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The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
GA 162

1 August 1915, Dornach

4. Harmonizing Thinking, Feeling and Willing

My dear friends, yesterday we were able to show how the intellect, all that is connected with the forming of our ideas and concepts, is in a certain way—especially in the case of Western thinking—set free from the inner upstreaming, the inner creating, and activity. We saw how through this fact man comes to the point of merely seeing images of something external in what he receives as concepts and ideas, and how he does not notice that at the same time as he is conceiving and thinking, something is also happening in him himself. An inner becoming is accomplished, an inner happening takes place. And I also referred yesterday to the polar opposite of this, namely, how the impulses of feeling and will are bewitched in the inner being of man, so that when he feels, when he brings his will into activity, he has the consciousness that he is then entirely and solely within himself, that he is concerned only with himself, and that what takes place in the impulses of feeling and will has nothing to do with anything in the outside world, in the cosmos. We believe that in our feelings we only bring to expression our inner life, we believe we are experiencing something which is connected only with this inner nature.

I have pointed out that this originates from the fact that certain spiritual beings of the hierarchy of the Archangeloi, at the time of the separation of the Old Moon from the Sun-evolution, did not take the step of separation, but remained, as it were, with the progressing Sun-evolution. What entered their destiny through their not having made this step of sharing in the Moon existence, they are now going through, in as much as they take part in our earthly existence. They interpenetrate us, interweave in us and shut off our feeling and our willing from the outer cosmic existence. They confine this feeling and willing of ours to our inner nature.

But now there arises through this, as you can readily imagine, a kind of pronounced separation between something in us that wishes to be confined to us ourselves, to live only within us as our impulses of feeling and willing, and something else which pays little heed to what is in us, and which are, far more turns outwards and tries to take a direction towards the external.

If we want to make a sketch of what this denotes we could perhaps say:

If this is the human being drawn schematically, we should first be concerned with our intellectual life (Diagram 1 yellow) which turns to the outer world and wishes to receive it and pays no attention to the fact that here within, it is raying out and continually calling forth our form. On the other hand we have an element of will and feeling here in the interior (violet), they radiate only within us and we are not aware that they now also go out into the cosmos, that they really bear something in them which is just as much derived from the cosmos as is the content of our thoughts.

There is, however, in us human beings a connection between these two centres within us. It is a connecting link (light red) but in ordinary life and existence it remains unknown, does not enter the consciousness. Man, in fact, experiences as his inner world, his feeling-and willing, and as his outer world his thinking, which leads over to perceptions, to the sense impressions. Thus, in ordinary life, the link between these two centres in us does not actually come to our consciousness. As a consequence of this, man can easily acquire the notion that truth is imparted to him from two sides, that he attains truth, or something like truth by observing the outer world through his senses, and then combining the observation with his intellect and so on.

Kant has examined this process of observation of the outer world and of the production of certain spheres of ideation on the basis of those observations. In his researches he found nothing to which one could come if one extended what tries to go out in the cosmos from the one centre. He came to a point where he asserted: ‘Yes, that (Drawing 1, yellow) must certainly go out to a ‘thing in itself,’ but one cannot find it.’ On the other hand he felt how from the inner being of man something thrusts up which lives in willing and feeling. But since the connection remained unknown to him there were two worlds for him; the world of the existing order and the world of the moral order. He only felt one thing to be clear. ‘Here, one does not come to anything at all. The thing in itself is nebulous, is unknown; but that which thrusts up as it were against man gives a certain inner compulsion.’ This Kant called the ‘categorical imperative,’ from which he derived all truths related to the inner nature—as he calls them: all higher truths of belief in contrast to the external truths, which, however, can tell nothing of the actual world.

We must, however, give our chief attention to this: that as a matter of fact, not merely through his own disposition, but because of his whole evolution during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon conditions, man thus shared in the separation which occurred in the Moon-evolution, and has therefore come to this dual partition and must experience it as a natural condition.

Now when we consider these matters still more closely, we come to an important and significant truth which is given us by Spiritual Science, on the ground of what has here been characterised. We can say; this state of our thinking, our intellect and conceptual life, is connected with the former separation of the Moon from the progressing Sun. The way in which we, as human beings, apprehend our thinking and conceiving is connected with the fact that certain Luciferic beings of the hierarchy of the Angels who, through what they had become, did not share in the return of the Moon to the Sun—that those are now living in our intellect, so that something Luciferic lives in our intellect and shuts us off from looking into the inner moving and forming. Thus Lucifer, as it were, dwells in our thinking.

What now is the essential character of this Luciferic influence? The essential is that we do not perceive what was established in us and developed by the normally progressive divine-spiritual beings but we perceive instead what has been made out of this normal evolution by Lucifer. And what is it for Lucifer himself, that what he should have experienced during the Moon-evolution, but did not, he now carries into the Earth-evolution, and in this evolution experiences for his own part what in that earlier time he did not share? What will be the nature of that which he must undergo during the Earth-evolution? I beg you to pay great attention to this, for it is full of importance, even if difficult. So what does Lucifer want? What do these Luciferic angels that are in our intellect want?

At that time they did not want to take the step of the union of the moon with the sun. Had they done so, they would, as it were, have united conceiving and thinking in the right way with human nature. This they did not do, so now they contribute nothing to it.

Now, however, during Earth-existence, they wish to do what they did not do formerly; they now wish to bind the intellect with the human being; they wish to do during the Earth-evolution what they ought actually to have done during the Moon-evolution. When you consider this earnestly you will understand that something of immense significance follows from it.

Had we not been misled by Luciferic beings in the way referred to, we should not relate thinking to ourselves as we do now, but we should look back to the Moon-evolution and say: ‘Long ages ago our thinking wished to unite with our inner being, wanted to belong to us.’ This we do not say, but instead: ‘We appropriate the thoughts of the world and now receive them within us.’ But that is sheer Luciferic temptation in the sense of the divine spiritual beings we should think: out there is extended the world of the senses as we see it; the moment we now pass over to thinking, we look back to the Old Moon-existence and attribute the whole earthly sense world to it.

The following is what we should experience: If we call that (see diagram) e earthly-perceived-sense world, we should then have the in us, i.e., the earth- contents, and we should not, as we do now, form concepts of the Earth-content, but we should say instead; All that we have in this way as earth-content, we relate to the ancient Moon,—and while we have sense-perceptions and the surroundings of earth appear to the senses there lights up in us the realisation that everything that lives and weaves upon earth, everything that exists and works and grows, appears upon the foundation of the old Moon existence.

There would light up something like a connection with a star apparently belonging to the past, but which was still there, living in our world of thought. We should feel in connection with the past existing in the present, and should see through the Luciferic deceptive picture which consists in this—that Lucifer holds before the shining Moon-existence a curtain, a veil, because at that time he omitted to unite himself with the Sun-existence. And he deceives us and makes us believe that what we ought to look upon as lighting up in us from the Old Moon-existence—that is from the eternally new Moon-existence is our thought-content, which is firmly established in us through our brain and rests within us as earthly men.

So through what has happened we have been shut off from that wonderful and mighty memory of the Old Moon. We do not see continually in the background, shining, as it were, into the nape of our neck, the explanation of all that the senses conjure up before us. We ought to go through the world, our senses turned outwards to sense-existence, and ought to feel as though our neck and the back of our head were shone upon by the ancient Sun and Moon-existence. And this would proffer the explanation of real, living concepts, concepts which are cosmic, and do not work into us from the external earthly objects.

Thus two world-pictures are projected through one another; the Earth-picture and the Moon-Picture. We ought to be able to hold them apart; the one, inasmuch as we turn our senses outwards, the other, inasmuch as we receive the shining from behind, and we ought to prevent their weaving into each other in our intellect. We cannot do this. Lucifer confuses the one with the other. Ideas, concepts, sense impressions, he mixes together, and philosophers have for a long time endeavoured to crack open a beautiful problem, which they call ‘antimony.’

You can refer to Kant: There on the one page you always have proofs brought forward, for instance, that the world is infinite as regards space; on the other page you have just as strict proofs advanced, that the world is not spatially infinite but is limited. For both there are equally conclusive proofs. They must be there, because the one point of view is just as true as the other, only one is the earth -view and the other the moon-view. To one who cannot hold them apart, they become insoluble contradictions, contradictions which cannot be solved in any case with earthly understanding. But we have seen that a still older kind of deviation from the forward course of evolution was that brought about by the spirits from the hierarchy of Archangeloi who live in our impulses of feeling and will. Therefore we can say: Lucifer through his existence shuts us off from the cosmos; he only allows us to feel the impulses of feeling and will which live in our inner nature. If he were not to shut us off like this, then, instead of feeling that will impulses and feeling arise as though from the subconscious inner being, man would be aware of all that shines into him, illumines him from the cosmos through the Sun-evolution. As man ought to be aware in his intellect of the Old Moon behind the ordinary sense-existence, so he ought to see behind his impulses of feeling and willing the radiating cosmic sun arise. In feeling and willing he should see—as the kernel in the fruit-the essence of the Sun shining through.

But we are shut off from this through Lucifer. We think that feeling and will are only something within us, we do not realise that they contain within them living sun-forces, sun-forces that are actually within them. If we were to feel these sun-forces, were we really to feel the spirit-light shining within feeling and will; then we should have an insight into the cosmos precisely through this lighting up of the spirit-light of the world. We should have a direct vision of the external through our inner nature. That has been destroyed for us through those Luciferic spirits who have an archangel nature and who did not share in the step of the separation of the Moon from the Sun. It had to be brought to us again through the coming of this cosmic sun-nature into the evolution of mankind. This cosmic Sun-nature came into earthly evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Mystery, the entire reality of which man must first of all accept in himself, must inwardly experience :Not I, but Christ in me.

And proceeding thence, more and more that inwardly shining, shaping force is formed in him. Cosmic light penetrates feeling and willing like the sunlight and unites itself with the intellectual life so that we attain a uniform cosmic picture by learning to allow the Christ-impulse to live, not only in feeling and willing, but to let it flow into the world of our concepts and understanding. Thus, instead of merely looking to Christ Jesus, a whole cosmology is really born for us, a Christened cosmology. We come to learn what the cosmos was before the Mystery of Golgotha, when the Christ was united with the Sun-nature outside the earth realm, and what the cosmos is after the Mystery of Golgotha, when the Christ is now no longer separated from the earthly aura, but lives on further within the aura of the earth. Only through first feeling ourselves to be identified with the Christ-impulse, regarding, as it were, this Christ-impulse as the centre from which, as shown yesterday, we can receive the continuous, the eternal, ever-enduring revelation,—only through this do we press forward increasingly to the possibility of attaining to a concrete Christianity, full of content, which will then be completely one with the content of spiritual science, even as regards cosmology.

Take the whole nerve- let me say -of Christology,—take what a man must really understand to comprehend Christology. Why do so many people not understand it? Why do they connect no right ideas with the Mystery of Golgotha? Because it is asking too much of them to describe as reality something which they are not otherwise accustomed to call real.

A sentence is to be found in a book of Haeckel's which reads something like this: ‘The Immaculate Conception is an impudent mockery of human reason.’ But why of human reason? Well, the next sentence reads: because in all other cases, in the animal and human kingdoms, it is not possible to observe such a birth. That is obviously a logical contradiction in itself.. For one ought to bring forward ground based not on observation but on reason. But just here again we encounter a fact of such a nature that it is incompatible with the ideas which man receives from external reality. All that man otherwise calls ‘real’ is incompatible, with the reality of this fact, with the whole fact of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus a man must grasp something that contradicts his ideas of reality. Now to those who approach more closely to Spiritual Science a way should open to ideas which permit an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. You see, in ordinary life and also in modern science what one observes with the outer senses is called real, or at least, something that is founded on reality. Real science rests upon what one observes by means of the senses. People endeavour, however, to make use of the senses for other purposes, they try to grasp everything after the manner of sense observation of external things. Biologists try to grasp the living being, the living organism as though it were only a complicated cooperation of purely mechanical forces, a complicated machine, since it is only a complicated machine that they can actually regard as a reality.

What actually lies behind this? What lies behind it is the fact that men call something real,—and indeed nowadays, throughout the whole of their life—which is not real at all, which is not in the least what it is said to be. Consider a corpse. Can you say that this corpse is the man? No, this disintegrating corpse is not the man, it is the form of man which is breaking in pieces. And so it is with the whole of outer nature. People investigate the inanimate, and have no idea that everything which is inanimate has once been alive. Men must find the transition from the concept of ‘inanimate nature’ to the concept of ‘Nature that has died,’ men must really grasp the fact that all inanimate things were once living and have died, that what we can find today as stone and rock was alive during the Moon age and has died, has become lifeless stone through a process such as that passed through by the human corpse.

If we were to grasp this actively, and look upon Nature as a corpse, then we should know that what we call existence is not something that contains existence, but rather something out of which existence has already fled. This is of infinite importance. Men do not realise that they cling to the inanimate, not realising that it is something that has died, and that they are trying to learn to understand the living through what has died.

When men look at the living organism that has not yet died, but lives before their eyes, and reduce it to a mechanism which is only an image of the dead, they are trying to understand and explain the living from the dead. That is the ideal and goal of the whole modern world concepts: to grasp the living out of what has died. Spiritual Science must take pains, always take pains to replace an understanding through the dead by an understanding through the living. The whole trend of modern science must disappear, since its only aim is to grasp the living through that which has died, not merely through the inanimate, the inorganic, but through what has died. This whole science must disappear. In its place must arise an understanding of the world out of the living. And of all the non-living, the inorganic at the present time, it must be realised that in the past it too was a living being. Had we not been luciferically hindered, from perceiving behind the sense impressions what has been characterised as the Moon existence, which stands behind them,—then we should realises there lies the corpse of what still appears to us from the Old-Moon. Just as on seeing a human corpse we remember how the man appeared as he was in life, how he went about and spoke with us, so, on looking at the earth we should look back on what it was when it was still alive during the Old-Moon existence.

It must be the earnest endeavour of Spiritual Science that we should be led out of the dead into the living; that must be an active, true goal although it may be difficult to attain; for all that is contained in our modern science touching a conception of the world is thoroughly foreign and hostile to such an aim. We must not deceive ourselves about this, but be quite clear that the world conception of modern science is absolutely opposed to it.

It will be intensely difficult to gain a living grasp of the cosmos in place of the dead one. But when we hold living ideas, then we shall no longer be wanting in an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For we shall know that what, in general, is subject to death, is derived from the Moon-existence, but that the Christ is from the Sun-existence. He held back in order to bring to us the Sun-element again. He has nothing to do with all the concepts that are lifeless, but will replace them by living ones. Therefore it is necessary to unite with Him in a living way, not through a dead science. Therefore it is necessary to recognise that only under specially abnormal conditions, could that which cannot die, cannot become dead, enter into the earthly course.

When one studies the special connection which the Christ Being had during the three years with the body of Jesus of Nazareth, one comes to realise that actually, in the different members which were united through the inter-connection of the two Jesus boys, through the fact that Zarathustra lived in the Nathan Jesus, something entirely special was created (I have already referred to this in other lectures), something which, during those three years made this whole body different from an ordinary human body. An ordinary human body is actually not the same as this body was already—and through the particular kind of union throughout the three years with the Zarathustra-being still- remained different from other earthly bodies. As the earth began to recapitulate the Moon-existence, there remained behind, as I have explained, that essential substance which then appeared in the Luke Jesus, the Nathan Jesus boy; something which had not entered into death, or passed through the illusion of earthly death, which in the course of earthly phenomena was reserved for Christ Jesus, this held back. This was in Christ Jesus, and guided him through these three years and through death,—through the Maya of death, in a different way from other human beings.

This extraordinarily central phenomenon of earthly evolution must, however be understood, must be really grasped, as standing outside everything that is derived solely from the Moon-existence, it must be understood as being inwardly connected with the regularly progressive Sun-existence. Nor, therefore, after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, could this Christ-Being be dependent on anything which is derived, only from the Moon-existence, derived, that is, from a Moon which had separated from the Sun, when during this separation Luciferic beings had taken part in the splitting off, but not in the reunion.

The Christ-Being remains completely untouched by all that is in the earth through this aberration from Luciferic spirits. He would immediately have been affected by it had He been incorporated in an ordinary human body. Hence He could only appear physically upon earth through these special and abnormal occurrences, not covered by earthly laws. And since this Being had taken possession of an earthly body through the Mystery of Golgotha, He is now upon earth spiritually and not subject to those laws which came into earth-existence through the Moon evolution. These are the laws of Space and Time.

Space and Time ... I have already indicated in Occult Science (as you will find in the passages there) that it is difficult to form a picture of the ancient Saturn and Sun conditions, because one must leave out the concepts of space and time. What one pictures as space and time in regard to this ancient existence, is only an analogy, only an image, does not as yet correspond with reality. The concepts of space and time have no reality if applied earlier than the Moon-existence. One cannot use this concept for the previous conditions of evolution. But that which comes through the Christ into the spatial-temporal is likewise not bound up with the laws of space and time. Therefore a genuine Spiritual Science recognises it as the greatest imaginable error to suppose that the Christ, as He is united now with earth-existence, could appear before mankind spatially limited in one single human being. It would be the gravest misapprehension of the Christ to assert that there could be a re-embodiment of Christ at the present day, and that if He perhaps wished to speak in the future to—let us say—a person in Europe and then to someone in America, He would have to take train and steamer and thus travel from Europe to America. That will never happen. He will always be raised above the laws of space and time. And we must conceive of His appearance in the 20th century as being raised above these laws. Never could the Christ, rightly understood, be embodied in a single human being.

It would therefore be or rather it is a blow in the face of genuine Spiritual Science, wherever it is asserted that there could ever be a human re-embodiment of Christ Jesus.1This had to be especially emphasised in view of the propaganda of ‘The Star in the East.’ But with this, it is also shown that Christology, that which the Christ really is, has nothing to do with any divisions of man and mankind.

