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Anthroposophy and Modern Civilization
GA 220

14 January 1923, Dornach

Today I should like to continue the theme which we have studied in the last two lectures. Firstly, it is a question of realising those impulses in evolution which have led to the spiritual life of our present age, so that we can see on the one side the Anthroposophical view of the world as a necessity, but on the other hand can fully understand that this Anthroposophical view of the world must find its enemies. Naturally I shall not now enter into the special characteristics of this or that opponent, perhaps that is comprehensible at the present time. Indeed, I want to deal with our theme as generally as possible because it is not essential for the moment to fix our minds on our opponents. Rather it is essential for us at present to understand that if the Anthroposophical Society is to exist as a Society, it must become fully aware of its position in the spiritual life of the day. Also, the Society itself must contribute something towards its own consolidation. Therefore, I am not going to say anything particularly new today. Only a few weeks ago I emphasised the fact that consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society is an absolute necessity.

So first of all, it has to become clear to us how Anthroposophy is placed in modern civilisation, a civilisation which, as regards Europe and America, really only goes back to the time which we have so often, discussed, the time of the 4th Post-Christian century. Now this 4th Post-Christian century lies right in the middle of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch of time, and I have often pointed out that the spreading of Christianity,—the whole mood by which Christianity was grasped in the early years of the first three or four centuries of Christian evolution—was essentially different to the mood later on in time.

Today we think that following history backwards, we can study the previous epoch, that we can go back to the Middle Ages, then to the events we call the Wanderings of the Peoples. Further back we come to the Roman Empire, passing through that we come to Greece, and then we imagine that we can feel the same atmosphere in this Greece as we can feel in the time of the Roman Emperors or in later European history.

But that is not the case. In reality there lies a deep cleft between that which can still be placed with a certain vividness before the consciousness of modern man, namely, his journey back to Rome; but a deep cleft exists between this and that which took place as life in ancient Greece. Let us bring an outline of this before our souls. If we study the Greece of Pericles or Plato, or of Phidias, or even the Greece of Sophocles and Aeschylus, we find that their basic mood of soul goes back to a Mystery civilisation, to an ancient spirituality. And, above all things, this Greece had still much in itself of what I characterised yesterday as a living experience of absolutely real processes in man's inner being, and which I described as the salt, sulphur and mercury processes. We must be quite clear that Greek thought and Greek feeling came close to the feeling of man, whereas that later age,—from the 4th Post-Christian century onwards—already began to get ready for that which came about in the way described in my last two lectures, in which I showed how Man himself was lost for human nature, for human consciousness.

I also told you that these three personalities, Bruno, Jacob Boehme and, in a certain connection also Lord Bacon, struggled for a knowledge of man's nature, but that it was impossible for their striving really to approach the Being of Man. If, however, we go further back, from Rome to Greece, then this alienation of man's nature—any talk or an alienation of man's nature—ceased to have any sense, because the ancient Greek knew himself as a human being standing in the cosmos. The Greek had no idea of that concept of nature which came about later, that concept of nature which finally culminated in the seizing of the mechanism of nature. One might say of the ancient Greek:—That he saw the clouds, the rain falling, the clouds ascending and all that comes out of the world as fluid; then when with especial vividness looking into himself with his still sharply concrete vision, he saw the circulation of his blood, he did not feel a very great distinction between the rising and falling of water in Nature and the movement of his own blood. The Greek could still grasp something of `the world in man and man in the world.'

These things cannot be taken too deeply, because they lead into a mood of soul which only exists in fragments of the external history. One should not forget how, in the 4th Post-Christian century, evolution took the form of destroying everything which remained of the ancient clairvoyant civilisation. Certainly, modern humanity knows something of this, because of all the information which has been dug up, but one should not forget how that which later gave the impulse to Western civilisation really arose on the relics of ancient Hellenism, of that widespread Hellenism which not only existed in the South of Europe, but even passed over into Asia.

Again, one should not forget that between the middle of the 4th and middle of the 5th centuries after Christ, countless temples were burnt, having an infinitely significant pictorial content, a precious content with reference to everything developed by Hellenism. Our modern humanity, proceeding only according to external documents, does not realise this anymore. But one should recall the words of an author of that time, when he wrote in one of his letters:—“This age is passing to its downfall. All those holy places to be found in the open country, and for the sake of which the labourers worked in every field, are being destroyed. Where can the countrymen now find joy for their work?” One can hardly conceive today how much was destroyed between the middle of the 4th and the middle of the 5th century after Christ,

Now the destruction of those external monuments was part of the effort to exterminate spiritual life in Greece, and this, as you know, was given its most bitter blow by the closing of the Schools of Philosophy in Athens in the year 529. Yes, one can look back into ancient Rome, but one cannot look back into ancient Greece through external history. And it is indeed true that very many things in Western civilisation have come down to us, through the Benedictine Orders, but we must not forget that even the holy Benedict himself founded the Mother Church of the Benedictine Order on the site of an old heathen Temple which had been destroyed. All that had to disappear first, and it did disappear.

Now, with normal human feelings, it is difficult to understand why such an impulse for destruction passed over the whole of the South of Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa at that time. It only becomes comprehensible when one is convinced that the consciousness of mankind in that age was entirely different. I have often mentioned a sentence which is quite incorrect:—“Nature,—or one may say, the world, makes no leaps,” but in history such leaps do occur and the soul mood of civilised humanity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries after Christ was quite different to the soul mood of today.

But now I should like to draw your attention to something which may make it clearer to you as to how this transformation really occurred. You see, today we must say when we speak of the interchange between waking and sleeping, that the physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed, while the ego and astral bodies go outside. The soul and spirit go out of the physical and etheric bodies.

Now at a certain time in ancient India this was not true; just the opposite would have been correct. Then one would have said that in sleep the soul and spirit of man go deeper into his physical body, more into his physical body.

Now this fact is almost unnoticed, and I must point out to you how, for instance, when the Theosophical Society was founded, the people who founded it had heard some of the spiritual truths from India, and what they heard they made their own property. Now they heard this fact, of the ego and astral body going out. Of course, because the Indians said it then, (i.e. when the Theosophical Society was founded) naturally that was in the 19th century, and in India what is real can be often observed. But when these same people of the Theosophical Society tell us that this is primeval Indian wisdom, it is pure nonsense, because the ancient Indian would have said just the opposite: That the soul and spirit go deeper into the physical body when man sleeps. Which was the case in ancient times.

Now in a certain sense a consciousness of this was existing in Greece, a consciousness of the fact that in sleep the soul and spirit seize the physical body more than in waking, and that this lies in the evolution of mankind.

Now today, because we have to describe things out of our direct spiritual perception, we must describe the following as correct:—The ancient Wise Men, and even the people of Greece, had an instinctive dreamy clairvoyance. And we can describe it so from our modern standpoint, but for those people it was not dreamy. They felt in their condition of clairvoyance as if they were just waking up, they felt themselves especially awake. And so, their consciousness existed with a greater intensity when they perceived the world in those magnificent pictures which I described to you in my last lectures. But they knew that when they pressed down into the inner part of their being and at the same time saw that which occurs in man, that that which they beheld were world processes, because man is in the world. And they knew then that in their time man dived still deeper into his physical body, and in deep sleep their consciousness became dim twilight, even unconsciousness. And these people ascribed to the Influence of their physical body that which embraces the soul and leads it over into sin.

And it was just from this point of view that the ancient consciousness of sin arose. If we exclude the Jewish form of sin, the consciousness of sin leads back into heathendom, and it proceeded from the consciousness of the diving down into the physical body which does not leave the soul free enough to live in the spiritual world. But considering all that I am describing to you, it must be said:—that ancient humanity had a consciousness of the fact that he was a spiritual being, and as a spiritual being, lived in a physical body, but it never occurred to him. to call that MAN which he saw as physical body.

Why, the very word MAN itself leads back to some such meaning as “The Thinker.” Not to something which is to be seen with a more or less red or white face, with two arms and two legs. That was not a man! Man was a being who dwelt as a spiritual soul in that dwelling house of the physical body. And a consciousness of this spiritual psychic man, existing in the wonderful, plastic, artistic forms in Greece, passed over into the sphere of Art, and into the general Greek civilisation.

And even if the external temples, even if the cult became infinitely decadent in many connections, one must still say that in all the divine images and temples which were destroyed, much existed that points to this ancient soul mood. And I might add that the ancient spiritual psychic consciousness of humanity was shown with tremendous power in the form of everything destroyed in those centuries. Now if with that consciousness—not of the following incarnation when the consciousness was changed—but if a Mystery Initiate of that early Greek age came to us with the same consciousness which he then had, he would say:—”You modern human beings, you are all asleep,” Indeed he would say:—“You modern men are sleeping through everything. We were awake, we woke up in our bodies. We woke up as spiritual beings in our bodies; we knew that we were human beings, because in our bodies we could distinguish ourselves from the body. What you call waking, for us is sleeping, because whereas you wake up and direct your attention to the external world and explain something about the external world, all the time you are asleep with regard to your own human nature. You are asleep, we were awake.” That is what he would say, and from a certain point of view he should be quite right. We wake up from our moment of waking until we go to sleep, as we say, when we are in our physical bodies as spiritual human beings. But then we know nothing of ourselves, we are asleep with regard to ourselves. When, however, we are in the world outside us, we are asleep—and that is the time from sleeping to waking up. Thus, it is that we must learn to wake with the same intensity as that with which the ancient humanity were awake in their bodies. That is, modern man must learn to be awake outside his body when he is really in the external world.

