| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Eighteenth Lecture
05 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Eighteenth Lecture
05 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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Dear Friends,Yesterday I began to speak about the path that has been sought to arrive at a baptismal ritual, and I introduced it by pointing out that in these rituals there must be a real connection between an insight into the supersensible worlds and what takes place here in the ceremony. We have perhaps seen from this that if we are to speak of a real ceremony, we have to relate to the world somewhat differently than we do today. You will perhaps understand me even better if I say the following. Today, people strive in the outer world for knowledge of natural laws. They consider this knowledge to be something that they set as a goal and believe that it must be achieved unconditionally as a kind of last resort. Now, when anthroposophical spiritual science is more widely recognized, it will be something very surprising when people find that the natural laws they talk about today only apply — (it is drawn on the board) if this is the earth — a certain distance beyond the earth, but not beyond that. For example, at a certain height, the chemist would try in vain to carry out his laboratory experiments in the usual way, not only because what he imagines analogous to the laws of the earth does not prevail there, but because completely different laws prevail there. While, for example, a theory such as Einstein's theory of relativity, which he invented and which impresses the world, can be called an ingenious theory within the context of earthly existence, beyond earthly existence it is – forgive the trivial expression – simply nonsense, real rolled-out nonsense. And one can certainly not expect someone who has insight into the supersensible world to accept the visualizations that Einstein undertakes, not even if he only executes them as thoughts. I am merely drawing your attention to Einstein's comparison of the clocks, where he says that if a clock were to fly away at the speed of light and then return, it would — as he imagines — be on the same hand position as before. That is complete nonsense. Anyone who thinks realistically knows that such an image cannot be realized. He should just imagine, in line with the higher world, how this clock returns, which he lets walk out at the speed of light. Einstein also imagines that if a person were to move at the speed of light, he would gradually become as thin as a sheet of paper because the movement would also cause deformation. Ingenious thought up, but it is absolute nonsense, because the human organization is not something with which one can mathematize, but something with which one must reckon as a being, and which, by its own nature, precludes one from simply letting it become as thin as a sheet of paper. These are all very unrealistic ideas, and so are the rest; but, as I admit, for the earthly being they are extraordinarily ingenious ideas. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Now, the one who acts sacramentally must come to ideas that are quite different from those that one can have merely within earthly existence. On the one hand, St. Paul's saying must be taken quite seriously: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” It must be taken so seriously that it is connected with the other saying: “All power is given unto me, not only in the kingdoms of the earth, but also in the kingdoms of heaven.” That is, the actions that are carried out must be able to be imagined in the sense of eternal becoming, not just of earthly becoming. Now, for example, all the manipulations we carry out today with our several seventy elements of chemistry have no significance at all; other ideas that we have to form are of great importance. Without these ideas, one cannot achieve real imaginative knowledge at all, and it can be said that when imaginative knowledge becomes real, one gets such ideas as are needed for sacramentalism. Now I will describe to you – as I said, all these things are of course in the process of becoming – how the baptismal act can be performed after I have tried to draw your attention to the fact that one must have a different relationship to the substances of the world than the current zeitgeist. Now, for the baptismal act, one has to prepare three small vessels, which should actually have the following shape when seen from the side (it is drawn on the blackboard), so that they can be arranged on a small table. In these three vessels one has some water, salt and ash. Imagination suggests that one should actually use pure wood ash. The little table on which these vessels stand — I will have to talk about these things later — is best covered with a blue carpet or something similar. The three vessels then stand on a red doily and are arranged as I have drawn here. And now one prepares the thing so that one has water in this vessel here (see plate), salt in this vessel here, ash in this vessel here. I have been able to bring it out so far. Now, in order to understand this, we must be clear about what real ideas must be associated with salt, water and ash if we are to relate to them through imagination. In the imagination, the idea of restoration connects with the water, the restoration of something or other that has lost its essential being in some ongoing process, whereby the water can thus reveal its mediating presence in the world process. This water is to be taken pure; distilled water is best used. The water dissolves the salt. In every salt process, that is, whenever salt settles somewhere – and we can certainly use the general term salt here for everything that settles in this way – so whenever salt settles, it means that the salt also releases a spiritual-ethereal content into the environment. So the salt that is dissolved in the liquid, in the water, that is, as one knows through the imagination, holds wisdom. The dissolved salt holds wisdom. As the salt coagulates, as the salt settles, the real wisdom evaporates into the environment and the salt becomes empty of wisdom. You have to think of all this as being more connected with the process than with the substance, because it is a process that takes place in the most eminent sense in one's own human organism; and when you think, when you develop thoughts, you are only filled with thoughts by the fact that salt is deposited in you. The denser the development of thoughts, the more salt is deposited. A tremendous light falls from this truth on the whole physiology of the human body. It may well be that you do not subjectively participate with consciousness in this development of wisdom that is taking place. If, for example, you develop salt in a dream, even in a dull dream that is already perceived by the human consciousness as sleep, then this salt deposit definitely means fulfillment with wisdom, and at this level of knowledge, wisdom can be said to be everything that is the spiritual correlate of the growth phenomena. So when you look at the plant cover of the earth and let the growth of the plants take effect on you, from the point of view of the being of the earth it means a continuous salting or salinization process in the plant and an outpouring of wisdom. While the physical eye perceives the process of growth, the spiritual eye should see in this growth a process whereby the spiritual, as it were, is released, whereas it was formerly bound in the salt. “You are the salt of the earth.” Such things are already to be found in religious documents, and I would ask you to pay close attention to the fact that any merely abstract explanation of “You are the salt of the earth” does not capture the meaning; originally, it was meant to be quite specific. So it is a matter of understanding this salting process and now knowing that in the moment when one has salt and dissolves it again, the water substance is permeated by regenerative forces. On the other hand, consider that which has now become pure ash; it has not emerged from a coagulation process, not from a deposition process, but it has emerged from the fire process; it is the opposite process. What comes from the material side as the material field of activity for the spiritual is also the result of the fire process. You will understand this best if you imagine that you have some water, add salt on one side and ash on the other. What happens is a process from the extraterrestrial world, whereas our chemical processes only relate to the earthly world. If I add some salt on one side and some ash on the other, I create growth force, that is, active spirit. Through the ash that I let flow in, I add that which must always combine with the dissolution of the salt; this must always combine to give the spirit the possibility of being material. Now, of course, the whole thing must not be carried out without the human being really making the whole cosmos consciously present within himself. Therefore, the baptismal act begins with a kind of monologue, after the child has first been brought in with the godparents. Now one must be clear about what takes place in baptism. I have already said that anthroposophical activity can only be one that works and shapes out of the reality of the present. Therefore, when it comes to the act of baptism, we cannot today enter into a dialectical discussion about whether the act of baptism should be performed at the beginning of earthly life or whether it should perhaps only be performed in the course of life when one is conscious. Today we are dealing with the fact that we simply have to place ourselves in what is, and that is that the act of baptism is performed at the beginning of earthly life. Now it is important to always know that when one places oneself in the cosmic process in this way, one is actually not that chaotic whole that one is usually aware of, but rather one stands as the threefold being. This threefold nature is such that the actual thinking tends towards an understanding of what the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is, that the feeling tends towards an understanding of what the Son, the Christ, is, and that the all-willing tends towards an understanding of the Father. One must always feel connected, knowing oneself as a thinking, feeling and willing being through the triad of the soul with the Spirit, with the Son, with the Father. If one pronounces this in the sequence as I have now pronounced it, one is aware that one is pursuing one of the world currents, the current that goes from heaven to earth. If one pronounces it as it was originally pronounced: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, then one places oneself in the world current that goes from the earth upwards. So first a monologue is spoken:
From this monologue, you can see the meaning that the act of baptism must have when it is performed at the beginning of life on earth, when it is thus aligned with present-day consciousness. The act of baptism must then signify that the person being baptized is accepted into the Christian community and considered a member of the Christian community. It is, so to speak, the vow that the Christian community, which baptizes the child, accepts him and, insofar as this can happen in the sense of Christian development, watches over his Christian development. So that, my dear friends, is what we have to bear in mind when we perform a baptism today. This is its meaning. After this monologue has been spoken, the officiant of the baptismal ceremony turns to those present who have the child that was brought in before the aforementioned prayer. The officiant now speaks to those present: Dear baptismal community:
Now you also have all this in the baptismal act, in that one first points out what this soul is to the body, to the soul, and how life on earth is to take on a meaning that is given by the last lines:
To this one has just to contribute, about that one has, that one vows to watch. Now the one who performs the baptismal act will extend his hand to the two godparents standing on his left and right and then speak:
— that is, the godparents —
— now the names of the godparents are mentioned. And then one speaks to the godparents:
You see, the ceremony must be guided entirely by personal considerations. Now the leader of the baptismal ceremony steps in front of the child. He speaks:
— now the name of the person being baptized is pronounced first. Then the index and middle fingers are moistened with the water and spoken:
Now the A sign is made on the forehead of the person being baptized with the water. Now dip both fingers into the water again, then into the salt and say:
This sign is made [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] — these are still preparatory signs — on the chin of the person being baptized. Then wet the two fingers with water again, reach into the ashes and speak:
And now the sign of the cross is made on the chest of the person being baptized. We will have more to say about these signs. Then one speaks to the child:
The officiant of the baptismal ceremony now speaks to the community:
The baptismal act is at an end. Now the Lord's Prayer can be prayed at the conclusion with the understanding of which we spoke. Then the baptismal act as such, as I can perform it in the present, would be at an end. You see, when one seriously considers reintroducing ritual and symbolism, what is really at issue is, if I may say so, a fully human – is a word — a whole-human understanding of the world (the word “whole-human” is written on the board), an understanding that lives not only in thinking but also in feeling and willing. Otherwise, what we do in this way remains either a mere sign, which is also abstract, or it is performed as a mere magical act, which also does not really reach the human being. Something must live in the ceremonial act, where man grows together with the originality in the spirit. We must, so to speak, in the moments when we perform ceremonial acts, try to really experience the spirit within the material work in its immediate presence. It is, of course, always there, but it is not experienced when it is merely looked at with the eyes and done with the ordinary human will. But such ceremonial acts are those where it is done out of the spirit, and where the volition itself is sustained in the spirit, where therefore something actually happens that goes beyond earthly activity, and which basically, when it happens, gives meaning to our entire earthly existence, that we may divide our time into ordinary weekday moments and into holiday moments. In such moments, when we perform things that are a living testimony to the fact that in an earth where man is supposed to be present, through man the divine is also truly present, there is something that must first be felt in the modern consciousness of time. For modern time consciousness tends towards two aberrations: First, the error that I have already characterized from a certain point of view, which we have in today's knowledge, that only recognizes that knowledge that wants to penetrate external nature in an external abstract way. That is the one error. The other error is when we mystically immerse ourselves only in our inner being and only deal with ourselves. This is at the same time the spiritual battle that Luther fought, on the one hand sensing the devil in that natural scientific aberration, which he felt was approaching, and on the other hand sensing the great, the immense danger that arises when man merely loses himself in his inner being and egoistically cuts himself off from the world. This egotistical shutting out of the world is to be avoided, on the one hand, by not carrying out spiritual acts within oneself alone, but in such a way that one has contact with the outer world; and, on the other hand, overcome what is merely abstract and unmanageable, by not merely doing things that have such an abstract and unmanageable character, but doing things that are done out of the spirit itself. Only when we again come to a proper concept of sacramentalism will we have overcome, on the one hand, the dangers of science and, on the other, the dangers of mysticism. Luther fought against the enemies of man, of whom he had an inward fear and who could approach him, on the one hand, as the emerging natural science and, on the other, as its necessary correlate, abstract mysticism within man, which is at the same time an egoistic mysticism. Anthroposophy must overcome both obstacles. It does this by not shying away from completely immersing itself in science, that is, by going through what is experienced in natural research and knowledge, so that the human being, so to speak, plunges into this abyss, in which, if he remains in it, he would absolutely lose himself. And on the other hand, anthroposophy does not shy away from the mystical abyss, which one must also get to know; one must really be able to experience mysticism, but one must also be able to overcome it. One will not have to fall into this abyss, into the abyss of egoism. Man can lose himself in egoism just as he can lose himself in nullity on the other side. To stop at natural science means to be tempted by all the luciferic powers as a human being, even if one also wants to come to a spiritual one. To stop at mysticism means to be tempted by all the ahrimanic powers as a human being. One simply has to know this. It must be clearly understood that it is through the power of Christ that we can overcome natural science and mysticism. We must not be afraid to experience these two things, for these enemies of humanity are only dangerous when they rule in us unconsciously. They lose their power over man only when he consciously elevates them to full consciousness. I would particularly like to place this sentence in your hearts, my dear friends: that for our time consciousness, the only thing that can apply is what I tried to present scenically at the end of the final scene of my first mystery drama, “The Portal of Initiation”, that only by emerging into consciousness can the real enemies of humanity be overcome. So, in answer to Luther's soul-struggle, Anthroposophy simply says that one has to oppose the Luciferic power, one has to oppose the Ahrimanic power, and one has to overcome them both through the power of Christ; one has not to retreat from them, but one has to overcome them. One simply has to learn what it means when, on the one hand, the luciferic power says: you, follow me out into the vastness, where you, with your abstract knowledge, measure nature in all its vastness — then one has to have the answer: “I can do that, I can measure the vastness of nature in all its infinities with my intellect, but when I measure these infinities with my intellect, I have to leave love at the threshold. Love must then be left behind at the threshold. But if I leave love behind at the threshold, then the power of Christ does not remain with me in the expanses, but the luciferic forces of the world draw near to me in the expanses. And on the other hand, when I descend into my own inner being, I must know that the Ahrimanic power lurks at the threshold. I must know that when I descend into this interior, at the threshold the Ahrimanic forces present me with the illusion that everything I can strive for spiritually lies in my ego. And I must know how to say: If, in descending into this inner being, I do not have the strength to overcome egoism, if I develop an egoistic mysticism, then I can never find in its true form, in the form of Christ, that which prevails in myself. The human being must find these two strengths, otherwise he is either tempted, through what has been brought forth by modern civilization, to dissolve as a soul in an infinite cosmic unconsciousness in space, or to contract into himself in an intense egoism and lose the I in his inner being. [Man must find both these strengths so that] his ego does not float through the cosmos like a hermit, but is connected with the power of Christ. All these, my dear friends, are sentiments that must permeate us if the ceremony is to have meaning, and we will be able to find this meaning for the ceremony more and more truly ourselves if we know how to enter into what surrounds us in a deeper way. We must learn to combine the gospel, the teaching, the message with the ceremony. But to do that, we must first come to an understanding of the gospels; we must first learn to read them. You see, it is not so easy to read the Testament at all. The strangest conflicts arise when something like this is not understood in the right light. Because it touches on a question that was asked during our meeting here, I would like to point to a certain experience that I once had with regard to the content of this question. Someone had heard — someone who actually had the good will, the good eye to understand what comes from anthroposophical spiritual science —, he had heard or even read in a cycle that I said that both the Old and the New Testament should actually be taken quite literally. So basically, literal readings are not really wrong. He paid little attention to the fact that preparation is needed to understand the words [of the Old and New Testaments] in order to be able to read them, and so he simply said from his abstraction: “But man will go astray if you simply tell today's man that the Gospels are to be understood literally, and then modern man – and he identified himself with a modern man – reads in the Bible: ”And it And it came to pass, that they fled from before the people of Israel, and were at the descent of Beth-horon, and the Lord rained upon them great stones from heaven, even unto Azekah, and they died; and there were those that died by the hailstones, and they were more in number than those that fell by the sword of the children of Israel, the people of Joshua. And Joshua spoke to the Lord of Hosts at the time when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the eyes of the children of Israel, and he spoke as he did so that Israel's eyes might see: Sun at Gibeon, stand still, and Moon in the valley of Ajalon! And the sun stood still at Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, until the people had avenged themselves of their enemies.” — And now comes the most important sentence -: ”Is this not written in the book of those who see God? And the sun stood still in the midst of heaven at Gibeon, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. Never before has there been such a day for the people of the earth, when the Lord of Hosts allowed such a thing to happen at the voice of a single man; but that became the sign that the Lord was there with the people of Israel." This passage must be read first. You will see how a true reading of the passage actually opens up the possibility of understanding the matter. Now this person said to me: If I read that, then of course it can only be meant symbolically; and I am disappointed in you, because it seems to me that you make judgments that are impossible to record in detail, as if you wanted to save the Bible by saying something like: the Bible must be taken literally. — In this context, I have to say that it is of course not possible for me to give you a full explanation of this passage now. It requires a little more, a lot more preparation. But, as I said, we want to come back to this passage in the next few days because a question along these lines has been raised. But what I want to say now is that it is necessary to be able to read the Gospels. Now it is not possible to read the Gospels correctly without placing them in the context in which they were spoken. Today, my dear friends, much of what is written in the Gospels is simply taken in such a way that sentences are omitted that are important in the very least sense for understanding. For example, if something like this is written somewhere in the Gospels: And when the sun had set, Christ Jesus healed the sick here and there - today this is naturally understood as if a modern person were to say: When the sun had set, he said this or that. But nothing is unnecessary in the Gospels. If it were unnecessary, “when the sun had set,” then it would not be there. And it means that everything that is now being told is being accomplished by Christ Jesus after the sun has set; that means that if the sun were still there, it would be an obstacle to what is to be accomplished. — So the understanding of the Gospels must be drawn from what went into the writing of the Gospels. But first of all it is necessary to be clear about one thing, which I now want to discuss from a certain point of view. We have received three religious festivals for the year from the most diverse Christian confessions; and before I want to continue saying anything else about rituals and ceremonies, I would like to talk about the festivals, because otherwise we will not be able to understand each other. First of all, we have Christmas, we have Easter, and we have Pentecost. Christmas has been transferred from an old consciousness to the time when the sun draws its strength most powerfully from the earth, when the earth, with all its activity, and thus also with what it can be for man, is most dependent on itself. At Christmas time, we are dealing with the earth that is abandoned to itself, and in the face of this, human beings must remember to awaken in their souls that which can come to them from the earth that is abandoned to itself. Thus we have fixed the Christmas festival quite according to earthly conditions. Even in its fixing lies the fact that the human being who experiences the Christmas season in the right way, I would like to say, feels connected in warm fervor with that which the earth can give out of its own strength. My dear friends, if you have lived in the countryside, you will have experienced how, in the fall, farmers dig large pits to a certain depth in the ground; they put their potatoes in them, and then they cover them up. These potatoes are kept in the right way by the warmth stored in the depths of the earth, so that they do not freeze. Why don't they freeze? Because the earth physically stores the warmth of the summer sun in its womb during the winter season. And if we were to observe everything that the earth stores from the summer season, not only in terms of warmth, but also in terms of light, mineral chemistry and life, then, my dear friends, we would be connected to the earth differently in our consciousness. Then, especially in the depths of winter, at the winter solstice, one would have to say to the earth: In you, everything that draws towards the earth in summer is revealed to me, in the warmth of the worlds, in the light of the worlds, in all that lives in the vastness of the world in terms of measure, number and weight, in all that lives in the vastness of the world in terms of life force. All of this is present in earthly existence during the winter season, and most strongly during the winter solstice. It is the inner substantiality of the earth to which we appeal when we set the Christmas festival in the season in which the sun most strongly withdraws its power from the earth. In a sense, we turn completely to the center of the earth by setting the Christmas season; in a sense, we are alone with the earth and its substantial existence; we are expelled from our heavenly context, but we see that we have given from this loneliness of the earth into the earth itself when we set the Christmas season on the calendar. We then live our way out of this Christmas season, approaching Easter through various intermediate stages, which we will also discuss. And so, out of an ancient awareness that Easter was not determined according to earthly conditions, man is meant to turn outwards into the cosmos at Easter time. Man does not set the Easter season according to the substantial transformations of the earth; man sets it according to heavenly relationships, according to the relationships that exist between solar and lunar processes. Easter is on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Why is Easter on the first Sunday after the spring full moon? For the reason that on Sunday we delve into that which is eternal, but because we want to celebrate this eternal in the sense of connecting our consciousness with the realm of the heavens, which is accessible from the outside. When the full moon appears, it radiates the light of the sun back to us with its full power. We thereby attune ourselves, not only to the mechanical movements of the outer universe, but we attune ourselves to the intensity of the universe. We attune ourselves to the light, but it is not the usual moonlight that reflects back to us, it is the moonlight that appears to us when the sun begins to send its power down to the earth ever stronger and stronger. There we are on earth, there we are not abandoned to the heavens and have to turn to earth, there we are as men so arranged in the cosmos that the light of the world stops in us, which does not go to the interior of the earth, which now stops in us men, and we turn to that what stops there, what is reflected back into us men. What is reflected back at the first full moon of spring is exactly the same power that is reflected back from the full moon itself at this time; it is the power of the sun that is held back. We set the date of Easter according to our connection with heaven. In a certain sense, we relate to earth and heaven in a different way at Easter than at Christmas, and it is a significant, profound immersion in the course of time when one becomes aware of what it means to set Christmas as an earthly festival and to set Easter as a heavenly festival. Now, my dear friends, we do not yet penetrate this with spiritual consciousness, but we move within what lies within the Christmas and Easter seasons, basically at first in the sensual manifestation of the eternal world activity. For us human beings, we participate in this sensual world activity through warmth on the one hand and through light on the other; we do not go further. We come, by remaining in the sensual, to the point that is announced [in the Bible] with the words: You, the Lord of Hosts, Lord of the hosts localized in the stars, Lord of the stars, You have ordered everything according to measure, number and weight. - We can inwardly experience warmth, we can outwardly experience warmth, that is, warmth can be given to us in sensual observation. We can inwardly experience light, we can outwardly experience light, that is to say, light can be given to us in sensory perception. But that which we experience as measure, number and weight, that is missing, so that we are not aware that we know absolutely nothing about our own center of gravity, although we use it when walking and standing, that we know nothing about our equilibrium, although we live through it constantly, that we know nothing about our weight. We are so physically arranged that we know nothing of our weight, and we could not live on earth if we knew our weight, because we could only know of our weight through our brain making this weight conscious in us. If the brain, with its entire weight – that is about 1300 grams – were to rest on the blood vessels that are located under the brain in our head, my dear friends, these blood vessels would be crushed every moment. We do not live with the absolute weight of the brain, we live within this weight in such a way that the brain fluid constantly penetrates up and down through the arachnoid space and the spinal canal, and the brain floats in the brain fluid. You know that according to Archimedes' law, every floating body loses as much of its weight as the weight of the displaced water. Our brain displaces so much water that it weighs about 1200 to 1300 grams; but that is almost as much as the brain weight less 20 grams, so that the brain presses only with 20 grams instead of with 1300 grams on its base. But that is what we experience. In this upward striving, we experience ourselves. This is something that can initially only be observed from the outside, something that is not fully appreciated by human beings in its inner significance. We do not experience what the ordering of the world is in terms of the divine principle, the order of measure, number and weight; but we have to change our inner being by experiencing the time [from Christmas to Easter] and to live spiritually into what changes outwardly in a sensory way. We must add to this an understanding of that which can only be experienced inwardly, an understanding of that which can only be present in our consciousness if we experience it inwardly. We must proceed to make arrangements that are now based neither on earthly observations nor on heavenly observations; we must proceed in such a way that we then only say: Whitsun falls so many days after Easter. So many days, that is, we no longer rely on anything that can be observed externally; we only set [the Pentecost] according to an internal process and thus step out of the sensual by developing from Easter to Pentecost. Take what I have suggested in the abstract, my dear friends, as a fully human understanding – as I said, “fully human” written as one word: ganzmenschlich —, take this as a fully human understanding, for then it does not just take hold of thinking, but also of feeling and willing, and the powers of understanding are absorbed in feeling and willing. If you imbibe what I have said inwardly in relation to thinking alone, you will indeed have something, but it will be something through which the fruit of Christ will only sprout thirtyfold in the soul. If it penetrates to your feeling, you will have something through which the fruit of Christ will bear fruit sixtyfold in you. But if you permeate thinking, feeling and willing, then the Christ-fruit will bear a hundredfold fruit in you. Take this in with the whole human understanding, not with two-thirds thinking and feeling, not with one-third mere thinking, but take it in with the whole human understanding, then you will find the mood that must live in the Christian by living from Christmas to Pentecost. He then lives the year with, he lives it in a concrete way, and he is ready to live into the Johanni mood, which he can only experience if he does not become intoxicated by the ever stronger and stronger growing sun. If he becomes intoxicated, that is, if he does not live towards the summer solstice in such a way that he lives through it with all his powers, then he undergoes a certain world fainting; he fades, so to speak, powerlessly in the summer warmth and sunlight. But if he holds together through what he has developed from Easter to Pentecost, he remains aware of what has been placed in his soul by divine world powers, and he experiences what is there at the summer solstice, at the time of St. John, with the full power of his inner being, insofar as this full power of his inner being is meant to be there. And then he can go on living, in that what he has, as it were, transplanted into himself as a human being, can mature more and more within him, so that his inner being ripens towards the Christmas season to such an extent that he is strong enough to draw from the earth what the earth itself can give him. In this way, an understanding of the year is awakened in our soul. And it is out of such an understanding that the Gospels are written, and it is out of such an understanding that we must know how to distribute their content throughout the year. If we thus include the Gospels as messages in our religious services, they must be included in such a way that they are included out of our inner understanding. And if we want to advance to that which enables us to really place ourselves in all acts of consecration, then we must find the breviary. But we can never find this breviary if we do not know how to attach ourselves to that which can be achieved in such an understanding of the year, in a cosmic, whole-human understanding. Therefore, I will have to give you the principle of the secret of building up a breviary. This consists in the fact that we first have a prayer for each day, a prayer that is inwardly meditative in character, but which has something cognitive for each day of the week, that we are able to direct this prayer in four parts through the month to the east, west, south and north, and that we are able to carry it through the twelve months of the year, so that a real annual cycle emerges from it. A breviary must therefore be constructed in such a way that inner experiences are rhythmically repeated through the breviary, which will be structured like the seven days of the week, the four weeks of the month and the twelve months of the year. We will see how a breviary should be structured, beginning with that which is connected to the course of the year through the twelve, that which relates to space through the four, and that which relates to the day through its essential content. The content of the day will be the content, the guiding force will be that which relates to the weeks, and the mood will be that which relates to the twelve months of the year. No breviary has ever been different, and if you, my dear friends, have the will to move on to such things, then you must also be prepared to acquire an understanding of these things. I had to assume that this would follow from the baptismal ritual before we move on to further discussions of rituals. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Nineteenth Lecture
05 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Nineteenth Lecture
