The Destiny of Individuals and of Nations
GA 157
26 January 1915, Berlin
6. Spiritual Perception Essential at the Present Time
Due to circumstances, my departure has been postponed till tomorrow and so we can still have this evening together.
As usual, let us first of all direct our thoughts to the souls of those who are out at the front, having to stand up for the momentous events of our time.
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here of earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
And for those who have already gone through the gate of death:
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
May the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha—the spirit we have been seeking in our spiritual movement over the Years so that he was able to influence our mind deeply—may he be with you and with the hard duties you have to perform.
Dear friends, I want to use this extra evening we have been given, as it were, to comment on a number of unrelated points that may of value to us in one respect or another.
First of all let me point out that in spite of the materialism of the present age, or perhaps exactly because of the materialism of our age, the souls of people doing scientific work in certain fields are guided towards the existence of a spiritual world even though they do not really intend this. Let me give you a specific example. It would of course be possible to pick up a great many threads with regard to what I have just indicated, but I should like to refer to a pamphlet which has appeared quite recently. It is number twelve in a series now being published with reference to the war written by Professor O. Binswanger, the well-known psychiatrist, under the title Die seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges (The Psychological Effects of War).34O. Binswanger: Die Seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges in the series of political pamphlets entitled Der Deutsche Krieg. Stuttgart and Berlin 1914. It is not my intention to take up the more detailed points made by Binswanger concerning the psychological effects of war but merely certain comments he made in this pamphlet. A scientist like Binswanger now feels compelled, as it were, to do more than just hint at the existence of a spiritual life. Yet he also feels obliged to apologize for this, pointing out that the present age is not inclined, where the enlightened are concerned, to believe in any such thing as a life of the spirit or of the soul. In his pamphlet Binswanger refers to the more than well-known fact that there has been a major increase in nervous diseases in our day. He discusses a number of contributory causes and on page 10 makes the significant statement: 'It may seem strange to some of you that I put such great emphasis on the psychological element in these nervous conditions.' He is a psychiatrist entirely in the materialistic way, yet finds it necessary to speak of the psychological element, the soul element, as one of the causes of the diseases he is particularly interested in.
‘What does the psychological element have to do with a nervous stomach, with a nervous heart, nervous pain in the back, arms and legs? All I can say is that it is the general medical opinion that in the final instance, pathological nervous reactions in many different organs and parts of the body are largely due to disorders in the psychological sphere.’
We see how someone whose researches lead him to consider the facts of soul life is forced by those facts to confess that nervous stomach complaints, nervous heart complaints, nervous pain in the back and, indeed, also in the extremities—conditions as a rule only considered from the materialistic point of view today—have their causes in disturbances in the soul life.
The modern scientist will however tend to go no further than making this admission. He will go no further, not one step further. In the first place it has to be admitted that we are not getting anywhere if the causes of pathological processes of the kind described are sought only in the physical sphere. Yet people still lack the courage and energy to do some serious investigation of spiritual scientific aspects. The moment people hear anything positive relating to the field of spiritual science they feel they no longer have solid ground under their feet, as it were; as though everything we are able to gain from the spiritual world by applying the methods of spiritual science lacked the security of certainty. For a psychiatrist this is doubly fatal, one might say. If the causes of certain physical conditions lie in the processes occurring in soul-life, it will have to be admitted that the best way to deal with such conditions is through treatment directed at the soul life.
But how is one to treat a soul if one has not developed any concept as to how the soul relates to the body? The prescriptions for getting rid of spiritual disorders, as it were, can only be taken from the spiritual world. Yet it is only possible to perceive the relationship between the spiritual world and the outer material world if we know something of that spiritual world. And so one gets a peculiar lack of precision, lack of logic, very peculiar reasoning, when such people attempt to speak about the relationship between body and soul in a really positive way. This is something we can demonstrate in the case of this particular scientist. A few pages further on—on page 23—he says something very peculiar indeed. Wanting to speak of the Confidence he feels as to the successful conclusion of the German campaign in the light of his understanding of how the human soul is constituted, he says:
‘It is my conviction that the army whose soldiers have the better nerves will win, or, to put it in other words those with greater moral resilience.’
Let us consider this in all seriousness. A scientist who admits that the causes even of physical disorders, so-called nervous disorders, are psychological, says that victory is sure to go to the soldiers who have the better nerves, or—as he says—'...in other words, those with greater moral resilience'. It is hard to imagine anyone producing greater nonsense than this. Both statements are of course absolutely true, but it is nonsense to maintain that the one says the same as the other. Just imagine someone forming a very clear picture of the nervous system, able to trace this nervous system down to it smallest ramifications, and then saying that 'put in other words' stronger nerves are equivalent to greater moral resilience in a person. It means that purely physical nerve strands are, in other words, supposed to be moral resilience. The modern reader will, of course, fail to nonce such things. You will find he fails to notice the oddest things when reading anything he considers tremendously erudite. Such things are, nonetheless, genuine nonsense unless they are seen in relation to what spiritual science has to say about it. What view does spiritual science take of these things?
If we consider the moral power of a person, the moral element that ensouls him and fills the whole of his soul, it is in the first instance something entirely spiritual, nonphysical, something that has nothing to do with anything material. What we call the moral power of a soul is a spiritual power within it, in so far as this soul belongs to the spiritual world. When the soul returns to its body on waking up, as it always does, it uses the body as a tool for the physical world from the moment of waking until going to sleep. Between going to sleep and waking up the soul is living in the purely spiritual world, separate from its physical tool, the body,and it also gathers its moral power there. In the physical world, however, moral powers can be active only by using the physical body as their tool. They are in that case also active as spiritual powers. In the ego and astral body of man the element we call his moral power is active. It is something purely spiritual in them. But what does this purely spiritual element of moral power in the astral body and ego of man have to do with his nervous system?
Let me make a comparison. The moral power of a person has exactly as much to do with his nervous system as I have to do with the floor on which my feet are now standing. If the floor were not there, nor the ground on which it rests beneath it, I would be unable to stand here, being a physical human being. The floor has to be there, but it has nothing to do physically with anything within me. The floor or the ground has to be there for me to stand on. In the same way the nerves have to be there in the physical body merely to provide the Physical resistance which the moral powers of the astral body and the ego must encounter in the physical world in order to make their Presence felt.
There is another comparison I can make—one that really goes to the heart of the matter though it will be necessary to think it through in some detail before one can really see what lies behind it. I am going to use a comparison that again comes up in physical life.
Consider the process of digestion. It consists in some of the food stock becoming part of the organism whilst the rest is eliminated. If it were not possible for a certain part of our food to be eliminated, digestion would be impossible. The process of elimination has to be a very regular one. Yet no one would get it into their heads to say we obtain nourishment from the part of the food we eliminate. The processes going on in our nervous system when we develop moral Power within us are like processes of elimination, genuine processes of elimination in relation to what is fruitful for us, what really lies within us as our true human nature. The assertion of a specific moral impulse in the soul is connected with a process of elimination. The process of elimination—the part which drops out as it were, the waste material we produce—that is the process in the nervous system. This relates to what we are actually doing in the same way as the process of elimination relates to the process by which foods are assimilated in our digestion. People who refer to the spiritual process in which moral impulses are formed as a process in nervous system are really saying—with reference to another sphere—that human nutrition consists in elimination, and they then examine the products of elimination in order to establish what is particularly beneficial to man. That, then, is the back-to-front method used by materialistic science. The principle which the spirit has to eliminate in order to unfold is considered the real thing. In their efforts to get at the truth about the spirit modern scientists investigate exactly the things the spirit has no use for. The method is more or less like that used by someone examining the intestinal contents in order to find out what kind of substances man takes up into his muscles. One has to put this bluntly at times to show up the utter absurdity of modern materialism. The false picture produced by modern materialism carries such enormous conviction in the perverted mental climate of today that strong words have to be used in pointing out the nature of the terrible misconception which prevails.
I am now going to start from something quite different, though later we shall relate this to what I have already put before you. Let us consider the question of the different religious systems that have evolved in the course of human evolution. In the course of human evolution a number of different religious teachers have appeared, telling People one thing or another about conditions in the spiritual world. It really does not take much to arrive at a really clever view of those religious systems. (It is not really difficult to be clever in the present age, as we have seen with regard to a number of opinions held today. You know how this should be taken and that it does not imply criticism of the present age.)
Someone who may be considered clever can so easily point to the fact that different religious teachers have taught different things and draw the conclusion that none of it could therefore be true. For if it were to be true then surely they must all have taught the same. This in turn would lead to the conclusion that all the talk of higher worlds has been shown to be so full of contradictions that it cannot be considered to be based on anything that comes to mankind out of truth.
The only way of finding the right answer to the above question is to form an idea of how much of what man has lived through here on earth goes with him through the gate of death. You can easily form an idea of what we take with us if you consider the following. As soon as you close your eyes and put your hands over your ears you will see or hear nothing of the physical world around you. And now ask yourselves: How much of the impressions the soul takes into itself from morning to night, and how much of the ideas and concepts it holds within it, is in actual fact owed to the eyes and ears? If we had no eyes and ears, by far the greatest part of human soul content would simply not be there. Now, after death the human being quite definitely has neither eyes nor ears. Anything taken in through the eyes and ears can therefore only be carried through the gates of death through memory. There really is no need to reflect further on this. Anything taken in through the eyes and ears can only be carried through the gate of death as memory. The same applies to all the ideas we have formed on the basis of sensory impressions. And now you merely need consider how much has to be left behind when we enter into the spiritual world—everything which has come to man through external impressions is left behind.
What quality should an idea have if we are to take it with us through the gate of death? It most certainly cannot derive from any form of external impression; and one quality it must possess is that anyone thinking in materialistic terms will be able to say: ‘What you have before your mind's eye simply does not exist, for you are not able to see it with your eyes nor hear it with your ears.’ The nature of such an idea or concept must be such, therefore, that its subject is not perceptible to the outer senses, for anything we are able to perceive with the outer senses cannot go through the gate of death as an idea. My comment is that materialism is seduced into raising such objections because it is all the time talking of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ without really understanding the ins and outs of ‘'being’ and ‘non-being’. It is sufficient for our present purpose to consider just the German language. The verb sein (to be) derives from sehen (to see). Anything said to be in ‘being’ therefore is said to be no more than ‘something I have actually seen’. All the rest of the talk about ‘being’, is really nothing more than communication about that what has been seen. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that we should not speak of the things we take with us through the gate of death in terms of ‘being’, for that would imply that we must have seen them with our physical eyes.
What did the founders of religions want to give to people in the ideas they presented?
They wanted to present ideas to people that would strengthen the spirit within them, endow it with the power of inner light. On passing through the gate of death and entering into the supersensible world man would then carry his own light, being able to illumine what he finds there out of his own power. People find it very easy to say: When I get you to tell me of the supersensible worlds how can I know that all these ideas are really correct?' Let us imagine someone was spreading ideas about the supersensible worlds, ideas accepted by a number of people, and these were in fact wrong, or one-sided, or did not turn out to be correct in the sense we speak of things being correct in the outer physical world. In such a case it would still have been better for people to have taken up the wrong ideas than to have taken up no ideas at all concerning the supersensible world. Why? It would have been better because the soul has to make an effort in accepting any kind of idea about the supersensible world. You may take up correct ideas or incorrect ideas but you have to make an effort, and it is this effort which counts in the spiritual world when we go through the gate of death. It is this effort that will benefit us after death or, indeed, benefits us altogether when we enter into the spiritual world.
Let us assume we had made our own what is a completely wrong view of the spiritual world. By taking it up we have developed our soul forces just as a gymnast develops his limbs. And whatever we have developed will be ours and we carry it with us into the spiritual world. By taking it with us into the spiritual world we then have something there that is similar to our having eyes here on earth. We shall no longer be blind in the spiritual world. Even if it were to be the case that everything we have taken up was wrong and the only thing we have done is to make an effort, this means we shall have developed the eye of the soul so that we are now able to see what it there in the spiritual world.
Now the situation is that the teachings of the different religious teachers are in no way completely wrong. It is rather that the truth concerning the supersensible world has been presented from different points of view and only appears to be contradictory. The one must be taken to complement the other. What is essential is that all these religious systems have something in common, and this is that they all provide the human soul with concepts the soul uses to make itself strong to enter the spiritual world, so that the soul is raised from death in its spiritual depths. Individual religious teachers give to the souls what those souls are capable of receiving, depending on the conditions given in individual races—I would say depending on climatic conditions of the country and on the time when such teachers come forth. They all have in common that they give power and strength to the souls of men. We may also say they make them radiant within so that the souls may be real not only in the physical world but also in the spiritual world. Food to strengthen the soul is the universal truth that has been given to men in all religious systems, depending on the given situation.
Our own age is now faced with the necessity gradually to accept a different view of the spiritual world compared to what people of Past ages were able to take in.
Certain ideas which have evolved with the flowering of modern science need to be strengthened inwardly in our age, to grow in inward Power so that these very ideas enable the soul to be alive in the spiritual world and not dead. It is through this that something more profound—more demanding but also more profound—than anything achieved in the various religions arises for the soul of its own accord. I have given a number of reasons over the years as to why our age is the one called to spiritual science. What I'd like to say is the following: For anyone close to spiritual life it is evident wherever we go—and that is what Is so deeply moving for us today—that one of the elements that has to come into the life of the present age, one form of leaven, is spiritual science.
Many, many souls have gone through the gate of death these last months, gone through the gate of death in the full vigour of youth. I have already told you that in the normal course of events the human beings whose souls have now gone through the gate of death could have expected to live longer on earth. When a human being goes through the gate of death we know that first of all he lays aside his Physical body and then, after a relatively short time, his ether body. This ether body then belongs to the outer ether world and the astral body and the ego continue to belong to the person concerned. It is usually said that the ether body dissolves in the spiritual world. But the time it takes to dissolve differs greatly. When a person has grown very old, i.e. has reached what we may call a normal life-span, he will have used up the forces of his ether body so that it dissolves quickly. But when a person goes through the gate of death in the vigour of youth, his ether body could still have served him for many years. This ether body is a cohesive, structured whole. It will not dissolve immediately in the second case. It will separate from the astral body and the ego and these will go their own ways in the spiritual world. The ether body will separate from them, but it will not dissolve immediately. It will seem quite natural to you that the human being maintains a certain connection with the ether body which has separated immediately but still continues to be present in the spiritual ether. We are therefore able to say that the sphere of this spiritual ether—taking it in absolute terms, close to the earth's aura—contains a very considerable number of unused ether bodies, ether bodies with vigorous forces. It is particularly impressive to see, when observing the spiritual world as it is at the moment, that we find there such a large number of unspent ether bodies. Something else may be noted at every point where we are able to be in touch with the feelings of the dead with regard to these, their ether bodies. (You are, of course, free to believe this or not. My only claim to credibility lies in the power of truth contained in what I have been telling you over many years.) As to the feelings one may perceive in the dead in relation to their ether bodies, one finds that a spiritual whisper reaches one, as it were, from all those who have now made the sacrifice of death: ‘The time has come! Mankind will only make rightful use of the unspent energies within our ether bodies if it becomes conscious of its relationship to the spiritual world.’
Many, many energies stream from those unspent ether bodies. They enter our world and men will only use them rightly if they direct their thoughts to the spiritual world. Then the energies from ether bodies given in sacrifice will be energies to benefit mankind. That, as it were, is what the dead are calling out to us today: ‘Do not allow our ether bodies to be wasted. Do not let the time go by when the energies of our unspent ether bodies are able to serve the spiritual progress of mankind.’
