| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Portal of Initiation: Scene 10
Translated by Harry Collison |
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| I feel thy near approach: thou must appear. (Lucifer and Ahriman appear.) Lucifer: O man, know me. O man, feel thou thyself. |
| O man, feel thou thyself: O man, know me. Ahriman: O man, know thou thyself: O man, feel me. From spirit darkness hast thou now escaped; And thou hast found again the light of earth. |
| O man, feel me. O man, know thou thyself. (Exit with Lucifer.) Johannes: What meaneth this? First Lucifer arose Prom me, and Ahriman did follow him. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Portal of Initiation: Scene 10
Translated by Harry Collison |
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A room for meditation as in Scene 3 Theodosius (in spirit-garb): Johannes: Theodosius: Johannes: He hath departed: but he will return Yet what is it I feel about me now? O Benedictus, fount of my new life! Benedictus: Johannes: Theodosius: Johannes: (Lucifer and Ahriman appear.) Lucifer: Ahriman: Johannes: Spirit: Curtain |
| 162. The Lost Union of Speaking and Thinking
18 Jul 1915, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond |
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| And so, from the beginning onwards an invisible kingdom was mingled with Earth-evolution, the invisible kingdom of Lucifer and Ahriman, who had been cast out of that realm from which man, animals, plants and minerals were ordained to be created and governed. |
| And this mightier Impulse was not only to lead Earth-evolution onwards along the course it would have taken if there had been no invasion by Lucifer and Ahriman, but to bring it back again into its old tracks until the end. Thus the Christ-Impulse took very powerful hold of Earth-evolution. |
| Just as the first is a seductive call of Lucifer which appears in the guise of an ideal, the second is a seductive call of Ahriman which again appears as an ideal—but a terribly perverted ideal. |
| 162. The Lost Union of Speaking and Thinking
18 Jul 1915, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond |
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We shall try today to understand one of the aspects of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic nature. If we are to acquire some idea of this element which plays a real part in man's existence, we must look back to the Moon-evolution of our Earth and consider this Moon-evolution in connection with Earth-evolution proper. We know that Earth-evolution proper was the outcome of the Sprits of Form having penetrated into the heritage left by the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. And we know too that these Spirits of Form produced an Earth constituted in such a way that man was able to receive his ego—in other words it became possible for the three principles of man's being which were the heritage of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions to be permeated by the Ego. The Spirits of Form endowed man with his Ego by a direct inpouring of their own being. As we look up to these Spirits of Form, seeing them as the bringers of the Ego we must also be mindful of the Hierarchy ranking immediately above man—which represents as it were, different stages of the organisation of the Spirits of Form. This other Hierarchy consists of the Spirits of Personality, the Archangeloi and the Angeloi. Leaving aside for the moment the still higher ranks of Beings, we have to regard as the Creators and Regents of Earth-evolution: the Spirits of Form and their Servers—the Spirits of Personality, the Archangeloi and the Angeloi. Thus there was created an Earth-existence which, as its flower or crowning fruit, brought man with his Ego-nature into being. When we observe earthly existence today we cannot really discern what its character might have been if the Spirits of Form alone, together with their Servers, had created and ruled over it. For the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings penetrate into everything. Thus we have an Earth-existence which, in its onflowing evolution, reveals what can be brought into being and directed by the normally-developed Spirits of Form and their Servers, and in-woven with it everything that proceeds from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. If we are clear about this we shall realise that all earthly existence—of man and the other kingdoms alike—would have been different if the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been able to create, to work, and to rule by themselves. What actually lies before us, therefore, is a clouded, falsified picture of Earth-existence, a picture that has been falsified through the working of Lucifer and Ahriman. In connection with many a phenomenon on the Earth we may well ask ourselves: What would this Earth-existence have become if the Luciferic and Ahrimanic falsifications had not taken place—in other words, if only the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been at work? Among many phenomena that come into consideration, there is, for example, the subject of which I spoke yesterday.1 I spoke of the evolution of language, which actually takes place more in the subconscious life of man, and I said that there is evidence of a certain law operating. In the development of language within the onflowing stream of Earth existence. I also said that the human-personal element has taken effect in this development and that today man has still not reached the point of perceiving in the sounds of speech, in the sounds of the letters, signs of the development of thoughts. Man has brought the development of thoughts to quite a different stage from that of speech and language. But just in this connection there is something that can become clear to us when we ask: How would the development of thoughts have proceeded in earthly existence if Luciferic an Ahrimanic influences had not been at work? What would man’s thinking have been, what would his speech have been, if the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been the sole creators and leaders of the Earth? If no Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence had taken effect in Earth-evolution, speaking and thinking would have been in complete unison. And this unison must be sought for again with a certain objectivity. If speech gradually assumes the character of a sign, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic element will be overcome. But if this Luciferic-Ahrimanic element had not been at work, inner unison, inner harmony between speaking and thinking, would have unfolded in humanity—that is to say, man would have perceived, would have had a living experience of what lies in a sound of speech, in d, t, th, and so on. He has no such experience today. This is evident from the fact that, in essentials at least, when men the whole world over have come to think in a certain way about one thing or another, they do not differ from one another in respect of their concepts, but very much in respect of their words. This one-sided character of thought which does not ever come to expression in speaking, must always be borne in mind for it is something that has already branched away from speech; it would be much more intimately connected with speech if no Luciferic-Ahrimanic influences had invaded Earth-existence. Men would have permeated speech with their feelings; they would have lived in the sound itself but at the same time would have experienced the concept, the idea, within the sound—the concept and the sound would have been experienced as one. That is what the Spirits of Form had originally planned for man. The element of soul which comes into play when, on the one hand, man is given up to his thoughts and ideas, and on the other, when he is given up to speech—this element of soul was not originally intended by the Spirits of Form for man on Earth; what they intended for him had been unison of speaking and thinking—speaking and thinking were to be experienced as one. The breach that exists today between speaking and thinking is to be traced back directly to the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman. Men have no feeling today for the special quality and character of m, g, and so on; the soul is related with these things in quite a different way from that in which it is related with thinking. The Spirits of Form and the Beings who serve them had intended for man an existence much more strongly based upon Nature-conditions than he was then able to achieve on Earth. The Spirits of Form had intended that man’s speech should be of such a character that it carries thinking itself on its wings, and not a kind of speech from whom the sap of thought has been drained. That is what the Spirits of Form had intended for man. And according to their intentions, differentiation among men was not to be determined by the character of languages on the Earth; differentiation among the nations was intended to be based only upon natural conditions, upon geographical and climatic differences. Man was to have felt himself belonging to a nation through the fact that he felt himself connected with certain powers working in the Nature-foundations underlying his existence. On the other hand, if the intentions of the Spirits of Form alone had been carried out, it would have been possible when as a member of a nation a man encountered a member of another nation, for him to feel and understand from the very outset what lay within the words. There would still have been different languages. But in respect of the understanding of languages men would not have differed; in experiencing what lay in the single sound, in the single letter, a man would, it is true, have heard the other language, but he would not have heard the word as a mere husk; within the sound, within the word, he would also have heard the thought or the idea; it would have been carried on the wings of the word itself. The reason why a man does not understand a foreign language today is because the ideas do not lie in the words themselves; the words have become divorced from the ideas. And so a cleft has arisen between speaking and thinking (ideation). The result is that up to now man was unable in Earth-evolution to develop the faculty of meeting other men with a feeling understanding even of an entirely new language. In this connection you must not think of the languages as they are now. The languages themselves would naturally have been quite different; as they have now become, people who live in one language-domain cannot understand those who live in a domain where a different language is spoken. This is because the languages have not developed in the same way that the life of thought has developed. In view of the present development of the languages, therefore, it is impossible to have any such understanding as was originally conceived by the Spirits of Form and which was to have been directed by the Beings who serve them. The Spirits of Form had not, of course, intended that men all over the Earth should be cut to one pattern, as it were by cosmic tailors; the intention was that men should differ among themselves but differ in such a way that they would still have confronted each other with complete understanding over the whole Earth. Beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi were chosen to direct those groups of men as conceived by the Spirits of Form. The Archangeloi were those Beings who during the Moon-evolution had perfected the development proper to that evolution. And in order that the single individual within such a group of men should also have a guide to act as intermediary between himself as a single personality and the group as a whole—such a guide was to be a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi whose development had proceeded regularly and normally during the Moon-evolution. It can therefore be said: if things had come about as they were intended by the Spirits of Form, differences among men would have been found all over the Earth, but everywhere they would have been connected as naturally as vegetation, and the plant-world, with the whole earthly environment. Men would have grown together with Nature, but there would not have penetrated into the life of soul the element that separates men according to languages. And there is something else too that would not have come to pass: men would not have attempted to find one science, one form of knowledge, all over the Earth. It is a deep-seated but a purely Luciferic belief today that there can be a uniform science which, comprised in a number of dogmas, must be valid for all mankind on the Earth. This belief has arisen simply because knowledge, conceptual ideation, has separated from speaking and thereby exists on its own. If the intentions of the Spirits of Form had been ful¬filled, men would have expressed themselves differently about things in the world according to the groups to which they belonged, but in their feeling they would have understood the others, they would have had no dispute with those who expressed themselves differently. Diversity itself would have been the basis of the right form of life on the Earth. These things were all part of what the Spirits of Form intended, but mankind has no longer the slightest understanding of them. For with surprising forcefulness the belief has taken root that the so-called conceptual life the life of thought, is non-national, in contrast to speaking which must necessarily be national. It was the middle condition that was intended by the Spirits of Form: not separation based upon languages and not union all over the Earth on the basis of some firmly established concept, but diversity of speech together with diversity of ideas. That is what was intended by the Spirits of Form. In our own domain of spiritual science this must also in a certain respect become an ideal, an actual ideal. But there is a deep-seated unwillingness in man's nature today to recognise this ideal.—I can give you an illustration. Although it is a long time ago now, you probably know that we were once part of the "Theosophical Society" of which Mrs. Besant was and is to continue to be President. We too—a number of us—were in the habit of attending the Congresses of that Society. Addresses were always given by the different General Secretaries representing the various European Sections. The difference in the languages was brought very clearly into evidence because each of the representatives spoke in his own tongue—with the inevitable consequence that the majority of them were not understood. Nevertheless, with the idea of promoting some measure of mutual understanding, the principle was followed of each representative giving at least a short address in his own language. Perhaps a few who were present on such occasions will remember that for several years I always spoke to the same effect—I do not know whether it was noticed, but year after year I said the same thing—not exactly with the thought, but always with the feeling: Will the real point of it be understood?—What I emphasised was always this: When we come together from the different countries we do not for the purpose of receiving a central Theosophy but in order to lay upon a common altar what it is the task of the various countries to accomplish for Theosophy. I always laid stress upon the individual element which, coming from the different sides, asks only to be laid on a common altar. Year after year I emphasised the same point. The only result was that although what I said was correct, some did not understand and the rest took offence. But it contained an expression of the ideal to which we must aspire: the ideal that cannot be made manifest by attempts to create a uniform system of dogma for the whole world but by working in the direction of enabling the principle of diversity in our Earth-existence to come to expression amid mutual understanding. The preconceived assumption that there can be only one truth is so deeply rooted in human souls that contradictions are actually suspected when in a lecture-course something is expressed in one way and at another time in a different way. But this is exactly what must be cultivated among us, in order to show that diversity is a sine qua non in any presentation of truth. It is diversity, manifoldness, therefore that must become an ideal—not uniformity. We have spoken briefly of the normally developed Spirit of Form and the Beings who serve them, and of the character of speaking and thinking which was intended for Earth-evolu¬tion, but we shall understand what lies at the root of these things only when we bear in mind the opposing Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. If we are to understand these, we must turn our minds away from Earth-evolution; for the Luciferic Ahrimanic element became what it is as a result of the Moon-evolution. As we have often heard, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic element remained stationary at the stage of Moon-evolution and carried over into Earth-evolution what stems from the Moon-evolution. So in the case of this Luciferic-Ahrimanic element we must not speak of the Spirits of Form as the Creators; the Spirits of Form are Creators only in the case of beings suitable for the Earth-evolution. In the case of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, it is the Spirits of Movement who must be regarded as the Creators, for they are the Creators and Regents of the Moon-evolution, thus being what the Spirits of Form are for the evolution of man and the Spirits of Movement are for the Moon-evolution and therewith for the Ahrimanic-Luciferic evolution as a whole. These Spirits of Movement were Creators during the Moon-evolution by virtue of what they brought into being in con¬junction with the Spirits who were then their Servers: the Spirits of Form as they then were, the Spirits of Personality and the Spirits belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. And what was brought into being were the Angeloi—the Angeloi who developed in the regular and normal way on the Moon. Just as in the course of Earth-evolution man is meant to develop the seven principles or members of his constitution the Angeloi were meant to develop their seven principles during the Moon-evolution. Those Angeloi who during the Moon-evolution duly developed their seven principles, passed over into Earth-evolution and became the Spirits who were to function as the intermediaries between the individual man and the group of men that is guided and led by a single Archangel—again a Being who developed his seven principles during the Moon-evolution. But among these Beings there were some who had only succeeded in developing six or even five of their principles, who had not developed all their seven principles during the Moon-evolution. Hence they were not capable during Earth-evolution of becoming leaders of individual men as Angeloi, or leaders of groups of men as Archangeloi. These spiritual beings who had developed only six or five of their principles are, so to speak, subordinate Hierarchies; other Hierarchies rank above them. When we speak of Ahriman and Lucifer, they are to be regarded as the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings most closely allied to them—beings, therefore, who could not possibly pass in a regular way into the Earth-evolution because this was under the direction of the Spirits of Form; these beings had not reached the stage where they could become helpers of the Spirits of Form, for they were at the stage of the Angeloi. Neither could they have become men. They therefore stood midway between the normally developed Angeloi and men. Thus in the Earth-evolution we have Man, (see diagram) and above him the Creators—the Spirits of Form—then the Spirits of Personality, the Spirits from the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, the Spirits from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi. These spiritual Beings had developed their seven or nine principles during the Moon-evolution; hence it is not necessary for them to enter into the kind of earthly embodiment created for man by the Spirits of Form; they – the Angeloi, for example—enter into an etheric body only, because they belong to the Hierarchy immediately above man. And in between are the beings for whom progress in simply not possible in these phases of evolution. Because they have not developed their seven principles, they are beings who can say of themselves: Our Creators are the Spirits of Movement, and we are ruled over by certain Spirits of Form, Archai and Archangeloi. Nevertheless, these beings were there, and were not capable of fulfilling the office that should properly have devolved upon them—which was to share in the rulership of the evolution of humanity and also of the other kingdoms of the Earth. In this they could have no share. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] And so there were two classes both of Archangeloi and of Angeloi—not to speak for the moment of the other Beings. These beings who had developed normally now shared in the activity which was meant to have taken the course I have described, for example in connection with speaking and thinking. If this legacy from the evolution directed by the Spirits of Movement had not existed, speaking and thinking would have developed in harmonious unison—as I described just now. And now something came to pass which seems to have little meaning when it is put into words, but it is, in fact, a tremendously significant, momentous cosmic event. There were now in the Spirit-Land—or, speaking in terms of religion—there were now in Heaven: the normally developed Archangeloi, the normally developed Angeloi, and a brood of incompletely developed Beings. And what happened was that the normally developed Archangeloi and Angeloi cast down upon the Earth those beings who had completed, not their full development, but only that of six or five of their principles—cast them down to the Earth from Heaven because no use could be made of them there. And so, from the beginning onwards an invisible kingdom was mingled with Earth-evolution, the invisible kingdom of Lucifer and Ahriman, who had been cast out of that realm from which man, animals, plants and minerals were ordained to be created and governed. They had been cast out and were now on the Earth; they could not, of course be perceived with earthly senses, but they were there. The normally developed Archangeloi and Angeloi were in Heaven—to use the Biblical expression; retarded beings were wandering about the Earth. It is to this that the words of the Bible refer: “Neither was their place found any more in heaven.”2 They were cast down to the Earth. And now try to think of the actual situation in order that you may avoid erroneous ideas about certain matters.—Men were living on the Earth in a primitive stage of development, as you will find described in "Occult Science", but immediately below and around them, beings were living—we will speak of the very lowest rank of Luciferic beings—beings who on the Moon were the retarded Angeloi and who, instead of now being in the position of rulers, were, to begin with, idle and inactive. But whereas man was only just about to begin to develop his seven principles, whereas he could only hope to develop his seventh principle at the end of the Earth-evolution, or at a correspondingly nearer time his sixth or fifth principle—in these Luciferic beings the development of the sixth or the fifth principle was already complete; it was only the seventh principle that they had not developed. The situation at the present time is that we are working at the development of what is called "Intellect”. The principle of man’s nature that is only now—in the Fifth Post Atlantean epoch—coming to expression in him for the first time, was far from being developed in the men of Lemuria. At that time the Angeloi who had been cast down had developed, already in the Moon-period, the principle which man is now for the first time in process of developing—already possessed what man was intended to develop only at a much later period of Earth-evolution. It is indeed a fact that even after the Lemurian epoch, in the Atlantean epoch, an important part was played by invisible beings who at that time had developed to a high degree that of which man in the Atlantean epoch had no trace whatever and which he is only now in process of developing, namely, the element of intellect. And so highly developed Intelligences, Angeloi beings, hovered hither and thither as retarded Spirits during the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis. These were Spirits at a lofty stage, an exceedingly lofty stage of development. Again, to put it trivially, therefore, we can say: The plan of the Spirits of Form was thwarted. Whereas their intention had been to develop man stage by stage, letting him be guided by Angeloi so that by the time of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch he would be ready to develop intellect which would be in unison with speech and language—this aim was thwarted owing to the fact that invisible Beings lived among men. We will think, to begin with of the Invisible Luciferic beings, the Luciferic Angeloi. These Luciferic Angeloi-beings penetrated into individual men in an early period of Earth-evolution, took possession of them, as it were. These Angeloi were beings who had been cast down upon the Earth. And so in ancient times there were men who, if they had become what the Spirits of Form had intended, would have been naive, primitive natures—but as things were, Luciferic Angeloi-beings had entered into them, and the result was that they were exceedingly clever, exceedingly astute—to a degree that was not possible in the case of man himself until the fifth or sixth epoch of Earth-evolution. In ancient India there was still some understanding of what the seven Rishis represented; these were men "illuminated by the Luciferic Angeloi-beings. They were men to whom naive and simple people naturally looked up to as standing at very lofty heights. In that time, and during later times too, these Luciferic Angeloi-beings again and again took possession of men, influencing either individuals or groups, they inculcated into humanity the notion of the "internationality" of the world of concepts, of the so-called uniformity of dogma over the whole Earth. Wherever men believe in this uniformity of dogma, wherever they believe that salvation is to be found, not in diversity but in uniformity—there the Luciferic Spirits are at work. They have torn the world of thought and ideation away from the world of speech and languages. Thereby they have evoked the state of things which has made it impossible for the thoughts and ideas to retain their rightful place within the spoken word. And so Luciferic uniformity, Luciferic monism, or the striving for it, came to prevail all over the Earth. Wherever there are fanatics who claim that what they themselves regard as right must forthwith be believed by all men on Earth—these fanatics are possessed by Luciferic Angeloi. What really matters, however is not so much the fact that men are possessed by this false idea of uniformity, but that they shall strive for an understanding of harmonious diversity. And now the way was smoothed for Spirits other than these Luciferic Angeloi-beings. The Luciferic Angeloi manifested in the form of illumined individuals, especially in ancient India. It was through these chosen men—who, in their states of illumination, gave early expression to a condition not intended for the rest of humanity until a much late time—that the delusion of uniformity of all thinking was spread over the Earth. And thereby the path was smoothed for the other Spirits who belonged to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. But they were Archangeloi who during the Moon evolution had not developed their seventh but only their sixth principle. They too—because they could not be used as teachers and guides of groups of men divided according to geographical and climatic conditions—had been cast down and were now on the Earth among men. These Archangeloi—they were no longer to be found in Heaven but on the Earth—were sent out by the highest among them to the different folk-groups. And these folk-groups dragged speech down a stage lower. Whereas the Luciferic beings had torn thinking away from speaking, these incompletely developed Archangeloi allowed speech and language to sink a stage lower, so that the languages were as different—well, as different as they actually became on the Earth. These beings who were retarded Archangeloi and carried out the guidance of groups of men on the Earth in such a way that they split humanity asunder, causing men to hate one another, to isolate themselves from one another—these beings have the Ahrimanic nature. They were highly developed beings but they were not the rightful leaders of peoples, for the simple reason that according to the intentions of the Spirits of Form, this leadership was meant to lie with the normal Archangeloi who have developed all their seven principles. It was especially the beings who had developed only six of their principles who now set themselves in opposition to the legitimate leaders of peoples. It is the Ahrimanic beings who have been the cause of languages sinking a stage lower, to a stage where to begin with men simply do not perceive what concepts, what ideas, are contained in the actual words of language. If the Luciferic Angeloi beings alone had come upon the scene the delusion of uniformity would, it is true, have spread over the Earth; but the several languages would have developed in such a way that if, merely in his mind, a man had overcome the delusion of uniformity, he would have been able still to feel what is contained in the different languages. But once the world of thoughts and ideas had been torn away by the Luciferic Angeloi, it was easy for the Ahrimanic Archangeloi to force speech still another stage downwards, with the result that it was then no longer possible for speech to develop in such a way that the thought or idea could be directly experienced within it. We have here a picture of the interworking of a threefold principle. When our statue3 has been completed and you look at it, you will see that it gives expression to this threefoldness.—There is an onflowing process of evolution, but it has been falsified: falsified above through the delusion of the uniformity of thoughts, and falsified below through the delusion of the false principle of differentiation—which already is no longer a delusion but actual fact—the splitting up of humanity into so-called nations according to languages. That is what came to pass in the course of Earth-evolution—it is part and parcel of Earth-evolution. And the result was that, as time went on, there developed the belief that is dominated by the delusion of uniformity, and, on the other side, the splitting into nations. That is what developed. This state of things had reached its peak when the Cosmic Being, Christ, came down to the Earth in the way known to you, inculcating into Earth-evolution an Impulse which we now have to carry into the world which represents the normal evolutionary process. But since Earth-evolution has for a time gone astray in two directions, the Christ-Impulse sets itself the task of creating the counter-impulse—that is to say, to impart greater power to the normally developed Angeloi in order that they may oppose the Luciferic Angeloi who uphold the delusion of uniformity. In the place of the monistic, delusive idea of the uniformity of all knowledge, there now came the Impulse that is implicit in Christianity when rightly conceived: understanding but not obtrusion of one’s own belief, the endeavour to find the truth residing in the nature of other men. Inasmuch as this is implicit in Christianity, the Impulse given by Christ enhances the strength of the normally developed Angeloi. So that for men and for every epoch it can again become an ideal to find on the Earth, wheresoever it may be, truth clothed in an individual form—to find what is true, now not merely through the intellect that has already been driven into delusion by Lucifer, but through souls, through hearts, allowing every man to find in his own way what is true. The saying that truth resides in every human soul is a profoundly Christian principle, as I have said on other occasions. It is the outcome of a strengthening of the Angeloi, enabling them to gain a victory over the Luciferic Angeloi who want to spread over the whole earth the delusion of the uniformity of dogma as a body of intellectualism which does not admit of diversity of manifoldness of understanding. And on the other side, the power of the normally developed Archangeloi was to be fortified in order that they may gradually defeat those spiritual beings who bring about the differentiation of groups of men through the fact that these groups become infatuated with their own language and are led to separate from each other to the point of fanaticism. The strength of the normally developed Angeloi and Archangeloi was to be enhanced through the Christ-Impulse. What was to come to pass through the Christ-Impulse is not something that exists merely in the thoughts, the minds and the feelings of men; what happens in the Earth as the outcome of the Christ-Impulse transcends the visible and passes into the invisible. Christ is there not for men only, but also for the Angeloi and Archangeloi. For Christ is a Cosmic Being Who, through Jesus of Nazareth, entered into the Earth evolution. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] In the middle of Earth-evolution, therefore, a strengthening was given everywhere: the Christ-Impulse entered, enhancing the power of the Angeloi and Archangeloi. This Impulse was powerful and mighty; something entered into Earth-evolution that had never previously been seen or known within it. (see diagram) The principle that had formerly prevailed strove to work as a Nature-principle, and desired that the spiritual guidance of the world should be based on the Jahve-principle. According to this principle it would have been natural for man's thinking and speaking to be in unison.—Our thinking has been detached from the Nature-Principle and has become spiritual; our speech has been detached from the Nature-principle and has taken on the qualities of soul. Speech has been laid hold of by forces of soul, by the element of emotion and passion pertaining to the life of soul; thinking has been laid hold of entirely by the intellectual element which again pertains to the astral. But it was not meant to have been so; thinking was meant to lie a stage lower and to have been far more of a Nature-process; man was meant to speak and to understand the spoken word at a far higher level. After speaking and thinking had been separated for a while (I take speaking and thinking as examples among others that could be quoted), an Impulse much stronger than the Jahve-impulse was necessary. The nature of the Jahve-impulse was such that it did not yet reckon with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses. But these Impulses were at work nevertheless, until the middle of the Greco-Latin epoch—and then came the Christ-Impulse. This Impulse had necessarily to be stronger, more powerful than the Jahve-impulse then in operation. And this mightier Impulse was not only to lead Earth-evolution onwards along the course it would have taken if there had been no invasion by Lucifer and Ahriman, but to bring it back again into its old tracks until the end. Thus the Christ-Impulse took very powerful hold of Earth-evolution. Because men were at first incapable of understanding it, it worked in ways I have indicated—examples that may be thought of are the Emperor Constantine and the Maid of Orleans.—The influence of the Christ-Impulse is of untold significance. Earth-evolution continued its course, and speaking figuratively, the following may be said. Suppose thick snow is lying on a railway line. A train comes and ploughs through the snow up to a certain point; but at that point the pile of snow is so high that the progress of the train is checked. Something similar happened in the case of the Christ-Impulse. It entered with tremendous power, strove to lay hold of the Earth, but Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces were there and they reared up like the snow in front of the train. For a time they were overcome—and, of course, will be further overcome if a sufficient number of men allow themselves to be moved by the Christ-Impulse—but for all that the snow-pile was there. And the consequence has been that—precisely in the age of intellectualism—the delusion of the uniformity of knowledge has asserted itself with particular strength. There is clear evidence of something which simply was not there in earlier times. Those conversant with the history of spiritual evolution are well aware that from the eighth or ninth century of the Christian era onwards, this delusion that a single form of truth must be made valid all over the Earth came strongly to the fore. The Luciferic Angeloi reared up once again. They were intent upon victory, intent upon misleading men into believing the delusion that one uniform truth should be held to prevail all over the Earth. And again and again there comes over men this terrible delusion of the monistic nature of dogma. Later on, when the age of intellectualism had already dawned, came the great resistance emanating from the Ahrimanic Archangeloi—those beings who have brought the delusion of nationalism—a delusion that has now become accomplished fact. This Ahrimanic principle took essential effect in the 19th century, just as the Luciferic principle had done in the 8th/9th century. The earthly bearer of this Ahrimanic principle was Napoleon. Napoleon is the one from whom proceeded that corruption of Europe which led to the idea that the principle of nationalism is all-important, that men must be divided into groups on the basis of the nationalistic principle. Napoleon worked in the service of Ahriman, and that was the starting-point of the state of things that has persisted to this day: the grouping of men according to regions of the Earth strictly enclosed within national boundaries. This delusion—it is now accomplished fact—is everywhere in evidence today. It is Ahriman on his rounds, it is the influence which strives to evoke the seductive cry that men must shut themselves off in accordance with the principle of nationality, while they clothe their delusion in the slogan: "Freedom of the nations—freedom and equality of the nations!" This is a trend deeply and intimately bound up with cosmic evolution and it is taking effect in a terrible way at the present time. The spiritual beings who set out to bring falsification into Earth-evolution naturally make use of ideas and concepts which seem to men not to be repre-hensible but, on the contrary, particularly noble; Ahrimanic intentions are adorned in the mask of great and powerful ideals, just as the Luciferic spirit has been masked by the delusion of the uniformity of knowledge, expressed in words which everyone understands because they sound so idealistic: "One truth for all men." But with this slogan, Lucifer creeps into the hearts of men; Ahriman creeps in when the cry goes forth: The peoples must shut themselves off as nationalities living in particular regions on the Earth—and only those groups of men who represent nationalities are of any account. Just as the first is a seductive call of Lucifer which appears in the guise of an ideal, the second is a seductive call of Ahriman which again appears as an ideal—but a terribly perverted ideal. Spiritual science is called upon to see through the seductive falsity of such calls and to work to the end that mankind shall take the rightful path, the path which after it had been laid down less forcefully through the Jahve-impulse, is now the path of the greater Impulse which came into Earth-evolution: the Christ-Impulse which sweeps away all the Luciferic and Ahrimanic delusions that have crept into the souls and hearts of men.
