| 332b. Current Social and Economic Issues: Prospectus for the Issue of 5% Loan Certificates
13 Mar 1920, Stuttgart |
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| The guiding principles for this will have to arise out of an insight into how the view of life that is provided by anthroposophy can be translated into economically fruitful action. The leadership of the Society will start from the realization that economic activity can develop branches that may temporarily produce favorable results for the individual entrepreneur, but that have a destructive effect in the context of the social order. |
| 332b. Current Social and Economic Issues: Prospectus for the Issue of 5% Loan Certificates
13 Mar 1920, Stuttgart |
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totaling M. 10,000,000 of the company “Der Kommende Tag”, a joint-stock company for the promotion of economic and spiritual values. The joint-stock company THE COMING DAY was established by articles of association dated March 13, 1920, with its registered office in Stuttgart. The purpose of the company is the operation and financing of purely economic and spiritual-economic business and enterprises of all kinds, which will be oriented towards the anthroposophical world view, both in terms of their objectives and the way they are conducted, and which should be suitable for placing economic life on a healthy associative footing and shaping spiritual life in such a way that justified talents are brought into a position where they can be lived out in a socially fruitful way. The company will differ from ordinary banking companies in that it will not only serve financial aspects, but the real operations themselves, which are supported by the financial. Therefore, capital will not be made available to other companies in the way that it is in ordinary banking, but rather from the factual points of view that come into consideration for an operation that is to be undertaken. The company will therefore have less the character of the lender and more that of the merchant who is in the know, who can realistically assess the scope of an operation to be financed and make practical arrangements for its execution. It will therefore be the case that the companies to be financed by the company will generally take the form of branches of the company. In this context, it will be important to focus, for example, on enterprises that are currently profitable in order to use their profits to support other enterprises that will only be able to bear economic fruit in the future and, above all, through the spiritual seed that is now being poured into them, which can only come to fruition after some time. The guiding principles for this will have to arise out of an insight into how the view of life that is provided by anthroposophy can be translated into economically fruitful action. The leadership of the Society will start from the realization that economic activity can develop branches that may temporarily produce favorable results for the individual entrepreneur, but that have a destructive effect in the context of the social order. Many recent enterprises were oriented in this way. They were capitalized, and it was precisely this capitalization that undermined the social order. Such enterprises must be confronted by those that arise from healthy thinking and feeling. These can be integrated into the social order in a truly fruitful way. But they can only be supported by a social way of thinking that is inspired by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. There is no doubt that enterprises such as those characterized here will initially only be able to overcome the social-technical and financial crises; on the other hand, they will face social difficulties as long as these, as the actual workers' question, still take the form that comes from the old mode of production, which is doomed to crisis. The workers who have a share in the new enterprises will, for instance, behave in exactly the same way towards 'wage' differences as they do towards enterprises of the old type. But in such matters, one must not underestimate how soon, under proper management, an enterprise of the kind characterized here must also have favorable social consequences. This will be seen. And the example will have a convincing effect. If a venture of this kind falters, then the workers who are involved in it will have their convictions with them when they are brought back into influence. For it is only by bringing the manual workers into line with the intellectual leaders of enterprises through a way of thinking that affects all classes of people that the forces of social destruction can be counteracted. The company will endeavor to invest the capital at its disposal in productive values and in products for which there is a constant demand. It hopes that this will minimize the effects of financial crises. The board of directors consists of the businessmen Konradin Haußer, Hans Kühn and Wilhelm Trommsdorff, all of Stuttgart; they are appointed by the supervisory board. The Supervisory Board consists of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, as Chairman, Emil Molt, Stuttgart, as Deputy Chairman, Emil Leinhas, Stuttgart, as Secretary, Jose del Monte, Stuttgart, and Dr. Carl Unger, Stuttgart. The members of the Supervisory Board perform their duties on a voluntary basis.
With regard to net profit, the statutes stipulate that 5% of this be allocated to the statutory reserve fund until it reaches one tenth of the share capital; the supervisory board is authorized to order further reserves of any amount. Thereafter, a dividend shall be paid on the share capital, which shall represent an appropriate interest rate on the nominal value of the share capital, in line with the prevailing market conditions. The General Meeting shall decide on the remaining profit. The initial capital stock is set at 300,000 marks, divided into 300 registered shares of 1000 marks each. It is intended to increase the capital stock substantially after the legal authorization has been granted. Until then, in accordance with the resolution of the supervisory board of March 11, 1920, the issue of loan certificates up to the amount of 100,000,000 marks is planned under the following conditions:
The company hereby invites the takeover of loan certificates and requests that the completed and signed subscription form be returned to the joint-stock company “Der Kommende Tag”, Stuttgart, Champignystr. 17 (not registered). Stuttgart, March 13, 1920. Konradin Haußer Hans Kühn Wilhelm Trommsdorff Dr. Rudolf Steiner Emil Molt Emil Leinhas |
| 332b. Current Social and Economic Issues: On the Crisis in the “Futurum”
02 Apr 1922, Dornach |
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| But today I was presented with the original, the original letter to the editorial offices, and this original letter to the editorial offices for these acts, which are already hostile to anthroposophy, comes from the current management of “Futurum”. This is what has been sent to all Swiss editorial offices by the current management of “Futurum”, that is, by the side that has actually always conducted this so-called offensive in an outrageous manner. |
| 332b. Current Social and Economic Issues: On the Crisis in the “Futurum”
02 Apr 1922, Dornach |
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My dear friends, I believe I have given you a very important insight into anthroposophical [spiritual] science. I will develop this further tomorrow. I would just like to ask you one thing now. I am obliged to tell you something more mundane, and since I don't have another opportunity to say this more mundane thing, I would like to ask you not to underestimate what I said “sub specie aeternitatis” alongside what I now have to say as something mundane. I would like to draw your attention to a newspaper report that has already appeared in a wide variety of Swiss newspapers about the events at the “Futurum” general assembly and what emerged from it. Now, as I said, I cannot take another opportunity, I do not want to call you together specially. I ask you all very much to make a distinction between the important matters that we have just discussed and what I have to say now. I do not want the first to be wiped out by the second. But I would like to note a few things here before taking the opportunity to speak about them in public, and that must be done. I will read you the relevant sentences from this report, which are:
My dear friends, I believe that if you reflect on the content of these sentences, you will have to say to yourselves: The worst enemy that could arise against the anthroposophical movement in Switzerland could not write worse sentences than those written here. For here, above all, the silliness is written that the reproach that can be made to the “Futurum” is that it has not fulfilled its expectations because it has not fulfilled what is demanded of the anthroposophical movement by the “Futurum”. And then it is said – as I said, putting these things together is nothing more than a huge, capital absurdity – then it is said: So the Futurum must separate itself from the anthroposophical movement, must give up the offensive against today's economic system. My dear friends, I myself must naturally regard this form of expression as one of the worst attacks on my own personality. You will feel this when you consider the matter. Because here nothing less is said than: Dr. Steiner, with his anthroposophical movement, is becoming very dangerous because he is taking action against the modern economic system; so we have to do it differently, we have to move away from him. My dear friends! This is the very way to completely destroy the Anthroposophical movement. But besides, anyone who understands what I myself have been dealing with in terms of economics in recent years will find that it is an unscrupulous untruth to say that, because one does not want to be offensive, one has to move away from the Anthroposophical movement and then from me. As if this offensive had come from me! It was completely different people who took this offensive approach! My dear friends! When I read this at first, I thought that some inept editors had written it who are not familiar with the anthroposophical movement as such. But today I was presented with the original, the original letter to the editorial offices, and this original letter to the editorial offices for these acts, which are already hostile to anthroposophy, comes from the current management of “Futurum”. This is what has been sent to all Swiss editorial offices by the current management of “Futurum”, that is, by the side that has actually always conducted this so-called offensive in an outrageous manner. If they were to write in a reasonable way, they would actually have to admit to themselves that they have spoiled things in the most stupid way possible by proceeding in this way and constantly throwing the most stupid things at people's heads in public lectures. This, my dear friends, is what is happening today. And actually, no worse insult has been made to the anthroposophical movement than here by the present management of “Futurum”. As I said, I only received it today that this has been issued by the current management of “Futurum”. I must emphasize here, and this cannot be emphasized enough, that I consider it a dishonest, lying attack when it is said that one has to turn against the offensive that has been driven against today's economic system in order to get by. It is a falsehood that, if it were not done out of stupidity but out of intention, could have no other purpose than to finally culminate in the entire anthroposophical movement being shaped in such a way that I am thrown out of it in order to have it for oneself. I am not saying that this must be the intention, but if one wanted to achieve this intention, one could not do it more subtly than through such writings. This, my dear friends, is necessary to say, after it became clear to me today that this writing originated from the current management of “Futurum”. Of course, I do not mean what I have discussed in relation to the current composition of the board of directors of “Futurum” and so on, which was somehow said in a still benevolent way. But the present management of Futurum has begun its activities by taking the most urgent steps to undermine the anthroposophical movement in Switzerland. You can imagine what consequences such a thing must have in the near future. There we have it: this anthroposophical movement is a dangerous movement, it undermines today's economic system; one's own “Futurum” must break away so as not to be in these dangerous waters! I don't know if it has been read in the right way. It must have been read, even by anthroposophists. But if it is read and felt in the right way, then it must also be felt as I have just expressed it. But then it cannot be allowed to go without informing the public that this is a thoroughly untruthful, objectively untruthful, unworthy attack against the Anthroposophical Society by the present management of “Futurum”. I cannot characterize the matter otherwise. I now ask you to really consider the matter, because the situation is such that it is no longer possible to put up with everything that is being said and done to us from all sides. It is no longer possible. I am only giving this to you all for consideration for now, but for careful consideration. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. there will be a eurythmy performance and at 8 a.m. we will continue today's reflection here. It is necessary to explicitly point out that it was not the anthroposophical movement that trumpeted these crazy things out into the world, but the same side that is now blaming it on the anthroposophical movement. |
| 112. The Gospel of St. John: The Initiation Mysteries
01 Jul 1909, Kassel Translated by Harry Collison |
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| We can say of such minds that they positively yearn for anthroposophy. But they have not been able to find it. It is the task of the anthroposophical movement to pour into these vessels, prepared by such minds, all that can contribute to clear, distinct, true conceptions of the most significant events, such as the Christ event and the Mystery of Golgotha. By means of its revelations concerning the realms of the spiritual world, anthroposophy or spiritual research alone can throw light on these events. Verily, it is only through anthroposophy, through spiritual research, that the Mystery of Golgotha can be comprehended in our time. |
| 112. The Gospel of St. John: The Initiation Mysteries
01 Jul 1909, Kassel Translated by Harry Collison |
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As the fruit of yesterday's enquiries we learned that the Christ-Impulse, once it had worked through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, united with the evolution of the earth; and now its power within the earthly development of mankind is such that in our time it affects man in the same way as did formerly the procedure which is becoming ever more dangerous for human life—that of withdrawing the etheric from the physical body during the three and a half days of initiation. The Christ-Impulse actually affects human consciousness as powerfully as does an abnormal process of the above sort. But you must realize that such a radical change needed time to take root in human evolution, that it could not appear from the start with such intensity; and it was therefore necessary to create a sort of transition in the resurrection of Lazarus. The deathlike state lasting three and a half days was still retained in the case of Lazarus, but you should clearly understand that this state differed from the one passed through by the old initiates. Lazarus' condition was not brought about artificially by the initiator, as was the case in former times, by withdrawing the etheric from the physical body through processes I am not at liberty to describe here. We may say that it came about in a more natural way. From the Gospel itself you can gather that Christ had associated with Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary before, for we read, “The Lord loved him”. This means that for a long time Christ Jesus had been exercizing a great and powerful influence on Lazarus, who had thereby been adequately prepared and developed. And the consequence was that in his case the initiation did not call for the artificial inducing of a three-anda-half-day trance, but that this came about of itself under the mighty impression of the Christ-Impulse. So for the outer world Lazarus was as though dead, so to speak, for three and a half days, even though during this time he experienced what was of the utmost importance; and thus only the last act, the resurrection, was undertaken by Christ. And anyone who is familiar with what there occurred recognizes an echo of the old initiation process in the words employed by Christ Jesus: Lazarus, come forth. The resurrected Lazarus, as we have seen, was John—or better, the writer of the John Gospel. It was he who could introduce the Gospel of the Christ Being into the world because he was, so to say, the first initiate in the Christian sense. For this reason we may safely assume that this Gospel of St. John, so badly abused by present-day research of a purely historical, critical, theological nature, and represented as a mere lyrical hymn, as a subjective expression of this author, will prove the means of insight into the profoundest mysteries of the Christ-Impulse. Nowadays this Gospel of St. John constitutes a stumbling block for the materialists who carry on Bible research when they compare it with the other three, the so-called synoptic Gospels. The picture of Christ that arises before them out of the first three is so flattering to the learned gentlemen of our time! The pronouncement has gone forth, even from theological quarters, that what we are dealing with is the “simple man of Nazareth”. Again and again it is emphasized that one can gain a picture of Christ as perhaps one of the noblest of men who have walked the earth; but the picture remains merely that of a human being. There is even a tendency to simplify this picture as far as possible; and in this connection one hears it mentioned that after all, there have been other great ones as well, such as Plato and Socrates. The most that is admitted are differences in degree. The picture of Christ yielded by the John Gospel is indeed a very different one. At the very beginning it is stated that what lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years was the Logos, the primordial, eternal Word, for which we have also the term “eternal creative wisdom”. Our epoch cannot understand that in the thirtieth year of his life a man could be sufficiently developed to be able to sacrifice his own ego and receive into himself another being, a Being of wholly superhuman nature: the Christ, Whom Zarathustra addressed as Ahura Mazdao. That is why theological critics of this type imagine that the writer of the John Gospel had set out merely to describe his attitude to his Christ in a sort of lyrical hymn—nothing more. On the one hand, so they maintain, we have the John Gospel, and on the other, the other three; but by taking the average one can compound a picture of Christ as the “simple man”, while granting His historical eminence. Modern Bible critics resent the idea of a divine being dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth. The akashic record discloses the fact that in His thirtieth year the personality we know as Jesus of Nazareth had, as a result of all He had experienced in former incarnations, achieved a degree of maturity that enabled Him to sacrifice His own ego; for that is what took place when, at the Baptism by John, this Jesus of Nazareth could make the resolution to withdraw—as an ego, the fourth principle of the human being—from His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. And what remained was a noble sheath, a lofty physical, etheric, and astral body which had been saturated with the purest, most highly developed ego. This was in the nature of a pure vessel which at the Baptism could receive the Christ, the primordial, eternal Logos, the “creative wisdom”. That is what the akashic record reveals to us; and we can recognize it, if we only will, in the narrative of the John Gospel. But clearly it behooves us to consider what our materialistic age believes. Some of you may be surprised to hear me speak of theologians as materialistic thinkers, for after all, they are occupied with spiritual matters. But it is not a question of what a man believes or what he studies, but rather, of the method of his research, regardless of its content. Anyone who rejects our present subject or repudiates a spiritual world, who considers only what exists in the outer world in the way of documents and the like, is a materialist. The means of research is the important thing. But at the same time we must come to terms with the opinions of our age. In reading the Gospels you will find certain contradictions. As to the essentials, to be sure—that is, as to what the akashic record discloses as essential—it can be said that the agreement among them is striking. They agree, first of all, in the matter of the Baptism itself; and it is made clear in all four Gospels that their authors saw in this Baptism the greatest imaginable import for Jesus of Nazareth. The four Gospels further agree on the fact of the crucifixion and the fact of the Resurrection. Now, these are precisely the facts that seem most miraculous to the materialistic thinker of today—and no contradiction exists here. But in the other cases, how are we to come to terms with the seeming contradictions? Taking first the Evangelists Mark and John, we find their narratives commencing with the Baptism: they describe the last three years of Christ Jesus' activity—that is, only what occurred after the Christ Spirit had taken possession of His threefold sheath, His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Then consider the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke. In a certain respect these trace the earlier history as well, the section which, within our meaning, the akashic record discloses as the story of Jesus of Nazareth before sacrificing Himself for the Christ. But at this point the contradiction seekers notice at once that Matthew tells of a genealogy reaching to Abraham, whereas Luke traces the line of descent back to Adam, and from Adam to Adam's Father: to God Himself. A further contradiction could be found in the following: According to Matthew, three Wise Men, or Magi, guided by a star, come to do homage at the birth of Jesus; while Luke relates the vision of the shepherds, their adoration of the Child, the presentation in the Temple—in contrast with which Matthew narrates the persecution by Herod, the flight into Egypt, and the return. These points and many others could be considered individual contradictions; but by examining more closely the facts gleaned from the akashic record, without reference to the Gospels, we can come to terms with them. The akashic record informs us that at about the time stated in the Bible—the difference of a few years is immaterial—Jesus of Nazareth was born, and that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt an individuality that in former incarnations had experienced lofty stages of initiation, had gained deep insight into the spiritual world. And it tells us something more, with which for the present I shall deal only in outline. The akashic record, which provides the only true history, reveals the circumstance that he who appeared in this Jesus of Nazareth had, in former incarnations, passed through manifold initiations, in all sorts of localities; and it leads us back to the fact that this later bearer of the name of Jesus of Nazareth had originally attained to a lofty and significant stage of initiation in the Persian world and had exercized an exalted, far-reaching activity. This individuality dwelling in the body of Jesus of Nazareth had already been active in the spiritual life of ancient Persia, had gazed up at the sun, and had addressed the great Sun Spirit as “Ahura Mazdao”. We must thoroughly understand that the Christ entered the bodies of this individuality which had passed through the sort of incarnations mentioned. What does that mean? It simply means that the Christ made use of these three bodies—the astral, etheric, and physical bodies of Jesus of Nazareth—for fulfilling His mission. Everything we think, all that we express in words, that we feel or sense, is connected with our astral body: the astral body is the vehicle of all this. Jesus of Nazareth, as an ego, had lived for thirty years in this astral body, had communicated to it all that He had experienced within Himself and assimilated during former incarnations. In what way, then, did this astral body form its thoughts? It had to conform and amalgamate with the individuality that lived in it for thirty years. When in ancient Persia Zarathustra lifted his gaze to the sun and told of Ahura Mazdao, this stamped itself into his astral body; and into this astral body there entered the Christ. Was it not natural, then, that Christ, when choosing a metaphor or an expression of feeling, should turn to what His astral body offered—of whatever nature? When you wear a grey coat you appear to the outer world in a grey coat; and Christ appeared to the outer world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—in His physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and consequently His thoughts and feelings were colored by the images of the thoughts and feelings living in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. No wonder, then, that many an old Persian expression is reflected in His utterances, or that in John's Gospel we find an echo of terms used in the ancient Persian initiation; for the impulse that dwelt in the Christ passed over, of course, into His disciple, into the resurrected Lazarus. So it can be said that the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth speaks to us through John, in his Gospel. No, it is not surprising that expressions should appear which recall the ancient Persian initiation and the form in which its ideas were presented. In Persia, “Ahura Mazdao” was not the only name for the spirits united in the sun: in a certain connection the term “vohumanu” was used, meaning the “creative Word”, or the “creative spirit”. The Logos, in its meaning of “creative force”, was first employed in the Persian initiation, and we meet it again in the very first verse of the John Gospel. There is much besides in this Gospel which we may understand through knowing that the Christ Himself spoke through an astral body which for thirty years had served Jesus of Nazareth, and that this individuality was the re-embodiment of an ancient Persian initiate. Similarly I could point to a great deal more in the John Gospel that would show how this most intimate of the Gospels, when using words associated with the mysteries of initiation, employs phrases reminiscent of Persia, and how this old mode of expression has persisted into later times. If we now wish to understand the position of the other Evangelists in this matter we must recall various points that have already been established in the previous lectures. We learned, for example, that there existed certain lofty spiritual beings who transferred their sphere of action to the sun when the latter detached itself from the earth; and it was pointed out that their outer astral form was in a sense the counterpart of certain animal forms here on earth. There was first, the form of the Bull spirit, the spiritual counterpart of those animal natures the essence of whose development lies in what could be called the nutritional and digestive organization. The spiritual counterpart is naturally of a lofty spiritual nature, however inferior the earthly image may appear. So we have certain exalted spiritual beings who transferred their sphere to the sun whence they influenced the earth sphere, appearing there as the Bull spirits. Others appear as the Lion spirits, whose counterpart lives in animal natures pre-eminently developed as to their heart and organs of circulation. Then we have spiritual beings who are the counterparts of what we meet in the animal kingdom as eagle natures, the Eagle spirits. And finally there are those that harmoniously unite, as it were, the other natures as in a great synthesis, the Man spirits. These were in a sense the most advanced. Passing now to the old initiation, we find that this offered the possibility of beholding, face to face, the exalted spiritual beings that had outstripped man. But the manner in which primitive men had to be initiated, in accord with the demands of those ancient times, depended upon the origin of their descent—that is, whether from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. Even in Atlantis, therefore, there existed oracles in manifold variety. Some had adjusted their spiritual vision primarily to the beholding of what we have described as the Eagle spirits, while others saw the Lion spirits, the Bull spirits, or the Man spirits: the initiation accorded with the specific traits of the candidate. This differentiation was one of the characteristics of the Atlantean age, and certain echos of it have persisted into our own post-Atlantean time. Thus you could find Mystery temples in Asia Minor, or in Egypt, where the initiation took a form that brought about the vision of the lofty spiritual beings as Bull spirits, or as Eagle spirits. And it was in the Mysteries that outer culture had its source. The initiates who saw the lion form in the exalted spiritual beings conjured up in the lion body a sort of image of what they had beheld; but they saw as well that these spirits take part in the evolution of man. That is why they assigned a human head to the lion body, a concept that later became the sphinx.—Those who saw the spiritual counterparts as Bull spirits bore testimony to the spiritual world by introducing a Bull worship, which led on the one hand to the Apis Bull worship in Egypt, and on the other, to the worship of the Persian Mithras Bull; for everything we find in the way of outer cult usages among the different peoples derived from the initiation rites. There were initiates everywhere whose spiritual vision was focussed principally on the Bull spirits, others attuned primarily to the Eagle spirits, and so on. To a certain extent we can even indicate the differences in the various modes of initiation. Those initiated, for example, in such a way that the spiritual beings appeared to them in the form of Bull spirits were informed principally concerning the secrets connected with man's glandular system, with what pertains to the etheric principle. And there is still another branch of the nature of man into which they were initiated: the human properties that are firmly attached to the earth—welded to it, as it were. All this was grasped by those initiated in the Bull Mysteries. Let us try to experience the soul mood of such initiates. From their great teachers they had learned, in effect, that man had descended from divine heights, that the primordial human beings were the descendants of divine-spiritual beings and that therefore they traced the first man back to his Father-God. Thus man came down to earth and passed from one earth form to another. These men were primarily interested in what was bound to the earth, as well as in all that men had experienced when they had thought of divine-spiritual beings as their ancestors.—That was the attitude of the Bull initiates. The Eagle initiates constituted a different case. These envisioned those spiritual beings who bear a most peculiar relation to the human being; but in order to understand this a few words must be said concerning the spiritual character of the bird nature. Animals rank below human beings by reason of their inferior functions, and they represent, as you know, beings that solidified too early, having failed to retain the softness and flexibility of their body substance until such time as they might have been able to embody in human form. But in the bird nature we have beings that did not assume the lowest functions: instead they overshot the mark in the opposite direction. They failed to descend far enough, as it were; they remained in unduly soft substances, while the others lived in substances that were too hard. But as evolution continued, outer conditions compelled them to solidify; hence they hardened in a manner incompatible with a nature that had descended to the earth, being too soft. That is a rough description in untechnical terms, but it gives the facts. The archetypes of these bird natures are those spiritual beings who likewise overshot the mark, who remained in a substance too soft, and who consequently were carried, as it were, beyond what they might have become at a certain point of their development. They deviated from the normal development in an upward direction, while the rest diverged downwards. The middle position is in a certain sense occupied by the Lion spirits, as well as by the harmonious ones, the Man spirits, who grasped the right moment to incorporate. We have already seen how the Christ event was received by those in whom there lived something of the old initiation. According to the nature of their specific initiation they had been able in the past to see into the spiritual world; and those who had received the Bull initiation—throughout a great part of Egypt, for example—were aware of the following: We can gaze up into the spiritual world, and therefore the lofty spiritual beings appear to us as the counterparts of the Bull nature in man. But now—so said those who had come in contact with the Christ impulse—now there has appeared to us in His true form the Ruler of the spiritual realm. That which we had always seen, that to which we had attained through the stages of our initiation, showed us a prefatory form of the Christ. In what was formerly revealed to us we must now see the Christ. Remembering all that we beheld, all that the spiritual worlds gradually disclosed to us, we can ask, Whither would it all have led us if at that time we had already attained to the requisite heights? It would have led us to the Christ.—An initiate of that type described the journey into the spiritual world in line with the Bull initiation; but he added. The truth it harbors is the Christ.—And a Lion or an Eagle initiate would have spoken similarly. It was definitely prescribed in each of these initiation Mysteries how the candidate should be led up into the spiritual world, and the rites varied according to the manner in which he was to enter it. There were Mysteries of many different shades, especially in Asia Minor and in Egypt, where it was customary to guide the initiates in such a way as to bring them eventually to the Bull nature, or to a vision of the Lion spirits, as the case might have been. With this in mind let us now consider those who, as a result of many different kinds of initiations in the past, had become capable of sensing the Christ impulse, of comprehending Christ in the right way. Let us observe an initiate who had passed through the stages enabling him to behold the Man spirit. Such a one could say, The true Ruler in the spiritual world has appeared to me, Christ, Who lived in Jesus of Nazareth. And to what am I indebted for this? To my ancient initiation.—He knew the procedure that led to the vision of the Man spirit; so he describes what a man experiences in order to attain to initiation, or to understand the Christ nature at all. He knew initiation in the form prescribed in those Mysteries that led to the Man initiation. That is why the lofty initiate who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him in the image of the Mysteries he had gone through and knew, and he described Him as he himself saw Him. That is the case in the narrative according to Matthew; and an old tradition hit upon the truth in connecting the Matthew Gospel with that one of the four symbols forming the capitals of the columns you see in this hall1 and which we connote the symbol of the Man spirit. An ancient tradition associates the writer of the Gospel according to St. Matthew with the Man spirit, and that is because this writer knew, so to speak, the Man Mystery initiation as his own point of departure. You see, in the time when the Gospels were written it was not customary to write biographies as they are written today. What seemed essential to those people was the appearance of an exalted initiate Who had received the Christ into himself. The manner of becoming an initiate, the experiences he was destined to undergo, that was what they considered important; and that is why they ignored the external every-day happenings that appear so important to biographers of today. The modern biographer will go to any lengths to collect enough material. Once when Friedrich Theodor Vischer (”Schwaben-Vischer”) was indulging in a bit of sarcasm at the expense of modern biographies he hit on an excellent illustration. A young scholar set about writing his doctor's thesis, which was to be on Goethe. As a preparation he first assembled all the material he could use; but as there was not enough to satisfy him, he poked about in all the rooms and attics of the various towns where Goethe had lived, swept out all the corners, and even emptied the dustbins in an effort to find whatever might chance to be there, which would then enable him to write a thesis on The Connection between Frau Christiane von Goethe's Chilblains and the Mythologico-allegorico-symbolical Figures in the Second Part of Faust. Well, that is laying it on rather thick, but it is after all quite in the spirit of modern biographers. People planning to write on Goethe sniff about in all sorts of rubbish hunting material. The meaning of the word “discretion” is no longer known to them today. But those who portrayed Jesus of Nazareth in their Gospels went about their descriptions quite differently. Everything in the way of external occurrences appeared to them negligible as compared with the various stages which Jesus of Nazareth, as an initiate, had to pass through. That is what they described; but each one did so in his own way, as he himself saw the matter. Matthew described in the manner of those initiated in the Man spirit. This initiation was closely akin to the wisdom of Egypt. And now we can understand, too, how the writer of the Luke Gospel had arrived at his unusual representation. He was one of those who in former incarnations had achieved initiations leading to the Bull spirit, and he could describe what accorded with such an initiation. He could say, A great initiate must have passed through such and such stages—and he portrayed Him in the colors he knew. He was one of those who formerly had lived principally within the Egyptian Mysteries, so it is not surprising that he should stress the trait which represents, let us say, primarily the Egyptian character of initiation. Let us consider the author of the Luke Gospel in the light of what we have thus learned. He reasoned as follows: A lofty initiate lived in the individuality that dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. I have learned how one penetrates to the Bull initiation through the Egyptian Mysteries. That I know.