From this you can see that we are dealing with a transition. As humanity, we have all gone to sleep compared with the ancient waking condition, but now we are in just that period when we have to be wakened up into a new waking state. What is the aim of Anthroposophy in this connection? Anthroposophy wants to be, Anthroposophy is nothing else than something which points out to you that man must learn to wake up outside of himself. And so, Anthroposophy comes along and shakes up modern humanity, the modern humanity which that ancient Initiate would have called a sleeping humanity, Anthroposophy shakes it up, hut they do not want to wake.

Anthroposophy often feels like Gallus beside the sleeper Stickl. (A reference to the Christmas Play just performed). Anthroposophy points out that the birds in the forest are singing. “Let them sing” says the present generation, “the birds have tiny heads and have soon had their ration of sleep.” Then Gallus goes on: “But the heavens are creaking,” Stickl (who is half asleep), “Let them go on creaking, they are old enough.” Of course, it is not said in the same words, but Anthroposophy says:—“The spiritual world wants to break through! Get up while the light of the spirit is shining.” The answer is:—“Let it go on shining, it is old enough.”

My dear friends, really it is so. Anthroposophy wants to awaken the sleepers, because that is just what is demanded of modern civilisation—an awakening—but humanity wants to sleep, and to go on sleeping!

I might say of Jacob Boehme—because he went right into the racial wisdom, and of Giordano Bruno, because he stands in a spiritual community which at that time had preserved so much from ancient times—that in them there lived a memory of the ancient waking condition.

In Lord Bacon there really lived the impulse for the justification of this new sleeping. That is, as I might put it, a still deeper explanation than we were able to give in the two preceding lectures and is the characteristic of our age.

Now with reference to the grasping of his own human nature, man of the present day cannot be awake as was humanity in ancient times, because man today does not press deep down into his physical body as ancient humanity did when asleep; because today when man goes to sleep he goes out of himself, but he must learn to come out of his physical body in a waking condition, for only thereby will he be in a position to realise himself again in his human nature.

But this impulse to continue asleep is still growing. “Stickl, the carters are cracking their whips in the street.” “Well, let them go on cracking, they have not far to go.”

It is du Bois Raymond, not Gallus, who says;—“Man has limits of knowledge, he cannot enter into the phenomena, the secrets of nature, he must limit himself.” But Anthroposophy says;—“We must strive yet further and further; the call for spirituality is already resounding.” “Well” says du Bois Raymond, “let it go on sounding, it won't be so very long before Natural Science will have come to the end of earthly days and therewith to the end of the discovery of all the secrets of nature.”

My dear friends, in many a relationship one thus finds a justification for the sleep of humanity today, because all talk of the limit of knowledge is a justification for sleep instead of a justification for a penetration into one's knowledge of human nature. And our present humanity can find ways enough of going to sleep. Even of this we have often spoken in our lectures. Today people only want to listen to things which can be put before them in images, in pictures. That is why the cinema is liked so much., but it is not popular when the listeners are asked to work with their heads. And so it is today that people want to go on dreaming of world secrets, but do not want to co-operate actively with those world secrets by means of energetic thinking. But that is just the path of awakening—one begins to wake up in one's thinking, because it is thought which first of all seeks to evolve into activity. That is the reason why in my “Philosophie der Freiheit” decades ago I pointed to this kind of thinking with such energy.

And now I should like to remind you of something else. I should like you to call to mind many a dream which you have had, and I should like to ask you whether you have never had a dream in which you have done something of which you would have been ashamed if you had done it in the daytime,—if you ever did by day what you did in the dream. Well, perhaps there are many sitting here who have never had such a dream, but at any rate they could let other people tell them of such an experience, because many people have dreamt of things they would never repeat in their waking lives, because they would be ashamed. My dear friends, apply that to our great sleep today—which we call the great sleep of present civilisation—where people really are letting themselves dream of all kinds of cosmic secrets, Anthroposophy comes along and says:—“Stickl, get up!” Anthroposophy wants to wake the people, they ought to wake! I can give you this assurance,—Many of the things that have been done in this civilisation would never have been done if humanity had been awake. That really is the case. You will say:—Who is going to believe that? Well, the dreamer pursuing his little business in his dreams, does not bother himself as to how that is really going to look when he is awake, but unconsciously the feeling exists somewhere in his soul that one really dare not do such things if one were awake. I do not mean this in a pedantic or a commonplace way, I just mean that many of the things which one considers today as being quite in order would look differently if one were really awake in one's soul.

And an unholy anxiety prevails in the soul because of this, especially in science. (If one were awake one could no longer comfortably dissect first a liver and next a brain.) One would be terribly ashamed of many methods of investigation if one were awake Anthroposophically. How can one ask people using such methods to wake up without any further reason? One notices many extraordinary apologies which exist for sleeping.

And now I want you to think of something else. What an immense pleasure a dreamer has when he dreams something which actually happens, say a couple of days later. You must have noticed yourselves the tremendous joy of a superstitious dreamer when his dream actually happens; and it often happens, and they all have this tremendous joy. In our present civilisation dreamers calculate by Newton's laws of gravitation, by formulae which have been worked out by mathematicians, and they have calculated that Uranus has a definite path in the heavens. But that path does not agree with the formulae and therefore they go on dreaming; certain disturbances must exist owing to a planet as yet undiscovered. When this did happen, and when Dr. Gall really discovered Neptune, the vision was fulfilled. Now this is just what is so often brought forward today as a justification of the methods of Natural Science.

The existence of Neptune was calculated in a dream and later the dream really happened. It is just like a person dreaming of something which later on takes place. Then there is the case of Mendaleff, who even calculated elements out of his periodic system. But this dream of a curse is not quite so difficult, because when such a periodical system is discovered and one place in it is empty, then it is easy enough to fill up that place and to mention a few properties. Here we have the fulfilment of a vision by the same methods as when a sleeper dreams of something which actually takes place a couple of days later, and which, he then calls a verification of the fact. And today people say that in this way the affair can be proved.

One has to understand how radically our modern civilisation has become the civilisation of sleepers and how necessary an awakening is for humanity. At the same time this tendency to sleep in our present age has to be seen very clearly by those who have received an urge from Spiritual Science towards waking. Such a moment must occur as sometimes in a dream when the dreamer knows “I am dreaming,” and in the same way humanity ought to have a special feeling for a strong expression which was once used by that energetic philosopher J.G. Fichte. Fichte said “The world which is spread out before mankind is a dream and all that man thinks about the world is a dream about a dream,” Of course one must not fall into anything like the philosophy of Schopenhauer, because, after all you are not doing very much for a human being when you characterise everything in front of him as a dream. It is not one's task merely to say:—“one dreams,” that is not quite enough. But that is all that many people of the present want to prove:—Man dreams and cannot do anything else but dream. Then in one's dream one comes to the limit of one's dream. And beyond the dream is what Kant calls the “Thing in itself,” and one cannot approach the thing in its reality. Edouard von Hartmann, that acute thinker, often spoke of this kind of dreaming with relation to reality. And Edouard von Hartmann makes it clear that everything which man has in his consciousness is a dream by the side of the Thing in Itself, of which man knows nothing, but which lies at the basis of his dream. So that Hartmann, who drives everything to extremes, speaks of the `real' table, in contrast to the table which we have before us in our sensations. The table we have in our consciousness is a dream, and behind that stands the table in its reality. Hartmann distinguishes between the table as appearance and the table in itself; between the chair in appearance and the chair in itself. But he is not fully conscious that finally the chair of which he is speaking had something to do with the chair in itself, because if you take the chair as appearance one cannot very well sit down on it. Even a dreamer has to have a bed to lie on. And so all this talk of “the Thing in Itself” can only be a preparation for something else. For what? For waking up, my dear friends.

And so it is not a question of seeing the world as a dream, but, as soon as we have the idea:—That is a dream!—we must do something we must wake up; and this waking up already begins with an energetic grasping of one's own thinking. It begins with active thinking, and from that point one comes to other things.

Now you see, what I have characterised—this impulse for awakening—is a necessary impulse for the present time. Certainly that which as Anthroposophy can be presented to the world; but however, when an Anthroposophical Society becomes a Society, then that Society must represent a reality. Then every single person who lives in the Anthroposophical Society should feel it as a reality, and he must be deeply permeated by the will to awake, and not, as is so often the case, feel insulted if one says to him:—“Stickl, stand up.” This is very necessary. And it is something which I should like to repeat in a few words.

The misfortune (i.e. the burning of the Bau) which has met us should above all be an awakening call to the Anthroposophical Society to do something that is a reality. This real Being—which I have characterised at the end of the Christmas Congress—this real Being (Wesen) which one can feel since that time as “the living stream from man to man within the Anthroposophical Society” that must exist, a living stream from one to the other. A certain lack of love has often appeared in the newest phases of our Society instead of a mutual trust, and if this lack of love gets the upper hand then the Anthroposophical Society must crumble. You see, our building brought many wonderfully beautiful qualities in the different Anthroposophists to the surface, but side by side with them there had to be an invigoration of the Society itself. Many of these beautiful qualities were named during our course of lectures which were given during the building of the Bau, and on the night of the burning of the Bau, but those beautiful qualities require guidance, and above all things this is necessary:—That anyone who has anything to do within the Society should not carry into it those things, which today are so customary outside it. And above all things, that each one who does anything for the Society should do it with real personal interest and participation. It is this personal interest, this personal share that one misses when people do one thing or another for our Society.

