The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness
GA 116
9 March 1910, Berlin
V. Correspondences Between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm
Our lecture to-day will consist of a kind of summing up of all we have heard in the course of the various lectures given here this winter, which may be taken as a continuation of the lectures on St. Luke's and St. Matthew's Gospels and of what was given here with reference to the lectures on St. John's Gospel which I gave in Stockholm. From the way in which these lectures were given, it will be clear that there never was any question in a narrow sense of explaining the Gospels, but rather that from the truths which in the first place are truths in themselves and as such can be found in the Gospels if rightly understood, light can be thrown in different ways upon other riddles of life.
When we go back beyond the founding of Christianity, we find two different kinds of Initiation: that of the North, described in more detail in the above-mentioned Stockholm Lectures, and that of the South, the chief characteristic of which is its connection with the Egyptian methods of Initiation. In the world of the ancients there were two different methods by which they could penetrate into the Spiritual world. In old Egypt a candidate for initiation had to descend into the depths of his own soul, beyond all that plays its part in the ordinary soul-life, as thinking, feeling and willing, and the like. There he found that from which the soul itself came forth: the divine Spiritual life of the world. A descent beneath those regions of the soul which are illuminated and permeated by the Ego, was the essential point in the Egyptian, or indeed, in any southern Initiation. In the Northern Initiation, on the other hand, the object striven for was that man should come out of himself, and expand into the phenomena of the world in a state of ecstasy. This was especially the case in the Germanic Druidic Mysteries and those of the Trotten. We heard how these two kinds of Initiation were combined in one stream, in what we call the Christian Initiation, and how this represented a higher unity combining the ecstatic Initiation of the North with the mystical contraction of the South. This gives an indication of a deeper foundation of cosmic Mysteries, permeating all existence. In reality this is in itself as great and mighty a fact as the fusion of the two different forms of Initiation of ancient times into the one single form of Christian Initiation; it is an example of a great and still more comprehensive law permeating all human existence, and also interwoven in the existence of all the outer world-phenomena, in so far as these are known to man. Everywhere we find ourselves confronted by opposites, by two parts of a duality. The Northern and Southern initiations offer one example of two opposite sides—polarities, as we might call them—that confront us in the life of the world. The other, the Christian initiation—in which these two forms of initiation flow together and as it were celebrate a Spiritual marriage—is an example of how opposites, dualities of any sort, reunite. This takes place without cessation; unities are always separating into dualities for the purpose of furthering evolution, while dualities unite again, and once more form unities. We can point externally to one great and mighty fact, extending beyond human evolution, which is an example of this division of unity into a duality, and of the streaming back of the two into one.
We have often thrown light on the Lemurian Epoch, which experienced, among other things, that great fact in the evolution of the world, the separation of the Moon from our Earth. That epoch also saw the first beginnings of that which in the present day sense of man's development, we may call the two opposites: man and woman; whereas in the ages preceding that of Lemuria we should only find unity of sex. There was an original unity, which separated into man and woman. We have already indicated, moreover, that in a future age the two sexes will once more become one, that the duality will again become a unity, a unity will come forth from a duality. That is the external indication of a far-reaching series of facts connected with the relation of two to one, or one to two.
What we thus meet with in the development of mankind is actually the expression, the image, of a still greater cosmic polarity rooted in a unity; greater than the example in our present-world life, of the two that in a distant future will be fused into one. It is necessary that we should take every one of the thoughts given us by Spiritual Science in its full depths, not allowing ourselves to form a habit of taking such thoughts in the same superficial way as other thoughts and conceptions which prevail in the world to-day, and which our present civilisation in its hasty and superficial triviality accepts. The thoughts of Spiritual Science must be taken as earnestly as possible. Therefore such a thought as that often spoken of and which indeed underlies all our teaching—that man as a little world, as a microcosm, is born out of the Macrocosm, the great world—must not simply be taken as an abstract thought, for in its content it is manifold and infinite. Above all, we must realise that the world contains more depth than is supposed; and that even when we have grasped a polarity or a truth in one of its aspects, that does not by any means signify that we know the last truth about it; rather must we patiently wait and observe, so that when we know one side of a thing, we should try to learn what refers to the other side of it.
Man is born out of the whole Cosmos; he must look up it to as to his Father-Mother, of whom he himself is an image. Yes, man is an image of the whole world with which he is acquainted, there is nothing in the being of man which does not in some way relate to what can be found in the great Cosmos. If we compare man, as seen to-day in the light of Spiritual Science, with the human forms of early ages, we find among others one characteristic feature of immense importance for the understanding of the nature of man. This sign can teach every one of us that, as regards what we have known about the world, the fact that some things that have been said are true, is not of sole importance; there is something else besides, something very different. When a man has proved the truth of a thing, he has not even then told us what is of greatest importance in it. For example, there is much truth in what a trivial natural scientist will tell about the resemblance between man and the higher mammals. It is an indisputable truth that man has the same number of bones and muscles, and so on. But after this has been proved, the last word on the subject has not been said. Man must learn, through the deepening and inwardness of Spiritual Science, to acquire a feeling for the value of a particular truth, to sense whether or no it is important and essential for the elucidation of a matter. People come along to-day and speaking from their trivial consciousness, keep on assuring us of the truth of their assertions. We have no wish to contradict them. But the point is, of what value are they for the understanding of the world? Now there is a certain fact—which is undeniably true, and with which everyone is acquainted, because we meet with it over and over again every day—the value of which, in its significance to man should be realised and felt in the right way. That is, the fact that man stands and walks upright and can gaze out into space around him. Man alone is capable of that! For we must say that even though the apes look as though they might possess this power, they have somehow missed it, for they cannot walk upright. Man is the only being who has achieved this, and who has succeeded in raising his countenance freely into the space around him. This fact is immeasurably more important than all those that a trivial Natural Science tells us as to the position occupied by man among the animals. What science says is true, but this is of much greater importance. If we wish to feel the force of this, we must make ourselves acquainted with the reason why man is a being that walks upright, a being certainly still bound to the earth, but one who, through his mental outlook and even through his sense-perceptions, raised himself into an upright position in space. The reason is that there is a certain polarity, a duality in the Cosmos, which corresponds to another duality in man. We can point to a duality in the universe and to a duality in man, as two opposites, existing in the microcosm and the macrocosm. The one alluded to in the macrocosm, in the great world, is that of the Sun to the Earth; and the same polarity that exists between Sun and Earth exists also in man. It is that between his head and his hands and feet; between his head and his limbs. As time goes on these things will be gone into more fully, but we must in the first place make ourselves acquainted with them and learn to feel that in a certain respect the head and limbs of man bear the same relation to each other as the Sun does to the Earth in our solar System. There are, in fact, in our earth those forces which in the course of the ages have brought about the whole form and movement of our hands and feet through certain mysterious forces which bind man to the Earth; while the forces which have lifted his countenance up in space, and which have transformed him from a being which gazes on to the earth to one who can look out into the infinite distances of cosmic space,—these forces have their seat in the Sun. Anyone who really has the right feeling will have the same impression when contemplating the self-evident polarity between man's head and his limbs, as he will if he turns his attention to the polarity between the Sun and Earth. This polarity will some day become a unity in the life of man, just as the Cosmic polarity will do.
Even as the Sun and Earth were once a single being which later divided into a duality, so will they some day be re-united; and the polarity in man between head and limbs will also some day become unity, difficult to imagine as it may seem to the man of to-day, who is not accustomed to such concepts.
We have thus pointed to a polarity in man and to its correspondence in the universe. There are, however, other polarities in man, which also have their corresponding counterparts in the universe. As regards the polarity between the head and limbs, all human beings on the earth are alike. It exists equally in man and woman. In this respect there is no difference between them; for every other polarity, for example that in the configuration of the soul, is not affected by this. If there were no other polarity but that existing between the microcosm and macrocosm, man and woman would be alike, but as it is they form another polarity in the being of man. Now we may ask: can we not also find a polarity in the universe corresponding to that between man and woman in human life? That can be found too. But before we are able to look for it we must make ourselves to some slight extent acquainted, in an occult sense, with the polarity between man and woman. In so doing we must not fall into the error of our materialistic age, which applies the polarity between man and woman—taking it simply as a question of sex—to the whole universe. Not only is that a trivial thing to do, but our learned men are taking a liberty when they consider that what is found in one domain is applicable to every other.
The corresponding polarity in the universe to that existing on our earth between man and woman cannot be called male and female. That would be nonsense. We must investigate the occult foundations of this other polarity. The polarity between male and female in our earthly evolution does not, of course, apply to the ‘human being.’ The human being as such is the same in both man and woman. When we speak of man and woman we only refer to the configuration of their physical and etheric bodies. This has nothing to do with the inner being of man; so that we cannot, in an occult sense, speak as our materialistic age does. A man and woman each possesses an astral body and an ego, but the ordinary perception knows nothing of that which makes a man or woman a human being, it can only speak of them as it sees them. We are not now speaking of the human being as such in man or woman, but of what constitutes a man or a woman, which is merely their outer sheaths. This must be thoroughly understood; for if what is about to be said were to be applied to the human being as such, it would be completely wrong. The polarity between man and woman within the above-named limits is as follows:—
In primeval ages the external human form was totally different. The present human forms—male and female—have gradually evolved out of an earlier single form, which had not yet divided into two. There was formerly a unity, where now there is a polarity, between man and woman. Now we know too, that the earlier uni-form was of a finer, more spiritual kind. Only in the course of ages did man develop a dense material form. When we look back not only do we find uni-form, but one which was more spiritual than the human form to-day. We have a primeval human being neither man nor woman, unity as yet undivided, and finer, more etheric, more spiritual than the later and more material human being, now separated into man and woman. What was the cause of the original unity having later developed into Man and Woman? This cause came about because, when the unity became a duality, the woman formed a physical body for herself which, if we may say such a thing, did not completely pass from the earlier form into the normal material form. The body of woman remained at a more spiritual stage, it did not fully descend into the material. It has certainly become dense and material, but at the same time it has retained an earlier, more spiritual form. Thus a spiritual stage has become material. The body of woman has, as it were, retained an earlier, more spiritual form, which has not descended completely into matter. Though it has become material, it has not done so as regards its form, for it still retains the form the human being originally possessed. Hence we may say: Woman is a manifestation of an earlier formation which was intended to be Spiritual and which, as seen to-day, is actually false, a maya, an illusion. If we accept the idea of a certain point in evolution when a spring-forward was made and when matter was crystallised, we can say: -the woman did not press forward as far as that point, she crystallised an earlier form. To one who can really perceive the facts of life, or who learns them through imaginative cognition, a woman's body is a somewhat truer imprint of the Spiritual behind it only as far as the head and limbs are concerned, that is to say, that her head and limbs alone express in their material appearance, something of a resemblance to their spiritual counterpart. The Spiritual behind the material form does not look like that, because the latter is not a true form.
Thus the saying that the world is ‘Maya’ can be applied to every region of life. It is very easy simply to state that ‘the world is Maya,’ but a man cannot grasp its meaning, if he does not go seriously into it, inquiring: ‘In how far are forms illusion?’ Some are more so and others less. There are those which at any rate approximately do in their outer semblance express the Spiritual behind them; these are the head and limbs. Others there are which are completely wrong and out of drawing; to these belong the rest of the human body, which is quite out of drawing. When the world understands these things it will no longer speak as foolishly as it does to-day, for it will then see that a certain deep, yet more delicate artistic sense tells us that the female form, with the exception of the head and limbs, is out of drawing, and if it is to be artistically represented the defects must be corrected. In better and more artistic times this was actually done, for no one who really has an eye for form can fail to observe that in the Venus of Milo the form has to a certain extent been corrected; but this as a rule is not noticed.
In this way we have divided the human being into two parts, consisting of those members of the body which are less of an illusion and those others that are more so and quite out of drawing. This does not apply to woman alone; but where a man is concerned the whole thing is reversed. He is the opposite pole. Just as the female form did not descend so far as the normal point necessary for rightly expressing the spirit in matter but crystallised at an earlier stage, so the male body on the other hand sprang just as far beyond that normal point as the female form stopped short of it. Thus the male body descended more deeply than the normal into materiality, and manifests this in its outer form. It would have quite a different appearance if it had not sprung beyond the middle point. Only as regards the head and limbs does the human body even approximately correspond to truth. As regards the rest of its form we must say that the female body, having reached a certain point, remained at a standstill; it consolidated before the waves of material existence broke over it; hence it manifest quite a different form from that which we should have seen if it had but waited till it had come in contact with material life before crystallising. The male body on the other hand plunged too deeply down and is just as greatly out-of-drawing as that of woman. Thus the woman's body manifests a distorted form in the Spiritual, while the man's body is distorted in the material. The true form would be between the two; it would consist of a happy average of both. Of course this affects the whole human being in his earth-life, in so far as he has a physical covering. What I have just said has nothing to do with the polarity between the head and limbs, it refers to the whole human being in one incarnation between birth and death. We incarnate either as man or woman. In so doing we have to take into account that which is out-of-drawing in the man or woman; but that extends to the whole human being, and the consequence is that if in one incarnation one has the body of a woman, the whole of this female body is influenced by the fact of its having remained behind at an earlier stage when the form was more pliable. In a male incarnation the whole physical body is permeated with the effects of having plunged down too strongly into coarse solid matter. If people had even the smallest inkling of what it means to think in the spirit, to live in the spirit, using the physical body only as an instrument,—so that one does not feel firmly fastened into it, identifying oneself with it—they would sing psalms about the misery of having to use a male body in an incarnation, for of course these material effects have also filtered into the brain. One observes that the forms of the male brain, through having been deeper into matter, are more difficult to manage than the more flexible forms of the female brain. It is truly a more difficult matter to train a male brain for the ascent into the higher worlds, and to translate the truths into thoughts, than it is to train a female brain for the same purpose. ‘For this reason it is not surprising to people who think, when a new conception of the world arises such as that of Spiritual Science, it is more easily grasped by the more manageable female brain; for it is more difficult for the male brain, being less pliable and obedient, to free itself from certain thoughts which it has absorbed. Hence Spiritual Science will not find an easy acceptance amongst the men who are to-day the leaders of culture and of the cultured ideas prevalent in our day. We must realise how awkward an instrument is the brain of a learned man to-day, not only for the acceptance of Spiritual Science, but also for thinking along those lines. But we must not look at these things in a wrong way and draw our own conclusions—rather should we look upon it as all the more significant that there are so many men whose brains are so pliant that they have become intimately acquainted with Spiritual Science.