05 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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My dear friends! Today I would like to say a few more words in continuation of what was said yesterday and the days before, and then I would ask you to use the next discussion hour in such a way that all the individual questions that are on your minds are actually put forward, so that we can then turn the hour into a real discussion. Today I would like to do it differently for the reason that what I said yesterday makes it absolutely necessary to look at the whole thing from the other side as well, namely to also consider the subjective process of redemption. We have, so to speak, set out what belongs to the act of redemption outside of man and must now say something about the other part of the question, about how redemption looks in the Lutheran sense, in the anthroposophical sense and so on, and that in relation to redemption, insofar as it is something subjective. The first question that arises, my dear friends, is what are we to be redeemed from, what do we need to be redeemed from, what is it about human beings that is in need of redemption? I must confess that I have actually found the most inaccurate ideas about this question in the sphere of Christianity, and this is because people today do not like to go into things in detail and ask questions quite seriously. You know, of course, that the act of redemption is actually something outside the course of the ordinary external development of the world. This can already be seen from all that I said yesterday. Therefore, the relationship between the act of redemption and the human being must also be something that leads the human being out of his subjectivity. Now, the concept of original sin already suggests something that leads out of the human being's subjectivity, because essentially it is about redemption from original sin. Of course, this raises the big question: what is original sin? Now, however, one finds that in many conceptions of original sin there is actually, one can say, in the truest sense of the word, blasphemy. For if one is convinced that everything that works and lives within creation owes its origin to the divine Creator, then one must ascribe to God the presence of a sin that is, as it were, injected into the course of the world. Such such ascribing of sin to God is in fact nothing less than blasphemy, and there is no way to maintain original sin on the one hand and on the other hand to speak of a God who, as the unified Creator, underlies everything. If you want to have any chance of arriving at a concept in this area that does not involve blasphemy, then you have to be able to hold on to the tri-personality of God. The tri-personality of God does not at all imply a transition from monotheism to a polytheism, to a tri-theism, but it is absolutely, if it is understood, properly compatible with a thoroughly monotheistic world view. But the question arises: by what subjective power do we humans come to a sense of the deity? It may be said that within the mystery, the Christian mystery and the mystery outside of Christianity, no other view of how to reach God has ever been accepted than that God lives in love. And it is actually a matter of clear insight, in the sense in which I expressed it this morning, of complete human insight into the sentence that God lives in love. This sentence can only be understood if we ask ourselves: what other paths could there be to God than the one that, if I may put it this way, is paved with love? What other paths to God could there be, or rather, in what imaginations could we see God except in the imagination of love? There are two other ways to approach God through inner experience, besides love. There are two other possibilities, namely the way of wisdom and the way of power. And from there one could have the three judgments: God lives in wisdom, God lives in love, God lives in power. After all, something like this has emerged from certain confessional backgrounds, which already lack the full human clarity in this area: all differentiations have been swept aside, so to speak, and God is worshipped or prayed to as the Almighty, the All-loving, the All-knowing. It is impossible to arrive at a pure and correct relationship between human beings and humanity and God for our time after the Mystery of Golgotha if one starts from the sentence: God is attainable through wisdom. It was one of the most profound sentences that has been spoken through the Gospel: God is not attained through wisdom. Of course, God lives in wisdom, but this must not be revealed to humanity in such a way that humanity in this day and age simply wants to find God through wisdom. For if we imagine the wise God, then, if we attach any real, concrete value to the idea, we must imagine this wisdom of God, which then works in the world, as surpassing all human wisdom; and then we immediately come to find no bridge to God by the way of wisdom. We lack the bridge if we want to seek God on the path of wisdom, because God's wisdom must infinitely outshine all human wisdom and we could never enter into the weaving and essence of God if we wanted to build the bridge with human wisdom. We will always find an abyss, my dear friends, if we want to seek God on the path of wisdom, the abyss at which we must absolutely stop. It is not the case that we cannot regard our human wisdom as a gift from God, it is. But we must not seek God on the path of wisdom, nor must we seek God on the path of power. For if we were to seek God by the way of might, the might of God would tower so high above all in the one seeking Him that all individual freedom would be excluded. And so it would be impossible for any freedom of the human being to develop on this earth if we were to seek God only by the way of that which is truly involved in Him as Almighty. The only way that truly leads to God, that connects the creature with the Creator, is the way of love, the love that man freely gives to God, which is nothing other than the universal human understanding of the love that God gives to man. This is the one thing that really does not lead us to an abyss, but rather leads us to finding a way to God, so that we do not have to look for some image when it is said that God lives in love, but that we have to imagine this as a reality before our soul. I am not speaking of something individual, my dear friends, but of something that, as I said, is the mystery wisdom of all times, whether it is brought out from the beginning of all knowledge or not, that is not important at this moment. What is important is that this knowledge: God is love – or: God lives in love – is the common mystery wisdom of all times. Now, when we understand this in a living way, it has a certain consequence that we can visualize when we look at the overall development of man on earth. We live in a certain state of consciousness in our time. You already know from the lectures of the past few days that this state of consciousness has not always been there in the development of mankind, but that the present state was preceded by a much duller, dream-like state, which was, however, brightened up so that at that time man could perceive the divine in images which were like images in a dream, and that the actual dream-like awareness of God in all of nature has ceased around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so that a new approach, a new way of finding the path to the divine has become necessary. We must therefore clearly distinguish the path that the human race has taken up to the proximity of the Mystery of Golgotha, from generation to generation, where consciousness was by no means awakened in the same way as it is today. Of course, for external activities it was similar to our present state of consciousness, but [people were] always able to put themselves, as it were, into states that lie between waking and sleeping and that led them to the divine through direct atavistic, imaginative contemplation, through contemplation of the divine in images. The oldest documents speak a great deal about this way of approaching the divine; that was the way, my dear friends, to approach the divine through wisdom, through human wisdom. Why was it possible in those days to approach the divine through human wisdom? Yes, you see, the state of consciousness was subdued; as a result, man was protected from experiencing in the fullest sense, with the intensity that exists today, those qualities in his organization that are inherited qualities, that is, from experiencing everything that comes into the individual human being through inheritance. Of course, even in ancient times people attached importance to their inherited characteristics, to racial characteristics, to consanguinity and similar things, but this was always counterbalanced by the assumption of a spiritual element in these inherited characteristics. One has to imagine that, by entering the earth, man has come into such a community with the physical process of development that he had to absorb inheritance into himself, so that something is actually inherited through the blood. But man had not yet reached the stage of consciousness where he could fully live by these inherited qualities. In fact, man experienced the inherited qualities of original sin within himself when he was dreaming. These were the impulses that constantly pushed him away from the divine, constantly urging him to sink below the level of his humanity. But he had, as it were, the counterweight in the atavistic clairvoyance, so that he did not completely merge within this hereditary current. That he entered into this hereditary current with full consciousness only became clearly established around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha; there man enters into this hereditary current more deeply and more intensely. Thus one can say: In the course of his evolution, man was led down to the experience of original sin, and he became in need of redemption from this inherited evil; but he only needed this redemption from the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha approached in the evolution of mankind. When man — if I may use the biblical image — entered the earthly element on earth through Adam's [fall into sin], he was lowered into the region of inherited qualities, but his consciousness was not yet so far advanced that he could be carried away by all that comes from inherited qualities. Original sin also developed, and so did being pushed into the inherited qualities. This is something that is given to the whole human race. It is something that lives in evolution as an impulse for the whole human race. This had to be counteracted by another impulse, which can now lift human consciousness up again, out of the sphere of inherited traits. This impulse was to be given by the Christ impulse. In a spiritual-soul way, man was to become acquainted with everything that he had previously experienced only in the blood, in the succession of generations, but which had become so that he was no longer allowed to experience it only in the blood. Thus, in ancient times, mankind was allowed to seek the way to God through wisdom, and that is through human wisdom, which had not yet been fully entangled in original sin. This was corrupted in the last phases of paganism, and it was also corrupted in the last phases of Judaism; it is just that actually the historical records report only on these last phases and not on what preceded them. What is it, then, that actually carries a person down into the region of inherited qualities within the earthly world? Let us ask what it is. We come across concepts that, I would say, are quite embarrassing for today's earthman, because one comes to speak about an area that today's man either very easily helps himself with all sorts of tirades, or or that he understands it in the sense in which it has become customary in recent times — as it can only be understood by anthroposophy as the culmination of the recognition of sin — in the psychoanalytical sense. We come to an area where the lowest phase of love life must be touched upon — only with regard to world orientation the lowest — that is, sexual love life. From the same source that a person is born human, from the same source arose what a person experienced in ancient wisdom. Only in this ancient wisdom, I would say, was the human being not fully awakened to life in the impulses of inheritance. Man is fully awakened here on earth through love, first of all as sexual love, and as a continuation of sexual love through child love and parental love, which, as long as they are bound by blood, always have something that pushes man deeper down than he should actually be in the world according to the original divine intention. And so it becomes necessary, starting from love itself, to sanctify this love by replacing the blood ancestor, the blood-ancestral rule, with the ancestor to whom one professes allegiance, not because of inherited qualities but because of one's own qualities, which one can develop as a human being beyond inherited qualities, or which can be developed in a person beyond inherited qualities. To profess such an ancestor means to include in one's consciousness, in addition to blood relationship, the relationship that arises from free choice, from free decision, that is, to add to blood relationship the elective affinity with Christ, with the ancestor who appears as the ancestor of love, spiritualized love, which now has nothing to do with blood, and which can therefore take hold of the whole human race because it arises from free choice, because it is a choice affinity. Now arose the idea of seeking the inner impulses for freely choosing a being, that is, of being educated in the course of one's individual life in such a way that this choice is a free one, but that one then professes this ancestor, chosen in free election, just as one used to profess the God of Abraham through blood relationship. After all, all ancient religions are based on direct blood relationships. That which was lived in the polytheism of later times was nothing more than a transformation of the service to the ancestors, that is, the kinship felt with the ancestral god as the blood relative. Now came the great realization that what had previously lived on earth only in the blood, what was somehow connected with the blood, had been handed over to the earthly life of the spirit and soul. Who handed it over? He who lives in the blood relationship and who sent the old wisdom out of the blood relationship into human consciousness. Who was it? It was the Father-God. It had to be recognized that the Father-God lives in such a way that human beings could remain human in a certain sense, right up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then he had to make a decision – and human consciousness is only possible because it understands something like this, because it moves beyond everything earthly not only to a supermundane experience, but to an [understanding of the] supermundane decision – to give up the one who was always connected with him, to give the son to the earth, to let him go through an event, as a result of which the son was no longer united with the father as he had been before, but where a different relationship between the son and the father had come about through the relationship of the son to humanity. It is extremely difficult to put these things into words, but I will try to put it into words as clearly as possible, as clearly as I can. We are referred back to the ancient recognition of the Father-God, who, subconsciously, passed through the generations with the blood, who enclosed the Son within himself, who, with wisdom, gave people the experience of love, and we are also referred to the ancient sacrificial service. You see, my dear friends, in the later corrupted times of the Gentiles and also in the later corrupted times of the Jews, people did not seek the essence of the sacrifice in what the sacrifice actually is. Let us take the characteristic sacrifice, the animal blood sacrifice. What is its essential nature? That the animal sacrifice was performed did not alone constitute the essence of the sacrifice, but rather that something that belonged to someone or to a community was given up, and in such a way that this individual or this community no longer had the possession. That is an essential part of the sacrifice. The further back we go in the evolution of time, the more we find that this concept is inseparable from the concept of sacrifice: the giving up of something one possesses. Animal sacrifice only became such because the animal was given to the fire; in older times, all animal sacrifices were carried out on living animals. When the sacrifice was made on the living animal, the life also perishes; something living is sacrificed. It was therefore definitely intended that through the sacrifice one should redeem and free oneself from a possession that one had, a possession which, if understood in the usual egoistic sense, consisted in something that benefited one, in something that one had inherited. If you understand it in a spiritual sense, then the possession was something that brought you down below humanity, something that you only had through blood. This was also to be given up again in the blood sacrifice, insofar as it was to be taken away from people. But one could only think in this way as long as one was allowed to believe that the innocent degree of consciousness, which does not reach down into original sin, is maintained, even when going through the moment when the blood fire, because the merging of the blood in the fire is, after all, the opposite act of what happens to the blood when it enters and pulses in the human organism, and what is precisely the carrier of original sin. But in order that what lies in the blood in the activity of the Father-God might be taken away for the whole human race in a uniform manner, the event of Golgotha had to be given to mankind through the sacrifice of the Son, so that henceforth the Son does not live in the succession of births as he formerly lived with the Father, but that he lives in that in which human consciousness immerses itself without falling into the powers that go through the succession of births, and that looks to him who has gone through death on Calvary. This victory over death and the feeling of what can be felt in this context, pulls one out of the context of being placed into original sin, as people said in ancient Christianity, in mystery Christianity. The elective affinity with Christ pulls one out of the original sin of blood relationship. You may sense your relationship to the event of Golgotha in a shadowy way, then this sense of yours brings about nothing but at most again wisdom, which was also there before the event of Golgotha, but you can also sense your connection with the Christ so strongly, you can strengthen your relationship to the Christ so much that you love him as you loved out of the blood. If you can do that, then your feeling of love for Christ works in you in the opposite way to how original sin worked in you. Then you heal the original sin in you. And then the Father God, the underlying of the world as the one aspect, the one person of the Godhead, the one mask or form of the Godhead, but which is connected to the other mask, the other form, the other person of the Godhead, to the person of the Son of God. But in the succession of time, especially when we think of the time that lies behind the mystery of Calvary in the gray time of the origin of mankind, we think of the God who works through the blood and through the succession of generations. And we think of God the Father, who sacrificed his Son, to whom love – which, as we have said, is the only real way to God for man – to whom love in the spiritual and soul life in man can be kindled so much can be so strengthened when he contemplates the full tragedy, the full horror of the Mystery of Golgotha; and when this love becomes so strong, then there is indeed in man a power that counteracts original sin. This then asserts itself from the body, in the effect of the blood in the original sin, in the inherited qualities, but we do not then merge into these inherited qualities; we rise with the feeling and willing gaze that we direct to Golgotha, above life in the original sin in consciousness itself and thereby bring about such a strong power in consciousness that it counteracts original sin. There is no other way to counteract original sin than to look at the Mystery of Golgotha. My dear friends, there is no self-redemption to counteract this original sin, there is only the redemption through Christ, the redemption through the vision of Christ passing through the Mystery of Golgotha. And by developing this feeling towards Christ, which consists of nothing but love, we may now look up to the God of might, to the Father-God, who underlies the creative activity in the blood and who allowed this might of his to pass over into the working of the Son. So that we can say: We do not need to look to the omnipotence of God, as we stand today in the development of the times; we leave that beyond love; it is in God, but we do not find the way to God if we go this way of power. The last emanation of the principle of original sin, my dear friends, is human knowledge that relies entirely on inherited characteristics. In the moment when – as a final phase – that which emerges from the impulses that lie in the blood flowing through the generations merges into knowledge, it becomes intellectualistic knowledge, it becomes the knowledge of modern natural science. It is the last phase of the original human sin; it is the spirit of antiquity transferred into the abstract; it is that which requires healing; it is that which makes it necessary for man now no longer to believe that he comes to God through the spirit alone, as it was possible in ancient times, when the divine was attained through wisdom. What is needed is the realization that man cannot attain the divine through wisdom alone, but that this path of wisdom must be sanctified. This is what has now come through the consequence of the event of Golgotha through the experience of knowledge in the power of the Holy Spirit. We have the third form of the Godhead. We have to look at the unified God in three forms. We now know that we may not behold the God of might without the mediation of the Christ in love, by reflecting back to the God of might what is given to us in the Christ, to whom we cleave through true love, and we also know that we may not receive any wisdom without sanctifying it, healing it through the Spirit sent to humanity through Christ. We must lift up human wisdom by the power of Christ, by the power that we have within us when we contemplate the event of Golgotha; we must regard it as sick and heal it by letting that supersensible permeate it, which can come to us and which is meant by permeation, by sanctification through Christ. So, my dear friends, there can be no other redemption from original sin than that through Christ Jesus; the other sins are consequential sins. Individual sins are committed by man because he can be weak through original sin, can be inclined to sin. These individual sins find their atonement in what must be achieved through self-redemption; they must be atoned for through self-redemption in the course of earthly or supermundane life. But that which is the original sin, the mother of all other sins, that could only be taken out of the human race through the act of redemption by Christ. And the moment someone, through something like – call it anthroposophy, call it Christianity, call it religion, it does not matter – the moment someone comes to a true realization of these things, there can be no doubt about it. And if there is still doubt, it stems from the inability to put it into words. For in itself there must be something directly convincing, something freely convincing in what leads to the historical Christ in love and to His deed, to the event of Golgotha. Not that which lives in Harnack's 'Essence of Christianity' (to give a specific example), can be a path that leads to Christ; the path can actually only lead away from Christ if one has the Christ merely as [the proclaimer] of the doctrine of the Father-God, where the main thing lies in the teaching. No, the path to the Christ, to the Mystery of Golgotha, does not lie in a teaching, it lies in freely developing, freely flowing love. Only through this is the path to the Christ attainable. And when this freely flowing love is present, our wisdom will also take up within itself the Spirit, which is the healing, the Holy Spirit. This is the same Word, but it means at the same time that no other human relationship can redeem man than the relationship to the historical Christ, to the one who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. There is no other human relationship that can take away original sin from a person than the relationship to the historical Christ, who went through the mystery of Golgotha. The wisdom that only reveals itself as the last descendant of original sin says, with Harnack: “We don't want to talk about what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, after all, no eye has seen it; in any case, however it may have happened with the resurrection, the belief in resurrection, that is, the Easter belief, emerged from it. It is not Christian to speak in this way. And once, in an association called the Giordano Bruno Association (it was not the Giordano Bruno League), I explained how someone who speaks in the spirit of Harnack has no right to call himself a Christian, especially not in the sense of the newest spiritual consciousness, I pointed out the passage where Harnack says in his “Essence of Christianity” that what matters is not the factuality of the resurrection but the belief in the resurrection. Then the chairman, who was a well-informed man and who felt he was a well-informed Christian, told me that it was nowhere in Harnack's “Essence of Christianity,” that he had not read it in Harnack's “Essence of Christianity”; and if it were in there, it would not be Protestant, it would be pagan-Catholic, because it simply resembled the statement – not me saying this, but him saying this – that was made by the Catholic side about the origin of the Holy Robe of Trier; there it also did not depend on where it actually came from, it depended on the faith that one associates with the Holy Robe of Trier; but that is not Protestant, that is pagan-Catholic. He had not found this in Harnack's Essence of Christianity, he said. I told him that I did not have the book with me and that I would send him the page number tomorrow. But at the same time I saw from this how such ideas are received today and in what a trivial sense one takes such things seriously and lives into them. One does not feel at all that the literary products that appear in the theological field are no longer Christian at all, and that the Overbeck, who made a great impression on Nietzsche in Basel, was quite right in all that he wrote about modern theology [in his book] “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology”, in which he had actually already provided proof in the 1870s that modern theology, whatever it may be, is no longer a product of Christianity. And Harnack's 'Essence of Christianity' is the least of all that has something to do with Christianity. If you replace the name Christ with the name Yahweh, the Father-God, wherever Harnack uses the name Christ, you are justified in saying that the person who wrote this book no longer knows the real relationship that the Christian must have with his Christ. I do not believe, my dear friends, that we can feel the full seriousness of what needs to be done to renew Christian religious life if we do not feel how far removed from Christianity those are who often think they can uphold Christianity before the world today by sacrificing everything in this great apologetic process that theology undertakes before the world, ultimately even their relationship to Christ himself. One cannot imagine anything more un-Christian than Harnack's principle that the gospel does not belong to the Son, but only to the Father, and that the gospel is not a message from the Son, but only the message of the Son from the Father. Someone might confess something like this today under the pressure of modern materialism, but they would have to have the honesty to then stop calling themselves Christian. There is no other way than to present these things in all their complexity and thereby rise to the realization: redemption from original sin means having such a relationship with the historical Christ, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that this relationship pulses through our veins in a spiritual-soul way just as truly as blood pulses through our veins in a physical way. That is the power, that is the strength that can be called the power and the strength of faith. One should not seek an abstract concept for faith, but this strength, this power for faith. To believe means to find in one's soul such strength and such power for the Christ that this soul power, this soul strength is as great as that which the blood ties can achieve in us. Then we will find the way to the unified Christ of all humanity, to that unified Christ who, through the event of Golgotha, is also the real objective cause for every subjective act of redemption. But then we will no longer seek the act of redemption in external signs; on the contrary, we will seek through the sacraments that which is the real relationship of the human soul to the Christ. We will have to talk about this in the other part. Then we also do not seek in an abstract or mystical way a relationship to a Christ who eludes us, but we establish in the human spirit and in the human heart and in the whole human being an elective affinity to the Christ, just as we have a consanguineous relationship to the life of the Father-God, in so far as this life expresses itself in the blood of mankind, that is to say, in the life-creative power of mankind in the physical realm. I have tried to present to you the subjective side of the idea of redemption. I do not believe that in this day and age one can arrive at an objective understanding of the subjective idea of redemption from other premises, from other antecedents. I would now like to ask you, my dear friends, to prepare your questions well so that we can really get into a discussion, a back-and-forth of words, in the afternoons over the next few days. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twentieth Lecture
06 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twentieth Lecture
06 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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My dear friends! I would now like to speak here about what a ceremony of the sacrifice of the Mass could be, and I would like to show how one can move towards such a ceremony of the sacrifice of the Mass while at the same time taking into account the modern consciousness of humanity, out of which these reflections, which I am making here before you, should always flow. I would like to convey as much as possible of what is necessary to you. This will probably enable you to build on what you have learned. Before I approach the ritual of the sacrifice of the mass, I would first like to say a few words, my dear friends, that are not connected with the external, but with the outward appearance of the mass sacrifice, and which we will then expand in a corresponding way to other ceremonies. How the priest himself relates to the mass sacrifice is intimately connected with it. This should already be apparent in the outward appearance in which the priest rode up to the altar. It is indeed the case that, by approaching the altar in his appropriate robes, the priest indicates that the sacrifice of the Mass is something for which I used the term “wholly human” yesterday. In our age, the whole human being can only be exhausted when we speak of the physical human being, the etheric human being or the human being of the formative forces, the astral human being, who already appears in the internalization, but is connected with the astral of the cosmos, and the I-human being. The higher members need not be taken into account here, because in the course of earthly development they are for the time being hidden within man as mere active forces. Now it is a matter of the fact that for a complete human insight, the human being as he stands before us first is the physical human being, and that if the complete human being is to be seen, it must be indicated, at least outwardly, how the other members of human nature relate to the human being. This is indicated for the Mass sacrifice in the vestments. (During the following explanations, the following is written on the board.) [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] The physical body of the priest is first of all contained in the etheric body, which is essentially represented by a kind of extended white surplice that reaches the floor. I will write “white robe”. It still has various parts that are separate from the actual surplice cut, but these things have also been added over time for various reasons, and I will speak here only of the essential. When we look at the white of the surplice, we must realize that it contains a hint of the part of the human being that is integrated into the cosmos, just as the physical human being is integrated into the forces of the earth. And just as one has to look for man's guilt in the forces of the earth, so one has to see innocence in the white robe that man puts on. Now, as you know, the human being, as he walks on earth, first has a firm connection with the physical and etheric bodies, and then these have a looser connection with the astral body and the ego – during sleep, these two are detached – and then again has a firm connection with the astral body and the ego. During sleep, the astral body and the ego separate from the physical body and the etheric body. During the whole of life, therefore, on the one hand the physical body and the etheric body, and on the other hand the astral body and the ego, remain connected to a certain extent in the body, but now they can be abstractly separated within consciousness, just as they also appear in an organized way, with the human being having a clear differentiation of the inner being in thinking, feeling and willing. In the will there is a strong impulse of the ego, in the astral body there is a strong impulse of thinking and feeling, coming from the side of the etheric body and from the side of the physical body, so that the human being is already differentiated in terms of the ego and the astral body for his consciousness, while the differentiation of the etheric and physical bodies does not confront him at all. But precisely that which otherwise forms a looser connection between the etheric and the astral body in a natural way in man must be hinted at during the actual central priestly action, during the sacrifice of the Mass and also otherwise during priestly actions, in that for the priest the interweaving of the etheric and the astral is actually always directly present. So the working over of the astral body into the etheric body must be indicated in some way, and this is the case in that the priest wears the stole. By wearing the stole, the connecting link between the astral and etheric bodies is indicated in the stole. We have the astral body (it is drawn). You see, the connection with the etheric of the cosmos is, so to speak, in itself a permanent one in man from birth to death and is only tinged by what the astral body as such sends into the etheric and physical bodies, that is, what emanates from human will emotions, from emotional content. With all these emotions of will and feeling, the human being must now place himself in that which I spoke to you about yesterday as the course of the year. I tried to draw your attention to the different ways in which people relate to the universe within themselves when they understand these festivals in the original way. He then places himself with his mood in these festivals, if his astral body is placed in them accordingly. The astral body is now expressed accordingly in the robe worn by the priest during the sacrifice of the Mass, in the actual chasuble, which is designed so that the priest can slip through it at the top, and which then hangs down at the front and back in a not quite identical form. It is, I would say, the symbol of the astral body. This symbol of the astral body must actually be adapted to the moods that the human soul must have in relation to the course of the year, and it is adapted by giving this, I say now “astral body”, the color mood that expresses how the soul mood stands in relation to the whole course of time at the turn of the year, in the course of the year. (See drawing, plate 12.) Let us begin with the preparations for Christmas. I say what I am about to say with full awareness of how it must sound to modern man. You will find the most diverse deviations from what I have to say in the Catholic Church, but these are deviations that have arisen from misunderstandings over time. If the colors of the chasubles were really taken from the spirit of the supersensible world, they would have to be as I am now going to show you. We must therefore have a certain mood, which is the mood of expectation towards Christmas. This mood can only be expressed in color by everything that belongs to the chasuble being blue for this time. So we have blue for the Advent season. This does indeed express that mood of devotion in which man does not feel what is around him, let us say, as if the forces of sunlight were working through him, but so that he feels that what is transformed into the spiritual, what is preserved by the forces of light, is working through him from the earth. But a mood of hope will have to find expression in the Christmas festival itself. It is the festival of expectation, it is the festival of hope, it is therefore the festival that must brighten, that must have a faint light in what was the earlier blue. We will therefore have the chasuble in the color at Christmas that we have mixed a red with the blue, in a kind of purple. We then have this purple gradually becoming lighter as we approach the time encompassing the first weeks of the year, and we then come to the expectation of Easter, of death, where we now have the chasuble in black to suggest the right mood. For the period before Easter, the chasuble is black. We now come to the Easter season itself, and there the chasuble turns to the earlier blue-red-purple in a rather abrupt transition – just as there is a sharp transition from purple to black – then reddish-yellow. We approach the time of Pentecost. At Whitsuntide, the chasuble is essentially white and then, until it returns completely to blue, it is in shades of white with all kinds of colorful embroidery, which indicates that during the summer season, when the soul is united with the cosmos, so to speak, the soul of the earth is subdued and the fertilizing forces of growth are sent from the cosmos. In a true priest's vestment, one should therefore see, as a symbol, that which is sent down from the heavens in the form of plant and animal growth forces. As autumn approaches, these forces find expression in that which corresponds to the fruitfulness of the harvest, until it in turn opens out into the blue of the Advent season. In fact, the Catholic Church has ritual prescriptions for these changes in chasubles. If they appear in different colors, it is only because of a misunderstanding; but essentially it is true that what appears in the Catholic Church as the color of the chasubles goes back to ancient traditions and ancient visions, to ancient knowledge of the supersensible world and man's relationship to the supersensible world. So that an extraordinary amount can be studied from the chasuble itself, although, if one includes the errors, one can also err a great deal. First of all, we have to consider the color of the chasuble. We will always see the stole, which is worn under the chasuble and crossed over the chest, in a slightly lighter tone than the chasuble itself, but essentially, since it is the connection between the astral and etheric bodies, in a lighter color than the seasonal color of the chasuble. We must then seek, by going further, that which is the symbol for the human ego. I would just like to add the following about the chasuble: the chasuble is essentially a revelation of the astral body. This is also expressed in the embroidery or the other dyes of the chasuble, let us say, in gold, if one follows either good old traditions or if one brings things directly from the spiritual worlds. so that this figure will always be found in some variation on the front of the chasuble (see plate 12, top right) and on the back of the chasuble (plate 12, bottom right). This is to suggest that, to a certain extent, the currents from the spiritual life extend into the astral life, and that the human being himself — precisely as he crosses the axes of his eyes, as he can fold his hands, as he can touch one hand with the other — comes to perceive the self through the crossing of the curves here on the chasuble representing the astral body. When we now ascend to the ego, it is the case that what man calls his ego is, in fact, most separate in human consciousness; it is the case that man, through his ego, has, in fact, his particular relationship to the outer world, that he can either consciously establish this relationship to the external world, which is established by the ego, or that he can also withdraw into his ego, that this is something that is only loosely connected to the unconscious being. Therefore, everything that is an outer work, such as the head covering, or everything that the priest only wears, symbolically points to the ego. Everything that can be taken off at the altar, everything that the priest only wears, everything that can really be taken off or put on, actually belongs to the ego area. The power of the ego rests in everything the priest wears; hence the power of command and the power of the law, which is inherent in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, is expressed primarily in the headgear. If you take the ordinary priest's headdress, it is the most inconspicuous; go up to the provost, go up to the bishop, and you will have the headdress becoming more and more complicated, and you will finally have the most complicated headdress at the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, the tiara of the Roman Pope. The triple headdress of the Roman Pontiff expresses the fact that no one is a worthy Pope who has not come to have control over the thinking, feeling and willing of his ego, and to rule the earthly kingdom of Christendom from this organization of thinking, feeling and willing. These symbols, which are also used in the vestments for the sacrifice of the Mass, are important down to the smallest detail, but that is not important for us. You may also know that the priest does not wear the chasuble, which is specifically intended only for the performance of the Mass, during other ceremonies, such as baptisms or funerals, requiems (I will talk about these later) or afternoon ceremonies. Instead, he wears a mantle over the stole, which now also has to appear with a similar figure to the one shown here, but which is intended to suggest how this astral body is supposed to behave in a different way during the other ceremonies, is in a different mood, above all is in a mood that is less devoted, but more blessing-like and the like. This is expressed in the particular cut of the so-called surplice, which is also worn at other ceremonies. The point is that for the Catholic priest, not only is the daily breviary prescribed – we will have to talk about that again – but the Catholic priest also has to check the ecclesiastical calendar, especially before celebrating the Mass, in order to determine exactly how he has to wear the chasuble on the relevant days according to the signatures, which are in line with cosmic processes. Of course, in poor churches it is not possible to change the chasuble every day or even every week, but there the change of the chasuble could be based on the respective constellations of the stars; a varied chasuble could certainly be used for each day according to the ecclesiastical calendar, which, according to the Catholic view, essentially gives us the constellations of the stars, the sun and the moon. Thus clothed, the priest celebrates the sacrifice of the Mass. I have already explained to you the structure of the sacrifice of the Mass in its four main parts. I would like to explicitly mention that these four main parts of the Catholic Mass are surrounded by a wealth of other prayer-like or ceremonial acts, which I will discuss later. Today, I will first talk about the first two main parts of the Mass, the reading of the Gospel, the proclamation of the Good News and the offertory. So after the preparatory prayers have been said – as I said, we will talk about these later – the priest enters the left side of the altar and then has to read the mass from the left side of the altar. There are differences here too. The ordinary daily mass is relatively shorter than the solemn mass. The solemn mass has additional elements, but each mass has the four parts that I will now discuss, with a preface, with prayers that lie between these main parts, or with ceremonial acts that lie before or in the middle. But first we must become thoroughly familiar with the nature of these main parts. So, first of all, I would like to show rituals in the way that is generally possible today directly from the spiritual world. I would like to emphasize that I am not claiming that the rituals I am about to show are perfect. But they are to be given in the way that is possible for me, in that I will first present what can be drawn directly from the spiritual world today. After the prayers and ceremonies have been performed, the gospel of the day is read on the left side of the altar. How the gospel falls on the day again, according to such a calendar as I have spoken to you about, we will speak briefly about in the next few days. So when the priest prepares to read the Gospel, he would say the following, either silently, at so-called silent masses, which every priest must read every day, or by reciting it aloud, or by accompanying it with singing and music at high solemn masses. I will now only have to communicate what the content should be. The priest will therefore first speak as he prepares to read the Gospel:
The priest has the altar servers at the altar, the ministers of the sacrifice of the Mass. What I have just spoken is spoken by the priest alone. What I now have to speak is a dialogue between the priest and the altar boy – usually, if there are two, between him and the one standing on the right side of the altar, while the one standing on the left side has more of a silent role. The priest now speaks:
This is not the case in Catholic masses, [where it is] Dominus vobiscum – the Lord be with you. This is something that arises from a misunderstanding of the ritual, because it makes the mass not a Christian sacrifice, but a sacrifice for the Father. So the priest would have to say:
And the altar server:
The Priest says:
The altar server says, after the priest has said this announcement:
Now, what I have just said is spoken in such a way that the first words, “My heart be filled...” to “...proclaim your gospel” are spoken by the priest, looking towards the altar, the word “Christ in you” is spoken looking towards the congregation, and the word “It is now proclaimed the gospel of Mark...” is spoken with the priest always turning around in between. The priest now turns around again and approaches the actual reading of the Gospel. But before that, he turns to the congregation. It is a custom in Catholicism today for the priest to often read the Gospel with his face turned towards the altar – especially at silent masses. However, it corresponds to the actual meaning, as is also done at the most solemn masses, that the priest reads the Gospel at least half turned towards the congregation. The altar server says after the Gospel is read:
The priest says:
Thus the ceremony of reading the Gospel is complete. It is certainly the case that the Gospel should not be read without the things that preceded its reading and those that follow. The Gospel should be read in a dignified manner, with the appropriate mood. This should be done by the priest dignifying the Gospel with the appropriate words. Now there are some intermediate prayers and ceremonies, which I will discuss later, and then the second main part of the Mass follows: the sacrifice, the offertory. We have already spoken about the essence of the sacrifice, and it will reveal itself to you in the sacrificial act itself when I communicate it to you now. This sacrifice consists, first of all, of offering wine and water as a sacrifice by mixing them, and that what is spoken into the mixing of wine and water is transferred, thus transferred as a word with the waves of the smoke clouds that stream out of the censer and that are supposed to carry up what is in the words of the sacrifice to the heights, so that grace may descend. Such a correct mass offering, a mass offertory, would then have to proceed in the following way: First the priest will uncover the chalice, which is initially covered with a small rug-like thing, and will have to speak opposite the covered chalice – this is how it should be:
Thus the sacrifice is brought to the World Ground, to the paternal principle: Receive, divine World Ground, you who are weaving in the widths of space and in the remote of time, this sacrifice through me, your unworthy creature, offered to you.
