The Mystery of Death
GA 159
7 May 1915, Vienna
7. Cosmic Effects on the Human Members During Sleep—The Esoteric Foundation of Christmas—The Significance of Sacrificial Deaths
It must be my intention during these days to bring something home to our souls that is able to throw some light from the spiritual-scientific point of view on our big events. Therefore, it is also my task next Sunday to turn our sensations to certain points of view which can bring some light just in that which must now move our hearts and souls in the deepest sense. I would like to prepare the basis of that, directing your souls to certain powers and forces which have an effect in the historical existence of human beings which can be only recognised by those insights spiritual science can give and are not immediately discernible for the everyday consciousness. I want to point to developmental facts of human life, to more or less subconscious facts today which express themselves in the historical course of human life.
We go out from the fact- you know it from the representation in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—that what takes place in secrecy with every human being is recognised on successive levels of supersensible knowledge, of the so-called Imaginative knowledge, of the Inspirative knowledge and of the Intuitive knowledge. In the public lecture yesterday, I have already emphasised that one has always to keep in mind that the spiritual scientist who states something of the spiritual worlds on the basis of his knowledge of Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive perceptions, does not add anything that does not exist in the spiritual realms in which every human soul lives without being aware of them. The spiritual scientist only draws attention to that which always weaves and lives in the world and in which way the individual human soul is put in it. So that not only for somebody who has the intention to make his way into the current of esoteric experiences, but for every human soul the knowledge of them is important what is internal reality for it at any rate, only a reality which cannot be recognised by means of the everyday awareness of life.
Thus I would like to go out from some facts of the Imaginative perception of the human nature generally. We observe daily that an event full of riddle, at least an event full of riddle for the external science intervenes rhythmically in our life by turns: the waking and sleeping states. We know for a long time that we belong with our four human members, the physical body, the etheric body, astral body and ego, in the waking state to the physical earth. We know that we are during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking, in the physical world only with our physical and etheric bodies that we withdraw as it were into the purely spiritual world with our astral bodies and egos. We can characterise that which presents itself now to the view of the spiritual researcher and say: the spiritual researcher looks at that which takes place, for example, constantly with the human being when he leaves his physical and etheric bodies while falling asleep and advances to the region of the higher world with his astral body and ego. The spiritual researcher simply watches what happens there with the human being—with every human being falling asleep. So that we can say: the spiritual researcher only observes what would show itself to every human soul if it could look down not in the dream state, but in the complete sleeping state at the world, so that it would find its physical and etheric bodies as something among the things of the world that is outside of it, of the sleeping soul.
We must not imagine that we see that which we have left there, in which we have left behind our physical and etheric bodies, from the point of view of sleep as we see our physical surroundings with our physical eyes. We have to use our physical senses, our physical eyes to see our surroundings from waking up to falling asleep. We do not use them when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies. If we became suddenly clairvoyant in the sleeping state, we would perceive nothing of that what surrounds us in the waking state, as it is in the waking state. We also do not perceive our physical and etheric bodies as we perceive the physical body looking into a mirror. It is quite wrong to believe that one looks at the physical and the etheric bodies as if one bends with his astral body and ego over the physical and etheric bodies. This is not the case.
That what the Imaginative knowledge—we keep that in mind now: Imaginative knowledge—shows us that everything disappears to us, really disappears for the time being that we are used to see in the waking state. Also while we see our physical and etheric bodies, these are not like they are in the waking state, but our physical and etheric bodies appear to be enlarged to a world; they appear to us as connected with the whole earth. We are looking; we are aware that we are looking at the physical and etheric bodies. But we behold them, so that they are the only world for us at first. As well as we have mountains, rivers and clouds, the sun and stars et cetera round ourselves and look at them as our surroundings in the waking state, we look, while we look at our surroundings, when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies, at our physical and etheric bodies as something that is extended to a world. We look at nothing else at all. We look at this as we look, otherwise, at the different things of our earth. We look there at our own physical nature like at a whole world.
It is strange that we feel this world at which we look there falling asleep that we feel it as we feel the earth in spring when it produces the single green rungs, after it has been freed from the snowy cover of the winter, when it makes the vegetation grow on it again, when everything begins shooting and sprouting. Falling asleep we look at the physical and etheric bodies enlarged to a world, we look at them, so that we can feel them like a planet waking in spring. And this goes on through the whole sleeping state that way. What we see there in mighty pictures which really appear to us in the expansion of a planet, begins going to its summer like the earth is about to go towards its summer when the spring comes to an end. We experience the sleeping state that way if we experience it properly.
We go in the sleeping state up to that point where we feel: our physical and etheric bodies bear something sprouting and shooting up to bloom, up to fruit; everywhere everything grows and blossoms. If I may express myself in detail, I have to say—for the Imaginative view that is paradoxical which shows itself that way, indeed: while looking physically we feel our earth's surface and experience its sprouting upwards, its growing and blooming in our consciousness. It is different when we now observe that from outside which takes action with our body and compare it with the plant world, as if its roots penetrate from above and grows with its flowers into our body. Thus we feel a completely reverse world, and the fruits are immersed. We learn then that with this immersion of the fruits is really expressed what becomes clear to us as the refreshment of sleep.
We know thereby that our physical and etheric bodies receive the forces from the whole universe—because everything is forces at what we look Imaginatively,—while we go on sleeping. We watch forces coming from the universe which are active in the creation of plants. We see the universe driving a vegetation into our physical nature. We get the sure knowledge of the fact that we leave our body while falling asleep, because we take away our physical and etheric bodies from the effects of the cosmic forces with our egos and astral bodies from waking up to falling asleep. Because we ourselves go out, the whole universe is able to have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies. It sends elemental, not physical forces into us which express themselves in the described Imaginations. Thus a relation is produced between physical body and etheric body with the whole universe every time when we fall asleep. While we live in the waking state in the physical world, our physical and etheric bodies really live during sleep in that what we call the elemental world, the world of the bare forces which show themselves just in the described Imaginations.
Where are we with our egos and astral bodies? We have often described, and it is also shown in different writings: we are with our egos and astral bodies in the world that has been described as the world of the higher hierarchies among the beings we call angeloi, archangeloi, archai et cetera. The egos and the astral bodies dive into these beings and their world. As well as we know about the beings of the animal, the plant, the mineral realms, when we are waking, and stand as human beings as it were above this world while we take up them in our thoughts, we are taken up like thoughts by the beings of the higher hierarchies. This is the significant matter that we can say: while here below our physical and etheric bodies are connected with the forces of the whole universe, we are thought from falling asleep up to waking, as if we were real beings, woven of thoughts and the will being; we are thought by the beings of the higher hierarchies.—As we think nature, the beings of the higher hierarchies think us. Hence, it is not right at all, exactly speaking, to say if one comes out of the physical body, he thinks the world. It is correct to say that one experiences to be thought by the world of the higher hierarchies. As the thought would have to feel itself during the waking life if it had consciousness, we would have to experience ourselves as the thoughts of the higher beings when we are outside our physical bodies.
How do we experience the reawakening Imaginatively? While we prepare to wake up gradually, we experience that really as we experience—we can compare the Imagination again to the external nature—the winter coming with its forces destroying and paralysing the sprouting summer life. As well as the winter above the earth brings frost and cold and the destruction of the summer splendour, we ourselves dive into the physical body and etheric body. Waking up we prepare the decline of the forces which entered our physical body and etheric body really like a vegetation, even like an animal realm from the elemental world of the universe as the winter prepares the decline of the summer splendour. While we are awake, we really transport our physical and etheric bodies as a result of our presence into such a condition as the cosmic relations transport the earth when it is winter. We spread out the winter over our own physical and etheric bodies, entering them. You see at the same time that what one uses from physical points of view often as a comparison is not right for the spiritual view. Indeed, the human being already has the consciousness instinctively that he is connected with the whole universe and that his experience is a microcosmic image of the macrocosm. But the human being prefers to say when he really wants to compare something in his microcosmic life to the macrocosmic life: waking is like the spring coming in our life and the waking life is like the summer. The autumn is like becoming tired in the evening and sleeping is like the winter.—Just the reverse is reality. The summer life is the sleeping life and the winter life is the waking life. This is the truth of the matter.
If the spiritual researcher investigates these relations, he finds that, while his ego and astral body rise to the realms of the higher hierarchies and are thought by the higher beings, not only the elemental world but also certain beings of the higher hierarchies work on his physical and etheric bodies. It is not only the elemental world which consists of forces, but real beings of the higher hierarchies, which work on our physical and etheric body. Something strange comes to light then that we can notice that we get to quite different conditions at the moment when we fall asleep as those in which we are while we are awake. As I have said, everything that can be expressed that way is based on the fact that the spiritual research permits us to watch the conditions of falling asleep and waking. Then it appears that also that being of the higher hierarchies has an effect on our physical and etheric bodies from waking up to falling asleep whom we must feel as the folk-soul to whom we belong. When the human being wakes up, he does not only dive into his physical and etheric bodies, but also into the processes which are carried out in his physical and etheric bodies by that which his folk-soul accomplishes. Something strange becomes apparent that the human being dives with falling asleep not only into those beings of the higher hierarchies who correspond to his individual development, but also into such spiritual beings we must regard as folk-souls. I ask to notice that, because it behoves us, who want to penetrate into spiritual science, to look deeper at the world interrelation than external perception can do it. Namely, the human being dives into the relationship to all folk-souls except his own folk-soul from falling asleep up to waking.
Let us remember: during the waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts which our own folk-soul carries out in our physical and etheric bodies. We live together with our own folk-soul from waking up to falling asleep. Beside our folk-soul all the folk-souls of the other peoples are existent in the world. With falling asleep we dive into the relations of the other folk-souls, not in a single other folk-soul—make a note of that,—but in what they accomplish together, what they accomplish as it were in association, as a society. Only the own folk-soul is taken away from this relationship during night. We cannot escape to have also a relationship with all those folk-souls which belong to the other peoples in whom we are not incarnated in a certain incarnation. Since, while we belong to our folk-soul in our waking state, we belong to the other folk-souls in the sleeping state, indeed, only to their sounding-together; while we belong in the waking state to the intentions of the individual folk-soul in whose area we are born in a certain incarnation.
But there is a means to dive sleeping also into an other folk-soul. While we live in the normal awake state in our own folk-soul or its activity and in sleep in the harmony of the other folk-souls, we can dive sleeping in an individual folk-soul if we acquire a rather burning hatred of that which this other folk-soul accomplishes. So absurd it may sound, it is true—and we must be able in our movement to endure such a truth quietly: if the human being really feels burning hatred of a nation's area from his inner being, he condemns himself to sleep with the folk-soul of this nation's area at night, to be together with it.
We just touch a truth where we can see that life begins to have a deep seriousness behind that veil which covers the spiritual worlds for the everyday view, and that it is quite uncomfortable in a certain respect to be a supporter of spiritual science. Since spiritual science begins to be most serious about circumstances which one thinks uncomfortable in life and over which we are generously helped to get because life does not reveal the truth in the everyday sense. Although we must stand, of course, in the external life on the ground which this external life requires from us, we have to be serious about such a principle if we rise in spiritual science to those realms where other characteristics of life begin.
In my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? I spoke of the fact that at the moment when one rises in the spiritual world—and every human being is in the spiritual world, it concerns here only to a knowledge of that which is there always,—then that comfortable unity of the human being stops in which we live in the physical world. The human being experiences some splits; apart from those splits which are mentioned there, and which one can observe after the meeting with the guardian of the threshold, some other splits happen, for example, that is of deep importance for the soul-life. We have to accept while we live in a certain incarnation in a certain nation that it is involved in the whole process of the earth's evolution. We have to do our duty for the nation in which we stand and we have to offer our love to it. It must be clear to us that we really belong, because we are also spiritual beings in our ego and astral body, to the whole humankind and feel with our impulses with the whole humankind. Spiritual science does not allow that we live in it in one-sidedness, but we must be able to harmonise these both sides completely.
We have to realise that we harmonise—although we can love as a person of the present incarnation, even if we are spiritual scientists, our nation as intensely as somebody else is able to love his nation—this feeling with that which combines us with the whole humankind. And just spiritual science raises us to be brought together with the whole humankind because it shows us that we are connected with the whole humankind in our egos and astral bodies. Spiritual science demands more and more to harmonise contrasts from those who devote themselves to it with seriousness and dignity. It is bad if true spiritual science is confused with that unclear mystic activity which wants to combine the needs of the external, physical life with that for which we must rise diving into the spiritual world. Because unclear mysticism wants to bring in that everywhere in the everyday life what spiritual science only shows in the right light. That unclear mysticism will never be able to harmonise, for example, the love of the own nation with the love of the whole humankind, it leads to a hazy mystic cosmopolitism.
One can compare it, as I have already done, to that which hazy theosophists say all the time about equality and about the equal validity of any religion. Indeed, you can say in the abstract: all religions contain the truth. But this is exactly the same, as if one says: pepper, salt and paprika and everything possible are on the table, and all are food ingredients. Sugar, pepper, salt, and paprika—everything is the same. So I give paprika once into the coffee and sugar into the soup, because they are all food ingredients. Exactly on the same point of logic are those who drivel in an unclear mysticism only about the uniform core of all religions instead of getting involved in the real being of any detail that appears in our earth development. It does not depend on emphasising always: all peoples are only expressions of the generally human, but that we recognise the specific tasks which are given to the individual peoples by their folk-souls. A key is given for that in the series of talks which was printed long ago, which was held several years before the outbreak of the war, which did not come into being under the influence of the war, which one cannot reproach that it originated under the impressions of the war: The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology.
Just in our time it is important to call to mind such serious matters, so that the human being can find the harmony between general charity and patriotism. One does not need to shy away from characterising of any individual people, in so far as it is a people—the individual human being always rises up above his people. However, you can derive from my remarks that that has to take place without hatred, of course. Anybody does not recognise the real being of the individual plant if he hates the plant and describes what he feels as hatred. And also anybody cannot recognise the characteristics of a people if he describes what he hates of the people, or if he takes up that in the portrayal which comes from the emotions of hatred.
Thus somebody who is able to rise up to the points of view of spiritual science has to be eager all the time to see the being of the world not in a uniform unity, but just in the harmony of a variety. The human being has to find the possibility to feel all possible warmth for his people, concerning which he needs not show less commitment than anybody who does not strive for spiritual science, and to combine, on the other side, what brings us together with the whole humankind as a big complete being.
I said that we resume such matters the day after tomorrow. Now, however, I want to note that we take off that which brings us together with the single incarnation by our physical and etheric bodies at the same time, while we pass from our waking state into sleep and are thereby taken up in the beings of the higher hierarchies. So we take off our national being in sleep, too. We become only human beings, human beings with all the characteristics which we must have by that which we have acquired as human beings. If we look as spiritual scientist at that which happens to the human being, waking and sleeping, we perceive at the same time that in sleep the human being lives in the spiritual world with his ego and astral body, just as now also his physical and etheric bodies belong to the big world. The independent existence stops, which passes as it were in our skin, and we extend our selves to the big self.
