| 270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class I: First Hour
15 Feb 1924, Dornach Translated by Frank Thomas Smith |
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| And it is necessary that this difference be felt in all its explicitness by the members of the School, so that eventually only those persons are members who really want to be representatives of anthroposophy in all aspects of life. I say this now in order to emphasize the seriousness of the matter. First of all, I would like to present to your hearts and to your souls what should stand over our School as a kind of engraving. |
| 270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class I: First Hour
15 Feb 1924, Dornach Translated by Frank Thomas Smith |
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My dear friends, With this lesson, I would like to restore to the Free School for Spiritual Science as an esoteric institution the task which it has been in danger of being deprived of during the past years. In this introductory lecture, I will not go further into explaining that situation, but I wanted to stress the importance of this moment by indicating the seriousness with which our movement—which is daily being endangered and undermined—must be imbued, especially in this School. This is no unnecessary observation, for such seriousness has not been apparent everywhere. A kind of preparatory introduction will be given today, my dear friends. And I would like to emphasize that in this School spiritual life is to be revealed in its true meaning, so that you will be able to consider this School as an institution which can provide for the revealed spiritual needs of our times. This spiritual life can be deepened in all its aspects. But a center must exist from out of which this deepening derives, and the Center can be seen by those who wish to be members of the School to be the Goetheanum in Dornach. Therefore, I wish to begin the School today, with those members for whom it has so far been possible to issue the membership card, to begin in a way that will make you conscious of the fact that every word spoken within this School is based on the full responsibility towards the spirit revealed to our times—that same spirit which has been revealed to humanity throughout the centuries and millennia, but revealed in each epoch in a special way. And this spirit will only give to humanity what it is able to receive. We must be clear from the very beginning that it is not animosity towards what the sense-world has accomplished for humanity when in a School for Spiritual Science we attend to the revelations of the spirit. We must also clearly recognize that the sense-world has provided necessary, practical revelations to humanity and this fact should not cause us to undervalue those contributions in any way. But it is nevertheless important that the spiritual revelations are received with all earnestness. For this—I must say it at the outset—much prejudice and obstinacy, which is deeply ingrained in the School's members, will have to go. It will be necessary to investigate how one finds the path to his own obstinacy, which hinders understanding what the School should be. For many still don't think correctly about the School. This must be gradually corrected. For it is only possible for those to be in the School who take it in all earnestness. The matter itself demands this. And on the other hand, we must follow a difficult path in face of the opposition and undermining forces which are increasing day by day. The members of the School are by no means sufficiently attentive to this. All this, my dear friends, must be kept in mind. The first and foremost thing to be observed in this School must of course be what it is possible for the spirit to give us. It will however be demanded of the members of the School that they accompany us on the difficult path strewn with obstacles and attempts at undermining it. I have gone into these things in our weekly periodical, What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society, and have also explicitly differentiated there between the General Anthroposophical Society and this School. And it is necessary that this difference be felt in all its explicitness by the members of the School, so that eventually only those persons are members who really want to be representatives of anthroposophy in all aspects of life. I say this now in order to emphasize the seriousness of the matter. First of all, I would like to present to your hearts and to your souls what should stand over our School as a kind of engraving. That we really identify with what emerges from the life of the spirit onto our soul's ear and our soul's understanding. We shall begin with the words:
I will repeat it:
These words tell us that the world is beautiful and glorious and sublime and the endless glow of revelation in all that lives in leaf and blossom flows to our eyes with color on color from the visible universe; it is meant to remind us how the divine is manifested in what is lifeless in earthly matter, in the thousands upon thousands of crystalline and non-crystalline forms at our feet, in the water and air, in clouds and stars; it makes clearer to us that the animal life that frolics in the world and delights in its own existence and the warmth of its existence—that all that is divine-spiritual revelation. And it reminds us that we owe our own bodies to all those shapes, to all that is greening and growing, color on color. And it should also make us conscious of that fact that although all that is beautiful and glorious and grand and divine to the senses, it is futile to ask it what we ourselves are as human beings. Nature, although it glows to us as grand and powerful in tone and strength and warmth, can never give us information about ourselves, although it does give us a huge amount of information about many divine aspects of the world. So we must evermore repeat to ourselves: what we feel as our innermost self is not woven from what we perceive as the beauty and grandeur and greatness and power of nature. And the question arises: Why does the reality of being all around us, of which we are also a part, remain dim and silent? And what we might feel to be a kind of privation, we must experience as a blessing, so that we can say in all seriousness and sternness: We must first make ourselves truly human, warm in soul and strong of spirit, so that we, as spirit in humanity, may find the spirit in the world. For this it is necessary that we prepare ourselves, without levity, to come to the frontier of the sense-world, where the spirit's revelation can rise in us. We must say to ourselves: If we arrive at this frontier unprepared and the full light of the spirit comes upon us at once, then, because we have not yet developed the strength of spirit and the warmth of soul necessary for receiving the spirit, it would shatter us and cast us back to our nothingness. Therefore, at the frontier between the sense-world and the spirit-world stands that messenger of the gods, that messenger of the spirit, about whom we will hear more and more during the next lessons, whom we will want to know always better and better. That messenger of the spirit stands there and warningly speaks, telling us how we should be and what we must set aside so that we may approach the revelations of the spiritual world in the right way. And when we have grasped, my dear friends, that the beauty, the greatness and the sublimity of nature is, at first, spiritual darkness for human knowledge, from which the light must be born which tells us what we are and were and will be; then we must know that the first thing to come from the darkness that must be grasped is that Spirit-Messenger who sends us the appropriate warning. Therefore, let this Spirit-Messenger's words resound in our souls, and let the Spirit-Messenger's description shine out before our soul's eye.
It must be clear to us that we must take seriously all that comes as warning from the Spirit-Messenger before daring to fathom what is found not on this side of the yawning abyss, that is, in the area of the senses, but on the other side spreading out as spirituality. This is veiled at first in darkness for human understanding, and can only be revealed by the countenance of the Spirit-Messenger, who appears at first to be similar to the human being, but transformed into one of gigantic stature. Then, although he is so similar to man, his form is shadowy, as though he were a mere parable of man. He warns that without the appropriate seriousness, no one should seek what lies beyond the yawning abyss. The earnest messenger entreats us to be earnest as well. And then, when we hear that voice and have grasped it with due seriousness, we should be aware of how at first softly, most softly, and in abstractions, it wishes to give us indications and orientation from the spiritual world about the abyss which yawns before us and from which the Messenger holds us back less we take a careless step. The voice resounds:
I will say it again:
These words can make it clear to us how the secrets of existence must be fathomed from all that acts and works in the depths of space and which from the depths of space manifest how real knowledge must be fathomed from what is revealed in the march of time as creative action, and how all that is revealed of the world in the human heart must be revealed by the soul's honest seeking. For all this can only constitute a basis for what one needs for fathoming one's self, in which the world has planted the sum of its secrets. Thus, they can be discovered through human self-knowledge. Everything man needs in sickness and in health on his journey between birth and death, and what he will also have to use on that other existential journey between death and a new birth. But all those who consider themselves members of this School should clearly realize that everything that is not acquired in this way is not real knowledge, but only pseudo-knowledge, that what usually passes for science, what man learns before he has acquired an awareness of the Guardian of the Threshold's warnings regarding spiritual knowledge, is all pseudo-knowledge. It doesn't have to stay pseudo-knowledge though. We do not scorn this pseudo-knowledge. But we must realize that it will only emerge from the stage of pseudo-knowledge once it has been transformed by all man can know about that purification and metamorphosis of his being, which he achieves when he understands what the Spirit-Messenger warns at the yawning abyss of knowledge—what the shining spirit warningly calls out from the darkness on behalf of the best spiritualinhabitants of the spiritual world. Whoever does not acquire the awareness that between the sojourn in the fields of sense—which we must live during our earthly existence between birth and death—and the spiritual fields, a yawning abyss exists, cannot achieve true knowledge. For only by means of this awareness can true knowledge be acquired. He doesn't have to become clairvoyant, although knowledge from the spiritual world comes by true clairvoyance. But he must acquire an awareness ofwhat exists as a warning at the yawning abyss of the secrets of space, the secrets of time, the secrets of the human heart itself. For whether wego out into space, the abyss is there; or if we wander in the turning points of time, the abyss is there; if we enter into the heart itself, the abyss is there. And these three abysses, they are not three abysses, they are only one abyss. For if we wander out into space so far that we come to where the expanses of space merge, we find the spirit; if we wander in the turning points of time to where they originate at the beginning of their cycles, if we wander into the depths of the human heart, so deep that we can only fathom ourselves: these three ways lead to only one goal, to one last stop, not to three different stops. They all lead to the same divine-spirituality that bubbles from the spring that fructifies and feeds all being, but also teaches man to recognize the ground of existence in knowledge. In such earnest awareness, we shall stand in thought where the earnest Spirit-Messenger speaks and listen to what he relates about the obstacles relative to our times, which we must sweep away in order to come to true spiritual knowledge. Obstacles to spiritual knowledge, my dear friends, have existed in all times. In all times the people have had to overcome this and that, put aside this and that according to the warnings of the earnest Guardian of the Threshold to the spiritual world. But there are obstacles peculiar to each age. What proceeds from human civilization is to a large extent not helpful, but rather hindrance for access to the spiritual world. And man must find the particular obstacles that emerge from each earthly civilization, and are implanted in his nature by that very civilization, and which he must put aside before he can cross the yawning abyss. Therefore, let us now hear the earnest watchful Messenger of the gods speak about this:
I will read it again:
These, my dear friends, are the three greatest enemies of knowledge for contemporary humanity. The human being of today is afraid of the spirit's creativity. Fear sits deep in his soul. And he would like to conjure it away. So he dresses his fear in all kinds of pseudo-logical arguments by which he tries to refute spiritual revelations. You will hear, my dear friends, from this or that side arguments against spiritual knowledge. It is sometimes dressed in clever, sometimes in sly, sometimes in foolish logical rules. Never, however, are the logical rules the reason why spiritual knowledge is refuted. Rather is it the spirit of fear that lives and works deep into humanity's inner life which, when it rises to the head, translates into logical reasons. It is fear! But it is not sufficient to say: I am not afraid. Everyone can of course say that. We must first comprehend the nature and the seat of this fear. We must tell ourselves that we were born and educated according to the present time, in which the Ahrimanic side has installed spirits of fear, and that we are tainted by these spirits. And conjuring them away doesn't mean that they really go. We must find the ways and the means—and this School will provide guidance—to bravery and knowledge against those spirits of fear which reside as monsters in our will. For it is not what often leads people to knowledge nowadays—or what they say does—that can provide true knowledge, but rather only courage, the inner courage of soul which provides the strength and the capacity to follow the path that leads to true, real, light-filled spiritual knowledge. And the second beast, which creeps into the human soul from the spirit of the times to become an enemy of knowledge, this beast lurks everywhere we go—in most of the literary works of the day, in most of the art galleries, in most sculpture and art in general and music. It wreaks its havoc in the schools and in society. In order to avoid having to confess its fear of the spirit, it resorts to mocking spiritual knowledge. This mockery is not always openly expressed, because people are not conscious of what is within them. But I would say that only a thin wall, the thickness of a spiderweb, separates what is in people's consciousness and what is in their hearts wanting to mock true spiritual knowledge. And when the mockery is open, it is only when the more or less conscious impertinence of modern man is able to suppress the fear. But basically, everyone today is vaccinated against the spirit's revelations. And the mockery is manifested in the most unusual ways. The third beast is lazy thinking, the kind of thinking that would make the whole world a movie, because then no one is required to think—everything is reeled out and all one has to do is follow what is reeled out. Even science would like to follow the world's phenomena with passive thinking. Man is too lazy and comfortable to activate his thinking. Humanity's thinking nowadays can be compared to someone who wants to pick something up from the floor and stands there with his hands in his pockets and thinks he can pick the thing up that way. But he cannot. And existence cannot be comprehended by thinking with its hands in its pockets. We must move our arms and hands if we want to grasp something from the floor. We must activate our thinking if we want to grasp the spirit. The Guardian of the Threshold characterizes the first beast, which lurks as fear in your will, as a beast with a crooked back and a bony face and scrawny body. This beast, with its dull blue skin, is verily what rises from the abyss and stands alongside the Guardian of the Threshold for today's humanity. And the Guardian of the Threshold makes it quite clear to the humanity of today that this beast is actually in you! It rises from out of the yawning abyss which lies in front of the knowledge fields, and reflects what lurks in your will as an enemy of knowledge. And the second beast, which is connected to the desire to mock the spiritual world, is characterized by the Guardian of the Threshold in a similar way. It emerges alongside the other monster, but its whole attitude is one of weakness and sleepiness. With this sleepy posture and gray-greenish body, it bares its teeth in a warped face. And this baring of teeth is meant to indicate laughter, but lies, because to mock is to lie. So it grins at us as the reflection of the beast that lives in our own feeling and, as the enemy of knowledge, hinders our search for knowledge. And the Guardian of the Threshold characterizes the third beast, which will not approach the world in spirit, as emerging from the abyss with cloven muzzle, dull glassy eyes, slouching posture and dirty-red form. Such is the doubt which speaks through the cloven muzzle and doubt in the power of spirit-light which expresses itself in the dirty-red form. This is the third of the knowledge enemies that lurks in us. They make us earthbound. If we approach spirit-knowledge accompanied by them, ignoring the Guardian of the Threshold's warning, we encounter the yawning abyss. One cannot pass over it earthbound, nor with fear nor mockery, nor with doubt. One can pass over it by grasping in thought thespirituality of being, by experiencing in feeling the soul of being, by strengthening the activity of being in the will. Then the spirit, the soul and the activity of being give us wings of release from the weight of earth. Then we can cross over the abyss. The steps of prejudice are threefold and will cast us into the abyss if we fail to acquire courage, fire and creative knowledge. If, however, we do acquire creative knowledge in thinking and we want to activate thinking, if we do not wish to approach the spirit in dreamy lassitude, but receive the spirit with inner heartfelt fire, and when we have the courage to really grasp the spirit as spirit, not merely letting it approach us as a materialistic picture, then will the wings grow which will carry us over the abyss, where every human heart that is honest with itself today desires to go. That is what I wish to bring before your souls, my dear friends, by means of this first introductory lesson, with which this School for Spiritual Science begins. In closing, let us review once more the beginning, middle and end of the experiences with the Guardian of the Threshold.
As to what we will experience when we have passed the Guardian of the Threshold, what is necessary in feeling, willing, thinking to experience in order to pass by the Guardian's light, and enter into the darkness from out of which that light shines in which we recognize the light of our own humanity, and thus arrive at “O man, know thyself!”—which calls out, which manifests from the spirit that enlightens the darkness. About all that, my dear friends, next Friday during the next lesson of the First Class. |
| 270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class I: Ninth Hour
22 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by Frank Thomas Smith |
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| Therefore whoever desires to understand in the right way must do so inwardly. With common sense we can understand all of anthroposophy, but to understand inwardly means to transfer more and more what is understood to inner life. |
| 270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class I: Ninth Hour
22 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by Frank Thomas Smith |
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First - without taking notes - let us be reminded of the admonition which directs human beings to the ancient holy words of knowledge:
* We can, my dear friends, look up to the distant stars and let our vision rest upon what radiates down to us from the universe in the forms the constellations possess. When we immerse ourselves in the sublimity of what the vast universe offers, we will gain enhanced inner strength. And especially for the strength to hold the soul separate from the body, we need to inwardly direct our gaze toward the heavenly bodies. By “inwardly” is meant the following: We have seen the stars so often and have stored the vision in our hearts and minds so that we no longer need to even look up at the heavenly bodies in order to make the powerful image of the star-embedded heaven's vault effective in our inner consciousness. If this picture arises from our own inner being, if the soul empowers itself to create it, then it will be able, through this empowered force, to liberate itself from its corporeality. And we can also observe all that radiates down and streams through us from the planets which circle the earth, and in their circling directly affect the earth's wind and weather. And when we again create a picture in our hearts of all this, the sensation of being integrated in the movement of the circling constitutes the second experience. And then when we are conscious of all that binds us to the earth, that we are heavy bodies among other heavy bodies. In other words what lives in us as a feeling of being bound to the earth becomes a facet of our soul, and it is the third aspect. And from these three inner experiences: what we have gained in luminous, radiant, living thought derived from the stars; and then when we merge with the path of our earth in the universe, merge with what the planets say to us meaningfully from space by their movements - so that having felt ourselves to be at rest in respect to the stars, now we feel ourselves to be set in movement through the cosmos itself. And thirdly, if we then feel ourselves bound to the earth by the force of the earth itself, then we will gradually and harmoniously be more and more able to make a beginning at entering into the spiritual world. And today everyone can make this beginning. This leads to the question: Why is it then that so few do so? The answer to this must be: most people don't want to experience things so intimately in order to enter into the spiritual world. They disdain experiencing so intimately. They prefer titillating experiences such as the spiritual world approaching them with all the characteristics of the sensory world. It would be easy to convince people about the spiritual world if for example a table from the spiritual world were to approach them. But there are no tables in the spiritual world, there are only spiritual beings in the spiritual world, and they must be perceived with what is spiritual in man. But spiritual is what we can read in the stars, what we can feel in the movements of the planets, what we can experience in the forces which hold us to the earth and make us people of the earth. Therefore whoever desires to understand in the right way must do so inwardly. With common sense we can understand all of anthroposophy, but to understand inwardly means to transfer more and more what is understood to inner life. Whoever wishes to do this must decide to undertake a really intimate exercise of these three sensations - or experiences, it doesn't matter what we call them. And now, my dear sisters and brothers, what is flowing to you from the spiritual world through this School wishes to speak to you about how by means of an intimate exercise you can become more aware of the connection of humanity with the world than you are accustomed to through normal consciousness. Firstly, we humans should in later life be more like we were to a great extent when we were children. As children we are almost all sensory organs: eyes, ears. The child experiences everything that happens in its environment as though its whole body were a sense organ. That's why he imitates everything, because everything continues to vibrate within him; and in the same way in which it vibrates within him, it seeks to emerge by means of the will. The child retains this characteristic only as long as we protect it from doing with its senses what we as adults do with them. The child develops this inner sensory capacity only as long as we carry it, protecting it so that it is not yet exposed to the forces of the earth. And it is really wonderful how the growing child's sensory-being is protected from the effects of the earth forces as long as this sensory-being is especially vital and alive. At the moment when the child stands on its feet and begins to move about is when its movements become susceptible to the earth's forces and it must find its own equilibrium, at that moment the intimate sensory-being ends. The human being of course does not remember back to this first stage of infancy, and therefore does not know what it means to feel his whole being as a sensory-organ. But we must, if we want to experience the human in us more and more, be able to feel and experience our whole human being as such a sensory organ. You grasp something, my dear sisters and brothers. It presses on you. You perceive the pressure. Or you perceive the texture of the surface you are touching. But in reality, you are continually touching in that you place your whole body from top to bottom on the earth and feel the earth under the soles of your feet. Only you are so used to it that you don't notice. When you begin to notice it, then you will first feel yourselves as human beings standing amidst the earth's forces. Therefore, the admonition at the threshold to the spiritual world. [written on the blackboard:]
[Certain essential words are underlined later, as described in the text. Trans.] Thus, we let the first stage of this inner experience work in us. Now we can feel ourselves as the ones touching, sensing. We can experience this touching, feel inwardly as the person doing the vibrant touching. When we advance enough to feel this touching itself, we are then not perceiving earth forces, but we begin to feel the vibrating water forces in us, the fluid forces which as blood and other liquids course through our bodies. And in these forces, we feel how all the fluids which course through our bodies are connected to the ether in the universe. [writing on the blackboard:]
If we only had earth forces to touch in our whole being, we would be constituted as something continually crumbling away. The water forces in us shape the form of the human body from the cosmic ether. Only the earth has influence over what is solid in us. But the whole wide world of ether has influence over the liquids in us . But then during the third stage we can immerse ourselves in what lives and weaves in the fluidity. We can feel it dimly, inwardly. When we feel our breathing, for example, we will realize how we are continually nurtured by the essence of breathing and of the air. We would be helpless children if we weren't continually nurtured by the forces of breathing flowing through us. [writing on the blackboard:]
And now if we have advanced to the third stage of inner experience, we can come to the fourth, if we feel inner warmth, and are attentive to our own fulfilling warmth which is in breath, which lives in everything air-forming within us. For only through what is air-forming in us is our warmth created. But what lives in us as warmth can be reached with thoughts. And here we have a most important secret of human nature. My dear sisters and brothers, you cannot reach with thought, but only with the sense of touch, how earth forces act on you and support you. You cannot reach with thought, but only with inner experience, how the water forces are your formative builders. You cannot reach with thought, but only with inner feeling, how the airy powers in you are your nurturers. You can be thankful for this nurturing, you can love these nurturers, but you cannot directly reach them with thought. But what man can reach by thought, by meditating on his warmth, is to experience himself as a being of warmth. The physician comes with a thermometer; he measures warmth from without. Just as warmth can differ on different places of the body, it is also different in the individual inner organs. You can direct your thoughts down to the individual organs and will find that the whole inner warmth-organism is differentiated. One can reach his own warmth organism with thought. But then, having done that, you have a specific feeling. This feeling, my dear sisters and brothers, will now be revealed to your souls. Imagine that you have achieved it, that in thought you have descended into your organism, reached the differentiating warmth - the warmth of the lungs, the warmth of the liver, the warmth of the heart, which are all God-spirit created entities within you. You achieve this with thought. Now for the first time you know what thought is. Before you didn't know what thought is. You know now that thought, by descending into what was before only warmth, turns the warmth into flame, into fire. For in ordinary life thought appears to you in its imperceptible inwardness as abstract thought. When you sink it down into your own body, the thought appears to you as luminous, radiantly penetrating into the lungs, into the heart, into the liver. Just as the light which goes out from your brow stretches downward, so does thought illumine the inner organs, differentiating itself into various nuances of color. One cannot merely say: I think through to the differentiations of my warmth; one must say: I enlighten myself by thinking through to the differentiations of my warmth. [writing on the blackboard:]
Everything in these eight lines can be summarized by letting what has been intimately worked through be summed up in your souls with the words: [On the blackboard each element is placed after the corresponding mantra-phrase.]
