Spiritual Scientific Notes on Goethe's Faust, Vol. II
GA 273
28 September 1918, Dornach
8. Spiritual Science Considered with the Classical Walpurgis-Night
What yesterday I particularly wanted to make clear in connection with Goethe's is “Faust” was that more goes to the making of man's being than can be known or fathomed either by the understanding or by other forces of the human soul. Goethe himself felt deeply that the spiritual forces,that can be developed today in man's conscious life, cannot go so far as man by nature reaches. Those who believe that what is today called science needs only to be extended in order to know, to a certain measure, the possible and the impossible, simply say: It is true that, with what science offers today, one gains only a very limited knowledge of man. But this science will be widened, it will press on over further and further, and then we shall come increasingly near to the knowledge of man.
This is a very short-sighted outlook and is untrue. Knowledge of man does not depend upon whether the scientific outlook accepted today extends more and more widely, but to our having recourse to forces and faculties for knowledge different from any of those applied by modern science. However far modern science may advance on its own lines, what Goethe felt to be unknowable within the being of man can, in no case, ever be penetrated by it.
All science, my dear friends, all officially accepted science that deals with the spiritual, in reality relates only to earthly being—what has being on the earth-planet. What is called science today can never pronounce judgment on anything beyond the processes of the earth-planet. But man is not earthly man alone. As earth-man he has behind him the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, and within him is the germinal basis of the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions. Science can know nothing of the different planetary life-forms beyond the earthly; for the laws of science apply only to what is earthly. Man in his entirety, therefore, cannot be known by these laws; he can only be know if knowledge, be extended beyond what is earthly.
Now yesterday I pointed out how man exists in states of consciousness lying, as it were, both below and above the threshold of ordinary consciousness. Below the threshold of ordinary consciousness lies much from the regions of which dream experiences spring. But beneath this threshold of consciousness there also lies a very great deal of what a men experiences in waking, life, between waking and falling asleep. For even a little reflection will show you that men would know far more about their dreams if they exerted themselves to know a little more about waking. If they would make an effort to know something about being awake, they would find that, during this waking time, they do a great more dreaming then they suppose. The fixed and solid boundary between waking and sleeping is really only apparent. We might say that not only do men dream during their waking hours, they sleep too—sleep as regards a very great many things. As we all know, we are in a genuinely waking condition only as regards our ideas and part of our feelings, while the greater part of our life of feeling, and above all of our life of will, is wrapped in dreams and sleep. Sleep-life projects itself into waking life. We could be far clearer about dream-life, if we tried to perceive the distinction between those ideas that surge to and fro, evoking all kinds of images as they come and go, ideas that might easily be mistaken for dreams, and those other ideas, in which man is active with his whole will. Only in a small part of the whole world of human ideas does a man find that he uses his will to connect one idea with another; whereas, in his waking life, very often there are moments when he abandons himself to the flow and the caprice of his ideas. Consider how, when you give yourself up in this way to the flow of your ideas, one idea calls up another, how you recall things long forgotten. You begin with an idea which has to do with the present, and this evokes long-forgotten experiences. That is a process often not very distinct from dreaming. Because men have so little inner, technical thinking power, with which rightly to follow their daily waking life, few are able to set the right value on sleep-life and the dream-life arising from it. Nevertheless, my dear friends, we know there are scientifically conceived theories about dreams that maintain something like the following. Freud's school and others, mostly, though not all disciples of the psycho-analysts, say of dreams that they are images evoked in man by certain wishes in his life not having been fulfilled. A man goes throughout life wishing all kinds of things, but—say these people—it is undeniable that many of our wishes are not fulfilled. Then, when consciousness is dimmed, these wishes appear before the soul, and because they cannot be fulfilled in reality, they are fulfilled in idea. So that in the opinion of many people today dreams are wishes fulfilled in phantasy. I should like the people who maintain this just to consider how they manage to dream they have been beheaded. All such things, so often today forming the content of theories, are terribly one-sided. And men's heads are bound to be full of this one-sidedness unless they turn to the investigations of Spiritual Science—investigations into worlds unknown both to the external world of the senses and to external intellectual thinking, and yielding conclusions beyond the grasp of human senses or human intellect.
From what was said yesterday, however, you can gather one thing concerning dreams with the utmost surety, namely, that in them something is living and weaving which is connected with our human past, with the past when we had an existence still associated with earth-fire and water-air. While unconscious in sleep, to a certain extent we call back our past. Today with our brain consciousness and our ordinary free-will, we are not in the position consciously to transport ourselves into that world. While passing through the earlier stages of our evolution we were indeed unconscious or subconscious. Yet relatively it is not particularly difficult to have this experience. If you follow up your dream life, you will certainly find it extraordinarily difficult to give a clear interpretation of your dream pictures. The way they follow one after another is generally completely chaotic. But this chaotic character is only superficial; below the surface man is living in an element that is by no means chaotic, it is merely different, totally different, from the experiences of waking life. We shall immediately see the profound difference if we are clear in just one case as to how far dream-life differs from waking life. It would be very unpleasant if our relations with other people were the same in waking life as they are in dreams. For in dreams we are aware of a bond uniting us with almost all those karmically connected with us; we experience a link with all the human beings with whom we have any karmic connection. From the moment you begin to fall asleep till you wake, a force goes forth from you to innumerable people, and from innumerable people forces come to you. I cannot say that you speak, for speaking is only learnt in waking day life, but if you will not misunderstand me, if you will apply what I am going to say to the communications we have in sleep, then you will know what I mean by saying: In sleep you speak to innumerable people and they speak to you. And what you experience in your soul during your sleep is imparted to you by innumerable people; and what you do during your sleep is to send thoughts to innumerable people. The union between men in sleep is very intimate. It would be highly distressing if this were continued into waking life. You see, it is the beneficent act of the Guardian of the Threshold that he hides from man what is beneath the level of human consciousness. In sleep, as a rule, you know if anyone is lying, you know as a rule if anyone has evil thoughts about you. On the whole, men know one another in sleep comparatively well, but with dimmed consciousness. That is all covered up in waking consciousness, and it must be so, for the simple reason that man would never attain the ego-conscious thinking he is to learn during his earth-mission, nor be able to manage the free will he is to acquire, if he were to continue to live as he lived during the periods of Saturn, Sun, and especially the Moon period. Then, in his external life, he lived as he now lives from falling asleep to waking.
But now we come to something else significant. Out of the unconscious life between falling asleep and waking, dreams emerge. Why then are they not a true picture of life below the threshold of consciousness? Ah! were these dreams direct and true reflections, they would be every possible thing. In the first place they would impart significant knowledge concerning our relation to the world and to men; they would also be stern monitors. They would speak dreadfully severely to our conscience about the various things in life about which we are so willing to give ourselves up to illusion. I might almost say that we are protected from the effect these dreams might have upon us if they were true reflections of life below the threshold of consciousness—we are protected by our waking life permeating us with forces so strongly that a shadow is cast over the whole life of dreams. Thus, we carry the ideas, the images, of waking life into our dream-life, into the life of sleep, and through this dreams arise. Suppose, for instance, you were to dream of some personality who took it upon himself to impress upon you that you had done something really tactless—unfitting. That happens sometimes. Others, too, might admonish us during sleep, and might speak to our conscience. The experiences and customs of waking life have given you the wish—I might even say the strong desire—not to listen to this; during sleep you don't want to hear anything this person says to you. Well then, the wish is transformed into a darkening of experience. But if at the same time, there is such intense activity of the soul that the picture surges up, then something else from waking life is superimposed upon what you were to have experienced as a picture, something said by a kind friend to whom you would rather listen than to the admonisher—What a splendid fellow you are, always ready to will and do what is best and most pleasant!—Sometimes, from waking life and its reminiscences, the very opposite can be hung over what is being experienced. Actually, waking life is the cause of all the illusions and deceptions arising during the life of dreams.
Furthermore it is possible for a man today, in the present cycle of evolution, to come to a knowledge of Spiritual Science. There are, I know, many who do so and say: I have been studying Spiritual Science for many years, and yet am no whit advanced. I am told that I can achieve this or that through Spiritual Science, but it does not help me forward.—I have often emphasized that this thought is not the right one. Spiritual Science brings progress to everyone, even when it does not develop an esoteric life. The thoughts of Spiritual Science on themselves bring progress. But we must be careful about subjective experiences that take place really in the soul, for it is strange that what springs up as new, in the path of anyone beginning to study Spiritual Science, in its picture character is, at first, no different from the world of dreams. What we experience, my dear friends, when we become anthroposophists, appears to differ very little from the world of dreams. But a more subtle differentiation shows a most important distinction between ordinary dreams and those perceptions that flow through spiritual life, when consciously admitted into thought.
Much that is chaotic may also appear in the dream-pictures experienced in the soul of a spiritual scientist. But if these pictures are analysed according to the guidance Spiritual Science can give, they will be found to become, especially as they progress ever truer reflections of man's inner experience. And we must pay heed to this layer of experience, hidden as it is from ordinary understanding and from the ordinary life of the senses. This experience runs its course like a meditation, a meditative dream, yet is full of meaning and, rightly regarded, throws much light on spiritual secrets. We must mark how it gradually creeps into the life of ordinary ideas—this layer of life that closely resembles dreams, but that can lead us into the spiritual world. But we must not merely look at its single pictures, we must look at the meaningful course these pictures take. If we pay attention to such things, we come to the differentiation of the three layers of consciousness which I showed you yesterday. Goethe divined it in a beautiful way. One of these layers of consciousness appears, without any help of ours, when we dream in the ordinary way; if we are not interpreters of dreams, if we are not superstitious but try honestly to find what lies behind the dream-pictures, then this dream-world will be able to reveal that, before these earth-lives, as men we passed through earlier stages of evolution.
And then we have the ordinary waking day consciousness we know, or at least think we know. We know the fact of its existence, we do not always venture to explain it fully but we know it exists.
The third layer is where supersensible knowledge enters in. For the reasons already mentioned, supersensible knowledge is of course something for which man has to strive, both now and into the future.
I pointed out to you yesterday how, in the first half of the scene in the scene in the second part of Faust, which we are now to consider, Goethe embodies the characteristic features of dream-life. And the moment the Oread begins to speak to Mephistopheles, and the philosophers appear, we have to do with the world of ordinary daytime reality. The moment the Dryads point out the Phorkyads to Mephistopheles, we are dealing with a reference to conscious supersensible knowledge. Goethe is directing his thoughts and ideas to the three layers of consciousness when he asks himself the question: How will Homunculus, to whom human knowledge is accessible, become a Homo?—Not through the ordinary knowledge of the understanding of the senses, but only by having recourse to other layers of consciousness. For man in his being is wider than the earth, and intelligence and the senses are adapted only to earthly things. But we explained yesterday how the equilibrium of the Sphinx fails when man plunges into the world of antiquity, how man really feels insecure in it, how Homunculus feels himself insecure. For man knows little more about himself—forgive me but this is true—he knows little more about himself than he does about a Homunculus; and about a Homo he knows nothing. And Homunculus, as Goethe pictures him, does not enter into all the whirl of the Sirens, the Seismos, and so on, because he is afraid of the stormy, surging element into which man dives when he forsakes the world of the senses to enter the world from which dreams arise. Homunculus does not dare to enter there, but wants to find an easier way to become Homo. He is on the track of two philosophers, Anaxagoras and Thales, from whom he hopes to learn how it is possible to put more into his human nature that can't be given him in a laboratoryby a Wagner. This is what he wants. We already know that Goethe had little hope of what could be experienced through the new philosophers, and had no wish at all to test people's patience by, perhaps, taking Homunculus to Königsberg to get information from Kant on how to become a complete human being, how to widen human nature. But Goethe sought to live himself into the world of the Greeks, believing that by so living in their more pliable and flexible ideas, he could grasp human life out of another layer of consciousness better than through what the more recent philosophers could produce out of understanding and the consciousness of the senses. Thus, he does not introduce Homunculus into the society of Kant, or of Leibnitz, Hume or Locke, but brings him into the company of those philosophers who came nearer the older outlook, the outlook of the ancient Mysteries, where something of man's nature could be known, if not with such clearly experienced consciousness as today, yet with a more all-embracing consciousness. But, at heart, Anaxagoras and Thales our only imitators of the old Mystery wisdom. Everything said by Anaxagoras in this scene, however, goes to show that it is he who has the more knowledge of ancient Mystery wisdom. Thales is really the inaugurator, the initiator, the beginner, of the new tendency in science, and knows but little of the old secrets. Naturally he knows more than his later philistine followers because he lived nearer the time of the ancient Mysteries, but he knows less than Anaxagoras. From what he says we can gather that Thales can only give information about what occurs in the world of the senses around him, how mountain ranges and such physical features were formed by slow and gradual processes. You might think it was Lyell, the modern geologist, speaking. Anaxagoras would explain the present out of the past, explain the earthly from what went before, when earth was not yet earth. He wants to find his explanation in those times to which, in their nature, the ants, the comets, and also the Pigmies belonged. I referred to this yesterday. Anaxagoras lives entirely in that world which today is a supersensible, or if you like, subsensible world, without knowledge of which, however, we cannot understand what has to do with the senses. Anaxagoras here reflects one of Goethe's deep convictions. For Goethe has put this point beautifully into one of his aphorisms, where he says: “What no longer arises, we cannot think of as arising. What has already arisen, we cannot understand”. And in another place: “Reason as applied to what is becoming, understanding to what has become”.
What Thales sees around him is what has become. Anaxagoras enters into all that has gone before the becoming—the actual arising. Hence Goethe distinguishes strictly between understanding that is directed to what is nowadays regarded as the object of science, and reason that extends beyond the obvious and intellectual, to the supersensible, even the supersensible that held sway before the existing conditions of the earth. In Anaxagoras, Goethe sees the representative of a knowledge, a science, that devotes itself to what is still coming into being, and is at home and all that is done by Pigmies, that is to say, at home in all that such beings do that certainly today develop a physical existence, but like the emmets, for example, really belonged by nature to a previous age.
So when Anaxagoras meets with Homunculus' request, he would like to give him the opportunity to enrich human nature through his own (Anaxagoras') knowledge; he wants to take Homunculus into the world of the Pigmies, the emmets, and so forth, and even wants to make him king there. It is already clear to Anaxagoras that the world of which Thales speaks, the world of present conditions, cannot be much help in changing Homunculus into Homo. Could entrance be made into the world of becoming, however, into the world preceding ours, something might be achieved towards that end. But Homunculus is undecided: “What says my Thales?” He still thinks he will not venture into that world. When he encountered it as a dream-world, he dared not enter it, and now it confronts him as the thought of Anaxagoras he still does not summon up sufficient courage, or at least he would first have Thales' advice. And Thales deters him from plunging into the world of Anaxagoras' thought. What kind of world is this? Fundamentally, it is the world of the ancient Mysteries, but flattened, levelled down, for human understanding. It is the shadow form of the concepts of the ancient Mysteries. That is why they cannot hold their own against the world. If we have real, living concepts of becoming, we can arrive at an understanding of this world—grow into it. But Anaxagoras' shadow concepts are no match for Thales' objections, for these come from the present sense-world. And just as fleeting dreams, that are reflections of higher spiritual worlds, fade away from man when a cock crows or a door slams, so everything in the thought-world of Anaxagoras fades when it meets other thoughts drawn from the present world of the senses. Thales has only to draw attention to the presence of the sense-world, and he does this very forcibly. As the present world kills the preceding world that arises before us in dreams, so do the cranes strike dead the Pigmies and the emmets. This is merely an image. Anaxagoras first turns to the world that re-appears in the vague experience of dreams. When he is obliged to realise that this world will be of no advantage to Homunculus, he then turns to the higher world. To begin with, in wonderful words, he invokes among heavenly phenomena, all that has remained of a previous period of he earth—he invokes the Moon. After he has widened his thoughts and ideas concerning what is left over from the Moon period—emmets, pigmies, creatures of a lower kind, and all this has proved useless to Homunculus, he looks upward to where the Moon has still remained from the old Moon period.