Take into account that we go through a summer state and a winter state always in the course of twenty-four hours. The earth goes also through this summer and winter states, but the earth goes through them in the cycle of the year. Why does the earth go through these states in the cycle of the year? Because the earth is a being as we are, only on another level of the hierarchies. The whole earth, if we look at it physically, as it is around us, is only the body of the earth; and as well as we carry our soul and spirit in ourselves, the earth also has its soul and spirit. Only that is the difference that we are awake and sleep in the course of twenty-four hours, and the earth is awake and sleeps in the cycle of the year. It is awake from the autumn up to the spring and sleeps during the summer. So that we can always say, actually when we live in the summertime: we live embedded in the sleeping earth.—When we live in the wintertime: we live embedded in the waking earth.—It does not hold true that the earth is awake in summer and sleeps in winter as we can say in the trivial comparison taken from everyday life. But it is correct that when autumn comes the earth wakes up as a psycho-spiritual being and is most awake in the midwinter. The earth spirit thinks in the midwinter the most and starts stopping its thinking bit by bit while spring is approaching; and it sleeps when the external life sprouts; in the summertime the earth spirit is sleeping.
We as human beings are not only in connection with the body of the earth by our physical body, but also with the spirit of the earth. We know from various talks that the spirit we call the Spirit of Christ was united with the spirit of the earth by the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ Spirit lives in the spirit of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. If the human beings want to commit a festival which should express that the Christ Spirit is in the earth spirit—in which time they have to set this festival? They must not set it in the summer, but in the winter, in the midwinter. This is Christmas. For this reason one sets Christmas and that which develops from it in the wintertime. This arose from a right knowledge of those who once arranged the Christian year. Out of esoteric truth Christmas was determined, not account of historical facts. For the human being, while he is embedded with his soul and spirit in the soul and spirit of the earth, is together with that most awake condition of the earth in the wintertime. There he lives in the waking earth.
And what did the ancient peoples do about whom we know that they worked and got knowledge with the help of a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must refer preferably to that which lives in the sleeping earth spirit when the earth spirit sleeps mostly, has withdrawn mostly to its sleeping state. There they have risen to that—in contrast to the modern humankind—which gave them the truth unconsciously, as it had to be for them. Hence, in the midsummer we find the St John's-tide festival with the peoples who belonged to the cult which scooped its knowledge from the more sleeping, dreamlike state. It is the summer festival in contrast to Christmas which is fitting for the modern humankind.
What is determined so externally, and what our materialistic time does not understand at all, this actually has its deep bases in the spiritual reality. We live now in a time in which the human beings must start again thinking and feeling quite differently as it was the case in the past time. The past time had the task to bring the realm of materialistic thinking and feeling home to the human beings. And just the last centuries which the human souls lived through should bring them home to the materialistic thinking and feeling. The earth development had to go through the materialistic time. We do not do well to harshly criticise materialism. It had to come once in the earth development. But now we live in a time when materialism must be overcome again when spiritual beholding has to enter human souls again. This is the more or less bright or dark sensation of those who are attracted in their own souls to our spiritual-scientific attempts, to our spiritual-scientific world view. They just feel that now the time is there when one has consciously to take up this spiritual world, while the spiritual world was once seen in a dreamlike condition. Spiritual science is there for that.
The past time was that of materialism. Because humankind had to dive into materialism, the strong impulse which takes up humankind again had to work just through the time of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. When the Christ Impulse came into the earth evolution, the preparation already began. It came in the 14th, 15th centuries all the more. But when it approached, humankind already prepared itself to dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse was there as an objective fact in the world evolution, but the human beings of that time were not able to understand it least of all. Now we live in the time when one has to start to really understand it.
What do we see, hence? We see a strange course of the Christ Impulse in the previous development. We see that this Christ Impulse when it has entered in the human development as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha is not understood at all by the human beings. Let us try once to form an idea about that which people did in their cleverness. Just in the first and the following centuries, after the Christ Impulse had entered, we find that any possible theological system forms, that the people argue about how they have to imagine the Trinity et cetera. We see an infinite theological squabbling through centuries, and it would probably be the worst way to want to understand the Christ Impulse today from this theological squabbling how the Christ Impulse has worked during these centuries. The people who quarrelled there about its understanding have also understood nothing of the way the Christ Impulse stands in the evolution.
Let us try to realise how this impulse really worked once. I may give you single facts. I take the event that happened in the fourth century A.D., in 312, on the 28th October, which determined the later map of Europe completely: this was that Constantine, who was called “the Great,” the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, and triumphed over him. That is why Christianity also was victorious in the western world in an external way. Constantine declared Christianity the state religion et cetera. However, did he act out of his cleverness? Did that happen, which happened in those days, out of cleverness? We cannot say this. What happened then, actually? When Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, got to know that Constantine was approaching, he asked the Sibylline Books at first. That means that he set about understanding the world phenomena in a dreamlike way. He got the statement out of these books that somebody would accomplish the right action if he left the city as a ruler of Rome and went into battle outside Rome. This was something most unusual that one could think. Because Constantine had a much smaller army than Maxentius and could have achieved nothing without doubt if Maxentius had remained in Rome. But Maxentius moved out of Rome on the advice of the Sibylline Books. However, also in the army of Constantine the generals were not victorious. Rather Constantine had a dream showing him the symbol of Christ. On account of this dream he made his armies carry the cross as the symbol of Christ. He made his behaviour dependent on that which the dream had revealed to him. This battle by which the map of Europe was determined at that time was not decided by means of human cleverness, nor did the generals triumph, but dreams and prophecies. Everything in Europe would have changed if in those days the matters had taken place according to the consciousness of the human beings and not according to that what worked out of the subconsciousness what the human beings just did not know.
The theologians have argued about the question who is Christ, whether He is born with the Father in eternity, whether He is born in time whether He had the same validity as the Father et cetera. In their thoughts nothing of the Christ Impulse was included. But it worked within the human beings in the subconscious regions. It worked not by the egos, but by the astral bodies. The Christ Impulse was reality and worked without human beings understanding it. This is the important, essential part. The working of Christ is so independent of that what human beings understood of it like the course of a thunderstorm is independent of that what human beings have learnt about electricity or in the physical laboratory. Now it is the time to immerse oneself consciously in the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse. But Christ was always working as a force in the historical events.
We go over from this to another, later example. However, there we have to remember of what I explained to you. For the time when materialism approached it is important to know that the human being, while he wants to immerse himself in the spiritual world, must do that best of all in the wintertime. Hence, the view arises everywhere for this time that at the mentioned nights of midwinter especially talented people are endowed with inspirations from the spiritual world. There are legends everywhere with the peoples that tell us how the especially talented human beings who experience no initiation but are endowed by their nature, by elemental forces working in them to be inspired, how these are inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, in thirteen winter nights.
There is a very nice legend which was found in Norway not long ago, the legend of Olaf Åsteson who approaches the church at Christmas Eve and falls asleep. He sleeps up to the sixth January; and when he wakes up, he knows how to tell in imaginations about that which has taken place in the soul land, in the realm of spirits, as we call it. He expresses it in pictures, but he has experienced it through these thirteen nights. Such legends are found everywhere. They are just not that which one calls legends today. Indeed, there have always been endowed human beings who have gone through a physical initiation by elemental forces working in them which the human being can go through if he carefully follows the instructions of the initiatory path by his will.
So that we can say: in the time of materialism there could always be human beings who could unite with the earth spirit and receive inspirations when the earth spirit is most awake, in the midwinter. This was also the time when the Christ Impulse was able to work which united with the earth. Imagine especially endowed souls who are receptive for the spiritual world. It became apparent to them that they just got the impulses to that what they had to accomplish from the spiritual world in these thirteen nights up to the sixth January. This had to appear and appeared always again in little and big examples that there were human beings in the historical course who were inclined spiritually so that if the right point in time entered when they lived through those thirteen nights in winter the spiritual impulse—and in this time the Christ Impulse in particular—came into them. Initiations by nature, initiations which did not take place by means of conscious work have been carried out in the time of materialism always the easiest in these thirteen nights. We can find out that where such initiations appeared they took place in these thirteen nights.
And now we have a fact that even those will accept, who have only a little good will to recognise the spiritual world—the fewest people have this today,—that spiritual forces entered the historical course in the 15th century in the form of a virgin, the Maid of Orleans, as can be proved. You can verify this also historically that again the whole map of Europe was arranged differently, because the Maid of Orleans helped the French against the English at that time. Who thinks about it can find out that everything would have formed differently after that what human beings are able to do unless the shepherd girl had intervened—and in this shepherd girl just the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only the instrument for that which was caused in those days. The Christ Impulse worked in her.
However, she had to have a physical initiation for that—and this physical initiation had to be carried out the best in the thirteen nights up to the sixth January. The Maid of Orleans had to get a sleeping state in the time from the 24th December to the sixth January when she would have been especially receptive for the spiritual influence which can be there just in this time. So that one had to demand that the Maid of Orleans would have experienced the time in a not quite conscious state from the 24th December to the sixth January and would have got the Christ Impulse.—Yes, the Maid of Orleans went through this state in a quite striking way. One cannot go through it more strikingly, than when one is still in that sleeping state in which somebody is before his birth, in the last times which he/she spends as a child before the birth in the body of the mother. The external consciousness is not able, of course, to take up anything. There is a sleeping state, and if it is the end of the time in the womb, it is the ripest condition of the internal-motherly sleep.
Indeed, the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. This is the great secret of the Maid of Orleans that it went through an initiation by nature during thirteen days, which preceded her birth. That was why especially sensitive people gathered on that sixth January, when the Maid of Orleans was born in the village, and said that something quite particular must have happened. They sensed that something particular had come to the village. The Maid of Orleans was born. She worked through an initiation by nature in that sleeping state which she experienced in the body of the mother in the last time before her birth. There we see the spiritual beings working behind the threshold of that which takes place for the human consciousness, which are under this threshold of consciousness.
We see what history can mean if it counts only on that which is given in documents and external communications. The gods go differently through the course of history. The gods work by other means and in other ways. They put a Maid of Orleans into life who is able because of her special karma of this incarnation to take up the Christ Impulse and to work with it. They allow the Christ Impulse to flow in at the right moment. Of course, both were right for that: the special individual karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be added. Not any child that is born on the sixth January could accomplish the same.
Thus we can really say: the Christ Impulse worked in the human being using those forces which did not become clear to these human beings. Only today do we live in the time in which we must consciously take up that which used another way for centuries than the conscious way to be effective in history.
I wanted to arouse a feeling in your souls how the subconscious powers work definitely, what external history is which can be studied according to the external documents, that it is trivialities. It is good if one does such a study in particular in our time. We see, nevertheless, just in our time something great, something immense, something valiant, combined with sacrificial actions, occurring. But we see this great that takes place in our time, being really accompanied from the consequence of the extreme materialism, from that consequence which tries to explain everything that takes place in our time by means of bare external circumstances. This finds expression in the fact that one nation puts the blame on the other nation for the present events and wants to judge everything externally, so that one finds the guilt with the other for that which takes place. Also for our time the causes and reasons of the events are right down at the bottom in the subconscious processes. We will speak about that the day after tomorrow.
Our time will be suitable—also because of the bloody events—to remind the human beings of spiritual impulses of cognition. If once again peace is in the countries waging war today, one will realise that one cannot explain such immense wars of world history out of external causes. One will find out that one cannot explain them. Today people still say, especially the clever ones: nobody is allowed to speak about everything that has caused this war, history will speak about that.—They regard themselves as especially prudent who say there: only in fifty, in hundred years history will speak the right thing about that.
What one calls history today will never explain the causes of these events; however, one will see that from the historical consideration the causes cannot be fathomed. But other support will be there. An esoteric observation of our present just shows this.
What is one of the most remarkable facts in this destiny-burdened time? Oh, one of the most remarkable facts is without doubt this that so countless human beings go through the gate of death in their youth. We know what happens with the human being when he goes through the gate of death. We know that he comes out of the physical body with his etheric body, astral body and ego and that he takes off his etheric body after relatively short time and makes his journey with the essence of the etheric body. However, you can imagine that a difference must be between an etheric body, which is taken off between the twentieth and thirtieth years which could still have supplied the functions of human life for decades, and an etheric body, which is taken off at the later age. Yes, there is a big difference. If a human being dies because of age or illness, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But countless young human beings go now through the gate of death, and their etheric bodies could not yet fulfil everything that they could fulfil.
I would like to show you at a concrete example how it is in a certain way with such etheric bodies that are torn away by force from the physical bodies. One could give many examples, of course. But today I want to give you an example which we ourselves experienced in Dornach in autumn. We experienced it at the site of our construction. A family which lives near the construction had a little son of seven years—a family which belongs to our anthroposophical circle. It was a dear boy of seven years, really a boon boy. He was so well-behaved that when his father had gone to war the seven-year-old Theo said to his mother: now I must be especially diligent, because I must help you where the father has helped you.
One evening after a lecture, a person belonging to our circle came and reported that this little Theo has disappeared since the evening. One could imagine nothing but that he has had an accident. A removal van had driven in that evening by what one calls in the external life chance at a place where for years indeed no van has gone, and since that time also not. Here the carriage had tipped over. The little Theo had been in that small house which one calls the canteen because there our friends who work on the construction are supplied with food. Strangely enough—he would have left sooner—he was detained by somebody, and while he wanted to go out through a door through which he would have gone on a certain way, this time he had to go through another door, and he thereby passed the removal van, just when the removal van toppled over. The van fell on him. This is one of those examples where we see clearly karma working.
I often used the simple comparison to show how often cause and effect are totally confused: we see a person going along a river. Suddenly we see the person falling into the river. We go and find a stone lying where the person has fallen. The person is drawn out of the water. He is already dead. If one does not go on examining the matter, one tells the matter with the best external conscience in the following way: the man fell over the stone and then into the river, and drowned.—One would have only needed to examine, and one would have thought that death did not happen because the person fell into the water, but the person fell into the water because he was dead; he had got a heart attack. Just the opposite happened as one imagines. You see how easy it is to confuse cause and effect everywhere in life. However, in the usual science this happens everywhere that causes and effects are confused.
Of course, here is the case that this Theo just caused it. He was the cause that the van passed at this time, he steered it to himself. You have to imagine this as the real secret of the matter. But now I will go on: a human child is killed in an accident in the very first blossom of life. If anybody is combined wholeheartedly with the construction work in Dornach and has the possibility at the same time to observe what is working on this construction, then one can say: this etheric body which was separated by force from the little Theo is in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus one gains the best Inspirative forces for the construction combining his own soul with that what lives, expanded to a little world, in the atmosphere of the construction. Never will I hesitate before confessing unreservedly that I have to thank for much that I could find for our construction in that time that I directed my soul to the etheric body of the little Theo working in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus just the connections are in the world. The real individuality of this human being goes on, but the etheric body remains which could have still supplied a human life for many decades.
Imagine the number of the unused etheric bodies which are floating there in the spiritual atmosphere over us and over those who will also live after us. Those etheric bodies which are left behind by those who went in young age through the gate of death in our destiny-burdened time. We do not speak of the way the individualities go through, but we speak of the fact that an own spiritual atmosphere is created by these etheric bodies. The human beings, who will live there, will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged into a spiritual atmosphere which is filled with these etheric bodies which sacrificed their lives, because just in our time humankind can advance by these events. But it will be necessary that one feels what these etheric bodies intend which are the best inspirators of the future humankind. A good time of spiritualism comes if human beings show understanding, internal heart understanding for that what these etheric bodies want to say to them. All these etheric bodies are assistants of the spiritual impetus of the future. That is why it is so important that there are souls who are able to feel that what comes into the atmosphere of the future by these etheric bodies.
You do not learn anything about the nature of the etheric bodies that you can tell: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, but that you also know such a secret of the effective spirituality of the etheric bodies as it is there in future.