These things can at first merely be hinted at, but if you allow them to work on you and then reflect over them, you will find immense perspective opening out regarding the life of man.
When we think of human life in its two opposites of man and woman, we are confronted with two forms, one that has remained at a standstill at an earlier stage, and one which has jumped on beyond the present stage and which draws into the present a form intended for the future, but presents it as a caricature. The female has preserved an earlier form and the male has taken on a later form, but has made it what it must not be in the future. The male form is incorrect, because it has brought later conditions of life into an age as yet too early for them.
Can we find a correspondence in the Cosmos to the polarity between male and female. Is there anything in the Cosmos which on the one hand shows us a development which has retained earlier forms and carried these over into a later age? And are there on the other hand forms which have transcended a certain stage, thus representing the caricatured form of a future state? If we bring to mind the concrete development which we know from the Akashic Records, we may put the question thus: Is there anything in the Cosmos outside, resembling an old Moon-existence which would not enter the Earth-existence, but retained from the old Moon something feminine in the Cosmos?
Is there anything which carries into the present time something like an old Moon existence belonging to an earlier stage? And is there in the Cosmos anything which has gone beyond a certain stage, and has condensed and thickened, so that it represents a later condition, a Jupiter condition?
There is! There is in the Cosmos the same polarity as we have described between male and female; and that is the polarity between a Comet and the Moon. If we wish to understand the nature of a Comet, wandering as it does in cosmic space regardless of the other laws of the Solar System, we must be clear as to the fact that the Comet carries the laws belonging to the old Moon-existence into our own. Those laws it has preserved, and with those it enters our existence. It has taken on the present substance of the solar-terrestrial system; but, as regards its motion and its nature, it has remained behind at that stage of natural law which prevailed in the Solar System when our earth was still Old Moon. It carries a former condition into a later, into the present; just as the woman's body carries an earlier condition into present-day existence. The nature of the Comet is one part of a polarity, and that of the Moon represents the other pole. When, in the Lemurian age the Moon evolved out of the Earth, it took with it certain portions, which had to be removed in order that the human being as such might develop. The earth was not to become as dense as it must have become if it had retained the Moon within it. The Moon actually represents a caricature of the Jupiter-condition. Just as a fresh ripe fruit is found in a petrified state in a stalactite, so the Moon in its configuration transcended the middle form, as has the male form of the human being. Exactly the same polarity that we find in human life between the male and the female, we can find in the Cosmos between the natures of Moon and Comets.
Thus are these things connected: as sun to earth, so head to limbs,—as Moon to Comet, so man to woman in the human being. Here again we must not go home and say:—well, now, we have some nice polarities to observe!—We must take these things very seriously and remember that on other occasions I said something more besides this. We must take into consideration the fact that a man is only male as regards his physical body, for as regards his etheric body he is female; and the woman on the other hand is only female in her physical body. A woman can only be said to be female as far as her physical body is concerned and that can be said of the etheric body of a man; so that the relation of the etheric body of a man to the etheric body of a woman is as that of Comet to Moon. If you like you may perhaps say: this makes everything confused again! But these things are so. In a culture which has created its ideas with a densified brain, those same ideas tend to create dense outlines which cannot be modified, so that when ideas are once formed they must be held on to. But the spirit does not admit of this. That is mobile, and when we form ideas, we must keep them plastic. So we must apply what has just been said as to the relation of the Moon and Comets to Man and Woman, to the male in the woman and the female in the man. It applies to the male and female elements in the human being but not to man and woman as we meet them externally.
We have now found some extremely interesting connections between the development of the human being and that of the Cosmos. Of course, as I have already observed: Those who sit in the high places of ‘true scientific observation’ will consider what has just been put forward about the Comet and the Moon, as utterly wild and absurd. That cannot be helped. They do not desire to investigate the truth. But on the ground of Spiritual Science, we can build a bridge between that which comes from the Spiritual and what is seen on the physical plane. Those others will not do this.
In the year 1906, during the Congress in Paris, I called attention to the fact that Spiritual investigation from its knowledge of the nature of Comets, was able to say: As the combinations of carbon and hydrogen play the same part on our earth as did the combinations of carbon and nitrogen (cyanogen) on the Old Moon, the cometary life must contain cyanogen compounds,—combinations of carbon and nitrogen. Those persons who have followed these things attentively will remember this. Our Spiritual Science, therefore, some time ago announced that the cometary nature must contain cyanogen in some form. During the last few weeks this fact has been mentioned in all the newspapers as an external fact discovered by spectro-analysis. This is only one case—hundreds of others could be quoted—in which Spiritual investigation builds bridges for the facts of external research. In this case spectro-analysis asserts what Spiritual Science stated years before. The results of external materialistic investigation never contradict those of Spiritual research. We may depend upon statements such as the above-mentioned, when those who sit in the high places of true science constantly point to the external facts. Only we must not confuse these facts with the limited conclusions which people draw for themselves. If everything in Natural Science to-day was really a fact, Natural Science would greatly contradict Spiritual Science; but their facts are no facts, only the corrupt conceptions of those who, through the conditions prevailing in our age, are called upon to deal with such matters.
Now, having brought before our minds the polarity to be found in human life as well as in the Cosmos, we may ask: What then is brought forth from the Universe as a result of this?
It is rather difficult to describe in a somewhat short time the immensity underlying such a fact. You will allow me, therefore, by way of example, to describe the life of man as it runs its course seen externally. First of all, we see something of which we may say, it pursues its course like the life of a good citizen, from day to day. He gets up in the morning, eats his breakfast and completes the rest of the day in accordance with the usual rules. There are certain events, however, which can intervene in a man's life at one fell swoop, and may bring about changes in the day's course. Take the case of a man and wife living for a while the life of good citizens with but little variety in the usual programme of their day, till something occurs which actually causes a leap in the ordinary external life of people in such circumstances. When a new human being incarnates, and enters life as a citizen of the world, the event causes a leap, a great change in the ordinary process of everyday life. When a new citizen of the world comes on the horizon of man and wife, something actually occurs which gives the whole family connection a new form. I brought this forward as an example by means of which we can gain some little understanding of the deep occult background of cometary life. In the Cosmos too, life goes on from day to day, from year to year—like the life of the good citizen—one day is like another; the Sun rises and sets, the plants blossom in spring, and wither away in autumn, and when there is rain or sunshine or hail or the like, these correspond to such events in ordinary life as, for instance, when instead of our ordinary five o'clock tea, we have a little party. We see these things happening as a matter of course. All this hangs together with the laws underlying the movements of Sun, earth, and so on, and the way in which these continue day by day and year by year. Into this regular process, there intervenes the rarer, yet in a certain respect recurrent, appearances of the comets. They come upon the process of Cosmic happenings like a new citizen entering the horizon of man and wife. Through the appearance of a comet in the cosmos, something is actually brought about in the life of humanity which could not occur in the ordinary process of life. If evolution is to continue, there must be, not only that which repeats itself day by day, but something new must be introduced into it. Just as something quite special enters the life of a family with the birth of a new earth-citizen, so something quite different enters the progress of the human race on earth through the appearance of a comet, which breaks through the ordinary process of cosmic existence. It is actually as though something new were born, when a comet appears.
One who can investigate these things spiritually is able to indicate quite definitely the different functions of the separate comets, and how each one has to introduce something spiritually new into the world. Thus Halley's comet is one of those which, in its periodic appearances, always introduces something specially new into the life of man. Whereas otherwise things recur in the ordinary way, this comet brings about a new birth in human inner life and culture. I can only characterise what I mean, by referring to the three last appearances of Halley's comet, in the years 1759, 1835, and the one we are now expecting. What are the tasks of these three appearances? Other comets have other tasks. New births in the universe are not always to be greeted with the same joy as the birth of a young citizen into a family. All sorts are born into the universe; those that bring humanity forward as well as those that drive it back. Now the appearance of Halley's comet, or what it signifies spiritually for the further evolution of humanity, is connected with that which humanity had to absorb out of the Cosmos at the various periods of Kali-Yuga in order that thought should descend more and more into materiality. With every new appearance of this comet a new impulse was born, to drive humanity further away from a spiritual cosmic conception by the Ego, and to urge it to grasp the world in a more materialistic way. This does not mean a descent into matter, but rather the driving of that Spiritual substance which the human Ego should draw from the universe for its Spiritual existence, down into the sphere of materialistic conception. All those conceptions of the second half of the 18th century, which are called shallow and superficial and which Goethe so ridiculed in his Truth and Poetry and which found their exponent for instance in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, are understood in their cosmic sense through the appearance of Halley's comet in the year 1759. The commonplace materialistical literature of the second third of the 19th century was preceded by the appearance of that comet in 1835. Things that take place microcosmically on the earth are macrocosmically connected with events of the great world. A new impulse towards materialism was again given by the appearance of Halley's comet in 1835. Buchner, Vogt and Moleschott are examples of those who were influenced on the earth by what appeared with Halley's comet, as a mighty sign from the Cosmos. We are now to be confronted in the near future—for humanity must be tested, must rise out of itself, must feel the resistance to Spirituality so that it may unfold all the more forces for its re-ascent—we shall be confronted with the forces which the new appearance of this comet will send forth from the universe, forces which may lead humanity down into a still more arid and dreadful materialism. Something may be born, which even the most arid and driest thoughts of the Buchner school could not have imagined. but this possibility is a necessity, for only if man overcomes the opposing forces can he acquire the strong force able to lead him up again.
If we bear this in mind, we shall then encounter in the right way what we call ‘Signs from the Heavens.’ This is really a fact; though what I have said must not be taken in a superstitious sense, as though God were pointing with a wand from Heaven to show men what they have to do! The approaching appearance of Halley's comet is one of these signs, and notice should be taken of it. For a mighty ascending impulse must follow it that we may rise from the depths of materialism into which we have sunk, into Spirituality. Just as we are given the possibility of being swamped in materialism, we are also given the chance to ascend into clearer, spiritual heights.
It was clearly and distinctly indicated in the last lectures that during the first half of the 20th century an etheric clairvoyance will develop in a few single individuals, as a natural capacity. In order that man may not sink more deeply into the materialism indicated by the present sign of 1910, those who have understanding of Spiritual Science have the possibility of developing those forces in the human soul which can lead man beyond materialism. If a man understands these forces, they will teach him how he may himself see the etheric nature of Christ. We are living at an important crossing-point, when men will be taught, even by signs from heaven, that in one direction the path will lead deeper into the mire, while the other path leads to the development in themselves of the forces which, at the conclusion of Kali-Yuga, will lead to etheric clairvoyance. The cry of John the Baptist: ‘Change the disposition of your souls,’ applies to us to-day! This may really be said. Just as on the one hand we are given the possibility of perishing in the materialistic morass, on the other it is possible, through the Sun reaching a certain point in the Constellation of Pisces at the Vernal Equinox, that a certain etheric clairvoyance may be acquired. For the spiritual ascent there are also signs, to show us how the forces come from the Cosmos. If a man is a student of Spiritual Science he will of necessity grow to understand this decision; if he does not, that means that he has not understood Spiritual Science aright. We must pass through the test submitted to us by the sign in the Heavens which we now recognise to be the appearance of Halley's Comet.
Let us now picture the vision of Christ, as it will appear to the first fore-runners during the next 2,500 years, and as it appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. Man will ascend to a cognition of the spiritual world and will see the physical world permeated by a new ‘country,’ or new realm. Man's physical environment will present a totally different aspect in the course of the next 2,500 years, through the addition of an etheric realm, which indeed is already here now, but which he will learn to perceive. This etheric sphere is even now spread out before the eyes of those who have carried their esoteric training as far as ‘Illumination’—as was the case with the Initiates even in Kali-Yuga. That which men will see more and more in the future is visible in its greatest heights to the Initiates. The Initiate draws from thence at repeated intervals, the forces he requires. When he has to carry out some special work, he draws his forces from those realms within the earth's circuit which are visible to him, but which can only be seen by those who have the vision. It will help us to understand this, when we know that a part of that land from which the Initiate drew his forces during Kali-Yuga, will be thrown open to a great part of humanity during the next 2,500 years. Formerly, in the days of primeval clairvoyance, man, though then without the strong Ego-consciousness, could see into the Spiritual world—and in a way he saw more or less what he will see now,—but he will now enter it with his newly acquired self-consciousness. At that time he saw it in dream-like ecstatic conditions, or by looking into his own soul. That world which during Kali-Yuga became physical was then open to man's gaze. Hence the traditions, which have preserved recollections of the old clairvoyance, tell us of an unknown Fairy-Land which has now disappeared from sight. There are wonderful documents in Eastern literature full of a peculiar tragical enchantment, and telling us that at one time it was possible for human beings to travel to a land where the Spiritual flowed into the physical. It is that Land from whence at certain times the Initiates—and at all times the Bodhisattvas—drew fresh forces. The Eastern writings speak with deep sorrow of that land, asking: ‘Where is it? We are told the names of places, paths are named; but the Land itself is concealed, even from those most initiated among the Lamas of Thibet!’ Only to the highest Initiates is it accessible. But it is always stated that some day this Land will return to earth. That is true; it will return to earth! And the guide thereto will be He Whom men will see, when, through the vision of the Event of Damascus, they reach the Land of Shamballa. ‘Shamballa’—for so this Land is called—has withdrawn from the sight of man. It can only be entered to-day by those who, as Initiates, go there from time to time to be strengthened. The old forces can no longer lead man thither. That is why Eastern literature speaks with such tragic despair of the vanished Land of Shamballa. But the Christ-Event, which will be vouchsafed to man in this century through his newly-awakened faculties, will bring back the Fairy-Land of Shamballa, which through the whole of Kali-Yuga could only be known to the Initiates.
