111. Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy: The Place of Purification and Devachan
23 Sep 1907, Hanover |
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The physical-sensual life is a necessary point of transition in our development and should not be confused with a sensualistic asceticism. We only have to give up the pleasures that the ego wants for its own sake. It is necessary to enjoy food. What is to be frowned upon is the desire for pleasure for the sake of pleasure, which plunges the human being deeper into the material world. |
111. Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy: The Place of Purification and Devachan
23 Sep 1907, Hanover |
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When a person has laid aside his body, a time of purification begins for him on the astral plane. The desires, cravings and passions follow him, but he lacks the tools - tongue, palate and so on - to satisfy them. This state can be compared [with] the increase of burning thirst until [the person] gets out of the habit of satisfying his desires. Man must seek the spiritual during his lifetime [-, that,] which shines through the sensual pleasures. On the other hand, it is wrong to despise the physical life. It has its great task in the sensual world. Without senses, we could not experience the beauty of nature, the processes of life, the relationships of love and friendship that flow from person to person, which spirits could not do without. The physical-sensual life is a necessary point of transition in our development and should not be confused with a sensualistic asceticism. We only have to give up the pleasures that the ego wants for its own sake. It is necessary to enjoy food. What is to be frowned upon is the desire for pleasure for the sake of pleasure, which plunges the human being deeper into the material world. The stay in Kamaloka lasts on average a third of the lifetime, counting backwards from death to birth, so three times as fast as in the physical life. At this level, we see everything as in a mirror image. The sight is confusing because, for example, numbers appear upside down. Indeed, the chicken eventually disappears into the egg. Human passions are reflected there as animal images, all selfish urges as monsters or snakes. There are enough people in physical life who can see such animal images because the spiritual life is seeking a way out due to the prevalence of materialism. To reach devachan, a person must truly become like a child and discard everything that is selfish. This is the reason for the words of Jesus Christ: “Unless you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” All the religious scriptures gradually reveal their true meaning to us in a theosophical way. Kamaloka is the place of effects. Man is exposed to all that to which he gave rise. If, in the course of time, he has given another a blow and he returns to that time, he feels the pain of the other, he crawls into his soul, as it were. He must experience the consequences of exaggerating selfishness as well as his good deeds. The spiritual world is a permeable sphere and is not limited to three dimensions, but to four and more. The laws of this space require that two or a thousand things, which do not need to be spatially together, for example, are located on another continent, find themselves united here as mirror images through the wishful thinking. When the soul sheds the etheric body, it has the sensation of expansion into the immeasurable. The repercussions of all events in the place of purification remain as a mark, as a feeling that desires and so on are obstacles to development. The essence in the etheric body, the desire to balance everything, goes as an overall desire on the further pilgrimage. Just as there is land, sea, air and fire in the physical world, so it is in the world that man reaches after his time of purification. In Devachan, physical things appear in a spiritual way as a foundation, as land. Just as one walks on rocks here, one walks on archetypes there. Let us think of a rock crystal; in Devachan it appears as a black cavity, with glowing masses around it. The flowing light is the blood in the spiritual. In the case of plants, one will see their etheric body in the hollow space. The radiations around a red rose blossom, for example, would be yellowish, those of the stem would be peach-red. Light radiates around the objects, and inside is the etheric body; in the case of animals, the astral body is also present. The blood vessel system and the like can be clearly recognized. As rocks are on earth, so are the beings who are here in the physical body in Devachan as archetypes; they are there the skeleton. As the sea and rivers, like human blood, the flowing, flooding life appears, which on earth is distributed into individual organisms. What feels on the earthly world appears there as clouds and lightning; a battle as a thunderstorm, when passions clash on earth. All emotional upheavals, joy and pain appear as wonderful atmospheric effects. An all-pervading warmth can be perceived. Warmth is not just a state, but a force. There are four states to be distinguished:
In the air circle of Devachan, the harmony of the spheres can be heard; pleasure and pain become sounds. The fire region becomes sound that expresses the inner meaning. Everything has a name. There is a true name for every thing. In this region, the essence of a being resounds; they express themselves. Here at the fire region of the word is an important boundary. Those who are clairvoyant or in a post-mortem state can see the Akasha Chronicle shining from higher regions. A record remains of everything that happens. The power of the spiritual remains in the spiritual, this is almost indestructible. The Akasha image remains; the mortal, the related matter disappears. To interpret the images correctly, a strong sense of orientation is needed. An example: let us think of Goethe at the end of the eighteenth century and look at the relevant image in the Akasha Chronicle. We want an explanation about Faust. The image can provide an answer in terms of the spirit that Goethe had at the time. The images have an inner life without being the subject. Just as the stars shine through, so does the Budhi plane shine through the astral plane. Here man has shed his astral corpse and has a significant experience. He sees his physical body and has the feeling: “That's you!” the core of Indian Vedanta philosophy. |
62. Jacob Boehme
09 Jan 1913, Berlin Tr. Margaret W Barneston Rudolf Steiner |
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Regarding it, he said that he did not write it down through his ordinary ego, but that it was given to him word for word; that, in comparison with his ordinary ego, he lived in a being which was encompassing, which reached into all parts of the world and immersed itself in this world. |
And he feels that, in his striving, he is driven to something which is not the ordinary cognizing human ego, but which is connected with the forces that bind the human being—out of the subconscious in his soul, out of the depths of his soul—to the whole cosmos; that is, to what lives and weaves outside in nature. |
The whole content of consciousness rests on the fact that we can remember past experience, and our consciousness does not extend back beyond that point of time to which we can remember. We began then to grasp ourselves as an “ego,” to have the coherent thread of our consciousness, to be at home in our soul life. Upon what, therefore, does the whole nature of consciousness depend? |
62. Jacob Boehme
09 Jan 1913, Berlin Tr. Margaret W Barneston Rudolf Steiner |
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AT the point of time in modern spiritual evolution when we see the dawn of the new world-conception breaking forth, at that time in which we must record the great achievements of Kepler and Galileo, in which Giordano Bruno, in a certain measure, outlines the great problem of a modern world-conception,—at this moment we meet the solitary thinker to whom the present reflections shall be dedicated, the simple shoemaker of Goerlitz, Jacob Boehme. He struggled with the highest problems of existence in a way which can occupy our thinking and feeling to this day in the deepest manner, and will probably occupy the thinking and feeling of human beings for a long time to come. A peculiar figure this Jacob Boehme, a figure who strove and struggled in solitude, whereas elsewhere in the spiritual life the single currents united to form a great comprehensive tableau. And in a certain sense one might say that the solitary striving of Jacob Boehme appears almost as interesting, from a certain standpoint, as the flowing together of the different points of view which meet us elsewhere in that epoch. And then we see how, very strangely, what Jacob Boehme found in his own solitary mind, even in his century, received the greatest imaginable dissemination—the greatest imaginable dissemination we may say, considering the fact that we are dealing with a deeply significant spiritual matter. Precisely through the manifestations of his adversaries we see how far his influence extended after only a few decades had passed since his death. Again and again, Jacob Boehme was the object of appreciative and admiring, or rejecting and ridiculing, contemplation. And when we observe what came into being as his following, or as his opposition, we have the impression that both the adherents and the attackers knew they were dealing with a very strange phenomenon. This phenomenon is strange, especially to those who wish to understand every personality that appears in the spiritual life of humanity on the basis of the immediate conditions, so to speak, of the age and the surroundings. We see, for instance, how people try to understand Goethe by collecting all sorts of details of his life, even the most unimportant, and believe that by assembling these details they can acquire this or that to explain his corresponding spiritual life. It is not possible in this manner really to acquire much for the understanding of Jacob Boehme. External influences are difficult to verify through external science, and it is still harder to understand how Jacob Boehme grew out of that which constituted the spiritual life of his time. Many, therefore, have professed the opinion that in Jacob Boehme we have to do with a kind of spiritual meteor. All that arose there, all that this personality had to give, appears as if it had suddenly sprung up, revealing itself out of the depths of his strange soul. Others then have tried to explain that many a turn of expression, many a way of presenting his ideas, shows similarity in words and turns of expression to the formulae of the alchemists, or to some philosophical or other tendencies that were still alive in his time. But whoever enters more deeply into the whole mentality of Jacob Boehme will find that such a procedure has hardly more value than if one were to examine the “language” in connection with an eminent personality, who, after all, must always express himself in a language. For when Jacob Boehme makes use of alchemistic formulae, or such things, it is only verbal clothing. That which makes such an exceedingly powerful impression, however, on one who seeks to understand him presents itself with an originality such as is found only in the very greatest minds. In contrast to this, there are a few clues which are not quite compatible with modern thinking—with the modern world-conception—but which, for the person who is capable of entering into such things, throw light on how Jacob Boehme was able to soar up to his high spiritual standpoint. In order to connect our reflections with his life, to the extent that it has a bearing here, we need mention only a few biographical facts. Jacob Boehme was the son of very poor parents and came from Alt-Seidenberg in the vicinity of Goerlitz. He was born in 1575. In his youth he had to tend the cattle with other village boys. As is apparent from this, he grew up in complete poverty, and since a person growing up in this way does not have any particular means of education, we shall find it understandable that even as a boy of twelve or thirteen years Jacob Boehme could hardly read and only barely write. But another experience confronts us even during his boyhood, of which a faithful biographer heard from him out of his own mouth. We shall first tell this experience. As we have said, it is not one of those things which are quite intelligible to modern consciousness. When Jacob Boehme was once tending the cattle with other shepherd boys, he withdrew from the company of the boys and climbed a moderately high mountain in the vicinity of his native locality, the “Landskrone.” He declared that he had seen there in the bright noontime something like an entrance-gate into the mountain. He went inside and there found a vessel, a kind of vat, filled with pure gold. That made such an impression of fearful awe on his soul that he ran away and retained only the memory of this peculiar experience. One can, to be sure, speak of a “dream dreamed in the waking state.” One may, for all that, grant the right to those who are satisfied with such an explanation. But the essential point is not whether one calls such an occurrence a “dream,” or gives it another name, but what it releases in the mind of the person who “dreams” it, what effect it produces in the soul. And from the way in which Jacob Boehme later told this occurrence to his friend we see that it had engraved itself deeply on his mind, that it had released significant forces in his soul so that it had the highest psychological significance for him. Let us, therefore, grant to the rationalists the right to explain such an experience, which was in any case a significant happening in Jacob Boehme's soul, in the way in which they likewise wish to explain the event of the appearance of Christ before Paul at Damascus. Only, an explanation which resorts to these things must also admit that such significant work as that of Paul, which is so intimately connected with Christianity, proceeded from a “dream.” Even the boy Jacob Boehme, when he had this experience, felt something like the deepest stirring up of soul forces which are otherwise not active in the soul. The important thing is this inner releasing of deeper-lying forces of the soul. The important thing is the testimony of such a fact which proves that we have to do here with a human being who could descend to a far greater profundity in his soul life than thousands and thousands of others. Another event of a similar nature must also be borne in mind, of which we must again say that it remained so fixed in Jacob Boehme's memory that the brightness and the significance of this event shone over his whole life, in so far as this life was an inner one. In his fourteenth year Jacob Boehme was sent to a shoemaker as an apprentice and often had to stand guard, so to speak, in his master's shop. He was not permitted to sell anything. On one occasion—and this story, again, came from the mouth of his loyal biographer, Abraham von Frankenberg—an individuality who immediately made a singular impression on Jacob Boehme came into the shop and wanted to buy shoes. But, because the boy was forbidden to sell shoes, he said this to the stranger. The latter offered him a high price and it came about that the shoes were sold. Then, however, the following took place, which remained in Jacob Boehme's memory throughout his life. When the stranger had departed and a short time had passed, Jacob Boehme heard his name called: “Jacob, Jacob!” and when he went out the stranger seemed to him even more singular than at first. There was something sun-like, shining in his eyes and he said words to him which sounded very strange: “Jacob, you are now still small, but you will once become an entirely different human being, about whom the world will break out in amazement. But remain humble before your God and read the Bible diligently. You will have to endure much persecution, but be strong, for your God loves you and will be merciful to you.”—Jacob Boehme regarded such an occurrence as much more essential than any other, external biographic experiences. And his biographer relates further how Jacob Boehme himself told him the following: It was in the year 1600 when, during seven days, Jacob Boehme felt as if withdrawn from his physical body, felt as if he were in an entirely different world, felt as if, with regard to his soul, he was re-born. We have to do here—if one wants to call it that—with a permanently abnormal condition of the soul. But Jacob Boehme experienced this, his “re-birth,” also simply more or less as something which could, according to his conception, take place with a human soul. He did not become, let us say, a visionary or a false idealist through this, nor did he become an arrogant person, but continued to practice his shoemaker's trade in all humility—or, we might say, in all sobriety. And even the experience of the year 1600, the withdrawal into another world, remained to him a phenomenon of which he said to himself: “You have looked into a kingdom of joy, into a kingdom of spiritual reality, but that is a thing of the past.” And he continued to live from day to clay pursuing his trade in his sober manner. In the year 1610 this experience of re-birth was repeated. He then began to record what he had experienced in his states of exaltation, since he felt called upon to do this. Thus, in 1612 his first work, The Dawn in Its Ascent, came into being, later entitled Aurora. Regarding it, he said that he did not write it down through his ordinary ego, but that it was given to him word for word; that, in comparison with his ordinary ego, he lived in a being which was encompassing, which reached into all parts of the world and immersed itself in this world. To be sure, the revelations did not do him much good. When several people noticed what he had to say, what he had written down, a few copies of the manuscript of Aurora were made and circulated. The result was that Gregorius Richter, the deacon of Goerlitz—where Jacob Boehme had meanwhile, in 1594, established himself as shoemaker—railed at Jacob Boehme from the pulpit and not only condemned his work, but also succeeded in having him called before the council of the city of Goerlitz. About this I will now simply repeat the words that we know from his biographer. He relates that the verdict of the council was that Jacob Boehme must be forbidden to write further, for only those who were academicians were permitted to write and Jacob Boehme was not an academician, but an idiot, and must, therefore, refrain from writing! Thus Jacob Boehme was branded as an idiot. And, since he was a good-natured man on the whole, who could not quite believe—because of the simplicity in his nature—that he would be considered one of the damned entirely without reason, he did indeed resolve to write nothing further in the near future. But then came the time when he could no longer do otherwise. And in the years 1620 to 1624, up to his death, he wrote rapidly, one after another, a great number of his works, as for instance: The Book of the Contemplative Life, De Signatura Rerum, or Concerning the Birth and Designation of All Beings, or the elucidation of the first book of Moses. But the number of his works is rather large and in this connection, many a reader may fare strangely. Some have said that Jacob Boehme repeats himself again and again. It is true; one cannot deny that certain things appear over and over again in his writings. If, however, a person draws the conclusion from this that you know the whole Jacob Boehme if you know a few of his works, because he always repeats himself—though we cannot simply contradict persons who say this—it must be said that whoever contents himself with having read one work of Jacob Boehme's and has no appetite to read the other works also, does not understand much of Jacob Boehme. But whoever takes the trouble to go through his other works will not rest, in spite of all the repetitions, until he has read even the very last ones. If, from this characterization of his nature, we try to penetrate more into his train of thought, into the spiritual nature of Jacob Boehme, it must be said that for modern man, who lives only in the cultural life of our time, much indeed must be unintelligible, not only in the content of Jacob Boehme's works, but also in his whole manner of presentation. At first the presentation appears completely chaotic. To be sure, one becomes slowly accustomed to it. But then there still remains for many persons something that is a hard nut to crack. We find that he has very peculiar definitions of words—quite unintelligible for the modern mind. Thus we find that in his explanation of the world he again and again uses words such as “salt,” “mercury” and “sulphur.” And if he wishes to analyse what “sul” signifies, what “phur” signifies, and finds all sorts of deep thoughts therein, then these modern minds must say to themselves that one cannot do anything with this, for what can be the significance of offering explanations about a universal principle by explaining the syllables of a word individually, such as “sul” and “phur”? That is quite alien to the modern mind. To be sure, if a person enters further into the mind of Jacob Boehme, he will find that Jacob Boehme clothes what he wishes tó say in all kinds of alchemistic formulae. But only when one penetrates through to what expresses itself livingly as the spirit of Jacob Boehme in what he found available, only then does one find that something entirely different lives in these formulae from what we know today as scientific thinking, as thinking with regard to world-conceptions, or any other thinking. What lives in Jacob Boehme's soul resembles most closely that which has been characterized here in these lectures as the first stage of a higher spiritual life, as the stage of imaginative cognition. We have emphasized the fact that he who ascends from ordinary life in the sense world comes, through a special development of his soul, to the point where he perceives a new world of pictures, of imaginations. And we have stressed the fact—I beg you to call to mind precisely the character of this discussion1 that, when the human being has brought it about that he does not only form imaginations, but that pictures, imaginative conceptions, shoot up out of the unknown depths of the soul-life and he experiences a new world, then he who desires to ascend to new cognition must make the firm resolution to suppress completely this first flashing up of an imaginative world in the soul and to wait until it rises up a second time from a much deeper-lying world. The whole state of soul, the whole inner mood to which Jacob Boehme comes is, therefore, most nearly comparable to that which meets a person in his soul-life who ascends to supersensible knowledge. Nowhere, to be sure, does it appear that something like that which modern spiritual-science proclaims as its conscious methods is already to be found in Jacob Boehme. But whoever were to believe that all this appeared in Jacob Boehme as if of its own accord would, nevertheless, be wrong. He himself once said that he had striven unceasingly for the spirit's—for God's—assistance, and that a luminous, imaginative world resulted from this unceasing striving. Thus, we cannot say that he was simply a naive, imaginatively cognizant person, but we must say that he grasped naively at the means which lead the human being to the height of imaginative cognition. It is to be assumed, naturally, that such an imaginative force was in his soul. In other words, he arrived at imaginative cognition by just the same paths, only more quickly, more as a matter of course, than one can arrive at it through such methods as are described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Thus Jacob Boehme stands before us as an imaginatively cognizant human being. But this imaginative knowledge struggles to the surface with primal power, as if it were a matter of course, as if borne by a strong inner will. Thus, we see this strong inner will, which cannot express itself in external deeds—his humble occupation prevents this—surrounding his soul like a flood, so that the soul immerses itself in this flood. We see powerful pictures being born out of this will, through which he tries to solve the riddles of the universe. In Jacob Boehme, it is not so much the individual results that matter, as this mood and condition of his soul. And he feels that, in his striving, he is driven to something which is not the ordinary cognizing human ego, but which is connected with the forces that bind the human being—out of the subconscious in his soul, out of the depths of his soul—to the whole cosmos; that is, to what lives and weaves outside in nature. The human being who really has an earnest desire for knowledge feels that there is not only something rational in the act of cognition, but something that he achieves for himself through suffering and pain, and through the overcoming of suffering and pain. And he notices, when he tries to penetrate into nature and existence with present-day, ordinary means, how he really separates himself from nature and existence through all such means. But when we expose forces in our soul which rest otherwise in the subconscious, then we feel that these are connected with nature and existence in quite another, more intimate sense. In order to explain this, I should like to draw upon the following. It is a well-known fact, and one hears it often related, that in regions where an earthquake or some other elemental event is imminent, certain animals flee from the locality of the earthquake or some similar occurrence, or at least become restless, so that they are like prophetic announcers of what is to happen. We may say that the instinctive life of the animal is more closely connected with what takes place outside in nature than the whole state of soul of the human being. But in the depths of the human soul, there lives something which is not the same as the instinct of animals, but which is deeper than this animal instinct, and which is also closely connected with the forces of nature. And in descending into the depths of his soul, Jacob Boehme felt himself more closely interwoven with the forces of nature. But one thing stands out particularly. It has been emphasized that only when that which appears as imaginations and an imaginative world has been suppressed, extinguished, and then lights up again as if of its own accord,—only then does this second imaginative world have value. (As I said, I beg you to call to mind the earlier discussions.) Now, it is most singular if we compare the path of Jacob Boehme with this. In the year 1600 he experiences a re-birth, feels himself transported into a spiritual world, into a “kingdom of joy.” Then he continues to live in sober simplicity. For ten years it is as if what he had experienced were submerged. Then it emerges a second time in the year 1610. Did not then the path which we represented as the right one appear as a natural phenomenon in Jacob Boehme's soul? For us, it is this that makes Jacob Boehme approach so closely that upon which we ourselves have focused our attention as being the natural way into the supersensible worlds. If we take this into account his experience will not seem as strange to us as it may have seemed at first sight.2 It will have no value for the objective cognition of the sceptic, to be sure, if one reflects profoundly on the combination out of the syllables “sul” and “phur,” or about other such things. But I beg you to call to mind what we explained concerning human speech once on an earlier occasion3 how we showed that in the course of human evolution “speech” really preceded abstract, conceptual thinking, and how Jean Paul is entirely right when he emphasizes that the child learns to think through speech, instead of forming speech through thinking. Speech, therefore, is something more elementary, primal than thinking. When we see how the whole of nature arises again in our thoughts, then we feel how thought is separated from the realities of nature by a world chasm. But, when the sound as something more like the sounds in nature—and, after all, speech was originally composed of such sounds,—when the sound of speech is wrested from the human soul, then something of the whole system of law in the universe works into the depths of the soul. And then a kind of echo in relation to nature tears itself loose in an entirely different way from that occurring when something is released out of thoughts as an echo. A soul of the present time no longer has any feeling for the affinity of speech and sounds in nature. As a contemporary soul one can only slowly struggle through to the feeling that in all speech there is something which directly resembles an echo of the impressions of the external world. In such a personality as Jacob Boehme, who draws deeper forces from his soul with elemental power, it is only natural that in this respect also, in feeling also, as it were, he is carried back to that impression of speech which was once characteristic of humanity and which the child, more or less unconsciously, still develops. And now if we extend what has just been set forth to include the strange analyses concerning the joining together of syllables into words, then we can understand that what nature brings about in the human soul is only a feeling by means of the sounds; that nature wishes to create her own language through sound itself. Precisely because Jacob Boehme stood closer to nature in his soul, he also lived more in speech than in thought, and his whole philosophy is more a feeling with, a sympathizing with, that which lives and weaves outside in nature than any abstract grasping of things. What I mean to say is that, when a person lets a thought of Jacob Boehme's really have its effect on him, he feels as if the thought were as akin to what Jacob Boehme observed as he himself is akin only to that which he senses as some kind of taste, when he also feels contact with nature. Thus, does Jacob Boehme feel the contact with nature. He feels in the inner being what weaves and works and lives outside in nature. He lives nature's life with it, and in his representations he gives, really, that wherein he participates, so that one feels what he perceived vibrating in his words. To him, therefore, words are something which he feels especially to be like that which is the “How” in nature itself. One does not have to ponder, therefore, over the question whether such discussions as the above-mentioned about “sul” and “phur” mean anything particular in Jacob Boehme, but one should try to re-experience in connection with this soul how it makes the experience of the universe into the experience of the soul and gives as its revelations that which the soul can experience. No one understands Jacob Boehme who simply supposes that he perceived thunder and lightning, clouds, or cloud transformations, or the growth of grass like a modern human being. A person understands him only if he knows that with the flashing lightning, with the rolling thunder, with the changing clouds something is transformed for his soul-life, so that something takes place in his soul which stands there as the solution of the corresponding riddle. Thus, what takes place in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme a riddle of his own experience. And now, if we look at him thus, we understand how he could wrestle with a task which meets us elsewhere during his time also, and which long occupied other spirits, even the greatest spirit of recent times. This same sixteenth century, in which occurred the birth of Jacob Boehme, gave birth to the Faust riddle, which places next to the striving and struggling man the enemy of man, who drags down man's striving nature into the base, sensual—into that which Jacob Boehme's age called “the Devilish.” Poetically, Goethe still struggled with the problem which places “evil” in the world structure. Must not the human being ask again and again: How does it come about that the irregular, the unsuitable, places itself antagonistically in the harmonious universe, in the wise guidance of the world? And the question of the origin of evil lies in the riddle of Faust. It is really already in the book of Job, but it appeared especially powerfully in the sixteenth century. In what manner could this question appear before the mind of Jacob Boehme? We need only to take a few words from the Dawn in Its Ascent and we shall see at once how that which is elsewhere a world problem becomes for Jacob Boehme at first an inner soul problem. There he says approximately the following words: If an understanding and thoughtful man shows himself anywhere in the world, the Devil at once meddles with his soul and seeks to drag his nature down into the vulgar, common, sensual,—seeks to ensnare the man in pride and conceit. Here we see at once how the problem is grasped by Jacob Boehme as a soul problem. We see how he searches in the soul itself for the power of evil, which interferes with the good soul forces. And the question arises for him: What does the soul have to do with the soul forces that strive towards evil? Thus the problem of evil becomes for Jacob Boehme finally an inner soul question.4 But because for him soul and universe correspond to each other, the soul at once expands into a universe. And now the peculiar thing for him is that the question of evil is transformed into an entirely different question, into the question of human consciousness—in fact, of all spiritual consciousness, of the whole character of the life of consciousness. It is difficult today with our current conceptions to illuminate Jacob Boehme's soul life and what the cosmic questions and their solutions became for him, and a person cannot make himself very clear if he uses the words of Jacob Boehme, because they are no longer current coin in our time. I will try, therefore — entirely in the spirit of Jacob Boehme, but with somewhat different words — to approach what he wished to say about the question of evil, which becomes with him a question concerning the whole nature of spiritual consciousness in general. Let us once try to think how our consciousness works, what our whole consciousness would be if we were not in a position to hold fast in memory, as thought, what we once experienced in our soul, in our consciousness. Let us try to think how our consciousness would have to be something entirely different if we were not capable of drawing up out of our memory what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, years ago. The whole content of consciousness rests on the fact that we can remember past experience, and our consciousness does not extend back beyond that point of time to which we can remember. We began then to grasp ourselves as an “ego,” to have the coherent thread of our consciousness, to be at home in our soul life. Upon what, therefore, does the whole nature of consciousness depend? Upon the fact that we know: Now we are at this moment experiencing something in our consciousness. When we experience something, we are directly connected with this experience. In the moment when we experience something we are nothing else than our experience itself. A person who visualizes a red colour is united with the experience of it at the moment when he visualizes this red colour. Whoever conceives an ideal is, at that moment, one with the ideal. I le distinguishes himself only afterwards from his experience, while before he was one with it. Thus our whole consciousness is something that we first experienced and then stored up as an objective thing in our inner soul life. Such storing away in the objective makes our consciousness possible. We could not develop any consciousness if everything that we experienced were always forgotten—completely removed. By placing our experience before ourselves as counterpart (Gegenwurf),5 as Jacob Boehme says,—by confronting ourselves with it as with an opposite—only thereby does our real consciousness ignite. We must observe this in connection with the simplest fact of our consciousness. In his clairvoyant contemplation Jacob Boehme extends this experience, which any and every consciousness can have, over all the world. He says: And if a Divine Being in the world had once had the capacity only to live in Himself, but not to confront Himself with His experience—as counterpart—consciousness would never have come to be, even in a Divine Being. But for the Divine Being the counterpart is the world. Just as we confront ourselves with our conceptions, just as we become conscious of ourselves through the object, so the counterpart for Divine Consciousness is the world. And everything that surrounds us Divine Consciousness set out of Itself, in order to become aware of Itself thereby,—just as we develop our consciousness only when we set up our own experiences as counterpart. For Jacob Boehme the grasping of this thought was not a theory, but something that brought him satisfaction with regard to a question which signified a matter of destiny for him—the great Faust question. He could now say to himself: “If I am carried back in thought into Divine Consciousness prior to the world, as it were, this Divine Consciousness could come to Itself, become real consciousness, only by confronting Itself with the world, in order to become aware of Itself through Its counterpart.” Thus, everything that lives and weaves and is took its rise from the Divine-Psychic, from a Will of this Divine-Psychic, which developed the craving, as Will, to become aware of Itself. And in that moment (this now became clear to Jacob Boehme) when the Unitary Consciousness set up Its counterpart and wanted to become aware of Itself—that is, duplicated Itself, created, as it were, the reflected image of Itself—It created this reflected image in a variety, in the multiplicity of single members, just as the single human soul does not have its life only in single limbs, but in limbs that have a certain independence, such as hand, and foot, and head. A person does not get close to the reality of Jacob Boehme if he describes him as a pantheist. He must go through the train of thought in a similar way, must understand how Jacob Boehme conceived everything that appears before us as a “counterpart of the Godhead.” To the counterpart of the Godhead, which the Godhead set out of Itself in order to become aware of Itself thereby, belongs also the human being as he is. From this point of view of his. Jacob Boehme says: Men direct their gaze upwards; see the stars, the masses of clouds, the mountains and the plants, and would often assume the existence of still another special region of the Godhead. But I say to you, you unreasoning human being, that you yourself belong to the counterpart of the Godhead; for how could you sense anything and become aware of anything of Divine Being in yourself if you had not flowed forth from this Divine Being? You have sprung from this Divine Being. He placed you opposite Himself, as He also gave birth to you out of Himself, and you shall be buried in Him. And how could you be raised from the dead if an alien Godhead stood confronting you? How could you call yourself a child of God if you were not one with the substance and being of God! That he does not refer to any ordinary pantheism is expressed by him through the fact that he says: “The external world is not God; it will never in eternity be called God, but a being in which God reveals Himself. … If one says that God is all. that God is heaven and earth and also the external world, it is true, for everything has its origin and genesis in Him. But what can I do with such a speech, which is no religion?” One cannot call him a pantheist. Just as the question concerning the essential nature of the world is not, for him, something artificially sought after, neither is that which he gives himself as an answer to it. Rather is it an experience for him. He felt the prerequisite conditions determining his own consciousness and extended these over Divine Consciousness, because he knew clearly that the nature of his own capacity for consciousness was an echo of the actualities of the world. And in the answer to the question of the soul and the Divine in the soul he finds also the answer to the question concerning the origin of evil. This is something exceedingly characteristic of Jacob Boehme, which has again and again aroused the admiration of profound thinkers. Thus, for instance, Schelling was very significantly affected when he became aware of the manner in which Jacob Boehme approached the question concerning the significance of evil in the world, and other thinkers of the nineteenth century also admired the profundity of thought with which Jacob Boehme took hold of this question. One may say, with regard to many persons who have sought an answer to the question concerning the origin of evil, that they searched for the primal cause of evil. It is characteristic of Jacob Boehme that he went further than that point which, according to the opinion of many people, is the sole and only limit to which one can go. For where else should a person go if he does not wish to stop at this primal cause? Jacob Boehme goes beyond the primal cause when he wishes to solve the question concerning the significance of evil. He goes to that which he calls, significantly, not the primal cause, or primal ground (Urgrund), but the groundlessness, (Ungrund), and here we actually stand before an experience of the human soul in Jacob Boehme which can be admired in the highest degree if one has the requisite organ. Certainly, the ordinary soul which has its roots in the modern world conception does not, perhaps, possess this organ; but one can have this organ which feels admiration when, in Jacob Boehme, the transition is made from the primal ground to the groundlessness. And, after all, it is really something like the egg of Columbus, something exceedingly simple. For, at the moment when Jacob Boehme had solved the world riddle for himself in the way we have just described—when it was clear to him that there is a relationship between God and the world like that between the soul and the limbs of the body—then he could also say to himself: When the world came into existence as counterpart of the Godhead, there appeared in this counterpart the dividedness, the differences among the limbs, as we should say.6 The dividedness of the single limbs of the body confronting the single soul made its appearance. Is not every single limb of the body good with regard to functions of the soul? Can we not say that the right hand is good, the left hand is good, everything is good in as much as it serves the functions of the soul? But cannot the right hand, because of its relative independence, indeed just because of its excellence, injure the left hand? Here we have the independence of the corporeal, that which needs to have “no ground” (cause), set up against that which constitutes harmony. We see this placed in the primal ground (cause), which simply results from the fact that from the “primal ground” we pass on to the “groundlessness.” Just as we do not need to seek in light the cause of darkness, so we do not need to seek in good the cause of evil. But as the world proves itself, for Jacob Boehme, to be the counterpart of the Godhead, the possibility arises in this world of dividedness for the individual limbs to work against each other, in that, because they must have their independence for the sake of the purpose of the world—according to the goal-seeking character of the world—they must also develop this independence. Thus, for Jacob Boehme, evil does not have its roots in that which one explains, but in that which we find as “groundlessness” without the need for explaining it. But the latter appears thereby, as if of its own accord, as a counterpart of good. And now evil, the unsuitable, the harmful in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme itself a counterpart, in contrast to good,—just as we become aware of ourselves through contact with an object. We move along in space; we do not think of ourselves. But we begin at once to think of ourselves if, for instance, we knock our head against a window. Then we become aware of ourselves through the counterpart, through the object. Just as Jacob Boehme confronts consciousness with the counterpart, just as he experiences himself through the counterpart, so the good, the suitable, the advantageous and useful becomes aware of itself, for Jacob Boehme, through the fact that it has to preserve itself in the presence of the harmful and unsuitable. It becomes aware of itself in that “evil” became the counterpart of good, like the objects that are experienced through collision with the external world. Thus Jacob Boehme sees in good the force which assimilates its counterpart, just as man, in his memory, assimilates more and more what he himself first set out of his consciousness. We find thus a constant absorption of evil and, thereby, an enriching of the good with the evil. And as darkness relates itself to light, in that light shines into darkness and thereby first becomes visible, so does good first become effective by working into evil and relating itself to evil as light to darkness. Just as light graduates to the different colours through darkness and could not appear as light if darkness were not opposed to it, so can good perform its world-function only by experiencing itself through its counterpart, through evil. Thus Jacob Boehme looks into the world. He sees the good effective in such a way that it finds itself confronted by evil, but that it takes evil into its own domain, absorbs it, so to speak. Thus a pre-earthly occurrence appears for Jacob Boehme in such a way that he says to himself: The Deity once placed other spiritual beings opposite Himself. These were, like our present nature at a later stage, a counterpart of the Deity. Thus these beings were already a counterpart of the Deity, whereby the Deity achieved consciousness of Himself. But they behaved towards the Deity like the limbs that turn against their own body. Thereby the Being Lucifer came into existence for Jacob Boehme. What is Lucifer for him? He is the Being who, after the counterpart was created, used the separateness, the multiplicity, to rebel against his Creator as independent counterpart. Thus, in the forces of the world which differ from and struggle against one another Jacob Boehme finds that which must be, but which contributes to the general evolution, nevertheless, by being absorbed in the course of development. In the same way he also conceives that all deeds of the opponent of the Gods—in order that the deeds of the Deity Himself may come to realization so much the more powerfully through the counterpart—are absorbed by the Deity, and that the self-realization of the Deity becomes only so much the more glorious through the forces which the opponent develops. Into the depths of the world Jacob Boehme pursues the thought which extends the experiencing of consciousness to the cosmic experience of the origin and primal state of evil. And he puts into a simple formula—not what he gave theoretically, we must say, as the solution of the cosmic riddles, but what he experienced,—into the formula: No “Yes” without a “No,” for the “Yes” must first experience itself through its counterpart, through the “No.” “No Yes without a No” is the simple formula into which Jacob Boehme brought the whole problem of evil. And it is not a theoretical formula, but in this philosophy, there lies something like a most primal, most elemental experience. For to know that there is no Yes without a No, that evil is absorbed by good and contributes to the evolution of the world,—that may yet be nothing. But it is something else to be a struggling soul, a soul that experiences pain and suffering, temptations and seductions, and to say to oneself: “All of this must be present, and although it is present I can procure for myself out of my living philosophical word—not by theorizing—the certainty and the consolation and the hope that the best in me will find the possibility of overcoming what is only the counterpart, the “No,” through the primal, through the Primordial Impulse (Wurf),7 through the “Yes.” And no matter how much I become entangled in evil, and no matter how small the ray of light is that extends over it,—I can and may hope for liberation, so that the good in me and not the evil will win the victory! If such a philosophy passes over into certainty of redemption, then it is something which is, in this manner, connected with the personality, to be sure, but which has with this character of personality at the same time general human significance. If a person allows this to work upon his soul, he will gladly go on from this struggling soul which rises into the cold abstractions of the “Yes” and “No” in order to acquire therefrom the warmest soul content and the warmest soul experiences—then he will gladly go on from this soul, which gains through struggle confidence in its world conception, to the lonely man in Goerlitz who had no opportunity to found a school, for the time which men, under other circumstances, spend in spiritual things he had to spend in making shoes ... he had to gain the time by strenuous effort for his numerous works. Such a person will gladly go to the man whose books reveal how he struggled with language because his external education was so limited, but whose teachings, nevertheless, were disseminated and spread abroad after his death; who sat on his shoemaker's bench and had only few friends to whom he could open his heart. He had friends, it is true, to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small. One sees him thus in his loneliness and feels as if a necessary connection existed herein. Just as one can think of Giordano Bruno only as journeying through the world, moving from land to land in order to proclaim something about the world as if with trumpet tone—just as one feels in him, who enters into the multiplicity of phenomena, that this journeying belongs to this world conception—so does one feel in the other case that this lonely shoemaker experienced something which could be experienced only in such a way that it took place as if in a solitary dialogue with the spirits of existence—in this solitary seership which we characterized at the beginning. If we feel thus, then the sentiment grows in us, with regard to what the human being needs in order to solve the riddles of the world in a thoughtful, feeling way, that the greatest which the human being can experience in the world is independent of place and time, is subject only to the human soul's capacity for profound meditation, and that the soul can undertake the greatest world-migrations, the migrations into the spirit-regions, everywhere and always. Then there rings out to us from Jacob Boehme's soul, and touches our understanding, that which characterizes his world conception in such a significant expression when he says:
This does not characterize his world conception in a theoretical respect, but it characterizes what his world conception really came to be through the fact that he was such a very special human being. For we have been able to emphasize that through his whole being he was more intimately connected with nature than the normal human being,—that he experienced the weaving and activity of nature in his own soul experiences. This leads us to sense a certain necessity in a designation which Jacob Boehme's friends gave him. They gave him a happy designation. For let us just consider the following: When there was already a widely diffused, wonderfully detailed science over in the East, in the Orient, whose wisdom we admire if we learn to know it, we still find the very simplest spiritual culture on Central European soil. We find that something lives in all the souls of Central Europe which is like an intimate connection of the forces in the depths of the soul with the forces of nature and the nature-beings, and that the people threw twigs on the ground and saw in the “Runes” which took form all kinds of riddles which they sought to solve. These human beings were decipherers of “Rune riddles.” And of all that speaks out of the souls of the human beings in the forests of ancient Germania about what lives in nature, about what rustles through the trees, or lives mysteriously in human souls themselves,—we feel as if something of all this were active in Jacob Boehme's soul. Then something in Jacob Boehme may well become comprehensible to us which would otherwise be the most difficult thing for us to comprehend today. We are not forcing things if we compare with the picture of the decipherer of runic riddles, who solves all sorts of riddles through the twigs which have been thrown on the ground and claims to perceive the revelations of the Divinity Himself—if we compare with this the way, for instance, in which Jacob Boehme sets up the syllables “sul” and “phur” runically out of his relationship with the feeling for speech, and wants to solve world riddles thereby. Here he appears to us like a last offspring of the forests of ancient Germania, and we understand why his friends gave him the name “Philosophus Teutonicus.” This includes, however, his significance for the coming times. We look towards him and see how he struggled with the most exciting problems that can play into the human soul, how he arrived at peace in this struggle, and how his last words: “I enter into Paradise” were the seal to consistency of soul, to soul-practice. It is this that led him to peace of the soul. A breath of faith lives in all his books, and from this point of view Jacob Boehme can have significance for us and for all times. When it comes to the practical life consequence of a philosophy, this “Philosophus Teutonicus” will always be a dominant influence as regards that which he can really be for the soul if it becomes familiar with him.8 His adversaries sometimes make a strange impression—beginning in the year 1684, when the first rather strong refutation of Jacob Boehme by Kallo appeared, up until our time, when we also have a writing against Jacob Boehme, by a Leipzig scholar of the past century, Dr. Harles. It seems rather peculiar how Harles wishes to show that Jacob Boehme did nothing but warm up old alchemistic things, and then says that, after he had often tormented himself for days in order to present Jacob Boehme in this way, he was often glad when he could approach Matthias Claudius in the evening in order to find recuperation and edification in his words, after he had had to concern himself thus with Jacob Boehme throughout the day. And he desires also for his readers that they not allow themselves to be beguiled by the glistening and glimmering formulae of Jacob Boehme, but that they also take refuge in the simple and naive Matthias Claudius, whose gift to the soul is such that the soul does not have to seek its salvation in being elevated to the highest heights of spiritual life. It may be that this Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme, had to take refuge in Matthias Claudius in order to escape from the glistening, high-flown formulae of Jacob Boehme, and that he could find peace in Claudius, in contrast to his experience with Jacob Boehme. Only, it makes a strange impression on one who knows that Matthias Claudius himself took refuge, after he had achieved what Dr. Harles found in his works, in some one who not only knew Jacob Boehme, but even translated him—in Saint Martin, who was a faithful pupil of Jacob Boehme! Thus it is very good not only to know wherein Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme, sought edification, but also to know wherein Matthias Claudius sought his edification! But the world conception of Jacob Boehme is one that is suited to lead beyond contradictions, if only one does not stop at it. The whole nature of the lectures that have been given here has shown that within the world conception which is represented here we should not remain standing at any one phenomenon, but that whatever of the spiritual world can be grasped directly through the forces of our age should be grasped. Certainly Jacob Boehme remains a significant personality, a star of the first magnitude in the spirit-heavens of humanity—yet no one will stop at him. The representations of spiritual-science which are given today are, therefore, by no means given from the standpoint of Jacob Boehme, but from that of our age, and the next time we shall show, in contrast, what an entirely modern spirit has to say.9 But Jacob Boehme becomes still more interesting if we transport ourselves into his spirit-nature—which stands upright in simplicity and solitude, and takes flight with his soul into the highest region of clairvoyance,—and if we find how this spirit-nature could spread peace over Jacob Boehme's soul, which can subsequently be felt by all who approach him with understanding or, at least, seeking for understanding. For this reason, intellectual characterizations will not come close to the reality of Jacob Boehme, but only such characterizations as endeavour to feel what a human being like Jacob Boehme felt, what streamed forth from him—as, for instance, in the three lines which I have cited. And only then can the words with which I essayed to characterize Jacob Boehme gain their significance if those present feel that they were not said in order to culminate in a theory or theoretical characterization of Jacob Boehme, but to culminate in this: that, when we are directly confronted by the personality of Jacob Boehme, something streams out from it—and streams out so much the more warmly and intensively the more we learn to know it—which can sum up what has been said in words designating his peace, his serenity: To whom time is like eternity