Those have to prepare themselves who already tend to stand up for spiritual science, to receive that which these etheric bodies want to say. If we turn our souls to the spiritual world, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel that which the legacy, the etheric legacy of the dead wants from the future humankind. If human souls are stimulated by spiritual science, so that they are able to direct their spiritual senses to the spiritual worlds, then something great and immense will certainly sprout up as an effect of the blood, of the courage, of the sufferings, and of the sacrifices. Hence, I would like to summarise at the end of this consideration in some words that what may now inspire, invigorate us if we as spiritual-scientific supporters direct our senses to the big, destiny-burdened events of our time.
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.
Kosmische Einwirkungen Auf Die Menschlichen Wesensglieder Während Des Schlafes Die Okkulte Grundlage Des Weihnachtsfestes Der Sinn Der Opfertode
Es muß in diesen Tagen meine Absicht sein, unseren Seelen einiges von dem nahezubringen, was vom geisteswissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkte aus einiges Licht zu werfen vermag auf unsere großen Zeitereignisse. Und deshalb wird es auch nächsten Sonntag meine Aufgabe sein, unsere Empfindungen auf gewisse Gesichtspunkte hinzulenken, die einiges Licht bringen können gerade in dasjenige, was jetzt in so tiefstem Sinne unsere Herzen und Seelen bewegen muß. Dazu aber möchte ich heute gewissermaßen eine vorbereitende Grundlage schaffen, indem ich Ihre Seele auf gewisse Mächte und Kräfte hinlenke, die im geschichtlichen Dasein der Menschen wirken, die nur erkannt werden können durch jene Einsichten, welche die Geisteswissenschaft zu geben vermag, und die für das alltägliche Bewußtsein nicht unmittelbar wahrnehmbar sind. Auf Entwickelungstatsachen des menschlichen Lebens, wie sie sich äußern im geschichtlichen Verlauf des Menschenlebens, auf mehr oder weniger unterbewußte Tatsachen möchte ich heute hinweisen. Ausgehen aber wollen wir davon, daß ja, wie Sie aus der Darstellung in dem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» wissen, dasjenige, was sich im Verborgenen mit jedem Menschen vollzieht, erkannt wird in aufeinanderfolgenden übersinnlichen Erkenntnisstufen, in der sogenannten imaginativen Erkenntnis, in der inspirierten Erkenntnis und in der intuitiven Erkenntnis. Ich habe schon gestern im öffentlichen Vortrag betont, daß man immer festhalten muß, daß der Geisteswissenschafter, der durch seine Erkenntnis der imaginativen, der inspirierten, der intuitiven Wahrnehmungen etwas über die geistigen Welten aussagt, nichts hinzubringt, was nicht in den geistigen Regionen, in denen jede Menschenseele darin lebt, auch ohne seine Erkenntnis vorhanden wäre. Der Geisteswissenschafter macht nur aufmerksam auf dasjenige, was immer webt und lebt in der Welt und wie die einzelne Menschenseele darin hineingestellt ist. So daß nicht nur für denjenigen, der die Absicht hat, sich hineinzubegeben in den Strom der okkulten Erlebnisse, sondern für jede Menschenseele das Wissen von dem wichtig ist, was ihr unter allen Umständen innere Wirklichkeit ist, nur eine Wirklichkeit, die mit der gewöhnlichen Wahrnehmung des Lebens nicht erkannt werden kann.
So möchte ich denn ausgehen von einigen Tatsachen der imaginativen Wahrnehmung über die menschliche Natur überhaupt. Wir beobachten täglich, daß ein rätselvolles Ereignis, wenigstens ein für die äußere Wissenschaft rätselvolles Ereignis, rhythmisch abwechselnd in unser Leben eingreift: das Wachen und das Schlafen. Wir wissen längst, daß wir im Wachzustand der physischen Erdenwelt angehören mit unseren vier Menschengliedern, dem physischen Leib, dem Ätherleib, Astralleib und Ich. Wir wissen, daß wir im Schlafzustand, also vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, in der physischen Welt nur mit unserem physischen Leibe und unserem ätherischen Leib sind, daß wir uns gewissermaßen zurückziehen in die rein geistige Welt mit unserem astralischen Leibe und Ich. Was sich nun der geistigen Anschauung des Geistesforschers darbietet, können wir so charakterisieren, daß wir sagen: Der Geistesforscher sieht dasjenige an, was sich zum Beispiel immerfort mit dem Menschen vollzieht, wenn er mit dem Einschlafen seinen physischen und seinen ätherischen Leib verläßt und sich in die Region der höheren Welt mit seinem Astralleibe und dem Ich begibt. Was da mit dem Menschen — mit jedem Menschen bei jedem Einschlafen - geschieht, dem schaut der Geistesforscher einfach zu. So daß wir sagen können: Der Geistesforscher beobachtet nur dasjenige, was sich jeder Menschenseele darbieten würde, wenn sie nicht im Traumzustand, sondern im völligen Schlafzustand auf die Welt so hinunterschauen könnte, daß sie unter den Dingen der Welt ihren physischen und Ätherleib als etwas fände, was außerhalb ihrer, also der schlafenden Seele ist.
Nun dürfen wir uns nicht vorstellen, daß wir dann etwa dasjenige, was wir da verlassen haben und worin wir unseren physischen Leib und Ätherleib zurückgelassen haben, von dem Gesichtspunkte des Schlafes aus so sehen, wie wir mit unseren physischen Augen das sehen, was uns in der physischen Welt umgibt. Damit wir dasjenige, was uns umgibt, so sehen, wie wir es eben vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen sehen, dazu ist notwendig, daß wir uns unserer physischen Augen, unserer physischen Sinnesorgane bedienen. Dieser bedienen wir uns nicht, wenn wir außerhalb des physischen Leibes und des Ätherleibes sind. Würden wir plötzlich hellsehend im Schlafzustand, so würden wir alle von dem, was wir während des Wachens sehen, so wie es während des Wachens ist, eben nichts wahrnehmen. Auch unseren physischen Leib und Ätherleib nehmen wir da nicht etwa so wahr, wie wir den physischen Leib wahrnehmen, wenn wir in einen Spiegel hineinschauen. Das ist ganz falsch, wenn man glaubt, daß man den physischen Leib und den Ätherleib gleichsam so ansieht, als wenn man sich mit seinem astralischen Leibe und dem Ich über den physischen und Ätherleib beugen würde. Das ist nicht der Fall. Dasjenige, was sich der imaginativen Erkenntnis — also halten wir das fest: der imaginativen Erkenntnis — darbietet, das ist, daß uns zuletzt verschwindet, wirklich für den Augenblick verschwindet alles dasjenige, was wir gewohnt sind, im Wachzustande zu sehen. Auch indem wir unseren physischen Leib und Ätherleib sehen, sind diese nicht so, wie sie im Wachzustande sind, sondern wirklich erscheint uns unser physischer Leib und Ätherleib wie zu einer Welt erweitert; sie erscheinen uns wie mit der ganzen Erdenwelt zusammenhängend. Wir schauen hin; das haben wir im Bewußtsein, daß wir auf physischen Leib und Ätherleib hinschauen. Aber wir schauen sie so, daß sie zunächst für uns gewissermaßen die einzige Welt sind. So wie wir im Wachzustande Berge, Flüsse und Wolken, Sonne und Sterne und so weiter um uns herum haben und auf sie als auf unsere Umgebung hinschauen, so schauen wir, indem wir auf unsere Umgebung hinschauen, wenn wir außerhalb unseres physischen und Ätherleibes sind, diesen unseren physischen Leib und den Ätherleib wie zu einer Welt erweitert. Gar nichts anderes schauen wir an. Das schauen wir so an, wie wir sonst die verschiedenen Dinge unserer Erde anschauen. Wir schauen hin auf unsere eigene Leiblichkeit wie auf eine ganze Welt.
Und merkwürdig, diese Welt, auf die wir da hinschauen, ist uns so, daß wir sie, indem wir ins Einschlafen übergehen, so empfinden, wie wir im Frühling die Erde empfinden, wenn sie, nachdem sie von der Schneedecke des Winters befreit worden ist, wenn sie die einzelnen grünen Sprossen hervorbringt, wenn sie sich wiederum zum Wachstum, zur Vegetation dessen, was sich auf ihr bildet, anschickt, wenn alles wiederum in Sprossen und Sprießen übergeht. Indem wir im Einschlafen den zu einer Welt erweiterten physischen Leib und Ätherleib ansehen, so sehen wir sie gleichsam so, daß wir sie empfinden können wie einen im Frühling aufwachenden Planeten. Und das geht durch den ganzen Schlafzustand so weiter. Was wir da in mächtigen Bildern sehen, die uns wirklich in der Ausdehnung wie ein Planet erscheinen, das schickt sich an, seinem Sommer entgegenzugehen, wie die Erde sich anschickt, ihrem Sommer entgegenzugehen, wenn der Frühling zu Ende geht. Und so machen wir den Schlafzustand durch, wenn wir ihn regelrecht durchmachen. Wir gehen gleichsam im Schlafzustand durch bis zu jenem Punkte, wo wir empfinden: Unser physischer Leib und Ätherleib tragen Sprießendes und Sprossendes bis zur Blüte, ja bis zur Fruchtentfaltung; überall wächst und gedeiht alles. Wenn ich mich im einzelnen ausdrücken soll, so muß ich sagen - für den imaginativen Anblick ist dasjenige, was sich so darbietet, allerdings paradox —: Während wir mit dem physischen Anschauen gewissermaßen unsere Erdoberfläche empfinden und auf ihr das von unten nach oben Sprießende, dasjenige, was wächst und gedeiht, im Bewußtsein haben, ist es so, wenn wir nun von außerhalb dasjenige beobachten, was mit unserem Leibe vorgeht und mit der Pflanzenwelt vergleichen, als wenn seine Wurzeln von oben herdringen und es mit seinen Blüten in unseren Leib hineinwächst. Also eine vollständig umgekehrte Welt empfinden wir, und die Früchte werden hineinversenkt. Wir lernen dann, daß mit diesem Hineinversenken der Früchte wirklich dasjenige zum Ausdruck kommt, was uns dann als die Stärkung des Schlafes zum Bewußtsein kommt. Und dadurch wissen wir, daß in der Tat — weil ja alles, was wir so in der Imagination anschauen, Kräfte sind - unser physischer Leib und Ätherleib die Kräfte aus dem ganzen Kosmos empfangen, indem wir uns in den Schlafzustand begeben. Wir schauen zu, wie Kräfte, die sich in der Bildung von aus der Welt hereinwachsenden Pflanzen ausdrücken, aus dem Kosmos kommen. Wir sehen, wie der Kosmos eine ganze Vegetation in unsere Leiblichkeit hineintreibt. Und wir bekommen dann das sichere Wissen davon, daß wir beim Einschlafen unseren Leib aus dem Grunde verlassen, weil wir vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen mit dem Ich und Astralleib unseren physischen Leib und den Ätherleib den Einwirkungen der Kräfte des Kosmos entziehen. Dadurch, daß wir selbst hinausgehen, machen wir unseren physischen Leib und den Ätherleib frei für die Einwirkungen des ganzen Kosmos, der mit dem, was er nun elementarisch, nicht physisch, an solchen Kräften hat, die sich uns eben in den geschilderten Imaginationen ausdrücken, in uns hineinsendet. So ist jedesmal, wenn wir einschlafen, eine Beziehung zwischen physischem Leib und Ätherleib mit dem ganzen Kosmos hergestellt. Während wir im Wachzustand in der physischen Welt leben, lebt wirklich unser physischer Leib und Ätherleib während unseres Schlafes in dem, was wir die elementarische Welt nennen, die Welt der bloßen Kräfte, die sich uns eben in den geschilderten Imaginationen darstellen. Und wir selber, wo sind wir mit unserem Ich und Astralleib? Nun, wir haben oft geschildert, und es ist auch in verschiedenen Schriften dargestellt: mit unserem Ich und Astralleibe sind wir in der Welt, die geschildert worden ist als die Welt der höheren Hierarchien unter den Wesenheiten, die wir Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai und so weiter nennen. In diese Wesenheiten und ihre Welt taucht das Ich und der Astralleib ein. So wie wir, wenn wir wachend sind, von den Wesen der tierischen Welt, der Pflanzenwelt, der Mineralwelt wissen und als Mensch gleichsam über dieser Welt stehen, indem wir sie in unsere Gedanken aufnehmen, so werden wir selbst wie Gedanken aufgenommen von den Wesen der höheren Hierarchien. Und das ist das Bedeutsame, daß wir sagen können: Während hier unten unser physischer Leib und Ätherleib mit den Kräften des ganzen Kosmos in Zusammenhang treten, werden wir vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen selber gedacht, wie wenn wir richtige Wesen wären, gewoben aus Gedanken und der Willenswesenheit; wir werden gedacht von den Wesen der höheren Hierarchien. — Wie wir die Natur denken, so denken uns die Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien. Daher ist es, genau gesprochen, gar nicht richtig, zu sagen, wenn man aus dem physischen Leib herauskomme, denke man die Welt. Richtig ist eigentlich, zu sagen, man erlebe es, daß man von der Welt der höheren Hierarchien gedacht wird. Wie der Gedanke während des Wachlebens sich fühlen müßte, wenn er Bewußtsein hätte, so müßten wir uns erleben als die Gedanken der höheren Wesenheiten, wenn wir außerhalb unseres physischen Leibes sind.
Und wie erleben wir für diese unsere imaginative Erkenntnis das Wiedererwachen? Indem wir uns allmählich zum Aufwachen anzuschicken haben, erleben wir das wirklich so, wie wir in der äußeren Natur - wir können die Imagination wieder mit der äußeren Natur vergleichen — das Hereinziehen des Winters erleben mit alledem, was er an Zerstörendem, Lähmendem und Vernichtendem für das sprossende und sprießende Sommerleben hat. Und so wie der Winter über die Erde den Frost und die Kälte bringt und die Zerstörung dessen, was Sommerherrlichkeit ist, tauchen wir selber in den physischen Leib und Ätherleib ein. Was an Kräften wirklich wie eine Vegetation, sogar wie eine Tierwelt aus der elementarischen Welt des Kosmos in unseren physischen Leib und Ätherleib eingezogen ist, dem bereiten wir mit dem Aufwachen den Untergang, wie der Winter den Untergang der Sommerherrlichkeit bereitet. Und während wir wachend sind, versetzen wir wirklich, durch unsere Anwesenheit in unserem physischen Leib und Ätherleib, diese in einen solchen Zustand, wie die Verhältnisse des Kosmos die Erde versetzen, wenn Winter ist. Wir breiten den Winter über unsere eigene physische und ätherische Wesenheit aus, indem wir in sie einziehen. Sie sehen daraus zugleich, wie dasjenige, was man von physischen Gesichtspunkten aus oftmals als Vergleich gebraucht, für das geistige Anschauen nicht stimmt. Gewiß, aus dem Gefühl heraus hat schon der Mensch das Bewußtsein, daß er mit dem ganzen Kosmos zusammenhängt und daß gewissermaßen dasjenige, was er erlebt, ein mikrokosmisches Abbild des Makrokosmos ist. Aber es liegt dem Menschen dann nahe, wenn er wirklich etwas in seinem mikrokosmischen Leben mit dem makrokosmischen Leben vergleichen will, zu sagen: Das Aufwachen ist wie das Hereinkommen des Frühlings in unser Leben, und das Wachleben ist wie der Sommer. Und der Herbst ist wie das abendliche Müdewerden, das Schlafesleben ist wie der Winter. - Gerade das Umgekehrte ist Wirklichkeit. Das Sommerleben ist das Schlafesleben und das Winterleben ist das Wachleben. Das ist die Wahrheit der Sache.