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| 177. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness: The Spirits of Light and the Spirits of Darkness
26 Oct 1917, Dornach Translated by Anna R. Meuss |
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| One always has the feeling one ought to base oneself on defined concepts—what is Ahriman, what is Lucifer, what are the particular spirits in one hierarchy or another? Those are the questions we ask, and we believe that having got the definitions we have also understood something about the way these entities work. |
| As you will remember, the ‘luciferic temptation’ of old held major significance for human evolution. It did, of course, arise from Lucifer's specific aims—and from Atlantean times onwards Lucifer was in league with Ahriman. These aims gave rise to counter-aims of, let us call them ‘good spirits’, the spirits of light. |
| This made human beings—I am using crosses to indicate them—part of the earth. You see, therefore, that Lucifer and Ahriman are servants of the progressive powers. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Evolution then continued. |
| 177. The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness: The Spirits of Light and the Spirits of Darkness
26 Oct 1917, Dornach Translated by Anna R. Meuss |
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The event I have been referring to in the preceding lectures, the occasion when certain spirits of darkness were cast out of the spiritual realm and down into the human realm in the autumn of 1879, holds great importance. We have to reflect again and again what it really means to say that a battle raged for decades in the spiritual realms. The battle started in the early 1840s and ended when certain spiritual entities, which had been acting like rebels in the spiritual world during those decades, were vanquished in the autumn of 1879 and cast down as dark spirits into the realm of human evolution. They are now among us and the effect of this is that they send their impulses into our view of the world, not only into the way we think about the world, but also into our inner feelings, our will impulses and even our temperaments. Human beings will be unable to get even a partial understanding of the significant events of the present time and the immediate future, unless they are prepared to recognize the relationship which exists between the physical world and the spiritual world and take as much account of important events like this as they do of natural phenomena. At the present time people generally give validity only to natural phenomena, phenomena of the physical world which are part of historical evolution. They will have to give validity again to spiritual events, which can be perceived with the aid of spiritual science, for only then can the events in which human beings are caught up be really understood. With reference to this important event it is quite easy to establish how seriously people are in error if they base themselves only on concepts and definitions when considering the world and not on direct observation of reality. One always has the feeling one ought to base oneself on defined concepts—what is Ahriman, what is Lucifer, what are the particular spirits in one hierarchy or another? Those are the questions we ask, and we believe that having got the definitions we have also understood something about the way these entities work. An extreme example of the inadequacy of definitions is the following, which I have quoted before. It may not have been the ideal way of defining the human being, but it is the definition which was given in a school in Greece: A human being is a creature who walks on two legs and does not have feathers. The next time the pupil came to school he brought a plucked cockerel: a creature who walked on two legs and had no feathers. This is a human being, he said, according to the definition. Many definitions of this kind are generally accepted, and many of our scientific definitions are therefore more or less in accord with the truth. We must not base ourselves on such definitions in anthroposophy, however. Perception will be poor if we base ourselves on abstract definitions. Yes, it is possible to define the term ‘spirits of darkness’, but this will not get us far. Spirits of darkness were cast down from heaven to earth in 1879. This may give a general idea of the spirits of darkness, but it does not get us far in understanding the real issue. The spirits of darkness now walking among us are of the same kind as the spirits of darkness which had been cast down from the spiritual world, that is from heaven to earth, in earlier times; they had specific tasks to perform during the whole of the Atlantean age and right into Graeco-Latin times. Let us try to use the different insights we have gained and determine the task those spirits of darkness had to perform through millennia, through the whole Atlantean age and on into Graeco-Latin times. It has to be kept in mind that the great scheme of things will only work if higher spiritual entities who have the task of guiding human evolution make use of such spirits, putting them in the right place, as it were, to enable them to do what is necessary. As you will remember, the ‘luciferic temptation’ of old held major significance for human evolution. It did, of course, arise from Lucifer's specific aims—and from Atlantean times onwards Lucifer was in league with Ahriman. These aims gave rise to counter-aims of, let us call them ‘good spirits’, the spirits of light. Fundamentally speaking, the spirits of darkness also wanted the best for humanity in those early times, they wanted human beings to have the capacity for absolute freedom; but humanity was not ready for this at the time. They wanted to provide humanity with impulses which would make every human being an independent individual. It was not to be, however, for humanity was not yet ready. A counter-force had to be set up by the spirits of light; this was done by taking human beings from the heights of the Spirit and putting them on to the earth, which is symbolically described in the expulsion from Paradise. In reality, human beings were being placed in the stream of hereditary traits. Lucifer and the ahrimanic powers wanted every human being to be an independent individual. This would have meant that people would have become spiritual very rapidly while still immature, but it was not to happen. Human beings were to be educated on earth, brought to full development through the forces of the earth. This was achieved by placing them in the stream of heredity, where they would physically descend from others. In this way they were not independent, but inherited certain traits from their forebears. They were weighed down with earthly qualities which Lucifer did not want them to have. Anything to do with physical heredity was given to humanity by the spirits of light to counterbalance the luciferic stream. A weight was attached to human beings, as it were, and this connected them with the earth. In everything connected with heredity, with the begetting of children, procreation, with love in the earthly sense, we must therefore see ourselves connected with the entities which are under the leadership of Yahveh or Jehovah. This is the reason why we find so many symbols of procreation and earthly heredity in the ancient religions. The laws of Judaism—which was to prepare the way for Christianity—as well as those of pagan religions, clearly show the importance attached to regulating everything to do with the laws of heredity here on earth. People had to learn to live together in tribes, nations and races, with blood relationship as the signature for the way affairs were ordered on earth. This had been in preparation during the Atlantean age and was to be repeated in the fourth epoch of civilization, the Graeco-Latin epoch, mainly on account of the measures taken in the third, Egypto-Chaldean epoch. We can see that specifically during epochs which were to recapitulate the Lemurian and Atlantean ages, account was taken of race, nation and tribal connections in all the ways in which human affairs were ordered; in short, account was taken of hereditary traits arising from blood bonds. The priests of the ancient Mysteries were mainly responsible for the ordering of affairs—today we would say for affairs of state—and they took care to observe the way in which customs, inclinations and habits had to develop in various places to take account of blood relationships, of people belonging to a particular nation or tribe. Their laws were based on this. We shall not be able to understand what issued from the Mysteries of the third and fourth post-Atlantean ages unless we consider the careful study of racial, national and tribal relationships on which the priests based the laws they made for different regions of the earth. What really counted in each individual region was to establish order in the blood relationships. In those times, when the spirits of light made it their concern to order human affairs on the basis of blood relationships, the spirits of darkness which had been cast down from heaven to earth with humanity, made it their concern to work against anything connected with heredity through blood relationship. They were the source of all rebellion against ordinances based on blood relationship in those ages, and of all teachings of rebellion against heredity and against tribal and racial relationships, insisting on the independence of the individual and seeking to establish laws based on this, laws which did, of course, come from human beings but were inspired by the spirits of darkness. Those ages extended as far as the fifteenth century. Echoes still persist, of course, for systems do not come to an abrupt end when there is a major break in evolution. Up to the fifteenth century in particular, we see teachings come up which rebel against purely natural bonds, against the bonds of relationship, family, nationality, and so on. Thus we have two streams: the ‘protector’ of everything to do with blood relationship, which is the stream of light; it is opposed by the stream of darkness as the ‘protector’ of everything which wants to abandon the bonds of blood relationship and help people to be free of the bonds of family and heredity. All this does not, of course, come to an abrupt halt any more than it does in the natural world, and in 1413, the year when the break occurred which marks the boundary between the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean ages, the old ways did not stop immediately. We can see the influence of the two streams continuing right into our own time. For from the nineteenth century onwards, from the time of the significant events I have described to you, we see something entirely different emerge—I have already made some mention of this. Angelic spirits, members of the hierarchy of the Angels have been active among us since 1879. They follow on after the old spirits of darkness, are related to these and are of a similar kind, but have only been cast down from heaven to earth because of the event which occurred in 1879. Until then they had their function up above, whilst their relatives, who acted in the way I have just described, have been among human beings from Lemurian and Atlantean times. Thus there was a break in evolution in about 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha; another one came in 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha, and the break which is particularly important to us, in 1879. Throughout the whole of this time spirits of darkness were active on earth, whilst certain other spirits of darkness, which are related to those down on earth, were still in the spiritual world. 1841 saw the beginning of the mighty battle of which I have spoken. Then the spirits which are related to those others descended to join them below. The power of the old rebels, of the continuing stream of spirits of darkness who had their tasks to perform from Lemurian and Atlantean times, is gradually dying down as the powers of their brothers begin to take effect. This means that from the last third of the nineteenth century the situation has been completely reversed. The spirits of light who have been continuing in their activities have done enough where the establishment of blood, tribal, racial and similar bonds is concerned, for everything has its time in evolution. In the general and rightful scheme of things, enough has been done to establish what needed to be established through blood bonds in humanity. In more recent times, therefore, the spirits of light have changed their function. They now inspire human beings to develop independent ideas, feelings and impulses for freedom; they now make it their concern to establish the basis on which people can be independent individuals. And it is gradually becoming the task of the spirits who are related to the old spirits of darkness to work within the blood bonds. The function which was right in the past or, better said, belonged to the sphere of the good spirits of light, was handed over to the spirits of darkness during the last third of the nineteenth century. From this time onwards, the old impulses based on racial, tribal and national relationships, on the blood, became the domain of the spirits of darkness, who had previously been rebels in the cause of independence. They then began to instil ideas in human minds that affairs should be ordered on the basis of tribal relationships, of blood bonds. You can see that definition is impossible. If you define the spirits of darkness on the basis of the function they had in the past, you get exactly the opposite of their function in more recent times, that is from the last third of the nineteenth century. In the past, it was the function of the spirits of darkness to work against hereditary traits in humanity; from the last third of the nineteenth century they have been lagging behind, wanting to lag behind, wanting over and over again to make people aware of their tribal, blood and hereditary bonds and to insist on these. These things simply are the truth, though it is a truth which people today find extremely unpalatable. For millennia, human beings have instilled the insistence on blood bonds into themselves, and out of sheer inertia they are letting the spirits of darkness take control of these habitual ideas. We therefore see insistence on tribal, national and racial relationships particularly in the nineteenth century, and this insistence is considered idealistic, when in reality it is an early sign of decline in humanity. Everything based on dominance of the blood principle meant progress for as long as it was under the authority of the spirits of light; under the authority of the spirits of darkness it is a sign of decline. The spirits of darkness made special efforts in the past to implant a rebellious feeling of independence in human beings at the time when hereditary traits were passed on in a positive sense by the progressive spirits. In the three ages of human evolution which now follow and will continue until the time of the great catastrophe, the spirits of darkness will make extreme efforts to preserve the old hereditary characteristics and inculcate human beings with the attitudes which result from such preservation; in this way they introduce the necessary signs of decline into human evolution. Here is another point where we have to be watchful. In particular, it is not possible to understand the present time unless one knows the change of function which came in the last third of the nineteenth century. A fourteenth-century person who spoke of the ideals of race and nation would have been speaking in terms of the progressive tendencies of human evolution; someone who speaks of the ideal of race and nation and of tribal membership today is speaking of impulses which are part of the decline of humanity. If anyone now considers them to be progressive ideals to present to humanity, this is an untruth. Nothing is more designed to take humanity into its decline than the propagation of ideals of race, nation and blood. Nothing is more likely to prevent human progress than proclamations of national ideals belonging to earlier centuries which continue to be preserved by the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. The true ideal must arise from what we find in the world of the spirit, not in the blood. The Christ, who is to appear in a specific form in the course of the twentieth century, will know nothing of the ‘ideals’ proclaimed by people today. In earlier times Michael, the spirit from the hierarchy of Archangels was the representative of Yahveh; thanks to the functions given to him in 1879, he will be the earthly representative, the vicar, of the Christ, of the Christ impulse to create spiritual bonds between human beings which will take the place of the purely physical blood bonds. For only the bonds of spiritual communion will bring a progressive element into the entirely natural element of decline. Please note, the element of decline is natural. Human beings cannot remain children as they get older, and their bodies then follow a downward curve of development. In the same way the whole of humanity has entered into a downward trend of development. We have passed the fourth post-Atlantean age and are now in the fifth; this, together with the sixth and seventh, will be old age in the present stage of world evolution. To think that old ideals can live on is no more intelligent than to think people should continue to learn their letters throughout the whole of their lives just because it is good for children to learn their letters. It would be equally unintelligent for people in the future to speak of a social structure for the whole world based on the blood bonds of nations. It is Wilsonianism, of course, but also ahrimanism—of the spirits of darkness. It is no doubt far from easy to accept the truth of this; it is easier today to share in the phraseologies in common use all over the world. Reality takes no account of phrases; it follows the true impulses. We shall not be able to change the labels on things which no longer hold true for the fifth, sixth and seventh periods, even if they are still being poured into Wilsonian world programmes in a form which still has power to convince a humanity that likes to take the easy way. There are still enough people, even today, who simply do not want to get to the point where they are prepared to accept such universal human truths, which are independent of all blood bonds. These are universal human truths because they have not come from the earth but have been brought down from the spiritual worlds. How terrible is the reaction already occurring as almost the whole world is resisting the true progress of humanity, and the phrase ‘freedom of nations’ is used for something which goes against the stream of evolution. It has always been the destiny of Mystery-truths that they have had to go against the stream of comfortable ease and with the stream of evolution. And we shall have to see if there will not be at least a small group of people free of all blood prejudices who are able to recognize the phraseology that goes round the world today, phrases signifying that something which in spiritual terms presents itself as the event of November 1879 is now coming to the surface with might and main. The events of the present time have been foreseen by the initiates of all nations. They were foreseen and forecast, and it was said that a highly reactionary mood would bubble up from the blood and people would believe it to be highly idealistic. We must be able to observe on the large scale, as in small things; we must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the opinions and phrases one hears in the world today. We have to be able to rise a little above ourselves to understand the signs of the times. Yes, you may choose the other road and continue in your blood-prejudices; you will then join the streams which lead downwards. These are coming. You need to know how to be watchful where they are concerned and oppose them with elements which follow the upward trend. The downward trend comes of its own accord. We must have a feeling for life on the upward and life on the downward trend. Do not fall prey to the foolish inclination to escape from the downward trend, saying, ‘I will have nothing to do with Lucifer, nor with Ahriman.’ I have often censured this foolish inclination, for we must certainly take account of the Spirits which serve the great cosmic scheme of things. Our failure to do so, assuming an attitude where they remain outside our conscious awareness, make them all the more powerful. We shall only be able to judge human affairs if we are able to take a broader view of the impulses of life in the ascendant and also in the descendant. It is important, however, to keep clear of sympathies and antipathies. Two streams have arisen in modern science; one of these I have called Goetheanism, the other Darwinism. If you study everything I have written, from the very beginning, you will see that I have never failed to recognize the profound significance of Darwinism. Some people were foolish enough to think I had fallen under the spell of materialism, and so on, when I wrote anything in favour of Darwin. We know, of course, that this was not from conviction, but had quite different reasons; and the people who say such things only need to think about it and they will know better than anyone else that they are not true. But if you really study everything I have written you will see that I have always done justice to Darwinism, but have done so by contrasting it with Goetheanism, the view of the evolution of life. I have always sought to see such things as the theory of descent in the Darwinian sense on the one hand and the Goethean on the other, and I have done so because Goetheanism presents the ascending line, with organic evolution raised above mere physical existence. I have often referred to the conversation between Goethe and Schiller.1 Goethe drew a diagram of his archetypal plant and Schiller said, ‘That is not empiricism—learning from experience—it is an idea.’ Goethe's reply was: ‘In that case I have my idea in front of my eyes!’2 For he saw the spiritual element in everything. Goethe thus initiated a theory of evolution which holds the potential for elevation to the highest spheres, for being applied to soul and spirit. Goethe may only have made a start with organic evolution in his theory of metamorphosis, but we have the evolution of the spirit to which humanity must attain from this fifth post-Atlantean age onwards—for human beings are becoming more inward, as I have shown. Goetheanism can have a great future, for the whole of anthroposophy is on those lines. Darwinism considers physical evolution from the physical side: external impulses, struggle for survival, selection, and so on, and in this way outlines an evolution which is dying down—everything you can discover about organic life if you give yourself up to impulses which came up in earlier times. To understand Darwin, one merely has to make a synthesis of all the laws discovered in the past. To understand Goethe, one has to rise above this to laws which are ever new in earth existence. Both are necessary. It is not Darwinism which is the problem, nor Goetheanism, but the fact that people want to follow one or the other rather than one and the other. This is what really matters. In future, human beings, the older they get, will need to take in spiritual impulses if they want to be able to grow younger and younger and really develop their inner life. If they do so, they may have grey hair and wrinkles and all kinds of infirmities, but they will get younger and younger, for their souls are taking in impulses which they will take with them through the gate of death. People who relate only to the body cannot grow younger, for their souls will share in everything the body experiences. Of course, it will not be possible to change the habit of going grey, but it is possible for a grey head to gain a young soul from the wellsprings of spiritual life. This is how human evolution will proceed in the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages in terms of Darwin's grey-haired theory, if you will forgive the expression. But in order to go through the catastrophe which is comparable to the earth's death—the catastrophe lying ahead—people must gain the power of youth which lies in Goetheanism, in the theory of metamorphosis and of spiritual evolution. This has to be taken through the future catastrophe, just as in the case of the individual the rejuvenated soul is taken through the gate of death. Humanity was able to unite with the earth because when it came down from heaven to earth, if we may put it like this, the spirits of darkness which came down with it laid an adequate foundation for human independence during the time when the laws of heredity, nationality and race prevailed. What Lucifer and Ahriman had done became a good thing in so far as humanity was enabled to unite with the earth. To show this in diagrammatic form, we may put it like this: before Lucifer took action, humanity was united with the whole cosmos including the earth (see diagram, violet); human beings united with the earth (yellow) because hereditary traits—original sin in biblical terms, hereditary traits in scientific terminology—were implanted into them. This made human beings—I am using crosses to indicate them—part of the earth. You see, therefore, that Lucifer and Ahriman are servants of the progressive powers. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Evolution then continued. We are now at the time when human beings live on earth and are united with it. Luciferic and ahrimanic spirits, spirits of darkness, have been cast down from heaven to earth. Because of this, human beings must be released from the earth, torn away from it, with part of their essential nature taken back into the spiritual world. Humanity must develop awareness of not being of this earth, and this must grow stronger and stronger. In future, human beings must walk on this earth who say to themselves: ‘Yes, at birth I enter into a physical body, but this is a transitional stage. I really remain in the spiritual world. I am conscious that only part of my essential nature is united with the earth, and that I do not leave the world where I am between death and rebirth with the whole of my essential nature.’ A feeling of belonging to the spiritual world must develop in us. In earlier years this merely cast a false shadow in so far as people did not want to understand physical life and practised a false asceticism, believing this to consist in mortifying the physical body in all kinds of ways. It has to be understood that it is not through false asceticism, but by uniting themselves with things of the Spirit, with the essence of things, that people will be able to perceive themselves as not merely earthly creatures but belonging to the whole cosmos. Gaining knowledge of the physical world has merely been a preparation for this. Just think how dependent people were on the soil where they had grown, as it were, right into the fifteenth century, the end of the Graeco-Latin epoch, and how much their development depended on the soil. This was good, but it must not dominate our lives now. Physical science has torn human beings away from the earth in the physical sense with Copernicanism, and soul awareness must also be torn away from the earth. The earth has become a small body in space; but initially this is only in terms of space. Through Copernicanism human beings were shifted out into the cosmos, as it were, though in entirely abstract terms. This must continue, but it should not be applied to physical life in the wrong way. The physical will take its own course. Take America, for instance, though not the population native to its soil for centuries. As you know, a new population consisting entirely of Europeans has arrived there in recent times. Careful observation shows that physical life continues to be bound to the soil. The Americans who are Europeans transplanted to America are gradually acquiring traits which recall the old Indian population—this has not yet progressed very far, but it is true nevertheless. The arms are a different length from what they were in Europe because these people have been transplanted to America. The physical human being does adapt to the soil. It even goes so far that there is now a considerable difference in physical form between Americans who live in the West and those who live in the East. This is adaptation to the soil. If the soul were to go along with this physical process the American Indian culture would be revived in time, though in a European form. This sounds paradoxical, but it is true. In future, humanity cannot be bound to the soil; the soul has to become independent. All over the world people may then assume the physical characteristics given by the soil, and the bodies of Europeans may become indianized when they go to America, but in their souls human beings will tear themselves away from the physical and earthly element and be citizens of the worlds of the spirit. And in those worlds there are no races or nations, but relationships of a different kind. These things must be understood today when great, tremendous events happen in the world, unless you are going to be mulish—excuse the expression—and present old-established prejudices as new ideals.