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79. Foundations of Anthroposophy: World Development in the Light of Anthroposophy
01 Dec 1921, Oslo Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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We grow aware, on the one hand, of a complete feeling of loneliness, which alone enables us to maintain our Ego in this world ... for we should melt away in this world of the spirit, if loneliness would not give us this Ego-feeling in the spiritual world, in the same way in which our body, our bodily sensation, gives us our Ego-feeling here on earth. To this loneliness we owe the maintenance of the Ego in the spiritual world. We then learn to know this spiritual world as our environment. But we know that we can only learn to know it through the inner soul-spiritual eye, even as we see the physical world through our physical eyes. |
79. Foundations of Anthroposophy: World Development in the Light of Anthroposophy
01 Dec 1921, Oslo Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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The thoughts which I have been putting before you, will show you that the acquisition of real super-sensible knowledge entails above all, with the aid of the exercises already described, that the two sides of human nature which are usually inexactly designated as man's inner and outer being should be distinctly separated. Perhaps it may be pointed out that in ordinary consciousness one does not make an exact distinction between man's inner and outer being, when speaking of these. The way in which I characterised the going out of man's sentient and volitional being during sleep and the becoming conscious in super-sensible knowledge outside the physical body, shows us that just this super-sensible knowledge enables us to separate distinctly those parts which are usually described vaguely in ordinary consciousness as man's outer and inner being. I might say that by this separation man's inner world becomes his outer world, and what we usually consider as his outer world becomes his inner world. What takes place in that case? During sleep, man's sentient and volitional being abandons what we have called his physical body and etheric body, or the body of formative forces, and then this sentient-volitional being looks back upon the physical body and the etheric body as if they were objects. We showed that in this retrospection the whole web of thought appears outside man's inner being. The world of thought which fills our ordinary consciousness and which reflects the external world, does not go out with man's true inner being in falling asleep, but remains behind with the physical body, as the true forces of the etheric body. In this way we were able to grasp that during our waking state of consciousness we cannot grow conscious of that part which goes out during sleep and which remains unconscious for the ordinary consciousness. (Self-observation can easily convince us that during our ordinary waking consciousness the world of thoughts produces this waking state of consciousness). In that part of the human being which goes out of the physical and the etheric bodies during sleep, there is a dull twilight-life, and we only learn to know this inner being of man when super-sensible knowledge fills it, as it were, with light and with warmth, when we are just as conscious within this inner being as we are ordinarily conscious within our physical body. But we also learn to know why we have an unconscious life during our ordinary sleeping condition. Consciousness arises when we dive down into our physical and etheric bodies at the moment of waking up. And by diving down into the physical body, we make use of the senses which connect us with the external world. As a result, the sensory world awakes and we thus grow conscious in it. In the same way we dive down into our etheric or life-body, that is to say, into our world of thoughts, and we grow conscious within our thoughts. Ordinary consciousness is therefore based upon the fact that we use the instruments of our physical body, and that we make use, so to speak, of the etheric body's web of formative forces. In ordinary life, man's true inner being, woven out of feeling and will, is not in a position to attain consciousness, because it has no organs. By making the thought- and will-exercises of which I have spoken, we endow the soul itself with organs. This soul-element, which is at first indistinct in our ordinary consciousness, acquires plastic form, even as our physical body and our etheric body acquire plastic form in the senses and in the organs of thought. Man's real soul-spiritual being therefore obtains a plastic form. In the same measure in which it is moulded plastically and acquires (if I may use this paradoxical expression) soul-spiritual sense-organs, the world of soul and spirit rises up round our inner being. That part of our being which ordinarily lives in a dull twilight existence and which can only perceive an environing world, namely the physical world, when it uses the physical and etheric organs of perception, thus acquires plastic form and enters into connection with a world which always surrounds us, even in our ordinary life, though we are not aware of it, a world in which we lived before descending into our physical being through birth or conception, as described the day before yesterday; a world in which we shall live again when we pass through the portal of death, for then we shall recognise it as a world which belongs to us and which is not limited by birth and death. But there is one thing which rises up before us when we enter the spiritual world. We cannot enter this world in the same abstract theoretic manner with which we can live in the physical world and in the world of thoughts or of the intellect. In the physical world and in the world of thoughts we use ideas and thoughts, which as such, leave us cold. With a little self-observation anyone can discover that when he ascends to the sphere of pure thinking, when he surrenders to the external sensory world without any special interest or a close connection with it, the external physical world, as well as the world of ideas, really leaves him cold. We must learn to know this in detail from particular examples in life. We should note, for instance, how different are the inner feelings with which we consider our home, from those with which we look upon any other strange country which is indifferent to us. This will show us that in order to have a living interest for the environing world, our feeling and our will must first be drawn in through special circumstances. Feeling will indeed always dive down into the physical world when we awake, obtaining from this physical world a connection with the senses and the understanding. The fact that love or perhaps hate are kindled in us when we encounter certain people in the physical world, the fact that we feel induced to do certain things for them out of compassion, all this demands the inclusion of our feelings and of everything which constitutes our inner being, when we come across such things in the external physical world. How conscious we are of the fact that our inner life grows cold, when we rise up to spheres which are generally called the spheres of pale, dry thought and of theoretic study! The being which lives in a dull twilight state from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, must, as it were, connect itself during the waking daytime condition with thoughts and with sensory experiences through an inner participation in these processes, thus giving rise to the whole wealth of interest in the external world. And so we recognise that in life itself feeling and will must first be drawn into the sense world and into the world of thoughts. But we perceive this in the fullest meaning of the word only when through super-sensible knowledge, we become free from the physical and etheric bodies, and have experiences outside them within our sentient-volitional being. And hence it is evident that we must begin to speak of the world in a different way from how we speak in ordinary life, in ordinary consciousness. The dry ideas, the laws of Nature which we are accustomed to find in science and which interest us theoretically, though they leave us inwardly cold, these should be permeated with certain nuances and expressions which characterise the external world differently from the way in which we usually characterize it. Our inner life acquires greater intensity through super-sensible knowledge. We penetrate more intensively into the life of the external world. When we try to gain knowledge, we are then no longer able to submit coldly to inner ideas. No doubt one is then exposed to the reproach that the objectivity may suffer through a certain inner warmth, through the awakening of feeling and of a subjective sense. But this objection is only raised by those who are not acquainted with the circumstances. The things perceived through super-sensible knowledge make us speak differently of the super-sensible objects of knowledge. These do not change, they do not become less objective, for in fact they are objective. When I look upon a wonderfully painted picture, it does not change through the fact that I look upon it with fire and enthusiasm; I should be a cold prosaic person if I were to face one of Raphael's Madonnas or one of Leonardo's paintings with a purely analytical artistic understanding, quite coldly and without any enthusiasm. It is the same when the spiritual worlds rise up in super-sensible knowledge. Their content does not change through the fact that we connect ourselves with these worlds with inner feelings, far stronger than those which usually connect us with the external world and its objects. When speaking from a knowledge of the higher worlds, many things will therefore have to be said differently, the descriptions will have to be different from those which we are accustomed to hear in ordinary life. But this does not render these worlds less objective. On the contrary, one could say: The subjective element which now breaks forth from the physical and etheric bodies becomes more objective, more selfless in its whole experience. And so the first experience which we have when going out of the physical body and experiencing our inner being consciously (whereas otherwise we always experience it unconsciously) is a feeling of absolute loneliness. In our ordinary consciousness we never have the feeling that by dwelling only within our inner self, independently of anything in the world pertaining to us, complete loneliness fills our soul, that we ourselves, with everything which now constitutes our soul-spiritual content, must rely entirely upon ourselves. The feeling of loneliness which sometimes arises in the physical world, but only as a reflection of the real feeling, though it is painful enough for many people, becomes immeasurably intensified when we thus penetrate into the super-sensible world. But we then look back upon that which reflects itself as the spiritual environment in the mirror of the physical and etheric body which we left behind. We grow aware, on the one hand, of a complete feeling of loneliness, which alone enables us to maintain our Ego in this world ... for we should melt away in this world of the spirit, if loneliness would not give us this Ego-feeling in the spiritual world, in the same way in which our body, our bodily sensation, gives us our Ego-feeling here on earth. To this loneliness we owe the maintenance of the Ego in the spiritual world. We then learn to know this spiritual world as our environment. But we know that we can only learn to know it through the inner soul-spiritual eye, even as we see the physical world through our physical eyes. It is the same when the human being abandons his physical and etheric bodies by passing through the portal of death, and in this connection I shall enlarge the explanations already given yesterday. It is true that in this case the physical body is given over to the elements of the earth and that the etheric body dissolves, as I described, in the universal cosmic ether. But what we learned to know as our physical world, through our feeling and will, the world in which we experienced ourselves through the ordinary consciousness between birth and death, this world remains to man. The physical body filled with substance and the body of formative forces permeated by etheric forces, are laid aside with death, but what we experienced within them remains as a mirroring element. From the spiritual world we look back through death, through which we have passed, into our last earthly life. Just because we have before us this last earthly life as a firm resistance which mirrors everything, just because of this, everything which surrounds us as we pass through the soul-spiritual world between death and a new birth, can also reflect itself. Through these experiences we perceive everything rising up in a far more intensive life than the one which we learned to know here in the physical world. And we first perceive as a soul-spiritual being everything with which we were in some way connected through our destiny, through our Karma. The people we loved, stand before us as souls. In our super-sensible vision we see all that we experienced together with them. Those who acquire spiritual, super-sensible knowledge, already acquire imaginative vision here in the physical world, through everything which I described to you. Those who pass through the portal of death in the ordinary way, acquire this faculty, though it is somewhat different from spiritual vision on earth, they acquire it after having passed through the portal of death. From the sheaths of the physical and etheric bodies which were laid aside, emerges everything with which we were connected by destiny, or otherwise, in this earthly life—it undoubtedly arises in a different way when those whom we left behind still live on the earth, where the connection with them is more difficult, but when they follow us through death, this connection exists in the free, soul-spiritual life. Everything in our environment with which we were connected as human beings rises up before us. To super-sensible knowledge, the fact that people (if I may now express myself in words of the ordinary consciousness) who belonged together here in the physical world find each other again in the soul-spiritual world, after having passed through the portal of death, is not a belief to be accepted as a vague premonition, but it is a certainty, a fact just as certain as the results of physics or chemistry. And this is in fact something which the spiritual science of Anthroposophy can add to the acquisitions of modern culture. People have grown accustomed to a certain feeling of certainty through the gradual popularisation of a scientific consciousness. They strive to gain some knowledge of the super-sensible worlds, but no longer in the form of the old presentiments handed down traditionally in the religious beliefs, for they have been trained to accept that certainty which the external world can offer. In regard to that which lies beyond birth and death the spiritual science of Anthroposophy seeks to pave the way to this same kind of certainty. It can really do this. Only those who tread the path already described, the path leading into the spiritual worlds, can carry the knowledge acquired in physics or chemistry further, out into the worlds which we enter when we pass through the portal of death. Not everything of course, appears to us in this way when we look back upon our physical body through super-sensible knowledge outside the body. There is one thing which then appears to us very enigmatic, and this enigma can show us best of all that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy does not translate the truths which it includes in its spheres of knowledge into a prosaic, dry rationalism. It leads us to spiritual vision, or by communicating its truth it speaks of things which can be perceived through spiritual vision. But in being led to spiritual vision, we do not lose full reverence towards the mysteries contained in the universe, towards everything in the universe which inspires reverence and which can now be clearly perceived, whereas otherwise they are at the most felt darkly. This enigmatic something which I mean and which appears to us, is that we now learn to know man's relationship with the earth, particularly his relationship with the physical mineral earth. I have already explained to you from many different aspects how our web of thoughts, which is connected with the physical body, remains behind, and in addition to what has been described to you, in addition to what reflects itself and leads us to a knowledge of man's eternal being, we can also recognise the nature of this mirror itself which we have before us. One might say: Even as in the physical world we face a mirror and in this mirror the environing world appears simultaneously with our own self, so in super-sensible knowledge the spiritual world appears through this mirror. But just as we can touch the material mirror with its foil and investigate its composition, so we can also investigate this mirror of the super-sensible—namely, our physical body and our etheric body—when we are outside with our real soul-spiritual being. And there one can see that during his earthly life man constantly takes in substances from the external world, in order to grow and to sustain his whole life. We certainly absorb substances from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but all these substances which we absorb from the animal and vegetable kingdoms also contain mineral substances. Plants contain mineral substances, for the plant builds itself up from mineral substances. By taking in vegetable nourishment we therefore build up our own body out of mineral substances. By looking back upon our physical body from outside, we can now perceive the true significance of the mineral substances which we absorb. For now spiritual vision reveals something of which our ordinary consciousness has not the faintest inkling, namely the activity of thinking. We have, as you know, left behind our thinking. Our thoughts continue, as it were, to glimmer and to shine within the physical body. Thus we can now observe the effects of thoughts in the physical body from outside, as something objective. And we perceive that the effect of thoughts upon man's physical body is a dissolution of its physical substances, which fall asunder, as it were, into nothing. I know that this apparently contradicts the law of the conservation of energy, but there is no time now to explain more fully its full harmony with this law. The nature of my subject obliges me to express myself in somewhat popular terms. But it is possible to understand that the purely mineral in man, what he bears within him as purely mineral substances, must be within him because it must be dissolved by his thoughts. For otherwise his thoughts could not exist—this is the condition for their existence—his thoughts could not exist if they did not dissolve mineral, earthly substances, a fact also revealed by the spiritual sciences of earlier times, based more on intuitive feeling. This dissolution, this destruction of physical substances constitutes the physical instrumentality of thinking. When our sentient-volitional part, our true inner being, lives within the physical body and within the etheric body and is filled by the activity of thinking, we now learn to recognise that this activity takes its course through the fact that physical substance is continually destroyed. We now learn to recognise how our ordinary consciousness really arises. We are not conscious because forces of growth hold sway in us, forces which develop in the rest of the organism through nutrition. For in the same measure in which the forces of growth are active within us, thinking is dulled. When we wake up, thinking must, so to speak, have a free hand to dissolve physical substances, to eliminate them from the physical body. To the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, the nervous system appears as that organ which mediates this secretion of mineral-physical substances throughout the whole body. And in this secretion of the mineral-physical develops just that thought-activity which we ordinarily carry with us through the world. You therefore see that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy not only enables us to recognise the eternal in man, but also to know of the way in which this eternal works within the physical body; that, for instance, thought can only exist through the fact that man continually develops within himself the mineral substances, that is, something dead. And so we can say: If we learn to know man from this aspect, we also learn to know death from another aspect. Ordinarily death confronts us as the end of life, as a moment in life, as an experience in itself. But when we throw light upon man's physical and etheric body in this way we learn to know the gradual course of death, or the separation of physical-mineral substance,—for death in fact, is nothing but the complete liberator of man's mineral-physical substance—we learn to know the continuous secretion of a dead, corpse-like element within us. We recognise that from birth onwards, we are really always dying and only when with the whole body we accomplish that which we ordinarily accomplish through the nervous system, in a small part of the body, only then do we die. We therefore learn to contemplate the moment of death by seeing it on a small scale in the activity of thinking in the human organism. And throughout the whole time that we pass through after death, we can only look back upon our physical body because the following fact exists: Whenever a thought lights up within you during your ordinary life, this is always accompanied by the fact that physical matter is secreted in the physical body, in the same way in which, for instance, physical substance separates from a precipitated salt-solution. This lighting up of thought you owe as it were, to this opaqueness, to this separating off of physical mineral substances. Inasmuch as you abandon the physical body, there is summed up in a comparatively brief space of time what lives in the continual stream of your thoughts. You confront the fact that in death you see lighting up as if all at once that which slowly glimmered and shone throughout your whole earthly life, from birth to death. And through this powerful impression, in which the life of thoughts illuminates the soul like a mighty flash of lightning, man acquires the memory of his physical lives on earth. The physical body may be cast off, the etheric body may dissolve completely in the universal ether, but through the fact that we obtain in one experience this powerful thought-impression (to mathematicians I might say: this thought-integral in comparison with thought-differentials, from birth to death), we always have before us, throughout the time after death, as a mirroring element, our physical life on earth, even though we have laid aside our physical and etheric parts. And this mirroring element reveals everything which we experience when the human beings with whom we were connected by destiny in love or in hate, gradually come up, when the spiritual Beings who live in the spiritual world and do not descend to the earth, whose company we also now share, rise up before us. The spiritual investigator may state this with a calm conscience, for he knows that he does not speak on the foundation of illusionary pictures; he knows instead that to super-sensible vision, when super-sensible vision arises through the organ of the physical and etheric bodies which are now outside, these things are just as real, can be seen just as really as physical colours are ordinarily perceived through physical eyes, or physical sounds through physical ears. This is how the evolution of humanity forms part of the evolution of the world. If we study the development of the world, for instance, the mineral life on earth, we understand why there should be mineral, earthly laws. They exist so that they might also exist within us, and thinking is therefore bound up with the earth. But in perceiving how the Beings who have bound their thinking with the earth emerge from that which produces their thought, we also learn to recognise how man in his true being lifts himself above the merely earthly. This is what connects the development of the world with the development of humanity and unites them. We learn to know the human being and at the same time we learn to know the universe. If we learn to know man's physical body and its mineralization through thinking, we also learn to know through man's physical body the lifeless mineralised earth. This created a foundation for a knowledge of the evolution of the world from its spiritual aspect also. When we thus learn to know man's inner being, we can consider the development of the world in the light of the ordinary earthly experiences through which we have passed since our birth. If you draw out of your memory-store an experience which you had ten years ago, a past event which you have gone through rises up before your soul as an image. You know exactly from the circumstances of life that it rises up as a picture. Yet this picture conveys a knowledge of something which really existed ten years ago. How does this arise? Through the fact that in your organism certain processes remained behind which now summon up the picture. Certain processes have remained behind in your organism and these summon up in you the picture enabling you to re-construct what you experienced ten years ago. But super-sensible knowledge leads us deeper into man's inner nature. We can perceive, for instance, that the physical body becomes mineralised during the thinking process; we perceive this in the same way in which we learn to know some past experience of our earthly life through the traces which it left behind within us. In the same way the development of the earth can be understood from the development of man; through the activity of the mineral in man we learn to know the task of the mineral kingdom within the development of the earth. And if, as already set forth, we learn similarly to know (I can only mention this, for a detailed description would lead us too far) how the vegetable kingdom is connected with man, and how the animal kingdom is connected with him (for this too can be recognised), then the development of the world can be grasped by setting out from the human being. And within the development of the world we can then see something which is again of the same importance to those who are interested in modern civilisation, as are the facts which I explained in connection with a knowledge of the human being, of the eternal inner kernel of man. We know that modern civilisation has succeeded, at least up to a certain point, in so regarding man's relationship to the development of the world as to attach him to the evolution of the animals,—even though the corresponding theories, or the hypotheses, as some people say, still contain much that is unclear, requiring completion and modification. We follow the development of the simplest organic beings up to the higher animals, and if we continue this line of observation we come indeed to the point of placing man at the summit of animal development. One person does it in this way, and the other in that way, one more idealistically, and the other more materialistically in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent, but methodically, it can hardly be denied that if we wish to study man's physical nature according to natural-scientific methods, we must rank him with the animal kingdom,—as has been done for some time. We must investigate how his head has changed in comparison with the heads of the different animal-species; we must investigate his limbs, etc., and we thus obtain what is known as comparative anatomy, comparative morphology, comparative physiology, and we then also form concepts as to how man's physical form has gradually developed out of lower beings in the course of the world's evolution. But in so doing we always remain in the physical sphere. On the one hand people take it amiss to-day if the anthroposophical spiritual investigator speaks of the spiritual world as I have taken upon myself to do in this lecture; from many sides this is viewed as pure fantasy, and although many people believe that it is well-meant ... they nevertheless look upon it as something visionary and fanciful. Those who become acquainted to some extent with what I have described, those who at least try to understand it, will see that the preparations and preliminary conditions for it are just as serious as, for instance, the preparations for the study of mathematics, so that it is out of the question to speak of sailing into some sort of fanciful domain. But just as on the one hand people take it amiss if one describes the spiritual world as a real visible world, so they take it amiss on the other hand if in regard to man's physical development one fully accepts those who follow man's development Darwinistically, with a natural-scientific discipline, along the animal line of descent, as far as man. No speculations should enter the observations made in the physical sphere and all sorts of things sought for there, as is done for instance, to-day in Neo-vitalism. This is full of speculations; the old vitalism was also full of speculative elements. But whenever we consider the physical world, we must keep to the physical facts. For this reason, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator who on the one hand ventures to speak in a certain way of the conditions after death and before birth, as I have done, does not consider it as a reproach (i.e. he is not affected by it) when people tell him that his description of the physical world is completely that of a modern natural scientist. He does not bring any dreams into the sphere which constitutes the physical world. Even though people may call him a materialist when he describes the physical world, this reproach does not touch him, because he strictly separates the spiritual world, which can only be observed with the aid of a spiritual method, from the physical-sensory world, which has to be observed with the orderly disciplined methods of modern natural science. A serious spiritual-scientific investigator must therefore feel particularly hurt and pained at reproaches made to him with regard to certain followers of spiritual science who sometimes rebuke natural science out of a certain pride in their spiritual-scientific knowledge and out of their undoubtedly shallow knowledge of natural science. They think that they have the right to speak negatively of science and of scientific achievements but the spiritual investigator can only feel deeply hurt at their amateurish, dilettantish behaviour. This is however not in keeping with spiritual science. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy is characterised by the fact that it deals just as strictly and scientifically with the external physical world, as with the spiritual world, and vice versa. With this preliminary condition, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator stands entirely upon the ground of strictest natural-scientific observation in regard to the study of the world's development, but at the same time he turns his gaze towards the soul-spiritual world. And even as he knows that not only a physical process is connected with man's individual embryonic origin in the physical world, but that a soul-spiritual element unites with the human embryo, with the human germ, so he also knows that in the whole development of the world—though to the physical body it appears as a tapestry of sensory objects, and though it manifests itself to the web of thoughts, i.e. to the etheric body, in laws of Nature—he also knows that the physical world is permeated and guided in its whole development by spiritual forces, under the sway of spiritual Beings, that can be known through the methods I have described. The anthroposophical investigator therefore knows that when he contemplates the external physical world in the sense of genuine science, he comes to the right boundary, where he may then begin with his spiritual investigation. If we have conscientiously traced evolutionary development through the animal kingdom up to man, as Darwin or other Darwinians or Haeckel did, and if we have gone into its scientific justification we can then continue this in a spiritual-scientific direction, after having reached the boundary to which we are led by natural science. We now discover that contemplation of the form into which we penetrate through super-sensible knowledge, shows us the whole significance of forms, as they appear in the kingdom of man on the one hand, and in the animal-kingdom on the other; we discover the whole significance of these forms. Equipped with the knowledge supplied by super-sensible research, we see how the animal (this is at least the case with most animals, and exceptions can be easily explained) stands upon the ground with its four limbs, how its spine is horizontal, parallel with the surface of the earth, and how in regard to the spine, the head develops in an entirely different position from that of man. We learn to know the animal's whole form, as it were, from within, as a complex of forces, and also in relationship with the whole universe. And we thus learn to make a comparison: We perceive the transformation, the metamorphosis in the human form, in the human being whom we see standing upon his two legs, at right angles, so to speak, with the animal's spine, with his own spine set vertically to the surface of the earth and his head developing in accordance with this position of the spine. By penetrating into the inner art of Nature's creative process, we learn to distinguish the human form from the animal form; we recognise this by entering into the artistic creative process of the cosmos. And we penetrate into the development of the world by rising from otherwise abstract constructive thoughts to thoughts which are inwardly filled with life, which form themselves artistically in the spirit. The important thing to be borne in mind is that when it seeks to know the development of the world, anthroposophical spiritual research changes from the abstract understanding ordinarily described—and justly so—as dry, prosaic, systematic thought, or combining thought, into more concrete, real thought. Not for the higher spiritual world, in which concepts must penetrate by the methods described, but for the physical world, the forms in world-development should first be grasped through a kind of artistic comprehension, which in addition develops upon the foundation of super-sensible knowledge. By thus indicating how science should change into art, we must of course encounter the objection raised by those who are accustomed to think in accordance with modern ideas: “But science must not become an art!” Now this can always be said, as a human requirement. People can say: Now I forbid the logic of the universe to become an art, for we only learn to know reality by linking up thought with thought and by thus approaching reality. Yes, if the world were as people imagine it to be, one could refuse to ascend to art, to an artistic comprehension of forms; but if the world is formed in such a way that it can only be comprehended through an artistic comprehension, it is necessary to advance to such an artistic comprehension. This is how matters stand. That is why those people who were earnestly seeking to grasp the organic in the world-development really came to an inner development of the thinking ordinarily looked upon as scientific thinking, they came to an artistic comprehension of the world. And as soon as we observe with an artistic-intuitive eye the development of the world, beginning with the point where the ordinary Darwinistic theory comes to a standstill, we perceive that man, grasped as a whole, cannot simply be looked upon by saying that once there were lower animals in the world, from which higher animals developed, that then still higher animals developed out of these, and so forth, until finally man arose. If we study embryology in an unprejudiced way, it really contradicts this conception. Although modern scientists set up the fundamental law of biogenetics and compare embryology with phylogeny, they do not interpret rightly what appears outwardly even in human embryology, because they do not rise to this artistic comprehension of the world's development. If we observe in a human embryo how the limbs develop out of organs which at first have a stunted aspect, how everything is at first actually head, we already obtain the first elements of what is revealed by the artistic comprehension of the human form as I meant it. It is not possible to range the whole human being with the animals. One cannot say: The human being, such as he stands before us to-day, is a descendant of the whole animal species. No, this is not the case. Just those who penetrate with genuine scientific conscientiousness into scientific Darwinism and its modern description of the development of the world, will discover that through a higher understanding it is simply impossible to place man at the end, or at the summit of the animal-chain of development; they must instead study the human head as such, the head of the human beings. This human head alone descends from the whole animal kingdom. Though it may sound strange and paradoxical, the part which is generally considered as man's most perfect part, is a transformation from the animal kingdom. Let us approach the human head with this idea and let us study it carefully. Observe with a certain morphological-artistic sense how the lower maxillary bones are transformed limbs, how also the upper maxillary bones are transformed limbs, how everything in the head is an enhanced development of the animal form; you will then recognise in the human head that upon a higher stage it reveals everything which has been developed in the animal under so many different forms. You will then also understand why it is so. When you observe the animal, you can see that its head hangs upon one extremity of the spine and that in the typical animal it is entirely subjected to the law of gravity. Observe instead the human head, observe how the human being stands within the cosmos. The human head is set upon a spine which has a vertical direction. It rests upon the remaining body in such a way that the rest of man protects the head, as it were, against being subjected to the force of gravity alone. The human head is really something which rests upon the remaining organism with comparative independence. And we come to understand that through the fact that the human head is carried by the remaining body, it really travels along like a person using a coach; for it is the rest of the body which carries the human head through the world. The human head has its transformed limbs which have become shrivelled, as it were, and it is set upon the rest of the organism. This remaining organism is related to the human head in the same way in which the whole earth with its force of gravity is related to the animal. In regard to the head, the human being is “membered” into his whole remaining body in the same way in which the whole animal is “membered” into the earth. We now begin to understand the human being through the development of the world. And if we proceed in this knowledge of the human form with an artistic sense and understanding, we finally comprehend how the human head is the continuation of the animal-series and how the remaining body of man developed later, out of the earth, and was attached to the human head. Only in this way we gradually learn to understand man's development. If we go back into earlier times of the past, we can only transfer into these primordial epochs that part of man which lies at the foundation of his present head-development. We must not seek the development of his limbs or of his thorax in those early ages, for these developed later. But if we observe the development of the world by setting out, as I described, from the human being, if we observe it in the same way in which we look upon some past experience through memory, we find that the human being had already begun his development in the world at a time when our higher animals, for instance, did not as yet exist. There were however other animal forms present at that time from which the human head has developed, but the higher animals of to-day were not in existence. We can therefore say: (let us now take a later epoch of the earth) In the further course of his development, man developed his head out of earlier animal-beings through the fact that his spiritual essence animated him. That is why he could bring his head to a higher stage of development. He then added his limbs, which developed out of the regular forces of the earth. The animals which followed, could only develop to the extent to which man had developed with the exclusion of his head. They began their development later, so that they have not come as far as the human development of the head; they remain connected with the earth, while the human being separates himself from it. This proves that it has a real meaning to say: Man is organised into the development of the universe in such a way that while he is connected with the animal kingdom, he rises above it through his spiritual development. The animals which followed man in their development could only develop as much as man had developed in his limbs and thorax ... the head remained stunted, because a longer time of development should have preceded it, such as that of man, in order that the real head might develop. Through an artistic contemplation of the forms in the world's development, the conscientiously accepted Darwinistic theory is transformed, in so far as it is scientifically justified to-day. And we recognise that in the development of the world the human being has behind him a longer time of development than the animals,—that the animals develop as their chief form that part which man merely adds to his head. In this way man reaches the point of lifting one part of his being out of the force of gravity, whereas the animals are entirely subjected to it. Everything which constituted our head with its sense-organs, is raised above the force of gravity, so that it does not turn towards heavy ponderable matter, but towards the ether, which fills the sensory world. This is the case above all with the senses; we should see this, if we were to study them more closely. In this way, for instance, the human organ of hearing depends upon an etheric structure, not only upon the air structure. Through all this, the human being forms part not only of the material world, of the ponderable physical world, but he forms part of the etheric outer world. Through the etheric world he perceives, for instance, what the light conjures up before him in the world of colours, etc., etc. Even through his external form he rises above heavy matter, up to the free ether, and for this reason we see the development of the world in a different way when we ascend from natural science to spiritual science. But when we rise up to an artistic conception, we also perceive the activity of the soul-spiritual in man, and we must rise up to such a conception if we wish to understand the human being. We should, for instance, be able to say: In regard to his soul-spiritual, sentient-volitional being, we must speak of loneliness and of a life in common with others, as if these were theoretical concepts, as I described to-day; we must rise up to the moral world and finally we come to the religious world. These worlds are interwoven and form a whole. If we study the human being in accordance with a natural-scientific mentality and in the sense of modern civilisation, we find on the one hand the rigid scientific necessity of Nature into which the human being is also inserted, and on the other hand, we find that man can only be conscious of his dignity and can only say: I am truly man, if he can feel within him the moral-religious impulses. But if we honestly stand upon the foundation of natural science, we have pure hypotheses as to the beginning and the end of the earth, hypotheses which speak of the Kant-Laplace nebula for the beginning of the earth and of a heat-death for the end of the earth. If in the face of the natural-scientific demands we now consider, in the sense of modern civilisation, the moral-religious world which reveals itself intuitively (I have shown this in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity), if we consider this world we must say: We really delude ourselves, we conjure up before us a fog. Is it possible to believe that when the earth passes through the death by heat, that there should still exist anything else in the sense of natural science than the death too of all ideals? At this point spiritual science, or Anthroposophy steps in, and shows that the soul-spiritual is a reality, that it is working upon the physical and that it has placed man in the human form, into the evolution of the world. It shows that we should look back upon animal-beings which are entirely different from the present animals, that it is possible to adhere to the methods of modern science, but that other results are obtained. Anthroposophy thus inserts the moral element into the science of religion, and Anthroposophy thus becomes moral-religious knowledge. Now we no longer merely look towards the Kant-Laplace nebula, but we look at the same time to an original spiritual element, out of which the soul-spiritual world described in Anthroposophy has just as much developed as the physical world has developed out of a physical-earthly origin. And we also look towards the end of the earth and since the laws of entropy are fully justified, we can show that the earth will end through a kind of death by heat. But we look towards the end just as from the anthroposophical standpoint we can view the end of the single human being: his corpse is handed over to the elements, the human being himself passes over into a spiritual world. This is how we envisage the end of the earth. The scientific results do not disturb us, for we know that everything of a soul-spiritual nature which men have developed will pass through the earth's portal of death when the earth no longer exists; it will pass over into a new world-development, even as the human being passes over into a new world-development when he passes through death. By surveying the development of the earth in this way, we perceive in the middle of its development the event of Golgotha. We see how this event of Golgotha is placed in the middle of the earth's development, because formerly, there only existed forces which would have led man to a kind of paralysis of his forces. We really learn to recognise (I can only allude to this at the end of my lecture) that in the same way in which through the vegetable and animal fertilization a special element enters the fertilised organism, so the Mystery of Golgotha brought something into the evolution of the world from spiritual worlds outside the earth, and this continues to live, it accompanies the souls, until at the end of the earth, they pass on to new metamorphoses of earthly life. I should have to describe whole volumes were I to show the path leading in a strictly conscientious scientific way from what I have described to you to-day in connection with the evolution of humanity and of the universe, to the mystery of Golgotha, to the appearance of the Christ-Being within earthly existence. But through a spiritual-scientific deepening many passages in the Gospel will appear in an entirely new light, in a different way from what it has hitherto been possible for Western consciousness. Let us consider only the following fact: If we take our stand fully upon a natural-scientific foundation, we must envisage the physical end of the earth. And those who continue to stand upon this scientific foundation, will also find that finally the starry world surrounding the earth will fall away; they will look upon a future in which this earth below will no longer exist and the stars above will no longer exist. But spiritual science gives us the certainty that just as an eternal being goes out of the physical and etheric body every evening and returns into them every morning, so an eternal being will continue to live on when its individual body falls away. When the whole earth falls away from all the human soul-spiritual beings, this eternal part will continue to live and it will pass over to new planetary phases of world evolution. Now Christ's words in the Gospels resound to us in a new and wonderful way: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away, and connected with these words are those of St. Paul: Not I, but Christ in me. If a Christian really grasps these words, if one who really understands Christianity inwardly and who says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” understands Christ's words, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away,” that is, what lives within my everlasting Being shall not pass away,—these words will shine forth from the Gospel in a remarkable way, with a magic that calls forth reverence, but if one is really honest they cannot be directly understood without further effort. If we approach such words and others, with the aid of spiritual science and in the anthroposophical sense, if we approach many other sayings which come to us out of the spiritual darkness of the world-development, of the development of the earth and of humanity, a light will ray on to them. Indeed, it is as if light were to fall upon such words as “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away”—light falls upon them, if we hear them resounding from that region where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, that event through which the whole development of the earth first acquires its true meaning. Thus we see that spiritual science in the sense of Anthroposophy strives above all after a conscientious observation of the strict methods of the physical world, but at the same time it seeks to continue these strict scientific methods into regions where our true eternal being shines out towards us, regions where also the spiritual being of the world-development rays out its light towards us, a light in which the world-development itself with its spiritual forces and Beings appears in its spiritual-divine character. At the conclusion of my lecture let me express the following fact: Spiritual-scientific Anthroposophy can fully understand that modern humanity, particularly conscientious, scientifically-minded men, have grown accustomed to consider as real and certain the results of causal natural-scientific knowledge, the results of external sense-observation, intellectual combinations of these sensory observations, and experiments. And by acquiring this certainty, they acquired a certain feeling in general towards that which can be “certain.” Up to now no attempt has been made to study super-sensible things in the same way in which physical things are studied. This certainty could therefore not be carried into super-sensible regions. To-day people still believe that they must halt with a mere faith at the thresh-hold of the super-sensible worlds, that feelings full of reverence suffice, because otherwise they would lose the mystery, and the super-sensible world would be rationalised. But spiritual science does not seek to rationalise the mystery, to dispel the reverent feeling which one has towards the mystery: it leads man to these mysteries through sight. Anthroposophy leaves the mystery its mystery-character, but it sets it into the evolution of the world in the same way in which sensory things exist in the sphere of world-evolution. And it must be true that men also need certainty for the spheres transcending mere Nature. To the extent in which they will feel that through spiritual science in the sense of Anthroposophy they do not hear some vague amateurish and indistinct talk about the spiritual worlds, but something which is filled by the same spirit which comes to expression in modern science, to this same extent humanity will also feel that the certainty which it acquired, the certainty which it is accustomed to have through the physical world, can also be led over into the spiritual worlds. People will feel: If certainty exists only in regard to the physical world, of what use is this certainty, since the physical world passes away? Man needs an eternal element, for he himself wants to be rooted in an eternal element. He cannot admit that this certainty should only be valid for the transient, perishable world. Certainty, the certainty of knowledge, must also be gained in regard to the imperishable world. This is the aim pursued in greatest modesty (those who follow the spiritual science of Anthroposophy know this) by Anthroposophy. Its aim is that through his natural certainty man should not lose his knowledge of the imperishable; through his certainty in regard to perishable things he should not lose the certainty in regard to imperishable things. Certainty in regard to the imperishable, that is to say, certainty in regard to the riddle of birth and death, the riddle of immortality, the riddle of the spiritual world-evolutions, this is what Anthroposophy seeks to bring into our civilisation. Anthroposophy believes that this can be its contribution to modern civilisation. For in the same measure in which people courageously recognise that certainty must be gained also in regard to imperishable things, and not only in regard to perishable things, in the same measure they will grow accustomed to look upon Anthroposophy no longer as something fantastic and as an idle individual hobby, but as something which must enter our whole spiritual culture, like all the other branches of science, and thereby our civilisation in general. |
173b. The Karma of Untruthfulness I: LectureI XIII
31 Dec 1916, Dornach Tr. Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner |
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But those substances that have developed in a forward direction, those substances that live in us in such a way that they can transform themselves to become the bearer of our ego, these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon. It is only because we bear within us these transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon that we have to some extent the capacity to be ego-conscious beings. I have mentioned this, even in public lectures, by saying that, in order to live, man needs not only constructive but also destructive forces. Without the latter, ego intelligence would be impossible. From birth onwards, breaking-down, growing-old and death are necessary, for it is in the processes of breaking-down—not those of building-up—that the possibility for our spiritual development lives. |
The links with the old atavistic knowledge have been severed, precisely because mankind is to become free to develop ego-consciousness ever further. So there is a fading away of what was still quite clear to the old atavistic consciousness and which is expressed in certain myths. |
173b. The Karma of Untruthfulness I: LectureI XIII
31 Dec 1916, Dornach Tr. Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner |
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You will understand that for one who follows with sympathy the destiny of mankind it will be difficult to speak today, on New Year's Eve. I expect it will be understandable if what I have to say today cannot be rounded off in the way we have come to expect, for that ‘New Year's Eve gift’ received by mankind will hardly allow the free unfolding of what is in my soul. Yesterday I endeavoured to describe to you a historical event and to show that on no account may such an event be judged in a moral sense, for events founded on historical necessity may not be assessed morally. We have to be quite clear that just as the Mystery of Golgotha has nothing to do with peoples or groups of people—for its light falls only on the individual human being—so, by analogy, is it also impossible to transfer to groups the way in which we morally judge the thinking, feeling and willing of the individual. There are other cases, also, to which moral yardsticks may not be applied. For instance, it would not occur to anyone to apply a moral yardstick to the building of a house; no one would find one roof less moral than another because of its shape. It is just that this example is more extreme, so it is more obvious that people would not apply moral judgements to such things; in such an extreme case they would be unlikely to let themselves be led astray by moral judgements. In contrast, however, those who want to work on people's souls, which are ever open to such things, choose just this method of decking out with moral reasons things to which, in truth, moral judgements do not apply and which cannot be judged morally, except by hypocrites. That is why I put before you an event which had the capacity of throwing light on certain motives which are at work in human evolution on the physical plane. It is not permissible to make moral judgements, either positive or negative, about events such as the Opium War I described to you yesterday. Where would a moral judgement lead, even if it were one which might make people consult their consciences? Suppose someone were to say: That was indeed an immoral venture, but now we have put it behind us. This would be one of those judgements intended to lull us to sleep! For thanks to the millions which flowed from Asia to Europe at that time, there exists today, in all its glory, that kingdom which ought to consult its conscience. To be logical it would then also be necessary, from the same standpoint of conscience, to condemn the present intrigues just as firmly and sharply as one condemns the Opium War! If one did not do so it would be like taking into account, in the case of a house, only the first, second and third floors and the attic, while leaving out what cannot be left out—namely, the ground floor. What was won at that time belongs now to the whole configuration of the British Empire. Perhaps you have heard the example of how much a penny or a centime invested at the time of the birth of Christ at compound interest would have increased by now. This shows you what increase of riches is possible over the years. So if you want to judge the yield of the Opium War you must look at it as a whole. Then you will see that what has grown out of those millions—after all, this has been going on for a century—is something which is preparing to rule the world, to overrun the world; this is what may be found in what was won at that time! You see, it would be an offence against all truth to consider in isolation a single event which is part of an ongoing evolution. What you can say is that what has since developed is one of the consequences of the Opium War. You can say this quite objectively, without taking up a positive or negative moral stance. It is not permissible to paint over the facts with shades of morality. If we do this today, we are preventing the possibility of any subsequent insight into what is going on now. On karmic and moral grounds we have to presume that, looking back on today's events in the decades or centuries to come, people will condemn with an equal degree of certainty and conviction what is today defended with noble moral patriotism. In the centuries to come, today's events will look very similar. It behoves us to look more deeply into such things as they occur on the physical plane, especially at a moment like this when, on the one hand, the turn of the year should awaken a festive mood in our souls, while on the other hand the bitterness of events must move us deeply—unless we are utterly superficial. Regardless of any side we might support, none of us can fail to realize that on the words we have read today could depend the most terrible destiny for the whole of mankind. I said: It behoves those of us who stand for spiritual knowledge to look more deeply into things. So today, since I do not know how much longer it will be possible to speak about such spiritual matters in Europe, I want to draw your attention to something which may serve as an example to help us look more deeply into conditions which are manifested outwardly in what we see on the physical plane. You see, even more than is the case in the sciences which apply to the physical plane, it is necessary to be clear that in spiritual science the facts and the way they relate to one another are not simple at all, but very complicated indeed. I have often stressed the complicated nature of these facts and have begged you to understand that although the general formulae, ideas and laws about the relationships between the different aspects of life which we receive from spiritual science are absolutely correct, nevertheless they are naturally extraordinarily complex in their application to actual cases. We have often spoken about the time between death and a new birth and of how the human being descends again to the physical world in order to incarnate his soul-and-spirit being into a physical body. So we can realize that whenever we raise our spiritual eye to the spiritual world we always find souls who, with the forces they have gathered between death and their new birth, are preparing to descend into physical bodies. In other words, here down below the possibilities await the creation of those physical bodies, while up above there are the forces in the souls which guide them to these physical bodies. Now you must consider a number of other things together with what I have just said. You know that one of the objections to the concept of repeated earthly lives is: The human population is increasing all the time, so where do all the souls come from? I have often replied that this is a superficial objection, for the simple reason that people forget to take into account that this so-called increase in the population of the world has only been observed in very recent centuries. For instance, those scientists who are so very proud of the exactitude of their calculations would be highly embarrassed if one were to question them about the population statistics of the year 1348 when America had not yet been discovered. The objections often mentioned are indeed staggeringly superficial. It is a fact that in some parts of the world the birth rate diminishes while it rises elsewhere, so that the population density varies in different places. This brings about a certain amount of disharmony. It can happen that, in accordance with the conditions prevailing in relation to the incarnation of souls who are living between death and a newbirth, there are certain souls who, as a result of previous incarnations, are inclined to descend to a certain part of the world but that there are too few bodies available there. This can indeed happen. Furthermore, there is something else that can happen as well, which I would like you to consider in connection with what we have been saying. Some time ago—and you will see from this that the lectures I have given here in recent weeks have not been without a wider context—I mentioned that John Stuart Mill, and the Russian philosopher and politician Herzen, have both pointed out that in many ways a kind of ‘Chineseness’ is beginning to manifest in Europe, as though Europe were becoming ‘chinesified’. This was no idle remark on my part. If John Stuart Mill, who was a keen observer, considered that many people in his vicinity were beginning to show noticeable Chinese traits, then in certain respects he was quite right. Consider the following: Souls exist who, as a result of their former lives, are inclined to incarnate in Chinese bodies during the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the twentieth. Now since the Chinese population is nowhere near as great as it was in former times, it is, in any case, not possible for all these Chinese souls to incarnate there. In Europe, on the other hand, the physical population has increased considerably in recent times, and so many souls can be accommodated here who were really destined for incarnation in Chinese bodies. This is one reason why keen observers are beginning to notice that Europe is becoming ‘chinesified’. But this alone would not have sufficed to prepare Europe for that European karma which was to come about. A helping hand was needed to assist a certain aspect of the great laws of existence. Now if over a long period something is brought about of the kind I mentioned yesterday, namely, that very many bodies in a whole population are caused to become emaciated, then a situation will arise in which souls who were inclined towards that area will not, after all, incarnate in those bodies. By bringing about the ‘opiumising’ of Chinese bodies and causing generations to come into being under the influence of opium's forces, it was possible to condemn the Chinese to take in, to a certain extent, some very immature, sub-standard souls, whose qualities I shall not discuss. But those souls who had themselves decided to incarnate in Chinese bodies were thereby prevented from approaching these ‘opiumised’ bodies. They were diverted to Europe where they brought about among the European population those traits which have, meanwhile, been noted by those keen observers I mentioned. So you see that an event on the physical plane such as the Opium War has a quite definite spiritual background. In the first instance, its purpose is not to help certain people make millions and grow rich but to prevent certain souls who would have come from the spiritual world round about now, to strengthen the cultural forces of Europe, from incarnating yet, and instead to surreptitiously fill European bodies with Chinese souls. This is really so, however paradoxical it may seem. This momentous event has truly become fact. In a great many European people a disharmony between soul and body has been brought about in the way I have just described. Such disharmony between soul and body always has the consequence of making it impossible to use the tools of the body properly. This makes it possible, instead, for others to busy themselves with errors and untruths. It would not be so easy to work by means of errors and untruths, if those who see through these errors and untruths were not condemned, by the conventions of their day, to preach in the wilderness. You see, therefore, that I certainly did not mention what I told you yesterday merely in order to link it in an insulting manner with a particular nation. I mentioned it as an example of how actions by human beings here on the physical plane can bring about far-reaching changes in the spiritual evolution of mankind as a whole. Furthermore, please do not imagine that I told you what I did about the hotbeds of deception, and the manner in which they bring about errors and illusions, simply for my own amusement. Here, too, my intention was to show you much that goes on in our materialistic age. And today I have sought to demonstrate the kind of result one discovers when one observes not only the physical events but also the spiritual background of what human beings bring about. Seen in this way, that Opium War meant the switching of a soul element from a part of the earth to which it belonged—and where it might have been of use, because it would have been united with bodies into which it would have fitted—to another part of the earth where it could become a tool for forces whose designs are by no means necessarily beneficial for mankind. We must realize, of course, that an ordinary historian will only notice some degree of degeneration in certain strata of the Chinese population resulting from the Opium War. But one who, in addition, observes the spiritual aspects of cultural history will have to look more deeply in order to see what is brought about by this degeneration for the whole of mankind. For only in this fifth post-Atlantean period, which is entirely permeated by materialism, is it possible to observe things in a manner so deeply ahrimanic—a manner which pervades all thinking and all ideas—that if something good or something bad is done to a part of mankind, people really can believe that this will not affect mankind as a whole. Whatever is done in connection with, or by, a part of mankind, will always affect the whole of human evolution because of the way the forces behind the scenes of physical existence arrange things. Not until the sixth post-Atlantean period will a sense of responsibility become general among mankind so that each individual feels responsible for what he does, not only towards himself but towards mankind as a whole. Today we are surrounded by such a mood of catastrophe because the very opposite of this is the general trend, and from the attitudes prevalent today mankind will prepare to crystallize out the opposite as the right view. So this is an example which can show you that what takes place on the physical plane really does affect even the spiritual world, and is therefore not only significant for the physical plane but is also echoed in the events of the spiritual world and thus of the whole universe. This is expressed quite deliberately in the mystery drama not for the poetic effect but, for once, in order to give embodiment to a truth which needs to be placed into our present time equally as much as everything else that is contained in the Mysteries. Man has as yet not progressed very far along the road towards the achievement of wider horizons in his view of the world. Somehow he does not really want wider horizons in his view of the world. At the same time, science today is intent on restricting the horizon more and more. For science is secretly afraid of what the truth really is. Fear of the truth is taking hold of mankind increasingly, both in everyday matters and in wider contexts. Indeed, if this were not the case in the wider contexts, neither could it come about in everyday situations. For instance, people would no longer continue to draw out the war merely because they are afraid that if an understanding were to be reached by means of proper discussion, certain matters would then be revealed of which they are—well, of which they are afraid. Some of you will remember the lecture cycle I gave in Vienna in the spring of 1914 when I summarized much of what I have said over the years about the tendencies and inclinations of our time. I said there that it is possible to speak about a social carcinoma. I must admit to being somewhat astonished by the way such remarks—which throw a profound light on certain existing things—are very frequently taken simply as remarks which satisfy curiosity to some extent, just like any other remark that might be made. I was trying to point out—at the beginning of 1914—that in our life today certain impulses are active comparable with the impulse in the physical human organism underlying the formation of a carcinoma, the disease of cancer. I said that just as one studies the sick physical organism, it would more and more become a task for mankind to study the social organism. Although poisons causing the disease are not present in the same way as they are in a physical organism, nevertheless they are no less poisons which create the disease. But to do this, a sense for what is spiritual is needed. And you cannot have a sense for the spiritual if you deny its existence. Of course the social organism is not infiltrated with bacterial poison as though it were a physical organism. The poison in the social organism can only be found if you have a sense for the spiritual as it interweaves with physical existence. But if there is a possibility of doing more than merely making analogies—which are inadmissible anyway—if there is a possibility of following events on the different planes, then it will be possible to form an idea of what is behind these things. It might be asked how it can be possible at all in the social life of the globe to move, in the way I have described, a whole company of souls from one part to another, just as though an illness were being artificially cultivated in a human body. But if these things are understood, if they are, to begin with, studied independently of what comes to meet us in human life, much may be noticed. Consider that plant life, animal life and, of course, also the minerals, are all capable of secreting poisons. As you know, these poisons have two different characteristics. On the one hand they are ‘poisons’, they destroy higher forms of life; they destroy and slay, for instance, the human organism. But on the other hand, suitably prepared and taken in suitable doses, they are medicaments. This arises from profound interconnections in the whole realm of nature. We ought gradually to acquire certain ideas about this, not based on hypotheses or, even worse, on fantasies, but on spiritual science. We know, for instance, the truth about the evolution of man and, connected with this, of way the world has passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences and has now reached Earth existence. We know that before the present Earth existence there was the Moon existence. I have described this to some extent, though hitherto more physically, depicting the substantiality, the substances of Moon existence. From my descriptions you can see that this Moon existence was quite physical, that it was—at least in certain stages—just as physical as Earth existence is today. Even though the mineral kingdom did not exist, Moon existence was physical. The physical structures were held by different conditions, but they were physical. So the question arises: How can the substantiality of ancient Moon be compared with the substantiality of Earth, with what flows and pulsates in the substances of our Earth? Spiritual investigation reveals that the substances existing on Earth today have really only come about during the course of Earth existence. They are such that the human body, which needs them for its nourishment, can unite itself with them. They passed through earlier stages but only reached their present stage during Earth existence. You could not speak of ‘wheat’ or ‘barley’ during Moon existence. So what substances now present on Earth were there during Moon existence? Every mineral, plant and animal poison, every poison that flows through these kingdoms, everything we today call poison and which today works as poison—these were the normal substances of Moon! You need only recall something I have pointed out quite often, namely, that prussic acid was present as something quite normal on ancient Moon. I have mentioned this a number of times since the year 1906, when I spoke about it for the first time, in Paris. All these things are connected with prussic acid. On ancient Moon the substances which are today poisonous played the same role as do the plant juices on Earth, those juices which agree with man. But why are the poisons still present today? For the same reason that Ahriman is present. They are what has remained behind, something that has remained behind in physical forms. So we now have what agrees with man, that is, whatever has progressed in the normal way, and certain other substances which have remained behind at the Moon stage, which is now the stage of poisons. There is also another aspect to this matter. We know that today's spirituality only developed as a possibility during the transition from ancient Moon to Earth existence. Our normal development was also paralleled in the substances of the lower kingdoms. Only the poisons remained behind. But there is a link, not in the spiritual but in the physical sense, between the substances on which our higher man is founded—that is, the higher organs which make us human, those organs which only developed during Earth existence—and the poisonous substances of Moon existence. To a certain degree we bear within ourselves the further stage of development of the poisons. The substances we today regard as poisonous are something which has remained behind at an earlier stage. Those substances from the lower kingdoms which man cannot tolerate have developed in a retrograde direction. But those substances that have developed in a forward direction, those substances that live in us in such a way that they can transform themselves to become the bearer of our ego, these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon. It is only because we bear within us these transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon that we have to some extent the capacity to be ego-conscious beings. I have mentioned this, even in public lectures, by saying that, in order to live, man needs not only constructive but also destructive forces. Without the latter, ego intelligence would be impossible. From birth onwards, breaking-down, growing-old and death are necessary, for it is in the processes of breaking-down—not those of building-up—that the possibility for our spiritual development lives. The building-up process lulls us to sleep. The building-up process is like rank, abundant growth which sends us to sleep. It dampens down consciousness. Consciousness can only live by using up spiritual forces. Those structures within us, together with their substances, which use up spiritual forces—these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon; they are transformed in such a way that they no longer work in the way they did on ancient Moon. It is difficult to imagine this in connection with certain poisonous substances. But what we have to imagine about the development of these poisons is that their intensity has been reduced by one seventh, or two sevenths, or three sevenths. Poisonous substances in plants are as they are today because they have remained behind from Moon existence. But other poisonous substances have had their poisonous potential reduced many times, and these have been inoculated into us during the course of evolution. Because of this we are capable of growing old during our lifetime. Also because of this we are capable of using these poisonous effects—for they are poisonous effects—which are connected with the way the male element works on the female element in human procreation. The effect of the poison is expressed in the fact that, without it, the female alone would tend to bring forth only an etheric being. For this etheric being to find a physical form, the rank growth of etheric life has to be poisoned. I hinted at this in my lecture on physiology some time ago in Prague. The act of fertilization provides this poisoning, just as in plant life the effect of etheric material on the pistil—which is the fertilization act of the plant—provides a poisoning by light. Here you have something which has come into existence for man since the beginning of Earth existence: procreation. It is a kind of distilled poisonous effect, a poisonous effect which existed on ancient Moon in an intensity equalling that of the poisons which have now remained behind in the lower kingdoms. You can now understand a sentence which I simply want to place before you for the moment: Ordinary poisons, which are ahrimanic substances left over from ancient Moon, are the opponents of progressive evolution; distilled, in a way diluted, they provide the physical substance which is the bearer of our spiritual life. What happens when a diseased form comes into being, when a form falls ill? Medical science will have to concern itself more and more with such things, so that it can widen its view through spiritual science. When a diseased form comes into being, this means that evolution is advancing faster, and with it our physical organism. If some form—and this need not only be a growth, it could be something fluid or not even fluid in the organism—if such a form comes into being, this means that a part of the physical organism is growing faster than normal. A carcinoma, for instance, comes about when a part of the organism excludes itself and starts to evolve more quickly than the rest of the human organism. In physical life, the life of substances, this is something luciferic. I do not mean luciferic in the moral sense; it is simply objectively luciferic. And it is balanced out by poison, because poison is ahrimanic—and that is the opposite. If you can find the proper polar opposite then the luciferic growth will be balanced by the poison, which is ahrimanic. These two can balance each other out if they work in the right way. From this you see that the concepts of what is luciferic and what is ahrimanic may be pursued right down into the realms of natural life. They may also be pursued upwards into human life, human social life. If we wanted to be cleverer than the gods, we might ask why they did not make the world without all these poisons. We would have to be as clever as that King of Spain, who first asked this in relation to a particular case. Now, just as these poisons work as actual substances in the human organism, so do they also work spiritually in social life. And in social life it is possible to guide and lead them. What is grey magic really? Grey magic is nothing other than the guiding of poisonous effects in such a way that they cause damage and bring about sickness in the social sense. This is, in the first place, something which must be taken into account by those who seriously wish to learn about life. So as not to go on for too long about one subject, we shall continue—probably tomorrow—to talk further about poison, sickness and health. Meanwhile, we might find in our soul the question: What is the consequence of all this? If you meditate on it you will not fail to see the connection. The consequence is that, having evolved beyond the former atavistic knowledge of these things, mankind now has the task of striving for truth with the new consciousness which has been achieved. Without this, nothing is possible. The links with the old atavistic knowledge have been severed, precisely because mankind is to become free to develop ego-consciousness ever further. So there is a fading away of what was still quite clear to the old atavistic consciousness and which is expressed in certain myths. I have demonstrated to you the connection between a myth such as the Baldur myth and great all-encompassing manifestations of human evolution. Our scientific simpletons who conduct research into myths and legends can go no further than to maintain that they are an expression of creative folk imagination. In reality, however, they encompass deeply significant truths which are revealed particularly through the fact that they are truly worked out down to the last detail. As an example, the Baldur myth, among many other things, gives us a very good idea of the gradation of poisons. That a parasitic plant exudes a certain degree of poison is expressed wonderfully in the way Baldur is slain by the mistletoe. This shows that there existed a knowledge of the gradation of poisons in the world, for instance, that mistletoe is poisonous to a degree which cannot be tolerated by man. Everything is differentiated by degrees, everything is graded. When certain things are said to be ‘poison’, what is meant is that they are stronger poison which has remained behind at the Moon stage—they have not continued to evolve. But everything is to some small extent poison, in everything there is a little poison; the only difference is in the degree. Although I cannot back a certain doctor and professor who stood up in favour of alcohol and maintained he could prove that many more people had died of the poison ‘water’ than of the poison ‘alcohol’, nevertheless the point he makes is important: In all poisons there are degrees, and it is true that more people have been killed by water than by alcohol. It is a fact that something can be true but at the same time it may, without becoming untrue, be inapplicable to a certain case. I have often said it is not enough for something to be true. What matters is whether it can be incorporated into reality, whether it belongs to actual reality. The ancient truths have, to a great extent, faded away. That is why significant indications about the truth of ancient myths still given, for instance, by the so-called ‘unknown philosopher’ Saint-Martin, remained totally incomprehensible to those who followed him. Saint-Martin, who considered himself to be a pupil of Jakob Böhme, was still just able to point to the true core of the myths. That was in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century the most total and utter nonsense was being put forward by way of interpretation of the myths. All this is connected with the way our time lacks a strong, intense urge for the truth. If this urge for truth had been sufficiently strong, it would have sufficed to lead mankind far more extensively towards spiritual life than has actually been the case. It is the weakness of the urge for truth which has brought it about that so few people experience a longing to deepen their spiritual life. This shows itself in the external, concrete world as well. The sad and painful events of today show that the sense for truth does not flow through the world like the blood of the soul, and this is not always the fault of human beings. The sense for truth must be properly awakened. That is why, during the past weeks, it has been necessary to point to concrete, sense-perceptible affairs in so far as they are the expression of spiritual impulses and spiritual events. It is because of the striving for truth—or rather the lack of striving for truth today—that current affairs are handled and things are said which are believed in the widest circles, although they are in fact nothing but absolute inversions of the truth. In an age when it is possible to make the truth, conform to any kind of antipathy, passion or instinct, a great deal of effort will be needed in this age to awaken a strong sense for the truth which can then lead to a spiritual life. The details show that this is so. Only consider all the things that have been said in the two-and-a-half years since this event called the war started to rage. Consider further all the things that have been believed. As I said yesterday, the striving for truth, the search for truth, has been the only standpoint for everything I have said; there has been no intention of taking sides in any way at all. It is necessary, however, when making an assertion—even if only in your own soul, for that is just as much a reality—to have the will to take into account that in a particular case the truth might not be entirely available to you and that it is therefore a matter of holding back and searching for ways which can then make it possible to come to a judgement of something. Let us look at a particular case. Think of all that was disseminated in America in connection with European life during the build-up to this war! Much that has echoed back to Europe reveals what is believed in America. Why are these things believed? They are believed because people over in America have, of course, just as little possibility of understanding European life as did the English with regard to life in China after the Opium War. Pangs of conscience might inspire someone today to admit that the Opium War was a faux pas. I should like to remind such a person that among those in the British Parliament who sang the praises of the outcome of the Opium War as ‘an achievement of British culture’ was old Wellington himself—not one of the worst. Some time ago an American wrote an essay for his countrymen which they obviously failed to note. To conclude this evening I shall read some passages to you so that you can see the judgement of a man who genuinely endeavours to understand things. Do not rejoin that after seeing what has happened in recent weeks a different judgement could be reached. Of course a more profound background might be found. But to form a judgement such things are not needed. To form a judgement it is enough to have a true sense of objectivity about the external events which are taking place. This sense of objectivity has been little in evidence. This is what George Stuart Fullerton, a professor at New York University, writes about Germany. Allow me to read to you from this document, which provides such a contrast to that New Year's Eve document which is now circulating in the world. Fullerton writes: ‘I am an American without a drop of German blood in my veins, so that I can not be suspected of having the natural partiality for Germany which characterizes the German-American. Moreover, I can claim the right to be as truly an American as any one, since my family has been American as long as there has been an American Nation. I love my country, and pray that it may have before it a great future, and a prosperity founded upon right and justice. Nevertheless, no man has the right to be only an American, but must remember that he is also a man, and that, as a man, it is a matter of concern to him that justice should prevail in other continents than his own. We Americans are neutrals, but we have a right to know the facts about the great war, and it is our duty to aim at intelligent comprehension of the situation.’ He is a man who applies only his common sense to what he sees; he is not an occultist. ‘For thirty years I have known Germany, and have been interested in her science, her literature, and her political and economic development. At first, I saw the land through the eyes of a mere visitor, but of late years I have had the opportunity to know it much more intimately. I have seen a people, formerly comparatively poor, not very strong, not very closely welded into a unit, become rich, powerful, united, and so advanced in its social development that its internal organization compels the admiration of the economist and of the humanitarian. The land has prospered exceedingly in the intelligent pursuit of the arts of peace. Austria I have visited in past years, and last winter I spent in that Empire in the capacity of first American Exchange Professor to the Austrian Universities, lecturing at Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Cracow and Lemberg. I met many persons in public and in private life and had an opportunity to feel the pulse of public opinion. He is rather optimistic here! But never mind; at the time this judgement was appropriate. ‘But Japan is far from us,’—she will draw nearer in the future!—‘and we know very well that she is too poor, and will long be too poor, to carry on a long-continued war. At the most, Japan can only annoy us. That European states should, singly or combined, crush us, is a contingency too remote to fall within our horizon. As much of an army and as much of a fleet as we think necessary to our purposes we freely call into being, nor does it occur to us to ask the permission of any other power before increasing either. Why should Mr. Carnegie fill his house with bread, as a provision against a possible famine in the State of New York? Why should Mr. Rockefeller store gold and silver coins in a stocking and hide them in his mattress? The occupant of a Nebraska farm who should build a sea-worthy boat, in order to be ready for all emergencies, we should regard as out of his mind. We Americans do what seems to us prudent and practical under the conditions which prevail in America, and we have no more need for the German army than has a Philadelphia Quaker, at his Yearly Meeting, for a revolver. What we think we really need, however, we set about with much energy to obtain. This man speaks very good sense! ‘I wish only to make the real issue clear, and to avoid the fallacy of catchwords and phrases. I make no reference to the neutrality of Belgium, nor do I think it worthwhile to touch upon the question who first formally declared war on this side or on that. In the light of what the world now knows, these have become wholly trivial matters. The explanation of the attitude of the German people is to be sought at a much deeper level. And I maintain without hesitation that we Americans, under the same circumstances, would have done just what the Germans have done. Would it have been right? Would it have been wrong? I leave it to Americans to decide. These are the words of one who had the will to see things as they really are, and not to listen to what is said in the newspapers and journals of the periphery. Are these the only people who spoke like this? Such people are equipped with a genuine sense for the truth. This is how they spoke. Yesterday—this is very relevant—I had a look at the Basler Nachrichten. It quoted some words which were actually spoken. It is a good thing that they have been quoted. They were spoken in 1908 by an Englishman in front of other Englishmen in order to point out that Germany had every reason to adopt a militaristic attitude, and that it would have been unwise for Germany not to have adopted this ‘militarism’, which has since become a slogan to be slandered. The words this Englishman spoke to other Englishmen were: ‘Look at the position of Germany ... Suppose we had here a possible combination (of enemies) which would lay us open to invasion, suppose Germany, and France, or Germany and Russia, or Germany and Austria, had fleets which, in combination, would be stronger than ours, would we not be frightened? Would we not arm? Of course we should!’ Lloyd George spoke these words in 1908 with as much conviction as he now thunders his tirades into the world! These words were spoken by Lloyd George in 1908! |
155. On the Meaning of Life: Lecture II
24 May 1912, Copenhagen Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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In short, we have to do with a numberless variety of phenomena. If, as human beings with our present ego we would rightly judge of everything which presents itself in the visionary world, we should have to compare an infinite number of visions. |
Further, in that they are empty, whilst the Divine consciousness is full of content, so that in the first place the copies exist as a multiplicity, and further they are empty, just as our empty Ego was confronted by a Divine Ego that contained a whole world. But this empty Ego becomes the stage where the Divine contents which are divided into two opposing camps continually unite, and because the empty consciousness is continually bringing about adjustment it becomes more and more filled with what was originally in the Divine consciousness. |
155. On the Meaning of Life: Lecture II
24 May 1912, Copenhagen Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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It would be a grave error if one were to believe that the question as to the meaning of life and existence could be put in such a simple way that one could ask: “What is the meaning of life and existence?” and then someone could give a simple answer in a few words, saying perhaps: “This or that is the meaning of life.” In this way no real feeling, no idea could ever be gained of the sublimity, majesty, and power which lie behind this question as to the meaning of life. It is true that an abstract answer might be given, but you will realise by what I say later on how little satisfactory such an answer would be. It might be said that the meaning of life consists in the fact that spiritual beings to whom we look up as Divine Beings gradually bring man to the stage where he is permitted to co-operate in the evolution of existence, so that man who was imperfect in the beginning of his development and was incapable of taking part in the whole construction of the universe, might in the course of evolution gradually be trained to participate more and more in this evolution. That would be an abstract answer, telling us very little. Rather must we penetrate into certain secrets of existence and life, if we would grasp something like an answer to a question of such far-reaching importance. So we may take as a basis the facts considered yesterday: penetrating yet a little more deeply into the mysteries of existence. When we observe the world around us, it is not really enough that we see growth and decay. Yesterday we drew attention to the fact that this growth and decay affect our souls mysteriously when we ask ourselves what is the meaning of it all. But there is something that is a still more difficult problem. We see already in the origin and growth of things something that is highly remarkable, which if only observed superficially gives us a feeling of sadness and of tragedy. If, with the knowledge gained from the physical world, we look into the depths of the ocean or into the vast fields of any other form of existence, we know that countless germs of life arise and that but few of these become fully developed beings. Only think how many germs of different fish are produced yearly in the sea which do not reach their goal of development, but disappear again before reaching it, and how only a small number of these germs attain maturity. Yesterday we turned our attention to the fact that everything which comes into existence perishes again. But now the other fact forces itself on our attention, that out of a limitless domain of immeasurable possibilities but few realities emerge, and that already in the origin of things there is something enigmatical, in the fact that what strives to come into existence cannot really develop. Let us take a concrete case. If we sow a field with corn, we see springing up a great number of ears of corn. We know quite well that out of every single grain in these ears of corn a new ear of corn can come into existence. And now we ask: “How many of all those grains of corn we see on the corn-field reach this goal?” Let us think for a moment of the numberless grains which go quite a different way from that which is their object, namely to become ears of corn in their turn. In concrete form we can therefore assert that the life surrounding us only comes into existence as such, through the fact that, in its birth, it seems to push down numberless life-germs as if into an abyss of non-fulfilment. Everywhere in our surroundings, what exists is built on a groundwork of infinitely rich possibilities which may become realities in the ordinary sense of the word. Let us keep in mind that on such a foundation of possibilities realities do arise, and let us regard this as one view of the mysterious life-existence that is presented to us. Now we shall look at the other side of the picture which also exists, but of which we are only aware when we enter deeply into spiritual truths. The other side is that which presents itself to man when he follows the path to Anthroposophy. This path is sometimes described, as you know, as dangerous. And why? Simply for the reason that if we wish to follow the path to spiritual knowledge we enter a realm which may on no account be accepted off-hand in the form in which it presents itself to us. Let us suppose that a man were following the spiritual path by methods known to you, and which are to be found in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and that such a person reached the point when what we call imaginative pictures arose out of the depths of his soul. We know what imaginative pictures are. They are visionary images, confronting a man when he is following the spiritual path as an entirely new world. If a man is really seriously following this path, he comes to the stage at which the whole of the physical world around him grows dim. In the place of this physical world there appears a world of moving images, a world of surging impressions of the nature of sounds, smell, taste and light. This presses on and whirls within our spiritual horizon and we experience what may be called imaginative visions which then surround us on all sides and constitute the world in which our souls live and move. Now let us suppose that a man were convinced that in the visionary world which appeared before him, he had something entirely real; such a man would be subject to a very grave mistake. And here we are at the point where danger begins. The realm of visionary life is immeasurable as long as we do not ascend from Imagination, which conjures up a visionary world, to Inspiration. It is the latter which first tells us to direct our attention to one particular picture, to turn our spiritual gaze to it, and that then we shall experience truth; and the countless other pictures that surround this one must vanish into lifeless space. This one picture will arise from countless others and will prove itself to be an expression of the truth. Thus, when we find ourselves on the spiritual path, we enter a realm where countless visions are possible and we must develop, so that we can select, as it were, out of this realm of infinite possibilities of vision, those which express a true spiritual reality. No other guarantee is possible than the one just mentioned, for if anyone were to come and say: “I enter a realm infinitely rich in visions, tell me which are true and which are false, can you not give a rule whereby I can distinguish the one from the other?”—no genuine occultist or spiritual investigator would answer these questions with a rule, but he would have to say: “If you wish to learn to discriminate, you must go on developing yourself. Then it will happen that it will be possible for you to direct your vision to that which remains. The visions which endure are those that have reached a certain level; but those which must be wiped out by you are merely images of mist.” Now danger lies in the fact that many people feel themselves extremely pleased and comfortable in the realm of visions. When once surrounded by a visionary world they do not trouble to develop themselves further, or go on striving, because this visionary world pleases them extremely well. But it is impossible to attain reality in the spiritual life when we simply surrender ourselves to this feeling of bliss, to revelling, as it were, in the visionary world. We cannot then ascend to reality of truth. It is necessary to go on striving with all the means at our disposal; for only then does spiritual reality really emerge out of the limitless possibility of visions. Now compare the two things which I have described. On the one hand, the world without, where we find numberless possibilities for life-germs, whereof only a few can attain their goal; on the other hand the inner world to which the path of knowledge leads us: an infinite world of visions which is to be compared with the world of infinite possibilities for the life germs. A few of these are such visions to which we at last attain, and which may be compared to the few real lives which emerge from among the numerous life-germs. These two things correspond completely; they belong entirely to each other in the world. Now let us carry this thought a little further: “Is that man right who is faint-hearted and sad about life and existence because in this life numberless germs can only, so to speak, half emerge and but few reach their goal?” Is it possible for us to be sad about these facts? Is it possible to say: “All around there is a wild struggle for existence from which only a few accidentally escape?” Let us consider our concrete example of the cornfield. Let us suppose that all the grains of corn which grow there were really to reach their goal and become ears of corn. What would be the result? The world would then be impossible, for the things which are nourished on the grains of corn would have no food. In order that certain things or beings well known to us may reach their present stage of development, other things or beings have to fall short of their goal, have to sink down into the abyss as far as their own destiny is concerned. But notwithstanding that, we have no reason for sadness, for if we concern ourselves with the world, if we concern ourselves with its existence, the world consists only of beings and those beings must be able to find nourishment. If they are to be nourished, then other beings must sacrifice themselves. Therefore, only few life-germs can really reach their goal. The others must go another way. They have to go a different way because the world has to exist, because it is really the only way in which the world can be wisely ordered. We are thus surrounded by a world which is such as it is because certain beings sacrifice themselves before they have reached their goal. If we follow the way of those which are sacrificed, we find them within other beings which are more highly organised; beings who have need of this sacrifice in order that they may exist. Here, in a nutshell, as it were, we can grasp the meaning of existence, which is so seemingly difficult to understand in the coming forth of beings into existence and their annihilation. Yet we have discovered that it is precisely in this that wisdom and meaning in existence are revealed, and that it is only our reflection that does not go far enough, when we lament that so many things must apparently disappear without reaching their goal. Now let us turn to the other, the spiritual side. Let us take what we have called the limitless world of visions. Here we must in the first place understand what this boundless world of vision really means. It is not simply false in such a sense that we can say: that which disappears is false, that which finally remains is true. Not in this sense is this world false. That would be as short-sighted a judgment as if we were to believe that the life-germs which do not come to fruition are not really life-germs at all. Just as in external life the fact confronts us that only a few beings reach their goal, so it is only possible for a few things out of the limitless spiritual life to enter our horizon. And why? This question as to the “why” will be extremely instructive for us. Let us suppose that a man would simply surrender himself to the visions floating in on him in immeasurable variety. If once this visionary world is opened, the visions pour in incessantly, one after another, they come and go and surge and flow into one another. It is quite impossible to shut ourselves off from the pictures and impressions which pulsate around us in the spiritual world. But on closer observation we find something very peculiar in a person who thus simply surrenders himself to this visionary world. In the first place we find when we encounter a person who does not want to develop any further, but just wishes to remain at the visionary stage, that he has experienced something, that he has had this or that experience. Good, we say, you have experienced things that are realities to you. Excellent, that is a manifestation from the spiritual world. But very soon we shall notice that when another person comes and tells us what visions he had in connection with the same thing, and this second one is no further advanced than the first, that his visions about the same thing have quite a different form, so that two different statements may be presented on the same subject. Indeed, we may even make worse discoveries. We find that such men who wish to remain at the mere visionary world even give different statements about one and the same matter; that sometimes they tell us one thing and sometimes another. Only it is unfortunate that visionaries generally have bad memories and have forgotten what they related the first time. They are not themselves aware of what they have related. In short, we have to do with a numberless variety of phenomena. If, as human beings with our present ego we would rightly judge of everything which presents itself in the visionary world, we should have to compare an infinite number of visions. But that would lead to no result. It must be taken as a principle that this visionary world is in the first pace a manifestation of the spirit, but that it has not the slightest value as information. However many visions may come to us, they are manifestations of the spiritual world, but they are not realities. If they are to become truths, the different visions of many persons would have to be compared and that is impossible. Instead of that there is the possibility of further development to the stage of Inspiration, we find that all their statements are alike. Then there are no more differences nothing which appears differently to different persons. Then the experiences are actually the same in the case of all who have reached the same stage of development. Now we pass to the other question, which also in a certain way corresponds to what we find in the outer world. There the few life-germs which reach their goal can be compared to the many which sink down into the abyss. We know that this loss is necessary in order that the outer world may exist. But how is it in the spiritual world, with these visions and inspirations? Here we must first of all understand that what we have before us, when we have selected the visions, stands before us as a spiritual reality, that in them we have not mere images which only give us knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word. That is not the case, and the fact that it is not so I shall make clear to you by a very important example. I shall explain how the selected visions stand in relation to the world just as we previously made it clear to ourselves how the life-germs which have reached their goal stand related to life-germs in general. These are used as nourishment by the others. How is it now with the selected visions, with those which really live in man as visions? Here I must draw attention to one thing. You must not believe that the person who has become clairvoyant has reached a point at which the world of the spirit lives in him and does not live in others. You must not think of clairvoyance in such a way that you say: “Here is a clairvoyant and here is another person; in the soul of that clairvoyant lives the expression of the spiritual reality, but not in the soul of the other.” That would not be right. Rather must you say, if you would express it correctly: “Here we have two men, the one is clairvoyant, the other not. That which the clairvoyant sees lives in both. In the non-clairvoyant as well as in the clairvoyant the same things, the same spiritual impulses live; these things are also present in the soul of the non-clairvoyant.” The clairvoyant only differs from the non-clairvoyant in the fact that he sees them, whereas the other