Thus humanity is now called upon to make a decision, whether it shall allow itself, through what comes with the Halley Comet, to be lead down into a darkness even lower than that of Kali-Yuga, or whether through an understanding developed by Anthroposophy it shall not neglect to cultivate the new faculties by which it may find the way to the Land which according to Eastern Literature has disappeared, but which Christ will once more reveal to mankind;—the Land of Shamballa. That is the great question of the dividing of the ways: either to go down or to go up. Either to go down into something which, as a Cosmic-Kamaloka lies still deeper down than Kali-Yuga, or to work for that which will enable man to enter that realm, which is really alluded to under the name of Shamballa.
Fünfter Vortrag
Mit dem heutigen Vortrag soll eine Art Zusammenfassung dessen gegeben werden, was wir in den verschiedenen Wintervorträgen gehört haben, was wir anschließen konnten an die Betrachtungen im Hinblick auf das Lukas-Evangelium und das Matthäus-Evangelium, und was hier referierend mitgeteilt worden ist in Anknüpfung an die Vorträge über das Johannes-Evangelium, wie sie zuletzt in Stockholm gehalten worden sind. So wie diese Vorträge gehalten worden sind, wird es Ihnen klar geworden sein, daß alles in ihnen so angelegt worden ist, daß man nicht etwa im eingeschränkten Sinne eine Evangelien-Erklärung hat, sondern daß aus den Wahrheiten, die nun erstens schon einmal Wahrheiten sind und zweitens sich bei einem richtigen Verständnis der christlichen Urkunden in den Evangelien finden, sich immer herausstellt, daß uns auch die anderen Rätsel des Lebens in der mannigfaltigsten Weise von ihnen aus gedeutet und erleuchtet werden können.
Wenn wir zurückgehen hinter die Begründung des Christentums, finden wir zwei Arten, zwei Formen der Initiation: die Initiation des Nordens, die in jenen in Stockholm gehaltenen Vorträgen näher charakterisiert worden ist, und die Initiation des Südens, die besonders dadurch charakterisiert worden ist, daß angeknüpft worden ist an die Initiationsvorgänge der altägyptischen Kultur. Von zwei Seiten her haben sich für den Menschen der alten Welt die Möglichkeiten ergeben, in die geistige Welt einzudringen. Wenn der zu Initiierende im alten Ägypterlande die geistige Welt hat erreichen wollen, so stieg er herunter in die Untergründe der eigenen Seele, stieg herunter hinter all das, was im gewöhnlichen Seelenleben als Gedanke, Gefühl, Wollen und so weiter vorhanden ist. Dort fand er das, woraus die Seele selbst hervorgegangen ist: das göttlich-geistige Dasein der Welt. Also ein Heruntersteigen unter diejenigen Regionen der Seele, die vom Ich durchglänzt und durchdrungen sind, war das Wesentliche der ägyptischen oder der südlichen Initiation überhaupt. Dagegen war ein Heraustreten des Menschen, ein Aufgehen in den Erscheinungen der Welt in ekstatischer Art dasjenige, worauf es in der nördlichen Initiation, vor allem in den germanischen Druiden- und Trottenmysterien, ankam. Dann wurde auch schon charakterisiert, wie in dem, was wir die christliche Initiation nennen, diese zwei Arten der Initiation zusammengeflossen sind, und wie gleichsam die christliche Initiation die höhere Einheit darstellt der ekstatischen Initiation des Nordens und der mystischen Versenkung bei der Initiation des Südens. Damit aber ist auf einen tiefen Grund der Weltengeheimnisse hingewiesen, der durch alles Dasein geht. Im Grunde ist alles Besprechen, selbst einer so großen gewaltigen Tatsache wie das Zusammenfließen der beiden Initiationsformen des Altertums in die christliche Initiation, ein Beispiel für ein noch umfassenderes großes Gesetz, das alles Dasein der Menschen durchdringt und zu gleicher Zeit alles Dasein der äußeren Welterscheinungen, soweit es der Mensch erkennen kann, durchwebt. Das findet sich nämlich überall, daß uns entgegentreten wie Gegensätze die Glieder einer Zweiheit. Diese Glieder einer Zweiheit sehen wir wie Gegensätze sich gegenübertreten in der nördlichen und in der südlichen Initiation. Das ist nur ein Beispiel dafür, wie Gegensätze, man könnte auch sagen Polaritäten, uns im Weltendasein entgegentreten. Und das andere, wie diese beiden Initiationsformen zusammenströmen und gleichsam eine geistige Ehe eingehen in der christlichen Initiation, ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie Gegensätze, überhaupt Zweiheiten in der Welt, sich vereinigen. Das geschieht unaufhörlich, daß sich Einheiten in Zweiheiten teilen, um die Entwickelung weiterzufördern, und daß sich Zweiheiten wiederum zur Einheit vereinigen. In äußerlicher Weise konnten wir hindeuten zunächst auf eine große, gewaltige, gleichsam über die Menschheitsentwickelung hin reichende Tatsache, die diese Spaltung einer Einheit in die Zweiheit und der Wiederzusammenströmung der Zweiheit in die Einheit darstellt.
Wir haben öfter hineingeleuchtet in das lemurische Zeitalter, das unter anderem auch die große Tatsache der Weltenentwickelung gesehen hat, da der Mond sich aus unserer Erde herausspaltete. Aber es sah dieses Zeitalter auch noch die ersten Anfänge dessen, was wir im heutigen Sinne der Menschheitsentwickelung den Gegensatz von Mann und Weib nennen; während wir in den der lemurischen Zeit vorangehenden Weltenaltern eine Einheit der Geschlechter finden würden. So haben wir eine ursprüngliche Einheit auseinandertretend in Mann und Weib. Wir haben aber auch schon darauf hingedeutet, daß in der Zukunft diese Zweiheit sich wiederum in der Einheit vereinigen werde, daß wiederum eine Einheit aus dieser Zweiheit entstehen werde. Das ist in äußerlicher Weise die Andeutung von umfassenden Tatsachenreihen, die in dieser Beziehung der Zwei zur Fins oder der Eins zur Zwei liegen.
Was uns so in der Menschheitsentwickelung entgegentritt, ist aber im Grunde der Ausdruck, die Abbildung eines noch größeren kosmischen Gegensatzes, der in einer Einheit wurzelt, als Zwei uns im heutigen Weltenleben entgegentritt und in einer fernen Zukunft sich wieder in eine Einheit auflösen wird. Es ist notwendig, daß wir jeden Gedanken, der uns durch Geisteswissenschaft heute gegeben wird, in seiner vollen Tiefe nehmen, daß wir uns nicht angewöhnen, die anthroposophischen Gedanken in derselben oberflächlichen Art hinzunehmen, wie andere Gedanken und Begriffe, die heute durch die Welt schwirren und die durch das Hastende und OberflächlichBanale unserer gegenwärtigen Kultur hingenommen werden. Die anthroposophischen Gedanken müssen so tief wie möglich genommen werden. Daher darf auch ein solcher Gedanke, wie er öfter ausgesprochen wird und gleichsam verborgen liegt in allen unseren Lehren: daß der Mensch als eine kleine Welt, als Mikrokosmos herausgeboren ist aus dem Makrokosmos, aus der großen Welt, nicht bloß als ein abstrakter Gedanke leicht hingenommen werden, sondern dieser Gedanke hat unendlich vielen, hundert- und hundertfachen Inhalt. Vor allem muß man sich darüber klar sein, daß die Welt tiefer ist, als man gewöhnlich glaubt, und daß, wenn man einen Gegensatz oder eine Wahrheit einmal in einer Richtung begriffen hat, man keineswegs die letzte Wahrheit über diese Beziehung oder diesen Gegensatz begriffen hat, sondern man muß geduldig überall Umschau halten, um, wenn etwas nach der einen Seite gilt, es auch kennenzulernen nach der anderen Seite.
Der Mensch ist aus dem ganzen Kosmos herausgeboren und muß aufschauen zu dem Kosmos wie zu seinem Mutter-Vaterwesen, von dem er selbst ein Abbild darstellt. Ja, der Mensch ist ein Abbild der ganzen Welt, die ihm bekannt sein kann; und es ist nichts im Menschenwesen, was nicht in irgendeiner Art ein Verhältnis zum Ausdruck bringen würde, das sich nicht auch irgendwie im großen Kosmos findet. Wenn wir den Menschen, wie er uns heute entgegentritt — und zwar geisteswissenschaftlich gesehen entgegentritt -, vergleichen könnten mit Menschengestaltungen in einer verhältnismäßig sehr frühen Zeit, dann fänden wir an diesem heutigen Menschen ein Merkmal von ungeheurer Bedeutung, neben anderen natürlich, zur Aufklärung über das Wesen des Menschen. Dieses Merkmal kann jeden von uns lehren, daß es bei dem, was wir über die Welt wissen, nicht nur darauf ankommt, daß die Dinge wahr sind, sondern noch auf etwas ganz anderes. Damit, daß uns jemand bewiesen hat, daß etwas wahr ist, hat er uns noch nicht das allerwichtigste Moment dieser Wahrheit enthüllt. Es ist zum Beispiel vieles wahr von dem, was eine triviale Naturwissenschaft sagt über den Vergleich des Menschen mit den höheren Säugetieren. Daß der Mensch dieselbe Anzahl Knochen und Muskeln hat und dergleichen Dinge mehr, sind wahr, unbestreitbar wahr. Aber wenn man von irgendeiner Sache bewiesen hat, daß sie wahr ist, hat man noch nicht alles getan. Es muß gerade der Mensch durch geisteswissenschaftliche Vertiefung und Verinnerlichung sich klarmachen, daß es darauf ankommt, sich bei jeder Wahrheit ein Gefühl dafür zu erwerben, wie schwer die Wahrheit wiegt, ob sie wichtig oder unwichtig, wesentlich oder unwesentlich ist zur Erklärung einer Sache. Daher kann es heute Leute geben, die kommen und uns aus ihrem trivialen Bewußtsein heraus immer wieder beweisen, daß es ja wahr ist, was sie sagen. Das soll auch nicht bestritten werden. Aber ob etwas für die Welterklärung in seinem richtigen Gewichte erkannt wird, darauf kommt es an!
Nun gibt es eine gewisse Tatsache, die unzweifelhaft wahr ist und die jeder kennt, weil sie jedem täglich unzählige Male begegnet, und die wir, wenn wir ihre Bedeutung und Wichtigkeit für den Menschen, ihr Gewicht fassen wollen, nur in der richtigen Weise fühlen müssen, nämlich die Tatsache, daß der Mensch ein aufrechtstehendes und aufrechtgehendes Wesen ist und mit seinem Antlitz in den Weltenraum hinaufschauen kann. Das kann nur der Mensch! Denn selbst von dem Affen müssen wir sagen, er sieht so aus, als wenn er sich um diese Möglichkeit bemüht hätte, aber er hat die Geschichte verpfuscht. Er kann es nicht. Der Mensch ist die einzige Wesenheit, die in bezug auf diese Absicht zu Ende gekommen ist, das Antlitz frei in den Weltenraum hinaufheben zu können. Diese Tatsache ist unendlich viel wichtiger als alles, was uns durch eine triviale Naturwissenschaft über die Stellung des Menschen in der Tierreihe gesagt werden kann. Alles andere ist ja wahr, aber dieses ist unendlich viel wichtiger. Wer etwas von dieser Tatsache fühlen will, muß sich damit bekanntmachen, wo die Veranlassung liegt, daß der Mensch ein aufrechtgehendes Wesen ist, ein Wesen, das zwar an die Erde gebunden ist, sich aber im Geiste durch seine Anschauung, schon durch seine sinnliche Wahrnehmung hinauserhebt in den Weltenraum.
Diese Veranlassung liegt darin, daß es einen gewissen Gegensatz gibt, eine Zweiheit, die sich im Kosmos so verhält wie eine andere Zweiheit im Menschen. Wir können hinweisen auf eine Zweiheit im Weltall und eine Zweiheit im Menschen wie auf zwei Gegensätze, die sich im Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos entsprechen. Der Gegensatz, der im Makrokosmos, in der großen Welt gemeint ist, ist der Gegensatz von Sonne und Erde; und derselbe Gegensatz, der zwischen Sonne und Erde im Weltall besteht, besteht auch im Menschen: es ist der Gegensatz zwischen Kopf und Händen und Füßen, zwischen Kopf und Gliedmaßen. Diese Dinge werden im Laufe der Zeit immer mehr und mehr ausgeführt werden, aber Sie müssen sich damit zunächst einmal andeutungsweise bekanntmachen und fühlen lernen, daß in gewisser Beziehung Kopf und Gliedmaßen als eine Zweiheit im Menschen sich so verhalten, wie sich Sonne und Erde in unserem Sonnensystem selber verhalten. Denn in der Tat ruhen in unserer Erde die Kräfte, welche sich im Laufe der Zeit herausgebildet haben, geheimnisvolle Kräfte, die den Menschen auf der Erde befestigen und die gegenwärtige Konfiguration und Bewegungsmöglichkeit unserer Hände und Füße bewirkt haben, während die Kräfte, die sein Antlitz in den Weltenraum hinausgehoben haben, die ihn von einem Wesen, das die Erde anschaut, zu einem solchen gemacht haben, das in die unendlichen Weltenfernen hinausblicken kann, in der Sonne ihren Sitz haben. Und wer fühlen und empfinden kann, der fühlt und empfindet, wenn er die beim Menschen auftretende Gegensätzlichkeit von Kopf und Gliedmaßen anblickt, dasselbe, als wenn er auf seine Empfindung wirken läßt den Gegensatz. von Sonne und Erde. Das ist ein solcher Gegensatz, der sich später einmal im Menschenleben vereinigen wird, wie er sich im Kosmos vereinigen wird. Wie einst die Sonne und die Erde ein Wesen waren und sich getrennt haben, eine Zweiheit geworden sind, ebenso werden sie sich wieder vereinigen. Ebenso wird, was im Menschen Gegensatz ist zwischen Kopf und Gliedmaßen, wiederum einmal eine Einheit werden, so schwer das vielleicht auch für den heutigen Menschen, der solcher Begriffe ungewohnt ist, vorzustellen ist.