There is a special point I wish to make. On one or more previous occasions I have described the way in which it is possible to help the dead. Under specific conditions the dead are able to benefit if we make accessible to them, by reading to them, what we attain to in spiritual science. I have pointed out that it means much to a person who has gone through the gate of death when we read spiritual scientific material to them in the spirit, when we form a vivid picture of that person in our mind and read a chapter of spiritual science to them, not aloud of course, but in our thoughts. It could also be several or, indeed, many persons. This may seem absurd to people who believe that the whole spiritual world is present around the human being as he enters through the gate of death so that there is no need for us to read to him. But it is not all that absurd. Of course, someone who has died does have the spiritual world around him, he finds himself within it. But just as someone here on earth understands only little of the world of the senses although he is within it, so someone who has died does not have full knowledge of the spiritual world merely by virtue of going through the gate of death, even though he will then be within that world. Such knowledge has to be acquired. When we read to someone who has died it is as though we were giving him food—it flows into him. In the time that lies ahead mankind will be able to achieve much strength-giving power where spiritual things are concerned by using the mantram I have always used at the beginning of our meetings: ‘Spirits of your souls, guardian guides...’ and so forth (in the version making reference to ‘those whom you guard in the spheres...’ for those who have fallen in battle). Usually this Method can be used only with the dead whom we have known personally, but this particular mantram can also be addressed to those among the dead who were not personally known to us. Having used this mantram with true reverence we are then able to read out into the unknown, as it were. Dead people who have gone to their death in consequence of the events of the present time will be able to receive this. They will be able to gain benefit from this connection with us and use it to influence cultural developments on earth through their ether bodies. They will be working together with the people living on earth to advance spiritual life.
There is something else we can achieve in this way. It is perfectly true that we have been living in an age of the most miserable materialism and that the events of the war have triggered something which clearly bears the marks of spiritual life. Anyone travelling through Germany and observing people spiritually could note an enormous difference in spiritual life between July 1914, or even earlier, and then in August, September and especially now. The difference which emerges is that before everybody had his own egoistic aura that was well closed in upon itself and clung to a person, as it were. Now a common aura may be seen, with people's thoughts flowing into it as something uniform. All thoughts going in one direction—that is something highly significant in spiritual terms. It means that for this time of war something has been created in the spirit that was not there before. This is quite undeniable.
But now imagine—for that is how it will have to be—that peace returns. Then souls will grow all the more empty and barren unless they are able to find some kind of spiritual asset out of their inner life. It is something men have need of at all times, that they direct their thoughts to something that has nothing to do with any external reality. In some form or other this strengthens them for the spiritual world. Ideas concerning the supersensible world will strengthen them with regard to the good powers in the supersensible world. Ideas not relating to the supersensible or ideas not justifiable with regard to the supersensible will also strengthen men for the supersensible world, though in that case for the Luciferic or Ahrimanic world. But it simply is part of the makeup of human beings that the spiritual wants to come to expression within them. We might put it like this: Man has to have something that does not hold true for the external world. If he has refused for a long time to take anything into his soul that does not hold true for the external world then there will be a reaction, a reaction to the effect that he will have to believe in something that does not hold true for the external world. Such beliefs may then take hold of human souls in the strangest way. Certain souls completely subject to materialism may nevertheless be religious in an external sense. And such souls may experience that reaction in a particular way. They may, for instance—how shall I put it—all be in accord in believing that some people, some race with its own culture, were a race of barbarians, and they may make this an article of faith. Leaving aside certain other aspects, this is nothing more than the soul's yearning for faith, for something that has no reality in the physical world. It is because they are no longer in the habit of applying their minds to what is genuinely supersensible that such men then fill their souls with the belief that some people or other are barbarians. This becomes an article of faith, a dogma, that is now as fanatically adhered to as they previously adhered to various religious dogmas. It is a substitute for a faith that has long been absent. We need to realize, however, that in the long run this will not do. Once peace has been restored People will no longer be able to have this real-world substitute that finds expression in the belief that some people or other are barbarians. And then emptiness comes, dreadful desolation. That is the prospect for those regions where people are today creating a faith, creating dogmas for themselves in a way that at times is downright disgusting, being nothing but lies. A terrible emptiness of soul will be experienced in those regions. And this emptiness of soul can only be combated if the unspent ether forces of those dedicated to sacrificial death are used in the right way, as I have described. That is why all of them are saying to us—reminding us, as it were, to use their ether forces rightly—and expressing it in form of a spontaneous discovery made as they went through death: ‘Now is the time!’ Mankind has to develop spiritually and these events must now be seen as a twilight state out of which a new Sun-state shall arise.
That is the thought which should fill the hearts and minds of those who suffer great losses: Our age desperately needs to become spiritual, and this will be possible only with help from the spiritual world. The means of providing such help have to come out of painful events like those we are now living through.
To the spiritual scientist it is immediately obvious that these events should not be considered from a materialistic point of view only. Yet a purely materialistic way of looking at these events is about all one can find. It may happen—and we have seen this happen—that a number of people in one part of the world feel that there is hostility towards them and therefore issue some form of proclamation. This proclamation reaches enemy territory and from this enemy territory the question is put: ‘Who was it who wanted this war?’ Or the other party is accused of having wanted the war. Again and again they forget the one thing which must be understood if a deeper insight is to be gained into the situation. Some good for the future will also come out of looking into things more deeply. It has to be understood that all these events are indeed willed out of the spiritual world, because the spiritual world needs the powers that may be the fruits arising from the seed of those unspent ether bodies. If accusations were to be levelled one would also have to level them at the spiritual world. But there all thought of blame goes from one's mind. There we become aware of the iron necessity which exists, the iron necessity which, from the point of view of the spiritual worlds, has to regard our earth world in about the same way as we have to regard a situation where it is necessary to consume so and so much, kill it, take it out of its natural context by force, in order to build up something else. We can not build a house unless we destroy so-and-so many rock formations' There is no point here in speaking of blame. We have to speak of necessity in this case. And in the same way it is necessary in the spiritual world to demand the sacrifices that are now being demanded because seed is needed. This seed consists in the unspent ether bodies which will then be present in all that develops for humanity, and these have to be available if evolution is to proceed. Otherwise mankind would lack the energies it needs to progress. Today's events have their outward significance but, in addition, we must also take these facts fully into account if we want to understand their true inward meaning.
Taking this point of view, we say to ourselves: I may not be able to know from the beginning if everything I am receiving from the spiritual world is ‘correct’, as they say. One thing is true, however, and that is that by uniting these revelations from the spiritual world with my own soul I am exerting my soul, and in this way I am giving it powers so that my soul grows luminous for the spiritual world, is given eyes for the spiritual world.
Conditions are, however, different in the spiritual world than they are in the physical world. In the physical world we can be satisfied once we have formed a thought and recognized its truth. It is sufficient for the practical life of the physical world to have perceived the truth of a thought just once. What I mean is this: If a body of judges wants to establish whether a person is guilty in a particular case, the matter is settled once the conclusion has been reached that the person is guilty. Everything that is necessary has then been done. In the spiritual world, however, everything has not been done once a conclusion has been reached or a thought has been formed. It is necessary for the thought to recur over and over again. What matters in spiritual terms is the repetition. It is not just a matter of knowing something about things but of ever and again making that thought present in the soul. This is also what meditative life is based on, that we have the content of the meditation present in the soul by constant repetition. Anything made constantly present in this way will truly have the power to act like the drops falling on a stone that will finally make a hollow. A single drop falling on to a stone will leave no impression. Nor will it do so if it falls ten times or a hundred times. But in the end it will make a hollow. When we take such things into our soul just once it might appear that they make no impression at all. Nor will they if taken in ten times. But if we are patient we can get to the point where we perceive the essential core that is eternal in man. It is the power we develop in the process that matters. People tend to run away from this power. They do not want it. Why is it that they do not want this power?
The question as to why people do not want this power, why they fight shy of spiritual science even today, can be answered if we briefly look again at the significance of the images for life after death presented in spiritual science. The images which are most important after death are those which do not depict anything belonging to the outer world, do not relate to external existence and are such that a crude materialist will say they are of no significance in life. Yet it is these images which are the most important after death. To form such images calls for such a great power of reflection, of deliberation and attunement, that it will make the soul strong, letting it experience itself, perceive itself, in the spiritual world. Those are the images the souls needs on going through the gate of death.
How can we gain such images? We know the answer. We do so by exerting the soul to a greater degree than it normally exerts itself. If we want to take in the images the modern scientist takes in we merely need to look, if necessary through a microscope or telescope. We can stay nice and passive as we receive impressions of the world and record them. That is only too common. No one likes to make an inner effort, for with things that are invisible it takes greater effort than with things that are visible. And greater effort in thought is what People shy away from, run away from. We are really inwardly lazy, if you will forgive such harsh words; we like to take things easy. The most profound characteristic of modern scientific endeavour is this inner laziness—going for the easy way, not wanting to call forth power from the soul. But if we do this, if we call forth such powers from the soul, what effect does this have after death? Well, we do gain something for life after death out of these powers we have called forth, but it is something we usually do not like at all, because we tend to live with a certain illusion. Let me tell you why we usuallY do not like it. When we enter the spiritual world through death or through initiation, something has to be experienced after death that is like a second death. It is a kind of second death- As you know, we later have to separate also from our astral body and this maY be done consciously or we can sleep through it. There is a certain fear in people's hearts which they do not interpret correctly. It is the fear of waking up so much after death that they will then be conscious of everything around them. That fear is entirely the same as the one men have in the physical world, where they would find it preferable not to live their physical life too intensively, not to be fully awake all the time, but rather go through life in a bit of a haze. Life would be more pleasant that way. And the most comfortable way of all would be to spend all one's life in bed, going through life half asleep. Yet this cannot always be done. The human being has to wake up. And if he has been in a haze concerning what happens after death up to the point in time I have mentioned, he cannot be allowed to go on being in a haze after death. Man must wake up. But he is still afraid of this! Even people who come as close to spiritual science as a scientist who says that nervous disorders affecting the back, the arms and the legs arise from the soul sphere will struggle to resist. He will struggle because he is desperately afraid. He will be like someone who says: 'Something is missing. It's been stolen. The wind cannot have carried it away, so it cannot have been removed by natural forces—some person must have taken it.' And he will stop at that point. He won't go further because he is afraid he may get beaten up. That is how some scientists behave, Binswanger for example. They say that certain nervous disorders affecting the arms, legs and so on are psychological in origin. But they will stick at that. They do not go further because they are afraid of getting beaten up—ahem!—I mean because they like to sleep through what goes on in the spiritual world.
Something we have to become aware of is that modern scientists actually are brought face to face with the effects produced by the spiritual world but refuse to tackle that world. Once these scientists are prepared to tackle the spiritual world they will have to understand that it is not permissible to talk about conditions relating to the spiritual world in just any kind of general terms, but that spiritual science has to be approached in a positive way so that the very act of turning one's mind to spiritual science becomes a kind of healing Process. That is how one thing goes with another. It is not that mental illness as such has increased—it would be wrong to think so—but it is a fact that the type of condition we may call a nervous disorder has spread a great deal in more recent times. If things continue the way they have been going until now the result will be that nervous disorders have to get worse and worse and this will show itself in the course human evolution is taking.
It would be possible to quote some very interesting facts. Let us take one very simple case. There is the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling [1830-89], an excellent poet, some of whose work has also been presented to this group. This man spent much of the second half of his life in bed. He was very ill suffering from a serious illness that was gradually getting worse and worse. He did not develop a nervous condition, however. There is nothing of a nervous quality about his writing. Even when he was only able to lie on one side and was in the most terrible pain when writing, his style was not what we would call 'nervous'. The reason is that he belonged to that Central European culture which has not yet fallen into nervousness the way the spiritual life of other European peoples has done. The nervous state does not take anything away from the life of the spirit, but the facts still must be seen clearly. I have seen how in the 1870s and 1880s People still had a feeling for the things Robert Hamerling had to offer, for instance, and then suddenly in the 1880s tremendous enthusiasm came up for Dostoevsky. [1821-81] Of course I do not want to take anything away from Dostoevsky, but what he mainly has to offer is a very nervy, twitchy art, however great. Such nervy art would develop if the stream of materialism were to go on and on, for Dostoevsky's art is materialistic even if it is psychology’.
If this is not to happen it will be necessary to develop the great powers which the human soul has to come up with to enter into lines of thought like the one that says Saturn, Sun and Moon are earlier stages of earth evolution. Just try and present ideas like Saturn evolution, Sun evolution and so on to a proper modern man, expecting him to exert his mind to the point where such things seem absolutely natural. It is possible to find such things absolutely natural, but the soul has to make considerable efforts to reach that point, and the result will be that the nervousness is driven out. It does require patience, but the nervousness will be driven out. The general nervousness which would otherwise affect the whole of human civilization will be cured if men take up what arises from spiritual science through the widening of the spiritual stream. In a situation where mankind is in danger of going all twitchy, spiritual science comes from the other side to offer a cure.
A psychiatrist who has not yet entered into spiritual science will have to admit to himself that nervous symptoms are on the increase. On the basis of spiritual science, however, he may then perhaps be forced to admit that the best cure for nervous conditions is to tell his patients: ‘Take a book on spiritual science for three-quarters of an hour every day and try to think it through; this will make your nerves much stronger.’ They will definitely get stronger. But we shall only be able to believe this if we clearly understand that our soul life relates to nerve function only in so far as it initiates processes of elimination, as we have shown in the comparison made at the beginning of this lecture. The soul life cannot be cured by putting particular emphasis on eliminatory processes but only by strengthening from within the aspect which has nothing to do with the eliminatory processes. The soul must impregnate this by letting spiritual energies stream into itself. A time will come when prescriptions are written on the basis of spiritual science, prescriptions making use of one thing or another that can only be found through spiritual science, and this will apply particularly to the diseases of more recent times. Of course we are not anywhere near it yet. For a long time to come it will be thought that there is sufficient evidence to show that any kind of therapy that could be labeled ‘mystical’ is claptrap. The label ‘mysticism’ will be all the more freely applied the less people know what mysticism really is. We are the ones who use the term ‘mysticism’ least often. We use it only as a technical term. On the other hand, it is used most of all by people who have no idea as to the nature of mysticism.
In getting a clear idea of these things we cannot hide from the fact that we are living in a significant time of crisis. I have said on a number of occasions that I am not in the habit of saying we live in a time of transition. Every period has something that went before and something that is to follow. The point is to recognize the concrete nature of the transition, the specific sense in which a time is one of transition. In our own time, the concrete part of it is that everything that is now happening points to one thing: Men must find the way to Comprehend the spiritual worlds. They will find calm, inner firmness and inner certainty in those spiritual worlds. That is what mankind is in absolute need of.
If you want to let this idea really come to life in your soul of how a new kind of calm has to be won for the soul out of spiritual science, it is a good idea to meditate on the following. It is truly significant that for the last three or four centuries people gradually had to accept the idea that they are rushing through space, genuinely rushing through space. Of course anybody can say they know this. But people do not usually reflect on this—a fact they already learned at school—that they are rushing through space at tremendous speed.
This more or less brings to mind the story of the man lying in a ditch who was very comfortable as he lay there and yet felt highly dissatisfied. Asked as to the reason for his dissatisfaction, seeing that he did not have to do anything, he replied that after all he had to revolve around the sun with the earth but would find it more convenient to stay behind. That was a man who had taken the notion of that revolution seriously. As a rule people do not think about this, for there is an element in man which he does not normally keep in mind.
To continue in our line of thought: Over the last three or four hundred years people have got used to the thought of being part of the earth as it rushes through space. Resistance has to be put up against this, resistance coming from cosmic space. It really is true that there Was a feeling of security in the old thought that the earth stood still and the sun was moving. Now it will be a long time yet before people come to realize that the Copernican view Copernicus, Nicolas (1473–1543). is not correct. Things are not the way they are taught today. It will however be possible to reach a point where life is brought into the concepts of non-physical science to the effect that a person may be sitting in a railway carriage or travelling by boat and make such inner efforts to counteract the rumbling noises that he will cease to hear them, being wholly contained within himself. That can only be done today with the help of spiritual science-It must be remembered, however, that constant repetition will be required, for it is the strength developed in the process that matters. Then we remain contained within ourselves, calm and sure. This is a good subject for meditation: The powers of the spiritual world will be able to come in and join us if we go out to meet them in the right way in such calm. They can only enter into our awareness if we go out to meet them with the kind of living idea I have described to you
That characterizes the period of transition we live in. That is the transition in which we really find ourselves. A longing for the spiritual world is definitely present in human souls, though most people do not yet know it. A conscious longing for the spiritual world will however develop out of the particular events that now involve such a large part of the earth. Something the spiritual scientist is already aware of today is that all the unused ether bodies given in sacrifice will release a truly profound longing for the spiritual world. This most profound longing will come, the longing for a truth that has to be won not through external observation but inwardly, through efforts made by the soul. The German spirit is indeed prepared for this. It is prepared for a truth that reveals itself to be true out of itself, not requiring external verification. The German spirit is prepared for this and evidence of this may be found everywhere. The thoughts of those who were truly working within the essence of the German spirit have always taken the form of considering truth to be an inner gift of the human soul. What would such a person say to many of the things happening in the present time? During the first days of August statements appeared in the foreign press that Hamburg fay in ruins, that the Russians had entered Stettin and even Cologne. And all kinds of other things were spread about as well. As you know, the Emperor Franz Joseph died on 8 September!36Rudolf Steiner was using irony here, referring to a rumour. Franz Joseph died on 21 November 1916. What would a person of the type I characterized above have to say to this?