does not. The one bears them within him and sees them, the other bears them within him and does not see them. Whoever believes that the clairvoyant has something within him which the other has not would be making a great mistake. Just as the existence of a rose does not depend on whether man sees it or not, so it is with the clairvoyant. The reality lives in the soul of the clairvoyant and in the soul of the non-clairvoyant. The reality lives in the soul of the clairvoyant, although the latter does not see it; the distinction consists in the fact that the one sees it and the other does not. Thus the fact is that there live in the souls of all men on earth all the things which the clairvoyant can perceive by means of his clairvoyance. Let us impress this on our minds before going on. We shall now pass on to an apparently different realm of observation which will later bring us back again to what has been said. We shall turn our attention to the animal world. The animal world surrounds us in manifold forms, in forms of lions, bears, wolves, lambs, sharks, whales, etc. Man distinguishes between these animal-forms by forming ideas of them, by forming the idea of the lion, the wolf, the lamb, etc. But now we must not confuse that which man forms as an idea with what the lion or the wolf is in reality. In Anthroposophy we speak of so-called group-souls. All lions have a common lion group-soul, all wolves a wolf group-soul. It is true that certain abstruse philosophers say, that that which the animals have in common only exists in ideas, that “wolf-hood” does not exist externally in the world. That is not true. Whoever believes that the “wolf-hood” as such, that is, that which exists objectively in the spiritual world as the group-soul, does not exist apart from our ideas, has but to consider the following. In the outer world there are beings which we call wolves. Let us now assume that the soul nature and characteristics of the wolf result from the kind of substance which forms the body of the wolf. We know that the substance of an animal’s body changes continually. An animal assimilates new substance and eliminates the old. In this way the consistency of the substance changes continually. But what matters is the fact that something is present in the wolf which changes the substance it assimilates into wolf-substance. Let us suppose that with all the means and methods of science we had found how long the wolf needs to renew his substance. Let us suppose further that we shut up a wolf for that time and feed it on nothing but lambs, so that for the time necessary to renew the substance of its physical body, it was fed on nothing but lamb-substance. If the wolf were nothing more than the physical substance from which its body is built, then it ought to have become a lamb by that time. But you will not believe that the wolf by eating lamb for ever so long becomes a lamb. So you will see that the ideas we form of the different animals correspond to realities which are superphysical in regard to that which is in the outer sense world. It is the same with all animals. The group-soul, that which lies behind the whole animal species, causes one animal to be a wolf, another a lamb, one a lion, and another a tiger. We must however form clear ideas regarding the group-souls. The ideas which we generally form of the animal world are very incomplete. That they are incomplete is due to the fact that man in his present condition penetrates but very little into realities, that he really only clings to the surface of things. Were he to penetrate more deeply, then on forming the idea of a wolf, he would have not only the abstract idea in his mind, but he would have the state of feeling which corresponds to this idea. With the idea, a state of feeling would be evoked, and while forming the idea of the wolf man would experience that which constitutes wolf-nature; he would feel the ferocity of the wolf, the patience of the lamb. That this is not the case to-day is due to the fact that man, after having come under the Luciferic influence, was prevented by the gods from having the “life” as well as the “knowledge.” He was not to eat of the “Tree of Life.” Therefore he has only the knowledge and cannot experience the reality of the life. This he can only do when, in an occult or spiritual way, he penetrates into this realm. Then he not only has the abstract idea, but lives in that which we describe with the expressions “the ferocity of the wolf” and “the patience of the lamb.” Now you will understand how great is the difference between these two things; how all these things are surging within us because our ideas are permeated by the most inward life of the substance of the soul. But these ideas the occultist and the clairvoyant must form for himself; he must rise to these ideas. When the clairvoyant has ascended thus far it may he said that something of the soul-substance is already living in him. Indeed a living reflection of the whole animal world that is without does live within him. One might say here: “How fortunate it is for those who have not become clairvoyants.” But I have already pointed out that in this connection the clairvoyant does not differ from other men. What is in the one is also in the other. The difference is that the one sees it and the other does not. The whole world of which I have spoken is really within the soul of every man, only the ordinary man does not see it. This whole world surges up out of the hidden depths of the soul, makes man restless, throws him into doubt, draws him hither and thither, and makes him unbalanced in his desires and instincts. That which does not rise beyond a certain threshold and which only faintly finds expression, is none the less present. The person whose mental disposition makes him sensitive to these influences is so connected with the world that these feelings possess him, enter into his life struggles and bring him into serious relations with men and other beings. This is a fact—and why? If this were not so, then the development of our earth along with the animal kingdom would in a certain respect come to an end. The animal kingdom, as it is, would then have been a kind of final stage, it could not have progressed. All the group-souls of the animals which live around us would not be able to carry their development over into subsequent incarnations of our earth. That would be a remarkable thing. These group-souls of the animals would be in the position (pardon the comparison, but it will make it clear to you what is meant) of a community of Amazons where never a man was allowed, which would of necessity die out as a community of human beings. It is true that it would not die out spiritually, for its soul would pass over into other realms, but as a community of Amazons, this would be its fate. In the same way the community of the animal group-souls would have to die out if nothing else were there. For that which lives in the animal group-souls must be fertilised, and it cannot otherwise bridge the gulf in earthly evolution, which leads to the Jupiter incarnation, if not fertilised as I have described. The outer forms of the animals of the earth die out, but the group-souls are fertilised and appear on Jupiter ready for a higher state of being and thus they attain their next stage of development. What is it that takes place through man’s furthering down here the development of the living form of the group-souls? He provides thereby the fertilising seed for souls which otherwise could not develop further. If we keep this in mind, then we can say: Hence we see that where man looks on the animal kingdom outwardly, he evolves from within certain inner impulses which have to be stimulated from without; these are fertilising seed for the animal group-souls. These impulses, which are the fertilising seed for the animal group-souls, arise through stimulus from without. But not from outward stimulus do the visions of the clairvoyant arise, nor those visions either which are selected as real. These exist only in the spiritual world, and live within the souls of men. But you must not believe that nothing takes place in the spiritual world when out of a multitude of grains of corn certain of them are consumed, while but few develop again into heads of corn. While the grains are consumed, the spiritual part connected with the grain passes over into man. This is most evident to clairvoyant vision when directed towards a sea in which there are many fish-germs, and it is seen how few develop into full-grown fish. In those which develop into full-grown fish small flames may be observed, but those which do not develop physically, which disappear into the abyss physically, develop huge flaming light-forms. In these the spiritual element is so much the more considerable. So it is also with the grains of corn which are eaten. The material part of them is eaten. When crushed, a spiritual force which fills the space around, issues from those grains of corn which have not reached their goal. It is just the same for the clairvoyant, when he looks at a man who is eating rice, or something similar. When he assimilates the material, the spiritual forces connected with the corn flow forth in streams. All this is not such a simple matter for spiritual observation, especially when the nourishment is not of a vegetable kind. But I will not enter into this to-day, because Anthroposophy must not agitate for any party movement, and therefore not even for vegetarianism! Thus it is that spiritual beings are linked together. Everything that apparently perishes, gives up its spiritual part to the environment. This actually unites with what lives within man when he becomes clairvoyant, or is by any other means in his visionary world; and the selected visions (after Inspiration) are what fertilise the spiritual part that has been forced out of those life-seeds that do not reach their goal; the visions fertilise it and bring it to further evolution. So our inner nature, through that which it inwardly evolves, is in continual relationship with the outer world, and works in connection with this outer world. This outer world would be condemned to perish, could not develop further, if we did not bring to meet it fertilising germs. Outside in the world spirituality exists, but only a half spirituality, as it were. In order that this spirituality outside may have offspring, the other spirituality that is within us must approach it. That which lives within us is by no means a mere reflection of the other, perceived mentally, but something that appertains to it. It unites with that which is outside us, and evolves further, just as the north and south poles have to come together as magnetism or electricity in order that something may be achieved. That which takes form in our inner world of visions must unite with that which flashes forth from those things which apparently perish. These are wonderful mysteries, which are however, gradually solved, and which show us how the inner is connected with the outer. Now let us glance at what surrounds us in the outer world and at what we possess as selected visions, singled out from the measureless possibility of visions. That which we exalt as a vision that is worthy serves for our inner development. That which sinks down when we overlook all the immeasurable field of visionary life, that which disappears, does not sink away into nothingness; it merges with the outer world and fertilises it. What we have selected from the visions serves to our further development. The other visions leave us, and unite with what is around us, with the life which has not reached its goal. Just as living beings must assimilate that which has not attained to life, so we must absorb that which we do not hand over to the outer world in order to fertilise it. This has also its aim. All that is continually coming to birth spiritually in the world must perish, if we do not let our visions go, and do not select those only which are revealed in accordance with Inspiration. Now we come to the second point, to the danger of the visionary life. What does the person do who simply takes the innumerable and varied visions for truth, who does not select what is right for him, and extinguish by far the greater number of the visions! What does such a person do? He does spiritually the same as a man would do (when we interpret it physically you will at once see what he does) who, confronting a cornfield would not use the greater part of the corn for nourishment but who would utilise all the grains as seed. It would not be long before there was no room on the earth for all the corn. Such a thing could not go on, for all other creatures would die out, there would be no nourishment left for them. It is the same with the man who looks on everything as truth, who does not destroy a single vision and retains everything within him. He does the same as if he were to gather all the grains of corn and sow them again. Just as the world would soon be covered with nothing but cornfields and grains of corn, so the man who did not select his visions would be overwhelmed by them. I have described what is around us, physically as well as spiritually, the animals and also the ideas which man forms of them. I have also shown how man has to assign an aim to his visions, and how this visionary world must be united with the outer world, in order that evolution may proceed. But how is it now when we turn our attention to man? He meets an animal, considers its group-soul, and says: “wolf,” that is, he has formed the idea “wolf,” and while saying “wolf” the picture has arisen in him of which the non-clairvoyant, to be sure, has not the “feeling-substance,” but only the abstract idea. That which lives in the “feeling-substance” unites with the group-soul and fertilises it at the moment the man pronounces the word “wolf.” If he were not to pronounce the name, the animal kingdom as such would die out. And the same holds good for the vegetable kingdom. What I have described with regard to man, holds good for him alone; not for the animals, nor for the angels; these have quite other missions. Man alone exists in order that with his own being he can confront the world around him, so that life-giving germs may arise that find expression in “names.” It is thus that the possibility of further development is implanted in the inner nature of man. Let us now go back to the starting point we chose yesterday. Jahve or Jehovah was asked by the ministering angels for what purpose he wished to create man. The angels could not understand why. Then Jehovah gathered the plants and the animals and asked the angels what were the names of these beings. They did not know. They have tasks other than fertilisation of the group-souls. Man, however, was able to tell the names. In this way Jahve shows that He has need of man, because otherwise creation would die out. In man those things evolve which have come to an end, and which have to be stimulated anew in order that evolution may go forward. Man had therefore to be created, so that the life-giving germ might be born which finds expression in “names.” Thus we see that we are not placed in creation without a purpose. Think man away, and the transitional kingdoms would not be able to develop further. They would meet the fate which would befall a plant world that is not fertilised. Only through the fact that man is placed into Earth existence, is the bridge built between the world which was and the world which is to be, and man takes for his own path of development that which exists as “name” in the vast sum of created beings; thus does he bring about his own ascent together with that of the rest of evolution. Here, but in no simple abstract way, we have answered the question, “What is the meaning of life?” although, after all, the abstract answer is contained therein. Man has become a co-worker with spiritual beings. He has become so through his whole nature. What he is has come about through his whole nature. He must exist, and without him there could be no creation. Knowing himself to be a part of creation, man thus feels that he is a participator in Divine spiritual activity. Now he knows also why his inner life is such as it is, why outside is the world of stars, the clouds, the kingdoms of nature, with all that spiritually belongs thereto, and within there is a world of the soul. He now sees that these two worlds belong to one another, and that only through their mutually reacting on each other does evolution proceed. Outside in space, the infinite world is unfolding to our view. Within is our soul-world. We do not notice that that which lives within us shoots forth and blends with that which is outside, we are not aware that we are the stage on which this union is carried out. What is within us forms as it were the one pole, what is outside in the universe—the other; these two must unite in order that the evolution of the world may proceed. Our meaning, the meaning of man, consists in this—that we take part in it. The ordinary knowledge of the normal consciousness knows little of these things. But the more we progress in the knowledge of such things, the more we become conscious that in us lies the point where the North and the South Poles of the world (if I may make the comparison) exchange their opposite forces, and unite, so that evolution may advance. Through the teaching of the spiritual world we learn that in us is the stage where the adjustment of forces takes place. We feel how within us, as in a focal point, the Divine world of spirit dwells, how it unites with the world outside, and how these two mutually fructify one another. When we feel ourselves to be the scene where all this takes place, and know that we take part in it, we find our right place in life, grasp the whole meaning of life and realise that that, which at first is unconscious in us, will become more and more conscious through our progress in Anthroposophy. All magic is based on this. While it is not given to the normal consciousness to know that something within us unites with something outside, it is given to the magic consciousness to see it all. That which belongs to the outer world develops of its own free will. Hence it is necessary that a certain state of maturity be reached and that what is within should not be indiscriminately mixed up with what is without. For as soon as we ascend to a higher stage of consciousness, what lives in us is reality; it is appearance only as long as we live in the ordinary normal consciousness. We shall participate in Divine spiritual activity. But why shall we thus participate? Is there then, after all, sense in the whole thing if we are only an apparatus for balancing opposing forces? A very simple consideration shows us how the matter stands. Suppose that here is a certain quantity of force: one part within, the other without. That they confront each other is not owing to us. At first we keep them apart. Their coming together depends on us. We bring them together within ourselves. This is a thought that stirs the very deepest mysteries within us if we consider it rightly. The gods present the world to us as a duality: without is the objective world, within us the life of the soul. We are present and are those who close the current, as it were, and thus bring the two poles together. All this takes place within us, on the stage of our consciousness. Here enters freedom for us. With this we become independent beings. We have to regard the whole universe not merely as a stage, but as a field for co-operation. It is true that this induces a thought which the world does not easily understand, not even if it be presented philosophically, for that is what I tried to do years ago in my booklet Truth and Science, in which it is stated that first the sense-activity appears and then the inner world, but that union and co-operation between them are necessary. There the thought is developed philosophically. I did not at that time try to show the spiritual mysteries behind, but the world did not at that time understand even the philosophy of it. Now we see in what way we have to think of the meaning of our life. Meaning enters into it. We become co-actors in the world process. That which is in the world is divided into two opposing camps and we are placed in the midst in order to bring them together. It is by no means the case that we have to imagine this as a work within narrow limits. I know a humorous gentleman in Germany who writes much for German periodicals. Lately he wrote in a newspaper that it was necessary for the evolution of the world that man should ever remain at the point of not being able to solve the ordinary problems of existence and that it would not be right if he should be able intellectually to grasp and solve them. For if man should have solved the intellectual problems there would be nothing left for him to do. Thus there must always be a doubt about these intellectual problems and imperfect things must always occur. But this man has no idea that when the normal consciousness has come to an end, consciousness itself progresses and a new polarity appears which represents a new task, the poles of which have to be again united. How long will they take to be united? Till man has actually reached the point at which the Divine consciousness has been recapitulated in his own consciousness. Now, after we have gained an idea of the immeasurable greatness of the problems, we can proceed to the abstract answer, for we know that in us fertilising germs are springing up for a spiritual world, which without us would not be able to develop further. Now we shall see also how it is with regard to the meaning of life, for now we are working on a broad basis. Now we can say: “Once, at the beginning of evolution, there was the Divine consciousness.” It was there in its infinity. Therewith we stand at the beginning of existence. This Divine consciousness first forms copies of itself. In what way do the copies differ from the Divine consciousness? In that they are many, whilst the Divine consciousness is one. Further, in that they are empty, whilst the Divine consciousness is full of content, so that in the first place the copies exist as a multiplicity, and further they are empty, just as our empty Ego was confronted by a Divine Ego that contained a whole world. But this empty Ego becomes the stage where the Divine contents which are divided into two opposing camps continually unite, and because the empty consciousness is continually bringing about adjustment it becomes more and more filled with what was originally in the Divine consciousness. Thus evolution proceeds in such a way that the individual consciousness becomes filled with what in the beginning was contained in the Divine consciousness. This is brought about through the perpetual adjustment of individuals. Has the Divine consciousness need of this for its own development? So ask many who do not quite understand the meaning of life. Does the Divine consciousness need this for its own perfection, for its own development? No, the Divine consciousness does not need it. It has everything within itself. But the Divine consciousness is not egoistic. It wishes that an infinite number of beings may have the same content as itself. But these beings must first fulfil the law, so that they may have the Divine consciousness within them and that thereby the Divine consciousness may be multiplied, That which existed at the beginning of world-evolution as unity then appears in multiplicity, but in course of time it falls away again on the path of complete permeation with Divinity. Evolution as it has now been described was really always so as regards humanity; it was so during the Saturn period; it was similar during the Sun and Moon periods. We have explained it clearly to-day as regards the earthly period. On Saturn this activity created the first rudiments of the physical body and at the same time fructified in an outward direction; on the Sun it created the first beginnings of the etheric body and so on. The process is the same, only it becomes more and more spiritual. There remained outside ever less and less which still needed fructification. As humanity evolves further, ever more and more will enter into life and ever less will remain outside that has still to be fructified. Therefore, in the end, man will have more and more within him of what had been outside. The outer world will have become his inner world. Making things “inward” is the other side of forward development. To unite Divinity with what is external, to make inward what is external—these are the two directions in which man makes progress in evolution. He will resemble Divinity more and more and will at last become more and more inwardly enriched. In the Vulcan stage of evolution everything will have been fructified. Everything external will have become internal. To become inwardly enriched—is to become Divine. That is the aim and the meaning of life. But we only get at the truth of the matter when we think of it in such a way that we do not merely set up abstract ideas, but really enter into details. Man must go deeply into the matter and so enter into details, that when he pronounces the name of plants or animals, something rises within him that unites the content of the word with that which lies at the basis of the plant or animal germ, and then lives on in the spiritual world. Our view of life needs improvement in the course of its evolution; for what has Darwinism performed in this direction? It speaks of the struggle for existence, but it does not take into account that that, which, from its point of view, is defeated and destroyed, is also undergoing further development. The Darwinist sees only the beings which reach their goal and the others which perish. The spirit, however, flashes out of those which perish so that it is not only that which conquers in the physical struggle which is developing. That which apparently perishes goes through a spiritual development. That is the important point. In this way we penetrate into the meaning of life; nothing, not even that which is defeated, or that which is eaten, is destroyed, it is being spiritually fertilised and springs up again spiritually. Much has disappeared in the whole course of the evolution of this earth and of humanity without man having anything directly to do with it. Let us take the whole of pre-Christian development. We know what this pre-Christian development was like. In the beginning man came forth from the spiritual world and gradually descended into the physical sense-world. That which he possessed in the beginning, that which lived in him, has vanished, just as have the life germs which have not reached their goal. Throughout human evolution we see countless things sink down as into an abyss. Whilst innumerable things are perishing in the outer development of human civilisation and of human life, the Christ-Impulse is developing above. Just as man develops life-giving germs for the world that is around him, so does the Christ-Impulse give what is necessary for the development of that which apparently perishes in man. Then the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. This is the fructification from above of what has apparently perished. Here actually a change takes place in that which apparently had fallen away from the Divine and sunk into the abyss. The Christ-Impulse enters and fertilises it. And from the Mystery of Golgotha onwards, we see in the course of the further development of the earth a renewed blossoming and a continuation through the fructification received with the Christ-Impulse. Thus what we have learned about polarity is also proved true in this greatest event of the earthly evolution. In our epoch the seeds of civilisation sown in the old Egyptian civilisation are coming to life. They are there in the earth evolution. The Christ-Impulse has come and has fertilised them and as a result of this fertilisation we have a repetition in our own epoch of the Egypto-Chaldean civilisation. In the civilisation which will follow our own, the old Persian civilisation will re-appear fructified by the seed of the Christ-Impulse. In the seventh age the old Indian civilisation, that lofty spiritual civilisation which came from the holy Rishis, will reappear in a new form, fructified by the Christ-Impulse. We see in this continuous development, that what we have learned with regard to man may also become a reciprocity; an inner and an outer, a spiritual and a physical, mutually fertilising each other. Fertilisation with the Christ-Impulse is active above and below. Below the progressing earthly civilisation; from above, entering with the Mystery of Golgotha—the Christ-Impulse. Now we can also understand the meaning of the Christ-Event. The earth has to participate in the cosmic mysteries just as the individual man has to participate in the Divine mysteries. Through this, polarity was implanted in man, as it is in the earth. That which is above the earth and that, which, through the Mystery of Golgotha, first united with the earth, have evolved like two opposite poles. Christ and the earth belong to one another. In order to be able to unite they had first to develop apart from one another. Thus we see that it is necessary, in order that things may really come to fruition, that they differentiate into polarities, and that the polarities then reunite in order that life may progress. That is the meaning of life. If we look at it like this, then it is true that we feel ourselves standing in the centre of the world, feel that the world would be absolutely nothing without us. As deep a mystic as Angelus Silesius made the remarkable statement which at first may astound people: “I know that without me no God can live; were I brought to naught, he would of necessity have to give up the ghost.” Sectarian Christians may disagree with such a statement, but they should not forget the historical fact that Angelus Silesius, even before he became a Roman Catholic (which he did in order according to his opinion to stand entirely on the ground of Christianity), was a very pious man, and yet he pronounced this dictum. Whoever knows Angelus Silesius will know that this statement was not prompted by impiety. All things in the world would stand opposed to other things, like poles that cannot meet, were man to be thought away. Man stands in the midst and forms a part of it. If man thinks, the world thinks in him. He is the stage on which the action takes place; he only brings the thoughts together. When man thinks and when he wills, it is even so. We can now estimate what it means when, directing our gaze into vastness of space we say: It is Divinity that fills it, and Divinity is that which must be united with the Earth-seed. “In me is the meaning of life!”—man may exclaim. The gods have set before them certain aims; but they have also chosen the stage on which these aims are to be carried out. The souls of men are the stage. Therefore, if the human soul looks but deeply enough into itself, and does not only try to solve problems in the vastness of space, it finds within itself the stage where gods are accomplishing their deeds—and man himself is taking part in them. That is what I tried to express in the words which can be found in my Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation how in man’s inner being the gods work, how the meaning of the world finds expression in the soul of man and how the meaning of the world will live on in the soul of man. What is the meaning of life? It is, that this meaning lives in man himself. This I tried to express in the words which the soul addresses to itself:—
If we wish to say something that is true, not something which has merely occurred to us, it must always be said out of the depths of spiritual secrets. That is extremely important. Therefore you must not think that words which are used in occult works, be it in the form of prose or poetry, arise in the same way as do words in other works. Such spiritual or occult works which really spring from truth, truth about the world and its mysteries, come into existence when the soul really allows world-thoughts to speak through it, really lets world-feelings not its own personal feelings inflame it and has really created these feelings and thoughts from beings of cosmic or universal will. It is part of the mission of the Anthroposophical movement that man should learn to discriminate between what is sounding forth out of the cosmic mysteries and that which his own arbitrary imagination has invented. Ever more and more the development of civilisation will rise to the point where, in the place of arbitrary invention, there will appear that which lives in the human soul in such a way that it is the other pole of the corresponding spirituality. Things created in this way are in their turn life-giving seed which unite with the spirit. They have a purpose in the world process. It gives us quite a different feeling of responsibility as regards what we do ourselves, when we know that what we bring about are living germs—not sterile ones which simply perish. Then we must allow these germs too to spring up from the depths of the World-Soul. Now it may be asked: But how is this to be attained? By patience. By approaching more and more to the stage where all personal ambition is killed out. Personal ambition tempts us ever more and more to produce that which is merely personal, without listening to that which is the expression of the Divine. How are we to know that the Divine is speaking in us? We must kill out everything that only comes from ourselves and first of all we must kill out every tendency to ambition. This generates the right polarity in us and produces real fructifying germs in the soul. Impatience is the worst guide in life. It is that which destroys the world. If we are successful in this, you will see, as I have been explaining to you, that the meaning of life is reached in the way described, through the fructification of what is outward by that which is inward. Then we shall also understand that, if our inner nature is not right, we sow wrong fertilising seed in the world. What is the result of that? The result is that deformities are born into the world. Our present civilisation is rich in such deformities. All over the world, books are written to-day one could almost say by steam-power; whilst even in the eighteenth century a celebrated author wrote: “A single country to-day produces five times as many books as the earth requires for its good.” To-day it is much worse. These are things which surround the present civilisation with spiritual entities which are not fit for life, which would not and should not come into existence, if man had the requisite patience. That will also come to birth within the human soul as a kind of opposite pole—patience: so that the human soul does not simply scatter around what is merely a product of ambition and egoism! This must not be taken as a kind of moral sermon, but as the representation of a fact. It is a fact that productions springing from ambition and desire for renown give rise in our souls to such seeds as bring deformities to birth in the spiritual world. To suppress these and also gradually to transform them is a fruitful task for the far future. It is the mission of Anthroposophy to accomplish this task, and it is the meaning of life, that in doing so the anthroposophical world conception should take its place in the whole meaning of life; that everywhere meaning should flow in on us in life, that everywhere life should be full of meaning. What Spiritual Science desires to teach men is this: that we are in the midst of this meaning, and can express it truly thus:—
That, my dear anthroposophical friends, is the meaning of life, as man must understand it at present. This is what I wished to consider with you. If we understand it fully and make it entirely our own, the souls which have become Divine will make it effective in your souls. What is difficult to understand in these lectures you must ascribe to the circumstance that Karma obliges us to restrict such an important subject as “The Meaning of Life” to two short lectures; much could therefore merely be hinted at, which can only be developed in the soul of each one for himself. Consider this also as a polarity: an impulse must be given which through meditation is developed further, that through this further development all our intercourse acquires meaning—reality; it ought to become so full of meaning that our souls should be able to play one into the other. It is of the essence of real love that it is also an equilibrium of polarities. At the point where anthroposophical thoughts find entrance to a soul, the other pole is stimulated and agreement found. It is this that can work like an anthroposophical “Music of the Spheres.” When we work thus in harmony with the spiritual world, when we really are living anthroposophical life, we also live united in this life. This is the way in which I should like you to take our meeting here in these two days. Such spiritual subjects are an expression of the Spirit of Love and are consecrated to the Spirit of Love amongst true anthroposophists. This love, through the touchstone we possess, will be instrumental in the exchange of our spiritual content; it will be something through which we not only receive, but through which we are also stimulated more and more to anthroposophical efforts. In this way Anthroposophy will become a means of spreading a love that touches the inmost depths of the human soul. Such love lives on. For as members of the Anthroposophical Movement, we have something that causes the love of those who are separated in space to endure until Karma again unites us on the physical plane. So we remain united and find the true cause for remaining so in the fact that with all the best in our souls, with the best of our spiritual powers, we have together risen to Divine spiritual heights. In this way, we also desire, my dear friends, to continue to be united with one another.
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71b. Reincarnation and Immortality: Free Will and Immortality
24 Apr 1918, Nuremberg Tr. Michael Tapp, Elizabeth Tapp, Adam Bittleston Rudolf Steiner |
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A good scientist, Waldstein, has published among his works, which are very good in parts and which deal with the border-area embracing the nervous system and the soul, a dissertation on the unconscious ego. He speaks about all sorts of things that go on in the human soul, and which are of significance to the soul but of which our ordinary consciousness is not aware. |
The scientist of spirit utilizes what he experiences with the pictures only to strengthen his ego that thereby becomes stronger than the ordinary ego, and can now maintain itself. When the ego maintains itself, it also maintains the world of pictures for itself, but by means of this inner strength it no longer directs its gaze to the perception of the world of pictures. |
71b. Reincarnation and Immortality: Free Will and Immortality
24 Apr 1918, Nuremberg Tr. Michael Tapp, Elizabeth Tapp, Adam Bittleston Rudolf Steiner |
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Of all the problems related to the soul life of the human being and that have constantly to be faced by each individual, those concerning free will and immortality are among the most important. I have planned today's lecture so that these two questions can be discussed in conjunction with each other. I have not united these two fundamental problems of human soul life arbitrarily, but I hope to be able to show how intimately they belong together and how it is hardly possible to make a thorough study of the one without the other. Anyone dealing with these two problems who has any grasp of what we are concerned with in human and spiritual history will immediately be aware of two facts. Apart from approaching such problems through faith, about which I intend to make neither positive nor negative comment here, people have tried to come to grips with them purely on the basis of thinking, scientifically and philosophically. Entirely on this basis of thinking attempts have been made to gain the most shrewd, penetrating and profound knowledge about the two problems. Anyone who tackles them cannot fail to note how individual scientists have disputed and acted in quite contradictory ways when dealing with free will and immortality. There must be some reason why humanity finds it so difficult to get anywhere with questions which lie so close to the efforts of the human soul, and which arise out of the deepest needs of the soul. The human soul incessantly tells itself that within the human being is hidden something that exists beyond birth and death, and which one should be able to investigate scientifically. It also tells itself that there must be something like free decision at the root of human action, a not being bound to natural necessity as a falling stone is. But when on the basis of its thinking, the soul then tries to investigate the things that are so important to it, it can set out with the greatest hopes of achieving something, but soon other considerations show that it is possible to say as much against it as for it. The approach I have represented for many years now—and also in these lectures here—seeks to clarify these questions from its own viewpoint and it thinks it recognizes not only the path that has to be followed to arrive at a conception of the two problems that is humanly satisfying, but it believes it also recognizes why it is that there is so much of a contradictory and unsatisfactory nature in other approaches to the problems. As is usual in these lectures given from the viewpoint of the science of spirit, in dealing with such problems I am obliged to take a quite different course from that taken by ordinary science. Science takes the facts, makes pronouncements about its findings, and then reaches its conclusions on the basis of these findings. The scientist of spirit normally has to proceed differently, especially when dealing with such subjects as these today. The scientist of spirit first must give an idea as to how he arrives at his results. He has constantly to describe the path upon which the source of his findings is revealed to him. For naturally he is dealing with things that cannot be reached by means of the ordinary senses, and which are far removed from the usual processes of knowledge. He therefore has to give an idea of the path upon which he reaches a point where his findings appear set out before the eye of the spirit. Such questions as we have before us today are of particular concern to the human being himself, for they are pre-eminently questions of human self-knowledge. It is quite possible to say—as I have already done here many times—that the science of spirit is definitely an admirer of the magnificent and tremendous progress which humanity has enjoyed as a result of scientific work in recent times. But it is precisely because it realizes how to value the findings of natural science, as far as they can be valued, that it also knows how far these scientific methods can go, and where they can obtain no information. We have to admit that for such questions as we are considering today, questions that concern human self-knowledge above all, the magnificent and admirable work of scientific thinking and particularly its method of thinking are more of a hindrance than a help. Therefore by way of introduction let me give you an example. Serious and well-intentioned scientists have constantly directed their particular way of thinking to what goes on within the human being himself, to what surges to and fro in his soul life. We can take an example to show how the scientist is bound to miss the way that would lead to a solution, not because of any mistake he makes, but because of his method. A good scientist, Waldstein, has published among his works, which are very good in parts and which deal with the border-area embracing the nervous system and the soul, a dissertation on the unconscious ego. He speaks about all sorts of things that go on in the human soul, and which are of significance to the soul but of which our ordinary consciousness is not aware. He says, for instance—and anyone can think of hundreds of thousands of similar examples—supposing I stand in front of a window of a bookshop and look into it. My eye falls on the most varied collection of books. It is a scientific bookshop. Nothing but serious books are there. Because of my profession I am attracted by one particular book that is in the window: Concerning Mollusks.—And the moment I see this book, Concerning Mollusks, I cannot help beginning to laugh quietly. Now I am, after all, a serious scientist and there is no apparent reason why I should begin to laugh when I see this book, Concerning Mollusks. What has caused me to laugh when looking at the title of a book about mollusks? I close my eyes—the scientist continues—in order to find out what has caused me to laugh. And, lo and behold!—now that my eyes are no longer drawn toward the book I can hear dimly in the distance amid many other noises and hardly audible, for it is a long way off, the sound of a barrel organ, and this barrel organ is playing the very tune to which I first learned to dance decades before as a very young man. At that time I attempted to learn the steps of the quadrille to this tune. I did not give much attention to the tune then, for I was very much occupied, first, in learning the steps and then in giving attention to my partner in the proper way. So even at that time I only noted the tune in a half-dreaming state. But now, although I have not concerned myself with this tune in any way more recently, the moment I see the book about mollusks, this tune strikes up in the distance, and I have to laugh quietly. Had I not closed my eyes—for when I looked at the book I knew nothing about a barrel organ playing, it simply beat on my ear unnoticed—I would not have discovered why I had to laugh when I saw the book. This shows me how remarkable are the things that go on inside us, that move and work in the subconscious, and how this subconscious nature pursues its ways in the human being. Such examples he describes in great numbers, and others have cited similar ones. But in following such learned dissertations one very quickly notices that although the people certainly know that they are dealing with something that belongs to a knowledge of what works and lives in the human being, their scientific thinking cannot achieve anything that leads to a furtherance of a real knowledge of what lives in man as his true being. For this we have to advance a stage further. And this is what I must deal with first—the path that leads us to self-knowledge. But I want, first of all, to place the two questions before you so that you see how they have to be dealt with in order to be felt and understood absolutely clearly. In choosing where we begin with this, we should not take the hardly perceptible impressions in the human self, such as those of the barrel organ, for then we only arrive at what it is that affects the self, and not what lies behind it. To put the question satisfactorily, we have to ignore this continual movement into which all sorts of things are incorporated, such as the sound of the barrel organ, and turn to something that has a different relationship to human life. In our soul life there is a continual movement of mental images which are gained through our normal way of perception, and also feelings and will impulses—all these play a role when we hear something like a barrel organ. But basically, the whole of our ordinary everyday soul life is more or less similar to the case of the barrel organ. It is true that we are fully conscious of at least part of what lives in our ordinary consciousness, but there is also an immeasurable amount, the origin of which we do not know. Science quite rightly looks for causes of what plays into our soul life in this way in the physical body, the part of us that passes away with death. We are completely taken up with this interplay of our mental images. But there is one thing where we have to admit that it has a quite different character from this continual movement of our feelings and sensations. This is the realization,—which brings with it a certain power of judgment,—that we cannot simply allow our mental images to come and go as they please. On the contrary, we have to take ourselves in hand and say: Some ideas and images are right, others are wrong.—We begin to develop logic in our thinking,—logic that is designed to enable us to have the right relationship to reality. Can it be the normal interplay of our mental images that is at work when we say that something is right or wrong? No, it cannot be the normal interplay, for now right and wrong ideas or images appear. All now depends on our being able to judge according to something that rejects wrong ideas—which arise out of bodily necessities, just as much as good ones do—and accepts good ideas. Something therefore of a quite different nature from what can otherwise be found by normal scientific self-observation, plays into our soul life. That is why the philosophical approach has constantly entered in at this point. Whenever the attempt has been made to save the human being from being simply the outcome of his physical functions, it has always been pointed out how something plays into the soul life that cannot come from the body. Sometimes it is the right thing, sometimes the wrong; both appear in the same way. But it is just on this point that we can see that this kind of approach cannot pursue the matter to a conclusion, that it is really impossible to find out anything in this way. For we get no further than establishing the facts, while the fundamental causes and real nature of the case are sought in vain.—That is the one point. On the other hand, there is the fact that among all the other things that take place in our soul life we are also able to say Yes or No to a particular action, to decide to do it or to leave it undone. But this contradicts every kind of scientific observation. For this action can only take place on the basis of our bodily nature, our human nature, and this means that we have to seek this basis in our human nature according to laws which function according to necessity. Human freedom does not come into it.—This is the other boundary. We have to start with these two points. Twenty-five years ago in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I attempted to make these two boundaries or limits my starting point, and purely on the basis of observation sought to establish what lives in the human soul, what really happens in the human soul when an action is performed where a person feels he is employing his freedom. At that time I did this in such a way as to remain within purely philosophical considerations. Today I will try to offer a solution, as far as is humanly possible, on the basis of the findings of the science of spirit. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to approach these two points that I have just characterized as the border points of genuine self-knowledge, in a way that only the science of spirit can approach them. One of the characteristic things about the science of spirit is that we do not allow the soul to investigate in its everyday condition. Our ordinary consciousness does this, as does science too, but in the science of spirit we evolve the soul beyond the point it attains if simply left to its own natural development. We ourselves must take the soul in hand, and it has to develop into something different. For it has to be able to see and perceive something different from what can be perceived with the ordinary means of acquiring knowledge. It has, if I may indicate this right at the outset, to be able to grasp with its spiritual eye the spirit that lives in man. Most people maintain that this is a subject for belief only, but this is really simply because they do not wish to make any effort to consider such things as the human spirit, that they say this. The actual method and practice of the scientist of spirit proves that it is not just a belief that is acquired, but knowledge as certain in its sphere as is scientific knowledge in the natural sphere. We must, of course, be quite clear that by undertaking certain exercises and functions, the soul has to attain a quite different constitution from the one it has in normal life and ordinary science. It has to acquire a different kind of perception. In my writings, where more detailed information about these matters can be found, I have called the first stage that the soul reaches in investigating the spiritual world, imaginative knowledge. How do we acquire this imaginative knowledge? Mainly by applying our thinking, our minds in a different direction from the one usual in everyday life. To take the example already cited, we have to try to introduce something into our thinking that is as remote as possible from the barrel organ. For the barrel organ introduced a kind of unknown quantity into the soul life, which was not even noticeable. Precisely the opposite must be the case if we wish to train our souls, to prepare ourselves for spiritual investigation. Nothing must enter our soul unless the soul itself admits it. This can only be done if we succeed—naturally only for the purposes of our investigations—in eliminating the past we have lived through, and the future we look forward to, and in concentrating in our souls solely on the present, as far as possible in one comprehensible mental image, a mental image that we have put together ourselves so that we know what is in it. And we have to do this again and again. What is characteristic about this is that such activity should be completely removed from any kind of dream life in the soul. No one can become a scientist of spirit in the right way who is fond of giving himself over to self-indulgence and dreaming. No one who willingly indulges in a false mystical way, in something indefinite, can ever become a scientist of spirit. For such indulgence does not lead to the science of spirit. We can only take up the science of spirit if we experience something in our souls that we ourselves have put there with every conceivable effort of our own consciousness, and then constantly concentrate upon it and devote ourselves to it. In my writings I have called this meditating, and by this I mean meditating in the proper sense that we are directed toward our own consciousness, our own soul activity. There is a further point I would like to mention. Not only must this meditating be far removed from any kind of dream state or false mysticism, it must also be removed from everything that produces hypnotic and suggestive conditions in the soul. Staring at shining objects, for example, by means of which hypnotists produce a hypnotic state is the very opposite of the first condition of a spiritually scientific training. All the various kinds of exercises that dull the consciousness are the very opposite of spiritually scientific training. What we are concerned with is placing ideas, feelings and will impulses, of which we have a clear picture, into the center of our soul life with full consciousness, so that we are as clear as we are when using the full powers of our thinking. In fact, this absolutely clear thinking, carried out with our full consciousness, must be our example and pattern. We have to be careful not to stop at this, however, for then we achieve nothing, but this should be a pattern for all the activity the soul undertakes in exercises directed toward finding the path into the spiritual world. It may perhaps take years of trying, but the passing years stand us in good stead, for the fact that we get older as we do the exercises is a great help in enabling something to happen. Constant attempts to concentrate our soul life upon our self-directed mental images by means of meditation, results in the development of our imaginative life. This means that we no longer need only to use pictures and mental images that we ourselves put together, but that such pictures, such imaginations, themselves appear as objective entities in the soul, and in fact, we can live in such imaginations. It is only when we have prepared ourselves in the way I have described, that these imaginations no longer arise out of the body, but out of the life of the soul. But we also become conscious of gradually following an inner necessity. In living in this world of pictures—for it is the imaginative world that we first experience—we gradually cease to believe that we can arrange the pictures as we please, but that we are bound to certain laws, just as we are bound to laws in the outer world. You can set a chair upon the table; it stays there. If you put it somewhere in the air, it falls down. If in looking at the outer world you wish to remain within reality, you find yourself bound to certain laws. As you develop your soul in the right way you will gradually see that you are similarly bound to laws in your inner world that are just as objective as, for instance, the law that a chair can only stand on something that supports it. On the one hand, we feel that with our consciousness we are part of the world in which the pictures exist; on the other hand, we feel bound to the underlying order which may be compared to the kind of order that exists in the physical world. In two particular respects we have to be able to differentiate carefully what we experience. We should not confuse the latter with what people experience under the influence of ordinary visions, for these ordinary visions come from the body. They are not induced by ourselves, and do not take the place in the soul. Imaginations, on the other hand, are processes which take place in the soul. Whoever has not learned to differentiate between imaginations and visions can, it is true, become a visionary who allows all sorts of vague clouds to arise out of his body, but he can never become a scientist of spirit. We are simply not consciously present when visions arise, and this is a most important point. It is in fact just as important and actual as the cautionary rules we adopt when pursuing chemical, physical and physiological methods. I would like to cite a critic of the spiritual scientific approach who has a high opinion of his own book wisdom. I have no wish to speak about all the rubbish he has said concerning my science of spirit, but I shall quote something from a book of this so-called learned gentleman. This book has attracted considerable notice and has already gone into a second edition after quite a short time. The author relates what happens to him sometimes when lecturing. For a time he speaks in such a way that he thinks over everything he says, but then sometimes he has observed that he does not think any longer, or at least thinks about something else, but yet he continues to speak. Well, first I promise never to impose myself upon you by ambling on when I have ceased to think! On the other hand, it must be emphasized that whoever believes it is possible to approach the mysteries of the soul when acting this way, is from the start much too stupid to be able to grasp anything about the fundamentals of what the true science of spirit is. He is also much too stupid to make any remotely correct statements about the science of spirit. With this one statement he proves how far he is from what is meant here. For the most essential thing is that the science of spirit must emphasize that consciousness must be present wherever the spiritual is sought. All visions and every kind of undirected dreaming, even if it is impressive enough to captivate a public without thinking as to the means by which it is captivated,—all this is quite out of the question, not only when we speak, but also in connection with what goes on inside us in our souls, if we are on the path to the spirit indicated by the science of spirit. The other thing that has to be differentiated from what I have called imagination, is our ordinary fantasy. Our higher imaginative life is not simply an act of our fantasy any more than it is a visionary or undirected mystical experience. With our fantasy, it is true, the pictures have a certain law and order, but they are arranged inwardly in quite a free way.