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| 120. Manifestations of Karma: Karma of the Higher Beings
25 May 1910, Hanover Translator Unknown |
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| Whilst acting upon us, the luciferic influences call forth the ahrimanic influences whose forces do not act from within, but from without, working upon and in us by means of all that confronts us externally. Thus it is Ahriman who is evoked by Lucifer, and we human beings are vitally involved in the conflict of these two principles. When we find ourselves caught in the clutches of either Lucifer or Ahriman, we must endeavour to progress by triumphing over the ill that has been inflicted upon us. |
| In the interim between death and a rebirth is accomplished the transformation of something internal into something external, and then Ahriman works against us through our own etheric body. This shows how Ahriman is drawn by Lucifer to approach our etheric body. |
| 120. Manifestations of Karma: Karma of the Higher Beings
25 May 1910, Hanover Translator Unknown |
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If we wish to resolve the contradiction which was placed before us at the end of yesterday's lecture, we must to-day once more look back upon the two forces, the two principles, which in the course of time have appeared to us to stimulate and also at the same time to regulate our karma. We have seen that our karma is brought into action only through the influences which the luciferic powers bring to bear upon our astral body, and that through the temptations of these powers we are led into expressions of feelings, impulses and passions, which in a certain way make us less perfect than we should otherwise be. Whilst acting upon us, the luciferic influences call forth the ahrimanic influences whose forces do not act from within, but from without, working upon and in us by means of all that confronts us externally. Thus it is Ahriman who is evoked by Lucifer, and we human beings are vitally involved in the conflict of these two principles. When we find ourselves caught in the clutches of either Lucifer or Ahriman, we must endeavour to progress by triumphing over the ill that has been inflicted upon us. This interplay of activity of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers around us can be understood quite clearly if we consider from a somewhat different aspect the case we alluded to in the last lecture—the case where the person succumbs to ahrimanic influence, whereby he experiences all kinds of deceptive images and illusions. He believes that knowledge of one thing or another has been specially imparted to him, or is in one direction or another making an impression upon him, while another person who had preserved a sound power of judgement would easily recognise that the person in question has succumbed to errors and delusions. Last time we spoke of those cases of clairvoyant delusions regarding the spiritual world, clairvoyance in the invidious sense, and we have also seen that there is no other, or at least no more favourable defence against the delusions of false clairvoyants than a sound power of judgement acquired during our physical life between birth and death. What has been said in our last lecture is of great significance and of fundamental importance if we are dealing with clairvoyant aberrations, for in the case of clairvoyance not attained through regular training, through systematic exercises under strict and proper direction, but showing itself through old inherited characteristics, in images, or else in hearing of sounds—in the case of such false clairvoyance we shall always find that it diminishes, or even ceases altogether if the person in question finds the opportunity and has the inclination seriously to take up anthroposophical studies, or to take up a training that is rational and normal. So we can say that a person who has a wrong perception of the super-sensible always finds that the true sources of knowledge, if he is susceptible to them, will invariably prove helpful to him and lead him back to the right path. On the contrary, we all know that if someone through the complexities of karma has arrived at a condition in which he develops symptoms of persecution mania, or megalomania, he will develop a whole system of delusive ideas, all of which he can substantiate most logically but which are nevertheless delusive. It may happen for instance that he thinks quite correctly and logically in every other department of life, but has the fixed idea that he is being pursued everywhere for some reason or another. He will be able, wherever he may be, to form the cleverest combinations out of the most trivial happenings: ‘Here again is that clique whose one and only aim it is to inflict this or that upon me.’ And in the cleverest way he will prove to you how well founded is his suspicion. Thus a person may be perfectly logical and yet give expression to certain symptoms of madness. It will be quite impossible to impress such a person by logical reasoning. On the contrary, if we make use of logical reasoning in such a case it may well happen that this will challenge the delusive ideas and the victim will try and find even more conclusive proof of the assertion resulting from his persecution mania. When we speak in the terms of Spiritual Science things must be taken literally. If a little while ago, and also the last time, we pointed to the fact that in the knowledge of Spiritual Science we possess an opposing force against any aberration of clairvoyant powers, we were then referring to something entirely different from what we are now discussing. We are not now concerned with influencing the person in question by means of revelations of Spiritual Science. Such a person is not amenable to any reasoning derived from the realm of ordinary common sense. Why should this be so? In a disease whose symptoms are such as we have described, we have to deal with a karmic cause in previous incarnations. The errors which come from the inner being do not in every case proceed from the present incarnation but from a preceding one. Let us now try to get an idea of how something may be carried from an earlier into the present incarnation. For this purpose we must envisage the course of our soul evolution. As external man, we consist of physical body, etheric body and astral body. In the course of time, into these sheaths we have built by means of our Ego the sentient soul into the sentient body, the rational or mind soul into etheric body, and a consciousness soul into the physical body. These three soul members we have developed and have built into the three sheaths where they now dwell. Let us suppose that in some incarnation we were so tempted by Lucifer, or in other words, we developed such egotistical impulses, greed, and other instincts that our soul was laden with transgressions. These transgressions may be in the sentient soul, the rational or mind soul, or in the consciousness soul. This then is the cause which in some future incarnation will be implanted in one of the three soul members. Let us suppose that there was a fault attributable especially to the forces of the rational soul. In the state between death and rebirth this will be so metamorphosed that it will be manifested in the etheric body. Thus in the new incarnation we encounter in the etheric body an effect that may be traced back to a cause in the rational soul of a preceding incarnation. But the rational soul of the next incarnation will again work independently in that incarnation, and it makes a difference whether this human being has previously committed this fault or not. If he has committed it in an earlier incarnation, he now carries his fault in his etheric body. It is now deeper rooted and is not in the rational soul but in the etheric body. But such rationality and good sense as we may acquire upon the physical plane will affect only our rational soul, and will not affect the activity of our rational soul in an earlier incarnation which has already been woven into the etheric body. For this reason it may happen that the forces of the rational soul, as we now encounter them in human beings, are doing their work logically, so that the real inner being is altogether intact; but that the co-operation of the rational soul with the diseased part of the etheric body provokes error in a certain direction. We can affect the rational soul with reasons which can be brought forward upon the physical plane, but we cannot directly affect the etheric body. That is why neither logic nor persuasion will have any effect. Logic would be of little use were we to place someone in front of a convex mirror so that he could see his distorted image, and then try to convince him that he is mistaken in thus seeing the image. He will nevertheless see a distorted image. In the same way does it depend upon the man himself if he morbidly misunderstands a thing, for his logic may be sound in itself but is reflected in a deformed manner by his etheric body. Thus we can carry within our deep organism the karmic effects of an earlier incarnation, and we can actually demonstrate that the defect is present in a certain part of the organism, as in our etheric body for instance. We see here how under the luciferic influence we have contracted an evil in a previous incarnation, and how between death and a new birth it has been transformed. In the interim between death and a rebirth is accomplished the transformation of something internal into something external, and then Ahriman works against us through our own etheric body. This shows how Ahriman is drawn by Lucifer to approach our etheric body. Previously the transgression was luciferic; it has been so transformed that, as it were, a receipt for it is given us by Ahriman in the next incarnation, and then it is a question of expelling the defect from one's etheric body. This can be done only by a deeper intervention in our organism than can be achieved in one incarnation by the ordinary means of external reason. He who in a certain incarnation passes through such an experience as that of persecution mania will, when again passing through the gate of death, be confronted by all the actions that he has performed in consequence of this ahrimanic defect, and he will see the absurdity of what he has done. From this will spring the new force which will completely heal him for his next incarnation; for he can be healed only by realising henceforth that the way he acted under the influence of the symptoms in question was absurd in the external world. We now realise how we can assist such healing. If someone suffers from such mad ideas we shall not succeed in healing him by means of logical reasoning, for such reasoning will only call forth even more violent opposition. But we shall achieve some result, especially when such a disposition shows in early youth, if we bring the sufferer into such a situation where the consequences of these symptoms prove themselves to be obviously absurd. If we make him face facts called forth by himself, and which react upon him in a crassly absurd manner, we can heal him in a certain way. We can also have a healing influence if we ourselves are so far in possession of the truths of Spiritual Science, that they have become the inner possession of our soul. If they have become such an integral part of us, then the whole of our personality will be radiating these truths of Spiritual Science. With these truths that stream into life between birth and death, filling it and yet projecting this life itself; with these revelations of the super-sensible world we can achieve more than with external rational truths. When nothing can be achieved by external logical reasoning we shall, if we patiently apply the truths of Spiritual Science, be able to bring impulses to bear upon the person in question, so that we can, as it were, achieve in the one incarnation what could otherwise take place only by the circuitous passage from one incarnation to another, namely, through penetration of the etheric body by the rational soul. For the truths of the physical plane cannot bridge the chasm between the sentient soul and the astral body, between the rational and the etheric body, or even between the consciousness soul and the physical body. That is why we shall always find that however much wisdom concerning the material world one may absorb upon the physical plane, this wisdom will have but little relationship to the world of his feeling—what we might term a permeation of his astral body by the corresponding impulses and passions. One may be most learned, may have much theoretical knowledge of things belonging to the physical world, may have become an ‘old professor,’ and yet may not have attained within to a transformation of the impulses, feelings and passions that dwell within the astral body. One may indeed know a great deal about the physical world and yet be a gross egotist, because such impulses have been absorbed in youth. Naturally the two things can go hand in hand, external material science and cultivation of the astral and etheric bodies from within. In the same way one can possess truths and amass such knowledge as may become forces for the rational soul in regard to the physical plane, and yet be incapable of bridging the deep chasm existing between the rational soul and the etheric body. In external truths, though one may be learning an enormous amount it will seldom be found that what has been learnt will have any power over the formative forces of the body. In the case of a person who is affected by these truths to such an extent that they get a hold upon his entire being, we may find that in the course of ten years the whole of his physiognomy will have changed so that upon it we can read the conflict he has experienced. We may also notice in his gestures if, for instance, with self-restraint he has become tranquil. These things will find their way into the formative forces of the organism, and even the most delicate and subtle parts of the organism will be stirred thereby. If what is grasped by our mind is not exclusively concerned with the physical plane we still shall become different after ten years, but the change will then have kept to the normal course in the same way as dispositions develop and change in a normal way in ordinary life. In the course of ten years we may possibly develop a different facial expression, but unless we have bridged the chasm from within, this change will have been produced by external influences. In this case we are not transformed by a force taking possession of us from within. It is therefore obvious that only the truly spiritual which really unites itself with our innermost being is able to have a transforming effect upon our formative forces during the period between birth and death, and that this transition, this bridging of the chasm will assuredly take place in the karmic activity between death and re-birth. If, for instance, those worlds through which we pass in the interim between death and a new birth are impregnated with the experiences of the sentient soul, then they will appear in the next incarnation as formative, shaping forces. In this way the reciprocal activity of Ahriman and Lucifer has become intelligible. And now we ask how this combined reciprocal activity presents itself when things are even more distant, when, for instance, the luciferic influence has not merely to cross the abyss between the rational soul and the etheric body, but has, as it were, a longer way to go. Let us suppose that in one life we are particularly susceptible to the influence of Lucifer. In such a case, we should with the whole of our inner being become considerably less perfect than we were before, and in the kamaloca period we should have this most vividly before our eyes, so that we should resolve to make a tremendous effort in order to balance this imperfection. This desire we incorporate as tendency, and in the next incarnation, with what have now become formative forces, we shape our new organism so that it must have a tendency towards balancing our earlier experiences. But let us suppose that the release of these luciferic influences had been instigated by something external, by an external greed, there must have been the influence of Lucifer. Anything external could not have affected us had not Lucifer been active within us. Thus we have within us a tendency to compensate for that which we have become through the luciferic influence. But as we have seen, the luciferic influence of one incarnation challenges and attracts to itself the ahrimanic influence in the next incarnation, so that the two act in alternation. We have seen the luciferic influence to be such that we can perceive it with our consciousness; that is to say, however, that our consciousness can still just reach down into our astral body. We have said that it is due to the luciferic influence when we are conscious of pain, but we cannot descend to those realms that may be termed the consciousness of the etheric and physical bodies. Even in dreamless sleep we have a consciousness, but one of so low a degree that we are not able to be aware of it. But this does not necessarily mean that we are inactive in this consciousness which is possessed normally for instance by plants, consisting as they do only of physical and etheric body. Plants live continually in the consciousness of dreamless sleep. The consciousness of our etheric and physical body is present also in our waking condition in the daytime, but we cannot descend to it. That this consciousness may he active, however, is shown when we perform in our sleep somnambulistic actions of which we later know nothing. It is this dreamless sleep consciousness that is active. The ordinary consciousness and the astral consciousness cannot penetrate to the sphere of somnambulistic action. But because in the daytime we are living in our Ego-consciousness and astral consciousness, we must not believe that the other kinds of consciousness are absent. It is only that we are not aware of them. Let us suppose that through the luciferic influence of an earlier incarnation we have provoked a strong ahrimanic influence which will be unable to act upon our ordinary consciousness. It will, however, attack the consciousness which dwells within our etheric body, and this consciousness will not only conduce to a certain organisation of our etheric body but will impel us even to acts which will be so expressed, that the consciousness of the etheric body will realise that we must discard from within us the effects of the luciferic influence to which we had succumbed in an earlier incarnation; it will realise further that this can be accomplished only through a deed in direct contradiction to the earlier luciferic transgression. Let us suppose that dominated by the luciferic influence, we have been led to supplant a point of view which was religious or spiritual by the point of view of the man who says: ‘I want to enjoy life,’ and thus plunges headlong into gross material pleasures. This would challenge the ahrimanic influence in such a way as to provoke the opposite process. It then happens that passing through life we seek a spot where it is possible at one leap to return to spirituality from a life of the senses. In the one, we went with one plunge into gross material pleasures, and in the other we try by one leap to return to a spiritual life. Our ordinary consciousness is not aware of this, but the mysterious subconsciousness which is chained to the physical body and the etheric body now urges us towards a place where we may await a thunderstorm, where there is an oak, a bench placed beneath, and where the lightning will strike. In this case the subconscious mind has urged us to make good what we have done in an earlier incarnation. Here we see the opposite process. This is what is meant by an effect of luciferic influence in an earlier life, and, as consequence, an ahrimanic influence in the present life. Ahriman's co-operation is necessary to enable us to put aside our ordinary consciousness to such an extent that our whole being will obey exclusively the consciousness of the etheric or of the physical body. In this way many events become comprehensible. However, we must beware of concluding that every accident should be traced to something similar, for this would be taking a very narrow view of karma. There are currents of thought even in our movement that take a really narrow view of karma. Were karma really as they conceive it, the whole world order would have to be specially arranged in the interests of each single human being, so that each life should run harmoniously and be duly compensated—the conditions of one life would be always combined in such a way as to result in an exact balancing of the consequences of an earlier life. This standpoint cannot however be maintained. Suppose someone were to say to a man who had met with an accident: ‘This is your karma; this is the karmic result of your earlier life, and you at that time brought it on yourself.’ Were the same man to have some stroke of luck, then the other would say: ‘This can be traced back to a good deed you did in an earlier life.’ If such words are to have any value, the person should have known what happened in an earlier life which is supposed to have produced this result. If he had knowledge of the earlier life, he would there see the causes coming from that life, and he would have to look towards later incarnations for the effects. From this it is logical to conclude that in every incarnation there are certain prime causes which come into play from incarnation to incarnation, and these will be karmically balanced in the next life. When examining the next life we can observe the causes. If an accident happens, however, for which in spite of all means at our disposal we can find no causes in an earlier life, then we must conceive that this will be balanced in a later life. Karma is not fate. From every life something is carried into later lives. If we understand this, we shall also understand that we may find new events in our life which are of profound significance. Let us remember that the great events in the course of human evolution could not come about without being carried by certain people. At a certain moment people must take over the intentions of evolution. What would the development of the Middle Ages have been, had not Charlemagne intervened at a given moment! How could the spiritual life of olden times have developed if Aristotle had not at a certain time done his work! We see from this that people like Charlemagne, Aristotle, Luther and so on, did not live at a certain period for their own sakes but for the sake of the world. Nevertheless, their personal fates are intimately connected with world events. Should we conclude from this, however, that what they accomplished is the expiation or the recompense for their previous merits or transgressions? Take the case of Luther. We cannot just simply ascribe everything he experienced and endured to his karma; we must be clear that those things which are due to happen in the course of human evolution must come about through human agency and that these individual agents have to be brought out of the spiritual world, without consideration whether they are fully ready in themselves. They are born for the purposes of human evolution, and a karmic path has to be interrupted or lengthened, so that the individuality concerned may appear at a certain time. In such cases a destiny is thrust upon men which need have no relation to their past karma. But to have achieved something between birth and death sets up on earth later karmic causes, so that though it is true that a Luther was born for humanity and had to bear a fate which had no vital association with his former karma, yet what he accomplished on earth will be connected with his later karma. Karma is a universal law, and each experiences it for himself; but we must not only look back to our former incarnations; we must also look forward. From this point of view it is only in a subsequent life that we can judge and justify earlier incarnations, for some of the events of this life do not lie in the karmic path. Let us take a case which actually happened. In a natural catastrophe a number of people perished. It is not at all necessary to believe that it was in their karma that they all should thus perish together; this would be a cheap supposition. Everything need not always be thus traced back to earlier transgressions. There is an instance that has been investigated of a number of people perishing in an elemental catastrophe which resulted in a close alliance of these people at a later period, and, owing to their common fate, they gained the strength to undertake something in common. Through this catastrophe they were able to turn from materialism and brought with them in their next incarnation a disposition to spirituality. What happened in that case? If we go back to the previous life we find that in this instance the common destruction took place during an earthquake; at the moment of the earthquake the futility of materialism presented itself to their souls, and so a mind directed towards the spiritual developed within them. We can see from this how people whose mission it was to bring something spiritual into the world, were prepared for it in this way, which demonstrates the wisdom of evolution. This case has been investigated and authenticated by Spiritual Science. So we can show how primary events can enter human life, and that it cannot always be traced back to an earlier transgression if one person or several people meet with an early death in a catastrophe or an accident. Such an event may appear as a primary cause, and will be balanced in the next life. Other cases may occur. It may happen that someone will have to meet with an early death in two or three consecutive incarnations. This may occur because this individuality has been chosen to bring to mankind in the course of three incarnations certain gifts that can be given only when living in the material world with such forces as result from a ‘growing body’. To be living in a body that has developed up to the thirty-fifth year is quite different from living in a body of greater age. For up to our thirty-fifth year we direct our forces towards the body, so that the forces unfold from within. But from the thirty-fifth year onward begins a life in which we progress only inwardly—a life in which we must continually attack the external forces with our life forces. From the point of view of the inner organisation, these two halves of life differ in every respect the one from the other. Let us suppose that according to the wisdom which presides over human evolution we stand in need of such people who can flourish only when they do not have to fight against external stress which comes in the second half of life, then it may be that the incarnations are brought to a premature close. There are such cases. At our meetings we have already pointed out an individuality who appeared successively as a great prophet, a great painter, and a great poet and whose life was always brought to an end through premature death, because what had to be accomplished by him in the course of these three incarnations was possible only by interruption of the incarnation before he had entered the second half of life. Here we see the strange interlacing of individual human karma and the general karma of mankind. We can go still further and find certain karmic causes in the general karma of mankind, whose effects show only at a later period. Thus the individual again sees himself caught up into the general karma of humanity. If we consider the post-Atlantean evolution, we find the Graeco-Latin period in the middle, preceded by the Egyptian-Chaldean period, and followed by our period—the fifth period of civilisation. Our period will be followed by a sixth and seventh cultural epoch. I have also pointed out on other occasions that in a certain respect there are cycles in succession of the various civilisations, so that the Graeco-Latin culture stands by itself, but that the Egyptian-Chaldean period is repeated in our own. Also in this course, I have already pointed out that Kepler lived in our period, and that the same individuality lived earlier in an Egyptian body, and was in that incarnation under the influence of the wise Egyptian priests who directed his gaze to the celestial vault, so that the mysteries of the stars were revealed to him from above. All this was brought further in his Kepler-incarnation which took place in the fifth period, and which, in a certain way, is a repetition of the third. But we can go still further. From the standpoint of Spiritual Science we can truly assert that most people to-day are blind when they consider world evolution and human life. These similarities, these repetitions, these cyclic lives can be followed even in their details. If we take a certain moment in human evolution, say for instance the year 747 B.C. we shall find that it constitutes a sort of ‘Hypomochlion,’ a kind of zero-point, and that what lies before and after this point corresponds in quite a definite way. We may go back to an epoch of the Egyptian evolution, and there we find certain ritualistic ordinances and commands which appeared as given by the gods. And this they actually were. These ordinances related to certain ablutions which the Egyptians had to perform by day. They were regulated by custom and by certain ritualistic prescriptions, and the Egyptians believed that they could only live in the manner desired by the gods, if on this or that day they were to undertake a certain number of ablutions. This was a command of the gods, that found expression in a certain cult of cleanliness, and if in the interim we encounter a period somewhat less clean, we now again, in our own period, encounter hygienic measures such as are given to humanity for materialistic reasons. Here we see a repetition of what was lost at a corresponding period in Egypt. The fulfilment of what happened earlier is represented in the general karma in a most remarkable manner. Only the general character is always different. Kepler in his Egyptian incarnation had directed his gaze up to the starry sky, and what that individuality there perceived, was expressed in the great spiritual truths of Egyptian astrology. In his reincarnation during that period of materialistic aims, the same individuality expressed these facts in a manner corresponding with our period, in his three materialistically coloured ‘Kepler laws.’ In ancient Egypt the laws of cleanliness were laws of Divine revelation. The Egyptian believed that he was fulfilling his duty to humanity by caring for his particular cleanliness at every opportunity. This preoccupation for cleanliness comes to the fore again today, but under the influence of a mentality which is entirely materialistic. Modern man does not think that he is serving the gods when he is obeying such rules, but that he is serving himself. It is nevertheless a reappearance of what went before. Thus all things are in a certain way cyclically fulfilled. And now we begin to understand that the matters that we summarised last time in a contradiction, are not as simple as one is inclined to suppose. If at a certain period people were not able to conceive certain measures against epidemics, these were times at which men could not do so because, according to the general wise world plan, the epidemics had to take effect in order to give human souls an opportunity of balancing what had been effected through the ahrimanic influence and certain earlier luciferic influences. If other conditions are now being brought about, these too are subject to certain great karmic laws. So we see that these matters cannot be regarded superficially. How does this agree with our statement that if someone seeks an opportunity of being infected in an epidemic, this is the result of the necessary reaction against an earlier karmic cause. Have we the right now to take hygienic or other measures? This is a profound question, and we must begin by collecting the necessary material for replying to it. We must understand that where the luciferic and ahrimanic principles are co-operating, whether concurrently or over longer periods, or where they are working against each other, there are manifested certain complications in human life. These complications appear under forms so diverse that we never see two identical cases. If we study human life, however, we shall find our way in the following manner: if in a particular case we try to discover the combined activity of Lucifer and Ahriman, we shall always find a thread by which this connection will become clear. We must discriminate clearly between internal and external man. Even today we had to differentiate sharply between that which is expressed by the rational soul, and that which appears within the etheric body as a result of the rational soul. We must examine the continuity in which karma is accomplished, and we must at the same time understand that we have still the possibility of influencing our inner being by means of certain karmic influences, so that in future a new karmic compensation may be prepared by the inner being. For this reason, it is possible for a being in an earlier life to have experienced sensations, feelings and so forth that have developed in him a want of love towards his fellow-creatures. Let us suppose, for instance, that he had passed through an experience whereby through karmic action he had become uncharitable. It may well happen that we, following for a time a downward grade, beget evil. We at first descend in order to develop the contrary impetus that will cause us to re-ascend. Let us suppose that a being, by yielding to certain influences, tends towards uncharitableness. This uncharitableness will in a later life appear as karmic result, and will develop inner forces in his organism. We can then act in two ways—consciously, or else unconsciously. In our epoch we have not progressed so far as to do it consciously. With such a person we can take precautions by which these characteristics in his organism, derived from uncharitableness, will be driven out and we may act in such a way that the effect that is expressed in the external organism as a lack of charity will be counteracted. By these means, however, the soul will not be cleansed of all uncharitableness, but only the external organ of uncharitableness will have been expelled. For if we do nothing further, we shall have accomplished only half of our task, perhaps even nothing at all. We may perhaps have helped this person physically, externally, but we shall not have given succour to his soul. Now that the physical expression of uncharitableness has been removed he will not be able to give expression to this uncharitableness, but he will have to retain it within his inner organism until a future incarnation. Let us suppose that a great number of people, because of uncharitableness, had been impelled to absorb certain infectious germs, so that they succumbed to an epidemic. Let us further suppose we were in a position to protect them from this epidemic. We should in such a case preserve the physical body from the effects of uncharitableness, but we should not have removed the inner tendency towards uncharitableness. The case might be such that, in removing the external expression of uncharitableness, we should undertake the duty of influencing the soul also in such a way as to remove from it the tendency towards a lack of charity. The organic expression of uncharitableness is killed in the most complete sense, in the external bodily sense, by vaccination against smallpox. There, for instance, the following becomes manifest, and has been investigated by Spiritual Science. In one period of civilisation, when there prevailed a general tendency to develop a higher degree of egotism, and uncharitableness, smallpox made its appearance. Such is the fact. In anthroposophy it is our bounded duty to give expression to the truth. Now it will be clear why in our period the protection of vaccination appeared. We also understand why, among the best minds of our period, there exists a kind of aversion to vaccination. This aversion corresponds to something within, and is the external expression of an inner reality. So if on the one hand we destroy the physical expression of a previous fault, we should, on the other hand, undertake the duty of transforming the materialistic character of such a person by means of a corresponding spiritual education. This would constitute the indispensable counterpart without which we are performing only half our task. We are merely accomplishing something to which the person in question will himself have to produce a counterpart in a later incarnation. If we destroy the susceptibility to smallpox, we are concentrating only on the external side of karmic activity. If on the one side we go in for hygiene, it is necessary that on the other we should feel it our duty to contribute to the person whose organism has been so transformed, something also for the good of his soul. Vaccination will not be harmful if, subsequent to vaccination, the person receives a spiritual education. If we concentrate upon one side only and lay no emphasis upon the other, we weigh down the balance unevenly. This is really what is felt in those circles which maintain that where hygienic measures go too far, only weak natures will be propagated. This of course is not justifiable, but we see how essential it is that we should not undertake one task without the other. Here we approach an important law of human evolution which acts so that the external and the internal must always be counter-balanced, and that it is not permissible to act with regard to the one only, leaving the other out of consideration. We here get a glimpse of an important relationship, and yet we have not even arrived at the significance of the question: ‘What is the relationship between hygiene and karma?’ As we shall see, the answer to this question will lead us still further into the depths of karma, and we shall further see that there exist karmic relationships between man's birth and death. In addition, other personalities influence a human life, and man's free will and karma are in harmony. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Probation: Scene 5
Translated by Harry Collison |
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| Dame Felicia Balde, Capesius, then Felix Balde; later on Johannes and his Double; afterwards Lucifer and Ahriman. Dame Felicia is seated on a bench in front of her cottage. Capesius (arriving, approaches her): I know an old friend will not ask in vain For leave to stay and rest awhile with thee Since now, e'en more than any former time, He needs what in thine house so oft he found. |
| As yet thou hast not reached that high estate, Which still deluded by thy personal self Thou thinkest falsely that thou hast attained. (Enter Lucifer and Ahriman.) Lucifer: O man, o'ercome thyself. O man, deliver me. Thou hast defeated me In thy soul's highest realm.. |
| O man, be bold and dare. O man, experience me. (Lucifer and Ahriman vanish; the Double also. Johannes walks, deep in thought, into the dark recesses, of the forest. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Probation: Scene 5
Translated by Harry Collison |
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A mountain glade, in which is situated Felix Balde's solitary cottage. Evening. Dame Felicia Balde, Capesius, then Felix Balde; later on Johannes and his Double; afterwards Lucifer and Ahriman. Dame Felicia is seated on a bench in front of her cottage. Capesius (arriving, approaches her): Felicia: Capesius (who has seated himself): Felicia: Capesius: Felicia: (Felix Balde comes out of the house.) Hour upon hour on end, as oft he doth, Felix: Capesius: Felix: Capesius: Felix: Capesius: Felix: Capesius: Felicia: Capesius: Felicia: Capesius: (Stands up to depart; Felix and Dame Felicia go into the house.) I feel the health that such a picture brings (He disappears behind some thick bushes. Enter Johannes, sunk in deep thought.) Johannes to himself: (He feels as if he were rooted to the ground.) What are the bonds that hold me prisoner (The Double of Johannes Thomasius appears.) Ah!—whosoe'er thou art; if human blood Double (as if to Maria): Johannes: Double (as if to Maria): (The voice of conscience speaks.) Conscience: Double (with a slightly different voice): (Enter Lucifer and Ahriman.) Lucifer: Ahriman: (Lucifer and Ahriman vanish; the Double also. Johannes walks, deep in thought, into the dark recesses, of the forest. Capesius appears again. He has, from his post behind the bushes, watched the scene between Johannes and the Double as if it were a vision.) Capesius: Curtain, whilst Capesius remains standing |
| 342. Lectures and Courses on Christian Religious Work I: Fifth Lecture
15 Jun 1921, Stuttgart |
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| Man must find the way between light and heaviness, between Lucifer and Ahriman, and therefore we must have the possibility to think not in any dualism, but to think in the Trinity. We must have the possibility to say: the Persian duality of Ormuzd and Ahriman is today Lucifer and Ahriman, and the Christ stands in the middle of them, the Christ is the one who brings about the balance. |
| The concept of Christ has not yet been worked out in its purity between Ormuzd and Ahriman, between Lucifer and Ahriman. The concept of the Christ must be grasped as that which leads us to harmonize the opposing poles. |
| 342. Lectures and Courses on Christian Religious Work I: Fifth Lecture
15 Jun 1921, Stuttgart |
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My dear friends! Today I would like to say a few words about the third area that you have mentioned, namely the actual content of the sermon. Of course, all three areas are intimately connected. We have given some indications about the nature of the cult, which of course must be very much completed and worked into the concrete, into what is needed today. We have at least been able to give some indications of the cultic aspect, and I would like to start by telling you how this cultic aspect is in turn related to the actual content of the sermon in practice. You see, the sermon element appeals to the parishioner's imaginative understanding. Of course, the sermon must be delivered in such a way that what enters the person through the imagination passes as quickly and as intensely as possible into the feeling, the emotional, and, above all, the will impulse. But nevertheless we must work on the parishioner indirectly through the power of the imagination in the sermon. In all our teaching and instruction we must work on the human being through the power of the imagination. But the conceptual has something inherently contradictory about the whole human nature. Here we enter a realm where today's science proves powerless from the outset to understand things. If you say something like that: the conceptual has something contradictory about the full nature of man, then you will meet with no understanding at all in today's scientific world view. And yet it is so. The conceptual tends to be absorbed once and then retained by the memory. You will easily see that this does not correspond to human nature. If you look at the other extreme in man, at the purely physical processes, you cannot say: I have eaten or drunk today, so it remains in my organism, so I do not need to eat and drink again tomorrow - but food and drink must be repeated in a rhythmic sequence. What a person does must occur in a rhythmic sequence. And this is basically the actual human nature, to be incorporated into the rhythm in a certain way, while it is already a deviation from human nature when a person absorbs something once and then retains it, when it becomes permanent for him. And this permanence is the character of the conceptual. In the extreme, the conceptual becomes boring when it is repeated too often; and there is a fundamental sin against human nature associated with this theoretical-conceptual, namely not wanting to have repetitions anymore. You can follow this purely externally. Read good translations of the Buddha's discourses; you will find that these discourses have countless repetitions, you progress through nothing but repetitions. In the West, the foolish mistake was made of taking only the content of the Buddha-speeches and omitting the repetitions, because it was not known that Buddha had taken human nature into account. There we come upon the point where, out of human nature itself, the mere content must of necessity pass over into something to be rhythmically assimilated. Of course, in the past this was done quite instinctively, by inserting prayer as the rhythmic element into the teaching, inserting prayer as the repeatedly recurring content of faith, even though the individual prayer has exactly the same content. The conceptual element merges with the volitional element when repetition occurs. In another way, one does not get a [volitional] content at all. Thus we already have the necessary flow of the doctrinal element into the cultic element. We have to bring the doctrinal content into such forms that we can present pictorial representations to the community members in a certain way. We have to let what we teach gradually become established in pictorial representations and to set the main points in a certain monumental way, so that they can be repeated again and again as a formula. Without this, we will not be able to bring the teaching content beyond the theoretical-conceptual into the practical-volitional, and this is what we must do. The more we stick to merely handing down the teaching content, the less we get to the practical religious exercise. This is what shows you directly how something like cultic practice is already present in the Buddha-Speeches. The working out of the will element from the mere theoretical element of imagination is actually present in these discourses. While we appeal to people to repeat the Lord's Prayer, we are working our way out of the merely theoretical into the practical religious realm. But we will not be able to do this at all if we ourselves are not completely imbued with the supersensible substance of the world. And here I come today to certain characteristics of the teaching material, which one must nevertheless take into account if one wants to become a practical preacher or if one wants to have an effect on people through the teaching material at all. You see, the greatest harm in today's religious work lies in the fact that the Gospels are no longer taken seriously. I do not mean any slight by this, but I do mean that people are not aware that the content of the Gospels goes beyond our sensory understanding. It is most significant that we can approach the Gospels again through anthroposophy and say to ourselves: an otherworldly content flows in the Gospels. We must understand them, we must do everything possible to really understand them. Today, however, people only criticize the Gospels; they do not really want to understand them, and this criticism is largely based on the fact that one does not take the content of the Gospels seriously at all, but takes it superficially. I must refer you to the third sentence of the Gospel of John. In this third sentence, one usually hears the following: All things were made through the Word, and without the Word nothing was made that has been made. - What is all included in this third sentence of the Gospel of John! In reality, one would have to say: All things that came into being came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing of what came into being came into being. This captures the meaning of this sentence. The third sentence points with all its might to what has come into being in the world, to everything that is subject to becoming. And of that which is subject to becoming, it is said, first, that it is tangible. Everything we see as having come into being is created and passes away. And secondly, it is said of this created and passing away that it is made by the word, by the logos. This sentence would not be there if it were not based on the awareness of a contrast, if it were not subject to the sentence that there is also something in the world that is not created and does not pass away, namely the eternal foundations that merely transform themselves. In our modern education, we have only lost this contrast between what has arisen on the surface and the powers that lie in the depths, which Plato, for example, calls the eternal ideas. We must presuppose these eternal ideas as that which does not pass away and which underlies what has arisen and is passing away, which does not exist in the arising and passing away in the ordinary sense, but subsists. We must distinguish between existence and subsistence. That which subsists all things is the foundation, that which refers to the Father. We must speak to the community in all popularity in such a way that we bring this Father-God as the content of the absolutely eternal to the consciousness of our community children. That is not as difficult as you think. It is only difficult because today the world is intensively economizing on ideas. I can assure you that the people who understand it most easily are the farmers in the countryside. They understand it immediately, while only the people who have been educated in the current way do not understand it. They do not understand it. We can learn a great deal by looking at the last remnants of the elementary spiritual that still exist in [unspoilt] human beings. It is relatively easy to convey the most profound ideas to people with an elementary soul life. These ideas are rejected only by those who are spoilt, who have been spoilt for the most part by our schools. We must understand how to teach people in a popular way the eternal in all things and how to distinguish between what is transient, what has come into being and what is passing away. And we must evoke the idea, in all possible ways and roundabout ways, that the Father-God underlies what is enduring and the Son-God, the Christ as the creative Logos, underlies what is becoming and what is the process of becoming. Therefore, one must also seek understanding of the Father-God before the created and the working of the Christ in the created. Such things must be worked out again, then we come again to concepts that lie beyond mere scientific concepts. But, my dear friends, you must also be able to speak about them in the right way. You do not learn this through logical speculation, because logical speculation itself suffers from the one-sidedness that it works towards being absorbed once. Logical speculation – if it remains only a matter of speculation – is the worst possible preparation for a sermon. If you want to preach, it is not enough to prepare yourself for the doctrinal content of the sermon; the only possible supplement to this preparation for the content is meditation for the preacher himself. Anyone who wants to preach must first meditate, that is, call something into their consciousness that brings them into a feeling inwardness so that they feel the God, the divine within them. Those who do not prepare themselves in this meditative way will not be able to let the word resound with the nuance with which it must resound if one is to evoke understanding for what one has to say. You will have to speak of immortality, you will have to speak of the Fall of Man, of Creation, of Redemption and of Grace. But you must not speak of immortality, the Fall of Man, Creation, Redemption and Grace with the consciousness that you have gained from modern scientific education, but you must speak with the consciousness that you have gained from your feeling of the divine existence within you. Then your words will be given the necessary nuance that you need to reach the hearts of those to whom you are to bring the truths about immortality, the Fall of Man, Creation, Redemption and Grace. This is what must be understood by preachers as deeply as possible. They will not come to a deeper understanding of the teaching content unless they prepare themselves meditatively. The kind of composure that you first acquire in meditation, which brings you to be alone with your whole being – even if only for a short time – that composure is what also prepares you for the proper mood for reading the Gospels. You must assume that only the meditative life can prepare you, on the one hand, for reading the Gospels and, on the other, for the special tone of preaching. This is what the preacher must make a habit of. One should not believe that an understanding of worship, an understanding of the right nuance of preaching, comes through intellectual considerations, through intellectual comprehension of the content of the gospel, but rather that it comes through meditative immersion in the spiritual and volitional element at the same time, which stimulates the human being, thus stimulates the whole human being, and that is what it is really always about. It is certainly a good thing for the modern preacher to realize, by means of outstanding examples, what inner soul struggles must actually be fought through if one wants to penetrate from what one absorbs today through external education, including external theological education, and what determines the whole form of thought, to a real grasp of the suggested idea about the supersensible. It is really useful for anyone who wants to become a religious leader today to study such personalities as, for example, Newman, the English Cardinal who started out from Anglicanism and who thus moved within a more modern world view, half consciously, and then fell back into Catholicism, which, even within Catholicism, because such people are only waiting for such people, could make him a cardinal. It is interesting to observe the struggles of such a personality. You see, in the beginning, Newman's struggle was based on wanting to understand Christian truths. But he could not get anywhere with that. In the end, he could not find a way to understand Christian truths in modern terms. He was honest enough not to want to come to the mere “simple man of Nazareth” in Weinel's manner, but there was in him the urge for the supersensible. He could not get along earlier than until he said to himself: Yes, at the starting point of Christianity are not highly educated, scientifically educated people, but there are the fishermen of Galilee, and they actually understood nothing of the sayings they did; they did these sayings without logic, without being imbued with a logical understanding. And then, in fact, everything that is modern theology, which works so hard to be logical, which comes to the point of negation in its criticism imbued with logic, only emerged from the simple words of the fishermen of Galilee. And then Newman comes to say to himself: If there is logic, it can only be born out of illogic, out of that which is lived in such a simple way as Christianity was lived by the people who surrounded Christ Jesus in Galilee. — And so he comes to a particular conception of the evolution, of the development of that which is experienced [religiously], into the more elaborate. But now he is obliged to take the whole Catholic Church with him, because he remains in the actuality of the unfolding [of religious experience]. Why does he remain? Because he negates the possibility that today, through the logical, one can arrive at the super-logical through beholding. Thus he could, [standing between Scylla and Charybdis,] run the risk, on the one hand, of falling prey to Scylla through a purely rationalistic interpretation, or, on the other hand, of Charybdis through killing the rationalistic way of thinking, but then having to accept the whole tradition and falling back into Catholicism. In fact, everyone who thinks this way falls prey to Catholicism. You only have to consider that people who cannot go along with the contemporary way of entering the supersensible, such as Scheler, who is characteristic of our German education for this matter, fall back into Catholicism. If people seek the supersensible and reject the path that anthroposophy wants to take, [they fall back into Catholicism]. Today, in order to avoid falling between Scylla and Charybdis, we have no other choice than to follow the anthroposophical path, even to accept anthroposophy as a supporting element of religious life, in order to access the supersensible truths. Then you will also find — and this is necessary for you because it occurs in community building — the popular, simple form for that which we cannot do within anthroposophy because something else must come first. We still have to express ourselves too strongly in modern forms of education [for the presentation of supersensible truths], because we speak to those who belong to modern education. But if you are a number of people, then it is quite possible to find the simple form to speak to the people in such a way that the high concepts of the supersensible that have been hinted at become concrete again. I will only hint at the following. You see, do not disdain to speak to people in such a way that you say to them: Look at the stone, look at the rock crystal, look at a mineral object shaped like this, and you will be able to say to yourself: This mineral object, how was it formed? It has been formed out of the earth; you have no reason to think otherwise than that it has been formed out of the earth. It is a piece of the earth, the earth can create such forms, that is a piece of the earth. But now look at the plants; look at what you can always see around you. Can you imagine that the earth produces plants [on its own]? No; what the earth has as seeds within itself must wait until spring comes, until the sun's rays penetrate from outside, and when the sun's rays lose their strength, the earth also loses the strength to produce plant growth. Look at the growth of plants, and you will notice that when plants try to survive the winter season, they take on a woody, mineral quality; they become trees, which in turn lose the sprouting and budding power in their wood, and take on something of the mineral world themselves. The Earth could never produce what is plant-like out of itself; for that it needs what surrounds the Earth. It is necessary to rise above this, to really teach people that the earth could only be a rocky body if it had only its own forces, but that it would never have vegetation and would be permeated by it if the earth did not form a unity with the cosmos, if the cosmic forces did not play a role and have an effect on the earth. The earth would not have a plant kingdom without the spatial heaven. And if it was possible in ancient times to teach the slave masses in ancient Egypt such truths as, for example, the transition from solar power to the power of Sirius, if it was possible to teach people that at that time, then we need not despair that today, when we can speak to the simplest people about the fact that the Earth owes what it has as a vegetative being to the extraterrestrial cosmos with its forces. And so we can rescue human beings from their tendency towards the merely earthly by teaching them to feel what the earth draws from the cosmic heavens. I therefore believe that we must work towards directing the soul's gaze to the whole of cosmic space, and that this can be achieved simply by considering the plant world in a way that can be understood by everyone. It is of great help to us to realize how completely innocent nature actually is. It is impossible to speak of anything in the mineral or plant world that is guilt or sin. And if we work through these concepts well, if we really present the innocence of nature and the possible becoming guilty of man in a concrete way, then we can work out what leads people to understand that something comes into the world with man that cannot be found in space at all. Once man has understood that plants owe their existence to space and are innocent, then we have a way of realizing that that which can make man guilty cannot come from space at all, that we are all compelled to seek the essential soul of man outside of space. We must seek this way to go beyond space. And you see, when we have found the way to go beyond space, then we will find further ways. You can see how difficult it has become for people with a modern education to go beyond space, from the fact that the most intelligent people in the 19th century opposed the idea of immortality on the grounds that souls would have no place in the universe. They could not get beyond the spatial with the concept of the soul. With the concept of the soul, one must get beyond the spatial. And when one has come this far, one turns one's attention to the animal world and tries to bring to life a concept that one gets there, which not only seizes our imaginative life but also our deepest feelings. We find that minerals and plants cannot become guilty, but they cannot suffer either. Man must suffer, but can also become guilty. And then we turn our gaze to the animal world; they cannot become guilty either, but they must suffer. And when we gradually learn to understand repeated lives on earth, especially when it is not a theory but a clear understanding, when we feel that there is a connection between guilt and suffering, even if it is not trivially practical, and we just cannot find this connection because we direct our attention to innocent nature and would also like to harness man to this unity of innocent nature, then the great world tragedy becomes clear to us, which consists in the fact that we have chained the animal world to us, that the animals must suffer with us, although they cannot be guilty. Then one arrives at the tragic realization that the animal world exists because of man, must share in his suffering, although it cannot be to blame. Feel this concept through, empathize that the animal world shares in evil, although it cannot go along with evil. When we form a vivid picture of evil in this way – a picture that is also intuitive – we come into contact with the world. We only have to feel the tragedy of existence in the world, which consists in the fact that the animals around us suffer with us, and then we come to realize that there are duties that go beyond the ordinary legal obligations. This is a point where you can lead the human being completely out of the immediate sense world. For in the immediate sense world you find nothing but the legal concepts that regulate the sensual, the external relationships between human and human. The obligation to redeem the animals comes to us from a completely different world. We cannot do this at all in our present existence. We cannot do anything in our present existence to redeem the animals that suffer for our sake. We can only redeem them if we look ahead to a final state of the earth that no longer prevents us from intervening in the laws of nature to relieve the suffering of the animal world. And so we are moving towards understanding a final state of the earth, in which physics has no right to interfere. We are expanding that which lives in us humans to include an understanding of the interconnection of the world. We must speak to the people of today, because if we speak in terms of the old religious ideas, people will object that from a scientific point of view none of this is possible. But we must try to find such a way that simply cannot be said by science. Because the suffering of the animal world is there, without the animal world being able to be guilty. And here we come directly to the transition; the possibility exists of knowing something about supernatural obligations, or rather, extra-terrestrial obligations, about duties that can be fulfilled when the earth has found its end, the end of its present physical state. We will be able to lead [people] to an understanding of this state of the earth by overcoming purely scientific thinking in an appropriate way. But we cannot do this if we merely appeal to people's selfishness in our preaching. And that is what has gradually arisen in humanity and has actually made religious conviction so difficult that today, with the best sermons, we basically appeal to human selfishness; and that has come about because we only speak of immortality and not of being unborn. What is the situation regarding immortality? From anthroposophy it becomes clear. It becomes clear through knowledge. But how does today's preacher speak about immortality? He shakes up — look at the facts — the selfish needs of people, and in doing so he speaks entirely to the deepest soul egoisms; and he would not reach the hearts at all if the desire did not beat towards him: I may not perish with death. Of course, man will not perish with death. But this view must not arise from desire. The preacher does stir up these desires; he speaks to desire and fear, even if he does not do so consciously, because that is how he is accustomed to speaking. You cannot speak of life before conception in the same way. You cannot speak of life before birth from an egoistic point of view; you can make a person indifferent to it, because deep down he does not care about it. Since he is experiencing existence, he is not interested in whether he has lived before. This interest must be instilled in man, and that can only be done by awakening in him the consciousness that he has been given a mission with his earthly existence, that he is a co-worker in the divine world order, which could not achieve its goal if it had to work without the sensual world. That the Deity has released man, that is one thing. What can be grasped is that the human being experiences freedom, which he could not experience if he had not descended into the body. We have to present the human being as something that has been sent down by God. Without realizing the pre-existence, you do not come to a sermon that takes hold of the whole person and not just the desiring person. And that is a great defect of our [present-day] preaching, that it appeals to the desiring on the one hand and to the fearful on the other, and not to