‘Brass may be sold for gold by some, forged bills of exchange rather than genuine ones, more than one side may claim a lost battle as a victory, and other lies concerning physical things and isolated events may be made credible for a time. But when it comes to knowledge of the essential reality where the conscious mind has direct certainty of its own existence, the thought of deception or illusion falls away.’
That could have been written out of the depths of what had to be experienced today. It was written by Hegel37Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831). See Phänomenologie des Geistes (VIb); Die Aufkärung (Phil. Bibl. Bd. 114, Leipzig 1907 p.358). who died in 1831. This is What is so strange: if someone is profoundly moved by the inner reality of truth he will say things that hold true for all times. What has been said out of an awareness of truth can be put forward again at all times. This is something that has to be said concerning the particular nature of the Central European spirit, concerning its very Special relationship to the truth. No one who takes the trouble to find out about these things can deny it. Today one has the feeling, of course, that one needs to ask again and again: ‘For what purpose have People been studying history?’ Perhaps they never actually have. It really is as though their souls had only been born after 1 August 1914, making no use at all of anything that happened earlier to help them form an opinion. But in the final instance all this exists only to make the reaction all the more powerful and intense, to arouse an even more powerful and intense desire for a truth that is true in itself. That is the nature of the transition we are going through now, at a time when this inner bond with the truth is often lacking and shows itself to be lacking. The reaction will be a most profound longing for the truth. Then the souls incarnated in bodies here will hear what those other souls are saying to them, the souls which have prepared themselves through their sacrificial death at this time to learn more of the truth than is generally known today.
That is what I have wanted to say to you in this lecture, to reaffirm once again what I have said on several occasions now in our time Concerning the way the events of the present time speak to us in a living way. For it is true: these events do speak of it. They offer courage and comfort to those who surrender to them ready to make sacrifices, to those who feel grief in considering the events of the present time—courage and comfort to lend new strength:
Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.
Sechster Vortrag
Da verschiedene Umstände mich erst morgen abreisen lassen, so können wir heute noch hier zusammen sein.
Wir lenken wiederum, wie üblich, zuerst unsere Gedanken nach den Seelen derjenigen, die draußen im Felde stehen und mit Leib, Blut und Seele für die großen Ereignisse der Zeit einzustehen haben:
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter,
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Erdenmenschen,
Daß, mit eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.
Und mit Bezug auf die bereits durch die Pforte des Todes Gegangenen:
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter,
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Sphärenmenschen,
Daß, mit eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.
Und der Geist, der durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist, den wir die Jahre hindurch gesucht haben in unserer geistigen Bewegung, der dadurch unserm Gemüte nahegegangen sein kann, er sei mit euch und euren schweren Pflichten!
Meine lieben Freunde, ich will den heutigen außerordentlichen Abend gewissermaßen zu einigen abgerissenen Bemerkungen benutzen, die uns nach der einen oder anderen Richtung nützlich sein können. Zuerst möchte ich darauf hinweisen, wie trotz des Materialismus unserer Zeit oder vielleicht gerade wegen des Materialismus unserer Zeit die Seelen gerade der forschenden Leute, der auf gewissen Gebieten forschenden Leute, man möchte sagen, trotzdem sie es nicht recht wollen, hingelenkt werden nach dem Vorhandensein einer geistigen Welt. Ich möchte an Bestimmtes anknüpfen. Man könnte natürlich von dem Gesichtspunkte aus, den ich eben angedeutet habe, an sehr, sehr vieles anknüpfen; aber ich möchte auf eine Broschüre zurückgreifen, die vor ganz kurzer Zeit erschienen ist, eine der Broschüren, die anknüpfend an den Krieg jetzt erscheinen, an das zwölfte Heft, das von dem bekannten Psychiater Professor Dr. O. Binswanger geschrieben ist und den Titel trägt: «Die seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges.» Ich will aber nicht an die Ausführungen anknüpfen, welche Binswanger im engeren Sinne über die seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges geschrieben hat, sondern an einige Bemerkungen, die er auch in dieser Broschüre gemacht hat. Ein Forscher wie Binswanger fühlt sich gewissermaßen heute gedrängt, nicht mehr nur so leise auf das Vorhandensein eines geistigen Lebens hinzuweisen, indem er sich gleichsam bemüRigt fühlt, sich zu entschuldigen und darauf hinzuweisen, wie unsere Zeit gar nicht geneigt ist, von seiten der aufgeklärten Leute so etwas wie ein geistiges oder seelisches Leben anzunehmen. Binswanger spricht in seiner Broschüre über die ja sattsam bekannte Tatsache, daß in unserer Zeit die nervösen Krankheiten sich wesentlich vermehrt haben. Er spricht über verschiedene Ursachen, die dazu beigetragen haben, und sagt dann sehr bezeichnend auf Seite 10: «Es wird manchem von Ihnen befremdlich erscheinen, daß ich bei diesen nervösen Krankheitszuständen das Seelische so stark in den Vordergrund stelle.» Also, er ist ja ein Psychiater ganz nach materialistischer Art, muß aber doch unter den Ursachen gerade derjenigen Erkrankungen, die ihm naheliegen, das Seelische anführen. «Was hat das Seelische mit einem nervösen Magenleiden, mit einem nervösen Herzen, mit nervösen Schmerzen im Rücken, in den Armen und Beinen zu tun? Da kann ich Ihnen nach übereinstimmenden ärztlichen Urteilen nur sagen, daß im letzten Grunde der Dinge die krankhafte nervöse Reaktion in den verschiedensten Körperorganen und Körpergebieten größtenteils auf Störungen seelischer Vorgänge beruht. »
Also wir sehen, wie die Tatsachen demjenigen, der durch seine Forschung genötigt ist, sich mit den seelischen Tatsachen zu beschäftigen, das Geständnis abringen, daß die Ursachen dessen, was man so vielfach nur materialistisch betrachtet: nervöse Magenleiden, nervöse Herzbeschwerden, nervöse Schmerzen im Rücken, ja selbst in den Gliedmaßen, in den Störungen des seelischen Lebens liegen.
Nun aber bleibt allerdings der heutige Forscher bei einem solchen Eingeständnis gewöhnlich stehen; er geht nicht weiter, geht ganz und gar nicht weiter. Denn was zunächst zugestanden werden muß, das ist, daß man nicht damit auskommt, nur im Körperlichen die Ursachen solcher Vorgänge, wie der angeführten, zu sehen, aber den Mut und die Kraft, nun wirklich auf irgend etwas Geisteswissenschaftliches einzugehen, den haben die Menschen noch nicht. Denn in dem Augenblick, wo sie irgend etwas Positives aus dem Gebiete der Geisteswissenschaft hören, da fühlen sie sozusagen, wie wenn sie keinen sicheren Boden mehr unter den Füßen hätten, wie wenn alles schwankend wäre, was man so nach den Methoden der Geistesforschung aus der geistigen Welt hervorholen kann. Für den Psychiater ist das, man möchte sagen, eine doppelt fatale Tatsache. Denn wenn die Ursachen für gewisse körperliche Zustände in den Vorgängen des seelischen Lebens liegen, dann muß man zugeben, daß die besten Mittel zur Beseitigung solcher Zustände auch in einer seelischen Behandlung liegen. Wie soll man aber eine Seele behandeln, wenn man sich keine Ahnung davon verschafft, wie die Seele mit dem Körper zusammenhängt? Es können sozusagen die Rezepte für die Wegbringung der geistigen Störungen ja nur aus der geistigen Welt entlehnt werden. Aber den Zusammenhang zwischen der geistigen Welt und der äußeren materiellen Welt erkennen, das kann man nur, wenn man etwas von der geistigen Welt weiß. Daher das Merkwürdige, das merkwürdig Unbestimmte, Unlogische, Sonderbare, was dann eintritt, wenn nun solche Leute wirklich positiv über den Zusammenhang des Körperlichen mit dem Seelischen sprechen wollen. Und das können wir bei demselben Forscher konstatieren. Ein paar Seiten weiter — Seite 23 — sagt derselbe Forscher etwas höchst Merkwürdiges; denn wo er davon sprechen will, welche Zuversicht er selber nach seinen Anschauungen über die Seelenkonstitution des Menschen für einen glücklichen Ausgang des deutschen Feldzuges hat, da sagt er: «Nach meiner Überzeugung wird das Heer siegen, dessen Soldaten die besseren Nerven haben, oder in anderer Fassung: den größeren moralischen Widerstand besitzen.»
Nehmen wir die Sache nur ganz ernst: Der Forscher, der also anerkennt, daß die Ursachen selbst für körperliche, sogenannte nervöse Störungen in seelischen Zuständen liegen, der sagt, daß diejenigen Soldaten sicher siegen werden, welche «die besseren Nerven haben, oder» — nun sagt er — «in anderer Fassung: den größeren moralischen Widerstand besitzen». Man kann sich kaum denken, daß jemand gewissermaßen einen größeren Unsinn zustande bringen kann — obwohl beide Sätze selbstverständlich absolut wahr sind — als zu sagen: Das eine ist eine andere Fassung des anderen. Denn man stelle sich nur einmal vor, jemand bilde sich eine ganz klare Vorstellung vom Nervensystem, könne dieses Nervensystem bis in seine geringsten Verzweigungen hinein verfolgen, und er nenne dann die stärkeren Nerven eines Menschen in anderer Fassung: den größeren moralischen Widerstand. Das heißt also: rein physisch-materielle Stränge sollen in anderer Fassung moralischer Widerstand sein! Über solche Dinge liest selbstverständlich der Leser der Gegenwart hinweg. Man macht die merkwürdigsten Entdeckungen, über was alles er hinwegliest, was er oft ungeheuer geistreich findet; aber solche Dinge sind nicht minder ein wirklicher reeller Unsinn, solange sie nicht auf das zurückgeführt werden, was die Geisteswissenschaft darüber zu sagen hat. Wie hat man nun geisteswissenschaftlich diese Dinge anzusehen?
Wenn wir die moralische Kraft eines Menschen, was ihn moralisch beseelt und durchseelt, ins Auge fassen, so ist dies zunächst etwas rein Geistiges, etwas, was nichts mit einem Materiellen zu tun hat, Und was wir die moralische Kraft der Seele nennen, das hat sie als geistige Kraft, insofern diese Seele der geistigen Welt angehört. Wenn nun diese Seele, wie es ja immer beim Aufwachen geschieht, in ihren Leib zurückkehrt, dann bedient sie sich des Leibes vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen als eines Werkzeuges für die physische Welt. Vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen lebt die Seele in der rein geistigen Welt, abseits vom Leibeswerkzeug, und sammelt auch dort ihre moralische Kraft. Aber in der physischen Welt können sich die Moralkräfte nur durch das Werkzeug des physischen Leibes betätigen. Da betätigen sie sich auch als geistige Kräfte. Im Ich und astralischen Leib des Menschen ist dasjenige tätig, was wir moralische Kraft nennen; das ist da drinnen etwas rein Geistiges. Aber was hat das, was da als rein Geistiges an moralischer Kraft im astralischen Leibe und Ich des Menschen ist, mit dem Nervensystem zu tun? Nun, ich will einen Vergleich gebrauchen. Genau so viel hat die moralische Kraft des Menschen mit seinem Nervensystem zu tun, als ich zu tun habe mit dem Boden, auf dem jetzt meine Füße stehen. Wenn der Boden nicht da wäre und darunter ein weiterer Boden, auf dem der erste ruht, so könnte ich als physischer Mensch nicht hier stehen. Der Boden muß da sein, aber er hat mit dem, was in mir selber ist, physisch nichts zu tun. Damit ich mich aufstellen kann, muß der Boden da sein. Ebenso müssen im physischen Leibe die Nerven da sein als bloßer Widerstand, damit die moralischen Kräfte des astralischen Leibes und des Ich in der physischen Welt Widerstand haben, erscheinen können, da sein können. Ich werde noch einen andern Vergleich gebrauchen, der aber schon ganz auf den Kern der Sache geht, obwohl es eines genaueren Durchdenkens wird bedürfen, um ganz einzusehen, was dahinter steckt. Ich werde einen Vergleich gebrauchen, der wiederum vom physischen Leben ausgeht.
Nehmen wir den Prozeß der Verdauung. Bei der Verdauung geschieht das, daß ein Teil des aufbewahrten Nahrungsstoffes in unseren Organismus übergeht, der andere Teil dagegen abgesondert wird. Wenn ein gewisser Teil der Nahrungsstoffe nicht abgesondert werden könnte, dann würde unsere Verdauung unmöglich sein. Diese Absonderung muß ganz regelmäßig vor sich gehen. Aber keinem Menschen wird es einfallen zu sagen, er ernähre sich von dem, was er absondert. Die Nervenprozesse, die nun in unserem Organismus vor sich gehen, wenn wir eine moralische Kraft in uns entwickeln, verhalten sich zu dem, was fruchtbar für uns ist, was wirklich in uns als eigentliches Menschenwesen ist, wie Absonderungen, richtig wie Absonderungsprozesse. Wenn wir einen bestimmten moralischen Impuls in der Seele geltend machen, dann ist das verbunden mit einem Absonderungsprozeß. Dieser Absonderungsprozeß, das was herausfällt, was wir sozusagen als Abfall in uns erzeugen müssen, das ist der Nervenprozeß. Und dieser Nervenprozeß verhält sich zu dem, was wir eigentlich tun, genau so, wie sich der Absonderungsprozeß bei der Verdauung verhält zu dem Aneignungsprozeß der Nahrungsmittel. Also diejenigen, welche den geistigen Prozeß des Bildens moralischer Impulse einen Nervenprozeß nennen, tun im Grunde genommen nichts anderes, als daß sie, nur auf einem anderen Gebiete, sagen, das menschliche Ernähren besteht im Absondern, und die dann die Absonderungsprodukte untersuchen, damit sie finden können, was eigentlich dem Menschen besonders zuträglich ist. So verkehrt verfährt eigentlich die materialistische Wissenschaft, indem sie das, was der Geist absondern muß, damit er sich entfalten kann, als das eigentliche Wesen betrachtet. Gerade das, was der Geist nicht brauchen kann, untersucht die moderne Wissenschaft, um hinter den Geist zu kommen. Sie verfährt dadurch ungefähr so, wie jemand verfahren würde, der den Darminhalt untersuchen würde, um zu erkennen, welche Stoffe der Mensch in seine Muskeln aufnimmt. Man muß sich manchmal hart aussprechen, wenn man die ganze Absurdität des modernen Materialismus ins Auge fassen will, weil das Trugbild, welches durch den modernen Materialismus entsteht, eine so überwältigende Überzeugungskraft für die verkehrten Anschauungen der Gegenwart hat, so daß man schon mit starken Worten darauf hinweisen muß, worinnen eigentlich die furchtbare Verkehrtheit besteht.