So haben wir im Menschen hingedeutet auf einen Gegensatz und den entsprechenden Gegensatz im Weltall angeführt. Aber im Menschen finden sich noch andere Gegensätze, die auch ihre entsprechenden Gegenbilder im Weltall haben. In bezug auf den Gegensatz zwischen Kopf und Gliedmaßen sind auf unserer Erde sozusagen alle Menschen gleich. Mann und Frau haben diesen Gegensatz in gleicher Weise. Darin gibt es keinen Unterschied zwischen Mann und Frau, denn alles, was sonst als Gegensatz auftritt, zum Beispiel in der Seelenkonfiguration wird nicht durch diesen Gegensatz bewirkt. Wenn bloß dieser Gegensatz im Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos bestände, würden Mann und Frau überhaupt gleich sein. Aber Mann und Frau sind ein anderer Gegensatz im Menschenwesen. Und nun können wir uns fragen: Können wir im Weltall auch einen Gegensatz finden, der im Menschenleben entspricht dem Gegensatz von Mann und Frau? Ist dieser Gegensatz, der im Erdendasein als Mann und Frau auftritt, auch herausgeboren aus dem Weltall? — Auch das gibt es. Und um diesen Gegensatz aufzusuchen, müssen wir uns jetzt ein wenig bekanntmachen im okkulten Sinne mit dem Gegensatz von Mann und Frau. Wir werden dabei nicht in den Fehler verfallen, in den unser materialistisches Zeitalter verfällt, das darauf ausgeht, den Gegensatz des Männlichen und Weiblichen, wie er einfach als Geschlechtsgegensatz in der physischen Welt auftritt, auch auf das ganze Weltall anzuwenden. Das ist nicht nur eine Trivialität, sondern eine Ungezogenheit unserer Gelehrsamkeit, wenn sie das, was uns auf einem Gebiete entgegentritt, hinauserstreckt auf alle anderen Gebiete.
Was sich auf unserer Erde als der Gegensatz von Mann und Frau manifestiert, dem entspricht im Weltall ein anderer Gegensatz, den wir nicht männlich und weiblich nennen können. Das wäre ein Unding. Aber wir müssen doch diesen Gegensatz einmal gerade in bezug auf seine okkulte Grundlage vor unser Auge treten lassen. Dieser Gegensatz des Männlichen und des Weiblichen in unserer Erdenentwickelung hat natürlich, wohlgemerkt, nichts zu tun mit dem «Menschen», der Mensch ist in Mann und Frau derselbe. Wenn man also von Mann und Frau spricht, bleibt man bei der Konfiguration von physischem Leib und Ätherleib stehen, das hat nichts zu tun mit dem Innern des Menschen, so daß man nicht im okkulten Sinne so sprechen darf, wie heute in unserer materialistischen Zeit gesprochen wird. Denn Mann und Frau haben auch einen astralischen Leib und ein Ich, während die gewöhnliche Anschauung überhaupt nichts kennt von dem, was den Menschen zum Menschen macht, und daher auch nur von Mann und Frau sprechen kann. Also wir sprechen jetzt nicht vom Menschen als solchem in Mann und Frau, sondern von dem, was den Menschen zum Mann oder zur Frau macht, und das ist nur die äußere Hülle. Das muß wohl verstanden werden. Wird von Mensch auf Mensch das angewendet, was in den nächsten Sätzen gesprochen wird, dann ist alles falsch. Der Gegensatz von Mann und Frau, in diesen Grenzen, liegt in folgendem.
Die äußere menschliche Gestalt war ja ganz anders in den Urzeiten der Menschheit. Die gegenwärtige Menschengestalt, also auch die gegenwärtige männliche beziehungsweise weibliche Gestalt haben sich erst herausgebildet aus einer früheren einheitlichen Gestalt, die noch nicht in den Gegensatz von Mann und Frau auseinandergefallen war. So haben wir also eine frühere Einheit und den heutigen Gegensatz von Mann und Frau. Nun wissen wir auch, daß die frühere Einheit eine feinere, geistigere war. Der Mensch hat sich zu der dichten materiellen Gestalt erst im Laufe der Zeit herausgearbeitet. Wir gehen also nicht bloß zurück zu einer Einheit der Gestaltung, sondern auch zu einer Einheit, die gegen die heutige Gestalt eine geistigere war. Wir haben also einen Urmenschen, der sich weder als Mann noch als Weib darstellt, sondern als die noch nicht eingetretene Trennung dieses Gegensatzes, als die Finheit, und der feiner, ätherischer, geistiger ist als der spätere materiellere Mensch, der sich in dem Gegensatz von Mann und Frau auslebt. Worauf beruht es nun, daß aus der ursprünglichen Einheit später Mann und Frau entstanden ist? Das beruht darauf, daß die Frau, als die Einheit in die Zweiheit trat, einen physischen Leib sich herausgebildet hat, der nicht vollständig aus der früheren Gestalt in die, wenn wir so sagen können, normale materielle Gestalt übergegangen ist. Der Frauenleib ist auf einer geistigeren Stufe stehengeblieben, ist nicht bis zum vollen Maße des Materiellen heruntergestiegen. Er ist zwar materiell, dicht geworden, aber er hat in dieser Materialität eine frühere, geistigere Gestalt festgehalten. Es ist also eine geistige Stufe materiell geworden. Der Frauenleib hat gleichsam zurückgehalten eine frühere geistige Gestalt, ist nicht vollständig in die Materie heruntergestiegen. Das ist er zwar in bezug auf das Materielle, aber nicht in bezug auf die Form. Er hat sich die Form, die der Mensch früher gehabt hat, bewahrt. Daher können wir sagen: Die Frau stellt sich dar als die Offenbarung einer früheren Gestaltung, die eigentlich geistig sein sollte und so, wie sie sich heute darstellt, eigentlich falsch ist, eine Maja, eine Illusion ist. Wenn wir einen gewissen springenden Punkt in der Entwickelung annehmen würden, auf dem sich das Materielle kristallisiert, so können wir sagen: Die Frau ist nicht bis zu diesem springenden Punkt vorgedrungen, sie hat eine frühere Gestalt kristallisiert. Daher ist für den, der die Tatsachen des Lebens wirklich empfindet, oder imaginativ erkennen kann, der menschliche Frauenleib nur in bezug auf Kopf und Gliedmaßen einigermaßen eine wahre Gestalt, ein Ausdruck seines ihm zugrunde liegenden Geistigen, das heißt nur in Kopf und Gliedmaßen drückt sich etwas aus, was als materielle Erscheinung dem dahinterliegenden Geistigen ähnlich ist. Daher ist das dahinterliegende Geistige unähnlich der übrigen materiellen Gestalt, denn diese ist eine falsche Gestalt.
So also gilt der Satz, daß die Welt Maja ist, bis in alle Regionen hinein. Man muß ihn wirklich ernst nehmen. In abstracto zu denken, die Welt ist Maja, ist bequem. Derjenige hat erst diesen Satz begriffen, der damit Ernst macht und fragt: Inwiefern sind nun diese Gestalten Illusion? — Die einen sind es mehr, die anderen weniger. Es gibt Gestalten, die wenigstens annähernd, im äußeren Gleichnis, das dahinterliegende Geistige ausdrücken: das sind Kopf und Gliedmaßen; aber es gibt Gestalten, welche direkt falsch sind, die verzeichnet sind, und dazu gehört die übrige Leiblichkeit des Menschen. Die ist direkt verzeichnet. Und wenn einmal die Welt dies verstehen wird, wird man nicht mehr so töricht reden wie heute, sondern man wird sehen, daß es ein gewisses tieferes, feineres künstlerisches Empfinden gibt, das sich selber sagt, daß die Frauengestalt verzeichnet ist, wenn man von Kopf und Gliedmaßen absieht, und daß man sie korrigieren muß, wenn man sie künstlerisch wiedergeben will. In besseren künstlerischen Zeiten hat man das auch wirklich durchgeführt, denn keiner, der wirklich Formen betrachten kann, kann sich der Einsicht verschließen, daß bis zu einem gewissen Grade die Formen korrigiert sind an der Venus von Milo. Das sehen nur gewöhnlich die Menschen nicht.
Also wir haben hier den Menschen zerteilt in Glieder, die wahrer sind, weniger Illusion sind, und in solche, die mehr Illusion sind, die ganz verzeichnet sind. Aber das gilt nicht nur von der Frau. Für den Mann ist die Sache nur umgekehrt. Es ist der Gegensatz. Wie die Frauenform nicht bis zu dem normalen Punkt heruntergestiegen ist, um den entsprechenden Geist in der Materie auszudrücken, sondern sich auf einer früheren Stufe kristallisiert hat, so hat der männliche Leib den normalen Punkt übersprungen und ist gerade so weit darüber hinausgegangen, als die Frauenform davor stehengeblieben ist. Daher ist der männliche Leib tiefer heruntergestiegen in die Materialität, als es das normale Verhältnis gewesen wäre, und stellt das auch schon in seiner äußeren Gestalt dar. Er würde ganz anders aussehen, wenn er nicht den mittleren Punkt übersprungen hätte. Der menschliche Leib ist überhaupt nur in bezug auf Kopf und Gliedmaßen wenigstens annähernd eine Wahrheit. In bezug auf die übrige Gestalt aber müssen wir sagen, daß der Frauenleib auf einem gewissen Punkte stehen geblieben ist, sich verfestigt hat, bevor er sich in die Wellen des materiellen Daseins hineingestürzt hat, und uns daher eine ganz andere Gestalt zeigt, als diejenige wäre, wenn er sich kristallisiert hätte, als ihn die Wellen des materiellen Daseins berührt haben; der männliche Leib aber ist noch weiter untergetaucht und stellt in demselben Maße eine falsche, verzeichnete Gestalt dar wie der Frauenleib. So stellt der Frauenleib eine ins Geistige, der männliche Leib dagegen eine ins Materielle verzeichnete Gestalt dar. Die wahre Gestalt würde in der Mitte liegen, würde eine Durchschnittsgestalt von beiden sein.
Das beeinflußt natürlich in seinem Erdendasein den ganzen Menschen, insofern er eine physische Hülle hat. Mit dem Gegensatz zwischen Kopf und Gliedmaßen hat das nichts zu tun, aber es überträgt sich das, was jetzt gesagt worden ist, auf den ganzen Menschen in der einzelnen Inkarnation zwischen Geburt und Tod. Man inkarniert sich ja als Mann oder als Frau. Dadurch hat man mit dem zu rechnen, was sich als verzeichnet bei Mann oder Frau auslebt. Aber das erstreckt sich auf den ganzen Menschen, und die Folge davon ist, wenn man in einer Inkarnation einen weiblichen Leib hat, daß dieser ganze weibliche Leib durchbeeinflußt ist von diesem mehr Zurückgebliebensein in einem ursprünglicheren, weicheren Formzustand. Und in einer männlichen Inkarnation ist dieser ganze männliche Leib durchfiltriert von einem Zu-stark-untergetaucht-Sein in die grobe, feste Materie. Wenn man nur einmal im kleinsten Maße den Begriff davon bekommen hat, was es heißt, im Geiste denken, im Geiste leben und den physischen Leib als ein bloßes Werkzeug benutzen, wenn man sich nicht so darinnen stecken fühlt, daß man sich mit ihm identifiziert, dann kann man ein Lied singen gerade von der Misere, einen männlichen Leib, der natürlich auch sein Gehirn infiltriert, in einer Inkarnation benutzen zu müssen. Denn man merkt, daß auch die Formen des Gehirns, weil sie derber in die Materie hineingegangen sind, schwerer zu handhaben sind als die weicheren, nicht so stark in die Materie hineingegangenen Formen des weiblichen Gehirns. Es ist in der Tat eine schwierigere Sache, wenn man in die höheren Welten hinaufsteigen muß, sich ein männliches Gehirn zu trainieren, um die Wahrheiten in Gedanken umzusetzen, als ein weibliches Gehirn. Daher ist es nicht zu verwundern für die Leute, die denken können, wenn eine Weltanschauung, die als Neues in die Welt tritt, wie die geisteswissenschaftliche, leichter verstanden werden kann mit dem bequemer zu trainierenden weiblichen Gehirn als mit dem männlichen Gehirn, dem es schwerer ist, von gewissen Gedanken loszukommen, die es heute aufgenommen hat, weil das männliche Gehirn schwerer zu bearbeiten, schwerer zu handhaben ist. Deshalb wird Geisteswissenschaft auch so schwer Eingang finden bei den Männern, die heute in der Welt Kulturträger sind und mit den gewöhnlichen Kulturvorstellungen unseres heutigen Lebens behaftet sind. Wir müssen es durchaus verstehen, was für ein ungelenkes Ding das Gehirn eines Gelehrten ist, nicht nur, um Geisteswissenschaft aufzunehmen, sondern um mit dem, was es aus der Geisteswissenschaft aufnehmen kann, zu denken. Wir dürfen aber die Sache nicht auf den Kopf stellen und daraus irgendwelche Schlüsse ziehen, oder höchstens den, daß wir es nun doch als etwas um so Bedeutungsvolleres empfinden müssen, wenn nun recht viele Männer ihr Gehirn so handhaben, daß sie recht intim und nahe an die Geisteswissenschaft herankommen. Diese Dinge können ja zunächst nur angedeutet werden, aber wenn Sie dieselben auf sich so wirken lassen und darüber nachdenken, werden Sie ungeheure Perspektiven für das Menschenleben darinnen finden.