Thus, do you measure yourselves, radiate, strengthen yourselves in respect to the body. But note how this strengthening, this measuring of the mere physical extends to the moral: Here we have the support of man, the physical support. [In the first mantra sentence “support” is underlined.] Here we have the formative forces. [In the second mantra sentence “formers” is underlined.] Still somewhat physical, but permeated with the etheric. Here we have nurturer. [In the third mantra sentence “nurture” is underlined.] It already has a certain morality. Then as we ascend from water to air we feel that the beings who are in the air are permeated with morality. And in the fire, we have not only nurturer, but also helpers, [“helpers” in the fourth mantra sentence in underlined], comrades, beings similar to us. Just as we feel through to our bodies, we can also feel through to our souls. For this we must not concentrate on the elements, rather must we concentrate on what pulls the planets that circle the earth and pulls the air and sea currents along with it. We feel our physicality in our spirituality when we measure the body as has been explained; but we directly experience our soul-life. [written on the blackboard:]
It can also be summarized in the sentence:
We realize and experience the spiritual in us when we elevate the spirit to the stars, which reach us in their groupings and formations and become like a celestial script to us. If we preserve what is thus written in the starry heavens we will become aware of our own spirituality, that spirituality which doesn't speak about man personally, but about the entire universe. [written on the blackboard:]
Summarizing:
Not by vague generalities, not by vague sensations are we able to gradually extract our souls from our physical bodies and pass over to the universe, but rather by grasping the elements in the specified way, by the movement of the planets, by the meaning in the stars. We unite with the universe when we do this. And we will note that once the first part of the exercise is accomplished we feel a life in us, the life of the universe. [Alongside the first eight lines of the mantra is written:] Life Once we have finished the second part of the exercise we feel love towards the whole world. [Alongside the tenth and eleventh lines is written:] Love Once we have finished the third part we feel a sense of piety in us. [Alongside the thirteenth and fourteenth lines is written:] Piety And it really is an ascension from life through love to piety, to a truly religious cosmic sense which can be undergone through such mantric words. But if it is really undergone, if we really end up being pious through such an exercise, then the world ceases to be physical for us. Then we say to ourselves with total certainty: the physical in the world is only semblance, maya; the world is everywhere through and through spirit. As humans we belong to this spirit. And if we feel ourselves as spirit in the spirit-world, then we are beyond the threshold to the spiritual world. Then, however, once we are beyond the threshold to the spiritual world, we sense how here, on this side, our body holds thinking, feeling and willing together through its own bodily force; how at the moment we are body-free in our experiencing, thinking, feeling and willing are no longer one, but threefold. Then it is as though by binding ourselves to the earth-powers in water, air, fire, earth, that by sending our will to the earth we become one with the earth through our will. Furthermore, because we feel love in our souls for the movements of the planets, that is, for the spiritual beings who live therein, it is so that we experience the Powers circling cosmic space as feeling. And if we can say: the sun moves in the feeling of cosmic space, Mercury moves in the feeling of cosmic space, Mars moves in the feeling of cosmic space, then we have grasped feeling in its cosmic being separated from thinking and separated from willing. And if we are able to grasp thinking in such a way that thoughts are freed from physical existence, it is as though our thinking were to fly out to the [resting] stars and rest there themselves. [Translator's Note: in German the stars themselves can be referred to as “resting” stars, in contrast to the “wandering” or “moving” stars: the planets. In this lecture there is much play on words between the two concepts, which is necessarily lost in translation.] And we say to ourselves when we have arrived on the other side of the threshold: my thinking rests in the resting stars; my feeling moves in the wandering stars [planets]; my willing unites with the earth forces. So thinking, feeling, willing are separated in the cosmos. And they must be again joined together. Here on the earth man does not need to bind thinking, feeling and willing together, because they already are so due to the physical body being a unity. Thinking, feeling and willing would be constantly falling apart if they were not held together by the physical man, without his intention or awareness. Now though, on the other side of the threshold, they are divided so that thinking rests above with the stars, feeling circles with the planets, and willing unites with the forces of the earth. And with strong inner determination, with our own forces, we must bring them back together as a unity. In doing this we must experience thinking, feeling and willing in such a way that we can communicate to thinking, which has gone to the stars, something of feeling and willing; to feeling, which is circling with the planets, communicate something of thinking and willing; to willing, which is bound to the earth, something of thinking and feeling. This something we indeed can do using such a mantric formula. We must look up to the stars and with devotion say to ourselves: there is where your thinking lies. But I will bring the starry sky into movement; just as feeling likewise does for the planets, in spirit I will slowly move the starry sky. I feel myself attracted to the starry sky; I want to go up there and be at one with that star-filled heavens. Thus have I incorporated feeling and willing into thinking, which is bound to the stars. Then I look up to the planets and feel: In these planets [Ger. wandering stars] my own feeling wanders. But I will attempt to fix the moment as the stars [Ger. fixed stars] are fixed in place. And through my rhythmic system - to which heart and lungs belong - I will become as one with the entire planetary system. Then I have assigned thinking and willing to feeling. And when I become aware of how, through this mantric formula, I am bound to the earth as a human being, then I should add feeling and thinking to this being bound to the earth. In thought I should set the earth in motion so that like a planet I accompany it on its rounds without perceiving its weight: bound to it as if I were guiding the earth through cosmic space. Feeling is combined with willing. I add thinking to the mixture when I accompany the earth's movement in thought, but can bring it again to a standstill, thus making the earth itself a [fixed] star by my own meditating force of thought. When I carry out such a meditation again and again, I gradually come to feel myself as a human being outside my body in the cosmos. For this, my dear sisters and brothers, this mantric formula can work on the soul with special force. [written on the blackboard:]
(that is: as meditation, as contemplation)
Secondly:
Thirdly:
Only seen thus does the human body appear in its true form. What is gleaned from the spiritual world, what the initiate experiences in the spiritual world, if it is expressed in words, they are mantric words, and he who experiences them will be led into the spiritual world. Therefore, if you let the words work on your soul, they are a true guide to the spiritual world:
Then, my dear sisters and brothers, when what lies in these mantric words is clearer and clearer to you, then when you come again and again to these lessons it will be with greater understanding, that is, with ever greater cosmic experience that you will hear these words:
[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] |
| 270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class II: Eighteenth Hour
12 Jul 1924, Dornach Translated by Frank Thomas Smith |
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| Or they will be dull and unwilling—after preparation by general anthroposophy—in respect to what is said in the esoteric schools. They do not perceive what can be heard through initiation-science from the realm of the heights. |
| 270. Esoteric Lessons for the First Class II: Eighteenth Hour
12 Jul 1924, Dornach Translated by Frank Thomas Smith |
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My dear friends, The call to self-knowledge, which the human soul can hear when it objectively pays attention to all the beings and events in nature and spiritual life, will pass before our souls again at the beginning of our considerations. O man, know thyself! On the path to the answer which the soul can find to this question, my dear sisters and brothers, we have followed the path leading to the Guardian of the Threshold, to the abyss of being. We have progressed to where the Guardian of the Threshold instructs us so that what was previously dark and gloomy—although we knew that it contained the source of our being—expanded and became light. And then, in the increasing light, we heard the Guardian's call: See the ether-rainbow arc's And the voices of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai are intoned with these words as they are directed to the human souls: Sense our thoughts And we see how through the flooding light in the cosmic bowl, which we met in the last lesson, the beings of the third hierarchy illuminate and are illuminated; we see the multitudes of these beings, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, turn to the higher spirits, which they serve, to the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; and we are witnesses to how the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes tell their serving spirits to fulfill the needs of human beings. The Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes speak: What you have received And then—impelled from within—we must turn our gaze to the highest spirits, the first hierarchy, who now turn to humanity in blessing. From them we hear: In the willing of your worlds As witnesses to how the beings of the higher worlds speak to each other, so penetrated with what the highest beings let stream into human souls as the cosmic-word so that the human heart may resonate with it, we must feel ourselves to be within the all-moving, all-pervading cosmic light in which we ourselves live and move. And now we come to a truth, which is perceived where the non-embodied beings live, where the spirits live their lives, where the spirits think their truths, where the spirits radiate their beauty, where their spiritual acts take place. And we recognize the greatness, the all-pervading, weaving truth in the spirit-worlds: spirit is. For we are, we live, we act in spirit. We perceive spiritual being. And now we realize that spirit, in which we now live, alone is. We now know that even here, in the world of sensory illusion, is only spirit. Only spirit is. This stands before our souls as unshakable, all-pervading truth: spirit is. And we do well to place this truth before our souls in picture form. [Drawing on the blackboard: red] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] What is expressed here in the drawing is spirit. It is spirit alone. [While continuing to speak, Rudolf Steiner inserts the word “Ist” in the red lines of the drawing—barely visible here.] What is here: Is— is spirit. And what is outside this red is nothing. This is placed before our souls. And the spirit-world tells us [pointing]: here Is, here Is, here Is. Everywhere that spirit is, Is something. [As he continues to speak, Rudolf Steiner writes the word Nichts (nothing) in various places between the read lines, then the worlds Mineralien (minerals), Pflanzen (plants), Tiere (animals).] And where there is no spirit, there is nothing. We are profoundly impressed by this truth: Everywhere where spirit is, is something, and where there is no spirit, is nothing. And now we wonder: How did all this seem to us there in the world of sensory illusion, which we left to enter the spiritual world, where we find true being, the spirit revealed to our souls. Over there we did not see what is drawn here in red. We are too weak there to see what is drawn here in red. What remains there then? Nothing. Over there we see Nothing, call it minerals, one kind of Nothing; call it plants, a second kind of Nothing; call it animals, a third kind of Nothing, and so forth. We see Nothing because we are too weak to see Something. And we call the Nothings the kingdoms of nature. That is the great deception, the great illusion. Over there only variations of the Nothing are visible when we look out from the body. And we feel deeply the impression, as we live over there and give names to what is fundamentally Nothing, that it is the great illusion. And what is Nothing, and what we give names to now appears to us as the sum of names which we give to Nothingness. For in their reality all beings are only present in the spiritual world that we have now entered. Names dedicated to Nothing we have wasted on the non-existent. And beings—not those from the domains of the gods to which we belong and to which we should belong—can take possession of the names which we have wasted on the Nothings. And they keep these names from now on. If we are not clear about the fact that here on earth we give names to nullities, we fall with our nullities into the greatest illusion. We must know that we are giving names to the nullities. It is now clear to us, because over there [in the spirit-world] we live and move in the light, and the spiritual strength of our hearts has remained there, we can feel deeply, deeply, deeply: We now know that we have gone from the kingdom of illusions to the kingdom of truth. Earnestness, holy earnestness in respect to the truth begins to act in our souls. And now we look back at the faithful Guardian of the Threshold, who stands at the abyss of being. He doesn't speak now. He spoke from out of the darkness. He spoke when we first felt the brightness. He spoke when the darkness [in the stenography “brightness”—possibly an error.] was brightening for us. Now, as we stand shaken by the great truth “only spirit is”, he stands there speechless, pointing above to where the beings of the higher hierarchies speak to each other. And with presence of mind we think for a moment: Below in earthly life we perceived the impression made on us by minerals, by plants, by animals, by physical human beings; we heard what the clouds say, what the mountains say, how the fountains ripple, how the lightning flashes, how the thunder rolls, what the stars whisper about cosmic secrets. That was our experience down below. Now beyond the abyss of existence all that is silent. Now we are witnesses to the gods speaking to each other. The whole choir of Angeloi begins to speak. We look up and see how the choir turns to the spirits of the second hierarchy, which they wish to serve. We observe the loving, serving gestures of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, who turn to the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. We view the serving multitudes of the third hierarchy. We view the multitudes of the second hierarchy in world-creation, in world-dominion, in world-illumination, and we hear what the spiritual-illuminating, divine-willing beings speak to each other. We hear the Angeloi intoning their words of concern for the guidance of human souls. Their words resonate: The human beings think! This weighs on the Angeloi. They are concerned as to how they should guide human souls, because humans think. Then they turn to the Dynamis for the force needed to guide human beings in their thinking. Angeloi: The human beings think! From the realm of radiance, dominion, acting, the Dynamis lovingly and benevolently reply: Receive the light from the heights, And the flooding light, the force of illumination in thought, streams over from the Dynamis to the Angeloi. What the Angeloi receive enlightens, without our knowing, human thinking. Now we realize what acts and weaves in human thinking: the illumination of the Angeloi. But the light force for this illumination they receive from the Dynamis. [The first part of the mantra is written on the blackboard. Italics indicate writing.] I) Angeloi: “Human being think!”: their concern is expressed in their words. Human beings think! They turn to the Dynamis with their concern: We need the light from the heights The Dynamis reply: Dynamis: Receive the light from the heights, Our spiritual view goes farther. We see the multitude of Archangeloi turning to the second hierarchy. They turn to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes, to two categories of spirits of the second hierarchy. (The Angeloi had turned to the Dynamis: Archangeloi turn to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes.) Their concern is for human beings' feeling. And they request from the Exusiai and Kyriotetes what they need in order to guide human beings in their feeling. Archangeloi: The human beings feel! They must breathe life into feeling. And with powerful voices, because two choirs are answering, Kyriotetes and Exusiai voices ring out in the spiritual cosmos: Receive warmth of soul [The second part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.] II) Archangeloi: The human beings feel! The reply: Kyriotetes and Exusiai: Receive warmth of soul We turn to the third multitude of the third hierarchy, to the Archai. They have concern for the will of the human being, the third concern of the third hierarchy. We feel: when the Angeloi turn to the Dynamis, then the Dynamis act way up in the heights in order to give the light they create from the heights to the Archai for their concern for human thinking. And we feel: everything in the compass of cosmic warmth is created by the Exusiai and Kyriotetes, and it is given over to the Archangeloi so that they can guide human feeling. And deep below, where the spirits and gods of the depths prevail, and where from the abysses—in which much evil moves—the good forces of the deep must be drawn up high, so all the gods of the second hierarchy pull together; for in their concern for the human being's will, the Archai need the forces of the deep. They speak: The human beings will! And the powerful spirits of the second hierarchy answer with a mighty cosmic voice in the combined voices of all three together, the three choirs forming one choir—Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai—three choirs in one: Receive the force of the depths, [The third part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.] III) Archai: The human beings will! Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai answer together: Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai: Receive the force of the depths, This is the world, existing in the holy words of creation, of which we will be witnesses in spiritual worlds, as we are witnesses of the events in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms here in earth. And we hear, in that it becomes our experience: The human beings think! Receive the light from the heights, The human beings feel! Receive warmth of soul The human beings will! Receive the force of the depths, We grow into the spiritual world. Instead of what surrounds us here in the sensory earth, the choirs of the spiritual world surround us. And we become witnesses to what the gods say in their creative concern for the world of humans. Only when in our meditation we go on to the complete elimination of what we are here on earth, and to having a feeling for the world the gods are forming with their divine speech, do we experience true reality. And only when we possess this reality, do we also know what really surrounds us between birth and death. Because behind the appearances in life between birth and death is the reality of what we experience between death and rebirth. In earlier times people living on earth had a dull, dreamlike clairvoyance. Their souls were filled with dreamlike pictures, spoken [sic] from the spiritual world. Let us imagine a person from olden times. When he was not working, and was resting—although the sun was still in the sky—and was thinking back, pictures arose which he experienced in his soul and which reminded him of what he had experienced in pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world. But he didn't understand the connection between his earthly existence and that existence which shone into his clairvoyant dreams. But the initiates and their teachings were there. They explained the connection, first to their students, and through their students to all the people. So they lived in the earthly world experiencing the memories of pre-earthly existence. Nowadays in earthly life the memory of pre-earthly existence has been extinguished. Initiates cannot explain the connection between earthly life and pre-earthly existence, because humans have forgotten what they experienced in pre-earthly existence. Such an explanation is not possible because the cosmic memory no longer exists. Nevertheless, what the gods are saying behind sensory being must be heard by means of initiation-science. Human beings must experience it. And soon the time will come—it's approaching more and more—when a person who passes through the gate of death will only be able to understand the spiritual world into which he enters if he realizes that when a person enters heavenly existence through the gate of death, and finds himself in the reality of the spiritual worlds, within the world of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—if he experiences all this, if what he experiences after death it is not to remain incomprehensible and dark to him, then he will have to remember what he experienced here on earth through initiation-science. And what is extremely important in understanding what can be experienced in life between death and a new birth—if it has been heard, otherwise it cannot be understood—is remembrance of what is still heard on earth, and which resounds as follows: The human beings think! The human beings feel! The human beings will!