Nun werde ich von etwas ganz anderem ausgehen, um nachher wieder an das anzuknüpfen, was ich vorausgeschickt habe. Wir werden uns einmal die Frage vorlegen: Wie ist es denn mit den im Verlaufe der Menschheitsentwickelung nach und nach erschienenen verschiedenen Religionssystemen? Da sind im Verlaufe der Menschheitsentwickelung verschiedene Religionslehrer aufgetreten und haben dies oder jenes über die Verhältnisse der geistigen Welt den Menschen mitgeteilt. Es gehört wirklich nicht besonders viel dazu, um im Hinblick auf diese Religionssysteme zu einem sehr gescheiten Urteile zu kommen, denn Gescheitsein — das haben wir an verschiedenen Urteilen aus unserer Zeit gesehen - ist nicht besonders schwer in unserer Zeit. Sie verstehen, wie das aufzufassen ist und daß nicht eine Kritik unseres Zeitalters damit gemeint ist. Es kann leicht ein sogenannter gescheiter Mensch darauf hinweisen, daß die verschiedenen Religionslehrer alle Verschiedenes gelehrt haben, und er kann daher zu der Ansicht kommen: also müßte alles nicht die Wahrheit sein; denn wenn es der Wahrheit entsprechen sollte, müßten sie alle dasselbe gelehrt haben. Und daraus könnte man dann wieder den Schluß ziehen, daß eigentlich alles Reden über die höheren Welten - durch die vielen Widersprüche, die sich dabei herausgestellt haben — nicht auf irgend etwas von der Wahrheit den Menschen Gegebenes zurückgeführt werden könnte.
Nun kann man sich die angedeutete Frage aber nur dann richtig beantworten, wenn man sich eine Vorstellung davon bildet, was man durch die Pforte des Todes mitnimmt von dem, was man hier auf der Erde durchlebt hat. Sie können sich leicht eine Vorstellung über das bilden, was man sich mitnimmt, wenn Sie daran denken: sobald Sie die Augen schließen und die Ohren sich zuhalten, so hören und sehen Sie nichts von Ihrer sinnlichen Umgebung. Und nun fragen Sie sich einmal: Wieviel von dem, was vom Morgen bis zum Abend die Seele an Eindrücken in sich birgt, und wieviel von dem, was sie an Vorstellungen in sich trägt, die Seele im Grunde genommen den Augen und Ohren verdankt? - Wenn man also keine Augen und Ohren hätte, so würde der weitaus größte Teil der Inhalte der menschlichen Seele überhaupt wegfallen. Aber nach dem Tode hat der Mensch ganz gewiß keine Augen und keine Ohren. Was er also durch Augen und Ohren aufnimmt, das kann er nicht anders als durch die Erinnerung durch die Pforte des Todes tragen. Darüber sollte es weiter kein Nachdenken geben, daß man das, was durch Augen und Ohren, überhaupt durch die Sinne aufgenommen wird, nur als Erinnerung durch die Pforte des Todes tragen kann. Ebenso ist es mit allem, was wir uns als Vorstellungen bilden, die durch die Sinneseindrücke veranlaßt sind. Und nun brauchen Sie nur darüber nachzudenken, was alles beim Eintritt in die geistige Welt zurückgelassen werden muß: alles wird zurückgelassen, was durch äußere Eindrücke an den Menschen herankommt.
Was muß also eine Vorstellung, die man durch die Pforte des Todes tragen soll, für eine Eigenschaft haben? Sie darf ganz gewiß nicht von irgendeinem äußeren Eindrucke hergenommen sein, und sie muß ganz gewiß die Eigenschaft haben, daß der materialistisch Gesinnte sagen kann: Was du dir da vorstellst, das ist ja gar nicht vorhanden; denn das kann man nicht mit Augen sehen, nicht mit Ohren hören. Also es muß eine solche Vorstellung die Eigenschaft haben, daß man ihren Gegenstand nicht äußerlich wahrnehmen kann, denn was man äußerlich wahrnehmen kann, das kann als Vorstellung nicht durch die Pforte des Todes gehen. Ich möchte hierbei bemerken, daß der Materialismus schon dadurch zu solchen Einwendungen verführt wird, daß er immerfort von Sein oder Nichtsein spricht und nicht recht weiß, was es eigentlich mit diesem Sein und Nichtsein auf sich hat. Es genügt für uns jetzt, daß wir bei der deutschen Sprache stehenbleiben. «Sein» ist von «sehen» hergenommen, kommt überhaupt von «sehen» her. Über dasjenige also, was mit dem Seinsbegriff belegt wird, wird überhaupt nichts anderes gesagt als: ich habe es einmal gesehen. Und alles sonstige Gerede über das Sein ist überhaupt nichts anderes als eine Verständigung über das, was gesehen worden ist. Daraus sollte man den Schluß ziehen, daß man in bezug auf die Dinge, welche man durch die Pforte des Todes trägt, nicht von Sein sprechen soll, denn das würde heißen: man muß diese Dinge mit physischen Augen gesehen haben.
Was wollten denn eigentlich die Religionsstifter den Menschen mit ihren Vorstellungen geben?
Sie wollten den Menschen solche Vorstellungen geben, welche den Geist innerlich stark machen, innerlich mit Leuchtekraft ausstatten, so daß der Mensch, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes in die übersinnliche Welt geht, in diese so eintritt, daß er sein eigener Leuchter ist, daß er die Dinge dort von sich aus zu beleuchten in der Lage ist. Es kommt den Menschen sehr leicht an zu sagen: Wenn ich mir da von den übersinnlichen Welten erzählen lasse, wie kann ich dann wissen, daß alle diese Vorstellungen wirklich richtig sind? Denn nehmen wir einmal an, es verbreite jemand Vorstellungen über die übersinnliche Welt, diese Vorstellungen würden von einer Anzahl von Menschen angenommen - und sie wären falsch, oder einseitig, oder ste entsprächen nicht in demselben Sinne dem Richtigen, wie man so vom Richtigen spricht, wenn man über die äußere physische Welt spricht. Nehmen wir also an, diese Vorstellungen wären falsch, und eine Anzahl von Menschen hätten sie angenommen. In solchem Falle wäre es noch immer besser, wenn die Menschen diese falschen Vorstellungen angenommen hätten, als wenn sie gar keine Vorstellungen über die übersinnliche Welt aufgenommen hätten. Denn warum? Es ist deshalb besser, weil unsere Seele sich anstrengen muß, wenn sie überhaupt Vorstellungen über die übersinnliche Welt annimmt. Ob man richtige oder falsche Vorstellungen annimmt, man muß sich anstrengen, und diese Anstrengung zählt in der geistigen Welt, wenn wir durch die Pforte des Todes gehen. Diese Anstrengung ist es, die uns nach dem Tode zugute kommt, oder die uns überhaupt zugute kommt, wenn wir in die geistige Welt hineingehen. Denn nehmen wir an, wir hätten uns mit einer ganz verkehrten Anschauung über die geistige Welt durchdrungen, so haben wir dadurch, daß wir sie in uns aufgenommen haben, so wie ein Turner die Glieder ausbildet, unsere Seelenkräfte ausgebildet. Und was wir ausgebildet haben, das haben wir dann, das tragen wir hinein in die geistige Welt. Indem wir das hineintragen in die geistige Welt, haben wir dann dort etwas Ähnliches, wie wir hier dadurch haben, daß wir Augen haben. Wir sind dann nicht mehr blind in der geistigen Welt. Selbst wenn der Fall eintreten sollte, daß alles falsch wäre, was wir so aufgenommen haben, und wir uns überhaupt nur angestrengt haben, so haben wir dadurch unser seelisches Auge ausgebildet und haben nun die Möglichkeit zu sehen, was in der geistigen Welt vorhanden ist.
Nun liegen die Dinge so, daß dasjenige, was die verschiedenen Religionslehrer mitgeteilt haben, nicht etwa total falsch ist, sondern es ist von verschiedenen Standpunkten aus die Wahrheit über die übersinnliche Welt dargestellt worden und nur scheinbar sich widersprechend. Man muß das eine durch das andere ergänzen. Aber das Wesentliche, was allen diesen Religionssystemen gemeinschaftlich ist, das ist, daß alle diese Religionssysteme der menschlichen Seele Vorstellungen liefern, durch welche die Seele sich stark macht, um in die geistige Welt einzutreten, daß die Seele auferweckt wird in ihren geistigen Untergründen. Was dann die einzelnen Religionslehrer den Seelen geben, das geben sie nach den Fähigkeiten der Seelen, nach den, ich möchte sagen, Bedingungen der einzelnen Menschenrassen, nach den klimatischen Verhältnissen oder den sonstigen Verhältnissen des Landes und der Zeit, in der sie aufzutreten haben. Aber allen ist das gemeinsam, daß sie die Seelen der Menschen stark und kräftig machen, man kann auch sagen, innerlich leuchtend machen, damit die Seelen nicht nur in der physischen Welt real sind, sondern auch in der geistigen Welt real sein können. Seelenstärkung ist das, was als ein Universell-Wahres nach den verschiedenen Möglichkeiten in allen Religionssystemen gegeben worden ist.
Unsere Zeit ist nun in die Notwendigkeit versetzt, die geistige Welt nach und nach immer mehr und mehr anders aufzunehmen, als verflossene, vergangene Zeiten das konnten.
Gewisse Vorstellungen, die sich seit dem Aufblühen der neueren Naturwissenschaft einmal gebildet haben, muß unsere Zeit innerlich erstarken, innerlich erkraften, so daß die Seele gerade durch solche Vorstellungen fähig wird, in der geistigen Welt nicht tot, sondern lebendig zu sein. Dadurch kommt von selbst etwas Tieferes, etwas die Seele allerdings mehr Anstrengendes, aber Tieferes zustande, als die verschiedenen Religionssysteme zustande gebracht haben. Ich habe im Laufe der Jahre verschiedene Gründe angegeben, warum unsere Zeit zur Geisteswissenschaft berufen ist. Aber ich möchte sagen: Für den, der dem geistigen Leben nahesteht, zeigt sich gerade heute auf Schritt und Tritt, und das gehört eben überall zu dem Erschütternden unserer Zeit, daß zu den Einschlägen, zu den Fermenten, welche das Leben unserer Zeit bekommen muß, die Geisteswissenschaft gehört.
Es sind ja in den letzten Monaten viele, viele Seelen durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen, in Jugendkraft durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen. Ich habe schon darauf hingewiesen, daß nach dem gewöhnlichen Verlauf der Dinge jene Menschenwesen, deren Seelen so durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind, alle die Anwartschaft gehabt hätten, noch länger auf Erden zu leben. Wenn nun ein Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes geht, so wissen wir, er legt zuerst den physischen Leib ab, dann nach verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit den Ätherleib. Dieser Ätherleib gehört dann der äußeren Ätherwelt an, und der astralische Leib und das Ich gehören dem Menschen weiter an. Über diesen Ätherleib sagt man gewöhnlich, er löse sich auf in der geistigen Welt. Aber die Zeit, in welcher er sich auflöst, ist sehr verschieden. Wenn ein Mensch uralt geworden ist im physischen Leben, also sozusagen ein normales Alter erreicht hat, dann hat er die Kräfte seines Ätherleibes verbraucht, und es löst sich dieser dann rasch auf. Geht aber ein Mensch in Jugendkraft durch die Pforte des Todes, so hätte ihm sein Ätherleib noch durch Jahrzehnte dienen können. Dieser Ätherleib ist eine zusammenhängende, in sich gefügte Organisation. Der löst sich im zweiten Falle nicht sogleich auf. Er trennt sich ab vom astralischen Leib und vom Ich. Diese gehen in der geistigen Welt ihre eigenen Wege; der Ätherleib jedoch trennt sich zwar ab, löst sich aber nicht sogleich auf. Es wird Ihnen nur natürlich erscheinen, daß der Mensch einen gewissen Zusammenhang mit dem Ätherleib behält, der sich zunächst abgetrennt hat, aber auch in der geistigen Ätherwelt vorhanden bleibt. Deshalb kann man sagen: In dieser geistigen Ätherwelt absolut genommen, in der Erden-Aura-Nähe - sind eine außerordentlich große Anzahl von unverbrauchten Ätherleibern, von Ätherleibern mit frischen Kräften. Das ist das ganz besonders Eindrucksvolle in der gegenwärtigen Beobachtung der geistigen Welt, daß wir einer solchen großen Anzahl unverbrauchter Ätherleiber gegenüberstehen. Aber überall, wo wir an die Empfindungen herantreten können, welche die Toten in bezug auf diese ihre Ätherleiber haben, merken wir wiederum eines. Selbstverständlich sind diese Dinge so, daß Sie sie glauben können oder nicht; denn Anspruch auf Glaubwürdigkeit kann ich ja nur durch das haben, was den Ausführungen vieler Jahre, die ich Ihnen gemacht habe, an Wahrheitskraft innewohnte, Was man an Empfindungen der Verstorbenen gegenüber ihren Ätherleibern bemerkt, das ist, daß durch alle die Menschen, welche jetzt das Opfer des Todes gebracht haben, einem gewissermaßen geistig zugeflüstert wird: Die Zeit ist gekommen! Und recht anwenden wird die Menschheit das, was an unverbrauchten Kräften in unseren Ätherleibern ist, nur dann, wenn diese Menschheit sich bewußt wird, wie sie mit der geistigen Welt zusammenhängt! — Denn von diesen unverbrauchten Ätherleibern strahlen viele, viele Kräfte aus. Die kommen herein in unsere Welt, und diese Kräfte wird die Menschheit nur dann richtig anwenden, wenn sie die Gedanken auf die geistige Welt hinlenkt. Dann werden diese Kräfte der geopferten Ätherleiber der Menschheit fördernde Kräfte sein. Das ist es gewissermaßen, was die Toten uns heute zurufen: Verbraucht unsere Ätherleiber nicht umsonst; laßt nicht die Zeit vorübergehen, in welcher die Kräfte unserer unverbrauchten Ätherleiber dem geistigen Fortschritt der Menschheit dienen können!
Und das Besondere möchte ich noch sagen: Ich habe einmal oder vielleicht öfter ausgeführt, wie man den Verstorbenen zu Hilfe kommen kann. Besondere Umstände machen es ja möglich, daß die Verstorbenen etwas davon haben, wenn wir das, was wir uns als Geisteswissenschaft erobern, ihnen vorlesend zugänglich machen. Ich habe darauf hingewiesen, daß es für den, der durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist, viel bedeutet, wenn wir im Geiste ihm Geisteswissenschaftliches vorlesen, wenn wir ihn uns lebendig, lebensvoll geistig vorstellen und, selbstverständlich nicht laut, sondern wie in Gedanken —- es können auch mehrere, können viele sein - ein Kapitel der Geisteswissenschaft ihm vorlesen. Das erscheint denjenigen absurd, die da glauben, wenn der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes tritt, ist die ganze geistige Welt um ihn herum, also brauchte er nicht von uns vorgelesen zu bekommen. Ganz so absurd ist es nicht. Selbstverständlich hat der Verstorbene die geistige Welt um sich herum, ist in ihr darinnen. Aber gerade so wenig, wie hier ein Mensch die Welt — die Sinneswelt — versteht, trotzdem er in ihr darinnen ist, wenn er nicht die Wissenschaft von ihr hat, so hat auch der Verstorbene nicht durch das Durchschreiten der Todespforte die Wissenschaft von der geistigen Welt, wenn er auch in ihr darinnen ist. Diese Wissenschaft muß vielmehr hier erworben werden. Wie etwas, was er als Nahrung empfängt, ist es für den Toten, wenn wir ihm vorlesen; das strömt in ihn ein. Und recht viel stärkende Kräfte kann die Menschheit für die nächsten Zeiten in bezug auf das Spirituelle dadurch bekommen, daß gerade jenes Mantram, welches ich jetzt immer am Beginne unserer Betrachtungen anwende, «Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter» und so weiter, mit der Veränderung «Sphärenmenschen» in bezug auf die Gefallenen, gebraucht wird. Wir können auch, während das sonst nur möglich ist bei solchen Verstorbenen, die wir selbst gekannt haben, gerade dieses Mantram an uns persönlich unbekannte Verstorbene richten; können, nachdem wir dieses Mantram recht andächtig gebraucht haben, vorlesen, ich möchte sagen, ins Unbekannte hinaus; und Tote, welche jetzt gerade durch unsere Ereignisse in den Tod gegangen sind, können es empfangen. Dann werden sie mit dem, was sie aus dem Zusammenhange mit uns schöpfen können, zurück wirken auf dem Umwege durch ihre Ätherleiber auf die Erdenkultur und werden mit den auf der Erde lebenden Menschen zusammenwirken, um das spirituelle Leben vorwärtszubringen.