Think how clearly in this scene Goethe actually points to all these secrets lying at the basis of earthly evolution. He even makes Anaxagoras address an invocation to the Moon, out of the ancient Mystery-wisdom. It is a wonderful passage in which Anaxagoras turns toward the Moon. It shows most distinctly how, in Anaxagoras, Goethe was wishing to portray a personality standing within the spiritual world but only with his understanding, the understanding that only studying the present can never reach the spiritual at all, but, in Anaxagoras, still preserves the spiritual out of the old Mysteries. Anaxagoras says:
“The powers subterene erstwhile adoring,
This crisis in, I turn above, imploring,
O Thou, that agest not eternally,
Three-named, three-formed, enthroned supernally,
Thee in my people's woe I call on Thee!
Diana, Luna, Hecate!
Thou bosom-lightener [or bosom-widener], deeply pensive one!
Thou tranquil brightener, mighty intensive one!
Open thy shadows' awful gulf alone!
Thine ancient might without a spell make known.”
But he has still only shadows; instead of achieving anything for Homunculus, he perceives how from the Moon desolation falls upon the earth, and how all the life still left there is destroyed by a phenomenon of the elements. As being characteristic of Anaxagoras it is significant that he addresses the Moon, this remnant of a previous period of the earth, as “Luna, Diana, Hecate ...”
For Anaxagoras, therefore, the Moon is not a unity but a trinity. In so far as it fulfils its course above in the heavens, it is Luna. In so far as it is active in the earth itself, it is Diana. The forces working cosmically through the Moon as it circles the heavens, have—one might say—for brothers and sisters the earthly forces; the Moon is not only present cosmically, it exists also in an earthly way. The same forces that are cosmically associated with the circling Moon in the heavens, also live and weave through what is earthly, and belong to significant subconscious forces in man. They work in man's nature and belong to forces in him that are subconscious but important. What works within the earth through man having a certain relation to Nature out of his subconscious, that never comes to complete consciousness, was called by the Greeks Diana. Diana is generally said to be the goddess of the chase. Certainly she is that too, because this subconscious holds sway in the pleasures of the chase; it does so, however, in countless other human feelings and will-impulses. Diana is not only goddess of the chase, she is the working, creating goddess of all half unconscious, half subconscious striving, such as is gratified in hunting. Man does much of this kind in life, and this is one of the ways.
Then there dwells in man, but also especially in the earth, a third figure, the figure of Hecate, the sub-earthly state of the Moon. It is from within the earth, from what is sub-earthly in it, that those forces work upwards, which—so far as the Moon is a heavenly body, work in her from above downwards. All that the man of today knows of this Moon is the abstract mineral ball he believes to revolve out there, round the earth in four weeks. The Greeks knew a threefold Moon—Luna, Diana, Hecate. And being a microcosm is an image of every trinity, and image of Luna, Diana, Hecate, as the threefold Moon. And we have learnt to know the threefold man. We know the man of the head; this man of the head, since he is the product of the periods of Saturn, Sun, and Moon, the product of all previous ages, can be brought into relation with the heavenly survival, with Luna. So that the head in man would, as a microcosm, correspond to the macrocosm Luna. The man of the centre, the breast, would correspond to Diana; it is in the heart that those subconscious impulses arise of which Diana is the goddess. And all that plays out of the extremity-man and is continued into the sex-man, all the dark, purely organic, bodily feelings and impulses, prevailing in the human being, come from the sub-earthly power of Hecate. And Goethe lets all this sound forth, making it all quite clear for those who wish to hear. To the realm of Hecate belongs, for instance, Empusa who appears in this scene among the Lamiae around Mephistopheles. The Lamiae express rather what belongs to Diana, whereas, in Empusa, all that belongs to the sub-earthly is working, all that dwells microcosmically in the lower nature of man, and is to be awakened in Mephistopheles. This is what Goethe makes ring out for us.
Anaxagoras wishes to show his science to better advantage than he did when alluding to the earthly, to earthly survivals, to the emmets, his myrmidons as he calls them. He turns to the threefold Moon that as macrocosm is the same as man as microcosm. And we ask: Had Goethe a presentiment that, in the threefold Moon, the head-man, chest-man, and limb-man were microcosmically present? Well, my dear friends, read the following lines:
“Thou bosom-widener, (Diana)
Profoundly pensive one, (Luna)
Thou tranquil brightener, mighty, intensive one!” (Hecate)
Here you have, fully expressed by Goethe and made obvious by his description of the middle one as “breast-widener”, the three qualities of Luna, Diana, and Hecate, in so far as these three also apply to threefold man.
You see, my dear friends, there are good grounds for maintaining that Goethe's foreseeing knowledge penetrated deeply in the truths on Spiritual Science. What, however, is written in a work like Goethe's Faust has to be taken in its true character. It when you consider Goethe's characteristic attitude with its foreseeing perception of the truths of Spiritual Science, that you can understand how in a certain sense he repeatedly felt the spiritual, the supersensible—but never the less as something uncanny. As I said yesterday, he lived within his northern world, and felt in sympathy with what this environment offered him in the way on ideas and concepts. However great a genius a man may be, he con only have the same concepts as his fellows; he can combine them differently but he cannot have different concepts. The two layers of consciousness, the subconscious and the superconscious, cannot be approached in this way. The ordinary philistine, my dear friends, can make nothing of all this, and is glad if he is not obliged to deal with the other layers of consciousness. But Goethe, who strove with every fibre of his soul, to penetrate the being of man, often felt it a grievous human limitation that he should have no ideas, no concepts, with which he could see into the would whence man arises, into which, however, no one can look with his understanding or his ordinary knowledge. And then, from all he had felt through his natural ability, or that he had experienced in other ways, and through what he had particularly noticed in Grecian art in Italy, there arose in Goethe the thought that, were man to steep himself in the ideas and life of Greece, he would come nearer to the supersensible than with modern ideas. This was so deeply rooted in Goethe that, from the year 1780 onwards he continually strove to make his ideas as supple as were those of the Greeks. He hoped in this way to reach the supersensible world. But what arose out of this? There arose his strenuous endeavour to come to knowledge of the supersensible world not from the outlook of Greek life, but by gaining ideas through which he would be able to grasp the supersensible world in the life of soul. It is interesting how, while he was writing this scene, Goethe was steeping himself in everything possible to bring Greek life vividly before his soul. Today we are no nearer to Greek life than men were in Goethe's days. And yet such a work as Schlosser's Universal Survey of the History of the Ancient World and its Culture, published in 1826, and immediately read by Goethe among many other works transplanting him into the life of Greece, enabled him, by his sympathetic attitude towards Greek life, to bring it vividly before his soul. But what idea had he in all this? Just think! he writes: We are called upon to look back on what is most universal, but utterly past, in ancient history—what cannot be brought back; and from there to let the different peoples gradually surge up beneath out gaze.
In the last twenty years of the eighteenth century during which these scenes of Faust were being created, Goethe occupied himself intensively with studies that should bring vividly before his spirit the far distant past and show him how it flows into the present. Goethe is not one of those who make poems by a turn of the hand; he plunges deeply into the world leading to the supersensible, so that as a poet he can give tidings of it. And his belief in the Greek world changed to a certain extent his way of representation. Because in his very soul he sought Greek life, the concept of truth, the concept of good, drew near the concept of beauty. And the concept of evil approached the concept of ugliness. That is difficult for present-day man to understand. In Greek thought it was different. Cosmos is a word meaning beautiful world-order, as well as true world-order. Today men no longer think, as did the Greeks, that beauty is so closely allied to truth, and ugliness to evil. For the Greeks, beauty melted into truth, ugliness into error and evil. Through his attitude to the Greek world Goethe acquired the feeling that anyone organised like the Greeks, who stood in such close relation to the supersensible world, would experience the untrue and evil as ugly, and would turn away from this because of his experience of beauty, while he would feel truth to be beautiful. This feeling was developed by Goethe. And he believed he might perhaps draw nearer the supersensible by saturating himself with feeling for the beauty of the world. But just as one can only know light by its shadow, one must also be saturated with feeling for the ugliness of the world. And that too Goethe sought.
For this reason he sets Mephistopheles, who is of course only another side of Faust's life, among the prototypes of gliness, the Phorkyads, who are in very truth the prototypes of what is hideous. And in so doing, my dear friends, Goethe touches on a great mystery of existence. You will have realised, from the lectures I have given here from time to time, that even today there are people in possession of certain secrets. Particularly the leaders of Roman Catholicism, for example, the leaders, are in possession of certain secrets. What matters is how these secrets are used. But certain initiates of the English-speaking peoples are also acquainted with mysteries. Out of a profound misunderstanding, does not only the Roman Church—that is, its leaders—keep these secrets from its adherents, but certain esoteric initiates of the English-speaking peoples do the same. They have various reasons for this, and of one of these I will now speak.
You see, my dear friends, the earth has a past, the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon; it has a present, the earth-period; it has a future, the periods of Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. In evolution there is both good and evil. Out of the cosmos, out of cosmic evolution, good can only be recognised from the past, from the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon, and half the earth-period. Wisdom and goodness are associated, in this looking back into the past. Wisdom and goodness were implanted into human nature by those members of the higher hierarchies who belong to man, at a time when this human nature was not yet awakened to full consciousness, as it is on the earth. For the coming time, the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan periods, and at present on the earth, for the coming half of the earth-period—it is already beginning—man must preserve goodness if he wishes to attain it; he must develop the impulse for goodness out of his own nature. For in his environment,in what is new that approaches him, the forces of evil are revealed. Were these forces for evil not revealed, man could not arrive at free-will. And those initiates to whom I refer know this important secret, my dear friends, and will not impart it because they do not wish to help mankind to maturity. They know this secret. If what arose as human nature on ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon, and still continues further—if what was evolved for us men on Saturn, and possesses a past, were to arise now out of earth-conditions, it would be fundamentally evil, it would only be able to absorb evil. It is only possible to receive evil from external conditions. That man can acquire freedom of will is due to this exposure to evil and his being able to choose between the evil that approaches him, and the good he can develop out of his own nature. This is if he has confidence in what was planted there in previous ages. Hence these initiates say to those wishing to be initiated: There are three layers of consciousness, (that is the formula always used in these English-speaking schools os initiation) three layers of consciousness. When a man plunges into the subconscious, from which dreams spring up, he experiences an intimate relation with other beings (I have described this to you before) also with other men; these beings do not appear in the present world. When, as is the case today, man is living in his day-consciousness in the perceptible, rational world, he is in the world where he goes through birth and death. And when he raises himself to the world—that he will enter as physical man in the future—to which he attains through supersensible knowledge, then that is the world where he first experiences evil. For it is then that a man must find strength to be a match for evil, to hold his own against it. He must learn to know evil.
The natural consequence of this is the necessity for men of the present to shed light on the past, so that they may be prepared for the inevitable encounter with evil; and this can be done only through Spiritual Science. To these three layers of consciousness, the initiates of the English-speaking peoples continually draw attention. This will be the basis of that conflict that is of the utmost importance, though the present age has little external knowledge of it. This conflict will be between those who want what is a necessity to take place, and secrets of this kind to be imparted, and those who wish to keep mankind in immaturity. So far the latter have had the upper hand. It is most important that these things should be known. You can see from this, my dear friends, what mischief will be set on foot if the truths of Spiritual Science are withheld. For man will be exposed to the forces of evil, and he will only be protected from it by giving himself up to the spiritual life of the good. To withhold the spiritual life of goodness from men is to be no friend to humanity. Whoever does this, be he Freemason or Jesuit, is no friend to humanity. For it means handing men over to the forces of evil. And there may be a purpose in doing so. This purpose may be to confine goodness to a small circle, in order by the help of this goodness to dominate the helpless humanity who are thus led by evil into the follies of life.
You can imagine, my dear friends, that anyone like Goethe, who has a presentiment of all these things, will have some hesitation in approaching them. From many things I have said in your presence about Goethe's particular kind of spirituality, you will be able to form a concept of how he would approach these subtle, but world-shattering matters with only really relevant ideas. Hence, in conceiving his Faust, he did not wish to be thought that man, wanting to make progress in culture, must fearlessly expose himself to the forces of evil; instead, he clothes this too, in Greek ideas, by confronting Mephistopheles with primeval ugliness, with the trinity of Phorkyads, the three prototypes of ugliness. Instead of pointing men unreservedly to the reality of evil, as Spiritual Science must do, Goethe points to the reality of ugliness as contrasted with beauty. Hence the characteristic behaviour of Mephistopheles towards the Phorkyads. Had Mephistopheles remained in his northern home, that is to say in a world that has certainly advanced beyond that of the Greeks in the world-order, he would have been obliged to meet with the bitter, but essential world, from which future evil flows. Instead of this, Goethe makes him meet in the world of antiquity the prototypes of ugliness, the Phorkyads. So that he places him, as it were, in prehistoric times before the history of evil. By employing Greek concepts, he places most solemn truth before men in a way that could still arouse their sympathy. And here too Goethe shows his deep knowledge of the matter. We know—you may read this in my Occult Science—that the future is in a sense the reproduction of the past on a higher level. Jupiter is a kind of repetition of the Moon; Venus of the Sun; and Vulcan of Saturn. On a higher level, the earlier appears in the later. It is the same as regards evil. Evil appears in order that man may develop goodness out of his own nature with all possible strength. But this evil will show distorted pictures, caricatures, of the forms of the primeval age.
You see, what we now are is largely because we are constructed symmetrically, the left-man and the right-man working together. Physicists and physiologists wonder why it is we have two eyes, what use we have for two eyes. If they knew why we have two hands, and of what use they are to us, they would also know why we have two eyes and of what use these are. If, for instance, we could not touch the left hand with the right, we could never arrive at ego-consciousness. By being able to grasp the right-man with the left, by gaining knowledge of the right-man by means of the left, we arrive at consciousness of ourselves, at consciousness of the presence of the ego. To look at an object a man must have more than one eye. If, by birth or accident, he has only one eye, that does not matter: it is not the external apparatus but the faculty, the forces, that are of importance. When we look at a man the axes of the eyes are crossed. In this way the ego is associated with sight; through the crossing the left direction is associated with the right. And the farther we go back the closer is the relation, in common with the consciousness. This is why Goethe gives the three Phorkyads one eye and one tooth between them, a representation that shows his deep knowledge. Thus the three have but one eye and one tooth. This implies that the senses are not meant to be working together, they are still isolated from one another. On the one hand relationship is expressed, on the other we are told that the elements are not yet working in collaboration, that what arises through the right-man and the left-man cannot yet appear. Thus accurately does Goethe express what he wishes to say, and he suggests infinitely much.
Now, if you think over what you know from Occult Science namely, that the present bi-sexual-sexual human being has sprung from the uni-sexual being, and that male and female have only been developed in the course of evolution, you will see that a retrograde evolution takes place when Mephistopheles meets with evil in the form of ugliness, joins with it in going with the Phorkyads: “Done! here stand I” (after he has thrown in his lot with the Phorkyads) ...
“Here stand I, Chaos' well-beloved son!”
Phorkyads: “And Chaos' true-born daughters, we, undoubted.”
To which Mephistopheles replies:
“O fie! Hermaphrodite must I be flouted?”
He becomes ‘hermaphrodite’ when it is intended to show the condition preceding the bi-sexual, the condition to which I have just referred. Truly Goethe gives his descriptions from inside knowledge! In this scene we may recognise how deeply he had divined and entered into the truths of Spiritual Science.
Now, remember now not long ago I said that no one can ever arrive at a satisfying conception of the world who, misled by what man is now, what he has of necessity to be, comes on the one hand to abstract ideals, ideals having no forces. (Forces such as those in nature that cannot fit into the physical world-order, but have to disperse like mist when the earth reaches her goal, that is, her grave). No one can find a satisfying world-outlook who is either an abstract idealist of this kind, or a materialist. As I said, man must be both. He must be able to rise to ideas in conformity with the age in which he lives, and also look at material things in a material way and form materialistic ideas about them. Thus, he must be able to form both a materialistic and an idealistic conception of the world, and not set up a unity with abstract concepts. Having on the one hand scientific concepts, on the other idealistic concepts, we must then let them interpenetrate each other just as spirit and matter do. As I have told you, in processes of cognition the ideal must permeate and illumine the material, the material must permeate and illumine the ideal.
