences the most varied fates. This can only be a parable, because the things in nature are themselves parables. But then, when he makes it clear to his disciples that he is one with the spiritual nature of all existence, that he must pass through death, that that which lives within him and must be cast into death in order to then rise as a power for human souls and hearts—which he is to give to all people through this death— then he speaks of reality, for then he speaks of the Spirit and of what happens through this Spirit. Therefore, it is only true knowledge when a person gradually comes to understand the mysteries of the world in such a way that he comes to know what confronts him in the external world as a parable for spiritual processes. Indeed, the human soul is enriched fruitfully only when one can find this perspective toward the external world.

[ 5 ] When this external world gradually reveals itself to him as illuminated by the spirit, he begins to experience it differently than before; he finds traces of the spirit everywhere in its rhythms. We observe in ourselves a recurring rhythmic event: falling asleep and waking up. We know that within twenty-four hours, a person must repeat this brightening of normal daytime consciousness and then the descent into the state of sleep. If we now ask ourselves what in the wider world can be compared to this rhythmic alternation of sleeping and waking in human beings, many might think of the rhythmic alternation in the plant kingdom: the growth of plants in spring and their withering in autumn. In spring, humans see plants sprout and grow into summer; in autumn, they see the fruits ripen through the power of the sun, which streams into the earth in spring and summer. Everything then seems to be extinguished in winter, only to sprout again in spring. One might well compare one’s own waking in the morning to the awakening of physical nature, and one’s falling asleep to the withering in autumn. But that would be a grave error, one to which we must not succumb if we are to see the truth.

[ 6 ] What do we experience when we fall asleep? The astral body and the I go out. They leave the physical and etheric bodies. If we could now see what the physical and etheric bodies do at night, we would observe that they are engaged in an activity quite different from one that could be compared to withering in autumn. But one can only see this if one looks down from the spiritual world upon the physical and etheric bodies. There one sees them behaving differently than during the day. For during the day one sees that they wear themselves out, and when we are tired in the evening, this is merely a sign that we have worn out our physical and etheric bodies. Life in full daytime consciousness is a process of ruining, of causing our physical and etheric bodies to wither away. In the evening they are most worn out; then we fall asleep. And when we then look at them spiritually, we see how a purely vegetative activity begins in the physical and etheric bodies, which we can compare to what happens in spring. It begins there as if to bloom, to sprout, to turn green in the physical and etheric bodies, as if something were taking place within the human being that can be compared to what happens in nature outside in the spring. We must therefore compare the moment of falling asleep to spring, and the deeper we sleep into the night, the more we can compare what takes place within the human being to what happens outside in summer. For this vegetative activity in our body becomes ever more intense. But then, upon waking, it is like the autumn state outside in nature. With the awakening of consciousness comes that which causes the summer state to wither, and in the course of the day such a desolation of the physical and etheric bodies sets in that it is caused by the same process as the winter state outside, when the plants have withered and vegetative activity has died away. — Thus, in the Spiritual Science sense, we must compare falling asleep with spring and waking up with autumn.

