| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Probation: Scene 5
Translated by Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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| A mist begins to form before mine eyes Which shrouds the marvels o'er, which used to make These woods, these cliffs a glory to mine eyes A fearful dream mounts from abysmal depths Which shakes me through and through with fear and dread— O get thee gone from me;—I yearn to be Alone to dream my dreams; In them at least I still can fight and strive To win back that which now seems lost to me. |
| Among them I could clearly see myself And all that happened was familiar too. A dream.—... yet most unnerving was that dream. I know that in this life I certainly Can ne'er have learned to know the like of it. |
| Those pictures draw me with resistless power.— O if I could but dream that dream again. Curtain, whilst Capesius remains standing |
| 14. Four Mystery Plays: The Soul's Probation: Scene 5
Translated by Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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A mountain glade, in which is situated Felix Balde's solitary cottage. Evening. Dame Felicia Balde, Capesius, then Felix Balde; later on Johannes and his Double; afterwards Lucifer and Ahriman. Dame Felicia is seated on a bench in front of her cottage. Capesius (arriving, approaches her): Felicia: Capesius (who has seated himself): Felicia: Capesius: Felicia: (Felix Balde comes out of the house.) Hour upon hour on end, as oft he doth, Felix: Capesius: Felix: Capesius: Felix: Capesius: Felix: Capesius: Felicia: Capesius: Felicia: Capesius: (Stands up to depart; Felix and Dame Felicia go into the house.) I feel the health that such a picture brings (He disappears behind some thick bushes. Enter Johannes, sunk in deep thought.) Johannes to himself: (He feels as if he were rooted to the ground.) What are the bonds that hold me prisoner (The Double of Johannes Thomasius appears.) Ah!—whosoe'er thou art; if human blood Double (as if to Maria): Johannes: Double (as if to Maria): (The voice of conscience speaks.) Conscience: Double (with a slightly different voice): (Enter Lucifer and Ahriman.) Lucifer: Ahriman: (Lucifer and Ahriman vanish; the Double also. Johannes walks, deep in thought, into the dark recesses, of the forest. Capesius appears again. He has, from his post behind the bushes, watched the scene between Johannes and the Double as if it were a vision.) Capesius: Curtain, whilst Capesius remains standing |
| 67. The Eternal human Soul: The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Riddles
14 Mar 1918, Berlin Rudolf Steiner |
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| If we get an idea about a vision, the light of the mental picture falls on the dream; then the dream becomes completely conscious, then we integrate it properly into the human life. |
| The human beings do not consciously experience history, but they dream it. History is the big dream of the development of humanity, and history never enters into the usual consciousness. |
| Below the consciousness, that remains which works in history, if one does not bring up the dream into the consciousness. Then, however, one has to bring up the dream in the supersensible consciousness that can imagine the spiritual. |
| 67. The Eternal human Soul: The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Riddles
14 Mar 1918, Berlin Rudolf Steiner |
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In this time where so many people have the comprehensible need to orientate themselves about the earth-shaking events you often hear, history “teaches” this or that. One means that one could judge about any fact of the present because of similar facts of history. If we ask ourselves, which possibilities present themselves to the human beings to judge this or that on basis of historical experience, then, however, you get to a somewhat dubious judgement about what history “teaches.” I would like to point only to two things, but I could increase them a hundred times. I would like to point to the fact that at the beginning of this world disaster many people were of the opinion that these critical events would last four, in the extreme case six months. One regarded such a judgement as completely entitled. You cannot say that these human beings had not applied all logical precautions to deliver such a judgement. Now, the facts themselves have taught such people rather thoroughly the opposite of that what they have believed. Just at this example, one also sees how narrowly that which history should teach is associated with the judgement of the social or other world relations, so that you can expect from a consideration of the historical life of humanity that also some light falls on the judgement you have to exert for the social and economic living together of the human beings. However, I would like to bring in another example of the limited validity of the sentence, that history “teaches” this or that. An ingenious personality received a professorship of history at a German university more than hundred years ago. Really, from a brilliant conception of that which history gives and which one can apply to the human life, this man spoke the following words approximately: the single nations of Europe have become in the course of the human progress, as history teaches, a big family whose single members are still feuding, but can never tear each other apart. - Really, a significant personality believed to be able to judge in such a way out of his insight into the course of history at his inaugural lecture. This man was Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). He spoke these words in the eve of the French Revolution which contributed so much to that what one can call the tearing of the European nations, and particularly if he could see what happens in our present. It seems to me that from such facts Goethe got the sensation, which he pronounced in a wonderful sentence: “The best that we have from history is the enthusiasm which it excites.” It seems, as if he did this quotation just to reject the other fruits of the so-called historical knowledge and to appreciate that only which can arise as enthusiasm, as a certain positive mood from the historical documents. Today we want to examine which position spiritual science has to take towards two opinions: history can be the great master of life, and the other: the best what one can have from history is the enthusiasm that it excites. At first it will be interesting just in case of the consideration of the historical life of humanity and the consequences which can be drawn from this consideration for the judgement of the social life to which view one has come in the present about the historical evolution beyond spiritual science. Since the historical life of humanity is attached to that what goes through every single person because every human being is cocooned in the historical evolution. And really, just in the present it is important to look at this judgement of the contemporaries because the judicious viewers of history think that also the judgement is in a crisis how one should found history. I would like to talk not in abstractions, but to attach my considerations to realities. There one must comply with examples that of course are single examples out of many. I would like to comply, for example, with the judgement about history, how it should be anew founded in the present, which the famous Professor Karl Lamprecht (1846-1915) has done. You can find that which one can feel from his monumental German History (1891-1909), in a comfortable way summarised in his lectures What is History? Five lectures on the Modern Science of History (1905) which Lamprecht held partly in St. Louis, partly in New York at invitation of the Columbia University. There he tries to summarise what has arisen to him about the kind how history should be taught out of the requirements of the present. It is even more comfortable to get an idea of that what this famous historian wanted to say, actually, by the fact that he treated a segment of the historical evolution of humanity exceptionally clear in the second of these lectures. Lamprecht briefly told the whole development of the German people from the first Christian centuries up to now to the Americans. He told that in such a way as he meant that science of history has to become according to the requirements of the present. Now you can judge such things, actually, only properly if you can compare them anyhow. There just a lecture by Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) offers itself which he held on the development of the North American life, so that you can compare two spirits who are emotionally and spatially far from each other how they look as historians at the history of their peoples in each case. Forgive if I let—not by courtesy but for stylistic reasons—the considerations of Woodrow Wilson precede. None who knows me more exactly states that I overestimate Wilson. I am also allowed to point to the fact that I already made my judgement about Wilson in a series of talks, which I held in Helsinki before the war, indeed, at a time when Wilson was already president of the United States (1913). At that time I already said that it is very unfortunate that at a position from which so much depends for humanity a personality is who is so frightfully narrow-minded in his judgement. Since although in those days still numerous people worshipped Wilson enthusiastically, for example, because of his books The New Freedom (1913) and Mere Literature and Other Essays (1896), one could prove that his independent judgement flowing from his personality is very much limited internally. Without being swayed by the present political events, I stress what I said before the war about the so misjudged, that is overestimated personality. I have to say this in advance, so that one does not doubt the objectivity of that which I still want to say about Wilson as a historian. It is very strange if one compares how Wilson considers the history of his people with that what Lamprecht says about the history of Central Europe. One detects that he finds out the most succinct point almost instinctively to answer the question: when have we become, actually, Americans, and how have we become Americans? How has this happened in history? There he makes an exceptionally appropriate distinction between all those who were sooner in the union whom he considers, however, as “Not yet Americans” but as “New Englanders” who are because of their whole disposition, their mood “New Englanders,” and the later “real Americans.” There he distinguishes to a hair's breadth a prehistory of the union and lets the union start its historical becoming when the population crowded together on a narrow space in the east expands to the west of America when the people develop that disposition which he calls the disposition of the frontiersmen. Now he shows how America's history consists externally and mentally of the fact that the east expands to the west, and he shows rather obviously how the regulation of the land distribution, of the tariff question, even the regulation of the slave issue which he ascribes not to some principles of humaneness but to the necessities which arose from the settlement and the conquest of the west. All these questions are put in the development of modern America. The essentials of this talk consist in the fact that he shows how the historical becoming has grasped a sum of human beings from an outer situation, and that that which goes forward with these human beings can be understood strictly speaking from that what they had to undertake under the influence of the described conditions. Various things are interesting if one pursues just these considerations of Wilson, and that what Wilson has performed, otherwise, as a historian. Just to get some thoughts on various things that are associated with the topic of the today's talk, a comparison of that what Wilson says about the most different historical objects with that which the Europeans say is very useful. It has exceptionally astonished me at the most different places of Wilson's explanations that there is a strange correspondence—to me already strange because I would have preferred it would not be this way—of the contents of sentences, of the contents of thoughts what Wilson explains about the most different objects, and of that what, for example, the spirited Herman Grimm, often mentioned by me, said about various things of the historical course of humanity. If one considers Herman Grimm as brilliant as I do and Wilson as prudent, as I must do, it may be quite unpleasant to someone if he reads Wilson sometimes and says to himself: it is peculiar, there I read a sentence that I could also read with Grimm. Although this is in such a way, although I have tested it with judgements that Wilson and Grimm made about the same personalities, like Macaulay, Gibbon and others, nevertheless, in spite of the often almost literal accordance, without having any relation to each other, it is obvious that in reality the attitudes of both men are completely different. Just on such occasion it becomes obvious that two persons can say the same but they do this from quite different mental undergrounds. In this case, it is particularly interesting because the colouring that the judgement receives in the one and the other case is associated with the roots of the one or the other personality in his respective national character. Just while one notices such resemblances, one discovers that the one is American and the other is German. It can strike you quite externally, which difference exists there. There is a volume of essays by Grimm that contains as frontispiece a picture of Grimm as this happens today so often. The German issue of Wilson's essays Mere Literature also contains a picture of Wilson. One can compare the portraits. Already this proves something quite strange to someone who knows to judge such a thing. If you look at Grimm's portrait, after you were engrossed in what he says as a historian, then you can realise that every feature of his face expresses that every sentence and every turn is connected intimately with everything that this man has wrested from his soul. Then you look at the portrait of Wilson, after you have also read his book first: it seems as if this man could not have been present at all with that what was judged there in the book; a certain foreignness appears. If you realise this, a riddle of the way dawns how in this case two persons consider history, and you can ask yourself in what way is this resemblance and the strongly felt basic difference caused? Then there appears something very strange. Just that what Wilson says about the American people makes sense immediately, so that you know, this is true of the historical development of this people as he wants to show it. However, you get on gradually—only the psychological observation can prove that—: Wilson has not grown together so intimately with his judgement as we imagine this within Central Europe. Another relation between judgement and human being exists there than we are used. I know that I say something paradox, but it is intimately connected with that what I would like to explain about the historical development of humanity. If it did not sound so superstitious, I would say, you find out for yourself that somebody like Wilson himself does not judge if he makes such suitable judgements as in this interpretation of history and at other places, but he is possessed by something in his soul. I would like to express myself somewhat different: With such a personality like Wilson, you have the impression that in the soul something is that suggests this judgement from the inside of the soul. You do not have the impression that the own individuality has completely developed it; you rather have the feeling that something like a second personality, a second being is in the soul, which has suggested it. If one looks at Wilson's appropriate judgements about the character of the American people where he says:
if you envisage this characterisation of the Americans by Wilson, then they have something in themselves that oppresses them externally: not the sensibly looking, quiet eye—I could also adduce the other characteristics—, but the quickly movable eye is a sign of the fact that something oppresses the American from the inside, and such suggestions continue to have an effect if the judgement of Wilson is accurate. We compare what I had to say with an interpretation of history, which is spatially and mentally somewhat far away, with that what Lamprecht puts as his ideas about the historical development of Central Europe. These are original ideas. He tries to realise how this being of the Central European people has developed in the course of centuries, since the third century up to now. One notices that he has internally worked for everything that he says. One has not to agree with many things, in particular as a spiritual scientist; we will immediately have to speak of it. However, he gained everything from his immediate personality. It would be complete nonsense to say, any inner force would suggest something. He does not have it so easy. He has to grasp a thought bit by bit, has to overcome thoughts to get to a judgement. Only then, he gets to a conception of the historical development that is relatively new, even in the view of Ranke (Leopold von R., 1795-1886, German historian) and Sybel (Heinrich von S., 1817-1895, German historian), new insofar that Lamprecht understands historical development as the development of the whole soul. Lamprecht tries to pursue the mental dispositions of the people as mental expressions as the psychologist pursues the soul development of every single person. Up to the third century, the German people developed according to Lamprecht in such a way that one can say, this development shows a symbolising tendency. Also the outer actions, also the political development run in such a way that one realises that it comes from the desire to interpret the world phenomena as symbols, to realise symbols everywhere, even to make the heroes symbols and to revere them as living personal symbols. Then comes the period from the third century to the eleventh, twelfth centuries. Lamprecht calls it the categorising one. There is no longer the desire to use symbols, but to establish types. One revers those persons whom one reveres whom one obeys in such a way that they work not like single individualities, but as types of a whole clan, a whole city. Then the time comes from the twelfth to about the thirteenth centuries in which knighthood develops particularly; Lamprecht calls it the conventional time in which one judges and feels his will impulses in such a way as the convention demands it from human being to human being, from state to state, from people to people, the time of conventionalism. Then follows—it is important that Lamprecht notices this, although he does not figure the consequences out—the individualistic age with the turn of the fifteenth century where people really feel as individuals within a community. This lasts about up to the middle of the eighteenth century. There begins the age of subjectivism in which we still live where the human being tries to internalise himself, to work out of the depths of his personality, to work, to think and to want out of the depths of the subject. Lamprecht divides this age into two parts: the first lasts until the seventies of the nineteenth century to which the great classical period of Goethe, Schiller, and Herder belongs, and then since the seventies our time follows. It is strange now, that Lamprecht, as the maybe most significant historian of the present, is completely clear in his mind that he has to look for an impulse first to see how the course of history goes on, and he investigated incessantly how one should start lining up that which the documents, the monuments, and the archives give in such a way how to tell and describe them so that on can call it history. So the most important question of history, the question of existence, became topical to Lamprecht. He said to himself, one can get only to history—for he did not regard the historiography of Ranke, Sybel and others as history—if one tries to describe the mental development of a nation or of the whole humanity. Then one must have the possibility to observe this mental development to find some laws in this mental development. There it is interesting that a strange contradiction faces us in his whole approach after the habitual ways of thinking of the present. After the habitual ways of thinking, Lamprecht said to himself, the former merely individualistic approach cannot remain. How can one put the facts in order generally? There he says to himself, you have to look at the soul development in such a way that you describe it social-psychologically. This arises to him from a necessary way of thinking of modern time to take the social life, the common being together of human beings into consideration. He says this to himself on one side. Now he has no possibility to look at the social in the soul life or at the mental in the social life following a set pattern. He turns to the psychologists, asks how the psychologists look today at the single individual souls. Here they see in the individual soul the thoughts associating, the feelings ascending, the will impulses developing. Then he wants to apply this to the historical events, wants to investigate how the thought of the one human being works on the whole clan how the thoughts associate externally, as, otherwise, in the individual psychology a thought associates with the other. Thus, he wants to consider history social-psychologically according to the model of individual psychology. There arises, as I have already indicated, a very noteworthy contradiction. He wants to get away from the individual interpretation of history and to get to the social-psychological one; but he takes the means from the consideration of the individual psychology. A strange contradiction that he does not notice at all. Something else: if one is engrossed with that which this modern historian performs describing so clearly:
one has the feeling that the man misses the trees for the forest. I do not take stock in the saying that one misses the forest for the trees. I would like to know how somebody wanted to do that while he is in the forest and wanted to see the forest! One has to go far away to see the forest. One has the strange feeling that Lamprecht cannot exactly work out the differences of the single periods. Briefly, one gets to the result that he is a researcher who has gained a view of the historical development for himself who, however, could not find the means to present the question to himself: what is now, actually, this historical development of humanity? Is that already history what one attains from the documents, from the archives, or do we still search anything quite different? Here you have to start if you want to consider the historical life and its riddles spiritual-scientifically. You have to put the question to yourself: is the object of history already found in the usual consciousness? Does one know already what one wants to judge if one approaches history? To answer these questions, however, I have to adduce something from spiritual science that is attached to things, which I have said here in former talks. The human soul life is within the change of being awake and sleeping. However, the alternating states of sleeping and being awake are normally considered one-sidedly, while one says, the human being spends two thirds or also more of his life awake and a third sleeping. However, the things are not so simple. It is only obvious that the sleeping state continues into the awake life that we are only partly awake in a certain sense from awakening to falling asleep. We are in reality consciously awake only with the percepts of the outside world and the mental pictures that we form from these percepts. Compare only how the feelings are experienced. Someone who gradually learns to observe how feelings arise in the human soul,—I will come back to this issue in the next talk on the Revelations of the Unconscious and say something fundamental now only—, learns to compare the emotional life, the affects and passions with the dreams. The dreams put pictures before us that are not penetrated with logic and moral impulses that we have only in the awake life. The visions differ indeed from the feelings from the passions and affects surging up and down, but there is something in which both are similar concerning the soul: it is the degree of consciousness in which we are given away to the visions. We have the same degree of consciousness if we are given away to our feelings, save that we accompany our feelings with mental pictures at the same time. If we get an idea about a vision, the light of the mental picture falls on the dream; then the dream becomes completely conscious, then we integrate it properly into the human life. We are doing this perpetually with our emotional life. We integrate our feelings into life by the mental pictures running parallel, but one experiences these feelings are with similar intensity as the dreams, so that the dreams continue in our wake day consciousness and become our world of feelings. You can easily realise that, however, also the deep, dreamless sleep continues in our awake life, namely as our will impulses. We know in the usual awake consciousness about these will impulses only if they are accompanied by mental pictures. We probably imagine what we should do, but it remains unaware to our usual day consciousness how the mental picture changes into the will impulse and then into the action, as we remain unaware in the deepest sleep. Only because we can imagine our will impulses, we accompany these sleeping impulses with the awake life. Thus, the sleeping life continues perpetually in our awake day life. Even if our feelings, our affects, our passions are only dreamt by us, nevertheless, our emotional life is connected with something objective spiritual-mental as with our own spiritual-mental, with our mental pictures and percepts. However, the connections of the contents of feelings and will impulses with the objective spiritual are in the subconscious. We oversleep this connection with the spiritual-mental, and only that towers above the sea in which we are embedded this way, which we experience by our mental pictures and percepts. If you learn to behold in the spiritual world, you know: indeed, with the usual consciousness you cannot perceive the world in which our feelings submerge just with that part of our soul, which remains unaware to our usual consciousness, but you can it perceive with the beholding one. Since the soul can develop pictures from the contact with this spiritual world by the strengthened will or by the mental capacity strengthened by the will impulses. The Imaginative cognition forms in it. It is the first level of supersensible beholding by which you get to the real spiritual world. This Imaginative cognition is the completely conscious beholding in a spiritual reality, so that the Imaginations are no imaginations, but reproductions of spiritual reality, although the soul does not experience them denser than the visions, save that you know that the visions have no reality value that, however, the Imagination points to an objective spiritual reality beyond us. You learn to recognise that with which the world of human feelings is connected, which is only dreamt for the usual consciousness; you learn to recognise it in its reality with the Imaginative beholding of the world. In the same way, you learn also to recognise that on the second level of higher consciousness, with the Inspirative consciousness in which the will impulses are embedded. You get to know the spiritual world as far as the will impulses that usually remain subconscious are also embedded in an objective spiritual reality. If you have figured these things out and if you ask yourself for the real object of the historical course, then you realise what, actually, the historical development is. You do not experience this as that development which is experienced in the everyday life, while we get into contact with the object personally. No, this historical development is something else in which something strange is contained as it is contained in that, which the human being experiences as a feeling, as a will impulse. As the human being dreams his feelings, he dreams the real stream of the historical development. This knowledge is the stupefying result of that observation which turns away from the human being to historical development, and it shows that we cannot use these mental pictures, which control the outer conscious life, to grasp history anyhow. Since that which you experience in the everyday consciousness as a single human being is experienced in the awake state. However, in this awake day life history is not included at all. The human beings do not consciously experience history, but they dream it. History is the big dream of the development of humanity, and history never enters into the usual consciousness. You may have an astute usual consciousness, you may be the most significant naturalist with that reason which can arrange the things according to cause and effect, and you may have that attitude which is especially appropriate to look properly at nature and to show her lawfulness. If you learn to recognise the real stream of historical development, you say to yourself, with any mental capacity that can understand nature, you cannot look into the historical development. This is not experienced in the usual consciousness like nature, but only on that level of consciousness, which you have also in the dream. It will be once for the interpretation of history one of the most significant results if one gets on
History is in reality only behind the facts; these facts emerge only from the historical development and are not the historical development. Once Herman Grimm said to me, one could consider the historical life only if one pursued the developing imagination of the people. One can say that Herman Grimm was on the brink to doing a discovery, but he did not want to make the transition to spiritual science. Hence, it appeared to him to be the only fertile to look not only at the outer events and to line up them in such a way as the naturalist does it according to the laws of causality but to look at them in such a way that he saw through them really at the developing imagination of humanity. This was an imperfect expression of that which he could have recognised: the fact that the historical development also does not take place in that which imagination experiences, but is still much deeper in the subconsciousness in which the dreams are woven. As well as the depths of the sea surge up in the waves, the single events surge up in the course of history. If we apply our usual reason to the historical development, we strangely meet the forces of decline only. Herman Grimm asked himself once why the historian Gibbon (Edward G., 1737-1794) portraying the first centuries of Christianity describes the decay of the Roman Empire only, but not the rise of Christianity. Grimm made a right aperçu, however, did not get on the reason. The reason is that Gibbon, although he is profound, applied that reason only to the interpretation of history, which one applies, otherwise, to the consideration of nature. There he could look only at the decline, not at the rise since one can only dream the rise. In the course of history that which is rising, growing, and sprouting is connected vividly with that what is declining, what is dying. That is why one can look with the usual reason only at the dead in the course of history. What does you need if you want to recognise the growing, the prospering element in the historical development, that what furthers the human being? In ancient times, one looked deeper in this respect, but just in the ancient form. One did not tell history, one told myths and legends. These myths and legends that should describe the historical dreams of humanity were truer than the so-called pragmatic history. However, we cannot go back in the development of humanity to myths and legends, but we can do something else. We can make up our mind to bring up that what rests for the usual consciousness as dreams in the subconscious, while we apply the Imaginative knowledge to the historical development. With the historical development, humanity and science will recognise that it cannot even reach the object of consideration if it does not want to go over to the spiritual-scientific consideration. Below the consciousness, that remains which works in history, if one does not bring up the dream into the consciousness. Then, however, one has to bring up the dream in the supersensible consciousness that can imagine the spiritual. Imaginative cognition only will create history. Then someone who can get to the heart of spiritual science and gets involved with the struggle of a man like Lamprecht, will realise that there a way is searched to a goal. However, where is this goal? Why does Lamprecht try to adduce everything to find history generally and, nevertheless, gets to nothing but to the usual psychology, although he believes that one has to apply social psychology? However, what the human being experiences as a social being what becomes his history, he dreams this, this also does not penetrate the individual psychology. There one has to apply that new psychology which spiritual science only can give. You find the demand with Lamprecht, you find the answer of the riddle of historical development in spiritual science. What will become, however, from all that for a conception of history? You see that Lamprecht does not get away from the intellectual consideration of the consecutive events. He considers that what happens up to the third, up to the eleventh centuries and so on even if he considers it brilliantly. But he does not get on to judge the events in such a way that he reaches that what the human being only experiences as a dream. One can easily find proofs of that. I want to bring in one example only where Lamprecht advances to the modern time. Among the rest, he asks, which are the most significant cultural phenomena in these modern times? Consider that Lamprecht held the concerning talk in 1904! There he asks, which are the most significant cultural-historical moments that appear as achievements of humanity today? He wants to bring in the most significant soul phenomena of the beginning twentieth century. What does he bring in? The answer is very interesting, just for a man who attaches so much significance to the soul. First, he brings in the attempts to propagate unselfishness, an altruistic life of humanity, various societies for ethical civilisation that came especially from England and America to Europe in those days, and secondly, he brings in the peace movement as something especially outstanding. An approved historian of the present says this. Is such a conception of history on the right way, even if Lamprecht endeavours so much? About at that time I held a talk here about similar ideas and explained that the least of all typical ideas of the beginning twentieth century are just these both movements: the movements of ethical civilisation and especially the peace movement. At that time, I summarised my talk saying: this is just the typical that that time in which the peace movement appears especially loud will be the same time in which the biggest human wars will take place. However, a famous historian said the one thing, a crazy representative of anthroposophy said the other, and it goes without saying in the present to whom one listens. The point is to recognise how one has to use the facts which one called history up to now so that it points you to the deeper currents of human development by this coherence between the human soul and that only dreamt spirituality which flows along as historical current. One can do this only if one replaces Lamprecht's and all other conceptions of history with that which I call symptomatic conception of history if one is aware that one has to use everything that one can find out in the archives, in the documents, briefly, with the usual conscious reason that one evaluates and appreciates it, while one relates it to something that is a symptom, an expression of it. One does not consider the great men of history, their appearances, and actions, for their own sake if one wants to describe the historical development of humanity but only as symptoms. One is aware that one properly describes history if one is able to connect the right symptom with the underlying spiritual current of development. Symptomatic history will look quite different from history, which runs in such a way, that one only strings together the facts and tries to use individual psychology to the explanation and analysis of these facts as Lamprecht does it. Symptomatic history consists of the fact that one becomes aware of this attitude which Goethe had that one can approach, actually, a spiritual being only from all sides, that one can get to know it only by its symptoms if one realises that that at which one has looked as history up to now is only at the surface and positions itself quite strangely in life like dream contents. Observe the dream contents, and you will realise that you often dream something quite different from what is directly attached to the most significant events of your day life. Nevertheless, it is anyhow associated as memory with your life, but in a much-concealed way, and it is associated with deeper forces of life. There is a reason why just this or that which works in the subconscious emerges symptomatically, while we do not dream anything significant that seems to be significant in the awake life, but maybe just something that appears to us as externally unimportant. Symptomatic historical research has to consider events that control the situation for the outer reason as unimportant for the true history and apparently unimportant events as far-reaching symptoms. Only thereby, one will penetrate from the outside to the inside of the historical life. One cannot transfer the individual soul life to the historical development in such an external way. Of course, I can do here no enclosing interpretation of history to show how this symptomatic consideration grasps the essential in the development of humanity, but I can at least indicate something. I have said in a former talk, if the spiritual researcher learns to behold in the spiritual world and its development, then he notices that the results, as one expects them, normally do not happen this way. They happen as a rule different from one could expect them after the judgement that one has gained in the sensory world. I want to bring in an example: One could expect that the historical events run in such a way that one could compare them to the childhood, youth, mature period, and old age of the human being. Indeed, some historians were under this illusion. These analogising considerations can be rather witty but have nothing to do with reality. However, something else appears. The result of which I have to inform you here is attained really with the same seriousness with which another scientific result is attained; I can state it, however, only as a result. Lamprecht tries to find periods of historical development for the German people at first. I have already indicated: it is owed to a right impression that he determines a transition from an age to another around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is also very typical that he calls this time the individualistic age. To spiritual-scientific research, an important incision likewise appears around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, while one spiritual-scientifically beholds in the current of the historical development, it becomes obvious that one has to go back further and has to disregard the borders of tribes or peoples. One has to envisage the general historical development of humanity. There the events combine for centuries, namely from the fifteenth century A.D. until the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. This age from the seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha to the fifteenth century after it has its own character. This character changes from inner reasons in the fifteenth century more than modern people believe. Lamprecht recognises this, but he does not recognise the whole scope of this fact. Others have already pointed out from different viewpoints that one has to explain not for outer reasons, not even because of the emergence of Renaissance et cetera, but because spontaneously that significant reversal arises from historical life, from the souls of the human beings, which asserts itself in this time almost across the whole earth, but particularly across Europe. It is remarkable that the most significant Germanist of the present, Konrad Burdach (1859-1936), has pointed to that in very nice essays. Burdach recognises from wholly literary-historical investigations that from the soul development of humanity something quite new has arisen in the spiritual configuration, in the activities of the human being. Now we live in the period from the fifteenth century on. Spiritual science is able to go further back. Now there something very strange appears. If you look at the impulses that control the human beings since the fifteenth century historically, they are different from those, which controlled the human beings in the preceding period. However, one cannot say, the impulses of the preceding period relate to those of the following period in such a way as in the individual human life any life period relates to the following one. This is not the case. Rather the weird turns out that today the historical works in particular in that in the individual human nature, which develops until the twenties of life. The secret of our present development is that we develop those forces by the historical conditions, which belong to our individual life during the twenties. In the preceding age, the historical life of humanity especially grasped the thirties. One can show the matter also different. One can say, today our souls are organised so that we develop from childhood to the twenties, and that we carry that which we have developed during the twenties into the rest of life, so that the human being feels that his developmental period is finished after the twenties. One can prove this with wholly external things. Scarcely anybody will state that somebody wants to learn earnestly today during his thirties, in a time where already the youngest people write essays in the newspapers. However, one will experience very easily that people say, one reads Goethe's Iphigenia, generally the classical writers, in the youth, nobody does that in his later life. One could still bring in other symptoms. However, if one goes back to the preceding period, one finds that the growing life lasted until the thirties. As paradox as it sounds today, it is in such a way, and one will once have this as a backed historical achievement. The Greek and Roman developed unlike the modern human being develops, and history happened in those days different because the human being remained longer able of development. Spiritual science shows that one gets, going back even further, to times where the human beings remained capable of development until the forties. So that one can say, one finds three consecutive periods in the historical life of humanity: one behind the eighth pre-Christian century in which we find human beings who feel young until the forties; then the period of the Greek and Roman cultures comes when the human beings remained young until the thirties; then the period in which they are capable of development until the twenties. If you reflect about that, you recognise that you cannot compare the historical development of humanity possibly with the course of the single individual life. In the individual life one grows older and older, humanity as such develops in reverse direction; it grows younger and younger, that is it remains younger and younger; it carries youth less and less into the later individual age. Hence, the civilisation makes a younger and younger impression in the consecutive periods; that means, the human being carries that which he gains to himself in his youth more and more into the old age. One could have believed that in the time before the eighth pre-Christian century, if one had taken prejudices as starting point, one just finds a younger humanity, then an older one, and that we have now become much riper and older. One has to answer the question first what in the course of development, not in the single life, maturity and age do mean. However, you can consider this developmental process of humanity only in such a way as I have indicated now. You see, something quite different results from what one normally imagines as inner laws of cultural development if one looks really symptomatically at the historical development. I want only to emphasise one thing in the end. One can also go into the whole attitude of the human beings in two consecutive periods. There you recognise that in the period which began with the eighth pre-Christian century another attitude was there than in the present period. If you consider the human soul spiritual-scientifically, you do not have the same comfort as the trivial psychology has it. Then you have to realise that there are three quite different shadings of the whole soul, and, hence, one distinguishes three soul members. I call one of them the sentient soul. In it the desires and passions are anchored, but it also connects the human being with the outer nature by his senses; then one distinguishes the intellectual or mind soul, and thirdly the consciousness soul in which the real self-consciousness is anchored. While now in the course of the historical development always other forces intervene in the human soul, the following turns out: during the period which lasts from the eighth pre-Christian up to the fifteenth post-Christian centuries where the European civilisation is coloured especially by the influence of the Greek-Latin culture particularly the intellectual or mind soul is working. Hence, everything faces us that the human being accomplishes in the course of the historical development and in the outer life, in the social and economic life, as if his mind worked instinctively, as if he grasped the outer world with body and mind equally strongly. The human body and mind are balanced in this time, and the mind itself works instinctively. This becomes different with the big reversal in the fifteenth century. There the self-consciousness appears. There the consciousness soul becomes especially strong, there the human being does no longer have the mind instinctively, but he has to reflect everywhere. There the individuality starts forming. There he does no longer feel instinctively if he meets another human being: you have to behave to him this or that way. There he reflects, there he turns to the inside of his personality. So that we can say, the whole historical structure since the fifteenth century is characterised by the fact that the consciousness soul works since that time, while before the more instinctive intellectual or mind soul has worked. You cannot understand the Roman Law, nothing that comes from antiquity properly if you do not envisage this difference between the instinctive mind and that what in modern times works in intellectualistic way. It arises that that which Lamprecht searches up to the fifteenth century is just the preparation of the consciousness soul in the German people. The German folk soul carried that into the coming period what flowed from the south, while it was just minded to further the stream of historical development from the intellectual or mind soul to the consciousness soul and its various nuances. If one learns to recognise what really works there, then this shines into the details. Then you can ask yourself again, what is that, for example, what Wilson describes as the real nature of the American people? This is another nuance of the consciousness soul. The western nuance is experienced in its archetypal phenomenon, in its original characteristic here in Central Europe. Here the struggling egoity of the human being is really experienced which relates to the consciousness soul quite consciously which wants to penetrate with all forces of personality that what wants to enter life wholly consciously. This appears in another nuance in the American people where the human soul is like possessed by itself. It is sometimes disagreeable to face the truth. However, just the catastrophic events of our time necessitate a certain objectivity. Into the character of the historian Wilson, the light shines which spiritual science can spread. Only in principle I could show which direction science of history has to take if it is fertilised by spiritual science in the same sense as I tried to show it for natural sciences eight days ago. Only if you consider history in such a way, you will realise how the human being is associated with that dreamt stream of the historical development that stirs him up. Then, however, it will appear that that which becomes known Imaginatively by the symptomatic interpretation of history is internally related to the human being as a historical being. Then you will realise that not the reason, but the subconsciousness, the dreamlike emotional life is connected with the historical development. Imagination will teach what works in the mood and in the will impulses of the human beings, while they are in the stream of the historical development. Then something else will arise than the belief that history can teach this or that. If it were able to teach as one normally imagines, then one would be able to find a connection between history and this usual reason. However, it does not exist. The connection is there with that what works in the depths of the soul, in the subconsciousness. The human being cannot learn, indeed, for his usual reason from history, but from the true history if he develops it more and more by the view of the spirit in history, then the historical impulses settle down in the feeling of the human being. If he faces a fact, if he is called for action or for the right feeling towards a fact within the social life, then his feeling will lead him properly. Then not his reason, but his whole soul is taught by such an interpretation of history. With it let me summarise this consideration briefly. Goethe suspected that history, if it is recognised truly, works in the mood, in the feeling that it works if enthusiasm originates in the right way if antipathies or sympathies originate for what should be done or be omitted in a social situation. Briefly, Goethe said out of a right notion of that which spiritual science has to bring to light: the best that we can have from history is the enthusiasm, which it excites. Certainly, we cannot feel the intellectual judgement but the enthusiasm as a fruit of history if we can recognise the real historical development. |
