Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom
GA 275
30 December 1914, Dornach
III. Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution II
We can obtain maybe the best survey of what ought to enter into our souls and hearts as a result of our efforts in spiritual science if we turn our attention for a moment to the greater part of what I have dealt with in my book Occult Science, an Outline. Leaving aside the introductory chapters, which are necessary as a preparation for the subject, we can begin with those chapters that introduce us to the being of man, his relation to birth and death, and his life in the spiritual worlds. After this comes a description of the great cosmic relationships, of course only in rough outlines; we are led through the transformations of our earth before it became the earth, through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions leading up to our present Earth evolution. Then follows a sketch in the form of brief hints giving us a glimpse of the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Finally, instead of a more detailed description of the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions we have an account of what must be undergone by the individual who wishes to set in motion within his being those inner soul experiences which must eventually lead him to initiation. These processes have been described in greater detail up to a certain stage in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved?.
It will become apparent that for us spiritual science falls into two parts. In one part we describe cosmic relationships; we describe how what we have before us today as the earth and its beings and as the rest of the cosmos has been coming into existence out of the very, very distant past, and we describe the prospect of how it will develop further. If you review the many observations that we have made, you will see that a large part of them are in a way under the influence of what we take into ourselves concerning the development and coming into being of the cosmos.
The other part of spiritual science is concerned for us with what the soul must do in order to enter the spiritual worlds or, in other words, to reach initiation. It is these inner experiences, conquests, battles, redemptions, and achievements of the soul with which we are always concerned in this second sphere of observation. Our observations always belong essentially to one or other of these two spheres.
Starting now with the first sphere of observations, we see that by describing the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions up to the present Earth evolution, we are placing something in the world which is entirely contrary to both the religious and the scientific world concepts of today; indeed the modern world for the most part considers these descriptions to be absurd. It is quite natural that to our modern minds a description of a world order appropriate, for instance, to the conditions of the Saturn evolution must appear too fantastic; the description of a cosmic order of this kind must appear to our present way of looking at things as absolute nonsense, as something that cannot exist, as the outcome of fantastic speculation. And this is just as true of the other parts of our portrayal.
Now bear in mind a remark that I have made here several times: The human being does not only sleep at night, when his conscious thoughts and ideas are dulled, but a part of his being is also asleep during the day. At night it is more the life of concepts that is asleep; but during the day, in a part of our being, the life of the will is more asleep. The will sleeps in the depths of our bodily being, or at least a large part of the will sleeps thus. This sphere of our will is much more comprehensive than the part which we develop consciously; the latter is only a small part. We may say with complete assurance that in his ordinary daily consciousness, either at work or enjoying leisure, the human being is really for the most part a sleepwalker. A vast number of things take place within him unconsciously; and even a great part of what seems to be done consciously is, in reality, done half or more than half unconsciously.
If we observe the human being exactly in what he does half or more than half unconsciously, then we may see with our spiritual eyes that during sleep he is not nearly so unbelieving as when awake. When awake his modern view of the world prompts him to say: The description of the Saturn evolution in a book like Occult Science is pure and absolute nonsense! Of course he must say this. But as a complete human being he does not speak like this; for he carries within himself something through which he—if I may say so—knows unconsciously that there was once upon a time a Saturn existence. He does something which proves that he in a certain way unconsciously remembers this Saturn existence: he becomes an architect. Architecture would never have come into being if man did not now carry within himself the laws which were imprinted on his physical body during the ancient Saturn period. Yesterday we discussed how these laws in the physical body can be projected into the space outside, where they become the laws of architecture. Man mysteriously projects into the laws of architecture all that he took into his being during the ancient Saturn period. Obviously he has to use such means as are at his disposal today; accordingly the present aspect of architecture is quite different from what we know of ‘Saturn architecture’. But the essential and living elements in our architectural activities stem from what was implanted in us during the ancient Saturn evolution.
Let us enter still deeper into the matter which we thus place before our souls. What does the human being do when he becomes totally absorbed in the creativity of architecture, either as the architect or as the observer or admirer? He lives within the Saturn laws of his physical body; if he immerses himself entirely into the laws of architecture, he forgets all about the life of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego: he becomes once more a Saturn man. All the impressions produced by architecture, its austerity, its chaste proportions, its silence which is yet so eloquent, result from the fact that, abandoning the higher members of his being, he immerses himself in what was given to him by the spirits of the higher hierarchies, the Thrones and Archai, who were active at the beginning of the Saturn period. It was mainly these two groups of higher spirits who were active then, assisted by the other beings belonging to the higher hierarchies.
So when he creates or enjoys architecture (where it is a case of real art of course), the human being really lifts himself not only out of the present Earth existence but also out of the more distant past and places himself once more into the period of Saturn existence.
Let us now pass on to sculpture. Yesterday we saw that the laws of sculpture are the laws of the etheric body which have been pressed down one step into the physical body. Just as that which lives in the physical body, when compelled into the space outside, becomes architecture, so sculpture appears when what lives in the etheric body is made to descend into the physical body. In enjoying sculpture we abandon the astral body, the ego, and all the higher members of our being, living as though we had only the physical body, and in the physical body an expression of the etheric body; in such a condition we are once more participants of the ancient Sun condition. All that the ancient Sun evolution planted in us reappears when we enjoy or create works of sculpture. On the one hand these works appear so congenial to us because they give us back our own very distant past which is still creative within us, our Sun period; and on the other hand they are so smooth and cold in their marble because what rays out to us from them is like light coming to us from the far distances of the cosmos.
Now let us pass on to painting. We know that painting comes about when the inner impulses of the astral body are pressed down into the etheric body; in painting we abandon the ego and live as though we were only in the astral, but were pressing it down into the etheric body. We experience ourselves in all that the ancient Moon evolution has implanted in us, this being our inner astral nature as human being. Painting is, as it were, the outward projection of this inner astral nature of ours. Just as we experience in our astral nature sorrow or joy, things that affect or impress us, whatever fate brings us, so do we experience what the painter conjures upon the canvas for us, which is a reflection of our own inner astral being.
If you try to enter a little into what is described in Occult Science as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, you will discover that an architectural mood underlies the description of the Saturn evolution, a sculptural mood underlies the description of the Sun evolution, and a pictorial mood underlies the description of the Moon evolution; an attempt was made to express these moods by choosing suitable words. The presentation of occult events definitely requires more than the current literary equipment of today. It would be an entire misconception of the style of an occult description to believe that it could be achieved by the dreadful literary devices of our time.
We now come to the Earth evolution. Here we are in the immediate present, in the reality appointed for us; what we experience here we do not immediately feel the need to place before ourselves in the form of art. But the need the human being feels of projecting his inner life outward in the form of art is not exhausted by, as it were, recreating his cosmic past in architecture, sculpture, and painting out of the memory implanted in him.
Our need for art progresses further and we can find the spiritual foundation for this if we turn again to the book Occult Science. After the descriptions of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth evolutions and after the brief outline of the future Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions, we come to the description of the processes of initiation, which are essentially at first inner human processes. These initiation processes are, in the form in which we encounter them today, the beginning of important changes for the life of human beings on earth and for the whole of future humanity.
Is it not so that our deeper experience of the life of humanity on earth is expressed in the words: Alas, in so far as man is consciously aware during life on earth he appears to be but an orphan in the cosmos, a child abandoned by the cosmos, or even a traveller who has lost his way in the cosmos!
For his everyday waking consciousness man does not know the origin of what lives in him as a result of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions; nor does he know what will become of him in the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Knowing neither his origin nor his future he wanders about at the edge of the abyss that bounds our earthly valley. Sometimes his consciousness may give him a feeling of assurance or he may feel secure as to his future; nevertheless, neither the past nor the future can be determined objectively and competently by man on earth. But something capable of giving him clear guidance in his life will appear before his soul. This will come about when man makes himself acquainted with the guidelines given him in the laws of initiation. Initiation, in ancient times, took the form of a kind of inheritance left to men by the gods, which manifested itself as atavistic clairvoyance; but in the course of our progress towards the future it must take hold of man more and more firmly and actually shape his inner soul life.
The path to initiation has two sides. The one side leads man to discover the secrets, the riddles of life so that he can enter into the spiritual experience of existence. The other side may be called the more subjective side of initiation that takes place more within the soul itself. It is, at the same time, the side from which men shrink the most, because it presents in fact something which does not fit in with the comfortable indolence of experience to which the soul so easily yields or wants to yield. An extremely wide and detailed range of inner experiences awaits the one who is to be gradually led by his inner experience to initiation. Conquest and liberation, hindrance and redemption alternate in manifold ways with inner experience on the way to initiation. One goes through everything the soul experiences when it suddenly feels it has become an entire stranger to itself; as though it had been cast into an abyss where it cannot help feeling that it is eternally lost and can never recover anything which it may have acquired during any lifetime. It may feel an unlimited dismay and grief at the loss of the existence already won. Then the soul may feel itself forced into complete fragmentation, as though it must disintegrate into an endless multiplicity and dissolve into all the beings out of which the cosmos is composed. Further the soul may feel itself wandering through the beings of the cosmos, becoming akin to one of them, then leaving it again and becoming akin to another, in the way I have described it in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World, in the part dealing with experiences that are always attended by painful privations, painful loneliness as they are passed through one by one. Then comes the experience of the most radical transformation of all, when the soul must decide to undergo what can be expressed with the words: Now you must lose yourself for a while, you must thrust yourself away from yourself; but you must have faith that while you are losing yourself, while you are thrusting yourself away from yourself, beings reposing in the wide expanses of the divine hierarchies will protect you, will cause you to find yourself again after you have lost yourself. This is the passage through births and deaths. This is to be undergone among the inner experiences which lead to initiation.
At last comes the awful passage through all the forces which are not necessary for life on earth, but which are necessary for the life of the extra-terrestrial cosmos and which become the forces of evil when they are brought without justification into the life of the earth by Lucifer or Ahriman. It is the dreadful passage through the forces of evil, together with all the disruptive, devouring, engulfing forces they represent throughout the cosmos. And finally man passes through a stage when he ought to feel himself to be only an instrument, a tool through which the spiritual beings speak; he becomes symbolically what his larynx is as a single organ, he becomes the larynx of the divine spiritual beings, he feels himself to be resting in the all-powerful divine world. And then at last a condition will be reached in the future in which this feeling emerges into sharing the experience of the divine will, working in the cosmos itself.
Only single stages have been described here. But the grades of experience through which the soul passes are infinite. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? and, more descriptively, in The Threshold of the Spiritual World, you will find set forth as far as is necessary for the present time, how the soul is able to adjust itself to all these states and how, at each stage, it advances one step further into the spiritual world. All that the soul passes through on the path to initiation is consciously undergone and consciously experienced.
This is why this path of knowledge is so beset with pain and yet so full of liberation. But long, long before the human being enters consciously into all that I have described to you as the stages of the path to initiation, he is able to express these experiences in his own way in pictures, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a process of life taking its course in tones, which is an external picture of what the soul experiences consciously in initiation.