My dear friends, no service for the Society—and that means anything done in the Society by one person for another—nothing can be trivial. The tiniest service rendered becomes valuable through its standing in the service of something great. That is so often forgotten, and the Society must really see this with the greatest and highest satisfaction, at a time when such a staggering blow demands the cultivation of these most beautiful qualities in the members. But at the same time, it should not be forgotten that in the industrious and patient accomplishment of everyday things, much which is necessary is overlooked. These are things which must not be undervalued when one sees Anthroposophy finding its enemies in the world around it. The fact that an enemy (Gegenschaft} is there, must not be overlooked, rather must it be grasped out of the very objective course of evolution itself. And I have often been astonished, and have said so publicly, at the lack of interest when opposition, taking its roots in objective untruth, develops around us. We must really place ourselves as positive defenders of Anthroposophy when it comes to a question of objective untruth. And at the same time, we must be able to raise ourselves to an understanding of the fact that Anthroposophy can only exist in an atmosphere of truth. We must develop a feeling of what it really means when so much untruth and so much objective calumny is brought against Anthroposophy. And for this we also need a real inner life. So you see, my dear friends we have a splendid opportunity for awakening ourselves. And if we can only reach the awakening in this sphere, then the impulse for awakening will spread itself out over other things.

But if we see everyone asleep while the flames of untruth are making themselves felt everywhere, then we must not be surprised when even Stickl goes on sleeping?

So that which I should like to characterise today, both in great things and also in tiny things is:—“Think, feel and meditate about this awakening.” So many today long for esotericism while these calumniations are hailing on our windows. Well, my dear friends, esotericism is there. Take hold of it. But, above all things, the will to awake is esoteric in our Society, and this will to awake must take its place within the Anthroposophical Society. Then the will to awake within the Society will be a point from which the awakening of the whole present civilisation will radiate.

Sechster Vortrag

Ich möchte nun das Thema, das ich in diesen verflossenen zwei Tagen angeschlagen habe, heute etwas fortsetzen. Es handelt sich dabei darum, aus den Entwickelungsmomenten, die zum Geistesleben der Gegenwart geführt haben, zu erkennen, wie auf der einen Seite anthroposophische Weltanschauung eine Notwendigkeit wird, wie auf der andern Seite auch verstanden werden muß, daß diese anthroposophische Weltanschauung Gegner hat. Ich will mich — und das ist begreiflich — gerade im gegenwärtigen Augenblicke natürlich jetzt nicht auf eine spezielle Charakteristik dieser oder jener Gegner einlassen, möchte das Thema möglichst allgemein behandeln, weil es sich ja auch gar nicht darum handelt, diese oder jene Gegnerschaft ins Auge zu fassen, sondern weil es sich eigentlich darum handelt, daß die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft, wenn sie als solche existieren will, sich ihrer Stellung im Geistesleben eben bewußt werden und dazu etwas beitragen muß, sich zu konsolidieren. Ich sage ja da nichts besonders Neues für heute, denn es ist erst einige Wochen her, daß ich ausdrücklich gesagt habe, daß diese Konsolidierung der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft eine Notwendigkeit sei.

Wir müssen uns durchaus klar sein darüber, wie Anthroposophie hineingestellt ist in eine gegenwärtige Zivilisation, die für Europa und Amerika eigentlich ihre Geschichte in Wahrheit nur bis in die Zeit zurückführt, von der ich öfters gesprochen habe: bis in die Zeit etwa des 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts. Dieses 4. nachchristliche Jahrhundert liegt ja gerade in der Mitte des vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraumes. Ich habe öfters darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß die Verbreitung des Christentums, die ganze Auffassungsweise des Christentums in den allerersten drei bis vier christlichen Jahrhunderten eine wesentlich andere war als später.

Wir denken heute oftmals so, wenn wir die Geschichte nach rückwärts verfolgen, daß wir die Neuzeit betrachten, zum Mittelalter zurückgehen, da etwa bei dem ankommen, was man die Völkerwanderung nennt, dann beim Römerreich, dann geht man eben weiter zurück ins Griechentum und denkt eigentlich und empfindet gegenüber dem Griechentum so ähnlich, wie man auch demjenigen gegenüber empfindet, was etwa seit der römischen Kaiserzeit als spätere europäische Geschichte existiert. Aber das ist ja gar nicht so. Es liegt eigentlich ein tiefer Abgrund zwischen dem, was noch mit einer gewissen Lebendigkeit vor dem Bewußtsein des heutigen Menschen steht, nämlich der Rückgang bis ins Römertum, und dem, was als griechisches Leben vorangegangen ist. Rufen wir nur ganz skizzenhaft die Sache vor die Seele. Wenn wir das Griechenland des Perikles oder Platon oder des Phidias betrachten, oder gar das Griechenland des Sophokles und Äschylos, dann geht dasjenige, was diesem Griechentum als Seelenverfassung zugrunde liegt, zurück auf alte Mysterienkultur, auf alte Geistigkeit. Und es hatte vor allen Dingen dieses Griechentum noch viel von dem in sich, was ich gestern charakterisierte als ein lebendiges Erleben der wirklichen Vorgänge im menschlichen Inneren; was ich als den Salz-, als den Sulfur-, als den Merkurprozeß bezeichnete. Wir müssen uns darüber klar sein, daß das griechische Denken und Empfinden dem Menschenwesen nahestand, während die spätere Zeit, vom 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert an, dem ja schon vorgearbeitet hat, was dann gekommen ist und sich in den drei Gestalten, die ich in diesen beiden Tagen angeführt habe, so besonders charakteristisch gezeigt hat: den Verlust des Menschenwesens für das menschliche Bewußtsein.

Ich sagte, solche Persönlichkeiten wie Bruno, Jakob Böhme und in gewisser Beziehung auch Lord Bacon, sie rangen nach einer Erkenntnis des Menschenwesens. Allein, es war diesem Ringen nicht möglich, an das Menschenwesen wirklich heranzukommen. Wenn wir hinter das Römertum ins Griechentum zurückgehen, dann hört eben dieses Reden von der Fremdheit des Menschenwesens auf, einen Sinn zu haben, denn der Grieche wußte sich als Mensch im Kosmos drinnenstehend. Der Grieche hat diesen Naturbegriff, der später aufgekommen ist, nicht gehabt, diesen Naturbegriff, der zuletzt ausmündete in die Auffassung vom Mechanismus der Natur. Man könnte vom Griechen sagen: er sah die Wolke, er sah den Regen herabquillen, er sah wiederum in Nebeln aufsteigen, was aus der Erde als Flüssigkeit kommt, und er sah mit einer besonderen Lebendigkeit, wenn er in sich selbst mit dem noch konkret geschärften Blick sah, seine Blutbewegung. Und er empfand keinen so tiefgehenden Unterschied zwischen dem auf- und absteigenden Wasser in der Natur und seiner eigenen Blutbewegung, wie man das später empfand. Der Grieche erfaßte noch etwas von dem, was in den Worten liegt: die Welt im Menschen, der Mensch in der Welt.

Das sind Dinge, die eigentlich nicht tief genug genommen werden können, denn sie führen hinein in die Seelenverfassung, die ja für die außere Geschichte nur in Fragmenten vorhanden ist. Man darf eben nicht vergessen, wie im 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert damit begonnen worden ist, alle Reste der hellseherischen Kultur gründlich zu vernichten. Gewiß, die heutige Menschheit weiß wiederum einiges, was später ausgegraben worden ist. Aber man sollte doch nicht vergessen, wie dasjenige, was später die Impulse der abendländischen Kultur gegeben hat, entstanden ist auf den Trüummern des alten Hellenismus, jenes erweiterten Hellenismus, der nicht nur in Südeuropa war, der bis nach Asien hinüberging. Man sollte nicht vergessen, daß in der Zeit zwischen der Mitte des 4. und der Mitte des 5. Jahrhunderts unzählige Tempel brannten, die ungeheuer bedeutungsvollen, bildhaften Inhalt hatten, kostbaren Inhalt hatten in bezug auf alles, was der Hellenismus ausgebildet hat. Das alles sieht ja die heutige Menschheit, die nur nach äußeren Dokumenten geht, nicht mehr. Man muß an ein solches Wort erinnern, wie das eines damaligen Schriftstellers, der in einem Briefe schrieb: Es geht zu Ende mit der alten Zeit. Alle einzelnen Heiligtümer, die zu finden sind auf den einzelnen Feldern, um derentwillen die Bau ern auf ihren Feldern arbeiten, die werden vernichtet. Wo sollen die auf dem Felde arbeitenden Leute noch Freude hernehmen zu ihrer Arbeit?

