| 9. Theosophy (1965): Body, Soul and Spirit
Translated by Mabel Cotterell, Alan P. Shepherd |
|---|
| Let us call that which shines forth in the soul as eternal the consciousness-soul.3 We can speak of consciousness even in connection with the lower soul-stirrings. The most ordinary everyday sensation is a matter of consciousness. To this extent animals also have consciousness. By consciousness-soul is meant the kernel of human consciousness, the soul within the soul. |
| The poet Jean Paul says in his autobiography: “I shall never forget the event which took place within me, hitherto narrated to no one, and of which I can give place and time, when I stood present at the birth of my self-consciousness. As a very small child I stood at the door of the house one morning, looking towards the wood pile on my left, when suddenly the inner vision, ‘I am an I’ came upon me like a flash of lightning from heaven and has remained shining ever since. |
| 9. Theosophy (1965): Body, Soul and Spirit
Translated by Mabel Cotterell, Alan P. Shepherd |
|---|
[ 1 ] Man can only come to a true understanding of himself when he grasps clearly the significance of thinking within his being. The brain is the bodily instrument for thinking. Just as man can only see colours with a properly constructed eye, so the suitably constructed brain serves him for thought. The whole body of man is so formed that it receives its crown in the organ of the spirit, the brain. The construction of the human brain can be understood only by considering it in relation to its task, which consists in being the bodily basis for the thinking spirit. This is borne out by a comparative survey of the animal world. Among the amphibians we find the brain small in comparison with the spinal cord; in mammals it is proportionately larger; in man it is largest in comparison with the rest of the body. [ 2 ] Many prejudices are prevalent regarding such statements about thinking as are brought forward here. Many persons are inclined to undervalue thinking, and to place higher the “warm life of feeling” or “emotion.” Some, indeed, say it is not by “sober thinking,” but by warmth of feeling, by the immediate power of “the emotions,” that one raises oneself to higher knowledge. People who talk thus fear to blunt the feelings by clear thinking. This certainly does result from the ordinary thinking that is concerned only with matters of utility; but in the case of thoughts that lead to higher regions of existence, the opposite happens. There is no feeling and no enthusiasm to be compared with the sentiments of warmth, beauty and exaltation enkindled through the pure, crystal-clear thoughts which relate to higher worlds. For the highest feelings are as a matter of fact not those which come “of themselves,” but those which are achieved by energetic and persevering work in the realm of thought. [ 3 ] The human body is so built as to be adapted to thinking. The same materials and forces which are present in the mineral kingdom are so combined in the human body that by means of this combination thought can manifest itself. This mineral construction, built up in accordance with its task, will be called in the following pages the physical body of man. [ 4 ] This mineral structure which is organised with reference to the brain as its central point, comes into existence through propagation and reaches its fully developed form through growth. Propagation and growth man shares in common with plants and animals. Through propagation and growth what is living differentiates itself from the lifeless mineral. Life gives rise to life by means of the germ. Descendant follows forefather from one living generation to another. The forces through which a mineral originates are directed upon the substances of which it is composed. A quartz crystal is formed through the forces inherent in the silicon and oxygen which are combined in the crystal. The forces which shape an oak tree must be sought for in an indirect way in the germ in the mother and father plants. The form of the oak is preserved through propagation from forefather to descendant. There are inner determining conditions innate in all that is living. It was a crude view of Nature which held that lower animals, even fishes, could evolve out of mud. The form of the living passes itself on by means of heredity. How a living being develops depends on what father or mother it has sprung from, or in other words, on the species to which it belongs. The materials of which it is composed are continually changing; the species remains constant during life, and is transmitted to the descendants. Therefore the species is that which determines the combination of the materials. This force which determines species will be here called Life-force. Just as the mineral forces express themselves in the crystals, so the formative life-force expresses itself in the species or forms of plant and animal life. [ 5 ] The mineral forces are perceived by man by means of his bodily senses; and he can only perceive that for which he has such senses. Without the eye there is no perception of light, without the ear no perception of sound. The lowest organisms have only one of the senses belonging to man: a kind of sense of touch. Nothing can be perceived by such organisms, in the way a human being perceives, except those mineral forces which make themselves known through the sense of touch. In proportion as the other senses are developed in the higher animals does their surrounding world, which man also perceives, become richer and more varied. It depends, therefore, on the organs of a being whether that which exists in the outer world exists also for the being itself, as perception, as sensation. What is present in the air as a certain motion becomes in man the sensation of hearing. Man does not perceive the manifestations of the life-force through the ordinary senses. He sees the colours of the plants; he smells their perfume; the life-force remains hidden from this form of observation. But the ordinary senses have just as little right to deny that there is a life-force as has the man born blind to deny that colours exist. Colours are there for the person born blind as soon as he has been operated upon; in the same way, the objects, the various species of plants and animals created by the life-force (not merely the individual plants and animals) are present to man as objects of perception as soon as the necessary organ unfolds within him. An entirely new world opens out to man through the unfolding of this organ. He now perceives, not merely the colours, the odours, etc., of the living beings, but the life itself of these beings. In each plant, in each animal, he perceives, besides the physical form, the life-filled spirit-form. In order to have a name for this spirit-form let it be called the ether-body, or life-body.1 To the investigator of spiritual life, this matter presents itself in the following manner. The ether-body is for him not merely a product of the materials and forces of the physical body, but a real independent entity which first calls forth these physical materials and forces into life. It is in accordance with spiritual science to say: a purely physical body, a crystal for example, has its form through the action of the physical formative forces innate in that which is lifeless. A living body has its form not through the action of these forces, because the moment life has departed from it and it is given over to the physical forces only, it falls to pieces. The ether-body is an organism which preserves the physical body every moment during life from dissolution. In order to see this body, to perceive it in another being, one requires the awakened “spiritual eye.” Without this, its existence can be accepted as a fact on logical grounds; but one can see it with the spiritual eye as one sees colour with the physical eye. Offence should not be taken at the expression “ether-body.” “Ether” here designates something different from the hypothetical ether of the physicist. It should be regarded simply as a name for what is described here. And just as the physical body of man in its construction is a kind of reflection of its purpose, so is this also the case with man's etheric body. Moreover, it can be understood only when considered in relation to the thinking spirit. The etheric body of man differs from that of plants and animals, through being organised to serve the purposes of the thinking spirit. Just as man belongs to the mineral world through his physical body, he belongs through his etheric body to the life-world. After death the physical body dissolves into the mineral world, the ether-body into the life-world. By the word “body” is denoted that which gives any kind of being “shape” or “form.” The term “body” must not be confused with a bodily form perceptible to the physical senses. Used in the sense implied in this book the term “body” can also be applied to such forms as soul and spirit may assume. [ 6 ] In the life-body we still have something external to man. With the first stirrings of sensation the inner self responds to the stimuli of the outer world. You may trace ever so far what one is justified in calling the outer world, but you will not be able to find sensation. Rays of light stream into the eye, penetrating it till they reach the retina. There they call forth chemical processes (in the so-called visual-purple); the effect of these stimuli is passed on through the optic nerve to the brain where further physical processes arise. Could one observe these, one would simply see physical processes, just as elsewhere in the physical world. If I were able to observe the ether-body, I should see how the physical brain-process is at the same time a life-process. But the sensation of blue colour, which the recipient of the rays of light has, I can find nowhere in this manner. It arises only within the soul of the recipient. If, therefore, the being of this recipient consisted only of the physical body and the ether-body, sensation could not exist. The activity by which sensation becomes a fact differs essentially from the operations of the formative life-force. It is an activity by which an inner experience is called forth from these operations. Without this activity there would be a mere life-process, such as is to be observed in plants. If one pictures a man receiving impressions from all sides, one must think of him at the same time as the source of the above-mentioned soul-activity which flows out from him to all the directions from which he is receiving the impressions. In all directions soul-sensations arise in response to the physical impacts. This fountain of activity shall be called the sentient soul. This sentient soul is just as real as the physical body. If a man stands before me, and I disregard his sentient soul by thinking of him as merely a physical body, it is exactly as if I were to call up in my mind, instead of a painting—merely the canvas. A similar statement has to be made in regard to perceiving the sentient soul, as was previously made in reference to the ether-body. The bodily organs are “blind” to it. And blind to it also is the organ by which life can be perceived as life. But just as the ether-body is seen by means of this organ, so through a still higher organ can the inner world of sensation become a special kind of supersensible perception. A man would then not only sense the impressions of the physical and life-world, but would behold the sensations themselves. Before a man with such an organ, the sensation world of another being is spread out like an external reality. One must distinguish between experiencing one's own world of sensation, and looking at that of another person. Every man of course can look into his own world of sensation; only the seer with the opened “spiritual eye” can see another person's world of sensation. Unless a man be a seer, he knows the world of sensation only as an “inner” one, only as the peculiar hidden experiences of his own soul; with the opened “spiritual eye” there shines out before the outward-turned spiritual gaze what otherwise lives only in the inner being of another person. [ 7 ] In order to prevent misunderstanding, it may be expressly stated here that the seer does not simply experience in himself what the other being has within him as content of his world of sensation. That being experiences the sensations in question from the point of view of his own inner being; the seer becomes aware of a manifestation of the world of sensation. [ 8 ] The sentient soul depends, as regards its activity, on the ether-body. For it draws from it that which it will cause to gleam forth as sensation. And since the ether-body is the life within the physical body, therefore the sentient soul is also indirectly dependent on the latter. Only with properly functioning and well-constructed eyes are correct colour sensations possible. It is in this way that the nature of the body affects the sentient soul. The latter is thus determined and limited in its activity by the body. It lives within the limitations fixed for it by the nature of the body. The body accordingly is built up of mineral substances, is vitalised by the ether-body, and limits even the sentient soul. A man, therefore, who has the above-mentioned organ for “seeing” the sentient soul, knows it to be conditioned by the body. But the boundary of the sentient soul does not coincide with that of the physical body. It extends somewhat beyond the physical body. From this one sees that it proves itself to be greater than the physical body. Nevertheless the force through which its limits are set proceeds from the physical body. Thus between the physical body and the ether-body, on the one hand, and the sentient soul on the other, there inserts itself another distinct member of the human being. This is the soul-body or sentient body. One can express this in another way. One part of the ether-body is finer than the rest, and this finer part of the ether-body forms a unity with the sentient soul, whereas the coarser part forms a kind of unity with the physical body. Nevertheless, the sentient soul extends, as has been said, beyond the soul-body. [ 9 ] What is here called sensation is only a part of the soul-being. (The expression sentient soul is chosen for the sake of simplicity.) Connected with sensations are the feelings of desire and aversion, impulses, instincts, passions. All these bear the same character of individual life as do the sensations, and are, like them, dependent on the bodily nature. [ 10 ] Just as the sentient soul enters into mutual action and reaction with the body, so does it also in thinking, with the spirit. In the first place thinking serves the sentient soul. Man forms thoughts about his sensations. He thus enlightens himself regarding the outside world. The child that has burnt itself thinks it over, and reaches the thought “fire burns.” Nor does man follow blindly his impulses, instincts, passions; his thinking about them brings about the opportunity through which he can gratify them. What is called material civilisation moves entirely in this direction. It consists in the services which thinking renders to the sentient soul. An immeasurable amount of thought-power is directed to this end. It is thought-power that has built ships, railways, telegraphs, telephones; and by far the greatest proportion of all this serves only to satisfy the needs of sentient souls. Thought-force permeates the sentient soul in a similar way to that in which the formative-life-force permeates the physical body. The formative-life-force connects the physical body with forefathers and descendants, and thus brings it under a system of laws with which the purely mineral body is in no way concerned. In the same way thought-force brings the soul under a system of laws to which it does not belong as mere sentient soul. Through the sentient soul man is related to the animal. In animals, also, we observe the presence of sensations, impulses, instincts and passions. But the animal obeys these immediately. They do not, in its case, become interwoven with independent thoughts, transcending the immediate experiences.2 This is also the case to a certain extent with undeveloped human beings. The mere sentient soul is therefore different from the evolved higher member of the soul which brings thinking into its service. This soul that is served by thought will be termed the intellectual soul. One could also call it the mind-soul. [ 11 ] The intellectual soul permeates the sentient soul. He who has the organ for “seeing” the soul sees, therefore, the intellectual soul as a separate entity, in relation to the mere sentient soul. [ 12 ] By thinking, man is led above and beyond his own personal life. He acquires something that extends beyond his soul. He comes to take for granted his conviction that the laws of thought are in conformity with the laws of the world. And he feels at home in the world because this conformity exists. This conformity is one of the weighty facts through which man learns to know his own nature. Man searches in his soul for truth; and through this truth it is not only the soul that speaks, but the things of the world. That which is recognised as truth by means of thought has an independent significance, which refers to the things of the world, and not merely to one's own soul. In my delight at the starry heavens I live in my own inner being; the thoughts which I form for myself about the paths of heavenly bodies have the same significance for the thinking of every other person as they have for mine. It would be absurd to speak of my delight were I not in existence; but it is not in the same way absurd to speak of my thoughts, even without reference to myself. For the truth which I think to-day was true also yesterday; will be true to-morrow, although I concern myself with it only to-day. If a piece of knowledge gives me joy, the joy has significance just so long as it lives in me; the truth of the knowledge has its significance quite independently of this joy. By grasping the truth the soul connects itself with something that carries its value in itself. And this value does not vanish with the feeling in the soul any more than it arose with it. What is really truth neither arises nor passes away: it has a significance which cannot be destroyed. This is not contradicted by the fact that certain human “truths” have a value which is transitory, inasmuch as they are recognised after a certain period as partial or complete errors. A man must say to himself that truth exists in itself, and that his conceptions are only transient forms of eternal truths. Even he who says, like Lessing, that he contents himself with the eternal striving towards truth because the full, pure truth can, after all, only exist for a God, does not deny the eternity of truth but establishes it by such an utterance. For only that which has an eternal significance in itself can call forth an eternal striving after it. Were truth not in itself independent, if it acquired its value and significance through the feelings of the human soul, then it could not be the one unique goal for all mankind. One concedes its independent being by the very fact that one sets oneself to strive after it. [ 13 ] And as it is with the true, so it is with the truly good. Moral goodness is independent of inclinations and passions, inasmuch as it does not allow itself to be commanded by, but commands them. Likes and dislikes, desire and loathing belong to the personal soul of man; duty stands higher than likes and dislikes. Duty may stand so high in the eyes of a man that he will sacrifice his life for its sake. And a man stands the higher the more he has ennobled his inclinations, his likes and dislikes, so that without compulsion or subjection they themselves obey what is recognised as duty. Moral goodness has, like truth, its eternal value in itself, and does not receive it from the sentient soul. [ 14 ] By causing the self-existent true and good to come to life in his inner being, man raises himself above the mere sentient soul. The eternal spirit shines into it. A light is kindled in it which is imperishable. In so far as the soul lives in this light, it is a participant of the eternal. It unites therewith its own existence. What the soul carries within itself of the true and the good is immortal in it. Let us call that which shines forth in the soul as eternal the consciousness-soul.3 We can speak of consciousness even in connection with the lower soul-stirrings. The most ordinary everyday sensation is a matter of consciousness. To this extent animals also have consciousness. By consciousness-soul is meant the kernel of human consciousness, the soul within the soul. The consciousness-soul is thus distinguished as a distinct member of the soul from the intellectual soul. This latter is still entangled in the sensations, the impulses, the passions, etc. Everyone knows how at first he counts as true that which he prefers in his feelings, and so on. Only that truth, however, is permanent which has freed itself from all flavour of such sympathy and antipathy of feeling. The truth is true, even if all personal feelings revolt against it. The part of the soul in which this truth lives will be called consciousness-soul. [ 15 ] Thus three members have to be distinguished in the soul as in the body: sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness-soul. And just as the body works from below upwards with a limiting effect on the soul, so the spiritual works from above downwards into it, expanding it. For the more the soul fills itself with the true and the good, the wider and the more comprehensive becomes the eternal in it. To him who is able to “see” the soul, the radiance which proceeds from a human being because his eternal element is expanding, is just as much a reality as the light which streams out from a flame is real to the physical eye. For the “seer” the corporeal man counts as only part of the whole man. The physical body, as the coarsest structure, lies within others, which mutually interpenetrate both it and each other. The ether-body fills the physical body as a life-form; extending beyond this on all sides is to be perceived the soul-body (astral form). And beyond this, again, extends the sentient soul, then the intellectual soul which grows the larger the more it receives into itself of the true and the good. For this true and good cause the expansion of the intellectual soul. A man living only and entirely according to his inclinations, his likes and dislikes, would have an intellectual soul whose limits coincide with those of his sentient soul. These formations, in the midst of which the physical body appears as if in a cloud, may be called the human aura. The aura is that in regard to which the “being of man” becomes enriched, when it is seen as this book endeavours to present it. [ 16 ] In the course of his development as a child, there comes the moment in the life of a man in which, for the first time, he feels himself to be an independent being distinct from the whole of the rest of the world. For finely strung natures it is a significant experience. The poet Jean Paul says in his autobiography: “I shall never forget the event which took place within me, hitherto narrated to no one, and of which I can give place and time, when I stood present at the birth of my self-consciousness. As a very small child I stood at the door of the house one morning, looking towards the wood pile on my left, when suddenly the inner vision, ‘I am an I’ came upon me like a flash of lightning from heaven and has remained shining ever since. In that moment my ego had seen itself for the first time and for ever. Any deception of memory is hardly to be conceived as possible here, for no narrations by outsiders could have introduced additions to an occurrence which took place in the holy of holies of a human being, and of which the novelty alone gave permanence to such everyday surroundings.” It is well known that little children say of themselves, “Charles is good,” “Mary wants to have this.” One feels it to be right that they speak of themselves as if of others, because they have not yet become conscious of their independent existence, because the consciousness of the self is not yet born in them. Through self-consciousness, man describes himself as an independent being, separate from all others, as “I.” In “I” man includes all that he experiences as a being with body and soul. Body and soul are the carriers of the ego or “I;” in them it acts. Just as the physical body has its centre in the brain, so has the soul its centre in the ego. Man is aroused to sensations by impacts from without; feelings manifest themselves as effects of the outer world; the will relates itself to the outside world in that it realises itself in external actions. The “I” as the essential being of man remains quite invisible. Excellently, therefore, does Jean Paul call a man's recognition of his ego an occurrence taking place only in his veiled holy of holies; for with his “I” man is quite alone. And this “I” is the man himself. That justifies him in regarding his ego as his true being. He may, therefore, describe his body and his soul as the “sheaths” or “veils” within which he lives; and he may describe them as bodily conditions through which he acts. In the course of his evolution he learns to regard these instruments ever more and more as servants of his ego. The little word “I” is a name which differs from all other names. Anyone who reflects in an appropriate manner on the nature of this name, will find that in so doing an avenue to the understanding of the human being in the deeper sense is revealed. Every other name can be applied to its corresponding object by all men in the same way. Everybody can call a table “table” or a chair “chair.” This is not so with the name “I.” No one can use it in referring to another person; each one can call only himself “I.” Never can the name “I” reach my ears from outside when it refers to me. Only from within, only through itself, can the human being refer to himself as “I.” When the human being therefore says “I” to himself, something begins to speak in him that has nothing to do with any one of the worlds from which the sheaths so far mentioned are taken. The “I” becomes ever more and more ruler of body and soul. This also expresses itself in the aura. The more the “I” is lord over body and soul, the more definitely organised, the more varied and the more richly coloured is the aura. The effect of the “I” on the aura can be seen by the “seeing” person. The “I” itself is invisible even to him; this remains truly within the veiled “holy of holies.” But the “I” absorbs into itself the rays of the light which flashes up in a man as eternal light. As he gathers together the experiences of body and soul in the “I,” so too he causes the thoughts of truth and goodness to stream into the “I.” The phenomena of the senses reveal themselves to the “I” from the one side, the spirit reveals itself from the other. Body and soul yield themselves up to the “I” in order to serve it; but the “I” yields itself up to the spirit in order that the spirit may fill it to overflowing. The “I” lives in body and soul; but the spirit lives in the “I.” And what there is of spirit in the “I” is eternal. For the “I” receives its nature and significance from that with which it is bound up. In so far as it experiences itself in the physical body, it is subject to the laws of the mineral world; through its ether-body to the laws of propagation and growth; by virtue of the sentient and intellectual souls to the laws of the soul-world in so far as it receives the spiritual into itself it is subject to the laws of the spirit. That which the laws of mineral and of life construct, comes into being and vanishes; but the spirit has nothing to do with becoming and perishing. [ 17 ] The “I” lives in the soul. Although the highest manifestation of the “I” belongs to the consciousness-soul, one must nevertheless say that this “I,” raying out from it, fills the whole of the soul, and through the soul exerts its action upon the body. And in the “I” the spirit is alive. The spirit sends its rays into the “I” and lives in it as in a “sheath” or veil, just as the “I” lives in its sheaths, the body and soul. The spirit develops the “I” from within, outwards; the mineral world develops it from without, inwards. The spirit forming an “I” and living as “I” will be called Spirit-self, because it manifests as the “I,” or ego, or “self” of man. The difference between the “Spirit-self” and the “consciousness-soul” can be made clear in the following way. The consciousness-soul is in touch with the self-existent truth which is independent of all antipathy and sympathy; the Spirit-self bears within it the same truth, but taken up into and enclosed by the “I,” individualised by the latter and absorbed into the independent being of the man. It is through the eternal truth becoming thus individualised and bound up into one being with the “I,” that the “I” itself attains to eternity. [ 18 ] The Spirit-self is a revelation of the spiritual world within the “I,” just as from the other side sensations are a revelation of the physical world within the “I.” In what is red, green, light, dark, hard, soft, warm, cold, one recognises the revelations of the corporeal world; in what is true and good, the revelations of the spiritual world. In the same sense in which the revelation of the corporeal world is called sensation, let the revelation of the spiritual be called intuition.4 Even the most simple thought contains intuitions, for one cannot touch it with the hands or see it with the eyes; its revelation must be received from the spirit through the “I.” If an undeveloped and a developed man look at a plant, there lives in the “I” of the one something quite different from that which is in the “I” of the other. And yet the sensations of both are called forth by the same object. The difference lies in this, that the one can form far more perfect thoughts about the object than can the other. If objects revealed themselves through sensation alone, there could be no progress in spiritual development. Even the savage is affected by Nature; but the laws of Nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts, fructified by intuition, of the more highly developed man. The stimuli from the outer world are felt even by the child as incentives to the will; but the commandments of the morally good disclose themselves to him only in the course of his development, in proportion as he learns to live in the spirit and understand its revelations. [ 19 ] Just as there could be no colour sensations without physical eyes, so there could be no intuitions without the higher thinking of the Spirit-self. And as little as sensation creates the plant on which the colour appears, does intuition create the spiritual realities about which it is merely giving information. [ 20 ] The “I” of a man, which comes to life in the soul, draws into itself messages from above, from the spirit-world, through intuitions, just as through sensations it draws in messages from the physical world. And in so doing it fashions the spirit-world into the individualised life of its own soul, even as it does the physical world by means of the senses. The soul, or rather the “I” lighting up in it, opens its portals on two sides; towards the corporeal and towards the spiritual. [ 21 ] Now just as the physical world can only give information about itself to the ego by building out of physical materials and forces a body in which the conscious soul can live and possess organs to perceive the corporeal world outside itself, so does the spirit-world build, with its spirit-substances and spirit-forces, a spirit-body in which the “I” can live and, through intuitions, perceive the spiritual. (It is evident that the expressions spirit-substance, spirit-body contain a contradiction, according to the literal meaning of the words. They are used only in order to direct attention to what, in the spiritual, corresponds to the physical body of man.) [ 22 ] Just as within the physical world each human body is built up as a separate physical being, so is the spirit-body within the spirit-world. In the spirit-world there is an “inner” and an “outer” for man just as there is in the physical world. As man takes in the materials of the physical world around him and assimilates them in his physical body, so does he take up the spiritual from the spiritual environment and make it into his own. The spiritual is the eternal nourishment of man. And as man is born out of the physical world, so is he born out of the spirit through the eternal laws of the true and the good. He is separated from the spirit-world outside him, as he is separated from the whole physical world, as an independent being. This independent spiritual being will be called the Spirit-man. [ 23 ] If we investigate the human physical body, we find the same materials and forces in it as are to be found outside it in the rest of the physical world. It is the same with the Spirit-man. In it pulsate the elements of the external spirit-world; in it the forces of the rest of the spirit-world are active. As within the physical skin a being is enclosed and limited which is alive and feels, so also is it in the spirit-world. The spiritual skin, which separates the Spirit-man from the homogeneous spirit-world, makes him an independent being within it, living a life within himself and perceiving intuitively the spiritual content of the world—let us call this “spiritual skin” (auric sheath) the spirit-sheath. Only it must be kept clearly in mind that the spiritual skin expands continually with advancing human evolution, so that the spiritual individuality of man (his auric sheath) is capable of enlargement to an unlimited extent. [ 24 ] The Spirit-man lives within this spirit-sheath. It is built up by the spiritual life-force. In a similar way to that in which one speaks of an ether-body, one must therefore speak of an ether-spirit in reference to the Spirit-man. Let this ether-spirit be called Life-spirit. The spiritual being of man therefore is composed of three parts, Spirit-man, Life-spirit, and Spirit-self. [ 25 ] For one who is a “seer” in the spiritual regions, this spiritual being of man is a perceptible reality as the higher, truly spiritual part of the aura. He “sees” the Spirit-man as Life-spirit within the spirit-sheath; and he “sees” how this “Life-spirit” grows continually larger, by taking in spiritual nourishment from the spiritual external world. Further, he sees how the spirit-sheath continually increases, widens out through what is brought into it, and how the Spirit-man becomes ever larger and larger. In so far as this “becoming larger” is “seen” spatially, it is of course, only a picture of the reality. In spite of this, man's soul is directed towards the corresponding spiritual reality in conceiving this picture. For the difference between the spiritual and the physical being of man is that the latter has a limited size while the former can grow to an unlimited extent. Whatever of spiritual nourishment is absorbed has an eternal value. The human aura is accordingly composed of two interpenetrating parts. Colour and form are given to the one by the physical existence of man, and to the other by his spiritual existence. The ego marks the separation between them in such wise that the physical, after its own manner, yields itself and builds up a body that allows a soul to live within it; and the “I” yields itself and allows to develop in it the spirit, which now for its part permeates the soul and gives it the goal in the spirit-world. Through the body the soul is enclosed in the physical; through the Spirit-man there grow wings for its movement in the spiritual world. [ 26 ] In order to comprehend the whole man, one must think of him as put together out of the components above mentioned. The body builds itself up out of the world of physical matter in such wise that its construction is adapted to the requirements of the thinking ego. It is penetrated with life-force, and thereby becomes the etheric or life-body. As such it opens itself through the sense-organs towards the outer world and becomes the soul-body. This the sentient soul permeates and becomes a unity with it. The sentient soul does not merely receive the impacts of the outer world as sensations; it has its own inner life which it fertilises through thinking, on the one hand, as it does through sensations on the other. It thus becomes the intellectual soul. It is able to do this by opening itself to intuitions from above, as it does to sensations from below. Thus it becomes the consciousness-soul. This is possible for it because the spirit-world builds into it the organ of intuition, just as the physical body builds for it the sense-organs. As the senses transmit to the human organism sensations by means of the soul-body, so does the spirit transmit to it intuitions through the organ of intuition. The Spirit-self is thereby linked into a unity with the consciousness-soul, just as the physical body is with the sentient soul in the soul-body. Consciousness-soul and Spirit-self form a unity. In this unity the Spirit-man lives as Life-spirit, just as the etheric body forms the bodily basis for the soul-body. And as the physical body is enclosed in the physical skin, so is the Spirit-man in the spirit-sheath. The members of the whole man are therefore as follows:
[ 1 ] Soul-body (C) and sentient soul (D) are a unity in the earthly man; in the same way are consciousness-soul (F) and Spirit-self (G) a unity. Thus there come to be seven parts in the earthly man.5