Now, after the acolyte has brought [the vessels] in which there is wine in one and water in the other, and after the priest has poured from one water and from the other wine into the chalice, the following is spoken in the chalice during this mixing of water and wine:
– now the mixture is ready; the following will be spoken after it has already been mixed –
This “per omnia saecula saeculorum” [of the Catholic Mass] is actually always to be replaced [by the words] “through all the following earthly realms,” that is, all the following earthly cycles, all the following time cycles. Now the chalice is raised, which is the actual symbol of the sacrifice. The believing community sees the raising of the chalice, and during the raising of the chalice the words are spoken:
The chalice is placed on the altar. The incense for the chalice is now prepared. In the Catholic Mass, this is done in two acts, but as far as I can see, this is not the intention. First the chalice is incensed and then the altar. But as I said, I cannot see that this is the intention. Before the incense is burned, the following is said:
Now the altar boy takes the censer and incense is burned. During the burning of incense, the word is spoken that is actually to be taken up by the smoke and carried upwards:
The faithful then join the priest in raising their hands.
After lowering the hands:
During these words incense is continually being smoked. After these words the censer is given to the acolyte and carried away from the altar. Usually the priest then has to descend to turn around and also smoke the faithful congregation. Then the censer is handed over, and the priest has to speak the prayer as an echo:
That, more or less, is what I am able to give, my dear friends, what can be given today when the question is how to find it from the spiritual worlds today – that which is to be done as gospel reading and sacrificial act. But I also want you to become familiar with the traditional, and so I would like to introduce you to what I have attempted at the suggestion of our dear friend, Pastor Schuster, as a translation of the Mass ritual.1The translation of the Catholic mass ritual is placed in quotation marks ” but with spiritual scientific foundations, which is the result of this approach. If one were to translate the traditional ritual of the mass, but not by proceeding in a lexicographic manner, but rather by first ascertaining what the text really means in terms of word-value and soul-content, then the aim would be to express before the Gospel:
The priest says:
The altar server says:
The priest says:
The altar server then says:
The Gospel of the day is read. After the reading, the altar server says:
The priest then says:
So, my dear friends, what you have just heard would, in today's time consciousness, have to be said in preparation:
It cannot be said in the Christian sense, if one takes up today's time consciousness: “Cleanse my heart and lips, Almighty God.” Yesterday afternoon I pointed out the reasons to you clearly. So:
It cannot be “Pour out Thy blessings, O Lord”; nor can it be “The Lord be in my heart and on my lips,” but it must be:
In the correct understanding of Christianity, it cannot be “dominus vobiscum”, but [it must be]:
The altar boy:
The priest:
The altar server:
The Catholic Mass Office still has the ritual: “May Christ reveal himself through you, O Lord”; these are echoes from the old days, which are not really understood in a Christian way. The Gospel reading follows. After the reading of the Gospel, if we translate the text properly, we have to say:
But what these words actually mean is:
The priest then says:
The Catholic text reads:
In the Catholic liturgy, the offertory would have the words:
We have the words for this because the words must be so – they also reveal themselves in this way – in the sense that the sacrifice is offered to the Father, the ground of the world:
When I read the supersensible directly, my dear friends, I must read:
If I read the traditional text, I have to read:
And it is the same with the following. In the original text:
in the text that can be given today:
Then in the old text:
and in the new text:
In the old text:
In the new text:
This verse is closely connected with the full understanding that we must have today, in the sense in which it was expressed yesterday. With regard to the mixing of the wine and water, the old text would read:
Today it says:
When the chalice is raised, that is, at the sacrifice, in the old text:
Then follows the incense-burning for the chalice. I will first say what is said here when the chalice is raised:
During the incense-burning of the chalice, the old text is spoken:
And then at the following incense of the altar:
And this is what we now say (according to the new text) during the incense-bearing:
or, if a silent Mass is being read:
The censer is removed and the prayer to be said is in the old text:
New text:
Actually, the text that I read to you as the old text is part of the Credo, which is inserted between the Gospel and the Offertory in the Christian Mass as the recitation of the Creed. In fact, the passage is absolutely correct; the question is rather that the Credo is inserted at this point, between the Gospel and the Offertory. We will have to talk about the Credo on the following days. Today, I will merely familiarize you with the Credo that goes with the old text I have read. This Credo reads:
The Priest says, after reciting the Credo:
the acolyte:
The Priest says:
And now follows the prayer. My dear friends, it is necessary for you to grasp the connection between the entire ancient sacrificial rite and this Credo, so that you will see how necessary it is for the modern consciousness to approach the sacrificial rite in an original way. Tomorrow we will deal with the ritual of consecration and communion. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-first Lecture
06 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-first Lecture
06 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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Rudolf Steiner: Yesterday I distinguished the whole process that lies in redemption and in original sin. Now, in the case of forgiveness, it is not a matter of our receiving forgiveness for something. What we receive forgiveness for and what we experience in the forgiveness is, of course, included in karma if one absolutely wants to refer back to karma. I think that the two things, the deed and the forgiveness for it, are karmically connected. Of course, you would hardly assume that it can be a matter of forgiveness for which one does nothing at all. However, as soon as we talk about the church as a serious community, it can certainly be said, even with the inclusion of the karma current, that the church as such takes on certain things that the individual does in his actions, whereby the church would thus assume a kind of collective karma. Of course, in return, one belongs to the church. It is always a little difficult to take karma as such so abstractly, because karma is something very complicated. For example, you can say that if you draw a line somewhere in life under the positive and negative deeds, that is, under the good and evil deeds, you get a certain life balance. But this life balance can be changed again immediately by one item or another. It is not at all a matter of this being a rigid balance, but rather a matter of the fact that one actually has a life balance at every moment of life. But there can certainly be items on one side or the other that simply exist because one belongs to some community that then takes them on. In the Catholic Church, it should be the case that if it claims to forgive sins, then it should take on this burden of sin collectively as a church. That is also the original meaning of the forgiveness of sins, the taking over of the burden from the individual and its collective assumption; of course, a strong sense of such responsibility is usually lacking, at least within the Roman Catholic Church.
Rudolf Steiner: Yes.
Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is possible.
Rudolf Steiner: I receive the strength from Christ to ensure that the general human original sin does not prevent me from having the strength [to do good]. I have no strength at all to do good in our time after the Mystery of Golgotha if I do not have this strength from Christ in relation to the original sin. I have no strength without the redemption of the original sin.
Rudolf Steiner: If the mere weaknesses and the like were diminished, we would be disturbed in our personal development. Perhaps this will be most vividly illustrated by the following. Please do not be shocked by it. It can be examined what impression it makes on the dead - that is, on the human being who has passed through the gate of death - when he, as it then is, bears in his characteristics the consequences of his deeds on earth. This is something that, according to the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine, even extends into eternity, because Catholic clergy do indeed talk about the fact that a person has to look at his sins forever, or rather, has to suffer because of his sins. Now this does not agree with the observation that can be made. The soul that has passed through death is indeed in this state. But when someone asks: Does the soul suffer from this? — then one is at a certain loss to answer. Suffering is there, but the soul desires the suffering, because strength comes from overcoming suffering. In this case, one is at a loss for words. One cannot say that the soul suffers, but the soul would be unhappy if it did not carry the consequences of its transgressions within it after death, and then as qualities. That which is action in life, or rather the character of action, is transformed into qualities, and these qualities are transformed in the life between death and new birth into powers, abilities, and so on, which are then inherited by the next birth. And these are transformed into unconscious desires, which then condition karma [in the next life] between birth and death. Therefore, it is also the case – and this has been asserted by a great many people who knew nothing at all about any repeated lives on earth – that if one examines one's early life from birth onwards from a certain point in life, one finds that the events [in life] are connected in such a way that one comes to one's unimportant and important acts in life through unconscious desires. One cannot overlook the fact that the power that brings one to experience this or that is identical with the unconscious desires that bring one to this or that.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, the question must actually be answered like this: You see, supersensible knowledge can never actually be pure teleology, but it is observational, and therefore the questions of the purpose of anything actually fall away in supersensible knowledge. This is something that was implied in your question: Can human beings [attain freedom without original sin], or did human beings incur original sin in order to attain freedom? — It is simply a fact that we, as the human race, have been living in the development of freedom from the 15th century onwards. This life in freedom is only possible under the influence, the inner influence of mere intellectuality, which actually has no content. Descartes' sentence “Cogito, ergo sum” is actually wrong. The sentence should actually read: Cogito, ergo non sum, I think, therefore I am not, because thinking never illuminates a reality, but on the contrary, it is the destruction of reality. Only when one can approach the I through imagination, inspiration and intuition, is there real certainty of the I. When we have become accustomed to applying the criteria of being to our environment, we must say: I think, therefore I am not. It is precisely in this non-being that the possibility of taking in something new lies. That is what lies in intellectuality. Intellectual concepts are actually empty in the face of reality; they are holes in the universe, and this is necessary for the development of freedom. You can see how intellectualism gradually emerges. It comes up through such thinkers who were still contemporaries of Nicolaus Cusanus. Then it goes further, but in particular Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton are the real intellectualists. Now, this state of consciousness, which brings about freedom, could not be there if man were inwardly filled with a content, because this content would have to be a divine one. This divine content, which was to some extent strongest in the beginning, had to decrease first and reach its zero point here (it is being drawn), and now the intellectualistic development occurs here. This gives man freedom and, as we become more aware of it, will in turn give our soul a content. So passing through [the zero point], being thrown down into matter, which certain occultists call the 'fall into procreation', for example, was absolutely necessary for freedom. You can only say it afterwards: because human beings fell into original sin, they gained freedom. It would be quite wrong for me to hold back these things from you, even if they are slightly shocking for a present-day consciousness. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Beings who know nothing of original sin do not partake of freedom either. Such beings are, for example, those who belong to the stages immediately above human beings. These beings have greater wisdom than human beings, and also have greater power, but they do not attain freedom, their will is always actually the divine will. Only under certain conditions, which have not yet occurred in the development of the world, but which may still occur during the development of the earth - they lie in a certain future - will these entities, which Catholicism calls angels and archangels, have the possibility of straying from their inner soul necessity, not in probability, but they would have the possibility of doing so. But nothing can be said about it because it will depend on what the whole world constellation is like. So we have beings that have nothing to do with original sin. Even those entities, which were the actual tempters of men in the course of the development of the earth, which are represented by the snake in paradise, these entities also have nothing to do with original sin, but with a sin freely committed by them. Only in man does it become original sin. It is that which is called original sin and then again freedom, that which is actually specific to man. We find that the establishment of each level of existence in the entire universe has its good meaning, so that nothing is repeated in a vertical direction. So what is in the animals is not in the human beings, and what is in the human beings is not in the angels, and so on.
Rudolf Steiner: To what extent can the mass be justified by the Golgotha mystery? I have said something about this. The point is that, for anthroposophical knowledge too, the Golgotha mystery is not a single historical fact in a limited time. The beginning of the event of Golgotha lies, of course, in Golgotha, but then, in a sense, the effect is an ongoing one. This continued effectiveness of the Mystery of Golgotha has also been depicted in many different ways, I would even say in mythical ways. I am reminded of the legend of the Holy Grail, in which the blood of Christ was caught and carried on to Europe, and this suggests that the Mystery of Golgotha continues to have an effect. Now, in the sense that I explained yesterday as the development, the continuing effect of the Mystery of Golgotha is such that we actually have the possibility of gaining a real connection to the power that emanates from Golgotha as a counterweight against original sin. This is the continuing power of the Mystery of Golgotha. As I have explained, the Catholic Church has now established the external act as that through which the efficacy of the Mystery of Golgotha is to pass. So it is simply through the successive sacrificial masses that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha is effective. If now the Mystery of Golgotha is a real power, that is, if a real power emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, then we must indeed imagine the matter in this way: You see, if we are honest, then, according to the intellectualistic view, we would have to say to ourselves — because the intellectualistic view is the ultimate consequence of original sin —: We are facing the danger of the death of our morality in our earthly existence. For if the earth undergoes such a development as it would actually have to undergo in the scientific sense, if, that is, the earth has emerged from the Kant-Laplacean nebula and ends in heat death, then for anyone who wants to be honest, that is, who wants to accept this scientific view without reservation, the moral world ends with it. And for the person who accepts this, the fear that he will have to go through moral death, through the destruction of what he has acquired as morality, would have to arise with the scientific view. There would then be no further development of morality. That would mean approaching a great cemetery for everything moral. Therefore, we need not only the abstract power, which is often assumed by modern theology today, because it cannot save itself from the power with which science calculates. No one can merely predict that the moral power can take on what is really happening if the scientific view is right. According to the scientific view, the moral force is a force that lies purely in consciousness; that is to say, for the intellectualistic age and for the following ages, we need a force that works as a moral force and at the same time has the ability to take on physical forces. This power, which enters us through our elective affinity, as I said yesterday, with what has gone through Golgotha, with Christ as the spiritual ancestor, this power, which can take on [the physical powers], can be found by the individual human being, as I described yesterday. And it would never be found if the Mystery of Golgotha had not existed. So it is absolutely true what even individual theologians — they are white crows — have said, for example Martensen, a Dane: the Mystery of Golgotha will only be properly understood again when we are in a position to attach a real physical- earthly significance for the development of the earth, and all the dialectical arts that speak of the fact that despite all natural science, what has been attained in faith can assert itself, they are actually not true inwardly, they are only there to delude themselves. The power of the Mystery of Golgotha can only be effective when it works in man in such a way that it can take on the physical and earthly forces in man. And it can do that. And that is what is to be conveyed to Catholicism in the Sacrifice of the Mass. For the one who takes the rituals that I have discussed this morning, it is the case that in his consciousness, which develops through performing the action, in the knowledge of the processes, lies the power to encounter this Christ-power that emanates from Golgotha. That would then be the connection with the sacrifice of the Mass.
Rudolf Steiner: Yes, you see, there is actually no such justification for the sacrifice of the mass in the testament itself. No passage of the New Testament can be used to justify the sacrifice of the mass. But the primeval sacrifice of the mass, of which the Gospels speak, is precisely the Mystery of Golgotha, and so we can only speak of how we correctly understand the words that are spoken in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha: “This do in remembrance of me,” that is, in remembrance of what takes place through the Mystery of Golgotha, and in such a way that first of all the Lord's Supper, which is an important part of the Mass, is already instituted. The Lord's Supper, however, is found in the Gospels; but the other must be sought in the necessity that arises more and more for the developing human being. In order to perform transubstantiation in a worthy manner, knowledge of the Gospel is essential, as are the sacrifice and the subsequent communion, which, by the way, is an integral part of the Lord's Supper if you will.
Rudolf Steiner: I can only refer you to the question, I would like to say, facts. If we imagine what underlies our intellect in us, so if we imagine that the sphere of sensory perception is here (it is drawn on the board, bottom left), we would then form the concepts that reminiscent concepts radiate back into our consciousness, so that there (see drawing) would be a mirror, so to speak – you will understand the image, we do not look behind our memory down – so there below, under the memory lies the sphere of destruction. Here all natural laws dissolve, all earthly laws of the world dissolve there in the human being. There is indeed a center of destruction here, and this center of destruction must be in us just as a coating must be behind the mirror. We need this, otherwise the memory would not be there. So there must be a center of destruction in us. For something to be in the world, spiritual forces must be there to bring it about. In my anthroposophical view, I call the spiritual forces underlying this focus of destruction ahrimanic forces. Now look at this matter from two different points of view. First, look at it from the point of view of human beings. Human beings are protected by the threshold that exists in their memory mirror; they do not normally enter this focus of destruction without further ado. But this focus of destruction must be there. The Ahrimanic forces, which are connected with these destructive forces, that is to say with the forces of dissolution for what takes place in the physical world, these Ahrimanic forces are not actually evil when one looks at the world from their aspect. For what they do, the destroying, is not at all evil in the divine plan of the world. But if a person is so abstracted that he lets the destructive forces pass through his mirror of memory, then something happens here in the physical world that has a good meaning in the next higher world, something that is only out of place in the physical world. So that what we call evil in physical life is a necessity in a higher world. It is only possible for man to let that enter his sphere of experience which, if he wants to remain an innocent person, is, as it were, out of place in it. So evil is only evil within the earthly world; and for man only the consequences of this evil remain when he now goes through the gate of death, that is, the consequences of the actions. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, which I believe is correct, that the existence of evil in the physical world can be reconciled with the cosmic scheme of things, if we realize that even the Almighty God can exist only under certain conditions. Now you can say: evil is also present in another aspect; it is present as imperfection, as badness, as pain. But then the question is: If you study a real physiology – not the university physiology that is official at the universities, but a real physiology – then you learn to recognize that, for example, the eyes are initially built out of pain. Everything that is built into the human organism is actually first built in through pain. The eyes are built in this way, which you can find confirmed in animals. So what is a later perfection must be built up out of pain. And in subjective development, anyone who is just beginning to have a little knowledge of the supersensible will tell you that he has acquired the experiences of life through pain. He will tell you: I thank my Creator for the joys of my life, I accept them, but I would not want to do without my pains, because without pains I could never have become a knowing human being. Just as you cannot demand a triangle with four corners from an almighty God, you cannot demand the creation of any perfect things without the foundation of pains. It would be a completely abstract, external thought, perhaps no more than a mere phrase. And just as little can you demand freedom in the world without building it on the foundation of evil.
Rudolf Steiner: I must say that there is hardly any such practical difficulty on the part of the Anthroposophical movement. For, in view of the present stage of human evolution, the Anthroposophical movement must now stand on the standpoint of gaining the knowledge that can be gained and spreading it among humanity. This is a self-contained activity that can be carried out without anyone other than its opponents bothering about it. It is not something that causes difficulties for anything else. Things will admittedly become somewhat more difficult when, in the future, in about the sixth or seventh millennium of the earth's development, human beings will take on a completely different form. You will be surprised that I say this. But it is actually the case that in the sixth or seventh millennium woman will become infertile, will no longer reach maturity but remain infertile. Man will then be in contact with the earth in a much more spiritual form, then there will be direct practical activity, and then a separation between religion and anthroposophy is no longer conceivable. For as long as there is no practical activity, but only the mere dissemination of impulses and so on – or at most the dissemination of impulses such as threefolding, which of course works entirely through the ordinary channels – as long as anthroposophy must work as it does today, there is no difficulty from this side. From the point of view of the denominations, from the point of view of the old denominations and perhaps also from the point of view of the new communities to be founded, I can indeed imagine that this relationship will develop in such a way that the communities will take up from anthroposophy what they can take up, according to their subjective ability and discretion, and according to what they consider acceptable or unacceptable in principle. I can well imagine that this movement, which is to begin here, will relate to the general anthroposophical movement as a self-contained entity. They are two distinct movements, but each movement can accept from the other what it can only give for itself. Since the anthroposophical movement will have research as its primary goal, the attainment of certain supersensible results will come from the anthroposophical side, and practical religious exercise will come from the other side; and thereby the same relationship, which existed at a naive stage, will be reestablished, only indirectly, as soon as we return to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, where there was no antagonism between religion and science. Their representatives were the same people, at least essentially, and that which one should experience religiously was expressed in forms that resulted from the corresponding research. So I can imagine that absolutely harmonious cooperation is possible. I do not believe, for example, that the splitting of communities, to which you, I believe, have pointed out, could ever come from the anthroposophical movement. I would like to say that the anthroposophical movement will remain neutral on this. It could, of course, come about through [something like that] that precisely from the ecclesiastical or theological side, there is dissatisfaction with the previous theology and religious development; but then the religious, the theological movement would lead to disruption. The Anthroposophical Movement as such cannot lead to disruption. I cannot imagine it being otherwise. I can only point out that the Anthroposophical Movement only wants to respond to the signs of the times. Once, I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and on wisdom. Those who were present in Stuttgart will know this. There were two Roman Catholic theologians in the audience. Now, in that lecture - that was many years ago, when the excommunication of the anthroposophical view had not yet been pronounced, which is there today, that is only since 1918, so it was not all that is there today, today it would no longer be able to happen - there were two Catholic theologians in it at the time. Now, if you give a lecture on alcohol, for example, in organic chemistry, you don't immediately give a lecture on all the carbon compounds, and so the two dear Catholic theologians found nothing in this lecture on the Bible and wisdom that they could contradict with their dogmas. They then came to me and said: In terms of content, we have no objections at all, but the way you present it is only for a select few who have acquired a certain education; but we speak for all people. I said, Reverend Sir, I want to hold you to your claim that you believe you speak for all people; that may be true from your subjective point of view. Everyone will have the right to say, from their subjective point of view, that they speak for all people. But it is of no importance to the world what our subjective point of view is. Standpoints – although today people always say, “I have a standpoint,” there are as many standpoints as there are people – standpoints are actually highly irrelevant to humanity, and one should, to put it radically, be fundamentally ashamed of constantly revealing one's subjective standpoint to the world. So it's not really a matter of points of view. But it is a matter of something else, of what the signs of the times objectively demand, and here I ask you: Do all people still go to church with you today? They couldn't say “yes” there, they had to say that some do stay away. I said, “I am speaking for those who stay away from church and who also want to find the way to Christ.” The facts suggest that it is not right for you to say that you speak for all people. So let us listen to what lies in the facts. That is precisely what must underlie anthroposophical work, and here I can only say to you: there can actually be no collision with anything that develops in dependence on or alongside anthroposophical work. If you follow the whole polemic and the whole fight against anthroposophy, one might almost say that one could become a naughty boy when one looks at all this; one always wants to say: but I didn't start it, never. You can follow it: if someone has been attacked in some way, the attacks always came from outside; just follow it historically and you will see that it is so.
Rudolf Steiner: The future of the existing churches? Yes, the future of the churches truly does not depend on anthroposophy, and, I am convinced, it does not depend on what is founded here either, but on their own crisis of disintegration. I cannot help it, it seems to me that way. I am absolutely clear about one thing: according to what is active today in the depths of human development, we will have no church at all within the present civilized world within a century, unless something like what is is intended here, because all the present church constitutions and church communities have the seed of their own destruction within them, and that is a continuous, I would say, yes, really, a continuous apologizing of the church. Some give up as much as possible in an intellectualistic way – Harnack, for example, gives up Christ, which means that the essence of Christianity, in the sense of Harnack's book, is actually pure Judaism; in principle it is, despite the recognition of the love of Jesus and so on, but in principle I mean. On the one hand, we have the intellectualist endeavor to reveal as much as possible, until we actually arrive at what Dr. Geyer so aptly called the day before yesterday: It is an X and the X is actually a Nix. But what is still an X today will become a Nix, the other things cannot change that. On the other hand, we have the violent maintenance of the institution and the dogmatic relationships, for example, of the Roman Catholic Church by external power. How can such power be pushed back? You can see that happening now in the Orthodox Church in Russia. Then we have, I would say, the intermediate churches, such as the Old Catholic Church. These are human reactions against the existing processes of disintegration, human reactions which, I believe, already contain within them the germ of transformation, even if this cannot be realized immediately in every single moment. But the existing churches – I can't say much about what they will look like, it's just going downhill on an incline, I don't have any other idea. But I think the main reasons why the majority of you are here or all are here are that the story is going downhill.
Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the point is not merely to discuss such a question in the sense of theoretical concerns or in the sense of objective belief, but rather, in the way of love, the question is the practical question of the innermost life, of course. The content of the Gospels, made into mere doctrine, runs the risk of having a strong effect on people's selfishness. For man has not only the possibility of leaning towards something in love, but love is at the same time something that also does man subjective good. There is always an elevation of egoism in the experience of love, even of the most spiritual kind, and this devotion in love in a merely abstract, even if soul-abstract, form, is something that very strongly leads to ego and this is lived out in our time in the fact that actually the objective sense of responsibility is no longer strongly present in people, but people tend very strongly to the mere subjective sense of responsibility. You see, when a representative of a religious confession like Frohnmeyer claims quite strictly, like an absolutely ascertainable truth, that over there [at the Goetheanum] a figure of Christ is being set up, with Luciferic features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom, that is an objective untruth. One could hear from a university professor of theology from a neighboring university: Yes, Frohnmeyer said that to the best of his knowledge and belief. One wants to refrain from convincing oneself of the reality of what one claims. Just think how different the path of humanity would be if it had not taken this strong tendency towards subjectivity, which always invokes the best of knowledge and belief and spares itself the test. We cannot accept what is invoked in the abstract as divine love if it does not have a counterweight in something like cult. But there are other dangers as well. It is not my intention to create a backwards history, but I just want to point this out. You see, if Protestantism, which is the defining consciousness of modern times, had not abolished worship, had not done away with everything cult-like – which it has – then we would not have materialism either. Materialism is the necessary corollary of the removal of all cultic forms. In religious matters, the human being lives in the community, and so this certainly has something to do with the modern Protestantism that has increasingly come to refer people to divine love, as it has been done, for the development of the human being, which is linked to strong egoism. And with something else. Isn't it true that nothing can be done about facts? So anyone who is grounded in anthroposophical spiritual science knows about preexistence as well as postexistence. And now I would like to point out that in our practical religious practice, even for advanced Protestants, only the post-mortal existence is actually present. The other has no practical significance anywhere. It has no significance for the practical religious practice of pastoral care. But now I ask you – perhaps this is sometimes necessary – to also look at how the matter then lies in the sermon in a great many cases. Try to visualize how much of the sermon is devoted to maintaining faith in immortality by counting on that selfishness that simply does not want the soul to perish at death. Of course, you have to take that very seriously, how much the sermons rely on this egoism of not wanting to die with death, on this egoism of people for the preservation of the belief in immortality. In this, there is practically such a one-sided tendency towards the abstract. The moment you go to the other side, you practically come to preexistence. You cannot base preexistence on egoism at all; you can only base it on selflessness. Egoism is absolutely indifferent to what came before birth. That is why, in our modern language, on the one hand we have a word for immortality, but on the other hand we have no word for being unborn, because the concept of immortality is inconceivable without the word immortality, just as the concept of being unborn is inconceivable without the word being unborn. We have now arrived at such things through what you just called the Protestant past. We must get away from it. Man must again find the way to objectivity; but he can only find it spiritually and soulfully. He can find it spiritually only through cult. I can imagine that what I am saying in this way may offend Protestant minds very much. But I cannot help that. The point is that if there are difficulties, one overcomes them; many people everywhere have gone through these difficulties.