—With our fantasy we are not so bound to the objective course of the pictures as we are in our ordinary perception or in the life of imagination where we know that the chair cannot stand in the air. If, therefore, in our inner training of the soul we reach the point of having before us what we cannot have before us in our ordinary consciousness, in our ordinary everyday life, we do not simply experience a world of pictures that arises out of the soul, the origin of which the soul itself has experienced bit by bit. We now experience a new world, a world of pictures, a world that otherwise we do not have around us. This is the first thing that anyone has to struggle for who wishes to penetrate into the real spiritual world. But now something specially important happens on this path toward spiritual investigation. The visionary is satisfied with this world of pictures. He says that that is what he has sought. The dreamer is also satisfied.—But the person who achieves imaginative knowledge is by no means satisfied with this world of pictures. He regards it only as a means for proceeding further. For the experience of this world of pictures is accompanied by a strengthening of our means of experience. We have to find quite different inner forces in our soul life if we want to hold on to these pictures, or be really consciously present when they come into existence. These forces are quite different from those we must use when ordinary pictures arise, when speaking in the ordinary way, or when writing books. This strengthening of our consciousness is the important factor, for by these means the soul becomes stronger than it is otherwise in life, or needs to be. There is nothing to be gained by this world of pictures other than a strengthening of our soul life. We should say to ourselves: This whole world of pictures is only a preparation for the spiritual world. Then, having experienced ourselves—and I say “experienced ourselves” intentionally—we realize that there is not really any objective world in these pictures, but that we have the means to penetrate into this objective world. We have, as it were, in this world of pictures a spiritual eye and a spiritual ear, but they are not yet transparent. Imagine that you have eyes in your eye sockets, but that they are not made of a transparent glasslike substance, but are darkened and opaque. This is the nature of this world of pictures within us, which is more likely to cut us off from the spiritual world, but which can be strengthened by taking into our souls the first available means to penetrate into the spiritual world. We have to acquire a further power. And this is acquired by feeling the power that we experience in these pictures. In experiencing them to the full, we acquire a second power. You can find more detailed information in my books. The second power consists in making the pictures transparent and transaudient, then doing away with them, just feeling ourselves in the pictures, having only strengthened our own self, but making the whole world of pictures transparent. We have to be in it, but we no longer have to see it. This is a condition that the visionary does not want at any cost, for he is immensely satisfied to feel himself in the pictures, to have, as he thinks, “the whole spiritual world” before him. He has no wish to make the pictures transparent. The scientist of spirit utilizes what he experiences with the pictures only to strengthen his ego that thereby becomes stronger than the ordinary ego, and can now maintain itself. When the ego maintains itself, it also maintains the world of pictures for itself, but by means of this inner strength it no longer directs its gaze to the perception of the world of pictures. The latter is overcome, so that although we live in this world of pictures we no longer perceive it and no longer look at it as something coming to us as a reality from outside. Further energetic practice of the exercises having made the imaginations transparent, the second thing necessary in order to enter the spiritual world comes about. This is what I call inspired knowledge. In using this word I would ask you to take it only in the sense that I have explained here, and not to confuse it with all sorts of superstitious notions. It is what appears in the soul when the latter has been strengthened in the world of pictures and then has eliminated. The world of pictures becomes transparent, and the outer objective spiritual world makes itself known in spiritual hearing, spiritual perception. It is not that then we have only the strengthened self before us, for our experience now gives us the possibility of knowing that there is a spiritual world around us, just as there is a physical world around us which we perceive with our physical eyes and ears. In fact, anyone who is of the opinion that proper investigation is not necessary in order to enter the spiritual world, or that talk about the spiritual world is only a lot of meaningless words, is quite wrong. And likewise wrong is the person who maintains that the scientist of spirit is a kind of visionary whose task is easy compared with the serious work which goes into the discoveries made in the laboratory and observatory. However difficult it may be for us to adopt the methods of ordinary science, it is even more difficult to master all the preparation necessary for the soul to get beyond the stage of imagination and enter the spiritual world as I have described. Irresponsible statements about such matters can come only from those who have never bothered to get a true idea of what the science of spirit is. Having now penetrated into the spiritual world when it is revealed to us in a way similar to our experience of color and sound in the physical world, something happens which we feel in a remarkable way. By continuing to apply ourselves to inspiration we continue to experience it and what happens then is what can be called a reversal of going to sleep. It is most important to grasp this. We know that by means of imaginative and inspired knowledge we have gone through all the various conditions that we normally only experience when we go to sleep. This making ourselves free of the physical body in imagination and inspiration is the same as when, in going to sleep, the physical body follows only its own laws, which have nothing to do with what happens in the soul. Notice what happens when we go to sleep: our normal perceptions become unclear and sink away, then we become unconscious. This sinking away of our physical perceptions does not happen because the physical body is tired, but because something else takes the place of our perceptions—namely, imaginations. It is not that we develop a lower form of soul activity, but a higher. This is even more the case with inspiration. If we proceed even further it is as if we were to wake up in the middle of sleep and see our bodies lying there apart from our souls. This is a real experience. We see that when we have experienced inspiration we are outside our bodies. We are not unconscious, however, but within the spiritual world. We now enter into what made itself known in inspiration, we enter into it, coming to know its beings and processes, step by step. In my writings I have called this third stage of spiritual knowledge, intuition. We penetrate into the spiritual world by imagination, inspiration and intuition. This is how we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world by the transformation of the soul. It cannot be attained by empty phrases or meaningless mystical talk about losing oneself in this or the other, but only by really earnest work on the soul.—Having reached this stage—and we do not have to call it a higher stage than our ordinary life, but only a different kind of knowledge—we then have quite a different relationship to the outer world than we have without this knowledge. Although it is well known to many of you after all the lectures I have given here, I would nevertheless like to mention in passing that it is not that a scientist of spirit is a scientist of spirit from the moment he wakes up until he goes to sleep as, say, a chemist is a chemist even when not in his laboratory. For the times when the scientist of spirit is not actually immersed in the spiritual world he is an ordinary human being like anyone else. He naturally lives according to what the outside world demands of him. It is a great mistake to imagine that the scientist of spirit becomes a different person. Many misunderstandings arise in the outside world about various kinds of societies because their members constantly suggest that they are a higher kind of human being. This is quite irresponsible and is certainly not meant here. What is meant is that in certain states of life we train the soul to enter the spiritual world, and that during these states, in this condition of soul, the soul has a different relationship to the outer world than usual, even regarding the more subtle distinctions in life. It may well seem odd to you, but it is nevertheless true, that it means a great deal to those who look at life in a one-sided way, whether one is a materialist or a spiritualist—spiritualist not in the sense of Spiritualism, but of German philosophy. It is really all the same to a scientist of spirit whether a person is a materialist or spiritualist. But this is not the point. For the materialist who approaches the outer material world with his deepened self, however material the phenomena are that he investigates, proceeds from matter to spirit, because spirit lies at the roof of all matter. If you start with matter and do not stop halfway, however rabid a materialist you may be, but are willing to apply your thinking to the investigation, you will then be on the right track. Neither should a spiritualist stop halfway, for then he only speaks eternally about spirit, and perhaps even despises matter. The important thing is not to talk about spirit, but to find the way from spirit to matter, to immerse oneself in matter, and to take the spirit with one into it. It is a fact that the spiritualists, who always chatter about spirit and have no idea of how to apply this spirit to our more immediate and useful life, are perhaps even more harmful than the materialists. Whether we start from matter or from spirit is not important. What is important is that we continue our investigations to a conclusion. But in a certain respect this does not happen in the case of the methods pursued by modern science. Although modern physiology and biology deal almost exclusively with the material aspect, even when studying the human being, their methods—that is, their method of thinking, not the facts they discover—cannot get behind the real mysteries of, say, human evolution. And for the questions we are now considering it is just this that is so important. You are well aware that the idea of evolution is one of the special achievements of modern science. But evolution has become a pretty threadbare word. The whole of science, including the human being, has come within the orbit of the idea of evolution, and this has led to the discovery of much useful and significant material. However, despite this, science has really only discovered half of what is necessary to make the human being understandable. For the human being is not as simple as all that, and cannot simply be understood on the basis of this single line of evolution. Man is a complicated being. If we are to apply the idea of evolution to the human being and really penetrate the real mysteries of his nature, we must apply the idea of evolution to the human organism, as the latter appears to our everyday senses, quite differently from the somewhat oversimplified approach attempted by science until now. For in dealing with the human being we have to differentiate between different parts—the head with the senses and the nervous system (for simplicity's sake I call it the head organism), the more central organism connected with the breast and abdominal regions, and the third, consisting of what takes place at the periphery of man's body. Anyone who has seen a human skeleton will know that what is expressed so differently from animals in the formation of man's extremities, his arms and hands, his legs and feet, is not only different in its outward expression, but this differentiation is also continued on a more inner level. Everything we experience outwardly concerning the human being is in the first instance, material. We come to know the real mysteries of this when we are in the position of being able to immerse ourselves in this material manifestation. Then in applying the idea of evolution as held by modern science we find that it only explains the middle of the three parts, the breast region. The human being considered from the aspect of his head organism cannot be explained by this idea of evolution. Why should this be?—Because the head of man not only undergoes a forward evolution, but within this forward evolution it also evolves in the opposite direction, a retrogressive evolution. The head, instead of building up, reduces, takes something away from the straightforward course of evolution, does not stop when the impetus of evolution comes to an end, but then ossifies more than the rest of the organism. We can see in this peculiar ossification of the head a trivial outer expression of the fact that anatomically the brain is strangely undifferentiated, a fact that the findings of modern science also point to—modern science and the science of spirit point to the same fact. Looking at the human being as a head organism, we are not concerned with one straight line of evolution, but with a development that at one time moves forward, then stops and becomes retrogressive. In becoming familiar with imagination, inspiration and intuition, our inner experience enables us to penetrate further into the structure of the material world than—however odd it may appear—those who always want only to experience the spirit. This experience of the spirit presupposes that we can penetrate into the material sphere. We then experience what our minds, which really make us human beings, really are. What happens in the unconscious when our minds are active? This is very odd—in using our minds, our heads become hungry. The head loses substance. Every idea that is permeated by our thinking is a partial condition of hunger. Ascetics, who have set about it in the wrong way, have then tried to let the whole body starve in order to call up certain ideas. This is wrong. In fact, the right thing comes about simply by establishing a certain unstable equilibrium. In our organism we have only a proper equilibrium and are properly nourished insofar as our middle organism is concerned, and respecting our head, only in sleep. All the time we are awake the head must suffer from undernourishment. This is the retrogressive evolution. It is derived from the withdrawal of evolution, from reducing substance. And lo and behold, we come upon something that is tremendously important, that provides the bridge from natural to scientific knowledge. We ask: How do our minds function? Is it due to a forward, germinal kind of evolution? No, it is due to evolution becoming retrogressive, where evolution stops and crumbles, thus making room for soul experience. If we believe that evolution simply continues in a straight line as it does in our purely animal, middle organisms, we never arrive at a concept of the independence of our minds, of our experience of thinking. This only happens when we know that evolution has to withdraw, as does everything that induces growth and life, in order that room is made within the head for the soul. Only in knowing how the head is the foundation of our soul life do we come to appreciate the independence of our experience. In penetrating to imagination, inspiration and intuition we see, therefore, how our thinking, whether right or wrong, affects our soul life. The body has to suspend its functions in order that the soul life can be present. We can then proceed further. The thinking part of us that takes up an independent position in the organism can be perceived, and we can see what it is and how it enters the human being when we say that one thing is right and another wrong, how it emerges out of our organism. And we have learned to recognize what sort of experience we have in imagination, inspiration and intuition. But now, in what way do we experience our thinking? We find that as it exists in everyday life, providing it is a real kind of thinking, it does not simply follow the haphazard way of our mental images, but evolves logically, rightly or wrongly, and that it is an unconscious form of inspiration to the human being. This is the great discovery that we make. The science of spirit leads us consciously into the sphere of inspiration. This can come about only by recognizing the fact that something flows into us that tells us to reject one thing and accept another. This is an unconscious form of inspiration.—Where does it come from? We discover this through the science of spirit in our experience of imagination, inspiration and intuition. If, having attained to imagination we do not rest there but immerse ourselves in inspiration, we come to see what it is that inspires us. This turns out to be the life that we lived before entering the body given to us by our mother and father, at birth or at conception. We now realize that this physical life is a continuation of a spiritual life that we have lived. Now through the thinking itself we learn that the human being descends from out of a spiritual world and enters into an existence where the mother and father provide him with a bodily vehicle which comes into being at birth or conception. In recognizing our thinking as unconscious inspiration and in perceiving intuitions, that is, in speaking of an intuitive thinking, of intuition living in our thinking, we are really speaking about the spirit-soul existence of man which he has before birth, or rather, before conception. In future the problem of immortality will be expanded considerably. Thus far, people have only interested themselves egoistically in what happens after death. But the life that we live here in a physical body is the continuation of a spiritual life. The science of spirit opens up the possibility of looking at our life here in conjunction with the immortal soul as it was before it entered into the physical body at birth or conception. Let us observe the human being from another aspect of his evolution. Here I shall have to say something very paradoxical. But I also know that the paradox I am going to speak about, which perhaps people will regard as somewhat perverse, will in fact be a solid possession of the science of the future. Let us look at the organism belonging to our extremities, that is, everything connected with the formation of our arms and hands, feet and legs, and see how these are continued on the inward plane. Here we have quite a different picture of evolution. With the head organism we saw how evolution has to be retrogressive. In the limb organism we have the odd situation that it is a shade ahead of what is normal in the middle organism; our extremities, our limbs, are really over evolved. Here the human being progresses beyond the norm established in the evolution of the head. Even the form—the time is unfortunately too short to go into all the details—and the whole life of our limb organism provides proof that we are here concerned with over-evolution, for it tends toward something for which the human being has no need for the preservation of his body. Our evolution goes beyond this, whereas our heads have evolved retrogressively. What is the consequence of this?—Because of this over evolution something is brought to life unconsciously in us that we only recognize when we have attained a grasp of the imaginative life and when this has then been deepened through inspiration and intuition. When the spiritual eye of the scientist of spirit perceives the limb organism, he sees how something is added to the organism. This something is, in fact, an imagination which arises as a matter of course in its own right. The extremities overdo evolution, thereby allowing something to be taken into the soul that cannot be seen with our normal eyes, but which appears immediately when we attain to imaginative life. Through the medium-ship of our limbs an imagination is produced, having nothing to do with our life here in the body. What have we here that is integrated into our limbs, and that can only be grasped as an imagination? It is nothing other than what later goes through the gate of death, that provides the foundation for the continuation of life after death. On the one hand, what exists before birth, before conception, unfolds its life in our heads, that have undergone retrogressive evolution to allow inspiration to work in our thinking, on the other, what bears our soul life in a kind of vehicle into the spiritual world after death, is integrated into our limb organism. Thus on the one hand we are endowed with unconscious inspiration in our heads, while on the other we are endowed with unconscious imagination in our limbs, whereby the part of us that goes through the gate of death lives unconsciously in us, bearing us into immortality after death. We therefore come to know life before birth and life after death in two different ways, the former as unconscious inspiration, the latter as unconscious imagination. It is possible to study biologically and physiologically the connection between the limb organism and the rest of the human organism. We then have only to see how in their structure the primary sexual organs are connected with the feet, and the secondary sexual organs, that is, the breasts only, are connected with the arms. Thus we have before us the physical basis for producing a new life, which then separates off, that has been integrated into the human being through the limb organization. This physical basis is complete when the human being reaches puberty, though he continues his life beyond this. What we have here as our physical organization has its counterpart. The physical organism, insofar as it is connected with the sexual organization, is the basis for producing further physical life. The spirit-soul nature, which is the basis of the organism of our extremities is, on the other hand, necessary in order to produce what is sent beyond the gate of death and brings about the next life on earth. We have here a starting point for a rigorous scientific investigation of the problem of immortality. And when more than twenty-five years ago I pointed out in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that it is necessary to observe correctly if we wish to approach freedom, I also indicated that on the other hand we have to progress toward purely intuitive thinking. Today I would add: This intuitive thinking is to be perceived before birth or conception. This was already written in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity when I called the one element of the human will, intuitive thinking. The other element that arises as imaginative life I called, for the purposes of discussing freedom, moral fantasy, in order to make the book possible for those who consider the science of spirit a lot of nonsense. It is described there from a philosophical viewpoint. The scientist of spirit adds that what is described there as moral fantasy is a part of what lives in the human organization as unconscious imagination and which then emerges in moral action. I said at that time that the interaction of moral fantasy and intuitive thinking is responsible for action on the part of the human being based on free will. Today I would add: What is the thinking? It is our inspiration here, that belongs to the sphere of pre-earthly existence. When does it become manifest?—It becomes manifest when we are able to work out an action that is so dear to us that it has nothing to do with our instincts and inclinations, that it is as dear to us as a person whom we really love because we have come to recognize and respect his inmost being. When we perform an action out of love—that is, not out of egoism, nor on the basis of our fluctuating mental images or ideas, but out of insight into the inner necessity of the action—then we give ourselves over to intuitive actions, we are then inspired by the life before birth. But where does the power to do this come from?—It is the power that takes us into the spiritual world after death. This goes on in us subconsciously. As moral action freely unfolds, there lights up what lies before birth or conception. This unites with what enters into the spiritual world after death. During our life between birth and death we already carry out actions where what lies before birth plays a part in us in our intuitive thinking, that flows as inspiration into our lives. What lies beyond death is really not connected with us at all, but is nevertheless carried out by us. It is characterized by being performed out of love: this is the truly free action. We therefore have to say that what enters us as inspiration by way of our intuitive thinking, has no connection with our body. And what works imaginatively has no significance for the moment, but only after death. These two factors, having nothing to do with the body, are the real forces that work in the true, free act of will in the human being. The profound mystery is that when we investigate the free will we find that nothing mortal in the human being carries out the actions, but we find that free actions are carried out by the immortal part of man. The problems of free will and of immortality are intimately connected because the only truly free actions are those in which the super-sensible plays a part, which is not yet bound to the body, which the human being has evolved in the spiritual world before he bears a body, and in which this super-sensible is joined to what results from over evolution, which has as yet no significance for our present development, but which will have significance after death, and which shines into those actions that are carried out apart from us. This is why I said in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that one cannot put the question: Is the human being free or unfree?—For this always leads to the wrong answers. It is not a question of “either—or,” but of “both—and.” The human being performs many actions arising out of the needs of his body, out of the interplay of mental images rising up out of the body as a result of the impulses of the body. But he always has the ideal of performing actions where he can say: What is to happen here is so free that I do not come into it; it is as free of me as the human being whom I love; it only happens because I realize that it should happen. Our whole human thinking is set in this direction, and it gradually seeks to infiltrate into our unfree action. The human being extricates himself from unfree actions by evolving increasingly toward his true self, especially in what he does and wills, where the spheres of before birth and after death shine into his willing. He evolves toward freedom within the sphere of unfreedom; he is on the way to becoming increasingly free. This is not a question of “either—or” but of action. Those who put the question in this way cannot possibly find an answer to the problem of freedom. On the contrary, it is a question of “both—and.” The human being is free in his actions inasmuch as the immortal soul is revealed to him underlying the life of the physical body. What he does is released by his thoughts, flowing by way of love into deeds, and his freedom will be measured by the extent to which this happens. In conclusion today I would simply like to show how the problems of immortality and free will illumine each other, and how they are so closely connected with each other. Free will can only be the possession of an immortal being. No one can be an adherent of free will without recognizing man's immortality at the same time. And those who do recognize man's immortality know that the human being is on the path of evolution toward freedom. The kind of considerations we have discussed today, in which the science of spirit enables us to approach the most important questions that then point to the necessity of selfless self-knowledge, are normally fraught with prejudices. For they indeed make great demands upon us. We have to take ourselves rigorously in hand if we are to succeed in persevering with the whole power of our souls in what I have called imaginative ideas. It is something we have yet to learn. It would be much more comfortable if we could answer the most profound questions and mysteries of human life without all this. What leads people today to regard the science of spirit as nonsensical and irrelevant? It is because they are unconsciously afraid of the powers that have to be developed in order to grasp the spirit in a completely free kind of experience of the spirit. For courage is necessary for such investigation, courage to believe that we do not immediately fall into an abyss of nothingness when we are dependent upon our own powers for producing a particular kind of experience which we ourselves place before our souls. It is certainly easier to want to penetrate the mysteries of life with outer means than to be told that the soul needs an inner strengthening far beyond anything found in ordinary life. It is therefore largely a matter of comfort and fear that leads to opposition to the science of spirit. Such things, however, will gradually be overcome by a humanity that is increasingly thirsting for truth. I would like to close today's lecture by quoting, in a somewhat modified form, the words of a German thinker. The science of spirit is slandered by many people today because it is not properly understood and recognized, because people do not see how necessary it is for human life. But if we really contemplate the course of human evolution, we are bound to say that however overbearing the opposition, the misunderstandings, the slanders that oppose the truth, the truth will find its own way through the narrowest cracks in the rocks of human evolution, however great the pressure from the rocks may be. The truth we have been talking about today—that on the one hand we recognize the needs of present day humanity, existing in the subconscious, and that on the other we look into the spiritual world and see how it reveals itself to us on the path from imagination to intuition—this is the kind of truth that must be seen by the scientist of spirit as the kind that will find its way through, however great the weight of opposition and slander that rests upon it. For the truth winds its way against obstacles through the tiniest cracks in the rock of human evolution, and is bound to triumph in the end. |
171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Seventh Lecture
30 Sep 1916, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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That means: Man's evolution is originally predisposed; man is not merely the highest peak of the animal world in the materialistic-Darwinian sense, but in the very first intentions of the earth's evolution, in the very beginning, in the beginning was the word. And only through this can man develop an ego on earth, which animals do not achieve, that the word is interwoven with human evolution. The word stands for the human ego. |
Man is capable of sense through having an astral body. Faust descends deeper into himself, from the ego into the astral body. “In the beginning was Sense.” Consider well the first line, Lest thy pen be over-hasty. |
Man will mature by developing still deeper damage for a while — and damage, as our days show, is sufficiently available — in his lower ego-bearer, in wild egoism; if man still had the old powers, that would be completely out of the question. |
171. Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century: Seventh Lecture
30 Sep 1916, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Following a performance of the scene in the study from “Faust I” Today I would like to take up the subject of what we have just seen, Goethe's “Faust”, in order to gain a unity from it that will then make it possible to arrive at a more comprehensive consideration tomorrow. We have seen how the transition from the 14th, 15th to the 16th, 17th century marks an extraordinarily significant turning point in the overall development of humanity, the transition from the Greco- Roman age to our fifth post-Atlantic period, to the period in which we now live, from which our impulses for all knowledge and also for all action flow, to the period that will last until the fourth millennium. Now, from all that you know about Goethe's “Faust” and the connection between Goethe's “Faust” and the Faust figure as it comes from the legend of the 16th century, you will realize that both this Faust figure from the 16th century and that which Goethe's perception formed out of it, is intimately connected with all the transitional impulses that the new age has brought forth in spiritual and thus also in external-material terms. Now in Goethe's case it is really true that precisely this problem of the dawning of the new age and the continued working of the impulses of the old age was so tremendously powerful that he was inspired throughout the sixty years during which he created his Faust by the question: What are the most important tasks, the most important attitudes for modern man? And Goethe could truly look back to the past age, which even science today knows so little about, that past age that ends with the 14th, 15th century. What history reports – I have said it often – about the human soul, about human abilities and needs in earlier centuries, is basically something that is very much a gray theory. In the souls of people in earlier centuries, in the centuries that preceded the age of Faust, things looked very different from the souls of people in the present, from the souls of the present human epoch. And Goethe has truly embodied a figure, a personality in his Faust, who looks back on the state of mind of people in earlier centuries, in centuries long past, and who at the same time looks forward to the tasks of the present, to the tasks of the future. In that Faust first looks back to the times preceding his own, he can, of course, see only the ruins of a perished culture, a spiritual culture. He can see the ruins. We must first of all consider the sixteenth-century Faust, who is a historical figure who really lived and who then became part of the folk legend. This Faust still lived in the old sciences that he had appropriated, lived in magic, in alchemy and in mysticism, which was the wisdom of earlier centuries, namely the wisdom of the time that preceded Christianity; but in the time in which the historical Faust of the 16th century lived, it was already in a state of profound decline. What was regarded as alchemy, magic, mysticism by those among whom Faust lived in the Faust era was already quite a strange stuff; it was a stuff based on traditions, on legacies from older times, but in which people no longer knew their way around. The wisdom that lived in it was no longer known. One had many sound formulas from ancient times, many correct insights from ancient times, but one understood them only poorly. Thus, in this respect, the historical Faust was placed in an age of decaying spiritual life. And Goethe continually mixed up what the historical Faust experienced with what he had created for the Faust of the 18th century, the Faust of the 19th century, and even the Faust of many centuries to come. Hence we see Goethe's Faust looking back to the old magic, to the old kind of wisdom, mysticism, which did not practice chemistry in today's materialistic sense, which, through its dealings with nature, wanted to come into contact with a spiritual world, but which no longer had the knowledge to do so in the right way, in the right way of earlier times. What was considered to be medicine in centuries long gone is not as foolish as today's science often wants to believe, but the actual wisdom contained in it has been lost, and it was already partly lost in the age of Faust. Goethe was well acquainted with it. But he did not know it intellectually alone, he knew it with his heart, he knew it with all the powers of his soul, which are attached to the welfare and salvation of humanity and which are particularly relevant for the salvation of humanity. He wanted to answer the questions, the riddles, that arose for him from this, in such a way that one could recognize how, proceeding further and further, one could arrive at other wisdoms regarding the spiritual world that were just as suitable for more recent times, as the ancients knew such wisdom, which, according to the course of human development, must necessarily fade away. Therefore, he lets his Faust become a magician. Faust has surrendered to magic, like the Faust of the 16th century. But he remains unsatisfied for the simple reason that the actual wisdom of ancient magic had already faded away. Ancient medicine also came from this wisdom. All knowledge of prescriptions and all medicine was connected with ancient chemistry, alchemy. Now, such a question immediately touches on the deepest secrets of humanity: that in truth one cannot cure diseases without at the same time being able to create them, for example. The ways to cure diseases are at the same time the ways to create them. We shall hear presently how the principle held good in ancient wisdom that the healer could at the same time be the producer of disease, and how therefore in ancient times the art of healing was associated with a deeply moral world view. But we shall also see shortly afterwards how little could have developed in these ancient times that is called the more recent freedom of human development, which was actually only tackled by humanity in this, our fifth period, following the Greco-Roman period. We shall see how this should have been if the ancient wisdom had remained. In all fields, however, this wisdom had to perish, so that man had to start from scratch, so to speak, but in such a way that he could strive for freedom with knowledge and action at the same time. He would not have been able to do so under the influence of the old wisdom. In such times of transition as those in which Faust lived, the decay of the old is there; the new has not yet come. Then such moods arise as can be observed in “Faust” in the scene that precedes the one we presented today. In this scene we see quite clearly how out of step Faust is with the times and how he feels out of step. We see how Faust, accompanied by his servant Wagner, goes out of his cell into the countryside, how he first looks at the people celebrating Easter outdoors, in the countryside, and how he himself gets into the Easter mood. But we immediately see how he does not want to accept the homage that the people offer him. An old farmer appears, steps up to Faust and offers homage because the people believe that Faust, the son of an old adept, an old healer, is also an important healer who can bring healing and blessing to the people. An old farmer steps up to Faust and says:
So says the old farmer, remembering how Faust is connected with the old healing arts, which, however, were not only related to the healing of physical illnesses, but also to the healing of the moral evils of the people. Faust knows that he no longer lives in an age in which the old wisdom of mankind was truly helpful, but already in a period of decline. And in his soul glows modesty, but at the same time dejection at the untruthfulness he actually faces; and he says:
Goethe had studied very well how they proceeded in those days, how they treated the “red lion”, the mercury oxide, sulfur mercury, how they treated the various chemicals that were mixed together and left to their processes, how they made medicines out of them. But all this no longer corresponded to the old wisdom. Goethe also knew the terminology; what you had to represent was definitely represented in images. The compounds of substances were depicted as a marriage. That is why he says:
- that was an artistic expression. Just as in today's chemistry, when certain substances have reached a certain state and color, they are called “the young queen”.
They died at that time from the fist, as they still do today from many medicines.
This is Faust's self-knowledge. Faust now stands before himself, he who you know has dabbled in old magical lore in order to penetrate the secrets of nature and the spirit. But through all this he has become spiritualized. Just as Wagner, his familiar, who has been satisfied with the newer wisdom that rests in the written works, that rests in letters, Faust cannot do so. Wagner, on the other hand, is a personality who makes far fewer demands on wisdom and life. And while Faust wants to dream himself into nature to find the spirit of nature, Wagner only thinks of the spirit that flows from the theories, the parchment, the books; what comes over Faust he calls “whimsical hours”:
- says Wagner —
He never wants to fly out into the world with the bird and see the world!
A complete bookworm, a complete theorist! So, after the people have left, they now stand there: the one who wants to go into the sources of life, who wants to connect his own being with the mysterious forces of nature in order to experience these mysterious forces of nature, Faust, and the one who sees nothing but the external material life and that which is recorded in the books precisely through matter. We need not reflect much on what has gone on in Faust's inner life through all that he has experienced up to this moment, as Goethe presents it to us; but we may say, after all that we find in Faust, that his inner life one might say, has been transformed and reversed, that a real development of the soul has taken place in Faust, that he has attained a certain inner vision; otherwise he would not have been able to call up the earth spirit, which surges up and down in a storm of activity. A certain ability to see the outer world not only in terms of its external appearances, but to see the spirit that lives and moves in everything, that is what Faust has acquired. Then, from afar, a poodle rushes towards them, Faust and Wagner. The way they both see the poodle – an ordinary poodle – the way Faust sees it and the way Wagner sees it, characterizes the two people completely. After Faust has dreamt himself into the living spirit of nature, he sees the poodle:
Faust does not just see the poodle, but something stirs inside Faust; he sees something that belongs to the poodle like a spiritual. That is what Faust sees. Wagner, of course, does not see it. After all, you can't see what Faust sees with your physical eyes.
Thus, in this simple manifestation, Faust also sees something spiritual. Let us hold on to that. Faust, whose mind is gripped by a certain spiritual connection with this poodle, now goes to his study. Now, of course, Goethe dramatically presents the scene in such a way that the poodle is as he is; that is also good, the drama must present it that way. But basically, we are dealing with something that Faust experiences inwardly. And the way this scene unfolds, how Faust experiences something inwardly here, is truly masterfully expressed by Goethe in every word. They remained outside, Faust and Wagner, until late into the night, when the external light no longer works, when only the twilight has worked. In the twilight, Faust sees what he wants to see spiritually. Now he comes home to his cell. Now he is alone with himself. A person like Faust, after going through all this, left alone with himself, is able to experience self-knowledge, that is, the life of the spirit in one's own self. He expresses how his innermost being has been stirred, but in a spiritual way:
The poodle growls. But let us be clear: these are inner experiences; even the poodle's growling is an inner experience, even if it is dramatically portrayed externally. Faust has entered into decaying magic, into an alliance with Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is not a spirit who leads him into progressive, regular spiritual forces; Mephistopheles is the spirit that Faust must first overcome, who is sent to him to overcome him, who is given to him for trial, not for instruction. That is to say, we now see Faust standing before us, on the one hand aspiring to enter into the spiritual world of divinity, which carries forward the evolution of the world, and on the other hand, the forces in his soul are stirring, drawing him down into the ordinary life of instinct, which diverts man from spiritual striving. Precisely when something sacred stirs in his soul, it scoffs; the opposing instincts scoff. This is now wonderfully presented in the form of external events: Faust, so to speak, striving for the divine-spiritual with all his knowledge, and his own instincts, which growl against it, just as the materialistic sense of man growls against spiritual striving. And when Faust says, “Be quiet, Poodle, don't growl,” he is basically calming himself. And now Faust speaks – that is, in this case, Goethe allows Faust to speak in a wonderful way. Only when one delves into the individual words does one find how wonderfully Goethe knows the inner life of the human being in spiritual development:
— that is, seeks the spirit in its own self.
— a very meaningful sentence! For the one who undergoes spiritual development, who is brought into contact with Faust through his life, knows that reason is not just something dead within, who not only knows rational reason, who knows how alive reason becomes, how inner spiritual weaving becomes reason and really speaks. This is not just a poetic image:
“Reason begins to speak again” - about the past that has remained alive from the past, “And hope begins to flourish again”, that is, we find our will transformed so that we know: we shall pass through the portal of death as a spiritually living being. The future and the past combine wonderfully. Goethe wants Faust to say that Faust knows how to find the inner life of the spirit through self-knowledge.
And now Faust seeks to get closer to what he is yearning for: the source of life. He first seeks one path: the path of religious uplift; he reaches for the New Testament. And the way he reaches for the New Testament is a wonderful representation of Goethe's wisdom-filled drama. He reaches for the one containing the most profound words of wisdom of modern times, the Gospel of John. He wants to translate this into his “beloved German”. The fact that Goethe chooses the moment of translation is significant. He who is familiar with the workings of deep world and spiritual realities knows that when wisdom is transferred from one language to another, all spirits of confusion arise and intervene. In the borderlands of life, the powers that oppose human development and human salvation are particularly evident. Goethe deliberately chooses the translation to place the spirit of wrongdoing, even the spirit of lies, which is still in the poodle, next to the spirit of truth. If you consider the feelings and sensations that can flow out of such a scene, the wonderful spiritual depth that lives in these scenes becomes apparent. All the temptations that I have just characterized, which come from what is in the poodle, which rise up to distort the truth into untruth, all this has an ongoing effect and has an effect precisely in an act of Faust, which gives one the opportunity to distort truth into untruth. And how little we actually notice that Goethe intended this is shown today by the various interpreters of Faust, for what do these various interpreters of Faust say about this scene? Well, you can read it; it says: Goethe is a man of the outer life, for whom the “word” is not enough. He has to correct the Gospel of John, he has to find a more correct translation; not: “In the beginning was the word,” the Logos, but: “In the beginning was the deed!” That is what Faust finds out after much hesitation. That is a profound Goethean wisdom. This wisdom is not a Faustian wisdom, it is a genuine Wagnerian wisdom, a true Wagnerian wisdom, just like the wisdom that is so often emphasized that Faust later says such beautiful words to Gretchen about religious life: Who can name him, who confess him, the all-embracing one who holds and carries everything, and so on, is a Gretchen wisdom. What Faust says to Gretchen has been quoted over and over again, and it is repeatedly presented as a profound piece of wisdom by the gentlemen who cite it, the learned gentlemen.
and so on. What Faust says is often presented as a profound piece of wisdom. Now, if Goethe had meant it to be the very deepest wisdom, he would not have put it into Faust's mouth at the moment when he wants to educate the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is a piece of wisdom for the ages! You just have to take things seriously. The scholars have only been taken in. They have taken what is a Gretchen saying for profound philosophy. And so, too, what appears as a translation of the Bible in Faust is taken for a particularly profound saying, whereas Goethe intends to depict nothing other than how truth and error toss man to and fro when he sets about such a task. Goethe has portrayed these two souls of Faust in great depth in this translation of the Bible.
We know that it is the Greek Logos. This is really written in the Gospel of John. In contrast to this, that which is symbolized by the poodle rears up in Faust and does not want to let him come to the deeper meaning of the Gospel of John. Why did the writer of the Gospel of John choose the word, the Logos? Because the writer of the Gospel of John wants to emphasize that what is most important in human development on earth, what really makes man outwardly human in his development on earth, did not develop gradually, but was there in the very beginning. What distinguishes man from all other beings? Because he can speak, all other creatures, animals, plants, minerals cannot. The materialist believes that man has only come to the word, that is, to language, to the Logos, which is permeated by thinking, after he has gone through the animal development. The Gospel of John takes the matter deeper and says: No, in the beginning was the word. That means: Man's evolution is originally predisposed; man is not merely the highest peak of the animal world in the materialistic-Darwinian sense, but in the very first intentions of the earth's evolution, in the very beginning, in the beginning was the word. And only through this can man develop an ego on earth, which animals do not achieve, that the word is interwoven with human evolution. The word stands for the human ego. But the spirit that is given to Faust, the spirit of untruth, rebels against this truth, and it must go deeper down; it cannot yet understand the profound wisdom that lies in the words of John.
But it is actually the poodle, the dog in him, and what is in the poodle that makes him falter. He does not get any higher, on the contrary, he gets lower.
While he sees Mephistopheles drawing near to him, he believes that he is enlightened by the spirit; but he is darkened by the spirit of darkness and comes down.
This is no higher than the word. Sense prevails, as we can easily demonstrate, even in the lives of animals; but the animal does not come to the human word. Man is capable of sense through having an astral body. Faust descends deeper into himself, from the ego into the astral body.
He thinks he is rising higher, but he is descending lower.
No, he descends even lower, from the astral to the denser material etheric body, and writes:
Power is that which lives in the etheric body.
The spirit that is in the poodle!
And now he has arrived at complete materialism; now he is at the physical body through which the outer deed is accomplished.