We see there, my dear friends, a way open: how the cosmic, the sun-nature comes again into our whole human race, how again the sun-nature, lost through Lucifer, rises in our feeling and willing, how it rises again through the Christ in our feeling and will how from there it can take hold of our intellect. That is the way which all spiritual understanding of the world must take in the future. But for a long time there will be errors and mistaken paths; for—I have often stressed it—only slowly and gradually can the Mystery of Golgotha in its depths find its way into the whole course of humanity's evolution. Only quite slowly and gradually can that come about. And inasmuch as it is gradually accomplished, more and more, it will create an accord between man's, intellectuality and his feeling and willing. That will increasingly fill out the human being with an inner Man, with a second man.

In man as he is without this filling out through the Christ Impulse, the head&'s inner nature, one might say, is hidden. If a man feels his head, he has headache; the inner quality is physically completely veiled as regards the head. Man carries the head about with him in normal life without actually feeling it, he makes use of it for registering external impressions.

The other part of man, which is at the same time the seat of the world of lower desires, this is within us; this to begin with, takes up nothing from outside, lives in itself. And the Jahve-God has concealed in a world of law not entering human consciousness, all that lives down below, as the sum total of man's desire world, so that the Luciferic rumblings or egotism, do not become too great. Through Lucifer we should really only be organised as Earthly men, to use our lower nature—disregarding the intellect -solely and only for ourselves. We should develop not a single altruistic instinct but purely egoistic instincts. There would be in the world no natural foundation for love. The human being would merely use the instincts that live in his lower nature, for manifesting himself in the world, for putting himself into the picture. Hence this lower nature has been rendered dim and dulled by the Jahve Godhead.

The Jahve Godhead himself lives in this lower nature and implants the instinct of love and altruism, but of a kind more or less unconscious for ordinary human life. These instincts and impulses have to become conscious again through the Impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. But in this whole unconsciousness of the desire world something of a twofold nature lies concealed. In the first place, the connection of the intellect, of the conceptual with the desire world remains in the subconscious. But nevertheless it works upwards, works definitely upwards and it works upwards through the fact that something enters which I have already often explained.

This whole desire world, which is actually an egotistic world belonging only to the human being, can, as it were emancipate itself from the Jahve Godhead living in it. Then it works upward, but—unconsciously and without man's knowledge—it presses through and interpenetrates the conceptual world with its imaginations. Then man becomes clairvoyant, that is to say, he his visions. He experiences as Imaginations all that lives in his desire world. In reality he only experiences his desire world; it shows itself to him as the Imaginative world. But since in this whole desire world of ours only the cosmos lives—though veiled from man—the Imaginations which rise up from his desire world like a mirage conjure up for him a complete cosmos. He can now experience a whole Cosmos, which Consists of nothing but that down below where the fire of the lower desires burns. This fire of the lower instincts then shoots upwards, and now a cosmos arises, here above in the intellectual system. This is essentially the process of self- mediumship. The medium who becomes a medium through his own desires and instincts succumbs to these processes. Such mediums are usually very proud of their Imaginations. They look down with arrogance upon those people who have no Imagination, whereas those in their turn can often very well see that such Imaginations, as are from time to time described as marvellous pictures are nothing more than what boils and bubbles in the instincts and in the digestive processes and loses its way upwards as cosmic images. It rises as a mist into the world of concepts and takes on the form of false cosmic pictures, expressing itself through these.

But the effect of this duality of human nature can appear in yet another way. For let us suppose that a second man meets the first man, a second who is naturally, as human being so constituted that his inner nature of willing and feeling hides the cosmos, and his intellectuality hides his own inner self. (Diagram II. Man) (Pg. 17)

Now let us suppose that such a second man, by means of various processes of which we have still to speak, came to the point of having more or less consciousness. Thus here would be man #1 and man # 2 (Pg 17) had reached a consciousness of this relation (Diagram II, Light red).

Now let us suppose that this man (II) was not disposed to employ all that came to him through such a consciousness in the pure sense of a universal and Christianized spiritual science, but that he had his own particular aims in the world. Let us suppose that this man belonged to a region which had framed a special world-concept in the course of historical development, and he had grown up within this region with such a world conception; and let us suppose that he had special, egoistic grounds to impose it upon the world quite intensively. The true occultist as we know has no other desire than to make valid that which can benefit all men; he has no lust of domination; but let us suppose that such a man II had a desire of power, and wished to make the world-conception of a limited territory dominate in other territories. Now if he simply goes ahead and represents in his own way the world concept that he wished to make dominant the following will happen: Some will believe him others will not believe him. Those who are of different opinion will not believe him, will repulse him- we know from experience how European missionaries are often repulsed by other races if they say things that these people do not understand or have no intention of understanding—another way. Since this whole process is a conscious one, he has the power of working upon another person e.g., upon Man #1 (Diagram Pg 2) and if he does not work merely through his intellect, but through his whole personality, he can act upon the intellect of the other.

Now if the other man is so organized that he has mediumistic tendencies—i.e., can receive something in an abnormal way—and so simply accepts it as truth because it is advanced by the second then there streams from the second into the first man the world concept held by the second, and the first allows it to pass through his unspoiled intellect if then the former appears before mankind, what is now presented comes out in quite a different way. People would notice in the case of man # 2 that acts purely on his own behalf in the world, and he has the power of clothing in an intellectual system what arises out of his inner being, for what he gives out is his own position. The ego of man #1 has not got it as its own possession but takes it from the other as something objective and advocates it with his intellect in such a way—since it is not his own personally—as to give it a more universal character. It seems to come from the unspoiled intellect of man #1 as if it were a universal truth. Here you have the facts as to how, from a certain grey or black direction, one-sided information is carried into the world. The particular one-sided grey or black spiritual-scientists do not bring it to the world by standing up and presenting their views, but they pour them into a mediumistic person. This person takes them over, passes them on and lets them work upon other people through their intellect. Hence such grey or black spiritual scientists often remain in the background as Mahatmas, and those who stand before the world speak of the Mahatma standing behind them, and what they proclaim is given out as a communication of the Mahatma.

This phenomenon leads up to much that has happened in a terribly psychologically-tragic way, one night call it, in the case of poor H.P. Blavatsky, who in the most eminent sense of the word, was a mediumistic personality. Her intellect was, however, never adequate to examine what was passed over to her by people who were not always honourable, but who could work precisely through Madame-Blavatsky. These persons concocted things which were not always irreproachable; in an egoistic sense and through the mediumistic intellect of Blavatsky they made this into something which then worked on people in a suggestive way. To those, however, who wish to take their stand honourably on the ground of spiritual science, quite definite rules and regulations of conduct are inseparable from it.

You see, from all that has now been expounded, that under all circumstances, when it is a question of spreading spiritual science, one sentence must hold good. It is obvious that anything coming from some kind of mediumism is interesting and significant, for it comes, of course, out of another world, but it must never be taken just as it stands. Otherwise it will fare with humanity as it did in the whole development of spiritism in the second half of the 19th century.

The whole development of the movement in the second half of the 19th century was really undertaken from a certain side in order to test men and ascertain how ripe they were to recognize not only the material sense world which men perceive with their senses lives around them, but also a spiritual world; for the modern material world concept of the 19th century had, under Ahrimanic suggestion, brought wide-spread belief in the sense word as the only existence. Already in the middle of the 19th century, it was a great question among occultists as to whether they should oppose this whole spiritistic movement. It was decided at the time not to not to oppose it, for it was assumed—though this was short-sighted—that when men saw how all sorts of things came from the spiritual world through the medium, they would most certainly bethink themselves that there were actually things and forces in the world which worked from one to another in a spiritual way. Instead of this the whole spiritistic movement plunged into a very egoistic materialistic channel. The majority of mediums everywhere said that they were in contact with this or that deceased person. They brought to light all sorts of things inasmuch as they said: this or that soul who died here or there communicated one thing or another through the medium. To be sure they brought to light very many things. But in far the greater number of cases a colossal error lay at the root of their claims. For if we imagine here the medium as Man 1, we have to imagine the experimenter or hypnotizer, i.e., the one who arranged everything, as Man 2.

Now in every man whilst he is alive here, all that is his dead part is already in him. But that reverberates below; during the waking day life it reverberates below in the sense perceptions. The dead part of man rumbles below in the sense perceptions. Now imagine the following: The medium is there, the experimenter also is there; he passes over to the medium or to whatever else may be manifesting in the arrangements, that which is actually pulsating in his own sense impressions, and often in his lower instincts and will reappear one day when he himself dies. Truths may be contained in all this, but one must understand the whole nature of what arises; one must not listen to the medium when he asserts that what comes to him by revelation is a communication from the departed.

The people who did not immediately offer resistance to spiritism, said to themselves: what it is will soon be evident. They wanted to know whether the working upon the medium of the living, of what lives in the embodied person, was really furthered. The mediums completely misunderstood this, always believing that they stood in connection with the departed. So we see how mediumism certainly formed a connection with the other world, though a deceptive one. Lucifer is not somehow driven away from the path of normality to mediumism but he is drawn in still more, the deception becomes still greater. What is in the inner being is not set free and distributed in the cosmos, but what is within spreads out like a mist in the conceptual world and becomes an imaginative world. What is in man's inner being can proceed from himself or rise up within him through the influence of another person.

But out of this will follow an infinitely significant and important law for the spread of spiritually scientific truth and for work in the stream of spiritual science. One should take care that all direct belief in a man's authority must be the less, the more this person shows marks and traces of mediumship. The more such a person comes and says; ‘I have received this or that as an impression somewhere or other,’ yet is not fully conscious of this and cannot furnish proof, all the less is there authority in his mediumship.

Therefore when H.P. Blavatsky brought certain teachings into the world, one had of necessity to say: This personality shows strong evidences of mediumship, and so it is impossible to credit her with authority, or at least only in a very slight degree. Authority must dwindle in proportion as the person shows traces of mediumship.

In the same way, it is an axiom, so to speak, in the spreading of the truths of spiritual science, that in this spreading there must never be any kind of appeal, when the truths are made public, to unnamed Masters or Mahatmas. No matter how many unnamed Beings and personalities stand behind such a movement, that which has significance as proceeding from such Beings is only significant for the one who directly confronts them; it is his affair whether he believes in them or not, and whether he can prove that they are worthy of trust. But it can never be his business when he is making public statements to claim that he has had it from unnamed Masters or Mahatmas, (in a small circle, if someone simply says... ‘This or that was said to me and I believe it,’ that is different, those are things that pass from one personality to another). The moment, however, that it becomes a question of presenting a teaching to the world, then the one who represents it must himself accept the responsibility for it. And only he who makes it clear though the type of man he is, that he does not appeal to unreal or unknown Mahatmas when he wishes to substantiate what he is propagating but who rather makes it intelligible and obvious that he, as personality, standing there on the physical plane, takes complete responsibility for his teaching, only he is living up to his full duty. And one who cannot do this, can refer to someone to be found by name on the physical plane, or who, if he is dead, can be found among the dead by historical paths.

It is therefore most important for the transmission of teachings that the one who communicates them with his own personality, as he stands there in the physical world, should accept full responsibility for the teachings, and must not appeal to unknown Masters. And those who spread the teachings further, may also only appeal to living personalities, who as physical persons are prepared to take full responsibility for their teachings. This gives a sure and certain way for dissemination of the teaching to a wider circle, but gate and door are barred against all persons unnamed and to all hints and allusions. Whoever asserts that he has received this or that from here or there, from unknown masters or from the dead (through which one can so regale oneself on one's own arrogance) against him is door and gate locked. For in spreading spiritual science the question is to know the path taken by the threads of confidence which lead to its original sources.

Hence, it was wrong when, in the so-called Theosophical Society one began to found certain society procedures on the utterances of unknown Mahatmas. That ought never to have been done. For anything that takes place and is propagated on the physical plane, a physical personality is answerable, as much as when teachings are circulated. He who spreads the teachings of another, has equally to show that he appeals, not to some unknown powers or impulses found along mediumistic paths, but to historical or living personalities. This means that he appeals to those who show the whole method of entry of spiritual truth into the physical world, who moreover, take full responsibility for their teachings and also show through their conduct that they take that responsibility. That is it above all! It is this latter above all!

These are two very important rules. The first is that we must possess the feeling that authority vanishes, if mediumism arises in the communication of the statements of personalities, and the second is that responsibility is never laid upon beings who are introduced to the world as unknown. One can, of course, speak of such unknown beings, but one must not appeal to them as authorities. That is a very different matter.

I only wished to place these indications before you today, since it is important to have the right feeling as to how the whole spirit and nature of the strivings of spiritual science should live in us. We must stand within this movement in the right way, otherwise the spiritual science movement will be immeasurably injured by being mixed up with unclear, mediumistic things, with appeals and references to all sorts of Mahatmas and beings who stand behind it. Everything that those standing in the movement so much enjoy shrouding in the magic breath of mystery (although it really proceeds from sense-instincts)—all this must be gradually ejected, otherwise we shall really not make progress in the sphere of spiritual science.

If every impact of a disordered gastric juice with the walls of the stomach causes an impetus that arises as a mist into the intellect and manifests there in the form of an Angel-Imagination, and the person in question then tells his fellow-men about this angel, that can of course make a very fine story! But what is instigated through this sort of thing only causes injury to the spiritual-scientific movement, endless injury. For the important part about these things is that they not only cause injury through what is said, but also through what they are—for they are, in fact, realities. The moment that one puts a false garment on them, one makes them appear before the world in a false form.

Obviously no one would make a special impression if he were to say: ‘I have had something going wrong in the stomach. The action of my gastric juices upon the stomach walls has appeared to me as an Angel.’ Anyone speaking thus would make no particular impression on his fellow-men; if, however, he were to leave out the first part, he would make a strong impression. It is extraordinarily important for people to have a thorough knowledge that this can happen. Naturally one cannot distinguish straight away between a true Imagination and a false one; but neither is it necessary to bring one's Imaginations immediately to people's notice. All that must be taken thoroughly into account. It is necessary, really earnestly necessary, to consider how the spreading of the spiritual science outlook can best take place in the world. We have had, up to now the instrument of the Society, no doubt too, in the future of our Anthroposophical Society we shall have it. But we must really so conceive of this Anthroposophical Society—or speaking more loosely—of our standing within the movement of Spiritual Science, that we shall consider in what way it is an instrument for something that is to take place spiritually in the whole earthly evolution.

You see, my dear friends, it happens all too often that one may become a member of the Anthroposophical Society, and yet carry into that Society all the various habits, inclinations, sympathies and antipathies that one had before becoming a member, and continue to exercise them. It is necessary to think this over. I have therefore today made the subject of our studies something that closely concerns us and that is real—and that is: how it is possible for imposters to appear who want to make propaganda for some one-sided world concept and make use of a mediumistic personality in order to introduce this one-sided world concept to the world. Just as the one who appeared in the place of the Master Kut-Humi stood there as an imposter and implanted a one-sided world concept in Blavatsky, so also was it possible for people not to see that behind her stood a grey magician who was in the pay of a narrowly circumscribed human society, and wished to promulgate a definite human world conception.

This is something very, very real, and shows us how keenly we must be on the watch when it is a matter of fostering and cultivating this sublime treasure of spiritual science, so necessary to mankind. One must strive for honesty—really into the inmost fibres of feeling; naturally faults may arise—but one must strive for the purest integrity. One must not, through laziness, be quickly satisfied that one can believe in anyone who gives one something of value, but must test every step, prove whatever comes to light. That is absolutely essential. It is a reality, not a mere theory, that steams into mankind in this spiritual science. Human evolution receives something actual and real through what steams into mankind through the world concept of Spiritual Science.

We must therefore become conscious that we must take a different stand on earth from that otherwise taken when we do not ally ourselves to such a Spiritual-Science stream.

Elfter Vortrag

Hinweisen konnten wir gestern darauf, wie der Intellekt, also alles dasjenige, was zusammenhängt mit unserer Begriffs- und Vorstellungsbildung, gewissermaßen losgelöst ist, namentlich für das abendländische Denken losgelöst ist von dem inneren Erquellenden, von dem inneren Schaffenden und Wirkenden, und wie dadurch der Mensch dazu kommt, in dem, was er als Vorstellungen, als Begriffe aufnimmt, bloß die Bilder von etwas Äußerem zu sehen und nicht darauf zu achten, wie mit den Vorstellungen, mit dem Denken zu gleicher Zeit in uns selber etwas geschieht, ein inneres Werden sich vollzieht, ein inneres Geschehen sich abspielt.

Und gewissermaßen als den polarischen Gegensatz habe ich gestern schon erwähnt das Gebanntsein von Gefühls- und Willensimpulsen wiederum in das Innere des Menschen, so daß der Mensch, indem er fühlt, indem er in sich Willensimpulse rege macht, dann das Bewußtsein hat, er sei in diesem Erfühlen, in diesem Willensimpulse-Regemachen ganz nur in sich selber, habe es da nur mit sich zu tun, und das, was sich im Gefühls- und Willensimpuls auslebt, beziehe sich nicht auf irgend etwas draußen in der Welt, im Kosmos. Mit unserem Gefühle glauben wir gewissermaßen nur unser Innenleben zum Ausdruck zu bringen, glauben etwas zu erleben, was nur mit diesem Inneren zusammenhängt.

Ich habe darauf aufmerksam gemacht: dies rührt davon her, daß gewisse geistige Wesenheiten aus der Hierarchie der Archangeloi dazumal, als die Trennung des alten Mondes von dem Sonnensein stattfand, diesen Schritt der Trennung nicht mitgemacht haben und gewissermaßen bei dem fortschreitenden Sonnensein geblieben sind. Das, was dadurch ihnen geworden ist, daß sie zurückgeblieben sind hinter dem Schritte des Mitmachens des Mondendaseins, das leben sie nunmehr dadurch aus, daß sie jetzt mit Anteil nehmen an unserem Erdendasein. Sie durchdringen uns, durchweben uns, diese geistigen Wesenheiten, und schließen gewissermaßen unser Fühlen und unseren Willen ab von der äußeren kosmischen Welt. Sie beschränken dieses unser Fühlen, dieses unser Wollen auf das Innere.