And Goethe found this out. It occurred to him how one-sided it is when, in abstract concepts, men seek a world-outlook inclining more to matter or more to spirit. Hence he was drawn to seek his world-conception not in abstract ideas but in a different way. And this he describes as follows:
“Since so much of our experience does not admit of being openly expressed and directly imparted, long ago I chose this method, namely, to reveal the hidden meaning to the observant by dint of contrasted images playing into one another.”
Now, can anyone express more clearly that he is neither idealist nor realist, but both idealist and realist, letting the two world-outlooks play into one another. Goethe seeks to approach the world from the most diverse directions, and to come to truth by means of mutually reflected concepts. Thus, in Goethe's impulses there is already concealed the way that must be taken by Spiritual Science in order to lead mankind towards the future—the health-giving future.
One would like, my dear friends, what Goethe began to be continued; but then it would be essential for such works as Faust to be really read. Man has, however, more or less lost the habit of reading. At best, men would say when they read:
“Diana, Luna, Hecate!
Thou bosom widener, profoundly pensive one!”
Oh! poetry. Then there is no need to go deeper into it, no need to meditate over every word! Thus men console themselves today when offered anything they are not actually bound to believe; for they like to take things superficially. But the universe does not permit that. When you consider the deep truth I have just shown in connection with the meeting of Mephistopheles with the Phorkyads—a truth that has been preserved in many occult schools of the present day—then you have the opportunity of understanding, together with much else that enables you to realise it, the intense seriousness of our striving after Spiritual Science, the seriousness that must underlie our endeavours. It may be said that there sometimes escapes, half consciously, from those who have come into contact with what is essential for man in the future, an pious ejaculation, like Nietzsche's, in his Midnight Song: “The world is deep, Yea, deeper than the day e'er dreamed”.
We must indeed say that the day gives man day-consciousness; but, so long as he clings only to what the day brings, man of himself becomes simply Homunculus, not Homo. For “the world is deep, yea, deeper than the day e'er dreamed”. And since Goethe does not wish to lead Faust into merely what the day brings, but into all that conceals the eternal, he has to let him take his way in the company of Homunculus, and of Mephistopheles who confronts the supersensible. Goethe thought he could do this by steeping himself in Greek ideas, and by bringing them to life within himself.
Geisteswissenschaftliche Ausführungen in Anknüpfung an die «Klassische Walpurgisnacht»
Daß der Mensch in seinem Wesen umfassender ist, mehr ist, als was erkennbar ist, was durchdringbar ist mit dem Verstande und den andern Seelenkräften, die der Mensch hat, das wollte ich hauptsächlich gestern in Anknüpfung an das Goethesche Faust-Werk zunächst klarmachen. Goethe selber fühlte tief, daß man mit den Geisteskräften, die man im heutigen bewußten Leben entwickeln kann, nicht so weit gehen kann, wie der Mensch seinem Wesen nach reicht. Diejenigen, welche glauben, daß das, was man heute Wissenschaft nennt, nur erweitert zu werden brauche, um gewissermaßen das Mögliche und Unmögliche zu erkennen, sagen einfach: Nun ja, mit demjenigen, was die Wissenschaft heute bietet, kommt man allerdings nur zu einer sehr eingeschränkten Erkenntnis vom Menschen. Aber diese Wissenschaft wird sich erweitern, diese Wissenschaft wird immer mehr und mehr vordringen, und dann wird man auch immer mehr und mehr zu der Erkenntnis des Menschen kommen.
Dies ist sehr kurzsichtig gesehen, denn es ist einfach unrichtig. Nicht daran hängt es, daß die wissenschaftliche Anschauung, die man gegenwärtig als solche gelten läßt, sich immer mehr und mehr erweitert, um den Menschen zu erkennen, sondern darauf kommt es an, daß man zu andern Erkenntniskräften und Erkenntnisfähigkeiten seine Zuflucht nimmt, als sie überhaupt diese heutige Wissenschaft verwendet. Diese heutige Wissenschaft kann noch so weit kommen auf ihren Bahnen, dasjenige, was Goethe so empfand, daß es nicht erkannt werden kann innerhalb der Wesenheit des Menschen, kann mit dieser Wissenschaft in keinem Falle jemals durchdrungen werden. Denn alle Wissenschaft, die wir haben als offiziell gültige Wissenschaft, bezieht sich nur auf irdische Wesenheit, auf die Wesenheit des Erdenplaneten. Niemals kann durch dasjenige, was man heute Wissenschaft nennt, über etwas anderes entschieden werden als über die Vorgänge des Erdenplaneten. Der Mensch aber ist nicht nur Erdenmensch, sondern er hat als Erdenmensch hinter sich die Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondenentwickelung, und er hat in sich die Keimanlage zu der Jupiter-, Venus-und Vulkanentwickelung. Über diese andere planetarische Lebensform außerhalb des Irdischen kann die Wissenschaft nichts wissen, denn diejenigen Gesetze, die diese Wissenschaft hat, gelten nur für das Irdische. Den Menschen in seiner Totalität also kann man mit diesen Gesetzen nicht erkennen, weil man ihn nur erkennen kann, wenn man seine Erkenntnis über das Irdische hinausdehnt.
Nun habe ich gestern darauf hingewiesen, wie der Mensch in Bewußtseinszuständen lebt, die gewissermaßen unter der Schwelle des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins und über der Schwelle des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins liegen. Unter der Schwelle des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins liegt vieles von dem, aus dessen Regionen die Traumerlebnisse heraufsprudeln. Unter dieser Bewußtseinsschwelle liegt aber allerdings auch sehr, sehr vieles von dem, was der Mensch im wachen Tagesleben erfährt vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen. Denn eine einigermaßen hinreichende Besonnenheit kann Ihnen zeigen, daß die Menschen über den Traum viel mehr wissen würden, wenn sie sich anstrengen würden, einiges mehr zu wissen, als sie es tun, über das Wachen. Wenn die Menschen mehr sich anstrengen würden, über das Wachen etwas zu wissen, so würden sie nämlich finden, daß sie während dieses Wachens viel mehr träumen, als sie eigentlich glauben. Es ist wirklich nur scheinbar, daß eine sichere, feste Grenze besteht zwischen Wachen und Schlafen. Nicht nur träumen, kann man sagen, viele Menschen während des Wachens, sondern auch schlafen, schlafen mit Bezug auf sehr, sehr viele Dinge. Und in wahrhaft wachem Zustande sind wir nur, wie wir wissen, mit Bezug auf unsere Vorstellungen und einen Teil unserer Gefühle, während ein großer Teil des Gefühlslebens und vor allen Dingen des Willenslebens, wie wir “wissen, eigentlich immer verträumt und verschlafen wird. Das Schlafensleben ragt durchaus in das wache Leben herein. Der Mensch würde sich viel mehr aufklären können über das Traumleben, wenn er versuchen wollte, anzuschauen, welcher Unterschied besteht zwischen den Vorstellungen, die so auf und ab wogen, die gewissermaßen kommen und gehen, die alles Mögliche anrufen, und die zum Verwechseln ähnlich sind dem Traumleben, und denjenigen Vorstellungen, bei denen man mit seinem vollen Willen tätig ist. Man wird nur einen kleinen Teil der Vorstellungswelt des Menschen finden, bei dem man mit seinem vollen Willen eine Vorstellung an die andere reiht, während der Mensch gar oftmals in seinem Tagesleben auch diejenigen Augenblicke hat, wo er sich dem Vorstellungsablauf so hingibt, wie es dieser Vorstellungsablauf selber haben will. Bedenken Sie einmal, wie, wenn Sie sich so Ihrem Vorstellungsablauf hingeben, die eine Vorstellung die andere heraufruft, wie Sie sich an längst Vergangenes dadurch erinnern, daß Sie eine Gegenwartsvorstellung angeschlagen haben und diese Gegen wartsvorstellung längst vergangene Erlebnisse in Ihnen heraufruft. Das ist ein Vorgang, der oftmals nicht stark verschieden ist von dem Träumen. Weil man so wenig, ich möchte sagen, innere technische Denkkraft hat, um das wache Tagesleben richtig zu verfolgen, deshalb haben auch die wenigsten Menschen heute schon die richtige Begabung, das Schlafesleben mit dem heraufsprudelnden Traumesleben richtig zu taxieren. Erleben wir es doch, daß es sich wissenschaftlich dünkende Theorien’ gibt, die etwa das Folgende über das Traumleben behaupten. Die Freudsche und andere Schulen, gewisse Anhänger, nicht alle, der Psychoanalytiker, sagen von den Träumen, daß sie dadurch hervorgerufene Vorstellungen sind, daß dem Menschen gewisse Wünsche nicht in Erfüllung gehen im Leben. Der Mensch durchläuft das Leben, er wünscht das Allerallerverschiedenste, aber es ist unleugbar, sagen diese Leute, daß uns im Leben viele Wünsche nicht in Erfüllung gehen. Da treten, wenn das Bewußtsein herabgedämmert ist, diese Wünsche vor die Seele. Und weil der Mensch sich diese Wünsche nicht in Wirklichkeit erfüllen kann, erfüllt er sie sich im Vorstellen, so daß die Träume nach der Anschauung mancher Leute heute in der Phantasie erfüllte Wünsche sind. Ich möchte nur, daß die Menschen, die solches behaupten, einmal nachdenken würden, wie sie dazukommen, den Traum zu haben, daß sie geköpft werden! Diese Dinge alle, die heute vielfach den Inhalt von Theorien ausmachen, sind furchtbarste Einseitigkeiten. Und diese Einseitigkeiten müssen ganz notwendig die Köpfe der Menschen durchdringen, wenn die Menschen nicht an die geisteswissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen über die der äußeren Sinnenwelt und dem äußeren Verstandesdenken unbekannten Welten sich wenden, die Aufschluß geben über das, was der Mensch noch außer dem ist, was seine Sinne und sein Verstand begreifen.
Aber aus dem gestern Gesagten werden Sie eines über die Träume mit voller Bestimmtheit entnehmen können. Sie werden daraus entnehmen können, daß im Traumesleben etwas webt und lebt, was zusammenhängt mit unserer menschlichen Vergangenheit, mit jener Vergangenheit, in der wir ein Dasein hatten, das noch Bezug hatte zum Erdfeuer und zu der Wasserluft. Gewissermaßen rufen wir, während wir unbewußt im Schlafe sind, unsere Vergangenheit wiederum zurück. Wir sind heute nicht in der Lage, mit dem, was unser Gehirnbewußstsein ist, und unser gewöhnlicher freier Wille ist, uns bewußt zu versetzen in diese Welt. Wir waren auch unbewußt oder unterbewußt, als wir in früheren Stadien unsere Entwickelung durchgemacht haben. Doch es ist eine Beobachtung verhältnismäßig gar nicht so besonders schwierig zu machen. Wenn Sie Ihr Traumleben verfolgen, so werden Sie allerdings finden, daß Sie die Bilder der Träume in außerordentlich schwieriger Weise sinnvoll sich deuten können. Wie sich so ein Traumbild an das andere reiht, das hat doch zumeist einen recht chaotischen Charakter. Aber dieser chaotische Charakter ist nur an der Oberfläche. Unter dieser Oberfläche lebt der Mensch in einem Elemente, das durchaus nicht chaotisch ist, aber es ist anders, total anders, als das Erleben im wachen Tagesleben ist. Man braucht sich nur in einem Falle klarzumachen, inwiefern das Traumesleben anders ist als das wache Tagesleben, und man wird gleich den radikalen Unterschied sehen. Im wachen Tagesleben wäre es sehr unangenehm, wenn mit Bezug auf das Verhältnis zu andern Menschen auch das vorhanden wäre, was im Traume vorhanden ist. Denn im Traume erlebt der Mensch fast zu allen Menschen, mit denen er irgendwie in karmischer Beziehung steht, ein Band; er erlebt das Zusammensein mit all den Menschen, mit denen er in irgendeiner karmischen Beziehung steht. Von da an, wo Sie anfangen einzuschlafen, bis Sie wieder aufwachen, geht von Ihnen eine Kraft zu unzähligen Menschen, und von unzähligen Menschen gehen Kräfte zu Ihnen. Sie — ich kann nicht sagen — sprechen, weil man das Sprechen erst lernt im wachen Tagesleben, aber wenn Sie mich nicht mißverstehen und mit Bezug auf diejenigen Kommunikationen, die wir im Schlafe haben, das denken, was ich jetzt sage, dann werden Sie auch verstehen, wenn ich sage, im Schlafe sprechen Sie mit unzähligen Menschen, und unzählige Menschen sprechen mit Ihnen. Und was Sie in Ihrer Seele erleben während des Schlafes, sind die Mitteilungen unzähliger Menschen; und was Sie tun während des Schlafes, das ist, daß Sie Ihre Gedanken an unzählige Menschen hinsenden. Dieses Verbinden der Menschen, dieses Verbundensein der Menschen untereinander ist während des Schlafes ein sehr, sehr inniges. Es wäre im höchsten Grade peinlich, wenn während des wachen Tageslebens sich das fortsetzte. Das ist ja das Wohltätige des «Hüters der Schwelle», daß er dem Menschen das verbirgt, was unter der Schwelle seines Bewußtseins ist. Im Schlafe wissen Sie es in der Regel, wenn Sie einer anlügt; Sie wissen in der Regel, wenn einer recht böse an Sie denkt. Überhaupt die Menschen kennen einander im Schlafe verhältnismäßig recht gut, aber in einem dumpfen Bewußtsein. Das alles wird durch das wache Bewußtsein überdeckt, und es muß überdeckt werden, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil der Mensch nie zu demjenigen selbstbewußten Denken kommen würde, das er gerade durch die Erdenmission lernen soll, und auch zur Handhabung des freien Willens, den er wiederum durch die Erdenmission gewinnen soll, wenn er so fortgelebt hätte, wie er während der Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondenzeit, namentlich während der Mondenzeit gelebt hat. Da hat er auch in dem äußeren Leben so gelebt, wie er jetzt lebt vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen.
Nun kommt aber etwas anderes, das bedeutsam ist. Aus diesem Leben, das der Mensch unbewußt wirklich durchmacht vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, tauchen die Träume herauf. Warum sind die nicht ein wahres Abbild des Lebens da unten? Oh, diese Träume wären, wenn sie wahre, unmittelbare Abbilder wären, alles mögliche. Sie wären erst bedeutsame Mitteiler über unsere Beziehungen zu der Welt und zu den Menschen, sie wären auch bedeutsame Mahner. Sie würden uns ungeheuer stark ins Gewissen reden über diese oder jene Dinge, über die wir uns so gerne im Leben Illusionen hingeben. Daß wir — ich möchte schon fast sagen — nicht ausgesetzt sind dem, was die Träume mit uns beginnen würden, wenn sie wahre Abbilder des Lebens unter dem Bewußtsein wären, das kommt davon her, daß unser waches Tagesleben uns so stark mit Kräften durchdringt, daß es, ich möchte sagen, seine Schatten wirft über das ganze Traumleben hin. Und so tragen wir die Vorstellungen, die Bilder des wachen Tageslebens in das Traumesleben, respektive in das Schlafesleben hinein, und dadurch entstehen die Träume. Nehmen wir zum Beispiel an, Sie träumen, oder sollten träumen von einer Persönlichkeit, welche sich zur Aufgabe stellt, Ihnen klarzumachen, daß Sie wiederum etwas recht Ungeschicktes, etwas recht Ungehöriges getan haben. Das kommt vor. Auch andere Persönlichkeiten könnten Mahner sein, könnten uns ins Gewissen reden während des Schlafes. Sie haben aus den Erfahrungen und aus den Gewohnheiten des tagwachen Lebens den Wunsch oder die Begierde — könnte ich auch sagen —, solches Gerede nicht anzuhören. Sie wollen nichts hören von dem, was Ihnen diese Persönlichkeit während des Schlafes sagt. Gut, der Wunsch setzt sich um in eine Verdunkelung des Erlebnisses; aber wenn zu gleicher Zeit eine so rege Seelentätigkeit vorhanden ist, daß das Bild heraufsprudelt, dann legt sich Ihnen aus dem wachen Tagesleben über dasjenige, was Sie eigentlich als Bild erleben sollten, das andere, daß Ihnen irgendein guter Freund, den Sie lieber anhören als den Mahner, sagt: Ach, was bist du doch für ein außerordentlich feiner, immer nur das Beste, Netteste wollender und tuender Mensch! Gerade das Entgegengesetzte kann manchmal aus dem wachen Tagesleben und seiner Reminiszenz in Bildform hinübergehängt werden über dasjenige, was eigentlich erlebt wird. Im Grunde ist doch das wache Tagesleben die Veranlassung für alle Illusionen und Täuschungen, die während des Traumlebens entstehen.