These, my sisters and brothers, are the words that should be heard today in the esoteric schools. They should resound through the instructions of those who lead the esoteric schools with the force of the Michael age. Then it can be thus: In the esoteric schools the voice of the Angeloi are first heard within the earthly sphere: The human beings think! The Dynamis' reply: Receive the light of the heights. The voice of the Archangeloi is heard: The human beings feel! The reply of the Kyriotetes and Exusiai: Receive the warmth of soul. The Archai's words: The human beings will! All three members of the second hierarchy, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, answer: Receive the force of the depths. Those people who have heard those words in esoteric schools will go through the gate of death, where they will again hear all these words resounding together: the esoteric schools here, life between death and a new birth there. They will understand what is resonating there. Or they will be dull and unwilling—after preparation by general anthroposophy—in respect to what is said in the esoteric schools. They do not perceive what can be heard through initiation-science from the realm of the heights. They go through the gate of death. They hear there what they should already have heard here. They don't understand it. When the gods speak to each other with powerful words, it sounds to them like incomprehensible ringing, mere sounds, cosmic noise. Paul speaks about this in the Gospel—that through the teachings of Christ men should protect themselves from death in the spirit-land. For death soon comes in the spirit-land if we go through the gate of death and don't understand what is resonating there, if we can only hear the incomprehensible sounds instead of the understandable words of the gods, because we have been overcome by the soul's death instead of the soul's life. There is an initiation-science because souls are alive. There are esoteric schools so that souls may remain alive when they go through the gate of death. This we must feel deeply. [In a previous paragraph leading up to these words, Rudolf Steiner says: “And soon the time will come—it's approaching more and more—when a person who passes through the gate of death will only be able to understand the spiritual world into which he enters if …” (Und immer mehr wird die Zeit kommen…) which seems to indicate that this means sometime in the future. {Ed./Trans.}] And now let us consider the path we have taken in spirit, how we approached the Guardian in order to learn how the human being crosses the abyss of existence. And let us also consider how the impressions there acted on our souls; let us take into our souls the inner drama of self-knowledge. We have traveled the path. Three tablets stood there, so to speak. We are now standing before the third one, after we have taken into our souls all the profundities of divine speech. On the first tablet, long before we arrived at the abyss of existence, resonated: O man, know thyself! Then we approached the Guardian. The second tablet stands there. On it stands: Recognize first the earnest Guardian, We have arrived on the other side, passing the earnest Guardian, and have heard a conversation such as this: The human beings think! The human beings feel! The human beings will! We look back to the world of senses and we feel about this sensory world the words: I entered in this world of senses, Blackboard texts in German: [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] |
| 235. Karmic Relationships I: Lecture X
16 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond |
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| Let the world think as it will: certain inner, spiritual necessities exist in connection with the spread of Anthroposophy. One lends oneself to the impulse that arises from these spiritual necessities, pursuing no outward “opportunism.” |
| 235. Karmic Relationships I: Lecture X
16 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond |
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In our study of karmic connections I have hitherto followed the practice of starting from personalities in more recent times and then going back to their previous lives on earth. Today, in order to amplify the actual examples of karmic connections, I propose to go the other way, starting from certain personalities of the past and following them into later times, either into some later epoch of history, or right into the life of the present day. What I want to do is to give you a picture of certain historic connections, presenting it in such a way that at every point some light is shed on the workings of karma. If you follow the development of Christianity from its foundation, tracing the various paths taken by the Christian Impulse on its way across Europe, you will encounter a different stream of spiritual life which, although little heed is paid to it today, exercised an extraordinarily deep influence upon European civilisation under the surface of external events. It is the stream known as Mohammedanism, the Mohammedan religion, which, as you know, came into existence rather more than 500 years after the founding of Christianity, together with the mode of life associated with it. We see, in the first place, that monotheism in a very strict form was instituted by Mohammed. It is a religion that looks up, as did Judaism, to a single Godhead encompassing the universe. “There is one God and Mohammed is his herald.”—That is what goes forth from Arabia as a mighty impulse, spreading far into Asia, passing across Africa and thence into Europe by way of Spain. Anyone who studies the civilisation of our own time will misjudge many things if he ignores the influences which, having received their initial impetus from the deed of Mohammed, penetrated into European civilisation as the result of the Arabian campaigns, although the actual form of religious feeling with which these influences were associated did not make its way into Europe. When we consider the form in which Mohammedanism made its appearance, we find, first and foremost, the uncompromising monotheism, the one, all-powerful Godhead—a conception of Divinity that is allied with fatalism. The destiny of man is predetermined; he must submit to this destiny, or at least recognise his subjection to it. This attitude is an integral part of the religious life. But this Arabism—for let us call it so—also brought in its train something entirely different. The strange thing is that while, on the one hand, the warlike methods adopted by Arabism created disturbance and alarm among the peoples, on the other hand it is also remarkable that for well-nigh a thousand years after the founding of Mohammedanism, Arabism did very much to promote and further civilisation. If we look at the period when Charlemagne's influence in Europe was at its prime, we find over in Asia, at the Court in Baghdad, much wonderful culture, a truly great and splendid spiritual life. While Charlemagne was trying to spread an elementary kind of culture on primitive foundations—he himself only learnt to write out of sheer necessity—spiritual culture of a very high order was flourishing over yonder in Asia, in Baghdad. Moreover, this spiritual culture inspired tremendous respect in the environment of Charles the Great himself. At the time when Charles the Great was ruling—768 to 814 are the dates given—we see over in Baghdad, in the period from 786 to 809, Haroun al Raschid as the figure-head of a civilisation that had achieved great splendour. We see Haroun al Raschid, whose praises have so often been sung by poets, at the centre of a wide circle of activity in the sciences and the arts. He was himself a highly cultured man whose followers were by no means men of such primitive attainments as, for example, Einhard, the associate of Charles the Great. Haroun al Raschid gathered around him men of real brilliance in the field of science and art. We see him in Asia—not exactly ruling over culture, but certainly giving the impulse to it at a very high level. And we see how there emerges within this spiritual culture, of which Haroun al Raschid was the soul, something that had been spreading in Asia in a continuous stream since the time of Aristotle. Aristotelian philosophy and natural science had spread across into Asia and had there been elaborated by oriental insight, oriental imagination, oriental vision. Its influence can be traced over the whole of Asia Minor, almost to the frontier of India, and its effectiveness may be judged from the fact that a widespread and highly developed system of medicine, for example, was cultivated at this Court of Haroun al Raschid. Profound philosophic thought is applied to what had been founded by Mohammed with a kind of religious furor; we see this becoming the object of intense study and being put to splendid application by the scholars, poets, scientists and physicians living at this Court in Baghdad. Mathematics was cultivated there, also geography. Unfortunately, far too little is heard of this in European history, and the primitive doings at the Frankish Court of Charles the Great are apt to obscure what was being achieved over in Asia. When we consider all that had developed directly out of Mohammedanism, we have before us a most remarkable picture. Mohammedanism was founded in Mecca and carried further in Medina. It spread into the regions of Damascus, Baghdad and so forth, indeed, over the whole of Asia Minor, exercising the dominating influence I have described. This is the one direction in which Mohammedanism spreads—northwards from Arabia and across Asia Minor. The Arabs continually lay siege to Constantinople. They knock at the doors of Europe. They want to force their way across Eastern Europe towards Middle Europe. On the other hand, Arabism spreads across the North of Africa and thence into Spain. It takes hold of Europe as it were from the other direction, by way of Spain. We have before us the remarkable spectacle of Europe tending to be surrounded by Arabism—by a forked stream of Arabic culture. Christianity, in its Roman form, spreads upwards from Rome, from the South, starting from Greece; this impulse is made manifest later on by Ulfila's translation of the Bible, and so forth. And then, enclosing this European civilisation as it were with two forked arms, we have Mohammedanism. Everything that history tells concerning what was done by Charles the Great to further Christianity must be considered in the light of the fact that while Charles the Great did much to promote Christianity in Middle Europe, at the same time there was flourishing over yonder in Asia that illustrious centre of culture of which I have spoken, the centre of culture around Haroun al Raschid. When we look at the purely external course of history, what do we find? Wars are waged all along a line stretching across North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula; the followers of Arabism come right across Spain and are beaten back by the representatives of European Christianity, by Charles Martel, by Charles the Great himself. Then, later, we find how the greatness of Mohammedanism is overclouded by the Turkish element which assumes the guise of religion but extinguishes everything that went with the lofty culture to which Haroun al Raschid gave the impetus. These two streams gradually die out as a result of the struggle waged against them by the warlike Christian population of Europe. Towards the end of the first thousand years, the only real menace in Europe comes from the Turks, but this has nothing much to do with what we are here considering. From now onwards no more is to be heard of the spread of Arabism. Observation of history in its purely external aspect might lead us to the conclusion that Arabism had been beaten back by the European peoples. Battles were fought such as that of Tours and Poitiers, and there were many others; the Arabs were also defeated from the side of Constantinople, and it might easily be thought that Arabism had disappeared from the arena of world-history. On the other hand, when we think deeply about the impulses that were at work in the sciences, and also in many respects in the field of art in European culture, we find Arabism still in evidence—but as if it had secretly poured into Christianity, had been secretly inculcated into it. How has this come about? You must realise, my dear friends, that in spiritual life, events do not take the form in which they reveal themselves in external history. The really significant streams run their course beneath the surface of ordinary history and in these streams the individualities of the men who have worked in one epoch appear again, born into communities speaking an entirely different language, with altogether different tendencies of thought, yet working still with the same fundamental impulse. In an earlier epoch they may have accomplished something splendid, because the trend of events was with them, while in a later they may have had to bring it into the world in face of great hindrances and obstructions. Such individuals are obliged to content themselves with much that seems trivial in comparison with the mighty achievements of their earlier lives; but for all that, what they carry over from one epoch into another is the same in respect of the fundamental trend and attitude of soul. We do not always recognise what is thus carried over because we are too prone to imagine that a later earthly life must resemble an earlier one. There are people who think that a musician must come again as a musician, a philosopher as a philosopher, a gardener as a gardener, and so forth. By no means is it so. The forces that are carried over from one incarnation into another lie on far deeper levels of the life of soul. When we perceive this, we realise that Arabism did not, in truth, die out. From the examples of Friedrich Theodor Vischer and of Schubert I was recently able to show you how the work and achievements of individualities in an earlier epoch continue, in a later one, in totally different forms. Arabism most assuredly did not die out; far rather was it that individuals who were firmly rooted in Arabism lived in European civilisation and influenced it strongly, in a way that was possible in Europe in that later epoch. Now it is easier to go forward from some historical personality in order to find him again than to go the reverse way, as in recent lectures—starting from later incarnations and then going back to earlier ones. When we learn to know the individuality of Haroun al Raschid inwardly in the astral light, as we say, when we have him before us as a spiritual individuality in the 9th century, bearing in mind what he was behind the scenes of world-history—and when what he was had been unfolded on the surface with the brilliance of which I have told you—then we can follow the course of time and find such an individuality as Haroun al Raschid passing through death, looking down from the spiritual world upon what is happening on earth, looking down, that is to say, upon the outward extermination of Arabism and, in accordance with his destiny, being involved in the process. We find such an individuality passing through the spiritual world and appearing again, not perhaps with the same splendour, but with a similar trend of soul. And so we see Haroun al Raschid appearing again in the history of European spiritual life as a personality who is once again of wide repute, namely, as Lord Bacon of Verulam. I have spoken of Lord Bacon in many different connections. All the driving power that was in Haroun al Raschid and was conveyed to those in his environment, this same impulse was imparted by Lord Bacon in a more abstract form—for he lived in the age of abstraction—to the various branches of knowledge. Haroun al Raschid was a universal spirit in the sense that he united specialists, so to speak, around him. Lord Bacon—he has of course his Inspirer behind him, but he is a fit subject to be so inspired—Lord Bacon is a personality who is also able to exercise a truly universal influence. When with this knowledge of an historic karmic connection we turn to Bacon and his writings, we recognise why these writings have so little that is Christian about them and such a strong Arabic timbre. We discover the genuine Arabist trend in these writings of Lord Bacon. And many things too in regard to his character, which has been so often impugned, will be explicable when we see in him the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The life and culture pursued at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, and justly admired by Charles the Great himself, become the abstract science of which Lord Bacon was the bearer. But men bowed before Lord Bacon too. And whoever studies the attitude adopted by European civilisation in the 8th/9th centuries to Haroun al Raschid, and then the attitude of European learning to Lord Bacon, will have the impression: men have turned round, that is all! In the days of Haroun al Raschid they looked towards the East; then they turned round in Middle Europe and looked towards the West, to Lord Bacon. And so what may have disappeared, outwardly speaking, from history, is carried from age to age by human individualities themselves. Arabism seems to have disappeared; but it lives on, lives on in its fundamental trend. And just as the outer aspects of a human life differ from those of the foregoing life, so do the influences exercised by such a personality differ from age to age. Open your history books, and you will find that the year 711 was of great significance in the situation between Europe and the Arabism that was storming across Spain. Tarik, Commander of the Arabs, sets out from Africa. He comes to the place that received its name from him: Gebel al Tarik, later called Gibraltar. The battle of Jerez de la Frontera takes place in the year 711. Arabism makes a strong thrust across Spain at the beginning of the 8th century. Battles are fought, and the fortunes of war sway hither and thither between the peoples who have come down into Spain to join with the old inhabitants, and the Arabs who are now storming in upon them. Even in those days the “culture,” as we would say today, of the attacking Arabs, commanded tremendous respect in Spain. Naturally, the Europeans had no desire to subject themselves to the Arabs. But the culture the Arabs brought with them was already in a sense a foreshadowing of what flourished later in such unexampled brilliance under Haroun al Raschid. In a man such as Tarik there was the attitude of soul that in all the storms of war wants to give expression to what is contained in Arabism. What we see outwardly is the tumult of war. But along the paths of these wars comes much lofty culture. Even outwardly a very great deal in the way of art and science was established in Spain. Many remains of Arabism lived on in the spiritual life of Europe. Spain itself soon ceased to play a part in the West of Europe. Nevertheless the fortunes of war swayed to and fro and the fighting continued from Spain; in men such as Spinoza we can see how deep is the influence of Arabist culture. Spinoza cannot be understood unless we see his origin in Arabism. And then this stream flows across to England, but there it runs dry, comes to an end. We turn over the pages of history, and after the descriptions of the conflicts between Europe and the Arabs we find, as we read on further, that Arabism has dried up, externally at any rate. But under the surface this has not happened; on the contrary, Arabism spreads abroad in the spiritual life. And along this undercurrent of history, Tarik bears what he originally bore into Spain on the fierce wings of war. The aim of the Arabians in their campaigns was most certainly not that of mere slaughter; no, their aim was really the spread of Arabism. Their tasks were connected with culture. And what a Tarik had carried into Spain at the beginning of the 8th century, he now bears with him through the gate of death, experiencing how as far as external history is concerned it runs dry in Western Europe. And he appears again in the 19th century, bringing Arabism to expression in modern form, as Charles Darwin. Suddenly we shall find a light shed upon something that seems to come like a bolt from the blue—we find a light shed upon it when we follow what has here been carried over from an earlier into a later time, appearing in an entirely different form. It may at first seem like a paradox, but the paradox will disappear the more deeply we look into the concrete facts. Read Darwin's writings again with perception sharpened by what has been said and you will feel: Darwin writes about things which Tarik might have been able to see on his way to Europe!—In such details you will perceive how the one life reaches over into the next. Now from times of hoary antiquity, especially in Asia Minor, astronomy had been the subject of profound study—astronomy, that is to say, in an astrological form. This must not, of course, in any way be identified with the quackery perpetuated in the modern age as astrology. We must realise the deep insight into the spiritual structure of the universe possessed by men in those times; this insight was particularly marked among the Arabians in the period when they were Mohammedans, continuing the dynasty founded by Mohammed. Astrological astronomy in its ancient form was cultivated with great intensity among them. When the Residence of the dynasty was transferred from Damascus to Baghdad, we find Mamun ruling there in the 9th century. During the reign of Mamun—all such rulers were successors of the Prophet—astrology was cultivated in the form in which it afterwards passed over into Europe, contained in tracts and treatises of every variety which were only later discovered. They came over to Europe in the wake of the Crusades but had suffered terribly from erroneous and clumsy revision. For all that, however, this astronomy was great and sublime. And when we search among those who are not named in history, but who were around Mamun in Baghdad in the period from 813 to 833, cultivating this astrological-astronomical knowledge, we find a brilliant personality in whom Mamun placed deep confidence. His name is not given in history, but that is of no account. He was a personality most highly respected, to whom appeal was always made when it was a question of reading the portents of the stars. Many measures connected with the external social life were formulated in accordance with what such celebrities as the learned scholar at the Court of Caliph Mamun were able to read in the stars. And if we follow the line along which the soul of this learned man at the Court of Mamun in Baghdad developed, we are led to the modern astronomer Laplace. Thus one of the personalities who lived at the Court of the Caliph Mamun appears again as Laplace. The great impulses—those of less importance, too, which I need not now enumerate—that still flowed from this two-branched stream into Europe, even after the outer process had come to a halt, show us how Arabism lived on spiritually, how this two-pronged fork around Europe continued its grip. You will remember, my dear friends, that Mohammed himself founded the centre of Mohammedanism, Medina, which later on became the seat of residence of his successors; this seat of residence was subsequently transferred to Damascus. Then, from Damascus across to Asia Minor and to the very portal of Europe, Constantinople, the generals of Mohammed's successors storm forward, again on the wings of war, bearing culture that has been fructified by the religion and the religious life founded by Mohammed, but is permeated also with the Aristotelianism which in the wake of the campaigns of Alexander the Great was carried over from Greece, from Macedonia, indeed from many centres of culture, to Asia. And here, too, something very remarkable happens. Arabism is flooded, swamped, by the Turkish element. The Crusaders find rudimentary relics only, not the fruits of an all-prevailing culture. All this was eliminated by the Turks. What was carried by way of Africa and Spain to the West lives on and develops in the tranquil flow, so to speak, of civilisation and culture; points of contact are again and again to be found. The unnamed scholar at the Court of Mamun, Haroun al Raschid himself, Tarik—all these souls were able to link what they bore within them with what was actually present in the world. For when the soul has passed through the gate of death, a certain force of attraction to the regions which were the scene of previous activity always remains; even when through other impulses of destiny there may have been changes, nevertheless the influence continues. It works on, maybe in the form of longing or the like. But because Arabism promotes belief in strict determinism, when the opportunity offered for continuing in a spiritual way what, at the beginning, was deliberately propagated by warlike means, it also became possible to carry these spiritual streams especially into France and England. Laplace, Darwin, Bacon, and many other spirits of like nature were led forward in this direction. But everything had been, as it were, damped down. In the East, Arabism was able to knock only feebly at the door of Europe; it could make no real progress there. And those who passed through the gate of death after having worked in this region felt repulsed, experienced a sense of inability to go forward. The work they had performed on earth was destroyed, and the consequence of this between death and rebirth was a kind of paralysis of the life of soul.—We come now to something of extraordinary interest. Soon after the time of the Prophet, the Residence is transferred from Medina to Damascus. From there the generals of the successors of the Prophet go forth with their armies but are again and again beaten back; the success achieved in the West is not achieved here. And then, very soon, we see a successor of the Prophet, Muavija by name, ruling in Damascus. His attitude and constitution of soul proceed on the one side from the monotheism of Arabism, but also from the determinism which grew steadily into fatalism. But already at that time., although in a more inward, mystical way, the Aristotelianism that had been carried over to Asia was taking effect. Muavija, who sent his generals on the one side as far as Constantinople and on the other made attempts—without any success to speak of—in the direction of Africa, this Muavija was at the same time a thoughtful man; but a man who did not accomplish anything very much, either outwardly or in the spiritual life. Muavija rules not long after Mohammed. He thus stands entirely within Mohammedanism, within the religious life of Arabism. He is a genuine representative of Mohammedanism at that time, but one of those who are growing away from its hide-bound form and entering into that mode of thought which then, discarding the religious form, appears in the sciences and fine arts of the West. Muavija is a representative spirit in the first century after Mohammed, but one whose thinking is no longer patterned in absolute conformity with that of Mohammed; he draws his impulse from Mohammed, but only his impulse. He has not yet discarded the religious core of Mohammedanism, but has already led it over into the sphere of thought, of logic. And above all he is one of those who are ardently intent upon pressing on into Europe, upon forcing their way to the West. If you follow the campaigns and observe the forces that were put into operation under Muavija, you will realise that this eagerness to push forward towards the West was combined with tremendous driving power, but this was already blunted, was already losing its edge. When such a spirit later passes through the gate of death and lives on, the driving force also persists, and if we follow the path further we get this striking impression.—During the life between death and a new birth, much that remained as longing is elaborated into world-encompassing plans for a later life, but world-encompassing plans that assume no very concrete form for the very reason that the force behind them was blunted. Now I confess that I am always having to ask myself: Shall I or shall I not speak openly? But after all it is useless to speak of these matters merely in abstractions, and so one must lay aside reserve and speak of things that are there in concrete cases. Let the world think as it will: certain inner, spiritual necessities exist in connection with the spread of Anthroposophy. One lends oneself to the impulse that arises from these spiritual necessities, pursuing no outward “opportunism.” Opportunism has, in sooth, wrought harm enough to the Anthroposophical Society; in the future there must be no more of it. And even if things have a paradoxical effect, they will henceforward be said straight out. If we follow this Muavija, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, as he passes along the undercurrent and then appears again, we find Woodrow Wilson. In a shattering way the present links itself with the past. A bond is suddenly there between present and past. And if we observe how on the sea of historical happenings there surges up as it were the wave of Muavija, and again the wave of Woodrow Wilson, we perceive how the undercurrent flows on through the sea below and appears again—it is the same current. I believe that history becomes intelligible only when we see how what really happens has been carried over from one epoch into another. Think of the abstraction, the rigid abstraction, of the Fourteen Points. Needless to say, the research did not take its start from the Fourteen Points—but now that the whole setting lies before you, look at the configuration of soul that comes to expression in these Fourteen Points and ask yourselves whether it could have taken root with such strength anywhere else than in a follower of Mohammed. Take the fatalism that had already assumed such dimensions in Muavija and transfer it into the age of modern abstraction. Feel the similarity with Mohammedan sayings: “Allah has revealed it”; “Allah will bring it to pass as the one and only salvation.” And then try to understand the real gist of many a word spoken by the promoter of the Fourteen Points.—With no great stretch of imagination you will find an almost literal conformity. Thus, when we are observing human beings, we can also speak of a reincarnation of ideas. And then for the first time insight is possible into the growth and unfolding of history. |
| 236. Karmic Relationships II: Reincarnation of Former Initiates, Ibsen, Wedekind, Hölderlein
26 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond |
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| Stuttgart, December 27th–31st, 1910 and January 1st, 1911. World-History in the Light of Anthroposophy. Dornach. December 24th–31st, 1923. |
| 236. Karmic Relationships II: Reincarnation of Former Initiates, Ibsen, Wedekind, Hölderlein
26 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond |
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Studies that are concerned with the karma of human beings must be undertaken with deep earnestness and inwardly assimilated. For it is not the mere knowledge of some particular karmic connection that is important. What is really important is that such studies should quicken the whole of man's nature, enabling him to find his bearings in life. Such studies will never be fruitful if they lead to greater indifference towards human beings than is otherwise the case; they will be fruitful only if they kindle deeper love and understanding than are possible when account is taken merely of the impressions of a single life. Anyone who reviews the successive epochs in the evolution of mankind cannot fail to realise that in the course of history very much has changed in man's whole way of thinking and perception, in all his views of the world and of life. Generally speaking, man is less interested in the past than in the future, for which the foundations have yet to be laid. But anyone who has a sufficiently clear grasp of how the souls of men have changed in the course of the earth's evolution will not shrink from the necessity of having himself to undergo the change that will lead him to study, not merely the single earthly life of some individual, but the succession of earthly lives, in so far as these can be brought within the range of his vision. I think that the examples given in the last lecture—Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Pestalozzi, and others—can show how understanding of a personality, love for this personality, can be enhanced when the latest earth-life is viewed against the background of other lives of which it is the outcome. And now, in order that our studies may be really fruitful, I want to return to a question to which, as many of those present here will know, I have already alluded. Reference is often made in spiritual science to the existence in olden times of Initiates possessed of clairvoyant vision, personalities who were able to communicate the secrets of the spiritual world. And from this the question quite naturally arises: Where are these Initiates in our own time? Have they reincarnated? To answer this question it is necessary to point out how greatly a later earth-life may differ from a preceding one in respect of knowledge and also in respect of other activities of the soul. For when in the time between death and a new birth the moment approaches for the human being to descend to the earth and unite with a physical-etheric organisation, a very great deal has to take place. The direction towards family, race and so forth, has indeed long been determined, but the resolve to undergo this tremendous change in the form of existence, the change involved in the transition from the world of soul-and-spirit into the physical world—this resolve is a stupendous matter. For as you can well imagine, circumstances are not as they are on earth, where the human being grows weaker as he approaches the end of his normal life; after all his experiences on earth he will actually have little to do with the decision to enter into a different form of existence when he passes through the gate of death. The change, in this case, comes upon him of itself, it breaks in upon him. Here on earth, death is something that breaks in upon man. The descent from the spiritual world is completely different. It is a matter, then, of fully conscious action, a deliberate decision proceeding from the deepest foundations of the soul. We must realise what a stupendous transformation takes place in the human being when the time comes for him to exchange the forms of life in the pre-earthly existence of soul-and-spirit for those of earthly existence. The descent entails adaptation to the prevailing conditions of civilisation and culture and also to the bodily constitution which a particular epoch is able to provide. Our own epoch does not readily yield bodies—let alone conditions of culture and civilisation—in which Initiates can live again as they lived in the past. And when the time approaches for the soul of some former Initiate to use a physical body once again, it is a matter of accepting this body as it is, and of growing into the environment and the current form of education. But what once was present in this soul is not lost; it merely comes to expression in some other way. The basic configuration of the soul remains but assumes a different form. Now in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. it was still possible for the soul to acquire a deep knowledge of Initiation truths, because at that time, especially in Southern Europe and Asia Minor, body followed soul, that is to say, the bodily functions were able to adapt themselves inwardly to the soul. One who may have lived in the early Christian centuries as an Initiate, with a soul wholly inward-turned and full of wisdom, is obliged to descend to-day into a kind of body which, owing to the intervening development, is directed pre-eminently to the external world, lives altogether in the external world. The result is that owing to the bodily constitution, the inner concentration of soul-forces that was still possible in the 3rd or 4th century of our era, is so no longer. And so the following could take place in the course of evolution.—I am telling you of things that reveal themselves to inner vision. There was a certain Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, typical of all such institutions in that part of the world in the early Christian centuries. Traditions were everywhere alive in those olden days when men were deeply initiated into these Mysteries. But everywhere, too, men were more or less aware of the rules that must be imposed on the soul in order to acquire knowledge leading to its own deep foundations, as well as out into the cosmic All. And in the early Christian centuries these very Mysteries of Asia Minor were occupied with a momentous question. Boundless wisdom had streamed through the sanctuaries of the Mysteries. If you will read what was described in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—as far as description was possible in a printed publication at that time—you will see that the ultimate aim of all this wisdom was an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And in these Mysteries of Asia Minor the great question was: How will the sublime content of the Mystery of Golgotha, the reality of what has streamed into the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha—how will it evolve further in the hearts and minds of men? And how will the ancient, primeval wisdom—a wisdom that encompassed the Beings who have their habitations in the stars and the manifold orders of Divine-Spiritual Beings who guide the universe and the life of man—how will this primeval wisdom unite with what is concentrated in the Mystery of Golgotha? How will it unite with the Impulse which, proceeding from a sublime Sun-Being, from the Christ, is now to pour into mankind?—That was the burning question in these Mysteries of Asia Minor. There was one personality who with his Mystery-wisdom and Mystery-experiences felt this question with overwhelming intensity. It is in truth a shattering experience when in the search for karmic connections one comes upon this man who was initiated in one of these Mysteries in Asia Minor in the early Christian centuries. It is a shattering experience, for with his Initiation-knowledge he was aware in every fibre of his being of the need to grasp the meaning and import of the Mystery of Golgotha, and he was faced with the problem: What will happen now? How will these weak human souls be able to receive it? Weighed down in soul by this burning question concerning the destiny of Christianity, this Initiate was walking one day in the wider precincts of his Mystery-centre, when an experience came to him of an event that made an overwhelming impression—the treacherous murder of Julian the Apostate. With the vision and insight of Initiation he lived through this event. It was known to him that Julian the Apostate had attained a certain degree of Initiation in the ancient Mysteries, that he wanted to preserve for the spiritual life of mankind, the impulses that had been cultivated in the ancient Mysteries, to ensure their continuance, in short to unite Christianity with the wisdom of the Mysteries. He knew that Julian the Apostate proclaimed, in the sense of the Mystery-wisdom, that as well as the physical Sun there is also a Spiritual Sun, and that whoever knows the Spiritual Sun, knows Christ. But this, teaching was regarded as evil in the days of Julian the Apostate and led to his treacherous murder on his journey to Persia. This most significant, symptomatic event in world-history was lived through by the Initiate of whom I am speaking. Those of you who for many years have been listening to what has been said on the subject of karmic connections in world-history, will remember that in the lectures I once gave in Stuttgart on certain chapters of occult history—reference was also made to the same theme at the Christmas Foundations Meeting1—I spoke of the deep tragedy of Julian the Apostate's position in the history of humanity. His death was felt and experienced by the Initiate to whom I am now referring, whose Initiate-knowledge, received in a Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, was shadowed by the question: What will become of Christianity? And through these symptomatic events there came to him the crystal-clear realisation: A time will come when Christianity will be misunderstood, will live only in traditions, when men will no longer know anything of the glory and sublimity of Christ, the Sun-Spirit Who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth. All this lay like a weight upon the soul of the Initiate. And for the rest of his life at that time he was heavy-hearted and sorrowful in regard to the evolution of Christianity. He experienced the consternation and dismay which a symptomatic event of the kind referred to must inevitably cause in an Initiate.—It made an overwhelming, shattering impression upon him. And then we go further.—The impression received by this Initiate was bound to lead to a reincarnation comparatively soon afterwards—in point of fact at the time of the Thirty Years' War, when very many outstanding, interesting incarnations took place, incarnations that have played an important part in the historical evolution of mankind. The Initiate was born again as a woman, at the beginning of the 17th century, before the actual outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. She lived on into the time of the conflict and was in contact with certain attempts that were made from the side of Rosicrucianism to correct the tendencies of the age and to make preparation in a spiritual way for the future. This work, however, was largely overshadowed and submerged by the savagery and brutality prevailing during the Thirty Years' War. Think only of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz which appeared shortly before its outbreak. And many other significant impulses came into the life of mankind at that time, before being stamped out or brutalised by the War. This personality, who as an Initiate had experienced the deeply symptomatic event connected with Julian the Apostate and had then passed through the incarnation as a woman in the 17th century, was born again in the 19th century. All that had become even more inward during the incarnation as a woman, all that had formerly been present in the soul—not the Initiation-wisdom but the horror caused by the terrible event—all this, in the last third of the 19th century, poured into a peculiarly characteristic view of the world which penetrated deeply into the prevailing incongruities of human existence. The whole tenor and trend of the present age is such that it is difficult for one who has carried over ancient Initiation-wisdom from an earlier earth-life into the life of the 19th and 20th centuries, to work effectively through deeds. And so, in this case, what was brought over—deeply transformed and apparently externalised, though in reality still inward—pressed its way from the heart—the seat of the old Initiation-wisdom—towards the senses and sense-observation, striving to find expression in poetry, in literature. That is the reason why recent times have produced so many really splendid examples of literature. Only they are incoherent, they are simply not intelligible as they stand. For they have been created not only by the personality who was present on earth at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th centuries, but an additional factor has been some experience in a past life such as I have related, an experience that had such a shattering effect upon an Initiate—albeit an Initiate in Mysteries already decadent. This shattering experience in the soul works on, streams into artistic, poetic qualities of soul—and what, in this case, comes over in so characteristic a way, lives itself out in the personality of Ibsen. When this vista is open to one, the secrets of the evolution of humanity light up from writings which appeared at the end of the 19th century and which cannot be the work of a single man but of a man through whom and in whom earlier epochs are also coming to expression. In approaching a theme like this, we shall certainly not lose respect either for the course taken by world-history or for the single personality who stands before us with greatness and distinction. In very truth, the experiences that come upon one in this domain are shattering—that is to say when such matters are pursued with the necessary earnestness. Now you will often have heard tell of an alchemist who lived in a comparatively early period of the Middle Ages: Basilius Valentinus (Basil Valentine), a Benedictine monk. His achievements in the spheres of medicine and alchemy were of momentous significance and to study him in connection with karmic relationships in world-history leads to remarkable results, results which show very clearly how difficult it is to understand the age in which we ourselves are living. Many things in our time are not only incomprehensible but often repellent, disagreeable, horrifying in a certain respect, and if we look at life merely as it is perceptible to the senses, it is impossible not to feel indignation and disgust. It is different, however, for one who can perceive the human and historical connections. Things are by no means what they seem! Traits may show themselves in life to-day for which the onlookers have, quite understandably, nothing but censure and indignation. And yet all the time, even in the unpleasant elements themselves, there may be something that is intensely fascinating. This will be the case more and more frequently. As I said, there in the early Middle Ages we find Basilius Valentinus, a Benedictine monk, engaged in the pursuit of medicine and alchemy in his cellars in the monastery and making a number of important investigations. There are others with him who are his pupils and they write down what Basilius Valentinus has said to them. Consequently there are hardly any original writings of Basilius Valentinus himself; but there are writings of pupils which contain a great deal that is genuinely his wisdom, his alchemical wisdom. Now when, at a certain time of my life, one of the pupils of Basilius Valentinus who especially interested me came into my field of vision, I realised: This pupil is again in incarnation, but spiritually there has been a remarkable metamorphosis. He has come again in the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. But the alchemical activity, directed without co-ordination towards the senses, manifested outwardly as a view of life in which alchemical concepts are always, so to speak, being welded into sense-observations. In this later incarnation the man observes external facts—how people act, how things happen among them, how they talk to one another—and he groups it all together in a way that is often repellent. But the explanation lies in the fact that the personality in question had, in an earlier incarnation, worked at alchemy under Basilius Valentinus. And now he jumbles everything together—the relationships between people, how they behave to one another, what they say, what they do and so forth. He does not look at these things with the eyes of a modern philistine—far from it!—but with the eye of a soul in which impulses from his former alchemical pursuits are still alive. He jumbles up events that occur among men, makes dramas out of them, and becomes: Frank Wedekind. These things must of course be studied in pursuance of a longing for a genuine understanding of man. When this is the case, life becomes, not poorer, but infinitely richer. Take Wedekind's ‘Hidalla’ or any other of his dramas which make the brain reel when one attempts to find the thread connecting what comes first with what comes later. Yet there is something fascinating about it for anyone who can look beyond the surface, and the commonplace judgments of the critics sitting in the stalls will leave him untouched. From their own standpoint, of course, these critics are justified—but that is of no account. The real point is that world-history has here produced a strange and remarkable phenomenon.—Alchemical thinking, flung as it were across centuries, is now applied to human life and human deeds; these, together with human rules and standards are all jumbled into a hotchpotch, just as once in alchemical kitchens—at a time when alchemy was already on the decline—substances and their forces were mixed in retorts and tests made of their effects. Even in respect of the point of time at which they occur on earth, the lives of men are determined by connections of destiny and karma. Let me give you another example in corroboration of this. We turn our gaze back to the time when the Platonic School flourishes in Greece. There was Plato, surrounded by a number of pupils. In their characters these pupils differed greatly from one another and what Plato himself depicts in the Dialogues, where characters of the most varied types appear and converse together, is in many respects a true picture of his School. Very different characters came together in this School. In the School there were two personalities in particular who imbibed, each in a very different way, all that fell from Plato's lips, bringing such sublime illumination to his pupils, and that he also carried further in conversations with them. One of these two pupils was a personality of rare sensitiveness and refinement. He was particularly receptive to everything that Plato did, through his teaching on the Ideas, to lift men's minds and hearts above the things of earth. Everywhere we find Plato affirming that over against the transitoriness of the single events in man's life and environment, stand the Eternal Ideas. The material world is transitory; but the material world is only a picture of the Idea which—itself eternal—passes in perpetual metamorphoses through the temporal and the transitory. Thus did Plato lift his pupils above the transitory things belonging to the external world of sense to contemplation of the eternal Ideas which hover over them as the heavens hover over the earth. But in this Platonic treatment of the world, man in his true being fares rather badly. For the Platonic conceptions and mode of thinking cannot properly be applied to man, in whom the Idea itself becomes alive in objective reality. Man is too individual. The Ideas, according to Plato, hover above the things. This is true in respect of the minerals, crystals and the other phenomena of the lifeless sense-world; Goethe too, while on the track of the archetypal plant (the ‘Urpflanze’) was observing the varying types; and the same applies in the case of the animals. With man, however, it is a matter of seeking the living Idea within each single human individuality. It was Aristotle—not Plato—who taught that the Idea as entelechy has entered into the human being. The first of the two pupils shared with whole-hearted fervour in this heavenward flight in Platonism. With his spiritual vision he could accompany Plato in this heavenward flight, in this soaring above the earth, and words of mellowed sweetness would fall from his lips in the Platonic School on the sublimity of the Ideas that hover over and above the things of earth. In his soul he soared to the Ideas. When he was not lingering in his world of vision but living again in his heart and mind, going about among the Greeks as he loved to do, he took the warmest interest in every human being with whom he came into contact. It was only when he had come down as it were to everyday life that his heart and feelings could be focused upon the many whom he loved so well, for his visions drew him away from the earth. And so in this pupil there was a kind of split between the life of heart when he was among living human beings and the life of soul when he was transported to the Eternal Ideas, when he was listening in the Academy to Plato's words or was himself formulating in words full of sweetness, the inspirations brought by Platonism. There was something wonderfully sensitive about this personality. Now a close and intimate friendship existed between this man and another pupil in the Platonic School. But in the course of it, a different trend of character which I will now describe, was developing in the friend, with the result that the two grew apart. Not that their love for one another cooled, but in their whole way of thinking they grew apart; life separated them. They were able, at first, to understand one another well, but later on even this was no longer possible. And it led to the one I have described becoming irritable and ‘nervy’ as we should say to-day, whenever the other spoke in the way that came naturally to him. The second pupil was no less ready than the first to look upwards to the Eternal Ideas which were the inspiration of so much living activity in the School of Plato. This pupil, too, could be completely transported from the earth. But the deep, warm-hearted interest in numbers of his fellow human beings—that he lacked. On the other hand he was intensely attracted by the myths and sagas of the ancient gods which were extant among the people and were well-known to him. He interested himself deeply in what we to-day call Greek Mythology, in the figures of Zeus, Athene and the rest. It was his tendency more or less to pass living human beings by, but he took a boundless interest in the gods whom he pictured as having lived on earth in a remote past and as being the progenitors of humanity. And so he felt the urge and the strong desire to apply the inspiration experienced in his life of soul to an understanding of the profound wisdom contained in the sagas of the gods and heroes. Men's relation to such sagas was of course completely different in Greece from what it is to-day. In Greece it was all living reality, not merely the content of books or traditions. This second personality who had been on terms of intimate friendship with the first, also grew out of the friendship—it was the same with them both. But as members of the Platonic School there was a link between them. Now the Platonic School had this characteristic.—Its pupils developed forces in themselves which tended to separate them from one another, to drive them apart after the School had for a time held them close together. As a result of this, individualities developed such as the two I have described, individualities who in spite of their different natures belonged together and who then grew apart. These two individualities—they were born again as women in Italy in the days of the Renaissance—came again to the earth in modern times; the first too early and the second rather too late. This is connected with the strong resolution that is required before making the descent to incarnation. Having passed through the gate of death, the one I described first, who had soared in spirit to super-earthly realms but without the fullness of human nature which expressed itself only in his heart and feelings, was able between death and rebirth to apprehend what pertains to the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; to some extent he could also apprehend the Second Hierarchy, but not the Hierarchy immediately above man, not, therefore, the Hierarchy, through which one learns how the human body is built up and organised here on earth. He thus became a personality who in pre-earthly existence had developed little insight into the constitution and nature of the human body; hence, when he was born again, he did not take into himself the final impulse. He made a partial, not a full descent into the body, did not come right down into it, but always hovered a little above it. His friend from the Platonic School waited before descending to incarnation. The reason for the waiting was that had the two of them met, had they been actual contemporaries, they would not have been able to tolerate one another. And yet, for all that, the one who had been wont to speak at such length about his intercourse with men, recounting it with such charm and sweetness to the other—who did not go among his fellows but was engrossed in the myths and sagas of the gods—this first personality was destined to make a deep impression upon the other, to precede him. The second followed later. This second personality, having steeped himself in Imaginations of the gods, had now developed a high degree of understanding of all that has to do with man. Accordingly he wanted to extend his time in the spiritual world and gather impulses that would enable him to take deep hold of the body. And what actually happened was that he took hold of the body too forcefully, he sank too deeply into it. Thus we have here two differing configurations of destiny. Of two members of the Platonic School, one takes too slight a hold of the body in the second incarnation afterwards and the other takes too strong a hold. The one cannot completely enter his body; he is impelled into it in his youth but out of it again soon afterwards and is obliged to remain outside. This is Hölderlin. The other is carried so deeply into his body that he enters with too much force into his organs and suffers almost lifelong illness. This is Hamerling. Thus we have before us great human destinies stretching through the ages of time, and the impulses which gave rise to these destinies; and we are now able to divine how the spiritual impulses work. For we must place this fact in all clarity before our souls: an individuality like Hölderlin, who has come from the Platonic School and who cannot enter fully into his body but has to remain outside it, such an individuality experiences in the dimness of insanity, impulses that work in preparation for coming earthly lives, impulses that destine him for greatness. And it is the same with the other, Robert Hamerling. Illness and health appear in quite a different light when considered in the setting of destiny than when they are observed within the bounds of the single earthly life. I think it can surely be said that reverence will arise in men's hearts and minds when life is treated in this way—reverence and awe for the mysterious happenings brought about by the spiritual world. Again and again I must emphasise that these things are not being told in order to satisfy cravings for sensation, but to lead us more and more deeply into a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual life. And it is only through this deeper penetration into the spiritual life that the external, sense-life of man can be explained and illumined.
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| 167. Things in Past and Present in the Spirit of Man: Shedding Light on the Deeper Impulses of History. Blavatsky
28 Mar 1916, Berlin Translated by E. H. Goddard |
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| On the one side you have the Berlin-Bagdad Railway and an the other side Anthroposophy. I was trying to work for the Pan-Germanic tendency, to separate India from England. In 1909 in Budapest, Mrs. |
| 167. Things in Past and Present in the Spirit of Man: Shedding Light on the Deeper Impulses of History. Blavatsky
28 Mar 1916, Berlin Translated by E. H. Goddard |
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Today it is my task to speak of a very deep historical impulse. As far as anthroposophical spiritual science is concerned, we are already familiar with the fact that spiritual forces, spiritual intentions, spiritual goals stand behind everything which occurs in the world. The anthroposophical spiritual scientifically schooled view is able to see more directly the spiritual processes which stand behind historical occurrences. In order to understand what is going on we must know not only the material historical facts, but we must be able to complete then by knowledge the sort of facts which we are going to present to you today. We will start by indicating a personality whom you all know, namely, H. P. Blavatsky. You all know that H. P. Blavatsky was a particularly psychic person in a time when materialism was at the high point in external life and she stood in a very special way in the spiritual movement of the second half of the 19th century. H. P. Blavatsky was not a personality whom one can designate in the ordinary sense as a medium, but she had, in the deepest sense, very striking psychical properties, she was a psychic personality. If you want to understand this you must realize the milieu out of which she proceeded. She came out of the Russian milieu, out of how the spiritual and physical can work together in a life in such a way that it is not normal, but abnormal. And to understand that, we must cast our attention on the special folk characteristics of the Russians, how that is different from the Central and Western Europeans. The Middle and Western Europeans are indeed, in a certain sense, the continuous and also the newly creative configuration of that culture which proceeded out of the 4th post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin cultural period. What lived in this Greco-Latin cultural period is continued in Central and Western Europe, through the fact that in this West and Middle Europe the physical bodies specially develop themselves, also become special instruments for spiritual working, for thinking, feeling and willing. That which thinking, feeling and willing can bring together through the Instrument of the physical body, that should come out in a very primary way in West and Middle Europe. However, the situation is different with the Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe and in particular with the Russians. One can say that the way in which the physical body is mechanized through as is the case in West and Central Europe cannot occur with the Russians in so far as this people remains in its national quality. You cannot understand the Russians with West European science. You can only understand them when you know that an ether body exists. The precise characteristic of the Russian people consists in the fact that the most important activity of life does not enter into the physical body as it occurs in West and Middle Europe, but more into the ether body and therefore does not permeate the physical body so much. In the Russian people the ether body has a much greater significance than it now has for the Western and Central Europeans and especially for the American people. Hence, within the Russian people, within the folk people, not the ruling classes, a direct strong ego as is the case in West and Central Europe can never be developed in the same way. However, the “I” is always veiled over by a certain dreaminess, it almost has something of a dreamy nature in it, because just as the “I” now lives in the 5th post-Atlantean period, so it is conditioned by a special development of the physical body. During this 5th post-Atlantean period, the Russian people are not advanced far enough for the building of the “I” directly as such. That which lives and weaves in the ether body should not imprint itself into the physical body. Hence, one can say that that which is predisposed in the Russian folk, in the main, cannot at the present come to external manifestation. Now, H. P. Blavatsky grew in part out of the Russian people, to the greatest part she has grown out of the Russian Folk Soul. It will be understandable from that that with her, the ether body in a high degree in its activity is able to be much more powerful than all physical activity in so far as we are dealing with a cognitive activity. Hence, we have in H. P. Blavatsky, in the main, a personality who can experience a large amount of her ether body, but naturally that is quite different from what one can experience through thinking and cognition with the help of the brain. Because Blavatsky has grown out of the Russian folk, she can experience an immense amount in her ether body. However, connected with that is the fact that she lacks certain qualities which West Europeans cannot be without if they want to have revelations from the spiritual worlds. H. P. Blavatsky lacked the possibility of thinking logically. This is the faculty which the Western European must have to obtain proper revelations from the spiritual world, but H.P. Blavatsky lacked this possibility of grouping together her knowledge. Nevertheless, that which permeated her ether body, which was contained in her etheric cognitive ability, did not prevent her from receiving significant revelations. Therefore precisely at the time when mankind was at the height of materialism, such a personality coming out of the East European people is present who in her stream of heredity, in her blood, still had, I might say, a dose of the Central European aspect. So there was present in her, but it was overpowered by the East European element, that which in Middle Europe leads to a logical nature and which in particular leads to will initiative which the Russian as a belonger of his folk does not have. Now what actually happened? When we put together these two extreme poles, then we can say—of course you know that we have English books written by Blavatsky—that which occurred came as a result of her roots in the Russian nature which came out of her ether body, that was taken hold of by the English being, and it appears that her books are worked out in English. However, the most important thing is what lies between; and to understand what does lie between one must become clear that in Western Europe, particularly from the British beingness, an extensive working in of occult science proceeds which always was present as far as one can speak of the English history. Through its whole evolution of its spiritual culture, Middle Europe actually did not have the slightest idea of how incisive occult working has always come out of the British land and spread itself over Western Europe, also over Southern Europe, and so on. When one wants to know how things stand, one must at least understand this British colored occultism. This British colored occultism is absolutely present. That which people know of as all sorts of high grades of Scottish Freemasonry and so on is actually only the external side which is shown to the world. However, comprehensive working occult schools actually stand behind this external side and they have taken up the ancient occult traditions and the ancient occult stream into themselves in a much higher degree than is the case in Middle Europe. In Central Europe, however, one must strive more and more to permit a knowledge of the spiritual world to rise up out of one's own spirituality. In the British aspect, they have preferred to lean on that which has been traditionally handed down from the more ancient occult schools. Actually