Durch solche Dinge werden wir aber noch etwas anderes erreichen. Es ist ja ganz richtig, daß wir gewissermaßen in einer Zeit des trübseligsten Materialismus gelebt haben, und daß diese kriegerischen Ereignisse etwas ausgelöst haben, was einen wirklichen Anstrich von spirituellem Leben hat. Es ist in bezug auf das Geistige ein großer Unterschied gewesen, wenn man zum Beispiel im Juli des vergangenen Jahres noch, oder sonst früher durch Deutschland gereist ist und geistig die Menschen beobachtet hat, und wenn man im August, September, oder überhaupt jetzt es getan hat oder tut. Was als ein Unterschied hervorrritt, das ist der, daß gewissermaßen früher jeder seine eigene egoistische Aura hatte, die sich eng abschloß, die sich gleichsam anlegte an den Menschen. Jetzt ist eine gemeinschaftliche Aura vorhanden, in welche die Gedanken als etwas Einheitliches hineinfließen. Daß alles an Gedanken nach einer Richtung hin zielt, ist auch in geistiger Beziehung etwas ungeheuer Bedeutungsvolles. Dadurch ist für die Zeit der kriegerischen Ereignisse etwas Spirituelles geschaffen, was vorher nicht da war. Das ist ganz unleugbar. Aber nun stellen Sie sich vor, wie es ja sein muß, daß wieder der Friede kommt. Dann würden die Seelen um so mehr veröden, wenn sie nicht aus ihrem Innern heraus etwas an spirituellem Gut finden könnten; denn das ist für jede Zeit dem Menschen notwendig, daß er an irgend etwas seine Gedanken hinrichtet, was nicht mit einer äußeren Realität etwas zu tun hat. Das stärkt ihn für die geistige Welt in irgendeiner Form. Wenn es Vorstellungen über die übersinnliche Welt sind, so stärkt es ihn in bezug auf die guten Kräfte der übersinnlichen Welt; wenn es nicht übersinnliche Vorstellungen sind, oder wenn es etwas ist, was in bezug auf das Übersinnliche nicht gerechtfertigt ist, so stärkt es ihn auch für die übersinnliche Welt, allerdings dann für die luziferische oder ahrimanische Welt. Aber der Mensch ist einmal so veranlagt, daß das Geistige in ihm sprechen will. Man könnte sagen: der Mensch muß etwas haben, was für die äußere Welt nicht wahr ist; und wenn er sich lange nicht darauf eingelassen hat, etwas in seine Seele aufzunehmen, was für die äußere Welt nicht wahr ist, dann kommt eine Reaktion, eine Reaktion in der Weise, daß er an etwas, was für die äußere Welt nicht wahr ist, glauben muß. In merkwürdiger Weise können dann solche Glaubensvorstellungen die menschliche Seele ergreifen. Gewisse, vom Materialismus überwältigte Seelen können ja äußerlich sogar fromm sein. Solche Seelen können diese Reaktion in einer besonderen Art erleben. Sie können sich zum Beispiel, man möchte sagen, unisono die Vorstellung bilden: irgendein Volk, das eine Kultur in sich hat, sei ein Volk von Barbaren, und können das zum Glaubensartikel machen. Von gewissen anderen Gesichtspunkten abgesehen, ist dieses nichts anderes als das Lechzen der Seele nach einem Glauben, nach irgend etwas, was in der physischen Welt keine Realität hat. Weil die Menschen nicht nach dem wahrhaft Übersinnlichen mehr die Blicke hinzulenken gewohnt sind, deshalb füllen sie die Seele mit dem Glauben aus: irgendein Volk sei ein Barbarenvolk. Das ist ein Glaube, ein Dogma geworden, dem man ebenso fanatisch anhängt, wie man einmal irgendwelchen religiösen Dogmen angehangen hat. Es ist ein Ersatz für einen lange entbehrten Glauben. Aber nun stelle man sich vor, daß dies nicht auf die Dauer geht. Wenn wieder Friede eingetreten sein wird, werden die Menschen nicht diesen realen Ersatz haben können, der sich in dem Glauben ausdrückt: irgendein Volk sei ein Barbarenvolk. Dann kommt die furchtbare Öde, die ganz furchtbare Öde. Und das ist etwas, was in Aussicht steht für diejenigen Gebiete, die heute in solcher zuweilen richtig abscheulich-verlogenen Weise sich einen Glauben schaffen, sich Dogmen schaffen. Für diese Gegenden wird furchtbare Seelenöde eintreten. Und diese Seelenöde wird nur bekämpft werden können, wenn in solcher Weise, wie es geschildert worden ist, die unverbrauchten Ätherkräfte der dem Todesopfer Geweihten in der richtigen Weise verbraucht werden, in der richtigen Weise angewendet werden. Daher sagen uns alle, gleichsam uns über den richtigen Verbrauch ihrer Ätherkräfte ermahnend, wie eine spontane, eine jetzt nach dem Tode getane Entdeckung ausdrückend: Es ist an der Zeit! Die Menschheit muß eine geistige Entwickelung durchmachen, und diese jetzigen Ereignisse müssen ein Dämmerungszustand sein, aus dem ein neuer Sonnenzustand hervorgeht.
Das ist das, was diejenigen durchdringen muß, welche schwere Verluste erleiden: daß in dem starken Maße, wie es notwendig ist, daß unsere Zeit spirituell wird, dies nur dadurch möglich ist, daß sie Hilfe bekommt aus der geistigen Welt. Aber die Mittel zu dieser Hilfe müssen durch solche schmerzlichen Ereignisse gewonnen werden, wie wir sie jetzt eben in unserer Gegenwart erleben. Für den Geistesforscher wird dadurch ganz von selbst klar, daß diese Ereignisse rein materialistisch nicht betrachtet werden dürfen. Aber man findet fast nur eine rein materialistische Betrachtung dieser Ereignisse. Man kann es erleben — was wir ja erlebt haben -, daß eine Anzahl von Leuten des einen Erdgebietes, die sich angefeindet fühlen, irgendeinen Aufruf erlassen, daß dieser Aufruf in andere feindliche Gebiete kommt; von diesen feindlichen Gebieten aus stellt man die Frage: Wer hat diesen Krieg gewollt? Oder man beschuldigt den anderen, er habe den Krieg gewollt. Dabei vergißt man immer und immer wieder, was für die tiefere Betrachtung der Verhältnisse klar sein muß, und von dieser tieferen Betrachtung der Dinge aus wird auch einiges Heil für die Zukunft kommen können: daß aus der geistigen Welt heraus alle diese Ereignisse wirklich gewollt sind, weil die geistige Welt diejenigen Kräfte braucht, die als Früchte aus diesen Saaten der unverbrauchten Ätherleiber kommen können. Und wenn man anschuldigen wollte, so müßte man zu gleicher Zeit die geistige Welt selber anschuldigen. Aber da wird einem das Beschuldigen vergehen. Denn da wird man aufmerksam auf die eherne Notwendigkeit, welche besteht, auf jene eherne Notwendigkeit, welche wirklich von dem Gesichtspunkte geistiger Welten aus auf unsere Erdenwelt herunterschauen muß, etwa wie wir auf etwas hinschauen müssen, wenn es notwendig wird, so und soviel zu verbrauchen, zu töten, aus einem Zusammenhang zu reißen, um irgend etwas anderes aufzubauen. Wir können kein Haus aufbauen, ohne daß wir so und so viele Felsgebiete zerstören; da können wir nicht von irgendeiner Schuld sprechen, da müssen wir von der Notwendigkeit sprechen. Also, es ist der geistigen Welt notwendig, diejenigen Opfer zu fordern, welche jetzt gefordert werden, weil Saaten notwendig sind. Diese Saaten sind eben die unverbrauchten Ätherleiber, die dann lebendig alles Werden der Menschheit durchdringen, und die da sein müssen, wenn die Entwickelung weitergehen soll, weil sonst der Menschheit die Kräfte fehlen würden, um weiterzukommen. Neben allem, was die heutigen Ereignisse äußerlich bedeuten, müssen wir, um die Ereignisse wirksam innerlich zu verstehen, dies voll ins Auge fassen.
Wenn wir so die Dinge betrachten, dann sagen wir uns: Wenn ich auch nicht von vornherein überschauen kann, ob alles richtig ist, wie man sagt, was ich aus der geistigen Welt aufnehme, das ist jedenfalls der Fall, daß ich dadurch, daß ich diese Offenbarungen aus der geistigen Welt mit meiner eigenen Seele vereinige, diese Seele anstrenge, ihr dadurch Kräfte zuführe, und daß dadurch meine Seele leuchtend wird für die geistige Welt, Augen bekommt für die geistige Welt. Nur sind die Bedingungen für die geistige Welt andere, als die Bedingungen für die physische Welt sind. Für die physische Welt können wir zufrieden sein, wenn wir einen Gedanken einmal gefaßt haben und wir seine Wahrheit einsehen. Im praktischen Leben der physischen Welt ist es auch hinreichend, wenn wir die Wahrheit eines Gedankens einmal eingesehen haben. Ich meine es so: Wenn ein Richterkollegium herausfinden will, ob ein Mensch schuldig ist in einer Sache, dann ist die Angelegenheit abgetan, wenn einmal die Vorstellung gefunden ist, dieser Mensch ist schuldig einer Tat. Dann ist alles getan, was nötig ist. In der geistigen Welt dagegen ist gar nicht alles getan, wenn man einmal einen Gedanken gefaßt hat, sondern da ist es notwendig, daß er immer wiederkehrt. Daher kommt es für die geistigen Verhältnisse auf die Wiederholung an. Es kommt nicht bloß darauf an, etwas von den Dingen zu wissen, sondern es immer wieder und wieder in der Seele gegenwärtig zu machen. Darauf beruht auch das meditative Leben, daß wir den Inhalt der Meditation im Wiederholen in der Seele gegenwärtig sein lassen. Dadurch wird das, was so immer gegenwärtig ist, in seiner Kraft wirklich so wirkend, wie wenn ein Tropfen immerfort auf einen Stein fällt und ihn zuletzt doch höhlt. Wenn der Tropfen einmal auf den Stein fällt, so macht er gar keinen Eindruck; wenn er zehnmal oder hundertmal darauffällt auch nicht; zuletzt aber höhlt er doch den Stein aus. Wenn wir so etwas in die Seele aufnehmen, dann könnte es scheinen, als ob es, einmal aufgenommen, gar nichts für die Seele bedeutet, zehnmal aufgenommen auch nicht; aber wenn wir Geduld haben, dann können wir es dahin bringen, daß wir den ewigen Wesenskern des Menschen gewahr werden. Denn auf die Kraft, die wir dabei entwikkeln, kommt es an; und diese Kraft wird vielfach von den Menschen geflohen, sie wollen sie nicht haben. Warum wollen sie diese Kraft nicht haben?
Warum die Menschen diese Kraft nicht haben wollen, warum sie heute noch eine Scheu haben vor der Geisteswissenschaft, das können wir uns dann beantworten, wenn wir ein wenig gerade wieder vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft aus auf die Bedeutung geisteswissenschaftlicher Vorstellungen für das Leben nach dem Tode sehen. Diejenigen Vorstellungen sind die wichtigsten nach dem Tode, die nichts abbilden, was in der äußeren Welt vorhanden ist, die sich nicht auf ein äußeres Sein beziehen und von denen der derb-materialistische Mensch sagen kann: sie bedeuten ja nichts im Leben. Aber diese Vorstellungen sind die wichtigsten nach dem Tode. Denn das Bilden solcher Vorstellungen erfordert jene starke Kraft des Nachsinnens, des Nachdenkens, des Nachfühlens, welche die Seele stark macht, sie so macht, daß sie sich erlebt, sich erfühlt in der geistigen Welt. Solche Vorstellungen braucht also die Seele, wenn sie durch die Pforte des Todes geht.
Wodurch kann man nun solche Vorstellungen gewinnen? Das wissen wir schon: nur dadurch, daß man die Seele in stärkerem Maße anstrengt, als sie sich gewöhnlich sonst anstrengt. Denn um die Vorstellungen aufzunehmen, welche der heutige Naturforscher aufnimmt, dazu braucht man nur zu schauen, eventuell durch das Mikroskop oder durch das Teleskop. Da kann man sich hübsch passiv verhalten, bekommt dann die Eindrücke von der Welt und kann sie registrieren. So ist es ja oft: man liebt es nicht, innerlich sich anzustrengen. Denn was man nicht sieht, darüber muß man sich doch stärker anstrengen als über das, was man sieht; und dieses stärkere Anstrengen des Denkens scheut man, das flieht man. So ist man eigentlich — verzeihen Sie den harten Ausdruck — innerlich faul, innerlich bequem. Und das tiefste Charakteristikum des gegenwärtigen wissenschaftlichen Strebens ist diese innerliche Faulheit, diese Bequemlichkeit, dieses die Kräfte aus der Seele nicht Hervorholenwollen. Wenn man es aber nun tut, wenn man diese Kräfte aus der Seele herausholt, was bewirkt das nach dem Tode? Ja, man hat gewissermaßen für das Leben nach dem Tode etwas von diesen herausgeholten Kräften, was man, weil man meistens in einer gewissen Illusion lebt, gewöhnlich gar nicht gern hat. Aber ich will gleich auf den Grund hindeuten, weshalb man es gewöhnlich nicht gern hat. Wenn man nämlich durch den Tod oder durch die Initiation in die geistige Welt eintritt, dann handelt es sich darum, daß man da hinter dem Tode etwas erleben muß, was gewissermaßen ein zweiter Tod ist. Eine Art zweiter Tod ist es. Sie wissen, man muß sich später auch wieder von seinem astralischen Leib abtrennen, und man kann das entweder bewußt durchmachen oder man kann es verschlafen. Aber es lebt in der Menschenseele eine geheime Sehnsucht, dies zu verschlafen, es nicht bewußt durchzumachen. Es lebt im Menschen eine gewisse Furcht, die nicht richtig interpretiert wird, nach dem Tode so stark aufzuwachen, daß man dann die Dinge alle bemerkt, die um einen sind. Diese Furcht ist allerdings ganz gleich derjenigen, die es dem Menschen hier angenehm machen würde, dieses physische Leben nicht gar so stark zu leben, nicht immer aufzuwachen, sondern etwas betäubt durch das Leben zu gehen. Das Leben ist dann angenehmer. Und wenn man gar immer im Bette liegen könnte, das Leben so im Halbschlaf verbringen könnte, dann wäre es am allerbequemsten. Aber es läßt sich nicht immer machen. Der Mensch muß aufwachen. Und wenn er bis zu dem Zeitpunkt, den ich andeutete, betäubt sein konnte über die Dinge nach dem Tode, so darf er jetzt nicht weiter betäubt sein nach dem Tode. Der Mensch muß aufwachen. Er hat aber noch Furcht davor. Daher sträuben sich selbst die, welche so nahe daran sind, die Geisteswissenschaft haben zu müssen, wie ein Forscher, der da sagt: selbst die nervösen Störungen im Rücken, in den Armen und Beinen beruhen auf Seelischem. Er sträubt sich, die Geisteswissenschaft anzunehmen, weil er heillose Angst davor hat. Er gleicht dann jemandem, der sagt: Da ist mir etwas abhanden gekommen, gestohlen worden; der Wind wird es schon nicht fortgetragen haben, also durch äußere Naturkräfte wird es nicht abhanden gekommen sein, also wird es ein Mensch weggetragen haben! Aber jetzt bleibt er dabei stehen. Er geht nicht weiter, weil er sich fürchtet, daß er dann durchgeprügelt werden könnte. So verhalten sich gewisse Forscher, wie zum Beispiel Binswanger. Sie sagen: Gewisse nervöse Störungen in den Armen, Beinen und so weiter haben ihre Ursache im Seelischen. Aber dann bleiben sie dabei; sie gehen nicht weiter, weil sie dann fürchten müssen, man könnte sie durchprügeln, pardon! — weil sie gern verschlafen, was in der geistigen Welt vor sich geht.