[ 27 ] In the soul the “I” flashes forth, receives the impetus from the spirit and thereby becomes the bearer of the Spirit-man. Thus man participates in the “three worlds,” the physical, the soul, and the spiritual. He is rooted in the physical world through his physical body, ether-body, and soul-body and blossoms through the Spirit-self, Life-spirit, and Spirit-man up into the spiritual world. The stalk, however, which takes root in the one and blossoms in the other, is the soul itself. [ 28 ] This arrangement of the members of man can be expressed in a simplified way, but one entirely consistent with the above. Although the human “I” lights up in the consciousness-soul it nevertheless penetrates the whole soul-being. The parts of this soul-being are not at all as distinctly separate as are the limbs of the body: they interpenetrate each other in a higher sense. If then one regards the intellectual soul and the consciousness-soul as the two sheaths of the “I” that belong together, with the “I” itself as their kernel, then one can divide man into physical body, life-body, astral body, and “I.” The expression astral body designates here what is formed by soul-body and sentient soul together. This expression is found in the older literature, and may be applied here in a somewhat broad sense to that in the constitution of man which lies beyond the sensibly perceptible. Although the sentient soul is in certain respects energised by the “I” it is still so intimately connected with the soul-body that, in thinking of both as united, a single expression is justified. When, now, the “I” saturates itself with the Spirit-self, then this Spirit-self makes its appearance in such wise that the astral body is worked over from within the soul. In the astral body there are primarily active the impulses, desires, and passions of man, in so far as they are felt by him; sense-perceptions are also active in it. Sense-perceptions arise through the soul-body as a member in man which comes to him from the external world. Impulses, desires, and passions, etc., arise in the sentient soul, in so far as it is energised from within, before this “inner” has yielded itself to the Spirit-self. If the “I” saturates itself with the Spirit-self, then the soul energises the astral body with this Spirit-self. This expresses itself in the illumination of the impulses, desires, and passions by what the “I” has received from the spirit. The “I” has then, through its participation in the spiritual world, become ruler in the world of impulses, desires, etc. To the extent to which it has become this the Spirit-self manifests in the astral body. And the astral body is thereby transmuted. The astral body itself then appears as a two-fold body—in part untransmuted and in part transmuted. Therefore the Spirit-self, as manifested in man, can be designated as the transmuted astral body. A similar process takes place in a man when he receives the Life-spirit into his “I.” The life-body then becomes transmuted. It becomes penetrated with the Life-spirit. This manifests itself in such wise that the life-body becomes quite other than it was. For this reason one can also say that Life-spirit is the transmuted life-body. And if the “I” receives the Spirit-man, it thereby receives the necessary force with which to permeate the physical body. Naturally, that part of the physical body, thus transmuted, is not perceptible to the physical senses. For it is just that part of the physical body which has been spiritualised that has become the Spirit-man. The physical body is then present to the physical senses as physical, but in so far as this physical is spiritualised, it must be perceived by spiritual faculties of perception. To the external senses the physical, even when permeated by the spiritual, appears to be merely sensible. Taking all this as basis, the following arrangement of the members of man may also be given:
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| 9. Theosophy (1971): Body, Soul and Spirit
Translated by Henry B. Monges, Gilbert Church |
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| Let us call what shines forth in the soul as eternal, the consciousness soul. We can speak of consciousness even in connection with the lower soul stirrings. The most ordinary everyday sensation is a matter of consciousness. To this extent animals also have consciousness. The kernel of human consciousness, that is, the soul within the soul, is what is here meant by consciousness soul. |
| The poet, Jean Paul, says in his autobiography, “I shall never forget the event that took place within me, hitherto narrated to no one and of which I can give place and time, when I stood present at the birth of my self-consciousness. As a small child I stood one morning at the door of the house looking towards the wood-pile on my left, when suddenly the inner vision, I am an I, came upon me like a flash of lightning from heaven and has remained shining ever since. |
| 9. Theosophy (1971): Body, Soul and Spirit
Translated by Henry B. Monges, Gilbert Church |
|---|
[ 1 ] Man can only come to a true understanding of himself when he grasps clearly the significance of thinking within his being. The brain is the bodily instrument of thinking. A properly constructed eye serves us for seeing colors, and the suitably constructed brain serves us for thinking. The whole body of man is so formed that it receives its crown in the physical organ of the spirit, the brain. The construction of the human brain can only be understood by considering it in relation to its task—that of being the bodily basis for the thinking spirit. This is borne out by a comparative survey of the animal world. Among the amphibians the brain is small in comparison with the spinal cord; in mammals it is proportionately larger; in man it is largest in comparison with the rest of the body. [ 2 ] There are many prejudices prevalent regarding such statements about thinking as are presented here. Many people are inclined to under-value thinking and to place higher value on the warm life of feeling or emotion. Some even say it is not by sober thinking but by warmth of feeling and the immediate power of the emotions that we raise ourselves to higher knowledge. People who talk in this way are afraid they will blunt the feelings by clear thinking. This certainly does result from ordinary thinking that refers only to matters of utility. In the case of thoughts that lead to higher regions of existence, what happens is just the opposite. There is no feeling and no enthusiasm to be compared with the sentiments of warmth, beauty and exaltation that are enkindled through the pure, crystal-clear thoughts that refer to the higher worlds. The highest feelings are, as a matter of fact, not those that come of themselves, but those that are achieved by energetic and persevering thinking. [ 3 ] The human body is so constructed that it is adapted to thinking. The same materials and forces that are present in the mineral kingdom are so combined in the human body that thought can manifest itself by means of this combination. This mineral structure built up in accordance with its function will be called in the following pages the physical body of man. [ 4 ] Organized with reference to the brain as its central point, this mineral structure comes into existence by propagation and reaches its fully developed form through growth. Man shares propagation and growth in common with plants and animals. Through propagation and growth what is living differentiates itself from the lifeless mineral. Life gives rise to life by means of the germ. Descendant follows forefather from one living generation to another. The forces through which a mineral originates are directed upon the substances of which it is composed. A quartz crystal is formed through the forces inherent in the silicon and oxygen that are combined in the crystal. The forces that shape an oak tree must be sought for indirectly in the germ-cells of the mother and father plants. The form of the oak is preserved through propagation from forefather to descendent. Thus, there are inner determining conditions innate in living things, and it was a crude view of nature that held lower animals, even fishes, to have evolved out of mud. The form of the living passes itself on by means of heredity. How a living being develops depends on what father and mother it has sprung from—in other words, on the species to which it belongs. The materials it is composed of are continually changing but the species remains constant during life and is transmitted to the descendants. Therefore, it is the species that determines the combination of the materials. This force that determines species will here be called life-force. Mineral forces express themselves in crystals, and the formative life-force expresses itself in the species or forms of plant and animal life. [ 5 ] The mineral forces are perceived by man by means of his bodily senses, and he can only perceive things for which he has such senses. Without the eye there is no perception of light; without the ear no perception of sound. The lowest organisms have only one of the senses belonging to man—a kind of sense of touch (See Addendum 2). These organisms have no awareness of the world perceptible to man with the exception of those mineral forces that they perceive by the sense of touch. In proportion to the development of the other senses in the higher animals does their surrounding world, which man also perceives, become richer and more varied. It depends, therefore, on the organs of a being whether what exists in the outer world exists also for the being itself as something perceptible. What is present in the air as a certain motion becomes in man the sensation of hearing. Man, however, does not perceive the manifestations of the life-force through the ordinary senses. He sees the colors of the plants; he smells their perfume. The life-force, however, remains hidden from this form of observation. Even so, those with ordinary senses have just as little right to deny that there is a life-force as the man born blind has to deny that colors exist. Colors are there for the person born blind as soon as he has undergone an operation. In the same way, the various species of plants and animals created by the life-force—not merely the individual plants and animals—are present for man as objects of perception as soon as the necessary organ unfolds within him. An entirely new world opens out to him through the unfolding of this organ. He now perceives not merely the colors, the odors and other characteristics of living beings, but the life itself of these beings. In each plant and animal he perceives, besides the physical form, the life-filled spirit-form. In order to have a name for this spirit-form, let it be called the ether body or life body.2 (Compare this also with what is said under Addendum 1) To the investigator of spiritual life this ether body is for him not merely a product of the materials and forces of the physical body, but a real independent entity that first calls forth into life these physical materials and forces. We speak in accordance with spiritual science when we say that a purely physical body derives its form—a crystal, for example—through the action of the physical formative forces innate in the lifeless. A living body does not receive its form through the action of these forces because in the moment life has departed from it and it is given over to the physical forces only, it falls to pieces. The ether body is an organism that preserves the physical body from dissolution every moment during life. In order to see this body, to perceive it in another being, the awakened spiritual eye is required. Without this ability its existence as a fact can still be accepted on logical grounds, but it can be seen with the spiritual eye just as color can be seen with the physical eye. We should not take offense at the expression “ether body.” “Ether” here designates something different from the hypothetical ether of the physicist. We should regard it simply as a name for what is described here. The structure of the physical body of the human being is a kind of reflection of its purpose, and this is also the case with the human etheric body. It can be understood only when it is considered in relation to the thinking spirit. The human etheric body differs from that of plants and animals through being organized to serve the purposes of the thinking spirit. Man belongs to the mineral world through his physical body, and he belongs through this etheric body to the life-world. After death the physical body dissolves into the mineral world, the ether body into the life-world. By the word “body” is meant whatever gives a being shape or form. The term body must not be confused with a bodily form perceptible to the physical senses. Used in the sense implied in this book, the term body can also be applied to such forms as soul and spirit may assume. [ 6 ] The life-body is still something external to man. With the first stirrings of sensation the inner self responds to the stimuli of the outer world. You may search forever in what is called the outer world but you will be unable to find sensation in it. Rays of light stream into the eye, penetrating it until they reach the retina. There they cause chemical processes in the so-called visual-purple. The effect of these stimuli is passed on through the optic nerve to the brain. There further physical processes arise. Could these be observed, we would simply see more physical processes just as elsewhere in the physical world. If I am able also to observe the ether body, I shall see how the physical brain process is at the same time a life-process. The sensation of blue color that the recipient of the rays of light experiences, however, I can find nowhere in this manner. It arises only within the soul of the recipient. If, therefore, the being of this recipient consisted only of the physical and ether bodies, sensation could not exist. The activity by which sensation becomes a fact differs essentially from the operations of the formative life-force. By that activity an inner experience is called forth from these operations. Without this activity there would be a mere life-process such as we observe in plants. Imagine a man receiving impressions from all sides. Think of him as the source of the activity mentioned above, flowing out in all directions from which he is receiving these impressions. In all directions sensations arise in response to the stimuli. This fountain of activity is to be called the sentient soul. This sentient soul is just as real as the physical body. If a man stands before me and I disregard his sentient soul by thinking of him as merely a physical body, it is exactly as if, instead of a painting, I were to call up in memory merely the canvas. A statement similar to the one previously made in reference to the ether body must be made here about perceiving the sentient soul. The bodily organs are blind to it. The organ by which life can be perceived as life is also blind to it. The ether body is seen by means of this organ, and so through a still higher organ the inner world of sensation can become a special kind of supersensible perception. Then a man not only senses the impressions of the physical and life world, but he beholds the sensations themselves. The sensation world of another being is spread out before a man with such an organ like an external reality. One must distinguish between experiencing one's own sensation world, and looking at the sensation world of another person. Every man, of course, can see into his own sensation world. Only the seer with the opened spiritual eye can see the sensation world of another. Unless a man is a seer, he knows the world of sensation only as an inner one, only as the peculiar hidden experiences of his own soul. With the opened spiritual eye there shines out before the outward-turned spiritual gaze what otherwise lives only in the inner nature of another being. [ 7 ] In order to prevent misunderstanding, it may be expressly stated here that the seer does not experience in himself what the other being experiences as the content of his world of sensation. The other being experiences the sensations in question from the point of view of his own inner nature. The seer, however, becomes aware of a manifestation or expression of the sentient world. [ 8 ] The sentient soul's activity depends entirely on the ether body. The sentient soul draws from the ether body what it in turn causes to gleam forth as sensation. Since the ether body is the life within the physical body, the sentient soul is also directly dependent on the physical body. Only with correctly functioning and well-constructed eyes are correct color sensations possible. It is in this way that the nature of the body affects the sentient soul, and it is thus determined and limited in its activity by the body. It lives within the limitations fixed for it by the nature of the body. The body accordingly is built up of mineral substances, is vitalized by the ether body, and itself limits the sentient soul. A man, therefore, who has the organ mentioned above for seeing the sentient soul sees it limited by the body, but its limits do not coincide with those of the physical body. This soul extends somewhat beyond the physical body and proves itself to be greater than the physical body. The force through which its limits are set, however, proceeds from the physical body. Thus, between the physical body and the ether body on the one hand, and the sentient soul on the other, another distinct member of the human constitution inserts itself. This is the soul body or sentient body. It may also be said that one part of the ether body is finer than the rest and this finer part forms a unity with the sentient soul, whereas the coarser part forms a kind of unity with the physical body. The sentient soul, nevertheless, extends, as has been said, beyond the soul body. [ 9 ] What is here called sensation is only a part of the soul nature. (The expression sentient soul is chosen for the sake of simplicity.) Connected with sensations are the feelings of desire and aversion, impulses, instincts, passions. All these bear the same character of individual life as do the sensations, and are, like them, dependent on the bodily nature. [ 10 ] The sentient soul enters into mutual action and reaction with the body, and also with thinking, with the spirit. In the first place, thinking serves the sentient soul. Man forms thoughts about his sensations and thus enlightens himself regarding the outside world. The child that has burnt itself thinks it over and reaches the thought, “Fire burns.” Man does not follow his impulses, instincts, and passions blindly but his reflection upon them brings about the opportunity for him to gratify them. What one calls material civilization is motivated entirely in this direction. It consists in the services that thinking renders to the sentient soul. Immeasurable quantities of thought-power are directed to this end. It is thought-power that has built ships, railways, telegraphs and telephones, and by far the greatest proportion of these conveniences serves only to satisfy the needs of sentient souls. Thought-force permeates the sentient soul similarly to the way the formative life-force permeates the physical body. The formative life-force connects the physical body with forefathers and descendants and thus brings it under a system of laws with which the purely mineral body is in no way concerned. In the same way thought-force brings the soul under a system of laws to which it does not belong as mere sentient soul. Through the sentient soul man is related to the animals. In animals also we observe the presence of sensations, impulses, instincts and passions. The animal, however, obeys these immediately and they do not become interwoven with independent thoughts thereby transcending the immediate experiences (See Addendum 4). This is also the case to a certain extent with undeveloped human beings. The mere sentient soul, therefore, differs from the evolved higher member of the soul that brings thinking into its service. This soul that is served by thought will be termed the intellectual soul. It could also be called the mind soul. [ 11 ] The intellectual soul permeates the sentient soul. The one who possesses the organ for seeing the soul sees the intellectual soul as a separate entity in contrast to the mere sentient soul. [ 12 ] By thinking, the human being is led above and beyond his own personal life. He acquires something that extends beyond his soul. He comes to take for granted his conviction that the laws of thought are in conformity with the laws of the universe, and he feels at home in the universe because this conformity exists. This conformity is one of the weighty facts through which he learns to know his own nature. He searches in his soul for truth and through this truth it is not only the soul that speaks but also the things of the world. What is recognized as truth by means of thought has an independent significance that refers to the things of the world, and not merely to one's own soul. In my delight at the starry heavens I live in my own inner being. The thoughts I form for myself about the paths of heavenly bodies have the same significance for the thinking of every other person as they have for mine. It would be absurd to speak of my delight were I not in existence. It is not in the same way absurd, however, to speak of my thoughts, even without reference to myself, because the truth that I think today was true also yesterday and will be true tomorrow, although I concern myself with it only today. If a fragment of knowledge gives me joy, the joy has significance just as long as it lives in me, whereas the truth of the knowledge has its significance quite independently of this joy. By grasping the truth, the soul connects itself with something that carries its value in itself. This value does not vanish with the feeling in the soul any more than it arose with it. What is really truth neither arises nor passes away. It has a significance that cannot be destroyed. This is not contradicted by the fact that certain human truths have a value that is transitory inasmuch as they are recognized after a certain period as partial or complete errors. Man must say to himself that truth after all exists in itself, although his conceptions are only transient forms of manifestation of the eternal truths. Even someone who says, like Lessing, that he contents himself with the eternal striving for truth because the full pure truth can only exist for a god, does not deny the eternity of truth but establishes it by such an utterance. Only what has an eternal significance in itself can call forth an eternal striving for it. Were truth not in itself independent, if it acquired its value and significance through the feelings of the human soul, it could not be the one unique goal for all mankind. By the very fact of our striving for truth, we concede its independent being. [ 13 ] As it is with the true, so is it with the truly good. Moral goodness is independent of inclinations and passions inasmuch as it does not allow itself to be commanded by them but commands them. Likes and dislikes, desire and loathing belong to the personal soul of a man. Duty stands higher than likes and dislikes. Duty may stand so high in the eyes of a man that he will sacrifice his life for its sake. A man stands the higher the more he has ennobled his inclinations, his likes and dislikes, so that without compulsion or subjection they themselves obey what is recognized as duty. The morally good has, like truth, its eternal value in itself and does not receive it from the sentient soul. [ 14 ] By causing the self-existent true and good to come to life in his inner being, man raises himself above the mere sentient soul. An imperishable light is kindled in it. In so far as the soul lives in this light, it is a participant in the eternal and unites its existence with it. What the soul carries within itself of the true and the good is immortal in it. Let us call what shines forth in the soul as eternal, the consciousness soul. We can speak of consciousness even in connection with the lower soul stirrings. The most ordinary everyday sensation is a matter of consciousness. To this extent animals also have consciousness. The kernel of human consciousness, that is, the soul within the soul, is what is here meant by consciousness soul. The consciousness soul is thus distinguished as a member of the soul distinct from the intellectual soul, which is still entangled in the sensations, impulses and passions. Everyone knows how a man at first counts as true what he prefers in his feelings and desires. Only that truth is permanent, however, that has freed itself from all flavor of such sympathy and antipathy of feeling. The truth is true even if all personal feelings revolt against it. That part of the soul in which this truth lives will be called consciousness soul. [ 15 ] Thus three members must be distinguished in the soul as in the body, namely, sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul. As the body works from below upwards with a limiting effect on the soul, so the spiritual works from above downwards into it, expanding it. The more the soul fills itself with the true and the good, the wider and the more comprehensive becomes the eternal in it. To him who is able to see the soul, the splendor radiating forth from a man in whom the eternal is expanding is just as much a reality as the light that streams out from a flame is real to the physical eye. For the seer, the corporeal man counts as only part of the whole man. The physical body as the coarsest structure lies within others that mutually interpenetrate it and each other. The ether body fills the physical body as a life-form. The soul body (astral shape) can be perceived extending beyond this on all sides. Beyond this, again, extends the sentient soul, and then the intellectual soul, which grows the larger the more of the true and the good it receives into itself. This true and good causes the expansion of the intellectual soul. On the other hand, a man living only and entirely according to his inclinations, likes and dislikes, would have an intellectual soul whose limits coincide with those of his sentient soul. These organizations, in the midst of which the physical body appears as if in a cloud, may be called the human aura. The perception of this aura, when seen as this book endeavors to present it, indicates an enrichment of man's soul nature. [ 16 ] In the course of his development as a child, there comes a moment in the life of a man when for the first time he feels himself to be an independent being distinct from all the rest of the world. For sensitive natures, it is a significant experience. The poet, Jean Paul, says in his autobiography, “I shall never forget the event that took place within me, hitherto narrated to no one and of which I can give place and time, when I stood present at the birth of my self-consciousness. As a small child I stood one morning at the door of the house looking towards the wood-pile on my left, when suddenly the inner vision, I am an I, came upon me like a flash of lightning from heaven and has remained shining ever since. In that moment my ego had seen itself for the first time and forever. Any deception of memory is hardly to be conceived as possible here, for no narrations by outsiders could have introduced additions to an occurrence that took place in the holy of holies of a human being, and of which the novelty alone gave permanence to such everyday surroundings.” It is known that little children say of themselves, “Charles is good.” “Mary wants to have this.” One feels it is to be right that they speak of themselves as if of others because they have not yet become conscious of their independent existence, and the consciousness of the self is not yet born in them (See Addendum 5). Through self-consciousness man describes himself as an independent being separate from all others, as “I.” In his “I” he brings together all that he experiences as a being with body and soul. Body and soul are the carriers of the ego or “I,” and in them it acts. Just as the physical body has its center in the brain, so has the soul its center in the ego. Man is aroused to sensations by impacts from without; feelings manifest themselves as effects of the outer world; the will relates itself to the outside world, realizing itself in external actions. The “I” as the particular and essential being of man remains quite invisible. With excellent judgment, therefore, does Jean Paul call a man's recognition of his ego an “occurrence taking place only in the veiled holy of holies of a human being,” for with his “I” man is quite alone. This “I” is the very man himself. That justifies him in regarding his ego as his true being. He may, therefore, describe his body and his soul as the sheaths or veils within which he lives, and he may describe them as bodily conditions through which he acts. In the course of his evolution he learns to regard these tools ever more as instruments of service to his ego. The little word “I” is a name which differs from all others. Anyone who reflects in an appropriate manner on the nature of this name will find that in so doing an avenue opens itself to the understanding of the human being in the deeper sense. Any other name can be applied to its corresponding object by all men in the same way. Anybody can call a table, table, or a chair, chair. This is not so with the name “I.” No one can use it in referring to another person. Each one can call only himself “I.” Never can the name “I” reach my ears from outside when it refers to me. Only from within, only through itself, can the soul refer to itself as “I.” When man therefore says “I” to himself, something begins to speak in him that has to do with none of the worlds from which the sheaths so far mentioned are taken. The “I” becomes increasingly the ruler of body and soul. This also expresses itself in the aura. The more the “I” is lord over body and soul, the more definitely organized, the more varied and the more richly colored is the aura. The effect of the “I” on the aura can be seen by the seer. The “I” itself is invisible even to him. This remains truly within the “veiled holy of holies of a human being.” The “I” absorbs into itself the rays of the light that flame forth in him as eternal light. As he gathers together the experiences of body and soul in the “I,” so too he causes the thoughts of truth and goodness to stream into the “I.” The phenomena of the senses reveal themselves to the “I” from the one side, the spirit reveals itself from the other. Body and soul yield themselves up to the “I” in order to serve it, but the “I” yields itself up to the spirit in order that the spirit may fill it to overflowing. The “I” lives in body and soul, but the spirit lives in the “I”. What there is of spirit in it is eternal, for the “I” receives its nature and significance from that with which it is bound up. In so far as it lives in the physical body, it is subject to the laws of the mineral world; through its ether body to the laws of propagation and growth; by virtue of the sentient and intellectual souls, to the laws of the soul world; in so far as it receives the spiritual into itself it is subject to the laws of the spirit. What the laws of mineral and of life construct, come into being and vanishes. The spirit has nothing to do with becoming and perishing. [ 17 ] The “I” lives in the soul. Although the highest manifestation of the “I” belongs to the consciousness soul, one must, nevertheless, say that this “I” raying out from it fills the whole soul, and through it exerts its action upon the body. In the “I” the spirit is alive. The spirit sends its rays into the “I” and lives in it as in a sheath or veil, just as the “I” lives in its sheaths, the body and soul. The spirit develops the “I” from within, outwards; the mineral world develops it from without, inwards. The spirit forming and living as “I” will be called spirit self because it manifests as the “I,” or ego, or self of man. The difference between the spirit self and the consciousness soul can be made clear in the following way. The consciousness soul is in touch with the self-existent truth that is independent of all antipathy and sympathy. The spirit self bears within it the same truth, but taken up into and enclosed by the “I,” individualized by it, and absorbed into the independent being of the individual. It is through the eternal truth becoming thus individualized and bound up into one being with the “I” that the “I” itself attains to the eternal. [ 18 ] The spirit self is a revelation of the spiritual world within the “I,” just as from the other side sensations are a revelation of the physical world within the “I.” In what is red, green, light, dark, hard, soft, warm, cold one recognizes the revelations of the corporeal world. In what is true and good are to be found the revelations of the spiritual world. In the same sense in which the revelation of the corporeal world is called sensation, let the revelation of the spiritual be called intuition.5 Even the most simple thought contains intuition because one cannot touch thought with the hands or see it with the eyes. Its revelation must be received from the spirit through the “I.” If an undeveloped and a developed man look at a plant, there lives in the ego of the one something quite different from what exists in the ego of the other. Yet the sensation of both are called forth by the same object. The difference lies in this, that the one can form far more perfect thoughts about the object than the other. If objects revealed themselves through sensation only, there could be no progress in spiritual development. Even the savage is affected by nature, but the laws of nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts fructified by intuition of the more highly developed man. The stimuli from the outer world are felt also by the child as incentives to the will, but the commandments of the morally good disclose themselves to him in the course of his development in proportion as he learns to live in the spirit and understand its revelations. [ 19 ] There could be no color sensations without physical eyes, and there could be no intuitions without the higher thinking of the spirit self. As little as sensation creates the plant in which color appears does intuition create the spiritual realities about which it is merely giving knowledge. [ 20 ] The ego of a man that comes to life in the soul draws into itself messages from above, from the spirit world, through intuitions, and through sensations it draws in messages from the physical world. In so doing it makes the spirit world into the individualized life of its own soul, even as it does the physical world by means of the senses. The soul, or rather the “I” flaming forth in it, opens its portals on two sides—towards the corporeal and towards the spiritual. [ 21 ] Now the physical world can only give information about itself to the ego by building out of physical materials and forces a body in which the conscious soul can live and possess within its organs for perceiving the corporeal world outside itself. The spiritual world, on the other hand, with its spiritual substances, and spiritual forces, builds a spirit body in which the `I” can live and, through intuitions, perceive the spiritual. (It is evident that the expressions spirit substance, spirit body, contain contradictions according to the literal meaning of the words. They are only used to direct attention to what, in the spiritual region, corresponds to the physical substance, the physical body of man See Addendum 6). [ 22 ] Within the physical world each human body is built up as a separate being, and within the spirit world the spirit body is also built up separately. For man there is an inner and an outer in the spirit world just as in the physical world there is an inner and an outer. Man takes in the materials of the physical world around him and assimilates them in his physical body, and he also takes up the spiritual from the spiritual environment and makes it into his own. The spiritual is the eternal nourishment of man. Man is born of the physical world, and he is also born of the spirit through the eternal laws of the true and the good. He is separated as an independent being from the spirit world outside him, and he is separated in the same manner from the whole physical world. This independent spiritual being will be called the spirit man. [ 23 ] If we investigate the human physical body, it is found to contain the same materials and forces as are to be found outside in the rest of the physical world. It is the same with the spirit man. In it pulsate the elements of the external spirit world. In it the forces of the rest of the spirit world are active. Within the physical skin a being is enclosed and limited that is alive and feels. It is the same in the spirit world. The spiritual skin that separates the spirit man from the unitary spirit world makes him an independent being within it, living a life within himself and perceiving intuitively the spiritual content of the world. Let us call this “spiritual skin” (auric sheath) the spirit sheath. Only it must be kept clearly in mind that the spiritual skin expands continually with advancing human evolution so that the spiritual individuality of man (his auric sheath) is capable of enlargement to an unlimited extent. [ 24 ] The spirit man lives within this spirit sheath. It is built up by the spiritual life force in the same way as the physical body is by the physical life force. In a similar way to that in which one speaks of an ether body, one must speak of an ether spirit in reference to the spirit man. Let his ether spirit be called life spirit. The spiritual nature of man is thus composed of three parts, spirit man, life spirit and spirit self. [ 25 ] For one who is a seer in the spiritual regions, this spiritual nature of man is, as the higher, truly spiritual part of the aura, a perceptible reality. He sees the spirit man as life spirit within the spirit sheath, and he sees how this life spirit grows continually larger by taking in spiritual nourishment from the spiritual external world. Further, he sees how the spirit sheath continually increases, widens out through what is brought into it, and how the spirit man becomes ever larger and larger. In so far as this becoming larger is seen spatially, it is of course only a picture of the reality. This fact notwithstanding, the human soul is directed towards the corresponding spiritual reality in conceiving this picture because the difference between the spiritual and the physical nature of man is that the physical nature has a limited size while the spiritual nature can grow to an unlimited extent. Whatever of spiritual nourishment is absorbed has an eternal value. The human aura is accordingly composed of two interpenetrating parts. Color and form are given to the one by the physical existence of a man, and to the other by his spiritual existence. The ego marks the separation between them in such wise that the physical element after its own manner surrenders itself and builds up a body that allows a soul to live within it. The “I” surrenders itself and allows the spirit to develop in it, which now for its part permeates the soul and gives the soul its goal in the spirit world. Through the body the soul is enclosed in the physical. Through the spirit man there grow wings for movement in the spiritual world. [ 26 ] In order to comprehend the whole man one must think of him as put together out of the components mentioned above. The body builds itself up out of the world of physical matter in such a way that this structure is adapted to the requirements of the thinking ego. It is permeated with life force and becomes thereby the etheric or life body. As such it opens itself through the sense organs towards the outer world and becomes the soul body. The sentient soul permeates this and becomes a unity with it. The sentient soul does not merely receive the impacts of the outer world as sensations. It has its own inner life, fertilized through thinking on the one hand and through sensations on the other. The sentient soul thus becomes the intellectual soul. It is able to do this by opening itself to the intuitions from above as it does to sensations from below. Thus it becomes the consciousness soul. This is possible because the spirit world builds into it the organ of intuition, just as the physical body builds for it the sense organs. The senses transmit sensations by means of the soul body, and the spirit transmits to it intuitions through the organ of intuition. The spiritual human being is thereby linked into a unity with the consciousness soul, just as the physical body is linked with the sentient soul in the soul body. Consciousness soul and spirit self form a unity. In this unity the spirit man lives as life spirit in the same way that the ether body forms the bodily life basis for the soul body. Thus, as the physical body is enclosed in the physical skin, so is the spirit man in the spirit sheath. The members of the whole man are therefore as follows:
Soul body (C) and sentient soul (D) are a unity in the earthly human being. In the same way consciousness soul (F) and spirit self (G) are a unity. Thus there come to be seven members in earthly man.