Wenn wir das Menschenleben in seinem Gegensatz von Mann und Frau vor uns hinstellen, dann haben wir etwas, was wir ein auf einer früheren Stufe Stehengebliebenes nennen können, und etwas, was eigentlich über eine gewisse Stufe der Gegenwart hinausgeschritten ist, was in einem gewissen karikierten Zustand eine zukünftige Form in die Gegenwart hereinnimmt, die eben daher karikiert erscheint. Eine frühere Gestalt des Leibes hat konserviert das Weibliche und eine spätere Gestalt hat hereingenommen das Männliche und sie so ausgebildet, wie sie in der Zukunft nicht sein darf. Daher ist der männliche Leib falsch geworden, weil er spätere Lebensbedingungen in einen früheren Lebenszeitraum hineingestellt hat.
Gibt es nun für diesen Gegensatz des Männlichen und Weiblichen auch eine Entsprechung im Kosmos? Gibt es im Kosmos etwas, was uns auf der einen Seite ein Dasein zeigt, eine Entwickelungsstufe, die gleichsam frühere Formen festgehalten hat und hineingetragen hat in ein späteres Dasein? Und gibt es auf der anderen Seite Formen, die eine gewisse Stufe überschritten haben, also in karikierter Form einen Zukunftszustand darstellen? Wenn wir die konkrete Entwikkelung, wie wir sie aus der Akasha-Chronik kennen, uns vor Augen stellen, können wir etwa fragen: Gibt es im Kosmos draußen etwas wie ein altes Mondendasein, das nicht herein wollte zum Erdendasein, sondern das aus dem alten Monddasein etwas zurückbehalten hat wie ein Weibliches im Kosmos? Gibt es etwas, was wie ein altes Mondendasein eine frühere Stufe hereinträgt in die Gegenwart? Und gibt es im Kosmos etwas, was eine gewisse Stufe überschritten hat, sich verdickt und verdichtet hat, so daß es einen späteren Zustand, einen Jupiterzustand darstellt?
Das gibt es. Denselben Gegensatz wie männlich und weiblich im charakterisierten Sinne beim Menschen gibt es draußen im Kosmos: Es ist der Gegensatz von Kometarischem und Lunarischem, von Komet und Mond. Wenn wir den Komet in bezug auf sein Wesen verstehen wollen, wie er heute, gleichsam durchbrechend die anderen Gesetze des Sonnensystems, im Weltenraum herumwandelt, dann müssen wir uns klarmachen, daß es eigentlich die Gesetze des alten Mondendaseins sind, welche der Komet in unser Dasein hineinträgt. Das hat er sich bewahrt und ist damit in unser Dasein hineingegangen. Er hat die gegenwärtige Materie des Sonnen-Erdensystems angenommen, ist aber stehengeblieben in bezug auf Bewegung und sein Wesen auf der Stufe der Narurgesetzlichkeit, die unser Sonnensystem hatte, als die Erde noch Mond war. Er hat einen früheren Zustand hereingetragen in einen späteren, in die Gegenwart, wie der weibliche Leib einen früheren Zustand in das gegenwärtige Dasein hereinträgt. Das Kometarische ist der eine Teil eines solchen Gegensatzes, das Mondendasein als sein Gegensatz stellt die andere Seite dar. Als der Mond in der lemurischen Zeit sich aus der Erde heraus entwickelte, hat er gewisse Teile mitgenommen, die herausgenommen werden mußten aus der Erde, damit sich der Mensch überhaupt als Mensch entwickeln konnte. Die Erde durfte nicht so dicht werden, wie sie geworden wäre, wenn sie den Mond in sich behalten hätte. Der Mond stellt in der Tat einen karikierten Jupiterzustand dar. Wie sich eine frische, reife Frucht darstellt gegenüber einer, die, ganz verrunzelt, sich in die Materie hinein versteinert hat, so ist der Mond in seiner Konfiguration über eine gewisse mittlere Gestalt hinausgeschritten, wie das Männliche im Menschen in seiner Form bei der Gestaltung diese Mitte überschritten hat. Ganz denselben Gegensatz, den wir im Menschenleben haben als den Gegensatz des Männlichen und Weiblichen, haben wir im Kosmos zwischen Lunarischem und Kometarischem.
So gehören die Dinge zusammen: wie Sonne und Erde, so Kopf und Gliedmaßen, wie Mond und Komet, so Mann und Frau im Menschen. Nur dürfen wir damit nicht wieder nach Hause gehen und sagen: Nun, da haben wir ja wieder etwas, was wir uns so hübsch als einen Gegensatz merken können! — Wir müssen die Dinge tief ernst nehmen und uns klar sein, daß zu anderen Zeiten noch etwas anderes gesagt worden ist. Wir müssen in Betracht ziehen, daß der Mann nur in bezug auf seinen physischen Leib männlich ist, in bezug auf seinen Ätherleib dagegen weiblich, und daß umgekehrt die Frau nur in bezug auf ihren physischen Leib weiblich ist. Was für das Weibliche des Weibes gilt für den physischen Leib, das gilt auch für den Ätherleib des Mannes, so daß auch der Ätherleib des Mannes zum Ätherleib der Frau sich verhält wie Komet zum Mond. Wenn Sie nun wollen, können Sie sagen: Dadurch verschwimmt ja wiederum alles! — Aber so sind die Dinge. In jeder Kultur, die ihre Begriffe geschaffen hat mit einem verdickten Gehirn, gehen ja die Begriffe darauf hinaus, möglichst dicke Konturen zu schaffen, an denen gar nicht gerüttelt werden kann, so daß man, wenn man solche Begriffe hat, ganz daran festhalten muß. Das läßt sich aber der Geist nicht gefallen. Der Geist ist etwas Bewegliches, und wenn wir uns Begriffe gebildet haben, müssen wir sie beweglich erhalten. Daher müssen wir auch für das Männliche in der Frau und für das Weibliche im Manne durchaus das anwenden, was eben von Mond und Komet in bezug auf Mann und Frau gesagt worden ist. Es gilt eben das, was gesagt worden ist, in bezug auf das Männliche und Weibliche, wie es uns im Menschenleben entgegentritt, und nicht für Mann und Frau, wie sie uns äußerlich entgegentreten.
So haben wir im eminenten Sinne interessante Zusammenhänge zwischen Menschenentwickelung und Weltenentwickelung gefunden. Ganz gewiß wird — ich habe auch schon darauf aufmerksam gemacht — derjenige, der heute auf dem kurulischen Stuhl der wahren wissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung sitzt, solche Dinge über Komet und Mond höchst verrückt und närrisch finden. Er mag es tun. Er hat eben nicht den Willen, auf die Wahrheit wirklich einzugehen. Wir auf dem Boden der Geisteswissenschaft können die Brücke ziehen zwischen dem, was aus dem Geistigen kommt, und dem, was auf dem physischen Plan sich uns darstellt. Die anderen wollen es nicht.
Im Jahre 1906 während des Kongresses in Paris habe ich darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß die Geistesforschung aus ihrer Erkenntnis der kometarischen Natur sagen kann: Weil auf der Erde Verbindungen von Kohlenstoff und Sauerstoff dieselbe Rolle spielen, welche während des alten Mondendaseins die Verbindungen von Kohlenstoff und Stickstoff gespielt haben, das heißt Zyanverbindungen, so muß das kometarische Dasein blausäureartige Verbindungen enthalten, Zyanverbindungen, die sich aus Kohlenstoff und Stickstoff zusammensetzen. Diejenigen, die diese Dinge aufmerksam verfolgt haben, werden sich das bewahrt haben. So ist also aus der Geisteswissenschaft heraus längst gesagt worden, daß unsere Kometennaturen irgendwelche zyanartige Verbindungen enthalten. In den letzten Wochen ist diese Tatsache als eine äußere spektralanalytische Tatsache durch die Zeitungen gegangen. Es ist das nur ein Fall, hundert andere könnten ebenso angeführt werden, wie die Geistesforschung ihre Brücke ziehen kann zu den Tatsachen der äußeren Forschung. Spektralanalyse hat in diesem Falle nach Jahren das konstatiert, was aus der Geisteswissenschaft heraus bereits vor Jahren gesagt worden ist. Nirgends widersprechen die Tatsachen der äußeren materialistischen Forschung den Tatsachen der Geistesforschung! Auf so etwas, wie das eben Gesagte, darf man sich berufen, wenn diejenigen, die auf dem kurulischen Stuhl der wahren Wissenschaft sitzen, immer wieder kommen und auf die äußeren Tatsachen hinweisen. Wir dürfen die äußeren Tatsachen nur nicht verwechseln mit den engbegrenzten Begriffen, welche die Menschen sich selber ziehen. Wenn das alles Tatsachen wären, was heute Naturwissenschaft ist, dann würde die Naturwissenschaft sehr der Geisteswissenschaft widersprechen; aber das sind gar nicht Tatsachen, sondern nur korrupte Begriffe derjenigen, die durch unsere heutigen Zeitverhältnisse eben berufen sind, mit den Dingen zu hantieren.
Nun können wir uns noch das Folgende fragen, nachdem wir uns diesen Gegensatz vor Augen gerückt haben, der sich im Menschenleben ebenso wie im Kosmos findet: Was wird denn damit eigentlich herausgeboren aus dem Weltall, wenn wir diesen ganzen Gegensatz des Kometarischen und Lunarischen ins Auge fassen?
Es ist etwas schwer, das ganz Gewaltige, was dieser Tatsache zugrunde liegt, in einer verhältnismäßig kurzen Zeit zu charakterisieren. Daher gestatten Sie einmal, daß ich davon ausgehe, vergleichsweise das Menschenleben zu charakterisieren, wie es verfließt, wenn wir es in seinem äußeren Verlauf betrachten. Da gibt es zunächst etwas, von dem man sagen könnte, es verläuft im guten Sinne bürgerlich von Tag zu Tag. Man steht des Morgens auf, nimmt das erste Frühstück, dann geht es weiter nach dem, was eben jeder Tag bringt nach den gewöhnlichen Gesetzen des Tages. Aber es gibt auch in diesem Leben des Menschen Ereignisse, die hineinschlagen und mit einem Schlage Veränderungen in den Verlauf des Alltags bringen. Nehmen wir einmal an, ein Mann und eine Frau leben so recht gutbürgerlich eine Zeitlang dahin mit dem gewöhnlichen, nur wenig variierten Tagesprogramm. Aber etwas anderes kommt, was tatsächlich eine Art Ruck bildet im gewöhnlichen äußeren Leben derjenigen Menschen, die unter solchen Verhältnissen stehen. Ein solcher äußerer Ruck ist es, wenn ein neuer Mensch sich verkörpert, als Erdenbürger ins Dasein hineintritt. Das unterscheidet sich gewaltig von dem gewöhnlichen Gang des alltäglichen Lebens. Wenn aber ein neuer Weltenbürger hereintritt in den Horizont von Mann und Frau, so fällt damit tatsächlich etwas hinein, was dem ganzen Familienzusammenhang ein neues Gepräge gibt. Das wollte ich zum Vergleich heranziehen, weil wir dadurch den tiefen okkulten Hintergrund des Kometendaseins ein wenig zum Verständnis bringen können. Es verläuft sozusagen auch im Kosmos das Leben von Tag zu Tag, von Jahr zu Jahr «gut-bürgerlich». Es geht da jeden Tag dasselbe vor: Die Sonne geht auf und unter, die Pflanzen blühen im Frühling, im Herbst dorren sie ab; und wenn es einmal Regen oder Sonnenschein gibt, oder Hagelschlag oder dergleichen eintritt, so entspricht das den Ereignissen, die auch sonst im gewöhnlichen Leben geschehen, wenn zum Beispiel statt des gewöhnlichen Tees einmal ein festliches Kaffeekränzchen veranstaltet wird. Solche Dinge sehen wir durchaus im gewöhnlichen Trott fortgehen. Das alles hängt zusammen mit den Gesetzen, die einmal den Bewegungen von Sonne, Erde und so weiter zugrunde liegen, und wie sie sich Jahr für Jahr, Tag für Tag vollziehen. Aber in diesen Gang ragen in merkwürdiger Weise herein die selteneren, aber sich doch wiederum in gewisser Beziehung wiederholenden Erscheinungen der Kometen. Sie ragen ebenso herein in den Gang der kosmischen Geschehnisse wie ein neuer Erdenbürger, der in den Horizont von Mann und Frau hereinrritt. Durch das Erscheinen des Kometen im Kosmos wird tatsächlich in das Menschheitsdasein etwas hineingeführt, was nicht auf dem gewöhnlichen Gang des Lebens gegeben werden könnte. Es muß, wenn die Entwickelung fortgehen soll, nicht bloß das geben, was sich von Tag zu Tag wiederholt, sondern es muß Neues hineingefügt werden in diesen Zusammenhang. Wie in das einzelne Familienleben mit einem neuen Erdenbürger etwas ganz Besonderes hineinkommt, so kommt in den Fortschritt des Menschengeschlechtes auf der Erde durch diese, den gewöhnlichen Fortgang des Weltendaseins durchbrechende Erscheinung des Kometen etwas ganz anderes hinein. Es wird tatsächlich gleichsam etwas Neues geboren, wenn der Komet in die Welt tritt.