Rudolf Steiner: It is not the case that the mediation between inner and outer cultus is precisely that the apostles had a different relationship to Christ than their successors. The inner cultus was at the same time an outer cultus. I have just tried to prove this in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, where I have endeavored to show that what happened at Golgotha had previously taken place in the form of an image or tragic action in every true mystery, so that those leading the mysteries understood these things. We cannot say that we have only an inner cultus at Golgotha, but at Golgotha there is also an outer cultus. But naturally the distinction must arise just at the time when the Christ Jesus has become invisible; then, of course, the distinction arises. For everything that will arise from the supersensible in the immediate present, which would, so to speak, be the realized mystical fact, is actually comprehended in the outer cultus, that is, only in the sense that one sees the supersensible-living in the sensual. You place the cultus facts only as supersensibly effective facts in the midst of the other conditions of the sensually effective facts. — But perhaps that is not quite in line with your question.
This is a factual error and, in addition, a terrible arrogance. It is not actually Protestant, but rather it has been more like this in a current such as the saints, which found the most beautiful expression - there was already something like this - in a figure like Francis; there we are dealing with emulation. But this emulation does not correspond to the facts. Because first of all, it is impossible to emulate Christ Jesus, because it is just not possible. It is presumptuous, basically. Besides, it has no real content, because, isn't it true, a life that takes place in a physical body is a whole. You cannot imagine one act without the other, it is a whole. Every single act, every single thought has its shading from the whole, and to the Christ Jesus life belongs precisely the death on Golgotha. I cannot grasp how one can come to a concrete concept of following. It is also no longer Christian, because in the Christian sense Christ is not the model, but the helper. I ask that this be clearly distinguished: Christ is the helper. We turn to him for help, we take him in so that he can become our helper. That is humble, that is what can be. The other, basically, includes a terrible arrogance, which is on the same path as the one who said: If there were a God, how could I stand not being a god. It is the same path. I know how tempting it is to see Christ as a role model. But He is the helper that we take within us. But I can never really connect the idea that we should become like Christ Jesus Himself; in any case, it is not Christian.
Rudolf Steiner: I would like to answer this question in another context as well.
Rudolf Steiner: “Imitatio” is not the same as emulating. Imitatio is a concept that is one step lower. Imitatio Christi is certainly a possibility, but it is something else; imitatio is an emotional concept. In the sense of Francis of Assisi, you cannot understand imitatio Christi any differently, except as an emotion. It is not a mere concept. The concept of “imitatio” actually implies that we shape ourselves in our feelings so that our feelings become similar, our inner life becomes similar to the life of Christ. This is not actually the same as regarding him as a model. Of course, in abstract thinking, we do not have these sharp distinctions between becoming similar and emulating. Thus imitation of Christ is not excluded, although I would prefer to speak of imitation of Jesus rather than imitation of Christ. In this sense, one can say that one can naturally become similar to Jesus in one's human qualities. But this similarity comes to an end when the Mystery of Golgotha enters upon its final acts. How this similarity with the Mystery of Golgotha can be achieved is something I cannot understand. The Christian can become similar to Christ in that the Christ in the Pauline sense lives in him. That is the correct Christian concept, and it cannot be understood in any other way than that the Christ comes to life in him through his presence. When a person becomes similar to Christ, it is through the Pauline “Christ in me”. This is certainly the case with anthroposophy. But the anthroposophical idea, which seeks to correspond to the facts, is that we can only become similar to Christ [through] the Christ living in us. Without this idea, becoming similar would be nothing more than an illusion. You cannot form an [abstract] concept of becoming similar. The anthroposophical idea is quite certain; it also seems to me to be the correct Christian idea: if we can become similar to something, it can only be to Christ in ourselves.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, from my point of view, which is the anthroposophical one, I consider this to be a movement that leads away from real Christianity. I consider this movement to be the most dangerous one in the present day, which actually strays from Christianity, because these lessons have nothing to do with the complete history of Christ Jesus on earth. Weinel's Jesus is indeed the teacher of something, which Weinel regards as a form of Christianity, but Weinel's Jesus is not a Christ, because he has no Christ within him. So you can say, you can of course teach Weinelianism in schools, but you cannot work in the Christian sense if you take something like that as a basis.
Rudolf Steiner: Formally, there is no question that the clergy are right. The question is whether they are giving the right portrayal of Jesus if one wants to judge the matter as a whole. But that they are formally right in contrast to the materializing un-Christian nature of Weinel's Jesus, in my opinion, and also in my anthroposophical view, there can be absolutely no doubt about that.
Rudolf Steiner: The thing is, however, that I have to go back to what I have already said here. Let us assume that this ethical teaching were actually practised; we would then only address the abilities in man that come to an end with death, that do not pass through death, and as pastors we are not allowed to do that at all. Rather, we must concern ourselves with cultivating the eternal in man before all else, so that the ideal abilities can sprout. I say this as an anthroposophist. What can be given to man in an ethical way from the Weinel views is something that has to do only with man's temporal existence between birth and death; and I see nothing in this movement but an influence of our materialistic age. They wear the most diverse masks, these outgrowths of our materialistic age.
Rudolf Steiner: What difficulties?
Rudolf Steiner: But precisely when this saying causes you difficulties, then this difficulty is relatively not difficult to resolve, because it is pointed out immediately what this succession should consist of: Take up your cross and follow me - then you do what you do in my interest. It does not say: Live so that your life becomes like mine. It is not commanded to emulate, but it is said: Take up your cross – which in this context means everything that one has to bear in life – take up your cross and follow in all patience. That does not mean emulating, but regarding Christ as a guide. A leader is a helper in the right direction. These distinctions must be very delicately handled. The leader in the right direction is the one who helps you to go the right way. But one cannot say that Christ said: “Seek, by following me, the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but rather, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And Paul was right to add: We find the Christ only when he is in us. He is a helper, not a role model in the sense that one could speak of a complete role model. The difficulty is easily resolved, and the other words you quoted were also to be understood in the ancient age as nothing other than following the leader.
Rudolf Steiner: On the contrary, they use the wrong word. The wrong word in this case is “Christ”. They must, of course, address the real content of the matter. I have expressly said: where Harnack has the word “Christ”, simply put “God” in its place and you will get the right thing. This person has a strong religious life; I will never deny that such people can have a strong religious life and feeling, only they are not Christians. If one wants to be a Christian, one must profess Christ. And it is not true that Harnack says that Easter faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane, but what really happened there is none of our business. That is not acceptable. What Harnack is doing is a misapplication of the word 'Christ'. That is what I said.
Rudolf Steiner: They have no differentiated feeling. But one must be clear about that. One can say: Christianity is antiquated, we have no need to distinguish the Christ from the Father, we can go back to a mere monotheism that does not distinguish between Father and Son. Then one can hold the position, but then one must not make the claim in intellectualism to be a Christian.
Rudolf Steiner: Then we might just as well let go of Christianity; we don't need Christianity, we'll introduce Brahmanism or Buddhism. Christianity makes it necessary to have the differentiation between the Father and the Son. Go to the Russians in the East and you will have the strong experience that father and son are differentiated. It would never occur to a Russian to fall into Kant's error and speak about God from the point of view of ontology. Up to Scotus Eriugena, one still had this experience of the differentiation between Father and Son, then the whole history of the proofs of God's existence begins. The moment you start proving God's existence, you no longer have him. In the works of Scotus Eriugena, we still find [differentiated] views; there is no question at all – that is, in the period up to the 10th century – of there being any such undifferentiated perception of the Father and the Son. But today, what do people think of all this when they discuss whether or not the Son should be of the same essence as the Father? The real original concepts, the elementary concepts, they no longer seem to be there in Western or Central European civilization today. Read the philosophy...1 there you have a sphere in which people have stopped at the point of Scotus Eriugena, there is still a differentiation there. But if you take the standpoint that you do not need differentiation, then, I want to say now, you can be a good Protestant, but not a Christian. I would like to discuss this in another context.
Rudolf Steiner: You can indeed say that quite well about the relationship between yourself and your father, with relationship, let us say, to the whole family. If it is a matter of something being common in relation to the wider circle of your family, then you can say: I and my father are one, and what I do or what I bring to bear, my father also does. Therefore you cannot claim that you can lump together the two individualities, you and your father.
Rudolf Steiner: No, no.
Rudolf Steiner: This is something that should be mentioned in connection with sacramentalism. It is already contained in what I have said, but I will deal with it in context, because, as I said, the two, Father and Son, must exist specifically as two non-numerically identical perceptions. The perception of the Father must not be numerically identical to the perception of the Son. Yes, then there would be the question of the woman's participation, but I would also ask to be allowed to answer that in the next few days, because, as I have already said personally, this question is really connected with a great many other individual questions, above all with the question: How does the woman participate? We must not only ask whether the woman participates, but how the woman participates best. And how do we get beyond the calamity that has occurred in the so-called women's issue when it comes to something as serious as this: the participation of women in male professions? In the nineties, I had a discussion in Weimar with Gabriele Reuter that was along these lines, but for a completely different area than theology. I had to say that from a certain point of view, the whole approach to the women's issue is wrong, because women have not actually brought that into civilization and culture that they can bring in on their own, but have adopted the culture of men. They have become physicians, as medicine was established by men; they have become philologists, as philology was established by men. So women have not contributed what they can contribute in women's clothing, but they have put on trousers and thus carried out this emancipation. This is something that naturally belongs to a completely different area. We have to answer this in a broader sense; we have to be absolutely clear that women's participation must happen in such a way that women do not simply put on trousers, but that women really — you will of course understand that this is only an image — bring what can be brought in dresses, not in trousers. But I will also address this question; it is again a very profound question.
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-second Lecture
07 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-second Lecture
07 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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My dear friends! Yesterday during the afternoon meeting here, a number of things came up that oblige me to say a few words before I move on to the ritual of the consecration and the communion. It seems to me that it is necessary to achieve a very fundamental understanding about certain things, because it would be of no use if this understanding were to remain in the background, so to speak. Here, too, it must be spoken about very clearly. Above all, it is necessary to really understand the essence of a ritual, so that it is not possible to say that what emanates from a ritual can also have a suggestive effect. There is absolute uncertainty today about what has a suggestive effect, and perhaps only the representatives of a religious world view are suited to correct the thoroughly unhealthy conditions that have arisen in this field as a result of our science. Our science has no possibility, if it wants to come to clarity even about the most elementary things of the soul, that through it somehow a correct insight into the facts would arise. It does not have that possibility. One must also have experience in this, my dear friends; these experiences come to one when one participates in something like I did. I was able to observe, I would like to say, the development of psychoanalysis from its very beginning. It was a friend of mine who first wanted to make accessible to science that which is justified in psychoanalysis. Then it came into the hands of Freud. The man who originally had the idea withdrew, and that in itself was proof of how impossible it is to arrive at clarity about these things from the foundations of today's science. Unfortunately, one does indeed experience that these concepts of modern science, which has no discernment at all for what takes place in the soul, are penetrating more and more into religious and theological concepts as well. Why, my dear friends, is so much care taken in the realization of the rituals from the supersensible? It is done for no other reason than to exclude even the last vestige of suggestion. That is the basic requirement, that even the last vestige of suggestion be excluded. And how is this achieved? You see, all the rituals I have given and will give you are conceived on the principle that they express in words what comes from the supersensible, the normal evolutionary forces, only in their development by man. When one speaks of suggestion here, one applies the term to something to which it is absolutely not applicable, because one would then also have to apply it [for example] to the forces that are involved in the growth of the child — I do not mean those those that come from the parents or the environment, but those forces that work inwardly, from the spiritual-mental, that shape the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen and so on – and one would also have to say of these that they have a suggestive effect on the person. Here it ceases to be possible to associate any meaning with the word 'suggestive'. One can only associate a meaning with this word when it is a matter of an influence being exerted on a person who is separated from the other people by his individuality, which falls outside the straight evolution of natural events, where something flows from one individuality to another. To exclude this is part of the path that must be taken when conceiving rituals. Here, then, we are not dealing with what passes from one person to another, but with a deepening into the divine-spiritual movement of development and the developmental forces of the human being himself, and these are to be brought into the word as they are. So here the possibility of speaking of suggestion ceases, just as in the case of a square the possibility ceases of speaking of the laws of the triangle. But these are distinctions that can only be made by a more profound science. Today's science is dreadfully dilettantish and dreadfully powerless with regard to the soul, and the things that are said about the soul by psychoanalysts or even by experimental psychologists and other psychologists are maddeningly impotent. One can say that ordinary science somehow does not have the possibility to grasp suggestion. That is what I have to say in principle first of all. The other thing is that our modern theory of development has led us to limit the content of consciousness so much to the human ego and to develop little interest in how the human ego is connected to the entire universe, so that such things, as I again spoke of yesterday, the necessity of the death of the moral in the downfall of the earth, are no longer felt with the necessary strength at all. It is easy for the modern consciousness to speak of superstition in such cases. But this superstition is based solely on the fact that one has become completely entangled in the selfish conception of the world. And so it happens that one actually does not attach any special importance, my dear friends, to what happens within man himself today. And he who attaches no importance to what happens within man himself will never be able to understand the ritual and never the sacrament in reality. Look around you, you see the stars, you see the sun and the moon, you see the formations in the air, you see clouds, waves, rivers, you see the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms – all of this will one day no longer be, all of this will one day have disappeared. Heaven and earth will come to an end. Everything you can see with your eyes, perceive with your senses, grasp with your reasoning mind, all that will perish. Only that which is grounded in the individual human being, which the individual human being has taken in, will not perish when the individual passes through death and will live beyond earthly existence. With Christ we say: My words will not pass away. Only that which is within the human skin will not perish. Today, everything else will perish. And as man passes through the gate of death, all mere intellectual effects and experiences perish with it. All that perishes, and only what is the wholly human comprehension can remain. But you cannot come to the wholly human comprehension without going beyond everything that takes place in your environment in earthly existence. If you only perform actions that are realized in earthly existence, no matter how important they may be, then you are only working for earthly existence, and that has only value for man between birth and death. In that case you do not fertilize man's soul, and man's soul gains nothing through you, however well meant everything may be. The very thrust of modern development — and that is why the present moment is so infinitely serious — is that everything that is connected with the eternal in man is to be taken away from him. And a human soul to which you make the ritual, the sacrament, accessible, such a human soul simply penetrates more deeply into the eternal through what is experienced in the ritual. He who does not understand this in its full depth will not understand ritual and sacrament. One must look at what is done to the soul of man and to his eternal part. The soul would die with the end of the earth and the soul would sleep after death if nothing were done to this human soul in our time, which lies after the mystery of Golgotha. The idea of resurrection must be taken very seriously, and Paul's conclusion that if Christ had not been resurrected, we would simply have no eternity. This must not be immersed only in the sphere of the intellectual; it must be taken so seriously that we know in fact: we are working to make the soul more and more alive by continuing in ceremony that which took place at Calvary. But, my dear friends, this is in turn intimately connected with making the word of the gospel come alive. The documentary is not the only thing in the words of the gospel; establish the gospel as you will, you have not yet done everything with it. You have then created the possibility of proclaiming the gospels as they had to be spoken to the contemporaries of the apostles, but you still have no way of making these gospel words as alive as they can and should be in today's living. In what I present to you here as a ritual, nothing lives but the living word of the Gospel. And anyone who believes that the living word of the Gospel does not live in it seems to me like someone who sees a 15-year-old boy and says that he does not know him, that he must first have a picture of him at the age of three and know what he looked like then. We must have the possibility today of having the gospel word within us and of handling it in full freedom, even though Christ lives in it. This must be allowed to flow into the ritual word; only then is the ritual word true in the modern sense. Only then do I truly understand the gospel. Therefore, what is to be achieved today cannot be achieved merely by repeating the gospel. On the contrary, anyone who knows how these things are constituted also knows that if you merely develop the gospel word of this or that soul in the dead, then unfortunately you can contribute to the opposite of what you are striving for. If you do not have a living relationship with the soul to whom you proclaim the gospel word, then the gospel word can be destructive, just as an otherwise healthy area can be destructive for someone who has a weak constitution, because he has not adapted to that area. We only have to look at these mysteries of existence in the right way. And we must come to something else. We must come to understand, my dear friends, why for all earlier consciousness healing and knowledge were one and the same, or at least belonged to one and the same. In the times when knowledge and religion were one, knowledge was never taken as anything other than an instruction for man to find healing at the same time. Here we come to realize that original sin in reality represents an illness of man. When consciousness is seized with this illness, then healing does not occur, but rather a further illness. We must snatch consciousness, the soul with all its powers, from the sphere of the illness of sin. We must therefore take into account the possibility that with the end of the earth, everything that is morally grounded could perish if we do not keep it alive through Jesus Christ and lead it beyond the end of the earth to future stages of existence. This awareness must permeate everything that flows into ritual and ceremony. And so you will see that precisely when we approach the mysteries of the sacrifice of the Mass, this beholding, this full human beholding of that which above all works and lives in man himself as the eternal, and of that which must be healed through its connection with Christ Jesus, becomes ever more and more apparent. If someone were to come today and say, “Why should we need the sacraments when we have the Word?” the answer from the anthroposophical standpoint would be, “True, you have the Word, but do you also have the power of the Word?” “Are you sure that your Word will not decay with the death of the earth?” This certainty must be established today! Therefore, he who knows this connection cannot speak about these things as another would who does not know it. It is from this point of view that I ask you to understand what I am now going to say about the continuation of the sacrifice of the Mass in the following. Here too, I must say in advance: some things may still be imperfect, but they are as good as they can be according to my ability today. So the reading of the Gospel is over, the sacrifice is over. Accordingly, the host is on the altar, the chalice, in which wine and water are mixed, is on the altar, and the host has this form - I am now describing how I think I should describe it (it is drawn on the board) -; it can be broken here, here (see drawing) a piece can be broken off. It is consecrated. We shall have to speak about the consecration later. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] During the consecration, it waits for what is to happen to it, so that the words can be true in the direct experience of the sacramental act, which I shall now communicate to you. First, we have to do with the preparation for the sacramental act. Then, at first, there is speaking without the ceremony being performed:
Now, during these words, the ceremony is performed:
— the host is lifted up —
The Host is broken, the small triangle taken out and mixed with the wine and water in the chalice.
— the chalice is raised —
The ceremony is complete.
The old canon, as it is used, already breathes something of this spirit, but it is focused on the Church, on the particular Catholic Church.
— which is then deleted for the Old Catholics, [instead of which it says] -:
Now, of course, masses are read [in the Catholic Church] for people who seek them, for the living or the dead. This is brought about by many externalizations, to which that which is actually the inner life is always exposed. We encounter something here that can hardly concern us, and that does not occur when the ritual is restored today.
These things are then accompanied by the appropriate ceremonies, which I will discuss later.
The ceremony is complete.
— now the names are mentioned again for whom the Mass is being read, if it is for the dead —
The altar server says:
You see what the tradition is, and you see how it seems to me that the sacrament must be endowed with a ritual today. In the Catholic Church, there are some intermediate things that we will talk about, but then we move on to the fourth main part of the Mass, to Communion, which is taken in the two forms, in bread and wine. Before the taking of the bread and wine, the following is spoken:
Now the bread is taken.
The cup is drunk.
This is what the act of Communion amounts to and what it says in the Catholic Church:
That is the “per omnia saecula saeculorum”. You see, here it is clearly stated how the priest in Catholicism differs from the Church. He stands as a member of the Church before the altar, and according to the dogma, his person is not actually considered at all.
So you see, the Sacrifice of the Mass is indeed the sacramental fulfillment of the four main parts of which I have spoken to you. And it is important that the entire meaning of Christianity is fully alive in the ritual of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Gospel must live in every single word of the ritual, the Gospel must be alive, and without this life of the living Gospel the ritual would be impossible. Of course, it must be assumed that the following is recognized in order to understand something like this: one is dealing with people who live according to the Mystery of Golgotha, with people, that is, for whom there could never be anything that would be a mere external act, that takes place in the world of the senses, or that is performed by the human being in the world of the senses , and with those, therefore, for whom there could also be nothing that could be spoken out of ordinary human consciousness in an intellectualistic way, that could strengthen the moral world in man so that that which must be conquered can be conquered. For this, an action is needed that goes beyond everything that lies within the bounds of our present-day possibilities for action and speech, if we are not to move on to an awareness of the sacramental. I know, my dear friends, how much is said against the sacramental in the hearts of modern people, but anyone who has experience in these matters may also say something else. One could think that my annoyance at the ceremonial, which is so common among modern people, might even come from a Christian or Protestant consciousness. But I must confess to you – it is a personal comment, but in this case it is very factual – I have actually never seen a person in whom what was angry against the sacramental came from love and from goodness, but always from secret evil that is in human nature. Of course, this is a process that we see occurring in many cases today, but what is primarily angry is actually the resistance, the resistance to salvation, of human nature. It is the incitement by the same forces that say in the Gospel: we recognize you – and then begin to fight Christ Jesus because they recognize him. I would not say this at all if it were not a thoroughly observable fact. Whoever overcomes that which asserts itself as evil in his soul is given the strength to overcome. But whoever cannot overcome this evil is also deprived of what strength he had to overcome before. These things are quite serious, and in the human soul things are constantly happening that cannot be grasped by ordinary external consciousness. One might say that the human soul is actually constantly walking over an abyss. That is indeed the case, it is just not aware of it. But it must become aware of it, and how it is to become aware of it must be guided in the right way. As long as we merely have the belief that we are to moralize the human soul, and as long as we have the belief from our present consciousness that we could do this with the powers that are present in the outer world, so long we have no idea of what the human soul actually is in the whole context of the world. Therefore, do not take something like an externality when certain sentences are spoken three times in Communion. Why are they spoken three times? The first time is spoken:
The first time the word is spoken so that it may be taken up into one's understanding. The second time the word is spoken:
so that we experience this in our feeling. And only the third time can the word be spoken in such a way that our volition is sufficiently kindled through our thinking and feeling, so that the word may also live in our volition:
Likewise with the words of the cup:
The second time:
The third time:
All details are important in such a ritual, and if they are incorrect, it is already roughly the same as if, let us say, any limb of the human body is wrongly formed due to a malformed development. We must have the feeling that these things are alive in truth. Of course, what lives in the succession of time changes its body in the succession of time, precisely because it is alive, but this change of body is precisely only a consequence of the living. With the help of the point of view just mentioned, it is now quite easy to find the differences that exist between what is in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass and what is in the ritual that I spoke of as possible today. But it is also clear to see how it is almost impossible to truly depict the full concrete experiences through a mere translation, even if it attempts to restore the old words' values. This is because, in fact, for the entire civilization of modern times, the actual meaning of the original words has been lost. We no longer live in the life that the words once had. We live in words, in that they have become mere signs for us. We no longer listen inwardly to the words either. The sensation of the sound of the words has become for us a sensation of a sign of memory. I have already spoken about these things from a different point of view. But such a ritual cannot be performed without coming back to the real listening to the words. I have told you: When we read in the Gospel of John today, “In the beginning was the Word,” we have to say that according to a literal translation. But what we associate with the word “Word” today is not at all what was once associated with the word “Word.” And when we translate the old word logos as wisdom, then the two are even further apart, for wisdom is something much more abstract than logos was. And by translating logos as wisdom we actually enter the sphere, well, not of Christ, but of the spirit. And while we can still feel the word to some extent in the “verbum” [the Latin translation], if “logos” were translated as “wisdom”, we would actually have to feel spirit, “sapientia”. These things should actually be thoroughly brought to perception in today's theology classes. Many have an enormous fear of this. Because they have learned that one should be a theo-logian, and they fear that if something else comes over their outer perception of “logia,” it is “sophia,” and then they are terribly afraid that they might come to theosophia instead of theologia. This is a terrible fear that is present in theologians today. They consider it an insult to be called “theosophists”. Why? Because they have no belief that the Christ works through the spirit that lives in wisdom, because they would like to deny the spirit; and the denial of the spirit, in many respects, is what causes such a feeling. We must see these things in their true light, only then can we also feel - and we will come back to this, my dear friends - how different our direct experience can be with regard to the Father-God and to the Christ Himself. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-third Lecture
07 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-third Lecture
07 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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Rudolf Steiner: There remains the question from yesterday about women. Perhaps I will first speak a little about this question, which was asked yesterday in relation to the participation of women in the movement we are dealing with here. Now, I believe that the time has indeed come when women should participate in all branches of public life on an equal footing. So there should be no doubt that the entry of women into this movement is justified and that women should be treated the same as men. I would just like to say that it would be necessary to make this clear. That has been the great disappointment so far, that the entry of women into the movements in which they have succeeded in entering has not actually been noticed, at most it has been noticed in relation to some externalities, to subordinate things, but not actually in relation to the cultural nuances. You will all have experienced the deep disappointment when a woman even entered the German Reichstag and absolutely no kind of change resulted from a woman's participation. I already pointed out yesterday that years ago I said to a woman's rights activist, Gabriele Reuter, who was moderate in one sense but very active in another direction, that women must bring their own character into the movements and not find their way into what is already given by the culture of the past, which is above all a male culture. As you know, Bebel once explained that there is a reason why women do not actually intervene in such a way that their intervention is noticed as a shade [in cultural life], which is justified in theory within Darwinism, but is strange in view of reality. He said that it is self-evident that every being, when it enters the world, must first adapt to the circumstances, and since women have not had the opportunity to adapt to the circumstances so far, one must first wait until a certain time has passed. If women then had the opportunity to discard their old inherited traits, then the adaptation would have been better executed. At present, women are still too much influenced by their inherited traits. Well, my dear friends, in the future, inheritance in women will not be any different than it is today, namely that they also descend from a father and a mother, just like their brothers, so that in this respect, there is obviously no inheritance through generations and no [necessary] adaptation. That is self-evident. So in the main it is just a matter of mere words. On the other hand, it is of course very important to consider that precisely for such an area as religious life, an extraordinary enrichment can occur if women bring their particular nature to it. Although women have not [so far] thrown their share into the movements they have joined, this nature has nevertheless been noticed within the modern emancipation efforts of women. The point is that women have a different way of thinking. It is therefore entirely possible for women to achieve a certain more congenial understanding of things that cannot be expressed in sharply defined concepts because then they would not correspond to reality. So women's ability to grasp things is readily given. It is extremely difficult for a man to grasp things without sharply contoured concepts; this makes it difficult for him to find his way into such areas where female concepts are needed. So it is that women will have to play a major role in the spiritualization of our culture. She will only have to try to assert sharply that which is her own, with less sharply defined concepts, and not simply imitate the conceptual contours of men, for example in their studies. We would have gained something if, for example, in medicine or in other branches, in philology and so on, where women have begun to work, we could have seen that women, with their greater mobility, with their greater adaptability, would really have made a difference. As a rule, female physicians are such that in their thoughts they are really a copy of what they have learned, even more so than men. So it is necessary that these qualities [of women] be brought into the field sharply, but on the other hand, precisely because of these qualities, women need an extraordinary self-criticism. Women are more subjective or at least more inclined to subjectivity than men. A man, for example, has more sense of the fact that one must be convinced of the truth of a matter that one asserts. It will be much easier for a woman to judge according to subjective feeling. This will be important here because a woman, when she participates in this movement, will probably be able to discern the emotional coloring of what is to be given with extraordinary subtlety. But she will have difficulties when it comes to really asserting a will rooted in the objective, and it is precisely this will factor that comes into play strongly. In the case of man, the fact is that he can generally be characterized in such a way that the greater part of his intellect is used to enter into the organism in an organizing way; hence, I might say, he retains for his psychic life an intellect that is indeed sharp but not mobile. His will enters less into his organism, hence he has a strong will. In women, it is the case that the will enters into the organism more, and the intellect less. The female body is less intellectual, less constructed with the intellect in mind than the male body; therefore, in general, despite the greater mobility of the intellect, or perhaps because of it, women are endowed with a greater measure of concepts, with broader concepts, and even with a greater number of concepts than men. It will be found that within this movement woman will present things in such a way that one has more of a feeling of the spiritual, and that man, in this movement, will present things in such a way that one has more of a feeling of firmness; but when the two really work together, then something extraordinarily harmonious can come out, especially in community life. Of course, when discussing such things, one speaks in generalities. There is no other way to do it, because the things one discusses must be more directive than something that is already based on observation. On the whole, however, it can be said that it is possible for a woman to develop a strong sense of responsibility through a strong self-education when she enters this movement, because the lack of a sense of responsibility is something that could certainly be observed where women have entered more spiritual movements in recent times. It is, for example, the case that a man is much more likely to be persuaded to keep something secret than a woman, who, if she has a female friend, is extremely quick to consider that friend as being completely trustworthy and then to divulge the matter to just one person, even though there are also numerous old women among men. This is simply a phenomenon that one has to experience and which carries a great, great deal of weight. So the sense of responsibility is something that will have to be particularly developed. It could be observed, for example, in medicine, how particularly the finer operations, eye operations and the like, can be performed much more precisely, better and more skillfully by women than by men. This will also be the case in the spiritual realm, and it will become apparent in the cult that women will truly be able to carry out the cult in a very special way, that they will also be able to empathize much more easily when performing the cult. On the other hand, something else has become apparent. I need only remind you that at the head of the Theosophical Society there stood for many years a woman, Annie Besant, who has a very skilled hand for many things, especially in the treatment of external matters, but who, on the other hand, is inclined to a very particular vanity. This is something that must then be developed: a keen sense of self-discipline to overcome vanity and ambition. In all this, women are much more easily tempted, both externally and internally, than men. All these things ultimately lead to the fact that woman is in a certain way less constant, that she very easily swings between these two you have seen, Ahriman on the one hand, Lucifer on the other. Man naturally swings in rhythm from one to the other, but woman swings with extraordinary agility and very frequently in such a way that the equilibrium becomes very unstable. This must be taken into account, and I could go on in this matter, but it is not really necessary. The question must practically be answered in such a way that today there can be no doubt that women must be able to participate in such movements, but that they must practice the necessary self-education for such movements. It must be said that women must participate out of the general course of human development. You see, until the 15th century, the development of man was such that he had then reached the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. In relation to the intellectual or emotional soul, man and woman are very different. Therefore, it could not be otherwise than that within this period of time, woman was excluded from certain things, and where these old customs have been retained, for example in Freemasonry, women are still excluded today. This is based on traditions, and this can be seen in the cult of Freemasonry itself. That women as such have absolutely equal rights is not recognized by legitimate Freemasonry. It is the case that the cult of Freemasonry is such that it could not be practised in common [with women].