So you have Faust alive and well in a piece of self-knowledge. He translates the Bible wrongly because the various members of the human being, which we have discussed so often, I, astral body, etheric body, physical body, work together in him in a chaotic way through the Mephistophelian spirit. Now it also shows how these instincts prevail, because the outer barking of the poodle is what rebels against the truth in him. In his knowledge, he cannot yet recognize the wisdom of Christianity. We see this in the way he relates word, meaning, power and deed. But the urge to embrace Christianity is already alive in him. By making active that which lives in him as the Christ, he conquers the opposing spirit. At first he tries what he has retained from ancient magic. The spirit does not retreat, it does not show itself in its true form. He invokes the four elements and their spirits: salamander, sylph, undine, gnome; none of this distracts the spirit that is in the poodle. But when he invokes the Christ-figure, the “maliciously pierced one, poured out through all the heavens,” the poodle must show its true form. All this is basically self-knowledge, a self-knowledge that Goethe makes very clear. What happens? A traveling scholastic! Faust is truly practicing self-knowledge; he is basically confronting himself. First, in the form of the poodle, the wild instincts that have rebelled against the truth have taken effect, and now, to a certain extent, he becomes clear, clearly unclear: the traveling scholastic stands before him; but it is only the other self of Faust. He himself has become little more than a wandering scholastic with all the fallacies that are to be found in the wandering scholastic. Only now, through his union with the spiritual world, he has come to know the drives more precisely, and so the wandering scholastic, that is, his own self, as he has appropriated it so far, now confronts him more crudely and thoroughly. He has learned like a scholastic, like Faust; only then he has surrendered to magic, and through magic, scholasticism has been demonized. What has become of the old good Faust, when he was still a wandering scholastic, he has only become through the fact that he has still relied on the old magic. The wandering scholastic is still in him; he confronts him in a transformed form. It is only his own self. This wandering Scholastic is also the self. The struggle to get rid of everything that rode up as the self is now contained in the further scene. Goethe always tries to show only Faust's other self in the various forms in which Faust appears together, so that Faust recognizes more and more of himself. Perhaps some of the listeners remember that in earlier lectures I explained how Wagner is also in Faust himself, how Wagner is also only another self of Faust. Even Mephistopheles is only another self. All of this is self-knowledge! Self-knowledge is practiced through knowledge of the world. But all of this is not present in Faust in clear spiritual knowledge; it is all contained in Faust in unclear, dull spiritual-visionary power that one might say is still influenced by ancient atavistic clairvoyance. It is not clarified. It is not bright knowledge; it is dream-like knowledge. We are shown how the dream spirits, which are actually group souls of all those beings that accompany Mephistopheles, beguile Faust, and how he finally awakens. And there Goethe says, there Goethe lets Faust say very clearly:
Goethe repeatedly uses the method of hinting at the truth again and again. That he actually means it as an inner experience of Faust is clearly enough expressed in these four lines. This scene also shows us how Goethe struggled to understand the transition from the old age to the new one in which he himself lived, from the fourth post-Atlantic period to the fifth post-Atlantic period. The boundary is in the 14th, 15th, 16th century. As I said earlier, anyone who lives in today's thinking cannot, unless they do special studies, get a good idea of the development of the soul in past centuries. And in Faust's time, only the ruins remained. You see, we often experience that today people do not want to approach the newer spiritual research that we are striving for, but want to reheat the old wisdom. Many a person believes that by rehashing the knowledge of the ancients, they can arrive at a deeper, magical-mystical wisdom about nature. I would like to say that two fallacies are extremely close to all of man's spiritual endeavors. The first is that people buy old, ancient books, which they then study and value more highly than newer science. They usually value them more only because they do not understand them, because the language can really no longer be understood. That is the one nonsense, that one comes again and again with the content of the old books, which has become gibberish, when one wants to talk about spiritual research. The other thing is that one wants to give the newer endeavors old names if possible and thereby sanctify them. Look at some of the societies that call themselves occult or secret or whatever: their whole endeavor is to date themselves back as far as possible, to explain as much as possible about a legendary past, to take pleasure in old naming. That is the second nonsense. You don't need to go along with any of this if you really understand the needs and impulses of our time and the necessary future. You can open any book from the time when traditions were still present, so to speak. You can pick out any book where traditions were still present: from the way it is presented, you can see that legacies, traditions, were present from an ancient, primordial wisdom that humanity possessed, but that this wisdom had fallen into decline. The language, everything is still there, even quite late. I have a book at hand that was printed in 1740, so it was only published in the 18th century. I would like to read a short passage from it, a passage that is certain to make many people who are seeking spiritual knowledge today think, “Abyssmal, profound wisdom!” Oh, what is contained in it all! - There are even some who believe that they understand such a passage. Now, I will first read the passage I mean: "The king's crone shall be of pure gold, and a chaste bride shall be given him in marriage.” Therefore, if you want to work through our bodies, take the ravenous gray wolf, which is subjugated to the warlike Mars in name but is by birth a child of the old Saturn, found in the valleys and mountains of the world, and possessed of great hunger. Cast him for the body of the king, that he may have his sustenance." That is how these chemical processes that were set up were called in ancient times; that is how certain chemical processes were spoken of, which Faust also alludes to when he talks about how a red lion marries the lily in the glass and so on. It is not proper to mock these things, for the simple reason that the way chemistry is spoken of today will sound to people who come later just as it does to us. But we should be clear that this has also just emerged, even in a very late period of decline. The term “gray wolf” is used; this refers to a certain ore that can be found everywhere in the mountains and that is subjected to a certain procedure. “King” was the term used to describe a certain state of substances; and what is being described here is meant to indicate a certain handling. They took the gray ore and treated it in a certain way; this gray ore was called the “gluttonous gray wolf,” and the other was the “golden king,” where the gold, after being treated in a certain way, was the “golden king.” And so a connection arose. He describes this connection as follows: And when he had swallowed the king – so it happens that the “gray, ferocious wolf”, that is, the gray ore that had been found in the mountains, merged with the golden king – that is a certain state of the gold after it has been chemically treated; the gold has disappeared into the gray ore. He depicts it: “And when he has swallowed the king, make a great fire and throw the wolf into it. – So the wolf that has eaten the gold, the golden king, is thrown into the fire – ”so that he may be completely consumed by the fire, and the king will be redeemed again. The gold appears again! “When this happens three times, the lion has conquered the wolf and will find nothing more to consume in him; then our body is complete, at the beginning of our work.” So he does something in this way. If you wanted to know what he does, you would have to describe these procedures in great detail, especially how the golden king is made, but it cannot be described here. These procedures are no longer carried out today. But what does the man expect to achieve by this? He promises himself something that is not entirely out of thin air, because he has now done something. What did he actually do it for? That is, the person who had it printed will probably not have done it at all, but will have copied it from old books. But why was it done in the time when people still understood the things? You can see this from the following: “And know that this alone is the right way to thoroughly cleanse our bodies, for Leo cleanses himself with the blood of Wolf, and the blood tincture combines wonderfully with the tincture of the lion, because the two bloods are closely related in the family tree.” So now he praises what he has created. He has received a kind of medicine. “And when the lion has gorged himself, his spirit has become stronger than before, and his eyes give off a proud glow like the bright sun.” That is all the property of what he has in the test tube! "His inner being can do a lot, and is useful for all the things he is required to do, and when he is brought to his readiness, the children of men, burdened with serious illnesses and multiple plagues, follow him, desiring to drink of the blood of his soul, and all who have ailments rejoice greatly in his spirit; for whoever drinks from this golden fountain feels a complete renewal of nature, an acceptance of evil, a strengthening of the blood, a vigor of the heart, and a perfect health of all limbs. You see, it is indicated that you are dealing with a medicine; but it is also sufficiently indicated here that it has something to do with what appears as a moral quality in man. Because, of course, if someone who is healthy takes it in the appropriate amount, then what the man describes occurs. That is what he means, and that is how it was with the ancients who still understood something about these things. “For whoever drinks from this golden fountain will feel a complete renewal of nature” – in other words, through this art, which he has described, he has striven for a tincture through which real vital energy enters the human being: “Heart strength, blood strength and perfect health of all limbs, whether they are closed inside or sensitive outside the body, for it opens up all the nerves and pores so that evil can be expelled and the good can dwell there in peace.” I read this out first to show how even in these ruins of an old wisdom, there is a reflection of what was aspired to in ancient times. They strove to stimulate the body through external means that they had created from nature, that is, to achieve certain abilities not only through inner, moral striving, but through means of nature itself, which they had created. Hold on to that for a moment, because it leads us to something important that distinguishes our period from earlier ones. Today, it is quite easy to scoff at ancient superstition, because then you are rewarded for it by being considered an intelligent person before the whole world; whereas otherwise you are not considered an intelligent person if you see something sensible in ancient knowledge. Something that has even been lost to mankind and was bound to be lost for certain reasons, because in this pursuit of the ancient times, people could never have come to freedom. But look, you will find in old books, which now go back to older times than this book, which belongs to a very late period of decay, you will find in old books, which you know well, sun and gold with a common sign, with this sign: ©; you find moon and silver with this sign: €. For today's man, this sign, applied to gold and sun, and this sign, applied to moon and silver, for soul abilities that today's man necessarily has, is of course complete nonsense; and it is complete nonsense how literature, which often also calls itself “esoteric” literature, about these things, because most of the time one does not have the means to recognize why in ancient times the sun and gold and the moon and silver were designated with the same sign. Let us start with moon and silver with this sign: €. You see, if we go back in time, say a few millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, before the Christian era, then people not only had the abilities that were already in ruins at the time when such things came into being, but they had even higher abilities. When a person of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture said “silver”, they did not mean what we mean when we say silver. When a person used the word in his ancient language that meant silver to him, he applied it quite differently. Such a person had inner abilities and meant a certain kind of power that is not only found in a piece of silver, but he meant something that basically extends over the whole earth. He meant: We live in gold, we live in copper, we live in silver. He meant certain types of forces that live there and that in particular flowed strongly towards him from the moon, and he sensed that in the coarsest material sense, sensitively, also in the piece of silver. He really found the same forces emanating from the moon, but also on the whole earth, and particularly in the material sense in the piece of silver. Now, today's enlightened man says: Yes, the moon, it shines so silvery white; they just believed that it was made of silver. — It was not, but rather, one had an inner soul experience with the moon, something that lived in the entire earth's sphere as a force, and, translated into the material, with the piece of silver. So the power contained in the silver must be spread over the whole earth, so to speak. Today, of course, people consider this to be complete nonsense when you tell them, and yet in terms of today's science it is not complete nonsense. It is not nonsense at all, not nonsense at all, because I will tell you one thing that science knows today, even if it does not always say it. Modern science knows that a body, thought of as a cube, one English nautical mile long, contains a little over four pounds of silver, finely distributed. This is simply a scientific truth that can be tested today. The ocean contains two million tons of silver, finely distributed, in the most extreme homeopathic dilution, one might say. It is truly as if the silver were spread out over the Earth. Today, when we verify this with normal knowledge, we do so by scooping up seawater and methodically testing it with all kinds of meticulous examinations. But then, using the means of today's science, we find that the world's oceans contain two million tons of silver. These two million tons of silver are not contained in it in such a way that they have somehow dissolved or something similar, but they belong to the world ocean; they belong to its nature and essence. And this was known to ancient wisdom; it knew this through the still existing fine, sensitive powers that came from ancient clairvoyance. And it knew that when one imagines the earth, one does not have to imagine this earth merely as today's geology imagines it, but that silver is dissolved in this earth in the finest way. I could go on now, and show how gold is also dissolved, how all these metals, in addition to being deposited here and there materially, are really contained in the earth in a fine dissolution. So the ancient wisdom was not wrong when it spoke of silver. That is contained in the earth's sphere. But it was known as a force, as certain types of force. The sphere of silver contains other forces, the sphere of gold contains other forces, and so on. Much more was known about what is spread out as silver in the sphere of the earth; it was known that the power that causes the tides lies in this silver, because a certain vitalizing power of this entire terrestrial body lies in this silver, or is identical with this silver. Otherwise, there would be no tides; this peculiar movement of the sea is originally fueled by the silver content. This has nothing to do with the moon, but the moon has to do with the same force. Therefore, the tides occur in a certain relationship with the lunar movements, because both, lunar movements and tides, depend on the same system of forces. And these forces lie in the silver content of the universe. One can, even without clairvoyant insight, merely go into such things and one will be able to prove with a certainty of proof, which is otherwise not attained in any field of science except at most in mathematics, that there was an ancient science that knew such things, that knew such things well. And connected with this knowledge and skill was what ancient wisdom was, that wisdom which really dominated nature and which must first be won again through spiritual research from the present into the future. We are living in the very age in which an old kind of wisdom has been lost and a new kind of wisdom is only just emerging. What was the consequence of this old wisdom? It had the consequence that I have already indicated. If you really knew the secrets of the universe, you could make your own human being more efficient. Do you think that people could be made more capable through external means! So the possibility existed that a person could acquire abilities simply by taking certain substances in the appropriate quantities, which today we rightly assume that a person can only have as innate abilities, as genius, as talent, and so on. It is not the fantastic dreams of Darwinism that are at the beginning of the development of the Earth, but the possibility of dominating nature and giving man moral and spiritual abilities through the treatment of nature. You will now understand that this treatment of nature must therefore be kept within very definite limits; hence the secrets of the most ancient mysteries. Whoever was to attain such knowledge, which really had something to do with these secrets of nature, which were not merely concepts and ideas and sensations, not merely beliefs, who was to attain such knowledge had first to prove himself to be completely suited to it, to want to achieve nothing, but also nothing at all for himself with this knowledge, but to apply these insights, these skills, which he acquired through this knowledge, solely in the service of the social order. That is why these insights were kept so secret, let us say, in the Egyptian mysteries. The preparation consisted of the fact that the one to whom such knowledge was transmitted gave a guarantee that he would continue to live the life he had led before in exactly the same way, that he would not gain the slightest advantage for himself, but would merely apply the proficiency he now acquired in the treatment of nature in the service of the social order. Under this condition, individuals were allowed to become initiates, who then led that ancient culture, whose wonders can be seen and are not understood because it is not known from what they arose. But humanity could never have become free in this way. Man would have had to be turned into an automaton through the influence of nature, so to speak. An age had to come when man would work through mere inner moral forces. Thus nature is veiled from him, as it were, because he would have profaned it by releasing his instincts in the new age. And his instincts have been most released since the 14th, 15th century. Therefore the old wisdom fades away; there remains only a bookish wisdom that is not understood. For no one today would be deterred if he really understood such things as only the sentence I read to you, no one today would be deterred from using these things for his own benefit. But that would give rise to the worst instincts in human society, worse instincts than those groping advances that are produced in the scientific work of today, where one finds out in the laboratory, without being able to see into things, that this substance affects the other in this way, — where one finds out something without looking into things, well, that is now the content of chemistry. We are thus adrift; and spiritual science will first have to find its way into the secrets of nature again. But at the same time it will have to found a social order that is quite different from today's social order, so that man can recognize what holds nature together at its core without therefore being seduced into the struggle of the wildest instincts. There is meaning and there is wisdom in human development, and that is what I have been trying to prove to you through a series of lectures. What happens in history happens, even if often through destructive forces, but in such a way that there is a meaning to historical development, even if it is often not the meaning that people dream up, and even if people have to suffer a lot as a result of the paths that the meaning of history often takes. Everything that happens in the course of time, it certainly happens so that the pendulum sometimes swings after evil, sometimes after less evil; but through this swinging, certain states of equilibrium are nevertheless achieved. And so it was that at least a few natural forces were known about until the 14th or 15th century, knowledge of which has been lost because people in more recent times would not have the right attitude towards it. You see, it is beautifully described in the symbol that expresses the power of nature in the Egyptian legend of Isis. This image of Isis makes a moving impression on us when we imagine it standing there in stone, but at the same time veiled from top to bottom: the veiled image at Sais. And the inscription reads: I am the past, the present and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil. This has led to an extremely clever explanation, although very clever people have taken this clever explanation, it must be said. It is said that Isis thus expresses the symbol of wisdom, which can never be attained by man. Behind this veil is a being that must remain hidden forever, for the veil cannot be lifted. — And yet the inscription is this: I am the past, the present and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil. All the clever people who say, “You cannot fathom the essence” are saying, logically, roughly the same thing as someone saying, “My name is Miller; you will never learn my name.” It is exactly the same as what you always hear people say about this picture: “My name is Miller; you will never learn my name.” If you interpret “I am the past, the present and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil,” then, of course, this interpretation is complete nonsense. Because it says what Isis is: past, present and future – flowing time! We will talk about these things in more detail tomorrow. It is flowing time. But something quite different from what this so-called ingenious explanation wants is expressed in the words: No mortal has yet lifted my veil. What is meant is that one must approach this wisdom as one would those women who had taken the veil, whose virginity had to remain intact: with reverence, with an attitude that excludes all selfish urges. That is what is meant. She is like a veiled nun, this wisdom of earlier times. The attitude is indicated by speaking of this veil. And so it was important that in the times when ancient wisdom was alive, people approached this wisdom in the appropriate way, or were not allowed at all if they did not approach it in the appropriate way. But in more recent times, man had to be left to his own devices. He could not have the wisdom of ancient times, the forms of wisdom of ancient times. Knowledge of certain natural forces was lost, those natural forces that cannot be recognized without simultaneously experiencing them inwardly, without simultaneously experiencing them inwardly. And in the age in which, as I explained to you eight days ago, materialism reached a certain peak, in the 19th century, at the beginning of the 19th century, a natural force arose that is characterized in its special nature by the fact that everyone today says: We have the natural force, but one cannot understand it; for science it is hidden. You know how the natural force of electricity in particular came into human use; and electrical power is such a force that man cannot experience it internally through his normal powers, it remains external to him. And more than one might think has come into being in the nineteenth century through electricity. It would be easy to show how much, how infinitely much, depends on electrical power in our present culture, and how much more will depend in the future when electrical power is used in the modern way, without going into the inner being. Much more! But it is precisely electricity that has been put in the place of the old, familiar power in the development of human culture, and through which man is to mature in a moral sense. Today, he does not think of any morality when using it. Wisdom is in the continuous historical development of humanity. Man will mature by developing still deeper damage for a while — and damage, as our days show, is sufficiently available — in his lower ego-bearer, in wild egoism; if man still had the old powers, that would be completely out of the question. It is precisely the electrical power as a cultural force that makes this possible; steam power in a certain way too, but it is even less the case there. Now the situation is such that, as I explained to you earlier, the first fifth of our cultural period, which will last into the 4th millennium, is over. Materialism has reached a certain peak. The social forms in which we live, which have led to such sad events in our years, are really such that they will no longer sustain humanity for fifty years without a fundamental change in human souls. For those who have a spiritual understanding of world development, the electrical age is at the same time an invitation to seek a spiritual deepening, a real spiritual deepening. For the spiritual power must be added to that power, which remains unknown on the outside for sensory observation, in the souls, which rests so hidden in the deepest interior, like the electrical forces, which must also first be awakened. Imagine how mysterious the electrical power is; it was only brought out of its secret hiding places by Galvani, Volta. Something similar is true of the hidden forces that lie in human souls and are the subject of spiritual science. The two must come together, like north and south poles. And just as the discovery of electricity as a hidden force in nature was inevitable, so the power that spiritual science seeks as the hidden force in the soul will inevitably be discovered. Although many people today what spiritual science wants, now, as roughly one would have confessed at the time when Galvani was preparing the frogs and noticed from the twitching of the leg that a force was at work in this twitching frog's leg. Did science know then that this frog's leg contained everything there is to be known about electricity, including static electricity? Imagine the time when Galvani was in his simple experimental house, hanging his frog's leg outside the window hook and it began to twitch, and he observed this for the first time! It is not a question of electricity, is it, which is excited, but of contact electricity. When Galvani first realized this, could he assume: With the power with which the frog's leg is attracted, one day trains will be driven over the earth, with that power one day one will be able to send thoughts around the globe? It is not so very long ago that Galvani observed this force in his frog legs. Anyone who had already said at that time what would flow from this knowledge would certainly have been considered a fool. So it also happened that today someone who has to present the first beginnings of a spiritual science is considered a fool. A time will come when that which proceeds from spiritual science will be just as significant for the world, but now the moral, spiritual and soul world, as that which proceeded from the Galvani frog's leg was for the material world, for material culture. This is how progress is made in human development. Only if we pay attention to such things do we also develop the will to go along with what can only be in its beginnings. If the other power, the electrical power, which has been drawn from its hiddenness, is only of importance for the outer material culture and only indirectly for the moral world, then that which comes from spiritual science will have the greatest social significance. For the social orders of the future will be regulated by what spiritual science can give to people, and everything that will be external material culture will also be indirectly stimulated by this spiritual science. Today, at the end, I can only point this out. Tomorrow we will expand the image of Faust, who, as I have already mentioned, is still half in the old and half in the new era, to create a kind of worldview image. |
168. The Connection Between the Living and the Dead: The Elements of the Human Being in Life Between Death and Rebirth
18 Feb 1916, Kassel Rudolf Steiner |
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Here, when we look at the human being on the physical plane, the ego appears to us as that which comes to us first, if we may use the expression, as the highest. The physical body is shared with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with all animals. |
For of the earthly members of human nature, essentially only the ego and the astral body remain. The physical body has fallen away. What remains is what I have called “the void.” |
Feeling and will remain with us in the astral body and in the ego. We carry these into the spiritual world. Not one science forces materialism, on the contrary, real science today justifies our spiritual science everywhere. |
168. The Connection Between the Living and the Dead: The Elements of the Human Being in Life Between Death and Rebirth
18 Feb 1916, Kassel Rudolf Steiner |
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The times in which we live will be able to suggest to us very clearly how urgently it is necessary for people in our present time to explore the meaning of life. And the meaning of life on earth can never become clear to us if we merely turn our gaze to that which takes place in the world of the senses. For everything that takes place in the world of the senses acquires its deeper meaning only through the fact that the spiritual in this sensual also comes to expression. Our time is a difficult time of trial. And those who are willing to remain loyal and firm to our cause must understand in particular how this time of ours is a difficult time of trial, and how it will only be able to reveal its meaning - again its meaning! - to our soul if we rise to that which expresses itself spiritually even in such difficult events that take place on the physical plane. In view of the fact that we are looking at fields where the gate of death rises up in countless cases, and in view of the thought that many of our friends have already left the physical plane in large numbers, we would perhaps do well today to turn our attention to what can be said about the world into which a person passes when he passes through the gate of death here. From this point of view — and you know that there are many, many points of view from which we can start our observations — we want to consider life between death and a new birth today. In our spiritual science, we first try to recognize the human being as he stands before us: we know that he stands in such a way that he unfolds his physical and spiritual sides before us. We know that these spiritual aspects remain supersensible for the physical plane; the spiritual can only reveal itself, announce itself through the physical. And when we look at the human being here on the physical plane in order to understand him in the sense of our spiritual science, we say: First of all, as you know from my book Theosophy, the four main aspects of the human being reveal themselves to us: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. From the etheric body upwards, the aspects of human nature are supersensible to physical observation. But we do experience our I and our astral body. We experience them inwardly. We experience them through the fact that we are able to know ourselves as I, even if this I remains invisible and supersensible. In short, one can understand, even if one remains with what only the physical world reveals, why we consider the human being in terms of these four aspects. Now let us imagine that we can also look at the human being who lives between death and a new birth in a similar way, that it is also possible to speak of members of the human being who is in the process of life between death and a new birth. You know that we hand over the physical body to the elements, to the substances of the earth; the ether body is handed over to the general ether world; after some time, that which is mainly in our astral body, but of which the earthly human being knows nothing, that also dissolves to a certain extent, and the I then goes its way through the world that we are currently experiencing between death and a new birth. Now we should not believe that the human being who stands between death and a new birth is not an equally differentiated, an equally structured being as the human being here in the physical world. We can also speak of members of human nature between death and a new birth; only then we will have to speak in the following way. Here, when we look at the human being on the physical plane, the ego appears to us as that which comes to us first, if we may use the expression, as the highest. The physical body is shared with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with all animals. The I is unique to us. In the spiritual world, the I, which appears to us here as the highest link in human nature, is the lowest link in human nature in the world between death and rebirth. Just as we begin here with the physical body, so in the spiritual world one must begin with the ego, which is shrouded, as if in a mist of the astral, only during the time when the human being passes through the soul world, but which is nevertheless the lowest link of the human being between death and a new birth. And just as we envelop ourselves here when we enter the physical world from the spiritual world through birth or through conception, we also envelop ourselves in the spiritual world, one might say with spirit members. We actually already know the names for these members of the spirit. We just look at them a little from a different angle. When we have passed through the gate of death, we envelop ourselves in the spirit self. This is, of course, a member of human nature that the human being will develop in the future during the Jupiter evolution. What I now call the spiritual self for the world between death and a new birth is not exactly the same as what will develop when the human being progresses from the earth to Jupiter; rather, what the human being will develop on Jupiter will be a kind of external image, a kind of counter-image for the senses of the spiritual essence in which the human being envelops himself when he passes through the time between death and a new birth. It is indeed the case that this link, in which the human being envelops himself when he passes through the time between death and a new birth, can also be described as a spirit self. In the further course, man then envelops himself in that limb, which can be described as the spirit of life, which in turn is a spiritual counterpart to something that will only arise in the physical process during the development of Venus. And the actual spiritual man is that which develops in man as the spiritual counter-image of that which, in the physical image, man will have in the highest sphere, to which we can still look today, during the volcanic development, in his physical development. So that we can say: As man here envelops himself in the astral, etheric and physical body, so he envelops himself by growing into the spiritual world, into spirit-self, life-spirit, spiritual man. Now I would like to describe to you in more detail how things turn out from the initiated knowledge, as one might say. You already know half of these things. When a person has passed through the gate of death here, his physical body is given back to the elements of the earth. This release of the physical body is an extremely important one for the life between death and a new birth. Of course, it seems trivial to say that death is actually birth for the spiritual world; but nevertheless it is also a justified word. We just have to get used to making our concepts somewhat flexible, so that we do not cling to our concepts directly to what the earth presents to us. We are accustomed to forming our concepts only according to what the earth presents to us. We must be able to change our concepts. Life in the spiritual world is completely different from life on earth. The spiritual experience that a person has in the spiritual world when he passes through the gate of death is that the physical body falls away from him. This is a momentous, an enormously momentous experience! And the first thing to be said about this experience is that it is completely contrary to the beginning of the spiritual life after death, as the birth of man is to our physical life between birth and death. No man can, after all, look at his birth with the physical power of knowledge of the earth. Man does not experience birth with his physical powers of knowledge here on earth. Just as we do not experience the physical birth, as the human being has no memory – this only begins later – of the events of his birth and how this is right for life on earth and must be so, so it is the opposite for the life between death and a new birth. Because the moment, the instant of, I cannot say dying, but of having died, remains as something that man can look at again and again during the whole process of life between death and a new birth. Just as we never remember the events of our birth in our physical life, just as clearly we have our entire lifetime between death and a new birth in front of us, the moment of death, but from the other side, from the side of spiritual experience, so to speak from the other shore. For the earthly human being, death can, with a certain justification, be a frightening thing. It represents the decay of the physical earthly human being. The opposite is the case when the human being looks back on having died between death and a new birth: Then it always represents the victory of the spirit over the physical, then death represents the most beautiful, the greatest, the most glorious, the most sublime that can be experienced at all. And because a person is able to look at their mortality between death and a new birth, this reflection on mortality is what gives us consciousness after death, so that we know: we have shed our physical body. And that we experience this, that we always have this before us, is given to us by our self-awareness after death, just as we attain our self-awareness here in the physical world by having our physical body. When we are outside the physical body with our astral body and I from falling asleep to waking up, we have no consciousness of the physical world. When we wake up, we have to physically push into ourselves, and then the consciousness of self can flourish again. Every time we look at death after death, when the whole event, this - speaking from the other side - sublime, beautiful event stands before our soul, then after death the consciousness ignites again and again. It depends entirely on the constant contemplation of this moment. And there is something else connected with this. It is somewhat difficult to talk about these things, because, as I said, there are no corresponding experiences here in the physical world, but one must try to characterize these things as they are. When we look beyond our continued existence after death and consider our dying, then we have above all the feeling, the impression, that where we died, now that we have died, there is nothing, not even space. It is, as I said, difficult to describe, but that is how it is: there is nothing there. And in the external sense: The thing appears magnificent and sublime for the reason that everywhere else a new world is opening up for us. The flooding spiritual world presses in from all sides, but there is nothing there from which we have died out. Theoretically described, the matter may have something terrible about it, but in the sensation after death it is not terrible. In the sensation after death, it allows a deep satisfaction to well up in the soul. One learns, as it were, to expand into the whole world and to look at something that is like an emptiness in the world. And from this arises the feeling: That is your place in the world, the place that is out of all the vastness, and that is yours. And you get the feeling, precisely from this emptiness, that you have a purpose for the whole world, that every single human existence - you get it initially, of course, as an explanation for yourself - must be there. This place would always be empty if I were not there - so every soul says to itself. That everyone, everyone as a human being, has been assigned a place in the universe, this feeling, this incredibly inwardly warming feeling, arises from this contemplation: that the whole world is there, and that this whole world has been driven out as if from a symphony the single note that one is, and that must be there, otherwise the world would not be there. This feeling arises from looking back at the experience of death. It remains, because it is what primarily gives the sense of self, self-awareness, between death and a new birth. Then, for a relatively short time — but that is enough — there is still a union with the etheric body. Everything one has experienced in life, even the smallest events, suddenly stand there as in a large life tableau, for days; they remain for days. One has the very intense feeling: the earth on which one has stood so far moves on, but one remains behind, one begins to stand still. One does not go along with the spatial movement of the earth. And in doing so, the life tableau expands. One does not actually speak when one speaks of a memory of life, because one has memories in such a way that one looks back in time. But that is not the case; it is simultaneous; it is a tableau, it is a moving tableau. Even, as I said, the smallest events extend to that. Then one separates from this ethereal experience. Then, as one is accustomed to saying, the disengagement of the etheric body takes place. That with which one was connected as the etheric body, one has it, while one previously addressed it as one's inner being, now externally, and it becomes ever larger and weaves itself into - that is actually the correct expression - the spiritual world, into which one has now entered. Only in this spiritual world is the empty space that I have spoken of; that remains empty. And the etheric body weaves itself in all around on the outside, becoming bigger and bigger. Now, we must be very clear that it would be a mistaken idea – I must confess, I have been convinced in all cases in which I have been able to study this fact, which I am now talking about, intensively, that it would be a mistake – to believe that we would not see what we have woven into the general spiritual world as our etheric body in the time between death and a new birth. We see it forever. We always look at it, it belongs to our outer world. What previously belonged to our inner world in our etheric body now belongs to our outer world. We look at that. And it is important that we can look at it, because through it so much of the spiritual outer world becomes understandable to us as a relationship exists between what we have interwoven and the entire spiritual outer world. You may remember from the lectures I once gave in Vienna about the time between death and a new birth that I said: First of all, the human being is interwoven in a world that is full of wisdom. While he searches for wisdom here with effort, he is completely immersed in the light of wisdom. And this wisdom, in which he is immersed, overwhelms him. And it would overwhelm him further if he could not weave into it that which he has woven into the wisdom of his etheric body during his lifetime, if he could not weave that into the world. In this way, the tremendous abundance of light in the general world ether is attenuated for him, and he begins to understand what it is that interweaves, ensouls and spiritualizes the world in the general world ether. Thus we have that which, as it were, falls away from the human being when the human being is taken up into the spiritual world. For of the earthly members of human nature, essentially only the ego and the astral body remain. The physical body has fallen away. What remains is what I have called “the void.” The etheric body becomes subject to the general world ether. The human being continues on his path. For what he now gives up to the cosmic ether as his etheric body, for that he envelops himself in what we have called the spirit self. This is, so to speak, now an outer member. Indefinite ether approaches him; this envelops him with a kind of spirit self. It is good if we now pause for a moment to consider what remains behind, I would say, in the immediate future: the concept of the human being. We need not speak of this emptiness, because it is of the greatest importance above all for the person himself who has died, who has the experiences I have described. But with the etheric body it is something else. The etheric body itself is objectively woven into what is the general world ether. It is then in this, this etheric body of man. Now you will find it understandable that, to a certain extent, the etheric body of a person who dies at a young age is somewhat different in the world outside than the etheric body of a person who, so to speak, reaches the normal age limit. Every etheric body naturally has its task, and it cannot arise from what I am about to say that any wish to die early or late can arise from it; that would be a very distorted and false, the most false conception of the matter. But nevertheless, what is to be said now is valid. When a person dies at a young age, they have an etheric body that could perhaps have still cared for the physical body for decades, could have worked in the physical body. Now, just as little energy is lost in the spiritual world as in the physical world. This means that in the etheric body, which the human being leaves after death, the power is present that could perhaps have supplied the physical body of the human being for decades if the person were in their twenties or thirties. It is no longer in a physical human body; it is out in the world. This can perhaps be most vividly brought home to our souls by an example. We had a little boy at the building site in Dornach – I have already spoken to some of our friends about this matter – who died in the seventh year of his life due to a tragic circumstance. The boy had fetched food supplies from our canteen that evening, which is located near the Dornach building site, and a strange chain of circumstances resulted in the boy walking out of the canteen and through a reed bed that was next to a path that a fully loaded furniture van was just driving along. And the fully loaded furniture van was knocked over and crushed the boy. It was a very painful thing. Just after the lecture evening, after ten o'clock, we received the news that the boy was not there. There was nothing to be done but to see what had happened to the furniture van. The circumstances were also quite strange. The boy wanted to leave a quarter of an hour earlier and was held back by someone who wanted to go with him. He wanted to go out through a different door; then he would have passed the furniture truck on the right, whereas he was crushed on the left. He had been told to go out through this door, so he was literally sent out. Besides, it is a road where a furniture truck may not have gone for years, and perhaps none will go for years. It was a furniture truck that was exceptionally delivering furniture to one of our members. So they looked for the boy. The furniture van was so heavily loaded and unfortunately tilted that it could not be lifted immediately, because the people who were driving the furniture van had not brought anything with them and simply walked away. They did not want to lift the furniture van until the next day. But now, of course, it had to be lifted during the night, and they found the dead baby underneath. This little boy had been in the atmosphere of the building for some time. It is true that since that time, soon after that death, the etheric body of that little boy has been woven into the aura of the building. And the person who – and it is certainly not immodest to say this – is involved in the artistic side of the building, as I am, notices how the fertilization comes from the unspent etheric power of the etheric body, which is needed to artistically integrate this or that into the building. Of course, human selfishness would perhaps prefer to attribute all this only to one's own genius. But it is absolutely the case that even what comes to us from within comes from external spiritual influences. And we can prove these spiritual influences in detail. We are dealing here with the etheric body of a boy who has turned seven years old, who could therefore have still supplied the physical body for another six to seven decades, who, with the tremendously wise building power that is necessary to form the physical human body in an appropriate way, is in the etheric aura of the Dornach building. And I dare say, with complete certainty, even to artists: the art needed to form the physical body out of the etheric body is much greater than any art that man practices on earth. Man is already the greatest work of art. And all the impulses for forming the physical human body are contained in the etheric body. The artist also brings them out of his etheric body when he creates artistically. This is just one example; others could be cited in which the capacity of the unspent etheric bodies can be seen. Just this year, dear friends of ours, some of them quite young, have also passed through the gateway of death. And so we see how, especially now, in this time, countless people are passing through the gate of death, in the vigorous age, leaving behind their etheric bodies, which could all have worked on the physical body for decades to come. These etheric bodies, which are still strengthened and invigorated by the fact that they have gone through sacrificial deaths, are present and will be present. And those people who will be in a position in the future, when different things are happening on the European continent than in the present events, who will then live on the European continent, they will live in a spiritual, in an etheric atmosphere in which these unused etheric bodies can be found. And when souls are found here on earth that will have understanding for that which will live spiritually not just as an abstract memory but as real etheric powers – this understanding can only be gained from spiritual science – they will well sense the inspiring powers of these etheric bodies. And that is one of the feelings that now weigh heavily on our hearts, heavily for the reason that on the one hand we have to look at the enormity that could happen if quite a lot of people could become aware of what is sown by the deaths that are now happening around us due to the great events of the time, while on the other hand the handful of people who can understand these things is still so small. And it could easily happen because of people's lack of understanding of spiritual science due to the materialism that fills all of humanity, that in the future people could continue to live without any trace of an inkling of what arises from death. We should not allow such a sentence to live in our hearts in any other way than by allowing ourselves, as far as it depends on us, to be completely imbued with such an awareness, to fully absorb this awareness and to do what we can to understand such a thing. I would like to say that we should not just worry about how much materialism there is. We should indeed recognize how much materialism there is on earth, but we should not close ourselves off from the ever-increasing materialistic worldview, but rather do all the more what is incumbent upon us. So much for what can be said about the etheric-physical. Then the human being progresses further. He has first enveloped himself in a kind of spiritual self that is formed in a slightly different way than everything that is formed when we live here on earth. One could say that the spiritual self is something that comes to us from all sides, and in the midst of which we feel ourselves. Then the human being continues to live in the other covers by simultaneously experiencing, as I have often described, a kind of spiritual regression, by experiencing - but now in a different way than through the mere tableau that has been described - that which acts as a kind of opposite to earthly life. One can realize how the following time passes, after the etheric body has been discarded and we live on with our astral body and with our I, wrapped in the spirit self. This spirit self is a kind of driving force. It leads us back, so that we relive, really go backwards, our last life on earth from death to birth. If, for example, we have said something to someone here on earth that has caused them suffering, we experience such an event from our point of view here on earth in our physical body. We cannot experience it from the point of view of the other person. We would not be able to live in the physical body at all if we wanted to live differently than to experience everything from our own point of view. But let us take the extreme case: we have hurt someone very much with a word that we said out of revenge. What he feels, what he experiences, we do not experience here. In the regression that I am now describing, we always experience what the other person feels as the effect of what we have done. So we live inside the world of effects. We experience what others have gone through with us during our physical life, until we get to the point where we have reached our birth. Then we envelop ourselves with what could be called the spiritual counter-image of what will develop on Venus: we envelop ourselves with the spirit of life. And our further life is now determined by this spirit of life, which I have described several times. You will find it described from a wide variety of perspectives in the lecture cycle in Vienna on life between death and a new birth. I will describe it here again from a different perspective. We are thus enveloped, as it were, by the spirit of life. This expresses itself in a certain way, and it is essential that we understand this. The spirit-self first guides us back; the spirit-self is mainly concerned with our being, with our individuality, and it then also leads us further. After it has brought us to our birth, it guides us further along the paths we have to take in the spiritual world. It is different with what the next shell, the life spirit, now does to us. Here in the physical body we are permeated by the etheric body, which also contains the life ether and everything that gives us life. We are, so to speak, permeated by the etheric body, and we live through this etheric body. Those who have no etheric body cannot live on the physical plane. When we have discarded our astral body, we know that we are enveloped by this spirit of life. Now we also realize that we were enveloped the whole time while our spirit self was guiding us back. But now we only realize it. We only realize it afterwards, when we have gone through the whole thing, which is called the Kamaloka time. And now we become aware of something very strange: it is only because we are enveloped by this spirit of life that our life between death and a new birth is possible. Because here in the physical body we have to live, I would say within our skin. We cannot do that between death and a new birth in the spiritual world. If we only wanted to live in the spiritual world within ourselves, so to speak, only in a single place in the spiritual world, then we would have to die continuously and would not be able to live. Rather, we have to live with the whole universe. We have to have the whole universe as one great living thing and have to live with it. Now this could happen in two ways. We could flow out into the whole universe. But if we were to flow out all at once, the consciousness that we have, that I have described, this self-awareness, would also flow out into the nebulous. Rather, we must be moved around in the great, living cosmic organism. Here in our physical body, a limb of ours, let's say the hand, is in a certain place. In the spiritual world, we must always be led around. We must always be carried from one place to another. The spirit of life does that. In this way we leave one place and arrive at the other. This is done rhythmically, so that we always come back to the same place. But we have to be led around in the world. An eventful, a spiritually eventful life arises for us. Here, as physical human beings, we are confined to a single place, with certain exceptions. However, the spiritual is always carried into the physical, and this is how we can move around in the physical plan. This is essentially an Ahrimanic effect, since the spiritual is brought into the physical by Ahriman. But in the spiritual, it is right that we are guided by the entire associated world organism. And in this way we settle in, just as we settle in here on earth in one place, I would say in the whole environment of earthly life. And as we are led from spiritual place to spiritual place in it – you can find more details in my Vienna Cycle – at the