Für den, der geistig diese Dinge untersuchen kann, gibt es dabei die Möglichkeit, ganz genau darauf hinzuweisen, wie die einzelnen Kometen ihre Funktionen haben, dieses oder jenes geistig Neue hineinzuführen in die Welt. So ist der Halleysche Komet einer von denjenigen, der so, wie er periodisch erscheint, immer wieder etwas ganz bestimmtes Neues gebiert im Menschenleben. Während sich sonst die Dinge in der gewöhnlichen Weise wiederholen, bringt der Komet eine seelisch-kulturelle Neugeburt hervor. Was damit gemeint ist, kann ich Ihnen charakterisieren, wenn ich nur die drei letzten Erscheinungen des Halleyschen Kometen anführe von den Jahren 1759, 1835 und diejenige, vor der wir gegenwärtig stehen. Was für eine Aufgabe — andere Kometen haben andere Aufgaben kommt diesen drei letzten Erscheinungen zu?
Neugeburten im Weltall sind nicht bloß solche, welche wir mit derselben Freude begrüßen wie einen jungen Erdenbürger, der in eine Familie hineintritt. Im Weltall wird alles geboren, was die Menschheit vorwärts- oder aber auch zurückbringt. Nun hängt das Erscheinen des Halleyschen Kometen, das heißt also, was er geistig bedeutet für die Fortentwickelung der Menschheit, mit demjenigen zusammen, was die Menschheit aufnehmen mußte aus dem Kosmos in den verschiedenen Zeiten des Kali Yuga, um immer mehr in bezug auf das Denken in die Materialität hineinzusteigen. Mit jedem neuen Erscheinen wurde für die Menschheit ein neuer Impuls geboren, um aus einer spirituellen Weltanschauung das Ich herunterzutreiben, um die Welt materialistischer aufzufassen. Nicht ein Heruntersteigen in die Materie ist gemeint, sondern dasjenige, was das menschliche Ich aus dem Weltall aufnehmen muß an geistiger Substanz, um von einem spirituellen Dasein hinunterzutreiben in die Sphäre der materialistischen Anschauungen. Alle diejenigen Anschauungen aus der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, die man die «seichte Aufklärung» nennt, und die Goethe so verspottet hat in «Dichtung und Wahrheit» als jene Anschauungen, wie sie zum Beispiel in Holbachs «Systeme de la Nature» ihren Vertreter gefunden haben, sie begreift man kosmisch durch die Erscheinung des Halleyschen Kometen vom Jahre 1759. Der banalen maternalistischen Literatur vom zweiten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts ging voran die Erscheinung des Halleyschen Kometen vom Jahre 1835. Die Dinge, die auf der Erde geschehen mikrokosmisch, hängen makrokosmisch zusammen mit den Dingen in der großen Welt. Mit der Erscheinung des Halleyschen Kometen vom Jahre 1835 war wiederum geboren ein neuer Impuls in den Materialismus herunter. Und Büchner, Vogt und Moleschott sind diejenigen, die auf der Erde ausleben, was aus dem Kosmos herunter wie ein gewaltiges Zeichen mit dem Halleyschen Kometen erschienen ist. Und jetzt stehen wir davor — weil die Menschheit eben geprüft werden muß, sich aus sich selber emporringen muß, die Widerstände der Spiritualität fühlen muß, um dann um so mehr Kräfte zu ihrem Aufstieg zu entfalten -, jetzt stehen wir davor, daß wir mit dem neuen Erscheinen des Halleyschen Kometen aus dem Weltall zugesendet erhalten die Kräfte, welche die Menschheit in einen noch flacheren, in einen noch abscheulicheren Materialismus herunterführen können. Geboren werden kann etwas, was sich vielleicht selbst die flachsten Flachlinge des Büchnerianismus nicht denken können. Diese Möglichkeit muß gegeben sein. Denn nur, wenn der Mensch die ihm widerstrebenden Mächte überwindet, kann er sich die hinaufführenden starken Kräfte aus dem Weltall aneignen.
Wenn wir das ins Auge fassun, werden wir in der richtigen Weise dem gegenüberstehen, was wir Zeichen des Himmels nennen können. Es ist durchaus der Fall, wenn es nur nicht abergläubisch aufgefaßt wird, sondern im Sinne der großen Weltengesetze: Es steckt der Herrgott wieder einmal die Himmelsrute heraus, um den Menschen zu zeigen, was sie zu tun haben. Und die gegenwärtige Erscheinung des Halleyschen Kometen ist eine solche, die beachtet werden muß. Denn es muß ein gewaltiger Impuls zum Aufstieg erfolgen, um herauszukommen aus dem Versunkensein in eine materialistische Weltanschauung zur Spiritualität. Wie uns die Möglichkeit gegeben ist, in den Materialismus hinein zu versumpfen, so ist uns auf der anderen Seite die Möglichkeit gegeben, hinaufzusteigen zu helleren, geistigeren Höhen.
In den letzten Vorträgen ist klar und deutlich erwähnt worden, daß sich noch in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts als natürliche Eigenschaft bei einzelnen Menschen ein ätherisches Hellsehen ausbilden kann. Damit der Mensch nicht weiter herunterzusinken braucht in den Materialismus, was ihm durch ein Zeichen jetzt, 1910, angedeutet wird, kann heute schon für denjenigen, der Verständnis für Geisteswissenschaft hat, das vor Augen stehen, daß sich im Schoße der menschlichen Seele die Kräfte entwickeln, die den Menschen über allen Materialismus hinüberführen können. Wenn der Mensch diese Kräfte versteht, werden sie ihn lehren können, selber die ätherische Natur des Christus zu sehen. Wir leben an einem wichtigen Kreuzungspunkt, wo selbst durch Zeichen vom Himmel dem Menschen gelehrt wird, daß der Weg nach der einen Seite noch weiter in den materialistischen Sumpf gehen kann, nach der anderen Seite jedoch dahin, wo sich die Kräfte beim Menschen entwickeln müssen, die nach dem Ablauf des Kali Yuga zum ätherischen Hellsehen führen. Es steht wahrhaftig so mit uns, daß der Ruf Johannes des Täufers: Ändert die Seelenverfassung! — auch für unsere Zeit gilt. Das kann durchaus betont werden. Wie uns auf der einen Seite die Möglichkeit gegeben ist, in dem materialistischen Sumpf zu verkommen, ist uns auf der anderen Seite die Möglichkeit gegeben dadurch, daß die Sonne im Frühlingspunkt einen gewissen Punkt im Sternbild der Fische erreicht, das zu gewinnen, was ein gewisses ätherisches Hellsehen ist. Auch für den spirituellen Aufstieg sind die Zeichen im Kosmos da, die uns anzeigen, wie die Kräfte aus dem Kosmos kommen. Der Mensch muß dadurch, daß er sich in die Geisteswissenschaft hineinfindet, sich ein Verständnis aneignen für diese Entscheidung. Und erst der versteht Geisteswissenschaft recht, der sich für diese Entscheidung das Verständnis aneignet. Hindurchschreiten müssen wir durch die Prüfung, die uns auferlegt wird durch Zeichen des Himmels, und die wir jetzt erkannt haben zum Beispiel in dem Erscheinen des Halleyschen Kometen.
Stellen wir uns nun die Christus-Erscheinung vor, wie sie für die ersten Vorzügler in den nächsten 2500 Jahren auftreten wird, wie es für den Paulus vor Damaskus der Fall war. Der Mensch wird aufsteigen zur Erkenntnis der spirituellen Welt, wird durchsetzt sehen die physische Welt mit einem neuen Lande, mit einem neuen Reich. Verändert wird in den nächsten 2500 Jahren der Anblick der physischen Umgebung für den Menschen sein, indem hineintreten wird für ihn ein ätherisches Gebiet, das da ist, das aber der Mensch erst wird sehen lernen müssen. Dieses ätherische Gebiet liegt jetzt schon vor demjenigen ausgebreitet, der seine esoterische Schulung bis zur Erleuchtung gebracht hat, auch vor dem Eingeweihten des Kali Yuga. So ist das, was in Zukunft die Menschen immer mehr und mehr sehen werden, für den Eingeweihten bis in hohe Höhen hinauf da. Und der Eingeweihte holt sich immer wieder nach einer bestimmten Zeit, wenn er es braucht, Kräfte aus diesem Gebiet. Er holt sich seine Kräfte, wenn er etwas auszuführen hat, aus jenem Gebiete des für den Eingeweihten sichtbaren Erdenkreises, der da ist, aber nur für den Menschen, der hineinschauen kann. Das kann uns ein Verständnis dafür geben, daß wir wissen, daß ein Teil jenes Landes, aus dem der Eingeweihte immer wieder während des Kali Yuga seine Kräfte geschöpft hat, für einen großen Teil der Menschheit während der nächsten 2500 Jahre ausgebreitet sein wird.
Früher, in den Zeiten eines uralten Hellsehens, konnte der Mensch ohne das starke Ich-Bewußtsein hineinschauen in die geistige Welt, so daß er damals schon in gewisser Weise das gesehen hat, was er jetzt wieder sehen wird, aber jetzt so, daß er hineintreten wird mit seinem neuen Selbstbewußtsein. Damals sah er es in traumhaft ekstatischen Zuständen, oder beim Hineinschauen in die eigene Seele. Damals war diese Welt vorhanden vor dem Blick, der während des Kali Yuga nur ein physischer Blick geworden ist. Daher erzählen uns die Traditionen, welche sich ein Andenken an das alte Hellsehen bewahrt haben, von einem unbekannten Märchenlande, das dem Blick des heutigen Menschen entschwunden ist. Und es gibt in der morgenländischen Literatur wunderbare Schriften mit einem eigenartigen tragischen Zauber in ihrem Inhalt, der etwa sagt: Es hat einmal im Menschenreich die Möglichkeit gegeben, hinzupilgern zu einem Lande, wo herausgeflossen ist alles Geistige in ein physisch Sinnliches. Es ist das Land, aus dem in entsprechenden Zeiten die Eingeweihten, und aus dem die Bodhisattvas immer wieder ihre Kraft schöpfen. Mit tiefer Wehmut wird von diesem Lande in den orientalischen Schriften gesprochen, wo es in einigen etwa heißt: Wo ist es? Es wird uns gesagt, wie die Orte heißen, Wege werden genannt, aber selbst vor den angesehensten Lamas des tibetanischen Gebietes hat es sich verborgen. Nur den Eingeweihten ist es zugänglich! Aber es wird davon erzählt, daß dieses Land wieder zur Erde kommen werde. Und das ist wahr: Es wird zur Erde kommen! Und der Führer dazu wird derjenige sein, den die Menschen sehen werden, wenn sie durch das Ereignis von Damaskus hineingelangen werden in das Land «Schamballa». Schamballa, so heißt das Land, hat sich zurückgezogen vor dem Blick der Menschen. Es ist heute nur zu betreten für die, welche sich als Eingeweihte nach bestimmten Zeiten ihre Kräftigung von dort zu holen haben. Die alten Kräfte führen nicht mehr in das Land Schamballa. Daher sprechen die orientalischen Schriften mit so tragischer Wehmut von dem untergegangenen Lande Schamballa. Aber es wird das Christus-Ereignis, das durch die erwachten neuen Fähigkeiten in diesem Jahrhundert den Menschen beschert sein wird, wiederbringen das Märchenland Schamballa, das während des Kali Yuga im Grunde nur der Eingeweihte kennen konnte.
So also steht die Menschheit vor der Entscheidung: Entweder mit dem, was durch den Halleyschen Kometen kommt, heruntergeführt zu werden in eine Finsternis, die noch unter dem Kali Yuga liegt, oder durch anthroposophisches Verständnis nicht zu übersehen dasjenige, was veranlagt ist an neuen Fähigkeiten, um die Wege zu finden nach dem Lande, das heute gemäß der orientalischen Literatur verschwunden ist, das aber der Christus der Menschheit wieder zeigen wird: nach dem Lande Schamballa. Das ist der große Punkt am Scheidewege: Entweder hinunter oder hinauf; entweder in etwas, was als ein Welten-Kamaloka noch unter dem Kali Yuga liegt, oder in das, was dem Menschen möglich macht jenes Gebiet zu betreten, was in Wahrheit gemeint ist mit der Bezeichnung Schamballa.
Fifth lecture
Today's lecture is intended to provide a kind of summary of what we have heard in the various winter lectures, what we have been able to add to the reflections on the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew, and what has been communicated here in connection with the lectures on the Gospel of John, as they were last given in Stockholm. As these lectures have been given, it will have become clear to you that everything in them has been arranged in such a way that we do not have an explanation of the Gospels in a limited sense, but that from the truths, which are, first of all, truths and, secondly, can be found in the Gospels when the Christian documents are correctly understood, it always emerges that the other mysteries of life can also be interpreted and illuminated in the most diverse ways.