Ein weiteres ist dieses, daß nun der Mensch heute im gegenwärtigen Entwickelungszyklus an die Geisteswissenschaft herankommen kann. Nun gibt es, ich weiß es, sehr viele, die an die Geisteswissenschaft herankommen und sagen: Jetzt befasse ich mich jahrelang mit der Geisteswissenschaft, sie bringt mich nicht vorwärts. Sie sagt mir, daß man das oder jenes durch die Geisteswissenschaft erlangen könne, aber sie bringt mich nicht vorwärts. — Ich habe es oft betont: dieser Gedanke ist kein richtiger. Geisteswissenschaft bringt, auch wenn sie nicht esoterisches Leben entfaltet, jeden Menschen vorwärts, denn die Gedanken der Geisteswissenschaft selbst sind vorwärtsbringend. Aber man muß achtgeben auf die subjektiven Erlebnisse, die sich in der Seele wirklich abspielen. Denn es ist das Eigentümliche, daß dasjenige, was neu auftritt bei jemandem, der in die Bahn der Geisteswissenschaft einmündet, sich zunächst gar nicht in bezug auf den Bildcharakter von der Traumeswelt unterscheidet. Dasjenige, was man erlebt, wenn man Geisteswissenschafter wird, sieht sehr ähnlich der übrigen Traumeswelt aus, aber bei feinerer Unterscheidung läßt sich doch ein gewaltiger Unterschied bemerken zwischen den gewöhnlichen Träumen und denjenigen Wahrnehmungen, die durch bewußt in Gedanken aufgenommenes geistiges Leben verlaufen. Auch bei den Traumesbildern, welche der Geisteswissenschafter in seiner Seele erlebt, mag manches chaotisch erscheinen. Analysiert man sie aber nach den Anleitungen, die man doch aus der Geisteswissenschaft gewinnen kann, dann wird man finden, daß sie in der Tat immer treuere und treuere Abbilder, namentlich in ihrem Verlaufe Abbilder werden des inneren Erlebens des Menschen. Und man muß schon Rücksicht nehmen auf diese dem gewöhnlichen Verstande und dem gewöhnlichen Sinnesleben verborgene Schichte des Erlebens, das so verläuft wie ein Sinnen, wie ein sinnendes Träumen, und das doch sinnvoll ist, und das, wenn man es in der richtigen Weise ins Auge faßt, aufschlußgebend ist über geistige Geheimnisse. Man muß achtgeben, wie sich allmählich, ich möchte sagen, einnistet in das gewöhnliche Vorstellungsleben dieses Leben, das sehr ähnlich den Träumen aussieht, aber gerade durch seinen sinnvollen Verlauf, wenn man nicht auf die einzelnen Bilder schaut, sondern auf den sinnvollen Verlauf der Bilder, hineingeleitend ist in die geistige Welt. Man kommt, wenn man auf solche Dinge achtgibt, durchaus zu jener Unterscheidung von drei Bewußtseinsschichten, von denen Goethe, wie ich Ihnen gestern ausführte, so schöne, ahnende Erkenntnisse hatte.
Eine Bewußtseinsschichte ist diejenige, die gewissermaßen ohne unser Zutun so auftritt, daß wir die gewöhnlichen Träume haben. Wenn wir nicht Traumdeuter sind, wenn wir nicht abergläubisch sind, sondern wenn wir versuchen, das Jenseits der Traumbilder zu suchen, dann wird uns diese Traumeswelt doch auch verraten können, daß wir als Menschen durch frühere Entwickelungsstadien gingen, als diejenigen des Erdenlebens sind.
Dann haben wir das gewöhnliche tagwachende Bewußtsein, das wir kennen oder wenigstens zu kennen glauben. Wir kennen es der Tatsache nach, die Menschen lassen sich nicht immer ein darauf, es sich voll zu erklären, aber man kennt es der Tatsache nach.
Die dritte Schichte ist das Hereinragen der wirklichen übersinnlichen Erkenntnis. Diese übersinnliche Erkenntnis ist natürlich etwas, was der Mensch der heutigen Zeit und gegen die Zukunft hin aus den Gründen anstreben muß, die wir oft genug besprochen haben.
Ich habe nun gestern gezeigt, wie Goethe in dem ersten Teile der Szene des zweiten Teils des «Faust», die für uns zunächst in Betracht kommt, das Traumleben in seiner Eigentümlichkeit verkörpert. Und von dem Momente an, wo die Oreade redet zu Mephistopheles, wo dann die Philosophen auftreten, haben wir es mit der Welt der gewöhnlichen tagwachenden Wirklichkeit zu tun. Von dem Momente an, wo die Dryade den Mephistopheles hinweist auf die Phorkyaden, haben wir es zu tun mit einem Hinweis auf bewußte übersinnliche Erkenntnis. Diese drei Schichten des Bewußtseins sind es, auf die Goethe sein Denken und sein Vorstellen richtet, indem er sich die Frage vorlegt: Wie wird aus diesem Homunkulus, der zunächst dem menschlichen Erkennen zugänglich ist, ein Homo? — Durch die gewöhnliche Wissenschaft des Verstandes und der Sinne nicht, sondern nur dadurch, daß man zu andern Schichten des Bewußtseins seine Zuflucht nimmt. Denn der Mensch ist weiter als die Erde in ihrem Sein, und der Verstand und die Sinne sind nur für Erdendinge geeignet.
Wir haben aber gestern bereits auseinandergesetzt, wie die Gleichgewichtslage der Sphinx noch fehlt, wenn der Mensch untertaucht in die Welt seiner Vorzeit, wie der Mensch sich darinnen eigentlich unsicher fühlt, der Homunkulus sich unsicher fühlt. Denn der Mensch weiß von sich — verzeihen Sie, aber es ist schon so — nicht viel mehr als von einem Homunkulus; er weiß ja nicht von einem Homo in Wirklichkeit. Und der Homunkulus wagt sich bei Goethe nicht in das Getriebe hinein der Sirenen, des Seismos und so weiter, weil er sich fürchtet vor dem wogenden, stürmischen Elemente, in das der Mensch untertaucht, wenn er die Sinneswelt verläßt, und in die Welt eintaucht, aus der sonst die Träume heraufsprudeln. Da wagt sich Homunkulus nicht hinein.
Homunkulus möchte einen bequemeren Weg zum Homo-Werden einschlagen. Er ist zwei Philosophen, dem Anaxagoras und dem Thales, auf der Spur. Er möchte von ihnen erfahren, wie man mehr in seine Menschenwesenheit hereinbringen kann, als einem so ein Wagner im Laboratorium geben kann. Das möchte er erfahren. Wir wissen schon, von neueren Philosophen versprach sich Goethe nicht, daß man so etwas erfahren kann; da will er gar nicht erst «geduldig Volk am Seile führen» und etwa den Homunkulus nach Königsberg in die Nähe Kants bringen, um Auskunft an ihn heranzubringen, wie man entstehen kann als Mensch, wie man sein Menschenwesen erweitern kann, sondern Goethe versuchte gerade, sich in die Welt der Griechen aus dem Grunde einzuleben, weil er glaubte, daß man durch Einleben in die noch biegsamen, weicheren Vorstellungen der Griechen das Menschenleben auch eher erfassen kann aus den andern Bewußstseinsschichten heraus als durch dasjenige, was die neueren Philosophen doch nur aus Verstand und Sinnesbewußisein herausholen. Und so bringt er denn den Homunkulus nicht in die Gesellschaft von Kant oder Leibniz oder Hume oder Locke, sondern er bringt ihn in die Gesellschaft von solchen Philosophen, die noch den älteren Anschauungen der Menschen, den alten Mysterienanschauungen nahegestanden haben, wo aus zwar nicht so hellen Bewußtseinserlebnissen wie heute, aber aus umfassenderem Bewußtseinserleben etwas über das Wesen des Menschen gewußt werden konnte. Aber im Grunde genommen sind Anaxagoras und Thales nur noch Nachzügler der alten Mysterienweisheit. Anaxagoras weiß noch mehr von dem alten Mysterienwissen. Das zeigt uns alles dasjenige, was Anaxagoras in der Szene vorbringt. Thales ist eigentlich der Inaugurator, der Initiator, der Anfänger der neueren wissenschaftlichen Richtung, und er weiß nur noch wenig von dem, was alte Mysteriengeheimnisse sind. Natürlich weiß er deshalb mehr, weil er doch noch nähersteht den alten Mysteriengeheimnissen als seine späteren philiströsen Nachzügler, aber er weiß weniger als der Anaxagoras. Thales, man sieht das aus seinen Reden, weiß eigentlich nur Auskunft zu geben über dasjenige, was in seiner sinnlichen Umwelt geschieht, wie sich da nach und nach — man glaubt, daß Lyell redet, der moderne Geologe — durch langsame Vorgänge Gebirge und sonstige Verhältnisse der Erde bilden. Anaxagoras will das Gegenwärtige aus dem Vergangenen erklären, das Irdische aus dem erklären, was vorgegangen ist, wie die Erde noch nicht Erde war. Anaxagoras will erklären aus jenen Zeiten heraus, welchen mit ihrem Wesen, wie ich Ihnen gestern ausgeführt habe, die Ameisen, die Imsen angehören, aber auch die Pygmäen angehören. Anaxagoras lebt ganz in dieser Welt, die heute eine übersinnliche oder meinetwillen untersinnliche ist, ohne deren Kenntnis man aber die sinnliche nicht verstehen kann. Anaxagoras gibt damit im Grunde eine tiefe Überzeugung Goethes wieder. Denn Goethe hat in einem seiner Sprüche in schöner Weise gerade über diesen Punkt sich ausgesprochen. Er hat gesagt: «Was nicht mehr entsteht, können wir uns als entstehend nicht denken. Das Entstandene begreifen wir nicht.» Und er sagt an einer andern Stelle seiner Schriften: «Die Vernunft ist auf das Werdende, der Verstand auf das Gewordene angewiesen ...»
Das Gewordene, das ist dasjenige, was Thales um sich herum sieht. Anaxagoras geht auf das Werden, das dem Gewordensein vorangegangen ist, auf das Entstehen. Goethe unterscheidet deshalb streng zwischen Verstand, der auf dasjenige gerichtet ist, was man heute Gegenstand der Wissenschaft nennt, und der Vernunft, die über das Sinnenfällige und Verstandesmäßige hinausgeht, und die auf das Übersinnliche geht, also auch auf dasjenige Übersinnliche, was sich abgespielt hat, bevor der heutige Erdenzustand gekommen ist. Es ist Anaxagoras, in dem Goethe den Repräsentanten sieht eines Wissens, einer Erkenntnis, die auf das Entstehen geht, heimisch in alldem, was die Pygmäen treiben. In alldem, was solche Wesen treiben, die zwar ein physisches Dasein in der Gegenwart entwickeln, aber ihrem Wesen nach eigentlich der Vorzeit angehören wie die Imsen und so weiter.
Und nun möchte Anaxagoras, als der Wunsch, die Bitte des Homunkulus an ihn herantritt, dem Homunkulus die Gelegenheit geben, durch sein Wissen das Menschenwesen zu bereichern. Er will den Homunkulus führen in die Welt der Pygmäen, der Imsen und so weiter, er will ihn darinnen sogar zum König machen. Das ist Anaxagoras schon klar, daß man in der Welt, von der Thales redet, die nur die Welt der gegenwärtigen Verhältnisse ist, nicht viel gewinnen kann, um vom Homunkulus zum Homo zu gelangen, aber wenn man eintritt in die Werdewelt, in die Welt, die der unseren vorangegangen ist, da könnte man etwas gewinnen, um vom Homunkulus zum Homo zu gelangen. Aber Homunkulus ist unschlüssig:
Was sagt mein Thales?
Er hat noch in sich den Gedanken des Sich-nicht-Hineinwagens in die Welt. Als sie ihm entgegengetreten ist als Traumeswelt, da wagte er sich nicht hinein. Jetzt, wo sie ihm in den Gedanken des Anaxagoras entgegentritt, wagt er sich auch nicht recht hinein, wenigstens will er noch den Rat des Thales. Und der hält ihn ab, in diese Welt der Anaxagoras-Gedanken unterzutauchen. Was ist das für eine Welt, die Welt der Anaxagoras-Gedanken? Es ist im Grunde genommen die Welt der alten Mysterien, aber abgeflacht und abgeplattet bis zur menschlichen Verständigkeit. Es sind die Schattenbegriffe aus den alten Mysterien heraus. Daher können sie nicht bestehen gegenüber der Welt. Hat man die wirklichen, lebendigen Begriffe vom Werden, dann kommt man schon zum Verständnis dieser Welt, dann ist man ihr gewachsen. Aber mit den schattenhaften Begriffen, die der Anaxagoras hat, ist Homunkulus nun den Einwänden des Thales nicht gewachsen, denn die Einwände des Thales sind aus der gegenwärtigen Sinneswelt. Und geradeso wie die flüchtigen Träume, die der Abglanz sind hoher Geisteswelten, vor dem Menschen verglimmen, wenn der Hahn kräht, oder wenn einer die Tür zuschlägt, so verglimmt überhaupt dasjenige, was da lebt wie in der Gedankenwelt des Anaxagoras sehr leicht, wenn sich die andern Gedanken geltend machen, die aus der gegenwärtigen Sinneswelt genommen sind. Thales braucht nur darauf aufmerksam zu machen, daß doch die gegenwärtige Sinneswelt da ist. Er weist in sehr kräftiger Art darauf hin. So wie die Gegenwartswelt die Vorwelt, die uns im Traume wiederersteht, totschlägt, so schlagen die Kraniche die Pygmäen und die Imsen tot. Es ist nur ein Abbild davon. Anaxagoras hat sich an die Welt zuerst gewendet, die dem Menschen wiederum in der Traumeswelt in einer unsicheren Kunde erscheint. Nachdem er es hat erleben müssen, daß aus dieser Welt heraus dem Homunkulus kein Segen erwuchs, wendet er sich nach der oberen Welt. Und er fleht zunächst an in einer wunderbaren Rede das Überbleibsel der irdischen Vorzeit unter den Himmelserscheinungen, er fleht den Mond an. Nachdem er sich zuerst verbreitet hat in seinen Ideen und Gedanken über dasjenige, was aus der Mondenzeit zurückgeblieben ist: Imsen, Pygmäen, das Untere, — nachdem ihm das mißglückt ist gegenüber dem Homunkulus, wendet er sich nach oben, wo der Mond zurückgeblieben ist aus jener alten Mondenzaeit. |
Denken Sie einmal, wie klar Goethe gerade in dieser Szene eigentlich hinweist auf alle diese Geheimnisse, die dem irdischen Werden zugrunde liegen. Er läßt nun auch noch den Anaxagoras aus der alten Mysterienweisheit sein Hinflehen zu dem Monde vornehmen. In einer wunderschönen Rede wendet sich Anaxagoras an den Mond. Diese Rede zeigt so recht, wie Goethe in Anaxagoras schildern wollte eine Persönlichkeit, die darinnensteht in der geistigen Welt, aber die in dieser geistigen Welt nur noch mit ihrem Verstande darinnensteht, jenem Verstande, der, wenn er nur das Gegenwärtige beobachtet, überhaupt an das Geistige nicht kommen kann, der aber bei Anaxagoras das Geistige aus den alten Mysterien noch bewahrt hat. Anaxagoras sagt:
Konnt’ ich bisher die Unterirdischen loben,
So wend’ ich mich in diesem Fall nach oben...
Du! droben ewig Unveraltete,
Dreinamig-Dreigestaltete,
Dich ruf’ ich an bei meines Volkes Weh,
Diana, Luna, Hekate!
Du Brusterweiternde, im Tiefsten-Sinnige,
Du Ruhig-Scheinende, Gewaltsam-Innige,
Eröffne deiner Schatten grausen Schlund,
Die alte Macht sei ohne Zauber kund!