same time, the forces we need to prepare our new life on earth are implanted in us, in order to be drawn to earthly life again. For the time between death and a new birth passes in the first half in such a way that we find our way out of earthly life; in the second half we find ourselves again preparing for a new earthly life. You see, materialism today basically turns everything into its opposite. It will lead people into the most serious errors, and into ones that are not only credible but almost taken for granted. When a personality appears who is as ingenious as Goethe, for example, people take it quite materialistically. A very thick book has been written and published about Goethe, in which all his ancestors that can be found are examined in a materialistic sense, physically and spiritually - but the materialist only assumes bodies - and then it is shown how Goethe got one thing from one ancestor and another from another. Goethe himself said ironically: From my father I have the stature, from my mother the cheerful nature - and so on. Here in Kassel, in a lecture series, I once developed how people take this quite materially by showing how we have inherited everything through the physical inheritance current, especially genius. And I have often said: the matter is absurd, ridiculously foolish, and yet again so credible, because it makes immediate sense to the materialist that certain qualities are enhanced through many generations, so that they then appear to be inherited in the case of genius. The materialist even believes that he is expressing an experience. But he does not express any other experience than that of someone who falls into the water and is pulled out is wet. Of course, the soul passes through all its ancestors in a certain way, and as a result it inherits everything it has drawn out of its ancestors. Just as someone who has fallen into the water is wet, so the person also has the qualities of his ancestors as he passes through the generations. It would be different if the opposite were to be proven, if it were to be proven that the genius that is present is inherited by the descendants: But it is not. People should prove that! But they will probably leave it alone. You examine Goethe's ancestors; but you leave it pretty to go to your son or your grandchildren! Just see if the qualities of genius are inherited by the descendants! There may be cases where the matter is concealed, but there can be no question of an inheritance of qualities of genius to the descendants. If there were, it would be known. But there is no such inheritance of qualities of genius. But something else is the case. If one tries to trace back a human individuality that enters a physical body at a certain point in time further back - it comes out of the spiritual world, after all - it is the same individuality that now brings together father and mother, that contributes to the fact that father and mother come together to produce it. Indeed, it is already involved further back. It works, so to speak, the whole succession of generations in such an order that in the end two people find each other through whom this one individuality can find its embodiment. The individuality is already involved in what takes place over centuries from ancestors to descendants. However strange it may sound, that is how it is. Goethe had a father and a mother, a grandfather and a grandmother and so on. If we go back centuries, we see that this individuality of Goethe's from the spiritual world already works in such a way that those who ultimately yielded the old Kaspar Goethe and Mrs. Aja always come together. Through the centuries, individuality is already working from the spiritual world; it works into the succession of generations. It is just the opposite of what is assumed. Man does not inherit what he carries in his soul from his ancestors in the physical sense. Rather, he compiles his ancestors from the spiritual world, from world midnight, which lies in the middle between death and a new birth, so that he can then find those through whom he makes his way into earthly life. That is the mystery that emerges. This is something tremendously significant, and basically actually harrowing. And we see through this that there really is an intimate connection between what happens in the spiritual world and what happens further down in the physical world. And at the same time we see how strangely intertwined our spiritual and soul life is with what happens here, which is just not noticed. One speaks of the spirit in modern philosophy in a very strange way. There was a professor in Halle who is now regarded as a very important light in the field of philosophy. He published a book, “The Philosophy of the As If,” in which he attempts to prove that such concepts as spirit and soul do not represent reality, but that they are nevertheless useful in man's contemplation of the world. One should not look at a person and say that he has a soul. But now, he moves his hands and speaks, so that one can say: one regards him as if he had a soul. Otherwise, one leaves the soul as a soul. One denies it; one does not care about it; but one regards it as if the person had a soul, as if the soul wanted to achieve all this. It is a comfortable philosophy, but also a terribly thoughtless one. However, anyone who tries to apply this philosophy in concrete life sees that this “as-if philosophy” is of little use, even as a method. And a person like Fritz Mauthner, who has written a philosophy of language and who traces everything back to language, should actually be viewed from the point of view of this “as-if philosophy”: as if such a person could also have spirit. But if you make this attempt, then this method is not good. You cannot show that he can be viewed as if he had spirit; it cannot be applied. Where there is no mind, it cannot be applied. You know, of course, what I mean. But I only cite this Fritz Mauthner because he is one of those who deny the whole meaning of history altogether and who have most clearly stated, from the standpoint of present-day materialism, that history can never be a science. He says: When a raindrop falls on the earth, we can find the laws of the raindrop scientifically, because many raindrops fall according to the same laws. Then you can compare the individual cases with each other, and you can find the laws. That is what philosophers today believe: that observing many cases and always finding the same thing leads to the individual laws. But in history, things only happen once, the Thirty Years War only once and so on; and therefore the whole of history is only a succession of coincidences for Fritz Mauthner. People in the present day must come to such assertions if they deny the spirit in reality; for history would also be only a sequence of coincidences if that which we have now shown, which works out of the spiritual world and in which people work between death and a new birth, did not have the very effect of what we have now shown, which works out of the spiritual world and in which people work between death and a new birth. We are weaving, so to speak, on what happens here on earth between death and a new birth. We weave only according to those impulses that then come to us from the spiritual world. It can truly be said: One should not believe that any serious objection to spiritual science can come from any scientific side; because if one compares what today's science can really achieve with spiritual science, then today's science is the best support for spiritual science. One must only approach the matter in the right way. If we pick up any book today in which a materialistically minded person expresses himself half in terms of psychology, that is, the soul, and half in terms of the body, we find the following. These people seek, as man presents himself, to visualize himself by showing the thinking apparatus - nervous life, brain life. They examine the thinking apparatus and can then really show that when any idea takes hold in us, a brain process occurs. So they say: You see, we can prove to you that without a brain process a thought, an idea, could not be conceived at all; so what do you want with an independent soul? After all, only the thinking apparatus is present! But they come to something else, these materialistically minded people. If you look through the textbooks in use, you will find that these people point out the thinking apparatus and link all thinking and imagining to the mechanical processes in the brain and nervous system; but they have to deny feeling and will. Feeling and will cannot be explained by physical processes. Therefore, this is simply eliminated. And today, if you open the books, you can find everywhere: People have indeed assumed a will and a feeling from their prejudices, but this is actually a nothing, it does not even exist. So the natural scientist stops just before feeling and will. Now that we know that thoughts separate from us with our etheric body, it is explained to us that this separated part, which leaves us with our etheric body, also works on our exterior here on earth, the thinking apparatus first sets itself up, and when the thinking apparatus is formed, then thinking comes with the help of the thinking apparatus formed by thinking itself. Feeling and will remain with us in the astral body and in the ego. We carry these into the spiritual world. Not one science forces materialism, on the contrary, real science today justifies our spiritual science everywhere. Today's materialism is entirely dependent on the fact that people have no urge for spiritual life, that they want no sense for spiritual life. Understanding would not be lacking either. For truly, if one opens oneself to what the spiritual researcher is able to give from the spiritual world, even for such chapters as we have allowed to arise before our soul today for the life between death and a new birth: it can be understood, one needs only a finer, more subtle understanding than the rough understanding that today's man often wants to apply to the outer world. But we also live in a time when materialism has reached its peak. The spiritual researcher can even state exactly that the year in which materialism reached a peak was around 1840/41. Since then, it has even been declining somewhat; but the after-effects are, of course, great. But what does materialism mean for the conception of physical human life? The most astute minds of the present are leading people astray into a state that is to be deeply regretted under the influence of materialism. There is a truly astute man, a criminal anthropologist by profession. He has examined the brains of many criminals. He was the first to find a famous, significant sentence about the brains of criminals, the sentence that in the criminal brain, in the vast majority of cases, the posterior lobe covering the cerebellum is underdeveloped, as is also the case in monkeys. The monkey is distinguished precisely by the fact that it also has a small occipital lobe. This was, of course, a godsend, because it meant that one could say: Aha, this is a throwback to the nature of the ape when a person is criminal; he is born with a too-small occipital lobe! But just think what an enormous significance this has for the moral life if one is only willing to admit that the human being has a physical body. He must then say: What are you talking about when you speak of responsibility, what are you talking about when you say that you want to improve people morally through this or that education? That is all nonsense. Those who are born with a occipital lobe that is too small, which of course cannot be changed during this life, become criminals; they become criminals out of necessity. And if materialism were true, then this must also be true: we would then not hang people because they have murdered another, but because they have too small occipital lobes! One would only have to admit this: we cannot live in the world at all if we did not admit such things. One cannot be materialistic in this sense if one would not admit: people are hanged because they have too small occipital lobes. Anything else would only be a concealment of the truth. But is it the truth? We have to speak of the etheric body in the sense that we have done today, that it is still present, that it even increases in size after death and is woven into the general cosmic ether. If we now have a young person who has a occipital lobe that is too small, we cannot make it grow; no physical science will ever achieve that. But we can organize the education in the appropriate way by saying to ourselves: There is also an etheric body present, and a part of the etheric body etheric body that corresponds to the occipital lobe, and through appropriate education we train the etheric body of the occipital lobe, and it is just as effective in life, perhaps even more effective in a certain sense than the physical occipital lobe, because it has to overcome a certain force. And then we derive comfort from our knowledge that the physical shape of our occipital lobe is not the determining factor, but that we can then develop the etheric lobe accordingly in the person whose occipital lobe is too small, by evoking these or those feelings in him when we notice that he has these or those tendencies towards wrongdoing. Then we will be able to save him. You see, that is the truth. That is the moral side of spiritual science! It is also present. Desolation and bleakness, especially in the moral and ethical sphere, if one only wanted to be true, one would see emerging from the materialistic world view. A consoling possibility to actively intervene in what people become can be seen from what spiritual science can give us. If we only recognize certain tendencies in a person at the right moment, which could lead to criminal acts, then we can use a certain type of education to develop what has a particularly strong effect on this occipital lobe in the ether strongly, and thus weave into the person the power that will continue to live with him between death and a new birth and, especially in the physical, particularly well develops the occipital lobe in the next incarnation. Not only do we help him for this incarnation; we also set the stage for a particularly well-developed brain, which he can then carry through the life between death and a new birth for inclusion in his next physical incarnation. So spiritual science now practically places us in life. Only it will have to do what goes beyond what is done today. Today, people still think that they have done enough with spiritual science if they have listened for a while and believe that it has had a favorable, uplifting effect on our soul. That is not enough! Spiritual science must enter into all branches of life in practical activity. The fruits of spiritual science must show themselves in all branches of life. Education, which is particularly bleak today because it only starts from what the human being has physically, must be particularly fertilized by spiritual science. Today there may still be many people who say: You can tell us a lot about spiritual science, but why should we believe in what you are telling us? We can't see it for ourselves. At most, it could be seen by someone who finds their way into the spiritual worlds in a certain way, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. If you say: Above all, I want to see something practically – and in doing so, you think that you can bring the spiritual into the physical world in this way, to see the spirit externally as you see the physical, because you are too lazy to seek the spirit in a spiritual way, then that is a very selfish point of view. And if materialism today is connected with selfishness – it is a world view, after all! – then materialistic spiritism is even more selfish. For materialism at least merely aims to accept only the physical world and then also to satisfy this physical world. But spiritualism wants, first of all, a sensual view of the spiritual world, and secondly, I might say, constant satisfaction, and that in a physical way. But in its lack of clarity it still imagines this physical way as spiritual. In short, it wants to remain in the physical world and yet have something spiritual! It is actually lamentable that our materialism has reached such a level of development as to give rise to the popular belief in spiritualism, which is particularly rife in America. This tendency is to reduce the spiritual to a material level and to view the spiritual and spiritual processes in material terms. But there are many other ways to recognize that which is on the physical plane as an imprint of the spiritual world. And one of the ways – of course not all of them can be listed now – is to seek the spiritual where it is effective, for example in children, where it is to develop. And that is where education must be enriched. Education will only come to fruition when people develop a sense, a feeling for the spiritual, so that the teacher not only teaches according to all kinds of instructions, but above all starts from observing the developing individuality, seeing what wants to develop out of it. This must be achieved, or rather, must be achieved! And it is good if we remind ourselves, so that we can believe in this struggle, that people in the present are actually terribly short-sighted. They believe that we have come a long way in our time, that we have finally cast off all the childishness of earlier centuries. But it is not true that we have cast off prejudices. All that had to be discarded in order to see the physical plane clearly and to gain freedom was the old atavistic clairvoyance, and that was discarded in its last vestiges not so long ago. The day before yesterday I was able to speak to our dear friends in Hamburg about a special example of this clairvoyance. If you had the opportunity to walk around here, you might be able to find such an example. But I will tell you the Hamburg example; perhaps you can look for a similar one for Kassel yourself. If the Fall of Man in Paradise, that powerful image that stands in the Bible for the Luciferic seduction of man, is depicted by the painter today, Adam and Eve and the snake are depicted realistically, with the usual snake head. Now we know from our spiritual science that this snake is Lucifer. The physical snake on earth can at most be a kind of symbol for Lucifer, but this physical snake is not Lucifer, nor is the great snake that is coiled around a tree and has an ordinary, common snake head at the top, is not Lucifer. Lucifer is a being that has remained on the moon, a being that naturally cannot be seen with the senses. On the moon, one did not see with the senses; only the earth has produced this sensuality. The earth snake can be seen with the senses. Lucifer, of course, cannot be seen with the senses, he must be seen inwardly. When one looks inwardly, it is an inner feeling. And one senses: Aha, that is the one that in its upper part resembles the human head; after all, it has driven out the eyes: “Your eyes will be opened, you will see,” it is inside the head and still fills the nervous system down into the spinal cord, -— a human head that continues in the snake's body, but all this only conceived ethereally. It would therefore have to be perceived from within. If one wanted to paint Lucifer according to the Bible, one would have to paint the etheric for the spinal cord, and at the top something that is also still etheric, which is not yet physical, the human head. That would be the teaching, if it were put into the picture, of what we have today. In Hamburg, one can see biblical pictures by the master Bertram, and, as I have just described, the Fall of Man: not an ordinary snake, but a snake with the usual shape, but with a human head. In the 14th and 15th centuries, in the middle of the Middle Ages, the painter painted it that way, that is, they still knew it back then. So you have tangibly proven what the matter is! The painter did not go and paint an ordinary snake, but in those days they still could, because atavistic clairvoyance was still present. It is only in the last few centuries that this has completely disappeared, and it must be regained. There is no other way to regain it than by preparing ourselves to understand the spiritual world through spiritual science. Those who are wholeheartedly devoted to our spiritual science take it in such a way that they see: It is the most important task of our time that people learn to understand what is in the spiritual world, in order to prepare themselves to be able to look into the spiritual world again, into that which is part of the world around us. How differently we as human beings will go through the world when we know that not only air surrounds us, but that this air is permeated by the weaving not only of the visible world - after all, light is not visible otherwise, but colors are visible - but in the light the dead etheric bodies weave. Natural science and spiritual science will combine in a beautiful way, only spiritual science will be there for all people, since it will bring something to all people. I believe that in our time it is especially necessary that we urgently feel obliged to let such truths as those we have been able to experience today for the life between death and a new birth enter into our meditation quite often. This too is good material for meditation when we let the beginning of life between death and a new birth, this emptiness that assigns us our place in the world, this instruction of the etheric world, the interweaving of our own etheric body into the etheric world, come before our soul quite often in meditation. This stimulates what lives in us to grow more and more into the direct experience of the spiritual world. And this is already necessary for humanity in the present. One could feel, when one looks at the events of the time, how necessary this living in the spiritual world is for present-day humanity. The present time of trial will only be able to be gone through in the right way if a number of people can feel it faithfully and humanly, what lives in spiritual science and how this spiritual science must prepare the human future. These are serious signs of the times, and the seriousness is revealed when we reflect on many things that are so close to us. Think, we speak of what should permeate our path with a serious principle: seeking the same in all human souls and through all nations and races. We are right to regard this as a lofty ideal of humanity, but we must not hide from ourselves the tremendous contrast between the life of present-day Europe and this ideal. Can we say that European humanity today is in any way remotely close to this ideal in what it expresses? How far removed it is! And may we – may, I say – regard this ideal as one that we can apply so directly today? Are we not obliged, as Germans, not to deceive ourselves, to be clear about the fact that we cannot even remotely think of realizing such an ideal due to European circumstances? We would do a poor job of fulfilling the mission specifically imposed on us as Germans if we were to simply become absorbed in general, vague ideals today. Time obliges us to develop the specific nature of our Central European character. And with that we may already look at the karma that has grown on us, I might say, in particular. Just think, when you look at world events today, we have not been managed badly in the sense of these great world events. Karma has brought it about that our movement first belonged to the general theosophical movement. Long before this war showed what it can show to the Germans today, our German movement had completely separated itself from the theosophical one and emphasized how necessary it is that the spiritual movement arises out of the very substance of the German people, a spiritual movement that can carry us and that the other world will also have to carry. We can say that we, as the anthroposophical movement, have felt the English hatred in our particular field for many years before. It has now only increased, because one cannot remain silent there; what has been written about us in recent times by so-called English Theosophists exceeds anything that can somehow still be justified. We may say, therefore, that when we survey the course of our movement, we find our karma also running through our movement in such a way that it is in full agreement with what the great movement in the world indicates to us even today. That our karma led us early enough to emphasize German intellectual life, we may, in all modesty, present as a favorable karma for us, and that anthroposophy has found its center in German intellectual life, we may regard as a kind of shining morning star for our karmic currents. And since, I would like to say, the omens for what is happening in the world have already shown themselves much earlier with us, we can already deduce from this single fact the belief that there is something in our movement of a power for the great general human movement. Let us learn, my dear friends, to trust the spiritual power that lies at the heart of our movement, trusting that it is one of the best to which our soul can possibly attach itself. Let us live through the full weight and the full significance of thought and feeling and will impulse, the full weight and the full significance of what it means: there must be individual souls who, in the face of the great demands of our time, understand how the spiritual impulses must interact with what must take place in future history here on earth. Let us learn to understand, not only in the abstract, but also in the concrete sense, what the countless deaths that are now flooding the earth mean. Let us learn to understand how faithfully our souls must remain loyal to our movement so that there may be people who can look up in the right way to the sphere where the etheric bodies and the individualities that have made the sacrifices for our time on the great historical field will continue to work and will work together with those who will later tread the earth in times of peace. Let us learn to understand what it means to find the right sense for the fact that a spirituality also permeates that which takes place on the physical plane today, that the confessors of spiritual science are there to turn their minds to that which arises spiritually from the courage and sacrifice of our time. Let us learn to understand in the right sense the words with which we want to conclude our reflections:
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68d. The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science: The Course of Human Development from the Standpoint of Occult Science
06 Feb 1908, Karlsruhe Rudolf Steiner |
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Only later is there a time when, in a similar way, what we call the “ego” is born. ... One can only understand the course of a person's life, and one can only educate a person reasonably, if one knows and applies all of this to the fullest extent. ... |
Just a few words about this: the birth and gradual development of the ego comes to an end with normal life around the age of 35. At this point, the human being is at the zenith of life. |
Before that, he had to use his time to mature his judgment and enter into a firm, definite relationship between his ego and the world around him. Now, what he is begins to have value for his fellow human beings. Now his judgment has weight, now people start to listen to him, now he radiates valuable things that he himself has to consume. |
68d. The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science: The Course of Human Development from the Standpoint of Occult Science
06 Feb 1908, Karlsruhe Rudolf Steiner |
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When the subject of theosophy or the theosophical worldview comes up, people often think: Oh, we are dealing with something that leads to remote realms of thought, something that takes us to nebulous, fantastic regions. In any case, many people have the idea that Theosophy or, as we can also say in the true sense of the word, spiritual science, that Theosophy or spiritual science is not for practical people, for people who are fully immersed in life, that it is not for them! Now, my esteemed audience, but the one who delves deeper into what Theosophy or spiritual science has to give, and then is able to see life, our immediate existence, in the light of this spiritual science, will soon be able to notice how this Theosophy is something that leads to the right, true life practice, as it is not just some theoretical knowledge, some speculation, but something that makes people capable, able to work in life, hopeful, confident, yes, healthy, because it makes our everyday life immediately understandable to us - if we start from the right points of view - makes it transparent. This everyday life truly offers us enough puzzles. We can only solve these puzzles if we are able to grasp what lies behind the sensual phenomena, if we are able to rise to the world of supersensible facts. The few times that I have been permitted to speak to you here in this city about Theosophical matters have already familiarized the audience with what underlies the Theosophical worldview. Therefore, only a brief reference will be made here. The Theosophical worldview rests on two pillars, on two pillars of knowledge. The first is that it shows people that there is a supersensible, a superphysical world above our sensual, our physical world. Secondly, it familiarizes people with the fact that they can penetrate these supersensible realms themselves — if they only want to — and that they can draw their powers and abilities from within. In this way, however, Theosophy is confronted with widespread prejudices in the present day, but even if it does not change overnight, over time more and more of these prejudices, which today affect wide circles of our present-day people, will fade. Many people today say: To speak of supersensible worlds, of a spiritual background to existence, is unseemly in our enlightened times, in our time of great scientific achievements... In the childhood cultures of humanity, where imagination still held sway, it was said that people dreamt of supersensible facts, of supersensible phenomena behind our sensory world. But now we are at the point where science, with its tools and methods, is revealing to us the world as one would think, in its natural, lawful context and does not make it necessary to assume anything behind what can be seen and what can be grasped by the mind. Many of our contemporaries think they are quite enlightened when they deny everything that lies behind the phenomena! This brings us to the question: in what sense does Theosophy speak of supersensible worlds? Not in the sense that these supersensible worlds lie somewhere in a cloud cuckoo land, but in a completely natural sense, in a completely logical sense, Theosophy speaks of higher worlds than the one that is accessible to our are accessible to our senses, in the same sense that a German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, spoke of these worlds when he was at the height of his thinking: in 1809, for example, in front of his audience in Berlin. At that time he said: “I have something to tell you about worlds that lie beyond the ordinary sensual world and therefore cannot be perceived with the ordinary physical senses.” Therefore, anyone who is only willing to acknowledge a world that can be perceived by the physical senses can easily consider everything that can be said about supersensible worlds to be fantasy. But — it was not I who said this, but Fichte. Imagine going through a world of blind people as the only one who can see and telling these blind people about the world of colors and the world of light. If they want, they can also say: All that you are telling me about color and light is empty dreaming, mere fantasy... ... and we can now tie in with Johann Gottlieb Fichte's thoughts and say: Let us assume that a person born blind is led into this room of ours and that we are able to operate on him here, to give him sight. What was around him before, what you can all see with your physical eyes, light and color, was not there for him; for him, the world was only what was given to his sense of touch and the other senses. But now that he has had the operation, light and color and radiance are emerging bit by bit from the bleak darkness and gloom. They were around him, but for him they have become a world only after he had the organs for them. Not every physically blind person can be operated on, but it is possible for everyone to awaken the abilities and powers slumbering within them – what Goethe calls “spiritual eyes” – to open them up, to opens up by itself through appropriate behavior, and he becomes aware of an awakening of a higher, more brilliant kind than that through which the blind person sees a new world entering him when he is operated on. Who can logically deny that there are worlds around us that the senses cannot perceive? Logically, no one can! Logically, a person can only make a statement about what he sees and perceives, never about what he does not perceive. But there have always been people in the world, and there are people today, who awaken these abilities and powers slumbering within us and who know from their own experience that spiritual worlds exist around us, know of worlds that are active and whose forces have an effect in our world. And it is of these worlds that spiritual science, theosophy, speaks – we only call it secret science because in order to gain access to it, man must first awaken the forces slumbering in him, and until he has done so all this remains hidden from him. But when he becomes a citizen of these worlds, when the spiritual lights around us dawn on him, then entities reach into this life for him that he can only now recognize, that... and in this way he attains knowledge that makes him fully able and willing to work. This will now become clear to us when we look at our own human life from the standpoint of this supersensible knowledge, not at something remote but at the most everyday things there are for us. Then we will see how we can apply this spiritual science. As far as I am concerned, someone can come and say: There are such twisted minds, oddballs, who call themselves Theosophists and bring all sorts of confused stuff, they may keep it to themselves, it is not for a reasonable person! Good, he may act on it! But now there is another point of view that says: Well, since things don't look so unreasonable after all, let's try to live life and work in life as if these assumptions were correct, and if they prove themselves in life, then we can talk to them. This is a thoroughly healthy point of view, and today's question in particular will enable us to find such a kind of truth, such proof of the theosophical premise, if we try to apply what the lecture contains to life. First, however, we must take a brief look at the human being in the theosophical or esoteric sense. If we look at the human being from this point of view, then what the senses can see, what eyes can see and hands can grasp, appears to us as only a part, a single limb of the entire human being. In the spiritual sense, we call this part of the human being the physical body. This physical body is shared by the human being with all the seemingly inanimate beings around him; the same substances and forces that are found outside in the inanimate minerals are also found in the physical human body. However, in this physical human body – and in fact in the body of every living being are so intricately combined and interwoven that the physical body of a living being, if it is left to the physical substances and forces alone, then it disintegrates into itself. No matter what a merely materialistically thinking wisdom may say – the theosophist knows very well what it can say – and no matter what it may say, there is a principle embedded in the physical body of every living being that can be logically , who is able to consider these things only philosophically, perceptible for him who has developed the higher abilities, the spiritual eyes, as Goethe says. For the materialistically-minded, it is of course a nothing, one can well understand that. ... For the person who sees through things, this etheric or life body is a fighter against the disintegration of the physical body in every moment. In all of you, this life body is a fighter that prevents physical substances and forces from following their own laws. At the moment of death, the physical body separates from the etheric body, and then the physical body follows its own substances and forces, then it is a corpse, then it decays. So we have this second link, the etheric body, in every living being, which the human being has in common with all plants and animals. The third link is the so-called astral body... This too is a fact for the spiritual seer. But you can get a logical idea of it if you consider the following: when you look at the person standing in front of you, you have not only what you can perceive as a physical body with your physical senses, not only what as an etheric and life body constantly protects this physical body from decay... but there is something else in this space in front of you: something is in it that is much closer to many people than the physical body and the etheric body. The details of the physical body, what do many people know about that... but there is something that is infinitely close to the simplest human being, much closer than his physical body, and that is the sum of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of urges, desires and passions. The sum of all sensations that rise and fall in the soul, that which we call the inner life or human inner life. And the carrier of this human inner life, in spiritual science we call this the astral body, the human being no longer shares this with plants and minerals, but only with the animal world. As long as we hold the view that this astral body, or if we want to speak in everyday terms: that drives, desires and passions, feelings and instincts and the surging and surging sensations, that these are only evoked by the physical body... Only at that moment do we have the right to speak of it... where we see the original not in the physical and not in the etheric body, but precisely in this astral body the original... It would take us too far today to show fully – we have a different goal today – that the physical body and the etheric body relate to this astral body as ice, for example, relates to water. If a child comes and shows you a piece of ice and you tell him that this is water in solid form, the child may not immediately see it, and you will have to make it clear to him in some way that the ice is water in a different form. Just as the child may not know that ice is just water in a different form, so someone who is accustomed to looking at things from a materialistic point of view does not yet know that the physical body and etheric body is only, basically speaking, let us say, condensed, condensed, crystallized out of this spiritual carrier of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, urges, desires and passions and perceptions. Everything that is physical is generated out of the spiritual, let us say condensed, crystallized out of the spiritual. ... You get an idea of this... if you take this as a small theoretical down payment for what spiritual science is gradually showing you comprehensively. Take the very simple two phenomena that a person experiences within himself: the feeling of shame or the feeling that arises when something near us puts people into fear and terror. Fear and terror make him pale, his blood takes on very specific movements, it changes in the body, it goes, if we may say so, from the outer surface to the center. The opposite happens with shame... So we have an external physical process under the influence of mental agitation. This is a small example of how one can see material effects arising from the spiritual. Imagine these effects increasing until the process of building the external physical... the material itself, is built out of the spiritual. Then you have something to which you cannot, admittedly, arrive in an instant, but which you can arrive at through patient study... to which spiritual science can lead you more and more. But now there is one thing by which man stands out above all the visible earthly creatures around him. We come to this when we study a very simple fact of human experience, which is only usually not properly interpreted and paid attention to; you will come to it when you go through a very simple contemplation with me, which is indeed somewhat subtle. Anyone can say “table” to the table, “clock” to the clock, and anyone can pronounce the name given to the external object in the language; but there is only one name, one little name, in the German language that not everyone can pronounce to the one that this name denotes. This is the name that lies in the little word “I”. Only one person can pronounce “I” if this “I” is to mean what it is. If the “I” is to mean you yourself, then no one can ever say “I” to you. You are a you to everyone else, everyone else is a you to you! If the little word “I” is to mean you yourself, then it must resound from the innermost part of the soul itself. That is why all religions and world views... that were based on spiritual science... called this short little word 'I' the unspeakable name of God... so that the power within can pronounce this name, which cannot access the soul through external senses and organs... that was called the divine power, the spark of God that is in us... Yes, you make a god out of man, many say. ... Anyone who makes this accusation can see from another example]... I have taken a drop of water out of the great, all-encompassing sea and I now claim that this drop is the same substance and essence as the sea, but it is not the whole sea... In the same way, the theosophist does not make a god out of the human ego when he declares: This “I” is a drop, a spark of divine substance. ... This “I” and the sum total of powers and principles that enable a person to let this divine, this God, speak within them, we call the fourth link of human essence, that makes man the crown of earthly creation. ... This is what distinguishes him from all other beings on earth. ... Thus, the human being stands before us as a four-part entity... Today, we will not discuss the further, higher aspects of human nature. ... This classification suffices for us today. ... When we consider these aspects of the human being and look at the human being, then in his development from birth to death, then spiritual science shows us that these individual aspects by no means develop in the same way or in the same times. ... When we have a person before us at any age, we do not have them before us in such a way that these four elements are always present in the same way. We only understand the human being when we know that the development of the human being takes place in different ways at different ages... After all, a person's life is preceded by a prenatal life... We know that when a person is born, they have a life behind them in their mother's womb, where their physical body was enclosed on all sides by the physical womb, where all organs have gradually developed to such an extent that when the person sees the light of day, their physical body was previously protected by an outer physical shell... which they now shed... We speak of the external physical birth of a person when the person sheds this physical shell around him, and his physical body is exposed to the external physical elements. Before that, the rays of light could not penetrate the eyes. Had these rays of light penetrated his eyes immediately, these eyes would not have been able to develop into today's human eyes.... And so it is with all organs of the human being.... Only then can he be directly exposed to external impressions and influences when these organs, protected by this cover, have matured for such influences... Now spiritual science also speaks of other births of man. ... When the spiritual seer now looks at man as he is born after his physical birth, he sees how the physical body is handed over to the external physical elements... but the second link of the human being is not yet handed over to the external powers, which act on the etheric body. What we have described as the etheric body is still surrounded by an - albeit ethereal - shell... and we speak of a second birth, through which it also sheds this etheric shell. When a person is born physically, his etheric body still has an etheric mother around it, which protects him, and it protects him until the change of teeth, until the time when the person loses the so-called milk teeth and gradually gets his own teeth, around the seventh year, then the human being is born of his second link; he sheds the protective etheric cover, as with the physical birth the physical mother shell. We will soon learn the full implications of these spiritual facts. But there is still another birth; this occurs because, even though the human being has freed his etheric body from external influences when his teeth change, for example, he is still surrounded by a protective astral mother-shell, as it were, around the third limb of his being, and this continues until sexual maturity. With this sexual maturity, around the age of 14 to 15, this further spiritual birth is also slowly taking place, that is, the astral mother shell is being shed, and thus the astral body of the person becomes free and can be directly exposed to the astral influences... that are working around him. Only later is there a time when, in a similar way, what we call the “ego” is born. ... One can only understand the course of a person's life, and one can only educate a person reasonably, if one knows and applies all of this to the fullest extent. ... Let us now first look at the ascending life. ... This brings us to an important field of human activity, that of education and teaching. Let us consider this and see how it presents itself to us when we consider the human being in terms of his or her entire nature and being. We know that from the time of his physical birth until he changes his teeth, the human being is enveloped in an etheric covering, which he then sheds. If we observe this, we will say to ourselves: We must keep away everything that has a direct effect on the etheric body or life body until this second birth has taken place. For the spiritual seer, it is just as nonsensical to allow direct effects on the etheric body with its etheric mother shell before the birth of the etheric body, as it would be for the ordinary consciousness of a person to allow direct effects on the physical body of the child before its physical birth. The first thing that happens is that the physical body, which was previously under the protective cover, is exposed to direct external physical influences. The time from birth to the seventh year is especially the time when we have to monitor the direct influence of physical elements on the physical human being. The detailed development of this results in many, many rules that spiritual science can provide for a healthy pedagogy. Above all, it is a matter of knowing what is happening during these developmental years until the change of teeth. Spiritual science tells us that up to this point of the change of teeth, the forms, the physical forms of the physical body, are established. ... The forms continue to increase in size only, but the plasticity of the forms, including the finer plasticity of the form, the balance of power in which they will develop, are determined up to the seventh year. And whatever has been neglected in the development of the human being up to that point can never be made up for later; it has been neglected for the whole of life... Because from the seventh year onwards, it becomes possible to influence the etheric body. ... The physical body is then under the influence of the etheric body, which then further regulates growth... It follows that the physical environment must be carefully arranged in the way it is designed until the teeth change. Not only the coarse, but also the finer structural and formative conditions of the physical body are formed under the influence of this physical environment.... A rough comparison:... If you strain any muscle, that is, expose it to what it belongs to, it becomes strong, powerful and expands... this is how it is with all the internal forms of the physical body... SO it is with our visual abilities, our vision... The forces that are in our physical body are tools that serve the soul to perceive the physical world... For example, it is not irrelevant what kind of color environment a person experiences in their physical environment between birth and the age of seven. Depending on the colors we choose for the child's environment, the inner formative forces will develop in opposition to this world of colors. Let us assume, for example, that we have a fidgety child, a nervous child, and in the other case an overly calm, “dead” child, who is “dead” in his behavior, his mannerisms. ... Both types, in order to develop in the appropriate way, must be placed in the right physical environment. ... Someone who only sees the world with their physical eye will probably place a fidgety child in an environment of so-called calming colors, of blue or green, while believing that a calm child should be placed in an environment of red or yellow... Countless mistakes are made here. ... Because the exact opposite is correct. If you want to proceed in the right way, you should, if possible, place a fidgety child in a red or reddish-yellow environment and a calm child in a blue or blue-green one. If you know how the internal structure of the organs is formed, you will be able to see this through pure logic. You stare at a red spot on a white surface and then, after staring at it for some time, you suddenly look at a different spot on the white surface, so you see the green counteraction on the empty white surface... What does this mean? While you are looking at the red color on the outside, the inside of the body tends to develop the opposite color. If you look at the red, the body adjusts itself internally so that it forms the green, and this is important for the internal formation of the plastic organs. ... If you have a restless, nervous child and you give him a red environment, then a countervailing force towards green, blue-green, is formed internally, and this has a calming effect on the plastic forces of the internal organs... Here things are much deeper than an external sensory observation usually shows... Sometimes I have been told: But that is really quite strange. When I work with any lamp that has a red shade, it makes me feel agitated; so why should it have a favorable effect on the child? - ... I have not claimed that a red glow has a favorable effect on a man of 56 years; I have only said that it stimulates the internal organs, the plastic of the internal organs of the child in a calming sense. ... Similarly, something extraordinarily important arises when we consider children's toys from this point of view. You will have often observed that a child with a healthy mind rejects dolls with beautifully painted faces and natural hair, or at least puts them aside soon. Let's take a closer look at this doll and admit to ourselves: it is, of course, hideous... But if you ever make a doll for your child out of an old napkin, you will have a completely different experience. The child will enjoy the so-called beautiful doll for a while. But then the child will soon throw it away and always return to the homemade napkin doll. This is a very correct, healthy instinct. ... For a power is constantly at work in the child to shape the organs plastically. If the child now has this self-made doll in front of them, the following occurs: the child must make an effort to first turn it into a human being through inner imagination; they must first apply forces to the imperfect doll in order to create the human image. This is beneficial for them internally and shapes the internal organs in a more perfect way. These inner plastic forces are not activated when you present the child with such a “beautiful” doll; these forces remain inert, and what should be active internally, the forces of the organs to form, cannot happen. The tools in our physical body, which should be active forces, are formed when we give the child something to do that requires it to be active through its imagination. The child must imagine something that the external object does not give it, it merely stimulates. And people have no idea how much harm they do to children if they do not give them the opportunity to develop this inner counterforce in the appropriate way. ... Oh, the one who looks deeper into human nature also knows something else. He knows that there is a huge difference between keeping a child busy putting together figures out of individual stones and keeping him busy with a toy that gives the impression of being alive, inwardly animated. ... Something completely different happens inside... and vividly brings the body to life... when you give the child a toy that creates the illusion of life through the way it moves when the child plays with it... There used to be old picture books in which whole scenes were presented in moving pictures, whole stories, and which thereby evoked the inner sculpture. They were wonderfully suited to developing the organs in a plastic way during the time when they had to be developed. Those who look more deeply into this want to... when they often and often have to watch with a bleeding soul as everything, absolutely everything, is neglected due to instinctive materialism.... Those who can see into our time with spiritual eyes can trace materialistic thinking back and see how it has been brought about that children have been given construction kits instead of living toys, with which they build something out of individual parts. This is what creates the materialistic mind, much more than materialistic literature... Materialistic theories are the least dangerous aspect of materialism. But if, instead of observing the inner life, a child who is putting together his body, this instrument of the human being, at the time when it should be developing its forms plastically, is concerned with putting the individual parts together, then he comes to imagine that the world is made up of individual clusters of atoms. ... So you see how spiritual science works in practice. But it goes even further. ... Right down to the instincts of eating, you can understand the course of human life and influence its shaping from the perspective of spiritual science. Spiritual science can draw attention to the fact that something that needs to be developed in the child's soul is being held back by certain foods... In the child's soul, the tools for healthy instincts and desires must develop. We do not have a certain desire for nothing. ... That is why they are there, so that when the instinct arises and is satisfied, life is steered in healthy directions. ... See how animals walk across the pasture and carefully choose the foods that are beneficial to them, leaving the others standing... What is the upward development into a human being? It gives man higher gifts, but it exposes him to the possibility of error, which the animal with its instinctive certainty is not exposed to. What matters is that man, with his higher gifts, nevertheless retains this security. And we can preserve this security of healthy instinct for the child if we do not stuff him full of an excess of such substances that kill such an instinct. Overfeeding children with protein-rich food is, many people believe today, the greatest care in the care of young children. But this is not true at all. The moment the child receives too much protein, the moment it is overfed with protein, it loses its sure instincts for nourishment, while another child sometimes rejects what is harmful to it, even down to a glass of water, and desires what is good for it, what is healthy. This is extremely important. It is an example of the practical knowledge of life that can flow from spiritual science. ... We could do a lot if we only wanted to pay attention to the principles of the matter... We can raise the question: What is the law of the human life cycle up to this change of teeth? ... This is described in a word that resonates like a magic [word] for everything that is influenced by these years. Imitation is the magic of education in these years, when the physical body has become accessible to the immediate influence of the outside world. The child strives to emulate what it sees. Therefore, education must, above all, be based on the child's intention to imitate; it should not demand or admonish, as this is not the main thing in these years. The main thing is that the child can follow what it sees during these years, and that nothing happens that the child is not allowed to imitate. ... However, there are a number of points to be considered. Imagine a couple... — I always tell such cases as examples that have really happened — they have a child who is very well-behaved, nothing to complain about, suddenly one day the child has stolen, as they say, from his parents' cash box. The child is so good that it did not use this money for itself, but gave it to others whom it believed needed it. ... You can perhaps imagine that the parents would be outraged if they did not know that during this time, until the permanent teeth have come in – and these things do not abruptly follow one another – during this time, everything is characterized by imitation, the child has always seen that the parents themselves take money out... and what it sees its parents doing is right for the child; it imitates it. To apply moral concepts here, such as stealing or the like, is in no way appropriate. The child only imitates what its parents demonstrate to it. Therefore, we know that in terms of everything we want to cultivate in the child, a plastic molding must be called forth from within through imitation. Therefore, we must build everything on imitation in the child during this first period, that is, the adults around him must not do or say anything that the child should not also do in exactly the same way. ... This is of profound significance. ... If imitation