If he remains in the everyday sphere, the human being cannot at once accomplish what we described yesterday as the submerging of the ego in the astral body. To submerge the ego in the astral body in the right way is to enter into the divine world, and this is the passage through initiation. A picture of this is given to us in the processes we perceive in musical compositions. When he surrenders himself to musical creativity, either as the composer or the listener, the human being abandons his ego, he pushes it back; but at the same time he surrenders it to those divine spiritual powers who are to work upon his astral body when he has ascended to existence on Jupiter.
Please observe how we are entering upon a consideration of the creative art of music which links us with the future of mankind. It is almost, one feels, lacking in modesty to say that musical creativity is called upon to perfect itself more and more in the world, to become continually more profound, and that the musical creativity that has entered into our world so far is still more or less at the experimental stage, even though so much greatness and so much genius has already been involved. So far we have made attempts at what will be infinitely more meaningful in the musical creativity of the future. And this musical art of the future will be most significantly stimulated when human beings begin to engage in learning to know the inner nature of the path of initiation.
When one day what can be described concerning the path of initiation will no longer be experienced by human beings as it is today, but will be experienced in such a way that the description of what the soul must feel will cause human beings to go through bliss and bitter disappointment; when the knowledge that can be gained by reading about the path of initiation has become a complete inner experience: only then will it be possible for human souls to be so deeply moved through their participation in the destinies of all those beings who take part in the events of the cosmos outside the human realm, that they will feel within themselves the shocks, privations and liberation that will impel the soul to express in tonal relationships what is experienced through the description of the path of initiation.
In time to come there will be individuals who will feel what is described as the path of initiation; they will feel that things which are put before us in such an apparently abstract way can be intensely experienced, much more intensely than is the case with our outward physical experience. Then a moment will come when those who are able to experience the truth of what is described as the path of initiation will say to themselves: Now I feel that what I am experiencing does not connect me with the realm of nature that surrounds me on the earth but with all that lives and weaves in the cosmos; not only can I experience all this, but I am able to sing it, to set it to music!
In what can thus be described we have an indication of what spiritual science is to become for human beings. Spiritual science must be a living stimulus for the human soul; it should be more than mere theory, mere understanding, mere knowledge. Spiritual science must live in the soul, taking hold of all its powers, transforming the human being into another being. Or vice versa, the human being must transform himself into another being when he becomes devoted to spiritual science.
In ancient times, even in the case of the Greeks who were Sun men, an atavistic clairsentience led men to abandon their astral and their ego beings completely and only to express the laws of the physical human form created during the Saturn and Sun evolutions. Thus Greek statues were made, those works of sculpture that really stand before our physical eyes as the mankind of the Sun evolution must stand before our spiritual eyes, when we understand that the human being of that period consisted only of the physical human body which contained within it the living etheric forces but not as yet the astral.
Indeed, a work of Greek art such as the Venus of Milo stands before us as the personification of absolute chastity, since unchastity is only possible in the astral body, in all that permeates the astral body as passion and desire. Unchastity is not yet possible in the etheric body. It was a heritage from the gods bestowed upon men which caused them to create such works of art. The human being has lost this ability to feel himself within the etheric and physical bodies alone, without the ego or the astral body.
When he awakes and submerges his ego and his astral body into his etheric and physical bodies, he feels and experiences only what is present in his ego. Even the processes in the astral body are in the subconscious realm, and he has no inner knowledge at all of what takes place in the etheric and physical bodies. The ancient Greeks were still dimly aware of all this. But today, when we seek to bring spiritual knowledge to life once more within ourselves and cause it to embrace not only our abstract and theoretical thoughts but also the whole of our soul life, we gradually penetrate the different members of our being and learn to know what permeates our astral and etheric bodies in rhythmical and harmonious cycles. Then we become able to follow with the soul the etheric forces which pulsate through the body and through space, calling forth forms out of the etheric.
An attempt of this kind was made in the creation of the columns and architraves in our Goetheanum building; it was a diving down into the spheres made accessible to us by spiritual science which have been forgotten by mankind. In this we must indeed take deeply seriously what spiritual science can mean to us. You can glean from all that has so far been said about spiritual science that when we enter consciously into the spiritual world (and one must enter the spiritual world consciously), in other words when with understanding we give form to what lives in the etheric world and in the human etheric body and wish to enjoy what we have thus formed, then we must inevitably make the acquaintance of those beings which are called the luciferic and ahrimanic spirits.
Now consider how much of what we create today has an ahrimanic character. You will remember1see lecture ‘Technology and Art’, p. 5 et seq. of this volume. what I have said with regard to our modern technical environment; and of course we cannot do otherwise than use modern technical methods in our work. If we wished to do without them we would produce the equivalent of hothouse plants. So it afforded me a certain satisfaction that we were able to use concrete, one of the most modern building materials, for part of our building here. For progress consists not in shutting oneself off, as in a hothouse, from the life around one, but in using what is offered by it. By grasping the spiritual nature of the world through spiritual science, we try to use modern materials in such way that what we know through spiritual science finds a living expression in them.
Of course this is only possible up to a certain point, and you will understand why this is so when you perceive all the implications of what has been said about the technical environment. For it is not possible to separate technical methods from ahrimanic forces, for instance, if we wish to create something in architecture or sculpture for ourselves. Thus it was a difficult task to take what of necessity had an ahrimanic nature in our building and, as it were, banish it from the building as something rendered harmless. It really was a difficult task, for we know that the ahrimanic element is inseparable from modern technology. For a while it seemed that Ahriman would easily gain the upper hand. Then we should have been compelled to incorporate into our main building all the technical equipment necessary for running it. As a result, Ahriman would have been permanently installed within the building. We had to think of a way of excluding the ahrimanic forces from the building, and the only possibility was to take the boiler house out and make it a separate unit. This has been done, as you can see for yourselves, and with great success.
It has been possible to create, in the most modern building material, forms that truly express the following: Here, near the building, but outside it, stands the part that must not be included in it, though it must be present outside; and the material out of which it has been formed represents an architectural structure that is truly in keeping with spiritual-scientific knowledge.
It was of immense importance that this should be achieved, particularly as the most modern building materials were employed. For if you look more deeply into what I have written about spiritual science, taking in this case the last chapter of The Portal of Initiation, you will find expressed there the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are at their most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible. Let us suppose that somebody is tormented by ahrimanic forces; what would be the best remedy? The best remedy would be for him to have some kind of picture made of Ahriman which he could place in his room. The best remedy against an astral being which torments one, is to place it before oneself in a physical form. It is incorrect to suppose that if we have Ahriman before us we will be persecuted by him; the contrary is true. Things must be made visible. But we must not let the matter get on our nerves; we must not develop a condition in which, if we happen to pass by the picture of Ahriman and look at it unconsciously, we then carry the image within ourselves. For this image will then be invisible inside us, thus making us nervous or excited.
You will also see, if you study our ahrimanic chimney along with the whole boiler house, how it is indeed possible to make an architectural structure of what belongs, one might say, to the most blatant elements of ahrimanic civilisation in our time. Certain defects of this civilisation will not vanish until mankind resolves to give architectural form to the things that concern the ahrimanic elements of our civilisation. Apart from all else, apart from our having a building for our own purposes, it is simply important that the first step should be taken in relating our present culture to art and in relating spiritual science to our present culture. Our boiler house is a first small step in this direction, and will lead, it is hoped, to the solution of other problems later. One enormous problem, for instance, would be to find a suitable form for the modern railway station; for the horrors and abominations which perform that function today are a contradiction of all decent human requirements. In its entire form our boiler house is not only suited to its specific purpose but also corresponds to the whole relationship of Ahriman to our building; in the same way the form of a railway station must correspond to what happens through it, with it, and in it within the framework of our modern civilisation.
Such things as these should indicate the way in which spiritual science can provide inspiration for artistic creativity and for many other fields. And we may rest assured, if we enter into the true sense and spirit of what is to develop for us out of spiritual science, that one day, when human beings immerse themselves in the nature of the Saturn condition, then the deeper laws of architecture will reveal themselves; and if people immerse themselves in the nature of the Sun condition, the the deeper laws of sculpture will reveal themselves; and if they immerse themselves in the nature of the Moon condition, then the deeper relationships between form and colour and the nature of chiaroscuro will become apparent, creating inspiration for the art of painting.
And from the description of the path of initiation will spring inspirations and intuitions for the creation of music and yet further for the creation of poetry. Then the time will come when poetic creativity in the true sense of the word will reappear in the world. For poetic creativity has to a certain extent died away. The ‘divine dreams’ incorporated in the work of the true poets were the last vestiges of the ancient heritage from the gods. But a time must come when, out of an understanding of the mysteries of initiation, poets will speak in dramatic or epic or lyric poetry about those intimate processes which take place in the soul when the human being is not alone with himself, but lives together with the gods of the higher hierarchies. In the not too distant future people will be saying: Stop bothering me with your perpetual jingles about men's experiences in the physical world; your daily routine of love and hate and enjoyment is your own affair. It is about what they experience together with the gods when they have found their way outside earthly experience, that men will sing in their music and in their dramas, epics, and lyrical poems. For we know that all men's experiences with the extra-terrestrial world must be brought into these arts through true creativity that is not involved in everyday life.
We have now seen what impulses of transformation lie in the knowledge brought to us by spiritual science, even in the field of artistic appreciation. And we have now seen how, if we enter into spiritual-scientific knowledge, we can dimly perceive the forces which must reign over the spiritual culture of future humanity. Indeed, we may believe that without achieving a profound inner transformation nobody can really make contact with spiritual science; and we may believe that spiritual science is something which can grasp man in a deeply inward way, leading beyond the narrow connections of physical life alone. If we bear in mind this ideal of spiritual science, if we bear in mind that spiritual science can lead out into a sphere that is different from ordinary experience, then it is always an event of immense significance to see somebody within the spiritual-scientific movement, really igniting within himself the spark that leads him out of and beyond the narrow limits of ordinary personal experience. In a way, the only joyful experience which is so far made possible for us through the spiritual-scientific movement is, that as a result of this movement, individuals can appear among us who really find their way out of their personal sphere into those spheres where the personal element ceases to exist.
In our everyday life we must, of course, cultivate the personal element; but in so far as we are together as students of spiritual science, all personal willing and feeling is changed into something impersonal if we take hold of spiritual science in the right way. And every victory over personal feelings and over the weight of personal feelings and over the weight of personal matters in life is of immense significance and value. But on the other hand it is one of the bitterest disappointments if something that is striven for in spiritual science with a will that is purely spiritual, becomes entangled again in the merely personal will and purpose of human beings, and if personal matters begin to play a role within a society whose object it is to unite us in striving for spiritual-scientific knowledge.