Nun entsteht dadurch aber, wie Sie leicht einsehen können, in einem hohen Maße eine Art Spaltung zwischen etwas in uns, was gewissermaßen auf uns selber beschränkt sein will, was in uns nur leben will als unsere Gefühls- und Willensimpulse, und einem anderen in uns, was wenig achtgibt auf das, was es in uns ist, und was sich viel, viel mehr wendet nach außen, ganz gerichtet sein will nach außen.

Wollten wir uns schematisch aufzeichnen, was da vorliegt, so könnten wir uns vielleicht sagen: Wenn das schematisch der Mensch ist, so würden wir es zu tun haben zunächst mit unserem intellektuellen Leben (Zeichnung I, gelb), welches sich nach außen richtet, die Außenwelt aufnehmen will und nicht darauf achtet, daß es hier im Inneren ausstrahlt und unsere Gestalt fortwährend hervorruft. Dagegen haben wir ein Element des Willens und der Gefühle hier im Inneren (Zeichnung, violett), die strahlen nur in uns selber aus, und wir werden nicht gewahr, daß sie nun auch in den Kosmos hinausgehen, daß sie wirklich in sich auch etwas tragen, was ebenso vom Kosmos herrührt, wie der Inhalt unserer Gedanken vom Kosmos herrührt.

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Nun ist ja allerdings in uns Menschen eine Verbindung zwischen diesen zwei, man könnte sagen, Zentren in uns. Es ist eine Verbindung (Zeichnung I, hellrot), aber diese Verbindung bleibt im gewöhnlichen Dasein, im gewöhnlichen Leben eigentlich unterbewußt, kommt nicht zum Bewußtsein. Der Mensch erlebt eben als seine Innenwelt sein Fühlen und Wollen und als seine Außenwelt sein Denken, das hinüberleitet zu den Wahrnehmungen, zu den Sinnesempfindungen. Also im gewöhnlichen Leben kommt die Verbindung zwischen diesen beiden Zentren in uns nicht eigentlich zum Bewußtsein. Das hat zur Folge, daß der Mensch leicht das Bewußtsein bekommen kann, es werde ihm von zwei Seiten her die Wahrheit zuteil, es werde ihm die Wahrheit oder etwas wie die Wahrheit dadurch, daß er durch seine Sinne die Außenwelt beobachtet und die Beobachtungen mit seinem Intellekte kombiniert und so weiter.

Auf diesen Prozeß des Beobachtens der Außenwelt und des Erhaltens von gewissen Begriffswelten auf Grundlage gewisser Beobachtungen hat Kant hingesehen und hat in seinem Suchen nicht gefunden irgend etwas, worauf man da kommen könnte, wenn man dasjenige hinauserstreckte, was von dem einen Zentrum hinaus will in den Kosmos. Er kam dazu, zu sagen: Ja, nach einem «Ding an sich» muß das (Zeichnung I, gelb) wohl hinausgehen, aber man kann es nicht finden. Und auf der anderen Seite fühlte er, wie aus dem Inneren des Menschen etwas aufstößt, was im Willen und im Gefühle lebt. Aber da ihm unbewußt blieb der Zusammenhang, waren dies für ihn zwei Welten: Die Welt des Seins und die Welt des Sollens, Nur das Eine fühlte er klar: Hier kommt man nicht zu irgend etwas. Das «Ding an sich» ist unbekannt, ist im Nebulosen; aber das, was da im Menschen gewissermaßen aufstößt, das gibt eine gewisse innerliche Verbindlichkeit. Die nennt Kant den «kategorischen Imperativ», von dem er dann alle Wahrheiten, die sich auf das Innere beziehen, ableitet ... alle höheren Glaubenswahrheiten, wie er sie nennt im Gegensatz zu den äußeren Wahrheiten, die aber von der eigentlichen Welt nichts überliefern können.

Worauf wir aber unser Hauptaugenmerk lenken müssen, ist dies, daß so der Mensch in der Tat nicht etwas bloß durch seine eigene Gesinnung, sondern daß er durch seine ganze Entwickelung, die er durchgemacht hat durch den Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondenzustand hindurch, teilgenommen hat an der Spaltung, die im Mondenzustand stattfand, und dadurch zu dieser Zweigeteiltheit gekommen ist und diese auf naturgemäße Weise erleben muß.

Nun kommen wir, wenn wir noch näher diese Sache betrachten, auf eine wichtige, auf eine bedeutungsvolleWahrheit, die uns die Geisteswissenschaft auf dem Boden dessen, was hier charakterisiert worden ist, gibt. Wir können sagen: Daß dies so ist mit unserem Denken, unserem Intellekte, mit unserem Vorstellen, das hängt zusammen mit der einstigen Trennung des Mondes von der fortschreitenden Sonne. Wie wir als Menschen dieses unser Denken und dieses unser Vorstellen auffassen, das hängt zusammen damit, daß gewisse luziferische Wesenheiten aus der Hierarchie der Angeloi, die nicht mitgemacht haben das Sich-wieder-Verbinden des Mondes mit der Sonne, durch das, was sie geworden sind, eben in unserem Intellekt leben, so daß etwas Luziferisches in unserem Intellekte lebt und uns abschließt von dem Hinschauen auf das innerlich Bewegliche und Formende. Also, es haust gewissermaßen Luzifer in unserem Denken.

Was ist denn nun das Wesentliche dieses Luziferischen? Das Wesentliche dieses Luziferischen ist, daß wir dasjenige, was von den regulär fortschreitenden göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten in uns veranlagt ist und entwickelt wird, nicht wahrnehmen, sondern wahrnehmen das, was Luzifer gewissermaßen aus dieser normalen Entwickelung macht. Und was ist das für Luzifer selber, daß er das, was er während der Mondentwickelung hätte durchmachen sollen, aber nicht durchgemacht hat, nun in die Erdenentwickelung hineinträgt und in der Erdenentwickelung seinerseits das durchmacht, was er damals nicht durchgemacht hat? Worin wird das bestehen, was er da durchmachen soll während der Erdenentwickelung? - Ich bitte, gerade auf diesen Zusammenhang recht sehr zu achten, denn er ist bedeutungsvoll, aber schwierig. Also, was will Luzifer? Was wollen diese luziferischen Engelwesen, die in unserem Intellekt sind?

Dazumal wollten sie nicht den Schritt mitmachen der Vereinigung des Mondes mit der Sonne. Hätten sie dazumal den Schritt mitgemacht, dann hätten sie gewissermaßen in richtiger Weise das Vorstellen und Denken mit der menschlichen Natur verbunden. Sie haben das nicht getan, und so tragen sie jetzt nichts dazu bei. Jetzt aber, während des Erdendaseins, wollen sie das machen, was sie dazumal nicht gemacht haben: sie wollen jetzt den Intellekt mit dem Menschen verbinden, sie wollen während der Erdenentwickelung das machen, was sie eigentlich auf dem Monde, während der Mondenentwickelung, hätten machen sollen. Wenn Sie das richtig überlegen, werden Sie verstehen, daß etwas ungeheuer Bedeutungsvolles daraus folgt.

Würden wir nämlich nicht in der angedeuteten Weise von luziferischen Wesenheiten verführt werden, so würden wir das Denken nicht so auf uns beziehen, wie wir es jetzt tun, sondern wir würden zurückschauen auf die Mondenentwickelung und würden sagen: Vor urfernen Zeiten wollte sich unser Denken mit unserem Inneren verbinden, wollte uns gehören. - So sagen wir aber dies nicht, sondern wir sagen: Wir eignen uns die Gedanken der Welt an und nehmen sie jetzt in uns auf. - Das aber ist richtige luziferische Verführung. Im Sinne der fortschreitenden göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten würden wir denken: Da draußen breitet sich die Sinnenwelt aus, so wie wir sie sehen. In dem Augenblicke, wo wir nun zum Denken übergehen, blicken wir zurück zum alten Mondendasein und führen die ganze irdische Sinnenwelt zurück auf das alte Mondendasein.

Wir würden also folgendes durchmachen: Denken Sie, wenn wir das (Zeichnung, grün) als die irdisch-wahrgenommene Sinneswelt bezeichnen, so würden wir da die Erde in uns haben, das heißt den Erdeninhalt, und wir würden nicht so, wie wir es jetzt machen, uns Begriffe von dem Erdeninhalt bilden, sondern wir würden sagen: Alles dasjenige, was wir so als Erdeninhalt haben, beziehen wir zurück auf den alten Mondinhalt, und während wir sinnlich wahrnehmen, und uns der Erdeninhalt sinnlich erscheint, leuchtet in uns auf, wie alles, was auf der Erde lebt und webt, west und wirkt und wird, auf der Grundlage des alten Mondendaseins erscheint. - Es würde uns aufleuchten etwas wie ein Zusammenhang mit einem scheinbar vergangenen Stern, der aber noch da wäre und in unserer Gedankenwelt lebte. Wir würden uns in Zusammenhang fühlen mit der gegenwärtigen Vergangenheit und würden durchschauen das luziferische Trugbild, das darinnen besteht, daß Luzifer uns vor das leuchtende Mondendasein einen Teppich, einen Schleier vorhält, weil er dazumal es unterlassen hat, sich mit dem Sonnendasein zu vereinigen. Und er gaukelt uns vor, daß wir alles dasjenige, was wir erblicken sollten als in uns hereinleuchtend vom alten Mondendasein - das heißt, vom ewig neuen Mondendasein - so aufnehmen, wie unseren Gedankeninhalt, der sich jetzt durch unser Gehirn in uns festsetzt und in uns ruht als Erdenmenschen.

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Also wir sind abgeschlossen worden von jener wunderbaren, gewaltigen Erinnerung an das alte Mondendasein durch das, was geschehen ist. Wir erblicken nicht stets im Hintergrunde, ich möchte sagen, wie in unseren Nacken hineinscheinend, die Erklärung für alles dasjenige, was uns die Sinne vorzaubern. Wir würden durch die Welt gehen, unsere Sinne hinausgerichtet auf das sinnliche Dasein, und würden erfühlen, wie unseren Nacken und unser Hinterhaupt bescheinend, das alte, immer neue Mondendasein, das die Erklärung böte der realen lebendigen Begriffe, die kosmisch sind und nicht von den äußeren Erdendingen in uns hineinwirken.

Durcheinandergeworfen sind also zwei Weltbilder: das Erdenbild und das Mondenbild. Wir müßten sie auseinanderhalten können: das eine, indem wir unsere Sinne nach vorn richten, das andere, indem wir das Scheinen von hinten empfangen, und wir müßten verhindern, daß sich dies ineinanderwebt in unserer Erkenntnis. Wir können das nicht; Luzifer wirft sie durcheinander. Begriffe, Vorstellungen, Sinnesempfindungen wirft er uns durcheinander, und die Philosophen knacken seit langem an einem entsprechenden Problem, das sie «Antinomie» nennen.

Bei Kant können Sie nachlesen: da haben Sie immer auf der einen Seite Beweise angeführt zum Beispiel dafür, daß die Welt dem Raume nach unendlich ist; auf der anderen Seite haben Sie ebenso strikte Beweise angeführt, daß die Welt dem Raume nach nicht unendlich, sondern begrenzt ist. Für beides gibt es gleich bindende Beweise. Sie müssen da sein, weil die eine Anschauung ebenso wahr ist wie die andere. Nur ist die eine die Erdenanschauung, und die andere die Mondenanschauung. Dem, der sie nicht auseinanderhalten kann, werden sie zu unauflöslichen Widersprüchen, zu Widersprüchen, die überhaupt mit dem Erdenverstande nicht aufzulösen sind.

Aber wir haben gesehen: nochälterer Art sind diejenigen Abirrungen vom fortschreitenden Gange der Weltentwickelung, die durch die Geister aus der Hierarchie der Archangeloi zustande gekommen sind, die in unseren Gefühlen und in unseren Willensimpulsen leben. Da können wir sagen, es schließt uns Luzifer ab durch sein Dasein von dem Kosmos. Er läßt uns nur dasjenige erfühlen, was in unserem Inneren lebt von Gefühlen und Willensimpulsen. Wenn er uns nicht so abschließen würde, dann würde der Mensch, statt daß er das Gefühl und den Willen wie aus seinem Unterbewußtsein, wie aus seinem Inneren da heraufkommen fühlte, alles dasjenige wahrnehmen, was durch die Sonnenzeit vom Kosmos in ihn hereinscheint, hereinleuchtet. Wie der Mensch in seinem Intellekt eigentlich wahrnehmen müßte den alten Mond hinter dem gewöhnlichen Sinnendasein, so müßte er hinter seinen Gefühlen und hinter seinen Willensimpulsen die strahlende Weltensonne aufgehen sehen. In den Gefühlen und im Willen müßte er - wie den Kern in der Frucht - das Wesen des Sonnenlebens durch das Gefühl und den Willen hindurchleuchten sehen.

Davon sind wir nun wiederum luziferisch abgeschlossen. Wir glauben, daß das Gefühl und der Wille nur etwas in uns ist; wir fühlen gewissermaßen nicht in uns, daß alle Gefühle und aller Wille in ihnen lebende Sonnenkräfte enthalten, Sonnenkräfte, die wirklich darinnen sind. Würden wir diese Sonnenkräfte fühlen, würden wir wirklich das Geisteslicht inmitten von Gefühl und Wille aufleuchten fühlen, dann würden wir ein Schauen des Kosmos eben durch dieses Aufleuchten des Geisteslichtes der Welt in dem Gefühle und dem Willen haben. Wir würden ein Äußeres durch unser Inneres unmittelbar wahrnehmen. Das ist uns durch jene luziferischen Geister, die Erzengelnatur haben und nicht mitgemacht haben den Schritt der Abtrennung des Mondes von der Sonne, eben verdorben. Es mußte uns wiedergebracht werden dadurch, daß nun dieses Kosmisch-Sonnliche hereinkam in die Menschheits-Entwickelung. Dieses Kosmisch-Sonnliche kam herein in die Erdenentwickelung durch das Mysterium von Golgatha, durch jenes Mysterium von Golgatha, dessen ganze Realität der Mensch zunächst in sich aufnehmen muß, innerlich erleben muß: «Nicht ich, der Christus in mir.»

Und von da ausgehend, bildet sich in ihm immer mehr und mehr jenes innerlich Leuchtende, Gestaltende. Das kosmische Licht durchzieht wie das Sonnenlicht Gefühl und Wille und vereinigt sich mit dem Intellektuellen, so daß wir ein einheitliches Weltenbild dadurch erlangen, daß wir lernen, nicht bloß in Gefühl und Wille leben zu haben den Christus-Impuls, sondern ihn einfließen zu lassen in die Verstandes-, in die Vorstellungswelt. So daß uns an Stelle des bloßen Hinblickens auf den Christus Jesus wirklich eine ganze Kosmologie wird, ein durchchristeter Kosmos wird, indem wir verstehen lernen, was der Kosmos war vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha, als der Christus mit dem Sonnlichen außerhalb des Irdischen verknüpft war, und was der Kosmos ist nach dem Mysterium von Golgatha, da der Christus nun nicht mehr von der Erdenaura getrennt ist, sondern in der Erdenaura weiterlebt. Nur dadurch, daß wir uns selber zunächst identisch fühlen mit dem Christus-Impulse, daß wir gewissermaßen diesen Christus-Impuls als das Zentrum betrachten, von dem uns in der gestern angedeuteten Weise die fortwirkende, die ewige, die immerwährende Offenbarung werden kann, nur dadurch dringen wir immer mehr und mehr zu der Möglichkeit vor, ein konkretes, ein inhaltvolles Christentum zu erlangen, das dann durchaus eins sein wird mit dem, was der Inhalt der Geisteswissenschaft ist, auch in kosmologischer Beziehung.

Nehmen Sie den ganzen Nerv, möchte ich sagen, der Christologie, nehmen Sie das, was der Mensch eigentlich verstehen müßte, um die Christologie zu verstehen. Warum verstehen denn so viele Leute die Christologie nicht? Warum verbinden sie keine richtigen Begriffe mit dem Mysterium von Golgatha? Weil den Menschen zugemutet wird, irgend etwas als Realität zu bezeichnen, was sie nicht gewohnt sind, sonst als Realität zu bezeichnen.

In Haeckels Büchern befindet sich ein Satz, der etwa so heißt: Die Conceptio immaculata ist eine freche Verhöhnung der menschlichen Vernunft. - Aber warum der menschlichen Vernunft? Ja, der Nachsatz heißt: Weil in allen anderen Fällen, im Tier- und Menschenreiche, sich zeigt, daß eine solche Geburt nicht beobachtet werden kann. - Das ist selbstverständlich ein logischer Widerspruch in sich. Denn man müßte einen Vernunftgrund und nicht einen Beobachtungsgrund anführen. Aber gerade hier begegnen wir wieder einer Tatsache, die so ist, daß sie mit den Begriffen, die der Mensch von der äußeren Realität empfängt, nicht vereinbar ist. Alles das, was der Mensch sonst «real» nennt, kann ja nicht vereinbar sein mit der Realität dieser Tatsache, überhaupt mit der ganzen Tatsache des Mysteriums von Golgatha.