Aber er hat nur noch die Schatten. Statt daß er etwas erreicht für Homunkulus, nimmt er wahr, wie aus dem Monde Verheerung herunterfällt auf die Erde, wie nun auch dasjenige, was noch am Leben übriggeblieben war, zerstört wird durch eine Elementarerscheinung. Bedeutsam aber ist für die Charakteristik des Anaxagoras, wie er den Mond, dieses Überbleibsel der Erdenvorzeit, anruft: «Diana, Luna, Hekate.» Für Anaxagoras ist also der Mond nicht eine Einheit, sondern eine Dreiheit. Der Mond, insoferne er am Himmel oben seine Kreise vollendet, ist Luna. Als Luna wirkt er von außen herein auf die Erde ein.
Insoferne er auf der Erde selbst tätig ist, ist er Diana. Diejenigen Kräfte, die als kosmische Kräfte wirken durch den am Himmel kreisendenMond, sie haben, ich möchte sagen, ihre Geschwister auch in irdischen Kräften. Nicht nur kosmisch ist der Mond vorhanden, sondern er ist auch irdisch vorhanden. Dieselben Kräfte, die kosmisch an den am Himmel kreisenden Mond gebunden sind, sie durchweben und durchleben auch das Irdische und gehören zu wichtigen unbewußten Kräften des Menschen. Sie wirken in der menschlichen Natur, gehören zu wichtigen unterbewußten Kräften. Dasjenige, was innerhalb der Erde wirkt, indem vom Unterbewußten herauf in dem Menschen ein gewisses Verhältnis, das nicht ganz zum Bewußtsein kommt, zur Natur waltet, das nannte der Grieche Diana. Man sagt gewöhnlich, Diana sei die Göttin der Jagd. Gewiß, das ist sie auch, weil in der Jagdlust auch dieses Unterbewußte waltet, was aber in zahlreichen andern menschlichen Gefühlen und Willensimpulsen waltet. Diana ist nicht nur die Jagdgöttin, sondern sie ist die schaffende und wirkende Göttin in alldem, was so angestrebt . wird, halb unbewußt und halb unterbewußt wie das Jagdvergnügen. Solches tut der Mensch sehr vieles im Leben. Das ist das Mittlere.
Dann lebt im Menschen aber auch und vor allen Dingen in der Erde eine dritte Gestalt, die Gestalt der Hekate, die unterirdische Gestaltung des Mondes. Auch vom Erdeninneren, vom Unterirdischen wirken herauf die Kräfte, die im Monde von oben hinunterwirken, insofern der Mond eine Himmelserscheinung ist. Der heutige Mensch kennt von diesem Mond eigentlich nur noch die abstrakte mineralische Kugel, von der er glaubt, daß sie da draußen in vier Wochen die Erde umkreist. Der Grieche kannte den dreifachen Mond: Luna, Diana, Hekate. Und indem der Mensch ein Mikrokosmos ist, ist er ein Abbild von allen möglichen Dreiheiten, also auch ein Abbild des dreifachen Mondes, von Luna, Diana, Hekate. Haben wir nicht kennengelernt den dreifachen Menschen? Wir haben kennengelernt den Hauptesmenschen, den Kopfmenschen. Der Kopfmensch kann, indem er das Ergebnis von Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondenzeit ist, das Ergebnis der Vorzeit überhaupt, in Zusammenhang gebracht werden mit dem himmlischen Reste, mit der Luna. So daß der Kopf im Menschen entsprechen würde als ein Mikrokosmos der makrokosmischen Luna. Der Mittelmensch, der Brustmensch würde der Diana entsprechen. Im Herzen entstehen auch diejenigen unterbewußten Impulse, deren Göttin die Diana ist. Und alles dasjenige, was in dem Extremitätenmenschen mit seiner Fortsetzung im Sexualmenschen spielt, das rührt her von der unterirdischen Macht der Hekate: alle die dunklen, rein organischen, leibesartigen Gefühle und Impulse, die im Menschen walten. Und Goethe läßt alles anklingen, um die Sache für den, der sie erkennen will, recht deutlich zu machen. Zum Reich der Hekate zum Beispiel gehört die Empuse, die unter den Lamien erscheint um den Mephistopheles herum in dieser Szene, neben den Lamien, bei denen das nicht so ausgesprochen ist, bei denen nur dasjenige ausgesprochen ist, was mehr zu der Diana neigt. In der Empusa wirkt aber mehr dasjenige, was im Unterirdischen des Irdischen, was mikrokosmisch in der niederen Natur des Menschen lebt und in Mephistopheles wachgerufen werden soll. Das läßt Goethe anklingen. Anaxagoras will gewissermaßen stärker geltend machen seine Wissenschaft, als er sie schon vorher geltend gemacht hat, indem er nur auf das Irdische, aber auf das zurückgebliebene Irdische hingewiesen hat, auf die Imsen, auf seine Myrmidonen, wie er sich ausdrückt. Er wendet sich an den dreifachen Mond, der makrokosmisch dasselbe ist wie mikrokosmisch der Mensch. Hatte Goethe davon eine Ahnung, daß in dem dreifachen Mond makrokosmisch-wirklich Hauptesmensch, Brustmensch, Unterleibsmensch oder Extremitätenmensch vorhanden war? Nun, lesen wir die folgenden Zeilen:
Du Brusterweiternde — Diana -,
Im Tiefsten-Sinnige — Luna -,
Du Ruhig-Scheinende, Gewaltsam-Innige — Hekate -.
Hier haben Sie die drei Prädikate von Luna, Diana, Hekate, insoferne sich diese drei Prädikate auch auf den dreigliedrigen Menschen beziehen, von Goethe voll ausgesprochen und handgreiflich gemacht dadurch, daß er das Mittlere sogar mit dem Ausdruck Brusterweiternde bezeichnet.
Sie sehen, derjenige, der behauptet, daß Goethe ahnendes Wissen tief untertauchte in geisteswissenschaftliche Wahrheiten, hat gute Gründe dazu. Nur muß dasjenige, was in einem solchen Werke steht wie Goethes «Faust», in seiner wahren Gestalt gelesen werden. Gerade wenn Sie bei Goethe dieses eigentümliche Stehen mit einem ahnenden Erkennen in dem Geisteswissenschaftlichen in Erwägung ziehen, dann werden Sie es begreiflich finden, wie Goethe, ich möchte sagen, in einer gewissen Beziehung immer wieder und wiederum das Geistige, das Übersinnliche als etwas doch Unheimliches empfand. Er stand in seiner nordischen Welt einmal darinnen, wie ich gestern gesagt habe, und fühlte mit dem, was diese Umwelt an Begriffen, an Vorstellungen darbietet. Wenn man das größte Genie ist - man kann nur dieselben Begriffe haben wie die andern. Man kann sie anders verbinden, aber man kann nur dieselben Begriffe haben. Da kommt man den andern zwei Schichten des Bewußtseins nicht bei: dem Untersinnlichen und dem Übersinnlichen; man kommt ihnen nicht bei. Der gewöhnliche Philister macht sich nichts daraus, ist froh, wenn er nicht beizukommen braucht den andern Schichten des Bewußtseins. Aber Goethe, der mit allen Fasern seiner Seele danach strebte, menschliches Wesen zu durchdringen, empfand es oftmals als etwas recht, recht sehr die menschliche Natur Einschränkendes, daß er keine Vorstellungen, keine Begriffe hatte, um hineinzuschauen in diejenige Welt, aus welcher der Mensch doch auftaucht, und in die er mit seinem Verstand und mit seiner gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft nicht hineinschauen kann. Und da entstand in Goethe aus alldem, was er durch natürliche Anlagen gefühlt hat, was ihm auch sonst zugänglich war, oder was er namentlich in Italien beobachtet hatte an der griechischen Kunst, der Gedanke: Wenn man sich erfüllt mit griechischen Vorstellungen, griechischem Leben, dann kommt man näher dem Übersinnlichen als mit den modernen Vorstellungen. — Und es war das so tief gewurzelt bei Goethe, daß er seit den achtziger Jahren des 18. Jahrhunderts immer danach strebte, seine Vorstellungen so biegsam zu machen, wie die Vorstellungen der Griechen waren. Er hoffte dadurch beizukommen der übersinnlichen Welt. Was aber war damit verbunden? Damit war verbunden, daß er in der Tat große Anstrengungen machte, nicht um durch die Anschauung des griechischen Lebens die übersinnliche Welt zu erkennen, aber um Vorstellungen zu gewinnen, um die übersinnliche Welt in das Seelenleben herein fassen zu können. Es ist interessant, wie Goethe, gerade als er an diesen Szenen geschrieben hat, sich vertieft hat in alles mögliche, um das griechische Leben vor seiner Seele lebendig erstehen zu lassen. Heute ist man nicht näher dem griechischen Leben, als man zu Goethes Zeiten war. Und Goethe fand immerhin an einem Werke, wie zum Beispiel Schlossers «Universalhistorische Übersicht der Geschichte der alten Welt und ihrer Kultur», das 1826 erschienen ist und das Goethe gleich gelesen hat neben vielen andern Werken, die ihn in das griechische Leben versetzten, er fand immerhin die Möglichkeit, indem er sich kongenialisch verhalten wollte zum griechischen Leben, das griechische Leben in seiner Seele lebendig zu machen. Aber mit welchen Gedanken versuchte er das? Denken Sie, da schreibt er: Es fordert uns auf, in das Allgemeinste, Vergangenste, Nichtheranzubringende der Urgeschichte unser Schauen hinzuwenden und von da an die Völkerschaften nach und nach zu unserem Blick heranquellen zu lassen.
Goethe beschäftigt sich schon in den letzten zwanziger Jahren, in denen gerade diese Szenen seines «Faust» entstehen, intensiv mit solchen Studien, die das Längstvergangene vor seinem Geiste lebendig machen und ihm zeigen, wie es heranquillt in die Gegenwart. Goethe ist kein solcher Dichter wie viele andere, die gewissermaßen aus dem Handgelenk heraus dichten, sondern er ist ein Dichter, der untertauchen will in diejenige Welt, die ihn in das Übersinnliche führt, damit er als Dichter Kunde bringen könne von diesem Übersinnlichen. Und weil er an die griechische Welt glaubte, so verwandelte sich für ihn in einer gewissen Beziehung die Vorstellung. Der Wahrheitsbegriff und der Begriff der Güte rückten für ihn, weil er griechisches Leben suchte in der Seele, dem Schönheitsbegriff nahe. Und der Begriff des Bösen rückte dem Häßlichkeitsbegriff nahe. Das ist für die heutige Menschheit schon schwer verständlich. Im griechischen Denken war das anders. Kosmos ist ein Wort, das auch ebensogut die schöne Weltenordnung wie die wahre Weltenordnung bedeutet. Die heutige Menschheit denkt nicht mehr so nahegerückt die Schönheit an die Wahrheit und die Häßlichkeit an das Böse, wie der Grieche das tat. Dem Griechen verschmolzen sich noch Schönheit mit Wahrheit, Häßlichkeit mit Irrtum und mit dem Bösen. Und Goethe bekam durch sein Verhältnis zum Griechentum gewissermaßen die Empfindung, wer so organisiert ist, wie die Griechen waren, die der übersinnlichen Welt noch näherstanden, empfindet das Unwahre und das Böse als häßlich, wendet sich aus Schönheitsgefühl davon ab, und die Wahrheit empfindet er als schön. Diese Empfindung bildete Goethe aus. Und er glaubte, er komme vielleicht dem Übersinnlichen näher, wenn er sich durchdringe mit einer Empfindung für die Schönheit der Welt. Dann aber, wie man das Licht nur an seinen Schatten kennenlernen kann, muß man sich auch durchdringen mit einer Empfindung für die Häßlichkeit der Welt. Das suchte Goerhe.
Aus diesem Grunde bringt er den Mephistopheles, der ja nur eine andere Seite des Faust-Lebens ist, in die Nähe der Urbilder der Häßlichkeit, der Phorkyaden, welche die Urbilder der Häßlichkeit sind. Damit rührt Goethe an ein großes Geheimnis des Daseins. Sie werden aus meinen Vorträgen, die ich im Verlauf der Zeit hier an diesem Orte gehalten habe, ersehen haben, daß schon auch in der Gegenwart gewisse Leute im Besitze gewisser Geheimnisse sind. Vor allen Dingen ist zum Beispiel die Führerschaft des römischen Katholizismus — die Führerschaft - im Besitze gewisser Geheimnisse. Es kommt dabei darauf an, wie man diese Geheimnisse anwendet. Aber auch gewisse Eingeweihte der englisch sprechenden Bevölkerung sind im Besitze gewisser Geheimnisse. Aus einem gründlichen Mißverständnis heraus bewahren nicht nur die römisch-katholische Kirche - die Führer - vor ihren Gläubigen diese Geheimnisse, sondern auch gewisse esoterisch Eingeweihte der englisch sprechenden Bevölkerung. Die haben nun verschiedene Gründe, und von einem der Gründe will ich nun sprechen.
Die Erde hat eine Vergangenheit: Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondenzeit; eine Gegenwart: Erdenzeit; eine Zukunft: Jupiter-, Venus-, Vulkanzeit. Es gibt in der Entwickelung ein Gutes und ein Böses. Aus dem Kosmos, aus der kosmischen Entwickelung ist das Gute nur zu erkennen aus der Vergangenheit, aus der Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondenzeit und aus der halben Erdenzeit. Weisheit und das Gute hängen mit dem Rückblick in die Vergangenheit zusammen. Weisheit und das Gute impfen jene Mitglieder der höheren Hierarchien, die zu den Menschen gehören, in der Zeit der menschlichen Natur ein, in welcher diese menschliche Natur noch nicht so wie auf der Erde zum vollen Bewußtsein erwacht ist. Für die folgende Zeit, für die Jupiter-, Venus-, Vulkanzeit und auch für die jetzige Erdenzeit schon - es beginnt schon -, für die halbe Erdenzeit noch muß der Mensch bewahren das Gute, wenn er zum Guten gelangen will, muß die Impulse dieses Guten aus seiner Natur heraus entwickeln, denn es offenbaren sich aus dem Umkreise, aus dem, was neu herantritt, die Kräfte des Bösen. Ohne daß sich diese Kräfte des Bösen offenbaren würden, würde der Mensch nicht zum freien Willen kommen. Und diejenigen Eingeweihten, die ich meine, wissen dieses bedeutsame Geheimnis und wollen es, weil sie die Menschheit nicht reif machen wollen, der Menschheit nicht mitteilen. Sie wissen dieses Geheimnis. Wenn dasselbe, was als Menschennatur auf dem alten Saturn entstanden ist, durch Saturn, Sonne und Mond sich entwickelt hat und nun weitergeht, wenn dieses selbe, was für uns Menschen sich auf dem Saturn entwickelt hat und eine Vergangenheit hat, jetzt entstehen würde aus den Bedingungen der Erde heraus, so würde es ein radikal Böses werden, würde es nur das Böse aufnehmen können. Aus den äußeren Bedingungen ergibt sich nur die Möglichkeit, das Böse aufzunehmen. Diesem dem Bösen Ausgesetztsein verdankt es der Mensch, daß er zum freien Willen kommen kann, daß er wählen kann zwischen dem Bösen, das an ihn herantritt, und dem Guten, das er aus seiner Natur heraus entwickeln kann, wenn er sich vertrauensvoll hingibt an dasjenige, was durch seine Vorzeit in seine Natur gelegt worden ist. Daher sagen diese Eingeweihten denjenigen, die sie auch einweihen wollen: Es gibt drei Schichten des Bewußtseins. — Das ist eine ständige Formel, die man in diesen englisch sprechenden Einweihungsschulen haben kann. Taucht der Mensch in dieses Unterbewußte hinunter, aus dem die Träume heraufquellen, dann erlebt er eine innige Verwandtschaft mit andern Wesen — ich habe Ihnen vorhin charakterisiert: auch mit andern Menschen -, die nicht heraufragen kann in die gegenwärtige Welt. Lebt der Mensch, wie es in der Gegenwart der Fall ist, mit seinem Tagesbewußtsein in der sinnenfälligen oder verständigen Welt, so ist das die Welt, in der er durch Geburt und Tod geht. Und lebt sich der Mensch hinauf in die Welt, die er als physischer Mensch betreten wird in der Zukunft, die er durch übersinnliche Erkenntnisse erringt, dann ist das die Welt, in der er zunächst das Böse erlebt. Denn gerade darinnen muß des Menschen Stärke bestehen, daß er dem Bösen gewachsen ist, daß er gegenüber dem Bösen sich aufrechterhalten kann. Er muß das Böse kennenlernen können.