Es ist eine Empfindung, die wir uns aneignen müssen, daß gerade heutige Forscher mit der Nase auf die Wirksamkeit der geistigen Welt gestoßen werden, aber nicht an sie heranwollen. Wenn aber diese Forscher einmal an die geistige Welt heranwollen, so werden sie sich klar sein müssen, daß man nicht so im allgemeinen über die Verhältnisse der geistigen Welt reden darf, sondern daß man in positiver Weise auf die Geisteswissenschaft eingehen muß und daß dieses Eingehen auf die Geisteswissenschaft selbst schon eine Art von Heilungsprozeß wird. So hängen ja die Dinge zusammen. Nicht die eigentlichen Geisteskrankheiten haben sich vermehrt; das zu glauben wäre ein Irrtum. Aber in der Tat ist dasjenige in der neueren Zeit besonders stark ausgebreitet, was man nervöse Störungen nennen kann. Und wenn die Dinge so weitergehen, wie sie bis jetzt gingen, dann wird man erst finden, wie der Entwickelungsgang der Menschheit uns zeigt, daß die nervösen Störungen, wenn die alten Verhältnisse vorhanden bleiben, immer stärker und stärker werden müssen.
Es könnte da auf ganz interessante Tatsachen hingewiesen werden. Nehmen wir einmal eine sehr einfache Tatsache. Es gibt einen österreichischen Dichter: Robert Hamerling — ein ausgezeichneter Dichter, von dem ja auch in unserem Kreise einiges schon vorgetragen worden ist. Dieser Mann hat einen großen Teil der zweiten Hälfte seines Lebens im Bette zugebracht. Er war schwer krank; immer mehr und mehr verfiel er einer schweren Krankheit. Aber nervös ist er nicht geworden. Nichts zeigt an seinen Dichtungen einen nervösen Charakter. Selbst in Zeiten, in welchen er nur auf einer Seite des Leibes liegen konnte und unter den furchtbarsten Schmerzen schreiben mußte, schrieb er nicht im eigentlichen Sinne nervös. Warum? Er gehörte jener mitteleuropäischen Kultur eben an, welche noch nicht in demselben Maße in die Nervosität übergegangen ist wie das geistige Leben anderer europäischer Völker. Dieses geistige Leben verkleinert man ja dadurch nicht, aber man muß sich doch klar sein über die Tatsachen. Ich habe es erlebt, wie, nachdem in den siebziger, achtziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts noch ein Verständnis vorhanden war für solche Dinge, wie sie zum Beispiel Robert Hamerling darbietet, dann plötzlich in den achtziger Jahren eine ungeheure Begeisterung einschlug für Dostojewski. Ich will Dostojewski damit selbstverständlich nicht verkleinern, aber was er uns vor allem darbietet, ist eine ganz nervöse, zappelige Kunst, bei aller Größe. Eine solche nervöse Kunst würde kommen, wenn der Materialismus — und materialistisch ist es, was Dostojewskische Kunst ist, wenn es auch «Psychologie» ist — weiterströmt und immer weiter.
Soll das nicht kommen, so müssen die starken Kräfte kommen, welche die Menschenseele aufwenden muß, wenn sie sich wirklich hineinfinden soll in Gedankengänge wie: Saturn, Sonne und Mond sind Vorstadien der Erdenentwickelung. Denn man soll einmal einem richtigen Menschen der Gegenwart mit solchen Vorstellungen wie Saturnentwickelung, Sonnenentwickelung und so weiter kommen und soll ihm zumuten, jene Gedankenanstrengung zu machen, um solche Dinge notwendig natürlich zu finden. Man kann solche Vorstellungen als notwendig natürlich finden; aber dazu müssen von der Seele stärkere Anstrengungen gemacht werden, und die Folge ist: die Nervosität wird ausgetrieben! Man muß zwar Geduld dabei haben, aber die Nervosität wird ausgetrieben. Und was sonst über die ganze Kultur der Menschheit kommen würde als eine allgemeine Nervosität, das wird geheilt werden, wenn dasjenige von der Menschheit ergriffen wird, was von der Geisteswissenschaft durch die Verbreitung der geistigen Strömung ausgeht. Während sonst die Menschheit zappelig werden würde, kommt die Geisteswissenschaft von der anderen Seite und bringt zugleich die Heilung. Und während der Psychiater, bevor er in die Geisteswissenschaft eingedrungen ist, sich zugestehen muß: die nervösen Erscheinungen nehmen zu, wird er sich vielleicht nachher gestehen müssen, daß es das beste Heilmittel gegen die nervösen Erscheinungen ist, wenn er dem Kranken sagt: Nimm dir einmal ein Buch über Geisteswissenschaft, jeden Tag dreiviertel Stunden, und versuche es einmal zu verarbeiten; dann werden deine Nerven stärker werden. — Sie werden es auch. Aber glauben wird man die Sache erst dann, wenn man sich klar sein wird, daß nach dem zu Anfang des Vortrages herangezogenen Vergleich das Seelenleben nichts anderes zu tun hat mit dem Nervenleben, als daß es Absonderungsprozesse hervorruft; daß man das Seelenleben nicht kurieren kann, indem man auf die Absonderungsprozesse einen besonderen Wert legt, sondern indem das, was nichts mit den Absonderungsprozessen zu tun hat, von innen heraus gestärkt wird, durchdrungen wird von der Seele aus dadurch, daß die spirituellen Kräfte in die Seele einströmen. Die Zeit wird kommen, wo man nach der Geisteswissenschaft Rezepte schreiben wird, die darin bestehen werden, daß man dieses oder jenes, was nur von der Geisteswissenschaft gewonnen werden kann, besonders bei den Krankheiten der neueren Zeiten verwenden wird. Vorläufig sind wir natürlich noch lange nicht so weit; denn vorläufig wird man es noch lange als hinlänglich bewiesen halten, daß irgendeine Therapie ein Unsinn ist, wenn man sie mit der Vignette mystischer Methoden belegen kann, wobei man um so freigebiger ist mit dem Namen «Mystik», je weniger man weiß, was eigentlich Mystik ist. Denn den Ausdruck «Mystik» brauchen wir am wenigsten; wir brauchen ihn nur, wenn wir etwas technisch bezeichnen wollen; aber die brauchen ihn am allermeisten, die keine Ahnung haben, was Mystik ist.
Gerade wenn wir diese Dinge überschauen, werden wir uns nicht verhehlen, daß wir in einer sehr bedeutungsvollen Krisenzeit leben. Ich habe öfter gesagt: es ist nicht meine Art zu sagen, wir leben in einer Übergangszeit; denn ein jeder Zeitraum hat etwas Vorangegangenes und etwas, was ihm folgt. Aber es handelt sich eben darum, da, worin eine Zeit eine «Übergangszeit» ist, das Konkrete des Überganges zu erkennen. Für unsere Zeit besteht dies Konkrete darin, daß alles, was in unserer Zeit geschieht, uns darauf hinweist: Es müssen die Menschen den Übergang finden zu einem Erfassen der spirituellen Welten. Dann werden sie in den spirituellen Welten Ruhe, innere Festigkeit, innere Sicherheit finden. Das ist das, was die Menschen unbedingt brauchen.
Wenn Sie sich so recht in der Seele beleben wollen, wie durch Geisteswissenschaft eine neue Art von Ruhe der Seele errungen werden muß, so ist es gut, folgenden Stoff zur Meditation zu nehmen: Es ist wirklich bedeutungsvoll, daß seit drei bis vier Jahrhunderten die Menschen sich allmählich der Vorstellung anbequemen mußten, daß sie durch den Weltenraum rasen, richtig durch den Weltenraum rasen. Gewiß, daß er es weiß, kann jeder sagen; aber die Menschen denken gewöhnlich nicht darüber nach, daß sie schon in der Schule lernen, daß sie mit einer riesigen Geschwindigkeit durch den Weltenraum rasen. In dieser Beziehung könnte man fast an den erinnern, der einmal in einem Graben lag, zwar ganz bequem lag, doch furchtbar unzufrieden war; und als er gefragt wurde, warum er so unzufrieden sei, da er doch nichts zu tun habe, antwortete er: ja, er müsse doch die Umdrehungen der Erde um die Sonne mitmachen, und er fände es bequemer zurückzubleiben. Das war also einer, der das Denken der Umdrehung ernst genommen hatte. Daran denken ja die Menschen gewöhnlich nicht, aber es lebt ja auch das in dem Menschen, woran man gewöhnlich nicht denkt. Also, um den Gedanken fortzusetzen: In den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten haben sich die Menschen gewöhnt, mit ihren Vorstellungen mitzugehen mit der durch den Weltenraum rasenden Erde. Dem muß aus dem Weltenraum Widerstand geboten werden. Es ist wirklich wahr, daß etwas Beruhigendes in dem alten Glauben war, daß die Erde stille stehe, und daß die Sonne sich bewege. Nun wird es noch lange bis dahin sein, daß man das Unrichtige der kopernikanischen Weltansicht einsehen wird; denn so ist die Sache nicht, wie sie heute gelehrt wird. Aber dahin kann man kommen, daß man gewissermaßen durch die Belebung der Vorstellungen der geistigen Wissenschaft sich in die Lage versetzt, in der ein Mensch ist, der in einem Eisenbahnwagen sitzt oder auf einem Schiffe fährt und der nun gegen das Poltern sich innerlich anstrengen kann, daß er nichts davon hört, sondern ganz «bei sich» ist. Das kann man heute nur mit den geisteswissenschaftlichen Vorstellungen. Aber man muß berücksichtigen, daß immer wiederkehrende Wiederholung dazu notwendig ist, weil es auf die Kraft ankommt, die daraus entsteht. Dann bleibt man gleichsam in sich, bei sich, ruhig und sicher. Und dies möchte ich als eine gute Meditationsvorstellung bemerken: Zu uns einsteigen können die Mächte der geistigen Welt, wenn wir ihnen diese Ruhe richtig entgegenbringen. Nur dadurch können sie uns bewußt werden, daß wir ihnen durch solches Vorstellungsleben, wie es charakterisiert worden ist, entgegenkommen.
Das charakterisiert die Übergangszeit, in der wir leben; in diesem Übergang sind wir wirklich darinnen. Die Sehnsucht nach der geistigen Welt ist in den Seelen durchaus vorhanden, wenn es auch die meisten heute noch nicht wissen. Aber aus dem, was jetzt als ganz besondere Ereignisse einen so großen Teil der Erde ergriffen hat, wird sich eine bewußte Sehnsucht nach der geistigen Welt entwikkeln. Dies kann man als Geistesforscher heute schon wissen: daß alle die hingeopferten unverbrauchten Ätherleiber die tiefste Sehnsucht nach der geistigen Welt loslösen werden. Diese tiefste Sehnsucht wird kommen, Sehnsucht nach einer Wahrheit, die nicht durch äußere Beobachtung, sondern innerlich durch die Anstrengung der Seele errungen werden muß. Darauf ist in der Tat der deutsche Geist vorbereitet. Er ist vorbereitet auf solche Wahrheit, die durch sich wahr erscheint und nicht dadurch, daß sie äußerlich bewahrheitet wird. Dazu ist der deutsche Geist vorbereitet. Und überall findet man die Beweise dafür. Diejenigen, die so recht im Wesen des deutschen Geistes gestrebt haben, sie haben ja immer in ihren Gedankenformen die Art gehabt, über die Wahrheit als einer innerlichen Gabe der Menschenseele zu sprechen. Was wäre es denn, was heute ein solcher sagen würde gegenüber manchem, was wir in unsern Tagen erleben? In den ersten Augusttagen konnte man in ausländischen Zeitungen lesen: Hamburg ist ein Trümmerhaufen; die Russen sind in Stettin, sogar in Köln eingezogen. Noch ganz andere Dinge waren verbreitet. Kaiser Franz Joseph starb bekanntlich am 8. September. Was wäre es, was ein solcher oben Charakterisierter demgegenüber sagen würde?
«Messing statt Goldes, nachgemachte Wechsel statt echter mögen von einzelnen verkauft, eine verlorene Schlacht als eine gewonnene mehreren aufgeheftet, und sonstige Lügen über sinnliche Dinge und einzelne Begebenheiten auf eine Zeitlang glaubhaft gemacht werden, aber in dem Wissen von dem Wesen, worin das Bewußtsein die unmittelbare Gewißheit seiner selbst hat, fällt der Gedanke der Täuschung hinweg.»
Das würde tief aus dem heraus, was man heute erfahren mußte, geschrieben sein. Hegel hat es geschrieben, und er ist im Jahre 1831 gestorben. Es ist das Eigentümliche: wenn jemand tief ergriffen ist von der inneren Natur der Wahrheit, dann sagt er Dinge, die für alle Zeiten wahr sind; dann kann man das, was also aus dem Bewußtsein der Wahrheit heraus gesprochen worden ist, zu allen Zeiten anführen. Das ist das, was man über die Eigentümlichkeit des mitteleuropäischen Geistes sagen muß, über sein ganz besonderes Verhältnis zur Wahrheit, und was unleugbar ist für den, der sich Mühe gibt, die Dinge kennenzulernen. Heute hat man ja das Gefühl, daß man oft sagen muß: Wozu haben die Menschen Geschichte gelernt? Sie haben sie vielleicht auch nicht gelernt. Es ist ja doch so, als ob die Seelen erst nach dem 1. August 1914 geboren worden sind und gar nicht das, was früher geschehen ist, zu Hilfe nehmen, um ein Urteil zu gewinnen. Aber alles das ist zuletzt nur dazu da, um die Reaktion um so stärker und intensiver zu machen, um so stärker und intensiver in den Seelen das Bedürfnis nach innerlich wahrhaftiger Wahrheit zu erzeugen. Das ist die Natur des Überganges in unserer Zeit, in der so vielfach fehlt und sich als so fehlend zeigt dieses innerliche Verbundensein mit der Wahrheit. Es wird als Reaktion entstehen eine tiefste Sehnsucht nach der Wahrheit. Dann werden die Seelen, die hier in Leibern verkörpert sind, hören, was jene Seelen zu ihnen sprechen, die sich durch den Opfertod der jetzigen Zeit bereitet haben, von der Wahrheit mehr zu erkennen, als man heute gemeiniglich erkennt.
Das ist es, was ich in dieser Stunde habe sagen wollen, um von neuem zu bekräftigen, was ich öfter gerade in dieser Zeit ausgesprochen habe über das lebendige Sprechen der Zeitereignisse zu uns. Denn wirklich: diese Zeitereignisse sprechen davon. Sie sprechen denjenigen, die mutvoll sich ihnen widmen, die opferfreudig sich ihnen widmen, die trauernd heute schon auf die Zeit hinsehen, sie sprechen ihnen Mut und Trost zu — Mut und Trost zu neuer Kraft:
Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht —
Lenken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.
Sixth Lecture
As various circumstances prevent me from leaving until tomorrow, we can still be together here today.
As usual, we first turn our thoughts to the souls of those who are out in the field, risking life and limb for the great events of our time:
Spirits of your souls, guardian angels,
May your wings carry
The pleading love of our souls
To the earthly people entrusted to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in help
To the souls that seek it lovingly.
And with reference to those who have already passed through the gates of death:
Spirits of your souls, working guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To the people of the spheres whom you protect,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine helpfully
Upon the souls who seek it lovingly.
And the spirit that has passed through the mystery of Golgotha, whom we have sought throughout the years in our spiritual movement, who has thereby become close to our hearts, may he be with you and your difficult duties!