is the magic word for education until the seventh year of a child's development, then from the time when the teeth change and the etheric or life body is freed for direct external influence ... the word 'authority' applies, and succession. What can be understood by these words must be the guiding principle of education for these years. ... Just as children must be able to imitate what is going on around them until their teeth change... so now, in the second phase of life, there must be someone alongside them who can be called an authority. ... In detail, we can say something like this: only after sexual maturity does the time come when a person, through the powers of their mind, understands what is good or bad, clever or stupid.... We do young people an injustice if we place too much emphasis on intellectual insight and education before this time, prematurely. During this time, until sexual maturity is reached, it is necessary for a personality of some kind to stand beside the child and determine what is true or false, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. These concepts must have an authoritative effect on the child at this age, not through mental judgments but through the power of the personality.... And it is the greatest joy for a child to have such personalities in their lives during these years, to whom they can look up as natural authorities who are truly worthy of emulation. A person becomes mature enough to judge when, during these years of their life, they have been influenced by an authoritative personality whom they looked up to and followed in awe. This is a beneficial power that affects a person throughout their life. Oh, if only people could know what it means for a person's whole life when something like this happens to them, such as hearing about a much-admired personality in the family whom they have not yet seen. Timid reverence already sits in his soul, the heart pounds until he is allowed to see the personality for the first time.... These are the most beautiful, wonderful feelings in his soul for the rest of his life, the moments of celebration that ignite forces that are as important as hardly anything else for the whole life of a person until death. Everything that one carries within the etheric body, the body that carries all growth, but also temperament, habits, and character, is decisively influenced in this way during this time between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. And it is important, for example, that this etheric or life body is also the carrier of memory. Therefore, it is essential that conscious care is taken during this time, above all, in the development of memory. In this respect, there is confusion has arisen. Precisely in our time, as a result of materialistic basic views, many educational efforts work towards having children do mental work as early as possible, so that they calculate and do similar things based on their own judgment. That looks quite progressive, but it is nevertheless extremely harmful for the development of the growing human being. First you have to have a store of knowledge and insights in your memory; only then can you form judgments about them. The time for judgment comes with sexual maturity. Until then, it is a time for purely memorized learning. The memory must be formed in the time until then. It is not important – as one would like to say today – that the child is already able to judge, for example, what he or she has to learn in history. It is precisely this that is so damaging, to want to evoke judgment at this time. In this time, the events must be presented to the soul in a purely factual and objective way, in large images, through an authority that is taken for granted. These events must first live in the soul of the child; only then has the time for judgment come. And what is very important at this time is that, because the etheric body now receives the direct influence of the forces that express themselves in memory and in other spiritual faculties, we will particularly develop these forces during this time, the qualities that are anchored in the etheric body. Above all, what is anchored there is what is called the pictorial power of human vision. ... Many people today look at the world so unimaginatively and soberly because the world has not been presented to them in vital images during this time. ... Man should first get to know this world in images. If you want to give people a healthy foundation for the higher supernatural truths, then you have to teach them the corresponding images at this age. During this time, the truths must first be brought to people in images and symbols if they are to be truly grasped later on. If in later life a person is to be able to say to himself: The human soul is immortal, when the human being passes through the gate of death, then the soul rises to higher regions, only the body remains behind and decays, then this is properly prepared in this age, when one tells the child, for example, “Watch the caterpillar as it transforms into a chrysalis and thus falls into deathly rigidity, and then how the chrysalis breaks something and the butterfly rises from the breaking shell into an airy, light existence." But it would be a mistake for teachers to use these images today. They no longer have an effect because those who use these images no longer believe in what they are supposed to express. Only when the image is a reality for them, then something in it takes effect, which naturally passes over into the soul of the child and works as a force that later awakens the right knowledge. For the spiritual scientist, the given is an image of immortality in reality, in truth. For him, it is not something that he laboriously devises with his mind, but rather, for him, life passes through a series of stages... and on the lower stage, the butterfly's emergence from the chrysalis is truly what, on the higher stage, is the soul's emergence from the dying body. If this is the case for you, then you will naturally be able to bring about an emotional understanding in the child first, in the magical touch of imagery, before you cultivate the sober judgments of the mind, which is only made possible by the correct understanding of the whole personality at a later stage. Here we see reason in something that is often viewed as unreasonable today. I know what misunderstandings we are exposed to in this matter, but it must be said not out of a reactionary sense, but out of a sense of truth. How clever we have become, many think today, how they look back on our forefathers, who told their children all kinds of tall tales. ... Today we must no longer tell such lies to children. Our forefathers taught their children things that are not true at all, such as the story of the stork. But, again, it must be said that, although not out of reactionary sentiment, their way of doing so was much more correct than the modern approach. For once you have seen through things, there is nothing more childish and naive you can say to a child than that nothing more is needed for a human being to come into the world than the purely physical process. ... That is fundamentally wrong from a deeper perspective. The reality is: the human being comes from a spiritual world... from a spiritual existence before birth, and the physical process is only the mediator of the spiritual person's entry into this sensual world, and what our enlightened people want to teach children today is much, much more untrue and unreal than the old stork tale. ... Everything that has been said in the image of the flying was the image of the spiritual for our ancestors. ... The image of something flying always appears when the spiritual is to be pointed out in a fairy tale. For example, in the children's song “Fly, little bird, fly... your mother is in Pommerland”... Pommerland is not Pommern... Pommerland is Kinderland... “fly, little beetle, fly”... the same image is everywhere, and it is the basis of the stork fairy tale. ... Man from a different developmental period before the time when he should have soberly understood it in everyday life, believed in the stork fairy tale himself, because at the time the magic touch of imagery had been breathed over what is in the world around us. ... And it is quite different when I have first had a mysterious natural process in front of me in the picture... first carried this image around with me for a long time and only then was faced with the task of understanding it intellectually. Only then did I mature and then I absorb what came later in a completely different way. This shows us, in turn, how we must know those forces that develop at a certain age. ... And so we can specify for each age what it is in detail. ... So then, around the 14th or 15th year, the time of sexual maturity is an important stage. For it is at this time that the growing human being's astral mother-shell is cast off and the astral body, to which, for example, judgment and many other things adhere, is released to the direct influence of the outer world. Therefore, it is only during this time that the human being is mature enough to be exposed to external judgment and to acquire independent judgment. If we bring this judgment forward, we arrive at these things that force their way into today's life as formidable dark sides... where people grow into them without consideration... Only when puberty has occurred should independent judgment be formed on the basis of what has developed in terms of imagery, of noble feelings... under the influence of authority.... otherwise we see that the youngest people, who have not even been born yet, people who should first learn to mature their judgment, are already making their appearance with their own judgment at the time when they should only be developing it.... But this is also the time when the astral body emerges with the instincts and drives for life that are inherent in it. ... These forces arise in the form that we call “youthful ideals”, “springtime hopes”, hopes for life. A dry, sober person can easily look down on what he has experienced in his youthful soul as a mere infatuation. Even if none of this materializes, even if these are hopes that are left out in the cold in life, the fact remains that they were hopes, ideals, and that is during the time when the astral body gradually emerges. What matters is not that hopes are fulfilled, that ideals are realized, but that they are there. For they are forces in the soul and as forces they are formative, they give life inwardness, they give life strength, even if they have been there as hopes that were later destroyed. Therefore, we must do everything to ensure that these spring hopes of life are developed during this time, that they are there. Then the time gradually comes for the human being to give birth to his or her full self, which now approaches the world around in a completely free way. ... And just as there is an ascending life, there is also a descending life in the second half. Just a few words about this: the birth and gradual development of the ego comes to an end with normal life around the age of 35. At this point, the human being is at the zenith of life. Everything that was laid down in him at birth has emerged in him by this time. But now something else begins; now begins the time when, just as before, things have been shaped out of life, just as before, the abilities have been developed, so now begins the time when they are processed and consumed in pieces, from the age of 35 onwards, when in normal life, first of all, the forces of the astral body are gradually consumed inwardly. We see all astral things gradually receding again. The person becomes sober, develops more sense of reality... he becomes what, in our times, is fashion, what one can call a Philistine. While until then the person had more to do with himself, from the age of 35 begins the time when he acquires value for his environment. Before that, he had to use his time to mature his judgment and enter into a firm, definite relationship between his ego and the world around him. Now, what he is begins to have value for his fellow human beings. Now his judgment has weight, now people start to listen to him, now he radiates valuable things that he himself has to consume. Now he shows, even to an intimate observer, whether the ascending path was the right one. Now it becomes clear how barren and empty are the judgments of someone who has not grown under the influence of ideals in the period from 14 to 21 years... In order to radiate, one must first have acquired the right kind of thing at the right time. All esoteric development is subject to strict laws... those who have become teachers in this spiritual science strictly observe the rules... and today things are such that, precisely because of our culture, no one is let loose on the world by the appointed authorities before this mid-life... The true secret teachers do not allow their students to present themselves to the world with what they are supposed to give before they are ready. Everyone's tongue is only loosened at this midpoint in life. And if personalities appear before this time, you can be sure that they are doing so without a mandate, without the authorization of the individuals behind our movement. On average, no one is let loose on people before this time... Only the nonsense of our time makes it... that in these areas... the nonsense that young people, who are far from being finished with themselves, also appear in these areas... And then we see further how, roughly from the 1940s onwards, a new epoch is reached with the descending life, even if no such great regularity can be observed here as in the ascending life. ... Now that the astral body has been consumed, the time comes when the human being also begins to consume his etheric body, which he built up in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. This is then depleted again around the fiftieth year... You can see this in certain signs that occur at this age. Try to look at life in its truth, and you will see how, in this period, the memory is just what cannot receive new impressions, new forces. On the other hand, just what was in this etheric body, that comes out just now, that which this etheric body has taken in, that occurs in the sharpest, strongest memory at this age. ... Observe life from this point of view and you will experience time and again how people of this age come back again and again and have a good memory of what was incorporated into them at those ages. See the sense of well-being that old people experience at this time when they can tell their memories of their youth over and over again... and consider what good you can do them by enabling them to tell such stories... And then, in the last stage of life, see how little by little the physical body is consumed too... see how the bones become more and more calcified, how they become more physical. The cartilages ossify... this last stage of life also consumes the physical body... Once the ascending life is properly regulated, another thing will show up, which is often ignored today. From the age of 35 onwards, a person radiates such judgments, which are decisive and have value for his environment... Then he comes to not only radiate judgments for his environment, but also to the fact that what he radiates as authority may also be considered authoritative for his environment... First the judgments become decisive, then in the penultimate epoch of life the life radiations themselves become decisive and a value for the environment... and last of all... man gains such judgment, such inner fullness, that what he then gives of himself has something mature not only for his time, but for all times. Those who see into things therefore also see in a completely different way... why certain people speak of this time in a very special way... With Dante, for example, you can see this in the very first lines of his “Divina Commedia”. There you can see how he says: “In the midst of life I saw all this...” And so you can look at all the great minds in this way... And if you look at a person like Goethe... you have to take into account the difference between what he created when he was in ascending development and what he created after the middle of his life. That by which he has become for humanity what he is to it, that falls after the middle of life... But if we look at the second half of life, we see that nothing external is developed for the temporal human being, for the outer limbs, physical body, etheric and astral body. This is consumed. But the moment the outer shell begins to disintegrate, that is when enrichment and the development of the essential begins. The forces of the inner being, the forces of the actual self, become ever more powerful and powerful in that which lives in these shells, for which the outer being begins the descending development. In the second half of life, the eternal, the lasting, the immortal in man develops, and when death occurs, we see how the outer shell falls away and how, even though it may have seemed for a while as if the inner life has receded, then we see how what the person has... how, at death, as a birth for the spiritual, the eternal, how that emerges at death as what he has developed valuably within himself, in his inwardness. Death is physical death, but spiritually for the spiritual world it is a new birth and... this is prepared in the second half of life. At this time, when the outer layers gradually die off, the human being shapes what remains, what is eternal about him. The great poet sensed that when the outer layers die away, the inner form, the spiritual form, that which is lasting and eternal, develops within. Great minds have always sensed and said what a wisdom that deeply penetrates the spiritual effects must confirm in every detail... What Schiller said cannot be presented to you as blind faith, but as fully valid knowledge. Today, only brief, cursory allusions could be given... about the course of human life... If we allow ourselves to be completely permeated by this practice of life, which can arise from spiritual science, then we will experience that life is shaped in such a way that we become hopeful, able to live and work through it, because we understand correctly in every moment:
Question and Answer
Rudolf Steiner: In this respect, we must learn to place the principle of freedom above all else in relation to the developing human being. It is easy to believe that these or those ideals are the right ones at first. But we must not create stereotyped ideals for ourselves. The developing human being is a mystery that the educator has to solve, and he learns just as much from the mysterious human being who is gradually emerging from his or her shells and allows himself to be guided by this human being to the ideals that are right for him or her. So we learn to respect the freely developing individuality when we know that the spirit is realizing itself... The question can only be solved by education in life in each individual case... However, there are certain basic ideals that are appropriate almost everywhere... above all, there is a beautiful ideal: a human being who is as complete as possible in every single detail, whom we can justifiably depict from history. ... when we create figures of world history and let our own powers be ignited by the great figures... but when we then come up with practical life, we can also ignite these ideals with practical life... what is important is to keep alive the sense of the transformation of the world, to maintain the sense that the world can change. ... On the real meaning of ideals: Fichte, “On the purpose of the scholar”. |
251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: Second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society — Day Two: Part II
19 Jan 1914, Berlin Rudolf Steiner |
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Rather, it is about strengthening the powers of the ego, which can raise our ego to a level that we place ourselves in life in such a way that we voluntarily take on what might otherwise appear to us as a compulsion in Boldt's sense. The “Philosophy of Freedom” does not teach that one should overturn all existing values of life, but that we should make ourselves available to these values of life with a strong I, so that we can reshape them – but not in the self-aggrandizing way that only the selfish personal ego knows, but in such a way that we never lose sight of the point of view of the whole, of community. |
But he should not devote himself to the affairs of his own ego in such moments. That would have the opposite effect to that intended. Rather, in such moments he should quietly reflect on what he has experienced, what the external world has told him. |
251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: Second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society — Day Two: Part II
19 Jan 1914, Berlin Rudolf Steiner |
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Dr. Steiner: Before Mr. von Rainer speaks further, I would like to mention one thing. When the brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” was sent to me, I read the motto on the title page:
“Goethe,” it says below. I have studied Goethe for a long time, and to me the words seemed quite un-Goethean; and I must confess: I could not remember how the words relate to Goethe. It did not occur to me at all where Goethe might have uttered these un-Goethean words – un-Goethean in the case that he might have used them himself. But I thought that someone who refers to me as much as Mr. Boldt does must at least have learned what I have so often pointed out: that the words spoken by characters in plays should not be applied to the poet himself; otherwise, one could quote Goethe with the words spoken by Mephistopheles in Faust. But I couldn't say anything because I didn't remember. - So I asked Dr. Reiche, who has the “German Dictionary” at hand, to look up the expression “plague ghosts” - since it is the most characteristic in this sentence - in the “German Dictionary”. And under “plague ghost” it was also revealed how these words are connected to Goethe. Goethe wrote a little drama called “Lila”. Various characters appear in it, including a lady who is somewhat eccentric and is being treated by doctors without success. Verazio, a doctor, is called in to make her well again, and I would like to read to you the conversation that develops.
Sophie, who is something of an enfant terrible in this piece, then says:
But the “Enfant terrible” then says:
(General amusement in the assembly). Mr. von Rainer continued: “It could be said that we are doing everything we can to show how deeply we are imbued with the significance and seriousness of what we receive from spiritual science, and that this lives fully in our ideas and convictions.” But if you look at the facts, you might come to a different conclusion. Above all, one thing can be considered: that at the constituent assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, which took place a year ago, Dr. Steiner gave us the right word of warning. He spoke of the fact that occult research presents a difficulty for our time: to allow our idealism and enthusiasm to truly mature into action — because we all have something morbid, which we have come to know as the “Amfortas nature”, and because with all truly convinced devotion to an ideal, this sick part of our soul life always plays a role in us, and we must therefore be very vigilant. It was said at the time: We have no reason to be particularly joyful, because we have great enemies outside, and we will not be able to work without concern in our individual working groups, but will have to be watchmen, protectors of what we have received as spiritual science, and of which we increasingly recognize – I add this now – that it is what today's humanity urgently needs. And with the admonition “Watch and pray” we were dismissed at the time. Mr. von Rainer then emphasized how important it seems to him that there be even more active participation on the part of the members in Dr. Steiner's cycles and lectures, and that by doing so they would show that they have recognized the full seriousness of the world-historical moment that is coming to light in our spiritual scientific movement. Through active participation, one should show that one is aware that a new stage in the spiritual-scientific movement is to emerge through the work of the Anthroposophical Society. Mr. von Rainer then continued: The difficulties in a movement that is constantly changing in the means are certainly great in order to understand them. But it is not without reason that it has been pointed out again and again how, out there in the world, what is left of truthfulness and understanding of reality is perishing with a certain rapidity. And anyone who has observed in a certain respect how, in recent times, one and the same theme has been repeated by Dr. Steiner in very different ways, especially in public lectures, namely how it has been structured and developed in order to present it, anyone who has observed this , must also have realized that the means by which spiritual science is to be communicated must be changed. This is because in the outside world everything is repeatedly and repeatedly trivialized and quoted in a misleading way. The need for flexibility of mind was already recommended to us at the constituent assembly of the Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, it is necessary that we do not always get stuck on what has already been brought, but that we go along with the movement as it is necessary. The new books are not given so that they are not read, even if they are very difficult to understand. This does not mean that the old books have lost their meaning. And one could see how in 1913, Dr. Steiner always gave what could draw attention to what is actually important now. This must really be taken into account! And if one does this, one need not fear that one cannot keep up. It is only too obvious that misunderstandings will arise in this regard, and I would like to mention one because it is symptomatic and needs to be taken into account. After Dr. Unger's lecture series in Munich, a series of lectures were given on the book “Theosophy”. An Anthroposophist who is a true and sincere admirer of Dr. Steiner's teachings, and in particular a very honest striving person who certainly did not want to do anything against Dr. Steiner, had the opportunity to hear Dr. Unger's lectures and now wanted to repeat them in our branch. I told him that I had nothing against him doing it, but I didn't think it would be right to do it on the only branch evening of the week. The Anthroposophical Society is our teacher, and the only branch evening should be devoted to the teacher's writings, because we have not yet worked through his writings sufficiently. I don't want to say anything against the good intentions of the person concerned. But as far as the teaching itself is concerned, we must concentrate on the personality who brought the teaching into the world, and we must realize that it is the spiritual impulses that make us productive in this field. We cannot say that we can achieve something in this respect, but only that we are inspired by these impulses, and that gives us some insights that we can pass on. But the one who truly leads and guides the matter must be and remain Dr. Steiner. After the Munich lectures, we had the cycle in Kristiania – one can truly say: a milestone in the development of humanity! And to personally listen to this cycle is not the same as just having it communicated through writing. If we are to get a feeling for the living force that should be in our movement, we must feel that “being there” plays a certain role. Of course, the reproduction of the cycles makes it easier to study; but on the other hand, we should say to ourselves out of our active theosophical sense of honor: We must be there personally through action! In this way we show ourselves to be truly loyal. One should not actually proceed according to numbers, but it does make a certain impression – and rightly so when such a new movement is launched – if one also shows this through the number; because it is also something that one shows on the physical plane that one is loyal to the cause as a follower. In this brief overview of what has happened since the constituent assembly, I wanted to show that it is necessary to pay much more homage to action than to words. Words have a lot of seductive power. It was said in Helsingfors that withheld speech forces bring moral impulses to action, and if you talk about something a lot, you usually don't do it. But it is good if, through what you get into your soul from your active sense of honor towards your ideal, anthroposophy, you come to do less talking and more action. There is nothing more absurd than being repeatedly accused of “worshipping” Dr. Steiner or when Freimark even speaks of “deceived frauds”. Dr. Steiner cannot be concerned with having admirers. What he communicates will not be changed by this. But for us, who have gained an understanding of what is necessary, what is in the teaching, and what humanity needs, it is necessarily a moral duty to hold the protective hand over the truth that is in this teaching and to reject everything that is not compatible with it. Mr. Bauer: I would like to make a very brief comment about a correction that does not belong to the Boldt matter; but it would not have the same significance later as it does now. Mr. von Rainer gave the example that after the last events in Munich, a member of the board or some other member wanted to repeat the lectures that Dr. Unger had given in Munich about the book 'Theosophy'. Mr. von Rainer advised this member not to do so, because it was not our task. We must place the writings of Dr. Steiner at the center of our studies, and the other does not belong to our task and would only detract from the core. I cannot let this remark go unchallenged. I do not understand the logic of this remark about what Mr. von Rainer said. I will try to illustrate it with an analogy. I assume that Dr. Steiner would have spoken here, and the hall would be much larger than it is, and there would now be someone in a corner who has not clearly understood what has been said and who is therefore turning to someone who was sitting in the middle of the hall - between him and the speaker - and who should have heard exactly what was said. Then Mr. von Rainer would have to intervene and say: “This distracts you from the right central task; you must listen only to Dr. Steiner; listening to others distracts you from Dr. Steiner!” In Munich, Dr. Unger showed with his own loyalty how one can study a book like Theosophy over many years and always find something deeper and deeper. He demonstrated the seeds that were already in this book, and thus directed all his efforts to leading to Dr. Steiner. He, through his peculiar, not too widespread gift and through his great loyalty to the writings of Dr. Steiner, can do much more in this than many others. One can understand many things through it that one would not otherwise have understood. He can tell you many things as one who is “in between” and has heard it better. So if someone, fired up and inspired by what he has heard in Munich, comes home and says, “Now I want to show the members what can be extracted from the book Fräulein Kittel then talks about how important it is to understand the full seriousness of our time, and that our movement must be protected from everything that does not belong in it. Mr. Walther: Dear friends! Since the Boldt matter has already been discussed at such length, I didn't really want to say anything more; but since I had initially planned to do so, I will present the little that I had planned here. In the small brochure that we have repeatedly discussed, on page 13 there is a sentence written by Mr. Boldt:
that is, for the 'followers' of Dr. Steiner
This is the accusation that Mr. Boldt makes against us. I have now also read his book, in which he shares with us what he has gained from the “Philosophy of Freedom” and is now handing down to humanity. To put it very briefly, I will pick out a few points from the book and use them to show what Mr. Boldt regards as the content or the impulse to action that arises from the “Philosophy of Freedom.” On page 75 of his writing “Sexual Problems” he writes:
Such is the judgment Mr. Boldt makes of the culture in which we live. And on page 78, he also tells us his remedy for how we can free ourselves from this “cage”:
And now he expands on the “freedom of love” in his book and then, on page 85, shows all the institutions that lock us into this menagerie or [in this] cage:
This is what Mr. Boldt has gained from his study of the “Philosophy of Freedom.” But we can shed even more light on it if we also consider what he said on page 90:
I think that what we have just heard from the book could well show us that he who presumes to judge a work like “The Philosophy of Freedom” and who receives such impulses for action from this study that he lets them end in a complete self-indulgence - well, in an indulgence with “free love” - can certainly not have understood “The Philosophy of Freedom.” Truly, the Philosophy of Freedom would be a terrible work if it were to teach man such a doctrine, such volitional impulses as are found in Boldt's book. An attempt has certainly been made to show man what freedom is and how a person who understands what is given in the book can truly come to a freedom, but how this freedom is not realized by him in the sense that Boldt would like to live it in the sense of a boundless superman, in which he no longer cares about anything and only wants to live as the most perfect egoist. We know such concepts among people as they are known as “anarchism”. That is also not meant in the book “Philosophy of Freedom”. Rather, it is about strengthening the powers of the ego, which can raise our ego to a level that we place ourselves in life in such a way that we voluntarily take on what might otherwise appear to us as a compulsion in Boldt's sense. The “Philosophy of Freedom” does not teach that one should overturn all existing values of life, but that we should make ourselves available to these values of life with a strong I, so that we can reshape them – but not in the self-aggrandizing way that only the selfish personal ego knows, but in such a way that we never lose sight of the point of view of the whole, of community. So it is not a matter of us activating everything that is predisposed in our lower nature and that might arise through a misunderstood freedom of will, but of understanding and implementing the “Philosophy of Freedom” in our lives in such a way that we use the strength it can give us to work for community and for higher life goals and values. For that would not be a freedom that only served to fulfill the desires of the human being. But such a strengthened self, in the sense of the “Philosophy of Freedom”, will not, as Mr. Boldt recommends, live out in free love and advocate for such an endeavor, as free love does find its followers, even in scientific circles, and is recognized by the general public. On the contrary, it should be said: this must be opposed! It would be dangerous if we followed Mr. Boldt here and sanctioned such theosophical or anthroposophical ideals as are meant here. Never ever must we mix such things with our movement, and it would not seem good if we did not strictly reject what is meant here in the book. We must not allow our movement to be used as a cloak for the things which Mr. Boldt is trying to do and hint at here. I would now like to suggest commenting on what Mr. Boldt is suggesting here. And even if we do not go to the extreme of expelling him, what we have to say against his writings could be communicated to him to make him aware of the consequences that it could have, so that it should cause him to change his position towards us. But it would then also have to be made clearer to him that if he wanted to continue his efforts, he should expect nothing from us, because we could never give up our movement to serve as a cover for the unbridled expression of the lower nature. Director Sellin: Are you not at all afraid that I will add fuel to the fire and come to you with Mr. Boldt's atrocities? I am, after all, the one least competent to judge Mr. Boldt, and I must say: I am actually pleased that I lack the understanding to link philosophy with eroticism in the way Mr. Boldt does. I only asked for the floor because Mr. Boldt believes that he would be expelled from the Munich branch if I made a request to that effect. That is not the case. The matter is as follows: When the article “Theosophy or Antisophy?” was distributed eight days ago, I talked about it with Theosophical friends, and some of them said, “You are the oldest. Can't you go to the man and give him a piece of your mind?” So I agreed, went to him, gave him my opinion and gave him a piece of my mind! And Mr. Boldt was careful not to cite me as the first person to praise the excellence of his opinion. As I did then, I told him in a thoroughly fatherly manner: “What you have written is so outrageous that you cannot take responsibility for it. You have thrown dirt at the ladies, at the board of the Munich branch. You have accused the teacher of moral cowardice. But since you have no prospect of getting your point across and putting another researcher in charge, I don't see why you want to continue to belong to this, in your opinion, hopelessly run-down society. Why not withdraw your membership! You can form a new group and gather people of your kind around you. There is such great annoyance in our society about your behavior. It would be best if you withdraw your membership. If you don't, you can experience being excluded!" Eight days later, I asked whether Mr. Boldt had responded, and was told that he had not. Only then did I feel justified in making a motion to expel Mr. Boldt from the Munich branch if he did not make amends for his wrongdoing and withdraw the offensive brochure. He has now done something quite different. Ms. Stinde has been kind enough to postpone the decision on my motion until eight days after the general assembly. If Mr. Boldt has not taken action by then, I will have to maintain my position; because I say to myself: Then the man does not belong with us. I will continue to make the motion for expulsion. Fräulein Scholl: With so many speakers having already addressed this matter in such detail, it is only natural that some points that one might have wanted to raise oneself have already been covered. It is therefore not necessary for me to speak at such length as would otherwise have been required, and I think we should proceed in such a way that we can deal with the matter as quickly as possible. The material has been sufficiently made known to you, and you have also become sufficiently familiar with the attitudes expressed in Mr. Boldt's brochure and book. However, perhaps another point of view may be pointed out, from which the whole matter can also be considered, and it does not seem superfluous to me to point this out. It has already emerged from a discussion at the board meeting that Mr. Boldt did not always tell the truth during the negotiations with the Munich lodge. As Countess Kalckreuth said, there were some parts of the letters that did not always correspond to the truth. This is only mentioned because Countess Kalckreuth was about to state it here as well. Now, we may have to consider a few more points to ensure that we have covered everything, or at least the most important aspects. It should be pointed out once again, as Mr. Boldt always refers to in his writing and later in the brochure, that the whole train of thought of his ideas, what he has published in his book, is based on the teachings of Dr. Steiner and specifically on the “Philosophy of Freedom”, and he always wants to point out through the quotations and the references that he has always connected his thoughts to what Dr. Steiner gives. But if you know the teachings of Dr. Steiner and then read Mr. Boldt's writings, it is really as if pure sunlight were transformed into the cloudy light of a smoky kerosene lamp. And it should be noted: We are responsible to the rest of humanity for allowing Dr. Steiner's teachings to be distorted in this way, not only when the quotations are literally wrong, but also when they are wrongly reproduced in meaning, because then they are a lie. It is really a matter of taking a firm stand against such occurrences and not allowing this spirit of untruth to arise. Not for our own sake! We could perhaps bear Mr. Boldt quite well; even if 25 percent of Mr. Boldt's nature and character were in society, we could bear it. But we should show the rest of humanity that we do not want to endure this 25 percent — or even just one percent of this kind, that if we want to be anthroposophists, we do not want to endure this spirit of lies, wherever it appears, in the smallest or greatest things. But here we are dealing with the greatest things, in the face of which Mr. Boldt appears. If you take such descriptions by Dr. Steiner as he has given about the Grail mystery, if you think about what has been told about the transformation of lower forces in man into higher ones, in how wonderful a way it was given, so that only feelings of reverence and devotion could flow through the listeners , and then you read how it is presented in Mr. Boldt's book – not 'dirty' because it deals with certain problems, but dirty because of the way in which he presumes to deal with the most sublime, a way that must disgust anyone who has a healthy sense: Then you can understand that the rest of humanity, when presented with this, must receive quite distorted ideas about the teachings of Dr. Steiner. Therefore, it seems especially important to me that we take strong action against these things. Other such untruths can be found in great numbers in the book. One need only point out Mr. Boldt's contradictions, for example where he says what the “Anthroposophical Society” is in his opinion, and where he says something quite the opposite about it. One time he says on pages 27-28:
But on pages 15-16 he has already said – he has probably forgotten this:
And at the same time, he ascribes a peculiar character trait to Dr. Steiner:
How can we understand that he says one thing on pages 27-28 and something completely different on pages 15-16? These are contradictions, and they are repeated over and over again in this little booklet. And then there is the comment as if Dr. Steiner behaved in the way attributed to him by Mr. Boldt, which has already been characterized several times. It is the most repulsive defamation that can be uttered about a person. Apart from the fact that we - each of us personally - must be horrified by the way he treats us, using Nietzsche's sayings, which he continually tears out of completely different contexts and uses only to reinforce his own thoughts, without the person who would have used the quote in this way – so, quite apart from the fact that Mr. Boldt is treating us very vilely and insultingly, it seems to me that we cannot tolerate a person in our society who acts in this way against Dr. Steiner and especially against the teaching. We know that we have only been able to receive these teachings through Dr. Steiner in our time, and that we honor Dr. Steiner's personality in this sense for the sake of the teachings that are given to us by him from the spiritual worlds. Among us, however, there are still some people who are not very mature or experienced in the field of spiritual science, those who still know too little about the whole spirit of the movement to be able to stand firm in every moment and to have the right judgment of such poisonous works as those of Mr. Boldt. But it should be sufficiently clear from the matters presented what harmful elements we are dealing with. Therefore, my proposal – this was meant from the outset, and my judgment has not been mitigated by the milder proposals of the other speakers – is that Mr. Boldt be expelled from the Anthroposophical Society. I believe that on average we are not so well-disposed that we can say with Ernst, “Despite the fact that someone acts in this outrageous way against that which is the highest and most sacred for us, we want to keep him among us and we will love him.” — In any case, I have to say that I do not have this love so far. I move, rather, that Mr. Boldt be struck from the lists of the Anthroposophical Society — out of love for our cause and out of love for the spiritual heritage that is endangered by such tendencies as those of Mr. Boldt, and on which alone we can live! Dr. Steiner: Before we continue, allow me a few words. It would perhaps be very appropriate to be as clear as possible in this matter and to arrive at a judgment by looking at things, I would say, soberly. Above all, let me first raise some questions that might serve us to form an opinion. I would like to raise the question: What actually happened for Mr. Boldt to approach us in such a way at this our General Assembly? Perhaps we will find it easier to answer this question if we ask ourselves: What should have happened first so that Mr. Boldt might not have come to the decision to approach the General Assembly in this way? If you have followed the debate, you will have seen that one of the first mistakes we made in Mr. Boldt's mind was that the two ladies of the board of the Munich Lodge I did not lay out the prospectus for Mr. Boldt's book in the Munich Lodge two years ago – approximately. I believe there can be no doubt that the display of this brochure in one of our lodges would have been perceived as a kind of recommendation; after all, we cannot display things without being aware that we are recommending them. I don't think there would be much point in displaying it at all if we can't advocate things from some point of view or other. That is to say: Mrs. Kalckreuth and Mrs. Stinde should have endorsed the book, which has now been characterized by the various speeches, in so far as they should naturally have endorsed the wording of the “prospectus” presented to them at the time. Conscientiously, one cannot understand it any other way than that the ladies should have said, as it says in the prospectus:
And everything else I read to them earlier should have been acknowledged by the aforementioned ladies. That is the first question I want to raise: What should have been done to prevent Mr. Boldt from approaching us in this way? I would like to raise a second question, which is connected to the judgment that Mr. Boldt has passed on me. This judgment, which appears at various points in his brochure, can be summarized by saying that the - I do not want to repeat the joke used yesterday - the man characterized in the well-known way is compelled by the peculiar circumstances of society to present his doctrine in a very peculiar way. One could say: This Dr. Steiner, whom Mr. Boldt indicates as a reference and on whom he wants to base his “sexual problems,” can indeed present some things to the world; but he has a society that is a minority of 25 percent, which “clenches its fists in its pockets” – as politely indicated to the other, so backward 75 percent –
Because society initially has this 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army, Dr. Steiner is compelled not to tell the truth; Mr. Boldt explains how this is understandable: since society has to adhere to Nietzsche and the “falsehood of a judgment is not an objection to a judgment,” so Dr. Steiner is obliged not to present the things he believes to be the truth, but those that he considers suitable for presentation to that 75 percent. Following on from this description of “Dr. Steiner”, I would like to ask my second question. I have tried to find out from this brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” what exactly it is that is wrong with what I present to the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery or Salvation Army from lecture to lecture, from working group meeting to working group meeting. I had to say to myself: It is somewhat difficult to find out what this wrong is supposed to be. Because if the 25 percent who do not belong to a girls' boarding school, a convent or the Salvation Army have now happily figured out that Dr. Steiner tries not to say what he thinks is right, but what he considers suitable for the 75 percent who attend girls' boarding schools and so on, can one ask what the value of this “fatal doctrine” - because it seems to me to be a fatal doctrine - should be? Because it must have some value! Because I can't help but say, based on what the brochure says: If these 25 percent don't want to withdraw from society and don't want to do without lectures and want to participate in the spiritual knowledge – that is, in the concoction that I brew for the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army – then these 25 percent who sit there in the strange way, with their fists clenched in their pockets, enjoy it so much and attach such importance to it that they definitely want to be there; so they appreciate a brew that is intended for girls' boarding schools, nunneries and salvation armies that they do not want to belong to. I said to myself: I won't find out what is wrong with what I am concocting for girls' boarding schools, nunneries and the Salvation Army. I tried harder to find out. Then I realized – and I don't know if the 75 percent agree: The only thing, it seems to me, that makes Mr. Boldt say that I make such a concoction is that I did not recommend his book! That seems to me to be the one that the 75 percent don't want to be in. If anyone finds something else, let me know! But I would also like to take the liberty of saying what I have already said: that I really do not consider Mr. Boldt's book to be a very mature product of our contemporary literature. But on the other hand, I would like to say something else. You see, I do share the opinion of the character I read to you earlier: the opinion of the enfant terrible Sophie in the little drama “Lila”, which does the saying that has already been read out, after Verazio spoke the words that Mr. Boldt used as the motto on the first page of his brochure – so they are not Goethe's words, but the words of a character in a play – and wants to apply to himself:
I am a little bit of that myself. Opinion – also with regard to the first sentence – of Sophie:
I do not believe that Mr. Boldt is dishonest; I do not even believe that he has evil intentions, and I must therefore say: What seems to me the most distressing thing in such a matter is actually always the case; and in this “case” one can very much detest the personality and consider the case as such. Mr. Boldt seems to me to be nothing more than one of the many victims of our time in a particular field. And it behoves us to point out that in the field of anthroposophy, we are not motivated by a nun-like, Salvation Army-like or girl's boarding school-like attitude, but by completely different reasons - reasons that not only Mr. Boldt, but also many other people do not have a proper concept of, we have to turn against such science and wisdom, as Mr. Boldt wants to bring to the man, seduced by some currents of our time, that we have to turn against such science and wisdom, against such pseudo-science and pseudo-wisdom, against such immature science and wisdom! The first thing we have to bear in mind is that we – how often have I emphasized this, especially in the course of the last year! – have the very task of standing up for truth and truthfulness. And it is not for nothing that we decided to put the motto on our statutes ourselves: “Wisdom lies only in truth!” Seduced by many of the currents of our time, immature minds then feel that they are in the — as it seems to them — justified position of speaking of the fact that precisely the one who stands up for this sentence — “Wisdom lies only in truth” — as a motto for our Anthroposophical Society must assume masks in order to cover up the truth so that he can get rid of its followers. This is not personal audacity — it is done by the seduced immature mind, which can be forgiven personally, but which must be characterized objectively as it arises from the character of the current. One of the first things to be characterized in this trend of the times is something that has often had to be mentioned in connection with our necessary striving for truth: It is that which deeply permeates the times and is even connected with some of the conditions of life in our time: It is untruthfulness, the lack of conscientiousness, which is not only found in what Mr. Boldt produces, but also in a large part of our contemporary literature! No wonder immature minds are seduced by it! But if we have to stand up for truth and truthfulness, we have to listen to the Spirit of Truth; but not to what is in this current of untruthfulness and lack of conscientiousness. Everywhere outside, we find that what is said in some other direction is cited to defend all kinds of private matters that, in the eyes of those who want to defend them, usually have the highest value. My dear friends, I ask you with reference to the man who wrote the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural and Spiritual Science” and who wrote in this book [in footnote 12] on page 136/137:
, and so on, as it has been mentioned before:
Here, a certain enjoyment is clearly and explicitly mentioned! It continues:
Imagine that someone does not have the conscientiousness to reach for issue 13 of “Lucifer - Gnosis”; then he must get the idea that is there: “there is talk about the enjoyment of love”. - Who can read anything else into it? But open “Lucifer - Gnosis”, issue 13, and try to figure out what it is about. There it says [on] $. 5:
And now you are wondering whether, if you profess the views of the Anthroposophical Society, you may quote what is said here in “Lucifer - Gnosis”, issue 13, in such a way that, may one, after having previously discussed the enjoyment of love in Boldt's manner, say: “The reader can find more about enjoyment in ‘Lucifer - Gnosis, Issue 13’ and so on?” In this context, I ask you: Is Mr. Boldt a disciple of the anthroposophical current or is he not - with regret I say: unfortunately; with reference to his weak personality, with which I have compassion - just a seduced of a current of today? We are entitled to ask ourselves such a question; for it is not a matter of treating the “Boldt case” as the case of Mr. Boldt, but of regarding it as symptomatic of what is happening not only to Mr. Boldt but also, I would say, speaks to us from the windows everywhere, and is infinitely more important than the individual case of Boldt, which is only one form of many of the things that are happening in our time, and which we are called upon to fight. Much to my regret, I was obliged on another occasion to point out how quotations are used today – on the occasion of Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's “Denkschrift” (memorandum). On page 135, you will find the following about Boldt:
Here, individual sentences have been taken out of context, which reads as follows:
Anyone who takes this as it is presented here, and the preceding and following must also be taken into account, will find that the one who wrote this considered it necessary to place these things in this overall context and not to tear them out of this context. And if Mr. Boldt is embarrassed to speak to the readers of his book about “fire fog” and “moon entities,” then let him keep his hands off it! Then it's none of his business! He has no right to tear sentences that I use only in one context out of that context in order to use them for his own private purposes. But something else has been said here that anyone who wants to can read. And I believe that the 25 percent who do not want to be a girl's boarding school and so on could read something like that. It is said:
Let noble divine powers work in this area! But not the dirty fantasies of our contemporary sexology. They have been described precisely in order to clarify the matter, but not to defile them with what can be said about this area from the coarse, clumsy human powers. And that was the spirit in all the explanations I have given over the course of many years for the anthroposophists. Truly, gentlemen, I would deny those from whose heads Mr. Boldt learned the right to speak at all about these things! I could never allow the students of those whose right I deny to speak at all about this area, which is protected by the noble powers of the gods, to spread among us. This is how one quotes in our time in the broad stream of life! But those who are disciples of this quoting have, in my opinion, no place within our anthroposophical stream! And another question that I want to ask you, and which is now to be linked to what has just been said, is one that is, however, more of a logical one. In Mr. Boldt's brochure, it says on page 21:
I address the question to those who present themselves in the “we”: Why don't they stay out if they don't “want to belong”? Because it does not seem logical to me if they are inside. Because the only thing that is to be held against me is that I have not praised Mr. Boldt's book and that everything I present is a concoction for girls' boarding schools, convents and salvation armies. So then the only conclusion to be drawn with respect to Mr. Boldt and the others – and here I am speaking of many people found in today's intellectual culture – is that they should view this concoction for girls' boarding schools , convents and Salvation Army from the outside – not from the inside – and that they do not let themselves be told only when their logic demands it would be illogical not to be among us! By this I wanted to suggest that we should not concern ourselves with the “Boldt case” in such a way that we “use a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. That is not necessary. But we really want to show that we have something to say about the field in which Mr. Boldt is a student – a seduced, unfortunate student. Therefore, I would like to continue here tomorrow with what I still have to say about this, as briefly as possible. The continuation of the “business part” is set for Tuesday, January 20, 1914, at ten o'clock in the morning. Dr. Steiner announces that he will speak about “Pseudo-Science of the Present” in relation to the matter at hand. |