[ 27 ] In the soul the “I” flashes forth, receives the impulse from the spirit, and thereby becomes the bearer of the spiritual human being. Thus man participates in the three worlds, the physical, the soul and the spiritual. He is rooted in the physical world through his physical body, ether body and soul body, and through the spirit self, life spirit and spirit man he comes to flower in the spiritual world. The stalk, however, that takes root in the one and flowers in the other is the soul itself. [ 28 ] This arrangement of the members of man can be expressed in a simplified way, but one entirely consistent with the above. Although the human “I” flashes forth in the consciousness soul, it nevertheless penetrates the whole soul being. The parts of this soul being are not at all as distinctly separate as are the members of the bodily nature. They interpenetrate each other in a higher sense. If then one regards the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul as the two sheaths of the “I” that belong together, with the “I” itself as their kernel, then one can divide man into physical body, life body, astral body and “I.” The expression astral body designates what is formed by considering the soul body and sentient soul as a unity. This expression is found in the older literature, and may be applied here in a somewhat broad sense to what lies beyond the sensibly perceptible in the constitution of man. Although the sentient soul is in certain respects energized by the “I,” it is still so intimately connected with the soul body that a single expression is justified when united. When now the “I” saturates itself with the spirit self, this spirit self makes its appearance in such a way that the astral body is transmuted from within the soul. In the astral body the impulses, desires and passions of man are primarily active in so far as they are felt by him. Sense perceptions also are active therein. Sense perceptions arise through the soul body as a member in man that comes to him from the external world. Impulses, desires and passions arise in the sentient soul in so far as it is energized from within, before this inner part has yielded itself to the spirit self. This expresses itself in the illumination of the impulses, desires and passions by what the “I” has received from the spirit. The “I” has then, through its participation in the spiritual world, become ruler in the world of impulses and desires. To the extent to which it has become this, the spirit self manifests in the astral body, and the astral body is transmuted thereby. The astral body itself then appears as a two-fold body—partly untransmuted and partly transmuted. We can, therefore, designate the spirit self manifesting itself in man as the transmuted astral body. A similar process takes place in the human individual when he receives the life spirit into his “I.” The life body then becomes transmuted, penetrated with life spirit. The life spirit manifests itself in such a way that the life body becomes quite different from what it was. For this reason it can also be said that the life spirit is the transmuted life body. If the “I” receives the spirit man, it thereby receives the necessary force to penetrate the physical body. Naturally, that part of the physical body thus transmuted is not perceptible to the physical senses, because it is just this spiritualized part of the physical body that has become the spirit man. It is then present to the physical senses as physical, and insofar as this physical is spiritualized, it has to be beheld by spiritual perceptive faculties, because to the external senses the physical, even when penetrated by the spiritual, appears to be merely sensible. (See Addendum 3) Taking all this as basis, the following arrangement may also be given of the members of man:
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| 129. Wonders of the World: The living reality of the spiritual world in Greek mythology
19 Aug 1911, Munich Translated by Dorothy Lenn, Owen Barfield |
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| When, out of this spiritual world, this whirling world of constant movement and changing forms, the archetypal mother of the human soul and of the fruitful forces of Nature appeared to him, what did he say? He said to himself, not in full consciousness, but as it were in the unconscious, ‘I myself have done nothing, I have gone through no inner development, as later ages will do, in order to see into the spiritual world. |
| Hence the whole picture of the world which the human being makes, the total content of his consciousness is a reflection of his ether body. Whether a man knows anything of the world depends upon his ether body. |
| 129. Wonders of the World: The living reality of the spiritual world in Greek mythology
19 Aug 1911, Munich Translated by Dorothy Lenn, Owen Barfield |
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Yesterday I tried to give you some idea of the way the Greeks thought about the relationship between the human soul and our Earth evolution, laying special emphasis upon two things. I said the Greeks were conscious that in primeval times the soul had been gifted with clairvoyance, and they regarded Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, as the ruler of those clairvoyant powers which played into men's souls from the cosmos. On the other hand I showed how the entire intellectual civilisation of mankind can be traced back to the stream associated with the names of Odysseus, Menelaus and Agamemnon. I tried to make you feel that this civilisation calls for a continual sacrifice. Thus the finest feelings and sentiments of which the human soul is capable, when it comes under the influence of this intellectual civilisation, were offered up to a kind of religious sacerdotal-ism, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia expresses this thought for us. Such views enable us to realise that the tradition, and to a certain extent the actual knowledge, of what we are now endeavouring to regain through Spiritual Science was still very much alive in ancient Greece. We draw attention to the fact that in primeval times the soul had clairvoyant capacities. You can read in my Occult Science—An Outline how in Atlantis men saw into the spiritual world and how cosmic forces appeared to them as actual forms or figures; so that men did not then speak of abstract forces, but of real Beings. Such a figure as Persephone is a relic of this consciousness. Through Spiritual Science we are struggling gradually to come to know again from our modern viewpoint the same living reality in the spiritual world which was familiar to men in primeval times, the same living Beings who lay hid behind the figures of Greek mythology. The more deeply one goes into Greek mythology, the greater is one's respect, one's admiration, for the profound cosmic wisdom which lies behind it. To give you some idea of this, let me just mention one thing. I said yesterday that Greek mythology draws attention to two different trends—to the intellectual civilisation associated with the names of Menelaus, Agamemnon and Odysseus, and so beautifully exemplified in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and to the other culture associated with Persephone and her mother Demeter. Now a thoughtful person will naturally reflect that such movements do not take their course in complete independence. Despite their apparent separation there must have been a point of contact somewhere. How does Greek mythology express this profound truth? We know that modern scholarship has nothing but a few abstract ideas to offer in this connection. But Greek mythology traces the ancestry of Agamemnon back to a representative of human soul-forces whom we may call Tantalus. According to the Greek legend Tantalus wantonly offered his own son to the gods as food. We know too that the gods recognised the impious nature of this act, and only one—a goddess—partook of a shoulder-blade. That goddess was Demeter. In this remarkable touch of symbolism—Demeter's eating of the shoulder-blade of the son of Tantalus—we find an indication that there is a connection between the two streams. It confirms that Demeter forces enter into the entire modern civilisation associated with the names of Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus. Thus every item of Greek mythology has its correspondence in what we are bringing to light again in the form of modern spiritual wisdom. It is worth while to call attention now and again to such deeply significant features. It brings home to us the fact that the way man looks at the wonders of Nature changes in course of time. Our natural science is proud of its interpretation of Nature. There seems little ground for this pride when we reflect that by representing the force hidden in the depths of Nature as the female ruler of the wonders of Nature, the Greek system of divinities showed a far deeper wisdom than the science of today has any inkling of, or will so much as guess at until Spiritual Science is allowed to penetrate into our civilisation. It can give a considerable spur to our own knowledge, to the knowledge which we have acquired in the course of years, to consider it in relation to the depths of wisdom in Greek mythology. One feature of The Mystery of Eleusis draws attention to an important natural wonder. What is really the crucial event of the drama? Persephone, who represents the ancient clairvoyant forces of the human soul, is carried off by Pluto, the god of the underworld. The whole wondrous action comes alive for you in the Pluto scene of the reconstructed drama; once more we have it before our very eyes ... what does it mean, when we apply what Greek mythology and the Mystery of Eleusis thus express to the nature of man himself? What in terms of Spiritual Science has happened to the old clairvoyant faculty of the human soul? This rape of Persephone has in fact been going on from the earliest times right up to our own day; the old clairvoyant culture has vanished. But nothing in the world ever really disappears, things are really only transformed. Whither, then, has Persephone gone? What is the Regent of the old clairvoyant forces doing today in human nature? In the opening chapters of a little book1 now on the verge of publication, and which virtually reproduces the contents of my recent lectures in Copenhagen, you can read that the human soul encompasses far more than what it knows by way of intellect, by way of reason. A more comprehensive soul-life, a subconscious soul-life, is at work in us—it is better to call it subconscious rather than unconscious—a soul-life which in most modern men does not emerge into consciousness at all. In this subconscious life which is at work today in the human being without his being able to give a reasoned account of it, is Persephone; that is where the suppressed clairvoyant forces have gone. Whereas in primeval times they worked in such a way that the soul could see into spiritual worlds, today they work in the depths of the human soul. They assist in the development and formation of the ego principle, making it firmer and firmer. Whereas in primeval times these forces were dedicated to the task of making man clairvoyant, today they devote themselves to the establishing to the consolidation of our ego. Thus these Persephone forces have been drawn down into the human subconscious, they have been embraced, have so to say been raped, by the depths of the human soul. Thus in the course of the historical development of humanity, the rape of Persephone has been brought about by soul-forces which lie deep in the subconscious, forces which in outer Nature are represented as Pluto. According to Greek mythology Pluto is the ruler of the underworld, of the interior of the earth. But the Greek was also aware that the same forces which are at work in the depths of the earth are also at work in the depths of the human soul. Just as Persephone was carried off by Pluto, in the same way, in the course of human development, the soul was robbed of its ancient clairvoyant capacity through Pluto's intervention. Now Persephone is Demeter's daughter, and so we infer that in Demeter we have a still older ruler, both of the forces of external Nature and of the forces of the human soul. I said yesterday that Demeter is a figure of Greek mythology whom we associate with the kind of clairvoyant vision which belongs to the very oldest endowment of wisdom of Atlantean humanity—for it is in Atlantis that Demeter is really to be found. When an Atlantean man gazed into the spiritual world, he saw Demeter; she really came to meet him. When, out of this spiritual world, this whirling world of constant movement and changing forms, the archetypal mother of the human soul and of the fruitful forces of Nature appeared to him, what did he say? He said to himself, not in full consciousness, but as it were in the unconscious, ‘I myself have done nothing, I have gone through no inner development, as later ages will do, in order to see into the spiritual world. The same forces of Nature which have given me my eyes, my brain, my organism, and are active in me, these very same forces give me also the power of clairvoyance; just as I breathe, so also I have clairvoyant sight.’ Just as man went through no special development to produce breathing, so at that time he did not form his own clairvoyant faculty, but both these things were given to him by the powers of Nature, by divine Beings. When man turned his attention to what was outside him, to what existed all around him, and along with the sensible received the spiritual, he consciously felt: ‘I absorb into myself the substance of the plant kingdom in the world around me (a plant kingdom quite different from our present one), I absorb from outside everything that is growing, but with the substances I take in also the forces active in them.’ The man of that time was not so hopelessly limited in his outlook as to believe that what he took in as food was only physical substance, only something which could be analysed by the chemist; he knew that with the substances he took in the inner configuration of the forces which are active in them, and that it is these forces which construct him, which build up his body again. Atlantean man said to himself: ‘Outside in Nature, forces are at work; through my breathing and through the food I eat they enter into me. What they are outside me is under the control of the great Demeter. But Demeter sends these forces into the human soul, there they are worked upon and transformed into the faculty of clairvoyance.’ (We may call these forces the process of digestion, but the digestion was then a spiritual one.) ‘Through the forces under the control of Demeter, the fecundating goddess of the whole world, the clairvoyant capacity represented by Persephone is born in the human organisation.’ Thus Atlantean man feels that he too has his place among the wonders of Nature. He feels this clairvoyant capacity born in him as the birth of Persephone, he feels that he owes this birth to Demeter, who spreads abroad in the wide cosmos the very same forces which in man develop into the faculty of clairvoyance. Thus the man of old looked up to the great Demeter, and in ancient Greece man was still aware that it had once been so. But you will have already realised from this that the human organism, the entire bodily constitution, has changed since those ancient times. The human body of today, with its organisation of muscle and bone, is substantially denser, more compact, than the bodies of those men who were still able to give birth to Persephone within themselves, since they still had the faculty of clairvoyance. And because this organism of ours has become denser, it can also hold fast the clairvoyant forces in the sub-earthly realm of the soul. The imprisonment of the clairvoyant forces within human nature comes about as a result of the densification of the human body. And when the ancient Greek feels the old, more delicate, rarefied body becoming denser, it is because he is taking in forces which are active in the inner earth, whereas formerly he had been more under the sway of forces connected with the surrounding air, which rendered him in consequence softer, more supple. And what is active in the sub-earthly realm, the realm governed by Pluto, obtained a greater and greater influence on the human body, so that we may say that Pluto obtained an ever increasing hold over man; he densified the human body and in doing so abducted Persephone. This densification went on right into the physical body. For even in the earlier postAtlantean times the human organisation appeared very different from what it does today. It is very shortsighted to think that the human being was always formed as he is today. Thus we see that the rape of Persephone and man's connection with Demeter are really expressions of the wonders of Nature within man himself. They show us how Greek mythology was dominated by the consciousness that man is a microcosm, an expression of the macrocosm, the great cosmos. As Demeter works without in the powerful forces of all that brings forth fruit from the Earth, so also is what comes from Demeter active within us. As the forces represented in Greek mythology by Pluto are active within the Earth and not on the Earth's surface, so does Pluto work in man's own organism. We must be able to blot out entirely the usual way of looking at things today, our own habits and customs, if we want to understand the completely different habit of thought even of people as recent as the Greeks. When the modern man wants to make laws he looks to the government, he looks to his parliaments. This is of course, not a criticism, it is merely a comment. That is where our laws come from today, and a man would probably be considered a fool if he were to put forward the theory that cosmic forces pass through the heads of the sitting members! We will not pursue this any further; it is sufficient that the man of today would find such an idea grotesque. It was not so in prehistoric times, it was not even so in ancient Greece. In those times there was prevalent an idea so wonderful, so impressive, that modern man can scarcely believe it. Think of all that I have told you about the development of the Greek gods. I pointed out how Demeter worked in ancient times, how she instilled her forces into human nature—her forces which were active in the plants and caused her child to be born in that human nature. That is what Demeter did in ancient times. Now there were also other gods working in like fashion both with the forces of Nature and the wonders of Nature. How did they work? Well, when the human being ate and when he breathed, he knew that the forces which he took in from the air and from the plants came from Demeter, and he knew that it was Demeter who gave him his clairvoyant consciousness, but he knew too that it was she who taught him how he had to behave in the world. There were at that time no laws in the later meaning of the term, there were no commandments outwardly expressed, but since man was clairvoyant, it dawned in him clairvoyantly how he ought to behave, what was right, what was good. Thus in those very remote times he saw Demeter, who gave him his food, also as the cosmic power of Nature who, when he took in foodstuffs, so transformed their forces within him that they gave him his morality, his rule of conduct. And the man of old said to himself: ‘I gaze upwards to the great Demeter, and whenever I accomplish something in the world, I do so because forces active in the plant world without are sent into my brain.’ This Demeter of old was a law-giver, giving law which did not flash up into consciousness, but which was self-evident, impelling the soul. And it was the same with other gods. In nourishing human beings, in causing them to breathe, in prompting in them impulses to walk and to stand, they at the same time gave men the impulse for morality, for the whole of their outer conduct. When the gods assumed the forms they had later and of which we have spoken ... when Demeter saw her child Persephone lost in man's nature, saw her raped as it were by the now denser human body so that these clairvoyant forces could henceforth only be used for coarser bodily nutrition. ... When at that point she so to say gave up imparting the moral law directly, what did she do? She instituted a Mystery, thereby providing a substitute, a new form of law, for the old law which worked through the forces of Nature. Thus the gods withdrew from the forces of Nature into the Mysteries, and gave moral precepts to men who no longer possessed a morality drawn from the activity of Nature within them. This was the essence of Greek thought in the matter, that originally the gods bestowed morality upon men along with the forces of Nature; then the forces of Nature more or less withdrew, and later the gods substituted a moral law in a more abstract form through their messengers in the Mysteries. When man became estranged from Nature he needed a more abstract, a more intellectual morality, hence the Greeks looked to their Mysteries for guidance in their moral life, and in the Mysteries they saw the activity of the gods, as previously they had seen their activity in the forces of Nature. For this reason the earliest Greek period attributed the moral law to the same gods who were at the back of the forces of Nature. When the Greeks spoke of the origin of their earliest laws they did not refer to a parliament, but to gods who had come down to men and who had in the Mysteries given them the laws which continue to live in human morality. But as the human body became denser and denser, as it became transformed, what happened to the original Demeter forces? If I may use a very rough illustration, you all know that one cannot do with ice what one can do with water, because ice is in another form. In the same way one cannot do with the solid human body what it was once possible, out of the forces of Nature, to do with the finer body. Into this more rarefied body Demeter had been able to instil, with the products of Nature, the spiritual forces which were in them and thereby to develop clairvoyant forces. What became of the Demeter forces as a result of the solidifying of the human body, or to use the language of Greek mythology, through the rape of Persephone by Pluto? They had to take a back place in the organisation of the human body, they had to become less active; man had to be alienated from the direct influence of Demeter, to become subject to other forces, forces to which I called attention yesterday. What is it that makes the denser human body fresh and healthy? Just as of old it was Demeter, now it is Eros, it is what is represented in the Nature-forces by Eros, who brings this about. If Eros were not working upon the human body, if Demeter had continued to work, the body would be shrivelled and wrinkled throughout life. Today, Demeter forces are not to be found in youthful bodies, in chubby rosy cheeks; they are in the body just when it eliminates the Eros forces, as it does when it becomes older, when it becomes shrivelled and wrinkled. This profound truth is actually portrayed in The Mystery of Eleusis. After the rape of Persephone, Demeter appears before us denuded of her original forces. She is transformed by Hecate, so transformed that she now bears the forces of decline. The rape of Persephone also represents the withdrawal of Demeter from the bodily organisation in the course of the historical development of humanity. How splendidly those ancient wonders of Nature are expressed in the figures of the ancient gods! When in old age Eros begins to withdraw from the human body, then the influence of Demeter begins again. Then Demeter can, once again in a way, enter the body, then forces of fruitful chastity can predominate, while the Eros forces fall into the background. We are touching upon a tremendous mystery in human growth, human development, when we speak of old age, when we speak of the metamorphosis of Eros into Demeter forces. Secrets such as this were hidden deep within the Eleusinian drama, so deeply hidden that no doubt anyone with the usual education of today would regard everything I have just said as fantasy. In fact, however, it is the pronouncements of materialistic science about these things that are fantastic, that is where all the dreaming and the superstition really lie! What is it then that, between the time of Atlantis and our own time, has really changed in human nature? It is that part of man in which his essential being is ensheathed. His essential being is enclosed in three bodily sheaths; it is enclosed in the physical body, the ether body and the astral body; our innermost, our ego, is hidden within these three sheaths. These three have all become different in the course of evolution from the age of Atlantis up to our own time. What is the essential drive which makes these sheaths different? We have to look for this impulse primarily in the ether body. It is the ether body which is the energising influence, which is the really impelling factor. It is the ether body which has made the physical body denser, and which has also transformed the astral body. For these three bodies are not like the rind of a fruit, or the layers of an onion, one outside the other, but their forces mutually interpenetrate, they are in living interplay with one another. The sheath which plays the most important part in this process of transformation, in this historical development of the human being, is the ether body. Let us make a diagram of the three bodies to illustrate this. I will draw them simply as three layers lying one under the other. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] We have to look for the real forces, the effectual forces, especially those of Eros and Demeter here in the ether body; from the etheric they are sent upwards into the astral body, and downwards into the physical body; that is to say, the ether body has an influence both on the astral and upon the physical bodies. During the period I have referred to the ether body makes the physical body definitely denser, more compact; it so transforms the astral body that it no longer develops forces of clairvoyance, but only the intellectual forces of human nature. Because man has been transformed in this way, because the ether body has brought about a transformation in all three bodies, important and fundamental changes have taken place. They have all three been changed. The Atlantean body, even a post-Atlantean body of the first period, was utterly different from a body of the present day. All the relationships and conditions of life were quite different, everything has changed. If we look at the physical body as it develops from the earliest times right up to the present day, we see that through having become denser it has come more under the influence of its physical environment whereas the delicate physical body of old was more subject to the spiritual conditions of existence. Hence certain characteristics of the physical body which did not exist earlier in a similar form have been enhanced; the causes of disease, of illness, in the physical body in particular have become quite different. In olden times what we call sickness and health were due to quite other causes. In those times human health was directly dependent upon conditions in the spiritual world. Today the physical body is bound up with external physical conditions and therefore dependent upon them; today we have to look for the requisite conditions for health more to the external physical environment. Thus, to use the language of Greek mythology, because of the rape of Persephone by Pluto and her captivity in the nether world of human nature, man in his inmost being has become subject, so far as sickness and health are concerned, to external conditions. That is one of the things which has happened to humanity. The second thing has to do with the ether body itself. Besides being the source of the forces of metamorphosis, the ether body has also changed in itself. In primeval times this ether body was so organised that the human being did not get to know the world in the way he does today; but when through the old Persephone clairvoyance he gazed into the spiritual world he saw pictures of spiritual Beings. Man saw around him a world of images. Of course it was the forces of the astral body which called forth these images, but the astral body would not have been able to see them if it had depended upon itself alone. The astral body does not of itself see images. Just as a man does not see himself advancing unless a mirror confronts him, so the astral body would not see the images it produces if its activity were not so to say reflected back by the ether body. Thus it is the ether body which brings to the point of vision, to perception, the images called forth by the astral body. What man perceives of the goings-on in his own astral body is what is mirrored for him by his ether body. If all our inner astral processes were not reflected by our ether bodies we should of course still have the astral body's activity within us, but we should not be aware of it, we should not perceive it. Hence the whole picture of the world which the human being makes, the total content of his consciousness is a reflection of his ether body. Whether a man knows anything of the world depends upon his ether body. This was so in the old clairvoyant days, and it is still so today. What is the secret of the ether body? Its secret is that it is the key to knowledge of the world. What the world brings about in the astral body would not open the door to knowledge of the world were it not for the ether body. The ether body contains all that I have referred to in certain passages of the two Mystery Plays2 of mine which you have just seen performed. The Plays mention the labyrinth of thought, the threads which have to weave our knowledge of the world. We do not come to know the world merely by looking at it. Either, as in the old clairvoyance, we move from picture to picture, or as in modern intellectualism, we move from thought to thought as if through a labyrinth. This association too is brought about by the activity of the ether body. Thus what we may call the key and what we may call the threads which connect the single images of our consciousness when we acquire knowledge of the world have both undergone a change. Thus you see what is dependent on the forces of the ether body and what has to be changed in these forces. Let us now consider the third member, the astral body itself. This is the element in us which is subject to the influences of the world and in which the forces and the skills are formed which are then reflected by the ether body. Knowledge is kindled in the astral body; it is brought to consciousness through the ether body. A thought, an image, is kindled in the astral body; we have these in us because we have astral bodies. But these thoughts and images become conscious in us because we have ether bodies; they would still be in us even if we had no ether bodies, but we should not be aware of them. The torch of knowledge is kindled in the astral body; this torch is reflected as conscious knowledge in the ether body. This torch of knowledge which is kindled in the astral body has changed in the course of the historical development of mankind; in ancient times man had clairvoyant or imaginal knowledge; today he has intellectual or rational knowledge. That is the change which has come about in the astral body. Thus during the course of the historical development of man forces have been at work in his nature which have changed his whole relationship with Demeter. Out of the human body, once so rarefied, Demeter was so to say driven. She was driven out of the astral body with its lost clairvoyant capacities and Eros took her place. In return, as I have shown you today, certain different Eros-free forces in human nature came more under the sway of Demeter. Thus during this period from the time of Atlantis up to the present day a force has been working on the development of human nature in three ways: there is a triple kind of development, of transformation, a triple kind of metamorphosis, emanating from the ether body and working upon the physical body, upon the ether body itself, and upon the astral body. This force of genetic change has been and still is in human nature. It changes us from youth to age by leading over the forces of Eros into those of Demeter. There is in our organisation this threefold development which in the physical body brings about changes in the conditions affecting sickness and health, which causes the ether body to reflect knowledge in a different way, and which transmutes the torch of knowledge in the astral body. How wonderful it is to find these genetic forces represented in Greek mythology, forces which are active in all of us, forces which transform our astral bodies and therefore the nature of Demeter herself. These human etheric forces which work upon the physical body, upon the ether body itself and upon the astral body are represented by the threefold Hecate. Whereas today we say that forces of metamorphosis emanate from the ether body in a threefold way, the Greek spoke of the threefold Hecate. One of Nature's wonders in the genesis of the human organisation is expressed in this threefold Hecate. We there get a glimpse into immense wisdom. You can still see the statue of this ‘triple Hecate’ in Rome today.3 It reveals how one of her aspects has to do with the conditions determining sickness and health, being furnished with the symbols of the † and the serpent (this latter symbol was also assigned to Aesculapius as the representative of medicine). The † represents the external destructive influences upon the human organism. The endowment of one aspect of the threefold Hecate with these emblems indicates forces which act upon the ether body in its development. The second aspect of Hecate had to indicate that in the ether body itself the key to knowledge of the world had changed; what are the symbols shown by this second form? They are the key and the coil of rope, typifying the labyrinth of thought. The third Hecate carries a torch—the torch of knowledge developed in the astral body. We cannot help feeling that the way in which this profoundly meaningful figure is regarded in our materialistic age is one great mass of superstition. What new life such profound and impressive symbols as that of the threefold Hecate will acquire when we know once more what they mean! When the soul steeped in Spiritual Science stands before such a statue, ancient Greece will arise anew in her thought, all the knowledge of the spiritual nature of man mysteriously hidden in such a statue will stream into her again. We should not take these things in an abstract way. Of course we can only express them by clothing them in abstract thought, but all this can become for us living feeling if we permeate ourselves with the consciousness that Hecate has only changed the manner of her activity, that she is in us even today, is at work in every single one of us. The ancient Greek said that not only humanity as a whole but every individual is subject in his development to the forces of Hecate, in the changes undergone by physical, etheric and astral bodies. Hecate works in man in a threefold way. But what was communicated to the soul at that time in pictorial form can also be learnt again today. How is this expressed by the pupil of Spiritual Science, who no longer speaks in this pictorial way? He says that in the course of the development of the individual from birth to maturity his sheaths undergo changes. In the first seven years the physical body is changed, in the second seven years the ether body, in the third seven years the astral body. The forces which you find described in my little book Education of the Child4 without the use of pictures, work in the human organisation in a threefold way. They are the Hecate forces. When Spiritual Science describes for you how up to the change of teeth the human being develops primarily his physical body, it is saying that one form of Hecate is working in him. There we are saying in a modern way what the Greek meant when he represented one part of Hecate with † and serpent; and the second seven years of transformation, when the ether body works upon itself, is represented in the key and the coil of rope; and the third seven years, during which changes take place in the astral body, is represented in the emblem of the torch. Thus long ago I said in modern form what was expressed in the ancient Greek Mysteries by the figure of Hecate. That is also the meaning of the development of our European civilisation. Going back to Greek times, we find in the tradition of Greek mysticism, of Greek mythology, the powerful pictures which were placed before the pupils in order to awaken in them the knowledge which man at that time needed. In a different way the figure of the threefold Hecate awakened the knowledge which we today absorb when we grasp the doctrine of the threefold change which takes place between birth and about the age of twenty. And when we understand such teaching, then we grasp correctly the course which human civilisation has to take. The old clairvoyant form of knowledge had to be buried in the Plutonic region of the human soul, and for a period, from the time of Socrates right up to our own day, men had to remain more or less in ignorance about all these things. Men had to build up, to consolidate, their egos. But under the surface the old knowledge, the knowledge aroused by those impressive pictorial images of the Greeks, still remained. It was buried as it were under the load of intellectual culture. Now it is emerging again from the dark depths of the spirit. What was submerged in the depths of the soul is coming to the surface again for the life of today in the form of Spiritual Science. Today we are again beginning in the way I have described in Education of the Child to recognise the threefold Hecate in a more abstract way. This is preparing the human soul for a future clairvoyance which is already in sight, notwithstanding our intellectualism. The triple Hecate, Demeter, Persephone, and all those other figures of whom Greek mythology tells us, were not in Greek times abstractions as the credulous scholars of today imagine. No, they were living figures of Greek seership! All these figures will appear again to clairvoyant vision, which in the future will press more and more urgently upon man from the spiritual world. And the force which penetrates into human souls in order to lead them up again to clairvoyance—or I could also say in order to bring down clairvoyance to them—is the force which was first prepared as conscious thought in the old Jahve civilisation, and then reached its full development through the coming of the Christ Being, who will become ever better understood by men. And when among the adherents of genuine Spiritual Science it is said that this clairvoyant vision of the Christ, who has been united with the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, is already beginning in this twentieth century, it is also made clear that this return of Christ will certainly not be in a physical body, but will come about for etheric vision, as it did for Paul at Damascus.5 The power of the Christ provides all the impulses to enable human nature to rise again and to see all that has been buried in the depths of the soul—such as for instance, the figures of the Greek gods. That will be the greatest event for the future history of the human soul. It is the event for which Spiritual Science must prepare, so that the soul may become capable of acquiring the etheric vision. In the next three thousand years it will lay hold of more and more souls, the next three thousand years will be devoted to kindling the forces in the human soul which will make it aware of the etheric wonders of Nature around it. It will begin to happen in our own century that one here and one there will see with their etheric souls the reappearing Christ, and within the next three thousand years more and more men will see Him. Then will come the fulfilment of the true oriental tradition, a tradition with which all true occultism is in agreement. At the end of three thousand years the Maitreya Buddha will descend, and will speak to humanity in a form which every human soul will understand, and will mediate the Christ-nature to man. That is the secret guarded by oriental mysticism, that about three thousand years after our time the Maitreya Buddha will appear. What can be added as the contribution of western culture is that the cosmic Individuality who has only once appeared in a human body will become ever more visible to the etheric vision of man; you will find this again emphasised in my Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation. The Soul's Probation. Thereby He will become a trusted friend of the human soul. Just as two thousand years ago the Buddha spoke of what was natural to the best human souls of his time, so in words which will thrill the soul, the Maitreya Buddha will be able to proclaim everywhere what today cannot be proclaimed publicly: the vision of the Christ in the etheric world which is to come. That is the greatest event of the twentieth century, this upward development of human nature towards what we may call the recurrence of the vision of St. Paul. In the vision at Damascus it came to one person only; in the future it will come little by little to all humanity, beginning in our own century. Whoever has faith in the progress of human nature, whoever believes that the soul will develop ever higher and higher powers, knows that it was necessary for the soul which had sunk to the uttermost depths of the physical plane, that the Christ too should appear once in a physical body. It was necessary because at that time the soul could only see the Godhead in a body which was visible to the physical eye, to physical organs. But because, after the old Hebrew civilisation had paved the way for it, this event did take place, the soul is being led to ever higher capacities. The soul's heightened capacities will show themselves in that man will learn to see the Christ even when He no longer walks among men in a physical body, when He shows Himself as He is among us now, as He has been since the Mystery of Golgotha, visible of course only for clairvoyant sight. Christ is here, He is united with the ether body of the Earth. What matters is that the soul should develop so as to be able to see Him. Herein lies the great advance in the evolution of the human soul. Anyone who believes in this progress, who believes that Spiritual Science has a mission to fulfil in regard to it, will understand that the powers of the soul must become ever higher, and that it would mean stagnation if in our time the soul were obliged to see the Christ in the same physical form in which He was once seen. He will know that there is a sublime meaning in the old Rosicrucian formula about God the Son, who once, and once only, incarnated in a human body, but Who, beginning from our own century, will become visible as an etheric Being to human souls to an ever increasing extent. This is confirmed by prophecy as well as by our own knowledge. Anyone who believes in human progress believes in this Second Coming of the Christ, who will be visible to those endowed with etheric sight. Those who refuse to believe in this progress may well believe that the powers of the soul remain stationary, and still today need to see the Christ in the same form in which He was seen when humanity was plunged in the uttermost depths of matter. They are the ones who can believe in a Second Coming of Christ in a physical body.