Es ist heute gar nicht mehr auszudenken, wieviel gerade in jenen Jahrhunderten von der Mitte des 4. bis zu der Mitte des 5. Jahrhunderts vernichtet worden ist. Die Vernichtung der äußeren Denkmäler ging parallel dem Bestreben, das griechische Geistesleben auszurotten, was ja in seinem herbsten Schlag vollzogen worden ist mit der Schließung der Philosophenschule in Athen, 529. Ja, so wie man zurückschauen kann ins Römertum, kann man in der äußerlichen Geschichte eben nicht zurückschauen in das Griechentum. Und es ist ja gewiß richtig, daß Unendliches in der abendländischen Zivilisation durch das ganze Mittelalter hindurch und bis in die Neuzeit herauf, sagen wir, zum Beispiel dem Benediktinerorden zu verdanken ist. Aber der heilige Benedikt hat ja zunächst an der Stätte, wo er das Mutterkloster für den Benediktinerorden begründet hat, nun auch die heidnischen Heiligtümer zerstört. Das alles mußte zunächst verschwinden und ist verschwunden.

Es ist tatsächlich schwer verständlich, wenn man sozusagen normal menschliche Gefühle anlegt, wie ein solcher Impuls der Zerstörung dazumal hat über ganz Südeuropa, Vorderasien, Nordafrika gehen können. Verständlich wird das erst, wenn man sich klar darüber wird, daß eben das ganze Bewußtsein der Menschheit in der damaligen Zeit ein anderes geworden ist, daß tatsächlich, was ich ja öfter schon gesagt habe, der Spruch ganz unrichtig ist, die Natur oder überhaupt die Welt mache keine Sprünge. In der Geschichte vollziehen sich solche Sprünge. Und es ist die Seelenverfassung der zivilisierten Menschheit im 2., 3. Jahrhundert der nachchristlichen Zeit etwas ganz anderes gewesen als das, was dann Seelenverfassung geworden ist.

Aber nun möchte ich Sie auf etwas aufmerksam machen, was Ihnen ganz besonders veranschaulichen kann, wie dieser Umschwung eigentlich ist. Wir müssen heute sagen, wenn wir von den Wechselzuständen von Wachen und Schlafen reden: Der physische Leib und der ätherische Leib bleiben im Bette liegen, und das Ich und der astralische Leib gehen heraus; das Seelisch-Geistige geht heraus aus dem physischen und Ätherleib. - So würde man in einer gewissen Zeit des alten Indertums nicht gesagt haben, da würde man das Umgekehrte gesagt haben. Im Schlaf, so würde gesagt worden sein, geht das Geistig-Seelische des Menschen tiefer in den physischen Leib hinein, geht mehr unter in dem physischen Leib. — Also das genau Entgegengesetzte.

Dies wird sehr wenig beachtet. Ich will nur aufmerksam darauf machen, daß ja, als zum Beispiel die Theosophische Gesellschaft begründet worden ist, die Leute, die sie begründet haben, einiges von geistigen Wahrheiten durch die Inder gehört und das, was sie da gehört haben, zu ihrem Eigentum gemacht haben. Da haben sie eben diese Sache von dem Herausgehen des Ich und des astralischen Leibes gehört. Gewiß, die Inder haben das damals gesagt, im 19. Jahrhundert haben sie das natürlich gesagt, denn in Indien kann man vielfach beobachten, was real ist. Aber wenn dann etwa Leute der Theosophischen Gesellschaft erzählen, das wäre auch uralte indische Weisheit gewesen, so ist das ein Unsinn, denn der alte Inder hat gerade das Umgekehrte gesagt: Das Seelisch-Geistige geht tiefer in den physischen Leib hinein, wenn der Mensch schläft. Und das war auch in älteren Zeiten der Fall. Und davon war in gewissem Sinne durchaus noch ein Bewußtsein vorhanden bei den Griechen, daß im Schlafe das Geistig-Seelische mehr den physischen Leib ergreife, als das im Wachen der Fall ist, denn das liegt in der Entwickelung der Menschheit.

Wir müssen heute, weil wir ja von unserer unmittelbar geistigen Wahrnehmung aus schildern müssen, mit Recht sagen: Die alten Weisen und auch die griechische Bevölkerung hatten ein instinktives Hellsehen, das traumhaft war. Das schildern wir von unserem Gesichtspunkte aus. Für die Leute dazumal war das aber nicht traumhaft. Sie fühlten sich gerade erwachend in diesem Zustande der Hellsichtigkeit. Das war gerade eine größere Intensität ihres Bewußtseins, wenn sie in mächtigen Bildern so die Welt wahrnahmen, wie ich es gestern geschildert habe. Aber sie wußten zugleich: da dringen sie in das Innere ihres Menschen ein und sehen dasjenige, was im Menschen vorgeht, und wissen, weil der Mensch in der Welt ist, daß das Weltvorgänge sind. Und dann wußten sie: Im Schlafe taucht der Mensch noch tiefer hinein in seinen physischen Leib. Und im tiefen Schlaf wurde dann wiederum dieses Bewußtsein dumpf, dammerhaft, eben unbewußt. Und das schrieben die Leute dem Einfluß des physischen Leibes zu, der die Seele umfängt und sie eigentlich ins Süundhafte hineinführt. Und es entstand gerade aus dieser Anschauung heraus das alte Sündenbewußtsein. Dieses Sündenbewußtsein führt eigentlich, wenn wir es nicht in seiner jüdischen Form nehmen, zurück in das Heidentum, und da geht es hervor aus einem Bewußtsein des Untertauchens in den physischen Leib, der die Seele nicht frei genug laßt, um in der geistigen Welt zu leben.

Aber wenn Sie alles das, was ich Ihnen da schildere, durchdenken, so werden Sie sich sagen: Dieser ältere Mensch hatte ein Bewußtsein davon, daß er ein geistiges Wesen ist, daß er als geistiges Wesen in einem physischen Leibe lebt. Es fiel ihm gar nicht ein, das, was er physisch am Menschen sah, Mensch zu nennen. Das Wort Mensch führt ja eigentlich zurück auf eine Bedeutung wie «der Denkende». Also nicht derjenige, der mit einem mehr oder weniger roten oder blassen Gesicht zu sehen ist, mit zwei Armen, zwei Beinen, war der Mensch, sondern der war der Mensch, der in diesem Wohnhause des physischen Leibes als Geist-Seele wohnte.

Und ein ins Künstlerische herüber übersetzter Rest dieses Bewußtseins vom geistig-seelischen Menschen war eben durchaus in der allgemeinen griechischen Zivilisation vorhanden - in jener wunderbar plastisch-künstlerischen Form des Griechentums. Und wenn auch das äußere Tempelwesen, wenn auch die Kulte in vieler Beziehung in einer ungeheuren Dekadenz waren, so darf man doch sagen, daß in den zerstörten Götterbildern und Tempeln eben Abbilder vorhanden waren, die hinwiesen auf jene alte Seelenverfassung. Ich möchte sagen: mit mächtiger Schrift stand in den Formen dessen, was zerstört worden war, das alte Geist-Seelenbewußtsein der Menschheit.

Wenn mit demselben Bewußtsein, nicht in einer folgenden Inkarnation, wo das Bewußtsein immer etwas verändert ist, sondern wenn mit demselben Bewußtsein, das er damals gehabt hat, ein Mysterieneingeweihter der griechischen Vorzeit heute wiederum zu uns käme und sich über diese Dinge mit uns besprechen würde, so würde er sagen: Ihr modernen Menschen, ihr schlaft ja alle! - Ja, das würde er sagen: Ihr modernen Menschen, ihr schlaft ja alle! Wir waren wach, denn wir wachten in unserem Leibe, wir wachten als Geistmenschen in unserem Leibe. Wir wußten, daß wir Menschen waren, weil wir uns in unserem Leibe von diesem Leibe unterschieden. Was ihr wachen nennt, das ist für uns schlafen, denn während ihr wacht und eure Sinne da in die Außenwelt richtet und irgend etwas von der Außenwelt erklärt, schlaft ihr ja in bezug auf euren Menschen. Ihr seid die Eingeschlafenen; wir waren die Wachen.

So würde er sagen. Und von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkt aus hätte er ganz recht. Denn heute ist es so: Wir wachen vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen, wie wir sagen, wenn wir in unserem physischen Leibe sind als geist-seelischer Mensch. Aber da wissen wir ja gar nichts von uns, da schlafen wir in bezug auf uns selber. Wenn wir aber drinnen sind in der Welt, die außer uns ist, da schlafen wir, nämlich vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen. Da müssen wir lernen zu wachen. Mit derselben Intensität, mit der die alten Menschen in ihrem Körper gewacht haben, muß der moderne Mensch lernen, außer seinem Leibe zu wachen, wenn er wirklich drinnen ist in der Außenwelt.

Daran ersehen Sie, daß es sich um einen Übergangszustand handelt. Wir sind eingeschlafen als Menschheit gegenüber dem alten Wachen und sind jetzt gerade in dem Zeitpunkt, wo aufgewacht werden soll gegenüber dem neuen Wachen. Und was will denn Anthroposophie in dieser Beziehung sein? Anthroposophie ist ja nichts anderes als dieses: daß sie zuerst darauf aufmerksam geworden ist, daß der Mensch außer sich wachen lernen soll. Und nun kommt sie und schüttelt den modernen Menschen - den der alte Mensch eben einen Schläfer nennen würde —, schüttelt den modernen Menschen und der will nicht aufwachen.