Es ist natürlich die wahre Folge dieser Tatsache diese, daß die Notwendigkeit besteht für die gegenwärtige Menschheit, Licht zu verbreiten über die Vergangenheit, was nur durch Geisteswissenschaft geschehen kann, damit der Mensch gewachsen ist dem notwendigen Entgegenkommen des Bösen. Auf diese drei wird gerade bei den Eingeweihten der englisch sprechenden Bevölkerung immer wieder und wiederum hingewiesen. Darauf wird jener Kampf begründet, der da sehr, sehr bedeutsam ist, wenn auch die äußere Zeit wenig davon weiß, zwischen gewissen Leuten, die da wollen, daß das Notwendige geschehe und dem Menschen solche Geheimnisse mitgeteilt werden, und denjenigen, die den Menschen unreif lassen wollen. Bis jetzt haben noch die letzteren gesiegt. Das ist sehr wichtig, daß man diese Dinge kennt. Welches Unheil angerichtet würde, wenn geisteswissenschaftliche Wahrheiten der Welt vorenthalten würden, das können Sie daraus ersehen, denn dem Bösen wird der Mensch schon ausgesetzt. Geschützt wird er vor dem Bösen nur dadurch, daß er sich in das spirituelle Leben des Guten vertieft. Enthält man ihm das spirituelle Leben des Guten vor, dann wirkt man nicht als Menschenfreund, ganz gleichgültig ob man Mitglied irgendeines Freimaurerordens ist, oder ob man Jesuit ist, man wirkt nicht menschenfreundlich. Dann liefert man die Menschen durch die Vorenthaltung der spirituellen Weistümer dem Bösen aus. Und man kann dabei einen gewissen Zweck haben. Man kann den Zweck haben, im engen Kreise selber nur das Gute zu wissen, um mit Hilfe dieses Guten die hilflose Menschheit, die durch das Böse sich in die Lebensabsurdität hineinführt, zu beherrschen.
Sie können sich denken, daß. derjenige, der — wie Goethe — eine ahnende Erkenntnis hat von diesen Dingen, nur zögernd an diese Dinge herantritt. Sie werden eine Vorstellung haben aus mancherlei, was ich schon gesagt habe in Ihrer Gegenwart über die ganz eigentümliche Geistesart Goethes, und werden sich daraus einen Begriff bilden können, daß Goethe nur mit der Sache wirklich kongruenten Vorstellungen an diese subtilen, aber welterschütternden Dinge herantritt. Daher wollte er sich auch nicht der Vorstellung aussetzen, indem er seinen «Faust» konzipierte, geradezu aufmerksam zu machen, wie der Mensch, wenn er vorwärtsdringen will in der Kultur, furchtlos sich dem Anblick des Bösen aussetzen muß, sondern er kleidet auch das in die griechischen Vorstellungen, indem er Mephistopheles aussetzt dem Anblick der Urhäßlichkeit, dem Anblick der Trinität der drei Phorkyaden, der urhäßlichen Phorkyaden. Statt die Menschen in rückhaltloser Weise, wie es die Geisteswissenschaft muß, auf die Realität des Bösen hinzuweisen, weist Goethe auf die Realität‘der Häßlichkeit neben der Schönheit hin. Daher das eigentümliche Verhalten des Mephistopheles gegenüber den Phorkyaden. Würde Mephistopheles in seiner nordischen Heimat geblieben sein, das heißt also in einer Welt, die doch gegenüber der griechischen fortgeschritten ist in der Weltenordnung, dann würde er der bitteren, aber notwendigen Welt, aus welcher das Böse der Zukunft quillt, entgegentreten müssen. Statt dessen läßt ihn Goethe in der Welt der Antike den Urbildern der Häßlichkeit entgegentreten, den Phorkyaden. Damit stellt er ihn gewissermaßen noch in die Vorgeschichte der Geschichte des Bösen hinein. Er stellt, indem er mit griechischen Begriffen spricht, eine grundernste Wahrheit in einer den Menschen noch sympathischeren Weise vor diese Menschen hin. Und auch hier erweist sich Goethe wiederum als ein gründlicher Kenner der Sache. Wir wissen — lesen Sie das in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft» -, die Zukunft ist in einer gewissen Weise die Wiederhervorbringung des Vergangenen auf einer höheren Stufe. Jupiter in einer gewissen Weise die Wiederholung des Mondes, Venus die Wiederholung der Sonne, Vulkan die Wiederholung des Saturn. Auf einer höheren Stufe in Späterem tritt auf das Frühere. So ist es auch mit Bezug auf das Böse, das auftritt, damit der Mensch sein Gutes aus seiner eigenen Natur heraus möglichst stark entfalten kann. Aber dieses Böse, das wird Zerrbilder, Karikaturen von Bildungen der Urzeit zeigen.
So wie wir jetzt sind, sind wir vieles nur dadurch, daß wir symmetrisch gestaltet sind, daß in uns der Linksmensch und der Rechtsmensch zusammenwirken. Die Physiker und Physiologen denken immer nach, warum wir eigentlich zwei Augen haben, und was uns diese zwei Augen nützen. Wenn sie wüßten, warum wir zwei Hände haben, und was uns diese zwei Hände nützen, wüßten sie auch, warum wir zwei Augen haben, und was uns diese zwei Augen nützen. Wenn man nämlich nicht mit der rechten Hand die linke befühlen könnte, würde man nicht zum Ich-Bewußtsein kommen. Dadurch, daß wir imstande sind, mit dem rechten Menschen den linken zu umfassen, daß wir in uns selber die Erkenntnis des rechten Menschen durch den linken anstellen können, kommen wir zum Selbstbewußtsein und zum Bewußtsein, daß das Ich dabei ist. Wenn wir einen Gegenstand anschauen, ist notwendig, daß der Mensch nicht nur ein Auge hat. Wenn der Mensch durch Geburt oder Anlage oder Unglücksfall nur ein Auge hat, zufällig, so hindert das nicht, es kommt auf die Veranlagung an, auf die Kräfte, nicht auf die äußere Erscheinung. Wenn wir einen Menschen anschauen, so kreuzen sich die Augenachsen; dadurch ist das Ich verbunden mit diesem Anschauen: durch diese Kreuzung der linken Richtung mit der rechten Richtung. Und je weiter man zurückgeht, je größer wird die Verwandtschaft, desto mehr gemeinsam aber auch das Bewußtsein. Daher läßt Goethe den drei Phorkyaden ein Auge und einen Zahn gemeinschaftlich sein, eine sehr sachgemäße Darstellung. Also die drei haben ein Auge und einen Zahn. Das haben sie, weil noch nicht die Sinne zusammenwirken sollen, sondern noch isoliert dastehen sollen. Die Verwandtschaft wird dadurch auf der einen Seite ausgedrückt, und auf der andern Seite wird aber auch ausgedrückt, daß noch nicht die Elemente zusammenwirken, daß nicht eintreten kann, was zum Beispiel bei uns durch den Links- und durch den Rechtsmenschen eintritt. So präzis drückt Goethe dasjenige dus, was er ausdrücken will. Es weist das auf sehr, sehr vieles hin.
Und wenn Sie gar bedenken, wie Sie aus der «Geheimwissenschaft» wissen, daß die gegenwärtige zweigeschlechtliche Menschheit aus der eingeschlechtlichen hervorgegangen ist! Das Männliche und Weibliche hat sich erst im Laufe der Entwickelung gebildet. Eine Rückentwickelung wird stattfinden. Indem Mephistopheles dem Bösen in der Form des Häßlichen entgegentritt und sich ihm anschließt, mit den Phorkyaden geht, sagt er ja:
Da steh’ ich schon...
— nachdem er Gemeinschaft geschlossen hat mit den Phorkyaden —
Da steh ich schon,
Des Chaos vielgeliebter Sohn!
Phorkyaden:
Des Chaos Töchter sind wir unbestritten.
Und Mephistopheles:
Man schilt mich nun, o Schmach! Hermaphroditen.
Selbst Hermaphrodit wird er, indem auf diesen Umstand hingewiesen werden soll, auf den ich jetzt als den der Zweigeschlechtlichkeit vorangehenden Zustand hingewiesen habe. Ganz sachgemäß schildert wirklich Goethe. Aus dieser Szene kann man schon erkennen, wie tief Goethe ahnend in den Wahrheiten der Geisteswissenschaft darinnengestanden hat.
Und nun erinnern Sie sich einmal, daß ich vor kurzem gesagt habe: Der kann nicht zu einer irgendwie befriedigenden Weltanschauung kommen, der, verführt durch das, was der Mensch nun einmal ist und sein muß, auf der einen Seite zum Beispiel zu abstrakten Idealen kommt, die dann keine Kraft haben — wie Naturkräfte, die in der physischen Weltenordnung nicht eingreifen können, die daher wie Nebel zerstieben müssen, wenn die Erde an ihrem Ziele, das heißt bei ihrem Grabe angelangt sein soll, - der kommt zu keiner befriedigenden Weltanschauung, der entweder ein solcher abstrakter Idealist ist, oder der Materialist ist. — Man muß beides sein, habe ich gesagt. Man muß sich erheben können zu geistgemäßen Ideen, und man muß das, was materiell ist, materiell anschauen können und materialistische Vorstellungen davon bilden können. Man muß eine materialistische und eine idealistische Weltanschauung bilden können und nicht durch abstrakte Begriffe eine Einheit herstellen, sondern, indem man auf der einen Seite die naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffe hat und auf der andern Seite die idealistischen Begriffe, muß man die beiden sich ineinanderleben lassen. Wie sich Geist und Materie ineinanderleben, so muß man im Erkenntnisprozesse selbst, wie ich Ihnen sagte, das Materielle durch das Ideelle, das Ideelle durch das Materielle beleuchten und durchdringen.
Auch darauf kam Goethe. Er kam darauf, wieviel Einseitiges darInnen ist, wenn ‘die Menschen in: abstrakten Begriffen entweder eine mehr dem Stoff oder eine mehr dem Geist zugeneigte Weltanschauung suchen. Und er war daher nicht geneigt, in solchen abstrakten Begriffen eine Weltanschauung zu suchen, sondern suchte anders zu verfahren. Und dieses andere charakterisiert er so: Da sich gar manches unserer Erfahrungen nicht rund aussprechen und direkt mitteilen läßt, so habe ich seit langem das Mittel gewählt, durch einander gegenübergestellte und gleichsam in einander abspiegelnde Gebilde den geheimen Sinn den _ Aufmerkenden zu offenbaren.
Nun, wie kann man klarer ausdrücken, daß man nicht Idealist oder Realist ist, sondern Idealist und Realist, und die beiden Weltanschauungen sich ineinander spiegeln läßt! Goethe sucht, von den verschiedensten Seiten der Welt nahezukommen und durch gegenseitige Spiegelungen der Begriffe zur Wahrheit zu kommen. Es steckt also auch schon in den Goetheschen Impulsen der Weg, der eingeschlagen werden muß durch die Geisteswissenschaft, um die Menschheit der Zukunft, der heilsamen Zukunft entgegenzuführen.
Man möchte, daß in dieser Art an Goethe angeknüpft würde. Dann aber muß so etwas wie der «Faust» vor allen Dingen gelesen werden! Aber die Menschheit hat sich mehr oder weniger das Lesen abgewöhnt. Es ist so, daß die Menschen höchstens sagen, wenn da steht: Luna, Diana, Hekate, die Brusterweiternde, die im Tiefsten-Sinnige, die Ruhig-Scheinende, aber Gewaltsam-Innige - na: dichterisch. Da braucht man nicht sehr weit zu gehen, man braucht sich nicht einzulassen darauf, über jedes Wort nachzuspintisieren. Die Menschen trösten sich heute, wenn ihnen irgend etwas geboten wird, woran sie eigentlich nicht zu glauben brauchen, denn sie möchten so über die Dinge obenhin gehen. Aber das läßt die Welt nicht zu. Wenn Sie an die ernste Wahrheit denken, die ich in Anknüpfung an die Begegnung des Mephistopheles mit den Phorkyaden eben aussprechen mußte, und die doch bewahrt wird, wenn auch schlecht bewahrt wird, in manchen okkulten Schulen der Gegenwart, dann werden Sie neben vielem andern, aus dem Sie Gelegenheit haben, den großen Ernst des geisteswissenschaftlichen Strebens zu erkennen, den Ernst, der in diesem geisteswissenschaftlichen Streben liegen muß, schon verstehen lernen. Manchmal dringt, man möchte sagen, halbbewußt nur aus Menschen, die in die Nähe desjenigen kamen, was für den Menschen der Zukunft erforderlich ist, so ein Stoßseufzer herauf, wie bei Nietzsche, als er sein Mitternachtslied dichtete: «Die Welt ist tief, und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.»
Man muß schon sagen: der Tag gibt dem Menschen das Tagesbewußtsein, aber der Mensch gelangt nicht zu mehr von sich selbst als zu einem Homunkulus, nicht zu einem Homo, wenn er sich nur an das hält, was der Tag bringt. Denn die Welt ist tief, und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. Und da Goethe den Faust nicht bloß in das einführen wollte, was der Tag bringt, sondern in das, was Ewigkeiten bergen, so mußte er ihn den Weg nehmen lassen in Gemeinschaft mit dem Homunkulus und mit dem Mephistopheles, der dem Übersinnlichen entgegengeht. Dem glaubte wiederum Goethe dadurch nahezukommen, daß er sich in griechische Vorstellungen vertiefte und sie in sich belebte.
Spiritual scientific explanations in connection with the “classical Walpurgis Night”
Yesterday, in connection with Goethe's Faust, I wanted to make it clear that human beings are more comprehensive in their essence, that they are more than what can be recognized, what can be penetrated by the intellect and the other soul forces that human beings possess. Goethe himself felt deeply that the spiritual powers that can be developed in today's conscious life cannot take us as far as the human being's essence allows. Those who believe that what we call science today only needs to be expanded in order to recognize, so to speak, the possible and the impossible, simply say: Well, with what science offers today, one can only arrive at a very limited understanding of the human being. But this science will expand, this science will advance more and more, and then one will also come to an ever greater understanding of the human being.
This is a very short-sighted view, because it is simply incorrect. It is not a matter of the scientific view that is currently accepted as such expanding more and more in order to understand human beings, but rather of resorting to other powers of knowledge and abilities to gain insight than those used by science today. No matter how far today's science may advance along its paths, what Goethe felt could not be known within the essence of the human being can never be penetrated by this science. For all the science we have as officially valid science refers only to earthly beings, to the essence of the earth planet. What we call science today can never decide anything other than the processes of the Earth planet. But human beings are not only Earth beings; as Earth beings, they have behind them the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, and they have within them the germ of the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Science can know nothing about this other planetary form of life outside the earthly realm, because the laws that science has apply only to the earthly realm. Human beings in their totality cannot be understood with these laws, because they can only be understood if our knowledge is extended beyond the earthly realm.