I shall not elaborate on these concluding remarks or go into more detail because I believe that there are a good many among you who will perhaps understand much of what is meant by them, who will understand that they were intended as an indication of a number of things that are satisfactory and a number that are disappointing. Today, having tried for a while to walk together along a path of spiritual science, it is good to think about these things for a moment; for there are various reasons why we should reflect and ask ourselves to what extent our own soul is participating in the sincere and honest effort to achieve the spiritual purposes which are nourished by the current of spiritual science. What a superb perspective unfolds before us when we say: Life, science, religion, and also art can receive impulses of transformation from spiritual science when it is truly understood. In the case of the pictorial and plastic arts the impulses come from what we learn in spiritual spheres about the past; and in the case of the arts involving music and speech the impulses come from that which we are striving for inwardly, in order to be able to approach the future. This perspective is so immense and so powerful that we cannot bring enough realisation to bear on it, in order to make it more intensely clear to ourselves. And the more we succeed in making clear to ourselves the inner mood resulting from this vision, the better we shall be as true members of that great organism known to us as spiritual science, an organism which is small today, but which has within it great possibilities. With this today I not only want to appeal to your reason and your understanding, but I also want to sow it as a seed in your souls and in your hearts.
Dritter Vortrag
Wir können vielleicht am besten übersehen, was wir hier meinen dürfen über das, was durch unsere geisteswissenschaftlichen Bestrebungen einziehen soll in unsere Seelen, in unsere Herzen, wenn wir einen Blick werfen über den größten Teil desjenigen, was ich mir erlaubte, als «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß» zu geben. Da haben wir zuerst, wenn wir absehen von den Einleitungskapiteln, die da gleichsam zur Vorbereitung sein müssen, diejenigen Kapitel, die dazu dienen sollen, das Wesen des Menschen und seine Beziehung zu Geburt und Tod und sein Leben in den geistigen Welten kennenzulernen. Nach diesen Einleitungskapiteln haben wir eine Schilderung der großen kosmischen Zusammenhänge, natürlich skizzenhaft, die uns führen durch die Verwandlungsstadien unserer Erde, bevor sie Erde geworden ist, durch das Saturn-, das Sonnen-, das Mondendasein und uns dann hereinführen in das Erdendasein. Dann haben wir eine ganz flüchtige, alles nur kurz andeutende Auseinandersetzung über die Ausblicke, die sich uns ergeben auf das Jupiter-, Venus- und Vulkandasein. Und ich möchte sagen, statt einer eingehenderen Schilderung dieses Jupiter-, Venus- und Vulkandaseins haben wir dann eine Darstellung desjenigen, was der Mensch durchzumachen hat, wenn er jene inneren Seelenerlebnisse in sich ablaufen lassen will, die ihn letzten Endes zur Initiation führen müssen. Genauer sind diese Vorgänge bis zu einer gewissen Etappe geschildert in den Auseinandersetzungen in «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?».
Wir werden überhaupt sehen, daß für uns die Geisteswissenschaft gewissermaßen in zwei Teile zerfällt: in einen Teil, wo wir schildern die kosmischen Zusammenhänge, schildern, wie das, was heute als die Erde und ihre Wesenheiten und das sonstige Weltenall vor uns ist, seit urferner Vergangenheit geworden ist, und wie in Aussicht steht, daß es sich weiter entwickeln wird. Wenn Sie nun die Betrachtungen, die wir so anstellen, durchgehen, dann werden Sie überall sehen, daß ein großer Teil unserer Betrachtungen gewissermaßen unter dem Einflusse steht desjenigen, was wir über das Werden des Kosmos in uns aufnehmen. Ein anderer Teil unserer Betrachtungen beschäftigt sich damit, was die Seele tun muß, um in die geistigen Welten hineinzukommen, mit andern Worten, um zur Initiation zu gelangen. Diese inneren Erlebnisse, Überwindungen, Kämpfe, Erlösungen und Erreichungen, die da die Seele durchzumachen hat, werden gewissermaßen in der zweiten Sphäre unserer Betrachtungen immer berührt. Und entweder aus der einen oder aus der andern Partie sind unsere Betrachtungen, wenn wir das Wesentliche an ihnen beobachten.
Wenn wir nun zunächst die erste Partie unserer Betrachtungen ins Auge fassen, jene Darstellungen durch das Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondendasein bis in das Erdendasein hinein, so stellen wir mit solchen Darstellungen etwas in die Welt hinein, das der heutigen, sei es religiösen, sei es wissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung sehr, sehr zuwider ist, das zum großen Teile von dieser heutigen Weltanschauung als etwas Absurdes angesehen wird. Denn es ist ganz selbstverständlich, daß unsere heutige Weltanschauung die Darstellung einer solchen Weltenordnung, wie wir sie zum Beispiel geben müssen, wenn wir das Saturndasein schildern, zu phantastisch findet, daß die Darstellung einer solchen kosmischen Ordnung für unsere gegenwärtige Anschauung so ist, daß man nur sagen kann: Das ist absoluter Unsinn, das kann es ja gar nicht geben, das ist etwas phantastisch Ausgedachtes! - Ebenso ist es für die andern Partien dessen, was wir zu schildern haben.
Nun erinnern Sie sich an den Ausspruch, den ich schon mehrfach hier und auch gestern gemacht habe. Ich habe gesagt: Der Mensch schläft nicht nur in der Nacht, wenn sein Gedanken- und auch sein Vorstellungsbewußtsein heruntergedämpft ist, der Mensch schläft auch bei Tage mit einem Teile seines Wesens. Während bei Nacht mehr das Vorstellungsleben schläft, schläft bei Tag in einem Teil unseres Wesens mehr das Willensleben. Unten in den Tiefen unserer Leiblichkeit schläft das Willensleben, wenigstens ein großer Teil des Willenslebens. Denn dieses Willensleben des Menschen ist viel umfassender als das bewußte Willensleben, das wir entwickeln. Das ist nur ein kleiner Teil. Und wir können dreist sagen: Der Mensch mit seinem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, wenn er so bei Tage seine Arbeit verrichtet, oder sein Vergnügen genießt, ist zum größten Teil doch ein Schlafwandler. Unendlich vieles geht unbewußt vor sich, und auch das, was er bewußt macht, vollbringt er zum großen Teile scheinbar bewußt, halb und mehr als halb unbewußt.
Wenn wir den Menschen genau beobachten in dem, was er halb oder mehr als halb bewußt, unbewußt macht, dann kann uns ins geistige Auge fallen, daß er als schlafender Mensch nicht so ungläubig ist wie als wachender Mensch, ganz und gar nicht so ungläubig. Der heutige wachende Mensch mit seiner Weltanschauung kommt und sagt: Die Schilderung des Saturndaseins in einem solchen Buche wie die «Geheimwissenschaft» ist der reinste, absolute Unsinn! — Selbstverständlich. Aber der Mensch als ganzer Mensch sagt das nicht, sondern er trägt etwas in sich, wodurch er — gestatten Sie den Ausdruck unbewußt weiß, daß es einstmals ein Saturndasein gegeben hat. Er macht etwas, wodurch er dokumentiert, daß er gewissermaßen unbewußt sich an dieses Saturndasein erinnert. Das, was er macht, das ist: er wird zum Baukünstler. Denn es würde niemals eine Baukunst entstanden sein, wenn der Mensch heute nicht in sich tragen würde diejenigen Gesetze, welche dem Menschen schon während der alten Saturnzeit eingeprägt worden sind in seinen physischen Leib. Wir haben gestern auseinandergesetzt, wie diese Gesetze im physischen Leibe hinausprojiziert werden können in den Raum und dann draußen baukünstlerische Gesetze sind. Alles das, was der Mensch während der alten Saturnzeit in sich aufgenommen hat, das geheimnißt er hinein in die Gesetze der Architektur. Selbstverständlich muß er das mit den heutigen Mitteln tun, so daß sich, was uns da in den gegenwärtigen Werken der Baukunst entgegentritt, ganz anders ausnimmt als das, was wir von der «Saturnarchitektonik» kennen. Aber das Wesentliche, das Lebendige, das wir machen im baukünstlerischen Tun, ist das, was sich in den Menschen eingepflanzt hat durch das alte Saturndasein.
Nehmen wir dieses, was wir so vor unsere Seele führen, in einem noch tieferen Sinne. Was tut der Mensch, indem er ganz, sei es schaflend, sei es erkennend oder genießend, in der architektonischen Schöpfung aufgeht? Er lebt in den Saturngesetzen seines physischen Leibes, das heißt, er vergißt, wenn er sich ganz versenkt in die Gesetze der Architektur, alles das, was in ihm lebt als ätherischer Leib, als astralischer Leib und als Ich, er wird wieder Saturnmensch. Alles Herbe, alles Keusche, alles Schweigsame und doch wiederum so Sprechende der Baukunst ist nichts anderes, als daß der Mensch sich mit Entäußerung der höheren Glieder seines Wesens versetzt in das, was ihm die Geister der höheren Hierarchien - die Throne, die Archai, die am Anfang des Saturndaseins beteiligt waren — gegeben haben, im wesentlichen diese beiden Gruppen von höheren Geistern, unterstützt von den andern Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien.
So ist es wirklich ein Hinausheben nicht nur über die Gegenwart der Erde, sondern über eine weit, weit entfernte Vergangenheit und ein Sich-Hineinversetzen in dieses Saturndasein, was der Mensch vollbringt, indem er baukünstlerisch schafft oder baukünstlerisch genießt, wenn es sich um wirkliche Kunst dabei handelt, selbstverständlich.
Und wiederum, schreiten wir herauf bis zur Skulptur, bis zur Bildhauerkunst. Wir haben gestern gesehen, daß die Gesetze der Skulptur die Gesetze des Ätherleibes sind, die der Mensch in seinen physischen Leib hinunterdrängt um eine Stufe. So wie das, was im physischen Leibe lebt, hinausgedrängt wird in den Raum und da die Architektur wird, so wird in der Skulptur das, was im Ätherleibe lebt, herabgedrängt in den physischen Leib. Wir entäußern uns, indem wir Skulptur genießen, des astralischen Leibes und des Ich und aller höheren Glieder. Wir leben im Skulpturgenießen so, als wenn wir nur den physischen Leib und im physischen Leibe den Ausdruck des Ätherleibes hätten: das ist das Zurückversetztsein in das alte Sonnendasein. Alles das, was dem Menschen das alte Sonnendasein eingepflanzt hat, wird gegenwärtig im Genuß oder Schaffen der Skulptur. Das, was uns in der Skulptur entgegentritt, erscheint uns auf der einen Seite so verwandt, weil es uns wiedergibt unsere eigene ferne, ferne Vergangenheit, die ja noch schöpferisch in uns ist, unsere Sonnenzeit. Und es erscheint uns auf der andern Seite wiederum so marmorglatt und marmorkalt, weil uns das, was aus der Skulptur kommt, anleuchtet wie das, was aus dem fernen Kosmos kommt, aus dem fernen All.