[ 7 ] When falling asleep—that is, in the state of spring—the astral body and the ego now leave the physical and etheric bodies. Out in nature, it is indeed the case that the spirits of the earth, who are connected to the plant kingdom, free themselves, so to speak, from the physical aspect of the plant world in spring, and that it is only then that the plant world truly enters a state of active operation. In summer, these spiritual beings connected to the plant kingdom sleep, and in winter they awaken and permeate the planetary mass. One might ask: yes, while it is winter on one half of the Earth, it is summer on the other? — Well, the rhythmic interplay is such that when the spirits of the Earth leave the northern half of the Earth in summer, they move toward the southern half. They permeate and circle the Earth rhythmically. The same thing happens in human beings. He believes, of course, that his thinking, his consciousness, is only in his head, and when he is out at night, he believes there is nothing left within him that thinks. But in truth, it is so that the lower half of his body is active then, that a kind of thinking and consciousness different from the human one takes place there, so that a rhythmic circling also occurs within the human body. In spring we can say: Now the earth spirits begin to sleep; they have withdrawn from the part of the earth where it is summer. There is then a vegetative life, as in a human being when he falls asleep and the vegetative life begins in his body. In winter, however, the earth spirits are awake. There they are united with the earth, just as in a human being, in daily life, his waking consciousness is within him. When we stand on the earth in summer, we have physical nature around us, rejoicing in its physicality. There everything in the plant world sprouts and grows, and all the lower spiritual beings who are the architects of plant growth are also active there. In winter, however, when the blanket of snow spreads over the earth, when vegetative activity slumbers, we know that the highest divine beings, who are creating, working, and weaving in the cosmic universe, are around us; that the highest divine life, divine consciousness, is at work in the earth. This is how it is in winter, not as it is in summer. — This is what true Spiritual Science teaches us to recognize.

[ 8 ] Spiritual Science, which is able to penetrate these matters with full, clear consciousness, knows that when a person holds all this not only theoretically in their mind but can also feel it with their heart, they can say: O you rising power of spring and summer, you bring everything in physical nature to sprout and bloom; you call the elemental beings out of the earth to their work. — And during the summer, in midsummer, these lower elemental beings celebrate something like an ecstasy, like a paroxysm. That is when the summer solstice, the festival of St. John, is celebrated. Then comes autumn and winter, and there the human being should feel in the depths of their soul: With the waning of the outer physical forces of the sun, with the onset of winter, when everything outside dies away, when it grows darker and darker, then the highest divine-spiritual forces unite with the piece of earth on which we live; there we feel as if enveloped by these highest spiritual beings, feel that we belong to them in the depths of our soul. Thus we feel the deepest reverence when we know that, with the onset of winter, we may observe the spiritual forces so intimately related to humanity as they reveal themselves directly in our surroundings. Theosophy is called upon to help us come to know them. It will bring clarity to humanity regarding all of this.

[ 9 ] We know that Theosophy is meant to restore to us what people once possessed in a dreamlike, dim form of clairvoyance. We are reclaiming an ancient heritage of humanity. This was a dreamlike, clairvoyant revelation to humanity, and there is evidence that this was indeed the case. For this is why the Feast of St. John has been moved to the middle of summer: to lead people to the awareness that now the physical realm is at its fullest expansion, and now the lower elemental beings celebrate something like an ecstasy in the unfolding of their strongest powers. The time of the Feast of St. John is fixed based on an ancient human consciousness. In this ecstasy of the physical, human beings forget their spiritual nature; they surrender themselves to the immediate splendor of physical nature. But these ancient clairvoyants knew just as well that in winter the highest spiritual forces unite with our earthly body. Therefore, wherever that ancient consciousness could be active, it placed that festival—which is meant to signify that human beings feel united with the spiritual essence of the Earth—Christmas, in the middle of winter. A clairvoyant and knowledgeable humanity could never have placed the festival of the divine being, the Earth Spirit, in the summer season; rather, it had to be celebrated in the winter season. During this sacred time, the soul felt united with the divine-spiritual forces that then permeate the Earth. Christmas belongs in winter, just as the festival of St. John belongs in summer.

[ 10 ] When one becomes aware of how these festivals speak to us in the way that the ancient consciousness of humanity established them, one feels spiritually united with the meaning of these festivals. One recognizes what such an understanding is meant to awaken in the human soul.