Wenn der Geistesforscher diese Verhältnisse wirklich untersucht, dann findet er aber, daß, während sich sein Ich und Astralleib so in die Regionen der höheren Hierarchien erhebt und gewissermaßen von den höheren Wesenheiten gedacht wird, hereinwirkt in seinen physischen Leib und Ätherleib nicht nur dasjenige, was in der elementaren Welt ist, sondern daß gewisse Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien auch in unseren physischen Leib und Ätherleib hineinwirken. Nicht nur ist es die elementare Welt, die aus Kräften besteht, sondern wirkliche Wesenheiten sind es, Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien, welche in unseren physischen und Ätherleib hereinwirken. Und da stellt sich dann das Merkwürdige heraus, daß wir gewahr werden können, wie wir in dem Augenblick, wo wir einschlafen, in ganz andere Verhältnisse kommen als die, in denen wir sind, während wir wachen. Wie gesagt, alles dasjenige, was so ausgesprochen werden kann, beruht darauf, daß die Geistesforschung uns gestattet, zuzuschauen, wie es mit dem Einschlafen und Aufwachen ist. Und für sie zeigt sich dann, daß auf unseren physischen und Ätherleib vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen auch dasjenige Wesen aus den höheren Hierarchien wirkt, das wir empfinden müssen als den Volksgeist, die Volksseele, der wir angehören. Indem der Mensch aufwacht, taucht er aufwachend nicht nur in seinen physischen und Ätherleib unter, sondern auch in die Vorgänge, die in seinen physischen Leib und Ätherleib ausgeführt werden von dem, was sein Volksgeist vollbringt. Das Eigentümliche stellt sich heraus - ich bitte, das wohl zu beachten, denn es geziemt uns, die wir in die Geisteswissenschaft eindringen wollen, den Weltenzusammenhang tiefer zu betrachten, als das äußere Wahrnehmen ihn betrachten kann -, daß der Mensch mit dem Einschlafen nicht nur eintaucht in diejenigen Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien, die seiner individuellen Entwickelung entsprechen, sondern auch in solche geistige Wesenheiten, die wir als Volksgeister ansehen müssen. Und zwar taucht der Mensch vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen in den Zusammenhang aller andern Volksgeister ein, nur nicht desjenigen, der der seinige ist.
Also merken wir uns das wohl: Während des Wachens leben wir eingetaucht in die geistigen Tatsachen, die der eigene Volksgeist in unserem physischen und Ätherleibe ausführt. Wir leben zusammen gewissermaßen mit dem eigenen Volksgeist vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen. Nun sind neben unserem Volksgeiste in der Welt vorhanden alle andern Volksgeister der andern Völker. Mit dem Einschlafen tauchen wir unter in den Zusammenhang der andern Volksgeister, nicht in einen einzelnen andern Volksgeist — halten Sie das streng fest —, sondern in das, was sie zusammen vollbringen, was sie gleichsam im Verein, als Gesellschaft vollbringen. Ausgeschaltet ist während der Nacht nur der eigene Volksgeist aus diesem Zusammenhang. Wir können dem nicht entgehen, auch einen Zusammenhang mit all denjenigen Volksgeistern. zu haben, die den andern Völkern angehören, in die wir in einer bestimmten Inkarnation eben nicht inkarniert sind. Denn, indem wir beim Tagwachen unserem Volksgeiste angehören, gehören wir im Schlafzustand den andern Volksgeistern, allerdings nur ihrem Zusammenklang an; während wir im Wachzustand den Intentionen des einzelnen Volksgeistes angehören, in dessen Gebiet wir eben in einer bestimmten Inkarnation hineingeboren sind.
Aber es gibt ein Mittel, auch während des Schlafzustandes gewissermaßen in die Wesenheit eines einzelnen andern Volksgeistes unterzutauchen. Während wir im normalen Zustand wachend in unserem eigenen Volksgeiste beziehungsweise seiner Tätigkeit leben und im Schlafe im Zusammenklang der andern Volksgeister, können wir schlafend untertauchen in einen einzelnen Volksgeist, wenn wir uns einen recht glühenden Haß gegen das, was dieser andere Volksgeist vollbringt, im Leben aneignen. Und so grotesk es klingt, wahr ist es doch - und wir in unserer Bewegung müssen solche Wahrheiten ruhig ertragen können -: Wenn der Mensch so wirklich aus dem innersten Wesen heraus glühenden Haß gegenüber einem Volksgebiet empfindet, so verurteilt er sich dazu, mit dem Volksgeist dieses Volksgebietes in der Nacht zu schlafen, mit ihm zusammen zu sein.
Da berühren wir eben Wahrheiten, denen gegenüber wir sehen können, daß das Leben hinter jenem Schleier, der für die alltägliche Beobachtung die geistigen Welten verhüllt, einen tiefen Ernst zu haben beginnt, und daß es in einer gewissen Beziehung schon unbequem ist, ein Bekenner der Geisteswissenschaft zu sein. Denn es beginnt die Geisteswissenschaft von gewissen Punkten aus im allertiefsten Sinne Ernst zu machen mit Verhältnissen, die man im Leben unbequem findet und über die wir wirklich gnadenvoll dadurch hinweggehoben werden, daß uns das Leben im gewöhnlichen Sinne die Wahrheit nicht enthüllt. Trotzdem wir selbstverständlich im äußeren Leben voll auf dem Boden stehen müssen, den dieses äußere Leben von uns verlangt, so müssen wir, wenn wir im Gebiete der Geisteswissenschaft uns zu denjenigen Gebieten erheben, wo andere Eigentümlichkeiten des Lebens beginnen, mit einem solchen Grundsatz ganz Ernst machen.
In dem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» wird davon gesprochen, daß in dem Augenblick, wo man sich hinauferhebt in die geistige Welt - und jeder Mensch ist ja in der geistigen Welt, es handelt sich hier nur um ein Erkennen dessen, was immer da ist —, dann jene bequeme Einheit des Menschenwesens aufhört, in der wir in der physischen Welt leben. Spaltungen geht das Menschenwesen ein; abgesehen von jenen Spaltungen, die dort erwähnt sind, und die man beobachten kann nach der Begegnung mit dem Hüter der Schwelle, treten manche andere Spaltungen ein, zum Beispiel diejenige, die von einer tiefen Bedeutung für unser ganzes Gemütsleben sein muß. Wir müssen anerkennen, daß, indem wir in einer bestimmten Inkarnation gegenüber dem Volkstum, in dem wir eben stehen, voll unsere Pflicht zu tun haben, ihm voll unsere Liebe darzubringen haben, dieses Volkstum im ganzen Entwickelungsprozeß der Erde darinsteht. Wir müssen uns klar sein, daß wir, indem wir auch geistige Wesenheiten sind im Ich und Astralleib, wirklich der ganzen Menschheit angehören und mit unseren Impulsen mit der ganzen Menschheit fühlen müssen. Und nicht ist es so, daß die Geisteswissenschaft zuläßt, daß wir in ihr in einer Einseitigkeit leben, sondern wir müssen diese beiden Seiten unseres Wesens in einen vollen Einklang bringen können.
Wir müssen uns klar darüber sein, daß wir - trotzdem wir als Mensch der gegenwärtigen Inkarnation, auch wenn wir Geisteswissenschafter sind, unser Volkstum so lieben können, wie nur irgend jemand sein Volkstum zu lieben vermag — mit diesem Fühlen dasjenige in Einklang bringen, was uns mit der ganzen Menschheit zusammenführt. Und gerade Geisteswissenschaft ist ja die Erhebung zu diesem Zusammengeführtwerden mit der ganzen Menschheit, weil sie uns eröffnet, daß wir mit der ganzen Menschheit zusammenhängen in unserem Ich und Astralleib. Harmonie zu bewirken zwischen Gegensätzen, das ist dasjenige, was Geisteswissenschaft immer mehr und mehr von demjenigen fordert, der sich mit Ernst und Würde in sie hineinbegibt. Und von Unheil ist es, wenn man wahre Geisteswissenschaft verwechselt mit jenem unklaren mystischen Getriebe, das immer da die Bedürfnisse des äußeren, physischen Lebens verquicken möchte mit demjenigen, wozu wir uns erheben müssen, indem wir in die geistige Welt eintauchen. Denn unklare Mystik, die überall in das alltägliche Leben dasjenige hereinbringen möchte, was die Geisteswissenschaft erst im rechten Lichte zeigt, jene unklare Mystik wird zum Beispiel niemals die Liebe zum eigenen Volkstum in Einklang bringen können mit der Liebe zur ganzen Menschheit, wird zu einem verschwommenen mystischen Kosmopolitismus führen. Den kann man ebenso, wie ich das schon getan habe, vergleichen mit dem, was unklare 'Theosophen immerzu von der Gleichheit und von dem Gleichgelten aller Religionen der Erde sagen. Gewiß, im Abstrakten kann man sagen: Alle Religionen der Erde enthalten die Wahrheit. Aber das ist genau dasselbe, als ob man sagt: Auf dem Tisch steht Pfeffer, Salz und Paprika und allerlei anderes, und das alles sind Speisezutaten. Zucker, Pfeffer, Salz und Paprika — das ist alles gleich; also gebe ich einmal in den Kaffee Paprika und Zucker in die Suppe, weil ja alles Speisezusätze sind. Genau auf demselben Punkt der Logik stehen die, welche in unklarer Mystik nur von dem Einheitskern aller Religionen faseln, statt sich in die wirkliche Wesenheit jedes einzelnen, was in unserer Erdenentwickelung erscheint, einzulassen. Nicht darauf kommt es an, daß wir nur immer betonen: Alle Völker sind gewissermaßen nur Ausdrücke für das allgemein Menschliche, sondern darauf, daß wir gerade die spezifischen Aufgaben, die den einzelnen Völkern durch ihre Volksseelen gegeben sind, erkennen. Und dazu ist ein Anhaltspunkt gegeben in dem Vortragszyklus, der ja schon lange gedruckt ist, der eine Anzahl von Jahren vor dem Ausbruch des Krieges gehalten worden ist, der nicht unter dem Einfluß des Krieges entstanden ist, dem man daher nicht vorwerfen kann, er sei unter den Eindrücken des Krieges entstanden: «Die Mission einzelner Volksseelen im Zusammenhang mit der nordisch-germanischen Mythologie.»
Gerade in unserer Zeit ist es wichtig, auf solche ernsten Dinge sich zu besinnen, damit der Mensch die Harmonie zwischen dem, was allgemeine Menschenliebe ist, und der Volksliebe finden kann. Man braucht nicht davor zurückzuscheuen, die Eigentümlichkeiten jedes einzelnen Volkes, insofern es Volk ist - der einzelne erhebt sich ja immer über sein Volk -, die Eigentümlichkeiten der einzelnen Völker zu charakterisieren. Nur muß es, wie das schon aus den Bemerkungen, die ich machte, hervorgeht, selbstverständlich ohne Haß geschehen. Geradesowenig wie man die wirkliche Wesenheit der einzelnen Pflanze erkennt, wenn man die Pflanze haßt und das schildert, was man als Haß empfindet, ebensowenig kann man die Eigentümlichkeiten eines Volkes erkennen, wenn man das schildert, was man an dem Volke haßt, oder wenn man das in die Schilderung aufnimmt, was aus Gefühlen des Hasses kommt.
Und so muß es immerzu das Bestreben desjenigen sein, der sich bis zu den Gesichtspunkten der Geisteswissenschaft zu erheben vermag, nicht in der einförmigen Einheit das Wesen der Welt zu sehen, sondern gerade in der Harmonie des Vielen. Und der Mensch muß die Möglichkeit finden, alle mögliche Wärme, hinsichtlich derer er vor keinem, der nicht Geisteswissenschaft erstrebt, zurückzustehen braucht, alle Wärme für sein Volkstum zu empfinden, und das auf der andern Seite zu vereinigen, was uns wiederum, insofern wir der ganzen Menschheit angehören, mit der ganzen Menschheit als einer groBen, gesamten Wesenheit zusammenbringt.
Wie gesagt, an solche Dinge wollen wir dann übermorgen anknüpfen. Jetzt aber will ich bemerken, daß wir zugleich, indem wir aus unserem Zustand des Wachens in den Schlafzustand übertreten und dadurch in die Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien aufgenommen werden, im Grunde genommen das abstreifen, was uns mit der einzelnen Inkarnation durch unseren physischen Leib und Ätherleib zusammenbringt. Im Schlafe streifen wir also auch unser nationales Wesen ab. Durch den Schlaf werden wir bloß Menschen, Menschen mit all den Eigentümlichkeiten, die wir durch das haben müssen, was wir uns als Menschen erworben haben. Wenn wir als Geistesforscher dasjenige anschauen, was mit dem Menschen, sowohl im Wach- wie im Schlafzustande geschieht, nehmen wir aber zugleich wahr, daß der Mensch, indem er schläft, mit seinem Ich und Astralleib in der geistigen Welt lebt, ebenso wie auch sein physischer Leib und Ätherleib nun der großen Welt angehören; daß dieses Eigenleben, das gleichsam in unserer Haut verfließt, aufhört, und daß wir unser Selbst zum großen Selbst erweitern. Und nun bedenken Sie, daß wir im Grunde immer im Laufe von vierundzwanzig Stunden durchmachen einen Sommer- und einen Winterzustand. Diesen Sommer- und Winterzustand macht ja auch die Erde durch, aber die Erde macht ihn im Jahreslauf durch. Warum macht die Erde diese Zustände im Jahreslauf durch? Weil die Erde ein Wesen ist wie wir selbst, nur auf einer andern Stufe der Hierarchien. Die ganze Erde, wenn wir sie so physisch betrachten, wie sie um uns ist, ist nur der Leib der Erde; und so wie wir in uns unser Geistig-Seelisches tragen, so hat auch die Erde ihr Geistig-Seelisches. Der Unterschied ist nur der, daß wir im Laufe von vierundzwanzig Stunden wachen und schlafen, und die Erde wacht und schläft im Laufe des Jahres. Sie wacht vorn Herbst bis zum Frühling und schläft während des Sommers. So daß wir eigentlich immer sagen können, wenn wir während des Sommers leben: Wir leben eingebettet in die schlafende Erde. - Und wenn wir während des Winters leben: Wir leben eingebettet in die wachende Erde. — Nicht so ist es, daß die Erde wacht im Sommer und schläft im Winter, wie wir in dem aus dem gewöhnlichen Leben genommenen trivialen Vergleich sagen können. Sondern das ist richtig, daß, wenn der Herbst kommt, die Erde als seelisch-geistiges Wesen aufwacht und in der Mitte des Winters am wachsten ist. Der Erdgeist denkt am allermeisten in der Mitte des Winters und er fängt an, sein Denken allmählich einzustellen beim Herannahen des Frühlings; und er schläft, wenn das äußere Leben sprießt und sproßt; während des Sommers schläft der Erdgeist.