| 174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Twelfth Lecture
23 Feb 1918, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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| Our consciousness is no more alert to the real feelings than it is to the dream. If we were to add an image to every dream as soon as we wake up, without being able to distinguish between the dream and the presentation of the dream, just as we always add a thought, an image, to our feelings, we would also consider our dreams to be the content of an awake experience. |
| But what we dream, in so far as it follows the moment of falling asleep, is actually only a dream-like, pictorial transformation of what we want to communicate to the dead person. |
| But this moment of falling asleep actually resonates in the following sleep, resonates in the dream. If we understand the matter correctly, we will not interpret dreams of the dead as messages from the dead. |
| 174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Twelfth Lecture
23 Feb 1918, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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There has hardly been a time in the development of humanity when it was as necessary as it is in the present to delve into the riddles of the supersensible life, although there has hardly been a time when there was as much rejection of this delving into supersensible problems as there is in the present. The questions that appear to be most remote must be of particular concern to the soul of the modern human being. And so today let us first consider what the materialistic attitude of the present day believes it must keep as far away as possible from human consciousness, but which is in fact infinitely close to human life. And to know that what is meant is infinitely close to human life is precisely one of the special tasks of our time. We want to start with a few remarks that are well known to us, in order to approach a subject that we have often considered from this or that point of view from a different point of view. We all know that for spiritual scientific observation, it has a special significance to observe human life again and again according to its two great opposites, which play into everyday life, to observe it according to the special essence of the alternating states of sleeping and waking. It is precisely these polar opposites of sleeping and waking that we have had to consider again and again from the most diverse points of view in our spiritual scientific investigation. Now you already know from the most diverse communications that this distinction, as it is usually made between sleeping and waking, according to which human life is divided up in such a way that one lives in an awake consciousness for about two-thirds or more of the day – or even less – and spends one-third in a sleeping consciousness, is at first only an external and superficial observation. Even if one continues to develop the matter as it is immediately given in this way, in order to get behind the character of sleeping and waking, it still remains somewhat superficial for spiritual-scientific views in relation to the depths that can be reached here. For we must be clear about the fact that the state of sleep is not only present in our soul life when we sleep in the superficial sense, not only in the time that passes between falling asleep and waking up, but that our soul also carries the state of sleep to a certain extent into the so-called waking state. In truth, even when we are awake for ordinary consciousness, we are only partially awake. We are never fully awake in this ordinary state of consciousness. And if we ask ourselves from a spiritual scientific point of view: to what extent are we fully awake? — then we have to give ourselves the answer: we are awake with regard to everything that we call perception of the external sense world, as well as the processing of these perceptions of the external sense world through the ideas. In our life of perception and imagination, in our thinking life, we are undoubtedly awake. We would not even think of speaking of our waking state if we did not want to describe as such a waking state a certain inner state of mind that is present when we perceive the external world in a fully conscious state and think about it, forming ideas about it. But we cannot say that we are awake for our emotional life in the same sense as we are for our perceptual and imaginative life. It is only an illusion if one believes that one is as awake with regard to one's emotional life, one's affective life, one's emotional life from waking up to falling asleep as one is with regard to one's perception and thinking or imagining. Those who surrender themselves to this illusion do so because we always accompany our feelings with images. We not only imagine external things, we not only imagine chairs and tables and trees and clouds, but we also imagine our feelings; and by imagining our feelings, we wake up in the images of our feelings. But the feelings themselves surge up from the subconscious depths of the soul. For the one who can observe the inner soul processes, the feelings, the affects, the emotions, and the passions do not arise in a greater inner wakefulness than the impressions of the dream. The impressions of the dream are pictorial. We know how to distinguish them quite precisely for the ordinary consciousness of the external perceptions. Our consciousness is no more alert to the real feelings than it is to the dream. If we were to add an image to every dream as soon as we wake up, without being able to distinguish between the dream and the presentation of the dream, just as we always add a thought, an image, to our feelings, we would also consider our dreams to be the content of an awake experience. In themselves, our feelings are not experienced in a more awake state than our dreams. And even less are our volitional impulses experienced in a waking state. With regard to the will, man sleeps continually. He imagines something when he wills something; he has an idea when he — let us take a simple volitional impulse — stretches out his hand to grasp something. But what actually happens in the life of soul and body when we stretch out a hand to draw something near remains in the unconscious, like dreamless sleep. While we dream our feelings, we oversleep our will impulses in reality. As a person of feeling we dream, as a person of will we also sleep in the so-called waking state, so that actually even when we are awake, that is, from waking to falling asleep, we are only awake with half of our being, while we continue to sleep with the other half of our being. We are awake in relation to our perceptions and our thoughts, but we continue to sleep and dream in relation to our will and our feelings. Such things can hardly be proved or corroborated more strongly than by what has just been said in the way of suggestion. For the recognition of such things depends on whether one can properly observe the life of the soul. He who can properly observe this life of the soul will unerringly discover the inner psychic equality of feelings, affects, passions and dreams. There is a very beautiful essay by Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the so-called V-Vischer, who is particularly well known in this city, about “Dream Fantasy”, in which he emphasizes this correct observation of the relationship between the emotional and passionate life and the dream world in a very beautiful way. So we also go through life in a waking state, not only surrounded by the world we perceive through our senses, by the world we think, but also surrounded by a world that we can only dream of in our feelings, of which we, as with our will impulses standing in it, no longer experience more than we experience of our surroundings in our sleep, namely actually nothing. But a world that we do not experience when we are asleep is still just around us. Just as the tables and chairs and the other objects are in the room where there is a sleeper who, however, is unaware of them while he sleeps, so man is unaware of the world from which his emotional and volitional impulses come because he is constantly asleep with regard to this world. But this world, in relation to which we are constantly asleep, is the one that we have in common with human souls that are no longer embodied in the body. We have tried from a variety of perspectives to build a spiritual bridge between the so-called living and the so-called dead. We can also build this bridge conceptually by becoming aware that we are connected to people in their physical bodies in our ordinary waking state because they are accessible to our perception and our thought life. We are not connected to the so-called dead in our ordinary waking state because we are constantly asleep to part of the world around us. If we were to penetrate into this world, which we so oversleep, we would no longer be separated from the world in which man lives between death and a new birth. Just as we are surrounded by the air, so we are surrounded by the world in which man finds himself between death and a new birth, only we know nothing of this world, precisely for the reason given: because we oversleep it. The clairvoyant consciousness, in the way we have often characterized it, leads to the recognition of this world, which is otherwise overslept, this world in which man finds himself between death and a new birth. To enter into this world in such a way that one can be certain that one's soul passes through the gate of death, enters another world and returns in a new earthly life, is not difficult in itself, if one carefully considers what is contained in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' or in similar books. It is much more difficult to penetrate into this world, which man passes through between death and a new birth, in such a way that concrete, definite relationships can be established between the person here in the physical body and concrete dead people. These relationships are always there to a certain extent, at least between certain living people and certain dead people. But the reasons why a person is not aware that relationships always exist between him and certain so-called dead people can be seen in what I have already said today. And precisely that which the seeing consciousness experiences when it can relate to individual dead people can teach us why man in ordinary waking consciousness learns nothing of his relationships with the dead, which, as I said, are always present as real relationships. If such conscious relations are to be established between the seeing, awakening consciousness and certain dead, one must appropriate certain soul experiences that are quite different from the soul experiences to which we have become accustomed in waking consciousness. It is precisely in this area that it becomes apparent how one must discard all habits that one has developed for the purpose of knowing the physical environment and replace them with others if one wants to penetrate with a seeing consciousness into the concrete spiritual world. When the seer is confronted with a very specific individual so-called dead person, then he can indeed communicate with him properly, but he must just get beyond certain soul habits. The way one experiences the soul in such a case naturally causes bewilderment in someone who is not accustomed to such visions. When we stand here in the physical world and converse with another person, we know that When we say something to the other person, it comes from our own vocal organs, so to speak, radiating out from us and going to the other person. And when he answers us or in turn communicates something to us, it radiates out from his vocal organs and over to us. —- It is quite different when one has concrete relationships between the seeing consciousness and a very specific dead person. In that case, one has to completely change one's habits. When we ourselves communicate something to the dead, when we ask the dead, when we tell him something, then we must — as strange as it may sound — have acquired the ability to perceive what we ourselves say as coming from him, as emanating from him and radiating to us. In order to be able to convey a message to a dead person, we have to be able to tune out ourselves and live in him in such a way that he actually speaks when we ask him, when we convey a message to him. And again, when he answers us, when he wants to convey a message to us, it comes from our own soul, it announces itself in such a way that we know: it radiates from us, so to speak. So we have to turn around completely, turn back, if we want to come into a real relationship with a specific dead person. This is, even if it can be characterized in a simple way, an extraordinarily difficult thing to do in our emotional experience. To behave in an almost opposite way to the world around us, as we are accustomed to in the physical world, is something that is extremely difficult to acquire. But genuine communication with the so-called dead is only possible under these conditions. On the other hand, if you consider that you have to completely change your inner attitude, you will understand that relationships between the so-called living and the so-called dead are always possible, but that the so-called living will show little inclination to recognize these relationships. For the living are accustomed—and such an habit means more than one usually thinks—when they say something, to perceive it radiating from themselves; when the other says something, to perceive it radiating from the other. And anyone who is completely rusty in the prejudices of the physical world will, from the outset, have to find something like what I have just said quite foolish. But it is like this: you cannot penetrate into the spiritual world if you do not familiarize yourself with the fact that in the spiritual world, much - I say much, not everything - is exactly the opposite of the habits we have acquired here in the physical world. And what I have just discussed is one such thoroughly opposite experience. Only when one has familiarized oneself with such unusual things through very intimate practice can one form an opinion about the nature of the ordinary relationships that each person has with certain dead people, and how these relationships develop. As I said, these relationships are constantly present. We just have to bear in mind, if we want to take a look at these relationships, that in addition to the polar opposites of the day's experiences, waking and sleeping, we have two others that are particularly important for the relationships between the so-called living and the so-called dead, but which, when consciously experienced, go against the usual habits of human beings. In addition to the usual waking and sleeping, there is also the process of falling asleep and waking up. These fleeting moments of falling asleep and waking up are just as important for the overall spiritual life of a person as the long periods of sleeping and waking, but they pass by in a flash. The reason a person does not experience the moment of waking up is because the full awakening follows immediately afterwards, and the person is not inclined to perceive as quickly as they would have to perceive if they wanted to grasp the fleeting moment of awakening; it is drowned out, deafened, by the waking life that follows. In more naive human conditions, where people knew a lot about such things, they also hinted at what it means for the human soul in this respect. But little by little, as materialism progresses, these things are being lost. Among naive, primitive people in the countryside, you still often hear it said that when you wake up, you shouldn't look straight into the bright window, you shouldn't open your eyes right away. Such talk arises from a very deep instinct, from the instinct not to immediately deafen the moment of waking through the waking day life, in order to be able to hold on to something that is there in the moment of waking. But the moment of falling asleep is equally important, only that usually one falls asleep immediately afterwards. Then consciousness ceases. And so the moment of falling asleep is not properly observed by the ordinary consciousness. What is important for the relationship between a person embodied in the physical world and the dead, however, is what can be experienced and is actually experienced in the moments of falling asleep and waking up. Such things can, of course, only be observed with the seeing consciousness. But when the seeing consciousness has brought about a state in which it can establish such relationships with certain dead people, relationships that can only be established through the complete transformation and readjustment of the soul's state that I have mentioned, then it can also judge what the real, but unconscious, relationships of the so-called living to the so-called dead are like. The most favorable moment to bring to the dead all kinds of relationships we ourselves have developed in our souls to certain dead people is when we fall asleep. And the most favorable moment to receive answers, messages from the dead into physical life on earth is when we wake up. You do not have to be put off by the fact that what I have just said requires the person to address a question to the dead person when falling asleep, to send a message to the dead, and only to receive an answer or a return message at the moment of waking up. With regard to the supersensible world, the time conditions are quite different. What is separated by hours here for the physical world does not necessarily have to be separated in real supersensible life. One can definitely say: While here in physical life, when one asks someone, one expects an answer immediately, there one perceives the relationship in such a way that when one addresses questions to the dead while falling asleep, one receives the answer upon waking up. This relationship really always exists between the living and the dead. In fact, every person who has lost their loved ones to the physical plane by crossing the threshold of death has such relationships, which experience their most important development when falling asleep and waking up. They are not brought up into consciousness only because these favorable moments flit by quickly and man is not accustomed to taking into consciousness what approaches his soul in these quickly fleeting moments. To hold on to what approaches us in such fleeting moments, there is nothing more suitable than to occupy oneself with the finer, more subtle thoughts of spiritual science. If someone appropriates spiritual science in such a way that it is not mere head knowledge, but an inner substance of the soul itself, something that is grasped not only with cleverness but with love, so that it passes completely into the soul, if someone does not just cling to the thoughts of spiritual science with scientific curiosity or curiosity, but pursues them with love, to such a person this love sinks into the soul with such power that, with a little attention, he gradually becomes aware of the great significance of the moments of falling asleep and waking up. And the more spiritual science will sink into the souls of men, the more men will take up into real life not only what they experience when awake, but also what comes to them from a supersensible world when they fall asleep, but especially when they wake up. We must only be clear about the fact that we can only establish such real relationships, as I mean them now, with those dead with whom we are somehow connected karmically. But we are connected karmically with many more souls than we realize. For the conscious or unconscious communication between the living and the dead, however, the karmic connection is as necessary as it is necessary to direct the eye to a sense object in order to perceive it. Just as the sense relationship must be established, so it is a prerequisite for communication between the living and the dead that certain karmic relationships exist between them, or at least be established. If we now consider the moment of falling asleep, it is the moment that is particularly favorable for us to bring up the relationships we have developed with someone who has passed away and who was dear and precious to us, who was otherwise karmically connected to us. The moment of falling asleep is particularly good for this. We naturally develop our relationships with the dead, with whom we are karmically connected, in the waking day life from waking up to falling asleep. We commemorate the dead. Everything we think in relation to the dead, that we would like to bring to them, that we would like to tell them, is then compressed in the moment of falling asleep and, even if it remains unconscious to us, reaches the dead for the ordinary consciousness. Only a certain state of mind is particularly favorable for these communications, another state of mind unfavorable. You see, mere dry, cold thinking about the dead is not very suitable for really reaching the dead, for getting a message through to them. If we want the moment of falling asleep to become, as it were, a gateway through which our own experiences of soul that are related to the dead can reach the dead, then we must occupy ourselves with the dead in a different way while we are awake than by thinking cold, dry thoughts. We must try to stir up thoughts that connected us with the dead person while he was still living among the so-called living. But we must then put particular thought into what can establish a connection through the heart. Thinking of the dead person indifferently does not help much. But everything that keeps us connected to him through our hearts is good to call to mind: how one was with the dead person here or there, how one just talked with him, by developing an active interest in something that particularly interested him, out of one's own feelings; or to recall a situation in which one was once dead man here in life and something that touched him also touched you, or vice versa; how you were tempted to share something you had experienced with the other person because you liked him, to experience it together with him. Not dry thoughts, but thoughts permeated with love, with feeling! These thoughts then remain in our soul until the moment we fall asleep. And that is when we find the gate through which they can safely reach the dead person as a message. We should not deceive ourselves about these things. We dream of the dead. When we dream of the dead, in a great many cases – not all, of course – it is because of a real relationship with the dead person. But what we dream, in so far as it follows the moment of falling asleep, is actually only a dream-like, pictorial transformation of what we want to communicate to the dead person. We do not experience the moment of falling asleep as the moment when thoughts, as just characterized, really go over to the dead, because this moment of falling asleep passes by so quickly. But this moment of falling asleep actually resonates in the following sleep, resonates in the dream. If we understand the matter correctly, we will not interpret dreams of the dead as messages from the dead. They could be, but usually are not. They are half-remembered impulses that tell us the following. If we dream of a dead person, it means that on a previous day we addressed such a thought to the dead person, either voluntarily or involuntarily, as I have characterized it. This thought has found its way to the dead person, and the dream indicates to us that we were actually speaking to the dead person. What the dead person then answers us, what the dead person communicates to us, these messages from the dead come in particularly easily at the moment of waking up. And they would come much more easily to the so-called living if they only had time in our present time, if they had the inclination to pay a little attention to what comes up between the lines of life from deep within their consciousness. Yes, today's man is vain and selfish, and when something arises in his soul, he is usually clear about the fact that it is his genius that has caused it to arise. Being modest is an admonition put into life; being modest in the depths of one's being is not so easy for a person. Being modest also means that one really learns to distinguish between what arises from one's own soul and what arises from one's own soul from foreign, supersensible impulses. Just as the one who has the seeing consciousness feels and perceives the dead person's answer rising up from his or her own soul, so these answers from the dead, these messages from the dead in the waking period, from waking to falling asleep, come up from the depths of the soul. However, one can say: Just as a person does not see the stars during the day – although they are constantly in the sky – because sunlight drowns them out, a person is just as unaware of what is constantly coming up from the depths of his soul in his ordinary consciousness because the external life, which is caused by the impressions of the senses, drowns it out. When we become familiar, I would say, with our own soul, when we learn to distinguish between that which originates from ourselves and that which sounds from our own soul as something foreign, then, little by little, we also learn to recognize messages from the dead in our waking daily life. But then one connects something extraordinarily important with this knowledge. Then one says to oneself: We are actually not separated from the dead, the dead live among us. They do not announce themselves in the same way as other sensual beings, who send their impulses to us from outside, but they announce themselves from within, they speak to us through our own inner being, they carry us. However, humanity in the present and near future will find it difficult to get used to the idea that the impulses under which they act come only from the sensual world around them, to recognize that in what we call our social, our other life, not only the so-called living lives, but also the so-called deceased, that the dead are always there and work in us and with us. In mythical form, the ancients knew this. When the ancients revered the deceased as tribal lords, as ancestral gods, it was because the ancients had atavistic knowledge that the dead are always there, that they are always at work through the living. This awareness had to be lost for good reasons for humanity, but it must come back! We must know again that the dead are in our midst, that the dead speak through our soul, that we have fellowship with the dead. We must recognize that spiritual science must be asked how life is actually constituted and that external science about life must be misleading because it does not know how to distinguish between what comes from the sensual world and what comes from the supersensible world. Our historiography has gradually become something grotesquely absurd. People speak of ideas that are supposed to live in history as if the ideas flew in like hummingbirds or other birds, whereas in truth the impulses that are often present as historical impulses are precisely the impulses of the dead. This awareness of communal life with the dead must be developed. And as this awareness develops, and as human soul life becomes more refined through the concepts of spiritual science, which only then do not refine human life when they are conceived theoretically and not lovingly, all this will, so to speak, make the dead present for the consciousness of humanity as well. Then the great part of reality that today remains unconscious and unconsidered will also be considered. Only then will one live with the full reality and in the full reality. This is a task for humanity from this time on. For humanity is presently living in a great catastrophe. The deeper reasons why this catastrophe has arisen are that people have forgotten how to live in reality. Through their materialistic consciousness, people are far removed from reality. They believe that they are close to reality because they only accept one part of reality, the sensual reality, and consider the other to be mere fantasy. But it is precisely by not recognizing one half of reality that one separates oneself from reality. This does not lead to a deeper understanding of reality. If only people would realize that what I have just said is very, very practical for the present day! Our children and young people are learning history today. In modern times, and for a long time already, people have become accustomed to learning history, that is, what they regard as history. But how much have people learned from history? Well, people today are very often called upon to ask themselves in the face of events that occur as elementary events every hour: What does history teach us about this? The phrase can be read again and again: one can learn this or that from history. People just don't learn anything from reality. Never before could one have learned so much from reality as in the last three and a half years. But countless people are oversleeping this infinitely meaningful reality. When these catastrophic events began, very clever people who believed that they had learned a great deal from history expressed their opinions about how long these war events, as they called them, could last. With the reasons they could have, they were also able to substantiate what they had expressed; they said: Four to six months; according to the knowledge one can have, this war catastrophe cannot last longer than that. They were experts who spoke in this way. Well, the facts turned out differently. And one truly does not need to be an insignificant person to judge in this way, seduced by what we call history in more recent times. In 1789, a truly significant person took up his professorship in history at the university and gave an inaugural address in which this truly significant person said at the time that history teaches that it is very likely that in the future the peoples of Europe will have all sorts of quarrels with each other, but that they will no longer be able to tear each other apart; after all, humanity is too advanced for that. In 1789, a not insignificant person, Friedrich Schiller, made this statement when he took up his professorship, based on his study of history, to which Schiller himself could devote himself. But what followed what Schiller said? The French Revolution; the great wars at the beginning of the 19th century. And if it were a lesson of history that the people of Europe, as members of one great family, could never again tear each other apart, then all the events of the present would be all the more impossible. However strange it may sound, it is necessary to change our thinking about these things. What has been called history is not history at all. The forces that are supersensible are at work in the historical life of mankind. The dead have an influence on historical life, and a judgment based on history will only emerge when this judgment is made on a spiritual-scientific basis. Until this happens, history will never teach anything, history will never become a practical science, and it will never be suitable for providing maxims for what is to happen. This is why people today are so helpless in the face of events, because it is necessary in our time that spiritual maxims become the practical basis of life. As long as this does not happen, catastrophic events cannot truly be overcome. I have said: thoughts that arise from an emotional relationship with the dead person and that are remembered in such a way that one also remembers this emotional relationship are particularly favorable for getting in touch with the dead. It is particularly favorable to get an answer from the dead, particularly favorable for the dead to influence our lives, if we really know the dead, if we have the opportunity to delve into his being. Spiritual science will also be able to provide the impetus to delve into the nature of other people. Because today, due to the materialistic state of mind, it is hardly possible for people to know each other in life. They think they know each other, but they just pass each other by, talk past each other. Today, you can be married to someone for thirty or more years and know very little about them. It requires a certain refinement of soul to know the nature of another. If one can know the nature of the other as one's own, then the prerequisite is to call one's nature before the soul. If we call the nature of a dead person to whom we want to ask questions before our soul by visualizing something that connects us emotionally with him, and if we imagine his nature quite vividly, then we are sure to get surely receive an answer; then it is only for us to develop the necessary attention for the interplay of what we address to the dead, with what is sure to come back from the dead when the emotional relationships mentioned are recalled. It is then possible that what we bring to the dead will find its answer from the dead if we can vividly imagine what we have truly understood of his nature. The consciousness that sees can provide information about many other specific relationships with the dead. Today I will speak of one more. You see, those who pass through the gateway of death as our relatives or friends or otherwise karmically related to us, they either pass away as children or young people or as older people. If you observe with the seeing consciousness what the relationships are like with the various dead, then you can say the following with regard to this passing away at different ages. When children or young people pass through the gate of death, the relationship they maintain with those left behind can be described as follows: those who were their relatives here do not lose their children or younger people; they actually remain right there in the vicinity. And that, which we feel as pain, as grief, takes on its character through this. When a human being endowed with consciousness observes the pain of soul that a mother or father feels over a child who has passed away, this pain of soul is quite different from the pain felt as a young person when an older person dies. Of course, on a superficial, external level, these experiences of the soul are more or less the same, but if you look at them more intimately, they are fundamentally different. The people who have died younger do not go away, they actually remain – that is how you can describe the relationship – and they live on with our souls, live on in our souls. And actually the pain we feel, the grief we feel, is what the younger deceased experience in us. This is transferred into our pain, into our grief. They stay with us. It is a transference of their own pain, which does not have to be pain, but then becomes pain for us when it is transferred into our souls. The grief we feel for an older person is actually a personal pain. I would say it is less a pain of sympathy and more of selfishness, our own selfish pain. For if we want to describe the relationship of the younger person left behind here to the older deceased from the point of view of the observing consciousness, we can say: the older deceased does not lose us. We do not lose the younger deceased; the older deceased does not lose us, those left behind, but to a certain extent takes the soul with him, carries it with him in its forces on his further path. He does not lose those who remain behind. And so our relationship to such an older deceased person is quite different from that to a younger deceased person. The older deceased does not tend to live in the soul of the person who remains behind, because he takes with him the inner being, the imprint of the inner being. What I just said is not insignificant in life, because what we call the memory of the dead is given a very specific light through it. In younger people it is good to cultivate this memory – I would say the cult of the dead – in such a way, to develop it, that we remain more general, that we arrange the thoughts or the cultic actions or other things that are intended to cultivate the memory in such a way that we do not go into the individual, the personal side of the dead person, but have great world feelings and thoughts in view of the dead. In this way, the one who died young and remains with us feels at home. In the case of someone who died older, it is especially good if one can go into his individuality, if the thoughts one addresses to him are shaped in such a way that they have something to do with his personality, are shaped towards his personality. For someone who has died more recently, it is particularly good if the funeral service is arranged in such a way that a kind of cult, a generally established cult that has a symbolic meaning, is developed. For people who have died more recently, the Catholic funeral service is particularly suitable, which in most countries is less concerned with individual circumstances or not at all, but is a symbolic general funeral service for everyone. For souls who have died young, who of course remain there, it is best to develop general world symbols, general world feelings with regard to them, with rites that apply equally to everyone. For those who have died older, the Protestant funeral service, where more attention is paid to the individual course of life and more reference is made to the personal side of the deceased, is better. And also in the individual memory that one dedicates to such a deceased person, that which is personally connected with him, which is not applicable to every deceased person, but only to him, is to be preferred. If one knows these things, then our emotional life with regard to the deceased will also be graded and differentiated. We know how to distinguish how the soul should behave towards a younger or older deceased. Life is enriched in its most intimate relationships when one absorbs the idea from spiritual science that not only the souls living in physical bodies belong to one another, but also the disembodied souls. Only then does man enter into full reality. It must be said again and again: to speak of the spirit in general does not lead very far. To speak of spiritual life in general, as certain philosophers do, or as people do who today also believe that they can overcome materialism by speaking in general of spirit and spirit and spirit: that does not lead very far. We muster the courage to penetrate into the concrete spiritual life. We muster the courage to unreservedly confess such conditions, as we have discussed them again today, before the world, no matter how great the mockery of materialistic thinkers may still be at present. Today one cannot see how much that is infinitely fatal for humanity, infinitely disastrous, is connected with the fact that people know nothing about these things in the most important parts of the world and therefore do not think about them, and are therefore so far removed from reality, which must then devastatingly befall them. The present earth catastrophe will be ascribed to all possible impulses, only not to those in which it really originates in the deepest sense. This is the place to reflect on the full significance that an anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific worldview must have in European intellectual life, as we understand it here. How people relate to the spirit and to spiritual content will be of great importance in the not-too-distant future. For important and significant things are preparing themselves in the life of mankind on earth. One cannot help but, if one comes even a little out of the sleepy state in which, unfortunately, so many people are, think more deeply about certain things than has been thought in Europe for centuries. The times urge people to learn to rethink. Actually, you can see that people are rethinking; the only question is whether they are doing so in a truly profound way or whether they are refraining from doing so altogether, or whether they are doing so in the way that very many people are doing now. You can see that people are rethinking, it's just that sometimes it comes out in a very strange way. You could give not hundreds, but thousands of examples. You see, one of those people who have changed their thinking terribly over the last three and a half years is the former French socialist and journalist Gustave Herve. He publishes a newspaper, he calls it 'Gloire', which has also been renamed from a less provocative name. This Herve is actually one of those who currently write in the spirit of the most furious French jingoism. One can say that even compared to a tigerish, bullish chauvinist like Clemenceau, Herve is actually even more French-chauvinist – and he has changed his views. Four years ago, he was still quite a cosmopolitan, who laughed at anyone who was somehow, I won't even say, French-chauvinist, but who was just somehow French-nationalist. He was a true cosmopolitan, this Herve. Now what he writes is so vitriolic that one can read between every line one reads of his: he would actually prefer that the French tricolour become an instrument to slay everything opposed to the French. Nevertheless, Herve did make a significant statement, though it was before this war. This saying is the following: The tricolor belongs on the dunghill! — So little was this man, who is now one of the most chauvinistic Frenchmen, nationally minded as a Frenchman, that he rose to say: the tricolor—he means the French tricolor—belongs on the dunghill. So he despised everything national. He has already relearned, rethought, only of course in a way that is not very profound. What should happen in a time happens – it is important to note this; the only question is how it turns out for one or the other, how one or the other really pays attention to their task for humanity. Above all, it is necessary in this re-education that the European man does not oversleep the significant things that are currently being prepared for all of humanity on earth. Over in Asia, especially in the Orient, a sum of judgments is being prepared about Europe, namely about Central Europe – we are particularly interested in Central Europe at the present time – judgments are being prepared that will gradually actually combine to form historical impulses. The Oriental, the Japanese, the Indian, the Chinese, are gradually feeling challenged to develop certain impulses within themselves. And to a high degree, such impulses have already been formed. To a certain degree, there are judgments, especially among leading Orientals, about Central European, about German nature, which should certainly be heeded, because what lives in these impulses will become history in the not too distant future. It may seem very strange, but today one should develop a fine sensitivity for such things; one should know that today it is necessary to foresee a little of what must come in order to keep pace with reality. The Orientals who are preparing to enter into a relationship with Europe, who are forming their judgments, which will become world politics in the future, these Orientals have their age-old views about spiritual life. They see what has been going on in Europe for centuries, but they see it only in a one-sided way, because this Europe, namely this Central Europe, shows them their own nature in a one-sided way. Yes, what do the leading Orientals believe, for example, about this Central European nature? They believe what they must believe from what they actually see. They believe that Central Europe is particularly skilled at organizing state, commercial and other relationships; that Central Europe is particularly skilled at submitting to the external science taught in schools in Europe and surrendering to the authority of this science. These Orientals cannot particularly appreciate what comes from this organization or from science, because they are aware that they have an ancient spirituality that is based on completely different impulses than we Europeans can have. The leading Oriental, in particular, will never be impressed by what European natural science, for example, has to offer; he will never be impressed by what European industry produces, even if he, like the Japanese, will accept it in an external way; he will never be impressed by what European organization is able to achieve. For he is aware that none of this establishes a relationship to the real essence of things. He feels that this relationship exists between his soul and the soul of the universe. He feels spiritually akin to the soul of the universe. Let us be quite clear about this. The Oriental would approach what corresponds to such a way of looking at things, as we have practiced here or elsewhere today, quite differently than he would approach the European machine, the European organization, the European external science of the mind. And however strange it may seem, we may well ask ourselves what the Orient would say if it could know that from the fruits of the spiritual life in Europe, as expressed by Herder, Schiller, Goethe, and the Romantics, , a true, concrete spiritual contemplation of the world, which adds something special to the oriental contemplation of the spirit that the Oriental cannot find through his disposition, but which he could appreciate and with which he could agree? Of course, you may say: Goethe is sufficiently known throughout the world, and the leaders of Oriental intellectual life can also get to know Goethe, and Goethe is a source, an infinite source for the intellectual life of Central Europe. All this is true, absolutely true. But has Central Europe already come to truly recognize Goethe as such a source? One could talk about this point at length. The Oriental looks at what Central Europe has been able to make of Goethe. Much could be said about this, but I will give just one example: Central Europe has known how to pass over the most important impulses of Goethe in silence, but it has a Goethe Society. This Goethe Society was founded at a truly propitious moment. The starting point was an excellent one. It may be said that few constellations were as favorable for such things as this one at the end of the 1880s. When the last descendant of Goethe handed over the estate to a princess, everything could have been well initiated, would have been well tackled, and would have given an initial impulse from which one could have believed: now the spiritual sources will be drawn from Goethe! Much has happened, and the Goethe Society was also founded at that time. But let us take the Oriental who asks: In the Orient we have a life that connects the soul directly to the world soul. Over there they have organizations of state and social conditions, over there they have machines and industry, they have a science that is taught in school and weighs on the soul with tremendous authority; but they have no relationship of the soul of the human being to the soul of the universe. If he knew what relationships were lying latent, if he knew what could be his after what could be experienced in Goethe, he would speak and think and feel differently. But what does he see? Well, he may ask himself: Yes, this Central Europe has managed to found a Goethe Society to honor one of its greatest minds. But it has also managed to have a former finance minister as the president of this Goethe Society today. - It is only symbolic of much more. One can say: there must live in our soul the impulse to make the world aware that from the source of the German spirit can emerge the impulses of spiritual science. They will not be overlooked in the Orient. If they were overlooked, then the judgment would have to form in the Orient as a historical impulse: This Central European culture is actually harmful to humanity. — And this judgment has become established to a high degree. It would certainly be corrected if it were known that this Central European spiritual life is capable of transforming even the most mechanical of mechanisms into beauty, into soul, through those impulses that it has within itself and that it can develop into real knowledge and real processing of the supersensible. So it could actually work in one direction. And if we look at the other side: in the West, in America, not only the Central European way of life but the whole of Europe is seen in the same way as one can only get to know it from the outside, because of course not only the Goethe Society, with the former finance minister at its head, but also the other things are seen in a similar way, but not what can live in souls as what has passed through our souls today. While in the Orient they say: This Europe, this European life is harmful – in America they find it superfluous. Because the Americans can build machines, organize industry, and found Goethe Societies with people who understand Goethe scholarship as much as what is needed to put together financial budgets. But what flows from Goethe as the deepest source of spiritual life, the Americans cannot do that; they can only have it if they take it from the Central Europeans. It is not just some mystical eccentricity, my dear friends, it is a question deeply connected with the practical necessities of life in the present, how we relate to the impulses to let the world know and feel, as much as is possible in us, what could live in European culture in terms of spirituality, which paths it could currently have to the supersensible. Today more than ever it is necessary to remember that spiritual science in our sense is not just something with which we want to do good to our own soul, but that spiritual science must become something through which we as human beings in the right sense, as human beings of Central Europe, can fulfill our task in the development of humanity. |