[ 11 ] The descent of the outer physical sunlight, of the physical forces of the heavens, to Earth in spring, and the retreat of the spirit into the sacred spheres—just as the spirit of the human being retreats into the spiritual world at night —is wonderfully expressed in the Easter festival, which is set so that the constellation of the sun, moon, and stars is used to determine the date of this festival. How visibly the spiritual forces fall asleep in spring is expressed by this constellation. It is characteristic of our materialistic age that people think, because materialism demands it, of fixing the date of Easter, of setting it in stone—thus abandoning what gives it its meaning for the sake of industrial and commercial convenience. A true expression of the materialistic spirit of our time! It may indeed be convenient for settling certain accounts that Easter is not celebrated in April one year and in March the next, but it is precisely this determination of Easter according to the constellation in the sky that expresses how the earthly and the heavenly interact. In this determination of the festivals lies a great wisdom of primeval humanity. Admittedly, commercial interests will likely prevail, and Easter will likely be fixed to a specific date, but it would be a sorry state of affairs for that which humanity is meant to preserve if the meaning of such a festival were forgotten. Therefore, even if Easter is set according to external interests, Theosophy will be called upon to continue to regard it as a movable feast that can be fixed solely by the constellation of the Sun, Moon, and stars.

[ 12 ] Alongside the materialistic celebration of Easter, there will therefore be a spiritual Easter that we continue to celebrate in our hearts, so that we remain aware of our connection to the spiritual world. This spiritual Easter will be a parable for the spiritual process: In spring, the consciousnesses of the higher spiritual beings fall asleep, and the consciousnesses of lower beings emerge. In autumn, however, the high divine forces awaken, which remain connected in their consciousness to the Earth. — If one truly feels this, then one will also gradually recognize that human beings belong to the spirit in the first place and that external physical nature is only a parable. And human beings will increasingly want to know how they relate to the spirit, but not how they relate to external nature, the parable.