Wir als Menschen sind aber nicht nur durch unseren physischen Leib mit dem Leibe der Erde in Verbindung, sondern auch mit dem Geist der Erde. Nun wissen wir durch die verschiedenen Vorträge, daß mit dem Geist der Erde sich vereinigt hat durch das Mysterium von Golgatha der Geist, den wir als den Geist des Christus bezeichnen. In dem, was der Geist der Erde ist, lebt seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha der Christus-Geist darin. Wenn die Menschen daher ein Fest begehen wollen, das ihnen ausdrücken soll, daß im Erdgeist der ChristusGeist darinnen ist - in welche Zeit müssen sie dann dieses Fest versetzen? Nicht in den Sommer, sondern in den Winter hinein müssen sie das Fest versetzen, mitten in den Winter hinein. Das ist das Weihnachtsfest. Aus diesem Grunde versetzt man das Weihnachtsfest und das, was sich daraus entwickelt, in die Winterzeit hinein. Das ging aus einer richtigen Erkenntnis derjenigen hervor, welche die Einrichtung des christlichen Jahres einmal bestellt haben. Aus den okkulten Wahrheiten heraus ist das Weihnachtsfest festgelegt worden, nicht aus historischen Tatsachen heraus. Weil in der Tat für das, was jetzt die Menschheit ist, der Mensch, indem er mit seinem Geistig-Seelischen in das Geistig-Seelische der Erde eingebettet ist, mit dem wachsten Zustand des Erdenseins zusammen ist in der Winterzeit. Da lebt er in der wachenden Erde.
Und was werden die alten Völker getan haben, von denen wir wissen, daß sie auf eine Art traumhaften Hellsehens ihren Dienst der Welt und ihre Erkenntnis der Welt aufgebaut haben? Nun, sie müssen vorzugsweise sich berufen haben auf das, was im schlafenden Erdgeist lebt, wenn der Erdgeist am meisten schläft, sich am meisten in seinen schlafenden Zustand zurückgezogen hat. Da müssen sie sich erhoben haben - im Gegensatz zu der neueren Menschheit - zu dem, was ihnen auf unbewußte Art einflößte die Wahrheit, wie sie für sie sein mußte. Mitten im Sommer finden wir daher bei den Völkern, die dem Kultus angehört haben, der aus dem mehr schlafenden, traumhaften Zustand heraus seine Erkenntnis schöpfte, das Johannisfest, die Johannisfeier, das Sommerfest im Gegensatz zu dem Weihnachtsfest, das der neueren Menschheit geziemt.
Was so äußerlich festgesetzt ist, und was unsere materialistische Zeit gar nicht mehr versteht, das hat wirklich seine tiefen Grundlagen in dem, was geistige Wirklichkeit ist. Und jetzt leben wir in einer Zeit, in der die Menschen wiederum anfangen müssen, in einer ganz andern Weise zu denken und zu fühlen und zu empfinden, wie es im abgelaufenen Zeitraum der Fall war. Der abgelaufene Zeitraum hat die Aufgabe gehabt, den Menschen das Reich des materialistischen Denkens und Empfindens nahezubringen. Und gerade die letzten Jahrhunderte, welche die Menschenseelen durchgelebt haben, sollten den Menschen nahebringen das materialistische Denken und Empfinden. Es ist einmal so, daß die Erdenentwickelung durchgehen mußte durch den materialistischen Zeitraum. Wir tun nicht gut, wenn wir für den Materialismus bloß eine herbe Kritik haben. Er mußte einmal in die Erdenentwickelung hereintreten. Aber jetzt leben wir in einer Zeit, wo der Materialismus wieder überwunden werden muß, wo wieder spirituelles Anschauen in die Menschenseelen hereinkommen muß. Und das ist die mehr oder weniger helle oder dunkle Empfindung aller derer, die sich in ihrer eigenen Seele hingezogen fühlen zu unseren geisteswissenschaftlichen Bestrebungen, zu unserer geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung; daß sie eben empfinden, jetzt ist die Zeit da, wo man, während früher traumhaft die geistige Welt geschaut werden mußte, bewußt diese geistige Welt in sich aufnehmen muß. Und dazu ist Geisteswissenschaft da.
Nun war also der abgelaufene Zeitraum der des Materialismus. Und weil gewissermaßen die Menschheit untertauchen mußte in den Materialismus, mußte der starke Impuls, der die Menschheit wieder hinaufführt, gerade durch die Zeit des Materialismus hindurch wirken. Das ist der Christus-Impuls. Und als der Christus-Impuls in die Erdenentwickelung hereintrat, da begann auch schon die Vorbereitung. Sie kam erst recht herein im 14., 15. Jahrhundert. Aber als er herankam, da bereitete sich schon vor, daß die Menschheit in den Materialismus untertauchte. Der Christus-Impuls war da als eine objektive Tatsache in der Weltenentwickelung, aber geeignet, ihn zu verstehen, waren die Menschen gerade in der Zeit, wo er da war, am wenigsten. Jetzt leben wir in der Zeit, wo angefangen werden soll, das, was da war, auch wirklich zu verstehen.
Was sehen wir daher? Wir sehen in der bisherigen Entwickelung einen merkwürdigen Gang des Christus-Impulses. Wir sehen, daß dieser Christus-Impuls, als er durch das Mysterium von Golgatha in die Menschheitsentwickelung eingezogen ist, ganz und gar nicht verstanden wird von den Menschen. Denn versuchen wir einmal, uns ein Bild von dem zu machen, was die Leute in ihrer Gescheitheit taten. Gerade in den ersten und den folgenden Jahrhunderten, nachdem der Christus-Impuls eingezogen ist, finden wir, daß sich alle möglichen theologischen Systeme bilden, daß die Leute darüber streiten, wie sie sich die Dreieinigkeit zu denken haben und so weiter. Ein unendliches theologisches Gezänk sehen wir durch Jahrhunderte hindurch, und es wäre wohl der schlimmste Weg, heute etwa aus diesem theologischen Gezänk heraus verstehen zu wollen, wie der Christus-Impuls gewirkt hat in diesen Jahrhunderten. Und die Leute, die sich da über sein Verständnis zankten, haben auch nichts verstanden von der Art, wie der Christus-Impuls in der Evolution darinsteht.
Versuchen wir uns einmal klarzumachen, wie er wirklich gewirkt hat. Ich will dazu einzelne Tatsachen anführen. Nehmen wir das, was geschehen ist im 4. Jahrhundert, im Jahre 312, am 28. Oktober, und wodurch die spätere Landkarte Europas vollständig bestimmt worden ist: das war das, daß Konstantin, der ja «der Große» genannt worden ist, der Sohn des Constantius Chlorus, gegen Maxentius, den Herrscher von Rom, gezogen war und den Sieg über ihn erfochten hat, wodurch dann in einer äußerlichen Weise das Christentum in der westlichen Welt auch gesiegt hat. Konstantin hat das Christentum dann zur Staatsreligion erhoben und so weiter. Aber hat er das aus seiner Gescheitheit heraus getan? Ist das, was dazumal geschah, aus der Gescheitheit geschehen? Das können wir nicht sagen. Was ist denn eigentlich geschehen? Als Maxentius, der Beherrscher von Rom, erfahren hatte, daß Konstantin im Anzuge war, frug er zunächst die Sibyllinischen Bücher. Er ging also auf eine traumhafte Art daran, die Welterscheinungen verstehen zu wollen. Und was er aus diesen Büchern herausbekam, das war, daß ihm bedeutet wurde: Die richtige Tat werde der vollbringen, welcher als Beherrscher Roms die Stadt verläßt und die Schlacht außerhalb Roms schlägt. Das war so ziemlich das Ungewöhnlichste, was man hat denken können. Denn Konstantin hatte ein viel kleineres Heer als Maxentius und hätte ohne Zweifel nichts ausrichten können, wenn Maxentius in Rom geblieben wäre. Aber Maxentius ist auf den Rat der Sibyllinischen Bücher aus Rom hinausgezogen. Doch auch im Heere des Konstantin haben nicht die Feldherren gesiegt. Vielmehr hatte Konstantin einen Traum, in dem ihm das Symbolum des Christus erschienen ist. Auf diesen Traum hin ließ er dann seinen Heeren das Kreuz als das Symbolum des Christus vorantragen. Was ihm der Traum offenbarte, davon hat er sein Verhalten abhängig gemacht. Diese Schlacht, durch die damals die Landkarte Europas bestimmt wurde, hat nicht die Gescheitheit der Menschen entschieden, nicht die Feldherren haben sie geschlagen, sondern Träume und Weissagungen. Alles in Europa wäre anders geworden, wenn dazumal die Dinge nach dem Bewußtsein der Menschen vor sich gegangen wären und nicht nach dem, was aus dem Unterbewußten heraufgewirkt hat, was die Menschen eben nicht wußten.
Die Theologen haben sich darüber gestritten, was der Christus ist, ob er in Ewigkeit mit dem Vater geboren, ob er in der Zeit geboren, ob er gleichwert mit dem Vater sei und so weiter. Was sie mit den Gedanken durchdrangen, in dem war nichts enthalten von dem Christus-Impuls. Aber er wirkte innerhalb der Menschen im Unterbewußten. Er wirkte nicht durch die Iche, sondern durch die Astralleiber wirkte er. Realität, Wirklichkeit war der Christus-Impuls, und er wirkte, ohne daß ihn die Menschen zu verstehen brauchten. Das ist das Wichtige, das Wesentliche. Die Art und Weise, wie der Christus gewirkt hat, ist so unabhängig von dem, was die Menschen von ihm verstanden haben, wie der Verlauf eines Gewitters unabhängig ist von dem, was die Menschen an der Elektrisiermaschine oder sonst im physikalischen Laboratorium gelernt haben. Jetzt ist die Zeit, sich bewußt in die Wirksamkeit des Christus-Impulses hineinzuversenken. Aber in dem, was geschichtlich geschehen ist, wirkte der Christus als Kraft immer darin.
Gehen wir von diesem zu einem andern Beispiel in späterer Zeit über. Da müssen wir uns allerdings desjenigen erinnern, was ich Ihnen auseinandergesetzt habe. Für die Zeit, in welcher der Materialismus heraufgezogen ist, ist es wichtig zu wissen, daß der Mensch, indem er sich in die geistige Welt versenken will, das am besten in der Winterzeit tun muß. Daher kommt für diese Zeit überall die Anschauung auf, daß in den bezeichneten Nächten der Wintermitte besonders begabte Naturen begnadet werden mit Inspirationen aus der geistigen Welt. Es gibt überall bei den Völkern Legenden und Sagen, die uns erzählen, wie besonders begabte Naturen, die keine Initiation durchmachen, sondern durch ihre Natur selbst, durch in ihnen wirkende elementare Kräfte begnadet sind, inspiriert zu werden, wie diese inspiriert werden in den Nächten vom Weihnachtsabend ab bis zum Dreikönigstag, in den dreizehn Winternächten. Es gibt eine sehr schöne Legende, die in Norwegen vor nicht langer Zeit gefunden worden ist, die Legende von Olaf Åsteson, der mit dem Weihnachtsabend an die Kirche herangeht und zu schlafen beginnt. Er schläft bis zum 6. Januar; und als er aufwacht, weiß er in Imaginationen von dem zu erzählen, was sich im Seelenland, im Geisterland, wie wir es nennen, zugetragen hat. Er drückt es in Bildern aus, aber er hat es durchlebt in diesen dreizehn Nächten. Und solche Legenden finden sich überall. Sie sind eben nicht das, was man heute Legenden nennt. Es hat in der Tat immer begnadete Menschen gegeben, die gewissermaßen eine Naturinitiation durchgemacht haben durch in ihnen wirkende elementare Kräfte, die der Mensch, wenn er getreulich die Vorschriften des Initiationsweges befolgt, durch seinen Willen durchmachen kann. So daß wir sagen können: In der Zeit des Materialismus konnte es immer Menschen geben, welche dann, wenn der Geist der Erde am wachsten ist, in der Mitte des Winters, sich vereinigen konnten mit dem Geist der Erde und Inspirationen empfangen. Das war auch die Zeit, wo nicht durch das Bewußtsein hereinwirken konnte der Christus-Impuls, der sich mit der Erde verbunden hat. Denken wir uns besonders begnadete Seelen, die empfänglich sind für die geistige Welt. Für sie mußte sich herausstellen, daß sie die Antriebe zu dem, was sie aus der geistigen Welt heraus zu vollbringen haben, gerade bekommen werden in diesen dreizehn Nächten bis zum 6. Januar. Das mußte sich zeigen und zeigte sich auch immer wiederum in kleinen und großen Beispielen, daß es im geschichtlichen Verlauf Menschen gab, welche spirituell so veranlagt waren, daß, wenn der rechte Zeitpunkt für sie eintrat, wo sie in einem Winter jene dreizehn Nächte durchlebten, der geistige Impuls — und in dieser Zeit besonders der Christus-Impuls - in sie hereinkam. Naturinitiationen, Initiationen, die also nicht durch menschliche Bewußtseinsarbeit sich vollzogen, werden sich in der Zeit des Materialismus immer am leichtesten vollzogen haben in diesen dreizehn Nächten. Und wir können erfahren, daß, wo solche Initiationen auftraten, sie sich in diesen dreizehn Nächten vollzogen haben.
Und nun haben wir eine Tatsache, die selbst jene, die nur ein wenig guten Willen haben, die geistige Welt anzuerkennen - die wenigsten Menschen haben das heute -, anerkennen werden, daß im 15. Jahrhundert durch eine Jungfrau, die Jungfrau von Orleans, nachweislich in den Geschichtsverlauf spirituelle Mächte eingetreten sind. Das kann man auch geschichtlich nachweisen, daß wiederum die ganze Landkarte Europas anders gestaltet worden ist dadurch, daß die Jungfrau von Orleans damals den Franzosen gegen die Engländer geholfen hat. Und wer nachdenkt, kann herausbringen, daß alles sich anders gestaltet hätte nach dem, was die Menschen können, wenn nicht das Hirtenmädchen eingegriffen hätte — und in diesem Hirtenmädchen eben die Kräfte aus der spirituellen Welt. Was dazumal bewirkt wurde, dazu war die Jungfrau von Orleans bloß das Instrument. Was in sie hereingewirkt hat, war der Christus-Impuls.
Dazu hätte sie aber eine Naturinitiation haben müssen - und diese Naturinitiation würde am besten auszuführen gewesen sein in den dreizehn Nächten bis zum 6. Januar. Es hätte also die Jungfrau von Orleans einmal in eine Art von Schlafzustand kommen müssen in der Zeit vom 24.Dezember bis zum 6. Januar, wo sie besonders aufnahmefähig gewesen wäre für den spirituellen Einfluß, der gerade in dieser Zeit da sein kann. So daß vorauszusetzen wäre, daß die Jungfrau von Orleans in einem nicht vollbewußten Zustande die Zeit vom 24. Dezember bis zum 6. Januar erlebt haben würde — und dabei den Christus-Impuls bekommen hätte. - Ja, die Jungfrau von Orleans hat in einer ganz eklatanten Weise diesen Zustand durchgemacht! Man kann ihn nicht eklatanter durchmachen, als wenn man noch in jenem Schlafzustande ist, in dem man vor seiner Geburt ist, in den letzten Zeiten, die man als Kind vor der Geburt im Leibe der Mutter zubringt. Da ist das äußere Bewußtsein selbstverständlich nicht fähig, irgend etwas aufzunehmen. Es ist ein Schlafzustand da, und wenn es das Ende der Zeit im Mutterleibe ist, dann ist es der reifste Zustand des innermütterlichen Schlafes. Und die Jungfrau von Orleans ist in der Tat am 6. Januar geboren. Das ist das große Geheimnis der Jungfrau von Orleans, daß sie in den dreizehn Tagen, die ihrer Geburt vorangingen, einen Natur-Initiationszustand durchgemacht hat. Daher war es, daß besonders sensitive Menschen an jenem 6. Januar, als die Jungfrau von Orleans geboren wurde, in dem Dorfe zusammenliefen und sagten, es müsse etwas ganz Besonderes geschehen sein. Sie fühlten, daß etwas Besonderes in das Dorf gekommen war. Die Jungfrau von Orleans war geboren. Und sie hat durchgemacht eine Naturinitiation in jenem für sie bedeutenden Schlafzustand, den sie im Leibe der Mutter in der letzten Zeit vor der Geburt durchmachte. Da sehen wir, wie immer hinter der Schwelle dessen, was sich für das menschliche Bewußtsein vollzieht, wirklich die geistigen Wesenheiten, die unter dieser Schwelle des Bewußtseins sind, wirken.