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| 40. The Calendar of the Soul (Riedel)
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| The Calendar of the Soul Inner life changes along with the changing seasons of nature, as the two are intimately connected. The verses commence in the spring, at the time of the vernal equinox, the full moon, and Sunday, which by definition is Easter. |
| And as always, the dating and significance of Easter and of Michaelmas create lots of discussion. “Human beings are able to develop the consciousness soul precisely through the exertion of energy required to penetrate such riddles”.1 The celestial equator and the ecliptic:2 —Translation by John Riedel MD - 6 May 2023 [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Week 1 (Spring) When from afar the sun breaks forth To warm the hearts and minds of men, And joy springs to life again To unite with shows of light, Then drawn from self’s high hull Thoughts emerge in ranging space And bind together dimly Human ways with spirit being. |
| Week 38 I feel enchantment-freed A spirit-child enfolded in soul; It has within my heart in glory Inscribed the holy word of worlds, The hope-filled heavenly fruit, So that joy will resound in distant worlds Out of ways of God that are found in me. |
| 40. The Calendar of the Soul (Riedel)
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The Calendar of the Soul
[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Week 1 (Spring) When from afar the sun breaks forth Week 27 (Autumn) Insistence builds in my being’s depths: Week 2 In thrall to everything in sight Week 28 I can with fresh interior gaze Week 3 With World-All in deep discourse, Week 29 To kindle the illumination of thinking Week 4 I feel the essence of my being: Week 30 By sprouting me in soul’s sunny light Week 5 In the light from spirit depths Week 31 The light from spirit depths Week 6 Arisen out of individuality Week 32 I feel fruiting inherent ways, Week 7 My self will surely fly away, Week 33 Now I begin to feel the world, Week 8 My power of mind waxes strong Week 34 Mystery wisdom honored of old Week 9 Forgetting personal self-concern, Week 35 Can I existence recognize, Week 10 To summery heights the Sun’s being Week 36 It speaks within my being’s depths Week 11 It’s up to you in these sunny hours Week 37 To carry spirit-light in wintery-world-night Week 12 The world’s radiant beauty Week 38 I feel enchantment-freed Week 13 And when I am in sensory heights, Week 39 Devoted to spirit-revelation Week 14 Summer Embedded in these sunny days Week 40 Winter And when I am in spirit depths, Week 15 I feel as though enchanted Week 41 The soul’s creative power, Week 16 Shelter spirit gifts within Week 42 In the depths of winter’s lair, Week 17 So speaks the world-word, Week 43 In the depths of wintery waste Week 18 Can I open up the soul so wide Week 44 Sensory wonders newly viewed Week 19 New impressions filled with mystery, Week 45 Assured becomes the power of thought Week 20 Just now I feel that my being, Week 46 The world threatens to overcome Week 21 I feel fermenting an unfamiliar power Week 47 From world’s womb will to be arises, Week 22 The light from world expanse, Week 48 In the light from heavenly heights Week 23 Pursuits of pleasure fade and dim Week 49 I feel the force of world-existence: Week 24 By continually refining inner self, Week 50 It speaks to human “I-am” core Week 25 Now may I hold my inner reins Week 51 Into mankind’s inner ways Week 26 O Nature, your motherly essence Week 52 When from depths of soul
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| 82. So That Man may Become Fully Human: The Anthroposophical Research Method
10 Apr 1922, The Hague |
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| And when one has created an empty consciousness by first having to extinguish an intensified power of thinking, then this empty consciousness does not wait in vain. |
| This is in contrast to the state when someone hallucinates and has visions, because in doing so, their entire consciousness is absorbed in individual visions. This is not the case with the consciousness I am talking about. |
| For when we have learned to expunge the imaginations and to have empty consciousness, then we can also expunge everything that fills us as an etheric body and look back at ourselves with empty consciousness. |
| 82. So That Man may Become Fully Human: The Anthroposophical Research Method
10 Apr 1922, The Hague |
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What seems most disconcerting to many people who are not yet familiar with anthroposophy is that it not only has something different to say than what we are accustomed to hearing in the natural sciences and in life today, but that it also has to say it in a different way, in a different form. And in a sense, it is precisely this different mode of expression, this different form, that people find most difficult to forgive in anthroposophy. They immediately begin to measure and criticize what anthroposophy has to say against what they are accustomed to and what they otherwise have in today's science and in today's life. What I have just said will probably have to be emphasized most today, when I have to speak to you about the way and the methods by which anthroposophy arrives at its research results. These methods are, of course, quite different from the methods of external observation and also from the usual methods of thinking. Today, when we talk about scientific methodology, we are accustomed to being told about things that come to us from outside: observations, experiments, and so on. And in the treatment of observation and experiment, we then see the methods of research. This is not the case with anthroposophy, especially when it comes to the foundations of anthroposophy. And that is what I am mainly talking about today. Of course, when anthroposophy spreads to the individual sciences, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and so on, as can be seen from the discussions that have already taken place here, then the methods of spiritual research, which I am speaking about today, will touch on some point with the experimental and observational methods that one is otherwise accustomed to in the clinic, in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on. But today we shall be dealing with the foundations, so to speak, with the way of entering into the soul state through which one can present anthroposophical results to the world at all. It is absolutely essential that research in the field of anthroposophy can only be carried out when the researcher has developed his soul forces, his powers of knowledge, further than they are in ordinary life, in ordinary science. One must develop what I would call intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty can be characterized in the following way. Think back to when you were a child, think of the dull mental experiences of early childhood. You will have to say to yourself that the clear overview of life and the world around you, which you acquired in later life, was still missing then. The ability to orientate yourself in the world was still lacking. All this one has developed within oneself. Compared to one's childhood, one has become a completely different person, not only physically and bodily but also mentally and spiritually. Abilities have sprouted from within that now serve one in life and in science. Just as the human soul is now, so one says to oneself: Certainly, education and life have drawn certain abilities out of my inner being since my childhood. But now I am finished. Now I have certain abilities with which I want to know the world, with which I want to place myself in the world as a human being who acts, who does things; with which I also want to judge my religious and moral impulses. One does not say to oneself: What has happened to the human soul from childhood until now could perhaps continue to happen. One could just as well say: I could extract further abilities from my soul. Then I would consciously make a person out of myself with quite a different soul capacity, a person who might differ from the normal person of today just as I differ from the child in my present state of soul. As I said, it takes intellectual modesty to say what I have just characterized at a certain point in one's life and then to put it into practice. To put it into practice in such a way that one really tries to make progress, to bring up abilities hidden in the soul to the goal of further research. For how could the results of research in today's science, how could the moral-religious impulses in today's life have taken hold in the world if all people had developed only with the soul-condition that they had in childhood? And so it is absolutely necessary for anthroposophical spiritual scientific research to take the position quite seriously: I want to bring out of my soul abilities that are dormant in my soul today, just as the abilities that are now manifest once lay dormant in my soul during childhood. I will still have to explain that not everyone who really wants to commit themselves to anthroposophical research, or who wants to be active in it, must also become a researcher in the sense I have just indicated. But in order to achieve real results, real outcomes, something like what I have said must take place. When these research results are then presented to the world, they are perfectly accessible to common sense and can be tested by it; just as anyone who is not a painter can judge a picture artistically. So, to understand anthroposophy, it is not necessary to go through everything that I will have to describe today, but it is necessary for research. And it is also necessary to discuss it for the reason that, to a certain extent, the anthroposophical researcher has to account to his fellow human beings for how he arrives at his results. Now I would like to start from the most fundamental point, from which one can start in this day and age if one wants to characterize the anthroposophical research method. Basically, you can find everything that is the first, let's say, axiom, that is the first, most elementary thing to understand the anthroposophical research method, in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, yes, in even older of my books. This “Philosophy of Freedom” was published in 1894, and was actually written much earlier. It may perhaps even surprise some who know this book that I make this claim, and yet it is true: the most elementary understanding of anthroposophical research methods can be gleaned from this “Philosophy of Freedom”. What one draws from it as an elementary understanding must then, however, be further developed. Only the most elementary things can be found in this “Philosophy of Freedom”. But these most elementary things can be found. In this “Philosophy of Freedom” I have tried to determine where the moral impulses, the ethical, the moral impulses of man actually come from. Now, because I will only be able to briefly characterize this “Philosophy of Freedom” today, I will characterize it in a slightly different way than it is done in the book itself, tying in with some of the things I have said here in the previous days. I believe that anyone reading this “Philosophy of Freedom” will find that there is something like mathematical thinking in it - strange as it may seem, but there it is - a mathematical thinking in that this “Philosophy of Freedom” actually aims to find the human impulse of freedom and the moral impulses. But the way in which this “Philosophy of Freedom” attempts to talk about the moral world is not qualitatively different from that which is present in us as a state of mind when we do mathematics. I have characterized this mathematizing in the preceding days. I have shown how it is drawn from the depths of the human soul, how we then, as it were, forget ourselves, how we forget that we have drawn mathematical space out of ourselves, and how we then live in this space with our view of space. I also said: People are initially interested when it comes to their own human abilities, not so much in what state of mind one is in when one mathematizes. I would say that there are only a few people in the world who, if I may use the expression, have the right respect for mathematization. For example, Novalis, a profound, amiable, extraordinarily sympathetic poet, had this proper respect for mathematization. Anyone who allows Novalis' poetry to take effect on them has the impression: there is a wonderful lyrical momentum, there is a complete enthusiasm, there is poetry in the soul. And when Novalis, the wonderful lyricist, starts talking about mathematics, he says something like: In mathematics we have, basically, the most beautiful, the greatest, the most powerful human poetry! I know how few people admit this at first. But, as I said, the amiable, profound lyricist Novalis knew – because he was a mathematician – what is stirred in the soul when one does not merely solve individual mathematical problems in a mechanical way, even if they are problems of function theory, number theory and the like, or of synthetic geometry; he knew how the soul feels when it is so enraptured that it forgets itself and knows itself in the space outside. But now one thing is possible. It is possible, in fact, if one is familiar with this state of mind of mathematical thinking that Novalis speaks of so wonderfully, and can then put oneself in a position to gain something completely different from the same state of mind, namely the experience of moral impulses. In other words, if one succeeds in grasping and experiencing moral problems with the same inner clarity and the same inner certainty with which one solve, let us say, the Pythagorean theorem, to grasp and experience moral problems, then one knows: one is in the spiritual, in the supersensible world with this grasping of moral problems, and one speaks of the fact that in this supersensible world moral intuitions flow into the soul with the moral impulses. One knows that one is feeling one's way within the moral world, that one is feeling one's way in a supersensible world, which has nothing to do with what can be perceived externally through the senses. One knows that one is in a world where, firstly, one experiences one's deepest inner moral impulses directly; where one is one with them; where, because one is one with them, they are intuitive insights. And one knows a second thing. One knows that no matter how long one looks around in the sensory world, no matter how astutely one thinks and observes and experiments, what one, if I may say so, discovers in the mathematical world as moral intuitions cannot come from any sensory external world; it comes to one from the supersensible world. But that means, in other words, that it is inspired. The real, the deepest moral impulses that a person can receive from the supersensible world are intuitions that are at the same time inspired for our soul. And although they are not visual, do not appear in pictures, they are nevertheless there in the same way as sense perceptions themselves. Just as sensory perceptions are in the realm of the sensual, so too are moral impulses in the supersensible realm. That is to say, they are imaginations. And anyone who has discovered in which world the moral element, as also meant by Novalis, is experienced, knows that this moral element appears in this field, that it appears to the person who is completely removed from the sensory world as intuitions, which are both inspirations and imaginations. In short, by trying to gain a moral foundation for human life from the supersensible world, one learns to recognize how the soul must experience if it wants to be in the supersensible world. And it must be said that for today's human being - I have explained how it is different for the person who undergoes the yoga practice, or who undergoes the practice of grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, and so on - for today's human being, it is first of all the best way for a person to get to know how to leave their physical body and live in a purely spiritual world, if they live in a purely supersensible world in the way that I have tried to indicate in my Philosophy of Freedom. I know that very many people are not satisfied with such a way of living in the spiritual world, because in this world only moral truths appear, which one prefers to accept as commandments, as conventional facts, and so on. But I am not here to talk further about the “Philosophy of Freedom”, but only about the elementary methodical. But once you have become familiar with this special way of being in the supersensible world, you are encouraged to go further, to try to see whether it is not also possible for other areas of life to penetrate into a supersensible world in relation to the sensory world. And then one gradually comes to the point where methods of inner soul development are really possible, which lead people up the path to see the whole cosmos and human inner knowledge in such a way, otherwise, in the sense of the “Philosophy of Freedom”, one only looks at the moral, where one does not yet want to admit that it is a matter of the supersensible, if one does not go into the actual foundation of the matter. The methods by which one ascends into the supersensible world in other fields consist in further developing the ordinary soul powers as one has them in ordinary life and in ordinary science. And these soul powers are, after all, first of all, if we characterize them externally in abstract terms, thinking, feeling and willing. We distinguish these three soul abilities, thinking, feeling and willing, but in the unified life of the soul they are not strictly separated from each other. One would actually have to say: when we speak of thinking, of mental images, we are speaking of a 'soul ability in which, for example, the will and also feeling are present, but it is mainly thinking that is present. In the will, on the other hand, thoughts are definitely present, but it is mainly will that is present. Thus, it is only the most salient feature that is referred to in the individual soul abilities, while everywhere below the surface, one might say, the other soul abilities also lie. This becomes particularly important when it comes to the further development, the evolution, of the ability to think, of the power of thought. For this, we must be clear about the following. First, we must be clear about our relationship to the things around us and to ourselves in ordinary life and in ordinary science. We perceive the world through our senses, through our eyes, ears, and so on. We live with a certain inner intensity in these sensory perceptions. Then we form mental images of what we perceive with our senses. We move away from the things we perceive with our senses. In our mental images, there remains an afterimage of what we experienced with our senses. But consider how dull and shadowy the thought, the mental image, is compared to what we experienced with full vitality in our sensory perception. These mental images that are linked to sensory perceptions are dull and shadowy. And we are accustomed in life and even in ordinary science to let the sensory perceptions speak to us and to passively surrender to these sensory perceptions so that they awaken in us the mental images that make what we have perceived through the senses permanent. And then, more or less clearly, even after a long time or throughout our whole life, we can in turn bring up from the depths of our soul or our human being, as memories, what we have experienced externally through the senses. The mental images that are otherwise linked to the sensory perceptions and that are faint and shadowy in comparison to the sensory perceptions can also arise from us, from memory. We experience inwardly in the life of mental images what we perceive outwardly through the senses; we experience it again through memory. It should be clear, very clear, that just about all ordinary life, even that which is immersed in science, proceeds in this way in terms of imagining: that we expose ourselves to the liveliness of sensory perceptions, that we then get dull mental images, but that we can bring up again from our human being in memory that which we have received from outside as impressions. Our inner life is mostly nothing more than more or less transformed, metamorphosed mental images in the sense of external perception. I will not go into the deeper nature of memory today, because I want to describe how what I have just characterized in terms of mental images can be further developed. It can be further developed by thinking in a way that does not merely tie in with external sense perceptions, but by thinking through the methods that I have mentioned in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in my “Secret Science”: meditation, concentration, and so on - the names are not important. You will find a detailed description of how to proceed in the books mentioned. I will now only explain the principles. While thoughts usually arise when we passively devote ourselves to perceptions or when the echoes of experiences resurface from memories, to become an anthroposophical spiritual researcher, one tries to do so through inner arbitrariness, as one has learned to do when mathematizing, when solving mathematical problems, so that one carries out everything fully consciously, not in a dreamy, hallucinatory state – that would be the opposite of what I will describe today – but in full awareness, devoting oneself to thinking and imagining, so that one learns to rest on mental images that one has arbitrarily brought into one's consciousness. It is good to bring into the center of your consciousness mental images that are as clear as possible, not those in which you can experience all kinds of nebulous, mystical stuff, but those that you can easily grasp. What matters then is not what kind of mental image you have, but the soul activity that you develop in this meditation. Just note: if you continually tense a muscle when you need it for work, the muscle becomes strong. The same thing happens with your soul's thinking power when you repeatedly concentrate on mental images that you bring to the center of your consciousness. The power of thought becomes stronger and stronger and finally reaches a point where you can say: “Now I am able to have my mental images as vividly as I otherwise only have external sensory impressions.” Mind you, I do not have hallucinations or illusions. These come from the unconscious. I now live in such vivid inner mental images as are otherwise external sensory perceptions, but I live in them with full consciousness, not with that dreamy mood of the soul, that mystical, nebulous mood of the soul, as it is present in hallucinations or visions. It must be a mathematical state of mind, through which one can immerse oneself in such inner experiences from mere mental images, which one otherwise only has when one is devoted to external sensory perception. One must compare, to say it again, the vividness and intensity of external sensory perception with what one otherwise experiences only pale and shadowy in thought. But in the way I have described, one learns more and more to be inwardly present with thoughts that have only been raised inwardly, as one is otherwise only present when some external sense impression stimulates one. No more pale, shadowy thoughts - inwardly vivid thoughts! The soul's power of thought has been strengthened. One has summoned a new power from the depths of one's soul. One has strengthened one's thinking power. When one has strengthened one's thinking, one has reached the first step of supersensible knowledge. In my books I have called this the imaginative stage of knowledge. One has reached the stage of imagination. This stage of imagination shows one, by means of the very vivid mental image that one now has: something is connected with this mental image. Let us once again take up our ordinary sensory life and our ordinary mental images. Today we perceive something. We are vividly immersed in this perception. We form a pale, shadowy mental image. After a week, say, prompted by something or also free-rising, as one might say, this mental image arises again from memory. It comes out of us, to put it trivially. The fact that I once had the sensory experience is the cause of the same mental image emerging again later from my inner human being in memory. Now, after my practice, I am able to have thoughts that are intensified in my consciousness, which I call imaginative thoughts because they occur with the vividness, with the intensity of images, because they are really like sensory images, even though they are only thoughts at first. But just as otherwise, through the fact that I have thought about an external experience – if I just stare at it, no memory comes to me later, only if I have thought about it – a memory can come from my own being, so through the fact that I now have a thought, and to an increased extent in the soul, something comes to me from my own being, which at first looks like a memory, but which is not a memory. Something is now arising that is not a reminiscence of an external sensual experience, but something that I have never before perceived arising from within me at all. If I may put it this way: just as memories of ordinary experiences arise otherwise, so now, through the power of intensified thinking, that which I have never before seen inwardly arises from within. And I will very soon recognize what that is that is arising. I try, by continuing to meditate, to bring it to ever greater and greater clarity in this inner arising, and I finally come to understand what this inner arising actually is. I come to it: this inner ascent is I myself, as I have developed in the time since my birth here on earth. Otherwise we have only the stream of memories, from which individual ones arise that are otherwise down there in the unconscious. I do not mean these memories. These memories are indeed what also arise in ordinary consciousness. But what is now arising, called forth from the inner being through the power of intensified thinking, that is not just thought, memory thought, it is that which leads me much deeper into my inner human nature than the power of memory. It is something that leads me, so to speak, deeper into the layers of my inner being than memory thoughts do. It is something that shows me how, as a small child, I used abilities that I had in my soul to shape my organism plastically from the brain outwards. This is what shows me how, as a somewhat older child, I used my ability to speak to further develop my inner self in a plastic way. In short, my innermost life comes before my soul in a grand, powerful tableau, the like of which I have never seen before. And what now comes before my soul is not just an image. Please bear this in mind. It is not just an image, but something that I recognize by grasping it, that it is connected with my growth forces, with that which grows in me, which also lives in me in the nourishing forces, in the circulation, in the breathing forces, which is in fact an inner, supersensible body in relation to the physical body. I am now getting to know a second person in me. I am learning to recognize that I can say the following to myself: You carry your outer body with you, it is extended in space, it has arms, feet, a head and so on. That is a spatial body. But what you have now discovered through your meditation, through imaginative recognition, that is an organism that lives in time, not in space, a time organism. It is difficult for today's man when one speaks to him of such a time organism. But this time organism really is present in us as a second person, and we may call it an organism. Because you come to it, let's say, when you've become an old fellow, as I may say of myself, you know, you have a certain soul configuration. This soul configuration, which you now carry within you, is connected with a soul configuration perhaps in the fifth or sixth year of life. And just as my left hand is connected in my spatial organism, for my sake, with some part of my brain in this spatial organism, and just as the brain is in this spatial organism so that the individual parts relate to each other, so the individual parts of the time organism relate to each other in time, not in space. I carry this time organism within me. I have called it the etheric body or formative forces body in my books. This formative forces body is a time organism. It is the first thing we discover on the path of imaginative research. We survey our previous life on earth in its inwardly creative, supersensible forces. We do not speculate about a life force, but we look at our past life on earth as an internally organized tableau, as a time organism, as the formative body. Older, less conscious views of these things, which were more intuitive, more instinctive, but which knew something of these things in their intuitions, called this time body, this body of formative forces, the ether body. It is not the terms that are important, but what is meant by these things. In this etheric body, one has a reality, a time reality within oneself, and no one understands the formation of the human being without understanding this etheric body. And the most significant thing about this etheric body is that, at the moment we are ready, we can see our previous life on earth as if with a spiritual vision in this life tableau, which is the formative forces body, and we also stop distinguishing between subjective and objective. We could draw a diagram of the etheric body, or formative body, which we carry within us and which is a fluid temporal body. But we must realize that we are then depicting in a single instant something that is constantly flowing. Just as one cannot depict lightning, one cannot depict this etheric body either. One can only paint a moment that is captured. We must realize that our human formation depends on this body of formative forces. And in the moment when we become aware that this etheric body within us is a body of forces, without knowing the inner structure of which we cannot understand the human being, we realize that the same forces that work within us as such an etheric body also permeate the world as etheric forces; that subjective and objective cease to have any meaning; that this formative body of forces is connected with the great course of time of the universe; that we are part of this great universe. We begin to speak of the etheric processes of the universe, for these become clear to us at the moment when we arrive at such a vivid mental image, as we otherwise only have external sense perceptions in a vivid way. And we can achieve this through meditation. In short, we enter into an etheric world. But at the same time we learn to recognize the first supersensible thing in ourselves. We do not yet come out of earthly life, but we learn to recognize that which is supersensible in us within earthly life. If we now want to progress, we must continue our exercises. These exercises consist of many, many details. I have described it in the books and will only state the principles here. The first thing in these exercises was to strengthen the power of thought, to come to develop imaginative thinking, a thinking that is as alive as otherwise only the experience of sensory perception. The second thing that must be trained can be characterized as follows: the person who, in full consciousness, develops such imaginations through which he then gets to know the ether world, the formative forces, also comes to understand that these imaginations, these images – for as images one's own life to date appears in a large tableau, the outer world appears in a universal tableau -, that these images, despite being evoked quite arbitrarily, hold one more strongly than the ordinary, pale, shadowy thoughts. Most people know that these pale, shadowy thoughts unfortunately all too quickly fade into obscurity — especially before an exam, it is usually the case. But if you have just applied a strong force in your thoughts, then the thoughts hold you, they do not want to let go. You must now, in order to get ahead, not remain at this level. With the same arbitrariness with which one has called these images, these imaginations into the soul, with the same strength and arbitrariness one must also be able to remove them again, to send them out of the soul, so that one can have in the soul what I would now like to call: emptiness of consciousness. Just realize what this emptiness of consciousness looks like in ordinary life. When empty consciousness occurs in ordinary life, there is usually no consciousness left, you fall asleep. The ordinary consciousness falls asleep when it becomes empty of sensory impressions, memories and so on. But that is precisely the difference between this ordinary consciousness and what one has already attained in imaginative knowledge: one learns to muffle, to muffle these imaginations completely, and yet one is now facing the world in an absolutely alert state. I would like to say: it is all expectation. One is awake, but has nothing in one's consciousness because one has extinguished the imaginations with the great strength that was necessary. One waits, alert, for what will now arise. And when one has created an empty consciousness by first having to extinguish an intensified power of thinking, then this empty consciousness does not wait in vain. Then the supersensible world penetrates into this 'empty consciousness', penetrates in exactly the same way as the sensory world penetrates through our eyes and ears, through our warmth organism and so on. We discover that a supersensible world surrounds us, and this penetrates into the empty but alert consciousness as the spiritual world, just as we previously had the sensory world around us. In doing so, the original consciousness of everyday life, that is, common sense, always remains present alongside this heightened consciousness, because we carry out all of this with absolute awareness. This is in contrast to the state when someone hallucinates and has visions, because in doing so, their entire consciousness is absorbed in individual visions. This is not the case with the consciousness I am talking about. The everyday consciousness, through which we are firmly rooted in life, in ordinary science, remains with us at every step, constantly present as a controller. Those who say that what is described as anthroposophical consciousness could also be based on visions or hallucinations do not know what it is about. They speak without inquiring what it is about. But if a supersensible world now penetrates through the empty consciousness from our environment, then we are also able to perceive more about ourselves than just the tableau-like etheric body described above. Now we are able to look beyond birth and conception. By being able to erase what the whole formative forces body is, we see through the empty consciousness nothing more of the whole human being between the birth and the present moment of experience. For when we have learned to expunge the imaginations and to have empty consciousness, then we can also expunge everything that fills us as an etheric body and look back at ourselves with empty consciousness. The ordinary human being remains for the onlooker, who can observe him. But this elevated consciousness now penetrates into the world in which we were before we descended from the spiritual and soul world and accepted an earthly body from our parents and great-grandparents. Now we look into the world in which we, before we were clothed with a physical body, were united with those spiritual substances that are in the spiritual world. Now we learn to recognize how we were before we descended into physical life. Now we learn to recognize another thing supernaturally. First, by looking at ourselves as physical beings on earth, we have our spatial body, the physical body; we have the second body, which we grasp through imaginative knowledge, which is a supersensible one, but does not lead beyond earthly life; but now we have the third body. Because it leads into the world of stars, it is called - it is only a terminology - the astral body. One gets to know the actual soul being of the human being. One gets to know this third, the second supersensible entity of the human being. But we also have this in our body in earthly life. It is veiled in the physical body. It was present before our birth or our conception. Through observation, one then comes to an understanding of one side of the human being's eternity. We have lost so much of this one side of the human being's eternity that modern languages hardly have a word for it anymore. We speak of immortality, of that which we have through the traditions, but which were only the traditions of the last millennia, we speak of the extension beyond death. That one can also speak of an extension beyond birth would necessitate that we also know about the other side of eternity and coin the word unbornness, for this unbornness is the other side of eternity. Now, in this way we have ascended to such insights, which now cannot enter our soul condition otherwise than by getting to know something that is completely closed to our ordinary consciousness. I have already described to you how empty consciousness must enter and how the contents of the supersensible world must come into this empty consciousness from the spiritual world, just as the sensory world otherwise penetrates into the eyes and ears. This second step of supersensible knowledge I call inspiration: inspired knowledge. Through inspired knowledge we now come directly into the supersensible world. Above all, we learn to recognize ourselves as supersensible beings in our prenatal existence. We also learn to recognize the spiritual environment. And now something very significant occurs. I would like to sketch it out for you today, and it will be explained in more detail in the next few days. Take the relationship between our environment and our own inner world. We can describe it by saying that for ordinary consciousness, the material world is out there. If we now look at the human being objectively, we can say that when a person looks into this material world through their eyes and perceives other things through their ears, material things and facts are out there, and inside the soul are its ideational, feeling and willing contents. By perceiving the material, he carries this outer material world in his soul's inner being pictorially, as an image, soulfully fine, soulfully thin. In the moment when we learn to grasp the spiritual world around us in our empty consciousness, something new also arises for our inner being. Suppose I now see this material world as permeated by the spiritual world for the inspired consciousness. Now it is not pictorially occurring in the inner being of man, what is seen out there as spiritual, but now one learns to recognize the spiritual outside, as it is reflected in the inner being of man, and there it is reflected as his physical organs, as lungs, liver, heart, kidneys and so on, as all that which is materially in the first instance in the inner being. There is a complete reversal, a reciprocity. While the material world is reflected in us in a spiritual-soul way for ordinary consciousness, the spiritual world is reflected in us through our organs. We get to know ourselves inwardly as physical human beings by becoming aware of the spiritual world around us. Before that, one does not understand the physical human being. Before that, through anatomy, we get to know the heart, lungs and liver externally, but not how they are connected to the external world. Through anatomy and physiology, we get to know the heart, lungs and liver as if we were to learn that a person has all kinds of mental images inside them, but is unaware that their inner images relate to the outside world. They do not know that these organs relate to the spiritual external world. This is the origin of what becomes possible, for example, as the effect of spiritual science in a rational medicine. Because only now do you really get to know the human being, you get to know the inner nature of his organism. There is no way to get to know it before. You can only recognize it externally. This is the second step on the path to supersensible knowledge and research, and it is the step of inspiration. A third step is reached by appealing to the will. One can also develop this will, in particular by first becoming quite clear about what this will is all about in ordinary life. It has already been mentioned, also from other sides in these days, that man is actually a continually sleeping being in relation to his will nature. If I just raise my arm, I first have the mental image of the goal that I want to raise my arm. But what then happens, as I plunge this thought of the goal into the human being and bring about the arm movement through the will, that initially eludes the human capacity for knowledge. I become aware again, and again through the perception, the raised arm, but the will remains as unconscious to ordinary consciousness as the states that we live through while asleep remain unconscious to the sleeper himself. We are actually awake in ordinary consciousness only for our imaginative life; we are asleep in ordinary consciousness for our will life. But we can raise this life of the will into the waking state. The exercises for this are very different from the exercises that are initially thinking exercises, as I have described them. And the best way to show this difference is to make it clear to you by means of a characteristic feature. Those who want to achieve something through such exercises, for example in observing the etheric body, must indeed undergo preparation. The preparatory exercises are described in the books mentioned. These concern, for example, the preparation for a quality that I would like to call presence of mind. Presence of mind in ordinary life consists of being able to make quick decisions in the face of a situation. But this must become a habitual quality for someone who wants to ascend into the spiritual worlds. Because what can be perceived there is not so easy to perceive. In fact, very diligent practitioners, if I may call them that, believe: I cannot perceive anything. They cannot do it because they are not sufficiently prepared for presence of mind, for the things flit by so quickly that one must grasp them quickly. Most people have such poor soul abilities that when they should turn their attention to what they should experience spiritually, it is already gone. It is therefore a matter of presence of mind. Exactly the opposite quality must be developed for will exercises. There it is important to apply the perfect will in the most elementary way in ordinary life, when walking, grasping, moving, in fact when doing anything, when performing actions, deeds. As long as one only develops the will inwardly in life, there is actually only a wish, not a will. A real will is always connected with an organic process, I could also say with a combustion process. The truly complete will actually changes the organism. It is linked to the organism in the metabolic process. But what about our ordinary will? We are not able to see through it at all. The impulses of the will take place, we look into our inner being, we are spiritually opaque to these impulses of the will. We look into a darkness in relation to the will. But we can lighten this darkness. We can make ourselves spiritually transparent. But this requires a lot of patience, because now we have to extend our exercises over long periods of time. I will tell you a simple exercise, the more complicated ones can also be found in the books mentioned. So let's take a simple exercise: for example, I have a habit, I write in a certain way, I have a handwriting. Once you've become an old guy, you don't like to get used to a different handwriting. It takes effort, it takes inner effort. It is something that remains within you, although it is expressed on the outside by writing. But all the volitional processes involved in changing one's handwriting take place within. Apart from the fact that I would not advise doing this particular exercise too much, even for external reasons – I just want to illustrate something with it, not give instructions on how to forge handwriting. But if one could train one's will to such an extent that one could change something that is so interwoven with a person as handwriting or other habits, in short, if one could make oneself a completely different person through inner awareness, through the cultivation of the will, one could make the will transparent. It takes years to achieve this. In particular, it is good to take the trouble to incorporate certain qualities that one initially only perceives as beautiful but does not have, by resolving, for example: “You will spend the next eight years training yourself with all your might to acquire certain qualities that you do not have, certain special ways of expressing yourself.” What I am describing seems easy, but one would like to say with Faust: “Yet the easy is difficult”. And the one who does such exercises will see that it is difficult to turn the will in this way through strong self-discipline in a different direction. In short, what otherwise only comes to life in moments when the will becomes full by expressing its existence outwardly in action, when applied to the development of the will itself, leads us to really look within ourselves through such exercises, you can find more details about these exercises in the books, to make ourselves completely transparent in relation to the will. By way of comparison, I would like to try to make clear to you what is achieved by this. How do we actually see through our eyes? Only because the eye is selfless, because it does not assert its own substantiality. It is transparent. The moment the eye partially gives up this selflessness, asserts itself, it can no longer serve us to see. It must extinguish itself. Now I am not going to claim that for ordinary life our physical body is sick and needs to be made healthy through exercises. It is not like that. For life and for ordinary science, our body is naturally healthy, but it is useless for supersensible perception. For that, it must be transformed. Not that it remains constantly transformed. The person with the ordinary, healthy human understanding always remains alongside. It is also not a matter of one person dissolving into the other, of the ordinary, healthy human being disappearing. Both the developed personality and the original personality with the healthy human understanding remain alongside one another, so that the latter acts as a controller for the former. But for the higher consciousness, which must already be empty, we come to the point where our body is no longer there for the soul to perceive. We see, as it were, through our body. We see how the will works in us. In ordinary science, one does not see how the will works. Therefore, one assumes that there are motor nerves. They do not know that the will works directly. It has been said today that the real discovery of the facts that exist here can only be made when one has come to make oneself transparent like a sense organ, so that the whole human being becomes like a single sense organ, permeable in soul and spirit, as the eye is transparent to light. Just as we first become free through intensified thinking and first reach the body of formative forces and then the prenatal astral body, so now, having trained the will in this way, we come to know the other side of our eternal being. By making our physical body transparent, we are able to summon the image – I say expressly: the image – of what happens to us at the moment of death. At that moment we leave our physical body, which is handed over to the physical elements. The soul and spirit pass over into the spiritual world. This moment, when we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we perceive it at the moment when our physical body becomes transparent to the soul. In intuitive knowledge, this third stage of supersensible knowledge, our body becomes