| 175. Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha: Lecture X
08 May 1917, Berlin Translated by A. H. Parker Rudolf Steiner |
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| They are first told in the relevant passage in Verworn's book that the dream exaggerates and then, later on, they are told (not precisely in the words I have used) that the brain is less active and therefore the dream appears bizarre. |
| But if this is a dream, and a dream is only a memory of everyday life, you will have difficulty in understanding why the foremost thought in your mind, namely the death of your friend, plays no part in the dream when you have just experienced a situation which you know for certain you could not have shared with him when alive. |
| If you take these two factors into consideration—perhaps in conjunction with other factors—you will conclude: my dream-picture veils a real meeting with the soul of X. The thought of death never occurs to me because the dream is not a memory of everyday life: in the dream I receive an authentic visitation from the deceased (i.e. |
| 175. Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha: Lecture X
08 May 1917, Berlin Translated by A. H. Parker Rudolf Steiner |
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It might seem at first sight that in the centuries immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha mankind had not been touched by the light of spiritual illumination; that this was the normal condition of mankind and increasingly so up to the present day. This is not so, however. If we wish to see these things in perspective we must distinguish between the prevailing spirit of mankind and that which occurs here and there in the life of mankind and may play a decisive part in the different spheres of life. It would be most discouraging for many today to be told of the existence of a spiritual world, but that the doors to this world were closed to them. And there are many at the present time who have come to this depressing conclusion. The reason for this is not far to seek. Where there is a clear possibility of gaining insight into the spiritual world they refuse to commit themselves unreservedly. Nor have they the courage to pass an objective judgement on this issue. It may seem therefore—but in reality it is only apparently so—that today we are far removed from those early times when the spiritual world was revealed to the whole of mankind through atavistic clairvoyance, or from the later times when the few could find access to the spirit through initiation into the Mysteries. We must draw together certain strands which link early periods of human evolution with the present if we wish to arrive at a full understanding of the mystery of man's destiny and especially of those phenomena we have discussed in these lectures in connection with the nature of the Mysteries. I should like to select an example from recent times which is accessible to all and which will lend encouragement to those who are faced with the decision of choosing paths leading to the spiritual world. From the many examples at our disposal I would like to take an example which demonstrates at the same time how these phenomena are none the less misjudged from the materialistic point of view of the present day—and will also be misjudged in the immediate future. No doubt you have all heard of Otto Ludwig (note 1) who was born in 1813, in the same year as Hebbel and Richard Wagner. Otto Ludwig was not only a poet—some may feel perhaps that he was not in the front rank of poets, but that does not concern us at the moment—but he was a man given to introspection, who sought self-knowledge and who succeeded in penetrating into the inner life which is veiled from the majority today. Otto Ludwig describes very beautifully what he experiences in the process of poetic composition or when he reads the poetry of others and surrenders to its appeal. He then realizes that he does not read or compose like other men, but that an extraordinary ferment is set up within him. And Otto Ludwig gives a beautiful description of this in a passage I will now read to you because it reveals a piece of self-knowledge of a typically modern man who, in the course of this self-revelation, speaks of things which our present materialistic age regards as the wildest fantasy. But Otto Ludwig was no visionary or idle dreamer. By nature he was perhaps introspective, but if we take into consideration the information we have about his life, we shall find that alongside this introspective tendency there was something eminently sane and balanced in his make-up. He describes his own creative experience and his response to the poetry of others in these words:
Here then we have the remarkable case of a man who experiences crimson-red on reading Schiller, or golden yellow passing over into golden brown on reading the dramas or poems of Goethe, who experiences a colour sensation with every drama of Shakespeare; who, when he composes or reads a poem sees figures like those of a copper engraving printed on a parchment-coloured background, or three-dimensional miming figures on which the sun falls through a veil which diffuses the light that evokes the total mood. Now we must understand this experience in the correct way. It is not yet a clairvoyant perception, but it is a step towards spiritual vision. In order to have a right understanding of this mood from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we must realize that Otto Ludwig was no stranger to spiritual vision. For if he were to advance further along this path he would not only experience these visions, but, just as physical objects are visible to the physical eye, spiritual beings would be visible to his spiritual eye and he would know them as an inner experience. Just as we see scattered light when we gently rub our eyes in the dark, light that seemingly radiates from the eye and fills the room, so from his inner life Ludwig radiates impressions of colour and tone. As he rightly says, he experiences them first as musical impressions. He does not exploit them in order to gain spiritual insight; but we perceive that he is mature enough spiritually to embark on the path leading to the spiritual world. It is no longer possible to deny that there exist people who are aware that “spiritual vision” is a reality, the vision that the neophytes learned to develop in the Mysteries in the way described in earlier lectures. For the real purpose of these ceremonies was primarily to call attention to the eye of the soul, to awaken man to the fact of its existence. That the phenomena which I have just described to you are not rightly understood today is evident from the observations of Gustav Freytag (note 3). When speaking of Otto Ludwig, he says:
This statement is perfectly correct, but has nothing to do with poetic composition. For the experiences of Otto Ludwig were not only shared by poets in ancient times, but by all men, and were shared in later times by those who had been initiated into the Mysteries irrespective of whether they were poets or not. These experiences have therefore no connection with poetic invention. Behind the barrier which the materialist of today has erected in his own soul there is to be found that which Otto Ludwig describes. It is found not only in the poet, but in every man today. The fact that he was a poet has nothing to do with the phenomenon of poetic vision, but is something that accompanies it. One may be a far greater poet than Otto Ludwig and that which one is able to describe may remain entirely in the subconscious. It is present in the substratum of the subconscious, but need not manifest itself. For poetry, indeed art as a whole today, is something other than the conscious fashioning of clairvoyant impressions. I quote the case of Otto Ludwig as an example of a man—and men of his type are by no means rare today—who stands on the threshold of the spiritual world. If one practises the exercises given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, that which already exists in the soul is raised into consciousness, so that one learns to use it or to apply it consciously. It is important to bear this in mind. The problem is not so much that it is difficult to reach the hidden depths of the soul, but that people today lack the courage to embark upon a spiritual training; and that for the most part those who would willingly do so from a heartfelt need to know and to understand, none the less feel constrained to admit this need, albeit somewhat shamefacedly in their own intimate circle, but conceal it when they later find themselves in the company of contemporary intellectuals. What we should characterize today as the right path, perhaps because we live in the Michael Age since 1879, need not of necessity be regarded as the only right path. Looking back over the recent past it is possible that many may have attained a high degree of clairvoyance, genuine clairvoyance; there is no need for us therefore either to recognize fully or to accept this clairvoyance unreservedly, nor to regard it as something dangerous and to be rejected. There are certainly many factors which for some time have undermined our courage to accept the validity of clairvoyance, and for this reason the assessment of Swedenborg (who has often been mentioned in your circle) has been so strange. He could act as a stimulus to many, in that people might see in him an individuality who had lifted to some extent the veils that concealed the spiritual world. Swedenborg had developed a high degree of Imaginative cognition which is a necessity for all who would penetrate to the spiritual world. It was indispensable to him; it was simply a kind of transition to higher stages of knowledge. And it was especially his clairvoyant sense for Imaginative cognition that he had developed. But precisely because this Imaginative cognition was stirring and pulsating in him he was able to make observations about the relations between the spiritual world and the phenomenal world, observations which are highly significant for those who seek to clarify their ideas about clairvoyance by studying the development of particular personalities. I should like to take Swedenborg as an example in order to illustrate how he came to self-understanding, how he thought and felt in order to keep his inner life attuned to the spiritual world. He was not motivated by egoism in his search for the spirit. He was already fifty-five years old when the doors of the spiritual world were opened to him (note 4). He was therefore a man of ripe experience; he had received a sound scientific training and had long been active in this field. The most important scientific works of Swedenborg have just been published in many volumes by the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and they contain material that may well determine the course of science for many years to come. But people today have learned the trick of recognizing a man such as Swedenborg (who was the leading scientist of his day) only in so far as they agree with him; otherwise they label him a fool. And they perform this trick with consummate skill. They attach no importance to the fact that from the age of fifty-five Swedenborg bears witness to the reality of the spiritual world—a man whose scientific achievement not only compares favourably with that of others—in itself no mean feat—but who, as a scientist, stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Swedenborg was particularly interested in the question of the interaction of soul and body. After his spiritual enlightenment he wrote a superb treatise on this subject. The content was approximately as follows: In considering the interrelation of body and soul there are three possibilities. First, the body is the decisive factor; sense-impressions are mediated by the body and react upon the soul. The soul therefore is to some extent dependent upon the body. The second possibility is that the body is dependent upon the soul which is the source of the spiritual impulses. The soul fashions the body and makes use of the body during its lifetime. In this case one must speak not of a physical influence, but of a psychic influence. The third possibility is as follows: body and soul are contiguous, but do not interact; a higher power brings about a harmony or agreement between them just as two clocks which are independent of each other agree when they show the time. When therefore an external impression is made upon the senses, a thought process is set up within the soul, but both are unrelated; a corresponding impression is made upon the soul from within by a higher power, just as an impression is made upon the soul through the senses from without. Swedenborg points out that the first and third possibilities are impossible for those who are able to see into the spiritual world, that it is evident to the spiritually enlightened that the soul by virtue of its inner forces is related to a spiritual sun in the same way as the (physical) body is related to the physical sun. And he also shows that everything of a physical nature is dependent upon soul and spirit. He throws fresh light upon what we called the Sun mystery (when speaking of the Mysteries), that mystery of which Julian the Apostate had a dim recollection when he spoke of the sun as a spiritual being. It was this which was the cause of his hostility to Christianity because the Christianity of his day sought to deny Christ's relation to the sun. Through Imaginative cognition Swedenborg restored the Sun mystery as far as was possible for his time. I have placed these facts before you in order to show what Swedenborg experienced inwardly in the course of developing his spiritual knowledge. His reflections upon the question I have just touched upon were embodied in a kind of philosophical treatise—the kind of treatise written by one who has insight into the spiritual world, not the kind of treatise written by the academic philosopher who is devoid of spiritual vision. At the conclusion of his treatise Swedenborg speaks of what he calls a “vision”. And by this vision he does not imply something he has conjured up, but something he has actually perceived with the eye of the spirit. Swedenborg is not afraid to speak of his spiritual visions. Furthermore he recounts what a particular angel said to him because he is certain of the fact. He no more doubts it than another doubts what a fellow human being has told him. He said: “I was once ‘in the spirit’; three Schoolmen appeared to me, disciples of Aristotle, advocates of his doctrine that attributes a physical influence to all that streams into the soul from without. They appeared on the one side. On the other side appeared three disciples of Descartes who spoke of spiritual influences upon the soul, albeit somewhat inadequately. And behind them appeared three disciples of Leibnitz who spoke of the pre-established harmony, i.e. of the independence of body and soul, of dissimilar monads existing and moving together in a state of absolute harmony pre-established by God. And I perceived nine figures who surrounded me. And the leaders of each group of the three figures were Leibnitz, Descartes and Aristotle, suffused in light”. Swedenborg spoke of this vision as one speaks of an event in everyday life. Then, he said, from out of the abyss there rose up a spirit with a torch in his right hand and as he swung the torch in front of the figures they immediately began to dispute amongst themselves. The Aristotelians defended, from their standpoint, the primacy of physical influences, the Cartesians defended spiritual impulses, and likewise the Leibnitzians defended, with the support of Leibnitz himself, the idea of preestablished harmony. Such visions may describe even the smallest details. Swedenborg tells us that Leibnitz appeared dressed in a kind of toga and the lappets were held by his disciple Wolf. Such details always accompany these visions in which such peculiarities are very characteristic. These figures, then, began to dispute amongst themselves. They all had a good case—and any and every case can be defended. Thereupon, after prolonged conflict, the spirit appeared a second time. He carried the torch in his left hand and lit up their heads from behind. Then the battle of words was really joined. They said: “We cannot distinguish which is our body and which is our soul.” And so they agreed to cast three slips of paper into a box. On the one slip was written “physical influence”, on the second, “spiritual influence” and on the third, “pre-established harmony”. Then they drew lots and drew out “spiritual influence” and said: “Let us agree to recognize spiritual influence.” At that moment an angel descended from the upper world and said: “It is not fortuitous that you drew out the slip of paper labelled ‘spiritual influence’; that choice had already been anticipated by the powers who in their wisdom guide the world because it accords with the truth.” This is the vision described by Swedenborg. It is open to anyone to regard this vision as of no importance, perhaps even as naive. The salient question however is not whether it is naive or not, but that he experienced it. And that which at first sight seems perhaps extremely naive has profound implications. For that which in the phenomenal world appears to be arbitrary, the vagary of chance, is something totally different when seen symbolically from the spiritual angle. It is difficult to come to an understanding of chance, because chance is only a shadow-image of higher necessities. Swedenborg wishes to indicate something of special importance, namely that it is not he who wills it, but “it” is willed in him. This vision arises because “it” is willed in him. And this is an accurate description of the way in which he arrived at his truths, an accurate description of the spirit in which the treatise was written. How did the Cartesians react? They sought to demonstrate the idea of spiritual influence on purely human and rational grounds. It is possible to arrive at the spirit in this way but that seldom happens. The Aristotelians were no better than the Cartesians; they defended the idea of the spiritual influence, again on human grounds. The Leibnitzians were certainly no better than the other two for they defended the idea of “pre-established harmony”. Swedenborg rejected these paths to the spirit; he did everything possible to prepare himself to receive the truth. And this waiting upon truth, not the determination of truth, this passive acceptance of truth was his aim and was symbolized by the drawing of the slips of paper from the box. This is of vital importance. We do not appreciate these things at their true worth when we approach them intellectually. We only appreciate them in the right way when they are presented symbolically, even though intelligent people may regard the symbol as naive. Our response to symbols is different from our response to abstract ideas. The symbol prepares our soul to receive the truth from the spiritual world. That is the essential. And if we give serious attention to these things we shall gradually understand and develop ideas and concepts which are necessary for mankind today, ideas which they must acquire by effort and which appear to be inaccessible today simply because people are antipathetic towards them—and for no other reason—an antipathy that springs from materialism. The whole purpose of our investigations was to study the course of human evolution, first of all up to a decisive turning-point—and this turning-point was the Mystery of Golgotha. Then evolution continues and takes on a new course. These two courses are radically different from each other. I have already described in what respects they differed from each other. In order fully to understand this difference let us recall once again the following: in ancient times it was always possible for man without special training of his psychic life (in the Mysteries this was connected with external ceremonies and cult acts) to be convinced of the reality of the spiritual world through the performance of these rites and ceremonies and thereby of his own immortality, because this certainty of immortality was still latent in his corporeal nature. After the Mystery of Golgotha it was no longer possible for the physical body to “distil” out of itself the conviction of immortality; it could no longer “press” out of itself, so to speak, the perception of immortality. This had been prepared in the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. It is most interesting to see how Aristotle, this giant among philosophers, made every effort a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha to grasp the idea of the immortality of the soul; but the idea of immortality he arrived at was a most remarkable conception. Man, in Aristotle's opinion, is only a complete man when he possesses a physical body. And Franz Brentano, one of the best Aristotelians of recent time, says in his study of Aristotle that man is no longer a complete man if some member is lacking; how can he be a complete man when he lacks the whole body? Therefore, to Aristotle, when the soul passes through the gates of death it is of less significance than it was when in the body here on Earth. This shows that he had lost the capacity still to perceive the soul, whilst on the other hand the original capacity to accept the immortality of the soul still persisted. Now, strange to relate, Aristotle was the leading philosopher throughout the Middle Ages. All that can be known, said the Schoolmen, is known to Aristotle and as philosophers we have no choice but to rely upon him and follow in his footsteps. They had no intention of developing spiritual powers or capacities beyond the limits set by Aristotelianism. And this is very significant, for it explains clearly why Julian the Apostate rejected the Christianity that was practised by the Church during the age of Constantine. One must really see these things from a higher perspective. Apart from Franz Brentano, one of the leading Aristotelians of our time, I was personally acquainted with Vincenz Knauer, a Benedictine monk, whose relationship to Aristotle as a Roman Catholic was identical with that of the Schoolmen. In speaking of Aristotle he sought to discover at the same time what could be known of the immortality of the soul by purely human knowledge. And Knauer gave the following interesting summary of his opinion:
It is very significant that those who are well versed in Aristotle admit that human knowledge could arrive at no other conclusion. And a certain effort therefore is demanded of us to resist the consequences of this attitude of mind. The materialism of the present time is unwittingly influenced by the Conciliar decree of 869 which abolished the spirit and declared that man consisted of body and soul only. Modern materialism goes even further; it proposes to abolish the soul as well. That of course is the logical sequel. We need therefore both courage and determination in order to find our way back again to the spirit in the right way. Now Julian the Apostate who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries was aware that a specific spiritual training could lead to the realization that the soul is immortal. This Sun mystery was known to him. And he now became aware of something that filled him with alarm. He was unable to grasp the fact that what he feared so much was a necessity. When he looked back to ancient times he realized that directly or indirectly through the Mysteries man was guided by Cosmic Powers, Beings and Forces. He realized that this may happen on the physical plane, that it is ordained from spiritual spheres because men have insight into these spiritual spheres. In Constantinism he saw a form of Christianity emerge which modelled Christian society and the organization of Christianity on the original principles of the Roman empire. He saw that Christianity had infiltrated into that which the Roman empire had intended for the external social order only. And he saw that the divine-spiritual had been harnessed to the Imperium Romanum. And this appalled him; he was unable to bring himself to admit that this was a necessity for a brief period. He realized that there was wide disparity between the mighty impulses of human evolution and what happened historically. I have often called attention to the need to bear in mind the golden age of the rise of Christianity before the era of Constantine. For at that time powerful spiritual impulses were at work which had been obscured solely because man's independent search for knowledge which he owed to the Christ Impulse had been harnessed to the Conciliar decrees. If we look back to Origen and to Clement of Alexandria we find men who were open-minded, men still imbued with the Greek spirit: yet they were also conscious of the significance of what had been accomplished through the Mystery of Golgotha. Their conception of this Mystery and of the crucified Christ is considered to be pure heresy in the eyes of all denominations today. In reality the great Church Fathers of the pre-Constantine age who are recognized by the Church are the worst heretics of all. Though they were aware of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the Earth, they gave no indication of wishing to suppress the path to the Mystery of Golgotha, the gate to the Mysteries or the path of the old clairvoyance, which had been the aim of the Christianity of Constantine. In Clement of Alexandria especially we see that his works are shot through with great mysteries, mysteries which are so veiled that it is even difficult for contemporary man to make head or tail of them. Clement speaks of the Logos for example, of the wisdom that streams through and permeates the Universe. He pictures the Logos as music of the spheres fraught with meaning, and the visible world as the expression of the music of the spheres, just as the visible vibration of the strings of a musical instrument is the expression of the sound waves. Thus, in the eyes of Clement, the human form is made in the image of the Logos; that is, to Clement the Logos is a reality and he sees the human form as a fusion of tones from the music of the spheres. Man, he says, is made in the image of the Logos. And in many of Clement's utterances we find traces of that supernal wisdom that dwelt in him, a wisdom illuminated by the Christ Impulse. If you compare these utterances of Clement of Alexandria with the prevailing attitude today then the claim to recognize a man such as Clement of Alexandria without understanding him will appear as more than passing strange. When it is said that the aim of Spiritual Science is to follow in the main stream of Christianity, to be a new flowering of Christianity to meet the needs of our time, then the cry is raised—the ancient Gnosis is being revived! And at the mention of Gnosis many professing Christians today begin to cross themselves as if faced by the devil incarnate. Gnosis for today is Spiritual Science; but the more developed gnosis of the present time is different from the gnosis known to Clement of Alexandria. What were the views of Clement of Alexandria who lived in the latter half of the second century? Faith, he says, is our starting-point—the orthodox Christian of today is satisfied with faith alone and asks no more. Faith, according to Clement, is already knowledge, but concise knowledge of what is needed; gnosis however confirms and reinforces what we believe, is founded on faith through the teaching of Our Lord and so leads to a faith that is scientifically acceptable and irrefutable. In these words Clement of Alexandria expresses for his time what we must realize today. Christianity therefore demands that gnosis, the Spiritual Science of today, must actively participate in the development of Christianity. But the modern philistine protests: “We must distinguish between science (which he would limit to sense experience) and faith. Faith must have no part in science.” Clement of Alexandria however says: To faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love, and to love the “Kingdom”. This is one of the most profound utterances of the human spirit because it bears witness to an intimate union with the life of the spirit. First we are nourished in faith; but to faith is added gnosis, that is, knowledge or understanding. Out of this living knowledge, i.e. when we penetrate deeply into things, there is first born genuine love through which our Divine inheritance operates. Mankind can only be the vehicle of the influx of the Divine as it was in the “beginning” if to faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love and to love the “Kingdom”. We must look upon these utterances as bearing witness to the deep spirituality of Clement. Difficult as it may seem we must make the true form of Christian life once again accessible to mankind today. It is important to see certain things for what they are today and we shall then know where to look for the real cause of our present tribulations (i.e. the War of 1914). The effect of these calamities is such that, as a rule, no attempt is made to discover what really lies behind them. When, for example, an Alpine village is buried beneath an avalanche, everyone sees the avalanche crash down; but if we want to discover the cause of the avalanche we must look for it perhaps in an ice-crystal where the snow-slip began. It is easy enough to observe the destruction of the village by the avalanche, but it is not so easy to provide tangible evidence that the disaster was caused by an ice-crystal. And so it is with the great events of history! It is evident that mankind is now caught up in a terrible catastrophe; this is the conflagration that has overwhelmed us. We have to look for the sparks—and they are many—which first set the conflagration alight. But we do not pursue our enquiries far enough in order to ascertain where the conflagration first began. Today we are afraid to see things for what they are. Let us assume that we wish to form an opinion about a certain field of science. Usually we rely upon the opinion of the specialist in that particular field. Why is his opinion accepted as authoritative? Simply because he is an expert in this field. Generally speaking it is the specialist or university professor who determines what is accepted as scientific today. Let us take a concrete case. I am well aware that it does not make for popularity to call a spade a spade, but that is no matter. But unless an increasing number of people is prepared to get to the root of things today we shall not overcome our present tribulations. Let us assume that a leading authority says the following: people are always talking about man in terms of body and soul. This idea of the dualism of body and soul is fundamentally unsatisfactory. That we still speak of body and soul today is due to the fact that we are dependent on a language that is already outmoded, which we have inherited from an earlier epoch when people were far more stupid than today. These people were so foolish as to believe that the body and soul were separate entities. When we speak of these matters today we are compelled to make use of these terms; we are victims of a language which belongs to the past. And our authority continues: we have to accept body and soul as separate entities, but this is quite unjustified. Anyone speaking from the present standpoint and wholly uninfluenced by the views of ancient times would perhaps say: let us assume here is a flower and here is a man. I see his form and complexion, his external aspect, just as I see that of the flower. The rest must be inferred.—Now someone might come along and object: that is true, but the man in question also sees the flower in his soul. But that is pure illusion. What I really receive from the perception of a flower or a stone is a sense-impression and the same is true of the man in question. The idea that an inner image persists in the soul is pure illusion. The only things we know are external relationships. You will say that you can make nothing of this argument! And a good thing too, because it is a farrago of nonsense, it is the acme of stupidity. This crass stupidity is supported by all kinds of careful laboratory investigations into the human brain and sundry clinical findings and so on. In short the man is a fool. He is in a position to provide good clinical results because laboratories are at his disposal; but the conclusions which he draws from these findings are pure nonsense. Men of this type are a commonplace today. To say these things does not make for popularity. The cycle of lectures which has appeared in book form by the man I am referring to—strangely enough his name is Verworn, [original note 1] I take this to be pure coincidence—is called “The Mechanism of the Spiritual Life”. It would be about as sensible to write about the “ligneousness of iron” as about “the mechanism of spiritual life”. Now if this is typical of the intellectual acumen of our most enlightened minds it is not in the least surprising that if those disciplines which are far from being accurate at least in relation to external facts—and in this respect Verworn is capable of accurate observation because he describes what he sees, but unfortunately muddies everything with his own foolish ideas—that if those disciplines which are unsupported by external evidence such as political science, for example, are exposed to the scientific mode of thinking, then the greatest nonsense results. Political science should be supported by thoughts that are rooted in reality, but lacks these thoughts for reasons I have indicated in my last lecture. And people are forcibly reminded of this fact. I referred earlier in this lecture to Kjellén, one of the leading Swedish thinkers. His book The State as Organism is ingenious; towards the end of the book he puts forward a remarkable idea, but neither he, nor others today, can make anything of it. He quotes a certain Fustel de Coulanges (note 5), author of La Cité antique, who showed that when we analyse pre-Christian political and social institutions we find that they are entirely founded on religious rites and observances; the entire State has a social and spiritual foundation. Thus people are willy-nilly brought face to face with the facts, for I pointed out in my last lecture that the social order stemmed from the Mysteries and had a spiritual origin. In studying the body politic or political science people are faced with these questions but are at a loss to understand them. They can make nothing of what even history reports when they can no longer rely upon documents. And still less can they make anything of the other idea which I indicated as a new path to the Christ. This idea which we find especially in the Mysteries and in Plato's writings, that remarkable echo of the Mystery teachings must arise once again. The central figure of Plato's dialogues is Socrates surrounded by his disciples. In the debate between Socrates and his disciples Plato unfolds his teachings. In his writings Plato was in communion with Socrates after the latter's death. Now this is something more than a literary device. It is the continuation, the echo of what was practised in the Mysteries where the neophytes were gradually prepared for communion with the souls of the dead who continue to direct the sensible world from the spiritual world. Plato's philosophy is developed out of his communion with Socrates, after the death of Socrates. This idea must be revived again and I have already indicated what form it must take. We must get beyond the dry bones of history, beyond the mere recording of external events. We must be able to commune with the dead, to let the thoughts of the dead arise in us once again. It is in this sense that we must be able to take seriously the idea of resurrection. It is through personal inner experience that Christ reveals Himself to mankind. It is by following this path that the truth of the Christ can be demonstrated. But this path demands of us that we develop the will in our thinking. If we can develop only such thoughts as are suited to the observation of the external world we cannot arrive at those thoughts which are really in touch with the dead. We must acquire the capacity to draw thoughts from the well of our inmost being. Our will must be prepared to unite with reality, and then the will which is thus spiritualised by its incorporation in our thinking will encounter spiritual beings, just as the hand encounters a physical object in the external world. And the first spiritual beings we encounter will, as a rule, be the dead with whom we are in some way karmically connected. You must not expect to find guidance in these abstruse matters from a set of written instructions which can be carried about in one's waistcoat pocket. Things are not as simple as that. One encounters well-intentioned people who ask: How do I distinguish between dream and reality, between phantasy and reality? In the individual case one should not attempt to distinguish between them in accordance with a fixed rule. The whole soul must be gradually attuned so that it can pass judgement in the individual case, just as in the external world we seek to pass judgement irrespective of the individual case. We must develop a wider perspective in order to form a judgement about the particular case. The dream may be a close approximation to reality, but it is not possible in the individual case to state categorically: this is the right and proper way to distinguish a mere dream from reality. Indeed what I am saying at the moment may not apply in specific cases, because other points of view must be taken into consideration. It is important to develop in ourselves the power to discriminate in spiritual matters. Let us take the familiar case of a person who is dreaming or who imagines he is dreaming. Now it is not easy to distinguish between dream and reality. People who study dreams today follow in the footsteps of Herr Verworn. He says that one can undertake an interesting experiment. He quotes the following example. Someone taps with a pin on the window of a house where the occupant is asleep. He is dreaming at the time, wakes up and says he had heard rifle-fire. The dream, according to Verworn, exaggerates. The tappings of the pin on the window-pane have become rifle-shots. Verworn explains this in the following way: we assume that in waking consciousness the brain is fully active. In dream consciousness the brain activity is diminished; only the peripheral consciousness is active. Normally the brain plays no part; its activity is diminished. That is why the dream is so bizarre and why, therefore, the tappings of the pin turn into rifle-fire. Now the public is highly credulous. They are first told in the relevant passage in Verworn's book that the dream exaggerates and then, later on, they are told (not precisely in the words I have used) that the brain is less active and therefore the dream appears bizarre. The reader has meanwhile already forgotten what was told in the first place. He is unable to relate the two statements and simply says: the State has appointed an expert in these matters and so we must accept his word. Now, as you know, belief in authority is taboo today. He who does not hold these views about the dream may none the less feel that the following way of thinking might well be the right approach. Let us assume you are dreaming of a friend who is dead. You dream, or believe you are dreaming that you are sharing some situation in common with him—and then you wake up. Your first thought on awakening is of course: but he died some time ago! But in the dream it never occurred to you that he was dead. Now you can find many ingenious explanations of this dream if you refer to Verworn's book, The Mechanism of the Spirit. But if this is a dream, and a dream is only a memory of everyday life, you will have difficulty in understanding why the foremost thought in your mind, namely the death of your friend, plays no part in the dream when you have just experienced a situation which you know for certain you could not have shared with him when alive. You are then justified in saying: I have now experienced with X something I could not have experienced in life, something that I have not only not experienced, but which would have been impossible in our normal relationship. Assuming that the soul of X, the real soul, which has passed through the gates of death is behind this dream-picture, is it not self-evident that you do not share his death experience? There is no reason why X's soul should appear to be dead since it still lives on. If you take these two factors into consideration—perhaps in conjunction with other factors—you will conclude: my dream-picture veils a real meeting with the soul of X. The thought of death never occurs to me because the dream is not a memory of everyday life: in the dream I receive an authentic visitation from the deceased (i.e. X). I now experience the visitation in the form of a dream-picture, a situation which could not have arisen under the normal circumstances of everyday life. Furthermore the thought of death never occurs to me because the soul of the deceased persists. And then you have every reason for saying: when I experience this apparent dream I inhabit a realm where physical memory does not operate—and what I am about to say is most important—for it is characteristic of our physical life that our physical memory remains unimpaired. This memory does not exist to the same extent, nor is it of the same nature in the world of spirit which we enter at death. The memory which we need for the world of the spirit we must first develop in ourselves. The physical memory is tied to the physical body. Therefore anyone who is familiar with the super-sensible realm knows that the physical memory cannot enter there. It is not surprising that we have no memory of the deceased; but we are aware that we are in communion with the living soul of X. Those who are acquainted with this fact maintain that what we call memory in the physical life is something totally different in the spiritual life. Anyone who has succumbed to the impact of Dante's great work, the “Divine Comedy” will never doubt, if he has spiritual discernment, that Dante experienced spiritual visions, that he had insight into the world of the spirit. He who comprehends the language of those who were familiar with the world of the spirit will find convincing proof of this in Dante's introduction to the “Divine Comedy”. Dante was well versed in spiritual knowledge; he was no dilettante in matters of the spirit; he was, so to speak, an expert in this field. He was aware that normal memory does not operate in the realm where we are in communion with the dead. He often speaks of the dead, of how the dead dwell in the “Light”. In the “Divine Comedy” you will find these beautiful lines on the theme of memory:
Thus Dante was aware that it is impossible with normal memory to grasp that which could originate in the spiritual world. There are many today who ask: why should we aspire to the spiritual world when we have enough to contend with in the physical world; the ordinary man seeks a practical answer to the problems of this life!—But have these people any reason to believe that those who were initiated into the Mysteries in ancient times were any less concerned with the physical world? The initiates knew that the spiritual world permeates the physical world, that the dead are unquestionably active amongst us even though people deny it. And they knew that this denial merely creates confusion. He who denies that those who have passed through the gates of death exercise an influence on this world resembles the man who says: “Nonsense! I don't believe a word you say”—and then proceeds to behave as if he did believe it. It is not so easy, of course, to give direct proof of the havoc that is wrought when the influx of the spiritual world into the physical world is not taken into account, when people act on the assumption that this interaction can be ignored. Our epoch shows little inclination to bridge the gap that separates us from the kingdom where the dead and the higher Beings dwell. In many respects our present epoch harbours a veritable antipathy towards the world of the spirit. And it is the duty of the spiritual scientist who is really honest and sincere to be aware of the forces that are hostile to the development of Anthroposophy. For there are deep underlying reasons for this hostility and they stem from the same sources which are responsible for all the forces which are today in active opposition to the true progress of mankind.