Yesterday I pointed out how human beings live in states of consciousness that lie, as it were, below the threshold of ordinary consciousness and above the threshold of ordinary consciousness. Below the threshold of ordinary consciousness lies much of what bubbles up from the regions of dream experiences. However, below this threshold of consciousness there is also very, very much of what human beings experience in their waking daily life, from waking up to falling asleep. For a reasonably sufficient amount of reflection can show you that people would know much more about dreams if they made an effort to know a little more than they do about waking life. If people made more of an effort to learn about waking life, they would find that they dream much more during this waking state than they actually believe. It is really only apparent that there is a clear, fixed boundary between waking and sleeping. Not only can many people dream while awake, but they can also sleep, sleep in relation to very, very many things. And we are only truly awake, as we know, in relation to our ideas and part of our feelings, while a large part of our emotional life and, above all, our volitional life, as we know, is actually always dreamy and sleepy. Sleep life definitely intrudes into waking life. People would be able to learn much more about dream life if they tried to see the difference between the ideas that ebb and flow, that come and go, that evoke all kinds of things, and that are confusingly similar to dream life, and those ideas in which one is active with one's full will. One will find only a small part of the human world of ideas in which one strings one idea after another with one's full will, while in daily life one often has moments when one surrenders to the flow of ideas as this flow of ideas itself dictates. Consider how, when you surrender to your stream of imagination, one idea evokes another, how you remember things long past by forming a present idea, and this present idea evokes long-past experiences in you. This is a process that is often not very different from dreaming. Because we have so little, I would say, inner technical thinking power to properly follow our waking daily life, very few people today have the right talent to properly assess their sleep life with its bubbling dream life. We experience that there are supposedly scientific theories that claim the following about dream life. Freudian and other schools, certain followers, not all, of psychoanalysis say that dreams are caused by certain desires not being fulfilled in life. People go through life, they desire all sorts of things, but it is undeniable, say these people, that many of our desires are not fulfilled in life. When consciousness has dimmed, these desires come to the fore in the soul. And because people cannot fulfill these desires in reality, they fulfill them in their imagination, so that, according to the view of some people today, dreams are desires fulfilled in the imagination. I would just like people who claim this to think about how they come to have dreams in which they are beheaded! All these things, which today often form the content of theories, are the most terrible one-sidedness. And these one-sided views will inevitably permeate people's minds if they do not turn to spiritual scientific investigations of worlds unknown to the outer senses and outer intellectual thinking, which provide insight into what human beings are beyond what their senses and intellect can comprehend.
But from what was said yesterday, you will be able to conclude one thing about dreams with complete certainty. You will be able to conclude that something weaves and lives in dream life that is connected with our human past, with that past in which we had an existence that still had a connection with the earth fire and the water air. In a sense, while we are unconscious in sleep, we call back our past. Today, we are not able to consciously transport ourselves into this world with what our brain consciousness is and our ordinary free will. We were also unconscious or subconscious when we went through earlier stages of our development. However, it is not particularly difficult to make this observation. If you follow your dream life, you will find that it is extremely difficult to interpret the images of your dreams in a meaningful way. The way in which one dream image follows another is usually quite chaotic. But this chaotic character is only on the surface. Beneath this surface, human beings live in an element that is by no means chaotic, but it is different, totally different from the experience of waking daily life. One only needs to realize in one case how dream life differs from waking daily life, and one will immediately see the radical difference. In waking life, it would be very unpleasant if what is present in dreams were also present in our relationships with other people. For in dreams, human beings experience a bond with almost all the people with whom they have some kind of karmic relationship; they experience being together with all the people with whom they have some kind of karmic relationship. From the moment you begin to fall asleep until you wake up again, a force flows from you to countless people, and forces flow from countless people to you. You — I cannot say — speak, because speaking is something we learn in our waking daily life, but if you do not misunderstand me and think about what I am saying now in relation to the communications we have in our sleep, then you will also understand when I say that in your sleep you speak with countless people, and countless people speak with you. And what you experience in your soul during sleep are the messages of countless people; and what you do during sleep is send your thoughts to countless people. This connecting of people, this interconnectedness of people, is very, very intimate during sleep. It would be extremely embarrassing if this continued during waking life. That is the benevolence of the “Guardian of the Threshold,” that he hides from people what is below the threshold of their consciousness. In sleep, you usually know when someone is lying to you; you usually know when someone is thinking badly of you. In general, people know each other relatively well in sleep, but in a dull consciousness. All this is covered up by waking consciousness, and it must be covered up for the simple reason that human beings would never arrive at the self-conscious thinking that they are supposed to learn through their earthly mission, nor would they learn to use the free will that they are supposed to gain through their earthly mission, if they had continued to live as they did during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, especially during the Moon period. There, too, they lived in their outer life as they now live from falling asleep to waking up.
But now something else comes along that is significant. From this life, which human beings unconsciously go through from falling asleep to waking up, dreams emerge. Why are they not a true reflection of life down there? Oh, if these dreams were true, immediate reflections, they would be all kinds of things. First of all, they would be significant communicators of our relationships with the world and with people; they would also be significant reminders. They would speak powerfully to our conscience about this or that thing about which we so readily indulge in illusions in life. The fact that we are not exposed to what dreams would do to us if they were true reflections of life below consciousness is because our waking daily life permeates us so strongly with forces that, I would say, it casts its shadow over our entire dream life. And so we carry the ideas, the images of our waking daily life into our dream life, or rather into our sleep life, and this is how dreams arise. Let us assume, for example, that you dream, or should dream, of a personality who sets themselves the task of making it clear to you that you have once again done something quite clumsy, something quite inappropriate. That happens. Other personalities could also be admonishers, could appeal to our conscience during sleep. From the experiences and habits of waking life, you have the desire or the urge — I could also say — not to listen to such talk. You don't want to hear anything that this personality says to you during sleep. Well, the desire translates into a darkening of the experience; but if at the same time there is such lively soul activity that the image bubbles up, then what you should actually experience as an image is overlaid by something else from your waking life, namely that a good friend, whom you prefer to listen to rather than the admonisher, says to you: Oh, what an extraordinarily fine person you are, always wanting and doing only the best and the nicest! Sometimes the very opposite can be transferred from waking life and its reminiscences in image form over what is actually being experienced. Basically, waking life is the cause of all the illusions and deceptions that arise during dream life.
Another thing is that today, in the current cycle of development, people can approach spiritual science. Now, I know that there are many who approach spiritual science and say: I have been studying spiritual science for years, but it is not helping me to progress. It tells me that one can attain this or that through spiritual science, but it does not help me progress. — I have often emphasized that this idea is not correct. Even if it does not develop esoteric life, spiritual science helps every human being progress, for the thoughts of spiritual science themselves are progressive. But one must pay attention to the subjective experiences that actually take place in the soul. For it is peculiar that what appears anew in someone who enters the path of spiritual science does not at first differ at all from the dream world in terms of its pictorial character. What one experiences when one becomes a spiritual scientist looks very similar to the rest of the dream world, but on closer inspection, a huge difference can be noticed between ordinary dreams and those perceptions that run through spiritual life consciously taken in by the mind. Even in the dream images that the spiritual scientist experiences in his soul, some things may appear chaotic. But if one analyzes them according to the instructions that can be gained from spiritual science, one will find that they actually become ever more faithful images, especially in their course, of the inner experience of the human being. And one must take into account this layer of experience, hidden from ordinary understanding and ordinary sensory life, which proceeds like a meditation, like a contemplative dream, and yet is meaningful and, when viewed in the right way, provides insight into spiritual mysteries. One must pay attention to how this life, which looks very similar to dreams, gradually, I would say, nestles into ordinary imaginative life, but precisely because of its meaningful course, if one does not look at the individual images but at the meaningful course of the images, it leads into the spiritual world. If one pays attention to such things, one certainly arrives at that distinction between three layers of consciousness of which Goethe, as I explained to you yesterday, had such beautiful, prescient insights.
One layer of consciousness is that which, without our intervention, so to speak, causes us to have ordinary dreams. If we are not dream interpreters, if we are not superstitious, but if we try to search for the beyond of the dream images, then this dream world can also reveal to us that we as human beings have gone through earlier stages of development than those of earthly life.
Then we have the ordinary waking consciousness that we know, or at least believe we know. We know it as a fact; people do not always allow themselves to explain it fully, but we know it as a fact.
The third layer is the intrusion of real supersensible knowledge. This supersensible knowledge is, of course, something that people of today and of the future must strive for, for reasons we have discussed often enough.
Yesterday I showed how Goethe embodies the peculiarity of dream life in the first part of the scene in the second part of Faust, which is of immediate concern to us. And from the moment when the Oread speaks to Mephistopheles, when the philosophers appear, we are dealing with the world of ordinary waking reality. From the moment when the Dryad points out the Phorcys to Mephistopheles, we are dealing with a reference to conscious supersensible knowledge. It is these three layers of consciousness that Goethe focuses his thinking and imagination on when he asks himself the question: How does this homunculus, which is initially accessible to human cognition, become a homo? — Not through the ordinary science of the intellect and the senses, but only by resorting to other layers of consciousness. For man is further than the earth in his being, and the intellect and the senses are only suitable for earthly things.
But yesterday we already discussed how the sphinx's equilibrium is still lacking when man submerges himself in the world of his past, how man actually feels insecure there, how the homunculus feels insecure. For human beings know of themselves — forgive me, but it is so — not much more than of a homunculus; they do not really know of a homo. And in Goethe's work, the homunculus does not venture into the machinery of the sirens, the seismos, and so on, because he is afraid of the surging, stormy elements into which man submerges when he leaves the sensory world and enters the world from which dreams otherwise bubble up. The homunculus does not venture in there.
Homunculus wants to take a more comfortable path to becoming human. He is on the trail of two philosophers, Anaxagoras and Thales. He wants to learn from them how to bring more into his human nature than someone like Wagner can give him in the laboratory. That is what he wants to learn. We already know that Goethe did not expect modern philosophers to be able to teach him such things; he does not want to “patiently lead the people by the rope” and bring the homunculus to Königsberg, close to Kant, in order to obtain information from him about how one can come into being as a human being, how one can expand one's human nature. Instead, Goethe tried to immerse himself in the world of the Greeks for the reason because he believed that by immersing oneself in the still flexible, softer ideas of the Greeks, one can also grasp human life more readily from the other layers of consciousness than from what the newer philosophers derive solely from the intellect and sensory consciousness. And so he does not bring the homunculus into the company of Kant or Leibniz or Hume or Locke, but into the company of philosophers who were still close to the older views of humanity, the ancient mystery views, where, although consciousness experiences were not as clear as they are today, but from more comprehensive experiences of consciousness. But basically, Anaxagoras and Thales are only latecomers to the ancient wisdom of the mysteries. Anaxagoras knows even more about the ancient mystery knowledge. This is shown by everything Anaxagoras brings up in the scene. Thales is actually the inaugurator, the initiator, the beginner of the newer scientific direction, and he knows only a little about what the ancient mystery secrets are. Of course, he knows more because he is still closer to the ancient mystery secrets than his later philistine latecomers, but he knows less than Anaxagoras. Thales, as can be seen from his speeches, actually only knows how to provide information about what is happening in his sensory environment, how mountains and other conditions on Earth are gradually formed through slow processes—one believes that Lyell, the modern geologist, is speaking. Anaxagoras wants to explain the present from the past, the earthly from what has gone before, how the earth was not yet earth. Anaxagoras wants to explain from those times, which, as I explained to you yesterday, belong to the ants, the ims, but also to the pygmies. Anaxagoras lives entirely in this world, which today is a supersensible or, for my part, an undersensible world, but without knowledge of which one cannot understand the sensible world. Anaxagoras thus basically reflects a deep conviction of Goethe's. For Goethe expressed himself beautifully on this very point in one of his sayings. He said: "What no longer arises, we cannot conceive of as arising. We do not understand what has come into being.“ And in another passage of his writings he says: ”Reason depends on what is becoming, understanding on what has become..."
What has come into being is what Thales sees around him. Anaxagoras focuses on the becoming that preceded what has come into being, on the emergence. Goethe therefore makes a strict distinction between the intellect, which is directed toward what we today call the object of science, and reason, which goes beyond the sensible and intellectual and turns to the supersensible, including the supersensible that took place before the present state of the earth came into being. It is Anaxagoras whom Goethe sees as the representative of a knowledge, an insight that goes back to the emergence, native to everything that the pygmies do. In everything that such beings do, who, although they develop a physical existence in the present, actually belong to prehistoric times in their essence, like the Imsen and so on.
And now Anaxagoras, when the homunculus approaches him with his request, wants to give the homunculus the opportunity to enrich human beings with his knowledge. He wants to lead the homunculus into the world of the pygmies, the Imsen, and so on; he even wants to make him king there. Anaxagoras already realizes that in the world Thales speaks of, which is only the world of present circumstances, there is not much to be gained in order to progress from homunculus to homo, but if one enters the world of becoming, the world that preceded ours, there might be something to be gained in order to progress from homunculus to homo. But Homunculus is indecisive:
What does my Thales say?
He still has within him the idea of not venturing into the world. When it confronted him as a dream world, he did not dare to venture into it. Now that it confronts him in the thoughts of Anaxagoras, he still does not really dare to venture into it; at least, he still wants Thales' advice. And Thales dissuades him from diving into this world of Anaxagoras' thoughts. What kind of world is this, the world of Anaxagoras' thoughts? It is basically the world of the ancient mysteries, but flattened and smoothed down to human comprehensibility. These are the shadow concepts from the ancient mysteries. Therefore, they cannot stand up to the world. If one has the real, living concepts of becoming, then one already comes to an understanding of this world, then one is equal to it. But with the shadow concepts that Anaxagoras has, Homunculus is now no match for Thales' objections, for Thales' objections are from the present sensory world. And just as the fleeting dreams, which are the reflection of higher spiritual worlds, fade away before man when the cock crows or when someone slams the door, so too does that which lives in the world of Anaxagoras' thoughts fade away very easily when other thoughts, taken from the present sensory world, assert themselves. Thales need only point out that the present sensory world is there. He points this out in a very forceful way. Just as the present world kills the pre-world that is resurrected in our dreams, so the cranes kill the pygmies and the imses. It is only a reflection of it. Anaxagoras first turned to the world that appears to humans in the dream world in an uncertain message. After he had to experience that no blessing arose for the homunculus from this world, he turned to the upper world. And he first implores in a wonderful speech the remnant of earthly prehistory among the celestial phenomena; he implores the moon. After first spreading his ideas and thoughts about what has remained from the time of the moon: Imsen, Pygmies, the lower ones—after he has failed in this regard with regard to the homunculus, he turns upward, where the moon has remained from that ancient time of the moon.
Just think how clearly Goethe points to all these mysteries that underlie earthly becoming in this scene. He now also has Anaxagoras from the ancient mystery wisdom make his supplication to the moon. In a beautiful speech, Anaxagoras addresses the moon. This speech shows how Goethe wanted to portray Anaxagoras as a personality who stands in the spiritual world, but who stands in this spiritual world only with his intellect, that intellect which, if it observes only the present, cannot reach the spiritual at all, but which in Anaxagoras has still preserved the spiritual from the ancient mysteries. Anaxagoras says:
If I have praised the subterranean ones thus far,
In this case I turn my gaze upward...
You! Up above, eternally ageless,
Three-named, three-formed,
I call upon you in my people's sorrow,
Diana, Luna, Hecate!
You who expand the breast, you who are profound in the deepest sense,
You who shine calmly, you who are violently intimate,
Open the gruesome mouth of your shadow,
Let the ancient power be revealed without magic!
But he has only the shadows left. Instead of achieving anything for Homunculus, he perceives how devastation falls from the moon onto the earth, how even that which was still alive is now destroyed by an elemental phenomenon. Significant for the characterization of Anaxagoras, however, is how he invokes the moon, this remnant of Earth's prehistory: “Diana, Luna, Hecate.” For Anaxagoras, then, the moon is not a unity but a trinity. The moon, insofar as it completes its circles in the sky above, is Luna. As Luna, it acts on the earth from outside.
Insofar as it is active on the earth itself, it is Diana. The forces that act as cosmic forces through the moon circling in the sky also have, I would say, their siblings in earthly forces. The moon is not only present cosmically, but also terrestrially. The same forces that are cosmically bound to the moon circling in the sky also permeate and animate the terrestrial and belong to important unconscious forces in human beings. They work in human nature and belong to important subconscious forces. The Greeks called Diana that which works within the earth, in that a certain relationship to nature, which does not quite reach consciousness, prevails in human beings from the subconscious. It is usually said that Diana is the goddess of the hunt. Certainly, she is that, because the subconscious also reigns in the desire to hunt, but it also reigns in numerous other human feelings and impulses of the will. Diana is not only the goddess of the hunt, but she is the creative and active goddess in everything that is striven for, half unconsciously and half subconsciously, like the pleasure of hunting. Human beings do a great deal of this in life. That is the middle way.