transparent. Therefore, we get to know ourselves in the state in which we are after death, when we no longer have the physical body. For we can now see beyond it by having risen to it in the third, intuitive stage of knowledge, by disregarding the physical body. Now we get to know the other side of the soul's eternity. We get to know immortality through direct contemplation. Anthroposophy is not a form of philosophical speculation. In order to get to know immortality, it does not start from the usual consciousness, but it assumes that the abilities slumbering in the soul, the slumber of which one becomes aware through intellectual modesty, can be awakened and thus rise to see the spiritual world. One learns to recognize the universe spiritually. You get to know your own eternal being spiritually. And when you get to know these two sides in yourself, you learn to recognize what a person is like between birth and death, when the soul is hidden under the bodily processes. on the other hand, recognize the spiritual and soul life that we unfold when we are outside the body before birth or after death, then insights into our true self also arise. And then we learn to recognize that which goes through repeated earthly lives. However, I will have to talk about this important result of anthroposophical research, about repeated earthly lives, tomorrow. As you can see, the path of supersensible knowledge, the anthroposophical path of research, involves first entering the world of formative forces through imaginative knowledge, so that we recognize the supersensible that is already in us in ordinary physical life, but in a supersensible way: the body of formative forces. Then, through the ascent to inspired knowledge, we get to know the astral body, that is, the soul body; we get to know entering into the body and, in turn, emerging from the body through death; then we also get to know the human ego. One now enters into a concrete spiritual world, into a world of spiritual beings. For that which one recognizes as a spiritual world, for which the organs are developed, with the empty consciousness, but which is still awake, is a world in which spiritual entities are next to our own spiritual entity, next to our own spiritual-soul being. One looks into a spiritual world in this way. And now one realizes: If one wants to explore this spiritual world, one must develop these three degrees of supersensible knowledge, must draw from the soul imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. They reveal themselves, they structure themselves in degrees, when one wants to know the Cosmos in its spiritual content in itself as spiritual entity. One has already received a hint of an impression when one searches through the moral world in its actual essence. There one comes, basically, to be in the same world, even if only for the moral impulses, as one otherwise is when one has the imaginative, the inspired, the intuitive world before oneself. Only it is so present for the moral that only the moral impulses are in it. But these can be found when one has passed through imagination and inspiration to intuition. But it is given to us human beings on earth that this world alone, the world of the moral, which we need for life on earth, can be present to our ordinary consciousness in its supersensible nature before the mind's eye. And anyone who understands the real existence of the supersensible nature of the moral can, if they only develop what they learn here in an elementary way as cosmology and anthropology, advance to a real spiritual insight into the world, so that the spiritual formations, then the spiritual inner life of other spiritual beings and then the interweaving with the spiritual world, as we are interwoven here with the other realms, and that his own eternal soul essence also really comes before the soul's eye. This is what one can get to know by studying the “Philosophy of Freedom” not just in theory but by really experiencing it. It is the same as reading the axioms of Euclid on the first page of a geometry book and getting an idea of what is to come. Just as the whole of geometry follows from these axioms, so the whole spiritual world is present, as it were, in the nature of things, in the real insight into the moral world. But no one should think that he knows the nature of the spiritual world just because he knows the nature of moral impulses. He only knows the axiomatic, the elementary. What is described here as a method of research for the supersensible worlds is indeed something that alienates most people today. But the one who is at home in these matters says to himself: How much of our present-day spiritual life began as something alienating and then became a matter of course. One need only really know the spiritual history of humanity and one will be able to say: Today, most people see what must be said as something absurd, ridiculous, as something funny. Later, a time will come when it will be taken for granted, just as the Copernican system was first taken as a curiosity, then became a matter of course. But people will feel – and feelings are precisely the most important thing that should arise from the life of the anthroposophical worldview – that this anthroposophy truly does not want to oppose what justified natural science or other science is in the present day. For what does it want to be at bottom? This question should emerge from what I have discussed today about the research methods of this anthroposophy: What does it want to be, this anthroposophy, also in relation to the other sciences, as in relation to universal human life? What does it want to be? Now, when we have a person in front of us, we see their outer facial features, their physique, their gait, their movements, their gestures. We cannot be satisfied with simply stating: This is how he walks, this is how he looks, and so on. We see this as an external physiognomy, but we only have a complete experience of this person when we add to this external experience his soul and spirit, his soul, when we see the soul through the outer form and outer movements. But if we understand things aright, we also have in external science what is described to us by the external physiognomy of nature and of the human being. Just as one does not deny that man must also be observed in his external form through the senses if one wants to experience his soul, so one does not deny that through external science the external physiognomy of nature and of the human being must be explained, described, and grasped by means of external science, if one asserts that behind all this there is something that can be regarded as the soul of nature, the soul of the cosmos. And so it is that just as a reasonable person who recognizes the soul of man does not negate his body, his outer form, his physiognomy, the reasonable anthroposophist does not negate the outer science. On the contrary. He wants to be fully immersed in it. He only wants the outer science to have a soul for the further development of humanity, just as the complete human being carries the soul in his physical body. Yes, he maintains that it needs soul. And anthroposophy does not want to be an opponent of the spirit of today's science, but wants to become the soul of this scientific endeavor in the future. |
| 125. Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas: On the Rosicrucian Mystery, The Portal of Initiation
31 Oct 1910, Berlin Translated by Ruth Pusch, Hans Pusch |
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| Just as there are natural laws, so there are also artistic laws, and these cannot be manipulated by the ordinary human consciousness, for then only dry-as-dust allegories would be the result. Artistic laws must be handled just as Mother Nature handles her own laws when she lets a child, a plant, or an animal come into existence. |
| The exoteric, ordinary, outside world is always changing, too, and its own karma is connected with the environment of a person who wishes to develop himself. |
| A room for meditation. Benedictus, Johannes, Maria, and a Child. Maria I'm bringing you the child. He needs a guiding word from you. |
| 125. Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas: On the Rosicrucian Mystery, The Portal of Initiation
31 Oct 1910, Berlin Translated by Ruth Pusch, Hans Pusch |
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Those of you who were present at the performance in Munich will remember that this children's song was the prelude to the Rosicrucian Mystery. Tonight, something of a spiritual scientific nature should unfold itself to us in connection with the content of this drama and with what, one could say, has come to life in it. If I may, I would like to touch on the long, slow spiritual path that led to this Mystery Drama. When I think about it and look at it, its origins go back to the year 1889, twenty-one years ago; it is not approximately but exactly twenty-one years that bring me back to the germinal point of this drama. In these matters, absolute exactness can be observed. The direction has been quite clear to me in which, in 3x7 years, these seeds have grown (without any special assistance, I can say, on my part), for they have led their own individual life in these 3x7 years. It is truly remarkable to follow the path of such seeds to what may be called their finished form. Their progress can be described as a passage through the Underworld. It takes seven years for them to descend; then they return, and for this they need seven more years. By then, having reached more or less the place where they first engaged a person before their descent, they must go in the opposite direction for seven years toward the other side; one could even say, onto a higher level. After twice seven years, then, plus seven more years, it is possible to try to embody them, foreseeing that whatever has been right in their development can take on a distinct form. If I were not convinced that within the Rosicrucian Mystery an individual organism has lived and grown for 3x7 years, I would not venture to speak further about it. I feel not only justified in speaking, however, though this is not really the question, but also in a sense obligated to speak about what lives in this Rosicrucian Mystery, not only between the lines, between the characters, in the What and the How, but what is alive in everything in the drama and what must be alive in it. In various places since the performance of the drama in Munich, I have stated the fact that many, many things of an esoteric nature would not need to be described, that lectures would be unnecessary on my part, if only everything that lies in the Rosicrucian Mystery could work directly on your souls, my dear friends, and on the souls of others, too. I would have to use the enormous number of words necessary in my lectures and speak for days, for weeks, even for years, in order to describe what has been said and what could be said in the single drama. Everything you find in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment,1 which is written in a somewhat tentative style—and in esoteric matters it is certainly correct to write thus as a description of the path into higher worlds—combined with what was said in Occult Science,2 can be found, after all, in a much more forceful, true-to-life, and substantial form in the Rosicrucian Mystery. The reason is that it is more highly individualized. What is said in such a book as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds about human development had to be applicable to every individual who wishes to direct his path in some way into higher worlds, applicable to each and every person. Because of this, the book takes on—even with as much concreteness as possible—a certain abstract character, or you might call it a semi-theoretical character. We must hold fast, however, to this point: human development is never merely development in general. There is no such thing as development per se, no such thing as common, ordinary, orthodox development. There is only the development of this or that particular person, of a third, fourth, or twentieth human being. For each individual in the world, there must be a different process of development. For this reason, the most honest description of the esoteric path of knowledge must have such a general character that it never in any way will coincide with an individual development. Should one actually describe the path of development as seen in the spiritual world, one can do it only by shaping the development of a single human being, by altering for the individual whatever is universally true. The book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, contains, to a certain extent, the beginning of the secrets of all human development. The Rosicrucian Mystery contains the secrets of the development of a single individual, Johannes Thomasius. It was a truly long descent from all the occult laws of development down to a single, actually real human being. In this process, on this path, what has a tendency to become theory in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds had to be turned almost completely upside down. If it was to go beyond mere theory and particularly if it was to enter the artistic sphere, it had to be completely reversed, because the laws of art are quite different from any others. Just as there are natural laws, so there are also artistic laws, and these cannot be manipulated by the ordinary human consciousness, for then only dry-as-dust allegories would be the result. Artistic laws must be handled just as Mother Nature handles her own laws when she lets a child, a plant, or an animal come into existence. If everything we can know about the world of nature is to be seen from the one direction that reveals its laws and secrets to the beholder, then whatever is to be revealed in art—any kind of art—must be seen from the other side, from just the opposite point of view. Therefore, it would be the worst imaginable interpretation of a work of art to start from ideas, concepts, or laws we have picked up somewhere, when we approach, say, a poem. Whoever thinks of explaining a work of art by means of abstract or symbolic ideas cannot be considered artistic. The poorest method of looking at a piece of work from the past in which true esoteric power has been invested, for instance, Goethe's Faust, would be to search within this work of art for the ideas and concepts one already has. Bad habits of this kind once prevailed in the theosophical movement in the most horrible way. I can remember something that happened just last year when we were performing Schuré's play, The Children of Lucifer. How shocking it was to the dramatist, who is an artist in the best sense of the word, when someone came up to him to ask, “Does this character represent Atma, this one Buddhi, a third Manas, or maybe this one is Kama Manas?” etc., etc. This kind of allegorizing is simply impossible in a truly creative, artistic process, and it is just as impossible in an explanation or interpretation. Therefore, it can now be said that no one should be pondering the anthroposophical meaning of Johannes Thomasius. To this question there is only one answer: as the main character in the drama, he is nothing more than Johannes Thomasius. He is nothing more than the living figure, Johannes Thomasius, in whom nothing more is portrayed than the mystery of development of one man, Johannes Thomasius. If one speaks in too general a way about the various characters, one thing will be missing, which is hinted at in the words of the drama itself:
There is no development evolving at any point of human history without the knotting of threads within that development, “spun by karma in world becoming.” And no individual development can be described without showing what is at work in the realm of the occult, that is, in the physical environment one looks at with the forces lying behind that physical environment. Therefore, Johannes Thomasius must be placed in the human surroundings out of which his development is proceeding in the real world of physical men and women. For this reason, the drama has to have a double introduction. The Prelude shows how the cosmic world in which the threads are knotting together for Johannes, threads that “karma spins in world becoming,” how this world confronts the ordinary outside world. One can certainly ask if this must be shown, if there must be a Prelude to show how this cosmic world looks from outside. Yes, it has to be shown. Something would be lacking if it were not so presented. The world in which karma spins its knots was quite different in 5000 B.C., for instance, from the world in 300 B.C. or in 1000 A.D. or today. The exoteric, ordinary, outside world is always changing, too, and its own karma is connected with the environment of a person who wishes to develop himself. Thus, the circle is drawn from outside inward. On the inside is the small circle in which Johannes Thomasius stands: the second Prelude. In the ordinary world outside there are trivial waves touching the shore; in the small circle, great waves are surging high. They show their turbulence, however, only within the soul of Johannes. That is why we are introduced first to the physical plane, and it is shown to us in such a way that the threads, which karma is spinning everywhere within this physical plane, are pointed out. When you look with occult vision at any group of people, you will find that there are strands extending from one person to another, tangled in the most astonishing way. You see human beings who apparently have little to do with each other in ordinary life, but between their souls are flung the most important, most vital connections. Everything so tangled together has gradually to be illuminated, with the focus on one particular knot. Sometimes, however, whatever is in the process of becoming must be hinted at more subtly. These delicate tones had to be sounded in Scene One, where the action is taking place on the physical plane and people with a wide variety of interests are coming together. Outwardly, they chat about this or that. As they talk, however, more or less on the surface, they are revealing karma. Everyone we first meet in Scene One on the physical plane is bound to the others by destiny. What is most fundamental is how they are bound by destiny. None of the connections have been simply thought out; they are all based on esoteric life. All the threads can come to life, and each thread is quite unique. The remarkable character of these connections you can guess at when you find such figures as Felix and Felicia Balde meeting with Capesius and Strader. What they say is not the important thing; it is that just these persons say it. They are living persons, not invented characters. I, for one, am well acquainted with them; by that I mean they are not thought out but fully alive. They are real. I have taken especially the figure of Professor Capesius, who has grown quite dear to my heart, directly from life. The extraordinary scene of the seeress Theodora had to be brought into this setting of our ordinary world. She, as one who sometimes looks into the future, now foresees the event that is to happen before the end of the twentieth century, the coming Christ event. It is a future event that can be explained karmically, although it would be wrong to interpret other events so precisely. Then there is the karmic relationship existing between Felicia Balde and Professor Capesius, which we find hinted at by the peculiar effect on Capesius of Felicia's fairy tales. When, too, we see Strader deeply moved by the seeress Theodora, it suggests that karmic threads are arising in Strader's heart, connecting him to her. These are all threads that lie occultly behind the physical occurrences, and they seem to be spun by karma and directed toward one point, Johannes Thomasius. In him they come together. While so much is being spoken about on the physical plane, a light begins to radiate in Johannes' soul, a light that arouses terrible waves within him. At the same time, however, this light kindles his esoteric development; as a distinctly individual development it will cross his own karma with world karma. We see, therefore, what a strong impression the happenings around him on the physical plane are making on him and how the unconscious greatness in his soul is striving upward to higher worlds. The journey into higher worlds, however, should not take place without a compass; there must be guidance and direction. Into the midst, then, of these many relationships comes the one who is described as the leader of the group. He is also the one who understands the cosmic relationships and discerns therefore “the knots that karma spins in world becoming”; it is Benedictus, and he becomes Johannes' guide. The karma working in Johannes Thomasius, which perhaps otherwise would have to work another thousand or even thousands of years, is kindled and set ablaze in one particular moment through a karmic relationship between Benedictus and Johannes, lightly drawn in the Meditation Room scene (Scene Three). There we find ourselves at the point where a human being, destined by karma to develop himself, begins to strive upward into higher worlds. In order not to do so blindly, he will be led by Benedictus in the right direction. These thoughts will become clearer when the following passages of Scene Three are presented. A room for meditation. Maria
Benedictus
Child
Benedictus
Maria
Benedictus
Maria
Johannes
Benedictus
Johannes
Maria
Johannes
Benedictus
Spirit Voice (behind the scene):
(As the curtain falls slowly, the music begins.) Those last tones of music, composed by our dear friend, Arenson,3 bring to expression what is echoing from higher worlds into Johannes Thomasius' soul in the drama. It follows the solemn experience he has had in the Meditation Room, which proved him genuinely mature and strong enough to ascend into these higher worlds. At the end of the scene just recited, we hear words actually sounding out of the spiritual worlds in a completely real way, into a soul that up to a certain level, if I may so describe it, has stood the test. The imponderable had to be touched on gently with words that are more meaningful than one at first believes. It must be quite clear that the knot spun out of the threads of world karma presents to Johannes Thomasius a fact of the most sublime and powerful nature in that solemn place. What is actually happening? Johannes Thomasius has to perceive a soul to whom he is joined karmically in a wonderful way (as shown later in Devachan, Scene Seven), ascending directly before him into the spiritual world. It is a unique moment in world history when such a soul enters divine worlds. Naturally, not everything connected with this moment can be fully described, but it is definitely a real happening that anyone conversant with occult life will recognize in its frightening and powerful interweaving of light and shadow. Such a person knows, too, what happens in the physical world at the shattering moment when a soul disappears into the spiritual world, not with the gradual step of individual karma but suddenly, challenged by world karma. These are moments that are vital for the evolution of mankind. They are also moments when the real, ever-present forces of temptation, peering into our physical world out of the spiritual world (just as the powers of good do), have the strength to take possession of deserted physical sheaths and use them as platforms for their guile and powers of deception. The body is the point from which they launch their attack. Immediately, then, the situation will show itself as maya, illusion, of the worst kind. Confronted with the small deceptions of karma, a person who is not far developed will be unable to withstand temptation. Confronted with much greater deceptions of karma, something that at a certain stage of development one would no longer have believed to be possible, a soul will recoil terrified, unless it has already gone through certain tragic depths of life experience. One can imagine some people saying that they, too, could have withstood what happened in the Meditation Room—but they should really find themselves sometime in the same situation! The reality is far different from what we might think it to be. In a spiritual reality, strange forces are at work. If someone does not believe this, he should just consider whether or not he has had any genuine experience with a human physical body abandoned by its own soul. Human beings know only ensouled bodies. In this case quite different forces come into play, and it is against these forces that Johannes Thomasius has to stand firm, having been guided to this moment in world karma. Now two things come into question. Johannes Thomasius first has to endure what is usually known as kamaloka, the world in which there appears to us as a mirror image what we ourselves truly are. Again, this sounds milder when spoken about than it is in reality. When it appears in its reality, there is not merely a picture limited in space to tell us what it is, but it intones this from every corner of the world around us. The whole world is we ourselves. For this reason, when you hear in Scene Two how Johannes Thomasius descends into the depths of his soul where he is “among rocks and springs,” it is not a single mirror image he conjures up, speaking to him out of his soul, but it sounds to him from everywhere around him, out of the rocks and springs, out of his whole surroundings. At such a moment, words that were tame enough as they came out of world theories or philosophical works, or even spiritual scientific writings, suddenly grow into terrifying power, for they sound forth out of the whole world from every side as though, reflected from unending space, they are caught up in the various processes of nature.
Thus, they sound when they become audible after living year after year within the soul. The soul then is left, lonely and forsaken, and stands before its Self. Nothing is there but the world—but this world is one's own soul; it contains everything the soul is, what its karma is, everything it has perpetrated. In a poetic work, only a special theme can be singled out—for instance, an action far in the past, the desertion of a woman—but this comes fully alive to confront Johannes Thomasius' soul. I can say only a few words about this. When it happens, Johannes loses what is necessary for him to lose: confidence in himself, in his strength, even in the ability to find in loneliness the healing for what brings him such agonizing pain on the physical plane when experiencing it there. The following words, therefore, I beg you to take as they should be taken, that is, as shaking the soul and filling it completely. When Johannes Thomasius hears from all the world around him the words, “O man, know thou thyself,” his soul answers, as though his ego were not present:
This is answered powerfully “from the springs and rocks.” Then his whole inner being is turned outward:
You must try to imagine how the Self joins the cosmic process outside. Usually, we stand still or go about our hourly tasks and fail to see what is happening out there. We have no idea of it and believe that we are within our own inner being. But Johannes is following consciously what is going on. Consciously, he keeps pace with the power of all the elements, moves with the hours of the day and transforms himself into the night.
All this leaves the impression with him: I am. This is the moment, however, when the I am becomes the Daimon of his own soul. In the process, man's self-assertion is completely silenced. One can scarcely try to speak out, “I am,” but the soul replies:
Then Johannes' own being appears in a limited, constrained form:
Now he can no longer speak with his own mouth but with the mouth of another person. It is the woman to whom he has done a wrong:
Then he returns to his own body:
At this point a path is begun that is afterward described at the close of the scene in the words showing the effect of the world and the effect of solitude. In the world everything that streams in from outside works in the most frightful way. What comes from within works in such a way that the solitude is absolutely filled with people. This is a test, a test designed for the purpose hinted at in the words recited to you earlier:
At this moment Johannes Thomasius would have lost consciousness and been flung back into the sense world if he had not held his ground in Scene Two, the scene we have been discussing in which he confronts his Self. Two things then became clear: his Self, as far as it is aware, has little strength; this deprives him of self-confidence. But the eternal “I” within him, of which he as yet knows nothing, has immense strength. It buoys him up and helps him to surmount the experience in the Meditation Room when Maria's soul departs. He needs, therefore, only the words of Benedictus, the force of those words, to guide him upward. In the lines read to you, you must sense a Mystery of Words. What this means is not merely something written down in a play. In these lines, cosmic forces are actually contained, down to the very sounds. Indeed, the sounds cannot be changed. The opening of a door into the spiritual world is provided by these words; therefore, they must be heard just as they are spoken. Anything of the nature of the following lines cannot be put together in an arbitrary manner:
Only after this can there sound from out the other world what is to sound into the soul. These are only hints, as has been said before. Johannes Thomasius is then really impelled into the spiritual world. He cannot, however, rise directly into this world into which every person must go; he must first pass through the astral world. In Scene Four you have the astral world represented as Johannes Thomasius perceives it on the background of his own particular, individual past experience. It is not a universal description of this world but rather a description of what, for example, Johannes Thomasius had to experience there. The astral world is quite different from the physical. It is possible to meet a person there and see him as he was decades before, or to see a young man as he will become in future years. They are both realities. In your soul nature, you are still the same today as you were as a child of three. What you see in the soul world is by no means what is shown in man's outer physical form. The physical appearance conceals at every moment what was true before and what will come as truth in the future. When we look into the astral world, it is first of all necessary to overcome the primary maya of the sense world in order to understand the illusory power of time. For this reason, Johannes Thomasius sees in the astral world the person he has met on the physical plane, Capesius, as he once was as a youth, and he sees the one he knows as Strader just as he will be as an old man. What does this mean? Johannes knows Strader as he is now in the sense world with the forces present in his soul on the physical plane. But already within Strader are the conditions for what he will become after several decades. This also has to be included in our knowledge of a human being. Thus, time is rent asunder. It is really so that time is quite elastic in its nature when one enters the higher worlds. In the physical world Johannes Thomasius knows Capesius as elderly, Strader as young; now they stand together in the astral world: Capesius young, Strader old. It is not that time is stretched forward and backward but that one man is shown in his youth, the other in his old age. It is an absolutely real fact. Something more is shown in this scene, something people react to with adolescent scorn. This is the fact that our soul experiences are greater than we usually think they are, that good and bad have their consequences when experienced within the soul. For example, if we think thoughts that are cruel or even false, they stream into the depths of the world and back again; we are closely connected in our soul experiences with the elemental powers of nature. This is no mere image. From the esoteric point of view, for example, it is a reality when Capesius is brought before the Spirit of the Elements, who leads every human being into existence. Actually, Capesius is confronting what the Spirit of the Elements is concerned with—and concerned with in such a way that when we experience anything in the soul, it is related to the elemental forces of nature. Johannes Thomasius is shown that both Capesius and Strader, out of the depths of their souls, can arouse the opposing powers of the elements. In that world, therefore, thunder and lightning follow what they have felt in their souls as pride or haughtiness, error, truth or lies. In the physical world, the error or lie a person has in his soul is quite peculiar. Someone can stand before us with error and lying in his soul and may appear to be quite innocent. But the moment we look at him with astral vision, we can see raging storms that otherwise are represented on earth only as a picture by the most terrible convulsions of the elements. All this Johannes has to experience and everything, too, that in the astral world can show him the remarkable connections he did not recognize when he met them on the physical plane. The names given in this Rosicrucian Mystery are not given just by chance. Names such as “the Other Maria,” and so on, all point to definite relationships, so that the “one” and the “other” Maria are not merely “two Marias” but present themselves as Maria-forces to the other characters. “The Other Maria,” the mysterious nature figure, is revealed to Johannes Thomasius as the soul living below the ordinary conscious soul quite inaudibly and imperceptibly as long as man lives only in the physical world. But you must not take these relationships and characters as symbols. The Other Maria is absolutely a real person, a reality, just as the first Maria is. They should be taken for what they really are. Everything that Johannes Thomasius has experienced passes before the eyes of his soul. He has experienced the astral world. This he can now bring into his consciousness by saying:
(End of Scene Four) Johannes Thomasius has passed through what wipes out time before his eyes, because he has now become mature, sufficiently mature to see into the astral world. Is this world free from error? No, it is not. But in the astral world one thing can become a certainty for man. It will become a certainty for him, if he enters it in purity and without guilt, that there is a higher world shining into the astral world, just as the astral world shines into the ordinary physical world. The only question is whether or not he can see this as it actually is. People who go about in this physical world are themselves only a kind of illusion, in that they have something behind them leading them into the higher world. They stand in contrast to what they have perhaps been in distant or more recent times and what they will become in the future. But certain errors do not show us the astral world in which one is quite entangled in the world of the senses. For instance, they do not show the relationship of the three great forces of our existence: Will, Love, and Wisdom. This is so difficult to discern and understand in its reality that it remains hidden for a long time in the astral world. It is not an easy matter to discover it there. Besides, some relationships that are errors in the sense world are continued on into the astral world. The working together of will, wisdom, and love, which at this point can only be touched on, takes place in the physical world through human beings. In the higher worlds, it takes place through the beings who expend their forces whenever, on the physical plane, the forces of supersensible beings descend into human souls. This happens through initiates in those temples where there are human representatives for the single world-forces, where human beings have come so far as to renounce the desire to portray the whole human being as he is but limit themselves to portraying a single force. It is the representatives who have taken over. But when man looks into the astral world, those holy places of the representatives of the powers of will, wisdom, and love are shown to him in a picture filled with maya. Therewith is woven a fearful web between the illusion of the sense world and of the astral world. Now, I should have to talk for weeks if I wished to explain how it is with that figure of the higher powers shown as the initiate of the powers of will; he has met Johannes Thomasius on the physical plane, and there he really seems to be an ordinary, superficial fellow. In such a case the question can arise: are the primal forces of will supposed to work through such a person? Yes, they are. We can perhaps understand that the force manifesting the powers of will can permeate just this kind of less developed human being in the same way as the radiance of wisdom enters a man like Benedictus. We must grasp the following. If we have a beautiful flower in full bloom and place a seed beside it, it may be that the seed when developed will bring forth a still more beautiful flower. The flower can at this moment be considered quite perfect, but, according to cosmic reality, the seed is actually something more perfect. Hence, we have these opposites: Benedictus, the eminent bearer of wisdom, and the man who on the physical plane behaves in such a strange way toward everything said about the spiritual worlds and in such a strange way rejects it all. When in a group of people he hears talk about the spiritual worlds, he says, as if he were unwilling to listen:
(Romanus, Scene One) He is a man who finds elsewhere what leads to deeds; to him, any talk about the spiritual is simply empty talk. You could tell this fellow beautiful things about theosophy; to the man he is, now, on the physical plane, it is nothing but words. What he finds worthwhile is the working of machines. When he hears about the Other Maria, how spiritual power has become part of her, kindling a strength of feeling and love in her so that she can perform healing deeds, he is the one who rejects all this, saying merely, “That comes from her having a good heart!” He remains wholly on the physical plane, where he is indeed a philistine, an ordinary fellow, but also at the same time an energetic, determined man of will. Hence, he says:
This is the man of will, the man of action. If you were to talk to him day in and day out about the spirit, his only response would be, “You can't turn a winch with that; meanwhile, what are people going to eat?” This amounts to saying, “Turn your winches all day long, and then, if you have a little spare time, talk about the spirit for amusement!” Here are the forces still latent in the seed, and they are good forces, important forces. Through the powers of will they stream into the world. When people hear about spiritual worlds and receive what is said, each in his own way, this must not be judged theoretically, for it is extremely difficult to arrive at the truth. If you do not understand that a seed must be looked upon as the counterpart to such a person as has just been described, you will be experiencing the same kind of illusion as the one presented by the Subterranean Temple. There it is an astral maya. There is reality in what Johannes Thomasius perceives in the scene with Capesius and Strader when he sees them at different ages. But in Scene Five a maya, a Fata Morgana of the spiritual world, is pictured, from which, after it has been experienced, the soul must free itself. Therefore, you have to take Scene Five as justified only by the fact that reality is intermingled with the maya. No part of this scene would contribute to Johannes Thomasius' development unless it bore the same relationship to astral experience that the concepts and ideas of the physical world bear to our understanding of the world. What scientific knowledge is for the physical plane, the “Maya Temple” is for the astral world. The “Maya Temple” is no more a reality rooted in the spiritual world than a concept is something we can eat. But concepts must live in the world for an understanding of the world to be possible. Only in this way can there play in from another world what is profoundly illuminating for Johannes Thomasius, that is, to recognize the definite knot in world karma formed when Felix Balde comprehends that in solitary wanderings about the world he must not bury his soul treasures but must bring them to the temple. Then, for the first time, it is possible for Johannes Thomasius to perceive relationships in the spiritual world that are, so to speak, much more real, and of a more delicate and intimate nature. For example, the projection of the astral world into the physical world takes place when such a thing happens as the inspiring of a man like Capesius by someone who does not really know, herself, how much is living in her soul. In the Mystery Play, Felicia Balde does not know this. In the case of a man of intellect, a man who works intellectually, everything passes through his intellect. There is nothing whatever in the intellect that can give us strength while it instructs us about the world. This lies outside the capacity of the intellect. In a person of exceptional intelligence, a force coming from the spiritual world may pass through the intellect and then continue. At this point, he will be able to speak of the spiritual world in splendid, theoretical terms. The mind, however, does not influence the degree of inner esoteric life or the content of the soul. What comes from theories may reach the soul even without passing through the intellect; it can discover a person who is receptive to the fountainhead of spirit and who can summon up something there that Capesius, for instance, describes on the physical plane. This is clearly shown in his words about Felicia Balde, who lives out there in the solitude with Felix, and what she really means to him—when he says how gladly he listens to her because she speaks out of the most profound, age-old wisdom. It is important for us to grasp fully what Capesius is saying: on the physical plane, there is a woman to whom he likes to listen and from whose lips come things welling up from occult sources. She cannot clothe them in elegant words, but when her words reach the ear of Capesius, he can say:
(Scene One) Such things exist. Such people, however much they know, feel at these times as if they could get no further.
Then his soul begins to open out, because that is for him the door into the occult world.
The reality of all this Johannes Thomasius can observe on the physical plane, for he is present, but to be able to explain it to himself he has first to look into the astral world. In Scene Six then, in the astral world, Felicia Balde appears to him “just as she is in life.” She gives the Spirit of the Elements one of the hundreds of fairy tales she has told Capesius. Now, however, comes the reciprocal movement to what takes place below the threshold of consciousness. Felicia has told Capesius her fairy tales. When she tells one that she herself does not understand, the forces arise in his soul that banish his mental paralysis; then he can, in turn, relate something to his audience. It sounds, however, quite different from what Felicia has related. Mysterious forces are active even in Capesius. When one seeks to discover them, he will find their origin in the astral world, where it can be seen how they call forth countercurrents. Wherever there are elemental powers, they call up the kind of reverberations that Felicia's words awaken in the soul of Capesius. The same kind of thing occurs in our brain. A little spirit lives there who perhaps thinks out the most wonderful things. When we try to discover how he comes out of the macrocosm, we are likely to find the Earth-brain, which thinks thoughts on quite a different scale from those appearing in the small human brain. A man will often assert something he does not see in his own brain, but it will look grotesque when it is reflected in the giant Earth-brain. This has to be reflected; hence, the relationship of Gairman, who appears on the physical plane and then as the Spirit of the Earth-brain. About this, too, one could speak for a long time. Were we to look with soul vision at what takes place in the lonely cottage when Felicia tells her fairy tales and afterward behold the Spirit of the Earth-brain, we would discover many a secret, as, for instance, how ironical this Spirit of the Earth-brain is and how often he mocks. Ridicule has to be a concern of his, because he finds much to laugh at in what human beings do. From an artistic point of view, it is justifiable that the moment this mockery is out of place, Gairman appears in the role he has so often to play and shows himself in his true guise. We see then, after Felicia Balde has told one of her fairy tales before the Spirit of the Elements in Scene Six, how an abnormal effect is produced on the Spirit of the Earth-brain, who translates the tale in quite different words. Felicia relates the story:
The Spirit of the Earth-brain responds in a way that is naturally not at all justifiable:
These things are distinct experiences of the astral world. Johannes Thomasius has to pass through them in order to ascend into the spiritual world. Today I will only say briefly that it is necessary for Johannes Thomasius, in order to reach the spiritual world itself, to make a real connection with that world on threads already woven in the physical world. As you will hear later in the recitation of Scene Seven, his connection with the spiritual world arose out of the karma encompassed by incarnations, and this could be revealed only to Devachanic vision. Devachanic elements actually have to play their part. Therefore, I ask you to notice how everything is alive in the living, weaving Devachanic ocean. This can be described, but the details must more or less be hinted at. For a real description, we must go further. Let us not think that we know anything of higher worlds by speaking about them with the words sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, alluding to Philia, Astrid, and Luna. These three figures are in no way personifications of the three soul principles, nor are they symbols for them. Listen to the vowels with which each of these characters describes her activities. Try to hear what lives in the vowels. Then you can follow how the sequence of single vowels and single words make clear what is given in a different way as sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls. Should you delete any part of it, it will no longer be intact. Therefore, it is important to listen carefully to the words when, for instance, Luna speaks, so as to get an understanding of the Devachanic element in the consciousness soul:
(Scene Seven) In the movement of the words can be heard in this description of Devachan what otherwise cannot in any way be expressed. This, too, must be taken into consideration. When speaking about higher worlds, we are definitely obliged to speak in many different ways. What I could never say theoretically about the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls you may perceive, if you have the desire to understand it, from the characterization of the three figures, Philia, Astrid, and Luna. But you must understand that these three are not symbols or allegories of the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls. Should you ask, “What are these three?” the answer would be, “They are persons who are alive; they are Philia-, Astrid-, and Luna-people.” This always must be kept firmly in mind. How karma, finally intertwining and twisting itself together, can display in a picture what as microcosm Johannes Thomasius experiences in his soul—this was portrayed in the whole closing scene of the Munich performance. Showing how karma is at work, the various characters stood in their places. Each had his position according to his relationship to another person. If you imagine this actually mirrored in the soul of Johannes Thomasius, you will then have more or less what is contained in this picture of the spirit realm in Scene Seven, which could only with great difficulty be given verbal expression.