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| 84. Supersensible Knowledge: Anthroposophy as a Demand of the Age: Anthroposophy and the Ethical-Religious Conduct of Life
29 Sep 1923, Vienna Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker Rudolf Steiner |
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| And a profounder reflection upon the world of dreams is the very thing that may show us that what we have to consider as our own inner human nature is connected with this dream world. Even the corporeal nature of man is reflected in a remarkable way in dreams: it is mirrored in fantastic pictures. One condition or another affecting an organ, a condition of illness or of excitation, may emerge in a special symbol during a dream; or some noise occurring near us may appear in a dream in a very dramatic symbolism. |
| It would be psychopathic for any one to suppose that, in the chaotic, though dramatic, processes of the dream something “higher” is to be seen than that which his waking experience defines as the significance of this life of dreams. |
| 84. Supersensible Knowledge: Anthroposophy as a Demand of the Age: Anthroposophy and the Ethical-Religious Conduct of Life
29 Sep 1923, Vienna Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker Rudolf Steiner |
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On last Wednesday I had the opportunity to explain to you how a super-sensible knowledge may come into existence out of the further development of those capacities of the human soul which belong to our every-day life, and which are recognized also in science when methodically applied. I undertook to show how a systematic further development of these capacities of the soul actually brings about for the human being a form of perception whereby he can become aware of a super-sensible world just as he becomes aware of the physical sensible world environing him by means of his physical senses. Through such vision we penetrate upward not only to an abstract sort of conviction that, in addition to the world of the senses, there exists also a world of the spirit, but to acquisition of real knowledge, to a real experience, of spiritual beings, which constitute the environment of man himself to the extent that he lifts himself up into a condition of spirituality, just as plants and animals constitute his environment in the physical world. Such a super-sensible knowledge is something different in its entire nature from that which we designate as knowledge in ordinary life and for our every-day consciousness, as well as in ordinary science. In this ordinary knowledge we come into possession, in a certain sense, of ideas—for example such ideas as embrace the laws of nature. But this possession of ideas does not really penetrate into the soul in such a way as to become an immediate power of the soul, comparable as a spiritual power to muscular force as this passes over into activity. Thoughts remain rather shadowy, and every one knows through immediate experiences how indifferent, in a certain sense, is the reaction of the human heart to thoughts when we are dealing with matters which affect the human heart in the profoundest degree. Now, I think I have shown already in the first lecture that, when a human being actually penetrates into the spiritual world by means of such a perception as we have in mind here, he then becomes aware of his super-sensible being as it was before it descended to the earthly existence. And the fact that he achieves for himself something of this kind as regards his own self in its relationship to the spiritual world, does not leave his heart, the needs of his profoundest sensibilities, to the same extent unaffected, as in the case of abstract forms of knowledge. It is certainly true that one who has himself led a life devoted to the acquisition of knowledge does not undervalue all the inner drama of the soul associated with the struggle for knowledge even in the ordinarily recognized sense, yet the knowledge that we thus acquire remains, nevertheless, mere pictures of the external world. Indeed, if we are scientifically educated at the present time, we are generally proud of the fact that these pictures merely reflect, in a certain sense, quite objectively the external world and do not dart with such inner force through the life of the soul as, in the case of the physical body, the circulating blood drives its pulsing waves through man's being. The fact is that what is here meant by super-sensible knowledge is something which acts upon the human being in a manner entirely unlike that of ordinary knowledge. And, in order that I may make myself perfectly clear precisely in reference to this point, I should like to begin with a comparison—which is, however, something more than a comparison, something that fits the matter completely in its reality. I should like to begin with the fact that the human being, even in ordinary life, lives in two states of consciousness—we might say three states, but let us consider sleeping and dreaming as constituting a single state of consciousness—that he is separated completely from the external world during sleep, and that a world existent only within him, reveals its effects in dreams in a grotesque and often chaotic manner. Even though we are in the same space with many other persons, our dream world belongs to us alone; we do not share it with the other persons. And a profounder reflection upon the world of dreams is the very thing that may show us that what we have to consider as our own inner human nature is connected with this dream world. Even the corporeal nature of man is reflected in a remarkable way in dreams: it is mirrored in fantastic pictures. One condition or another affecting an organ, a condition of illness or of excitation, may emerge in a special symbol during a dream; or some noise occurring near us may appear in a dream in a very dramatic symbolism. The dream creates pictures out of our own inner nature and out of the external world. But all of this is intimately connected, in turn, with the whole course of our life upon earth. From the most remote epochs of this life the dream draws the shadows of experiences into its chaotic but always dramatic course. And, the more deeply we penetrate into all this, the more are we led to the conclusion that the innermost being of man is connected, even though in an instinctive and unconscious manner, with that which flows and weaves in dreams. One who has the capacity, for example, for observing the moment of waking and, from this point on, fixing the eye of the mind upon the ordinary daily life, not in the superficial way in which this usually occurs, but in a deeper fashion, will come to see that this waking life of day is characterized by the fact that what we experience in a wholly isolated manner during sleep and during dreams, in a manner that we can share with other persons at most only in special instances,—that this soul-spiritual element sinks down into our corporeal being, inserts itself in a way into the will, and thereby also into the forces of thought and the sense forces permeated by the will, and thus enters indirectly, through the body, into a relationship with the external world. Thus does the act of waking constitute a transition to an entirely different state of consciousness from that which we have in dreams. We are inserted into the external course of events through the fact that we participate, with our soul element, in the occurrences of our own organisms, which are connected, in turn, with external occurrences. Evidences of the fact that I am really describing the process in a wholly objective way can, naturally, not be obtained by the manner of abstract calculation, nor in an experimental way; but they are revealed to one who is able to observe in this field—particularly one who is able to observe how there is something like a “dreaming while awake,” a subconscious imagining, a living in pictures, which is always in process at the bottom of the dry, matter-of-fact life of the soul, of the intellect. The situation is such that, just as we may dive down from the surface of a stream of water into its profounder depths, so may we penetrate from our intellectual life into the deeper regions of the soul. There we enter into something which concerns us more intimately than the intellectual life, even though its connection with the external world is less exact. There we come also upon everything which stimulates the intellectual life to its independent, inventive power, which stimulates this life of the intellect when it passes over into artistic creation, which stimulates this intellectual life even—as I shall have to show later—when the human heart turns away from the ordinary reflections about the universe and surrenders itself to a reverent and religious veneration for the spiritual essence of the world. In the act of waking in the ordinary life the situation is really such that, through the insertion of our soul being into the organs of our body, we enter into such a connection with the external world that we can entrust, not to the dream, but only to the waking life of day, responsibility for the judgment which is to be passed upon the nature of the dream, upon its rightness and wrongness, its truth and untruth. It would be psychopathic for any one to suppose that, in the chaotic, though dramatic, processes of the dream something “higher” is to be seen than that which his waking experience defines as the significance of this life of dreams. In this waking experience do we remain also—at about the same level of experience—when we devote ourselves to the intellectual life, to the ordinary life of science, to every-day knowledge. By means of that absorption, immersion, and I might say strengthening of the soul about which I spoke on the previous occasion, the human being exercises consciously at a higher level for the life of his soul something similar to what he exercises unconsciously through his bodily organization for the ordinary act of waking. And the immersion in a super-sensible form of knowledge is a higher awaking. Just as we relate any sort of dream picture to our waking life of day, through the help of our memory and other forces of our soul, in order to connect this dream picture, let us say, with some bodily excitation or external experience, and thus to fit it into the course of reality, so do we arrive by means of such a super-sensible cognition as I have described at the point where we may rightly fit what we have in our ordinary sensible environment, what we fix by means of observation and experiment, into a higher world, into a spiritual world in which we ourselves are made participants by means of those exercises of which I spoke, just as we have been made participants in the corporeal world in the ordinary waking by means of our own organism. Thus super-sensible knowledge really constitutes the dawn of a new world, a real awaking to a new world, an awaking at a higher level. And this awaking compels him who has awaked to judge the whole sensible-physical world, in turn, from the point of view of this experience, just as he judges the dream life from the point of view of the waking life. What I do here during my earthly life, what appears to me by means of my physical knowledge, I then learn to relate to the processes through which I have passed as a spirit-soul being in a purely spiritual world before my descent into the earthly world, just as I connect the dream with the waking life. I learn to relate everything that exists in physical nature, not “in general” to a fantastic world of spirit, but to a concrete spiritual world, to a spiritual world which is complete in its content, which becomes a visible environment of the human being by reason of the powers of knowledge I have described as Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. But, just as a person feels himself in ordinary life to be in different states of soul when awake and when dreaming, so does the whole state of soul become different when one arrives at this higher awaking. For this reason, in describing super-sensible knowledge in the manner that I have employed here, we do not describe merely the formal taking of pictures of the super-sensible world, but the transition of a person from one state of consciousness into another, from one condition of soul into another. In this process, however, even those contents of the soul in which one is absorbed in ordinary life become something entirely different. Just as one becomes a different person in ordinary life through awaking, so does one become, in a certain sense, a different human being through this super-sensible knowledge. The concepts and ideas that we have had in ordinary consciousness are transformed. There occurs not only a conceptual revolution in a person consisting in the fact that he understands more, but also a revolution in his life. This penetrates into the profoundest human conceptions. It is precisely in the profoundest human conceptions, I wish to say, in the very roots of the soul being, that a person is transformed through the fact that he is able to enter into the sphere of this super-sensible knowledge—something which happens, of course, only for momentary periods in one's life. Here I must call your attention to two conceptions that play the greatest imaginable role in every-day life. These are conceptions completely and profoundly valid in ordinary life which take on an utterly different form the moment one ascends into the super-sensible world. These are the two concepts on the basis of which we form our judgments in the world: the concepts true and false, right and wrong. I beg you not to imagine that in this explanation I intend, through a frivolous handling of the problem of knowledge, to undermine the validity of the concepts true and false, right and wrong. To undermine something which is wholesome in ordinary life is by no means in keeping with a genuine super-sensible knowledge. This higher knowledge enables us to acquire something in addition for ordinary life, but never subtracts from it. Those persons who—whether really or in sentimentality—become untrue in their ordinary lives, unpractically mystical for this aspect of life, are also unsuited for a genuine super-sensible knowledge. A genuine super-sensible knowledge is not born out of fantastic persons, dreamers, but out of those very persons who are able to take their places in their full humanity in the earthly existence, as persons capable in real life. In other words, it is not our purpose to undermine what we experience in our every-day lives, and what is bound up in its very depths with the concepts true and false, right and wrong; on the contrary, truthfulness in this sphere, I should like to emphasize, is strengthened in one's feelings by that very thing which now comes about in connection with a higher knowledge by reason of a metamorphosis, a transformation of the concepts true and false, right and wrong. When we have really entered into this higher, super-sensible world, we do not any longer say in such an abstract way that a thing is true or false, that it is right or wrong, but the concept of the true and the right passes over into a concept with which we are familiar in ordinary life, though in a more instinctive way; only, this concept belonging to the ordinary life is transmuted into a spiritual form. True and right pass over into the concept healthy; false and wrong pass over into the concept diseased. In other words, when we reflect about something in ordinary life—feel, sense, or will something—we say: “This is right, that is wrong.” But, when we are in the realm of super-sensible knowledge, we do not arrive at this impression of right or wrong but we actually reach the impression that something is healthy, something else is diseased. You will say that healthy and ill are concepts to which a certain indefiniteness is attached. But this is attached to them only in the ordinary life or the ordinary state of consciousness. The indefiniteness ceases when the higher knowledge is sought for in so exact a manner as I have explained in the first lecture. Precision then enters also into what we experience in this realm of higher knowledge. Healthy and ill,—these are the terms we apply to what we experience in association with the beings of the super-sensible world of whom we become aware through such a form of knowledge. Just think how deeply that which becomes an object of super-sensible knowledge may affect us: it affects us as intimately as health and illness of the body. In regard to one thing that is experienced in the super-sensible, we may say: “I enter livingly into it. It benefits and stimulates my life; it elevates my life. I become through it in a certain way more ‘real.’ It is healthful.” In regard to something else I say: “It paralyzes—indeed, it kills—my own life. Thereby do I recognize that it is something diseased.” And just as we help ourselves onward in the ordinary world through right and wrong, just as we place our own human nature in the moral and the social life, so do we place ourselves rightly in the super-sensible world through healthy and ill. But we are thus fitted into this super-sensible world with our whole being in a manner far more real than that in which we are fitted into the sense world. In the sense world we separate ourselves from things in this element of the right or the wrong. I mean to say that right does not benefit us very intensely and wrong does not cause us much distress—especially in the case of many persons. In the super-sensible world it is by no means possible that experiences shall touch us in this way. There our whole existence, our whole reality, enters into the manner in which we experience this super-sensible world. For this realm, therefore, all conflict of opinion ceases as to whether things are reality or mere phenomena; whether they manifest to us merely the effects produced upon our own sense organs; and the like—questions about which I do not wish to speak here because the time would not suffice. But everything about which people can argue in this way in relation to the physical reality,—to carry on such discussion with reference to the spiritual world really has no significance whatever for the spiritual, super-sensible world. For we test its reality or unreality through the fact that we can say: “One thing affects me wholesomely, another thing in an ill way—causing injury,” I mean to say, taking the word in its full meaning and weight. The moment a person ascends to the super-sensible world, he observes at once that what was previously knowledge void of power becomes an inner power of the human soul itself. We permeate the soul with this super-sensible knowledge as we permeate our bodies with blood. Thus we learn also in such knowledge the whole relationship of the soul and the spirit to the human body; we learn to see how the spirit-soul being of man descends out of a super-sensible prenatal existence and unites with the inherited body. In order to see into this, it is necessary first to learn to know the spirit-soul element so truly that through this reality, as healthy or diseased, we experience the actuality in our own—I cannot say body here, but in our own soul. Supersensible knowledge, therefore—although we make such a statement reluctantly, because one seems at once to fall into sentimentality—is really not a mere understanding but an ensouling of the human being. It is soul itself, soul content, which enters into us when we penetrate to this super-sensible knowledge. We become aware of our eternity, our immortality, by no means through the solution of a philosophical problem; we become aware of them through immediate experience, just as we become aware of external things in immediate experience through our senses. What I have thus described is exposed, of course, to the objection: “To be sure, one may speak in this way, perhaps, who participates in such super-sensible knowledge; but what shall any one say to these things who is himself not as yet a participant in this super-sensible knowledge?” Now, one of the most beautiful ways in which human beings can live together is that in which one person develops through contact with the other, when one goes through the process of becoming, in his soul nature, through the help of the other. This is precisely the way in which the human community is most wonderfully established. Thus we may say that, just as it is not possible for all persons to become astronomers or botanists and yet the results of astronomy and botany may possess importance and significance for all persons—at least, their primary results—and can be taken in by means of the insight possessed by a sound human intellect, it is likewise possible that a sound human mind and heart can directly grasp and assimilate what is presented by a spiritual-scientist who is able to penetrate into the super-sensible world. For the human being is born, not for untruth, but for truth! And what the spiritual-scientist has to say will always be clothed, of course, in such words and combinations of words that it diverges, even in its formulation, from what we are accustomed to receive as pictures out of the sensible-physical world. Therefore, as the spiritual-scientist lays open what he has beheld, this may work in such a way upon the whole human being, upon the simple, wholesome human mind, that this wholesome human mind is awakened—so awakened that it actually discovers itself to be in that state of waking of which I have spoken today. I must repeat again and again, therefore, that, although I have certainly undertaken to explain in such books as Occult Science—an Outline, and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and in other volumes, how it is possible to arrive through systematic exercises at what I must designate as “looking into the spiritual world,” so that every one possesses the possibility today, up to a certain degree, of becoming a spiritual-scientist, yet it is not necessary to do this. For a sound human constitution of soul is such that what the spiritual-scientist has to say can be received when it comes into contact with the human soul—provided only that the soul is sufficiently unprejudiced—as something long known. For this is precisely the peculiar characteristic of this spiritual research, this super-sensible knowledge to which we are referring: that it brings nothing which is not subconsciously present already in every human being. Thus every one can feel: “I already knew that; it is within me. If only I had not permitted myself to be rendered unreceptive through the authoritarian and other preconceptions of natural science, I should already have grasped, through one experience or another, some part of what this spiritual research is able to present as a connected whole.” But the fact of such a thing as this transformation of the concepts true and false into the healthy and the diseased renders the inner experience of the soul more and more intense. At a higher level man places himself more intensely within a reality than he places himself in the physical reality through the ordinary waking of the daily life. In this way, feelings, sentiments, experiences of the soul are generated in relationship to these items of knowledge, which are altogether exact, just as they are generated through our being confronted by external things. That which the super-sensible knowledge can bestow lays hold upon the whole human being whereas it is really only the head that is laid hold of by what the knowledge of the senses can bestow. I trust you will permit me to visualize this relationship of super-sensible knowledge to the complete human being by referring to something personal, although the personal in this realm is also factual, for the facts are intensely bound up with the personal. In order to render it clear that super-sensible knowledge cannot really be a mere head-knowledge, but lays hold upon the human being in a vastly more living and intense way than head-knowledge, I should like to mention the following. Whoever is accustomed to a living participation in ordinary knowledge—as every true super-sensible knower should really be—knows that the head participates in this ordinary knowledge. If he then ascends, especially if he has been active through his entire life in the ordinary knowledge, to super-sensible knowledge, the situation becomes such that he must exert all his powers in order to keep firm hold upon this super-sensible knowledge which comes upon him, which manifests itself to him. He observes that the power by means of which one holds fast to an idea about nature, to a law of nature, to the course of an experiment or of a clinical observation, is very slight in comparison with the inner force of soul which must be unfolded in order to hold fast to the perception of a super-sensible being. And here I have always found it necessary not only, so to speak, to employ the head in order to hold firmly to these items of super-sensible knowledge, but to support the force which the head can employ by means of other organs—for example by means of the hand. If we sketch in a few strokes something that we have reached through super-sensible research, if we fix it in brief characteristic sentences or even in mere words, then this thing—which we have brought into existence not merely by means of a force evoked through the nerve system applied in ordinary cognition, but have brought into existence by means of a force drawing upon a wide expanse of the organism as a support for our cognition,—this thing becomes something which produces the result that we possess these items of super-sensible knowledge not as something momentary, that they do not fall away from us like dreams, but that we are able to retain them. I may disclose to you, therefore, that I really find it necessary to work in general always in this way, and that I have thus produced wagon-loads of notebooks in my lifetime which I have never again looked into. For the necessary thing here lies in the activity; and the result of the activity is that one retains in spirit what has sought to manifest itself, not that one must read these notes again. Obviously, this writing or sketching is nothing automatic, mediumistic, but just as conscious as that which one employs in connection with scientific work or any other kind of work. And its only reason for existence lies in the fact that what presses upon us in the form of super-sensible knowledge must be grasped with one's whole being. But the result of this is that it affects, in turn, the whole human being, grasps the whole person, is not limited to an impression upon the head, goes further to produce impressions upon the whole human life in heart and mind. What we experience otherwise while the earthly life passes by us, the joy we have experienced in connection with one thing or another, joy in all its inner living quality, the pain we have experienced in lesser or deeper measure, what we have experienced through the external world of the senses, through association with other persons, in connection with the falling and rising tides of life,—all this appears again at a higher level, at a soul-spiritual level, when we ascend into those regions of the super-sensible where we can no longer speak of the true and the false but must speak of the healthy and the diseased. Especially when we have passed through all that I described the last time, especially that feeling of intense pain at a certain level on the way to the super-sensible, do we then progress to a level of experience where we pass through this inner living dramatic crisis as super-sensible experiences and items of knowledge confront us: where knowledge can bestow upon us joy and pleasure as these are possible otherwise only in the physical life; or where knowledge may cause the profoundest pain; where we have the whole life of the soul renewed, as it were, at a higher level with all the inner coloring, with all the inner nuances of color, with all the intimate inwardness of the life of the soul and the mind that one enjoys through being rooted together with the corporeal organization in every-day existence. And it is here that the higher knowledge, the super-sensible experience comes into contact with that which plays its role in the ordinary life as the moral existence of the human being; this moral existence of the human being with everything connected with it, with the religious sentiment, with the consciousness of freedom. At the moment when we ascend to a direct experience of the health-giving or the disease-bringing spiritual life, we come into contact with the very roots of the moral life of man, the roots of the whole moral existence. We come into contact with these roots of the moral existence only when we have reached the perception that the physical life of the senses and that which flows out of the human being is really, from the point of view of a higher life, a kind of dream, related to this higher life as the dream is related to the ordinary life. And that which we sense out of the indefinite depths of our human nature as conscience, which enables us to conduct our ordinary life, which determines whether we are helpful or harmful for our fellow men, that which shines upward from the very bottom of our human nature, stimulating us morally or immorally, becomes luminous; it is linked up in a reality just as the dream is linked up in a reality when we wake. We learn to recognize the conscience as something existing in man as a dimly mirrored gleam of the sense and significance of the spiritual world—of that super-sensible world to which we human beings belong, after all, in the depths of our nature. We now understand why it is necessary to take what the knowledge of the sense world can offer us as a point of departure and to proceed from this to a super-sensible knowledge, when we are considering the moral order of the world and desire to arrive at the reality of this moral world order. This is what I endeavored to set forth thirty years ago as an ethical problem, merely as a moral world riddle, in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Without taking into account super-sensible knowledge, I sought by simply following out the moral impulses of the human being to establish the fact that the ethical arises in every instance, not out of the kind of thinking which simply absorbs external things, external occurrences or the occurrences of one's own body, but out of that thinking life of the soul which lays hold upon the heart and the will and yet in its very foundation is, none the less, a thinking soul life, resting upon its own foundations, rooted in the spiritual nature of the world. I was compelled to seek at that time in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity for a life of the soul independent of the corporeal being of man, a life that seems, indeed, a shadowy unreality in comparison with the solid reality of the external world of the senses, but which is rooted in its true nature in the very spiritual foundations of the universe. And the fact that the ethical impulses proceed from this kind of thinking, purified from the external world of the senses but wholly alive within man, gives to the human being his ethical character. When we learn to see now through super-sensible knowledge that what is rooted in us as our conscience is, in its essence, the mirroring within our inner being of the real spiritual world which weaves and breathes throughout the world of the senses, we then learn to recognize the moral nature of man as that which forever unites us without our knowing this, even when we sense it only as a still small voice within us, with that spiritual world which can be laid open to us through super-sensible knowledge. But let no one say that this super-sensible knowledge is meaningless, therefore, for our moral life for the very reason that we have the voice of conscience, for the reason that we possess the practical intentions of life for its individual situations. Especially will one who sees that the ancient spiritual traditions, super-sensible knowledge handed down from primeval times and continuing until now, have faded away and continue their existence today as pale religious creeds, will be able to see that man stands in need of a new stimulus in this very sphere. Indeed, many persons are the victims of a great delusion in this field. We can see that scientific knowledge, which is considered by many today as the only valid knowledge—that the form which this scientific knowledge has taken on, with its Ignorabimus, “We cannot know”—has caused many persons to doubt all knowledge, in that they say that moral impulses, religious intentions, cannot be gained out of any knowledge whatever, but that these ethical-religious impulses in the conduct of life must be developed out of special endowments belonging to man, independent of all knowledge. This has gone so far, indeed, that knowledge is declared not to possess any capacity for setting in motion in the human being such impulses as to enrich him in his moral-religious existence through the fact that he takes in his own spiritual being—for this is really what he does take in with super-sensible knowledge. It has gone so far that people doubt this possibility! On the other hand, however, especially if one is not such a practical person as the so-called practical persons of our present-day life, who merely follow a routine, if one takes the whole world into account, on the contrary, as a genuinely practical person—the world consisting of body, soul, and spirit—one will certainly see that, in the individual life situations for which we may be permeated in actual existence with moral-religious content, more is needed than the faded traditions, which cannot really any longer inspire the human being in a completely moral sense. One recognizes something of this sort. Permit me to introduce here a special example. Out of everything that fails to satisfy us in that which confronts us today also in the educational life, what concerned us when the Waldorf School was to be founded in Stuttgart on the initiative of Emil Molt was to answer the question how a human being ought really to be educated. In approaching this task, we addressed this question to the super-sensible world of which I am here speaking. I will mention only briefly what sort of purposes had then to be made basic. First of all, the question had to be raised: “How is a child educated so that he becomes a real human being, bearing his whole being within himself but also manifesting his whole being in the ethical-religious conduct of life?” A genuine knowledge of man in body, soul, and spirit was necessary for this. But such a knowledge of man in body, soul, and spirit is entirely impossible today on the basis of what is considered valid—most of all such a knowledge as may become actually practical so that it enables one to lay hold upon the manifold duties of life. In connection with this let me discuss the question by pointing out to you very briefly that what we so generally feel today to be a just ground for our pride—external science, dealing through observation and experimentation with material substance—is not qualified to penetrate into the secrets of the material itself. What I shall introduce here now will be stated very briefly, but we can find it set forth with all necessary proofs in my writings, especially in the volume Riddles of the Soul [Von Seelenratseln—not yet translated.] When we pay attention nowadays to ordinary science, we receive the conception, for example, that the human heart is a kind of pump, which drives the blood through the organs like a pumping machine. Spirit-science, such as we have in mind, which introduces us to a view of what constitutes not only the physical body of the human being, but his spirit-soul nature, shows us how this spirit-soul nature permeates the corporeal nature, how the blood is driven through the human being, not as if by the action of the “heart pumping machine,” but through the direct action of the spirit-soul nature itself; how this spirit-soul nature so lays hold upon the circulation of the blood that it is this spirit-soul element which constitutes the force that causes the blood to pulse through our organism. But the heart is then looked upon as something like a sense organ. As I consciously perceive the external world with my eyes, and through my concepts make this something of my own, thus do I likewise perceive through this inner sense organ of the heart—again, in an unconscious way—that which I develop unconsciously through my spirit-soul forces as the pulsation in my blood. The heart is no pump; the heart is the inner sense organ through which we perceive what the spirit-soul nature develops inwardly in connection with our blood, just as we perceive through the external senses the external world. The moment that we pass over from an intellectual analysis of the human organism to a vision of the whole human being, the heart reveals itself in its true essence, in its true significance—as an inner sense organ. In the heart the effects of the circulation of human blood, with its life impulses, are manifest; the heart is not the instrument causing this pulsation. This is an example of the tragic fact that the very science bearing a materialistic coloring is not able to penetrate into the secrets of the material life; an example of the fact that we do not penetrate into the secrets of the material life until we do this by observing the spirit in its true work, in its creative work upon matter. When we become aware through such super-sensible knowledge, on the one hand, of the creative spirit in the very course of material occurrences, we become aware on the other hand of the power-filled spirit—not merely of the abstractly thinking spirit—of the real spirit in its essence. Then only does there result a genuine knowledge of man, such a knowledge as is needed if we wish to develop in the growing child that which can live and breathe in the human being until death, full of power, suited to life, corresponding with reality. Such an intensive vitalizing of the knowledge of man causes the educator to see the child as something fundamentally different from what he is to the merely external observer. In a fundamental sense, from the very first moment of the earthly life, the growing child is the most wonderful earthly phenomenon. The emergence out of the profoundest inner nature, at first mysteriously indeterminate, of something that renders the indeterminate features more and more determinate, changing the countenance, at first so expressionless, into an expressive physiognomy, the manner in which the vague, unskillful movements of the limbs come to correspond to purpose and objective,—all this is something wonderful to behold. And a great sense of responsibility is necessary in bringing this to development. If we stand in the presence of the developing human being in such a way that we say, with all the inner fervor associated with super-sensible knowledge: “In this child there is manifest that which lived as spirit and soul in the pre-earthly existence in super-sensible beauty, that which has left behind, in a certain sense, its super-sensible beauty, has submerged itself in the particular body that could be given to it in the course of physical heredity; but you, as a teacher, must release that which rests in the human body as a gift of the gods, in order that it may lay hold year by year, month by month, week by week upon the physical body, may permeate this, may be able to mold it plastically into a likeness of the soul, you have to awaken still further in the human being that which is manifest in him,”—if we stand thus before the child, we then confront the task of educating the child, not with intellectual principles, but with our whole human nature, with the fullness of our human heart and mind, with a comprehensive sense of human responsibility in confronting the problem of education. We then gradually come to know that we do not have to observe only the child if we wish to know what we must do with him at any particular time, but that we must survey the whole human being. This observation is not convenient. But it is true that what is manifest in a person under certain circumstances in the period of tenderest childhood, let us say, first becomes manifest in a special form as either health-giving or disease-bringing only in high old age after it has long remained hidden in the inner being. As educators, we hold in our hands not only the immediate age of childhood but the whole earthly life of the human being. Persons who frequently say from a superficial pedagogical point of view that we must present to the child only what it can already understand make a very serious mistake. Such persons live in the moment, and not in the observation of the whole human life. For there is a period of childhood, from the change of teeth until adolescence, when it is exceedingly beneficial to a child to receive something that it does not yet understand, something that cannot yet be made clear to it, on the authority of a beloved teacher—to the greatest blessing for this human life, because, when the child sees in the self-evident authority of a teacher and educator the embodiment of truth, beauty, and goodness, in a certain sense, when it sees the world embodied in the teacher, the effect of this is the awaking of the forces of life. This is not something which contradicts human freedom; it is something which appeals to self-evident authority, which in its further development becomes a fountainhead of strength for the whole life. If, at the age of 35 years, we bring something into our heart and mind which is suited by its nature only now to be understood by us as mature persons, but which we took into our hearts upon the authority of a beloved teacher personality even in our eighth year,—if we bring that up into consciousness which we have already possessed, which lived in us because of love and now for the first time at a mature age is understood by us, this understanding of what was present in us in germ is the fountain for an inner enrichment of life. This inner enrichment of life is taken away from the human being when, in a manner reducing things to trivialities, only that is introduced to the child which it can already understand. We view the mode of a child's experience in the right way only when we are able to enter into the whole human being and, most of all, into that which enters as yet primarily into the human heart. For example, we become acquainted with persons who radiate a blessing when they enter the company of other persons. Their influence is quieting, bestowing peace even upon excited persons whose tempers clash with one another. When we are really able to look back—as I said, this is not convenient—and see how such persons, apart from their innate qualities, have developed such a quality also through education, we often go back into a very tender age of the life where certain teacher personalities have stood very close to these children in their inner heart life, so that they learned to look up with reverence to these personalities. This looking up, this capacity for reverence, is like a mountain brook which flows into a crevice in the rock and only later appears again on the surface. What the soul acquired then in childhood exerts its influence below in its depths, manifesting itself only in high old age, when it becomes a power that radiates blessing. What I have just introduced to you might be indicated in a picture if we say that, in relationship to the universe as well, the human being may be so educated that he may transmute into forces of blessing in high old age the forces of reverence of his tender childhood. Permit me to indicate in a picture what I mean. No one will be able to open his hands in blessing in old age who has not learned in tender childhood to fold his hands in reverent prayer. This may indicate to us that in such a special case a life task, education, may lead to an ethical-religious attitude of mind; may indicate how that which our hearts and minds, and our wills, become as a result of entering livingly into spirit-knowledge may enter with vital reality into our conduct of life, so that what we develop otherwise, perhaps, only in an external and technical way shall become a component part of our moral-religious conduct of life. The fact, however, that instruction and education in the Stuttgart Waldorf School, and in the other schools which have arisen as its offshoots, have been brought into such an atmosphere does not by any means result in a lack of attention to the factual, the purely pedagogical; on the contrary, these are given full consideration. But the task of education has really become something here which, together with all its technique of teaching, its practice of instruction and everything methodical, at the same time radiates an ethical-religious atmosphere over the child. Educational acts become ethical-religious acts, because what is done springs from the profoundest moral impulses. Since the practice of teaching flows from a teacher-conscience, since the God-given soul nature is seen in the developing human being, educational action becomes religious in its nature. And this does not necessarily have any sentimental meaning but the meaning may be precisely what is especially necessary for our life, which has become so prosaic: that life may become in a wholly unsentimental sense a form of divine service to the world, as in the single example we have given of education, by reason of the fact that spiritual science becomes a light illuminating the actions of our life, the whole conduct of life. Since super-sensible knowledge leads us, not to abstractions, but to human powers, when these forms of knowledge gained through super-sensible cognition simply become immediate forces of life, they can flow over, therefore, into our whole conduct of life, permeating this with that which lifts the human being above his own level—out of the sensible into the super-sensible—elevating him to the level of a moral being. They may bring him to the stage where he becomes in consecrated love one with the Spirit of the World, thus arriving at truly religious piety. Indeed, this is especially manifest also in education. If we observe the child up to his seventh year, we see that he is wholly given over, in a physical sense, to his environment. He is an imitator, an imitative being even in his speech. And when we observe this physical devotion, when we observe what constitutes a natural environment of the child, and remains such a natural environment because the soul is not yet awake, then we feel inclined to say that what confronts us in a natural way in the child is the natural form of the state of religious consecration to the world. The reason why the child learns so much is that it is consecrated to the world in a natural-religious way. Then the human being separates himself from the world; and, from the seventh year on, it is his educational environment which gives a different, dimly sensed guidance to his soul. At the period of adolescence he arrives at the stage of independent judgment; then does he become a being who determines his own direction and goal from within himself. Blessed is he if now, when freed from his sensuous organism, he can follow the guidance of thought, of the spirit, and grow into the spiritual just as he lived in a natural way while a child in the world,—if he can return as an adult in relationship to the spirit to the naturalness of the child's feeling for the world! If our spirit can live in the spirit of the world at the period of adolescence as the body of a child lives in the world of nature, then do we enter into the spirit of the world in true religious devotion to the innermost depths of our human nature: we become religious human beings. We must willingly accept the necessity of transforming ordinary concepts into living forces if we wish to grasp the real nature, the central nerve, of super-sensible knowledge. So is it, likewise, when we view the human being by means of what I described the last time as super-sensible knowledge in Imagination. When we become aware that what lives in him is not only this physical body which we study in physiology, which we dissect in the medical laboratory and thereby develop the science of physiology, when we see that a super-sensible being lives in him which is beheld in the manner I have described, we then come to know that this super-sensible being is a sculptor that works upon the physical body itself. But it is necessary then to possess the capacity of going over from the ordinary abstract concepts which afford us only the laws of nature to an artistic conception of the human being. The system of laws under which we ordinarily conceive the human physical form must be changed into molded contents; science must pass over into art. The super-sensible human being can not be grasped by means of abstract science. We gain a knowledge of the super-sensible being only by means of a perception which leads scientific knowledge wholly over into an artistic experience. It must not be said that science must remain something logical, experimental. Of course, such a demand can be set up; but what does the world care about what we set up as “demands!” If we wish to gain a grasp of the world, our process must be determined in accordance with the world, not in accordance with our demands or even with our logical thoughts; for the world might itself pass over from mere logical thoughts into that which is artistic. And it actually does this. For this reason, only he arrives at a true conception of life who—by means of “perceptive power of thought” to use the expression so beautifully coined by Goethe—can guide that which confronts us in the form of logically conceived laws of nature into plastically molded laws of nature. We then ascend through art—in Schiller's expression “through the morning glow of the beautiful”—upwards into the land of knowledge, but also the land of reverent devotion, the land of the religious. We then learn to know—permit me to say this in conclusion—what a state of things we really have with all the doubts that come over a human being when he says that knowledge can never bestow upon us religious and ethical impulses, but that these require special forces far removed from those of knowledge. I, likewise, shall never maintain, on the basis of super-sensible knowledge, that any kind of knowledge as such can guide a human being into a moral and religious conduct of life. But that which really brings the human being into a moral and religious conduct of life does not belong in the realm of the senses: it can be investigated only in the realm of the super-sensible. For this reason a true knowledge of human freedom can be gained only when we penetrate into the super-sensible. So likewise do we gain real knowledge of the human conscience only when we advance to the sphere of the super-sensible. For we arrive in this way at that spiritual element which does not compel the human being as he is compelled by natural laws, but permits him to work as a free being, and yet at the same time permeates him and streams through him with those impulses which are manifest in the conscience. Thus, however, is manifested to man that which he vaguely senses as the divine element in the world, in his innocent faith as a naive human being imbued with religious piety. It is certainly true that one does not stand in immediate need of knowledge such as I have described in order to be a religious and pious person; it is possible to be such a person in complete naiveté. But that is not the state of the case, as history proves. One who asserts that the religious and ethical life of man must come to flower out of a different root from that of knowledge does not realize on the basis of historical evolution that all religious movements of liberation—naturally, the religious aptitudes always exist in the human being—have had their source in the sphere of knowledge as super-sensible sources of knowledge existed in the prehistorical epochs. There is no such thing as a content of morality or religion that has not grown out of the roots of knowledge. At the present time the roots of knowledge have given birth to scientific thinking, which is incapable, however, of reaching to the spirit. As regards the religious conduct of life, many people cling instead to traditions, believing that what exists in traditions is a revelation coming out of something like a “religious genius.” As a matter of fact, these are the atavistic, inherited traditions. But they are at the present time so faded out that we need a new impulse of knowledge, not working abstractly, but constituting a force for knowledge, in order that what exists in knowledge may give to the human being the impulse to enter even into the conduct of the practical life with ethical-religious motives in all their primal quality. This we need. And, if it is maintained on the one hand—assuredly, with a certain measure of justification—that the human being does not need knowledge as such in order to develop an ethical-religious conduct of life, yet it must be maintained, on the other hand, as history teaches in this respect also, that knowledge need not confuse the human being in his religious and his ethical thinking. It must be possible for him to gain the loftiest stages of knowledge, and with this knowledge—such, naturally, as it is possible for him to attain, for there will always remain very much beyond this—to arrive at the home in which he dwelt by the will of God and under the guidance of God before he had attained to knowledge. That which existed as a dim premonition, and which had its justification as premonition, must be found again even when our striving is toward the loftiest light of knowledge. It will be possible then for knowledge to be something whose influence does not work destructively upon the moral conduct of life; it may be only the influence which kindles and permeates the whole moral-religious conduct of life. Through such knowledge, however, the human being will become aware of the profounder meaning of life—about which it is permissible, after all, to speak: he will become aware that, through the dispensation of the mysteries of the universe, of the whole cosmic guidance, he is a being willed by the Spirit, as he deeply senses; that he can develop further as a being willed by the Spirit; that, whereas external knowledge brings him only to what is indefinite, where he is led into doubt and where the unity which lived within him while he possessed only naive intimations is torn apart, he returns to what is God-given and permeated of spirit within himself if he awakens out of the ordinary knowledge to super-sensible knowledge. Only thus can that which is so greatly needed by our sorely tested time really be furthered—a new impulse in the ethical-religious conduct of life: in that, just as knowledge has advanced up to the present time from the knowledge of vague premonition and dream to the wakeful clarity of our times, we shall advance from this wakeful clarity to a higher form of waking, to a state of union with the super-sensible world. Thus, likewise, will that impulse be bestowed upon the human being which he so imperatively requires especially for the renewal of his social existence at this time of bitter testing for humanity in all parts of the world—indeed, we may say, for all social thinking of the present time. As the very root of an ethical-religious conduct of life understanding must awaken for the fact that the human being must pass from the ordinary knowledge to an artistic and super-sensible awaking and enter into a religious-ethical conduct of life, into a true piety, free from all sentimentality, in which service to life becomes, so to speak, service to the spirit. He must enter there in that his knowledge strives for the light of the super-sensible, so that this light of the super-sensible causes him to awaken in a super-sensible world wherein alone he may feel himself to be a free soul in relationship to the laws of nature, wherein alone he may dwell in a true piety and a genuine inwardness and true religiousness as a spirit man in the spirit world. |