My dear friends, I would like to use this extraordinary evening to make a few brief remarks that may be useful to us in one way or another. First, I would like to point out how, despite the materialism of our time, or perhaps precisely because of the materialism of our time, the souls of inquiring people, of people who are researching in certain fields, are being drawn, one might say against their will, toward the existence of a spiritual world. I would like to pick up on something specific. Of course, one could pick up on many, many things from the point of view I have just indicated, but I would like to refer to a brochure that appeared very recently, one of the brochures that are now appearing in connection with the war, the twelfth issue written by the well-known psychiatrist Professor Dr. O. Binswanger and entitled “The Psychological Effects of War.” However, I do not wish to follow up on Binswanger's remarks in the narrower sense about the psychological effects of war, but rather on a few comments he also made in this brochure. A researcher like Binswanger feels compelled today, in a sense, to no longer merely hint at the existence of a spiritual life, but feels compelled to apologize and point out how our age is not at all inclined to accept anything like a spiritual or mental life on the part of enlightened people. In his brochure, Binswanger talks about the well-known fact that nervous disorders have increased significantly in our time. He discusses various causes that have contributed to this and then says very significantly on page 10: “Some of you may find it strange that I place such strong emphasis on the spiritual in these nervous disorders.” So, he is a psychiatrist of the materialistic kind, but he has to cite the psyche as one of the causes of the very illnesses that are familiar to him. “What does the psyche have to do with a nervous stomach, a nervous heart, nervous pains in the back, arms, and legs? Based on unanimous medical opinion, I can only tell you that, ultimately, the pathological nervous reaction in various organs and areas of the body is largely due to disturbances in mental processes.”
So we see how the facts compel those who are forced by their research to deal with mental facts to admit that the causes of what is so often viewed solely from a materialistic perspective—nervous stomach problems, nervous heart complaints, nervous pain in the back, even in the limbs—lie in disturbances of mental life.
Now, however, today's researchers usually stop at such an admission; they do not go any further, not at all. For what must first be admitted is that it is not enough to see the causes of such processes as those mentioned above in the physical realm alone, but people do not yet have the courage and strength to really engage with anything spiritual. For the moment they hear anything positive from the realm of spiritual science, they feel, as it were, as if they no longer had solid ground beneath their feet, as if everything that can be brought forth from the spiritual world using the methods of spiritual research were unstable. For the psychiatrist, this is, one might say, a doubly fatal fact. For if the causes of certain physical conditions lie in the processes of the soul life, then one must admit that the best means of eliminating such conditions also lie in spiritual treatment. But how can one treat a soul if one has no idea how the soul is connected to the body? The recipes for removing mental disorders can only be borrowed from the spiritual world, so to speak. But recognizing the connection between the spiritual world and the external material world is only possible if one knows something about the spiritual world. Hence the strange, the strangely indefinite, illogical, and peculiar things that occur when such people really want to speak positively about the connection between the physical and the spiritual. And we can observe this in the same researcher. A few pages further on — on page 23 — the same researcher says something highly remarkable; for when he wants to talk about the confidence he himself has, based on his views of the soul constitution of human beings, that the German campaign will have a happy outcome, he says: “I am convinced that the army whose soldiers have the better nerves, or in other words, the greater moral resistance, will be victorious.”
Let us take the matter very seriously: the researcher, who thus acknowledges that the causes of even physical, so-called nervous disorders lie in mental states, says that those soldiers who “have better nerves, or” — now he says — “in other words, who possess greater moral resistance” will surely be victorious. It is hard to imagine that anyone could come up with a greater nonsense — even though both statements are, of course, absolutely true — than to say that one is another version of the other. Just imagine that someone has a very clear idea of the nervous system, can trace this nervous system down to its smallest branches, and then calls the stronger nerves of a person, in another version, greater moral resistance. This means that purely physical, material strands are, in another version, moral resistance! Of course, today's readers would skip over such things. One makes the strangest discoveries about everything one skips over, which one often finds tremendously witty; but such things are no less real nonsense as long as they are not traced back to what spiritual science has to say about them. How, then, are these things to be viewed from a spiritual scientific point of view?
When we consider the moral power of a human being, what animates and permeates him morally, this is initially something purely spiritual, something that has nothing to do with anything material. And what we call the moral power of the soul, it has as spiritual power, insofar as this soul belongs to the spiritual world. When this soul returns to its body, as always happens when we wake up, it uses the body as a tool for the physical world from the moment of waking until the moment of falling asleep. From the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking, the soul lives in the purely spiritual world, apart from the body as a tool, and gathers its moral strength there. But in the physical world, moral forces can only act through the instrument of the physical body. There they also act as spiritual forces. What we call moral power is active in the ego and astral body of the human being; it is something purely spiritual within. But what does this purely spiritual moral power in the astral body and ego of the human being have to do with the nervous system? Well, let me use a comparison. The moral force of the human being has as much to do with his nervous system as I have to do with the ground on which my feet now stand. If the ground were not there, and if there were no other ground beneath it on which the first ground rests, I could not stand here as a physical human being. The ground must be there, but it has nothing to do physically with what is within me. In order for me to stand, the ground must be there. Similarly, the nerves must be present in the physical body as mere resistance so that the moral forces of the astral body and the ego can find resistance in the physical world, can appear, can be there. I will use another comparison, which goes right to the heart of the matter, although it will require more careful consideration to fully understand what lies behind it. I will use a comparison that again starts from physical life.
Let us take the process of digestion. During digestion, part of the stored nutrients pass into our organism, while the other part is excreted. If a certain part of the nutrients could not be excreted, our digestion would be impossible. This excretion must take place regularly. But no one would think of saying that they feed on what they excrete. The nerve processes that take place in our organism when we develop moral strength within ourselves behave like secretions, like processes of secretion, in relation to what is fruitful for us, what is truly within us as human beings. When we assert a certain moral impulse in our soul, this is connected with a process of secretion. This process of secretion, that which falls away, that which we must produce within ourselves as waste, so to speak, is the nerve process. And this nerve process relates to what we actually do in exactly the same way as the process of secretion in digestion relates to the process of assimilation of food. So those who call the spiritual process of forming moral impulses a nervous process are basically doing nothing more than saying, only in a different field, that human nutrition consists in secretion, and then examining the products of secretion in order to find out what is actually particularly beneficial to human beings. This is actually the mistaken approach of materialistic science, which regards as the actual essence that which the spirit must separate in order to develop. Modern science investigates precisely that which the spirit cannot use in order to get behind the spirit. In doing so, it proceeds in much the same way as someone who would examine the contents of the intestines in order to determine which substances humans absorb into their muscles. Sometimes one has to speak harshly if one wants to grasp the whole absurdity of modern materialism, because the illusion created by modern materialism has such overwhelming power of persuasion for the false views of the present that one must use strong words to point out where the terrible error actually lies.
Now I will start from something completely different, in order to return later to what I have said before. Let us ask ourselves the question: What about the various religious systems that have gradually appeared in the course of human evolution? In the course of human development, various religious teachers have appeared and told people this or that about the conditions of the spiritual world. It really does not take much to arrive at a very clever judgment about these religious systems, for cleverness—as we have seen in various judgments of our time—is not particularly difficult in our age. You understand how this is to be understood and that this is not meant as a criticism of our age. A so-called intelligent person can easily point out that the various religious teachers have all taught different things, and he can therefore come to the conclusion that none of it can be the truth; for if it were the truth, they would all have taught the same thing. And from this one could then conclude that all talk about the higher worlds — because of the many contradictions that have come to light — cannot be traced back to anything of the truth given to human beings.
However, the question posed can only be answered correctly if one forms an idea of what one takes with oneself through the gate of death from what one has experienced here on earth. You can easily form an idea of what one takes with oneself if you think about it: as soon as you close your eyes and cover your ears, you hear and see nothing of your sensory environment. Now ask yourself: How much of what the soul takes in from morning to evening, and how much of what it carries within itself in the form of ideas, does the soul actually owe to its eyes and ears? If we had no eyes or ears, the vast majority of the contents of the human soul would disappear. But after death, human beings certainly have no eyes and no ears. What they perceive through their eyes and ears, they can only carry through the gate of death by means of memory. There should be no further reflection on the fact that what is perceived through the eyes and ears, through the senses in general, can only be carried through the gate of death as memory. The same applies to everything we form as ideas that are caused by sensory impressions. And now you only need to think about what must be left behind when entering the spiritual world: everything that comes to humans through external impressions is left behind.
What, then, must be the nature of an idea that is to be carried through the gate of death? It must certainly not be taken from any external impression, and it must certainly have the quality that the materialist can say: What you imagine there does not exist at all, for it cannot be seen with the eyes or heard with the ears. So such an idea must have the characteristic that its object cannot be perceived externally, for what can be perceived externally cannot pass through the gate of death as an idea. I would like to note here that materialism is led to such objections by the very fact that it constantly speaks of being or not being and does not really know what this being and not being actually means. It is sufficient for us now to remain with the German language. “To be” is taken from “to see” and comes from “seeing” in general. Therefore, nothing else is said about that which is covered by the concept of being other than: I have seen it once. And all other talk about being is nothing more than an understanding of what has been seen. From this we should conclude that we should not speak of being in relation to the things we carry through the gate of death, for that would mean that we must have seen these things with our physical eyes.
What did the founders of religion actually want to give people with their ideas?
They wanted to give people ideas that would strengthen the spirit internally, endow it with inner light, so that when a person passes through the gate of death into the supersensible world, he enters it in such a way that he is his own light, that he is able to illuminate things there on his own. It is very easy for people to say: If I am told about the supersensible worlds, how can I know that all these ideas are really true? For let us suppose that someone spreads ideas about the supersensible world, and these ideas are accepted by a number of people—and they are false, or one-sided, or do not correspond to the truth in the same sense as we speak of truth when we speak of the external physical world. Let us suppose, then, that these ideas are false and that a number of people have accepted them. In such a case, it would still be better if people had accepted these false ideas than if they had not accepted any ideas about the supersensible world at all. Why? It is better because our soul has to make an effort when it accepts any ideas about the supersensible world. Whether one accepts correct or false ideas, one must make an effort, and this effort counts in the spiritual world when we pass through the gate of death. It is this effort that benefits us after death, or that benefits us at all when we enter the spiritual world. For suppose we had imbued ourselves with a completely wrong view of the spiritual world. By taking it in, just as a gymnast trains his limbs, we would have trained our soul forces. And what we have trained, we then have, we carry into the spiritual world. By carrying this into the spiritual world, we then have something there similar to what we have here by virtue of having eyes. We are then no longer blind in the spiritual world. Even if it should turn out that everything we have absorbed is wrong, and we have only exerted ourselves, we have nevertheless trained our spiritual eye and now have the ability to see what exists in the spiritual world.
Now, the situation is such that what the various religious teachers have communicated is not totally wrong, but rather the truth about the supersensible world has been presented from different points of view and only appears to be contradictory. One must supplement one with the other. But the essential thing that all these religious systems have in common is that they all provide the human soul with ideas through which the soul strengthens itself to enter the spiritual world, that the soul is awakened in its spiritual foundations. What the individual religious teachers give to souls, they give according to the abilities of the souls, according to, I would say, the conditions of the individual human races, according to the climatic conditions or other conditions of the country and the time in which they have to appear. But what they all have in common is that they make the souls of human beings strong and powerful, one might even say, they make them shine inwardly, so that the souls are not only real in the physical world, but can also be real in the spiritual world. Strengthening the soul is what has been given as a universal truth in all religious systems according to their different possibilities.
Our time is now compelled to gradually perceive the spiritual world in a different way than past times were able to do.
Certain ideas that have formed since the flourishing of modern science must first be strengthened and empowered within our time so that the soul, through such ideas, becomes capable of being alive in the spiritual world rather than dead. This automatically brings about something deeper, something that is certainly more demanding on the soul, but deeper than what the various religious systems have achieved. Over the years, I have given various reasons why our time is called to spiritual science. But I would like to say: for those who are close to spiritual life, it is evident today at every turn, and this is part of the turmoil of our time, that spiritual science belongs to the impacts, to the ferments that our time must undergo.
In recent months, many, many souls have passed through the gate of death, passing through the gate of death in the prime of youth. I have already pointed out that, according to the ordinary course of things, those human beings whose souls have passed through the gate of death in this way would all have had the right to live longer on earth. When a human being passes through the gate of death, we know that they first lay down their physical body, then, after a relatively short time, their etheric body. This etheric body then belongs to the outer etheric world, and the astral body and the I continue to belong to the human being. It is usually said that this etheric body dissolves in the spiritual world. But the time in which it dissolves varies greatly. When a person has reached a very old age in physical life, that is, has reached a normal age, so to speak, then they have used up the forces of their etheric body, and it dissolves quickly. But if a person passes through the gate of death in the prime of life, their etheric body could have served them for decades. This etheric body is a coherent, well-ordered organization. In the second case, it does not dissolve immediately. It separates from the astral body and the ego. These go their own ways in the spiritual world; the etheric body, however, separates but does not dissolve immediately. It will seem only natural to you that human beings retain a certain connection with the etheric body, which has initially separated but remains present in the spiritual etheric world. That is why we can say that, strictly speaking, in this spiritual etheric world, in the vicinity of the Earth's aura, there are an extraordinarily large number of unused etheric bodies, etheric bodies with fresh forces. This is what is particularly striking in the present observation of the spiritual world, that we are faced with such a large number of unused etheric bodies. But everywhere we approach the feelings that the dead have in relation to these etheric bodies, we notice something else. Of course, these things are such that you may believe them or not; for I can only claim credibility through the truth inherent in the explanations I have given you over many years. What one notices in the feelings of the deceased toward their etheric bodies is that all those who have now made the sacrifice of death are, in a sense, being whispered to spiritually: The time has come! And humanity will only make proper use of the unspent forces in our etheric bodies when it becomes aware of how it is connected with the spiritual world! For many, many forces radiate from these unspent etheric bodies. They enter our world, and humanity will only make proper use of these forces when it directs its thoughts toward the spiritual world. Then these forces of the sacrificed etheric bodies will be forces that promote humanity. This is, in a sense, what the dead are calling out to us today: Do not use up your etheric bodies in vain; do not let the time pass in which the forces of your unused etheric bodies can serve the spiritual progress of humanity!
And I would like to add something special: I have explained once, or perhaps more often, how we can help the deceased. Special circumstances make it possible for the deceased to benefit when we read to them what we have gained through spiritual science. I have pointed out that it means a great deal to those who have passed through the gate of death if we read spiritual science to them in spirit, if we imagine them alive and full of life in spirit, and, of course, not aloud, but as if in thought — there can be several, there can be many — reading a chapter of spiritual science to them. This seems absurd to those who believe that when a person passes through the gate of death, the entire spiritual world is around them, so they do not need us to read to them. It is not quite so absurd. Of course, the deceased has the spiritual world around them, is within it. But just as a person here does not understand the world — the sensory world — even though they are in it, if they do not have knowledge of it, so too the deceased does not have knowledge of the spiritual world when they pass through the gate of death, even though they are in it. This knowledge must be acquired here. When we read to the dead, it is like something they receive as nourishment; it flows into them. And humanity can gain a great deal of strengthening power for the coming times in relation to the spiritual by using precisely that mantra which I now always use at the beginning of our meditations, “Spirits of your souls, working guardians,” and so on, with the change “sphere beings” in relation to the fallen. We can also, although this is otherwise only possible with deceased persons whom we have known ourselves, address this mantra to deceased persons who are personally unknown to us; after we have used this mantra with due reverence, we can read it aloud, I would say, into the unknown; and the dead who have just passed away through our events can receive it. Then, with what they can draw from their connection with us, they will have a retroactive effect on earthly culture via their etheric bodies and will work together with the people living on earth to advance spiritual life.