But since the middle of the 15th century, we have been developing more and more towards the unfolding of the consciousness soul, and in relation to the consciousness soul, such a differentiation no longer exists; the qualities of both sides [of man and woman] flow entirely into a unified configuration. It is, of course, not correct when, within certain movements that also take the position of reincarnation, one repeatedly finds that women – with rare exceptions – when they list their past incarnations – which of course is mostly fantasy – then list only women, while men list only men. These are, of course, things that are based on fantasy. It is of course the case that the successive earthly lives are experienced in different genders. So that is what I have to say first about such a matter, which is always problematic and must always be unsatisfactory, with regard to the position of women. Do you (to Gertrud Spörri) have anything else in particular in this direction that you would like to discuss?
Rudolf Steiner: Whether a woman today has the opportunity to establish independent communities? Yes, you know, I believe that women will not only have the opportunity to found independent communities, but that it will sometimes even be relatively easy for women to found independent communities. They just have to be sustainable, that is, women will have to prove themselves. She will be able to found communities relatively easily, but she will have to reflect on what is a little sensational, a little novel, and so on. But we must not exclude these latter things just because we are afraid of them; we must rise above them. I am rather afraid that at first it could go for the world as it has gone for the anthroposophical movement, where, in newspaper reports, when there is an anthroposophical lecture somewhere, it is usually calculated that there are so many women in it and only very few men. In general, this has also been the case in reality, in that women are much more easily able to found groups, circles and so on. So that does make itself felt. I have always said that when it was emphasized that there were often more women than men, it was not the women's fault. They were quite right to do so, but if the men find it necessary to play cards and therefore stay away, then it is the men's fault. It does not testify to a strongly developed spirit in men, but to a backwardness in men. You have to be clear about that. Now, this sometimes occurs in an extremely disturbing way in the anthroposophical movement, in that women quickly find their way into it, but sometimes the depth of their finding their way in is lacking because the active, the will element, is missing. Therefore, when forming a community, a wise self-education of this element of knowledge and, in the beginning, a certain reserved element will be called for, I think. Perhaps it will be a matter of tact and then has to develop in cooperation with the central leadership, so that in the beginning women do not found ninety percent of the communities and only ten percent the men. Yes, you could experience that under certain circumstances, and it would not be wise if it happened that way. But that we have to fear that women will be less successful than men in founding communities is not something I think will happen. It will certainly not be the case that the women's churches would be attended only by women, that is, more than is now the case with the men's churches, because some churches are indeed attended by a majority of women; so nothing special needs to change there. We must be quite aware that in Central Europe, where it is a matter of attributing to women alone the ability to bring a certain kind of divine revelation from the supersensible world into the sensory world, only a light veil lies over the old conditions with regard to the things at issue here. The WALA principle is something that is absolutely true here and that, when it is resurrected in a dignified way, is not something that needs to be looked at with a jaundiced eye. But there are a whole bunch of questions here.
Rudolf Steiner: In what way would you like to know about this question?
Rudolf Steiner: We will discuss the funeral ritual tomorrow. Well, for spiritual scientific-anthroposophical research, it turns out that the human being is still connected to the physical-earthly conditions after death and that one can imagine this connection in a very specific way because one can observe it. However, it must be clear that life here on earth in relation to life after death is often something like a cause in relation to an effect. Let us assume that a family man has died, he was a materialist, but he led a life otherwise that he, for example, was very much absorbed in his love for his children. In the beginning there is a certain difficulty for those who are left behind to approach the soul of the dead person with prayers or meditations, because the dead person initially only perceives what he experienced up to his death, so that he perceives, let's say, his wife and children insofar as their life developed up to the moment he died. A wall opens up to the present experiences, to the present being of the bereaved, so that it is extremely difficult for the deceased to experience the connection with his relatives in the immediate present. It seems as if he can only get to this particular point in time, and then it stops; it is like a memory that has been torn away. But this shows, of course, that it has a meaning how the soul's attitude towards the spiritual world [in life] has been. You cannot be materialistic or spiritual without consequences for life after death. In people who are spiritually minded, it is immediately apparent [after death] that they can have an immediate connection with those who have remained behind. Now today, the human being's ability to experience anything supernatural is extremely coarse. People can hardly develop any kind of feeling for the numerous influences from the spiritual world, so that the real connection with the dead, which many seek and which is quite possible – not in the sense of an ordinary trivial interpretation, of course – is made more difficult. One can help oneself to strengthen and increase the sensitivity for these things through meditation, for example in the following direction: Imagine that you have decided to go out on a certain day, let's say at 11 o'clock; now someone comes and delays you by half an hour. Afterwards you discover that if you had left half an hour earlier, you would have found a ride, for example, and then you hear that everyone was killed in the accident – so you would have been killed too. I believe it is absolutely certain that a great many people did not die in the Paris disaster these days because they were prevented from doing so. Don't you read the newspapers? A large number of people have been killed in the Paris subway. When you think about such things, you will see how extraordinarily little man, in judging his life, takes into account the things from which he is protected. We live for the moment and only pay attention to what happens to us. We never perceive what we are protected from. Of course, it is difficult to prove something positively when you live in the spiritual world. I have already pointed out the following: Suppose I advise someone who is ill – let's say he is 40 years old – not to drink wine and not to eat meat. He dies at 48; now people say: He died young, even though he didn't eat meat or drink wine for the last eight years. But who can say whether he wouldn't have died at 44 if he had eaten meat and drunk wine? What people so carelessly call 'proving' is extraordinarily difficult when it comes to things in the supersensible world, but precisely reflecting on such things increases our sensitivity to the intrusion of the supersensible world into the sensual world. I only mention this because there can still be very little understanding of this relationship with the dead today, especially in the West. Of course, this does not prevent us from cultivating this relationship with the dead in such a way, and it is particularly effective if we cultivate this relationship with the dead in such a way that we try to live in such thoughts in which the dead can also easily live, and these are never abstract thoughts. The more abstract a thought is, the less the dead person can have such a thought in common with us. These things are all very difficult to express when I am trying to make myself understood. For example, there are no nouns for the dead; the dead do not know non-nouns, which are the most abstract words. They still know verbs, but mainly those that are spoken from the heart. That is tangible for them. Then he can experience what is specifically vivid. So if you immerse yourself in something that you experienced with the dead person in all concreteness here on earth, let's say you remember that you were on a walk with him, he picked up an ear of corn, he spoke something —, and you remember it down to the smallest nuance, then the dead person can have the thought [with you]. All these are preparations for developing a relationship with the dead. We can then also read out loud to the dead person everything that relates to the spiritual world, as I always call it. If we simply imagine in a concrete way that the dead person is present and we read something, but as I said, it must relate to the spiritual world, then he can develop a connection with us. I would feel untrue if I did not first communicate these things, which are concrete observations of spiritual science, to you, because then you will know that the assertions of spiritual science with regard to the dead refer to concrete things. One also has the possibility of bringing about the turning to the dead especially by supporting what the dead person takes with him in a spiritual relationship. I can tell you that it is extremely important to relate to the dead person in the following way: Immediately after death, right away, the person experiences a streaming memory of their life here, which does not proceed like an ordinary memory because, as I said, it is much more fluid, but it contains everything specific in this memory picture. If we then inwardly say something to the dead person that is in this memory picture, then that is an element, a force, which can now also contribute to his particular well-being, which will particularly satisfy him. All this shows you that we as people on earth can do something to come into a special relationship with the dead. From this you can see that anthroposophical spiritual science must definitely speak of the fact that everything we feel inwardly for the dead is something real. A funeral ritual, for example, is something absolutely real. In a similar way to how we initiate something for life here between birth and death through a baptismal ritual. We give something to the dead when we direct our thoughts to them, thoughts that are multiplied a hundredfold in the community, not just added up, but multiplied many times over. What is directed to the dead in this way is something that falls into the dead person's field of vision and enriches the dead inwardly. Just don't say that we are interfering with their karma. If you gave someone 500 marks – I don't know how much that is worth today – so that he could make an Italian journey and visit the art galleries in Italy, that was not at all an unlawful interference with his karma; it was something perfectly permissible, although it has something to do with his karma. And so it is also not an unlawful interference with karma when we do something for the dead. It is indeed an embellishment, an elevation, an enrichment for the life of the 'dead, when thoughts or actions or the like, clothed in ritual, flow from us to the dead, but it must remain the intercourse with the dead in the inner life of the soul. A great deal of nonsense has been done with spiritualism, also in other respects. In recent times, in particular, communication with the dead through spiritualism has been brought into a terrible situation. You know that spiritist séances are mainly used to communicate with the dead. Now, of course, most of what comes to light in spiritist séances is false, but despite all the falsity, there remains a certain residue that should not be cultivated, because it is something that always brings a person down, not up. If a person does not develop in a higher world, but allows the ordinary world to enter deeper into himself, a kind of pathological relationship with the spiritual world can arise. This is, as a rule, also the case with mediums, who very often succeed in approaching the dead through suggestion. You will understand that all kinds of illusions must arise. It is, of course, absolute nonsense to believe that the dead are able to use speech and writing in the way that is manifested in spoken or even written communications. That is, of course, complete nonsense. What comes to light is only transformed by the medium. Imagine that we were all sitting here together in peace, when the floor opened up and a menagerie of lions came up into this room. Imagine that vividly! Just as it would look here if a menagerie of lions came up through a floor opening, so it is for the dead when we enter their realm in a spiritualistic way with all that we are as human beings here. It is an entirely accurate image. The dead suffer as a result if the contact is real. It is irresponsible what can be achieved through spiritualism. Communication with the dead must remain entirely within the soul realm. In this context, it is only ever appropriate to address prayers to the dead when there is a tendency to find a bridge to the dead, and that meditation, ritual acts and so on are also directed towards the dead, so that one can relate to the dead on a spiritual level. In this way, both the world in which the dead find themselves and the world in which the living find themselves are served; that is, those who are living on earth; for much of what people, without having a real idea of its origin, summarize in the word “genius” is in reality an inspiration from the dead, who find their way into the thoughts of men. So what we develop in relation to the dead in cult, in prayer, in meditation, these are absolutely justified things.
Rudolf Steiner: In general, I can say that when thinking of the dead, when praying for the dead, the place plays an extraordinarily small role. It can indeed happen that the dead person has a strong longing for earthly life, then he would develop a certain longing for the place and also have a point of reference for being met there, if I may say so, where he was last thought of in community. It could be that way roundabout, but apart from that, one cannot say that the place, or even the place where someone is buried, has a great influence on what we can do for the dead. It is indeed the case, is it not, that in the festivals of the dead, especially in the All Souls' festivals, in a certain way the dead are almost brought to their graves, but that is actually something more for the living than for the dead. Here I must again take up the thought I expressed earlier. The dead man does indeed reach out to the living in his effectiveness, and we can certainly say: the dead man takes part in the world, as we take part in the most eminent sense in the spiritual world, and it can have a certain significance for the living when they develop their memories and their thoughts at the grave, in connection with the grave. This was naturally the case with the martyrs, the so-called saints. In the early centuries of Christianity, worship was performed at the graves primarily not for the sake of the dead, but for the sake of those who had been left behind. The altar still has the form of a grave, and this is a relic of the time when the service of the supersensible was already a kind of cult of the ancestors; and this is how it must be judged in the early times of Christianity. It is more for the living than for the dead.
Rudolf Steiner: The funeral service is essentially one of the things that can be done ritually for the dead. Now it is the case that the funeral service should of course be read soon after the “death, and that is also good because the etheric body and the astral body still interact then. The etheric body is discarded very soon after death, so that the requiem, if it falls into the time when the person still has his etheric body or at least has not discarded it for long, still has a very strong subjective meaning for him. Regarding the other question, I would like to ask you to take into consideration that a person, on the one hand, has to consider the objective facts and, on the other hand, his or her ability to perceive. Certainly, if someone died thirty years ago, he or she is no longer as intimately connected to the earth as if he or she died three days ago, that is certain. But there is a connection, and it is only a question of the fact that after thirty years it is difficult for a person here to establish the connection. I cannot find that it does not coincide a little with earthly development, because I have met a great many people in whom the first intense pain, which may have been stormy in expression, after they lost someone, was very subdued after thirty years, but I have never met anyone in whom the pain would have increased. Circumstances arise in the lives of those who have been left behind that are quite contrary to the fact that in later years the connecting bridge can still be as lively as in previous years. But if someone asks me whether the dead person comes out of the earthly sphere completely after thirty years or after an even longer time, then I must always say no; there can be no question of that. The world is such that everything is together in it; it is quite the case that we could just as easily perform rituals or ceremonies for the dead after thirty or fifty years as we could earlier. This is to be firmly held.
Rudolf Steiner: “What do those who are baptized for the dead do? If the dead do not rise, why are they baptized for the dead?” — What kind of question is that?
Rudolf Steiner: What kind of influence do you mean?
Rudolf Steiner: What do those who get baptized for the dead do if the dead do not rise at all? – Is it not the question of resurrection for you? Well, it is not, because here it is a matter of the idea of resurrection being the underlying assumption, and then of our taking it very seriously that the dead person has a relationship with the living, with those living here on earth. If the dead person has an ongoing life, then this life is modified in the most diverse ways, and if his life was such in Christ, then the connection that remains with the dead person is indeed a strengthening element for us. We can therefore say the following: Let us assume that we have known someone who was particularly significant in some way. I do not want to talk about spiritual or psychological qualities, but only about a significant person who has died and with whom we ourselves have a living connection in the way we can, emotionally, in thought. I will start from something else first. You will gain extraordinary strength if you develop a living pedagogy, namely strength that can be used to make children receptive to certain admonitions when you educate, as it were, in the name of a dead person. If you just have the strength to do that, for example, to walk around the classroom and bring this connection with the dead person to life within you, it will give you the strength to make the children receptive to admonitions. In this way, you will also gain a special strength for the rite for that which is to be attained through baptism – baptism is emphasized here because it aims to lead the person into the Christian community – if you gain strength through the dead. It is natural that this is cited by the founder of Christianity, for the reason that all of Christianity, including dead Christianity, should work in the continuation of Christianity, so that all those who have gone out of the world through death should be co-helpers in properly guiding those who are born into the Christian community. That is what I would like to summarize.
Rudolf Steiner: Yes, according to the experiences one can have, it is the case that the most real relationships emerge when they are built on real relationships in life before death. In general, if I may express it this way, dying is as follows: when the individual dies, he steps out of his physical shell, and what he has experienced in the physical shell is often the cause of what he then experiences [as an effect after death]. That is just the way it is: after death, he is dependent on what he has experienced in the physical shell. What he can experience through the physical shell falls away, he acquires other perceptual abilities, but he slips out of the shell, so to speak. It is the same with the relationships that a person has entered into with other people in life; these relationships have developed, they are mediated through our physical existence here, but when we slip out of the shell, the relationships continue. If one can have experiences in this area, one really has to say: the more concrete the relationships were in life, the more concrete the relationships are with the dead person. But there is something else to consider. Above all, it must be considered that relationships are formed between the dead person and a new birth itself. So the person then develops new perceptions, but he forms emotional relationships, so that when the person comes down from the pre-existent life with human relationships – and in fact our real human relationships are much greater than we actually believe – one cannot say that the general relationship that is developed through such things as you have in mind would be completely fruitless. It is true that, for example, the members of a church community also establish relationships for their afterlife, but the other things are by no means fruitless, that much can be said. Such things can really only be determined from experience, but the concrete aspect plays a much greater role.
Rudolf Steiner: In this respect, we have indeed had a certain experience. Was it not necessary for me to follow a call to Stuttgart in April 1919 and to advocate there in Germany for the threefold social order movement, just as the view of the threefold structure of the social organism arose for me from the foundations of experience to be cultivated through spiritual science? I had to regard it absolutely as something that was a task for precisely this point in time. Before I left Switzerland, a man came to me who wanted to sign the appeal I had written and said that I must tell him more than was in the appeal. The Kernpunkte had not yet appeared at that time. He thought that something must arise that could be counted on, something like the second German revolution. I asked him: Do you therefore count on the second German revolution? — He counted the one of November 1918 as the first. And just as one revolution followed another in Russia, so he counted on a second revolution and thought that I held the view that threefolding should fall into it. I told him at the time: Yes, a large number of people believe that threefolding will indeed have a rapid effect after all the events of the times. It simply has to be tried. Because if I were to say that it cannot have a rapid effect, it would not be done, and then it will not be possible to prove to anyone that if it had been done, it would have had a very good effect for the benefit of all humanity. I told him: Just as one can overlook something in an ordinary context, so can some things also escape one in a spiritual field. There may be factors that make a second German revolution promising, but I do not believe at all in an acute second revolution, but in a continuity that would make it impossible to count on a second revolution as a serious factor. I do not believe that there is any real basis for such things. Well, the development of the years has also proved this view right, and the result was that, at first, the threefold order progressed relatively quickly. Then it faltered, and obstacles arose from various sides, which I do not want to discuss with you now. On the other hand, a certain connection with the proletariat has been created precisely through the threefolding movement, and this connection has brought anthroposophy into the proletariat in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. I would like to say that anthroposophy has remained, and that threefolding has passed by the proletariat. It has been shown that there is a very strong interest among the urban proletariat in getting to know these things. I have already mentioned another thing to you. If we had not been able to give anthroposophical religious education in the Waldorf school, always in harmony with the parents' views, never against them, the vast majority [of children] would have been left without religious education. With anthroposophical religious education, it is the case that the teachers say: We can't keep up, we are not able to have a sufficient number of teachers [for religious education]. It might even look a bit malicious if I were to say that the other RE teachers sometimes express their displeasure: Yes, if they keep it up like this, all the children will run away from us. But we can't help it, the blame must lie with someone, I won't say who, but I think it lies with someone else. So you see again that there is actually a strong pull in the direction that can come into the world through anthroposophy. So I am not at all worried about the urban population. I believe that the communities you will be able to found will indeed attract a large influx of people from the proletariat in particular. Experience shows this quite clearly, and the whole constitution of the proletarian soul today shows it, as one has experienced in the last time. It is really the case that the proletariat today is something different than it was in 1914. If you grasp it in the right way, it is very accessible to a religious deepening, it is really longing for it. The situation is more difficult, however, with the rural population, but with the rural population it is more difficult in all areas. The rural population is very stubborn, very conservative and will in fact hardly be won over to a reasonable further development in any other way than by the fact that those who are their leaders gradually become reasonable, which of course causes terrible difficulties with certain sides. Today, one must actually say that it would be relatively easy to make progress with the led — I mean, as a general phenomenon — if only the leaders would bite, but they are so terribly comfortable. With regard to the rural population, the leaders would just have to bite, we would have to overcome the leaders' complacency. Then the question of the rural population would also be solved, because it will quickly be solved if the question is resolved there as a pastor. In the cities, pastors will be forced to be progressive because the churches will gradually remain empty. In the countryside, it is a matter of winning over the leaders. Now, my dear friends, I cannot interfere in this matter given our situation here, because it is a question of how quickly it will be possible for those who are actually, I do not want to say for a hasty, but for an energetic approach, in the real sense, that is, future pastors, to be able to shape the leadership in their own way. That is what one has to say about it. Is your question going in a different direction?
Rudolf Steiner: That is quite certain. It is only important to know how to treat the proletariat. Of course — as can also be seen from the first chapter of my 'Key Points' — the qualities that have developed in the souls of the proletariat today are essentially the heirlooms of bourgeois qualities from the last centuries. The proletarian today shows no other characteristics than those he has inherited from the bourgeois. If the bourgeois has become pedantic, the proletarian has become even more pedantic; if the bourgeois has become philistine, the proletarian has become even more philistine; if the bourgeois has become materialistic, the proletarian has become even more materialistic, and so on. The dislike of ritual and ceremony that you find among the proletariat today is nothing more than the continuation of that dislike that has gradually developed in the bourgeoisie. It is also a matter of our really being able to appeal from the external to the internal, and here it must be said: anyone who looks a little deeper into the course of human development knows that, as the social question stands today, it cannot be overcome by anything other than a serious religious renewal, and that can only be found through the ceremonial. You do not even get around to developing what you need to get into the proletarian soul without the ceremonial. But the ceremonial must be honest. Here imponderables play a great role. If the ceremonial is not honest, it is impossible to bring it to bear. If it is honest, it takes the lead. I would like to say that it is not necessary to be blunt, but the ceremonial must be honest. You see, in this respect one must say: the ceremonial acts have gradually become so externalized that of course the proletarian today has only a smile for everything ceremonial. But let something come along that is honest, that is what it should be, then you will get through to people, even to the proletarian soul, perhaps even to this first of all.
Rudolf Steiner: This cannot be done theoretically, but must be taken as I have said it. We must be clear about the fact that the countryman, the farmer, is conservative, and that what is rigid in him is extremely difficult to get out of him, and this is much more common today than it used to be. I think that can be seen in a relatively short time. In the 1980s, it was still relatively easy to bring people over from the Roman Catholic Church to the Old Catholic Church. Today, it is almost unthinkable.
Rudolf Steiner: The general effect is that receptivity has actually been lost in a relatively short time, especially in the countryside to an eminent degree. In the countryside, things can only improve if we work indirectly through the priesthood. If we are able to found a community in the countryside, even if it is still small, and if this community is there and the priest really works in a priestly way, then he can gradually have this community, but of course he must be prepared for the fact that the real issue is to overcome the leaders. Of course, they cannot do anything with the people of Arlesheim as long as Pastor Kully is there. It is clear that we are talking here about the leaders. The path that can be taken at all will be to first found communities in larger towns and then to simply try to have a convincing effect on people, so that a kind of further development takes place through the pastor himself. The moment you succeed in conquering any district as a leader, it will happen. You always have to see that it does not depend on individual souls, especially not in the compact rural communities. But attempts must be made everywhere, and it will be a matter of overcoming the leaders there.
Rudolf Steiner: Please bear in mind that what you describe is only a contemporary phenomenon. Just think of the time of the peasant revolts, which were entirely religious in character. The phenomenon you describe is actually much more connected with other things in the present than merely with religious things. If you want to present anthroposophy in Regensburg and there are farmers in the audience, they will naturally come and stamp on the ground: You have nothing to say to us here, our pastor has to say that to us, and you have to shut up! —- But this is connected with the fact that today, as a result of liberalism, of man's development towards freedom, there is an enormous belief in authority, not only in the religious field, but everywhere. We have acquired this belief in authority particularly by becoming more and more liberal people. It is because liberalism has spread that we have forfeited our freedom. This is a somewhat radical statement, but it is already proving true in the most diverse areas. This has much more to do with the things that are otherwise present in life than with religious matters. Just try to imagine what would happen if a truly free spiritual life were to take hold. A free spiritual life, where, for example, the school is completely autonomous and self-sufficient, where what is done in the school is, I might say, direct revelation from the spirit, then, of course, you come to the point where, through the free spiritual life, you overcome the leading personalities with their authorities. This is something that comes to the fore most strongly in things that develop in other areas than in the religious sphere, especially in the countryside, because in the countryside the principle of authority cannot be overcome as easily in all areas as it can in cities. But I do not wish to say that religious life is unconscious in the countryside for that very reason. It is simply that everything is more rigid and submerged in what the modern age has brought forth.
Rudolf Steiner: Yes, certainly for the introduction of cults. The moment you appear with the cult, you will win the heart of the countryman much more easily than with a teaching; that is quite certain. The Catholic Church spread Christianity initially not so much through teaching as through cult, even if the teaching has flowed into external forms.
Rudolf Steiner: Which priest?
Rudolf Steiner: Yes, why do you think it can't be done?
Rudolf Steiner: This is indeed essentially overcome by a free spiritual life, as I think it is in the sense of the threefold social organism - that is, in the educational sphere according to the model of the Waldorf School through education in the free spiritual life. Don't we see the worst consequences actually coming from the lack of freedom in the spiritual life, that is, I mean now from the lack of social freedom. Just think, it was not so very long ago that there was a real and serious debate about whether or not to tolerate the Jesuits in the German Reich. Now, it is outrageous to even discuss the spiritual life from a political point of view. You will not expect me to have even a single hair left to praise the Jesuits, of course, but politically speaking, no kind of spiritual movement should be oppressed in any way if we want to advance in the general spiritual life. What have they achieved by politically fighting Jesuitism in Germany? To the same extent that they fought Jesuitism politically, to that same extent did its capacities increase from another side. Jesuitism is very astute; it has extraordinarily significant people working within it. If you want to fight it, you also have to develop sharp mental abilities. I must say that any kind of oppression of the free intellectual life leads to an oppression of the intellectual life in general. We should never think of using political measures to bind or restrict our opponents in the field of intellectual life, or anything of the sort; only in this way is it possible to really move forward. I think that when intellectual life sheds all the dark sides that still remain, for example specialization – which can be completely shed in anthroposophical education – then the pastor will actually be able to be the leader that he must be. There is simply no other way in the rural communities out there. There is no other possibility for the pastor than to really be involved in all matters concerning the community – I also want to talk about community building – he simply must be. One cannot say “he will be”, but one can say: he must be. We must say with Fichte: Man kann, was er soll, and when he says: ich kann nicht, so will er nicht. That should be our motto.
Rudolf Steiner: Tomorrow. It is no longer possible for us to continue. Tomorrow, yes. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-fourth Lecture
08 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-fourth Lecture
08 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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My dear friends! We shall now continue our discussions of the various rituals. I would just like to start by adding a discussion of the so-called Credo, which is inserted between the Gospel and the Offertory in the Catholic Mass and which plays a certain role in the confessions. Before I discuss this Credo, however, I must explain something about how the point of view from which I must treat such a Credo is to be characterized. First of all, in view of the many discussions that take place about the Credo, it must be said to what extent such a Credo can play a role at all within a confessional community of Christianity. When the Credo is discussed today, the question is often whether one should include this or that sentence or not, and how the Credo should be formulated for this or that occasion, or rather, for this or that reason for using it, and so on. Now it seems to me that a credo, that is, a confession of faith, could at most only make sense to those who are simultaneously willing to recognize that they have reasons of an inner, cognitive nature that compel them to utter such a credo or at least make it possible for them to utter such a credo. Of course, it is quite impossible to demand such a credo from a confirmand, for example, that is, to demand a credo from a confirmand at all. Is it even possible to have such discussions – as they have been held about the credo – whether a person who is perhaps 15 or 16 years old should profess one or the other, which basically cannot be understood in a lifetime? Nevertheless, the discussion proceeds from the standpoint of what can be signed by one or the other of these creeds? You have seen that the Jugendfeier ceremony that I showed you here, of course, contains nothing of such a creed. When I first treated the ritual of the Mass Sacrifice in its main parts, I pointed out that in the Catholic Church the Creed is inserted between the reading of the Gospel and the Offertory. But if one wants to either justify or refute the insertion of the Credo at this point in the Mass, then again various things must be taken into consideration. I am not here to justify or refute anything that concerns the Catholic Church, but to discuss the issues. What would have to be asserted in the face of the Creed at this point, what could be said in justification, is this: First the Gospel is read, and now the one who celebrates the Mass, who is thus the actual agent in the Mass, can give a kind of response in the Creed to what is heard as the inspired word in the Gospel. If the Mass sacrifice is now understood to mean that it is actually only the sacrifice celebrated by the ordained priest, then all the faithful who participate in this Mass sacrifice are naturally not at all connected with it – in principle – to recognize everything that the priest confesses during the act of celebration as that which lives in him. Besides, the priest also says silent masses where he is at most concerned with the others in the idea. What is expressed in the Credo of the Catholic Mass must not be understood as if it were a confession for those who participate in the sacrificial act of the Mass, sentence by sentence. It is a different matter as to what extent the Catholic Church demands confession of the Credo from its faithful. That is certainly the case to a certain extent. What is required here is actually all based on a somewhat liberal interpretation of church practice, but the idea is that the confession of the Credo is required, as I have read it to you. The Credo also forms the content of [Catholic] catechism lessons and is taught to children in the very form that I have read to you. The Credo also forms the content of a certain part of the ordination of a priest, which we shall have to discuss later. Here it takes on a completely different meaning and is undoubtedly justified in this context, since it contains what can really be advocated within the Church. Thus, it is quite impossible to demand a credo, to incline towards a credo that contains, as the usual credo does, I might say, a certain essence of world wisdom, of all world feeling and world will — for that is what is usually contained in a credo. In so far as the Catholic Credo contains this, one cannot help saying that it cannot, in the Christian sense, be taught to the faithful in the way it is. If it is to be discussed from an anthroposophical point of view, only the following can be said, because it really requires a great deal of knowledge to meaningfully accept what can be offered by a creed. Anyone who professes to believe in a pedagogy that is truly based on knowledge of human nature will never advocate teaching children only things that they immediately understand. Anyone who did so would not take into account the whole of human life; for example, he would not take into account what it means in terms of rejuvenating strength, in terms of the real influx of inner life force when, let us say, in the fortieth year of one's life one remembers something that one authority in the tenth year, and now, in the fortieth year, you say to yourself: You have come through your life experience so far that you now understand from your own inner being what you learned by heart in the tenth year. Simply the fact that you understand things later on, which you can recall from memory, means that you are receiving real vitality. Another educational theory might advocate the following: the child should not be encouraged to do anything that it cannot immediately put into practice, or perhaps one should only teach the child what its hands naturally want to do. Now, I have made this pedagogical digression so that you can see what kind of attitude can prevail in a pedagogy that is based on real human knowledge. But then, when it comes to something like the credo, the feeling must be evoked not to urge the child to believe these things, but the child must have the clear idea: the person who is dealing with him, believes in them. That is the most extreme idea that can be evoked: the person who is dealing with the child believes in it because he knows the things, and the child must also have the feeling that he can grow into an understanding of what the adult believes. Without this feeling, it is not possible to establish a community that is permeated by inner truth; but above all, this must be the case in a Christian community. Having said that, my dear friends, I would like to present to you some of the elements of a credo that could arise out of anthroposophical knowledge. I ask you to listen to it as it is meant, namely that it arises out of anthroposophical knowledge, and that anyone who has a certain anthroposophical knowledge can , but that it is really extremely difficult to find even remotely adequate words in which to express what can only come about in the course of a wide-ranging anthroposophical realization. The words must be chosen in such a way that for someone who is not immersed in the whole process from which these words ultimately arise, they are in many respects merely a sound. I have tried by every possible means to express in concise words what, according to anthroposophical conviction, should be in such a credo, but do not think that I believe I have succeeded in doing so. What needs to be said is perfectly clear to me; but it is extraordinarily difficult to put into words, because our words have lost their values in all languages, because our words are often only external signs. So, even if some of it shocks you, I would ask you to accept what I am about to read as a possible anthroposophical credo, bearing this in mind.