| 69d. Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science: The Hidden Depths of the Soul
24 Feb 1912, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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| But we cannot retrieve what we have experienced in our feelings. However, anyone who examines the dream images finds that it turns out that someone expresses ancient moods in the symbols of his dreams. |
| He will have an idea of what has happened to him, but the moods can no longer have the same power in his daily life. They take them on in his dreams. And it is not uncommon for someone of a certain age to dream every night that he is actually a major or that he is “taking a journey in his dream”. |
| If they still live in a corner of our hidden soul life, then they come up in dreams. When someone is transported in a dream to earlier moods, then the whole way in which they come up in the dream reveals to us: certain feelings have remained; they have not yet exhausted their strength, so the half-asleep life of the dream brings them up into our half-consciousness – the dream images present themselves to us. |
| 69d. Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science: The Hidden Depths of the Soul
24 Feb 1912, Munich Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! Allow me this evening to summarize some of what has been said in the course of the lectures I have been privileged to give you here from this place, in relation to spiritual-scientific knowledge of the human being, and to place it under a particular point of view, so that in the next lecture, the day after tomorrow, I can succeed in speaking fruitfully about one of the most important questions of our present spiritual life: about the origin of the human being. The human being who occasionally casts a glance at his own soul, at himself, will undoubtedly have the impression in some cases that he not only faces his own being as if it were something unknown, but this impression can deepen to the point that this own being may well appear to the person as something that sometimes fills him with apprehension, perhaps even seeming like fear of something unknown. What takes place in our conscious soul life, what we experience from morning, from waking up until we fall asleep in the evening, often seems as if everything that lives in our consciousness comes up from unknown depths, surges up and ripples up like ocean waves from the unknown depths of the sea. And although, when we look at this stormy sea and these rippling waves, we can well imagine that something or other is going on in the depths, we often say to ourselves: How little does what is happening on the surface reveal what is going on in the depths. And so it is sometimes with our own soul life. What takes place in our consciousness is like waves breaking up from unknown depths, and since we ourselves are the scene of all this activity, the question of what is going on down there sometimes takes on an anxious character. Yes, the impression can become even more profound when we see how, from the hidden depths of our soul life, these or those feelings, these or those passions or drives, these or those volitional impulses arise, which we cannot can't control, that are there to our chagrin, perhaps often also to our joy; we can also feel as if we were standing on the earth's surface and, as it were, as if the underground depths were beginning to tremble, as in an earthquake. It is the impression of not knowing what will come, which weighs on our minds. We can often have this feeling about what is coming up, and we are aware that it is not in our hands at all. We best gain access to the hidden depths of the soul when we start from the familiar processes in the life of the soul, that is, when we start from what we are aware of; and what, after all, would a person be more aware of than what he believes he has grasped, what he believes he has recognized, in which he believes he has insight from these or those branches of knowledge of this or that science or believes he has recognized from his life experience? What, after all, is more conscious and better known in our soul life than what we call our clear ideas? Yes, but when we survey these ideas, this knowledge of ours, this insight of ours, then – if we face the matter without prejudice – a feeling of powerlessness will arise in us in the face of this knowledge, so to speak a feeling of being closed off from the world in our knowledge. From Greek intellectual history, we know that a great philosopher was once asked how people actually relate to life, and he is said to have replied: Those who want to recognize and actually achieve it, act like certain people at some fair. While some come to a fair to sell this or that and are interested in selling their goods, and others are interested in buying, there are also those everywhere at fairs who neither want to sell nor buy, who have simply come to look at the things, at life at the fair. It is the same with people of knowledge. They come to the market of life, not to interfere with the conflicting interests, but to quietly observe life. Now, it might seem that a person who is immersed in ordinary life could care little about the universal task of the special people of insight, but in a sense we must say that every person, wherever they are in life, has a corner where they are people of insight; and without being a philosopher, without being a person of insight, no one can actually walk through this life satisfied. So for those moments when we are just watching without getting caught up in the “fairground life,” when we are philosophers, we are able to have the qualities of those who merely watch. And as a spectator, as a little standing in the corner, one actually always feels when contemplating the most significant performances in terms of the urge for knowledge and insight. And what applies to ideas of the life of knowledge applies, so to speak, to our entire life of ideas. There we will realize something of what is called the powerlessness of the life of knowledge. Now one could say: Yes, you label people of knowledge as a kind of gawker of life and make knowledge into something that does not really intervene in the real surge and hustle and bustle of life. But it is precisely from this impotence of life that one gains knowledge when one observes how the human being seeks to understand and recognize the hidden forces, how they work in life, how they can advance it and keep it in order. And yet, even when a person is completely imbued with the light that, let us say, emanates from moral or other ideas, it may still be the case that his urges speak, his instincts, his passions assert themselves, and that in reality he cannot follow what has arisen in his ideas. We have to say: the images have no power to intervene in our soul life, to work and weave in such a way that we would adapt our soul reality entirely to the life of images. The power, the strength of the impulse, that is what the images lack in relation to the reality of the soul life, and we feel the powerlessness of the life of images and the real impulses of life as a duality within ourselves. How people here and there believe, how they have believed at all times, to grasp important worldviews, yes, the whole world - and lo and behold: if the ideas had the power to really implement into life impulses what they seemingly contain, then it would have to be easier to convince people of such ideas. Every time this is at issue, one recognizes the powerlessness of ideas in the face of reality, in the face of life. One can understand only too well if the artist in particular, who is supposed to create out of the totality of his soul, would become sober and dry if he were not there with the whole of his soul - we can see how he of being absorbed in the soul process, because he feels: the moment when, instead of receptive soul impulses, a certain logical sequence of thoughts [constructed ideas] intervenes, the moment soul life becomes weak. That is why one speaks of [the] sobriety [of the life of ideas]. The artist knows that art cannot work if it is taken from mere conceptual life. Indeed, one recognizes works of art by whether they are created out of the life of the soul or out of abstract ideas. The basis for such a feeling is an awareness of the powerlessness of the life of imagination. And since our imaginations are actually what makes us truly human in life, and we realize that our imaginations actually reach deep into our soul life, the question arises: is it all about these imaginations, what, so to speak, ripples on the surface and does not penetrate into the deeper regions of the soul life? Here we are confronted with the most primitive question of the hidden life of the soul. Nevertheless, we can only penetrate to the essence of the feelings and sensations of the deeper soul life if we start from the everyday, from this primitive question. Now we all know that what we experience in our conscious waking state unfolds in this way: Those who have an eye for the peculiarities of their soul life will realize that in the course of what lives in their imaginations, emotional and mood experiences are connected with the ideas. Only with the most outstanding ideas do we really feel that we are experiencing joy or sorrow. This resonance of moods with the life of ideas, however, is basically always present. No one can say that anything takes place in their conscious life that does not bring with it, even if only to a small degree, a sense of pleasure or sorrow, hope or fear, and the like. In everyday life, we never have pure thinking, mere life of ideas in consciousness; but always connected with what takes place in the conscious life is that which we can call mood, feeling, sensation. In the course of life, however, this element of the life of ideas behaves quite differently from that which arises as a concomitant of the life of ideas in the form of a state of mind. You can see this when you try, after ten or twenty years, to recall something you have experienced more or less clearly in such a way that you can recreate the event in the life of ideas. If things are linked, some with great pain, others with great joy, we will always realize that this joy or pain does not appear with the same strength and energy in our memory. For example, if someone has experienced a death, then they know that the pain cannot be relived in their memory with the original strength in their emotional life. It is the same with joy. So in our memory, the ideas play a completely different role. The question may be raised: Yes, but if the images that we can form of painful or joyful events are alive in our memory, where are the moods, where is the emotional life that was connected with these ideas? Now this question, however much it belongs to the “primitive”, is not so very simple. And many people will still dispute that one can give an answer to such questions using strictly logical methods. But much of what has been said about elementary questions of spiritual research does put us in a position to get an idea about the fate of the moods associated with the ideas. While the images can be conjured up again from memory, the same cannot be done with the moods. If we look at life as intensely and thoroughly as is necessary to answer such a question, we find that every person we know for a long time The overall state of health of this person is expressed in the fact that he is a more or less happy person, so that his happiness is expressed not only in the way he perceives the outside world emotionally, but also in the way he feels in his organization, in terms of harmony and health. When we speak of a person's overall state of mind, we must not separate emotional experience from what we call overall state of mind, and this also includes those moods that depend on our physical condition, on how our blood flows, on how the flow of thoughts in our brain and nervous system takes place. If we consider the overall state of a person at a certain point in time, when he is not in a happy frame of mind, when he is melancholy or downhearted or tired of what his whole being indicates as his overall ; if we observe this state of a person and compare it with how we knew him in earlier days of his life, we will [...] find there the moods and sensations and feelings that do not enter into the memories. He does not live in the regions from which we draw our memories, but has descended into the depths of life, where the constitution that makes up our mental life is worked on, but which is also connected to our entire physical organization as a state of mind. How we are full of life and hope, how we can be melancholy and downhearted, how we can be full of zest for work, tired, exhausted or prone to attack each of these states of mind has arisen from the fact that they separate from the life of ideas and descend into the deep foundations of the soul. Where our personal happiness is built, so to speak, we see a certain line separating itself from the life of ideas; we see that part of it that accompanies this life of ideas diving down and working in hidden depths of the soul, where our life essence is incorporated into our personal state. There we have an element that comes from conscious experiences, but is always submerged in those regions where it can work on our entire life. But sometimes what has gone underground in our overall state is brought back up, but brought up in a certain way, not just brought up when the ordinary, everyday consciousness through which we connect with the external world is switched off in a certain way - what has gone underground can sometimes be seen rising in the semi-conscious states of the dream world. This is why the images of the dream world appear to us so meaningfully that they transport us to distant, past times in our lives. If we had tried to somehow reflect on what had happened, we might or might not have gotten a clear picture. But we cannot retrieve what we have experienced in our feelings. However, anyone who examines the dream images finds that it turns out that someone expresses ancient moods in the symbols of his dreams. It may well be, for example, that someone reaches a ripe old age and is no longer inclined to go out on the street with a paper cap or a toy sword and command children as they do. He will have an idea of what has happened to him, but the moods can no longer have the same power in his daily life. They take them on in his dreams. And it is not uncommon for someone of a certain age to dream every night that he is actually a major or that he is “taking a journey in his dream”. In his outer life, he may remember what he read in children's books, but he no longer experiences the bliss he felt at the time. But in his dreams he does. Where everyday life ends, where the human being feels the images of his or her ideas in dreams, we find that the emotional states that play and work in the hidden depths of the soul life come up when they have not yet been used – and this is important – to work on our physical organization. If they still live in a corner of our hidden soul life, then they come up in dreams. When someone is transported in a dream to earlier moods, then the whole way in which they come up in the dream reveals to us: certain feelings have remained; they have not yet exhausted their strength, so the half-asleep life of the dream brings them up into our half-consciousness – the dream images present themselves to us. Here we have an example of how we can penetrate the ceiling of our everyday state of consciousness, how what lives in the hidden life of the soul can indeed come to mind, but how these ideas are not then checked against the outside world, but live entirely in the moods present in our inner life of the soul. This is something very primitive, but it can lead our understanding to what can be explored from the hidden depths of the soul through spiritual science. We see a property of the moods that withdraw from our imaginative life; we see a property that they acquire that is extraordinarily important: by releasing the ideas, they gain power. And we can say to ourselves: While we used to speak of the powerlessness of knowing the life of ideas in consciousness, we can see precisely from this how used moods of mind transform themselves or how moods of mind, without our intervention as dream images present themselves to us in such a way that we do not have the power to correct them through logic. We see how this life of the soul snatches itself away from outer experience through the senses, away from outer thinking, which is bound to the brain. In this way, this subconscious soul life acquires a certain power, a certain reality. At first, this reality is one that leads us only into ourselves, into our own reality. Dreams like the ones just discussed are a reflection of what we have stored up in terms of fear and hope, of anxiety and confidence in life. But we come to something that affects our inner state and is expressed in our dream life. We do not come out of ourselves, but we get to know reality and have to say: the moods had to break free to become real in us. How the constitutions, these moods, work down there, how that which detaches itself from the ideas works, can be seen if one considers the training that has been discussed several times, which one must undergo if one really wants to become a knower of the spiritual world. You will find – this cannot, of course, be discussed in detail today – you will find the instructions for how to penetrate into that which has descended into the depths of the soul and which makes us appear healthy or ill and only shows itself in fleeting dream images, in the writing “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Through training, through imagination, [inspiration] and intuition, when the soul is actively immersed – not in the vague way described in the two cases mentioned – when the soul is actively immersed, then the human being learns, albeit only initially, to know what is confronting him, to know himself. All methods of meditation and concentration lead, in a sense, to the study of deep self-knowledge. They do not lead to the self-knowledge that one thinks one has exhausted when one takes a normal look at the forces with which one works in everyday life, but they lead one to where that deep individuality is in oneself, in which those moods are. He gets to know what lies dormant in the hidden depths of his soul, as if kept under a blanket. And here the human being must familiarize himself with the fact that when the forces for his recovery or illness emerge from the soul, he can acquire completely new insights into the peculiarities of this hidden self. Only real results of spiritual research can be cited. In particular, the human being gets to know how moods of joy, delight, bliss, moods of sadness and melancholy, impressions of ugliness or impressions of beauty, impressions of error, deception, impressions of truth or wisdom affect his or her entire being. Yes, you learn to recognize that everything that has just been mentioned, the impressions we have of joy or sadness, of beauty or ugliness, are connected with the becoming and passing away of something deeper within us, so that when we begin , when we move on to this realization, we are no longer indifferent to the outside world, but learn to know: certain things that take place in the world have a real destructive effect, taking something away; others have such a fertilizing effect that they help us. We cannot say that at the moment when we consciously or unconsciously tell lies, we are really destroying anything. We cannot say that what has a destructive effect on our being when we tell lies, and what has a fertilizing effect when we speak the truth, is the same as the external forces of becoming and passing away, but something akin to them. He who does not form his knowledge at the point where the soul benefits or destroys itself through what takes place in his mind, is not on the right path. Self-knowledge, which takes place in the hidden depths of the soul, is therefore not what could be given to humanity at a time when humanity had not yet matured to acquire this self-knowledge, which is related to the forces of arising and passing away; it must now be incorporated into humanity. Weak humanity has been spared from realizing the devastating effect of lying and deception, and the uplifting effect of honesty and sincerity. Usually, people believe that lying and deception or honesty and sincerity are things that can only be judged by means of ideas. But what is there, without our being able to judge it, penetrates down into the depths of our soul life and takes effect there as a real force. Self-knowledge is the true starting point for all higher knowledge. A person who wants to recognize what lives out there behind the sensuality of the outside world must delve into his or her self and will see that moral and emotional forces are not just something abstract, but something that descends and is the decisive factor not only for our entire human value, but for our entire humanity. How we grow into the outer sensory world with our body, which we wear as the garment of our self and which has the sense organs, how we see this sense world with the eyes of the body, hear this sense world with the ears, how we establish a connection with the mind, which has its tool in the brain, with this sense world, develop an inner experience of what is outside of us in the sense world, and thus come into relationship with the outer world through our outer human being. In the same way, we come into contact with spiritual forces and impulses from our outer environment through the human being that we develop within us. When we look out into the world with our eyes, we perceive colors and forms. When he has discovered his self resting in the deeper soul forces, then what is in the outer sense world does not emerge in the usual way, but the realities of the outer world also arise, and then we get to know a new context of things, that which stands between the beings of the outer world. As we now take the first step into the qualities of the soul forces that have a destructive and constructive effect, we then learn that the inner self expands, so that we not only have it in its arising and passing away, but we feel it interacting with the external reality, with the spiritual reality of the outer world. Therefore, the images of the spiritual environment then arise in these hidden depths of the soul. Man comes to know the spiritual world indirectly through his self. Much of what appears impenetrable or even random to the ordinary view, which is limited only to the external sense world, is revealed to us within the context of such knowledge, in which the self grows together in its hidden depths with the environment. The strange thing about this is that the deeper we penetrate into our own self, the more the horizon with which we are connected in the external world expands; the more we dive into our subconscious, the more spiritual aspects of the external world we recognize. To delve into the powers of the soul means to go beyond belief, to learn about the spiritual world. For down there we are much more deeply connected with the essence of things than we can be with the senses and the mind, which is bound to the physical brain. When one can say that consciousness has created a larger horizon, then at the same time a spreading of one's own self and an penetration into the spiritual worlds has been achieved. There is no other way to reach hidden depths of the soul than to gradually penetrate the external spiritual world. In the process, a real knowledge of the spiritual foundations of existence arises for those who penetrate it through the observation of everything we can achieve through the knowledge of the higher world. What is described in spiritual science and what you can find in theosophical books occurs. But it is possible - although in our time one can only gain an unchallengeable view into the spiritual world through training - for certain individuals to gain insights that come from ancient heirlooms, from the inheritance of clairvoyant qualities, insights that are nothing other than a descent into the hidden depths of the soul, so that an expansion of the hidden human being beyond the external world occurs, through which the human being perceives what would otherwise remain closed to the external life of the senses and mind. Then intuitions arise, everything that a person can recognize without proper training - also about the fate of the soul, about the fate of the soul between death and a new birth in the sense of reincarnation. On the one hand, this can happen through proper training, on the other hand, these hidden depths of the soul can 'push themselves up'. Like dreams, what is in the deeper layers and cannot be perceived by the senses or the mind can be discharged; through a “second sight” or [deuteroscopy] it can be brought to light. Insights can also be brought to light about the fate of the human soul, even if it is not embodied in the body. We must only realize in what respect one or the other is or is not beneficial for the human being, we must realize that there is a tangible difference between looking through spiritual training and that looking, which, as it were, pushes its way up out of the hidden into the known depths of the soul. There is a fundamental difference. When a person enters the spiritual world through proper schooling, as indicated, for example, in Occult Science, it happens in such a way that the person, after penetrating into the depths of the soul, consciously brings up the forces hidden there. However, visions can also occur with the full vividness of a play of colors and sounds, corresponding to what we receive as sense impressions. But while we receive them in such a way that we know we must surrender to the control of the external world, we let those colors and tones of the visions take effect on us in such a way that we do nothing to them – and then we become fantasists, dreamers. Such visions are removed from our inner arbitrariness, our generative power, our spiritual willpower. Conversely, in the training we have to experience the hidden depths of our soul in such a way that we know: What is there has been brought forth by our free will, by our generative power. Only when one knows: What you perceive [gap in the transcript] is made by you, because you must — because you are experiencing something spiritual that is otherwise not perceptible in the outer world — fill what you experience with colors and sounds, then the person is protected from deception. If the visions confront him with the full vividness of a play of colors, then he is one who hallucinates. The moment the vision presents itself as a sensory perception, it is a hallucination; it does not yet belong to the realm of true clairvoyance, but to the realm where the hidden powers of the soul emerge without the conscious willpower of the human being, without arbitrary training. When the trained clairvoyant can control the way in which things present themselves to him, when they present themselves without such conscious willpower in the soul's imagination, without the inner self-activity generated by training , then we find ourselves in the realm of unschooled clairvoyance, and then man is at the mercy of the forces that play into the hidden depths of his soul; then he is unfree. Then he is connected with all the dangers with which he must be connected when he is in contact with supersensible reality without conscious willpower. In the world of the senses every phantasm reveals itself. But in the spiritual world, the moment things present themselves, it is no longer possible to distinguish objectively between reality and fantasy, and there is a danger that the human will sphere will be affected in some way and that the human being - instead of facing the spiritual world as an individuality - will be surrendered to the things that play in the hidden depths of his soul; just as the unconscious life of the soul plays out, like the rippling of the sea over the depths of the sea, so the I, one's own personality, is opened up and then plunged down again, [and he is guided from another side, through] hallucinations [and visions], [...] carried by hidden depths of the soul, and it can happen that [that this] is presented to the outsider, to the one who wants to investigate scientifically, as a phenomenon, as a specific thing, so that he can distinguish what of what he sees is real objective reality and what is fantasy; but it can only lead to fruitful observation if a trained clairvoyance exercises criticism. It can result in fruitful observation to extract insights from the depths of the soul in this way, and since science is allowed to take anything as an object, wherever it may come from, which it must then take up into right knowledge, one cannot speak of something unlawful can be said when these things are examined, which even the untrained clairvoyant sees and which can be based on correct, useful perception of what leads tremendously deep into the hidden depths of the soul. What the objective, critical clairvoyant can contribute regarding the facts that arise through untrained clairvoyance can be extraordinarily fruitful, especially today. I may here again and again point out the fact that we now have a fine book - as I have often pointed out - which, in addition to the so-called esoteric clairvoyance, also sheds light on this side of clairvoyance: “The Mystery of Man”, written by Ludwig Deinhard. So, when the hidden depths of the soul are discussed, one must not forget that there is a difference between proper training and the kind of clairvoyance that breaks away with elemental force and rises from the subconscious to the conscious mind. The former must be examined with critical means, while the latter, who has expanded his consciousness within himself, can take on the criticism and exercise control himself. There will come an age in our culture when individuality will become more self-assertive, when humanity will 'enter' into what can be achieved through properly trained clairvoyance, when this will be introduced into culture. When this is made clear to him, the person can then test it out in life itself, in the ordinary things of life. There is yet another difference between the trained clairvoyant and the person who has “exposed” his clairvoyance through elementary, primitive powers, namely that the trained clairvoyant first comes to realizations that are general; and he comes to see how the visible human body differs from the supersensible human being, to see how man, as a being with many parts, is endowed with visible and invisible members, to see what there is between birth and death, not just in one life, but in several. He comes to understand everything that arises as experiences in this life between birth and death and between death and new birth, and also to understand what the origin of man is, what the course of the great world order became, of which we will present an example here in the lecture the day after tomorrow. The clairvoyant comes to an understanding of the things that concern all people, and he works his way through them with great caution, so that he first gets to know his own intellectual processes and does not carelessly communicate the fate of some disembodied soul. He can work his way to perceiving such individual circumstances and to experiencing the spiritual that plays into everyday life, but he advances from the general to the individual only with difficulty. He first recognizes that a person has an etheric body at all, but only later the individual etheric body. In the untrained clairvoyant, however, the opposite is the case when the hidden depths of the soul struggle to emerge; he begins with visions that actually need to be carefully controlled; he begins with individual, everyday things. It is peculiar that he has basically little interest in what are general great insights. Particularly in those who have retained an old, atavistic clairvoyance, one can observe that they have little interest in things [that must prove to be significant for all people through spiritual science]. And nowhere are there such snobbish people among clairvoyants as those who call a naturally inherited clairvoyance their own. Thus we see that which leads us into the hidden depths of our soul life and what makes us healthy and sick there, we see that which connects us to the spiritual world. Now it is natural that this is not only there because one recognizes it, only there when man dives down and beholds it; it is just as truly there before the recognition as the whale was there before man saw it. So we are deeply connected with our hidden soul life with the spiritual world that is there. The spiritual foundations play a role here, and we should not be surprised that there is a much deeper essence down there than comes up and comes to our consciousness. We see that the bases that connect us to the spiritual world actually lie there, in the hidden foundations, and that the forces that come from the spiritual worlds have an effect on them. Only part of it enters our consciousness, so that our consciousness is only part of what we actually are. But this consciousness of man is there because man is able to raise to a higher level what can emerge from the hidden depths of his soul. For we see these things emerging in many different ways – they could emerge distorted or embellished, of which we would otherwise know nothing – but what emerges from the spiritual worlds into the depths of our souls and strives upwards is expressed in the sublime and the beautiful, which consciousness can control. What happens when that which penetrates from the spiritual worlds into the hidden depths of the soul's life is transformed on its way up to consciousness? Then it is so that the impressions can live out as artistic fantasy, as that about which no one but the artists can say: the things are there, they rise up from the depths of the soul. And then we understand the powerlessness of ordinary consciousness, understand how the artist wants to expose the depths of his soul, even if he does not have them in front of him like a clairvoyant, and that it seems more important to him how things permeate each other. Everything that a person can have in his consciousness without being stimulated by the outside world comes from the hidden depths of the soul. Even that which each of us needs to make this life fruitful must arise from the hidden depths of the soul. Not only the poet needs this, not only the artist, but also the merchant, the engineer – each of us needs this fertilizing stimulus from the hidden depths of the soul. We can see what these depths are truly rooted in when what lies down there rises up into consciousness. When it permeates him and presents itself in such a way that it can be perceived, conceived, experienced, then it becomes dependent on the way in which the person can absorb it. If someone has the ability not only to perceive what can be perceived through the external senses and through the mind bound to the senses, but has the ability to perceive in images, in beautiful fantasy, what lives in the hidden depths of his soul, then he can give in images what he cannot draw from nature, but what lives in the hidden depths of his soul. But if a person is so constituted that he is untruthful, then the hidden depths do indeed come to the surface, but in such a way that, on the way from the hidden depths into the manifest, the person takes on the character and appears as a liar, as a deceiver or the like, through that part of the hidden powers of the soul that he cannot control in relation to external reality. Thus we can see how these hidden soul forces can make one person an artist and another a liar. This is what is necessary to recognize in order to penetrate into what a person has in his hidden soul forces. This should be our first goal today: to recognize that everything that takes place in our conscious mental life is rooted in the depths of the soul, in the depths that we find in many other ways. Finally, I would just like to say – because time is pressing – that in our ordinary lives, precisely in our consciousness, in our interaction with the outside world, in our perception through the senses and the mind, we merge with this outside world, that in the most important things we cannot distinguish what we have within, what is at the core of our being, from the outside. The human being is not capable of detaching the core of his soul from what he has grown together with externally. That is why he must take the path into his inner being. He can take it if he imagines how the ball of sunlight rises out of the dawn. We can best recognize what we experience inwardly by whether it is present in one person or not. And when we feel compassion for something that our fellow human experiences, we cannot separate what lives in hidden depths from the sight of compassion and pain; we grow together with it. But there is a way that leads from this conscious soul life into something that can be inferred from the faith of a great man like Goethe: that it is not what lives in the external world but what lives in the spiritual environment that is significant, and this includes basically all stellar worlds, everything that works in the external world. If it does not awaken its own life in the human soul, if we only get stuck in what connects us to the outside world, if we only remain in consciousness, then we will not penetrate into the spiritual. But we can find the way into the spiritual world. When we look back into the past and see that up to a certain point our parents and brothers and sisters can tell us about it, but when we go back to the point where our memory awakens, we see that we have not only gone through external experiences, but that something else is connected with these experiences: the carrier of our experiences, that which we call our I. By looking back over our lives, we can see our own development. We feel how we have become more mature and more mature, because we feel we have gained in life experience. There is one thing we have to tell ourselves: the most important thing we have learned is actually one that we cannot apply in life. We have attained our greatest maturity through the mistakes we have made. We only know how to do something better when we have done it. Man learns most important things from the unrepeatable, most from what has passed. Especially with the most intimate things in our soul, we feel that something has arisen in us, of which the materialist says: When man goes through the gate of death, it disappears, or at most it is handed over to the human race, to cultural life. But the spiritual person knows that what he has experienced in his innermost being cannot be handed over to anyone else. It shows when he delves into the hidden depths, it shows that what we allow to mature within us can be fulfilled directly in us. When we examine our lives and find that we were born into certain family circumstances, into a certain environment, then something occurs – if we do not grasp our destiny in an intellectual way with our ordinary consciousness, but appeal to forces that are somewhat hidden from our ordinary consciousness . It is something that cannot so much become knowledge as a volitional impulse, when we look back at our lives and our destiny as it was when we were placed in life, but then make the decision to depart from the experiences of ordinary consciousness. Those who face their destiny with ordinary consciousness, who say that everything has happened to us by chance, will be resentful of their destiny, will feel resentment. If we move away from these peculiarities such as antipathy and sympathy towards fate and appeal to a force that we can develop within us, to the power of non-self-will - letting our own will remain silent for a while, calmly facing this fate and indulging for once in the idea: How is it that this fate is there? It continues through our ego, after all. Was our ego not there before? If we seek our self by calmly looking at our fate, and if we now trace our self further back, we find that through such a deeper contemplation of life, our self grows together with fate, and we understand our fate as if our self were included in this fate and brought about in it before we were there. Then we come to see that we pass through the gate of death with the best that is in us and that we have allowed to mature, and that what we have experienced in previous lives meets our ego again as fate in our next life. We see that it works in the depths of the soul, and when we leave this body, what we have acquired as forces to build a new life for ourselves continues to work in us. So we see our own hidden beingness building up this soul life anew, we see it becoming real down there, becoming constructive forces in the hidden soul life. When we look at the world in this way, we grow out of the hidden depths and into the spiritual world. And the knowledge that penetrates into these depths is so truly connected with the spiritual worlds as thinking, feeling and willing are the powers of our soul, to which the soul clings as the bonds that penetrate from the spiritual world. By penetrating into it, the human being finds his connection with the macrocosm; the forces grow out of the microcosm, [the human being grows] into the macrocosm, as [it is presented in] the drama 'The Testing of the Soul', [and every] soul can say to itself:
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| 196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Eighth Lecture
31 Jan 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| Just now, for our fifth post-Atlantic period, the dream consciousness is abnormal: the day consciousness, which is permeated by the images of the dream. If we let dreams into our thinking, we mix up what we should have only through our prenatal life with what happens between birth and death. |
| For we are seized by the Luciferic in the world in that we dream consciously, especially in dreams. In relation to this public judgment, a large part of humanity today has been and continues to be truly childish. |
| 196. Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity: Eighth Lecture