—This special form of initiation was vividly before him. And now he continues: He Who has become so exalted an initiate as Jesus of Nazareth must have passed through an Egyptian initiation, as well as through all the others. So in Jesus of Nazareth we have an initiate who had undergone the Egyptian initiation.—Naturally the other Evangelists knew that, too; but it did not appear to them as of any special importance, because they had not known initiation from this aspect so intimately. For this reason a certain journey undertaken by Jesus of Nazareth did not strike them as in any way noteworthy. I said in one of the first lectures that if a man had undergone an initiation in the past, something special happens to him when he reappears. Definite events occur resembling, in the outer world, repetitions of former experiences. Let us assume a man had been initiated in ancient Ireland: he would now have to be reminded, by some experience in his life, of this old Irish initiation. This could come about, for instance, by some outer event impelling him to travel to Ireland. Now, anyone familiar with the Irish initiation would be struck by the fact that it was Ireland and not some other country that the man visited; but no one else would see anything unusual in this journey. The individuality that dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth was an initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries, among others—hence the journey to Egypt. Who would be particularly struck by this Flight into Egypt? One who knew it from his own life; and such a one did describe this particular journey because he knew its significance. It is narrated in the Matthew Gospel because the writer knew from his own initiation what a journey to Egypt meant to a great many initiates of former times. And when we know that in the writer of the Luke Gospel we are dealing with a man who was specifically conversant, through his knowledge of the Egyptian Mysteries, with the initiation that led to the Bull cult, we shall find truth in the old tradition that couples him with the Bull symbol. For good reasons—to explain which would require more time than is available at the moment—the Luke Gospel does not mention the journey to Egypt; but typical events are cited whose significance can be rightly judged only by one in close contact with the Egyptian initiation. The author of the Matthew Gospel indicates this connection of Jesus of Nazareth with the Egyptian Mysteries in a more external way, by means of the journey to Egypt; whereas the writer of the Luke Gospel sees all the events he describes in the spirit provided by an Egyptian initiation. Now let us turn to the writer of the Mark Gospel. This Evangelist omits all the early history and describes particularly the activity of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth during three years. In this respect his Gospel tallies completely with that of St. John. This writer passed through an initiation strongly resembling those of Asia Minor, even those of Greece—we can call them EuropeanAsiatic-pagan initiations—and at that time these were the most up-to-date. Reflected in the outer world, they all imply that one who is a lofty personality, initiated in a certain manner, owes his origin not only to a natural but to a supernatural event. Consider that Plato's followers, those who were anxious to form the right conception of him, did not care particularly who his bodily father was. For them, Plato's spirituality outshone all else. Hence they said, That which lived in the Plato body as the Plato soul, that is the Plato who was born for us as a lofty spiritual being that fructifies the lower nature of man.—That is why they ascribed to the God Apollo the birth of the Plato who meant so much to them, the awakened Plato. In their sight Plato was a son of Apollo. Especially in these Mysteries was it customary to pay no particular attention to the earthly life of the personality in question, but to focus on the moment at which he became what is so often mentioned in the Gospels: a “divine son”, a “son of god”. Plato, a son of god—thus was he described by his noblest devotees, by those who understood him best. And we must realize what significance such a characterization of the Gods bore for the human life of such sons of god on earth. It was in this fourth epoch, as you know, that men adapted themselves to the physical sense world and came to love the earth. The old gods were dear to them because they could symbolize the fact that precisely the leading sons of the earth were “sons of the gods”. Those of them who dwelt on earth were to be thus designated. One of these was the author of the Gospel of St. Mark, hence he describes only what occurred after the Baptism by John. The initiation this Evangelist had undergone was the one that led to a knowledge of the higher world in the sign of the Lion spirit; and an old tradition links him with the symbol of the Lion. Now we will turn back to what we already touched on today, the Gospel according to St. John. We said that he who wrote the John Gospel was initiated by Christ Jesus Himself, hence he had something to give which contained the germ, so to say, of the efficacy of the Christ-Impulse, not only for that time, but for the far distant future. He proclaimed something that will remain valid for all time. This Evangelist was one of the Eagle initiates, those who had skipped the normal evolutionary stage. The normal instruction of that time was set down by the author of the Mark Gospel. All that reaches out beyond that period, showing the nature of Christ's activity in the distant future, all that transcends earthbound matters, we find in St. John. That is why tradition connects him with the symbol of the Eagle. This shows us that a tradition associating the Evangelists with what may be called the essence of their own initiation is by no means based on mere fancy, but is born out of the depths of Christian evolution. One must penetrate in this way deep into the roots of things; then it becomes clear that the greatest, the most transcendent events in the life of Christ are all described in the same way, but that each of the Evangelists portrays Christ Jesus as he understands Him according to the type of his initiation. I indicated this in my book, Christianity as a Mystical Fact, but only in such a way as could be done for readers as yet unprepared; for it was written in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific development. Allowance was made for the lack of understanding, in our time, of occult facts proper. We now understand that Christ is illuminated for us from four sides, each Evangelist throwing light upon Him from the aspect he knew most intimately; and in view of the mighty impulse He gave, you will readily believe that he had many sides. Now, I said that all the Gospels agreed on the following points: that the Christ-Being Himself descended from divine-spiritual heights at the Baptism by John, that this Christ-Being dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, that He suffered death on the Cross, and that He vanquished this death. Later we shall have occasion to examine this Mystery more closely. Today let us look at the death on the Cross in the light of the question: What feature of it is characteristic in the case of the Christ-Being? The answer is, we find it to be an event that created no distinction between the life that went before and the life that followed. The most characteristic feature of the death of Christ is that He passed through death unchanged, that He remained the same, that it was He Who exemplified the insignificance of death. For this reason all who could know the true nature of the Christ death have ever clung to the living Christ. Considered from this point of view, what was the nature of the event of Damascus, where he who had been Saul became Paul? From what he had previously learned Paul knew that the Spirit first sought by Zarathustra in the sun as Ahura Mazdao, the Spirit later beheld by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai, had gradually been approaching the earth; and he also knew that this Spirit would have to enter a human body. What Paul could not grasp, however, while he was still Saul, was that the man destined to be the Christ bearer should have to suffer the disgrace of death on the cross. He could only imagine that when Christ came He would triumph, that once He had approached the earth He would have to remain in all that pertained to it. Paul could not think of Him Who had hung upon the Cross as the bearer of the Christ.—That is the substance of Paul's attitude as Saul—before he became Paul. The death on the Cross, this humiliating death and all that it implied, was primarily what prevented him from recognizing the fact that Christ had really been present on the earth. What, then, had to occur? Something had to take place in Paul which at a certain moment would create in him the conviction: The individuality that hung upon the Cross in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ. Christ has been here on earth.—And what brought this about? Paul became clairvoyant through the event of Damascus; and then he could become convinced. To the eye of the seer the aura of the earth appeared changed after the event of Golgotha: previously the Christ was not to be found there, but thenceforth He was visible in the earth's aura. That is the difference; and Saul reasoned: With clairvoyant perception I can verify the fact that He Who hung upon the Cross and lived as Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ Who is now in the earth aura.—In the aura of the earth he saw the Being first beheld in the sun by Zarathustra, Ahura Mazdao; and now he knew that He Who had been crucified had arisen. Now he could proclaim that Christ had arisen and had appeared to him, as He had appeared to Cephas, to the other brethren, and to the five hundred at one time. Thenceforth he was the apostle of the living Christ for Whom death has not the same meaning as for other men. Whenever the Death on the Cross is doubted—that is, this particular manner in which the Christ died—anyone who is really informed on the subject will agree with another2 Swabian who, in his Urchristentum, has assembled with the greatest historical accuracy everything that is indisputably related to what we know about it. In that connection Gfrörer—for he it was—rightly emphasized specifically the Death on the Cross; and in a certain sense we can agree with him when he says, in his rather sarcastic mode of expression, that when anyone contradicted him in this matter he would look him critically in the eye and ask whether there might perhaps be something wrong in his upper storey. Among the most indubitably established elements of Christianity are this Death on the Cross and what we shall elucidate tomorrow: the Resurrection and the effect of the words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” And these were the substance of Paul's message, hence he could say, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” For him the Resurrection of Christ was the starting point of Christianity. Not until our time have people begun again to reflect, so to speak, upon such things—not in circles where they are made the subject of theological disputes, but where the actual life of Christianity is involved. So the great philosopher Solovyev really takes entirely the Pauline standpoint in emphasizing that everything in Christianity rests upon the idea of the Resurrection, and that a Christianity of the future is impossible unless the concept of the Resurrection be believed and grasped. And after his own fashion he repeats Paul's utterance, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” In that case the Christ impulse would be an impossible thing: there could be no Christianity without the risen Christ, the living Christ. It is characteristic, and therefore worthy of emphasis, that certain isolated deep thinkers have come to recognize the truth of Paul's message solely by means of their philosophy, without benefit of occultism. If we devote some attention to such thinkers we realize that men are beginning to appear in our time who have a concept of what the future convictions and Weltanschauung of mankind will have to be, namely, that which spiritual science must provide. But without spiritual science even so profound a thinker as Solovyev achieved no more than empty conceptual forms. His philosophical paraphernalia resemble vessels for containing concepts; and what must be poured into them is something they indeed crave and for which they form the molds, but something they lack; and this can come only out of the anthroposophical current. It will fill the molds with that living water which is the revelation of facts concerning the spiritual world, the occult. That is what this spiritual-scientific Weltanschauung will offer its finest minds, those who already today show that they need it, and whose tragedy lies in their not having been able to obtain it. We can say of such minds that they positively yearn for anthroposophy. But they have not been able to find it. It is the task of the anthroposophical movement to pour into these vessels, prepared by such minds, all that can contribute to clear, distinct, true conceptions of the most significant events, such as the Christ event and the Mystery of Golgotha. By means of its revelations concerning the realms of the spiritual world, anthroposophy or spiritual research alone can throw light on these events. Verily, it is only through anthroposophy, through spiritual research, that the Mystery of Golgotha can be comprehended in our time.
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| 120. Manifestations of Karma: Karma in Relation to Disease and Health
18 May 1910, Hanover Translator Unknown |
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| Sides are taken by the laity quite as much as by certain physicians against what is called scientific medicine, and it can easily be seen how the partisans of scientific medicine are perhaps provoked by many an unjustified attack, so that they not only fall into a kind of passion when they feel called upon, and rightly too, to enter the lists on behalf of what science has to say on this matter, but they also wage war against what is said contrary to their own views on the subject in question. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will be able to do justice to its high task only if it succeeds in maintaining an unprejudiced and objective judgement in this field which has been so much darkened by discussions. |
| It may be said, however, that the most admirable facts which have so far been brought to light cannot bear fruit for the good of humanity in our day because the materialistically coloured opinions and theories prevalent to-day render them sterile. So it is much better for Anthroposophy modestly to say what it has to say than to take part in any sort of party war. In this way it will arouse much less the passions already so excited at the present time. If we wish to obtain a point of view from which to consider the questions that are to occupy us, we must first realise that the cause of any phenomena has to be sought for in a variety of ways; there are nearer and more remote causes, and where Anthroposophy wishes to discover the karmic cause of health, it will have to occupy itself a little with the more remote causes not on the surface. |
| 120. Manifestations of Karma: Karma in Relation to Disease and Health
18 May 1910, Hanover Translator Unknown |
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The observations we shall have to make in this and succeeding lectures may be exposed to a certain misunderstanding. We shall have to deal with various questions about disease and health from the standpoint of karma, but owing to the contrary nature of present currents of thought on this subject a wrong idea of the spiritually scientific basis may easily be formed when this subject is touched upon. We know that the most varied circles discuss these questions of health and disease, and that the discussion is often carried on with considerable vehemence and passion. Sides are taken by the laity quite as much as by certain physicians against what is called scientific medicine, and it can easily be seen how the partisans of scientific medicine are perhaps provoked by many an unjustified attack, so that they not only fall into a kind of passion when they feel called upon, and rightly too, to enter the lists on behalf of what science has to say on this matter, but they also wage war against what is said contrary to their own views on the subject in question. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will be able to do justice to its high task only if it succeeds in maintaining an unprejudiced and objective judgement in this field which has been so much darkened by discussions. Those who have often heard lectures from me will know how little I am disposed to join the chorus of those who wish to discredit what is described as academic medicine; in Spiritual Science there is no question of agreement with one particular party or another. As a preliminary observation we may say that the achievements of recent years in regard to health and the actual investigations into the phenomena of disease really arouse praise, recognition, and admiration, just as do numerous other scientific discoveries. Concerning what has been actually accomplished in this realm, it may be said that if anyone may rejoice at all about what medicine has accomplished in recent years it is Spiritual Science that should do so. On the other hand, we must point out that the achievements and actual knowledge and discoveries of Natural Science are by no means always truly and satisfactorily interpreted and explained by present-day scientific opinion. It is indeed most patent in many fields of scientific investigation that the opinions and theories have not grown in accordance with the positive ideas and facts which are sometimes marvellous. The light which proceeds from Spiritual Science will also successfully illuminate the scientific conquests of recent years. After this preliminary observation it will be seen that we are not concerned with any sort of an agreement in a paltry skirmish regarding what can be done at the present time in the field of scientific medicine. It may be said, however, that the most admirable facts which have so far been brought to light cannot bear fruit for the good of humanity in our day because the materialistically coloured opinions and theories prevalent to-day render them sterile. So it is much better for Anthroposophy modestly to say what it has to say than to take part in any sort of party war. In this way it will arouse much less the passions already so excited at the present time. If we wish to obtain a point of view from which to consider the questions that are to occupy us, we must first realise that the cause of any phenomena has to be sought for in a variety of ways; there are nearer and more remote causes, and where Anthroposophy wishes to discover the karmic cause of health, it will have to occupy itself a little with the more remote causes not on the surface. We will give an illustration of this, which upon reflection will soon be understood. Let us take the standpoint of one who thinks that we are gloriously advanced at the present day in this field, and who altogether despises the opinions on health and disease which were advanced in previous centuries. If we survey the questions of disease and health, we gain the impression that the representatives of this view usually conclude that what has come to light in this field within the last twenty or thirty years is a kind of absolute truth which may, indeed, be supplemented, but can never be gainsaid as can the knowledge which has been acquired in past ages. For example it is often said: ‘In this field we find the grossest superstition in bygone times!’ And then truly startling examples are given of the way in which in past centuries they tried to heal one complaint or another. It is considered to be exceptionally bad when one comes across terms which for the modern consciousness have lost the meaning they possessed at that time. Thus some say: ‘There were times when every illness was ascribed to God or the devil!’ This was not so bad as these people make it out to be, because they can form no idea of what was intended by the expression ‘God’ or ‘devil.’ We can make this very clear by means of an illustration. Let us suppose that two persons are speaking together. One says to the other: ‘I have just seen a room full of flies. Someone said it was quite natural the room should be full of flies, and I thought so too, for the room was very dirty and so the flies thrive.’ It is quite natural that one should accept this as a reason for the existence of the flies and it will be quite reasonable to say that if the room were thoroughly cleaned the flies would disappear. But there was another person who said that he knew a different reason for the flies in the room, and that the real cause was that for a long time a very lazy housewife had lived there. Now what boundless superstition to think that laziness was a kind of personality which needed only to beckon, and then in came the flies! Surely the explanation which attributes the presence of flies to the dirt is a better one. There happens almost the same thing when one says: ‘Someone has fallen ill through being infected by some sort of bacillus; if this is driven out, the person will be well again.’ Others talk about a spiritual cause which lies deeper down, but to effect a cure they still think it necessary only to drive out the bacillus. To talk of a spiritual cause of illness while admitting all the rest is no more superstitious than to say as in the first case that the presence of the flies was due to a lazy housewife. And there is no need to be angry if someone says that the flies would not be there if the room were clean. It is not a question of one view being in opposition to the other; rather the holder of each view should learn to understand the other and study his meaning. One must carefully take into consideration whether only the immediate causes are spoken of, or whether indirect causes are referred to. The objective Anthroposophist will never take this standpoint that laziness needs only to beckon for the flies to come into the room; he will know that other material things also come into consideration. But everything which has a material expression has its spiritual background, and for the welfare of humanity this spiritual background has to be sought. Those, however, who would like to take part in the combat should also be reminded that spiritual causes will not always be understood in the same way and also cannot be combated in the same way as ordinary material causes; and one must not always think that by fighting the spiritual causes there would be no need to combat the material causes; for then one might allow the room to remain dirty, and seek to cure the idleness of the housewife. What is necessary is that each of these two parties should understand the other's point of view and not quarrel with him about it. Now when we are considering karma we must speak of connections of events which came into human life in former times, and how they manifest themselves later in their after-effects on the same human being. If we speak of health and disease from the standpoint of karma we must ask: ‘Can we connect the healthy and diseased condition with the former deeds and experiences of this person, and how will his present condition of health or disease later react upon him?’ The man of the present day would far rather believe that disease is connected only with immediate causes. For the fundamental tendency in the modern view of life is always to seek what is most convenient. And it is certainly convenient to go no further than the immediate cause. Therefore in considering human diseases, only the immediate causes are taken into consideration, and most of all is this the case with the invalid himself. For it cannot be denied that the patients themselves are led to take this standpoint, and because of this there exists so much dissatisfaction. When there is the belief that the disease must have an immediate cause which must be found by the skilled physician, and when he cannot help, he is accused of having bungled somewhere. From this convenient method of judgement proceeds much of what is said at the present day on this subject. One who knows how to observe the wide-spreading effects of karma will always extend his gaze more and more from what happens now to events which lie comparatively far back. Above all, he will be convinced that a complete understanding of some circumstance in a person's life is only possible when an extended view over what lies further back can be obtained. Especially is this so in the case of illness. When speaking of people who are ill, and also of those who are well, the question arises, ‘How can we form an idea of the nature of disease?’ When spiritual investigation is carried on directly with the aid of the spiritual organs of perception, it will always—when dealing with the diseases of man—notice irregularities, not only in the physical body, but also in the higher principles, in the etheric and astral bodies. The spiritual investigator must always in the case of illness consider, on the one hand the share the physical body may have in this particular case, and, on the other, the share of the etheric body and the astral body; for all three principles may be involved in the disease. The question now arises: ‘What ideas can we form about the processes of disease?’ The answer to this question may be found most easily by first considering how far the idea of disease may be extended. Let us leave it to those who enjoy using such allegorical and symbolic language to talk about diseases of minerals or metals. Let them talk about rust as disease of the iron. We must be quite clear that if we use purely abstract ideas we can gain no practical knowledge of life but can arrive at only a fantastic view, and not one which really penetrates into the facts. If we wish to arrive at a real idea of disease and also a real idea of health, we shall have to guard against saying that minerals and metals can also have diseases. But matters are quite different when we come to the vegetable kingdom. We may certainly speak of the diseases of plants, for a real comprehension of the idea of disease these diseases of plants are especially interesting and important. In the case of plants, if again one does not go to work in a fantastic way, one cannot well speak of ‘inner causes of diseases,’ in the same way as with animals and men. The diseases of plants can always be traced to outer causes, such as some detrimental influence in the ground, insufficient light, this or that effect of the wind and other elementary activities in nature. Or they may be traced to the influence of parasites which live upon the plants and injure them. In the vegetable kingdom the idea of ‘inner causes of disease’ cannot be justified. It is, of course, impossible in the short space of time at our disposal to furnish innumerable proofs of what I have just indicated, but the deeper one goes into the pathology of plants the more it can be seen that in their case inner causes of disease do not exist, but that we have to deal with external injuries or other external influences. Now a plant such as we see in the external world is a being which is made up of a physical and etheric body. At the same time it is a being which brings to our notice the fact that what we call the physical and etheric body are in principle healthy, and that it has to wait until it meets with an external injury before it can become diseased. The researches of Spiritual Science confirm that this is the true state of affairs. Whereas through spiritual scientific research into the diseases of animal and human being we are able to see quite decided changes in the inner or super-sensible part of the being, in the case of a diseased plant we are never able to say that the original etheric body itself is changed, but only that all kinds of disturbances and harmful influences from outside have penetrated into the physical body and especially into the etheric body. Spiritual Science entirely confirms the following general conclusion: In the constituent parts of the plant, namely, physical and etheric bodies, we have before us something which is in essence healthy. But it is another thing to see how when it has suffered external damage it can safeguard by all sorts of means its growth and development, and heal the injury. Notice for instance how, if you cut a plant, it tries to grow round the injured part, and to get round what then interferes with and injures it. We can see when an external injury occurs, the clear manifestation of the healing power which the plant has in its inner organisation. In the etheric and physical bodies of the plant exist healing forces which are brought into play when some exterior injury is inflicted. This is an extremely important fact if we wish to come to a clear understanding in this realm. A being such as a plant, having physical and etheric body thus shows that these principles are fundamentally healthy. There is in them sufficient force not only for the development and growth of the plant, but also there is a super-abundance of these forces which manifest themselves as healing powers when injuries come from outside. Whence, then, do these healing forces come? If you wound a merely physical body the injury will remain; it is unable of itself to repair the injury. For this reason, we cannot talk of a disease in the case of a merely physical body, and least of all can we talk of a relation between disease and healing. This we can best see when a disease appears in a plant. Here we have to look for the principle of the inner healing power in the etheric body. Spiritual investigation shows us this very clearly, for the activity of the etheric body of the plant is much intensified round the part where the wound has been inflicted. It brings forth from itself entirely different forms, and develops entirely different currents. It is an extremely interesting fact that we call on the etheric body of a plant to exercise increased activity when we injure its physical body. We have not indeed defined the concept of disease but we have done something to arrive at its nature, and we have gained something which gives us an inkling of the inward process of healing. Following the clue given by inward spiritual observation let us go further and try to understand the external phenomena to which Spiritual Science leads us. Then we may pass from the consideration of the injuries we give to plants to those we give to animals which, in addition to the etheric body, have also an astral body. If we carry our observations further we shall see that the etheric body of a higher animal reacts correspondingly less to an external injury. The higher the animal is in the scale of evolution so much the less will be the action of the etheric body. If we cause a severe injury to the physical body of a lower or even a higher mammal; if, for instance, we tear a leg from a dog or some such animal, we find that the etheric body cannot answer with its healing power in the same measure as the etheric body of a plant replies to a similar injury to itself. But even in the animal kingdom this action of the etheric body can still be seen to a great extent. Let us descend to a very low order of animals—to the tritons. If we cut off certain organs from such a being they do not experience anything particularly painful. The organs quickly grow again, and the animal soon looks as it did before. In this case something similar has taken place to that which occurred in the case of the plant; we have called forth a certain healing power in the etheric body. But we should not deny that such provocation to develop healing powers in the etheric body of man or of higher animals would mean a considerable risk to health. The lower animal on the contrary will only be stimulated from its inner being to put forth another member by means of its etheric body. Now if one of the limbs of a crab is severed, the animal cannot at once renew it. But when it casts its shell the next time and arrives at the next transition stage of its life, a stump appears; the second time the stump grows larger, and if the animal were to cast its shell often enough, the limb would be replaced by a new one. These facts show us that the etheric body must make greater efforts to call forth the inner forces of healing; and in the higher animals the healing power is still less. If you mutilate a higher animal it can do nothing towards replacing the limb. Here we must allude to a fact which at the present time is the subject of an important dispute in the field of Natural Science: If you mutilate an animal, and the animal has progeny, the deformities are not transmitted to the offspring; the next generation has again the complete parts. When the etheric body carries its qualities over to the offspring it is again stimulated to form a complete organism. The etheric body of a triton still acts in the same animal; in a crab it acts only when it casts its shell; in the higher animals the same phenomenon appears only in the offspring, and there the etheric body replaces what had been mutilated in the previous generation. If we observe these phenomena rightly we shall clearly perceive that we must still speak of the healing forces in the etheric body even if these forces are manifested only in the succeeding generation when the offspring is born without the mutilation which the parent suffered. Here we have, as it were, a research into the why and wherefore of the healing powers of the etheric body. We might now ask the question: How is it, then, that the higher we rise in the animal kingdom—and this applies externally to the human kingdom also—we find that the healing forces of the etheric body have to make greater efforts to manifest themselves? This depends upon the fact that the etheric body may be bound to the physical body in very different ways. Between the physical body and the etheric body there may be a more intimate union or a loose one. For example, let us take the triton, in which the severed member is replaced very quickly. Here we must assume a loose connection between the physical body and the etheric body, and this applies in the vegetable kingdom to a still higher degree. This union, let us say, is such that the physical body is unable to react upon the etheric body, and the latter remains untouched by what happens to the physical body and is in a certain sense independent of it. Now the nature of the etheric body is that of activity, of generation and growth. It encourages growth up to a certain point. When we cut off a part, the etheric body is immediately prepared to restore that part, and to that end unfolds all its activities. But what is the reason if it cannot develop all its activities? The reason is to be found in a closer dependence on the physical body. This is the case with the higher animals. There is here a much more intimate union between the etheric body and the physical body, and when the physical body develops its form and organises the forces of physical nature, these forces react upon the etheric body. To put it clearly: In the lower animals or the plants, that which is outside does not react on the etheric body but leaves it untouched, carrying on an independent existence. When we come to the higher animals, reactions of the physical body are imposed upon the