we are able to go back to the beginning of the 17th century and find particularly in England, Scotland and Ireland (less in Ireland but over Scotland) such occult societies spread out in which they have continued to propagate that which was occult knowledge in the ancient times, which however they transformed in a certain way. If one wants to find the reason for this transformation, then one must know that the 4th post-Atlantean cultural epoch which was comprised of Greekdom and Romandom lasted until the beginning of the 15th century and the task of this 4th period was to work over in itself in a purely human way that which in earlier epochs was there as spiritual revelations. What man received in revelations, that was supposed to be spiritually worked over in this Greco-Latin period. Then came the 5th period which begins with the beginning of the 15th. century. Man was supposed to focus more upon the external, more upon the physical world and not to work out new concepts. All the concepts which you have in the world today have come over from the Greco-Latin period. There have not been any real new concepts developed since the 15th century; the ancient concepts were only applied in a new way upon the processes. Darwinism never brought in one single new concept of evolution; it only applied it to certain processes. Thus, not one single new concept has arisen since the beginning of the 15th century. All of these arose previously in the Greco-Latin period. The 5th post-Atlantean period was supposed to direct its glance at the external physical plane and the British people were especially prepared for this task. They were especially adapted for this task, because the British characteristics were developed later in the British Isles. Now, at the beginning of the 15h century something was threatening. What threatened to arise was a kind of confusion; the purely physical striving of the Britishdom threatened to be confused with a much more spiritual life, with a spiritual life which was fructified from ancient times. This took place when English dominion crossed over the channel into France. The fact that a real separation occurred was effected from the spiritual world through the appearance of Joan of Arc who precisely from the spiritual world itself had to create order in the beginning of the 15th century. The whole of external Western Europe depends, as we have said before, on this appearance of Joan of Arc. At that time there was a complete separation between the French nature and the British nature. This British being originally arose from the Angles and Saxons who had the occult sagas of Hengis and Horsa when they migrated over towards the British Isles. Now, at the time of Joan of Arc, this Anglo-Saxon layer was ruled by the Norman-Roman element and formed a lower caste. That particular British beingness which today is the superior, only happened since the 17th century, at the time when the French element was still working, and the Anglo-Saxons were the lower layer and the French spirit was the aristocratic spirit. They despised everything coming from the Angles and Saxons. For example, there was a very common expression in the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries used as a curse by the aristocracy still living in France in whom there still lived French Normanhood which went as follows: “God damn me to become an Englander”. This curse was often heard. You were not supposed to be an Englander if you wanted to be well regarded. However, this thing changed fundamentally after the separation occurred through Joan of Arc and then the Englander aspect began to develop. There are many different processes playing about here and it would take too much time if I were to describe them completely, but deep spiritual forces held sway behind the civil war of the Red and the White Roses. But the important thing is that in the beginning of the 17th century, a certain soul incarnated in the British kingdom who did not work in a very significant way externally, but worked further and in a very stimulating way. This person incarnated in a British body in whom there was more French and Scottish blood working together and very little British blood. There actually proceeded from this soul that which gave the impulse not only for the external British spiritual life but also to the occult British life. Naturally there were certain intermediate processes which if described would cause us to go far off our theme which also formed this occult British spiritual life . I have told you that this spiritual life was a continuation of the occult streams of the 4th post-Atlantean period. One knew an immense amount precisely because physical bodies had the most significance. There in the British occult life they knew the significance of the physical body, that the ether body was made least active, and that the physical body was regarded as an instrument of all spiritual life; and precisely because of that there was no possibility in these occult schools themselves to experience very much from the spiritual world. However, one preserved the ancient traditions in the occult schools; one preserved that which was handed down through what the ancient clairvoyant observed and they sought to permeate that with concepts. Therefore an occult science arose which worked only with the experiences of what had been handed down from what had been seen by clairvoyance in the 4th and even in the 3rd post-Atlantean period. However, that which came into existence through clairvoyance was worked through with purely physical concepts, with that conceptual material which you have when you think through the physical body. Therefore, an actual occult science arose which, however, stretched itself out over all domains of life. Above all it is interesting to realize that in this chapter of occult science there are facts which actually were taught in these British occult schools about the destiny of the European people. That formed a very important chapter in these occult schools. I will attempt to characterize what was taught there about the destiny of the European peoples. They said the following. There was a 4th post-Atlantean period. This is what they had out of tradition. This 4th post-Atlantean period abounded with spiritual life. This 4th post-Atlantean period has brought forth the conceptual world for man, the perception about social organization. This 4th post-Atlantean period brought forward all possible things; it abounded with spiritual life. It had developed itself in Southern Europe on the Greek and Italian Peninsulas and it radiated out from there. Now, the people of Central and Western Europe were in their infancy in reference to spiritual connections at the time of the flowering of the 4th period. I am now telling you just what was taught there. Thus, the Central and Western Europeans were infants in reference to the spiritual life, infants in relation to that which could radiate out from the cultural results of the 4th post-Atlantean period. These Central AND Western Europeans very gradually worked themselves up out of their infancy until the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and they became maturer and maturer. When we say the Reformation, we do not mean the German Reformation but the English Reformation under James I, and so on. The central and Western Europeans were able to separate themselves in a sense and now a quite definite dogma arose within these occult schools, a dogma which was very strongly held, the dogma that just as the Greco-Latin peoples were the leading peoples of the 4th, now in the 5th post-Atlantean period the Anglo-Saxon culture has to take the lead. This was impressed again and again. The Anglo-Saxondom has to reign spiritually through the 5th postAtlantean period, and everything that was thought in reference to mankind's development had to be so arranged that this dogma of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon as the leaders of the 5th had to be effected. They taught the following in these schools. There lives in East Europe today the people who are in the same condition in which the Central and Western Europeans were at the time of the Greco-Latin period; the Slavic people who are now in their infancy are in the East of Europe. They realize that these Slavic peoples must develop out of their infancy in a similar way as did the Central and Western Europeans. And just as the Romans were the wet nurse in spiritual connection in the West and Middle Europe, so must the Anglo-Saxon be the wet nurse for the East European peoples and lead them over to their later spiritual life period. It was also taught that just as the Germanic peoples differentiated themselves into Gothic and other tribes in the course of European history, so to speak, so do the Slavic peoples also differentiate themselves. Therefore they depicted how the present forces point to certain future configurations. For example, in Russia itself, there were a number of different communities which were gathered together spatial aspect just as once numbers of people were gathered in Central and West Europe, and these people who are gathered together in Russia, so to speak, are artificially held together by a state bond. On the other hand, a folk like the Poles were held together by their religion and in spite of their attempts to become independent, these Poles had to be inserted into the Russian beingness. One had confidence in these schools that the whole of Polishdom has to be shoved in turn into the Russian being and they said that they are of the Dornau there are single Slavic peoples who exist in isolated kingdoms. And the following was repeated again and again in these schools: Such independent Slavic folk states are forming. However, these will only last until the next great European war which was going to bring everything into disorder. And they said: The independence of the Slavic States would only last a while and in the future a quite different way of being held together in reference to these East European peoples who are at present in their infancy state, must take place. This was the teaching that was given; it was not just theory but was repeated again and again in these occult schools. Therefore numerous people attempted to configure the external life to influence it in different ways so that the actual facts could form themselves in the sense of what their dogma said. People do not realize what enormous attempts were made by their occult brothers in the British Isles who had other groups in Western Europe and Italy. They knew what one person must do, what another must do and how to work in life in order to achieve their aims. For example, there was one English statesman who became friendly with a certain statesman from a small state in the Dornau which was part of Austria. A friendly arrangement was set up between them. It was so artfully arranged that, for example, on the one side they made friends, but on the other side they tried to put forth all sorts of criticism about this same state. The situation is of great significance when you methodically follow a path in which you develop friendship on the one side in order to win a certain people over and on the other side begin to show the shadow side of these people and attack them. This is a very devilish thing, but it is an Ahrimanic trick which you can use. One member of such a brotherhood would write a book which would cause a rightful movement to be called forth, for example, and another person would write a book in order to develop friendship. That is how they work between the lines of life; all this so that the British aspect could become the ruling aspect: let us look at how the personality of H.P. Blavatsky works in this occult brotherhood situation. These occult brothers have become aware of her. These ahrimanic occultists knew very well when there was such a person who is configurated as is H. P. Blavatsky, there are all sorts of developmental forces occurring. And here we have H. P. Blavatsky in whom the ether body is active in a special way and they wanted to utilize her so that certain spiritual truths could come forward which could be favorable to their dogmas of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon people. Therefore the tendency arose in the 60's and the beginning of the 70's with these occult brothers of the West to utilize Blavatsky so as to place spiritual truths before the world of which one can say the following. Here is a person whose ideas do not come out of an ordinary human brain, but come out of an ether body and in addition to that one who can predict future elements from such an ether body, a future that holds a foundation for the 6th post-Atlantean period. And, since the 6th post-Atlantean period has not yet arrived, they can then make certain preparations in the 5th. In the case of Blavatsky who was not an ordinary medium, they could so influence her mediumistic forces that she would say what the British brotherhoods wanted. They themselves could not come before the world and say Britain shall be the rulers, but they could say: Look here, here is a person who we are not influencing in any way; she brings a quite new knowledge out of her own ether body. Their goal was that this new knowledge should be placed in the service of the Anglo-Saxon brotherhoods. These brotherhoods related themselves to her so that they were a sort of wet nurse and she was the infant. The intention of these brothers was to put a certain new occult science into the world which would be very suitable for the special aims of these Western brothers. They would have succeeded in their intentions if Blavatsky had been a pure Russian. However, as I mentioned earlier, she had a certain dose of Central European nature in her. She had an independent nature and very soon became aware of what lived in her ether body and then she did not want to go along with what these occult brotherhoods, who wanted to develop Earth as a higher medium, wanted. After a certain time, H. P. Blavatsky developed many things on very good paths, then she entered into a high order in Paris. However, this Parisian order was dependent on the British occult streams and they tried to prepare her so that what they wanted could come out of her soul. but, as I said, she had much of this Germanic element in her and insisted on certain conditions in this order which were impossible to fulfill and the consequence was that she was excluded from this order. In the meantime she was able to take up into herself many significant secrets which were present in these orders and she began to acquire a very special taste for the whole role; she wanted to play the foremost occult role. She did not want to be just a higher medium; she wanted to direct the thing herself. She entered an American order where they told her many secrets which were only given to those in high grades. Nevertheless, this American order had a very definite intention and in time she received into her consciousness a great deal of knowledge. A whole new situation was now created. Here was a personality who knew much of the occult knowledge which the secret orders had preserved and protected. Here was a situation which had never occurred before. In America she again tried to set up certain conditions to which the American order could not agree, because if they had done so terrible confusion would have come about. Therefore, through very dubious means, they put her in what is called occult imprisonment which one achieves through certain ceremonial magic in which the soul which you are imprisoning can have ideas which go to a certain sphere and then are reflected back. Everything that develops in the person can be seen by themselves but it is not possible to share it with the external world. It only works within itself; it is an occult imprisonment. This particular ceremonial magic leading to occult imprisonment was done in order to try to make H. P. Blavatsky harmless. In the year 1879 there was an association of occultists of various lands and it was decided that an occult imprisonment was to be placed over Madam Blavatsky and she then lived for a number of years in real occult imprisonment. It then came about that certain Indian occultists freed her from this occult imprisonment and now begins the time when Blavatsky enters into the Indian influence. Everything which I told you up to now is a kind of pre-history of Blavatsky. We now have the development which everyone knows about. All the difficulties and problems which Blavatsky had are connected with all this pre-history. Certain Indian occultists who strove to save themselves from the British now applied certain means to release her from her occult imprisonment, and this actually was done with the consent of those who had put her in this imprisonment. The consequence was that there streamed into her soul that which was connected only with the Indian occultism. All these goings on are effected by the British brotherhoods completely rejecting that which applies to Central Europe. These brotherhoods tried to utilize Blavatsky for their political objects, but in Paris and America she objected; the inner opposition of her Russianness objected and there was opposition against making the Russians dependent upon West Europe and America. When she was in Paris, she set forth a special stipulation which could not be fulfilled because it would have necessitated a political transformation in France. In America she herself did not put forth the stipulation, but she allied herself with a man named Olcott who was interested in producing all sorts of political machinations. These people originally wanted to guide her into a certain channel failed because she was released from this and went into a different channel in which the mahatma was not what Blavatsky thought he was. You can see in the well known novel of George Sand how occult societies and particular movements occur in Western Europe, people have a sub-role and are not externally visible. I mentioned all these things in the public lecture on Friday, all the occult streams which produce conspirators resulting in the assasination of Jure (sic), also the murder of Franz Ferdinand. Here you have the whole source of the conspiracy of which the outside world knows very little. It begins in London, it spins over into Western Europe, goes into Southern Europe, goes into the Balkans and finally goes over to St. Petersburg and plays into the whole circle in St. Petersburg. I tell you all these things because you must know that so much of what is happening is produced by causes that you know nothing about. Our Society has a special task of freeing itself from the influence of these Western European brotherhoods. For example, remember how I was attacked in 1909, how I was accused of wanting to become president of the whole Theosophical Society, of wanting to go to India in order to influence certain political activities. On the one side you have the Berlin-Bagdad Railway and an the other side Anthroposophy. I was trying to work for the Pan-Germanic tendency, to separate India from England. In 1909 in Budapest, Mrs. Besant's intentions was to make Krishna Murti the carrier of the Christ and I would be the reincarnated St. John, the Evangelist in order to get my recognition. Actually I would not go along with that sort of thing. There were many other Theosophists against all this, in fact the International Society of Honest People was formed, really noble people and among them was Keightley who was used earlier by Mrs. Besant to correct the mistakes in her books. This International Society asked me to become its president. And in 1909 I told Mrs Besant that I did not want to connect myself with any other occult movements, only that which works with German culture within Europe. At that time I asked her what she thought about the mighty German occultism which appeared at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century in connection with German culture. And this is what she said: “Ah, that which appeared in Germany was an unsuccessful attempt in occultism that took other forms, and because that failed England must now take the situation in hand and occultism must be brought to Europe from England.” Now you can see how the situation stands. I tell you all these things as students of esoteric wisdom, you have to know these things. |
| 196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Eleventh Lecture
07 Feb 1920, Dornach |
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| I do not want to claim that today all those who have made anthroposophy their creed are skilled in life. A creed does not mean much in this respect. I really dare not claim that all anthroposophists are skilled in life. |
| 196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Eleventh Lecture
07 Feb 1920, Dornach |
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Today I shall again insert a kind of episode into our reflections, which will serve to further the actual theme tomorrow. I shall be obliged to use a somewhat more aphoristic mode of presentation today in order to discuss certain things with you. We have, of course, taken the most diverse symptoms and phenomena from current events in order to recognize how these events are leading humanity to a grasp of spiritual realities. And it was my endeavor to make clear that this taking hold of spiritual realities cannot be merely a matter of man's continuing to take hold of the spiritual world in the future, so to speak, in order to have something from it, I might say, for his Sunday hours. That was precisely the pernicious thing in the civilization that has developed in recent centuries, that spiritual life has gradually become something so detached and abstract. In answer to the question that I posed in a public lecture in Basel some time ago: What connects the world view, the view of the spiritual or the unspiritual, that someone has as a civil servant, lawyer, factory owner, or merchant, with what one does every day? One could say: The thoughts that he has as a worldview have no influence on his professional and everyday affairs, or rather, on how he conducts them. On the one hand, one is a person of external practical life, and on the other, one has a purely abstract worldview, whether it is more or less religious or more or less scientifically colored. This has become common practice in the course of the last few centuries and has reached a climax in our so ominous time. And what underlies this is expressed in another, even more fatal circumstance, that people who have the good will to acquire a spiritual worldview are virtually absorbed in the content of this spiritual worldview, that this spiritual worldview has nothing to do with their practical life. Because practical life is the real thing, it is what one devotes oneself to externally; one has spirituality for Sundays, it is set apart from life, and life is not worthy of absorbing this spirituality. I have always endeavored to make it clear that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here, while seeking to ascend to the highest heights of spiritual life, should then cultivate in man, through this ascent into the spiritual worlds, a way of thinking, a way of imagining, that makes him suitable, adept, and practical in every aspect of everyday life. One should have something for one's business, for daily practical life, from what one also works for spiritually in the higher worlds. This work for the spiritual world should not tempt one to say: This spiritual world is the other world, it must not be touched by the coarse everyday life; the coarse everyday life is separate, it is despised, the spiritual world is the high, the exalted. I have often pointed these things out very sharply in earlier years and have said that, over the years, many a person has come to me and said: Oh, I have such a prosaic profession, I want to leave this prosaic profession and devote myself to more ideal things. That is the worst maxim one can have in life. I have often said that anyone who, by fate or karma, is a postal worker, and a decent postal worker at that, certainly serves the world more by properly fulfilling their profession than someone who is a bad poet or even a bad journalist or the like, which one sometimes craves. The point is, when one approaches the spiritual, to take this spirituality into one's mind in such a way that it does not make one unskillful, but skillful for the outer life. Because this maxim has disappeared from life since the 15th century and, to a certain extent, life has split into these two currents, into the outer practical life despised by idealists and mystics, and into the mystical, religious, idealistic life regarded by practical people as somewhat dreamy and starry-eyed, we now find ourselves in the deadlock of life described to you yesterday. That is the deeper reason why we are stuck in this impasse. As a result, on the one hand, in practical life, each individual stands in a small circle, as I said yesterday, working without an overview and also without a warm interest in the whole, and on the other hand, if one is idealistic enough to devote oneself to a spiritual world-view, one then wants to have this spiritual world-view in such a way that one is not educated in this spiritual world-view, for example, in practical leadership, let us say, of a proper ledger or a proper journal. There are people who consider it an advantage if someone does not understand and cannot grasp how to keep a journal or a cash book. This is the great damage that has gradually become more and more widespread over the past few centuries. It is not an advantage to have no idea of how to keep ledgers and cash books, and it is not a blessing for humanity when there are as many people as possible who want to be idealists by not understanding anything practical and only wanting to devote themselves to spiritual contemplation. The only healthy thing in life is when these two maxims in life go so far together that one supports the other. But what has gradually emerged more and more as a life-damage in the smallest circles over the past few centuries is also expressed in the great affairs of life, in that no one, really, one can say, no one except a few people who have done it quite impractically, has actually worried about it: How can something really healthy arise from the structures that are outdated – I characterized them for you yesterday in terms of how they look on the map – that were used before the war, until 1914, to describe the states of the world? – Yes, even after the trials of the last four to five years, unfortunately we have not yet come far enough to think about these things in a healthy way. Take just one thing. When we have a cool head to consider the more distant causes of the terrible catastrophe of the last four and a half or five years, we will find that these causes lie in the industrial and commercial conditions between Central Europe and the western regions, including America, in those industrial and commercial conditions that have long since come into conflict with national borders. The state structures, which have developed out of quite different conditions and which are a relic of medieval conditions, have been used artificially as a framework for what are only commercial and industrial interests. They were not suited for that purpose at all, but they could be used for it. And today one notices that so little that a social-democratic movement, which is hopeless for longer periods of time but extremely disruptive for shorter periods, does not do it any differently. We are experiencing today that socialist theories are emerging everywhere, even in the Asian world, and they are becoming particularly radical. These socialist theories want to create something practical. Before the war they wanted to use the framework of the old states, now they want to use the framework of what has emerged from the catastrophe of war, that is to say, we say Russia, as it has emerged from the war, should be used as a framework for Bolshevik theories. If you can think according to reality, you cannot think of anything more nonsensical than this attempt. There is no greater nonsense than this construct, which initially arose out of purely medieval forces, combined then with the unnatural results that arose more and more in the war that had come to Versailles, that is, to an unpeaceful state. That this structure in the east of Europe should now take up the fantasies of Lenin and Trotsky is nonsense in the long term, and in the short term it is a tumult that must enormously delay the healthy development of Europe's humanity. This is the result if one has a sense of reality. But this sense of reality is lacking today, one might say, in the whole of humanity's public judgment. The whole of humanity's public judgment is not formed out of a sense of reality, but actually out of abstractions, out of abstract theories. And when something arises that is not based on abstract theories, such as threefolding, something that is taken from life and, because one cannot write thirty volumes about it, which people would not read anyway, one has to summarize it briefly, then people do not recognize the spirit of reality in it, but, because they are completely filled with theories today, they consider it to be a theory all the more. One no longer has any sense of what is taken from reality, because one has become completely estranged from reality. It must happen that people today can become practical in the most eminent sense and yet still look up to the spiritual world. For only in this way will the human mind develop healthily into the future, that these two elements in the human mind can go side by side. When the time comes that he who says: Over in the East live souls who, due to the special historical circumstances of Asia, have developed in such a way that today they have little sense for the outer world and could easily become the prey of the Europeans, who are attached to the mere material world, but that they have been able to preserve their gaze into the spiritual world. Then one will see that in the Orient we have such souls. I have often mentioned Rabindranath Tagore as an especially important representative. But this Rabindranath Tagore, who is not even an initiate but merely an Asian intellectual, has within him, I might say, the whole spirit of Asia, and you can learn much about this striving Asian spirit from his collection of lectures, 'Nationalism'. But the souls that are over there lack any inner relationship to what has been achieved in Europe and America in relation to the outer life. Let me remind you once again of something that I have already said before you. It is only in the last few centuries that we have developed what can be called a purely mechanistic culture. Even today you will find in geography books that the entire earth is populated by about fifteen hundred million people. But that is not true if you take into account the work that is done on the earth. If, let us say, a Martian were to come down to Earth and assess the Earth's population in the following way, first asking: How much does a person work on Earth, taking into account the amount of labor they can apply? – and then asking: How much work is done altogether? — let us take the figures that existed before the war, the current figures cannot be used for this, they are not yet available either, then if we were to note how much work is done by people on earth, not fifteen hundred million would come out, but two thousand million or even two thousand two hundred million people as the earth's population. Why? Because the work done by machines on earth is actually so great that it is the equivalent of about seven hundred million human workers. If the machines did not work and if what the machines do were to be done by human labor, there would have to be seven hundred million more people on earth. I have calculated this from the amount of coal used on earth, based on an eight-hour working day. What I have said applies approximately to the coal consumption at the beginning of the 20th century and to an eight-hour working day, so that one can say: judging by what is being done on the earth, there are actually two thousand two hundred million people on the earth. But what is achieved by purely mechanical instruments of labor is more or less done entirely in Europe and America; not much of it is done in Asia today. It has begun there, but it is still in its early stages, because the Asian has no sense of this mechanization of the world. He completely lacks the sense for what has been absorbed in the Occident since the last century or even since the middle of the 15th century. But we must not just think about the fact that mechanical work is being done; we must also think about the fact that people's entire way of thinking is turning to this mechanization of the world. Today, someone can say: So-and-so many workers were needed to build the Gotthard tunnel. But today you can't build a Gotthard tunnel without knowing differential and integral calculus, and that comes from Leibniz, the English say from Newton; we won't argue about that. So the Gotthard tunnel or the Hauenstein tunnel near here could not have been built if Leibniz had not discovered differential and integral calculus in his study one day. All of European thought since Copernicus and Galileo is directed towards this mechanization of the world. Read up on Rabindranath Tagore