Da sehen wir, was eine Geschichte bedeuten kann, die nur mit dem rechnet, was in Dokumenten und äußeren Mitteilungen gegeben ist. Die Götter gehen anders durch den Lauf der Geschichte. Die Götter wirken durch andere Mittel und auf andern Wegen. Sie stellen eine Jungfrau von Orleans in das Dasein herein, die durch ihr besonderes Karma für die Inkarnation geeignet ist, den Christus-Impuls aufzunehmen und mit ihm zu wirken. Und sie lassen diesen ChristusImpuls einfließen in der geeigneten Zeit. Natürlich war beides dazu geeignet: Es mußte das besondere individuelle Karma gerade der Jungfrau von Orleans dazukommen. Nicht jedes Kind, das am 6. Januar geboren ist, könnte das gleiche vollbringen.
So können wir wirklich sagen: Der Christus-Impuls hat in den Menschen gewirkt durch diejenigen Kräfte, die diesen Menschen nicht zum Bewußtsein gekommen waren. Erst heute leben wir in der Zeit, in der wir bewußt aufnehmen müssen dasjenige, was durch Jahrhunderte hindurch einen andern als den bewußten Weg in die geschichtliche Wirksamkeit hinein suchte.
Ein Gefühl wollte ich in Ihren Seelen hervorrufen davon, wie im Konkreten die unterbewußten Mächte wirken. Wie dasjenige, was äußere Geschichte ist und studiert werden kann nach Dokumenten und äußeren Urkunden, eine Äußerlichkeit ist. Es ist gut, wenn man insbesondere in unserer Zeit ein solches Studium anstellt. Sehen wir doch gerade in unserer Zeit, wie sich auf der einen Seite abspielt ein Großes, ein Gewaltiges, ein Heldenhaftes, gepaart mit Opfertaten. Aber wir sehen das Große, das sich in unserer Zeit vollzieht, wirklich begleitet von der Konsequenz des äußersten Materialismus, von jener Konsequenz, welche alles, was sich in unserer Zeit vollzieht, aus bloßen äußeren Umständen zu erklären sucht. Das kommt ja dadurch zum Ausdruck, daß ein Volk dem andern Volk zuschiebt die Schuld an den jetzigen Ereignissen und so äußerlich alles dadurch beurteilen möchte, daß man beim andern die Schuld findet für das, was sich vollzieht. Auch für unsere Zeit liegen tief unten in den unterbewußten Ereignissen die Gründe und Ursachen für das, was geschieht. Davon wollen wir dann übermorgen sprechen.
Geeignet wird gerade unsere Zeit sein — auch durch das, was sich so blutig vollzieht -, den Menschen die Mahnung zu geben nach spirituellen Impulsen des Erkennens hin. Wenn einmal wiederum Friede sich über die heute kriegführenden Länder hinziehen wird, wird man eine Entdeckung machen: die Entdeckung, daß man aus äußeren Ursachen so gewaltige Kriege der Weltgeschichte nicht erklären kann! Man wird es entdecken, daß man sie nicht erklären kann. Heute sagen noch die Leute, besonders die Gescheiten: Es ist nicht angemessen, über alles zu sprechen, was diesen Krieg verursacht hat, darüber wird die Geschichte sprechen! — Und die dünken sich besonders klug, die da sagen: Erst in fünfzig, in hundert Jahren wird die Geschichte das Richtige darüber sprechen!
Was man heute Geschichte nennt, wird niemals die Ursachen der heutigen Ereignisse erklären; aber ersehen wird man, daß aus der geschichtlichen Betrachtung die Ursachen nicht ergründet werden können. Aber andere Hilfen werden da sein. Das zeigt gerade eine okkulte Beobachtung unserer Gegenwart.
Was ist denn eine der auffälligsten Tatsachen in dieser schicksaltragenden Zeit? Oh, eine der auffälligsten Tatsachen ist ohne Zweifel diese, daß so unzählige Menschen in jugendlichen Jahren durch die Pforte des Todes gehen. Wir wissen, was mit dem Menschen geschieht, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht. Wir wissen, daß er zunächst aus dem physischen Leib heraustritt mit Ätherleib, Astralleib und Ich und daß er nach verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit diesen Ätherleib abstreift und mit dem Extrakt daraus seine weitere Wanderung durchmacht. Aber können Sie sich nicht denken, daß ein Unterschied sein muß zwischen einem Ätherleib, der abgestreift wird zwischen dem zwanzigsten und dreißigsten Lebensjahr, der noch die Funktionen des Menschenlebens hätte versorgen können durch Jahrzehnte hindurch, und einem Ätherleib, der da abgestreift wird im späteren Alter? Ja, da ist ein großer Unterschied. Wenn ein Mensch durch Alter oder durch Krankheit stirbt, so hat der Ätherleib seine Aufgabe erfüllt. Aber bei einem jungen Menschen, deren ja Unzählige jetzt durch die Pforte des Todes gehen, hat der Ätherleib noch nicht alles erfüllen können, was er erfüllen könnte.
Nun möchte ich Ihnen an einem konkreten Beispiel zeigen, wie es mit solchen Ätherleibern ist, die gleichsam gewaltsam weggerissen werden von dem physischen Leibe. Man könnte natürlich viele Beispiele anführen. Aber ich will Ihnen heute ein Beispiel anführen, das wir selbst im Herbst erlebt haben in Dornach. An der Stätte des Baues haben wir das erlebt. Eine Familie, die in der Nähe des Baues wohnt, hatte ein Söhnchen von sieben Jahren — eine Familie, die zu unserem anthroposophischen Kreise gehört. Es war ein lieber Junge von sieben Jahren, wirklich ein ganz wunderbarer Junge. Er war so brav, daß, als sein Vater in den Krieg gezogen war, der kleine siebenjährige Theo zu seiner Mutter sagte: Jetzt muß ich besonders fleißig sein, denn ich muß dir noch da helfen, wo dir der Vater geholfen hat! Eines Abends nach einem Vortrag kam eine unserem Kreise angehörige Persönlichkeit und erklärte, daß dieser kleine Theo seit dem Abend verschwunden sei. Man konnte sich nichts anderes denken, als daß er verunglückt sei. Nun war an jenem Abend durch das, was man im äußeren Leben Zufall nennt, ein Möbelwagen an einer Stelle gefahren, wo jahrelang gewiß keiner gefahren ist, und seither auch keiner wieder. An der Stelle war der Wagen umgekippt. Der kleine Theo war in jenem Häuschen gewesen, das man die Kantine nennt, weil dort unsere Freunde, die am Bau arbeiten, mit Essen versorgt werden. Merkwürdigerweise — er wäre früher weggegangen — wurde er von irgend jemand zurückgehalten, und während er durch eine Tür hinausgehen wollte, durch die er auf einen bestimmten Weg gekommen wäre, mußte er diesmal durch eine andere Türe gehen, und er ging dadurch an dem Möbelwagen vorüber, gerade als der Möbelwagen umfiel. Der Wagen fiel über ihn. Es ist das eines jener Beispiele, wo wir so klar sehen, wie das Karma wirkt.
Ich habe oftmals den einfachen Vergleich gebraucht, um zu zeigen, wie oft Ursache und Wirkung gänzlich verwechselt werden: Wir sehen einen Menschen an einem Fluß entlanggehen. Plötzlich sehen wir, wie der Mensch in den Fluß hineinfällt. Wir gehen hin und finden an der Stelle, wo der Mensch hereingefallen ist, einen Stein liegen. Der Mensch wird aus dem Wasser gezogen. Er ist schon tot. Wenn man die Sache nicht weiter untersucht, so wird man mit dem besten äußeren Gewissen die Sache so erzählen: Der Mann ist über den Stein gefallen, in den Fluß hinein, und ist ertrunken. — Man hätte nur zu untersuchen brauchen, und man hätte gefunden, daß der Tod nicht eingetreten ist, weil der Mensch ins Wasser fiel, sondern der Mensch ist ins Wasser gefallen, weil er tot war; er hatte einen Schlag bekommen. Die Sache ist also umgekehrt, als man sich denken muß. So sieht man, wie man im Leben leicht überall Ursache und Wirkung verwechselt. In der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft geschieht das allerdings überall, daß Ursachen und Wirkungen verwechselt werden.
Hier ist es nun natürlich auch so, daß das gerade dieser Theo es bewirkt hat: er war die Ursache, daß der Wagen zu dieser Zeit vorbeifuhr, er hat ihn auf sich gelenkt. Das muß man sich als das eigentliche Geheimnis der Sache vor Augen halten. Aber nun das Weitere: Ein wirklich in der allerersten Blüte des Lebens verunglücktes Menschenkind! Ja, wenn man verquickt ist mit seinem Herzen mit der ganzen Bauarbeit in Dornach und zu gleicher Zeit die Möglichkeit hat, dies zu beobachten, was in diesen Bau hereinwirkt, dann kann man sagen: Dieser Ätherleib, der auf diese Weise gewaltsam von dem kleinen Theo getrennt worden ist, der ist jetzt in der Atmosphäre des Baues, und die schönsten Inspirationskräfte zu dem, was dort geschaffen wird, gewinnt man dadurch, daß man seine eigene Seele vereinigt mit dem, was vergrößert, wie zu einer kleinen Welt ausgedehnt, in der Atmosphäre des Baues lebt. Und niemals werde ich anstehen, rückhaltlos zu bekennen, daß ich vieles, was ich zu unserem Bau in jener Zeit finden konnte, der Hinlenkung der eigenen Seele nach dem in der Atmosphäre des Baues wirksamen Ätherleib des kleinen Theo zu verdanken habe. So sind eben die Zusammenhänge in der Welt. Dasjenige, was die eigentliche Individualität dieses Menschenwesens ist, geht weiter, aber zurück bleibt der Ätherleib, der noch viele Jahrzehnte ein menschliches Leben hätte versorgen können.
Nun denken Sie sich die Anzahl der unverbrauchten Ätherleiber, die da schweben in der geistigen Atmosphäre über uns und über denjenigen, die auch nach uns leben werden! Jene Ätherleiber, die zurückgeblieben sind von denen, die durch unsere schicksaltragende Zeit in frühem Lebensalter durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind. Wir sprechen da nicht von dem Wege, den die Individualitäten durchmachen, sondern wir sprechen davon, daß durch diese zurückgebliebenen Ätherleiber eine eigene geistige Atmosphäre geschaffen wird. Die Menschen, die da leben werden, sie werden in dieser Atmosphäre leben. Sie werden eingetaucht sein in eine geistige Atmosphäre, die erfüllt sein wird von diesen Ätherleibern, die ihr Leben hingeopfert haben dadurch, daß in unserer Zeit gerade die Menschheit vorwättskommen kann durch diese Ereignisse. Aber notwendig wird sein, daß man verspüre dasjenige, was diese Ätherleiber wollen, welche die besten Inspiratoren der zukünftigen Menschheit sein werden. Es wird eine schöne Zeit des Spiritualismus erwachen können, wenn die Menschen Verständnis, inneres Herzensverständnis entgegenbringen dem, was ihnen diese Ätherleiber werden sagen wollen. Alle diese Ätherleiber, sie werden Helfer sein zum spirituellen Aufschwung der Zukunft. Deshalb ist es so wichtig, daß es Seelen gibt, die in der Lage sein werden, dasjenige zu fühlen, was in die Atmosphäre der Zukunft hineinkommt durch diese Ätherleiber.
Nicht dadurch lernen Sie nur etwas über die Natur der Ätherleiber, daß Sie erzählen können: Der Mensch besteht aus physischem Leib, Ätherleib, Astralleib und Ich, sondern daß Sie auch ein solches Geheimnis der wirksamen Geistigkeit der Ätherleiber wissen, wie es in der Zukunft da sein wird.
Vorzubereiten werden sich diejenigen haben, die jetzt schon eine Hinneigung haben zum Bekenntnis der Geisteswissenschaft, für die Empfänglichkeit dessen, was diese Ätherleiber sagen wollen. Lenken wir daher unsere Seelen der geistigen Welt zu, so werden wir uns und diejenigen, die nach uns kommen werden, vorbereiten, das zu empfinden, was die Vermächtnisse, die ätherischen Vermächtnisse der Toten von der Menschheit der Zukunft wollen. Wenn Menschenseelen durch die Geisteswissenschaft so angeregt sein werden, daß sie hinlenken können ihren geistigen Sinn in die geistigen Welten, dann wird sicher Großes und Gewaltiges als Wirkung aus dem Blut und aus dem Mut und aus den Leiden und aus den Opfern hervorsptießen. Daher möchte ich am Schlusse unserer heutigen Betrachtung in einige Worte zusammenfassen dasjenige, was uns jetzt beseelen, beleben kann, wenn wir als geisteswissenschaftliche Bekenner unseren Sinn hinlenken auf die großen, schicksaltragenden Ereignisse unserer Zeit.
Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht
Denken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.
Cosmic influences on the human members during sleep The occult basis of Christmas The meaning of sacrificial death
It must be my intention during these days to bring to our souls some of what, from a spiritual scientific point of view, can shed some light on the great events of our time. And so it will also be my task next Sunday to direct our feelings toward certain points of view that can shed some light on precisely what must now move our hearts and souls in the deepest sense. To this end, I would like to lay a preparatory foundation today, so to speak, by directing your souls to certain powers and forces that are at work in the historical existence of human beings, which can only be recognized through the insights that spiritual science can provide and which are not immediately perceptible to everyday consciousness. Today I would like to point to facts of human development as they manifest themselves in the historical course of human life, to facts that are more or less subconscious. Let us start from the fact that, as you know from the book How Does One Reach Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, what takes place unseen within every human being can be recognized in successive stages of supersensible knowledge, in what is called imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge, and intuitive knowledge. I already emphasized yesterday in the public lecture that one must always bear in mind that the spiritual scientist who, through his knowledge of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive perceptions, says something about the spiritual worlds, does not bring anything that would not already exist in the spiritual regions in which every human soul lives, even without his knowledge. The spiritual scientist merely draws attention to what is always weaving and living in the world and how the individual human soul is placed within it. Thus, not only for those who intend to enter into the stream of occult experiences, but for every human soul, knowledge of what is their inner reality under all circumstances is important, a reality that cannot be recognized through the ordinary perception of life.
I would therefore like to start from a few facts of imaginative perception about human nature in general. We observe daily that a mysterious event, at least an event that is mysterious to external science, intervenes rhythmically in our lives: waking and sleeping. We have long known that when we are awake, we belong to the physical world with our four human members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. We know that when we are asleep, that is, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are in the physical world only with our physical body and our etheric body, that we withdraw, so to speak, into the purely spiritual world with our astral body and our I. What now presents itself to the spiritual perception of the spiritual researcher can be characterized as follows: The spiritual researcher observes what happens, for example, when a person falls asleep, leaves their physical and etheric bodies, and enters the higher world with their astral body and ego. The spiritual researcher simply observes what happens to the person—to every person every time they fall asleep. So we can say: The spiritual researcher observes only what would present itself to every human soul if it could look down on the world, not in a dream state but in a state of complete sleep, so that it would find its physical and etheric bodies among the things of the world as something outside itself, that is, outside the sleeping soul.