But then there is also a third figure living in human beings and, above all, in the earth: the figure of Hecate, the subterranean manifestation of the moon. The forces that work down from the moon also work up from the earth's interior, from the underground, insofar as the moon is a celestial phenomenon. Today's human beings actually know only the abstract mineral sphere of this moon, which they believe orbits the earth out there in four weeks. The Greeks knew the threefold moon: Luna, Diana, Hecate. And since man is a microcosm, he is a reflection of all possible triads, including the threefold moon, Luna, Diana, Hecate. Have we not learned about the threefold human being? We have learned about the head man, the head person. The head person, being the result of Saturn, Sun, and Moon time, the result of prehistoric times, can be associated with the heavenly remnant, with Luna. So that the head in man would correspond as a microcosm to the macrocosmic Luna. The middle man, the chest man, would correspond to Diana. The heart is also the source of those subconscious impulses whose goddess is Diana. And everything that plays a role in the extremity human being, with its continuation in the sexual human being, stems from the subterranean power of Hecate: all the dark, purely organic, bodily feelings and impulses that prevail in human beings. And Goethe hints at everything to make the matter quite clear to those who want to recognize it. For example, the Empusa belongs to the realm of Hecate, appearing among the Lamias around Mephistopheles in this scene, alongside the Lamias, in whom this is not so pronounced, in whom only that which tends more toward Diana is pronounced. In Empusa, however, what is more effective is that which lives in the underground of the earthly, that which lives microcosmically in the lower nature of man and is to be awakened in Mephistopheles. Goethe hints at this. Anaxagoras wants, in a sense, to assert his science more strongly than he has done before, by pointing not only to the earthly, but to the backward earthly, to the imses, to his Myrmidons, as he puts it. He turns to the triple moon, which is macrocosmically the same as microcosmically man. Did Goethe have any idea that the triple moon macrocosmically and truly contained the head man, the chest man, the abdomen man, or the extremities man? Well, let's read the following lines:
You breast-expanding one — Diana —,
You deepest-meaningful one — Luna —,
You calmly shining, violently intimate — Hecate.
Here you have the three predicates of Luna, Diana, Hekate, insofar as these three predicates also refer to the threefold human being, fully expressed by Goethe and made tangible by the fact that he even describes the middle one with the expression breast-expanding.
You see, those who claim that Goethe's intuitive knowledge was deeply rooted in spiritual scientific truths have good reason to do so. However, what is written in a work such as Goethe's “Faust” must be read in its true form. Precisely when you consider this peculiar standing with a premonitory recognition in the spiritual sciences in Goethe, then you will find it understandable how Goethe, I would say, in a certain respect, again and again perceived the spiritual, the supersensible, as something uncanny. He stood in his Nordic world, as I said yesterday, and felt with what this environment offers in terms of concepts and ideas. Even if you are the greatest genius, you can only have the same concepts as everyone else. You can connect them differently, but you can only have the same concepts. You cannot reach the other two layers of consciousness: the sub-sensual and the supernatural; you cannot reach them. The ordinary philistine does not care about this and is happy not to have to deal with the other layers of consciousness. But Goethe, who strove with every fiber of his soul to penetrate human nature, often felt that it was something that greatly restricted human nature that he had no ideas, no concepts with which to look into the world from which man emerges and into which he cannot look with his intellect and with his ordinary science. And so, from all that he felt through his natural gifts, from what was otherwise accessible to him, and from what he had observed in Italy, particularly in Greek art, the thought arose in Goethe: if one fills oneself with Greek ideas, Greek life, then one comes closer to the supernatural than with modern ideas. — And this was so deeply rooted in Goethe that, from the 1780s onwards, he always strove to make his ideas as flexible as those of the Greeks. He hoped that this would bring him closer to the supernatural world. But what was associated with this? It was associated with the fact that he made great efforts, not to recognize the supernatural world through the observation of Greek life, but to gain ideas in order to be able to grasp the supernatural world in his inner life. It is interesting how Goethe, precisely when he was writing these scenes, immersed himself in everything possible in order to bring Greek life to life before his soul. Today we are no closer to Greek life than we were in Goethe's time. And Goethe found, at least in one work, such as Schlosser's “Universalhistorische Übersicht der Geschichte der alten Welt und ihrer Kultur” (Universal Historical Overview of the History of the Ancient World and its Culture), which was published in 1826 and which Goethe read immediately, along with many other works that transported him into Greek life, he found, at least, the possibility of bringing Greek life to life in his soul by wanting to behave in a manner congenial to Greek life. But with what thoughts did he attempt this? Consider what he writes: It calls upon us to turn our gaze to the most general, most distant, most inaccessible aspects of prehistory and, from there, to gradually allow the peoples to spring forth before our eyes.
In the last twenty years of his life, during which these scenes from his “Faust” were written, Goethe was already intensively engaged in studies that brought the distant past to life in his mind and showed him how it wells up into the present. Goethe is not a poet like many others, who write poetry off the cuff, so to speak, but rather a poet who wants to immerse himself in the world that leads him into the supernatural, so that he can bring news of this supernatural as a poet. And because he believed in the Greek world, his conception of it was transformed in a certain way. Because he sought Greek life in the soul, the concept of truth and the concept of goodness moved closer to the concept of beauty for him. And the concept of evil moved closer to the concept of ugliness. This is already difficult for today's humanity to understand. In Greek thinking, it was different. Cosmos is a word that means both the beautiful order of the world and the true order of the world. Today's humanity no longer thinks of beauty as so closely related to truth and ugliness to evil as the Greeks did. For the Greeks, beauty was still fused with truth, ugliness with error and with evil. And Goethe, through his relationship with Greek culture, developed a certain sense that those who are organized as the Greeks were, who were even closer to the supernatural world, perceive untruth and evil as ugly, turn away from it out of a sense of beauty, and perceive truth as beautiful. Goethe developed this sense. And he believed that he might come closer to the supernatural if he imbued himself with a feeling for the beauty of the world. But then, just as one can only recognize light by its shadow, one must also imbue oneself with a feeling for the ugliness of the world. That is what Goethe sought.
For this reason, he brings Mephistopheles, who is only another side of Faust's life, close to the archetypes of ugliness, the Phorkyades, who are the archetypes of ugliness. In doing so, Goethe touches on a great mystery of existence. From my lectures, which I have given here over time, you will have seen that even today certain people are in possession of certain secrets. Above all, for example, the leadership of Roman Catholicism — the leadership — is in possession of certain secrets. It depends on how these secrets are applied. But certain initiates among the English-speaking population are also in possession of certain secrets. Due to a fundamental misunderstanding, not only the Roman Catholic Church — the leaders — keep these secrets from their believers, but also certain esoteric initiates among the English-speaking population. They have various reasons for this, and I would now like to talk about one of these reasons.
The Earth has a past: Saturn, Sun, and Moon time; a present: Earth time; a future: Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan time. There is good and evil in evolution. From the cosmos, from cosmic evolution, good can only be recognized from the past, from Saturn, Sun, and Moon time, and from half of Earth time. Wisdom and goodness are connected with looking back into the past. Wisdom and goodness are instilled by those members of the higher hierarchies who belong to humanity, in the time of human nature when this human nature has not yet awakened to full consciousness as it has on Earth. For the following period, for the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan periods, and also for the present Earth period already — it is already beginning — for the half Earth period still, human beings must preserve the good if they want to attain the good; they must develop the impulses of this good from their nature, for the forces of evil are revealed from the orbit, from what is newly approaching. Without these forces of evil revealing themselves, human beings would not attain free will. And those initiates I am referring to know this significant secret and do not want to reveal it to humanity because they do not want humanity to mature. They know this secret. If the same thing that arose as human nature on ancient Saturn, developed through Saturn, Sun, and Moon, and now continues, if this same thing that developed for us humans on Saturn and has a past, were now to arise from the conditions of Earth, it would become radically evil, it would only be able to absorb evil. The external conditions give rise only to the possibility of absorbing evil. It is thanks to this exposure to evil that human beings can attain free will, that they can choose between the evil that approaches them and the good that they can develop from their nature if they trustingly surrender to what has been laid into their nature through their past. Therefore, these initiates say to those whom they also want to initiate: There are three layers of consciousness. — This is a constant formula that one can find in these English-speaking initiation schools. When a person descends into this subconscious, from which dreams spring forth, they experience an intimate kinship with other beings — I characterized this for you earlier: also with other people — which cannot rise up into the present world. If human beings live, as is the case in the present, with their daily consciousness in the sensory or intelligible world, then that is the world in which they pass through birth and death. And if human beings live their way up into the world that they will enter as physical human beings in the future, which they attain through supersensible knowledge, then that is the world in which they first experience evil. For it is precisely in this that human strength must consist, that they are able to cope with evil, that they can stand up to evil. They must be able to get to know evil.
The true consequence of this fact is, of course, that there is a need for present-day humanity to shed light on the past, which can only be done through spiritual science, so that human beings can grow to meet evil with the necessary response. These three points are repeatedly emphasized, especially among the initiates of the English-speaking population. This is the basis for the struggle, which is very, very significant, even if the outside world knows little about it, between certain people who want what is necessary to happen and for such secrets to be communicated to human beings, and those who want to keep human beings immature. So far, the latter have prevailed. It is very important to know these things. You can see from this what harm would be done if spiritual scientific truths were withheld from the world, for human beings are already exposed to evil. They are protected from evil only by immersing themselves in the spiritual life of good. If you withhold the spiritual life of goodness from them, then you are not acting as a philanthropist, regardless of whether you are a member of some Masonic order or a Jesuit; you are not acting philanthropically. By withholding spiritual wisdom, you are delivering people into the hands of evil. And you may have a certain purpose in doing so. One may have the purpose of knowing only the good within one's own narrow circle, in order to use this good to dominate helpless humanity, which is led into the absurdity of life by evil.
You can imagine that someone who, like Goethe, has a premonitory knowledge of these things, approaches them only hesitantly. You will have an idea from many things I have already said in your presence about Goethe's very peculiar disposition, and you will be able to form a concept from this that Goethe only approaches these subtle but world-shattering things with ideas that are truly congruent with the matter. Therefore, when he conceived his “Faust,” he did not want to expose himself to the idea drawing attention to how, if humans want to advance in culture, they must fearlessly expose themselves to the sight of evil. Instead, he clothes this in Greek ideas by exposing Mephistopheles to the sight of primordial ugliness, the sight of the trinity of the three Phorcys, the primordial Phorcys. Instead of pointing out the reality of evil to people in an unreserved manner, as spiritual science must do, Goethe points out the reality of ugliness alongside beauty. Hence Mephistopheles' peculiar behavior toward the Phorcys. If Mephistopheles had remained in his Nordic homeland, that is, in a world that is more advanced than the Greek world in terms of world order, he would have had to confront the bitter but necessary world from which the evil of the future springs. Instead, Goethe has him confront the archetypes of ugliness, the Phorcys, in the world of antiquity. In doing so, he places him, as it were, in the prehistory of the history of evil. By speaking in Greek terms, he presents a most serious truth to these people in a way that is even more sympathetic to them. And here, too, Goethe once again proves himself to be a thorough connoisseur of the subject. We know—read this in my “Secret Science”—that the future is, in a certain sense, the reappearance of the past on a higher level. Jupiter is, in a certain sense, the repetition of the moon, Venus the repetition of the sun, Vulcan the repetition of Saturn. On a higher level, the later follows the earlier. This is also true with regard to evil, which arises so that human beings can develop their goodness as strongly as possible from their own nature. But this evil will show distorted images, caricatures of formations from primeval times.
As we are now, we are many things only because we are symmetrically designed, because the left-hand human and the right-hand human work together within us. Physicists and physiologists always wonder why we actually have two eyes and what use these two eyes are to us. If they knew why we have two hands and what use these two hands are to us, they would also know why we have two eyes and what use these two eyes are to us. For if we could not feel our left hand with our right hand, we would not be able to develop self-consciousness. Because we are able to embrace the left hand with the right hand, because we can recognize the right hand through the left hand within ourselves, we come to self-awareness and to the awareness that the ego is present. When we look at an object, it is necessary that humans have more than one eye. If, by birth or predisposition or accident, a person has only one eye, that does not matter; what matters is the predisposition, the powers, not the external appearance. When we look at a person, the axes of our eyes cross; this connects the ego with this looking: through this crossing of the left direction with the right direction. And the further back you go, the greater the kinship, but also the more the consciousness is shared. That is why Goethe gives the three Phorkyades one eye and one tooth in common, a very appropriate representation. So the three have one eye and one tooth. They have this because the senses are not yet supposed to work together, but are still supposed to stand alone. On the one hand, this expresses their kinship, and on the other hand, it also expresses that the elements do not yet interact, that what occurs in us, for example, through the left and right human beings, cannot occur. Goethe expresses what he wants to express with such precision. It points to very, very many things.
And when you consider, as you know from “The Secret Science,” that the present two-sexed humanity has emerged from the one-sexed! The male and female have only formed in the course of development. A reverse development will take place. By confronting evil in the form of ugliness and joining it, by going with the Phorcys, Mephistopheles is saying:
There I stand...
— after he has joined forces with the Phorcys —
Here I stand,
Chaos's beloved son!
Phorcys:
We are indisputably the daughters of Chaos.
And Mephistopheles:
Now they call me, oh shame! Hermaphrodite.
He himself becomes a hermaphrodite, in order to point out this circumstance, which I have now referred to as the state preceding hermaphroditism. Goethe really describes this very appropriately. From this scene, one can already see how deeply Goethe intuited the truths of spiritual science.
And now remember that I said recently: Those who, seduced by what human beings are and must be, arrive on the one hand at abstract ideals that have no power—like forces of nature that cannot intervene in the physical order of the world and must therefore dissipate like mist when the earth reaches its goal, that is, at its grave. Anyone who is either such an abstract idealist or a materialist cannot arrive at a satisfactory worldview. One must be both, I said. One must be able to rise to spiritual ideas, and one must be able to view what is material in a material way and form materialistic ideas about it. One must be able to form a materialistic and an idealistic worldview and not create unity through abstract concepts, but rather, by having scientific concepts on the one hand and idealistic concepts on the other, one must allow the two to interpenetrate. Just as spirit and matter interpenetrate, so, as I told you, in the process of cognition itself, one must illuminate and penetrate the material through the ideal, and the ideal through the material.
Goethe also came to this conclusion. He realized how one-sided it is when “people seek a worldview in abstract concepts that is either more inclined toward matter or more inclined toward spirit.” And so he was not inclined to seek a worldview in such abstract concepts, but sought to proceed differently. He characterizes this different approach as follows: Since many of our experiences cannot be expressed clearly and communicated directly, I have long since chosen the means of revealing the secret meaning to the attentive observer through structures that are juxtaposed and, as it were, reflect each other.
Well, how can one express more clearly that one is not an idealist or a realist, but an idealist and a realist, and that the two worldviews are reflected in each other! Goethe seeks to approach the world from its most diverse sides and to arrive at the truth through the mutual reflection of concepts. So Goethe's impulses already contain the path that must be taken by spiritual science in order to lead humanity toward a future of salvation.
One would like to see this kind of approach to Goethe continued. But then something like Faust must be read above all else! However, humanity has more or less lost the habit of reading. The fact is that people say at most, when they read: Luna, Diana, Hecate, the breast-expanding, the deeply meaningful, the calmly shining, but violently intimate — well, poetic. There is no need to go very far, no need to get involved in speculating about every word. People today console themselves when they are offered something they don't really need to believe in, because they want to gloss over things. But the world won't allow that. If you think of the serious truth that I had to express in connection with Mephistopheles' encounter with the Phorkyades, and which is still preserved, albeit poorly, in some occult schools of the present day, then, among many other things that give you the opportunity to recognize the great seriousness of spiritual scientific striving, you will already begin to understand the seriousness that must lie in this spiritual scientific striving. Sometimes, one might say, only semi-consciously, a sigh escapes from people who have come close to what is necessary for the human beings of the future, as in Nietzsche's case when he wrote his Midnight Song: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day imagines.”
It must be said: the day gives man his daily consciousness, but man does not attain more of himself than a homunculus, not a homo, if he only sticks to what the day brings. For the world is deep, and deeper than the day imagines. And since Goethe wanted to introduce Faust not only to what the day brings, but also to what eternities hold, he had to let him take the path in communion with the homunculus and with Mephistopheles, who approaches the supernatural. Goethe believed he could approach this by immersing himself in Greek ideas and bringing them to life within himself.