etheric body which adapts itself completely to the physical body; so that if we injure the physical body, we injure the etheric body at the same time. Hence the etheric body has to exercise greater powers if it has first to heal itself and then the corresponding member in the physical body. Therefore in the case of the etheric body of a higher animal, deeper healing forces must be called forth. But what is the connection? Why is the etheric body of a higher animal so dependant upon the forms of the physical body? The higher we advance in the animal creation the more do we have to consider, not only the activity of the etheric body and the physical body, but also that of the astral body. In the case of the lower animals the activity of the astral body comes but little into consideration. For this reason the lower animals still have so many qualities in common with the plants. The higher we ascend, the more does the astral body come into action, and this action is such that it makes the etheric body subservient to itself. A being such as a plant, which has only physical body and etheric body, has little to do with the external world; an action may be exercised upon the plant from outside, but this is not reflected as an inward experience. Where an astral body is active, external impressions are reflected into inner experiences, but a being in which the astral body is inactive is more shut off from the external world. The more the astral body is active the more does a being open itself to the external world. Thus the astral body unites the inner nature of a being with the outer world, and the increasing activity of the astral body brings it about that the etheric body has to use much stronger forces to make injuries good. If we now pass on from animals to man, a new element arises. Man does not simply conform to certain prescribed functions inspired by the astral body as is the case with the animals which have, as it were, a course outlined for them in advance, and which live more according to an established programme. We could scarcely say of an animal that it departs to any great extent from its instincts, or that it follows its instincts with more or less moderation. It follows its plan of life, and all its actions are submitted to a sort of general programme. But man, having risen higher on the ladder of evolution, is able to discern between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil. Through purely individual motives he comes into touch with the outer world in various ways. These contacts react and make an impression upon his astral body, and as a consequence of the interaction between his astral body and etheric body, both now suffer these reactions. Thus if a person leads a dissolute life in any respect it will make an impression on his astral body which in its turn influences the etheric body. How it will do this will depend upon what has been laid down in the astral body. Therefore we shall now be able to understand that the etheric body of man alters, according as he leads this or that life within the limits of good or evil, right or wrong, truth or falsehood, etc. All these exercise an influence on his etheric body. Let us now remember what takes place when a human being passes through the portal of death. We know that the physical body is laid aside and that the etheric body, now united with the astral body and the Ego, remains. When a certain length of time has passed after death, a time which is measured only by days, the etheric body is thrown aside as a second corpse; an extract, however, of the etheric body is left over and this is taken along and kept permanently. In this extract of the etheric body is contained as if in an essence, all that has penetrated the etheric body, for example, from a dissolute life, or from true or false thinking, feeling and action. This is contained in the etheric body and he takes it with him in the period up to a new birth. As an animal does not have such experiences, it cannot, of course, take anything over in the same way beyond the portal of death. When the person again comes into existence by birth, the essence of his previous etheric body is something which now impregnates his new etheric body, and permeates its structure. Therefore in his new existence the person has in his etheric body the results of what he had experienced in his previous life, and as the etheric body is the builder of an entirely new organisation at a new birth, all this now imprints itself on his physical body also. How does this come about? Spiritual investigation shows us that in the form of a human body which enters into existence by birth, we are able to see approximately what deeds a person did in a previous life. In the case of an animal we cannot say that at its birth it brings with it a reincarnated individuality from a previous earth life. Only the common astral body of this species of animal is active, and this will limit the healing power of the etheric body of this animal. In man we find that not only his astral body but also his etheric body is impregnated with the results of the deeds of his previous life: and as the etheric body has within itself the power to bring forth what it formerly had, we shall also understand that this etheric body will also build into the new organism that which it brings with it from previous incarnations. We shall now understand how our deeds in one life can work over into our conditions of health in the next life, and how in our state of health we have often to seek a karmic effect of deeds of a previous life. We may approach the matter in still another way. We may ask: Does everything that we do in the life between birth and death react in the same manner on our etheric body? Even in ordinary life we can perceive a great difference on our inner organisation between the reaction of what we experience as conscious beings, and many other experiences. Here comes a very interesting fact which can be fully explained by Spiritual Science and which can also be quite reasonably understood. In the course of his life a person has a great number of experiences which he receives consciously and unites them with his Ego. Within him they develop into concepts which he works upon, etc. But a great many experiences and impressions do not come as far as to concepts, and yet they are really there in man and act upon him. If you walk along the street it often happens that someone says to you: ‘I saw you today, and you even looked at me!’ And yet you know nothing about it! This is often the case. Of course, this has made an impression; your eyes indeed saw the other person but the direct impression did not come as far as a concept. There are innumerable cases of this sort, so that our life is really divided into two parts—into a realm of soul-life which consists of concepts, and another realm that we have never brought really into clear consciousness. There are again other differences. You will easily be able to distinguish between impressions which you have in your life and can remember, and those which you cannot remember. Thus our soul-life is divided into entirely different categories, and there is, indeed, a very considerable difference between these various categories if we consider the effect upon the inner being of man. Let us now consider for a few minutes the life of man between birth and death. First of all we observe this great difference between the concepts which come again and again into our consciousness, and those which have been forgotten. This difference can be most easily exemplified by the following. Think of an impression which called forth a clear idea within you. Let it be an impression which aroused joy or pain, an impression which was accompanied by a feeling. Let us bear in mind that most impressions, really all the impressions that are made upon us are accompanied by feelings and these feelings express themselves not only on the conscious surface of life, but they work down into the physical body. You need only remember how one impression will cause us to become pale, and another causes us to blush. These impressions affect the circulation of the blood. And now let us pass over to what on the whole does not come to consciousness, or only fleetingly so, and is not remembered. In this case Spiritual Science shows how these impressions are none the less accompanied by emotions in the same way as are the conscious impressions. If you receive an impression from the outer world which, if received consciously, would have frightened you so much that it would have made your heart beat, that same impression is not, however, without effect, even when unconsciously received. It not only makes an impression, but it also goes down into the physical body. It is remarkable that an impression which produces a conscious idea, finds a kind of resistance when working into the deeper human organisation; but if the impression simply acts upon us without our bringing it to a conscious idea, then nothing hinders it, and for this reason it is even more effective. Human life is much richer than the conscious human life. There is a period in our life when we experience a great number of impressions which act very strongly upon the human organisation and which we are unable to remember. In the whole of the period from birth up to the moment when a person can first remember, a great number of impressions are made upon him which are all there, and which have been transformed during this time. They work, just as do the conscious impressions, but there is nothing opposed to them, especially when they are forgotten. Nothing that is otherwise contained in the soul-life in the way of conscious conception can thereby form a dam as it were, and the sub-conscious impressions are those which act most profoundly. Now in the external life one can often find proof that there are moments in human life when the second kind of inner effect is manifested. We are unable to explain many of the events in later life and we cannot discover why we have to experience one thing or another in this particular way. For example, we experience something which has such a tremendous impression upon us that we cannot explain how such a comparatively insignificant experience could make such a great impression. Now if we investigate, we shall perhaps find that exactly in that critical time between birth and the time back to which we can remember, we had a remotely similar experience, but which we have forgotten. No idea of it has remained behind, but at the time we had an impression which affected us very much. This has lived on and now unites with the present impression, strengthening it so that what would otherwise have moved us much less or perhaps not at all now makes a particularly strong impression. If we perceive this clearly we shall be able to form an idea of the extreme importance of the impression made upon a child in its earliest years and how something may throw its very significant shadow or light on the later life. Here again, something from the earlier life works into the later life. It may happen that these impressions of childhood—particularly if they are repeated—influence the whole disposition in such a way that from a certain point of time on, an inexplicable depression of spirit comes. This can only be accounted for when one goes back and discovers the impressions received during childhood which throw their lights or shadows into the later life, and which are now expressed in a permanent depression of spirits. Now we shall find that those events which then made particular impressions upon him work the more strongly on the child. We may say that if emotions, particularly feelings and sensations, were connected with the impressions which were later forgotten, these emotions and overflowings of feeling are particularly effective in producing later similar experiences. Now remember what I have often said about the life during the kamaloca period. After the etheric body has been laid aside as a second corpse, man lives the whole of his last life backwards. He goes over all the experiences which he has had, but not in such a way that he is indifferent to them. During the period in kamaloca, as man still possesses his astral body, what he has gone through brings about the most profound experiences in feeling. For example, let us suppose that a person died at the age of seventy. He lives his life back to his fortieth year when he struck a man on the face; he then experiences the pain which he gave to the other. A kind of self-reproach is thereby called forth; this then remains, so as to compensate the matter in a future life. You will understand that as in this period between death and a new birth there are all kinds of astral experiences, that which is experienced by us as an action imprints itself all the more surely and deeply into our inner being, and contributes to the construction of our new body. Thus, if even in ordinary life we are so strongly affected by certain experiences, especially if they were accompanied by feeling, that they are able to bring about later a depression of spirits, we shall understand that the much stronger impressions of kamaloca life are able to express themselves so that they work deeply into the organisation of the physical body. Here, then, you see a stronger form of a phenomenon which on careful observation you are able to find, even in the life between birth and death. The ideas which meet with no hindrance from the consciousness will lead to other irregularities in the soul—to neurasthenia, to various kinds of nervous diseases and perhaps also to mental diseases. All these phenomena present themselves as causal connections between earlier and later events, and furnish us with a clear picture of them. If we now wish to go further with this idea we may say that our actions will, in the life after death, be transmuted into a powerful emotion. This emotion which is not then weakened by any physical idea, not limited by any ordinary consciousness—for the brain is not then necessary—is experienced by the other form of consciousness, which then works down more deeply. So it is brought about that our actions and the whole nature of our previous life appear in the constitution of our whole organisation in a new life. Hence we shall quite easily understand that when a person who in one incarnation has thought, felt and acted very egotistically, sees before him after death the fruits of his egotistic thoughts, feelings and action, he is filled with strong feelings against his former deeds. This is in fact the case. He develops tendencies which are directed against his own being, and these tendencies, in so far as they have proceeded from an egotistic nature in the previous life, express themselves in a weak organisation in the new life. (The ‘weak organisation’ here refers to the being, and not to the external impression.) Therefore we must clearly understand that a weak organisation can be traced back karmically to egotism in a previous life. Let us go further. Let us suppose that in one life a person manifests a particular tendency towards telling lies. This is a tendency which proceeds from a deeper organisation of the soul; for if a person only follows what is in his most conscious life he will not really lie. It is only emotions and feelings which work up out of his sub-consciousness which lead him to this. Here again we have something deeper. If a person is untruthful, the actions which proceed from untruthfulness will again arouse the most forcible feelings against himself in the life after death, and a profound tendency against lying will appear. He will then bring with him into the next life not only a weak organisation but—so Spiritual Science shows us—an organisation which is incorrectly built, so to speak, and which manifests irregularly formed inner organs in the finer organisation. Something is there which does not agree and this is due to the previous tendency to lying. And whence came this tendency to lying?—for in that tendency the person already has something which also is not in order. Here we shall have to go back still further. Spiritual Science shows that a fickle life which knows neither devotion nor love—a superficial life in one incarnation—expresses itself in the tendency to lying in the next incarnation; and in the third incarnation this tendency to lying manifests itself in incorrectly formed organs. Thus we can karmically trace the effects in three consecutive incarnations: superficiality and fickleness in the first incarnation, the tendency to lying in the second, and the physical disposition to disease in the third incarnation. Thus we see how karma is connected with health and disease. That which has just now been said is based upon facts revealed as the result of spiritual investigation. We are not advancing theories, but actual cases which have been observed, and which can be investigated by the methods of Spiritual Science. We commenced this lecture by referring to the most ordinary facts—the healing powers of the etheric body of the plants. We then showed how through the addition of the astral body in the animals the etheric body is less active. And we saw further how through the reception of the Ego which develops an individual life for good or evil, truth and falsehood, the astral body which, in the case of the higher animals only hinders the healing power, again adds something new to man, namely the karmic influences of disease which flow into him out of the individual life. In the plant there are no inner causes of disease, because disease is still something outside, and the healing powers work without being weakened. In the lower animals we find an etheric body but with such healing powers that it can even replace certain parts; but the further we rise the more does the astral body imprint itself into the etheric body and thereby limit its healing powers. The animals do not survive in reincarnations; therefore that which is in the etheric body is not connected with any moral, intellectual or individual qualities, but only with the common type. In man, however, that which he experiences in his Ego works down into the etheric body. Why then do the experiences of childhood in the realm of feeling we have mentioned manifest themselves only in light diseases? Because we are able to find in the same life the causes of much that manifests itself as neurasthenia, neurosis, hysteria. But we shall have to look for the causes of severer cases of disease in the moral causes set up in the previous life because that which is experienced morally and intellectually can only be fully implanted in the etheric body on passing over to a new birth. On the whole, the etheric body of man cannot embody the deeper moral activities in one life, although we shall still hear of exceptional cases, and indeed of very important ones. Such is the connection which exists between our life of good or evil, our moral and intellectual life in one incarnation, and our health or disease in the next. |
| 120. Manifestations of Karma: Natural and Accidental Illness in Relationship to Karma
20 May 1910, Hanover Translator Unknown |
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| But we must not confuse what appears at the beginning of such a movement as Anthroposophy with what this movement can be in reality. Things may be brought into the Anthroposophical Movement which prevail in the physical world, for people on becoming Anthroposophists often bring to Anthroposophy exactly the same interests and also all the bad habits which they had outside. There is thus brought in much of the degeneracy of our age, and when some such degeneracy appears in the persons in question, the world says that this is the result of Anthroposophy. That is of course a cheap statement. If we now see the karmic thread passing from one incarnation to another, we grasp only the one aspect of truth. |
| 120. Manifestations of Karma: Natural and Accidental Illness in Relationship to Karma
20 May 1910, Hanover Translator Unknown |
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The contents of the last lecture are most important for our next consideration as well as for a comprehension of karmic connection in general. For this reason, because of its extreme importance, allow me to recapitulate the chief points. We began by saying that views concerning cures and medicines have in the course of a relatively short time, during the last century, undergone a radical change. We pointed to the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that view was developed which was based entirely upon the theory that for every illness which was given a name, and which it was believed could be strictly defined, some remedy must exist upon earth. And it was firmly believed that by the use of the remedy in question the course of the illness must be influenced. We then pointed out that view prevailed more or less until the nineteenth century, and side by side with this we showed the complete reversal of this opinion which found expression chiefly in the nihilism of the Viennese school, founded by the famous medical man Dietel, and carried on by Skoda and his disciples. We characterised the nihilistic current of thought by saying that it not merely harboured doubts as to the existence of any absolute connection between one remedy or another, one manipulation or another in respect to the treatment of illness and the illness itself, but would no longer concern itself with any such connection. The idea of the so-called ‘self-healing’ penetrated the minds of the young doctors influenced by this school. Skoda himself made the following significant statement to this school: ‘We may be able to diagnose an illness, to explain, and perhaps also to describe it, but remedy for it we have none.’ This point of view originated from the proofs furnished by Dietel to the effect that, given the necessary conditions, an illness such as pneumonia will with temporising treatment take such course as to develop self-healing forces at the end of certain period. By means of statistics he was able to prove that a temporising treatment showed neither fewer cures nor more deaths than the remedies ordinarily in use. At that time the term ‘therapeutic nihilism’ was not without justification, for it is quite true that the doctors of this school were powerless against the patient's conviction that there simply must exist a remedy, a prescription. The patient would not yield, nor would his friends. A remedy had to be prescribed, and the disciples of this school got out of the difficulty by prescribing a thin solution of gum arabic, which according to their opinion would have the same effect as the remedies previously in use. From this we have learnt how the modern scientific world is moving in the direction of what we may call the karmic connections of life. For they had now to find an answer to the question: how is that which we may call ‘self-healing’ brought about? Or better, why does it take place? And why in some cases can there be no self-healing or cure of any kind? If a whole school led by medical authorities resorts to the introduction of the idea of self-healing, we must arrive at the conclusion that something is invoked in the course of an illness which leads to the conquest of the illness. And this would have induced us to pursue the more secret reasons for the course of the illness. We have attempted to point out how such a karmic connection with the course of an illness may be sought for in the development of humanity. We showed that indeed what we accomplish in our ordinary lives in regard to good or evil deeds, or wise or foolish deeds, what we experience in regard to right or wrong emotions, that all this does not go deeply into the foundation of the human organism. And we have shown the reason why what is subject to the moral, intellectual, or emotional judgement in ordinary life remains at the surface, and is not subject to the law which we could trace in another instance—a law which influences the deeper lying forces of the human organism. We demonstrated that in this way there exists a sort of hindrance preventing immorality from entering into the deeper forces of our organism. And this barrier against the penetration by our acts and thoughts into the deeper forces of our organism, consists in the fact that our deeds and our emotions accomplished between birth and death are accompanied by our conscious concepts. In so far as we accompany an act or any other experience by a conscious concept, so far do we provide a defence against the result of our deeds sinking down into our organism. We have also pointed out the significance of those experiences that have been irrevocably forgotten. It is no longer possible to bring them back to the life of our conscious perceptions, but those experiences, because the defence of the conception is lacking, penetrate in a definite way into our inner organism and there co-operate with the formative forces of our organism. And we are able to point to those forms of disease which lie nearer the surface, such as neurosis, neurasthenia, and so forth. A light is thrown even upon hysterical conditions. As we said, the cause of such conditions must be sought for in the concepts that have been forgotten, which have fallen out of the complex of consciousness and have sunk down into the inner soul-life where, as a sort of wedge, they assert themselves in the form of disease. We further pointed out the tremendous significance of the period which lies between birth and the time when we first begin to remember our experiences; and our attention was drawn to the fact that what at an earlier stage has been forgotten continues to be active within our living organism, forming, as it were, an alliance with the deeper forces of our organism, and thereby influencing our organism itself. As we see, a complex of conceptions, a number of experiences must sink down into the deeper foundations of our being before they can intervene in our organism. We then pointed out that this sinking down is most thorough when we have passed through the gate of death and are experiencing the further existence between death and re-birth. The quality of all experiences is then transformed into forces which now develop an organising activity, and the feelings which we have experienced during the period between death and re-birth will become part of the plastic forces, the formative forces that take part in the rebuilding of the body when we return into a new life. In these formative forces man now carries within him the result of what at an earlier stage he held within his soul-life, perhaps even in his conscious conceptions. And further we could point to the fact that man with his conscious conceptions permeated by the Ego oscillates between two influences present in the world—between the luciferic and the ahrimanic influences. When owing to the characteristics of our astral body we have done wrong through evil passions, temper, and so forth, we are driven thereto by luciferic forces. Such deeds then take the course we have described, if they are transformed into formative forces, they will be dwelling as causes of luciferic disease within the formative forces, and will lay the foundations of our new body. We have further seen that we are subject also to the ahrimanic forces which affect us more from outside. And again we had to admit, concerning the ahrimanic forces, that they are transformed into formative forces, into forces shaping the newly built organism when man enters existence through birth, and in so far as the ahrimanic influences mingle with the formative forces, so far we may speak of ahrimanic predisposition to disease. We then pointed out in detail how the forces act, that are thus developed. I quoted some radical examples of this activity, because in radical examples the picture is more distinct, more clearly defined. I gave the person who in his previous life had at all times acted in such a way as to produce a weak Ego-consciousness and weak self-reliance, and whose Ego attached little value to itself, becoming absorbed only in generalities and so forth. Such a person will after death develop the tendency to absorb forces that will render him capable of strengthening and perfecting his ego in his further incarnation. As a result of this he will seek conditions that will give him an opportunity of fighting against certain resistances, so that his weak Ego-consciousness may be strengthened through resistance. Such a tendency will lead him to seek an opportunity of contracting cholera, because in this he will face something that offers an opportunity of conquering those resistances, in the conquest of which he will be led in his next incarnation, or even should a cure be effected in this same incarnation, to a stronger Ego-consciousness or to forces which will by way of self-education lead him gradually to a stronger Ego-consciousness. We have further stated that an illness such as malaria affords an opportunity of compensating for the overbearing Ego-consciousness which has been engendered by the soul in an earlier life through its deeds and emotions. Those of us who took part in our earlier anthroposophical studies will understand such a course. It has always been said that man's Ego finds its physical expression in its blood. Now both of these illnesses which have just been mentioned are connected with blood and the laws of blood. They are so connected that in the case of cholera there is a thickening of the blood which can be regarded as the ‘resistance’ which a weak self-reliance must experience, and by means of which it is trying to develop. We shall also be able to understand that in a case of malaria we are faced with an impoverishment of the blood, and that an over-developed Ego-consciousness needs the opportunity of being led to an impossible extreme. This impoverishment of the blood of an over-developed Ego will find all its efforts ending in annihilation. Naturally these things stand in an intimate relationship to our organism, but if we examine them, we shall find them comprehensible. The result of all this is that when we are dealing with an organism formed by a soul that has brought with it the tendency to overcome some imperfection in one or another direction, man will tend to become impregnated with a predisposition to a certain illness, but, at the same time he will have the capacity for fighting this illness which is produced for no other reason than to provide the means of a cure. And a cure will be effected when the person, in accordance with his whole karma acquires through the conquest of the illness, such forces as will enable him through the rest of his life to make true progress by means of his work upon the physical plane. In other words, if the stimulating forces are so strong that man is able to acquire upon the physical plane itself those qualities, on account of which the illness broke out, then he will be able to work with that reinforced power which he lacked before, and which he gained from the healing process. But if it is in our karma that we have the desire to mould our organism so that through the conquest of the illness in question it should acquire forces which lead nearer to perfection, and yet because of the complexity of the causes we are forced to leave our organism weak in another direction, then it may be that although the forces we develop and make use of in the healing process strengthen us, they do not do so sufficiently to make us equal to our work upon the physical plane. Then because what we have already gained cannot be used upon the physical plane, it will be made use of when we pass through the gate of death, and we shall try to add to our forces what we could not achieve upon the physical plane. So these forces will mature in the formation of the next body when we return to earth in a new incarnation. Bearing this in mind one more indication should be given which deals with those forms of illness leading neither to a real cure nor to death but to chronic conditions, to a kind of languishing state. Here we have something of which the knowledge is of the greatest importance for most people. When one has recovered from an illness, the effect sought for has been obtained and in a certain sense the illness has been conquered. But in another sense this may not be the fact. For instance, the trouble which was produced between the etheric body and the physical body has disappeared, but the disharmony between the etheric body and the astral body still exists, and we oscillate between attempts at cure and our inability to effect a cure. In such a case it is of special importance that we should make use of all that we have attained in the way of a real cure. And this is what is very rarely done for it is precisely in the case of those illnesses that become chronic that we find ourselves in a vicious circle. We should find a way out of the difficulty if in such a case we could isolate that part of our organism that has achieved a certain cure, if we could let it live by itself and withdraw from the healthy part the rest which is still in disturbance and disorder on account of what is in the soul. But many things oppose this, and chiefly the fact that when we have had an illness resulting in a chronic condition, we are living all the time under the influence of that condition, and, if I may thus crudely express myself, we can never really completely forget our condition, never really arrive at a withdrawing of that which is not yet healthy, so as to treat it by itself. On the contrary, through thinking continually about the sickly part of our organism, we bring as it were our healthy part into some kind of relationship with the sickness and thus irritate it anew. This is a special process, and in order to make it clearer I should like to explain one of the facts proved by Spiritual Science, that can be seen by clairvoyant consciousness when a person has gone through an illness, and has retained something which may be termed chronic. The same occurs also when there exists no apparent acute illness, but when a chronic disease is developed without any acute state having been specially noticed. In most of these cases it is possible to see that there is an unstable state of balance between the etheric and the physical body, an abnormal oscillation to and fro of the forces, but in spite of which the body still remains alive. This oscillation of forces which appertain to the etheric body and the physical body bring about in the person a continual state of irritation which leads to continuous excitability. Clairvoyant consciousness sees this agitation transmitted to the astral body, and these states of excitability continually force their way into that part of the organism which is partly ill and partly well, thereby creating not a stable but an unstable balance. Through this penetration by astral excitability, the health which would otherwise be much better is in fact greatly impaired. I must beg of you to remember that in this case the astral does not coincide with consciousness, but rather with an excitability of the inner soul, which the patient does not wish to admit even to himself. Because in such cases the barrier of consciousness is lacking, those conditions and passions, emotional crises, continual states of weariness of mind and inner discontent do not always act as do conscious forces, but rather like the organising forces. Seated within our deeper being they continually irritate that part which is half ill and half well. If the patient by means of a strong discipline of the soul could forget his condition for some time at least, he would gain such satisfaction from this, that even from this satisfaction itself he could derive the necessary force to carry on further. If he could forget his state completely and develop the strong will which will help him to say: ‘I will not bother with my condition,’ certain soul forces would thereby become liberated, and if he applied them to something spiritual that would elevate him and satisfy his inner soul, if he liberated the forces that are continuously occupied with the sensation of aches and pains, oppression and so on he would thereby gain great satisfaction. For if we do not live through these feelings, the forces are free and they are at our disposal. Naturally it will not be of much use merely to say we don't want to take notice of these aches and pains, for if we do not put these liberated forces to spiritual use, the former conditions will soon return. If, however, we employ these liberated forces for a spiritual purpose which will absorb the soul, we shall soon discover that we are attaining in a complicated way that which our organism would otherwise have attained without our assistance through the conquest of the illness. Naturally the person in question would have to be aware of filling his soul with something directly connected with his illness or with that which constitutes his illness. For instance, if someone suffering from a weakness of the eyes were to read a great deal so as to avoid thinking of this, he would naturally not arrive at his goal. But it is quite unnecessary to resort to further illustrations. We have all noticed how useful it is when we are slightly indisposed, to be able to forget that indisposition, especially if we gain this forgetfulness by occupying ourselves with something different. Such is a positive and wholesome forgetfulness. This already suggests to us that we are not entirely impotent in face of the karmic effects of those transgressions of our earlier lives which are expressed in the form of illness. We recognise that what is subject to moral, emotional and intellectual judgement during life between birth and death cannot penetrate so deeply during one single life as to become the cause of an organic disease, but that in the period between death and re-birth it may penetrate so deeply into the human essence as to cause disease; then there must also exist a possibility of re-transforming these processes into conscious processes. The question might be put thus: If illnesses are the karmic results of spiritual or other events called forth or experienced by the soul, if they are the metamorphosis of such causes, might we not then also suppose that the result of the metamorphosis, namely, the illness, might be avoided—or do we learn nothing of this from spiritual facts? Might it not be avoided if we could replace, for the good of our education, the healing processes which are drawn from the organism to combat the disease. Could we not replace these by their spiritual counterpart, their spiritual equivalent? Should we not thus, if we were sufficiently wise, transform illness into a spiritual process and accomplish through our soul forces the self-education that would otherwise be accomplished through illness? The feasibility of this may be demonstrated by an example. Here again we must insist that only those examples are given which have been investigated by Spiritual Science. They are not hypothetical assertions but actual ‘cases.’ A certain person contracts measles in later life, and we seek for the karmic connection in this case. We find that this case of measles appeared as the karmic effect of occurrences in a preceding life—occurrences that may be thus described: In a preceding life the individuality in question disliked concerning himself with the external world but occupied himself a great deal with himself, though not in the ordinary egotistical sense. He investigated much, meditated much, though not with regard to the facts of the external world, but confined himself to the inner soul life. We meet many people to-day who believe that through self-concentration and through brooding within themselves, they will arrive at the solution of world riddles. The person in question thought he could order his life through inner meditation how to act in one instance or another without accepting any teaching from others. The weakness of the soul resulting from this led to the formation of forces during existence between death and re-birth which exposed the organism comparatively late in life to an attack of measles. We might now ask: if on the one hand we have the attack of measles which is the physical karmic effect of an earlier life, how is it then with the soul? For the earlier life will also result through karmic action in a certain condition of the soul. This soul condition will prove itself to be such that the personality in question, during the life in which the attack of measles took place, was again and again subject to self-deception. Thus in the self-deception we must see the psychic karmic result of this earlier life, and in the attack of measles the physical karmic result. Let us now assume that this personality before developing measles had succeeded in gaining such soul forces that he was no longer exposed to all kinds of self-deception, having completely corrected this failing. In this case the acquired soul force would render the attack of measles quite unnecessary, since the tendencies brought forth in this organism during its formation had been effaced through the stronger soul forces acquired by self-education. If we contemplate life as a whole and examine in detail our experiences, considering them always from this standpoint, we should invariably find that external knowledge will bear out in every detail what has here been stated. And what I have said about a case of measles can lead to an explanation why measles is one of the illnesses of child-hood. For the failings I have mentioned are present in a great many lives and especially in certain periods did they prevail in many lives. When such a personality enters existence he will be anxious to make the corresponding correction as soon as possible. In the period between birth and the general appearance of children's complaints which effect an organic self-education, there can as a rule be no question of any education of the soul. From this we see that in a certain respect we can really speak of a disease being transformed back into a spiritual process. And it is most significant that when this process has entered the soul as a life principle, it will evoke a viewpoint that has a healing effect upon the soul. We need not be surprised that in our time we are able to influence the soul so little. Anyone regarding our present period from the standpoint of Spiritual Science will understand why so many medical men, so many doctors become materialists. For most people never occupy themselves with anything which has vital force. All the stuff produced today is devoid of vital force for the soul. That is why anyone wishing to work for Spiritual Science feels in this anthroposophical activity something extremely wholesome, for Spiritual Science can again bring to men something which enters the soul so that it is drawn away from what is acting in the physical organism. But we must not confuse what appears at the beginning of such a movement as Anthroposophy with what this movement can be in reality. Things may be brought into the Anthroposophical Movement which prevail in the physical world, for people on becoming Anthroposophists often bring to Anthroposophy exactly the same interests and also all the bad habits which they had outside. There is thus brought in much of the degeneracy of our age, and when some such degeneracy appears in the persons in question, the world says that this is the result of Anthroposophy. That is of course a cheap statement. If we now see the karmic thread passing from one incarnation to another, we grasp only the one aspect of truth. For anyone beginning to understand this, many questions will arise which will be touched upon in the course of these lectures. First of all we must deal with the question: What difference is there between an illness due to external causes and an illness where the cause lies exclusively in the human organism itself. We are tempted to dispose of the latter illnesses by saying that they come of their own accord without any external provocation. But this is not so. In a certain sense we are justified in saying that illnesses come to us if we have a special disposition for the illness within us. A great many forms of illness, however, we shall be able to trace to external causes; not indeed everything that happens to us, but much that befalls us from outside. If we break a leg for instance, we are obliged to account for it by external causes. We must also include within external causes the effects of the weather, and numerous cases of disease which come to people living in slum dwellings. Here again we envisage a wide field. An experienced person looking on the world will find it easy to explain why the modern trend of the medical faculty is to seek the causes of illness in external influences, and especially in microbes. Of these a witty gentleman (Tröhls-Lund) said not without justice: ‘Today it is said that illnesses are provoked by microbes, just as it was formerly said that they came from God, the devil, and so forth.’ In the thirteenth century it was said that illnesses came from God; in the fifteenth it was said that they came from the devil; later it was said that illnesses came from the humours, today we say that illnesses come from microbes! Such are the views that in the course of time give place to one another. Thus we speak of external causes of human illness and health. And the man of the present day may easily be tempted to use a word that is fundamentally adapted to bring disorder into the whole of our world-conception. If someone who was previously healthy comes into a district where there is an epidemic of influenza or diphtheria, and then falls ill, the man of today will be inclined to say that the person has become ill because he entered this particular district. It is thus easy to make use of the word ‘chance.’ Today people really speak of ‘chance.’ This word is really disastrous for any world-conception, and as long as we make no attempt to become clear about what is so readily termed ‘chance,’ we shall not be able to deal in any way satisfactorily with the initial stages of the subject: ‘Natural and accidental illnesses of man.’ For this it is essential that we should attempt by way of introduction to throw some light on the word ‘chance.’ Is not chance itself inclined to make us suspicious of the way it is frequently defined to-day? I have already on a previous occasion drawn your attention to the fact that a clever man in the eighteenth century was not entirely wrong when, concerning the reason for the erection of monuments, he made the following statement: ‘If we regard objectively the course of history, we should have to erect by far the greater number of monuments to Chance.’ And if we examine history, we shall make strange discoveries concerning what is concealed behind chance. As I have mentioned before, we owe the telescope to the fact that children once were playing with optical lenses in an optical laboratory. In their play they formed a combination by means of which someone then produced a telescope. You might also recall the famous lamp in the cathedral of Pisa, which before the time of Galileo was seen by thousands and thousands, oscillating with the same regularity. But it remained for Galileo to find out by experiment how these oscillations coincided with the course of his blood circulation, whereby he discovered the famous laws of the pendulum. Had we not known these, the whole course of our physics, the whole of our culture would have developed on entirely different lines. Let us try to find a meaning in human evolution, and then see whether we should still wish to maintain that only chance was at work when Galileo made this important discovery. Let us consider yet another case. We are aware what Luther's translation of the Bible means to the civilised countries of Europe. It profoundly influenced religious sentiment and thought and also the development of what we call the German literary language. I simply mention the fact without comment. I insist only on the profound influence which this translation exercised. We must endeavour to see the significance of that education which, during the course of several centuries, came to mankind as a result of Luther's translation of the Bible. Let us endeavour to perceive a meaning in this, and then let us consider the following fact. Up to a certain period of his life Luther was deeply imbued with the feeling and desire so to order his life as to become a veritable ‘child of God.’ This desire had been brought about by a constant reading of the Bible. The custom prevailed amongst the Augustinian monks of reading preferably the works of the Fathers of the Church, but Luther passed to the spiritual enjoyment of the Bible itself. Thus he was led to this intense feeling of being a ‘child of God,’ and under this influence he fulfilled his duties as teacher of Theology in the first Wittenberg period. The fact that I should now like to emphasise is that Luther had a certain repugnance to acquiring the title of Doctor of Theology, but that, when sitting with an old friend of the Erfurt Augustinian monastery, he was persuaded in the course of a ‘chance’ conversation to try and gain the hat of a Doctor of Theology. For this purpose it was necessary once more to study the Bible. Thus it was the ‘chance’ conversation with his friend which led to a renewed study of the Bible, and to all that resulted from it. Try to conceive from the point of view of the last centuries the significance of the ‘chance’ that Luther once conversed with that friend and was persuaded to try for the Doctorate of Theology. You will be obliged to see that it would be grotesque to connect this human evolution with a ‘chance’ event. From what has been said we shall first of all conclude that perhaps after all there is something more in chance than is usually supposed. As a rule we believe chance to be something which cannot be satisfactorily explained either by the laws of nature, or by the laws of life, and that it constitutes a kind of surplus over and above what can be explained. Let us now add to this statement a fact which has helped us to understand so many aspects of life: Man, since he began his earth existence, has been subject to the two forces of the luciferic and ahrimanic principles. These forces and principles continually penetrate into man. While the luciferic forces act more within by influencing the astral body, the ahrimanic forces act rather through the external impressions which he receives. In what we receive from the external world there are contained the ahrimanic forces, and in what arises and acts within the soul in the shape of joy and dejection, desires, and so forth, there are contained the luciferic forces. The luciferic as well as the ahrimanic principles induce us to give way to error. The luciferic principle induces us to deceive ourselves as to our own inner life, to judge our inner life wrongly, to see Maya, illusion within ourselves. If we contemplate life rationally, we shall not find it difficult to discover Maya in our own soul life. Let us consider how very often we persuade ourselves that we have done one thing or another for this or that reason. Generally the reason is quite a different one, and far more profound. It may be found in temper, desire, or passion, but in our superficial consciousness we give quite a different explanation. Especially do we endeavour to deny the presence within our soul of that which the world does not greatly appreciate, and when we are driven to some act from purely egotistical motives, we frequently find ourselves clothing these crude egotistical impulses with a cloak of unselfishness, and explaining why it was necessary for us thus to act. As a rule we are not aware ourselves that we err. When we become aware of it, there generally begins an improvement accompanied by a certain feeling of shame. The worst of it is that for the most we are ignorant that we are driven to something from the depths of our soul, and then we invent a motive for the deed in question. This has also been discovered by modern psychologists. As there exists but little psychological culture today, however, these grotesque indications are brought forward, and interpretations are arrived at which are altogether peculiar. Any true investigator on observing such facts will naturally fathom their true significance and so realise that there are indeed two influences acting together, namely, our consciousness, and that which dwells in the deeper layers beneath the threshold of consciousness. But when the same facts are observed by a materialistic psychologist, he will set to work differently. He will immediately fabricate a theory about the difference between the pretext for our deeds and the real motive. If, for instance, a psychologist discusses the suicides of students which occur so frequently today, he will say that what is quoted as pretext is not the real motive; that the real motive lies far deeper, being found mostly in a misdirected sexual life, and that the real motive is so transformed that it deludes the consciousness for some reason or other. Often this may be so, but anyone who has the least knowledge of truly profound psychological thought will never from this evolve a general theory. Such a theory could easily be refuted, for if the case really is such that pretext is nothing, and motive everything, this would also apply to the psychologist himself, and we should be forced to say that with him too, what he is telling us and developing as a theory is but a pretext. If we were to search for deeper reasons, perhaps the reasons alleged by him would be found to be of exactly the same nature. If this psychologist had, truly learnt why a reason is impossible that has been based upon the conclusion: ‘All Cretans are liars,’ and that such a judgement is biased if made by the Cretan himself, if he had learnt the reason why this is so, he would also have learnt what an extraordinarily vicious circle is created when in certain domains assertions can be driven back upon oneself. In almost the whole compass of our literature we find very little of truly deep culture. That is why as a rule people hardly notice what they themselves do, and for this reason it will be indispensable for Spiritual Science in every respect to avoid such confusions in logic. Modern philosophers when dealing with Spiritual Science come more than any others to such confusions in logic. Our example is typical of this. We here see the tricks played upon us by the luciferic influences transforming the soul-life into Maya, so that we can pretend to have quite different motives from those really dwelling within us. We should try to acquire a stricter self-discipline in this respect. Today words are as a rule handled with great facility. A word, however, can lead to great error and confusion. The word has but to have a pleasing sound, and it creates the impression of a charitable deed. Even the pleasant sound of a sentence will betray us into believing that the motive in question is within our soul, while in truth the egotistical principle may be concealed behind it without our being aware of its presence, because we have not the will to arrive at true self-knowledge. Thus we see Lucifer active on the one side. How does Ahriman act on the other? Ahriman is that principle which intermingles with our perceptions and enters us from outside. Ahriman's activity is strongest when we feel that in this case thought is not sufficient, and that we face a critical moment in our thought life. Thinking is trapped as in a thought maze. Then the ahrimanic principle seizes the occasion to penetrate us as through a rift in the external world. If we pursue the course of world events and the more obvious occurrences, if for instance, we pursue modern physics back to the moment when Galileo was sitting in front of the oscillating church lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa, we can spin a thought-net embracing all these events whereby the matter will be easily explained. Everything will be quite clear, but the moment we arrive at the oscillating church lamp, our thoughts become confused. Here is the window through which the ahrimanic forces penetrate us with the greatest strength, and here our thought refuses to understand the phenomena which might bring reason and understanding into the matter. Here also is what we call ‘chance.’ It is here where Ahriman becomes most dangerous to us. Those phenomena which we call ‘chance’ are the phenomena by which we are most easily deluded by Ahriman. Thus we shall learn to understand that it is not the nature of facts themselves that induces us to speak of ‘chance,’ but that it depends on ourselves and our own development. Little by little we shall have to educate ourselves to penetrate Maya and illusion, that is to say, we must gain insight into matters where Ahriman's influence is at its strongest. So that just where we have to speak of important causes of illness, and of a light that is to be shed over the course of many an illness, we shall find it necessary to approach phenomena from the following aspect. First of all we shall have to try and understand how far it is by chance that someone should be travelling on the very train on which he may lose his life, or that someone at a definite period should be exposed to disease-germs affecting him from outside, or to some other cause of illness, and if we pursue matters with sharpened understanding, we shall be able to arrive at a truer cognition of the whole meaning for human life of illness and health. Today we had to show in detail how Lucifer leads to illusions within man, and how Ahriman becomes intertwined with external perceptions and there leads to Maya; that it is a result of Lucifer if we delude ourselves with a false motive, and how the false supposition concerning the world of phenomena—the deception through Ahriman—leads to the belief in chance. These foundations had to be laid to show that karmic events, the results of earlier lives, are active also in those cases where external causes, which seem to be chance, give rise to illnesses. |
| 141. Between Death and Rebirth: Lecture I
05 Nov 1912, Berlin Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, E. H. Goddard |
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| It cannot be emphasised too often that the essence of Anthroposophy cannot be grasped with the help of a few simple concepts or a theory briefly propounded, let alone a programme. |
| Someone might argue that he can hardly be expected to ally himself with an Anthroposophical Movement if he is immediately faced with a demand for self-development and told that he can only hope to penetrate slowly and gradually to the essence of Anthroposophy; he may ask how he can decide to join something for which he can prepare only slowly. The rejoinder to this would be that before a human being can reach the highest stage of development he already has in his heart and in his soul the sense of truth which has led mankind as a whole to strive for such development, and he need only devote himself open-mindedly to this sense of truth, with the will for truth which lies in the depths of his soul unless prejudices have led him astray. |
| Connected with this is the fact that many people who would like to be anthroposophists find that the knowledge we are trying to promote here is too baffling for them. Many of them complain: in Anthroposophy one has to be always learning, always pondering, always busy! But without such efforts it is not possible to acquire any understanding of the spiritual worlds. |
| 141. Between Death and Rebirth: Lecture I
05 Nov 1912, Berlin Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, E. H. Goddard |
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I am very glad to be able to speak here again after a comparatively long absence. Those of you who were present at our meeting in Munich earlier this year1 or have heard something about my Mystery Play, The Guardian of the Threshold, will have realised what the attitude of the soul must be if an adequate conception is to be acquired of the content of Spiritual Science or, let us say, of Occultism. A great deal has been said previously about the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. The aim of The Guardian of the Threshold was to show that the essential nature of these beings can be revealed only by studying them very gradually and from many different aspects. It is not enough to form a simple concept or give an ordinary definition of these beings—popular as such definitions are. My purpose was to show from as many different sides as possible, the part played by these beings in the lives of men. The Play will also have helped you to realise that there must be complete truthfulness and deep seriousness when speaking of the spiritual worlds. This, after all, has been the keynote of the lectures I have given here. It must be emphasised all the more strongly at the present time because there is so little recognition of the seriousness and value of genuine anthroposophical endeavours. If there is one thing that I have tried to emphasise in the lectures given over the years, it is that you should embark upon all your anthroposophical efforts in this spirit of truthfulness and earnestness, and become thoroughly conscious of their significance in world-existence as a whole, in the evolutionary process of humanity and in the spiritual content of our present age. It cannot be emphasised too often that the essence of Anthroposophy cannot be grasped with the help of a few simple concepts or a theory briefly propounded, let alone a programme. The forces of the whole soul must be involved. But life itself is a process of Becoming, of development. Someone might argue that he can hardly be expected to ally himself with an Anthroposophical Movement if he is immediately faced with a demand for self-development and told that he can only hope to penetrate slowly and gradually to the essence of Anthroposophy; he may ask how he can decide to join something for which he can prepare only slowly. The rejoinder to this would be that before a human being can reach the highest stage of development he already has in his heart and in his soul the sense of truth which has led mankind as a whole to strive for such development, and he need only devote himself open-mindedly to this sense of truth, with the will for truth which lies in the depths of his soul unless prejudices have led him astray. He must avoid empty theories and high-sounding programmes. Man is able to sense truth where it genuinely exists. Honest criticism is therefore always possible, even if someone is only at the very beginning of the path of attainment. This, however, does not preclude him from attributing supreme importance to anthroposophical endeavour. In our present age there are many influences which divert men from the natural feeling for truth that is present in their souls. Over the years it has often been possible to indicate these misleading influences and I need not do it again today. My purpose is to emphasise how necessary it is—even if there is already some knowledge of occult science—to approach and study things again and again from constantly new sides. One example of what I mean is our study of the four Gospels. This autumn I brought these studies to a provisional conclusion with a course of lectures on the Gospel of St. Mark. These studies of the Gospels may be taken as a standard example of the way in which the great truths of existence must be approached from different sides. Each Gospel affords an opportunity to view the Mystery of Golgotha from a different angle, and indeed we cannot begin really to know anything essential about this Mystery until we have studied it from the four different viewpoints presented in the four Gospels. In what way have our studies over the last ten or twelve years demonstrated this? Those of you who want to be clear about this need only turn to my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, the content of which was first given in the form of lectures, before the foundation of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. Anyone who seriously studies this book will find that it already contained the gist of what I have since said in the course of years, about the Mystery of Golgotha and the four Gospels. Nothing, however, would be more unjustified than to believe that by knowing the contents of that book you would ipso facto have an adequate understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. All the lectures given since the book appeared have been the natural outcome of that original spiritual study; nowhere are they at variance with what was then said. It has furthermore been possible to open up new ways for contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha, thus enabling us to penetrate more and more deeply into its significance. The attempt has been made to substitute direct experience of the spiritual facts for concepts, theories and abstract speculations. And if, in spite of it all, a feeling of a certain lack still exists, this lack is due to something that is inevitable on the physical plane, namely, the time factor. Hence I have always assumed that you would have patience and wait for matters to develop gradually. This is also an indication of how what I have to say to you during this coming winter should be understood. In the course of years we have spoken a great deal of the life between death and a new birth. The same subject will, however, be dealt with in the forthcoming lectures, the reason being that during this last summer and autumn it has been my task to undertake further spiritual research into this realm and to present an aspect of the subject which could not previously be dealt with. It is only now possible to consider certain matters which bring home the profound moral significance of the super-sensible truths pertaining to this realm. In addition to all other demands to which only very brief reference has been made, there is one which in this vain and arrogant age is a cause of offence to numbers of individuals. But we must not allow it to deter us from the earnestness and respect for truth that are due to our Movement. The demand will continue to be made that by dint of earnest, intimate efforts we shall learn to be receptive to knowledge brought from the spiritual world. For some years now the relationship of human beings living on the physical plane to the spiritual worlds has changed from what it was through almost the whole of the nineteenth century. Until the last third of that century men had little access to the spiritual worlds; it was necessary for evolution that only little of the content of those worlds should flow into the human soul. But now we are living in an age when the soul need only be receptive and duly prepared and revelations from the spiritual worlds will be able to flow into it. Individual souls will become more and more receptive and, being aware of their task in the present age, they will find this inflow of spiritual knowledge to be a reality. Hence the further demand is made that anthroposophists shall not turn deaf ears to what can make its way into the soul today from the spiritual worlds. Before entering into the main theme of these lectures I want to speak of two characteristics of the spiritual life to which special attention must be paid. Between death and the new birth a human being experiences the realities of the spiritual world in a very definite way. But he also experiences these realities through Initiation; he experiences them too if his soul is prepared during his life in the physical body in a way that enables him to participate in the spiritual worlds. Hence it is true to say that what takes place between death and the new birth—which is, in fact, existence in the spiritual world—can be revealed through Initiation. Attention must be paid to two points which emerge from what has often been said here; they are essential not only to experience of the spiritual worlds but also to the right understanding of communications received from these worlds. The difference between conditions in the spiritual world and the physical world has often been emphasised, also the fact that when the soul enters the spiritual world it finds itself in a sphere in which it is essential to become accustomed to a great deal that is the exact opposite of conditions in the physical world. Here is one example: If, on the physical plane, something is to be brought about by us, we have to be active, to use our hands, to move our physical body from one place to another. Activity on our part is necessary if we are to bring about something in the physical world. In the spiritual worlds exactly the opposite holds good. I am speaking always of the present epoch. If something is to happen through us in the spiritual worlds, it must be achieved through our inner calm, our inner tranquillity; in the spiritual worlds the capacity to await events with tranquillity corresponds to busy activity on the physical plane. The less we bestir ourselves on the physical plane, the less we can bring about; the more active we are, the more can happen. In the spiritual world, the calmer our soul can become, the more all inner restlessness can be avoided, the more we shall be able to achieve. It is therefore essential to regard whatever comes to pass as something bestowed upon us by grace, something that comes to us as a blessing because we have deserved it as the fruit of inner tranquillity. I have often said that anyone possessed of spiritual knowledge is aware that 1899 was a very significant year; it was the end of a period of 5,000 years in human history, the so-called Lesser Kali Yuga. Since that year it has become necessary to allow the spiritual to come to men in a way differing from what was previously usual. I will give you a concrete example. In the early twelfth century, a man named Norbert2 founded a religious Order in the West. Before the idea of founding the Order came to him, Norbert was a loose-living man, full of sensuality and worldly impulses. One day something very unusual happened to him; he was struck by lightning. This did not prove fatal, but his whole being was transformed. There are many such examples in history. The inner connection between Norbert's physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego was changed by the force contained in the lightning. It was then that he founded his Order, and although, as in so many other cases, it failed to fulfil the aims of its founder, in many respects it did good at the time. Such ‘chance’ events, as they are called nowadays, have been numerous. But this was not a chance happening; it was an event of world-karma. The man was chosen to perform a task of special importance and to make this possible, particular bodily conditions had to be created. An outer event, an external influence, was necessary. Since the year 1899 such influences on the souls of men must be purely inner influences, not exerted so definitely from outside. Not that there was an abrupt transition; but since the year 1899, influences exerted on the souls of men must more and more take effect inwardly. You may remember what I once said about Christian Rosenkreutz—that when he wishes to call a human soul to himself, it is a more inward call. Before 1899 such calls were made by means of outer events; since that year they have become more inward. Intercourse between human souls and the higher Hierarchies will become more and more dependent upon inner exertions, and men will have to apply the deepest, most intimate forces of their souls in order to maintain this intercourse with the Beings of the Hierarchies. What I have just described to you as an incisive point in life on the physical plane has its counterpart in the spiritual world—visibly for one who is a seer—in much that has taken place between the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. At this time there were certain tasks which it was incumbent upon the Beings of the Hierarchies to carry out among themselves, but one particular condition must be noted. The Beings whose task in the spiritual worlds was to bring about the ending of Kali Yuga, needed something from our Earth, something taking place on our Earth. It was necessary that in certain souls who were sufficiently mature there should be knowledge of this change, or at least that such souls should be able to envisage it. For just as man on the physical plane needs a brain in order to develop consciousness, so do the Beings of the Hierarchies need human thoughts in which their deeds are reflected. Thus the world of men is also necessary for the spiritual world; it co-operates with the spiritual world and is an essential factor—but it must co-operate in the right way. Those who were ready previously or are ready now to participate in this activity from the human side, would not have been right then, nor would they be right now, to agitate in the way that is customary on the physical plane for the furtherance of something that is to take place in the spiritual world. We do not help the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies by busy activity on the physical plane, but primarily by having some measure of understanding of what is to happen; then, in restfulness and concentration of soul, we should await a revelation of the spiritual world. What we can contribute is the inner quietude we can achieve, the attitude of soul we can induce in ourselves to await this bestowal of grace. Thus, paradoxical as it may seem, our activity in the higher worlds depends upon our own inner tranquillity; the calmer we can become, the more will the facts of the spiritual world be able to come to expression through us. Hence it is also necessary, if we are to participate effectively in a spiritual Movement, to be able to develop this mood of tranquillity. And in the Anthroposophical Movement it would be especially desirable for its adherents to endeavour to achieve this inner tranquillity, this consciousness of Grace in their attitude to the spiritual world. Among the various activities in which man is engaged on the physical plane it is really only in the domain of artistic creation, or where there is a genuine striving for knowledge or for the advancement of a spiritual Movement, that these conditions hold good. An artist will assuredly not create the best work of which his gifts are capable if he is perpetually active and is impatient to make progress. He will produce his best work if he can wait for the moment when Grace is vouchsafed to him and if he can abstain from activity when the spirit is not speaking. And quite certainly no higher knowledge will be attained by one who attempts to formulate it out of concepts already familiar to him. Higher knowledge can be attained only by one who is able to wait quietly, with complete resignation, when confronted by a problem or riddle of existence, and who says to himself: I must wait until the answer comes to me like a flash of light from the spiritual worlds. Again, someone who rushes from one person to another, trying to convince them that some particular spiritual Movement is the only genuine one, will certainly