Er muß also etwas begreifen, der Mensch, was seinen Begriffen von Realität widerspricht. Nun sollte denjenigen, die der Geisteswissenschaft immer näher- und nähertreten, sich ein Weg eröffnen zu Begriffen, die die Möglichkeit bieten, das Mysterium von Golgatha zu verstehen. Man nennt im gewöhnlichen Leben und auch in der heutigen Wissenschaft das, was man äußerlich mit den Sinnen beobachtet: ein Reales oder wenigstens etwas, was auf einem Realen begründet ist. Man stützt die reale Wissenschaft auf das, was man mit den Sinnen beobachtet. Man bemüht sich aber noch, sie zu etwas anderem zu benützen, man bemüht sich auch, alles so zu begreifen, wie das verläuft, was draußen durch die Sinne beobachtet werden kann. Es bemühen sich die Biologen, das Lebewesen, den lebendigen Organismus so zu begreifen, als ob er nur ein kompliziertes Zusammenwirken von lauter mechanischen Kräften, also eine komplizierte Maschine sei, weil sie nur eine Maschine als etwas Reales ansehen können.

Was liegt eigentlich dahinter? Das liegt dahinter, daß der Mensch etwas als Reales bezeichnet, und zwar durch das ganze Leben hindurch heute als real bezeichnet, was gar nichts Reales ist, was gar nicht dasjenige ist, als was es angesprochen wird. Treten Sie vor einen Leichnam. Werden Sie sagen: Dieser Leichnam ist der Mensch? Nein, diese sich zersetzende Leiche ist nicht der Mensch, sie ist die zerbrechende Form des Menschen. Und so ist es mit der ganzen äußeren Natur. Man sucht das Tote und ahnt nicht, daß alles Tote ein Gestorbenes ist. Würde man nur wirklich den Übergang finden von dem Begriffe der «toten Natur» zu dem Begriffe der «gestorbenen Natur», würde man nur wirklich begreifen, daß alles Tote einmal lebendig war und gestorben ist, daß das, was wir heute als Gestein finden können, während der Mondenzeit lebendig war und gestorben ist, zum toten Gestein erst durch einen ähnlichen Prozeß geworden ist wie der Leichnam des Menschen; würden wir das im lebendigen Sein erfassen, würden wir die tote Natur als einen Leichnam verstehen, so würden wir wissen, daß das, was wir das Sein nennen, nichts ist, was Sein enthält, sondern etwas ist, aus dem eigentlich das Sein schon entflohen ist. Das ist unendlich wichtig. Die Menschen begreifen nicht, daß sie sich heften an das Tote, ohne zu verstehen, daß es ein Gestorbenes ist; und sie verstehen nicht, daß sie das Lebendige nicht begreifen sollen durch das Gestorbene.

Wenn die Menschen den lebendigen Organismus ansehen, der noch nicht gestorben ist, sondern vor ihnen lebt, und ihn zurückführen auf einen Mechanismus, der nur ein Abbild ist des Gestorbenen, so wollen sie das Lebendige aus dem Gestorbenen begreifen und erklären. Das ist das Ideal, das Ziel der ganzen heutigen Weltanschauung: das Lebendige aus dem Gestorbenen zu begreifen. Die Geisteswissenschaft muß sich Mühe geben, innig Mühe geben, an die Stelle eines Begreifens durch das Gestorbene ein Begreifen durch das Lebendige zu setzen. Die ganze Richtung der heutigen Wissenschaft muß verschwinden, weil sie allein darauf hinzielt, das Lebendige durch das Gestorbene, nicht bloß durch Totes, Unorganisches, sondern durch das Gestorbene zu begreifen. Diese ganze Wissenschaft muß verschwinden. An ihre Stelle muß treten das Begreifen der Welt aus dem Lebendigen heraus. Und von allem in der Gegenwart Unlebendigen, Unorganischen muß begriffen werden, daß es in der Vergangenheit ein Lebendiges war.

Würden wir nicht luziferisch verführt sein, würden wir hinter den Sinneswahrnehmungen erblicken dasjenige, was vorhin charakterisiert wurde als das dahinterstehende Mondendasein, dann würden wir verstehen: da liegt der Leichnam desjenigen, was uns noch von dem alten Monde erscheint. Wir würden ebenso, wie wir beim Anblicke des Leichnams des Menschen uns zurückerinnern, wie er war im Leben, wie er war einmal, als er mit uns lebte, vor uns wandelte und mit uns sprach. So würden wir zurückschauen beim Anblicke der Erde auf das, was sie war, als sie noch lebte während des alten Mondendaseins.

Daß wir also herausgeführt werden aus dem Toten in das Lebendige, das muß das Bestreben der Geisteswissenschaft sein, das muß ein lebendiges, ehrliches, wenn auch schwer zu erringendes Ziel sein; denn alles, was in unserer heutigen Wissenschaft lebt als Weltanschauung, als Weltanschauungsstimmung, ist diesem Ziele durchaus fremd und feindlich. Darüber sollen wir uns wirklich keinen Nebel vormachen, daß alles, was in der heutigen Wissenschaft als Weltanschauungsstimmung lebt, diesem Ziel durchaus widerstrebt.

Ungeheuer schwierig wird es sein, an Stelle der toten Weltauffassung die lebendige Weltauffassung zu setzen. Wenn wir aber dann lebendige Begriffe haben, dann werden wir nicht mehr, mit diesen lebendigen Begriffen, ermangeln des Verständnisses des Mysteriums von Golgatha. Da werden wir wissen, daß dasjenige, was überhaupt dem Tode unterworfen ist, vom Mondendasein herrührt, daß der Christus aber vom Sonnendasein ist. Er hat sich bewahrt, um uns das Sonnenhafte wiederzubringen. Er hat nichts zu tun mit all den Begriffen, die die toten Begriffe sind, sondern wird an die Stelle der toten Begriffe die lebendigen Begriffe setzen. Daher ist es notwendig, sich lebendig mit ihm zu verbinden, nicht durch eine tote Wissenschaft. Daher ist es notwendig, einzusehen, daß nur unter ganz besonders abnormen Verhältnissen eingehen konnte dasjenige, was nicht sterben kann, was nicht tot werden kann, in eine irdische Laufbahn.

Wenn Sie die besondere Verbindung studieren, in welcher durch drei Jahre hindurch die Christus-Wesenheit mit dem Leibe des Jesus von Nazareth war, so werden Sie darauf kommen, daß in der Tat in diesen verschiedenen Gliedern, die da vereinigt waren durch das Zusammengefügtsein der beiden Jesusknaben, dadurch daß Zarathustra in dem nathanischen Jesus lebte, etwas ganz Besonderes geschaffen war - ich habe in anderen Vorträgen darauf schon hingedeutet - etwas, was während dieser drei Jahre diesen ganzen Leib anders machte als einen gewöhnlichen Menschenleib. Ein gewöhnlicher Menschenleib ist wahrhaftig nicht dasselbe wie dieser Leib. Dieser Leib war schon durch die besondere Art der Verbindung mit der Zarathustra-Wesenheit die drei Jahre hindurch etwas anderes, als es die Erdenleiber sind. Als die Erde das Mondendasein zu wiederholen begonnen hat, da blieb ja zurück, wie ich auseinandergesetzt habe, diejenige Wesenssubstanz, die dann durch den Lukas-Jesusknaben, durch den nathanischen Jesusknaben erschien: etwas, was nicht in den Tod eingegangen war und durch das Scheinbild des irdischen Todes hindurch, der im Laufe der irdischen Erscheinungen über den Christus Jesus verhängt wurde, sich bewahrte. Das war in diesem Christus Jesus und führte ihn schon in anderer Weise durch diese drei Jahre und in anderer Weise als andere Menschen durch den Tod, durch das Scheinbild des Todes hindurch.

Diese außerordentliche Zentralerscheinung der irdischen Entwikkelung muß aber verstanden werden, muß wirklich begriffen werden, so daß sie außerhalb alles desjenigen steht, was nur von dem Mondendasein herrührt; es muß verstanden werden, daß sie innig zusammenhängt mit dem regelmäßig fortwirkenden Sonnendasein. Daher kann, nachdem das Mysterium von Golgatha sich vollzogen hat, diese Christus-Wesenheit auch mit nichts zusammenhängen von dem, was nur vom Mondendasein herrührt, und zwar vom Mondendasein so herrührt, daß eben dazumal die Trennung eingetreten ist des Mondes von der Sonne, und während dieser Trennung eine Anzahl luziferischer Wesenheiten die Trennung, aber nicht nachher die Wieder-Verbindung mitgemacht hat.

Von alledem, was durch diese Verirrung der luziferischen Geister in der Erde ist, bleibt die Christus-Wesenheit richtig unberührt. Sie würde sogleich berührt werden davon, wenn sie in einem gewöhnlichen Menschenleibe sich verkörpern würde. Sie konnte sich daher nur unter diesen besonderen, abnormen, nicht durch die gewöhnlichen Erdengesetze gedeckten Vorgänge physisch auf der Erde befinden. Und als sie vom Erdenleib Besitz ergriffen hatte durch das Mysterium von Golgatha, ist sie nun geistig auf der Erde und nicht unterworfen jenen Gesetzen, die in das Erdendasein hineinkamen durch die Mondenentwickelung. Das sind namentlich die Raum- und Zeitgesetze.

Also Raum und Zeit: Ich habe das schon in der «Geheimwissenschaft» angedeutet - und Sie werden an der betreffenden Stelle der «Geheimwissenschaft» die Andeutung finden -, daß es schwierig ist, das alte Saturn- und Sonnendasein sich vorzustellen, weil man die Raum- und Zeitbegriffe noch draußen lassen muß, weil das, was man als Raum- und Zeitbegriffe von diesem alten Dasein sich vorstellt, nur ähnlich, nur wie ein Bild ist, noch nicht stimmt mit der Wirklichkeit. Beim Mondendasein fängt das Bild erst einigermaßen an zu stimmen, wenn man es räumlich und zeitlich vorstellt. Für die vorherige Entwickelung ist diese Vorstellung noch nicht zu gebrauchen. Aber das, was durch den Christus in das Räumlich-Zeitliche hineinkommt, ist auch nicht an Raum- und Zeitgesetze gebunden. Daher würde es vor einer wirklichen Geisteswissenschaft der größtdenkbare Unsinn sein, sich vorzustellen, daß der Christus, so wie er jetzt mit dem Erdendasein vereinigt ist, in einem einzelnen Menschen räumlich begrenzt vor die Menschheit hintreten könnte. Es wäre das größte Mißverstehen des Christus, wenn man behaupten wollte, es könnte eine Wiederverkörperung-des Christus in der jJetzigen Zeit eintreten, und der Christus müßte sich etwa, wenn er zu einem Menschen in Europa in der Zukunft sprechen wollte und dann zu einem Menschen in Amerika, auf die Eisenbahn und dann auf das Dampfschiff setzen, um von Europa nach Amerika zu reisen. Das wird nimmermehr der Fall sein. Er wird immer über die Raum- und Zeitgesetze erhaben sein. Und seine Erscheinung im 20. Jahrhundert müssen wir uns auch so vorstellen, daß er über Raumund Zeitgesetze erhaben ist. Niemals wird der richtig verstandene Christus in einem einzelnen Menschen verkörpert sein können.

Es war also, oder besser gesagt, es ist überall da ein Faustschlag in das Gesicht der wirklichen Geisteswissenschaft, wo behauptet wird, daß es eine menschliche Wiederverkörperung des Christus Jesus jemals geben könnte. Damit ist aber auch gezeigt, daß die Christologie, dasjenige, was der Christus wirklich ist, mit allen Trennungen der Menschen und der Menschheit nichts zu tun hat.

Wir sehen da sich einen Weg eröffnen, wie das Kosmische, das Sonnenhafte, doch wiederum in unsere gesamte Menschheit hereinkommt, wie wieder aufgeht das durch Luzifer verlorene Sonnliche im Gefühl und im Willen, wie es wiederum aufgeht durch den Christus in diesem Gefühl und Willen, und wie es von da aus unseren Intellekt ergreifen kann. Das ist der Weg, den in der Zukunft alles geistige Verständnis der Welt nehmen muß. Aber es wird noch lange Verirrungen geben, denn - ich habe es ja oft betont - nur langsam und allmählich kann das Mysterium von Golgatha in seinen Tiefen sich in den ganzen Gang der Menschheitsentwickelung hineinleben. Nur ganz langsam und allmählich kann das geschehen. Und indem es sich vollzieht nach und nach, wird es immer mehr einen Einklang schaffen zwischen der Intellektualität des Menschen und seinem Gefühle und Willen. Das wird immer mehr und mehr den Menschen ausfüllen mit einem inneren Menschen, mit einem zweiten Menschen.

So wie der Mensch ist ohne diese Ausfüllung durch den ChristusImpuls, so ist mit Bezug auf den Kopf des Menschen, ich möchte sagen, das Innere verhüllt. Wenn man den Kopf spürt, hat man ja schon Kopfschmerzen. Das Innere ist, ich möchte sagen, physisch ganz verhüllt in bezug auf den Kopf. Den Kopf trägt man mit sich, ohne daß man ihn im normalen Leben eigentlich fühlt, man verwendet ihn dazu, um hineinzupressen die Eindrücke von außen. Das andere vom Menschen, das der Sitz der niederen Begierdenwelt zugleich ist, das ist in uns; das nimmt zunächst nichts von außen auf, lebt in sich. Und die Jahve-Gottheit hat eingehüllt in eine dem Menschen unbewußt bleibende Gesetzlichkeit alles dasjenige, was da unten im Menschen als die Summe der Begierdenwelt lebt, damit das luziferische Rumoren des Egoismus nicht allzu groß werde. Durch Luzifer wären wir wirklich nur dazu veranlagt, als Erdenmenschen unsere vom Intellekt absehende niedere Natur einzig und allein für uns zu gebrauchen. Wir würden keinen einzigen altruistischen Trieb entwickeln, aber lauter egoistische Triebe. Es würde keine natürliche Anlage zu einer Liebe in der Welt geben. Der Mensch würde die Triebe, die in seiner niederen Natur leben, lediglich gebrauchen, um sich in der Welt zu verwirklichen, um sich in Szene zu setzen. Daher ist diese niedere Natur abgedämpft und abgedämmert worden durch die Jahve-Gottheit.

Die Jahve-Gottheit lebt selber in dieser niederen Natur und pflanzt hinein die Instinkte der Liebe und des Altruismus, aber auf eine mehr oder weniger für das gewöhnliche Menschenleben unbewußte Art. Bewußt sollen diese Triebe werden wiederum durch den Impuls des Mysteriums von Golgatha. Aber es liegt in diesem ganzen Unbewußten der Triebwelt, ich möchte sagen, verborgen ein Zweifaches. Zunächst bleibt da die Verbindung des Intellektuellen, des Vorstellungsmäßigen mit dieser Triebwelt, im Unterbewußten. Aber sie wirkt doch herauf, wirkt richtig herauf, und zwar wirkt sie herauf dadurch, daß das eintritt, was ich öfter schon auseinandergesetzt habe.

Diese ganze Triebwelt, die eigentlich eine egoistische, nur dem Menschen angehörige Triebwelt ist, die kann sich gewissermaßen emanzipieren von der in ihr lebenden Jahve-Gottheit. Dann wirkt sie herauf; aber unbewußt, ohne daß es der Mensch merkt, drängt sie sich durch und durchsetzt die Vorstellungswelt mit ihren Imaginationen. Der Mensch wird, wie man oftmals sagt, hellseherisch, das heißt, er hat Visionen. Er erlebt alles dasjenige, was in seiner Triebwelt ist, als Imaginationen. In Wahrheit erlebt er eigentlich nur seine Triebwelt; die stellt sich ihm als imaginative Welt dar. Aber da in dieser ganzen Triebwelt, wie wir sie haben, eigentlich verschleiert für den Menschen nur der Kosmos lebt, so täuschen ihm die Imaginationen, die aufsteigen aus seiner Triebwelt wie ein Dunst, einen ganzen Kosmos vor. Er kann nun einen ganzen Kosmos erleben, der aber aus nichts anderem besteht, als daß da unten das Feuer der niederen Triebe brennt und das Feuer dieser niederen Triebe dann heraufsteigt, und daß hier nun ein Kosmos entsteht, hier oben, in dem intellektuellen System. Das ist im wesentlichen der Vorgang der Selbstmedialität, der Mediumschaft. Das Medium, das durch seine eigenen Begierden zum Medium wird, unterliegt diesen Vorgängen. Solche Medien sind gewöhnlich sehr stolz auf ihre Imaginationen. Sie sehen hochmütig auf die herab, die keine Imaginationen haben; während die, welche keine Imaginationen haben, oft sehr gut durchschauen können, daß solche Imaginationen, die ihnen zuweilen als wunderbare Gebilde beschrieben werden, nichts anderes sind als dasjenige, was in den Instinkten, in den Verdauungsprozessen kocht und brodelt und sich als kosmische Gebilde herauf verirrt, indem es heraufdünstet in die Vorstellungswelt und zu kosmischen Scheingebilden sich ausgestaltet, in solchen sich auslebt.