and how much he hates this mechanization of the world. But what will this have to lead to? In the mirror of the spiritual world view, it can be said: All those souls that are embodied today in the East, in what we call the East, will seek their next embodiment in the West. Western people will seek their next embodiment more in the East. The middle will have to form a mediation. But if you say something like a cultural-historical demand, that the whole education system and the like should be designed so that this intersecting wave of souls passes over the earth, you say something like that to the very clever people of the present, let us take the cleverest, those who are chosen by the nations to come into parliaments, then you will hear that you are a fool, that this is quite mad! But the recognition of these truths must also move people as much as what is now called anthropological truths moved people in earlier times; the mixing of races, the mutual distribution of races and so on. We must begin to look at everything from a spiritual point of view, instead of regarding it merely from an external physiological point of view, as we have done in the past. There are, of course, good Theosophists who, in moments of solemnity in their lives, think that man lives in repeated lives on earth; it is a creed for them. But that is not enough. If one merely believes in reincarnation and karma as an article of faith, it is no more valuable than making a laundry list. These things only take on value when they are integrated into the whole way of thinking about the world and also into the way of acting and behaving in the world. These things only have value when they are considered in terms of cultural history. And if you do not see these things as something you only devote yourself to in the festive moments of life, but as something you permeate with life, and if you really have such thoughts in earnest - theosophically you can of course play with these thoughts a lot with these thoughts, then one will also have a sense for the proper keeping of a cash book or a ledger, for the shaping of a proper workbench; one will also not disdain it if one is put in the position of having to do cobbling work oneself. For only in the case of someone who is able to engage practically in life, who can be dexterous in circumstances where it comes down to taking hold everywhere, in the case of such a person the whole human organism is so imbued with inner skill that this inner skill also finds expression in truly viable thoughts. This is what should penetrate our minds. It will permeate our culture if we familiarize ourselves with what people today fear most. One could say that there are two things today that point to two states of fear in contemporary humanity – I do not think that you, if you look at the situation with an inner sense of truthfulness, can refute me. The first is that, throughout the civilized world, there is a terrible fear of getting to the real causes of war. They do not want to look into it, or even stick their nose into it, at most with the opponent, but certainly not at home! With a few exceptions, people avoid dealing with the actual causes of the terrible human catastrophe of recent years, they are terribly afraid of it. During the war, this was even idealized. There were people who took the view: From this war will emerge a new human life, a new fertilization of the ideals of humanity and so on. - One will be able to study the events of recent times a lot to get behind the real cause of this horror catastrophe. But then nothing positive will arise as the content of this war, but it will arise that the old forms of culture and civilization have become rotten, that they have led themselves ad absurdum in this war catastrophe, that this war means nothing more than the leading ad absurdum of civilization as it was until this war. That is one thing that people are terribly afraid of, afraid of an external event. They are so afraid that today they have generally given up even thinking in terms of tomorrow. Because no reasonable person, from either side, could believe that what is called the Treaty of Versailles could ever give birth to reality. And yet, because people think only for today, not for tomorrow, this strange instrument has come into being. That is an external event. But there is something else, and that is the fear people have of advancing into ever greater and greater awareness of the soul life. If it seems to people somehow justified to flee from consciousness into the unconscious, then they are glad. When a world view such as this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science comes along, which strives for a complete development of consciousness and wants to arrive at its truths from this complete development of consciousness, then people do not want to approach it. It is too difficult for them. It requires activity, it requires that one really engages in flexible spiritual life. That is too difficult. But people strive for revelation in their lower states of consciousness: first, of what spiritual life is, and second, of what lives within the human being. How many people, much more than you think, do not want to engage with spiritual truths grasped with a healthy soul sense today. But if something from the spiritual worlds is proclaimed to them by a medium, then they fall for it. One does not need to make an effort to understand it. It comes about unconsciously, and one wants to believe the unconscious. The other thing that follows directly from this is the blatant spread of psychoanalysis. It is hard to believe how this psychoanalysis has taken root in people's minds with breakneck speed. What does it consist of? It consists of the fact that all kinds of medical people are opening up today and – it's hard to say in a nutshell, I've often analyzed psychoanalysis here – setting up something that brings what is subconscious in the human psyche up into consciousness. People are made to tell their dreams, and they explore earlier experiences of disappointment, of unfulfilled desires and so on, which have then been forgotten and formed islands in the soul and so on. In this way, they try to get a clear picture of what actually lives in the human being. Particularly clever people have found out that a great deal lives in the human soul, which takes root in the soul during early childhood in the form of unnatural feelings and sensations, which are then pushed down into the subconscious; but they continue to live in the human being, the human being is their slave. These people trace the Oedipus myth back to the unnatural feelings that every child is supposed to have towards its mother and so on. These people are clear in their view that every little girl is actually jealous of her mother because she loves her father, and every little boy is jealous of his father because he loves his mother. From this arises a complex of feelings, which, transformed into myth, appears in the Oedipus myth and the like. People do not want to believe that spiritual things play a role, but spiritual things that must be permeated with the light of consciousness, people are afraid of that. They are afraid of bringing these things into the light of consciousness. They would prefer to keep everything shrouded in a nebulous darkness. I have already pointed out to you a splendid example, which keeps cropping up time and again when psychoanalysis is discussed: a lady is invited to an evening entertainment at a house where the lady of the house is ailing and the farewell party is being celebrated because she has to travel to a spa. The master of the house stays at home, the lady of the house has to go to the spa. The evening entertainment is over. The lady of the house has already been sent to the train station, the evening party is leaving and is on its way home. A cab, not a car, is driving around the corner, and the evening party is moving out of the way to the left and right. But the one lady I am actually eyeing does not move to the left or to the right, but remains in the middle of the street and runs in front of the horses. The coachman naturally makes a terrible din, but the lady runs and runs, and the coachman has the greatest difficulty in holding the horses back, because he could run over the lady. They come to a bridge. The lady, quite an object for the psychoanalysts, throws herself into the stream, and of course the evening party follows suit to save her. What do you do with her? Well, of course, take her back to the host's house, that's the next step. The psychoanalyst now has this lady in front of him. He lets her tell him everything she went through in her youth, and he now also happily comes to the conclusion that when she was a very little girl, she was crossing the street and a horse came around the corner; she was very frightened. That has sunk down into the subconscious. It is down there. Since then she has been so afraid of horses that she ran away from them on the street, not dodging to the right or to the left. That is the isolated province of the soul that she has, the fear of horses, which dwells in the subconscious. There is something in this subconscious, but one must penetrate this subconscious with the light of spiritual research. Then one comes to the conclusion that this subconscious is very clever under certain pathological conditions, that under the ordinary individual human consciousness, however, it is not exactly the foundations of the Oedipus myth, not exactly the fear of the horse that once crossed one's path, but rather a certain sophistication. Because the lady who was invited to that evening party naturally wanted nothing more than to spend the night in that house after the lady of the house had been sent off to the bath, and the best way for the subconscious to arrange things was to seize the next best opportunity – had it not been the steed, had it been something else – that the evening party would have to bring her back to the house. That is how she had achieved her goal. Of course, according to her upbringing, according to what she had absorbed, she would never have violated her morality to such an extent as to do something like that. In the superconscious, she is not that clever; but in the subconscious, there are many sophisticated impulses that can be very clever. This whole spreading psychoanalysis, which takes on such blatant forms today, in which, more than you think, today in particular the more hopeful intellectuals believe - I say this not in a derogatory sense, but even with the tone of truth -, in which even today theologians would like to base religion, this psychoanalysis is the other fear product of the present. People are afraid of consciousness. They do not want things to be seen in the clear light of consciousness, but they want the most important thing to dwell down there in the subconscious, and for man to be dominated in regard to his most important things, especially in regard to his religious feelings. Read about this in William James, the American. Because whether it is called psychoanalysis in some areas of Europe or whether it is called it as William James, the American, expresses these things, it is all the same. There is a fear of the conscious. One does not want the most important thing that lives in man to be in his consciousness. After all, man would have to think more if he were to direct himself with his conscious will. It is important that the human being has justified that he thinks less. Our eurythmy is worked out entirely from the consciousness. It is the opposite of everything dreamy. People are afraid that it is less artistic because they associate the artistic with the dreamy. But that is nonsense. In the artistic, it does not matter whether it comes from this or that region, but that it is artistic in its forms and in its development. This eurythmy, which is based entirely on the superconscious, on the opposite of the subconscious, was recently appraised by a gentleman, as I was told, who is now also a doctor: He noticed a lot of unconsciousness in it. — Of course, this is proof that the gentleman did not understand eurythmy at all. Precisely that which is the lifeblood of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has been noticed very little. And it will only be fully noticed when one can really undergo such an inner education of thinking, feeling and will through this spiritual science that it makes one more skillful for life, not less. I do not want to claim that today all those who have made anthroposophy their creed are skilled in life. A creed does not mean much in this respect. I really dare not claim that all anthroposophists are skilled in life. But you see, what is expressed in the real movement of the Anthroposophical Society is often what is brought into it from outside. And only then will anthroposophically oriented spiritual science be able to be what it should be for the world, not only when mystical tendencies, unworldliness, false idealism, and a kind of spiritualism — I could also say “uncleism”; no, I mean similar things — are brought into it , but when what can be gained in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is carried out: a stimulation of the soul life that passes into the limbs, that takes hold of the whole human being - not just the creed - and thereby enables people to intervene in the affairs of the world. That is what it is mainly about. In this one should seek the whole seriousness of life. |
| 201. Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe: Lecture I
09 Apr 1920, Dornach Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams |
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| From this point of view we may really say that the course taken by the development of the spiritual Movement directed to Anthroposophy has in the last few days taken a step forward; it has begun to show clearly to the spiritual life of humanity, how we must seek to illuminate modern methods of thought with a knowledge of Man; for it is a fact that the knowledge of Man has to a very great extent been lost in modern times. |
| 201. Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe: Lecture I
09 Apr 1920, Dornach Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams |
|---|
Today I shall try to give a wider view of a subject already often touched upon. I have frequently pointed out how, for modern man, moral and intellectual conceptions diverge. On the one hand we are brought, through intellectual thinking, to recognition of the stern Necessity of Nature. In accordance with this necessity we see everything in Nature under the law of Cause and Effect. And we ask also, when man performs an action: what has caused it, what is the inner or outer cause? This recognition of the necessity for all events has in modern times acquired a more scientific character. In earlier times it had a more theological character, and has so still for many people. It takes on a scientific character when we hold the opinion that what we do is dependent on our bodily constitution and on the influences that work upon it. There are still many people who think that man acts just as inevitably as a stone falls to the ground. There you have the natural scientific colouring of the Necessity concept. The view of those more inclined to Theology might be described as follows. Everything is fore-ordained by some kind of Divine Power or Providence and man must carry out what is predestined by that Divine Power. Thus we have in the one case the Necessity of natural science, and in the other case unconditioned Divine Prescience. One cannot in either case speak of human Freedom at all. Over against this stands the whole Moral world. Man feels of this world that he cannot so much as speak of it without postulating the freedom of the decisions of his will; for if he has no possibility of free voluntary decision, he cannot speak of a morality of human action. He does however feel responsibility, he feels moral impulses; he must therefore recognise a moral world. I have mentioned before how the impossibility of building a bridge between the two, between the world of Necessity and the world of Morals, led Kant to write two critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason in which he applies himself to investigating the nature of simple Necessity, and the Critique of Applied Reason in which he inquires into what belongs to Moral Cosmogony. Then he felt compelled to write also a Critique of Judgement which was intended as an intermediary between the two, but which ended in being no more than a compromise, and approached reality only when it turned to the world of beauty, the world of artistic creation. This goes to show how man has on the one side the world of Necessity and on the other the world of Free Moral Action, but cannot find anything to unite the two except the world of Artistic Semblance, where—let us say, in sculpture or in painting—we appear to be picturing what comes from Natural Necessity, but impart to it something which is free from Necessity, giving it thus the appearance of being free in Necessity. The truth is, man is not able to build a bridge between the world of Necessity and the world of Freedom unless he finds the way through Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science, however, requires for its development a fulfilment of the aphorism which won respect centuries ago, the saying of the Greek Apollo: “Know thyself!” Now this admonition, by which is not intended a burrowing into one's own subjectivity but a knowledge of the whole being of man and the position he occupies in the Universe—this is a search that must find a place in our whole spiritual life. From this point of view we may really say that the course taken by the development of the spiritual Movement directed to Anthroposophy has in the last few days taken a step forward; it has begun to show clearly to the spiritual life of humanity, how we must seek to illuminate modern methods of thought with a knowledge of Man; for it is a fact that the knowledge of Man has to a very great extent been lost in modern times. This was our aim in the course of lectures that has just been held for doctors, where an initial attempt was made to throw light in a positive way upon matters with which medical science has to concern itself. [*Published by Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, 1961, (third edition) with the title: Geisteswissenschaft und Medizin. English translation (now out of print) entitled: Spiritual Science and Medicine, can be borrowed from the Library, Rudolf Steiner House, London, N.W.I] In the series of lectures given by our friends and myself, we tried to show how a connection must be made between the individual sciences and what these can receive from Spiritual Science. It is very desirable that within our Movement there should be a strong consciousness of the need for such attempts; for if we are to succeed it is absolutely necessary to make clear to the outer world—in a sense, to compel it to understand—that here no kind of superficiality prevails in any domain, but rather an earnest striving for real knowledge. This is often hindered by the way in which things reach the public from our own circles, so that it is supposed, or may easily be maliciously pretended, that all kinds of sectarianism and dilettantism are allowed here. It is for us to convince the outer world more and more how earnest is the striving underlying all that this Movement represents. Such attempts must be carried further afield, and they must be carried further by the forces of the whole Anthroposophical Movement; for we have now made a beginning with a true knowledge of Man which must form the foundation of all true spiritual culture. It is true to say that from the middle of the fifteenth century, man's earlier concrete relation to the world has been growing more and more abstract. In olden times, through atavistic clairvoyance man knew much more of himself than he does today, for since the middle of the century intellectualism has spread over the whole of the so-called civilised world. Intellectualism is based upon a very small part in the being of Man, a very small part; and it produces accordingly no more than an abstract network of knowledge of the world. What has knowledge of the world become in the course of the last centuries? In its relation to the Universe, it has become a mere mathematical-mechanical calculation, to which in recent times have been added the results of spectra analysis; these again are purely physical, and even in the physical domain, mechanical-mathematical. Astronomy observes the courses of the stars and calculates; but it notices only those forces which show the Universe, in so far as the Earth is enclosed in it, as a great machine, a great mechanism. It is true to say that this mechanical-mathematical method of observation has come to be regarded simply and solely as the only one that can actually lead to knowledge. Now with what does the mentality which finds expression in this mathematical-mechanical construction of the Universe reckon? It reckons with something that is founded to some extent in the nature of Man, but only in a very small part of him. It reckons first with the abstract three dimensions of space. Astronomy reckons with the abstract three dimensions of space; it distinguishes one dimension, a second (drawing on blackboard) and a third, at right angles. It fixes attention on a star in movement, or on the position of a star, by looking at these three dimensions of space. Now man would be unable to speak of three dimensional space if he had not experienced it in his own being. Man experiences three-dimensional space. In the course of his life he experiences first the vertical dimension. As a child he crawls, and then he raises himself upright and experiences thereby the vertical dimension. It would not be possible for man to speak of the vertical dimension if he did not experience it. To think that he could find anything in the Universe other than he finds in himself would be an illusion. Man finds this vertical dimension only by experiencing it himself. By stretching out our hands and arms at right angles to the vertical we obtain the second dimension. In what we experience when breathing or speaking, in the inhaling and exhaling of the air, or in what we experience when we eat, when the food in the body moves from front to back, we experience the third dimension. Only because man experiences these three dimensions within him does he project them into external space. Man can find absolutely nothing in the Universe unless he finds it first in himself. The strange thing is that in this age of abstractions which began in the middle of the fifteenth century, Man has made these three dimensions homogeneous. That is, he has simply left out of his thought the concrete distinction between them. He has left out what makes the three dimensions different to him. If he were to give his real human experience, he would say: My perpendicular line, my operative line, my extensive or extending line. He would have to assume a difference in quality between the three spatial dimensions. Were he to do this, he would no longer be able to conceive of an astronomical cosmogony in the present abstract way. He would obtain a less purely intellectual cosmic picture. For this however he would have to experience in a more concrete way his own relationship to the three dimensions. Today he has no such experience. He does not experience for instance the assuming of the upright position, the being in the vertical; and so he is not aware that he is in a vertical position for the simple reason that he moves together with the Earth in a certain direction which adheres to the vertical. Neither does he know that he makes his breathing movements, his digestive and eating movements as well as other movements, in a direction through which the Earth also moves in a certain line. All this adherence to certain directions of movement implies an adaptation, a fitting into, the movements of the Universe. Today man takes no account whatever of this concrete understanding of the dimensions; hence he cannot define his position in the great cosmic process. He does not know how he stands in it, nor that he is as it were a part and member of it. Steps will have now to be taken whereby man can obtain a knowledge of Man, a self-knowledge, and so a knowledge of how he is placed in the Universe. The three dimensions have really become so abstract for man that he would find it extremely difficult to train himself to feel that by living in them he is taking part in certain movements of the Earth and the planetary system. A spiritual-scientific method of thought however can be applied to our knowledge of Man. Let us therefore begin by seeking for a right understanding of the three dimensions. It is difficult to attain; but we shall more easily raise ourselves to this spatial knowledge of Man if we consider, not the three lines of space standing at right angles, but three level planes. Consider for a moment the following. We shall readily perceive that our symmetry has something to do with our thinking. If we observe, we shall discover an elementary natural gesture that we make if we wish to express decisive thinking in dumb show. When we place the finger on the nose and move through this plane here (a drawing is made), we are moving through the vertical symmetry plane which divides us into a left and a right Man. This plane passing through the nose and through the whole body, is the plane of symmetry, and is that of which one can become conscious as having to do with all the discriminating that goes on within us, all the thinking and judging that discriminates and divides. Starting from this elementary gesture, it is actually possible to become aware of how in all one's functions as Man one has to do with this plane. Consider the function of seeing. We see with two eyes, in such a way that the lines of vision intersect. We see a point with two eyes; but we see it as one point because the lines of sight cross each other, they cut as shown in the drawing. Our human activity is from many aspects so regulated that we can only understand its regulation by reference to this plane. We can then turn to another plane which would pass through the heart and divide man back from front. In front, man is physiognomically organised, behind he is an expression of his organic being. This physiognomical-psychic structure is divided off by a plane which stands at right angles to the first. As our right and left man are divided by a plane, so too are our front and back man. We need only stretch out our arms, our hands, directing the physiognomical part of the hand (in contrast to the merely organic part) forwards and the organic part of the hands backwards, and then imagine a plane through the principal lines which thus arise, and we obtain the plane I mean. In like manner we can place a third plane which would mark off all that is contained in head and countenance from what is organised below into body and limbs. Thus we should obtain a third plane which again is at right angles to the other two. One can acquire a feeling for these three planes. How the feeling for the first is obtained has already been shown; it is to be felt as the plane of discriminative Thinking. The second plane, which divides man into front and back (anterior and posterior) would be precisely that whereby man is shown to be Man, for this plane cannot be delineated in the same way in the animal. The symmetry plane can be drawn in the animal but not the vertical plane. This second (vertical) plane would be connected with everything pertaining to human Will. The third, the horizontal, would be connected with everything pertaining to human Feeling. Let us try once more to get an elementary idea of these things and we shall see that we can arrive at something by this line of thought. Everything wherein man brings his feeling to expression, whether it be a feeling of greeting or one of thankfulness or any other form of sympathetic feeling, is in a way connected with the horizontal plane. So too we can see that in a sense the will must be brought into connection with the vertical plane mentioned. It is possible to acquire a feeling for these three planes. If a man has done this, he will be obliged to form his conception of the Universe in the sense of these three planes—just as he would, if he only regarded the three dimensions of space in an abstract way, be obliged to calculate in the mechanical-mathematical way in which Galileo or Copernicus calculated the movements and regulations in the Universe. Concrete relations will now appear to him in this Universe. He will no longer merely calculate according to the three dimensions of space; but when he has learnt to feel these three planes, he will notice that there is a difference between right and left, over and under, back and front. In mathematics it is a matter of indifference whether some object is a little further right or left, or before or behind. If we simply measure, we measure below or above, we measure right or left or we measure forward or backward. In whatever position three metres is set, it remains three metres. At most we distinguish, in order to pass from position to movement, the dimensions at right angles to one another. This we do, however, only because we cannot remain at simple measurement, for then our world would shrink to no more than a straight line. If however, we learn to describe Thinking, Feeling and Willing concretely in these three planes, and to place ourselves thus in space as psychic-spiritual beings, with our Thinking, Feeling and Willing—then just as we learn to apply to Astronomy the three dimensions of space as found in man, so do we learn to apply to Astronomy the threefold division of man as a being of soul and spirit. And it becomes possible if we have here (drawing) Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and lastly Earth, then it becomes possible, if we look at the Sun, to observe it in its outer manifestation as something separating, as a dividing element. We must think of a plane passing through the Sun, and we shall no longer regard what is above the plane and what is below as merely dimensional, but must regard the plane as a dividing plane and distinguish the planets as being above or below. Thus we shall no longer say: Mars is so many miles distant from the Sun, Venus so many miles; but we shall learn to apply the knowledge of Man to the knowledge of the Universe, and say: It is no mere question of dimensions when I say that the human head in respect of the nose is at such and such a distance from the horizontal plane which I have called the plane of Feeling, and the heart at such and such a distance; but I shall bring their position and distance above and below into connection with their formation and structure. So too I shall no longer say of Mars and Mercury that the one is at such a distance and the other at such another distance from the Sun, but I shall know that if I regard the Sun as a dividing partition, Mars being above must be of one nature and Mercury being below of another. I shall now be able to place a similar plane perpendicularly through the Sun. Thus the movements of Jupiter, let us say, or of Mars, will be such that at one time it will stand on the right of this plane and then go across it and stand on the left. If I simply proceed abstractly, according to dimensions, I shall find it is sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left, and such and such a number of miles. But if I study cosmic space concretely, as I must [study] my own being as man, it is not a matter of indifference whether a planet is at one time on the left and at another time on the right, but I say there is the same kind of difference whether it is on the right or left as there is between a left and right organ. It is not sufficient to say that the liver is so many centimetres to the right of the symmetrical axis, the stomach so many centimetres to the left, for the two are dissimilar in formation because the one is a right organ and the other a left. Here it is so, that Jupiter, according as he is on the right or the left, to the eye appears different. In the same way I might make a third plane, and must again form a judgement in accordance with that. And if I extend my knowledge of Man to the Universe, I shall be obliged, as I connected the one plane with human Thinking, and the second plane with human Feeling, to consider the third plane as connected with human Will. By all this I wanted only to show how modern cosmogony has no more than a last remnant of external abstraction when it speaks of the three planes perpendicular to one another, to which the positions and movements of the stars are quite indifferently related, and then according to these positions the whole Universe calculated out as a machine. In the astronomical conception of Galileo, only this one thing is taken into consideration for the Universe—abstract space, with its point relationships. This knowledge can however be enlarged to become an active and powerful knowledge of Man. One can say: Man is a thinking, feeling and willing being. As an external being, he is connected by Thinking with one plane, with another at right angles to it by Willing, and with a third at right angles to both by Feeling. This must apply also in the external world. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, man has really known no more than that he extends in three directions; all else is just material collected for observation. A true knowledge of Man must be regained, and indirectly a knowledge of the Cosmos by the same method. Then man will understand how Necessity and Free Will are related, and how both can apply to Man, since he is born from the Cosmos. Naturally if one only takes this last remnant of the human being—the three dimensions at right angles to one another—if that is all one wants to imagine, then the Universe appears terribly poor. Poor, infinitely poor is our present astronomical view of the Universe; and it will not become richer until we press forward to a real knowledge of Man, until we really learn to look into Man. The anthroposophical conception of the universe leads directly into a real spiritual knowledge of the matter. Do not such things as Thinking, Feeling and Willing appear to human knowledge as terribly bare abstractions? Man does not investigate himself thoroughly enough. He does not ask himself what these things are for him to which he applies the words. So much has become mere phrase. One should really ask oneself conscientiously, when using the word Thinking, whether it presents any clear idea—not to speak of Feeling and Willing. But our speech becomes clear and plain, directly we pass from the mere making of phrases, the using of lofty words, and go back to pictures; even when we take just that one picture for Thinking—putting the finger to the side of the nose! We do not need to do it always, but we know that this gesture is often naturally made when we have to think hard, just as we point the finger to the chin when we want to indicate we are paying attention! We enter this plane precisely because we wish to judge there concerning something to which we are related. We bisect our organism as it were into right and left; for we really act quite differently with our right and left sense-organs. This we can appreciate if we observe that with the left sense-organ we undertake as it were, the handling of outer objects; and in our thinking too, there is a sort of handling or feeling of external objects. With the right sense-organ we as it were ‘feel our feeling’ of them. It is then that they first become our own. We could never have attained to the ego-concept if we were not able to perceive, together with what we experience on the right, also that which we experience on the left. By simply laying the hands one over the other we have a picture of the ego-concept. It is indeed true that by beginning to use clear images instead of living merely in phraseology, man will become inwardly richer and will gain the faculty of visualising the Universe in greater detail. Having entered on this path, we shall find that the Universe comes to life again for us, and that we ourselves as human beings share in its life. Then we shall learn again how to build a bridge between Universe and Man. When this is done man will be able to perceive whether there is in the Universe an impulse of Natural Necessity for all that is in Man, or whether the Universe in some measure leaves us free; whether it wholly determines us, or leaves us in a certain sense free. As long as we live in abstractions, we cannot build a bridge between Moral and Natural Law. We must be able to ask ourselves how far Natural Law extends in the Universe, and where something enters in which we cannot include under the aspect of Natural Law. Then we arrive at a relation which has its significance for Man too, a relation between what comes under Natural Law and what is Free and Moral. In this way we learn to connect a meaning with the statement: “Mars is a planet far from the Sun, Venus a planet nearer the Sun.” By simply stating their distances in abstract numbers we have said nothing or at least very little, for to define in this way according to the methods of modern Astronomy, is equivalent to saying: I look at the line which passes through man's two arms and hands, and I speak of an organ that is 2.5 decimetres from this line.—Now this organ may be so and so far under the line, and another organ so and so far above it; it is not, however, the distance that makes the difference, but the fact that one organ is above and the other below. Were there no difference between above and below, there would be no difference between the nose or eyes and the stomach! The eyes are only eyes because they are above, and the stomach is only a stomach because it is below, this line. The inner nature of the organ is conditioned by the position. Similarly the inner nature of Mars is qualified by its position outside the Sun's orbit, and that of Venus by its position within the Sun's orbit. If one does not understand the essential difference between an organ in the human head and an organ in the human trunk—the one lying over and the other under this line—then one cannot know that Mars and. Venus, or Mars and Mercury are essentially different. The ability to think of the Universe as an organism depends on our learning to understand the hieroglyph of the organism we have before us. We must learn to perceive Man as a hieroglyph of the Universe, for he gives us the opportunity of seeing near at hand how different are above and below, left and right, before and behind. We must learn this first in Man, and we shall then find it in the Universe. Because the modern view of the Universe held by Natural Science really gives a cosmogony omitting Man—recognising him only as the highest of the animals, that is to say an abstraction—because Man is not in it at all, therefore to this conception the Universe appears as a mathematical picture only, in which the universal origin of Freedom and Morality can never be recognised. It is, however, of the utmost importance that we should learn to perceive scientifically the connection between Moral Law and Natural Necessity. Today I have endeavoured to show you, in perhaps rather subtle concepts, how a knowledge of the Universe is to be gained from a Knowledge of Man. To the doctors I was able to show in a strictly scientific way how this path has to be sought in Medicine, Physiology and Biology. In these lectures it will be our task to perceive how it must be sought if we are to form aright our general understanding of the world; and the social life in which we find ourselves in these times has great need of such understanding. |
| 202. The Shaping of the Human Form out of Cosmic and Earthly Forces
26 Nov 1920, Dornach Translated by Charles Davy |
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| The difficulty in spreading Spiritual Science lies in this—that today here and there some society may organise lectures on Anthroposophy, or perhaps on its social aspect, the Threefold Commonwealth, and people go to hear the lectures, afterwards attending others and still others—without any desire to come to a definite inner decision. |
| 202. The Shaping of the Human Form out of Cosmic and Earthly Forces
26 Nov 1920, Dornach Translated by Charles Davy |
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I have often spoken of how man's bodily form is an expression of the course of his entire life. Anyone who understands the human head in the right way can recognise that the special moulding, the special formation of the head is connected with former lives which have been passed through by the human being before he descended to his present life on Earth. And when we consider the limb-organisation, extending it—naturally to cover the organs associated with the limbs, then we have something which, after certain metamorphoses, will underlie the formation beyond death of the future human head. At the same time, however, the human form points to man's connection with the Cosmos. As the human being stands before us today, we can certainly say that the particular formation of his head is a metamorphosis of his previous limb-formation. But the fact of his having any such formation of the head as the one he carries around is the result of his cosmic experiences before he set foot on the Earth. In essentials, the head-formation is an outcome of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions; whereas the limb-man is a starting-point for the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions. It is only the breast-man, embracing all that belongs to the present rhythmical system, who is the real man of the Earth. Thus we can say: What we have before us in the human head is formed out of the three preceding planetary embodiments of the Earth; and the starting-point for its subsequent embodiments is all that underlies man's limbs today. As a man goes through life between death and rebirth, he is repeating spiritually his experiences during the ages of Saturn, Sun, Moon. He takes his organism back from its earthly form to what it was as Saturn organism, Sun organism, Moon organism. Similarly; his limb-organism, as fashioned on Earth, will be further organised physically, will go through reorganisation, during the embodiments of Earth as Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. These things have, therefore, a human earthly aspect and also a cosmic one. Hence we can study the formation of the human head while keeping in mind the relation of man's essential being to the Cosmos. Now what came about during the Saturn-evolution and the Sun-evolution is certainly rather remote from our study of man; and so we are less able to form an opinion of it from our earthly point of view. On the other hand we can form a vivid idea of what took place during the old Moon-evolution, for this is to a certain extent repeated in the interaction between the Earth and the present Moon, and we can therefore study the human head in relation to that. We then come to certain secrets concerning the formation of the human organism. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Let us imagine—in the form of a diagram—a man standing on the Earth; he is thus not in the centre of the Earth but distant from it by the length of the Earth's radius. And if we draw the human head diagrammatically we can say: As the Moon moves round the Earth, it moves also round man's head. Naturally this is expressed diagrammatically and not in the correct proportions. Now let us assume the Moon, as full Moon, to be here; then the light it is always said to reflect from the Sun will stream to the man. In this way the light of the Sun has an effect upon the man—and when I speak here of the ‘man’ I am always referring to the human head. On the opposite side we have the new Moon, and no light then reaches the man, who on this side is, as it were, left to himself. Less demand is made upon him by the stimulation of the light from outside; hence he is left more to his own inner development. And if you put the first quarter here and the last quarter there—the waxing Moon and the waning Moon—then from these two directions less stimulation is exercised by the light upon the man than from the direction of the full Moon and more than from that of the new Moon. Moreover in its course round the Earth the Moon travels through the Zodiac. Because of this the light is modified in a certain way—I might perhaps say differentiated, for the moonlight becomes different according to whether it comes from a position behind which there is, for example, the Ram, or from one behind which the Virgin stands. The moonlight is therefore differentiated in accordance with the sign of the Zodiac through which the Moon is passing. Now imagine the diagram in relation to a relevant point in human development: imagine, that is, that through some course of events there establishes itself in the mother's body the spirit-germ of a human being, coming straight from his development between death and rebirth. During this time the Moon is working on the embryo. Then, you have, as a result of the Moon working in from the Cosmos—in connection naturally with other cosmic bodies—the configuration of the human head in the body of the mother. The configuration of the human head is altogether the work of the Moon. Perhaps you will say, quite rightly : But surely we have not to assume that it is always the full Moon which sheds its rays on eyes or nose, and that the back of the head, which should depend on inner development and not on the external world, is always exposed to the influence of the new Moon? It is true that this is not unconditionally so. In essentials, however, the full Moon is active on some part of the face, whereas the activity of the new Moon is concentrated on the back of the head. In the body of the mother, too, the child has a special position in relation to the Cosmos. According to how the Moon sheds its rays more or less obliquely on that part of the embryo destined to become the face, the human being will have certain of those gifts bestowed upon him which depend upon the head. He will have different gifts, physically, if the bright moonlight sheds its beams on his mouth rather than upon his eyes. This is connected with a person's talents, in so far as they depend on the Cosmos. But the essential thing to be borne in mind today is that during the embryonic development of the human being the chief influences proceeding from the Moon are those that give form to the human ovum, starting with the formation of the head. For in the human being the head is the first thing to take shape. This is brought about by the Moon—that is, by the movement and activity remaining over from the old Moon and from the other previous embodiments of the Earth. You see here how the head is cosmically connected with the external world; how during the development of the embryo the human being is caught up in that cosmic condition to which the tone is given essentially by the Moon and its activity. This comes about through the movement made by the Moon, through the encirclement of the head by the Moon, which occurs ten times during the human being's embryonic development. Thus the Moon first passes by and works upon the formation of the human face—leaving it then in peace to continue its growing. During this period the Moon retires. When the formation of the face has been in abeyance for some time, the Moon re-appears and gives it a fresh impetus. It does this ten times. And during these ten lunar months the human head is formed rhythmically out of the Cosmos. Thus the human being waits for ten times twenty-eight days in the mother's body, under the influence of cosmic forces mediated through the moon. Now what really happens here? As a being of soul and spirit a man descends to the personality he has chosen out of the whole Cosmos to be his mother. And from that time the Moon takes over the formation of his head. Were he to remain within the mother's body for twelve lunar months, a quite self-enclosed, circular formation would result. But he remains there for only ten lunar months. Hence something of his development is left incomplete, and after birth all that works in out of the Cosmos is occupied with this. Thus, before birth, ten-twelfths of the cosmic forces work upon the forming of the human head, the remaining two-twelfths being left over for the formative work which continues outside the mother's body—though it actually begins during the embryonic period. In addition to the cosmic forces there are others, and these come from the Earth itself: they do not work on the head but on the limb-system. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] If you imagine this, here, to be the Earth (diagram above) and this to be a diagram of man's limb-system, then the forces which in the limbs continue their activity inwardly are essentially earthly, telluric. Into arms and hands, in legs and feet, there play forces of the Earth, and this process, continued inwardly, becomes metabolism. But this inward metabolism is outwardly an interchange of forces. When you move your arm or your leg the movement is not simple; it has to do with the forces of the Earth. When you move your legs in walking you have always to overcome the force of gravity, and what happens results from the interplay between these forces of gravity and the forces working inwardly. Whereas in metabolism these inward forces enter into interplay with the chemical properties of the Earth-substance, there is an interchange between the forces in arms and legs and the forces of the Earth. These activities are connected with temporal conditions different from those prevailing in the mother's womb. In the mother's body we have ten times twenty-eight days—that is, ten moons or 280 days. Here we have to do essentially with the course of the day. Where the development of the limb-man is concerned we have to do with the course of the year. We see also how in their earliest stage the human limbs are developed with a continually decreasing rapidity. A man needs actually twenty-eight years for their full development, though this is certainly not so evident during the final seven years as it is up to the age of twenty-one. He needs twenty-eight years to develop his limb-system outside his mother's body, though it is within the mother's body that the development begins. Just as the man of head is connected with the past and is able to come into being because the relation of the Moon to the Earth recapitulates the past evolutions of Saturn, Sun, Moon, so is the limb-man connected with the Earth, but actually with the preparation for the transformations of Earth into Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. Hence a human being cannot form his head directly on the Earth, for over this the Earth has no power. It is only because he brings with him the forces from before birth, before conception, and is then sheltered within the mother's body from his earthly environment, with the Cosmos working upon him by way of the Moon—only because of all this can the head come into being as a higher metamorphosis of the limb-man of the previous incarnation. The man of the limb-system, arising as he does under the influence of the Earth, cannot come to completion; he can do nothing for the head. During Earth-evolution he is incapable of what he will be able to do during the Venus-evolution. Just as the stag casts his antlers, the human being will then dispense with his head, and out of the rest of himself develop a different one—certainly an enviable lot for the Venus-man! But this is what actually appears to spiritual vision as the future condition of the human being. Things that are part of reality appear grotesque compared with those having earthly limitations, but reality far outstrips what is accessible to our narrow earthly understanding. We must face the fact that our earthly power of observation gives us merely part of reality, and that when we observe only earthly conditions we really know nothing of the human being. Thus in man we have a cosmic being who, it is true, is formed for the main part in the body of the mother; and we have an Earth-being who is formed, configured, differentiated, under the influence of earthly conditions, while the Sun apparently takes its course round the Earth, passing the constellations of the Zodiac on its way. Hence you will recognise in the human being two contrasting conditions, one of a cosmic nature, the other earthly. The cosmic nature works in such a way that the human being would receive from the Cosmos a head that was perfectly round. The face is formed by the sunlight shining upon it by way of the Moon, and when the Sun turns its light away, the basis for the back of the head is created. The spherical form that would have been imparted by the Cosmos is differentiated. Were the kindly Moon not there to give shape to the human head, a human being would be born as an undifferentiated sphere. On the other hand, because the mother is on the Earth, the Earth itself has its effect. The reason why the human being as embryo does not develop only a head is that the Earth is already at work during the time when the head is being given its form. Were he to be subject to the working of the Earth alone, however, and the Cosmos were to have no effect, he would be just a pillar. The human being is at the mercy of these two tendencies—either of being made a pillar, a radius, by the Earth, or of receiving a spherical form from the Cosmos. Circle and radius actually underlie the forming of a human being. The fact that he is not a pillar, that he is not born with feet joined together, with hands joined together, is due to the course of the year being involved, due to winter and summer working in spiritually, indicating the various cosmic relations between the Earth and its surroundings. The difference between winter and summer is like the difference between the new Moon and the full. Just as new Moon and full Moon, in their different ways, determine the nature of the face and of the back of the head, so do those cosmic forces coming to expression in winter and summer, spring and autumn, determine the configuration of our limb-system, so that we have two legs and are not just a pillar. In order that in our head we should not be entirely cosmic, but cosmic toned down by the earthly, and in order that our limb-system should not be entirely of the Earth but something earthly moderated by the cosmic, the yearly course of the Earth is cosmically conditioned. We have therefore a cosmic nature influenced by the earthly and an earthly nature cosmically influenced. Were we not in our cosmic being influenced by the earthly, as man we should be a round ball; were we not, as man of the limb-system, as earthly man, influenced by the Cosmos, we should be a pillar. This combined working of cosmic and earthly is expressed in our human form. No-one understands the human form who has no wish to take into consideration the interplay of Earth and Cosmos. It is wonderful how the human being is an expression of the whole world; an expression of the world of the stars in his form, which is at the same time an image of those forces that stream from the Earth and have a conditioning effect upon him. Imagine man's earthly nature without this cosmic influence: we do not carry this earthly nature within us but it works in us. As a basic influence it streams from the centre-point of the Earth, sending its forces from there. That which makes its appearance in our human strength, working there also as will, has from ancient times been called by a word that might be rendered as ‘strength’ or ‘force’. The formative influence from the Cosmos, which we have to picture through in the circle underlying especially the form of our head, works in our head without coming to full expression because of being toned down by the earthly element: and this from olden days has been called ‘beauty’. So we see that taken as a whole the influences at work in a human being have a value transcending both the physical and the moral, for they have a value which embraces both. The strength that comes from the Earth and works in us as muscular force is physical and moral at the same time. The beauty shining around us, the beauty underlying our head, appears in our head as the beauty of thoughts, and this, too, is related to both the physical and the moral. Between these—between, that is, what we are as earthly beings toned down by the Cosmos and what we are as cosmic beings toned down by the earthly—there is the trunk-man. What is this trunk- or torso-man? He is essentially the rhythmic man who causes the cosmic to swing down continually towards the earthly and the earthly to swing up towards the cosmic. We have circling round in us a continuous stream from the limb-system and this finds its way to the head through the breathing, while a stream from the head makes its way through the breathing to the limb system. So that there is always this wave movement, this surging to and fro between limb-system and head. It is brought about by our rhythmic system, working through the heart and lungs and the circulation of the blood. How then does the circulation arise? It comes from the interplay between straight line and circle, receiving its form from the Zodiac and the planets. A force proceeding from the head tends to send the blood round a circular path, while a force from the limb-system tends to keep it in a straight line. From the interaction of these two forces there arises in us, under the impetus of breathing, the particular course followed by the blood. This rhythmical system is the mediator between the cosmic and the earthly in man, so that through it is woven a connecting link in him between the cosmic, or the beautiful, and the strength that is of the Earth. The link thus woven in the trunk-man, understood in terms of soul and spirit, has from ancient times been given the name of ‘wisdom’. The beauty of the Cosmos projected into the human being is the wisdom living in his thoughts. But the moral force coming from the strength of the Earth by way of heart and soul becomes moral wisdom. In man's rhythmical system, earthly wisdom and cosmic wisdom meet. Man is an expression of the whole Cosmos, and where there is the will to understand this configuration, it can be understood. In so far as man is formed out of cosmic mysteries, he is able to see into them, and can even perceive a certain connection with them in earthly life itself. Consider the cosmic beauty that works into a man by way of his head: there you have the feminine contribution; and you have the male contribution in the force that appears in a man's earthly strength. You are then able to say: In the act of fructification a union is consummated between the cosmic and the terrestrial. There can be no understanding of the nature of man's task on Earth unless we perceive the particular way in which he is formed. For then indeed we see that the head has its form because the earthly forces are at first unable to work on the human being; you see that he brings his pre-natal being into the realm of Earth and that in the mother's body an extra-terrestrial influence works formatively upon him by way of the Moon. Strength or force works from the Earth and forms the limb-system without being able to bring it to completion, so that the limb-system has to pass through death. For the forces in the limb-system have to be spiritualised, imbued with soul. Beyond the Earth, accordingly, between death and a new birth, they develop further by taking on, in soul-spiritual terms, the form of the head. It is only with the help of the Jupiter and Venus forces the head can arise out of the limb-system in this way. Earthly forces are not the determining factor in a man from birth to death. Those that worked previously on Saturn, Sun, Moon have by then become spiritual, and must be developed spiritually between death and rebirth; and that which lies beyond death has to be spiritualised also—then the future can grow out of the past, then man's limb-organisation can become head. We may therefore say : A man dies so that in the spiritual world he can become able to bring to expression the form which, partly toned down by the earthly, can be expressed by virtue of having gone through the conditions of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Here on Earth a man can experience as his limb-system only the earthly nature developed through his rhythmical system. But in his limb-system he is forming the future. This cannot be completed; he has to die and become head again, and the form of his head is prepared at first in pre-earthly spheres. Thus the form of a human being is connected with repeated earth-lives. Because physically he is born as a being who has acquired his form during the conditions on Saturn, Sun and Moon; because he receives from the spiritual world his tendency to express in spherical form his experiences on Saturn, Sun and Moon, his head on Earth—since it is not of the Earth—is continually giving him over to death. These things which find expression in a man's repeated lives on Earth are intimately connected with cosmic evolution. It is not true that the things we have touched upon today, and shall be going into further tomorrow and the day after, are beyond human understanding. Human beings can understand them, but they have to be investigated through Spiritual Science. Everyone who gives free play to the sound development of thought can understand them. Yet one is always hearing that there can be no immediate understanding of spiritual-scientific matters. if anyone says: ‘These things have been told to me by a spiritual investigator, but I cannot look into them for myself’, it is just as if it were complained that after matriculating a boy could not cope with the differential calculus.—Everyone can learn what Spiritual Science has to say, just as anyone can learn in principle to apply the differential calculus—though the latter is more difficult than the former. It is not true that because we are not clairvoyant we cannot understand these matters. Just as we have no need for clairvoyance to use the differential calculus, we have no need of it to see into the cosmic connection with the external world. We have only to bring sound concepts to bear. The matter is even the reverse of what is so often said. Someone, for; example, may say: One man has a certain conception of the world, another takes a different view : how can one know which is right?—If you are consistent, if you follow up everything, taking note of what has been said, you will find that only one conception is possible. You cannot argue about beauty, wisdom, strength, and what they mean. For each has only one meaning. The fact that the formation of our head has a peripheral character, and that in the rest of us the element of strength is present in radial form these things always have the same meaning. There is nothing here to be discussed, the facts are quite clear. The difficulty in spreading Spiritual Science lies in this—that today here and there some society may organise lectures on Anthroposophy, or perhaps on its social aspect, the Threefold Commonwealth, and people go to hear the lectures, afterwards attending others and still others—without any desire to come to a definite inner decision. They take the content of Spiritual Science as something on a par with that of other movements. But with Spiritual Science this cannot be done though it may be done with other world-conceptions, one being rather better, another worse. They all get a hearing; people, as it were, nibble at them. But that won't do where Spiritual Science is concerned; there one has to make up one's mind, for it goes to the root of things. There is need for that strenuous exertion of the will which leads to decisions; which avoids distractions and is determined to get down to fundamentals. This will not be accomplished by veering between one world-conception and another, nibbling here, nibbling there. Spiritual Science calls for energy and thoroughness and therefore has against it the spirit of the times, all the slovenliness and weakness of the times. It demands a strength and clarity of spirit for which people today have no liking; they find it disturbing, uncongenial. In primeval days men came to these things with instinctive knowledge; and the old documents—which our scholars study without understanding them—are full of indications that their wisdom embraced something like these relationships between man and the Cosmos. Then this faded away. Humanity relapsed into chaos. But from this chaos man must rescue himself through his own will-forces; out of this chaos he must consciously re-discover his connection with the Cosmos—and he can do it. At the beginning of this lecture I told you how the head cannot be understood if its cosmic origin is not taken into account; nor can the limb-man be understood unless his earthly formation is considered. Both find their balance in the breast-man, the rhythmical organisation, which is continually trying to make the straight circular and the circle into a straight line. When you look at the bloodstream you have the straight, and the tendency to make a straight line of the circle, too; how the course of the blood arises depends on the movement of the stars, and so on. The form is connected with the constellations, the movement with the movement of the planets. This has been referred to from other points of view. Now what happens to the human heart and soul when knowledge of this kind is absorbed? We are bound to say that for those who take it in the right way it becomes as clearly evident as the truths of mathematics. These are certainly evident though the higher truths will not be evident to a fifteen-year old boy; and it is the same with the things we have been discussing. On the other hand these things can have a decisive influence on our feeling and perceiving. Out of this wisdom there arises a feeling for the divine. It is only a knowledge that keeps to the surface of things which can be irreligious, not a knowledge that goes into them deeply. If we look once more at man's connection with the Cosmos, in the starry heavens above all we see beauty as an expression of spiritual entity, and then we become able to imprint the beauty of things on our art. Then in art there will not be merely external nature as seen by the senses, but with this deeply penetrating knowledge we shall in fact reach what Spiritual Science is. And we shall then appreciate something I said in the introductory lecture to this course—how here at the Goetheanum the unity of science, art and religion is sought. What is said by the one from whom the Goetheanum has its name?