not be setting about this in the right way; he should wait until the souls he approaches have recognised the urge in themselves to seek the truths of the spiritual world. That is how we should respond to any illumination shining down into our physical world; but it is particularly true of everything that man can himself bring about in the spiritual world. It may truly be said that even the most practical accomplishments in that realm depend upon the establishment of a certain state of tranquillity. I want now to speak of so-called spiritual healing. Here again it is not the movements or manipulations carried out by the healer that are of prime importance; they are necessary, but only as preparation. The aim is to establish a condition of rest, of balance. Whatever is outwardly visible in a case of spiritual healing is only the preparation for what the healer is trying to do; it is the final result that is of importance. In such a case the situation is like weighing something on a pair of scales: first, we put in the one scale what we want to weigh; in the other scale we put a weight and this sets the beam moving to right and left. But it is only when equilibrium has been established that we can read the weight. Something similar is true of actions in the spiritual worlds. In respect of knowledge, of perception, however, there is a difference. How does perception come about in everyday life on the physical plane? Everyone is aware that with the exception of certain spheres of the physical plane, objects present themselves to us from morning until evening during the waking life of day; from minute to minute new impressions are made upon us. It is in exceptional circumstances only that we, on our side, seek for impressions and do with objects what otherwise they do to us. This, however, is already near to being a searcher for knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is a different matter. We ourselves must set before our soul whatever is to be presented to it. Whereas we must be absolutely quiescent if anything is to come about, to happen through us in the spiritual world, we must be uninterruptedly active if we really desire to understand something in the spiritual world. Connected with this is the fact that many people who would like to be anthroposophists find that the knowledge we are trying to promote here is too baffling for them. Many of them complain: in Anthroposophy one has to be always learning, always pondering, always busy! But without such efforts it is not possible to acquire any understanding of the spiritual worlds. The soul must make strenuous efforts and contemplate everything from many sides. Mental pictures and concepts of the higher worlds must be developed through steady, tranquil work. In the physical world, if we want to have, say, a table, we must acquire it by active effort. But in the spiritual world, if we want to acquire something, we must develop the necessary tranquillity. If anything is to happen, it emerges from the twilight. But when it is a matter of knowing something, we must exert every possible effort to create the necessary Inspirations. If we are to ‘know’ something, effort is essential; the soul must be inwardly active, move from one Imagination to another, one Inspiration to another, one Intuition to another. We must create the whole structure; nothing will come to us that we have not ourselves produced in our search for knowledge. Thus conditions in the spiritual world are exactly the opposite of what holds good in the physical world. I have had to give this introduction in order that we may agree together, firstly, as to how certain facts are discovered, but secondly, how they can be understood as more is said of them. In these lectures I shall deal less with the life immediately following death—known to us under the name of Kamaloka—the essential aspects of which are already familiar to you. We shall be more concerned to study from somewhat new points of view those periods in the life after death which follow the period of Kamaloka. First of all it is important to describe the general character of that life. The first stage of higher knowledge is what may be called the ‘Imaginative’ life, or life filled with true, genuine visions. Just as in physical life we are surrounded by the world of colours, sounds, scents, tastes, mental pictures which we form for ourselves by means of our intellect, so in the spiritual world we are surrounded by ‘Imaginations’—which can also be called ‘visions’. But we must realise that these Imaginations or visions, when they are true in the spiritual sense, are not the imagery of dream but realities. Let us take a definite case. When a human being has passed through the Gate of Death he comes into contact with those who died before him and with whom he was connected in some way during life. During the period between death and the new birth we are actually together with those who belong to us. Just as in the physical world we become aware of objects by seeing their colours, hearing their sounds and so on, in the same way we are surrounded after death, figuratively speaking, by a cloud of visions. Everything around us is vision; we ourselves are vision in that world just as here on Earth we are flesh and bone. But this vision is not a dream; we know that it is reality. When we encounter someone who is dead and with whom we previously had some connection, he too is ‘vision’; he is enveloped in a cloud of visions. But just as on the physical plane we know that the colour ‘red’ comes, let us say, from a red rose, on the spiritual plane we know that the ‘vision’ comes from the spiritual being of someone who passed through the gate of death before us. But here I must draw your attention to a particular aspect, especially as it is experienced by everyone who is living through this period after death. Here on the physical plane it may, for example, be the case that at least as far as we can judge, we ought to have loved some individual but have loved him too little; we have, in fact, deprived him of love or have hurt him in some way. In such circumstances, if we are not stony-hearted, the idea may occur to us that we must make reparation. When this idea comes to us it is possible to compensate for what has happened. On the physical plane we can modify the previously existing relationship but during the period immediately following Kamaloka, we cannot. From the very nature of the encounter we may well be aware that we have hurt the person in some way or deprived him of the love we ought to have shown him; we may also wish to make reparation, but we cannot. During this period all we can do is to continue the relationship which existed between us before death. We perceive what was amiss but for the time being we can do nothing to make amends. In this world of visions which envelops us like a cloud, we cannot alter anything. The relationship we had with an individual who died before us remains. This is often one of the more painful experiences also associated with Initiation. A person experiences much more deeply the significance of his relation to the physical plane than he was able to do with his eyes or his intellect, but for all that he cannot directly change anything. This, in fact, constitutes the pain and martyrdom of spiritual knowledge, in so far as it is self-knowledge and relates to our own life. After death, relationships between individuals remain and continue as they were during earthly life. When recently this fact presented itself to my spiritual sight with tremendous force, something further occurred to me. During my life I have devoted a great deal of study to the works of Homer and have tried to understand many things contained in these ancient epics. On this particular occasion I was reminded of a certain passage. Homer, by the way, was called by the Greeks the ‘blind’ Homer, thus indicating his spiritual seership. In speaking of the realm through which men journey after death, Homer calls it the ‘realm of the Shades in which no change is possible’. Here once again I realised that we can rightly understand much that is contained in the great masterpieces and revelations of mankind only by drawing upon the very depths of spiritual knowledge. Much of what will lead to an understanding of humanity as a whole must depend upon a new recognition by men of those great ancestors whose souls were radiant with spiritual light. Any sensitive soul will be moved by the recognition that this ancient seer was able to write as he did only because the truth of the spiritual world shone into his soul. Here begins the true reverence for the divine-spiritual forces which stream through the world and especially through the hearts and souls of men. This attitude makes it possible to realise how the progress and development of the world are furthered. A very great deal that is true in the deepest sense is contained in the works of men whose gifts were on a level with those of Homer. But this truth which was once directly revealed to an ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance, has now been lost and must be regained on the path leading to spiritual knowledge. In order to substantiate still further this example of what has been bestowed upon humanity by creative genius, I will now speak of something else as well. There was a certain truth which I strongly resisted when it first dawned upon me, which seemed to me to be paradoxical, but which through inner necessity I was eventually bound to recognise. The spiritual investigation on which I was engaged at that time was also connected with the study of certain works of art. Among them was one which I had previously seen and studied although a particular aspect of it had not struck me before. I am speaking now of the Medici tombs in the Chapel designed and built in Florence by Michelangelo. Two members of the Medici family, of whom no more need be said at present, were to be immortalised in statues. But Michelangelo added four so-called ‘allegorical’ figures, named at his suggestion, ‘Morning’ and ‘Evening’, ‘Day’ and ‘Night’. ‘Day’ and ‘Night’ were placed at the foot of one statue; ‘Morning’ and ‘Evening’ at the foot of the other. Even if you have no particularly good photographs of these allegorical figures, you will easily be able to verify what I have to say about them. We will begin with ‘Night’, the most famous of the four. In guide-books you can read that the postures of the limbs in the recumbent figure of ‘Night’ are unnatural, that no human being could sleep in that position and therefore the figure cannot be a good symbolic presentation of ‘Night’. But now let me say something else. Suppose we are looking at the allegorical figure of ‘Night’ with occult vision. We can then say to ourselves: when a human being is asleep, his Ego and astral body have left the physical and etheric bodies. It is conceivable that someone might visualise a particular posture which most accurately portrays that of the etheric body when the astral body and Ego have left. As we go about during the day our gestures and movements are conditioned by the fact that the astral body and Ego are within the physical and etheric bodies. But at night the astral body and Ego are outside and the etheric body alone is in the physical body. The etheric body then unfolds its own activity and mobility, and thus adopts a certain posture. The impression may well be that there is no more fitting portrayal of the free activity of the etheric body than that achieved by Michelangelo in this figure of ‘Night’. In point of fact, the movement is conveyed with such precision that no more appropriate presentation of the etheric body under such circumstances can be imagined. Now let us turn to the figure of ‘Day’. Suppose we could induce in a human being a condition in which his astral and etheric bodies were as quiescent as possible and the Ego especially active. No posture could be more fitting for the activity of the Ego than that portrayed by Michelangelo in the figure of ‘Day’. The postures are not allegorical but drawn directly and realistically from life. The artist has succeeded in capturing as it were for earthly eternity the postures which in the evolutionary process most aptly express the activity of the Ego and the activity of the etheric body. We come now to the other figures. First let us take that of ‘Evening’. If we think of how, in a healthily developed human being, the etheric body emerges and the physical body relaxes—as also happens drastically at death—but if we think, not of actual death but of the emergence of the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego from a man's physical body, we shall find that the posture then assumed by the physical body is accurately portrayed in the figure of ‘Evening’. Again, if we think of the activity of the astral body while there is diminished activity of the etheric body and Ego, we shall find the most precise representation in Michelangelo's figure of ‘Morning’. So on the one side we have the portrayals of the activity of the etheric body and of the Ego (in the figures of ‘Night’ and ‘Day’) and on the other side the portrayals of the physical and astral bodies (in the figures of ‘Evening’ and ‘Morning’). As already said, at first I resisted this conclusion, but the more carefully one investigates the more one is compelled to accept it. What I have wanted to indicate here is how the artist is inspired by the spiritual world. Admittedly, in the case of Michelangelo the process was more or less unconscious but in spite of that his creations could only have been produced by the radiance of the spiritual world shining into the physical. Occultism does not lead to the destruction of works of art but on the contrary to a much deeper understanding of them; as a result. a great deal of what passes for art today will in the future no longer do so. A number of people may be disappointed but truth will be the gainer! I could well understand the foundation of the legend that has grown up in connection with the most elaborate of these figures. The legend is to the effect that when Michelangelo was alone with the figure of ‘Night’ in the Medici Chapel in Florence, he could make the figure rise up and walk. I will not go further into this, but when we know that this figure gives expression to the ‘life-body’, the significance of the legend is obvious. The same applies in many cases—in that of Homer, for instance. Homer speaks of the spiritual realm, a realm of the Shades in which there can be no change or alteration. But when we study the conditions prevailing in the period of life following Kamaloka, we begin to have a new understanding of works of a divinely blessed man such as Homer. And a great deal will be similarly enriched through Spiritual Science. Useful as it may be to indicate these things, they are not of prime importance in actual life. Of prime importance is the fact that mutual relationships are continually being formed between one human being and another. A man's attitude towards another individual will be very different if he detects a spiritual quality in him or thinks of human beings as pictured by a materialistic view of life. The sacred riddle that every human being should be to us can only be this to our feelings and perceptions when we have within our own soul something that is able to throw spiritual light upon the other soul. By deepening our contemplation of cosmic secrets—with which the secrets of human existence are connected—we shall learn to understand the nature of the man standing before us; we shall learn to silence our preconceptions and to feel and recognise the true qualities of the individual in question. The most important light that Spiritual Science can give will be the light it throws upon the human soul. Thereby sound social feelings, also those feelings of love which ought to prevail between human beings, will make their way into the world as a fruit of true spiritual knowledge. We shall recognise that our grasp of spiritual knowledge alone can help this fruit to grow and thrive. When Schopenhauer said: “To preach morality is easy; to establish morality is difficult”, he was giving expression to true insight. After all, it is not so very difficult to discover moral principles, neither is it difficult to preach morality. But to quicken the human soul at the point where spiritual knowledge can germinate and develop into true morality capable of sustaining life—that is what matters. Our attitude to spiritual knowledge can also establish within us the seeds of a truly human morality of the future. The morality of the future will either be built on the foundations of spiritual knowledge—or it will not be built at all! Love of truth requires that we acknowledge these things; it requires us to deepen our anthroposophical life; and above all to bear in mind what has been said today as an introductory fact, namely, that whereas knowledge demands activity, action in the spiritual world demands of us inner tranquillity, in order that we may prove worthy of Grace. You will now be able to understand that during the period between death and the new birth, when we are confronting another being, we can realise through the activity we then unfold whether we have deprived him of love or done anything to him that we ought not to have done. But, as I have said, during this period we cannot induce the tranquillity of soul that is necessary if the wrong is to be righted. In the lectures this winter I shall be describing the period during which it is actually possible in the natural course of the life between death and the new birth, to establish conditions in which change can be made possible—in other words, when a person's karma can be influenced in a certain way. We must, however, carefully distinguish between the point of time we have just been considering and the later period between death and the new birth when the tasks are different. It remains to be said that there are certain conditions which will enable a human being to live through his existence after death in a favourable or an unfavourable way. It will be found that the mode of existence of two or more human beings after the period immediately following their life in Kamaloka depends largely upon their moral disposition on Earth. Human beings who displayed good moral qualities on Earth will enjoy favourable conditions during the period immediately following Kamaloka; those who displayed defective morality will experience bad conditions. I should like to sum up what I have been saying about the life after death in a kind of formula, although as our language is coined for the physical world and not for the spiritual world, it cannot be strictly exact. One can only try to make it as exact as possible. If, then, there has been a good moral quality in our soul, we shall become ‘sociable’ spirits and enjoy companionship with other spirits, with other human beings or with Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. The opposite is the case if a genuine moral quality has been lacking in us; we then become solitary spirits, spirits who find it extremely difficult to move away from the clouds of their visions. To feel thus isolated as a spiritual hermit is an essential cause of suffering after death. On the other hand it is characteristic of the companionship of which I have spoken, to be able to establish the connection with what is necessary for us. It takes a long time after death to live through this sphere which in occultism is called the Mercury-sphere. The moral tone of the soul is naturally still decisive in the next sphere, the Venus-sphere; but new conditions then begin. In this sphere it is the religious disposition of the soul that is decisive. Individuals with a religious inner life will become sociable beings in the Venus-sphere, quite irrespective of the creed to which they belonged. On the other hand, individuals without any religious feelings are condemned in this sphere to complete spiritual self-absorption. Paradoxical though it may seem, I can only say that individuals with predominantly materialistic views and who scorn religious life, inevitably become spiritual hermits, each one living as it were confined in his own cell. Far from being an ironical comparison, it is true to say: all those who are supporters of ‘monistic religion’—that is to say, the opposite of true religion—will find themselves firmly imprisoned and be quite unable to find one another. In this way the mistakes and errors committed by the soul in earthly life are corrected. On the physical plane errors are automatically corrected but in the life between death and the new birth, errors and mistakes on Earth. also our thoughts, become facts. In the process of Initiation too, thinking is a real fact and if we were able to perceive it, an erroneous thought would stand there before us, not only in all its ugliness but with all the destructive elements it contains. If people had no more than an inkling that many a thought signifies a destructive reality they would soon turn away from many of the thoughts circulating in Movements intent upon agitation. It is part of the martyrdom endured in the process of Initiation that thoughts gather around us and stand there like solidified, frozen masses, which we cannot in any way dislodge, as long as we are out of the body. If we have formed an erroneous thought and then pass out of the body, the thought is there and we cannot change it. To change it we must go back into the body. True, memory of it remains, but even an Initiate is only able to rectify it when he is in the physical body. Outside the body it stands there like a mountain. Only in this way can he become aware of the seriousness of the realities of life. This will help you to understand that for certain karmic adjustments a return into the physical body is essential. The mistakes do indeed confront us during the life between death and the new birth; but the errors have to be corrected while we are in the physical body. In this way compensation is made in the subsequent life for what happened in the previous life. But what must be recognised in all its strength and fallaciousness stands there, unchangeable to begin with, as in the case of things in the spiritual world according to Homer. Such knowledge of the spiritual world must penetrate into our souls and become perception and feelings, and as feelings they form the basis for a new conception of life. A monistic Sunday sermon may expound any number of moral principles but as time will show, they will produce very little change, because in the way they are presented the concepts can have a real effect only when we recognise that for a certain period after death whatever is a burden on our karma will confront us as a direct reality. We recognise the burden but it remains as it is; we cannot change it now; all we can do is to recognise and accept the burden fully and deepen our nature accordingly. The effect of such concepts upon our souls is that they enable us to have the true view of life. And then there will follow all that is necessary to further the progress of life along the paths laid down by those who are the spiritual leaders of mankind; we shall thus move forward towards the goals that are set before man and mankind.
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| 141. Between Death and Rebirth: Lecture II
20 Nov 1912, Berlin Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, E. H. Goddard |
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| For certain as it is that a truth is right in an epoch possessed of a genuine sense of truth, it is also a fact that continually new impulses will make their way into the evolution of humanity. True indeed it is that what Anthroposophy has to give is right for a particular epoch, and humanity, having assimilated Anthroposophy, may bear it into later times as an inner impulse and through these forces also acquire the forces of the later epoch. |
| Every individual can ask himself the question: In what measure must I co-operate with the spiritual world in order that the Earth shall not be peopled by sickly bodies only? Anthroposophy is not knowledge alone but a responsibility that brings us into connection with the whole nature of the Earth, and sustains that connection. |
| 141. Between Death and Rebirth: Lecture II
20 Nov 1912, Berlin Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, E. H. Goddard |
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It has already been announced that our studies in these Group Meetings during the winter are to be concerned with the life between death and the new birth. Obviously, what will be said from a comparatively new point of view will become thoroughly clear only when the whole course of lectures has been given. It must be taken for granted that a great deal will consist in the communication of findings of investigation carried out during recent months. It is only as our studies progress that understanding can become more complete. Let us, however, begin with a brief consideration of man's nature and constitution—a study that everyone can undertake for himself. The most important and most outstanding fact revealed by an unprejudiced observation of man's life is surely the existence of the human Ego, the ‘I’. A distinction must however be made between the ‘I’ itself and the ‘I’ consciousness. It must be clear to everyone that from the time a child is born the ‘I’ is already active. This is obvious long before the child has any ‘I’-consciousness, when in the language he uses he speaks of himself as if he were another person. At about the third year of life, although of course there are children in whom this happens at an earlier age, the child begins to have some consciousness of himself and to speak of himself in the first person. We know too that this year, although it varies in many individuals, marks the limit before which, in later life, a human being is unable to recall what his soul has experienced. There is thus a dividing line in the life of a human being: before it there is no possibility of any clear and distinct experience of himself as ‘I’. After that point he can experience himself as an Ego, as ‘I’; he finds himself so at home in his ‘I’ that he can again and again summon up from his memory what his ‘I’ has experienced. Now what does unprejudiced observation of life teach us about the reason why the child gradually passes from the stage when he has no experience of his ‘I’ to the stage when this experience comes to him? A clear observation of life can teach us that if from the earliest periods after birth a child were never to come into any sort of collision with the outer world, he could never become ‘I’-conscious. You can discover for yourselves how often you become conscious of your ‘I’ in later life. You have only to knock against the corner of a cupboard and you will certainly be made aware of your ‘I’. This collision with the outside world tells you that you are an ‘I’ and you will hardly fail to be aware of that ‘I’ when you have given yourself a hard bump! In the case of a child these collisions with the outside world need not always cause bruises but in essence their effect is similar—to some extent at least. When a child stretches out his little hand and touches something in the outside world, this amounts to a slight collision and the same holds good when a child opens his eyes and light falls upon them. It is actually by such contacts with the world outside that the child becomes aware of his own identity. Indeed his whole life during these early years consists in learning to distinguish himself from the world outside and thus becoming aware of the self, the ‘I’, within him. When there have been enough of these collisions with the outside world the child acquires self-consciousness and says ‘I’ of himself. Once ‘I’-consciousness has been acquired the child must therefore keep it alive and alert. The only possibility of this, however, is that collisions shall continue to take place. These collisions with the world outside have completed their essential function once the child has reached the stage where he says ‘I’ of himself, and there is nothing further to be learnt by this means as far as the development of consciousness is concerned. Unbiased observation, for instance, of the moment of waking will, however, help everyone to realise that this ‘I’-consciousness can be maintained only by means of ‘collisions’. We know that this ‘I’-consciousness, together with all the other experiences, including those of the astral body, vanishes during sleep and wakens again in the morning. This happens because as a being of soul-and-spirit, man returns into his physical and etheric bodies. Again collisions take place—now with the physical and etheric bodies. A person who is able—even without any occult knowledge—to observe the life of soul accurately, can have the following experience. When he wakes in the morning he will find that a great deal of what his memory has preserved rises again into his consciousness: mental pictures, feelings and other experiences rise up into consciousness from its own depths. If we investigate all this with exactitude—and that is possible without any occult knowledge provided only there is some capacity for observing what the soul experiences—we shall find that what rises up into consciousness has a certain impersonal character. We can observe too that this impersonal character becomes more marked the longer ago the events in question took place—which means, of course, the less we are participating in them with our immediate ‘I’-consciousness. We may remember events which took place very long ago in our life, and when memory recalls them we may feel that we have as little directly to do with them as we have with experiences in the outside world which do not particularly concern us. What is otherwise preserved in our memory tends continually to break loose from our ‘I’. The reason why, in spite of this, we find our ‘I’ returning each morning clearly into our consciousness is that we come back into the same body. Through the resulting collision our ‘I’-consciousness is awakened again each morning. Thus just as the child develops consciousness of his ‘I’ by colliding with the external world, we keep that consciousness alert by colliding each morning with our inner being. This takes place not only in the morning but throughout the day; our ‘I’-consciousness is kindled by the counter-pressure of our body. Our ‘I’ is implanted in the physical body, etheric body and astral body and is continually colliding with them. We can therefore say that we owe our ‘I’-consciousness to the fact that we press inwardly into our bodily constitution and experience the counter-pressure from it. We collide with our body. You will readily understand that this must have the consequence which always results from collisions, namely that damage or injury is caused, even if it is not at once noticed. Collisions of the ‘I’ with the bodily constitution cause slight injuries in the latter. This is indeed the case. Our ‘I’-consciousness could never develop if we were not perpetually colliding with our bodily make-up and thereby destroying it in some way. It is in fact the sum-total of these results of destruction that ultimately brings about death in the physical world. Our conclusion must therefore be that we owe the preservation of our ‘I’-consciousness to our own destructive activity, to the circumstance that we are able to destroy our organism perpetually. In this way we are destroyers of our astral, etheric and physical bodies. But because of this, our relation to those bodies is rather different from what it is to the ‘I’. Everyday life itself makes it obvious that we can also work destructively upon the ‘I’, and we will now try to be clear as to how this may happen. Our ‘I’ is something—never mind for the moment exactly what—that has a certain value in the world. Man feels the truth of this, but it is in his power to reduce that value. How do we reduce the value of our ‘I’? If we do harm to someone to whom we owe a debt of love, we shall actually at that moment have reduced the value of our ‘I’. This is a fact that every human being can recognise. At the same time he can realise that as a human being never fulfils his ideal value, his ‘I’ is really occupied throughout his life in reducing his own value, in bringing about his own destruction. However, as long as we remain poised in our own ‘I’, we have constant opportunity in life to annul the destruction we have caused. We are capable of this even though we do not always manage to do it. Before we pass through the gate of death we can make compensation in some form for undeserved suffering caused to another person. If you think about it you will realise that between birth and death it is possible for man to reduce the value of his ‘I’ but also ultimately to make good the destruction that has been brought about. But in the case of the astral, etheric and physical bodies there is no possibility of being able to do this at the present stage of man's evolution. He is unable to work consciously on these bodies as he can do in the case of his ‘I’, for the reason that he is not, in the real sense, conscious in these members of his being. The destruction for which a man is continually responsible remains in his astral, etheric and physical bodies but he is not in a position to repair it. And it is easy to understand that if we were to come into a new incarnation with the forces of the astral, etheric and physical bodies as they were at the end of our previous incarnation, those bodies would be useless. The content of the life of soul is always the source and the sum and substance of what comes to expression in the bodily constitution. The fact that at the end of a life we have a brittle organism is evidence that our soul then lacks the forces necessary to sustain its vigour. In order to maintain our consciousness and keep it alert we have been continually damaging our bodily sheath. With the forces that are still available at the end of one incarnation we could do nothing in the next. It is necessary for us to reacquire the forces that are able to restore freshness and health within certain limits to the astral, etheric and physical bodies, and to make them of use for a new incarnation. In earthly existence—as is evident even to external observation—it is possible for man to damage these bodies but not to restore them to health. Occult investigation reveals that in the life between death and the new birth we acquire from the extra-terrestrial conditions in which we are then living the forces able to restore our worn-out sheaths. Between death and the new birth we expand into the Universe, the Cosmos, and we have to acquire the forces which cannot be drawn from the sphere of the Earth from the heavenly bodies connected with the Earth. These heavenly bodies are the reservoirs of forces needed for our bodily sheaths. On the Earth man can acquire only the forces needed for the constant restoration of the ‘I’. For the other members of his being the forces must be drawn from other worlds. Let us consider the astral body first. After death the human being expands, quite literally expands, into all the planetary spheres. During the Kamaloka period, as a being of soul-and-spirit, man expands to the boundary demarcated by the orbit of the Moon around the Earth. Beings of various ranks are involved in the process. After that he expands until the Mercury sphere is reached—Mercury as understood in occultism. Thence he expands to the spheres of Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and finally Saturn. The being who has passed through the gate of death becomes in the real sense a Mercury dweller, a Venus dweller and so on, and in a certain sense he must have the faculty to become thoroughly acclimatised in these other planetary worlds. How does he succeed or fail in this respect? In the first place, when his Kamaloka period is over, a man must himself possess some quality that will enable him to establish a definite relationship with the forces in the Mercury sphere into which he then passes. If the lives of various human beings between death and the new birth are investigated, it will be found that they differ greatly in the Mercury sphere. A clear difference is evident according to whether an individual passes into the Mercury sphere with a moral disposition of soul, with the outcome of a moral or an immoral life. There are of course nuances of every possible degree. A man with a moral quality of soul, who bears within him the fruits of a moral life, is what may be called a spiritually ‘social’ being in the Mercury sphere; it is easy for him to establish relationships with other beings—either with people who died before him or also with beings who inhabit the Mercury sphere—and to share experiences with them. An immoral man becomes a hermit, feels excluded from the community of the other inhabitants of this sphere. Such is the consequence in the life between death and the new birth of a moral or immoral disposition of soul. It is important to understand that morality forges our connection and relationship with the beings living in this sphere and an immoral disposition of soul encloses us as it were in a prison. We know that the other beings are there but we seem to be within a shell and make no contact with them. This self-isolation is an outcome of an earthly life that was unsociable and lacking in morality. In the next sphere, which we will call the Venus sphere—in occultism it is always so named—a man's contact with it is mainly dependent upon a