Now, we must not imagine that we then see what we have left behind, in which we have left our physical body and etheric body, from the point of view of sleep, in the same way as we see what surrounds us in the physical world with our physical eyes. In order to see what surrounds us as we see it from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, it is necessary that we use our physical eyes, our physical sense organs. We do not use these when we are outside the physical body and the etheric body. If we suddenly became clairvoyant while asleep, we would not perceive anything of what we see while awake as it is while awake. Nor do we perceive our physical body and etheric body in the same way as we perceive the physical body when we look into a mirror. It is quite wrong to believe that we see the physical body and the etheric body as if we were bending over the physical and etheric bodies with our astral body and our I. That is not the case. What presents itself to imaginative knowledge — let us keep that in mind: to imaginative knowledge — is that everything we are accustomed to seeing in the waking state ultimately disappears, truly disappears for a moment. Even when we see our physical body and etheric body, they are not as they are in the waking state, but our physical body and etheric body really appear to us as if expanded into a world; they appear to us as connected with the whole earthly world. We look at them; we are conscious that we are looking at our physical body and etheric body. But we see them in such a way that they are, for us, in a sense, the only world. Just as we have mountains, rivers, clouds, the sun, stars, and so on around us in the waking state and look at them as our environment, so, when we are outside our physical and etheric bodies, we look at our physical body and etheric body as extended into a world. We see nothing else. We look at it in the same way as we normally look at the various things on our earth. We look at our own physicality as if it were a whole world.
And strangely, this world we look at is such that, as we fall asleep, we perceive it as we perceive the earth in spring, when it has been freed from the winter's blanket of snow, when it brings forth individual green shoots, when it sets out once more on its path of growth, of vegetation of all that forms upon it. and everything turns into sprouts and shoots again. As we fall asleep and look at the physical body and etheric body expanded into a world, we see it, as it were, in such a way that we can perceive it like a planet awakening in spring. And this continues throughout the entire state of sleep. What we see there in powerful images, which really appear to us in their expansion like a planet preparing to enter its summer, is like the earth preparing to enter its summer when spring comes to an end. And so we go through the state of sleep when we go through it properly. We go through the state of sleep, as it were, until we reach the point where we feel that our physical body and etheric body carry sprouting and budding things to blossoming, even to the unfolding of fruit; everything is growing and thriving everywhere. If I am to express myself in detail, I must say — for the imaginative view, what presents itself is indeed paradoxical —: While we perceive the surface of the earth with our physical sight and are conscious of what sprouts from below and grows and flourishes on it, when we observe from outside what is happening to our body and compare it with the plant world, it is as if its roots were penetrating from above and growing into our body with its flowers. So we perceive a completely inverted world, and the fruits are sunk into it. We then learn that this sinking of the fruits really expresses what then comes to our consciousness as the strengthening of sleep. And through this we know that in fact — because everything we see in our imagination is forces — our physical body and etheric body receive forces from the entire cosmos when we enter the state of sleep. We observe how forces that express themselves in the formation of plants growing from the world come from the cosmos. We see how the cosmos drives an entire vegetation into our physical body. And we then gain the certain knowledge that when we fall asleep, we leave our body from the ground up, because from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, we withdraw our physical body and etheric body from the influences of the forces of the cosmos with our ego and astral body. By going out ourselves, we free our physical body and etheric body for the influences of the whole cosmos, which sends into us what it has in the form of elemental, non-physical forces, which are expressed in the imaginations described above. Thus, every time we fall asleep, a relationship is established between the physical body and the etheric body and the entire cosmos. While we live in the physical world in the waking state, our physical body and etheric body actually live during our sleep in what we call the elemental world, the world of pure forces, which are represented to us in the imaginations described above. And where are we ourselves, with our ego and astral body? Well, we have often described this, and it is also described in various writings: with our ego and astral body, we are in the world that has been described as the world of the higher hierarchies among the beings we call Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on. The ego and the astral body immerse themselves in these beings and their world. Just as we, when we are awake, know about the beings of the animal world, the plant world, and the mineral world, and as human beings stand, as it were, above this world by taking it into our thoughts, so we ourselves are taken up as thoughts by the beings of the higher hierarchies. And this is what is significant, that we can say: while here below our physical body and etheric body are connected with the forces of the entire cosmos, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we ourselves are thought, as if we were real beings, woven from thoughts and the essence of will; we are thought by the beings of the higher hierarchies. — Just as we think nature, so the beings of the higher hierarchies think us. Therefore, strictly speaking, it is not correct to say that when we leave the physical body, we think the world. It is actually correct to say that we experience being thought by the world of the higher hierarchies. Just as thoughts must feel during waking life if they had consciousness, so we must experience ourselves as the thoughts of higher beings when we are outside our physical body.
And how do we experience the reawakening of this imaginative knowledge? As we gradually prepare to awaken, we experience this in the same way as we experience in outer nature—we can again compare imagination with outer nature—the onset of winter with all that it brings of destruction, paralysis, and annihilation to the sprouting and budding life of summer. And just as winter brings frost and cold to the earth and destroys the glory of summer, we ourselves immerse ourselves in the physical body and etheric body. What has really entered our physical body and etheric body from the elemental world of the cosmos, like vegetation or even like the animal world, we prepare for destruction when we wake up, just as winter prepares for the destruction of summer's glory. And while we are awake, through our presence in our physical body and etheric body, we actually put them into a state similar to that which the conditions of the cosmos put the earth into when it is winter. We spread winter over our own physical and etheric being by entering into it. You can see from this how what is often used as a comparison from a physical point of view is not correct for spiritual observation. Certainly, out of feeling, human beings already have the awareness that they are connected with the whole cosmos and that, in a sense, what they experience is a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm. But it is natural for people, when they really want to compare something in their microcosmic life with the macrocosmic life, to say: Waking up is like the arrival of spring in our lives, and waking life is like summer. And autumn is like the evening weariness, and sleep is like winter. The opposite is true. Summer life is sleep life, and winter life is waking life. That is the truth of the matter.
When the spiritual researcher truly investigates these relationships, however, he finds that while his ego and astral body rise into the regions of the higher hierarchies and are, in a sense, thought by the higher beings, not only what is in the elemental world works into his physical body and etheric body, but that certain beings of the higher hierarchies also work into our physical body and etheric body. It is not only the elemental world that consists of forces, but real beings, beings of the higher hierarchies, that work into our physical and etheric bodies. And then the remarkable thing happens that we can become aware of how, at the moment we fall asleep, we enter into completely different conditions than those in which we are while we are awake. As I said, everything that can be expressed in this way is based on the fact that spiritual research allows us to observe what happens when we fall asleep and wake up. And it then becomes apparent that, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, our physical and etheric bodies are also influenced by the beings from the higher hierarchies that we must perceive as the folk spirit, the folk soul to which we belong. When a person wakes up, they do not just immerse themselves in their physical and etheric bodies, but also in the processes that are carried out in their physical and etheric bodies by what their folk spirit accomplishes. What is peculiar here—and I ask you to note this carefully, for it befits us who wish to penetrate spiritual science to consider the world connection more deeply than external perception can—is that when a person falls asleep, they do not only immerse themselves in those beings of the higher hierarchies that correspond to their individual development, but also in those spiritual beings which we must regard as folk spirits. From the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up, human beings immerse themselves in the connection of all other folk spirits, except for their own.
So let us remember this well: while we are awake, we live immersed in the spiritual realities that our own folk spirit carries out in our physical and etheric bodies. We live together, as it were, with our own folk spirit from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. Now, in addition to our folk spirit, all the other folk spirits of other peoples exist in the world. When we fall asleep, we immerse ourselves in the context of the other folk spirits, not in a single other folk spirit — keep this strictly in mind — but in what they accomplish together, what they accomplish, as it were, in association, as a society. During the night, only our own national spirit is excluded from this context. We cannot escape having a connection with all those national spirits that belong to other peoples in whom we are not incarnated in a particular incarnation. For when we are awake, we belong to our national spirit, but when we are asleep, we belong to the other national spirits, albeit only to their harmony; while in the waking state we belong to the intentions of the individual national spirit into whose domain we were born in a particular incarnation.
But there is a means of submerging ourselves, as it were, into the essence of a particular other folk spirit even during the state of sleep. While in the normal state we live awake in our own national spirit or its activity, and in sleep we live in harmony with other national spirits, we can immerse ourselves in a single national spirit while asleep if we acquire a truly fervent hatred for what this other national spirit accomplishes in life. And as grotesque as it sounds, it is true—and we in our movement must be able to calmly accept such truths—that if a person feels such intense hatred toward a people from the depths of their being, they condemn themselves to sleep with the spirit of that people at night, to be with them.
Here we touch upon truths which show us that life behind the veil that conceals the spiritual worlds from everyday observation is beginning to take on a deep seriousness, and that in a certain sense it is already uncomfortable to be a professed spiritual scientist. For spiritual science, starting from certain points, begins to take seriously, in the deepest sense, conditions that we find uncomfortable in life and over which we are really graciously lifted by the fact that life in the ordinary sense does not reveal the truth to us. Although we must of course stand firmly on the ground that outer life demands of us, when we rise in the realm of spiritual science to those realms where other peculiarities of life begin, we must take this principle very seriously.
In the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is said that at the moment when one rises into the spiritual world—and every human being is in the spiritual world; it is only a matter of recognizing what is always there—then that comfortable unity of the human being in which we live in the physical world ceases. The human being undergoes divisions; apart from those divisions mentioned there, which can be observed after the encounter with the guardian of the threshold, many other divisions occur, for example, those that must be of profound significance for our entire emotional life. We must recognize that, in a particular incarnation, we have a duty to do our utmost for the people among whom we live and to give them our wholehearted love, for this people is part of the whole process of the Earth's development. We must be clear that, inasmuch as we are also spiritual beings in our ego and astral body, we truly belong to the whole of humanity and must feel with our impulses with the whole of humanity. And it is not the case that spiritual science allows us to live in one-sidedness within it, but rather we must be able to bring these two sides of our being into complete harmony.
We must be clear that, even though we are human beings in our present incarnation, even if we are spiritual scientists, we can love our national culture as much as anyone else can love theirs — but we must bring this feeling into harmony with what unites us with the whole of humanity. And spiritual science is precisely the elevation to this coming together with the whole of humanity, because it reveals to us that we are connected with the whole of humanity in our ego and astral body. To bring about harmony between opposites is what spiritual science demands more and more of those who enter into it with seriousness and dignity. And it is disastrous to confuse true spiritual science with that unclear mystical machinery that always wants to confuse the needs of outer, physical life with what we must rise above by immersing ourselves in the spiritual world. For unclear mysticism, which wants to bring into everyday life what spiritual science only shows in the right light, will never be able to reconcile love for one's own people with love for all humanity, for example, but will lead to a vague mystical cosmopolitanism. This can be compared, as I have already done, with what unclear 'theosophists' constantly say about the equality and equivalence of all religions on earth. Certainly, in the abstract one can say: All religions on earth contain the truth. But that is exactly the same as saying: There is pepper, salt, paprika, and all sorts of other things on the table, and they are all food ingredients. Sugar, pepper, salt, and paprika—they are all the same; so I'll put paprika in my coffee and sugar in my soup, because they are all food additives. Those who, in unclear mysticism, babble only about the unified core of all religions instead of delving into the real essence of each individual that appears in our Earth's development, stand at exactly the same point of logic. It is not important that we always emphasize that all peoples are, in a sense, only expressions of what is generally human, but rather that we recognize the specific tasks that are given to individual peoples through their national souls. And a point of reference for this is provided in the lecture cycle, which has been in print for a long time, which was given a number of years before the outbreak of the war, which was not written under the influence of the war, and which therefore cannot be accused of having been written under the impressions of the war: “The Mission of Individual Folk Souls in Connection with Norse-Germanic Mythology.”
Especially in our time, it is important to reflect on such serious matters so that people can find harmony between what is universal human love and love for one's own people. One need not shy away from characterizing the peculiarities of each individual people, insofar as it is a people—the individual always rises above his people—the peculiarities of the individual peoples. However, as is already clear from my remarks, this must of course be done without hatred. Just as one cannot recognize the true nature of an individual plant if one hates the plant and describes what one feels as hatred, so one cannot recognize the peculiarities of a people if one describes what one hates about the people, or if one includes in the description what comes from feelings of hatred.
And so it must always be the endeavor of those who are able to rise to the viewpoint of spiritual science not to see the essence of the world in monotonous unity, but precisely in the harmony of the many. And human beings must find the possibility of feeling all the warmth they can for their own people, without feeling inferior to anyone who does not strive for spiritual science, and of uniting this with what brings us together with the whole of humanity as a great, unified entity, insofar as we belong to the whole of humanity.
As I said, we will pick up on such things the day after tomorrow. But now I want to note that at the same time, when we pass from our waking state into the state of sleep and are thereby taken up into the beings of the higher hierarchies, we basically shed what connects us to the individual incarnation through our physical body and etheric body. In sleep, we also shed our national being. Through sleep, we become merely human beings, human beings with all the peculiarities that we must have acquired as human beings. When we, as spiritual researchers, look at what happens to human beings in both the waking and sleeping states, we perceive at the same time that when human beings sleep, they live with their ego and astral body in the spiritual world, just as their physical body and etheric body now belong to the greater world; that this inner life, which flows, as it were, in our skin, ceases, and that we expand our self into the greater self. Now consider that we basically always go through a summer and a winter state in the course of twenty-four hours. The earth also goes through this summer and winter state, but it does so in the course of a year. Why does the earth go through these states in the course of a year? Because the earth is a being like ourselves, only on a different level of the hierarchy. The whole earth, when we look at it physically as it is around us, is only the body of the earth; and just as we carry our spiritual and soul life within us, so the earth has its spiritual and soul life. The only difference is that we wake and sleep in the course of twenty-four hours, and the earth wakes and sleeps in the course of the year. It wakes from autumn to spring and sleeps during the summer. So that we can actually always say, when we live during the summer: We live embedded in the sleeping earth. And when we live during the winter, we can say that we live embedded in the waking earth. It is not that the earth wakes in summer and sleeps in winter, as we might say in a trivial comparison taken from ordinary life. Rather, it is true that when autumn comes, the earth awakens as a spiritual being and is most awake in the middle of winter. The earth spirit thinks most in the middle of winter and begins to gradually cease its thinking as spring approaches; and it sleeps when outer life sprouts and blossoms; during summer, the earth spirit sleeps.
However, we as human beings are not only connected to the body of the earth through our physical body, but also to the spirit of the earth. Now we know from the various lectures that through the Mystery of Golgotha, the spirit we call the spirit of Christ has united with the spirit of the earth. Since the mystery of Golgotha, the Christ spirit has been living in what is the spirit of the earth. If people want to celebrate a festival that expresses to them that the Christ spirit is in the earth spirit, when should they celebrate this festival? Not in summer, but in winter, they must place the festival, in the middle of winter. That is Christmas. For this reason, Christmas and what develops from it are placed in the winter season. This arose from a correct understanding of those who once established the Christian year. Christmas was established on the basis of occult truths, not historical facts. For in fact, for what humanity is now, human beings, being embedded with their spiritual-soul life in the spiritual-soul life of the earth, are in the most awake state of earthly existence during the winter season. There they live in the awakened earth.