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Aber es kann noch in einer anderen Weise das zutage treten, was von dieser Zwiespältigkeit der menschlichen Natur herrührt. Denn nehmen wir an, ein zweiter Mensch träte dem ersten entgegen, ein zweiter Mensch, der nun selbstverständlich als Mensch wiederum so aufgebaut wäre, daß er in sich die den Kosmos verbergende innere Natur des Willens und der Gefühle hat und die Intellektualität, welche das eigene Innere verbirgt (Zeichnung II, Mensch). Nehmen wir nun an, ein solcher zweiter Mensch käme durch irgendwelche Vorgänge, über die wir auch noch im weiteren sprechen werden, dazu, mehr oder weniger Bewußtsein zu erlangen. - Also hier wäre der Mensch I (Zeichnung S. 215) und der Mensch II (Zeichnung $5. 229) käme dazu, ein Bewußtsein zu erlangen von diesen Zusammenhängen. Nehmen wir nun an, es wäre dieser Mensch II nicht geneigt, alles, was ihm durch ein solches Bewußtsein wird, im reinen Sinne der universellen Geisteswissenschaft zu verwenden, im reinen Sinne auch der verchristeten Geisteswissenschaft zu verwenden, sondern er hätte seine Sonderzwecke in der Welt; nehmen wir an, dieser Mensch gehörte einem Erdgebiete an, das eine besondere Weltanschauung ausgestaltet hätte im Laufe einer geschichtlichen Entwickelung, und dieser Mensch wäre innerhalb dieses Erdengebietes verwachsen mit dieser Weltanschauung; nehmen wir auch an, er hätte nun noch besondere, egoistische Gründe, diese Weltanschauung ganz intensiv in der Welt zur Geltung zu bringen. Der wirkliche Okkultist hat ja keine andere Sehnsucht, als dasjenige zur Geltung zu bringen, was allen Menschen gegenüber zum Heile gereichen kann, er hat keine Herrschaftsgelüste. Aber nehmen wir an, ein solcher Mensch II hätte solche Herrschaftsgelüste und hätte das Bedürfnis, dasjenige, was Weltanschauung eines beschränkten Territoriums ist, zur Herrschaft über andere Territorien zu bringen. Wenn er nun einfach hingeht und also in seiner Art die Weltanschauung vertritt, die er zur Herrschaft bringen will, so wird das Folgende eintreten: Die einen werden ihm glauben, die anderen werden ihm nicht glauben. Die, welche anderer Ansicht sind, werden ihm nicht glauben, werden ihn zurückprallen lassen. Wir wissen ja aus Erfahrung, wie bei anderen Völkerschaften oftmals die europäischen Missionare zurückgewiesen werden, wenn sie den Leuten Dinge sagen, die diese nicht verstehen oder nicht zu verstehen die Absicht haben. So könnte es diesem Menschen II auch gehen. Aber er kann einen anderen Weg einschlagen. Dadurch, daß ihm dieser ganze Prozeß bewußt ist, dadurch hat er die Macht, auf einen anderen, zum Beispiel auf den Menschen I zu wirken (Zeichnung $. 215), und wenn er jetzt nicht bloß durch seinen Intellekt wirkt, sondern durch seine ganze Persönlichkeit, so kann er auf den Intellekt des anderen wirken.

Wenn der andere nun so veranlagt ist, daß er etwas Mediales in sich hat, das heißt, etwas aufnehmen kann, ohne in normaler Weise sich zu dem Aufgenommenen zu stellen, so daß er es einfach so aufnimmt als Wahrheit, weil es ihm von dem zweiten dargeboten wird, dann strömt von dem zweiten in den ersten dasjenige hinein, wasder zweite als Weltanschauung hat, und der erste läßt es durch seinen unverdorbenen Intellekt hindurchgehen. Tritt dann der erste vor die Menschheit hin, dann tritt das, was zum Vorschein kommen soll, auf ganz andere Weise heraus. Bei dem Menschen II würden die Menschen merken: Er vertritt nur sich selbst in der Welt, und er hat die Macht, dasjenige, was ihm aus seinem Inneren aufsteigt, in ein intellektuelles System zu kleiden, denn er hat zugleich das, was er von sich gibt, als sein eigenes Besitztum in sich. Das Ich des Menschen I hat es nicht als sein eigenes Besitztum in sich, sondern nimmt es von dem anderen als etwas Objektives auf und vertritt es mit seinem Intellekte so - weil er es eben nicht als sein Persönliches hat -, daß es mehr den Charakter eines Universellen hat. Es sieht aus dem unverdorbenen Intellekt des MenschenI so aus, als wenn es ein Universelles wäre.

Hier haben Sie das Faktum, wie von einer gewissen grauen oder schwarzen Richtung her einseitige Mitteilungen in die Welt getragen werden. Die werden nicht so in die Welt getragen, daß sich die betreffenden, einseitig grauen oder schwarzen Geisteswissenschafter hinstellen und ihre Anschauung vertreten; sondern sie flößen sie einer medialen Persönlichkeit ein. Eine solche übernimmt sie, gibt sie weiter und läßt sie durch ihren Intellekt auf die anderen Menschen wirken. Daher bleiben solche grau oder schwarz wirkenden Geheimwissenschafter oftmals als Mahatmas im Hintergrund, und diejenigen, die auftreten in der Welt, reden davon, daß hinter ihnen der Mahatma steht und verkünden dasjenige, was sie verkündigen, als eine Botschaft des Mahatma.

Dieses Phänomen führt uns zu vielem hin, was, man könnte sagen, in einer furchtbaren, psychologisch-tragischen Weise mit der armen Helena Petrowna Blavatsky geschehen ist, die im eminentesten Sinne eine mediale Persönlichkeit war, deren Intellekt niemals geeignet gewesen ist, hinunterzuschauen in dasjenige, was ihr überliefert worden ist von Personen, die nicht immer ehrliche Personen waren, die aber gerade durch die Blavatsky wirken konnten und die zusammengezimmert haben das, was nicht immer einwandfrei war, die das in egoistischem Sinne durch den medialen Intellekt der Blavatsky zusammengezimmert haben zu etwas, was dann in einer suggestiven Weise auf die Menschen wirkte. Für diejenigen aber, die in ehrlicher Weise auf dem Boden der Geisteswissenschaft stehen wollen, fließen daraus ganz bestimmte Regeln, ganz bestimmte Verhaltungsmaßregeln.

Sie sehen aus alledem, was jetzt auseinandergesetzt worden ist, daß unter allen Umständen ein Satz gelten muß, wenn es sich um die Verbreitung der Geisteswissenschaft handelt. Selbstverständlich ist alles dasjenige, was durch irgendwelche Art Medialität in die Welt hereintritt, interessant, bedeutsam, denn es kommt selbstverständlich aus einer anderen Welt herein. Aber es darf niemals so hingenommen werden, wie es unmittelbar ist. Sonst ergeht es der Menschheit so, wie es ihr ergangen ist mit der ganzen Entwickelung des Spiritismus in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts.

Dieser ganze Spiritismus in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts war ja, im Grunde genommen, von einer gewissen Seite her unternommen, um die Menschen zu prüfen, wie weit sie reif sind einzusehen, daß um sie herum eine geistige Welt lebt, nicht nur die materielle sinnliche Welt, die die Menschen mit ihren Sinnen wahrnehmen, und deren einziges Dasein die moderne materialistische Weltanschauung des 19. Jahrhunderts unter ahrimanischer Suggestion in so hohem Maße verbreitet.

Es war wirklich schon in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts eine große Frage unter den Okkulktisten, ob sie von ihrer Seite aus dieser ganzen spiritistischen Bewegung etwas entgegenhalten sollten. Man hat sich damals entschlossen, zunächst nichts entgegenzuhalten, weil man erwartet hat - was aber eine Kurzsichtigkeit war -, daß, wenn die Menschen sehen, wie durch das Medium aus der geistigen Welt heraus allerlei zum Vorschein kommt, sie dann vor allen Dingen darauf verfallen werden, daß es eben Dinge und Kräfte gibt in der Welt, die auf geistige Art von einem zum andern wirken. Statt dessen tauchte der ganze Spiritismus in ein sehr egoistisches, materialistisches Fahrwasser unter. Die Medien haben zumeist überall gesagt, daß sie mit diesem oder jenem Toten in Verbindung ständen. Sie brachten dadurch allerlei zum Vorschein, indem sie sagten: diese oder jene Seele, die da oder dort gestorben ist, verkündet durch das Medium das eine oder das andere. Gewiß, sie brachten manches zum Vorschein. Aber in den allerallermeisten Fällen war da ein kolossaler Irrtum zugrunde liegend. Der bestand darinnen, daß wir, wenn wir uns das Medium als den Menschen I hier (siehe Zeichnung) vorstellen, wir uns den Experimentator oder Hypnotiseur, also denjenigen, der alles arrangierte, als den Menschen II vorzustellen haben

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Nun ist ja in jedem Menschen, wenn er hier lebt, schon dasjenige in ihm, was all sein Totes ist. Aber das rumort unten; während des wachen Tageslebens rumort es unten in den sinnlichen Empfindungen. Der tote Mensch rumort unten in den sinnlichen Empfindungen. Jetzt stellen Sie sich vor: das Medium ist da, der Experimentator ist auch da. Der Experimentator überträgt eigentlich das, was in seinen sinnlichen Empfindungen und oftmals niederen Trieben pulsiert - und was dann zum Vorschein kommen wird, wenn er selber einmal tot sein wird -, auf das Medium oder auf dasjenige, was sich sonst in den Veranstaltungen manifestiert. Darinnen können Wahrheiten enthalten sein; aber man muß verstehen, wie der ganze Zusammenhang dessen ist, was da zum Vorschein kommt; man darf nicht auf das Medium hinhören, wenn es erklärt: was da kommt, was sich ihm offenbart, seien Mitteilungen der Verstorbenen.

Die Leute, welche sich nicht gleich gewehrt haben gegen den Spiritismus, die haben sich gesagt: Man wird schon sehen, was das ist. Sie wollten eigentlich die Wirkung des Lebendigen auf das Medium, dessen, was im Lebendigen lebt, was im verkörperten Menschen lebt, das wollten sie gefördert wissen. Die Medien haben das vollständig mißverstanden, haben immer geglaubt, mit den Toten in Verbindung zu stehen. So sehen wir, wie die Medialität zwar eine Verbindung schafft mit der anderen Welt, aber eine trügerische Verbindung. Luzifer wird nicht etwa hinweggeschafft von dem Wege der Normalität zur Medialität, sondern er wird noch mehr hineingezogen, der Trug wird noch größer. Das, was im Innern ist, wird nicht losgelöst und in das Kosmische hinaus verteilt, sondern das, was im Innern ist, das dunstet in die Vorstellungswelt hinauf und wird zu einer imaginativen Welt. Das, was so im Inneren des Menschen ist, kann von dem Menschen selber kommen oder von dem Einfluß eines anderen Menschen im Menschen aufsteigen.

Daraus aber wird folgen als ein unendlich bedeutungsvolles und wichtiges Gesetz für die Verbreitung der geisteswissenschaftlichen Wahrheiten und für das Arbeiten in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Strömung: man beachte, daß alles unmittelbare Glauben an die Autorität eines Menschen in dem Maße geringer werden muß, je mehr dieser Mensch Züge der Medialität annimmt, je mehr dieser Mensch die Merkmale eines Mediums zeigt. Je mehr solch ein Mensch damit kommt, zu sagen: ich habe da oder dort dieses oder jenes als Eindruck empfangen -, und er nicht mit seiner vollbewußten Vernunft bei diesem Empfangen ist und die Dinge prüfen kann, um so weniger Autorität muß gerade die Medialität geben.

Man hätte daher, als H.P. Blavatsky gewisse Lehren in die Welt brachte, von Rechts wegen sich sagen müssen: Diese Persönlichkeit zeigt starke Züge von Medialität, daher ist es unmöglich, ihr eine Autorität beizumessen, oder wenigstens nur möglich, ihr eine solche Autorität in sehr geringem Grade beizumessen. Die Autorität müßte schwinden, in dem Maße, als die Persönlichkeit Züge von Medialität an sich zeigt.

Ebenso ist es ein, ich möchte sagen, Axiom in der Verbreitung geisteswissenschaftlicher Wahrheiten, daß bei dieser Verbreitung niemals irgendwie eine Berufung stattfindet, wenn die Wahrheiten veröffentlicht werden, auf ungenannte Meister oder Mahatmas. Hinter einer solchen Bewegung mögen so viele ungenannte Wesen und Persönlichkeiten stehen, als irgendwie stehen können; dasjenige, was Bedeutung hat als ausgehend von solchen Wesenheiten, hat nur Bedeutung im Verein mit demjenigen, der ihnen unmittelbar gegenübersteht. Seine Sache ist es nun, an sie zu glauben oder nicht zu glauben, seine Sache ist es, ihre Vertrauenswürdigkeit zu prüfen. Aber seine Sache kann es niemals sein, sich bei dem, was er öffentlich verbreitet, irgendwie darauf zu berufen, daß er es von ungenannten Meistern oder Mahatmas erhalten hat. In dem Augenblicke, wo es um die Veröffentlichung einer Lehre geht - nicht da, wo es sich etwa im kleinen Kreise darum handelt, daß einer einfach sagt: es ist mir dieses oder jenes mitgeteilt worden und ich glaube daran; das sind Dinge, die von Persönlichkeit zu Persönlichkeit gehen, und das ist etwas anderes -, in dem Augenblicke aber, wo es sich darum handelt, eine Lehre vor der Welt zu vertreten, hat derjenige, der sie vertritt, die Verantwortung dafür zu übernehmen. Und nur derjenige, der durch die Art seines Wesens klarmacht, daß er sich nicht auf unwahre oder unbekannte Mahatmas beruft, wenn er begründen will dasjenige, was er verbreitet, der vielmehr begreiflich macht, anschaulich macht, daß er als Persönlichkeit, wie er dasteht auf dem physischen Plan, durch sich selbst mit voller Verantwortung für seine Lehre eintritt, der lebt in seiner vollen Pflicht. Und wer das nicht vermag, der kann sich dann berufen auf einen solchen, den man auf dem physischen Plane mit Namen finden kann oder, wenn er schon gestorben ist, unter den Verstorbenen finden kann auf historischem Wege.

Für die Überlieferung der Lehre ist es daher recht wichtig, daß derjenige, der die Lehre aus den Quellen heraus mitteilt, mit seiner eigenen Persönlichkeit, so wie er dasteht in der physischen Welt, die volle Verantwortlichkeit für die Lehren übernimmt, und er darf sich nicht berufen auf unbekannte Meister. Und wer die Lehre weiter verbreitet, darf sich auch nur berufen auf physische Persönlichkeiten, die wiederum als physische Persönlichkeiten die volle Verantwortung für die Lehre zu übernehmen bereit sind. Damit ist der gewisse Weg geschaffen für die Verbreitung der Lehre in einem weiteren Umkreis, aber Tür und Tor verschlossen allem Ungenannten, allen Andeutungen. Wer sagt, daß er von da oder dort her dies oder jenes habe, von unbekannten Meistern oder Verstorbenen, wodurch man sich selber so an seinem eigenen Hochmut laben kann, dem ist Tür und Tor verschlossen. Denn es handelt sich bei der Verbreitung der Geisteswissenschaft darum, daß man weiß, in welcher Weise die Fäden des Vertrauens gehen, die hinführen zu den Ursprüngen.

Daher war es ein Unfug in der sogenannten Theosophischen Gesellschaft, als man anfing, gewisse Gesellschaftsvorgänge auf Aussprüche unbekannter Mahatmas zu begründen. Das hätte niemals sein dürfen. Für dasjenige, was auf dem physischen Plane geschieht und verbreitet wird, hat eine physische Persönlichkeit einzutreten, also auch dafür, wenn Lehren verbreitet werden. Derjenige, der die Lehren anderer weiterverbreitet, hat ebenso zu zeigen, daß er sich nicht beruft auf irgendwelche unbekannten Mächte oder Einwirkungen, die auf medialem Wege zustande gekommen sind, sondern auf geschichtliche oder lebendige Persönlichkeiten, das heißt, auf solche, die den ganzen Hergang des Hereinkommens geistiger Wahrheiten in die physische Welt schauen, die wiederum die volle Verantwortung für ihre Lehren übernehmen und auch zeigen durch ihr Verhalten, daß sie die Verantwortung übernehmen. Das ist es vor allem. Das letztere ist es vor allem.

Das sind zwei sehr wichtige Regeln. Die erste ist diese, daß wir im Gefühle es haben müssen, wie die Autorität schwindet, wenn Medialität auftritt bei der Mitteilung von Veröffentlichungen von Persönlichkeiten, und die zweite ist, daß die Verantwortung niemals hingelenkt wird zu Wesen, die man als unbekannt der Welt gegenüber vorgibt. Man kann selbstverständlich von solchen unbekannten Wesen sprechen, aber man darf sich nicht auf sie als auf Autoritäten berufen. Das ist ein großer Unterschied.

Nur diese Andeutungen wollte ich zunächst heute einmal vor Sie hingestellt haben, weil es wichtig ist, daß man den ganzen Geist und das ganze Wesen, wie geisteswissenschaftliches Streben in uns leben soll, in der richtigen Weise erfühle. Man muß doch in der ganzen geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung in der richtigen Weise darinnen stehen. Sonst wird dieser geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung unendlich geschadet gerade dadurch, daß sie vermengt wird mit der Berufung auf allerlei irgendwo dahinterstehende Mahatma-Wesenheiten und dergleichen. Alles dasjenige, was, ich möchte sagen, wie in einen doch im Grunde genommen aus sinnlichen Trieben hervorgehenden Zauberhauch des Geheimnisvollen so gern eingehüllt wird von denen, die in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung stehen, all das muß allmählich heraus aus dieser geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung, sonst kommen wir nicht wirklich auf dem Gebiete der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung vorwärts.

Wenn jedes Anprallen eines krankhaften Magensaftes an die Magenwände einen Trieb verursacht, der hinaufdunstet in die Intellektualität und sich dort in der Intellektualität in der Form der Imagination eines Engels manifestiert, und der Betreffende dann von diesem Engel seinen Mitmenschen erzählt, so kann das selbstverständlich eine sehr schöne Erzählung sein. Aber dasjenige, was dadurch angestiftet wird, das ist nur Schaden, unendlicher Schaden für eine geisteswissenschaftliche Bewegung. Denn das ist ja das Bedeutsame bei diesen Dingen, daß sie nicht nur durch das schaden, was man sagt, sondern daß sie auch schaden durch das, was sie sind; denn sie sind ja Realitäten. Indem Augenblicke, wo man ihnen ein falsches Gewand anzieht, läßt man sie eben in einer falschen Gestalt vor der Welt auftreten.