31 Jan 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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I would like to start today by drawing your attention to something that may be connected with the assessment of what is now being associated socially with our anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement. You know the inner connection; I have spoken of it often. I have also drawn your attention to the fact that a spiritual movement would be in very little shape to meet the challenges of our time if it were to withdraw from the great questions that must occupy humanity and had nothing to say about the most significant demands of the present and the near future. Yesterday I pointed out how dream-like elements creep into human thinking, and I pointed out the various ways, or at least some of the various ways, in which dream-like elements creep into human thinking. We must be particularly attentive to such creeping in when we are confronted with ready-made judgments from the outside world. A large part of what we think is thought by us in such a way that it is not first examined, that it is not first brought to life within us, but that it is repeated, re-evaluated, re-thought. You need only consider the numerous judgments that people of the most diverse nations have made in the last four to five years about the fate of the world, about the value of individual nations, about the causes of the war, and so on, and you cannot help but say to themselves: Of all the judgments that have been passed, even by people of whom one would have liked to assume a completely different one, very few have actually been examined; they have been repeated, re-judged, re-thought. Perhaps I may also take this opportunity to remind you that when I have spoken here about contemporary phenomena, I have never given ready-made judgments, but have always characterized things that could serve to help people form their own judgments. In general, there should be more and more emphasis on giving the world the foundations for forming judgments, not ready-made judgments. But people today are very much inclined, when they hear something here or there, especially if it is said with great self-confidence, when it is imbued with a perhaps not quite perceptible fanaticism, to then reflect on, think about, repeat such judgments. And especially in view of the fact that some of our English friends are still here, I must touch on the following, which may also be of importance for the other friends sitting here from over there or over there. For example, it has now been judged from a certain quarter that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which has its representative seat in Dornach, is now dealing with politics, and such a movement should not deal with politics. Among other things, it is said to have been pointed out that the Catholic Church had indeed come into its times of disaster by dealing with matters that are usually considered political. When such a judgment arises, it echoes many things that one is accustomed to thinking. And when someone hears such a judgment, it seems somewhat plausible. He then says to himself: Yes, there is something to it, it is perhaps nonsense after all, when a spiritual scientific movement starts dealing with such questions, as the threefold social organism is one now. Now, both the original judgment about this matter in the direction that I have just characterized it, and the repetition of it, belong to the class of superficial methods of thinking that are now emerging in large numbers. Our time very much believes that one has particularly advanced in thinking. Yes, we have the task of raising thinking to a certain level if humanity is not to perish in disaster. But what is demanded of humanity with regard to clear, sharp thinking, above all with regard to inwardly truthful thinking – because thinking that is unclear is always somewhat dishonest – what is demanded of humanity in terms of clear, sharp, inwardly truthful thinking, is confronted today with the urge to think unclearly, to think incompletely, to think half-way, to repeat what one hears here or there, or to think it again. But I also say: originally, the saying that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has strayed into the political sphere, which does not belong to it, on the issue of threefolding, is based on an extraordinary superficiality. For anyone who judges in this way judges in a completely abstract way. He simply takes something that may be right for the Catholic Church and applies it to something that is quite different. This is just as if someone had learned that something is good for a shoe that you put on your foot, and then applied the judgment that he had formed about the shoe to the glove; that is how clever such a judgment is. Why? What is the original aim of the threefold social order? It is to create a clear division in the social order between spiritual life, which should have its own administration; legal or state life, which should stand in the middle between the other two with its full independence; and economic life, which should be clearly separated from the other two as the third link. Now let us not think superficially, as does the person who says that anthroposophy should not concern itself with politics, but let us think through the matter objectively: What is the aim of such a strict separation? Well, spiritual life should stand on its own, spiritual life should develop on its own ground, spiritual life should only emphasize that which comes from its own impulses. The aim is therefore to achieve a spiritual life that is no longer dependent on the life of the state and the economic life, but can be free and independent, just as the Catholic Church has never been, always confounding itself with the state and the economic life. So it is a matter of creating precisely that through which one is in a position to assert all the impulses of this spiritual life. Therefore, think how frivolous, how superficial it is when someone says that anthroposophy should not venture into the field of politics, while it is precisely demanding that such a social order should be created that will make it possible for spiritual life to no longer deal with politics. What is to be created is a policy through which spiritual life has its own administration, its own internal organization. And it should no longer be necessary to turn to the political authority or to the state curriculum when one wants to found a school or develop a curriculum; because that is precisely how one becomes dependent on politics. From this example you can see what clear, sharp thinking means and how those think who today make judgments about what has been drawn from the impulses of spiritual life simply from things that have come their way. For the idea of threefolding is drawn from the Science of Initiation. And anyone who says that spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy should not deal with the idea of threefold social order does not understand how to think clearly; his thinking is confused. But secondly, he understands nothing whatever of the real impulse of spiritual science, for he does not know that this matter, in connection with the great demands of our time, has been brought out of the impulse of spiritual science. But today, numerous judgments that are made publicly and that are simply repeated, re-judged and re-thought by a large number of people are based on such self-contradictions. Our most important task is to try to arrive at a pure, straightforward, inwardly truthful thinking, independently of all national chauvinisms. We will not achieve this if we do not first admit that the present is far from it. For if we have no sense of how far the judgments that are flying around today are from objectivity, then we will not even experience the drive within us to arrive at clarity, at an inner truthfulness of thought. I wanted to use an obvious example of the misunderstanding of the position of threefolding in relation to the actual spiritual-scientific problem to make it clear to you what confused judgments are flying around the world today, and I know very well that such judgments have a blinding effect on many people because they do not think about it, because they believe that when the person in question says that anthroposophy should not deal with the threefold social order, there is something to be said for it, because it is subject to the fact that a spiritual movement can only flourish if it is self-contained. But that is precisely what is being sought. So anyone who judges as I have characterized it stops halfway. On the basis of such premises, I would like to encourage self-examination to see where unfinished judgments are sitting in the mind, judgments for which the documentation is completely missing. It is, in fact, all too easy to criticize superficially what is given by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. If you do not feel the depths from which things are created, then you can judge anthroposophy from the most superficial daily moods. That is why we so often see people who have hardly even sniffed into the field of anthroposophy, but who are clever, immediately saying: “I can agree with that, I cannot agree with that” and so on. The task for those who can really feel is always to penetrate deeper and deeper into the matter, to get a feeling for how initiation truths are actually drawn from the depths of being. For if we now take a somewhat deeper look at what I have touched on in terms of its outward appearance, the following emerges. In modern history, we have seen more and more aspects of public life merge into a social organism: intellectual life, legal life, economic life. Modern parliaments strive to make their decisions on their own initiative through majority votes by people who may not understand the issues at hand, which can only be decided if you understand something about them. The unified parliaments are supposed to decide on everything: intellectual life, legal life, economic life. But the moment intellectual life — let us take this first — is separated from the other two elements, from the legal-state and economic spheres, intellectual life is brought entirely to the people themselves. Intellectual life becomes a separate organism. Spiritual life must be administered on the basis of the same principles from which it is constantly drawn. Those people who have this or that to teach must also administer the way teachers are employed and schools are run. Spiritual life should be completely free to rely on itself. In this way, individual human abilities are constantly called upon, especially in the field of intellectual life. Thus, what is to be decided in the field of intellectual life is constantly made dependent on the abilities of the people, on the abilities of those people who happen to be around in any given age. But that is how it should be. Those who are individually capable of this or that in any age should not be prevented by any state or parliamentary instruments from bringing their abilities to bear. In this way, spiritual life is made completely dependent on man. But because nothing else works in the development of spiritual life except human beings themselves, what I characterized yesterday, that element of spiritual life that develops itself, is at work. I have quoted Raphael as an example of the outstanding but also characteristic type. When his works have long since been lost, there will be in the world that he has developed through the works. This inward principle of development is applied to that which is active in spiritual life, that is to say, all that is Luciferian is eliminated from spiritual life precisely through its separation from the state. And only by this separation can the Luciferic be eliminated. Every spiritual life that depends on the state is permeated with Luciferic impulses. Then into spiritual life come into play the decisions of the majority or the like, which always cover up what comes from human individuality, but thereby blur the sharp thinking, the sharp volition that comes from human individuality. But it is precisely this blurring of clarity that gives rise to the Luciferic element in human thinking and human volition. So we can say that all spiritual life that is connected with the life of rights bears the Luciferic character. And it is precisely in order to overcome the Luciferic character, which must be overcome in public spiritual life, that it is necessary to separate from the life of rights. The individual human being cannot overcome it, because dream-like elements — I pointed this out yesterday — must always play a part in his spiritual life. But these are repelled by the fact that the human being is part of the social spiritual life, but this spiritual life is separate from the state. Similarly, Ahrimanic elements play a part in economic life when it is administered by the state. These Ahrimanic elements, which play a part in economic life and in the administration of economic life when the state is involved in that economic life, can only be eliminated if economic life, as I have often emphasized here, is built on the life of brotherhood in corporations, associations and so on. You see, it is a matter of applying truly great principles to this threefold order. In the middle then remains the actual structure of the state, everything that relates only to public law. Now you will remember something that I have already explained to you here, but which I will repeat for those who have not heard it. Man, by living here on earth between birth and death, is not just this being that lives here between birth and death, but he carries within himself the echoes of what he has lived through, firstly in previous incarnations, but especially of what he has lived through between the last death and the birth that preceded his present life. In this time between death and a new birth, we have experiences in the spiritual world, and these experiences resonate in the present life. And how do they resonate in public social life? - So that everything that people bring into public life through their talents, through their special gifts, in other words, what public intellectual life actually is, is not at all from the earth, but is all the resonance from the pre-earthly life. What Goethe achieved as Goethe between 1749 and 1832 was all influenced by what he had experienced in the spiritual world before 1749; he had brought it down with him. And all the art, science and religious impulses that are developed by people here on earth, that is, all that is developed as earthly spiritual life, is an echo of the supermundane spiritual life, which people bring here through the portal of birth. If you take literature, if you take art, everything that is in it has been sent down from the spiritual worlds. So in this social life, in terms of forces, we have an element within us that is simply sent down to us from the spiritual worlds. Human beings bring it down by entering through the gate of birth into this world between birth and death. But what is worked in economic life through brotherliness or unbrotherliness, what people do for one another in their economic lives, has, strange as it may sound, not only a significance for this life between birth and death, but a very great significance for life after death. For example, it makes a difference whether I act as a grumbler all my life and behave in such a way that envy is my guiding principle, or whether I act out of love for my fellow human beings. Actions that influence public life, that bring people into contact with each other, are not only important here on earth, but their effects are carried through the gateway of death and are significant throughout the entire life between our death, which occurs after this life on earth, and the next life on earth. So that we can say: What takes place here as economic life is the cause of how people will live between death and a new birth. If, for example, an economic order is based solely on selfishness, it means that people will become highly reclusive between death and a new birth, that they will have great difficulty in finding other human beings. In short, how a person behaves economically here has a huge significance for their life between death and the next birth. Therefore, the only thing that remains purely earthly is the life under the rule of law or the life of the state. This has no significance for prenatal life or for the life after death, it only has significance for what happens here on earth. If we strictly separate the life of the rule of law from the other two areas, we separate the earthly from everything supernatural that plays a role here on earth. Thus, in this respect, there are also great principles in the threefold social organism. We divide into three parts because we must separate the most diverse areas that have something to do with the supersensible from that which has only to do with the sensual between birth and death. What the human being can decide on the path that alone makes majority decisions possible can only have significance here for the earth. What a person accomplishes through his talents, through his abilities, which are said to be innate but are actually acquired in the way I have just characterized, he accomplishes as a human individuality. And in that moment, to use an old expression, the “prince of this world” reigns when individuality is somehow compromised by majority decisions. Majority decisions can only and alone relate to that which, let it be said once more, has significance for earthly conditions; for that which has significance after death, again requires human love, humanity, goodwill, which in turn is and can only be entirely individual, to unfold its power. In this way, I am pointing out to you that which can only be gained from the science of initiation to reinforce the idea of threefold social order. But what is the actual basis for the intrusion of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic into our world? The intrusion of all that is Luciferic and Ahrimanic into our world is due to the fact that something flows into our world from other degrees of consciousness than are the normal degrees of consciousness. When we pass through the gate of birth, we enter this earthly stage of consciousness from a normal stage of consciousness that is quite different from the earthly one here. Just now, for our fifth post-Atlantic period, the dream consciousness is abnormal: the day consciousness, which is permeated by the images of the dream. If we let dreams into our thinking, we mix up what we should have only through our prenatal life with what happens between birth and death. And this mixture is particularly suitable for Lucifer to achieve his goals with us, not the normal divine goals of the earth. All the abnormal dream-like elements that enter into the present world of consciousness can therefore only lead to the Luciferization of humanity. It is normal for our consciousness to be educated in a dreamy way as long as our consciousness is still dreamy, namely during childhood. If we continue this same relationship to the world, which is quite good during childhood, where we are supposed to learn to speak, for example, in a dream-like state, beyond childhood, which a large part of today's humanity does, then we open the doors and windows and everything we can possibly open to Lucifer in our consciousness. Therefore, if we do not accept public judgments more deeply than something is founded when we dream it, then we continually open the gates to Lucifer. If, for example, we are ordered from some quarter to regard such and such a person as a “great statesman” or a “great prince” or as “innocent of war” or as a “great military leader,” without our examining the matter, then the reason why we form such a judgment is no different from the reasons why we dream anything at all. A large part of the present human race has until recently considered Woodrow Wilson a great man because he sent the nonsense of the “Fourteen Articles” into the world. If you ask with what inner conviction people did that, you will find no difference between the conviction they felt in considering Woodrow Wilson a great man and the conviction you feel when you dream something. The dream comes to you with the same inner arbitrariness or involuntariness as the judgment about Woodrow Wilson and his “Fourteen Nonsenses” came to you. There is no difference between dreaming fully consciously in this way and dreaming while asleep. There is no difference between considering Ludendorff a great general or Clemenceau a great statesman in response to the voices of the outside world and dreaming this or that in the night. But humanity must become aware of these things. For in noticing such things, judgment enters into us at the same time, as we are seized by the Luciferic in the world. For we are seized by the Luciferic in the world in that we dream consciously, especially in dreams. In relation to this public judgment, a large part of humanity today has been and continues to be truly childish. These are things that must be considered more seriously today than many people think. And on the other hand, it is important that we learn from life. Because in relation to our will, we are constantly asleep, as I have often said. I have explained to you: you have ideas about what you are doing, but not even about what the hand is actually doing when it moves; usually, people have no idea about that. People have as little idea about this strange process, which is connected with human will, as they have about what they do when they are deeply asleep. As a rule, will is an awake sleeping. This volition must be raised more and more to consciousness. This will be a long process, as volition is raised to consciousness in the understanding of the earth time. It is partially raised to consciousness in a small area, in other areas too, but most outstandingly in one area - for example, through our eurythmy. In it, movements are carried out with full consciousness. In it, full consciousness truly permeates the will. That is why I have often emphasized in the introduction to the eurythmic performance that it is important that eurythmists in particular fight against any drowsiness and work towards the opposite of dreaminess. It is a great mistake if eurythmy is not performed in a fully conscious state, but if it is performed in such a way that one believes one can also “mystify” into eurythmy. “Mystifying” comes from mysticism. It is very bad to mystify into ordinary life, and it is even worse when something that is supposed to be intentional, that is supposed to be the counter-image of the dream, is thoroughly mystified. But the will permeated by full consciousness must also be striven for more and more in the rest of life. Once again we have a case here where a large part of humanity is working towards the opposite, towards the opposite of what should be before our eyes as a basic demand of our time. A basic demand of our time is this: to permeate life with consciousness, not just with intellect. The intellect is something very one-sided. Today people even believe that they can gain supersensible truths in a mystical way by using mediums, that is, they tune their consciousness down as much as possible. There is no more luciferic-Ahrimanic path to the spiritual world than the spiritualistic one. On the one hand, it brings the medium close to Lucifer, and on the other hand, it brings those who allow themselves to be told their “truths” by the medium close to Ahrimanism. And the content of such truths, of these so-called truths, is also accordingly. For what the medium has to say about the extrasensory is not something higher than the sensory. The sensible has a certain meaning throughout the whole of earthly time. What mediums have to say is only meaningful for a very short period of time, if it is based on truth, of course. It is only of significance for certain elementary spiritual effects over a short period of time, so that even if one does nothing but see with one's healthy eyes and hear with one's healthy ears throughout one's entire life, one still experiences something higher than that through mediums. From these and similar things you can see that on the one hand there are great demands in our time for the renewal of spiritual life, but that there is also what can be called a strong resistance to the real sources of spiritual life that have grown in our time. People today resist the intrusion of the spiritual into the physical-sensual world. This resistance is what can confront you in all possible fields and what you should recognize from the various attacks on spiritual science as it is meant here. This spiritual science, as it is meant here, is clear about the fact that everything that is to enter into public social life in the future must flow entirely from the sources of initiation. What is being asserted there, such as the threefold social order, may not appeal to certain people today. There are people who say: I don't like this or that about it. These people should in turn learn to understand what whole thinking is. In life, it does not depend on what we like or dislike. I once knew a lady - I have told this story before - who had many things told to her about spiritual science. Then she said: Yes, but re-incarnation, the repeated lives on earth, that is something I don't like; I don't want to come back to earth. Little by little she could be made to understand that it did not depend on whether she wanted to or not, especially not whether she wanted to in this life or not, because she did not yet know what she would want between death and a new birth; then she would want to come back. Now she seemed to gradually understand that and also left, saying that she now understood. It was in Berlin. From Stettin she wrote a card saying that she did not believe in it after all; she did not like the idea of coming back to earth after all. — Then the thinking breaks off dynamically; it can also break off mechanically. We have already experienced an example of this on our own soil. The example is very plausible; but that it can be applied to much of what people think is less plausible. Once at a meeting I had to explain how human beings come back in reincarnation, how they reappear with their individual human souls. I had to say that animals have a group soul; and while it is the case with man that he has an individual soul, preserves this individual soul for the time between death and a new birth, reappears with his individual soul and so on, it is the case with animals that has a group soul, it is so that it is taken into the whole group at death, that each individual animal is then separated again at birth and, as it were, drawn back into the group soul after death through a tentacle. Then a lady began to polemicize: Yes, she could see that for all animals, only not for her dog - which she had particularly liked; because she had raised him so much that he had such a strong individual soul that he would reappear as an individuality! — Afterwards I had a conversation with another lady who said: How stupid the lady was to believe that her dog, who only has a group soul, will return as an individuality. I realized right away that that cannot be. But my parrot, he will surely return as an individuality, that is something else! Of course, these things make you laugh; but it is precisely in these things that you notice when you make the thinking mistakes. From what I have told you regarding the alleged conflation of threefolding with spiritual science, one does not notice one's short thinking! I have seen how, in the last five years, numerous judgments have been made entirely according to the pattern of this parrot judgment, how people in one region of the country have grasped how things are everywhere else, but for them it was always something different, entirely according to the pattern of the parrot's return. The point is that we really take these things seriously in the present and that we can see: initiation science must be able to flow into social life, and that we must not deceive ourselves about the difference between what we would like to think and what is real. That is why many people today may find it unpleasant to propagate threefolding. But there are two things in the world today, and anyone who looks at the world honestly and sincerely, who has no illusions, can see that there are these two things: either Bolshevism over the whole world or threefolding! You may not like threefolding; then you decide in favor of an old world order! But just consider what has been left of a large part of Europe in the last four to five years! Take the individual parts. There you have, for example, German-Austria; apart from the efforts of a few prominent individuals whom I have singled out in my book 'Vom Menschenrätsel' (The Riddle of Man), the substance of the whole derives from the Catholic principles of the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. That still existed there, and could be artificially preserved under the principle of cohesion of the so-called House of Habsburg, which was only natural at the time, and then under the entire unnatural principle of cohesion of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Or take, for example, what the former lands of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen are, Hungary: it is, in its entire constitution, what it became in the year 1000! And so we could indicate from all the individual areas what the essence of this overall substance actually is. It is not even convenient to say these things to people in the present, because people do not want to look at such circumstances impartially. But how can we expect that simply by piecing together these ruins, which have become old and decrepit because their entire substance dates from the 8th, 9th, 10th or 11th centuries and so on, they can be welded together into lasting structures today! No, only a real renewal of the soul life will do. But that must actually be grasped. Therefore, one must always appeal to people's sense of responsibility to take a look at this soul life. If it is looked at, then it will also be attended to. I will continue speaking about these matters tomorrow, especially about the relationship between what I have said today and the particular view of the Christ principle. |
| 215. Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion: The Exercise of Thinking, Feeling and Willing
07 Sep 1922, Dornach Translated by Lisa D. Monges, Doris M. Bugbey, Maria St. Goar, Stewart C. Easton Rudolf Steiner |
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| Compared to modern consciousness in which we think scientifically, that consciousness was dream-like. What we must keep in mind as an ideal for a new philosophy is to be able to experience philosophy in the etheric body, but not in that dream-like way as was the case in olden times. But it must be realized that these dreams of ancient philosophers were not dreams in the same sense as dreams are today. Today's dreams are pictorial conceptions in which, however, the reality factor is nowhere assured by the content of the dream conceptions themselves. |
| What man experiences as moral impulses through imagination, inspiration and intuition, even when he experiences it in a dream-like manner as in ancient times—when it was always experienced through dreams, instincts and emotions and thus became an impulse to action—this always puts a constraint on man. |
| 215. Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion: The Exercise of Thinking, Feeling and Willing
07 Sep 1922, Dornach Translated by Lisa D. Monges, Doris M. Bugbey, Maria St. Goar, Stewart C. Easton Rudolf Steiner |
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Philosophy did not arise in the way it is carried on at the present time. Now it is a sum, a group of connecting ideas whose inner, real content is not experienced by the philosophers; instead, they seek theoretical proof for it to show that it relates to reality. So the philosopher is not able to verify his ideas in reference to reality as directly as one always can in the case of any given fact in the real world. Of course, people can certainly harbor some illusions concerning a given fact, but they can easily come to mutual understanding about it when confronting it. In philosophy, the ideas, which despite one's belief to the contrary are actually taken only from tradition, can be related in various ways to reality because this reality is not experienced. In this way the various, diverging systems of philosophy arise. The validity of none of them can be absolutely established because, as reasons for the one or the other system are presented, one can always bring forward opposing reasons to refute them. Since it is only a matter of relative correctness, one can say then that the one who proves something and the one who refutes it are, in most cases, equally in the right. While at the present time a philosophy can be attained that differs from that of one or the other philosopher, it is impossible to arrive at anything that both could be felt directly as real and that also carries conviction because of the directness of observation. Philosophy has originated out of a state of consciousness differing completely from that of abstract thinking in which it is now produced. Therefore, one must learn once again to live with one's soul in that state of consciousness. But since humanity has in the meantime progressed in its evolution, one cannot just resume the ancient consciousness that gave rise to philosophy. While something similar must be attained if one is to have a philosophy today, it is nevertheless something quite different. The old state of consciousness, which gave birth to philosophy and by means of which a philosopher experienced the activity of his own etheric organism, was partly unconscious. Compared to modern consciousness in which we think scientifically, that consciousness was dream-like. What we must keep in mind as an ideal for a new philosophy is to be able to experience philosophy in the etheric body, but not in that dream-like way as was the case in olden times. But it must be realized that these dreams of ancient philosophers were not dreams in the same sense as dreams are today. Today's dreams are pictorial conceptions in which, however, the reality factor is nowhere assured by the content of the dream conceptions themselves. These conceptions may consist of all kinds of reminiscences of life; they may relate to processes of the physical organism. In the dream conception itself one never has a convincing indication of any reality. With the consciousness that cultivated philosophy in ancient times it was otherwise. Those conceptions were also pictorial, but they arose in such a way that the picture absolutely guaranteed the presence of a spiritual, an etheric reality, indicated by the picture itself. Today we cannot abandon ourselves to this dreamy, half-conscious soul state. Our scientific manner of forming concepts requires that we think in a fully conscious way, that in all respects we live in full consciousness in our soul life if we want to attain knowledge. Therefore, to achieve a new philosophy we must develop a way of thinking that takes its course in the etheric organism, but at the same time is as fully conscious as the scientific thinking we utilize in mathematics or natural science. Such fully conscious, pictorial thinking that relates itself to an etheric reality is achieved today in anthroposophical research by means of an inner meditative exercising of the soul. These meditative exercises consist basically in the concentration by the soul on a conceptual content easily visualized at a glance. I shall have to describe details concerning this meditating in the following lectures. You will find it also in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and in my An Outline of Occult Science. Here I shall only mention in principle that it consists in concentrating all the forces of the soul, disregarding everything that makes impressions from outside or from within, so that the soul's forces may rest undisturbed upon an easily surveyable concept. If, with the necessary energy and perseverance, you repeat for months or perhaps for years such a meditative exercise, you arrive one day at the point where you notice that in your soul-spiritual life you are becoming entirely independent of the physical organism so that you can actually come to the realization, “When I think in the physical organism I am making use of it as a tool. To be sure, thinking itself does not run its course in the physical organism, but, because of its finer organization, the latter gives a reflection of the thinking; thereby I become conscious of it. “ Without the physical organism the thinking of ordinary consciousness cannot be carried out; ordinary consciousness, therefore, is bound to the physical organism. Just as we realize clearly that all ordinary thinking takes place only with the help of the physical organism, we also see clearly that in meditation a pictorial thinking activity is brought into play; for by means of meditation, through these ever-recurring periods of the soul's resting on an easily visualized conceptual content, in this inner soul activity we are set free of the physical body. Now, a picture world is experienced that surrounds us, which, in regard to this pictorial quality, resembles the picture world of the ancient thinkers who acquired their philosophy from it. It is experienced, however, with the same clear presence of mind found in any clear concept produced by the observations and experiments of natural science. In this picture world that he has before him, man now gains an overall view of those forces in his own being that have been active since birth as the forces of growth, and that were responsible for the increase in his bodily size. He also gains a view over the forces active in the metabolism, in nutrition, and in the processes of digestion. In other words, he gains in picture form a complete survey of the life forces that permeate him out of the spiritual etheric world, and build up in him a particular etheric organism, bringing about his form and his life. Again, there arises in man, but in full consciousness, what was present in the earliest philosophers in a dream-like condition, from whom later philosophers have simply taken, in a more abstract form, what is now commonly known as philosophy. In other words, he now rises to the level of supersensible knowledge, which may be designated as imaginative knowledge, the knowledge of imagination. In this imaginative knowledge he surveys the forces of his own growth and life. But what one perceives here as the etheric or life organism is not as sharply separated from the outer world as, in sense observation, objective things are separated from what is subjective. In sense perception I know: the object is there, I am here. In etheric imaginative perception one's own etheric organism grows together, so to say, with the etheric cosmos. In like manner, one experiences oneself within one's own etheric organism and in the etheric cosmos. What is thus experienced through the confluence of his own etheric nature with the etheric weaving and pulsing in the cosmos, man is now able to bring into sharply outlined picture concepts, and then also to formulate and to express it in human language. In this way man can acquire a philosophy once again. This philosophy, therefore, can be recovered through the fact that man works himself up to the development of imaginative thinking. But when the imaginative thinker—at the level of exact clairvoyance it may be called imagination—expresses his insights in speech and in thought forms, the matter is formulated in such a way that another person, who cannot perceive imaginatively on his own, can carry over into the full consciousness of ordinary thinking what the philosopher says, and, because it is different, it is also felt and experienced differently. But through the verbal communication and its comprehension, that reality is also experienced in ordinary consciousness. The imaginative thinker can imbue his words with this reality, for he acquires his conceptions out of the real etheric world. Thus, a philosophy can again be achieved that has been won out of the etheric world, out of the human etheric organism and the etheric cosmos. It affects the listener in such a way that in taking it in with his ordinary, healthy understanding he feels: It has been brought out of the super-sensible—first of all from the etheric—reality. So, when imaginative thinking is attained, a true philosophy will be restored to the world whose authenticity is guaranteed. For cosmology, the meditative life must be extended. This can take place, if—with the whole range of its forces—the soul accustom itself not only to dwell on a surveyable concept, or complex of concepts, and to dwell on it over and over again in order to enter into an increased intensive activity—which finally is torn loose from the physical organism and continues in the purely etheric—but the soul must also reach the point of being able to eliminate from its consciousness again those concepts on which it has been dwelling. In the same fully willed manner in which it concentrates totally on certain concepts, holding them in its consciousness, so the soul must be able to eliminate them again and to enter a condition of mere wakefulness and full consciousness, devoid of any soul content derived from the senses or from thinking. The soul must be awake but have within itself nothing of all the contents acquired through ordinary consciousness. When, in full wakefulness, the soul brings about an empty state of consciousness after meditation and attains a certain invigoration with inner strength in maintaining this emptiness of soul while fully awake, then the moment finally comes when a soul-spiritual, cosmic content not previously known flows into this emptiness—a new spiritual world, a spiritual outer world. This, then, is the stage of inspiration, which follows the stage of supersensible perception through imagination. If one has this capacity for receiving a soul-spiritual cosmic content into the emptied consciousness through inspiration, one is also able to take hold of what I called yesterday man's astral organism. It is that part of him that lived in a soul-spiritual world before it descended to earth and clothed itself in a physical and etheric body. Man becomes acquainted with his own soul-spiritual life before the embryonic life, before birth. He learns to know the astral organism that leaves physical man at death and lives on further in the soul-spiritual world. In inspired cognition he thus learns to know the astral organism that in ordinary consciousness lives itself out in thinking, feeling and willing. But at the same time, he learns to know the spiritual cosmos. As man has the physical cosmos before him by means of his senses and his sense-bound thinking, he now confronts the spiritual cosmos; only, what within his physical and etheric organism is the work of this spiritual cosmos is much more real than the sense impressions received in ordinary consciousness. One can indeed say that what flows into man through inspiration, whereby he comes to a soul life independent of his body, can be compared with the breathing in of real oxygen. Among other things, through this inspired knowledge one gains a more exact insight into the nature of the human breathing process, and also into the process of blood circulation, which is rhythmically connected with the process of breathing. Through inspired knowledge, one gains an actual view of all the rhythmical processes in man. One attains a view of how the astral organism works in rhythmical man, and further, how this organism, ensheathed by the physical and etheric organisms, is connected with the breathing, with the whole rhythmic system, inserting itself directly in the rhythm of breathing and blood circulation. Now we are also in a position to comprehend through cognition what is merely hereditary in the physical and etheric organisms and is therefore subject to the laws of heredity that are of the earth, and what man brings with him out of the supersensible, cosmic world, as soul and spirit being. This being enters the earthly world and only clothes itself in the physical and etheric organisms. One can then distinguish between man's inherited characteristics and what he brought with him out of a spiritual world into his physical existence. In what we now perceive through our astral organism and its reflection in the rhythmic human processes, we have something that can now be integrated into the spiritual cosmos surrounding us, made accessible to us through inspiration. We attain a cosmology that can include man. One gains a cosmic picture of how man's astral organism, with the ego—of which I shall speak shortly—enters the physical organism on the waves of breathing and the other rhythmic processes. We see the cosmos in its fundamental, lawful order as it continues into man through his rhythmic processes. We arrive at a cosmology by which the astral organism is understood; likewise, the rhythmic processes in each individual person. Thus, inspired knowledge becomes the source of a genuine, modern cosmology that is on a par with that ancient cosmology, which by man's dream-like forces of soul made him similarly a member of the whole cosmos, of a soul-spiritual, cosmic world. The knowledge gained in inspired perception, however, is gained in full consciousness, and can then be seen in its reflection in the etheric body. It is like this: The experiences of inspiration project themselves in pictures upon the etheric body. The insight thus gained in inspiration in the cosmos connects itself with the experiences of fantasy in the activity of the etheric body. What is inspired out of the cosmos is to a certain degree inwardly in motion and cannot at once be brought into sharp outlines. This only happens when it links itself with the experiences of fantasy in the ether body. Then, cosmology also can be brought into sharp outlines. Thereby arises a cosmic philosophy completely appropriate for modern man; a philosophical cosmology, which in this way is formed through a flowing together of inspired knowledge with the imaginations experienced pictorially in the ether body. It is such a cosmology that I have sought to give in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, translated into French as La Science de l'Occulte. In order to establish the religious life on a basis of knowledge, further development of the meditative life, of soul exercises, is necessary. These exercises must now be extended to the human will. So far, we have chiefly described a form of soul exercises based on a special development of the life of thought. Now the soul's life, insofar as it is revealed in the will, has to be set free from the life of the spiritual researcher's physical and etheric organisms. That happens when the will is employed otherwise than in ordinary consciousness. I will illustrate this method by an example. The events in the outer world are ordinarily observed as following one upon the other: the earlier one first, subsequently the later one—and thus we trace them also in our thinking. Now, however, we must try to place these events in reverse order, putting the last one first, then the immediately preceding one next, and so on back to the first event. In this way, through an exertion of the will in the soul, we accomplish something not achieved in ordinary consciousness. Normally, you follow the course of outer events with the will that lives in thinking. By means of this thinking in reverse order, thinking differently from the actual course of events in nature, you tear the will free from the physical and etheric organisms. The will that otherwise is merely a reflection of the astral organism is thereby bound to this astral organism. Since the latter is lifted out of the physical and etheric organisms through the other meditations, the will is carried along out of the physical organism into the spiritual world outside. In thus taking the will out of your own organism in the astral body, you also take with it, out of the physical and etheric bodies, what is the real spiritual man, the 'I.' Now, it is possible to live with the ego and the astral organism in the spiritual world together with the spiritual beings. As we live by ourselves in our own body in the physical world, we now learn—through such a training of the soul's life—to live together in the outer spiritual world with all the beings who first revealed themselves in imagination and inspiration. In this way we attain the ability to lead a life in the spiritual world independent of our own physical organism. Such exercises can be strengthened still more, so that the will puts forth another kind of effort. The more exertion needed for this development of the will, the better it is for experiencing the spiritual world outside the physical and etheric organisms. Man can change his habits by making the deliberate, conscious resolve, “This or that habit you have had for many years; you will now change it into something else by an energetic use of your will so that in four, five or ten years it is so transformed that in regard to it you will appear like a different person.” They may, for example, be small, insignificant habits, of the kind that persist without being given much attention. If you work at them they are the most effective for the sort of supersensible knowledge I am now