If we go back to the origins of Christianity, we find two types, two forms of initiation: the initiation of the North, which has been characterized in more detail in the lectures given in Stockholm, and the initiation of the South, which is particularly characterized by its connection to the initiation processes of ancient Egyptian culture. From two sides, opportunities arose for the people of the ancient world to enter the spiritual world. If the initiate in ancient Egypt wanted to reach the spiritual world, he descended into the depths of his own soul, descended behind everything that exists in ordinary soul life as thought, feeling, will, and so on. There he found that from which the soul itself had emerged: the divine-spiritual existence of the world. Thus, descending below those regions of the soul that are illuminated and permeated by the ego was the essence of Egyptian or southern initiation in general. In contrast, the northern initiation, especially in the Germanic Druid and Trotten mysteries, was all about stepping out of yourself and merging with the world in an ecstatic way. It has already been characterized how these two types of initiation have merged in what we call Christian initiation, and how Christian initiation represents, as it were, the higher unity of the ecstatic initiation of the North and the mystical contemplation of the initiation of the South. This points to a deep foundation of the mysteries of the world that runs through all existence. Basically, any discussion, even of such a great and powerful fact as the merging of the two forms of initiation of antiquity into Christian initiation, is an example of an even more comprehensive law that permeates all human existence and at the same time interweaves all the phenomena of the external world, as far as human beings can recognize them. For we find everywhere that the members of a duality confront us as opposites. We see these members of a duality confronting each other as opposites in the northern and southern initiations. This is only one example of how opposites, or polarities, confront us in worldly existence. And the other, how these two forms of initiation flow together and enter into a spiritual marriage, as it were, in Christian initiation, is an example of how opposites, dualities in the world in general, unite. This happens incessantly, that units divide into dualities in order to further development, and that dualities in turn unite into unity. Outwardly, we could first point to a great, powerful fact that extends, as it were, beyond human evolution, which represents this division of a unity into duality and the reunification of duality into unity.
We have often looked into the Lemurian epoch, which among other things also saw the great fact of world evolution, when the moon split off from our earth. But this age also saw the first beginnings of what we now call the opposition between man and woman in the sense of human evolution, whereas in the world ages preceding the Lemurian epoch we would find a unity of the sexes. Thus, we have an original unity that has split into male and female. However, we have also already pointed out that in the future, this duality will reunite into unity, that unity will arise again from this duality. Outwardly, this is an indication of a comprehensive series of facts that lie in this relationship of two to fin or one to two.
What we encounter in human evolution is, however, basically the expression, the reflection of an even greater cosmic opposition that is rooted in unity, which we encounter as two in today's world and which will dissolve into unity again in the distant future. It is necessary that we take every thought given to us today through spiritual science in its full depth, that we do not get into the habit of accepting anthroposophical thoughts in the same superficial way as other thoughts and concepts that are buzzing around the world today and are accepted by the hasty and superficial banality of our present culture. Anthroposophical ideas must be taken as deeply as possible. Therefore, a thought such as this, which is often expressed and lies hidden in all our teachings, must not be taken lightly as an abstract idea: that the human being is born as a small world, as a microcosm, out of the macrocosm, out of the great world. This thought has an infinite, hundredfold content. Above all, one must be clear that the world is deeper than one usually believes, and that once one has understood a contradiction or a truth in one direction, one has by no means understood the ultimate truth about this relationship or this contradiction, but must patiently look around everywhere in order to get to know the other side of the coin.
Human beings are born out of the whole cosmos and must look up to the cosmos as to their mother-father being, of which they themselves are an image. Yes, human beings are an image of the whole world that can be known to them; and there is nothing in the human being that does not in some way express a relationship that is not also found in some way in the great cosmos. If we could compare the human being as he appears to us today — from a spiritual scientific point of view — with human forms in a relatively early period, we would find in the human being of today a characteristic of tremendous significance, among others of course, for enlightening us about the nature of the human being. This characteristic can teach each of us that what we know about the world is not only important in terms of whether things are true, but also in terms of something else entirely. The fact that someone has proven to us that something is true does not reveal to us the most important aspect of this truth. For example, much of what trivial natural science says about the comparison of humans with higher mammals is true. It is true, indisputably true, that humans have the same number of bones and muscles and other such things. But once you have proven that something is true, you have not done everything. It is precisely the human being who, through spiritual scientific deepening and internalization, must realize that what matters is to acquire a feeling for every truth, for how heavy the truth weighs, whether it is important or unimportant, essential or insignificant for the explanation of a thing. That is why there are people today who come and prove to us again and again, out of their trivial consciousness, that what they say is true. That is not to be disputed. But what matters is whether something is recognized in its proper weight for explaining the world!
Now there is a certain fact that is undoubtedly true and that everyone knows because they encounter it countless times every day, and which we, if we want to grasp its meaning and importance for human beings, its weight, only have to feel in the right way, namely the fact that human beings are upright beings who can look up into the world with their faces. Only human beings can do that! For even of the ape we must say that he looks as if he had tried to achieve this, but he has botched the job. He cannot do it. Man is the only being who has come to the end of this intention of being able to lift his face freely up into the world space. This fact is infinitely more important than anything that trivial natural science can tell us about the position of man in the animal kingdom. Everything else is true, but this is infinitely more important. Anyone who wants to feel something of this fact must familiarize themselves with the reason why human beings are upright beings, beings who are bound to the earth but who, through their perception, through their sensory perception, rise up into the universe in spirit.
This reason lies in the fact that there is a certain opposition, a duality, which behaves in the cosmos like another duality in man. We can point to a duality in the universe and a duality in man as two opposites that correspond to each other in the microcosm and the macrocosm. The contrast meant in the macrocosm, in the great world, is the contrast between the sun and the earth; and the same contrast that exists between the sun and the earth in the universe also exists in the human being: it is the contrast between the head and the hands and feet, between the head and the limbs. These things will be explained more and more as time goes on, but for now you must familiarize yourself with them in a general way and learn to feel that, in a certain sense, the head and the limbs behave as a duality in human beings, just as the sun and the earth behave in our solar system. For indeed, the forces that have developed over time rest in our earth, mysterious forces which anchor human beings to the earth and have brought about the present configuration and mobility of our hands and feet, while the forces that have lifted his face out into the world space, that have made him from a being who looks at the earth into one who can look out into the infinite distances of the worlds, have their seat in the sun. And those who can feel and sense, when they look at the contrast between the head and the limbs in humans, feel and sense the same thing as when they allow the contrast between the sun and the earth to affect their senses. This is a contrast that will one day be united in human life, just as it will be united in the cosmos. Just as the sun and the earth were once one being and separated to become two, so will they unite again. Likewise, what is a contrast in humans between the head and the limbs will once again become a unity, however difficult this may be to imagine for people today, who are unaccustomed to such concepts.
Thus, we have pointed to a contrast in humans and cited the corresponding contrast in the universe. But there are other opposites in human beings that also have their corresponding opposites in the universe. In relation to the opposition between head and limbs, all human beings on our earth are, so to speak, the same. Men and women have this opposition in the same way. There is no difference between men and women in this respect, for everything else that appears as opposition, for example in the configuration of the soul, is not brought about by this opposition. If this contrast existed only in the microcosm and macrocosm, men and women would be completely the same. But men and women are a different contrast in human beings. And now we can ask ourselves: Can we also find a contrast in the universe that corresponds to the contrast between men and women in human life? Is this contrast, which appears in earthly existence as man and woman, also born out of the universe? — Yes, there is. And in order to find this contrast, we must now familiarize ourselves a little, in an occult sense, with the contrast between man and woman. In doing so, we will not fall into the error of our materialistic age, which seeks to apply the contrast between male and female, as it simply appears as a sexual contrast in the physical world, to the entire universe. This is not only trivial, but also an impertinence on the part of our scholarship when it extends what we encounter in one area to all other areas.
What manifests itself on our earth as the contrast between man and woman corresponds to another contrast in the universe, which we cannot call male and female. That would be absurd. But we must nevertheless consider this opposition in relation to its occult basis. This opposition between male and female in our earthly evolution has, of course, nothing to do with “human beings”; human beings are the same in men and women. So when we speak of man and woman, we are referring to the configuration of the physical body and the etheric body; this has nothing to do with the inner being of the human being, so that we cannot speak in the occult sense as we do today in our materialistic age. For man and woman also have an astral body and an ego, while the ordinary view knows nothing at all of what makes a human being a human being, and can therefore only speak of man and woman. So we are not now speaking of human beings as such in terms of man and woman, but of what makes a human being a man or a woman, and that is only the outer shell. This must be well understood. If what is said in the following sentences is applied from one human being to another, then everything is wrong. The contrast between man and woman, within these limits, lies in the following.
The outer human form was completely different in the early days of humanity. The present human form, including the present male and female forms, only developed from an earlier unified form that had not yet split into the contrast between man and woman. So we have an earlier unity and the present contrast between man and woman. Now we also know that the earlier unity was a finer, more spiritual one. Man only developed his dense material form in the course of time. So we are not merely going back to a unity of form, but also to a unity that was more spiritual than the present form. We therefore have a primordial human being who is neither male nor female, but rather the not-yet-manifest separation of this opposition, as fineness, and who is more refined, more ethereal, more spiritual than the later, more material human being who lives out the opposition between man and woman. What is the basis for the fact that man and woman later emerged from the original unity? This is because when woman, as unity, entered into duality, she developed a physical body that did not completely transition from her earlier form into what we might call a normal material form. The female body remained at a more spiritual level and did not descend to the full extent of the material. It did become material and dense, but in this materiality it retained an earlier, more spiritual form. Thus, a spiritual level became material. The female body retained, as it were, an earlier spiritual form and did not descend completely into matter. This is true in relation to the material, but not in relation to the form. It has retained the form that humans had earlier. We can therefore say that women represent the revelation of an earlier form that was actually spiritual and, as it appears today, is actually false, a maya, an illusion. If we assume a certain turning point in development at which the material crystallizes, we can say that woman has not advanced to this turning point; she has crystallized an earlier form. Therefore, for those who truly feel the facts of life or can recognize them imaginatively, the human female body is only in relation to the head and limbs a true form, an expression of its underlying spirit; that is, only in the head and limbs is something expressed that is similar to the spirit behind it as a material appearance. Therefore, the spiritual behind it is unlike the rest of the material form, for this is a false form.
Thus, the statement that the world is Maya applies to all regions. One must take it seriously. It is convenient to think in the abstract that the world is Maya. Only those who take this statement seriously and ask, “In what sense are these forms illusions?” have truly understood it. Some are more so, others less so. There are forms that at least approximately, in their external likeness, express the spiritual reality behind them: these are the head and the limbs; but there are forms that are directly false, that are distorted, and these include the rest of the human body. They are directly distorted. And once the world understands this, people will no longer talk as foolishly as they do today, but will see that there is a certain deeper, finer artistic sensibility that tells us that the female figure is distorted if we disregard the head and limbs, and that it must be corrected if we want to reproduce it artistically. In better artistic times, this was actually done, because no one who can really look at forms can fail to see that, to a certain extent, the forms are corrected in the Venus de Milo. It's just that people don't usually see it.
So here we have divided the human being into limbs that are truer, less illusory, and those that are more illusory, that are completely distorted. But this does not only apply to women. For men, the opposite is true. It is the opposite. Just as the female form has not descended to the normal point in order to express the corresponding spirit in matter, but has crystallized at an earlier stage, so the male body has skipped the normal point and gone just as far beyond it as the female form has stopped before it. Therefore, the male body has descended deeper into materiality than would have been the normal relationship, and this is already evident in its external form. It would look completely different if it had not skipped the middle point. The human body is only approximately true in relation to the head and limbs. But in relation to the rest of the form, we must say that the female body stopped at a certain point, solidified before plunging into the waves of material existence, and therefore shows us a completely different form than it would have if it had crystallized before the waves of material existence touched it; the male body, however, has submerged even further and presents a false, distorted form to the same extent as the female body. Thus, the female body represents a form distorted toward the spiritual, while the male body represents a form distorted toward the material. The true form would lie in the middle, would be an average form of the two.
This naturally influences the whole human being in his earthly existence, insofar as he has a physical shell. This has nothing to do with the contrast between the head and the limbs, but what has now been said is transferred to the whole human being in the individual incarnation between birth and death. One incarnates as a man or as a woman. As a result, one has to reckon with what is recorded as being lived out in men or women. But this extends to the whole human being, and the consequence of this is that if one has a female body in an incarnation, this entire female body is influenced by this more backward state in a more original, softer form. And in a male incarnation, the entire male body is filtered through an excessive immersion in coarse, solid matter. If you have even the slightest idea of what it means to think in the spirit, to live in the spirit, and to use the physical body as a mere tool, if you do not feel so stuck in it that you identify with it, then you can sing a song about the misery of having to use a male body, which of course also infiltrates the brain, in an incarnation. For one realizes that the forms of the brain, because they have entered more coarsely into matter, are more difficult to handle than the softer forms of the female brain, which have not entered so strongly into matter. It is indeed more difficult to train a male brain to translate truths into thoughts when one has to ascend to the higher worlds than it is to train a female brain. It is therefore not surprising for people who are capable of thinking that a worldview that is new to the world, such as spiritual science, can be more easily understood with the female brain, which is easier to train, than with the male brain, which finds it more difficult to break away from certain thoughts that it has absorbed today, because the male brain is more difficult to work with and more difficult to handle. This is why spiritual science will find it so difficult to gain acceptance among men who are the cultural leaders of today's world and who are steeped in the conventional cultural ideas of our present-day life. We must understand what an awkward thing the brain of a scholar is, not only for taking in spiritual science, but also for thinking with what it can take in from spiritual science. However, we must not turn the matter on its head and draw any conclusions from it, or at most conclude that we must now regard it as something all the more significant if quite a few men use their brains in such a way that they come quite close to the humanities. These things can only be hinted at for now, but if you let them sink in and think about them, you will find tremendous perspectives for human life in them.
When we consider human life in its contrast between man and woman, we have something that we can call something that has remained at an earlier stage, and something that has actually progressed beyond a certain stage of the present, which in a certain caricatured state brings a future form into the present, which therefore appears caricatured. An earlier form of the body has preserved the feminine, and a later form has taken in the masculine and developed it in a way that it must not be in the future. Therefore, the male body has become false because it has placed later conditions of life into an earlier period of life.