[ 13 ] We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and it has often been pointed out that this epoch is a repetition of the third, the Egyptian epoch.^{2See, among others, « The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity” (1911), GA 15, and “World, Earth, and Humanity: Their Nature and Development, and Their Reflection in the Connection Between Egyptian Myth and Contemporary Culture,” GA 105.} We live in such a way that what lived in ancient Egypt reemerges in our thinking, feeling, and willing. Now, during the Egyptian-Chaldean period, human beings were to develop primarily their connection with the world of the stars. Astrology was discovered and particularly cultivated during this period. At that time, people possessed direct clairvoyance regarding how the constellations are connected to human life and destiny. One looked deeply into the mysterious connections between the starry heavens and human destiny. There have been extraordinary, great spirits in modern times in whom this continued to work, as it were. They had, after all, also been incarnated during the Egyptian-Chaldean period, and in their subsequent incarnations, a deep, intuitive astrological knowledge shone upon them as if directly from an inner soul power. This was the case with the reincarnated Julian the Apostate and with Tycho Brahe. ^{3See Rudolf Steiner’s detailed remarks in the lectures of December 30, 1910, in “Occult History,” GA 126, and of September 16, 1924, in “Esoteric Considerations of Karmic Connections. Volume Four,” GA 238.
Tycho Brahe, 1546–1601, Danish astronomer, worked in Prague under Rudolf II; based on his numerous observations, his student Kepler was able to formulate his famous laws. He himself developed the Tychonic system of the world, which represents a kind of compromise between the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems of the world.
Julian the Apostate, 331–363, born Julian Flavius Claudius, Roman emperor. Although raised as a Christian, Julian turned to the ancient mystery cults, which is why he is also called Julian the Apostate (the Renegade). He was assassinated at the age of 31 during a military campaign in Asia.} He placed great importance on that mysterious connection between human destiny and the mysterious patterns formed in the constellations. It is now considered an irrefutable fact by science that Tycho Brahe was a great astronomer who discovered a number of new stars in the sky and drew a star map. Therefore, scientists say, it is forgivable that he was also an astrologer who used the stars to prophesy all manner of things to people. They forgive Tycho Brahe for having, through his profound astrological insights, predicted the death of Sultan Suleiman ^{4Suleiman II (Suleiman), 1495–1566, Turkish sultan, besieged Vienna in 1529, died on September 5, 1566, during a military campaign against Hungary. 5On the occasion of a lunar eclipse on October 28, 1566, Brahe recited several Latin verses at the University of Rostock in which he predicted the sultan’s death. A few weeks later, news of Suleiman’s death did indeed arrive. However, he had already died on September 5, that is, before the lunar eclipse, which some took as an opportunity to mock Tycho Brahe’s “prediction.” He, however, defended himself by going into detail about Suleiman’s horoscope, from which he had read the constellation of death. See “Tycho Brahe. A Portrait of Scientific Life and Work in the 16th Century” by J. L. E. Dreyer (German translation by M. Bruhns, Karlsruhe 1894), Chapter II.} when he was teaching at the University of Rostock. They forgive him for having astonished the world with such a prediction and say: that was merely a weakness of this otherwise great man, which must be overlooked. And they even forgive him that the sultan’s death actually occurred exactly as prophesied! — In Tycho Brahe, however, we see the ancient Egyptian wisdom shine forth once more. It must shine into our time, which is a repetition of the Egyptian era. Today, too, we must seek the connection between the earthly and the divine. But we must not only look out into the heavens; we must also study the parables of the divine worlds that we find in the physical world. We can find them in the smallest and the largest. If, for example, we study how the leaf bases are arranged on every plant, we will find, as we trace the line of how leaf after leaf attaches itself around the stem, that we obtain a spiral line. We see that the leaves grow in a spiral rhythm around the stem where the stem is stiff. In other plants, for example in field bindweed, we see the stem itself tracing this spiral line. People do not pay attention to such things. If they were to study such things, they would make a new discovery. They would see that this spiral movement depends on forces that are not at all on Earth, but that act down from the planets. These planets make a spiral movement in the heavens and act down in such a way that they cause the plants to make the same spiral movement around their stems. But the stem grows from the bottom up. This upward movement cuts through the spiral motion. This is the force that completes the upward movement, bringing the flower to bloom. This force flows from the Earth to the Sun and vice versa. One plant species is assigned to one planet, another to the other, based on its movement. A time will come when people will know how Venus or another planet moves. They will not know this from an external astronomical calculation, but rather by studying the plants, which are Venusian beings and whose spiral movement is a miniature reflection of the absolute movement of Venus. Up above, Venus traces the great spiral in cosmic space, and the plants imitate it in their movement through their small spirals. Their patterns imprint the celestial bodies into the earth through plant growth, and the Sun brings it to a close. It pours itself over everything and governs what the planets do. In the spiral growth of plants, one will study the interaction of the earthly realms with the heavenly realms. Plant growth is a parable for the realities of spiritual beings in the cosmos.

[ 14 ] In this way, we will discover the connection of individual physical beings to the cosmos. We will link them to the events in the cosmos, and thus we will gradually come to understand the connection of minerals, plants, animals, and even human beings—through their actions and destinies—to the cosmos. On a small scale, we are beginning to study such things in the manner we have done here today in the context of Spiritual Science. It will, however, take a long time to pursue these paths in science and to study these things in their true context based on occult sources. But it must happen.

[ 15 ] If one once again confronts the world in the spirit of today’s occult development and regards everything external as a sign and a parable, one will find in our “Soul Calendar” ^{5The “Anthroposophical Soul Calendar” was first published at Easter 1912. In the form given to it by Imme von Eckardtstein, the calendar has not been reprinted. In the new edition of 1925, Rudolf Steiner gave it the form that has been retained ever since; see “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe,” issue 37/38, 1972. The Soul Calendar is included in “Wahrspruchworte,” GA 40, and is also available as a separate edition.} a guide. But one must not believe that the symbols for the zodiac signs represent the signs themselves. The sign of Aries does not signify the constellation of Aries, but rather that the Sun or the Moon is in a specific relationship to this constellation and that special forces are at work there. These signs do not signify something placed in space, but rather that forces are active in one way or another. What we call space is a figment of the imagination. Spiritual forces act from everywhere, and these signs express how they act. For example, when the Sun stands above the constellation of Pisces in the morning as it rises, this constellation is the expression of a very specific way in which spiritual forces act down upon the Earth.