characterizing. For example, you have a certain form of handwriting. With all your energy, you apply yourself to changing it into a form different from what you are accustomed to and have developed since childhood. When one devoted oneself for years to such will exercises, the soul finally becomes strong enough to live outside the physical and etheric organisms with the spiritual beings of the outer spiritual world, with human souls either before they are incarnated, or after they go through death and are living in the spiritual world before returning into physical existence and also with those spiritual beings who are only in the spiritual world and dwell there in such a way that, unlike human beings, they never have a physical and etheric body. In this way one arrives at living with one's soul and spirit in that world where the content of religious consciousness is experienced. In full consciousness one enters that world described by the ancient teachers of religion as the divine world; at that time this happened through a more dream-like familiarization with the divine, but now, it is through a fully conscious one, the same fully conscious state of mind as is only developed in mathematics or the exactness of modern natural science. In this way the third level of supersensible knowledge is cultivated, that of true intuition. Through this true intuition by which we learn to live in the divine-spiritual world, we are able to bring back experiences from that world so as to form them into the content of religious consciousness. Once again, we learn to recognize a basic fact of human nature: how man, with his true 'I' and his astral organism, can live in a purely spiritual world. We now gain a view of man's condition in wakefulness and in sleep; we gain insight into how the ego and astral organism envelop themselves during the waking state in what I have described earlier as the processes of breathing and circulation, the rhythmic processes; but how, as the 'I' creates a reflection of itself in the physical organism, the metabolic processes that live in the circulation of the blood are included in this reflected nature. What man in his ordinary consciousness calls his 'I' is merely a weak reflection of his true 'I.' The true ego is rooted in the divine-spiritual world characterized above. In ordinary consciousness this ego is perceived through the permeation of the circulatory system by the metabolic processes. In these latter, pulsating in the circulation, one senses, feels, what in ordinary consciousness is perceived as the ego. But that is only a weak reflection of the true ego. In the waking state the reflection of the ego lives in the metabolism that circulates through the rhythmic system of man. That is to say, the true ego exists, but ordinary consciousness only contains its reflection produced in metabolism. When, however, the human physical and etheric organisms use the processes of breathing and circulation, permeated by metabolism, when they use the forces of this rhythmical man themselves, as is the case in the state of sleep, then the true ego, with the astral body, lives in the outer spiritual world. Breathing and circulation, with the pulsating metabolism contained within, then care for the needs of the physical and etheric organisms on their own; the true ego and the astral organism carry on an existence aside from the physical and etheric bodies in the spiritual world. One beholds these alternating conditions by means of true intuition—how the physical and etheric organisms need the breathing and blood circulation, with the metabolism contained in them, to renew their forces. During this time the true ego and the astral organism stay for a while in the spiritual world, carrying on their own existence. When the forces of the physical and etheric bodies are regenerated through rhythmical man to the extent that further rhythmical regenerative processes are not needed, the astral body and ego return and permeate the metabolic process pulsating through the breathing and blood circulation, and man is then awake again. Thus, one sees how the true ego and astral organisms pulsate in the metabolism. Thus, one learns to know that world designated by the old religions as the divine world in which the ego of man, the true ego, has its innate home. Since what one grasps in this way through intuition is once again reflected in the physical and etheric organisms as in a mirror, one can also express in words, in pictures, in concepts, what one experiences in the purely spiritual world, independent of all human corporeality. This can then be grasped in turn by man's healthy human reason. It can be felt and sensed, it can be experienced in the human heart, and then it forms the content of religious consciousness, which thereby is founded on knowledge. It is not necessary for every person to find his way into the divine world through intuition. That must be done by one who becomes a researcher of the spirit. But when the spiritual researcher puts what he discovers in the spiritual world into words in the manner characterized above, it then takes on such forms that, through what comes to be revealed in this way, one experiences in the ordinary state of consciousness: “Here, words are spoken that do not relate to this world, but with the power of the reality inherent in them they fully come to life in the human soul.” It is through this power that what is drawn from the spiritual world by spiritual research through an intuitive experience of the divine-spiritual world has its religious influence upon our consciousness. If men want to acquire once more through their own efforts a religious life based on knowledge, they must accept what the spiritual researcher is able to reveal as his own experiences in the divine-spiritual world gained through true intuition. The religion will return to what it once was. In its inception, every religion was a revelation from the divine-spiritual world: a revelation of those experiences that can be had with those divine beings that earlier reveal themselves to imaginative and inspired perception, but whom one meets on their own level only through intuition. The kind of thinking that can live in abstractions, that is chiefly employed in scientific research and on which we base our observations and experimentations, has been attained only in the course of human evolution. It did not exist among those people from whom the early philosophers and teachers of religion came—those who founded the old philosophy, cosmology and religious life, of which much has been preserved by way of tradition. In those times, half-conscious dreamily imaginative, inspired and intuitive experiences prevailed. It is from these experiences that men of earlier ages drew their knowledge in every domain of life. Only since the rise of modern natural science do we have what we experience as abstract thinking. One should not believe that only scientists think in this way. Nowadays, it is absorbed through the ordinary schools and by the simplest person living in a rural area far from all urban culture. No trace of the consciousness that is spread through the civilized world today by this abstract thinking existed in any part of humanity even in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. Everywhere there lived what had been attained by means of the other three states of consciousness. But the fully conscious condition, which we must interpret as the true expression of mankind today, could be achieved only by the fact that abstract thinking, now the pride of scientific life, has integrated itself into the human experience. In other words, the form of thinking that utilizes man's physical organism and needs it in order to think as is the case today—such thinking did not exist in ancient times. Then, man thought only with the etheric and astral elements in his nature and with his ego organization. His thoughts were given him by the revelations of imagination, inspiration and intuition. This is still the case today with people who, through some circumstance that we will mention later, possess a kind of clairvoyance. That is not the modern, exact clairvoyance but something inherited from ancient conditions of dreamlike clairvoyance. Such persons are never able to control their soul experiences, but they can have them, as people in earlier times had them. It is often surprising what clear thoughts are given to such people in their dream-like visions; thoughts based on a far more brilliant logic than even a philosopher can produce. Those are just the thoughts revealed out of the spiritual world. In ancient epochs of human evolution, only such thoughts existed, that is, revealed thoughts. Abstract thinking, the only kind known today, is obtained by using the physical body as a tool. It is experienced through the instrument of the physical body. This characterizes what modern humanity has achieved in rising to its full consciousness. In regard to the spiritual world, such thinking achieved through the physical body is actually a displaced thinking. For particularly through what I have just characterized, thinking shows that it belongs to the spiritual world. It is now displaced when man employs his physical organization in his thinking. Thereby, thinking lives in an element that is not its very own. But man, nevertheless achieves something in this thinking that he could never attain if thinking would merely result as a revelation out of imagination, inspiration and intuition. Because thinking is obtained through the physical organism it substantially contains nothing from the spiritual world. It is fundamentally an activity taking place solely in the physical body. In other words, this abstract thinking experiences nothing real; it is as if pressed out, filtered out of imagination. What is experienced is illusion. What we experience in abstract thinking is an illusory experience just because we become fully conscious in this thinking. We can experience two facts in this thinking. First, the illusion in it, which does not itself pretend to express something, becomes a reflection of objective nature. Only thereby has man attained what he is so proud of today, an objective natural science. Outer occurrences in nature could not be objectively presented by a thinking filled with substance of its own. We cannot acknowledge such descriptions of natural processes as were given in olden times as objective natural science. Just because thinking has only a life of semblance, the outer world can reflect itself in this semblance. In a thinking that does not have a substance of its own, the substance of the outer occurrences of nature appears in picture form. So, humanity in its progress is indebted to objective natural science for the fact that it attained full consciousness in an illusory experience of thinking. The epoch in which abstract thinking arose also became the time when objective natural science was attained. A second fact that man owes to this advance into abstract thinking is his experience of freedom. What man experiences as moral impulses through imagination, inspiration and intuition, even when he experiences it in a dream-like manner as in ancient times—when it was always experienced through dreams, instincts and emotions and thus became an impulse to action—this always puts a constraint on man. An instinct underlying an action in man's organism is something that drives him, forces him here and there. What is brought out of the real etheric world in imagination as moral impulses impels me; I cannot do otherwise than follow it. So it is also with what derives from inspiration and intuition. Between birth and death man experiences the illusory life of abstract thinking, of pure thinking that is nothing but thinking, yet is carried out through the physical organism. If man now takes moral impulses into this thinking, they then live in the pure thinking that has only an illusory life and cannot force him to do anything, anymore than a mirrored image can compel one to some action. Something that thrusts at me in reality does coerce me. But something that has a mere semblance of life, as, for example, what we experience in pure thinking, cannot compel a person. I myself must decide whether or not I want to follow it. In this way, through the illusory experience of thinking, the possibility of human freedom is given at the same time. Even though a man's thinking is able to experience nothing but semblance, when moral impulses rooted in the spiritual world enter into it and form its content, then they become free impulses. Man, therefore, owes two things to his advance to illusory experience in thinking: the era of objective natural science, and the attainment of real freedom. Just as I have described the ascent into supersensible worlds in the books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, in An Outline of Occult Science, and in Theosophy, likewise have I sought to present the basis for attaining the consciousness of freedom in the modern age in my Philosophy of Freedom. Thus, we can say that in the epoch in which man has achieved his full consciousness because thinking has streamed down into his physical organism and makes use of it, this thinking has rejected the old dream-like clairvoyance that was once the basis of an old philosophy, an old cosmology and an old religious life. Thereby man has gained the possibility of developing objective natural science in his physical organism between birth and death, and further, the possibility of developing freedom. Today, however, man is at the point where, retaining his full consciousness, he must again travel the road into the supersensible world in fully conscious imagination, inspiration and intuition. He must do this in order to attain—in addition to what he can experience in objective natural science, and in freedom—a new philosophy, a new cosmology, and a new religious life built upon knowledge of the super-sensible world. These, as revelations from the supersensible world, satisfy modern man in the same way that he is satisfied when by means of his wideawake consciousness in the sense world he attains to an objective science, and to freedom. Thus, we have now characterized freedom and objective natural science on the one side, and on the other modern spiritual science, and thereby shown how humanity must go forward from the present into the future, so that through attaining supersensible knowledge it can participate in the true human advancement demanded by the world order. |
| 115. Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit: Imagination — Inspiration — Intuition
15 Dec 1911, Berlin Translated by Samuel P. Lockwood, Loni Lockwood Rudolf Steiner |
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| Walking along the street, you perceive a whole world of things that you do not take into your consciousness. This is shown when you dream of curious things, for there are dreams that are indeed strange in this respect. You dream, for example, that a man is standing by a lady and the lady says this or that. |
| One morning they found that during the night both had had the same dream, which they recounted to each other. (You can find this dream cited by a certain materialistic interpreter of dreams who turns the most grotesque somersaults in attempting to explain it.) |
| This crowing of the rooster had produced the whole dream, but you will admit that it might have produced other dreams just as well. Suppose, for instance, that a thief had been awakened by it. |
| 115. Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit: Imagination — Inspiration — Intuition
15 Dec 1911, Berlin Translated by Samuel P. Lockwood, Loni Lockwood Rudolf Steiner |
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Yesterday we found that in a certain way there is, after all, something like proof of the existence of the spirit that will satisfy our personal consciousness, provided the latter is rightly understood. We maintained that error and the possibility of correcting it are evidence of the existence of the spirit, in so far as our personal consciousness is concerned, and in order to understand this we cited an attribute of the spirit that appears self-evident. That is, its supersensibility, as we call it, for we based our statement on the fact that the root of error must be sought in the super-sensible realm. I said that it would naturally be impossible to present all the arguments necessary to prove such a matter in full detail, but that it might be extremely interesting to show how the possibility of error appears only in that realm to which man raises himself by casting off the coercion of the outer physical world through all that he can learn through perception alone.1 One fact suffices to indicate the method by which it could be shown that at bottom it is only through his own nature and being that man is exposed to the temptation to fall into error through a connection with the outer world. It has been repeatedly pointed out that modern science really gathers from all sides certain proofs of the conclusions arrived at by spiritual science, but the proponents of external science fail to interpret them with sufficient open-mindedness. We will cite one of these facts, established by the naturalist, Huber, through the observation of caterpillars spinning a cocoon. There is a caterpillar that builds its web in successive phases or stages, so that one can describe the process as spinning in the first stage, second stage, and so forth, up to seven. Now, Huber took a caterpillar working on the third stage and set it on another web of which six stages were finished, and a strange thing happened. At first the caterpillar felt shocked, as one might interpret its behavior, but then it continued to spin, not the seventh stage, but the fourth, fifth, etc. It obeyed a sure inner life, following only its own dictates. When Huber took one of the caterpillars away from its own cocoon and put it in another that had also arrived at the third stage, it continued the work in the regular way. It was not reacting to an outer impression at all. It did not say to itself, “Now I must spin the fourth stage.” It was following an inner urge, and this it did even when the outer impression emanated from another stage. This is an extremely important fact, because it shows that in animal beings outer impressions can in no way effect what in man we call right or wrong—the category “subject to error.” The human being can be confused by something external, because the nature of his organization is such as to cause him to obey not only his inner life of impulses, but the impulses entering from without as well. In this sense only man confronts an outer world. Fundamentally, this accounts for all possible illusions in respect to the concept of the spirit; at least, there is a connection. Now, in order to find the right transition from science to our anthroposophical doctrine of the spirit, let us call to mind again what a keen teacher of the present, Brentano, brought forward to characterize the soul and its capacity as such, and to facilitate the right transition to the spirit realm I will indicate by diagrams on the blackboard what is in question. Brentano classifies our psychic faculties as visualizations, reasoning and what we can call emotions—the phenomena of love and hate. Well, if we imagine the whole extent of our soul life as organized in this way, we should have to observe that visualizations and emotions, if closely studied, bear a different relation to the soul and to whatever else may enter our enquiry than do judgments. That is exactly what the soul-teachers, the psychologists, pride themselves on. They divide visualizations from reasoning because in reasoning they see something more than a mere combination of visualizations. Our psychologist by no means sees in this the essence of reasoning, where something is to be settled; nor can all this ever have any foundation as such, because, as he argues, when we combine visualizations it might also be a case of establishing the possibility of combining visualizations. If, for example, we were to combine the visualizations “tree” and “golden”—not “tree” and “green”—we would be forced to admit axiomatically that no tree is golden. Now, what is really the premise of the judgment in this context? It is that we should be able, so to speak, to form a valid proposition out of every such judgment. From the compound visualization, “a tree is green,” I can form the valid proposition, “a green tree is.” Not until then have I passed judgment. Only when I try to form the proposition do I know whether the combination of visualizations permits of establishing anything. “A golden tree is”—that won't do. So when one asks whether a judgment can proceed from a combination of visualizations, this would involve the second question: Can a valid proposition be formed in the case? Now let me ask you this. If you were to traverse the entire extent of the soul life, searching everywhere in the soul, could you anywhere discover the possibility of simply forming a valid proposition out of a combination of visualizations? What can impel you to form the proposition, “a green tree is,” out of the compound visualization, “the tree is green?” What is it that induces you to do this? Only something that is primarily not within your soul, because in the whole realm of the soul you can find nothing of the sort. When you want to make the transition from the compound conception to the proposition, to the thesis that settles something, you must emerge from the soul life and seek something which, as your inner feeling tells you, is not of the nature of the soul but with which the soul makes contact. That means that there is no way of accomplishing the transition except through perception. When a combination of conceptions is joined by what we can call perception, then and only then is it possible to speak of forming a judgment within the present meaning. This shows further that in the first instance we know nothing more of all that we visualize than simply that it lives in the soul, and that something more is needed if we are to pass from conception to reasoning. That emotions exist only in the soul everybody will doubtless believe even more readily than that this is the case with visualizations, for if they had their being anywhere but within the soul they could not bear so individual a character as they do in different people. We need waste no time explaining that emotions live primarily in the soul. We must enquire next if it is in any way possible to maintain that visualizations and emotions live only in the soul. Although we know that without the aid of outer perception we cannot directly arrive at a verdict, because visualizations and emotions are inner processes of the soul, we must still ask whether anything justifies our speaking of visualizations and emotions as though they existed only within the soul. Well, in respect to visualizations we could first point out that when living in them we by no means feel as though we mastered them completely in our soul, as though they were not coercive or the like. We learned yesterday that error is of a spiritual, super-sensible nature and can enter the realm of our visualizations, but that the latter in turn can overcome error; otherwise, it would never be possible to get beyond error. Bearing this in mind we must recognize the fact that we have in our soul a kind of battlefield of a conflict between error and—well, something else. All error is of a spiritual nature, and we must have something adequate to oppose it, otherwise we could never rise above it. There is, indeed, a means of overcoming error, as everyone knows. Since error is spiritual, we cannot overcome it through mere perception from the sense world. In the lectures on Anthroposophy I pointed out that the senses as such do not err. Goethe once emphasized that. It is not the senses that err but what goes on in the soul; therefore, error can only be corrected within the soul, and primarily through visualization. It is by means of visualizations, then, that we get past error. We found yesterday that in a certain way error is a sort of abortive species of something else, of something we could designate as precisely the element in us that raises us to higher regions of the soul life. The chief characteristic of error is its non-agreement with the world of perception, and we came to realize that on the path to the higher world we must devote ourselves in meditation, concentration, and so forth, to conceptions that also fail to agree with our perception. The rose cross itself, for example, is a conception that shares with error its lack of agreement with outer perception. We said, however, that when error is employed on the path of spiritual life it would have a destructive effect in us, and experience shows this to be the case. How, then, can we achieve conceptions that, though at variance with the outer world of perception, nevertheless awaken higher soul forces in a healthy, normal way? How can we proceed from what is merely false to allegorical conceptions such as we have described? We can do this by not letting ourselves be guided by the outer sense world, the world of perception, in compounding such visualizations, nor, on the other hand, by forces that lead us into error. We must avoid both of these and appeal to forces in the soul, which, however, we must first awaken. The day before yesterday we characterized them as inner stirrings growing only out of the soil of morality and beauty. We must break, as it were, with impulses and passions such as are imprinted in us by a world that after all must be termed external; we must work within ourselves in order to be able to call up, quite experimentally, forces in our soul that at the outset we lack entirely. By doing this we learn to form allegorical conceptions that in a sense have a certain objective validity, though one not applicable to the outer world of perception. We start by forming the conception of man as he presents himself to us in the present time, a being of whom, in a certain sense, he himself can by no means approve, with whom he cannot be satisfied, and of whom he must say that such as he is now, he must be conquered. Then, by the side of this conception we place the other: that he feels he must strive to realize his own higher nature, a nature that would give him complete mastery over all that in his present form he disapproves of. That this second conception cannot be classed as perception is shown by the fact that it does not refer to the present or the past, but to man's future. Then, from such stirrings, we combine conceptions that ordinarily, under the guidance of the world of perceptions, would not coincide. We bring together the black cross, symbol of what must be caused to die, and the red roses, symbol of the life that must arise from it. In inner meditation we visualize the rose cross, a visualization that can only be called unreal, yet did not come into being like an external error but was born of the noblest impulses of our soul. We have, then, brought forth out of the noblest impulses of our soul a visualization corresponding to no outer perception and if we apply this visualization—that is, if we give ourselves up to it in conscientious inner devotion and let it work upon us—we find that our soul expands in a healthy way and attains to heights not reached before. Thus, experience shows the soul to be capable of development. By means of a visualization that is outwardly an error we have performed something that manifests itself as intrinsically right. The next question is whether or not we can endow all that crowds into us through outer perception with power over such a visualization that has nothing in common with this outer perception. Can we lend it the power to exercise any force that will make of the visualization something different in our soul from what it makes of error? We must remember that the quality in us that has converted this allegorical visualization into something different from anything that could arise out of error is the opposite of what functions forcefully in error. We said that in error we felt the Luciferic forces; now we can say that in the transformation of an allegorical visualization in the soul, in the wholesome guiding of the allegorical visualization to a higher aspect of the soul, the lofty stirrings we feel are the opposite of Luciferic. They are of the nature of the divine-spiritual. The deeper you penetrate into this interrelationship, the more directly you will feel the inner influence of the super-sensible through this experience of transforming an allegorical visualization. Then, when we see that the super-sensible effects something in us, achieves something, operates in us, then what had previously been mere visualization in the soul, abiding within the soul element, becomes something quite different, something that we must now term a conclusion such as the soul, as primarily constituted, cannot bring about through outer perception. Nor can a visualization perform in the soul what has been described. Just as visualization, when coming in contact with the ordinary outer world, leads to reasoning, so the inner life of a visualization, not lacking direction but amenable to guidance as set forth, leads out beyond the visualization itself and transforms it. It becomes something that may not be a verdict but is at least a visualization fraught with significance and pointing out beyond the soul. This is what in the true sense of the term we call imagination. Summing up: When visualization comes in contact with the outer world through perception, it points to reasoning, but through the inner process we have described it points to what we call inner imagination in the true sense. Just as perception is not mere visualization, so imagination is not visualization either. By means of perception, the life of visualization comes in contact with a primarily unfamiliar outer world. By means of the process described, visualization adapts itself to what we may call the imaginative world. Just as there is a real transition from the mere conceptual complex, “a tree is green,” to the verdict, “a green tree is,” so there is an analogous transition from the mere life of conceptions to what is comprised in imagination, in a conception filled with other than the yield of a spatial outer world. There we have the process that in our imaginative life enriches our conceptions. There is, however, something that intervenes between imagination and visualizations. Imagination has a way of announcing itself quite realistically the moment it appears. When our soul really attains to imagination, it senses in its life of visualizations something akin to what it feels in its life of perceptions. In the latter the soul feels—well, its direct contact with the outer world, with corporeality; in imagination it feels an indirect contact with a world that at first also appears to it as an outer world, but this is the outer world of the spirit. When this spirit begins to live in the visualizations—those that really attain to imagination—it is just as coercive as outer corporeality. Just as little as we can imagine a tree as golden when we are in contact with the outer world—just as the outer world forces us to visualize in a certain way—so we feel the compulsion emanating from the spirit when visualization rises to imagination. In that case, however, we are at the same time aware that this life of visualizations expresses itself independently of all the ways and means by which visualizations are ordinarily given a content. In ordinary life this takes place by reason of our having perceptions through our eyes, ears, etc., and of our nourishing the life of visualizations with these perceptions, so that it is filled from the content of our perceptions. In imagination we suffer our visualizations to be filled by the spirit. Nothing must intervene that might become the content of our soul by way of the bodily organs, nothing that enters us through our eyes or ears. We are directly conscious of being free of all that pertains to outer corporeality. We are as directly free of all that as we are—to use a material comparison—of the processes of the outer body during sleep. For this reason, as far as the total organism is concerned all conditions are the same during imagination as during sleep, except that imaginative consciousness takes the place of the unconsciousness of sleep. What is otherwise wholly empty, what has separated from the body, is filled with what we may call imaginative conceptions. So the only difference between a man in sleep and one in imagination is that the parts that in sleep are outside the physical body are devoid of all conceptions in ordinary sleep, whereas in imagination they are filled with imaginative conceptions. Now, an intermediate condition can appear. It would be induced if a man in sleep were filled with imaginative conceptions but lacked the power to call them to consciousness. Such a condition is possible, as you can gather from ordinary life. I will merely remind you that in ordinary life you perceive any number of things of which you are not aware. Walking along the street, you perceive a whole world of things that you do not take into your consciousness. This is shown when you dream of curious things, for there are dreams that are indeed strange in this respect. You dream, for example, that a man is standing by a lady and the lady says this or that. Well, the dream remains in your consciousness, you remember it, but after you've thought about it you have to admit that the situation actually occurred, only you would have known nothing of it if you hadn't dreamed of the experience. The whole event passed your consciousness by, and not until you dreamed it did the picture enter your consciousness. That happens often. Thus, perceptions that have occurred can leave consciousness untouched, and imaginations that indeed live in the soul can also leave consciousness untouched so that they do not appear directly. In that case they appear to consciousness in a manner similar to that of the perceptions we have just described. They appear to us in semi-consciousness, in dreaming. Imaginations of that sort can shine into our waking day-consciousness and there fluctuate and pass. An imagination of that sort does enter the everyday human consciousness, but there it experiences changes. It expresses itself in what is called ‘imagination,’ ‘imagination’ based on world truths, the real basis of all artistic creation, in fact, of all productive work of man. Because this is so, Goethe, who knew well how art comes into being, often maintained that ‘imagination’ is by no means something that arbitrarily manipulates cosmic laws, but that it is subject to the laws of truth. Now, these laws of truth act absolutely out of the world of imagination, but here they integrate the ordinary world of perceptions in a free manner, so that true ‘imagination’ is something between ordinary conception and imagination. ‘Imagination,’ rightly understood, not conceived of simply as something that isn't true, bears direct witness to the progress of conceptions toward the point where they can flow over into the super-sensible region of the imaginative world. This is one of the points at which we are able to perceive the direct streaming in of what we can call the spiritual world into our ordinary world. Now let us examine the other aspect, the emotions. It has already been said that the psychologist under discussion keeps within the soul, that he therefore follows up all that concerns impulses of will only as far as these remain within the soul, and that he stops short at the emotions. Everything that men do is motivated by a desire, a passion, an urge, that is, that element within the region of the soul that must be called emotion. Of course, nothing happens through emotions alone, and as long as we remain within the soul nothing need happen. No matter how violently we intensify any emotion, we cannot thereby make something happen that is independent of the soul because nothing that remains in the soul is a true expression of will. If the soul never emerged out of itself, but merely kept wanting to experience desires and emotions—anything from the deepest reverence to disgust—nothing would happen that is independent of the soul. When we recognize will in its true form as a fact, the region of emotions points out beyond the soul as well. The manner in which this sphere of emotions points out beyond the soul is singular. What does it suggest first of all? Well, if we take the simplest expression of will—if we raise a hand, walk about, strike the table with some instrument or do anything else that involves the will—we see that something takes place in the realm of reality that we can call a passing over of our emotions by way of an inner impulse to the hand movement, to something that is certainly no longer in our soul. Yet in a certain way it is within us because all that happens as a result of a genuine will impulse when we set our body in motion, and as a continuation of this, something external as well, lies by no means outside the circle comprising the being of man. Here, through emotions, we are led on the other side into an externality, but into a quite different kind of externality, into our own corporeality, which is our own externality. We descend from our psychic to our bodily self, to our own corporeality, but for the moment we do not know how we accomplish this in external life. Imagine the effort it would cost if, instead of moving your hand, you had to construct an apparatus, possibly worked from the outside by springs or the like, that would produce the same effect as you do in picking up this chalk! Imagine that you would have to be able to think out all that and realize it by means of a machine. You can't think that out and there is no such machine; yet that apparatus exists. Something occurs in the world that is certainly not in our consciousness, for if it were we could easily build the apparatus. Something takes place, then, that really pertains to us, but of which we have no immediate knowledge. We must ask what would have to take place to make us aware of a movement of the hand, or of any motion of the body obeying the will? Another reality as well, the one that is outside us, would have to be able to enter our consciousness instead of halting before it. We would need to have before us a process such as takes place in our own body without penetrating consciousness—a process equally external, yet connected with consciousness in such a way that we would be aware of it. We should have to have something that we experienced in the soul, yet it would have to be something like an outer experience in this soul. So something just as ingenious as the picking up of the chalk would have to take place in our consciousness—just as ingenious and just as firmly based on abiding external laws. Some external event would have to enter our consciousness, acting in accord with prevailing laws, that would have the following effect. We would not think, as we would in the case of actions of the will, “I will pick up this chalk,” and consider that as representing one side of our soul life, strictly divided off from something we don't recognize as an external perception but, rather, these two processes would have to coincide, be one and the same. All the details of the hand motions would have to occur within consciousness. Now, that is the process that takes place in the case of intuition. We can put it this way. When we can grasp with our own consciousness something that comes to full expression within this consciousness—not merely as knowledge but as an event, a world event—we are dealing with intuition, or more precisely, with intuition in the higher sense, such as is meant in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Within intuition, then, we are dealing with the governing will. While that shrewd psychologist, Brentano, finds only emotions within the soul, not will, because the will does not exist for ordinary consciousness, it remains for the consciousness that transcends ordinary consciousness to find something that is a higher event. It is the point at which the world enters and plays a part in consciousness. That is, intuition. Here again we have a sort of transition, only it is a little less readily noticeable than the one leading from imagination to ‘imagination’. This transition sets in when we acquire such power of self-observation as to enable us not merely to will something and follow this by the deed, with thoughts and deeds standing dynamically side by side, so to speak, but to start expanding our emotions themselves over the quality of our deeds. In many cases this is even useful, yet it can happen in life that in performing an action we are gratified or disgusted by it. I don't believe an unprejudiced observer of life can deny the possibility of so expanding the emotions as to include likes and dislikes for one's own actions, but this co-experiencing of them in the emotions can be intensified. When this has been intensified to the point of its full potentiality in life, this transition reveals what we can call the human conscience. All stirrings of conscience occur at the transition from the emotions to intuition. If we seek the location of conscience, we find it at this transition. The soul is really open laterally on the side of imagination and on that of intuition, but it is closed on the side where we encounter the impact, as it were, of outer corporeality through perception. It achieves a certain fulfillment in the realm of imagination, and another when it enters the realm of intuition—in the latter case through an event. Now, since imagination and intuition must live in one soul, how can a sort of mediation, a connection of the two, come about in this single soul? In imagination we have primarily a fulfilled image of the spiritual world, in intuition, an event that impinges out of the spiritual world. An event we encounter in the ordinary physical world is something that leaves us no peace, so to speak. We try to understand it, then we seek the essence underlying it. It is the same in the case of an event in the spiritual world that is to penetrate our consciousness. Let us consider this more closely. How does imagination first of all penetrate consciousness? Well, we found it first on the side of the emotions, but there, though it enters consciousness, enters the soul, it does so primarily on the side of the emotions, not on the side of visualization. It is the same in the case of intuition. Intuition can enter the soul life without providing the possibility of being visualized. Imagination, too, can occur without our being aware of it, in which case we have ‘imagination’ directly affecting the world of visualizations. Intuition, however, is to be found on the side of the emotions. You see, in the whole spiritual life of man intuition is linked with the emotions. I will give you an example, a well-known dream. A couple had a son who suddenly became ill and in spite of all that could be done he died within a day. The parents were profoundly affected. The son continually occupied their thoughts, that is, their memory; they thought of him a great deal. One morning they found that during the night both had had the same dream, which they recounted to each other. (You can find this dream cited by a certain materialistic interpreter of dreams who turns the most grotesque somersaults in attempting to explain it.) They dreamt that the son demanded to be exhumed, as he had been buried alive. The parents made all possible efforts to comply with this demand, but as they lived in a country in which exhumation was not permitted after so long a lapse of time, it could not be done. How can we arrive at a sort of explanation of the phenomenon presented in this dream? Well, one premise is obvious. The parents' continuous recollection of the son, who was present in the spiritual world as a spiritual being, created a bridge to him. Let us suppose you admit that a bridge to the deceased was built through memory. You cannot possibly assume that, when all the intervening veils have been pierced, enabling the deceased to influence the two people, and when both have the same dream in which he tells them, “I am buried alive; go and see!”—you cannot assume that he really said that. Instead, there simply came about a contact in the night between parents and son. He did tell them something, or endeavored to instill something into their souls, but since the parents had no way of bringing to consciousness what it was that the son had instilled into their souls, their accustomed conceptions stood in the way of the real events. What the son manifestly wanted was something quite different because such visualizations could only have been gathered from the visualization substance of their accustomed life. The other part I will explain to you by means of another dream, the dream a peasant woman had. This peasant woman dreamt she was going to town, to church. She dreamt vividly of the long walk on the road and through the fields, of arriving in the town, entering the church, and listening to the sermon, which moved her deeply, but it was, above all, the end of the sermon that went to her heart. The pastor spoke there with special warmth, and with the concluding words he spread out his arms. Suddenly his voice was transformed. It began to resemble the crowing of a rooster. Finally it sounded actually like a cock crowing, and the outspread arms seemed to her like wings. At the same moment the woman woke up, and out in the barnyard the rooster crowed. This crowing of the rooster had produced the whole dream, but you will admit that it might have produced other dreams just as well. Suppose, for instance, that a thief had been awakened by it. He might have been wondering how to break a lock, and some other astute rascal had been giving him directions that then turned into the cock-crow. That might have been the conception. You see, it need have no connection with what really entered the soul. The peasant woman was floating, so to speak, in a world of devotion and, when this was shattered, she still had the feeling of being elsewhere, but her entire consciousness was filled by the cock-crow. What manifested itself could therefore only express itself in symbols. When anyone gets practice in passing from such dreams to reality, he finds that before he can arrive at spiritual reality he must penetrate some form of emotion—a sorrow or joy, a tension of this or that feeling. He must form wholly new conceptions if he would arrive at what the spiritual world comprises, and as a rule spiritual events are much closer to the emotions than to conceptions. The conceptual life of dreams is not conclusive in reporting what has happened there. There we have the spiritual event impinging. We are present in the spiritual world throughout our sleeping life, but our visualization is unable to characterize what we visualize. A similar condition prevails between intuition and the emotions. That is why mystics arrive at a vague, hazy soul experience of the higher worlds before attaining to any concretely outlined conceptions of them, and many mystics remain satisfied with that. Those whose souls truly meditate in the higher worlds, however, all describe in the same way the conditions of blissful devotion, their frame of mind in directly experiencing the spiritual world. If we then endeavored to proceed through intuition, which sways the soul, we would not get very far; instead, we must proceed more from the other side, must try to develop imagination, to focus our attention on the imaginative world, in order not merely to wallow in emotions but to arrive at concrete images. If we do that, a sort of contact enters our life between intuition, which is not yet understood but rather felt, and imagination, which still floats in unreality and consists only of images. This contact finally enables us to ascend to the plane we can describe by saying that we have arrived among the beings who bring about spiritual events. Approaching these beings is what we call inspiration, and in a sense we have here the reverse of the processes confronting us in the outer corporeal world. In confronting the outer corporeal world we have, so to speak, the thoughts we frame about objects. The objects are given, and we think about them. Here it is the event, the “object,” that appears in intuition primarily as emotion, so that imagination as such would remain in suspension. Not until the two unite, until intuition streams into imagination and visualizations are set free by imagination so that we feel imagination as coming to us from beings, not until then does the essence of the beings stream into us as an event, and what the imaginations have provided flows into intuition. We perceive in the event a content comparable to that of visualizations. These thoughts, for the perception of which imagination has prepared us, we then perceive by means of the event provided by intuition. I have described to you today how man ascends to the spiritual world on the other side of his soul life, as it were. I have anticipated a little in the matter of what only spiritual science itself can give, but I had to do this in order that tomorrow we might be able to understand each other more readily in the principal subject—a description of the spiritual world itself.