that which represents man as an image of the Godhead, which has released man to work in earthly existence. You see, that word that comes to us from ancient times, that plays such a great role in the Catholic Church, the Gloria, is inserted into the mass between the Gospel and the offertory. Gloria in excelsis Deo – Glory be to God in the highest, and peace on earth, and goodwill toward men. – This is how it is translated in modern times. Now this translation is somewhat misleading, because the concept of glory is not based on the concept of being worshipped; rather, it is based on the same concept as the Greek exusiai: the concept of shining outwards, of revealing itself. And the saying actually means: May the Divine in the Heights reveal Itself, and on earth may Its reflection be the peace of men of good will. — We must arrive at a new concept of glory, then we will also come to an understanding of these things. Just think how terribly blasphemous it actually is when the Gospel of the Blindborn is translated: Why was this man born blind? Did he sin or his parents? — And the answer: Not he has sinned nor his parents, but the works of God shall be made manifest in him. Is this not blasphemy, that the man born blind was healed so that the works of God might be seen in him? While it is always translated that the works of God are revealed through him, the truth lies in the fact that he preformed blindness for himself in a pre-existent life, so that God might be revealed in him. We must eliminate this erroneous concept, which appears in many forms; then we can begin to make it clear that the human being stands as an image of God, that he is there to allow the Godhead to work in him. We cannot arrive at this understanding if we rely only on the hope of a post-existent life and not on pre-existence. We must grasp radically that we are here on earth the continuation of the pre-existent life, not merely the beginning of the post-existent life, and that human minds cannot find the way to selflessness if we speak only of immortality and not of pre-existence. These things must be the subject of glowing preaching, then there will be a possibility of reconnecting human consciousness to the supersensible; and then the rest will follow of itself. You see, if you want to arrive at a concept such as that of Creation, then you have to evoke in people an awareness of the following: if you look at the mineral nature today, you see that the law of the conservation of matter and of force prevails in it. And this world that we are looking at seems to be eternal. But if you realize that this world is only in space and that only minerals from the earthly and plants from the extra-earthly space have been added to space, that something is already coming in with the animal from a pre-earthly state – because what is natural law on earth today cannot of course, cannot make the animal into a human being – if you realize that the laws of nature themselves have a beginning, then you will be able to understand that the concept of creation also includes the emergence of the laws of nature, whereas today we simply extend the laws of nature forward and backward into infinity. This is how we arrive at the concept of creation. It is intended to draw attention to something that can prove to you that, when speaking to simple minds, one can always find a certain understanding for the highest things. When I was young, if one went to an Austrian farmer who had not been educated at school but had only learned to read and write in his village school and spoke to him about nature as one had learned at school, he would stare at one. He could not reconcile this concept of nature with what he knew at all. You couldn't say to him in the usual way, you look at nature, it produces plants and animals, it is beautiful, nature appears in the light - and so on; you might as well have said something Chinese. There was an Austrian dialect poet who used the word “d'Naduar”. But when the Austrian farmer, who had only learned to read and write, who had no sense of the concept of nature as it appears in modern science, spoke of nature, he had a different concept of nature. For him, “nature” was the male seed and without this connotation he could not understand the word nature. He understood that what lives innocently in nature is in him, but it is drowned out in him by what can become guilty. He regarded nature as a part of himself, which is connected with it if one can speak of birth, and he also had the concept that something else enters into man at birth than nature, which is why he calls the male seed nature, the natural thing, however, that is connected with being born. He had this mysterious connection between our being born and being a work of nature. And as is the case with this striking concept, if one only seeks, even if one wants to move on to the concept of creation, one can still find the possibility of connecting to concepts that are understandable to the simplest mind. The concept of creation can become something thoroughly understandable, but one must really try to move beyond what modern education gives us with good will. And so one gradually comes to make man understand that the creation of man comes before the creation of nature, that man has entered the world at a time when nature had not yet taken effect, when there was no such thing as heredity, fertilization and so on. One returns to a state where heredity and fertilization did not yet exist, where our present world was not yet an external world order, where the apostasy of the spiritual beings could take place, which then later dragged man along with them; one returns to a state in the pre-natural time, where the fall into sin was not yet a possibility for man. One can and must come to these things if one wants to find a content for the sermon. For this it is not enough for you to present these concepts of the Fall, redemption, and so on, to people in a theoretical way. You will see that if you only count on formal understanding, if you count on mere doctrinal content and not on varied repetition, then you will not be able to hold the community together. If you count on varied repetition, then you can hold the community together. Then you also bring them to an understanding of grace, then you also bring them to the possibility of understanding a new sense of freedom, and you can teach people that man can come to develop, at least in his consciousness, concepts of the innocent and of non-evil [...] gap], freedom [... gap], and that through all our efforts we can indeed become good people inwardly, but that we can only find our connection to the world of the good when grace is at work, when grace comes to meet us. I can only hint at this, because I don't have the time to discuss these things properly. But to put it briefly: there are ways, if only they are sought, to get out of the conceptual system of today's education and into a fully human system of ideas that has access to the supersensible world; and to do all this, it is absolutely necessary to allow oneself to be fertilized by anthroposophy in a certain sense. People are quite capable of understanding what you say if you find the right tone by first putting yourself in a meditative state. In recent times, there has been too much abstract, lifeless preaching. And you see, I can say this to you for further reflection — I do not want to impose it on you like a dogma — I can only say: the worst manner of preaching is to stick to abstractions and then become unctuous. To believe that one speaks to the heart by presenting the abstract in a very inward way is poison for the heart. If one speaks of the “simple man of Nazareth”, if one tries to preach about Christ without taking the supersensible into account, if one allows everything Christian to rest, as it were, on his humanity, and wants to teach this to people by adopting an untrue sentimental tone, then one poisons the minds, because then one lives untruthfully about that which should permeate the sermon. What should permeate the sermon through the feelings is the connection between the preacher and the supersensible content and impulse of the world itself, and the supersensible content and impulse is never given through the abstract. The preacher must be deeply imbued with the humility that the mere use of logical reason is itself a sin, and that the pursuit of science in modern times is killing the religious, that we must redeem the world from the scientific view through religion, that it belongs to the religious to overcome science, and that it is a commandment of Christ Jesus himself to overcome science, that Christ Jesus lives among us precisely for this reason, and that we express his mission to overcome science when we connect with him. On the one hand, we must be clear about one thing: the human being must work in the world, and so he must already sin by grasping the world with his senses. We see sin as being necessary. And we see that the pendulum, because there is rhythm in the world, must swing to the other side, to the side of redemption from natural science. We will not be able to eradicate it, because we recognize the necessity for man to make the acquaintance of Ahriman, but we must realize that the pendulum must swing to the other side. But we must realize the rhythm, that only in a state of equilibrium can the two things work together. And for that, you see, I must draw your attention to something that may surprise you, but which must enter your consciousness if you want to find the necessary tone for a future sermon. You see, we actually live today in a consciousness that is a kind of continuation of the ancient Persian world consciousness, which lived in Ahriman and Ormuzd. In Ahriman, he sees the evil god who opposes Ormuzd, and in Ormuzd he sees the good god who destroys the works of Ahriman. It is not known that the ancient Persian was aware that one must follow neither Ahriman nor Ormuzd [alone], but their interaction. And their interaction manifests itself in a figure such as Mithras. Ormuzd is a Lucifer-like figure who frees us from the world when we surrender to her, who wants to snatch us from heaviness and let us burn in the light. Man must find the way between light and heaviness, between Lucifer and Ahriman, and therefore we must have the possibility to think not in any dualism, but to think in the Trinity. We must have the possibility to say: the Persian duality of Ormuzd and Ahriman is today Lucifer and Ahriman, and the Christ stands in the middle of them, the Christ is the one who brings about the balance. Now all religious development so far, especially the theological, has set up a very pernicious equation, it has brought the Christ-figure as close as possible to the Lucifers. It is almost a resurrection of the old Persian Ormuzd when one experiences how Christ is spoken of today. One always thinks only of duality, thus of evil in contrast to good. The world problem is not solved by duality, but solely and exclusively by the Trinity. For as soon as you have duality, you not only have good and evil, but you have the battle between light and darkness, the battle that must not end with the victory of one over the other, but must end with the harmonization of the two. That is actually what must be brought into the concept of Christ. It is not for nothing that Christ sits with the tax collectors and sinners. You see, my dear friends, the world in which we live has come about in such a way that it was originally formed by all the influences that were at work in the configuration that we experience as the echoes of race, as the echoes of the individual peoples and the like. Consider this world as it emerges from the element of birth, and consider the mission of Christ. The mission of Christ is to overcome all this naturalness, to plant the love of universal humanity in the place of racial life. That which was there at the beginning of the earth, the Adamite, is to be eradicated by Christ. The particularism of a nation, the national egoism, is to be overcome by the Christ, by the general humanity. Redemption does not consist in being in an equally real way as the natural itself, working against the natural, but in taking up the natural and bringing about a balance between the purely spiritual and the natural. The concept of Christ has not yet been worked out in its purity between Ormuzd and Ahriman, between Lucifer and Ahriman. The concept of the Christ must be grasped as that which leads us to harmonize the opposing poles. For general humanity, human love, is something other than what arises out of families, peoples, races, nations, and so on. But the one is not to be eradicated by the other; rather, race and individual must be harmonized. The mission of Christ on earth will only be understood when it is known that the Father God is connected with the eternal alone, not with the created and the passing; the Christ impulse has come into temporality because it is connected with the created and the passing, and it makes the temporal into the eternal. We must learn to take literally again what is written in the Gospels: Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. - Let us translate it into a language that can be spoken today. That which the expanse of space - heaven in the external spatial sense - evokes through the stars in the plants of the Earth, that which the Earth itself brings forth in the minerals, that is, the whole earthly world, will pass away. But when it has passed away, when plants and stones have passed away, then, after this earth has disappeared, that which has come to earth in the Christ will live, that which lives on in the word. And when the Christ is taken up in our word, then, after the destruction of the earth, that which is alive in us through the Christ will continue to live in time, according to the Pauline word: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” We must rise to the belief that the laws of nature are not eternal, but that the earth will come to an end, and that what exists can only continue to exist because a creative force will carry it beyond when our earth has perished. Stone and plant will perish, but what is in us must not perish, it must be carried out, and that can only be done if the Christ is in us. Only the animals will come with us, and we will then have to release them. Because they are on earth because at the moment when the possibility of becoming sinful entered the world, they were at a stage of development where they had to be seized by that which was only suitable for people. Before this possibility of sin entered the world, there could be no suffering in the world. Minerals and plants do not need to suffer as such, but minerals and plants will pass away. Animals were at a stage of development when they were dragged along by people into suffering. They must be released from it again when this stage of development is over and the earth no longer exists. The laws that now rule our natural world will then rule the world of the soul, which we now only experience inwardly. We cannot comprehend this if we do not also know that man came before the earth. We must open up access to understanding of these things to people. This must be reflected in our preaching. You do not need to believe that what I have said today you have to say to the congregation in similar words. But you must understand it, then it is already alive in your sermon, even if you preach in the simplest way. For there is not only the ponderable understanding of things, which consists in your mouth speaking and your ear listening, but there is also the imponderable understanding that works from person to person. Unfortunately, I could only give you these few hints, my dear friends, but I hope that you will have heard many things in my words that want to come from the human being. Without this will, we will not make any progress. It is not a matter of merely stimulating our intellect; we must stimulate the whole human being. |
| 202. The Search for the New Isis, Divine Sophia: The Quest for Isis-Sophia
24 Dec 1920, Dornach Translator Unknown |
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| Thus the Egyptian who was himself permeated by Lucifer rightly sees a world-picture in which Ahriman-Typhon is active. Now, we must realise that modern man is permeated by Ahriman. Ahriman moves and surges within him, just as Lucifer moved and surged within the Egyptian world. And then, when Ahriman works through Lucifer, man sees his picture of the world in a luciferic form. |
| We must bear out into the heavenly spaces that which Lucifer has made of Isis, just as Isis buried in the earth parts of the body of Osiris, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman. |
| 202. The Search for the New Isis, Divine Sophia: The Quest for Isis-Sophia
24 Dec 1920, Dornach Translator Unknown |
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In the festival of Christmas we have something given to us that directs the thoughts of all circles of Christian people straight to the very deepest problems of the evolution of man upon earth. Regard the events of history from whatever aspect you will, examine them and try to arrive at an understanding of evolution, search how you will for the meaning of man's evolution on earth,—in all history you will find no thought that has such power to lift the soul to the contemplation of the whole becoming of man as the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha, as the thought that is contained in the Christian festival. If we look back to the beginning of man's evolution upon earth, and then follow it up through the thousands of years that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, we shall find through that time that, no matter how great and grand the achievements of the peoples in the various nations, all these achievements constituted in reality a kind of preparation—they were a preparatory stage for that which took place for the sake of mankind at the Mystery of Golgotha. Again, if we study what has happened since the Mystery of Golgotha, there too we shall find we can only understand it when we remember that the Christ who went through the Mystery of Golgotha has taken active part in the evolution of man ever since. Many things in human evolution may at first appear incomprehensible; but if we investigate them without narrow-mindedness or prejudice—for instance, prejudices of the kind which believe that unknown divinities come to man's help just where he considers that help is needed, without his having himself to move a finger,—if we leave aside such views, we shall find that even the most distressing events in the course of the world's history can show us how the evolution of the earth has acquired significance and meaning through the fact that Christ has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. It is good if we study the Mystery of Golgotha—the Christmas Mystery is contained in it—from points of view which can reveal, as it were, the meaning of the entire evolution of man. We know the intimate connection between what takes place in the ethical-moral sphere of man's evolution and what takes place in nature, and a certain understanding of this link between life in nature and the world's moral order enables us to approach also another relationship which we have been contemplating for many years—namely, the relationship of the Christ to that Being whose outer reflection appears in the sun. The followers and representatives of the Christian impulse were not always so hostile as they often are today toward the acknowledgment of this relationship between the Sun-Mystery and the Christ-Mystery. Dionysius, the Areopagite, who has often been mentioned here, calls the sun God's monument, and in Augustine we continually find allusions—even in Scholasticism we find such allusions—referring to the fact that the outwardly visible stars and their movements are images of the divine-spiritual existence of the world. And we must grasp the Christmas Mystery in a far wider connection than is usually done, if we would grasp just that which concerns us most of all in view of the important tasks of the present age. I should like to remind you of something of which I have spoken repeatedly in the course of many years. I have told you how we look back upon the first post-Atlantean age, filled with the deeds and experiences of the ancient Indian nation; how we look back upon the ancient Persian epoch of post-Atlantean humanity; then upon the Egyptian-Chaldean, and upon the Greco-Latin, and at last come to the fifth epoch of the post-Atlantean humanity, our own. Our epoch will be followed by the sixth and by the seventh. And I have drawn your attention to the fact that the Greco-Latin, the fourth epoch of post-Atlantean humanity, stands, as it were, in the centre, and that there are certain connections—you can read of this in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind—between the third and the fifth epochs, that is between the Egyptian—Chaldean epoch and our own—and that there is also a certain connection between the ancient Persian epoch and the sixth, and between the ancient Indian and the seventh epoch of post-Atlantean humanity. Certain things repeat themselves in a special way in each of these epochs of life. Once I pointed out that the great Kepler, the successor of Copernicus, had a feeling that his solar and planetary system repeated—of course in a way suited to the fifth post-Atlantean age—what was contained in the world-picture of the Egyptian Mysteries. Kepler expressed this in a certain connection very radically when he said that he had borrowed the vessels of the ancient Egyptian teachers of wisdom and carried them over into our modern times. Today, however, we will consider something which had a central place in the cults performed by the Egyptian Mystery-priests—the Isis-Mysteries. In order to call up before our minds the spiritual connection between the Isis-Mystery and that which lives in Christianity, we need only cast our eyes upon Raphael's famous picture of the Sistine Madonna. The Virgin is holding the child Jesus, and behind her are the clouds, which are really children's faces. We can imagine that the child Jesus has come down to the Virgin from the clouds, through a condensation, as it were, of the thin cloud-substance. But this picture which has arisen out of an entirely Christian spirit is, after all, a kind of repetition of what was revered in the Egyptian Isis-Mysteries, which portrayed Isis holding the child Horus. The theme of this earlier picture is entirely in keeping with that of Raphael's picture. Of course we must not be tempted to interpret this in the superficial way in which it has been done by many people since the 18th century and throughout the 19th century right up to our own days—namely, to consider the story of Christ Jesus and all that belongs to it merely as a metamorphosis, a transformation, of ancient pagan Mysteries. From my book Christianity as Mystical Fact you already know how these things must be considered, but in the sense in which it is explained there we can point to a spiritual relationship between that which arises in Christianity and the old pagan Mysteries. This Isis-Mystery has as its chief content the death of Osiris and the search of Isis for the dead Osiris. We know that Osiris, the representative of the Sun-Being, the representative of the spiritual sun, was killed by Typhon, who is none other than the Ahriman of the Egyptians. Ahriman kills Osiris, throws him into the Nile, and the Nile carries the body away. Isis, the spouse of Osiris, sets out on her quest and finds him in Asia. She brings him back to Egypt, where Ahriman, the enemy, cuts the body into twelve parts. Isis buries these twelve parts in various places, so that from now on they belong to the earth. This can show us how profound was the connection between the heavenly and the earthly powers in the conception of Egyptian wisdom. Osiris is, on the one hand, the representative of the Sun-Powers. After having passed through death he is, in various places simultaneously, the force which matures everything that grows out of the earth. The ancient Egyptian sage is quick to imagine how the Powers which shine down to us from the Sun, enter the earth and become part of the earth, and how, as Sun-Powers buried in the earth, they hand over once more to man what matures out of the earth. The Egyptian myth is founded upon the story of Osiris—how he was killed, how his spouse Isis had to set out on her quest for him, how she brought him back to Egypt and he then became active in another form, from out of the earth. One of the Egyptian pyramids depicts the whole event in a most significant manner. The Egyptians not only wrote down in their own particular writing what they knew as the solution to the great cosmic secrets, they also expressed it in their architectural constructions. They built one of these pyramids with such mathematical precision, that its shadow disappeared in the spring equinox owing to the position of the sun—the shadow disappeared into the base of the pyramid and only reappeared in the autumn equinox. The Egyptians tried to express in this pyramid that the forces which used to shine down from the sun are now buried in the earth and stimulate the forces of the earth, so that the earth may produce the fruit which mankind needs. This, then, is the idea we find present in the minds and hearts of the ancient Egyptians. On the other hand, they look up to the sun, they look up to the lofty Sun Being, and they honour Him. At the same time, however, they relate how this Sun Being has been lost in Osiris, and has been sought by Isis, and how the Being has been found again and is able hereafter to continue his activity in a new and changed way. Many things which appeared in the Egyptian wisdom must be repeated in a different form during the fifth post-Atlantean age. We must learn more and more to contemplate, upon a spiritual-scientific basis, the Mysteries of the Egyptian priests in a form which is suited to our own age, in the light of Christianity. For the Egyptians, Osiris was a kind of representative of the Christ Who had not yet appeared. They looked upon Osiris as the Sun-Being, but they imagined that this Sun-Being had disappeared and must be found again. We cannot imagine that mankind could lose the Sun-Being, the Christ, Who has now passed through the Mystery of Golgotha; for He came down from spiritual heights, connected Himself with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and now remains connected with the earth. He is present, He exists, as the Christmas carol proclaims each year anew: “Unto us a Saviour is born.” It expresses thereby the eternal, not the transitory nature of this event—that Jesus was not only born once at Bethlehem, but is born continually; in other words, He remains with the life of the earth. The Christ, and what He means for us, cannot be lost. My dear friends, it is not the Osiris, but the Isis legend that has to be fulfilled in our time. We cannot lose the Christ and what He gives in a higher form than Osiris; but we can lose, and we have lost, that which we see portrayed by the side of Osiris—Isis, the Mother of the Saviour, the Divine Wisdom, Sophia. If we wish to renew the Isis legend, we cannot take it in the form in which it has been transmitted to us—Osiris who is killed by Typhon-Ahriman and carried away by the waters of the Nile, who must be found again by Isis, in order that his body, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman, may be sunk into the earth—no, my dear friends, we must somehow find the Isis legend again, the content of the Isis Mystery, but we must form it out of Imagination, suited to our own times. An understanding will come again for the eternal cosmic truths, when we learn to create in the world of Imagination, as the Egyptians did. We must find the true Isis legend. Because the Egyptian lived before the Mystery of Golgotha, he was permeated by luciferic powers. If luciferic powers are within man and stir his inner life, moving and weaving through it, then the result will be that the ahrimanic powers will appear to him as an active force outside. Thus the Egyptian who was himself permeated by Lucifer rightly sees a world-picture in which Ahriman-Typhon is active. Now, we must realise that modern man is permeated by Ahriman. Ahriman moves and surges within him, just as Lucifer moved and surged within the Egyptian world. And then, when Ahriman works through Lucifer, man sees his picture of the world in a luciferic form. How does it appear to him? This luciferic picture of the world has been made, it has become increasingly popular and has been adopted in all circles of thought that consider themselves progressive and enlightened. If we would understand the Christmas Mystery, we must bear in mind that Lucifer is the power who wants to hold back the world-picture in an earlier stage. Lucifer is the power which tries to bring into the modern world-conception that which existed in earlier stages of evolution; he tries to give permanence to that which existed in earlier periods. All that was moral in earlier periods also exists of course today. But Lucifer strives to sever the moral forces as such (the significance of the moral forces lies in this: that they are there in the present, working as seeds for the future), Lucifer strives to sever all moral forces from the world-picture; he only allows the laws of nature, the necessary and natural aspect, to appear in this world-picture. Thus the impoverished human being of modern times possesses a wisdom of the world in which the stars move according to a purely mechanical necessity, devoid of morality; so that the moral meaning of the world's order cannot be found in their movements. This, my dear friends, is a purely luciferic world-picture. Just as the Egyptian looked out into the world and saw in it Ahriman-Typhon as the one who takes Osiris away from him, so we must look at our luciferic world-picture, at the mathematical-mechanical world-picture of modern astronomy and of other branches of natural science, and we must realise that the luciferic element rules in this world-picture, just as the typhonic-ahrimanic element ruled in the Egyptian world-picture. Just as the Egyptian saw his outer world-picture in an ahrimanic-typhonic light, so modern man, because he is ahrimanic, sees it with luciferic traits. Lucifer is there, Lucifer is active there. Just as the Egyptian imagined that Ahriman-Typhon was active in wind and weather and in the snowstorms of winter, so modern man, if he wishes to understand things, must imagine that Lucifer appears to him in the sunshine and in the light of the stars, in the movements of the planets and of the moon. The world-conception of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, is a luciferic conception. Just because it is in keeping with our ahrimanic forces of knowledge, its content—please note the distinction—its content is a luciferic one. When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the divine Sophia, the wisdom that sees through the world and enables man to comprehend the world, worked in a twofold way:—in the revelation to the poor shepherds in the fields, and in the revelation to the wise men from the East. This was the twofold working of the divine Sophia, the heavenly wisdom. This wisdom, which was still to be found in its later form among the Gnostics, and which the early Christian Fathers and Teachers of the Church learned from the Gnostics and used to enable them to understand the Mystery of Golgotha—this wisdom could not be continued into our times, it was overwhelmed and killed by Lucifer, just as Osiris was killed by Ahriman-Typhon. We have not lost Osiris—the Christ—we have lost that which for us takes the place of Isis. Lucifer has killed it But the Isis-Being killed by Lucifer was not sunk into the earth, as Typhon sunk Osiris into the Nile; Lucifer carried the Isis-Being, the divine wisdom whom he had killed, out into the world's spaces; he sunk her into the world's ocean. When we look out into this ocean and see the stars moving only according to mathematical lines, then we see the grave of the world's spiritual essence; for the divine Sophia, the successor of Isis, is dead. We must give form to this legend, for it sets forth the truth of our times. We must speak of the dead and lost Isis, the divine Sophia, even as the ancient Egyptians spoke of the dead and lost Osiris. We must set out in search of the dead body of the new Isis, the dead body of the divine Sophia, with a force which, although we cannot yet rightly understand it, is nevertheless in us—with the force of the Christ, with the force of the new Osiris. We must approach luciferic science and seek there the coffin of Isis; in other words we must find in that which natural science gives us something which stimulates us inwardly towards Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. This brings to us the help of Christ within—Christ, Who remains hidden in darkness if we do not illuminate Him with divine wisdom. Armed with this force of the