Anthroposophie fühlt sich schon manchmal so wie der Gallus neben dem Schläfer Stichl! Anthroposophie macht aufmerksam darauf, daß die Waldvöglein singen. «Laß s’ nur singen», sagt die Gegenwart, «ham kloane Kepf, ham bald ausgschlofa» und so weiter. «Der Himmel kracht scho!» «Ei, laß’n kracha, er is scho alt gnua dazua'» Nur natürlich ist das nicht immer mit denselben Worten ausgedrückt, sondern Anthroposophie sagt: Die Geisteswelt, die will schon herein, steht auf! - Ei, laß nur scheinen das Licht des Geistes, ’s ist scho alt gnua dazua! - Tatsächlich ist es so: den Schläfer erwekken möchte Anthroposophie. Denn dasjenige, was von der modernen Zivilisation gefordert. wird, ist eben ein Erwachen. Und die Menschheit will schlafen, will weiterschlafen.

Und ich möchte sagen: in Jakob Böhme, weil er ganz mit der Volksweisheit ging, in Giordano Bruno, weil er innerhalb einer Geistgemeinschaft stand, die dazumal noch sehr viel bewahrt hatte von alten Zeiten, in ihnen lebte durchaus eine Erinnerung an das alte Wachsein. In Lord Bacon lebt eigentlich der Impuls zur Rechtfertigung des neuen Schlafens. Das ist, noch tiefer erfaßt als wir das in den beiden vorhergehenden Tagen tun konnten, das Charakteristikon unserer Zeit. So wach in bezug auf die Auffassung des Menschenwesens, wie die Menschheit der alten Zeiten war, kann der Mensch der Gegenwart nicht sein. Denn er dringt nicht etwa tiefer in seinen physischen Leib hinab, wie das der alte Mensch getan hat, wenn er schlief, sondern er geht im Schlafe heraus. Aber er muß lernen, auch herauszukommen aus seinem physischen Leibe im Wachen, denn nur dadurch wird er in die Lage kommen, sich wieder als Mensch zu wissen. Aber der Drang, den Schlaf zu bewahren, der ist ja sehr groß. «Stichl, dö Fuhrleut kleschn scho auf der Stroßn'» «Ei; laß s’ nur kleschn, habn noch goar wait z’foarn.»

Du Bois-Reymond - nicht Gallus aus dem Christgeburtspiel, aber Du Bois-Reymond — sagt: Der Mensch hat Grenzen der Erkenntnis, er kann nicht eindringen in die Naturerscheinungen, in die Geheimnisse der Naturerscheinungen, er muß sich beschränken. Ja, aber, sagt Anthroposophie, man muß doch weiter, weiter und weiter streben! Der Impuls nach Geistigkeit ertönt schon. — Ei sagt Du Bois-Reymond -, laß ihn nur ertönen, er hat noch gar weit, sich zu entwickeln, bis die Naturwissenschaft am Ende der Erdentage angekommen sein wird bei der Ergründung aller Naturgeheimnisse.

In vieler Beziehung findet man da gerade eine Rechfertigung des Schlafens. Denn das Reden von den Grenzen des Naturerkennens ist eben eine Rechtfertigung des Schlafens gegenüber dem Eindringen des Menschenwesens in die Natur. Und Schlafmittel findet ja die Gegenwart genügend — auch davon wurde des öfteren hier gesprochen. Man will heute womöglich allein dem zuhören, was sich anschaulich machen kann, recht anschaulich, womöglich gleich mit einem Film anschaulich. Aber man liebt es nicht, wenn etwas geltend gemacht wird, wo die Zuhörer mit dern Kopfe dabei sein müssen, in dem auch noch was drinnen arbeitet. Denn eigentlich strebt man danach, sich die Weltengeheimnisse träumen zu lassen, nur ja nicht innerlich aktiv denkend mitzuarbeiten. Das ist aber gerade der Weg, um aufzuwachen: zunächst beim Denken anzufangen, denn der Gedanke will in Tätigkeit entwickelt werden. Deshalb habe ich auf dieses Denken mit solcher Energie gerade in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» vor Jahrzehnten hingewiesen.

Ich möchte Sie auf etwas aufmerksam machen, meine lieben Freunde. Ich möchte, daß Sie sich erinnern an manche Träume, die Sie gehabt haben und möchte Sie fragen, ob Sie noch nie einen Traum gehabt haben, in dem Sie so recht ein Filou waren, jedenfalls etwas taten, dessen Sie sich schämen würden, wenn Sie es bei Tag so täten, wie Sie es da im Traum getan haben? Ich meine doch. Nun gewiß, es mag ja viele geben, die hier sitzen, die niemals einen solchen Traum gehabt haben, aber die können sich es von andern erzählen lassen, denn etwelche wird es schon geben, die wissen, daß man manchmal Dinge träumt, die man nicht im Wachen wiederholen möchte, deren man sich schämen würde. Ja, wenden Sie das jetzt auf den großen Schlaf an, den wir auch den Zivilisationsschlaf der Gegenwart nennen können, wo sich eigentlich die Leute alle Weltengeheimnisse träumen lassen wollen. Nun kommt die Anthroposophie und sagt: Stichl, steh auf! - Nun sollen die Leute aufwachen! Manches, das kann ich Sie versichern, manches von dem, was in dieser Schlafzivilisation gemacht wird, würden die Leute nicht tun, wenn sie wach würden, da ist es ebenso. Sie werden allerdings sagen: Ja, wer soll denn das glauben? — Doch darüber denkt der Träumer auch nicht nach, wenn er seine Allotria im Traume treibt, wie das im Wachzustande eigentlich sich ausnimmt. Aber unbewußt ist eben diese Angst vorhanden, daß man da vieles nicht tun dürfte, wenn man aufwachte. Ich meine das natürlich jetzt nicht philiströs und spießbürgerlich, sondern ich meine: Vieles, was man heute durchaus als sehr ordentlich betrachtet, würde man ganz anders ansehen, wenn man eben erwachte.

Und davor herrscht eine heillose Angst. Man könnte auch nicht mehr so bequem die Leber neben dem Hirn sezieren! Vor manchen Forschungsmethoden gerade würde man sich heillos schämen, wenn man anthroposophisch erwachte. Wie wollen Sie denn dann verlangen, daß die Leute so von heute auf morgen, gerade wenn sie in solchen Methoden drinnenstehen, so ohne weiteres erwachen! Man bemerkt ja auf sonderbare Weise die Apologie des Schlafens. Denken Sie doch nur einmal, was für eine riesige Freude ein Träumer hat, wenn er etwas träumt, was in ein paar Tagen zutrifft! Sie müssen nur einmal so recht aufgemerkt haben, welche riesige Freude abergläubische Träumer haben, wenn das, was sie geträumt haben, zutrifft - es trifft ja manchmal zu -, sie haben eine riesige Freude. Nun, die Zivilisationsträumer, sie rechnen nach dem Newtonschen Gravitationsgesetz, nach den Formeln, die dann weiter ausgearbeitet sind von den Mathematikern, daß der Uranus eine bestimmte Bahn hat. Aber die Bahn stimmt nicht mit den Formeln. Sie träumen davon, daß da Störungen vorhanden sein müssen von einem Planeten, der noch da sein könnte. Es ist ja alles geträumt, denn es wird tatsächlich ohne den intensiven Impuls der inneren Gewißheit so etwas ausgerechnet. Und wenn es eintrifft — es hat dann der Dr. Galle den Neptun wirklich entdeckt: da ist der Traum eingetroffen. Das ist sogar etwas, was heute angeführt wird als das, was geradezu die naturwissenschaftliche Methode rechtfertigt, daß da, nun, sagen wir, einer den Neptun im Traum ausrechnet, und dann trifft das ein. Es ist wirklich wie bei den Träumern, wenn ihnen irgend etwas eintrifft. Oder der Mendelejew, der sogar ein Element nach dem periodischen System ausrechnet. Es ist dieser Traum gar nicht einmal so schwer, denn wenn man das periodische System aufstellt, und eins fehlt, wenn ein Platz leer ist, so ist es eigentlich ziemlich leicht, eins da hineinzusetzen und ein paar Eigenschaften zu sagen. Aber es ist zunächst ein Traum! Trifft er ein, dann geht das nach derselben Methode, wie es eben beim Träumer geht, wenn der sieht, daß ein paar Tage darauf das eintrifft, daß er die Sache verifiziert bekommt. Ja, der Träumer sagt gewöhnlich nicht so, daß er das verifiziert bekommt, aber in der Gelehrtensprache sagt man eben, daß man die Sache verifiziert bekommt.

Man muß erst wirklich gründlich verstehen, wie diese moderne Zivilisation eben eine Schlafzivilisation geworden ist und wie ein Erwachen notwendig ist für die Menschheit. Dann aber müssen gerade die Tendenzen des Schlafens in der Gegenwart von denjenigen, welche nun einmal einen Drang haben nach einer geistigen Wissenschaft, klar durchschaut werden. Jene Momente müssen eintreten, die oftmals beim Träumer eintreten, wenn er sich als Träumer weiß, wenn er weiß: ich träume. Und so sollte die Menschheit heute eine besondere Empfindung haben für ein so starkes Wort — ich habe Ööfter auf dieses Wort hingewiesen -, wie es einstmals der so energische Philosoph Johann.Gottlieb Fichte ausgesprochen hat: Die Welt, die vor dem Menschen ausgebreitet ist, ist ein Traum, und dasjenige, was der Mensch über sie denkt, ist ein Traum vom Traume.