[ 16 ] We can sense all of this and translate it into imaginative insight. We have attempted to express in the calendar published this year by the Theosophical Society what can spring forth from our souls when we truly feel what radiates toward us from the spiritual world. There we find symbols other than the traditional ancient calendar symbols, as a new expression of what souls have to learn anew during this period. They came into being by following—with feeling, not with the intellect—what we have just considered as the rhythmic change on our Earth: the falling asleep of the spiritual beings connected to our Earth in spring, their awakening in autumn. A renewal of these things, which have been infused into our festivals from ancient clairvoyant wisdom, is necessary. They must be renewed because in the fifth epoch, that which was the wisdom heritage of the third epoch rises again.

[ 17 ] However, it must seem like the height of absurdity to outsiders that we placed the year 1879 at the beginning of our calendar. We wanted to draw attention to the fact that it is of the utmost importance to take the year of the Mystery of Golgotha as the beginning of our calendar, and not the year of Jesus’ birth. On a Friday, April 3, in the year 33, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And there also took place the birth of the I in the sense in which we have often characterized it. And it makes no difference whatsoever where on Earth a person lives, or to which religious denomination they belong; what came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha applies to all people. Just as it is a fact for the whole world that Caesar died on a certain day—and not a different day for the Chinese or yet another for the Indians—so it is a simple fact of occult life that the Mystery of Golgotha took place on that day and that it concerns the birth of the I. This is a fact of a wholly international nature. And one must wonder why certain quarters claim that what is being pursued here—our Rosicrucian theosophy, which regards the Mystery of Golgotha as the center of everything—is a theosophy tailored solely to German culture and unsuitable for other peoples.

[ 18 ] Where such claims are made, people are certainly not inclined to concern themselves with matters such as those we are engaged in here. They simply do not understand Christ or the Mystery of Golgotha. They spread distortions, and unfortunately, such distortions are also believed. But it is a sacred duty to protect people from error. It is certainly no pleasant task to tell them such truths, but it must be done. — Elsewhere, people say that the same law applies to everyone, yet they themselves break the law. The point is not that one says or publishes this or that, but that truth reigns among us and that truth is our sacred law.

[ 19 ] We want to reflect the birth of the “I” in our calendar. However, this means that we had to take the moment of this birth as our starting point. So we had to count from Easter to Easter, and not from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Day. If this perhaps causes new annoyance and provokes new mockery and scorn, we need not worry about it, for we know that if we were to merely repeat the old, the already existing, in the same way, no new life would arise. The same, repeated over and over, is death; the different, incorporated into the same, is life. But our calendar is a life’s work. And if we have made it very poorly this year, we will make it better next year.

[ 20 ] The second part, the “Soul Calendar,” is particularly important. There I sought to compile, week by week, such meditative formulas as the soul can experience inwardly through meditation, and which work in the soul in such a way that it finds the connection between its own inner experience and that which is directed by divine-spiritual beings in the course of time. These meditations truly lead to an experience of these beings when they are performed earnestly and devotedly. Long occult experience and research are condensed into these fifty-two formulas, which can serve as temporal formulas for an inner soul experience that can thereby be connected to the processes of divine-spiritual experience. They are something timeless that represents the relationship between the spiritual and the sensually perceived. Everyone will gradually come to appreciate the value of this “Soul Calendar,” which will retain its significance for years to come, and will gradually find the path from the human soul into the Spirit that permeates and weaves through the entire universe. But it is not so easy to fully make these meditative formulas one’s own in their deepest sense. This requires years and years of the human soul. Thus, this calendar documents not a mere whim that came suddenly, but an act that stands in an organic connection with our entire movement, and little by little it will be recognized why this or that is done differently within it.