Selbstverständlich würde niemand einen besonderen Eindruck machen, wenn er sagen würde: Du, ich habe da etwas Schiefgehendes im Magen gehabt. Das Anprallen meiner kranken Magensäfte an die Magenwände ist mir als Engel erschienen. - Wer so sagte, der würde keinen besonderen Eindruck machen auf seine Mitmenschen. Wenn er aber das erstere wegläßt, dann macht er einen besonderen Eindruck. Das ist außerordentlich wichtig, daß man von der Möglichkeit, daß solches geschehen kann, durchaus weiß. Selbstverständlich kann man nicht so ohne weiteres überall unterscheiden zwischen dem, was wahre Imagination ist, und dem, was nur falsche Imagination ist. Aber es ist ja auch nicht nötig, daß man seine Imaginationen sogleich an die Menschen heranbringt. Das ist dasjenige, was durchaus berücksichtigt werden muß. Es ist überhaupt notwendig, wirklich ernsthaft notwendig, daß wir dazu kommen, nachzudenken, wie die Verbreitung der geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung in der Welt geschehen muß. Nicht wahr, wir haben bisher - vielleicht auch weiterhin - das Instrument unserer Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, der Gesellschaft überhaupt, gehabt. Aber wir müssen wirklich diese Anthroposophische Gesellschaft, oder sagen wir in loserem Sinne unser Darinnenstehen in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung schon so auffassen, daß wir darüber nachdenken, in welcher Weise diese Gesellschaft, oder dieses Darinnenstehen in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung, ein Instrument ist für etwas, was geistig in der ganzen Erdenevolution geschehen soll.

Sehen Sie, meine lieben Freunde, esgeschieht allzu oft, daß man Mitglied wird der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, aber all die verschiedenen Gewohnheiten, all die Neigungen, die Sympathien und Antipathien, die man auch hätte, wenn man nicht Mitglied wäre, nun in die Gesellschaft hineinträgt und darinnen weiter auslebt. Notwendig ist es schon, daß man darüber nachdenkt. Ich habe deshalb heute etwas recht Naheliegendes, Reales zum Gegenstande der Betrachtungen gemacht, nämlich das Reale: wie es möglich ist, daß Betrüger auftreten, die irgendeine einseitige Weltanschauung propagieren wollen und sich einer medialen Persönlichkeit bedienen, um diese einseitige Weltanschauung in die Welt zu bringen. So wie derjenige, der an die Stelle des Meisters Koot Hoomi getreten ist, als Betrüger dasteht und eine einseitige Weltanschauung verpflanzt hat in die Blavatsky, wie es möglich war, daß man nicht einsah, daß hinter ihr ein grauer Magier stand, der im Solde war einer engbegrenzten menschlichen Gesellschaft und eine bestimmte menschliche Weltanschauung propagieren wollte.

Das ist etwas sehr, sehr Reales, das uns zeigt, wie man richtig achtgeben muß, wenn es sich darum handelt, dieses hehre, der Menschheit so notwendige Gut der Geisteswissenschaft zu hegen und zu pflegen; wie man da wirklich bis in die innersten Fasern des Gemütes hinein, man kann nur sagen, nach Ehrlichkeit streben muß - selbstverständlich können Fehler vorkommen -, aber auch wirklich nach reinster Ehrlichkeit streben muß, nicht durch Bequemlichkeit sich rasch zufrieden stellen soll damit, daß man an irgend jemanden glauben kann, der einem etwas Wertvolles gibt, sondern wirklich jeden Schritt prüft; prüft, was da alles in Betracht kommt. Das ist schon einmal notwendig. Es ist also etwas Reales, was in die Menschheit hineinströmt in dieser Geisteswissenschaft, wirklich nicht eine bloße Theorie, sondern etwas Reales, was hereinströmt durch die geisteswissenschaftliche Weltanschauungsströmung in die Menschheitsentwickelung.

Daher müssen wir uns bewußt werden, daß wir uns in einer andern Weise auf die Erde stellen müssen, als wir sonst auf der Erde stehen, wenn wir uns nicht eingliedern in eine solche geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung.


Daher müssen wir uns bewußt werden, daß wir uns in einer anderen Weise auf die Erde stellen müssen, als wir sonst auf der Erde stehen, wenn wir uns nicht eingliedern in eine solche geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung. Mancherlei ist zutage getreten, was zeigt, daß wohl immer wieder und wieder betont werden muß, daß ein solches Bewußtsein entsteht, und ich bitte Sie ganz herzlich, meine lieben Freunde, betrachten Sie das, was ich sage, absolut unpersönlich; betrachten Sie es nicht so, daß Sie hinterher den Glauben haben, das, was ich ausspreche, das treffe nur den einen oder anderen. Es ist leider auch das schon passiert, daß man gesagt hat: «Er hat diesen oder jenen treffen wollen». Ich will nie einen einzelnen treffen, ich charakterisiere immer unpersönlich. Also es möge das nicht in irgendeiner Weise persönlich verstanden werden. Es möge aber bitte auch nicht in der anderen Weise verstanden werden - wie es auch oftmals geschah -, daß keiner es auf sich bezieht, sondern daß man es immer nur auf die anderen bezieht. Es ist schon viel, viel häufiger vorgekommen, daß das, was gesagt wurde, keiner auf sich bezogen hat, aber immer auf den anderen, so daß immer der andere derjenige ist, den ich charakterisiere.

Es ist manches zutage getreten, meine lieben Freunde, in den Jahren, die unserem Bau vorangegangen sind, manches auch während der Arbeiten an unserem Bau. Mit großer Dankbarkeit muß ja gesagt werden, daß der weitaus größte Teil unserer am Bau arbeitenden Freunde wirklich mit inniger Selbstlosigkeit arbeiten, mit aufrichtiger Hingabe arbeiten, und daß schon in der Seele, in dem Geist der lieben Freunde, die arbeiten, der Grundsatz lebt, der unbedingt bei einer solchen Sache in uns leben muß: daß es uns aufrichtigst und ehrlichst in unserer Seele ebenso lieb sein muß, wenn ein anderer etwas macht, wie wenn wir es selber machen. Solange wir nicht durchdrungen sind von dem Grundsatz, daß es uns ebenso lieb ist, wenn ein anderer etwas macht, wie wenn wir es selber machen, solange stehen wir nicht in der richtigen Weise zu der Sache. Ich meine das aber nicht so, meine lieben Freunde, wie das im gewöhnlichen, äußeren Leben ist, daß man andere arbeiten läßt und selber lieber faulenzt. Sie werden das schon verstehen. Es ist von dem Gesichtspunkt aus gesagt, daß uns im Grunde genommen vorschweben muß, wenn wir unsere Arbeit im Zeichen geisteswissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung verrichten, daß wir die sogenannte geringere Arbeit - es ist das schon ein unmögliches Wort unter uns —, daß wir die geringere Arbeit ebenso wichtig finden wie die scheinbar größte und umfassendste und geistigste, daß wir wirklich jede Arbeit als gleich, als sich in den Organismus der gesamten Arbeit einfügend betrachten und daß wir weit davon entfernt sein müssen, jemals das Gefühl zu haben, daß wir einen anderen in irgendeiner Weise beneiden oder seine Arbeit haben wollen statt der unseren, und was alles damit zusammenhängt. Bei der weitaus größten Zahl der unter uns arbeitenden Freunde ist ja wirklich ein solches anthroposophisches Bewußtsein richtig vorhanden, und es war selbstverständlich immer auch ein solches rechtes Bewußtsein vorhanden, als wir noch nicht genötigt waren, manches mitzunehmen, was nicht mitgenommen zu werden braucht, wenn man bloß als Gesellschaft dasteht und noch nicht eine gemeinsame Arbeit hat, wo jeder neben dem anderen angreifen muß. Es kommen viel ärgere Kollisionen des Lebens heraus, wenn einer neben dem anderen angreifen muß; da kommen dann Dinge heraus, meine lieben Freunde, die schon erwähnt werden müssen. Es sei noch einmal gesagt: Nicht im allerentferntesten ist in dem, was ich sage, irgendeine persönliche Richtung genommen. Aber es darf und sollte nicht vorkommen unter uns, bei unserer Arbeit, daß der eine über die Arbeit des anderen abfällig spricht, daß der eine mit der Arbeit des anderen in irgendeiner Weise unzufrieden ist, unzufrieden ist aus Gefühlen und Emotionen heraus. Höchstens kann man die Anschauung haben, daß man helfen soll, um etwas besser zu machen. Aber etwas Abfälliges zu sagen über irgend etwas, was jemand von uns macht, das sollte nicht unsere Art sein. Etwas Abfälliges zu sagen, nur um etwas zu sagen, Unzufriedenheit mit der Arbeit des anderen — das ist etwas, was wir auf jede Weise überwinden sollten, das ist etwas, was wir ablegen sollten.

Es hängt vieles mit dem zusammen, was ich da berühre. Es ist gewiß nicht allzu verbreitet, aber es ist immerhin Grund vorhanden, über solche Dinge einmal ernstlich nachzudenken, mit uns zu Rate zu gehen, wie manches auf diesem Gebiete noch verbessert werden kann. Denn ich kann Ihnen die Versicherung geben: Unsere Gesellschaft kann nicht gedeihen und nicht vorwärtskommen, wenn ich selbst genötigt bin, immer wieder Klagen anzuhören, die das eine Mitglied über das andere Mitglied vorzubringen hat. Man müßte ja gewiß einen großen Sarg haben, wenn unsere Bewegung zu Grabe getragen werden sollte; aber jedes An-mich-Heranbringen einer Klage über eines unserer Mitglieder ist ein Nagel zum Sarge unserer geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung. Und ich bin am wenigsten dazu berufen, Frieden zu stiften oder auf dasjenige, was man das Recht nennt, zu schauen, denn, selbstverständlich, wenn zwei streiten, hat jeder recht, und keiner wird so leicht anerkennen, daß auch der andere. recht haben könnte. Es kann sich ja wirklich nicht darum handeln, Persönliches zwischen den Mitgliedern in irgendeiner Weise an die Geisteswissenschaft heranzubringen. Vieles, vieles würde anders werden, wenn wir nur einmal die Möglichkeit fänden, folgenden Grundsatz als unseren obersten Grundsatz anzuerkennen: Dadurch, daß jemand in unsere Gesellschaft hineintritt oder überhaupt in unsere geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung sich eingliedert, dadurch bekennt er sich zu etwas, was es eben nur in dieser geisteswissenschaftlichen Strömung allein gibt. Daher treten. wir ihm nicht nur so entgegen, wie wir sonst einem uns entgegenkommenden Menschen entgegentreten, indem wir unsere Sympathien und Antipathien spielen lassen, sondern wir treten ihm unter allen Umständen als einem Mitglied unserer Gesellschaft entgegen. Das soll für uns etwas sein und das soll in erster Linie für uns in Betracht kommen, daß er sich zu der geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung bekennt. Es ist ein großer Fehler, wenn die Usancen, die sonst in der Welt existieren und die Sympathien und Antipathien bildend sind, hereingetragen werden in unsere Gesellschaft, wenn Rivalitäten entstehen, wie sie draußen entstehen. Begreiflich sind sie ja gewiß, diese Rivalitäten. Aber wenn jemand zu “mir kommt und sagt: Da ist diesem oder jenem wieder das und jenes passiert, und damit kann ich nicht einverstanden sein -, ja, der könnte sich die Antwort selber geben, und die besteht einfach darin: Braucht man denn unbedingt mit allem einverstanden zu sein? Läßt es sich denn nicht auch leben, ohne daß man mit allem einverstanden ist, was Menschen tun, die neben einem arbeiten? Das ist eine ganz selbstverständliche Antwort. Es kann doch niemand in der Welt verlangen, daß man mit allem einverstanden sein muß, was ein anderer tut, oder daß man dasjenige, was er tut, als etwas Minderwertiges betrachtet.

Ich deute damit auf vieles, indem ich solche Dinge andeute. Aber es muß durchaus sein, daß wir denjenigen, der unserer Gesellschaft angehört und in derselben Richtung strebt wie wir, wirklich betrachten als uns nahestehend. Das wollen wir niemals vergessen. Denn nur so werden sich niemals Cliquenverhältnisse bilden, die heute entstehen und morgen wieder vergehen, mit der Nebenwirkung, daß die, welche außerhalb dieser Cliquen stehen, immer unrecht haben.

Glauben Sie .nicht, meine lieben Freunde, daß es mir sehr leicht fällt, daß ich diese Dinge sagen muß. Es ist nicht unmöglich, daß nach dem Kriege etwas ganz anderes an die Stelle der Gesellschaft gesetzt werden muß, wenn manche Dinge nicht aufhören. Und Sie werden begreifen, daß um des Fortbestehens der Gesellschaft willen schon einmal auf solche Dinge gedeutet werden muß. Man muß wirklich das, was man als Vorliebe empfindet, ablegen und suchen, sich ehrlich dazu zu bekennen, die Sache höher zu stellen als das, was man in dem gewöhnlichen Leben Sympathie und Antipathie nennt. |

Überzeugen Sie sich nur einmal von dem folgenden: Wenn Sie nur ein paarmal, wenn in Ihnen die Galle über einen Mitmenschen aufsteigen will, diese Galle hinunterfressen und nicht gleich in Wut auszubrechen, so werden Sie bemerken, daß Sie ein Stückchen weitergekommen sind in dem Grundsatze, die Sache über das Persönliche zu stellen; überzeugen Sie sich, indem Sie den entsprechenden Versuch anstellen. Dann kann nicht irgend etwas unwahr sein in unserer Bewegung. Man kann nicht unwahr sein in bezug auf das, was man sagt und in bezug auf das, was man tut. Wenn es allgemein Übung würde, viel Unwahres hineinzutragen in die Bewegung, so müßte sie einfach aufhören, so könnte sie nicht bestehen bleiben. Wenn ein Mensch zu mir kommt und über einen anderen Menschen etwas sagt, was er morgen wieder zurücknimmt, wenn er sich heute in ganz anderer Weise zu dem Menschen stellt, als er sich drei Monate vorher zu ihm gestellt hat, nur weil das aus seinen Sympathien und Antipathien fließt, so ist das etwas, was als Kraft nicht vereinbar ist mit der unbedingt notwendigen Wahrheitsliebe, mit dem Herrschen des Prinzips der Wahrheit, die da sein muß heute unter uns.

Ich hoffe, meine lieben Freunde, daß Sie wirklich diese Dinge ganz unpersönlich nehmen und auch, gerade im Anschluß an die tief einschneidenden Wahrheiten, die ich heute mitgeteilt habe, diese Dinge sich überlegen, damit nicht vielleicht in der Zukunft dennoch - weil die Unwahrheit aus Launen, aus Sympathien und Antipathien überhandnimmt in unserer Gesellschaft —, es einmal notwendig werden möge, darüber nachzudenken, welche andere Form des Zusammenwirkens man als Instrument für die geisteswissenschaftliche Weltanschauung wählt anstelle unserer Gesellschaft.

Eleventh Lecture

Yesterday we were able to point out how the intellect, that is, everything connected with our formation of concepts and ideas, is in a sense detached, especially in Western thinking, from the inner source, from the inner creative and active forces, and how this leads human beings to see in what they take in as ideas and concepts merely images of something external, without paying attention to what is happening at the same time within ourselves through our ideas and thinking, namely an inner becoming, an inner process.

And yesterday I mentioned, as a kind of polar opposite, the binding of emotional and volitional impulses back into the inner being of the human being, so that when a person feels, when he stirs volitional impulses within himself, he is then conscious of being entirely within himself in this feeling, in this stirring of volitional impulses, of having only to do with himself, and that what is expressed in the emotional and volitional impulses does not relate to anything outside in the world, in the cosmos. With our feelings, we believe, in a sense, that we are only expressing our inner life, that we are experiencing something that is connected only with this inner life.

I have pointed out that this stems from the fact that certain spiritual beings from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi did not take part in the separation of the old moon from the sun when it took place, and in a sense remained with the advancing sun. What became of them as a result of their remaining behind the step of participating in the moon existence, they now live out by participating in our earth existence. These spiritual beings permeate us, interweave us, and in a sense close off our feelings and our will from the outer cosmic world. They limit our feelings and our will to the inner realm.

Now, as you can easily see, this creates a kind of division between something within us that wants to be limited to ourselves, that wants to live only as our emotional and volitional impulses, and something else within us that pays little attention to what it is within us and turns much, much more toward the outside world, wanting to be directed entirely toward the outside world.

If we wanted to sketch out schematically what is going on here, we could perhaps say: If this is schematically what the human being is, then we would first have to deal with our intellectual life (drawing I, yellow), which is directed outward, wants to take in the outside world, and does not pay attention to the fact that it radiates inward and continually brings forth our form. In contrast, we have an element of will and feelings here within us (drawing, violet), which radiate only within ourselves, and we do not realize that they also go out into the cosmos, that they really carry something within themselves that comes from the cosmos just as the content of our thoughts comes from the cosmos.

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Now, of course, there is a connection between these two, one might say centers, within us humans. It is a connection (drawing I, light red), but in ordinary existence, in ordinary life, this connection remains subconscious and does not come to consciousness. Human beings experience their feelings and desires as their inner world and their thinking as their outer world, which leads to perceptions and sensory impressions. So in ordinary life, the connection between these two centers within us does not actually come to consciousness. As a result, human beings can easily become conscious that truth is imparted to them from two sides, that truth or something like truth is imparted to them by observing the external world through their senses and combining their observations with their intellect, and so on.