Nur darf man nicht etwa in so etwas wiederum verfallen, was ähnlich wäre einer Schopenhauerschen Philosophie. Denn wenig hat man davon als Mensch, wenn man nur etwa erkenntnistheoretisch darauf aufmerksam macht, daß alles ein Traum ist. Nicht das ist die Aufgabe, einzusehen, daß man träumt — das möchten viele Leute der Gegenwart ja recht klar beweisen, daß man träumt, und daß der Mensch überhaupt gar nichts anderes kann als träumen, denn wenn er je an die Grenze dieser Träume kommt, dann ist eben da drüben das Ding an sich, da läßt sich nicht herankommen. Interessant hat ja von diesen Träumen gegenüber dem, was Realität ist, oftmals Eduard von Hartmann, der sonst ausgezeichnete Denker, gesprochen. Er macht klar, daß der Mensch eigentlich alles, was er so im Bewußtsein hat, träumt; wie aber allem ein «an sich», von dem der Mensch nichts weiß, zugrunde liegt. So spricht Hartmann, der die Dinge bis zum Extrem trieb, zum Beispiel vom Tisch an sich, im Gegensatz von dem Tisch, den wir vor uns haben: der Tisch, den wir vor uns haben, ist eben ein Traum, und dahinter ist der Tisch an sich. Wirklich, Hartmann unterscheidet zwischen dem Tisch als Erscheinung und dem Tisch an sich, zwischen dem Sessel als Erscheinung und dem Sessel an sich. Aber er ist sich gar nicht bewußt, daß schließlich der Sessel, auf den er sich draufsetzt, etwas zu tun hat mit dem Sessel an sich, denn auf dem Sessel als Erscheinung, auf dem geträumten Sessel, läßt sich nämlich nicht gut sitzen, so wie auch der Träumer in einem wirklichen Bette liegen muß. Aber die ganze Rederei, daß die Welt ein Traum ist, kann ja nur eine Vorbereitung sein zu etwas anderem. Zu was? Nun, zum Erwachen, meine lieben Freunde! Nicht darum handelt es sich, daß wir einsehen, die Welt ist ein Traum, sondern darum handelt es sich, daß wir, sobald wir nur ahnen, die Welt ist ein Traum, etwas dazutun, um zu erwachen! Und das Erwachen, das beginnt schon beim energischen Ergreifen des Denkens, bei dem aktiven Denken. Und da kommt man dann in alles andere hinein.

Sie sehen, es ist dies, was ich eben charakterisiert habe, dieser Impuls des Erwachens, ein notwendiger Impuls für die Gegenwart. Gewiß, dasjenige, was da als Anthroposophie auftritt, kann in die Welt gestellt werden. Wenn aber eine Anthroposophische Gesellschaft eben Gesellschaft sein will, dann muß diese Gesellschaft eine Realität bedeuten. Dann muß der einzelne, der in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft lebt, diese Anthroposophische Gesellschaft als Realität empfinden. Und er muß tief durchdrungen sein von diesem Erwachenwollen, und nicht, wie es vielfach der Fall ist, es sogleich als eine Beleidigung betrachten, wenn man ihm sagt: Stichl, steh auf! - Das ist schon notwendig. Und das ist es, was ich eben noch einmal nur in ein paar Worten wiederholen möchte.

Das Unglück, das uns betroffen hat, sollte in allererster Linie auch ein Weckruf dazu sein, an der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft etwas zu tun, damit sie eine Realität werde. Dieses reale Wesen, das ist dasjenige, was man ja seit jener Zeit, die ich vor einigen Tagen hier am Ende des Weihnachtskursus charakterisiert habe, so spürt. Die lebendige Strömung von Mensch zu Mensch innerhalb der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, die muß da sein. Eine gewisse Lieblosigkeit ist an die Stelle des gegenseitigen Vertrauens in der neuesten Phase der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft so häufig getreten, und wenn diese Lieblosigkeit weiter überhand nimmt, dann wird eben die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft zerfallen müssen.

Sehen Sie, der Bau hat ja viele außerordentlich schöne Eigenschaften der Anthroposophen auf die Oberfläche gebracht; aber parallel hätte gehen müssen eine lebendige Erkraftung der Gesellschaft selbst. Es sind mit vollem Recht viel schöne Eigenschaften am Ende unseres Kurses neulich genannt worden, die hervorgetreten sind während des Baues, hervorgetreten sind während der Brandnacht. Aber diese Eigenschaften brauchen Führung, brauchen vor allen Dingen aber auch dieses, daß jeder, der irgend etwas zu tun hat, auch innerhalb der Gesellschaft etwas zu tun hat, nicht dasjenige hineinträgt in die Gesellschaft, was heute eben gang und gäbe ist, sondern daß jeder vor allen Dingen alles, was er für die Gesellschaft zu machen hat, mit wirklichem persönlichem Interesse und Anteil tue. Und dieses persönliche Interesse und diesen persönlichen Anteil, den muß man leider gerade da vermissen, wo Persönlichkeiten für die Gesellschaft das eine oder das andere tun.

Es ist ja kein Dienst gering, der für die Gesellschaft, das heißt auch von einem Menschen für den andern Menschen, in der Gesellschaft gemacht werden kann. Das Geringste wird ja wertvoll dadurch, daß es im Dienste eines Großen steht. Das aber ist etwas, was so oft vergessen wird. Die Gesellschaft muß es ja mit größter, höchster Befriedigung sehen, wenn ein gewaltiges Unglück herausfordert zu der Betätigung der allerschönsten Eigenschaften. Aber darüber sollte nicht vergessen werden, wie bei vielen in den alltäglichen Verrichtungen Fleiß und Ausdauer, aber namentlich Interesse und persönliche Anteilnahme an dem, was einem obliegt, so leicht erlahmt, und wie manches, was man sich eines Tages vornimmt, so schnell vergessen wird. Deshalb wollte ich jetzt die ganze Größe des Gegensatzes, in dem sich Anthroposophie befindet gegenüber der Welt, einmal hervorheben, weil gerade immer übersehen wird, wie die Gegnerschaft einzuschätzen ist.

Daß Gegnerschaft in sachlicher Beziehung da ist, das muß man begreifen, das muß man aus dem objektiven Weltengang heraus begreifen. Manchmal aber bin ich doch - und ich habe es ja auch öffentlich ausgesprochen - erstaunt darüber, wie wenig innere Anteilnahme da ist, wenn die Gegnerschaft so ausartet, daß sie einfach von objektiven Unwahrheiten nur so wimmelt. Wir müssen sachlich in der positiven Verteidigung der Anthroposophie bleiben, wenn es sich um Sachliches handelt. Aber wir müssen uns auch wirklich dazu aufschwingen können, zu begreifen, daß Anthroposophie nur bestehen kann in der Atmosphäre der Wahrhaftigkeit; daß wir daher auch ein Gefühl entwickeln müssen dafür, was es heißt, wenn so viel von Unwahrhaftigkeit, von objektiver Verleumdung demjenigen entgegengebracht wird, was sich auf anthroposophischem Felde geltend macht. Da brauchen wir wirklich inneres Leben. Und da haben wir heute reichlich Gelegenheit dazu, zu erwachen. Dann wird der Impuls des Erwachens vielleicht sich auch auf anderes ausdehnen. Aber wenn man jemanden schlafen sieht, während die Flammen der Unwahrheit überall sich geltend machen, dann braucht man sich nicht zu verwundern, wenn auch der Stichl weiterschläft.

Das also, was ich im Großen charakterisieren möchte, was ich im Kleinen heute charakterisiere, das ist: Denken Sie, empfinden Sie, meditieren Sie über das Erwachen. Manche sehnen sich heute in dieser Zeit, wo die Verleumdungen zum Fenster hereinhageln, nach allerlei Esoterik. Ja, meine lieben Freunde, die Esoterik ist da. Fassen Sie sie! Aber dasjenige, was vor allen Dingen Esoterik ist innerhalb der ganzen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, das ist der Wille zum Erwachen. Dieser Wille zum Erwachen, er muß zuerst Platz greifen innerhalb der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft. Dann wird diese sein ein Ausstrahlungspunkt für das Erwachen der ganzen gegenwärtigen Zivilisation.

Sixth Lecture

I would now like to continue the theme I have touched on over the past two days. It is a question of recognizing from the moments of development that have led to the spiritual life of the present how, on the one hand, the anthroposophical world view is becoming a necessity, and how, on the other hand, it must also be understood that this anthroposophical world view has opponents. It is understandable that at the present moment I do not wish to enter into a specific characterization of this or that opponent, but would like to deal with the subject as generally as possible, because it is not a question of focusing on this or that opposition, but because it is actually a question of the Anthroposophical Society, if it wants to exist as such, having to become aware of its position in spiritual life and contribute to consolidating itself. I am not saying anything particularly new for today, because it is only a few weeks ago that I expressly said that this consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society was a necessity.

We must be quite clear about how anthroposophy is embedded in a present-day civilization which, for Europe and America, actually only traces its history back to the time of which I have often spoken: to around the 4th century AD. This 4th century after Christ lies precisely in the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean period. I have often pointed out that the spread of Christianity, the whole conception of Christianity in the very first three to four Christian centuries was significantly different than later.