They naturally find in it essentially what is already contained in the traditional Creed. But I cannot help saying that in the traditional Creed, insofar as it is translated into newer languages, what is actually in it can no longer be found. That is why I tried to translate the Credo of the Catholic Mass in the way I have already read out, which I will now present again. But it is one thing to try to reconstruct what is available as tradition and quite another to try to express what can really be advocated today. In my opinion, the Credo would be translated as follows:
The word “made” is already in it, although it contradicts the Gospel of John; no other text is possible in opposition to the Gospel of John than:
But here it says further:
Well, my dear friends, it must be translated like that, but it is impossible to imprint in such words what can be experienced today originally from the spiritual worlds. The most striking fact that can prove this to you, for quite external reasons, is that in the dictionary [by Fritz Mauthner] the two most problematic articles are those about “spirit” and about “God”. This dictionary of philosophy has really emerged from the essence of more recent philological scholarship, and in this German dictionary the article “God” is treated in such a way that one must say: The deepest scholarship is no more capable of filling the word “God” with a living concept than anything else that can be found. In the very word that is most important to humanity, a word sound is pronounced that cannot be filled with a living concept if one wants to somehow arrive at the origin of the word “God” etymologically, philologically. Today's science cannot do it. Fritz Mauthner brings it together with the word “gießen” (to pour), that is, that which is poured out, which pours itself out into the world, and that would then lead back to an old word “Götze” (idol), which would be related to “Gott” (God). You see, that is the situation today with those who have spent a lot of time trying to find the origin of the word “God”. What can be said from the spiritual scientific point of view is that the word 'God' points to something that expresses a relationship, and which still resonates in the common language in individual dialects that have the word 'God': the feminine 'Godel', which is also found in the name 'Goethe', which originally was 'Goede'. It is the godfather, it is the one to whom there is a spiritual kinship. The word is intimately connected with the fact that this kinship was felt in the monotheistic sense, that the one great godfather of the world, whom one felt like the father imagined in the spirit, was contrasted with some random godfather. So the word probably grew out of primitive, monotheistic stages of religion and probably once meant in North Asia the “Ongod”, the one great godfather, and this prefix “On” definitely points to the monotheistic origin of those ideas that correspond to the word of God. So you see, anyone who chooses words with true inner conscientiousness is not in a position to utter them as lightly as is usually the case today. Empathizing with these words, living into them, must actually be a process of life. Today, when people believe that they can translate from one language into another by simply using a dictionary and then inserting the word that appears in the dictionary into the sentence, no one can have any sense of what is actually involved. This is because the word in the dictionary is usually the least useful one if you want to translate the real meaning. At best, the dictionary word can help us arrive at what is meant, and it is characteristic of this that even school dictionaries have become terribly poor in this regard over the course of fifty years. We are hardly familiar with all the dictionary blunders that have been made since then. But now we find in this creed, in addition to “he who is God of God, true God of true God”, also “light from light”. Now, my dear friends, perhaps twenty or twenty-one years ago I once wrote an essay that contained something like the following. I wrote: In physics, light is spoken of as if it were given as a gift; but I ask: has light ever been seen? You can see colors; all colors, including white, are something that arises from light, but light is something that no one can see with their eyes. It is the mediator of seeing objects in color, but light itself remains invisible in the light-filled space. Just imagine standing in the middle of a room that contains no objects, only light. Would you see anything? You would be just as if in darkness, only you would feel differently, but you could not see the light. Everywhere one speaks as if one could see the light. Physics has — most terrible of horrors — instead of a color theory a light theory. They know, of course, what light is: wave motion. Now imagine that and compare it with the idea of light that you cannot have from external experience, then you will see what significance such a theory has. This is roughly how modern man must feel in his truth when he hears the words “light from light”. Now there is a sentence in the Creed which, if it is a mere translation, cannot be translated differently than as it stands here: “Father, through whom all things were made” contradicts the Gospel of John, because there it explicitly states that all things that have been made were made through the Logos. But “Descended, but not produced” - yes, my dear friends, for this you need a broad knowledge to understand such a thing, which was certainly useful at the time when the last creeds were written in this way, but which can no longer be used directly today. Therefore, I cannot express what is behind this other than by saying:
which does not refer to a birth in time, but indicates that the Word is now born and must not now be taken in the sense in which it is usually taken.
I cannot get any other text than this:
If it is desired, we can also talk about the virgin birth in another context that does not belong to the ritual.
Now, it is the case that one must express it in this way:
Yes, now it continues:
These are, of course, ideas that must be given correctly:
[In the translation of the Credo]:
So, as I said, I cannot say anything other than what I have shared here with regard to what can now, with all the difficulties, be summarized from anthroposophical foundations as a real credo. You can regard what is summarized here in such a way that it can truly be signed off in the sense of anthroposophical knowledge in every single word, if the word is now really taken with all its inner values. For it turns out that this anthroposophical insight, too, requires us to hold fast to the idea of resurrection, and to hold fast to what we encounter in the words that you also find in the Catholic Creed, at least in most versions, namely that Christ descended to the dead – or as it is also called, “into hell”. I had to express this by saying:
It is indeed a fact that is perfectly recognizable to spiritual science that not only does the evolution of the living take place in all its differentiation in the successive epochs of earthly existence, as you know from anthroposophical descriptions, but that the life of the dead also evolves. And this life of the dead at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was such that the ancient Greek saying, which was connected with the Mysteries of that time, was indeed true: better a beggar in the Upper World than a king in the realm of shadows – that is, the dead, for the dead in those days were in danger of losing the divine, the astral, that which was present in humanity, and they had to give up their divine existence altogether. The Christ came to them to save their lives. This is truly not at all a reminiscence from Catholicism, as one might easily believe when spiritual science presents it. A very clever person of the present day, a philosophically educated person, as they are called today, would necessarily say that only someone who experiences it as a reminiscence would come up with something like that. Well, I can give you the assurance that I never had the opportunity to experience Catholic reminiscences, but I had to be forced by the knowledge of the facts of the supersensible world to each of these things. If the formation of new communities in the Christian sense is at issue, then I do believe that this Credo could initially serve as a basis for the cohesion of the communities through the leading priestly figures. But I also believe something else: I believe that long theological studies on the exegesis or interpretation of what is contained in this Credo should be established, at least for those who want to prepare for the priesthood. I cannot believe otherwise, because these things can indeed only be achieved step by step, and because it seems to me that after a certain transitional period – if, as I hope, the revival of religious life, as it is being pursued by our friends, is successful – then indeed the theological study must be established afterwards. And then it seems to me that a few years of theological study will be necessary to understand the Credo. But if this will evoke a true sense of truth in the person, it will naturally prevent demanding a credo or the like from confirmands.
Rudolf Steiner:
Please note that here the two words are combined: Earlier was “Christ”, and then was “Jesus”. Now the two words are combined here:
I can only express it this way.
And now, before I go further in discussing the sacrifice of the Mass, which after all has already been discussed in its four main parts, I would like you to see how the things we are dealing with here can also lead to the living word of the gospel being incorporated into everything , talk about how a funeral ritual can come about, and specifically the funeral ritual that our friend, Pastor Schuster, used at funerals in my presence, so that for me the use is thoroughly tried and tested from direct observation. This funeral rite, which can also be used for cremations, has the following content. First, the part that is performed at the house of the deceased. It is, as it seems to me, as befits a funeral rite, simple:
The Lord's Prayer is now recited. After the Lord's Prayer:
— here the name is mentioned —
Now follows a sprinkling with holy water. This is the ceremony in the house.
The sign of the cross is made over the grave or the cremation site, then the following is spoken:
And now follows the Lord's Prayer again. After:
The Weihwedels are dipped into the Weihwasserfaß and the corpse, or rather what it is in, is sprinkled with holy water:
— so it is spoken further —
Incense is poured over the corpse.
This funeral ritual could basically be understood as an adaptation of common funeral rituals. As I said, it is a tried and tested funeral ritual. When this funeral ritual is spoken with the right attitude, it is actually the spiritual processes that are at work, those that best guide the soul of the dead person from the world of physical existence into the world of spiritual existence. When we speak of a ritual, it really is a matter of living in it to the full, according to one's ability and capacity, in the things that are at stake. There is much to be learned from what has been handed down. For example, there is a great deal to be learned from studying the ancient church constitutions regarding the performance of the sign of the cross by the faithful and by the priest. The faithful make the sign of the cross by saying: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The sign of the cross is made on the forehead for the Father, on the chin for the Son, and on the chest for the Holy Spirit. The priest does not make the sign of the cross in this way, but rather makes the sign in one go over the whole upper body. This is meant to point to a profound mystery, I would say to that mystery that shows us how the one who is on the way to becoming immersed in life, which must be called the religious life, feels in a different way than the one who has reached the end of this path to a certain degree. These two different signs of the cross show that it requires a profound experience to gradually find the three in the one. Of course, my dear friends, I have an understanding and perhaps I may even say a heart for all the criticisms that have been raised against the fact that three should be one and one three in the divine Trinity. I have an understanding and a heart for it, and I can understand it in the case of anyone, whether it be a person who today, let us say, is one of the very clever, or the youthful, high-spirited Goethe. But true understanding of these things lies so deep that critical discussion of them is usually nothing more than proof that one has no access to understanding. You see, it is easy to say that three is not one. Arithmetic certainly teaches that, and the outer sensory perception also teaches that. But this arithmetic, which we only carry into the outer sensory perception, is, after all, first shaped by ourselves on the basis of this outer sensory perception. And the arithmetic we have today does not go back very far in the history of humanity. Even Pythagoreanism, which lies only a few hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, cannot be understood from the present-day arithmetic. For how does present-day arithmetic count? One, two, three. Each is one, and all three are just three. That is how you count. If you just adjust your counting for the physical world, it is quite good. But this counting loses all meaning when you want to apply it to the supersensible world. There you have to count quite differently. Of course you can enter the supersensible world and, if you calculate that which is inspired there in much the same way as you calculate things on earth, then you can apply earthly arithmetic; of course you can apply it, but you won't gain anything from it. There is no need to count money there, and you would get nothing out of the other things if you were to treat them with arithmetic as in the physical world and count them in an earthly way. You have to count differently there, I can only sensualize it (it is drawn on the board): [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Here you have everywhere \(1=1\), \(1=2\), \(1=3\), \(1=4\), and so on. Not the law of counting, but the law of analysis is the one that allows for real practical application in the world of the soul — not just in the intellectual world. While we can manage with counting here in the physical world, when we synthesize, the arithmetic of the supersensible is an analytical one. The point here is that all numbers are contained in the one. And it will only be possible to study psychology again when the dreadful doctrine of association, which is a subjective thing where one thought is added to another, which does not correspond to reality in the slightest, has finally been removed from the doctrine of the soul. For one is dealing [in the supersensible] with such processes that can only be grasped by such counting and calculating, where unity includes every number. Only when one begins to understand how that which is a unity in a higher world, which can be seen as a unity, actually appears as three in a lower world, does one gradually begin to understand the mystery of three in one and one in three, although it is by no means merely something arithmetic. The arithmetic is only the very least, the beginning of these things. When we enter into the qualitative, which is also contained in the God of the Trinity, then we must also come to count in this way (it is written on the board): That is, one must proceed to qualitative counting, and qualitative counting is something that is connected with the inner nature of things. Qualitative counting always leads to concrete differentiations, while our synthetic counting leads more and more to abstractions. Try to use today's usual synthetic counting: 1 apple, 2 apples, 3 apples. Well, yes. But if there is an apple, a pear and a plum here, you can no longer remain in the concrete when you add them up: 1, 2, 3; you cannot say that there are 3 apples or 3 pears or 3 plums, but at most you can say that there are 3 pieces, which means that you are entering into the abstract. It is precisely the opposite path that quantitative arithmetic takes to qualitative arithmetic, which leads more and more into the concrete. It has a creative element in the concept of the number contained in the sentence: “For God has ordered the world according to measure, number and weight”. He certainly did not order it like a general orders his troops, but according to the creative, qualitative, analytical order of numbers. If you say that such things are not necessary today, because we can develop a good religious life without knowing these things, then I say to you: certainly, all this may apply to the faithful, but the pastor must know these things because he must fulfill his task in harmony with the whole course of human development. He must know that these things have a very real significance. Let me give you an example of where these things can have a very real meaning today. You see, today you learn the Copernican theory of the world at an early age. This Copernican theory of the world is traced back to two sentences of Copernicus, while his third sentence is always suppressed. What today's astronomers do is this: they add up the revolutions of the earth around itself. These rotations of the Earth around itself, around its axis, are now made each year in the path of an ellipse, progressively, over the course of 365 days to 24 hours. But while the Earth is turning around itself, astronomers say that it turns around itself yet another time. You can imagine it like this: When you turn around on your own axis, you make one revolution when you are back to where you started. But if you simultaneously turn around a central point or an interior, you have to turn a little further than one revolution each time. If you now add up 365 plus one, you do not realize that in the world things are different than when a person turns around like that. When the Earth or the world turns once, then the matter becomes concrete, then you have to say: 365 Earth days plus one world day; and if you add that up to 366, it is exactly the same as if you add up 4 pears and 1 apple gives 5 pears. And the error that underlies this has led to the fact that even today people believe that the earth revolves around the sun in the course of a year, which is not the case in reality. It follows behind the sun in a curve, the sun moves in a spiral – (during the following demonstration, it is demonstrated on the board) – the earth follows it in the same spiral. If you look at it this way, the sun is on the line when the sun has set and the earth is here, so look at it this way; this creates the illusion that the earth is moving around the sun. In reality, it follows it in a spiral. I only mention this, of course I cannot explain it in the breadth in which it should be explained, but it is actually based essentially on a lack of insight into the way in which creating arithmetic and creating geometry work in relation to that which we use as arithmetic and geometry applicable to the sensory world. One must know how little it is right to simply take up the scientific concepts of today; the most important ones are not right. They can easily be taught to people; one can then move from this rolling [of the earth] around the sun to the circling of a nebula, as in the Kant-Laplacean theory and the splitting off [of the solar system] from it. This can even be done very vividly; the object lesson in the sense of today's pedagogy can achieve anything, can't it? You take water and alcohol and let a ball form out of a substance that floats on water, an oil ball, take a piece of a map that you stick with a pin exactly in the middle of the ball. Now you start turning: Tiny spheres separate out and the miniature world system is created. Why shouldn't it be the same outside? For the simple reason that it would be necessary for the great teacher to stand there and stick the giant pin through. When describing an observation, one must describe it very precisely. Otherwise, unselfishness is very good, but this omission of the teacher from an experiment is scientifically far too much unselfishness; because he is there and he must not be denied. It is true that anyone approaching the renewal of religious life must deal very thoroughly with all those things that today confuse the concepts, that create such confused concepts. He must deal with the fact that they are held to with no less authority than the concepts that are church dogmas. For truly, the Trinity has never been more firmly believed in than modern people believe in such world theories, and they do the latter not with more reason than the others have done or do the former. Today, the belief in authority is only attracted to a different area. And people are truly white ravens when they talk like Herman Grimm – I think I have already told you – who, with reference to the Kant-Laplacean theory, said that a carrion bone around which a hungry dog circles is to be regarded as a more appetizing piece than this world theory, the madness of which later times would wonder at, and will wonder at the fact that this delusion in a time like ours could be adopted by wide circles. Understanding this will one day become a difficult problem for the cultural history of later times. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-fifth Lecture
08 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-fifth Lecture
08 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, we will first address the question: can the new mass also be read or is a free recitation possible with it and with the other acts? What needs to be said first is this: I naturally had to present the essence of the mass to you and essentially had to present the texts for the four main sections. In a complete mass, the idea is that certain parts and the whole structure of the mass are constructed in a similar way – as I will show – to the sequence of breviary prayers. So you have the complete text of the mass, varying according to the time of year. However, the main things always remain the same, so that if you have to say Mass, you will have to refer to the Missal, which is of course available, and according to common usage there is actually no other way of saying Mass than reading it. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable to know the Mass by heart, but it is not usually done. There is basically no real reason to think that it would be necessary to either read the mass or recite it by heart. It says here: Is the new mass also to be read or is extemporaneous delivery to be aimed for with it and with the other acts? — Extemporaneous delivery is not necessary for the other acts either; it can be read quite well. It is always very nice when our Waldorf school celebrant delivers the free speech in essence, but I have rarely seen anything in the Roman Catholic Church that was part of the liturgy delivered freely. The next question: the meaning and use of church music in the mass. - Well, an ordinary silent mass can certainly be performed in such a way that one is only dealing with a kind of reading, but originally a mass is actually associated with the recitative of the text, so that at the real liturgical mass one is dealing with a recitation of the mass according to notes. In the missal, you will therefore also find notes if the mass is to be celebrated in a truly liturgical manner. So the text itself is to be read in a recitative-like manner, but in addition, the mass is to be thought of as thoroughly musical, so that in a truly solemn mass, the motifs can also be set to music and the organ music, as well as other music and singing, should play a role. Regarding the question of congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony: these things, congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony, should not actually disappear from the action; on the contrary, they should be further developed. Congregational singing as such is essentially designed to increase the sense of community, just as the musical and vocal element should not be underestimated. We are too accustomed to regarding language merely as a means of expressing something. When we speak as we are accustomed to doing today, language is essentially only suitable for expressing abstract or sensual things, but it is not really an instrument for expressing the supersensible. You will notice when I express in my lectures that which is to be expressed directly through language as supersensible, that I then try to shape the language and approach a matter from different sides. Rhythm, musicality in general, and the musical-thematic element in particular, is what actually leads us into the supersensible world. In a poem, the prosaic, literal content is basically not what one should look at if one wants the artistic element. Recitation and declamation — I always say this with reference to our eurythmy performances — is completely misunderstood today. The art of recitation and declamation does not lie in emphasizing the content of the prose, but in bringing in the rhythmic and musical and musical-thematic, and thus basically also in the painting of the sound and so on. We should therefore work towards ensuring that this treatment of language and this elevation of the linguistic to song, to the musical, should not only not disappear, but should be developed more and more.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, it is not quite so easy to put together a collection of sermon texts in this way. But apart from that, it does not seem to me to be something desirable in the end, that such prescribed sermon texts are handed out. It would perhaps even be good, I think, if you want to build community in such a way that not only the individual communities build community, but that you build a community of pastors, if you were to swear, by some means to be agreed upon, never to adhere to such prescribed sermon texts. By doing so, you would make a significant contribution to revitalizing what you are actually supposed to do. Because you can be quite sure of this: anyone who needs prescribed sermons, who absolutely must have them, should actually be considered a bad preacher, and anyone who can write their own sermons but still likes to use a sermon text as a leader is forgetting how to preach and becoming lazy. It is really a matter of understanding the sermon in a different way, which is not how I have often seen it. You see, in preaching, it is important to be familiar with the Christian doctrine, but also to have a certain command of symbols and images, in the sense that I mentioned last week, and in this way to actually do the work in such a way that you can draw on what can enliven the sermon. Of course, one cannot expect everyone to speak about everything under inspiration, but one must at least strive for the following kind of preparation for preaching: the point is to have the text as such, but one should actually have found it alive, so that the task is then to address the topic; then the preparation should be a kind of meditation. It should consist in devotion to the subject, not in the elaboration of the individual word, but in devotion to the subject. If we really develop this devotion to the subject, then we grow much more together with the matter than if we try to chisel out the word and the like. Of course, there are all sorts of gradations. Dr. Rittelmeyer recently told the story of how two preachers once discussed whether they delivered their sermons under inspiration. One said: “Well, I deliver all my sermons under inspiration.” The other said, ‘No, I don't do that anymore; the only time I waited for the Holy Spirit was when He said, ’You're a lazy slut!' Now, these things are of course different according to human abilities. But it is certainly true that we learn to do our preaching better and better if we do it the way I have just indicated. The next question: The word of Jesus: Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. This saying should be considered in connection with another Bible saying, namely, “Be ye good, as your heavenly Father is good.” You see, these two sayings are only really understandable in context, although they seem to contradict each other. Why, no one is good but God alone. But now, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Now, if you want to grasp the aspiration, the tendency in man that leads to the good – and with regard to the good, of course, the Christ must be the guide – if you want to understand this tendency, this leading to the good, then you must really grasp that the idea that one can be good impairs being good through and through. Nothing detracts so much from real goodness or at least from the pursuit of goodness as the opinion that one can achieve the good. The good is something that man can only aspire to by presenting it in such a way that, to a certain extent, the model of goodness is unattainable for him. While Christ actually wants to awaken the mood of striving for the good with such words, He presents it in such a way that one should not call Him good, but that one should call the origin of the world good as united in God, thus in Father, Son and Spirit, but not Him as He walks around on earth, even if He lives and is inspired by Christ. He rejects the idea of simply calling that which is walking around on earth good, no matter how strongly it is inspired by the spiritual, because only the pursuit of the good actually constitutes the good, and one cannot truly pursue the good if one does not move it away from oneself into an objective. Therefore, subjective ethics, the autonomy of ethics, subjective autonomous ethics, is never really a real instruction for the good. So let us understand this connection of the two sayings: Man should strive for a perfection as the Father in heaven is, but never imagine that he can be good. Only the Almighty God is good. So it is a practical instruction for the practice of good deeds. You see, this is a very broad subject. It becomes especially clear when people want to have an explanation of what is called repentance for sins in religious practice, especially in Catholic religious practice. Repentance for sins very often has an extremely selfish coloring, and people should be instructed to bring this selfish tendency out of repentance. What does the feeling of repentance often consist of? It consists in wanting to have been a better person than one actually was. This “wanting to be a better person than one actually was” contains something that, in essence, contradicts a morality imbued with Christ. One must, in essence, take responsibility for one's sins and not want to be considered a better person than one really was. Repentance only makes sense if it strives for an unprejudiced recognition of one's imperfections, if one is inclined to reproach oneself for the full severity of one's imperfections, and if this full recognition gives rise to the resolve — but one that leads to action — to abandon these imperfections. Thus, the essence must lie in the soul's work for itself in the future. Repentance is the intention to discard these imperfections through a precise realization of them. In practice, this can be seen as a teaching that arises from such sayings as the one quoted here. Another question: could we learn something about textual corruption in the New Testament? Yes, I am not sure what is actually meant by this, if not what I have already discussed in various ways. But perhaps the questioner would be so kind as to say what he actually means.