Is there also a counterpart in the cosmos for this contrast between male and female? Is there something in the cosmos that shows us, on the one hand, an existence, a stage of development that has, as it were, retained earlier forms and carried them over into a later existence? And are there, on the other hand, forms that have passed a certain stage, i.e., that represent a future state in caricatured form? If we consider the concrete development as we know it from the Akashic Records, we might ask: Is there something in the cosmos outside, something like an old lunar existence that did not want to enter into earthly existence, but has retained something from the old lunar existence, like a feminine element in the cosmos? Is there something that, like an old lunar existence, carries an earlier stage into the present? And is there something in the cosmos that has passed a certain stage, thickened and condensed, so that it represents a later state, a Jupiter state?
There is. The same contrast that exists between male and female in the sense characterized in humans also exists out there in the cosmos: it is the contrast between the cometary and the lunar, between the comet and the moon. If we want to understand the comet in terms of its essence, as it wanders through space today, breaking through the other laws of the solar system, so to speak, then we must realize that it is actually the laws of the old lunar existence that the comet brings into our existence. It has preserved this and thus entered into our existence. It has taken on the present matter of the sun-earth system, but has remained at the stage of natural law that our solar system had when the earth was still a moon in terms of its movement and nature. It has brought a former state into a later one, into the present, just as the female body brings a former state into the present existence. The cometary is one part of such a contrast, and the moon existence as its opposite represents the other side. When the moon developed out of the earth in the Lemurian epoch, it took with it certain parts that had to be removed from the earth so that human beings could develop as human beings at all. The earth was not allowed to become as dense as it would have become if it had retained the moon within itself. The moon actually represents a caricatured state of Jupiter. Just as a fresh, ripe fruit contrasts with one that is completely wrinkled and has petrified into matter, so the moon in its configuration has gone beyond a certain middle form, just as the male in the human being has gone beyond this middle in its form during its development. The very same contrast that we have in human life as the contrast between the masculine and the feminine, we have in the cosmos between the lunar and the cometary.
This is how things belong together: like the sun and the earth, like the head and the limbs, like the moon and the comet, like man and woman in human beings. But we must not go home and say: Well, there we have something again that we can nicely remember as a contrast! — We must take things deeply seriously and be clear that at other times something else has been said. We must take into account that man is masculine only in relation to his physical body, but feminine in relation to his etheric body, and that, conversely, woman is feminine only in relation to her physical body. What applies to the physical body of the female also applies to the etheric body of the male, so that the etheric body of the male is to the etheric body of the female as a comet is to the moon. If you like, you can say: This blurs everything again! — But that is how things are. In every culture that has created its concepts with a thickened brain, the concepts tend to create contours that are as thick as possible and cannot be shaken, so that when one has such concepts, one must hold fast to them. But the spirit will not tolerate this. The spirit is something mobile, and once we have formed concepts, we must keep them mobile. Therefore, we must also apply to the masculine in women and the feminine in men what has just been said about the moon and the comet in relation to men and women. What has been said applies to the masculine and feminine as they appear to us in human life, and not to men and women as they appear to us externally.
In this way, we have found interesting connections between human development and world development in an eminent sense. Certainly, as I have already pointed out, those who sit on the curule chair of true scientific worldview today will find such things about comets and the moon highly crazy and foolish. They may do so. They simply do not have the will to really engage with the truth. We, on the ground of spiritual science, can build a bridge between what comes from the spiritual and what presents itself to us on the physical plane. The others do not want to.
In 1906, during the congress in Paris, I pointed out that spiritual research, based on its knowledge of the cometary nature, can say: Because on Earth, compounds of carbon and oxygen play the same role that compounds of carbon and nitrogen played during the ancient Moon existence, that is, cyan compounds, the cometary existence must contain cyanide compounds, cyan compounds composed of carbon and nitrogen. Those who have followed these things closely will have remembered this. Thus, spiritual science has long since stated that our comets contain some kind of cyanide compounds. In recent weeks, this fact has been reported in the newspapers as an external spectral analysis fact. This is just one case; hundreds of others could be cited to show how spiritual research can build bridges to the facts of external research. In this case, spectral analysis has confirmed after years what spiritual science said years ago. Nowhere do the facts of external materialistic research contradict the facts of spiritual research! We can refer to something like what has just been said when those who sit on the curule chair of true science keep coming back and pointing to external facts. We must not confuse the external facts with the narrowly defined concepts that people create for themselves. If everything that is natural science today were fact, then natural science would contradict spiritual science greatly; but these are not facts at all, only corrupt concepts of those who, due to our present circumstances, are called upon to deal with these things.
Now that we have brought this contrast to light, which is found in human life as well as in the cosmos, we can ask ourselves the following question: What is actually born out of the universe when we consider this whole contrast between the cometary and the lunar?
It is somewhat difficult to characterize in a relatively short time the tremendous power that underlies this fact. Therefore, allow me to characterize human life comparatively, as it flows when we consider its outer course. First, there is something that one could say proceeds in a good, bourgeois sense from day to day. You get up in the morning, have your first breakfast, then go on with whatever each day brings according to the usual laws of the day. But there are also events in human life that strike with a blow and bring about changes in the course of everyday life. Let us assume that a man and a woman live a fairly middle-class life for a while with a routine that varies little from day to day. But then something else comes along that actually causes a kind of jolt in the ordinary outer life of people living under such circumstances. Such an outer jolt occurs when a new human being incarnates and enters into existence as a citizen of the earth. This differs enormously from the ordinary course of everyday life. But when a new citizen of the world enters the horizon of a man and a woman, something actually falls into place that gives the whole family relationship a new character. I wanted to use this as a comparison because it helps us to understand a little of the deep occult background of the existence of comets. In the cosmos, too, life proceeds, so to speak, from day to day, from year to year, in a “bourgeois” manner. Every day the same thing happens: the sun rises and sets, the plants bloom in spring and wither in autumn; and when there is rain or sunshine, or hail or the like, this corresponds to events that also happen in ordinary life, for example when a festive coffee party is held instead of the usual tea. We see such things happening in the ordinary course of life. All this is connected with the laws that underlie the movements of the sun, the earth, and so on, and how they take place year after year, day after day. But the rarer, yet in a certain sense recurring, phenomena of comets intrude into this course in a remarkable way. They intrude into the course of cosmic events just as a new citizen of the earth intrudes into the horizon of man and woman. Through the appearance of comets in the cosmos, something is actually introduced into human existence that could not be given in the ordinary course of life. If development is to continue, there must not only be what repeats itself from day to day, but something new must be added to this context. Just as something very special enters into the life of an individual family with the arrival of a new citizen of the earth, so something completely different enters into the progress of the human race on earth through the appearance of the comet, which breaks through the ordinary course of world existence. Something new is actually born, as it were, when the comet enters the world.
For those who can investigate these things spiritually, it is possible to point out very precisely how the individual comets have their functions of introducing this or that spiritual new element into the world. Halley's Comet, for example, is one of those comets which, as it appears periodically, always gives birth to something very specific and new in human life. While things otherwise repeat themselves in the usual way, the comet brings about a spiritual and cultural rebirth. I can characterize what this means by citing the last three appearances of Halley's Comet in 1759, 1835, and the one we are currently witnessing. What task—other comets have other tasks—is assigned to these last three appearances?
Rebirths in the universe are not merely those that we welcome with the same joy as a young citizen of Earth entering a family. In the universe, everything is born that brings humanity forward or backward. Now, the appearance of Halley's Comet, that is, its spiritual significance for the further development of humanity, is connected with what humanity had to take in from the cosmos at various times of the Kali Yuga in order to descend further and further into materiality in terms of thinking. With each new appearance, a new impulse was born for humanity to drive the ego down from a spiritual worldview in order to perceive the world in a more materialistic way. This does not mean a descent into matter, but rather that which the human ego must absorb from the universe in spiritual substance in order to descend from a spiritual existence into the sphere of materialistic views. All those views from the second half of the 18th century that are called the “shallow Enlightenment” and that Goethe so mocked in “Poetry and Truth” as those views that found their representatives, for example, in Holbach's “Systeme de la Nature” , can be understood cosmically through the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1759. The banal maternalistic literature of the second third of the 19th century was preceded by the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835. The things that happen on Earth microcosmically are macrocosmically connected to things in the greater world. With the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835, a new impulse was born in materialism. And Büchner, Vogt, and Moleschott are those who live out on earth what appeared from the cosmos like a powerful sign with Halley's Comet. And now we stand before it—because humanity must be tested, must struggle out of itself, feel the resistance of spirituality in order to then develop all the more strength for its ascent — now we stand before the fact that with the new appearance of Halley's Comet sent to us from outer space, we will receive the forces that can lead humanity into an even flatter, even more abominable materialism. Something may be born that even the most shallow of Büchnerianists cannot imagine. This possibility must exist. For only when human beings overcome the forces that oppose them can they acquire the powerful forces from the universe that will lead them upward.
If we take this into account, we will face what we call signs from heaven in the right way. This is certainly the case, provided it is not interpreted superstitiously, but in the sense of the great laws of the universe: God is once again sticking out his rod from heaven to show people what they have to do. And the current appearance of Halley's Comet is one that must be heeded. For a powerful impulse toward ascension must occur in order to emerge from our immersion in a materialistic worldview and attain spirituality. Just as we have been given the opportunity to sink into materialism, so too have we been given the opportunity to ascend to brighter, more spiritual heights.
In the last lectures, it was clearly stated that in the first half of the 20th century, etheric clairvoyance can develop as a natural ability in some people. So that human beings do not need to sink further into materialism, as is now indicated by a sign in 1910, those who have an understanding of spiritual science can already see today that forces are developing in the womb of the human soul that can carry human beings over all materialism. When human beings understand these forces, they will be able to teach them to see the etheric nature of Christ for themselves. We are living at an important crossroads where even signs from heaven are teaching human beings that the path on one side can lead further into the materialistic morass, but on the other side to where the forces must develop in human beings that will lead to etheric clairvoyance after the end of the Kali Yuga. It is truly the case with us that John the Baptist's call, “Change your soul's disposition!” also applies to our time. This can be emphasized quite strongly. Just as we are given the opportunity to degenerate in the materialistic morass, we are also given the opportunity to gain a certain etheric clairvoyance through the fact that the sun reaches a certain point in the constellation of Pisces at the vernal equinox. The signs in the cosmos are also there for spiritual ascent, showing us how the forces come from the cosmos. By finding their way into spiritual science, human beings must acquire an understanding of this decision. And only those who acquire this understanding can truly understand spiritual science. We must pass through the test imposed on us by the signs of the heavens, which we have now recognized, for example, in the appearance of Halley's Comet.
Let us now imagine the appearance of Christ as it will appear to the first pioneers in the next 2,500 years, as it did to Paul before Damascus. Human beings will ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual world and will see the physical world permeated by a new land, a new kingdom. Over the next 2,500 years, the physical environment will change for human beings, as they will enter an etheric realm that is already there but which they will first have to learn to see. This etheric realm is already spread out before those who have brought their esoteric training to enlightenment, including the initiates of the Kali Yuga. Thus, what human beings will see more and more in the future is already there for the initiates, up to great heights. And the initiate draws strength from this realm again and again after a certain time, when he needs it. He draws his strength when he has something to accomplish from that realm of the earth's sphere that is visible to the initiate, but only to those who can look into it. This can give us an understanding that we know that a part of that land from which the initiated have repeatedly drawn their strength during the Kali Yuga will be spread out for a large part of humanity during the next 2,500 years.
In ancient times, when clairvoyance was common, people could look into the spiritual world without a strong sense of self, so that they could already see in a certain way what they will see again now, but now they will enter it with their new self-awareness. At that time, they saw it in dreamlike, ecstatic states or when looking into their own souls. At that time, this world existed before the gaze, which during the Kali Yuga has become only a physical gaze. That is why the traditions that have preserved a memory of ancient clairvoyance tell us of an unknown fairy-tale land that has disappeared from the view of modern humans. And there are wonderful writings in Eastern literature with a peculiar tragic magic in their content, which say something like: Once upon a time, there was a possibility in the human realm to make a pilgrimage to a land where everything spiritual flowed out into the physical senses. It is the land from which, in appropriate times, the initiates and the Bodhisattvas draw their strength again and again. The Oriental writings speak of this land with deep melancholy, saying in some places: Where is it? We are told the names of the places, the paths are named, but even the most respected lamas of the Tibetan region have been unable to find it. Only the initiates have access to it! But it is said that this land will return to Earth. And that is true: it will come to Earth! And the guide to it will be the one whom people will see when they enter the land of “Shamballa” through the event of Damascus. Shamballa, as the land is called, has withdrawn from human view. Today it can only be entered by those who, as initiates, have to draw their strength from there at certain times. The old forces no longer lead to the land of Shamballa. That is why the Oriental scriptures speak with such tragic melancholy of the lost land of Shamballa. But the Christ event, which will be bestowed upon humanity in this century through the awakened new abilities, will bring back the fairy-tale land of Shamballa, which during the Kali Yuga could basically only be known to the initiated.
So humanity stands before a decision: Either to be led down by what comes with Halley's Comet into a darkness that still lies beneath the Kali Yuga, or, through anthroposophical understanding, not to overlook what is inherent in new abilities to find the paths to the land that, according to Eastern literature, has disappeared today, but which Christ will show humanity again: to the land of Shamballa. That is the great point at the crossroads: either down or up; either into something that lies beneath the Kali Yuga as a world Kamaloka, or into that which enables human beings to enter the realm that is truly meant by the name Shamballa.