Christ, with the new Osiris, we must set out in search of Isis, the new Isis. Lucifer does not cut Isis in pieces, as Ahriman-Typhon did with Osiris; on the contrary, Isis is spread out, in her true shape, in the beauty of the whole Universe. Isis shines out of the cosmos in an aura of many shining colours. We must learn to understand Isis when we look out into the Cosmos; we must learn to see this Cosmos in an aura of shining colours. But just as the Ahriman-Typhon cut Osiris into pieces, so Lucifer blurs and washes out the colours in all their clear distinctness, blends and merges into one single whole the parts which are so beautifully distributed over the heavens, the limbs of the new Isis which go to make the great firmament of the heavens. Even as Typhon cut Osiris in pieces, so Lucifer blends the manifold colours that stream down to us from the whole aura of the cosmos into a uniform white light that streams through the universe. It is that light which Goethe combated in his Theory of Colours, repudiating the statement that it contains all the colours, which in truth are spread out over the marvellous and manifold and secret deeds of the whole cosmos. But we must pursue our search until we find Isis, and when we have found her, we must learn how to place out into the universe what we are then able to discover and to know. We must having a living picture in our minds of all that we have acquired through the newly-found Isis, so that the whole heavens become for us spiritual again. We must understand Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan from within. We must bear out into the heavenly spaces that which Lucifer has made of Isis, just as Isis buried in the earth parts of the body of Osiris, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman. We must realise that through the force of the Christ we can find an inner astronomy, which reveals to us once more the origin and life of the cosmos, as grounded in the force of the spirit. And then, when we have this insight into the cosmos, awakened through the newly-found power of Isis, which is now become the power of the divine Sophia, then will the Christ, Who has united with the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, become active within us, because then we shall know Him. It is not the Christ we lack, my dear friends, but the knowledge and wisdom of the Christ, the Sophia of the Christ, the Isis of the Christ. This is what we should engrave in our souls, as a content of the Christmas Mystery. We must realise that in the 19th century even theology has come to look upon the Christ merely as the Man of Nazareth. This means theology is completely permeated by Lucifer. It no longer sees into the spiritual foundations of existence. External natural science is luciferic; theology is luciferic. Of course if we are speaking of the inner aspect of the human being we can just as well say that in his theology man is ahrimanic. Then in the same way we must say of the Egyptian that he is luciferic, just as we say of him that his perception of the external world is ahrimanic. The Christmas Mystery must be grasped anew by modern man. Let him realise that first of all he must seek Isis, in order that Christ may appear to him. The cause of the misfortunes and troubles in modern civilisation is not that we have lost the Christ Who stands before us in a far greater glory than Osiris did in the eyes of the Egyptians. We have not lost Him and need not to set out in search of Him, armed with the force of Isis—what we have lost is the wisdom and knowledge of Christ Jesus. This is what we must find again, with the help of the force of Christ which is in us. This is how we must look upon the content of the Christmas festival. For many modern people Christmas is nothing but an occasion for giving and receiving presents, something which they celebrate every year through habit. The Christmas festival has become an empty phrase like so many other things in modern life. And it is just because so many things have become a phrase, that modern life is so full of calamities and chaos. This is in truth the deeper cause for the chaos in our modern life. My dear friends, if in this community, we could acquire the right feelings for everything which has become words, has become a phrase in modern life, and if these feelings could enable us to find the impulses needed for a renewal, then this community, which calls itself the anthroposophical community, would be worthy of its existence. This community should understand how terrible it is in our age that such things as the Christmas festival should be kept up as a mere phrase. We should be able to understand that in future this must not happen, and that many things must be given a new content, so that instead of acting out of old habits, we act out of new and fresh insight. If we cannot find the inner courage needed for this, then we share in the lie which keeps up the yearly Christmas festival merely as a phrase, celebrating it without any true feeling. Do we really rise to the highest concerns of humanity when we give and receive presents every year at Christmas out of habit? Do we lift ourselves up to the highest concerns of humanity when we listen to the words—which have also become a phrase—spoken by the representatives of this or that religious community? We should forbid ourselves to continue in this inner hollowness of our Christmas celebrations. We should make the inner decision to give true and worthy content to such a festival, which should raise mankind to the comprehension of the meaning of its existence. Ask yourselves, my dear friends, whether the feelings in your hearts and souls, when you stand before the Christmas tree and open the presents which are given out of habit, and the Christmas cards containing the usual phrases—ask yourselves whether there are living in you feelings that can raise mankind to an understanding of the sense and meaning of its evolution on earth! All the trouble and sorrow of our time is due to this—we cannot find the courage to lift ourselves above the phrases of our age. But it must happen, a new content must come—a content which can give us entirely new feelings that stir us mightily, even as those were stirred who were true Christians in the first Christian centuries, and who knew that the Mystery of Golgotha and the appearance of Christ upon the earth was the highest which man could experience. Our souls must again acquire something of this spirit Oh, my dear friends, the soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it is willing to experience the new Isis legend within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and transfers her body into the cosmic spaces, which have become a mathematical abstraction, or the grave of Isis; then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery through the impulse given by the inner force of spiritual knowledge, which places into the lifeless sky that which stars and planets reveal through an inner life, so that they appear as monuments of the spiritual powers that surge through space. We look in the right spirit towards the ‘manger’ when we first let the powers that surge through space kindle our feeling, and then look at that Being Who came into the world through the Child. We know that we bear this Being within us, but we must understand Him. Just as the Egyptians looked from Isis to Osiris, so we must learn to look again to the new Isis, the holy Sophia. The Christ will appear in spiritual form during the 20th century, not through an external happening, but inasmuch as human beings find that force which is represented by the holy Sophia. The present age has the tendency to lose this Isis-force, this force of the Mary. It was killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of mankind. New forms of religion have in part exterminated just this view of the Mary. This is the Mystery of modern humanity. The Mary-Isis has been killed, and she must be sought, just as Osiris was sought by Isis; but she must be sought in the wide space of heaven, with that force that Christ can awaken in us, if we give ourselves to Him in the right way. Let us picture this rightly, let us immerse ourselves in this new Isis legend which must be experienced, and let us fill our souls with it. Only then shall we experience in a true sense this Holy Eve of Christmas, leading us into Christmas Day, the Day of Christ. My dear friends, this anthroposophical community can become a community of human beings united in love because of the search in which they set out together. Let us realise this most intimate and dear task, let us go in spirit to the manger and bring to the Child our sacrifice and our gift, in the knowledge that something altogether new must fill our souls, in order that we may undertake the tasks which can lead mankind out of barbarism into a new civilisation. To this end it must really be so among us that one helps the other in love, so that a real community of souls arises in which envy and all such things disappear, and in which we do not look each at our own particular goal, but face together, united in love, the great goal which we have in common. The Mystery which the Christmas Child brought into the world contains this—to look at a goal in common, without discord among us. For the common goal implies union and harmony. The light of Christmas should shine as a light of peace, a light that brings peace outside, only because first of all it sheds an inner peace into the hearts of men. We should understand this and say together: Let us realise this and work together with love in the great task. Then, and only then, shall we understand Christmas. If we cannot realise this, we shall not understand Christmas. Let us remember that when we do sow discord, this discord hinders us in understanding the One who appeared among us on Christmas Eve. Can we not pour this Christmas Mystery into our souls, as something which unites our hearts in love and unity? We cannot do this, my dear friends, unless we understand what Spiritual Science really means. Nothing will grow out of this community if we merely bring into it ideas and impulses we have collected from all comers of the world, where phrase and routine hold sway. Let us remember that our community is facing a difficult year, that all forces must be gathered together, and let us celebrate Christmas in this spirit. Oh, my dear friends, I should like to find words which appeal deeply to the heart of each one of you on this evening. Then each one of you would feel that my words contain a greeting which is at the same time an appeal to kindle Spiritual Science within your hearts, so that it may become a force which can help humanity to raise itself up again from its terrible oppression. These, my dear friends, are the aspects from which I have gathered the thoughts which I wished to give you. Be sure that they are meant for each one of you, as a warm Christmas greeting, as something which can lead you into the New Year in the very best way. In this spirit, accept my words as a warm and loving Christmas greeting.
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| 147. Secrets of the Threshold: Lecture V
28 Aug 1913, Munich Translated by Ruth Pusch |
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| If it had been able to remain as originally foreseen, without Lucifer's intervention, it would belong to a central divine position free from the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman; then, in accordance with the progress of the divine world order, mankind could have set sail on a different current. |
| However, someone who wants to go through a normal development will easily notice from the three things Benedictus gave Capesius as examples, how senseless it is to wish to eliminate Ahriman and Lucifer from human evolution. Consider these three activities: solitary thought, the spoken word, and writing. No sensible person, even when he fully recognizes the fact of Lucifer's influence on thinking and Ahriman's influence on writing, will wish to root out Lucifer where he is so obviously at work, for this would mean forbidding solitary thought. |
| 147. Secrets of the Threshold: Lecture V
28 Aug 1913, Munich Translated by Ruth Pusch |
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I should like to help everyone understand, if I can, the characteristics of the spiritual realms we are studying in these lectures. For this reason, I am going to add a little story to shed light on the questions we have already considered and on those ahead of us.13 Some time ago Professor Capesius was inwardly quite disturbed and puzzled. It came about in the following way. You will have noticed in The Portal of Initiation that Capesius is a historian, a professor of history. Occult research has shown me that a number of well-known modern scholars have become historians through a particular connection with an Egyptian initiation in the third post-Atlantean epoch, either directly within an initiation cult or else by being attracted in some way or other to the Temple Mysteries. You will notice that Capesius is a historian who depends not only on external documents; he tries also to penetrate to the historical ideas that have played a part in human evolution and in the development of civilization. I must admit that in characterizing Capesius in The Portal of Initiation, The Probation of the Soul, and The Guardian of the Threshold, I was continuously aware of his link to the Egyptian cult of initiation shown in detail in Scenes Seven and Eight of The Souls' Awakening. We must keep in mind that what Capesius's soul experienced during his Egyptian incarnation forms the foundation for his later destiny and for his present-day soul. Capesius has therefore become a historian, concerned in his professional life chiefly with what has been brought about in successive epochs by the varying character of peoples, civilizations and individuals. One day, however, Capesius came across some literature about the philosophy of Haeckel. Up to then he had not paid much attention to these ideas, but now he studied various articles on Haeckel's atomistic view of the world. This was the reason for his tortured state of mind; a peculiar mood descended on him when he met this atomistic philosophy at a relatively late period in his life. His reason told him: We really cannot get behind natural phenomena properly unless our explanations involve atoms by way of a mechanistic conception of the universe. In other words, Capesius came more and more to recognize what is, in a sense, the one-sided correctness of atomism and a mechanistic view of nature. He was not one to fight fanatically against a new idea, for he had confidence in his own intelligence, which seemed to find these ideas necessary to explain the natural phenomena around him. Yet it troubled him. He said to himself, “How desolate, how unsatisfying for the human soul this conception of nature is. How poorly it supports any ideas one would like to acquire about spirit and spiritual beings or about the human soul!” Capesius was thus driven back and forth by doubt; therefore he set out—almost instinctively, I might say—on the walk he so often took when his heart was heavy, to the Baldes' little cottage. Talking over things with those warmhearted people had many times provided him with a real emotional lift, and what Felicia Balde gave him in her wonderful fairy tales had refreshed him. And so he went there. As Dame Felicia was busy in the house when he arrived, he met first his good friend Felix, whom he had gradually grown fond of. Capesius confided his troubles to Felix, describing the doubts that the knowledge of Haeckelism and the atomistic theory had brought. He explained how logical it seemed to apply it to the phenomena of nature, but on the other hand how barren and disheartening such a conception of the universe is. In his distress, Capesius more or less sought help for his state of soul from his fatherly friend. Now Felix is quite a different character from Capesius. He goes his own unique way. Turning aside at once all Haeckel's ideas and theories, he explained how the matter really stands. He said: “Certainly there must be atoms; it is quite correct to talk about them. But we have to understand that atoms, in order somehow to form the universe, must stratify and arrange themselves in such a way that their relationships correspond in measure and number; the atoms of one substance form a unit of four, another of three, another of one or two; in this way the substances of earth came about.” It seemed to Capesius, who had a good grasp of history, that this was somewhat Pythagorean. He felt that a Pythagorean principle had the upper hand in Felix, who was arguing that there is nothing we can do about the atoms themselves but that within them we find the wisdom of measure and number. More and more complicated became the argument, with ever more complicated numerical relationships, where—according to Felix—cosmic wisdom in combining the atoms revealed itself as a spiritual principle among them. More and more complicated became the structures that Father Felix built up for Capesius, who gradually was overcome by a peculiar mood. You could describe it by saying that he had to strain every nerve so much in deciphering this complicated stuff that, even though the subject interested him immensely, he had to suppress a desire to yawn and to sink into a kind of dream state. Before our good professor dropped completely into a dream, however, Dame Balde joined them and listened for a while to the expounding of numbers and structures. She sat there patiently, but she had a peculiar habit. When something not altogether pleasant or congenial bothered her, and she had to control her boredom, she would clasp her hands together and twirl her thumbs around each other; whenever she did this, she was able to swallow her yawns. And now after she had twirled her thumbs for a short time, there came a pause. She could finally try to stir up Capesius with a refreshing story, and so Felicia told her good friend the following tale. Once upon a time there stood in a very lonely region a great fortress. Within it lived many people, of all ages; they were more or less related to one another and belonged to the same family. They formed a self-contained community but were shut off from the rest of the world. Round about, far and wide, there were no other people nor human settlements to be found, and in time this state of things made many of the people uneasy. As a result, a few of them became somewhat visionary, and the visions that came to them might well, from the manner in which they appeared, have been founded on reality. Felicia told how a great number of these people had the same vision. First, they saw a powerful figure of light, which seemed to come down out of the clouds. It was a figure of light bringing warmth with it as it came down and sank into the hearts and souls of the people in the fortress. It was really felt—so ran Felicias' story—that something of glory had come down from the heights of heaven in this figure Of light from above. But soon, Felicia continued, those who had the vision of light saw something more. They saw how from all sides, from all around the mountain, as though crawling out of the earth, there came all kinds of blackish, brownish, steel-grey figures. Whereas it was a single figure of light coming from above, there were many, many of these other forms around the fortress. Whereas the figure of light entered into their hearts and their souls, these other beings—one could call them elemental beings—were like besiegers of the fortress. For a long time the people, of whom there was a fairly great number, dwelled between the figure from above and those besieging the fortress from outside. One day, however, it happened that the form from above sank down still further than before, and that the besiegers come closer in towards them. An uncomfortable feeling spread among the visionaries in the fortress—we must remember that Felicia is telling a fairy tale—and these visionaries, as well as all the others, fell into a kind of dream state. The figure from above divided into separate clouds of light, but these were seized upon by the besiegers and darkened by them, so that gradually the people of the fortress were held in a dream. The earth life of the people was thereby prolonged for centuries, and when they came to themselves, they found that now they were divided into small communities scattered over many different parts of the earth. They lived in small fortresses that were copies of the great, original one they had inhabited centuries before. And it was apparent that what they had experienced in the ancient fortress was now within them as strength of soul, soul richness and soul health. In these smaller fortresses they could now bravely carry on all sorts of activities, such as farming, cattle raising and the like. They became capable, hard working people, good farmers, healthy in soul and body. When Dame Felicia had finished her story, Professor Capesius felt as he usually did, pleasantly cheered. Father Felix, however, found it necessary to provide some explanation for the images of the story, for this was the first time Felicia had told this particular tale. “You see,” Felix began, “the figure that came from above out of the clouds is the luciferic force, and the figures that came from outside like besiegers are the ahrimanic beings....” and so on; Felix's explanations became more and more complicated. At first Dame Felicia listened, clasping her hands together and twirling her thumbs, but finally she said, “Well, I must get back to the kitchen. We're having potato pancakes for supper and I don't want them to get too soft.” So she slipped away. Capesius sank into such a heavy mood through Felix's explanations that he no longer could listen properly and though he was really very fond of Father Felix, he could not altogether hear what was being explained. I must add that what I have just been relating happened to Capesius at a time when he had already met Benedictus and had become what one could call his pupil. He had often heard Benedictus speak about the luciferic and ahrimanic elements, but though Capesius is an extremely intelligent man, he never could quite fathom these remarks of Benedictus. Something seemed to be missing; he could not begin to understand them. So this time when he left the Balde cottage, he turned over in his mind the story of the fortress that multiplied itself. Almost every day he pondered the tale. When he later came to Benedictus, Benedictus noticed that something had taken place in Capesius. Capesius himself was aware that every time he recalled the story of the fortress, his soul was peculiarly stirred within him. It seemed as if the story had worked upon his inner being and strengthened it. Consequently he was continually repeating the tale to himself—as if in meditation. Now he came to Benedictus, who perceived that the forces of Capesius' soul had been newly strengthened. Benedictus began therefore to speak about these things in a special way. Whereas earlier Capesius—perhaps because of his great learning—would have had more trouble grasping it all, he now understood everything extremely well. Something like a seed had fallen into his soul with Felicia's story and this had fructified his soul forces. Benedictus said the following. Let us look at three different things: First, consider human thinking, human concepts, the thoughts that a person carries around within himself and ponders when he is alone to help him understand the world. Everyone is able to think and to try to explain things to himself in complete solitude. For this he doesn't need another person. In fact, he can think best when he shuts himself up in his own room and tries as best he can, in quiet, self-contained pondering, to understand the world and its phenomena. Now then, said Benedictus, it will always happen to a person that a feeling element of soul rises up into his solitary thoughts, and thus there will come to every individual thinker the tempting attraction of the luciferic element. It is impossible for someone to ruminate and cogitate and philosophize and explain everything in the world to himself without having this impulse coming out of soul sensitivity as a luciferic thrust into his thinking. A thought grasped by an individual human being is always permeated to a great extent by the luciferic element. Capesius had earlier understood very little when Benedictus spoke about luciferic and ahrimanic elements, but now it was clear to him that there must lurk in the solitary thoughts a person forms in himself the allurements of luciferic temptation. Now, too, he understood that in the human activity of individual thought Lucifer will always find a hook with which he can snatch a human being out of the forward-moving path of world evolution; then, because a person separates himself with this kind of thinking from the world, he can be brought to the lonely island that Lucifer—himself separated from the rest of the cosmic order—wants to establish, setting up on that island everything that separates itself into a solitary existence. Benedictus, after directing Capesius's attention to the nature of lonely, personal, inner thinking, said, Now let us look at something else. Consider what writing is: a remarkable factor of human civilization. When we look at the character of thought, we have to describe it as something that lives in the individual human being. It is accessible to Lucifer who wants to lead our soul qualities out of the physical world and isolate them. This solitary thinking, however, is not accessible to Ahriman, for it is subject to the normal laws of the physical world—that is, it comes to life and then passes away. Writing is different. A thought can be put into writing and snatched from destruction; it can be made permanent. I have sometimes pointed out that Ahriman's effort is to reclaim what is alive in human thinking as it goes toward destruction and to anchor it in the physical sense world. That is what typically happens when you write something down. The thoughts that otherwise would gradually disperse are fixed and preserved for all time—and thus Ahriman can invade human culture. Professor Capesius is not the sort of reactionary who wants to forbid the teaching of writing in the early grades, but he understood that with all the books and other reading matter people are piling up around themselves, the ahrimanic impulses have entered the evolution of human culture. Now he could recognize in solitary thought the luciferic temptation, in what is written or printed, the ahrimanic element. It was clear to him that in the external physical world, human evolution cannot exist without the interplay of ahrimanic and luciferic elements everywhere in everything. He realized that even in our forward-moving evolution, writing has gained greater and greater importance (and to recognize this, one does not have to be clairvoyant but need only look at the developments of the last couple of hundred years). Ahriman is therefore continually gaining in importance; Ahriman is seizing more and more influence. Today when the printed word has acquired such immense significance—this was quite clear to Capesius—we have built great ahrimanic strongholds. It is not yet the custom (spiritual science has not brought things completely to the point where the truth can be openly spoken in public) that when a student is on his way to the library, he would say, “I've got to hole up and cram for an exam in such and such a subject down at Ahriman's place!” Yet that would be the truth. Libraries, great and small, are Ahriman's strongholds, the fortresses from which he can control human development in the most powerful way. One must face these facts courageously. Benedictus then had something more to explain to Capesius. On the one hand, he said, we have the thoughts of the individuals, on the other, the written works that belong to Ahriman—but between them there is something in the center. In whatever is luciferic we have a single whole; men strive after unity when they want to explain the world to themselves in thought. In what is written, however, we have something that is atomistic. Benedictus now disclosed what Capesius could understand very well, for his mind and heart had been so enlivened by Dame Felicia's tale. Between these two, solitary thought and writing, we have the Word. Here we cannot be alone as with our thinking, for through the spoken word we live in a community of people. Solitary thinking has its purpose and a person needs no words when he wants to be alone. But speech has its purpose and significance in the community of other human beings. A word emerges from the solitude of the single individual and unfolds itself in the fellowship of others. The spoken word is the embodied thought but at the same time, for the physical plane, it is quite different from thought. We need not look at the clairvoyant aspects I have mentioned in various lectures; external history shows us—and being a historian, Capesius understood this very well—that words or speech must originally have had quite a different relationship to mankind from what they possess today. The further you go back into the past, you actually come—as occult research shows—to one original language spoken over the whole world. Even now when you look back at ancient Hebrew—in this regard the Hebrew language is absolutely remarkable—you will discover how different the words are from those in our own languages of western Europe. Hebrew words are much less ordinary and conventional; they possess a soul, so that you can perceive in them their meaning. They themselves speak out their inner, essential meaning. The further you go back in history, the more you find languages like this, which resemble the one original language. The legendary Tower of Babel is a symbol of the fact that there was really once a single primeval human language; this has become differentiated into the various folk and tribal languages. That the single common language disintegrated into many language groups means that the spoken word moved halfway towards the loneliness of thought. An individual does not speak a language of his own, for then speech would lose its significance, but a common language is now found only among groups of people. Thus the spoken word, has become a middle thing between solitary thought and the primeval language. In the original common language one could understand a word through its sound quality; there was no need to try to discover anything further of meaning, for every word revealed its own soul. Later, the one language became many. As we know, everything to do with separation plays into Lucifer's hands; therefore as human beings created their different languages, they opened the door to a divisive principle. They found their way into the current that makes it easy for Lucifer to lift human beings out of the normal progress of the world, foreseen before his own advent; Lucifer can then remove them to his isolated island and separate them from the otherwise progressive course of human evolution. The element of speech, the Word, finds itself therefore in a middle state. If it had been able to remain as originally foreseen, without Lucifer's intervention, it would belong to a central divine position free from the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman; then, in accordance with the progress of the divine world order, mankind could have set sail on a different current. But language has been influenced on the one side by Lucifer. While a thought grasped in solitude is the complete victim of the luciferic forces, the Word itself is laid hold of only to a certain extent. On the other hand, writing, too influences language; the further mankind progresses, the more significant is the effect of the printed word on spoken language. This comes about when folk dialects, which have nothing to do with writing, gradually disappear. A more elegant kind of speech takes their place, and this is even called “literary speech.” The name indicates how speech is influenced by writing, and you can still notice how this happens in many localities. I am often reminded how it happened to me and my schoolmates. In Austria where there are so many dialects all mixed up together, the schools insisted on the pupils' learning the “literary speech,” which the children to a great extent had never spoken. This had a peculiar result; I can describe it quite frankly, for I myself was exposed to this literary language over a long period of my life, and only with the greatest effort could I get rid of it. It sometimes even now slips through. Literary speech is peculiar in this: that one speaks all the short vowels long and all the long vowels short, whereas dialect, the language born out of the spoken word, pronounces them correctly. When you mean the Sonne, “sun” that is up there in the sky, dialect says d'Sunn. Someone, however, who has gone through an Austrian school is tempted to say, Die Soone. Dialect says, der Sun for Sohn (“son”); the school language says der Sonn.