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| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: On the Meaning of Life
26 May 1918, Vienna Rudolf Steiner |
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| The simplest thing that happens in this area for most people is that they dream about people with whom they have been in contact. But these dreams, even if they are partly subjective experiences, can also arise from a real interaction with the dead. |
| So we are together with the so-called dead, but at first we are not aware of this togetherness. But sometimes it does emerge from dreams, and, as I said, these dreams can only be completely subjective experiences, reminiscences. So there are dreams that, by showing us that the dead person is saying this or that to us, bring us into a real interrelationship, into a real communication with the dead. |
| We will then have not a subjective but an objective, real dream. But we must interpret this dream in the right way. People do not interpret it correctly, because this “dream means the echoes of what we ourselves have addressed to the dead; even if it seems to us in the dream image that the dead person is speaking to us, it does not mean that he is speaking to us in the words he is saying to us, but only that he is hearing us, that what we are saying to him is reaching him. |
| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: On the Meaning of Life
26 May 1918, Vienna Rudolf Steiner |
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My dear Theosophical friends! During the years in which this catastrophe that has befallen humanity has called so many of our human brothers to difficult, responsible posts, we have always turned to the protecting spirits of those fighting in the field at our meetings:
My dear friends! We have not seen each other for a long time here in Vienna, but this difficult present, this present, which makes so much of what we now have to remember so necessary, so much of the past gathering of strength for the present and the future, this present necessitates so much. And we have to accept – as so much has to be accepted today – that we will see each other less on the physical plane. On the other hand, however, at such a meeting it will be particularly important to remember those souls who have been holding us together in our spiritual movement for years. One of the main thoughts, one of the main impulses that hold us together, is that through spiritual science we must increasingly come to the conviction that whatever is to help all of humanity, to help it on , must be spiritually motivated. The more we can truly feel, sense, and understand this in our souls, that humanity needs spiritual insights to warm and illuminate our souls, the more we will we will find the opportunity to fruitfully engage with the difficult tasks that are actually posed today to every person who does not dreamily, sleepily pass by the events of the present. And so, after such a long time of not being together, it may be good today, when we tie in with this reflection, to think about ideas that, on the one hand, are connected with the present-day insights that are necessary, but which, despite being necessary, are not present in general humanity, and which, on the other hand, are again suitable to penetrate us soulfully, to strengthen us, to permeate us with strength precisely for the task we have in the present for this present. In particular, my dear friends, if we turn our attention to what we have been doing for years in spiritual science, one main thought, above all, will remain before our soul. The thought is that if we want to gain spiritual-scientific knowledge, we must shape many a concept, many a feeling, and many a volitional impulse differently than we have done so far. We must think differently about many things, and perhaps the time is not far distant when many more people than today will see that something else also teaches us to think differently about time, about human development, and about human tasks. And this other thing is the catastrophe itself that has befallen humanity, the whole of humanity on earth, and the goal of which can hardly be grasped at all by anything other than an understanding of the spiritual path of human development. But let us start with seemingly very distant thoughts. We can ask: Why is it that, as soon as they are present, the majority of people actually show either irony, mockery, annoyance, or some other kind of dislike or opposition to what we call spiritual science? It can be said that this is often because this spiritual science makes demands on people that have to be met, but first a firm decision of the heart must be made. The spiritual world, as everyone says, as we gradually learn to understand it through spiritual science, looks quite different from the world that our senses must actually be the spiritual world. We only learn when real spiritual research brings us close to how fundamentally different the ideas about it are; only then do we learn to understand why people are so dismissive of spiritual science. Let us then start from an obvious thought, or I could just as easily say: from a remote thought, to show you why humanity has so much to say against spiritual science. To help us understand this idea, let us first take those spiritual beings that are closest to most people, towards which most people long most intensely, let us take the human souls that have passed through the gate of death itself. The one who enters the spiritual world with clear vision gradually comes to an understanding, although this understanding is one of the most difficult in the realm of spiritual vision. There is also a certain correlation that draws him to the so-called deceased human souls. But it is precisely then that it becomes apparent that when one enters into this spiritual communication with the departed human souls, one must become accustomed to different concepts than those to which one is accustomed from the sense world. When we stand here in the sense world and speak to another person, it is the case that when we say something to him, we know that what we speak to him as sound comes from our own soul. We hear ourselves speak; and when he answers us, we hear him speak. We know that what he has to communicate to us is coming from him to us. We become accustomed to such communication with the outside world as a matter of course, and therefore it can only seem quite strange, quite paradoxical to us when the spiritual researcher claims the absolute opposite about communication with the dead. When he has to say that he has struggled to make contact with the deceased, when he can tie the karmic threads that connect people even beyond death, then one has to get used to perceiving what the dead person has to communicate as coming from one's own soul. What comes from the dead person resounds from one's own soul, and what we have to communicate to him, what we have to say to him, is clothed so that it is as if we heard it spoken to us by him. So you have to completely change your habits when you are confronted with a spiritual being, when you compare the external experience you have with it to the experiences of the sensory world, when someone who has become a spirit speaks to us in that wordless language that is spoken on the spiritual plane, that when he communicates or seems to communicate something to us, then we have to say to ourselves: that is what you yourself say to him. On the other hand, when he really communicates something to us, when something really comes from him, then it rises up from the depths of our own soul. It is easy to say such things, but to develop this habit of our soul life, to truly change our habits, that is somewhat more difficult. Now you will understand that it is not easy for a person to cross this bridge to a completely different kind of experience, to a completely different way of experiencing. [You will understand] that he instinctively, unconsciously, withholds his soul life, which, if he did not withhold it, would lead to communication with the so-called dead. But then one would have to communicate in the way I told you. On the other hand, it cannot be said that people who live here on earth in the physical body do not do so; they actually do it all the time, only they misunderstand the whole nature of this communication. The simplest thing that happens in this area for most people is that they dream about people with whom they have been in contact. But these dreams, even if they are partly subjective experiences, can also arise from a real interaction with the dead. If one really wants to establish a right relationship with the spiritual world, then it is necessary to see two experiences in the right light. Two experiences that man actually pays no attention to in ordinary life. And these two experiences are falling asleep and waking up. The other two states of the four states of consciousness, sleeping and waking, last, and man is generally inclined to follow attentively what lasts a long time, but what passes quickly, like waking and falling asleep, man is not accustomed to follow with the same attention. And in the times when we are awake, we do experience important things for our physical life, but in the time of actual sleep, we experience, with the exception of dreaming, which we find very difficult to interpret, not much consciousness. On the other hand, we actually experience a lot in the moments of falling asleep and waking up, but we do not pay attention to it because at the moment we wake up and fall asleep, we are at our most inattentive. The moment of waking up and falling asleep has already passed by the time we want to look at it and take notice of it; that is why we are so unaware of how infinitely important and significant these two points of falling asleep and waking up are. We know from spiritual science, at least in theory, what falling asleep is: a stepping out of the physical body. In the present state of development of humanity, we are too weak to be conscious in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and so it happens that when we fall asleep, we pass from our conscious state to the unconscious one; we do not develop enough attention to observe the falling asleep itself; and it is the same when we wake up from the spiritual world. The physical world with its impressions of light, colors and sounds overwhelms us immediately, physical sensations overwhelm us immediately as well, and we do not have time to grasp the moment of waking up in a spiritual way; our attention cannot develop that fast, and when it does develop, we are already overwhelmed by the external influences, then our consciousness is no longer attuned to grasp the more subtle things. The spiritual researcher must learn to develop attention for these two moments, for falling asleep and waking up. Now, for us, falling asleep is a stepping into the spiritual world. By stepping into the spiritual world, we are in the realm of existence where the so-called dead are. We are with the dead. In the world in which we then are, they live and weave. But as I said, our consciousness is too weak in the present cycle of humanity to perceive our surroundings in this state. But just because we do not perceive something, it does not mean that it is not there! It is all around us, we just cannot perceive it. So we are together with the so-called dead, but at first we are not aware of this togetherness. But sometimes it does emerge from dreams, and, as I said, these dreams can only be completely subjective experiences, reminiscences. So there are dreams that, by showing us that the dead person is saying this or that to us, bring us into a real interrelationship, into a real communication with the dead. But as a rule one interprets the communication wrongly. One has the image of the dead person before one, the dead person says this to one, one takes this for an order. It is not that. Perhaps we have thought and felt about the dead, and if we are in spiritual science, we also know that we can become more and more aware of these thoughts about the dead. We can almost reshape our thoughts about the dead in such a way that they offer a certain guarantee of the reality of our contact. We can vividly remember this or that occasion when we were together, but we do not think in general, abstract terms in such a case; rather, we think of something that we really experienced with him, we think of it with the vividness with which we experienced it, and then we make the decision to to behave in our thoughts with the dead person as we would like to behave with him if he were standing in front of us. When we do this, we address a question to him, or we communicate something to him that we believe he or we might need to tell him. What we do consciously and more and more consciously – but in a sense it is what I say, what we want to send into it during our waking life – we take that into our sleep consciousness. We will then have not a subjective but an objective, real dream. But we must interpret this dream in the right way. People do not interpret it correctly, because this “dream means the echoes of what we ourselves have addressed to the dead; even if it seems to us in the dream image that the dead person is speaking to us, it does not mean that he is speaking to us in the words he is saying to us, but only that he is hearing us, that what we are saying to him is reaching him. There you have a living application of what I have told you. I said that when we turn to the dead, we have to get used to the fact that it seems as if it comes from him. This also occurs in dreams. The dream seems as if it brings us something from the dead. But in reality it is only proof that it has been transformed in a certain way, that it has reached him; he has heard us. When we dream of the dead, that is no more than proof that they hear us, that what we have sent to them in loyal love really reaches them. These facts of spiritual life are often misinterpreted. When someone dreams of the dead, they believe that what the dead person tells them is directed to them. But this is only proof that what they have said to the dead has been understood by the dead. I have to say to myself: Yes, I really spoke to the dead, since he tells me so in my dream. This is proof that what I said to him has reached him. For it is only the reflection of what has reached him from me. Through the moment of falling asleep, we carry into the spiritual world what we say to the dead. By waking up, we carry into the physical world, conversely, what the dead person says to us. And what the dead person speaks to us must resound from the depths of our soul in the state between waking up and falling asleep in the everyday state of consciousness. As in the “dream, what we speak to the dead lingers, so what the dead speak to us lingers in the waking state. But here again, people are unaccustomed to interpreting it correctly – unaccustomed for a different reason than we stated in the previous case. People, as they are predisposed for physical life, are, firstly, not very inclined to really listen to the inspirations that come from the depths of the soul. Most people, who do not consider anything that arises from the depths of the soul to be anything other than subjective ideas, think: Yes, that just occurred to us, it comes from ourselves. But one must learn to distinguish, just as there are dreams that are subjective and others that are objectively true, there are so-called ideas that are purely subjective and others that are inspirations from the depths of our soul. We must learn – and we can learn – to listen attentively to our waking daily life, so that we become aware of how thoughts penetrate from the depths of our soul, and even when we are in conversation with others, how this or that thought, which we are not inclined to pay attention to, emerges from the depths of our soul, and then we will recognize the objective character of these inspirations, which softly sound in the midst of our daily life from the soul. Then we will experience that in such inspirations the dear, so-called dead speak to us from their realm. For what the dead person tells us must come from within ourselves. For the spiritual researcher, it is the case that he directly experiences what he has told you: What the dead person says comes from the soul, and he has to reorganize himself. For those who have not acquired this state of mind, it takes place in such a way that what we experience in our thoughts when we address a message and question to a dead person in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and what the dead person tells us, sounds from the depths of the soul. Human life is much more connected with the spiritual world than we usually believe. Today, we have not only become [materialistic] in our views, we have also become vain and proud, dismissive of the spiritual world, presuming to say that everything that resonates within us is our own inspiration. Materialism also makes the human soul selfish and vain, leading to a certain conceit, in which we ascribe everything to ourselves. What we consider our own ideas are actually the thoughts of those who have already passed through the gate of death, who, by addressing our souls, are working together with us in this shared human life. It is not enough for us to develop the thought: We will not perish when we die. It is certainly true, but it has something selfish about it. Rather, it is more important to grasp it practically, vigorously for life, to grasp it in such a way that we know: Not only our life does not perish, but the dead do not perish for life either. They influence our soul, and we will only understand our dreams correctly if we see them as inspired by the realm of the dead. This is the first thought from which I started today. It should show you that the real contemplation of the spiritual world makes demands on people, in the face of which people see, consciously see: after all, all this contradicts the world in which I have become accustomed. Man does not say to himself in his conscious mind: I do not enter the spiritual world because those who fantasize about the spiritual world describe it to me in such a way that it contradicts the physical world. But instinctively man would rather say: There are limits to human knowledge, one cannot enter it - than to admit to himself: I must grasp the strong, courageous thought [and imagine] the spiritual world quite differently. If this healthy courage to think about the spiritual world replaces much of the morbid thinking that still prevails today, our earthly life can be fertilized by spiritual thoughts in a completely different way than it is fertilized when these spiritual thoughts are merely conceived in the abstract. Let us now take up another thought. The thought that is linked to a question: What does an understanding of the spiritual world offer people with regard to ordinary physical life on earth? There, you see, we can already penetrate a little more into the practice of contemporary life. For how could one not admit to oneself that - after humanity was so proud of its great cultural and human progress until 1914 - that what has been happening since 1914 could befall it? How could one not admit to oneself that this must pose a difficult question? And how can we not admit to ourselves in the face of this question that perhaps something in the overall state of humanity was not quite right after all? Of course this is not meant as a criticism. But we can understand this life. So when I say that something must have been wrong, I do not want to say that I condemn what happened. For spiritual science has nothing at all to do with such thoughts about the past. These are critical thoughts from which one learns and should learn. When I say that something is not right, I mean that it could not have been otherwise in the development that has now passed, but on the other hand, the human being must pull himself together, then many things will be different. Criticism is unfruitful. Only recognition of what should be from what was is fruitful. In humanity, from old states of consciousness, it has now become so that since the middle of the fifteenth century, mainly with regard to the consciousness soul, that on the one hand man - although he does not believe it - that man preferably hangs on to abstract concepts; and [although] precisely those who believe they are very practical. So people are theorists, often completely steeped and infected by all kinds of theories. But theories are quite barren. Theories only have value when what they contain bubbles up directly, welling up from living together with the spiritual world. But in his present cycle of development, this is precisely how the human being acts. On the other hand, there is justification: the consciousness soul must be developed. But on the other hand, countervailing forces must be developed so that it does not become one-sided. The sensing, feeling, and willing that one develops primarily through the consciousness soul is tied to the human brain. One should not ignore the fact that today man develops a consciousness that is tied to the brain. And so he believes that all consciousness is bound only to the brain. But this has a very specific consequence for the coexistence of people and for practical life, that man preferably develops a thinking that is bound to the brain. This forces him to develop thoughts that come from his interaction of the ordinary brain with the external, sensual world. He cannot free himself from what the brain can experience. The consequence of this is that a general cultural trait takes hold in the human soul. This is narrow-mindedness, narrow-mindedness. This is not to be criticized. On the other hand, I would like to point out that it is necessary. But it is the case that present-day humanity is most inclined to hold only to that which arises in the brain with the outside world; only when we reach out to the spiritual world do we expand it. This is something that today's development of humanity brings with it. Spiritual science is called upon to counteract the narrow-mindedness in the intellectual field. It has this cultural task of broadening the horizon again, of raising the horizon. Yes, my dear friends, the matter at hand is much more serious than one might think. I think most of you have known me too long to know that I don't say this or that out of some personal sympathy or antipathy. When I observe how one of the most outstanding character traits is narrow-mindedness, I must at the same time see it in important things that go beyond the world. I may mention it, one must always remind, I may mention it because I am not saying it only now, but because I have said what I am saying before this catastrophic event befell our humanity. [In Helsingfors, that is, at a time before the war began, I have already pointed out] the fact that at such an outstanding position there is a person like Wilson, who today is associated with many catastrophic events that have befallen humanity. At the time, I drew attention to the most salient trait of Wilson's character, to the narrow-mindedness and bigotry that is encroaching on the social structure of humanity. But what [humanity] does depends on what people think. That thoughts are realities and that realities flow out of thoughts is something that humanity must come to understand: to understand life precisely on the basis of genuine spiritual science, to come to an understanding of the spiritual world from an understanding of what underlies life. We must not only recognize that spiritual science can give us those experiences that can make us whole in our entire soul life, because they prove to us that we belong to a spiritual world, but also the thought: When what lies in the spiritual world flows into our moral and social will, then thinking does not remain limited and expands. Then it will also get better, otherwise not. If only we could grasp this thought in all its depth! Then we would become aware of much of what is going on in the present. With regard to our feeling, with regard to our thinking, the present age makes us limited. With regard to our feeling: what does it do to us? That which arises from the consciousness soul. Feeling is that these abstract thoughts, which are at the same time the most materialistic thoughts, that these actually no longer grasp our feeling and sensing in reality. How often do we hear people say: Oh, it's just a thought, you have to feel! That is as true as it is false. You cannot have a truly fruitful influence on life, you cannot truly lead life fruitfully if you do not want to think, but instead you let everything be absorbed into the mush of feeling. You turn life into a mess. What matters is to bring the light of thought into feeling and to elevate feeling. Thinking feeling, feeling thinking, that is what is needed. What the consciousness soul wreaks, because the abstract brain cannot grasp our /gap in transcript] Therefore, the spiritual state of present-day people in relation to feeling, the present spiritual state will tend more and more towards narrow-mindedness the more materialistic it becomes. Narrow-minded, philistine – that is what the spiritual state is currently leaning towards. If the light of thought, the realm of light of thought, does not penetrate feeling, it makes people narrow-minded, their interests are limited to the very immediate. Thoughts must be wide-ranging, but they can only do that if we carry the sense that the world that surrounds us sensually is something quite different [from what] expresses itself spiritually, that the dead express themselves; [then our interests, then spiritual science - just as narrow-mindedness and limitation in the field of the intellect - will have to work against narrow-mindedness in the field of feeling. It needs a view of a social structure that is imbued with broad interests, namely, interests that will arise in us when we look at the wonderful, mysterious human being himself. For today's anatomist and philosopher, this human being is only a kind of physical organism, not mysterious and wonderful enough. Such ideas must kill our ethics in particular, but also our social conception of life. We must be clear that the spiritual is reality, that thoughts are what the reality of life flows from. In theory, most people agree with what I am saying on this point. In terms of their life practice, however, they do not agree. They act contrary to it. From what people say, we can see which thoughts are unfruitful for life due to the narrow-mindedness of their emotional life. My dear friends! To have thoughts in such a way that the thought stands vividly before us, as something we see directly, that is something that people have gradually lost in the materialistic age. In the 1980s, I attended a lecture by a professor who was extraordinarily impressive for people at the time. He kept asking the question, “What should one ask?” [gap in the transcript] And finally he said: I think I have led you into a forest of question marks. Who not only expresses the thought in the abstract, but develops views on these thoughts: It is neither beautiful nor meaningful, [so] a forest of question marks. Who is not satisfied with expressing thoughts – thoughts must be immersed in reality – does not speak of the truth. A statesman has expressed a remarkable thought. He says: Our relationship with Austria is the point that indicates the direction of our future policy. Anyone who is out of touch with reality must say to themselves: A relationship is a point and a point is a direction. Those who think like this are not rooted in reality with their thoughts. He separates thought from feeling. But realities can only be real thoughts. He who works with such thoughts can accomplish nothing healing. He who has a feeling for such things can hear a great deal of this kind today. Recently, for example, someone said in regard to the peace treaty with Romania: [gap in the transcript] that Romania is putting itself on an open, honest footing with us. We would like it not to be on just an “open” foot, but to be on a foot at all. In the future, the Romanians should have an “open” foot in order to enter into a proper relationship with us. Is such a thought present in reality as a thought? It is not! Speech is used because the brain is in motion. But something beneficial for humanity can only arise for the social structure when it flows from the real. It is precisely for this reason that one must respect reality and also the spiritual life. Mere criticism does not make it. You can study the life of humanity today. It would certainly be necessary to study the life of humanity in order to develop thoughts that are in line with reality. And one should not study it in such a way that every thought becomes a matter of sympathy or antipathy, of praise or blame. You know from my lecture cycle 191[0] in Kristiania, also with regard to the present time, that I have ascribed to the British nation that it is preferably called upon to develop the consciousness soul. On the one hand narrow-mindedness, on the other hand small-mindedness. It does not apply to the individual Englishman, but to the whole English national soul. One has only to study the language. We must really, I might say, for the sake of the spirit, hold on to the idea that language is inwardly effective; it forms feelings that are effective in language. The British language simply drops whole broad sections of the word into nothingness; it is the most abstract language. That is it, my dear friends. What matters in the present is not to create theoretical concepts, but to draw these concepts from the depths of the soul. We need such concepts. You can be a traveler, a scientist, a political scientist, you can travel to entire countries, but if you have no sense of what lives inside people, the descriptions for practical life will not be of much use. People in the materialistic age have said many a witty and apt thing about the various European and non-European national souls. When it comes to expressing the true essence of the national soul, they fail. If one wants to be effective in practical life, because people are so reluctant to get to know each other in terms of their soul qualities, they are bound to end up in a catastrophe that is only the result of incorrect thoughts. There are two aspects to the human soul: materialism strives towards one, and spiritual science must counteract the other. The area of will: thoughts that do not want to unite with our will, they do not attack it, they do not intervene in the whole person, they arise from the brain. The result of this is that in our lives, materialistic thoughts make people clumsy, narrow-minded, philistine. This must necessarily result. Those who observe life notice the clumsiness. What can a person do today? What he has been taught and learned with difficulty. Today you can be an excellent professor of Chinese, you can be an excellent civil servant, carpenter, and yet it can happen that you cannot sew on a trouser button, but that someone else has to sew it on for you. We are highly inept at everything we have not learned, because what we absorb in our education in feeling and thinking is suited to our body and blood and muscles. The spirit, when it takes effect on a person and has a living effect, takes hold of the whole person, makes him skillful out of the spirit. [This is] a test for the reality [of spiritual science] that it forms people out of us who are more and more able to cope with life, that what it lets flow in out of the spirit, [people] can also carry into life. But that is what triggers another thought. What we need, out of an understanding of the spiritual world, is to come to life at all. Let us take a truth of spiritual science: I will list it briefly today. Today I want to elaborate on the idea that When a person passes through the portal of death, he should immerse the first third between death and rebirth mainly in the imaginative, the second third between death and rebirth mainly in the inspirational, and the third third between death and rebirth mainly in the intuitive; in the last third of our life between death and rebirth – the Viennese cycle – the person immerses himself in the life he has to live here on earth. In the continuation of this, we would have to lead an imitative life between birth and the seventh year, an immersion in childlikeness. Thus, in the imitative immersion of the child, in every action, is the continuation of the life of the last third between death and new birth. We just have to grasp life in the right way. We see the human being growing into life and we can tell from his faculty of perception that he is continuing a spiritual life in the physical one, that he is continuing an imitation of the intuition from the last third. We see the human being growing into life. — What a thought! Imagine, my dear friends, if it becomes socially fruitful for the human being to be together: this is the continuation of spiritual life, we see it in him! Life is the proof of the immortality of man. As it is, it is the continuation. To grasp the thought of immortality, the departure from the spiritual world through birth into physical life on earth! Imagine what that must be like for life! Imagine this thought! That is also why we recognize the value of thoughts. Imagine this even more in a concrete sense. Imagine: I look at this body, which comes from spiritual life, then you will believe in the whole of human life. Do we believe in the whole of human life today? No, we do not believe in the whole of human life, we only believe up to the age of 25 or 26 at the most. Most young people no longer believe that we can be educated, that life gives us something new. We still believe that we can acquire something new well into our 20s, but after that we only believe that life goes on. That what is brought in through birth is to be developed through the whole of life must, may not be a theoretical truth, it must become a concrete truth of life. Ask how many people there are today who, when they turn 30, say: When I turn 40, life will have revealed more to me. I am waiting for what life will bring me. I have not lived in vain. I live in anticipation of life, waiting for each year to reveal new secrets. Do we believe in life like that? No, we don't expect anything more when we turn 27. Today, when we turn 20, we consider ourselves mature enough to make decisions about the whole of human life, if we are not [even] elected to parliament, where we already decide everything. [Gap in the transcript] Greeks atavistically. We will once again look into the developing, the expectant. We should not express such a thought, nor think it, we should feel it through and through. Imagine what would have to be different in social life if people faced each other like this. Today, one person may be 60 years old and another 17. The 17-year-old has his point of view. Today everyone has their point of view. Life experiences develop and become ever richer. How different our interactions will be if we lead a life of hope and expectation. And every new year brings me something new, and when I am ten years older, I will be completely different. [A] different view of life then arises from the view of the world, that we grasp the concrete thought of reality from the meaning of the world and the meaning of human life, that the whole of human life, the whole of the human being has a meaning [gap in the transcript] Historical science must change completely! Today, anyone who looks at the life of humanity at most says to themselves: the life of humanity is developing, and the individual human being is also developing. That is only an external comparison. Spiritual observation yields something quite different. Humanity is becoming ever younger. People who are capable of development through their natural powers alone – if I may put it this way – in body and soul until their 50s [Unclear transcript; gap in transcript]. The ancient Persians 40 years to 30 years. Today, the human being remains [only] capable of development for 27 years. Today, people believe only in youth, not in the whole of humanity. It is an important truth that man can experience through his natural powers, without intervention, [that he] can actually only develop for 27 years. He does not become more perfect through the outer world. If we ask the question: Who is a particularly characteristic person for the present day? - A person who grew up without the advantages that one has through the past, without inheritance; [a person] who did not go to many high schools, but is open and receptive to everything in his environment, who had to grow into and only take in what today's world offers into his education. A self-made man. [He] absorbs his environment in an elementary way. Up to the age of 27 – then he enters public life, gets himself elected to parliament, becomes a minister. Now he is engaged, he has no need to develop further. A person born of poor parents, growing up wild, but receptive to his environment /gap in the transcript]: Lloyd George. — Ministry wonders what to do with the man – just take him on. What do you give him? What he understands least: transportation. |