Und schreiten wir herauf zur Malerei, dann wissen wit, daß die Malerei darauf beruht, daß hineingedrängt werden in den Ätherleib die inneren Impulse des astralischen Leibes, so daß wir uns in der Malerei unseres Ichs entäußern und so leben, wie wenn wir nur im astralischen Leibe erleben würden, aber dieses astralische Leben hinunterdrängen in den Ätherleib. Wir erleben uns in alledem, was in uns eingepflanzt hat das alte Mondendasein, jenes alte Mondendasein, welches uns als Menschen unsere astralische Innerlichkeit gegeben hat. Das Malerische ist gleichsam die äußere Projektion dieser unserer astralischen Innerlichkeit. Geradeso wie wir in unserer astralischen Innerlichkeit erleben Stimmungen wie Trauer, Freude, Charakteristisches, Ausdrucksvolles, wie wir erleben das, was das Geschick über uns bringt, so erleben wir das, was der Maler uns auf die Leinwand zaubert und was ein Widerschein ist unseres eigenen inneren astralischen Wesens.
Wenn Sie versuchen, sich ein wenig hineinzuleben in das, was geschildert worden ist in der «Geheimwissenschaft» als Saturn-, Sonnen- und Mondendasein, dann werden Sie die Entdeckung machen, daß in der Tat bei der Schilderung des Saturndaseins eine architektonische Stimmung zugrunde liegt, bei der Darstellung des Sonnendaseins eine bildhauerische Stimmung und bei der Darstellung des Mondendaseins eine malerische Stimmung. Es ist versucht worden, in der Ausprägung der Worte diese Stimmungen wiederzugeben. Zur Darstellung okkulter Ereignisse gehört eben durchaus mehr als das, was die heutigen literarischen Hilfsmittel sind, und man verkennt den Stil einer okkulten Darstellung vollständig, wenn man glaubt, das Richtige treffen zu können mit den greulichen literarischen Hilfsmitteln unserer Zeit.
Dann kommen wir in das Erdendasein hinein, worin wir leben als in unserer unmittelbaren Gegenwart, als in der uns angewiesenen Realität. Das ist nicht etwas, bei dem wir so, wie wir darinnen leben, das Bedürfnis haben, es künstlerisch unmittelbar vor uns hinzustellen. Dagegen ist das, was der Mensch als Bedürfnis empfindet, künstlerisch aus sich herauszustellen, nicht erschöpft damit, daß er in der Architektur, Skulptur und Malerei gleichsam seine kosmische Vergangenheit, wie es sein kann aus dem uns eingepflanzten Gedächtnis heraus, wiedererschaflt. Das künstlerische Bedürfnis geht weiter. Und wenn wir die geistige Grundlage dieses Weitergehens des künstlerischen Bedürfnisses suchen, so müssen wir sie in dem finden, was in der «Geheimwissenschaft» nach der Darstellung des Saturn-, Sonnen-, Mond- und Erdendaseins, und nachdem sich uns nur ganz skizzenhaft die weiteren Entwickelungsstufen des Jupiter-, Venus- und Vulkandaseins darstellen, weiter gegeben ist als eine Darstellung der Initiationsvorgänge, die im wesentlichen zunächst innere menschliche Vorgänge sind. Von diesen Initiationsvorgängen muß man sich vorstellen, daß sie, so wie sie uns heute entgegentreten, der Anfang sind zu wichtigen Umgestaltungen des menschlichen Erdenlebens, überhaupt des menschlichen zukünftigen Lebens. Ist es doch so, daß man gegenüber dem menschlichen Erdenleben fühlen kann, wenn man tiefer empfindet: Ach, dieses menschliche Erdenleben, wie es verläuft, insofern der Mensch bewußt ist, läßt den Menschen eigentlich erscheinen wie eine Waise im Kosmos, wie ein verlassenes Kind des Kosmos, man könnte auch sagen, wie ein verirrter Wanderer im Kosmos,
Weiß doch der Mensch in seinem alltäglichen Bewußtsein, in seinem Wachzustande nicht, wie das gekommen ist, was durch das Saturndasein, durch das Sonnen- und Mondendasein entstanden ist, was in ihm lebt, und weiß er auch nicht, was aus ihm wird in dem, was Jupiter-, Venus- und Vulkanzustand sein wird. Ohne seinen Ursprung, ohne seine Zukunft zu kennen, irrt der Mensch hin am Abgrund des Erdentales. Er mag manchmal sich fest fühlen durch sein Bewußtsein und auch sicher sein wegen seiner Zukunft, aber gegenständlich-sachlich sind weder Vergangenheit noch Zukunft von dem Erdenmenschen zu bemessen. Doch wird vor die menschliche Seele treten dasjenige, was Führer sein kann in eine sichere Lebensrichtung hinein, was sich ergibt, wenn die Menschen sich bekanntmachen werden mit dem, was ihnen gegeben wird als Richtlinie in den Gesetzen der Initiation, jener Initiation, die in alten Zeiten eine gewisse Erbschaft der Götter darstellte, die den Menschen mitgegeben wurde und als atavistisches Hellsehen auftrat, die aber, indem wir der Zukunft entgegenleben, immer mehr und mehr den Menschen ergreifen und das innere Seelenleben des Menschen formen muß.
Gewiß, dieser Weg, dieser Pfad zur Initiation hat zwei Seiten. Die eine Seite ist diese, daß der Mensch die Geheimnisse, die Rätsel des Daseins durch die Initiation kennenlernt, daß er durch sie eintritt in das geistige Erleben des Daseins. Die andere Seite ist aber dasjenige, was wir nennen können das mehr Subjektive, das mehr in der Seele sich Abspielende der Initiation. Es ist zugleich das, vor dem die Menschen am meisten zurückschrecken, weil es in der Tat etwas darstellt, was nicht zu den Bequemlichkeiten des seelischen Erlebens gehött, denen sich die Seele so leicht hingibt oder hingeben will. Es gibt eine Skala, eine ungeheuer ausführliche Skala inneren Erlebens für denjenigen, den sein inneres Erleben allmählich zur Initiation führen soll. Die Überwindungen, Befreiungen, die Widerstände und Erlösungen, sie wechseln ab in mannigfaltigster Weise in dem inneren Erleben auf dem Wege zur Initiation: Da hat man durchzumachen all dasjenige, was uns die Seele so erfühlen läßt, wie wenn sich diese Seele plötzlich ganz fremd geworden wäre, wie wenn sie in einen Abgrund gestürzt wäre, wo sie fühlen muß von sich, wie wenn sie ewig verloren wäre und nimmer wiederfinden könnte das, was sie schon in irgendeiner Lebenszeit einmal erworben hat. Wie eine unendliche Bestürzung und Trauer gegenüber dem Verlieren des schon gewonnenen Daseins kann es über die Seele kommen. Und dann wiederum kann es auch so über die Seele kommen, wie wenn diese Seele sich zersplittern müßte, aufgehen müßte in eine unendliche Vielheit, in alle die Wesen, aus denen der Kosmos zusammengesetzt ist. Dann aber ist es wieder die Stimmung, wie wenn sie sich fühlen muß hindurchwandeln durch die Wesen des Alls, verwandt werden mit dem Wesen des einen, wiederum verlassen dieses Wesen und verwandt werden mit dem Wesen des andern, wie ich das geschildert habe in meinem Buche «Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt», wo ich dargestellt habe die Erlebnisse, die immer verbunden sind mit schmerzlichen Entbehrungen, mit schmerzlichen Verlassenheiten, wenn sie im einzelnen durchgemacht werden. Endlich dasjenige, was die Seele erleben kann, wenn sie die radikalste Verwandlung, möchte ich sagen, miterlebt, wo die Seele sich entschließen muß zu dem, was ausgedrückt werden kann mit den Worten: Du mußt jetzt eine Weile dich selber verlieren, dich selber von dir stoßen, aber du mußt das Vertrauen haben, daß, während du dich selber verlierst, während du dich von dir stößest, Wesen, die in den Weiten der göttlichen Hierarchien ruhen, dich bewahren und wieder dich selbst finden lassen, nachdem du dich verloren hast. — Dies ist das Durchgehen durch Geburten und Tode. Das ist es, was durchzumachen ist unter den inneren Erlebnissen, die zur Initiation führen.
Es ist endlich das schaudervolle Durchgehen durch alle die Kräfte, die nicht für das Erdenleben, wohl aber für das Leben des außerirdischen Kosmos notwendig sind, die aber, wenn sie von Luzifer oder Ahriman in unberechtigter Weise in dieses Erdenleben hineingebracht werden, zu den Kräften des Bösen werden; es ist das schaudervolle Durchgehen durch die Kräfte des Bösen, samt alledem, was sie an Aufwühlendem, Zerstörendem, Aufsaugendem in dem ganzen Kosmos bedeuten. Und es ist endlich das Durchgehen durch das Stadium, wo der Mensch sich nur als Instrument, als Werkzeug fühlen darf, durch das die geistigen Wesen sprechen, wo er symbolisch das wird, was sein Kehlkopf zum Ausdruck bringt als einzelnes Glied, wo er zum Kehlkopf der göttlich-geistigen Wesen wird, wo er sich selber ruhend fühlt in dem allwaltenden, göttlichen Wort. Und dann der Zustand, wo in der Zukunft dieses Fühlen einläuft in das Miterleben des göttlichen Webens und Wollens im Kosmos selber.
Das sind aber nur einzelne Zustände, die geschildert sind. Unendlich abstufungsreich ist das, was die Seele also durchmacht. Und wie die Seele in all diese Zustände sich hineinfinden kann und mit jedem solchen Zustand um eine Stufe höher auf demPfade der Initiation kommt, einen Schritt weiter hineinkommt in die geistige Welt, das finden Sie dargestellt, soweit das darzustellen für die Gegenwart nötig ist, in der Schrift «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» oder auch in der Schrift «Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt» mehr deskriptiv. Ja, das alles, was die Seele also durchmacht, indem sie sich der Initiation nähert, wird auf dem Pfade der Initiation bewußt durchgemacht, bewußt durchlebt. Daher ist dieser Erkenntnispfad so schmerzens- und auch so erlösungsreich. Aber der Mensch vermag lange, lange bevor er sich bewußt hineinfindet in all das, was ich Ihnen geschildert habe als die Etappen des Initiationspfades, auszusprechen mit seinen Mitteln dieses Erleben, auszusprechen in Bildern - und das geschieht durch die Musik. Letzten Endes, im wesentlichen, ist wahre Musik in Tönen verlaufendes Dasein, in Tönen verlaufendes Daseinsgeschehen, welches ein äußeres Bild desjenigen ist, was bewußt die Seele durchlebt im Initiationsleben.