Kant looked at this process of observing the external world and obtaining certain conceptual worlds on the basis of certain observations, and in his search he did not find anything that could be arrived at by extending what wants to go out from the one center into the cosmos. He came to say: Yes, after a “thing in itself” (drawing I, yellow) must go out, but it cannot be found. And on the other hand, he felt something rising up from within man, something that lives in the will and in the feelings. But since the connection remained unconscious to him, these were two worlds for him: the world of being and the world of ought. He felt only one thing clearly: here one does not arrive at anything. The “thing in itself” is unknown, is in the nebulous; but what rises up in man, so to speak, gives a certain inner binding force. Kant calls this the “categorical imperative,” from which he then derives all truths relating to the inner world ... all higher truths of faith, as he calls them, in contrast to external truths, which, however, cannot convey anything about the actual world.

But what we must focus our attention on is this: that man does not in fact achieve something merely through his own disposition, but that through his entire development, which he has undergone through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon states, he has participated in the division which took place in the lunar state, and has thus come to this duality and must experience it in a natural way.

Now, if we look at this matter more closely, we come to an important and meaningful truth that spiritual science gives us on the basis of what has been characterized here. We can say that this is so with our thinking, our intellect, and our imagination because it is connected with the former separation of the moon from the progressing sun. How we as human beings perceive our thinking and our imagination is connected with the fact that certain Luciferic beings from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, who did not participate in the reconnection of the moon with the sun, because of what they have become, live in our intellect, so that something Luciferic lives in our intellect and prevents us from looking at what is inwardly moving and forming. So, in a sense, Lucifer dwells in our thinking.

What, then, is the essence of this Luciferic? The essence of this Luciferic is that we do not perceive what is predisposed and developed in us by the regularly progressing divine-spiritual beings, but rather perceive what Lucifer, in a sense, makes of this normal development. And what is it about Lucifer himself that he now carries into earthly evolution what he should have gone through during the lunar evolution but did not, and in turn goes through in earthly evolution what he did not go through then? What will consist of what he is to go through during the Earth's development? I ask you to pay close attention to this connection, for it is significant but difficult. So what does Lucifer want? What do these Luciferic angelic beings in our intellect want?

At that time, they did not want to take the step of uniting the moon with the sun. If they had taken that step at that time, they would have connected imagination and thinking with human nature in the right way, so to speak. They did not do that, and so now they contribute nothing. Now, however, during our existence on earth, they want to do what they did not do then: they now want to connect the intellect with human beings; they want to do during the earth's development what they should actually have done on the moon during the moon's development. If you think about this correctly, you will understand that something tremendously significant follows from this.

For if we were not seduced by Luciferic beings in the manner indicated, we would not relate thinking to ourselves as we do now, but we would look back on the lunar evolution and say: In ancient times, our thinking wanted to connect with our inner being, it wanted to belong to us. But we do not say this; instead, we say: We appropriate the thoughts of the world and now take them into ourselves. But this is true Luciferic seduction. In accordance with the progressive divine-spiritual beings, we would think: Out there, the sensory world spreads out as we see it. The moment we begin to think, we look back to the old lunar existence and trace the entire earthly sensory world back to the old lunar existence.

We would therefore go through the following: Think, if we designate this (drawing, green) as the earthly-perceived sensory world, then we would have the Earth within us, that is, the Earth's content, and we would not, as we do now, form concepts of the Earth's content, but we would say: Everything that we have as the contents of the earth, we relate back to the old contents of the moon, and while we perceive sensually, and the contents of the earth appear to us sensually, it dawns on us how everything that lives and weaves, works and becomes on the earth appears on the basis of the old lunar existence. Something like a connection with a seemingly past star would dawn on us, but one that was still there and lived in our world of thoughts. We would feel connected to the present past and see through the Luciferic illusion that consists in Lucifer holding up a carpet, a veil, before the luminous moon existence because he failed to unite himself with the sun existence at that time. And he deludes us into believing that everything we should see shining into us from the old moon existence—that is, from the eternally new moon existence—is to be taken in as the content of our thoughts, which is now fixed in us through our brain and rests in us as earthly human beings.

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So we have been cut off from that wonderful, powerful memory of the old lunar existence by what has happened. We do not always see in the background, I would say shining into the back of our necks, the explanation for everything that our senses conjure up for us. We would go through the world with our senses directed toward sensual existence and would feel, as if confirming our neck and the back of our head, the old, ever-new lunar existence that would provide the explanation for the real, living concepts that are cosmic and do not affect us from the external earthly things.

Two world pictures are thus confused: the earth picture and the moon picture. We should be able to keep them apart: one by directing our senses forward, the other by receiving the shining from behind, and we should prevent these from becoming interwoven in our knowledge. We cannot do this; Lucifer confuses them. He confuses concepts, ideas, and sensory perceptions, and philosophers have long been grappling with a corresponding problem, which they call “antinomy.”

You can read about this in Kant: on the one hand, you always cite evidence, for example, that the world is infinite in terms of space; on the other hand, you cite equally strict evidence that the world is not infinite in terms of space, but limited. There is equally compelling evidence for both. It must be there because one view is just as true as the other. Only one is the view of the Earth, and the other is the view of the moon. To those who cannot distinguish between them, they become insoluble contradictions, contradictions that cannot be resolved by human reason at all.

But we have seen that even older are those deviations from the progressive course of world evolution which have come about through the spirits of the hierarchy of the Archangels, who live in our feelings and in our impulses of will. Here we can say that Lucifer, through his existence, cuts us off from the cosmos. He allows us to feel only what lives within us in the form of feelings and impulses of the will. If he did not shut us off in this way, then instead of feeling the feelings and the will rising up from his subconscious, from within himself, man would perceive everything that shines into him from the cosmos during the solar period. Just as human beings should actually perceive the old moon behind their ordinary sensory existence in their intellect, so they should see the radiant world sun rising behind their feelings and impulses of will. In their feelings and will, they should see the essence of solar life shining through their feelings and will, like the core in a fruit.

We are now again cut off from this by Lucifer. We believe that feeling and will are only something within us; we do not feel, as it were, that all feelings and all will contain living solar forces, solar forces that are truly within them. If we felt these solar forces, if we really felt the light of the spirit shining in the midst of feeling and will, then we would have a vision of the cosmos through this shining of the light of the spirit of the world in feeling and will. We would perceive the external world directly through our inner being. This has been corrupted by those Luciferic spirits who have the nature of archangels and did not participate in the separation of the moon from the sun. It had to be restored to us through the entry of this cosmic-solar element into human evolution. This cosmic-solar element entered into the development of the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, through that Mystery of Golgotha whose entire reality human beings must first take into themselves, must experience inwardly: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

And starting from there, that inner light, that inner formative element, develops more and more within them. The cosmic light, like sunlight, permeates feeling and will and unites with the intellectual, so that we attain a unified world picture by learning not only to live with the Christ impulse in feeling and will, but to let it flow into the world of the intellect and imagination. So that instead of merely looking at Christ Jesus, we actually gain a whole cosmology, a Christ-pervaded cosmos, as we learn to understand what the cosmos was before the Mystery of Golgotha, when Christ was linked to the solar outside the earthly, and what the cosmos is after the Mystery of Golgotha, since Christ is no longer separated from the earth's aura but lives on in it. Only by first identifying ourselves with the Christ impulse, by regarding this Christ impulse as the center from which the continuing, eternal, everlasting revelation can become ours in the way I indicated yesterday, only then do we increasingly gain the possibility of attaining a concrete, meaningful Christianity which will then be completely one with the content of spiritual science, also in a cosmological sense.

Take the whole essence, I would say, of Christology, take what human beings actually need to understand in order to understand Christology. Why do so many people not understand Christology? Why do they not associate the right concepts with the mystery of Golgotha? Because people are expected to describe as reality something that they are not accustomed to describing as reality.

In Haeckel's books there is a sentence that reads something like this: The Conceptio immaculata is a cheeky mockery of human reason. - But why human reason? Yes, the postscript reads: Because in all other cases, in the animal and human kingdoms, it is evident that such a birth cannot be observed. - This is, of course, a logical contradiction in itself. For one would have to cite a rational reason and not a reason based on observation. But here we encounter once again a fact that is such that it is incompatible with the concepts that man derives from external reality. Everything that man otherwise calls “real” cannot be compatible with the reality of this fact, or indeed with the whole fact of the mystery of Golgotha.

So man must comprehend something that contradicts his concepts of reality. Now, for those who are drawing ever closer to spiritual science, a path should open up to concepts that offer the possibility of understanding the mystery of Golgotha. In ordinary life, and also in modern science, what is observed externally with the senses is called real, or at least something that is based on something real. Real science is based on what we observe with our senses. However, we still try to use it for something else; we also try to understand everything as it appears to us through our senses. Biologists strive to understand living beings, living organisms, as if they were merely a complicated interaction of purely mechanical forces, i.e., a complicated machine, because they can only perceive a machine as something real.

What is actually behind this? What lies behind this is that human beings designate something as real, and indeed designate it as real throughout their entire lives, which is not real at all, which is not at all what it is referred to as. Stand in front of a corpse. Will you say: This corpse is a human being? No, this decomposing corpse is not a human being, it is the decaying form of a human being. And so it is with all of external nature. We seek the dead and do not suspect that everything dead is something that has died. If we could only truly find the transition from the concept of “dead nature” to the concept of “dead nature,” if we could only truly understand that everything dead was once alive and has died, that what we find today as rock was alive during the time of the moon and died, and only became dead rock through a process similar to that of the human corpse; if we could grasp this in living being, if we could understand dead nature as a corpse, then we would know that what we call being is not something that contains being, but something from which being has actually already fled. This is infinitely important. People do not realize that they cling to the dead without understanding that it is dead; and they do not understand that they should not try to understand the living through the dead.

When people look at a living organism that has not yet died but is living before them, and reduce it to a mechanism that is only a copy of what has died, they want to understand and explain the living from the dead. That is the ideal, the goal of the whole of today's worldview: to understand the living from the dead. Spiritual science must make an effort, an intense effort, to replace understanding through what has died with understanding through what is alive. The entire direction of present-day science must disappear, because it aims solely at understanding the living through what has died, not merely through what is dead and inorganic, but through what has died. This entire science must disappear. In its place must come an understanding of the world from the living. And everything in the present that is lifeless, inorganic, must be understood as having been alive in the past.

If we were not seduced by Lucifer, if we could see behind our sensory perceptions what has just been characterized as the underlying lunar existence, then we would understand: there lies the corpse of what still appears to us from the old moon. Just as we remember the human being as he was in life, as he once was when he lived with us, walked before us, and spoke to us, so we would look back at the earth and see what it was when it was still alive during the old lunar existence.

That we are thus led out of the dead into the living must be the striving of spiritual science; this must be a living, honest, though difficult goal to achieve; for everything that lives in our present-day science as a worldview, as a worldview sentiment, is completely foreign and hostile to this goal. We should not delude ourselves that everything that lives in present-day science as a worldview sentiment is completely opposed to this goal.

It will be enormously difficult to replace the dead worldview with a living one. But once we have living concepts, we will no longer lack an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha with these living concepts. We will know that everything that is subject to death originates from the moon, but that Christ comes from the sun. He has preserved himself in order to bring back the sun to us. He has nothing to do with all the dead concepts, but will replace them with living concepts. Therefore, it is necessary to connect with him in a living way, not through a dead science. Therefore, it is necessary to understand that only under very special, abnormal circumstances could that which cannot die, which cannot become dead, enter into an earthly career.

If you study the special connection in which the Christ Being was with the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years, you will come to realize that something very special was indeed created in these different members that were united through the joining of the two Jesus boys, through the fact that Zarathustra lived in the Nathanic Jesus. something very special was created—I have already pointed this out in other lectures—something that during these three years made this whole body different from an ordinary human body. An ordinary human body is truly not the same as this body. Through the special nature of its connection with the Zarathustra being, this body was already something different from earthly bodies during those three years. When the earth began to repeat its moon existence, the substance of being that remained behind, as I have explained, appeared through the Luke Jesus child, through the Nathan Jesus child: something that had not entered into death and preserved itself through the apparition of earthly death that was imposed on Christ Jesus in the course of earthly appearances. This was in Christ Jesus and led him in a different way through these three years and in a different way than other human beings through death, through the apparition of death.

This extraordinary central phenomenon of earthly development must be understood, must be truly grasped, so that it stands outside everything that originates solely from the moon existence; it must be understood that it is intimately connected with the regularly continuing sun existence. Therefore, after the mystery of Golgotha has been accomplished, this Christ-being has nothing to do with anything that originates solely from the lunar existence, and indeed originates from the lunar existence in such a way that at that time the separation of the moon from the sun took place, and during this separation a number of Luciferic beings experienced the separation but not the subsequent reconnection.

The Christ Being remains completely untouched by everything that is in the earth as a result of this aberration of the Luciferic spirits. It would be immediately affected by it if it were to incarnate in an ordinary human body. It could therefore only be physically present on earth under these special, abnormal circumstances, which are not covered by the ordinary laws of the earth. And when it took possession of the earthly body through the Mystery of Golgotha, it is now spiritually on earth and not subject to those laws that came into earthly existence through the lunar evolution. These are namely the laws of space and time.

So space and time: I have already hinted at this in “The Secret Science,” and you will find the hint in the relevant passage of “The Secret Science” that it is difficult to imagine the old Saturn and Sun existence because one is not familiar with the laws of space and time. — and you will find the reference in the relevant passage of The Secret Science — that it is difficult to imagine the old Saturn and Sun existence because one must leave the concepts of space and time out of the picture, for what one imagines as the concepts of space and time in this old existence is only similar, only like a picture, and does not yet correspond to reality. In the case of the moon existence, the image only begins to correspond to reality to some extent when one imagines it in space and time. This image cannot yet be used for the previous development. But what enters into space and time through Christ is not bound by the laws of space and time. Therefore, it would be the greatest conceivable nonsense for a true spiritual science to imagine that Christ, as he is now united with earthly existence, could appear before humanity in a single human being limited in space. It would be the greatest misunderstanding of Christ to claim that a reincarnation of Christ could occur in the present time, and that Christ would have to board a train and then a steamship to travel from Europe to America if he wanted to speak to a person in Europe and then to a person in America. That will never be the case. He will always be above the laws of space and time. And we must also imagine his appearance in the 20th century as being above the laws of space and time. The correctly understood Christ will never be embodied in a single human being.

So it was, or rather, it is everywhere a blow in the face of true spiritual science to claim that there could ever be a human reincarnation of Christ Jesus. But this also shows that Christology, that is, what Christ really is, has nothing to do with all the divisions among human beings and humanity.

We see a path opening up here, how the cosmic, the solar, can once again enter into our entire humanity, how the solar element lost through Lucifer can rise again in feeling and will, how it can rise again through Christ in this feeling and will, and how it can then take hold of our intellect. This is the path that all spiritual understanding of the world must take in the future. But there will still be long periods of confusion, because—as I have often emphasized—the mystery of Golgotha can only slowly and gradually work its way into the entire course of human development. This can only happen very slowly and gradually. And as it gradually takes place, it will increasingly create harmony between the intellect of the human being and his feelings and will. This will increasingly fill human beings with an inner human being, with a second human being.

Just as human beings are without this filling by the Christ impulse, so, with regard to the human head, I would say that the inner part is veiled. When you feel your head, you already have a headache. The inner part is, I would say, physically completely veiled in relation to the head. You carry your head with you without actually feeling it in normal life; you use it to press in impressions from outside. The other part of the human being, which is also the seat of the lower world of desires, is within us; it does not initially take anything in from outside, but lives within itself. And the Yahweh deity has enveloped everything that lives down there in the human being as the sum of the world of desires in a lawfulness that remains unconscious to the human being, so that the Luciferic rumblings of egoism do not become too great. Through Lucifer, we would really only be inclined, as earthly human beings, to use our lower nature, which disregards the intellect, solely for ourselves. We would not develop a single altruistic impulse, but only selfish ones. There would be no natural predisposition to love in the world. Man would use the impulses that live in his lower nature solely to realize himself in the world, to show himself off. Therefore, this lower nature has been dampened and dimmed by the Yahweh deity.

The Yahweh deity lives in this lower nature itself and plants the instincts of love and altruism into it, but in a way that is more or less unconscious to ordinary human life. These instincts are to become conscious again through the impulse of the mystery of Golgotha. But there is something hidden in all this unconsciousness of the world of instincts, something twofold, I would say. First, there remains the connection between the intellectual, the conceptual, and this world of instincts in the subconscious. But it does have an effect, a real effect, and it does so through the occurrence of what I have already discussed several times.

This entire world of instincts, which is actually an egoistic world of instincts belonging only to human beings, can, in a sense, emancipate itself from the Yahweh deity living within it. Then it works upward; but unconsciously, without human beings noticing, it pushes through and permeates the world of ideas with its imaginings. Man becomes, as is often said, clairvoyant, that is, he has visions. He experiences everything that is in his world of instincts as imaginations. In truth, he actually experiences only his world of instincts, which presents itself to him as an imaginative world. But since in this entire world of instincts, as we have it, only the cosmos lives, veiled from human beings, the imaginations that rise up from his world of instincts like a mist deceive him into believing that he sees a whole cosmos. He can now experience an entire cosmos, but it consists of nothing other than the fire of the lower instincts burning below, and the fire of these lower instincts then rising up, and a cosmos now emerging here above, in the intellectual system. This is essentially the process of self-mediality, of mediumship. The medium, who becomes a medium through his own desires, is subject to these processes. Such mediums are usually very proud of their imaginations. They look down haughtily on those who have no imaginations, while those who have no imaginations can often see very clearly that such imaginations, which are sometimes described to them as wonderful creations, are nothing more than what is boiling and bubbling in the instincts, in the digestive processes, and which strays upward as cosmic creations, rising up into the world of imagination and developing into cosmic illusions, in which it lives out its life.