That means: Let him have the religion that comes from without; but anyone who possesses the essentials of science and art has religion from within—that is Goethe's conviction.
hence those who are striving, in the way referred to, for the unity of religion, art and science, do well to call their Building the ‘Goetheanum’. But to comprehend what has arisen here on this foundation is apparently no task for the superficiality of the age, which looks condescendingly on everything and merely nibbles at one thing after another. Spiritual Science calls for decisions—for decisions that are necessary because the spirit of this science has the will to penetrate into the depths of the world. This must be grasped, too, out of the depths of the human heart. |
| 179. Historical Necessity and Freewill: Lecture V
15 Dec 1917, Dornach Translator Unknown |
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| Then it will be seen clearly that a human being's deeds, let us say, in a certain decade of a certain century, are the consequence of what he experienced before entering into his incarnation on earth; they are in no sense the consequence of events that occurred in the course of decades of physical experience on the earth, and so on. Spiritual Science, in the meaning of Anthroposophy, will have to bring more depth and more life—especially in regard to historical, social, and moral life—into the sphere of history above all. |
| 179. Historical Necessity and Freewill: Lecture V
15 Dec 1917, Dornach Translator Unknown |
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If we wish to understand what lies at the foundation of the two impulses that penetrate so deeply into human life—that of the so-called free will and of the so-called necessity—then we must add still other thoughts to the various ideas already gained as a foundation. This I will do today, in order that tomorrow we may be in a position to draw the conclusion, or inference, in regard to the concept of free will and necessity in the social, ethical-moral, and historical processes of human life. In discussing such things it becomes more and more evident that people—especially modern people—strive to embrace the highest, most important and significant things with the most primitive kinds of thoughts. It is taken for granted (I have often mentioned this) that certain things must be known in order to understand a clock; someone who has not the slightest idea of how the wheels of a clock work together, etc., will hardly attempt to explain, on the spur of the moment, the details of a clock's mechanism. Yet we wish to be competent judges of free will and necessity in all situations of life without having learned anything fundamental about these things. We prefer to remain ignorant concerning the most important and most essential things, which can only be understood if we consider their whole relationship to human nature, and we wish to know and judge everything imaginable of our own accord. This is particularly the desire of our times. When it is shown that the human being is a complicated being, organized in manifold ways, a being that penetrates deeply, on the one hand, into all that is connected with the physical plane, and on the other, into all that is connected with the spiritual world, then people often object that such things are dry and intellectual, and that the most important and essential things must be grasped in quite another way. The world will have to learn (perhaps just the present catastrophic events may teach us something) how much lies hidden in man and in his relationship with the course of the world's evolution. For years we have emphasized that we can differentiate roughly in man what we may call his physical nature, or his physical body; his etheric body, or the body of formatives forces, as I have called it; his astral body, which is already psychic; and the actual ego. We have emphasized recently from the most varied points of view that—in reality—man, as he lives between waking and sleeping, in his usual waking day-consciousness, has some knowledge only of the impressions given to him by his senses, and of his thoughts; but he dreams away the real contents of his life of feeling, and sleeps away the real contents of his life of the will. Dream and sleep stretch into the world of waking life; during our usual waking consciousness, our feeling life is hardly more than a dream, and the real contents of our will reach our consciousness just as little as a dreamless sleep. Through our feelings, through the contents of our will, we dive down into the world (we have pointed this out specially during these considerations) in which we live together with the dead, in the midst of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, Archai, etc. As soon as we live in a feeling—and we live constantly in feelings—all that lives in the kingdom of the dead lives with us in the sphere, or in the realm of feeling. Now something else must be added to this. In the life of ordinary waking consciousness we speak of our ego. But in reality we can only speak of this ego in a very unreal sense as far as our usual waking consciousness is concerned. For what is the real nature and being of this ego? The usual waking consciousness cannot gain knowledge of this. When the clairvoyant dives down consciously into the true being of the ego, he will find that the true ego of man is of a will-like nature. What man possesses in his everyday consciousness is only an idea of the ego. This is why it is so easy for the scientific psychologists to do away entirely with this ego although, on the other hand, this is really nonsense. These scientists and psychologists say that the ego develops gradually and that the human being acquires this ego in the course of his individual development. In this way he does not acquire the ego itself, but only the idea of the ego. It is easy to eliminate the ego, because for the everyday consciousness it is merely a thought, a reflection of the true, genuine ego. The real ego lives in the world in which the true reality of our will also lives. And what we call our astral body, what we designate as the actual soul life, lives in the same sphere as our life of feelings. If you bear in mind the things that we have thus considered, you will see that we dive down with our ego and our astral body into the same region that we share with the dead. When we penetrate clairvoyantly into our true ego, we are also among the egos of the dead, as well as among the egos of the so-called living. We must realize such things quite clearly, in order to grasp to what an extent man lives, with his everyday consciousness, in the so-called world of appearance, or in Maya, as it is called by a oriental term. We are consciously awake in the world of our senses, in the world of our thoughts; but the sense impulses give us only that portion of the world that is spread out as Nature. And our world of thoughts gives us only that which is in us and corresponds to our own nature between birth and death. That which is our eternal nature remains in the world that we share with the dead. When we enter the life of the physical plane through incarnation, it remains indeed in the world in which also the dead live. In order to understand these things fully we must grasp thoughts which are not so easy to digest (but these things must be said because they are so)—thoughts that cost us an effort to think out. Man has no such thoughts in the course of his everyday waking consciousness. He prefers to limit his knowledge to that which is stretched out in space and that which takes its course in Time. A frequent pathological symptom is this one: to imagine even the spiritual world spatially, although these thoughts may be nebulous, thin and misty; yet we somehow wish to imagine is spatially; we wish to think of souls flying about in space, and so on. We must go beyond the ideas of space and time to more complicated ideas, if we really wish to penetrate into these things. Today I wish to draw your attention to something that is very important for the understanding of the whole of human life. Let us bear in mind once more the fact that—roughly speaking—we possess this four-fold nature—the physical body, the body of formative forces or etheric body, the astral body, and the ego. Now, when someone speaks from the standpoint of the usual waking consciousness, he may ask:—How old is a person—How old is a certain person A? Someone may give his age, let us say 35, and he may believe that he has made an important statement. In stating that a certain person is 35 years old he has, in fact, said something of importance for the physical plane and for the usual waking consciousness; but for the spiritual world, in other words, for the etheric being of man, this implies only a part of the reality. When you say: I am 35 years old—you only say this in regard to your physical body. You must say: My physical body is 35 years old—then this will be correct. But these words express nothing at all as far as the etheric body, or the body of formative forces is concerned, and nothing at all as far as the other members of the human being are concerned. For it is an illusion, it is indeed quite fantastic to think that your ego, for instance, is 35 years old, when your physical body is 35 years old. You see, here we must bear in mind different speeds, different rapidities in the development of the various members. The following figures will make you realize this. A human being is, let us say, 7 years old; this means nothing less than this:--his physical body has reached the age of 7 years. His etheric body, his body of formative forces, is not yet 7 years old, for his body of formative forces does not maintain the same speed as the physical body and has not yet reached this age. We are not aware of such things just because we imagine time as one continuous stream, and thus we cannot form the thought that different things maintain different speeds within the course of time. This physical body that is 7 years old has developed according to a certain speed. The etheric body develops more slowly, the astral body still more slowly, and slowest of all, the ego. The etheric body is only 5 years and 3 months old when the physical body is 7 years old, because it develops more slowly. The astral body is 3 years and 6 months old, and the ego, 1 year and 9 months. Thus you must say to yourself—when a child is 7 years old, its ego is only 1 year and 9 months old. This ego undergoes a slower development on the physical plane. On the physical plane this ego develops at a slower pace; it is a slower pace, the same pace that we find in our life with the dead. Why do we not grasp what takes place in the stream of the experiences of the dead? Because we do not grow accustomed to the slower pace of the dead, and do not admit this into our thoughts and especially into our feelings, in order to hold them fast. Hence, if someone is 28 years old as far as his physical body is concerned, then his ego is only 7 years old. As far as your ego is concerned, which is the essential part of your being, you thus maintain a much slower pace in the course of development than that of the physical body. You see, the difficulty consists in the fact that, generally, we consider speed, or velocities, merely as outer velocities. When things move one beside another, we say that one thing moves more quickly and the other one more slowly because we use Time as a comparison. But here the speed within Time is different. Without this insight into the fact that the different members of the human being have different speeds in their development, it is impossible to grasp the connections with the true deeper being of man. From this you will see how in everyday consciousness people simply throw together entirely different things contained in human nature. Man consists of this four-fold being, and the four members of this being are so different from one another that they even have different ages. But man is under a great illusion in making everything depend on his physical body. He says something that has absolutely no meaning whatever for the spiritual world, in stating that his ego is 28 years old, when he is 28 according to his physical body. His statement would only have a meaning if he would say:—My ego is 7 years old—in the case of the ego, a year is naturally four times as long as in the case of the physical body. One might also say that the age of the four different members of the human being must be reckoned according to four entirely different measurements of time; for the ego, a year is simply four times as long as for the physical body. Pictorially you might conceive this as a projection from the physical plane—for instance, one human being may normally become 28 years old, while another child may grow more slowly and after 28 years be like a child of 7. Thus the whole matter appears at first like an abstract truth. But it is a fundamental reality in man. Just consider that our ego is the bearer of what we call our understanding, or our thinking consciousness of self. When our understanding and our conscious thinking are within our ego, then this understanding and conscious thinking are really essentially younger than we ourselves apparently are, according to our physical body. This is indeed so. But this will show you that when a human being of 28 gives the impression of one whose understanding has developed to the age of 28, only one fourth of this understanding is really his own. It cannot be helped; when we have a certain quantity of understanding at 28, only a quarter of this is our own; the rest belongs to the universe, to the world in which we are submerged through our astral body, through our etheric body, and through our physical body. But we only know directly something of these bodies through ideas, through sense perceptions, in other words, again within the ego. This means that during our development as human beings between birth and death we are indeed mere apparitions of a reality. We make the impression of being four times as clever as we really are. This is true. All we possess, in addition to this one fourth, we owe to what holds sway in the historical, social, and moral processes within that world we dream away and sleep away. Dream and sleep impulses, which we have in common with the universe, seethe up, above the horizon of our being and fructify this fourth part of our understanding and soul, and make it four times as strong as it really is. You see at this point arises the illusion concerning the freedom of man. Man is a free being; he is, indeed. But only the real, true man is a free being. That fourth part, of which I have just spoken, is a free being. Other beings play into the remaining three fourths; these cannot be free. This gives rise to the delusion in regard to freedom so that we continually ask:—Is man free or is he not free? Man is free when he connects this idea of freedom with the one fourth of his being, in the sense in which I have just explained it. If the human being wishes to have this freedom as an impulse of his own, then he must develop this fourth part in a corresponding, independent way. In usual life, this fourth part cannot assert itself, for the simple reason that it is overpowered by the other three fourths. In the remaining three fourths is active all that man calls his desires, his appetites, his emotions and passions. These slay his freedom, for what is contained in the universe in the form of impulses works through these desires, emotions and passions. Now the question arises:—What shall we do to make this one fourth of our soul-life, which is a reality within us, really free? We must place this one fourth in relationship with that which is independent of the remaining three fourths. I have tried to answer this question philosophically in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, by attempting to show how man can only realize the impulse of freedom within himself, when he places his actions, his deeds, entirely under the influence of pure thought, when he reaches the point of transforming impulses of pure thought into impulses of action, into impulses which are not in any way dependent upon the outer world for their development. All that which is developed out of the outer world does not allow us to realize freedom. Only that which develops in our thinking, independently of the outer world, as the motive of our actions, enables us to realize freedom. Where do such motives come from? Where does that which does not come from the outer world come from? It comes out of the spiritual world. The human being need not be clairvoyantly conscious in every situation of life of how these impulses come from the spiritual world; they may nevertheless be within him all the same. But he will necessarily conceive these impulses in a somewhat different way than they must be conceived in reality. When we rise in clairvoyant consciousness to the first stage of the spiritual world, we come to the imaginative world; the second stage is the world of inspiration, as you know; the third stage, the world of intuition. Instead of allowing the impulses of our will or of our actions to rise out of our physical body, our astral body, and etheric body, we can receive them as imaginations, behind which stand inspirations and intuitions. That is, if we receive no impulses from our bodies, but only from the spiritual world. This does not need to be the conscious clairvoyant perception: “Now I will something and behind this stand intuition, inspiration, and imagination.”—but, instead, the result appears as an idea, as a pure thought, and has the appearance of an idea created within the element of fantasy. Because this is so, because such an idea, which lies at the foundation of free actions must appear to everyday consciousness as an idea created out of the element of fantasy, I call it moral fantasy in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. (That which lies at the foundation of free actions.) What, then, is this moral fantasy? This moral fantasy is the reverse of a mirrored reflection. What lies spread out around us as the outer physical reality is a mirrored reflection; physical reality sends us reflections of things. Moral fantasy is the image, through which we do not see. For this reason, things appear to us as fantasy. Behind them, however, stand the real impulses—imagination, inspiration, intuition—which are active. When we do not know that they are active, but only receive the influences into our usual consciousness, then this appears as fantasy. And these results of moral fantasy, these incentives to action, which do not lie in desires, passions and emotions—are free. But how can we attain them? Moral fantasy can also be developed by a human being who is not clairvoyant. Everything that implies a real progress for humanity has always been born out of moral fantasy, insofar as this progress lay within the ethical sphere. The point in question is that man first develops a feeling, and then an enhanced feeling (we shall hear immediately, what is to be understood exactly by “enhanced feeling”)—that he is not merely here on this earth in order to accomplish things which concern him personally, or individually, but in order to accomplish things through which the will of the Time Spirits can be realized. It appears as if something quite special were implied when one says: Man must realize the will of the Time Spirits. But a time will come when people will understand this much better than now. And a time will come when the contents of human teaching will not be that of the present. At present only ideas dealing with nature can be conveyed even to the most educated people; for what is imparted to people in regard to ethical and social life is in most cases an unreal, schematic abstraction; indeed, the greatest abstraction. In this connection we have not yet attained what earlier ages already possessed. Only with great difficulty can a modern man immerse himself in earlier times. Earlier times possessed myths—myths that were connected with the vital life of the people, myths that penetrated into poetry, into art, into all manner of things. In Greece one spoke of Oedipus, of Hercules, and of other heroes, one tried to emulate those who had done things which were exemplary deeds, and first deeds, and one wished to tread in their footprints. Everyone wished to tread in these footprints. The thread of ideas, the thread of thought and feeling, led backwards. One felt at one with those long dead. What went out as an impulse from those who had died was told in myths; and these men lived in experiencing, in becoming one with the impulses of these myths. Something similar must again be created and will be created if the impulses of spiritual science are rightly understood. Except that, in the future, souls will gaze forward much more than backward. The contents of public teaching must be that which binds human beings together with the creative activity of the Time, and above all, with the impulses of the Time Spirit, the corresponding Being from the Hierarchy of the Archai, concerning whom I have said, in an earlier description, that the so-called dead, as well as the living, are connected with him. People will learn in the public teaching of the future the meaning of such a period of culture as the one that began in the 15th century and closed the Greco-Latin period; in this fifth post-Atlantean period people will learn to know the real intentions of the universal World-All. They will take up the impulses of this fifth post-Atlantean period and they will know:—This must be realized between the 15th century and one of the centuries in a coming millennium. They will know: We belong to our period of culture in such a way that the impulses of this coming age stream through us. In future, even the children, as they learn to name the flowers and the stars (they do this less today—but it is at least something outwardly real) will learn to take up the real, spiritual impulses of the period. First they must be educated to do this. What is told as “history” today must first cease to be called “history.” In not too distant a future, instead of speaking of all the things contained in history as it is told today, people will speak of the spiritual impulses standing behind the historical evolution, impulses which are dreamed by human beings. These are the spiritual impulses that call man to freedom, and make him free, because they raise him to the world from which intuition, inspiration, and imagination come. For what happens outwardly on the physical plane, what constitutes outer history (I have explained this even in public lectures) loses its meaning as soon as it has occurred; in reality it does not justify our saying that the former event is always the cause of the latter. There is nothing more senseless than to recount history by describing, for instance, the deeds of Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century, and then assuming that the events after Napoleon's exile are the consequence of Napoleon's actions. Nothing is more senseless than this! Descriptions of Napoleon imply exactly the same, as far as reality is concerned, as the description of a human corpse three days after death, as far as the dead man's life is concerned. What is now called “history” is a “corpse-history” compared with reality, even though this “corpse-history” has a great importance in the minds of many people. What happens outwardly becomes a reality only when it is revealed in its development from spiritual impulses. Then it will be seen clearly that a human being's deeds, let us say, in a certain decade of a certain century, are the consequence of what he experienced before entering into his incarnation on earth; they are in no sense the consequence of events that occurred in the course of decades of physical experience on the earth, and so on. Spiritual Science, in the meaning of Anthroposophy, will have to bring more depth and more life—especially in regard to historical, social, and moral life—into the sphere of history above all. When this knowledge of the spiritual impulses will have become one of the essential demands of our time—it will then correspond to the living reality of the myths in ancient times—it will permeate human beings with impulses leading them to deeds and actions that will make them free. These things must first be understood; they will indeed influence real life when this understanding spreads over an ever-wider sphere. But these considerations will show you something else besides. You will realize that the impulses of feeling, the impulses of will, which place us within the same sphere of life as the so-called dead, are a higher and more intensive reality than the one we know through our waking consciousness, in the form of ideas and sense impressions. For this reason, what has just been brought forward as a demand of our age, as something that must become an object of public teaching, can only be truly fruitful when it is grasped not merely with the understanding, but goes over into the impulses of feeling and into the impulses of will. This can only come about when spiritual science is really seen as a reality, and not simply as a teaching. spiritual science is easily looked upon merely as a teaching, as a theory; but spiritual science is not a mere teaching, a mere theory, spiritual science is a living Word. For what is given out as spiritual science is the revelation from the world which we share with the higher Hierarchies and with the so-called dead. This very world speaks to us through spiritual science. And he who really understands spiritual science knows that the soul music of the spiritual world continues to resound in spiritual science. What we read, not from the dead letters, but from the real happenings in the spiritual world, can indeed permeate our feeling with true life, when we grasp spiritual science in this sense, as something which speaks to our inner being from out the spiritual world. I have emphasized at different times how the matter stands, when I described how, on the one hand, since 1879, spiritual life has the opportunity of streaming down to the physical plane in an entirely new way, and how, on the other hand, it must indeed face an opponent in the Spirits of Darkness, of whom we have spoken. Everything must still be achieved, before the content of spiritual science really enters the life of our feeling and will. And this can be achieved when certain things change fundamentally, in regard to which modern man has reached a cultural blind alley. Something else must also work its way through; namely, evolution must develop in such a way that, on the one hand, the events of history may be compared to a growing tree (I have already used this picture during these considerations): but when the leaves have grown as far as the periphery, the tree ceases to grow. Here the dying process begins. It is the same with historical events. A certain group of events takes shape—let us describe it quite schematically:—Certain historical events have their roots. A definitive group of historical events may have their roots in the last third of the 18th century. I shall speak of this more clearly tomorrow. Other influences are added to these in the course of the 19th century, and so on. But you see, these historical events expand and reach their extreme boundaries. In this case the boundary is not the same as in the case of a tree or a plant, which does not grow beyond its periphery; but here a new root of historical events must begin. For decades, already, we have been living in a time in which such new historical events must spring out of direct intuition. But in the historical life of man, illusion can easily spread also over these things. To be sure, you can watch the growth of a plant, which grows according to its inner laws until it reaches a certain periphery and cannot grow beyond it. But now you can call forth an illusion—you can take wires, hang paper leaves on them, and give yourself the illusion that the plant continues to grow up to this point. Such wires do indeed exist where historical events are concerned. While historical events should long ago have adopted another course, such wires are there instead; except that in historical evolution these wires are human prejudices, human indolence, which continue to maintain, on dead wires, what has died long ago. Certain people place themselves at the ends of these dead wires—in other words, at the outermost ends of human prejudice—and these people are often considered historical personalities; indeed, the true historical personalities. And people do not realize to what an extent these personalities sit on the wires of human prejudice. One of the most important tasks of the present is to begin to understand how certain personalities who are looked upon as “great” are, in reality, merely hanging on the wires of human prejudice; this is indeed one of the chief tasks of the present. |