Der Mensch kann, wenn er im alltäglichen Dasein stehenbleibt, nicht ohne weiteres das vollziehen, was wir nennen können: das Ich wie wir es gestern dargestellt haben — hinuntertauchen in den astralischen Leib. Dies, was man da unternimmt, indem man mit dem Ich untertaucht in diese astralische Welt in der richtigen Weise, so daß das Untertauchen ist ein Eintauchen in die göttliche Welt, ist eben der Gang durch die Initiation. Aber ein Bild davon ist uns in dem Geschehen, das durch musikalische Schöpfungen an uns herantritt, gegeben. Der Mensch entäußert sich, indem er der musikalischen Schöpfung schaffend oder genießend sich hingibt, seines Ich. Er drängt dieses Ich zurück, aber er übergibt es zugleich all den göttlich-geistigen Mächten, die an seinem astralischen Leib arbeiten werden, wenn er aufsteigen wird zum Jupiterdasein.
Bedenken Sie, wie wir jetzt eintreten in eine Betrachtung des musikalisch-künstlerischen Schaffens, das uns mit der Zukunft des Menschen in Zusammenhang bringt. Es ist fast, man möchte sagen undemütig, auszusprechen, daß das musikalisch-künstlerische Schaffen in der Tat dazu berufen ist, sich immer mehr und mehr in der Welt zu vervollkommnen, immer mehr sich in der Welt zu vertiefen, und daß das, was als musikalisch-künstlerisches Schaffen in unsere Weltenordnung schon eingetreten ist, mehr oder weniger Versuche sind trotz allem Großen, trotz allem Genialen in diesem musikalisch-künstlerischen Schaffen. Es sind Versuche zu etwas noch unendlich Bedeutungsvollerem im musikalisch-künstlerischen Schaffen der Zukunft. Und dieses musikalisch-künstlerische Schaffen der Zukunft wird Anregungen empfangen können, die bedeutsamsten Anregungen, wenn die Menschen sich darauf einlassen werden, die innere Charakternatur des Initiationspfades kennenzulernen.
Wenn einmal das, was mit Bezug auf den Initiationspfad geschildert werden kann, von den Menschen nicht so durchlebt wird wie heute, sondern so durchlebt werden wird, daß die Menschen bei den Schilderungen dessen, was die Seele da zu erleben hat, Beseligungen und schwere Enttäuschungen durchmachen, wenn das ein ganzes Erleben ist, was man lesend über den Initiationspfad erfahren kann, dann wird die Seele des Menschen erst so erschüttert werden können in ihrer Teilnahme an den Schicksalen all der Wesen, die im außermenschlichen Dasein teilnehmen an den Ereignissen des Kosmos, daß sie in sich Erschütterungen, Entbehrungen und Erlösungen erleben wird, die die Seele dazu drängen werden, in Tonzusammenhängen dasjenige auszusprechen, was erlebbar ist an der Schilderung des Initiationspfades. Geben wird es in Zukunft Menschen, welche die Schilderungen des Initiationspfades empfinden werden, fühlen werden, daß ein intensives Erleben bei dem, was uns da scheinbar so abstrakt entgegentritt, möglich ist, viel intensiver als es in unserem äußeren physischen Erleben der Fall ist. Dann wird ein Moment kommen für die Naturen, die in ihrer Wahrheit empfinden können die Dinge, die auf dern Initiationspfade geschildert werden, in welchem sie sich sagen werden: Jetzt fühle ich, das, was ich da erlebe, bringt mich in Zusammenhang nicht mit der Natur, in der ich darinnenstehe auf dem Erdenrund, sondern mit dem, was den Kosmos durchwebt und durchlebt. Oh, ich kann das alles nicht bloß erleben, aber ich kann es singen, ich kann es komponieren!
Wir haben in dem, was wir so schildern können, einen Fingerzeig für das, was die Geisteswissenschaft dem Menschen werden soll, denn die Geisteswissenschaft soll lebendig die Menschenseele anregen, soll nicht bloß Theorie sein, nicht bloß Erkenntnis, nicht bloß Wissen. Die Geisteswissenschaft soll leben in der Seele, alle Kräfte in der Seele ergreifen, soll aus dem Menschen ein anderes Wesen machen. Beziehungsweise der Mensch soll aus sich selber ein anderes Wesen machen, wenn er sich der Geisteswissenschaft hingibt.
In alten Zeiten, wir können sagen, noch bei den Griechen, die Sonnenmenschen waren, da war es ein atavistisches Hellfühlen, was die Menschen dazu brachte, sich zu entäußern alles astralischen Wesens und alles Ich-Wesens und nur die Gesetze in der physischen Menschengestalt zum Ausdruck zu bringen, die das Saturn- und Sonnendasein erst geschaffen haben. Dadurch entstanden die griechischen Skulpturen, jene griechischen Skulpturen, die als Kunstwerke wirklich so vor uns stehen, wie der Sonnenmensch geistig vor uns stehen muß, wenn wir ihn begreifen als nur enthaltend die physische Menschengestalt und das ätherisch Lebendige darinnen und noch nicht enthaltend das Astralische. Ja, so eine aus der griechischen Kunst heraus geschaffene Venus von Milo können wir betrachten als eine vor uns stehende Personifikation keuschesten Wesens, weil Unkeuschheit erst im astralischen Leibe möglich ist in alldem, was als Triebe und Begierden den astralischen Leib durchdringt. Unkeuschheit ist noch nicht möglich im ätherischen Leibe. Da war es Erbgut der Götter, das die Menschen mitbekommen haben, was sie veranlaßte, solche Kunstwerke zu schaffen. Verlorengegangen ist den Menschen dieses SichErfühlen bloß im ätherischen und physischen Leibe, ohne‘ Ich und ohne astralischen Leib.
Wenn der Mensch aufwacht, mit seinem Ich und seinem astralischen Leibe untertaucht in den Äther- und physischen Leib, so fühlt er und erlebt er nur dasjenige, was in seinem Ich vorhanden ist. Was in seinem astralischen Leib vorgeht, ist schon im Unterbewußten, geschweige denn, was im ätherischen Leibe und im physischen Leibe vorgeht. Davon weiß der Mensch innerlich nichts. Für den Griechen aber war noch ein ahnendes Erfühlen da. Wir aber, wenn wir danach trachten, daß das geisteswissenschaftliche Erkennen in uns wiederum lebendig wird, daß es nicht nur unser abstraktes Erkennen, unser theoretisches Erkennen, sondern unser ganzes Seelenleben erfaßt, dringen dann hinunter allmählich in das, was uns konstituiert, lernen dann erkennen, was da durchrhythmisiert, durchharmonisiert, durchzyklisiert unseren astralischen und ätherischen Leib. Und dann kommen wir zu einem mit der Seele möglichen Verfolgen desjenigen, was ätherisch den Leib durchpulst, den Raum durchpulst und die Gestalten aus dem Ätherischen heraus hervorruft.
Solches sollte versucht werden in dem Aufbau unserer Säulen, in dem Aufbau unserer Architrave im Goetheanumbau: ein Hinuntertauchen in die Sphären, in die uns die Geisteswissenschaft hinuntertauchen läßt, und die vergessen worden sind von der Menschheit. Da müssen wir aber in der Tat mit tiefstem Ernste das nehmen, was uns die Geisteswissenschaft sein kann. Wenn man — das können Sie aus dem ganzen Sinn der bisherigen Auseinandersetzungen über die Geisteswissenschaft entnehmen — bewußt in die geistige Welt eindringt, und man muß ja in die geistige Welt bewußt eindringen, wenn man also das, was in der ätherischen Welt und im ätherischen Menschenleibe lebt, begreifend gestalten und das so Gestaltete genießen will, wenn man da hinein will, dann muß man aber auch mit denjenigen Wesenheiten Bekanntschaft machen, die man als die luziferischen und ahrimanischen Geister bezeichnet.
Nun denken Sie sich wiederum, wieviel in unserem heutigen Schaffen ahrimanisches Wesen ist. Erinnern Sie sich an das, was ich auseinandergesetzt habe in bezug auf das gegenwärtige technische Milieu. Und wir können doch nicht anders, als mit Hilfe der heutigen Technik schaffen. Das würde nur einer Treibhauspflanze ähnlich werden, wenn wir ohne Hilfe der modernen Technik arbeiten wollten. Und es war mir eine gewisse Befriedigung, daß wir hier unseren Bau zum Teil mit einem der modernsten Materiale bauen konnten, daß wir ihn zum Teil mit dem Betonmaterial gebaut haben, denn nicht darinnen kann der Fortschritt liegen, daß wir uns treibhausartig absondern von dem, was das übrige Leben gibt, sondern daß wir benützen, was das übrige Leben gibt. Indem wir uns geisteswissenschaftlich bemächtigen eben der Geistigkeit der Welt, versuchen wir das heutige Material so zu verwenden, daß das, was wir geisteswissenschaftlich erfassen, im heutigen Materiale darinnen lebt.
Das kann natürlich nur bis zu einem gewissen Grade geschehen. Das werden Sie einsehen, wenn Sie den ganzen Sinn dessen sich vor Augen führen, was wir über das technische Milieu gesagt haben. Denn es ist nicht zu trennen Technisches und Ahrimanisches, wenn wir zum Beispiel architektonisch oder durch die Skulptur etwas schaffen wollen für uns. Daher war es eine schwierige Aufgabe, dasjenige, was notwendigerweise ahrimanisch sein mußte an unserem Bau, aus diesem Bau gleichsam als etwas unschädlich Gemachtes auszuschalten. Es war eine schwierige Aufgabe, denn wir wissen, das Ahrimanische muß mit dem heutigen technischen Schaffen verbunden sein. Und es war eine Zeitlang so, als ob Ahriman sehr gut die Oberhand über uns hätte gewinnen können. Dann wären wir genötigt gewesen, all das, was auch zum Betrieb, zum technischen Betriebe von einer gewissen Seite her, gehört, in unseren Bau selber hineinzunehmen, und so hätten wir Ahriman im Bau darinnen sitzen gehabt. Es mußte daran gedacht werden, die ahrimanischen Kräfte aus dem Bau herauszubringen, und das konnte nur geschehen, wenn wir unser Heizhaus aus dem Bau herausnahmen, es absonderten von dem Bau. Das ist, wie Sie jetzt sehen können, geschehen, und es ist gelungen, was nur gelingen kann, wenn es möglich ist, daß so verständnisvoll auf die Intentionen eingegangen werden kann, wie es durch unseren lieben Herrn Englert geschehen ist. Es ist möglich gewesen, in dem modernsten Materiale Formen zu bilden, die wirklich zum Ausdrucke bringen: Hier in der Nähe des Baues, aber außerhalb des Baues, steht das, was nicht darinnen sein darf, was aber außerhalb sein muß, und es steht so da, daß das, worin es erzeugt worden ist, ein wirklich den geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen angepaßter architektonischerBau ist.