We often think today, when we follow history backwards, that we look at modern times, go back to the Middle Ages, arrive at what is called the migration of peoples, then at the Roman Empire, then we go further back to Greek times and actually think and feel about Greek times in a similar way to how we feel about what has existed since the Roman Empire as later European history. But that is not the case at all. There is actually a deep abyss between that which still stands with a certain vividness before the consciousness of man today, namely the decline into Roman times, and that which preceded it as Greek life. Let us just sketch the matter in our minds. If we look at the Greece of Pericles or Plato or Phidias, or even the Greece of Sophocles and Aeschylus, then that which underlies this Greekness as the constitution of the soul goes back to ancient mystery culture, to ancient spirituality. And above all, this Greekism still contained much of what I characterized yesterday as a living experience of the real processes within the human being; what I called the salt process, the sulphur process, the Mercury process. We must be clear about the fact that Greek thought and feeling were close to the human being, while the later period, from the 4th century AD onwards, had already prepared the way for what then came and was shown so particularly characteristically in the three figures I have mentioned in these two days: the loss of the human being for human consciousness.

I said that personalities such as Bruno, Jakob Böhme and, to a certain extent, Lord Bacon, struggled for a realization of the human being. But it was not possible for this struggle to really reach the human being. If we go back beyond Romanism to Greekism, then this talk of the alien nature of the human being ceases to make sense, for the Greeks knew themselves to be human beings standing within the cosmos. The Greek did not have this concept of nature that arose later, this concept of nature that ultimately culminated in the concept of the mechanism of nature. One could say of the Greek: he saw the cloud, he saw the rain pouring down, he saw again in mists what comes from the earth as liquid, and he saw with a special vividness, when he looked into himself with his still concretely sharpened gaze, his blood movement. And he felt no such profound difference between the rising and falling water in nature and his own blood movement as was felt later. The Greek still grasped something of what lies in the words: the world in man, man in the world.

These are things that cannot really be taken deeply enough, for they lead into the constitution of the soul, which is only present in fragments for external history. We must not forget how in the 4th century AD all remnants of clairvoyant culture were thoroughly destroyed. Certainly, mankind today knows some of what was later unearthed. But we should not forget how that which later gave the impetus to Western culture arose from the debris of ancient Hellenism, that extended Hellenism which was not only in Southern Europe, but which extended as far as Asia. We should not forget that in the period between the middle of the 4th and the middle of the 5th century countless temples were burning, which had tremendously meaningful, pictorial content, precious content in relation to everything that Hellenism had developed. Today's humanity, which only looks at external documents, no longer sees all this. We must remember the words of a writer of that time who wrote in a letter: "The old age is coming to an end. All the individual shrines that can be found in the individual fields, for the sake of which the farmers work in their fields, will be destroyed. Where will the people working in the fields find joy in their work?

Today it is impossible to imagine how much was destroyed in those centuries from the middle of the 4th to the middle of the 5th century. The destruction of the external monuments went hand in hand with the endeavor to eradicate Greek intellectual life, which was carried out in its harshest blow with the closure of the school of philosophy in Athens in 529. Yes, just as one can look back to Romanity, one cannot look back to Greekity in external history. And it is certainly true that infinite things in Western civilization throughout the Middle Ages and up to modern times are due, for example, to the Benedictine order. But St. Benedict first destroyed the pagan sanctuaries at the place where he founded the mother monastery for the Benedictine order. All this had to disappear first and has disappeared.

It is indeed difficult to understand, if one applies normal human feelings, so to speak, how such an impulse of destruction could have spread throughout southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It only becomes understandable when one realizes that the whole consciousness of mankind at that time became different, that in fact, as I have often said, the saying that nature or the world in general does not make leaps is quite incorrect. Such leaps take place in history. And the constitution of the soul of civilized humanity in the 2nd, 3rd century of the post-Christian era was something quite different from what has since become the constitution of the soul.

But now I would like to draw your attention to something that can illustrate to you in particular how this turnaround actually is. Today, when we speak of the alternating states of waking and sleeping, we must say: The physical body and the etheric body remain lying in bed, and the ego and the astral body go out; the soul-spiritual goes out of the physical and etheric body. - This would not have been said in a certain time of ancient Indianism, the reverse would have been said. In sleep, it would have been said, the spiritual-soul of the human being goes deeper into the physical body, goes down more into the physical body. - In other words, the exact opposite.

Very little attention is paid to this. I only want to draw attention to the fact that when, for example, the Theosophical Society was founded, the people who founded it heard some spiritual truths from the Indians and made what they heard their own. There they heard this very thing about the ego and the astral body coming out. Certainly, the Indians said this at that time, in the 19th century of course they said it, because in India you can often observe what is real. But when people from the Theosophical Society, for example, say that this was also ancient Indian wisdom, that is nonsense, because the ancient Indians said precisely the opposite: the soul-spiritual goes deeper into the physical body when a person is asleep. And that was also the case in older times. And in a certain sense, the Greeks were still aware of the fact that in sleep the spiritual-mental takes hold of the physical body more than is the case when we are awake, because this lies in the development of humanity.

We must rightly say today, because we have to describe from our direct spiritual perception, that the ancient sages and also the Greek population had an instinctive clairvoyance that was dreamlike. We describe this from our point of view. For the people back then, however, it was not dreamlike. They just felt themselves awakening in this state of clairvoyance. It was just a greater intensity of their consciousness when they perceived the world in powerful images, as I described yesterday. But at the same time they knew that they were penetrating into the interior of their human being and seeing what was going on in the human being and knew, because the human being was in the world, that these were world processes. And then they knew: In sleep the human being dives even deeper into his physical body. And in deep sleep this consciousness became dull, dim, unconscious. And people attributed this to the influence of the physical body, which surrounds the soul and actually leads it into sinfulness. And it was precisely from this view that the old consciousness of sin arose. This consciousness of sin actually leads, if we do not take it in its Jewish form, back to paganism, and there it emerges from a consciousness of immersion in the physical body, which does not leave the soul free enough to live in the spiritual world.

But when you think through all that I am describing to you, then you will say to yourself: This older man had an awareness that he is a spiritual being, that he lives as a spiritual being in a physical body. It did not occur to him to call what he saw physically in man man. The word man actually leads back to a meaning such as “the thinker”. So it was not the one who can be seen with a more or less red or pale face, with two arms, two legs, who was the human being, but the human being who lived in this dwelling place of the physical body as a spirit-soul.

And a remnant of this consciousness of the spirit-soul man, translated into the artistic, was definitely present in the general Greek civilization - in that wonderfully plastic-artistic form of Greekness. And even if the external temple system, even if the cults were in many respects in a tremendous state of decadence, one may nevertheless say that in the destroyed images of the gods and temples there were images that pointed to that ancient state of soul. I would like to say: in the forms of what had been destroyed, the old spirit-soul consciousness of mankind was written in powerful letters.

If with the same consciousness, not in a subsequent incarnation, where the consciousness is always somewhat altered, but if with the same consciousness that he had then, a Mystery initiate of Greek antiquity were to come to us again today and discuss these things with us, he would say: You modern people, you are all asleep! - Yes, he would say: You modern people, you are all asleep! We were awake because we were awake in our bodies, we were awake as spirit people in our bodies. We knew that we were human beings because in our body we were different from this body. What you call waking is for us sleeping, for while you are waking and directing your senses into the outer world and explaining something of the outer world, you are sleeping in relation to your human being. You are the asleep ones; we were the awake ones.

So he would say. And from a certain point of view, he would be quite right. For today it is like this: We are awake from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, as we say, when we are in our physical body as a spiritual-soul human being. But there we know nothing about ourselves, we are asleep in relation to ourselves. But when we are inside in the world that is outside of us, we sleep, namely from the time we fall asleep until we wake up. We have to learn to wake up. With the same intensity with which ancient people woke in their bodies, modern man must learn to wake outside his body when he is really inside in the outside world.

You can see from this that it is a transitional state. We have fallen asleep as humanity in relation to the old waking and are now just at the time when we are to wake up in relation to the new waking. And what does anthroposophy want to be in this respect? Anthroposophy is nothing other than this: that it first became aware that man should learn to awaken apart from himself. And now it comes and shakes modern man - whom the old man would call a sleeper - shakes modern man and he does not want to wake up.

Anthroposophy sometimes feels like Gallus next to the sleeper Stichl! Anthroposophy draws attention to the fact that the forest birds are singing. “Just let them sing”, says the present, “ham kloane Kepf, ham bald ausgschlofa” and so on. “The sky is already cracking!” “Well, let it crack, it's already old enough for that” Of course, this is not always expressed in the same words, but anthroposophy says: "The spiritual world, it wants to come in, get up! - Oh, let the light of the spirit shine, it's already old enough! - In fact, anthroposophy wants to awaken the sleeper. For that which is demanded by modern civilization is precisely an awakening. And humanity wants to sleep, wants to sleep on.