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But what arises from this duality of human nature can also come to light in another way. For let us suppose that a second human being comes to meet the first, a second human being who is, of course, also structured as a human being, in such a way that he has within himself the inner nature of the will and the feelings that conceal the cosmos, and the intellectuality that conceals his own inner being (drawing II, human being). Let us now assume that such a second human being, through certain processes which we will discuss further, came to acquire more or less consciousness. So here we would have human being I (drawing p. 215) and human being II (drawing $5. 229) would come to acquire consciousness of these connections. Let us now assume that this human being II is not inclined to use everything that becomes available to him through such consciousness in the pure sense of universal spiritual science, in the pure sense of Christian spiritual science, but that he has his own special purposes in the world; let us assume that this human being belongs to an earthly region that has developed a particular worldview in the course of historical development, and this person has grown up within this region of the earth and become intertwined with this worldview; let us also assume that he now has special, selfish reasons for wanting to assert this worldview very intensively in the world. The true occultist has no other desire than to bring to fruition that which can benefit all human beings; he has no desire for power. But let us assume that such a person II had such a desire for power and felt the need to bring what is the worldview of a limited territory to power over other territories. If he now simply goes and represents in his own way the worldview that he wants to bring to power, the following will happen: Some will believe him, others will not believe him. Those who hold a different view will not believe him and will reject him. We know from experience how European missionaries are often rejected by other peoples when they tell them things they do not understand or have no intention of understanding. The same could happen to this person II. But he can take a different path. Because he is aware of this whole process, he has the power to influence someone else, for example, Person I (drawing $. 215), and if he now acts not only through his intellect but through his whole personality, he can influence the intellect of the other person.

If the other person is predisposed to to have something mediumistic within him, that is, to be able to take something in without relating to it in the normal way, so that he simply accepts it as truth because it is presented to him by the second person, then what the second person has as his worldview flows into the first person, and the first person allows it to pass through his uncorrupted intellect. When the first person then steps before humanity, what is to come to light emerges in a completely different way. With person II, people would notice that he represents only himself in the world, and that he has the power to clothe what rises from within him in an intellectual system, because he also has within himself what he gives of himself as his own possession. The ego of Man I does not have this within itself as its own possession, but takes it from the other as something objective and represents it with its intellect in such a way—precisely because it does not have it as its own—that it has more the character of something universal. From the uncorrupted intellect of Man I, it appears as if it were something universal.

Here you have the fact that one-sided messages are spread throughout the world from a certain gray or black direction. They are not spread in such a way that the relevant one-sided gray or black intellectuals stand up and represent their views; rather, they instill them in a media personality. Such a person takes them on, passes them on, and allows them to influence other people through their intellect. That is why such gray or black-seeming secret scientists often remain in the background as mahatmas, and those who appear in the world talk about the mahatma standing behind them and proclaim what they proclaim as a message from the mahatma.

This phenomenon leads us to many things that, one might say, happened in a terrible, psychologically tragic way to poor Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who was, in the most eminent sense, a mediumistic personality whose intellect was never capable of looking down into what had been handed down to her by people who were not always honest, but who were able to work through Blavatsky and who cobbled together something that was not always flawless, cobbled together in a selfish way through Blavatsky's mediumistic intellect into something that then had a suggestive effect on people. For those who want to stand honestly on the ground of spiritual science, however, very specific rules flow from this, very specific rules of conduct.

You can see from everything that has now been discussed that one principle must apply under all circumstances when it comes to the dissemination of spiritual science. Of course, everything that enters the world through any kind of mediumship is interesting and significant, because it obviously comes from another world. But it must never be accepted as it is. Otherwise, humanity will suffer the same fate as it did with the whole development of spiritualism in the second half of the 19th century.

All of this spiritualism in the second half of the 19th century was, in essence, undertaken from a certain perspective to test how far people had matured in their understanding that a spiritual world exists around them, not just the material, sensory world that people perceive with their senses, and whose only existence is so widely spread by the modern materialistic worldview of the 19th century under the influence of Ahriman.

In the middle of the 19th century, it was already a big question among occultists whether they should oppose this whole spiritualist movement. At that time, it was decided not to oppose it at first, because it was expected—which was short-sighted—that when people saw how all kinds of things came to light through the medium from the spiritual world, they would then above all become convinced that there are things and forces in the world that work spiritually from one person to another. Instead, the whole spiritism movement took a very selfish, materialistic turn. The mediums mostly claimed that they were in contact with this or that deceased person. They revealed all kinds of things, saying that this or that soul who had died here or there was communicating one thing or another through the medium. Certainly, they revealed some things. But in the vast majority of cases, there was a colossal error underlying it. This consisted in the fact that when we imagine the medium as person I here (see drawing), we have to imagine the experimenter or hypnotist, that is, the one who arranged everything, as person II.

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Now, every human being, while living here, already has within them everything that is dead. But this rumours below; during waking life, it rumours below in the sensory perceptions. The dead person stirs below in the sensual perceptions. Now imagine: the medium is there, the experimenter is also there. The experimenter actually transmits what pulsates in his sensual perceptions and often in his lower instincts—and what will then come to light when he himself is dead—to the medium or to whatever else manifests itself in the events. There may be truths contained therein, but one must understand the whole context of what is coming to light; one must not listen to the medium when he explains that what is coming, what is being revealed to him, are messages from the deceased.

People who did not immediately resist spiritualism said to themselves: We will see what this is all about. They actually wanted to promote the effect of the living on the medium, of what lives in the living, of what lives in the embodied human being. The mediums completely misunderstood this and always believed that they were in contact with the dead. Thus we see how mediumship does indeed create a connection with the other world, but it is a deceptive connection. Lucifer is not removed from the path of normality to mediumship, but is drawn even further in, and the deception becomes even greater. What is inside is not detached and distributed into the cosmic realm, but rather what is inside evaporates into the world of imagination and becomes an imaginative world. What is inside a person can come from the person themselves or arise from the influence of another person within them.

From this follows an infinitely significant and important law for the dissemination of spiritual scientific truths and for working in the spiritual scientific stream: note that all immediate belief in the authority of a person must diminish in proportion to the extent to which this person takes on traits of mediumship, in proportion to the extent to which this person displays the characteristics of a medium. The more such a person says, “I have received this or that impression here or there,” and the less they are fully conscious of this reception and able to examine the things, the less authority mediumship should have.

When H.P. Blavatsky brought certain teachings into the world, one should therefore have said, quite rightly: This personality shows strong traits of mediumship, therefore it is impossible to attribute any authority to her, or at least it is only possible to attribute such authority to her to a very limited degree. The authority would have to diminish in proportion to the degree to which the personality shows traits of mediumship.

Likewise, it is, I would say, an axiom in the dissemination of spiritual scientific truths that in this dissemination there is never any reference to unnamed masters or mahatmas when the truths are published. Behind such a movement there may be as many unnamed beings and personalities as there can possibly be; but what is significant as emanating from such beings is only significant in connection with the person who stands directly opposite them. It is now up to him to believe or not to believe in them; it is up to him to test their trustworthiness. But it can never be his business to refer in any way to having received it from unnamed masters or mahatmas when he publicly disseminates it. At the moment when it comes to publishing a teaching—not when it is a matter of a small circle where someone simply says, 'I have been told this or that and I believe it'; these are things that pass from one personality to another, and that is something else. But at the moment when it is a matter of presenting a teaching to the world, the person who presents it must take responsibility for it. And only the one who makes it clear by the nature of his being that he does not refer to untrue or unknown Mahatmas when he wants to justify what he is spreading, but rather makes it understandable, makes it clear that he, as a personality, as he stands on the physical plane, stands up for his teaching with full responsibility, lives in his full duty. And those who are unable to do so can then refer to someone who can be found by name on the physical plane or, if they have already died, can be found among the deceased by historical means.

For the transmission of the teaching, it is therefore very important that the person who communicates the teaching from the sources takes full responsibility for the teachings with his own personality, as he stands in the physical world, and he must not refer to unknown masters. And those who spread the teachings further may only refer to physical personalities who, in turn, are prepared to take full responsibility for the teachings as physical personalities. This creates a certain path for the spread of the teachings in a wider circle, but closes the door to everything that is unnamed and to all insinuations. Anyone who says that they have received this or that from here or there, from unknown masters or deceased persons, thereby allowing themselves to revel in their own arrogance, will find the door closed to them. For the dissemination of spiritual science is a matter of knowing in what way the threads of trust lead to the origins.

Therefore, it was nonsense in the so-called Theosophical Society when people began to base certain social processes on statements made by unknown Mahatmas. That should never have happened. A physical personality must stand for what happens and is disseminated on the physical plane, and this also applies to the dissemination of teachings. Those who spread the teachings of others must also show that they do not refer to any unknown powers or influences that have come about through mediumistic means, but to historical or living personalities, that is, to those who see the entire process of spiritual truths entering the physical world, who in turn take full responsibility for their teachings and also show through their behavior that they take responsibility. That is the most important thing. The latter is the most important thing.

These are two very important rules. The first is that we must feel how authority disappears when mediumship occurs in the communication of publications by personalities, and the second is that responsibility must never be shifted to beings who are presented as unknown to the world. One can, of course, speak of such unknown beings, but one must not refer to them as authorities. That is a big difference.

I just wanted to present these hints to you today because it is important to feel in the right way the whole spirit and the whole essence of how spiritual scientific striving should live in us. One must stand within the entire spiritual scientific movement in the right way. Otherwise, this spiritual scientific movement will be infinitely harmed precisely by being mixed with references to all kinds of Mahatma beings and the like that are supposedly behind it. Everything that, I would say, is so readily enveloped in a magical aura of mystery, which basically arises from sensual impulses, by those who are involved in the spiritual scientific movement, must gradually be removed from this spiritual scientific movement, otherwise we will not really make any progress in the field of spiritual science.

If every collision of a diseased gastric juice with the stomach walls causes a drive that rises up into the intellect and manifests itself there in the form of the imagination of an angel, and the person concerned then tells his fellow human beings about this angel, this can of course be a very beautiful story. But what is instigated by this is only harm, infinite harm to a spiritual scientific movement. For what is significant about these things is that they do not only cause harm through what is said, but also through what they are, for they are realities. By dressing them up in false garb, we allow them to appear before the world in a false form.

Of course, no one would make a particular impression if they said: “Hey, I've got something wrong with my stomach. The impact of my sick stomach juices on the walls of my stomach appeared to me as angels.” Anyone who said that would not make a particular impression on their fellow human beings. But if they leave out the first part, they make a special impression. It is extremely important to be fully aware of the possibility that this can happen. Of course, it is not always easy to distinguish between what is true imagination and what is merely false imagination. But it is not necessary to immediately share one's imaginings with others. That is something that must be taken into account. It is absolutely necessary, truly necessary, that we come to think about how the spiritual scientific worldview must be spread throughout the world. Until now, we have had—and perhaps will continue to have—the instrument of our Anthroposophical Society, the Society itself. But we really must understand this Anthroposophical Society, or let us say in a looser sense our standing within the spiritual scientific movement, in such a way that we think about how this Society, or this standing within the spiritual scientific movement, is an instrument for something that is to happen spiritually in the whole evolution of the earth.

You see, my dear friends, it happens all too often that people become members of the Anthroposophical Society, but then bring all their various habits, inclinations, sympathies, and antipathies, which they would have had even if they were not members, into the Society and continue to live them out there. It is necessary to think about this. That is why I have chosen something quite obvious and real as the subject of today's reflections, namely the real question of how it is possible for fraudsters to appear who want to propagate some one-sided worldview and use a mediumistic personality to bring this one-sided worldview into the world. Just as the person who took the place of Master Koot Hoomi stands there as a fraud and has transplanted a one-sided worldview into Blavatsky, how was it possible that people did not see that behind her stood a gray magician who was in the pay of a narrow-minded human society and wanted to propagate a certain human worldview?

This is something very, very real that shows us how we must be careful when it comes to cherishing and nurturing this noble good of spiritual science that is so necessary for humanity; how we must strive for honesty, even in the innermost fibers of our minds—of course, mistakes can happen—but we must strive for the purest honesty, not be quickly satisfied out of convenience by believing in someone who gives you something valuable, but really examine every step; examine everything that comes into consideration. That is necessary. So it is something real that flows into humanity in this spiritual science, not merely a theory, but something real that flows into human development through the spiritual scientific worldview.

Therefore, we must become aware that we have to stand on the earth in a different way than we otherwise stand on the earth if we do not integrate ourselves into such a spiritual scientific stream.


We must therefore become aware that we need to stand on the earth in a different way than we normally do if we do not integrate ourselves into such a spiritual scientific current. Various things have come to light which show that it must be emphasized again and again that such an awareness must arise, and I ask you most earnestly, my dear friends, to consider what I say in a completely impersonal way; do not consider it in such a way that you afterwards believe that what I say applies only to one person or another. Unfortunately, it has already happened that people have said, “He wanted to hit this one or that one.” I never want to hit anyone individually; I always characterize impersonally. So please do not take this personally in any way. But please do not take it the other way either—as has often happened—that no one takes it personally, but that everyone always takes it personally. It has happened much, much more often that no one took what was said personally, but always referred it to others, so that it was always the other person whom I was characterizing.

Many things have come to light, my dear friends, in the years leading up to our construction, and some also during the work on our building. It must be said with great gratitude that the vast majority of our friends working on the building really do work with heartfelt selflessness, with sincere devotion, and that already in the souls, in the spirit of our dear friends who are working, there lives the principle that must absolutely live in us in such a matter: that it must be just as dear to us, in our hearts, when someone else does something as when we do it ourselves. As long as we are not imbued with the principle that it is just as dear to us when someone else does something as when we do it ourselves, we are not in the right attitude toward the matter. I do not mean this, my dear friends, as it is in ordinary, outward life, that one lets others work and prefers to be lazy oneself. You will understand that. It is said from the point of view that, when we carry out our work in the spirit of spiritual science, we must basically have in mind that we consider the so-called lesser work — which is already an impossible word among us — that we consider the lesser work to be just as important as the seemingly greatest, most comprehensive, and most spiritual work, that we truly regard every kind of work as equal, as fitting into the organism of the whole, and that we must be far from ever feeling that we envy another in any way or want his work instead of our own, and everything that goes with that. Among the vast majority of our working friends, such an anthroposophical consciousness really does exist, and of course it always existed when we were not yet forced to take on things that need not be taken on when one is merely a society and does not yet have a common task in which everyone has to work alongside one another. Much worse conflicts arise in life when one has to work alongside another; then things come out, my dear friends, that must be mentioned. Let me say once again: there is not in the slightest a personal bias in what I am saying. But it must not and should not happen among us, in our work, that one speaks disparagingly about the work of another, that one is dissatisfied with the work of another in any way, dissatisfied out of feelings and emotions. At most, one can take the view that one should help to make something better. But to say something disparaging about anything that any of us does should not be our way. To say something disparaging just for the sake of saying something, to express dissatisfaction with the work of others—that is something we should overcome in every way, something we should put aside.

There is a lot connected with what I am touching on here. It is certainly not all too widespread, but there is nevertheless reason to think seriously about such things and to consult with one another on how some things in this area can be improved. For I can assure you: Our society cannot flourish and move forward if I myself am forced to listen again and again to complaints that one member has to make about another. We would certainly need a large coffin if our movement were to be carried to its grave; but every complaint brought to me about one of our members is a nail in the coffin of our spiritual scientific movement. And I am the least qualified to make peace or to look at what is called justice, because, of course, when two people argue, each is right, and neither will readily admit that the other might also be right. It really cannot be a question of bringing personal matters between members to spiritual science in any way. Much, much would be different if we could only find the opportunity to recognize the following principle as our highest principle: By entering our society or joining our spiritual-scientific movement, a person commits himself to something that exists only in this spiritual-scientific movement. Therefore, we do not approach them as we would otherwise approach a person who approaches us, by allowing our sympathies and antipathies to play a role, but we approach them under all circumstances as a member of our society. It should be important to us and should be our primary consideration that they profess the spiritual scientific worldview. It is a great mistake to bring into our society the customs that otherwise exist in the world and that form sympathies and antipathies, when rivalries arise as they do outside. These rivalries are certainly understandable. But if someone comes to me and says, “This or that has happened to so-and-so again, and I can't agree with that,” then they could give themselves the answer, which is simply: Do you really have to agree with everything? Can't you live without agreeing with everything that people who work alongside you do? That's a perfectly obvious answer. No one in the world can demand that you have to agree with everything someone else does, or that you consider what they do to be inferior.”

I'm hinting at a lot of things when I say things like that. But it is absolutely necessary that we truly regard those who belong to our society and strive in the same direction as us as close to us. Let us never forget that. For only in this way will clique relationships, which arise today and disappear tomorrow, never form, with the side effect that those who stand outside these cliques are always in the wrong.

Do not believe, my dear friends, that it is easy for me to say these things. It is not impossible that after the war something completely different will have to take the place of society if certain things do not stop. And you will understand that for the sake of the continued existence of society, such things must be pointed out. One must truly abandon what one feels to be a preference and seek to honestly acknowledge that the cause is higher than what one calls sympathy and antipathy in ordinary life.

Just convince yourself of the following: if, only a few times, when you feel bile rising in you toward a fellow human being, you swallow that bile and do not immediately burst out in anger, you will notice that you have made a little progress in the principle of placing the matter above the personal; convince yourself by making the appropriate attempt. Then there cannot be anything untrue in our movement. One cannot be untrue in what one says and in what one does. If it became common practice to introduce a lot of untruth into the movement, it would simply have to cease; it could not continue to exist. If a person comes to me and says something about another person which he takes back tomorrow, when he takes a completely different attitude toward that person than he did three months ago, simply because it flows from his sympathies and antipathies, then that is something that, as a force, is incompatible with the absolutely necessary love of truth, with the reign of the principle of truth that must exist among us today.

I hope, my dear friends, that you will take these things completely impersonally and also, especially in light of the profound truths I have shared with you today, consider these things carefully, lest in the future—because untruth, arising from whims, sympathies, and antipathies, gains the upper hand in our society—it may become necessary to think about what other form of cooperation to choose as an instrument for the spiritual-scientific worldview instead of our society.