Rudolf Steiner: I could, of course, look for specific examples. In general, I would just like to say this: I do not think that much can be gained by looking for intentions behind the corruption of the text. The corruption of the text has basically come about through a more or less self-evident development of humanity. Over time, the fully substantive, most ideal, spiritual substances for the words are simply lost, and the things that can still be fully felt in one generation are basically already pushed towards the words in the next generation. This is how corruptions arise, and they are the most important ones. You can still study this today. You see, today, when we do not have such, I would like to say, inwardly living text in the individual branches of science, we notice exactly the same thing in some of them, if we take a little what in any science tends towards a world view, as was the case with Haeckel, in whom the scientific tends towards a world view; that satisfied him in the highest sense. Even a student of Haeckel, just any student, who simply takes over the subject, who reads what Haeckel himself observed, can no longer have the same thing in the words and can no longer find satisfaction in the world view. And then there are the many descriptions that are given today of embryology, from the first germ cell back to the first. People believe, of course, that by reading about things they can form some idea of them, but very few of those who have written books have had any kind of direct experience of what they are describing; they have only seen pictures. For example, there are very few specimens of the earliest stages of the human germ cell, and even fewer people have been able to see them. Producing such a specimen is, of course, a very difficult matter. So we can observe the removal of the word from the thing in external science when it is to become a world view; and it is actually this removal of the word from the thing that essentially matters. I would like to say that this is precisely the historical aspect of text corruption. It is the case, for example, that almost all of the oriental texts cannot be used, as can the biblical text if it is taken as we usually have it. It is good to occasionally ask ourselves how what we have today as a text should actually force us to search for a living text. Of course, it will take a lot of work and effort to create the text of the Gospels in such a way that it can apply to the present day. For you, it is enough to first understand that the search for the text is absolutely necessary, and I think that with what I have presented here, you will often come to understand something like this earlier, and if you take the whole of anthroposophy, you will perhaps find a kind of key to understanding in anthroposophy, at least to begin with. Take, for example, such a sentence – I will pick out something, it is not easy, without preparation, to find a characteristic example – take the eighth verse of the seventh chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans – you of course know the context: 'Sin, seizing the opportunity, aroused through the commandment all kinds of covetous desires in me, for without the law sin is dead.' Now, I do believe that many people think they understand such a statement without further ado. But those who sense something quite profound in such a statement and believe that one really has to go deeper than the interpretation that is often given in a very superficial sense are better off. Because people look at you very strangely when you tell them that something like this has to be taken literally. And the literal interpretation of such a sentence always has a very definite consequence, my dear friends. It has the consequence that normal people today — anthroposophists are not considered normal, but rather crazy — think of you as anarchistic. It is then difficult to make them understand that they must also consider the Apostle Paul an anarchist, because the fact is that the sentence says nothing less than: Sin will not be present if, for example, you abolish state laws. Abolish all state laws, and then there can be no sin. Where there are no state laws, there is no sin. — Let us say, for example, in a flock of sheep, we have no laws, and there is no sin. So when we look after a herd of sheep or a herd of cows, when we look after those creatures that live together in nature simply out of instinct, without intellectually formulated laws being present, then we cannot speak of sin. Sin arises, that is, it shows itself, reveals itself, at the same moment that the law is given, and sin is only the other pole of the law. Sin is thus revealed through the law. But it is not merely a one-sided effect, but rather there is a reciprocal effect; the law produces sin in that human nature works against it. And whereas the animal has no laws, and so can indeed abandon itself to instinct, man's actions are inconceivable as sinful if the law is there. Only when instinctive life is permeated by the power of Christ, which stands as far above nature as instinct stands below nature, is there again that relationship which needs no law. So take this here (see drawing on the board) as the level of the law, any law; that which lies below it in terms of instinct has no law. Where there is law, there is sin. Sin absolutely accompanies the law; but that which lies so far above it is what arises in us as a spiritual-soul impulse through the Christ. There we stand above the law and hold the Christ within us. Then we may dispense with the law. To dispense with the law altogether — that is what people consider to be true anarchism. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] But that is exactly what the Apostle Paul meant. He meant that the law is overcome by the body of Christ. I must confess that an example such as this makes it particularly clear to me that today the actual living aspect of Christ's activity is not even considered, because otherwise one would see with full seriousness that the Christ actually had to present the law as that which is to be gradually overcome by him. Not abolished, but overcome, should be the law that is accompanied by sin. It would not be enough just to say what I have just said, but we must go further. We must also realize that the Apostle Paul spoke from a consciousness that also contained the following: He asks himself: Is the law — which can only ever be grasped in abstractions — enough? Is the law enough to banish sin? No, it is not enough to banish sin. Socrates might have believed that the doctrine of virtue was enough, but it is not enough to know what is right; rather, there must be a Christ-power present that counteracts sin, whereas the law can do nothing but make sin recognizable. It makes no sense whatsoever to think of the law in any other way than that it makes sin recognizable. This verse 8 should be translated as I always try to translate it: The tendency to sin was brought about by the legal prohibition, because where there is no law, sin as such cannot be alive. If only the law—the 13th verse should read—if only the law existed about what is good, I would still fall prey to moral death, because only through the law should sin become recognizable. And so on. Another example: Now then, my brothers, by living in Christ, we are not obliged to the flesh, for he who lives in the flesh alone must perish. But if you receive the Spirit within you and overcome the flesh, you may live, for all who bear the living Spirit within them are destined to be children of the Godhead. Of course, someone can come today and say that such a translation would be tendentious. But in this sense, one must strive to find the original text of the Gospel, and one will see that there is still truly great in it. But the rule of the spiritual-scientific method is that one must also really produce the text and also allow that to flow into the interpretation, which one can gain by producing the original text. Now, there is still the question here: The Saints and the Belief in Saints, Invocation of Spiritual Entities. — It is obviously meant to convey the significance of invoking spiritual entities. Now, the fact is that, according to modern consciousness, one cannot, of course, limit oneself to saints established by some church, without one's own conviction leading one to do so. One can therefore only speak in relation to those Christian ancestors whose particular personal value one has recognized. As far as these are concerned, one cannot but say that leaning towards them in order to work in the sense of their power does indeed have a certain meaning, that it gives strength. It must not go so far as to somehow impair the basic feelings one has towards the Divine, towards the Christ, through these things. In the Catholic Church, the veneration of saints often takes on the character of idolatry. This is what must naturally be avoided. Now comes the question of the immaculate conception of Mary. — Here it is really a matter of truly understanding the Gospel in relation to these things. Let us first take the Gospel of Matthew: “Now the birth of Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together in the flesh, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. But Joseph, her lover, that is, her beloved, who was a righteous man and did not want to accuse her of evil, decided to treat the whole matter as a secret. This is more or less what was translated into the sentences that are usually found at this point today. So it actually means: Joseph, who understood how to live in the sense of righteousness – you could also say – wanted to treat the whole thing as a mystery. As he was visualizing this in his mind, the image of an angel appeared to him, and the angel said to him: Joseph, son of David, consider Mary your wife, for what is happening is happening through the determination of power in the sense of the Holy Spirit. Call the son she will bear Jesus, for it will be he who will take away the burden of sin from men. Of course I have to tell you the truth about such things, because there is no other way, but some of you may be shocked by what has to be said as the truth in this case. You know that I have described the time on Earth that lies roughly behind the year 8000. What is concluded in today's geology through analogies and all sorts of things is pure nonsense compared to reality. We have received many fairy tales, but the strongest fairy tales are the things that geologists tell about the Alluvial, Devonian, Tertiary, Silurian, and so on; especially when they get into calculating numbers, then things are certainly interesting, but somehow a realistic thinking is not in it at all. It is sometimes downright funny how that true science deals with such things. For example, there are physicists today who calculate what the earth will be like in a million years, if we imagine certain physical analogies. They then describe, for example, how egg white, if spread on a wall, will glow wonderfully. But on an earth where egg white glows so wonderfully, humans will no longer be able to exist, everything would be extinct. I might say, people always take isolated little facts and then paint the rest of the picture around them. But things are not really like that. When they are seen in the light of spiritual science, they look quite different. If we go back further than 8000 years, we come to a certain catastrophe on Earth, which I always call the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this catastrophe, the distribution of land and water was essentially different in the areas that we now call the areas of Western civilization. Where the waves of the Atlantic Ocean are today, Atlantis was above. Much of present-day Europe was sea and alluvial land, as was still the case with a large part of America. We are dealing here with the old Atlantis, but in this old Atlantis the physical conditions of life on earth were essentially different from what they were later, after this catastrophe had passed. The conditions were such that, for example, the air was always present with a certain greater intensity in a watery state; man could not have lived there with a substance with which he lives today. In relatively recent times man was still endowed with a substance very similar to the present-day fish substance. And when we come more to the beginning of Atlantis or even to the middle, man was such that he could not be seen better with physical eyes than the transparent jellyfish of the sea. Man was therefore relatively quite different from how he is presented by those who today believe they are pursuing exact science. But he was also different in soul. You know that when spiritual science traces development back, it must go back to about the eighth century BC. That is around the time of the founding of Rome. Until then, we can follow the age in which the intellectual soul or soul of mind was developed. But there was a time when the human soul was very different. The remains of it are still present in a few writings, but these are little understood because people no longer understand this remarkable development of the sentient soul, which was much more directed towards an understanding of the extra-sensory than of the sensory present on earth. If we go back to after the fifth millennium, we come to the time when a culture prevailed that can no longer be compared to today's at all - in my “Occult Science” I called it the ancient Persian culture - and we then come back to the ancient Indian culture and with this to the eighth millennium BC. There we approach the Atlantean catastrophe and then return to Atlantean civilization. However, the use of this word is particularly unusual, because the development of the soul was still a completely, completely different one. For example, it is quite true of ancient Atlantis that, in the case of procreation, there could never have been any awareness of the act in humans, that is, in the human ancestors. Procreation had always been carried out in complete unconsciousness; at most, in the later days of Atlantis, what had happened began to be experienced in the imagination, but this was essentially subjectively colored. But all these things are preserved in the image atavistically, only one must not grasp them roughly, but one must be clear about the fact that these things must be grasped extremely delicately. So the one who wrote the Gospel of Matthew rejected the idea that at that time feelings of procreation had somehow flowed into Mary, and he also rejected the idea that they were present in Joseph. Those who do not know that such things were a natural possibility until the fourth century of the Christian era and that it only stopped then cannot understand this matter even in its outward meaning. So we are dealing with a pure, immaculate procreation because it was unconscious. This is not a means of providing information, but, as I said before, you may or may not be shocked by it, but that is just the way it is. In Atlantis, it was taken for granted that one never spoke otherwise than that the children of men were sent by the gods, and that still extends into the post-Atlantean period and lives on in legends and myths. I advise you to study the Hertha legend in all its profound significance. There is something tremendously significant about the way in which this Hertha saga is connected with the whole spiritual development of humanity in this direction. It is shown how Hertha appears at a certain time of year, [...]2 But the slaves who serve her are immediately thrown into the sea, must be killed. The man became aware of the act of procreation earlier than the woman, and those who had become aware of it in this age – this is hinted at in this saga – even had to be killed. These things must be handled with great delicacy; one must not hint at them with crude concepts. One must know something about the development of mankind, then one will be far removed from belferting like Haeckel, who says that the immaculate conception, which is asserted in the Gospel, is an impudent mockery of human reason. Human reason as such has nothing to do with the immaculate conception; according to what man justifiably calls human reason, the immaculate conception could of course not exist in the grossest sense. Yes, of course, people talk about it today as if it were a mystery, even though the words are by no means appropriate: Joseph, who was a righteous man, decided to treat the whole matter as a mystery. — No consideration is given to what led to this sentence, namely that Joseph wanted to direct the whole matter, which has happened, precisely into the mystery, that is, into what can only be perceived in the spirit, thus into what can be perceived in innocence; he really wanted to make a mystery out of it. The concept of a miracle, as it is often understood today, is not mentioned at all in the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels are concerned with a time when the effect of soul on soul and thus from body to body was much more intense than it is today, and when, let us say, miracles are mentioned, we must understand that this is said entirely from the factual world of the time. These are the things that we must take into account when considering the Gospels. In my cycles on the Gospels, you will find numerous examples of how the concept of a miracle, as understood today, is not present in the Gospels at all. What is a miracle, as it is understood today? I have tried to reveal the resurrection of Lazarus in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact'. If you read there how the so-called miracle of Lazarus is revealed, you will find that it is only possible to penetrate the mystery through supersensible cognition, but that one must simply penetrate the mystery through it. Miracles are — I do not say this out of some kind of prejudice, but I can say this from the real knowledge of the facts — miracles are what arise in the consciousness of modern man. A miracle is a process that today's man no longer understands, but that could have taken place in the course of human development as a process. It is only because things are no longer understood that they are thought to be miracles. On the one hand, people today help themselves by thinking of things as miracles, but on the other hand, they help themselves by extending what has taken place over the course of a few millennia to 20 million years, whereby the funny thing is that with respect to geological periods, one [researcher] differs from the other by the trivial fact that one calculates some period as being 20 million years in the past, while the other calculates it as being 200 million years in the past. It is only that they are not noticed because one is usually taught only from one side. If you read about some geological period, Devonian or Alluvium, and according to some teaching 20 million years are claimed for their length, then you do not immediately read another geological writer, but you may read it only after ten years, and when he then writes that this geological period dates back 200 million years, then you have long forgotten the other. These things abound in humanity, and today, in all seriousness, everything should be paid attention to. And so, when faced with a mystery such as the Immaculate Conception, it is necessary to understand things in the right way. I have already told you that in addition to the actual dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, [the Catholic Church has also] established [the dogma of] the Immaculate Conception of St. Anne, and of course this should go further back, but that is not possible; I have already spoken about this. Perhaps we can discuss one or two more questions, because some of you are leaving, so that we cover as much as possible. [Here is the question from Pastor Neuhaus:] The Roman concept of transubstantiation is different from that in Dr. Steiner's new mass formula. Would you (to Pastor Neuhaus) perhaps be so kind as to comment personally.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, I don't know why you have concluded from the formula I gave this morning that the matter is as you assume.
Rudolf Steiner: Is your question based on the fact that I used the expression “with the bread my body”, “with the wine my blood”? It is, of course, necessary to bear in mind that linguistic usage itself determines what needs to be said. It is not the case that when a Roman Catholic theologian wants to explain transubstantiation philosophically, he needs to explain that the accident is not inextricably linked to the substance. Therefore, you will find in the approved Catholic philosophies that when the concepts of substance and accident are discussed, the corresponding chapter concludes by stating that it is indeed possible to connect the concept of accident with the fact that substance changes and becomes a different substance through the accident. That is the case there. So it is only necessary to understand the matter philosophically for those who want to find their way into the Catholic version. I have expressly pointed out that I have met Catholic priests who have taken everything possible back to Aristotle to help them to understand transubstantiation at all as something conceivable. Now, you have seen how I meant today how necessary it is to formulate the words in such a way that one can grasp the correct meaning with the sentence. It is something else to simply formulate the sentence “This is my body” or “Receive with the bread my body”. In fact, there is actually no difference, but for today's people it is more vivid to feel the matter if one does not give them direct preparatory instruction in the way that it is actually only treated in the approved Catholic philosophies in the discussions about substance and accident. Perhaps such arguments are also present among the Old Catholics, but in any case they are modeled on the Roman Catholic scholastic philosophies. If you simply stipulate: This is my body – hoc est corpus mei – then you can cause all the misunderstandings that you could possibly encounter. People don't understand that. But let me present the following image: Let us say I have a friend; I received a note from this friend saying that he had had a son, but due to some obstacles I was unable to see him for three or four years, until the boy could already walk. Now my friend brings him to me, since the opportunity has arisen, and as he enters through the door he says: “Take, I show you my son” or ‘Receive this, this is my son.’ With these words, ‘with what I bring you I show you my son,’ a perfectly possible figure of speech is given to modern man, for I really show him the body when I say: Receive with the bread my body. It is not possible to express it in any other way [that the body is received] than in connection with the bread, not the substance of the body, of course, but that which in the bread passes over into the communicant. It is not a matter here of discussing the concept, but merely of whether the formulation is useful. This formulation was chosen simply to make it clear to today's people — who do not want to get involved in the abstraction that the accident can separate from the substance — with the formula: If I show him something and he sees bread on the outside, then that is not ordinary bread, but it is the body of Christ. That should already be in the formula. This, of course, eliminates the second part of your question: “What is the sacrificial character of the Mass according to Dr. Steiner?” — That is something, as I said, that I wanted to avoid with my formula. Merely this phenomenon, which I have characterized, that the host acquires an aura, that the transformation also becomes outwardly visible, I wanted to express that in some formula that can be grasped more vividly. But I can hardly imagine that the Lutheran interpretation could be heard in this and that it could be taken as the Lutheran view. What must be avoided, of course, is the kind of nonsense that prevails there. I ask you, what does the communicant of today basically imagine, if he has not studied scholasticism, what is actually at the root of it? What does the person imagine today, who communicates as a Catholic or receives the communication, that transubstantiation takes place in the sacrifice of the Mass? What does he really imagine? He may imagine many things. But what does he really imagine?
Rudolf Steiner: Yes, to a certain extent that is true, certainly. I think it is true that these things are right, and it lives in Catholicism. But can one really say that what lives in this way, for example when it is emphasized in Catholicism, leads to a possible clear conception? I have actually hardly found such clear ideas, and I have met theologians with great capacities and discussed a lot with them. I admit that the discussions are very lively, but the great liveliness stops when you enter the theological faculty. As long as you are a second-year student, you admit that you can have a say without getting close to the matter with a real idea. But then, when they enter the theological faculty, people usually become quieter, and I have met an extraordinary number of those who have resigned themselves to not understanding the subject at all. Isn't it true that it is relatively easy to discuss with someone who is not very far along in the formation of such concepts, but with the trained theologians, the discussion will take on a completely different form. I must confess that a conversation I had with one of the most important theologians at the Vienna Theological Faculty about the nature of Christ, which is connected with everything that led up to it, will remain significant to me for a long time. He simply said when I tried to develop my idea of Christ: “Now we come to a point where I need concepts that I am forbidden to think.” Yes, that is what must be brought into the formulation of the matter and what underlies it: that one takes the process of transubstantiation as a real one, that something does indeed happen through transubstantiation; then it is something different from merely getting stuck in the formalities. I have, after all, characterized in detail what happens there. I have characterized how the process that takes place there is the outer process for an inner developmental process, how it is, so to speak, the polar opposite of it. So I have tried to characterize the matter from the real, and I had to do that because I believe that the concepts I have given here cannot actually be encompassed in any way by the traditional concepts. But that will be the case if a religious renewal is based on anthroposophy. Then it is impossible that one can be required, for example, by anthroposophy itself to lean towards a Catholic or a Protestant or any other confession, but one must just recognize the matter.
Rudolf Steiner: Because of the use of the word transubstantiation? It is quite right that the word transubstantiation is used, of course, in reference to the word that was mainly used in the tradition of the Mass. It is just a common word that has been taken historically [from tradition]. But I believe that I mainly used the word when I wanted to approach the historical tradition of the Mass in the sense of Catholicism. I believe that I have said “conversion” when I meant the real process. When I myself developed these things, I believe that I used the word “conversion”. But if I say, for example, “I was in a church in Italy and saw the aura after transubstantiation,” then I can of course say that, because the expression “transubstantiation” applies there. But I would never want to force it, because it is quite natural that the expression can be used to characterize a situation. I believe that for those who have been sitting here, the term “transubstantiation” is something perfectly common.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is not true that today the two concepts of sin and illness, of sanctification and healing, are very far apart because we have an abyss between the moral world order and the physical world order. But it is absolutely the case that these concepts actually belong together, so that one must say that sin is, in physical terms, quite literally illness, and the healing process is a process that takes place within the soul. At most, one could perhaps take offense at the fact that one process looks more like an objective one and the other more like a subjective one.
Rudolf Steiner: I have already hinted at this. I once said: One must, of course, be aware that someone who, let us say, comes from a weak constitution to a very healthy area, which the robust person experiences as a delight, may be ruined by this healthy area. That means that the unprepared person, that is, the one who does not approach healing in the right way, is, well, I would say, destroyed, is ruined by being given something as a cure that can only help him when he can experience it in the right way. That is it. Basically, there is only a slight difference between illness and death. We are constantly dying. We begin to die the moment we are born, and the moment of dying, of actually dying – what one calls dying – is really nothing more than, I would say, the integral of all the differentials of dying between birth and death. We collect all the individual deaths in every moment of our lives. That is what must be considered right away, that in such a sentence “therefore many are sick among you and a part have fallen asleep” the same cause is present, depending on one's state. Because dying is only quantitatively different from being sick. We experience as illness that which is partial dying, if these are partial dying processes that intervene only in such a way that we can overcome them. We experience them as death if we cannot overcome them.
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-sixth Lecture
09 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-sixth Lecture
09 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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My dear friends! Today we have something to discuss that is very intimately connected with what can be felt from the whole of today's spirit of the age as the need for religious renewal. First of all, I have to present to you what can lead to the creation of a kind of breviary. This breviary should be what gives the pastor the strength to work, and perhaps I may take this opportunity to point out that in this respect, too, we should not confuse the intellectual with what, in the truest sense, can be the religious impulse that comes from the whole human being. Here it is really a matter of us communicating properly. There is a great deal – and this includes, in particular, because it has just been mentioned in the questions, charity – there is a great deal that must, so to speak, flow naturally from the mind, that must, as a matter of course, emanate from the pastoral care, but the pastoral care must first have acquired the appropriate mind. And that is why, to a certain extent, things that are happening inwardly are even more important today than the intellectual description of some external measures. The latter follow naturally in many respects when the inner life is in order. Now I do not intend to go so far as to compile a literal breviary right now, but rather to bring about what a breviary can achieve. For the man of today, a breviary can no longer consist merely of reciting prayers, but must be a kind of emotional meditation in the fullest sense. Now I would like to give you the elements that, according to my findings, should make up what the pastor should experience over the course of a year, so that he can prepare himself in the right way and perform the pastoral ministry in the right way. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] We begin with the time that lasts from, say, the end of November to around the end of December, until Christmas. So we begin with what can be called the Advent season. This Advent season is felt in the right way by us when we go through it as preparation for the Christmas season itself. But this can only be the case if we truly awaken within us all that is, as it were, alive in the development of the world and of humanity itself within such preparation, and these are essentially the following details for the Advent season. He who wants to live through this Advent season should first direct his meditation to that which, as a certain mystery, is included in what can be called the Word, the Logos. (The following is written on the board): 1. Word (Logos) He should feel, in particular, how the concept of the Logos must be expanded so that one feels what it contains in everything that is actually the world, that one feels the working of the Logos in the blowing of the wind, in the moving of the clouds, in the course of the stars, the sun and the moon, in the becoming and growing of everything that surrounds us, but also in all that is becoming in man, without man adding anything to it through his own power of soul development at first. In this process, we do not yet feel the Logos or the Word in its entirety, but the most essential thing about meditation is that one begins with an incomplete beginning, like the plant with the root, and that one allows what one begins with, as it grows within oneself, to become what it can become. The second thing that can be particularly felt during this time is what I would like to call the commandment, (it is written on the board): 2. Commandment that is, what arises when a person looks more inwardly. One could say: If one wants to visualize what is meant by this commandment or law, then one can turn, on the one hand, to the Old Testament image of the proclamation of the law to Moses at the burning bush, or, on the other hand, one can try to feel what is still felt today in ritual terms as the right thing to do when completing Jewish worship by saying: O Adonai. The third thing to focus on is, I would say, the natural event (it is written on the blackboard): 3. Natural Event with its necessity, which must be felt in such a way that the person who sees both the sprouting and the destructive forces of nature, who sees, let us say, the proliferation of a jungle as the characteristic of growth, who sees earthquakes or volcanic eruptions as the characteristic of destruction, feels the necessary power of nature to become. In essence, this is the feeling that properly brings us to what the Old Testament calls the root of Jesse. The fourth thing we have to delve into is what can now be called the moral force in man, which in our time speaks from some vague depths as conscience, for example. (It is written on the blackboard): 4. Moral Power This is essentially what is already felt in the sense of the Old Testament as the source in man, through which he is a closed self in relation to the outside world, which can therefore well be called: the key that opens and no one locks, that locks and no one opens. We have meditatively immersed ourselves in those points that can also be felt with regard to the human being himself. If one then turns more outward, one awakens in oneself the light that pours through the world, but at the same time one feels it by taking that which is there for the senses as light and, for the spirit, as the justice of the universe. (It is written on the board): 5. Light: Justice In the languages of earlier times, right means something that is connected with “judging”, and this in turn is connected with the ray. One can then feel how that which is felt as luminous justice penetrates into the darkness, into the shadow, as the invigorating element that works into the shadow of death. It is images that we must mainly devote ourselves to, and from this pictorial composition, after we have, so to speak, felt the sun of righteousness, the possibility arises for us to let the sun of righteousness arise from this image, when we have felt this deeply, and also that which is summarized in one the good and the evil, that it turns out for the good through the power that radiates from it – not radiating from evil, but from that which we are to grasp – so that we do not place ourselves alone among those who claim justice through a certain inward arrogance, but also among those who are recognized as sinners. Finally, as we pass through this series of images, we rise to the perception of Christ, (it is written on the board): 6. Christ who unites life with death and death with life. And finally, from there, I would like to say, we can be brought into the perspective that leads directly to Christmas, the perspective through which we can see the Christ in the Jesus who is also called Immanuel in the New Testament, because in Jesus is God. (It is written on the blackboard): 7. Jesus = Immanuel If we meditate on these images in the organic context just characterized during the Advent season, then this is what can be lived out, as I would like to show you using this example: by inwardly expressing what we have experienced in words, which might sound something like this:
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that in the early days of human development, the language that was given and which then led to poetic forms, to the art of language in humanity, was never given than from such an inner experience of the cosmic currents and from such an experience of the world, so that every sentence in older languages and also in older poetry can be related to something like that. When we have gone through this way to the Christmas season, we should then actually use the following four weeks until January 25 to understand the essence of this Christmas season in a holistic way. And it is connected with the understanding of this essence of the Christmas season, a large part of what can also be called the understanding of Christ. I would like to say that it is important to cross the threshold from the Advent season through the consecration evening, through the Christmas night to the actual Christmas celebration. What can we feel when we are really standing in the world as human beings? Well, my dear friends, we can feel that everything I have given you now as a meditation for the Advent season, no matter how vividly it was in us, in a certain sense destroys our humanity, as we experience these things inwardly, I would say, as an inner perception, but we do not understand them. I would like to say that throughout the whole Advent season, one believes to understand it, but precisely by having gone through it, one gets the feeling that understanding must first follow, the word must first become a name that makes sense to us, that makes the word understandable to us. And whereas we used to feel, I might say, with a certain depression, the word flowing through the world, we now become aware of it as power, as the power of becoming of existence, the name of which we have grasped; and we become further aware of it as the active factor in all activity. (It is written on the blackboard): 1. Name: The power of existence of being. The commandment ceases to be a mere intellectual concept that one is supposed to obey; one becomes aware of a power of being that also prevails in the moral realm, and one becomes aware, as a third thing, of how the naming and the named are one. Here, in the quiet interior, lies the experience of the sense of self. (It is written on the blackboard): 3. Name to name The natural law ceases to be mute, it begins to speak: name to name. And in this naming of the name, we now feel through Christ as that which leads through illness and death, through darkness and bondage. (It is written on the blackboard): 4. The Guide through Death and Darkness And what was previously only felt as a kind of glow of justice flowing through the world is revealed to us as something that belongs to our own being in this experience of the Christmas season; the light of justice is transformed into the ancestor Christ. (It is written on the board): 5. Ancestor Christ And then we feel how man needs Christ, how he lives unreconciled with the earth without Christ, how the earth can only bring him something that, in a certain sense, takes him away from the spiritual. If we allow these feelings to precede, we can see the reconciliation of earth and heaven emerging from them. (It is written on the blackboard): 6. Reconciliation of Earth and Heaven And then one can feel in a very natural way how the earth denies the spirit in a certain way and now something is happening in one whereby one comes to the spirit that the earth cannot give. (It is written on the board): 7. Spiritualization of the earth I would like to emphasize, my dear friends, that I try to give the words as I am giving them right now, because I believe that a living force is already at work in the words, and because, when one gives the words in a certain way and the other person immerses himself in the word in full inner freedom, then, if the words are chosen correctly, one can arrive at much, much more than is originally contained in these things, or at least than is contained in them according to the use of language. So I would like to express things in such a way that the word can come to life in you in a certain sense. Once more I would like to give an example of how one can summarize what has been experienced here by constantly looking at Christ Jesus in the Spirit:
The experience of the Christmas mystery should actually extend into January, until, yes, let us say, January 22, 23, 24, 25. The time that now comes, until about February 23, 25, should be devoted to a meditative sense of what Jesus became in his transformation of humanity. It is necessary, my dear friends, that we also feel how, through such a deepening in all becoming, being and weaving, how through such a feeling the pastor of souls can automatically come to open the testament and take from it the things that he then also brings to humanity in the reading of the gospel, and how he can come to carry out what he is to bring to humanity for understanding. In this time, which is the time of February, the third season for the Christian, we will meditate in particular on the way Jesus becomes wise. (It is written on the blackboard): 1. Jesus becoming wise Everything that we can recognize, for example from the appearance of twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, everything that can otherwise be recognized about the development of Jesus in his youth, belongs in this meditation. Secondly, however, we are to find our way into the meditation of the one who cannot be tempted, who cannot really be tempted in temptation. (It is written on the blackboard): 2. He who cannot be tempted Thirdly, we are to confront that which lies in a concept that we are actually to feel completely; that is the concept that the One who becomes wise, the One who in temptation is not to be seduced, is the Son of Man. (It is written on the blackboard): 3. The Son of Man is therefore the one who is intimately related to all humanity, but who, due to the fact that he entered into earthly existence under the conditions you already know, does not represent that human being who bears the disease of sin, but rather that human being who bears within him the calling to fulfill the nature of the human being in such a way that the disease of sin may fall away. This, however, leads directly to what the fourth aspect has to present: the World Physician. (The following is written on the blackboard): 4. The World Physician that is, the one who heals sick humanity. We can apply to ourselves everything in the Gospels that relates to this, and we can bring it to others in the appropriate way. But only through this are we properly prepared for what we are to feel about the Gospel and, in general, through our relationship with Christ Jesus as the special way in which Christ Jesus finds the disciples. (It is written on the blackboard): 5. The Finding of the Disciples There are infinite depths to the Gospel narratives when we make the meditation just on these, on the way the Christ is approached by his disciples, how they follow him, and so forth. It is only when we have this feeling that we have a correct sense of the next, of the teacher, (it is written on the board): 6. The Teacher by the Teacher in the sense in which I have indicated it to you in the course of these lectures, in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. And only when we have felt this will we be able to experience inwardly what I have said about the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, because the earthly kingdom is actually destined to perish, and so the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. (It is written on the board): 7. Establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom We have immersed ourselves in an understanding of Jesus in this way, and in a sense we have become mature through it. Then we have become mature in a sense to the point of Christian self-knowledge. This would then have to be fulfilled from the end of February to March 21 to 25, or so. And we would come to such human self-knowledge by properly fulfilling the period of Lent, the time of fasting, which of course must essentially take into account the process of transformation within. In this way, the human being would first feel how the earth takes hold of him with its forces, but how he, through this taking hold of the forces of the earth, is, as it were, making his way with the decline of the earth. (It is written on the board): 1. Earthly Decline But precisely from such a feeling of earthly decline, another feeling can arise, which I would like to characterize in the following way. One senses that in all that announces itself as external nature, there is an element of decline. One feels connected to this element of decline through the nature of one's body, and one is seized by the fear that the moral within oneself must also perish. Thus, one senses a danger for the moral in the face of becoming earthly. (It is written on the blackboard): 2. Danger for the moral sense. Certain denominations accommodate this sentiment by ordering fasting, that is, not eating as sumptuously as is otherwise the case during the year, but rather abstaining. In this way, although it is attempted in a physical way and such physical things should actually be far removed from our time, there is indeed an increased sense of the human being within himself, and with it a transition from the otherwise merely natural feeling to the finer feeling with regard to the moral. However, fasting must not be arranged in the way it is often arranged in the Roman Catholic faith. Recently, we learned of a decree issued by the bishop to whose diocese Basel also belonged in the 12th and 13th centuries; in this episcopal ordinance, the provost of the Basel cathedral was obliged to slaughter eight pigs every day at Christmas for his canons – I believe there were twelve of them. I think there were more like 26 canons, but that's enough. In any case, the menu that was indicated was more than enough for Christmas, thanks to an episcopal decree. And then it was also indicated how to fast. But I could not find out that through this fasting precisely that could be achieved, which I have now indicated to you as the meaning of the Lenten commandment. But then, when this danger to morality has been felt, one can also have a sense of the distinction between what is actually the eternal heritage of man and how this eternal heritage of man, which is to be restored through Christ, differs from what man has become through mere earthly existence. (It is written on the blackboard): 3. Eternal heritage of humanity and temporal humanity. And now, and this can also be the case, a strong feeling should arise from this, how man as an earthly human being is in need of healing, how he is in need of the leader, how he is in need of light, how he is in need of a transformation for that kind of mind that he has only from earthly forces, how he is in need of that kind of mind that he has only as an earthly human being. (It is written on the blackboard): 4. Needing healing 5. Needing a guide 6. Needing light 7. Needing a change of mind We have thus characterized something of what we are to live through as meditation during the March time of the year, February to March, during Lent, and are now approaching what arises as the contemplation of Christ's death as the March-April time that fills the Easter season. The first thing we are to include in our meditation is looking up to heaven. Let us try to have a sense that the Easter season is connected with the fact that, in a sense, the spiritual falls away in the sky, that we are pushed towards a physical relationship. So (it is written on the board): 1. Looking up to the Physical Sky The second thing we are to feel, looking up to the physical sky on the one hand, is the grave, in reference to Christ's descent into the grave. (It is written on the board): 2. Grave. The third, which we should then feel deeply, is death as the effect of being in the earthly body. (It is written on the blackboard): 3. Death We will try to put ourselves in these feelings during Passion Week, in order to find the right way to make the transition during Easter days, to feel the resurrection as the effect of being a spirit. (It is written on the blackboard): 4. Resurrection But then, when we have grasped the resurrection, when resurrection stands before us, as we have tried to do in our lectures, then the right worship of the one God arises, but then also the right self-containedness, the right “Christ in me.” (It is written on the blackboard): 5. Worship And only after all this, what the felt connection between looking up at the starry sky, but which determines the times, and looking down at the grave, feeling death in the body, feeling the resurrection as a spirit, permeating ing of our soul with devotion in worship, of the closing in on itself of the power of Christ, all that can be deeply felt can then be summarized in what can be called the Christian confession, which is best achieved through meditation. (It is written on the board): 7. Confession And now we come to what the May days, April 24 to May 25, can encompass. Once we have gone through all this, the days of May will give us a sense of the immediate presence of the supersensible, which we can learn to perceive in the way the resurrected Christ Jesus walks with his disciples, insofar as the Gospels give us clues. (The following is written on the board): 1. The Presence of the Supersensible From this presence of the supersensible, from what we can feel from the fact that we feel, just as things surround us in relation to our eyes and ears, so the beings of the supersensible surround us, from this a feeling for the existence of the moral arises. (It is written on the blackboard): 2. The Existence of the Moral And only when we have developed the right feeling for the existence of the moral will we be ready to perceive the external phenomena of the world as appearance; before that, it will always remain more or less a cliché. (It is written on the blackboard): 3. World as Appearance But then, when we perceive the world as appearance, this carries us over to a perception of the truth that is hidden in the world. (It is written on the board): 4. Hidden Truth And now we all have within us the elements that enable us to penetrate more concretely with the Christ, to penetrate with the Risen Christ. (It is written on the blackboard): 5. Penetrating with the Risen One Only in this context can we really have a proper sense of how to be a disciple, not of someone facing death, but of the Risen One, which is what Paul then became. (The following is written on the board): 6. Disciple of the Risen One And then you can feel with him in his world, feel in the spiritual world, feel in a different world. (It is written on the board): 7. Feeling in a Different World And now we come to the time of Pentecost, that is, to the time of the appearance of the Holy Spirit, May-June. If we have gone through all this in advance, if we feel we are in another world, we get an idea of how we can have a new living realization, not the realization that we peel off as words from the things around us. So (it is written on the board): 1. New Living Realization (gospel) We are beginning to feel the gospel in its liveliness, and now it turns out that we are learning to feel it promisingly, that a moral world is emerging, because the moral will be its continuation after the demise of the purely natural world. The second thing is therefore the prospect of the existence of the moral. (It is written on the board): 2. Prospect of the existence of morality This will be a very concrete sensation when we have first gone through everything else, after we have come to the feeling of danger for the moral during Lent. And after we have opened up this prospect of the being of this moral, we learn to recognize, I might say, how the truth in the spirit, holding itself up, floats away from all earthly heaviness. (It is written on the board): 3. Truth that holds itself in the spirit. This is something that one must first experience separately in its concreteness in order to have it as a human being. Everything we can experience on earth, everything we can combine through the senses and with the mind, carries within it a certain element that I would like to compare pictorially with the following: Imagine an athlete stepping up to us and showing us a weight that says, let us say, 1000 kg. We marvel at his enormous strength. But then he shows us that there is nothing inside by shaking it, and we stop believing in the reality of the appearance. Why do we stop believing in the reality of the appearance? Because we see that the earthly power of gravity is lacking, and the earthly ceases to have a being for us in the true sense of the word when it lacks the earthly power of gravity. The spiritual has the inner gravity, the inner power of retention. We do not get a correct sense of this inner power of retention of the spirit until we have gone through the things I have spoken of. But then, when we have gone through this, we realize that what appears to us separately in spirit as the truth of the world is also present in material things, so that it is not the material things that are an illusion, but only their appearance as mere matter, that matter is actually spirit. (It is written on the blackboard): 4. Matter as Spirit When we have sensed this, then, my dear friends, we must experience something like an invasion of the power that we have gained through this entire meditation into our word. That is the moment when, in our inner meditation, what can be expressed by the words: “My tongue is loosed,” arises. (It is written on the board): 5. The tongue is loosened. One senses the word of the world in the spoken word. One senses it as something that one experiences, I would say, in the utterance of the word itself; just as one has a taste when swallowing food, so when one speaks the word, when the tongue is loosened in this sense, one senses what the word as a world word allows us to feel, not just to understand. One then feels oneself in the word, one feels oneself raised up out of what our mere body is, one feels oneself weaving with its essence on the waves of the word, one feels the liberation. (It is written on the board): 6. Feeling of liberation And then one also feels the union with that which has liberated one, the union with the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard): 7. Union We now come to the so-called St. John's time, June-July. We have, in a certain way, meditatively completed what we must, after all, to a high degree work out with ourselves as human beings. We are now ripe to immerse ourselves in what is going on around us, and we are indeed called upon to do so by what has already been prepared in the outer world. My dear friends, we can look at what is happening and has been prepared in the outer world in such a way that our inner eye is not spiritually solar; then we see the plant world, prepared in spring, extending into the ripening of the high sun, but we do not feel the spirit in the making concretely and distinctly enough. Only when we have brought all this with us to the time of June, for the training of our spirit, do we also experience the spirit in the making. (The following is written on the board): 1. Spirit in Becoming And when we experience the spirit in becoming, then, in a sense, all being continues for us; we feel, in a sense, when we look beyond the seed, how the seed does not merely conclude with its upper fruit, but carries within it the power, which we feel spiritually, to shoot up further. And we feel how the long light of night at this time carries within it the power to become even brighter spiritually. That the growth of the light of night can remain until the time when the actual summer begins is transformed into a spiritual growth of the universe. We feel that which in pre-Christian times could only be felt by the world, that in the post-Christian era, when we can relate to Christ in the right way, it transforms into the spiritual vision in the becoming of the light in the darkness. That which we have developed for Christ in us is also carried into nature. We also feel the light in nature outside as the spiritual in the darkness. From what we feel in the continuation of the power of growth in the plants, in the continuation of the becoming light, we are given images that are hidden in the world, which we grasp in the imaginative life. We are given the power to express ourselves in images. We learn to follow the Pentecostal call, we learn to preach. We learn to preach by learning to penetrate nature spiritually. We learn to preach by developing a deep feeling for nature, by being able to say to ourselves: the plants do not stop growing there, but the spiritual extends beyond their physical growth. The light also shines where it is on the wane. We understand the words of John: 'I will decrease, but thou shall increase'. Thus we have a sense for the light in the darkness, for the becoming in the being. (The following is written on the board): 2. Light in the Darkness. Becoming in Being. We feel nature around us and become aware that what we feel around us, wherever we carry the spirit through our mind's eye, has a relationship to our sleeping, but that we are unconscious when we experience our sleeping, and that by looking out [into nature] we feel the waking sleeping of nature. (It is written on the blackboard): 3. Nature's waking sleep. And we feel, my dear friends, how that which was the Christ impulse can now actually be carried into the contemplation of the outer world. The time is ripe for this, because the present time must spiritualize a Christ-less natural science, to christen it; otherwise no new formation of religion arises. The description of this process through the year in the early Church has come to an end; the time had not yet come when it was possible to carry the Christ impulse out into the outer natural world. You see how what was given in a certain abundance for the preceding period passes over into something that now has no relation at all to the development of time. You must begin — if you stop with the old development of the church — to do something like what the Catholic Church does when it has developed the Gospel up to the time of Pentecost and developed it out into the time of St. John: you must adhere to the feasts of the apostles, you must adhere to the feasts of the saints, to the feasts of Mary, you must adhere to the Acts of the Apostles, you must adhere to the letters of Paul. But basically you do not have that innermost relationship to what actually only emerges here and deepens more and more in the following time. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, had the Gentile view, which related to nature, to connect with the Jewish view, which related to the inner man. Therefore, if we feel very deeply during this time: What was the consciousness of John as the forerunner of Christ Jesus, how did he experience the Christ, and how did he, above all, express his own activity in relation to the appearance of the Christ? If we then find the transition [to the question]: How was Paul's life in relation to the living Christ? — and if we draw a comparison in ourselves in this time of John between John and Paul, then we lead over in the right way to the actual task of Paul, which is felt to be so because it could not have been fulfilled in its time. But, my dear friends, we are not getting anywhere here; we only have three points, whereas we used to get seven points in a very natural way. And we must be content with the inner development, with the meditative development of these three points, for the time around St. John's Day. We must feel what the spirit gives us in a more lively way, how it expands, I might say, into the distance, but thereby also has less content than what arises for the spirit in what has gone before. Therefore, anyone who wanted to continue schematically with what I have given would not be able to arrive at a correct inner handling of what I must actually describe as the meditative content of the month of John for the pastor. This afternoon I will also write down the time from July to August for you. This is the time when we experience the actual maturing of nature in the Christian sense. This is also the time when we will be particularly moved by what Paul says about his perception of the living Christ, his rapture into a spiritual world. For we will, so to speak, feel that which we previously sensed as the spirit in the process of becoming, as the presence of this spirit in the ripening nature that surrounds us. We will feel, when we can immerse ourselves in the right way in what has come to fruition, how the light has really shone in the darkness, in everything that is out there, where the light lives on in the ripening, and we will be able to feel how that which comes into being, that which lives on in the ripening, can also take root in us. We can only feel this if we can now experience, out of the earlier feeling of the waking-sleeping spirit, the calm of the August nature and the spiritual that is weaving in the calm, living in the splendor of the sunlight, and we will be able to transfer this image to that which we can experience in ourselves through Christ. Then, as a fourth point, a very lively experience of the external world emerges, and a fourth point follows from the other three. In a sense, the external and the internal come together in us. In this way, one can sense external and internal maturity, and one gets the images for inner maturity from the fact that the external fertilizes one. I would like to continue from there in the afternoon and write down the last few points for the rest of the time. |
| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-seventh Lecture
09 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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| 343. Lectures on Christian Religious Work II: Twenty-seventh Lecture
09 Oct 1921, Dornach |
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My dear friends! I have been meditating on the course of the year up to the time that would fall roughly on 21-23 July to 22-23 August, the time that I have called the time of ripening. If we permeate ourselves with the world during this time, let ourselves be permeated by the world, then we feel - after we have immersed ourselves in meditation in what I presented this morning - not only how the spirit works in what is becoming and, so to speak, towards the light, but we feel the becoming of the outside world itself as spirit. And I can then say for this time in the same sense as I did for the other times in the morning, that is, for the time erwa from July 22 to August 23: Firstly, becoming as spirit that fills. (It is written on the blackboard:) [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] 1. Becoming as spirit that fills. Secondly, I will try to feel how the light not only continues to work as I said during the transition from the time of St. John to this time, but how the light is born, as it were, in the darkness. So: the effect of light in darkness. (It is written on the blackboard:) 2. Effect of light in darkness And when I can feel this, I will sense all around me the calm of the spirit weaving in nature. This morning I already pointed out how the whole, which matures there, appears to me as poured out calm, in which the light of the sun blows spiritually. So: the calm of the spirit weaving. (It is written on the board:) 3. The tranquility of weaving the spirit. And fourthly, I feel myself indistinctly in the outer spiritual, as part of the spiritual, thus: the co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard:) 4. The co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit. This would be meditation, which can be developed by watching nature mature in August, and we will find that it is precisely during this time that Paul's writings can have such an effect on us if we approach them with understanding. While in previous periods the contrast between John and Paul should be placed before our souls or by us before the soul of the community, it becomes particularly significant for this time if we place the full significance of Paul before ourselves or before the community. Then we come to the time when summer draws to a close and autumn sets in, when nature gives us that mood that can be called the expectation of the gifts of ripening, when we expect how that which has first worked on us as ripening will then fall to us. This is therefore the time from August 23 to September 23. As this ripening process unfolds, we will look to the spirit, in the dying away of the outward budding of nature, in the dying away of nature itself. (The following is written on the board:) 1. Look to the spirit Secondly, we will have confidence in the power of that which lives in dying, since we see how these gifts are, as it were, brought to us by nature as it fades away. So (it is written on the blackboard:) 2. Confidence in the spirit We will learn to revere the power that reveals itself to us in withering nature, in nature that fades away for our senses, from which the spirit confronts us, especially in view of what becomes of us from nature, in view of the harvest. We will learn to revere the power of the world in this nature. 3. Worship of the Power of the World. Now we are ready to feel how what comes to us as gifts of the harvest does not confront us in images of the external world, but how the external world itself becomes increasingly darker, and we feel ourselves surrendered to what comes to us as a gift as the gifts of nature come to meet us. We can then feel our own inner radiance in the darkening external world. (It is written on the board:) 4. Radiant interior in the darkening outer world And we will now condense the feelings we used to have towards the maturing into a grateful look at the radiant maturing of our own becoming. (It is written on the board:) 5. Grateful regard for the ripening of our own radiance. These are the feelings that, as you can see, are, to a certain extent, much more abstract when they are expressed than those we have developed for Advent, for Christmas, for Easter and so on; but that is the given. And now we come to the time from September 23 to October 23, when we experience the gifts we can receive and the harvest of the world. In beholding what is taking place there, where the world literally imposes a moral relationship on us, our feeling spiritualizes in beholding. It is impossible for man, when he feels in a fully human way, not to experience with gratitude what he can feel at the time of the harvest. (It is written on the board:) 1. The feelings spiritualize in beholding. Our whole relationship to the world, even as it is a relationship to nature, acquires a moral character; we develop a moral view of the world. (It is written on the blackboard:) 2. Moral world view But just as we are morally perceiving the world, it is as if the world would be forgotten as such with the approach of the harvest and as if it would become dark. (It is written on the blackboard:) 3. The world is forgotten and darkens It is precisely in this world that is eluding us and darkening that we are compelled to withdraw into our inner selves. The luminous inner self can best learn a prayerful mood in this autumn meditation, or rather, in the meditation of the world moving towards winter. (It is written on the blackboard:) 4. The luminous inner self learns to pray. Here meditation takes on the character that it very often, I might say as if by instinct, takes on in the case of deeper philosophical natures. By contemplating the world for a long time and forming their ideas, deeper philosophical natures very often have the feeling that all existence is only provisional because, as it presents itself to us, it does not contain seeds for the future, but because it fades away. In this mood, the mood for prayer best develops for meditation. In this mood, I would say, in this helpless mood, where the world has disappeared from our radiant inner being, it is also where we begin to pray while meditating, that is, we begin to turn to something. Here we best learn the necessity of the commandment or law. (It is written on the board:) 5. Feeling the necessity of the law. But just by seeing the approach of the spirit, by experiencing the approach of the spirit inwardly in meditation, one feels something like a faintness in the spirit. We can say that the overabundance of the spirit can be felt there, this almost nightmare-like feeling of the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard) 6. The overabundance of the spirit is felt. It is indeed an absolutely self-evident process that from Johanni onwards – where we have seen how only three stages of our inner meditative experience can come – through the following months, it so happens that in August there are four stages, then five stages, then six stages. This is something quite necessary. As we approach the Christmas season, the inner life of the spirit becomes more differentiated again, we live our way into a more differentiated life. And now we come to the time from October 23 to about November 23 or 24. This is the time when everything can guide us through the following meditation: We have empathized deeply with the growth and maturation, but then also with what the decline of growth and maturation is and the approach of the gifts out of the decline. We have learned to apply all this to our own inner life. We are, to a certain extent, living with nature and can now, first of all, have the feeling of how a power such as that which brings us the harvest gifts wants to stir in us as well. But precisely now, when we still have a vivid echo, we can feel towards nature in decline how our will is without drive. (It is written on the blackboard:) 1. The will without impulse. One feels that the moral should enter into the will. (It is written on the board:) 2. The moral wants to seize the will. Now one can prepare oneself for the mood in which one actually finds Christ's will for the first time. You can say to yourself: I see the world around me, but what I see is not the world. I am seeking a real world. The world is a decayed world; what I see is not the world. You must have already mustered the courage to find the world somewhere else than in what you see and hear and perceive with the other senses. (It is written on the board:) 3. What I see is not the world. You have to have the courage not to want to see the sun where it was in April, not to perceive the spirit where it sprouts and sprouts, but in the darkness, in death I must seek the sun. (It is written on the board:) 4. In darkness, in death, I must seek the sun. But through this one will be able to feel oneself in darkness, (it is written on the board:) 5. Man is himself in darkness. One feels, while one used to feel with the world, now the world is dying. (It is written on the board:) 6. In man the world dies Everything can now come together in the question (it is written on the board:) 7. How does the world live again in man? Then the Advent mood can come, which I characterized in the morning as the first one, which begins with the sensation of the word, with the sensation of the Logos. We have truly come through the moods of the year to be able to feel what the Logos is, and we can now develop the mood in the Advent season that is to lead up to the Christmas season. May I read to you the experiment that I began this morning, such as how, by meditatively surrendering to what I have written on the board here, the meditation can be experienced inwardly in these words, how these words can be experienced in a breviary-like manner. For the Advent season:
Now the Christmas season:
And in the time following Christmas, when we reflect for ourselves and with the community on those parts of the Gospel that deal with Jesus' youth until his preparation for death, when we meditate ourselves in the way I showed you this morning, we can summarize this meditation in the words:
And the time of Lent:
And so, in the spirit of the meditations and Easter Gospels mentioned this morning, we come to the following Easter saying:
Now the walk on earth after the resurrection, the time that follows Easter, before the time of Pentecost:
Whitsun time, June:
And we come to the time of St. John:
We come to the time of Paul, the time of ripening, July to August, the time after John:
Toward September 23, in anticipation of the gifts of maturity:
Now at the harvest of nature's gifts:
Now in the time leading up to November 23:
Next month, Advent will answer that. In this way, we actually get the twelve stations of the breviary if we really get involved in the whole thing. And at the same time, you see something in what I have developed for you that is like an inner call for religious renewal. If you take the church year as it is in the traditional churches, once you have found your way through what has, of course, been corrupted in some ways, to the beauty of this church year, you have the significance of the Advent season, the wonderfully sweet intimacy of the Christmas season, and you can also shape all of this for the congregation in the sense of the Gospels. We then have everything we can do for ourselves and for the community in relation to Jesus, who in his youth grows ever wiser, develops until he cannot be tempted, and develops until he can appear as a teacher. We then have Lent, into which we can place everything that human self-knowledge can become so that the Easter event can be experienced in a dignified way. We also have the Gospel accounts, and these are particularly magnificent, of the events surrounding Easter; we also have the walk of the risen Christ with one or other of his apostles, which we can also gain from the Gospel; we then have the time of Pentecost with everything that follows the Feast of Ascension. But by developing the year in this way, we now lose touch with the world. The Old Catholic Church has now inserted the work of the apostles at this point, the feasts of the apostles, the feasts of the saints up to the feast of the dead for All Souls' Day and so on. But with that, the Pauline task in inner experience has actually been dropped. According to his commission, Paul had to go to those who had previously experienced the divine only as pagans in their souls. This mood, which we particularly need in the present time, which has taken away the religious from us – while we should give it back to the world – must also be in the human being. In this time, the religious feeling must find its way into nature, just as we have found it in the John mood, in the Paul mood of maturation. In the September mood, where we will see that we can very well experience what is given to us in the letters of Peter, we will be able to carry what we have developed in the harvest mood as the meditative life into the feeling of the [... gap in the postscript], without it falling prey to fantastic mysticism. During the time leading up to Advent, which I have just characterized as the time between now and November 23, we will be able to incorporate everything we have to say to the community and to ourselves, from the time of the Apostle's disciples, from the time of the Church Fathers. If you take this concise month, August, you will be able to sense in its fourfold structure the indication of the structure of the month in weeks, while for the other months the weeks are effaced in their conciseness. A complete breviary will now have to be compiled in such a way that the fourfold division of the month and the twelvefold division of the year are included in meditations, or that the weekly meditations are included in the annual meditations. Then one can also proceed to the daily meditation in such a way that the meditation expressed in the breviary is a threefold one for each day. The weekly verses would follow on from the annual verses, which I have shared with you as they have emerged for me. However, the weekly verses would be repeated in each month, and these would be followed by the daily verses, which run each week from Saturday to the following Sunday. So we would have year-month verses, month-week verses, week-day verses, 21 lines, three times seven lines, except for the middle months, where we have four lines in August, three lines in the St. John season, five lines in the September season, and so on. Thus the breviary is also structured inwardly according to number, and one really experiences that into which we are subconsciously placed in the world. We bring the spirit up into consciousness in the experience of the year. I will speak more about this tomorrow. So tomorrow the formation of the breviary will take us a short time and then we will move on to discussing community building.
Rudolf Steiner: I have tried to develop for you, as it were, the principle of the breviary as it arises directly out of the present time, and I cannot see that a religious renewal could be possible if a renewal of breviary prayer does not take place in this direction. The hours can be taken in such a way that we have the opportunity to delve into the content of the breviary meditation three times a day, in the morning, at noon and in the evening.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, the weekly sayings refer to the moods that are in the calendar of the soul. Isn't that right? The one who seeks these things out of the spirit, out of real supersensible experience, always has the very concrete situation before him; and in trying to research for your breviary, I had your minds before my soul. When I once formulated the twelve seasonal verses and the weekly verses, I had before me the very different moods of an anthroposophical context, within which no one could yet know that knowledge would arise somewhere, that a religious renewal was necessary. But you will feel that if you compare what we have in mind here with the moods of the annual week proverbs, the two will complement each other perfectly, and each will support and illuminate the other. I will have to talk about the question of the consecration of holy water and the ordination of priests tomorrow when we come to the topic of community building. All of this is part of it. I will also talk about the place of the sermon in the service tomorrow.
Rudolf Steiner: I cannot understand what is meant by the question. So far I have spoken about the baptismal ritual and I do not know why this should not be mentioned by that name.
Rudolf Steiner: I must confess that I am now using words that can make the matter understandable to you, and that will probably have been achieved. But everything that now has to do with putting it into the world should be done by you. Of course, this or that can be guessed here or there, but it is not really the anthroposophical task to intervene in the reality of community and church building.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, I have spoken about celibacy in relation to the Catholic Church. It serves the aims of the Catholic Church in a very consistent way, as we have seen in the context of the lectures. But now the question is that today, people must rather more strongly ask the question, that is, answer the question: How does the pastor achieve the mood that can sustain pastoral care, even though he is not subject to celibacy rules or at least cannot be required to observe them? In the time in which we live, the important thing is not to alienate ourselves from the world with religion, but to penetrate the world with religion; that is the important thing.
Rudolf Steiner: The triangle and the square are only the preliminary stages of the cross. The cross is the one that underlies the whole of human development. Although the cross on Golgotha is thoroughly historical – the external reality, as it is often disputed, cannot be disputed in this way – on the other hand, in the sign of the cross we have the sign for the physical and etheric human being. But before we come to the sign of the cross, we have that which lives in the human being as an astral being. Isn't it true that what lives in the sign of the cross, the physical and etheric human being, is completely unconscious? What lives in the astral body is semi-conscious; it is best expressed in the square. It is truly expressed in the square, and what lives in the I is in the triangle. So we see: I – triangle, astral body – square, the whole human being as he lives as I and astral body in the physical and ether bodies – the cross. This is entirely connected with the feeling one has towards I and astral body and towards physical and ether body. (See Chart 18 above)
Rudolf Steiner: This is something that would lead extremely far if it were to be fully developed. It is absolutely the case that there is also a spiritual natural history, if I may use the paradoxical expression. Those who look at the world of birds with a spiritual eye see in the world of birds something in which, albeit in its Ahrimanic ramification, the spirit has worked more than, for example, in the human form. The being is not formed from the inside out, but from the outside in. We have here a formation out of the cosmos in the formation of the feathers, in the whole formation of the bird, which should not simply be represented as it is represented by our sensory natural science today, but should be represented in such a way that its bone structure corresponds to a reproduction of the human head, so that the bird is actually a head with the mouth, because the bird's head is merely a complicated mouth. One must learn to understand this whole design, and when one learns to understand it, then one already gets the necessity, not just the possibility, to see that which one wants to express as the healing spirit in the dove, and to see that which the sacrifice offers in the shape of the lamb. In the time when such symbols were conceived, the lamb or the ram was usually depicted as a recumbent lamb, looking backwards with its head. This form is even something essential; it means that one does not turn one's gaze towards the world, but turns one's gaze away from the world, so to speak, one tries to look into oneself.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, the thing is that in the newer human being, the Christ experience and the Father experience cannot be distinguished from one another, because the newer human being perceives in nature only what grows and sprouts, and thus in nature actually perceives only that which does not carry death within itself, because the human being does not perceive the fruitfulness of death. The Christ experience only comes into confrontation with the Father experience when we can feel, for instance, that we – adding the experience of the Holy Spirit – make the negations [of the Christ experience and the Father experience] clear to ourselves in the following way. The Father-experience simply arises as the summary of the whole human nature out of the consciousness of the healthy human being. The healthy human being is organized in such a way that just as he must see and hear, so he must have the Father-experience. That is why I always said to my listeners when discussing these things: Not to have the Father-experience is an illness. Not to have the Christ-experience is a fate, because it cannot be acquired through what is merely in the blood, but because, as it were, through self-education, the encounter with the Christ in the outer world and within the human being must be experienced. That is an essential difference. And because today we cannot have the Father-experience as we did in pre-Christian times, arising from a healthy organism – I have discussed this – we have to have an inadequate Father-experience today. With our organism, which has now become such that it can no longer grasp the spiritual, we have to have the Father-experience as a memory. The Christ-experience must be a present experience. We must be able to make this clear distinction. If we wrestle with the question, where is the Father? —, then we are too weak with our present organism to find him. And if we then go to the Christ because we cannot find the Father and seek the Christ through the inner in the outer, then we experience the Christ-experience as a destiny, while one can experience the Father-experience as health. And when we wrestle with the questions: Does the Christ also give us what the Father has given? Is the Christ in what He gives us only similar to the Father or is He equal to Him? — when these questions of Arianism, of Athanasianism, take on a living form again, as we still see, for example, in Eastern philosophers such as Solowjow, then the differentiation between the experience of the Father and the experience of Christ and also the experience of the Holy Spirit in man comes to life again quite clearly, because not to recognize the Spirit is folly. Not recognizing the Father is illness, not recognizing the Christ is fate, not recognizing the Spirit is folly. And we must fight our illness in order to come to the Father, we must bring about our fate in order to come to the Christ, we must fight our 'folly' in order to come to the Spirit. This, of course, only hints at the beginning; what is at issue here is the extraordinarily differentiated experience of the Father and of the Christ. I cannot find that these two experiences are differentiated in the modern Protestant feeling; there is even something strongly Theistic or Deistic about it. One could say that one person feels more what can be achieved in the mind, he feels more Christ, but it is just only an undifferentiated feeling, and the other feels more the Father, but here too it is undifferentiated again; no Christianity comes out of this experience.
Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, why should we concern ourselves with this question? We get to know the world as a sensual world, and we arrive at the supersensible insofar as our own being is placed in this supersensible. Such questions do not actually arise in this abstraction for the spiritual researcher, because he stands in concrete life. I am often asked what the ultimate goal of the world is, because: If I do not know the ultimate goal, some people say, then I will not set myself in motion with regard to the course of the world and its development. — I always had to answer: If I want to go to Rome and someone only knows the timetable to Bern, there is bound to be someone who knows the route to Ticino and there will be someone else who knows the route to Milan and so on. So I can rest assured with my timetable to Bern. Likewise, I can be reassured if I know the present and what the near future holds, because I will first have to perfect myself in order to recognize the path to the next stage at the next stage. So it is really a matter of seeking living knowledge, knowledge that one can experience, and not of pushing intellectualism to its very limits. In doing so, we lose ourselves completely in the formless.
Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could answer such questions, but one is misunderstood if one answers them in short sentences. One has to go into everything that is a real force in nature. One has to start at a seemingly completely different end to arrive at an explanation of these things. Start where you are confronted with the spawning of fish, with the release of milt into the sea, and how countless of them perish and only a few become fish. But this is only an outward appearance, because it is actually not known what happens to the undeveloped fish spawn from the aspect of a world that lies immediately behind our sensory world, which is also there. It also undergoes its development. That which is deprived of development in the sense undergoes development in the spiritual. It is destroyed in appearance, but it is preserved in its inner becoming. And in the situation of this fish spawn, which becomes a fish, are also all those wheat grains in the field that are used for sowing again, that is, that turn into wheat again. But all the grains you consume with the bread are capable of becoming fish spawn, because they do not reach the goal that is set for them in the sense world. Just ask what would become of the world if all those beings who do not achieve their goal in the sense world were to withdraw from their other goal, which is not similar to the goal that can be seen in the sense world. The world is indeed very complicated. It is certainly deeply true that the lamb and the one who feels with the lamb must find it cruel when the lamb is eaten by the wolf, but it would be terribly cruel for the wolf if there were no lambs. It is just that what the wolf feels is important for a completely different world than the one in which we live with our senses. One must already have a sense of the world's unfathomability and of the possibility that the world presents itself quite differently from other sides than from the side from which we look at it here. Therefore, our combinative mind, which is actually only intended for the sensory world, fails when faced with some questions, and if we want to use it to explain cruelty in the animal kingdom or other things in the way we are accustomed to explaining [with the combinative mind], we cannot understand these things. Well, that's what I can answer today. I'll maybe prepare the next two questions, including the one about holy water, for tomorrow. |