This is an extreme example from an earlier time, of course, but it illustrates my point. You see how writing works back on the spoken language: it generally does work back on it. If you look at how things have developed, you will find that language has already lost what grows out of the earth and soil and is most vital, most elemental, most organic; people speak more and more a book language. This is the ahrimanic element in writing, which continually influences the spoken word from the other side. However, someone who wants to go through a normal development will easily notice from the three things Benedictus gave Capesius as examples, how senseless it is to wish to eliminate Ahriman and Lucifer from human evolution. Consider these three activities: solitary thought, the spoken word, and writing. No sensible person, even when he fully recognizes the fact of Lucifer's influence on thinking and Ahriman's influence on writing, will wish to root out Lucifer where he is so obviously at work, for this would mean forbidding solitary thought. Admittedly, for some people this would be a most comfortable arrangement, but chances are that none would be willing to advise it openly. On the other hand, we would not want to do away with writing. Just as the positive and negative electric charge indicates a polarity in external physical nature, we will also have to agree that the contrasting ahrimanic and luciferic elements have also to exist. They are two polarities, neither of which we can do without, but they must be brought into the right relationship to measure and number. Then the human being can move between them in the middle ground by way of the spoken word—for indeed the Word was meant to be the vessel for wisdom and insight, the vehicle of thoughts and mental images. A person could say, “I must so train myself in using words that through them I allow everything self-willed and merely personal to be corrected. I must take into my soul the wisdom that past ages have unlocked out of the word. I must pay attention not only to my own opinion, not only to what I myself believe or can recognize correctly through my own ability, but I must respect what has come down through the various cultures, through the efforts and wisdom of the various races in human evolution.” This would mean bringing Lucifer into the right relationship to the Word. We would not do away with isolated thinking but, realizing that the spoken word belongs to the community, we would try to trace it back through long periods of time. The more we do this, the more we give Lucifer his rightful influence. Then instead of merely submitting to the authority of the Word, we protect its task of carrying earth wisdom from one epoch of civilization to the next. On the other hand, if someone fully understands the matter, he must take it on himself not to submit to the rigid authoritarian principle that belongs to writing—whether it be most holy in content or completely profane—for otherwise he will fall victim to Ahriman. It is clear that for the external materialistic world we have to have writing, and writing is what Ahriman uses to detach thinking from its course toward destruction; this is his task. He wants to hold thinking back from flowing into the stream of death: writing is the best means of keeping thoughts on the physical plane. In full consciousness, therefore, we must face the fact that writing, which carries the ahrimanic element in itself, must never gain the upper hand over mankind. Through our vigilance we must keep the Word in the middle position, so that on the left and on the right—both in our thinking and in our writing—the two polar opposites, Lucifer and Ahriman, are working together at the same time. This is where we should stand and it will be the right place if we are clear in mind and heart that there must always be polarities. Capesius took hold of all this that he heard, with his soul forces strengthened by Felicia. His attitude to what Benedictus was explaining was quite different now from earlier explanations that Benedictus had given him of the luciferic and ahrimanic elements. Fairy tales flowing out of the spiritual world were more and more fructifying the forces of his soul, so that Capesius himself perceived how inwardly strengthened and fortified his soul capacities had become. In Scene Thirteen of The Souls' Awakening this is represented; a soul force within Capesius designated as Philia appears to him as a spiritually tangible being, not as a merely abstract element of his soul. The more Philia becomes alive in his soul as a real being the more Capesius understands what Benedictus expected from him. At the time when he had first heard the enlivening story of the fortress that multiplied itself into a great number of such buildings, it did not at first affect him. In fact, he almost began to slumber; then when Father Felix was talking about the atoms, he really was practically asleep. Now, however, with his soul so matured, Capesius recognized the threefoldness inherent in the whole stream of world evolution: on one side the luciferic solitary thought, on the other, the ahrimanic writing, the third, the middle state, the purely divine. He now understood the number three as the most significant factor in cultural development on the physical plane; he surmised that this number three can be found everywhere. Capesius viewed the law of number in a different way than before; now, through the awakening of Philia within him, he perceived the nature of number in world evolution. Now too, the nature of measure became clear: in every threefoldness there are two polarities, which must be brought into an harmonious balance with each other. In this, Capesius recognized a mighty cosmic law and knew that it must exist, in some way or other, not only on the physical plane but also in higher worlds. We shall have to enlarge upon this later in more precise descriptions of the divine spiritual world. Capesius surmised that he had penetrated to a law acting in the physical world as though hidden behind a veil and in possessing it, he had something with which he could cross the threshold. If he were to cross the threshold and enter the spiritual world, he must then leave behind him everything stimulated merely by physical experience. Number and measure—he had learned to feel what they are, to feel them deeply, to fathom them, and now he understood Benedictus, who brought up other things, at first fairly simple ones, to make the principle fully clear. “The same predominance of the triad, of polarity or opposition in the triad, of harmonious balance,” Benedictus told Capesius, “is found in other areas of our life. Let us look from another point of view at thinking, mental images, or ideas. First of all you have mental images; you work out for yourself the answers to the secrets of the universe. The second would be pure perception; let us say, simply listening. Some people are more likely to ponder about everything introspectively. Others don't like to think but will go around listening, will receive everything through listening, then take everything on authority, even if it's the authority of natural phenomena, for there is, of course, a dogma of external experience, when one is pushed around willingly by the superficial happenings of nature.” Benedictus could soon show Professor Capesius also that in lonely thinking there lies the luciferic attraction, whereas in mere listening, or in any other kind of perceiving, there is the ahrimanic element. But one can keep to the middle path and move between the two, so to speak. It is neither necessary to stop short at abstract, introspective thinking wherein we shut ourselves away within our own souls like hermits, nor is it necessary to devote ourselves entirely to seeing or hearing the things our eyes and ears perceive. We can do something more. We can make whatever we think so inwardly forceful that our own thought appears before us like a living thing; we can immerse ourselves in it just as actively as we do in something heard or seen outside. Our thought then becomes as real and concrete as the things we hear or see. That is the middle way. In mere thought, close to brooding, Lucifer assails man. In mere listening, either as perception or accepting the authority of others, the ahrimanic element is present. When we strengthen and arouse our soul inwardly so that we can hear or see our thoughts while thinking we have then arrived at meditation. Meditation is the middle way. It is neither thinking nor perceiving. It is a thinking that is as alive in the soul as perception is, and it is a perception of what is not outside man but a perception of thoughts. Between the luciferic element of thought and the ahrimanic element of perception, the life of the meditating soul flows within a divine-spiritual element that alone bears in itself the rightful progress of world events. The meditating human being, living in his thoughts in such a way that they become as alive in him as perceptions of the outside world, is living in this divine, on-flowing stream. On his right are mere thoughts, on his left the ahrimanic element, mere listening; he shuts out neither the one nor the other but understands that he lives in a threefoldness, for indeed life is ruled and kept in order by number. He understands, too, that between this polarity, this antithesis of the two elements, meditation moves like a river. He understands that in lawful measure the luciferic and ahrimanic elements must be balanced in meditation. In every sphere of life the human being can learn this cosmic principle of number and measure that Capesius learned after his soul had been prepared through Benedictus's guidance. A soul that wants to prepare itself for knowledge of the spiritual world gradually begins to search everywhere in the world, at every point that can be reached, for the understanding of number, above all the number three; it begins then to see polar opposites revealed in all things and the necessity for these opposites to balance each other. A middle condition cannot be a mere flowing onward, but we must find ourselves within the stream directing our inner vision to the left and to the right, while steering our vessel, the third, middle thing, safely between the left and right polarities. In recognition of this, Capesius had learned through Benedictus how to steer in the right way upwards into the spiritual world and how to cross its threshold. And this every person will have to learn who wants to find his way into spiritual science; then he will really come to an understanding of the true knowledge of higher worlds.
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| 272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Goethe's Search for the Depths of Becoming and the Mysteries of the World in His “Faust”
11 Sep 1916, Dornach |
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| It undoes in Faust what Lucifer has achieved; it closes his eyes again. Do you realize the depth of the world view here! That which came to man through Lucifer's impulse is now paralyzed by an impulse of Ahriman through the detour of worry. Man has become sighted in the physical realm through Lucifer. Now he is being blinded again by the form brought in from the realm of Ahriman, that is, made to see inwardly. |
| And yet, everything that goes down this false track will fall prey to Lucifer and Ahriman. Only that which will know that nothing can be achieved on this track will flourish! |
| 272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Goethe's Search for the Depths of Becoming and the Mysteries of the World in His “Faust”
11 Sep 1916, Dornach |
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after a eurythmic presentation of the scenes “Midnight” and “Entombment” Much could be said if one wanted to exhaust everything that lies in these final scenes of Goethe's “Faust”, if one wanted to point out all the perspectives that naturally arise for spiritual science from the thoughts that flow from these final scenes. Today I want to bring out a few things from the abundance of what could be said. But I certainly do not want to create the impression that these things could be completely exhausted. We must take as our starting point two facts of the evolution of the earth if we want to understand these final scenes, two of the most important facts of the evolution of the earth. We have already referred to them. The first fact lies in the Lemurian period, the second in the Atlantean period. Today we will only characterize them insofar as we need to. The fact of the Lemurian period, characterized from a certain point of view, is that through all the events that can be read about in “Occult Science in Outline” or in our cycles, human beings have, to a certain extent, organized themselves more deeply into matter than was predetermined. This has come about through the Luciferic impulse. This impulse has, as it were, fulfilled one of the intentions to which Mephistopheles refers when he says that he undertook it together with the others in deeply wicked hours when destruction was devised for the human race. Through the fact that humanity organized itself more deeply into matter than was actually predetermined for it, human consciousness connected with all that human existence means in the evolution of the earth in a different way than it should have been. We have often pointed out that, as a result of this Luciferic impulse having been given, man connects a completely different consciousness with generation, with sexual reproduction. In those days, so to speak, sexual reproduction was brought into consciousness, and in this way it was made, in a certain sense, one might say, from a supersensible fact, into a sensual fact. That is the first. The fact that then exists in the Atlantean period is that, since man was now already more deeply organized in sensuality than was predetermined for him, he developed his whole organism in such a way that the Verahrimanization, one could say, could take place as we have often described it, that man connected his spiritual powers with the sensual-physical natural powers and natural facts. You know that in the Bible the first fact is expressed through the image that is given of the Luciferic seduction, which is mainly characterized in the words that Lucifer speaks with regard to the human race: Your eyes will be opened, and you will distinguish good and evil. Your eyes will be opened – in this taking in of the sensual into consciousness with the opening of the eyes lies precisely the fall of mankind into matter. So now mankind had fallen deeper into matter than was predetermined for it. It was predetermined for mankind to see the material world from outside the material world. Through Luciferic seduction, humanity sank into the material world, and through the Ahrimanic of the Atlantean period, a relationship between man and the material world arose within the material world, which should only have taken place in the spiritual counter-image above. What should have taken place above, as it were floating above the material, took place in the material. The first is expressed by the words spoken over the human being: Your eyes will be opened, and you will distinguish – outwardly – good and evil in sensual perception. – The second is expressed in the Bible, as you know, by saying: And the sons of the gods found that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they united with them in matter. — That is the biblical word, which, I would say, with reference to the human being and that which dwells in the human being, expresses a broad fact. For in this broad fact, all Ahrimanic activity in the human race is included at the same time. Through the same power with which heavenly love has sunk and been drawn into matter and become earthly love, through the power that underlies the fact of the transformation of heavenly love into earthly love, through these impulses, this fact was at the same time brought about, that in an earthly way the intellect of man connects with matter and creates the materialistic form of science. If the Ahrimanic impulses had not taken hold in man, which are expressed through their most human fact: And the sons of the gods found that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they joined with them in the flesh, without the impulses having entered the human race, had the impulses not been drawn upon to use the human intellect to create all kinds of instruments that are only combinations of material forces, and that consist of merely creating everything possible in a machine-like way for any purpose, even if that purpose is the destruction of the human race. If this Ahrimanic temptation had not occurred, it would not have been possible for instruments of murder and the like to have been devised on earth, because if people had retained the relationship between intellect and creation up there, not down in matter, they would not have poured intellect into matter to create the kinds of things that are created in our purely demonic machines, which play an ever greater role in the materialization of human culture. Just as everything that is confusion and aberration in human affectivity, human passion, human emotional life, is expressed by the fact: “And your eyes will be opened and you will distinguish - outwardly, sensually distinguish - good and evil - so all the facts that, as it were, arise from the pride and out of the Ahrimanic nature of man, such as great advances of humanity are marvelled at, the purely mechanical culture, is out of the same principle as that which is hinted at in the Bible: And the sons of the gods found that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they joined with them in the flesh. The records express these things in their own way. In a certain field they shine where these impulses lie, but these impulses are effective in a wide periphery. In the present age, when humanity is to overcome that which is Luciferic and Ahrimanic – and this must be fully recognized – in our time, a clear insight must increasingly prevail regarding what has come about through the opening of the eyes, through the union of the Sons of God with the daughters of men, that is, through the descent of heavenly love to earthly love. A clear understanding must spread. And Goethe's intuitive perception came close to grasping the necessity for this clear understanding. Precisely when he was writing the last scenes of Faust, his intuitive perception, which was based on instinct, came close. This is of infinite significance. What, then, is it all about? You know, it achieves nothing to say: Oh, I avoid the Luciferic, I avoid the Ahrimanic. That is foolish talk, for one cannot do that; one can only establish the balance between the two. Thus, the Luciferic must gradually be paralyzed by the Ahrimanic as human evolution progresses, and, conversely, the Ahrimanic must be paralyzed by the Luciferic. This is what Goethe sensed and what he incorporated into the last scenes of his “Faust”. Let us recall once more the deeply moving scene with Sorge. Do you recall how it was explained in an earlier cycle that the rightful realm of Ahriman-Mephistopheles is the realm of death? Thus, in a certain sense, destruction and dying already belong to the realm of Ahriman; he must only not apply his impulses in a misplaced way. When he applies them to places where they do not belong, then the bad arises. Now, Goethe has lack, need, guilt depart at the moment when the physical body begins to separate from the spiritual soul. In this way he indicates that he is aware of the connections that exist between man and lack, need and guilt, especially for the physical life on earth spent in the body. But when the soul is already loosened, when it is already said of the three that death is approaching, then there still remains worry, but it is still related to the others. It remains, so to speak, in the time in which death is already at work. It is sent from the legitimate realm of Ahriman, worry. Ahriman could do nothing worse for Faust than prevent worry from remaining with Faust through the beginning of Faust's death, for in this lies the intervention of very mysterious forces. A deep mystery is touched here. What does worry do? Sorrow, which is also brought by Mephistopheles-Ahriman, like all gray-haired women, for the magic of Mephistopheles still lasts until then, what does sorrow do? It undoes in Faust what Lucifer has achieved; it closes his eyes again. Do you realize the depth of the world view here! That which came to man through Lucifer's impulse is now paralyzed by an impulse of Ahriman through the detour of worry. Man has become sighted in the physical realm through Lucifer. Now he is being blinded again by the form brought in from the realm of Ahriman, that is, made to see inwardly.
There is an enormous depth to this matter. And so, in this dying Faust, Goethe is really not trying to undo anything in a human being, but to shape the Luciferic in such a way that it enters life in balance with the Ahrimanic. And now, in a sense, care speaks a profound word to interpret what it does. Lucifer once said: You humans will see by having your eyes opened. What does care say? Care counters the Luciferic with the Ahrimanic. People have indeed become able to see outwardly, physically, but they are blind in spiritual terms, and this continues throughout their lives. How can this blindness be overcome? By consciously immersing oneself in it, by grasping it, by recognizing it, and thus spiritual seeing, spiritual looking, occurs. Now Sorrow utters a word that one could already say, with a certain justification, sounds equally mysterious to the clever and the foolish:
Thus, Sorrow seems to say:
One cannot make much sense out of these two sentences. One wonders: What is it actually supposed to mean? — So, physically, people see all their lives, but worry calls this blind.
He is now really going blind. She applies the words in a completely different way, but she actually means that he becomes inwardly sighted. It is important to learn how to read these sentences in the right way. And that consists of:
The experience lies in the becoming. For people, it is a given fact: they are blind. But Faust should not be blind, but should experience the process of entering into blindness. Become blind, experience this connection between being-seeing and being-blind. Take this word and link it to another:
- attention is drawn to this! —
The Becoming, which is eternally active and alive, is conceived as the spiritual, as the reflection of the spiritual in the “Prologue in Heaven”; this Becoming is now poured out upon Faust through the concern:
It is something different to experience the connection between seeing and blindness in the process of becoming than not to experience it, but to be only in the blindness of seeing, If one is well acquainted with Goethe, one can well understand his peculiar feelings towards being and becoming, and then one has a deep, deep understanding of Goethe in this interpretation of this saying. So we see how Goethe penetrates to the deepest human secrets. This going blind through worry is really the counterpart to man becoming blind through Lucifer in paradise. And now let us move on. Let us look at Mephistopheles as he stands there, facing the sons of the gods, who have received, so that they can truly have the treasure of the soul, the roses from the hands of loving, holy penitents. What has happened here? These penitents were once on earth, they went through earthly love, through that which had become of Ahrimanic seduction in the Atlantean period. But what have these penitents achieved through their human experiences? Earthly love has become heavenly again! We see at the end that Gretchen herself has carried the earthly love she experienced here up into the spiritual regions. And what took place here on earth has been transformed into the spiritual and heavenly. Gretchen is up there among the penitents, she is among the penitents scattering roses. Love that has become earthly comes to us again in a heavenly form. She has been led back to the heavenly realm through the process of humanity, through what human beings can experience. And if the Bible expresses it at the point where it means heavenly seduction, that heavenly love has become earthly, then Goethe points to the process of humanity, where earthly love becomes heavenly again, and Mephistopheles stands below as a son of the gods too, but now unites with the daughters of men, who in turn have become spiritual, through the roses they have strewn. It is the reverse process of the one the Bible suggests to us: And the sons of the gods united with the daughters of men. And again, Mephistopheles, who had strayed with the daughters of men, united with the daughters of men, who had been taken up by the gods. So it is the reverse process. Both the process in Paradise of the Luciferic temptation and the later process, which was indicated by the words: “The sons of the gods united with the daughters of men in the flesh” —, are applied in the opposite direction. The son of the gods, Ahriman-Mephistopheles, unites with the daughters of men, who in turn have been taken up into the nature of the gods, but now in heavenly love, not in earthly love, in spirit, in soul, not in the flesh. The reverse process. Once again, a wonderful mystery through which the events of “Faust” are directly linked to the highest traditions of humanity. And only now, taking things this way, do we understand what Goethe actually means, for only now are we able to grasp the process that is taking place. It is most interesting to follow how Goethe was led, I might say, by the necessity of the matter, to shape the conclusion of his “Faust” exactly as he did. He really allowed himself to be led by the matter, not by some mere inner arbitrariness, he allowed himself to be led by the matter. Just consider, he once wrote down, when the matter was not yet finished, when it was so ripe that he could write it, in a scheme of how he wanted to shape this scene. There he writes down:
Goethe originally wanted to tie in with this appeal, where Mephistopheles, as it were, appeals to heaven for the soul of Faust. So he wrote this down: Mephistopheles off to appeal. -— Then he writes: “Heaven, Christ, Mother” — that is, the Mater dolorosa — “Evangelists and all saints. Judgment on Faust”. So not long before Goethe completed his “Faust,” he wanted to end it with Mephistopheles appealing to heaven on behalf of Faust's soul, and he thought of having a kind of judgment held, where one should have seen a kind of heavenly scene, in which Christ, the Mother of God, the Evangelists and all the saints were gathered. Goethe had thought of presenting this scene in a way similar to the way we find the upper part in the well-known Raphael painting, where the sacrament is in the middle. We know this picture. A judgment should have been held over Faust. Goethe did not carry this out because at the time he wrote it down, he wanted to follow his inner arbitrariness even more. He was driven by the desire to do it differently. The first could have been quite beautiful, but, one might say, it could have been written in earlier times. It no longer fits into Goethe's time. Only those who understand nothing about the developmental history of humanity believe that everything can be written at all times and that the same things can be written about in the same way in every age. Those who are alive in the process of human development So that is not what Goethe did. Instead, he did what we now know and what was presented here some time ago, the scene where it goes up through the holy anchorites, where we are then led into the realm where the angels come, into the realm of the blessed children, where the penitent women appear, where Gretchen herself appears. That is to say, Goethe humanized the last scene, in keeping with the challenge of the times that was set for him, and included the human element in its significance for spiritual reality. Goethe himself once said that, to a certain extent, the most important thing for solving his Faust problem lies in the words contained in the final scene:
One should not take such a word of Goethe lightly. The commentators on Faust took it very lightly. By pointing this out, Goethe wanted to show how deeply he was able to grasp the secret of the gracious working of the divine spiritual principle in relation to man. And he proceeded with deep significance. But he took it in a lively way. Through the fact that Gretchen had certain experiences at Faust's side during her time on earth and was then transported into the spiritual worlds, a bond is created between Faust and Gretchen, and Goethe wants to show that something like this is a reality to him, that when death passes over these things, they remain a reality. Man is placed in the connections that are formed during his physical existence, only when death has passed over them, they take on a spiritual form.