Through such things, however, we will achieve something else. It is quite true that we have lived, in a sense, in a time of the most gloomy materialism, and that these warlike events have triggered something that has a real tinge of spiritual life. In terms of the spiritual, there has been a great difference between, for example, traveling through Germany in July of last year, or earlier, and observing people spiritually, and doing so in August, September, or even now. What stands out as a difference is that, in a sense, everyone used to have their own egoistic aura that closed itself off tightly and clung to the individual. Now there is a communal aura into which thoughts flow as something unified. The fact that all thoughts are directed in one direction is also something tremendously significant in a spiritual sense. This has created something spiritual for the time of war that was not there before. That is undeniable. But now imagine how it must be when peace returns. Then souls would become all the more desolate if they could not find something of spiritual value within themselves; for it is necessary for human beings in every age to direct their thoughts toward something that has nothing to do with external reality. This strengthens them for the spiritual world in some way. If these are ideas about the supersensible world, they strengthen him in relation to the good forces of the supersensible world; if they are not supersensible ideas, or if they are something that is not justified in relation to the supersensible, they also strengthen him for the supersensible world, but then for the Luciferic or Ahrimanic world. But human beings are predisposed in such a way that the spiritual wants to speak in them. One could say that human beings must have something that is not true for the external world; and if they have long refused to allow something into their souls that is not true for the external world, then a reaction occurs, a reaction in such a way that they must believe in something that is not true for the external world. In a strange way, such beliefs can then take hold of the human soul. Certain souls overwhelmed by materialism can even be outwardly pious. Such souls can experience this reaction in a special way. For example, they can, one might say, unanimously form the idea that a people with a certain culture is a barbarian people, and they can make this an article of faith. Apart from certain other points of view, this is nothing more than the soul's longing for a belief, for something that has no reality in the physical world. Because people are no longer accustomed to turning their gaze toward the truly supernatural, they fill their souls with the belief that a certain people is a barbarian people. This has become a belief, a dogma, to which people adhere just as fanatically as they once adhered to religious dogmas. It is a substitute for a long-lost belief. But now imagine that this cannot go on forever. When peace returns, people will no longer have this real substitute, which is expressed in the belief that a certain people are barbarians. Then there will be a terrible desolation, a completely terrible desolation. And that is what lies in store for those regions which today are creating a belief for themselves, creating dogmas for themselves, in such a sometimes truly abominable and mendacious manner. A terrible spiritual desolation will descend upon these regions. And this spiritual desolation can only be combated if the unspent etheric forces of those who have sacrificed their lives are used in the right way, as has been described. Therefore, all of them tell us, as if admonishing us about the right use of their etheric forces, expressing a spontaneous discovery made now after death: The time has come! Humanity must undergo a spiritual development, and the present events must be a twilight state from which a new sun state will emerge.
This is what must penetrate the minds of those who suffer heavy losses: that to the extent that it is necessary for our time to become spiritual, this is only possible if it receives help from the spiritual world. But the means for this help must be gained through such painful events as we are now experiencing in our present time. For the spiritual researcher, it becomes quite clear that these events cannot be viewed in a purely materialistic way. But one finds almost exclusively a purely materialistic view of these events. One can experience — as we have experienced — that a number of people in one part of the world who feel hostile toward each other issue some kind of call, that this call reaches other hostile areas, and from these hostile areas the question is asked: Who wanted this war? Or one accuses the other of wanting the war. In doing so, one always forgets what must be clear from a deeper consideration of the circumstances, and it is from this deeper consideration of things that some salvation for the future can come: that all these events are really willed from the spiritual world, because the spiritual world needs those forces that can come as fruits from these seeds of the unspent etheric bodies. And if one wanted to accuse, one would have to accuse the spiritual world itself at the same time. But then the accusation would disappear. For then one would become aware of the iron necessity that exists, of that iron necessity that really must look down upon our earthly world from the point of view of spiritual worlds, just as we must look at something when it becomes necessary to consume, to kill, to tear out of a context in order to build something else. We cannot build a house without destroying so many rocky areas; we cannot speak of any guilt here, we must speak of necessity. So it is necessary for the spiritual world to demand the sacrifices that are now being demanded, because seeds are necessary. These seeds are precisely the unspent etheric bodies that then permeate all of humanity's becoming with life, and they must be there if development is to continue, because otherwise humanity would lack the forces to progress. In addition to everything that today's events mean outwardly, we must fully grasp this in order to understand the events effectively inwardly.
When we look at things in this way, we say to ourselves: Even if I cannot see from the outset whether everything I receive from the spiritual world is correct, as people say, it is certainly the case that by uniting these revelations from the spiritual world with my own soul, I exert this soul, supply it with strength, and thereby my soul becomes luminous for the spiritual world and gains eyes for the spiritual world. Only the conditions for the spiritual world are different from those for the physical world. In the physical world, we can be satisfied once we have formed a thought and recognized its truth. In the practical life of the physical world, it is also sufficient if we have recognized the truth of a thought once. I mean this: if a panel of judges wants to find out whether a person is guilty of something, then the matter is settled once the idea has been formed that this person is guilty of an act. Then everything that is necessary has been done. In the spiritual world, on the other hand, it is not enough to have formed a thought once; it is necessary for it to recur again and again. That is why repetition is so important in the spiritual realm. It is not enough to know something about things; it must be made present in the soul again and again. This is also the basis of the meditative life, in which we allow the content of meditation to remain present in the soul through repetition. In this way, what is always present becomes truly effective in its power, just as when a drop falls continuously on a stone and eventually hollows it out. When the drop first falls on the stone, it makes no impression; nor does it when it falls ten or a hundred times; but eventually it hollows out the stone. When we take something like this into our soul, it may seem as if, once taken in, it means nothing to the soul, not even ten times; but if we are patient, we can bring ourselves to become aware of the eternal core of human nature. For it is the power we develop in the process that matters, and this power is often shunned by people; they do not want to have it. Why do they not want this power?
Why people do not want this power, why they are still afraid of spiritual science today, we can answer when we look again at the significance of spiritual scientific ideas for life after death from the point of view of spiritual science. The most important ideas after death are those that do not depict anything that exists in the outer world, that do not refer to an outer existence, and of which the crude materialist can say: they mean nothing in life. But these ideas are the most important after death. For the formation of such ideas requires that strong power of reflection, of thinking, of feeling, which makes the soul strong, which makes it experience itself, feel itself in the spiritual world. The soul therefore needs such ideas when it passes through the gate of death.
How can one gain such ideas? We already know: only by exerting the soul to a greater degree than it usually does. For in order to take in the ideas that today's natural scientists take in, one need only look, perhaps through a microscope or a telescope. One can remain quite passive, receive impressions of the world, and register them. This is often the case: one does not like to exert oneself inwardly. For what one does not see requires greater effort than what one sees, and one shies away from this greater effort of thinking, one flees from it. So you are actually — forgive the harsh expression — inwardly lazy, inwardly comfortable. And the deepest characteristic of contemporary scientific endeavor is this inner laziness, this comfort, this unwillingness to draw forces out of the soul. But if one does this, if one brings these forces out of the soul, what effect does this have after death? Yes, one has, in a sense, something of these forces that have been brought out for life after death, which one usually does not like at all because one lives mostly in a certain illusion. But I will immediately point out the reason why one does not usually like it. For when one enters the spiritual world through death or initiation, one must experience something behind death that is, in a sense, a second death. It is a kind of second death. You know that later one must also separate oneself from one's astral body, and one can either go through this consciously or one can sleep through it. But there is a secret longing in the human soul to sleep through this, not to go through it consciously. There is a certain fear in human beings, which is not properly interpreted, of waking up after death so strongly that one then notices everything that is around one. This fear is, however, exactly the same as the fear that makes it pleasant for people here not to live this physical life so intensely, not to always wake up, but to go through life somewhat numb. Life is then more pleasant. And if one could always lie in bed, spend one's life in a half-sleep, then that would be most comfortable. But that is not always possible. Man must wake up. And if he could be numb to the things after death until the point I indicated, he must not remain numb after death. Human beings must wake up. But they are still afraid of doing so. That is why even those who are so close to needing spiritual science resist it, like a researcher who says that even nervous disorders in the back, arms, and legs are based on the soul. He resists accepting spiritual science because he is terrified of it. He is then like someone who says: I have lost something, it has been stolen; the wind cannot have carried it away, so it cannot have been lost through external natural forces, therefore a human being must have taken it away! But now he stops there. He does not go any further because he is afraid that he might then be beaten up. This is how certain researchers behave, such as Binswanger. They say: Certain nervous disorders in the arms, legs, and so on have their cause in the soul. But then they stick to their guns; they don't go any further because they are afraid that they might be beaten up, pardon me! — because they like to sleep through what is going on in the spiritual world.
We must acquire the feeling that today's researchers in particular are coming face to face with the effectiveness of the spiritual world, but do not want to approach it. But once these researchers want to approach the spiritual world, they will have to realize that one cannot talk about the conditions of the spiritual world in general terms, but that one must engage with spiritual science in a positive way, and that this engagement with spiritual science itself becomes a kind of healing process. That is how things are connected. It is not mental illness itself that has increased; to believe that would be a mistake. But what has become particularly widespread in recent times is what can be called nervous disorders. And if things continue as they have been, then we will find, as the course of human development shows us, that nervous disorders must become stronger and stronger if the old conditions remain.
Some very interesting facts could be pointed out here. Let us take a very simple fact. There is an Austrian poet, Robert Hamerling — an excellent poet, some of whose works have already been recited in our circle. This man spent a large part of the second half of his life in bed. He was seriously ill; he sank more and more into a serious illness. But he did not become nervous. Nothing in his poetry indicates a nervous character. Even in times when he could only lie on one side of his body and had to write in terrible pain, he did not write in a nervous manner in the true sense of the word. Why? He belonged to that Central European culture which had not yet become as nervous as the intellectual life of other European peoples. This does not diminish that intellectual life, but one must be clear about the facts. I experienced how, after there was still an understanding in the 1870s and 1880s for things such as those presented by Robert Hamerling, for example, there was suddenly an enormous enthusiasm for Dostoyevsky in the 1880s. I do not wish to belittle Dostoyevsky, of course, but what he presents us with above all is a very nervous, fidgety art, for all its greatness. Such a nervous art would come about if materialism—and Dostoyevsky's art is materialistic, even if it is “psychology”—continues to flow and spread.
If this is not to happen, then the powerful forces that the human soul must expend if it is to truly find its way into trains of thought such as Saturn, the sun, and the moon are preliminary stages of the Earth's development must come into play. For one should try to present a real person of the present day with such ideas as the development of Saturn, the development of the Sun, and so on, and expect him to make the mental effort necessary to find such things natural and necessary. One can find such ideas natural and necessary, but this requires greater effort on the part of the soul, and the result is that nervousness is driven out! One must be patient, but nervousness will be driven out. And what else would come over the whole culture of humanity as a general nervousness will be healed when humanity grasps what emanates from spiritual science through the spread of the spiritual current. While humanity would otherwise become restless, spiritual science comes from the other side and brings healing at the same time. And while the psychiatrist, before he has penetrated spiritual science, must admit that nervous symptoms are increasing, he will perhaps have to admit afterwards that the best remedy for nervous symptoms is to say to the patient: Take a book on spiritual science, read it for three quarters of an hour every day, and try to work it through; then your nerves will become stronger. — They will. But people will only believe this when they realize that, according to the comparison made at the beginning of this lecture, the life of the soul has nothing to do with the life of the nerves except to bring about processes of separation; that the life of the soul cannot be cured by placing special emphasis on the processes of separation, but by strengthening from within that which what has nothing to do with the processes of separation is strengthened from within, permeated by the soul through the spiritual forces flowing into the soul. The time will come when, according to spiritual science, prescriptions will be written that consist of using this or that, which can only be gained from spiritual science, especially for the diseases of modern times. Of course, we are still a long way from that; for the time being, it will still be considered sufficiently proven that any therapy is nonsense if it can be labeled as mystical, whereby the less one knows what mysticism actually is, the more liberally one uses the term. For we have no need of the term “mysticism”; we only need it when we want to describe something technical; but those who have no idea what mysticism is need it most of all.
Precisely when we survey these things, we cannot hide from ourselves that we are living in a very significant time of crisis. I have often said that it is not my way to say that we are living in a time of transition, because every period of time has something that preceded it and something that follows it. But the point is precisely to recognize the concrete nature of the transition in a time that is a “time of transition.” For our time, this concrete nature consists in the fact that everything that is happening in our time points us in one direction: Human beings must find the transition to a grasp of the spiritual worlds. Then they will find peace, inner strength, and inner security in the spiritual worlds. That is what human beings absolutely need.
If you really want to enliven your soul, as a new kind of peace of soul must be attained through spiritual science, it is good to take the following material for meditation: It is truly significant that for three or four centuries people have gradually had to come to terms with the idea that they are racing through space, literally racing through space. Of course, everyone knows this, but people do not usually think about the fact that they learn in school that they are racing through space at tremendous speed. In this respect, one could almost recall the man who once lay in a ditch, lying quite comfortably, but terribly dissatisfied; and when asked why he was so dissatisfied, since he had nothing to do, he replied: yes, he had to go along with the earth's revolutions around the sun, and he would find it more comfortable to stay behind. This was someone who took the idea of rotation seriously. People don't usually think about this, but it lives in people, even though they don't usually think about it. So, to continue the thought: in the last three or four centuries, people have become accustomed to their ideas keeping pace with the Earth racing through space. This must be resisted from outer space. It is really true that there was something reassuring in the old belief that the earth stood still and that the sun moved. Now it will be a long time before people realize the inaccuracy of the Copernican view of the world, for things are not as they are taught today. But it is possible to reach a point where, through the enlivening of the ideas of spiritual science, one puts oneself in the position of a person sitting in a railway carriage or traveling on a ship, who can now make an inner effort against the rumbling so that he hears nothing of it but is completely “at home.” Today, this is only possible with spiritual scientific ideas. But one must take into account that repeated repetition is necessary for this, because it depends on the power that arises from it. Then one remains, as it were, within oneself, calm and secure. And I would like to note this as a good meditation idea: the powers of the spiritual world can enter us if we respond to them with this calmness. Only in this way can they become conscious to us, because we meet them with the kind of imaginative life that has been described.
This characterizes the transition period in which we live; we are truly in the midst of this transition. The longing for the spiritual world is definitely present in souls, even if most people are not yet aware of it today. But from what has now seized such a large part of the earth as very special events, a conscious longing for the spiritual world will develop. As spiritual researchers, we can already know today that all the sacrificed, unspent etheric bodies will release the deepest longing for the spiritual world. This deepest longing will come, a longing for a truth that cannot be attained through external observation, but only internally through the effort of the soul. The German spirit is indeed prepared for this. It is prepared for a truth that appears true in itself and not because it is proven externally. The German spirit is prepared for this. And everywhere one finds proof of this. Those who have truly strived in the essence of the German spirit have always had a way of speaking in their thoughts about truth as an inner gift of the human soul. What would such a person say today in response to some of the things we are experiencing in our time? In the first days of August, one could read in foreign newspapers: Hamburg is a heap of rubble; the Russians have marched into Stettin, even into Cologne. Quite other things were also reported. Emperor Franz Joseph died, as is well known, on September 8. What would someone like the one described above say in response?
“Brass instead of gold, counterfeit bills instead of genuine ones may be sold by individuals, one lost battle may be touted as several won, and other lies about sensual things and individual events may be made believable for a time, but in the knowledge of the essence in which consciousness has immediate certainty of itself, the idea of deception falls away.”
That would be written from the depths of what one had to experience today. Hegel wrote it, and he died in 1831. It is peculiar: when someone is deeply moved by the inner nature of truth, they say things that are true for all time; then what has been spoken out of the consciousness of truth can be cited at all times. That is what must be said about the peculiarity of the Central European spirit, about its very special relationship to truth, and what is undeniable for anyone who makes an effort to get to know things. Today, one often has the feeling that one must ask: Why did people study history? Perhaps they did not really learn it. It is as if souls were born only after August 1, 1914, and do not draw on what happened in the past to form their judgments. But in the end, all this is only there to make the reaction all the stronger and more intense, to create all the more strongly and intensely in souls the need for inner truth. That is the nature of the transition in our time, in which this inner connection with the truth is so lacking and so evident. As a reaction, a deepest longing for the truth will arise. Then the souls embodied here in bodies will hear what those souls who have prepared themselves through the sacrificial death of the present time are saying to them, that they will recognize more of the truth than is commonly recognized today.
That is what I wanted to say at this hour, to reaffirm what I have often said, especially in this time, about the living speech of the events of the time to us. For truly, these events of the time speak of this. They speak to those who courageously devote themselves to them, who sacrifice themselves willingly for them, who already look forward to that time with sorrow; they speak to them with courage and comfort—courage and comfort for new strength:
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruits of the spirit will grow —
Souls, conscious of the spirit,
Will direct their minds to the realm of the spirit.