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| 41b. H. P. Blavatsky's, “The Key to Theosophy”: X. On the Nature of Our Thinking Principle
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| We have our own doctrine ready, and to us it offers no difficulty. The clue lies in the double consciousness of our mind, and also, in the dual nature of the mental "principle." There is a spiritual consciousness, the Manasic mind illumined by the light of Buddhi, that which subjectively perceives abstractions; and the sentient consciousness (the lower Manasic light), inseparable from our physical brain and senses. |
| It is only the former kind of consciousness, whose root lies in eternity, which survives and lives for ever, and may, therefore, be regarded as immortal. |
| Yet it is the Ego, the Manasic Entity, which is held responsible for all the sins of the lower attributes, just as a parent is answerable for the transgressions of his child, so long as the latter remains irresponsible. Enq. Is this "child" the "personality"? Theo. |
| 41b. H. P. Blavatsky's, “The Key to Theosophy”: X. On the Nature of Our Thinking Principle
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The Mystery of The EgoEnq. I perceive in the quotation you brought forward a little while ago from the Buddhist Catechism a discrepancy that I would like to hear explained. It is there stated that the Skandhas — memory included — change with every new incarnation. And yet, it is asserted that the reflection of the past lives, which, we are told, are entirely made up of Skandhas, "must survive." At the present moment I am not quite clear in my mind as to what it is precisely that survives, and I would like to have it explained. What is it? Is it only that "reflection," or those Skandhas, or always that same EGO, the Manas? Theo. I have just explained that the re-incarnating Principle, or that which we call the divine man, is indestructible throughout the life cycle: indestructible as a thinking Entity, and even as an ethereal form. The "reflection" is only the spiritualised remembrance during the Devachanic period, of the ex-personality, Mr. A. or Mrs. B. — with which the Ego identifies itself during that period. Since the latter is but the continuation of the earth-life, so to say, the very acme and pitch, in an unbroken series, of the few happy moments in that now past existence, the Ego has to identify itself with the personal consciousness of that life, if anything shall remain of it. Enq. This means that the Ego, notwithstanding its divine nature, passes every such period between two incarnations in a state of mental obscuration, or temporary insanity. Theo. You may regard it as you like. Believing that, outside the ONE Reality, nothing is better than a passing illusion — the whole Universe included — we do not view it as insanity, but as a very natural sequence or development of the terrestrial life. What is life? A bundle of the most varied experiences, of daily changing ideas, emotions, and opinions. In our youth we are often enthusiastically devoted to an ideal, to some hero or heroine whom we try to follow and revive; a few years later, when the freshness of our youthful feelings has faded out and sobered down, we are the first to laugh at our fancies. And yet there was a day when we had so thoroughly identified our own personality with that of the ideal in our mind — especially if it was that of a living being — that the former was entirely merged and lost in the latter. Can it be said of a man of fifty that he is the same being that he was at twenty? The inner man is the same; the outward living personality is completely transformed and changed. Would you also call these changes in the human mental states insanity? Enq. How would you name them, and especially how would you explain the permanence of one and the evanescence of the other? Theo. We have our own doctrine ready, and to us it offers no difficulty. The clue lies in the double consciousness of our mind, and also, in the dual nature of the mental "principle." There is a spiritual consciousness, the Manasic mind illumined by the light of Buddhi, that which subjectively perceives abstractions; and the sentient consciousness (the lower Manasic light), inseparable from our physical brain and senses. This latter consciousness is held in subjection by the brain and physical senses, and, being in its turn equally dependent on them, must of course fade out and finally die with the disappearance of the brain and physical senses. It is only the former kind of consciousness, whose root lies in eternity, which survives and lives for ever, and may, therefore, be regarded as immortal. Everything else belongs to passing illusions. Enq. What do you really understand by illusion in this case? Theo. It is very well described in the just-mentioned essay on "The Higher Self." Says its author:
This is what I mean. The world in which blossom the transitory and evanescent flowers of personal lives is not the real permanent world; but that one in which we find the root of consciousness, that root which is beyond illusion and dwells in the eternity. Enq. What do you mean by the root dwelling in eternity? Theo. I mean by this root the thinking entity, the Ego which incarnates, whether we regard it as an "Angel," "Spirit," or a Force. Of that which falls under our sensuous perceptions only what grows directly from, or is attached to this invisible root above, can partake of its immortal life. Hence every noble thought, idea and aspiration of the personality it informs, proceeding from and fed by this root, must become permanent. As to the physical consciousness, as it is a quality of the sentient but lower "principle," (Kama-rupa or animal instinct, illuminated by the lower manasic reflection), or the human Soul — it must disappear. That which displays activity, while the body is asleep or paralysed, is the higher consciousness, our memory registering but feebly and inaccurately — because automatically — such experiences, and often failing to be even slightly impressed by them. Enq. But how is it that MANAS, although you call it Nous, a "God," is so weak during its incarnations, as to be actually conquered and fettered by its body? Theo. I might retort with the same question and ask: "How is it that he, whom you regard as 'the God of Gods' and the One living God, is so weak as to allow evil (or the Devil) to have the best of him as much as of all his creatures, whether while he remains in Heaven, or during the time he was incarnated on this earth?" You are sure to reply again: "This is a Mystery; and we are forbidden to pry into the mysteries of God." Not being forbidden to do so by our religious philosophy, I answer your question that, unless a God descends as an Avatar, no divine principle can be otherwise than cramped and paralysed by turbulent, animal matter. Heterogeneity will always have the upper hand over homogeneity, on this plane of illusions, and the nearer an essence is to its root-principle, Primordial Homogeneity, the more difficult it is for the latter to assert itself on earth. Spiritual and divine powers lie dormant in every human Being; and the wider the sweep of his spiritual vision the mightier will be the God within him. But as few men can feel that God, and since, as an average rule, deity is always bound and limited in our thought by earlier conceptions, those ideas that are inculcated in us from childhood, therefore, it is so difficult for you to understand our philosophy. Enq. And is it this Ego of ours which is our God? Theo. Not at all; "A God" is not the universal deity, but only a spark from the one ocean of Divine Fire. Our God within us, or "our Father in Secret" is what we call the "HIGHER SELF," Atma. Our incarnating Ego was a God in its origin, as were all the primeval emanations of the One Unknown Principle. But since its "fall into Matter," having to incarnate throughout the cycle, in succession, from first to last, it is no longer a free and happy god, but a poor pilgrim on his way to regain that which he has lost. I can answer you more fully by repeating what is said of the INNER MAN in ISIS UNVEILED (Vol. II. 593): —
Such is the destiny of the Man — the true Ego, not the Automaton, the shell that goes by that name. It is for him to become the conqueror over matter. The Complex Nature of ManasEnq. But you wanted to tell me something of the essential nature of Manas, and of the relation in which the Skandhas of physical man stand to it? Theo. It is this nature, mysterious, Protean, beyond any grasp, and almost shadowy in its correlations with the other principles, that is most difficult to realise, and still more so to explain. Manas is a "principle," and yet it is an "Entity" and individuality or Ego. He is a "God," and yet he is doomed to an endless cycle of incarnations, for each of which he is made responsible, and for each of which he has to suffer. All this seems as contradictory as it is puzzling; nevertheless, there are hundreds of people, even in Europe, who realise all this perfectly, for they comprehend the Ego not only in its integrity but in its many aspects. Finally, if I would make myself comprehensible, I must begin by the beginning and give you the genealogy of this Ego in a few lines. Enq. Say on. Theo. Try to imagine a "Spirit," a celestial Being, whether we call it by one name or another, divine in its essential nature, yet not pure enough to be one with the ALL, and having, in order to achieve this, to so purify its nature as to finally gain that goal. It can do so only by passing individually and personally, i. e., spiritually and physically, through every experience and feeling that exists in the manifold or differentiated Universe. It has, therefore, after having gained such experience in the lower kingdoms, and having ascended higher and still higher with every rung on the ladder of being, to pass through every experience on the human planes. In its very essence it is THOUGHT, and is, therefore, called in its plurality Manasa putra, "the Sons of the (Universal) mind." This individualised "Thought" is what we Theosophists call the real EGO, the thinking Entity imprisoned in a case of flesh and bones. This is surely a Spiritual Entity, not Matter, and such Entities are the incarnating EGOS that inform the bundle of animal matter called mankind, and whose names are Manasa or "Minds." But once imprisoned, or incarnate, their essence becomes dual: that is to say, the rays of the eternal divine Mind, considered as individual entities, assume a two-fold attribute which is (a) their essential inherent characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher Manas), and (b) the human quality of thinking, or animal cogitation, rationalised owing to the superiority of the human brain, the Kama-tending or lower Manas. One gravitates toward Buddhi, the other, tending downward, to the seat of passions and animal desires. The latter have no room in Devachan, nor can they associate with the divine triad which ascends as ONE into mental bliss. Yet it is the Ego, the Manasic Entity, which is held responsible for all the sins of the lower attributes, just as a parent is answerable for the transgressions of his child, so long as the latter remains irresponsible. Enq. Is this "child" the "personality"? Theo. It is. When, therefore, it is stated that the "personality" dies with the body it does not state all. The body, which was only the objective symbol of Mr. A. or Mrs. B., fades away with all its material Skandhas, which are the visible expressions thereof. But all that which constituted during life the spiritual bundle of experiences, the noblest aspirations, undying affections, and unselfish nature of Mr. A. or Mrs. B. clings for the time of the Devachanic period to the EGO, which is identified with the spiritual portion of that terrestrial Entity, now passed away out of sight. The ACTOR is so imbued with the role just played by him that he dreams of it during the whole Devachanic night, which vision continues till the hour strikes for him to return to the stage of life to enact another part. Enq. But how is it that this doctrine, which you say is as old as thinking men, has found no room, say, in Christian theology? Theo. You are mistaken, it has; only theology has disfigured it out of all recognition, as it has many other doctrines. Theology calls the EGO the Angel that God gives us at the moment of our birth, to take care of our Soul. Instead of holding that "Angel" responsible for the transgressions of the poor helpless "Soul," it is the latter which, according to theological logic, is punished for all the sins of both flesh and mind! It is the Soul, the immaterial breath of God and his alleged creation, which, by some most amazing intellectual jugglery, is doomed to burn in a material hell without ever being consumed (being of "an asbestos-like nature," according to the eloquent and fiery expression of a modern English Tertullian), while the "Angel" escapes scot free, after folding his white pinions and wetting them with a few tears. Aye, these are our "ministering Spirits," the "messengers of mercy" who are sent, Bishop Mant tells us —
Yet it becomes evident that if all the Bishops the world over were asked to define once for all what they mean by Soul and its functions, they would be as unable to do so as to show us any shadow of logic in the orthodox belief! The Doctrine is Taught in St John's GospelEnq. To this the adherents to this belief might answer, that if even the orthodox dogma does promise the impenitent sinner and materialist a bad time of it in a rather too realistic Inferno, it gives them, on the other hand, a chance for repentance to the last minute. Nor do they teach annihilation, or loss of personality, which is all the same. Theo. If the Church teaches nothing of the kind, on the other hand, Jesus does; and that is something to those, at least, who place Christ higher than Christianity. Enq. Does Christ teach anything of the sort? Theo. He does; and every well-informed Occultist and even Kabalist will tell you so. Christ, or the fourth Gospel at any rate, teaches re-incarnation as also the annihilation of the personality, if you but forget the dead letter and hold to the esoteric Spirit. Remember verses I and 2 in chapter xv. of St. John. What does the parable speak about if not of the upper triad in man? Atma is the Husbandman — the Spiritual Ego or Buddhi (Christos) the Vine, while the animal and vital Soul, the personality, is the "branch." "I am the true vine, and my Father is the Husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away . . . As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the Vine — ye are the branches. If a man abide not in me he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered and cast into the fire and burned." Now we explain it in this way. Disbelieving in the hell-fires which theology discovers as underlying the threat to the branches, we say that the "Husbandman" means Atma, the Symbol for the infinite, impersonal Principle, while the Vine stands for the Spiritual Soul, Christos, and each "branch" represents a new incarnation. (During the Mysteries, it is the Hierophant, the "Father," who planted the Vine. Every symbol has Seven Keys to it. The discloser of the Pleroma was always called "Father.") Enq. But what proofs have you to support such an arbitrary interpretation? Theo. Universal symbology is a warrant for its correctness and that it is not arbitrary. Hermas says of "God" that he "planted the Vineyard," i. e., he created mankind. In the Kabala, it is shown that the Aged of the Aged, or the "Long Face," plants a vineyard, the latter typifying mankind; and a vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of "King Messiah" is, therefore, shown as washing his garments in the wine from above, from the creation of the world. (Zohar XL., 10.) And King Messiah is the EGO purified by washing his garments (i. e., his personalities in re-birth), in the wine from above, or BUDDHI. Adam, or A-Dam, is "blood." The Life of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh — soul), Leviticus xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten. Noah also plants a vineyard — the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a consequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced in the Nazarene Codex. Seven vines are procreated — which seven vines are our Seven Races with their seven Saviours or Buddhas — which spring from Iukabar Zivo, and Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them. (Codex Nazaraes, Vol. III., pp. 60, 61.) When the blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they shall see Iavar-Xivo, Lord of LIFE, and the First VINE. (Ibid., Vol. II., p. 281.) These kabalistic metaphors are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel according to St. John (xv., 1). Let us not forget that in the human system — even according to those philosophies which ignore our septenary division — the EGO or thinking man is called the Logos, or the Son of King of Soul and Queen of Spirit. "Manas is the adopted Son of King — and Queen —" (esoteric equivalents for Atma and Buddhi), says an occult work. He is the "man-god" of Plato, who crucifies himself in Space (or the duration of the life cycle) for the redemption of MATTER. This he does by incarnating over and over again, thus leading mankind onward to perfection, and making thereby room for lower forms to develop into higher. Not for one life does he cease progressing himself and helping all physical nature to progress; even the occasional, very rare event of his losing one of his personalities, in the case of the latter being entirely devoid of even a spark of spirituality, helps toward his individual progress. Enq. But surely, if the Ego is held responsible for the transgressions of its personalities, it has to answer also for the loss, or rather the complete annihilation, of one of such. Theo. Not at all, unless it has done nothing to avert this dire fate. But if, all its efforts notwithstanding, its voice, that of our conscience, was unable to penetrate through the wall of matter, then the obtuseness of the latter proceeding from the imperfect nature of the material is classed with other failures of nature. The Ego is sufficiently punished by the loss of Devachan, and especially by having to incarnate almost immediately. Enq. This doctrine of the possibility of losing one's soul — or personality, do you call it? — militates against the ideal theories of both Christians and Spiritualists, though Swedenborg adopts it to a certain extent, in what he calls Spiritual death. They will never accept it. Theo. This can in no way alter a fact in nature, if it be a fact, or prevent such a thing occasionally taking place. The universe and everything in it, moral, mental, physical, psychic, or Spiritual, is built on a perfect law of equilibrium and harmony. As said before (vide Isis Unveiled), the centripetal force could not manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious revolutions of the spheres, and all forms and their progress are the products of this dual force in nature. Now the Spirit (or Buddhi) is the centrifugal and the soul (Manas) the centripetal spiritual energy; and to produce one result they have to be in perfect union and harmony. Break or damage the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending toward the centre which attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging it with a heavier weight of matter than it can bear, or than is fit for the Devachanic state, and the harmony of the whole will be destroyed. Personal life, or perhaps rather its ideal reflection, can only be continued if sustained by the two-fold force, that is by the close union of Buddhi and Manas in every re-birth or personal life. The least deviation from harmony damages it; and when it is destroyed beyond redemption the two forces separate at the moment of death. During a brief interval the personal form (called indifferently Kama rupa and Mayavi rupa), the spiritual efflorescence of which, attaching itself to the Ego, follows it into Devachan and gives to the permanent individuality its personal colouring (pro tem., so to speak), is carried off to remain in Kamaloka and to be gradually annihilated. For it is after the death of the utterly depraved, the unspiritual and the wicked beyond redemption, that arrives the critical and supreme moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the INNER SELF (Manas), to unite something of the personality with itself and the high glimmering ray of the divine Buddhi, is thwarted; if this ray is allowed to be more and more shut out from the ever-thickening crust of physical brain, the Spiritual EGO or Manas, once freed from the body, remains severed entirely from the ethereal relic of the personality; and the latter, or Kama rupa, following its earthly attractions, is drawn into and remains in Hades, which we call the Kamaloka. These are "the withered branches" mentioned by Jesus as being cut off from the Vine. Annihilation, however, is never instantaneous, and may require centuries sometimes for its accomplishment. But there the personality remains along with the remnants of other more fortunate personal Egos, and becomes with them a shell and an Elementary. As said in Isis, it is these two classes of "Spirits," the shells and the Elementaries, which are the leading "Stars" on the great spiritual stage of "materialisations." And you may be sure of it, it is not they who incarnate; and, therefore, so few of these "dear departed ones" know anything of re-incarnation, misleading thereby the Spiritualists. Enq. But does not the author of "Isis Unveiled" stand accused of having preached against re-incarnation? Theo. By those who have misunderstood what was said, yes. At the time that work was written, re-incarnation was not believed in by any Spiritualists, either English or American, and what is said there of re-incarnation was directed against the French Spiritists, whose theory is as unphilosophical and absurd as the Eastern teaching is logical and self-evident in its truth. The Re-incarnationists of the Allan Kardec School believe in an arbitrary and immediate re-incarnation. With them, the dead father can incarnate in his own unborn daughter, and so on. They have neither Devachan, Karma, nor any philosophy that would warrant or prove the necessity of consecutive re-births. But how can the author of "Isis" argue against Karmic re-incarnation, at long intervals varying between 1,000 and 1,500 years, when it is the fundamental belief of both Buddhists and Hindus? Enq. Then you reject the theories of both the Spiritists and the Spiritualists, in their entirety? Theo. Not in their entirety, but only with regard to their respective fundamental beliefs. Both rely on what their "Spirits" tell them; and both disagree as much with each other as we Theosophists disagree with both. Truth is one; and when we hear the French spooks preaching re-incarnation, and the English spooks denying and denouncing the doctrine, we say that either the French or the English "Spirits" do not know what they are talking about. We believe with the Spiritualists and the Spiritists in the existence of "Spirits," or invisible Beings endowed with more or less intelligence. But, while in our teachings their kinds and genera are legion, our opponents admit of no other than human disembodied "Spirits," which, to our knowledge, are mostly Kamalokic SHELLS. Enq. You seem very bitter against Spirits. As you have given me your views and your reasons for disbelieving in the materialization of, and direct communication in seances, with the disembodied spirits — or the "spirits of the dead" — would you mind enlightening me as to one more fact? Why are some Theosophists never tired of saying how dangerous is intercourse with spirits, and mediumship? Have they any particular reason for this? Theo. We must suppose so. I know I have. Owing to my familiarity for over half a century with these invisible, yet but too tangible and undeniable "influences," from the conscious Elementals, semi-conscious shells, down to the utterly senseless and nondescript spooks of all kinds, I claim a certain right to my views. Enq. Can you give an instance or instances to show why these practices should be regarded as dangerous? Theo. This would require more time than I can give you. Every cause must be judged by the effects it produces. Go over the history of Spiritualism for the last fifty years, ever since its reappearance in this century in America — and judge for yourself whether it has done its votaries more good or harm. Pray understand me. I do not speak against real Spiritualism, but against the modern movement which goes under that name, and the so-called philosophy invented to explain its phenomena. Enq. Don't you believe in their phenomena at all? Theo. It is because I believe in them with too good reason, and (save some cases of deliberate fraud) know them to be as true as that you and I live, that all my being revolts against them. Once more I speak only of physical, not mental or even psychic phenomena. Like attracts like. There are several high-minded, pure, good men and women, known to me personally, who have passed years of their lives under the direct guidance and even protection of high "Spirits," whether disembodied or planetary. But these Intelligences are not of the type of the John Kings and the Ernests who figure in seance rooms. These Intelligences guide and control mortals only in rare and exceptional cases to which they are attracted and magnetically drawn by the Karmic past of the individual. It is not enough to sit "for development" in order to attract them. That only opens the door to a swarm of "spooks," good, bad and indifferent, to which the medium becomes a slave for life. It is against such promiscuous mediumship and intercourse with goblins that I raise my voice, not against spiritual mysticism. The latter is ennobling and holy; the former is of just the same nature as the phenomena of two centuries ago, for which so many witches and wizards have been made to suffer. Read Glanvil and other authors on the subject of witchcraft, and you will find recorded there the parallels of most, if not all, of the physical phenomena of nineteenth century "Spiritualism." Enq. Do you mean to suggest that it is all witchcraft and nothing more? Theo. What I mean is that, whether conscious or unconscious, all this dealing with the dead is necromancy, and a most dangerous practice. For ages before Moses such raising of the dead was regarded by all the intelligent nations as sinful and cruel, inasmuch as it disturbs the rest of the souls and interferes with their evolutionary development into higher states. The collective wisdom of all past centuries has ever been loud in denouncing such practices. Finally, I say, what I have never ceased repeating orally and in print for fifteen years: While some of the so-called "spirits" do not know what they are talking about, repeating merely — like poll-parrots — what they find in the mediums' and other people's brains, others are most dangerous, and can only lead one to evil. These are two self-evident facts. Go into spiritualistic circles of the Allan Kardec school, and you find "spirits" asserting re-incarnation and speaking like Roman Catholics born. Turn to the "dear departed ones" in England and America, and you will hear them denying re-incarnation through thick and thin, denouncing those who teach it, and holding to Protestant views. Your best, your most powerful mediums, have all suffered in health of body and mind. Think of the sad end of Charles Foster, who died in an asylum, a raving lunatic; of Slade, an epileptic; of Eglinton — the best medium now in England — subject to the same. Look back over the life of D. D. Home, a man whose mind was steeped in gall and bitterness, who never had a good word to say of anyone whom he suspected of possessing psychic powers, and who slandered every other medium to the bitter end. This Calvin of Spiritualism suffered for years from a terrible spinal disease, brought on by his intercourse with the "spirits," and died a perfect wreck. Think again of the sad fate of poor Washington Irving Bishop. 1 knew him in New York, when he was fourteen, and he was undeniably a medium. It is true that the poor man stole a march on his "spirits," and baptised them "unconscious muscular action," to the great gaudium of all the corporations of highly learned and scientific fools, and to the replenishment of his own pocket. But de mortuis nit nisi bonum; his end was a sad one. He had strenuously concealed his epileptic fits — the first and strongest symptom of genuine mediumship — and who knows whether he was dead or in a trance when the post-mortem examination was performed? His relatives insist that he was alive, if we are to believe Reuter's telegrams. Finally, behold the veteran mediums, the founders and prime movers of modern spiritualism — the Fox sisters. After more than forty years of intercourse with the "Angels," the latter have led them to become incurable sots, who are now denouncing, in public lectures, their own life-long work and philosophy as a fraud. What kind of spirits must they be who prompted them, I ask you? Enq. But is your inference a correct one? Theo. What would you infer if the best pupils of a particular school of singing broke down from overstrained sore throats? That the method followed was a bad one. So I think the inference is equally fair with regard to Spiritualism when we see their best mediums fall a prey to such a fate. We can only say: — Let those who are interested in the question judge the tree of Spiritualism by its fruits, and ponder over the lesson. We Theosophists have always regarded the Spiritualists as brothers having the same mystic tendency as ourselves, but they have always regarded us as enemies. We, being in possession of an older philosophy, have tried to help and warn them; but they have repaid us by reviling and traducing us and our motives in every possible way. Nevertheless, the best English Spiritualists say just as we do, wherever they treat of their belief seriously. Hear "M. A. Oxon." confessing this truth: "Spiritualists are too much inclined to dwell exclusively on the intervention of external spirits in this world of ours, and to ignore the powers of the incarnate Spirit." (Second Sight, "Introduction.") Why vilify and abuse us, then, for saying precisely the same? Henceforward, we will have nothing more to do with Spiritualism. And now let us return to Re-incarnation. |
| 174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Fifteenth Lecture
26 Apr 1918, Stuttgart |
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| How much benefit is derived today from bringing the child to form its own judgment as early as possible, from educating the child in a different way as early as possible, as described in my booklet “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”. It is necessary that the child live above all in pictorial representations, that the intellectual approach comes to the child as late as possible. |
| Or let the child observe a plant in the garden in spring, summer and autumn, and then read to him Goethe's poem “Metamorphosis of Plants”. |
| 174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Fifteenth Lecture
26 Apr 1918, Stuttgart |
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One of the fundamental characteristics of the spiritual scientific contemplation that we practice is not fully appreciated, even among us. Indeed, when this fundamental characteristic of our spiritual scientific endeavor is first pointed out in abstract terms, it is perhaps not so far from many of us, including those of us at the forefront, to think: That is self-evident, how could it not be! And yet it is not so. The basic characteristic I have in mind is that our spiritual science endeavors not only to point out in general terms that the spiritual world is a reality, that individual world beings live as realities within the spiritual world, but to show again and again in detail how what takes place around us and within us in our ordinary life between birth and death is a creation of the spiritual world. I say: It could be thought that if one seriously turns one's spiritual eye to the spiritual world, it is already given to see what is around us as a creation of the spiritual world. But it is a long way from these general, quite abstract, empty, meaningless thoughts to penetrating to the spiritual places where it is grasped in detail how the reality of the senses is a creation of the spirit. Today, we shall see this illustrated by a particular example, one that can also show how far present-day humanity is from even suspecting what it means that the creation of sense-perceptible reality around us, as we experience it between birth and death, is a creation of spiritual reality. In order to explain the special example we want to approach today in detail, I would like to remind you of what I was obliged to say in yesterday's public lecture. Today, we want to bring the matter more deeply and closely before our soul with reference to certain applications. Yesterday and earlier, I spoke here in this branch about what I would like to call the growing discipleship of humanity in the course of development. If we go back in the evolution of humanity to the catastrophe in the becoming of the earth, which we call the Atlantic catastrophe, where the continent that once lay between present-day Europe and America sank and the western American and eastern European worlds arose in its place, we find, starting from our own epoch, five epochs of humanity. The first post-Atlantean epoch, which followed immediately as a cultural epoch upon the Atlantean catastrophe, is the culture of ancient India. It goes far beyond what can be explored through external historical documents. You will find it described, to the extent necessary, in my book, Occult Science. What is important for us today, however, is to be clear about the following: in that cultural epoch, people lived in such a way that they participated in their physical development with their spiritual and soul selves up to the age of fifty. This participation does not include what we experience today. When we feel tired or old, it is not the same kind of participation as the child experiences in its physical development in the first years of life. No, what we experience physically at a later age is not directly known by the soul and spirit. We do not participate in the descent of our development. If we could participate physically in the descent of this development, we would learn an enormous amount about the spiritual world by undergoing a reverse development - a collapse, a mineralization of the brain mass, a sclerotization of the body. We would experience through our body what we have to experience today through spiritual science if we want to approach it at all. In ancient Indian culture, this descending development continued until the fifties. People were children until their fifties, only an aging child. Then came the second post-Atlantic culture, the ancient Persian culture, which was also prehistoric. In this culture, people continued to experience what they went through mentally and spiritually in relation to the body until the end of the 1940s. Then, in the third cultural period, humanity as a whole had become younger again. In the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the souls emancipated themselves from the body from about the age of thirty-five to forty-two. Then came the age of Greek-Latin culture, which included the Mystery of Golgotha. During that time, the body underwent a development similar to that which today only the child goes through, up to the age of thirty-five. And today we are in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch – we have been advanced in this cultural epoch since the 15th century – we experience what the body experiences until the end of the twenties; we no longer experience the descending development at all. This is why man is so little inclined today, by his natural disposition, to take in the spiritual as such into his soul. In ancient times, the physical body itself gave the spirit; today, the physical body no longer gives the spirit. Therefore, the spirit must be taken up by the soul itself. The soul refuses to do this. In ancient times, it was nonsense for a person not to believe in the spirit. In order not to believe in the spirit, he would have had to die before the age of thirty-five. If he lived to see the time after the thirty-fifth year, he experienced something through what was happening in his body in a descending development, which immediately presented itself as spirit. It was inconceivable that people in ancient times did not believe in the spirit. But because things have developed in this way, a moral impulse, a magnificent moral impulse of humanity, has been lost in so far as its natural development is concerned. I ask you not to underestimate this magnificent moral impulse, which was lost in a natural way and which must be found again in a spiritual-ethical way. In those ancient times, children knew from their elders: Once you have passed the age of thirty-five, you experience something as a human being that you cannot experience at a younger age. — Imagine vividly the feeling that children and young people grew up with: I have something to expect when I enter the descending development; I then have something to experience that I cannot know now, that my physical body simply cannot give me now. Imagine the feeling, quite different from today's, when one expected to grow old under such conditions. There is something tremendously different in life today when one expects to grow old in such a way that one knows: something is coming that could not come earlier. That has changed, but not as abruptly as one might imagine. Isn't it true that when one expresses such a truth as the one just hinted at, today's intellectual bad habit immediately demands an either-or. But in reality things are never an either-or, as a rule it is a matter of both-and. The spiritual does not come of itself when one ascends again in the development of age. But when the spark of spirituality is awakened in the soul in the way it is meant in spiritual science, then one benefits from growing old after all. Then something arises from the declining body that particularly immerses itself in what one has learned and come to know through the spiritual scientific path. If you remain without a scientific contact with the spirit today – this scientific contact is not meant in a specialized way, but so that it can be accessible to everyone, even to the simplest mind, because spiritual science can become popular if humanity wills – then you will not experience anything special when you grow old; you will not be able to appreciate growing old. They will also have no special expectation of growing old in childhood and youth. It is different when the spark of spiritual knowledge in the soul is not aroused through natural development, but through educational development, through a development that approaches the souls of the human community. If it is properly understood, what spiritual science can be for the soul in a living way, the mood will be generated again in a conscious way through this spiritual science: I have something to expect when I get old. Growing old means something. When I am thirty-five years old, what lives in me will be different than it is now that I am a young badger of twenty. This mood is something tremendous for the human soul, this mood, which I would describe as the mood of expectant life, of life that simply knows: the creation that you experience in yourself, you must seriously consider it to be a creation of the spirit. Today, when people do not want to be touched by the knowledge of the spirit, do they seriously regard the creation of man – even when it is expressed in a phrase-like way – as the creation of the spirit? No, in practice people do not do this at all. For if they did, they would say to themselves: It makes sense that one grows old. The whole human life is a spiritual creation; one does not grow old in vain, the spiritual in us is constantly finding new expression. That which arises in us, that which reveals itself in us from within, will always show new aspects. To live expectantly, to expect something from growing older and older with each passing year, is a consequence that arises from taking seriously the sentence that what is around us and in us is a creation of the spirit. This is an attitude, this expectant life, which must become part of every educational system, which must flow into the whole constitution given to the educational system. So that from an early age, and when they become young men and maidens, and even later, the children get the feeling: While we are young, the spirit does not give us everything; but as one grows older, it reveals more and more new things that arise in the soul. One need only be stimulated by the knowledge of the spirit not to overlook, not to disregard, that which wants to emerge from the depths of our being, because it is not senseless, but because it makes sense that we grow old. Today, even the youngest people are annoyed when such a feeling is still expected of them; because the youngest people already feel ready to be elected to parliaments and state assemblies, as a matter of course, even though they do not belong there, because it is a matter of being able to pass judgment on social structures only from a mature perspective on life. If you have the mood of expectant life at all, then you know: you cannot know what you assume from external institutions in a living way, in a feeling way, until you have reached a certain age. Do not say that spiritual science, when it is properly understood, is something abstract that does not intervene in practical life. Spiritual science, when it is more and more and more correctly understood, will intervene very much in practical life, because it will become familiar with concrete perceptions; it will cause man to grow up differently, to expect differently what each new year of his life can bring him again. Spiritual science contains the most powerful educational enzymes, the most powerful educational impulses. It contains moral impulses that affect the human mind quite differently from the moral impulses that people of the present day pride themselves on; for it contains impulses that flow to the human soul from the whole meaning of life, from the universal meaning of life. Of course, I do not mean by this that everyone who is familiar with spiritual science should immediately fulfill all ideals. But that is the case with morality in general: it initially hangs over man as an ideal, and he has to incorporate it into himself according to his free will. But spiritual science as such contains these significant moral impulses. It is not only a nurse of earthly morality, but it is a nurse of universal morality. One must only see through these things in the appropriate way. But it is extraordinarily necessary that an attitude of mind, which is connected with what I have now explained, should gain access to human minds through spiritual science. For what has led our time into such a fateful catastrophe is precisely that we live in that transition period that wants to pour something new into the human soul, and that people have not yet lost their attachment to the old, that they do not want to take in such new feelings, especially not want to take in such feelings in the principles of education. In the outer life, which has emerged from materialistic culture, one often finds the opposite of what the future so energetically demands of humanity. It is necessary that, above all, the young people assimilate this focus on the meaning of the emerging life. And today, in this respect, everyone is still a young person, because spiritual science has not yet been sufficiently assimilated, so that everyone must first become imbued with what spiritual science can give to the education of the human soul. For mankind must free itself from the belief that one is a finished human being at the age of twenty or twenty-five, that one has developed everything and only needs to live one's life, and for whom life has meaning only in so far as one applies what one has learned, or by enjoying life, and the like. If you look more deeply into the context of life, what has been said comes to mind in a very, very deep way. It is something that developed in people by itself in ancient times, and that is to develop in more recent times through educational care in the human feeling: expectant life. Oh, it is something significant when a person says to himself at the age of thirty: in the future, simply by growing older by five or ten years, secrets will be revealed to me through this growing older; I have something to expect. —- Just consider what that is and what it means to introduce something like that into education! But it is also something real. It is a flowing being that comes into its own in man, that came into its own in ancient times by itself, that is to be cultivated in more recent times. For that is what comes to the fore in man; just because we do not pay attention to it, do not care about it, that does not make it not there. Do not think that you will escape becoming wiser, receiving secrets, as you grow older if you ignore these secrets. The spirit is at work in you. You will all become spirit-rich! The only difference is that one person absorbs it willingly, while another, once he has decided to become a clever man in his twenties (today this is particularly the case in the so-called world of the intelligentsia), rejects the idea of absorbing anything later in his development. The youngest people today write, compose poetry and do many other things. And how they feel about these things! How little they sense the meaning of life, which consists in the emergence of the human being as a creation from the spirit. But the spirit does not give up, even if the youngest people today write dramas or feature articles and the like. Nevertheless, it is possible that they still have spirit, they just know nothing about the spirit that develops in them. What happens to this spirit, to the real spirit that developed by itself in ancient times? Yes, my dear friends, this spirit must disperse. Truly, it disperses. It spreads in the spiritual atmosphere, it spreads in the aura of humanity. And this is something that must be said again and again to our time, but which of course it does not believe for the simple reason that it naturally regards it as fantasy when one says to it: Now there is a young feature writer who thinks he is very clever. He knows nothing of the spirit, but the spirit passes into the aura of humanity, it atomizes. His spirit is nevertheless there. Today the aura of humanity is completely permeated with such atomized spirit. This spirit must be held together again by human beings, through the mood of which I have spoken. For we are already close to the point where a terrible evil would arise if this atomizing spirit were to be further and further developed. For it is an important law of spiritual life that a spirit becomes something quite different from what it originally was when it leaves its carrier. Just grasp this clearly: a spirit that leaves its carrier, that atomizes, becomes something quite different from what it would become if it remained held together by its carrier. It is essentially deteriorated, worsened, it is transformed in an ahrimanic way. And that which must come out, which does not yet come out clearly today because we are at the beginning of what can become terrible if it is not taken into account, that is a terrible spiritual wasteland. People will search for something to keep them busy because they have allowed the spirit to dissipate, which should actually keep them busy. A search for something without knowing what one is looking for is something that must become more and more widespread if the evil is not controlled. We can already see the beginnings of this in many of the things I have already mentioned. What does a person do today if he has neglected to pay attention to his spirit? He will preferably search for something; only this search comes to fruition in a strange way in the most diverse fields. One very common area is: people found associations, associations with good programs. They confront people with all kinds of demands. These may be quite clever things, but they are mostly things that arise only from the fact that one has remained at the childhood point of view and then fossilized the childhood idea until one lets it loose on the world at a later age in the form of association programs. In this area, people today know an enormous amount to do. But they know little about working in the spirit, starting from small seeds of spiritual effectiveness, letting people join of their own accord and keeping them alive and active, something like a human community. You see, that is why so many conflicts arise in our society, which, for certain reasons, remain latent and which I do not want to discuss here. Wherever I myself can exert an impulse in some way, I want all statutes, all rules, all laws to remain as far away as possible. After all, why do we need statutes when a number of people come together to cultivate spiritual life? We can draw up such statutes to show the authorities; that is another matter, it has nothing to do with the matter itself, but what matters is what such statutes mean to us ourselves. The point is that such a community should live, that each new person can bring something new into it. Such a community should live; it cannot be bound by any statutes. After five years of existence, it should be just as different as a child is different at twelve than it was at seven. But that is not the way of thinking in today's world. The way of thinking in today's world is to live as unalive as possible, to constrict everything into abstractions. That is one thing. Many examples could be given, all of which show that there is no awareness of the atomizing of spiritual life. One searches, one searches in every possible way. Just think how many women's and other associations there are already in a reasonably large city today! One searches and searches because one does not know that what one is supposed to hold is atomized. So one searches because one does not have what one does not pay attention to. This seeking means a barren life. This barrenness would increase terribly if humanity did not understand that the mood of life must arise, of which I have just spoken. Isn't that what people today refuse to understand: the immediacy of life! The principle that what is there is a creation of the living spirit certainly demands mobility of experience. Never declaring yourself closed off or finished is inconvenient in some respects. But it is a necessity if the spiritual development of humanity is to progress. And to understand spiritual science in such a way that it is the inspiration for a living life, that it really finds its way into what the time demands at the present point of development of humanity, that is precisely the task of those who really devote themselves to spiritual science: to live with humanity and to recognize what it has to go through in the course of the development of time, what is set before it. Try to gain an unbiased view of the events that surround you today. Actually, most people are oversleeping what is going on around us today. They just think that a state like the one before 1914 must come again, and they are waiting for such a state to come. They do not understand at all how radically the issue is involved, and how necessary it is that mankind should work its way through to quite new concepts, which were not there before. To comprehend life in its historical development, that is above all the task of the spiritual-scientific school of thought. That is one thing: that the spirit is atomized by being ignored by people, as happens so often today. But only part of it is atomized, the other part remains behind, accumulating in the human organism, but not entering consciousness. It unconsciously impregnates the organism. It enters the blood and the flesh; it works in the unconscious. Part of what the human being should be aware of is atomized in the course of a lifetime, and part is driven down into the subconscious. What does it do in the subconscious? Let us take a closer look at what causes the spirit to be partially driven down into the subconscious. The cause for this is mostly the wrong educational principles, which work towards children and young people becoming precocious, and towards children remaining childlike as little as possible. How much benefit is derived today from bringing the child to form its own judgment as early as possible, from educating the child in a different way as early as possible, as described in my booklet “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”. It is necessary that the child live above all in pictorial representations, that the intellectual approach comes to the child as late as possible. Today, there is very little sense of this. Even culture itself has little sense of it. But this culture should not be held back; spiritual science will never become reactionary. It will, of course, take into account external, material cultural progress; but this external, material cultural progress demands that a counterweight be created. It was different for people in the days when they did not learn to read and write in their youth. I do not want to speak in favor of illiteracy, do not misunderstand me, but today it is considered a misfortune when people are illiterate, because one sees the value of a person not in what is alive in the soul, but in what is brought up to the person, which ultimately has terribly little to do with the actual human soul. In those ancient times, when writing was still a pictographic script, when the letter reproduced a word secret, writing was something. But today: those little ghosts that appear on white paper before the eyes of the youngest children and have to be deciphered, those little ghosts that the children themselves conjure up on the paper, what kind of relationship do they have to the soul? They are only signs, arbitrary signs. One could imagine that the whole thing, as a piece