Von einer ungeheuren Bedeutung war es, daß dieses zustande gebracht werden konnte gerade in dem neuesten Material. Denn sehen Sie, wenn Sie etwas tiefer hineinschauen in unsere geisteswissenschaftlichen Schriften, namentlich in das letzte Kapitel der «Pforte der Einweihung», dann werden Sie verspüren, wie es dort zum Ausdrucke kommt, daß Luzifer und Ahriman am schädlichsten dann sind, wenn man sie nicht sieht, wenn sie unsichtbar bleiben. Nehmen wir einmal an, jemand würde von ahrimanischen Kräften gequält. Was wäre da das Beste dagegen? Das Beste dagegen wäre, wenn er sich ein irgendwie geartetes Bild von Ahriman formen ließe und es sich ins Zimmer stellte. Gegen dasjenige, wodurch man astralisch gequält wird, ist das beste Mittel, daß man es physisch vor sich hinstellt. Das ist eine falsche Auffassung, wenn man glaubt, daß, wenn man Ahriman vor sich hat, man auch von Ahriman verfolgt werde. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Sichtbar machen muß man die Dinge. Man darf aber dabei nicht nervös werden, man darf nicht so werden, daß, wenn man an der Ahrimanfigur vorbeigeht und unbewußt darauf schaut, man ein Nachbild in sich trägt. Denn das hat man dann unsichtbar in sich, so daß man nervös oder aufgeregt wird.
Gleichzeitig werden Sie sehen, wenn Sie unseren Ahrimanschornstein mit dem ganzen Heizhaus studieren, wie sehr wohl architektonisch aufgebaut werden kann, was, man möchte sagen, der allergröbsten Ahrimankultur unserer Zeit angehört. Nicht früher werden gewisse Schäden dieser Kultur weichen, als bis sich die Menschheit entschließen wird, dasjenige architektonisch zu gestalten, was unsere Ahrimankultur angeht. Neben allem übrigen, neben dem, daß wir einen Bau haben für unsere Sache, ist es wichtig, daß einmal ein Anfang gemacht wird mit der Beziehung der modernen Kultur zum Künstlerischen, mit der Beziehung der Geisteswissenschaft zur modernen Kultur. Ein leiser Anfang ist mit diesem Heizhause gemacht, der der Anfang sein soll dazu, daß man einmal auch andere Probleme löst. Ein ungeheures Problem wäre auch das, einmal den modernen Bahnhof zu finden, denn jene Scheußtümer, jene Scheußlichkeiten, welche als Bahnhöfe heute existieren, sind durchaus ein Widerspruch gegen alles Menschentum. Ebenso wie unser Heizhaus in seiner ganzen Form nicht nur angepaßt ist dem, was in ihm geschieht, sondern dem ganzen Verhältnisse, in dem Ahriman zu unserem Bau steht, so muß der Bahnhof angepaßt sein dem, was durch ihn und mit ihm und in ihm innerhalb unserer modernen Kultur geschieht.
Das sind durchaus Dinge, die hinweisen sollen auf jene Befruchtung, welche ausgehen kann von der Geisteswissenschaft auch für das künstlerische Schaffen. Und überzeugt kann man sich halten, wenn man in den wirklichen Sinn und Geist desjenigen, was uns aus der Geisteswissenschaft folgen soll, eingeht, daß, wenn die Menschen sich einmal vertiefen werden in die Natur des Saturnischen, ihnen die tieferen Gesetze der Architektonik entgegentreten werden. Wenn die Menschen sich versenken in die Natur des Sonnenhaften, so werden ihnen entgegentreten tiefere Gesetze der Skulptur; wenn sie sich vertiefen in das Mondhafte, so werden ihnen erst aufgehen die tieferen Zusammenhänge von Form und Farbe und das Wesen vom HellDunkel, und so werden sie die Inspirationen bekommen für das malerische Schaffen.
Von der Schilderung des Initiationsweges aber werden ausgehen die Inspirationen und Intuitionen für das musikalische und im weiteren Sinne auch für das dichterische Schaffen. Dann wird auch die Zeit einmal kommen, wo wiederum dichterisches Schaffen da sein wird in der Welt im echten Sinne des Wortes. Das dichterische Schaffen hat ja bis zu einem gewissen Grade ausgeklungen. Die göttlichen Träume, die bei den echten Dichtern verkörpert sind, gehörten noch den letzten Resten der alten Göttererbschaft an. Aber eine Zeit muß kommen, wo aus der Einsicht in die Geheimnisse der Initiation heraus die Menschen im Drama oder in der Epik oder in der Lyrik sprechen werden von solchen innersten Seelenvorgängen, die der Mensch erlebt, wenn er nicht mit sich allein lebt, sondern wenn er mit den Göttern der höheren Hierarchien zusammen lebt. Von dem Versgeklingel, das uns immer wieder und wieder nachklingelt das, was die Menschen im physischen Leben erleben, wird man in nicht allzu ferner Zeit sagen: die Menschen sollen einen in Frieden damit lassen. Was sie da vom Morgen bis zum Abend herumlieben, herumhassen, herumfreuen, das ist ihre eigene Sache. Was sie mit den Göttern zusammen erleben, wenn sie den Weg heraus finden aus dem irdischen Erleben, davon werden sie uns erzählen in ihrem musikalischen Schaffen, davon werden sie uns erzählen, wenn sie Dramen, Epik oder Lyrik schaffen. Denn wir wissen: all dasjenige, was der Mensch miterleben kann mit dem außerirdischen Dasein, muß hereingeholt werden durch wirkliches, auch vom Alltagsleben sich ablenkendes Schaffen.
So sehen wir, was an Umwandlungsimpulsen auch für das künstletische Auffassen im geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkennen liegt. So sehen wir, wie wir ahnen können, wenn wir uns einlassen auf dieses geisteswissenschaftliche Erkennen, die Kräfte, von denen die Geisteskultur der Menschheitszukunft beherrscht sein muß. In der Tat, wir dürfen es glauben, daß niemand, ohne daß sein eigenes Wesen tief innerlich umgewandelt wird, an die Geisteswissenschaft wirklich herankommt. Wir dürfen glauben, daß die Geisteswissenschaft etwas ist, was den Menschen tief innerlich erfassen kann, was hinausführt über die engen Zusammenhänge des nur physischen Lebens. Wenn man ein solches Ideal der Geisteswissenschaft im Sinne hat, gewissermaßen etwas im Sinne hat, was, indem die Geisteswissenschaft betrieben wird, schon in eine andere Sphäre führt als die Sphäre des gewöhnlichen Erlebens, dann bedeutet es jedesmal etwas Ungeheures, wenn bei irgend jemandem gesehen werden kann, der innerhalb dieser geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung steht, daß er wirklich den Funken in sich entzündet, der ihn hinausführt über das gewöhnliche, eng persönliche Erleben. Das ist das einzige, was wir heute gewissermaßen schon wie beseligend durch die geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung erleben können, daß durch diese geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung Menschen unter uns auftauchen können, welche wirklich den Weg finden hinaus aus ihrer Persönlichkeit in diejenigen Sphären, wo nicht mehr das Persönliche vorhanden ist.
Im Alltäglichen müssen wir das Persönliche pflegen, aber insofern wir als Geisteswissenschafter beisammen sind, verwandelt sich alles persönliche Wollen und Fühlen, wenn wir die Geisteswissenschaft richtig ergreifen, in etwas Unpersönliches, und jeder Sieg über das persönliche Fühlen, über die persönliche Schwere des Lebens ist von unendlicher Bedeutung, von unendlichem Wert. Aber es ist zugleich das, was zu den bittersten Enttäuschungen gehört, wenn dasjenige, was im Verlaufe der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bestrebungen rein geistig gewollt wird, wiederum hereinrückt in das persönlich-menschliche Wollen und in die persönlich-menschlichen Absichten, wenn das Persönliche anfängt, eine Rolle zu spielen innerhalb jener Gesellschaft, welche uns im Streben nach der Geisteswissenschaft umschließen soll.
Ich möchte nicht die paar Sätze, welche ich am Schlusse gesprochen habe, genauer ausführen, ihre Bedeutung genauer umschreiben, weil ich glaube, daß so mancher unter Ihnen sein wird, der vielleicht vieles in diesen Sätzen verstehen wird, der verstehen wird, daß in diesen Sätzen manches angedeutet werden sollte von dem, was an Befriedigendem und an Enttäuschendem vorhanden ist. Heute, nachdem wir eine Weile versucht haben, einen geisteswissenschaftlichen Weg miteinander zu machen, ist es gut, darüber einmal nachzudenken, das sich einmal vorzuhalten, denn es gibt mancherlei Veranlassungen, solches sich vorzuhalten, inwiefern man mit der eigenen Seele Anteil nimmt an dem aufrichtigen, ehrlichen Hinaufstreben zu den geistigen Interessen, die gerade durch die geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung gepflegt werden. Denn wie großartig ist die Perspektive, wenn wir uns sagen: Das Leben, die Wissenschaft, die Religion und auch die Kunst, sie können Umwandlungsimpulse erleben von der wahrhaft verstandenen Geisteswissenschaft. Alle bildenden Künste von dem, was wir im Geistigen erkennen über die Vergangenheit, alle musikalischen, redenden Künste von dem, was wir erstreben in uns, um einmal einer Zukunft entgegengehen zu können. Diese Perspektive ist so groß und so gewaltig, daß wir gar nicht genug empfinden und erfühlen können, um sie uns intensiver klarzumachen. Und je mehr wir das können, die Stimmung, die aus uns heraus kommt, uns klarzumachen, desto besser stehen wir als wirkliche Glieder in dem großen — heute noch kleinen, aber zu Großem veranlagten - Organismus darinnen, den wir als die Geisteswissenschaft kennen. Das möchte ich heute nicht nur in Ihren Verstand und in Ihre Vernunft senden, sondern das möchte ich in Ihr Gemüt und in Ihr Herz legen.
Third Lecture
We can perhaps best understand what we mean here about what our spiritual scientific endeavors should bring into our souls and hearts if we take a look at most of what I have taken the liberty of presenting as “An Outline of Esoteric Science.” First, if we disregard the introductory chapters, which are necessary as preparation, we have those chapters that serve to acquaint us with the nature of the human being and his relationship to birth and death and his life in the spiritual worlds. After these introductory chapters, we have a description of the great cosmic connections, sketchy of course, which lead us through the stages of transformation of our Earth before it became Earth, through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon existences, and then introduce us to Earth existence. Then we have a very brief, only briefly hinting at the prospects that arise for us in the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan existences. And I would like to say that instead of a more detailed description of these Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan existences, we then have a description of what a person has to go through if they want to allow those inner soul experiences to unfold within themselves, which must ultimately lead them to initiation. These processes are described in more detail up to a certain stage in the discussions in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.”