– that is, he has entered into an elective affinity with the spiritual that has become of the sensual – then what has become spiritual meets him with a warm welcome, then he is not only a free human being, then he is a human being enveloped in the effects of grace. Goethe points out how deeply significant everything becomes for the human being that he enters into by way of elective affinity, and how real it is for the human being who is interwoven in some way, having been taken up from the physical into the spiritual. And how real are the things that people do in the moral and spiritual realms, how these are not just, as materialism believes, something temporary, but something that continues to have an effect, something that has significance for developing humanity. This is what Goethe shows in this final scene. That is what makes this final scene so magnificent. What can materialism say other than: Well, the Pater ecstaticus, he imagines things; but when the Pater ecstaticus is dead, then it is all over. Likewise the Pater profundus, likewise the Pater Seraphicus, and so on. — For Goethe, what these anchorites experience is just as real as the rising and setting of the sun is real to him. And just as the rising and setting of the sun has an effect on the physical world, so in Faust's soul a real process is effected in Goethe through what flows through the world from the raptures and prayers and mystical hoverings of the anchorites. Goethe presents the reality of the spiritual world, insofar as this spiritual world is rooted in human feeling and in human inner experience. Not just the supermundane conceptions that are to some extent detached from the human being, but the supermundane conceptions that are deeply connected with the human being, are presented by Goethe. And that is why his Faust has become the real poem about the origin, about the first time of the fifth post-Atlantic period. But one thing must strike those who follow the various notes that Goethe made before writing the individual scenes. I have already spoken of some notes in another context. For example, at the end of the 18th century, when Goethe was once again approaching the task of editing his “Faust”, he wrote down a few sentences of this sketch of how he wanted to work, how he wanted to transition from what had already been edited to what followed. He wrote down:
- That's all there.
There he already indicates the direction he wants to take towards the end. And then he writes down what was not carried out: “Epilogue in Chaos on the Way to Hell”. I have already said how it was misunderstood that this epilogue should have been held in chaos on the way to hell. People racked their brains over how Faust should have ended with an epilogue in chaos, on the way to hell. So, in a relatively advanced stage, Goethe would not have wanted Faust to be redeemed, but would have wanted him to go to hell. People have not thought about the fact that this epilogue should be spoken by Mephistopheles and not by Faust. Faust goes off to hell after having lost the bet and speaks his epilogue. But Goethe could not carry this out, it is really not there. Why is it not there? Because at that time it could not yet be written, arising out of the profound mystery and at the same time out of the mystery of his time. For what would be contained in this epilogue in the chaos on the way to hell? Let us imagine what would be contained there. What has happened? We have considered the various interactions that have occurred between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, which are depicted at the end of Goethe's 'Faust'. As a result, Faust's soul has not really been captured by Ahriman-Mephistopheles, but enters the spiritual world in the appropriate way, to join the forces that come from the blessed host in the way we have depicted. It is due to the fact that the Luciferic element has gained a little ascendancy, that a kind of spiritualization has occurred for Faust, that the materialization, which should have occurred through Ahriman, whereby Faust's soul would have remained united with matter, as it were, through earthly heaviness, and Faust would have sunk into an abyss — the ruler over matter is Ahriman-Mephistopheles! That this did not happen. It did not happen. In a sense, the scales tipped more towards the Luciferic side. This made it possible for Faust's soul to enter the region where it then enters, where, with the overcoming of the Ahrimanic in the appropriate way, the human effects of penitents and Gretchen themselves are in the spiritual sphere. Now Mephistopheles is standing there. He wanted to capture this soul, but could not. He did not succeed in connecting it with the heaviness of the earth, otherwise it would either have remained with the corpse and been caught by the circle of lemurs, or it would have been captured by the thick devils or the thin devils. None of this has succeeded. Such a state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic has arisen that Faust has risen to heavenward. But Mephistopheles has now come to a standstill. The soul has escaped him. But he could now say to himself: Yes, here I stand; this soul has escaped me, but it will again move into my realm, it will return to earth. Then I will recognize it, then I will be able to come close to it again, because then it will have to undergo new ahrimanic trials. — Having explained this, there would be the 'epilogue in chaos on the way to hell'. For that is the peculiar thing about Mephistopheles-Ahriman, that he always believes he will win in every incarnation. And in every incarnation, when the corresponding state of equilibrium with Lucifer occurs, he can again lose his victory. That is the peculiar thing. But this to and fro of man between Ahriman and Lucifer must take place, otherwise the human personality could not develop. If man did not have the spirit that works and creates through resistance, the human personality would not be able to develop. It is only through resistance that the human personality develops. Even in our body, our personality develops through resistance. Think, if we did not have two eyes and could direct them at things so that their axes intersect, if we did not have two hands that touch each other, and one of which washes the other, our personality consciousness would not be able to develop physically. The lord of obstacles, the lord of hindrances, is also Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Therefore Ahriman had to gain great influence in the fifth post-Atlantean period, because personality is to be developed precisely in this fifth post-Atlantean period. In earlier periods, the human being had far less personality; in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, almost none at all, since the human being was still almost completely enclosed in a sense of community. I have often discussed this. Personality only really begins to emerge in the Greco-Latin period, and even then slowly, there is still a lot of sense of community. Then in our fifth post-Atlantic period is the time when the personality must become fully aware of itself, so that it can fully create out of itself what is to be achieved for this fifth post-Atlantic period. The strongest demands on the creative and life impulses of the personality are the hallmark of the fifth post-Atlantic period. In this fifth post-Atlantic period, spiritual science must enter into human development. But this spiritual science demands, in order to be understood, grasped and comprehended, a greater strain on the intellectual, the sentient and also the will forces, a greater strain on all the forces of the personality than was present in earlier times. And it was from a deeply intuitive recognition of the impulses of his time that Goethe placed Ahriman-Mephistopheles at the side of Faust, who is to develop personality consciousness in his trials. He must develop in the face of the resistance of Mephistophelian influences; he must recognize what lives in Ahriman-Mephistopheles from the one-sided development of reason and science, but he must preserve himself in it. For a personality who has passed through all science – “Alas, now I have studied philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and unfortunately also theology!” – and who has also taken up magic and magical traditions, it was only possible either to fall into mystical enthusiasm for the Earth Spirit:
— to weave with it! But this is a rising, a becoming nebulous in this weaving and living in the storm of action... only vague mystics who want to lose their personality may long for this! The fifth post-Atlantic period demands the precise exertion of the strongest personality forces, and out of this knowledge and will in man should arise in the fifth post-Atlantic period. Therefore, however, in this fifth post-Atlantic period, humanity is required to fully employ its personality. And this will become more and more a requirement of this fifth post-Atlantic period: strengthening, empowering the personality through full use of the personality. It will become necessary, also with regard to moral understanding of life, for people who do not want to lag behind in their development to use their personality more and more. This strengthening of the personality will be a demand of the time. And this strengthening of the personality lies in the sense of normal, good, proper further development. The weakening, obscuring of the personality does not lie in the impulses of the rest of the fifth post-Atlantic period. This dissolving of the personality in nebulousness is a relapse, an atavistic relapse into ancient times. But when left to themselves, the opposing Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces work against the human being and undermine his tasks. Because the human being must then fully employ the spiritual science that should arise out of the strong forces of the personality for the fifth post-Atlantean period, Ahrimanic counterforces work against the personality. We must understand this, and it is from this point of view that we must view our time. If we look back to earlier times, we shall find, in spite of all that is already personal, much more objective striving. In our time, the Ahrimanic forces are working in such a way that they gradually seek to draw the objective striving entirely into the sphere of the personality of those individuals who allow themselves to be drawn into it. Consider how, little by little, everything is diverted from the factual to the personal. This is not just a matter of chance, but something that lies in the nature of our time. Someone is working in the service of evolution, which continues to have a regular effect. Instead of approaching the matter, the fight against his personality will start more and more, personal defamation, personal distortion, will take the place of the factual. And today we can already see how far this has progressed in our age, how people no longer know how to distinguish between purely personal suspicion and objective criticism. And precisely where spiritual science is being practiced in an improper way, it expresses itself most grotesquely and most strongly. Just recall our own struggles. Do you remember how objectively something had to be presented against the movement that has been attached to the name of Mrs. Besant in recent times. Did they present a single objective argument in their reply? No! Only the strongest personal suspicions. All personal suspicions! This is only a caricatured anticipation of what is a characteristic of our time and will take up more and more space, and which must be seen through with full awareness. Because personality must be pushed into the breach – because only through personality will it be possible to achieve more and more of what used to be achieved more through public spirit – the fight against personality is also starting. And because strength is demanded of the personality, and the sense of comfort does not want to seek strength from the thing that is striven for, the weak personality, the incompetent personality, is today so directed by the own power of the personality, drilled up into the strong. Without having learned anything, without having seriously occupied himself with anything, without having penetrated deeply into anything, today, purely out of the arbitrariness of the personality, this or that is done. And one does not understand at all how to reckon with these things. In our field, you can again do some nice studies. How often has it been necessary to repudiate the swelling folly that has developed in our movement over the years, to repudiate the swelling vanity! But vanity does not understand that it must be repudiated. An example: in Frankfurt, when I was there once, I received a telephone call from a man who said he had to speak to me immediately. He then arrived, with extremely long hair that fell down over his shoulders and a corresponding patriarchal beard. He explained that he had been following me for quite some time and that he wanted to reach a kind of compromise between what he has to give to the world and what I represent. Well, you can't help but violate that principle of brotherhood, which considers amateurish stupidity and that which is honestly striven for as equivalent. You have to presume to make that distinction. So, of course, you have to let such people go, you don't have to worry about them any further. You don't have to be rude to them, but you do have to show them what you think of them and that you don't subscribe to the vague principle of equality, that every self-important idiocy must be regarded as equivalent to the other. Well, after some time the person in question appeared here in Switzerland and even announced lectures in various cities against me. He has also caused mischief in other ways, as some of those sitting here know. Thus enmities arise because the personality, which today must push itself into the breach everywhere, must permeate itself with something. But if it cannot do so, it wants to be strong without first making itself strong through the forces that permeate it. One must see through the causes of the conflicts. That is the essential thing. We must really understand the times in which we live, not act arbitrarily. Therefore, the strongest possible assertion of the personality is what our time demands. Fight the Ahrimanic battle against the personality. The second thing that our time demands, and demands quite energetically, is familiarization with the sense of fact. Humanity is instructed to understand the spiritual world. In this spiritual world, it is not the case that one can follow how one is being corrected. I expressed this in the final chapter of my “Theosophy”, that one is not corrected when one has done something wrong. Read it up. Sense of fact, sense of real facts. But the strongest Luciferic battle is being waged against this sense of fact in our time. In no other time, despite everything and in spite of everything that has happened, have facts been falsified as much as in our time! The Luciferic instincts call upon Ahrimanic forces, which present facts in a lying way. This tendency to present facts dishonestly is on the increase and will become more and more prevalent. It is important to see through this. Becoming accustomed to a sense of fact and to the fact that one will increasingly have to stand up for what needs to be stood up for in the world with one's personality is part of the fifth post-Atlantic period. Try to understand how, especially in our field, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic struggle can already be observed today, how, right up to the most recent events, we have been confronted with a lack of sense of fact. Things are being written and said today that are no longer true at all. Goethe sensed all this, deeply sensed it. If you go through his “Faust”, you will see that he connects the luciferic and ahrimanic forces to the nature of Faust in such a way as it must be seen by man if man wants to properly place himself with consciousness in the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantic period. In detail and on a large scale, the forces of Ahriman and Lucifer work against the human being. If Ahriman were not recognized, if Lucifer were not recognized, one would not be able to continue to live in the appropriate way. And all this must be brought about through spiritual science. One would like to say that it cannot be discussed strongly enough today, because one is still little understood today according to the weight of what has to be brought out of spiritual science. Things are taken too lightly, too easily forgotten. What our time demands is the deepening and strengthening of the personality, a sense of fact, a sense for true facts, and working with them on a large scale, one could say today, with the external events of the world. There are two things that work against what is necessary for the progress of humanity: an absurd nationality principle that has become atavistic. That is the first. A perverse nationality principle, as it was brought into the world by the Napoleons in the 19th century in particular, a nationality principle in the name of which many impulses are invoked today against the true sense of human development. A befogging nationality principle that befogs and confuses concepts, that places concepts in false spheres. I will make myself clear in the following way. In a certain sense, we are right to speak of a green meadow if we understand the matter correctly. But we understand the matter correctly only if we speak of the green meadow in such a way that we know that the individual plants are green and that the greenness of the meadow consists in the green of the individual plants; the individual plants have the concrete green. If I wanted to have the green of the meadow in concrete terms, without the concrete greenness of the individual plants, I would have to paint the meadow green, but then it would truly not be a green meadow. I can only speak of the green of the meadow if I am aware that in concrete terms I can only mean the green of the individual plants. I must know that the green quality is applied only to the individual plants, and that I must not think confusingly as if the green quality of the meadow could apply to the whole. If I use the word the green quality of the meadow in the abstract, then I must be clear about the fact that I am forming only an abstraction which summarizes the individual concretes, the green plants. It is absolutely necessary that there should be such clarity in the use of concepts, that, for example, people should learn that the words “freedom” and “justice” can only be applied in relation to the individual human being, just as “verdancy” can only be applied to individual plants, and that when I speak of the justice and freedom of nations, I can only mean an abstraction, just like the verdancy of a meadow. But today the most mendacious motto that could possibly exist is being spread across half the world, with talk of something that is to be fought for in the name of the rights and freedom of nations, which is such nonsense, such folly, as the green color of a meadow is a folly, if one thinks one could paint all the plants in the meadow, instead of the meadow being green because of the individual plants. Nevertheless, today's delusion of nations, with the false principle of nationality, speaks of this foolish motto: the rights and freedom of nations. And one is quite sure to be considered a fool, a madman, if one expresses what has already been expressed, especially in connection with 'Faust', who says: 'On free ground with a free people', not with a free nation, which could not be mentioned at all, - which must already be expressed in reference to 'Faust'. Today, one is certain to be considered a fool or a malicious person who rebels against something that is so beautiful and so great and so ideal, that is so well intended, but that is thought imprecisely, thought carelessly , is conceived with malevolence because it brings in something atavistic that does not belong in our time, because it teaches the individual a consciousness that comes from weakness and not from strength of personality. And the other thing that works against progressive principles in our time, apart from the absurd principle of nationality, is the politicization of intellectual life. It is important to understand these two things, to understand the politicization of the life of thought. I have already drawn attention to the meaning of “policy” in another context, where people are constantly talking about policy, about staging certain thoughts in order to achieve this or that. But how widespread this is in the world! In our fifth post-Atlantic period, the worst is emerging from this politicization of the life of thought. A time that could still believe in a certain way when it formed thoughts, could be inspired at its councils, and could decide on this or that dogma, which was then used to achieve this or that in the world. But our time, which is truly uninspired in its materialistic structure, will, if it does not tie the thought in such a way that it is tied in responsibility to the impersonal truth, grasp the thought only out of personal-arbitrary or out of association-arbitrary or otherwise somehow common-arbitrary aspiration. And so the thought is not put into the world because one sees its correctness, but because one wants to politicize with it. This politicization of the thought life goes on and on. And one does not educate oneself in such a way that one comes to the right, to the true thought, but one educates oneself in such a way that one comes to a thought with which one can politicize, for example with the thought of not vivisecting animals. But one does not grasp the thought in its truth, but by its political power of agitation. One agitates with the thought, one politicizes with the thought in temperance associations, in anti-vivisection associations. One does not grasp a thought in its reality – temperance, vivisection or the like – but one politicizes in relation to it. Thought is politicized everywhere. They are absorbed into the political machinery. The false principle of nationality, the false politicization of thoughts, as it lives especially in our present-day clubbiness, is what is contrary to the currently progressive correct evolutions of humanity. Associations are founded, not to represent the truth, but to achieve this or that. As a result, even the right idea can be fanatized, made one-sided, while the fifth post-Atlantic period has in its fundamental character the task of working through the truth. Herman Grimm, who had become familiar with Goethe's life, said: “Goethe's ‘Faust’ represents a poetry that is really thought out entirely from the organization of the human personality.” A middle-ranking university professor goes astray in his scientific pursuit, going through all sorts of things. But what he goes through is representative of all human striving in the highest sense and, if you go deep enough, contains everything that can arise in a person in our time in terms of philosophical questions, everything that can arise in terms of matters of the heart, and everything that can arise in terms of political forces. And one could add from the depths of spiritual science: precisely that which is purely human, which is the content of humanity, is contained in this “Faust”. What nation does he belong to then? None, of course. And he is the most vivid protest against the false nationality principle of our day, which is thoroughly captured in a word of Grillparzer, a harsh-sounding but deeply true word of Grillparzer. Grillparzer spoke the word: from humanity through nationality to bestiality. That is the way! Nationality leads astray when it is insisted upon, when aspirations are drawn from it, from humanity, and it soon leads into bestiality. And of course politics is necessary in the world, but not the politicization of thought. And one sees how Goethe's thoughts are depoliticized! Try to understand the second part of Goethe's Faust from this point of view; it is written from tremendous depths. It is a great document not only of our time, but of all times of humanity, for it touches on the questions that we have seen, which stand directly alongside the great biblical questions. The scene of Sorrow stands beside the scene of Paradise; the scene where Mephistopheles stands before the spirits of heaven stands beside the image that the Bible gives of how the sons of the gods took pleasure in the daughters of men and joined with them in the flesh. One would like to have much, much better words to point out what should be deeply inscribed in the human mind and heart and what should not be forgotten, which unfortunately is all too quickly forgotten after it has been heard. For the healing of the great evils of the time can only come from an understanding of the things that have been touched upon. If today, in connection with Goethe's “Faust”, I have tried to give some idea of the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period, and how they are spiritual, I would above all like to see an understanding come of how the sins against these impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period are showing up all over the world, how lack of understanding is occurring everywhere in the world precisely with regard to what is to be understood. Oh, I would like to have the words with which I would like to talk about these things! But perhaps in the times to come other people will find better words to discuss the things that are so little understood today, because so many people would like to let their personality be submerged in some convenient support for this or that, seeking to become this or that through this or that movement here or there, and then no longer able to extricate themselves from the false principle of community or false principle of nationality, no longer able to extricate themselves from the politicization of thought. And yet, everything that goes down this false track will fall prey to Lucifer and Ahriman. Only that which will know that nothing can be achieved on this track will flourish! However comfortable we may be in all the various agitations and club activities of our time, the path that must be found will only be found in the service of that human activity that seeks wisdom in truth, and that is convinced that only by incorporating truth into humanity can the human goal can be achieved by incorporating truth into humanity, and which knows that all politicization of thought must cease, all agitating with thoughts as if they were dogmas, that they must be grasped with the full sense of responsibility for truth, not for their agitational value, not for the favor that we show them. It is not because they please us that thoughts may enter our sphere, but because we really have the full sense of responsibility for truth and truth-value. I would like to have said much more than can be contained in the words spoken in the appendix to Goethe's “Faust”. I want it to continue to work in hearts and souls, because I know how much of what is needed for our era and for humanity, which is wandering on such wrong paths in our era, is contained in it. If we cannot admit to ourselves the wrong paths we wish to continue along, then we cannot make real progress towards the right goal that humanity must pursue. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Awakening: Scene 8
Translated by Harry Collison |
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| Four other priests stand in front of them. In front of all Lucifer to the left of altar and Ahriman to the right in the guise of sphinxes, with the cherubim emphasized in the case of Lucifer and the bull in the case of Ahriman. |
| The Mystics: O sacrilege;—thou must atone—and pay (The sphinxes begin to speak one after the other as Ahriman and Lucifer; hitherto they have been as statues motionless; what they say is heard only by the hierophant, the chief hierophant, and the neophyte;—the others are full of excitement over the preceding events.) Ahriman as Sphinx: For my realm I must lay my hands upon What here doth wrongly seek the way to light, And in the darkness further foster it; That it may bring forth spirit-qualities Which later on will let it weave itself With rightful meaning into human life. |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Awakening: Scene 8
Translated by Harry Collison |
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As in Scene 7. An Egyptian woman is seen crouching by the wall. She is a previous incarnation of Johannes Thomasius. Egyptian woman: (Clinging to the wall.) Yet though in this hour he abandons me Part IIInside the temple. The hall of initiation. The ceremony is performed on a broad flight of steps descending from the back to the front of the stage. The characters stand in groups below one another and on different steps. The drop-curtain goes up, disclosing everything in readiness for the initiation of the Neophyte, who is to be thought of as an earlier in-carnation of Maria; behind the altar and to the left of it stands the Chief Hierophant who is to be thought of as an earlier incarnation of Benedictus; on the other side the Recorder, an earlier incarnation of Hilary True-to-God; a little in front of the altar the Keeper of the Seals, an earlier incarnation of Theodora; in front, on the right side of the altar, the Impersonator of the Earth Element, an earlier in-carnation of Romanus, and with him the Impersonator of the Air Element, an earlier incarnation of Magnus Bellicosus; quite close to the Chief Hierophant, stands the Hierophant, an earlier incarnation of Capesius; on the left side of the altar the Impersonator of the Fire Element, an earlier incarnation of Doctor Strader, with the Impersonator of the Water Element, an earlier incarnation of Torquatus. In front of them Philia, Astrid, Luna and ‘the Other Philia.’ Four other priests stand in front of them. In front of all Lucifer to the left of altar and Ahriman to the right in the guise of sphinxes, with the cherubim emphasized in the case of Lucifer and the bull in the case of Ahriman. Dead silence for a while after the interior of the temple with its grouped mystics has become visible. The Keeper of the Temple, an earlier incarnation of Felix Balde, and the Mystic, an earlier incarnation of Dame Betide, lead the Neophyte in through a doorway on the right of stage. They place him in the inner circle near the altar, and remain standing near him. The Keeper of the Temple: The Mystic: The Impersonator of the Earth Element: The Recorder: The Mystic: The Impersonator of the Air Element: The Recorder: The Mystic: The Chief Hierophant: (The bright, quivering sacred flame flares up on the altar in the middle of the stage.) To thee than is the life of thine own self, The Mystic: The Impersonator of the Fire Element: The Keeper of the Seals: The Mystic: The Impersonator of the Water Element: The Keeper of the Seals: The Chief Hierophant: Philia: Astrid: Luna: The Other Philia: The Mystic: The Chief Hierophant (addressing the Hierophant): The Hierophant: The Chief Hierophant: (A pause of considerable length ensues, during which the stage is darkened till only the flame and indistinct outlines of the characters are visible; at the conclusion of the pause the Chief Hierophant continues.) And now from out the cosmic vision wake! (The Neophyte is silent. The Chief Hierophant, much alarmed, continues): The Neophyte: (The assembled mystics, the Hierophant excepted, show an ever-increasing alarm during the speech of the Neophyte.) I felt that I could shake off from myself (Consternation all around.) Spirits rayed light thereon from lofty worlds; The Chief Hierophant (himself alarmed, to the alarmed Mystics): The Recorder (angrily to the Hierophant): The Hierophant: The Mystics: (The sphinxes begin to speak one after the other as Ahriman and Lucifer; hitherto they have been as statues motionless; what they say is heard only by the hierophant, the chief hierophant, and the neophyte;—the others are full of excitement over the preceding events.) Ahriman as Sphinx: Lucifer as Sphinx: The Chief Hierophant: (The other mystics, with the exception of the Hierophant and the Neophyte, are amazed at the words of the Chief Hierophant.) The Hierophant (to the Chief Hierophant): Curtain
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