religious attitude of soul. Contact with the beings of this sphere can be established by individuals who during their life on Earth came to realise that everything transitory in physical things and in man himself is after all related in some way to immortality; thus they had a feeling that the attitude of soul in every individual should incline to divine-spiritual reality. On the other hand, anyone who is a materialist and cannot direct his soul to the Eternal, the Divine, the Immortal, is condemned in the Venus sphere to be imprisoned within his own being, in isolation. Particularly in connection with this sphere we can learn from occult investigation how in our astral body during life on Earth we create the conditions of existence as they will be in the Venus sphere. On the Earth we must already develop understanding of and inclination for what we hope to contact and experience in that sphere. Let us consider for a moment the fact that human beings living on the Earth during entirely different epochs—as was both inevitable and right—were connected with divine-spiritual life through the various religions and prevailing conceptions of the world. The only way in which human evolution could progress was that out of the one source—for example the religious life—at different times and for very different peoples, according to their natural traits and climatic and other conditions of existence, the varying religious principles were imparted by those destined for this mission. These religious principles stem from one source but are graduated according to the conditions prevailing among particular peoples. Humanity today is still divided into groups determined by their religious tenets and views of the world. But it is through what is thereby formed in our souls that we prepare our understanding of and possibility of contacts in the Venus sphere. The religions of the Hindu, of the Chinese, of the Mohammedan, of the Christian, prepare the soul in such a way that in the Venus sphere it will understand and be attracted to those individuals whose souls have been moulded by the same religious tenets. Occult investigation shows clearly that whereas nowadays men on Earth are divided by race, descent and so forth, and can be distinguished by these factors—although this will change in the future and has already begun to do so—in the Venus sphere in which we live together with other human beings there are no such divisions. The only division there depends upon their religious principles and conceptions of the world while they were on the Earth. It is true that to some extent a classification according to race is possible because this classification on Earth—even according to religion—is still, in a certain respect, a matter of racial relationships. All the same, it is not the element of race that is decisive, but what the soul experiences through its adherence to the principles of a particular religion. We spend certain periods after each death within these spheres; then our being expands and we pass on from the Venus sphere to the Sun sphere. In very truth we become, as souls, Sun dwellers between death and the new birth. Something more than was necessary in the Venus sphere is required for the Sun sphere. If we are to fare well in the Sun sphere between death and the new birth, it is essential to be able to understand not merely one particular group of human beings but to understand and find points of contact with all human souls. In the Sun sphere we feel isolated, like hermits, if the prejudices of one particular faith render us incapable of understanding a human being whose soul has been filled with the principles of a different faith. An individual who on the Earth regarded one particular religion only as valuable is incapable in the Sun sphere of understanding adherents of other religions. But the consequences of this lack of understanding are not the same as they are on Earth. On the Earth men may live side by side without any inner understanding of each other and then separate into different faiths and systems of thought. In the Sun sphere, however, since we interpenetrate one another, we are together and yet at the same time separated in our inner being; and in that sphere every separation and every lack of understanding are at once sources of terrible suffering. Every contact with an adherent of a different faith becomes a reproach which weighs upon us unceasingly and which we cannot escape because on Earth we did not educate ourselves in this respect. Taking the life between death and the new birth as a starting-point, what is now to be said will in a certain sense be easier to understand if reference is made to Initiation. What the Initiate experiences in the spiritual worlds is in a certain respect closely akin to experiences undergone in the life between death and rebirth. The Initiate has to make his way into the same spheres, and were he to maintain the prejudices resulting from a biased, one-sided view of the world, he would undergo similar suffering in the Sun sphere. It is therefore essential that Initiation should be preceded by thorough understanding of every religious faith spread over the Earth, also understanding of what is taking place in every individual soul regardless of the creed or system of thought to which it adheres. Otherwise, whatever has not been met with understanding becomes a source of suffering, as if towering mountains were threatening to crash down upon one, as if explosions were discharging their whole force upon one. Whatever lack of understanding due to one's own narrow prejudices has been shown to human beings on Earth, has this effect in the spiritual worlds. It was not always so. In pre-Christian times the process of evolution did not require men unconditionally to acquire this understanding of every human soul. Humanity was obliged to pass through the phase of a one-sided attitude. But those who were trained for some kind of leadership in the world were obliged to acquire, either consciously or less consciously, an understanding for every human being without distinction. Even when some individual was to be the leader of a particular people he would be required to develop a measure of understanding for every human soul. This is indicated magnificently in the Old Testament in the passage describing the meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High. Those who understand this passage know that Abraham, who was destined to become the leader of his people, underwent an Initiation at this time—even if not in full consciousness as is the case in later Initiations. Abraham's Initiation was connected with realisation of the Divine element that can flow into all human souls. The passage which tells of the meeting of Abraham with Melchizedek contains a deep secret connected with the evolution of humanity. But men had gradually to be prepared to become more and more qualified for a fruitful existence in the Sun sphere. The first impulse in the evolution of our Earth towards a fruitful existence in the Sun sphere was given by the Mystery of Golgotha, after preparation for it had been made by the people of the Old Testament—about which there will be more to say. It is not essential at the moment to deal with the question as to whether Christianity in its development hitherto has achieved all its goals and possible fruits. Needless to say, in its various sects and denominations Christianity has produced only one-sided aspects of its essential principle; in certain of its tenets, and as a whole, it is not on the level of certain other faiths. What really matters, however, is its potentiality of development, what enrichment it can give to one who penetrates more and more deeply into its essential truth. We have already tried to indicate these possibilities of development. There is infinitely much to be said, but one matter only shall now be mentioned because it can throw light upon the point under consideration at the moment. If we have a genuine understanding of the different faiths we find one outstanding characteristic, namely that in the earlier periods of Earth evolution the individual religions were adapted to the particular races, tribal stocks or peoples. There is still evidence of this. Only one who has been born a Hindu can be an orthodox adherent of the Hindu religion today. In a certain respect the earlier religions are racial religions, folk-religions. Do not take this as disparagement but simply as characterisation. The different religions, although deriving from the primal source of a universal world-religion, were given to the peoples by the Initiates and adapted to the specific tribal stocks and races; hence in that sense there is something egoistic about them. Peoples have always loved the religion that has been determined by their own flesh and blood. In ancient times, when a religion stemming from a Mystery Centre had been established among a particular people, a bodily stranger who wanted to start another religion among them did not do so, but instead founded a second Mystery Centre. People were always given a leader from their own tribe or clan. In this respect true Christianity is very different. Christ Jesus, the Individuality to whom the Christians turn, was least active among the people and in the area on the Earth where He was born. In respect of religion, can conditions in the Western world be equated with those existing in India or China where folk-religions still survive? No, they cannot! The regions where we ourselves are living could be equated with India and China only if here, in Middle Europe, we were, for example, faithful followers of Wotan. We should then be at the same stage and the element of religious egoism would be in evidence here too. But in the West this aspect has disappeared, for the West accepted a religion that was not confined to any particular folk-community. This fact must be remembered. The influences which bound blood to blood and were a determining factor in the founding of the old religious communities, played no part in the spread of Christianity. The life of soul was the essential factor and in the West a religion unconnected with a single people or folk-community was adopted. Why has it been so? It is because in its deepest roots and from the very beginning Christianity was meant to be a religion for all men without distinction of belief, nationality, descent, race, and whatever separates human beings from one another. Christianity is rightly understood only when it is realised that it is concerned solely with the essentially human element in all men. The fact that in its early phases and also in our own times sects have arisen from Christianity should be no cause of apprehension; for Christianity makes possible the evolution of the “human universal”. It is also true that a great transformation will have to take place within the Christian world if the roots of Christianity are to be rightly understood. A distinction will have to be made between knowledge of Christian tenets and the reality of Christianity. St. Paul did in fact begin to make this distinction and those who understand his words can realise something of what they mean, although up to now understanding has been rare. When St. Paul made it clear that belief in Christ Jesus was not the prerogative of Judaism, and spoke the words, “Christ died not only for the Jews but also for the Gentiles”, this was an enormous contribution to the true conception of Christianity. It would be quite false to maintain that the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled only for those who call themselves Christians. The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled for all men! This is indeed what St. Paul meant in the words just quoted. What passed over from the Mystery of Golgotha into earthly life has meaning and significance for all that life. Grotesque as it may still seem today to those who do not distinguish between knowledge and reality, it must nevertheless be said that he alone understands the roots of Christianity who can view an adherent of a different religion—no matter whether he calls himself Indian, or Chinese, or anything else—in such a way that he asks himself: To what extent is he Christ-like? The fact of knowing this is not what really matters; what does matter is that such a person knows the reality of Christianity—in the sense that it is not essential to know physiology provided that digestion takes place. A man whose religion has failed to bring about in him a conscious relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha has no understanding of it, but that does not entitle others to deny him the reality of Christianity. Not until Christians become so truly Christian that they seek for the Christ-like principle in all souls on Earth—not when they have implanted it in the souls of others by attempts at conversion—not until then will the root principles of Christianity have been understood. All this belongs to Christianity when rightly understood. Distinction must be made between the reality of Christianity and an understanding of it. To understand what has been present on the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha is a great ideal, the ideal of supremely important knowledge for the Earth—knowledge that men will gradually acquire. But the reality itself has come to pass; the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled. Our life in the Sun sphere after death depends upon what relationship we have established with the Mystery of Golgotha. The contact with all human souls that can be experienced in the Sun sphere is possible only if a relationship with the Mystery of Golgotha has been established in the way described. It is a relationship which ensures freedom from any still imperfect form of Christianity as practised in this or that sect. If we have no such relationship with the Mystery of Golgotha we condemn ourselves to becoming solitary individuals in the Sun sphere, unable to make contact with other human souls. There is a certain utterance which retains its power even in the Sun sphere. When in the Sun sphere we encounter another human soul we can become companions and not be thrust away from that soul, if these words have been preserved in our inner being: “When two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.” In the Sun sphere all human souls can be united with one another in a true recognition of Christ. And this union is of tremendous significance. For in the Sun sphere a man must make a decision; he must acquire a certain understanding. And what this means can best be explained by referring to an extraordinarily important fact which every human soul would be able to realise but does not always do so. One of the most beautiful sayings in the New Testament occurs when Christ Jesus is endeavouring to make men conscious of the divine-spiritual core of being within them, of the truth that God is present as the divine spark in every human soul, that every human being has divinity within him. Christ Jesus emphasises this, declaring with all power and intensity: “Ye are Gods!” The emphasis laid upon the words shows that He recognised this as a rightful claim when a man applies its implications to himself. But this utterance was also made by another Being. The Old Testament tells us in symbolic words at what point in evolution it was made. At the very beginning of man's evolution, Lucifer proclaimed: “Ye shall be as Gods!” This is something that must be noticed. A saying in identical terms is uttered by two Beings: by Lucifer and by Christ! “Ye shall be as Gods.” What does the Bible imply by giving emphasis to these two utterances? It implies that from Lucifer this utterance leads to a curse, from Christ to the highest blessing. Is there not a wonderful mystery here? The words hurled into humanity by Lucifer, the Tempter—when uttered by Christ to men are supreme wisdom. That what is really important is not the content of an utterance but from whom it comes—this fact is inscribed in letters of power into the biblical record. From an instance such as this let us feel that it behoves us to understand things in adequate depth and that we can learn a very great deal from what may lie openly before us. It is in the Sun sphere between death and the new birth that again and again we hear the words spoken to our soul with all their force: Thou art a God, be as a God! We know with all certainty when we arrive in the Sun sphere that Lucifer meets us again and impresses the meaning of this utterance forcibly upon us. From then onwards we can understand Lucifer very well, but Christ only if on Earth we have prepared ourselves to understand Him. Christ's utterance will have no meaning for us in the Sun sphere if by our relationship on Earth to the mystery of Golgotha we have not gained some understanding of it. Trivial as the following words may be, let me say this: In the Sun sphere we find two thrones. From the throne of Lucifer—which is always occupied—there sound the words of temptation, asserting our divinity. The second throne seems to us—or rather to many human beings—to be still empty, for on this other throne in the Sun sphere between death and the new birth, we have to discover what can be called the Akashic picture of Christ. If we can find the Akashic picture of Christ it will be for us a blessing—this will become evident in later lectures. But it has become possible to find that picture only because Christ came down from the Sun and has united Himself with the Earth and because we have been able to open our eyes of spirit here on Earth through understanding in some measure the Mystery of Golgotha. This will ensure that the throne of Christ in the Sun sphere does not appear empty to us but that the deeds He performed while His dwelling-place was still the Sun sphere become visible. As I said, I have to use trivial words in speaking of these two thrones; this sublime fact can only be spoken of figuratively. But anyone who acquires more and more understanding will realise that words coined on Earth are inadequate and that one is obliged to resort to imagery in order to be intelligible. Now we shall understand and find support for what we need in the Sun sphere only if on the Earth we have acquired something that plays not only into the astral forces but into the etheric forces as well. You will know from what I have previously said that the religions influence the etheric forces and the etheric body of man. A considerable spiritual heirloom is available for all of us inasmuch as forces from the Sun sphere are instilled into us if we have acquired understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For it is from the Sun sphere that we must draw the forces necessary for the renewal of our etheric body for the next incarnation; whereas the forces necessary for our astral body in the next incarnation must be drawn from the other planetary spheres. Let nobody believe that what I have been saying is unconnected with the whole course of evolution. I have told you that already in pre-Christian times a leader of humanity such as Abraham was able at his meeting with Melchizedek (or Malkezadek) to acquire the forces needed for the Sun sphere. I am making no intolerant statement implying that man can acquire the forces necessary for establishing a right relationship to the beings of the Sun sphere through orthodox Christianity alone. I am stating a fact of evolution; another fact is that the time when it was still possible, as in ancient days, to behold the Akashic picture of Christ as the result of different means is drawing nearer and nearer to a close as evolution proceeds. Abraham's spiritual eyes were fully open to the Akashic picture of Christ in the Sun sphere. You must not argue that the Mystery of Golgotha had not then taken place and that Christ was still in the Sun sphere; for during that period Christ was united with other planetary spheres. It is indeed a fact that at that time and even down to our own epoch, human beings were able to perceive what could be perceived in those spheres. And if we go still further back to those primeval ages when the Holy Rishis were the first Teachers of the people of ancient India, those Teachers certainly had knowledge of Christ who at that time was still in the Sun sphere, and they imparted this knowledge and understanding to their followers, although of course not using the later nomenclature. Although in those ancient times the Mystery of Golgotha was not yet within their ken, men were able, by drawing intimate truths from the depths of their being, to acquire from the Sun sphere what was needed for the renewal of their etheric bodies. But these possibilities ceased as evolution proceeded and this was necessary because new forces must perpetually be instilled into humanity. What has been said is meant to indicate a fact of evolution. We are moving towards a future when it will be less and less possible for men during the period between death and the new birth to live through their existence in the Sun sphere in the right way if they alienate themselves from the Christ Event. True it is that we must look for the Christ-like quality in each soul. If we are to understand the root of Christianity we must ask ourselves in the case of everyone we meet; how much in his nature is Christ-like? But it is also true that a man can sever himself from Christianity if he fails to become conscious of what it is in reality. And when we remind ourselves again of St. Paul's words, that Christ died not only for the Jews but also for the Gentiles, we must also add that if in the course of further progress men were more and more to deny the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha they would prevent what was done for their sake from reaching them. The Mystery of Golgotha was a deed of blessing for all mankind. Every human being is free to allow that event to influence him or not; but the effect of the influence will in future depend more and more upon the extent to which he is able to draw from the Sun sphere the forces required to ensure that his etheric body shall be rightly formed in his next incarnation. The immeasurable consequences of this for the whole future of the human race on Earth will be considered in the forthcoming lectures. Thus Christianity, admittedly little understood, yet always connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, is the first preparation if humanity is to regain the relationship to the Sun sphere. A second impulse would be the genuine anthroposophical understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. After a human being has adjusted himself to existence in the Sun sphere his life expands further outwards, into the Mars sphere, for example. What is essential is that he not only establishes the right relationship to the forces of the Sun sphere but maintains this relationship when his life expands into the Mars sphere. In order that his consciousness shall not become dim, shall not fade away altogether after the Sun sphere but that he can carry it over into the Mars sphere, it is necessary in the present cycle of human evolution that spiritual understanding of the gist of our religions and conceptions of the world shall take root in the souls of men. Hence the endeavours to understand the essence of religions and systems of thought. Spiritual-scientific understanding will eventually be replaced by another, quite different understanding of which men today cannot even dream. For certain as it is that a truth is right in an epoch possessed of a genuine sense of truth, it is also a fact that continually new impulses will make their way into the evolution of humanity. True indeed it is that what Anthroposophy has to give is right for a particular epoch, and humanity, having assimilated Anthroposophy, may bear it into later times as an inner impulse and through these forces also acquire the forces of the later epoch. Thus it has been possible to show the relationship of man’s life on Earth to the life between death and the new birth. Nobody can fail to realise that it is just as necessary for a human being to have knowledge, feeling and perceptiveness of the life between death and the new birth as of earthly life itself. For when he enters earthly life at birth, the confidence, strength and hopefulness connected with that life depend upon what forces he brings with him from the life between the last death and the present birth. But again, the forces we are able to acquire during that life depend upon our conduct in the earlier incarnation, upon our moral and religious disposition or the quality of our attitude of soul. We must realise that whether the future evolution of the human race will be furthered or impeded depends upon our active and creative co-operation with the super-sensible world in which we live between death and the new birth. If men failed to acquire the forces able to provide them with healthy astral bodies, the forces in their astral bodies would become ineffective and sterile and humanity would sink into moral and religious turpitude on the Earth. Similarly, if men failed to acquire the forces needed for their etheric bodies, as members of the human race they would wither away on the Earth. Every individual can ask himself the question: In what measure must I co-operate with the spiritual world in order that the Earth shall not be peopled by sickly bodies only? Anthroposophy is not knowledge alone but a responsibility that brings us into connection with the whole nature of the Earth, and sustains that connection. |
| 240. Karmic Relationships VI: Lecture VI
01 Jun 1924, Stuttgart Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, E. H. Goddard, Mildred Kirkcaldy |
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| This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. |
| It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. |
| There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge. Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. |
| 240. Karmic Relationships VI: Lecture VI
01 Jun 1924, Stuttgart Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, E. H. Goddard, Mildred Kirkcaldy |
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On the last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to others less familiar to you. When the human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence, while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this constitutes a third of the earthly life—if a man is not an abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies about a third of the time of life on the Earth. We may ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the human being—constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary consciousness—were always to have awareness during sleep he would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep. When a man has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through the nights—the periods of sleep—not through the days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward ‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during which—unconsciously of course—pictures were produced which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life. If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences? In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation. When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’ Let me give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays. You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death. An incident connected with this was that certain friends interested themselves in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while living through his life in backward order are much more intense than they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not. You can imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from judgement as it is on Earth.—I may already have mentioned that many years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives. She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that there are many earthly lives! When the human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death, he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being; and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you do most assuredly form it! All these experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything good—but after all, nobody like this really exists—such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings do make progress. With less or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth. This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had his Mysteries. As you can read in the book, Occult Science, there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece; they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a tradition. Then the human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality, and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature as it will be in his next Earth existence. This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say: this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say: this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth—I refer of course to a spiritual conception of man—he is merely filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life. In order to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think of the following.—Stars—what are they, in reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth—which is the theatre of man's existence—there are so and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers, intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma. We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there—in that direction—is a colony of Spirits. When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well as this—in order that he shall find the load of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way that it can be fulfilled on Earth—he needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere. Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this. Today the time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world becomes for the first time transparent, full of light—not poorer but richer, more splendid in content. I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives. In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world? With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller. And now study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation. What circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place. Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained, and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon existence—he can look into these happenings. In the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years, the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence. As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence. And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe. When history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke, openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to understand the battle that is being waged between men who strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science but also in what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents alone are studied—for documents too are records only of happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution. Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an illness of which I have been speaking for years—even in public lectures—will become more and more widespread. Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but it will none the less exist in life—its name is Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)—or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man. I want to give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is details which lead to perception of the real connections. This individuality lived through various other incarnations which were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere, to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world. The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes through the Mars sphere—battle; through the Mercury sphere—critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere—it is a particularly complex karma—and with the tendency to evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century becomes Heinrich Heine. Just try to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is, in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth. And so, looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. (I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere, Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos here on Earth—in one case in this way, in another in that. These things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes out in all his creations because living beings are at work—this will have a different result in another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar, primitive form of wisdom—an inferior wisdom—was in this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like. The earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become elements in the constitution of karma. It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge. Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is star-wisdom—all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man. That is what I wanted to say to you today concerning karma. |
| 228. The Spiritual Individualities of Our Planetary System: Lecture III
29 Jul 1923, Dornach |
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| There is truly no need to rebuke opponents who say, in the field of anthroposophy, that we have great physics. But physics thrives on the denial of the artistic. It thrives on the denial of the artistic in each individual, because it has arrived at a way of treating the world in which the artist no longer cares about the physicist. |
| And so I have tried in the most diverse places – for example, when I showed you yesterday how the concepts that were still there thirty or forty years ago are now being dissolved by the theory of relativity, simply melting away like snow in the sun – I have tried to show you how everywhere you look there are calls to really strive towards anthroposophy. For, as the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann says: If the world is as we have to imagine it – that is, as he imagines it in the 19th century – then we must actually, because we cannot endure it in it, blow it up into space, and it is only a matter of our being so far that we can carry it out. |
| If we allow ourselves to become ensnared in such sectarianism, as there were strong tendencies towards during the delegates' meeting, then we will not achieve the great task of anthroposophy in the present, and this must be achieved, because 'it is a human task. Having said this, I would like to take leave of you for a few weeks and we will announce the next events in due course. |
| 228. The Spiritual Individualities of Our Planetary System: Lecture III
29 Jul 1923, Dornach |