We will see that for us, spiritual science can be divided into two parts: one part in which we describe the cosmic connections, describe how what we see today as the Earth and its beings and the rest of the universe has come into being since time immemorial, and how it is likely to develop further. If you now go through the observations we make, you will see everywhere that a large part of our observations are, in a sense, influenced by what we take in about the becoming of the cosmos. Another part of our observations deals with what the soul must do in order to enter the spiritual worlds, in other words, to attain initiation. These inner experiences, overcoming, struggles, redemptions, and achievements that the soul has to go through are, in a sense, always touched upon in the second sphere of our considerations. And our considerations are from one or the other part when we observe their essence.
If we now consider the first part of our reflections, those representations through Saturn, Sun, and Moon existence into Earth existence, we are introducing something into the world that is very, very contrary to today's religious or scientific worldview, something that is largely regarded as absurd by today's worldview. For it is quite natural that our present-day worldview finds the representation of such a world order, as we must give it, for example, when we describe Saturn existence, too fantastic, that the representation of such a cosmic order is such for our present view that one can only say: That is absolute nonsense, that cannot exist at all, that is something fantastically imagined! - The same applies to the other parts of what we have to describe.
Now remember the statement I have made several times here and also yesterday. I said: Human beings do not only sleep at night, when their thinking and imagining consciousness is subdued, but they also sleep during the day with part of their being. While at night it is more the life of imagination that sleeps, during the day it is more the life of will that sleeps in a part of our being. Down in the depths of our physicality, the life of will sleeps, at least a large part of it. For this life of will in human beings is much more comprehensive than the conscious life of will that we develop. That is only a small part of it. And we can boldly say that human beings, with their ordinary consciousness, when they go about their work or enjoy their pleasures during the day, are for the most part sleepwalkers. An infinite amount happens unconsciously, and even what they do consciously, they accomplish for the most part seemingly consciously, but half and more than half unconsciously.
If we observe human beings closely in what they do half or more than half consciously, unconsciously, then it may occur to us that as sleeping human beings they are not as incredulous as as waking human beings, not at all as incredulous. Today's waking human being, with his worldview, comes and says: The description of Saturn's existence in a book such as “Occult Science” is pure, absolute nonsense! — Of course. But the human being as a whole does not say that; rather, he carries something within himself through which he — if you will allow the expression — unconsciously knows that Saturn's existence once existed. He does something that documents that he remembers this Saturn existence, unconsciously, so to speak. What he does is become an architect. For architecture would never have come into being if human beings today did not carry within themselves those laws that were imprinted on the human physical body during the ancient Saturn period. Yesterday we discussed how these laws can be projected out of the physical body into space and then become architectural laws. Everything that human beings absorbed during the ancient Saturn era is hidden in the laws of architecture. Of course, they must do this with today's means, so that what we encounter in contemporary works of architecture looks very different from what we know of “Saturnian architecture.” But the essential, the living thing that we create in our architectural activity is what has been implanted in human beings through the ancient Saturn era.
Let us take this, which we bring before our soul, in an even deeper sense. What does man do when he is completely absorbed in architectural creation, whether sleeping, recognizing, or enjoying? He lives in the Saturn laws of his physical body, that is, when he is completely immersed in the laws of architecture, he forgets everything that lives in him as an etheric body, as an astral body, and as an I; he becomes a Saturn human again. Everything austere, everything chaste, all that is silent and yet so eloquent in architecture is nothing other than the human being, by renouncing the higher members of his being, placing himself in what the spirits of the higher hierarchies — the Thrones, the Archai, who were involved in the beginning of Saturnic existence — have given him, essentially these two groups of higher spirits, supported by the other beings of the higher hierarchies.
So it is really a lifting up not only above the present of the earth, but above a far, far distant past and a placing of oneself into this Saturn existence, which man accomplishes by creating or enjoying architecture, if it is real art, of course.
And again, we ascend to sculpture, to the art of sculpting. Yesterday we saw that the laws of sculpture are the laws of the etheric body, which human beings push down one level into their physical body. Just as what lives in the physical body is pushed out into space and becomes architecture, so in sculpture what lives in the etheric body is pushed down into the physical body. When we enjoy sculpture, we divest ourselves of the astral body and the ego and all higher members. When we enjoy sculpture, we live as if we had only the physical body and, in the physical body, the expression of the etheric body: this is being transported back to the old solar existence. Everything that the old solar existence implanted in human beings becomes present in the enjoyment or creation of sculpture. What we encounter in sculpture appears to us, on the one hand, so familiar because it reflects our own distant, distant past, which is still creatively present in us, our solar time. And on the other hand, it appears to us so smooth and cold as marble, because what comes from the sculpture shines upon us like what comes from the distant cosmos, from the distant universe.
And when we move on to painting, we know that painting is based on the inner impulses of the astral body being pushed into the etheric body, so that in painting we express our ego and live as if we were only experiencing the astral body, but pushing this astral life down into the etheric body. We experience ourselves in all that has been implanted in us by the old lunar existence, that old lunar existence which has given us our astral inner life as human beings. The painterly is, as it were, the outer projection of our astral inner life. Just as we experience moods such as sadness, joy, characteristic and expressive qualities in our astral inner life, just as we experience what fate brings upon us, so we experience what the painter conjures up on the canvas, which is a reflection of our own inner astral being.
If you try to empathize a little with what has been described in “The Secret Science” as Saturn, sun, and moon existence, you will discover that the description of Saturn existence is indeed based on an architectural mood, the description of sun existence on a sculptural mood, and the description of moon existence on a painterly mood. An attempt has been made to reflect these moods in the choice of words. The description of occult events requires much more than today's literary tools, and one completely misunderstands the style of an occult description if one believes that one can do justice to it with the ghastly literary tools of our time.
Then we come to earthly existence, in which we live as in our immediate present, as in the reality assigned to us. This is not something that we feel the need to present artistically in front of us as we live in it. On the other hand, what human beings feel as a need to express artistically is not exhausted by recreating their cosmic past in architecture, sculpture, and painting, as it may be from the memory implanted in us. The artistic need goes further. And if we seek the spiritual basis for this artistic need to go further, we must find it in what is presented in “The Secret Science” after the description of the existence of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth, and after the further stages of development of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan existences are presented only in a very sketchy way, is passed on as a representation of the initiation processes, which are essentially inner human processes at first. One must imagine that these initiation processes, as they appear to us today, are the beginning of important transformations of human life on earth, and indeed of human life in the future. For it is true that when we feel more deeply, we can sense that human life on earth, as it unfolds, insofar as human beings are conscious, actually makes human beings appear like orphans in the cosmos, like abandoned children of the cosmos, or, one might also say, like lost wanderers in the cosmos.
For in their everyday consciousness, in their waking state, human beings do not know how what has come about through the existence of Saturn, through the existence of the sun and moon, what lives within them, and they also do not know what will become of them in what will be the state of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. Without knowing his origin or his future, man wanders at the edge of the abyss of the earthly valley. He may sometimes feel secure in his consciousness and also be certain about his future, but objectively speaking, neither the past nor the future can be measured by earthly man. But what can guide the human soul in a safe direction in life will come before it, which will result when people become acquainted with what is given to them as a guideline in the laws of initiation, that initiation which in ancient times represented a certain inheritance from the gods, which was given to humans and appeared as atavistic clairvoyance, but which, as we live toward the future, must increasingly take hold of people and shape their inner soul life.
Certainly, this path, this path to initiation, has two sides. One side is that through initiation, people come to know the mysteries, the riddles of existence, and through it they enter into the spiritual experience of existence. The other side, however, is what we might call the more subjective aspect of initiation, that which takes place more in the soul. It is also what people shy away from most, because it represents something that does not belong to the comforts of soul experience, to which the soul so easily surrenders or wants to surrender. There is a scale, an enormously detailed scale of inner experience for those whose inner experience is gradually leading them to initiation. The overcoming, the liberations, the resistances and the redemptions alternate in the most manifold ways in the inner experience on the path to initiation: One has to go through all that which makes the soul feel as if it had suddenly become completely alien, as if it had fallen into an abyss where it must feel as if it were eternally lost and could never again find what it had once acquired in some lifetime. An infinite consternation and grief over the loss of the existence already gained can come over the soul. And then again, it can also come over the soul as if this soul had to splinter, had to dissolve into an infinite multiplicity, into all the beings that make up the cosmos. But then it is again the feeling of having to pass through the beings of the universe, to become related to the being of one, to leave this being again and become related to the being of another, as I have described in my book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World,” where I have described the experiences that are always connected with painful privations, with painful abandonments, when they are gone through individually. Finally, what the soul can experience when it witnesses, I would say, the most radical transformation, where the soul must decide to do what can be expressed in the words: You must now lose yourself for a while, push yourself away from yourself, but you must have the confidence that while you lose yourself, while you push yourself away, beings who rest in the vastness of the divine hierarchies will preserve you and let you find yourself again after you have lost yourself. — This is the passing through births and deaths. This is what must be gone through among the inner experiences that lead to initiation.
It is finally the terrifying passage through all the forces that are not necessary for life on earth, but are necessary for life in the extraterrestrial cosmos, but which, when brought into this earthly life in an unjustified way by Lucifer or Ahriman, become the forces of evil; it is the terrifying passage through the forces of evil, with all that they mean in terms of turmoil, destruction, and absorption throughout the cosmos. And finally, it is the passage through the stage where the human being may only feel himself to be an instrument, a tool through which the spiritual beings speak, where he symbolically becomes what his larynx expresses as an individual member, where he becomes the larynx of the divine-spiritual beings, where he feels himself resting in the all-ruling, divine Word. And then the state where, in the future, this feeling merges into the co-experience of divine weaving and willing in the cosmos itself.
But these are only individual states that are described. What the soul goes through is infinitely rich in gradations. And how the soul can find its way into all these states and, with each such state, ascend one step higher on the path of initiation, taking one step further into the spiritual world, you will find described, as far as it is necessary to describe it for the present, in the book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” or, more descriptively, in the book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.” Yes, everything that the soul goes through as it approaches initiation is consciously experienced and lived through on the path of initiation. That is why this path of knowledge is so painful and yet so redemptive. But long, long before consciously finding their way into all that I have described to you as the stages of the path of initiation, human beings are able to express this experience with their own means, to express it in images — and this happens through music. Ultimately, in essence, true music is existence expressed in sound, the events of existence expressed in sound, which is an outer image of what the soul consciously experiences in the life of initiation.
If human beings remain stuck in everyday existence, they cannot easily accomplish what we might call the ego as we described it yesterday — diving down into the astral body. What one undertakes there, by descending with the ego into this astral world in the right way, so that the descent is an immersion into the divine world, is precisely the passage through initiation. But we are given an image of this in the events that come to us through musical creations. By devoting themselves to musical creation, either creatively or as listeners, human beings renounce their ego. They push this ego back, but at the same time they surrender it to all the divine spiritual powers that will work on their astral body when they ascend to Jupiter existence.