And what will the ancient peoples have done, whom we know built their service to the world and their knowledge of the world on a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? Well, they must have drawn primarily on what lives in the sleeping earth spirit when the earth spirit is most asleep, most withdrawn into its sleeping state. There they must have raised themselves—in contrast to the newer humanity—to that which unconsciously inspired them with the truth as it had to be for them. In the middle of summer, therefore, we find among the peoples who belonged to the cult that drew its knowledge from the more sleeping, dreamlike state, the feast of St. John, the summer festival, in contrast to the Christmas festival, which befits the newer humanity.
What is so outwardly fixed, and what our materialistic age no longer understands at all, really has its deep foundations in what is spiritual reality. And now we are living in a time when people must once again begin to think, feel, and perceive in a completely different way than was the case in the past. The past period had the task of bringing people closer to the realm of materialistic thinking and feeling. And it was precisely the last few centuries that human souls have lived through that were intended to bring people closer to materialistic thinking and feeling. It is simply the case that the development of the earth had to pass through a materialistic period. We are not doing well if we merely criticize materialism harshly. It had to enter into the development of the earth at one time. But now we are living in a time when materialism must be overcome again, when spiritual perception must enter into human souls again. And this is the more or less clear or obscure feeling of all those who feel drawn in their own souls to our spiritual scientific endeavors, to our spiritual scientific worldview; that they feel that now is the time when, whereas in the past the spiritual world had to be viewed in a dreamlike state, we must consciously take this spiritual world into ourselves. And that is what spiritual science is for.
So the period that has just passed was that of materialism. And because humanity had to submerge itself, as it were, in materialism, the strong impulse that leads humanity back up again had to work precisely through the period of materialism. This is the Christ impulse. And when the Christ impulse entered into the evolution of the earth, the preparation began. It really came into its own in the 14th and 15th centuries. But when it approached, the preparation was already underway for humanity to submerge itself in materialism. The Christ impulse was there as an objective fact in the evolution of the world, but the people were least able to understand it at the very time when it was there. Now we are living in the time when we must begin to truly understand what was there.
What do we see, then? We see a strange course of the Christ impulse in the development thus far. We see that this Christ impulse, when it entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, was not understood at all by human beings. For let us try to imagine what people did in their cleverness. Especially in the first centuries after the Christ impulse entered, we find that all kinds of theological systems were formed, that people argued about how to conceive of the Trinity, and so on. We see endless theological squabbling throughout the centuries, and it would probably be the worst way to try to understand today, based on this theological squabbling, how the Christ impulse worked in those centuries. And the people who quarreled about its meaning did not understand anything about the way the Christ impulse stands in evolution.
Let us try to clarify how it really worked. I will cite a few facts. Take what happened in the 4th century, in the year 312, on October 28, which completely determined the later map of Europe: Constantine, who was called “the Great,” the son of Constantius Chlorus, marched against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, and defeated him, whereby Christianity also triumphed in the Western world in an outward manner. Constantine then elevated Christianity to the state religion, and so on. But did he do this out of his own wisdom? Did what happened back then happen out of wisdom? We cannot say. What actually happened? When Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, learned that Constantine was on his way, he first consulted the Sibylline Books. He thus set out in a dreamlike manner to understand the phenomena of the world. And what he got out of these books was that he was told: The right deed will be done by the one who, as ruler of Rome, leaves the city and fights the battle outside Rome. That was pretty much the most unusual thing one could have thought of. For Constantine had a much smaller army than Maxentius and would undoubtedly have been unable to achieve anything if Maxentius had remained in Rome. But Maxentius left Rome on the advice of the Sibylline Books. However, it was not the generals who won the victory in Constantine's army. Rather, Constantine had a dream in which the symbol of Christ appeared to him. Based on this dream, he had his armies carry the cross as the symbol of Christ. He based his actions on what the dream revealed to him. This battle, which determined the map of Europe at that time, was not decided by human intelligence, nor was it won by the generals, but by dreams and prophecies. Everything in Europe would have been different if things had happened according to people's consciousness at that time and not according to what emerged from the subconscious, what people did not know.
Theologians have argued about what Christ is, whether he was born in eternity with the Father, whether he was born in time, whether he is equal to the Father, and so on. What they pondered in their minds contained nothing of the Christ impulse. But it worked within people in their subconscious. It did not work through the egos, but through the astral bodies. The Christ impulse was reality, and it worked without people needing to understand it. That is the important thing, the essential thing. The way in which Christ worked is as independent of what people understood about him as the course of a thunderstorm is independent of what people have learned about electricity from an electrostatic machine or elsewhere in a physics laboratory. Now is the time to consciously immerse ourselves in the effectiveness of the Christ impulse. But in what has happened historically, Christ has always worked as a force within it.
Let us move on from this to another example in later times. Here, however, we must remember what I have explained to you. For the time in which materialism has arisen, it is important to know that when human beings want to immerse themselves in the spiritual world, they must do so best in winter. That is why the view arises everywhere at this time that on the nights in the middle of winter, particularly gifted natures are endowed with inspirations from the spiritual world. There are legends and sagas among all peoples that tell us how particularly gifted individuals, who have not undergone initiation but are gifted by their very nature, by elemental forces working within them, are inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, during the thirteen nights of winter. There is a very beautiful legend that was found in Norway not long ago, the legend of Olaf Åsteson, who approaches the church on Christmas Eve and begins to sleep. He sleeps until January 6, and when he wakes up, he knows in his imagination what has happened in the soul country, in the spirit country, as we call it. He expresses it in images, but he has lived through it during these thirteen nights. And such legends can be found everywhere. They are not what we call legends today. There have always been gifted people who have undergone a kind of initiation into nature through elemental forces working within them, which human beings can experience through their own will if they faithfully follow the rules of the path of initiation. So we can say that in the age of materialism there could always be people who, when the spirit of the earth is at its most awake, in the middle of winter, could unite with the spirit of the earth and receive inspiration. That was also the time when the Christ impulse, which had connected itself with the earth, could not work through consciousness. Let us imagine particularly gifted souls who are receptive to the spiritual world. For them, it had to become clear that they would receive the impulses for what they had to accomplish from the spiritual world during these thirteen nights until January 6. This had to become apparent, and it did so again and again in small and large examples, that there were people in the course of history who were so spiritually predisposed that when the right moment came for them, when they lived through those thirteen nights in winter, the spiritual impulse — and at that time especially the Christ impulse — entered into them. Nature initiations, initiations that were not achieved through human consciousness work, will always have been easiest to achieve during the age of materialism in these thirteen nights. And we can learn that where such initiations took place, they were achieved during these thirteen nights.
And now we have a fact that even those who have only a little goodwill toward recognizing the spiritual world — very few people have that today — will acknowledge, namely that in the 15th century, through a virgin, the Virgin of Orleans, spiritual powers demonstrably entered the course of history. This can also be proven historically, that the entire map of Europe was redrawn as a result of the Virgin of Orleans helping the French against the English at that time. And anyone who thinks about it can see that everything would have turned out differently according to what people are capable of if the shepherdess had not intervened — and in this shepherdess, the forces from the spiritual world. The Virgin of Orleans was merely the instrument for what was accomplished at that time. What worked through her was the Christ impulse.
But for this she would have had to undergo a nature initiation — and this nature initiation would have been best carried out during the thirteen nights leading up to January 6. The Virgin of Orleans would therefore have had to enter a kind of sleep state between December 24 and January 6, when she would have been particularly receptive to the spiritual influence that can be present at this time. This would presuppose that the Virgin of Orleans experienced the period from December 24 to January 6 in a state of semi-consciousness — and that she received the Christ impulse during this time. Yes, the Virgin of Orleans went through this state in a very striking way! One cannot go through it more strikingly than when one is still in that state of sleep in which one is before birth, in the last moments spent as a child in the womb of the mother. There, of course, the outer consciousness is not capable of taking anything in. It is a state of sleep, and when the time in the womb is over, it is the most mature state of inner maternal sleep. And the Virgin of Orleans was indeed born on January 6. That is the great secret of the Virgin of Orleans, that in the thirteen days preceding her birth she went through a state of natural initiation. That is why, on that January 6, when the Virgin of Orleans was born, particularly sensitive people gathered in the village and said that something very special must have happened. They felt that something special had come to the village. The Virgin of Orleans was born. And she underwent a natural initiation in that significant state of sleep which she experienced in her mother's womb during the last period before her birth. Here we see how, as always, behind the threshold of what takes place in human consciousness, the spiritual beings that exist below this threshold of consciousness are truly at work.
Here we see what a story can mean that only takes into account what is given in documents and external communications. The gods move differently through the course of history. The gods work through other means and in other ways. They bring a Virgin of Orleans into existence who, through her special karma, is suited for incarnation, to receive the Christ impulse and work with it. And they allow this Christ impulse to flow in at the appropriate time. Of course, both were necessary: the special individual karma of the Virgin of Orleans had to be present. Not every child born on January 6 could accomplish the same thing.
So we can truly say: The Christ impulse has worked in human beings through forces that were not conscious to them. Only today do we live in a time when we must consciously take in that which, throughout the centuries, sought a path other than the conscious one into historical activity.
I wanted to evoke in your souls a feeling of how the subconscious forces work in concrete terms. How that which is external history and can be studied from documents and external records is an externality. It is good, especially in our time, to undertake such a study. Let us look at our own time, where on the one hand something great, powerful, and heroic is taking place, coupled with acts of sacrifice. But we see that the great things happening in our time are accompanied by the consequences of extreme materialism, by a tendency to explain everything that happens in our time by mere external circumstances. This is expressed in the fact that one people blames another for the current events and thus wants to judge everything externally by finding fault with the other for what is happening. For our time, too, the reasons and causes for what is happening lie deep down in the subconscious events. We will talk about that the day after tomorrow.
Our time will be particularly suitable — also because of what is happening so bloodily — to give people the warning to seek spiritual impulses of knowledge. Once peace returns to the countries that are at war today, a discovery will be made: the discovery that the tremendous wars of world history cannot be explained by external causes! People will discover that they cannot be explained. Today, people still say, especially the clever ones: It is not appropriate to talk about everything that caused this war; history will speak about that! And those who say that only in fifty or a hundred years will history speak the truth about it think themselves particularly clever!
What we call history today will never explain the causes of today's events; but it will be seen that the causes cannot be fathomed from a historical perspective. However, other aids will be available. This is precisely what an occult observation of our present situation shows.
What is one of the most striking facts of this fateful time? Oh, one of the most striking facts is undoubtedly that so many people pass through the gates of death in their youth. We know what happens to a person when they pass through the gates of death. We know that they first leave the physical body with the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego, and that after a relatively short time they shed this etheric body and continue their journey with the extract from it. But can you not imagine that there must be a difference between an etheric body that is shed between the ages of twenty and thirty, which could have continued to perform the functions of human life for decades, and an etheric body that is shed at a later age? Yes, there is a great difference. When a person dies of old age or illness, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But in the case of a young person, of whom countless numbers are now passing through the gates of death, the etheric body has not yet been able to fulfill all that it could fulfill.
Now I would like to show you a concrete example of what happens to such etheric bodies that are, as it were, violently torn away from the physical body. Of course, many examples could be given. But today I would like to give you an example that we ourselves experienced in Dornach last fall. We experienced this at the building site. A family living near the building site had a seven-year-old son—a family that belongs to our anthroposophical circle. He was a dear seven-year-old boy, a truly wonderful boy. He was so well-behaved that when his father went to war, little seven-year-old Theo said to his mother: “Now I must be especially diligent, because I have to help you with the things your father used to help you with!” One evening after a lecture, a member of our circle came and said that little Theo had disappeared that evening. We could only assume that he had had an accident. Now, on that evening, by what one calls chance in everyday life, a furniture van had driven to a place where no one had driven for years, and no one has driven since. The van had overturned at that spot. Little Theo had been in the little house that we call the canteen because it is where our friends who work on the building site are provided with food. Strangely enough—he would have left earlier—he was held back by someone, and while he was trying to go out through a door that would have taken him to a certain path, he had to go through another door this time, and he walked past the moving van just as it was tipping over. The truck fell on him. It is one of those examples where we can see so clearly how karma works.
I have often used a simple comparison to show how often cause and effect are completely confused: We see a man walking along a river. Suddenly we see the man fall into the river. We go over and find a stone lying where the person fell in. The person is pulled out of the water. He is already dead. If you don't investigate the matter further, you will tell the story with the best of intentions: The man fell over the stone into the river and drowned. — One would only have had to investigate and one would have found that death did not occur because the man fell into the water, but that the man fell into the water because he was dead; he had been struck. The matter is therefore the opposite of what one would think. Thus one sees how easy it is in life to confuse cause and effect everywhere. In ordinary science, of course, causes and effects are confused everywhere.
Here, too, it is of course Theo who caused this: he was the reason the car drove by at that moment; he steered it toward himself. This must be kept in mind as the real mystery of the matter. But now for the rest: a human child who has met with an accident in the very prime of life! Yes, if one is deeply involved with one's heart in the entire building work in Dornach and at the same time has the opportunity to observe what is happening in this building, then one can say: This etheric body, which has been violently separated from little Theo in this way, is now in the atmosphere of the building, and the most beautiful forces of inspiration for what is being created there are gained by uniting one's own soul with what is magnified, expanded as if into a small world, living in the atmosphere of the building. And I will never hesitate to admit that much of what I was able to find for our building at that time I owe to the turning of my own soul toward the etheric body of little Theo, which was active in the atmosphere of the building. Such are the connections in the world. That which is the actual individuality of this human being continues, but what remains behind is the etheric body, which could have sustained a human life for many decades to come.
Now think of the number of unused etheric bodies floating in the spiritual atmosphere above us and above those who will live after us! These etheric bodies are what remain of those who passed through the gate of death at an early age during our fateful times. We are not talking about the path that individualities go through, but rather that these remaining etheric bodies create their own spiritual atmosphere. The people who will live there will live in this atmosphere. They will be immersed in a spiritual atmosphere filled with these etheric bodies that sacrificed their lives so that humanity could advance through these events in our time. But it will be necessary to feel what these etheric bodies want, for they will be the best inspirers of future humanity. A beautiful time of spiritualism will be able to dawn when people show understanding, inner heartfelt understanding, for what these etheric bodies want to tell them. All these etheric bodies will be helpers for the spiritual upsurge of the future. That is why it is so important that there are souls who will be able to feel what enters the atmosphere of the future through these etheric bodies.
You do not learn about the nature of etheric bodies simply by being able to say that human beings consist of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego, but also by knowing the secret of the effective spirituality of etheric bodies as it will exist in the future.
Those who already have an inclination toward spiritual science, toward receptivity to what these etheric bodies want to say, will have to prepare themselves. If we therefore turn our souls toward the spiritual world, we will prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel what the legacies, the etheric legacies of the dead, want to convey to the humanity of the future. When human souls are so inspired by spiritual science that they can direct their spiritual sense into the spiritual worlds, then great and mighty things will surely spring forth from the blood and from the courage and from the sufferings and from the sacrifices. Therefore, at the end of our present consideration, I would like to summarize in a few words what can now inspire and enliven us when, as spiritual scientists, we direct our minds to the great, fateful events of our time.
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 mature
Souls will think spiritually
And direct their minds to the realm of spirits.