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During his earthly existence, the human being alternates in the states of consciousness, which we have already considered from many points of view during these days, between the states of complete waking, sleeping and dreaming. And I have just tried to explain the full significance of dreaming during the short lecture cycle at the delegates' meeting. Today, let us first ask ourselves the question: Is it part of the essential nature of man as an earthly being to live in these three states of consciousness? We must be clear about the fact that within earthly existence, only man lives in these three states of consciousness. The animal lives in a fundamentally different cycle. The animal does not have the deep dreamless sleep that man has for the longest time between falling asleep and waking up. On the other hand, the animal does not have the complete wakefulness that man has between waking up and falling asleep. The animal waking state is actually somewhat similar to human dreaming. Only the conscious experiences of higher animals are more definite, more saturated, I might say, than the fleeting human dreams. But on the other hand, the animal is never unconscious to the same high degree as man is in deep sleep. The animal therefore does not differ to the same extent from its surroundings as does man. The animal does not have an external world and an internal world in the way that man has them. If we translate into human language, the animal actually reckons, what lives as a dull consciousness in the higher animals, with its entire inner being to the outside world. When an animal sees a plant, it does not initially have the feeling that there is a plant outside and that it is a closed being inside, but rather a strong inner experience of the plant, an immediate sympathy or antipathy. In a sense, the animal feels within itself what the plant expresses. That in our present age people are so little able to observe what does not reveal itself in a very crude way, this circumstance alone it is, which prevents them from simply seeing from the behavior, from the behavior of the animal, that it is as I have said. Only man has this sharp, clear distinction between his inner world and the outer world. Why does man acknowledge an outer world? How does man come to speak of an inner world and an outer world at all? He comes to it through the fact that he is always outside his physical and etheric bodies with his I and with his astral body in the state of sleep, that he, so to speak, leaves his physical and etheric bodies to themselves in sleep and is with those things that are the outer world. During our state of sleep, we share the fate of external things. Just as tables and benches, trees and clouds are outside our physical and etheric bodies when we are awake, and we therefore call them the external world, so our own astral body and our own ego belong to the external world during sleep. And when we belong to the external world with our ego and our astral body during sleep, something happens. To understand what is happening, let us first consider what actually happens when we face the world in a normal waking state. The objects around us are external to us. And gradually, human scientific thinking has come to recognize only that which can be measured, weighed and counted as certain for these physical things of the outside world. The content of our physical science is, after all, determined by weight, by measure, by number. We calculate with the calculation operations that once applied to earthly things, we weigh the things, we measure them. And what we determine by weight, measure and number, that is actually given by the physical. We would not describe a body as physical if we could not somehow prove its reality with the scales. But that which, for example, colors are, that which sounds are, that which even sensations of warmth and cold are, that which is the actual sensory perceptions, that weaves so over the heavy, measurable, countable things. When we want to define any physical thing, what constitutes its actual physical essence is precisely what can be weighed and counted, and what the physicist actually only wants to deal with. Regarding color, sound and so on, he says: Yes, something is happening out there that also has to do with weighing or counting. — He himself says of the color phenomena: There are vibrations out there that make an impression on people, and people describe this impression as color when the eye determines it, as sound when the ear determines it, and so on. - Actually, one could say: the physicist today does not know what to do with all these things - sound, color, warmth and cold. He regards them simply as properties of what can be determined with the scales, with the measuring stick or by calculation. In a sense, colors adhere to the physical, sound breaks away from the physical, and warmth or cold undulate out of the physical. We say: that which has a weight, that asked for the blush, or it:st red. When a person is in the state between falling asleep and waking up, it is different with the I and with the astral body. In this state, things are not there at all in terms of measure, number and weight. According to earthly measure, number and weight, things are not there. When we are asleep, we do not have things around us that can be weighed, strange as it may seem, nor do we have things around us that can be counted or measured directly. You could not apply a yardstick as I and as an astral body in a state of sleep. But what is there, if I may express it in this way, are the free-floating, free-weaving sensations. Only that in his present state of development, man does not have the ability to perceive the free-floating blush, the waves of the free-weaving sound, and so on. If you want to draw a schematic picture of the matter, you could do it like this. [Here he begins to draw on the board] You could say: Here on earth we have tangible solid things, and the red, the yellow, that is, what the senses perceive in the physical world, adheres to these tangible solid things, so to speak. When we are asleep, yellow is a free-floating being, red is a free-floating being, not attached to such conditions of heaviness, but freely weaving and floating. It is the same with sound: it is not the bell that sounds, but the sound that weaves. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] And it is true that when we walk around in our physical world and see something, we pick it up; only then it is a thing, otherwise it could also be an optical illusion. Weight must be added. That is why one is so inclined to regard something that appears in the physical without it being perceived as heavy, such as the colors of the rainbow, as an optical illusion. If you open a physics book today, you will find that it explains that what you see is an optical illusion. What is actually real is the raindrop. And so you draw lines into it that actually mean nothing at all for what is there, but which you imagine through space; you then call them rays. But the rays are not there at all. Then one says: the eye projects that outwards. This projection is something that is used in physics today in a very strange way. So I take up the idea: we see a red object. To convince ourselves that it is not an optical illusion, we pick it up and it is heavy: this is how we verify its reality. The one who now becomes aware in the I and in the astral body outside the physical and etheric body also finally comes to the conclusion that something like this is already there in this free-floating and free-weaving colored, sounding; but it is different. In a freely floating colored shape, there is a tendency to move out into the vastness of the world; it has an opposite gravity. These things on earth want to go down to the center of the earth [drawing, downward arrows], while those [upward arrows] want to go out freely into space. And there is also something similar to a measure. You see it when you have, let's say, a small reddish cloud [plate 4], and this small reddish cloud is surrounded by a mighty yellow structure. Then you measure, but not with the scale, but qualitatively you measure with the red, with the stronger shining the weaker shining yellow. And just as the measuring rod tells you: that is five meters, so here the red tells you: if I were to spread out, I would enter the yellow five times. I have to expand, I have to become more powerful, then I will also become yellow. — So the measurements are made here. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] It is even more difficult to explain counting here, because in earthly counting we usually only count peas or apples that lie next to each other indifferently. And we always have the feeling that when we make two out of one, the one is actually quite indifferent to the fact that there is another two next to it. In human life it is already different; there it is sometimes the case that one is dependent on the two. But that also goes into the spiritual. But in actual physical mathematics, the units are always indifferent to what is associated with them. That is not the case here. If there is a one of a certain kind somewhere, it requires any, say, three or five others, depending on the case [drawing, red dots and rings]. This always has an inner relationship to the others, there the number is a reality. And when consciousness begins to perceive what it is like to be out there with the ego and the astral body, then one also comes to determine something like measure, number and weight, but in an opposite way. And then, when seeing and hearing out there are no longer a mere swimming and groping of red and yellow and sounds, but when one begins to perceive things in such an orderly way in there too, then the perception of the spiritual entities that actualize and realize themselves in these free-floating sensory perceptions begins. Then we enter into the positive spiritual world, into the life and activity of spiritual beings. Just as we enter into the life and activity of earthly things here on earth by determining them with the scales, with the measuring rod, with our calculations, so we enter into the comprehension of spiritual entities by acquiring the merely qualitative, opposite heaviness, that is, by wanting to expand with ease in space, measuring color by color and so on. These spiritual essences now also permeate everything that is outside in the realms of nature. With the waking consciousness, the human being sees only the outer side of minerals, plants, and animals. But in what lives as spiritual in all these beings of the nature kingdoms, there the human being is when he sleeps. And when he then goes back into himself when he wakes up, then his I and his astral body retain, so to speak, the inclination, the affinity to external things and cause the person to recognize an external world. If the human being had an organization that was not designed for sleep, he would not recognize an external world. Of course it is not a matter of someone suffering from insomnia. For I am not saying that a person does not sleep, but that a person does not have an organization that is designed for sleeping. It is a matter of being attuned to something. That is why a person who suffers from insomnia becomes ill, because it is not suited to his nature. But that is just how things are: precisely because man dwells in sleep with what is in the outer world, with what he then calls his outer world when awake, he also comes to an outer world, to a view of the outer world. This relationship of man to sleep gives the earthly concept of truth. How? Well, we call it truth when we can correctly recreate an external event within us, when we can correctly experience an external event within us. But for this we need the mechanism of sleep. We would have no concept of truth at all if we did not have the mechanism of sleep. So that we can say: we owe truth to the state of sleep. In order to devote ourselves to the truth of things, we must also spend a certain amount of time with them in our existence. Things only tell us about themselves when we are with them in our souls during sleep. The dream state is different. As I explained to you in the short series during the delegates' meeting, the dream is related to memory, to the inner life of the soul, to that which lives primarily in memory. When the dream is a free-floating world of sound and color, we are still half outside of our body. When we completely submerge, the same forces that we unfold in the dream, weaving and living, become forces of memory. In this way we no longer differ from the outer world. Our inner life coincides with the outer world, we live so intensely in the outer world with our sympathies and antipathies that we do not perceive things as sympathetic or antipathetic, but the sympathies and antipathies themselves show themselves pictorially. If we did not have the ability to dream and the continuation of this dream power within us, we would have no beauty. The fact that we have any predispositions for beauty at all is based on our ability to dream. For the prosaic existence, we have to say: we owe it to the power of dreaming that we have memory; for the artistic existence of man, we owe beauty to the power of dreaming. So: 'the state of dreaming is connected with beauty'. The way we perceive beauty and create beauty is very similar to the weaving force of dreaming. We behave similarly when experiencing beauty and when creating beauty – only with the application of our physical body – as we behave outside of our physical body, or half-connected to our physical body, when dreaming. There is only a small gap between dreaming and living in beauty. And only because in today's materialistic time people are so coarse that they do not notice this gap, there is so little awareness of the full significance of beauty. In order to experience this free floating and weaving, one must necessarily devote oneself to it in dreams. Whereas when one surrenders to freedom, to the inner exercise of will, and thus lives after the jolt, one no longer has the sensation that it is the same as dreaming, because it is just the same, only with the application of the powers of the physical body. People today will think long and hard about what was meant in older times when one said “chaos” [the word “chaos” is written on the blackboard]. There are many different definitions of chaos. In reality, chaos can only be characterized by saying: When a person enters a state of consciousness in which the experience of heaviness, of earthly measure, just ceases, and things begin to feel half light, but do not yet want to reach out into the world , but still maintain themselves horizontally, in balance, when the fixed boundaries dissolve, when the floating indeterminacy of the world is still seen with the physical body, but already with the soul-constitution of dreaming, then one sees chaos. And the dream is merely the shadowy approach of chaos to man. In Greece, people still had the feeling that you can't really make the physical world beautiful. The physical world is just a necessity of nature, it is what it is. You can only make that beautiful which is chaotic. If you transform chaos into cosmos, then beauty arises. That is why chaos and cosmos are interchangeable terms. You cannot create the cosmos – which actually means the beautiful world – from earthly things, but only from chaos, by shaping chaos. And what you do with earthly things is merely an imitation in the substance of the shaped chaos. This is the case with all artistic endeavors. In Greece, where mystery cults still had a certain influence, people still had a very vivid idea of this relationship between chaos and the cosmos. But if you travel around in all these worlds - in the world in which man is unconscious when he is in a state of sleep, in the world in which man is half-conscious when he is in a state of dreaming - if you travel around everywhere: you will not find goodness. These beings that are in there have been predestined with wisdom from the very beginning of their lives. In them, you find ruling, weaving wisdom; in them, you find beauty. But there is no point in our, as terrestrial human beings, trying to get to know these entities and speak of goodness in them. We can only speak of goodness when there is a difference between the inner and outer world, so that the good of the spiritual world can or cannot follow. Just as the sleeping state is truth, the dreaming state is beauty, so the waking state is goodness, assigned to the good [it is written on the board]. |
But that does not contradict what I have said in recent days, that when one leaves the earthly and comes out into the cosmos, one is led to drop even earthly concepts in order to speak of the moral order of the world. For the moral order of the world is just as predetermined, just as necessarily predetermined in the spiritual as causality is here on earth. It is just that there it is spiritual: the predetermination, the being-determined-in-oneself. So there is no contradiction. But we must be clear about human nature: if we want to have the idea of truth, then we must turn to the state of sleep; if we want to have the idea of beauty, then we must turn to the state of dreaming; if we want to have the idea of kindness, then we must turn to the state of waking. Thus, when a person is awake, he is not destined for his physical and etheric organism according to truth, but rather destined for goodness. So we must come to the idea of goodness all the more. Now I ask you: What does contemporary science strive for when it wants to explain the human being? It does not want to ascend by explaining to the awake person the path from truth through beauty to goodness; it wants to explain everything according to an external causal necessity, which only corresponds to the idea of truth. One does not come to that which lives and weaves in man in an awakened state, but only to that which the sleeping person is at most. Therefore, if you read anthropological works today and do so with an awakened eye, awake to the soul peculiarities and forces of the world, then you get the following impression. You say to yourself: That is all very nice, what we are told by today's science about man. But what is this human being like, of whom science tells us? He is constantly lying in bed. He cannot walk. He cannot move. Movement, for example, is not explained at all. He is constantly lying in bed. The human being that science explains can only be explained as a person lying in bed. There is no other way. Science only explains the sleeping human being. If you want to get him moving, you have to do it mechanically. That is why it is also a scientific mechanism. You have to introduce a machine into this sleeping human being that will get this lump up and moving when it is time to get up and put it back into bed in the evening. This science, however, tells us nothing about the human being who walks around in the world, who lives and breathes, who is awake. For what sets him in motion is contained in the idea of kindness, not in the idea of truth, which we gain from external things. This is something that is given very little consideration. When a modern physiologist or anatomist describes the human being, one has the feeling that one would like to say: Wake up, wake up, you are asleep, you are asleep! — People get used to this state of sleep under the influence of this world view. And what I have always had to characterize: that people actually oversleep everything, that is because they are obsessed with science. Today, because the popular magazines report on everything everywhere, even the uneducated are obsessed with science. There have never been so many obsessed people as there are today, obsessed with science. It is quite peculiar how one has to speak when describing the real conditions of the present day. One has to use completely different tones than those that are currently in use. And so it is when a human being is placed in an environment by the materialists. When materialism was at its height, people wrote books such as one that sounded in a certain chapter, which states: Man is actually nothing in himself. He is the result of the oxygen in the air, he is the result of the degree of cold or heat under which he is. He is actually - so ends this materialistic description - a result of every draft of air. If you go along with such a description and imagine the person to be what the materialistic scientist describes, then it is in fact a highly neurasthenic person. The materialists have never described any other people. If they did not realize that they were actually describing people asleep, when they wanted to move on but had fallen out of step, they never described people as anything other than highly neurasthenic individuals who, due to their neurasthenia, are bound to die the very next day and who cannot live at all. For this epoch of science has never grasped the living human being. There lie the great tasks which must lead men out of the conditions of the present back to such conditions under which the further life of world history is possible. What is needed is an advance in spirituality. The other pole must be found to what has been attained. What exactly has been attained in the course of the 19th century, which was glorious for the materialistic world view? What has been achieved? In a wonderful way – it can be said quite sincerely and honestly – it has been possible to determine the external world in terms of measurement, number and weight as an earthly world. In this respect, the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century have achieved something magnificent and tremendous. But the sensations, the colors, the sounds, they are all fluttering around in the indefinite. Physicists have completely stopped talking about colors and sounds; they talk about air vibrations and ether vibrations, which are neither colors nor sounds. Air vibrations are not sounds, but at most the medium through which sounds propagate. And there is no grasp of what the sensory qualities are. We must first come to that again. Actually, today we see only what can be determined by means of scales, measures, calculations. The rest has eluded us. And if the theory of relativity also introduces the magnificent disorder described to you yesterday into what can be measured, weighed, counted, then everything becomes fragmented, everything diverges. But after all, this theory of relativity itself fails at certain limits. Not with regard to concepts – one does not escape the theory of relativity with earthly concepts; I have already discussed this elsewhere – but with reality one always escapes the concepts of relativity. For that which can be measured, counted, weighed enters into quite definite relationships with regard to measure, number and weight in the outer, sensory reality. Once upon a time in Stuttgart, a physicist or a group of physicists took umbrage at the way the theory of relativity was treated by anthroposophists. Then, in a discussion, he demonstrated a simple experiment that it is actually immaterial whether I hold the matchbox and stroke the match: it will burn; or whether I hold the match and stroke the matchbox: it will also burn. It is relative. Certainly, here it is still relative. And in relation to everything that is related to a Newtonian space, or to an Euclidean space, it is all relative. But as soon as that reality comes into consideration, which appears as heaviness, as weight, then it is no longer as easy as Einstein imagined, because then real conditions arise. Here one must really speak in paradoxes again. Relativity can be asserted if one confuses the whole of reality with mathematics and geometry and mechanics. But if one enters into the true reality, then that no longer works. After all, it is not just relative whether one eats the roast veal or whether the roast veal eats one! You can travel back and forth with the matchbox, but you have to eat the roast veal, you can't let the roast veal eat you. There are things that set limits to these relativity concepts. These things are such that if they are now told outwardly, one will say: There is not the slightest understanding for this serious theory. But the logic is already as I say it: it is no different, I cannot do it differently. So it is a matter of seeing how, by taking into account weight – that is, what actually makes physical bodies – how, in reality, I might say, colors, sounds and so on cannot be accommodated anywhere. But with this tendency, something extraordinarily important is lost. Namely, the artistic element is lost. As we become more and more and more and more physical, the artistic element leaves us. No one today will find any trace of art in what the physics books describe. There is nothing left of art, everything must come out. It is indeed dreadful to study a physics book today if you still have any sense of beauty. Because everything that beauty is woven from, color and sound, is outlawed, and only recognized when it adheres to the heavy things, precisely because of that, art is no longer important to people. Today it is no longer important to anyone. And the more physical people become, the less artistic they become! Just think about it: we have a great physics. There is truly no need to rebuke opponents who say, in the field of anthroposophy, that we have great physics. But physics thrives on the denial of the artistic. It thrives on the denial of the artistic in each individual, because it has arrived at a way of treating the world in which the artist no longer cares about the physicist. I don't think, for example, that the musician today attaches much importance to studying the physical theories of acoustics. It's too boring for him, he doesn't care. The painter also doesn't like to study the terrible color theory that is contained in physics. He usually turns, if he cares about colors at all, to Goethe's color theory. But that is wrong, according to physicists. Physicists turn a blind eye and say: Well, it's not so important whether the painter has a correct or a false theory of colors. It just so happens that under today's physical world view, art must perish. Now we have to ask ourselves the question: Why was there art in older times? If we go back to very ancient times, to the times when people still had an original clairvoyance, it was the case that people did not notice so much of measure, number and weight in earthly things. They did not care so much about measure, number and weight, they were more devoted to the colors, the sounds of earthly things. Just think that chemistry has only been calculating with weight since Lavoisier; that is a little more than a hundred years! Weight was only applied to a world view at the end of the 18th century. The consciousness that everything must be determined according to earthly measure, number and weight was simply not present in the older humanity. One was devoted to the color carpet of the world, the weaving and undulation of sound; one was devoted not to the vibrations of the air, but to the undulations and weaving of sound. One lived in it, even by living in the physical world. But what possibilities did one have by living in this sensual perception free of heaviness? It gave one the possibility, for example, when one approached a person, not to see the person at all as one sees him today, but one looked at the person as a result of the whole universe. Man was more a confluence of the cosmos. He was more of a microcosm than what stands within his skin on this small patch of earth, where man stands. Man was thought of more as an image of the world. The colors flowed together from all sides, giving man his colors. The harmony of the world was there, resonating through man, giving man his form. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] And humanity today can hardly understand the way in which the ancient mystery teachers spoke to their students. Because if someone today wants to explain the human heart, they take an embryo and see how the blood vessels expand, and how a tube initially forms and then the heart gradually takes shape. No, the ancient mystery teachers didn't talk to their students like that! That wouldn't have seemed much more important to them than knitting a sock, because after all, the process looks very similar. On the contrary, they emphasized something else as being tremendously important. They said: The human heart is a result of the gold that lives everywhere in the light and that streams in from the universe and actually forms the human heart. They had the ideas: The light weaves through the universe, and the light carries the gold [see drawing]. The gold is everywhere in the light, the gold weaves and lives in the light. And when a person is in their earthly life, then their heart – you know, after seven years it changes – is not built from the cucumbers and lettuce and roast veal that a person has eaten in the meantime, but these old teachers knew: it is built from the gold of the light. And the cucumbers and the salad are only the stimulus for the heart to build itself up out of the light-woven gold of the whole universe. Yes, people spoke differently, and one must become aware of this contrast, for one must learn again to speak in this way, only on a different level of consciousness. For example, what once existed in the field of painting, which then disappeared, where one still painted from the universe because one did not yet have the gravity, that has left its last trace - let us say, for example, with Cimabue and especially with the icon painting of the Russians. The icon is still painted from the external world, from the macrocosm; in a sense, it is a section of the macrocosm. But then one arrived at a dead end. One could not go further because this view simply no longer exists for humanity. If one had wanted to paint the icon with an inner part, not just out of tradition and prayer, then one should have known how to treat gold. The treatment of gold in the picture was one of the greatest secrets of ancient painting. To bring out what is human in the background of gold, that was ancient painting. There is an enormous gulf between Cimabue and Giotto. For Giotto had already begun to do what Raphael would later take to a particularly high level. Cimabue still had tradition, but Giotto was already becoming a naturalist. He realized that tradition was no longer coming to life in the soul. Now you have to take the physical human being; now you no longer have the universe. You can no longer paint out of gold, you have to paint out of the flesh. This has finally come to the point that, after all, painting has passed over to what it had in many ways in the 19th century. The icons, they have no heaviness at all, the icons have “shone in” from the world; they have no heaviness. You just can't paint them anymore today, but if you painted them in their original form, they would have no weight at all. Giotto was the first to paint things in such a way that they had weight. From this it became that everything that is painted also has weight in the picture, and one then paints it from the outside; so that the colors relate to what is painted, as the physicist explains that the color arises on the surface through some special wave vibration. Art, in the end, also reckoned with weight. Giotto began it in an aesthetic-artistic way, and Raphael then brought it to the highest level. So that one can say: The universe has departed from man, and the heavy man became that which one could only see. And because the feelings of the old days were still there, the flesh became as little heavy as possible, but it became heavy. And so the Madonna was created as the opposite of the icon: the icon, which has no weight, the Madonna, which has weight, even if she is beautiful. Beauty has been preserved. But icons cannot be painted at all, because man does not experience them. And it is an untruth when people today believe that they experience icons. That is why the icon culture was immersed in a certain sentimental untruth. This is a dead end in art, it becomes schematic, it becomes traditional. Raphael's painting, painting that is actually based on what Giotto did with Cimabue, this painting can only remain art as long as the old splendor of beauty still shines on it. To a certain extent, it was the sunny Renaissance painters who still felt something of the gold weaving in the light and at least gave their pictures the radiance with which the gold weaving in the light made them shine from the outside. But that came to an end. And that is how naturalism came about. And so today, in terms of art, humanity is caught between two stools on the ground, between the icon and the Madonna, and is dependent on discovering what pure weaving color and pure weaving sound is, with their opposite weight, opposite to measurability, to weighable countability. We must learn to paint from color. Even if we approach this today tentatively and poorly, it is our task to paint from color, to experience color itself, detached from the heaviness of experiencing color itself. In these things, one must be able to proceed consciously, also artistically consciously. And if you look at what has been achieved in the simple attempts at our programs, you will see that, even if it is only a beginning, a start has been made to free colors from heaviness, to experience color as an element in itself, to make colors speak. If we succeed, then, in contrast to the unartistic physical world view that allows all art to evaporate, an art is created from the free elements of color and sound that is free from heaviness. Yes, we are also sitting between two chairs, between the icon and the Madonna, but we have to get up. Physical science will not help us here. I have told you: one must always remain lying down if one applies only physical science to the human being. But now we must get up! For that we really need spiritual science. This contains the element of life that carries us from heaviness to the weightless color, to the reality of color, from the very bondage in musical naturalism to the free musical art and so on. In all areas, we see how it is about a rousing, about an awakening of humanity. That is it, that we should take up this impulse to awaken, to look out, to see what is and what is not, and everywhere the challenges lie to move forward. That is why I really had to conclude with just such reflections, as I have brought to you, both at the delegates' meeting and now in these days, before this summer break, which is due to the English trip. These things are already getting to the nerve of our time. And it is necessary that one lets the other shine into our movement, as I have tried to hint at. I have described how the modern philosopher has come to admit: What does this intellectualism lead to? Building a giant machine that you place in the center of the earth to blast the earth out into all the spaces of the universe! He admitted that this is the case. The others do not admit it to themselves! And so I have tried in the most diverse places – for example, when I showed you yesterday how the concepts that were still there thirty or forty years ago are now being dissolved by the theory of relativity, simply melting away like snow in the sun – I have tried to show you how everywhere you look there are calls to really strive towards anthroposophy. For, as the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann says: If the world is as we have to imagine it – that is, as he imagines it in the 19th century – then we must actually, because we cannot endure it in it, blow it up into space, and it is only a matter of our being so far that we can carry it out. We must long for the time when we can blast the world into all the expanses of the universe. Before that happens, relativists will have ensured that people no longer have any concepts! Space, time, movement dissolve, then one can already fall into such despair that under certain conditions one already sees the greatest satisfaction in this blasting out into the whole universe. But you just have to familiarize yourself with what lies as certain impulses in our time. That is what has caused the last lectures to be held in the way they have been: where external culture shines into our ranks. They were also an invitation to open our eyes. And I tried to shape these lectures in such a way that they show what it means: the Anthroposophical Society should make every effort to get out of sectarianism, to get beyond sectarianism. My dear friends, I am sorry to have to say goodbye to you for a few weeks with these words, but I would like you to use this time to reflect on how to get out of this sectarianism! Otherwise, the situation will arise that the Anthroposophical Society will get more and more into sectarianism. And there are strong tendencies not to throw off the sectarianism, but to sail right into the sectarian nature. How it is possible to avoid sectarianism is something that must occupy our feelings. And I wanted to touch on this point very briefly because it is extremely necessary to do so. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that, in these last lectures, I have tried to speak in such a way that, so to speak, we look out into the world everywhere, that there is no spinning into a sect, but a life in the world with open eyes, with a practical mind, an inner connection with the world. This is entirely compatible with the utmost immersion in the spiritual. That is why I told you that today a person must even know that there may be an Indian today, Rãmanãthan, who looks at European culture and says to the Europeans: Let yourselves be taught about the Jesus of India, because you understand nothing about Jesus Christ. We only understood the matter when we started reading the New Testament. If we allow ourselves to become ensnared in such sectarianism, as there were strong tendencies towards during the delegates' meeting, then we will not achieve the great task of anthroposophy in the present, and this must be achieved, because 'it is a human task. Having said this, I would like to take leave of you for a few weeks and we will announce the next events in due course. In the next few weeks, lectures and eurythmy performances will take place at various locations in England. So we want to prepare ourselves for a summer break in such a way that during this summer break we let our hearts be particularly alert to the right feeling of how we should feel so that the development of humanity can continue in the right way. |
| 200. The New Spirituality and the Christ Experience of the Twentieth Century: Lecture V
29 Oct 1920, Dornach Translated by Paul King |
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| Sometimes they do so in a truly grotesque manner, like that strange academic4 who recently spoke in Zurich about Anthroposophy and went to such extremes that even his colleagues were shocked; so that, as it seems, this attack against Anthroposophy has actually acted as mild propaganda for it. |
| But I am really only pointing out what has, as it were, to be a challenge to really cooperate on all sides and not to shelter behind reactionary practices and, behind the bulwark of these reactionary practices, destroy Anthroposophy even though one is perhaps trying to help it. So I am not referring to something that has already happened but to something that is necessary for the future. |
| 200. The New Spirituality and the Christ Experience of the Twentieth Century: Lecture V
29 Oct 1920, Dornach Translated by Paul King |