Consider how we now enter into a contemplation of musical and artistic creation that connects us with the future of humanity. It is almost, one might say, presumptuous to say that musical and artistic creation is indeed called upon to perfect itself more and more in the world, to delve deeper and deeper into the world, and that what has already entered our world order as musical and artistic creation are, despite all their greatness, more or less attempts despite all the genius in this musical and artistic creation. They are attempts at something even more infinitely meaningful in the musical and artistic creation of the future. And this musical and artistic creation of the future will be able to receive inspiration, the most significant inspiration, if people allow themselves to get to know the inner character nature of the path of initiation.
Once what can be described in relation to the path of initiation is no longer experienced by people as it is today, but is experienced in such a way that people undergo bliss and severe disappointment when reading about what the soul has to experience there, once reading about the path of initiation becomes a complete experience, then the soul of the human being will be so shaken in its participation in the destinies of all the beings who participate in the events of the cosmos in non-human existence that it will experience within itself shocks, privations, and redemptions that will urge the soul to express in tonal contexts what can be experienced in the description of the path of initiation. In the future, there will be people who will perceive the descriptions of the path of initiation, who will feel that an intense experience is possible in what appears to us to be so abstract, much more intense than is the case in our outer physical experience. Then a moment will come for those natures who can feel in their truth the things that are described on the paths of initiation, in which they will say to themselves: Now I feel that what I am experiencing there brings me into connection not with the nature in which I stand on the earth, but with what weaves through and lives through the cosmos. Oh, I cannot merely experience all this, but I can sing it, I can compose it!
In what we can describe in this way, we have a hint of what spiritual science should become for human beings, for spiritual science should stimulate the human soul in a living way; it should not be merely theory, not merely insight, not merely knowledge. Spiritual science should live in the soul, seize all the powers of the soul, and transform human beings into different beings. Or rather, human beings should transform themselves into different beings when they devote themselves to spiritual science.
In ancient times, we can say, even among the Greeks, who were sun people, there was an atavistic clairvoyance that led people to renounce all astral being and all ego being and to express only the laws in the physical human form that first created the Saturn and Sun existence. This gave rise to Greek sculptures, those Greek sculptures that stand before us as works of art, just as the sun-human must stand before us spiritually when we understand him as containing only the physical human form and the etheric life within it, and not yet containing the astral. Yes, we can regard a Venus de Milo created from Greek art as a personification of the most chaste being standing before us, because unchastity is only possible in the astral body in all that penetrates the astral body as drives and desires. Unchastity is not yet possible in the etheric body. It was the genetic heritage of the gods that humans inherited, which prompted them to create such works of art. Humans have lost this feeling of being solely in the etheric and physical body, without the ego and without the astral body.
When human beings wake up, with their ego and astral body submerged in the etheric and physical bodies, they feel and experience only what is present in their ego. What goes on in their astral body is already in the subconscious, not to mention what goes on in the etheric and physical bodies. Human beings know nothing of this inwardly. For the Greeks, however, there was still a sense of intuition. But when we strive to revive spiritual scientific knowledge within ourselves, so that it encompasses not only our abstract knowledge, our theoretical knowledge, but our entire soul life, we gradually penetrate into what constitutes us and learn to recognize what rhythms, harmonizes, and cycles through our astral and etheric bodies. And then we come to a soul-based pursuit of that which pulsates through the etheric body, pulsates through space, and brings forth forms from the etheric.
This is what we should try to do in the construction of our pillars, in the construction of our architraves in the Goetheanum building: to descend into the spheres into which spiritual science allows us to descend, and which have been forgotten by humanity. But we must indeed take what spiritual science can offer us with the utmost seriousness. If one consciously enters the spiritual world — as you can gather from the whole meaning of the discussions on spiritual science so far — and one must consciously enter the spiritual world if one wants to understand and shape what lives in the etheric world and in the etheric human body, and enjoy what has been shaped in this way, then one must also become acquainted with those beings who are described as the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits.
Now think again about how much Ahrimanic essence there is in our work today. Remember what I have discussed in relation to the current technical environment. And we cannot help but create with the help of today's technology. It would be like a greenhouse plant if we wanted to work without the help of modern technology. And it gave me a certain satisfaction that we were able to build our building here partly with one of the most modern materials, that we built it partly with concrete, because progress cannot lie in isolating ourselves like a greenhouse from the rest of life, but in using what the rest of life has to offer. By using spiritual science to grasp the spirituality of the world, we try to use today's materials in such a way that what we grasp through spiritual science lives in today's materials.
Of course, this can only happen to a certain extent. You will understand this when you consider the whole meaning of what we have said about the technical environment. For the technical and the Ahrimanic cannot be separated when, for example, we want to create something for ourselves architecturally or through sculpture. Therefore, it was a difficult task to eliminate from our building that which necessarily had to be Ahrimanic, to render it harmless, as it were. It was a difficult task, because we know that the Ahrimanic must be connected with today's technical work. And for a time, it seemed as if Ahriman could very well have gained the upper hand over us. Then we would have been forced to incorporate everything that belongs to the operation, to the technical operation from a certain point of view, into our building itself, and thus we would have had Ahriman sitting inside the building. We had to think about removing the Ahrimanic forces from the building, and that could only be done by removing our boiler house from the building, separating it from the building. As you can now see, this has been done, and it has succeeded, which can only succeed if it is possible to respond to the intentions with such understanding as our dear Mr. Englert has done. It has been possible to create forms in the most modern materials that truly express: Here, close to the building but outside it, stands what must not be inside, but must be outside, and it stands there in such a way that what it has been created in is an architectural structure that is truly in keeping with spiritual scientific insights.
It was of enormous significance that this could be achieved precisely with the latest materials. For if you look a little deeper into our spiritual scientific writings, especially into the last chapter of The Gate of Initiation, you will sense how it is expressed there that Lucifer and Ahriman are most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible. Let us suppose that someone is tormented by Ahrimanic forces. What would be the best remedy for this? The best remedy would be for them to form some kind of image of Ahriman and place it in their room. The best remedy for astral torment is to place it physically in front of you. It is a misconception to believe that if you have Ahriman in front of you, you will also be persecuted by Ahriman. The opposite is true. You have to make things visible. But you must not become nervous in the process, you must not become so that when you walk past the Ahriman figure and unconsciously look at it, you carry an afterimage within you. For then you have it invisibly within you, so that you become nervous or agitated.
At the same time, if you study our Ahriman chimney with the entire boiler room, you will see how well it can be architecturally constructed, which, one might say, belongs to the coarsest Ahriman culture of our time. Certain damages of this culture will not disappear until humanity decides to architecturally design what concerns our Ahriman culture. In addition to everything else, in addition to the fact that we have a building for our cause, it is important that a start is made with the relationship between modern culture and the arts, with the relationship between spiritual science and modern culture. A quiet beginning has been made with this boiler house, which should be the start of solving other problems as well. It would also be an enormous problem to find a modern train station, because the monstrosities, the abominations that exist as train stations today are completely contrary to all humanity. Just as our boiler house in its entire form is not only adapted to what happens in it, but also to the whole relationship in which Ahriman stands to our building, so the station must be adapted to what happens through it and with it and in it within our modern culture.
These are things that should point to the enrichment that spiritual science can bring to artistic creation. And if we delve into the true meaning and spirit of what spiritual science has to offer us, we can be convinced that once people immerse themselves in the nature of Saturn, they will encounter the deeper laws of architecture. When people immerse themselves in the nature of the solar, they will encounter the deeper laws of sculpture; when they immerse themselves in the lunar, they will first understand the deeper connections between form and color and the nature of light and dark, and thus they will receive inspiration for their artistic creation.
The description of the path of initiation will give rise to inspiration and intuition for musical and, in a broader sense, poetic creation. Then the time will come when poetic creation will once again exist in the world in the true sense of the word. Poetic creation has, to a certain extent, faded away. The divine dreams embodied in true poets still belonged to the last remnants of the ancient god heritage. But a time must come when, out of insight into the mysteries of initiation, people will speak in drama or epic or lyric poetry of those innermost soul processes that human beings experience when they do not live alone with themselves, but when they live together with the gods of the higher hierarchies. In the not too distant future, people will say of the verse that echoes again and again what people experience in physical life: people should leave us in peace with it. What they love, hate, and rejoice in from morning to night is their own business. What they experience together with the gods when they find their way out of earthly experience, they will tell us about in their musical creations, they will tell us about when they create dramas, epics, or poetry. For we know that everything that human beings can experience with extraterrestrial beings must be brought in through real creativity that also distracts from everyday life.
Thus we see what impulses for transformation also lie in artistic perception in spiritual-scientific knowledge. Thus we see how we can sense, when we engage in this spiritual-scientific knowledge, the forces that must dominate the spiritual culture of humanity's future. Indeed, we may believe that no one can truly approach spiritual science without undergoing a profound inner transformation of their own being. We may believe that spiritual science is something that can deeply affect people, something that leads beyond the narrow confines of physical life alone. If one has such an ideal of spiritual science in mind, something that, in a sense, leads beyond the sphere of ordinary experience when spiritual science is practiced already leads to a sphere other than that of ordinary experience, then it is always something tremendous when we can see someone within this spiritual scientific movement who has truly ignited the spark within themselves that leads them beyond ordinary, narrow personal experience. That is the only thing we can experience today as something blissful through the spiritual science movement, that through this spiritual science movement people can emerge among us who truly find the way out of their personality into those spheres where the personal no longer exists.
In everyday life, we must cultivate the personal, but insofar as we are together as spiritual scientists, all personal will and feeling is transformed into something impersonal when we grasp spiritual science correctly, and every victory over personal feeling, over the personal heaviness of life, is of infinite significance, of infinite value. But at the same time, it is one of the most bitter disappointments when what is purely spiritually desired in the course of spiritual scientific endeavors re-enters into personal human desires and personal human intentions, when the personal begins to play a role within the society that is supposed to surround us in our pursuit of spiritual science.I do not wish to elaborate on the few sentences I spoke at the end, to describe their meaning in more detail, because I believe that there will be some among you who will perhaps understand much in these sentences, who will understand that these sentences were intended to hint at some of what is satisfying and disappointing. Today, after we have been trying for a while to follow a spiritual scientific path together, it is good to think about this, to keep it in mind, because there are many reasons to keep it in mind, to what extent one participates with one's own soul in the sincere, honest striving toward the spiritual interests that are cultivated precisely by the spiritual scientific movement. For how magnificent is the perspective when we say to ourselves: life, science, religion, and also art can experience transformative impulses from truly understood spiritual science. All the visual arts from what we recognize in the spiritual realm about the past, all the musical and spoken arts from what we strive for within ourselves in order to be able to face the future. This perspective is so great and so powerful that we cannot feel and sense enough to make it clearer to ourselves. And the more we can do this, the more we can understand the mood that comes out of us, the better we stand as real members of the great — today still small, but destined for greatness — organism that we know as spiritual science. Today, I would like to send this not only to your intellect and your reason, but I would like to place it in your mind and in your heart.