of writing, would be arranged quite differently. Some people today already have a tendency to arrange it differently. They have even arranged shorthand. There is no necessity for what is there to approach people in this way; it could also be quite different. But that is a necessary requirement of earthly culture; it is against this that the reactionary turns, not the spiritual scientist. That had to come, of course. But a counterweight will come. Spiritual science will not consider it an ideal to abolish school; but a counterweight will be that children receive pictorial instruction, that instruction which contains reference after reference to the secrets of the world, instruction which, through everything that is learned, connects the mind with the secrets of the world. Every animal, every plant in its forms, they express something that is mysteriously connected with all creation. The right freshness of mind to feel such expression is only found at a certain age. One must grow together with creation at a certain age. Let us take an example here too. I have already mentioned a saying that my old friend Vinzenz Knauer, the historian of philosophy, often used. He said, from his well-medieval scholastic consciousness, to those who claim that everything is in the same matter: Well, just look at the same matter as it is in a wolf and in a lamb; lock up a wolf so that it can't get any other food and only give it lambs. If the matter of the lamb is really the same as the matter of the wolf, then the wolf should gradually become a lamb, or at least become as meek as a lamb. This clearly shows that in that which forms the wolf – we call it the group soul – in that living thing that determines the structure of the wolf, there is something other than the structure of the lamb. To look at mere matter, not at formed matter, not at spiritualized matter, does not lead into creation, but out of it. The animals around us are built in the most diverse forms. Just look at how different man is from animals in this respect. Consider very carefully what is actually present. Human beings, apart from small differences that lie in the various racial characteristics, which can be great but do not come close to the differences between animal species, are equally formed across the earth. Why? Because the equilibrium conditions in them are different from those in animals. The animal is a result of the equilibrium conditions that develop in relation to the earth. You can see this in the ape, which is almost upright. The animal is designed in such a way that its backbone is actually designed to be parallel to the earth's surface, that its hindquarters are at the same height as its forearms. The most significant thing is that the human being is predisposed from the outset in such a way that what is next to the hindquarters in animals is built over the hindquarters, covering them. In humans, the line that goes through the head to the earth falls into the center of gravity line, but not in animals. The fact that man is called upon to give himself his own equilibrium to the earth, which becomes a caricature in the ape, but is the self-evident essence in man, is why he rises above the definite form that each animal genus has. Man does not have the same definite configuration as the animal species because he rises above it, because he can place the head above the abdomen. This is something tremendously significant. The Darwinists have not yet thought of this at all. But this is what matters. Today I can only hint at it; if I wanted to explain it further, I would have to give many lectures, and it would illuminate the deeply significant question of the difference between animals and humans. But that interests us less today; what interests us today is that the human being overcomes the animal form within himself by adopting an upright position, by giving himself a different state of equilibrium on earth. In doing so, he makes himself independent of the earth. But he is only independent as a physical human being. If we go to the etheric body, it is different. This etheric body is mobile in itself; it is differently shaped every moment in every single person. If someone looks at a lion, you see the lion's shape in the person looking at it. If you look at a hyena, you become hyena-like in the supersensible. In the physical, the human being overcomes external formations, but in the etheric body, he adapts to what occurs in his environment. And this is precisely what so significantly distinguishes man from animals: the animal has its definite form; the lion that confronts the dog cannot imitate the shape of the dog in its etheric body, it always remains, even internally, the lion; in truth it only recognizes another lion. Observe how the similar animal faces the similar animal quite differently than the dissimilar one. Man, however, is versatile; he adapts himself to his surroundings with regard to his ether body. But the question is whether this adaptation is regular or irregular, whether this adaptation intervenes meaninglessly or meaningfully in life. The fact that animals are so diversely formed, that they hold fast in their physical form that which man, ever changing, can become, makes that the whole animal kingdom is not only what the modern zoologist sees, but that every animal form has a definite meaning, and the connections among the animals yield a definite meaning. In a certain way one can read this meaning of the whole animal kingdom. But it is by grasping the meaning of what is out there in solid form that we build a bridge between ourselves and the spiritual world, and then meaningfully relive it by becoming it ourselves. In ancient times, people instinctively tried to sense the meaning of their environment. The various symbolic tales about animals are what stand out in historical times: the animal fairy tales, the animal sagas, the animal fables and the like. We cannot go back to that. But something else must be developed for this, so that people do not just learn what they are currently learning in a very abstract way about the animal form. How such animals are described in today's school books! The descriptions seem so boring to children because they are entirely external. Let the description be a meaningful one, let the lion become again something that is developing in Creation in a different way from the hyena or the kangaroo. Then the human being will also live meaningfully in Creation, will take in Creation in a living way. It will certainly have a certain effect, for the spirit will become mobile, the spirit will become full of content when it becomes absorbed in Creation. Then it will not be satisfied with what official science gives it today in many cases. You can experience all kinds of things in this respect today. If you follow the development of the animal series as presented by today's official science, even where it is somewhat unbiased, you can experience strange things. You don't even have to go as far as Darwinism; you can start with Zamarck, who is much wiser than what has been developed in a materialistic way from Darwinism. There you can also find a description of how the different animal forms have developed by adapting to their living conditions. Certain animals have developed webbed feet because their living conditions have developed for them to live in the water. Other animals have developed prehensile feet because they had to find their food up in the trees and the like. Yes, if the organs have developed through such habits, they must have been different before. Animals that have webbed feet must not have had any before, must have had different ones; they then developed them through their living conditions. One gradually comes to realize that those animals that have webbed feet have developed them from other feet, and those that do not have webbed feet have developed them from the earlier ones that were differently formed. That is how it is. You just don't notice it, you study hard, but you don't notice it. When the giraffe has a long neck, it is explained that it has become so from a short one because the giraffe had to reach the tree. If the giraffe had a short neck, it would have become so from a long neck through other habits of life. You don't even notice that you are turning things around and around. Today, no one has any idea of the confusion and confused thinking in which a world view lives that does not create a meaningful bridge to what is in the human environment. But this is what must be incorporated into education, to mention just one thing: this meaningful experience of the environment; not just understanding the environment intellectually, but experiencing it meaningfully, so that one really absorbs the forms of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms with one's whole soul. What a blessing it would be for a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy or girl if you took them for a walk and said: Look at these cloud formations! Then again on a next walk, where the clouds are formed differently: Now look at these clouds. Memorize this so that you have an image of these forms! After letting the child observe the whole for a while, you go to your shelf and take out Goethe's “Natural Science Writings”, where he meaningfully describes the various cloud formations and how they merge and separate. The child will immediately understand this and immediately become immersed in this vivid, meaningful description of cloud formations, experiencing something wonderful. Or let the child observe a plant in the garden in spring, summer and autumn, and then read to him Goethe's poem “Metamorphosis of Plants”. This is a meaningful way to introduce nature. These are some of the things that help to create the mood of expectant life. These are some of the things that are needed if we are to avoid the spirit being repressed and entering the blood and the flesh, but instead being taken hold of by the soul in the appropriate way within. Certain things must not enter the flesh in the course of development, but must remain in the soul. What happens when they enter the flesh and blood? They create affects and passions in the subconscious, which are given names and masks, and which are sometimes quite different from the masks given them. Today, so much lives in human development that has come about because what should have remained in the soul has passed into the blood and flesh. And what is the result? It brings forth strife, discord, disharmony over the earth. This masks itself in all possible forms, this masks itself in the fact that the Italian cannot stand the German, that the Englishman cannot stand the German, that the German cannot stand the Roman; this masks itself in these passions that rage over the earth. We only have to know the deeper reasons for these things, and we have to realize what is incumbent on humanity, what is humanity's mission, in order to achieve what must be achieved at all costs. What is happening at the present time should be seen as clear signs of what we must learn in order to lead humanity towards a prosperous future. We should not remain on the surface, as people do today, but look into the depths of human souls. The fact that the 19th century made an educational mistake because it was a transitional period, because it allowed things to be taught in the flesh and blood that should have been taught in the soul, is being fought out today on the battlefields. The blood that has absorbed what should have gone into the soul now rules in the wild passions that are raging across the earth. This makes it impossible for people to understand each other. It makes them talk at cross purposes. It makes them have so little sense of feeling and living together. The signs of the times are serious, very serious, but they are an invitation to look into the depths of world evolution in order to recognize from these depths what our task is. I already said last time: This is not an objection to world wisdom, to divine wisdom. Divine wisdom must guide these signs through humanity, because humanity is not an automaton-like entity, but should become independent. The question is not: Why did humanity come into all this? — but: What must be done for the salvation of humanity? It is a matter of action and of great universal ethical impulses. This is what we are called upon to do from week to week, from hour to hour, from minute to minute: to engage with what is to happen. And the person who, in the way indicated today, has expected each new year of life to bring something that was previously a mystery to him, ignites in his soul that which humanity will also need in the future: the living, not the dead, sense of immortality. He who knows that every new year brings him new secrets also knows that life after death brings him new secrets; for him, doubt about the continuation of what brings something new to the development of the body makes no sense. But for him, this life after death is also real, very real: it is not only the egoistic principle, as it so often appears today, but it becomes the principle of humanity. Today we step through the gateway of death and bring with us many observations of life that we have not processed here. But that still has a meaning for the earth. Our wisdom, which we have acquired here, will also benefit the earth after we have passed through the gate of death. But here on earth there must be people who want to use it. Those who have had experiences know how to report on them. In public, in order not to make a complete fool of oneself, one must still say these things as I did yesterday, for example: that Planck would think differently today than he thought in the 1880s. As a humanities scholar, one actually means something else by this. One knows that this person's soul has carried so much through the gateway of death that there is plenty that can still be useful to the earth. And those who know that their living feeling for the living soul is not diminished by the portal of death also know that the so-called dead are in constant contact with us, and that we only have to receive what they have worked. Those who have experience in this may perhaps speak of these things in a modest way from personal experience. I know that I have not only taken up Goethe's world view, but that I have written what I have written about Goethe's world view in the most diverse ways only because I knew that it comes from the inspiration of the soul of Goethe himself, at least as far as a weak descendant can absorb it. But this requires a living relationship with the soul that has remained alive, not just the abstract veneration of the dead, but the absorption of the living essence of the dead into our souls, which are embodied here in the physical body. Oh, how much, how very much that is fruitful and of significant essence will flow into the evolution of the earth when the dead, through the attitude of the living, can be the advisers of mankind. I know how far our attitude still is from this. I know that people today ask: What does the twenty-two-year-old, the twenty-three-year-old say - or whatever the age limit may be for the various parliaments - what does the twenty-four-year-old say about something that is to become law? - But they do not ask: What does Goethe say today about what is to become law? But that will come too. The dead will be our fellow citizens. If you absorb into your soul the feeling that a new secret can be revealed to us every year, then you will go even further: then you will also know what it means to make the great transition through the gateway of death with the sum of the earth's evolution. Then the dead will be the co-advisers of the living. For it does not depend merely on belief in immortality, but on the fact that that which is immortal can bear fruit in all the fields where it is really to bear fruit. Man needs strength to push through the veil that still separates him from what the spiritual world still holds. You see, today's way of thinking is actually more or less there for us to develop the strong power to penetrate to the spirit. But the time has already come when people must penetrate many things in a clear way, because they should understand it themselves. That is why the signs are placed before the human soul, because people must learn: This must not be there at all, that must be overcome completely. And because they are to overcome it themselves, that is why it had to occur among them. Two extremes stand in the outer life - but there are many such extremes - opposite each other: Wilsonism and, opposite it, Trotskyism or Leninism, call it what you will. Both stand there, born out of an unspiritual world-view, the most unspiritual world-view imaginable. It is the task of mankind to see that everything that ultimately leads to Leninism or Wilsonism be eradicated. But there is a great deal of both Wilsonism and Leninism everywhere; they are very, very widespread, one just does not notice it. One must only look the things in the eye. But anyone who has studied spiritual science to some extent knows that this spiritual science gives him the soul's eye to look things squarely in the eye in this area as well. Today it is a vital necessity for people to look squarely at the world, to look at things, not to oversleep them. For people have all too much reason to spread masks over what is true in many cases. And people are all too gullible; that is why they believe in the masks and do not look at what is hidden behind them. One cannot develop the way of thinking that makes possible a certain agility of mind, which is necessary for spiritual science, without, in a certain time, when one really finds one's way into this agility, acquiring a clear, calm view of what is going on in the world. One must not oversleep things, one must awaken through spiritual science if one does not want to lull oneself out of a certain comfort in life. There is much need to let such a spirit flow into the soul, but the will, especially of many who feel themselves to be leaders of humanity, to take this need into account, is not there. The will to the spirit exists today in the simplest natures; they only do not yet understand themselves because they are misled by what is spread today in many cases as “public opinion” — Schopenhauer called it “private stupidity”. The leaders are often inclined to speak of the limitations of human nature where they do not want to lead people beyond those limitations. You find this today in all fields. How good it is for people – to mention just one example – when something like what is happening now to the French “theologian” Loisy, who has also taken up such a strangely vacillating position between modernism and non-modernism, although he had apparently stood on his own two feet for a while. But now, in the face of the catastrophic events, he has asked himself the question: Yes, what has actually become of Christianity in view of the catastrophic events that have taken place in the world today? Has not Christianity perhaps failed? Loisy does not mean Christ as such, but he wonders: Has not Christianity perhaps failed in some ways? Some have written about this question of conscience of Loisy. One said: Well, you just have to reckon with the imperfection of human beings. Christianity wants something different from what is happening on earth now, but what is happening must happen because people are imperfect. To think about it is not the point, but the point is to reflect and to consider and to feel how man can become more perfect, how man can ennoble himself, how man can come higher ethically by becoming more and more integrated into the universal world being. In many cases, the questions must be asked quite differently than one is inclined to ask them today. These are the feelings that I wanted to place in your souls during our time together. Even more than before, it is important to me this time that my words are not only understood with the mind, but that they are taken as they are meant: that they inspire our minds, so that they become the seeds in our minds for an understanding penetration of what has to happen in the development of humanity, in the course of humanity. For each of us, in perhaps not too long a time, according to our nature and karma, will find ourselves surrounded by important questions in life at this or that point in our lives, questions that we cannot cope with if we only want to cling to the old, comfortable ideas. We must learn to acquire new ideas. Spiritual science can be our guide to such new ideas. My words were intended to awaken the souls to wakefulness. Even if they appear to have been based on facts, the facts were chosen so that they would touch on precisely what is most important for people at the present moment in terms of their emotional life, in terms of their entire mental life. |
| 96. Karma and Details of the Law of Karma
15 Oct 1906, Berlin Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond |
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| From the materialistic standpoint it could therefore be said that in a young child the etheric body must be very small. And that is so. We must think of the etheric body more as a force which in certain circumstances may occupy a smaller space than what it actually creates. |
| A fourth member of man's being is what comes into manifestation in self-consciousness, in the ‘I.’ The other members are germinal only and are centred in the ‘I.’ In connection with karmic evolution it is these members of man's being that are of primary interest to us. |
| Or if you experience pain that with time disappears from your consciousness—these are things which can be seen lighting up in the astral body and then disappearing from it. |
| 96. Karma and Details of the Law of Karma
15 Oct 1906, Berlin Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond |
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We shall speak today about Karma and details of the law of Karma. You know that by Karma is meant the great law of cause and effect in the spiritual life and that this law of Karma comes into consideration in Spiritual Science since it applies to repeated lives on Earth. We speak of the interrelationship of Reincarnation and Karma. Now as you certainly know, the prevailing conception of this law of Karma is somewhat superficial, as if it were simply a matter of reward and punishment extending from one incarnation into the other, so that when the individual experiences something evil or reprehensible in the present life he must say to himself unconditionally: Because of some guilt incurred in my previous life, I have deserved this—or, if I do this or that, the corresponding reward or punishment will be mine in the next life—but the matter is not as simple as that. Whosoever desires to understand this law of Karma must penetrate more deeply into the nature of man and his whole being. The law of Karma and Reincarnation, of repeated lives on Earth, comes in for the fiercest possible attacks from the opponents of Spiritual Science, attacks often beginning with the hackneyed phrase: One life on Earth is enough for me. I have no wish to endure it more than once—and finishing with the assertion that it is a teaching which leads to inactivity and blind resignation in face of destiny. We shall go closely into this opposition and be able in the case of every objection to refute it when we study the whole course of Karma. For this purpose, we must remind ourselves once again of what Man is in the deeper sense. We know that man consists, primarily, of the physical body that can be seen by the eyes and touched by the hands, that is investigated and examined by physical science, dissected by anatomy and is familiar in ordinary life. Many materialistic thinkers regard the physical body as being the only evidence of the existence of man. We have then to regard the etheric body, or life-body, as a second member of the human being. It is a body which consists of a substance essentially different from that of the physical body. It is by no means enough to say that the matter, the substance, of which the etheric body consists is essentially finer than the substance of which the physical body is composed. Far rather we have here a completely different ‘substantiality’. It is active matter, matter of the nature of force. This etheric matter which has no connection whatever with what is called ether in Physics, has a certain creative quality and is actually the upbuilding, constructive principle. The best mental picture you can make of the etheric body is that its form is approximately the same as that of the physical body, but it is luminous throughout, although not fully transparent—even for clairvoyants. It is also penetrable; if it were alone one could therefore pass through it. At the same time, it is creative; man's physical organs are built of it. Heart, lung, liver and so forth are created out of this etheric body. From the materialistic standpoint it could therefore be said that in a young child the etheric body must be very small. And that is so. We must think of the etheric body more as a force which in certain circumstances may occupy a smaller space than what it actually creates. Thus, we have here to do with creative life, with a creative body which underlies the physical body that can be touched in space. This etheric body is the bearer of a man's habits. Above all it is the bearer of the memory and the temperament, of the permanent qualities of soul in a human being. In speaking of the soul-nature of a human being we do not mean only the temperament and the qualities of character. But in respect of form all this comes to expression in the etheric body. The third member of man's being is the astral body. It fills and surrounds his body as an aura of light in which the impulses, desires and passions become visible. This has often been described. A fourth member of man's being is what comes into manifestation in self-consciousness, in the ‘I.’ The other members are germinal only and are centred in the ‘I.’ In connection with karmic evolution it is these members of man's being that are of primary interest to us. Above all we must be mindful of a very important fact of life. When you look back over your life and think of your childhood, you will be able to say that you have learnt a very great deal. There was a time when you could not write or read and knew nothing about happenings in the world, about history or literature as well as a great deal else. Now you have knowledge of all this, and it has become a possession of your soul. But you also know that a person can learn a great deal and yet no great change takes place in his original character and temperament. There are individuals who in the course of their lives have amassed a tremendous amount of knowledge and have filled their souls with science of every kind, but who must admit to themselves: I once had a violent temper and still have it today—Or again: I was phlegmatic from the beginning and have remained so. Once upon a time I had this or that habit and still have it. Admittedly there are also individuals who have changed a great deal in their own natures and characters. Perhaps indeed there is no individual who has brought about no change whatever in his fundamental disposition. When you look back to your childhood you will certainly have to admit that you have achieved many changes in your character since then. But at the same time, you will realise that realisation of your characteristics and learning how to change them are processes related to each other as the minute hand of a clock and the hour hand. The transformation of character and temperament proceeds slowly, as does the hour hand of a clock and observations of life are comparatively rapid, rather like the minute hand. This is connected with the fact that everything an individual learns can be received quickly into the soul; the astral body is its bearer and it takes effect in the astral body. When you learn something fundamentally new a feeling comes over you at the moment and is forgotten the next day. Or if you experience pain that with time disappears from your consciousness—these are things which can be seen lighting up in the astral body and then disappearing from it. The astral body is the bearer of all this. Whatever lights up in us temporarily and disappears again has its seat in the astral body. What becomes a man's permanent stock, as it were, in so far as it comes to expression in the life of soul, everything that becomes habit so that it is noticeable in an individual for a long time—perhaps always—in his life, everything that has to do with the temperament, is situated in the etheric body which is denser than the astral body. When an individual succeeds in changing a habit, a characteristic feature of his temperament, when, for example, he rids himself of habitual indolence and becomes alert and attentive, this becomes evident in the etheric body, not only in the astral body. When a person learns a great deal, assimilating it so thoroughly that it gradually becomes an asset of his very soul and an actual constituent of his inner nature—so that he does not only know it but possesses it in a deeper sense—then he is changing the configuration of his etheric body. When someone accepts a moral principle and is obliged to say to himself repeatedly: the principle exists so that is why I obey it—then the principle is rooted in the astral body only. But if the principle is rooted so firmly in him that he simply can do no other than obey it—then it is established in the etheric body. Transition from the astral body to the etheric body takes place slowly and gradually in the course of life. We will now pass from a study of these members of man's constitution to their connection with Karma. What takes place during the same life on Earth only slowly, that is to say the transition of something that to begin with is in the astral body into the etheric body manifests karmically from one incarnation to the other in the following way.—Someone who has tried to judge things in accordance with true morality, and who in this striving may perhaps still have been prompted by other considerations, finds the fruits of this striving in his next life as a basic quality of his etheric body, as a kind of habit, as a quality of his character. What is active in the present life in the astral body becomes in the next life an attribute of the etheric body. When you come across a person with a certain praiseworthy habit which is constantly expressed in his life, this, is an indication that in his earlier incarnation he had absorbed the corresponding ideas or closely scrutinised his own nature. Propensities and habits stem from ideas, thoughts and concepts that had been formed in previous lives. If you pay attention to this, you can make provision for the next incarnation by laying the foundation of a definite organisation of the etheric body. You can say to yourself: I shall try in this life to convince myself over and over again that this or that is good and right. Then the etheric body will ultimately show you that it is good and right in the very nature of things to follow the corresponding principles. A certain concept that can be explained in the light of karma, is particularly important here. It is the concept of conscience. What arises from a man's conscience is equally something that has been acquired. He has a conscience, an instinct for what is good, right and true only because in his past lives, in his experiences during life, in his moral principles, he has moulded this conscience. You can provide for the strengthening and enhancement of conscience if you undertake every day to deepen your moral conceptions. Moral conceptions become conscience in the next life and the one after that. So you see, that what the minute hand on the clock of life shows us becomes the hour hand in the next life. There must, however, be a certain strengthening of the moral principle and its realisation in one life and then they are consolidated for the next. What is established in the etheric body of one life brings to maturity the attributes of the physical body of the next life. Good habits, good inclinations, good traits of character, prepare healthiness, physical proficiency, physical strength, therefore a healthy physical body, for the next life. A healthy physical body in one life indicates that the individual concerned prepared this physical body for himself in an earlier life through self-acquired habits and qualities of character. A particularly strong connection exists between a well-developed memory in one life and the physical body in the next life. Let us take as an example a person who forgets everything immediately and another who has a faithful memory. One need only consciously recall experiences into the memory and practise this consistently, and it will finally be noticed that not only has a good memory of things for which one has had specific training been acquired, but that this memory also becomes a quite different faculty which comes into consideration during the process of spiritual development. The capacity to survey the past develops to a very marked degree. An individual who develops his memory conscientiously will be reborn with physical soundness, with limbs that can be truly useful to him for giving effect to what his soul inwardly desires. A body that is incapable of giving effect to what the soul wishes stems from a previous life during which no care was given to the development of a good and healthy memory but when, through slovenliness, forgetfulness prevailed. Today we are speaking only of single phenomena, but you can realise the magnitude of the domain of which we are speaking. A genuine occultist will never indulge in speculations on this subject. What I have put before you are not theories but definite cases that have been tested. What has been said here is based upon specific results of research. When it was stated that a sound physical organism which obeys the soul can be traced back to a good memory in the previous life, a number of cases had been investigated and the indications given were based upon the facts ascertained by that investigation. Facts alone have been presented. Now what develops in the etheric body passes in the next life into the physical body. Good inclinations, qualities of character, and proficient habits in life come to expression in a healthy physical body in the next incarnation, whereas the opposite qualities produce a sickly organism in the next life. This is not to be understood in the sense that a particular disease stems from a particular quality, but certain predispositions for illness can always be led back to quite definite qualities of character and temperament in the previous life. An individual whose life in the past was fraught with tainted qualities of character has, in the present life, an organism that is more easily prone to physical illnesses than the organism of an individual who was equipped with healthy characteristics and a sound temperament. Such an individual will be reborn with a body that can be exposed to every possible form of epidemic without being infected. You see, therefore, that things in the world are complicated and are subject to the law of cause and effect. To give an example, here is a case based on definite results of investigation. It may at first be something of a shock but in a study group it may certainly be spoken of. A certain individual had developed an entirely egoistic urge for acquisition, a veritable greed for external wealth. It was not a matter of a healthy striving for riches which may spring from an altruistic aim to be of help and engage in selfless activity in the world—that is something different—but it was a case of an egoistic longing for acquisition due to a particular constitution of the etheric body; the striving for acquisition was abnormal. Such an individual may very possibly be born in the next life with a physical body prone to catch infectious diseases. In numerous cases it has been established by occultism that individuals readily prone to infection from epidemics in the present life, were possessed of a pathological sense for acquisitions in the previous life. Other examples could be specifically quoted. Thus, there are two characteristics which have a clearly recognisable influence upon the karmic formation of the following life. There we must speak to begin with of the strong influence exerted by a loving, benevolent attitude towards one's fellow men. There are individuals who accept everything from their fellowmen with benevolence, who deal with their environment lovingly and sympathetically. In many cases this love extends far beyond pure philanthropy. Such individuals love nature and the whole world. The more strongly this sense of all-embracing love has developed and become habit in the soul and is therefore rooted in the etheric body, the greater becomes the capacity of the individual concerned to retain the qualities of youth for a long time in a subsequent incarnation. Therefore an individual who ages very late in life, who remains youthful and mobile, has behind him an earlier life—or maybe several lives—during which he had a true love of his environment. The more strongly he expresses love for his environment, the longer he remains physically youthful in a following incarnation. An individual prone to show antipathy towards his fellowmen, ages early in the next life. A body that shows the signs of age at a physically early age, stems from the life of a perverse critic, from a life of aversion and ill-will. Thus, we see that life can be influenced by a conscious intervention in Karma. A person capable of love in the present life can rest assured that in the next life he will have a body that reveals all the traits of youth. Individuals who become harsh critics at an early age will in the next life be people who are almost born with wrinkles! That is a radical expression, but it is based upon truth. Thus, the laws of Karma reveal the connection between health and the spiritual life. Everybody will agree that this connection cannot be immediately obvious but that individual details must doubted that a genuinely moral, sincere, conscientious soul is the future creator of a healthy body. But actual knowledge of this cannot be expected from one day to the next, nor can it be believed that a person afflicted with flaws of soul can be healed overnight. It should also be realised that one must rise above egoism and adopt a selfless mode of life that does not want to garner the fruits of its deeds immediately. What becomes habit, however, can react upon the physical body already in the present life. A proof of this is afforded by occult development which can acquire conscious influence not only upon the astral body but also upon the etheric body. An individual who achieves occult development learns how to influence not only his astral body but also his etheric body and his physical body. Through the transformation of habitual behaviour, a violent, choleric individual can become a gentle character, a highly emotional human being an equable, harmonious person. An occultist must change his habits in a comparatively short time. Genuine development pre-supposes that what a man learns does not remain mere teaching but penetrates into the etheric body. In an occultist it penetrates even into the physical body. He learns to control the heartbeat, the pulse beat and the breathing. A process that in ordinary life is distributed over many incarnations is therefore shortened. The process of Karma itself is shortened in the case of an occultist. Much that will be discussed this Winter will become more intelligible to us when we learn of certain more intimate karmic connections, for example the difference between the karma of a beautiful and an ugly human being. What is the karma of a beautiful human being? Something comes into consideration there that at first seems incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. Beauty of the physical body is in many cases, not always but very often, a consequence of suffering endured in the preceding life. Suffering in the preceding life—physical and also soul-suffering—becomes beauty in a subsequent life, beauty of the external physical body. In these cases, it is permissible to use an analogy which I have often applied. How does the beautiful pearl in a pearl-oyster originate? Actually, as the result of an illness. Approximately speaking, therefore, there is a karmic process which represents the connection of illness, of suffering, with beauty. This beauty is often bought at the cost of suffering and illness. Wisdom too is in many respects bought at the cost of pain. It is not without interest that a. certain example of outer investigation today confirms in many ways what occultists have said for thousands of years, namely, that wisdom is connected with pain and sufferings, with a life of earnestness and renunciation in the previous existence. It is sometimes very rewarding to consult ordinary scientific investigation. A book on the effects of thinking has recently been published. Its aim is to show how in the physiognomy of a human being there is engraved the quality and trend of his thinking. The author of the book who clearly does not know much about occultism has nevertheless discovered through outer observation that an impression of pain once endured can be recognised in the physiognomy of a thinker. Modern science is on the point of confirming ancient occult wisdom little by little. In the coming years this will be the case far more often than any learned scholar dreams of. It will now be still easier for you to realise that one cannot give way to blind belief or submission to authority in connection with certain revelations of the history of spiritual life. Faced with the problem of understanding Karmic law in the case of a phenomenon such as Schopenhauer, whose whole world-conception was filled with a mood of pessimism, nobody possessed of deeper insight must believe that this pessimism represents the fundamental attitude of humanity in general. It is far rather the individual trait of Schopenhauer's soul, karmically forecast and brought about by a certain constitution of his etheric body. This pessimistic mood of his thinking can only be understood by examining the karmic aspect. In an earlier life—and this is an absolutely real explanation—a personality of this nature had had no opportunity of doing much good. Because of his position in life and vocation this man had been obliged to commit much evil and injustice. And this evil and injustice which he was fated—not by karma but by his vocation—to bring about, returned to him in the form of a certain feeling of antipathy towards the world he now encountered. This antipathy was the recapitulation of his own deeds. If you want to understand karma you should not adopt the fatalistic standpoint that everything is predestined. A man need not be condemned by his previous lives to carry out his present deeds. Adjustment is often made in the next life. Thus, deeds are not always the fruits of an earlier life but in certain cases find their adjustment in a future speaking of the cause of the pessimistic mood in Schopenhauer. We must strictly differentiate between everything a man accomplishes as his own individual deeds, deeds which proceed entirely from himself, and those made obligatory by his race, family and profession. Two Councillors may do the same thing because they happen to be Councillors but that too is exempted. They may however also perform utterly different deeds because they are different human beings. And that is what we are considering now. Deeds that stem from a man's personality—that is what meets him as his outer destiny in the next incarnation. If some individual finds himself in fortunate circumstances of life, if he enjoys a favourable destiny, this leads back to the just, ingenious and good deeds of an earlier life. If a man's circumstances in life are unfavourable, if he has many failures and is surrounded by adverse conditions—external circumstances are meant, not the qualities of the physical body—this equally leads back to personal deeds of the previous life. What an individual has accomplished as the result of his vocation and family circumstances is stored in his temperament and character. Thus, the destiny of a man is determined by his personal deeds in the preceding life. Vice versa, through good, intelligent and righteous deeds, he can bring about a favourable or unfavourable destiny in the next incarnation. An individual who comes into contact with particular personalities has himself created the conditions for this in a preceding life. He had had something to do with these individuals and has himself now led them into his environment. Here is an example from the time of the Vehmic tribunals.1 One such tribunal was concerned with an execution. The victim was placed before masked judges who immediately gave effect to the judgment. This is a case where a man was condemned and executed. Occult investigation of his destiny in the earlier incarnations brought to light the fact that the individual who had been executed by the five judges had, at the time, when he was a chieftain, allowed these five persons to be murdered. His deed in days gone by had brought these five individuals as it were with magnetic force again into his life and they wreaked their vengeance upon him. This is a radical case, but it is founded upon universal law. You cannot come into contact with an individual who makes an impact upon your life if you have not yourself brought him into your orbit on the basis of earlier relationships. It may, of course, also he the case that through general conditions, through his vocation or family a man is led into contact with individuals he had never yet encountered. But then, through their mutual behaviour, the foundation is laid for a meeting in the next incarnation, a meeting connected with the destinies and lives of the individuals concerned. You will realise that these illustrations of Karma are in many respects complicated and by no means so easy to explain. It is important to study these examples individually because only so can we really understand life. It must again and again be stressed that the idea of Karma, rightly understood and to be found in Christianity, must never be thought to contradict the teaching of the Redemption. To many of you I have already spoken of the compatibility of the Christian teaching of the Redemption with the idea of Karma, but there are new listeners here. Many misunderstandings are to be found, due very often to the fact that numbers of people talk about Theosophy without much understanding. It is stated that Karma means simply that a man must take upon himself all the effects of his deeds. If he has committed some offence, he alone can redeem himself from his sin. From this point of view many Theosophists declare that the thought of the Redemption through Christ Jesus is unfounded, that Theosophy could not accept the idea of Redemption through another being, for every man must redeem himself. Christian Theologians dispute this, saying: we believe in the Redemption through Christ Jesus, but you believe in self-redemption. This is irreconceivable.2 Meanwhile, Karma is a kind of life account that can quite rightly be compared with a salesman's accounts. On the one side there are the debit entries and on the other the credit entries. They are added and the balance struck. It would be a peculiar salesman who said: I will do no more business in order that my balance shall not be upset.—Just as in every moment of a salesman's life a new transaction can be made, so at every moment through a new deed, new karma can be created. When somebody says: A man has himself brought about his suffering, he has deserved it, so I may not help him—this is so much nonsense. It is just as if one thousand marks would help you, but if I were to give them to you, I should upset your account book.—That would certainly not be the case! The sum of money lent would simply be entered in the account book. It is the same with life. Compensation must be made but it need not necessarily be made by oneself. Karma does not signify self-compensation but only that compensation shall be made through a deed. Now suppose you are a wealthy, powerful person who can help not only one but two. Then you can intervene in the Karma of two human beings. Just because Karma exists you can intervene in the life accounts of both these two people. There are individuals who can help three, four, five people—indeed even hundreds. Such individuals will not say: I must not help those others because then I shall intervene in their Karma.—Far rather, they will help them. Such help can be vouchsafed by a most mighty Being who once appeared in the world co those who account themselves His followers. This Being is Christ Jesus. The fact that the Redemption was brought about by a certain form of evil, does not contravene the law of Karma. The Redemption through Christ Jesus is perfectly compatible with the law of Karma, just as is the help given by the wealthy man to the bankrupt salesman. The misunderstandings arise from the fact that Theosophists do not basically understand Karma and Theologians have not bothered about it. It is precisely through the intrinsic nature and importance of the deed of a single sublime Being that the validity of the law of Karma is guaranteed. When, in the future, these things are rightly understood, it will become evident for the first time that Theosophy is not an opponent of any confession that has a genuine foundation and how it leads far rather to a true understanding of it. If you have discerned the law of Karma in a certain number of cases, you will feel that you have here perceived a deep necessity of spiritual life. Truth to tell, the law of Karma has been rightly understood only by one to whom it is not merely a piece of theoretic knowledge but has become part of his whole world of feeling and perception. Inner security and harmony then pervade the whole of life. And those people who again and again assert that the law of Karma leads to inactivity and lethargy, that it causes a person to abandon himself to his destiny and does not lead to freedom in life—such people have not made any endeavour to live in harmony with the law of Karma. To live in accordance with the law of Karma means to infuse courage and hope into the soul. The law of Karma must above all throw light upon our future. We must think less about the past than about the future. It has been indicated in many ways that in compliance with the law of Karma a man can produce effects far into the future by preparing in his astral body the future configuration of the etheric body and in the course of further progress the future formation of the physical body. When you have grasped the implications of this you will realise the tremendous importance of these connections and what a deepening the idea of education, especially of that of peoples, will experience in the light of the law of Karma. If efforts are made today to induce human beings to live in conformity with the law of Karma and to prepare the configuration of their future accordingly, they are at the same time preparing the future communities of peoples. After all, life in the future will consist of the reincarnated human beings of the present. Healthy races and especially healthy leaders of the future races will come into existence if human beings live on into the future intelligently, in accordance with the law of Karma. For if the single individual achieves perfection in some degree, he has an effect upon the organisms of the peoples and of races. The actual mechanism of Karma is a matter for early discussion. The question is concerned with which forces are being activated when the astral characteristics of the present life are transmitted to the etheric body in the next life and which forces bring it about that the qualities established in the etheric body of the present life—habits and inclinations—are carried over into the physical predisposition of the next life. It is still more difficult to answer the following question: Which forces are at work in cases where a man's deeds in the present life determine his external environment in the next incarnation when he not only gathers around him the individuals with whom he has and previously had, something to do, but also takes his place within the world of Nature that surrounds him, in the plant world and animal world, also in the conditions of the race and society which he himself has prepared? What is the character of these forces which bring all this again to the individual concerned? How does it come about that two human beings who had some connection with each other in an earlier life and of whom one is reborn in America and the other in Europe are nevertheless led together? Such are the great questions which we will endeavour to answer next time. Briefly, how do the relationships of the one life form the relationships of the next? As we shall have many guests, this question will also be suitable for study at the general Meeting. Naturally, those who have been present at this series of lectures will be at an advantage. The title of the next lecture will be: The Technique of Karma. Thus, consideration of an important question in life will have been dealt with today and next time. I ask you to bear in mind that what has been said consisted of selected cases, based upon actual occult facts. Everything that has been disclosed today on the subject of karmic connections leads back to actual investigation of the Karma of specific individuals. The study of Karma also gives us knowledge of how to evaluate, even in the present life, the connection between illness and specific characteristics, of the life of soul, especially the awakening of certain forces of the soul. So far those who have assimilated the lectures on Karma given here, what is said in general outline in the Architektenhaus lectures about illness and death, suffering and evil, will have been amplified in greater detail. During this Winter special consideration will be given here and elsewhere to the place of the spiritual—scientific view of the world in practical life. In this way we shall strengthen the impulse and the insight ensuring that Spiritual Science is not presented as something impractical but that it is a factor in practical life itself.