And I would like to say: in Jakob Böhme, because he went completely with the wisdom of the people, in Giordano Bruno, because he stood within a spiritual community that at that time had still preserved a great deal from ancient times, a memory of the old wakefulness lived in them. The impulse to justify the new sleep actually lives in Lord Bacon. This is the characteristic of our time, even more deeply understood than we were able to do in the previous two days. The man of the present cannot be as awake to the conception of the human being as mankind was in ancient times. For he does not penetrate deeper into his physical body, as the old man did when he slept, but comes out in his sleep. But he must also learn to come out of his physical body when he is awake, for only then will he be able to know himself as a human being again. But the urge to preserve sleep is very strong. “Stichl, the waggoners are already clomping along the road” “Ei; let them clomp along, they still have a long way to go.”

Du Bois-Reymond - not Gallus from the Christgeburtspiel, but Du Bois-Reymond - says: Man has limits of knowledge, he cannot penetrate into natural phenomena, into the secrets of natural phenomena, he must limit himself. Yes, but, says Anthroposophy, one must strive further, further and further! The impulse towards spirituality is already resounding. - Egg says Du Bois-Reymond - let it sound, it still has a long way to develop until natural science will have arrived at the end of its days on earth in the exploration of all the secrets of nature.

In many respects one finds a justification of sleep. For the talk of the limits of knowledge of nature is precisely a justification of sleep in the face of the intrusion of the human being into nature. And the present finds enough sleeping pills - this has also been mentioned here several times. Today, people may only want to listen to what can be made vivid, quite vivid, possibly even vivid with a movie. But people don't like it when something is presented where the listener has to be there with their head, with something still working inside. Because actually, one strives to let the secrets of the world be dreamed, but not to actively participate in the inner thinking. But that is precisely the way to wake up: to start by thinking, because thought wants to be developed into activity. That is why I referred to this thinking with such energy decades ago in my “Philosophy of Freedom”.

I would like to draw your attention to something, my dear friends. I would like you to remember some of the dreams you have had and I would like to ask you whether you have never had a dream in which you were really a filou, or at least did something that you would be ashamed of if you did it in daylight as you did in your dream? I think so. Well, of course, there may be many sitting here who have never had such a dream, but they can let others tell them, for there will be some who know that one sometimes dreams things that one would not like to repeat in waking life, of which one would be ashamed. Yes, now apply this to the great sleep, which we can also call the civilization sleep of the present, where people actually want to dream all the secrets of the world. Now anthroposophy comes along and says: Stichl, get up! - Now people should wake up! I can assure you that people would not do some of the things that are done in this sleeping civilization if they were awake. But you will say: Yes, who is supposed to believe that? - But the dreamer doesn't think about that either when he does his allotria in a dream, as it actually looks like when he is awake. But unconsciously this fear is present that one would not be allowed to do many things if one woke up. Of course, I don't mean this in a philistine and bourgeois way, but I do mean that many things that are considered very proper today would be viewed very differently if we were awake.

And there is a terrible fear of that. It would no longer be so easy to dissect the liver next to the brain! One would be utterly ashamed of some research methods if one had an anthroposophical awakening. How do you expect people to awaken so easily from one day to the next, especially when they are involved in such methods? One notices the apology of sleep in a strange way. Just think what enormous joy a dreamer has when he dreams something that will come true in a few days! You only have to have really noticed what enormous joy superstitious dreamers have when what they have dreamed comes true - sometimes it does - they have enormous joy. Well, the dreamers of civilization, they calculate according to Newton's law of gravitation, according to the formulas that are then further elaborated by mathematicians, that Uranus has a certain orbit. But the orbit does not match the formulas. They dream that there must be disturbances from a planet that could still be there. It is all a dream, because something like this is actually calculated without the intense impulse of inner certainty. And when it happens - Dr. Galle has really discovered Neptune: the dream has come true. This is even something that is cited today as justifying the scientific method, that, let's say, someone calculates Neptune in a dream, and then it happens. It really is like the dreamers when something happens to them. Or Mendeleev, who even calculates an element according to the periodic system. This dream is not even that difficult, because if you set up the periodic system and one is missing, if one place is empty, it is actually quite easy to put one in there and say a few properties. But it's a dream at first! If it comes true, then it follows the same method as the dreamer does when he sees that a few days later it comes true, that he gets the thing verified. Yes, the dreamer does not usually say that he gets it verified, but in scholarly language one says that one gets the thing verified.

One must first really thoroughly understand how this modern civilization has become a sleeping civilization and how an awakening is necessary for humanity. Then, however, the tendencies of sleep in the present must be clearly seen through by those who have an urge for a spiritual science. Those moments must occur which often occur in the dreamer when he knows himself to be a dreamer, when he knows: I am dreaming. And so mankind today should have a special feeling for such a strong word - I have often referred to this word - as once uttered by the so energetic philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The world that is spread out before man is a dream, and that which man thinks about it is a dream of a dream.

Only one must not fall into something like that again, which would be similar to a Schopenhauerian philosophy. For one gains little from it as a human being if one only draws attention to the fact that everything is a dream. This is not the task of recognizing that one is dreaming - many contemporary people would like to prove quite clearly that one is dreaming, and that man can do nothing at all but dream, for if he ever reaches the limit of these dreams, then the thing itself is over there, and there is no way to reach it. Eduard von Hartmann, the otherwise excellent thinker, has often spoken interestingly of these dreams in relation to what is reality. He makes it clear that man actually dreams everything he is conscious of; but how everything is based on an “in itself” of which man knows nothing. Thus Hartmann, who took things to an extreme, speaks, for example, of the table in itself, in contrast to the table we have in front of us: the table we have in front of us is a dream, and behind it is the table in itself. Indeed, Hartmann distinguishes between the table as an appearance and the table in itself, between the armchair as an appearance and the armchair in itself. But he is not at all aware that the armchair on which he sits has something to do with the armchair itself, for it is not possible to sit well on the armchair as an apparition, on the dreamed armchair, just as the dreamer must lie in a real bed. But the whole argument that the world is a dream can only be a preparation for something else. To what? Well, to awakening, my dear friends! It is not a question of our realizing that the world is a dream, but of our doing something to awaken as soon as we suspect that the world is a dream! And awakening begins with the energetic grasping of thought, with active thinking. And then you get into everything else.

You see, what I have just characterized, this impulse of awakening, is a necessary impulse for the present. Certainly, that which emerges as anthroposophy can be placed in the world. But if an anthroposophical society wants to be a society, then this society must be a reality. Then the individual who lives in the Anthroposophical Society must experience this Anthroposophical Society as a reality. And he must be deeply imbued with this will to awaken, and not, as is often the case, immediately regard it as an insult when someone says to him: Stichl, get up! - That is necessary. And that is what I would like to repeat in just a few words.

The misfortune that has affected us should first and foremost be a wake-up call to do something about the Anthroposophical Society so that it becomes a reality. This real being is what we have felt since the time I characterized here a few days ago at the end of the Christmas Course. The living current from person to person within the Anthroposophical Society must be there. A certain lack of love has so often taken the place of mutual trust in the latest phase of the Anthroposophical Society, and if this lack of love continues to get out of hand, then the Anthroposophical Society will have to disintegrate.

You see, the building has brought many extraordinarily beautiful qualities of the Anthroposophists to the surface; but parallel to this there should have been a lively regeneration of the Society itself. Many beautiful qualities were quite rightly mentioned at the end of our course the other day, qualities that emerged during the construction, emerged during the night of the fire. But these qualities need leadership, but above all they also need that everyone who has something to do, who has something to do within society, does not bring into society what is common practice today, but that above all everyone does everything he has to do for society with real personal interest and involvement. And this personal interest and this personal contribution is unfortunately lacking precisely where individuals do one thing or another for society.

There is no small service that can be done for society, that is, by one person for another person in society. The least becomes valuable because it is in the service of a great. But this is something that is so often forgotten. Society must see it with the greatest, highest satisfaction when a tremendous misfortune calls for the exercise of the most beautiful qualities. But it should not be forgotten how, for many, diligence and perseverance, but especially interest and personal involvement in what is incumbent upon them, are so easily slackened in their everyday activities, and how many things that one sets out to do one day are so quickly forgotten. That is why I wanted to emphasize the greatness of the opposition in which anthroposophy finds itself in relation to the world, because it is always overlooked how the opposition is to be assessed.

The fact that there is opposition in a factual respect must be understood, it must be understood from the objective course of the world. Sometimes, however, I am astonished - and I have said so publicly - at how little inner sympathy there is when the opposition degenerates to such an extent that it is simply teeming with objective untruths. We must remain objective in our positive defense of anthroposophy when it comes to factual matters. But we must also really be able to rise to the realization that anthroposophy can only exist in an atmosphere of truthfulness; that we must therefore also develop a feeling for what it means when so much untruthfulness, so much objective slander is directed at what is asserted in the anthroposophical field. We really need inner life. And today we have ample opportunity to awaken. Then perhaps the impulse of awakening will also extend to other things. But if you see someone sleeping while the flames of untruth are asserting themselves everywhere, then you need not be surprised if they continue to sleep.

So what I would like to characterize on a large scale, what I characterize on a small scale today, is: think, feel, meditate on awakening. Some people long for all kinds of esotericism in these times, when slander hails from the window. Yes, my dear friends, esotericism is here. Grasp it! But that which is above all esoteric within the whole Anthroposophical Society is the will to awaken. This will to awaken must first take hold within the Anthroposophical Society. Then it will be a radiating point for the awakening of the whole present civilization.