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The subject about which I shall have to speak today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and which was already referred to some time ago,1 is the special way in which, in the first half of the twentieth century, a kind of renewed manifestation of the Christ-Event is to take place. This will need a certain amount of preparation, and today, to begin with, I shall try to characterize again from a certain point of view the spiritual complexion of the civilized world and, from this point of view, draw attention to the challenges that are placed before us with regard to the evolution of humanity—the education of humanity as a whole in the near future-by the facts of this human evolution itself. We know that a new age in the development of civilized humanity began around the beginning of the fifteenth century. People today no longer form an exact idea of what the constitution of soul was like in the people who lived before this great turning-point of modern history. People do not consider this. But one could easily imagine how different the soul-constitution in Europe must have been which, over large areas, inclined people to undertake the Crusades to Asia, to the Orient; especially when one bears in mind how impossible an event like this, resting as it did on an idealistic spiritual background, has become since the beginning of the fifteenth century. People do not consider the completely different nature of humanity's interests before this historical turning-point, nor the interests which, since that time, have become particularly important. But if, from the many characteristics which can be attributed to this more recent time, one wishes to single out the most significant one, then this must be the increasing ascendancy, the increasing intensity of the human power of intellect. But in the depths of the human soul there is always another force, whether as a sense of longing or as a more or less clear facet of consciousness. It is the longing for knowledge. Now, when one looks back into former times, even into the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of European development, it is possible to speak of a definite longing for knowledge in as much as the human being at that time had faculties in his soul which enabled him to achieve a relationship to nature—a relationship to what was revealed in nature as spirit—and thereby also to achieve a relationship to the spirit world itself. Certainly, longing for knowledge has been spoken about a good deal since then; but it is impossible, when one looks completely without prejudice at the development of humanity, to compare the longing for knowledge which holds sway today with the intensity of the longing for knowledge that held sway before the middle of the fifteenth century. Striving for knowledge was an intense affair of the human soul; for knowledge that had an inner glow, an inner warmth, for the human being, and which was also significant for the human being when it came to what moved him to perform his work in the world, and so on. Everything that lived there as a longing for knowledge has become less and less comparable with what has been emerging since the middle of the fifteenth century. And even when we consider the great philosophers of the first half of the nineteenth century, we are presented with ingenious elaborations of the human system of ideas; but only, if I can put it so, artistic elaborations of it. In neither Fichte, nor Schelling, nor Hegel—particularly not in Hegel—do we find a proper idea of what had previously existed as a longing for knowledge. Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the striving for knowledge, even though pursued in isolation as was still the custom, enters more and more into the service of outer life. It enters into the service of technological science and thus also takes on the configuration of this technology. What then is the cause of this? It comes from the fact that it is just in this time that we find the particular development and elaboration of the intellect. This, of course, did not happen all at once. The intellect was gradually prepared for. The last traces of the old clairvoyance had long since become extremely dim. But one can nevertheless say that, to a certain degree, the last effects of the old clairvoyance—though not the old clairvoyance itself—were still present even in the fifteenth century. All human beings, or at least those who strove for knowledge, had some idea of the faculties rising up out of the human soul that are higher than the faculties concerned with daily life. Although in olden times these faculties arose from the soul in a dreamlike way, they were nevertheless faculties different from those of everyday life and it was by means of these other [higher] faculties that people tried to probe to the depths of the world-being—and did, in fact, penetrate to its spirituality. Thus was knowledge attained. People experienced it as knowing when, from the phenomena of nature, from the being of nature, they sensed, they perceived, how spiritual elemental beings worked in the individual phenomena of nature; how the divine spiritual being as a whole worked through the totality of nature. People felt themselves to be in the realm of knowledge when gods spoke through the phenomena of nature; when gods spoke through the appearance and movements of the stars. This is what people understood as knowledge. The moment humanity renounced perception of the spiritual in the manifestations of nature, the concept of knowledge itself also fell more or less into a deterioration. And it is this decline of real intensity in the pursuit of knowledge that marks the latest period of human evolution. What then is needed here? It is that which exists at present only in the small circle of anthroposophically-striving human beings but which must become more and more general. Nature's manifestations spoke to ancient human beings in such a way that they revealed the spirit to them. The spiritual spoke out of every spring, every cloud, every plant. In the way people came to know the manifestations and beings of nature they also came to know the spiritual. This is no longer the case. But the condition of intellectualism is only a transitional condition. For what is the deepest characteristic of this intellect? It is that it is impossible to grasp and know anything at all with the pure intellect. The intellect is not just there for knowing. This is the greatest error to which the human being can give himself: the belief that the intellect is there for gaining knowledge. People will attain to true knowledge again only when they concern themselves with what lies at the basis of spiritual-scientific research; which, at the least, can be given by Imagination. People will only know truly again when they say: In ancient times divine-spiritual beings spoke from the manifestations of nature. For the intellect they are silent. For higher, super-sensible knowledge it will not be the phenomena of nature that will speak directly—for nature, as such, works silently. But beings will speak to the human being—beings who will appeal, to him in Imaginations, will inspire him, with whom he will become united intuitively and whom he will then be able to relate again to the phenomena of nature. Thus one can say: In ancient times the spiritual appeared to the human being through nature. In our transitional condition we have the intellect. Nature remains spiritless. The human being will lift himself up to a condition where he can again truly know; where, indeed, nature will no longer speak to him of divine-spiritual beings but where he will o take hold of the divine-spiritual in supersensible knowledge and will, in turn, be able to relate this to nature. It was a particular characteristic of oriental spiritual life, of oriental knowledge—which, as we know, lived on as a heritage in occidental civilization—that the orientals, at the time of the blossoming of the knowledge of their culture, perceived a spiritual element in all the manifestations of nature; that the divine-spiritual spoke through nature, whether through the lower elemental beings in individual things and phenomena or in the whole of nature, as the all-encompassing divine-spiritual. Later on there developed in the central regions of the earth that which came under the dialectical-legal spirit. It is out of this that intellectuality was born. Spiritual culture was retained as a heritage from the ancient Orient. And when people still had this last longing to experience something from the Orient—people did experience something of this in the Crusades and brought it back to Europe—and after they had stilled this longing through the Crusades, the Orient became effectively closed off. On the one hand, by what was established by Peter the Great who destroyed the remains of the oriental constitution of soul on the European side and, on the other hand, by the blockade set up by the Turks who, just at the beginning of this age which we call the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, established their rule in Europe. European thought and culture was, as it were, closed off from access to the Orient. But it had to develop further and could only do so under the influence of the dialectical-legal life, under the influence of the economic life arising from the West, and in the decadent continuation of the spiritual life which had been received from the Orient, to which the doors were now closed as I described. The condition was thereby prepared in which we are now living, where it is up to us, out of ourselves, to open the doors again to the spiritual world; to come to a perception of it through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. This is all connected with the fact that, in those ancient times in which the oriental rose to the attainment of wisdom, what was of particular importance were the abilities, the forces, brought by the human being into physical existence through birth. In the time of oriental wisdom, everything—despite the civilization which took its course there and was shone through with wisdom—everything, fundamentally, depended on the blood. But, at the same time, what was in the blood was also spiritually recognized. It was determined by the Mysteries as to who, through his line of blood, was called by destiny to the leadership of the people. There could be no questioning this: whoever was called to the leadership of the people by the Mysteries was brought to this position because his bloodline, his descent, was. the outer sign that this was how it should be. There could be no question of any kind of legal proof as to whether anyone was rightly in this position or not because, against the verdict of the gods, according to which people were allotted their place, there could be no contradiction. Jurisprudence was unknown in the mission here in the world of the senses was given by Orient. One knew theocracy, the 'rule of cosmic order', One's mission here in the world of the senses was given by the spiritual world above. The feeling that said that someone was in the in the right place because the gods had directed his bloodline in such a way that he could be brought to this place was replaced with another in a dialectical-legal dress, on the basis of which one that he could dispute on legal grounds whether someone was entitled to his position, or to do this or that, and so on. The nature of the soul-constitution, prepared already in Greece but then particularly also in Rome, by which Central Europeans were beginning to use concepts, dialectics, to decide what justice was, was quite unknown and alien to the Orient. I have described this from different aspects. In the Orient it was a matter of fathoming the will of the gods. And there were no dialectics for deciding what the gods willed. But we are again at a turning-point. It is becoming necessary now for humanity to also take a closer look at this dialectical-legal element. For the economic element, which from the West has conquered the world with the aid of technology, is already completely entangled in the state of affairs that has arisen through the dialectical-legal aspect. The economy was a minor element in the ancient theocratic cultures which were permeated by the divine-spiritual. People did there in the economic life what arose as a matter of course according to the place and rank into which the gods had placed them through the proclamations of the Mysteries. And then the economic life, which began again only primitively, became caught up, as it were, in the threads of the dialectical-legal life. For, at the beginning of the so-called Middle Ages, the Romans above all had no money. Economics based on money was gradually lost and the dialectical-legal culture spread in Europe as a kind of economy based on nature-produce. The early part of the Middle Ages was, basically, short of money; and this brought about all those forms of military service which were necessary because there was no money to pay the troops. The Romans paid their troops with money. In the Middle Ages feudalism developed, and with it a particular type of professional soldiery. All this came about because, tied to the soil under the influence of an economy based on the exchange of nature-produce, a man could no longer take part himself in distant campaigns of war. Thus this dialectical-legal element grew up in a kind of agricultural economy based on barter, and it was only when technology from the West permeated this economic life that the new age arose. The life of this new civilization, which has become so fragile, has arisen in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch entirely as a result of technology. I have already described this in different ways. I have described how, according to the official census, world population at the end of the nineteenth century was 1,400 million but that as much work was being accomplished as though there were 2,000 million. This is because such a phenomenally large amount of work is done by machines. The machine technology with its stupendous transformation of the economic life and the social life has arrived. What has not yet arrived—because everything is still engulfed in the intellectual life—is precisely what must now carry this machine-technological economy into modern civilization. One experiences the strangest things today with regard to the prospects facing humanity. There are already many people today, particularly among those who pride themselves on being practical, who, for example, go into governmental positions with their practical experience where it then usually evaporates. The little practical experience people have usually evaporates as soon as they take it into a government department. Such `governing practicians', such 'practical men in government'—one has to put it in inverted commas—get the strangest ideas these days. Someone said to me recently: 'yes, the new age has brought us machines, and with them urban life; we must take life back to the land.' As though one could just remove the machine-age from the world! The machine would simply follow us into the country, I said to him. Everything, I said, could be forgotten; spiritual culture could be forgotten, but machines would remain. They would simply be taken out to the land. What has arisen in the cities will transplant itself into the country. In fact, people become reactionaries in a grand style—when they no longer feel inclined—and this is the characteristic of people generally today: that they have no will—to form ideas concerning true progress. They would prefer to bring back the old conditions of the countryside. They imagine that this can be done. They believe that one can shut out what the centuries have brought. That is nonsense! But people today love this nonsense so tremendously because they are too complacent to grasp the new and prefer to get along with the old. The machine age has arrived. Machines themselves show how much human labour they save. It is simply that 500 million people would have to do the work machines do if their work on the earth were to be done by people. And all this work by machines began, primarily, in Western civilization. It arose in the West and spread to the Orient very late where it did not establish itself at all in the same way as it did in occidental civilization. But that is a time of transition. And now try and grasp a thought which, however strange it may seem to you, must be taken seriously. Let us suppose the human being in ancient times had before him a cloud, or perhaps a river, or all kinds of vegetation and so on. He did not see in these the dead nature seen by the human being of today—he saw spiritual elemental beings, up to the divine-spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies. He saw all this, as it were, through nature. But nature no longer speaks of these divine-spiritual beings. We have to grasp them as spiritual reality beyond nature and then relate them again back to nature. The period of transition came. Man created machines as an addition to nature. These he regards for the time being quite abstractly. He works with them in an entirely abstract way. He has his mathematics, geometry, mechanics. With these he constructs his machines and regards them altogether in the abstract. But he will very soon make a certain discovery. Strange though it may still seem to the human being of the present that such a discovery will be made, people will nevertheless discover that (in this mechanistic element which they have incorporated into the economic life) those spirits are again working which in earlier times were perceived by the human being in nature. In his technical machines of the economic sphere the human being will perceive that, although he constructed and made them, they nevertheless gradually take on a life of their own—a life certainly which he can still deny because they manifest themselves to begin with only in the economic sphere. But he will notice more and more in what he himself creates that it gains a life of its own and that, despite the fact that he brought it forth from the intellect, the intellect itself can no longer comprehend it. Perhaps people today can barely form a clear idea of this, but it will be so nevertheless. People will discover, in fact, how the objects of their industry (Wirtschaft) become the bearers of demons. Let us look at it from another side. Out of the naked intellect, out of the most desolate intellect, there has arisen the Lenin-Trotsky system that is trying to build an economic life in Russia. Despite Lunacharsky,2 these people are not interested in the spiritual life. For them the spiritual life must be an ideology arising from the economic life. It can hardly be said that there is a very strong dialectical-legal element in the Trotsky-Leninist system—everything is to be geared towards the economic. The desire is, in a certain sense, to embody the intellect in the economic life. If one could do this for a time—this initial experiment will not work, but let us suppose that it were possible—the economic life would grow over peoples' heads. It would bring forth everywhere destructive, demonic forces out of itself. It would not work because the intellect would not be able to cope with all the economic demands that would surge up! Just as the human being in ancient times beheld nature and the manifestations of nature and saw in them demonic beings; so, too, must the human being of present times learn to see demonic beings in what he himself produces in the economic life. For the time being these demons, which human beings have not diverted into machines, are still in human beings themselves and manifest as the destructive beings (die zerstarenden) in social revolutions. These destructive social revolutions are nothing other than the result of not recognizing the demonic element in our economic life. Elemental spirits (elementarische Geistigkeit) must be looked for in the economic life just as in ancient times elemental beings (elementarische Geistigkeit) were sought in nature. And the purely intellectual life is only an intermediary stage which has no significance at all for nature or for what man produces, but only for human beings themselves. Human beings have developed the intellect so that they can become free. They have to develop a faculty that has absolutely nothing to do with nature or with machines but only with the human being himself. When the human being develops faculties that stand in a relationship to nature, he is not free. If he tries to flee into the economic life he is also not free because the machines only overwhelm him. But when he develops faculties that have nothing to do with either knowledge or practical life, like pure intelligence, he can appropriate freedom to himself in the course of cultural development. It is precisely through a faculty like the intellect, which does not stand in a relationship to the world, that freedom can arise. But in order that the human being does not tear away from nature, in order that he can again work into nature, Imagination must be added to this intellect; everything must be added to it which supersensible research is seeking to find. There is something else involved here. I related how, for the ancient oriental, the relationships of the blood line were of very particular importance, for the wise men of the Mysteries were guided by these as though by signs from the gods when they placed the human being into his appropriate [social] position. And all these things reach over then like after-effects, like ghosts, into later times. Then came the dialectical-legal element. The official stamp became the most important thing. The diploma, examination results or, rather, what was on the piece of paper that was the examination certificate—this became the important thing. Whereas in ancient theocratic times blood was the decisive factor, it was now the piece of paper. Those times drew near for which many things are characteristic. A lawyer once said to me during a discussion I had with him: The fact that you were born, that you exist, is not what matters!' This did not interest him. It was the birth certificate or the christening certificate that had to exist; that was the important thing. The paper substitute! So the dialectical-legal arose. This, at the same time, is also the expression for the unreal (das Scheinhafte) in relation to the world, for the unreal element of the intellect. But precisely in the human being himself there could develop, as the counterpart of this maya element (Scheinhafte) in the world, what gave the human being freedom. But now there develops, out of what is signified in paper—which in earlier times was signified in the blood—out of what is signified in the letter-patent of nobility or similar documents, something that is already showing itself today and which will—continue if things go on as now. And they will continue! Descent by blood will no longer be of importance. The letter-patent of nobility and similar papers will have no more importance. At most, only what a man manages to salvage of what he possesses from the past will count. To ask 'why' was not possible when the gods still determined an individual's place in the world. In the dialectical-legal age it was possible to dispute this 'why'. Now all discussion ceases, for only the factual is left, the actuality of what an individual has salvaged. The moment people lose faith in the paper-regime there will be no more discussions. The things an individual has saved for himself will simply be taken away. There is no other way to bring humanity forward, now that nature no longer reveals the spiritual, than to turn to the spiritual itself and, on the other hand, to find in the economic element what people in earlier times found in nature. This, however, can only be found through association. What a human being alone can no longer find can be found by an association which will again develop a kind of group-soul, taking in hand what the individual at present cannot decide alone. In the Middle Ages, in the age of the intellect, it was the individual that ruled in economics. In the future it will be the association. And people must stand together in an association. And then, when it is recognized that a spiritual element has to be kept in check in the economic life, something will be able to arise which can replace the blood-line and the patent. For, the economic life would grow above the human being's head if he did not show himself equal to it, if he did not bring a spiritual insight with him to guide it. No one would associate with someone who did not bring qualities that made him effective in the economic life and which qualified him really to control the spirits which assert themselves in the economic life. An entirely new spirit will arise. And why will this be so? In the ancient times, in which people judged according to the blood, what had taken place before birth or before conception was of importance for human beings, for this is what they brought into the physical world through the blood. And when existence before birth had been forgotten a recognition of the life before birth still lived on in the recognition of the blood-line. And then came the dialectical-legal element. The human being was only recognized in relation to what he was as a physical being. Now the other element comes in—an economic life that is growing demonic. And the human being must also now be recognized again in his inmost soul-and-spirit being. And just as one will see the demonic element in economic life, so one will also have to begin to see that which the human being bears through repeated lives on earth. One will have to be aware of what a human being brings when he enters this life. This will have to be taken care of in the spiritual limb of the social organism. When one judges according to the blood, one really does not need a pedagogy; one only needs a knowledge of the symbols through which the gods express where it is a human being is to be placed. As long as one judges in a purely dialectical-legal way one only needs an abstract pedagogy which speaks of the human child in a generalized way. But when a human being is to be placed in an associative life in such a way that he is fit and capable one has to take account of the following. One must realize that the first seven years in which the human being develops the physical body, are not significant for what he will be able to do later in the social life -—he must only be made fit and capable in a general way valid for all human beings. In the years between seven and fourteen, in which the etheric body is developed, the human being must first of all be recognized. What has to be recognized is what then emerges as the astral body at the age of fourteen or fifteen and which comes into consideration when the real soul-and-spiritual core of the human being is to bring him to the place he is meant to be. Here the educational factor becomes a specifically social one. It is a matter here of gaining a true understanding of the child one is educating so that one can see that a certain quality in the child is good for this, and another quality is good for that. But this does not show itself clearly until after the child leaves primary school and it will belong to an artistic pedagogy and didactics to be able to discern that one child is suited for this and another is suited for that. It is according to this that those decisions will be made that are the challenge in Towards Social Renewal for the circulation of capital; that is to say the means of production. A completely new spiritual concept must arise which, on the one hand, is capable of perceiving the economic life in its inner spiritual vitality and, on the other, can perceive what role must be played by cultural life; how cultural life must give economic life its configuration. This can only happen if the cultural life is independent, when nothing is forced upon it by the economic life. It is when one inwardly grasps the whole course of humanity's evolution that one recognizes how this evolution requires the threefolding of the social organism. Thus, because we have been closed off from the Orient in more recent times by the Petrinism of Peter the Great on the one hand and Turkey on the other, we therefore need an independent spiritual life; a spiritual life that really recognizes the spiritual world in a new form and not in the way in which, in ancient times, nature spoke to man. One will then be able to relate this spiritual life back to nature. But once one has found it, one will also be able to develop this spiritual life in such a way in the human being that it becomes the content of his skills; that he will be able through this spiritual life to satisfy, in associative cooperation, an economic life that becomes more and more dynamic. Such thoughts as these really must exist in an anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science. For this reason such a spiritual science can only be born from a knowledge of the course of human evolution. The first thing is to steer towards a real knowledge of the spirit. Talk of the spirit in general terms—in empty, abstract words in the way that is accepted practice today among official philosophers and in other circles and which has become generally popular—is of no use for the future. The spiritual world is not the same as the physical world. Thus it is not possible to gain a perception of the spiritual world by abstracting from the physical but only by direct spiritual investigation. These perceptions naturally then appear as something completely different from what the human being can know when he knows only the physical world. People who, out of complacency, wish only to know of the physical world call it fantastic to talk about Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. They find that, when one speaks about these former embodiments of the earth, it strikes no chord in them. Things are described there of which they do not have the foggiest notion. The fact is of course that they have no notion of them because they do not want to know about the spiritual world. Things are related to them about the spiritual world and they say: But it doesn't concur with anything we already know. But that is the whole point: worlds are found that do not concur with what one knows already. This is the way, is it not, that, for example, Arthur Drews, the philosophy professor, judges spiritual science. It does not concur with what he has already imagined. Indeed, when the railway from Berlin to Potsdam was to be built, the post master of Berlin3 said: And now I'm supposed to send trains to Potsdam! I already send four post coaches a week and no one travels in them. If people really want to throw their money out of the window why don't they do it directly! Of course, the railways looked different from the post-coaches of the 1830s of the honest post-master of Berlin. But, of course, the descriptions of the spiritual world also look different from what nests in heads like Arthur Drews'. He, however, is only characteristic of many others. He is even one of the better ones, strange as it may seem. Not because he is good, but because the others are worse. It was first of all necessary to show how, on a strict scientific basis, one can truly penetrate into the spiritual worlds. This is what, in the first place, our lecture course this autumn has been striving towards. And even if this is only at its beginnings, it has at least been shown how, in certain areas of the sciences, knowledge can be raised to a knowledge of the spiritual as such and how this spiritual element can in turn permeate what is gained by sense-knowledge. But what can thus be gained in the field of knowledge and what will be achieved in contrast to the accepted knowledge in the schools—for it is in this area that fine beginnings are apparent—would remain incomplete. One could in fact already show how psychology, and, indeed, even mathematics, point towards spiritual realms. But it would only be something incomplete and therefore unable to aid our declining civilization if a truly elemental and intensive will does not arise from the area of practical economic life. It is necessary that old usages, old habits, be truly dropped and that everyday life be permeated with spirituality. It must come about as a flower of the Anthroposophical Movement that, with the help of the mood of soul that can arise out of spiritual science, a perceptive understanding of practical life is brought to bear—especially of the practical economic life—and that it may be shown how the downfall can be averted if a consciousness of creating something alive is carried into this economic life. Every day one should keep an ever-watchful eye on the so blatantly visible signs of our declining economic life. This old economic life cannot be galvanized. For just as today no one should be proud of what he gains from ordinary science—for that would definitely lead humanity into the future prophesied by Oswald Spengler—so, too, no one should be proud of what he can gain from the old economic life by way of abilities that correspond to this old form. Today no one can be proud of being a physicist, a mathematician, a biologist in the usual sense. But also no one can be proud of being a merchant, an industrialist in the old sense. But this 'old sense' is the only thing we have today. Nowhere today do we see anything arising like a true association. What is really needed, as a kind of second event of this Goetheanum, is to have something on the lines of this lecture-course, which could provide something tangible out of the realm of practical life itself, and which could stand side by side with the sciences. We will not get any further with what is contained in just one stream but only when this other side of human striving also has its place. This today is still the characteristic feature of our present human evolution: on the one side the traditional bearers of the old spiritual life who calumniate and slander one when, working out of the modern scientific approach, one tries to achieve a spiritualization. They already do this today quite consciously because they have no interest in the progress of human development and because, for the time being, they only think to hold back this evolution of humanity. Sometimes they do so in a truly grotesque manner, like that strange academic4 who recently spoke in Zurich about Anthroposophy and went to such extremes that even his colleagues were shocked; so that, as it seems, this attack against Anthroposophy has actually acted as mild propaganda for it. These representatives of a redundant spiritual life persist, however, and will do so far more, for they will dose ranks with formidable slanders. Here one sees what one is up against, arising in the form of slanders and so on, in regard to untruth. On the other side one can notice another strong resistance; which, however, occurs in the unconscious. And this is a painful experience. In this area one can definitely speak of an inner opposition, sometimes quite unintentional, against what must lie in the direction of spiritual-scientific endeavour. It will be a matter of having to learn, particularly in this area, to identify with the aims that spiritual science can set here. For to judge, in the subjective way that has been usual up to now, what must be willed from spiritual science, would be to do the same as the priests and others in other areas do when they declare spiritual science a heresy. This is what makes difficulties for our Anthroposophical Movement—the fact that precisely in this area a kind of inner opposition is clearly noticeable. One can say that it is particularly in this area that what sheds light in such a strange way on certain accusations which come from many sides, shows itself most clearly. They say: 'In this Anthroposophical Society everyone only repeats what one man has said. But in reality they do not repeat at all; everyone just says what he thinks so that the one man can approve it.' We have experienced this many times, have we not? A person talks frequently about what he may want, saying that I said so, even though from me he actually heard the exact opposite. Now this is the real rule of blind faith in authority. A strange faith in authority! This has been evident in many cases. But it would be particularly damaging if this strange kind of opposition—there has actually always been more opposition than faith in authority and, therefore, an indictment of faith in authority is really unjust—it would be far more fatal if what I refer to here as inner opposition were, particularly in the sphere of practical life, to take on wider dimensions. For then the opponents of anthroposophical striving would, as long as they could, of course say: `Aha, a sectarian, fantastic movement which cannot be practical.' Of course it cannot be practical if people do not engage themselves in it; just as, after all, no matter how good one is at sewing, one cannot sew without a needle. With this I only wished to draw attention to something that needs watching. It is by no means intended as a criticism or as a reference to the past but is something necessary for the future. Nevertheless, I would of course not have referred to it if I did not see all sorts of smoke-clouds rising. But I am really only pointing out what has, as it were, to be a challenge to really cooperate on all sides and not to shelter behind reactionary practices and, behind the bulwark of these reactionary practices, destroy Anthroposophy even though one is perhaps trying to help it. So I am not referring to something that has already happened but to something that is necessary for the future. It is necessary to think about these things. With these comments I shall have to let it rest for today. Tomorrow and the following day we shall have to link up this prelude which, as you will see, is in fact an introduction to a study of the Christ-experience in the twentieth century.
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