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| 193. Some Characteristics of Today
12 Jun 1919, Heidenheim Translator Unknown |
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| Spiritual forces are there and we should make our decisions, our deeds, our whole thinking dependent on them. This is demanded of us to-day! Much is changing in the present time. Let me point to something symptomatic which also sounds strange when spoken of, but appears of the greatest importance when viewed spiritually. |
| It is not necessary that we should be conscious of these decisions; in our sub-consciousness we live through in the night what we can experience on the following day. Man has not yet got so far as to be able to survey it prophetically, but that is not the point. |
| But it appears as if this is being learnt with difficulty, for this nation is still inclined to condemn everything else rather than lack of consciousness of responsibility towards the spirit. The lamentable events occurring in this domain to-day show that men's souls are still asleep. |
| 193. Some Characteristics of Today
12 Jun 1919, Heidenheim Translator Unknown |
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We are living at a time when one can see what anthroposophic Spiritual Science—as it is called—has really been striving after for years. To a certain extent the fiery signs of the times can be regarded as proving the necessity that led to the birth of this movement and has kept it before the world for some years now. And perhaps the best result of our anthroposophic strivings would be a conviction of this necessity in the hearts and souls of those taking part. Though this or that event in the external world may take on a stormy character, though that which is striving to develop from out of the depths of human evolution may have this or that appearance, the essential nature of what is happening to-day can only be grasped if we look at those events which escape the ordinary human powers of perception still usual among us. Such events are only really perceptible when we study the world from a spiritual point of view. I should like to start by mentioning one such phenomenon which almost escapes notice among the manifold stormy events of to-day. It is regarded as something insignificant and unimportant, but it is an actual fact for one who, from spiritual sources, has acquired the ability to study life as it actually is. It may sound an extraordinary statement, but it is nevertheless true, that for some seven, eight or ten years now a real student of human life can observe quite a different expression on the faces of new-born babies. Many people, it is true, do not notice this, for the most important things of life pass unheeded to-day. But one who has acquired an eye for such things knows that very many children born during the last seven to ten years wear a melancholy expression. It is as if they ‘held back’ from the world. One might say that even from the first days of life, from the first week onwards, something different can be seen in the physiognomy of these children. And if we investigate this remarkable fact that seems so strange to the man of to-day, we find that the souls entering the world through birth bear within them from before conception and birth that which gives their faces this melancholy expression. Hidden though it often be behind all their smiles, it is nevertheless there in the faces of these children, almost from birth. It was not there formerly. In these souls there lives—though it is quite unconscious, of course—a “reluctance” to enter life. Souls entering through birth to-day feel a kind of hindrance, a difficulty, in entering the physical world. Now it is a fact that man undergoes an important experience in the spiritual world before entering the physical world through conception and birth, and the effects of this experience are active in his coming life. Here on the earth men die; they pass through the gate of death, laying aside their physical bodies and taking their souls into the spiritual world. These souls still bear within them the effects of all they have experienced in the physical world. After passing through the gates of death human souls appear, on the whole, as the after-effects of what they have immediately experienced in earthly life. Now such souls meet those who are about to descend into a physical body. (This is actually the case. I can only tell you of it, for these things can only be brought from the spiritual world through actual experience of them.) This meeting between those souls who have just passed through the gate of death and those who are just about to enter the physical world through the gate of birth is an important event. Its effect is decisive in many respects. In a certain sense, its function is to give the descending souls some idea of what they will encounter here. It is from this meeting that the “impulse” is derived that stamps the peculiar expression of melancholy on the faces of children entering the world to-day. They do not want to enter the world of which they have learnt through this meeting. For they know how, in a sense, their “spiritual plumage” will be ruffled by what mankind, immersed in materialistic thoughts and feelings, views and deeds, is experiencing on the earth to-day. This fact (which, naturally, can only be established spiritually) and other things beside throw a strong light on our whole age. The present times can only be understood on such a basis, and we ought to strive for such an understanding. I have started from something which can, of course, only be apprehended through spiritual perception. But other events of to-day are speaking to us loudly and clearly and can strike everyone who, though without spiritual vision, does not go through life half asleep. We have seen the great catastrophe of the World-War extend over the world during the last four or five years, causing great harm; we can turn our thoughts again and again to the outward and visible causes of this terrible catastrophe (as, I believe, everyone who is not asleep must do); we can study the course of this catastrophe and, finally, the events which have followed from it over large areas of the globe. One thing must be clear to every soul that is really awake. Consider the peculiar fact that this catastrophe of the world-war burst over Central Europe, for example, actually without anyone knowing how it all came about. This was indeed the case. People ask how it arose, pronounce this or that person guilty—and then, when they imagine they have laid the blame at somebody's door, repeat again and again: Yet it cannot be like that; there must have been some other factor at work. People tell themselves that a great social movement has developed out of the catastrophe of the world war. Whether they belong to a party or not they try to understand what ought to be done in the present social catastrophe. Yet all the thoughts they form about it are only “thought-mummies” in the face of current events—thoughts that are powerless before the storm of events and quite inadequate to their true character. And if we look more closely at all this—especially now when all kinds of memoirs are being published by persons who, apparently, were directly concerned in the outbreak of the world-catastrophe—we have to ask ourselves: Were these people really “within” the events of four or five years ago? Did they really know what they were doing? Had they any conception of the far-reaching consequences of what their intellects had thought out? People ought more and more to admit to themselves to-day what the Russian Minister Suchomlinoff admitted at his trial. Speaking of the three or four hours in which he made his most important decisions, he said: I must have lost my reason then; I must, indeed, have been mad! Such things are very significant. They point to the wide-spread mental confusion among those concerned. And one who is really in a position to see through the terrible nature of present world-events, discovers what people will come to see more and more, namely: that there was not so very much moral failure, but all the more intellectual blundering through sheer incapacity to grasp world-events. It is just the same to-day. How helpless, in the main, is the great majority of people in the face of world-events that have come upon them. A most serious question is presented here. What really lies at the base of all this? At the base of this lies something which is extraordinarily difficult for our materialistically-minded age to grasp, namely: that just since the historical moment in which the wave of materialism rose especially high, the strongest spiritual force that has ever willed to enter human life from the spiritual world is now seeking to enter. It is this that is characteristic of our age. Since the beginning of the last, third of the 19th century the spirit—the spiritual world—is willing to reveal itself to men in all strength; yet men have gradually reached a point in their development when they are only willing to use their physical bodies as instruments for receiving anything at all in the world. Their materialistic outlook has accustomed them to consider—even to maintain on theoretical grounds that the physical body is the instrument of thinking and, indeed, of feeling and willing too. Men have persuaded themselves that the physical body is the instrument of all spiritual life. They have not persuaded themselves of this without grounds; they have good reason for this, namely: That man in the course of his evolution had gradually come to be able to use only the physical body. It had really come about that only the physical body could be used as the instrument of spiritual activity. So we stand to-day at the infinitely important juncture in human evolution where, on the one hand, the spiritual world is willing to reveal itself with great power, while, on the other, man must find the strength to free himself from his greatest entanglement in what is material and come to a new reception of spiritual revelations. To-day man is confronted by the greatest trial of his strength—his power to work his way in freedom to the spirit which is approaching him of itself, if he does not shut himself off from it. The time is past when the spiritual could reveal itself to man in all sorts of subconscious and unconscious processes. The time has come when man must receive the light of the spirit through a free, inner deed. All the confusion and want of clarity in which men are living to-day come from the fact that men must receive something that they do not yet want to receive: an entirely new understanding of things. The old ways of thought, the old ways of regarding world-events, came to full expression in the terrible catastrophe of the world-war. Its infinitely significant warning signs are nothing but a call to re-model our ways of thinking, to try a new way of regarding the world, for the old way can only lead again and again to chaos and confusion. It is time we realised this. It is time we realised that the leading statesmen in 1914 had come to a point at which nothing more could be achieved with the old methods of thought. Because of this they led humanity into misfortune. People must impress this fact strongly upon themselves, or they will not form a strong resolution really to meet the spirit and the life of the spirit in freedom and inwardness of soul. The lamentable thing about the time in which we are living is that we see things being revealed everywhere which cannot be understood with previous points of view and previous conceptions of life; yet people cling firmly to these old points of view and conceptions of life and simply do not want to come to new modes of conception. The anthroposophic view of the world wanted to prepare mankind for such new modes. Fundamentally, the anthroposophic view of the world had no real opponents except inner comfort and laziness of soul. People cannot rouse themselves to bring the inner forces of their souls to meet the spiritual wave invading our life so powerfully to-day. I have just said that people are no longer accustomed to use anything but their physical bodies for thinking. It is this that had led to the materialistic view of the world. Now there is one thing that simply must be understood to-day. Nature, as studied by natural science to-day—that science which has achieved so many triumphs—can be understood with the instrument of the physical brain or of the physical body in general. But one cannot understand human life with this instrument of the physical body. We can only understand human life if we can rise to a thinking that is not produced by the physical body alone. It is this thinking that should be cultivated through the anthroposophic view of the world. Of course people say they do not understand the anthroposophic outlook—what is given in our books or presented in lectures. And we can quite believe them. But what does this mean? It only means that they want to se their physical brains for understanding. They do not want to learn another kind of thinking than that which can lazily find support in the physical brain. The anthroposophic view of the world cannot, of course, be understood with such thinking. It is not that one would have to be clairvoyant in order to understand it. But one must train oneself to a thinking that is not bound to the physical brain. What is to be found in anthroposophic literature and can be acquired with the healthy human understanding—for the healthy human understanding is not bound to the brain—gradually develops a thinking, a feeling and a willing that are adequate to the needs of to-day. It is a fact that what the present requires of us cannot be understood by the instrument of the physical body; it must be apprehended, through the instrument of the etheric body, i.e., with the body of formative forces underlying the physical body. The spiritual world which is striving to reveal itself to men, only finds expression in their deeply unconscious feelings. Men are dominated by an unconquerable fear of the spiritual world. When they say they do not understand spiritual science this is really only an excuse. The truth is, they are afraid of the revelations of the spiritual world. It is only because they will not admit this fear that they say they do not understand spiritual science, or that it is not logical—or they make other excuses. In truth, they are afraid and therefore seek all possible excuses in order to escape from the great problems. How glad people are when they can escape the great tasks and riddles of present day life! When one spoke, maybe from this or that angle, of important problems of our age, people grew uncomfortable. Then perhaps they went to see the plays of Ibsen in which some of the great problems of the age find partial expression. But they did not need to take these seriously; all that is “merely” dramatic art. People grew uncomfortable when one spoke to them directly of the penetration of the physical world by the spiritual. Now Björnson had treated of this in his dramas, but one had no need to believe it; it was “only” art. People felt an unconquerable fear of taking these things seriously. Again, class differences became greater and greater, the gulf between the governing and proletarian classes became wider and wider. The social question produced riddles; one talked of these but felt uncomfortable about them. Yet people went to the theatre to see Hauptmann's “Weavers,” though they felt no need to take a serious attitude to the problems it presented. One let oneself be stirred a little by the abysmal depths in human life, but there was no need to take it seriously, for it was “just” art. People took refuge in something that they did not need to take seriously. This is a phenomenon that is characteristic of the psychology of the age. What lies behind this? Behind this lies the fact that men, in accordance with the will on the part of the spiritual world to reveal itself to them, ought to have striven to take seriously certain things which cannot be grasped through the instrumentality of the physical body, but only through “imaginative” forces—just as art itself can only be grasped by “imaginative” forces. Man's physical body is built up like a natural product; it is a work of nature. Man's etheric body is built up like a work of art; it is a real work of plastic art—only, it is in constant motion. And what man receives (for his enjoyment) from understanding a work of art, must be intensified and clarified, must become perception which he takes seriously, i.e., “Imagination,” “Inspiration” and “Intuition.” Man then understands what is willing to reveal itself to him to-day. For behind present events waits concealed what can only be understood spiritually. One should feel deeply that the spiritual revelation trying to enter our present world can only be grasped through spiritual science itself i.e., through that thinking and feeling, through those inner impulses of will which can be trained by spiritual science and belong to the same region of soul as artistic perceptions—though these are not taken seriously and remain mere mirror-images. At one time I tried to draw attention to something that is urgently needed by the present age. Naturally it was not understood because of the philistine character of our science—that terrible monster of official, academic science. My book “Philosophie der Freiheit,” which appeared in 1892, contains a chapter entitled “Die Moralische Phantasie” (Moral Imagination). In terms of Spiritual Science one could say “imaginative moral impulses.” I wanted to point out that the domain usually reached only in artistic fantasy must now be grasped by mankind in all earnestness, for it represents a stage that man must attain in order to receive the super-sensible which cannot be grasped by the brain. At the beginning of the nineties I wanted to point out, at least in regard to man's moral perceptions, that the super-sensible must now be grasped in all earnestness. One should realise all this to-day; one should feel that the thoughts, the inner impulses of soul that were carried over into the catastrophe of the world-war and into the present period of social upheaval are no longer of any use. We need new “impulses” (or springs of action). If one comes to-day with a new “impulse,” it is the last thing that people understand. For if one brings a new “impulse,” whose source is entirely within the spiritual world, and presents it as a remedy for the evils of our age, complaints are heard on all sides, from the extreme right to the extreme left, that it is all incomprehensible. Of course one does not understand it if one wants to retain the old forms of thinking. But to-day it is necessary to overcome these old forms, re-modelling one's whole soul inwardly. All external revolutions, no matter how agreeable to this or that party or class, lead into the worst of blind alleys and will bring the greatest misery to mankind if not illuminated by the inner revolution of the soul. This means throwing off one's absorption in the purely materialistic view of the world and preparing actively to receive the spiritual wave that is willing to invade human evolution as a new revelation. The revolution from matter to spirit is the only salutary revolution; all others are only like diseases of childhood—scarlet-fever or measles—afflicting the early stages of what is trying to come to healthy expression in the emergence of the spirit at the present time. A strong inner resolution is necessary to-day if we are to be equal to the demands made upon us by our present age. Let us consider in all earnestness that it is a spiritual world that is trying to invade our life. Spiritual forces are there and we should make our decisions, our deeds, our whole thinking dependent on them. This is demanded of us to-day! Much is changing in the present time. Let me point to something symptomatic which also sounds strange when spoken of, but appears of the greatest importance when viewed spiritually. I have just spoken to you of the etheric body as a necessary instrument for a certain spiritual understanding of what in art need only remain a mirror-image. Now we know from Spiritual Science that in addition to the physical body and “etheric body” we possess an “astral body”—or whatever you like to call it. It is the psychic element proper and is essentially more spiritual than the “etheric body.” At the time of his physical development man was naturally more “remote” from this than from his “etheric body.” For the “etheric body,” underlying, as it does, the physical body, has a kind of “form” [Bildgestalt] even though it is a “form” in constant motion. The “astral body,” however, is really formless. When we speak of it, we are speaking of an “image” or “picture” which, we know, is only intended to “represent” the “astral body,” for this is really formless. The “astral body” has been changing during the last three to four centuries and is very different in modern man. The human beings of the past had “astral bodies” that were, comparatively speaking, permeated with all kinds of spiritual forces; the spiritual feelings and impulses at work in their lives were due to this spiritual element in their “astral bodies.” To-day our “astral bodies” have becomeempty. They are remarkably empty, and this is because, at the present time, when the power of the spiritual world is striving to reveal itself from without (to a certain extent), man is to receive this external spiritual world. Hence his “astral body” has gradually become empty. He ought to fill himself again with what is revealing itself from without. This has a quite definite effect on man. And now I am coming to a fact which, as I have already said, sounds so very strange when one speaks of it just as strange as when one speaks of the child's melancholy countenance. Nevertheless it is a fact. The most important event in the series that led to the outbreak of the catastrophe of the world-war fell—so far as Berlin was concerned—on the 1st [of] August, at some time between a quarter past three in the afternoon and eleven or twelve o'clock at night. Various people were concerned—people belonging, of course, to our materialistic age. Now for the materialistically-minded man of to-day that is the most unfavourable time for making decisions. For we have come to a very, very important point in human evolution. The man of to-day cannot form sensible decisions at all if he does not wake up with them in the morning. This is true, however strange it may sound, and men will recognise it more and more from external acts. It is not necessary that we should be conscious of these decisions; in our sub-consciousness we live through in the night what we can experience on the following day. Man has not yet got so far as to be able to survey it prophetically, but that is not the point. If you harbour a thought at 3:30 or 6 o'clock, it may be a thought that you have already had in the night and now arises in you again. If, however, a thought arises that you have not already formed in the night but which is produced from out of the events of the day, it cannot be a reasonable thought in the case of the man of to-day. The man of to-day has to draw his most important impulses from the spiritual world. These do not come from the physical world at all. To-day we cannot but be “unreasonable” if we do not bring our decisions with us, if we do not appeal to this life in the spiritual world. When our “astral body” is free at night, i.e., outside the physical and “etheric” bodies and together with the spiritual world, that which is most essential takes place; it is prepared for the Reason of the day (and more so than in the case of our ancestors). The moment of waking should be sacred for the modern man. He should feel: I come from the spiritual world and enter the physical; all that is good, all that makes me capable of being a reasonable man, I have experienced between falling asleep and waking up, through intercourse with the spiritual world, through intercourse with the dead I have known in life and who have died before me—in short, through intercourse with those who are no longer in a physical body. I experience it when I am with them in the purely spiritual world. From this experience I ought to draw the fundamental mood of sacred regard for the moment of waking; this fundamental feeling will then make it possible for me throughout the day to say in one case “Here I am helped by a spiritual impulse” and in another case “Here I receive no help; this must not be decided before tomorrow.” That is a way of conducting one's life spiritually, really reckoning with spiritual factors. Of course, in a materialistic age men do not reckon with spiritual factors for they are always so “clever.” They believe that nothing more than the instrument of the physical body is required in order to be clever. They do not appeal to what can be revealed to them when they are separated from their physical body and are together with the spiritual world in their “astral body.” Nothing but the will to conduct life spiritually, the will to allow spiritual decisions, spiritual impulses, to play a part in what we do in the physical world can make humanity healthy again. This is what man should really consider thoroughly to-day. The anthroposophic view of the world cannot consist in a number of abstract concepts which we receive, studying them and resting content that we have a different view of the world from that of others. No; our whole thinking and our whole feeling must become different, so that we realise that we must let our life be penetrated by the light of the spirit. Humanity's present misfortunes have come from its refusal to entertain the spiritual—an attitude that has been cultivated to the utmost. The catastrophe of the world-war has, more than any previous event, arisen from external, purely material causes. It has therefore been the most terrible catastrophe of all. Man should learn from it that he was driven into it by his previous thinking, feeling and willing; he will not come out of it—though it will assume other forms—until he boldly determines to undertake the inner transformation of his soul. The facts which I have put before you are indeed facts: the melancholy expression on the faces of children, the necessity of using our etheric body for gaining an understanding of the world, and the necessity of appealing to the moment of waking, to what remains of the previous sleep and glows on, as it were, in us.. It will be more and more necessary for man's future evolution that he should let the spirit play an active part. One should understand that the anthroposophic view of the world is not intended as something sensational for “psychic idlers”—and many of our present day mystics are just that. One should see in it not a kind of dessert supplementing life's external, physical enjoyments, but something connected with the deepest impulses of our cultural life. The latter cannot become healthy unless fructified by the anthroposophic view of the world. We should engrave this fact deeply upon our souls when we have learnt to know this anthroposophic view. With the above words I wanted to describe, from a certain point of view, the present decisive moment in human evolution. Of course it is quite easy, if we judge with the thoughts of the age, to condemn as mere foolishness the important things that are most in need of being said to-day. People believe themselves Christians but have not even understood the saying that what is wisdom with man is often foolishness unto God, and that all foolishness—perhaps folly and madness—before men can yet be wisdom unto God. Indeed, people to-day forget so easily the inner impulses and like to cling to the empty phrase. When one speaks to men to-day and utters the word “Christian” or “Christ” or “Jesus” after every fifth word, one is considered to be speaking in a Christian sense, even if what one is saying may be very unchristian. But if we hold we are making known what the Christ is revealing to our souls to-day, and if in doing so we take account of the commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”—a saying that has been carried over into Christianity—people find it unchristian. They repeat, in parrot fashion, the Ten Commandments, but take the name of their God in vain every moment and believe themselves to be specially Christian in consequence. So, too, one is not regarded as a true German if one has not always the word “German” on one's lips; though to-day the important thing is to see that the deepest forces of the German people have been, as it were, trampled under foot during the last thirty years and must be raised again by a spiritual deepening. We look to the West and find a civilization that strives to become completely materialistic, though it has, at least, a certain inner surety of instinct and on this account cannot completely drown in materialism. We look to the East and find a cultural life that despises the West and us too, for the Eastern culture still clings to an ancient spirituality and is renewing it in a certain way. We stand between these and are called to find the right path between Western materialism, and Eastern spirituality (which is not suitable for us). We in Central Europe should become conscious of our great responsibility and conscious, too, how much our sense of responsibility for this position has been lost in the last decades. What has our spiritual life become? An appendage to the political life and to the economic life. The state as trustee of the spiritual [cultural] life, especially of education, has destroyed the spiritual life. The economic life on which we depend for our daily bread has further destroyed us. We require a free spiritual life, for only into such can we introduce that which the spiritual world would reveal to mankind. This stream of spiritual life must descend! But it will never reveal itself to the servant of the state, the state professor; and it will never reveal itself to one who, in the spiritual life, is the coolie of the economic life. It will only reveal itself to him who has daily to struggle with the spiritual life and stands within the free life of the spirit. Our age requires the life of the spirit to be set free from the shackles of the state and of economics. These things which are being made known to-day in another form through our “Threefold State” proposals, are the Christianity of to-day; they are, spiritual revelations clothed in external forms. They are what men need; they alone offer men a real basis and a real possibility for learning anew to transform their thinking. It is this that is so necessary for mankind to-day. We have had to wage war with a country that possesses an instinctive political life of great perfection and has long possessed many colonies with which it has industrial ties. We have fought as a country with an industrialism that was only developing and which wanted to possess colonies. For these strivings we required “spirit” [Geist]—and no one had committed the sin against the Spirit more than those who took a leading part in the economic life of Germany during the last three decades. For their programme was: rejection of the spiritual life, surrender to mere chance, blind chance. It is as if the World Spirit had wished to give the German people the greatest lesson by imposing the greatest test. This nation was to be shown the Spirit cannot be ignored. But it appears as if this is being learnt with difficulty, for this nation is still inclined to condemn everything else rather than lack of consciousness of responsibility towards the spirit. The lamentable events occurring in this domain to-day show that men's souls are still asleep. There is a total lack of conscious realisation how ill-fitted for their task are the men who guide the destiny of the German people and have to represent it before the West. There is simply no realisation that the whole delegation, to Versailles is senseless because of the men taking part. The will not to see events as they are is still a witness to the fact that men's souls are asleep; otherwise they would have said long ago: The delegates to Versailles whom we have sent are as unfitted as possible to understand the present moment of world history. One will only judge these things correctly when one becomes conscious of responsibility towards the spirit—when one recognises that we are living in a very important moment of the world's history and that it is our duty to take things very seriously. In certain fields there is much talk about this, that and the other, and it is more comfortable to say: those who hold the responsible positions will manage somehow. But nothing good can come if those who hold responsible positions to-day still harbour the old thoughts. Whether they be old-fashioned aristocrats, or decadent aristocrats, or Marxian Socialists who know nothing about the world but, at most, have absorbed something of Marx' “Kapital”—whoever they be nothing good can come if they do not develop the will to turn their souls from the old to new thoughts. The revolution of the 9th [of] November, 1918, was no revolution, for what has changed is only the external stucco. But what is trying to change can be seen most clearly in those who now wear the outward stucco instead of those who wore it previously. It is necessary to see what lies at the base of all this. But thoughts are necessary, and for these one must have the will; and this will can only come when trained through active intercourse with the spiritual world. On this account active intercourse with the spiritual world is the sole real balsam that humanity needs. This is what I wanted to put before you in a form in which it must appear to one to-day in face of contemporary events. I wanted, as the opportunity was given us to speak together again, to put this before your souls so that ever more and more and in ever wider and wider circles within our Anthroposophic Movement a striving might arise which can not only give the single individual an inner feeling of comfort but can bear fruits for the cultural life of the whole of humanity. It is a deep satisfaction to me to see how many more friends of our Anthroposophic Movement are present to-day than a year ago. May the Spirit now quickening the development of the world and of humanity bring it about that in another year there may be as great, or even a much greater, increase in our numbers. For the more human souls there are who become convinced by this Spirit of the need for the new thinking, feeling and willing, and for a new sense of responsibility, the better it will be. |